of God, who makes his sun shine and his rain to descend upon the just and the unjust; who sheds abroad his blessings, not on his own alone, but even upon those whose thoughts are far from him; we must show this by our actions, endeavouring to become perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect, and blessing those who curse, and doing good to those who persecute us.' Encouraged by this paternal admonition, the members of the church addressed themselves to the work; the rich contributing money, and the poor their labour; so that in a short time the streets were cleared of the corpses who filled them, and the city saved from the dangers of a universal pestilence."*

That the spirit of primitive Christians is still the characteristic spirit of christianity, in regard to all works of charity, may easily be seen. Go where the gospel has attained the greatest supremacy, and behold how every form of human misery is met by the self denying diligence, and comforted by the munificence, of the benevolent. What conceivable method of removing distress, of preventing vice, and disseminating happiness, has not been put in operation? The whole Roman empire had not one benevolent institution. The single city of London counts her three hundred! And why is so little said or thought of them, except that the public mind has become so accustomed to the noblest efforts of benevolence, that they are now regarded almost as matters of course-the natural consequence of prevailing principles of brotherly kindness and charity?

It is not my design to exhibit any thing like a full length portrait of the contrast between the civilization of modern, and that of ancient nations. It is seen in all the relations of life; in the whole fabric of society, from the government of the family, to that of the state; from the tender cares of the cradle and the mother to the wide concerns of communities and rulers. Every thing has felt the change. Though not perfect, it is immense. Much remains to be done, but mighty

Rose's translation of Neander's Ch. Hist.

improvements have been effected. Were the whole work undone should the sun, which now enlightens the moral world, be commanded to go back, and suffer the classic paganism of Greece and Rome to resume its sway; every joint in the mechanism of society would groan with pain; every corner in the household of civilized beings would be filled with darkness; the transition from the arts and literature of England to those of Hottentots or New Zealanders, would not be greater than such a change from the moral elevation of the present age, to the highest refinements of the purest nations of antiquity.

Such is the fact. It remains to be accounted for. What produced this change? The religion of ancient heathens pleads "not guilty" to the charge. It had no reference to morals. The vilest crimes and the highest repute for piety were perfectly consistent with each other, among heathens of the Augustan age. It was no part of the business of their priests to teach men virtue. No religion but that of the Bible ever possessed or aimed at the power of reformation. Equally clear are the literature, and philosophy, and arts of antiquity from the imputation of this mighty revolution. Never did they prevail so extensively among the heathen, as in the first century of christianity; and never were they accompanied with such moral degradation. Philosophy had as little disposition, as ability to reform. Whatever light it may have possessed, it monopolized; holding its truth in unrighteousness, and studiously conforming its practice to the worst abominations. "Cicero declares that the ancient philosophers never reformed either themselves or their disciples; and that he knew not a single instance in which either the teacher or the disciple was made virtuous by their principles."*

* Dwight on Infidel Philosophy.

"In their writings and conversation, the philosophers of antiquity asserted the independent dignity of reason; but they resigned their actions to the commands of law and custom. Viewing with a smile of pity and indulgence the various errors of the vulgar, they diligently practised the ceremonies of their fathers, devoutly frequented the temples of the gods; and, sometimes conde

But it may be supposed that, without any other cause than its own natural fluctuation, the moral condition of ancient nations may have taken a change, like the tides of the ocean, and begun to rise from the mere fact of being reduced to so low an ebb. Answer this by the present state of those nations that continued under the native influence of paganism. In which of them was such a thing ever known, as a reformation of public morals? Their unvaried history, from the days of Moses to the present, settles the matter, that heathenism has no power, but of progressive corruption ; and, left to itself, can only reduce its votaries into deeper and deeper debasement. Then, if the vast improvement in question is neither the consequence of the religion, nor the philosophy, nor the arts, nor the literature, nor of any natural reaction in the moral state of the ancient heathen; to what other cause must it be assigned? History has but one answer. Reason has but one answer. Christianity alone; single-handed, persecuted christianity, by the agency of twelve obscure Jews, began the wonderful change, and under the favour of God, has accomplished its every step of advancement. Till such a thing as the religion of Christ appeared in the world, a reformation of heathen society was never dreamed of. Till Christians appeared among the Gentiles, none had ever adventured, none were ever disposed, to labour for the improvement of mankind. Christian writers were the first that dared to drag the abominations of classic antiquity to light, and brand them with the condemnation of truth and righteousness. The first christian emperor

