law, in many of its chief elements, they learned in time to reverence and adopt; to the church, in its various institutions, they at length yielded submission. The very name of the Roman empire had long been a spell upon the nations; these rude peoples felt it still. They could not understand the art and the literature of this strange world into which they had come, but they discerned in these, in some dim way, a treasure which they were unwilling wholly to destroy. That ancient social order, even now, in its degenerate state, had something venerable in it to their view, and it became their ambition to partake of it even while they appeared to despise it. Thus, it might seem a question, after all, which of the two elements, the old or the new, really had the mastery. In the end there was an interfusing and blending of old and new, so that in the resultant creation, each bore a part. The new manhood imparted to the old one a vitality which, turning to use so much of the old culture as was really valuable, in the result made possible that which the history of Europe and America has since disclosed.

Now the Reformation came just about one thousand years after this reconstruction of European civilization may be said to have fairly begun. This interval of ten centuries was, in the most emphatic sense, a troubled and a stormy one. Certain tendencies, inherent in the new order, worked themselves out in directions and with results which often seemed to threaten direst disaster. Elements came in collision which were ultimately to blend, yet whose first contact with each other could only result in explosion. Barbarism and civilization do not at once enter into alliance; much less do they readily fuse and become one. The breaking up of the old empire left a vast territory to be divided amongst the conquerors-themselves far from mutually friendly. The question had to be decided where, thenceforth, the centres of political power were to be, of what race the masters of the world were to come, and what form the new civilization should have. Even the languages of the old world were to be no longer living languages in the new, and vernaculars were to be created for

the new nationalities. Christianity had its own fierce ordeals. Tendencies had already appeared in it, and indeed become largely developed, the result of which was to be such as the history of the Middle Ages makes known. Systems in church and State grew naturally out of the existing condition of things, but were deeply affected by the vicious character of the element amidst which they arose. Feudalism and the Papacy, thoroughly in keeping, both of them, with the times in which they flourished, were to have their day; space to show completely what was in them, to serve at the beginning a certain good end, yet to become at last what it was their nature to be. In all these things, and in others similar, are seen the characterizing features of a long period of transition, in which the scene of human things should be swept by such tempests as human passion in its utmost strength and violence is so well capable of arousing, and yet on which should be going forward a great and wonderful work of preparation.

For those were not centuries of mere destruction; of rude violence alone, of only war, oppression and suffering. It is indeed, in such periods as this now described, when human energy is stimulated to such intensity, that human nature appears in some of its grandest forms. Some, at least, of the splendid powers so developed become devoted to aims worthy of them. The centuries under review, had their great teachers, as well as their great rulers and commanders; their Augustine, their Anselm, their St. Bernard, their Thomas Aquinas, as well as their Charlemagne, their Alfred, and their Barbarossa. Even monastic life had its beneficent side; even feudalism fostered the spirit of reverence for constituted authority, chivalry embodied and illustrated some of the noblest principles of manly rectitude, and the priesthood, if often corrupt and cruel, did not always forget its mission. Meanwhile, those languages were created which have since flowered and fruited in the rich literature of our modern age, while if theology and philosophy often mistook by attempting things as impossible as the dreams of the alchemist himself, they at least made it clear what things are possible, and what

are not. It was indeed one of the marked features of the period in question, that it was a period of preparation.

And this new age, this wonderful period of progress to which our own century belongs, is that for which the preparation was made. To show something of the mutual relations of these two sections of modern history, each characterized in its own remarkable way; especially to trace in the new age the operation of causes originating in that truly epochal event in which was generated so much of what we now see and rejoice in; also to illustrate in this way some of the principles in that philosophy of history, which seeks ever in the human the overruling of the divine;—this is in main part the aim of what is written in the following pages.

THE REFORMATION.

I.

AS TO CIVILIZATION AND INTELLECTUAL PROGRESS.

The Fall of the Western Empire.

IN the year A. D.

"The Little Augustus

476, Augustulus,

-a name said to have been given him in derision of the fact that so small a man should bear such great names as Romulus Augustus-last of the Roman emperors, was compelled by Odoacer, the Herulian, his chief officer and the real ruler of the empire, to abdicate. The Senate at Rome, obedient to the dictates of Odoacer, signified to Zeno, the Eastern Emperor, at Constantinople, that the Western Empire had come to an end. Odoacer took the title of King, the imperial crown and robe were sent to Constantinople, and until that memorable Christmas Day, A. D. 800, three hundred and twenty-four years later, when Charlemagne was crowned in St. Peter's by Pope Leo III, there was no longer an empire or an emperor in the West.

"Modern history," says Rev. R. W. Church, Dean of St. Paul's, "is separated from ancient by two unparalleled catastrophes, and from the changes occasioned by these catastrophes in the materials and conditions of society in Europe modern history took its beginnings. One was the destruction of the Jewish state and temple. The other was the break-up of the Roman empire. These two catastrophes, though divided by a considerable interval of time, and altogether different in their operation, were in various ways closely combined in their effects on the state of the world. They were catastrophes of the same order: the overthrow and passing

away of the old, in things most deeply concerning human. life, that the new might come. Without them that new settlement or direction of human affairs, under which the last fifteen centuries have been passed, would have been inconceivable and impossible."1

Both the great events so appropriately characterized by the writer as "catastrophes," are significant for us in our present inquiry. "The one," he says in another place, "cleared the ground for the Christian religion and the Christian church, to which ancient Judaism, if it had still subsisted, unhumbled and active, with its wonderful history and uncompromising pretensions, would have been a most formidable rival. The other made room, and prepared materials, not only for new nations, but for new forms of political and social order, then beyond all possibility of being anticipated or understood; for the new objects and ambitions, the new honors and achievements, which have distinguished modern times, at their worst as well as at their best, from those of all ancient civilizations."

2

What was achieved, during the interval between the fall of the Western empire, and the Reformation, in the interest of a new civilization and of the intellectual progress of the race, wherein there was failure, or worse than mere failure, and the cause of these, is what we are at the outset to inquire and try to determine, at least in a few leading particulars. Civilization and intellectual progress are to such an extent identified, that in our present study it will be unnecessary to sharply distinguish them. We may proceed at once to inquire what was achieved in that great human interest which comprehends both, and what failed of achievement, and why, in the process of that new order in all departments of human life which arose in Europe during the centuries of the long and troubled interval now especially held in view.

New Nationalities.

The formation of new nationalities need not detain us long. We ought to notice, however, the sharp contrast between what is seen in the fixed

1 Beginning of The Middle Ages, p. 1.

2 Ibid. p. 2.