Chapter XII (2)

The true artist is one of the favorites of Heaven, in a great measure exalted above mortal commiseration, even if his days are clouded with cares and sorrows. He lives in a different and purer atmosphere than ordinary men. He may not banquet on the pleasures of sense, but he revels in the joys of the soul. A Dante may be sad and sorrowful, as when, in his gloomy wanderings and isolations, he asked of Fra Ilario the rest and peace of his sacred monastery; but he was sad as a greater than he wept over Jerusalem, in the profound seriousness of superior knowledge, in the sublime solitariness of an inhabitant of another and grander sphere. Genius ever partakes of this sadness, and it is as shallow to mistake it for misery as it would be to pity the saint passing through the tribulations of our worldly pilgrimage, in full view of the unending glories which are in store for him in the celestial city. The higher joys of the soul are foreign to frivolity, tumult, and the mirth of wine,--those pleasures most prized by the weak or sensual. There is nothing more sublime in this world than the example of a lofty nature seeking the imperishable, the true, the beautiful, the good, amid discomfort, or reproach, or neglect.

Such are truly great artists. Sometimes they are munificently rewarded by their generation with praises and material goods, as was Apelles among the Greeks, and Raphael among the Italians. Sometimes their excellence was unappreciated, except by a few. But whether appreciated or not, the great artists of antiquity belong to the constellation of men of genius which shall shine forever. They lived in their own glorious realm of thought and feeling, which the world can neither understand nor share. They did not live for utilities. They lived to realize their own exalted ideas of excellence.

[Sidenote: Decline of art.]

[Sidenote: Prostitution of art.]

[Sidenote: The later Romans incapable of appreciating art.]

[Sidenote: The degradation of art.]

[Sidenote: utter failure of art as a conservative power.]

