The Janizaries of the Porte were Christian children, recruited by the most degrading tribute which tyrannical ingenuity has invented. Torn from their homes in infancy, every tie severed that bound them to the world around them; the past a blank, the future dependent solely upon the master above them; existence limited to the circle of their comrades, among whom they could rise, but whom they could never leave; such was the corps which bore down the bravest of the Christian chivalry and carried the standard of the Prophet in triumph to the walls of Vienna. Mastering at length their master, they wrung from him the privilege of marriage; and the class in becoming hereditary, with human hopes and fears disconnected with the one idea of their service, no longer presented the same invincible phalanx, and at last became terrible only to the effeminate denizens of the seraglio. The example is instructive, and it affords grounds for the assumption that the canon which bound all the active ministers of the church to perpetual celibacy, and thus created an impassable barrier between them and the outer world, was one of the efficient instruments in creating and consolidating both the temporal and spiritual power of the Roman hierarchy. I. ASCETICISM. The most striking contrast between the Mosaic Dispensation and the Law of Christ is the materialism of the one, and the pure spiritualism of the other. The Hebrew prophet threatens worldly punishments, and promises fleshly rewards: the Son of Man teaches us to contemn the treasures of this life, and directs all our fears and aspirations towards eternity. The exaggeration of these teachings by the zeal of fervent disciples led to the ascetic efforts to subjugate nature, which present so curious a feature in religious history, and of which those concerning the relations of the sexes form the subject of our consideration.