of rank to count the years, not by the consuls, but 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 benefitted 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 recurrence 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 dishonor 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 glut the base passion 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 Athens, that out of four millions of inhabitants, only twenty-one thousand are free. Our citizens 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 fish-ponds, to feed his lampreys; nor, upon the 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 accursed traffic in African slaves-a blot which this country, thank God, has wiped off; and which the other countries of Europe have been compelled professedly to abandon—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 ultimate emancipation, of the descendants of the injured Africans, in order to vindicate fully our holy faith in this respect.d 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 suicide-piracy-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 (d) It is impossible not to stand astonished 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. the utmost indifference, and connect forsooth, with moral reflections upon the brevity of life. 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, applauded, 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 the mass of her people, a new virtue and life; and though the whole mass of the state was too far corrupted to be recovered, it broke the rapidity and violence 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, and raises up the barrier of public opinion against their progress. (e) Pallida mors æquo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas Nec tenerum Lycidam mirabere, quo calet juventus, Nunc omnis, et mox virgines tepebunt. Hor. Car. i. 4. (f) The favorite 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 world-Egypt, 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. The Christian revelation is a religion, not a code of human 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 cruelest 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 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, after having solemnly promised to spare their lives. The loss of thousands in the field, is not the prelude to the desolation of a whole country, to indiscriminate 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 wonderful example of the power of Christianity over the fierce passions of man. Alaric no sooner found himself master of the city, than he gave orders that all the unarmed inhabitants who had fled to the churches, or to the sepulchres of the martyrs, should be spared. This, you will observe, was an instance of mercy and moderation in a whole army, in common soldiers, flushed with (g) Thucyd. 1. vii. p. 540. ed. Frank. apud Porteus. victory, and smarting under the wounds they had received in obtaining it. Even Gibbon acknowledges that "the pure and genuine influence of Christianity may be traced in its beneficial, though imperfect effects, on the barbarian proselytes of the north. On the fall of the Roman empire, it evidently mollified the ferocious temper of the conquerors." May we not add, that in a much later period, when the fierceness of a successful, but most unprincipled usurper, had brought back as much of the ancient atrocities of war, as the spirit of the times would allow, the moderation of the allied army, on the taking of Paris, was a somewhat similar illustration of the influence of Christianity. Indeed, from the days of Alaric to the present, the cruelty of war has declined; till now, not only are captives among Christians treated with humanity, and conquered provinces governed with equity, but in the actual prosecution of a war, it is become a maxim to abstain from all unnecessary violence. Wanton depredations are rarely committed upon private property, and the individual is screened as much as possible from the evil of the public quarrel. To spare the effusion of blood, has come to be accounted the highest exercise of military skill. The greatest captain of our age is as much famed for humanity to the vanquished, and compassion to his wounded men, as for conduct and valor in the field. 2. Again, the spirit of faction and of party animosities in states, are far less bitter and permanent, and break out into much less violent excesses, than in the times of the Greeks and Romans. They are now mollified by the intercourse of private society, and overborne by a regard to the interests of the nation; and do not lead to outrage, treachery, assassination, and private war. (h) Moscow BURNT, PARIS SPARED, was one of the legends of the triumphant illuminations in our metropolis, after the capture of Paris by the combined armies of England, Russia, and Prussia, in 1814. (i) The treatment of persons imprisoned for civil offences is also so softened, as to be a totally different thing from what it was in heathen governments. The philanthropy of such individuals as Howard and Fry-the latter a female of the most retired of the Christian sects-casts a strong light on the character of the beneficent religion by which they have been and are actuated. |