Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith Part 9

These a.s.sertions are absurd. In the hundred years between the death of the apostles, and the beginning of the third century, there was not time to form a mythology. The times of Trajan's persecution, and that of the philosophic Aurelius, and the busy bustling age of Severus, were not the times for such a business. Bigoted Jews would not, and could not, have made such a character as Jesus of Nazareth; and the philosophers of that day, Celsus and Porphyry, for instance, hated it when presented to them as heartily as either Strauss or Paine. There were not wanting thousands of enemies, able and willing, to expose such a forgery.

The aspect and character of the gospel narrative are totally unlike those of mythologies. Hear the verdict of one who confessedly stands at the head of the roll of oriental historians: "In no single respect--if we except the fact that it is miraculous--has that story a mythical character. It is a single story, told without variations; whereas myths are fluctuating and multiform: it is blended inextricably with the civil history of the times, which it everywhere reports with extraordinary accuracy; whereas myths distort or supersede civil history: it is full of prosaic detail, which myths studiously eschew: it abounds with practical instruction of the simplest and purest kind; whereas myths teach by allegory. Even in its miraculous element it stands to some extent in contrast with all mythologies, where the marvelous has ever a predominant character of grotesqueness which is absent from New Testament miracles. (This Strauss himself admits, _Leben Jesu_, 1-67.) Simple earnestness, fidelity, painstaking accuracy, pure love of truth, are the most patent characteristics of the New Testament writers, who evidently deal with facts, not with fancies, and are employed in relating a history, not in developing an idea. They write that 'we may know the certainty of the things which are most surely believed' in their day. They 'bear record of what they have seen and heard.' I know not how stronger words could have been used to prevent the notion of that plastic, growing myth which Strauss conceives to have been in apostolic times."[69]

The character of Christ exhibited in the Gospels is the contrary of that of the heroes of mythology; as contrary as holiness is to sin. The invention of such a character by any man, or by the wisest set of men who ever lived, would have been a miracle nearly as great as the existence of such a person. When the character of Christ was presented to the wisest men of the Greeks, and Romans, and Hebrews, so far from admiring him as a hero, they crucified him as an impostor, and persecuted the preachers of his gospel. There was nothing mythical in the ten persecutions; these at least were hard historical facts. Every line of examination of time, place, and circ.u.mstances proves the falsehood of the mythical theory, and establishes the truth of the gospel history.

The authenticity of the gospel history, and of the Apostolic Epistles is confirmed by the testimony of their enemies. It is a well-authenticated and undeniable fact, that, in the close of the second century, Celsus, an Epicurean philosopher, wrote a work against Christianity, ent.i.tled, "The Word of Truth," in which he quotes pa.s.sages from the New Testament, and so many of them, that from the fragments of his work which remain, we could gather all the princ.i.p.al facts of the birth, teaching, miracles, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, if the New Testament should be lost. If Paine quotes the New Testament to ridicule it, no man can deny that such a book was in existence at the time he wrote. If he takes the pains to write a book to confute it, it is self-evident that it is in circulation, and possessed of influence. So Celsus' attempt to reply to the Gospels, and his quotations from them, are conclusive proofs that these books were generally circulated and believed, and held to be of authority at the time he wrote. Further, he shows every disposition to present every argument which could possibly damage the Christian cause. In fact, our modern Infidels have done little more than serve up his old objections. Now nothing could have served his purpose better than to prove that the records of the history of Christ were forgeries of a late date. This would have saved him all further trouble, and settled the fate of Christianity conclusively. He had every opportunity of ascertaining the fact, living, as he did, so near the times and scenes of the gospel history, and surrounded by heretics and false Christians, who would gladly have given him every information. But he never once intimates the least suspicion of such a thing--never questions the Gospels as books of history--nor denies the miracles recorded in them, but attributes them to magic.[70] Here, then, we have testimony as acceptable to an Infidel as that of Strauss or Voltaire--in fact, utterly undeniable by any man of common sense--that the New Testament was well known and generally received by Christians as authoritative, when Celsus wrote his reply to it, in the end of the second century. If it was a forgery, it was undoubtedly a forgery of old standing, if he could not detect it.

