Chapter III: Science and the Press (3)

"The world of thought in which we live is, after all, formed by
Christianity. Modern Europe is a relic of Christendom, the virtue
of which is not gone out of it. Gregory VII. and Innocent III. have
ruled over generations which have ignored them; have given breadth
to minds which condemned their benefactors as guilty of narrow
priestcraft, and derided the work of those benefactors as an
exploded theory. Let us take an example in what is, morally,
perhaps the worst and most shocking period of the last three
centuries--the thirty years preceding the great French revolution.
We shall see that at this time even minds which had rejected, with
all the firmness of a reprobate will, the regenerating influence of
Christianity, could not emancipate themselves from the virtue of
the atmosphere which they had breathed. They are immeasurably
greater than they would have been in pagan times, by the force of
that faith which they misrepresented and repudiated. To prove the
truth of my words, compare for a moment the great artist who drew
Tiberius and Domitian and the Roman empire in the first century
with him who wrote of its decline and fall in the second and
succeeding centuries. How far wider a grasp of thought, how far
more manifold an experience, combined with philosophic purposes, in
Gibbon than in Tacitus. He has a standard within him by which he
can measure the nations as they come in long procession before him.
In that vast and wondrous drama of the Antonines and Constantine
Athanasius and Leo, Justinian and Charlemagne, Mahomet, Zenghis
Khan, and Timour, Jerusalem and Mecca, Rome and Constantinople,
what stores of thought are laid up--what a train of philosophic
induction exhibited! How much larger is this world become than that
which trembled at Caesar! The very apostate profits by the light
which has shone on Thabor, and the blood which has flowed on
Calvary. He is a greater historian than his heathen predecessor
because he lives in a society to which the God whom he has
abandoned has disclosed the depth of its being, the laws of its
course, the importance of its present, the price of its futurity."

A very little thought will show that, constituted as man's nature is, this could not have been otherwise. Man differs from the inferior animals in that he is richly endowed with faculties which, until they have been developed by education, he can never use, and appreciates and embraces truths, when they have been set before him, which he could never have discovered unassisted. This is the most obvious distinction between reason and instinct. The caterpillar, hatched from an egg dropped by a parent whom it never saw, knows at once what food and what habits are necessary for its new life. Weeks pass away, and its first skin begins to die; but (as if it had been fully instructed in what has to be done) it draws its body out of it as from a glove, and comes forth in a new one. A few weeks later it forsakes the food which has hitherto been necessary for its life, and buries itself in the earth, which up to that very day would have been certain death. There a mysterious change passes upon it, and it lies as if dead till the time for another change approaches. It then gradually works its way to the surface, and comes out a butterfly or a moth. It is now indifferent to the plants which in its former state were necessary to its existence, but yet it chooses those plants on which to deposit its eggs. {362} We are so apt to delude ourselves with the notion that we understand everything to which we give a name, that ninety-nine people out of a hundred seem to think they account for this marvelous power of the inferior animals to act exactly right under circumstances so strangely changed, by calling it "instinct." But, in truth, why or how the creature does what it does, we no more know when we have called it "instinct" than we did before. All we can suppose is that as the Creator has left none of his creatures destitute of the kind and degree of knowledge necessary to enable it to discharge its appointed office in creation, the appetites and desires of the insect are modified from time to time in the different stages of its existence so that they impel it exactly to the course necessary for it to take, with much greater certainty than if it understood what the result was to be. How different is the case of man. Not only is he a free agent, and therefore to be guided by reason, not by mere propensity, but neither reason nor speech, nor indeed life itself, could be preserved or made of any use except by means of training and education received from others. A man left to shift for himself like the animal whose changes we have been tracing, would die at each state of his existence for want of some one to teach him what must be done for his preservation. This same training is equally necessary for his physical, intellectual, moral, and spiritual life. But he is so constituted that the different things needful for him to know for each of these purposes approve themselves to him as soon as they are presented to his mind from without, and the things which thus approve themselves, although he could never have discovered them, we truly call natural to man, because no external teaching would have made him capable of learning them unless the faculty had been as much a part of his original constitution as the unreasoning desires which we call instinct are part of the constitution of brutes. And therefore, when once developed by education, they remain a part of the man, even when he casts away from him those teachers by whom they were developed. Nero would never have learnt the use of speech if he had not caught it from his mother; yet when he used it to order her murder he did not lose what she had taught him, because it was a part of his nature. And so of higher powers, the result of a superior training. Principles which men would never have known without Christian training are retained when Christianity itself is rejected, because they are a part of the spiritual endowment given to man by his Creator, although without training he would never have been able to develop them. His rejection of Christianity results from an evil will. The parts of Christian teaching against which that will does not rebel he calls and believes to be the lessons of his natural reason, although the experience of the greatest and wisest heathen shows that his unassisted natural faculties never would have discovered them.

