INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.

THE influence of Christianity on the state of the world is acknowledged, but it is not estimated with any degree of care or exactness: many are the moral forces which it brings to bear on every portion of society; but who thinks of attempting to measure or reckon up the almost countless effects which result from their action? Whatever may have been said of the weakness of human reason, in its conflicts with passion and a perverse will, men of elevated thought have at all times exercised a very conspicuous influence over the opinions of their fellow-men. The ancient systems of philosophy were, without exception, based on the supposition that we require much help from wisdom to make us happy; that good has to be sought and protected by many a complicated process of reason; and that there is a constant struggle through the whole range of existence between happiness and misery, and right and wrong. In the mass of

argument, of persuasive exhortations and maxims, which was accumulated in the illustration of these systems, every faculty of the human mind was appealed to, every chord of the human heart sometimes made to thrill with deep and intense emotion. The impressions thus produced on those who occupied the highest stations in the schools of wisdom, were gradually communicated to the humblest of their brethren; and large classes of society were thereby imbued with feelings which confessed the power of those mighty master spirits who ventured to examine the laws and tendencies of being. But in the little practical influence which the united systems of philosophy possessed, we find a demonstration of the melancholy fact, that that which flows from the heart or intellect of man, has an inherent imperfection, which prevents it from effecting any important improvement in human nature. The reasonableness, the truth, and beauty of all that genius creates may be felt; but the homage we render it is the homage of admiration, not of subjection; and in rendering this there is a consciousness of equality, which deprives the voice of the eloquent and praise-rewarded teacher of most of his authority.

Thus the ancient world was not without light on many points of elevated morality; nor did it wholly fail in recognizing the power of those inward principles on which, as on an everlasting

foundation, the noble fabric of humanity stands fronting the skies. But it is an indubitable fact, that notwithstanding the efforts which were made to resist the depressing influences of sensuality, the minds of men did, for ages, lie grovelling with their passions, in doubt or despair of ever obtaining freedom. The thirst for life was never satisfied: the path of existence ran through a desert, where there were a few ancient wells, but no fountains flowing into the ocean. It was only that small body of men, who were justly regarded as the wonders of their race, on whom the light of reason shed a hope of immortality: for the rest, they could scarcely look upon themselves as otherwise than passing shadows, or bubbles for death to burst: there was no savour of life in their souls; and thus, from one end of the earth to another there was an incessant talk of eternal night and nothingness. The mother brought up her children with the mother's natural care and fondness; but if she chanced to think of death, she felt as if she held but dust and ashes to her bosom. The friend loved his friend as friends love each other now, but when sickness came, or old age drew nigh, they had to think of nothing but an eternal farewell. All was hopelessness, or that which is almost as bad, and perhaps worse, a harrowing, feverish state of doubt; and generation after generation seemed to perish like the leaves of

successive autumns. The poet's melancholy image was all but reality.

If we inquire now how vice grew to such a height, when the principles of morality were so far from being unknown, or how it was that the noble efforts which philosophy made towards enlightening mankind were of so little avail, the answer will be found in this, that the whole system of ethics, and that knowledge of intellectual nature which belonged to the province of reason, had no connexion with the faith which pointed to Deity or heaven. The philosopher and the scholar, it is supposed, believed not in the gods: if they did, neither could their faith receive any support from their studies, nor their reason any help from their creed: but the people at large, depending chiefly on what was taught them respecting the nature and will of their deities, could only find, in the scattered rays of purer truth which occasionally reached them, a light too clear for the light of their heavens—a revelation of glory which had as little similarity to the splendours of Olympus or the happiness of Elysium, as the sublime beauty of nature to the wanton luxuries of art. To decide between the claims thus made by popular tradition on the one hand, and reason, throned in her secret asylum, on the other, was rarely attempted, and error was worshipped because her antiquity could be traced,

while truth had only, to appearance, its every-day birth in the minds of the few and the isolated. But the gloom of error and corruption is the night in which the soul sleeps without dreaming of its original destiny: and this was the case with myriads in the anti-evangelical ages. The sun of truth never rose above the horizon: but meteors of every shape and hue sprung from the noxious vapours of sin, and appearing like stars in the dense night, were reverenced as guides throughout the disordered world. To one small portion of the human race God had continued the knowledge of his name, and the elements of his law; but both the one and the other were only revealed so as to form the surface of a deep mystery, not then to be penetrated. A light, pure and splendid, shone around them: no one could look upon it without feeling that it came from above: but it was a light announcing rather than revealing the presence of God; and truth-though its messengers, and its ordinances, its laws, and signs, and emblems were there was not itself substantially known or present.

Now let us suppose that in this state of things, a simple, but full and direct, revelation had been made of the immortality of the soul--a revelation couched in such terms that minds of every class might comprehend it, and see the whole force of the evidence by which it was established. The