Conflict between the the spirit ual. BOOK I. should be denounced as the greatest of crimes, inasmuch as the authority to which it was opposed was assumed to be the most momentous and the most sacred. Looking at these positions of Church and State, secular and positions so clearly before us in the early Christian centuries, it is easy to see that from this source contentions of the gravest description would come. Conviction in Christian souls is sure to show itself more or less self-reliant and independent; and the love of power elsewhere is sure to be such as to spare no pains to discountenance such self-reliance, and to crush such independence. In looking at the ecclesiastical proceedings of 1662, in our history, in their relation to these causes, we shall meet with many sad illustrations of the antagonism which has never ceased to spring from this The two great forces source. Within the walls of ancient Rome, and in that part face to face. of the vast inclosure where the ruins of the ancient city. stand apart, and crumble into deeper ruin in comparative solitude, there is one structure which rises higher than the rest, and is more gigantic than the rest. Several of the hills, so memorable from the incidents connected with them in Roman history, slope down towards the level on which that edifice rests. The form of the building is circular, the outward surface rising in one upward line from the base to the summit. There are many ways of entrance. Passing through one of those arched passages, you reach an even floor in the interior, forming a vast circle. Walls rise to the height of some twenty feet around the edge of that circle, and from that elevation benches range off, each higher, wider, and more distant than the former, until the vast basin marks its outline on the open sky, and presents sitting room in the nearer, or standing room on the CHAP. I. further circles, for some seventy or eighty thousand persons. There were occasions when around on those front seats might be seen the emperor and his family, the patrician nobles, constituting the senate of Rome, and the ambassadors of foreign countries. Beyond were men and women splendidly attired, in the next gradation of rank and opulence; and beyond those you might see a mass of heads from the busy life of Rome, terminating with the lowest class, who press upon each other on the standing room upon the highest and outer curve of the edifice. Such was the appearance of the interior of the Colosseum on a Roman holiday. But for what were all these persons brought together -brought together day after day, and sometimes week after week? The answer to this question is not to the honour of Roman civilization. That multitude has come into that place in search of pleasure, and the pleasure they seek is to see the strongest and most ferocious animals let loose upon each other down upon that central floor, or to see men wrestle to death there with men, or with infuriated beasts. Between the successive exhibitions of this nature, the spectators eat and drink, and joke and laugh. Should the excitement flag, from the repetition of these scenes, you may hear the cry raised-"The Christians to the lions !" And if that cry becomes sufficiently general, officers are sent to the prisons, and a supply of Christians is furnished. The modern Christian can hardly stand for the first time on that floor, at the base of that huge structure, and look up at those now mouldering benches, and not picture to himself his brother Christian who was made to stand there, long centuries ago, that he might furnish BOOK I. Sources of spiritual power in the early Church. amusement to that pitiless multitude by doing battle with the hungry lion before him. Was it a marvel that the ancestors of such a people should have been described as suckled by a wolf? Or that the mildest of the apostles should have spoken of that Roman "world" as "lying in wickedness?" But if the Colosseum multitude was representative of the people and power of Rome, so that Christian man thrust before them was also a representative-a representative of Christianity and of Christ. He might be the image of weakness to the outward sense, but he was the reality of power from the spiritual influences which were embodied in him. The two great forces which were to try their strength against each other in the world of the future, were there face to face. We know that in this struggle, the force which was apparently so much the weakest, was to to prove the strongest. The great religious and social system, shadowed forth in that Colosseum multitude, is to be unwoven and displaced, almost to its last shred, and the man on that blood-stained floor is the presence of the power by which that work is to be done. Even the Roman eagles are to submit to the might of the Cross. But whence came this strength beneath so much apparent weakness? Partly from a Divine power which we can comprehend but imperfectly, and partly from moral causes which it is not difficult to understand. The old religions of the world had lost much of their influence, and man is not made to live without a religious faith of some kind. Christianity proclaimed itself as adapted to this sense of want-as the new, the higher, the nobler manifestation of which the world was so much in need. There was much also in the credentials of the new faith to secure attention. There was the evidence in its favour derived from history. The first preachers of the Gospel were careful to show that Christianity was no mere accident in the story of the world. It was, in their apprehension, the fulfilment of a purpose as old as the beginning. With the entrance of sin came the proclamation of redemption. Nay, more: what was done in the fulness of time was done in accordance with doctrines older than the foundation of the world. If they preached to Jews, a great part of their argument was that they taught no other things than Moses and the prophets did say should come. If they preached to Gentiles, they were careful to affirm that the God who had sent his Son into the world to teach and save it, was the God who had made all nations of one blood, who had never ceased to rule over them, and had filled their hearts from age to age with food and gladness. They felt the advantage of being able to look to Christianity as thus rooted in the past. An antique An antique grandeur was thrown about it as it was thus made to hold its place as a part, and in reality as the most significant part, in the great scheme of the world's creation, government, and history. The Hebrew Scriptures, from which these conceptions were derived, had been watched over and preserved, as sacred writings, with a singular care. There were no writings of that age claiming such antiquity, and none so well attested. Not to believe in the history of the Hebrews was not to believe in remote history at all. If the past of the world, as reported in those writings, was not to be credited, then the world could scarcely be said to have a past that could be known to the present. CHAP. I. BOOK I. Throughout those writings, coming from so many different men, and through so many centuries, there was one special note of prophecy, declaring that the time would come when a greater than the prophetsa greater even than Moses himself, would appear, to become a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of his people Israel. It is said of our Lord, that beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he ex'pounded in all the scriptures the things concerning ' himself."* The apostles made appeals of this nature constantly, in the hearing both of Jews and Gentiles. Next came the evidence from miracles. In the Old Testament the supernatural was seen to be interwoven with the natural, showing that the voice which spoke from those oracles was the voice of God. The miracles of the New Testament are distinguished, for the most part, by some strong characteristics, from those of the Old Testament. They are not like those recorded by Moses, Joshua, or Daniel-great physical miracles, wrought in the sight of whole communities and nations. They are nearly all miracles of healing and of mercy. They are signs, not more of power than of pity. They come upon us without noise and without observation, like the dew, and like it, they are everywhere beautiful and refreshing. The circumstances under which they present themselves are most natural. The effects described as resulting from them are no less natural. The world in that day was full of pretension to the supernatural. But of all impostors the pretenders to such power are the most easily detected. It is not given to them to know where to stop. We see this strikingly in the legends of the Romanists. Everything in the Christian * Luke xxiv. 27. |