Walter M. Chandler

“ The trial of Socrates before the dicastery of Athens, charged with corrupting Athenian youth, with blaspheming the Olympic gods, and with seeking to destroy the constitution of the Attic Republic, is still a sublime and thrilling chapter in the history of a wonderful people, among the ruins and wrecks of whose genius the modern world still wanders to contemplate, admire, and study the pride of every master and the perfection of every model. ”

“ He knows that, in the infancy of civilization, when our island was as savage as New Guinea, when letters and art were still unknown to Athens, when scarcely a thatched hut stood on what was afterwards the site of Rome, this contemned people had their fenced cities and cedar palaces, their splendid Temple, their fleets of merchant ships, their schools of sacred learning, their great statesmen and soldiers, their natural philosophers, their historians and their poets.
What nation ever contended more manfully against overwhelming odds for its independence and religion? ”

“ And the same spirit of generous criticism is everywhere displayed in matters of profane literature. The opponents of Christianity are never embarrassed in excusing or explaining away omissions or contradictions, provided the writer is a layman and his subject secular. But let the theme be a sacred one, and the author an ecclesiastic—preacher, priest, or prophet—and immediately incredulity rises to high tide, engulfs the reason, and destroys all dispassionate criticism. ”

“ It also seems that, at a time antedating the early Romans, Etruscans and Sabines, a primitive race inhabited the plains of Northern Italy, "to whom the cross was a religious symbol, the sign beneath which they laid their dead to rest; a people of whom history tells nothing, knowing not their name; but of whom antiquarian research has learned this, that they lived in ignorance of the arts of civilization, that they dwelt in villages built on platforms over lakes, and that they trusted to the cross to guard, and maybe to revive, their loved ones whom they committed to the dust." ”

“ A sense of awful responsibility weighed upon the hearts and consciences of the judges. The services of the synagogue were not conducted with deeper fervor or greater religious solemnity than were the proceedings of a capital trial in the great Judgment Hall of the Sanhedrin. Certain sacred maxims flamed forever like beacon lights along the pathway of the members of the court during the solemn deliberations. "A judge," says the Talmud, "should always consider that a sword threatens him from above, and destruction yawns at his feet." ”

“ If it was high treason to refuse to believe in the deification of an emperor or an empress, what other crime could be imputed to him whose design was to destroy an entire religious system, and to pile all the gods and goddesses—Juno and Poppæa, Jupiter and Augustus—in common ruin? ”

“ What could, then, be more terrific than the hatred of such a character for an unlettered Galilean who descended from the mountains of His native province to rebuke and instruct the "divine aristocrats" in religious matters and heavenly affairs? Imagine his rage and chagrin when he heard these words: "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and all uncleanness.... Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! ”

“ While alone with Jesus in the palace, he must have reasoned thus with himself, silently and contemptuously: The mob outside tells me that this man is Rome's enemy. Foolish thought! We know who Cæsar's enemies are. We have seen and heard and felt the enemies of Rome—barbarians from beyond the Danube and the Rhine—great strong men, who can drive a javelin not only through a man, but a horse, as well. These are Cæsar's enemies. This strange and melancholy man, whose subjects are mere abstract truths, and whose kingdom is beyond the skies, can be no enemy of Cæsar. ”

“ God's sovereign miracle may be described as the changing of a man, with all his sins and imperfections, into a winged spirit, thus fitting him to leave the coarse and vulgar earth for life among the stars. Nature, in her feeble way, tries to imitate the wonder by transforming the caterpillar into a butterfly, thus fitting it to leave the dunghill for life among the flowers. ”

“ Roman Skepticism.—Of contempt of the gods, which was due to many causes, skepticism was born. The deities of every race had been brought to Rome and placed in the pantheon; and there, gazing into each other's faces, had destroyed each other. The multiplicity of the gods was the chief agency in the destruction of the Roman faith and ritual. The yoke and burden of endless ceremonials had been borne for centuries and were now producing intolerable irritation and nauseating disgust. ”