But we will go back a step farther, and prove the antiquity of the New Testament by the testimony of another enemy, two generations older than Celsus. The celebrated heretic, Marcion, lived in the beginning of the second century, when he had the best opportunity of discovering a forgery in the writings of the New Testament, if any such existed; he was excommunicated by the Church, and being greatly enraged thereat, had every disposition to say the worst he could about it. He traveled all the way from Sinope on the Black Sea, to Rome, and through Galatia, Bithynia, Asia Minor, Greece, and Italy, the countries where the apostles preached, and the churches to which they wrote, but never found any one to suggest the idea of a forgery to him. He affirmed that the Gospel of Matthew, the Epistle to the Hebrews, those of James and Peter, and the whole of the Old Testament, were books only for Jews, and published a new and altered edition of the Gospel of Luke, and ten Epistles of Paul, for the use of his sect.[71] We have thus the most undoubted evidence, even the testimony of an enemy, that these books were in existence, and generally received as apostolical and authoritative by Christians, at the beginning of the second century, or within twenty years of the last of the apostles, and by the churches to which they had preached and written.

The only remaining conceivable cavil against the genuineness of the books of the New Testament is: "That they bear internal evidence of being collections of fragments written by different persons--and are probably merely traditions committed to writing by various unknown writers, and afterward collected and issued to the churches under the names of the apostles, for the sake of greater authority." This theory being received as gospel by several learned men, has furnished matter for lengthy discussions as to the sources of the four Gospels.

Translated into English, it amounts to this, that Brown, Smith, and Jones wrote out a number of essays and anecdotes, and persuaded the churches of Ephesus, Jerusalem, Antioch, Corinth, and the rest, to receive them as the writings of their ministers, who had lived for years, or were then living, among them; and on the strength of that notion of their being the writings of the apostles, to govern their whole lives by these essays, and lay down their lives and peril their souls' salvation on the truth of these anecdotes. As though they could not tell whether such doc.u.ments were forgeries or not!

It is almost incredible how ignorant dreaming book-worms are of the common business of life. Most of my readers will laugh at the idea of a serious answer to such a quibble. Nevertheless, for the sake of those whose inexperience may be abused by the authority of learned names, I will show them that the primitive Christians, supposing them able to read, could know whether their ministers did really write the books and letters which they received from them.

If you go into the Citizens' Bank, you will find a large folio volume lying on the counter, and on looking at it you will see that it is filled with men's names, in their own handwriting, and that no two of them are exactly alike. Every person who has any business to transact with the bank is requested to write his name in the book; and when his check comes afterward for payment, the clerk can tell at a glance if the signature is the same as that of which he has a single specimen. If there has been no opportunity for him to become personally acquainted with the bank, as in case of a foreigner newly arrived, he brings letters of introduction from some well-known mutual friend, or is accompanied by some respectable citizen, who attests his ident.i.ty.

Business men have no difficulty whatever in ascertaining the genuineness of doc.u.ments. It is only when people want to dispute Holy Scripture that they give up common sense.

Holy Scripture was known to be the genuine writing of the apostles, just in the same way as any other writing was known to be genuine; only the churches who received the writings of the apostles had ten thousand times better security against forgery than any bank in the Union. In one of the first letters Paul writes to the churches--the second letter to the Thessalonians--to whom he had been preaching only a few weeks before, sent from Athens, distant only some two days' journey, full of allusions to their affairs, commands how to conduct themselves in the business of their workshops, as well as in the devotions of the church, and explanations of some misunderstood parts of a former letter sent by the hand of a mutual friend--he formally gives them his signature, for the purpose of future reference, and comparison of any doc.u.ment which might purport to come from him, with that specimen of his autograph. He gives not the name merely, but his apostolic benediction also, in his own handwriting: _The salutation of me Paul with mine own hand, which is the token in every epistle: so I write. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen._ It shows the heart of an apostle of Christ; but what concerns the present question is the remark, which every business man will in a moment appreciate, how immensely the addition of these two lines adds to the security against forgery. It is a very hard thing to forge a signature, but give a business man two lines of any man's writing besides that, and he is perfectly secure against imposition.[72]

