, 1876-12-09

,nnt torment least his wjtr-houWdtc. 81
fry r ym." ho wrote. "to resist my
l gG.." When urged to resume auuin the
government ol Geneva. Inc is ,0d to have
shed tears %, 'ur Thought OF returning to
If. ,,pub.icmJ 50 'uIl Of anxiety and
toll. This same Calvin lived a liIr OF
bcucvo'rncr, and when, after such life
Of labor, he made his will AID passed
awpy, hi, property amounted to only II
few hundrcds Of duMls.-not a thousand
in all.
Thus it appears that after you have
found the religious philosophy of IN age
you cannot make ont from it picture of
that time until you have admitted into
your estimate that immense element call
ed human nature. Cuvirr from u bone
could reconstruct the fossil Quadrupcd
or bird, butt from no doctrine ot theoo-
gy can any modern mind reconstruct the
man that once held that doctrine. Along
through all the ages flows the stream of
human nature, and upon its banks there
will always grow flowers and fruits not
alluded to in the books of the philoso.
pliers. Hence we say, happiness ran all
through the past ages of mankind, n per
petual Nile, subject, indeed, to great
flood heights, but never running dry
1t would be impossible for our century
to 90 back to the fifteenth and live hap.
PLY, if with us we should carry back
our IDEAS. But the people Of the fifteen.
til century did not enter it from the nine.
teenth, but they marched in from the
fourteenth and no doubt enjoyed all the
luxury of u golden age. To 20 from
riches to poverty is to he indeed misera.
bic, but to be born poor among the poor
is very tolerable fate. Thus the fit.
teenth and sixteenth centuries grew up
amid their own associations. and laughed
and sang and danced and ate and slept
and then dieu weeping that they had to
go away from a world so beautiful.
Passing thus over the great buried
periods we only do justice to their mem.
ory For our own sakes we wish thus
to know Alright the past, because out of
the past we all deduce opinions, and
hence it is essential that it should lie be-
fore US, not in the lines of distortion, bnt
of truth. Looking at these dead and
sleeping years, we may mark this, that
wherever Christianity has gone it has
been well out of which the public has
drawn great happiness, Many Of the
doctrines which were so false and so hor
rid either lay on the ground rs dead the.
ories, or else they exerted their power
for few years, and then fell back into
stupor or death. From the manger and
tomb of Christ up to the present day the
Christian world has quite uniformly ex-
tracted honey rather than poison from
the lilies of Nazareth.
while wise men were saying a thou.
sand things, foolish or wicked, and were
basing them on Scripture, while Angus
tine was framing a false system in the
fourth century, or Ahelard was toiling
at the impossible in the eleventh, the
millions of men, women and children
were looking to Christ for salvation and
to his sermons for duty, much as the
Christians Of our day look thitherward.
In all the death. scenes of those times
that have come into history, and upon
the old tomhs that have withstood the
corroding of the ages, there is seen moth
ing OF that vast thing called theology,
but only simple phrases about dying in
faith and hope and in Christ. As men
eat only the food they want, and look
only at the landscapes that please them,
and will form friendships and confess
love only according to the inner wish,
so Christianity has always been affected
by the absolute need of man, and hence,
in its doctrines of repentance and par.
don and love AMI the Mediator Christ
the great multitude has found always its
chief refuge, In even the sixteenth cen.
tury millions must have lived and died
happily in a simple, pure faith, not at
all mindful Of the wonderful philosophy
that was filling the closets of students
and the pages Of their books. The vast
thinrs in rplioion to lov b,,o oI,,,,,,,