[1] Sunday Lecture Society, November 7, 1875.
[2] Treatise Baba Bathra, 59 b.
[3] Compare these passages from Merivale ('Romans under the Empire,'
vi.), to whom 'it seems a duty to protest against the common tendency
of Christian moralists to dwell only on the dark side of Pagan society,
in order to heighten by contrast the blessings of the Gospel':--
'Much candor and discrimination are required in comparing the sins
of one age with those of another ... the cruelty of our inquisitions
and sectarian persecutions, of our laws against sorcery, our serfdom
and our slavery; the petty fraudulence we tolerate in almost every
class and calling of the community; the bold front worn by our open
sensuality; the deeper degradation of that which is concealed; all
these leave us little room for boasting of our modern discipline, and
must deter the thoughtful inquirer from too confidently contrasting
the morals of the old world and the new.'
'Even at Rome, in the worst of times ... all the relations of life
were adorned in turn with bright instances of devotion, and mankind
transacted their business with an ordinary confidence in the force of
conscience and right reason. The steady development of enlightened
legal principles conclusively proves the general dependence upon
law as a guide and corrector of manners. In the camp, however,
more especially, as the chief sphere of this purifying activity,
the great qualities of the Roman character continued to be plainly
manifested. This history of the Cæsars presents to us a constant
succession of brave, patient, resolute, and faithful soldiers, men
deeply impressed with a sense of duty, superior to vanity, despisers
of boasting, content to toil in obscurity and shed their blood at
the frontiers of the empire, unrepining at the cold mistrust of their
masters, not clamorous for the honors so sparingly awarded to them,
but satisfied in the daily work of their hands, and full of faith in
the national destiny which they were daily accomplishing.'
[4] Finlay, 'Greece under the Romans.'
[5] Examination, p. 495, 2d ed.