CHRISTIANITY JUDGED BY ITS FRUITS.* This book is what one

rarely meets with now,—a compreesed book,L-one that represents a vast deal more labour and study than the number of its pages represents. It is a perfect repository of evidence as to the moral condition of the pre-Christian world, and as to the change wrought by Christ's influence in that world. We should like very much to see this book ex panded into a much larger one, in which all the evidence merely referred to should be so drawn out as to exhibit at large what is here only shortly indicated. Dr..Groslegh might easily build_ on the ground-plan here laid down a picture of the heathen society as it was, and of the Christian society into which it wag transformed, which would be one of the most valu- able records of the magnitude of the great spiritual revolution which Christianity effected to be found in any language. We believe that Dr. Croslegh might have made his impressive. little work still more impressive if be had not rather arti- ficially divided his subject into sections which overlap each other, and could hardly help doing so. 'If, instead of separating " Christianity in relation to morals " from " Christ- ianity in relation to happiness," and that, again, from" Christ- ianity in relation to material prosperity," and, all these from the 'chapter on " What. Christianity has done in the World", 'a * Christianity Judged by its Prints. By the Bev. Charles Croelegh, Chaplain of the Royal Indian Engineering _College, Cooper's Hill. London The deelety for Promoting Christian Knowledge.

subject which has necessarily been discussed at length in the preceding sections, he had separated the manner in which Christianity dealt with distinct spheres of life,—had shown ns, for instance, what it did to purify that which was impure ; *hat it did to restrain revenge and cruelty, and to enforce the rights of the weak ; what it did to encourage honesty, patience, self- sacrifice, and the many virtues on which mutual confidence, and

the prosperity which comes of mutual confidence, depend ; and, 'finally, what it did to console grief, to implant hope, and to give nerve to moral courage,—we should have had all the same facts and evidence, with less overlapping and in more natural combination than they are at', present. That, however, is only saying that in our opinion Dr. Croslegh might have arranged his materials somewhat more effectively. He could -hardly by any means have compressed into a smaller space the materials he hid to arrange. Dr. Croslegh gives us some of his most striking arrays of facts in the chapter on " Christianity in relation to material prosperity," in dealing with the exces- sive insecurity of life under heathenism. Take this, for

instance :— •

" From infancy to old age, in the highest rank as in the lowest, what we understand by security of life was a thing unkcown. The crime of infanticide has been practised all the world over. In Europe, in Asia, in Africa, in America, in the Islands of the ocean, the new- born babe has been sacrificed either to want, or luxury, or pride, or superstition. At Rome it was no uncommon practice to make a pre-nuptial agreement that boys only, should be reared. The orphan was not safe from the poison of the guardian to whom his property was entrusted. The husband poisoned his wife to enjoy her dowry, the wife her husband to marry another. Under Augustus, will.hunting was an act systematically practised, and the physician was the ready and skilful. poisoner. Three thousand. persons were put to death in part of one season for crimes of this kind. The purple itself failed to protect its wearer from violent death. Of the Emperors before Constantine, more than 80 per cent. were sacrificed either to war, conspiracy, or private hate. The hideous practice of human sacrifice also demanded its yearly tithe of victims. For it was not only wild and savage barbarians who offered their eons and their daughters to devils ; it was not only Druid priests and Aztec, rulers who thus spilt human blood ; the practice was common to Greece and Rome."

And Dr. Croslegh adds• in a note :—

"The Pelasgi devoted a tenth of their offspring, in order to escape the ravages of famine. Aristomenes sacrificed 300 noble Spartans at the altar of Jupiter. And the Lacedtemonians offered up a like number of victims to Mars. Livy tells us that human sacrifice, though not• originating with the Romans, was often practised by them under public authority. And even Augustus, in the second Triumvirate, offered 300 persons of rank to the Manes of Julius Cresar, on the Ides of. March. Sueton., Oct., c. xv ; Dion Cassius,

14."

