Tried by such a standard, the Koran altogether fails. In its philosophy it is incomparably inferior to the writings of Chakia Mouni, the founder of Buddhism; in its science it is absolutely worthless. On speculative or doubtful things it is copious enough; but in the exact, where a test can be applied to it, it totally fails. Its astronomy, cosmogony, physiology, are so puerile as to invite our mirth if the occasion did not forbid. They belong to the old times of the world, the morning of human knowledge. The earth is firmly balanced in its seat by the weight of the mountains; the sky is supported over it like a dome, and we are instructed in the wisdom and power of God by being told to find a crack in it if we can. Ranged in stories, seven in number, are the heavens, the highest being the habitation of God, whose throne—for the Koran does not reject Assyrian ideas—is sustained by winged animal forms. The shooting-stars are pieces of red-hot stone thrown by angels at impure spirits when they approach too closely. Of God the Koran is full of Its God. praise, setting forth, often in not unworthy imagery, his majesty. Though it bitterly denounces those who give him any equals, and assures them that their sin will never be forgiven; that in the judgment-day they must answer the fearful question, "Where are my companions about whom ye disputed?" though it inculcates an absolute dependence on the mercy of God, and denounces as criminals all those who make a merchandise of religion, its ideas of the Deity are altogether anthropomorphic. He is only a gigantic man living in a paradise. In this respect, though exceptional passages might be cited, the reader rises from a perusal of the 114 chapters of the Koran with a final impression that they have given him low and unworthy thoughts; nor is it surprising that one of the Mohammedan sects reads it in such a way as to find no difficulty in asserting that, "from the crown of the head to the breast God is hollow, and from the breast downward he is solid; that he has curled black hair, and roars like a lion at every watch of the night." The unity asserted by Mohammed is a unity in special contradistinction to the Trinity of the Christians, and the doctrine of a divine generation. Our Saviour is never called the Son of God, but always the son of Mary. Throughout there is a perpetual Its views of man. acceptance of the delusion of the human destiny of the universe. As to man, Mohammed is diffuse enough respecting a future state, speaking with clearness of a resurrection, the judgment-day, Paradise, the torment of hell, the worm that never dies, the pains that never end; but, with all this precise description of the future, there are many errors as to the past. If modesty did not render it unsuitable to speak of such topics here, it might be shown how feeble is his physiology when he has occasion to allude to the origin or generation of man. He is hardly advanced beyond the ideas of Thales. One who is so untrustworthy a guide as to things that are past, cannot be very trustworthy as to events that are to come.

Of the literary execution of his work, it is, perhaps, scarcely possible to judge fairly from a translation. It is said to be the oldest prose composition among the Arabs, by whom Mohammed's boast of the unapproachable excellence of his work is almost universally sustained; but it must not be concealed that there have been among them very learned men who have held it in light esteem. Its most celebrated passages, as those on the nature of God, in Chapters II., XXIV., will bear no comparison with parallel ones in the Psalms and Book of Job. In the narrative style, the story of Joseph, in Chapter XII., compared with the same incidents related in Genesis, shows a like inferiority. Mohammed also adulterates his work with many Christian legends, derived probably from the apocryphal gospel of St. Barnabas; he mixes with many of his own inventions the scripture account of the temptation of Adam, the Deluge, Jonah and the whale, enriching the whole with stories like the later Night Entertainments of his country, the seven sleepers, Gog and Magog, and all the wonders of genii, sorcery, and charms.

An impartial reader of the Koran may doubtless be surprised that so feeble a production should serve its purpose so well. But the theory of religion is one thing, the practice another. The Koran abounds in excellent moral suggestions and precepts; its composition is so fragmentary that we cannot turn to a single page without finding maxims of which all men must approve. This fragmentary construction yields texts, and mottoes, and rules complete in themselves, suitable for common men in any of the incidents of life. There is a perpetual insisting on the necessity of prayer, an inculcation of mercy, almsgiving, justice, fasting, pilgrimage, and other good works; institutions respecting conduct, both social and domestic, debts, witnesses, marriage, children, wine, and the like; above all, a constant stimulation to do battle with the infidel and blasphemer. For life as it passes in Asia, there is hardly a condition in which passages from the Koran cannot be recalled suitable for instruction, admonition, consolation, encouragement. To the Asiatic and to the African, such devotional fragments are of far more use than any sustained theological doctrine. The mental constitution of Mohammed did not enable him to handle important philosophical questions with the well-balanced ability of the great Greek and Indian writers, but he has never been surpassed in adaptation to the spiritual wants of humble life, making even his fearful fatalism administer thereto. A pitiless destiny is awaiting us; yet the prophet is uncertain what it may be. "Unto every nation a fixed time is decreed. Death will overtake us even in lofty towers, but God only knoweth the place in which a man shall die," After many an admonition of the resurrection and the judgment-day, many a promise of Paradise and threat of hell, he plaintively confesses, "I do not know what will be done with you or me hereafter."

