ligious system the nascent Christian Church, two of its characteristics stand out in the most striking contrast. They are (1) an organic catholicity, and (2) authoritative dogmatism-not only as to outward acts but also as to complete internal assent and belief. As to its catholicity, the same fundamental doctrines-however small their number compared with the explicit possessions of later ages-were everywhere taught and received. Neither was there any distinction of esoteric and exoteric teaching. The Church either of Rome, Jerusalem, Egypt, or transalpine Gaul did not admit to communion members of any other local Church which denied the doctrines (whether of Rome, Jerusalem, Egypt, or Gaul) held to be the most sacred of all. It was a real catholicity, inasmuch as it depended on the universal acceptance of what was most revered in each and every province of the empire. It was catholic also, because it had no limit as to nationality, and was the offspring of no local cultus in any city, while it was freely offered to the citizens of every city, to the inhabitants of every province of the Empire, and to the world beyond the Empire. No competent scholar denies that at the close of the second century such a catholic Church gives evidence of at least its incipient existence.

This character of "catholicity" can hardly be denied to be one pertaining to the essence of the Christian Church long before it mounted the throne with Constantine.

But its catholicity depended on another character still more essential and fundamental, and yet more contrasted with the nature of the so-called pagan Church.

This still more fundamental character was that of authoritative dogmatism. To all men a doctrine was preached, and assent to its teaching was categorically demanded. No external acts, no ceremonial observances, were deemed of the slightest value without the interior as sent of the mind and the adhesion of the will to that doctrine. Moreover, the Christian religion did not consist of religious doctrines or of religious practices, but of two facts, the acceptance of which, as facts, was indispensable and imperative (1) one of them was

the fact of the founder's life, death, and resurrection; the other (2) was the fact of an organized community which authoritatively handed down and interpreted the tradition of that founder's teaching, with power to add to or exclude from the Christian body, although membership of that body was taught to be a necessary condition of life everlasting.

Quite recently it has been shown, by an authority who cannot be accused of any ultra orthodox tendency, how authoritative and distinctly dogmatic was the early Church, and how great was the influence of the authority of Christian Rome. Dr. Adolph Harnack has given the early creed of the Roman Church as follows:

I believe in God the Father Almighty, and in Jesus Christ His only begotten Son, our Lord, who was born of the Holy Ghost and the Virgin Mary, crucified and buried under Pontius Pilate, who rose on the third day from teth on the right hand of the Father, from the dead, and ascended into heaven, and sitwhence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead; and in the Holy Ghost, the Holy Church, the forgiveness of sins, and the resurrection of the flesh.

This Roman confession Dr. Harnack regards as having been" in all cases the foundation stone" whence the various provincial Churches satisfied their several needs according to their different circumstances. He roundly declares that "the creed of the city of Rome governed the whole creed-formation of the West ;" and he further tells us that "the various anti-Gnostic rules of faith presuppose a short, settled, formulated creed, and this must, in the second century, have been the old Roman creed."

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As to the precise period at which its existence must be admitted-the minimum of its antiquity-he regards it as certainly dating from "the middle of the second century," and affirms that it can be traced on direct lines" to the second half of the third. But no one will probably dispute that if such a creed was a recognized authoritative baptismal symbol as early as 250 A.D. it is impossible to believe that it could have grown up in fifty years; and thus it plainly comes within the range of the period considered in this article-namely, the two first centuries of our era.

But as to the character of the early Roman Church and our indebtedness thereto, Dr. Harnack says

Whoever turns from the perusal of the Apostolic Fathers and the Christian apologists

to the Old Roman confession cannot but ren

der a meed of grateful admiration to the Roman Church for the act of faith which she has here made in her baptismal creed. If we consider with what strange and curious notions the Gospel was already at this time often associated, in what a meagre spirit it was often conceived, and how Chiliasm and Apocalyp tics on the one hand, and legalism and Greek philosophy on the other threatened to destroy the simplicity of Christ, the Old Roman creed will seem to us doubly great and venerable.

Considering, then, the contrast presented by the Christian religion to that of pagan Rome, the most striking and essential distinctions appear to be those herein pointed out. Christianity is essentially moral; but morality—and high morality was also introduced into paganism by teachers of philosophy.

