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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



the war-cry of the heathen mob against the 

 Christians. It was with this cry, for example, 

 that in a. d. 156 the veDerable Bishop Polycarp 

 was received on the race-course at Smyrna. The 

 only gods the people knew anything about, 

 whose temples they frequented, whose statues 

 they worshiped, to whom they offered sacrifices 

 and prayers, were denied by the Christians ; they 

 were declared to be the inventions of man's 

 superstition, ■and sometimes to be evil spirits, 

 devils. Can we wonder that the people who 

 were still devoted to these gods felt the attack 

 upon them to be an attack upon themselves, 

 their most sacred and cherished possessions ; 

 that they were the more deeply incensed at it 

 the more seriously they feared by toleration of 

 it to lose the favor of the gods on whom their 

 welfare depended ? The reproach of atheism 

 was therefore the most dangerous that could be 

 brought against the Christians. In that " Down 

 with the atheists ! " with which the yells of the 

 mob greeted Polycarp at Smyrna, was included 

 the sentence of death, which they at once pro- 

 ceeded to execute by preparing the stake. And 

 the cry was followed in numberless cases by 

 the same results. If any public misfortune, any 

 alarming event occurred, which seemed to indi- 

 cate the displeasure of the gods — a pestilence, a 

 dearth, a flood, an eclipse, an earthquake — super- 

 stition was always ready to make the Christians 

 responsible for it, as enemies of the gods ; the 

 exclamation was sure to be heard, l: The Chris- 

 tians to the lions ! " Both the educated and 

 uneducated have always attributed every other 

 wickedness to the enemies of the gods, and so 

 it was with the Christians. Being atheists, they 

 were also criminals, and all manner of horrible 

 stories were told of them. It was not enough 

 that they were said to worship a god with the 

 head of an ass, which we see represented to this 

 day in a caricature of that period, the well-known 

 mock crucifix in the Kircher Museum at Rome ; 

 it was said, also, that in their secret assemblies 

 they practised all sorts of horrors, killed and 

 devoured children, and gave themselves up to 

 frightful excesses. Scarcely any evils were at- 

 tributed to the Jews in the middle ages by Chris- 

 tian fanatics which had not been before at- 

 tributed to the Christians by heathen supersti- 

 tion. How ancient this bad opinion of them was 

 we learn from the account given by Tacitus of 

 the persecution under Nero. When more than 

 two-thirds of Rome was burned to ashes in his 

 reign, and report accused the emperor himself 

 of setting fire to it, he tried to find people on 



whom he could lay the blame, and selected the 

 sect, says Tacitus, " who were universally hated 

 for their shameful deeds, to whom the people 

 gave the name of Christians." These stupid 

 misrepresentations of the Christians, then, were 

 not only circulated, but so generally believed 

 that but a few years after their rise as a com- 

 munity at Rome, and only two years after Paul's 

 arrival there, Nero could venture to throw on 

 them the responsibility of a public calamity. lie 

 was out in his reckoning, however ; suspicion 

 still attached to him, and the cruel torments 

 which he inflicted on his wretched victims at last 

 aroused the pity of their enemies. But one thing 

 is obvious — Nero could not have punished the 

 Christians as incendiaries if they had not been 

 judged capable of such a crime ; and Tacitus 

 expressly says that they were so. 



We cannot, however, be much surprised that 

 the credulous and ignorant masses had not more 

 correct ideas. It is far more astonishing that 

 even the great historian to whom we owe this 

 first mention of the Christians in profane history 

 should share their opinions, and he cannot be 

 cleared from this accusation. He not only treats 

 the excesses of which they were said to be guilty 

 as acknowledged facts, but adds this remark : 

 ' The founder of this sect, named Christ, had 

 been executed under Tiberius, by the Procurator 

 Pontius Pilate. The heinous superstition was 

 thereby checked for a time, but the infection 

 soon spread again, not only throughout Judea, 

 where the disease was indigenous, but also in 

 the capital, where all that is disgraceful and rep- 

 robate collects and finds favor." And of the 

 accusation against the Christians he says, "They 

 certainly cannot be convicted of causing the fire, 

 but of being enemies of the human race they 

 can." This is the impression made upon the 

 Roman by what he had heard of the religion and 

 conduct of the Christians. Of atheism, of which 

 the enemies of the popular divinities had been 

 certainly by that time accused, he makes no 

 mention. In the eyes of Tacitus the chief error 

 in the new religion is not disbelief, but supersti. 

 lion. But in his general estimate of them this 

 does not turn much to the advantage of the 

 Christians ; they are " enemies of the human 

 race," and from such any crimes may be ex- 

 pected. And after mentioning the fearful tor- 

 ments and cruel scorn with which Nero treated 

 the Christians, Tacitus closes his narrative with 

 these words : " Guilty as they were, and well as 

 they deserved the severest penalties, they ex- 

 cited pity, because it was considered that they 