That is very much to the purpose, no doubt, in proving the in- security of life ; but would it not have been even more to the purpose in proving the reckless cruelty and insensibility to the higher affections from which Christianity delivered the ancient world P And is not the passage which corresponds to this, respecting the beneficent agency of Christianity, one which belongs even more to the chapter on the transformation effected by Christian morality, than to that on the transformation effected in the security of life and property ?— " From the first, Christianity made men feel that we are all the children of a common Father, that we are bound to love and serve

with all the heart and soul; and that we exemplify and prove our love by loving our brethren, His children. Thus, while changing men's conception of the relation which they bore to each other, did it supply the highest motive for the discharge of the duties arising out of that relation. The Gospel placed moral obligation above posi- tive command, and changed the views, the temper, and the character of man. Henceforth the individual felt, himself to be more than a subject. of the government under which he lived. He belonged to a kingdom which taught him higher rights, nobler duties, truer liberty, —the right, amid the tumultuous strife of nations, in patience to possess his soul, the duty to shun the evil and do the good, the liberty in all things to obey a Master whose service is perfect free- dom, and while on earth to breathe a life divine, and know himself a citizen of heaven. Thus endowed with a - conschinsness of his dignity, man began to exert an energy, and to apply a perseverance, which should enable him to live more worthily. He began by putting a higher estimate on human life. The Gospel proclamation that one perfect and sufficient sacrifice bad been offered, once for all, for the sins of the whole world, put an end to the hideous practice of immo- lating human victims. Individual violence was lessened, exposed children were rescued, public tyranny was restrained, woman was .elevated, labour was dignified, the slave was set free, gladiatorial combats ceased, the horrors of war were mitigated, peace was fos- tered, manners were softened, and noble sentiments, lofty aspirations, generous enthusiasms, were awakened."

Add to this what Dr. Croslegh says as to the gladiatorial shows, and the triumph of the Christian world over them—he places • it in a different chapter, but it seems to us :to belong to the same context as that from which we have just quoted—and

we shall see the dimensions of the change in something like their true proportions :— " The gladiatorial shows present us with another picture of in- humanity, on a scale that to us seems almost incredible. The scenes enacted in the arena had a horrible fascination even for those who were not naturally given to bloodshed. And these exhibitions had become so pm-eminently the favourite pastime of the people, that the statesman regarded them as necessary for the maintenance of social order. The shows were not confined to the capital, nor even to great occasions, nor to the public arena. They were introduced at private banquets, for the excitement and gratification of, the guests. So popular was the sickening butchery, that we find the authorities repeatedly imposing limits upon the numbers of the combatants. In spite of these restrictions, however, it was no unusual thing to see two hundred pairs of gladiators engaged at a private entertainment; and we read of these games costing Europe 20,000 or 30,000 lives in one month. The figures are not so surprising when we remember that men glutted their eyes with regular battles, in which thousands were en- gaged, whose dead bodies were left in heaps upon the ground. As new countries were added to the growing Empire, men were dragged to Rome from greater distances. And we find in the arena, side by side with the Suevi and the Daci, tattooed savages from Britain, and fair Germane from the Rhine, butchering one another to make a Roman holiday.' T6 uproot an institution so firmly fixed in the passions of the populace, and, as a consequence, in the policy of the rulers, was, hopeless ; until the religion which first brought home to men's hearts the full conviction of the immortality of the soul, and of the soul's redemption by Jesus Christ, had taught truer views of humanity, and a jester estimate of human life, to the mind of the populace itself. Constantine made a, law prohibiting these .combats, but he had not power to enforce it ; and it was reserved to a humble monk to effect, by his death, what the power of the purple could not accomplish. With the martyrdom of Telemachus in A.D. 404, these bloody scenes came to an end."

Still more impressive is Dr. Croslegh's pictureof the condition in which Christianity found the relations of the sexes, and the

transformation which it effected ; but there, undoubtedly, he is open to a retort with which he does not propose to deal. When in so many profesdedly Christian countries we find the old Roman practice of free divorce re-established, as it is now to a great extent in Germany, in many of the States of America, and in some of the cantons of Switzerland, and when we see how enormous are the consequent or closely allied evils which have grown up in all Christian lands, it is hardly possible to say that Christianity has coped with these evils successfully. That true Christians would cope with them in a very different fashion is, no doubt, perfectly true. But that is only saying that Christ has not effected the same absolute conquest over the impurity of man which he has more or less really effected over man's ferocity.

