Moreover, the whole progress of civilization has been counter to
it. The fiats of eternal justice have pronounced against it,
because it is antagonistic to the dignity of man and the triumphs
of reason. I would not fall in with the cant of the dignity of
man, because there is no dignity to man without aid from God
Almighty through His spirit and the message he has sent in
Christianity. But there is dignity in man with the aid of a
regenerating gospel. Some people talk of the triumphs of
Christianity under the Roman emperors; but see how rapidly it was
corrupted by them when they sought the aid of its institutions to
bolster up their power. The power of Christianity is in its
truths; in its religion, and not in its forms and institutions, in
its inventions to uphold the arms of despotism and the tools of
despotism. It is, and it was, and it will be through all the ages
the great power of the world, against which it is vain to rebel.
And that government is really the best which unfetters its
spiritual influence, and encourages it; and not that government
which seeks to perpetuate its corrupt and worldly institutions.
The Roman emperors made Christianity an institution, and obscured
its truths. And perhaps that is one reason why Providence
permitted their despotism to pass away,--preferring the rude
anarchy of the Germanic nations to the dead mechanism of a lifeless
Church and imperial rottenness. Imperialism must ever end in
rottenness. And that is one reason why the heart of Christendom--I
mean the people of Europe, in its enlightened and virtuous sections
has ever opposed imperialism. The progress has been slow, but
marked, towards representative governments,--not the reign of the
people directly, but of those whom they select to represent them.
The victory has been nearly gained in England. In France the
progress has been uniform since the Revolution. Napoleon revived,