Christianity taught the doctrine of a Divine Sonship and Incarnation; but analogous views were common in various pagan forms of religion. It taught also the resurrection of a Divine Sufferer; but that, in other shapes, was the accepted belief of multitudes.

It taught contempt for honors, riches, and worldly pleasures; but the same was taught by the Stoics and the Cynics.

It propagated its creed without the aid of, and in opposition to, the Roman State; but many Oriental religions did the same thing. Thus it appears to me that the two most striking differences between paganism and Christianity differences, therefore, which must be held to be most essential-were the possession by the Christian Church of (1) catholicity and (2) authority. Such authority also, when it first appears on the field of history, shows itself, as it were, crystallizing round the person at the head of the Roman Church-as was natural, for the Romans were the born legislators and governors of the world.

But if the most apparent of all the distinctions between paganism and Roman Christianity in its earliest period are Catholicity and authority, what is the distinctive character of that Christianity to-day? We have still a Church which differs from all other religious

bodies by the same two essential marks, (1) catholicity and (2) authority, and which is unquestionably the direct and uninterrupted descendant of the primitive Church at Rome. Other religious bodies may share with it this or the other group of doctrines or of practices, but there is not one other which dares to affirm that it alone is catholic, and that it alone possesses absolute dogmatic authority. The Church also which solely asserts these claims is now, as in the second century, the Church of the Roman communion, and regards with respect and deference the Roman Pontiff.

There are persons who presume to apply the term " Italian mission" to the English Church in communion with. Rome, as if that term was a term of opprobrium, or at least denoted some inferiority of status. But the members of that Church glory in such a title, and declare that it is by God's unmerited mercy they have the inexpressible privilege of being Roman Catholics. They are an Italian mission, and the aims of that mission they strive to fulfil. I am far, indeed, from feeling any desire for the destruction of the Anglican Church. I recognize the important and beneficent rôle it fulfils, and have the highest respect for many of its ministers. My recollection of its action in my own regard demands my gratitude. Nevertheless, the duty to bear witness to truth admits of no compromise. I feel, therefore, compelled to call my readers' attention to the fact that there was another Italian mission, that of St. Augustine, whence arose the English Church as it existed till the reign of Henry the Eighth. Up to the year 1534 its prelates and priests had also dutifully striven to fulfil the Italian mission they had received, but then they shamefully abandoned it, setting aside, in despite of authority, that Church organization they had themselves ever regarded as essential,* thus

episcopal Commission of 1382, wherein seven * Thus Archbishop Courtenay in the Archibishops (one of them William of Wykeham), with thirty seven leading theologians, co. operated, declared the doctrine that the English Church should exist under its own laws, and not subject to the Pope, to be an heretical

proposition. See the Tablet, August 26, 1893, p. 327.

also cutting themselves off from the other character of catholicity.

Thus both the Anglican Church and the English Roman Church were "Italian missions," but they differ essentially in the fact that the former was and is, while the latter is not, faithless to its mission.

We must now, in conclusion, say a few words as to the positive influence of antecedent paganism on the Christianity which sprang up among it. As most of my readers probably know, M. Ernest Havet, in his work Le Christianisme et ses Origines, endeavors to show that Christianity was nothing more than the natural, inevitable outcome of the mingling of Hellenism and Judaism with Roman life under the conditions existing at the time. This M. Boissier entirely denies.* He admits that it developed under favorable (the Theist must term them "providential") circumstances, as we have here endeavored to show, and it can hardly be denied that it came at the very moment most profitable for its success. As Prudentius says

Christo jam tum venienti, Crede, parata via est. Christianity profited by its environment, but was not thereby generated. That system (as shown, for example, in St. Paul's epistle to the Romans) is as radically distinct from Hellenism as from Roman paganism, and carried forward to an otherwise impossible consummation the reforms and religious ameliorations which arose in the pagan world. But, as we have said, philosophy and religion had raised questions which they could not solve, and aspirations they could not satisfy, while complete solution and abundant satisfaction were afforded to those who accepted the Christian faith.

