prevailed in antiquity, not merely among the Jews, but also among the Greeks and Romans, was, in accordance with the isolation of the nations before the great monarchies of the world arose, exclusive, and limited to their own people. The Jew considered none but the posterity of Abraham to be the people of God; the Greek held that none but a Hellene was a genuine man, or fully entitled to be called a man at all, and with reference to the barbarian he assigned himself the same exclusive position that the Jew did to himself towards the Gentiles. Even philosophers like Plato and Aristotle had not yet quite rid themselves of the national prejudice: the Stoics were the first to draw from the community of the faculty of reason in all men the inference of the essential resemblance and connection of all.

The Stoics were the first to look upon all men as citizens of a great republic, to which all individual States stand in only the same relation as the houses of the town to the whole, as a family under the common law of reason: the Idea of Cosmopolitanism, as one of the finest fruits of the exertions of Alexander the Great, first sprung up in the Porch; nay, a Stoic was the first to speak the word that all men are brothers, all having God for their father. As regards the Idea of God, the Stoics advanced the reconciliation between the popular polytheism and philosophical monotheism on the ground of the pantheistic view of the universe, so far as to consider Zeus as the universal Spirit of the universe, the original Existence, and the other gods as portions and manifestations of him; and in doing so they did, in the Idea of the Logos, describing universal Reason as the creative power of nature, prepare a conception which was afterwards to become of the utmost importance for the dogmatic foundation of Christianity. At the same time, by the allegorical interpretation which they applied to Homer and Hesiod in order to extract physio-philosophical ideas of the gods and their histories in the Greek mythology, the Stoics pointed out to the Alexandrian Jews and subsequently to the Christians, in the study of the Old and subsequently of the New Testament, the way of substituting at their pleasure a different meaning when they did not like the literal one.

However far a theory which places the highest good in pleasure, and deprives the gods of all interference with the world and mankind, appears to be moved from the line of spiritual development which helped to prepare the way for Christianity,- still, even in Epicureanism, traits are not wanting that bear some

resemblance to it. In the first place, it is especially true in philosophy that the most opposite tendencies come in contact when thoroughly carried out; and thus the highest Good of the Epicurean is not so far from that of the Stoic as might appear at first sight. For by that pleasure in which he places the highest Good, the Epicurean does not understand the highest sensual enjoyment, but an abiding tranquil state of mind, which requires the renunciation of much transitory enjoyment, the acceptance of much incidental pain; and the Epicurean tranquillity is closely connected with the Stoic apathy. It is true indeed that the vir tue of the Epicurean is never an object in and for itself, nor ever anything but a means for attaining that happiness which is separate from it; but still the means are so indispensable and so sufficient, that he can neither conceive virtue without happiness nor happiness without virtue. And though the Epicureans were not so prudish as the Stoics with regard to the outward good things of life, still they pointed to the simplicity of men's real wants, and to the advantage of keeping within the bounds of these wants, conversely also to the mode in which pain and misery may be conquered by the exercise of reason and coolness. In this the Epicureans, by their passive process, approached very nearly to the same point as the Stoics did by their active; and towards the latter they stood in a supplementary relation in those points in which Stoic severity became harshness and want of feeling. The Porch would know nothing of compassion and indulgence; Epicurus advised mercy and pardon, and the Epicurean principle, that it is better to confer a benefit than to receive one, corresponds exactly to the precept of Jesus, that to give is more blessed than to receive.

It was from the opposition and combat between these schools of Greek philosophy, of which the one regularly denied what the other maintained, the one thought it could refute what the other could maintain, that at last a doubt of all truth as capable of being known and proved — skepticism, as well philosophical as practical-developed itself. In this there seems at first sight to be a still wider separation from popular religious faith than had been before involved in men's applying themselves to philosophy. Still, the breaking of the last supports which human consciousness sought in philosophy might make that consciousness even more ready to receive a fresh supposed revelation of the Divine. The increase of superstition, the recourse to secret mysteries and novel forms of worship, which were to bring man into

14117 immediate contact with the Divinity, such as may be noticed about the time of the rise of Christianity even among the more cultivated classes of the Græco-Roman world, was the result of the fact that not merely the old religions now failed to give mankind the satisfaction which they sought for, but the existing philosophical systems also failed to do so. It is well known how in the third century after Christ the so-called Neo-Platonic philosophy sprang out of this unsatisfied want; but even in the last century before Christ we remark a precedent to this tendency in the same Neo-Pythagoreanism to which we ascribed, above, an influence upon the Therapeutico-Essenic sect among the Jews. If then such a want of a new method of contact with the Divine, a new bond between heaven and earth, was felt in the spirit of that time, and felt among the Jews as well as among the Gentiles, Christianity takes its place as one of a series of attempts to satisfy that want; and the recognition that it met with. is explained from the fact that it had the power of satisfying it in a more catholic and original manner than the artificially invented systems of Neo-Pythagoreanism and Neo-Platonism, or the secret league of the Therapeuts and Essenes.