The Koran thus betrays a human, and not a very noble intellectual origin. It does not, however, follow that its author was, as is so often asserted, a mere impostor. He reiterates again and again, I am nothing more than a public preacher. He defends, not always without acerbity, his work from those who, even in his own life, stigmatized it as a confused heap of dreams, or, what is worse, a forgery. He is not the only man who has supposed himself to be the subject of supernatural and divine communications, for this is a condition of disease to which any one, by fasting and mental anxiety, may be reduced.

In what I have thus said respecting a work held by so many millions of men as a revelation from God, I have endeavoured to speak with respect, and yet with freedom, constantly bearing in mind how deeply to this book Asia and Africa are indebted for daily guidance, how deeply Europe and America for the light of science.

As might be expected, the doctrines of the Koran have received many fictitious additions and sectarian interpretations in the course of ages. In the popular superstition angels and genii largely figure. The latter, being of a grosser fabric, eat, drink, propagate their kind, are of two sorts, good and bad, and existed long before men, having occupied the earth before Adam. Immediately after death, two greenish, livid angels, Monkir and Nekkar, examine every corpse as to its faith in God and Mohammed; but the soul, having been separated from the body by the angel of death, enters upon an intermediate state, awaiting the resurrection. There is, however, much diversity of opinion as to its precise disposal before the judgment-day: some think that it hovers near the grave; some, that it sinks into the well Zemzem; some, that it retires into the trumpet of the Angel of the Resurrection; the difficulty apparently being that any final disposal before the day of judgment would be anticipatory of that great event, if, indeed, it would not render it needless. As to the resurrection, some believe it to be merely spiritual, others corporeal; the latter asserting that the os coccygis, or last bone of the spinal column, will serve, as it were, as a germ, and that, vivified by a rain of forty days, the body will sprout from it. Among the signs of the approaching resurrection will be the rising of the sun in the West. It will be ushered in by three blasts of a trumpet: the first, known as the blast of consternation, will shake the earth to its centre, and extinguish the sun and stars; the second, the blast of extermination, will annihilate all material things except Paradise, hell, and the throne of God. Forty years subsequently, the angel Israfil will sound the blast of resurrection. From his trumpet there will be blown forth the countless myriads of souls who have taken refuge therein or lain concealed. The day of judgment has now come. The Koran contradicts itself as to the length of this day; in one place making it a thousand, in another fifty thousand years. Most Mohammedans incline to adopt the longer period, since angels, genii, men, and animals have to be tried. As to men, they will rise in their natural state, but naked; white winged camels, with saddles of gold, awaiting the saved. When the partition is made, the wicked will be oppressed with an intolerable heat, caused by the sun, which, having been called into existence again, will approach within a mile, provoking a sweat to issue from them, and this, according to their demerits, will immerse them from the ankles to the mouth; but the righteous will be screened by the shadow of the throne of God. The judge will be seated in the clouds, the books open before him, and everything in its turn called on to account for its deeds. For greater dispatch, the angel Gabriel will hold forth his balance, one scale of which hangs over Paradise and one over hell. In these all works are weighed. As soon as the sentence is delivered, the assembly, in a long file, will pass over the bridge Al-Sirat. It is as sharp as the edge of a sword, and laid over the mouth of hell. Mohammed and his followers will successfully pass the perilous ordeal; but the sinners, giddy with terror, will drop into the place of torment. The blessed will receive their first taste of happiness at a pond which is supplied by silver pipes from the river Al-Cawthor. The soil of Paradise is of musk. Its rivers tranquilly flow over pebbles of rubies and emeralds. From tents of hollow pearls, the Houris, or girls of Paradise, will come forth, attended by troops of beautiful boys. Each Saint will have eighty thousand servants and seventy-two girls. To these, some of the more merciful Mussulmans add the wives they have had upon earth; but the grimly orthodox assert that hell is already nearly filled with women. How can it be otherwise since they are not permitted to pray in a mosque upon earth? I have not space to describe the silk brocades, the green clothing, the soft carpets, the banquets, the perpetual music and songs. From the glorified body all impurities will escape, not as they did during life, but in a fragrant perspiration of camphor and musk. No one will complain I am weary; no one will say I am sick.

