Even during the period of the universal excommunication of mankind from the church of God that church existed, the divine revelation was preserved and increased, and the line of continuity between the past and the future was kept unbroken, in the nation of the children of Abraham. It was from Juda that the Lawgiver and the law came forth to the subjugation of the nations. The historical and rational basis of the supernatural origin and power of Christianity reaches down, therefore, to the first foundations of the world and the human race. So, then, we can have no fear of searching after and pointing out any natural and concurrent causes in the progress of human events which have prepared the way for Christianity and facilitated its universal conquests. The state of heathendom is not to be considered as a normal, natural, and necessary stage in the evolution and progress of mankind, from which Christianity was educed. The plan of divine Providence proposed to conduct mankind from one degree of development to another, until the perfection of religion and civilization was attained in the Catholic Church and carried forward to its last results in the universal resurrection and the everlasting kingdom of heaven, for which all the progeny of Adam, without exception, were destined. According to this plan, the church would always have been one and universal, and whatever might have been the special mission and privileges of the people of Israel, the covenant of God with them, and the possession of divinely-revealed doctrine, discipline, and worship would not have been exclusive. The national and exclusive constitution of the church in the posterity of Abraham and Jacob through the Law of Moses was a dispensation established on account of the general apostasy of mankind, a measure of protection against an absolute and final defection of the human race. And the preparation which went on in heathendom for the new promulgation of the divine law to all the world by Jesus Christ was also a measure of remedy and rescue, a “second plank after shipwreck,” thrown to the nations who were drowning in a sea of errors and miseries.