War is the science of destruction. - John Stevens Cabot Abbott

Popular prejudice is seldom removed by argument

Civil war burst upon the United States, with almost the suddenness of the meteor's glare. It was, however, but like the eruption of the volcano, whose pent-up fires had, for ages, been gathering strength for the final explosion. The whirlwind which our country has reaped, is but the natural harvest of that seed which, for long years, we have been sowing.

Christianity had undermined all the temples of idolatry, and was enthroned as the established religion of the Roman empire. Ambitious men rallied about it as a great political power. Wicked men nominally embraced it as an essential step to worldly advancement. Christianity had thus, perhaps, more to fear from favoritism than from persecution. Unprincipled men, grasping at wealth and power, embraced Christianity merely as an instrument for the promotion of their own temporal aggrandizement. They hated its spiritual teachings, and endeavored to make it a religion of dead doctrines and of pompous ceremonies, rather than a rule to govern heart and life. They crucified Christianity while crowning it.