The Catholic World
Chapter 182 : It was in fact a federation of civilized states under an absolute monarch; the munic.i

It was in fact a federation of civilized states under an absolute monarch; the munic.i.p.al liberties were left so entire that Niebuhr mentions Italian cities, in the immediate neighborhood of Rome itself, which retained all through the times of the empire and the middle ages, down to the wars of the French revolution, the same munic.i.p.al inst.i.tutions under which Rome had found them. They were swept away by that faithful lover of despotism, Napoleon I., to make way for the uniform system of a _prefet_ and _sousprefet_ in each district. It is more important to bear this in mind because, as the revolutionists aped the manners and names of the Roman republic without understanding them, the imperialists of France are apt to a.s.sume that they faithfully represent the Roman empire. Now the one striking characteristic of the French empire is that it raises yearly 100,000 military conscripts, beside the naval conscription, the police, and the very firemen, all of whom are carefully drilled as soldiers. How was it under Augustus?

"It is hard to conceive adequately what a spectator called 'the immense majesty of the Roman peace' (Pliny, 'Nat. Hist,' xxvii. 1).

Where now in Europe, impatient and uneasy, a group of half-friendly nations jealously watches each other's progress and power, and the acquisition of a province threatens a general war, Rome maintained, from generation to generation, in tranquil sway, an empire of which Gaul, Spain, Britain, and North Africa, Switzerland, and the greater part of Austria, Turkey in Europe, Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt formed but single limbs, members of her mighty body. Her roads, which spread like a network over this immense territory, from their common centre, the golden milestone of the Forum, under the palace of her emperors, did but express the unity of that spirit with which she ruled the earth her subject, levelling the mountains and filling up the valleys for the march of her armies, the caravans of her merchandise, and the even sweep of her legislation. A moderate fleet of 6,000 sailors at Misenum, and another at Ravenna, a flotilla at Forum Julii, and another in the Black sea, of half that force, preserved the whole Mediterranean from piracy; and every nation bordering on its sh.o.r.es could freely interchange the productions of their industry. Two smaller armaments of twenty-four vessels each on the Rhine and the Danube secured the empire from northern incursion. In the time of Tiberius a force of twenty-five legions and fourteen cohorts, making 171,500 men, with about an equal number of auxiliary troops, that is, in all, an army of 340,000, sufficed, not so much to preserve internal order, which rested upon other and surer ground, but to guard the frontiers of a vast population, amounting, as is calculated, {368} to 120,000,000, and inhabiting the very fairest regions of the earth, of which the great Mediterranean sea was a sort of central and domestic lake. But this army itself, thus moderate in number, was not, as a rule, stationed in cities, but in fixed quarters on the frontiers, as a guard against external foes. Thus, for instance, the whole interior of Gaul possessed a garrison of but 1,200 men--that Gaul which, in the year 1860, in a time of peace, thought necessary for internal tranquillity and external rank and security to have 626,000 men in arms. [Footnote 53] Again, Asia Minor had no military force; that most beautiful region of the earth teemed with princely cities, enjoying the civilization of a thousand years, and all the treasures of art and industry, in undisturbed repose. And within its unquestioned boundaries, the spirit, moreover, of Roman rule was far other than that of a military despotism, or of a bureaucracy and a police pressing with ever watchful suspicion on every spring of civil life. The principle of its government was not that no population could be faithful which was not kept in leading-strings, but rather to leave cities and corporations to manage their own affairs themselves. Thus its march was firm and strong, but for this very reason devoid alike of fickleness and haste."

[Footnote 53: Surely the author should have added the Belgian army (fixed by the laws of 1853 at 100,000), and that part of the Prussian, etc., which is raised west of the Rhine, in comparing the military force of ancient Gaul with that of the same district in our day.]

It might have been added, that, as a general rule, the army which guarded each portion was composed of the natives of the country in which they were stationed. Roman citizens they were, no doubt, but citizens of provincial extraction, and posted to guard on behalf of Rome the very country which their fathers, sometimes but a very few generations back, had defended against her. [Footnote 54] This is a policy the generosity of which France dares not at this day imitate, even in her oldest provinces. To say nothing of the British army in Ireland, the Breton conscripts are still sent to serve at Lyons and Paris.

