236 THE GOOD TIDINGS. 



appear to have rejected the freedman's cap on religious 

 grounds, for Paul exhorts such persons to become free 

 if they can ; advice which slaves do not usually 

 require. 



As time passed on the belief of the first Christians 

 that the end of the world was near at hand became 

 fainter, and gradually died away. It was then declared 

 that God had favoured the earth with a respite of one 

 thousand years. In the meantime, the gospel or good 

 tidings which the Christians announced was this. There 

 was one God, the Creator of the world. He had long 

 been angry with men because they were what he had 

 made them. But he sent his only begotten son into a 

 corner of Syria ; and because his son had been mur- 

 dered his wrath had been partly appeased. He would 

 not torture to eternity all the souls that he had made; 

 he would spare at least one in every million that were 

 born. Peace unto earth and good will unto men if 

 they would act in a certain manner ; if not, fire and 

 brimstone and the noisome pit. He was the Emperor 

 of Heaven, the tyrant of the skies ; the pagan gods 

 were rebels, with whom he was at war, although he 

 was All-powerful, and whom he allowed to seduce the 

 souls of men although he was All-merciful. Those 

 who joined the army of the cross might entertain some 

 hopes of being saved ; those who followed the faith of 

 their fathers would follow their fathers to hell-fire. 

 This creed with the early Christians was not a matter of 

 half-belief and metaphysical debate, as it is at the present 

 day, when Catholics and Protestants discuss hell-fire with 

 courtesy and comfort over filberts and port wine. To 

 those credulous and imaginative minds God was a live 

 king, hell a place in which real bodies were burnt with 

 real flames, which was filled with the sickening stench 



