to give up faith in the power and destiny of our religion to bring forth Christian nations. The Christian individual progresses from infancy to maturity, and a nation may be called Christian, when its Christianisation is but really begun and still far from perfect.

The national Christianity or Christian nationality, resulting in the Roman empire from the elevation of the Church of Christ into the religion of the State, and from its consequent effects upon the nation at large, was no doubt far behind the standard of its aspiration and vocation, and it is not difficult to point out its serious failings and faults; but nevertheless it marked a progress compared with the previous state of things. Christianity really made a long stride towards actualising its nature and destiny, it accomplished a decided advance in unfolding an unquestionable latent potentiality, when it passed from the obscurity of secret conventicles and the ignominy of a religio illicita into the broad daylight of a recognised chief power in the State, for securing the highest interests of the entire nation. A spiritual potency so mighty, intense, and salutary, as Christianity, demands and deserves the widest scope for its energy and action. It will bring its benefits not only to the individual believer in his private closet, or to the devout assembly in their public temple, but also to the nation at large as a first-rate public power.

Some, indeed, have doubted whether it was right for Christianity ever to have assumed a national garb; and whether it ought not to have confined itself to the ecclesiastical robe, or to the still more tightly fitting individual dress; but at the time it was first raised to national eminence, the universal feeling produced amongst the Christians was that of intense relief and gratitude. Every one recognised in its new character the hand of Providence and the seal of Divine approval.

If it be remembered how long and how cruelly the Church had been persecuted by the Heathen State, and that at the first General Council of Nice, there were Bishops present, as its members, with maimed limbs and blinded eyes, the result of tortures suffered for their faith: then who can wonder that the magnificent appearance of the first Christian Emperor in that memorable assembly seemed to

many like the visit of a heavenly messenger; and the sumptuous banquet in the Imperial palace, to which they were invited at its close, as something like an anticipation of millennial enjoyment?
Surely the national character and political aspect which Christianity assumed in the course of providentially ordered history, was nothing but its natural development, the legitimate outcome of its destiny for the whole world. Christianity national and political, is Christianity still, though in a wider circle and with a fuller scope than Christianity personal and ecclesiastical.

Now if, as we have seen, Christianity has been violently opposed in its infancy, when its sole exponents were Christian individuals, and cruelly persecuted in its youth, when it established itself in the form of numerous congregations or Churches, we must be prepared to find that, when, in its manhood, it sought to pervade with its vigorous life the entire national organism, and to assert itself as a new national force amidst the peoples of mankind, its onward course was again obstructed by all the might of its ancient adversary, and this more particularly with the intent of annihilating it as a national force and a dominating political power.

The spiritual kingdom of evil, whose main policy is to prevent or spoil what is good, and which therefore has to accept its temporary shape from the development and manifestation of the kingdom of God, took good care that such an expectation should not be disappointed. The consciously anti-Christian policy of Julian the Apostate overshot the mark and mistook the time in trying to revive and re-establish effete Heathenism; hence it was but short-lived, and Julian had to cede the victory to the great 'Galilean.' Two still more serious, because much more lasting, movements were soon after let loose against the Christianly remodelled Roman empire. The one consisted in the irruption of those northern nations — the Goths, Alani, Suevi, Vandals, Huns, and the like, who, impelled by a mysterious impulse, convulsed the whole Western empire and gave an entirely new face to the population of Europe and North Africa. The other, springing from the fire-worshipping power of Persia, extremely imperilled the Eastern empire. Both these