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 172 disparaged the things of this world in order to quicken our desire for things eternal, it might suffice to hint that Christianity is a large word, and represents at present a great many different phases of thought. Mr. Arnold objected, rationally enough, to the lugubrious hymns from which the English middle classes are wont to draw their spiritual refreshment; and Dr. Holmes, it will be remembered, has spoken quite as strongly in regard to their depressing influence upon New England households. But Christianity and the modern hymn-book are by no means synonymous terms, and to claim that the early church deliberately lowered the scale of human joy is a very different and a very grave charge, and one which Mr. Pater, in Marius the Epicurean, has striven valiantly to refute. With what clear and delicate touches he paints for us the innocent gayety of that new birth,—a gayety with no dark background, and no heartbreaking limits of time and space. Compared to it, the sombre and multitudinous rites of the Romans and the far-famed blitheness of the Greeks seem incurably narrow and insipid. The Christians of the catacombs were