The History of Teachings of the Early Church, as a Basis for the Re-Union of Christendom; Lectures (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1889 edition. Excerpt: ... IV. REV. JOHN H. EGAR, D.D., Rector of Zion Church, Rome, N. Y. THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA. There are in this audience, I doubt not, those who have enjoyed the privilege, which has not been permitted to your lecturer, of making the voyage up the Nile. You are familiar with the present aspect of the city which bears the name of the great Greek conqueror, who founded it for the capital of his world-wide dominion. You know the unchangeable features of sea and sky, of burning sun and desert sands, of mighty river and distant hills, of pyramids almost as enduring as the mountains; and you have felt the spell of that vast and wondrous civilization of ancient Egypt, of which the ruins were around you. If, from the contemplation of the desolate temples as they are now, you can reconstruct the grandeur of those temples as they stood perfect in their glory, with their forests of pillars, their colossal statues, their avenues of sphinxes, their armies of priests, and their multitudes of wor shippers, you must feel what a background they are for the scene of the conflict of Christianity with a paganism powerful enough, and earnest enough at one time, to have reared and peopled those monuments of its religion, and what a power that paganism must have still possessed at the advent of our Lord, even though its mightiest works belonged to the then distant past. And you may appreciate the visible triumph of Christianity, and the greatness of the revolution it had accomplished, when, in the year 386, the decree went forth from the Emperor Theodosius and was executed, which shut them all up, and left them to become what they are seen to be to-day. But the Alexandria that now is, is no adequate representative of the Alexandria of the first centuries of the Christian...