"No war nor battle's sound

Was heard the world around,

The idle spear and shield were high up hung;

The hooked chariot stood

Unstained with hostile blood;

The trumpet spake not to the armed throng,

But peaceful was the night,

In which the Prince of light

His reign of peace upon the earth began."

All nations being united under one government, the barriers which had always existed between them were broken down, and the traveller might pursue his way unmolested from the Euphrates to the Atlantic, from Ethiopia to the British Isles. Those legions, which had conquered the world, preserved its quiet, and kept watch on the borders of civilization, while the apostles went forth to fulfil the parting commission of their Master; "Go teach all nations," "Preach the Gospel to every creature." No circumstances can be conceived more favorable for the spread of a peaceful religion, than existed at the origin of Christianity. The very power which enslaved Judea, opened the world to be traversed by the disciples of Jesus, as the subjects of the same wide empire which had subjected all things to itself, and gave them the protection of its laws in regions which it would have been impossible for them a few ages before to have penetrated. Paul, the zealous mis

sionary of Jesus to the heathen, though a native of Tarsus, was a citizen of Rome, and of the Roman empire; and shielded by this defence was safe as well against the malice of his own countrymen, as the riotous assaults he encountered in Asia Minor and Macedonia. Thus it was, that Grecian letters, and Roman arms, as well as the mission of Moses and the national existence of the Jews, bore a part in the Providential preparation of the world for the advent of the Redeemer. The wisdom of Roman statesmen was made quite as subservient to the great plan of Providence as the valor of the Roman commanders. They alone of all nations that have ever existed were able to retain and consolidate their conquests. Their polity, perfected by the experience of ages, greatly alleviated the burden of their yoke, and it has been often said, that after conquering the world like savages they governed it like sages. And if it is objected, "How could a just God permit so many millions of his creatures to come under a power so stern," the reply is ready, that they generally displaced a worse government than they created; and that such was the moral condition of the nations at that period, that a military despotism was the best government they would bear; and the power which put to death our Lord, tamed and civilized many barbarous tribes, and prepared them for the reception of his religion. The world was now ready

and waiting to receive its last great message from God. The predictions of the Hebrew prophets had spread through the world, the time was come for their fulfilment, and the expecting eyes of the nations were turned to Judea and the East. Virgil at Rome had caught the echo, and repeated in the language of his classic muse the glorious auguries of the sacred bards of Israel, and their united strains have been most happily imitated by a Poet of our own tongue;

"From Jesse's root, behold a branch shall rise,
Whose sacred flower with fragrance fills the skies;
The ethereal Spirit o'er its leaves shall move,
And on its top descends the mystic Dove.
Ye heavens from high the dewy nectar pour,
And in soft silence shed the kindly shower,
The sick, the weak, the healing plant shall aid,
From storms a shelter and from heat a shade.
The Saviour comes, by ancient bards foretold;
Hear him, ye deaf, and all ye blind behold.
He from thick films shall purge the visual ray,
And on the sightless eye-ball pour the day.
'Tis he the obstructed paths of sound shall clear,
And bid new music charm the unfolding ear.
No sigh, no murmur, the wide world shall hear,
From every face he wipes off every tear.
In adamantine chains shall death be bound,
And hell's grim tyrant feel the eternal wound.
Rise crowned with light, imperial Salem rise
Exalt thy towery head and lift thine eyes.
See a long race thy spacious courts adorn,
See future sons and daughters yet unborn

In crowding ranks on every side arise,
Demanding life, impatient for the skies.
See barbarous nations at thy gates attend,
Walk in thy light and in thy temple bend.

See thy bright altars thronged with prostrate kings
And heaped with products of Sabean springs;
See heaven its sparkling portals wide display,
And break upon them in a flood of day!
No more the rising sun shall gild the morn,
Nor evening Cynthia fill her silver horn,
But lost, dissolved in thy superior rays
One tide of glory, one unclouded blaze
O'erflow thy courts, the Light himself shall shine

Revealed, and God's eternal day be thine."

Lecture V.

THE PAGAN RELIGIONS.

ROMANS 1: 22, 23.-Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image like unto corruptible man, and birds and four-footed beasts, and creeping things.

It is worth our while, before we proceed to the history of Christianity, to consider the religious condition of the world at the time of its introduction. It obtained immediately a wide extension; what were the religions which it supplanted? What changes did it introduce? What was the condition in which it found the morals of the world, and what improvement was consequent upon its promulgation?

Man is essentially a religious being. He is made so by the faculties of his mind, as well as the emotions of his heart. He is so both by his intellectual and his moral nature. One of the first and most spontaneous exercises of the reason of man is the investigation of causes and effects. And one of the first convictions, which are developed in the mind is, that there cannot be an effect without a cause. The next is, that the