"Hear ye not the measured footfalls echoing solemn and sublime, From the groves of Academus down the avenues of Time; See'st thou not the giant figures of the Sages of the Past, Through the darken'd long perspective on the living foreground cast; Feel'st thou not the thrilling rhythm of the grand old Grecian line, Pulsing to the march of Progress, cadencing her hymn divine, All the forces of the present by the subtle sparks controlled, Of the quickening Grecian fire, of the mighty Lights of old.
"Through the dark and desolation of the centuries between, Still 'The Porch's' glories glimmer, still 'The Garden's' wreaths are green. Still the Zeno, still the Plato, still the Pyrrho points the page, Still the Philip fears the pebble—still Melitus dreads the Sage, Still the Dionysius trembles at the stylus of the age. Still the dauntless ranks of Freedom kindle to Tyrtæus' song; Still they bear aloft the symbol—bear the glorious torch along."[118:A]
If the Christian Church had done nothing for us but preserve in its monasteries and abbeys the finest examples of classic literature that have come down to us, and given us those glories of Gothic architecture which seem to express in stone the grandeur and sublimity, the peacefulness and the beauty of a pure religion, it would, notwithstanding its many defects, its cruelty and oppression, its opposition to the study of nature and to freedom of thought, have fully justified its existence as helping us to realise whatever more advanced and purer civilisation the immediate future may have in store for us.
Before passing on to another branch of my subject I feel it necessary to make a few suggestions in reply to the objection that will certainly and very properly be made, as to why, if our higher human nature is in its essence Divine, it has suffered such long and terrible eclipses—why has the lower so often and for so long prevailed over the higher? This is, of course, one of the many forms of the old problem of the origin of evil, which is no doubt insoluble by us. But as it is a fairly well-defined and limited portion of that problem it may be possible to obtain some idea of a possible solution, and as such an one has occurred to myself during the composition of the present volume, I will give it as briefly as possible in the hope that it may interest some of my readers.