Nor is this true only of individuals. Nations trained for many generations in Christian faith have before now fallen away from Christianity. But it does not seem that they are able to reduce themselves to the level of heathen nations in their moral standard, their perception and appreciation of good and evil, justice and wrong, or of the nature and destinies of the human race. In some respects they are morally much worse than heathen. But it does not appear that in these points they can sink so low, because their nature, fallen though it be, approves and accepts some of the truths taught it by Christianity. Hence, in order to judge what man can or cannot do without the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, we must examine him in nations to which the faith has never been given, rather than in those which have rejected it. Unhappily, there are at this moment parts of Europe in which the belief in the supernatural {363} seems wanting. An intelligent correspondent of the _Times_ a year ago described such a state of things as existing in parts of northern Germany and Scandinavia. The population believes nothing, and practises no religion. Public worship is deserted, not because the people have devised any new heresy of their own as to the manner in which man should approach God, but because they have ceased to trouble themselves about the matter at all. Lutheranism is dead and gone; but nothing has been substituted for it. The intelligent Protestant writer was surprised to find a population thus wholly without religion orderly and well-behaved, hard-working, and by no means forgetful of social duties. The phenomenon is, no doubt, remarkable; but it is by no means without example. Many parishes (we fear considerable districts) in France are substantially in the same state. The peasantry are sober, industrious, and orderly to a degree unknown in England. They reap the temporal fruits of these good qualities in a general prosperity equally unknown here. They are saving to a degree almost incredible, so that it is a matter of ordinary experience that a peasant who began life with nothing except his bodily strength, leaves behind him several hundreds, not unfrequently some thousands, of pounds sterling. But in this same district whole villages are so absolutely without religion, that, although there is not one person for many miles who calls himself a Protestant, the churches are almost absolutely deserted, and the _curés_ (generally good and zealous men) are reduced almost to inactivity by absolute despair. Some give themselves up to prayer, seeing nothing else that they can do; some will say that they are not wholly without encouragement, because, after fifteen or twenty years of labor, they have succeeded in bringing four or five persons to seek the benefit of the sacraments out of a population of as many hundreds, among whom when they came there was not one such person to be found. [Footnote 52]

[Footnote 52: It should be observed that the morality said to exist
in those parts of France which have so nearly lost the faith is not
Catholic morality: in fact, the population in those districts is
decreasing, and that (it is universally admitted) from immorality.
It should also be remember that there is a most marked contrast
between these districts and those Lutheran districts of which the
_Times_ spoke: In the latter, Lutheranism has died out of itself. In
the worst districts of France, the Catholic religion has not died
out, but has been displaced by a systematic infidel education
inflicted on the people by a godless government. Lastly, even where
things are the worst, there are a few in each generation who, in the
midst of a godless population, turn out saints, really worthy of
that name. It is seldom that a mission is preached in any village
without some such being rescued from the corrupt mass around them.
Nothing, in fact, can more strongly mark the contrast between the
Catholic religion and Lutheranism. The subject is far too large to
be discussed here, but we have suggested these considerations to
avoid misconceptions of our meaning.]

Appalling as is this state of things, the natural virtues (such as they are) of populations which have thus lost faith are themselves the remains of Christianity. History gives us no trace of any people in such a state except those who have once been Christians. For instance, in all others, however civilized, slavery has been established both by law and practice; no one of them has been without divorce; infanticide has been allowed and practised. Nowhere has the unity of man's nature been acknowledged, and, what follows from that, the duties owing to him as man, not merely as fellow countryman. And hence, nowhere has there existed what we call the law of nations, a rule which limits the conduct of men, not only toward those of other nations, but, what is much more, toward those with whom they are in a state of war, or whom they have conquered. In the most civilized times of ancient Greece and Rome no rights were recognized in such foreigners. All these things are the legitimate progeny of Christianity, and of Christianity alone, although they are now accepted as natural principles by nations by whom, but for the gospel of Christ, they would never have been heard of.

{364}

We have enlarged upon this point because, not only in what he says of Gibbon, but in many parts of his subsequent chapters, Mr. Allies attributes to the influence of Christianity things which a superficial observer may attribute rather to some general progress in the world toward a higher civilization. We shall see instances of this as we proceed. We are satisfied that the objection is utterly unfounded. We see no reason to believe that without Christianity any higher or better civilization than that of Rome under Augustus and Athens under Pericles would ever have been attained. That those who lived under that state, so far from expecting any "progress," believed that the world was getting worse and worse, and that there remained no hope of improvement, nor any principles from which it could possibly arise, is most certain. Nor do we believe that those who thus judged of the natural tendency of the world were mistaken, although by a stupendous interference of the Creator with the course of nature an improvement actually took place.

The philosophy of history then sifts and arranges the facts which it records, and judges of them by fixed and eternal principles of right and wrong; drawing from the past lessons of wisdom and virtue for the future. It will approach nearer and nearer to perfection as the range of facts investigated becomes wider, and as the principles by which they are judged are more absolutely true, and applied more correctly, more practically, and more universally. Hence, it would never have existed without Christianity, and although in Christian nations it is found in men partially or wholly unworthy of the Christian name, but who retain many ideas and principles derived from Christianity alone, yet even in them it is exercised imperfectly in proportion as they are less and less Christian.