But this was not the case in imperial Rome. All writers speak of a most signal decline in the arts from Augustus to Diocletian. Even architecture became corrupted. It was without taste, or a mere copy, like the arch of Constantine, from the older models. There were no original edifices erected, and such as were built were in defiance of all the principles that were established by the Greek architects. Least of all did art encourage grand sentiments. It did not paint ethereal beauty. It did not chisel the marble to elevate or instruct. Statues were made to please the degraded taste of rich but vulgar families, to give pomp to luxury, to pander wicked passions. Painting was absolutely disgraceful; and we veil our eyes and hide our blushes as we survey the decorations of Pompeii. How degrading the pictures which are found amid the ruins of ancient baths! Art was sensualized, perverted, corrupting. Paintings appealed either to perverted tastes, or fostered a senseless pride, or stimulated unholy passions, or flattered the vanity of the rich--brought angels down to earth, not raised mortals to heaven. They commemorated the regime of tyrants, or amused the wealthy classes, whose wealth had bought alike the muse of the poets and the visions of the sculptor. Art was venal. She sold her glories, which ought to be as unbought as the graces of life and the smiles of beauty; and she became a painted Haetera, drunk with the wine-cups of Babylon, and fantastic with the sorceries of Egypt. How could she, thus prostituted, elevate the people, or arrest degeneracy, or consecrate the ancient superstitions? She facilitated rather than retarded the ruin. It is marvelous how soon art degenerated with the progress of luxury, reproducing evil more rapidly than good, and obscuring even truth itself. Pleasures that appeal to the intellect will ever be in accordance with prevailing tastes, and the more exquisite the art the more fatally will it lead astray by the insidious entrance of a form as an angel of light. We cannot extinguish art without destroying one of the noblest developments of civilization; but we cannot have civilization without multiplying the dangers and temptations of human society. And even granting that the arts of the pagan world had a refining influence on the few, what is this unless accompanied with the virtues which grow out of self-sacrifice? I am not speaking of those glories which art ought to represent, but of those attractions which it presents when degraded. What conservative influence can result from the Venus of Titian? Why did not art reform morals, as morals elevated art? And why did art degenerate? Why did it not keep its own? The truth is, that art is esoteric, and not popular. The imagination of the vulgar is not sufficiently cultivated to see, in the emblems which art typifies, those passions or sentiments which have moved generations with enthusiasm. A Gothic cathedral is infinitely more interesting to a man of sentiment or learning than to an unlettered boor. The ignorant cannot appreciate the historical fidelity and marvelous study of races which appear in such a statue as the African Sybil. We must comprehend the character of Moses before we can kindle with admiration at the dignity and majesty which Michael Angelo impersonated in his statue. When Phidias, Praxiteles, and Lysippus moulded their clay models, they had a Pericles, a Plato, or a Demosthenes for their critics and admirers. It was for them they worked, and by them they were stimulated--not the rabble crowd of slaves and sycophants. But when, at Rome, there was no Cicero, no Octavius, no Mecaenas, no Horace, the artists toiled to please imperial gluttons, pretentious freedmen, ignorant generals, drunken senators, and venal judges. Their sublime art became the handmaid of effeminacy, of vanity, of sensuality. It could not rise above the level of those who dedicated themselves to its service. It did not make men better. Was Leo X. a wiser Pope because he delighted in pictures? Did art make the Medici at Florence more susceptible to religious impressions? Does art sanctify Dresden or Florence? Does it make modern capitals stronger, or more self-sacrificing, better fitted to contend with violence, or guard against the follies which undermine a state? What are the true conservative forces of our world? On what did Luther and Cranmer build the hopes of regeneration? The cant of dilettanti would be laughed at by the old apostles and martyrs. Art amuses, and may refine when it is itself pure. It does not brace up the soul to conflict. It does not teach how to resist temptation. It presents temptations rather. It gilds the fascinations of earth. It does not point to duties, or the life to come. That which is conservative is what saves, not what adorns. We want ideas, invisible agencies, that which exalts the mind above the material. So far as art can do this it is well. It is a great element of civilization. So far as gardens and flowers and villas and groves can do this, let us have them. Let us make a paradise out of a desert. Man was put into Eden to dress and to keep it. The material, rightly directed and used, is part of our just inheritance. Man is physical as well as intellectual. It is monkish and erratic to spurn the outward blessings of Providence. An inheritance in Middlesex is worth more than one in Utopia. Give us beauty and grace-- they are invaluable. But let us remember, also, that it is chiefly from moral truth that the soul expands--the recognition of responsibilities and duties. No matter how splendid we make the triumphs of art in its aesthetic influence, the question returns, Did these, in their best estate, in Greece and Rome, lead to patriotism, to sacrifice, to an elevated social home? And if these did not arrest corruption, how could art, when perverted, save a falling empire? All profound inquiries as to the progress of the race centre in moral truths,--those which have reference to the spiritual rather than the material, the future rather than the present. Art failed because it did not propound grand ideas which pertain to spiritual and future interests. It especially failed when it pandered to perverted tastes, when it was the mere pastime of the rich, and diverted the mind from what is greatest and holiest. St. Paul, when he wandered through the Grecian cities, said very little of the sculptures and the temples which met his eye at every turn. He was not insensible to beauty and grandeur. But he felt that all renovating forces came from the ideas which he was sent to preach. He did not condemn art; he probably admired it; but this he saw was a poor foundation of national happiness and strength. If the severe morality of the Stoics was a feeble barrier against corruption, how much more feeble were temples to Minerva, and statues to Jupiter, and pictures of Venus? Great was Diana of the Ephesians, but not as an influence to stem degeneracy. Exalt art as highly as we can, it is not a renovating power, and it is this of which we speak.

[Sidenote: Attempts of literature.]

[Sidenote: Degradation of literature.]