The churches to which the Epistles were written, and to which the Gospels were delivered, consisted largely of business men, of merchants and traders, tent makers and coppersmiths, city chamberlains, and officers of Caesar's household, and the like. Does any one think such men could not tell the handwriting of their minister, who had lived among them for years; or that men who were risking their lives for the instructions he wrote them, would care less about the genuineness of the doc.u.ments, than you do about the genuineness of a ten dollar check? I am not as long in this city as Paul was in Ephesus, nor one fourth of the time that John lived there, yet I defy all the advocates of the mythical theory of Germany, and all their disciples here, to write a myth half as long as this essay, and impose it on the elders and members of my church as my writing. Let it only be presented in ma.n.u.script to the congregation--there was no printing in Paul's days--and in five minutes a dozen members of the church will detect the forgery, even if I should hold my peace. And were I to leave on a mission to China or India, and write letters to the church, would any of these business men, who have seen my writing, have the least hesitation in recognizing it again? Do you think anybody could forge a letter as from me, and impose it on them? What an absurdity, then, to suppose that anybody could write a gospel or epistle, and get all the members of a large church to believe that an Apostle wrote it. The first Christians, then, were absolutely certain that the doc.u.ments which they received as apostolic, were really so. The Church of Rome could attest the Epistle to them, and the Gospels of Mark and Luke written there. The Church of Ephesus could attest the Epistle to them, and the Gospel, and Letters, and Revelation of John written there. And so on of all the other churches; and these veritable autographs were long preserved. Says Tertullian, who was ordained A. D. 192: "Well, if you be willing to exercise your curiosity profitably in the business of your salvation, visit the apostolical churches in which the very chairs of the apostles still preside--in which their authentic letters themselves are recited (apud quae _ipsae authenticae literae_ eorum recitantur), sounding forth the voice and representing the countenance of each one of them. Is Achaia near you, you have Corinth. If you are not far from Macedonia, you have Philippi, you have Thessalonica. If you can go to Asia, you have Ephesus; but if you are near to Italy, you have Rome." There can not be the least doubt about the preservation of doc.u.ments for a far longer time than from Paul to Tertullian--one hundred and fifty years. I hold in my hand a Bible, the family Bible of the Gibsons--printed in 1599--two hundred and fifty-seven years old, in perfect preservation; and we have ma.n.u.scripts of the Scriptures twelve to fourteen hundred years old, like the Sinaitic Codex, perfectly legible.

They were moreover directed to be publicly read in the churches, and they were publicly read every Lord's day. Is it credible that an impostor would direct his forgery to be publicly read? If the epistle was publicly read during Paul's lifetime, that public reading in the hearing of the men who could so easily disprove its genuineness, was conclusive proof to all who heard it, that they knew it to be the genuine writing of the Apostle. The primitive churches then had conclusive proof of the genuineness of the Apostolic Epistles and Gospels.

The only difficulty which now remains is the objection that they might have been corrupted by alterations and interpolations by monks, in later times. We have two securities against such corruptions, in the way these doc.u.ments were given, and the nature of their contents. They were sacred heirlooms, and they were public doc.u.ments. Could you, or could any man, have permission to alter the original copy of Washington's Farewell Address? Would not the man who should attempt such sacrilege be torn in a thousand pieces? But Washington will never be an object of such veneration as John, nor will his Farewell Address ever compare in importance with Paul's Farewell Letter to the Philippians. Besides, these Gospels and Letters were public doc.u.ments, containing the records of laws, in obedience to which men are daily crossing their inclinations, enduring the mockery of their neighbors, losing their money, and endangering their lives. They contained the proofs and promises of that religious faith in G.o.d and hope of heaven, for the sake of which they suffered such things. Is it credible that they would allow them to be altered and corrupted? You might far more rationally talk of altering the Declaration of Independence, or the Const.i.tution of the United States. Translated into different languages--transported into Britain, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Carthage, Egypt, Parthia, Persia, India, and China--committed to memory by children, and quoted in the writings of Christian authors of the first three centuries, to such an extent, that we can gather the whole of the New Testament, except twenty-six verses, from their writings--appealed to as authority by heretics and orthodox in controversy--and publicly read in the hearing of tens of hundreds of thousands every Sabbath day in worship--we are a thousand times more certain that the New Testament has not been corrupted, than we are that the Declaration of Independence is genuine.

