Page:The rise, progress, and phases of human slavery.djvu/81

 well-known efforts of Pontius Pilate to save Christ himself from the hands of his Jewish enemies, shows clearly enough that the early Christians had little to fear from the Romans, so long as they were deemed to be only a religious sect of the Jews, and to be aiming at a kingdom which "is not of this world."

It became otherwise, however, as soon as the pagan priesthood and pagan magistracy began to discover that Christ's kingdom would very materially affect this world, as well as the next. The priests, trembling for their revenues and estates, the magistrates and rulers for their power, and the rich generally for their wealth and station, became very Jews from the moment that discovery was made. A religion which proclaimed spiritual equality was, to the priest and rulers, undistinguishable from one that, if it did not proclaim, would very speedily lead to temporal equality as well; and the principle of community of goods, which so notoriously prevailed in some of the early churches, was point blank evidence of the levelling tendencies of the sect. Indeed, examining it philosophically, the religion could not be otherwise than social in its effect. For, as its main doctrines went to condemn riches ("lay not up for yourselves treasures," &c.), to make power a trust for the governed, and not a profitable monopoly for governors ("let him who would be foremost amongst you be the servant of the rest," &c.), and to exhibit this life as a mere probationary state for another and eternal one, in which the poor of this world were likely to fare better than the rich ("it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven"),—as these and the like were amongst the vital doctrines of the new religion, it is impossible that such as embraced it with a firm belief in its ordinances, and promises of future rewards and punishment, could dare to rob and enslave their fellow-creatures, or peril their eternal salvation in another world for the sake of enjoying the mammon of unrighteousness in this for the brief space of a few years. These conclusions being but strictly logical deductions from Christian premisses, it is no wonder that a people, whom one of their own historians (Sallust) represents as valuing riches, honour, and empire as the greatest goods the immortal gods could vouchsafe to man, should regard with an evil eye a religion which threatened them with the loss of all, by bringing them into contempt, and making the possession of them a peril to salvation.

At all events, such was the impression made upon the pagan mind. Had they regarded Christ's kingdom as pertaining only to another world, they would have cheerfully made his followers a present of it, on condition that they did not meddle with this. But in the face of such levelling doctrines, and in presence of a faith so lively and ardent, which made hosts of men renounce their temporal possessions in order to render themselves worthy of the new dispensation, the higher and wealthier orders of the empire soon became convinced that they would lose their kingdoms in this world if they allowed any further scope to that new and strange religion which promised so much in the next.