we should not wish it eradicated. It is the bitter oil in the kernel that gives the peculiar flavor to the fruit. That remnant of bitterness in the lot of man, so far from depreciating the value of human life, enhances its significance by supplying the needful tonic without which the spirit would rest and rust in sluggish contentment with the present, and, ceasing to aspire, would forfeit the prize of its higher calling. The end of man is not enjoyment, but discipline, education, growth, effective service. Given a lot of unbroken ease, and life would not be worth living. LIFE AND CHARACTER OF AUGUSTINE. THE HE formation of the Christian Church in the early ages of its history was a process involving many elements besides Christianity proper, as represented in the Gospels. Jewish cabalism, Greek and Roman polytheism, Alexandrian mysticism, Persian dualism, Indian gymnosophism, are among the confluents which emptied their tributary streams into this providential river, and became coefficients of a faith whose triumphs are owing in part to its having appropriated all that was vital in foregone and contemporary creeds and rites. And not only did the Church inoculate itself with ideas from without; it also absorbed into its system and transubstantiated into its own kind, by "the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus," the blood and temper of many climes. The dreaming Oriental, the volatile Greek, the practical Roman, the impetuous Goth, the fiery African, are all represented in its organism. |