the poets, the gentle breeze, is personified as Aura and Placida. The _perpetua felicitas_ of the devotee becomes a lovely presence in the forms of St. Perpetua and St. Felicitas, guardian angels of the pious soul. No relic of Paganism was permitted to remain in its casket. The depositories were all ransacked. The shadowy hands of Egyptian priests placed the urn of holy water at the porch of the basilica, which stood ready to be converted into a temple. Priests of the most ancient faiths of Palestine, Assyria, Babylon, Thebes, Persia, were permitted to erect the altar at the point where the transverse beam of the cross meets the main stem. The hands that constructed the temple in cruciform shape had long become too attenuated to cast the faintest shadow. There Devaki with the infant Crishna, Maya with the babe Boodha, Juno with the child Mars, represent Mary with Jesus in her arms. Coarse emblems are not rejected; the Assyrian dove is a tender symbol of the Holy Ghost. The rag bags and toy boxes were explored. A bauble which the Roman school-boy had thrown away was picked up and called an "agnus dei." The musty wardrobes of forgotten hierarchies furnished costumes for the officers of the new prince. Alb and chasuble recalled the fashions of Numa's day. The cast off purple habits and shoes of pagan emperors beautified the august persons of christian Popes. The cardinal must be contented with the robes once worn by senators. Zoroaster bound about the monks the girdle he invented as a protection against evil spirits, and clothed them in the frocks he had found convenient for his ritual. The Pope thrust out his foot to be kissed, as Caligula, Heliogabalus, and Julius Cæsar had thrust out theirs. Nothing came amiss to the faith that was to discharge henceforth the offices of spiritual impression. Stoles, veils, croziers, were all in requisition without too close scrutiny of their antecedents. A complete investigation of this subject will probably reveal the fact that Christianity owes its entire wardrobe, ecclesiastical, symbolical, dogmatical, to the religions that preceded it. The point of difficulty to decide is in what respect Christianity differs from the elder faiths. This is the next task its apologists have to perform. But this question does not concern us here. Having indicated the source whence the religion proceeded, and the process by which the successive stages in its development were reached, we have done all that was purposed. We have tried to make it clear that the Messianic conception from which it started, and from which its life was derived at each period of its growth, presided over its destiny in the western world, and introduced it to the place of honor it was afterwards called to fill.