From the contradictions, puerilities, and impossibilities indicated in the preceding paragraphs, it may be anticipated that the faith of Mohammed has been broken into many sects. Of such it is said that not less than seventy-three may be numbered. Some, as the Sonnites, are guided by traditions; some occupy themselves with philosophical difficulties, the existence of evil in the world, the attributes of God, absolute predestination and eternal damnation, the invisibility and non-corporeality of God, his capability of local motion: these and other such topics furnish abundant opportunity for sectarian dispute. As if to show how the essential principles of the Koran may be departed from by those who still profess to be guided by it, there are, among the Shiites, those who believe that Ali was an incarnation of God; that he was in existence before the creation of things; that he never died, but ascended to heaven, and will return again in the clouds to judge the world. But the great Mohammedan philosophers, simply accepting the doctrine of the Oneness of God as the only thing of which man can be certain, look upon all the rest as idle fables, having, however, this political use, that they furnish contention, and therefore occupation to disputatious sectarians, and consolation to illiterate minds.

Thus settled on the north of Africa the lurid phantom of the Arabian crescent, one horn reaching to the Bosphorus and one pointing beyond the Pyrenees. For a while it seemed that the portentous meteor would increase to the full, and that all Europe would be enveloped. Christianity had lost for ever the most interesting countries over which her influence had once spread, Africa, Egypt, Syria, the Holy Land, Asia Minor, Spain. She was destined, in the end, to lose in the same manner the metropolis of the East. In exchange for these ancient and illustrious regions, she fell back on Gaul, Germany, Britain, Scandinavia. In those savage countries, what were there to be offered as substitutes for the great capitals, illustrious in ecclesiastical history, for ever illustrious in the records of the human race—Carthage, Alexandria, Jerusalem, Antioch, Constantinople? It was an evil exchange. The labours, intellectual and physical, of which those cities had once been the scene; the preaching, and penances, and prayers so lavishly expended in them, had not produced the anticipated, the asserted result. In theology and morality the people had pursued a descending course. Patriotism was extinct. They surrendered the state to preserve their sect; their treason was rewarded by subjugation.

From these melancholy events we may learn that the principles on which the moral world is governed are analogous to those which obtain in the physical. It is not by incessant divine interpositions, which produce breaches in the continuity of historic action; it is not by miracles and prodigies that the course of events is determined; but affairs follow each other in the relation of cause and effect. The maximum development of early Christianity coincided with the boundaries of the Roman empire; the ecclesiastical condition depended on the political, and, indeed, was its direct consequence and issue. The loss of Africa and Asia was, in like manner, connected with the Arabian movement, though it would have been easy to prevent that catastrophe, and to preserve those continents to the faith by the smallest of those innumerable miracles of which Church history is full, and which were often performed on unimportant and obscure occasions. But not even one such miracle was vouchsafed, though an angel might have worthily descended. I know of no event in the history of our race on which a thoughtful man may more profitably meditate than on this loss of Africa and Asia. It may remove from his mind many erroneous ideas, and lead him to take a more elevated, a more philosophical, and, therefore, more correct view of the course of earthly affairs.

CHAPTER XII.

THE AGE OF FAITH IN THE WEST.

From the Age of Faith, in the East, I have now to turn to the Age of Faith in the West. The former, as we have seen, ended prematurely, through a metamorphosis of the populations by military operations, conquests, polygamy; the latter, under more favourable circumstances, gradually completed its predestined phases, and, after the lapse of many centuries, passed into the Age of Reason.

If so many recollections of profound interest cluster round Jerusalem, "the Holy City" of the East, many scarcely inferior are connected with Rome, "the Eternal City" of the West.

The Byzantine system, which, having originated in the policy of an ambitious soldier struggling for supreme power, and in the devices of ecclesiastics intolerant of any competitors, had spread itself all over the eastern and southern portions of the Roman empire, and with its hatred of human knowledge and degraded religious ideas and practices, had been adopted at last even in Italy. Not by the Romans, for they had ceased to exist, but by the medley of Goths and half-breeds, the occupants of that peninsula. Gregory the Great is the incarnation of the ideas of this debased population. That evil system, so carefully nurtured by Constantine and cherished by all the Oriental bishops, had been cut down by the axe of the Vandal, the Persian, the Arab, in its native seats, but the offshoot of it that had been planted in Rome developed spontaneously with unexpected luxuriance, and cast its dark shadow over Europe for many centuries. He who knew what Christianity had been in the apostolic days, might look with boundless surprise on what was now ingrafted upon it, and was passing under its name.

