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On Some Influences of Christianity Upon National Character
On Some Influences of Christianity Upon National Character Author:Richard William Church Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LECTURE III. CHRISTIANITY AND THE TEUTONIC RACES. At the time when the Roman Empire was the greatest power in the world, and seemed the firmest, a race was... more » appearing on the scene which excited a languid feeling of uneasiness among Roman statesmen, and an artificial interest among Roman moralists. The statesman thought that this race might be troublesome as a neighbour, if it was not brought under the Roman rule of conquest. The moralists from their heights pf civilization looked with curiosity on new examples of fresh and vigorous nature, and partly in disgust, partly in quest of unused subjects for rhetorical declamation, saw in them, in the same spirit as Rousseau in later times, a contrast between their savage virtues and Roman degeneracy. There was enough in their love of enterprise and love of fighting to make their wild and dreary country a good exercise-ground for the practice of serious war by the Legions ; and gradually a line of military cantonments along the frontier of the Rhine and the Danube grew into important provincial towns, the advanced guard of Roman order agairst the darkness and anarchy of the wilderness outside. When the Roman chiefs were incapable or careless, the daring of the barbarians, their numbers, and their physical strength made their hostility formidable: the Legions of Varus perished in the defiles of the German forests, by a disaster like the defeat of Braddock in America, or the catastrophe of Afghanistan; and Roman Emperors were proud to add to their titles one derived from successes, or at least campaigns, against such fierce enemies. The Romans—why, we hardly know—chose to call them, as they called the Greeks, by a namewhich was not their own; to the Romans they were Germans; to themselves they were Diutisc, Thiudisco, Teutsch, Deutsche...« less