Mr. Allies thus compares Tacitus and St. Augustine:

"The atmosphere of Tacitus and the lurid glare of his Rome compared
with St. Augustine's world are like the shades in which Achilles
deplored the loss of life contrasted with a landscape bathed in the
morning light of a southern sun. Yet how much more of material
misery was there in the time of St. Augustine than in the time of
Tacitus! In spite of the excesses in which the emperors might
indulge within the walls of their palace or of Rome, the fair fabric
of civilization filled the whole Roman world, the great empire was
in peace, and its multitude of nations were brethren. Countries
which now form great kingdoms of themselves, were then tranquil
members of one body politic. Men could travel the coasts of Italy,
Gaul, Spain, Africa, Syria, Asia Minor, and Greece, round to Italy
again, and find a rich smiling land covered by prosperous cities,
enjoying the same laws and institutions, and possessed in peace by
its children. In St. Augustine's time all had been changed; on many
of these coasts a ruthless, uncivilized, unbelieving, or
misbelieving enemy had descended. Through the whole empire there was
a feeling of insecurity, a cry of helplessness, and a trembling at
what was to come. Yet in the pages of the two writers the contrast
is in the inverse ratio. In the pagan, everything seems borne on by
an iron fate, which tramples upon the free will of man, and
overwhelms the virtuous before the wicked. In the Christian, order
shines in the midst of destruction, and mercy dispenses the severest
humiliations. It was the symbol of the coming age. And so that great
picture of the doctor, saint, and philosopher laid hold of the minds
of men during those centuries of violence which followed, and in
which peace and justice, so far from embracing each other, seemed to
have deserted the earth. And in modern times a great genius has
seized upon it, and developed it in the discourse on universal
history. Bossuet is worthy to receive the torch from St. Augustine.
Scarcely could a more majestic voice, or a more {365} philosophic
spirit, set forth the double succession of empire and of religion,
or exhibit the tissue wrought by Divine Providence, human free will,
and the permitted power of evil."

After this estimate of St. Augustine, he speaks of

"A living author--at once statesman, orator, philosopher, and
historian of the higest rank--who has given us, on a less extensive
scale, a philosophy of history in its most finished and amiable
form. The very attempt on the part of M. Guizot to draw out a
picture of civilization during fourteen hundred years, and to
depict, amongst that immense and ever-changing period, the course of
society in so many countries, indicates no ordinary power; and the
partial fulfilment of the design may be said to have elevated the
philosophy of history into a science. In this work may be found the
moat important rules of the science accurately stated; but the work
itself is the best example of philosophic method and artistic
execution, united to illustrate a complex subject. A careful study
of original authorities, a patient induction of facts, a cautious
generalization, the philosophic eye to detect analogies, the
painter's power to group results, and, above all, a unity of
conception which no multiplicity of details can embarrass; these are
some of the main qualifications for a philosophy of history which I
should deduce from these works. Yet, while the action of Providence
and that of human free will are carefully and beautifully brought
out, while both may be said to be points of predilection with the
author, he has not alluded, so far as I am aware, to the great evil
spirit and his personal operation. Strong as he is, he has been
apparently too weak to bear the scoff of modern infidelity--"he
believes in the devil"--unless, indeed, the cause of this lies
deeper, and belongs to his philosophy; for if there be one subject
out of which eclecticism can pick nothing to its taste, it would be
the permitted operation of the great fallen spirit. Nor will the
warmest admiration of his genius be mistaken for a concurrence in
all his judgments. I presume not to say how far such an author is
sometimes, in spite of himself, unjust, from the point of view at
which he draws his picture. Whether, and how far, he be an eclectic
philosopher, let others decide. It would be grievous to feel it true
of such a mind; for it is the original sin of that philosophy to
make the universe rotate round itself. Great is its complacency in
its own conclusions, but there runs through them one mistake--to
fancy itself in the place of God" (p. 31).

Those who have ever made the attempt to analyze in a few lines the genius of a great writer will best be able to estimate the combination of keen intellect, patient thought, and scrupulous candor in this criticism. We must not deny ourselves one more quotation:

"St. Augustine, Bossuet, Guizot, Balmez, Schlegel: I have taken
these names not to exhaust but to illustrate the subject. Here we
have the ancient and the modern society, Africa and France, Spain
and Germany, and the Christian mind in each, thrown upon the facts
of history. They point out, I think, sufficiently a common result.
But amid the founders of a new science, who shall represent our own
country? Can I hesitate, or can I venture, in this place and company
[_i.e._, before the Catholic University of Dublin, in the chair of
which this lecture was delivered], to mention the hand which has
directed the scattered rays of light from so many sources on the
wild children of Central Asia, and produced the Turk before us in
his untameable ferocity--the outcast of the human race, before whom
earth herself ceases to be a mother--by whom man's blood has ever
been shed like water, woman's honor counted as the vilest of things,
nature's most sacred laws publicly and avowedly outraged,--has
produced him before us for the abhorrence of mankind, the infamy of
nations? To sketch the intrinsic {366} character of barbarism and
civilization, and out of common historical details, travel, and
observation to show the ineffaceable stamp of race and tribe,
reproducing itself through the long series of ages, surely expresses
the idea which we mean by the philosophy of history" (p. 38).

