Antebellum period

“ When that empire had exhausted its natural vitality, the dark forests of the North poured forth a barbarous but vigorous multitude, who trampled into ruins the decrepit civilization of the Roman world, but infused new blood into the veins of old Europe, grasping the great ideas of Christianity with a bloody but firm hand—and a new period of original progress sprang out of the seeming devastation. ”

“ It may be replied that the history of Rome, on which I dwelt a moment ago, shews that arrested progress, and even decadence, may be but the prelude to a new period of vigorous growth. So that even those races or nations which seem frozen into eternal immobility may base upon experience their hopes of an awakening spring. ”

“ The secret of a period furrowed by a reformation or a civil war, can be learned by those who would never have discovered it; it is hard to teach the true character of a period when its charm is the perpetual shifting of its lights and shadows, and the transitions from one stage to another. ”

“ The era of its greatest power was from the Norman conquest of England to the reign of Edward III. But there was a long and gloomy period before Feudalism ripened into an institution,—from the dissolution of the Roman Empire to the eighth and ninth centuries. I would assign this period as the darkest and the dreariest in the history of Europe since the Roman conquests, for this reason, that civilization perished without any one to chronicle the changes, or to take notice of the extinction. ”

“ Nay, I will even confess to you that I have my private doubts whether the Middle Ages are over yet—whether any period comes to an end at a given epoch, but does not rather still subsist, diminished yet puissant, stealing in unnoticed currents along the vast veins and secret fabric of the world. ”

“ If we allow a period of one hundred years between the introduction of one type and the first use of its successor, we shall be able to fit the two ascertained dates, and this period seems on the whole reasonable. ”

“ If, sweeping over in retrospect the history of the world since the time when the Egyptian and Babylonian civilizations were at their height, we attempt some such classification of the stages of progress as that which we a moment ago applied to pre-historic times, we shall be led to some rather startling conclusions. In the broadest view, it will appear that the age which ushered in the historic period continued unbroken by the advance of any great revolutionary invention throughout the long centuries of pre-Christian antiquity, and well into the so-called Middle Ages of our newer era. ”

“ How remote the origin of this transition-period of civilisation dates we cannot as yet presume to say; but with our preconceived notions, derived chiefly from an exclusively classical education, we are more apt to err on the side of too modern than of too remote a date. ”

“ With the Pontificate of Leo the Great that dark period which we call the "Middle Ages" may be said to begin. The disintegration of society then was complete, and the reign of ignorance and superstition had set in. With the collapse of the old civilization a new power had become a necessity. If anything marked the Middle Ages it was the reign of priests and nobles. ”

“ The first period was filled with an uninterrupted series of troubles, quarrels, and animosities, culminating in the most terrific and horrible disaster that ever fell upon a people. The second period was an uninterrupted reign of peace, harmony, and unity; no religious society ever enjoying more comfort in its privileges, or exhibiting a better example of all that ought to characterize a Christian congregation. ”

“ Further, from the fifth century after Christ until the fifteenth, that period defined as the Middle Ages, such terrible struggles and fierce upheavals, such ruthless encounters and horrifying acts, were the rule among the peoples of Europe, that the Europeans rightly describe those ten centuries as the Dark Ages. ”

“ In the ancient sense, a period is above all a physiological whole, inasmuch as it is comprised in one breath. Such periods as occur in Demosthenes and Cicero, swelling twice and sinking twice, and all in one breath, were pleasures to the men of ANTIQUITY, who knew by their own schooling how to appreciate the virtue therein, the rareness and the difficulty in the deliverance of such a period;—WE have really no right to the BIG period, we modern men, who are short of breath in every sense! ”

“ If there is any period one would desire to be born in,—is it not the age of Revolution; when the old and the new stand side by side, and admit of being compared; when the energies of all men are searched by fear and by hope; when the historic glories of the old, can be compensated by the rich possibilities of the new era? ”

“ The interest of the period lies perhaps rather in its tendencies and development than in its actual achievements, which by general consent are inferior not only to those of the First, but to those of the Third, Period. It is a period of transition and uncertainty, of the loss of old ideals when men "follow wandering fires." ”

“ How fatal every error as to the quantity of time must prove to the introduction of rational views concerning the state of things in former ages, may be conceived by supposing the annals of the civil and military transactions of a great nation to be perused under the impression that they occurred in a period of one hundred instead of two thousand years. ”

“ As the historian recognizes Ancient History, the Middle Ages, and Modern History as distinct phases in the growth of the human race, so they distinguished between what they called the Primary period, when, as they believed, no life stirred on the surface of the earth; the Secondary or middle period, when animals and plants were introduced, and the land began to assume continental proportions; and the Tertiary period, or comparatively modern geological times, when the physical features of the earth as well as its inhabitants were approaching more nearly to the present condition of things. ”

“ Then followed the Bronze Age, a period of constant quarrelling and deeds of violence. Instead of cultivated lands, and a life of peaceful occupations and orderly habits, there came a day when every where might was right, and men, big and powerful as they were, became physically worn out.... ”

