longer bright with the beams of an Italian sun flashing upon its polished marbles or gilded ceilings, but imperfectly lighted with an illuminated cross, image of the blazing sign of Constantine, suspended from the dome in front of the high altar, and pouring its rays upon the head of the Roman Church prostrate in the act of worship, while arch and column project their shadowy masses upon the immense aisles, thronged, but not filled, with the multitude gathered to witness the scene from every quarter of Christendom.

Such is modern Rome; such the great Catholic Church, out of which, as it grew corrupt, all the sects and denominations of western Christendom took their departure; such is social refinement, in its grandest efforts, associated with religion. But, you will say, this was a degenerate church; its forms overlaid with superstition, its doctrines wide of the pure standard of the gospel. True. Its ministers, its followers, were men, full of the infirmities, which still cling to poor humanity, raise it as you may by teachings or by discipline. It was a domineering, a persecuting church. True, again. It is the attribute of power, wherever it exists, to whatever it attaches itself, in religion as in politics, to be prone to exact conformity with its opinions, and obedience to its commands. And we have to do with the actual, not the ideal,-the world as it is, not as we would have it to be. Even the Puritan fathers of New-England, the very zealots of liberty, who abandoned their native land, with all that is dear in the name of country and of home, dared the perils of unknown seas, and planted themselves on these inhospitable shores of the New World, amid untamed savages, or in the solitudes of the primeval wilderness, that here they might found an. asylum for unrestricted. freedom of conscience, even they, upright and highminded as they were,—did they escape the infirmities of our common nature? Fleeing from religious persecutors, did they learn to eschew religious persecution? Let the history of their times,let the sufferings of the men and the women of other persuasions with whom they fell into conflict,-let this free-spirited plantation of Providence, founded on the broad platform of pure toleration, by Roger Williams cast out from Massachusetts for religious dissent,-answer the question. What then? Shall we, because of the corruptions of this society, or the intolerance of that, condemn Christianity in the general, and with Gibbon and his disciples infer that its social influences are only evil continually?

Here is a great problem. To the statesman, and to society in general, this becomes a curious and most instructive inquiry, namely, to ascertain precisely what Christianity has done for the advancement and cultivation of social life in Europe and America. To reach the solution of this problem, it needs that we take note of the condition and vicissitudes of Christianity at certain proscribed epochs of modern history.

In the prosecution of which, I desire to be understood as examining the point under a laical, not a clerical, aspect; that is, I shall avoid, the most I may, any observations affecting controverted matters of religious opinion or belief; and shall presume to touch the tenets of Christianity, only so far as they bear upon the social and intellectual state of mankind in the diverse countries of Christendom.

Just as the minister of religion has frequent occasion to consider the social relations of mankind, so the layman would but imperfectly discharge his duty, if he did not sometimes reflect on the social uses of religion. Each may thus aid the deliberations of the other; and by comparison of thought strike out the holy spark of truth, the common pursuit of both. Individuals deeply and conscientiously pledged to any set of opinions, especially where those opinions belong to the social position of such individuals, are prone to fall into professional trains of thought; whereby it not seldom happens that a man profoundly versed in some precise branch of knowledge, errs for that very cause in his estimate of the mutual relations of things. His facts and reasonings are grouped around his own point of view; what he sees, he sees clearly; what he knows, he knows accurately and thoroughly; but only with reference to the range of his own line of observation. Another person, although quite superficially informed upon such questions, will sometimes arrive at sound conclusions respecting them relatively, by reason of the very fact of his less exclusive engagedness in any one of them; according as, in war, a spectator, curiously overlooking the field, has a better idea of the general ordering of the battle, than the brave soldier, who is contending for victory and life at his appointed post in the very thick of the combat.

These explanations I interpose, not at all in proof or justification of what is to follow, but simply to forestall any misconstruction of what is intended only as a secular view of the social influence of Christianity.

Begin at the reign of Constantine, and look back and around

on what Christianity had been, and what it then was, in the proud days of the greatest extent of the Roman Empire. In the very infancy of our religion, the early Christians appear to have assembled as voluntary associates, without fixed or uniform ecclesiastical discipline. They were apostles and inferior teachers on the one hand, and converts or disciples on the other, alike engaged in the mutual enjoyment of the same religious emotions and convictions, and in the propagation of the new faith over the Greek and Roman world; but they had not yet become an organized social institution. At the period in question, there was no established hierachy in the Church, independant of the whole body of believers; no government, except of their own choice or assent; no laws or discipline acting upon them by the unappealable will of human superiors. And this, it is believed, is the characteristic of the Church in the primitive years of Christianity.*

Fortunately, or it should rather be said providentially, things had undergone a material change at the epoch immediately preceding the dissolution of the Roman Empire. There had grown up a body of clergy having a distinct being as such a clerical society administering the services and teaching the doctrines of religion to the lay society of the time; the Church as a public institution. The assistant or elder had become a priest; the inspector, a bishop.-Christianity, having triumphed over paganism, was now the recognized religion of the Roman Empire. Its ministers and teachers were objects of distinction and observance. In fact, they were the only class of men, who, at this time, possessed a marked personal authority, founded on public respect and confidence, apart from the holding of military force; they were the only men, having moral strength of character; and these peculiarities in their condition led to a new and singular change in their social position, which was, their being invested with large secular power in the internal administration of the Empire.

