ΙΟΟ CHURCH HISTORY. [IV. motive influences, and not merely of historic continuity. It is in it that the continuity of the Latin civilisation, of the Holy Roman Empire and of the Latin language, Roman Law and Latin literature, is traceable, and to it that we owe them. T o it, or to influences which it nourished or provoked, we owe the renaissance, that revival of ancient culture the very title of which is a denial of the continuity which its influences seem to claim for it. But I am not going to usurp the functions of a Professor of Church History, and I am very sure that Church History is not the ground on which the doctrine of the Unity of History is supposed by its advocates to take its stand. One word more; I do not deny this Unity in the high region of religious History or in the scarcely less comprehensive grasp which the political philosopher may take of Universal Human Life; nor do I deny it in the minute archaeological investigations in which all particulars great and small have much the same value ; nor do I deny that the student of modern history may gain lessons of immense value from the old. But I do maintain that it is wrong to say that the one cannot be studied without the other; for the things, persons, ideas, plot and scenery are different in the two ; and more than that, save in the region of Church History, the precious lessons of the two are not those in which the approximate continuity may be traced : the continuity lies in the less important, the great contributions of either to the world's growth lie in the less continuous influences; in the ancient world in a perished civilisation, in the modern world in one in which all the fresh springs are, by God's grace, in the new races. You will, I hope, acquit me now of any desire to undervalue any kind of culture ; but, put upon our defence, we must maintain the strong point, as it seems to us, of our position ; and it is our duty, as well as our right, to say what