184 



one of the latter possessed the privilege to plead. The 

 vanquished were fain to suffer in silence, for every at- 

 tempt at agitation was suppressed at once by military force; 

 those guilty in such movements were chained and sent 

 to the galleys, their property being confiscated by the 

 treasury and their wives and children sold into slavery. 

 The wealthy magnate of to-day might become to-morrow 

 but a chattel and a slave. Humanity outside the limits 

 of Roman citizenship was degraded; the peoples suffered 

 martyrdom under the victor's iron hand, and the future 

 seemed to the oppressed without the glimmer of a single 

 hope. 



And it was in this tragic age that the Saviour appea- 

 red on earth with his divine gospel. 



You are anxious tor temporar}' blessing, he declared, 

 but you forget the Eternity beyond the grave: you think 

 of your passing happiness here and pay no heed to 

 your everlasting happiness hereafter. You are harassed 

 and affronted and oppressed; but what of that? Your 

 reward in heaven above will be the greater. If any-one 

 strike you on the right cheek offer him the left. All that 

 you see and suffer here passes swiftly away; but in hea- 

 ven all is eternal. 



Such a doctrine could not but attract and pacify all 

 the oppressed and desolate; it reconciled the spiritual 

 side of man to human suffering on earth and it specially 

 drew to itself the poor and unprotected. Hundreds of 

 thousands of such rallied to the Christian standard and 

 bore the tenets of their faith to the furthest borders of 

 the Roman Empire. Faith in God and in Christ became 

 common everywhere, but the dogma and the ritual of 

 this general faith evolved differently under different local 

 influences and conditions, 



We must understand that neither the Bible nor Christ 

 were ever opposed to the natural propagation of the 

 human race. It is in the Bible that we find the phrase 

 'Increase and multiply and replenish the earth', whilst 

 we cannot find there any obstacle to this, or any artifi- 



