The Catholic World, Vol. 27, April 1878 to September 1878

by Various

THE PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY IN THE SIX CENTURIES BEFORE CHRIST.

The period of six centuries before Christ may be taken as the immediate period of preparation for Christianity—not in a precise numerical sense of exactly six hundred years, but as a general term denoting an epoch whose beginning is somewhat vague and indeterminate. Some of the great events are prior to B.C. 600, and the larger number of those which are important are much later. What we would do is to describe an historical cycle including the great prophetic cycle of Daniel, which embraces seventy weeks in the mystical numeration of Holy Scripture—i.e., a period of four hundred and ninety years; beginning at the rebuilding of the city and temple of Jerusalem, and ending with the promulgation of the New Law to the nations of the earth by St. Peter. We consider this last event as the culmination and ultimate term of the preceding historical period of preparation, from which history takes a new point of departure, thenceforward moving directly towards its final consummation through its last period, the one in which we live. These six centuries comprise what is specially the pre-Christian historical period. The greatest part of ancient profane history is taken up with the record of its events. The history of the ages going before is vague and scanty, and even the chronology is uncertain. A few dates will show how great a portion of what is known to us from childhood as historical antiquity is comprised within this relatively recent and modern period.

Herodotus, the father of history, is said to have recited parts of his history at the Olympic games, B.C. 456, and Thucydides, who was then a boy, to have heard him; and this is also the date of the death of Æschylus. The date of the battle of Thermopylæ is 480, of the death of Socrates 399, of the birth of Alexander 356. The period of Confucius, Lao-Tseu, and Pythagoras is in the vicinity of the year 550. The beginning of the Persian Empire under Cyrus was in 559. The common date of the building of Rome is 753 B.C. Carthage was destroyed in 146. Julius Cæsar began his career in the year 80. Within this period occurred also the restoration of the Jews to their own country, the founding of the Jewish temple and community at Alexandria, the translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek, the rise and triumph of the Asmonæan dynasty of the Machabees, the usurpation of Herod, and the beginning of Roman supremacy in Palestine.

We now proceed to show the relation between this period and its great events, as making the most important chapter in ancient universal history, with the origin and extension of Christianity. The modern rationalist theory of a purely natural origin of the Christian religion by development from previous stages of purely natural phases of the human intellect, should be refuted by a true exposition of the connection between the natural and the supernatural causes which concurred in producing the great historical phenomenon of Christianity. The history of the one true and revealed religion, and specifically of its latest form in Christianity, is not isolated and separate from the general history of mankind.

It is a topic in universal history. The Christian era succeeds by a close historical connection to the period which preceded it, and that period was the outcome of the ages going before. These preceding ages appear to us historically under a merely natural aspect. That is to say, the nations of the earth have no divine revelation or religion. Their religions are different and national, mere human creations, and their polity, morals, philosophy, and literature are products of natural intelligence. Their early history loses itself in obscurity or fable. Hence the manifest connection of the Christian period with the ages foregoing gives some plausible ground for the hypothesis that the origin of Christianity is natural, that it is only an outcome of mere natural progress and development. When we proceed to show a preparation for Christianity in the ages immediately preceding, we may be asked if we do not thereby tacitly admit and argue from this hypothesis. If God created all mankind for a supernatural destiny, under a supernatural providence; needing a divine revelation, in which a divine religion, one, unchangeable, demanding absolute, universal faith and obedience, is made known and imposed on the intellect and will of man as obligatory; how is it that we seek for the causes and events which prepared the way for its promulgation in a previous state of things so unlike that which we declare God intended to produce by Christianity?

