new that a hundred thousand Roman
citizens devoted to the interests of Rome, could keep in subjection
a population of ten millions who were destitute of any intense
patriotism and had no central objects of attachment. The Christian
church had shown its immense resisting power and its tenacious union,
in the persecution by Galerius; and Constantine was discerning enough
to see the vast political importance of winning over such a body;
which, though but a small fraction of the whole empire, was the only
party which could give coherence to that empire, the only one which
had enthusiastic adherents in every province, the only one on whose
resolute devotion it was possible for a partizan to rely securely. The
bravery and faithful attachment of Christian regiments was a lesson
not lost upon Constantine; and we may say, in some sense, that the
Christian soldiers in his armies conquered the empire (that is, the
imperial appointments) for Christianity. But Paganism subsisted,
even in spite of imperial allurements, until at length the sword of
Theodosius violently suppressed heathen worship. So also, it was the
spear of Charlemagne which drove the Saxons to baptism, and decided
the extirpation of Paganism from Teutonic Europe. There is nothing in
all this to distinguish the outward history of Christianity from
that of Mohammedism. Barbarous tribes, now and then, venerating
the superiority of our knowledge, adopt our religion: so have Pagan
nations in Africa voluntarily become Mussulmans. But neither we nor
they can appeal to any case, where an old State-religion has yielded
without warlike compulsion to the force of heavenly truth,--"charm we
never so wisely." The whole influence which Christianity exerts over
the world at large depends on the political history of modern Europe.
The Christianity of Asia and Abyssinia is perhaps as pure and as
respectable in this nineteenth century as it was in the fourth and
fifth, yet no good or great deeds come forth out of it, of such a kind
that Christian disputants dare to appeal to them with triumph. The
politico-religious and very peculiar history of _European_ Christendom
has alone elevated the modern world; and as Gibbon remarks, this whole
history has directly depended on the fate of the great battles of
Tours between the Moors and the Franks. The defeat of Mohammedism by
Christendom certainly has not been effected by spiritual weapons. The
soldier and the statesman have done to the full