d his pen to write a
defense of a man who murdered his mother. And Marcus Aurelius directed
the murder of thousands of innocent men and women, causing young ladies
to be stripped naked and torn to pieces by wild beasts, in the public
amphitheater, and others to be roasted alive in red-hot iron chairs, for
no other offense but that they avowed themselves Christians. Such are
these boasted saints and heroes of heathendom.

What, then, must the lives of the vulgar have been? In the very height
of Roman civilization, Trajan caused ten thousand men to hew each other
to pieces for the amusement of the Roman people; and noble ladies
feasted their eyes on the spectacle. In the Augustan age, when the
invincible armies of Rome gave law to half the world, fathers were in
the habit of mutilating their sons rather than see them subjected to the
slavery and terrible despotism of their officers. What, then, must the
state of the people of the vanquished countries have been? Whole
provinces were frequently given over to fire and sword by generals not
reputed inhuman; and such was the progress of war and anarchy, and their
never-failing accompaniments, famine and pestilence, that, in the reign
of Gallienus, large cities were left utterly desolate, the public roads
became unsafe from immense packs of wolves, _and it was computed that
one-half of the human race perished_. This was just before the
toleration of Christianity. God would allow the wisest and bravest of
mankind to try the experiment of neglecting his gospel and living
without his revelation, until all mankind might be convinced that such a
course is suicidal to nations. "Where there is no vision, the people
perish."

A brief reference to the codes of morals which the modern opposers of
the Bible would substitute for it in Christian lands shall conclude our
proof of the necessity of such a revelation of God's law to man, as
shall guide his life to peace and happiness.

The family is the basis of the commonwealth. Destroy family confidence
and family government, and you destroy society, subvert civil
government, and bring destruction on the human race. Mankind are so
generally agreed on this subject, that adultery, even among heathens, is
regarded and punished as a crime. The whole school of Infidel writers
and anti-Bible lecturers, male and female, apologize for, and vindicate
this crime. Lord Herbert, the first of the English Deists, taught that
the indulgence of lust and a