WHAT CHRISTIANITY HAS DONE.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, some years ago, in an after-dinner speech in London, thus replied to a sneer at religion: "When the microscopic search of skepticism, which has hunted the heavens and sounded the seas to disprove the existence of a Creator, has turned its attention to human society, and has found a place in this planet where a man can live in decency, comfort, and security, supporting and educating his children unspoiled and unpolluted; a place where age is revered, infancy respected, womanhood honored, and human life held in due regard, when skeptics can find such a place ten miles square in this globe where the Gospel of Christ has not gone and cleared the way, and laid the foundation, and made the decency and security possible, it will then be in order for the skeptical literati to move thither and ventilate their views. But so long as these very men are dependent upon the religion they discard for every privilege they enjoy, they may as well hesitate a little longer before they seek to rob the Christian of his hope and humanity of its faith in that Saviour who alone has given to man that hope of life eternal which makes this life tolerable and society possible, which robs death of its terrors and the grave of its gloom."