Page:The rise, progress, and phases of human slavery.djvu/74

 such, in good sooth, it did appear to them. Indeed, so utterly atrocious and "subversive of all law and order" did Christianity appear to the world at its first introduction, that, but for the obscurity and seeming insignificance of its first propagators, it is impossible it ever could have been established by mere human agency. Contempt and pity were the true safeguards of its first missionaries. Had they, at the outset, exhibited any signs of strength or importance, it is certain they would have been extirpated at once. No slave-owner would tolerate a system which went to deny him a property in his fellow-man. No ruler, no magistrate, would spare innovators whose doctrine went to revolutionize the entire social system as then constituted. No nation as a notion, no people as a people, would, for an instant, endure a religion which went to deprive them of their gods—the accredited protectors of their liberties and laws. For in those days, be it observed, every particular State or people had its peculiar form of worship, and its own peculiar gods; and every religion being particularly united with the laws which prescribed it, there was no way of converting a nation but by subduing it—no possibility of any system of proselytism proving successful but what could enforce its dogmas at the head of a victorious army. In other words, the only system of religious propagandism known in the old pagan world was the propagandism of the sword. And here let us note, for the benefit of certain shallow philosophists who declaim against Christianity on the alleged ground that before its introduction religious wars were unheard of, that political and religious wars amongst pagans were one and the same thing; and consequently, to make good their case, they should prove that political wars were unheard of. Rousseau exposes this philosophic error effectively in his "Social Contract," when showing the inseparable connection that subsisted between religion and politics under the pagan system. "The reason," he says, "there appear to have been no religious wars in the days of paganism was, that each State, having its peculiar form of government as well as of religion, did not distinguish its gods from its laws, and the political was also a religious war; the jurisdiction of their gods being, as it were, limited by the boundaries of the nation, and the gods of one country having no right over the people of another." Under an order of things like this, it is manifest no progress could have been made by the first Christians had they appeared in sufficient numbers, or of sufficient importance in the way of rank and station, to attract the notice of governments. As already observed, it was to their insignificance and obscurity alone they owed their preservation and first successes. For, as we shall presently see, the moment they grew strong enough to invite public vigilance, from that moment their persecutions began, and a torrent of execration and vengeance was let loose upon them the like of which was never witnessed before, nor will, we trust, ever be again. What we shall say of these persecutions will abundantly prove the horror which the doctrine of equality inspired in rulers and slave-owners, and, at the same time, show what miracles of bearing and forbearing the