but of husbands. So completely, indeed, had the Roman women thrown aside the natural modesty of their sex, that they frequently took a personal part in the gladiatorial shows of the arena, and, under Nero and Domitian, even ladies of rank came forward in these encounters. Added to all this, the introduction of Asiatic luxuries had induced an even more than oriental effeminacy of manners, while the long series of conscriptions and murders, the private treachery and violence, which marked the overthrow of the republic, nearly extinguished the last flickering remains of Roman virtue, and reacted with an accumulated force of crime and calamity upon the female character. We learn from Roman authors and poets, that at no former period of their history were the women so utterly abandoned as at the time of the introduction of Christianity;—it seemed as if the whole frame-work of society, and all the bonds of domestic life, were on the eve of disruption.

Yet had the outward machinery of paganism never been maintained with more costly splendour; holocausts flamed upon the altars, and human victims were sacrificed in honour of the

gods*; the senate consulted oracles, and the general paused before omens; but the soul and essence of polytheism was gone. At no time had its moral influence put any great restraint upon the passions; yet the terror of the gods, and the vague apprehension of an hereafter, presented some check to the outward commission of crime. But even this barrier, frail as it was, had now been completely undermined by the scepticism of philosophers,

* Dr. Magee, in his Dissertation on the "Atonement," says, that the practice of human sacrifices "prevailed also among the Romans; as appears not only from the devotions so frequent in the early periods of their history, but from the express testimonies of Livy, Plutarch, and Pliny. In the year of Rome 657, we find a law enacted, in the consulship of Lentulus and Crassus, by which it was prohibited: but it appears notwithstanding to have been in existence so late even as in the time of Trajan; for at this time three vestal virgins having been punished for incontinence, the pontiffs, on consulting the books of the sibyls to know whether a sufficient atonement had been made, and finding that the offended deity continued incensed, ordered two men and two women, Greeks and Gauls, to be buried alive. Porphyry also assures us, that even in his time, a man was every year sacrificed at the shrine of Jupiter Latialis."

and the scoffs of poets. Men, when they have thrown off the authority and restraints of religion, may, to a certain extent, maintain the outward decencies of life, because they are more habitually influenced by reason and maxims of worldly calculation; but when woman assumes the atheist, she unsexes herself, and becomes an object of contempt and detestation even to the avowed scorner. By the constitution of her nature she is influenced by the feelings and the affections, and when these are enlisted on the side of the worst passions of our nature, licentiousness, ambition, and revenge, she plunges, without any counteracting principle, into the very vortex of sin. We need only compare the Deffands, the Châtelets, the Rolands of modern France, with the Fulvias, the Livias, the Messalinas of Rome, to be convinced that a woman in the moment of apostacy becomes reckless and abandoned, for she has lost the only stay of her weakness, the only safeguard of her virtue.

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CHAPTER IV.

THE CHRISTIAN FEMALE IN THE APOSTOLIC AGE.

What contributed most powerfully to the propagation of the Christian Church, was not so much the miracles which the first Christians wrought, as the holy life they led. They walked as angels upon earth. Did we live as they lived, we should not be so continually asked for miracles in proof of our doctrines; we should bring the whole world into the faith of Jesus Christ, by the force of our example alone.

St. Chrysostom, Hom. on Corinthians.

FROM this saddening picture of heathen darkness, the eye turns with delight to the bright beams of that Gospel which brought life and immortality to light. Here all is harmony and beauty; every relative and social duty is based upon the immutable authority of the Creator, who is the inexhaustible source of love-deep, pure, and unfeigned. As He is the first supreme object of love, so is He also the author of it in our hearts towards the whole human family. Love is the very badge of the Christian profession, and is made by our blessed

Lord the test of our love to him.

"By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one toward another." The apostles, when enforcing the same doctrine, still make "Jesus Christ and Him crucified" the motive, end, and aim of every social duty. Thus they exhort the Christian wife to evidence her love to God by submitting to her own husband "as unto the Lord," and to do so, not merely towards a believing partner, but to him also who "obeys not the word;" children are admonished to a dutiful obedience to their parents, as "well-pleasing unto the Lord;" while the very bond-slave is commanded to discharge his duty "heartily as to the Lord."

From the frequent exhortations addressed by the apostles to the converted wife of an unbeliever, it would almost seem that the freedom of the divine grace in choosing whom it will,one of a city, and two of a family,"

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more especially exerted in rescuing the weaker vessels from the thraldom of sin, and bringing them into the glorious liberty of the children of God. It appears that some of the early disciples were under the erroneous impression, that