than usual lucidity, and argues with candour and moderation, at least, against those of his opponents. He may be assured that one half of the world will always be on his side, and that to that balf his reasonings will appear sufficiently conclusive; but he is no doubt too good a philosopher himself to hope to persuade many, or even a single one, of the phalanx opposed to him; and we have already seen, in the notices of his book with which the press teemed in the first fortnight, the usual retorts for which all such speculators must prepare themselves, that he has misunderstood and misrepresented their opinions before he undertook to demolish them. However this may be-and the result is so inevitable that we are content ourselves simply to notice it in passing, we must remark the general want of connexion between this preliminary discussion and the remainder of the book. As far as Mr. Lecky treats the history and development of Morals, it matters not in the slightest degree what the true foundation of moral principles is proved to be. Nor does he attempt to establish any such connexion; to show, for instance, that because our first ideas of morality are instinctive, therefore the Stoics of one age became the anchorites of another, or the love of country of the Pagans was succeeded and displaced by loyalty to the city of God in the Christian. Still less is he at the pains to show, or attempt to show, that if we shift the foundations of duty from the Intuitive to the Utilitarian basis, the historical development of Morals must have been different, and to disprove the principles of the selfish school from the actual facts themselves. The chapter on the Natural History of Morals stands, as it seems to us, entirely independent. Once only, as far as we have observed, does Mr. Lecky seem to betray any consciousness of the want of connexion between his History and his Philosophy, it is where he pauses to remark on the great change which he observes after the recognition of the principles of Christian asceticism, and the relation of the two great schools of Morals to active and political life (vol. ii. p. 155): "Among the ancients," he says, "the Stoics, who regarded virtue and vice as generically different from all other things, participated actively in public life, and made this participation one of the first of duties, while the Epicureans, who restored virtue into utility, and esteemed happiness its supreme motive, abstained from public life, and taught their disciples to neglect it. Asceticism followed the Stoical school in teaching that virtue and hap piness are generically different things; but it was at the same time eminently unfavourable to civic virtue. On the other hand, the great industrial movement which has arisen since the abolition of slavery, and which has always been essentially utilitarian in its spirit, has been one of the most active and influential elements of political progress. This change, though, as far as I know, entirely unnoticed by historians, constitutes, I believe, one of the great landmarks of moral history." Here then, if anywhere, one might expect Mr. Lecky to enter into some explanation of the why and wherefore; to show how the same principles should at different periods lead to precisely opposite results; to acknowledge, at least, that a case had arisen for testing historically the generation of results from principles. But perhaps we were wrong in saying that he evinces here a consciousness of the want of connexion between his History and his Philosophy. It is to the reader that the defect is so apparent. We are not sure that Mr. Lecky has noticed it at all. It is indeed to this kind of haziness of view that we are inclined to attribute the apparently fragmentary character of the work now before us. Bearing in mind the character of Mr. Lecky's former book, The History of Rationalism, the object of which briefly was to trace our modern discoveries in moral truth to the defeat and discomfiture of all ideas founded upon the belief in the supernatural, it is not impossible that he may regard the present volumes as the complement to the previous ones, and conceive that he has comprehended the whole history of Morals throughout the Christian ages in the four together. He may say to himself that the history from Augustus to Charlemagne contains the record of the decline of moral ideas from the highest Pagan standard under Augustus to the completest logical deduction from the teaching of primitive Christianity in the ascendency of the Church under Charlemagne; and that all the advance we have made in morality since the eighth century has been owing to the efforts, gradual and painful, at least till very recent times, of the natural sense of man in revolt against the teachings of a grovelling superstition. Such a view would be a very important one, and demand close and candid investigation were we now engaged in examining it. Were we engaged in reviewing Mr. Lecky's earlier work, The History of Rationalism, from which we venture to deduce it, it would be our business to show that the Rationalism itself by which the superstitions adherent to Christianity have been destroyed, may be really the offspring of the free thought which is itself the true inheritance of Christianity. But we make the