inaugurated an age of feeble laws and strong passions; and the
declension which set in issued at length in downright barbarism.

Papal Rome has run the very same course. The feeble intellect of the
European nations accepted Romanism as a religion, just as the Romans
before them had accepted of paganism. But the Reformation introduced a
period of growing enlightenment and independent thinking; and by the end
of the eighteenth century, Romanism had shared the fate which paganism
had done before it. The masses of Europe generally had lost faith in it
as a religion; then came the atheism of the French school; an era of
feeble laws and strong passions again returned; the selfish and
isolating principle came into play; and at this moment the nations of
continental Europe are rapidly sinking into barbarism. Thus, the history
of the race under the reign of the false religions exhibits but
alternating fits of superstition and scepticism, with their
corresponding eras of civilization and barbarism. And it necessarily
must be so; because, these religions not being compatible with the
indefinite extension of man's knowledge, they do not secure the
continued action and authority of conscience; and without conscience,
national progress, and even existence, is impossible.

Is there, then, no immortality in reserve for nations? Must they
continue to die? and must the history of our race in all time coming be
just what it has been in all time past,--a series of rapidly alternating
epochs of partial civilization and destructive barbarism? No. He who is
the former of society is the author of the Bible; and we may be sure
that there is a beautiful meetness and harmony between the laws of the
one and the doctrine of the other. Christianity alone can enable society
to fulfil its terrestrial destiny, because it alone is true, and, being
true, it admits of the utmost advancement of the human understanding. In
its case the centrifugal force of the intellect can never overcome the
centripetal power of the conscience. It has nothing to fear from the
advance of science. It keeps pace with the human mind, however rapid its
progress. Nay, more; the more the human mind is enlarged, the more
apparent becomes the truth of Christianity, and, by consequence, the
greater becomes the authority of conscience. Under the reign of
Christianity, then, there is no point in the onward progress of society
where conscience dissolves, and leaves man and nations dev