AND DISCUSSIONS.

59

to him in the case of a woman who had married seven breth-ren ; * and, more especially, in his reply to those who de-manded from him an explanation of the authority by which heacted, which reply consisted in proposing a question to them,situated between the very difficulties into which they were insid-iously endeavouring to draw him. f

4. Finally, we may reflect on the effects produced byChristianity even thus far, as seen in its superseding theMosaic dispensation, which was but “ the shadow of good thingsto come” ;J in its gradual undermining, successful assault, andfinal overthrow of the great system of Roman superstition,“ which,” as Gibbon says, “ was interwoven with every circum-stance of business or pleasure, of public or private life, withall the offices and amusements of society ; ” § in the civilization,public order, general cultivation and refinement, which it commu-nicated to the barbarians who destroyed the Roman empire, and,penetrating the forests and mountains from whence they issued,brought at length these countries themselves within its civilizing,enlightening, elevating, and purifying power; in the increasingknowledge, and advancement in art and science, in private andpublic morals, in social and political institutions, which have alwaysaccompanied its progress everywhere; especially in its accom-panying the origin and advances of European colonization on thisimmense continent, in Africa, in the islands of the great Pacificand Indian oceans, and in the vast dominions of British India ;in its diminishing the frequency, softening the fierceness, and miti-gating the calamities of war ; in its putting an end to the crimeof infanticide ; in its restoring the wife from a condition of hu-miliation and servitude, to he the companion, the associate, theconfidential adviser and friend of her husband ; in providing ahome for the poor, the outcast, and the forsaken ; and in exter-minating the combats of gladiators, the impurities of superstitiousrites, and unnatural vices not to be named and scarcely to bereferred to in the presence of a Christian assembly,|| and known

* Matt. xxii. 28. t Matt. xxi. 23, &c. See Paley’s Evid. pp. 252 - 257.

t Col. ii. 17; Heb. viii. 5; x. 1.

§ Quoted by Dr. Paley, Evidences, p. 19.

|| Exod. xxii. 19; Levit. xviii. 23; Deut. xxvii. 21; Rom. i. 24, 26, 27.