early stages of the temperance reformation, physicians were called upon to say, whether spirituous liquors were, in any case, beneficial to persons in health, even to the laboring classes of the community, they responded promptly and decidedly in the negative; and this reformation, as far as it has advanced, has been accomplished, in no small measure, by the general, zealous, and persevering support which they have given it.

CHAPTER III.

MORAL INFLUENCE OF THE CLERGY ON SOCIETY, INCLUDING AN ESTIMATE OF THE CLERICAL CHARACTER.

THE chief points of morals peculiar to Christianity; its bringing life and immortality to light, and thereby giving an effectual sanction to morals by furnishing assurances of the reality of a future existence; its expansive benevolence, acknowledging only the limits of the earth as the rightful sphere of its influence; its undertaking to regulate the prime sources of human action and character, the thoughts; its disregard to mere profession, unaccompanied by active virtue; and its general reforming, purifying, and elevating influence, have been reviewed and illustrated; and even the difficult enterprise of portraying the moral character of the Saviour has been attempted, with what success my readers much judge each for himself.* The lives and conversation of the clergy are the natural exemplification of the religion which they preach," the bodying forth" to mankind the peculiar morals of Christianity. Whatever may be the spirit of its morals, it is natural to expect to see this exemplified in the clergy. "By their fruits we are to know" all men, especially the clergy. Nor, when subjected to this reasonable test, will the Christian clergy, as a body of men, be found wanting. Unworthy members there are, and always have been; but the lives and character of the great body of the clergy have not been unworthy of the

* See above, pp. 43-60.

religion which they preach. Indiscriminate censure, however, and indiscriminate praise are alike foreign to my habits and my principles; and the fairest estimate of the moral character and beneficial influence of the clergy on society may be made, by reviewing their conduct in the light of history, and under several particulars.

1. Their labors, dangers, sufferings, and privations, in the original planting and building up of Christianity in every country in which its blessings are now enjoyed. The effectual establishment of Christianity in the world exhibits a scene of labors and trials, to which history presents no parallel. Frequent, earnest, and laborious preaching, constant conversing with persons upon religion, a withdrawing from the usual pleasures, engagements, and varieties of life, and an exclusive devotion to their one object, composed the habits of the Apostles and other early preachers of the Gospel. This kind of life, however, was not, in their view, privation, much less was it suffering; it was their daily bread to do the will of their Master, and to finish the work to which he had appointed them. But the preaching of the new religion was attended with a difficulty and danger, which we shall in vain attempt to estimate without a minute acquaintance with the history of those times. When addressed to the Jews, it was a system adverse, not only to their confirmed opinions, but to those convictions upon which their hopes, their partialities, their pride, and their consolation were founded." They saw, in the success of Christianity, the overthrow of the Mosaic code, which was the ancient object of their reverence, and contained alike their religion, their government, and the basis of their national history; the destruction of the ancient honors and privileges, which had been hitherto withheld from other nations, and which they had been accustomed to make their boast; and the blasting of all their high hopes and expectations of a Messiah, who, according to a long-cherished persuasion, was to exalt their nation to a supremacy over all the nations of the earth.

Nor, when the early preachers of Christianity turned themselves from the Jews to the heathen public, did they meet with prejudices less determined, labors less arduous, dangers less terrific, or sufferings less appalling. The religion which they

preached was exclusive in its claims; it held no compromise with any other religion; but denied, without fear and without reserve, the truth of every article of the heathen mythology, and the existence of every object of heathen worship. "If it prevailed, it was to prevail by the overthrow of every statue, altar, and temple on earth." "It pronounced all gods to be false, and all worship to be vain, but its own!"

"The danger, too, of the Christian preachers proceeded not merely from solemn acts and public resolutions of the State, but from sudden bursts of violence at particular places, from the license of the populace, the rashness of some magistrates, and the negligence of others; from the influence and instigation of interested adversaries, and, in general, from the violence and excitement which a mission so novel and extraordinary could not fail of producing. They were a set of friendless, unprotected travellers, telling men, wherever they came, that the religion of their ancestors, the religion in which they had been brought up, the religion of the State and of the magistrate, the rites which they frequented, the pomp which they admired, were, throughout, a system of folly and delusion." One of their number has described the kind of life which they led, and the treatment with which they were accustomed to meet, both from the Jews and the heathen. "Of the Jews," says he, "five times received I forty stripes save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day have I been in the deep ;— in journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness."* This statement of St. Paul was doubtless true of the other preachers as well as of himself, and is confirmed by all the original documents which exist on the subject, both heathen and Christian.†

These sufferings, moreover, it must be remembered, were

* 2 Corinth. xi. 24 - 27.

