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The moral influence of Charlemagne was on a par with his material power; he had everywhere protected the missionaries of Christianity; he had twice entered Rome, also in the character of protector, and he could count on the faithful support of the Pope at least as much as the Pope could count on him.
There is perhaps nothing so admirable in Christianity and Buddhism as their art of teaching even the lowest to elevate themselves by piety to a seemingly higher order of things, and thereby to retain their satisfaction with the actual world in which they find it difficult enough to live this very difficulty being necessary.
Now Charles was aware that the Pope, in his dread of a French invasion, and seeing vain all his efforts to dissuade Charles from making his descent upon Italy, had appealed for aid to Bajazet. For so doing he has been severely censured, and with some justice, for the picture of the Head of Christianity making appeal to the infidel to assist him against Christians is not an edifying one.
What is true Christianity if it be not the belief in the divine sonship of man, as the Greek philosophers had rightly surmised, but had never seen realised on earth?
Christianity, then, is not a record, a history of what was said and done eighteen centuries ago: it is not a body of doctrines and precepts: it is the living power of God in the soul of man. The written Word is the sword of this Divine Spirit. The renewed soul is begotten of the Spirit and it is instinct with the indwelling of the Spirit.
He would despise women in general, despise Christianity past words, and decline to argue on such a point with a man. People are apt to forget that Mohammedanism is a faith to which many millions of earnest and intelligent men and women have pinned their salvation.
At the present time a great number of the islands have been blessed with the light of Christianity, but some of them are still lying in the state of degradation in which they were first found.
The last conclusion which the Quakers draw from the words of our Saviour on this occasion, is, that a spiritual participation of the body and blood of Christ is such an essential of Christianity, that no person who does not partake of them, can be considered to be a Christian; "for except a man eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, he has no life in him."
Greek philosophy and Asian mysticism and Roman legalism are responsible for certain perversions of Christianity, as well as for enlargement of its content. We have great need to be careful in these assimilations; some kinds of food are rich but not easily digested. But it is, as I have said, a chief glory of Christianity that it possesses this assimilative power.
For "the Spirit of the Lord filleth the world," and the Divine Wisdom "reacheth from one end to the other mightily, and sweetly ordereth all things." It follows that Christianity, the religion of the Spirit, can never stand still. Not stagnation, but life, is its characteristic note, even "that Eternal Life which was with the Father, and hath been manifested unto us."
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