persons and things by the scale of earthly profit and loss, and of temporary success. " The City of God " is the most powerful, comprehen- sive, profound, and fertile production in refutation of heathen- ism and vindication of Christianity, which the ancient church has bequeathed to us, and forms a worthy close to her literary contest with Graeco-Roman paganism.' It is a grand funeral discourse upon the departing universal empire of heathenism, and a lofty salutation to the approaching universal order of Christianity. While even Jerome deplored in the destruction of the city the downfall of the empire as the omen of the ap- proaching doom of the world,^ the African father saw in it only a passing revolution preparing the way for new conquests of Christianity. Standing at that remarkable turning-point of history, he considers the origin, progress, and end of the perish- able kingdom of this world, and the imperishable kingdom of God, from the fall of man to the final judgment, where at last they fully and forever separate into hell and heaven. The an- tagonism of the two cities has its root in the highest regions of the spirit world, the distinction of good and evil angels ; its historical evolution commences with Cain and Abel, then proceeds in the progress of paganism and Judaism to the birth of Christ, and continues after that great epoch to liis return in glory. Upon the -whole his philosophy of history is dualistic, and does not rise to the unity and comprehensiveness of the divine plan to which all the kingdoms of this world and even Satan himself are made subservient. He hands the one city ' Milman says (1. c. book iii. ch. 10) : " The City of God was unquestionably the noblest work, both in its original design and in the fulness of its elaborate execution, which the genius of man had as yet contributed to the support of Christianity." * Proleg. in Ezek. : In una urbe totus orbis interiit. Epist. 60 : Quid salviun est, si Roma pcrit ! § 12. Augustine's city of god. 87 ovei" to God, the other to the demons. Yet he softens tlie rigor of the contrast by the express acknowledgment of shades in the one, and rays of light in the other. In the present order of the world the two cities touch and influence each other at innumerable points ; and as not all Jews were citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem, so there were on the other liaud true childj-en of God scattered among the heathen like Melchisedek and Job, who were united to the city of God not by a visible, but by an invisible celestial tie. In this sublime contrast Au- gustine weaves up the whole material of his Scriptural and antiquarian knowledge, his speculation, and his Christian ex- perience, but interweaves also many arbitrary allegorical con- ceits and empty subtleties. The first ten books he directs against heathenism, showing up the gradual decline