and God hath remembered her iniquities."a Alaric the Goth appeared before Rome; and the city of the Cæsars became the prey of the barbarians. The event produced a sensation much more profound than would now be occasioned by the sack of London. The work of a thousand years, the greatest effort to organise human life permanently under a single system of government, the greatest civilisation that the world had known, at once so vicious and so magnificent, had perished from sight. It seemed to those who witnessed it as though life would be no longer endurable, and that the end had

come.

But before the occurrence of this catastrophe, another and a more remarkable change had been silently taking place. For nearly three hundred years the Church had been leavening the Empire. And the Empire, feeling and dreading the ever-advancing, ever-widening influence, had again and again endeavoured to extinguish it in a sea of blood. Among the great persecutors are the noblest as well as the most degraded of the Emperors: Nero, Domitian, Trajan, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius, Septimius Severus, Maximinus, Decius, Valerian, Diocletian. Diocletian, who came last, was the most implacable; and Diocletian failed. After Diocletian came Constantine. But from the year of the Crucifixion, A.D. 29, to the Edict of Toleration, A.D. 313, there were 284 years of almost uninterrupted growth, promoted by almost perpetual suffering; until at last, in St. Augustine's language, the Cross passed from the scenes of public executions to the diadem of the Cæsars.

Yes! by this wonderful change the Empire had become Christian; and when it sank beneath the blows of the barbarians, the Christian Church, and it alone, remained

a Rev. xviii. I, 2, 4, 5.

erect. But meanwhile what had become of the world; the world of St. John? Had it ceased to be? Was it banished utterly beyond the frontiers of triumphant Christendom? Or had it taken a new form? had it ceased to be an organisation, only to become a spirit, a temper, a frame of mind, a settled habit of thought and feeling more subtle, penetrating, and deadly than the organised world that had preceded it?

Yes! so indeed it was. The world had passed within the conquering Church. The world which early Christian writers such as Tertullian saw without the Christian fold, St. Bernard, and others long before him, detected within it. Even in St. Augustine's day the world had crowded, almost with a rush, within the Church. Emperors like Honorius, provincial governors like Marcellinus, successful generals like Bonifacius, were Augustine's fellow-Christians. The world now to a great extent used Christian language, it accepted outwardly Christian rules. And in order to keep this world at bay, some Christians fled from the great highways and centres of life, to lead the life of solitaries in the Egyptian deserts; while others even organised schisms, like that of the Donatists, which, if small and select, relatively to the great Catholic Church, should at least be unworldly. They forgot that our Lord had anticipated the new state of things by His parables of the Net and of the Tares; they forgot that whether the world presents itself as an organisation or as a temper, a Christian's business is to encounter and to overcome it. The great question was and is, how to achieve this; and St. John gives us explicit instructions. "This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith."

a St. Matt. xiii. 47-52.

b

b Ibid. xiii. 24-30, 36-43.

III.

This is, I say, the question for us of to-day, no less than for our predecessors in the Faith of Christ. For the world is not a piece of the furniture of bygone centuries, which has long since perished, except in the pages of our ancient and sacred books. It is here, around and among us; living and energetic, and true to the character which our Lord and His Apostles gave it. It is here, in our business, in our homes, in our conversations, in our literature; it is here, awakening echoes loud and shrill within our hearts, if, indeed, it be not throned in them. Now, as of old, its essence is passionate attachment to the material and passing aspects of human life; it is forgetfulness of the immaterial and imperishable realities. Do you want to know whether you love the world or not? You need not love it because you are fond of natural objects, and spend much time in studying them scientifically; they may well lead you up to God. You need not love it, if you have a true love of your fellow-creatures, and lose no opportunity of doing them any service that lies in your power; this is not a temper which our Lord would condemn. But supposing, for instance, you belong to the middle classes in society, are you, above all things, anxious for a fortune, or for a social position which is at present denied you? Do you spend much time and thought on the question how to make money, and how to get on in social life? Do you experience disappointment when others succeed; when they attain to wealth or to honours which you think are rightfully your own? Do you think slightingly of those who are below you, while you make great efforts to stand well with those who are above you? Does a slight cause you keen distress, and a little flattery, whether

sincere and deserved or not, great satisfaction? Do you measure men, not by what they are in point of character, but by their titles and incomes; by what they are called or have? and do you convey this fatal estimate of life to those who are in contact with you? If so, be your position what it may, you are in league with the world. It has its grip upon you; and its prince is your ruler more entirely than you think. And be sure, that if you do not break away and overcome it, it will drag you deeper and deeper down; it will dim the eye of your soul till you see no spiritual truth distinctly; it will chill your heart till you feel no pure and generous affection stir within it; it will unnerve your arm, and make your will falter, for all action that is unselfish and high-minded; at least when the time for action comes. And therefore, "whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world;"a as a man fighting for his life, a Christian conquers this passion for materialised existence; he conquers it not as a pastime, but as a condition of his spiritual safety.

Is the world-temper to be overcome by mental cultivation?

We live in days when language is used about education and literature, as if of themselves they had an elevating and transforming power in human life. In combination with other and higher influences, mental cultivation does much for man. It softens his manners; it tames his natural ferocity. It refines and stimulates his understanding, his taste, his imagination. But it has no necessary power of purifying his affections, or of guiding or invigorating his will, In these respects it leaves him as it finds him. And, if he is bound heart and soul to the material aspects of this present life, it will not help him to break his bonds. No doubt there are fine things in great writers about the a I St. John v. 4.

unsubstantial and fugitive character of this life and its enjoyments. But we read; we admire; we assent; and we pass on; perhaps, with the observation that it is a striking passage. The illusion that there is a sort of moral or even sacramental force in literary pursuits, would never be cherished by any who have considered the history of literature. Polite learning is no monopoly of Christians; when St. John wrote, it could hardly be said to be possessed by them at all. Had Christians been dependent on their cultivation in St. John's days, they certainly would have had a poorer chance of conquering the world than had the Stoics, who were, some of them, very polished and cultured indeed.

Is the world then to be overcome by sorrow, by failure, by disappointment; in a word, by the rude teaching of experience ?

Sorrow and failure are no doubt to many men a revelation. They show that the material scene in which we pass our days is itself passing. They rouse into activity from the depths of our souls deep currents of feeling; and we may easily mistake feeling for something which it is not. Feeling is not faith; it sees nothing beyond the veil. Feeling is not practice; it may sweep the soul in gusts before it, yet commit us to nothing. Feeling deplores when it does not resist; it admires and approves of enterprises which it never attempts. Consequently, self-exhausted, in time it dies back; leaving the soul worse off than it would be, if it had never felt so strongly; worse off, because at once weaker and less sensitive than before. It is piteous to think how many a disappointment, many a failure, many a sorrow, ends like this. If illuminated by faith, it might have raised the sufferer from earth to heaven; but it has left him an enfeebled cynic, who has indeed found out much about the world that he