The following passage is quoted by the London Quarterly Review, with the remark that, “for the condensation of its wide historic survey, and its vigorous and glowing eloquence, it is one of the finest in the whole range of literature:”
“It arose in an enlightened and skeptical age; but among a despised and narrow-minded people. It earned hatred and persecution at home by its liberal genius and opposition to the national prejudices; it earned contempt abroad by its connection with the country where it was born, but which sought to strangle it in its birth. Emerging from Judæa, it made its outward march through the most poisoned regions of the world—Asia Minor, Egypt, Greece, and Rome—and in all it attracted notice and provoked hostility. Successive massacres and attempts at extermination, persecuted for ages by the whole force of the Roman Empire, it bore without resistance, and seemed to draw fresh vigor from the axe; but assaults in the way of argument, from whatever quarter, it was never ashamed or unable to repel; and whether attacked or not, it was resolutely aggressive. In four centuries it had pervaded the civilized world; it had mounted the throne of the Cæsars, it had spread beyond the limits of their sway, and had made inroads upon barbarian nations whom their eagles had never visited; it had gathered all genius and all learning into itself, and made the literature of the world its own; it survived the inundation of the barbarian tribes, and conquered the world once more by converting its conquerors to the faith; it survived the restoration of letters; it survived in an age of inquiry and skepticism, and has long stood its ground in the field of argument, and commanded the intelligent assent of the greatest minds that ever were; it has been the parent of civilization, and the nurse of learning; and if light and humanity and freedom be the boast of modern Europe, it is to Christianity that she owes them. Exhibiting in the life of Jesus a picture, varied and minute, of the perfect human united with the divine, in which the mind of man has not been able to find a deficiency or detect a blemish—a picture copied from no model and rivaled by no copy—it has [109] accommodated itself to every period and every clime; it has retained, through every change, a salient spring of life, which enables it to throw off corruption and repair decay, and renew its youth, amid outward hostility and inward divisions.”
[Volume V: January, 1868]
Return to Lard’s Quarterly index.