The answer to this is easy. God began by giving a revelation and a divine religion to all mankind. The general falling away from this primitive religion was not so far advanced as to make it necessary for God to select a special race as the recipient and preserver of a renewed form of the divine religion until two thousand years before Christ. The period of the old and universal form of religion, therefore, embraces all the time from the calling of Abraham to the creation of man, at least two thousand years, and, according to the opinion of many, from two thousand five hundred to four thousand years. During the entire period of human history, therefore, from the creation of man to the present moment, embracing from sixty to eighty centuries, the divine religion derived from revelation has been more or less universally promulgated, with the exception of its mediæval portion—that is, during a time including from two-thirds to three-fourths of the whole time in which the human race has existed. The period in which the mass of mankind was left to itself apparently, without the law of God manifested by revelation—the period called by St. Paul “the time of ignorance which God winked at”—embraces only the remaining third or fourth part of time, that is, twenty centuries. This state of ignorance was not original, and not natural in the sense of being conformed to the exigencies of human nature and human destiny, or intended and directly produced by the Author of nature. It was the result of an apostasy, a degeneration, a wilful departure, a rebellion, a schism, a voluntary fall from the primitive state. Moreover, in this very state of apostasy, the principles of all the good which remained, the principles of civilization, science, virtue; political, social, and personal well-being and improvement; were all remnants from the first period in which the divine religion was universal. Therefore, when we point out in heathendom the preparation for a new promulgation of the universal religion, we are not tracing Christianity back to its natural causes and to its origin, but are tracing the movement of humanity along its re-entering curve, from the ultimate term of its departure, to its point of contact with a new motive power, the true and divine cause of the re-conversion and restoration of mankind through Christ, qui restauret omnia.

In addition to this, we must remember that it is only wilful ignorance and sophistical perversion of historical truth which assigns the origin of the human race and its institutions to an unknown, pre-historic chaos. Far back of the period of written, profane history, of hieroglyphic and cuneiform inscriptions, of the scattered, uncertain records of every kind which we can gather up from the remote past, the authentic, written documents of the people of Judea throw a clear light on the beginning of things. Divine revelation is in possession from the beginning. Profane history is modern history. We alone are ancient; and we may say to the infidel, as the Egyptian said to Solon: “You have neither knowledge of antiquity, nor antiquity of knowledge.”

Even during the period of the universal excommunication of mankind from the church of God that church existed, the divine revelation was preserved and increased, and the line of continuity between the past and the future was kept unbroken, in the nation of the children of Abraham. It was from Juda that the Lawgiver and the law came forth to the subjugation of the nations. The historical and rational basis of the supernatural origin and power of Christianity reaches down, therefore, to the first foundations of the world and the human race. So, then, we can have no fear of searching after and pointing out any natural and concurrent causes in the progress of human events which have prepared the way for Christianity and facilitated its universal conquests. The state of heathendom is not to be considered as a normal, natural, and necessary stage in the evolution and progress of mankind, from which Christianity was educed. The plan of divine Providence proposed to conduct mankind from one degree of development to another, until the perfection of religion and civilization was attained in the Catholic Church and carried forward to its last results in the universal resurrection and the everlasting kingdom of heaven, for which all the progeny of Adam, without exception, were destined. According to this plan, the church would always have been one and universal, and whatever might have been the special mission and privileges of the people of Israel, the covenant of God with them, and the possession of divinely-revealed doctrine, discipline, and worship would not have been exclusive. The national and exclusive constitution of the church in the posterity of Abraham and Jacob through the Law of Moses was a dispensation established on account of the general apostasy of mankind, a measure of protection against an absolute and final defection of the human race. And the preparation which went on in heathendom for the new promulgation of the divine law to all the world by Jesus Christ was also a measure of remedy and rescue, a “second plank after shipwreck,” thrown to the nations who were drowning in a sea of errors and miseries.

The object of that preparation was to furnish a sufficient ground and territory for the kingdom of Christ, the Catholic Church; to make ready the people who were fit to receive his law and doctrine; to produce the conditions and circumstances requisite for the universal conquest and permanent dominion of Christianity in the world. The discipline of divine Providence over the nations during the long centuries of their wandering through the waste and howling wilderness of ignorance, error, sin, warfare, and misery of all kinds, is like that over the children of Israel during their wandering of forty years in the desert which lay between Egypt and Palestine. They were condemned to this wandering as a punishment for their unbelief and disobedience. This punishment was nevertheless made the means of their training and education as a nation, and a better generation, born in the wilderness, was formed, which was fit to go into, conquer, and possess the Promised Land. We can also draw an illustration front individual examples, of which history furnishes a great number. A youth, highly gifted, brought up in faith and virtue, well educated, and with every kind of means and opportunity for pursuing a noble career to the glory of God, the welfare of men, and his own highest advantage both in time and eternity, comes to the morning of his manhood, with the straight path of duty stretching out its narrow and ascending course before him. Instead of pursuing this path steadily from the beginning, he is seduced to turn aside and wander over the more pleasant lands which are on the border of his right road, following the illusions of ambition, of pride, and of pleasure. For a while God leaves him to his wanderings, but his mercy does not abandon him. Through circuitous paths, through the lessons of experience, through trials, disappointments, and sufferings, he is led back to the right road. He becomes a hero, a saint, an apostle. The science, the fame, the influence, the wealth, the experience he acquired during those years, and which he labored to acquire for a low and unworthy end, are all now made the means and instruments of fulfilling a noble and holy purpose. Even his errors and sins serve as a warning lesson to others, and cause in himself a more vivid appreciation of the goodness of God, the value of divine faith and grace, and the happiness of a holy life.