And, of course, it would be asserted by the sceptic, and asserted with some plausibility, that this is precisely because Christianity has succeeded much more completely in the region in which it has been seconded by the claims of the intellect, than it has in the region in which the moral' spell of the Saviour is left to work alone.

One of the most valuable parts of Dr. Croslegh's little book•

is that in which he deals with the argument that what Christianity appears to have effected has really been due to the better stock of the races on which Christianity has taken the strongest hold. This he questions, and questions on strong grounds :— " Bat the strongest proof of the inability of society to preserve, as it advances in civilisation, the vigour of morals that marked its ruder life, is furnished by the rise and fall of the nations of antiquity. Their prosperity invariably led to luxury ; luxury to corruption and decay, the pestilential influence of which survived the people whom they ruined. For in the history of the olden Empires we find the • effete and demoralised nationality conquering its more robust con. querom. Persia demoralised Greece; Greece corrupted Rome. With the fallen nation's life, its corruption does not die. It passes over, and roots itself' in the ascendant people to bear again in course of time the fatal fruit of ruin. With Christianity comes a change; The conquered is conquered still, but now no longer for the worse. Conquered Rome conquers in tarn the victorious hordes of the North ; imparting to them, not the poison of corruption—a baneful principle of death—but the doctrines of Christ, which have proved a fruitful germ wherever they have been carried over the face of the globe; It is still objected, however, that notwithstanding the connection which we find actually to exist between the profession of the Christian faith and material progress, Christianity is nevertheless no more than an insignificant factor in the evolution of modern society.. If reason and experience have not, apart from Christianity, produced results equal to those which they have produced in combination with it ; if modern Europe enjoys a civilisation superior to that of ancient Greece and Rome, it is only becatise in modern times culture has been able to work upon the bettet material of the Teutonic character. If the modern harvest is richer and better than the ancient, it is not because it is the growth of a new seed, but merely because the old seed hap- pens to have fallen on better ground. Without denying to .the Northern races the possession of some nobler national characteristics,

I cannot but think that it is fashionable greatly to exaggerate this natural superiority. Nothing is more common than to institute a comparison between the good qualities noticed by ItaCitus as char- acterising the early Germans, and the vicious excesses of his de. generate fellow-countrymen in his own time. But such a comparison is idle for the purpose of our inquiry. It does not help us to form a right estimate of the yielding powers of two different fields, to compare the virgin vigour of the one with the effete languor of the other. And a just comparison of early Germany with early Greece or early Borne would tend, I think, largely to modify the popular conception of the superiority of the North. At all events, the recog- nition of the fact that many of the fine qualities wanting to the Greeks and Romans in the days of their highest culture had strongly marked the early days of their ruder life, would greatly diminish the force of the common argument from differences of race."

Ofcourse, it is a question not yet decided whether the decay which came upon Rome may not come upon Christian States also. Nor, even if it does not, could we be certain that our exemption is due solely to our Christian culture. Since the number of savage peoples able to test the strength of civilisation has dwindled so rapidly, it is probable that civilisation is no longer exposed to such- external shocks as that to which Rome was ex- posed at the hands of the Goths. On the other hand, itis per- fectly certain that civilisation is now exposed to much more dangerous assaults from within. The populations now crowded into comparatively small areas are such as the ancient world never dreamt of ; and nothing seems to us more demonstrable than that the security against collapse is due much more to moral and spiritual causes, to the equity and charity which the different classes in our communities display, than to any other cause whatever.. Whether other religions, besides Christianity,

have not displayed in some cases a marvellous amount of that equity and charity, it would be difficult to decide. - But after all;

Christiatity need not be jealous of the Christian spirit, even though it be found without the nominal authority of Christ. So much the more, as we should hold, is it clear that Christianity has -other conquests ready to its hand which it has not yet effected.

We heartily thank Dr. Croslegh for this most valuable and highly concentrated piece of work, and hops that he may care- fully consider the suggestion that he should expand it' into a fall description of the great transformation of which he has here given us only an outline map..