10. Immediately after his death his followers commenced to publish and enforce his teachings with great success, and on the outbreak of persecution, without making opposition, they scattered in all directions, proclaiming them with undiminished zeal. Very soon their converts numbered tens of thousands, in all parts of the Roman Empire. Persecution increased their fervor and their numbers, without leading them to revolt or resistance, until, in the course of time, an emperor found it politic to profess Christianity. This high patronage, and the active part the emperors took in the affairs of the church from that time, had the effect to corrupt its simplicity of manners, as the adhesion of Greek philosophers, who imported into its doctrines their crude theories, adulterated its teachings, and much that was quite foreign to its essential character continued associated with its promulgation and institutions for fifteen hundred years, and, indeed, remnants of the same foreign element yet linger in it.
Notwithstanding the embarrassing load which the fantastic distortion of its original simplicity and directness laid upon it, it continued to exert great influence, and seems destined to return, in time, to its original form and purity, and to employ its primitive power to crown the work of civilization.
11. Such is the historical report of the man who introduced into the process of human progress an element of unexampled power. An impartial estimate of the influence of Jesus Christ on history must allow that he is the most important character that has ever appeared among men. The unhappy association of his ideas with the vagaries of an imperfect philosophy and the unwholesome ambitions of power, greatly curtailed their usefulness; but the simple majesty of his character and his discourses could not always be obscured, and the luster of both has never shone more clearly nor exerted more influence than they do in this age.
The course of the history of Christianity will be seen to be intimately connected with every stage of advancement from the time the Roman Empire began to wear out; it was the nucleus which survived its fall, around which the surging waves of invasion raged in vain, and which immediately began the work of reconstruction.
SECTION XII.
THE CHRISTIAN ERA.
4—By some chronological confusion the new era has been made to begin four years before the appearance of the founder of Christianity. When Augustus had settled the whole empire he ordered the temple of Janus to be closed and a census taken of all its inhabitants, which numbered one hundred and twenty millions. On this occasion Jesus Christ was born.
10—A Roman army under Varus was defeated and cut to pieces in Germany. It was the severest defeat the Romans had suffered since the overthrow and death of Crassus, by the Parthians, sixty-three years before.
14—The Emperor Augustus died and was succeeded by his step-son, Tiberius.
29—Jesus Christ was crucified by Pontius Pilate, Roman governor of Judea, at the solicitation, and on the accusation, of the leading Jews.
37—Tiberius died and was succeeded by Caligula. The commencement of the reign of Tiberius was wise and moderate, but he soon became violent and cruel. Caligula was a still greater monster of wickedness.