In like manner the human race, in its youth, went forth from the cradle-land of Armenia to take possession of the wide inheritance of the earth. Carried away by the illusions of the senses and the imagination, in the pride of its youthful strength, the human race sought to find its destiny and create its paradise on the earth, forgetful of God, of his law, of his doctrine, and of his promises. The colonization of new countries, the foundation of empires and cities, the cultivation of science, literature, art, and every sort of commerce, handicraft, and industry, all that is included in the term civilization, employed the energies of that portion of mankind whose doings find a place in universal history, until everything was accomplished which was possible to man and God saw fit to permit him to achieve. As for his relations with the world above this earth, with the duration which is beyond time, and with superhuman and divine powers, since he could not ignore them or confine his intellect of divine origin and immortal destiny to merely temporal and earthly things, he invented religions, or sought by the light of reason to discover the truth about the supersensible world. The result of all was that a state of things was produced in which mankind, unable to proceed further, dissatisfied and sighing after something better, cried out for God to come and accomplish the work which was too much for man. A young man or a young woman, feeling deeply the emptiness of all the enjoyments to be obtained by wealth, gives up his or her fortune for charitable purposes. A prince, tired of war and politics, devotes his castle and domain to the foundation of a monastery and assumes the religious habit. An artist, a poet, an orator, a great scholar, convinced of the futility of chasing the shadow of earthly glory, consecrates his gifts and acquisitions to religion. In like manner all that the human race had gained in civilization, in empire, in wealth, in philosophy and literature and art, was so much material accumulated for the spirit and genius of Christianity to appropriate and employ in the work of the regeneration of mankind.

This statement is, of course, restricted to that part of the human race which forms the principal subject of universal history and is included within the sphere of the Greco-Roman intellectual and political dominion. The Chinese, and the nations of similar origin and character, are a nullity in universal history. The Hindoos have remained to this day outside of the current of the catholic movement of Christianity. The barbarian and savage races have only been capable of receiving Christianity together with civilization from nations previously civilized. What conquests Christianity may yet make among the great mass of the heathen who constitute the numerical majority of mankind, only the future can disclose. Probably the dominion of European intelligence and political power will be a necessary condition for the extension of the spiritual dominion of the Catholic Church in those regions of the world, if it is ever accomplished. Leo says of the Mongolian races:

“It seems to us that it is only their conversion to Christianity which can entitle them to admission into the domain of universal history as we have conceived its plan, and this conversion can hardly become general except through some kind of political subjugation and dependence. Certainly, the place of these nations in history is one foreseen by God; but the period of their intellectual importance for us has not yet arrived, and will perhaps never come until they are conquered by the Caucasian race and mingled with it. It is therefore only upon the Caucasians, in their great division of Semites, Japhetians, and Chamites, that we can direct our view, as being hitherto the workmen whose labors are recorded by universal history.”

