How readily, then, can we comprehend the ardent and untiring devotion and love which were everywhere evinced by Christian women for their divine Redeemer and Benefactor! How readily can we explain the boundless enthusiasm and joy of the multitudes of poor, oppressed, and disease-stricken men who followed Jesus from place to place for consolation and restoration! When these multitudes heard the precious sermon upon the mount, so much at variance with the prevalent tenets and practices of the world, they were amazed and delighted; for in it false philosophies, a vicious civilization, and pernicious usages were rebuked, mankind exalted to a higher sphere, and humanity vindicated. As the lives of the pagans were natural reflexes of their false and inhuman moral and social codes, so were the lives of the Christians natural reflexes of the divine code. The foundations of the one were idolatry, selfishness, sensuality, uncharitableness, pride, and arrogance; of the other, godliness, charity, love, humility, and benevolence. Humanity cannot clothe itself with the first without chilling and paralyzing the higher impulses of the soul, and fostering the bitter germs of mental and physical sorrow. Nor can it adopt the last without developing those spiritual attributes which elevate, refine, and bless the possessor. Let us come down to our own day, where materialism, sensuality, and general immorality are nearly as common as in the days of the apostles. We call ourselves Christians, profess to believe in one God, in the immortality of the soul, and in a future state of rewards and punishments; but practically, in actual life, many communities are as inhuman, as sensual, as material, and as immoral as were the pagans of the golden age. {120} The pagan disciples of Aristotle, for instance, did not hesitate to violate the sacred germs of humanity, and thus to blast the souls of multitudes of victims, for the purpose of preventing too great an increase of population. The religion of Christ changed all this, and true Christians have ever heeded the change. But the recent work of Dr. Storer, of Boston, and official legislative reports, demonstrate that this great crime is quite as prevalent in the modern Athens and in the State which contains it, as it was in the worst days of the Roman empire. The influence of this alarmingly prevalent crime of our own day and of our own nation is baneful in the extreme. On strictly sanitary and material grounds, it is to be deprecated as an evil of the greatest magnitude. Among its deleterious results may be recorded diseases of important vital organs, which are in turn reflected to the entire nervous system, and a consequent train of physical and mental disorders, which make life a burden instead of a blessing. Here, then, we see that a truly Christian mode of living is more conducive to health, happiness, and long life than that of the sensual materialist.