scending to act a part on the theatre of superstition, they concealed the sentiments of an Atheist under the sacerdotal robes. It was indifferent to them what shape the folly of the multitude might choose to assume; and they approached, with the same inward contempt and the same external reverence, the altars of the Lybian, the Olympian, or the Capitoline Jupiter."- Gibbon's History, i. 34.

A sorry tribute, by a philosopher, to the benevolence and honesty of his ancient brethren. Paul would have drawn their picture with a darker pencil still. Paul's Master would have named them "hypocrites," "whited sepulchres."

issued the first prohibition of inhuman practices and amusements, which many centuries had sanctioned. Till the gospel set up its churches and gathered its disciples, the gentile world had never seen such a spectacle as that of a society united by bands of love; shining in the beauty of holiness; animated with zeal to do good at the expense of self-denial and sacrifice.

How exclusively the happy effects of which we have been speaking are the fruit of christianity, is evident from the fact that, when you take up a map of the world and mark out the boundaries of christendom, you mark also the boundaries of all civilization and refinement; that as you approach the regions where the Bible is best known and most obeyed, you perceive a rapid increase of all the virtues, and charities, and blessings of which the society of man is capable; that the highest elevation of the human character is where christianity reigns in her purest form, and the blackest page in the history of Christendom, the page most polluted with vice, and red with cruelty and murder, is the record of the people who trampled down the institutions of the gospel, decreed the living God out of existence, and attempted to raise the deities of ancient paganism from the dead. That many individuals who deny the truth, and profess to be free from the influence of christianity, are decent men and far removed from the condition of the heathen in point of moral precept, as well as practice, is no evidence against our position. The light of christianity is all about them, and they cannot help seeing by its aid. They have learned christian truth from their childhood, and it cannot be unlearned. Do what they may, they cannot think or act without its influence. They may boast the sufficiency of their own reason, but they can no more exercise their reason without the aid of revelation, than they can breathe the air of spring without the fragrance of its flowers. "On all questions of morality and religion, the streams of thought have flowed through channels enriched with a celestial ore, whence they have derived the tincture

to which they are indebted for their rarest and most salutary qualities."* What a community of deists would be without christianity, can only be known by remembering what deists were before christianity came into the world, and what they became, when in France they supposed they had almost banished her from the earth.

How remarkable are the confessions of infidels to the excellent fruit and indispensable influence of the gospel! Bolingbroke acknowledges, "that Constantine acted the part of a sound politician in protecting christianity, as it tended to give firmness and solidity to his empire, softened the ferocity of the army, and reformed the licentiousness of the provinces, and by infusing a spirit of moderation and submission to government, tended to extinguish those principles of avarice and ambition, injustice and violence, by which so many factions were formed." "No religion," says the same opposer of christianity, "ever appeared in the world. whose natural tendency was so much directed to promote the peace and happiness of mankind. It makes right reason a law in every possible definition of the word. And therefore, even supposing it to have been purely a human invention, it had been the most amiable and the most useful invention that was ever imposed on mankind for their good." Thus even Rousseau: "If all were perfect Christians, individuals would do their duty; the people would be obedient to the laws; the magistrates incorrupt; and there would be neither vanity nor luxury in such a state." Such are the confessions of many other writers of the same class. And yet these men would run the ploughshare through the foundations of the church of Christ, so that one stone should not be left upon another. So much for the consistency, the virtue, and disinterested benevolence of infidelity; or rather so much for the contradiction between its head and its heart, its convictions and its vices.

I know of nothing, in the way of fact, more strikingly

*Robert Hall.