ditional and local beliefs, far less any dream of the universal supremacy of any one religion.

Yet the paradox does not end here, for we must suppose this audacious speculation to have first entered the head, not of sages and philosophers, not of great legislators and conquerors, but of a Jew; who, if no more than a Jew, was one of a community who, as we have seen, doted on their exclusive privileges, and jealously guarded the mountain-passes which shut them out in religious isolation from the rest of the world; who, if their ancient writings intimated that "from the midst of them" a religion would arise which should spread beyond Judea, and in which their own exclusive privileges should expire, had grossly misinterpreted these records, and would not hear of a religion that was to be universal, in any sense that would not still admit of the supremacy of that of Moses. Like the rest of the nations, they assuredly made no active efforts to realise any such dream.

An objector will probably say, "And is it not, in spite of the progress of Christianity, still a dream? Would any one, looking on the infinite religious discords and controversies of the world, venture to say, without superhuman illumination, that these discords would one day be hushed, and one religion prevail?" I answer, this is precisely what I am saying; this objection is my present argument. I do not think any human being, left to his own intelligence, would have indulged any such dream.

But it is the combination of the two features I have

mentioned—the predicted universality of the religion with the renunciation of all violence in attaining itwhich constitutes the great peculiarity on which I am now insisting, and which makes it deservedly rank as one of the many paradoxes which require to be accounted for, if the New Testament was the work of unaided men. Nor is it, as I have hinted, any answer to say that the religion of the New Testament has not always been propagated by merely moral forces, or rather it is an objection which much strengthens the argument,as we shall presently see. It did restrict itself to such means in the days of its signal and most rapid triumphs, namely, for the first three centuries; and has done so since in all its most worthy and durable conquests. Nor, perhaps, can a single instance be pointed out in which it has not received more damage than benefit by the ill-judged and ignorant resort to other than its own weapons. Beyond question, if its nominal sphere has been sometimes enlarged by such methods of propagandism, the violence done to the genius of the religion has generated evils which, for ages, have obscured its lustre, and impeded its real progress and legitimate influence. But this is not the only, nor the chief reply to the objection. The objection, in fact, answers itself. My argument is based upon the paradoxical character of the original conception;-of a universal religion, in the establishment of which all coercion was to be abjured. Nothing depends on whether men have acted up to this conception or not. But that they notoriously have not, is of itself an argument for the unhuman

character of the project itself. For it could only be because they despaired of the possibility of realising it in the prescribed methods, that they deviated from them, and violated the express letter of the Scripture rule. They have thereby simply borne witness to the genuine tendency of human nature; demonstrated how little likely men were to originate, how difficult for them even to entertain, such a conception. They have thus shown that it was foreign to all their ideas and repugnant to their passions and their impatience. They found it impossible to adhere to such a conception, though it had been clearly sketched out before their eyes. The veil of our common nature was upon their hearts, as the veil of old prejudices was upon the hearts of the Jews when the Scripture was read in their hearing: "seeing, they saw not," and "hearing, they heard not, neither did they understand."

9. It is another paradox, though only a corollary from the preceding, that the New Testament, in thus peremptorily prohibiting all attempts to protect or propagate Christianity by coercion and penalties, recognises the rights of conscience in general as sacred, and consecrates the principle of toleration. It recognises at once what Christians themselves, with the book before them, too soon unlearnt, and were slow to learn again,- that religion, by its very nature, can be propagated by nothing but argument and persuasion.

Now, however various and multiform the religions of the ancient world, we look in vain for such a prin

ciple of toleration as this. Gibbon eulogises, and with some show of justice, the tolerance of the imperial government of Rome; but it is easy to see that the praise, for anything more than political wisdom, does not belong to it. It never recognised, it never dreamt of recognising, the true nature and claims of conscience or religious liberty. Nor is it even true, that the kind of toleration it at last practised, was known to it when Rome was a homogeneous state and had a homogeneous religion. Then, like all the rest of the world, it could persecute with rigour; it could banish from the state, under severest penalties, those who presumed to innovate in religion, and essayed to be "the setters forth of strange gods;" who either introduced new rites. into the old worship, or alien divinities for a new worship.' It was not till after the Roman power had absorbed into itself many nations of heterogeneous race and creed, that the problem was forced upon it as to how the various religions were to be treated. Without attempting to solve it on any religious or philosophical principles, without having any just notions of religious liberty at all, the political instincts of that great people, and the consummate administrative sagacity which so distinguished them and so fitted them for empire, suggested that the nations should be left to the undisturbed enjoyment of their various religious systems, and the Pantheon be open to all the divinities of the earth; provided always the gods

See passages proving this, from Cicero, Livy, and other writers, cited in Waddington's "Church History." Vol. I. pp. 110-112.

would live on terms of peace with one another, and engage that their votaries would be as quiet as their statues! So long as the gods were contented, each with his own belt of territory and his own peculium of incense and sacrifice, and their votaries refrained from troubling the imperial government, Rome was content to tolerate them all. Nor is there, in all the history of Rome, any greater proof of political genius than the instinctive wisdom with which, abandoning early predilections (in which she shared with all the rest of the world) for religious uniformity, she restricted her aims to what alone was possible; and exacting, with all the sternness of her iron rule, absolute obedience to the civil government, left the many-coloured religious panorama of the world just as she found it. Rome, doubtless, felt that not even Rome could rule the nations, if she attempted to reduce the religious opinions of men to one, and that a foreign, standard. Nothing but persuasion can change these; and indeed it is one of the proofs of the indestructible religious nature of man-the deep foundations in which religious sentiment is laid- that it is easier to rob him of his liberty than of his conscience, even though it be a superstitious one; easier to despoil him of his goods than of his gods, though he would so often gain by the loss; easier to enslave his body than coerce his mind. In the knowledge of this, the Romans were assuredly wiser than many a Christian ruler. For though their toleration was only a political compromise, and no true concession to the sacred claims of con