Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

306 THE SECOXD AGE OF THE MAKTYR CHURCH.a fancy of the prince alone. All the thinking mindsof his time have become ashamed of Olympus andits gods. The cross has wounded them to death.A new philosophy-the last fortress into which retreatingheathenism throws itself-while it breaksup Roman life, prepares the way for the ChristianFaith which it strenuously combats. The EmperorSeverus, fixing the eye of a statesman and a soldieron that Faith, contemplates its grasp upon society,and decrees from the height of the throne a generalassault upon it; while his wife encourages awriter72 to draw an ideal heathen portrait as acounterpart to the character of Christ, tacitly subtractingfrom the gospels an imitation which is tosupply the place of the reality. The time was notfar distant when Origen would already discern andprophesy the complete triumph of the religion thusassailed; and if Celsus had objected, that were allto do as Christians did, the emperor would be deserted,and his power fall into the hands of themost savage and lawless barbarians, would reply:" If all did as I clo, men would honour the emperoras a divine command, and the barbarians drawingnigh to the word of God would become most law-loving and most civilised; their worship would bedissolved, and that of the Christians alone pre-vail, as one day it will alone prevail, by means72 Philostratus in his Life of Apollonlus of Tyana, wrquest of the empress Julia Domna. See Kellner, Hellenisttenthwm, c, v. s. 4, 81-4,