George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 4, 15th edition.

[7] bounded the expansive spirit of independence

chap. I.} 1748.

by giving dominion to property, and extended her own influence by the sword, yet, heaping up conquests, adding island to continent, crushing nationalities, offering a shrine to strange gods, and citizenship to every vanquished people, she extended over a larger empire the benefits of fixed principles of law, and a cosmopolitan polytheism prevailed as the religion of the world.

To have asserted clearly the unity of mankind was the distinctive glory of the Christian religion. No more were the nations to be severed by the worship of exclusive deities. The world was instructed that all men are of one blood; that for all there is but one divine nature and but one moral law; and the renovating faith taught the singleness of the race, of which it embodied the aspirations and guided the advancement.

The tribes of Northern Europe, emerging freshly from the wild nurseries of nations, opened new regions to culture, commerce, and refinement. The beams of the majestic temple, which antiquity had reared to its many gods, were already falling in; the roving invaders, taking to their hearts the regenerating creed, became its intrepid messengers, and bore its symbols even to Iceland and Siberia.

Still nearer were the relations of the connected world, when an enthusiast reformer, glowing with selfish ambition, and angry at the hollow forms of Eastern superstition, caught life in the deserts of Arabia, and founded a system, whose emissaries hurried lightly on the camel's back beyond pathless sands, and, never diverging far from the warmer zone, conducted armies from Mecca to the Ganges