I also remembered how eagerly I had swallowed the unfair
representations and fallacious reasonings of Buckle with regard to
Christianity and skepticism, and how impatiently I had hurried over what
reviewers friendly to Christianity said on the other side of the
subject. The balance of my mind was at length restored. I now saw that
Christianity had proved itself the friend of peace and freedom, of
learning and science, of trade and agriculture, of temperance and
purity, of justice and charity, of domestic comfort and national
prosperity. The history of Christianity was the history of our superior
laws, of our improved manners, of our beneficent institutions, of our
schools of learning, of our boundless wealth, of our constitutional
governments, of our unequalled literature, of our world-wide influence,
of our domestic happiness, and of all that goes to make up our highest
forms of civilization. Imperfectly as it had been understood, and
defectively as it had been reduced to practice, Christianity had placed
the nations of Europe at the head of the human race. Christian nations
were the most enlightened and virtuous, the most prosperous and
powerful, the most free and happy of all the nations of the earth. The
pious frauds, the intolerance and persecutions, the oppressions and
wrongs, the selfishness and sin, which were found in the history of the
Church, were not the effects of Christianity, but the effects of
passions and principles directly opposed to its spirit and teachings.
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