137

Facsimile

Transcription

Status: Page Status Transcribed

44

and poetry, cherished by the wealth and taste of Venice,
Florence and Genoa, cast a warmer glow and roseate
hue over the blue skies of Italy.

Even beneath the withering hand of a vagabond pope-
dom, Petrarch sung his undying love, and Rome's gen-
tler superstitions taught Rafaelle to abandon the misty
and rigid forms of Gothic rule, and give human shape to
divine essences; Rome's sins made Dante tell his ter-
rific ecstacies, and Rome's iron heeled tyrannies crushed
from the great heart of Cola de Rienzi a shriek which
startled the sluggish ears of Europe as if it were the
echo of Brutus' voice crying, "Justice, liberty, Rome
again is free." It was then, too, that Padua and Bologna
and Pavia, rebelling against the mental despotism of the
Church, broke through the "reluctant shades of Gothic
night," and with the immortal thought of Greece and Rome,
and sent its beams even to the rude coasts of Britain,
then "Earth's loneliest bounds and ocean's wildest
shores." Then, too, a flimsy scholasticism was fading
before a more vigorous and profound comprehension of
the old philosophies. Men began to comprehend that
Plato and Aristotle had indicated the true pathway up
to the holy precincts of Christianity, and that with them
we might approach its portals, and still standing beneath,
look up to the Angel of Faith, "on whose brow the
light of the world was beaming," ready to open to all
who would ask for entrance in her name. This was in
the most intimate accordance with the spirit which had
preserved the English Church through so many ages
and troubles. It was the right seed for the English
heart and mind. It grew apace and heavenward until
its genial foliage overspread the land, and the thistles
and noxious weeds of Rome, and the scentless blossoms
of formal philosophy, withered beneath it.

The invention of the mariner's compass, the extension
of geographical knowledge, came in happy coincidence
to aid in the glorious work of intellectual emanicipation
and religious and political advancement. But far above
these extraneous impulses--far above all the devices of
man, or human chances--Christianity, in all its glorious
attributes of angelic beauty and Divine power--Chris-
tianity, God's essence--stooped from His throne to bear

45

upward the still feeble and drooping wing of human
learning. She bade man gaze around and beneath him
at the realms of nature, inward on his own heart, and
upward to the realm where Hope and Faith claim their
everlasting home.

Christianity is not learning--Christianity is not knowl-
ledge--Christianity is not philosophy--Christianity is the
sublime faith of the eternal soul--and without it, neither
learning, nor science, nor philosophy, nor liberty, can
bear that fruitage which nourisheth the heart of man;
but rather that which withereth away into bitter ashes.
Pure and undefiled, this Divine essence hovered around
the English Church and the English Universities--and
driving away the fading shadows of antiquity, and lop-
ping off the lifeless forms of Rome, bade the Church
gather her strength from all human learning, and arming
her with the panoply of Divine truth, and planting her
forever on England's regenerating soil, she scatters her
true children over the earth--and to-day, from India's
remotest bounds, they are outstretching their pious
hands to ask her blessing, and we here, beneath this
free sky--ourselves as free--are raising our prayerful
voices, and crying--All hail, our mother! (Great ap-
plause.)

It was, then, the revivial of ancient learning and
thought, under the revealed tutelage of Christianity,
which caused the final disruption from Rome, and pro-
duced that Reformation which has advanced human so-
ciety to its present condition, and is, age by age, ad-
vancing it to man's highest capacities. The ashes of
Huss were scattered on the Rhine, and a Council of
Constance had exhumed and desecrated the bones of
Wyckliffe--and yet, in less than a century, the voice of
Luther was thundering at the Vatican--and again, in
less than another century, Bacon had gathered all hu-
man knowledge, and traversed the realms of nature,
even to the very verge of that domain, where the Eter-
nal and Invisible dwelleth in "unapproached light"--
and the pilgrim fathers were standing on Plymouth
Rock--and again the English Protestant Church knew
her triple offspring.

The assumption is indisputable, that the Reformation

Notes and Questions

Nobody has written a note for this page yet

Please sign in to write a note for this page