[Footnote 54: Champagny, Rome, and Judea.]

The extracts we have given will doubtless lead every reader to study for himself Mr. Allies's descriptions of Rome, and the life of the Thermae, and of the colonies, everywhere reproducing the life of Rome.

Every page breathes with the matured thought of a mind of remarkable natural acuteness, and stored with refined scholars.h.i.+p. There is nothing of beauty or majesty in that magnificent old world which he does not seem to have witnessed and mused over.

It is hardly possible to realize all this greatness without being tempted to repine in the remembrance whither it was all hastening--that the peace of the Roman world was but "the torrent's smoothness ere it dash below;" its magnificence only the feast of Balta.s.sar in that last night of the splendor of Babylon, when the Medes and Persians were already under her walls, and the river had been turned away from its course through her quays, and a way left open for the rush of the destroyer into her streets and palaces.

Already the mysterious impulse had been given which, during so many centuries, drove down horde after horde of barbarians from the wild north-east, to overflow the favored lands that surrounded the Mediterranean. In the early days of Roman history the Gauls had rushed on, sweeping away those earlier races whose remains we are now exploring in the shallows of the Swiss lakes, and whose descendants are probably to be found in the Basques, and in some of those degraded castes which, in spite of the welding power of the Church, left proscribed remnants in France and elsewhere until the great revolution. That mighty wave burst upon the rock of the Capitol, threatened for a moment utterly to overwhelmed it, and then fell broken at its feet. But it is not by repelling one wave, however formidable, that a rising tide is turned back. In the day of Rome's {369} utmost power her very foundations were shaken by the torrent of the Cimbri and Teutones. They, too, were broken against the steel-clad legions of Marius, and fell off like spray on the earth. But the tide was still advancing. What need to trace its successive inroads? Every reader of Gibbon remembers how the time came at last when the very site where Rome had stood had been so often swept by it, that of all its greatness there remained nothing more than the sea leaves of some castle of s.h.i.+ngles and sand, after a few waves have pa.s.sed over it.

"Quench'd is the golden statue's ray; The breath of heaven hath swept away What toiling earth hath piled; Scattering wise heart and crafty hand, As breezes strew on ocean's strand The fabrics of a child!"

There even came a time when for many weeks the very ruins of ancient Rome were absolutely deserted, and trodden neither by man nor beast.

No wonder that the world stood by afar off weeping and mourning over the utter destruction of all that the earth had ever known of greatness and glory. So the sentence had been pa.s.sed, in the day of her greatest glory, by the prophetic voice of the angel, who cried with a strong voice:

"Fallen--fallen, is Babylon the great, and is become the habitation of devils and the hold of every unclean spirit, and of every unclean and hateful bird. And the kings of the earth shall weep and bewail themselves over her, when they shall see the smoke of the burning; standing afar off for fear of her torments, saying, Alas! alas! that great city Babylon, that mighty city; for in one hour is thy judgment come. And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her, and shall stand afar off from her for fear of her torments, weeping and mourning, and saying, Alas! alas! that great city which was clothed in fine linen, and purple, and scarlet, and was gilt with gold and precious stones and pearls. For in one hour are so great riches come to nought." (Apocalypse, chap, xviii.)

It was not the ruin of one city, however glorious, but the sweeping away of all the acc.u.mulated glories of the civilization of the whole civilized world, during more than a thousand years. All had been embodied in imperial Rome. In the words of our author--