We have given a disproportionate space to this inaugural lecture, both for its intrinsic importance and because it gives a shadow of the whole plan of Mr. Allies's work, both that part which lies before us and that which remains to be published; for the volume before us is "only a portion, perhaps about a fourth, of the author's design." In the six lectures which it contains, he gives us an estimate, first, of the physical and political condition of the Roman empire in its palmy days; then, of the force by which it pleased God to constitute the new creation in the midst of it. In the last four lectures he compares the vital principles of these two vast social organizations--the heathen and the Christian--first in a representative man of each class, then in the effects produced upon society at large by the influence of each; then in the primary relation of man to woman in marriage; and, lastly, in the virginal state; although under this last head there can hardly be said to be a comparison, as heathen society has simply nothing to set against that wonderful creation of Christianity--holy virginity.

We know not where we have met any painting of the Roman empire so striking as that contained in the first lecture. Of the multitude of Englishmen who read more or less of the classical Latin authors, a very small proportion have ever paid any attention to the Roman empire, as it is displayed by Tacitus and Juvenal. This is the natural result of the grace and eloquence of Livy and Cicero, much rather than of any strong preference for republican institutions. Indeed it is impossible not to be struck with the vast influence which Roman republicanism exercises in France compared with England. Nor is it difficult to account for this. France, except to a limited degree under the monarchy of July, has never enjoyed constitutional liberty. The Frenchman, therefore, who dreams of liberty at all, places his dreamland in a Roman republic. Boys who in England would rant about John Hampden are found in France ranting about Junius Brutus. For what the Englishman means when he talks about liberty is "English liberty;" the Frenchman means the Roman republic. So much has this been the case, that even in America the war of independence began, not in any aspiration after a republic, but for the rights of English subjects. The sword had been drawn for a year before the colonies claimed independence, and very shortly before Washington had declared that "there was no thought of separation, only of English liberty." What proves that these were not mere words was, that even after independence had been achieved, the leaders, who met in congress, agreed almost to a man in expressing their preference for "an English constitution," if circumstances had placed it within their reach. All the world knows that France became a republic chiefly because Rome in her palmy days had been so called; nay, to this hour all the terms adopted by the revolutionary party have been borrowed from classical times. Such was the term "citizen," so appropriate to a people whose boast was that they were free of a city which had conquered the world, so absurd as denoting the members of a great nation in which not even centuries of extreme centralization have prevented political rights from being exercised by each man in his own province. Such, again, was that inundation of pagan names which the revolutionary times substituted for those of the saints, and which are still characteristic of France--Camille, Emile, Antonine, and even Brute and Timoleon. This we take to be one great reason why many sensible {367} persons in France are so greatly afraid of classical studies in schools and colleges. They say that they turn the heads of boys, especially French boys. It is highly characteristic of the man, that the officers of the House of Commons, who made forcible entry into the house of Sir Francis Burdett when he was committed by order of the House, found him reading with his little son, not Plutarch's life of Brutus or Cato, as would assuredly have been the case with a Frenchman, but "Magna Charta." He was not less theatrical, but he was a thoroughly English actor.

And yet we strongly suspect that out of a hundred boys who leave a classical school more than ninety believe that Roman history ends with Augustus. The university no doubt, gives a somewhat more extended view. But even there Tacitus is usually about the limit. We wonder how far this feeling was carried before Gibbon published the "Decline and Fall."

Hence we especially value the wonderful picture of the empire painted by our author.

It was in fact a federation of civilized states under an absolute monarch; the municipal liberties were left so entire that Niebuhr mentions Italian cities, in the immediate neighborhood of Rome itself, which retained all through the times of the empire and the middle ages, down to the wars of the French revolution, the same municipal institutions under which Rome had found them. They were swept away by that faithful lover of despotism, Napoleon I., to make way for the uniform system of a _préfet_ and _souspréfet_ in each district. It is more important to bear this in mind because, as the revolutionists aped the manners and names of the Roman republic without understanding them, the imperialists of France are apt to assume that they faithfully represent the Roman empire. Now the one striking characteristic of the French empire is that it raises yearly 100,000 military conscripts, beside the naval conscription, the police, and the very firemen, all of whom are carefully drilled as soldiers. How was it under Augustus?

