of such appearances that we expect to find in the end the change transitory or else hypocritical; or, if it be genuine, that the convert was never a criminal of the deepest dye, but perhaps rather unfortunate than guilty. Must we not, then, still conclude that Christ has in this instance made a miscalculation, and that if he has not overrated the power of Enthusiasm so long as Enthusiasm exists, he has at least overrated the probability of its continuing long, and underrated the power of the agencies which are always at work to damp and quench it? Instead of presuming that the Church would generally be under the influence of enthusiasm, ought he not rather to have foreseen that it would generally be lukewarm and enthusiastic only at rare intervals? The answer is, that Christ does not actually seem to have been thus sanguine, but he counted the Enthusiasm not merely an important but an absolutely essential thing, and therefore left no directions as to what should be done when it was absent. He did not disguise from himself the probability of great seasons of depression occurring in the Church, ebbs in the tide of the Enthusiasm of Humanity. He spoke of a time when the love of many should wax cold; he doubted whether on his return to the earth he should find faith in it. And the Apostles in like manner became sensible that their inspiration was liable to intermissions. They regard it as possible to grieve the Divinity who resided within them, and even to quench his influence. But neither they nor Christ even for a moment suppose that, if he should take his flight, it is possible to do without him, or that the sphere of Christian duty is to be narrowed to suit the lukewarmness of Christian feeling. Christianity is an enthusiasm or it is nothing; and if there sometimes appear S in the history of the Church instances of a tone which is pure and high without being enthusiastic, of a mood of Christian feeling which is calmly favourable to virtue without being victorious against vice, it will probably be found that all that is respectable in such a mood is but the slowly-subsiding movement of an earlier enthusiasm, and all that is produced by the lukewarmness of the time itself is hypocrisy and corrupt conventionalism. Christianity, then, would sacrifice its divinity if it abandoned its missionary character and became a mere educational institution. Surely this Article of Conversion is the true articulus stantis aut cadentis ecclesiæ. When the power of reclaiming the lost dies out of the Church, it ceases to be the Church. It may remain a useful institution, though it is most likely to become an immoral and mischievous one. Where the power remains, there, whatever is wanting, it may still be said that the tabernacle of God is with men.' 259 CHAPTER XXI. THE LAW OF RESENTMENT. IT is not the fault of the divine virtue of Mercy that it is so readily counterfeited by the vice of insensibility. The difference is indeed vast, but it often does not express itself at all in outward deeds. The difference lies in that indignation at vice which in the merciful man may often be suppressed, while in the merely tolerant man it has no existence. Mercy has been defined above as a feeling of mixed indignation and pity; properly speaking, Mercy is present wherever such a feeling is entertained, whether the action dictated by the feeling be punishment or forgiveness. There are occasions when the wise man who entertains this compound feeling will see fit to indulge the pity and suppress the indignation; there are other occasions when he will gratify the indignation and resist the impulses of pity. But he is not merciful unless he feels both. Thus the man who cannot be angry cannot be merciful, and we shall be able to assure ourselves that that unbounded compassion for sinners which Christ showed was really Mercy and not mere tolerance, by enquiring whether on other occasions he showed himself capable of anger. Of the two feelings which go to compose Mercy the indignation requires to be satisfied first. The first impulse roused by the sight of vice should be the impulse of opposition and hostility. To convict it, to detect it, to contend with it, to put it down, is the first and indispensable thing. It is indeed a fair object of pity even while it remains undetected and prosperous, but such pity must be passive and must not dare to express itself in deeds. It is not mercy but treason against justice to relent towards vice so long as it is triumphant and insolent. So long, if we may venture upon the expression, mercy will be even sterner and more unpitying than justice, as the poet felt when he wrote And oh! if some strange trance The eyelids of thy sterner sister press, But the moment that indignation begins to be in some measure satisfied, pity awakes; and when indignation is satiated then Pity occupies the whole mind of the merciful man. We have seen Christ when his feelings were in this latter condition, when he moved among that class of criminals upon whom justice had in some measure done its work. They were suffering the sentence of social excommunication. His indignation towards them was not dead but satisfied, and therefore in his demeanour few traces of it appear. But there must have been in Palestine another class of criminals, a class which is found in all countries, whose vices are not detected or pass for virtues, and who accordingly reap all the advantages and suffer none of the penalties of crime. In the presence of such a class true Mercy, as we have seen, makes her face as a flint, and hardens and stiffens into mere Justice. We find, then, in Palestine a class of persons towards whom Christ's demeanour was precisely of this kind. It was a class not less influential and important than might be produced in England by fusing the bar, the clergy, and universities and the literary class into one vast intellectual order. It is to be remembered that with the Jews theology, law, science, and literature were but different aspects of one thing, the Divine Revelation which had been made to their fathers and which was contained for them in the Scriptures of the Old Testament supplemented, in the view of the most influential party, by a Tradition of equal antiquity and authority. As there was but one sort of learning, there was but one learned profession, consisting of the expounders of this ancient wisdom. At least these constituted the one learned profession which had much influence at this time, and which could be said to deserve the title. The old Aaronic priesthood still existed, but it bore the stamp of a ruder age and wanted the character and acquirements which conferred influence in an age of books and study. As in Greece the priesthood passed into insignificance and resigned the task of instructing the people, so far as they had ever undertaken it, to the philosophers, so in Judæa they were eclipsed first by the prophets and afterwards, when the faith in inspiration began to die out, by the commentators on the old Law. The order of Aaron gave place to the order which regarded Ezra as its founder; the priest gave place to the Scribe or Lawyer. At the time when the national institutions of Judæa were threatened by the Greek kings of Syria, there sprang up a party composed of those who clung most fondly to ancient traditions, the object of which was to preserve the nation from losing its peculiarity through the infection of Greek manners and opinions. They bore the name of |