Judaism was the dawn which announced the near advent of the "Sun of Justice," but the fulfilment of its law was only accomplished by breaking away from what was its central principle, as Judaism. The essence of Christianity, as we have seen, consisted for one thing in its catholicity; but Judaism was, and is, essentially a racial religion, and therefore incapable of uni

* Vol. ii. p. 400.

versal extension. It was also too devoid of dogma to fulfil the requirements of that age, since it consisted in little more than the assertion of God's unity and the fact that the Jews were his chosen people. Every Jew will admit that their sacred formula, "Hear, O Israel : the Lord thy God is one God," contains the essence of Judaism.

As to Hellenism, that it also contributed its share to the development of Christianity no reasonable man would wish to deny. The Christian Church, as it exists in the concrete in every region of the world's surface, receives, and must receive, modifications from its environment; but accidental modification and essential transformation are very different things.

We have seldom been so forcibly impressed with the way in which an author's prejudices can distort his judgment, as in our perusal of M. Havet's work. His ignorance of the Christian Church is also curious. He represents it as claiming that its rites and ceremonies and its pious practices are due to special and extraordinary revelations, instead of having arisen as acts responding to and supplying natural human wants. He details a number of pagan customs to which a variety of Christian medieval customs conform, and he, with almost incredible absurdity, represents the latter as having directly followed from the former. But every tyro of ecclesiastical history knows that a long interval intervened between the cessation of such pagan customs and the development of analogous Christian ones. It would be as absurd to believe in a direct filiation, instead of a mere relation of analogy between such practices, as to believe that the pillar of St. Simeon Stylites was a mere imitation of the long antecedent one of the priest of Astarte. As in the organic world we continually meet with (as it has been my special function to point out) the "independent origin of similar structures," so also in the domain of human history we continually meet with "the independent origin of similar customs." This circumstance needs no elaborate theory for its explanation; it follows, as it might be expected to follow, from the simple fact that there is a great deal of human nature in every one of us. Nineteenth Century.

AT the beginning of the century classical studies, as pursued in our schools and universities, rested on a tradition, dating from the sixteenth century, which had never been effectively challenged, even by those whom it failed to satisfy. And yet the humanities, salutary as their influence had been in the higher education, powerful as they had been in helping to shape individual minds and characters, did not then possess much hold on the literary and intellectual life of the country at large. Even among those who had profited most by them there were perhaps few who, if they had been called upon to defend the humanistic tradition, could have done so in a manner which we should now regard as adequate. At the present day, on the other hand, the classics share the domain of liberal culture with a large number of other subjects whose importance is universally recognized; controversies have raged around them; but at any rate, wherever classical studies are carried to an advanced point, the students can now give good reasons for their faith. That spirit which the classics embody now animates the higher literature of the country to a greater extent than at any previous time in the history of English letters. Moreover, an intelligent interest in the great masterpieces of ancient literature and art is far more widely diffused than it ever was before in England.

It is worth while to trace, however briefly, the process by which this change has been effected. The latter part of the eighteenth century was the time at which the distinctive qualities of the old Greek genius began to be truly appreciated by moderns: this was due chiefly to such men as Lessing and Winckelmann in the province of art, to Goethe and Schiller in literature. Meanwhile the Romantic school had arisen, seeking an ideal, but recoiling from the Latin classicism hitherto prevalent, and seeking refuge in the *An Address delivered at Mason College, Birmingham, on October 9th, 1893.

Middle Ages. The Romanticists had little sympathy with the Greek desire for light and clearness; they were more inclined to be mystical; medieval art as inspired by Catholicism, and national legend with its chivalrous or magical lore, gave them their favorite material. With us in England, at the beginning of the century, the Romantic school was dominant. Walter Scott's mighty genius showed from the first its native affinity with romance; when he was a youth at the University of Edinburgh, he could not be induced to learn Greek; but he learned Italian, and maintained that Ariosto was better than Homer. Toward the end of his life, when he went to Italy, he showed no interest in the classical antiquities; but delighted in Malta as associated with the Knights of St. John. Scott remains the most signal embodiment in our literature of the romantic, as contrasted with the classical tendency. Then came Byron, a force too individual and too volcanic to be described under the name of a school, but making, on the whole, for Romanticism; identified, in his last years, with Greece, and masterly in his description of its natural beauties, but not in harmony with the mind of its ancient people :-

