Alexandria and her Schools | Page 4

will, I cannot
but believe also, reassert themselves, and have to be reasserted by all
wise teachers, very soon indeed, and it may be under most novel
embodiments, but without any change in their eternal spirit.
For I may say, I hope, now (what if said ten years ago would have only
excited laughter), that I cannot but subscribe to the opinion of the many
wise men who believe that Europe, and England as an integral part
thereof, is on the eve of a revolution, spiritual and political, as vast and
awful as that which took place at the Reformation; and that, beneficial
as that revolution will doubtless be to the destinies of mankind in
general, it depends upon the wisdom and courage of each nation
individually, whether that great deluge shall issue, as the Reformation
did, in a fresh outgrowth of European nobleness and strength or usher
in, after pitiable confusions and sorrows, a second Byzantine age of
stereotyped effeminacy and imbecility. For I have as little sympathy
with those who prate so loudly of the progress of the species, and the
advent of I know-not-what Cockaigne of universal peace and plenty, as
I have with those who believe on the strength of "unfulfilled prophecy,"
the downfall of Christianity, and the end of the human race to be at
hand. Nevertheless, one may well believe that prophecy will be
fulfilled in this great crisis, as it is in every great crisis, although one be
unable to conceive by what method of symbolism the drying up of the
Euphrates can be twisted to signify the fall of Constantinople: and one
can well believe that a day of judgment is at hand, in which for every
nation and institution, the wheat will be sifted out and gathered into
God's garner, for the use of future generations, and the chaff burnt up
with that fire unquenchable which will try every man's work, without
being of opinion that after a few more years are over, the great majority
of the human race will be consigned hopelessly to never-ending
torments.
If prophecy be indeed a divine message to man; if it be anything but a
cabbala, useless either to the simple-minded or to the logical, intended
only for the plaything of a few devout fancies, it must declare the
unchangeable laws by which the unchangeable God is governing, and
has always governed, the human race; and therefore only by
understanding what has happened, can we understand what will happen;

only by understanding history, can we understand prophecy; and that
not merely by picking out--too often arbitrarily and unfairly--a few
names and dates from the records of all the ages, but by trying to
discover its organic laws, and the causes which produce in nations,
creeds, and systems, health and disease, growth, change, decay and
death. If, in one small corner of this vast field, I shall have thrown a
single ray of light upon these subjects--if I shall have done anything in
these pages towards illustrating the pathology of a single people, I shall
believe that I have done better service to the Catholic Faith and the
Scriptures, than if I did really "know the times and the seasons, which
the Father has kept in His own hand." For by the former act I may have
helped to make some one man more prudent and brave to see and to do
what God requires of him; by the latter I could only add to that
paralysis of superstitious fear, which is already but too common among
us, and but too likely to hinder us from doing our duty manfully against
our real foes, whether it be pestilence at home or tyranny abroad.
These last words lead me to another subject, on which I am bound to
say a few words. I have, at the end of these Lectures, made some
allusion to the present war. To have entered further into political
questions would have been improper in the place where those Lectures
were delivered: but I cannot refrain from saying here something more
on this matter; and that, first, because all political questions have their
real root in moral and spiritual ones, and not (as too many fancy) in
questions merely relating to the balance of power or commercial
economy, and are (the world being under the guidance of a spiritual,
and not a physical Being) finally decided on those spiritual grounds,
and according to the just laws of the kingdom of God; and, therefore,
the future political horoscope of the East depends entirely on the
present spiritual state of its inhabitants, and of us who have (and rightly)
taken up their cause; in short, on many of those questions on which I
have touched in these Lectures: and next, because I feel bound, in