Page:The rise, progress, and phases of human slavery.djvu/78

 For, as may be inferred from some of these names, it was not in Judea only the new faith triumphed: it spread with almost equal celerity and success throughout Asia Minor, Greece, Africa, and the islands of the Archipelago; indeed, everywhere in the countries bordering the Mediterranean. There was hardly a province of the Roman empire that was not visited by its missionaries, even in the lifetime of the Apostles. Some of its earliest and most marked triumphs came off in the heart of Greece itself, at that time reputed the most polished nation in the world, and to whose schools and academies (as being the choicest nurseries of learning, art, and science) the aristocracies of Rome and elsewhere sent their sons to be educated and trained for public employments. Indeed, long before the last of the Apostles disappeared, we read of churches founded at Ephesus, Corinth, Thessalonica, Berœa, Philippi, and other Greek cities. Rome herself, the seat of empire and mistress of the world, was not proof against the contagion of spiritualized democracy. Before the end of the second century there were Christians to be found in almost every department of the imperial service—Christians in the senate, in the palace, in the camp, in the public offices,—in short, everywhere, it is said, except in the temples and the theatres, from which, of course, their religion debarred them.

But, it will be readily imagined, this amazing progress was not obtained without paying the cost which is paid for all reformations, in the blood and calamities of the principal actors. A religion of such unheard-of character, ushered into a world such as we have described, could not but excite the fiercest opposition and call forth the most malignant passions. It was so with Christianity, despite all the miracles alleged to have been wrought in its favour. The very term "Christian" was first heard of as a term of reproach. The new believers are said to have got that name at Antioch, where the people "were given to scoffing," but afterwards adopted it themselves as a term of honour, and gloried in it, just as we have seen the Chartists of England adopt that title (first given them in derision by their enemies), and glorify themselves in it; or as the French revolutionists of 1793 adopted and converted into an honorary title the nickname of "Sans Culottes," contemptuously given them by Lafayette; or as our democratic brethren in America converted "Yankee Doodle" into a national air, by way of revenge for the insult originally intended by their enemies in its use.

That the word Christian was, indeed, originally used as a term of reproach cannot be doubted. Christ or his disciples never used the term. It is nowhere to be found in the Gospels; and if made use of twice or thrice in the Acts, and in one of the Apostolic Epistles, it is evidently used as a term borrowed from others, and not as one voluntarily adopted by the sect itself. But the best proof that the term was used in an offensive sense, and that the sect itself was held in detestation (mitigated only by contempt), is furnished by Tacitus's "Annals," in the only passage in which that historian deigns to notice them. It occurs where, speaking of the Christians persecuted by Nero, he describes them as believers in a "deplorable and destructive