Literature attempted something higher than art; nor need we expatiate on its transcendent excellence in the classical ages. This itself was art, art in the highest and most enduring form, and will live when marbles moulder away. Virgil, Cicero, Horace, Tacitus, Livy, Ovid, were great artists, and civilization will perpetuate their fame. They cannot die. What more immortal than the artistic delineations of man and of nature which the poets and historians wrought out with so much labor and genius? When did men, uninspired by Christianity, utter sentiments more tender, or thoughts more profound, or aspirations more lofty? They are our perpetual study and marvel--prodigies of genius, such as appear only at great intervals. All that is most valuable in the ancient civilization is perpetuated in its literature, and survives empires and changes. The men who were amused and instructed by these great masterpieces _have_ passed away, as well as their empire, but these will interest remotest generations. These live by their own vitality. If the unaided intellect of man could soar so high under the withering influence of paganism and political slavery and social degradation, we cannot but feel that Christianity has higher missions to accomplish than to stimulate the intellectual faculties of man; and, while we remember that, in our own times, some of the highest creations of genius have been made by those who have repudiated the spirit of Christianity, we cannot but feel that conservative influences do not come from literature, in its best estate, unless its ideas are inspired by the Gospel. The great writers of the Augustan age did not arrest degeneracy, any more than Goethe and Bulwer and Byron and Hugo have in our own day. They amused, they cultivated, they adorned; they did not save. Nor is it probable that the great masterpieces of antiquity were favorite subjects of study, except with a cultivated few, any more than Milton, Bacon, and Pascal are read in our times by the people. They enriched libraries; they were venerated and preserved in costly bindings; but they were not familiar guides. The people read nothing. The great writers of antiquity complain of the frivolity of the public taste. Moreover, the troubles of the empire and the corruptions of society were unfavorable to lofty creations of genius. Men were absorbed in passing events; and literary men generally pandered to the vile taste of the people, or stooped to adulate the monsters whom they feared. Hunting and hawking furnished subjects for the muse of the poets. History was reduced to dull and dry abridgments, and still drier commentaries. The people sought scandalous anecdotes, or demoralizing sketches, or frothy poetry. The decline in letters, like the decline in art, kept pace with the public misfortunes. When lofty and contemplative characters were saddened and discouraged, in view of public and private corruption, and saw ruin approaching, they had no spirit to make great exertions--and exertions which would not be appreciated. They sought retreats. There was no life, no enthusiasm in literature. It was conventional--to suit fashionable coteries, with whom strength was unpalatable and dignity a rebuke. Sound was preferred to sense. Rhetoric supplanted thought. A sentimental flow of words passed current for poetry. Literary men united into mutual admiration societies, and exalted their own frivolous productions. As the penny-a- liners of our day enumerate in their catalogue of great men chiefly those who have written romances and poetry for magazines, and pass unnoticed the stern thinkers of the age, so the literary gossips of Rome made the city ring, like grasshoppers, with their importunate chink. Unfortunately they were the only inhabitants of the field, for "no great cattle" kept silence under the shadow of the protecting oak. Nero suppressed the writings of Lucan, because he painted, in his "Pharsalia," the follies of the time. Lucian gave vent to his bitter sarcasms, and raised the veil of hypocrisy in which his generation had wrapped itself; but his mockery, like that of Voltaire, demolished, without seeking to substitute any thing better instead. Petronius laughed at the vices he did not wish to remove, and in which he himself shared. Juvenal and Martial both flattered the tyrants they detested. The nobles may have laughed at their bitter sarcasms, but they pursued their pleasures. Literature, under Augustus, did but little to elevate the Roman mind. What could be expected when it was coarse, feeble, and frivolous? If intellectual strength will not keep men from vices, what can be expected when intellect panders to passions and interests? There is no more absurd cant than that the culture of the mind favors the culture of the heart. What do operas and theatres for the elevation of society? Does a sentimental novel prompt to duty? Education seldom keeps people from follies when the will is not influenced by virtues. If Socrates sought the society of Aspasia, if Seneca amassed a gigantic fortune in the discharge of great public trusts, if Cicero languished in his exile because deprived of his accustomed pleasures, if Marcus Aurelius was blind to the rights and virtues of Christians, what could be hoped of the literary sensualists of the fourth century? If knowledge did not restrain the passions of philosophers, how could passions be restrained when every influence tended to excite them? Athens fell when her arts and schools were in the zenith of their glory, how could Rome stand when arts and schools undermined the moral health? Neither poets, nor historians, nor critics had in view the regeneration of society. They wrote, as poets and novelists write now, for bread, for fame, for social position. If such a man as Racine, so lofty and severe, was killed by a frown from Louis XIV., how could such an elaborate voluptuary as Petronius live out of the smiles of Nero and the flatteries of the court? If literature is feeble to arrest degeneracy when it is lofty, inasmuch as it reaches only the cultivated few, how inadequate it is when it is itself corrupted! The taste of our times, with all our glorious Christian literature, and our public libraries, our lecturers, our preachers, our professors, and our standard classical authorities, is scarcely kept from being perverted by the flimsy literature which has inundated us, and the newspaper platitudes which we devour with our breakfast. With every effort of true and Christian philanthropists, it is questionable whether there is any moral progress among us. There is a material growth; but does the moral correspond, with all our immense machinery for the elevation of society? What, then, could be expected at Rome, where there were no public libraries, no newspapers, no lyceums, no pulpits, no printing-presses, and where books were the solace of a few aristocrats, and where these aristocrats could only be amused by scandalous anecdotes and frivolous poetry. Literature did not even hold its own. It steadily declined from the Augustan age. It declined in proportion as the people had leisure to read it. Instead of elevating society, society corrupted literature. The same may be said of literature as was said of art. It did not fulfill its mission, if it was intended to save. It could reach only a small part of the population, and those whom it did reach were simply amused.

