especially among the Greeks. It was the handmaid of music and poetry
when the divinity of mind was adored--perhaps with Pagan instincts, but
still adored--as a birthright of genius, upon which no material estimate
could be placed, since it came from the Gods, like physical beauty, and
could neither be bought nor acquired. Long before Christianity declared
its inspiring themes and brought peace and hope to oppressed millions,
eloquence was a mighty power. But then it was secular and mundane; it
pertained to the political and social aspects of States; it belonged to
the Forum or the Senate; it was employed to save culprits, to kindle
patriotic devotion, or to stimulate the sentiments of freedom and public
virtue. Eloquence certainly did not belong to the priest. It was his
province to propitiate the Deity with sacrifices, to surround himself
with mysteries, to inspire awe by dazzling rites and emblems, to work on
the imagination by symbols, splendid dresses, smoking incense,
slaughtered beasts, grand temples. He was a man to conjure, not to
fascinate; to kindle superstitious fears, not to inspire by thoughts
which burn. The gift of tongues was reserved for rhetoricians,
politicians, lawyers, and Sophists.

Now Christianity at once seized and appropriated the arts of eloquence
as a means of spreading divine truth. Christianity ever has made use of
all the arts and gifts and inventions of men to carry out the concealed
purposes of the Deity. It was not intended that Christianity should
always work by miracles, but also by appeals to the reason and
conscience of mankind, and through the truths which had been
supernaturally declared,--the required means to accomplish an end.
Therefore, she enriched and dignified an art already admired and
honored. She carried away in triumph the brightest ornament of the Pagan
schools and placed it in the hands of her chosen ministers. So that the
Christian pulpit soon began to rival the Forum in an eloquence which may