But this is not all.

IV. Christianity has ACTUALLY CONFERRED, AND IS CONFERRING, NUMEROUS, MOST SUBSTANTIAL AND POSITIVE BENEFITS ON INDIVIDUALS AND NATIONS.

1. It has elevated and blessed the female sex in the most striking manner. It has not only raised women from the degradation into which they were sunk in the heathen times, as we have just mentioned, but has restored them to all their just rights, has clothed them with all those tender attributes for which the goodness of God designed them; has made woman the companion, the friend, the solace of man; the sharer of his joys and sorrows, the instructress of their mutual offspring; the equal partaker of his social comforts and advantages; with only that gentle subordination which exempts them from the perpetual uneasiness which an absolute equality would generate. Christian piety has repaid them the arrears of ages of cruelty and neglect. We hear more of women in the New Testament, than in all the writings of philosophers. They now, generally speaking, take the precedence in personal piety, of the stronger sex.

2. Christianity, again, has blessed the lower orders of society, and raised them to a degree of comfort, respectability and information unknown before the promulgation of the gospel. Christianity has taught us that "all men are brethren," that all were 66 I made of one blood," that all are redeemed by one Saviour, that all are equal as immortal and accountable beings, that all are capable of the same lessons of heavenly wisdom, that all are to read the same Scriptures, to worship in the same temple, and approach the same altar. What is it that has opened before all classes of men the field of competition and improvement? What is it that imparts to reformed the licentiousness of the provinces; and, by infusing a spirit of moderation and submission to government, tended to extinguish those principles of avarice and ambition, injustice and violence, by which so many factions were formed." He confesses, also, that "no religion ever appeared in the world, whose natural tendency was so much directed to promote the peace and happiness of mankind."

And yet Bolingbroke and Gibbon, with unaccountable inconsistency, lived and died infidels. Pride and vice are the keys to such a mystery.

The whole Christian argument might be maintained on the admissions of one or other of the leading infidel writers; and no contest remain, unless, if it could then be called one, with the miserable, ignorant ferocity of Paine and his associates,

them a share of general knowledge, the discoveries of science, and the pleasures of intellectual improvement? What is it that breaks down the impassable barriers of caste, and places men on the common ground of their respective merits and exertions? My brethren, it is the religion of Christ that has done all this. This religion proposes its blessings especially to the lowly-raises, improves, illuminates, emancipates, restores the poor and outcast, and opens before them the career of useful diligence and honorable exertion. And yet, whilst it does all this, it teaches them the duties of humility and cheerful subjection to authority. No voice but that of the Christian apostle ever addressed to the body of mankind such words as these, "Be subject to principalities and powers, obey magistrates, be ready to every good work, speak evil of no man, be no brawlers, but gentle, showing all meekness to all men."

3. And what, again, has instituted all the charitable designs for the relief of human wretchedness, which are multiplied around us, but the merciful religion of Christ? What has founded our hospitals, opened our dispensaries, formed our unnumbered societies for bettering the condition of the poor, and aiding them under the various calamities to which our nature is exposed? What is it that framed the various wise and humane systems which provide for the sick and indigent, but Christianity? What is it that founded so many thousand institutions for the religious education of the poor? What has made the duties of humanity and benevolence the popular and habitual topic of anxiety and effort? planted in London the THREE OR FOUR HUNDRED charitable institutions which are now, as angels of peace, walking through the haunts of vice and misery, and scattering blessings wherever they go?

What

4. Again, what has encircled age with reverence in every rank and condition of society? What has inspired for the hoary head and declining years that respect and gratitude, which heathenism knew so little of, as a pervading principle of social life? What has opened in human intercourse those copious sources of tenderness, the love and piety of children to their aged and infirm Christian relatives and parents?

5. Further, what has given to man one day in seven, for repose from toil, for the cultivation of his intellectual and spiritual being, fo repairing the decays which his exhausted

powers, after six days of labor, require? For connecting man with his God, and preparing him for eternity?

6. Once more, what has infused into Christian legislators and princes, the temper of equity and mercy? Christianity meddles not, indeed, with the particular form of human governments, nor does it interfere with any acknowledged and long-established authority; but it teaches governors of every class the unbending rules of justice and truth. Christian governments are, for the most part, moulded by the principles of our holy religion. A mild, paternal spirit of legislation has taken the place of brute force and capricious violence. Governments are now acting for the good of the governed, and not for the pleasure of a despot. The most arbitrary Christian states are controlled by religion. Under the heathen governments there was neither internal tranquillity nor external peace. They were continually agitated and distracted within by popular commotions and sanguinary convulsions, or exposed without to unnecessary and inexpiable wars. And in their declines they were torn to pieces by such dreadful massacres and proscriptions as cannot be recited without horror. Christianity has made princes the fathers of their people. Even in the dispensation of punishment for crime, the severity of the law has been gradually mitigated. Capital punishment is not now inflicted, as under the heathen governments, for the slightest offences; nor is it inflicted in the most despotic Christian states, suddenly, upon the bare order of the sovereign, without a formal trial, conviction, sentence and warrant of execution.

