after life. So long as Christianity held, though in a different shape, nearly the same mystic principles as Buddhism, the results in art were the same; for our ecclesiastical art was a revival of Buddhistic temples, with all their divisions and sub-divisions, their pointed arches, their variegated columns and pillars, the triforium, the altar (Daghopa), cloisters, chapels, and crypts. Christ’s divine words resounded at a period when the Greeks had long turned their minds to the licentious worship of the sensuous. The Egyptians, sighing under their Roman taskmasters, had taken refuge in dark mysticism, the meaning of which had been long lost to them; the Jews were divided into quarrelling sects, sunken in religious indifference, or occupied with mere outward formalities, hating everyone and hated by everyone. The Romans knelt tremblingly before an imperial divinity, slaves and poor being considered mere burdens on society; the rich were merciless, debauched, and revelled in amusements; infanticides, suicides, murder and decay, despair and annihilation, were every-day occurrences. At this period, under such circumstances, the divine Master died on the cross, sealing with his death the one great tiding of love: ‘that we are all children of _one_ Father, who is in heaven.’ The god of revenge of the old world was transformed into a God of inexhaustible love. With the Jews and the ancients, he only was blessed who had plenty on earth; now, the pure in mind, whether poor or rich, weak or mighty, beautiful or ugly, was extolled. God was not merely present in the universe as its living soul, or in a burning bush, in thunder and lightning, in growling volcanoes, in an ark, a carved idol, a statue or in a temple. God was present, wherever a kind, loving, and forgiving mind was ready to be His ark or temple. Christ repudiated all local gods; did not require any sacrifices of plants or animals; did not prescribe any diet, or outward sanguinary sign; did not allow polygamy; did not proclaim his followers the only _chosen_ children of the _Father of All_; but taught the one and indivisible, and ever-true law of peace, love, and tolerance. This doctrine is as universal as intellect; it must be of as divine origin as intellect itself; it is, and can be, the only faith which must once unite Humanity into one great loving and beloved brotherhood. What a change! Not only a change; it was the building up of a new glorious future; it was the re-establishment of the lost balance between the working forces of humanity; it was the redemption of our individual, moral, and intellectual capacities; it was the enunciation of an eternal law, under which humanity had, till then, unconsciously developed, but of which it became conscious in word as well as in spirit, through Christ. Slavery in body or mind was, at least in principle, for ever abolished; and one of the noblest edifices of Byzantine architecture in Italy, the church of St. Vitale