On this ground then we plant ourselves. The whole story of a late and gradual formation of the New Testament, or, in plain English, of its forgery, stands out as an unmitigated falsehood in the eyes of every man capable of writing his own name. The first churches could not be deceived with forgeries for apostolic writings. Nor could they, if they would, allow these writings to be corrupted. Be they true or false, fact or fiction, the books of the New Testament are the words of the Apostles of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. In the next chapter we will inquire into the truth of their story.

FOOTNOTES:

[65] The Family Christian Almanac for 1859, p. 57, American Tract Society, New York.

[66] Acta Concitia, sub voce Laodicea, Canon iv. Lardner vi. p. 368.

[67] Gibbon's Decline and Fall, II. p. 267.

[68] The original authorities may be found collected in the fourth volume of Lardner's Credibility of the Gospel History; abstracts of them, with ample references, in Mosheim and Neander's Ecclesiastical Histories, and in Stanley's Eastern Church.

[69] Rawlinson's _Historical Evidences_, page 227.

[70] Origen Contra Celsum, pa.s.sim.

[71] Lardner, Vol. IX. page 358.

[72] In fact, some persons were trying to impose a letter, "as from us,"

containing declarations, that the day of Christ was upon them.

CHAPTER VI.

IS THE GOSPEL FACT OR FABLE?

"For they themselves show of us what manner of entering in we had unto you, and how ye turned to G.o.d from idols, to serve the living and true G.o.d; and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come."--1 Thess. i. 9, 10.

In the last chapter we ascertained that the Gospels and Epistles were not forgeries of some nameless monks of the third century--that the shopkeepers, silversmiths, tent-makers, coppersmiths, tanners, physicians, senators, town councilors, officers of customs, city treasurers, and n.o.bles of Caesar's household, in Rome, Antioch, Ephesus, Corinth, Athens, and Alexandria, could no more be imposed upon in the matter of doc.u.ments, attested by the well-known signatures of their beloved ministers, than you could by forged letters or sermons purporting to come from your own pastor--and that the doc.u.ments which they believed to contain the directory of their lives, and the charter of that salvation which they valued more than their lives, which they read in their churches, recited at their tables, quoted in their writings, appealed to in their controversies, translated into many languages, and dispersed into every part of the known world, they neither would, nor could, corrupt or falsify.

The genuineness of the copies of the New Testament, which we now possess, is abundantly proved by the comparison of over two thousand ma.n.u.scripts, from all parts of the world; scrutinized during a period of nearly a hundred years, by the most critical scholars, so accurately that the variations of such things as would correspond to the crossing of a t, or the dotting of an i, in English, have been carefully enumerated; yet the result of the whole of this searching scrutiny has been merely the suggestion of a score of unimportant alterations in the received text of the seven thousand nine hundred and fifty-nine verses of the New Testament. This is a fact utterly unexampled in the history of ma.n.u.scripts. There are but six ma.n.u.scripts of the Comedies of Terence, and these have not been copied once for every thousand times the New Testament has been transcribed, yet there are thirty thousand variations found in these six ma.n.u.scripts, or an average of five thousand for each, and many of them seriously affect the sense. The average number of variations in the ma.n.u.scripts of the New Testament examined, is not quite thirty for each, including all the trivialities already noticed.

