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REV. A. J. RYAN, Editor
AUGUSTA, Ga., DECEMBER 12, 1868
THE LOST CAUSE.
The Banner or the South is now
the only weekly paper published, devoted
to the “Memories of the Lost Cause.” Will
not th'* people of the South and the true
people of the North extend to us that sup
port which it deserves ? Wc believe they
will, and, so believing, wc will continue
to labor to make it worthy ot a gen
erous patronage. Me ask our friends
everywhere to aid us in extending our
circulation. Invite your neighbors to
subscribe. Send us their names and we
will send them specimen copies free.
Stories, sketches, and incidents ol the
struggle for Southern Independence are
respectfully solicited.
THE CONVENTION.
The importance of promoting the in
terests of Southern Agriculture is so
apparent, and has been so often and so
ably set forth in various Southern jour
nals, that we need not urge it here. One
of the best ways to benefit this great in
terest is through the medium of County
Associations and State Conventions. In
these* gatherings, views can be inter
changed. the various modes of cultivation
discussed, and plans arranged lor im
provement and progress. The Planters’
Convention, which was called for the 9th
of this month, has, wc hope, taken such
measures as will encourage immigration
to the South, and promote the varied in
terests of Agriculture iu this section of
the Union. The subjects to be discussed
were of the greatest importance, and,
no doubt, the result will be commensurate
with these.
We invite attention, here, to the com
munications on Agriculture, in this
issue. They are able and interesting,
and will, no doubt, be read with general
interest. We hope to hear from the
writer often, as well as from others who
feel disposed to discuss a subject ot so
much interest to the whole South.
FAIR PLAY.
What does the South want ! She asks
for no extraordinary privileges or emolu
ments. She wants no high position in
the Union. All she asks is to be let
alone—to work out her own destiny—to
promote her own individual interests.
Why can’t the North do this much for us ?
Why can’t Southern politicians do this
much for us ? Wo have humbly bowed
our necks to the yoke of Radical tyranny,
and became peaceable, law-abiding States
and people, despite the “raw head and
bloody bones” stories which found their
way into Southern and Northern Radical
journals. Wc have done all that was
asked of us : and in doing that, one
ol the States, at least, Georgia, “the
Empire State of the South,” has been
rescued from the hands ol the ene
my and placed in the front rank ot
Southern States. If wc can only have
fair play, the other Southern States will
>oon follow her glorious example. Rut
dbuppointed Southern Radical politicians
don’t want us to have peace—don't want
us to have fair play ; and they have gone
on to Washington to inflame the powers
that be against vs. Let us hope that
they will not succeed—that foul play has
had its day, aud that fair play will hence
forth be given to us, so that we can work
in peace and quiet, promote all the inter
ests ot our great section, and secure for
it that prosperity and glory which of
right ought to belong to us.
The Paris papers announce the death
if “ the mother of M. Alexander Dumas,
the younger. ’’ Why not “the wife of
M. Alexander Dumas, the older ?' !
For the Fanner of the South.
THE OECLINEAND FALL OF THE ROMAN
EMPIRE, By EDWARD GIBBON.
No. 1..
When, iu 1764, amid the ruins of an
ancient City, once the heart of a great
Empire, Edward Gibbon conceived the
idea of writing a History of “The Decline
and Fall of the Roman Empire,” he
thought he would accomplish a work
which would be a groat addition to the
Literature of the world, and secure for
his own name a literary immortality. It
was an ambitious thought; and, could it
have been carried out fully, completely,
and impartially, the time devoted to it,
and the labor expended on it, would have
deserved the literary immortality which it
would have inevitably secured. But,
when one considers the long period of
time over which the subject extended,
more than a thousand years; the many
and various Nations embraced within
the limns of that Empire; the constant and
successive invasions of the innumerable
hordes from Central Asia; the division of
thy Empire into Eastern and Western;
the incessant wars of the frontiers, and
constant changes of dynasty; the growth
of Christianity under the persecutions of
Idolatry, and its final triumph; the strug
gles of the Church against the various
sectaries who denied her faith, resisted
her spiritual authority, and persecuted her
when they had the power; all of whose
doctrines he undertakes to explain and
criticise, seeming to iind a special
pleasure in dilating upon the want of
unanimity among the Christians; the
rise and spread of Mohammedanism; the
wars of the Saracens, and the Crusades
from Spain to the Euphrates, and the
final destruction of the Eastern Empire by
the Turks; one is compelled to the con
clusion that, to do full and complete
justice to a subject so multifarious, in six
quarto volumes, was an impossibility.
