ing primates of Rome in the third and following centuries usurped that authority which has brought with it such a flood of corruptions.

The second great division of this volume discusses the private and public worship in the Churches of the second and third centuries. The first Christian Churches were the Churches in the house, and the first worship was the worship of the family. Every-day life was consecrated by prayer and praise. Each meal was a eucharist, in which the faithful broke bread with gladness, in singleness of heart. The father was the priest of the household, and offered daily the sacrifice of thanksgiving unto God. The following are examples, which have come to us down the ages, of a morning and an evening hymn, such as were wont to hallow in a thousand happy Christian homes the opening and close of each new day :

MORNING HYMN.

Day by day will we bless thee,

And will praise thy name forever,

And from age to age.

Vouchsafe, O Lord, that we may be kept this day also without sin.

Blessed art thou, O Lord, the God of our fathers,

And thy name is to be praised and glorified forever.-AMEN.

TWILIGHT HYMN.

Calm light of the celestial glory,

O Jesus, Son of the Eternal Father,

We come to thee now as the sun goes down,

And before the evening light

We seek thee, Father, Son,

And Holy Spirit of God.

Thou art worthy to be forever praised by holy voices.

O Son of God, thou givest life to us,

And therefore does the world glorify thee.

The worship of the early Church was not yet stereotyped into liturgical forms. It was characterized by a grand simplicity and freedom. Its prayers, our author remarks, were "fed and nourished on Scripture, the sacred texts being constantly reproduced, either by literal quotation or by allusion. The Divine Word bears them heavenward, as the eagle bears the eaglet on its mighty wings. The simplicity of the prayers forbids long periods, but they are equally free from dullness and abruptness. Frequent repetitions occur, the outpourings

of the deepest and tenderest emotions of the soul. As in a musical composition the principal theme recurs again, and again, so in prayer we catch at frequent intervals the one dominant note, like the recurring toss of the wave on the shore, and the repetition prolongs the impression, which might else die away too soon.'

And this liberty and spontaneity of prayer long continued. It was not till the Council of Toledo, in 633, that uniformity of worship was commanded, and spontaneous prayer forbidden. Much of the spirituality of primitive worship was destroyed by this enforced formalism. "The grand liturgical productions of following ages," our author beautifully remarks, "seem sometimes, in their magnificence, to resemble the splendid tombs erected by the synagogue to the prophets whom it had first slain. It was when the spirit of true evangelical prophecy, the fire of free and fervent prayer, had been stifled under an accumulation of forms, that the Church erected these sumptuous monuments of prescribed devotion, which are too often but the cenotaphs of departed piety."+

It was probably in connection with the baptismal and eucharistic services that liturgical forms were first introduced. In the forms of prayer which accompany these rites in most of the Churches of Christendom is heard the echo of those early litanies which have come down the ages from the worship of the early Church.

The third section of this book, that on the moral life of the Christians of the third and fourth centuries, will be that, we think, which will possess the greatest charm to most readers. It was the most signal glory of early Christianity that amid the thoroughly effete and corrupt society of paganism it manifested the intense energy of that moral leaven that was to regenerate the world. It is scarce possible for modern imagination to conceive the appalling pollutions of that old pagan life. The heathen satirists and historians and the Christian Fathers and Apologists unite in painting its corruptions in most lurid hues. "Society," says Gibbon, " was a rotting, aimless chaos of sensuality." Yet, like the snow-white lily, springing in virgin purity from the muddy ooze, primitive Christianity ex

* "Christian Life and Practice in the Early Church," p. 289.

+ Idem, p. 293.

haled its moral fragrance amid the social corruptions of its vile environment. The lives of the believers were the noblest testimony to the power of the Gospel to quicken, and renew, and save. For they themselves, as Origen declared, "had been reclaimed from ten thousand vices." And St. Paul, magnifying the grace of God, describes some of the vilest of characters, and exclaims, "Such were some of you, but ye are washed, ye are sanctified."

The early Christians, therefore, recoiled with abhorrence from the corruptions from which they had themselves been rescued. They thus became emphatically a peculiar people, and the easily marked prey of persecution. The whole public and private life of the heathen was pervaded with the spirit of idolatry. Almost every act was performed under the auspices of some deity. Buying or selling, feasting or toiling, pleading in the courts or saluting in the market-place, the contamination of paganism was ever imminent. Hence the Christians were especially exhorted to "keep themselves from idols." From many trades and occupations they were, therefore, excluded, and the public amusements and festivities of the heathen were alike abhorrent to their modesty and piety.

