history of Christianity begins, the Gothic zone yet unconverted, and having not yet even heard of the new faith. You have the Classic zone variously and increasingly conscious of it, disputing with it, striving to extinguish it—and your Arab zone, the ground and sustenance of it, encompassing the Holy Land with the warmth of its own wings, and cherishing there—embers of phœnix fire over all the earth,—the hope of Resurrection.
26. What would have been the course, or issue, of Christianity, had it been orally preached only, and unsupported by its poetical literature, might be the subject of deeply instructive speculation—if a historian's duty were to reflect instead of record. The power of the Christian faith was however, in the fact of it, always founded on the written prophecies and histories of the Bible; and on the interpretations of their meaning, given by the example, far more than by the precept, of the great monastic orders. The poetry and history of the Syrian Testaments were put within their reach by St. Jerome, while the virtue and efficiency of monastic life are all expressed, and for the most part summed, in the rule of St. Benedict. To understand the relation of the work of these two men to the general order of the Church, is quite the first requirement for its farther intelligible history.
