enew
hope. This was the gift which the Gospel brought to the Romans,--hope for
time, hope beyond time. This was the prayer for the Romans of the Apostle
Paul: "Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing,
that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost."[314] A
remarkable fact, that a Jewish writer should exhort Romans to hope and
courage!

Sec. 5. Relation of the Roman Religion to Christianity.

The idea of Rome is law, that of Christianity is love. In Roman worship
law took the form of iron rules; in Roman theology it appeared as a stern
fate; in both as a slavery. Christianity came as freedom, in a worship
free from forms, in a view of God which left freedom to man. Christianity
came to the Roman world, not as a new theory, but as a new life. As,
during the early spring, the power of the returning sun penetrates the
soil, silently touching the springs of life; so Christianity during two
hundred years moved silently in the heart of Roman society, creating a new
faith, hope, and love. And as, at last, in the spring the grass shoots,
the buds open, the leaves appear, the flowers bloom; so, at last,
Christianity, long working in silence and shadow, suddenly became
apparent, and showed that it had been transforming the whole tone and
temper of Roman civilization.

But wherever there is action there is also reaction, and no power or force
can wholly escape this law. So Roman thought, acted on by Christianity,
reacted and modified in many respects the Gospel. Not always in a bad way,
sometimes it helped its developments. For the Providence which made the
Gospel for the Romans made the Romans for the Gospel.

The great legacy bequeathed to mankind by ancient Rome was law. Other
nations, it is true, had codes of law, like the Institutes of Manu in
India, or the jurisprudence of Solon and the enactments of Lycurgus. But
Roman law from the beginning was sanctified by the conviction that it was
founded on justice, and not merely on expediency or prudence. In
submitting to the laws, even when they were cruel and oppressive, the
Roman was obeying, not force, but conscience. The view which Plato gave as
an ideal in Crito was realized in Roman society from the first. Consider
the cruel enactments which made the debtors the slaves of the creditor,
and the fact that when the plebeians were ground to the earth by that
oppression, they did not attempt to resist the law, but in their despair