3. Then it discourages and tends to eradicate the vices which most directly infest society-rapacity, violence, malice, revenge, profligacy, treachery; and establishes the contrary virtues of honesty, meekness, forgiveness of injuries, purity, fidelity and truth: and thus restores peace and harmony amongst men. 4. Further, it mitigates that insatiable ardour after worldly possessions and enjoyments, which is the spring of so many acts of injustice and oppression; by elevating man to a consideration of spiritual, intellectual, solid, pure, eternal blessings. 5. It implants especially the principle of enlarged, active, effectual benevolence, in opposition to that inordinate self-love which is the bane of every virtue, the enemy of all public spirit and love of country, and the gangrene of states. On earth peace, good-will towards men," is inscribed on the banners of the Christian faith. 66 6. It is, again, the spring of personal exertion and beneficial industry- it expels indolence and selfindulgence, and inspires an active and useful diligence, the employment of life to the most valuable purposes, and the occupying with our time and various talents as accountable stewards of the Great Householder. 7. Lastly: it elevates the whole character, enlarges and improves the mind, raises man in the scale of being, brings him back to himself, to his fellow-men, to his country, to all the ends for which he was created, to his God. It first teaches him to "love the Lord with all his heart, and soul, and mind, and strength;" and then "to love his neighbour as himself.' II. By the operation of these principles the Christian doctrine has BANISHED AN IMMENSE MASS OF FRIGHTFUL EVILS from Christian states. 1. Idolatry with all its atrocious impurities and cruelties was gradually expelled from the kingdoms of Europe, Asia, and Africa, as our holy faith was propagated. Human sacrifices prevailed in the heathen world. Men "offered their sons and their daughters unto devils." The polished Greeks and Romans were infected with this horrid practice, as well as the ruder Scythians and Thracians. It reached from one end of the globe to the other. Our own ancestors offered their Druidical victims; and on the discovery of South America, it was found that Montezuma immolated a prodigious number of human beings annually to the sun. The light of truth scared away the monster from the Christian folds. 2. Again, the heathen were "full of murder," as the Apostle to the Romans strongly expresses it. Scenes of blood made a part of the public diversions of the people. Miserable slaves were exposed to the fury of wild beasts for an amusement and recreation to the populace, and were engaged in mortal combat with each other upon a public stage. Such bloody sports are no more. Women of condition would have no relish, as of old, for the sight. They would not be able to behold it with so much composure as to observe and admire the skill and agility of the champions, and interest themselves in the issue of the combat. The tender virgin would not rise from her seat in ecstacy as the victor put his dagger to the throat of the vanquished; and exclaim, "He is my delight;" and give him a sign with her thumb to lay open the breast of the prostrate wretch. Nor would the audience applaud 1 See Bishop Porteus's Beneficial Effects of Christianity; to which excellent summary of Ryan's larger work I am much indebted. Bishop Horsley's Sermon before the Philanthropic Society; Paley; Wilberforce's Practical View; Fuller's Gospel its own Witness; Harness' Happiness of Men; Sumner's Reception; the Monthly Lectures, 1827; and Dewar's Designs of Christianity, have also aided me. 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 an other. 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, |