“Progression has not been the character of the history of man.”
More Worlds Than One: The Creed of the Philosopher and the Hope of the Christian (1856), "Religious Difficulties", p. 157-158
Context: The history of the human species is the history of a variety of races in every stage of civilization and barbarism, and the great majority of which have neither an intellectual, nor a moral, nor a religious progressive history. Progression has not been the character of the history of man. Without alluding to his primeval fall from his high estate, we have only to cast our eyes over the globe, and look at the intellectual, moral, and religious catastrophes which it presents to us, — at ages of light and darkness, — at alternations of progress and decline, — at the highest civilization sinking into the lowest barbarism. Mark those eastern lands, now involved in darkness, from which the beams of knowledge first radiated on mankind. Study the extinction of morality in many regions of the earth where its great lessons were first taught by our Saviour and His apostles; and above all, mark the total suppression of the Christian faith in European communities, where it has been displaced by a religion whose doctrines were preached by conquest, and whose decalogue was dictated by the sword.