"It is hard to conceive adequately what a spectator called 'the immense majesty of the Roman peace' (Pliny, 'Nat. Hist,' xxvii. 1). Where now in Europe, impatient and uneasy, a group of half-friendly nations jealously watches each other's progress and power, and the acquisition of a province threatens a general war, Rome maintained, from generation to generation, in tranquil sway, an empire of which Gaul, Spain, Britain, and North Africa, Switzerland, and the greater part of Austria, Turkey in Europe, Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt formed but single limbs, members of her mighty body. Her roads, which spread like a network over this immense territory, from their common centre, the golden milestone of the Forum, under the palace of her emperors, did but express the unity of that spirit with which she ruled the earth her subject, levelling the mountains and filling up the valleys for the march of her armies, the caravans of her merchandise, and the even sweep of her legislation. A moderate fleet of 6,000 sailors at Misenum, and another at Ravenna, a flotilla at Forum Julii, and another in the Black sea, of half that force, preserved the whole Mediterranean from piracy; and every nation bordering on its shores could freely interchange the productions of their industry. Two smaller armaments of twenty-four vessels each on the Rhine and the Danube secured the empire from northern incursion. In the time of Tiberius a force of twenty-five legions and fourteen cohorts, making 171,500 men, with about an equal number of auxiliary troops, that is, in all, an army of 340,000, sufficed, not so much to preserve internal order, which rested upon other and surer ground, but to guard the frontiers of a vast population, amounting, as is calculated, {368} to 120,000,000, and inhabiting the very fairest regions of the earth, of which the great Mediterranean sea was a sort of central and domestic lake. But this army itself, thus moderate in number, was not, as a rule, stationed in cities, but in fixed quarters on the frontiers, as a guard against external foes. Thus, for instance, the whole interior of Gaul possessed a garrison of but 1,200 men--that Gaul which, in the year 1860, in a time of peace, thought necessary for internal tranquillity and external rank and security to have 626,000 men in arms. [Footnote 53] Again, Asia Minor had no military force; that most beautiful region of the earth teemed with princely cities, enjoying the civilization of a thousand years, and all the treasures of art and industry, in undisturbed repose. And within its unquestioned boundaries, the spirit, moreover, of Roman rule was far other than that of a military despotism, or of a bureaucracy and a police pressing with ever watchful suspicion on every spring of civil life. The principle of its government was not that no population could be faithful which was not kept in leading-strings, but rather to leave cities and corporations to manage their own affairs themselves. Thus its march was firm and strong, but for this very reason devoid alike of fickleness and haste."

[Footnote 53: Surely the author should have added the Belgian army
(fixed by the laws of 1853 at 100,000), and that part of the
Prussian, etc., which is raised west of the Rhine, in comparing the
military force of ancient Gaul with that of the same district in our day.]

It might have been added, that, as a general rule, the army which guarded each portion was composed of the natives of the country in which they were stationed. Roman citizens they were, no doubt, but citizens of provincial extraction, and posted to guard on behalf of Rome the very country which their fathers, sometimes but a very few generations back, had defended against her. [Footnote 54] This is a policy the generosity of which France dares not at this day imitate, even in her oldest provinces. To say nothing of the British army in Ireland, the Breton conscripts are still sent to serve at Lyons and Paris.

[Footnote 54: Champagny, Rome, and Judea.]

The extracts we have given will doubtless lead every reader to study for himself Mr. Allies's descriptions of Rome, and the life of the Thermae, and of the colonies, everywhere reproducing the life of Rome. Every page breathes with the matured thought of a mind of remarkable natural acuteness, and stored with refined scholarship. There is nothing of beauty or majesty in that magnificent old world which he does not seem to have witnessed and mused over.

It is hardly possible to realize all this greatness without being tempted to repine in the remembrance whither it was all hastening--that the peace of the Roman world was but "the torrent's smoothness ere it dash below;" its magnificence only the feast of Baltassar in that last night of the splendor of Babylon, when the Medes and Persians were already under her walls, and the river had been turned away from its course through her quays, and a way left open for the rush of the destroyer into her streets and palaces. Already the mysterious impulse had been given which, during so many centuries, drove down horde after horde of barbarians from the wild north-east, to overflow the favored lands that surrounded the Mediterranean. In the early days of Roman history the Gauls had rushed on, sweeping away those earlier races whose remains we are now exploring in the shallows of the Swiss lakes, and whose descendants are probably to be found in the Basques, and in some of those degraded castes which, in spite of the welding power of the Church, left proscribed remnants in France and elsewhere until the great revolution. That mighty wave burst upon the rock of the Capitol, threatened for a moment utterly to overwhelmed it, and then fell broken at its feet. But it is not by repelling one wave, however formidable, that a rising tide is turned back. In the day of Rome's {369} utmost power her very foundations were shaken by the torrent of the Cimbri and Teutones. They, too, were broken against the steel-clad legions of Marius, and fell off like spray on the earth. But the tide was still advancing. What need to trace its successive inroads? Every reader of Gibbon remembers how the time came at last when the very site where Rome had stood had been so often swept by it, that of all its greatness there remained nothing more than the sea leaves of some castle of shingles and sand, after a few waves have passed over it.

"Quench'd is the golden statue's ray;
The breath of heaven hath swept away
What toiling earth hath piled;
Scattering wise heart and crafty hand,
As breezes strew on ocean's strand
The fabrics of a child!"

