The Sun. — London, England, 1865-11-04 00:00:00

writers. But the defiled and putrescent system of religion which they found confronting them, for midable as it was from antiquity, wide extension, general consent, from tle strength of habit, and the tenacious grasp of powerful interests upon tempo ral possessions and advantages, this evil system they hunted down in argument without mercy, and did not admit to be an historical and traditional deri vation from a primeval truth, which the common ancestry of the Semitic and the European races had once in common enjoyed. It can hardly be said that there was intentional unfairness in this pro ceeding. The Christian writers laboured under the same defect of critical knowlege and practice with their adversaries. They took their lives, deeds, and genealogies of the heathen deities, just as they found them in the popular creed, for the starting points of their argument. Their immediate business was to confute a false religion, and to sweep from the face of the world a crying and incurable moral evil ; not to construct an universal philosophy of the religious history of man, for which the time had not then, and perhaps has not yet, arrived. But . we have new sources of knowledge, new means of detecting error and guiding inquiry, new points of view open to us; and the more freely and faithfully we use them the more we shall find cause to own, with reverence and thankfulness, the depth, and height, and breadth of the wisdom and goodness of God. Meantime, it is easy to perceive the polemical advantage which was obtained by this unsparing man ner of attack. He brought the case straight to issue, not between -differently shaded images of a Deity confessedly the same, - with their respective champions ready to uphold their several claims amid the din of contending 'preferences and of interminable dispute, but, taking his stand on the threshold of the argu ment, and like a soldier in fight disencumbering him self of all detail, between the God of the Hebrew on the one side, worshipped from the beginning of man kind, and pretended gods on the other, which could render no distinct account of their origin, and were in truth no gods at all. And to estimate the great ness of this advantage we must take into view the nature of the adverse arguments. The Pagan cham pions did not too much embarrass themselves by defending the popular forms and fables of the old religion. Perhaps, to the credulous villager, the re ligion of Porphyry might have been as unintelligible or as odious as that of St. Paul. All these incum brances were at once disposed of by being treated • on the Pagan side as allegorical, figurative, secondary manifestations of the true Deity, or even as having been in many cases due to the intrusive and mis chievous activity of the spirits of evil. The Pagan champion, then, was himself contending, not for the forms, but for the one great unseen Deity, which, driven to his shifts, he affirmed to lie hid within the forms. To admit, under circumstances like these, that any principle of inward life, under whatever incrustations, was latent in the mythology as it lay before their eyes, would have been to betray the truth. And any seeming approach to that admission such as allowinkthatthat foul and loathsome corpse had once been alive in youthful health and beauty, might have sorely hindered and perplexed the Chris tian argument on its way to the general mind. As respects the religious ideas of the Greeks, properly so called, and their philosophic tenets, the scholars of the 17th century seemed to have occupied much the I same ground with Eusebius and the early Christian writers. But as respected their mythol og i ca l person- I ages, not having the Pagans to argue with, they had no prejudices against finding for them a lineage • in Scripture. I am not competent to determine how far in the prosecution of their task they went into excess. But those who admit the truth of the Sacred Records must surely decline to say that they were wrorg in principle. We are not called upon to be lieve that Neptune was Japhet, or that Iphigenia was Jephtha's daughter ; or that Deucalion was Noah, or that Bellerophon was really Joseph in the house of Potiphar, notwithstanding certain resem blances of circumstances by which these and some I other such cases are marked. But if we belieVe in the substantial soundness of the text of Scripture, and in the substantial truth of its history, we must then also belies e that the Hamitic and Japhetic races, as they in their successive branches set out upon their long migrations, brought with them, from the early home which they had shared with the sons ' of Shotn, the ccirmon religious traditions. They could not but go, as lEneas is fabled to have gone from Troy,-- "Cum patribus populoque, Penatibus, ac magnis Dis." But if there be those who would strangely forbid us to appeal to what may be called, by the most modest of its august titles, the oldest and most vene rable document of human history, the argument still remains much the same. The progress of ethnological and philological research still supplies ns with accumulating evidence of the chain of migrations, north and westwards, of the Turanian, and especially of the Aryan races, from points neces sarily undefined, but in close proximity with the seats of the patriarchal nomads ; and has not sup plied us with any evidence, or with any presump tion whatever, that their known traditions sprang from any fountainhead other than that which is described in the "Book of Genesis" as the three branching fathily of Noah. If, then, upon this ground, there is, to say the least, nothing to exclude or to disparage, but so much to support, the doctrine of the original intercommunion of these races with the Semitic tribes, Tvhich could not but include re ligion, the question occurs in all its force, how was it Mil possible that they could leave behind them their religious traditions upon the occasion of their lira local separation from their parent stock? They did not surely, like the souls in transmigration, drink of the river of forgetfulness, and raze out from the tablets of the brain, as a preparation for their journey, all they had ever known, or heard, or felt. The obscuration and degeneracy of religious sys tems is commonly indeed,a rapid, but is necessarily a gradual process. Nemo repente fuit turpissimus ; and no tribe or nation passes either from light to darkness, or from the possession of a religious belief to the loss of it, at a moment's notice. It was, therefore, antecedently probable that, in examining the actual religious systems of later times, and of countries at a distance from the earliest known seat of mankind, but connected with it by the great cur rent of human migration, we should find remain ing tokens of affinity to any religious system, which upon competent evidence we might believe to have prevailed among the races most closely and directly connected with that seat. And this antecedent probability is sustained by a mass of evidence running through the whole web of the Hellenic mythology, obscure indeed in its latest and most darkened ages, but continually gaining iu force and clearness as we ascend the stream of time, and so strong in itself as to be, I am firmly persuaded,incaPable of argumentative confu tation. To collect and present this mass of evidence, with a careful and strict appreciation of the respee_ tive value of its parts, is a work not to be attempted within the limits, however extended by your indul gence, of what is termed an address. But I will now endeavour to bring to a head what has been stated, and to apply it to the purpose which I an nounced at the commencement. I submit, then, to you that the true " Prxparatio Evangelica," or the rearing and training of mankind for the Gospel,was not confined to that eminent and conspicuous part of it, whi c h i s r e presen t e d b y th e di spensat i ons g i ven to the Patriarch and the Jews, but extends likewise to other fields of human history and experience, among which, in modes and in degrees, varying perceptibly to us, the Almighty distributed the ope rations preliminary and introductory to his one great, surpassing, and central design for the reco very and happine ss o f mankind. So that in their several spheres, some positi ve , some negative, some spiritual, some secular, with a partial consciousness, or with an absolute unconsciousness, all were co operators in working out His will, under a guidance strong and subtle, and the more sublime perhaps in proportion as it was the less sensible. Intheboardye of those traditions of primitive religion which handed down to us in the Book of Genesis, and which I shall make no further apology for treating as records of great historic weight, there are mani festly included what I may term a humanistic ele 'lieut. It was embodied in the few but pregnant words which declared that the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's head. The principle of evil was to receive a deadly shock in its vital part, and this at the hands of One who should be born inio the very race that He would come to deliver. The next observation I would submit is this—that there was no provision made, so far as we are aware, at-any rate in the Mosaic system, for keeping alive this particular element of the original traditions, otherwise than as an anticipation raaching into the fardistantfuture. On the contrary, every precaution was apparently taken to prevent any human being, or any human form, from becoming the object of