in light in the long chapel
windows; and in the summer matins his figure, lighted up in splendour,
gleams down on the congregation as they pray, or streams in mysterious
tints along the pavement, clad, as it seems, in soft celestial glory,
and shining as he shines in heaven. Alas, alas! where is it all gone?

We are going to venture a few thoughts on the wide question, what
possibly may have been the meaning of so large a portion of the human
race, and so many centuries of Christianity, having been surrendered and
seemingly sacrificed to the working out this dreary asceticism. If right
once, then it is right now; if now worthless, then it could never have
been more than worthless; and the energies which spent themselves on it
were like corn sown upon the rock, or substance given for that which is
not bread. We supposed ourselves challenged recently for our facts. Here
is an enormous fact which there is no evading. It is not to be slurred
over with indolent generalities, with unmeaning talk of superstition, of
the twilight of the understanding, of barbarism, and of nursery
credulity; it is matter for the philosophy of history, if the philosophy
has yet been born which can deal with it; one of the solid, experienced
facts in the story of mankind which must be accepted and considered with
that respectful deference which all facts claim of their several
sciences, and which will certainly not disclose its meaning (supposing
it to have a meaning) except to reverence, to sympathy, to love. We must
remember that the men who wrote these stories, and who practised these
austerities, were the same men who composed our liturgies, who built our
churches and our cathedrals--and the gothic cathedral is, perhaps, on
the whole, the most magnificent creation which the mind of man has as
yet thrown out of itself. If there be any such thing as a philosophy of
history, real or possible, it is in virtue of there being certain
progressive organising laws in which the fretful lives of each of us are
gathered into and subordinated in some larger unity, through which age
is linked to age, as we move forward, with an horizon expanding and
advancing. And if this is true, the magnitude of any human phenomenon is
a criterion of its importance, and definite forms of thought working
through long historic periods imply an effect of one of these vast
laws--imply a distinct step in human progress. Something previously
unrealised is being lived out, and r