Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 6.djvu/248

242 242 H. W. SCOTT. there is a bridge connecting the past glory of Hellas and of Rome with the prouder fabric of modern history ; that Western Europe is Romanic and Germanic Europe classic ; that the names of Themistocles and Scipio have to us a very different sound from those of Asoka and Salmanassar ; that Homer and Sophocles are not merely like to the Vedas and Kalidasa, attractive to the literary botanist, but bloom for us in our own garden all this, as Niebuhr and Mommson show us, is the work of Csesar ; and, while the career of his great predecessor in the East (Alexander) has been reduced nearly to ruins by the tempests of the Middle Ages, the structure of Csesar has outlasted those thousands of years which have changed religion and polity for the human race and even shifted the center of civilization itself, and it stands erect for what we may term perpetuity. It is the greatest and most permanent work yet achieved in the secular world under the leadership of a single mind. The comparison with it, in the world of spirit and re- ligion, is the life and career of Jesus of Nazareth and the hold this name has on the spirit of mankind. Secular history and religious history that is, under the old description, history sacred and profane go to- gether, meet on a common ground. Again, the connection and the unity of history is established. Shall I shock any reverent mind? I would not willingly. But in the scheme of history that I here set forth, with Jesus I include Socrates and Plato, Alexander and Caesar, and Charlemagne ; I include Columbus and John and Sebastian Cabot; I include I extend now the illustra- tion Washington and Jefferson, and Hamilton and Lin- coln. I include the history of the United States of America. All this connected history is no marvel. It is all linked together, and fits in together. We separate religious and political systems now, and the two run on parallel lines. But the whole world has not yet separated them.