Page:Three introductory lectures on the study of ecclesiastical history.djvu/14

6 the historical student. Out of a great variety of documents, sometimes contemporaneous, sometimes posthumous, sometimes regular narratives, sometimes isolated fragments, is to be constructed the picture of events, persons, manners most diverse. The style and language, of primitive abruptness, pregnant with meaning, is eminently suggestive. The historical annals are combined with rich and constant illustration, from what in secular literature would be called the poets and orators of the nation. There is everything to stimulate research, even did these remains contain no more than the merely human interest which attaches to the records of any great and ancient people.

But the sons of Israel, as we all know, are much more than this. They are, literally, our spiritual ancestors: their imagery, their poetry, their very names have descended to us; their hopes, their prayers, their Psalms are ours. In their religious life we see the analogy of ours; in the gradual, painful, yet sure unfolding of divine truth to them, we see the likeness of the same light dawning slowly on the Christian Church. They are truly 'our ensamples.' Through the reverses, the imperfections, the errors, the sins of His ancient Church, we see how "God at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past to our fathers," bringing out of all the highest of all blessings, as we trust that He may still through like vicissitudes to the Church of the present and to the Church of the future.