One-sided Determination,' to characterise the primitive notion of Causation. In this stage of culture, it cannot properly be said that there is the notion of Miracle, any more than of Law. For both notions are implicit in this first stage. In order to the clear development of the notion of Law, there is needed the development of the notion of Miracle. This, we now see, was the great intellectual service performed by Christianity, under the predominating Semitic influences of its Oriental origin. But the relation of the development of the notion of Miracle to the clear and complete development of the notion of Law, cannot here be fully pointed out. A more favourable occasion will, doubtless, offer itself in the sequel.' Here I must content myself with but thus briefly indicating that the ultimate explanation of the development of the notion of Miracle, as the antithesis of that of Law, is to be found in relating it to that vast historical movement of the differentiation of the Subjective and the Objective, which was initiated by the great Revolution of the Sixth Century, B.C. And I trust that it will be one of the main results of this work to prove that such a differentiation is the true generalisation of the activity of that great middle period of Thought which, under the dominancy of Christianity, has prepared the way for that final conception of Causation as Mutual Determination, the establishment of which will be the triumph of the Modern Revolution.

14. But if I must here only thus briefly indicate how it was that, notwithstanding all its train of undeniable Below, chap. v. sect. ii.

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mischiefs, and false as was its fundamental intellectual notion, Christianity was still of immense service to the intellectual progress of Humanity; the consideration. of the service rendered by Christianity to the moral progress of Mankind must be altogether postponed. Not here, by the river of Egypt, is there, but hereafter, perhaps, on the hills of Syria-at Bethlehem, at Jerusalem, or at Nazareth--there may be, fit inspiration. But still, as, considering it from an intellectual point of view, I have unfavourably contrasted the Christian with the Neo-Platonic theory of the Trinity; I must here suggest, at least, the vast superiority, in a moral point of view, of the Christian conception. Just consider it. In the Neo-Platonic conception of the Trinity there is a mere repeated relation of sequence. The Persons, on the other hand, of the Christian Trinity are in such relations to each other as to form what can hardly by any phrase be more adequately expressed than by that, already quoted, of Bossuet's: une sainte et divine société.' The Father, the co-eternal only-begotten Son, and the Holy Spirit proceeding from both the one and the other. Is it calculable the effect of such a supreme ideal of Love? What matters it that this sublime dream has no verifiable reality in a Supernatural Existence? Has not man thus set himself an ideal of Love, in the constraining beauty of which there is the prophecy of its realisation in Humanity itself?

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15. Thus does the New Philosophy of History teach us to look, not with the mere impartiality of cold indifference, but with the high justice of many-sided sympathy on the great facts of the history of Man.

And so, if we take the side of the Neo-Platonists against Christianity, it is but because we see that what they saw of its mischiefs was true; and know that what we know of its benefits they could not know. But if we judge this religion without sentimentality, we judge it also without hatred. For there can be no hatred where there is no fear. And the New Philosophy of History not only assures us, by that great law which is its central doctrine, that the days of a religion, of which the fundamental intellectual conception is Miracle, are numbered, and its power over, at least, all those who can rise to the conception of Law, given to another; but assures us, by the incomparably grander reach of its sympathy when set side by side with the historical philosophy of Christianity, that the Revolution of which it is at once the philosophy and the religion will ultimately be triumphant; assures us that the Philosophy of History, of which the outcome is the Ideal of Humanity, will, not only because of its greater truth, but because of its wider love, ultimately triumph over that-beneficent as, notwithstanding all the mischiefs of its falsehood, in its day, it has been— that philosophy at once and religion of which the central figure is a miraculous Christ.

SECTION III.

THE RELATION OF BROADCHURCHISM TO NEO-PLATONISM.

1. IF such a conclusion as that to which we are led by an historical analysis of the facts, and philosophical consideration of the bearings of the development of the notion of Miracle, excites loud murmurs of dissent; subtle arguings about the interpretation of myth and legend, in order to such a reconciliation of Reason and Faith as may haply content the former, and leave the latter untransformed; and a confused clamour of definitions of Christianity in which its intellectual aspect as a great historical revolution is left wholly out of account-standing where we now are, the futility of all this babble is too evident to permit of its disturbing our confidence in the conclusion by which it has been excited. On this silent shore, once so thronged with the varied fervent life of that great transitional age dominated by the Schools of Alexandria, we but hear the disputes of the later Neo-Platonists over again. Again this strand re-echoes with moral ideas and aspirations which have no adequate expression or due satisfaction in the Old Faith; re-echoes with innumerable explanations and interpretations,' allegorisings

Of these, in ancient times, there were, at least, three distinct systems, which may be distinguished as the Stoical, the Euhemerist, and the Neo-Platonic. The first offered explanations founded on physical facts; the second, historical explanations; and the third, explanations partly by means of a theory of demons, partly by aid of mystical allegories. Quite singularly analogous are the hermeneutical systems of our Christian Latitudinarians.

and spiritualisings of the Old Creed; re-echoes with declamations that but testify to sense of the need, and want of the power of reconstruction. For again we approach the culminating epoch of a great age of Transition. Again, with an old religion, a civilisation is seen to be falling into ruin. And again, we hear the despairing cries of those who, notwithstanding all their love of the old religion, and all their subtlety in spiritualising its materialism, see, not only that it is doomed, but with it the whole social system of which it was the life. And yet, as then, the destruction of the old religion and civilisation was, so now the same phenomenon will be the prelude, not, as imagined, to universal anarchy, but to a new and higher religion, a new and higher civilisation.

2. But similar as is modern Latitudinarianism, or, to use a preferable, because shorter and Saxon word, Broadchurchism, to ancient Neo-Platonism,' the essential difference between them must not be overlooked; and, in pointing it out, I hope to clear away all doubt that may still exist as to the intellectual character of the Christian Revolution. Neo-Platonism fought for a true intellectual conception, or for what must be

The restoration attempted satisfies nobody; criticism sees that it is but a compromise with the exigencies of an uncomfortable position; and conservatism prefers the old ruins to a castle in the air.'-Saturday Review, 1864, pp. 786-7, in a notice of Richter's Ueber Leben und Geistesentwickelung des Plotin. But with a really humorous Protestant blindness, it is to 'the partial reaction of our own age in the direction of Roman Catholicism,' that the rise and fall of the Neo-Platonic Philosophy is said to 'present a singular parallel.' Surely if any parallel is to be drawn at all, modern Roman Catholicism is the representative of the ancient Orthodox Paganism, and, as in the text I maintain, Protestant Broadchurchism of Neo-Platonism.