ondition daily realized. Not only do we
see many of the eminent, but also countless multitudes of the lowly and
obscure, whose common lives are, as it were, transfigured with a light
from heaven. Unhappy, indeed, is he who has not known such men in
person, and whose hopes and habits have not caught some touch of
radiance reflected from the nobility and virtue of lives like these. The
thought has been well expressed by the author of _Ecce Homo_, and we may
well ask with him, "If this be so, has Christ failed, or can
Christianity die?"

No, it has not failed; it cannot die; for the saving knowledge which it
has imparted is the most inestimable blessing which God has granted to
our race. We have watched philosophy in its loftiest flight, but that
flight rose as far above the range of the Pagan populace as Ida or
Olympus rises above the plain: and even the topmost crests of Ida and
Olympus are immeasurably below the blue vault, the body of heaven in its
clearness, to which it has been granted to some Christians to attain. As
regards the multitude, philosophy had no influence over the heart and
character; "it was sectarian, not universal; the religion of the few,
not of the many. It exercised no creative power over political or social
life; it stood in no such relation to the past as the New Testament to
the Old. Its best thoughts were but views and aspects of the truth;
there was no centre around which they moved, no divine life by which
they were impelled; they seemed to vanish and flit in uncertain
succession of light." But Christianity, on the other hand, glowed with a
steady and unwavering brightness; it not only swayed the hearts of
individuals by stirring them to their utmost depths, but it moulded the
laws of nations, and regenerated the whole condition of society. It
gave to mankind a fresh sanction in the word of Christ, a perfect
example in His life, a powerful motive in His love, an all sufficient
comfort in the life of immortality made sure and certain to us by His
Resurrection and Ascension. But if without this sanction, and example,
and motive, and comfort, the pagans could learn to do His will,--if,
amid the gross darkness through which glitters the degraded civilization
of imperial Rome, an Epictetus and an Aurelius could live blameless
lives in a cell and on a throne, and a Seneca could practise simplicity
and self-denial in the midst of luxury and pride--how much loftier
should be both the zeal and the att