impedes the development of his powers, and is therefore a violation of God's law. And in the plainest terms S. Paul expresses the antagonism of Christian principles to the despotism of civil government, when he exclaims in words to be echoed with bitterness by many an after generation, "We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places."1

Thus Christianity taught men that they were free and that they were noble; and whatever might be their ranks and relative positions in the world, it boldly declared that in the eye of God, and in His Church, all stood on one level. It knew nothing of castes and privileged orders. All were bound by the same duties, to all were extended alike the same hopes, the same means of grace. "The word caste," says M. Guizot, in his History of the Civilization of Europe,' "cannot be applied to the Christian Church. A system of caste, and the existence of hereditary succession, inevitably involve the idea of privileges. The very definition of a caste implies privileges. When the same functions, the same powers, become hereditary in the same families, it is evident that privileges follow, and that no one can acquire such functions and powers unless he is born to them. This, in fact, is what has taken place wherever religious government has fallen into the hands of a caste, it has become a privilege; no one has been permitted to enter it but the members of families belonging to the caste. Nothing of this has occurred in the Christian Church; on the contrary, she has ever maintained the equal admissibility of all men, whatever their origin, to all her functions, to all her dignities. The ecclesiastical state, particularly from the fifth to the twelfth century, was open to all. The Church was recruited 1 Eph. vi. 12.

from all ranks, from the inferior as well as from the superior -more commonly from the inferior. She alone resisted the system of castes; she alone maintained the equality of competition; she alone called all legitimate superiors to the possession of power. This is the first grand result naturally produced by the fact that she was a corporation, and not a caste."

In the Church, worldly rank and position had, theoretically at least, no place. With the same rite and the same words, the same privileges were accorded to the infant of the tramp wrapped in a tattered shawl, and to the baby prince swathed in gold brocade. So in every sacrament, the Church ignored temporal distinction, and viewed each Christian as a Christian only, a child of Him with Whom is "no distinction of persons." To this day, when earth is committed to earth, ashes to ashes, and dust to dust, the deceased is prayed for, whether brought in a frail deal shell at parish expense from the workhouse, or from the palace in the crimson velvet and gold cased coffin of royalty, whatever the deceased may have been, beggar or prince, he is the "dear brother here departed" of the parish priest and the parish sexton.

At the first glance it is sufficiently difficult to account for the strong antipathy exhibited towards Christianity by the Roman State. The Pantheon had niches enough to accommodate any number of new gods, and liberty was freely accorded to any person who chose to believe anything.

But Christianity was not a mere importation of foreign. gods and foreign mysteries. It had a mission beside that of changing the popular creed. Its mission was the enfranchisement of humanity. When a great Roman died, it was the fashion for him to manumit a number of his slaves.

When Christ gave up the ghost He set at liberty all mankind. That Christianity was a religion teaching political principles which would infallibly subvert the government of Rome, was perceived by the shrewdest Roman emperors; and these were invariably its most inveterate persecutors.

When Alexander the Great, drunk with Bacchic wine, slew Clitus at a banquet, "There is no law above the will of the monarch," whispered a flatterer. Such a doctrine was sweet to a despot. But when Theodosius sent commissioners to slaughter the inhabitants of Antioch for having mutilated his statues, they were met by a bare-footed, ragged, hairy man, a hermit, and sent back to the tyrant with a message of other sort; "Go and say from me to the emperor: you are an emperor, but you are a man, and you command men who are your fellow-creatures, and who are made in the image of God. Fear the wrath of the Creator if you destroy His work. You, who are so much displeased when your statues are overthrown, shall God be less displeased if you destroy His?"

Man is made in the image of God. He has rights and duties which it is not lawful for the State to forget and to override. God is no respecter of persons. Such were the notes of the Gospel message which jarred on the ear of despotism. The idea of the equality of men was odious to an aristocracy; that of the meanest slave having God-given rights which might not be trampled on without incurring Divine wrath was hateful to the lords of misrule. No wonder that the Felixes trembled before the apostles of liberty, for they felt that their doctrine circumscribed and limited their powers.

When Constantine established himself on the throne, he saw, as clearly as any emperor who had preceded him, that the constitution of the Church and that of the State were antagonistic. Either the State would become democratic,

or the Church must be infected with the political views of the emperor, and become autocratic.

He therefore forced a concordat on the Church, offering her recognition by the State, and freedom from persecution, and demanding in return that she should touch lightly on the rights of men, suppress her efforts to obtain liberty for every individual, and devote herself to some other portion of her task.

The crown, by assuming the nomination of bishops, held in its hands the power of bribing the Church into acquiescence in its claims.

The result of this concordat was soon evident. The Church had sold her birthright for a mess of pottage. She lost her ancient vigour. The crown, naturally enough, appointed to the episcopal thrones men whose sympathies were with the royal prerogative rather than with the popular right. The Episcopacy, from having been the ornament of the Christian Church, became her disgrace. Prelates fawned on the monarch who had lifted them into their thrones, and suffered them to trample with impunity on the liberties of their subjects. And in his turn the sovereign put his sword at the disposal of the Church for the extermination of heretics.

What can be more humiliating than to see the Council of Toledo craving leave of the king to rob Jewish parents of their children, that they might be brought up Christians, and then pronouncing Anathema Maranatha against any man who should be so presumptuous as to propose marriage to the queen, should his gracious majesty die before her and thus leave her a widow!

Few scenes in history are so instructive as that in the Olive garden, when Simon Peter smote off the ear of Malchus. He, the chief of the apostles, the representative of the

Church, had armed himself with the sword. The moment of trial came. The brave champion of Christ brandished his weapon, and the tip of an ear fell to the ground. Surely that scene should be a lasting lesson to the Church, that the assumption of the sword by its pastors must ever be inefficient and ever contemptible. The tribunal of the Church is man's heart, and conscience the sole executor of her mandates.

Throughout the Middle Ages individual liberty was scarcely recognized except by the great theologians of the Church; it was a theory, a principle, but was never practised.

The Church had been too deeply engaged in symbolizing the beliefs of the world and rectifying them by the Absolute, for her to pay much attention to the rights of man.

She had been prevented from doing so by her union with the State on one side, and on the other by the growth of the theocratic system within her bosom.

She did worse than forget these rights, she trampled on them, and brought her subjects into a condition of bondage far more terrible than that of heathenism; for she chained thought which in the slave had been free.

Morals, physics, politics, religious dogmas, rested on authority. A system of ethics had been deduced syllogistically from the sacred writings, to be applied by rules of casuistry. Political principles were derived from the same source. The human mind had its rule in the decisions of the Church or of the approved doctors on every subject. Thought and action which were not according to norm were put down with the strong hand.

Then came a change. A warm breath passed over that frozen sea in which thought lay stiff and stark, like Ugolino, in the icy fetters of an unbending orthodoxy. The emanci