The fall of our first parents is a universal tradition.

A new proof of it may be found in the constitution of the moral man, which is contrary to the general constitution of beings.

The prohibition to touch the fruit of knowledge was a sublime command, and the only one worthy of the Almighty.

All the arguments which pretend to demonstrate the antiquity of the earth may be contested.

The doctrine of the existence of a God is demonstrated by the wonders of the universe. A design of Providence is evident in the instincts of animals and in the beauty of nature.

Morality of itself proves the immortality of the soul. Man feels a desire of happiness, and is the only creature who cannot attain it; there is consequently a felicity beyond the present life; for we cannot wish for what does not exist.

The system of atheism is founded solely on exceptions. It is not the body that acts upon the soul, but the soul that acts upon the body. Man is not subject to the general laws of matter; he diminishes where the animal increases.

Atheism can benefit no class of people :-neither the unfortunate, whom it bereaves of hope, nor the prosperous, whose joys it renders insipid, nor the soldier, of whom it makes a coward, nor the woman, whose beauty and sensibility it mars, nor the mother who has a son to lose, nor the rulers of men, who have no surer pledge of the fidelity of their subjects than religion.

The punishments and rewards which Christianity holds out in another life are consistent with reason and the nature of the soul.

In literature, characters appear more interesting and the passions more energetic under the Christian dispensation than they were under polytheism. The latter exhibited no dramatic feature, no struggles between natural desire and virtue.

Mythology contracted nature, and for this reason the ancients had no descriptive poetry. Christianity restores to the wilderness both its pictures and its solitudes.

The Christian marvellous may sustain a comparison with the marvellous of fable. The ancients founded their poetry on Homer, while the Christians found theirs on the Bible: and the beauties of the Bible surpass the beauties of Homer.

To Christianity the fine arts owe their revival and their perfection.

In philosophy it is not hostile to any natural truth. If it has sometimes opposed the sciences, it followed the spirit of the age and the opinions of the greatest legislators of antiquity.1

In history we should have been inferior to the ancients but for the new character of images, reflections, and thoughts, to which Christianity has given birth. Modern eloquence furnishes the same observation.

The relics of the fine arts, the solitude of monasteries, the charms of ruins, the pleasing superstitions of the common people, the harmonies of the heart, religion, and the desert, lead to the examination of the Christian worship.

This worship everywhere exhibits a union of pomp and majesty with a moral design and with a prayer either affecting or sublime. Religion gives life and animation to the sepulchre. From the laborer who reposes in a rural cemetery to the king who is interred at St. Dennis, the grave of the Christian is full of poetry. Job and David, reclining upon the Christian tomb, sing in their turn the sleep of death by which man awakes to eternity.

We have seen how much the world is indebted to the clergy and to the institutions and spirit of Christianity. If Schoonbeck, Bonnani, Giustiniani, and Helyot, had followed a better order in their laborious researches, we might have presented here a complete catalogue of the services rendered by religion to humanity. We would have commenced with a list of all the calamities incident to the soul or the body of man, and mentioned under each affliction the Christian order devoted to its relief. It is no exaggeration to assert that, whatever distress or suffering we may think of, religion has, in all probability, anticipated us and provided a remedy for it. From as accurate a calculation as we were able to make, we have obtained the following results:

There are computed to be on the surface of Christian Europe about four thousand three hundred towns and villages. Of

We are at a loss to know what sciences were ever opposed by Christianity. T.

these four thousand three hundred towns and villages, three thousand two hundred and ninety-four are of the first, second, third, and fourth rank. Allowing one hospital to each of these three thousand two hundred and ninety-four places, (which is far below the truth,) you will have three thousand two hundred and ninety-four hospitals, almost all founded by the spirit of Christianity, endowed by the Church, and attended by religious orders. Supposing that, upon an average, each of these hospitals contains one hundred beds, or, if you please, fifty beds for two patients each, you will find that religion, exclusively of the immense number of poor which she supports, has afforded daily relief and subsistence for more than a thousand years to about three hundred and twenty-nine thousand four hundred persons.

On summing up the colleges and universities, we find nearly the same results; and we may safely assert that they afford instruction to at least three hundred thousand youths in the different states of Europe.1

In this statement we have not included either the Christian hospitals and colleges in the other three quarters of the globe, or the female youth educated by nuns.

