t the growth. That
moment was when the idea of God appeared in its fulness: modern
civilization was born of the Gospel. The knowledge of God strengthens
justice, and the thought of the common Father develops benevolence.
These theses are well known; let us confine ourselves to a few rapid
illustrations.

There exists an institution in which has been embodied the negation of
social justice--Slavery. Slavery is at length disappearing before our
eyes from the bosom of Christendom; and its final retreat is doing honor
to Russia, and bathing America in blood. This is perhaps the greatest of
the events which the annals of history will inscribe on the page of the
nineteenth century. Now slavery was, in the past, an almost universal
institution. The finest intellects of Greece devoted a portion of their
labors to its justification. Rome, at the most brilliant period of its
civilization, caused slaves to kill one another, in savage spectacles
intended to delight the populace, or during sumptuous banquets for the
amusement of wealthy debauchees![30] How has slavery disappeared little
by little! How has man been rediscovered beneath that living _thing_ of
which was made, one while an instrument of labor, and another while the
sport of execrable passions? Inquire into this history. You will find
the reason and the heart making their protests heard in antiquity, but
without becoming efficacious. One day all is changed, and the
foundations of slavery begin to shake. At that memorable epoch you will
meet with a written document, the first in which is shown in its germ
the great social fact which was about to have birth. It is not an
emperor's decree, it is not the vote of a body politic, it is a letter a
few lines long written by a prisoner to one of his friends. The
substance of this letter was: "I send thee back thy slave; but in the
name of God I beg of thee to receive him as thy brother; think of the
common Master who is in heaven." This letter was addressed--"To
Philemon;" the name of the writer was Paul. It is the first charter of
slave emancipation. Ponder this fact, Gentlemen: contemplate the ancient
institution of slavery shaken to its foundations, without being the
object of any direct attack, by the breath of a new spirit. You will
then understand how historians can tell us that the relations of states,
belligerent rights, civil laws, political institutions, all these things
of which the Gospel has never spoken, have been,