Greece developed individuality of the finest type, and Rome created a social compact on the grandest scale; but it was reserved for a yet further step in westward civilization to blend these two elements, personal independence and social loyalty, under the auspices of liberty governed by law. Neither the Greeks nor Romans had a separate term for institution, that truest exponent of modern society. But this grand conservative and redeeming power in due time appeared, when there arose, amidst the ruins of exhausted imperialism, a society both young and ardent, united in a firm and fruitful faith, inwardly gifted with preternatural power, and endowed with an unlimited capacity for external expansion. This was Christianity, the blessed philosophy of God on earth. The necessity of replying to heathen adversaries, and the desire of defining and enforcing the Christian doctrines, gradually led to the formation of a species of philosophy peculiar to Christianity, and which successively assumed different aspects, with respect to its principles and object. The spirit of Grecian philosophy thus transferred into the writings of the early fathers, in after times proved the material germ of original speculations. Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Arnobius, and Lactantius, first employed philosophy as an auxiliary to assist in winning over the more cultivated classes to the Christian religion. Subsequently it was turned to the refutation of heresies, and lastly applied to the elucidation and formal statement of the prevailing creed. Most distinguished of his age was Aurelius Augustinus, born A.D. 354, at Tagaste in Africa. After having studied the scholastic philosophy, and became an ardent disciple of the Manicheans, he was converted to the orthodox faith under the preaching of Ambrose, at Milan, A.D. 387, and eighteen years after was made bishop of Hippo. The religious philosophy of this great writer became the pivot of dogmatical science in the West, and has swayed the destinies of millions of minds from the time Justinian closed the classic schools, and the Gothic king Theodoric put Boethius, the last of the ancient philosophers, to death. Augustin, who ended the Augustan age of philosophy, while yet far from the great centre of the succeeding age, now sleeps at Pavia, in the very bosom of its domain. Such is the grand truth of universal history; all living greatness, and even the remains of the dead, move only toward the West. CHAPTER V. RELIGION.