spirit that never sought to assail them, and by practices they never dreamed of examining or opposing.

We are thus led to our next queries: How did it rise in him, and what is its result in the realm of philosophic thinking? These questions will be considered in a subsequent article.

ART. II.-CHRISTIAN LIFE AND PRACTICE IN THE EARLY CHURCH.

The Early Years of Christianity. By E. DE PRESSENSÉ, D.D. Vol. I, Apostolic Era. Vol. II, Martyrs and Apologists. Vol. III, Heresy and Christian Doctrine. Vol. IV, Christian Life aud Practice in the Early Church. New York: Nelson & Phillips.

WHAT a fascination there is in the study of primitive Christianity! As we examine the records, monumental or bibliographic, of the early Church, our sympathies overleap the intervening centuries, and we feel our spiritual kinship with the persecuted yet triumphant community of believers, who conquered the old Roman world for Christ. "We are but of yesterday," writes Tertullian at the close of the second century, yet we fill every city, town, and island of the empire. We abound in the very camps and castles, in the council chamber and the palace, in the senate and the forum; only your temples and your theaters are left." The grandeur of that victory against such tremendous odds is one of the sublimest proofs of the divine energy of the Gospel, and of its perfect adaptation to the profoundest needs of humanity.

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In the noble volumes of Pressensé we have probably the best apparatus extant for the study of this most interesting and important period of human development. We are greatly mistaken in our judgment, also, if the last volume, just published, will not be considered the most valuable and interesting of the series. The learned author has worthily crowned the labors of a long and studious life by this important work. For over twenty years it has been growing under his hand, and it is enriched with the fruits of his ripened scholarship and mature judgment. While based, after the strictest historical method, upon an extensive and careful study of the best contemporary

* Apol., cap. 37.

authorities and evidences, it is not the work of a cold critic or a formal annalist. The author is instinct with sympathy with his subject, and his style, therefore, glows with animation; yet he is not the blind partisan nor sectarian advocate. He maintains a judicial mental equipoise. He detects the germs of nascent error, and traces the divergence of early heresies from the norm of truth. The charm of the present volume to the Christian reader will be the vivid insight it gives into early' Christian life and character. As we read its pages we are present at the worship of the primitive Church, we study its ecclesiastical organization, we listen to the prayers and hymns. of the persecuted flock of Christ, and to the homilies of the faithful pastors and bishops who shepherded that flock in those troublous times.

The subject of this volume is treated under three divisions. The first of these discusses ecclesiastical life in the second and third centuries. This includes, as sub-sections, the admission of converts into the Church, the organization of authority, discipline in the local Church, and the mutual relations of the Churches at the beginning of the third century. We are struck with the wise care observed in excluding the formalist, the hypocrite, and the unworthy from the communion of saints. Holy things to the holy," was the watchword of the Church in that period of unspeakable moral pollution of the pagan world. According to the "apostolical constitutions," converts from heathenism must continue for three years to receive instruction as catechumens before they were admitted to the full privileges of the community of believers.

Sacramentarian theories find no support from the investigation of the offices and institutions of the primitive Church. The simplicity and parity with their fellows of the early elders and bishops was the furthest possible remove from the sacerdotalism of the Church of Rome or of high Anglicanism. So, also, the utter baselessness of the Romish assumptions of authority is clearly shown. The spiritual supremacy of the great Churches of Jerusalem, Alexandria, Antioch, Ephesus, and Rome-those mighty centers of thought-was a supremacy of intellectual and moral influence, not of ecclesiastical authority. It was only after long struggles against strenuous opposition, and through many fortuitous circumstances, that the self seekFOURTH SERIES, VOL. XXXI.-2

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