Let us take the ancient Romans as an example. In the youth of their nation their gods were revered; and in the existence of a national conscience, a basis was found for law and virtue; and while these lasted the empire flourished. But by and by the genius of its great thinkers leavened the nation; an era of scepticism ensued; that scepticism inaugurated an age of feeble laws and strong passions; and the declension which set in issued at length in downright barbarism.
Papal Rome has run the very same course. The feeble intellect of the European nations accepted Romanism as a religion, just as the Romans before them had accepted of paganism. But the Reformation introduced a period of growing enlightenment and independent thinking; and by the end of the eighteenth century, Romanism had shared the fate which paganism had done before it. The masses of Europe generally had lost faith in it as a religion; then came the atheism of the French school; an era of feeble laws and strong passions again returned; the selfish and isolating principle came into play; and at this moment the nations of continental Europe are rapidly sinking into barbarism. Thus, the history of the race under the reign of the false religions exhibits but alternating fits of superstition and scepticism, with their corresponding eras of civilization and barbarism. And it necessarily must be so; because, these religions not being compatible with the indefinite extension of man's knowledge, they do not secure the continued action and authority of conscience; and without conscience, national progress, and even existence, is impossible.
Is there, then, no immortality in reserve for nations? Must they continue to die? and must the history of our race in all time coming be just what it has been in all time past,--a series of rapidly alternating epochs of partial civilization and destructive barbarism? No. He who is the former of society is the author of the Bible; and we may be sure that there is a beautiful meetness and harmony between the laws of the one and the doctrine of the other. Christianity alone can enable society to fulfil its terrestrial destiny, because it alone is true, and, being true, it admits of the utmost advancement of the human understanding. In its case the centrifugal force of the intellect can never overcome the centripetal power of the conscience. It has nothing to fear from the advance of science. It keeps pace with the human mind, however rapid its progress. Nay, more; the more the human mind is enlarged, the more apparent becomes the truth of Christianity, and, by consequence, the greater becomes the authority of conscience. Under the reign of Christianity, then, there is no point in the onward progress of society where conscience dissolves, and leaves man and nations devoid of virtue; there is no point where conviction compels man to become a sceptic, and scepticism pulls him down into barbarism. As the atmosphere which surrounds our planet supplies the vital element alike to the full-grown man and to the infant, so Christianity supplies the breath of life to society in all its stages,--in its full-grown manhood, as well as in its immature infancy. There is more meaning than the world has yet understood in the statement that the Gospel has brought "life and immortality to light." Its Divine Founder introduced upon the stage that system which is the _life_ of nations. The world does not furnish an instance of a nation that has continued to be Christian, that has perished. We believe the thing to be impossible. While great Rome has gone down, and Venice sits in widowed glory on the Adriatic, the poor Waldenses are still a people. The world tried but could not extinguish them. Christianity is synonymous with life: it gives immortality to nations here, and to the individual hereafter. Hence Daniel, when unfolding the state of the world in the last age, gives us to understand that, when once thoroughly Christianized, society will no longer be overwhelmed by those periodic lapses into barbarism which in every former age has set limits to the progress of States. "And in the days of those kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed." Unlike every preceding era, immortality will then be the chief characteristic of nations.