Compressed within such narrow limits, it
is rather a brief compendium than a his
tory, containing a catalogue of the Roman
Emperors, and, afterwards, those of the
Western and Eastern Empires, with a
rapid sketch of their struggles for power,
diversified by the growth of Christianity
and its divisions, the rise of Mohamme
danism, the Conquests of the Saracens
and the Turks, and the wars of the Cru
sades. Hordes of fierce, gigantic barba
rians from the North, myriads of white
robed Saracens from the South, mounted
Turkomans from the far East, and steel
clad Crusaders from the West, march, in
turn, across its pages, The sene con
stantly changes from the camp to the
court, from the court to the camp; but, of
the internal, social, or domestic life of the
people, the reader learns little. The im
mensity of the subject causes sudden
transitions from one quarter of the Empire
to another, while the reader is frequently
carried back three or four centuries to
trace the march of some new horde of
barbarians, the birth of some newly risen
nation, or the rise and doctrines of some
new sects, which, from the very com
mencement, afflicted Christianity. Events,
separated by centuries, are brought al
most together in contiguous chapters;
while events immediately following, and
sometimes consequent upon others, are
separated from them by several chapters,
so that the connexion of events on the
mind of the reader is continually distract
ed. and a confused impression left upon
his memory.
Mr. Gibbon was, evidently, a vain man,
in no way embarrassed by any modest
diffidence in his own power In some of
his notes, he congratulates himself upon
the felicity of his delineations of charac
ter. lie decides the question how History
should be written, and selects from his
authorities those on whom he chooses to
rely, while he rejects others whose views
do not suit him, with the peremptory air of
one speaking with authority. > No one can
read his work without concluding that lie
was no Christian, though he seems to
claim to be one Indeed, from his con
stant sneers at Christianity, and his un
disguised preference for ancient philoso-
his idea of the Deity seems to resem
ble the Ammu* JHandi of Mr. Jushua
Bletsou, Member for Littlecreed, in Sir
Walter Scott’s novel, Woodstock. 11 is
religion, if it could be so called, was one
that imposed no restraint or obligation,
and required no prayer, no fasting, no
penance, no sacrifice, no Driest, no
Temple. His morality appears to have
been based upon no principle, with
scarcely an outward show of respect t<r
the conventional decencies of society. In
the tiftv-third chapter, in discussing the
merits of the works ol' the Emperor Con
stantine Porphyrogenitus, I find the fol
lowing sentence :
“The Basilica will sink to a broken
copy, a partial and mutilated version, in
the Greek language, of the laws of Jus
tinian ; but the sense ol the old civilians
is often superseded by the influence c ■
bigotry; and the absolute prohibition of
divorce, concubinage, and interest for
money, unslaves the freedom of trade, and
the happiness of private life.”
He is fond of the use of the word
philosophy, and iutimates, very clearly,
that he is a philosopher. It is his reli
gion, and seems to imply a rejection of
everything that appears to violate the
operation of natural law, and every belief
at. which he cannot arrive by the process
of reason. With him, Religion, in any
shape or form, is superstition—Faith, aa
absurdity. He sneers at the doctrine of
the Trinity, and looks upon the Incarna
tion as theological nonsense. Though he
exposes the pretended miracles, hypoc
risy and vices of Mohammed, he affects
to look upon his creed as superior to
Christianity in the sublime simplicity of
its announcement, “There is but one
God.” Throughout the work, wherever
the questiou of Religion arises, lie exhibits
a bitter hostility to Christianity, and on
ail questions between Christians and
Pagans, his partiality for the latter is
evident. Even in describing their per
secutions of the former, he almost be
comes their apologist. He represents
the Christians as inflated with the pride
of fanaticism, looking down with contempt
upon their Pagan fellow-citizens, who
were better educated and more refined
than they, and exhibiting, in their man
ner, an arrogance that excited the hatred
of the people around them. That flair
vanity, pride, and love of notoriety, led
them to court martyrdom, aud that the
majority might be considered guilty ot
voluntary suicide, as they could have
saved their lives by merely throwing a
few grams of wheat before the statue of
Ceres, or pouring out a few drops of wine
before that of Jupiter.