In the last chapter we have seen how, through the Vandal invasion, Africa was lost to the empire—a dire calamity, for, of all the provinces, it had been the least expensive and the most productive; it yielded men, money, and, what was perhaps of more importance, corn for the use of Italy. A sudden stoppage of the customary supply rendered impossible the usual distributions in Rome, Ravenna, Milan. A famine fell upon Italy, bringing in its train an inevitable diminution of the population. To add to the misfortunes, Attila, the King of the Huns, or, as he called himself, "the Scourge of God," invaded the empire. The battle of Chalons, the convulsive death-throe of the Roman empire, arrested his career, A.D. 451.

Four years after this event, through intrigues in the imperial family, Genseric, the Vandal king, was invited from Africa to Rome. The atrocities which of old had been practised against Carthage under the auspices of the senate were now avenged. For fourteen days the Vandals sacked the city, perpetrating unheard-of cruelties. Their ships, brought into the Tiber, enabled them to accomplish their purpose of pillage far more effectually than would have been possible by any land expedition. The treasures of Rome, with multitudes of noble captives, were transported to Carthage. In twenty-one years after this time, A.D. 476, the Western Empire became extinct.

Thus the treachery of the African Arians not only brought the Vandals into the most important of all the provinces, so far as Italy was concerned; it also furnished an instrument for the ruin of Rome. But hardly had the Emperor Justinian reconquered Africa when he attempted the subjugation of the Goths now holding possession of Italy. His general, Belisarius, captured Rome, Dec. 10, A.D. 556. In the military operations ensuing with Vitiges, Italy was devastated, the population sank beneath the sword, pestilence, famine. In all directions the glorious remains of antiquity were destroyed; statues, as those of the Mole of Hadrian, were thrown upon the besiegers of Rome. These operations closed by the surrender of Vitiges to Belisarius at the capture of Ravenna.

But, as soon as the military compression was withdrawn, revolt broke out. Rome was retaken by the Goths; its walls were razed; for forty days it was deserted by its inhabitants, an emigration that in the end proved its ruin. Belisarius, who had been sent back by the emperor, re-entered it, but was too weak to retain it. During four years Italy was ravaged by the Franks and the Goths. At last Justinian sent the eunuch Narses with a well-appointed army. The Ostrogothic monarchy was overthrown, and the emperor governed Italy by his exarchs at Ravenna.

But what was the cost of all this? We may reject the statement previously made, that Italy lost fifteen millions of inhabitants, on the ground that such computations were beyond the ability of the survivors, but, from the asserted number we may infer that there had been a horrible catastrophe. In other directions the relics of civilization were fast disappearing; the valley of the Danube had relapsed into a barbarous state; the African shore had become a wilderness; Italy a hideous desert; and the necessary consequence of the extermination of the native Italians by war, and their replacement by barbarous adventurers, was the falling of the sparse population of that peninsula into a lower psychical state. It was ready for the materialized religion that soon ensued. An indelible aspect was stamped on the incoming Age of Faith. The East and the West had equally displayed the imbecility of ecclesiastical rule. Of both, the Holy City had fallen; Jerusalem had been captured by the Persian and the Arab, Rome had been sacked by the Vandal and the Goth.

But, for the proper description of the course of affairs, I must retrace my steps a little. In the important political events coinciding with the death of Leo the Great, and the constitution of the kingdom of Italy by the barbarian Odoacer, A.D. 476-490, the bishops of Rome seem to have taken but little interest. Doubtless, on one side, they perceived the transitory nature of such incidents, and, on the other, clearly saw for themselves the road to lasting spiritual domination. The Christians everywhere had long expressed a total carelessness for the fate of old Rome; and in the midst of her ruins the popes were incessantly occupied in laying deep the foundations of their power. Though it mattered little to them who was the temporal ruler of Italy, they were vigilant and energetic in their relations with their great competitors, the bishops of Constantinople and Alexandria. It had become clear that Christendom must have a head; and that headship, once definitely settled, implied the eventual control over the temporal power. Of all objects of human ambition, that headship was best worth struggling for.

