sistency, the sobriety, of the Church's doctrine concerning both God and man, the conflicts through which she has passed in the early persecutions, in her acceptance of earthly sovereignty and of the direction of the intellect of the world through its schools, the character of her teaching is surely a powerful witness to her divine origin. What other institution could have survived such a trial? What sect or party or form of doctrine can point to a similar triumph after a like experience? There have been times when all seemed lost, and no Christian voice able to be heard amid the violence and disorder that everywhere prevailed; again, a storm of contradiction, of fierce disputation, of sheer unbelief, has seemed to sweep Christian faith and unity from the earth: but the Church has arisen, like her Master, from the tomb, radiant with heavenly life, to renew among men her eternal lessons.

The success with which man's intellect in these later days has conquered various fields of science, his ability to preserve and consolidate his conquests-a power signally wanting in the brightest days of heathenism—is a testimony to the power of that religion which alone possessed the truth concerning the Author of nature, and concerning man, the interpreter of nature, and in these truths held the key of knowledge. The triumphs of science are in some sort a justification of the immortal hope planted by revelation in human breasts. In the Greek schools, from Pythagoras downward, the heliocentric theory of the universe was conjectured, mathematics were highly developed, the wonderful suggestion of chemical equivalents appears to have been made, the musical scale traced out, the shape of the earth known; and yet long ages of darkness succeeded, whose shadows fell before Christ was born, and were not dissipated but through Christian learning-ages when the earth was thought to be a plane, and fixed in the centre of moving sun and stars, when the wisest entertained childish thoughts on all the themes of natural philosophy, and

science was dead, and her method forgotten. The Christian progress in wisdom, beginning in knowledge of self, and advancing through humility over the often rough induction of Christian experience, is a type of most knowledge that is true and real, which is reached by patience, by diligence, by the submission of theory to trial, by the labors of many combined to one end.

III. This leads us to reflect, lastly, upon the history of the Church's doctrine concerning the relations of man to God and of men to one another. Religion is a name for the first of these relations, whether we refer it, with Lactantius, to the tie of duty that binds man to God, or, with Cicero, to the frequent study of the sacred oracles of Scripture and tradition. The reciprocal duties between human beings in the family and in the State, as well as in the Church, are an essential part of religion, viewed in either way.

The Church from the beginning and throughout her career taught what appears but dimly among the Jews, and not at all among pagans; the importance, namely, of certain opinions or views on leading points of religion, and the danger of missing the truth on these points. The Church had a definite doctrine upon the great articles of religion. But the knowledge and reception of these were considered only as part of the preparation for the sacraments, through which believers were formally brought into union with God and with one another. The same strong principle of life asserted itself, doubtless, in the dogmas of belief as in the sacramental confession by act. Prepared for baptism by thorough repentance and steadfast faith, God's child received herein forgiveness of sin and a supernatural engrafting into God's kingdom, where by the Holy Spirit he might obtain, in union with his brethren, freedom from the power, and cleansing from the stain, of sin. In the holy eucharist he was permitted to

'The defence of the sacraments as part of external religion forms the subject of the Bampton Lectures for

1826, by Wm. Vaux, chaplain to the Abp. of Canterbury, to whom the volume is dedicated,

feast upon the flesh and blood of the Sacred Victim offered upon the altar of the cross for the sins of all mankind, and coming to each faithful soul in the chalice and broken bread as the true food of immortality and the pledge of resurrection from the dead. The prayers and confessions of Christians were in a certain sense accessory to these acts of real organic union with their God and with one another. The love and gratitude which bound them to their Maker and Saviour were proven and made real by their self-sacrificing charity and labors for all whom they could benefit.

It is only since the Reformation that controversies have prevailed concerning the grace of the sacraments, the regeneration in holy baptism, and the Divine Presence in the eucharist. In the early ages they disputed whether the baptism of heretics should be admitted; and in the scholastic ages the method of Christ's Presence, though not its reality, was discussed by the advocates of rival theories, as impanation, transubstantiation,' etc. But that God unites believing souls to Himself, and nourishes them with the food of eternal life by outward and visible instruments, this is distinctive of the Christian religion, and, if we consider it rightly, an important evidence of its truth.

In the sacraments the words and acts of the Incarnate God are repeated and His miracles are renewed through space and time. The consecration of the elements in both baptism and the eucharist is said by the Eastern Church to be placed in the invocatory prayer; in the Western, rather in the words of institution; but in the view of both, He, God the Son, is truly present. Not through subjective emotion, but by a simple, outward rite He speaks and works. The worlds and the life that is in

'As early, perhaps, as the middle of the thirteenth century we may trace in some professors in the University of Paris, mentioned in a letter to Pope Clement IV., the dawning of the Zwinglian rationalism:

"Corpus Christi non esse vere in altari, sed sicut signatum sub signis." Bulæus, Vol. III., pp. 372, 373. Ockham prepared the way for Luther's consubstantiation.

them, the angels and holy souls that lift to Him adoration and zealous service, were formed by Him, the Word of God, and live by the breath of His mouth; and it is He who here cleanses and feeds the souls of men, lifts them in His arms, enlightens them with His truth, warms them with His love, unites them by the image of His own selfsacrifice into the power that can subdue the world's unbelief.

LECTURE XI.

SACRAMENTS: LORD'S DAY: MINISTRY.

A CHRISTIAN man, who habitually thinks and acts as if his religion were true, cannot realize without an effort the peculiar force certain external facts of Christianity should have for one outside the Christian fold. Three of these primary facts, it has been often noted, are unparalleled in their character and evidence: 1. A Jewish peasant, as far as the world knew Him, changed the religion of the world by persuasion alone, without force or worldly influence. 2. Upon His death, the result of His teaching, a few followers from the same rank in life asserted His supernatural character, and spent lives of danger, labor, suffering, terminated by cruel deaths, in order to make known to others what they had seen and heard. They did this without and against every motive of self-interest, solely in consequence of their belief in its truth. There is nothing else like this in the history of the world. 3. The third fact is that a few days after their Master's death, His followers proclaimed that He was alive in the very city and place where He had died, declared this fact as the ground of their confidence in the face of those who had killed Him, and preached it to the end of their lives as the foundation of their religion, requiring the faith and confession of it from every Christian. This, too, is a fact entirely without parallel in history. It should be observed, moreover, that besides the unexampled character of these three facts, they would have been thoroughly