condition * thus the fear of their slaves hindered Christian landowners in Spain from ridding their domains of the symbols of Pagan worship. Moreover, towards the close of the fourth century there was a perceptible change in the attitude of the servile class, and to some extent of the lower classes generally, towards Christianity; a change which, coinciding with, as will be shown, the rise of a middle class favourably disposed towards the faith, involved a corresponding change in the aspect and composition of the ecclesiastical body. But here, again, we may detect the hand of the noble-the influence of the master over the dependent. Hitherto the aristocracy had habitually ignored the fact of their slaves possessing souls, regarding them as they did simply as "bodies." But now, seriously alarmed at the continued defection of the Emperors from the national religion, they began to display some care for the spiritual welfare of their dependents: insisted on their recognition of Paganism, and forced them to do sacrifice to the national gods, by way of identifying them with their interests, and thus gaining, from however despised a quarter, some measure of support for the tottering fortunes of their party.† As a class intimately connected with that of the slaves, because continually supplied from its ranks, we may next take that of the freedmen; noticing their circumstances only so far as they were calculated to mould the character and determine the attitude towards Christianity of the members of this large and important class of Roman society. Not infrequently, as the history of the Empire shows us, the freedman rose to great eminence in the State, and, as minister of the palace, exercised a marked and most pernicious influence over the Emperor himself. Of Trajan's predecessors on the throne, Pliny the younger remarks that if they ruled the citizens the majority of them were themselves ruled by the freedmen. But instances of fortune such as this apart, the freedman, if compelled to work for his living, took his natural place either amongst the members of the professional classes, or, more generally, amongst the artisans and operatives with whose success, when a slave, he had already interfered, and thus helped to swell the numbers of a population of servile origin, whose substitution for a free-born people Augustus was too wise a statesman not to deplore.§ Often, however, in preference to honest industry of any sort, the freedman chose to live by his wits-to carry on, as it were, on independent lines and in a wider sphere, the artifices, the chicanery, and the immorality which had stained his conduct and swelled his peculium in his servile days. If, owing to his master's generosity, he had no need to exert himself at all, he too frequently became a victim to ennui and listlessness. He might, it is true, elect to remain-and he often did so-in his manumitted condition about the person, or at least in the service, of his former master. Speaking generally, the tendency with the freedman was to perpetuate the faults and vices of his servile state, if not to exaggerate them by reason of his freedom from the restrictions and obligations hitherto Plin., "Paneg.," 88. Epict., "Dissert.," IV. i. 33-41. *Beugnot, ii. 3. + Ibid. § Suetonius, "Aug.," 40. imposed upon him. Of the palace-minion, the unprincipled go-between, the idle loiterer, no high moral estimate can be formed; nor anything in their circumstances found to predispose them to accept the Gospel. Yet as forming part of the "plebicula" out of which the Church was gathered, the freedmen, like the members of other sections of that body, must frequently have joined the Christian ranks. While with regard to their brethren who remained in servitude, as to what could be, and doubtless often was, their attitude towards Christianity, we have the testimony of epigraphy in her record of a "whole family," i.e., freedmen as well as slaves, laying down together with their master their lives for the faith.* With the Roman freed woman things were somewhat different. If forced to work for a livelihood, she found apart from service few means of gaining one honestly and honourably: of the trades, businesses, and occupations which, however limited in number, women have followed in modern and Christian times, few were open to, few existed for her. Conscious of a stigma attaching to her from her former condition of lifepossibly also of actual degradation-she found herself shunned or courted according to the character of the society into which she was thrown. For of the reputation and too frequent destiny of this class of female society etymology tells its tale only too truly in the history of the word libertina. Yet to this class also-of whose members it might often have been said that they were sinned against rather than that they sinned-Christianity, which was no mere collection of dogmas but an organization, had not only its message but a work in life to offer. The freed woman might become a deaconess, take her part in the service of the sanctuary, and, more than this, find an outlet for her natural affections and for the pure and holy love the message had begotten in her breast, in ministering to the necessities and alleviating the sufferings of the poor and the sick. To pass on to the intermediate classes of Roman society, and to take of these first the professional-drawing a distinction, however, between those which were held to be suitable to the free-born Roman-viz., jurisprudence and the vocation of an advocate, and those which were regarded as beneath his dignity, and as such reserved for the foreigner, the freedman, or the slave-e.g., medicine, architecture, painting, and the teaching of rhetoric and grammar. With regard to the first-named professions, it may reasonably be supposed that their members were little likely to favour Christianity-implicated as they were from the nature of their professions with so much that was national and Roman, and as such Pagan; while of the latter class, rhetoric exhibited in the persons of her professors, as we have seen philosophy did in hers, a marked hostility towards the new religion. Properly speaking, the rhetorician was concerned with belles lettres alone, and charged with no other task than that of imparting a knowledge of grammar. But having frequent occasion in the discharge of his vocation to weave into the woof of his discourse subjects of Pagan mythology, he possessed Wall. iii. p. 319. ample opportunities of strengthening the popular beliefs-opportunities of which he did not fail to avail himself. Besides, he was in a measure bound to be orthodox. Into his hands had been entrusted for their education the noble youth, not only of Rome but of the provinces. If any suspicion arose of his orthodoxy, his lightest utterances were carefully watched, every symptom of defection noted. And for a rhetorician to openly avow Christianity, after the noble example of Victorinus, was to lose at once his popularity and his pupils-his very livelihood.* Taken as a class, the rhetoricians, whether of Rome, Milan, or the important towns of Gaul, were bitterly opposed to the new faith.