and women in unknown villages and humble homes, “the faithful who were not famous.”  We do not doubt that there were such—­but were they relatively numerous?  If those who rose above the level of the multitude—­if those whom some form of excellence, and often of virtue, elevated into the reverence of their fellows—­present to us a few examples of stainless life, can we hope that a tolerable ideal of sanctity was attained by any large proportion of the ordinary myriads?  Seeing that the dangerous lot of the majority was cast amid the weltering sea of popular depravity, can we venture to hope that many of them succeeded in reaching some green island of purity, integrity, and calm?  We can hardly think it; and yet, in the dispensation of the Kingdom of Heaven we see such a condition daily realized.  Not only do we see many of the eminent, but also countless multitudes of the lowly and obscure, whose common lives are, as it were, transfigured with a light from heaven.  Unhappy, indeed, is he who has not known such men in person, and whose hopes and habits have not caught some touch of radiance reflected from the nobility and virtue of lives like these.  The thought has been well expressed by the author of Ecce Homo, and we may well ask with him, “If this be so, has Christ failed, or can Christianity die?”

No, it has not failed; it cannot die; for the saving knowledge which it has imparted is the most inestimable blessing which God has granted to our race.  We have watched philosophy in its loftiest flight, but that flight rose as far above the range of the Pagan populace as Ida or Olympus rises above the plain:  and even the topmost crests of Ida and Olympus are immeasurably below the blue vault, the body of heaven in its clearness, to which it has been granted to some Christians to attain.  As regards the multitude, philosophy had no influence over the heart and character; “it was sectarian, not universal; the religion of the few, not of the many.  It exercised no creative power over political or social life; it stood in no such relation to the past as the New Testament to the Old.  Its best thoughts were but views and aspects of the truth; there was no centre around which they moved, no divine life by which they were impelled; they seemed to vanish and flit in uncertain succession of light.”  But Christianity, on the other hand, glowed with a steady and unwavering brightness; it not only swayed the hearts of individuals by stirring them to their utmost depths, but it moulded the laws of nations, and regenerated the whole condition of society.  It gave to mankind a fresh sanction in the word of Christ, a perfect example in His life, a powerful motive in His love, an all sufficient comfort in the life of immortality made sure and certain to us by His Resurrection and Ascension.  But if without this sanction, and example, and motive, and comfort, the pagans could learn to do His will,—­if, amid the gross darkness through which glitters the