close of the fourth century asylums were
provided for the sick, aged, and infirm. During the Decian persecution,
when the streets of Carthage were strewn with the dying and the dead,
the Christians, with the scars of recent torture and imprisonment upon
them, exhibited the nobility of a gospel revenge in their care for their
fever-smitten persecutors, and seemed to seek the martyrdom of Christian
charity, even more glorious than that they had escaped. In the plague of
Alexandria, six hundred _parabolani_ periled their lives to succour the
dying and bury the dead. Julian urged the pagan priests to imitate the
virtues of the lowly Christians.

Christianity also gave a new sanctity to human life. The exposure of
infants was a fearfully prevalent pagan practice, which even Plato and
Aristotle permitted. We have had evidences of the tender charity of the
Christians in rescuing these foundlings from death, or from a fate more
dreadful still--a life of infamy. Christianity also emphatically
affirmed the Almighty's "canon 'gainst self-slaughter," which crime the
pagans had even exalted into a virtue. It taught that a patient
endurance of suffering, like Job's, exhibited a loftier courage than
Cato's renunciation of life.

We have thus seen from the testimony of the Catacombs, the immense
superiority, in all the elements of true dignity and excellence, of
primitive Christianity to the corrupt civilization by which it was
surrounded. It ennobled the character and purified the morals of
mankind. It raised society from the ineffable slough into which it had
fallen, imparted tenderness and fidelity to the domestic relations of
life, and enshrined marriage in a sanctity before unknown.
Notwithstanding the corruptions by which it became infected in the days
of its power and pride, even the worst form of Christianity was
infinitely preferable to the abominations of paganism. It gave a
sacredness before unconceived to human life. It averted the sword from
the throat of the gladiator, and, plucking helpless infancy from
exposure to untimely death, nourished it in Christian homes. It threw
the [ae]gis of its protection over the slave and the oppressed, raising
them from the condition of beasts to the dignity of men and the
fellowship of saints. With an unwearied and passionate charity it
yearned over the suffering and the sorrowing everywhere, and created a
vast and comprehensive organization for their relief, of which the world
had bef