"The empire of Augustus inherited the whole civilization of the ancient world. Whatever political or social knowledge, whatever moral or intellectual truth, whatever useful or elegant arts, 'the enterprising race of j.a.phet' had acquired, preserved, and acc.u.mulated in the long course of centuries since the beginning of history had descended without a break to Rome, with the dominion of all the countries washed by the Mediterranean. For her the wisdom of Egypt and of all the East had been stored up. For her Pythagoras and Thales, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, and all the schools beside of Grecian philosophy suggested by these names, had thought. For her Zoreaster, as well as Solon and Lycurgus, legislated. For her Alexander conquered, the races which he subdued forming but a portion of her empire. Every city, in the ears of whose youth the poems of Homer were familiar as household words, owned her sway. The magistrates, from the Northern sea to the confines of Arabia, issued their decrees in the language of empire--the Latin tongue; while, as men of letters, they spoke and wrote in Greek. For her Carthage had risen, founded colonies, discovered distant coasts, set up a world-wide trade, and then fallen, leaving her the empire of Africa and the west, with the lessons of a long experience. Not only so, but likewise Spain, Gaul, and all the frontier provinces, from the Alps to the mouth of the Danube, spent in her service their strength and skill; supplied her armies with their bravest youths; gave to her senate and her knights their choicest minds. The vigor of {370} new and the culture of long-polished races were alike employed in the vast fabric of her power. Every science and art, all human experience and discovery, had poured their treasure in one stream into the bosom of that society, which, after forty-four years of undisputed rule, Augustus had consolidated into a new system of government, and bequeathed to the charge of Tiberius" (p. 41).

No wonder the ancient world had a.s.sured itself that, as nothing greater, nothing wiser, nothing more glorious than Rome could ever arise upon earth, so its greatness, wisdom, and glory could never be superseded. It was "the eternal city." It was "for ever to give laws to the world." The contemporary poets could imagine no stronger expression of an eternity, than that of a duration while Rome itself should last. Yet was it at that very time that the eyes of a fisherman of the lake of Tiberias were opened to see the angel "coming down from heaven with power and great glory," from whose mighty cry over the fall of Babylon we have already quoted some words. No wonder when the time came that his prophecy was fulfilled, the world stood by weeping and mourning, not over the fall of a single city (such as Scipio Africa.n.u.s had forecast as he watched the smoke of old Carthage rising up to heaven), but over the ruin of the civilization of the whole world. No wonder that, even in our own age, those whose hearts have so far sunk back to the level of heathenism as to value only material prosperity and worldly greatness, still re-echo the cry--

"Alas! the eternal city, and alas!

The trebly hundred triumphs, and the day When Brutus made the dagger's edge surpa.s.s The conqueror's sword in bearing fame away.

Alas! for earth, for never shall we see That brightness in her eye she wore when Rome was free."

But the voice of divine wisdom was far different: "Rejoice over her, thou heaven, and ye holy apostles and prophets, for G.o.d hath judged your judgment upon her. And a mighty angel took up a stone, as it were a great millstone, and cast it into the sea, saying, 'With such violence as this shall Babylon, that great city, be thrown down, and shall be found no more at all; and the voice of harpers, and of musicians, and of them that play on the pipe and on the trumpet, shall no more be heard at all in thee; and no craftsman, of any art whatsoever, shall be found any more at all in thee; and the sound of the mill shall be heard no more at all in thee; and the light of the lamp shall s.h.i.+ne no more in thee; and the voice of the bridegroom and the bride shall be heard no more at all in thee; for thy merchants were the great men of the earth, for all nations have been deceived by thine enchantments.' And in her was found the blood of prophets, and of saints, and of all that were slain upon the earth."

Thus total, according to the prophecy, was to be the destruction of the wealth, civilization, greatness, and glory of the ancient heathen world, gathered together in Rome, that in the utter sweeping away of that one city all might perish together. How fully the words were accomplished we know by the lamentation of the whole world over Babylon, the echoes of which still ring in our ears. But to us Christians it rather belongs to weigh the words which follow without any break in the sacred text (although the division of the chapters leads many readers to overlook the close connection). "After these things I heard, as it were, the voice of much people in heaven, saying, 'Alleluia. Salvation, and glory, and power is to our G.o.d. For just and true are his judgments, who hath judged the great harlot which corrupted the earth with her fornications, and he hath avenged the blood of his servants at her hands.' And again they said, 'Alleluia. And her smoke ascendeth for ever and ever.'" Here is the answer to that cry of the angel, "Rejoice over her, thou heaven, and ye apostles and prophets."

