UNIVERSALITY OF CHRISTIANITY.
Universality is one of the essential characteristics of Christianity. It is not so with human religions. They are adapted to a certain people, and to the degree of cultivation they have attained; they keep these nations stationary, or if by any extraordinary circumstance the people attain a fuller growth, their religion is left behind, and by that means becomes useless to them.
There has been an Egyptian, a Grecian, a Latin, and even a Jewish religion; Christianity is the only religion of mankind.
Its starting point in man is sin; and this is a characteristic not peculiar to any one race, but is the heritage of every human being. Hence the Gospel, as satisfying the universal and most elevated wants of our nature, is received as coming from God by the most barbarous and by the most civilized nations. It does not, like the religions of antiquity, deify national peculiarities; but it does not destroy them as modern cosmopolitism would do. It does better; it sanctifies, ennobles, and raises them to a holy unity by the new and living principle it communicates to them.
The introduction of Christianity into the world has wrought a great revolution in history. Until then, there had only been a history of nations; now there is a history of mankind; and the idea of a universal education of the human race, accomplished by Jesus Christ, has become the historian's compass, the clue to history, and the hope of the nations.
But Christianity exerts its influence not only on all nations, but also on every period of their history.
At the moment of its appearance, the world was like a torch about to become extinct, and Christianity rekindled it with fire from heaven.
Subsequently, the barbarian tribes, having rushed upon the Roman empire, had shattered and confounded every thing; and Christianity, stemming that desolating torrent with the cross, subdued by it the savage children of the north, and gave society a new form.
Yet an element of corruption already lay hid in the religion carried by courageous missionaries to those barbarous tribes. Their faith came from Rome almost as much as from the Bible. This element soon gathered strength; man everywhere substituted himself for God,—the essential characteristic of the Romish church; and a renovation of religion became necessary. This Christianity accomplished at the epoch of which we are treating.
The history of the Reformation in the countries that we have hitherto surveyed has shown us the new doctrine rejecting the extravagances of enthusiasts and of the new prophets; but in the country towards which we now turn our attention, infidelity is the shoal which it has to encounter. Nowhere had bolder protests been made against the superstitions and abuses of the Church: nowhere had there been a more striking development of a certain love of learning, independent of Christianity, which often ends in irreligion. France carried in her bosom two reformations at the same time,—the one of man, the other of God. "Two nations were in her womb, and two manner of people were to be separated from her bowels."[678]