"He taught us little; but our soul

Had fell him like the thunder's roll," The most gifted Englishmen of that period who were really in sympathy with the old Greek genius had no influence in England. Shelley, as might have been expected, was keenly alive to the beauty of Greek literature; he translated Plato's Symposium, and a blending of Plato with Dante may be felt in his Epipsychidion; though, when he followed the outlines of Greek form, as in the Prometheus Unbound and the Adonais, he wholly transmuted the spirit of his models. Keats, again, was in much Greek by instinct, though his style was usually less classical than romantie. Walter Savage Landor, born seventeen years before Shelley and twenty before Keats, continued to be active long after those short lives

were closed; in his exquisite prose he is a conscious artist, working in the spirit of the classical masters. But these men, and such as these, appealed in their own day only to a few. In the earlier part of this century there arose no new popular force in English literature tending to diffuse a recognition of those merits and charms which belong to the classical ideal. Take, for instance, two great writers who present a sufficiently strong contrast to each other, Carlyle and Macaulay: Carlyle, both in cast of thought and in form, is anti-classical; while Macaulay, with his intimate knowledge of the classics, his ardent love of them, and his mastery of a brilliant style, does not exhibit those particular qualities and charms which are distinctive of the best classical prose. John Henry Newman, whose scholarship, in Greek at least, was not equal to Macaulay's, exhibits them in an eminent degree; reminding us that for their happy manifestation a certain spiritual element is requisite, a certain tone of the whole mind and character.

A new current set in soon after the middle of the century, when a more living interest in classical antiquity began to be felt, outside of scholastic and academic circles, by the cultivated portion of the English public generally, It was in the province of history, I think, rather than of literature, that this new current first became perceptible. Dr. Arnold, in his teaching at Rugby, had already prepared it among a select few; but if one were to specify any single book as marking the commencement of its wider influence, one might perhaps name Grote's History of Greece. Grote had the advantage, not a small one for this purpose, of being not only a scholar, but a man of affairs; the British public was the better inclined to him on that account; and one of his achievements, due especially to his treatment of Athens, was to invest ancient Greece with a modern interest. That good work was carried on by the lamented Mr. Freeman, ever insisting, as he did, on the unity of history, and emphasizing the fact that the story begun by Herodotus and Thucydides should be followed up in Polybius and Finlay.

Meanwhile purely literary forces were

tending to create a more appreciative sympathy with classical literature. Among these the foremost place must be given to the influence of Tennyson; not only when it is direct, in the series of his poems on classical themes, but as it operates generally by his artistic perfection of form, which is always, in spirit, classical. In this large sense he has been, for our age, the most powerful poetical mediator between the antique masters and the English-speaking world. And there is another poet, one whom those who love him will not fear to call great, whose effectiveness in this way can be deemed second only to the late Laureate's-I mean Matthew Arnold. His influence, inevitably less popular, quickened the perceptions of a comparatively limited public, yet one which included not a few of those by whom literary opinion is gradually moulded. This is not the time to estimate all that Matthew Arnold did. for Hellenism; but, as we know, he wrought in two ways; by example, in his own exquisite poetry; and by precept, as in his lectures on translating Homer, and generally in his critical essays. That comparison between Hebraism and Hellenism which he draws in Culture and Anarchy goes a step further; showing that the difference appears not only in letters and in art, but in ideals of conduct; and that Englishmen, if they can harmonize those ideals by tempering the energy of the one with the intelligence of the other, may learn some things which, at this period of their development, will be salutary for the nation. Robert Browning had less of native sympathy with the classical spirit than is shown by his gifted wife in her poem, "The Great God Pan;" his normal style is far from classical; but his marvellous wealth of poetical thought is seen in Balaustion's Adventure, the new garb in which he has clothed the Alcestis of Euripides; and in that " Apology," so instinct with modern subtlety, which he puts into the mouth of Aristophanes. Nor should it be overlooked that all Browning's work has one element of kinship, unconscious but important, with the Greek; pervaded, as it is, by an intense vitality, it is always a voice of life; it has more affinity with the