It is only with the past history of that select portion of the human race which has advanced steadily on the road of progress toward the completion attained in Christianity that our theme is concerned. Even some portions of the Aryan race, as the Hindoos, have but little connection with it. And in that later period upon which our attention is at present specially directed, the Jews, the Greeks, and the Romans make the principal factors in producing the result which we wish to estimate—viz., the preparation for the actual conquest and extension of Christianity as a universal religion, which has been thus far achieved, and has become an historical fact. Jewish faith, Hellenic intellectual culture, Roman polity, were the chief agents in preparing the way for Christianity as the world-religion and the world-subduing power. The Hellenic philosophy and literature we leave aside for the present. The Roman imperial and universal monarchy is the topic to be specially considered in this article. This great world-subduing power is historically and logically connected with the great monarchies of a similar character which preceded it, and which are all presented under one figure, that of a colossal statue, whose members are cast from different metals, in the celebrated vision of Nabuchodonosor, interpreted and recorded by the prophet Daniel. It is remarkable that this vision, which presents emblematically a summary of the universal political history of the world in prophecy, was given to the monarch of the great Assyrian Empire, yet in such a way that it passed before his mind like an evanescent flash. He could not understand or even remember it until the great prophet of Juda repeated and explained it. The date of this vision is a little later than B.C. 600, just at the beginning of the period we are considering. “Thou, O king! didst begin to think, in thy bed, what should come to pass hereafter: and He that revealeth mysteries showed thee what shall come to pass. Thou, O King! sawest, and behold there was, as it were, a great statue: this statue, which was great and tall of stature, stood before thee, and the look thereof was terrible. The head of this statue was of fine gold, but the breast and the arms of silver, and the belly and the thighs of brass: and the legs of iron, the feet part of iron and part of clay. Thus thou sawest, till a stone was cut out of a mountain without hands: and it struck the statue upon the feet thereof, that were of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces: but the stone that struck the statue became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.”

Daniel then interpreted the vision as a prophecy of the destinies of the world under four universal monarchies, the Assyrian being the first, represented by the head of gold. The other three are manifestly the Medo-Persian, Macedonian, and Roman. The weak feet and toes of the statue are the extension of the empire among the barbarians of the West. The prophet finishes by declaring that after the decadence of the last empire God will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed or transferred to another power, but which shall destroy entirely the whole fabric of world-monarchy which was represented by the statue of gold, silver, brass, and iron, terminating in clay—i.e., the Babylo-Roman Empire. Thus, at the very beginning of the course of events which took place during the six centuries of the period preceding the Messianic epoch, the great prophet who is inspired to foretell with minute distinctness the times of the Messianic kingdom is made the counsellor and prime minister of the last monarchs of the Assyrian Empire, and of the first of the succeeding Medo-Persian kings, and Nabuchodonosor and Cyrus are instructed by divine revelation in the designs and purposes for which God has raised them up to prepare the way for the coming and reign of his Son upon the earth. The great world-empire, whose seat is first established in Babylon, and afterwards transferred to Rome, has a mission to accomplish, and, when that has been fulfilled, it is finally abolished to make way for the Catholic Church and the Christendom of which it is the nucleus, the Christian political, social, and moral order, the unification and restoration to one universal fraternity of the regenerated human race.

The Roman Empire, the inheritor of all the power, the civilization, the intellectual and material wealth and grandeur of its predecessors, with its own new and specific force in addition, made of the whole world one dominion, brought the East into subjection to the West, and established in Rome, the Eternal City, the permanent capital of the earth. Thus the way was prepared, by the general diffusion of the Greek and Latin languages, by universal commerce and communication between all nations, by the organizing and educating force of political and military discipline, and by many other efficient agencies, for a rapid and irresistible transmission of the spirit, the doctrine, the moral law, the entire supernatural and regenerating grace of Christianity throughout the civilized world. At the same time the civilizing power was brought into contact with that great mass of European barbarians who were destined to form the most vigorous portion of Catholic Christendom. Julius Cæsar is considered as the great author of modern European civilization. The empire reached its acme in the reign of Augustus. Near the close of his reign, and somewhere in the vicinity of A. U. C. 747, the Temple of Janus was closed, and the epoch of universal pacification, the effect of irresistible, triumphant Roman power, came to a world which was expecting the advent of the Prince of Peace, and made a moment’s stillness, a brief pause of silent wonder through the universe, while the mystery of the incarnation and human birth of the great King was accomplished.

