‘Is there any one in Rome who has seen him?’
‘He was put to death,’ said Pomponia, bowing her head, ‘more than twenty years ago, when Tiberius was Emperor. But His disciples, who lived with Him, whom He called Apostles or messengers, were many of them young men, and they are living still.’
‘Had Paulus of Tarsus ever seen him?’
‘In heavenly vision, yes; but not when He was teaching in Palestine. But there was one disciple whom He loved very dearly, and who is now living in Jerusalem, though Agrippa I. beheaded his elder brother. Perhaps he may some day come to Rome.’
‘But you, Pomponia, must have heard much about Christus. Tell me, then, something about him. How could a Judæan peasant be, as you say Jesus was, divine?’
‘Self-sacrifice for the sake of others is always divine,’ said Pomponia. ‘Even in Greek mythology the gods assume the likeness of men in order to help and deliver them. Does not the poet tell us how Apollo once kept, as a slave, the oxen of Admetus? how Hercules was the servant of Eurystheus? how Jupiter came to visit Baucis and Philemon? Is it so strange that the God of all should reveal Himself to man as man? Doubtless you have read with your tutor the grandest play of Æschylus—the “Prometheus Bound.” Does not the poet there sing that Prometheus, who is the type of humanity, can never be delivered until some god descends for him into the black depths of Tartarus?And does not Plato say that man will never know God until He has revealed Himself in the guise of suffering man; and that “when all is on the verge of destruction, God sees the distress of the universe, and, placing himself at the rudder, restores it to order”?[25] And does not Seneca teach that man cannot save himself?[26] Seneca even says, “Do you wonder that men go to the gods? God comes to men—yea, even into men.” No one laughs at such thoughts in the most popular of our philosophers; why should they laugh at Christians for believing them?’
‘But what made his disciples believe that Christus was a Son of God?’ he asked.
Sitting quietly there, she told him, that day, of the Jews as the people who had kept alive for centuries the knowledge of the one true God; of their age-long hopes of a Deliverer; of their prophecies; and of the coming of the Baptist. On his next visit she told him of Jesus, and read to him parts of one of the old sketches of His ministry which were current, in the form of notes and fragments, among Christians who had heard the preaching of Peter or other Apostles. Lastly, she told him some of His miracles, and the story of His death and resurrection. ‘He spake,’ she said, ‘as never man spake. He did what man never did. Above all, He rose from the dead the third day. Even the centurion who watched the crucifixion returned to Jerusalem and said, “Truly this was a Son of God!”’
Britannicus felt almost stunned by the rush of new emotions. His mind, like that of most boys of his age at Rome, was almost a blank as regards any belief in the old mythology. In Stoicism he had found some half-truths which attracted his Roman nature; but its doctrines were stern, and proud, and harshly repressive of feelings which he felt to be natural and not ignoble. Here, at last, in Christianity, he heard truths which, while they elevated the character of man even to heaven—while they kindled his aspirations and fortified his endurance—were suited also to soothe, to calm, to console. He had heard them to the best advantage. They had been told him, not by lips of untaught slaves and humble workmen, but by the noblest of Roman matrons. She spoke in Latin worthy of the best days of Cicero, and adorned all she said not only by the sweetness of her voice and the grace of her language, but also by her broad sympathies and her cultivated intelligence. Most of all, her words came weighty with the consistency of a life which, in comparison with that of the women around her, shone like a star in the darkness. It was this beauty of holiness which won him first and most. He saw it in Pudens, whom he suspected of stronger Christian leanings than he had acknowledged. He saw it conspicuously in Claudia,
‘A flower of meekness on a stem of grace,’