salt of the nations, if Christians are true to their belief and equal to their claim; nothing can make it so, nothing can secure that what has been, shall be, if they are not. And so we are brought back to the secret which our Lord's words intimate; the great secret of personal influence; the key of great movements; the soul of all that is deep and powerful, both in what lasts and in what makes change. It is of infinitely less consequence what others are and do against us, and what we do to resist and defeat them, and what we are as Christians ourselves. We ask a great thing, when we talk of influencing the world; let us believe that it imposes obligation, and must have its cost. Our Master's sentence, "Ye are the salt of the earth; ye are the light of the world," has been before now the bitterest of sarcasms, the deepest of shames. The wrath and scorn of men have trodden under foot, as He said, the salt that had lost its savour; and when the light became darkness, it has been darkness indeed. May we try so to live, that these words may not ring in our ears and thoughts as a mockery, or, what is worse, a hollow, self-complacent boast. Let us hear in them our Lord's claim on us. How each generation fulfils this call can never be

known to itself; it must be left to the judgment of posterity and the account of the Great Day. But we have in them the announcement that to the personal influence of Christians our Lord commits His cause; in personal influence His Church was founded, and by this it was to stand. May we never forget, amidst the contests and searchings of heart round us, that these words are the measure of what we were meant to be; the standard by which we shall all be tried.

CIVILISATION

BEFORE AND AFTER CHRISTIANITY

TWO LECTURES

DELIVERED IN ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL

AT THE

TUESDAY EVENING SERVICES

January 23 and 30, 1872

PREFACE

THE two following Lectures are part of an unfinished series which was begun in St. Paul's on Tuesday evenings during the winter of 1871-72, and which the preparations in the Cathedral for the Queen's visit to return thanks for the recovery of the Prince of Wales made it necessary to discontinue. The Lectures were an experiment, arising out of the desire of the Chapter to make the Cathedral of service to the large body of intelligent young men who follow their business around it, by treating, in a spirit not unbecoming the place and its purpose, subjects of interest and importance which are often assumed to be out of place in the pulpit. I have reprinted these two Lectures as a remembrance of an occasion of great interest to us at St. Paul's, and as being in some degree connected with the subjects of the preceding sermons.

R. W. C