Let us turn now to Judea, whose mission was much higher in the order of moral grandeur, though not so dazzling to the imagination as that of Rome. Daniel foretold the end of the captivity of the Jews when a period of seventy years should be completed, and the birth and death of the Messias after another period of seven times seventy years from the rebuilding of the city and Temple. The schism and captivity of the ten tribes had freed the kingdom of David from putrescent parts and given a more pure and healthy life to Juda. The corruption of Juda found a severe and efficacious remedy in the captivity which befell that tribe also at a later period. A purified remnant, the élite of the nation, were restored to their own land under Cyrus. The city and temple were rebuilt. Alexander the Great extended the same favor to the Jewish nation which had been granted by the Persian monarchs. Under his successors, the kings of Syria and Egypt, Judea flourished both in a political and a religious sense for three centuries, although not exempt from vicissitudes, a second temple was established in Egypt, and in Alexandria, the new capital founded by Alexander, the Jews became numerous and attained to great consideration and importance. The Hebrew Scriptures were translated into Greek and the important books of the second canon were written. Under Antiochus Epiphanes a new crisis arrived, which threatened the total extinction of Judaism. A large portion of the priests and people were infected with the corrupted Greek civilization of that period, the practice of the Mosaic law was forbidden and suppressed by the most oppressive edicts sanctioned by the most cruel penalties, and Jerusalem was changed into an apparently heathen city. The sacred ark containing all the hopes of the world in the ages to come seemed about to be wrecked. But God raised up the heroic family of the Machabees to rescue once more Jerusalem and Judea from the ruin which seemed to be imminent.

There is no greater and more wonderful hero in all history than Judas Machabeus, a new and more sublime Leonidas, standing with his small but invincible host in the world’s Thermopylæ, as the defender, even unto death, not of Greece but of all mankind; the saviour, not of mere national and temporal interests, but of the precious inheritance of faith, the supernatural treasure by which all men were to be enriched with those blessings which are eternal. The history of the Asmonæan dynasty, its period of glory and of decay, and, next, of the Idumæan usurpation in the person of the cruel tyrant, Herod the Great, a mere creature and dependent viceroy of the Roman emperor, brings us to the end of the dispensation of Abraham and Moses, to the epoch of the new Prophet, Priest, and King, who teaches, sanctifies, and rules mankind by his own personal and inherent might and right, as the Emmanuel, who is both the Creator and the Redeemer of the world.

St. Paul declares that the mystery of divine Providence respecting both the Jews and the Gentiles, made known in the full Christian revelation, was to “establish all things in Christ, in the dispensation of the fulness of times” (Eph. i. 10). We infer from this statement, that all the ages preceding the birth of Christ were a preparation for the foundation of the Catholic Church, which was completed at the epoch of his coming. The work of Judaism was done and its mission completed. Henceforth it was only an obstacle in the way of the universal religion which it had been created to serve. The oracles of God which it preserved and transmitted, the faith which it inherited from Abraham, its genuine spirit, the essence of religion which had been embodied in its outward organization, were transmitted to Christianity. The lifeless mass which was left behind was only fit to be buried as a putrescent carcass. The mission of the Roman Empire was also completed, its destruction decreed, and dimly foretold by the apostles. The entire Greco-Roman civilization, with its philosophy, its literature, its religious superstitions, had run its course, and its ultimate result was an intellectual and moral abyss of vacancy and unfulfilled longing for the truth and the good which alone can fill the frightful void in the human soul and in universal humanity caused by the absence of God. St. Paul says that Christ, having first descended to the lowest depth, ascended to the highest celestial summit, “ut impleret omnia”—that he might fill all things. The Emmanuel, the God in humanity, the very sovereign truth and sovereign good impersonated in a twofold nature, divine and human, is the only fulfilment of universal history, of human destiny, as the term and expression of the thoughts and purposes of God. His kingdom on the earth, the Catholic Church, is the instrument and medium by which he extends his action through time and upon universal humanity during the period of universal history which is now in the process of fulfilment. The material part of the substantial essence of this new Messianic empire was furnished by the commingling of the elements of Judaism and Greco-Roman civilization. The vital and informing principle was supernatural and divine, inspired into the now organic structure by a new out-breathing of the creative and life-giving Spirit.

