piercing sarcasm of Chrysostom, and their hearts kindled in them when they saw that he was one of those who can dare and suffer as well as speak, and that the preacher who had so sternly rebuked the vices of the multitudes at Antioch and Constantinople was not afraid of the consequences of speaking the truth to an Empress at an Imperial Court. The mark which such men left on Greek society and Greek character has not been effaced to this day, even by the melancholy examples of many degenerate successors. They have sown a seed which has more than once revived, and which still has in it the promise of life. and progress. Why, if Christianity affected Greek character so profoundly, did it not do more? Why, if it cured it of much of its instability and trifling, did it not also cure it of its falsehood and dissimulation? and Why, if it impressed the Greek mind so deeply with the reality of the objects of faith, did it not also check the vain inquisitiveness and spirit of disputatiousness sophistry, which filled Greek Church history with furious wranglings about the most hopeless problems? Why, if it could raise such admiration for unselfishness and heroic nobleness, has not this admiration borne more congenial fruit? Why, if heaven was felt to be so great and so near, was there in real life such coarse and mean worldliness? Why, indeed ?—why have not the healing and renovating forces of which the world is now, as it has ever been, full, worked out their gracicus tendencies to their complete and natural effect? It is no question specially belonging to this part of the subject: in every other we might make the same inquiry, and I notice it only lest I should be thought to have overlooked it. Christi anity," it has been said, "varies according to the nature on which it falls." That is, in modern philosophical phrase, what we are taught in the parable of the Sower. It rests at last with man's will and moral nature how far he will, honestly and unreservedly, yield to the holy influences which he welcomes, and let them have their "perfect work." But if the influence of Christianity on Greek society has been partial, if it has not weaned it from some of its most characteristic and besetting sins, it has done enough to keep it from destruction. It has saved it; and this is the point on which I insist. Profoundly, permanently, as Christianity affected Greek character, there was much in that character which Christianity failed to reach, much that it failed to correct, much that was obstinately refractory to influences which, elsewhere, were so fruitful of goodness and greatness. The East, as well as the West, has still much to learn from that religion, which each too exclusively claims to understand, to appreciate, and to defend. But what I have tried to set before you is this: the spectacle of a great civilised nation, which its civilisation could not save, met by Christianity in its hour of peril, filled with moral and spiritual forces of a new and unknown nature, arrested in its decay and despair, strengthened to endure amid prolonged disaster, guarded and reserved through centuries of change for the reviving hopes and energies of happier days. To a race bewildered with sophistries, and which by endless disputings had come to despair of iny noble conduct of life, Christianity solved its questions, by showing it in concrete examples how to live and to walk; how, in the scale of souls, the lowest might be joined to the highest. Into men, whom their own passions and subtlety had condemned to listless moral indifference, it breathed enthusiasm ; the high practical enthusiasm of truth and a good life. And for a worship, poetically beautiful, but scarcely affecting to be more, it substituted the magnificent eloquence of devotion and faith, the inspired Psalms, the majestic Liturgies. It changed life, by bringing into it a new idea, the idea of holiness, with its shadow, sin. That the Greek race, which connects us with some of the noblest elements of our civilisation, is still one of the living races of Europe, that it was not trampled, scattered, extinguished, lost, amid the semi-barbarous populations of the East, that it can look forward to a renewed career in the great commonwealth of Christendom-this it owes mainly to its religion. What great changes of national character the Latin races owed to Christianity will be the inquiry of the next lecture. LECTURE II CHRISTIANITY AND THE LATIN RACES UNDER the discipline of Christianity in the Eastern Church the Christians of the East were trained to endurance, to a deep sense of brotherhood, to a faith which could not be shaken in great truths about God and about man, to the recognition of a high moral ideal, to a purer standard of family and social life, to inextinguishable hope. They learned to maintain, under the most adverse and trying circumstances, a national existence, which has lasted more than fifteen centuries. They have been kept, without dying; without apostatising, without merging their nationality in something different, till at last better days seem at hand; and to welcome these days there is vigour and elasticity, a strong spirit of self-reliance, even of ambition. But what appears, at least to us, distant and probably superficial observers, is this. Their religion has strengthened and elevated national character: it |