remark only to account to our Own minds for the apparent inconsistency in the author's present work. It is with the present work only that we are now concerned, of which we propose to give our readers some account, unless the temptation of the subject tempts us too irresistibly into speculations of our own. The preliminary chapter, of which we have spoken, after stating and examining the conflicting pretensions of the two great schools of Morals, concludes with a series of reflections on "the order in which the moral feelings are developed; " or the general effects of the advance of civilisation and material culture upon the estimation in which the virtues and vices of human nature are held among men. These remarks, how ever, were of a desultory and rambling character, nor do they at all answer the purpose which we might expect them to serve, of laying down the outlines of the discussion which is to follow. It is not till we come to the second chapter, a great division of the subject (for the whole is comprised in five chapters only), that the real purport and interest of the work begins. It is in the collection and grouping of facts, in the very considerable research evinced, and the unfailing lucidity of statement, and again in candour and moderation, and warm personal sympathy with the best feelings of humanity, that Mr. Lecky's merits as a historian of Morals mainly consist. The second chapter contains an account of the moral condition of the Roman Empire. Few things can be more interesting to intelligent inquirers, whether as Christians or philosophers, than to examine the actual results of Paganism from the moment when Paganism attained its highest moral development to the period of its decline and extinction. We are getting more and more to regard the history of our race as a continuous whole. We feel more and more sensibly how every volume, every page, every line of history is evolved out of those that went before it. History admits of no break, of no full stop, hardly of a pause. The child is still father to the man from generation to generation. Our task, then, in examining the history of Morals, is to set clearly before ourselves their state at the era of their highest development in the ancient or Pagan world, and then to trace the way in which they were accepted, transformed, or rejected under the gradual advance of the principles of Christianity, which have dominated so long over the conscience of the moderns. The march of novel ideas has continued, we may be sure, interruptedly, while it has admitted of modi fication, change, and revolution, from age to age, and almost from day to day. The history of Morals is a dissolving view, extending in Mr. Lecky's book over eight centuries-with which it is quite enough to occupy ourselves at present, but really comprehending the whole bistory of the human race, as far at least as recorded facts enable us to trace it. We must content ourselves here with a glance at some of its most salient features. It is true of heathen religion generally, as well as of the religion of classical antiquity, of which it is so often predicated, that they have differed from Christianity in the one essential particular, that they have made little or no pretensions to the inculcation of morality. It is by this characteristic, as it seems to us, that the perpetuity of the Christian system is, humanly speaking, guaranteed. When we see from time to time, and notably at the present era, around us, the signs of a breaking up of old dogmatic beliefs, and a disintegration of religious ideas, not dissimilar in many respects from that which heralded the extinction of classical Paganism, we may be reassured by the recollection of this fact, to whatever obscuration Christian dogma may at any period be subjected under popular impatience of definite creeds. The moral foundations of the Christian faith can never be removed, and can never be long overlooked. teaching is founded upon indefeasible principles, and appeals to inextinguishable feelings. Remaining for ever as a fixed and indestructible landmark of opinion, it cannot fail to reassert from time to time the dogmatic beliefs with which it is historically connected, and to cluster around it again and again the articles of a theological creed with which it was at the beginning associa ted. We can see, therefore, no human prospect of any such crisis overtaking the religion of the Christian world as that which signifies the overthrow of the Pagan beliefs of antiquity. Nor need we, as Christians, feel any discouragement at the utter failure of the heathen philosophers to supply the place of the religion which they undermined, to afford a present sauction for the morals they taught, or associate with them a hope in the future. That That such was the mortifying result of the teachings of the Pagan philosophy, is abundantly, if not expressly shown in Mr. Lecky's chapter on "The Pagan Empire." The inculcation of moral principles, entirely neglected by the religions of the Pagan world, was definitively adopted by the rival schools of the Stoics and the Epicureans; and, from the age at least of Augustus, these schools assumed a wide and comprehensive | Roman liberty. It was the self-assertion of character. The Romans were very much in Roman pride and