Nevada County picayune., 1891-06-11
CHRISTIANITY HAS DONE AND
 IS DOING.

The fol,oainG oratiun was deliver ed at the Commencement Exercises of the Emmct High School, May l5, 1891, by Robert McSwain:
 Christianity has always been live force. Christ. its founder, was the most industrious worker the world has ever known. Throughout his entire ministry of three and half years he was continually engaged in the most earnest and jealous labor for both the immediate and the fu- turc good of mankind. He has in- spircd his followers with the same spirit. The few followers left at the ascension had, in less than three centuries. although subjected to the most cruel and severe persecution, so disseminated Christianity through out the Roman Empire that the Ro- man Emperor, Constantine, consider ed it to be to his advantage to pro- fess Christianity and adopt it as the State religion. Christianity, thus disseminated among the Romans, softened their stern and ferocious l dispositions, educated their morals, and cultivated all their higher and nobler qualities.
 But the work of Christianity has not been confined to civilized nations. 1 What civilized nation of the present l has risen from the savage state since l the Christian era, without Christian 1 ity? Christianity has always pre- ceeded civilization, making way for it and becoming an important factor in it's development. Wherever Christianity has gone, whether among the barbarian Teuton of Flu rope, among the wild Indians of America, among the savage negroes of Africa, or among the uncivilizcd Malays of Oceanica, it has been fol- lowed by civilization. Without the conversion of the barbarians of Eu- rope where would be the civilization of modern Europe! Had they re- mained Pagans, they would have oyerrun Rome and the Roman Elm pire and destroyed Roman civiliza- ton. Both Marie and GenseriC spared Rome from destruction. q thing which Pagan kings in the same circumstances would not have done, Through the influence of Christiani. fly Rome, though captured and sacked, remained as a civilizing cen ter, while province after province succumbed to the barbarians; anC when Rome did cease to exist as { nation, or more properly, when the Western Roman Empire fell, Christi anity had been so firmly established and so many of the barbarian iDva- ders had been converted, that the institutions of the Church did not share it's fall; but Christianity was the nucleus which sur vived the Roman decline, trans planting the civilization of the Ro- mans to their barbarian successors and uniting all Western Europe to Rome as a civilizing centre. With out this connecting link between civ 1 ilizcd Rome and the uncivilizcd Celts and Teutons, the progress of these l barbarians in civilization would have been slow and retarded. Hereto fore all conquests had been made upon the uncIvilized by civilized na- tions, held together by the strong hand of a Monarch, and not upon civilized nations by unclvilized bar barians, held together by their own ambitions and greed for plunder. But the time had passed when civili- zation was to be promulgated by cOnQucSts and nations to be held to- gcthcr by Monarchy. A new force was needed which would carry ciyli- zation among the uncivilizcd, without their subjugation, and act as cen i tralizing influence without the de- l struction of freedom. The former was especially needed in the time of l the Roman decline the latter in the age of Feudalism. This force in both instances was well supplied by Christianity.
 Christianity having converted the Celtic and Teutonic tribes, having in- l troduced civilization among them, and having united them among them selves and joined them to civilized Rome by the tie of common Chris tian faith, introduced the most inn l portant elements of modern Europe an civilization. Christianity did not only aid in the establishment of Eu-