whilst many circumstances, which naturally accompanied the establishment of their power over the nations they had subdued, became predisposing causes, rendering it easier to teach and fix the Christian faith in those countries than it would. otherwise have been.

The Roman people were brave, and their leaders ambitious. They glowed with the most ardent pa triotism, without feeling any general benevolence; the freedom which they enjoyed being very favourable to the production of the former, whilst the ferocity of their favourite amusements effectually destroyed all tendency to the latter. They had sufficient love of justice to obtain such a reputation for it as made those who were liable to the capricious violence of a barbarous despot rejoice in seeing their armies advance; but not sufficient to withhold them from attempting any conquest for want of a fair pretext for war. The necessity of popular approbation made their government anxious to support its expenses by the fruits of invasion, rather than by levying any regular tribute on its own citizens; and the same necessity made those who had influence fear to place authority in any but able hands. Such were the circumstances under which GOD permitted the Roman character to be formed; and they were enough to make them at once a restless and a victorious people. But, as their form of government gave no ambitious man the elevation which it encouraged him to aspire to, till he had struggled in popular assemblies for eminence above numerous rivals; and as all considerable military command, as well as civil authority, could only be obtained by first winning the applause of the people; they who aimed at such distinctions, as powerful minds have generally been too greedy in pursuing, were obliged to sustain an arduous intellectual contest in the city, as well as to show themselves bold, and hardy, and prudent, in the field. Hence, while

many received a large share of political instruction from the mere habit of watchfully observing the conduct of those who were competitors for their approbation, and these were constantly striving to increase their own mental resources by every means within their reach, that they might be seen to be pre-eminent in argument or eloquence, and were studying the mind of man, that they might learn how to lead and controul him, the whole nation rose in the scale of intelligence far above the surrounding people. Their wisdom bore, indeed, no marks of a heavenly origin; for it was neither pure, nor peaceable, nor gentle, nor abounding in mercy. But it was such wisdom as the children of this world might be expected to value and excel in; teaching men to follow their own ends with peculiar dexterity; adding to the power of the ambitious, and to the luxuries of the indolent; storing the mind with precepts and subtle devices for use in the toil after advancement; and adding the pleasures of imagination to the coarser gratifications of a savage. If the advantages which their wisdom procured were thus worldly, they were but so much the better suited to the comprehension, and adapted to excite the desires, of the people who submitted to the Roman arms. And, as the barbarian, who felt his conquerors' superiority, was permitted, by the laws. of Rome, to aspire to becoming their rival in honourable, but peaceful, contests, he eagerly sought after the attainments which constituted, at once, so visible and so desirable a part of their superiority; whilst they were freely communicated to him by the victors, as likely to strengthen the bonds of his allegiance, by amalgamating his thoughts and pursuits with their own. Thus a considerable degree of civilization rapidly followed the course of the Roman arms; and, as the indulgence of curiosity, and a tendency to search into the mysterious hopes and fears of another life, have always occupied a promi

nent place amongst the pleasures of imagination, the literature of Rome soon contained several distinguished works, in which the authors had detected and exposed the weakness of the popular superstition; at the same time that the evident failure of all the efforts which their own powerful minds could make to arrive at truth and certainty, proved that something more than human wisdom was necessary to solve that important and awful question which will press upon the thoughts of man, as soon as he has risen sufficiently above the mere animal life of a savage to turn his contemplations upon himself.

The blessings of the Christian covenant, the glad tidings of the Gospel of peace, were proclaimed to the world by the Apostles and their followers at the time, as GOD had announced it should be, when the Roman empire had taken its widest range. And the advancement of civilization among its ruder subjects, with the diffusion, amongst the more enlightened, of a spirit of enquiry, (which shook the old systems of idolatry, and excited a longing it could not satisfy for the information Christian teachers came to offer) must have been favourable to the propagation of Christianity over its extensive dominions; which, perhaps, comprehended half mankind. Instead, too, of the difficulty of teaching elevated and spiritual truths in barbarous tongues, scarcely containing terms for expressing more than the simple wants, the rough pursuits, and coarse pleasures of savages, the first missionaries of the Gospel found that the Roman arms, as if with the intention of facilitating their labours, had spread the use of two languages, the Latin and Greek, most admirably adapted to all the purposes of persuasion and instruction. The gift of tongues, indeed, miraculously enabled the first teachers of

*It seems very doubtful whether America was as yet inhabited by men.

PREPARATIONS FOR CHRISTIANITY,

9

Christianity to speak the language of any people they chose to address; and to do this without the delay of previously learning that language. But though this gift put them at once into complete possession of all the words of a barbarous tongue, it must still have remained impossible adequately to express, in that tongue, ideas for which, from its own poverty, it wanted names. Now, though the variety of languages naturally spoken by the numerous distinct nations subject to Rome had not been entirely superseded by the Latin or Greek, yet either the one or the other of these two became familiarly known in every province; and whatever was written in these languages could be read by all those, at least, who had leisure for thought and study; whose influence must gradually lead their more ignorant countrymen in their train.

Another very considerable advantage to the rising cause of Christianity, resulting from the victories of Rome, was the abundant intercourse to which they gave facilities, or which they directly occasioned, between nations previously unknown to each other, and tribes whose petty hostilities would have made of every frontier a barrier to the farther progress of the preachers of peace. It is probable that the intercourse which commerce now produces between independent countries could, in that state of civilization, only have been brought about by conquest. It was, besides, a part of the Roman policy to transfer whole armies to perform the duties of a vast garrison in provinces widely separated from their native country; these soldiers carried with them the opinions they had learned to adopt in their earlier home; and the leisure, not to say the tediousness, of their permanent and generally inactive camps, enabled and led them to do more to diffuse their opinions around them than a merchant would at the ports to which he makes his busy and transitory visits.

But, doubtless, amongst the various means by which GOD made the elevation of the Roman power subservient to the propagation of Christianity, no one was so incontestably important, in the end, as this, that as soon as the capital and sovereign of this vast empire were won over to the faith of Christ, the establishment of His Church, in all its numerous and extensive provinces, was carried, as it were, by that one victory. Then began to be fulfilled the words of the promise which Jehovah had made to Him whom man despised, to Him whom the nation abhorred, to a servant of rulers. Kings shall see Him rise up, princes also shall worship Him*.

If the brief notice here taken of the effects naturally flowing from these different pre-disposing causes, in favour of a wide reception of the Gospel, should still seem not to have clearly established their importance, history sets before us such a striking contrast between the result produced in those countries where their united operation was experienced, and in those where they were wholly absent, as would alone be sufficient to lead us to trace the hand of God, in the wisdom which prepared them. For history tells us, that the Christian religion was regularly established in every province of the Roman empire; and fixed on such firm ground that, though it may have been deplorably perverted, it never became less than the paramount religion in any of those provinces, so long as they continued to be parts of that empire; whilst, on the other hand, neither the Apostles, nor any of their immediate successors, appear to have planted any permanent Church beyond the bounds of the Roman empire.

The people of this country have, therefore, exceeding reason to bless GOD that their ancestors found themselves compelled to submit to becoming a part of that empire. GOD commendeth His love

Isaiah xlix. 7. Improved Translation.