that little region a singular and rather retired people, who, however,
differed from the rest of mankind in the very important circumstance of
not being idolaters. He looks around upon every other country of the
earth, where he discovers superstitions of the most hateful and degrading
kind, darkening all the prospects of the human being, and corrupting his
moral nature in its very source. He observes that some of these nations
are far advanced in many intellectual accomplishments, yet, being unable
to shake off the tremendous load of error by which they are pressed down,
are extremely irregular and capricious, both in the management of their
reason and in the application of their affections. He learns, moreover,
that this little spot called Palestine is despised and scorned by those
proud kingdoms, whose wise men would not for a moment allow themselves to
imagine, that any speculation or tenet arising from so ignoble a quarter
could have the slightest influence upon their belief, or affect, in the
most minute degree, the general character of their social condition.

But, behold, while he yet muses over this interesting scene, a Teacher
springs up from among the lower orders of the Hebrew people,--himself not
less contemned by his countrymen than they were by the warlike Romans
and the Philosophic Greeks,--whose doctrines, notwithstanding, continue
to gain ground on every hand, till at last the proud monuments of pagan
superstition, consecrated by the worship of a thousand years, and
supported by the authority of the most powerful monarchies in the world,
fall one after another at the approach of his disciples, and before the
prevailing efficacy of the new faith. A little stone becomes a mountain,
and fills the whole earth. Judea swells in its dimensions till it covers
half the globe, carrying captivity captive, not by force of arms, but by
the progress of opinion and the power of truth, all the nations of Europe
in successive ages,--Greek, Roman, Barbarian,--glory in the name of the
humble Galilean; armies, greater than those which Persia in the pride of