It was the subject to which the ablest Christian writers of the first three centuries devoted their energies, carrying on in no alien spirit the work of the Apostles, meeting assailants at every point, demolishing with comparative ease the fabric of heathen superstition; winning a nobler and more fertile triumph over the intellect of Greece. Nor was the work thus well begun wholly intermitted during the ages which intervened between the overthrow of ancient, and the full development of modern, civilization; a civilization which owes whatever it has of life and power to its reception and assimilation of Christian principles.[152] But, as might be expected, the work had to be begun anew, new difficulties were to be met, new victories were to be achieved, when the spiritual and intellectual energies of Europe were set free by the vast upheaval of mind at the Reformation. The way was opened by representative men. Grotius, who combined in a most remarkable degree the accurate and profound learning and the clear dispassionate judgment characteristic of his countrymen, produced the first complete treatise, "_De Veritate Christianæ Religionis_," soon adopted as the standard work by Protestants, translated into every language of Europe, and by our own Pocock into Arabic, for the use of the East. England followed early in the field, and in the last century fairly won the place, which she still retains, among the foremost champions of the Cross. Nor did the persecution which arrested the progress of the Reformation in France, then, as ever, unhappy in her struggles for light and air, suppress the workings of spiritual thought. Of all advocates of the faith, none penetrated more deeply into its foundation, none ascended with a stronger flight or keener vision into its highest sphere, none combined more varied gifts of intellect and spirit than Pascal, a name bright with the gracious gleam of letters, dear to "science," dearest above all to Christian truth.[153] Germany, too, great in every field of intellectual power, has not been unmindful of the duty of maintaining and defending the deposit of truth--a duty specially incumbent upon her as first leader in the revolt against usurped authority--not wholly unmindful, though as yet she is far from having discharged her debt to Christendom, of late years perplexed and harassed by her reckless abuse of power. Still in the past, among other great names, Leibnitz, who represents, perhaps more fully than any one man, the peculiar characteristics of German intellect, laid the foundations of a system, in which the true relation between the Christian revelation and God's universe is examined. And at this present hour men sound in the faith, full of the love and light of Christ, are bringing the resources of profound learning and vigorous intellect to bear upon the chaotic turmoil of anti-Christian influences. Within this present year several works have