fortitude against the tyearnest in their philosophy, as in most other ranny of the earlier Cæsars. It was thus things. They were not content to trifle that the spirit of the Republic wrapt itself with the tenets of Zeno and Epicurus, after closely round to resist the pelting of the the fashion of the idle speculations of Athens storm of political adversity. Roman Stoiand the Hellenic world. They really be- cism relaxed under the first rage of returning lieved in them, and in their vital regenera- serenity. The last of its genuine assertors tive force; they carried them into practice was the patrician who bore his bodily infirthemselves, and disseminated them among mities with patience till he had witnessed others with the zeal of proselytes or con- the murder of Domitian, and then, but not verts. They arrayed themselves definitively till then, allowed himself to retreat from his under the banner of the one leader or the sufferings by suicide. As soon as public other, and with their instinctive military liberty was restored, or such a compromise notions, were wont to regard them rather as between liberty and monarchy effected as military chiefs,under whose word of command the Romans could be induced to regard with they had placed themselves by oath, than as equanimity, the defiant attitude of the Stoic guides of opinion or trainers in the discipline was abandoned, and the name and distincof virtue. There are few of the chief men tive teaching of the school became rapidly of Rome in the first century, in which the lost. Under the Antonines, the Porch and war between the rival schools or factions the Garden have both equally disappeared was decided for the Romans, who did not from the history of opinion, and both have openly enlist himself as a soldier of the one become practically merged in the Eclectic or the other. The contention of the Stoics philosophy, which subsisted by the sufferand the Epicureans, the eternal conflict be- ance of all opinions, and the rigid enforcetween the Intuitives and the Inductives, was ment of none. From the Epicurean and carried on at Rome with the earnestness of the Stoic sprang the Eclectic moralists, an international struggle, and it resulted, in represented to us by Plutarch and Dion the first century of our era, in the decisive Chrysostom, who practically ruled in the victory and the permanent ascendency of the schools of the second and third centuries, and former. The principles of Stoicism, as the who became the preachers of comprehensive most congenial to the temper of the Roman humanity, as distinguished from the national people, carried the day. They formed the and sectional exclusiveness which had hithunderstanding, they directed the actions, and erto prevailed in the teaching both of the finally constituted the glory, of many of the Greeks and the Romans. greatest exemplars of Roman virtue; and they succeeded so far in impressing themselves on the page of Roman history, as typical of the Roman character. The disciples of Epicurus at Rome, the successors of Cæsar himself, of Atticus and Horace, though probably always more numerous than their opponents, were reduced to obscurity, and content to hide themselves from the general eye, and renounce the open assertion of views which were confessedly discredited. It was no doubt felt at the time, and it has been universally admitted since, that all that was noblest, most unselfish, and most magnanimous in the conduct of the Romans of the early Empire, was derived from their training in the Stoic philosophy; and Stoicism was undoubtedly more widely taught and more conscientiously practised by the Romans of that period than by any other people at any other. Such a strain as the practice of the Stoical principles puts upon the human mind could only be endured under special circumstances. It was endured at Rome under the deep mortification and stern self-repression of the oppressed and persecuted votaries of The great moral discovery of the Empire, which, when we take a wide survey of the history of our race, may serve to redeem it in our eyes from its fearful sins against liberty of action and independence of thought, was that of the common claims and rights of mankind in general, the solidarity, inmodern phrase, of the nations. The over throw, indeed, of the exclusive national pre judices which had for ages set up moral barriers between clan and clan throughout the world, which had laid the foundation of the special character of Jew and Greek and Roman, may be traced to the conquests of Alexander. These conquests themselves had been long prepared. Alexander could not have overrun the East with his thirty thousand Macedonians, had not the East been honeycombed, as it were, with Grecian colonies, and its moral ideas as well as its political spirit sapped by Grecian intelligence. But when the hour and the man arrived, ten years or less sufficed not only to subdue, under Grecian domination, the vast realm of Asia Minor, of Assyria, Media, India, and Bactria, but to effect the far wider and greater conquest of Grecian prejudices, and dispose the Greeks as well as the Orientals to acknowledge one another as brethren, to start together on the career of intellectual conquest which dominated the civilized world for a thousand years, and