The Sun.
London, England, 1869-10-11 00:00:00

has sought foe his faults, having never dared to
utter a word against his virtue"—" the character
of his tenderness being that of an ineffable chastity.'.
No marvel is it, remembering all this, that, in the
midst of the unbelieving eighteenth century, even
Rousseau himself, the greatest but one of the hitch
lec'sual giants in that age of infidelity, should coun-
terpoise the unutterable blasphemy of Voltaire—
&sasses l' Infante !—by that cry from his " Emile"
which Lacordaire grandly predicts will resound
throughout Christendom until the second coming
of Christ—" If the life and death of Socrates be
those of a sage, the life and death of Jesus Christ
are those of a God." No wonder, again, that a far
mightier genius than either of those two sterile
Champions of Unbelief—himself, as he has been
called, the Child of Infidelity and the Revolution—
Conqueror, Soldier, Lawgiver, founder of a
dynasty, should, towards the close of his long cap-
tivity, after descanting one day upon the character-
istics which distinguished Jesus Christ from all
mankind, " after uttering a torrent of eloquence,"
says Lacordaire, " which no Father of the Church
would have disclaimed," ended his estimate of the
Redeemer with these words—" In flue, I know
men, and I say that Jesus Christ was not a man."
Referring to that memorable dictum, the eminent
Dominican, speaking from his rostrum in the pulpit
of Notre Dame, could not help exclaiming, in his
turn, "The day will come when, upon the tomb of
her Great Captain, France will grave those words,
and they will shine, there, with more immortal
lustre than the sun of the Pyramids and of Auster-
litz." Opening the map of the world, as the
preacher very strikingly observes, there is a country
exactly midway between the three great continents of
Europe, Asia, and Africa—and there, at that fitting
stand-point, it is, that the stupendous drama of the
Incarnation and Redemption is accomplished. It
is there, and it is then, at no mythical period of the
earth's history, but in a glare of publicity—with
Paganism, with Judaism, with Platonism, to attest
the veracity of the Evangelical record of the coming
of Jesus Christ as the Saviour of Mankind, that
the Divine Redeemer makes his long-looked-for
and clearly predicted appearance. Tacitus, the
greatest of the Roman historians, is aptly ad
duced in corroboration of the Gospel. Tacitus,
as Lacordaire finely says, is " charged by God to
grave in history the certificate of the birth and
death of His only Son Jesus Christ !" Twenty-
seven years after the Crucifixion, the Emperor
Nero, wantonly committing Rome to the flames, in
order to shroud from discovery the origin of that
detestable crime, causes to be seized, according to
Tacitus, "an immense multitude of men," ingens
multitude, " whom the common people called Chris-
tians," quos vulgus C'hristianos appellabat. Tacitus
adds—" The author of this name was Christ,"
auctor nominis hujus Christus. But he not only says
this, he observes yet further—" They derived their
name and origin from Christ, who in the reign of
Tiberius had suffered death by the sentence of the
procurator, Pontius Pilate," auctor nonzinis hujus
Christus, qui, Tiberio inzpe,ritante, per procuratorem,
Pentium Pilatum supplicio affectus erat. "Is it
Tacitus who speaks ?" exclaim 3 Lacordaire, " or is
it the Apostle's creed ?" The Apostle's creed says :
Qui passes est sub Pontio Pilate. Tacitus says :
Qui per procuratorem Pentium Pilatum supplicio
affectus erat. It is, indeed, Tacitus, a stranger, a
pagan, a man who, in writing these things in inde-
structible memorials, did not even know what he
said." The effect of this dispassionate testimony
to the truth of the Roman historian, Tacitus, in
corroboration of the chronological exactitu le and
historical veracity of the gospel history of our Lord
in the New Testament, is, in truth, as startling as
—what Lacordaire, however, does not in the least
refer to in his,Conferences— Virgil's memorable
lines in the Fourth Eclogue :

"Aggradere, 0, mag:tog, advarit jam tompus hoo-ires,
Cara Deum sotoles, magnum Jovis incretnentum !
Aspics convsico nutantem ponders mondum,

Torrasque, traetwquo maxis, ccalunlque profunduni."