[Sidenote: Failure of literature.]

It would be too sweeping to affirm that the better forms of Roman literature did not refine and elevate, but unfortunately they reached only a few minds, and not always those who had political and social power. Literature was not powerful enough, was not sufficiently circulated, and the greater part of it was demoralizing, thus proving a savor of death rather than a savor of life. When a civilization reproduces evil more rapidly than good, there is not much hope for society, except from some signal interposition of Almighty power. Society is infinitely gloomy to a contemplative man, when there are no antidotes to the poison which is rapidly consuming the vitality of states. We contemplate approaching death, and death amid the array of physical glories. It is like a rich man laid on the bed from which he will never rise, surrounded with every comfort and every pleasure that men seek. Literature was a feeble medicine to the dying patient. Had all classes banqueted on the rich treasure of the mind, and been content, then there might have been some hope. But this was not the fact. Only a few reveled in the glories of thought. And these scorned the people.

[Sidenote: Ancient philosophy.]

But philosophy attempted something higher and nobler--even to reform morals, especially at Rome. The Romans had but little taste for abstract speculations. And hence they did not extend the boundaries of thought and reason beyond the limits which the Greeks arrived at. But they adopted what was most practical in the Grecian philosophy, and applied it to common life.

If there is any thing lofty in paganism, it is philosophy. It proposed to seek the beautiful, the true, the good; to divert men from degrading pursuits; to set a low estimate on money, and material gains, and empty pleasures. It was calm, fearless, and inquiring. All sects of philosophers despised the pursuits of the vulgar, and affected wisdom. Minerva, not Venus, not Diana, was the goddess of their idolatry. It deified reason, and sought to control the passions. It longed for the realms of truth and love. It believed in the divine, and detested the gross. Hence the philosophers were not eager for outward rewards, and kept aloof from the demoralizing pleasures of the people. They attired themselves in a different garb, lived retired, and studied the welfare of the soul. Mind was adored, and matter depreciated. They were esoteric men who abhorred vice, and sought the higher good. Morally, they were in general superior to other men, as they were in intellectual gifts and attainments. And they opposed the popular current of opinions, and stemmed popular vices. They were the reformers of the ancient world, the sages--earnest men, advocating the great certitudes of love and friendship and patriotism--the lofty spirits of their time, preoccupied and rapt in their noble inquiries into nature and God. Look at Socrates, so careless of dress, walking barefooted, giving what he had away, courting mortification, and disdaining popular favor, if he could only persuade his pupils of the greatness of the infinite and imperishable. Look at Pythagoras, refusing political office, and consecrating himself to teaching. Look to Xenophanes, wandering over Sicily in the holy enthusiasm of a rhapsodist of truth. Look at Parmenides, forsaking patrimonial wealth, that he might teach the distinction between ideas obtained through the reason, and ideas obtained through the senses. Look at Heraclitus, refusing the splendid offers of Darius, and retiring to solitudes, that he might explore the depths of his own nature. See Anaxagoras, allowing his fortune to melt away, that he might discover the many faces of nature. See Empedocles, giving away his fortune to poor girls, that he might attack the Anthropomorphism of his day; or Democritus declining the sovereignty of Abdera, that he might have leisure to speculate on the distinction between reflection and sensation; or Diogenes living in a tub; or Plato in his garden; or Aristotle in the shady side of the Lyceum; or Zeno guarding the keys of the citadel. See the good Aurelius, in later and more corrupt ages, forsaking the pleasures of an imperial throne, that he might meditate on his soul's welfare, or the slave Epictetus, unfolding the richest lessons of moral wisdom to a corrupt and listless generation.