We are, then, by the special providence of G.o.d, now as undoubtedly in possession of genuine copies of the Gospels and Epistles, written by the companions of Jesus, as we are of genuine copies of the Const.i.tution of the United States, and of the Declaration of Independence. These are historic doc.u.ments, of well-established genuineness and antiquity, which we now proceed to examine as to their truthfulness.

There is no history so trustworthy as that prepared by contemporary writers, especially by those who have themselves been actively engaged in the events which they relate. Such history never loses its interest, nor does the lapse of ages, in the least degree, impair its credibility.

While the doc.u.ments can be preserved, Xenophon's Retreat of the Ten Thousand, Caesar's Gallic War, and the Dispatches of the Duke of Wellington, will be as trustworthy as on the day they were written. Yet some suspicion may arise in our minds, that these commanders and historians might have kept back some important events which would have dimmed their reputation with posterity, or might have colored those they have related, so as to add to their fame. Of the great facts related in memoirs addressed to their companions in arms, able at a glance to detect a falsehood, we never entertain the least suspicion.

If, to this be added, the correspondence of monuments, architecture, painting, statuary, coins, heraldry, and a thousand changes in the manners and customs of a people, we become as absolutely convinced of the truth of the narrative thus confirmed by these silent witnesses as if we had seen the events described. No man who visits the disinterred city of Pompeii, and sees the pavements marked by the wheel ruts, has any doubt that the Romans used wheeled carriages. When he sees the court-yards adorned with mosaic figures, and the walls with paintings of the G.o.ds, and of the manners of the people who worshiped them, he is profoundly impressed with the conviction that they excelled in the fine arts, and in the coa.r.s.e vices of heathenism. When he visits the Coliseum, that vast ruin declares that the wealth of an empire, once devoted to the gratification of the most savage pa.s.sions, has been diverted into some other channel. When he visits the catacombs, and reads long lines of heathen epitaphs, with their despairing symbols of broken columns, extinguished torches, and their heart-breaking "Farewell! an eternal farewell!" and then turns to the monuments of only two centuries later, and reads, "He sleeps in the Lord," "He waits the resurrection to life eternal," recording the hopes of whole generations of survivors, he can not doubt the truth of the written records of the conversion of the Roman Empire.

There is, moreover, another kind of contemporary history not so connected and regular as the formal diary or journal, which does not even propose to relate history at all, but is for that very reason entirely removed from the suspicion of giving a coloring to it; which, at the cost of a little patience and industry, gives us the most convincing confirmations of the truth, or exposures of the mistakes of historians, by the undesigned and incidental way in which the use of a name, a date, a proverb, a jest, an expletive, a quotation, an allusion, flashes conviction upon the reader's mind. I mean contemporary correspondence. If we have the private letters of celebrated men laid before us, we are enabled to look right into them, and see their true character. Thus Macaulay exhibits to the world the proud, lying, stupid tyrant, James, displayed in his own letters. Thus Voltaire records himself an adulterer, and begs his friend, D'Alembert, to lie for him; his friend replies that he has done so. Thus the correspondence of the great American herald of the Age of Reason exhibits him drinking a quart of brandy daily at his friend's expense, and refusing to pay his bill for boarding. In the unguarded freedom of confidential correspondence the vail is taken from the heart. We see men as they are. The true man stands out in his native dignity, and the gilding is rubbed off the hypocrite. Give the world their letters, and let the grave silence the plaudits and the clamors which deafened the generation among whom they lived, and no man will hesitate whether or not to p.r.o.nounce Hume a sensualist, or Washington the n.o.blest work of G.o.d--an honest man.

