ght headway. But take up the cycle
of history that preceded the advent of Christianity, and compare it with
the present period; and is there not an entirely different expression on
the face of things, so far as conceptions of humanity and influences of
philanthropy are concerned? Contrast "a Roman holiday," its butchery and
its blood, with a modern anniversary that clasps the round world in its
jubilee, and see if humanity has not been helped by religion. Or look
back upon Grecian art and refinement, and tell me what oration or poem,
or pantheon of marble beauty, is half as glorious as the plain brick
free-school; the asylum of industry; the home for the penitent, the
disabled and the poor? Ah! my friends, these are such familiar things
that we may not think them the great things they really are; and in
gazing upon the colossal evils that yet tower up before us, they may
seem slight achievements. But they _are_ great: and when I see the poor
drunkard return to a renovated home--the demoniac sitting clothed and in
his right mind once more; when I see the dumb write, and hear the blind
read, and little rescued children sing their thankful hymns; I think
humanity _has_ been helped a great deal since that Divine Teacher walked
the earth, and took the lambs to his bosom, and made the foul leper
clean, and partook with publicans and sinners, and bade the guilty go
and sin no more. I think that currents of love and self-sacrifice, from
that heart that was pierced for us upon the cross, have found their way
through the channels of ages, through all the impediments of worldliness
and selfishness, and inspired and blessed men far more than they know.

But if, turning from the positive achievement, you point to the evils
that still exist--if you lift the coverings of respectability and custom
from the ghastly facts that are embedded here in our so-called
civilization; if you bid me mark the vice, the poverty, the crime, the
oppression, the grinding monopoly, the prejudice, the gigantic
materialism and practical atheism that are mixed up with it, and seem to
be inseparable parts of it; then I ask you--how would it be _without_
the Help of Religion? What interpretation should we obtain from the
dark creed of the skeptic, what inspiration from the philosophy of
annihilation, and of fate? To say nothing of those forces of Love and
self-sacrifice which it sheds abroad in the world, and to which I have
just alluded,--Religion, in one sin