when humanity began deeply to feel this, and it was the first dawn of a glorious day. Christianity arose and called upon men as moral beings, to the humblest of whom its founder lowered himself. The apsis of the basilica contained an Augusteum, where the statues of the Cæsars were divinely worshiped; but these were to be exchanged for holier symbols and a higher truth. God never abandons his dependent creatures, but affords them light according to their destinies here below. Even amidst the darkest idolatry true adoration was presented by Job in Arabia, Melchisedec in Syria, and the Queen of Sheba in Æthiopia or India. Orpheus, the Thracian, older than Homer, living more than sixteen centuries before Christ, taught many things to be admired respecting God, the word, and the creation of the world. Justin Martyr, in his first apology to the Roman senate, says, "Socrates was accused for the same crime as that of which we are accused, namely, of asserting that there is but one God." Irenæus says that Plato had sounder views of religion than the heretics of his own day whom he was refuting. The conformity of his doctrine to some features of the Hebrew scriptures is well known. Augustin says, that if Plato could return to the world, he would doubtless become a Christian, as most of the Platonicians of his time did. But something more was needed than the aspirations of patriots, or the sacred suggestions of philosophers, and the world's greatest want was met in the divine lessons imparted through the elect people of God. Out of the Abrahamic tribe of faith Moses formed the Jewish nation. Natural stubbornness and the lingering superstitions contracted from the sacerdotal caste of Egypt, necessitated the ritual and ceremonial regulations by which they were first encompassed. Moreover, inspired prophets, called from the humblest ranks of the people, counteracted the hierarchical and regal tendencies of the more aristocratic classes, and by degrees elevated all to the conception and adoption of comparative republicanism in church and state. Disciplined by successive revelations, and decimated by death, they gradually became competent to enjoy unmixed truth and liberty governed by law. The rule of conscience which the father of the faithful had made the distinctive law of his particular household, Moses extended throughout the legislation of the first religious nation; it only remained, in due time, for the humanly realized God to divinize man by extending this celestial influence and control over all mankind. It was necessary that the gross fetichism of the East should be entirely eradicated from the race destined to plant true religion on earth; and so the wandering tribes sojourned in the wilderness until the generation, contaminated by actual contact and intercourse in Egypt, were all dead. Then prophets more enlightened and progressive arose, who occupied an intermediate position between the material dispensation of Moses