Page:Three introductory lectures on the study of ecclesiastical history.djvu/12

character, in his migration, in his faith was bound up, as the Christian Apostle well describes, all that has since formed the substance and fibre of the history of the Church.

The History of Israel, the first period of Ecclesiastical HistoryFrom this point, then, we start, and from this shall be prepared to enter on the history of the people of Israel, as the true beginning and prototype of the Christian Church. So in old times it was ever held; to the Apostolic age it could not be otherwise; even Eusebius, writing for a special purpose, is constrained to commence his work by going back (almost in the words with which I opened this lecture) to "records of the greatest antiquity, shewing the pedigree of the Son of the Ancient of days," both divine and human; and, in spite of the ever-increasing materials of later times, the elder dispensation has been included, actually or by implication, in some of the greatest works on Ecclesiastical History. So it must be in the nature of the case, however much, for the sake of convenience or perspicuity, we may divide and subdivide what is in itself one whole. Speaking religiously, the history of the Christian Church can never be separated from the life of its Divine Founder, and that life cannot be separated from the previous history, of which it was the culmination, the explanation, the fulfilment. Speaking philosophically, the history of the religious thoughts and feelings of Europe cannot be understood without a full appreciation of the thoughts and feelings of that Semitic race which