In the struggles of the Church with the
various sectaries, which appeared aud
disappeared one after another, like the
dissolving views of a diorama, lie finds an
opportunity for exhibiting his contempt
for the folly, credulity, fanaticism, and
cruelty of all, but he relieves his special
hatred for the Church. He persistently
reiterates the charge of Idolatry against
her—her hierarchy are haughty, ambi
tious, overbearing, and licentious; her
Priests are pedlars in rites and jugglers
in pious frauds; her monks fanatical
brutes. In the choice of evidence in re
lation to matters as between Christianity
and Paganism, or between the Church
and the Sectaries, he sets down Catholic
writers as unreliable, unless where they
are sustained by Pagan authority. In
reference to some authorities, he says, in
one of bis notes ;
“The invectives of the two Saints might
not deserve much credit, unless they were
confirmed by the testimony of the cool
and irnpaitin 1 infidel.”
In reference to Spondanus. a celebrated
writer in the beginning ot the 1 1 th cen
tury, he speaks as follows:
“In the Hungarian Crusade, Spondanus
has been my leading guide. He has dili
gently read and carefully compared the
Greek and Turkish materials, the histo
rians of Hungary, Poland, and the \V est.
His narrative is perspicuous; and. where
he can be free from a religious bias, the
judgment o<‘ Spondanus is not con
temptible.”
After availing himself ol Ihe labor,
learning, and research of that writer,
whose merit he seems to acknowdedge,
why does he speak so slightingly towards
the close ? Henry Spondanus was a
native of Navarre, reared a Protestant,
and educated at the Reformed College tit
Oithes. He held the office of Master of
Requests at the Court of Beurne, under
Henry of Navarre, afterwards Henry IV
of France. In 1595, in his 28th year,
he resigned his office, united himself to
the Catholic Church, as his brother, also
a man of high literary reputation, had
previously done; went to Rome, entered
into orders, and, afterwards, became
Bishop of Premiers, iu France, in the
reign of Louis XIII. In reference to the
same writer, he says, in another note :
“The sense of the latter is
drowned in prejudice and passion, as soon
as Rome and Religion are concerned.”
Even when compelled, as it were, to
admit some fact creditable to the Church,
or its hierarchy, he invariably accompa
nies it with some assertion that detracts
from the merit of the admission, and
shows the spirit by which he is actuated.
In speaking of the efforts of Pope Nicho
las V, in the 15th Century, to promote
learning by collecting old manuscripts ot
the writers of antiquity, and having them
transcribed and deposited in the Library
of the Vatican, he says :
“And such was the industry of Nicho
las, that, in a reign of eight years, he
formed a Library of five thousand vol
umes. To his munificence, the Latin
world was indebted for the versions of
Xenoplion, Diodorus, Polybius, Thucy
dides. Heroditus, and Appinn; of Strabo’s
Geography; of the Iliad: of the most
valuable "works of Plato, and Aristotle ;
ol Ptolemy aud Theophrastus; and of the
Fa the is ot the Greek Church.
In the above, instead of “he formed a
Library of five thousand volumes, it
should have been written, he added five
thousand volumes' to the Library; for that
was iu existence long before his time: but
this is one of the writer’s ingenuous ways
of insinuating a lie, by producing the im
pression that there was no Library in the
Vatican until that time. The above in
formation—which, as far as it is correct,
properly finds its place in History—lie
gives on the authority of writers, to whom
he refers in the notes. The following,
however, with which lie prefixes the
above, and for which he gives no authori
ty whatever, is not History; ‘-imply, be
cause it is not true:
“The Vatican, the old repository for
bulls and legends, for super.>tition and
forgery, was daily replenished with more
precious furniture.”
