It is difficult to imagine, and impossible to portray, the abominable pollutions of the times. “Society,” says Gibbon, “was a rotting, aimless chaos of sensuality.” It was a boiling Acheron of seething passions, unhallowed lusts, and tiger thirst for blood, such as never provoked the wrath of heaven since God drowned the
world with water, or destroyed the Cities of the Plain by fire. Only those who have visited the secret museum of Naples, or that house which no woman may enter at Pompeii, and whose paintings no pen may describe; or who are familiar with the scathing denunciations of popular vices by the Roman satirists and moralists and by the Christian Fathers, can conceive the appalling depravity of the age and nation. St. Paul, in his epistle to the church among this very people, hints at some features of their exceeding wickedness. It was a shame even to speak of the things which were done by them, but which gifted poets employed their wit to celebrate. A brutalized monster was deified as God, received divine homage,[760] and beheld all the world at his feet and the nations tremble at his nod, while the multitude wallowed in a sty of sensuality.[761]
Christianity was to be the new Hercules to cleanse this worse than Augean pollution. The pure morals and holy lives of the believers were a perpetual testimony against abounding iniquity, and a living proof of the regenerating power and transforming grace of God. For they themselves, as one of their apologists asserts, “had been reclaimed from ten thousand vices.”[762] And the Apostle, describing some of the vilest characters, exclaims, “Such were some of you, but ye are washed, ye are sanctified.” They recoiled with the utmost abhorrence from the pollutions of the age, and became
indeed “the salt of the earth,” the sole moral antiseptic to prevent the total disintegration of society.
The Christians were daily exposed to contact with idolatry. The whole public and private life of the heathen was pervaded with the spirit of polytheism. Idolatrous usages were interwoven with almost every act. The courts of justice, the marts of trade, the highways and gardens, the fountains and rivers, the domestic hearth, and the very doors and hinges, were under the protection of their respective deities. The implements of labour, the household utensils, the military ensigns, the achievements of art, the adornments of beauty, were all consecrated to idol worship. The daily meals and rites of hospitality, the social banquets and public amusements, the common language and salutations of friendship, had all a religious significance.
The Christians were therefore especially exhorted to “keep themselves from idols.” They believed that their images were the abodes of dæmons who delighted in the reek of blood and the fetid odour of sacrificial flesh.[763] Against image-makers the severest ecclesiastical censures were denounced. They were the foster fathers of devils,[764] to whom they offered not the sacrifice of a beast, but immolated their mind, poured the libation of their sweat, kindled the torch of their thought, and slew the richer and more precious victim of their salvation.[765] The believers might not wreath their gates, nor illuminate their houses, nor attend the public festivals, nor witness a sacrifice, nor accept a heathen salutation, nor sell incense, nor eat meat polluted
with idolatrous lustration.[766] Thus amid pagan usages and unspeakable moral degradation the Christians lived: a holy nation, a peculiar people. “We alone are without crime,” says Tertullian; “no Christian suffers but for his religion.” “Your prisons are full,” says Minutius Felix, “but they contain not one Christian.” And these holy lives were an argument which even the heathen could not gainsay. The ethics of paganism were the speculations of the cultivated few who aspired to the character of philosophers. The ethics of Christianity were a system of practical duty affecting the daily life of the most lowly and unlettered. “Philosophy,” says Lecky, “may dignify, but is impotent to regenerate man; it may cultivate virtue, but cannot restrain vice.”[767] But Christianity introduced a new sense of sin and of holiness, of everlasting reward, and of endless condemnation. It planted a sublime, impassioned love of Christ in the heart, inflaming all its affections. It transformed the character from icy stoicism or epicurean selfishness to a boundless and uncalculating self-abnegation and devotion.[768]
This divine principle developed a new instinct of philanthropy in the soul. A feeling of common brotherhood knit the hearts of the believers together. To love a slave, to love an enemy! was accounted the impossible among the heathen; yet this incredible virtue they beheld every day among the Christians. “This surprised them beyond measure,” says Tertullian, “that
one man should die for another.”[769] Hence, in the Christian inscriptions no word of bitterness even toward their persecutors is to be found. Sweet peace, the peace of God that passeth all understanding, breathes on every side.
One of the most striking results of the new spirit of philanthropy which Christianity introduced is seen in the copious charity of the primitive church. Amid the ruins of ancient palaces and temples, theatres and baths, there are none of any house of mercy. Charity among the pagans was, at best, a fitful and capricious fancy. Among the Christians it was a vast and vigorous organization, and was cultivated with noble enthusiasm. And the great and wicked city of Rome, with its fierce oppressions and inhuman wrongs, afforded amplest opportunity for the Christ-like ministrations of love and pity. There were Christian slaves to succour, exposed to unutterable indignities and cruel punishment, even unto crucifixion for conscience’ sake. There were often martyrs’ pangs to assuage, the aching wounds inflicted by the rack or by the nameless tortures of the heathen to bind up, and their bruised and broken hearts to cheer with heavenly consolation. There were outcast babes to pluck from death. There were a thousand forms of suffering and sorrow to relieve, and the ever-present thought of Him who came, not to be ministered unto but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many, was an inspiration to heroic sacrifice and self-denial. And doubtless the religion of love won its way to many a stony pagan heart by the winsome spell of the saintly charities and heavenly benedictions of the persecuted Christians. This sublime principle has since covered the earth with its institutions of mercy, and with a passionate