Such was imperial Rome, in all the internal relations of life, and amid all the trophies and praises which resulted from universal conquest,—­a sad, gloomy, dismal picture, which fills us with disgust as well as melancholy.  If any one deems it an exaggeration, he has only to read Saint Paul’s first chapter in his epistle to the Romans.  I cannot understand the enthusiasm of Gibbon for such a people, or for such an empire,—­a grinding and resistless imperial despotism, a sensual and proud aristocracy, a debased and ignorant populace, enormously disproportionate conditions of fortune, slavery flourishing to a state unprecedented in the world’s history, women the victims and the toys of men, lax sentiments of public and private morality, a whole people given over to demoralizing sports and spectacles, pleasure the master passion of the people, money the mainspring of society, a universal indulgence in all the vices which lead to violence and prepare the way for the total eclipse of the glory of man.  Of what value was the cultivation of Nature, or a splendid material civilization, or great armies, or an unrivalled jurisprudence, or the triumph of energy and skill, when the moral health was completely undermined?  A world therefore as fair and glorious as our own must needs crumble away.  There were no powerful conservative forces; the poison had descended to the extremities of the social system.  A corrupt body must die when vitality has fled.  The soul was gone; principle, patriotism, virtue, had all passed away.  The barbarians were advancing to conquer and desolate; there was no power to resist them but enervated and timid legions, with the accumulated vices of all the nations of the earth, which they had been learning for four hundred years.  Society must needs resolve itself into its original elements when men would not make sacrifices, and so few belonged to their country.  The machine was sure to break up at the first great shock.  No State could stand with such an accumulation of wrongs, with such complicated and fatal diseases eating out the vitals of the empire.  No form of civilization, however brilliant and lauded, could arrest decay and ruin when public and private virtue had fled.  The house was built upon the sand.

The army might rally under able generals, in view of the approaching catastrophe; philosophy might console the days of a few indignant citizens; good Emperors might attempt to raise barriers against corruption,—­still, nothing, according to natural laws, could save the empire.  Even Christianity could not arrest the ruin.  It had converted thousands, and had sowed the seeds of future and better civilizations.  It was sent, however, not to save a decayed and demoralized empire, but the world itself.  Not until the Germanic barbarians, with their nobler elements of character, had taken possession of the seats of the old civilization, were the real triumphs of Christianity seen.  Had the Roman empire continued longer, Christianity might