it was the parent. Unhappily, in recent times, ecclesiastical corporations have universally sought to narrow and check the stream of enlightenment, and therefore men have come to regard them as the necessary, as well as the open, enemies of human improvement. In the times, however, of which I speak, the Church was compelled to further the diffusion of knowledge, even when it was not prompted thereto by a spontaneous movement of benevolence. Its power was essentially intellectual and moral. By the nature of its mission, and more by the very condition of its existence, its work was to favor liberty and diffuse light. Hence universities founded in every nation and many of the cities of the least dark portions of Europe; hence schools in connexion with the palace of the bishop and the abbey of the monk; hence those collections, and that perpetual transcription of manuscripts, by which the relics of ancient civilisation were preserved and floated down to modern days. With all its faults—and they were many-the Christian Church proved the ark of the higher learning, as well as the palladium of liberty. It kept alive the sap of human improvement during the long and severe winter through which Europe passed, till the spring time and summer should call forth leaves and elaborate germs into fruit.

If there is truth in these remarks, then, at and since the revival of letters and the Reformation, you cannot deny that the religion of Jesus justly claims no insignificant award of praise. At least it sowed and watered the seed of the harvest which we have reaped, are reaping, and shall reap. And could we succeed in separat-, ing from the religion of Jesus the unholy passions and influences which were blended with it in the organised form it assumed under the shape of the Catholic Church, you would, I feel no doubt, discover that its own unadulterated operation had been both purely and largely beneficial.

But for a moment call to mind a few plain facts. The greater part of Europe has been delivered out of the chains of personal thraldom. It is a mere abuse of words to talk of 'white slavery.' I admit, and I deplore, the degraded and unhappy lot in which large portions of the working classes still remain. But they are free to think, to speak, to act, to go whither they will, to carry their labour to the best market, and to rise to any position which their abilities may enable them to command. Then look at the general diffusion of knowledge, at the immense circulation of cheap literature. The very

ability to assail Christianity, has been born of the influences of which Christianity is the parent. Look also at the general spread of the comforts, and what were formerly the luxuries of life. On the table of the day labourer, and around his cottage, the four quarters of the globe come and lay their choice productions. Look at the schools which stand in every hamlet in Europe, and in the case of no few of its lands, effect much of what the philanthropist could most ardently desire. Think how many streams of private benevolence steal forth from our homes to water, refresh, and invigorate our barren spots. Benevolence standeth in our streets, and crieth to the destitute, the ignorant, the sick, the maimed, the blind, the deaf, the dumb; Ho, every one that thirsteth come, even he that hath no money; Come, buy wine and milk, without money and without price.' See how the love of human kind, called forth and sustained by the love of Christ, is sending, and has sent devoted men and women into all parts of the uncivilised world; and though you should have no fellow-feeling with the exertions they make on behalf of religion, you cannot deny that they have been the advanced guard of civilisation; nor that in the abolition of cruel rites, the extinction of barbarous superstitions, the putting an end to the exposure of the aged, the mis-treatment or the illtreatment of the sick, the immolation of the widow, to

infanticide, to wars of extermination; and in the introduction of the arts and sciences of civilised life, of a taste for knowledge, of an idea and a want for the comforts of home, they have rendered services to their race, and manifested a spirit of humanity, to which there is no parallel nor approach in the previous history of mankind. But of details on this point there is no end: the man must be ignorant, or wilfully blind, who would assert, that Europe is not far advanced in those things which bless and adorn humanity, beyond what it was at any anterior period. As futile is the attempt to deny or disown the influence of the religion of Christ in these grand achievements. What was the revival of letters, but the bringing forth to light of those germs of intelligence and refinement which Christianity had fostered in its bosom? And who but Christians drew the remains of ancient letters from the cloister, and diffused them throughout the world? The Reformation was the first great result of the revival of letters, and the Reformation was the offspring of the Bible, and the work of a monk. In these two grand events lay the impulse of all our subsequent triumphs. They were the epochs of the new birth of Europe. The invention of printing, the discovery and colonisation of the New World, the discoveries of science, the application of science to the arts, the improvements in medicine, the increased value of human life; the intellectual and moral power, before which the blaze of diadems grows dim, and the sceptre of monarchs is changed from a rod of oppression into a bauble of office, and by which-a higher triumph-individuals become conscious of their rights, their duties— conscious of the worth and dignity of their nature, and home is made the abode of happiness, and the nursery of sterling principle, and of the purer virtues and more refined graces of life ;-all this multiplicity of good has ensued from the impulse which Europe received some three centuries since, and from the quiet but efficacious

operation on its condition of the great principles of the religion of Jesus.

You have now before you some means of determining whether the socialist charge against Christianity, of having proved baneful to man, is just or unjust.

I have in this instance, as in some others, during this course of lectures, given Socialism the advantage of stating its position in a mitigated form. Its customary declaration has been that Christianity is the cause of all our social ills. In the words of one of its writers,* 'it never has done good, has always done harm, and ever will so long as it exists.' Christianity has been the harbinger of discord, plunder, and bloodshed wherever she has extended her devastating influence; and no country exists on the face of the globe where the attempt to Christianize the inhabitants has not been attended with, at least, the partial loss of freedom and of happiness to those inhabitants.' The Christian religion is nothing more than a fashion, that can only exist with ignorance; it has been productive of hypocrisy and superstition; it will be the duty, business, and tendency of superior intelligence to uproot this gigantic scourge.'

Wherever there is any knowledge of the history of the world, such extravagancies confute themselves. But in ignorance they find a prepared and a rank soil. The Christian, then, cannot fail to see his duty. His motto must be Educate, educate, educate.' Thus, and thus only, can the evil tendencies of Owenism be effectually encountered. Let the system only be met by the diffusion of knowledge, its existence will be of short duration, and that religion which it has made the special object of its assaults, will prove a rock on which it will be ground to pieces.

* Horton's Survey of the Effects of Christianity.

NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

NOTE 1.

Page 5 The economical arrangements proposed for adoption in the New Moral World'

SOCIALISTS are wont to affirm, that in respect of community of property, they do but propose to imitate the first Christians. I, therefore, translate the following from a very respectable and an impartial authority :"And they had all things common.'

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Many writers have before remarked that these words should not be too much insisted on, nor interpreted as intimating an absolute communion of property; and have supported their position by suitable arguments. For, from the circumstance that the richer Christians are said, in order to aid the poverty of their companions, to have sold their houses and lands, and deposited the price in the hands of the Apostles for the use of the poor, it by no means follows that they stripped themselves of all their property: in fact, the meaning of the words is this, the richer, that they might confer more abundant benefits on their fellow-Christians of a slenderer fortune, used to dispose of a portion of their property which they could without great detriment do without, in order that they might supply, by means of the sale of possessions, aid which the annual income did not furnish. It is sufficiently clear, from many other passages of this book, that the words of the writer are to be understood in this sense, and that no idea is contained

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