The Church is for all ages and all conditions of men. She is equally effective in answering the soul-questionings of savage peoples, barbarous, semi-civilized, cultured, and æsthetic: of a superstitious monk of the Thebaid and of the philosopher Augustine, Bishop of Hippo: of a Thais of the desert and of Ursula, virgin and martyr: of Charles Martel, of the bloody battle Tours, and the gentle Francis of Assisi: of Constantine, Clovis, Charlemagne; and of John Henry Cardinal Newman, Mangan, Oscar Wilde, Strindberg, and Francis Thompson. As the manna that fell from heaven for the Israelites had in it every taste that might be in accordance with the peculiar desire of him who tasted, so in like manner, the Church of all ages has ever brought to her children that which was in accordance with their peculiar needs and desires. Fiercely kind, sternly kind, firmly kind, humanly kind, and divinely kind--as occasion may require, the Church has been and may be. In Charles Martel, hero of Tours, the Church had a gallant defender. Under his son Pepin, and his greater grandson Charlemagne, the Church made that leap forward, away from ninth century barbarism, up and onward to her fair and full flowering in the thirteenth century Renaissance. GREEK FIRE. At the second siege of Constantinople, when Moslemah with a land force of one hundred twenty thousand Arabs and Persians stood ready to attack the city; and a fleet of eighteen hundred ships--as a moving forest,--covered the Bosphorus, Constantinople seemed doomed. A night attack of the combined land and sea forces was planned; and no one might reasonably doubt the issue of the conflict. But here again the unexpected happened. Truly the race is not to the swift nor is the battle to the strong. Marathon, Salamis, Arbela, Tours, Cressy, Poitiers, Agincourt, Saratoga, Valmy,--were battles not to the strong. “There’s a divinity that shapes our ends.” As night approached and the formidable “moving forest” gathered round the doomed city, suddenly there darted amidst the towering timbers--lighted monsters, Greek Fire-ships belching forth from dragon-mouthed prows the fatal Greek Fire. Here, there, everywhere plunged the fire-breathing ships leaving behind them Moslem vessels in flames. The Bosphorus was on fire. Of the fated soldiers in that mighty fleet of eighteen hundred ships, few escaped to make known the tragedy or to describe the horribly magnificent scene.