and lives of the leading actors in modern history is not more important than it is difficult of solution.  Plutarch, better than any other ancient writer, affords the means of estimating the motives, the principles, the objects, of the men of the old time.  We see in his pages what they were; we see the differences between them and the men of later days.  How far are those differences exhibitions of inferiority or of superiority?  How far do they result from the influence of secondary causes? how far from the change in religious belief?

No man who knows much of the course of history will venture to insist greatly on any essential change for the better having been wrought as yet by Christianity in the manner in which the affairs of the world are carried on.  Christianity has not yet been fairly tried.  Nations calling themselves Christian are still governed on heathen principles.  Christianity has been for the most part perverted and misunderstood.  The grossest errors have been taught in its name, are still taught in its name.  Falsehood has claimed the authority of truth, and its claim has been granted.  The stream which flowed out pure from its source has been caught in foul cisterns, has been led into narrow channels, has been made stagnant in desolate pools and wide-spread weedy marshes.  The doctrine of Christ has had thus far in the world but very few hearers who have understood it.  Many a modern creed might well go back to heathenism for improvement.  This perversion of Christianity is a chief element in the difficulty of tracing the real influence of true Christian teaching upon character.  It is this which compels us to draw a parallel, not so much between the actual characters of ancient and modern times, if we would rightly understand the differences between them, as between what we may assume to be the ideal standards of the heathen and the Christian.  But to treat this subject with the fulness and in the manner which it deserves would lead us too far from Plutarch, and we have done enough in suggesting it as matter for reflection to those who read his Lives.

One of the most marked differences in the position of the ancient and the modern man is that which has been quietly and gradually brought about by science; but its effect is little recognized by the mass of men or the most wide-spread churches.  It is the difference of his recognized relations to the universe.  While this earth was supposed to be the central point and main effort of creation, while the earth itself was unknown, and all the regions of space were regarded as void and untenanted, save by the inventions of fancy, man may have seemed to himself a creature of large proportions and of considerable importance.  He measured himself with the gods and the half-gods, and found himself not much their inferior.  In reading Plutarch, one cannot fail to be struck with the manly self-reliance of his best men of action.  Their piety had no weakness of self-abasement in it.