Page:Three introductory lectures on the study of ecclesiastical history.djvu/18

10 exercised any widespread or lasting control over the general condition of mankind.

We stand, therefore, at the close of the first century, like travellers on a mountain-ridge, when the river which they have followed through the hills is about to burst forth into the wide plain. It is the very likeness of that world-famous view from the range of the Lebanon over the forest and city of Damascus. The stream has hitherto flowed in its narrow channel—its course marked by the contrast which its green strip of vegetation presents to the desert mountains through which it descends. The further we advance, the more remarkable does the contrast become,—the mountains more bare, the river-bed more rich and green. At last its channel is contracted to the utmost limits; the cliffs on each side almost close it in; it breaks through, and over a wide extent, far as the eye can reach, it scatters a flood of vegetation and life, in the midst of which rise the towers and domes of the great city, the earliest and the latest type of human grandeur and civilization.

Such is the view, backwards, and forwards, and beneath our feet, which Ecclesiastical History presents to us, as we rest on the grave of the last Apostle and look over the coming ages of our course. The Church of God is no longer confined within the limits of a single nation. The life and the truth, concentrated, up to this point, within the narrow and unbending character of the Semitic race, has