† Acts v. 17, 18; vii. 59; xxi. 30-34, &c. See, also, Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny, &c. Paley's Evidences of Christianity, pp. 10-17. ↑

only preliminary; the sufferings of the Christian preachers were infinitely more cruel and afflictive, as well as more general, during the celebrated ten persecutions under the Roman emperors, in which those powerful despots sought, by all the means at their command, to eradicate every vestige of Christianity from the earth. It was thus, chiefly and preeminently by the labors, privations, and sufferings of the clergy, that the cause of Christianity, aided from on high, gradually made its way, until it was effectually established and recognised as the religion of the empire.

In like manner, in whatever country Christianity has been made known, its establishment has been, for the most part, accomplished by the labors and sacrifices of the clergy. “The missionaries who first introduced Christianity into Great Britain," says Southey, "were the prime spirits of the age, steady in purpose, wise in contrivance, and trained in the most perfect school of discipline. They were men of the loftiest minds, and ennobled by the highest and holiest motives; their sole object in life was to increase the number of the blessed, and extend the kingdom of their Saviour, by communicating to their fellowcreatures the appointed means of salvation; and, elevated as they were above all worldly hopes and fears, they were ready to lay down their lives in the performance of this duty, sure, by that sacrifice, of obtaining crowns in heaven, and altars upon earth, as their reward.”* Still further illustrations of this position might be drawn from many sources; the history of our own country is rich in them. Christianity came into this country as a part of its original colonization, and Christian preachers, in almost every instance, made a part of the original colonists. New settlements on a distant and unknown shore, must, in the best circumstances, be subjected to many and great hardships; - of these they cheerfully underwent their full share, and their disinterestedness and usefulness are fully attested by the early documents of our history. To refer to a single instance among multitudes. Besides exercising his clerical functions with singular zeal and success, the clergyman who accompanied the first colonists to Virginia, was twice instrumental in saving the colony from destruction;

*Book of the Church, Vol. I. p. 56.

once by healing dissensions between its rival governors; and again, by rendering an Indian massacre partial in its effects, which must, but for him, have involved every man, woman, and child, indiscriminately. Nothing but my very confined limits, prevents me from enlarging on this part of the subject.* Christianity is the basis of all our most valuable institutions, moral, political, and social; it gives tone, temper, and character to them all; and its introduction into every country which enjoys its manifold blessings, is preeminently the work of the Christian clergy.

2. Their labors and success in promoting education, literature, and science, in establishing institutions of learning, and other institutions which have meliorated the condition of mankind.

Our materials for the history of education are scanty, and no historian has yet employed himself much in collecting such as exist. In Greece, not more than a tenth part of the inhabitants were freemen, † and, of these, only a small part seem to have received any literary education. The very phrase used by Tacitus (literarum secreta) to express literary education, shows that it was generally looked upon as an abstruse art, shrouded in mystery, not to be attained and understood by the common people. ‡ In truth, the plan of educating the common people of any country does not seem to have occurred to any one as possible, until Christianity was established and had attained considerable strength; and the credit of originating such a plan, and of reducing it to practice, is due to the Christian clergy. Instruction was very early given at the monasteries and the churches, more especially at the cathedrals. In England, King Henry the Sixth, by petition of many of the clergy, established grammar schools in various parishes, and this number was greatly enlarged a few years after, on the recommendation of the Archbishop of Canterbury. The great foundations of Winchester (A. D. 1382), and of St. Paul's School (A. D. 1508), were established by clergymen ; and those of Eton (A. D. 1446), Christ Church (A. D. 1553), and Westminster (A. D. 1559), by royal munificence; but they

*Hawks's History of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Virginia, pp. 42, 43. Kent's Commentaries on American Law, Vol. I. p. 218. De Moribus Germanorum, c. 19.