[Sidenote: The Romans fail to appreciate philosophy.]

The loftier forms of the ancient philosophy were never popular, even at Athens. The popular teachers were sophists and rhetoricians, who, as men of fashion and ambition, despised the sublime speculations of Socrates and Plato. The Platonic philosophy had a hold only of a few, and these were men of powerful minds, but stood aloof from the prevailing tastes and pleasures. It had still less influence on the Roman mind, which was practical and worldly. Platonism opposed the sensualism and materialism of the times, believed in eternal ideas, sought the knowledge of God as the great end of life--a sublime realism which was hardly more appreciated than Christianity itself. Platonism was doubtless the highest effort of uninspired men, under the influence of pagan ideas and institutions, to attain a knowledge of God and the soul. It gloried in immortality, and claimed for man a nature akin to the deity, and destined to a higher development after death. It endeavored to understand our complex nature, and trace a connection between earth and heaven. It sought to distinguish between forms and essence, the spiritual and the sensual. It spiritualized the popular mythology, and insisted on the unity on which it fundamentally rests. It did not sneer at religious earnestness, and looked upon the beatitudes of the soul as the highest good of earth.

[Sidenote: Platonism.]

But such knowledge was too wonderful for the Romans. It was high, and they could not attain unto it. Its ends were too spiritual and elevated. There was scarcely an eminent Roman who adopted the system. Cicero came the nearest to understand its spiritual import, but it was too lofty even for him. He composed a republic and a treatise of laws, in which reason and the rule of right should be made the guide of states and empires. In this way Platonism, as a sublime hypothesis, entered into jurisprudence. It affected the thinking of master minds, even as it entered into Christianity at a later period, and formed an alliance with it. But, practically, it did not have much effect on life and manners. It was regarded as a system of mysticism, cherished by a very small esoteric body of believers, who were spurned as dreamers. They were looked upon very much as the transcendentalists of our own day are regarded, with whom the great body of even thinkers had but little sympathy. There was no more respect for Plato at Rome than there is for Kant among the merchants of London. His name may have been pronounced with an oracular admiration, but there was no profound appreciation of him, no general knowledge of his writings, no sympathy for his doctrines. They were to the Romans foolishness, somewhat after the sense that Christianity was to the Greeks. They transcended their experience, went beyond the limits of their thoughts, and sought spiritual certitudes which they disdained.

[Sidenote: The Aristotelian philosophy.]

[Sidenote: Its failure.]

The philosophy of Aristotle was nearly as distasteful to the Romans as that of Plato, and it was less lofty. It had a skeptical tendency, and excluded scientific light from the sphere of activity, and inculcated a proud and self-reliant spirit. The academics denied the possibility of arriving at truth with certainty; and, therefore, held it uncertain whether the gods existed or not, whether the soul is mortal or survives the body, whether virtue is preferable to vice, or the contrary. They sneered at religious earnestness, and tacitly encouraged influences greatly to be dreaded. They held in supreme contempt the popular religion, and made a mockery of religious ceremonies. They undermined superstition, but weakened religion also by substituting nothing instead of the absurdities they brushed away. Lucian was a type of these philosophers, and his bitter sarcasms were more powerful than the logic of Cicero to destroy what could not be proved. The academics may be said to have been the rationalists of antiquity. The old religions could not maintain their ground before the inquiring skepticism and sarcastic wit of these irreligious philosophers, who contented themselves with a lifeless deism--a system which did not, indeed, deny the existence and providence of God, but which attributed to the Deity an indifference respecting the affairs of men. Dr. Neander, in the first volume of the "History of the Church," has shown the effects of the unbelief of the academics on the state of society at Rome, especially on the men of rank and fashion. Infidelity, in any form, can have no conservative influence. It is designed to pull down, and not to build up. Superstition, with all its puerilities, is better than a scornful and proud philosophy which takes no cognizance of popular wants and aspirations.