Philosophy," says Lecky, "may dignify, but is impotent to regenerate, man; it may cultivate virtue, but cannot restrain vice." The ethics of paganism were the speculations of the philosophic few, and so left uninfluenced the toiling and degraded many. The ethics of Christianity were embodied in practical principles which controlled the daily life of even the unlettered and the slave. Hence became possible the reconstruction of society on a loftier plane-the building of a new "city of God" even in the great Babylon of the West.

One of the grandest results of these Christian principles was the new dignity given to man, no matter how lowly and degraded, as one for whom Christ also died. The loftiest heathen. virtue looked down with a supercilious contempt upon the toiling helots or "vile plebs" that ministered to its pleasures or enhanced its gains. The existence of a vast slave population was at once the crime and the Nemesis of pagan society. It became the hot-bed of every vice, and was alternately led by its lusts or crushed by power. Labor became degraded and

unremunerative, as slave labor always is. Hence some of the fairest and most fertile regions of Italy became sterilized to a desert, and the mistress of the world was dependent for bread on her conquered provinces. A storm on the Mediterranean, scattering the corn fleet, threatened Rome with famine and with the ravening revolt of that myriad-headed wild beast, her hunger-bitten slave population.

This vast, dumb, weltering mass of human wretchedness and vice Christianity came to elevate, to ennoble, and to bless. It raised the victims of bondage and oppression from the condition of beasts and chattels to the dignity of men and the fellowship of saints. It was the boast of the Christian apologists that in Christ Jesus there was neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free-that in the Church the conditions of worldly rank were abolished.* The wealthy noble and the lowly slave"not now a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved". bowed together at the same table of the Lord, saluted each other with the kiss of charity, and, side by side in their narrow graves, returned to indistinguishable dust.

Christianity also dignified and ennobled labor, and threw around it the hallowed associations of Jesus the carpenter, Peter the fisherman, and Paul the tent-maker. Labor was enjoined as a daily duty. The Christians, while fervent in spirit, were also diligent in business, and were patterns of thrift and industry. They faithfully performed life's lowly toils, and followed blamelessly whatsoever things were lovely and of good report. To the sneer of the pagan Celsus that the ranks of the Church included cobblers and weavers and ignoble slaves, Tertullian grandly answers that the humblest Christian artisan understood loftier truths than Plato ever knew.

One of the most notable results of the growth of Christianity was the development of a new instinct of philanthropy in the soul, and the creation of an extensive organization of charity. And a wide field was open for the exercise of this grace in the great multitude of suffering and sorrowing of the old Roman world. There were cruel wrongs to be mitigated, and fierce oppressions to be alleviated, and bruised and broken hearts to be cheered and bound up. Nor were these hallowed minis

* Apud nos inter pauperes et divites, servos et dominos, interest nihil.-Lactantius, Div. Inst., vs. 14, 15.

trations confined to the Christian kinsmen of the early believers; they were extended oftentimes to their pagan enemies, to the outcast and the vile, to the unthankful and the unworthy. This impossible virtue, as the heathen deemed it, was a testimony for Jesus that even Stoic natures could neither gainsay nor deny. And doubtless the unwearied and passionate charities of the Christians melted the icy barriers of many a pagan heart, and opened the way for the reception of the truth. Voluntary collections* were regularly made in the Christian assemblies for the poor, the aged, the sick, the brethren in bonds, and for the burial of the dead. "Our charity dispenses more in the streets," says Tertullian to the heathen, "than your religion in all the temples." The Church at Antioch, says St. Chrysostom, maintained three thousand widows and virgins, besides the sick and poor. The charity of the Christians found abundant scope in ransoming their brethren held in bondage. For this purpose the Church in Carthage contributed at one time a sum equal to four thousand dollars. To ransom a number of poor captives Paulinus of Nola not only sold the treasures of his beautiful church, but is said to have sold himself into slavery. "Better clothe the living temples of Christ," says Jerome," than adorn the temples of stone." In obedience to this principle Acacius, Bishop of Amida, sold the treasures of his church to rescue a number of poor prisoners. "God has no need," he said to a remonstrant, "of dishes and plates." In the terrible plagues which visited the great centers of ancient civilization the saintly ministrations of the Christians were especially conspicuous. When Alexandria was decimated by pestilence, the Christians, we learn from Eusebius, organized themselves, to the number of six hundred, into a fraternity for the care of the sick and the burial of the dead. Even when a fierce persecution was raging in Carthage, the Christians, many of them bearing the scars of imprisonment and the brand of the iron upon them, imperiled their lives to minister to their persecutors.

In nothing is the elevating influence of Christianity more conspicuous than in the benefits it has conferred upon woman. It has raised her from being the toy or slave of man to become his helpmate and companion. It has given tenderness and fidel

*Nemo compellitur, sed sponte confert.-Tertullian. Apol., c. 39.