SOURCE: "Virgil as a Precursor of Christianity," in The Princeton Review, Vol. 4, July-December, 1879, pp. 401–20.

In the following essay, Shairp examines changing religious practices during the reign of Augustus, how these changes are embodied in the Eclogues, Georgics, and Aeneid, and how Virgil's theological views impacted western literature.

Scripture and reason alike combine to show that before the world could possibly have received Christianity it needed to pass through many centuries of preparatory discipline. It was only when this had been undergone that what St. Paul speaks of as "the fulness of the time" was come. All historians of the Christian Church have dwelt on this—none with more power than Neander in the opening of his great work [Allgemeine Geschichte der christliche Religion und Kirche, 1825–52]. If this preparation is an intrinsic part of the providential purpose that runs through history, we would naturally expect that while it embraced...