[Sidenote: The Stoical philosophy.]

If any form of ancient philosophy could have renovated society, it was the Stoical school, which Zeno had founded. It commended itself, in a corrupt age, to many noble and powerful minds, because it raised them above the corruption around them, and proclaimed an ideal standard of morality. The Romans cared very little for mere speculations on God or the universe; but they did revere that which proposed a practical aim. The Stoics despised prevailing baseness, and set examples of a severe morality. Marcus Aurelius, one of the loftiest followers of this school, was a model of every virtue, and he looked upon his philosophy as a means of salvation to a crumbling empire. But the Stoics, with all their morality, were the Pharisees of pagan antiquity. They held themselves superior to all other classes of men. They gloried in their proud isolation. And with all the loftiness of Stoicism, it did not teach of a God who governed the world in mercy and love, but according to the iron decrees of necessity. It attacked error with a stern severity, but had no toleration for human weakness. It confounded the idea of God with that of the universe, and therefore destroyed his personality, making the Deity himself an influence, or a development. The Stoic despised the age, and despised every influence to elevate it which did not come from himself. He treated the most wholesome truths so partially as to be led into the greatest absurdities of doctrine and inconsistencies with their general principle. Epictetus, indeed, infused a new life into the Stoical philosophy. He taught the doctrine of passive endurance so forcibly that the Christians claimed him for their own. But there was nothing which appealed to the people in Stoicism. It was too stern and cold. It had no humanity. Hence they stood aloof, as they did from all the systems of Grecian philosophy. It was not for them, but for the learned and the cultivated. It was a system of thought; it was not a religion--a speculation and not a life. Like Platonism, the Stoical philosophy was esoteric, and only appealed to a few elevated minds, who had affected indifference to the evils of life, and had learned to conquer natural affections. The Stoical doctrines of Epictetus had a more practical end in view than those of Zeno, since they were applied to Roman thought and life. We cannot deny the purity and beauty of his aphorisms, but he was like Noah preaching before the flood. He had his disciples and admirers, but they made a feeble barrier against corruptions. It was the protest of a man before a mob of excited and angry persecutors resolved on his death. It was no more heard than the dying speech of Stephen. It was lost utterly on a people abandoned to inglorious pleasure.

[Sidenote: The Epicurean philosophy.]

