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But the modern dogmatist tries to take his case out of the argument, by pretending that Christianity will protect the world from again retrograding. This is the mere pride of the Pharisee, who flatters himself that he is not as other men are, that his Christianity is too pure to fall, and his knowledge too vast to be blasted. Or else he forgets that the pure Christianity of the first disciples and martyrs failed to preserve succeeding generations from the inroads of sin and darkness more overwhelming than had ever blackened the face of Europe since the commencement of the historical period. The dogmatist of those days sighed over the world’s degeneracy, and saw not through the surrounding gloom any hopeful gleam of light; just as the modern dogmatist rejoices over the world’s advance, without perceiving any overhanging shadow of darkness.

Both judge of the world by their own time and circumstances, just as we are too apt to judge of each other by ourselves.

A due regard to the psychonomy of nations would throw much light upon many abstruse points of history, and often serve to corroborate narrations which appear marvellous and incredible to us. Thus, as we have, for the most part,^[9] left off eating human flesh in these islands for some thousand years or more, historians reject as utterly incredible that our forefathers were cannibals; and some still more tender-hearted philanthropists even venture to assert that cannibalism has not and never had an existence anywhere. Whereas, if they would compare the evidence with the psychonomy of the nations of whom the circumstance is narrated, instead of with our own, they would instantly perceive in it nothing unnatural nor incredible. Thus also infidel writers, unable to comprehend the fervent and assured hope of a blessed immortality which supported the martyrs, deny, as repugnant to human nature, the patient sufferings of the early Christians. And thus again commentators on the Bible, both infidel and credent, have made sad havoc of many texts, by endeavoring to interpret them by European manners and habits. This inattention to national psychonomy is, moreover, a fertile cause of the mal-administration of colonies, and was the root of nine-tenths of the errors in Indian affairs during the last century.