If we add another test of truthfulness, by increasing the number of the witnesses, comparing a number of letters referring to the same events, written by persons of various degrees of education, and of different occupations and ranks of life, resident in different countries, acting independently of each other, and find them all agree in their allusions to, or direct mention of, some central facts concerning which they are all interested, no one can rightfully doubt that this undesigned agreement declares the truth. But if, in addition to all these undesigned coincidences, we happen upon the correspondence of persons whose interests and pa.s.sions were diametrically opposed to those of our correspondents, and find that, when they have occasion to refer to them, they also confirm the great facts already ascertained, then our belief becomes conviction which can not be overturned by any sophistry, that these things did occur. If Whig and Tory agree in relating the facts of James' flight, and William's accession, if the letters of his Jacobite friends and those of the French amba.s.sador confirm the statements of the English historian, and if we are put in possession of the letters which James himself wrote from France and Ireland to his friends in England, does any man in his common sense doubt that the Revolution of 1688 did actually occur?

When, in addition to all this concentration and convergence of testimony, one finds that the matters related, being of public concern, and the changes effected for the public weal, the people have ever since observed, and do to this day celebrate, by religious worship and public rejoicings, the anniversaries of the princ.i.p.al events of that Revolution, and that he himself has been present, and has heard the thanksgivings, and witnessed the rejoicings on those anniversaries, the facts of the history come out from the domains of learned curiosity, and take their stand on the market-place of the busy world's engagements. We become at once conscious that this is a practical question--a great fact which concerns us--that the whole of the law and government of a vast empire has felt its impress--that our ancestors and ourselves have been molded under its influence, and that the religion of Europe and America, under whose guardianship we have grown to a prominent place among the people of earth, and may arrive at a better prominence among the nations of the saved, has been secured by that Revolution. We could scarcely know whether most to pity or contemn the man who should labor to persuade us that such a Revolution had never occurred, or that the facts had been essentially misrepresented.

Now it is precisely on this kind of evidence that we believe the great facts of the Christian Revolution. We have contemporary histories, formal and informal; letters, public and private, from the princ.i.p.al agents in it, and opposers of it, dispersed from Babylon to Rome, and addressed to Greeks, Romans, Jews, and Asiatics, written by physicians, fishermen, proconsuls, emperors, and apostles. We have miles of monuments, paintings, statuary, cabinets of coins, and all the heraldry of Christendom. And these great facts stand out more prominently on the theater of the world's business as effecting changes on our laws and lives, and their introduction as authenticated by public commemorations, more solemn and more numerous than those resulting from the English or the American Revolution. Our main difficulty lies in selecting, from the vast ma.s.s of materials, a portion sufficiently distinct and manageable to be handled in a single essay.

We shall be guided by the motto already announced as the rule of inductive research. One thing at a time; and the nearest first. The Epistles, being nearer our own times than the Gospels, claim our first notice, and first among these, those which stand latest on the page of sacred history, the letters of John; two from Peter to the Christians of Asia; and those which Paul, in chains for the gospel, dictated from imperial Rome.

From the abundant notices of the early Christians by historians and philosophers, satirists and comedians, martyrs and magistrates, Jewish, Christian, and heathen, I shall select only two for comparison with the Epistles and of the apostles; and both those heathen--the celebrated letter of Pliny to Trajan, and the well-established history of Tacitus; both utterly undeniable, and admitted by the most skeptical to be above suspicion. Not that I suppose that the testimony of men who do not take the trouble of making any inquiry into the reality of the facts of the Christian religion is more accurate than that of those whose lives were devoted to its study; or that we have any just reason to attach as much weight to the a.s.sertions of persons, who, by their own showing, tortured and murdered men and women convicted of no crime but that of bearing the name of Christ, as to those of these martyrs, whose characters they acknowledged to be blameless, and who sealed their testimony with the last and highest attestation of sincerity--their blood. Considered merely as a historian, whether, as regards means of knowledge, or tests of truthfulness, by every unprejudiced mind, Peter will always be preferred to Pliny. But because the world will ever love its own, and hate the disciples of the Lord, there will always be a large cla.s.s to whom the history of Tacitus will seem more veritable than that of Luke, and the letters of Pliny more reliable than those of Peter. For their sakes we avail ourselves of that most convincing of all attestations--the testimony of an enemy. What friends and foes unite in attesting must be accepted as true.

