Page:The Source and Aim of Human Progress.djvu/57

Rh with horror as we do anarchists and Bolsheviki, and he branded them as "the enemies of the human race." The mild Pliny in his report to emperor Trajan considers the Christians as deserving of punishments from a purely civic principle of subduing the obstinate and the obdurate. A quotation from Pliny's correspondence is both interesting and instructive as a warning to our own times: "The method I have observed," Pliny, as Governor of the province of Bythinia, reports to emperor Trajan "towards those who have been brought before me as Christians is this: I asked them whether they were Christians; if they admitted it, I repeated the question twice, and threatened them with punishment. If they persisted, I ordered them at once to be punished. For I was persuaded, whatever the nature of their opinions might be, a contumacious and inflexible obstinacy certainly deserved correction. . . . According to your commands, I forbade the meetings of any (Christian) assemblies. . . . I judged it necessary to endeavor to obtain the real truth, by putting two female slaves to torture, who were said to officiate in their religious rites, but all I could discover was evidence of an absurd and extravagant superstition. I deemed it expedient to adjourn all further proceedings in order to consult you. For it appears to me a matter highly deserving your consideration, more especially as great numbers must be involved in the danger of these persecutions. . . . In fact, this contagious superstition is not confined to the cities only, but has spread its infection among neighboring villages and country. Nevertheless, it still seems possible to restrain its progress." Pliny's opinion was the mildest statement made by a Roman official on the character of the despised Christians.

As the Christians grew in numbers they were no longer regarded in the light of superstitious, misguided people, but as people who were dangerous to the foundations and pillars of society. The Christians were accused of being cannibalistic, ghoulish in their religious services; it was charged that at their secret meetings they drank the blood of children as a sacrament, that they consumed the flesh of human victims as a sacrosanct piaculum, that they were drunk with human blood, and generally rejoiced in offering theanthropic victims to Christ, a crucified, criminal Jew. The Christians were abandoned criminals and degenerates who hated mankind, who delighted in excess, in ruin and destruction of civilization. The Christians were accused of crimes more heinous and nefarious than those brought at present against anarchists, Bolsheviki, and I. W. W. Incendiary