the effects of which we feel to this day. It was to the Greek philosophy, modified by the cosmopolitan tincture it imbibed after the age of Alexander, that we refer the first conception of the dogma of our universal brotherhood; but it was from the Romans, when from the conquest of the West they proceeded to conquer over again the conquests of Alexander, that this conception received its practical exposition in the laws and institutions of the Empire. The circumstances of universal empire rendered the fusion of the nations in one amalgam necessary, and this, with one great exception of freedom and slavery, became in a few generations complete. Every wall of partition was thrown down. The spirit it of the age, the feelings of mankind in general, kept pace with, and helped no doubt to precipitate, the external action of law. No revolution of sentiment so wide and so rapid has ever perhaps taken place before or since. The religious prejudices of the Roman world accommodated themselves to the social and philosophical views of the period with a facility for which we may look in vain for a parallel; while, on the other hand, the physics and ethics of the Stoics and Epicureans yielded under the manipulation of the "Such were the influences which acted in turn upon a society which, by despotism, by slavery, and by atrocious amusements, had been Each debased and corrupted to the very core. sect which successively arose contributed something to remedy the evil. Stoicism placed beyond cavil the great distinctions between right and wrong. It inculcated the doctrine of universal brotherhood; it created a noble literature and a noble legislation, and it associated its moral system with the patriotic spirit, which was then the animating spirit of Roman life. The early Platonists of the Empire corrected the exaggerations of Stoicism, gave free scope for the amiable qualities, and supplied a theory of right and wrong, suited not merely for heroic characters and for extreme emergencies, but also for the characters and the circumstances of common life. The Pythagorean and Neo-Platonist schools revived the feeling prayerfulness, and purity of thought, and acof religous reverence, inculcated humility, customed men to associate their moral ideas with the Deity rather than with themselves. with the Deity Farovement of society was now to pass into other hands. A religion which had long been increasing in obscurity began to emerge into the light. By the beauty with which it governed the imagination and of its moral precepts, by the systematic skill habits of its worshippers, by the strong religious motives to which it could appeal, by its admirable ecclesiastical organization, and, it must be added, by its unsparing use of the arm of power, Christianity soon eclipsed and destroyed all other sects, and became for many centuries the supreme ruler of the moral world. Combining the Stoical doctrine of universal brotherhood, the Greek predilection for the amiable qualities, and the Egyptian spirit of reverence and religious awe, it acquired from the first an intensity and universality of influence which none of the philosophies it had superseded had approached. Eclectics and the New Platonists to the craving of mankind for dogmatic theology, and invited even the mystical religions of the East to share in their power over the hearts of the believers. These successive schools of thought are described by Mr. Lecky in "I have now," he continues, "to examine detail, and their respective effect upon the the moral causes that governed the rise of this morality of the age very fully and clearly religion in Rome, the ideal of virtue which it presented, the degree and manner in which it indicated. The original sources from which stamped its image upon the character of the this revolution is to be traced are very wide-nations, and the perversions and distortions it ly scattered over the remains of antiquity underwent." through three centuries, and have been examined by many inquirers. Our author has made himself very well acquainted with them; but his task has been lightened by the labors of those who have preceded him in the same field, and he is not slow in acknowledging his obligations to them. The materials for the history have been long since exhausted; nor was there much room left him for novelty of combination or illustration; but by grace of style as well as by clearness of statement and arrangement, he has succeeded in giving a new interest to one of the most interesting portions of human history. He concludes his chapter on the Moral Condition of the Empire with these discriminative observations: Accordingly, in the two chapters or divisions of the work which follow, he traces the moral history of Christianity, first during the period of the conversion of the Empire, and next of the ages which succeeded down to the era of Charlemague; lastly, he devotes a separate section to the "Position of Women" under its influence. So comprehensive and so full are the details of each of these chapters that we could not pretend within the limits of a review to give more than a dry analysis of any one of them, and we shall be more likely perhaps to interest our readers in the subject of the book, and in the book itself, if we confine ourselves, in the space