was a Christian monk (St Telemachus) who, in the truest martyrdom, put an end to such spectacles at the cost of his life. But when the Northern nations had spread night over Europe, the faith of Christ, though mixed with legends and ancient customs, was still a light in a dark place. In its power, the bishops of Spain forbade the Gothic chieftains to estimate any humble life as worth less than their own, and affixed the same penalty to any murder of man. In the same spirit, it was reckoned an acceptable sacrifice to God for serfs to be emancipated by their rude lords. Even the right of asylum in churches, (though it became abused†, as it had been among the Hebrews, from whose precedent it seems taken,) was useful in so fierce an age, as enabling passion to cool, and equity to obtain a hearing. Again, in the monasteries were preserved the relics of learning. Around them, or in episcopal cities, survived an image of the old Roman tribunate, with its veto in favour of humanity upon illegal tyranny; and so the germs of our municipal freedom were cherished. The schools of Charlemagne in France, the patronage of learned men by Alfred, and the foundation of many colleges throughout Europe, are all connected in some measure with the influence of the Church in the dark ages. They are akin to that spirit which sent missionaries into the most savage nations, like the Briton Winifrid (or Boniface) into Germany, softening everywhere wild man, by shewing him something of the truth of God. Even where such missions, or the Churches which sent them forth, were in collision with one another, as the Churches of Iona and Western Britain were with the growing centralisation of Rome, the spirit which animated them all was the same, and the truth which lay at the bottom of their zeal was essentially one.

"Of religious wars, such as the Crusades, we may say that, if Christianity had never existed, they would not the less have

* Guizot.

+ Hosea vi. 8, 9, where harbouring of homicides in the Levitical cities seems implied.

Guizot, and Sir James Stephen's Lectures on French History.

CHURCH HISTORY.

PRIMITIVE REVIVAL.

419

been fought. For their real causes were generally passion or policy. Yet the religion, which was made a pretext for them, threw an elevating influence among the mixed motives of the combatants, and often ennobled ferocity into courage, while sometimes it even mitigated victory. Nor need we doubt that, in this tangled world, such contests are often means of working out a Divine design, which is neither to be measured by the consciousness of its instruments, nor yet to be charged with the acts of their free will. We see all things not as yet put under the feet of the most perfect wisdom.

"But a great sign of the goodness of Christianity is, that when the ages of twilight were to brighten into noonday, they did so chiefly by returning to the first principles of our faith. By reviving the good news of God's 'frank' forgiveness of sins, such men as Wyclif and Luther rolled away the burden that lay heavy on the human breast. By putting us, in the Spirit of Christ, face to face with God, they put away all false subterfuges of the conscience, and all vain gloryings, and at the same time all fears, awakening in men both a deeper humility, and a consciousness of strength not their own. Again, leading us to the foot of Christ's cross, they shewed us the evil of wilful sin, and by what a sacrifice of self-dedication our health is wrought, and persuades us to 'sin no more, lest a worse thing befal us.' They did not thus bring a new Christianity, but they renewed the power of the old. Then by putting in every man's hands the sacred writings of the prophets and apostles, they not only enable us to judge of the truth of things, but give us a wonderful instrument for awakening in ourselves the same spirit as dwelt in the writers. For though faith is in one sense the gift of God, yet in another sense it comes by reading and by hearing. Hence I wish you also to study our scriptures, especially the book of Isaiah, and the Psalms, and St Paul, and St John, with perhaps also Genesis. These five books, postponing at first those which concern you less, I should like to see spread and read in India. They would teach you what our faith is, better

