day, from vain idols to serve the living God, and were
baptised into that holy church in which we now stand. And it has
been among us, and the nations who are our kinsmen, that the light
of the gospel has shone ever since, while all through the East,
where the apostles preached most and earliest, it has died out. So
that our Lord's words have been fulfilled, that many that are last
shall be first, and those that are first shall be last. God grant
that it may not always be so. God grant that his kingdom may return
to its ancient seat at Jerusalem, and that all nations may go up to
the mountain of the Lord's house, in the day of which St. Paul
prophesies, when the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled, and all
Israel shall be saved, when the earth shall be full of the knowledge
of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea. But it is not so now; and
cannot be so, as far as we can see, for many a year to come.

But in the meanwhile, why were our forefathers--heathens though they
were, and sinners in many things, being truly children of wrath,
fierce, bloodthirsty, revengeful, without the grace of Christ, which
is Love and Charity--nevertheless a people prepared for the Lord?
How was it true of them that to him that hath shall be given?

I will tell you. There is an old book, written in Latin by a
heathen gentleman of Rome, who lived in St. Paul's time, and wrote
this book about twenty years after St. Paul's death. It is a little
book; but it is a very precious one: and I think it is a great
mercy of God that, while so many famous old books have been lost,
this little book should have been preserved: for this Roman
gentleman had travelled among our forefathers; and when he returned
he wrote this book to shame his countrymen at Rome. In it he calls
us 'Germans;' but that was the Roman fashion. By Germans they meant
not only the people who now live in Germany, but the English and the
Danes, and the Swedes, and the Franks, who afterwards conquered
France. In fact he meant our own forefathers. And he said to the
Romans,--

'Look at these wild Germans. You despise them because they go half-
naked, and cannot read or write, and live in mud cottages; while you
go in silk and gold, and have all sorts of learning, and live in
great cities, palaces, and temples, in worldly pomp and glory. But
I tell you,' he said, 'that these wild Germans are better men than
you; for, while you are living in sin, in cheating and falsehood