Instructor of souls, the church uses the method of all good education--authority and patience. Where there is doubt, she affirms; where there is denial, she insists; where there is division, she unites; she repeats for ever the same lessons, and what grand lessons they are! The true nature of God, the true nature of man, moral responsibility and free-will, the immortality of the soul, the sacredness of marriage, the law of justice, the law of charity, the inviolability of private rights and of property, the duty of labor, and the need of peace. This always, this everywhere, this to all men, to kings and to shepherds, to Greeks and to Romans, to England and to France, in Europe and in Australia, under Charlemagne or before Washington. I dare to assert that the continuity of these affirmations creates order in society and in the human mind, just as certainly as the repeated rising of the same sun makes the order of the seasons and success in the culture of the earth. O philosopher, you who disdain the church! be candid and tell me what would have become of the idea of a personal God among the nations, had it not been for her influence? O Protestants and Greeks! admit that without the church the image of Jesus Christ would have been blotted out beneath your very eyes! O philanthropist and statesman! what would you do without her for the family and the sanctity of marriage? What the church has once done, she is going to do again; what she has already said, she is going to repeat; she will continue her life, her course, her work, in the same spirit of wisdom and charity; she will continue to affirm to man's reason those great truths of which she is the guardian, and it is by this means, by this alone, though by it most energetically, that she will act on society. It has been said that the religion of the masses of the people is the whole of their morality. Then since morality is the true source of good statesmanship and good laws, all the progress of a people must consist in making the first principles of justice influence more and more their private and public life. From this it follows that every people which increases in its knowledge of Christian truth will make substantial progress, while at the same time every people which attempts to solve the great questions that perplex mankind in any way opposed to the gospel of Christ will be in reality taking the wrong road which can only end in their utter destruction. Who expelled pagan corruption from the world, who civilized barbarians by converting them? Look at the East when Christianity flourished there; and look at it now under the rule of Islam! The influence of Christianity upon civilization is a fact as glaring as the sun. But the principles of the gospel are far from having given all that they contain, and time itself will never exhaust them, because they come out of an infinite depth.