There even came a time when for many weeks the very ruins of ancient Rome were absolutely deserted, and trodden neither by man nor beast. No wonder that the world stood by afar off weeping and mourning over the utter destruction of all that the earth had ever known of greatness and glory. So the sentence had been passed, in the day of her greatest glory, by the prophetic voice of the angel, who cried with a strong voice:

"Fallen--fallen, is Babylon the great, and is become the habitation
of devils and the hold of every unclean spirit, and of every unclean
and hateful bird. And the kings of the earth shall weep and bewail
themselves over her, when they shall see the smoke of the burning;
standing afar off for fear of her torments, saying, Alas! alas! that
great city Babylon, that mighty city; for in one hour is thy
judgment come. And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn
over her, and shall stand afar off from her for fear of her
torments, weeping and mourning, and saying, Alas! alas! that great
city which was clothed in fine linen, and purple, and scarlet, and
was gilt with gold and precious stones and pearls. For in one hour
are so great riches come to nought." (Apocalypse, chap, xviii.)

It was not the ruin of one city, however glorious, but the sweeping away of all the accumulated glories of the civilization of the whole civilized world, during more than a thousand years. All had been embodied in imperial Rome. In the words of our author--

"The empire of Augustus inherited the whole civilization of the
ancient world. Whatever political or social knowledge, whatever
moral or intellectual truth, whatever useful or elegant arts, 'the
enterprising race of Japhet' had acquired, preserved, and
accumulated in the long course of centuries since the beginning of
history had descended without a break to Rome, with the dominion of
all the countries washed by the Mediterranean. For her the wisdom of
Egypt and of all the East had been stored up. For her Pythagoras and
Thales, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, and all the schools beside
of Grecian philosophy suggested by these names, had thought. For her
Zoreaster, as well as Solon and Lycurgus, legislated. For her
Alexander conquered, the races which he subdued forming but a
portion of her empire. Every city, in the ears of whose youth the
poems of Homer were familiar as household words, owned her sway. The
magistrates, from the Northern sea to the confines of Arabia, issued
their decrees in the language of empire--the Latin tongue; while, as
men of letters, they spoke and wrote in Greek. For her Carthage had
risen, founded colonies, discovered distant coasts, set up a
world-wide trade, and then fallen, leaving her the empire of Africa
and the west, with the lessons of a long experience. Not only so,
but likewise Spain, Gaul, and all the frontier provinces, from the
Alps to the mouth of the Danube, spent in her service their strength
and skill; supplied her armies with their bravest youths; gave to
her senate and her knights their choicest minds. The vigor of {370}
new and the culture of long-polished races were alike employed in
the vast fabric of her power. Every science and art, all human
experience and discovery, had poured their treasure in one stream
into the bosom of that society, which, after forty-four years of
undisputed rule, Augustus had consolidated into a new system of
government, and bequeathed to the charge of Tiberius" (p. 41).

No wonder the ancient world had assured itself that, as nothing greater, nothing wiser, nothing more glorious than Rome could ever arise upon earth, so its greatness, wisdom, and glory could never be superseded. It was "the eternal city." It was "for ever to give laws to the world." The contemporary poets could imagine no stronger expression of an eternity, than that of a duration while Rome itself should last. Yet was it at that very time that the eyes of a fisherman of the lake of Tiberias were opened to see the angel "coming down from heaven with power and great glory," from whose mighty cry over the fall of Babylon we have already quoted some words. No wonder when the time came that his prophecy was fulfilled, the world stood by weeping and mourning, not over the fall of a single city (such as Scipio Africanus had forecast as he watched the smoke of old Carthage rising up to heaven), but over the ruin of the civilization of the whole world. No wonder that, even in our own age, those whose hearts have so far sunk back to the level of heathenism as to value only material prosperity and worldly greatness, still re-echo the cry--

"Alas! the eternal city, and alas!
The trebly hundred triumphs, and the day
When Brutus made the dagger's edge surpass
The conqueror's sword in bearing fame away.
Alas! for earth, for never shall we see
That brightness in her eye she wore when
Rome was free."

But the voice of divine wisdom was far different: "Rejoice over her, thou heaven, and ye holy apostles and prophets, for God hath judged your judgment upon her. And a mighty angel took up a stone, as it were a great millstone, and cast it into the sea, saying, 'With such violence as this shall Babylon, that great city, be thrown down, and shall be found no more at all; and the voice of harpers, and of musicians, and of them that play on the pipe and on the trumpet, shall no more be heard at all in thee; and no craftsman, of any art whatsoever, shall be found any more at all in thee; and the sound of the mill shall be heard no more at all in thee; and the light of the lamp shall shine no more in thee; and the voice of the bridegroom and the bride shall be heard no more at all in thee; for thy merchants were the great men of the earth, for all nations have been deceived by thine enchantments.' And in her was found the blood of prophets, and of saints, and of all that were slain upon the earth."

