se the
number of the servants of the Lord.[27]

St. Augustin was considerate. But Jesus had been indulgent. In the
plentitudes of his charity there was both commiseration and forgiveness.
Throughout his entire ministry he wrote but once. It was on an occasion
when a woman was brought before him. Her accusers were impatient. Jesus
bent forward and with a finger wrote on the ground. The letters were
illegible. But the symbol of obliteration was in the dust which the wind
would disperse. The charge was impatiently repeated. Jesus straightened
himself. With the weary comprehension of one to whom hearts are as books,
he looked at them. "Whoever is without sin among you, may cast the first
stone."

The sins of Mary Magdalen were many. He forgave them, for she had loved
much. His indulgence was real and it was infinite. Yet occasionally his
severity was as great. At the marriage of Cana he said to his mother:
"Woman, what have I to do with thee?" In the house of the chief of the
Pharisees he more emphatically announced: "If any man come unto me and
hate not his father and mother and wife and children and brethren and
sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple." Elsewhere
he advocated celibacy enforced with the knife. John, his favorite
disciple, beheld those who had practised it standing among the
redeemed.[28]

That vision peopled the deserts with hermits. It filled the bastilles of
God, the convents and monasteries of pre-mediaeval days. The theory of it
was adopted by kings on their thrones. Lovers in their betrothals engaged
to observe it reciprocally. Husbands and wives separated that they might
live more purely apart.

The theory, contrary to the spirit of paganism, was contrary also to that
of the Mosaic law. The necessity of marriage was one of the six hundred
and thirteen Hebraic precepts. The man who omitted to provide himself with
heirs became a homicide. In the Greek republics celibacy was penalized. In
Rome, during the republic, bachelors were taxed. Under the empire they
could neither inherit nor serve the State. But the law was evaded. Even
had it not been, the people of Rome, destroyed by war or as surely by
pleasure, little by little was disappearing. Slaves could not replace
citizens. The affranchised could be put in the army, even in the senate,
as they were, but that did not change their servility, and it was
precisely that servility which encouraged imperial aberrations and
welcomed