A “otory 6" Ramt. 
be so.’ Into this result the Roman ideas of Duty and Law had 
stiffened at last.”? In such a creed there was nothing to attract 
the ordinary weakness of human nature, and human nature, at 
the time when Christianity had begun to work its way, was more 
than usually weak and helpless. “The world was sick at heart. 
The spiritual horizon was overspread with a gray monotony of 
despair. Men could not even curse God and die, for they had 
no gods to curse. The prevailing schools of philosophy, the 
Stoics, Epicure’ans, and Academicians, though opposed to one 
another, arrived at the same result—an utter indifference to 
actual life and a future state, and a profound resignation to the 
gloomy fate which weighed down the universe. 
9. “In the midst of this darkness, a still small voice was heard 
introduction Out of the East, ‘Come unto me all ye that travail 
„..9f and are heavy laden and I will give you rest;’ and 
“hristianity, after a while the same voice was heard saying, ‘God 
so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, to the 
end that all who believe in Him should not perish, but have 
everlasting life;’ and again, a Roman citizen of Tarsus cried, 
“This is a true saying, and worthy of all men to be believed, 
that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners.” There 
was rest, then, for the weary and heavy laden; there was a God, 
too, and life everlasting, for those who believed in Him and in 
His Son, who had come into the world to save sinners, and so 
the new doctrine came to Rome, In that sluggish mass the 
leaven was hid that was to throw the whole world into ferment; 
into that dark soil, in which so much that was precious had 
been interred, a grain of seed was cast that was to grow into a 
stately tree overshadowing the earth. 
10. “The doctrine spread at first, as we may readily suppose, 
Spreadof among slaves, whose weary lot was consoled with 
Christianity. the thought that the Founder of their creed had ex- 
pired on the bitter cross reserved for them; then gradually it 
made its way among other classes, but especially the Asian 
Greeks and other foreigners, with whom Rome was filled, until, 
after much persecution and many relapses, it reached the 
highest class of all, and Christianity became the religion of the 
land,”? Apart from supernatural workings, Christianity suc- 
ceeded because it was suited to man’s needs, and especially to 
the particular needs of the time when it appeared. "The age 
was in search of a religion, because it was an age of servitude, 
"7 W” Robertson.—Sermons. ? Essays from the 77%mes newspaper.