a religious reverence. To this aim the abstraction of the body of Moses from the view of the people seems to be most naturally referred, and the strin gent prohibitions of the second commandment of the Decalogue appear to have been especially pointed against the execution by human hands of the figure of a man. For we hear in Holy Writ of the serpent made , by Moses and exhibited to the nation : and the brazen sea of the Temple rested upon 12 brazen oxen. There were cherubim in the Ark framed by Moses ; and " cherubim of image work" were made by Solomon for the Temple; but they were not, it is commonly believed, in human figure ; and the four living creatures of the vision of Ezekiel had each the mixed character of man, lion, ox, and eagle. And it would appear that these measures were effectual. Ready as were the Jews to worship the serpent or the golden calf, their idolatry never was anthropomorphic. The majesty of the Deity was thus kept, in the belief of the Hebrew race, effectually apart from that one form of lowering association which, as we see from the experience of Paganism, was by far the subtlest, the most attrac tive, and the most enchaining. A pure Theistic system was maintained, a redemption to come was embraced in faith, and, in a religion laden with ritual and charged with symbol, no rite, no symbol, was permitted to exhibit to the senses, and through the senses to the mind, of the people, the form of Him that was to be the worker of the great deliver ance. Thus was kept vacant until the appointed time, in the general belief as well as in the scheme or theory of religion, the sublime and solitary place which the Redeemer of the world was to fill. Counterfeits there were, but they had not that dangerous resemblance to the truth which would enable them to make head against the Messiah when He should arrive. And so after He had come, His only rivals and competitors in Judaea were conceptions, distorted in the ab stract, of His character and office ; far different from those solid formations of an embodied and or ganised religion, whose dangerous contact the gospel had not to encounter, until the life and work of its author, and the foundation of the Christian society with all its essential powers, were complete. Let us now turn to the religion of the Hellenic race ; and we shall find that, as matter of fact, it appro priated to itself, and was intensely permeated by, that very anthropomorphic element which the Mo saic system was so especially framed to exclude, and to which the other religions of antiquity gave in comparison but a doubtful and secondary place. If I am asked to point out a link which especially associates the early Greek mythology with the hu manistic element of primitive tradition, I venture to name the character of Apollo as pre-eminently sup plying such a link. He is born of Zeus, but he is not born of Here. Through him the divine counsels ale revealed to the world as the god of prophecy and of oracle. This lamp of knowledge burning in him establishes an affinity between him and the sun, but the anthropomorphic energy of the religion is jealous of the absorption of Deity into mere nature power. At what period the identification of Apollo with the sun took place in the Hellenic system, we cannot say ; but this we know, that it had not taken place in the time of Homer, with whom Apollo and the Sun are perfect distinct individuals. To him is assigned the healing art and the general office of deliverance. To him, again, who remains to the last the perfect model of masculine beauty in the human form, is assigned by tradition the con quest alike over Death and over the might of rebel lious spirits. In his hands we find functions of such rank and such range that we cannot understand how they could pass from him to Zeus, the supreme deity, until we remember they are the very functions assigned by a more real and higher system to the Son of God ; the true Instructor, Healer, Deli verer, Judge, and Conqueror of Death, in whom the power and majesty of the Godhead were set forth in the world. The character of this deity, whom Eusebius calls " the most venerable and the wisest" of the whole Olympian order, affords, in my opi nion,the most complete and varied proof of the tradi tional relationship to which I now refer. Abundant evidence, however, of the same character might be adduced under many other heads. But I do not re fer to this weighty subject at present with a view of leading you to affirm the existence of such a rela tionship ; that could not legitimately be done, ex cept upon a scrutiny, both deliberate and minute, of a great mass of evidence, gathered from many quarters, and dependent for much of its force upon careful comparison and juxta-position. I now advert to the question only as casting light upon a matter which will follow. What I take, however, to be indisputable, apart from all theorising upon causes, is this fact—that the Hellenic mythology is charged throughout with the humanistic element in a man ner clearly and broadly separating it from the other religions of the ancient world. It has anthropomor phism for the soul and centre of all that is distinc tive in it ; and that peculiar quality seems to enter, more or less, into the religion of other tribes nearly in proportion as they were related to the Hellenic race. Let us now shortly contemplate that mytho- 1 logy, such as it wears . in the works of Homer, its i prime and most conspicuous author, and himself the true representative of the purely Hellenic spirit in its largest and most authentic form. The theology of Homer is variously composed. He seems to have I lived at the critical moment in the history of the Hellenic or, as they were then called, Achaian families or tribes, when the different ethnical ele- meuts or factors with which they were to assimilate 1 —Pelasgic, lonian, Egyptian, Phceuician, and the like settled down and compounded themselves into the firmly knit and sharply defined character of a people, and they were no longer a chaotic assem blage of unassorted or even conflicting units, but as apeople were born into that world on whose fortunes , they were to exercise an influence almost immeasur able. The theology of Homer is the Olympian system ; and that system exhibits a kind of Royal or Palace life of man, but on the one hand more splendid and powerful, on the other more intense and free. It is a wonderful and a gorgeous creation. It is eminently in accordance with the signification of the English epithet—rather a favourite apparently with our old writers—the epithet jovial, which is derived from the Latin name of its head. It is a life of all the pleasures of mind and body, of banquet and of revel, of music and of song ; a life in which solemn grandeur alternates with jest and gibe ; a life of childish wilfulness and fretfulness, combined with serious, manly, and imperial. cares ; for the Olympus of Homer has at least this one recom mendation to esteem, that it is not peopled with the merely lazy and selfish gods of Epicurus, but its in habitants busily deliberate on the government of man, and in their debates the cause of justice wins. I do not now, however, discuss the moral titles of the Olympian scheme ; what I dwell upon is its in tense humanity, alike in its greatness and its little ness, its glory and its sham. As the cares and joys of human life, so the structure of society below is reflected, by the wayward wit of man, on 'leaven above. Though the names and fundamental tradi tions of the several deities were wholly or in great part imported from abroad, their characters, rela tions, and attributes passed under aHellenizing pro cess, which gradually marked off for them special provinces and functions, according to laws which appear to have been mainly original and indigenous, and to have been taken by analogy from the division of labour in political society. As early as in Homer, while the prerogatives of Apollo and Athens a re almost universal, yet the Olympian society has its complement of officers and servants with their pro per functions. Hephaistos moulds the 20 golden thrones which move automatically to form the circle of the council of the gods ; and builds for each of his brother deities their separate places in the deep-folded recess of the mighty mountain. The materials for the old religious outside of Greece a b n y d ti t l h e ip e w G ors re h ek races were in great part afforded first of nature, and secondly by the wor ship of animals. Both of these the early Hellenic system steadily rejected and eschewed; and their re- DIE SUN, LONDON, SATURDAY EVENING, NOVEMBER 4, 1865. ligion took its stand upon the idea which insepar ably incorporated deity in the matchless human form. This, and much besides, obscured in the later and more mixed traditions, stands out clearly in the earliest records of the Greeks. The " Theogony" of Hesiod, which must be regarded as a work of very great antiquity, exhibits to us the elemental and Olympian gods in groups clearly enough dis tinguished. The poems of Homer, far more Helle nic in their spirit, may be said to exclude and repel from the sacred precinct alike the heavenly bodies and the elemental powers. The plague in the first " Iliad " bears evident marks of solar agency ; but, without the least allusion to that luminary, it is ascribed to Apollo in one of the noblest anthropo morphic passages of the poems. The Sun only once appears as a person iu the " Iliad," where he re luctantly obeys the command of Here that by set ting he shall end the day, which was the