This supernatural character of Christianity is capable of a rigorous historical and rational demonstration. Rationalists, as they call themselves, having first made themselves their own dupes, have duped the great mass of the unlearned and the unthinking in this age, and even imposed to a greater or a lesser degree on numbers of Catholics whose instruction in sound Christian knowledge is defective and superficial, by a shallow and pretentious system vaunted under the name of scientific criticism. Like the pseudo-Smerdis, its pretence to be the true, legitimate possessor of dominion, and heir to the acquisitions of reason and experience historically transmitted from the past, is founded on an illusory semblance of likeness to genuine science. As the impostor who passed himself off on a credulous people for the son of Cyrus was detected and exposed by stripping off the royal head-dress which he had stolen, and showing that his head had long since been deprived of the ears as an ignominious punishment for crime, so this base-born rationalism, when the logic of facts and sound reasoning seizes hold of it, meets the fate which befell the Persian usurper under the iron grasp and death-dealing sword of Darius, the son of Hystaspes. It is an old culprit, long since marked by the sword of truth, and doomed to perish under the blows of the genuine offspring of the noble, ancestral chiefs in the intellectual kingdom. Christianity is historical and rational, resting on the principles of contradiction and of the sufficient reason. That which has occurred and which exists cannot be denied or doubted, and must be referred to a sufficient reason and an adequate cause. The facts and events of the religion of Christ, as well those which preceded as those which have followed his human birth, are historically certain. The flimsy hypotheses of sceptical criticism have been destroyed by critical science. The penetrating acid of critical investigation, a solvent which is destructive of all counterfeits and semblances, has only made more manifest and clear of all accidental adhesions the real substance and imperishable solidity of the great historical structure of the primeval and universal religion. The books of Moses and his successors, the four Gospels and the other apostolic documents, together with all else that is accessory and corroborative of sacred history in the genuine records and works of antiquity, have come unscathed, and with brighter and clearer evidence than before, out of the restless and audacious researches of that modern school of rationalists who have sought to destroy all ancient science and belief, to make way for a new fabric of hypothesis which they call modern science and philosophy. Their visionary systems stand confronted with unassailable facts and convicted of falsehood. These great facts, from the creation of man to the resurrection of Christ, and from his resurrection to the present, actual existence of the Catholic Church, irresistibly, and with all the force of invincible logic, demand the recognition of their sole, assignable sufficient reason, a supernatural cause. It is because of this necessary connection of the great facts upon which Christianity is founded with a supernatural cause that rationalists deny, in so far as that is possible, these facts. But, as they cannot deny altogether the reality of all, they deny the principle of causality itself, like Hume and the whole sceptical sect of pseudo-philosophers, or, at least, by their hypotheses, ignore and subvert the principle of causality, through the contradiction of necessary deductions from the principle which is contained in these hypotheses.

The fact of Christianity cannot be denied, because it is too immediately present and evident before the minds of all men. Unless one avowedly abjures reason, it must be accounted for. The hypothesis of the rationalists supposes that a young man of Galilee, without education, evolved out of his own mind and the Scriptures of the Old Testament a doctrine which he taught for about one year to the people of Judea and Galilee, and was then crucified as a teacher of false doctrine and a disturber of the religion of his country. The effect of his moral excellence and heroism in dying for his convictions, together with that of his teaching of a few simple and sublime doctrines of theology and ethics, was the astounding revolution which has resulted in historical Christianity. This is a theory of lunatics. The birth of Jesus precisely at the period which was the fulness of the times, the promulgation of a universal religion which appropriated and subjected to its dominion and utility all the results of previous preparation, combined opposite elements into a new form, conquered and regenerated the human race; and all the phenomena of the origin and progress of Christianity; prove the intervention of the same power which created the world and has governed it since the beginning. The divine mission of Jesus is proved by the work which he accomplished. The precise nature and comprehension of that mission and work, as God intended it, and as Jesus Christ revealed it to his apostles, is proved by the effect actually produced, by the argument a posteriori, from the effect to the cause. The religion which actually became universal is the religion which is founded on the confession of the Trinity, the true and proper divinity of the Son of God, his assumption of human nature by a miraculous birth from the Virgin, his redemption of the human race, fallen through the sin of the first Adam, by the cross, his absolute sovereignty over the earth and the whole universe, and his delegation of authority to the apostles under their prince and head, St. Peter. The conversion of the Roman Empire to this religion demands a sufficient cause, and the only cause to which it can possibly be traced is the divine power of its founder, Jesus Christ. The law did not go forth from Sion and Jerusalem to the whole world by virtue of any power which Judaism put forth. The Roman imperial power did not undergo a transmutation into the kingdom of Christ. Catholic theology was not the fruit of Greek philosophy, and the regeneration of mankind was not the natural result of Greco-Roman civilization. All these forms were overmastered and supplanted by a superior force which overcame a most violent and stubborn resistance on their part. They had only prepared the way, and were destroyed when their work was done. Jesus Christ proved himself to be the possessor of that divine power which had employed them to prepare his way before him, by establishing his new kingdom upon their territory, and making their work subservient to his own conquest and dominion. Rome was made the seat of his own Vicar, the monarch of his spiritual kingdom. The thirteen great dioceses of the Roman Empire were parcelled out to the great princes of the church, the patriarchs, exarchs, and primates, who received a delegated share of the supremacy of the Sovereign Pontiff of the city of Rome. The great provincial cities were made the seats of the metropolitans, and the thousands of minor cities the sees of the bishops of the Catholic Church. This great work was substantially accomplished within three centuries from the death and resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ. One must be demented not to recognize a supernatural cause for this effect, and, as directed by and concurring with this first, supreme, efficient cause, a chain-work of second causes extending through all previous history backward to the origin of the human race and of the great nations of the earth.

