The Christian religion also acts upon public usages and institutions, by an operation which is only secondary and indirect.  Christianity is not a code of civil law.  It can only reach public institutions through private character.  Now its influence upon private character may be considerable, yet many public usages and institutions repugnant to its principles may remain.  To get rid of these, the reigning part of the community must act, and act together.  But it may be long before the persons who compose this body be sufficiently touched with the Christian character to join in the suppression of practices to which they and the public have been reconciled by causes which will reconcile the human mind to anything, by habit and interest.  Nevertheless, the effects of Christianity, even in this view, have been important.  It has mitigated the conduct of war, and the treatment of captives.  It has softened the administration of despotic, or of nominally despotic governments.  It has abolished polygamy.  It has restrained the licentiousness of divorces.  It has put an end to the exposure of children and the immolation of slaves.  It has suppressed the combats of gladiators,* and the impurities of religions rites.  It has banished, if not unnatural vices, at least the toleration of them.  It has greatly meliorated the condition of the laborious part, that is to say, of the mass of every community, by procuring for them a day of weekly rest.  In all countries in which it is professed it has produced numerous establishments for the relief of sickness and poverty; and in some, a regular and general provision by law.  It has triumphed over the slavery established in the Roman empire:  it is contending, and I trust will one day prevail, against the worse slavery of the West Indies.

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* Lipsius affirms (Sat. b. i. c. 12) that the gladiatorial shows sometimes cost Europe twenty or thirty thousand lives in a month; and that not only the men, but even the women of all ranks were passionately fond of these shows.  See Bishop Porteus, Sermon xiii. _________

A Christian writer, (Bardesanes, ap.  Euseb.  Praep.  Evang. vi. 10.) so early as in the second century, has testified the resistance which Christianity made to wicked and licentious practices though established by law and by public usage:—­“Neither in Parthia do the Christians, though Parthians, use polygamy; nor in Persia, though Persians, do they marry their own daughters; nor among the Bactri, or Galli, do they violate the sanctity of marriage; nor wherever they are, do they suffer themselves to be overcome by ill-constituted laws and manners.”

Socrates did not destroy the idolatry of Athens, or produce the slighter revolution in the manners of his country.