himself as subordinated to a higher power,
and labors under a sense of obligations which begets habits of
self-control that are the life of morality. The ideal character of the
Christian religion is such that faith in God and future rewards tend to
make the earth life an image of the divine. This is the glory of both
reason and faith, that it perceives the invisible. The students of the
present have no trouble to see that the true greatness of the nation of
antiquity was in their attribute of morality. Virtue and morality in an
ancient ruler shines in history even across the dark ages, and makes
glad the heart of the student of the nineteenth century. Faith in God
has been the great leading thought in the rise of nations--that is, in
reformations. Luther and Melancthon preceded Lord Bacon, Newton and
Locke. The few stars that lit up the gloomy night that preceded the
reformation and the revival of literature were lighted by the faith of
God. Speaking of this fact, Dr. Goode says: "We behold a flood of
noonday bursting all at once over every quarter of the horizon and
dissipating the darkness of a thousand years; we behold mankind in
almost every quarter of Europe, from the Carpathian Mountains to the
pillars of Hercules, from the Tiber to the Vistula, waking as from a
profound sleep to a life of activity and bold adventure; ignorance
falling prostrate before advancing knowledge; brutality and barbarism
giving way to science and polite letters; vice and anarchy to order and
moral conduct.

"The modern opposers of Christianity, reasoning in a retro-grade
motion--that is, going backwards--ascribe every improvement to science
and philosophy, but it was religion that took the lead in _both_ the
great revival of learning and the reformation. Aldhelm, Bede and Alcuin
were three great Anglo-Saxon luminaries of the eighth century. Alcuin
was the tutor and confidential friend of Charlemagne. Ingulph, made
abbot of Croyland by William the Conquerer, was the bright light of the
eleventh century. To him we are indebted for much that has come down to
us. John of Salisbury, Girald the Cambrian, and the monk Adelard, and
Robert of Reading were all religious leaders. The last two traveled in
Egypt and Arabia, studied mathematics at Cordovia. Adelard translated
Euclid out of Arabic into Latin. Such also was Alfred the Great, who was
victorious in prosperity and adversity, as a legislator and philosopher,
as a soldier and politician, a ki