It was Christianity; that is to say, Hebraism aiming at self-conquest
and rescue from the thrall of vile affections, not by obedience to the
letter of a law, but by conformity to the image of a self-sacrificing
example. To a world stricken with moral enervation Christianity offered
its spectacle of an inspired self-sacrifice; to men who refused
themselves nothing, it showed one who refused himself everything;--"_my
Saviour banished joy!_"[452] says George Herbert. When the _alma Venus_,
the life-giving and joy-giving power of nature, so fondly cherished by
the pagan world, could not save her followers from self-dissatisfaction
and ennui, the severe words of the apostle came bracingly and
refreshingly: "Let no man deceive you with vain words, for because of
these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of
disobedience."[453] Through age after age and generation after
generation, our race, or all that part of our race which was most living
and progressive, was _baptized into a death_; and endeavored, by
suffering in the flesh, to cease from sin.
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