The Press.
London, England, 1854-04-08 00:00:00

APRIL 8, 1854.

Yittraturt.

History of Latin Christianity to the Pontificate
of Nteolas V. By Henry Hart Milman,
D.D., Dean of St. Paul's. London: Murray.
ECCLESIASTICAL history, superior in the gravity
of its subject to every other department of the
narrative art, has rarely received the illustra-
tion that comes from the union of profound
scholarship and powerful style. Exceptional
chapters in its annals have been commented
on with the subtlest philosophy, and large tracts
o f its outlying domains that seem canopied
in obscurity have been traversed and explored
with extraordinary perseverance and research.
Nor have there been wanting massive tomes
of erudition, cyclopfedias of ecclesiastical
science in themselves, their very indexes
being summaries of controversy and guides to
the polemical student. From the Magdeburg
centuriators to the illustrious French scholars
Tillemont, Fleury, and Dupin—from the days
of Baronius and his followers to those of
Mosheim, Shroeck, Neander, and many more—
there has been a dazzling array of writers who
have piled up monuments of erudition, attest-
ing the greatness of the subject on which they
toiled, and recording upon it their own names
in imperishable characters. But all that class
of minds had, perhaps, too much of the pride
of learning or the ambition of profundity to
cultivate those popularising arts which the
great historical writers of antiquity knew so
well how to display, and by which Hume and
Gibbon have gained such countless readers.
Certain it is that a popular history of the Church,
comprehensive in its aims and consecutive in
its narrative, with adequate learning and with
the attraction of style, has long been wanted.
Nor is there any subject on which a writer
inspired by great thoughts could win so last-
ing a fame as in Church history. There is a
sublime unity in the theme which is absent
from merely national annals. It is the pro-
longed story of God's providence working in
human society ; its incidents illustrate the
power of his special revelation ; its progress
attests the miraculous character of his myste
rious scheme for the redemption of mankind.
There is a pervading energy in the history of
the Church on earth to whose expansive force
and fertilising influence we meet no analogous
element in any other branch of mundane ex-
perience. Every cycle of ecclesiastic annals
reiterates with eternal force the scriptural
truth that we are " fearfully and wonderfully
made." In every century we are taught to see
the depths of degradation in which society
can wallow ; and, while we shudder at the
gloomy gulfs opened to our view, we are
cheered with the presence of the Spirit of the
Church, standing on the rock of time, waving
the torch of truth, and in halcyon tones
breathing its sublime " Excelsior" over the
tempest-tost beings carried to and fro on the
surging tide of human passions. For our own
part, we confess that, while the aspects of the
Church in remote periods rivet the attention
of a thinker, in ages nearer to our own time
the study of its progress, the difficulties in its
path, and the supernatural strength with which
it surmounted them, has more peculiar fascina-
tion for us who have a near and daily view
of the direful moral evils that surround the
swarming masses of population in the great
hives of manufacturing industry. For, while
the Church in every age has had its ethical
teaching for maturing the gifted and the wise,
it has leavened the whole community (however
imperfectly) with sympathies congenial with
its heavenly aspirations. Nor is there any
better mode of exemplifying how grand is the
reality of ecclesiastical history than to open
the works of Tacitus and Pliny, and to peruse
their cursory and contemptuous remarks on
the Christians, and then to reflect what such
authors would feel if, like us in the middle of
the nineteenth century, they were permitted
to look back on the indomitable energy of the
Church militant—its extirpation of Paganism
in Europe—its absorption of ancient societies
and prolific creations of new moral types—its
Latin and Teutonic civilisations—its aims
high as inspiration can suggest—its progress
wide as the bounds of the earth—ts results