{371}

Were any comment needed upon such prophecies--any explanation of the sentence pa.s.sed upon a civilization so great, so ancient, so widely extended, and so refined--anything to reconcile us to the utter destruction of so much that was fair and mighty, we may find it in the latter half of the lecture before us. Not that our author is insensible to the marvellous beauty of that glow with which cla.s.sical literature causes the figures of those days to s.h.i.+ne before us. That would be impossible for a man of his studies. He says:

"Is not the very language of Cicero and Virgil an expression of this lordly, yet peaceful rule; this even, undisturbed majesty, which holds the world together like the regularity of the seasons, like the alternations of light and darkness, like the all-pervading warmth of the sun? If every language reflects the character of the race which speaks it, surely we discern in the very strain of Virgil the closing of the gates of war, the settling of the nations down to the arts of peace, the reign of law and order, the amity and concord of races, the weak protected, the strong ruled: in a word,

'Romanos rerum dominos, gentemque togatam.'"

Neither, need it hardly be said, has he set the hideous pollutions of that civilization fully before us: that is rendered impossible by its very hideousness. Let those who recoil from the horrors of what he has said--but a faint outline of the miserable truth, though traced with singular artistic form and beauty--bear in mind the while the words of the inspired prophecy, "All nations have drunk of the wine of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her"--"Her sins have reached unto heaven, and the Lord shall reward her iniquities"--"In her was found the blood of prophets, and saints, and of all that were slain upon the earth." The crimes, as well as the civilization of a thousand years, were acc.u.mulated at Rome, and both were swept away together by that overwhelming flood of fierce barbarians. Little were it worthy of Christians to mourn over a civilization into whose very heart-strings such unutterable pollution was intertwined; especially as it was removed, not like Babylon of old, to leave behind it nothing but desolation, but to make room for that kingdom of G.o.d which was to be enthroned upon its ruins; for such was the purpose of G.o.d, that the very centre of Christendom, the very seat of the throne of Christ upon earth, on which he would visibly sit in the person of his Vicar, was there to be established, whence the throne of the Caesars and the golden house of Nero had been swept away in headlong ruin. "I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth was gone. And I heard a great voice from the throne saying, 'Behold the tabernacle of G.o.d with men, and he will dwell with them. And they shall be his people, and G.o.d himself shall be their G.o.d. And G.o.d shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.'"

"And he that sat on the throne said, 'Behold, I make all things new.'"

The full accomplishment of these words we expect, in faith and hope, when "death shall be no more, nor mourning, nor crying, nor sorrow shall be any more; for the former things are pa.s.sed away;" yet, surely, whatever more glorious accomplishment is yet to come, it were blindness not to see how far they are already fulfilled in the subst.i.tution of Christendom for the civilized pagan world, the setting up the throne of the Vicar of Christ upon the ruins of the palace of the Caesars.

First among the causes of that hideous acc.u.mulated mixture of blood and filth in which heathen civilization was drowned, Mr. Allies most justly places the inst.i.tution of slavery as it was at Rome, because by this the springs of human life were tainted. It is certain that during all the long years of the duration of the Roman {372} empire, there was among its heathen population no one human being, who lived beyond the earliest childhood, who was not polluted, and whose very soul was not scarred and branded, by the marks of that hideous moral pestilence. We say "its heathen population," because great as must have been the evil it wrought upon ordinary Christians, we doubt not that there were those who gathered honey out of corruption, and whose justice, charity, and purity came out from that furnace of temptation with a brightness which nothing but the most fiery trial could have given to them. From slavery the whole of Roman society received its form. Our author most truly says, "The spirit of slavery is never limited to the slave; it saturates the atmosphere which the freeman breathes together with the slave; pa.s.ses into his nature, and corrupts it." This miserable truth can never be too often impressed upon men, because, unhappily, there are still advocates of slavery who think that they apologize for it if they can prove, as they think, that the slave is happy. As well might they argue that the introduction of the plague into London would be no calamity, if the man who brought it in upon him entered the city dancing and shouting. In ancient Italy slaves replaced the hardy rustics, that "_prisca gens mortalium_" who, though doubtless far less virtuous than they appeared in the fevered dreams of men sick of the vices of Rome in the last days of the republic, were still among the best specimens of heathen life.

