APPLICATION OF THE FOURTH TEST OF FIDELITY IN DEVELOPMENT.

It has been set down above as a fourth argument in favour of the fidelity of developments, ethical or political, if the doctrine from which they have proceeded, in any early stage of its history, gave indications of those opinions and practices in which it has ended. Supposing then the so-called Catholic doctrines and practices are true and legitimate developments, and not corruptions, we may expect to find traces of them in the first centuries. And this I conceive to be the case: the records indeed of those times are scanty, and we have little means of determining what daily Christian life then was: we know little of the thoughts, and the prayers, and the meditations, and the discourses of the early disciples of Christ, at a time when these professed developments were not recognised and duly located in the theological system; yet it appears, even from what remains, that the atmosphere of the Church was, as it were, charged with them from the first, and delivered itself of them from time to time, in this way or that, in various places and persons, as occasion elicited them, testifying the presence of a vast body of thought within it, which one day would take shape and position.

Resurrection and Relics.

As a chief specimen of what I would say, I will direct attention to a characteristic principle of Christianity, which may almost be considered as a modification or instance of the great Sacramental Principle on which I have lately insisted; I mean the view which Christianity takes of Matter as susceptible of grace, or as capable of a union with a Divine Presence and influence.