Thus total, according to the prophecy, was to be the destruction of the wealth, civilization, greatness, and glory of the ancient heathen world, gathered together in Rome, that in the utter sweeping away of that one city all might perish together. How fully the words were accomplished we know by the lamentation of the whole world over Babylon, the echoes of which still ring in our ears. But to us Christians it rather belongs to weigh the words which follow without any break in the sacred text (although the division of the chapters leads many readers to overlook the close connection). "After these things I heard, as it were, the voice of much people in heaven, saying, 'Alleluia. Salvation, and glory, and power is to our God. For just and true are his judgments, who hath judged the great harlot which corrupted the earth with her fornications, and he hath avenged the blood of his servants at her hands.' And again they said, 'Alleluia. And her smoke ascendeth for ever and ever.'" Here is the answer to that cry of the angel, "Rejoice over her, thou heaven, and ye apostles and prophets."

{371}

Were any comment needed upon such prophecies--any explanation of the sentence passed upon a civilization so great, so ancient, so widely extended, and so refined--anything to reconcile us to the utter destruction of so much that was fair and mighty, we may find it in the latter half of the lecture before us. Not that our author is insensible to the marvellous beauty of that glow with which classical literature causes the figures of those days to shine before us. That would be impossible for a man of his studies. He says:

"Is not the very language of Cicero and Virgil an expression of this
lordly, yet peaceful rule; this even, undisturbed majesty, which
holds the world together like the regularity of the seasons, like
the alternations of light and darkness, like the all-pervading
warmth of the sun? If every language reflects the character of the
race which speaks it, surely we discern in the very strain of Virgil
the closing of the gates of war, the settling of the nations down to
the arts of peace, the reign of law and order, the amity and concord
of races, the weak protected, the strong ruled: in a word,

'Romanos rerum dominos,
gentemque togatam.'"

Neither, need it hardly be said, has he set the hideous pollutions of that civilization fully before us: that is rendered impossible by its very hideousness. Let those who recoil from the horrors of what he has said--but a faint outline of the miserable truth, though traced with singular artistic form and beauty--bear in mind the while the words of the inspired prophecy, "All nations have drunk of the wine of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her"--"Her sins have reached unto heaven, and the Lord shall reward her iniquities"--"In her was found the blood of prophets, and saints, and of all that were slain upon the earth." The crimes, as well as the civilization of a thousand years, were accumulated at Rome, and both were swept away together by that overwhelming flood of fierce barbarians. Little were it worthy of Christians to mourn over a civilization into whose very heart-strings such unutterable pollution was intertwined; especially as it was removed, not like Babylon of old, to leave behind it nothing but desolation, but to make room for that kingdom of God which was to be enthroned upon its ruins; for such was the purpose of God, that the very centre of Christendom, the very seat of the throne of Christ upon earth, on which he would visibly sit in the person of his Vicar, was there to be established, whence the throne of the Caesars and the golden house of Nero had been swept away in headlong ruin. "I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth was gone. And I heard a great voice from the throne saying, 'Behold the tabernacle of God with men, and he will dwell with them. And they shall be his people, and God himself shall be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.'" "And he that sat on the throne said, 'Behold, I make all things new.'" The full accomplishment of these words we expect, in faith and hope, when "death shall be no more, nor mourning, nor crying, nor sorrow shall be any more; for the former things are passed away;" yet, surely, whatever more glorious accomplishment is yet to come, it were blindness not to see how far they are already fulfilled in the substitution of Christendom for the civilized pagan world, the setting up the throne of the Vicar of Christ upon the ruins of the palace of the Caesars.

First among the causes of that hideous accumulated mixture of blood and filth in which heathen civilization was drowned, Mr. Allies most justly places the institution of slavery as it was at Rome, because by this the springs of human life were tainted. It is certain that during all the long years of the duration of the Roman {372} empire, there was among its heathen population no one human being, who lived beyond the earliest childhood, who was not polluted, and whose very soul was not scarred and branded, by the marks of that hideous moral pestilence. We say "its heathen population," because great as must have been the evil it wrought upon ordinary Christians, we doubt not that there were those who gathered honey out of corruption, and whose justice, charity, and purity came out from that furnace of temptation with a brightness which nothing but the most fiery trial could have given to them. From slavery the whole of Roman society received its form. Our author most truly says, "The spirit of slavery is never limited to the slave; it saturates the atmosphere which the freeman breathes together with the slave; passes into his nature, and corrupts it." This miserable truth can never be too often impressed upon men, because, unhappily, there are still advocates of slavery who think that they apologize for it if they can prove, as they think, that the slave is happy. As well might they argue that the introduction of the plague into London would be no calamity, if the man who brought it in upon him entered the city dancing and shouting. In ancient Italy slaves replaced the hardy rustics, that "_prisca gens mortalium_" who, though doubtless far less virtuous than they appeared in the fevered dreams of men sick of the vices of Rome in the last days of the republic, were still among the best specimens of heathen life. Wherever slavery extends, labor becomes dishonorable as the badge of servitude, a few masters languish in bloated luxury, but the nation itself grows constantly poorer, as an ever-increasing proportion of its population has to be maintained in indolence. At Rome slaves were the only domestic servants, and after a time the only manufacturers. And yet even this is nothing compared to the evils of a state of society in which the great majority of women as well as of men are the absolute property of their masters. Horrible as was this state of things, it offered so many gratifications to the corrupt natures of those whose hands held the power of the world, and without whose consent it could not be abolished, that it would have seemed to any one who had ever witnessed the life of a wealthy Roman noble no less than madness to imagine that any man would ever willingly surrender them.

