and shout when the blood of the dying man, gushing from the ghastly wound, flowed upon the stage.2 3. Further, Christian nations are not destitute, as the Heathen, of "natural affection." "No man in a Christian country, would avoid the burden of a family by the exposure of his infant children; no man would think of settling the point with his intended wife before marriage, that the females that she might bear, should be all exposed, and the boys only reared."" 4. Once more; Christianity has cleared away the immense mass of misery and vice, arising from the heathen customs of divorce and polygamy. The most profligate of women now would not, as some of Rome did, count the years by the number of her husbands. The statutes of all Christian countries are framed in conformity with the rules of the gospel, and no cause of divorce is allowed but that which violates the fundamental law of the union. By this one act, Christianity has more benefited mankind, than can be adequately conceived. All the social affections, all the purity and comfort of domestic life, all the duties of family morals and religion, all the right education of children, spring from the inviolability of the nuptial contract. Perhaps the superiority of Europe over Asia, more depends on the abrogation of the practice of polygamy, and the recur 2 Bishop Horsley, vol. 3. Sermon xl. before Phil. Soc. 3 Bishop Horsley ut supra. The general neglect of human life is a striking characteristic of Paganism. The value of human existence and happiness was reserved to be proved by that religion which teaches the immortality of the soul and the redemption of it by Christ. "The truth is, so very little value do these people (the Hindoos) set on their own lives, that we cannot wonder at their caring little for the life of another. The cases of suicide are double those of suttees; men, and still more women, throw themselves down wells or drink poison, for apparently the slightest reasons, generally out of some quarrel, and in order that their blood may lie at their enemy's door."-Bishop Heber's Journal, vol. i. p. 269. rence to the original institution of marriage, than on any other cause. 5. In fact, the Christian faith has put an end to the degradation and dishonour to which the whole female sex had been doomed by Pagan nations. Woman is no longer accounted as a slave and beast of burden. The drudgery of the meanest and most servile occupations, is no longer imposed on her feeble shoulders. The injustice, the cruelty, the ungenerous and harsh contempt of her by the other sex, is no more. Among Christian nations she is no longer, like the wretched inmate of the seraglio, doomed to subserve the base passions of a pampered master. Christianity seems to say to the sex generally, what our Lord did to one afflicted with bodily distemper, "Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity." 6. Again, the cruelties of domestic slavery no longer pursue with their curse the great bulk of mankind. It cannot now be said of any Christian state, as it was of Attica, that out of 450,000 inhabitants, only 40,000 are free. Our citizens no no longer possess ten or twenty thousand slaves, tilling their grounds in chains. The master of a family no longer buys and sells his servants like cattle, nor punishes and tortures them as he pleases, nor puts them to death with or without reason. Youths of condition no longer venture forth to murder their unhappy fellow-creatures for amusement, by thousands at a time. A Claudius no longer gluts his lakes with dying gladiators, nor does a Tacitus record the deed with admiration. A Vedius Pollio no longer throws his servants, on the most trifling fault, into his fishponds, to feed his lampreys; nor, upon a master of a household being found dead, are all his servants, as formerly, amounting sometimes to thousands, put to death. One foul blot, indeed, upon the Christian nations remains, the cruel traffic in African slaves-a blot which this country, thank God, has wiped off; and which most of the other countries of Europe have professedly abandoned and which they will effectually and totally renounce, in proportion as Christian principles prevail. We have still, as Englishmen, to follow up the act of national righteousness which we performed in abolishing the trade, by immediate and vigorous measures for ameliorating the condition, and providing for the earliest possible emancipation, of the descendants of the injured Africans, in order to vindicate in this respect our holy faith.* 7. Private assassination is another of the monstrous fiends which the true religion has put to flight. The guardian mixes not now the deadly cup for the unhappy orphan, whose large property has been entrusted to his management. The husband no longer poisons the wife for her dowry, nor the wife her husband, that she may marry the adulterer. A Christian magistrate has no longer to punish capitally for this one crime, three thousand persons during part of a season, as was the case with a Roman prætor in Italy. But, I cannot dwell on all the evils banished by the doctrine of Christ.-The unlimited power of parents, extending to the liberty, and even life of their children-the vindication and defence of suicidepiracy-public indecencies between the sexes-the incests, and unnatural crimes, which polluted the philosopher and statesman of old, and which the poet did not fear to descant upon with the utmost indifference, and connect, forsooth, with moral reflections upon the brevity of life are all gone." 4 It is impossible not to lament at the practice prevailing in some of the United States of America, of trading in slaves, in the very teeth of their own free institutions, and their jealous attachment to political liberty. 5 Pallida mors æquo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas Nec tenerum Lycidam mirabere, quo calet juventus, These, and a thousand similar evils, have been banished from Christian states, and banished by the Christian doctrine. For that we owe their expulsion to this cause is manifest, because it was Christianity that first raised her voice against them; it was she that first prohibited them to her disciples; whilst all the wisest men of the heathen world, at the period of greatest refinement and highest intellectual cultivation, justified, connived at, and practised them. It was moreover, by Christian emperors that the first public enactments against them were framed. Constantine, upon his conversion to the Christian faith, to stop the crime of infanticide, ordained that the public should maintain the children of those parents who were unable to provide for them. In A. D. 319, he made it a capital offence to expose infants. He promulgated also the first edict against gladiatorial shows; and discouraged perpetual servitude, which was gradually lessened, till at length it was entirely banished from Christian states. The Christian religion, indeed, preserved the Roman empire from that sudden destruction which her vices threatened; it infused into her government and people, a new virtue and life; and though the whole mass of the state was too far cor rupted to be recovered, it broke the rapidity and vio lence of its fall. But this leads us to notice, III. That Christianity has promoted the welfare of states, by MITIGATING MANY EVILS which she has not yet entirely removed;-she protests against them, 6 The favourite notion of infidelity, that improvements in morals and virtue are chiefly owing to the progress of civilization, is contrary to the experience of all ages of the worldEgypt, Babylon, Greece, Rome, India, testify against such an assumption. Civilization, except as accompanied, and animated, and directed by Christianity, has uniformly corrupted and deteriorated public morals. and raises up the barrier of public opinion against their progress. The Christian revelation is a religion, not a mere code of laws. It can therefore only reach public institutions and usages through private character. To get rid of these usages, the reigning part of the community must act, and act in concert. Where, however, Christianity is not sufficiently obeyed to eradicate national evils altogether and at once, it begins by mitigating and abating them. 1. The horrors of war, before the coming of Christ, were inconceivable. Ambition, the love of conquest, revenge, were openly professed as its object. "To glut our souls with the cruellest vengeance upon our enemies, is perfectly lawful, is an appetite implanted in us by nature, and is the most exquisite pleasure that the human mind can taste," is the language of Gylippus, speaking of an invading army, as recorded by the great historian Thucydides." "Avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath," is the command of our divine Master-and which would have long since extinguished war, and established universal peace and tranquillity, had it been duly obeyed. It has, however, actually been softening the cruelties of national conflicts for eighteen hundred years. We do not now begin our wars openly for interest, aggression, the acquisition of territory. We do not murder every human creature in a besieged place, as of old. The loss of thousands in the field, is not the prelude to the desolation of a whole country, to indis criminate massacre, and utter extermination. The first symptoms of the mitigation of the horrors of war appeared in the fifth century, when Rome was stormed and plundered by the Goths under Alaric. Those rude soldiers were Christians, and their conduct, in the hour of conquest, exhibited a new and 7 Thucyd. 1. vii. 540. ed. Frank. |