7. Further, the Christian religion has conferred upon her subjects the blessing of equal distributive justice in the administration of courts of law. The civil and criminal jurisprudence of the state-that great bulwark of liberty, that most powerful protector of the rights and immunities, the persons and property of the subject was among the heathen far removed from that degree of purity which prevails in Christian lands. In Rome, especially in the later periods of the republic, the courts of justice were one continued scene of the most open and undisguised iniquity, venality, partiality and corruption; so that it was hardly possible for the poor man to obtain redress for the most cruel injuries, or for a rich man to be brought to punishment for the most atrocious crimes.

But now the spirit of Christianity has been so interwoven

with the texture of governments, that all ranks are placed under the equal protection of the laws; and in our own country, and the other states where our religion obtains in its greatest purity, the evenhanded distribution of justice, the security of person and property, the enjoyment of a high degree of civil and religious liberty, the freedom from vexatious and unequal imposts, the open career presented for virtue and talent, the repose and tranquillity of private life-our towns and castles dismantled through long ages of internal peace-all proclaim the beneficial effects of the doctrine which has produced them. 8. Even the most distant provinces of the Christian commonwealths feel the salutary influence of the vital principles of religious legislation at home. Under the Roman sway, the provinces were the spoil of petty tyrants. Every governor was an oppressor and a scourge. The privileges enjoyed at the seat of the empire were violated with impunity in its distant regions. Christianity diffuses its benefits. Our provincial governors carry to remote climes the freedom, the justice, the institutions, the tranquillity, the security for persons and property, of the parent state. The Hindoo acknowledges the difference between a Mahometan and Christian conquest. It was the glory of one governor-general of India to abolish infanticide in Bengal; it was the glory of another to plant the seeds of moral and religious culture; it was the glory of a third, to put an end to the immolation of widows.* In the mean time, the British authorities, in the various provinces, are pushing our national improvements and advantages wherever they come.t

Such is Christianity in her influence on the welfare of mankind. She implants the principles on which the well-being of individuals and states depends. She has banished the most frightful evils, she mitigates and raises a barrier against every other; she dispenses the most palpable and important benefits. Nor has she lost this power by the lapse of ages. See her entering now the heathen lands in our modern missions. See her by the labors of Schwartz and his companions, in Southern India; or by the toil of the Moravian brethren, in Greenland and South Africa; or by the recent

* The Marquises Wellesley and Hastings and Lord William Bentinck.

+ The propagation of the discovery of vaccination has been zealous and extensive, as becomes the Christian philanthropy.

I

exertions of the London missionary institution of our own times, in the Pacific ocean, displaying and repeating, as it were, her mighty works in blessing wretched man.* I follow her to the prostrate tribes of one region of paganism, or to the wild and debased natives of another. I see the stupidity and indolence of the first-scarcely removed from the fish on which they lived-quickened, stimulated, elevated. I see the fierce, bloody, revengeful spirit of the others-dancing their infernal war-step with the mind of a fury-reduced to meekness, docility, simplicity. I see them casting their cruel and obscene idols to the moles and to the bats, and acknowledging "the one true God, and Jesus Christ whom he hath sent." see the tears of penitence flow down their cheeks. I see their manners humanized and softened, stimulated to habits of solid, and persevering, and well-directed diligence. Principles of truth, and purity, and uprightness, and benevolence take the place of animal indolence, and insatiable selfishness, and remorseless revenge. I see the Christian institution of marriage opening the sources of the social affections. The Christian village begins to rise. The huts, and churches, and schools, and bridges, and streets, and gardens smile. Commerce visits the newly civilized people. The sabbath interposes a day for religious instruction. The magistrate assumes his office. The minister of religion is the father and friend of all. Disease, and vice, and misery begin to be lessened and disappear. Virtue, peace, industry, social order, are the lovely fruits of the Christian faith.

I turn from the delightful scene to others of an opposite class. I behold the states of Europe where Christianity has most deeply declined, or the Asiatic and African nations where it was extinguished by the Mahometan imposture. The temporal calamities, the civil and social oppression, the decay of moral order and mutual benevolence, the want of public liberty, virtue, confidence and integrity, illustrate, by the melancholy contrast, the immense value of pure Christianity to man,

"They are not Christians, but pagans," says Lactantius, A. D. 306," who rob by land and commit piracy by sea; who poison their wives for their dowries, or their husbands that they may marry their adulterers; who strangle or expose infants, commit incest and unnatural crimes too odious to relate."-" Give me a man who is choleric, abusive, headstrong and unruly; with a very few words-the words of God-I will render him as gentle as a lamb. Give me an unjust man, a foolish man, a vicious man; and, on a sudden, he shall become honest, wise, virtuous."