Wherever slavery extends, labor becomes dishonorable as the badge of servitude, a few masters languish in bloated luxury, but the nation itself grows constantly poorer, as an ever-increasing proportion of its population has to be maintained in indolence. At Rome slaves were the only domestic servants, and after a time the only manufacturers.

And yet even this is nothing compared to the evils of a state of society in which the great majority of women as well as of men are the absolute property of their masters. Horrible as was this state of things, it offered so many gratifications to the corrupt natures of those whose hands held the power of the world, and without whose consent it could not be abolished, that it would have seemed to any one who had ever witnessed the life of a wealthy Roman n.o.ble no less than madness to imagine that any man would ever willingly surrender them.

As a matter of fact, so far was this state of society from holding out any hope of its own amendment, whether sudden or gradual, that, as our author remarks--

"Of all the minds which have left a record of themselves, from Cicero to Tacitus, there is not one who does not look upon the world's course as a rapid descent. They feel an immense moral corruption breaking in on all sides, which wealth, convenience of life, and prosperity only enhance. They have no hope for humanity, for they have no faith in it, nor in any power encompa.s.sing and directing it."

Faithless and hopeless they were; but whatever this world could give they had in abundance:

"In the time of heathenism the world of sense which surrounded man flattered and caressed all his natural powers, and solicited an answer from them; and in return he flung himself greedily upon that world, and tried to exhaust its treasures. Glory, wealth, and pleasure intoxicated his heart with their dreams; he crowned himself with the earth's flowers, and drank in the air's perfume; and in one object or another, in one after another, he sought enjoyment and satisfaction. The world had nothing more to give him; nor will the latest growth of civilization surpa.s.s the profusion with which the earth poured forth its gifts to those who consented to seek on the earth alone their home and their reward; though, indeed, they were the few, to whom the many were sacrificed. The Roman n.o.ble, with the pleasures of a vanquished world at his feet, {373} with men and women from the fairest climes of the earth to do his bidding--men who, though slaves, had learnt all the arts and letters of Greece, and were ready to use them for the benefit of their lords; and women, the most beautiful and accomplished of their s.e.x, who were yet the property of these same lords--the Roman n.o.ble, as to material and even intellectual enjoyment, stood on a vantage-ground which never again man can hope to occupy, however--

'Through the ages an increasing purpose runs, And the thoughts of men are widen'd with the process of the suns.'

"Caesar and Pompey, Lucullus and Hortensius, and the fellows of their order, were orators, statesmen, jurists, and legislators, generals, men of literature, and luxurious n.o.bles at the same time; and they were this because they could use the minds as well as the bodies of others at their pleasure. Not in this direction was an advance possible" (p. 159).

Our author draws with great skill and vigor a picture of the moral society of the heathen world, and of the beliefs upon which the practice of the heathen rested. Into these we have no room to follow him. At the end of this lecture he shows what sights they were which met the eyes of a stranger coming from the east in the days of Nero--an execution in which four hundred men, women, and children were marched through the streets of Rome to the cross, because their master had been killed by one of his slaves. In all such cases the Roman law required that every slave in the house, however innocent, however young or however old--man, woman, or child--should be put to death.

Thence the stranger pa.s.sed to a scene of debauchery such as the world has never imagined, in the gardens close to the Pantheon. This stranger--

"Why has he come to Rome, and what is he doing there? Poor, unknown, a foreigner in dress, language, and demeanor, he is come from a distant province, small in extent, but the most despised and the most disliked of Rome's hundred provinces, to found in Rome itself a society, and one, too, far more extensive than this great Roman empire, since it is to embrace all nations; far more lasting, since it is to endure for ever. He is come to found a society, by means of which all that he sees around him, from the emperor to the slave, shall be changed" (p. 101).

What madness can have inspired such a hope, or what miracle, real or simulated, could fulfil it? And that, not in the golden age of pastoral simplicity, in which men looked for wonders with an uncritical eye, but "amid the dregs of Romulus," when all the world seemed to have fallen together into the "sere and yellow leaf."