Steadily pursuing every advantage as it arose, Rome inexorably insisted that her decisions should be carried out in Constantinople itself. This was the case especially in the affair of Acacius, the bishop of that city, who, having been admonished for his acts by Felix, the bishop of Rome, was finally excommunicated. A difficulty arose as to the manner in which the process should be served; but an adventurous monk fastened it to the robe of Acacius as he entered the church. Acacius, undismayed, proceeded with his services, and, pausing deliberately, ordered the name of Felix, the Bishop of Rome, to be struck from the roll of bishops in communion with the East. Constantinople and Rome thus mutually excommunicated one another. It is in reference to this affair that Pope Gelasius, addressing the emperor, says; "There are two powers which rule the world, the imperial and pontifical. You are the sovereign of the human race, but you bow your neck to those who preside over things divine. The priesthood is the greater of the two powers; it has to render an account in the last day for the acts of kings." This is not the language of a feeble ecclesiastic, but of a pontiff who understands his power.

The conquest of Italy by Theodoric, the Ostrogoth, A.D. 493, gave to the bishops of Rome an Arian sovereign, and presented to the world the anomaly of a heretic appointing God's vicar upon earth. There was a contested election between two rival candidates, whose factions, emulating the example of the East, filled the city with murder. The Gothic monarch ordered that he who had most suffrages, and had been first consecrated, should be acknowledged. In this manner Symmachus became pope.

Hormisdas, who succeeded Symmachus, renewed the attempt to compel the Eastern emperor, Anastasius, to accept the degradation of Acacius and his party, and to enforce the assent of all his clergy thereto, but in vain. On the accession of Justin to the imperial throne, Rome at last carried her point; all her conditions were admitted; the schism was ended in the humiliation of the Bishop of Constantinople, it was said, through the orthodoxy of the emperor. But very soon began to appear unmistakable The emperor and pope conspire against him.

The Gothic king detects them. indications that for this religious victory a temporal equivalent had been given. Conspiracies were detected in Rome against Theodoric, the Gothic king; and rumours were whispered about that the arms of Constantinople would before long release Italy from the heretical yoke of the Arian. There can be no doubt that Theodoric detected the treason. It was an evil reward for his impartial equity. At once he disarmed the population of Rome. From being a merciful sovereign, he exhibited an awful vengeance. It was in these transactions that Boethius, the philosopher, and Symmachus, the senator, fell victims to his wrath. The pope John himself was thrown into prison, and there miserably died. In his remonstrances with Justin, the great barbarian monarch displays sentiments far above his times, yet they were the sentiments that had hitherto regulated his actions. "To pretend to a dominion over the conscience is to usurp the prerogative of God. By the nature of things, the power of sovereigns is confined to political government. They have no right of punishment but over those who disturb the public peace. The most dangerous heresy is that of a sovereign who separates himself from part of his subjects because they believe not according to his belief."

Theodoric had been but a few years dead—his soul was seen by an orthodox hermit carried by devils into the crater of the volcano of Lipari, which was considered to be the opening into hell—when the invasion of Italy by Justinian showed how well-founded his suspicions had been. Rome was, however, very far from receiving the advantages she had expected; the inconceivable wickedness of Constantinople was brought into Italy. Pope Sylverius, who was the son of Pope Hormisdas, was deposed by Theodora, the emperor's wife. Subjugation of the pope by the emperor. This woman, once a common prostitute, sold the papacy to Vigilius for two hundred pounds of gold. Her accomplice, Antonina, the unprincipled wife of Belisarius, had Sylverius stripped of his robes and habited as a monk. He was subsequently banished to the old convict island of Pandataria, and there died. Vigilius embraced Eutychianism and, it was said, murdered one of his secretaries, and caused his sister's son to be beaten to death. He was made to feel what it is for a bishop to be in the hands of an emperor; to taste of the cup so often presented to prelates at Constantinople; to understand in what estimation his sovereign held the vicar of God upon earth. Compelled to go to that metropolis to embrace the theological views which Justinian had put forth, thrice he agreed to them, and thrice he recanted; he excommunicated the Patriarch of Constantinople, and was excommunicated by him. In his personal contests with the imperial officials, they dragged him by his feet from a sanctuary with so much violence that a part of the structure was pulled down upon him; they confined him in a dungeon and fed him on bread and water. Eventually he died an outcast in Sicily. The immediate effect of the conquest of Italy was the reduction of the popes to the degraded condition of the patriarchs of Constantinople. Such were the bitter fruits of their treason to the Gothic king. The success of Justinian's invasion was due to the clergy; in the ruin they brought upon their country, and the relentless tyranny they drew upon themselves, they had their reward.

In the midst of this desolation and degradation the Age of Faith was gradually assuming distinctive lineaments in Italy. Paganization, which had been patronized as a matter of policy in the East, became a matter of necessity in the West. To a man like Gregory the Great, born in a position which enabled him to examine things from a very general point of view, it was clear that the psychical condition of the lower social stratum demanded concessions in accordance with its ideas. The belief of the thoughtful must be alloyed with the superstition of the populace.