“ We may take 1859, almost exactly two hundred years after the final readjustments of the Reformation period, as the point of departure for the forces which have so greatly modified our outlook upon our world and our understanding of ourselves ”

“ Sometimes in history there have been so many changes within a short time that the effect has been cumulative and an epoch has been created, as at the break-up of the Roman Empire, when civilization was merged in the ‘Dark Ages’. ”

“ How did the reverence of Europe settle at one time on the sword of Edward the Third, and at another on the periwig of Louis the Fourteenth? These and similar inquiries will lead us to the real principles and motive forces of a particular age, as they distinguished it from other ages. We shall label the centuries, as it were, with their characteristic marks, and know where to look for thoughts and incidents of a particular class and type.
Let us look at the first century.
Throughout the civilized world there is nothing but Rome. ”

“ My darlings, this morning we will glance at some of the relics of what was once called the 'Christian Era,' subsequently designated by historians as 'The Age of Blood and Malevolence,' but which is, nevertheless, always of importance in the world's library from its having been the first link in the long unbroken chain of eras of civilization. If time will permit we will take from the twenty-first century to the fifteenth. ”

“ It was these Romans who united in one State the Culture which had now been produced by the intermixture of different races, and who thereby completed the period of Ancient Time and closed the simple course of Ancient Civilization. With respect to its influence on Universal History, this nation, more than any other, was the blind and unconscious instrument for the furtherance of a higher World-Plan, since it had formed itself, as indicated above, into a most fit and proper instrument for that purpose. ”

“ One woe is past. The woe referred to in ver. 1‒11. In ch. viii. 13 three woes are mentioned which were to occur successively, and which were to embrace the whole of the period comprised in the seven seals and the seven trumpets. Under the last of the seals we have considered four successive periods, referring to events connected with the downfall of the Western empire; and then we have found one important event worthy of a place in noticing the things which would permanently affect the destiny of the world—the rise, the character, and the conquests of the Saracens. ”

“ The work embraces the period from the invasion of the Romans till the death of Henry VIII, and is divided into periods, the history of which is treated under seven separate headings—civil and military history, history of religion, history of the constitution, government, and laws and courts of justice, history of learning, history of arts, history of commerce, and history of manners. ”

“ The ancient and popular doctrine of the Millennium was intimately connected with the second coming of Christ. As the works of the creation had been finished in six days, their duration in their present state, according to a tradition which was attributed to the prophet Elijah, was fixed to six thousand years. 61 By the same analogy it was inferred, that this long period of labor and contention, which was now almost elapsed, 62 would be succeeded by a joyful Sabbath of a thousand years; ”

“ Lessons of the Period. It is difficult to draw, from a period of which we know so little, any certain conclusions. We are perhaps safe in making some observations. (1) Christianity must always make its way against opposition. (2) The Christian faith gives courage and joy in the most trying circumstances. (3) Christianity will finally triumph over its enemies.
For Study and Discussion. (1) From the Bible dictionaries, cyclopedias, etc., study the reigns of the different Roman emperors of this period. ”

“ The sixteenth century was drawing to its close,—a century marked by the ravages of religious revolution, and destined to be for ever honoured or deplored according as men may think of it as the age of reformation or of decay. ”

“ The interval between the decay of the old and the formation and establishment of the new, constitutes a period of transition, which must always necessarily be one of uncertainty, confusion, error, and wild and fierce fanaticism. ”

“ Whatever the division in men's minds as to the relation between the close of the century and a race's history, and the precise moment at which the old century ends and the new begins, one thing in 1800 was radiantly clear to all men—the glory and the wonder, the endless peace and felicity not less endless, which the opening century and the new age dimly portended or securely promised to humanity. ”

“ The age of which we have been writing the history, is that which has been fitly named the Anthropic, in that earlier part of it preceding the great diluvial catastrophe, which has fixed itself in all the earlier traditions of men, and which separates what may be called the Palanthropic or Antediluvian age from the Neanthropic or Postdiluvian. ”

“ It is evident that in the period designated as that of the kings, when Rome commenced her career of conquest, she was, for that time and country, a great and wealthy city. ”

“ we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way— in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. ”

“ It was a wonderful time, but after all less memorable as the culmination of mediaeval empire and mediaeval church than as the dawning of the new era in which we live to-day, and in which the development of human society proceeds in accordance with more potent methods than those devised by the genius of pagan or Christian Rome. ”

“ Revolutions go by periods. Are they possibly controlled or influenced in these years by the stellar affinities of the north pole? Is that capricious functionary leading up to Casseopeia, in this cycle, or Andromeda, that we find ourselves turning from great Hercules, fiery Bootes, and even neglecting the shining majesty of belted, sworded Orion, to consider woman? ”

“ This is the age of mechanism and of science, and mechanism and science sweep every thing before them, and will probably be carried to their utmost capacity and development. Then the human mind may seek some new department, some new scope for energies, and a new age of wonders may arise,—perhaps after the present dominant races shall have become intoxicated with the greatness of their triumphs and have shared the fate of the old monarchies of the East. ”