inimitably his superior, he is at the same moment taught by a
revelation that this awful superior is the same who created him,
and that in a sense more than figurative, he himself is the child
of God. There stand the two relations, as declared in Paganism and
in Christianity,--both probably true. In the former, man is the
essential enemy of the gods, though sheltered by some conventional
arrangement; in the latter, he is the son of God. In his own image
God made him; and the very central principle of his religion is,
that God for a great purpose assumed his own human nature; a mode
of incarnation which could not be conceivable, unless through
some divine principle common to the two natures, and forming the
_nexus_ between them.

With these materials it is, and others resembling these, that
Christianity has carried forward the work of human progression. The
ethics of Christianity it was,--new ethics and unintelligible, in
a degree as yet but little understood, to the old pagan nations,--which
furnished the rudder, or guidance, for a human revolution; but the
mysteries of Christianity it was,--new Eleusinian shows, presenting
God under a new form and aspect, presenting man under a new relation
to God,--which furnished the oars and sails, the moving forces,
for the advance of this revolution.

It was my intention to have shown how this great idea of man's
relation to God, connected with the previous idea of God, had first
caused the state of _slavery_ to be regarded as an evil. Next,
I proposed to show how _charitable institutions_, not one of
which existed in pagan ages, hospitals, and asylums of all classes,
had arisen under the same idea brooding over man from age to
age. Thirdly, I should have attempted to show, that from the same