Accordingly, that was what actually occurred. For the clear understanding of these events I shall have to speak, 1st, of the acts of Pope Gregory the Great, by whom the ideas of the age were organized and clothed in a dress suited to the requirements of the times; 2d, of the relations which the papacy soon assumed with the kings of France, by which the work of Gregory was consolidated, upheld, and diffused all over Europe. It adds not a little to the interest of these things that the influences thus created have outlasted their original causes, and, after the lapse of more than a thousand years, though moss-covered and rotten, are a stumbling-block to the progress of nations.

Gregory the Great was the grandson of Pope Felix. His patrician parentage and conspicuous abilities had attracted in early life the attention of the Emperor Justin, by whom he was appointed prefect of Rome. Withdrawn by the Church from the splendours of secular life, he was sent, while yet a deacon, as nuncio to Constantinople. Discharging the duties that had been committed to him with singular ability and firmness, he resumed the monastic life on his return, with daily increasing reputation. Elected to the papacy by the clergy, the senate, and people of Rome, A.D. 590, with well dissembled resistance he implored the emperor to reject their choice, and, on being refused, escaped from the city hidden in a basket. It is related that the retreat in which he was concealed was discovered by a celestial hovering light that settled upon it, and revealed to the faithful their reluctant pope. This was during a time of pestilence and famine.

Once made supreme pontiff, this austere monk in an instant resumed the character he had displayed at Constantinople, and exhibited the qualities of a great statesman. He regulated the Roman liturgy, the calendar of festivals, the order of processions, the fashions of sacerdotal garments; he himself officiated in the canon of the mass, devised many solemn and pompous rites, and invented the chant known by his name. He established schools of music, administered the Church revenues with precision and justice, and set an example of almsgiving and charity; for such was the misery of the times that even Roman matrons had to accept the benevolence of the Church. He authorized the alienation of Church property for the redemption of slaves, laymen as well as ecclesiastics.

An insubordinate clergy and a dissolute populace quickly felt the hand that now held the reins. He sedulously watched the inferior pastors, dealing out justice to them, and punishing all who offended with rigorous severity. He compelled the Italian bishops to acknowledge him as their metropolitan. He extended his influence to Greece; prohibited simony in Gaul; received into the bosom of the Church Spain, now renouncing her Arianism; sent out missionaries to Britain, and converted the pagans of that country; extirpated heathenism from Sardinia; resisted John, the Patriarch of Constantinople, who had dared to take the title of universal bishop; exposed to the emperor the ruin occasioned by the pride, ambition, and wickedness of the clergy, and withstood him on the question of the law prohibiting soldiers from becoming monks. It was not in the nature of such a man to decline the regulation of political affairs; he nominated tribunes, and directed the operations of troops.

No one can shake off the system that has given him power; no one can free himself from the tincture of the times of which he is the representative. Though in so many respects Gregory was far in advance of his age, he was at once insincere and profoundly superstitious. With more than Byzantine hatred he detested human knowledge. His oft-expressed belief that the end of the world was at hand was perpetually contradicted by his acts, which were ceaselessly directed to the foundation He materializes religion. of a future papal empire. Under him was sanctified that mythologic Christianity destined to become the religion of Europe for many subsequent centuries, and which adopted the adoration of the Virgin by images and pictures; the efficacy of the remains of martyrs and relics; stupendous miracles wrought at the shrines of saints; the perpetual interventions of angels and devils in sublunary affairs; the truth of legends far surpassing in romantic improbability the stories of Greek mythology; the localization of heaven a few miles above the air, and of hell in the bowels of the earth, with its portal in the crater of Lipari. Gregory himself was a sincere believer in miracles, ghosts, and the resurrection of many persons from the grave, but who, alas! had brought no tidings of the secret wonders of that land of deepest shade. He made these wild fancies the actual, the daily, the practical religion of Europe. Participating in the ecclesiastical His hatred of learning,

and expulsion of classical authors. hatred of human learning, and insisting on the maxim that "Ignorance is the mother of devotion," he expelled from Rome all mathematical studies, and burned the Palatine library founded by Augustus Cæsar. It was valuable for the many rare manuscripts it contained. He forbade the study of the classics, mutilated statues, and destroyed temples. He hated the very relics of classical genius; pursued with vindictive fanaticism the writings of Livy, against whom he was specially excited. It has truly been said that "he was as inveterate an enemy to learning as ever lived;" that "no lucid ray ever beamed on his superstitious soul." He boasted that his own works were written without regard to the rules of grammar, and censured the crime of a priest who had taught that subject. It was his aim to substitute for the heathen writings others which he thought less dangerous to orthodoxy; and so well did he succeed in rooting out of Italy her illustrious pagan authors, that when one of his successors, Paul I., sent to Pepin of France "what books he could find," they were "an antiphonal, a grammar, and the works of Dionysius the Areopagite." He was the very incarnation of the Byzantine principle of ignorance.