Was this the result of spiritual pride on the part of the clergy? Was it an act of clerical usurpation or ambition?-Not at all. Power devolved upon them, because they alone were able and willing to undertake its responsibility. At the period of the invasion of the Empire by the barbarians, the municipalities were all that survived, in a political form, to attest the grandeur and

* Guizot, Civ. de l'Europe.

wisdom of the Romans, that proud race, whose national art it was

Regere imperio populos,

Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos.

The dissolving world broke up into cities; it had not yet assumed the form of separate nations. But the curiales, the ordinary municipal magistrates, shrank from the labor and respon sibility of administration. Amid the vexations of despotism, the decay of industry, and the universal crash and confusion of the social elements, which foretokened the downfall of the Empire, common men grew weary even of governing their fellows: -it sufficed them to live,—if indeed they could make sure of that poor boon. Hereupon, impelled by the necessities of the times, one emperor after another imposed municipal duties on the bishops and priests, as appears by various examples in the civil code.* Ravaged, depopulated, miserable as the cities then were, they retained a share of their ancient dignity and importance; and they did so, chiefly by the reason of the activity and self devotion of the clergy, who preserved public affairs from falling into utter chaos, and stood as a sort of connecting link between the Roman population and the conquering barba

rians.

It is demonstrable, therefore, that whatever of civilization survived the destruction of the Empire, is mainly due to the influence of the Christian Church. Its ministers were the life and soul of the civic organization of that period. Armed only with the holy weapon of the cross, they opposed the moral power of conviction, reasoning, example, religious profession, to the brute power of mere physical force. They extended the ægis of a divine religion over the prostrate body of the ancient civilization. They strove to redeem the earth from the empire of sheer violence. See Alaric and his Goths, pausing amid the fury of the sack of Rome, to respect the churches of the apostles, and to conduct the emblems of religion, and the fugitive multitudes who accompany them, into the sanctuary of the Vatican. Hearken to St. Ainbrose, arresting the great Theodosius at the entrance of the catheral church of Milan, because of the emperor's unatoned massacre of the people of Thessa

* Cod. Just. L. i, tit. 4, s. 26 and 30.-Ibid. tit. 65, s. 8. Aug. de Civ. Dei, l. i.

lonica, and sending this mighty monarch away to penance and repentance as if he were the humblest man of the people. "Sir, you seem not to perceive," said Ambrose, "the guilt of the murder you have committed; or perhaps the greatness of your power prevents your acknowledging your offence. But it is not fit you should suffer the splendor of the imperial purple to deceive you. With what eyes will you look on the house of our common master? With what feet will you tread his holy pavement? Will you stretch forth those hands, still dropping with the blood of that unjust murder, and take therein the holy body of the Lord?" Noble rebuke! Objectors may say what they will of the idle though bloody controversies, the spiritual pride, and the world-seeking ambition, of the clergy of those times it is obvious to reply that the clergy alone served to rescue from extinction the expiring flame of civilization, and pass it down to modern Europe.

Would you realize all which the Church,-that is, I mean, the clergy and the visible institutions of Christianity in the general,-did for religion and for society in the fifth and sixth centuries? Make present to the imagination the unspeakable disorders, the chaotic confusion, the misery, desperation, and abandonment, of a rich and cultivated nation deluged by one overwhelming flood of barbarians following on the track of another, each successive horde wasting, burning, slaying, as if sent on a mission of divine vengeance for the curse and ruin of the uniConceive the exanimate frame of the Roman Empire struggling in vain against all these lawless bands of Lombard, Goth, Vandal, Hun, Frank, and whatever else of horrid name the frozen North vomited forth upon the sunny fields of Gaul and Italy. What men might do to stay and withstand the torrent of destruction, the Romans did; but the fatal hour of the Empire was come. In that dread season of Night and Erebus returning to brood once again over the earth, the clergy sustained the drooping strength of the municipalities; they endeavored to save the power of the Empire and the supremacy of their religious opinions from a common overthrow; and failing in this, they betook themselves, in the true spirit of saints and missionary martyrs, to the sacred task of converting their barbarian conquerors to the faith of Christ. Victorious in vain over the paganism of the Empire, the Christian Church saw itself compelled to renew its exertions and zeal to gain to the cross these new masters of

* Ward's L. of Nations, ii, 25.