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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



could not fail to be opposed to it — the Christians 

 were enemies of the gods, atheists. Pliny does 

 not use the term, but it is really this character- 

 istic which makes him regard them as enemies 

 of the state ; they refused to offer sacrifices to 

 the gods and the emperor, and such defiance 

 must be put down. Trajan himself formed the 

 same opinion. In his reply to Pliny's report he 

 approves his conduct, and adds that they are not 

 to be officially proceeded against, but, if they are 

 denounced and refuse to recant their Christianity 

 by worship of the national gods and the emper- 

 or, they are to be punished. He evidently con- 

 sidered it to be a comparatively harmless super- 

 stition, a delusion which might be tolerated so 

 long as it could be ignored, but which must not 

 be indulged, in consequence of its open resist- 

 ance to the religion and laws of the state, nor 

 left unpunished when brought before the courts 

 and obstinately persisted in. 



Trajan's mandate to Pliny was for a hundred 

 and fifty years the standard by which the rela- 

 tions of the Roman state toward Christianity 

 were regulated, and the views which dictated it 

 remained for a long period unaltered. While 

 among the people the old hatred of the atheists 

 survived, and the old calumnies retained their 

 hold, the new religion was regarded by the edu- 

 cated as one of the many fruits of superstition 

 which inundated the Roman Empire from the 

 East; and whether it was regarded with lenience 

 or severity, as perilous- or absurd, its followers 

 as deceivers or deceived, in one thing all were 

 agreed, that it could not be permitted to break 

 the laws against making proselytes and against 

 unauthorized societies. The contumacy which 

 the Christians showed in refusing to join in the 

 public worship of the gods must be put an end 

 to, especially in cases in which, according to the 

 prevailing ideas, the established customs were 

 inseparable from the fulfillment of duties toward 

 the state and its rulers. The three successors 

 of Trajan, and the excellent Marcus Aurelius 

 Antoninus, two generations later, formed the 

 same opinion of the Christians. This emperor 

 was one of the most benign, philanthropic, and 

 conscientious rulers who ever adorned a throne. 

 He was, moreover, a zealous adherent of the 

 Stoic philosophy, which in its morals, and even in 

 its theology, was so closely allied to Christianity. 

 And yet in his reign the Christians were subject- 

 ed to persecutions more severe than even under 

 Nero. He felt compelled, as Roman emperor, to 

 protect the religion of the state from its pro- 

 nounced enemies ; and, as one of a school which 



was content to place philosophical ideas and re- 

 ligious myths on an equality, and made terms 

 with the popular religion by the most extrava- 

 gant allegorization of it, he had no comprehen- 

 sion of the scruples of conscience which made 

 all participation in heathen worship appear to a 

 Christian as an unpardonable sin. In the posi- 

 tive Christian doctrines, which could not, like 

 poetic myths, be evaporated into mere symbols 

 of philosophic dogmas, a Marcus Aurelius could 

 not possibly see anything more than Pliny saw— 

 a " foolish and boundless superstition ; " nor, in 

 the steadfastness with which the Christians ad- 

 hered to them, anything but a stupid obstinacy, 

 originating in defiance and bigotry, and perhaps 

 in a desire to excite attention. And this is just 

 what he says in the only passage in his "Mono- 

 logues " in which he mentions the Christians (xi., 

 3) : he observes that a man should be ready to 

 die at any time, but with dignity, without boast- 

 ing; from reasonable conviction, "not out of 

 mere defiance, like the Christians." So little did 

 the devoted heroism of the Christian martyrs 

 overcome the prejudices of the Roman. Marcus 

 Aurelius doubtless pitied the Christians who were 

 put to death by his orders, since he so often tells us 

 that pity is the only sentiment that befits the wise 

 man in view of the folly and perversity of men ; 

 but he judged that, for the sake of the common 

 weal and public order, he could not restrain the 

 arm of justice, and, in truth, he had no idea that 

 it was not to justice they were sacrificed, but to 

 political laws and interests which were incompat- 

 ible with the natural law of liberty of conscience. 

 Since even a Marcus Aurelius was not able to 

 form an unbiased opinion of Christianity, this 

 will not be expected from one so entirely want- 

 ing in religious interests, and therefore in appre- 

 ciation of religious life and motives, as his con- 

 temporary, the satirist Lucian. A man of the 

 world, half skeptic, half Epicurean, could not 

 possibly regard Christianity as anything but one 

 of the follies and fancies of which the age was 

 so prolific. He only mentions it in connection 

 with them. In his book on the cynic, Pere- 

 grintis, who had publicly burned himself at the 

 Olympic games in a. d. 165, he relates that this 

 eccentric man had in his younger days belonged 

 to the sect of the Christians in Palestine, had 

 gained a high standing among them, had been 

 imprisoned for his faith, but was afterward set at 

 liberty ; and he takes occasion to give his opin- 

 ions of the Christians. He describes them with 

 a sort of contemptuous pity, as poor simple folk 

 who had been persuaded by the founders of their 