last day of Trojan success ; thus indicating the side to which, as an elemental deity, he inclined. Again, Xan thos, a river god, appears in the " Theomachy," but he appears on the side of Troy; and he seems also to have had one name as a deity with the Trojans, another with the Greeks or Achains as a stream. When Agamemnon offers solemn service for his army only, he invokes Zeus alone, and invokes him as dwelling in the sky. But when he offers the joint sacrifice of the two parties in the Third Book, then he invokes Zeus as governing from the hill of Ida, which was in hisview, and invokes with him the sun, the earth, and the rivers. The rivers are summoned to the Olympian assembly of the Twentieth Book; but it is an assembly in which the gods are to take their several sides. It is a mistake to suppose that Poseidon was an elemental god ; he was the patron of the sea, as he was of the horse, but he was more the god of navigation than of water. The sea had its elemental god, the hoary Nereus, with Am phitrite seemingly for his wife; but Amphitrite is always the moaning Amphitrite, and Nereus never emerges from the depths ; nor, though he is fre quently referred to, is he ever named on the Hellenic page of Homer. I turn to another head. Loth on the one side to admit the imposing elements of Na ture-worship on the grand scale, the Olympian system is yet more alien to the other favourite form of religious illusion, the worship offered to animals, and particularly to the ox, of which Egypt seems to have been the headquarters. In the full exhibition which the poems of Homer afford us of the religion in its earlier forms, there is not a trace of animal worship. In the " Odyssey," indeed, an awful and mystic sacredness attaches to the sun. In the island of Thrinakie, detained by adverse winds, the com panions of Odysseus are warned that under no ex tremity should they supply their wants by the de struction of these animals. Accordingly they resort to birds and fish, unusual food with the Homeric Greeks ; they finally put some of the animals to death, only to avoid dying themselves by famine ; and for this offence the entire crew, except Odysseus, who had not shared in it, are drowned when next they take to sea. Now although there is no animal worship here, there is what may be called animal sanctity ; but it is in connection with a deity not even recognized at the time in the Hellenic system ; and introduced as it is during the voyage in remote parts—which must have been based upon the tales of the Phcenician mariners—it appears certainly to belong to the Phcenician circle of mythology. And here we find an example of the manner in whichthe immense plastic power of the Hellenic mind dealt with foreign ideas of all kinds, so as to make them its own. What their sculptors did with the rude and formless art of Egypt—what their philosophers did with the shreds of Eastern knowledge picked up on their travels, their theology did with the many and crude varieties of superstition which flowed in upon them from the numerous quarters that furnished by sea and land immigrants for the Hellenic peninsula. The old Pelasgian gods, not rudely overthrown, but gently taken from their pedestals, were set down harmless in the shade of a mellow distance ; and the animals before which lower types of men were content to bown down the godlike head, were not, when the traditions that defied them set foot on Grecian soil, thrust wholly out of view ; but they were put into appropriate and alwayssecondary places. The eagle of Zeus, the falcon of Apollo, the peacock of Here, the owl of Pallas, stood no higher in Greece than as accessories to the figures on which they attend. And now I will endeavour to point out, in rude and rapid outline, some of the remarkable results of this idee mere of the Greek religion, the annexation of manhood to deity, and the recriprocal incorporation of deity into man hood ; which made the human form the link between the visible and the invisible worlds, the meeting point of earth and heaven. And here my object will be only to give you a sample of the redundant ma terials which seem to rise up around me thickly piled on every side ; most of all, perhaps in the Homeric or Achaian period. First, I will remark a profound reverence for human life and human na ture, which even the fiercest passions of war would but rarely, and only for a moment violate. Hence we find the highest refinements of the manners of the gentleman existing at a time when, among the Greeks, the material appliances of civilisation were in their infancy, and when writing andthe alphabet were practically unknown. The sentiment of honour is indicated, at this epoch, by a word (al8cos) too delicate for our rendering by a single term in the English, perhaps in any modern tongue. A cata logue of horrors that have stained the life of man elsewhere, sometimes even ih the midst of the triumphs of culture and refinement, were unknown in the Achaian period. I will dwell for a moment on one of,: these, the practice of human sacrifice. You will find from a charming volume, the " Miscellanies of Lord Stanhope," that a few years ago, some of the most famous men of our day wore brought by him into correspondence on tho in- teresting, but to many startling, question whether human sacrifices were in use among the Romans ; not the unlet tered semi-barbarians of Romulus or Tarquin, but the Romans of Rome in its highest political power and its palmiest civilisation. Naturally enough, a considerable re pugnance wils manifested to entertaining this supposition; but as tho inquiry proceeded, a younger yet profoundly learned scholar, Sir John Acton, was brought into the field. His full and varied researches do not appear in the pages of Lord Stanhope. But they range well nigh over all space and time. His conclusions are, that "wo find traces of it, that is of human sacrifice, throughout almost the whole Hellenic world, in the cuftus of almost every god, and in all periods of their independent his tory." That among the Romans it was still more rife and that, though attempts were made to restrain or put down the practice, even the famous edict of Adrian, to which Eusebius allows the honour of its extinction, failed to effect it; nay, more, that "in every genera tion of the four centuries, from the fall of the Repub lic to the establishment of Christianity, human victims were sacrificed by the Emperors" themselves. The conclusions of Sir John Acton are Lot admitted in their full breadth by other great authorities ; but it seems impossible to doubt tho wide-spread and long-continued, or often-recurring prevalence of the practice, in contact, more or less, with civilised times and nations, and sustained in various de grees by perverse but accepted ideas of religion. Notwith standing this terrible and too well sustained indictment against the unenlightened and the enlightened world, it is pleasing to observe that this horrible rite did not originally belong to the usages of Greece. It seems to have come in by a late contagion from abroad ; and human sacrifice is not found in Homer. The slaughter of some Trojan youths by Achilles, in his nnsated vengeance, has none of the marks of a religious Tito, and no relation to a deity. Of the tradi tions of Iphigenia, sacrificed in Aulis for the welfare of the Achaian host, Homer is wholly ignorant ; and Agamemnon in the Iliad speaks of his daughters as open to the option of Achilles, as many fathers may since have done who had two or three of them ready to marry, but so as almost to supply sufficient evidence that no such blood-stained gap had been made in the circle of his family. It is many cen turies later, when the tradition reaches us in the works of the tragedians. In that grandest of all Greek dramas, the "Agamemnon" of .7Eschylus, his murderous wife Clytem nestra seeks an apology for her act partly in the immola tion of Iphigonia by her father's hand; and the tone of the play is so condemnatory as to suggest that an Athenian audience of the middle of the fifth century, before Christ, did not allow religion to be an adequate apology for the deed. At a somewhat later period, the " Iphigenia in Tauris" of Euripides supplies us with more direct evidence that the practice while not indigenous in Greece, was foully rife among other races. The scene is laid abroad in hon or boric territory ; and the chorus of Greek attendants on the A in d oome d princess addressing the Deity, says, "Receive, 0 .