"If we turn our eyes to history, we shall find that all the great developments of the human mind have turned to the advantage of society--all the great struggles of humanity to the good of mankind. It is not, indeed, immediately that these efforts take place; ages often elapse, a thousand obstacles intervene, before they are fully developed; but when we survey a long course of ages, we see that all has been accomplished. The march of Providence is not subjected to narrow limits; it cares not to develope to-day the consequences of a principle which it has established yesterday; it will bring them forth in ages, when the appointed hour has arrived; and its course is not the less sure that it is slow. The throne of the Almighty rests on time--it marches through its boundless expanse as the gods of Homer through space--it makes a step, and ages have passed away. How many ages elapsed, how many changes ensued, before the regeneration of the inner man, by means of Christianity, exercised on the social state its great and salutary influence! Nevertheless, it has at length succeeded. No one can mistake its effects at this time."--(_Lecture_ i. 24.) In surveying the progress of civilization in modern, as compared with ancient times, two features stand prominent as distinguishing the one from the other. These are the _church_ and the _feudal system_. They were precisely the circumstances which gave the most umbrage to the philosophers of the eighteenth century, and which awakened the greatest transports of indignation among the ardent multitudes who, at its close, brought about the French Revolution. Very different is the light in which the eye of true philosophy, enlightened by the experience of their abolition, views these great distinctive features of modern society.