Dispel a Saviour’s love! Correction’s rod
Hath won the world,—for Heaven and Thee, O God!
It is one of the providences of Jehovah, that the very wretched forget their wrath, and the broken in spirit their violence. And it may be well for those who examine moral conduct by the evidences of the providences of God, to notice how wrath conduces to wretchedness, and violence to a breaking down of the spirit.
Olybius was by no means prepared to adopt the humiliating doctrines of the new faith; but he perceived it to be well adapted to the condition of those in the extremely low walks of life. By it the slave was taught to become “the freeman of the Lord,” and the wretched, destitute, and miserable, to become “heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ.” These doctrines, and the whole system, being founded upon the pillars of Humility, Faith, Hope, and Charity, were an arrangement to make the most humble as happy as the most exalted; as to happiness and hopes of heaven, it made all men equal; nor is it surprising that the low classes more readily become its converts.
Olybius may have seen some beautiful features in this system; but his philosophy forbid his faith. He calmly decided that it was a superstition too low to combat—worthy only of contempt. But he perceived that the blood of a hundred made a thousand Christians, and was convinced the only remedy was to improve and elevate the mind,—to imbue it with deep religious feeling and principle, a reverence and veneration for the gods.
He deeply felt the wound inflicted by the presence of Vopiscus, and would gladly have proved to the emperor that change of government, either as to ruler or its general system, could not affect the condition of this new doctrine. But he had no knowledge of the Christian’s God, nor of his attributes as a distinct Being; and hence, although he may be regarded as a most deadly enemy, yet, since the providences of Jehovah, through the mild light of the gospel, begin to develop themselves to the human understanding, we may deem his report to the emperor, on the Christian superstition, to be ONE OF ITS MOST UNDYING PANEGYRICS; as an extract from which, we may well imagine, he wrote thus:—
Olybius to the Emperor Probus.
* * * “Great reforms on moral subjects do not occur, except under the influence of religious principle. Political revolutions and changes of policy and administration do indeed occur from other causes, and secure the ends which are desired. But, on subjects pertaining to right and wrong; on those questions where the rights of an inferior and down-trodden class are concerned, we can look for little advance, except from the operation of religious principle.
“Unless the inferior classes have power to assert their rights by arms, those rights will be conceded only by the operations of conscience and the principles of religion. There is no great wrong in any community which we can hope to rectify by new considerations of policy, or by a mere revolution. The relations of Christianity are not reached by political revolutions, or by changes of policy or administration.
“Political revolutions occur in a higher region, and the condition of the Christian is no more affected by a mere change of government, than that of the vapours of a low, marshy vale is affected by the tempest and storm in the higher regions of the air. The storm sweeps along the Apennines, the lightnings play, and the thunders utter their voice, but the malaria of the Campagna is unaffected, and the pestilence breathes desolation there still. So it is with Christianity. Political revolutions occur in higher places, but the malaria of Christianity remains settled down on the low plains of life, and not even the surface of the pestilential vapour is agitated by all the storms and tempests of political changes; it remains the same deadly, pervading pestilence still. Under all the forms of despotism; in the government of aristocracy, or an oligarchy; under the administration of a pure democracy, or the forms of a republican government; and in all the changes from one to the other, Christianity remains still the same. Whether the prince is hurled from the throne, or rides into power on the tempest of revolution, the down-trodden Christian is the same still:—and it makes no difference to him whether the prince wears a crown, or appears in a plain, republican garb,—'whether Cæsar is on the throne, or slain in the senate-house.'”