before us, to putting forward such particular reflections on the moral history | Christian preaching with the spirit of the of Christianity as its perusal has suggested to us. Mr. Lecky is at pains to show, along with other philosophical historians, the sufficiency of strictly natural causes to account for the success and ultimate triumph of Christianity in the Empire. It is certainly scarcely worth while to refute in these days the ecclesiastical writers of a former generation, who could only ascribe the early diffusion of the Faith to a continuous miracle. There can be no doubt that the moral and spiritual condition of mankind in the period before us was eminently favourable to the reception of some of the cardinal doctrines of the gospel. We have seen how the idea of universal brotherhood, so important a feature in the teaching of Christ and the apostles, had been promulgated by philosophers, and very generally accepted by the conscience of mankind even at an earlier period. It is the preparation of the world for Christianity, rather than the conquest of the world by Christianity, that we admire in the counsels, so far as we seem to trace them, of the Divine Source of religious knowledge. On the other hand, our philosophical historians are too apt to forget that, with all this accommodation in some points to the ideas and cravings of mankind around it, Christianity is not less remarkable for its strong antagonism to them on others. We are not here laying undue stress upon the self-denial, in its ordinary sense, inculcated by Christianity, for the philosophers no doubt inculcated much self-denial, and Christianity, again, as popularly understood and practised, admitted of great relaxation from the ideal standard established by its founders. But we must insist strongly upon the scandal of the Cross of Christ, as a much more important element in the question than it has been generally considered in modern times. The ancients themselves, the primitive Christians especially, knew well the offence of the preaching of a crucified Founder. The doctrine was a special one, and was fundamental and absolutely necessary to the idea of the Christian faith, for the mortification of human pride, and the identification of the Divine Author with the character and the sufferings of humanity. But there can be no doubt that its repulsiveness to human prejudice, more especially to the prejudice of the Roman world, created an immense practical obstacle to the reception of Christianity; and so the contemporary literature of Christian and of Pagan equally testify. We do not say that it required a miraculous interference to counteract this injury and discouragement to the faith; but the falling in of age on the one point just mentioned would hardly, we think, have availed against it; and we must look, at least, to other human causes for the ultimate success of the gospel. Of such causes there were doubtless many. We will point out the two which seem to us the most important: 1. Doctrine of future life. 2. Formation of a strong character. 1. The great central doctrine of Christianity was the revelation of future life. This doctrine was placed in the head and front of all Christian preaching. The faith of the gospel was taught in public discourses weekly and daily; and every Christian sermon insisted upon this great doctrine as the cardinal point of all Christian instruction. Christianity had its mysteries, more or less, like other religions of the day; and there were various points of faith which its teachers unfolded gradually and with reserve; but upon this one point, at least, there was no reserve, and no hesitation. The future life was an exoteric doctrine, made known to every one from the first, held forth as a common boon for all mankind, maintained as the indefeasible right and possession of every son of Adam. In these respects the Christian doctrine of immortality differed essentially from the speculations of the philosophers, who, in the highest flights of their imagination, ventured only to regard it as the prize of a few superior spirits, as a reward extorted from nature by the little band of godlike men who had been endowed from their birth with a portion of the divine essence. Nor did the mysteries in their most popular interpretation go further. But, besides the universality of the Christian doctrine on this head, the unwavering confidence with which its certainty was proclaimed constituted an important element in the acceptance which it naturally met with. Undoubtedly, the hope of a future existence is one to which the human mind naturally clings, and with all the waverings and doubts and despondency so painfully apparent in the utterances of the wisest of the heathens about it, we are inclined to believe that this hope, blind and naked as it was, exercised no slight dominion over the thoughts and actions of great numbers of all classes among them. But none of the heathens ventured to assert it as a positive fact, susceptible of proof from actual experience, of which an instance could be drawn from veritable history. The resurrection of Jesus, and his subsequent residence among men in the body, professed to be the revelation of a great psychological fact, appealing to sensible proof in itself. This typical resurrec |