The whole of this mystical Pastoral in celebration
of Pollio being an adaptation from one of the
Sibylline propli..sies of the advent of our
Saviour ! Another of those oracular utter-
ances of the Sibyl—one preserved and illus-
trated by the scholarship of Oparinus and
and Bethuleius —conveys, through a wond.4lll
fragment of Greek, beg-inning I3)con SE x9un,
Kinocan crvecov 6r'ea-ac---au astoulding acrostic in
which (as the author of Dion has beautifully ex-
pressed it) one may real the initial letters of that
acrostic, spelling our bles.ed Lord's two nani;s
" all down the lines like a golden fringe'J—lqu-ovs
xpto-ros Ofov Yun, a-corlip. Alluding in no way ei.her
to Virgil's Eclogue or to the Sibylline Oracles, La-
cordaire scarcely deigns to make one passing refe-
rence to Josephus, contenting himself) for the most
part, with the certainly all-sufficient testimony in
corroboration of the Gospel, produced only seven
and twenty years after the date of the Crucifixion,
by the luminous pen of the greatest of all the
pagan historians, Tacitus. Another Roman An-
nalist he does quote, also, it is true, meaning Pliny
the Younger, who, in the year 98—that is, sixty
years after the death of our Lord on Mount Cal-
vary—writing in his character as Pro-Consul of
Bithynia, and addressing himself by letter to the
Emperor Trajan, says, among other things, that
"not only the cities, but the towns and villages are
overrun with that contagious superstition, Christi-
anity." Between two and three centuries after-
wards, A. D. 363, Julian the Apostate, while expir-
ing on the battle-field in Persia, exclaimed, " Ga-
lilean, thou hast conquered !" And for eighteen
centuries and upwards, He has been conquering !
During more than a thousand years, His kingdom,
which is not of this world, has replaced the long-
vanished Empire of Pagan Rome. And where,
asks Laccordairo, " did this kingdom of souls set
up its capital? in Rome. The seat of virtue, in
the seat of power. The seat of liberty, in the seat
of bondage. In the seat of shameful idols, the seat
of the Cross of Jesus Christ." Lacordaire ex-
claiming afterwards, in earnest exultation, " Chris-
tus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat !" . . .
As a supplementary chapter to this noble volume,
we have here presented to 113 also Lac3rdaire's me-
morable Panegyric on Daniel O'Connell, delivered
like the Conferences themselves 3 in the Cathedral
of Notre Dame, shortly after the death, in 1847, of
the Liberator. Remembering the nature—and the
very title, for that matter—of the volume to which
this funeral oration is thus appended, the publica-
tion, in this way, of any man's eulogium almost
partakes of the character of an apotheosis.

Messrs. Berger Spence and Co., in their Weekly
Chemical, Mineral, and Metal Report, say :—With
the commencement of the new quarter a satisfac-
tory business has been done in this market in che-
micals generally, and, excepting one or two spe-
cialties of the trade, manufacturers have no reason
to complain. The alkali trade dons not yet show
any signs of increased vitality, and unless some
extraordinary demand for shipment should spring
up, or the present over production is further re-
duced, producers must still submit to present un-
remunerative prices.

The New York Herald gives the following list of-
the failures reported immediately after the break-
up of the gold speculation, adding that some of the
houses assert they will be able shortly to adjust
their affairs :—Smith, Gould, and Martin ; William
Heath and Co. ; Albert Speyers and Co. ; Chase,
M'Clure, and Co. ; Galway, hunter, and Co. ; I'.
11. Williams, jun., and Co.; Pearl and Co. ; S. M.
Waller ; E. K. Wallard ; William Belden and Co. ;
Eitritnbernat and Co. ; Underhill and Haven ;
and Donning and Boooock.
A special general incetiug of the Indian TrAm-
is called for the 18th
way Company (Limited)
inst., for the puTose of considering a letiT from
the Secretary of State for India, dated 23,1 ult.,
containing offers to the company for the construc-
tion, under a guarantee of 5 per cent., of a railway
from Conjeveram to Cadd More, or s'Ane other point
in that direction to be hereafter sett.ed, upon the
Indian gauge, &C.

CRYSTAL PArAcE.—TheN was a large attendance
at tho Harvest Fete from an early hour this morning
The sun shone brilliantly as g in the middle of smuttier.,
The two great Harvest 'Trophies on each sib of the
centre stage excited marked attention. h'rom the un-
usually fineness of the weather, the special display of
fireworks this evening is expected to be attended by a
great concoureo of visitors.