ery fast. By the memorable words, "Of such
is the kingdom of heaven," Christ unbarred the portals of the
future world and revealed therein hosts of angelic children. Ever
since then children have been seen in heaven. The poet has sung
that the angel child is first on the wing to welcome the parent
home. Painters have shown us, in their visions of the blessed
realms, crowds of cherubs, have shown us

"How at the Almighty Father's hand,
Nearest the throne of living light,
The choirs of infant seraphs stand,
And dazzling shine where all are bright."

Fifthly, the triumphant establishment of Christianity in the world
has thrown the prestige of public opinion, the imposing authority
of general affirmation and acceptance, around its component
doctrines chief among which is the doctrine of immortality and
secured in their behalf the resistless influences of current
custom and education. From the time the gospel was acknowledged by
a nation as the true religion, each generation grew up by habitual
tutelage to an implicit belief in the future life. It became a
dogma not to be questioned. And the reception of it was made more
reasonable and easy by the great superiority of its moral features
over those of the relative superstitions embodied in the ethnic
religions which Christianity displaced.

Finally, Christianity has exerted no small influence both in
expressing and imparting faith in immortality by means of the art
to which it has given birth. The Christian ritual and symbolism,
which culminated in the Middle Age, from the very first had their
vitality and significance in the truth of another life. Every
phase and article of them implied, and with mute or vocal
articulation proclaimed, the superiority and survival of mind and
heart, the truth of the gospel history, the reality of the opened
heaven. Who, in the excited atmosphere, amidst the dangers, living
traditions, and dramatic enactments of that time, could behold the
sacraments of the Church, listen to a mighty chant, kneel beside a
holy tomb, or gaze on a painting of a gospel scene, without
feeling that the story of Christ's ascent to God was true, being
assured that elsewhere than on earth there was a life for the
believer, and in rapt imagination seeing visions of the
supernatural kingdom unveiled?

The inmost thought or sentiment of mediaval art to adapt a
remarkable passage from Heine6 was the depression of the body and
the elevation of the soul. Statues of