This .-weeping calumny, which he
writes on his own authority, shows how
utterly unfit he was to write such a
I listory.
In speaking of Ecclesiastical Govern
ment, especially in reference to the Popes,
he says ;
“In the trammels of servile faith, he
(the Pope) has learned to believe, because
it is absurd; to revere all that is con
temptible, and to despise whatever j
might deserve the esteem of a rational J
being: to punish error as a crime; to re- J
ward mortification aud celibacy as the j
fiist of virtues: to place the Saints of tlie ;
Calendars above the Heroes ot Rome and !
the Sages of Athens; and to consider the j
missal or the crucifix as more useful j
instruments than the plough or the j
loom ”
Perhaps, the Popes, not being philoso- •
pliers, may not have agreed with 31 r. :
Gibbon in his notions*of what is absurd,
contemptible, or deserving of esteem.
Perhaps, they may have known as well as
he, that those heroes of Rome and Sages
of Athens, where they were rot Idolaters, |
were, generally, Atheists; and that their
habits of life would be deemed scaudalous
in any Christian country. Perhaps, the
preference, which he deemed “unworthy,”
they thought becoming decent men and
good Christians; and, perhaps, they
could not see any grounds for comparison
between a missal, or a crucifix, and a
plough, or a loom. If the Popes have
been old and feeble in mind and body,
“and without children to inherit,” as he
shrewdly observes; “drawn from the
Church, and even the Convent; from the
mode of education and life the most ad
verse to reason, humanity, and freedom,”
why did lie not explain how the Papacy,
under such Rulers, with an Army scarcely
strong enough to preserve the peace, and
without a Navy, surrounded by grasping
and unscrupulous neighbors, should have
lasted for more than a thousand years '
Thev have been martyred, exiled, and
murdered ; their territory devastated, and
their chief city taken by Emperors, Kings,
Princes, Barons, and so-called Republi
cans; but most of the latter have lived
wretched lives, and died violent deaths;
while the former returned, the* territories
were restored, and the Papacy survived.
He affects to believe in the existence of
a God; but, indenyinga Revelation and
a Providence, he really denies a living
God. For man to believe that a few,
poor, illiterate fishermen of Galilee, the
most despised people of their time, without
power, influence, birth, education, or
wealth, should have succeeded iu organ
izing au institution, that, without phy
sical three, by moral suasion alone, not by
shedding the blood of its enemies, but by
piety, offering up its own, should have
overthrown the oldest system of Religion
then known, lcndered respectable by the
progress of its followers in Literature and
Philosophy, in Science, and the Arts;
should have taken captive the mightiest
Empire that History has ever recorded;
should have converted Nation.-, civilized
barbarians, introduced the purity of
Christian morality iu the place of Heathen
licentiousness, and have planted, watered,
and cultivated the seeds that grew up
into the elements of modern civilization,
should not only have maintained its
vitality, but overcoming the rapacity of
power and the violence of revolution, by
its passive resistance, and the licentious
ness of the world; by its moral teaching,
should have outlivated Empires, and
Dynasties, aud Nations, aud exhibited
throughout, amid the throes of Empire
and the storms of time, a steady, healthy,
progressive growth ; while, to-day, more
widely extended than ever, as fresh and
more vigorous than ever, she goes about
doing good, healing the sick aud burying*
the dead, feeding and comforting the
poor, aud educating the ignorant, sympa
thizing with the weak and the humble,
and rebuking the proud; and. that all this
should have been done by mere human
means, requires a stretch of credulity far
less consistent with reason and common
sense than to believe in the existence of
a God and a superintending Providence.
The so-called Philosophy of the
1 eighteenth century wa» the offspring of
pride, vanity, and self-conceit. It ( yj'y
ited a morbid appetite for notoriety {■
reviving the old worn-out skepticism of
Heathen Philosophy, and presenting it!
dead speculations to the world cs ion,-
tiling new. It sought to unsettle and de
stroy all old opinions, aud all f a j t p p
Religion, but had nothing to substitute io
their place. By vague and empty deola"
rnation in favor of the freedom of th.
human mind, and the rights and libertie
of the people, it sought to remove every
restraint upon human will and huma
passion. But human reason, which a;
first, seemed disposed to accept tie* de ac j
philosophy of Heathenism for a hew
Faith, revolted at the atrocitie- which
followed its first success. The wi.-e anc j
the good saw the horrible consequence.*-
to which it led, and raised thmr voices
against it, though the severest commenta
ries that could have been written on th,
lives and characters of its writers, may b
fouud in the results to which their teachim
led.
