atible with the wants and claims of his higher nature, did not
absolutely condemn slavery. But he has put on record the customs of the
Essenes of Palestine, a people who, uniting the wisdom of the Gentiles
with the faith of the Jews, led lives which were uncontaminated by the
surrounding civilisation, and were the first to reject slavery both in
principle and practice. They formed a religious community rather than a
State, and their numbers did not exceed 4000. But their example
testifies to how great a height religious men were able to raise their
conception of society even without the succour of the New Testament, and
affords the strongest condemnation of their contemporaries.

This, then, is the conclusion to which our survey brings us: There is
hardly a truth in politics or in the system of the rights of man that
was not grasped by the wisest of the Gentiles and the Jews, or that they
did not declare with a refinement of thought and a nobleness of
expression that later writers could never surpass. I might go on for
hours, reciting to you passages on the law of nature and the duties of
man, so solemn and religious that though they come from the profane
theatre on the Acropolis, and from the Roman Forum, you would deem that
you were listening to the hymns of Christian Churches and the discourse
of ordained divines. But although the maxims of the great classic
teachers, of Sophocles, and Plato, and Seneca, and the glorious examples
of public virtue were in the mouths of all men, there was no power in
them to avert the doom of that civilisation for which the blood of so
many patriots and the genius of such incomparable writers had been
wasted in vain. The liberties of the ancient nations were crushed
beneath a hopeless and inevitable despotism, and their vitality was
spent, when the new power came forth from Galilee, giving what was
wanting to the efficacy of human knowledge to redeem societies as well
as men.

It would be presumptuous if I attempted to indicate the numberless
channels by which Christian influence gradually penetrated the State.
The first striking phenomenon is the slowness with which an action
destined to be so prodigious became manifest. Going forth to all
nations, in many stages of civilisation and under almost every form of
government, Christianity had none of the character of a political
apostolate, and in its absorbing mission to individuals did not
challenge public authority. The early Christian