84 
ORDINARY MEETING, April 20th, 1874. 
The Rev. Prebendary Row, M.A., in the Chair. 
The Minutes of the last Meeting were read and confirmed, and the follow- 
ing Presentations to the Library were announced : — 
“ Transactions of the Geological Society.” Part 117. From the Society. 
“ End of the Ungodly.” By the Rev. R. Gordon. From the Author. 
“Funeral Oration.” By the Rev. R. Gordon. From the Author. 
The following Paper was then read by the Author : — 
THE ETHICAL CONDITION OF THE EARLY SCAN- 
DINA VI AN PEOPLES. By Edmund W. Gosse, of 
the British Museum. 
W E are all of us familiar with the outlines, at least, of the 
particular form of culture which Christianity super- 
seded in the south of Europe. We know that in Greece the 
Gospel had to contend against an elaborate system of pure 
ethics fallen into decay, against a moral obliquity only the more 
impervious because it held the outward form of an earlier, 
far nobler morality, and against a system of literature and 
the fine arts, the most perfect in execution that the world 
has ever seen. In Rome, Christianity met with an opposition 
more crude and less insidious, partly because culture there 
took a less sesthetical and more practical form, and partly 
because the hands of the younger power were still muscular 
and vigorous. The opposing forces, however, were of the same 
inner nature, whether in Greece or Rome, and the immediate 
and obvious benefit exercised on society by the new religion 
was the creation of a moral conscience, and the scattering of 
spiritual salt over successive generations, whose predecessors, 
supplied as they were with every other requisite, had passed 
into a shameful state of ethical putrescence for the want of it. 
I propose to show this evening how totally distinct was the 
mission of Christianity to the peoples of the North; to sketch 
