Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/28

 The Church in its spiritual work, the Church in its intellectual work, the Church in its work with the sword, or with the plough, or with the axe; the soul and spirit of all true civilisation, of all true liberty, of all true knowledge; the Church in its work of evil, in the abasement of its divine energies, in the vile fetters of priest-craft, in the blind paroxysms of popular fanaticism, in the strange varying fortunes that allies Ireland with Rome, Scotland with Geneva, setting father against son, and husband against wife, the herald of peace with a sword; such an influence so wide in its extension, so deep in its penetration, so ancient in the past, and in the future eternal, could by itself account for the unity, the life of modern history: the life, the soul of a body which thrills at every touch. The student cannot handle his subject-matter as he can a skeleton; if he is a true student he knows himself to be at work among living influences, some active, some slumbering, but all of which are so vital and so entangled that he cannot move without making someone feel, or without being himself affected in his process and in his judgment by the system of which he is himself a part. Modern History is the history of ourselves, of the way in which we came to be what we are, of the education of our nation, of the development of our government, of the fortunes of our fathers, that caused us to be taught and governed and placed as we are, and formed our minds and habits by that teaching, government, and position; and as for the soul, that other portion of us,—unchanged by education, government or fortune, unchanged and untrained in the development and education of the world, unchanged except by the Spirit of God beginning at the beginning in every one that is new born of Him,—that gift in which almost alone we trace the unity of our nature with that of the ancient world, in its waywardness, and short-sightedness, and self-will, what can all history tell us other or more than this, how God sent light into the world and men loved darkness rather than light, how they have perverted, but not closed the way of eternal life?

But if the student of Modern History finding himself at work among such subjects misses the facility with which Ancient History may be handled, he has the advantage to