-- vener able one, this sacrifice, if it be a sacrifice agreeable atm ' to thee, which the law of us Greeks declares to be un- Greece holy. e that the anhetd theradit in ioonriogftahle freedomforeign rded first origin of T the husg showabominablen rite, iy the wo'' of the Hellenic system from it, was cherished in the .4rly IT' . memory of the people. I have already had to observe a' that the Achaians eschewed both incest a nd p ol yg am y . I - may add that even the unconcious incest of Edipus and Jocasta drew down the heaviest calamities ; and further, that we have no trace, among the Homeric records, not only of canibalisin but of violence to nature in any form. The crimes of abortion and the exposure of infants autho rised and commended by Plato in his ideal State have no place in the Homeric poems ; nor do they afford the slightest indication of those shameless lusts, which formed the incredible and indelible disgrace of Greece in the time of its consummate Supremacy in art, and at the climax of its boasted civilisation. If I am right in my estimate of the, place which the human form hold in its relation to the Hellenic religion, we may naturally expect to find it at tested, among ether ways, by the following signs : —An intense admiration of personal beauty ; a resentment against and avoidance of deformity, as a kind of sin against thollaw of nature ; and a marked disposition to associate ignorance with vice. I cannot now undertake to exhibit the remark able manner in which these anticipations are realised in Homer : whose appreciation of the beauty of the human form appears from unequivocal signs to exceed that of any author in any age or country : while upon the other side, introducing but ono vicious character, Thersites, among the Greeks of the Iliad, ho describes his personal appear ance with a degree of detail foreign to his habit, in order, seemingly, that, even as we read, we may see him before us in his hideous deformity. The same topics might be illustrated in detail from the later history of Greece, in modes inconsistent or questionable enough, yet abundantly significant. Courtesans of extraordinary beauty were sometimes chosen to march in the processions of the gods. By the side of the evil tradition of Aphrodite the promis cuous, there lingered long the rival tradition of an Aphro dite the heavenly. On the other hand, with respect to deformity, I do not remember that Aristophanes, in his campaign against Socrates, makes the use which we might ha ve expected of the ugliness of the philosopher. And though jests were freely passed upon actual eccentricity of feature, I have not seen it proved, in such partial exami nation of the subject as has lain within my power, that the Greeks were wont to make use of that which we call caricature ; which I understand to bo, the founding upon some known or peculiar feature a representation of defor mity that does not exist, for the purpose of exciting ridicule or hatred. Among the moderns this practice appears to have boon employedeven to stimulate religious animosity or fury : and the rarity or absence of it, among a people possessed of such high sarcastic power as the Greeks, sug gests that it may have been excluded by the predominating force of a traditional reverence, grown into instinct, for the beauty of the human form ; having its origin nowhere with greater likelihood than in the early and continued association of that form with the highest object of religion. I will now - refer to the feeling of the Homeric period con cerning the sacredness of the human body against both violation and exposure. The horror of Priam in anticipat ing his own death at the coming sack of Troy rises to its climax when he brings into the picture the tearing and defilenient by dogs of his own exposed and naked figure. And the extremest point of punishment threatened to the degraded Thersites appears to be the stripping of his person for the disgust and derision of the camp, and the seaming it with "indecorous" wounds. Nor was this respect for decency a shallow or shortlived tradition. It was indeed rudely tried, since it came into conflict with the eagerness of the race for high physical activity and athletic development, stimulated to the uttermost by the great national institution of the Games, in which, as Horace said with little exaggeration, the palm of the victor uplifted even the lords of earth to the honours of the gods. Yet, important as it was for per fection in those unparalleled contests to free the person from the restraints of clothing, Thucydides in his preface tells us that the athletes wore formerly covered ; that the Lacedromonians were the first to strip in the arena, and that it was not many years before his time when the fashion reached its height. But when we are seeking to ascertain the measure of that conception which any given raco has formed of our nature, there is perhaps no single test so ef fective as the position which it assigns to woman. For as the law of force is the law of the brute creation, so, in pro portion as he is under the yoke of that law, does man ap proximate to the brute ; and in proportion, on the other hand, as he has escaped from its dominions, is he ascend ing into the highensphore of being, and claiming relation ship with deity. But the emancipation and due ascendancy of woman are not a mere fact ; they are the emphatic asser tion of a principle ; and that principle is the dethronement of the law of force, and the enthronement of other and higher laws in its place, and in its despite. Outside the pale of Chris tianity it would be difficult to find a parallel, in point of ele vation, to the Greek woman of the heroic age. Mr. Buckle candidly acknowledges that her position was then much higher than it had come to be in the most civilised historic period of Greece ; and yet he was a writer whose bias, and the general cast of whose opinions would have disposed him to an opposite conclusion. Again, if the pictures presented by the historical books of the Old Testament and by Homer respectively be compared, candour will claim from us a verdict in favour of the position of the Greeks as com pared with that of the Hebrew woman. Among the Jews polygamy was permitted; to the Greeks, as has been said, it was unknown. Tales like that of Amn on and Tamar, or like that of the Levite and his concubine, are not found even among the deeds of the dissolute Suitorsof the Odys sey. Among tho Jews the testimony of our Lord is that be cause of the hardness of their hearts Moses suffered them to put away their wives, but that "from the beginning it was not so." Apart from the violent contingencies of war, manners seem to have been, in the momentous point of divorce, not very different among the 'Greeks of the heroic age from what they had been in the beginning. The picture of Penelope waiting for her husband through the creeping course of 20 years, and of Odysseus yearning in like manner for his wife, is one of the most remarkable in the whole history of human manners ; and it would lose little, if any thing, of its deeper significance and force, even if we be lieved that the persons whom the poet names Odysseus and Penelope have never lived. It must be observed, too, what, in the mind of Homer, constitutes the extraordinary virtue of the royal matron. It is not the refusal to marry another while her husband is alive, but her stubborn determination not to accept the apparently certain conclusion that he must have ceased to live. Not even the Suitors suggest that, if ho be indeed alive, any power can sot her free. Scarcely less noteworthy, for the purpose of the present argument, are the immunities which she enjoys even in her painful posi tion. She is importuned, but she is not insulted. She feels horror and aversion, but she has no cause for fear. Such, in the morning of Greek life, was the reverence that hedged a woman, as she sat alone and undefended hi the midst of a body of powerful and abandoned men. Again: the famous scene of Hector and Andr Dina ciao is not more touching by its immeasurable tender ness than it is important for the proof which it affords, with reference to the contemporary manners, of what may be called the moral equality of man and wife. And the general effect of the poems is to give an idea of social purity, and of a share borne by women in the practical and responsible duties of life, such as we seek iu vain, notwithstanding some charming specimens of cha racter, among the Jews. Still less can it be found among the Greeks of the more polished ages. In their annals wo scarce ever hear of a wife or mother, though the na mes of mistresses and courtesans are entered -on the roll of fame, and PhryneNedicated in a Phocian temple a gilded statue of herself, which was wrought by the hand of Praxiteles. In deed, not to speak of the poetry of Euripides, even the most solid and impartial judgments, such as those of Thucydides and Aristotle, were-unfavourably warped in their estimate of women. It would, I have no doubt, be possible to illus trate in great detail from ancient rocorcls the high value set by the Greeks upon man, in his mind, life, and person. I will mention two instances from Pausanias. An Arcadian, named Skedasos, living at Leuctra, had two daughters, who were violated by Lacedamnonian youths. Unable to bear the shame, they put an end to their lives. Their fa ther, also, having in vain sought justice from the- Spartan lauthorities, sternly recoiled from the disgrace,and destroyed himself. In after times Epriminondiis, abOut to join battle with the Spartans at the place, made offerings and prayers to the insulted maidens and to their parent ; and then won the victory which laid low the power of Spirta, - The:other is of a different, and a yet more singular character. The statue of Theagenes, the Thasian athlete, after his death, fell upon an enemy of his, and killed him. The sons of the man who thus lost his life brought an action against the statue ; and it was thrown into tho sea, under a law of Draco, which made inanimate objects punishable for destroying human life. Nor was this law peculiar to Athens, where it was maintained in the legislation of Solon. For, as we see, it was recognised in Theses. Now there is an apparent re semblance between this law and the English law of deo dand, which involved the forfeiture, says Blackstone, of " whatever personal chattel is the immediate cause of the n d i e u a c t h h se of e a mi ny n r g e s a hn son il a a b ri le ty c , r t e h a e ti ca iro se .' s '. ar ß e u e t I sse t n h t ik ia n lly th di a, ff t er w e i n t t h . Deodand was originally a