s nominally Christian, which no one denies;
while the exceptions to this rule, which occur almost wholly among
Christians, prove the very view he controverts. It is Christian
opinion making itself felt through legislation that is gradually
circumscribing the area of these vices.

Again, says Mr. Mill. "Because when men were still savage they would
not have received either moral or scientific truths unless they had
supposed them supernaturally imparted, does it follow they would now
give up moral truths any more than scientific because they believed
them to have no other origin than wise and noble human hearts?"
Overlooking the adroit introduction here of scientific truths as
having originally been on the same footing with moral truths--for
which we do not think there is any sufficient historic evidence--it is
competent to reply that the great mass of mankind are still in the
earlier stages of intellectual and moral development, even in the most
advanced countries; so that on grounds of utility it is important to
prolong, if possible, the supernatural sanctions of religion.
Although, as Mr. Mill believes, a moral truth once in the possession
of humanity may never be lost, it may yet have its influence suspended
through many generations, as in the Dark Ages, and thus the advance of
civilization be indefinitely retarded; and therefore the office of
religion in keeping morality operative among men is not to be
discarded. It is doubtless impossible to estimate with entire
correctness the relative value of the different forces that advance or
retard civilization, but we believe the weight of historic evidence
goes to prove that religious skepticism was the actual cause, as it
has always been the inevitable precursor, of national decay. Coleridge
in _The Friend_ quotes the historian Polybius as attributing the
strength of the Roman republic to the general reverence of the
invisible powers, _and the consequent horror in which the breaking of
an oath was held._ This he thought the _causa causarum_ of Roman
grandeur; and he attributed the ruin of the Greek states to the
frequency of perjury resulting from the atheism taught by the
Sophists. Goethe says somewhere that "all epochs in which faith has
prevailed have been the most heart-stirring and fruitful both as
regard contemporaries and posterity; whereas all epochs in which
unbelief obtains its miserable triumphs, even when they boast of some
apparent brilliancy, are not less s