of this world, secular still, became also the kingdom of Christ, when the pillars that upbore the Roman State and the paths that Rome had opened over land and sea sustained a structure and carried a message that were to remain when her dominion had fallen. "Rome alone," cries Claudian, "has taken the conquered to her bosom, and has made men to be one household with one name, and has linked far places in a bond of charity. Hers is that large loyalty to which we owe it that the stranger walks in a strange land as if it were his own, that men can change their homes, that it is a pastime to visit Thule and to explore mysteries at which once we shuddered, that we drink at will the waters of the Rhone and the Orontes, that the whole earth is one people." The benefits which Claudian describes as conferred by the Empire on the temporal intercourse of mankind were shared by the œcumenical commonwealth of the Church; and these benefits, indeed, took their origin from the military despotism which Julius Cæsar founded. But this ultimate result must not be allowed to reflect an unreal glory on the process by which that despotism was first established. Our judgment on the act by which a soldier and statesman of surpassing genius crowned a career of unparalleled success must not be confused by the fancy which would consecrate this act as a necessary part in the scheme of a beneficent Providence. To regard the special work of Cæsar as a direct preparation for the work of Christ is less extravagant, but not essentially less illogical, than it would be to
