In three centuries, after persecutions the most dire, the Christian Church won her way from the gloom of the catacombs to the imperial throne of Rome. The hand of power sought to check her progress, but in vain; the sword of persecution raised against her fell from the hand of the tyrant; the insidious breath of heresy could not corrupt her purity, nor the splendid teachings of Athens or Alexandria draw her from her sublime mission of truth. She consoled the slave, she cheered and strengthened the martyr, she elevated and purified all; she struggled with Paganism--with its profane and captivating rites--with its proud philosophy and its millions of refined and luxurious votaries. She won disciples from every grade, and class, and nation, until Christianity became the national religion of the proud and persecuting empire of the Cæsars. But now, that very empire which the Church has won is tottering to ruin; new difficulties beset her, and a new mission awaits her. The Goth, the Hun, and the Vandal have seized on the richest provinces of Rome. Her cities lie in ruins, her temples are profaned, and Europe seems again fast sinking into hopeless barbarism; the clash of arms and the yell of triumph has silenced the voice of civilization, and the jargon of her rude conquerors startles the ear in the very streets of Rome; streams of human population pour in from the northern nations--they extinguish the Roman power, and carry into the heart of Europe new traditions, a new mythology, new habits of thought, and new principles of action. And whilst the north was thus violently convulsed by the crash of the western empire, the south was not less violently agitated by the rising greatness of the Saracen. From the Atlantic to the Pacific the sway of Omar extended; and many were the cities ruined, and many were the literary monuments destroyed by these untamed children of the desert. In such perils what is able to save--what spirit could brood over this social chaos and breathe into it order and beauty--what power could move in the track of the desolating host, could collect the half ruined fragments of classic art and construct them again into a still more beautiful temple of learning? What influence could wean that lawless race from the wild ways of rapine and the degrading vices of savage life, and make them rival and excel the polished Roman in all the arts and accomplishments of civilized life? The Church alone could arrest the onward march of barbarism, and restore social order; with prophetic glance she seemed conscious of the perils that beset her, and prepared to overcome them. Augustine, Jerome, Hilary, and Prosper, the last expiring lights of the past civilization, were the devoted children of the Church. In the sixth century, when the schools of the empire were closed, her monasteries were the sole sanctuaries of learning. In them she studied and taught, and opposed an organised resistance to