[Original Size]
I was willing to be a monster for the glory of God!
The Christian sect to which I belonged was one of the oldest in Christendom. Our ancestors were called the Puritans of the fourth and fifth centuries. We believe that no one can be saved outside of our communion. When a Christian of another church joins us, we re-baptize him, for we do not believe in the validity of other baptisms. We are so particular that we deny our cemeteries to any other Christians than our own members. If we find that we have, by mistake, buried a member of another church in our cemetery, we dig up his bones, that he may not pollute the soil. When one of the churches of another denomination falls into our hands, we first fumigate the building, and with a sharp knife we scrape the wood off the altars upon which other Christian priests have offered prayers. We will, under no consideration, allow a brother Christian from another church to commune with us; if by stealth anyone does, we spare not his life. But we are persecuted just as severely as we persecute, ourselves. *
* This sect (Donatist) and others, lasted for a long time,
and made Asia and Africa a hornet's nest,—a blood-stained
arena, of feud and riot and massacre, until Mohammedanism
put an end, in these parts of the world, not only to these
sects, but to Christianity itself.
As the sun was setting, fatigued with the holy Sabbath's religious duties, I started to go home. On my way back, I saw even wilder, bloodier scenes, between rival ecclesiastical factions, streets even redder with blood, if possible, yea, certain sections of the city seemed as if a storm of hail, or tongues of flame had swept over them. Churches were on fire, cowled monks attacking bishops' residences, rival prelates holding uproarious debates, which almost always terminated in bloodshed, and, to cap the day of many vicissitudes, I saw a bear on exhibition which had been given its freedom by the ruler, as a reward for his faithful services in devouring heretics. The Christian ruler kept two fierce bears by his own chamber, to which those who did not hold the orthodox faith were thrown in his presence while he listened with delight to their groans.
When I reached home, I was panting for breath. I had lived through another Sabbath day. *
* If the reader will take the pains to read Dean Milman's
History of Christianity, and his History of Latin
Christianity; also Gibbon's Downfall of the Roman Empire,
and Mosheim's History of Christianity, he will see that we
have exaggerated nothing. The Athanasian and the Arian, the
Donatist and Sabellian, the Nestorian and Alexandrian
factions converted the early centuries into a long reign of
terror.
I feel like covering my face for telling you so grewsome a tale. But if this were the fourth or the fifth century, instead of the twentieth, and this were Constantinople, or Alexandria, or Antioch, instead of Chicago, I would have spent just such a Sunday as I have described to you. In giving you this concentrated view of human society in the great capitals of Christendom in the year 400, I have restrained, rather than spurred, my imagination. Remember, also, that I have confined my remarks to a specific and short period in history, and have excluded from my generalization all reference to the centuries of religious wars which tore Europe limb from limb,—the wholesale exterminations, the crusades, which represented one of the maddest spells of misguided and costly zeal which ever struck our earth, the persecution of the Huguenots, the extermination of the Albigenses and of the Waldenses,—the massacre of St. Bartholomew, the Inquisition with its red hand upon the intellect of Europe, the Anabaptist outrages in Germany, the Smithfield fires in England, the religious outrages in Scotland, the Puritan excesses in America,—the reign of witchcraft and superstition throughout the twenty centuries—I have not touched my picture with any colors borrowed from these terrible chapters in the history of our unfortunate earth. I have also left out all reference to Papal Rome, with its dungeons, its stakes, its massacres and its burnings. I have said nothing of Galileo, Vanini, Campanella or Bruno. I have passed over all this in silence. You can imagine, now, how much more repellant and appalling this representation of the Roman world under Christianity would have been had I stretched my canvas to include also these later centuries.