he
natural instincts of the catholic church, as being indeed the
long-desired initiator of a religion of cheerfulness, as a true lover
of the industry--so to term it--the labour, the creation, of God.

And this severe yet genial assertion of the ideal of woman, of the
family, of industry, of man's work in life, so close to the truth of
nature, was also, in that charmed hour of the minor "Peace of the
church," realised as an influence tending to beauty, to the adornment
of life and the world. The sword in the world, the right eye plucked
out, the right hand cut off, the spirit of reproach which those images
express, and of which monasticism is the fulfilment, reflect one side
only of the nature of the divine missionary of the New Testament.
Opposed to, yet blent with, this ascetic or militant character, is the
function of the Good Shepherd, serene, blithe and debonair, beyond the
gentlest shepherd of Greek mythology; of a king under whom the beatific
vision is realised of a reign of peace--peace of heart--among men.
Such aspect of the divine character of Christ, rightly understood,
[115] is indeed the final consummation of that bold and brilliant
hopefulness in man's nature, which had sustained him so far through his
immense labours, his immense sorrows, and of which pagan gaiety in the
handling of life, is but a minor achievement. Sometimes one, sometimes
the other, of those two contrasted aspects of its Founder, have, in
different ages and under the urgency of different human needs, been at
work also in the Christian Church. Certainly, in that brief "Peace of
the church" under the Antonines, the spirit of a pastoral security and
happiness seems to have been largely expanded. There, in the early
church of Rome, was to be seen, and on sufficiently reasonable grounds,
that satisfaction and serenity on a dispassionate survey of the facts
of life, which all hearts had desired, though for the most part in
vain, contrasting itself for Marius, in particular, very forcibly, with
the imperial philosopher's so heavy burden of unrelieved melancholy.
It was Christianity in its humanity, or even its humanism, in its
generous hopes for man, its common sense and alacrity of cheerful
service, its sympathy with all creatures, its appreciation of beauty
and daylight.

"The angel of righteousness," says the Shepherd of Hermas, the most
characteristic religious book of that age, its Pilgrim's Progress--"the
angel of righteousness is