The reforms of justice and mercy which Alexander Severus was introducing into the empire were hateful to the soldiers. They wished to give free range to their appetites and passions, and to riot in plunder. A mutiny was excited in the camp against him. In a paroxysm of rage, the Pretorian Guard, sixteen thousand strong, marched into the city, breathing threatenings and slaughter. For three days and three nights, a terrible battle raged in the streets of Rome. There was a wasting conflagration, and multitudes were slain. The city was menaced with total destruction. And all this because a virtuous emperor wished to protect the innocent, and to restrain the wicked from crime!
A kind Providence gave Alexander the victory. The insurgents were driven back to their camp. Still they were too powerful to be punished. The whole reign of Severus was harassed and imbittered by the outrages of this licentious soldiery.
We have now come down in our narrative to the middle of the third century. The Romans were a very powerful, and in many respects a highly-cultivated people. Their literature has excited the admiration of the world. It is still studied in the highest seats of learning. Their paganism was the bestwhich the world has ever known. We have presented in impartial contrast the practical workings of the religion of Rome and the religion of Jesus Christ. Every thoughtful reader must be impressed with the wonderful, the divine superiority of Christianity. It must be manifest to every reflective mind, that, in the religion of Jesus Christ, we find the only hope for our lost world. That religion is not a religion of dead doctrines and pompous ceremonies, but one of a living faith and a holy life.
“Do right,” says Christianity,—“right to God by loving him and worshipping him as your heavenly Father; right to yourself by cultivating in your own heart every thing that is pure, lovely, and of good report; right to your fellow-man, regarding him as your brother, and doing every thing in your power to elevate him, purify him, and prepare him for heaven. Your past sins may all be forgiven. Christ has died upon the cross, and made atonement for them. Penitence for sin, trust in an atoning Saviour, and the earnest, prayerful return to a holy life, will open to you the gates of heaven.” This is Christianity. It needs not the enforcement of labored argument: it is its own best witness.“He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself.”[173]
It not unfrequently happens that a young man gets the impression that there is something a little distinguished in being an unbeliever. He assumes the air of a sceptic, and takes the ground that Christianity is the religion of weak minds; that the reason why he does not believe is, that he has more intelligence and knowledge than those people who believe.
Should there chance to be such a one who reads these pages, I would ask him, How do you account for the fact that the most intelligent men in the world have been Christians? Were Bacon and Boyle, Sir Matthew Hale and Herschel, men whose intellectual renown has filled centuries, weak-minded men?—and yet they were Christians. Was Napoleon Bonaparte a man of feeble intellect?—yet he said at St. Helena,—
“The loftiest intellects since the advent of Christianityhave had faith, a practical faith, in the mysteries and the doctrines of the gospel; not only Bossuet and Fénelon, who were preachers, but Descartes and Newton, Leibnitz and Pascal, Corneille and Racine, Charlemagne and Louis XIV.” Were Washington and Jackson, Clay and Lincoln, ignorant and weak men?—they were Christians. Are the presidents in nearly all the colleges and universities of Christendom incapable of comprehending the force of argument?—they are Christians.
Was Daniel Webster a man of feeble powers of comprehension, incapable of appreciating the force of an argument?—he bears the following testimony to his faith in Christianity:—
“Philosophical argument, especially that drawn from the vastness of the universe, compared with the apparent insignificance of this globe, has sometimes shaken my reason for the faith that is in me; but my heart has always assured and re-assured me that the gospel of Jesus Christ must be a divine reality. This belief enters into the very depths of my conscience. The whole history of man proves it.”
No: it is too late for any one to take the ground that Christianity is the religion of ignorant men and weak women. God has given evidence sufficient to convince every candid mind. This evidence is so abundant, that God declares it a great sin not to believe. There is no crime more severely denounced in the Bible than that of unbelief. Perhaps you say, “I cannot believe without evidence;” but God has given evidence sufficient to convert every heart which is not so wicked that it will not believe.