As a matter of fact, so far was this state of society from holding out any hope of its own amendment, whether sudden or gradual, that, as our author remarks—
"Of all the minds which have left a record of themselves, from Cicero to Tacitus, there is not one who does not look upon the world's course as a rapid descent. They feel an immense moral corruption breaking in on all sides, which wealth, convenience of life, and prosperity only enhance. They have no hope for humanity, for they have no faith in it, nor in any power encompassing and directing it."
Faithless and hopeless they were; but whatever this world could give they had in abundance:
"In the time of heathenism the world of sense which surrounded man flattered and caressed all his natural powers, and solicited an answer from them; and in return he flung himself greedily upon that world, and tried to exhaust its treasures. Glory, wealth, and pleasure intoxicated his heart with their dreams; he crowned himself with the earth's flowers, and drank in the air's perfume; and in one object or another, in one after another, he sought enjoyment and satisfaction. The world had nothing more to give him; nor will the latest growth of civilization surpass the profusion with which the earth poured forth its gifts to those who consented to seek on the earth alone their home and their reward; though, indeed, they were the few, to whom the many were sacrificed. The Roman noble, with the pleasures of a vanquished world at his feet, [{373}] with men and women from the fairest climes of the earth to do his bidding—men who, though slaves, had learnt all the arts and letters of Greece, and were ready to use them for the benefit of their lords; and women, the most beautiful and accomplished of their sex, who were yet the property of these same lords—the Roman noble, as to material and even intellectual enjoyment, stood on a vantage-ground which never again man can hope to occupy, however—
'Through the ages an increasing purpose runs,
And the thoughts of men are widen'd with the process of the suns.'
"Caesar and Pompey, Lucullus and Hortensius, and the fellows of their order, were orators, statesmen, jurists, and legislators, generals, men of literature, and luxurious nobles at the same time; and they were this because they could use the minds as well as the bodies of others at their pleasure. Not in this direction was an advance possible" (p. 159).
Our author draws with great skill and vigor a picture of the moral society of the heathen world, and of the beliefs upon which the practice of the heathen rested. Into these we have no room to follow him. At the end of this lecture he shows what sights they were which met the eyes of a stranger coming from the east in the days of Nero—an execution in which four hundred men, women, and children were marched through the streets of Rome to the cross, because their master had been killed by one of his slaves. In all such cases the Roman law required that every slave in the house, however innocent, however young or however old—man, woman, or child—should be put to death. Thence the stranger passed to a scene of debauchery such as the world has never imagined, in the gardens close to the Pantheon. This stranger—
"Why has he come to Rome, and what is he doing there? Poor, unknown, a foreigner in dress, language, and demeanor, he is come from a distant province, small in extent, but the most despised and the most disliked of Rome's hundred provinces, to found in Rome itself a society, and one, too, far more extensive than this great Roman empire, since it is to embrace all nations; far more lasting, since it is to endure for ever. He is come to found a society, by means of which all that he sees around him, from the emperor to the slave, shall be changed" (p. 101).
What madness can have inspired such a hope, or what miracle, real or simulated, could fulfil it? And that, not in the golden age of pastoral simplicity, in which men looked for wonders with an uncritical eye, but "amid the dregs of Romulus," when all the world seemed to have fallen together into the "sere and yellow leaf."
"He has two things within him, for want of which society was perishing and man unhappy: a certain knowledge of God as the Creator, Ruler, Judge, and Rewarder of men; and of man's soul made after the image and likeness of this God. This God he has seen, touched, and handled upon earth; has been an eye-witness of his majesty, has received his message, and bears his commission. But whence had this despised foreigner received the double knowledge of God and of the soul, so miserably lost (as we have seen) to this brilliant Roman civilization?