beating in his heart and crowning with a supernal glory all the creations of his lofty intellect. Thus have we endeavored to show that Christianity, pure of spirit, and legitimate in exercise, which was proudly contemned when most pure, is adapted to encourage the deserving when most depressed, and ever delights to patronize all aspirations that are both free and grand. It coins words in young and generous hearts that are often as brave as the bravest deeds; words that have created revolutions more memorable, more enduring, and more blissful, than the most glorious battles that freedom ever gained with martial weapons. They are words compounded of wisdom, courage, and love, but not of that shallow cunning, and commonplace charlatanism, which hunt for insipid popularity by fawning on arrogant power. The brave, free, and consistent Christian scorns all crippling conventionalisms, stands up fearlessly, though alone, to resist every form of injustice, labors assiduously and kindly to foster every order of merit, and sows with a lavish hand the seed destined to make glad the eye of coming centuries, in view of unlimited harvests gleaming with immortal richness and eternally reproduced. Thus obscure and discarded youth, like young Christ battling against the penury, hypocrisies, and popular wrongs of his day, learn in solitude and gloom to continue undaunted by obstacles, while they nourish noble thoughts, and verify to themselves that to persevere unsubdued by defeats, is itself the most glorious success we can know on earth. The blows of adversity prepare them for future triumphs; more closely incorporate the greatest mental strength of their being with its greatest affection; and in the full development of both, create an enthusiasm for perfection, and a sympathy with all who aspire toward it, which no hardship can depress and no tyranny resist. CHAPTER III. CHRISTIANITY THE FORTIFIER OF THE WEAK. THE general points discussed in this series of chapters, on the republican influence of Christian doctrine, will be found to harmonize with those considered in the corresponding delineations of the republican character of Jesus Christ, which constitute the first part of this work. In saying that Christianity is the solace of the obscure, the patron of the aspiring, the fortifier of the weak, &c., we but remind ourselves that the Savior of the world emerged from the deepest earthly gloom, was most contemned in his early aspirations, and needed continually to pray that his human weakness might be divinely sustained. As was our Lord in the lowly and trying circumstances of his incarnate state, so is every truthful disciple who has imbibed his spirit, and would imitate his beneficent life. He needs all the succors afforded by a divine example, as well as the history of a divine belief; and, in all his struggles, should remember that Christianity was fiercely persecuted when most weak; sympathizes with the suffering when most wronged; and fortifies the confiding with invincible strength. In the first place, the fact that Christianity was fiercely persecuted in the feebleness of its youth, is perfectly consistent with the character it bore in contrast with the world it came to redeem. At the time Christ appeared, the world stood in the greatest need of a religion at once moral, intelligible, and spiritual; adapted to human nature, level to the capacities of the multitude, fitted to all countries, and ennobling in its influence upon all institutions. Christianity exactly and fully met this want, because all its doctrines respecting God and our relations to him agreed perfectly with the moral law, and most facilitated human obedience. It poured the clearest light upon ethics, and rendered their sacred obligations most intuitive. Moreover, it prescribed no external rites and ceremonies, but such as, by their manifest moral and exalting efficacy, best demonstrated their own intrinsic worth. Because Christianity, by its very nature, was most intimately connected with all in man that is most lasting and unchangeable, it was happily fitted to become universal, and was designed, by infinite wisdom and love, to exert the best influence on man's temporal and eternal welfare. She lends human nature that aid which is indispensable to self-conquest, and which has always been most anxiously desired. In this new fountain of salvation, infinitely capacious and purifying, the world was invited to participate in energies the most potent and salutary, animating and ennobling man in every faculty and every where, rescuing body and soul from every form of vassalage, regulating all his social relations, and filling him with all the fulness of divine freedom and love. The better to conceive the worth of this religion, we have but to glance at the moral character of the world, when its divine Author was fiercely persecuted, and all its heavenly claims were first repelled. When Christ appeared, earth presented