his perpetual and immediate intercourse with his chosen nation by their priests and prophets, could not directly help that people to true happiness, and had only the effect of preventing them from sinking with so deep a plunge as the rest of the nations, and of preserving among them a sanctuary of believing hearts, with whom the Messiah, at his coming in the flesh, might connect his new work of mercy. If, then, the very people of God themselves, who had his appointed constitution, his law, and his wisdom from heaven, were thus dwindled down to nothing; how could less be expected of the Grecian imperial government, whose wisdom was of this world, and contained so little of Divine and fundamental truth? Even the Grecian empire was to come to nothing, and to confess, by its fall, that it had not within itself enough stamina of truth and of Divine life, to overcome the powers of dissolution and death, and to make good its promises of happiness to the nations.

(e.) Condition of the East and West.

THE fundamental idea of Greece, was liberty; that of the East, was unity by implicit obedience. The history of the eastern empire is a history of attempts to plant and support unity by implicit obedience. The history of Greece exhibits a series of attempts to secure a freedom for every department of intellect and common life. The history of the fourth universal empire, namely, the Roman, is pervaded by a continual struggle between liberty and implicit obedience. Whereas,

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as, in the East, every endeavour was directed to reduce the importance of individuals to a mere component fraction of the great total, by uniting very large masses, as much as possible, under one general absolute will,-the ruling aim in Greece was to adjudge to every individual a share in the government; so that, indeed, every subject, and at the same time every ruler, was severally serviceable to the whole, though he still remained his own master. The Greeks would neither be governed, nor govern by sensible physical strength, but by the power of mind; and this dominion continued with them, when all other power was taken away. But, as they extended their dominion, foreign mixture could not be avoided; and this in turn had its influence upon themselves, their constitution, and their religion. Had the Grecian ideas, which were diffused over nearly the whole civilized world, especially by the victories of Alexander, possessed inherent life, the nations would have been made happy by them, and their empire Iwould have been rendered immoveable.

But

thus was it to be made evident, that even by the most refined and exalted education of the human mind, which it cannot be denied that the Greeks attained, no power is awakened in man sufficient to restrain the corruption of human nature. Whether the spirit of inquiry and experiment, which was stirred by the diffusion of Grecian ideas among the nations, served more to further or to hinder the reception of Christian truth, it is not easy to determine; for often was it the very character of this Grecian philosophy to

hate and despise the truth, as we learn from Acts vi. 9, etc., and Acts xvii. 18, etc.; and as St. Paul himself declares, in 1 Cor. i. and in other places, what sort of position the word of God had to take against Grecian wisdom.

IV. THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

(a.) Rome's Earliest History.

ITALY was, probably at the earliest dispersion of mankind, peopled by the family of Ashkenaz; but every fresh eastern movement, which occasioned individual nations or national families to seek out new settlements in the West, brought a fresh mass of settlers into these western countries; and the genealogy of Italy's earliest periods contains such a multitude of various names, that it can no longer be decided which settlers came earlier or later, or which settled in Upper and which in Lower Italy. Among them we may mention the Etruscans, (or Etrurians,) who appear to have had their period of cultivation in very early times, and long before the existence of the Romans. Beside these was the central part of Italy, inhabited by the Latins, the Campanians, the Umbrians, the Samnites, and other petty nations. In Latium, the territory of the Latins, was built about the year 753 B.C. that city in which the empire of the world was for the longest period to have its seat, and which, next to Jerusalem, and yet in a way of contrariety and opposition to it, is to be regarded as