yet deeper mystery in the eternal purpose of God. He had always meant to make His tabernacle among men, but He had not meant to die. Only in so far as we comprehend the charity of the Incarnation, can we hope to comprehend aright its consummation in the charity of the Cross.

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NOTE TO CHAP. VII.

ON CERTAIN CONTRASTS OF CHRISTIAN AND HEATHEN CIVILIZATION.

THE view expressed in the last chapter as to the comparative absence from the old heathen civilization of that gentler phase of humanity, which seems a natural outgrowth from the Cross, may not improbably be considered by many exaggerated or unreal. A few words, therefore, shall be added here, in explanation of what it is intended to convey. It is quite true, that a standard of excellence was attained under the Greek and Roman Republics, which in some respects has never been surpassed, while there are points in which the average morality of Christian States has not unfrequently fallen below it. To dispute this would be as little in the interests of Christianity, as of historical truth. Neither, again, is it to be denied, that many individual characters of heathendom present at least foreshadowings and instalments of the peculiarly Christian virtues, those, I mean, which were not only sanctioned but first distinctly inculcated by the Gospel. To use the words of Tertullian, we discover in many testimonium animæ naturaliter Christiana. Such preeminently were Socrates, Marcus Aurelius, Agricola, and perhaps Seneca; such, in various degrees, were many more who might be named. God never left Himself without a witness among men. On the other hand, it must be confessed, that only in rare and almost exceptional cases is anything like the Christian ideal, as represented by the Sermon on the Mount, realized among ourselves. It is a common remark, that very few lines need be altered in Juvenal's Satires, beyond what is purely local, to make them applicable to the London, or Paris, or Vienna of to-day. Yet it is

important to remember, that, after all allowances, certain broad contrasts remain, which fix a moral gulf between the world of Juvenal and our own.* We gaze in a rapture of admiration on that marvellous creation of genius, the Athens of Pericles, and Socrates, and Phidias, of the mighty orators and poets whose words have rung music in the ears of seventy generations of mankind. We do well to gaze; there has not been such another glory upon the earth. But we are apt to forget that the picture has a darker side, over which distance draws a veil; that, in the language of a writer little likely to undervalue its ideal grace, "if the inner life had been presented to us of that period, which in political greatness and in art is the most brilliant epoch of humanity, we should have turned away from the sight with loathing and detestation." The plays of Aristophanes tell us something of that inner life; the pages of Petronius Arbiter reveal under the Roman Empire a lower depth of pollution. But the reality must have far exceeded anything our imagination can reproduce.

It is not, however, with the impurity but the cruelty of the old civilizations that we are now concerned, as contrasting with the tenderness of feeling, the scrupulous thoughtfulness for others, which has always been more or less a characteristic of Christian society, and never more so than in our own day. If many things were permitted to the Jews for the hardness of their hearts,' many more and worse were practised by the Gentiles.

The usages of war and slavery
The condition of women, and in

have been alluded to in the text. fact the whole system of family life, which was treated simply as a subordinate department of statecraft, are also cases in point; so is the practice of human sacrifice, wherever it prevailed; and the absence, already mentioned, of any public provision for sickness or other inevitable suffering. There is, again, in individuals, even the best of them, a hardness, a want of sympathy and considerateness, of much that falls under the notion of Christian courtesy, which to us would seem almost incredible, if we came across it in real life, at least among

They are summed up in the Essay "On the State of the Heathen World," in Jowett's Epistles of St. Paul, vol. ii., p. 68, sqq.

+ Ib. p. 71.

Mommsen denies the practice of human sacrifice at Rome; others affirm it. In Greece it did not prevail in historical times, but the public taste was not shocked by legends which record it; nor was the Spartan cryptia looked upon with any special horror, though it would have been alien to Athenian habits.

the educated classes. There are, of course, exceptions; but I speak of the general standard, and of what was not found inconsistent with distinguished personal excellence. Even a man with all the refinement of Horace never dreamt of regarding slaves as other than mere chattels; the highest Roman ladies gazed with eager and unpitying enjoyment on the hideous spectacles of the Coliseum. Nor was the stern morality of Juvenal shocked at the gladiatorial shows, but only at the nobles taking part in them. No public sentiment of Rome was outraged when 20,000 slaves were killed in a mock sea-fight for a summer afternoon's pastime to the spectators. But I need not multiply illustrations of what will be readily admitted.

'Now it is clearly a fact, that in these and such like matters the common feeling and practice of Christendom is a marked improvement on that of preceding ages. Cruelties no doubt, both public and private, have been perpetrated in Christian countries, some of a kind the heathen never dreamed of. Still it remains true, that the average standard, whether national or individual, is not what it was then. No one questions, for instance, that the influence of the Church contributed in the long run to the abolition of slavery, and softened the horrors of war. Care for the sick and poor was from the beginning a noticeable speciality of Christians; hospitals, as has been observed, were first erected in Christian cities. It is surely no mere fancy to connect the changed temper of modern society with the great event which has engaged our attention in this volume. There is a sequence of causation, as well as of chronology. An Order was founded by St. Camillus of Lelli in the sixteenth century, under the name of Cruciferi, for attending those afflicted with incurable diseases, or at the point of death. May we not say, that all who represent the more tender and compassionate spirit of Christian civilization are so far, in their measure, bearers of the Cross?

GENERAL LIST OF WORKS

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