those two creeds one has become Aryan by adoption; the younger races accepted the gift which the elder cast aside; as the birthright of Edom passed to Israel, so the birthright of Israel passed to be the common heritage of the Greek, the Roman, and the Teuton. Rome is not Rome in all her fulness, she has not risen to the true height of her mission in the world, she is not fully mistress and teacher of the nations, till she has cast aside her old gods and has bowed to the spiritual mastery of a despised sect from a despised corner of her dominion. The miracle of miracles, greater than dried-up seas and cloven rocks, greater than the dead rising again to life, was when the Augustus on his throne, Pontiff of the gods of Rome, himself a god to the subjects of Rome, bent himself to become the worshipper of a crucified provincial of his Empire. The conversion of our own folk, the conversion of any other barbarian folk of Europe, was no marvel. Where Rome led, all must follow, Celt, Teuton, Slave, each in his turn. That Christianity should become the religion of the Roman Empire is the miracle of history; but that it did so become is the leading fact of all history from that day onwards. Explain the fact as we will, Christianity is the religion of the Roman Empire, and it is hardly more. It has been accepted by every land which either became part of the Empire or came under its influence; that is, it has become the creed of Europe and European colonies. Beyond those limits it has made conquests, but they have seldom been abiding; such cases as Abyssinia are exceptional, and after all they come of Roman influence more widely spread than usual. Christianity has never been the creed of any great power beyond the European world. The great nations of Asia and Africa have either kept their ancient heathendom or have become more distinctly antagonistic to the faith of Rome by embracing the faith of Arabia. On the other hand, no nation within the Roman pale can be said to have fallen away from Christendom. The folk of Christian lands have been enslaved or swept away; renegades have been many; whole tribes, as in Albania, have become apostates, but whole nations never. It would have sounded strange in the ears of Nero or of Trajan to be told that a day would come when the rule of Rome could be spoken of as the joint “rule of Christ and Cæsar;” to be told that their successors should be admitted to their office by rites borrowed from the sacred books of the Hebrew, at the hands of the chief of the sect whose votaries they sent to the lions or to the coat of fire. It was in a very deep and living sense that the words were fulfilled which said that the kingdoms of the world had become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ. But their highest fulfilment of all was when the Empire of the Cæsar came to rejoice in its Christian style of Holy; when the Emperor, Advocate of the Universal Church, deemed it a further honour to wear the garb and