ward Christian organisation, and between the consequences to human
nature and society which flowed from the first, and the advantages which
may be traced to the second. There was on the one hand a doctrine,
stirring dormant spiritual instincts, and satisfying active spiritual
needs; on the other an external institution, preserving, interpreting,
developing, and applying the doctrine. Each of the two has its own
origin, its own history, its own destiny in the memories of the race. We
may attempt to estimate the functions of the one, without pronouncing on
the exact value of the other. If the idea was the direct gift of heaven,
the policy was due to the sagacity and mother-wit of the great
ecclesiastical statesmen. If the doctrine was a supernatural boon, at
least the forms in which it came gradually to overspread Europe were to
be explained on rational and natural grounds. And if historical
investigation of these forms and their influences should prove that they
are the recognisable roots of most of the benign growths which are
vaguely styled results of Christianity, then such a conclusion would
seriously attenuate the merits of the supernatural Christian doctrine in
favour of the human Christian policy.

If there had been in the Christian idea the mysterious self-sowing
quality so constantly claimed for it, how came it that in the Eastern
part of the Empire it was as powerless for spiritual or moral
regeneration as it was for political health and vitality, while in the
Western part it became the organ of the most important of all the past
transformations of the civilised world? Is not the difference to be
explained by the difference in the surrounding medium, and what is the
effect of such an explanation upon the supernatural claims of the
Christian idea? Does such an explanation reduce that idea to the rank of
one of the historic forces, which arise and operate and expand
themselves in accordance with strictly natural conditions? The
Christianity of the East was probably as degraded a form of belief, as
lowering for human character, and as mischievous to social wellbeing, as
has ever been held by civilised peoples. Yet the East, strangely enough,
was the great home and nursery of all that is most distinctive in the
constituent ideas of the Christian faith. Why, in meditating on
Christianity, are we to shut our eyes to the depravation that overtook
it when placed amid unfavourable social conditions, and to confine our
g