194 EVOLUTION AND NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



of both Berlin and St. Petersburg. For this, and 

 for many other blessings, we have mainly to 

 thank the great French Ee volution, terrible as 

 it was at the time. Among other benefits, the 

 French Eevolution practically abolished torture 

 in Europe. The stake and the wheel were still 

 common punishments in France, up to that 

 time ; but during the turmoil of the Eevo- 

 lution, and the years of war which followed, 

 there was no time to torture criminals, and 

 they were simply put out of the way as 

 speedily as possible. This gave time for a new 

 generation to grow up, to whom torture was 

 simply abhorrent, and to Napoleon himself 

 we owe the final abolition of the Inquisition 

 in Spain. We may reckon the French Eevo- 

 lution as the real close of the Middle Ages. 



The reign of Solomon was the Golden 

 Age of Hebrew history ; and yet Solomon, 

 like a true Eastern despot, commenced his 

 reign with the massacre of his father's per- 

 sonal enemies, and his own rivals, under cir- 

 cumstances of peculiar atrocity. Yet crimes 

 which would now be regarded as likely to draw 

 down the immediate vengeance of Heaven, 

 excited no moral reprobation whatever at 