payment to the sovereign to be applied to pious uses, and seems to have passed into a ma norial right, or in the Gothic codes, into a compensation for homicide, payable to the surviving relatives. But it proceeded upon the principle of making the owners pay ; though they paid in respect of homicide effected through a material instrument. The Greek law inflicted punishment upon the inanimate matter itself for having violated the sanctity of human life. In this essential point it exactly corresponded with the remarkable law of Moses, which said " If an ox gore a man that he die, the ox shall be stoned, and his flesh shall not be eaten." But even this provision falls greatly short of the full spirit of the Greek law, since even the animal that kills is conscious, and gores from excited passion. I pass, however, to a subject of larger scope, and I venture to suggest that the anthropo morphic spirit of the Greek religion was the source of that excellence in art, which has become to after ages a model for imitation, and a tribunal without appeal. All aro aware that the Greek religion was eminently poetical ; for it ful filled in the most striking manner that condition which Poetry above all requires, harmony in tbo relation between the worlds of soul and sense. Every river, fountain, grove, and hill was associated with the heart and imagination of the Greek ; subject, however, always to tho condition that they should appear as ruled by a presiding spirit, and that that spirit should bo impersonated in the human shape. A poetical religion must, it seems, be favourable to art. The beauty of form which so much abounded in the country was vas neglected, o ffavour able beautyy le toa u rt t . The Athenians, however, are stated not to have b een b eau tiful ; and at Sparta, where art y was immensely prized. • And, indeed, the personal beauty of a race is by no means usually found zufficient to produce the development of the fine arts ; and as to the poetry of religion, and its bearing upon art, while a general connection may bo admitted, it is very difficult to define the manner and degree. The practice of image-worship promotes the production of works, first rude and coarse, then more or less vulgar and tawdry. Over the whole centinent of Europe there is scarcely at this moment an object of popular veneration, which is worthy to be called a work of art. Of the finest remaining works of Greek art, not very many, I imagine, bear the mark of having been intended for worship. The great size required for statues like the Atheno of the Par thenon and the Zeus of Olympia seems unfavourable to the exhibition of fine art in the highest sense. In Pausanias we find notices•of an immense number of statues in and about the temples ; they aro not commonly, I think, praised for excellence in this respect ; and the nature of material, to which we find constant reference, could hardly have been chosen by the artist for the sake of his own proper purpose. I have heard Lord Macaulay give his opinion that this mixture in the Zeus of Phidias at Olympia, made of ivory and gold, simple as was that form of combination, may probably have been duo to the necessity of condescen sion to the popular taste in connection with an object of worship. Although, therefore, the highest artists were employed, it does not appear probable that they derived any part of their higher inspiration from the fervour of the multitude of the worshippers in the temples. Neither will it avail to urge the great esteem in which the profes- sors of the arts wero held. High indeed it was; and the successions of sculptors in the different schools seem to have been recorded apparently with almost as much care as the Archons of Athens, or the priestesses of Here at Argos those landmarks of the history of states. But the question recurs, was their estimation the cause of their excellence, or was their excellence the cause of their estimation; and if the estimation flowed from the excellence, whence came excel lence itself ? Both the one and the other were perhaps due to another cause. That many accessories contributed to the wonderful result Ido not doubt. But mainly and essenti ally, every art and method, every device and habit, in the language of Aristotle, has an end ; and is modelled upon the and at which it aims ; and by that end its greatness or its littleness is measured. Now the climax of all art, it seems to be agreed, is the rendering of the human form. What, then, could be so calculated to raise this represen tation to the acme of its excellence, as the belief that the human form was not only the tabernacle, but tho original and shape, the inseparable attribute, of Deity itself ? In the quaint language of George Herbert, He that aims the moon Shoots higher much than ho that means a tree. And again, as Tennyson has sung:— It was my duty to have loved the highest: We needs must love the highest when wo see it, Not Lancelot, nor another. It was this perpetual presentation of the highest to the mind of the Greek artist that cheered him and rewarded him, and yet, while it cheered him and rewarded him, still over spurred him on in his pursuit. Whatever he had done more remained to do, Nil actum reputans dum quid superesset agendum. The desire of ambition was fulfilled : he had always more worlds to conquer. The divine was made familiar to him, by correspondence of shape : but on the other side, its ele ments, which it was his business to draw forth and indicate to men, reached far away into the infinite. And Iknow not what true definition there is for an age or people of the highest excellence in any kind, unless it be perpetual effort upwards in pursuit of an object higher than ourselves, higher than our works, higher even than our hopes, yet beckoning us on from hour to hour, and always permitting us to apprehend in part. I venture then to propound for consideration the opinion, that the fundamental cause of the transcendent excellence of the Greek artist lay in his be ing, by his birth and the tradition of his people, as well as with every favouring accessory, both in idea and in form, and in such a sense as no other artist was, a worker upon deity, conceived as residing in the human form. It is hardly necessary to observe how the rich and many-sided compo sition of the Greek mythology favoured the artist in his work, by answering to the many-sided development of tho mind and life of man. Unconsciously then to himself, and in a sphere of almost parochial narrowness, the Greek not only earned himself an immortal fame, but was equipping from age to age a great school of art, to furnish principles and models made ready to the hand of that purer and higher civilisation which was to be; and over the prerara tion of which, all the while, Divine Providence was brood ing, like the Spirit on the face of the waters, till the fulness of time should come. But besides the art and the poetry of the Greeks, there were other provinces in which their achievements were no less remarkable; and, with reference to the present argument, I must shortly touch upon their philosophy. The first philosophers of the Greek race were not for the most part natives and inhabitants of Greece, nor subject exclusively to Greek influences. Their specu lations turned mainly on the nature of the first principle, and partook of an eastern spirit. But when philosophy took up her abode in the country where Hellenism was supremo and without a rival, that human element, which lay so pro foundly embedded in the whole constitution of the Hellenic mind, unfolded itself in the region of speculative thought ; and the true meaning of the famous saying that Socrates called down philosophy from heaven would seem to be, that he gave expression to the genius of his country by propound . ing, as the prime subject for the study of man, the nature, constitution, and destiny- of man himself. And the illustrious series of disciples, some of them probably greater than their master, who followed his example, were not therein aping or adopting the mere peculiarity of an individual, but obey ing a congenial impulse that sprang from the depths of their being. Whatever philosophy was to be indigenous in Greece could not but be predominantly and profoundly human ; and their power and fame, as analysts of our un fathomable constitution, are fresh and unabated at the pre sent hour. Fashion may wave her wand, but it is with small result. Idolatrous veneration of course has at times begotten temporary reaction and neglect ; but the power of Greek culture seems again and again to assert itself by virtue of the law which makes all things find their level, and since it came into existence it has never ceased to be in the most instructed periods the chief criterion and means of the highest intellectual training ; not, of course, necessarily for each individual, but for classes and for countries. The point, however, to which I wish to draw particular attention at this moment is the large and well balanced view, to which Greek philosophy attained, of the compound nature of man. Never, probably, has there appeared upon the stage of the world so remarkable an union, as in the Greeks, of corporal with mental excellence. From the beginning of the race Homer shared the privi lege of his most gorgeous epithet between battle and de bate. The Odes of such a poet as Pinder, handing on wards the tradition of the twenty-third Iliad, commemo rate, so to speak, the marriage of athletic exorcise with the gift of song. We do not trace among the Greeks that con trast, which is found