At length, on the triumph of the British-born Emperor, Constantine, over his rivals for the throne of the world, like the trump of Jubilee, the edict of the toleration of Christianity, pealed through the land. It penetrated the gloomy dungeon, the darksome mine, the Catacombs' dim labyrinth, and from their sombre depths, vast processions of "noble wrestlers for religion," thronged to the long-forsaken churches, with grateful songs of praise to God.
Christianity, after long repression, became at length triumphant. It emerged from the concealment of the Catacombs to the sunshine of imperial favour. Constantine, himself, proclaimed to eager thousands the New Evangel—the most august lay preacher the Church has ever known. The legend of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus strikingly illustrates the wondrous transformation of society. These Christian brothers, taking shelter in a cave during the Decian persecution, awoke, according to the legend, after a slumber of over a century, to find Christianity everywhere dominant, and a Christian Emperor on the throne of the Cæsars.[59] The doctrines of Christ, like the rays of the sun, quickly irradiated the world. With choirs and hymns, in cities and villages, in the highways and markets, the praises of the Almighty were sung. The enemies of God were as though they had not been.[60] The Lord brought up the vine of Christianity from a far country, and cast out the heathen, and planted and watered it, till it twined round the sceptre of the Cæsars, wreathed the columns of the Capitol, and filled the whole land. The heathen fanes were deserted, the gods discrowned, and the pagan flamen no longer offered sacrifice to the Capitoline Jove, Rome, which had dragged so many conquered deities in triumph at its chariot wheels, at length yielded to a mightier than all the gods of Olympus. The old faiths faded from the firmament of human thought as the stars of midnight at the dawn of day. The banished deities forsook their ancient seats. They walked no longer in the vale of Tempe nor in the grove of Daphne. The naiads bathed not in Scamander's stream nor Simois, nor the nereids in the waters of the bright Ægean Sea. The nymphs and dryads ceased to haunt the sylvan solitudes. The oriads walked no more in light on Ida's lofty top.
O ye vain false gods of Hellas!
Ye are vanished evermore!
Long before the recognition of Christianity as the religion of the empire, its influence had been felt permeating the entire community. Amid the disintegration of society it was the sole conservative element—the salt which preserved it from corruption. In the midst of anarchy and confusion a community was being organized on a principle previously unknown in the heathen world, ruling not by terror but by love; by moral power, not by physical force; inspired by lofty faith amid a world of unbelief, and cultivating moral purity amid the reeking abominations of a sensual age.
We should do scant justice to the blameless character, simple dignity, and moral purity of the primitive Christians, if we forgot the thoroughly effete and corrupt society by which they were surrounded. It would seem almost impossible for the Christian graces to grow in such a foetid atmosphere. Like the snow-white lily springing in virgin purity from the muddy ooze, they are more lovely by contrast with the surrounding pollutions. Like flowers that deck a sepulchre, breathing their fragrance amid scenes of corruption and death, are these holy characters, fragrant with the breath of heaven amid the social rottenness and moral death of their foul environment.
It is difficult to imagine, and impossible to portray, the abominable pollutions of the times. "Society," says Gibbon, "was a rotten, 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 to 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,[61] and beheld all the world at his feet, and the nations trembled at his nod, while the multitude wallowed in a sty of sensuality.
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;" 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.
Thus amid idolatrous 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." 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.
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." 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 mercy 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 zeal has sought out the woes of raan in every land, in order to their relief.