her--how it safeguards her and uplifts her! Men came into the world
full of this passion for Jesus Christ. They went to the slave and to
the temple-woman and told them: "The Son of God loved you and gave
himself for you"; and they believed it, and rose into a new life. To
be redeemed by the Son of God gave the slave a new self-respect, a
new manhood. He astonished people by his truth, his honesty, his
cleanness; and there was a new brightness and gaiety about him. So
there was about the woman. They sang, they overflowed with good
temper. It seemed as if they had been born again. As Clement of Rome
wrote, the Holy Spirit was a glad spirit. The word used both by him
and by St. Augustine is that which gives us the English word
"hilarious." There was a new gladness and happiness about these
people. "It befits Truth to laugh, because she is glad--to play with
her rivals because she is free from fear," so said Tertullian. Of
course, there were those who broke down, but Julian the Apostate, in
his letters to his heathen priests, is a reluctant witness to the
higher character of Christian life. And it was Jesus who was the
secret of it.

The pagan noticed the new fortitude in the face of death. Tertullian
himself was immensely impressed with it. He had never troubled to
look at the Gospels. Nobody bothered to read them unless they were
converted already, he said. But he seems to have seen these
Christian martyrs die. "Every man," he said, "who sees it, is moved
with some misgiving, and is set on fire to learn the reason; he
inquires and he is taught; and when he has learnt the truth, he
instantly follows it himself as well." "No one would have wished to
be killed, unless he was in possession of the truth." I think that
is autobiography. The intellectual energy of the man is worth
noting--his insistence on understanding, his instant resolution;
such qualities, we saw, had won the admiration of Jesus. Here is a
man who sacrifices a great career--his genius, his wit, his humour,
fire, power, learning, philosophy, everything thrown at Christ's
feet, and Christ uses them all. Then came a day when persecution was
breaking out again. Some Christians were for "fleeing to the next
city"--it was the one text in their Bible, he said. He said: "I stay
here." Any day the mob might get excited and shout: "The Christians
to the lions." They knew the street in which he lived, and they
would drag him--the scholar, the man of letters and of
im