world.  And here I wish my thought to be clearly comprehended:  I do not pretend that the Apostles were conscious of the unlawfulness of slavery, and that they avoided pointing it out through policy, for fear of compromising their work.  No, indeed, this happened unconsciously.  According to all appearances, they held the opinions of their times, and God revealed nothing to them on the subject, wishing that the abolition of slavery, like all the social results of the Gospel, should be produced by moral agency, which works from within outward, which changes the heart before changing the actions.

At the time of the Apostles, there were many other abuses than slavery; they never wrote a word in their condemnation.  They make allusions to war, yet say nothing of the nameless horrors which then attended it; they speak of the sword placed in the king’s hands to punish crime, yet say nothing of those atrocious tortures, in the first rank of which must be cited crucifixion; they make use of figures borrowed from the public games, yet say nothing either of the combats of the gladiators, or of the abominations which sullied other spectacles; they unceasingly call to mind the reciprocal relations of husbands and wives, of parents and children, yet say nothing of the despotic authority which the Roman law conferred upon the father, or of the debasement to which it condemned the wife.  The evangelical method is this:  it has not occupied itself with communities, yet has wrought the profoundest of the social revolutions; it has not demanded any reform, yet has accomplished all of them; the atrocities of war and of torture, the gladiatorial combats and immodest spectacles, the despotism of fathers and the debasement of women, all have disappeared before a profound, internal action, which attacks the very roots of the evil.

Not only does the Gospel forbear to touch on social and religious problems, but, even on questions of morals, it refuses to furnish detailed solutions.  Its system of morality is very short; and in this lies its greatness, through this it becomes morality instead of casuistry.  Cases of conscience, special directions, a moral code, promulgated article by article—­you will find in it nothing of this sort.  What you will find there, and there alone, is a growing morality, which passes my expression.  Two or three sayings were written eighteen centuries ago, and these sayings contain in the germ a series of commandments, of transformation, of progression, which we have not nearly exhausted.  I spoke a moment since of the progress of revelations; I must speak now of the progress which is being wrought in virtue of a revelation constantly the same, but constantly becoming better understood, which multiplies our duties in proportion as it enlightens our conscience.  With the one saying:  “What ye would that men should do unto you, do ye also to them,” the Gospel has opened before us infinite vistas of moral development.