The only form of philosophy which was popular with the Romans, and which was appreciated, was the Epicurean. The disciples of this school were, of course, the luxurious, the fashionable, the worldly, and it exercised upon them but a feeble restraining influence. It denied the providence of God; it maintained that the world was governed by chance; it denied the existence of moral goodness; it affirmed that the soul was mortal, and that pleasure was the only good. If the more contemplative and the least passionate rebuked gross vices, they still advocated a tranquil indifference to outward events that showed neither loftiness nor fear of judgment. Their system was openly based upon atheism. Self-love was the foundation of all action, and self-indulgence was the ultimate good. The Epicureans were the patrons of the circus, and the theatre, and the banquet, and, indeed, of all those vanities and follies which disgraced the latter days of Rome. Their influence tended to enervate and corrupt. Their philosophy, instead of preserving old forms of life, old customs, old institutions, old traditions and associations, made a mockery of them all, and was as efficient in producing decay as was the philosophy of the eighteenth century in France in paving the way for the revolution. The purest type of Epicureanism may have refined a few of the better sort, but the prevailing influence, doubtless, undermined society. The god of the reason was allied with the god of the sense, and the maniac soul of the lying prophet entered the schools. Education, as directed by them, served only to make youth worldly and frivolous. Teachers sought to amuse and not to instruct, to make royal roads to knowledge, to exalt the omnipotence of money, to set a high value on what passes away. They limited man to himself, and acknowledged no other object of human exertion than is to be found within the compass of the fleeting phenomena of the present life. They had no wish beyond the present hour, and only aimed to console man in the corruption and misery which he saw around him. They had no high aims; nor did they seek to produce profound impressions. They adapted themselves to what was, rather than what ought to be. They were easy and gracious, but utterly without earnestness. The Peripatetic inquired, sneeringly, "What _is_ truth?" The Epicurean languidly said, "What is truth to _me_. There is no truth nor virtue, nor is there a God, nor a place of rewards and punishments. This world is my theatre. Let me eat and drink, for to-morrow I die. I will abstain from inordinate self- indulgence, for it will shorten my life, or produce satiety, ennui, disgust--not because it is wrong. I will make the most of earth and of my faculties for pleasure. Wealth is the greatest blessing, poverty the greatest calamity. Friends are of no account, unless they amuse me or help me. The sentiment of friendship is impossible, and would be unsatisfactory." The true Epicurean quarreled with no person and with no opinions. Nothing was of consequence but ease, prosperity, self- forgetfulness. The soul of man could aspire to nothing beyond this life; and when death came, it was a release, a thing neither to be regretted nor rejoiced in, but an irresistible fate. What could be expected from such a system? What renovation in such a cold, barren, negative faith, without hope, without God in the world? The most prevalent of all the systems of philosophy, so far from doing good, did evil. How could it save when its ends were destructive of all those sentiments on which true greatness rests? What could be expected of a philosophy which only served to amuse the great, to throw contempt on the people, to undermine religious aspirations, to vitiate the moral sense, to ignore God and duty and a life to come?

Thus every influence at Rome, whether proceeding from art, or literature, or philosophy, or government, instead of saving, tended to destroy. All these things came from man, and could not elevate him beyond himself. Even religion was a compound of superstitions, ritual observances, and puerilities. It did not come from God. It was neither lofty nor pure. What good there was soon became perverted, and the evil was reproduced more rapidly than good. Only error seemed to have vitality. The false lights which sin had kindled shed only a delusive gleam. The soul occasionally asserted the dignity which God had given it, and great men swept and garnished houses, but devils reentered, and the normal condition of humanity was what the Bible declares it to be since Adam was expelled from Paradise. Genius, energy, ambition, were allowed to win their victories, and they shed a glorious light, and for a time exalted the reason of man, but alas, were soon followed by shame and degradation.

[Sidenote: All forms of civilization fail to be conservative.]

And what is the logical inference--the deduction which we are compelled to draw from this mournful history of the failure of all those grand trophies of the civilization which man has made? Can it be other than this: that man cannot save himself; that nothing which comes from him, whether of genius or will, proves to be a conservative force from generation to generation; that it will be perverted, however true, or beautiful, or glorious, because "men love darkness rather than light." All that is truly conservative, all that grows brighter and brighter with the progress of ages, all that is indestructible and of permanent beauty, must come from a power higher than that of man, whether supernatural or not--must be a revelation to man from Heaven, assisted by divine grace. It must be divine truth in conjunction with divine love. It must be a light from Him who made us, and which alone baffles the power of evil.

He did send Christianity, when every thing else had signally failed, as it will forever fail. And this is the seed of the woman which shall bruise the serpent's head.

We have now to show why this great renovating and life-giving influence did not prevent the destruction of the empire; and we may be convinced that if this great end could not be accomplished in accordance with the plans of Providence, and in accordance with the laws by which He rules the world, Christianity was in no sense a failure, as man's devices were; but, through the mouths and writings of great bishops, saints, and doctors, projected its saving truths far into the shadows of barbaric Europe, and laid the foundation for a new and more glorious civilization--a civilization not destined to perish, so far as it is in harmony with divine revelation.