so rude and sharp elsewhere, between energy iu the body and energy in the brain. The Greek was in this like Adam in the noble verso of Milton, For contemplation and for valour born. And the Greek philosophy was for nothing more remark able than the manner in which it not only asserted but felt as an elementary law, the place of the body in human education. This with no exclusive or peculiar view to what we should call utilitarian purposes,:such as those of defence or industry, or even art. It seems to have been rather an ample recognition of the right of the body to be cared for, and to be reared in its various organs up to the highest excellence it is capable of attaining, as being, what indeed it is, not a mere vesture, or tool, or appendage of the soul, but, like the soul, an integral part of man himself. This plenitude and accuracy of view on such a subject is the more to be regarded on some special grounds. In general, the philosophies of the world, outside of Christianity, have shown a tendency to fluctuate between sensuality on the one hand, and on the other a contempt and hatred of mat ter, and a disposition to identify it with the principle of evil. The philosophy of Socrates, of Plato, and of Aristotle, seems to have steered clear and safe between this Scylla and this Charybdis. But again, the Greek saw, as all men see, the body parted from the soul at death, and hastening rapidly, as by the law of its nature, to corruption. To none could this severance, and its mournful and painful incidents be more repulsive than to him, with his delicate perceptions and his lively emotions. Of a future existence in any shape he usually knew or oven surmised little ; of the revival of the body, or of the reunion hereafter of the two great fac tors of the human being, he had yet less conception. We may say then that belay under, every temptation to a dis paraging view of the body and of its office. Yet, in spite of his immense disadvantage, it fell to him to find a place for the body in the philosophy of human nature, and to incor porate the principle thus conceived in laws, usages, and institutions, with a clearness and general justness of view, by which Christian learning has done and will yet do well to profit. What with us is somewhat dubious and fluctuating both in theory and in practice, with him was familiar and elementary in both; but the teachers of mental accomplishment taught also the science, if not the art, of bodily excellence. Thus, for example, Plato in his Treatise on the State, has to consider what men are fit to bo chosen for rulers. They should if possible, he says, have the ad vantage of personal beauty. They must be energetic ; and he therefore proceeds to treat of the character of the 96tX47roves, or diligent man. He must be ready and keen in study; for human souls are much more cowardly in strong studios than in exercises of corporal strength ; as in the former they bear all the burden, instead of sharing it with the body. But philosophy itself, lie admits, has fallen into some dishonour from a tendency to partiality in handling this question. The truly diligent man, then, must not be halt or one-sided in his diligence. If be be fond of athletic exercise and of sports, but not apt for learning and inquiry, then he is but half-diligent. And no less " lame " will he be, says the philosopher, if addicted to mental pursuits, ho neglects the training of the body, and of the organs with which it is endowed. This may servo for a sample, but it is a sample only, of the largo and com plete grasp of the Greek philosophy upon the nature of man ; and I connect this largeness and completeness with the fact that the Greek, from the nature of his religion, cherished in a special degree the idea of the near association of human existence, in soul and body, with that existence which we necessarily regard as the largest and most complete,namely, with the Divine. It may indeed be said that the Greek lowered and contaminated tho Divine idea by weak and by vile elements carried into it from the human. Yes, this and much more may be said, and said with truth. Nothing can be more humbling or more instructive than the total failure of the Greek mind with all its powers either to at tain or even to make progress towards attaining the greater ends of creation by rendering man either good or happy. This is the negative but most important purpose which the Greek of old may have been destined to fulfil; the purpose of casting down the strongholds of our pride, by first showing us how great ho is, and then leaving us to see how little, when standing alone, is all his greatness, if it be measured with reference to its results in accomplishing those ends of life without which every other end is vain. But I am not now engaged in endeavouring to ascertain what Greek life or what tho Greek mind was in itself and for itself ; nor for what negative or secondary uses the study of it may be available. I wish to point out in some degree what it was for a purpose beyond itself, what materials it was preparing for our use, how it was, if I may so express , myself, the secular counterpart of the Gospel, and how it became, in ono word, the great intellectual factor of the Christian civilization. Now it is not I think difficult to see what materials and instruments, such as it furnished, were required. I will not attempt by argument to show that all the powers and capacities of man, being the work of God, must have their proper place in His designs ; and that the evil in•the world arises not from their use, but from their misuse, not from their active working each according to its place in the providential order, but from their having gone astray, as the planets would if the centripetal force that con trols their action were withdrawn. We see, then, in the Greeks, beyond all question, these two things—first, a pe culiar and powerful element of anthropomorphism pervad ing their religion, and giving it its distinctive character ; secondly, a remarkable fullness, largeness, subtlety, eleva tion-, and precision in their conception of human nature ; taking form in, or at least accompanying, an immense vigour both of speculation and of action ; a language of marvellous reach, elasticity, variety and power ; a scientific excellence in art never elsewhere attained ; and an eminence in the various branches of letters which has given to them, for more than two thousand years, the place of first authority in the cultivated world. The Latin literature, though it has both a character and a purpose of its own, is, in its most splendid elements, derivative from the Greek., Now, if wo survey with care and candour the present wealth of the world, I mean its wealth intel lectual, moral, and spiritual—we find that Christianity has not only contributed to the patrimony of man its brightest and most precious jewels, but has likewise been what our Saviour pronounced it, the salt or preserving principle of all the residue, and has maintained its health, so far as it has been maintained at all, against corrupting agencies. But the salt is one thing, the thing salted is another; and as in the world of nature, so in the world of mind and of human action, there is much that is outside of Christianity that harmonises with it, that revolves, so to speak, around it, but that did not and could not grow out of it. It seems to have been for the filling up of this outline, for the occu pation of this broad sphere of exertion and enjoyment, that the Greeks were, in the councils of Providence, ordained to labour; that so the Gospel, produced in the fulness of time, after the world's long gestation, might have its ac complished work in rearing mankind up to his perfection, first in the spiritual life, but also, and through that spiritual life, in every form of excellence, for which his varied powers and capacities have been created. If this be so, it is quite plain that the Greeks have their place in the pro vidential order—ay, and in the Evangelical preparation, as truly and really as the children of Abraham themselves. But indeed there is no need, in order to a due appreciation of our debt to the ancient Grooks,',that we should either forget or disparage the function which was assigned by the Almighty Father to His most favoured people. Much pro fit, says St. Paul, had the Jew in every way. Ho had the oracles of God ; ho had the custody of the promises ; he was the steward of the great and fundamental conception of the unity of God, the sole and absolute condition under which the Divine idea could be upheld among men at its just elevation. No poetry, no philosophy, no art of Greece ever embraced, in its most soaring and widest conceptions, that simple law of love towards God and towards our neigh bour, on which " two commandments hang all the law and the prophets," and which supplied the moral basis of the new dispensation. There is one history, and that the most touching and most profund of all, for which we should search in vain through all the pages of the classics—l mean the history of the human soul in its relations with its Maker the history of its sin, and grief, and death, and of the way of its recovery to hope and life, and of enduring joy. For the exercise of strength and skill, for tho achievements and for the enchantments of wit, of eloquence, of art, of genius for the imperial games, of politics and war, let us seek them on the shores of Greece. But if the first among the pro blems of life be how to establish the peace and restore the balance of our inward being; if the highest