As a matter of fact, so far was this state of society from holding out any hope of its own amendment, whether sudden or gradual, that, as our author remarks--

"Of all the minds which have left a record of themselves, from
Cicero to Tacitus, there is not one who does not look upon the
world's course as a rapid descent. They feel an immense moral
corruption breaking in on all sides, which wealth, convenience of
life, and prosperity only enhance. They have no hope for humanity,
for they have no faith in it, nor in any power encompassing and
directing it."

Faithless and hopeless they were; but whatever this world could give they had in abundance:

"In the time of heathenism the world of sense which surrounded man
flattered and caressed all his natural powers, and solicited an
answer from them; and in return he flung himself greedily upon that
world, and tried to exhaust its treasures. Glory, wealth, and
pleasure intoxicated his heart with their dreams; he crowned himself
with the earth's flowers, and drank in the air's perfume; and in one
object or another, in one after another, he sought enjoyment and
satisfaction. The world had nothing more to give him; nor will the
latest growth of civilization surpass the profusion with which the
earth poured forth its gifts to those who consented to seek on the
earth alone their home and their reward; though, indeed, they were
the few, to whom the many were sacrificed. The Roman noble, with the
pleasures of a vanquished world at his feet, {373} with men and
women from the fairest climes of the earth to do his bidding--men
who, though slaves, had learnt all the arts and letters of Greece,
and were ready to use them for the benefit of their lords; and
women, the most beautiful and accomplished of their sex, who were
yet the property of these same lords--the Roman noble, as to
material and even intellectual enjoyment, stood on a vantage-ground
which never again man can hope to occupy, however--

'Through the ages an increasing purpose runs,
And the thoughts of men are widen'd with the process of the suns.'

"Caesar and Pompey, Lucullus and Hortensius, and the fellows of
their order, were orators, statesmen, jurists, and legislators,
generals, men of literature, and luxurious nobles at the same time;
and they were this because they could use the minds as well as the
bodies of others at their pleasure. Not in this direction was an
advance possible" (p. 159).

Our author draws with great skill and vigor a picture of the moral society of the heathen world, and of the beliefs upon which the practice of the heathen rested. Into these we have no room to follow him. At the end of this lecture he shows what sights they were which met the eyes of a stranger coming from the east in the days of Nero--an execution in which four hundred men, women, and children were marched through the streets of Rome to the cross, because their master had been killed by one of his slaves. In all such cases the Roman law required that every slave in the house, however innocent, however young or however old--man, woman, or child--should be put to death. Thence the stranger passed to a scene of debauchery such as the world has never imagined, in the gardens close to the Pantheon. This stranger--

"Why has he come to Rome, and what is he doing there? Poor, unknown,
a foreigner in dress, language, and demeanor, he is come from a
distant province, small in extent, but the most despised and the
most disliked of Rome's hundred provinces, to found in Rome itself a
society, and one, too, far more extensive than this great Roman
empire, since it is to embrace all nations; far more lasting, since
it is to endure for ever. He is come to found a society, by means of
which all that he sees around him, from the emperor to the slave,
shall be changed" (p. 101).

What madness can have inspired such a hope, or what miracle, real or simulated, could fulfil it? And that, not in the golden age of pastoral simplicity, in which men looked for wonders with an uncritical eye, but "amid the dregs of Romulus," when all the world seemed to have fallen together into the "sere and yellow leaf."

"He has two things within him, for want of which society was perishing and man unhappy: a certain knowledge of God as the Creator, Ruler, Judge, and Rewarder of men; and of man's soul made after the image and likeness of this God. This God he has seen, touched, and handled upon earth; has been an eye-witness of his majesty, has received his message, and bears his commission. But whence had this despised foreigner received the double knowledge of God and of the soul, so miserably lost (as we have seen) to this brilliant Roman civilization?

"In the latter years of Augustus, when the foundations of the imperial rule had been laid, and the structure mainly raised by his practical wisdom, there had dwelt a poor family in a small town of evil repute, not far from the lake of the remote province where this fisherman plied his trade. It consisted of an elderly man, a youthful wife, and one young child. The man gained his livelihood as a carpenter, and the child worked with him. Complete obscurity rested upon this household till the child grew to the age of thirty years" (p. 104).

Then follows in few words the history of his life, death, and resurrection. These things the fisherman had {374} seen, and in this was the power which was to substitute a new life for the corrupt civilization of a world.