To these results must be added the catalogue of the celebrated men produced by the Church, who form nearly two-thirds of the distinguished characters of modern times. We must repeat, as we have shown, that to the Church we owe the revival of the arts and sciences and of letters; that to her are due most of the great modern discoveries, as gunpowder, clocks, the mariner's compass, and, in government, the representative system; that agriculture and commerce, the laws and political science, are under innumerable obligations to her; that her missions introduced the arts and sciences among civilized nations and laws among savage tribes; that her institution of chivalry powerfully contributed to save Europe from an invasion of new barbarians; that to her mankind is indebted for

The worship of one only God;

The more firm establishment of the belief in the existence of that Supreme Being;

1 See note WW, where the reader will find the basis of this calculation, although the figures are expressly set down much lower than the reality.

A clearer idea of the immortality of the soul, and also of a future state of rewards and punishments;

A more enlarged and active humanity ;

A perfect virtue, which alone is equivalent to all the others— Charity.

A political law and the law of nations, unknown to the ancients, and, above all, the abolition of slavery.

Who is there but must be convinced of the beauty and the grandeur of Christianity? Who but must be overwhelmed with this stupendous mass of benefits?

CHAPTER XIII.

WHAT WOULD THE PRESENT STATE OF SOCIETY BE IF CHRISTIANITY HAD NOT APPEARED IN THE WORLD?-CONJECTURES-CONCLUSION.

WE shall conclude this work with a discussion of the important question which forms the title of this last chapter. By endeavoring to discover what we should probably be at present if Christianity had not existed, we shall learn to appreciate more fully the advantages which we owe to it.

Augustus attained imperial power by the commission of crime, and reigned under the garb of virtue. He succeeded a conqueror, and to distinguish himself he cultivated peace. Incapable of being a great man, he determined to acquire the character of a fortunate prince. He gave a long repose to his subjects. An immense focus of corruption became stagnant, and the prevailing calm was called prosperity. Augustus possessed the genius of circumstances, which knew how to gather the fruits which true genius had produced. It follows true genius, but does not always accompany it.

Tiberius had too great a contempt for mankind, and but too plainly manifested this contempt. The only sentiment which he frankly displayed was the only one that he ought to have dis

sembled; but he could not repress a burst of joy on finding the Roman people and senate sunk even below the baseness of his own heart.

When we behold this sovereign people falling prostrate before Claudius and adoring the son of nobarbus, we may naturally suppose that it had been honored with some marks of indulgence. Rome loved Nero. Long after the death of that tyrant, his phantoms thrilled the empire with joy and hope. Here we must pause to contemplate the manners of the Romans. Neither Titus, nor Antoninus, nor Marcus Aurelius, could change the groundwork of them; by nothing less than a God could this be accomplished.

The Roman people was always an odious people; it is impossible to fall into the vices which it displayed under its imperial rulers, without a certain natural perverseness and some innate defect in the heart. Corrupted Athens never was an object of execration; when in chains, she thought only of enjoying herself. She found that her conquerors had not deprived her of every thing, since they had left her the temple of the Muses.

When Rome had virtues, they were of an unnatural kind. The first Brutus butchered his sons, and the second assassinated his father. There are virtues of situation, which are too easily mistaken for general virtues, and which are but mere local results. Rome, while free, was at first frugal, because she was poor; courageous, because her institutions put the sword into her hand, and because she sprang from a cavern of banditti. She was, besides, ferocious, unjust, avaricious, luxurious; she had nothing admirable but her genius; her character was detestable.

The decemvirs trampled her under foot. Marius spilt at pleasure the blood of the nobles, and Sylia that of the people; as the height of insult, he publicly abdicated the dictatorship. Catiline's accomplices engaged to murder their own fathers,1 and made a sport of overthrowing that majesty of Rome which Jugurtha proposed to purchase. Next come the triumvirs and. their proscriptions. Augustus commands a father and son to

1 Sed filii familiarum, quorum ex nobilitate maxuma pars erat, parentes interficerent. Sallust, in Catil. xliii.

2 Sallust, in Bell. Jugurth.