of all condi dims in the existence of the creature be his aspect towards the God to whom he owes his being, and in whose great hand he stands ; then let us make our search elsewhere. All the wonders of the Greek civilisation heaped together are less wonderful than is the single Book of Psalms. Pa lestine was weak and despised, always obscure, oftentimes and long trodden down beneath the feet of imperious mas ters. Greece for a thousand years, Confident from foreign purposes, repelled every invader from her shores, and, fostering her strength in the keen air of freedom, she defied, and at length overthrew, the mightiest of empires; and when finally she felt the resistless grasp of the masters of all the world, them too, at the very moment of her subjugation, she subdued to her literature, language, arts, and manners. Palestine, in a word, had no share of the glories of our race ; they blaze on every page of the history of Greece with an overpowering splendour. Greece had valour, policy, renown, genius, wisdom, wit sho had all, in a word, that the world could give her; but the flowers of Paradise, which blossom thinly, blossomed in Palestine alone. And yet, as the lower parts of our bodily organisa tion are not less material than the higher to the safety and well-being of the whole, or Christianity itself was not ordained to a solitary existence in man, but to find helps meet for it in the legitimate use of every faculty, and in the gradually accumulated treasures of the genius, sagacity, and industry of the human family. Besides the loftiest pert of the work of Providence entrusted to the Hebrew race, there was other work to do, and it was done elsewhere. It was requisite to make ready the materials not only of a divine renewal and of a moral harmony for the world, but also for a thorough and searching culture of every power and gift of man, in all his relations to the world and to his kind ; so as to lift up his universal nature to the level upon which his relation as a creature to his Creator, and as a child to his father, was about to be established. And the question arises whether, among the auxiliaries required to complete the training process for our race, there were not to be found some which were of a quality, I will not say to act as a corrective to Christianity, but to act as a corrective to the narrow views and the excesses which might follow upon certain modes of conceiving and of applying it. Doubtless the just idea of their general purpose is that they wore a collection of implements and materials to assist in the cultivation of the entire nature of man, and to conse crate all his being to the glory and the designs of his Maker. Yet in part they might have a purpose more spe cial still—the purpose of assigning due bonds to the action of impulses springing out of Christianity itself. Now, that narrow conception which I have mentioned, of the Jews as virtually the sole object of the providential designs of God, while it began doubtless in a devout sentiment, passed into superstition when it led men to assign to the Jewish people every imaginable gift and accomplishment, and into virtual impiety when it came to imply that the Almighty had little care for the residue of His creatures. And cer tainly it was not toScripture itself that opinions like these were due. In a dissertation " On the Prophecies of the Messiah Dispersed among the Heathen," Bishop Horsley has shown what a large amount of testimony is yielded by the Sacred Books to the remaining knowledge of the true God among the races in the neighbourhood of Judea. With them religion seems to have been for long periods, as was also to no small extent the religious practice of the Jews, an inconsistent combination of lingering and struggling truth with rampant error. Melchisedec, the typo of Christ, Job, one of the chosen patrons of faith and patience, were of blood foreign to the patriarchal race; and the same agency of the prophetic order, which was employed to correct and guide the Jew, was not withheld from his neighbours ; Balaam, among the Moabites, was a prophet inspired by the Most High. Of the minor prophetical books of the Old Testament two are ex pressly devoted to setting forth tho burden of Nineveh and the-dealings of God with its inhabitants; and Eastern Magi were, in the words of Bishop Horsley, " the first worship pers of Mary's Holy Child." A system of religion, however absolutely perfect for its purpose, however divine in its conception and expression, yet of necessity becomes human too, from the first moment of its contact with humanity from the very time, that is to say, when it begins to do its proper work by laying hold upon the hearts and minds of men, mingling, as the leaven in the dough, with all that they contain, and unfolding and applying itself in the life 'and conduct of the individual and in the laws, institutions, and usages of society. In tho building up of the human temple, the several portions of the work, while sustaining and strengthening each other, confine each other also, like the stones of a wall, to their proper place and office in the fabric. Divine truth contained in the gospel, is addressed to the wants and uses of a nature not simple but manifold, and is manifold itself ; though dependent upon one princi ciple it consists of many parts, and in order to preserve re ciprocally the duo place and balance of those parts, means that we call human aro available, as well as means more obviously divine; and secular forms and social influences, all adjusted by one and the same Governor of the world, aro made to serve the purposes that have their highest ex pression in the kingdom of grace. The gospel aims not at destroying this equilibrium, but at restoring it ; and in the restoration it accepts, nay courts, and by natural law re quires, the aid of secondary means. It is manifest, indeed, that there was in Christianity that which men might easily and innocently carry into such an excess, as, though it would have ceased to be Christian, would not have ceased to seem so, and would under a sacred title have tended to impair the healthful and complete development of his being. Rousseau objects to the Christian system, that it is opposed to social good order and prosperity, because it teaches a man to regard himself as a citizen of another world, and thus diverts him from the performance of his duties as a member of civil society. "Far from attaching the hearts of the citizens to the state, it detaches them from it, as from all other earthly things. I know nothing more opposed to the social spirit. . . A society of true Christians would no longer be a society of men. • ' What matters it tobofree or a slave in this vale of misery 7' The ono thing needful is to go to paradise, and submission to calamity is an additional means of getting there." In an age and in a country such as this, it is not required, it is scarcely allowable, to seem to depreciate those various forms of self-restraint and self-conquest which the spirit of man, vexed in its sore conflict with the flesh and with the world, has in other times employed to establish the supremacy of the soul, by trampling upon sense and ap petite and all corporal existence. Even in tho time of the apostles, it seems to have been manifest that a t en dency t° excess in this direction had begun to operate in the Chris tian church. As time passed on, and as the spirit of the mirenewed world became more rampant within the sacred ,Iffeeinet, the reaction against it likewise grow mor e vei l ment and eager. The deserts of Egypt Were peopled with thousands upon thousands of anchorites, who foreswel.e . every human relation, extinguished every appetite, and absorbed every motive, every idea, every movement o f our complex nature in the groat but single fuuctiou of the re: - lation to the unseen world. True and earnes t in the!: Christian warfare, they, notwithstanding, represe nt a spirt of exaggeration, which it was necessary to check, uproot ing what they ought rather to have pruned, and destr°Y; ing what they ought to have chastised, and mastered, °h alm,_ a converted to purposes of good. That internecine war sin, which is of the very essence of Christianity , seems t° have been understood by them as a war against th whole visible and sensible world, against the intel lectual life, against a great portion of their own normal nature' and though as :regarded themselves, even their evigge ration was pardonable, and in many respects a noble err'' yet its unrestricted sway and extension would have le l man a maimed, a stunted, a distorted creature. Autissii would have done more than this. By severing the Gor's from all else that is beautiful and glorious in creation, would have exposed the spiritual teacher to a r esistance not only vehoment but just, and would have placed di! kingdom of grace in permanent and hopeless discord wit° the kingdoms of nature, reason, truth, and b e auty, Ic in g; doms established by the very same Almighty hand. Tb°,7, principles of repression, which wore indispensable as t" medicine of man, was unfit for his food. What was requis tt : o l however, was not to expel them, and thereby to revert the mental riot, and the moral uncleanness of heathenism' but to check their usurpations, and to keep them seithia their bounds ; and this was to be effected not by Pw itib s i t tion or disparagement, but by vindicating for every and powor,and work, of human nature, and for eve* . ° mc° of life, its proper place in the Divine order and constitution of the world. The seed of