The private history of Roman ladies of first rank is a succession of marriages and divorces, each new marriage giving way to one more recent. Octavia, the daughter of the Emperor Claudus, married Nero, was repudiated by him for the sake of Poppæa; this woman was first married to Rufus Crispinus; then to Otho; and at length to Nero, by whom she was killed.
Nero murdered Thessalina's husband, and married her for his third wife. Julia, the daughter of Augustus, was first the wife of Marcellus, then the wife of Agrippa, and then the wife of Tiberius. Such examples are found almost without number in the annals of Tacitus. The extent to which this evil was carried may be learned from the poet Martial, [pg 090] who informs us, that, when the Julian law against adultery was revived as a prevention of the corruption of the times, Thessalina married her tenth husband within thirty days, thus evading all the restraints which the law imposed against her licentiousness. What is the marriage bond worth in such a state of society?
Where is the state of society essentially better in the absence of the Christian religion?
The Bible teaches us that the institution is of Divine origin, established by the Lord himself. It inscribes upon every marriage altar, “What God hath joined together let no man put asunder.” It definitely defines marriage to be the act of uniting two persons in wedlock, and only two. According to the Scriptures, this union can only be dissolved by crime or death. With great tenderness the Bible prescribes the duties of this relation. “Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church.” This love is not the cold hearted affection that is after the fashion of free-love philosophy, but it is after a model that has touched heavenly hearts, and caused more admiration than all other things combined.
In the ancient dispensation adultery was punished with death. In the Christian dispensation, it is said with great emphasis, “Whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.” There is a place of which it is said, “Whoso is simple let him turn in hither, but he knoweth not that the dead are there, and that her guests are in the depths of hell.” There is a sin of which the Bible often speaks, pointing the guilty perpetrators to the fact that they have none inheritance in the kingdom of God and of Christ.
The history of Pagan nations is little else than a record of crime. By studying it we may learn something of our obligations to the Christian religion, and our indebtedness to its pure spirit, which has brooded over the darkness of the nations, and brought order out of confusion. It will, also, learn us to value the names father, mother, husband, wife, children and parents; these names were of little value among Romans. In the annals of the Roman empire may be found [pg 091] a record of all that is shocking; a record of all that man can be guilty of; a record of all that an enemy could be guilty of; suspicion, licentiousness, murder, conspiracy of wives against their husbands, and husbands against their wives; children sacrificed by the doings of a mother; families whose peace is ruined by intrigue and violence; men everywhere falling upon their own swords; the wife murdering her own husband for the sake of marrying another; woman practiced, skilled, in the art of poisoning—such is the picture of Pagan life in the most enlightened age of Rome.
Let any man compare society in our country, or in any protestant country, with the state of society under the reign of the Cæsars, and he will see what the Christ has done for our race. The spirit that sustains our social institutions does not grow cold even at the grave, but is felt beyond death. How is it in heathen lands? The sweetest loves of life give way to suspicion and envy; the jealousy of love, the thirst for power and ambition, drives them away, often as soon as the flowers and beauty of youth are gone. Where Christ reigns it is not so. Yet there are those who would have us believe that the religion of Christ is an unsocial, selfish religion. If it is unsocial and selfish to have no sympathy with wickedness, to promote all that is virtuous and kind, pure and true, to take pleasure in all that subdues the malignant and beastly, the ambitious and cruel, then it is an unsocial and selfish affair. If it is unsocial and selfish to take pleasure in that which elevates and moulds character in the image of God, and fits it for angelic society hereafter, then it is truly unsocial and selfish.
Law, Cause, And Agent.
The word law denotes the unceasing, regular order in which an agent or force operates. It should, consequently, be distinguished from cause or efficiency; it being only the manner, or mode, according to which an agent or cause manifests itself. Therefore law is neither cause or agent. Yet it implies [pg 092] an agent, or an energy; for without these law is nothing—does nothing. The laws of nature had no existence until nature existed. That is to say, the laws of water did not exist until water existed, etc. So it is easy to perceive the truth that the laws of nature created nothing. Nature is said to be the aggregate of everything; therefore nature created nothing. The laws of nature, being the rules according to which effects are produced, demonstrate the existence of a cause or agent which operates. As the rules of navigation never steered a ship, so the law of gravity never moved a planet. A bare order or law of nature was not the cause of nature. To confound order or law with cause is to speak unadvisedly—unintelligently; it is perfectly irrational. Would you cut off executive authority in a government and continue its existence without a person or society to exercise, judge and execute according to law?