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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



ly the attitude taken up historically by Christian- 

 ity. It did not claim merely to be one higher 

 form of morals or religion among others. It 

 claimed to be the true religion — in the sense of 

 being both universal and obligatory. And the 

 empire, which would have been content to ignore 

 it while it presented itself as simply a higher 

 form of morals or even of social order, could not 

 ignore it when it appeared as the universal and 

 obligatory form. When it claimed to be the truth, 

 Rome first answered, " What is truth ? " and when 

 it insisted on the right of truth to be obeyed, 

 Rome answered again with persecution. And 

 Christianity responded by the constant reiteration 

 of the duty of every member of the state, whether 

 an official or not, to recognize this truth, to bear 

 witness to it, and, if need be, to die for it. Hence 

 the immense interest which has always attached 

 to Pilate's answering inquiry. It was the utter- 

 ance of one who was neither a philosopher nor a 

 statesman, but simply a typical Roman gentle- 

 man, in a position where he represented his state. 

 And precisely because it was so, the question, 

 " What is truth ? " lays bare the hinge upon 

 which the mighty Roman world was then smooth- 

 ly revolving into the abyss. The republic, we 

 must never forget, had already ceased to believe 

 in its own morals and social order. The fact is 

 certain, but the pathos of it has too seldom been 

 acknowledged. Again and again in the past we 

 have mused and mourned over Greece, and its 

 search of truth intellectual — its keen and fruit- 

 less search, never ending, ever beginning, across 

 wastes of doubt and seas of speculation, lighted 

 by uncertain stars. But to-day let us for once 

 remember that greater race, the greatest this 

 earth has known; called and trained through 

 long centuries to the work of governing a world, 

 and, when at last that mighty inheritance came 

 into its hands, stricken with inward paralysis for 

 want of a motive and a hope. Too well has our 

 own poet drawn the picture : 



" In his cool hall, with haggard eyes, 

 The Roman noble lay ; 

 He drove abroad, in furious guise, 

 Along the Appian Way ; 



" He made a feast, drank fierce and fast, 

 And crowned his hair with flowers : 

 No easier and no quicker passed 

 The impracticable hours." 



And so there crept upon men that moral languor 

 and satiety of life which underlay the whole time 

 of the empire, hardening often into cruel apathy 

 or reckless despair. But have we always reflected 



how certainly this cynical moral mood of the 

 dominant race was the result of the new circum- 

 stances into which it was thrown ? In early days 

 the Roman believed in himself, in his gods, in his 

 institutions, and, above all, in his state. It was 

 for him theairum satis magnum — his standard, his 

 rule, his righteousness. And so he was righteous, 

 in his stern, relentless way. But now the world 

 had grown wider. And what had sufficed for vir- 

 tue in former times did not suffice for virtue now. 

 A provincial belief, a national religion, was too 

 narrow for a world: it necessarily collapsed, and 

 left the lords of earth, with strong hands and 

 empty hearts, skeptical as to truth, and so laps- 

 ing from righteousness. 



That this had become largely the result, even 

 in the reign of Tiberius, is admitted. And it was 

 plainly a position of matters very unfortunate 

 for the application of the general rule suggested. 

 That Pilate or Pliny, or any Roman official, 

 should have to refuse a higher order of morals 

 which his conscience approved, simply because 

 his state believed in a lower, was hard enough. 

 But that such an official should have to refuse 

 that higher morality or religion, after both he 

 and his state had ceased to believe in the lower, 

 was harder still. And that in such circumstances 

 a judge should have to use systematic persecu- 

 tion against the confessedly higher convictions, 

 simply to prevent their making head against a 

 legal standard of faith which he and all men had 

 begun to disbelieve, was the most unfortunate 

 thing of all. There is probably nothing which 

 so excites the loathing of mankind as when the 

 state persecutes for a faith which it is already be- 

 ginning to lose. And yet, obviously, that is pre- 

 cisely the time when it is most likely to happen, 

 and on the theory with which we are dealing it 

 is what ought to happen. That theory we are 

 not to discuss, but in answering the question by 

 which its author so courageously illustrates it, 

 "Was Pilate right in crucifying Christ?" we 

 must for a moment shred away all circumstances 

 of aggravation. Suppose that Pilate and the Ro- 

 mans of his time still believed in the old religion 

 of the little Tiber city, that Jesus had been a na- 

 tive subject of that city, and that the law of the 

 city demanded persecution of all religious convic- 

 tions hostile to its old faith. What, in such cir- 

 cumstances, was the " duty of a man in Pilate's 

 position ? " I answer that his duty was (having 

 first cared for the immediate peace of his district) 

 to refuse to obey the law, and to resign his posi- 

 tion rather than outrage a principle of conscience, 

 which lies deeper than all social superstructures 



