into which he was born; never spoke from the
vantage-ground of worldly elevation; simply moving among people of his
own station in life, mechanics, fishermen, and peasants, he told of a
religion of love, a gospel of peace, for which he was willing to die.

Who would have dreamed that this was the germ of the most potent, the
most regenerative force the world had ever known? That thrones,
empires, principalities, and powers would melt and crumble before His
name? Of all miracles, is not this the greatest?

The passionate ardor with which this religion was propagated in the
first two centuries had no motive but the yearning to make others share
in its benefits and hopes; and to this end to accept the belief that
Jesus Christ had come in fulfilment of the promise of a Saviour--who
should be sent to this world clothed with divine authority to establish
a spiritual kingdom, in which he was King of kings, Lord of lords,
Meditator between us and the Father, of whom he was the "only begotten
Son."

The religion in its essence was absolutely simple. Its founder summed
it up in two sentences: expressing the duty of man to man, and of man
to God. That was all the theology he formulated.

For two centuries the religion of Christ was an elemental spiritual
force. It appealed only to the highest attributes and longings of the
human soul, and under its sustaining influence frail women, men, and
even children were able to endure tortures, of which we cannot read
even now without shuddering horror.

Nature's method of gardening is very beautiful. She carefully guards
the seed until it is ripe, then she bursts the imprisoning walls and
gives it to the winds to distribute. Precisely such method was used in
disseminating Christianity. It was not for one people--it was for the
healing of the nations, and its home was wherever man abides.

Nearly five decades after Christ's death upon the cross, Jerusalem was
destroyed by Titus. The home of Christianity was effaced. At just the
right moment the enclosing walls had broken, and freed to the winds the
germs in all their primitive purity.

Imperial favor had not tarnished it, human ambitions had not employed
and degraded it, nor had it been made into complex system by ingenious
casuists. The pure spiritual truth, unsullied as it came from the hand
of its founder, was scattered broadcast, as the band of Christians
dispersed throughout the Roman Empire, naturally forming into