nothing but the frightful spectacle of ignorance, slaughter, and slavery. The foot of the strong was perpetually on the necks of the despairing and unresisting masses, while the oppressors never ceased to carry on the bloodiest conflicts among themselves. Thus, while the majority were in perpetual chains, and the minority in perpetual strife, the whole race appeared supremely cursed. From the perpetuity of such misery Christianity came to free mankind. Infinite truth and mercy appeared on the field of conflict to encourage the feeble to resist the strong, and to resist them effectually. But while the tyrannical minority was to be checked and overthrown by redeemed and enlightened majorities, it was not anarchy that was appointed to rule, but love. Both parties were first to be reasoned with, then conciliated, and finally blended in one common championship of the highest freedom and blandest truth. Thus, amidst the greatest oppressions and most exasperated antagonists, Christianity appears with weapons at once invincible and unavenging, because she comes to save, and not to destroy. Her design is, if possible, to convert into a votary the enraged tyrant, even while she rescues the bleeding victim; and therefore does she mildly interpose for the benefit of both, with a power "Which, like a strong man's arm, Keeps back two foes whose lips are white, Moral aspirings and religious yearnings have never been entirely unknown to human nature; but it was impossible for spiritual perfection to be obtained, so long as blind coercion was predominant. The kingdom of physical energy was carried to its grandest height by the Romans, and was doomed to pass away at the dawn of that better kingdom, based on intellectual immunities for all, under the beneficent dominion of which the most mutilated and degraded child of a suffering race might become a perfect man. And though the main purpose of Christ, and the immediate effect of his incarnation, was to teach true morality and a saving religion, the indirect and very important influence of his doctrines, for eighteen centuries, has been to substitute the reign of free intellectual power for that of arbitrary dictation every where. This tends to the repossession of original rights, and the equal balance of all our faculties, in which every man will become a son of God, by uniting, in their just proportions and healthful exercise, his physical energy, intellectual power, moral ability, and religious affections. The chief instrument for working out this external equality and internal equilibrium is Christianity, the divine balm of the keenest woe, which tyrants of every grade most fiercely hate. But the time has come, when consolidated power and vengeful persecution can no longer prevent the steady growth and ultimate triumph of the true lawgivers and most potent rulers of the age, who, at the outset, seldom or never occupy situations of note, are little known, and are seldom heard by the unheeding crowds around them. Nevertheless, it is they who appear as the high priests of destiny, whose whispered thoughts evoke the tempests which annihilate empires and shatter chains. From the nineteenth century onward, earth will be governed by crownless and sceptreless monarchs, whose only homage will be the revolutions they have promoted, and the universal blessings they have conferred. Our race will soon have learned that there is human truth and divine truth harmoniously blended, and offered equally to all in Christ, the first great Teacher of republican doctrine, infinitely higher and more salutary than the bigoted creeds which selfish priests sell to their victins, and which trembling despots are always ambitious to bind on all free souls. From such wretched creatures the good may expect persecution, for that which they most hate they certainly have good reason most to fear. Christianity plants redemption and perfects order in society, by imparting force to reason and uprightness to conscience; and these are precisely the attributes which it is impossible for oppression long to resist. In vain may despots expect to hold mankind bound by a chain, every link of which has previously been sundered by the lightning of truth. As, in the original creation, the kindling elements raved and struggled in the gigantic chaos water and fire, darkness and light, at war vapor and cloud hardening into mountains, while the Breath of Life moved a steadfast splendor over all; so, in the grand moral renovations of our day,-when the new heavens and new earth seem rapidly forming,—light pierces to the lowest depths, permeates the greatest masses, discriminates between all spiritual and material elements, energizes every rational being to act for himself, and qualifies him to be his own teacher, guide, and judge. The word of God is open for all, and there is but one Priest in the universe who has a right to say, "If any man lack wisdom, let him ask of me." It is the religion |