In Rome, we discover the world's legislator; Rome gave law to all the nations of the earth. The Justinian code of Roman Law lies at the root of half the European legislation of to-day. What a nation once does thoroughly she does for all Time.

Then there is a mysterious nation which I have not mentioned yet; I allude to that Semitic nation, that missionary race, that race to whom was given the power of keeping alive a consciousness of the spiritual in the midst of crushing material forces. The gift of the moral law and the grace of the spiritual life comes from the Jews. This nation, as I pointed out elsewhere, seems to have been brought in contact with all the great nations of the world, at the time when those nations had reached their highest degree of civilisation; and this strange and wonderful Semitic people, as we know, gave to those nations a moral law and a spiritual life, taking from them at the same time a good deal, but never losing their own individuality. And I cannot be unmoved when I remember that from this people came Jesus Christ, the Author of our religion-came Christianity, which was, as it were, the concentrated essence of all that was most highly spiritual in the world at that time,— came Christianity, which has watched over the development of the modern nations of Europe and America

Christianity, which has been most mighty, and planted itself with the tread of onward civilisation, and which is at this moment developing, and only kept back by the unwillingness of man to accept the new aspects of divine truth, and the determination of religious people

not to allow the free spirit of religion to incarnate itself in all the more modern forms of thought.

Brethren, standing thus between the Past and the Future, can I look back without a certain awe and conviction of Divine superintendence and purpose upon the development of the world? May I not say, there has been one and the same mighty spirit at work here, a spirit not only of intelligence, but a spirit of beneficence? We are the heirs of all the ages. We in our complex civilisation, in our superior skill of maintaining the health of the body and regulating man's social happiness and stamping out disease, in discovering the laws of the mind, in using the forces of nature, in lightening the burdens of life, in legislating for the welfare of society-we are living witnesses that the Law of Progress has been going on, creating many developments out of the most simple things, until all things tend to grow into a more grand and complex unity; and we are not at the end even now. As I look forward into the future, I can see a time when men will point back to this age, and call it the infancy of the world. The arcana of nature have still to be revealed, the supremacy of justice and love has still to be vindicated, the palm-branch of universal peace has still to blossom and to bear fruit, and give its leaves for the healing of the nations.

I will ask you to rest your minds by a short pause, before I proceed rapidly to survey the history of the Christian Church,

163. When Jesus Christ came, He founded an outward

and visible kingdom resting upon two great laws; one law was the universal brotherhood of man, not as a theory, for as a theory that universal brotherhood had been long known; but as an active principle, making everyone acknowledge that there was something common between man and his fellow-man, upon which a commonwealth of love might be founded. Another law was the communion between God and man, that dream which all religions have shadowed forth, and which Jesus Christ proclaimed with a voice of thunder, which has resounded through the ages and still rings in our ears. Jesus made men feel that it was possible to pray to God, that it was possible for God to pour Himself into the soul of man, that it was possible for the development of every individual to be carried on under the superintendence of a Divine love.

Upon these two great principles the Christian Church was founded, and as long as the Christian Church adhered to them it went on conquering and to conquer. As long as it accepted this law of love, moulding it about new social and political modes of life, as long as it could shape the future, by adopting and consecrating the Law of Progress, it continued to rule, and by ruling, to bless the world. The interest of man in men, and of God in all men, shown by deeds of love, and the irresistible power of a holy life, that, I make bold to say, is the heart and marrow of Christianity, as it is sketched lightly but firmly by the Master's own hand in the Sermon on the Mount; and that was, and ever must be, the only life, and heat, and radiance which the Christian Church ever had or ever can have.

The Apostles knew that and taught that, and the Church of the Fathers entered into their labours.

From A.D. 400 to A.D. 1208 the Christian Church was almost an unmixed blessing to humanity. It was not widely at variance with the intellectual state of the times, it was perhaps a little in advance of it. It was the conservator of literature, the patron of the arts, the friend of science, and the censor of morals. About 1208 the Church made up its mind that it was a great deal of trouble to go on with the age, and stood still. About 1208 the Inquisition was established at Rome and fixed dogmatic truth, thus erecting an immovable standard of belief and stopping progress; and all the strength, intellectual and spiritual, in the world has been struggling ever since with this dogmatic theology and these immovable forms. Whether they be forms doctrinal or forms ceremonial, forms belonging to Rome or any other branch of the Christian Church, it matters little. It is the principle more than the thing which is deplorable. Immovable expressions of truth must yield to common sense and to matters of fact. We must accept the development of knowledge, we must admit that the free spirit of Christianity will appear and re-appear under different forms. We must not attempt to check human progress or obstruct modern civilisation, or silence the voice o modern science. We cannot do it. began to revive, began-I had almost said—to be founded. A little further on, in the following century, the conscience of man began to rebel against the forms of the Roman I See Introductory Discourse On the Liberal Clergy.'

About 1208 science

Church, until, at the time of the Protestant Reformation, the yoke of ecclesiasticism became altogether too heavy for our fathers to bear, and they cast it off. The times were fatal to the old theology, there was a great retrogression on the part of Rome, for the Roman Church could not see that the Divine Law of Progress was daily and hourly forcing religion into new forms. And as it was in those days so it is in ours. Even now the voice of science is ringing in our ears, which is none other than the voice of God, for it is the discovery of the laws of God; and even at this moment we are, as a religious people, timid and terrified like the startled hare of the forest. We are closing our ears to the new revelation, as the old world closed its ears to the revelation which God made by the mouth of Luther, and Zuingle, and Calvin.

164. But still, in spite of us, the majestic wave of progress moves on, submerging the worn-out beliefs and crumbling superstitions of the past. Strong and irresistible as the rolling tides of the sea come the new impulses, and we may not stay them. We deem them wild and lying spirits; they care not, they pass us by, they are full of holy scorn; they speak to their own and their own receive them, and we may go hence and mutter our threats, and tremble in the darkness and spiritual gloom of our empty churches; but outside our churches the bright light is shining, and the blessed winds of heaven are full of songs from the open gates of paradise, and men hear them and rejoice. How many are there,