If thus the misfortunes that had fallen on Italy had given her a base population, whose wants could only be met by a paganized religion, the more fortunate classes all over the empire had long been tending in the same direction. Whoever will examine the progress of Christian society from the earlier ages, will find that there could be no other result than a repudiation of solid learning and an alliance with art. We have only to compare the poverty and plainness of the first disciples with the extravagance reached in a few generations. Corruption of Christianity. Cyprian complains of the covetousness, pride, luxury, and worldly-mindedness of Christians, even of the clergy and confessors. Some made no scruple to contract matrimony with heathens. Clement of Alexandria bitterly inveighs against "the vices of an opulent and luxurious Christian community—splendid dresses, gold and silver vessels, rich banquets, gilded litters and chariots, and private baths. The ladies kept Indian birds, Median peacocks, monkeys, and Maltese dogs, instead of maintaining widows and orphans; the men had multitudes of slaves." The dipping three times at baptism, the tasting of honey and milk, the oblations for the dead, the signing of the cross on the forehead on putting on the clothes or the shoes, or lighting a candle, which Tertullian imputes to tradition without the authority of Scripture, foreshadowed a thousand pagan observances soon to be introduced. As time passed on, so far from the state of things improving, it became worse. Not only among the frivolous class, but even among historic personages, there was a hankering after the ceremonies of the departed creed, a lingering attachment to the old rites, and, perhaps, a religious indifference to the new. To the age of Justinian these remarks strikingly apply. Boethius was, at the best, only a pagan philosopher; Tribonian, the great lawyer, the author of the Justinian Code, was suspected of being an atheist.

In the East, the splendour of the episcopal establishments extorted admiration even from those who were familiar with the imperial court. The well-ordered trains of attendants and the magnificent banquets in the bishops' palaces are particularly praised. Extravagant views of the pre-eminent value of celibacy had long been held among the more devout, who conceded a reluctant admission Episcopal splendour and wickedness. even for marriage itself. "I praise the married state, but chiefly for this, that it provides virgins," had been the more than doubtful encomium of St. Jerome. Among the clergy, who under the force of this growing sentiment found it advisable to refrain from marriage, it had become customary, as we learn from the enactments and denunciations against the practice, to live with "sub-introduced women," as they were called. Paganisms of Christianity. These passed as sisters of the priests, the correctness of whose taste was often exemplified by the remarkable beauty of their sinful partners. A law of Honorius put an end to this iniquity. The children arising from these associations do not appear to have occasioned any extraordinary scandal. At weddings it was still the custom to sing hymns to Venus. The cultivation of music at a very early period attracted the attention of many of the great ecclesiastics—Paul of Samosata, Arius, Chrysostom. In the first congregations It allies itself to art, probably all the worshippers joined in the hymns and psalmody. By degrees, however, more skilful performers had been introduced, and the chorus of the Greek tragedy made available under the form of antiphonal singing. The Ambrosian chant was eventually exchanged for the noble Roman chant of Gregory the Great, which has been truly characterised as the foundation of all that is grand and elevated in modern music.

With the devastation that Italy had suffered the Latin language was becoming extinct. But Roman literature had never been converted to Christianity. Of the best writers among the Fathers, not one was a Roman; all were provincials. The literary basis was the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament, the poetical imagery being, for the most part, borrowed from the prophets. In historical compositions there was a want of fair dealing and rejects learning. and truthfulness almost incredible to us; thus Eusebius naïvely avows that in his history he shall omit whatever might tend to the discredit of the Church, and magnify whatever might conduce to her glory. The same principle was carried out in numberless legends, many of them deliberate forgeries, the amazing credulity of the times yielding to them full credit, no matter how much they might outrage common sense. But what else was to be expected of generations who could believe that the tracks of Pharaoh's chariot-wheels were still impressed on the sands of the Red Sea, and could not be obliterated either by the winds or the waves? He who ventured to offend the public taste for these idle fables brought down upon himself the wrath of society, and was branded as an infidel. In the interpretation of the Scriptures, and, indeed, in all commentaries on authors of repute, there was a constant indulgence in fanciful mystification and the detection of concealed meanings, in the extracting of which an amusing degree of ingenuity and industry was often shown; but these hermeneutical writings, as well as the polemical, are tedious beyond endurance; with regard to the latter, the energy of their vindictive violence is not sufficient to redeem them from contempt.

