suppressed the combats of gladiators,* and the impurities of religions
rites. It has banished, if not unnatural vices, at least the toleration
of them. It has greatly meliorated the condition of the laborious part,
that is to say, of the mass of every community, by procuring for them a
day of weekly rest. In all countries in which it is professed it has
produced numerous establishments for the relief of sickness and poverty;
and in some, a regular and general provision by law. It has triumphed
over the slavery established in the Roman empire: it is contending, and
I trust will one day prevail, against the worse slavery of the West
Indies.

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* Lipsius affirms (Sat. b. i. c. 12) that the gladiatorial shows
sometimes cost Europe twenty or thirty thousand lives in a month; and
that not only the men, but even the women of all ranks were passionately
fond of these shows. See Bishop Porteus, Sermon XIII.
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A Christian writer, (Bardesanes, ap. Euseb. Praep. Evang. vi. 10.) so
early as in the second century, has testified the resistance which
Christianity made to wicked and licentious practices though established
by law and by public usage:--"Neither in Parthia do the Christians,
though Parthians, use polygamy; nor in Persia, though Persians, do they
marry their own daughters; nor among the Bactri, or Galli, do they
violate the sanctity of marriage; nor wherever they are, do they suffer
themselves to be overcome by ill-constituted laws and manners."

Socrates did not destroy the idolatry of Athens, or produce the slighter
revolution in the manners of his country.

But the argument to which I recur is, that the benefit of religion,
being felt chiefly in the obscurity of private stations, necessarily
escapes the observation of history. From the first general notification
of Christianity to the present day, there have been in every age many
millions, whose names were never heard of, made better by it, not only
in their conduct, but in their disposition; and happier, not so much in
their external circumstances, as in that which is inter praecordia, in
that which alone deserves the name of happiness, the tranquillity and
consolation of their thoughts. It has been since its commencement the
author of happiness and virtue to millions and millions of the human
race. Who is there that would not wish his son to be a Christian?

Christianity also, in every country in which it is professed, hath
obtained a sensi