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than my account can; and might, if it be the Divine will, have the same power to awaken in you a hunger and thirst after righteousness, as they have often shewn in Europe and in Asia. Nor is it a slight sign of our religion having come from God, that its earliest writings yet breathe such power. We have learnt since many arts and sciences, and have adapted our phrase and usage, as we have a right, to the aspects of various nations. But the first life which dwelt fresh in the apostles and prophets, upon whom the temple of men's minds is built, yet speaks in their writings; and when we have most caught a contagion from thence, we most partake of their spirit, and enter into the mind of Christ, and do, as Christ did, the works of God who sends us. You should read, then, Hebrew history; nor is there any harm in comparing it with your own, since there is one God of Jew and Gentile; you should compare the doctrine and faith of Christ with both that of the Jews, and with anything analogous to it among yourselves, or answering to it in your own spirits; you should study the life, and death, and all the history of Christ Himself, and the results of His appearing in the world; you should kneel down for a little, and pray as it were at the foot of the cross in thought, asking the Divine Enlightener for His light; you may consider also whether such a deliverer as Christ from both the penalty and stain of evil, and such a revealer of immortality, is not what you need for your own peace; and then I hope, alike the substance of our faith, and the attestation which accompanied it, and the history which prepared for it, and the results which have followed it, which we both see in the history of nations, and can try for ourselves, will all together convince you that it is taught us by God, the Father of all. But I agree with Blancombe, that the love of Divine things must go before their knowledge, and if you would know whether the doctrine is of God, you must be endeavouring to do His will."

DIFFICULTY OF ORIGINAL SIN.

421

CHAPTER XII.

Doctrinal Difficulties and Explanations.

"Consider the work of God: for who can make that straight which He hath made crooked? In the day of prosperity be joyful, but in the day of adversity consider: God also hath set the one over against the other, to the end that man should find nothing after him."-ECCLESIASTES VII. 13, 14.

"That which is far off, and exceeding deep, who can find it out?"-ld. v. 24. "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.”— -I THESS. V. 21.

"For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love."-I CORINTH. xiii. 9-13.

"THE more you explain all the circumstances and accompaniments of Christianity," remarked the Saugata, "the more wonderful it appears to be. But when you urge the excellence of the Doctrine itself, as a thing that should awaken an echo of faith from the heart of man, you seem not to be aware, that the entire Christian scheme appears to us to contain very great difficulties, if not to be quite incredible." "In what respect is this so?" asked Mountain. "If you have no objection, I will explain to you," replied the other.

(1) "In the first place," he continued, "you have spoken of human nature as diseased, or as having the Divine likeness in it marred, and requiring a certain health to be wrought in it. In the mouths of many of your teachers, this statement takes even a harsher form than in your own. For they speak of man's nature as utterly abominable, so that for God even to compassionate it seems almost at variance with His truth. They say it deserves infinite torments, which are accordingly to be suffered by the mass of mankind. Then if we ask whether human sin does not come much of weakness and ignorance, and even of

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circumstances in which our Maker has placed us, they answer, No; for that it comes of our first mother's disobedience in eating the fruit of a forbidden tree; and this act of hers, several thousand years before our birth, is, they say, put down to our account; so that, even if we never sinned for ourselves, as dying perhaps in infancy, we should still be justly liable to punishment, for that act in which we had no share or consciousness, but which they say was prompted by a Spiritual Enemy, or Devil, who again preceded our birth by I know not how many more ages. We were present in some mysterious way, they tell us, in the loins of Adam or the womb of Eve; and such a doctrine, they say, is the best account of the origin of evil, and explains the world's history; whereas to us it appears to involve all visible acts and all voices of our conscience in inextricable confusion. But if we remonstrate, and say that such a doctrine neither gives a pleasant image of a heavenly Father, nor answers to our notions of justice, still less of equity, they reply, that our whole nature is too corrupt for us to have any notion of what is just or right; and perhaps even, that the more a doctrine contradicts our conscience, the more likely it is to be true; but that the infallibility of your sacred books, as proved by miracles, (which we never ourselves saw,) should compel us to abase our proud reason, and accept thankfully the Divine Revelation. But at least we know not how such a doctrine is good news, or a Gospel; for it seems to us so injurious to our Maker, and so hateful to man, that we must at least pray it may not be true. Then, as to the evidence of it, we have not seen the miracles alleged to prove it; and it is hardly pious to put the senses so far above the soul, as to make mere stories of what men have seen, overbear our holiest conceptions of Right. But, if we cannot conceive either Truth or Right, then our souls contain nothing for any Divine Revelation to obtain an answer from. Again, if God implants in some of us such a special organ of sacred perception, there is left no fitness in His doing so by men, rather than by tigers or dogs; and all your arguments for the