The relation of the Church to the sister arts, painting and sculpture, was doubtless fairly indicated at a subsequent time by the second Council of Nicea, A.D. 787; their superstitious use had been resumed. Sculpture has, however, never forgotten the preference that was shown to her sister. To this day she is a pagan, emulating in this the example of the noblest of the sciences, Astronomy, who bears in mind the great insults she has received from the Church, and tolerates the name of no saint in the visible heavens; the new worlds she discovers are dedicated to Uranus, or Neptune, or other Olympian divinities. Among the ecclesiastics there had always been many, occasionally some of eminence, who set their faces against the connexion of worship with art; thus Tertullian of old had manifested his displeasure against Hermogenes, on account of the two deadly sins into which he had fallen, painting and marriage; but Gnostic Christianity had approved, as Roman Christianity was now to approve, of their union. To the Gnostics we owe the earliest examples of our sacred images. The countenance of our Saviour, along with those of Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, appears on some of their engraved gems and seals. Among the earlier fathers—Justin Martyn and Tertullian—there was an impression that the personal appearance of our Lord was ungainly; that he was short of stature; and, at a later period Cyril says, mean of aspect "even beyond the Adopts a typical model of the Saviour, ordinary race of men." But these unsuitable delineations were generally corrected in the fourth century, it being then recognised that God could not dwell in a humble form or low stature. The model eventually received was perhaps that described in the spurious epistle of Lentulus to the Roman senate: "He was a man of tall and well-proportioned form; his countenance severe and impressive, so as to move the beholders at once with love and awe. His hair was of an amber colour, reaching to his ears with no radiation, and standing up from his ears clustering and bright, and flowing down over his shoulders, parted on the top according to the fashion of the Nazarenes. The brow high and open; the complexion clear, with a delicate tinge of red; the aspect frank and pleasing; the nose and mouth finely formed; the beard thick, parted, and of the colour of the hair; the eyes blue, and exceedingly bright." Subsequently the oval countenance assumed an air of melancholy, which, though eminently suggestive, can hardly be considered as the type of manly beauty.

At first the cross was without any adornment; it next had a lamb at the foot; and eventually became the crucifix, sanctified with the form of the dying Saviour. Of the Virgin Mary, destined in later times to furnish so many beautiful types of female loveliness, the earliest representations are veiled. The Egyptian sculptors had thus depicted Isis; the first form of the Virgin and child was the counterpart of Isis and Horus. St. Augustine says her countenance was unknown; there appears, however, to have been a very early Christian tradition that in complexion she was a brunette. Adventurous artists by degrees removed the veil, and next to the mere countenance added a full-grown figure like that of a dignified Roman matron; then grouped her with the divine child, the wise men, and other suggestions of Scripture.

While thus the papacy was preparing for an alliance with art, it did not forget to avail itself of the vast advantages within its reach by interfering in domestic life—an interference which the social demoralization of the time more than ever permitted. A prodigious step in power was made by assuming the cognizance of marriage, and the determination of the numberless questions connected with it. Once having discovered the influence thus gained, the papacy never surrendered it; some of the most important events in later history have been determined by its action in this matter. Perhaps even a greater power accrued from its assumption of the cognizance of wills, and of questions respecting the testamentary disposal of property. Though in many respects, at the time we are now considering, the papacy had separated itself from morality, had become united to monachism, and was preparing for a future alliance with political influences and military power; though its indignation and censures were less against personal wickedness than heresy of opinion, toward which it was inexorable and remorseless, a good effect arose from these assumptions upon domestic life, particularly as regards the elevation of the female sex. Roman Church anthropomorphized,

and necessarily becoming intolerant. The power thus arising was re-enforced by a continually-increasing rigour in the application of penitential punishments. As in the course of years the intellectual basis on which that power rested became more doubtful, and therefore more open to attack, the papacy became more sensitive and more exacting. Pushed on by the influence of the lower population, it fell into the depths of anthropomorphism, asserting for the Virgin and the saints such attributes as omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence. Everywhere present, they could always listen to prayer, and, if necessary, control or arrest the course of Nature. As it was certain that such doctrines must in the end be overthrown, the inevitable day was put off by an instant and vindictive repression of any want of conformity. Despotism in the State and despotism in the Church were upheld by despotism over thought.