“ Græco-Roman Social Depravity, Born of Religion and Traceable to the Gods.—The modern mind identifies true religion with perfect purity of heart and with boundless love. "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you" is the leading aphorism of both the Hebrew and Christian faiths. The Sermon on the Mount is the chart of the soul on the sea of life; and its beatitudes are the glorifications of the virtues of meekness, mercy, and peace. To the mind imbued with the divine precepts of the Savior, it seems incredible that religion should have ever been the direct source of crime and sin. ”

“ The principle of law which rejects a bare confession of guilt as a basis of criminal conviction is one of the most merciful and benign known to jurisprudence. It is intended to protect the commonwealth against perjury and deception on the part of the accused. It is also intended to protect the prisoner against ignorance and rashness. It is a well-known fact that the masses of mankind are ignorant of law, both civil and criminal. Not one in a thousand in the most enlightened commonwealths can define successfully the elements of the crimes of the state of which he is a citizen. ”

“ This quality of courage is peculiar to no race of men and to no form of civilization. It has existed everywhere and at all times. It causes the spirit of man to tread the earth like a lion and to mount the air like an eagle. The ancient barbarians of Gaul believed that lightning was a menace from the skies; and amidst the very fury of the storm, from their great bows they sent arrows heavenward as a defiance to the gods. ”

“ If the teachings of the Nazarene are a faithful portrayal and a truthful expression of all the verities of Heaven and earth, then Christianity has nothing to fear from the discoveries of Science, from Roman catacombs, Arabian hieroglyphics, the sands of Egypt, or the ruins of Nineveh and Babylon. Science is the High Priestess of Nature and Nature's oracles, and no single revelation of Science can disprove or contradict the simplest truth of Nature's God. ”

“ If this was the private life of the greatest Roman of the world, who, at the time of his death, was Pontifex Maximus, the supreme head of the Roman religion, what must have been the social life of the average citizen who delighted to style Cæsar the demigod while living and to worship him as divine, when dead? ”

“ Every serious, thoughtful mind at once inquires: Could bad men, conspirators and hypocrites, have painted such a character—one whose perfect purity and sinless beauty mock and shame the mental and spiritual attributes of every false prophet and of all heathen gods? The Olympian Zeus, the sovereign creation of the superb Greek intellect, was a fierce and vindictive deity—at times a faithless spouse and a drunken debauchee. ”

“ The presence of barbarians at the gate created not so much consternation and despair among the citizens of Rome, as did the news of the mutiny of the soldiers of Germanicus on the Rhine. What the legion was to the body, the law was to the soul of Rome—the highest expression of its sanctity and majesty. And when her physical body that once extended from Scotland to Judea, and from Dacia to Abyssinia was dead, in the year 476 A.D., her soul rose triumphant in her laws and established a second Roman Empire over the minds and consciences of men. ”

“ Among the earliest traditions of the Fathers, we read this maxim: "When a judge decides not according to truth, he makes the majesty of God to depart from Israel. But if he judges according to the truth, were it only for one hour, it is as if he established the whole world, for it is in judgment that the divine presence in Israel has its habitation." Hebrew horror of capital punishment and dread of taking human life are well expressed in the celebrated maxim of the Mishna: "The Sanhedrin, which so often as once in seven years, condemns a man to death, is a slaughter-house." ”

“ Seest thou yon sea, yon river, yon well; freedom sits there in the depths. Seest thou yon low withered tree; there freedom hangs. Seest thou thy neck, thy throat, thy heart; they are the ways of escape from bondage.
And the Roman philosopher was not only conscientious but consistent in his teachings. He was heroic enough to take the medicine himself which he had prescribed for others. Indeed, he took a double dose; for he not only swallowed poison, but also opened his veins, and thus committed suicide, as other Stoics—such as Zeno, Cleanthes and Cato—had done before him. ”

“ If a midnight assassin should stealthily creep into the room of a sleeping man and shoot him to death, a judge would not be legally justified in instructing the jury, at the close of the people's case, to bring in a verdict of guilty, on the ground that nothing that the defendant could prove would help his case. However weak and ridiculous his defense, the prisoner should at least be heard ”