If now, as compared with what the Greeks did to prepare the way for Christianity, we attempt to describe the assistance which the Roman people rendered, we may refer this assistance to two points. The first is the unity of one great Empire within which, even in the century before the birth of Christ, they had comprised all the known nations of the ancient world. In this Alexander had preceded them; but his kingdom, which besides did not comprise the real West, had not continued to exist as a unity, but had fallen into several pieces, among which there was never a complete cessation from a bloody struggle. It was impossible that the idea of Cosmopolitanism-the contemplation of man as man, and no longer merely as Greek, Jew, etc., etc.— could strike deep root until it did so in the Roman Empire of the world; so also it was necessary for the numerous and separate divinities of tribes and nations to unite and mix in this great communion of peoples, before the conceptions of them could resolve themselves into that of the one supreme and only God, the religions of the nations into a religion of the world. And with this change the spiritualization of religion was immediately connected. The One God could not be a material God, and for the God of all nations the usages were no longer suited by which this or that people had been accustomed to worship its own God. Christianity

having once arisen, was enabled to spread rapidly and unimpeded by means of the closer connection which the Roman rule had established by assimilation of education and institutions, as well as by the facilitation of intercourse between separate nations and countries. This dissemination was but an external addition to

all that preceded. The reverse side of this unity is the destruction of the happiness and comfort which one of these peoples had before enjoyed in its independence, in living according to its own laws and ancient traditions; the pressure with which the foreign yoke weighed upon them; the manifold acts of injustice to which in the later times of the Roman republic - especially during the civil war - they were obliged to submit. Men's life in this world being thus embittered, and all natural assistance against Roman oppression being at last despaired of, their minds were directed to the next world, their expectations to some miraculous succor such as that of the idea of the Jewish Messiah made them hope for, and Christianity promised after a spiritual fashion.

The other point which we may look upon as the Roman contribution towards the preparation of the way for Christianity is the practical turn of the Roman people. Even the late schools of Greek philosophy, such as the Stoic and Epicurean, had preferred applying themselves to the theory of morals; and in the hands of the Romans, who had little inclination for mere speculation or scholastic philosophizing generally, philosophy became entirely practical and popular. In the popular apprehension the opposition between different schools and systems was smoothed away. The consequence was that among the Romans especially was formed that Eclecticism, as the most famous representative of which Cicero is well known to all the world, though his real merit and importance in the history of progress has been lately overlooked; Seneca also, though he stands on Stoic ground, was not free from this Eclecticism: and in the writings of both there are found, about the One God and the consciousness of him implanted in men,- as well as about man, his Divine nature, its corruption and restoration,- thoughts and expressions the purity of which surprises us: while their resemblance to the doctrines. of Christianity, especially in the case of Seneca, has given occasion to the legend of a connection between him and the Apostle Paul, though it only shows how everything on all sides at that time was pressing towards the point at which we see Christianity immediately appear.

W

RUTH MCENERY STUART

(1856-)

ITHIN the last ten years Ruth McEnery Stuart has become prominent among writers of dialect stories, by an originality and charm which offset the disadvantages of her being a late comer in a well-worked field. One of her earliest magazine stories, Lamentations of Jeremiah Johnson,' proved that the possibilities of the dialect story were by no means exhausted. It was brightened with kindly humor; was in itself a quaint conception, having that general character of pleasantness which distinguishes Mrs. Stuart's stories, making them always

readable.

'Lamentations of Jeremiah Johnson' was followed by other stories of negro life: The Golden Wedding,' 'Lucindy,' 'Crazy Abe,' each told with force and naturalness, each a picture in which scenes and situations stand out by a quick succession of masterly strokes. Her characters are not subtle, but clear and sharp. To understand them, eyesight, not imagination, is required. There are more classic ways than hers of telling a story; but few are written with

less effort to be brilliant at the expense of RUTH MCENERY STUART truth. Her comedy rarely degenerates into

melodrama. Her pathos is never overdrawn.

She has not confined herself altogether to tales of negro life. 'Babette,' her only long story, is a pretty and conventional idyl of Creole life in New Orleans. The Sonny' series tells of the birth and education of the child of an Arkansas planter. The stories of Simpkinsville are of life in an Arkansas village. The Unlived Life of Little Mary Ellen is a pathetic tale of old-fashioned Southern gentlefolk.

Mrs. Stuart has lived the greater part of her life among the people and scenes which she describes so well. She was born in Marksville, Aroyelles Parish, Louisiana, in 1856. In 1879 she married Mr. Alfred O. Stuart, a planter of southern Arkansas, where she learned to know the after-the-war negro of the Southern plantations, the