The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1872-02-03 00:00:00

CIVILIZATION BEFME AND AFTER

CHRISTIANITY.
On Tuesday evening the Dean of St. Paul's tiellvered his
second and concluding lecture on this subject, before a large
audience under the dome of St. Paula Cathedral, London.
The rev, gentleman dwelt much on the awfulness of
the catastrophe, as it must have seemed, when the
Roman Empire at het fell ; when
,Pnuan belief in
zit and law was quenched in dolma whether there
was such a thing as goodness at all, and when RUMan
public spirit yielded to a selfish indifference to public
scandal or disaster. But, in the meantime, a new
principle hail come into the world—an enthusiasm
popular, widespread. and serious—an enthusiasm not
for conquest, or for riches, or for knowledge, but for
real and solid goodness. Never had men seen be-
fore, never had they seen since, a rapturous confi-
dence such as possessed the first Christians ; and little
by. little iliil this new principle establish itself, appro-
priating as of right whatever ..had beta oast or
vffitiallie in the old- amid adding to it virtues
and gnus,: all its own. Above all things was it gifted
with a new and wonderful power of recovery. What,
asked Be. Church, what is the whole history of
modern Europe but the history of sal recoveries
And what is there like it to be found in the ancient
world ? Dark days have been, indeed, in Christendom,
Society seemed to be breaking up, as it did at last at
Rome. lint wait awhile, and you saw that which you
looked for in vain at Rome ; the tide began to turn,
the energy, the indignation, the resolute, unflinching
of ref,— to show itself; and
..

purpose 0 ieformalion began
whether wise or not, whether in its special and definite
work a failure or even a mischief, it was at least
enough to muse society, to set it on a new course, to
disturb that lethargy of custom which is so fatal, to
make men believe that it was not a law of nature or
of fate that "as things had been, things most be."
That terrible disease of public and stagnant despair
which killed Roman society has not had the mastery
yet in Christian times ; in evil days, sooner or later,
there have been men to believe that they could im-
prove things, even if, in fact, they could not. And for
that power of hope, often it may be, chimerical,
hazardous hope, which I:as done so much for
the improvement of social life, the world is
indebted to Christianity. It was part of the very
essence of Christianity not to let evil, not to let the
bad alone. It was bound, it was its instinct,
to attack it. Christian men have often, no doubt,
mistaken the evil, and the bad, whom they attacked;
but their acquiescence in supposed evil, and their hope-
lessness of a victory for good, would have been worse
for the world than their mistakes. The great ref orals
in Christian days have been very mixed lines; but
they have been reforms, an uninterrupted series of
attemps at better things ; for society, for civilization,
successive and real, though partial recoveries. The
monastic life which was, besides its other aspects,
the great civilising agent in the rural populations ;
the varied and turbulent municipal life in the cities ;
the institutions in the middle ages, on a broad and grand
scale for teaching, for study, for preaching, for the re-
formation of manners ; the determined and sanguine
ventures id heroic enthusiasts like St. Bernard,
Savonarola, or Luther, or of gentler, but not less reso-
lute reformers, like Erasmus and our own Dean Colet;
the different schemes for human improvement, so
varied, ci opposed, so incompatible, yet in purpose
one of Jesuits, of Puritans, of the great Frenchman of
Poitroyal all witness to the undying, unwearied
temper which had been kindled in society, and which
ensured it from the were ruin of helplessness and de.
spair.
They were all mistakes, you will say, perhaps, or
full of mistakes. Yes, but we all do our work through
mistakes, and the boldest and most successful of us, per-
haps make the most. They failed in the ambitious com-
pleteness if their aim; but they left their mark, if only
in this -that they exhibited men, in the struggle with
evil and the effort after improvement, refusing to give
up, refusing to be beaten. Butthey were more than this.
There are none, I suppose, or these great stirrings of
society, however little we may sympathise with them,
which have not contributed something which those
whoicome after are the better for. The wilder or the
feebler ones are an earnest of something mare reason-
able and serious. They mark and secure for some
important principle or idea, a step which cannot
easily be put back. They show, as the whole
history of Christendom, with all its dismal traits
of darkness and blood, seems to me to show, that
society in Christian times has somehow or other
ix,ssessed a security, a charm against utter ruin,
which society before them had not ; that it has been
able to go through the most desperate crises, and at
length to throw off the evil, and continue on its
course, not perhaps unharmed, yet with a new chance
of life; that following its course from first to last, we
had in it a tough, indestiuctible foim of resistance to
decay, a continual, unwornout spring of revival, reno-
vation, restoration, recovery, and augmented strength,
which, wherever it comes from, is most marked and
surprising, and which forms an essential difference
lietween it and the conditions of society, befOre and
beyond Christian influences.