the earlier but in the latter Ages;- that all physical science is of modern date, and only in the sixteenth century an Englishman revealed the methods by which Nature should be studied; that Revelation itself has had an historical development, and Moses and the Prophets are no longer the Lights of spiritual man: - these are facts, in the face of which mere veneration for Antiquity cannot reasonably be expected to hold its place, against any real interest, or temptation, of the world. But no sooner is one Figure of the Imagination removed than another takes its place; for it is wonderful to what extent Metaphors rule the world. If length of experience belongs to modern men, and we, in the opportunities of knowledge, are the seniors of Antiquity, — then we change the emblem, and, since we cannot regard the olden Time as the hoary Age, we now call it the Infancy of the Race; and no sooner have we given it that name, than images of purity, and simplicity, and innocence, rise before us, the golden light.of Childhood fills our eye; and the next error we fall into is, that, if the Primitive Times were not wiser, they were at least purer, gentler, with the first freshness of heavenly affections yet unsullied and unworn. Alas! we forget that this Infancy of the Race is all a figure; that the ignorance of a child was united to the passions of a man, the most dreadful combination of moral elements that Humanity can present. The animal nature in its fiercest vigor, the moral and intellectual nature helpless as infancy, - are these, materials to produce a Golden Age? a Golden Age?- or do they now, in the untaught masses, who have developed passions and undeveloped souls, produce the fabled tenderness and simplicity of the world's youth? That the former Times were better than the Present, is what no one with the least acquaintance with Antiquity will be forward to maintain,—and in fact only the total absence of any enlightened public sentiment, the silence and unconcern that suffered familiar inhumanities to pass almost unoticed, without a recording word or a resisting struggle, have left out the dark coloring of truth. The very protests of this Age against the ills that afflict it, contribute to swell our impressions that we have fallen upon evil times. That of which we hear so much, we imagine to be growing in amount. The constant denunciations of public injustice, and of private vice, never permit us to lose the feeling that we dwell in a bad world. There were Times, and not distant ones, when the evils were greater, and the denunciations less, because there was no enlightened Opinion to appeal to, and no public Virtue to speak out. I am not the apologist of the present Times, yet, however we may fail to detect the exact law by which Providence regulates the progress of Man, a successive progress History broadly declares, and though we are justly dissatisfied with our present condition, yet God has not deserted us, for in vain shall we search the past for a nobler Age. Of all the delusions which have grown up as to the wisdom and virtue of primitive Times, that which affirms the perfection and purity of primitive Chris - tianity is the most blind, both to the facts and to the reason of the case. "The light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not," is a truer picture, and from a higher authority. Is it reasonable to expect that the Period of its conflict with Heathenism should bear the choicest fruits of its unadulterated spirit, or that those from whose hearts it was expelling the gross darkness of the Pagan worship, should reach its most spiritual truths, and walk in its divinest light? Does it belong to the moral nature of man to be the subject of such rapid and perfect transformations, to empty the mind completely of one set of influences, and receive at once the entireness and purity of another, -and, without a long term of intermediate mixture and struggle, put off the Heathen or the Jew, and exhibit, like a new creation, the truest symmetry of Christian development? And what are the facts? Do the Gospels, or do the Epistles of St. Paul, exhibit a more spiritual Discipleship, as we approach the person of Christ; or present a Model in the Churches that had an Apostle for their guide? Christ's life was passed without the conversion of a single soul; and when he died, the Jewish peculiarity had yielded to the Christian Idea of the Kingdom of God in not one single mind. In fact, the work of conversion, even in the Apostles themselves, took place after the death of Christ; and only when no longer Jewish notions could be made to cohere with a Messiah in the skies, did they gradually, and by necessity, adapt their conceptions of his Mission to his now spiritual and heavenly state. The Resurrection 、 and Ascension of Messiah are usually represented as having their sole objects in the evidence they afford of human Immortality;- but in the actual History of Christianity, the first purpose they served was to spiritualize the views of the Apostles; - for with one who dwelt no longer on the Earth, all his relations to his Church must be of an inward, heavenly, and immortal nature, and all Jewish apprehensions were disengaged from his person as he ascended to God, above all temporal connections. Still, however, did Judaism endeavor to fasten itself on as a necessary adjunct, even to spiritual Christianity; and those who had come nearest to the fountainhead of Truth, the personal companions and disciples of our Lord, were not the first to emancipate themselves from exclusive and unchristian views. Stephen the Martyr, in mind and character the evident prototype of Paul, had the first glimpse of the catholic nature of the Church of Christ; and St. Paul, who alone in the Apostolic Age conceived aright of the Universality of the Gospel, not in peace and triumph, but against controversy and resistance, proclaimed the essence of Christianity that which rises above outward differences, and unites souls by an inward tieto be, not a Righteousness with which any thing external can interfere, but "the Righteousness of God, proceeding out of Faith." Or, are we to look in the Churches founded and taught by St. Paul for the purity and perfection of the primitive Christianity,- for examples of evangelical Unity, and humble submission to Apostolical Authority? The Epistle to the Romans exhibits the Jewish and the Gentile form of mind looking upon Christianity from different positions; and the two partial views in bitter animosity threatening destruction to each other. The Epistles to the Corinthians exhibit schisms in Doctrine, immoralities in Practice, Factions organized under Leaders, a perilous observance of Idolatrous usages, proving a very imperfect emancipation from the Polytheistic sentiment, and the most open contempt of the Authority of the Apostle. The Apostolic Age exhibits no Church Models, -no uniformity of Faith and Sentiment, no gentle reign of Truth and Love, with quiet submission to legitimate Instructors, no perfect realization of Christian Communion to serve as an example and a standard for successive ages, and by the claim of its Beauty and Repose to awe and silence the disturbing outbreak of individual Thought. These are not the Pictures which Christian Antiquity presents in the Epistles of St. Paul; nor will peace ever be restored to the Church by the endeavor to go back to a primitive Uniformity, that never existed. But the real Picture which that Age presents is full of the lessons of a true Peace for our present times; it represents an attempt by Paul to combine a unity of Spirit with the utmost diversity of Forms, Sonship to God and Brotherhood to Christ with the freest varieties of national and intellectual differences, and it exhibits an Apostle claiming no authority to settle controversies, to reduce to one common formula modes of worship, or inequalities of speculative view, but leaving every |