† Then, again, the learned classes generally entertained feelings of contempt for Christianity. Varro had laid it down that truth was not a thing to teach the world;‡ whereas the Christian teacher taught his doctrines to all-women and children, weavers, cobblers, and fullers. And apparently in proportion to the contempt they felt for Christianity, was their own incapacity to comprehend its doctrines, or to detect in them, as a system of philosophy, anything but confusion. To use the words of St. Gaudentius, "Confusa esse apud nos omnia philosophi gentium judicant." What was revealed to babes was in fact hidden from the wise and prudent. Its professional sections however apart, middle-class society, especially in the provinces, was on the whole favourable to Christianity. While the senatorial families, and the upper bourgeois who held themselves aloof from all beneath them, were hostile to the religion-chiefly it would seem from a wish to follow the lead of the Roman aristocracythere grew up in the provinces, especially after the establishment of the Curiæ, an intermediate class-independent in character and free from the weakness of aping their social superiors-whose members in large numbers became converts to the faith, and in time formed the staple of the party of Christianity.§ It remains only to note briefly after what manner the representatives of these different classes of society respectively bore themselves after their acceptance of Christianity and as professing members of the Church. A readiness to adopt the tenets was not necessarily tantamount to a consistent practice of Christianity. There was always a danger that members of the lower classes should be led by curiosity, fashion, and especially in the case of the slaves, interested motives, to enrol themselves in the Christian ranks with little or no reflection on the con sequences of their act. In such cases apostasy was a frequent result. The atheism and moral corruption which prevailed to so great an extent towards the close of the fourth century, proved too much and presented temptations too powerful for those who had never counted the cost or been seriously impressed by the truths of Christianity, and whose con * Beugnot, ii. 3. + Ibid. vii. 7. S. Aug., "De Civ. Dei," iv. 31. § Beugnot, ii. 3. Curiously in accordance with this ultimate tendency of middle-class provincial society is M. Renan's testimony-based on the authority of epigraphy-to the "kindness, conjugal_fidelity, probity" of this same section of society under Pagan influences. "Hibbert Lectures," Lect. i. p. 23. duct won for them the appellation of " mali, ficti Christiani."* The aristocrat, on the contrary, had counted the cost of his confession. He had had to overcome many an obstacle, to combat many a prejudice within his own breast, to wrench himself from many a lifelong association, before he could accept Christianity with its levelling tendencies; but his adhesion once given, he neither wavered nor proved himself an apostate. With a name and an ancestry famous in the annals of pagan Rome, he set an example of consistent piety and the practice of every Christian virtue. This conclusion then may surely be arrived at. The members of the different classes of Pagan society were very largely influenced as to the attitude they assumed towards Christianity by the question of their class. Further, and speaking generally, the aristocracy as a body—for there were many noble exceptions-were, not only at first but for a long while, opposed to Christianity on political or national grounds, or blinded to its merits by caste prejudices; while the lower classes— servile and free-were not only not repelled by the new religion, but to a great extent positively attracted towards it by that in it which responded to their needs and soothed them under privations and miseries incident to their condition in life. On the other hand, by their frequent apostasy, especially after the cessation of persecution and the recognition of the Church by the State, they gave rise to the suspicion that their conversion had too often been one of a facile and half-hearted description, if not actuated by interested motives, and, at any rate, a wholly different thing from the inward change which in the case of the smaller and aristocratic section of the Christian body had been evidenced by steadfast faith and consistency of conduct. Lastly, as to the middle classes, while one section—viz., the professional-was opposed to Christianity on grounds of self-interest, another and an increasingly important one, free alike from the political prejudices of the aristocracy, the subserviency of the plebeian, and the demoralizing circumstances of the servile classes, accepted the Gospel so extensively and with such sincerity of purpose as to become in time the very staple of the Christian community. In the treatment of our subject we have been concerned with the influence of Class upon human conduct in the matter of accepting or rejecting the Gospel, in reference only to the early times of the Church's history. The circumstances of an age in which Christianity is outwardly professed necessarily differ from those of one during which it was in open conflict with Paganism. But the existence of such an influence, in the past at least, renders probable its operation at the present day, however limited and modified it may be by the difference we have denoted, and whatever-whether similar or dissimilar to those we have traced-the results by which it is attended. C. G. CLARKE. REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT FOR INDIA. HE above question is really equivalent to asking if it be wise or possible for a man to make use of his mental capacities. But we are accustomed to reason and think about the people of India as we reason and think about no other people under the sun. "Able Indian administrators" have succeeded in persuading us that the two hundred millions of human beings who inhabit our Indian Empire are so deficient in mental capacities that to keep them fast bound under the yoke of a military despotism is a most humane and righteous proceeding. Despotisms, we are willing to admit, when they exist in Russia, in Germany, or in Austria, constitute a mode of Government which cannot be condemned too strongly. But in India it is different. In the British civilians whom we annually export to that country we have (at least so our Anglo-Indian administrators assure us) struck upon a vein of human character, the like of which has never been witnessed in the world. Wielding the powers of an irresponsible despot, these superior personages never succumb to the vices of despotism. Appointed to rule over a continent of imbeciles, from whom, therefore, they can derive no assistance, they divine with unerring sagacity exactly what is best for the imbeciles, and in the execution of their plans exhibit the same consummate sagacity as in their original conception. There can be no question that this the official account of our position and acts in India-is a comfortable thing to believe, if by any means it is possible to give it credence. The difficulty in the way of its reception is, that it requires us to suppose that the Miraculous, expelled from every other part of the habitable globe, has securely established itself in India and is daily performing prodigies in the interests of British rule. For the members of the Indian Services who are supposed to work these regenerative miracles are not men living withdrawn in a |