acting but in lying passive.

It was oblivious of

the fact that in the display of this strength there might be manifested a height of heroism and a depth of human resources compared with which all the past achievements of the empire were but the exhibitions of child's-play. Rome failed to realise the union of humanity because she failed to perceive the many-sidedness of man.

Now, it is here that there emerges the real contrast between the latest growth of the Roman religion and the manifestation of that faith which arose in the very midst of the empire-the gospel of Jesus Christ. The difference between them lay not in the idea that the one glorified the creature and the other did not. Strictly speaking, they both glorified the creature-both took hold of a human life and lifted it into the presence of the divine. The difference lay in the fact that the life which Christianity lifted into the presence of the divine was a life of larger and fuller humanity than that which Rome exalted. Rome crowned humanity only in one of its aspects-the aspect of physical power. Christianity crowned man all round, in every sphere of his nature, in every promise and

potence of his life. It deified him as the prophet, the priest, and the king, and in so doing it exhausted all the possible fields of his action. When it deified him as the king, it was, so far, in unison with the Roman empire; it recognised the truth

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that there is indeed something godlike in man's power over the physical forces. When it worshipped him as the prophet, it was in unison both with the Greek and with the Jew; it recognised the truth that in the revelations of human thought and in the glimpses of poetic genius there are seen the flashes of a light divine. But when it adored him as the priest, it was in unison neither with Roman nor Greck nor Jew; it transcended all, or rather, it went down beneath all. It took up a part of humanity which had always been regarded as its contemptible part-the susceptibility to pain. It put a crown upon the head of that in man which had hitherto been despised by man himself. It proclaimed a doctrine which to the old world was certainly a paradox. It said that the kingdom of God recognised amongst the trophies of its glory a multitude of souls whom the kingdoms of this world regarded as State hindrances. It declared that man might be as great in his weakness as in his strength, as heroic in his pain as in his power. The priest had, even with the Jew, existed as a representative of human nothingness; with Christianity he stood forth as a representative of something which in man was divine the power to be touched with the feeling of infirmities.

Hence it is that the incarnation taught by Christianity has been more thorough and fearless than the incarnation taught by Rome. The religion of

Christ has prevailed over the religion of Rome, simply from the fact that it has been less afraid to exalt the human soul. Rome only canonised man as an emperor; Christianity proclaimed the essential sacredness of humanity in all its attributes. There arose in the heart of the Roman empire the conception of another empire called the kingdom of heaven. It partook somewhat of the soil in which it grew. It aimed at finding a meeting-place for all things-a brotherhood amongst the nations and a point of union with the divine. But it aimed at more than that. It was not content to establish a brotherhood of nations; it wanted a brotherhood of souls. It was not satisfied to find a point of ́ union with the divine; it desired the divine and the human to be united along the whole line. It called itself the kingdom of heaven, not to separate itself from the kingdoms of earth, but to indicate its wider comprehensiveness than any earthly kingdom. It proposed to found a State which should embrace amidst its members not only the active but the passive units. It proclaimed for the first time to the world what has since become a commonplace -that they also serve who only stand and wait. In that aphorism there is at once involved an enlargement of the whole idea of empire. The conception of the kingdom of heaven was itself a revelation to the old world. It told men that they had made an inadequate census of the population,

that they had failed to enrol in the State the full complement of its members. It told them that they had not sufficiently estimated, the actual strength of any community, that in limiting their view to the labourers and ignoring the heavy-laden, they had left out of account the strongest proof of national resources, the highest evidence of imperial power. When it included within its borders the heavy-laden as well as the labouring, it for the first time reached the idea of a State coextensive with the Church, because coextensive with the needs of humanity.

It was fated, then, that the message of Rome should be actually fulfilled within its own dominions and within its own era. It was to be fulfilled, however, not by Rome herself, but by another and a humbler power. The office of Rome was, after all, only that of John the Baptist; she prepared the way. Her relation to Christianity was, indeed, no merely negative one. She did not simply, as church historians affirm, help to create a longing for the light by increasing the power of darkness. Her contribution to the world was a contribution of light, and of light in the direction of Christianity. She aimed at the construction of a universal kingdom, and in so doing she was on the lines of the coming faith. Her error was that her universal kingdom did not embrace a universal humanity. She gained all that she sought, but she sought too little. The Roman empire was less comprehensive

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than the kingdom of heaven, and it was less comprehensive because it was less microscopic. measured forces too much by the extensiveness of their range, and too little by the intensiveness of their pressure. It incorporated the length and the breadth, but not the depth of humanity. The kingdom of heaven went down to the roots of human nature-to its wants, to its sins. If I were allowed to express the difference epigrammatically, I would say that the religion of Rome and the religion of Jesus were united in the first three petitions of that Christian aspiration called the Lord's Prayer. Rome said with Christianity, "Hallowed be Thy name”; she was prepared to assert and to maintain the dignity and the solemnity of that imperial structure which she reverenced. She said with Christianity,

Thy kingdom come"; her perpetual prayer was for the establishment of her ideal kingdom. She said with Christianity, "Thy will be done"; she undertook no enterprise until she had first inquired whether that enterprise should be favoured by heaven. But there the concord ended and the difference began. When Rome passed from the divine to the human, she proceeded to halt in her petitions. She had no prayer for the pure and simple forgiveness of moral debts; she could only ask what atonement would be accepted by the gods. She had no prayer to be led out of the way of temptation; she depreciated the danger on this side