Mr. Gibbon’s hostility to Christianity
is apparent throughout his whole work
It leads him to speak,even of Idolatry,;;
terms almost of eulogy. He seeing h,
look with indulgence- on the deification of
the Sages and Heroes who had lived or
died for the benefit of their Country;
who, he says, it was universally confessed,
deserved, if not the adoration, at least, the
veneration ot ali mankind. He seems
desirous of throwing a halo of poetry
around it, when lie speaks of the roman
tic beauty of a Religion which gave each
stream and valley, each grove and moun
tain, its special divinity; and adds, that
“The elegant Mythology of Homer gave
a beautiful and almost regular form to
the Polytheism of the z\ncient World.”
Where a learned man, who claimed to be
a Sage aud a Philosopher, could find
beauty, poetry, or romance in a Religion
whose chief deities, according to the ad
mission of their own worshippers, wen
addicted to the lowest and most vulgar
vices, I cannot conceive. Jupiter anti
Apollo were notorious for their indiscrinii
nate amours. Mercury was a thief and
Bacchus was a drunkard; while their as
sociate goddesses were “no better than
they should be.” Had these so-called
deities been men, and lived in our time,
they would have beeu considered fi: sub
jects for the gallows, the penitentiary,
and the guard-house. So much for the
beauty, poetry, and romance of Heathen
Mythology. But, not content with fancy
painting the rotten carcass of Ancient
Idolatry, he undertakes, even in the very
face of the records before him, from which
his own work was compiled, to give it
credit for religious toleration. lie says
“Such was the mild spirit of Anti juity,
that the Nations were less attentive to th
difference than to the resemblance o.
their religious worship.” Yet that spirit
of Antiquity which he considered m
“mild,” inaugurated ten persecution,
against the Christians during the lir.o
three centuries.
In like manner, he seems to Bui
Mohammedanism, iu some resects,
superior to Christianity. He says :
“The Christians of the seventh centur.
had iuvariablv relapsed into a sembhuci
of Paganism; their public and private
vows were addressed to the relics and
images that disgraced the Temples oft:
East; the Throne of the Almighty wa
darkened by a cloud of Martyrs, and
Saints, arid Angels, the objects of popula
veneration.” - (
Thus, it appears, that, in Christianity
he can see no beauty, no poetry, no
romance in its Angels; no wisdom in if'
Spirits; no heroism in its Martyrs. IK
continues :
“The mystery of the Trinity and th*'
Incarnation appear to contradict th*
principles of the Divine unity. In their
obvious sense, they introduce three eqn:.-
Deities, and transform the man Jesus in:
the substance of the Son of God. ’
“The creed of Mohammed is free from
suspicion or ambiguity, and the Koran is
a glorious testimony to the unity of God.
The Prophet of Mecca rejected the wui
ship of idol> and men, of stars and p lance
on the rational principle, that, whateve:
risc> must set; that whatever is born uvl-i
die; that whatever is corruptible mi -
decay or perish.”
“These sublime truths, thus announced
in the language of the prophet, arc firuu.
held by the disciples, and defended vatu
metaphysical precision, by th** mtu
preters of the Koran. A philosopin
Theist might subscribe the popuhfr < rt
of the Mohammedans; a Creed too -’.ioK
perhaps, for our present faculties.
“During the month of Rarnad. n,
Mohammedan Lent, from the rising
the setting of the sun, the Mus>uhnui
abstains horn eating and drinking, worn -
and baths, and perfumes, from all non
ishment that can restore his stren.:
from all pleasure that can gratify
senses.”
This twelve hours Fast, lie call
ful restraints,” and says, “the
by whom they arc enacted, canno* >u.