mote past.

Thus, considering merely this _analogism_, might one have prophetically
announced, even in the generations immediately succeeding to Christ,
when Christianity bade fair to become a world-power in a new
civilization, that here, indeed, was a new planting of Mysteries, which,
although infinitely transcending them in fulness and meaning, were
yet the counterparts of mysteries which had hitherto swayed the human
heart,--but that, pure and holy as were these mysteries, they should
yet, in their human connections, share the vicissitudes of the
old,--that, like them, they should march through tribulations on to
triumph,--that, like them, once having triumphed and become a recognized
source of power, they should be linked with hierarchical delusions and
the degradations of despotism,--that, like them, too, in some future
generation, they should, through the protesting intellect, be uplifted
from these delusions and degradations. Thus, also, and following the
same guidance, might our prophet have foretold the _political_ shapings
of the newly emerging hemisphere of Christendom. He would thus, through
a precise analogy in ancient history, have anticipated the conjunction
of principles so novel in their operation as were those of Christianity
with the new races, then lying in wait along the skirts of the Roman
Empire, and biding their time. From a necessity already demonstrated in
the ancient world, he would have foreseen the necessity of Feudalism for
the modern, as following inevitably in the train of barbarian conquest,
the recurrence of which had been distinctly foreshadowed. In connection
with the Protestantism of intellect in religious matters, he would have
anticipated a similar movement in politics; he would have prefigured the
conflict that was to be renewed between the many and the few for
power; and if by some miracle his material vision could have been made
coextensive in space with the scope which was possible for him in
thought, if he could have followed the sails of Columbus across the
Atlantic, then, in connection with the transference of European
civilization to the New World, and foreseeing the revulsion in habits
and institutions that must follow such local separation, he might
have indicated the arena which _representatively_ was to stand for
Christendom, and in which, if anywhere, the great problem of human
freedom should be solved, either by a success so grand that the very
reflex of its splendor