Mgr. Delille, Bishop of Rodez, thus contrasts the theory of universal history which presents the incarnation of the divine Word as the central fact of the whole circle of human events with that of modern rationalism:

“In presence of all the remains of the past actions of the human race which are buried in the catacombs of history, only two theories can be found by which to account for them—the theory of chance or fatalism, and the theory of a divine plan.

“The first explains nothing, because it professedly ignores the final destination of humanity. Sitting amid the ruins, with its back turned to the future, it contents itself with making an inventory of the bones of the defunct generations, and weighing their dust. As the conclusion of this fruitless and melancholy work, it says: Things were thus and so, because they had to be so; they are either games of chance or evolutions of the universal substance. It is quite otherwise with that theory derived from the revelation of the divine plan by the way of faith, in which all the events of the world are viewed as an execution of a pre-conceived design of Providence, being nothing else than the restoration of fallen humanity by the Mediator. This is the true philosophy of history, illuminating the past of which it furnishes the explanation, and the future of which it gives foresight. In accordance with its results, the ancient era of the world can be defined, the preparation for the reign of the Messias, and the modern era, the reign of the Messias.”

In this present article it is especially some parts of the preparation which immediately preceded the epoch of the Messias that are presented to the reader’s consideration. It is one of the most interesting and useful fields of exploration upon which any one who has taste and time for solid reading can enter. There are not wanting in our modern literature some excellent works in which the desirable information can be obtained. In the German language the Universal History of Leo, in the first part, on ancient history, presents a condensed but most complete, learned, and philosophical sketch of the great historical events of the pre-Christian period, conceived entirely in accordance with the idea we have here endeavored to present. In French, the History of the Universal Church, by Rohrbacher, has remarkable merit in this respect and is very full in its details. This subject is treated most explicitly and comprehensively in a work by M. l’Abbé Louis Leroy, entitled Philosophie Catholique de l’Histoire. In English the learned works of Father Thébaud, and a recent one entitled De Ecclesiâ et Cathedrâ, by Colin Lindsay, are especially valuable. As a French bishop, Mgr. Angebault, of Angers, has said: “For the last hundred years an effort has been kept up to make history lie by perverting it; it is requisite that men of learning and sound faith should bring it back into the right path from which it has been drawn away.”

History, like all the treasures of the past, belongs to Christianity and the Catholic Church. A few years ago some marbles belonging to Nero, which had been laid aside and become buried under the accumulated deposit of ages, were unearthed, and became the property of Pius IX. as sovereign of Rome; who made use of them for decorating a church. In like manner it is our right to claim all the costly materials we can find and dig out of the dust of all foregoing centuries, and our duty to use them in adorning the walls of the temple of God on earth, his universal and eternal church.