626 THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 



of which the old Europeans had an indistinct perception, became intense 

 and precise ; the sentiment of universal charity was exemplified not only 

 in individual acts, the remembrance of which soon passes away, but in the 

 more permanent institution of establishments for the relief of affliction, 

 the spread of knowledge, the propagation of truth. Of the great ecclesias- 

 tics, many had risen from the humblest ranks of society, and these men, 

 true to their democratic instincts, were often found to be the inflexible 

 supporters of right against might. Eventually coming to be the deposi- 

 taries of the knowledge that then existed, they opposed intellect to brute 

 force, in many instances successfully, and, by the example of the organi- 

 zation of the Church, which was essentially republican, they showed how 

 representative, systems may be introduced into the state. Nor was it 

 over communities and nations that the Church displayed her chief power. 

 Never in the world before was there such a system. From her central 

 seat at Eome her all-seeing eye, like that of Providence itself, could equal- 

 ly take in a hemisphere at a glance, or examine the private life of any 

 individual. Her boundless influences enveloped kings in their palaces, 

 or relieved the beggar at the monastery gate. In all Europe there was 

 not a man too obscure, too insignificant, or too desolate for her. Sur- 

 rounded by her solemnities, every one received his name at her altar ; her 

 bells chimed at his marriage, her knell tolled at his funeral. She ex- 

 torted from him the secrets of his life at her confessionals, and punished 

 his faults by her penances. In his hour of sickness and trouble her serv- 

 ants sought him out, teaching him by her exquisite litanies and prayers 

 to place his reliance on God, or strengthening him for the trials of life 

 by the example of the holy and just. Her prayers had an efficacy to 

 give repose to the soul of his dead. When even to his friends his life- 

 less body had become an offense, in the name of God she received it into 

 her consecrated ground, and under her shadow he rested till the great 

 reckoning day. From little better than a slave she raised his wife to be 

 his equal, and, forbidding him to have more than one, met her recompense 

 for those noble deeds in a firm friend at every fireside. Discountenancing 

 all impure love, she put round that fireside the children of one mother, 

 and made that mother little less than sacred in their eyes. In ages of 

 lawlessness and rapine, among people but a step above savages, she vin- 

 dicated the inviolability of her precincts against the hand of power, and 

 made her temples a refuge and sanctuary for the despairing and oppress- 

 ed. Truly she was the shadow of a great rock in many a weary land ! 



The civilization of the European, so far as it has yet advanced, has 

 been accomplished by the agency of many different causes, foreign and 

 domestic ; but among all these, the institution of the Christian Church 

 stands pre-eminent by reason of the moral power it exerted, its duration, 

 and the social benefits it has conferred. 



