uphin, he taught him how God is above man,
as man is above the brute. Monarchy--as he showed in his _Politique
Tiree de l'Ecriture Sainte_--is hereditary and absolute; but
absolute power is not arbitrary power; the King is God's subject,
and his laws must conform to those of his Divine Ruler. The _Discours
sur l'Histoire Universelle_ (1681) was written in the first instance
for the Dauphin; but its purpose was partly apologetic, and Bossuet,
especially in the second part of the book, had the errors of
free-thinkers--Spinoza and Simon--before his mind.

The seventeenth century had not contributed largely to historical
literature, save in the form of memoirs. Mezeray, in the first half
of the century, Fleury, in the second, cannot be ranked among those
writers who illuminate with profound and just ideas. The Cartesian
philosophy viewed historical studies with haughty indifference.
Bossuet's _Discours_ is a vindication of the ways of God in history,
a theology of human progress. He would exhibit the nations and
generations of human-kind bound each to each under the Providential
government. The life of humanity, from Adam to Charlemagne, is mapped
into epochs, ages, periods--the periods of nature, of the law, and
of grace. In religion is found the unity of human history. By religion
is meant Judaism and Christianity; by Christianity is meant the
Catholicism of Rome.

Having expounded the Divine policy in the government of the world,
Bossuet is free to study those secondary causes which have determined
the rise and fall of empires. With magisterial authority, and with
majestic skill, he presents the movements of races and peoples. His
sympathy with the genius of ancient Rome proceeds not only from his
comprehensive grasp of facts, but from a kinship between his own and
the Roman type of character. The magnificent design of Bossuet was
magnificently accomplished. He hoped to extend his studies, and apply
his method to other parts of his vast subject, but the hope was not
to be fulfilled. A disinterested student of the philosophy of history
he is not; he is the theologian who marshals facts under an accepted
dogma. A conception of Providence may indeed emerge from the
researches of a devout investigator of the life of humanity as their
last result; but towards that conception the secular life and the
various religions of the world will contribute; the ways of the Divine
Spirit will appear other than those of the anthropomorp