The facts which we shall thus establish are not, in the first instance, those called miraculous. We are now ascertaining the general character for truthfulness of our letter writers and historians. If we find that their general historic narrative is contradicted by that of other credible historians, then we suspect their story. But if we find that, in all essential matters of public notoriety, they are supported by the concurred testimony of their foes, and that the narrative of the miracles they relate bears the seals of thousands who from foes became friends, from conviction of its truth, then we receive their witness as true. Even in Paul's day, heathen Greek writers bore testimony to the apostles, what manner of entering in they had unto the converts of Thessalonica; and how they turned to G.o.d from idols, to serve the living and true G.o.d, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead--even Jesus, who delivered us from the wrath to come.

Pliny wrote forty years later.

Pliny, the younger, was born A. D. 61, was praetor under Domitian, consul in the third year of Trajan, A. D. 100, was exceedingly desirous to add to his other honors that of the priesthood; was accordingly consecrated an augur, and built temples, bought images, and consecrated them on his estates; was, in A. D. 106, appointed Governor of the Roman Provinces of Pontus and Bithynia[73]--a vast tract of Asia Minor, lying along the sh.o.r.es of the Black Sea and the Propontis; and including the province anciently called Mysia, in which were situated Pergamos and Thyatira, and in the immediate vicinity of Sardis and Philadelphia. Pliny reached his province by the usual route, the port of Ephesus; where John had lived for many years, and indited his letters, A. D. 96, scarcely ten years before. The letters of Peter to the strangers scattered through Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, bring us to the same mountainous region, eight hundred miles distant from Judea; whence, in earlier days, our savage ancestors received those Phoenician priests of Baal, whose round towers mark the coasts of Ireland nearest to the setting sun; and whence, about the period under consideration, came the heralds of the Sun of Righteousness, who brought the "_Leabhar Eoin_"[74] which tells their children of him in whom is the life and the light of men. Natives of these countries had been in Jerusalem during the crucifixion of Jesus, and, though only strangers, had witnessed the darkness, and the earthquake, and had heard the rumors of what had come to pa.s.s in those days; and on the day of Pentecost had mingled with the curious crowd around the apostles, and heard them speak, in their own mother tongues, of the wonderful works of G.o.d. The remainder of the story of their conversion we gather from the letters of Peter, John, and Pliny.

"Pliny, to the Emperor Trajan, wisheth health and happiness:[75]

"It is my constant custom, Sire, to refer myself to you in all matters concerning which I have any doubt. For who can better direct me when I hesitate, or instruct me when I am ignorant?

"I have never been present at any trials of Christians, so that I know not well what is the subject matter of punishment, or of inquiry, or what strictures ought to be used in either.

Nor have I been a little perplexed to determine whether any difference ought to be made upon account of age, or whether the young and tender, and the full grown and robust, ought to be treated all alike; whether repentance should ent.i.tle to pardon, or whether all who have once been Christians ought to be punished, though they are now no longer so; whether the name itself, although no crimes be detected, or crimes only belonging to the name ought to be punished.

"In the meantime, I have taken this course with all who have been brought before me, and have been accused as Christians. I have put the question to them, whether they were Christians.

Upon their confessing to me that they were, I repeated the question a second and a third time, threatening also to punish them with death. Such as still persisted, I ordered away to be punished; for it was no doubt with me, whatever might be the nature of their opinion, that contumacy and inflexible obstinacy ought to be punished. There were others of the same infatuation, whom, because they are Roman citizens, I have noted down to be sent to the city.

"In a short time the crime spreading itself, even whilst under persecution, as is usual in such cases, divers sorts of people came in my way. An information was presented to me, without mentioning the author, containing the names of many persons, who, upon examination, denied that they were Christians, or had even been so; who repeated after me an invocation of the G.o.ds, and with wine and frankincense made supplication to your image, which, for that purpose, I have caused to be brought and set before them, together with the statues of the deities.

Moreover, they reviled the name of Christ. None of which things, as is said, they who are really Christians can by any means be compelled to do. These, therefore, I thought proper to discharge.