the Stoics were of opinion, that the consummation of all things would be effected by fire. Yet every philosopher, however rational in many parts of his system, not only adopted some absurdity himself, but wove it into his code. One believed that the soul was only a vapour, which was transmuted from body to body, and was to expiate, in the shape of a brute, the sins it had committed under that of a man. Another affirmed that the soul was a material substance, and that matter was endowed with the faculties of thought and reason. Others imagined every star to be a god. Some denied not only a superintending, but a creating Providence; insisting that the world was made, without any plan or contrivance, by a fortuitous concourse of certain particles of matter; and that the members of the human body were not framed for the several purposes to which they have been accidentally applied. One affirmed the eternity of the world; another, that we

can be certain of nothing,-that even our own existence is doubtful.

A religion so absurd, which had no basis even in probability, and no attraction but what it borrowed from a preposterous fancy, could not satisfy the deep-thinking philosopher; — a philosophy abstruse and metaphysical was not sufficiently accommodated to general use to suit the people. Lactantius, on the authority of Plato, relates, that Socrates declared there was no such thing as human wisdom. In short, all were dissatisfied. The wise had a vague desire for a religion which comprehended great objects, and had noble ends in view. The people stood in need of a religion which should bring relief to human wants, and consolation to human miseries. wanted a simple way, proportioned to their comprehension; a short way, proportioned to their leisure; a living way, which should give light to the conscience

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and support to the mind; a way founded, not on speculation, but evidence, which should carry conversion to the heart as well as conviction to the understanding. Such a religion God was preparing for them in the Gospel of his Son. Christianity was calculated to supply the exigencies both of the Greeks and of the barbarians; but the former, though they more acknowledged their want, more slowly welcomed the relief; while the latter, though they less felt the one, more readily accepted the other.

Alexander, though he had the magnanimity to declare to his illustrious preceptor, that he had rather excel in knowledge than in power, yet blamed him for divulging to the world those secrets in learning, which he wished to confine exclusively to themselves. How would he have been offended with the Christian philosophy, which, though it has myste ries for all, has no secrets for any! How would

would he have been offended with that bright hope of glory, which would have displayed itself in the same effulgence to his meanest soldier, as to the conqueror of Persia !

But how would both the monarch and the philosopher have looked on a religion, which after kindling their curiosity, by intimating it had greater things to bestow than learning and empire, should dash their high hopes, by making these great things consist in poverty of spirit, in being little in their own eyes, in not loving the world, nor the things of the world.

But what would they have said to a religion which placed human intellect in an inferior degree in the scale of God's gifts; and even degraded it from thence, when not used to his glory? What would they have thought of a religion, which, so far from being sent exclusively to the

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conquerors in arms, or the leaders in science, frankly declared at its outset, that "not many mighty, not many noble "were called;" which professed, while it filled the hungry with good things, to send the rich empty away?

Yet that mysterious HOPE which Alexander declared was all he kept for himself, when he profusely scattered kingdoms among his favourites; - those ambiguous TEARS which he shed, because he had no more worlds to conquer; that deeply felt, but ill understood hope, those undefined and unintelligible tears, mark a profounder feeling of the vanity of this world, a more fervent panting after something better than power or knowledge, a more heartfelt " longing "after immortality," than almost any express language which philosophy has recorded.

"Learn of me" would have been thought

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