"He has two things within him, for want of which society was peris.h.i.+ng and man unhappy: a certain knowledge of G.o.d as the Creator, Ruler, Judge, and Rewarder of men; and of man's soul made after the image and likeness of this G.o.d. This G.o.d he has seen, touched, and handled upon earth; has been an eye-witness of his majesty, has received his message, and bears his commission. But whence had this despised foreigner received the double knowledge of G.o.d and of the soul, so miserably lost (as we have seen) to this brilliant Roman civilization?

"In the latter years of Augustus, when the foundations of the imperial rule had been laid, and the structure mainly raised by his practical wisdom, there had dwelt a poor family in a small town of evil repute, not far from the lake of the remote province where this fisherman plied his trade. It consisted of an elderly man, a youthful wife, and one young child. The man gained his livelihood as a carpenter, and the child worked with him. Complete obscurity rested upon this household till the child grew to the age of thirty years" (p. 104).

Then follows in few words the history of his life, death, and resurrection. These things the fisherman had {374} seen, and in this was the power which was to subst.i.tute a new life for the corrupt civilization of a world.

The details of the comparison which follows we may leave to be considered when the work is continued. They are drawn out with great spirit, thoughtfulness, and artistic beauty. For the comparison of the two systems in an individual, Mr. Allies selects on the one side Cicero, on the other St. Augustine. An able reviewer has maintained that "Marcus Aurelius was the person to compare with St Augustine."

Mr. Allies has given his reasons for not selecting either Marcus Aurelius or Epictetus in the defective religious system of both. There were, however, other grounds which seem to us even stronger. To test what heathenism can do, it was necessary that the example selected should, as a chemist would say, present not "a trace" of any other influence. Now this was impossible in the days of Epictetus or Aurelius. Christianity had then been taught and professed publicly and without restraint for many years, with only occasional bursts of persecution since Nero first declared war upon it. Its theology, indeed, was fully known only to the faithful, but its moral code was publicly professed. The Christian teachers came before the people as philosophers. It is absolutely certain that all the great Stoics, and especially the emperor, must often and often have heard of the great moral and religious principles laid down by the Christian teachers, however imperfect was his knowledge of their religious practices. But we have already had occasion to remark that men are driven, whether they will or no, to approve and admit these great principles when they are only publicly stated and maintained, although certain not to have discovered them by their una.s.sisted reason. We cannot, therefore, but regard the religious and moral maxims of the later Stoics as an imperfect reflection of the full light of Christianity, like the moonlight illuminating without warming, but still taking such hold of the minds which have once embraced them, that they could never be forgotten. The life and practice of the imperial philosopher, we have every reason to believe, was, for a man without the faith and the sacraments, wonderfully high. Far be it from us to depreciate it, for whatever there was in it that was really good we know resulted from that grace which is given even beyond the bounds of the Church. But our knowledge of details is most meagre, while Cicero we know probably more familiarly than any great man in whose intimacy we hare not lived. The thoughts and speculations which approved themselves to the deliberate judgment of Marcus Aurelius, these we know, and in many respects they are wonderful. Of his life we know little more than he chose publicly to exhibit to his subjects. The failings of Cicero were petty and degrading; but if he had been firmly seated on the throne of the Caesars, and if we had possessed no more exact details of his life than we do of the life of Marcus Aurelius, we much doubt whether we should have been aware of them. Merivale says: "The high standard by which we claim to judge him is in itself the fullest acknowledgment of his transcendent merits; for, undoubtedly, had he not placed himself on a higher level than the statesmen and sages of his day, we should pa.s.s over many of his weaknesses in silence, and allow his pretensions to our regard to pa.s.s almost unchallenged. But we demand a nearer approach to the perfection of human wisdom and virtue in one who sought to approve himself as the greatest of their teachers." He was condemned indeed by his heathen countrymen, but their censure was rather of his greatness than his goodness, and they would probably have been even more severe had he attained what he did not even aim at --Christian humility.

