they existed at the birth of Christ, could satisfy the mind, thirsting after truth. Men were too far advanced in reason and reflection, to rest content with the childish consolations which the gods of Greece and Rome could offer them. A longing for something unknown and undefinable, like to that which often agitates the mind of ripening youth, began to move all nations. In Judea, this feeling was manifested in a hatred of oppression; in Greece, altars were raised to the Unknown God; and, in Egypt, the worship of Isis, which the Romans had also established in their capital, was intended to satisfy this yearning after the mysterious. But none of these was sufficient; and a sort of chill despair, a tendency to scorn and scoff what had been hitherto held sacred, combined with a sense of utter inability to furnish any thing better, now filled the minds of men. Conscious of their guilt and moral degradation, they felt all the tortures of remorse, without any of the consolations of repentance. The ancient gods had been hurled from their elevation, and could afford no help to the afflicted. The philosophy of the Stoics gave this only solace, the advice to suffer sorrow patiently because it was no evil; and men, maddened by despair, plunged into a sensuality so gross, that the bare idea thereof must excite horror in the human mind, conscious of its divine origin. The literature-that infallible mirror of the moral state of a people-presents but too faithful a picture of the depravity prevailing at this period. --- Read the works of Sallust, Suetonius, and Tacitus; compare them with the poetical effusions of Juvenal, Martial, and others; and every where you will find an expression of indignant sorrow for the fallen glory and vanished spirit of degraded Rome; a bitter irony which, in some instances, under a light, lascivious veil, attempts to hide a blush for the deep and all-prevailing immorality. Holiness is scoffed at; vulgarity is satirized; earthly power and splendour are scorned, but no celestial agency acknowledged vices and follies are chastised, but no way to virtue pointed out. Cremutius Cordus was right, when styling Brutus and Cassius the last of the Romans. They dreamed a golden dream, but their efforts vanished as tracelessly as a vision, for their country; and the beautiful death of Seneca seemed to the Stoics irreconcilable with a life, which had been unable to withstand the allurements of vanity and ambition. From the time of Augustus, the Roman commonwealth is but a dissevering structure: in vain did Trajan, Hadrian, and Marcus Aurelius, endeavour to retard its overthrow: if it did not earlier fall, the praise is due to the first founders, who furnished materials, so lasting, for the structure. The Roman people of this period is the historical representative of mankind, for their empire had received and embraced the elements of all nations, mentioned in previous history; and this circumstance it was, which so especially favoured the perfect regeneration of mankind, as the Christian religion gradually pervaded the whole mass of people throughout the globe. The depraved national feeling of the Romans could not, it is true, be regenerated by this divine doctrine, which, indeed, had no such object. The Romans, as a nation, were to perish. To this the course of history had doomed them; but in their fall they became the benefactors of mankind, the teachers of their conquerors. The haughty, rude, but uncorrupted sons of Nature, bowed to the dust before the cross, presented to them by the vanquished Romans, whose sword they had broken. As the Christian faith was not originally intended to be propagated by conquest, its diffusion through the vast Roman empire, which was shortly to be subverted, was a circumstance highly favourable to the moral transformation of mankind. The Roman prescripts would, of themselves, have been insufficient to tame the wild minds of the barbarians; but, when combined with the gospel law, their influence gradually rendered those minds susceptible of civilization. How different from this was the operation of Islamism, which spread, like a running fire, over the whole eastern world, and rendered its adherents victors, it is true, yet, in many instances, destroyers of civilization; while Christianity made haughty conquerors captives to the cross, and members of civilized states! The duration of Arabian culture, short as it was, suffices to show that it did not emanate from Islamism. It was a meteor called forth by the prototypes of ancient classical culture, and by the wondrous juvenile enthusiasm of a nation, whose fancy was as rich and exuberant, as their sun-burnt plains were barren and desolate; and, meteor-like, it vanished. The Turks have not advanced a single step in civilization since the conquest of Constantinople, except what they have gained by their political and commercial relations with Europe: and thus we have an historical proof, that Islamism could exercise no lasting influence on the mental formation of mankind; but that, on the contrary, it has kept its adherents longer in the trammels of irreligion and barbarism than even the Pagan creeds did with theirs. Indian, Egyptian, Greek and Roman culture were necessary, in order to prepare mankind for Christian wisdom. In the early ages, man either felt himself to be one of a distinct caste, as was the case with the Hindoos and Egyptians; or he deemed himself a member of a nation, specially favoured by God, as did the Jews; or he boasted of his denizenship in a state which regarded the rest of their contemporaries as barbarians, like the Greeks and Romans. And it were vain to deny that to this selfishness much of the energy, by which the ancient nations are so strikingly distinguished from the moderns, is attributable. But while civilization advanced, men's views became more extended; as, in the individual, every degree of cultivation, however partial, strengthens the mental power. It was requisite that the human race should pass through the different periods of improvement, in order to exercise their strength, and to prepare the boy for the deeds of youth; but through all the stages of progression, a continual and growing, though undefined, desire for a more satisfy. ing futurity, evinced the consciousness that what had been already enjoyed, felt, and thought, was insufficient for the deeply acknowledged want of a higher moral state. Fancy and intellect, the two characteristic qualities of the mind among the ancients, at length exhausted themselves. Fancy could find nothing which intellect did not crush; nor could intellect create any thing to appease the suffering mind. The love of freedom and country was destroyed, and all was vacancy, when the revival of those feelings was effected by the one sentiment of love to the Creator, which had hitherto been unperceived, or indistinctly known. All love, all noble sentiments, were concentrated in this great pervading principle; and thus feeling and sentiment became the ruling elements in the human mind, instead of fancy and intellect, which, during the classical period, had predominated. With the awakening of this power in the soul, by the propagation of Christianity, the regeneration of mankind and the career of its youth begin. He no Man now occupies a higher eminence. longer appertains to an exclusive caste, nor to a people especially favoured by God, nor to a republic distinguished by its customs and laws. The feeling of love, of which he has now a clear conception, leads him to adore a common Father, who, in the spirit of love, embraces all his creatures with the same pa |