For the study is one not only of living interest, but also of supreme importance. Other history may be more or less antiquarian. Its ultimate result may be only to gratify our curiosity and to add to the stores of our knowledge. But Christianity claims to be a present guide of our lives. It has been so large a factor in the moral development of our race, that we cannot set aside its claim unheard. Neither can we admit it until we know what Christianity is. A thousand dissonant voices are each of them professing to speak in its name. The appeal lies from them to its documents and to its history. In order to know what it is, we must first know both what it professed to be and what it has been. The study of the one is the complement of the other; but it is with the latter only that we have at present to do. We may enter upon the study with confidence, because it is a scientific inquiry. We may hear, if we will, the solemn tramp of the science of history marching slowly, but marching always to conquest. It is marching in our day, almost for the first time, into the domain of Christian history. Upon its flanks, as upon the flanks of the physical sciences, there are scouts and skirmishers, who venture sometimes into morasses where there is no foothold, and into ravines from which there is no issue. But the science is marching on. “Vestigia nulla retrorsum.” It marches, as the physical sciences have marched, with the firm tread of certainty. It meets, as the physical sciences have met, with opposition, and even with contumely. In front of it, as in front of the physical sciences, is chaos; behind it is order. We may march in its progress, not only with the confidence of scientific certainty, but also with the confidence of Christian faith. It may show some things to be derived which we thought to be original; and some things to be compound which we thought to be incapable of analysis; and some things to be phantoms which we thought to be realities. But it will add a new chapter to Christian apologetics; it will confirm the divinity of Christianity by showing it to be in harmony with all else that we believe to be divine; its results will take their place among those truths which burn in the souls of men with a fire that cannot be quenched, and light up the darkness of this stormy sea with a light that is never dim. LECTURE II. GREEK EDUCATION.