Considering these things, and especially that Cicero belonged almost to {375} the last generation, which was wholly uninfluenced by the reflected light of Christianity and in which, therefore, we can to a considerable degree measure the real effects of heathen philosophy, we venture to think that Mr. Allies has judged well in comparing him as the model heathen with St. Augustine as the model Christian. The comparison is drawn with a masterly hand.

On the whole, however, we incline to think that the two last lectures are of the greatest practical value, especially at the present crisis.

The salt by which Christianity acts upon the world seems to be martyrdom and holy virginity. Both of them have been always in operation since the days of John the Baptist. But there are periods of comparative stillness in which martyrdom is hardly seen, or at least only at the outposts of the Christian host. At such times, it is by holy virginity that the Church acts most directly and most powerfully upon the world. This was the case in the Roman empire as soon as persecution relaxed.

Our author says:

"A great Christian writer [St. Chrysostom], who stood between the old pagan world and the new society which was taking its place, and who was equally familiar with both, made, near the end of the fourth century, the following observation: 'The Greeks had some few men, though it was but few, among them, who, by the force of philosophy, came to despise riches; and some, too, who could control the irascible part of man; but the flower of virginity was nowhere to be found among them. Here they always gave precedence to us, confessing that to succeed in such a thing was to be superior to nature and more than man. Hence their profound admiration for the whole Christian people. The Christian host derived its chief l.u.s.tre from this portion of its ranks.' And, again, he notes the existence, in his time, of three different sentiments respecting this inst.i.tution.

'The Jews,' he says, 'turn with abhorrence from the beauty of virginity; which indeed is no wonder, since they treated with dishonor the very Son of the Virgin himself. The Greeks, however, admire it, and look up to it with astonishment, but the Church of G.o.d alone cultivates it.' After fifteen hundred years we find the said sentiments in three great cla.s.ses of the world. The pagan nations, among whom Catholic missionaries go forth, reproduce the admiration of Greek and Latin pagans; they reverence that which they have not strength to follow, and are often drawn by its exhibition into the fold. But there are nations who likewise reproduce the Jewish abhorrence of the virginal life. And as the Jews wors.h.i.+pped the unity of the G.o.dhead, like the Christians, and so seemed to be far nearer to them than pagan idolaters, and yet turned with loathing from this product of Christian life, so those nations might seem, from the large portions of Christian doctrine which they still hold, to be nearer to Christianity than the Hindoo and the Chinese; and yet their contempt and dislike for the virginal life and its wonderful inst.i.tutions seems to tell another tale. But now, as fifteen hundred years ago, whether those outside admire or abhor, the Church alone cultivates the virginal life. Now, as then, it is her glory and her strength, the mark of her Lord, and the standard of his power, the most _special_ sign of his presence and operation.

'If,' says the same writer, 'you take away its seemliness and its continuity of devotion, you cut the very sinews of the virginal estate; so when it is possessed together with the best conduct of life, you have in it the root and support of all good things: just as a most fruitful soil nurtures a root, so a good conduct bears the fruits of virginity. Or, to speak with greater truth, the crucified life is at once both its root and its fruit'" (p. 382).

We must conclude by expressing our deliberate conviction that no study {376} can be more important at the present day than that of the change from heathen civilization to Christendom, the means by which it was brought about, and the effects which it produced. For in our day, most eminently, the Protestant falling away is producing its fruits in restoring throughout all Europe more and more of the special characteristics of heathen society. We have not room at present to offer any proofs of this, but we would beg every reader to observe for himself, and we are confident that his experience will confirm what we say. Nor is it only Catholics that are aware of this tendency. A thoughtful writer in the _Sat.u.r.day Review_, six months back, devoted a whole article to trace the points of resemblance between an educated English Protestant of our day and a heathen of cultivated mind. Those who feel disposed at once to regard the idea as an insult are probably judging of heathen civilization by Nero and Domitian. Mr. Allies's book will at least dispel this delusion. In fact, it is only too obvious that there is, even in our own day, no want of plausibility in what is at the bottom only revived heathenism; and in consequence of this remarkable resemblance, nothing could be more strictly practical at the present moment than any studies which show us the old heathen civilization as it really was, in its attractive as well as its repulsive qualities.

From The Month.

SAINTS OP THE DESERT.