this comprehensive philosopil supplied by the words of the Apostle :—" Wh atsoever was things aro true, whatsoever things are honest, wha tseeer _ things are just, whatsoever things are pure, w hats°ave il l. things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report: there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think ° 0 these thin g s." A n d so th e so lid an d f ru itf u l materials of th Greek civilisation came in aid, by a wise Providence , of ti ; : a s humanising principles and precepts of the Gospel, to a. ss- o f in securing a well-bal ance d d eve l o p men t o f the powers the Christian system, and to prevent the instrunle nts , ci si a ; signed for eradicating the seeds of disease from subvert( the yet higher agencies appointed for the fostering na ti " t ; velopment of life in every region of our being and our ac i ; vity. Volumes might be written with profit to trace t d , application of the principles touched upon in this , a dress to the whole history of the Church, °''A the tllO Christian civilisation, down to the present day ; an Tbot 'more we said, the more there would remain to sat. 5.0 which I have now attempted is no more, in effects " a suggestion which may open the way for others ls, a wide and ever-widening field. And if that sugges ti°ll just it will be difficult to deny its importance. Let us gl i/li f ca is in a few concluding words at some of its results. V irs ,",bo places on high and safe grounds that genial primacy Greeks in letters and in human culture, to the acknovriel; ment of which Christian Europe has been guided ° Di much by a logical process, or a definite forethough t, as a sure instinct with the after confirmation of a long Oi l r e rience. Nor can this primacy be justly disturbed 11 t o f multiplication, and the energetic and growing Pll rsil he it those branches of knowledge for which this age h as : A ra so remarkable. For Aristotle it was excusable to ren i . ; " s the heavenly bodies as objects nobler than lua u " t ae Christianity has sealed and stamped the title of our r 5. is with theal the crown and flower of the visible creation ; irreversible sentence in their favour, the studies, ll e io 9ll a studies of humanity, shoudl not resent ' nor fear, ' but 6 ° lll w favour and encourage all other noble research its object the globe on whi c h we li ve , th e t r ibes with siici, it is peopled in land, a i r , an d sea , th e power s drawn fc s i er from nature or yet latent i n h e r un ex plored recea Se ' the spaces of that vast system— ' " Ultra flammantia ramie mundi," s re° ,„ to which our earth belongs. But m ore than this; Ws in times when the whole nature of our relation to th e "--: seen world is widely, eagerly, and assiduously questions; Sometimes we aro told of general laws, so conceived es 0 be practically independent either of a lawgiver oral ; Sometimes of a necessity worki ng a ll thi n gs to la tif le results, but seeming to crush and bury under theln;;,, ruins of our will, our freedom, our personal responsi b tfl Sometimes of a private judgment, which we are to s" upon thishard condition o f t a ki ng not hi ng upo n trus t ? i ° passing by, at the out se t o f our men t a l lif e, the w i _ f r preceding education of th e wor ld, o f own i ng n o cis"" t :f those who have gone before without a regu l ar proces s - proof; in a word, of beginning anew e a c h man for h i t self; a privilege which I had thought was restrictea - the lower orders of creation,where the parent infuses u° judices into its litter or its fry. Such are the clouds c areer w; in heaven, and pass between us and the sun, and make idly think that what they see not is n ot, an d blot the P r°- ; pects of what is in so many and such true respects a and a hop3ful age. It is I think an observation of Augustine, that those periods are critical and forreibbi" when the power of putting questions runs greatly in 3 ,, vance of the pains to answer them. Such appears to l led s''' the period in which we live. And among us, who are s° ) , in any manner to move in the world of thought, 1/7° ,,,Te s st ask who is sufficient for these things ? Who can sy"'"' an d and firm hand se ver th e t rans it ory f rom th e durabl e, i l o the accidental from the essential, in old opinions ? can combine, in the measures which reason would : of scribe, reverence and gratitude to the p as t with s ell- r e s t? the new claims, new means, new duties of the pr Who can bo stout and earnest to do battle for the ts‘ri, and yet hold sacred, as he ought, the freedom of iMitillete and cherish, as he ought, a chivalry of co ntrover s l t l e t the ancient chivalry of arms ? Ono persuasion at lea! of us embrace : one error let us avoid. Lot us be persiliwepa this, that Christianity will, by her inherent resour ces all for herself a philosophy equal to all the shifting a ti ps tor the growing wants of the time. Let us avoid thocil l of seeking to cherish a Chisti a nity o f i so l a ti on . The v n -I c 4 tianity which is now and hereaft er t o flourish, and,tlll;:tie• its power in the inner circles of h uman t h oug ht, t° olg once ultimately, in some manner more a d equa te than - asel the masses of mankind, must be such as of old the W 16 , 1 ;D 8 of God was described. "F or i n h er i s an undo-stall...de spirit, holy, one only, manifold, subtil, lively, clear, titi s filed, plain, not subject to h ur t, l ov i ng th e thing I tili sci good, quick, which cannot be lotted, rea dy to do go c " ' f orf to man, steadfast, sure, free f rom care , h a ving all P ° f tlts overseeing all things. .. . For she is the brightnos s of everlasting light, the uns p o tt e d m i rror of the O s/T s - Ted God, and the imago of His goodness." It must bs' sof full with human and genial warmth, in close sYMPtIO with every true instinct and need of man, regardful of otB just titles o f every f acu lt y o f hi s na t ure , apt to as s°e D ic# with and make its own all, under whatever name, l ito ti goes to enrich and enlarge the patrimony of the race. e 0 therefore it is well th a t we s h ou ld look out over the Plos of history, and see if haply its records, the more the or unfolded, do or do not yi e ld us new ma t er i a ls for ti,° 6 00 0 , port of faith. Me at least, for one, experience has vinced that, just as fresh wond er and confirmed con k fic l i fl it flow from examining the structure of th e un iverse 1 % 0 ls countless inhabitants, and their respective adapta titl- on s the purposes of their being and to the use of nulls, tt e , ' results will flow in yet larger measure from tract ss' i footmarks of the Most Hi g h i n th e seem i n gly be y !, bI e ' paths of human history. Everywhere, beforeus, an d - 1 Or us, and around us, and above us and beneath, w° s ilt' the power which— Lives through all life, extends through all extent' Spreads undivided, operates unspent. do ero And, together with the power, we shall find the g °° b st and the wisdom, of which that sublime power fs ,, - ste minister. Nor can that wisdom and that goodues",, lye where shine forth with purer splendour than W I/e s. - 0 3 ' 1 Divine forethought, working from afar, in many Pl°,,ces- act! through many generations, so adjusts beforehan d ', s e 7 1 and the affairs of men as to let them all converge' U 9 v h CO Y single point, upon that redemption of the world, v n l s os a ; made Man, in which all the rays of His glory are , C I ; sli ti° trated, and from which they pour forth a flood m light even over the darkest and saddest places of c r-a s ora i Mr. Vice - Chancellor, professors, and cuticula , Sje c ; mend to your n o ti ce an d your impartial research th ° °.13 01 41/ ' s of the foregoing remarks. It is at least a less It V offering than the mere common pl aces o f t a king leav e ' gr eti' claim ono rema i n i ng momen t t o conve y t o you 14 , i oVs t I f tudo for your con fid ence ,`you to assure th a t I sh;ro s " feel a liv e ly i n t eres t i n a ll th a t pertains to the vr e j" e n . uil your famous University, and to bid you ro se s farewell. EADVEItTISEMENT. 1-llolloWay's Ointment and hOt ifij A Sores which are daily extending, ulcers which a re '- g5 deepening, may be arrested in their torturing Inli e :0 11 1 induced to take healthy action by applying t hw 006 s t , ointment and taking ing these purifying pills. It s°° f distempers of and extracts all morbid humours J r- a Pi skin. Old ulcers of the legs, inflammations c4.5,4c5:0111 varicose veins and cramps of the lower limbs, G 55 ,:fsil is : ben e eased and shortly cured by Holloway's, which represses excessive and stiraulateobreitl:' ointment gish vascular and nervous ac tion. In constitutions 001 ing down under piles, fistulas, and other ' llil maladies, a few applicati o ns of this cooling tol e ' give comfort, and persistence in its use will cifoct 5 P jj London : Printed and Published by WILLI A M So' t ! 0 , of No. 112, Strand, Ptinter , at Tit^ Sus e o n` Strand, in the Precinct of , the Savoy . i' in. a e -9 Bliddlenex.—§aturday, November 4, 1865. Ja n Rai itaihr Jot Lond Ma 11E011 1 Cht Th e North, enter e , and ma Kevi n insuri n The a. 2d, r with tl most e district 3d, , Ware a t he sta lar da thia nee 5tC raetror plated 6th. Ilig,hg park, v T O thi „.... GI ktay t .43 e ; . Park I alleh s Leo an FORS ~ Ba` .5 xi( ura p„, Shag, to Pay 411 d 4 --,... It C ' 4 Y 1 , , i vi,..i, LI EvA ii Tii Prizi It i th Boi e A at . /til O h brin g tw o , t he is N 0.5 , X( Ek, liollo a Din the 4 4 1 to ~. tile] 11:'tab T .4401adi "Willil lies sr kessr Br o , J. B . kessr, Rob er Toi