Walter M. Chandler

“ No period of human history is so marked by lust and licentiousness as the history of Rome at the beginning of the Christian era. The Roman religion had fallen into contempt. The family instinct was dead, and the marital relation was a mockery and a shame. The humane spirit had vanished from Roman hearts, and slavery was the curse of every province of the empire. The destruction of infants and the gladiatorial games were mere epitomes of Roman brutality and degeneracy. Barbarity, corruption and dissoluteness pervaded every form of Roman life. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The statue of Ganymede at the side of Zeus was a perpetual reminder to the youth of Athens of the originator of the loathsome custom of paiderastia. The paintings of Leda and the swan, of the courtship of Dionysus and Ariadne, of the naked Aphrodite ensnared and caught in the net with Ares that adorned the walls and ceilings of Greek and Roman homes, were not too well calculated to inspire pure and virtuous thoughts in the minds and hearts of tender youths and modest maidens who looked upon and contemplated them. ”

“ If the sacred spirit of the Hebrew law has illuminated the conscience of the world in every age, it must not be forgotten that "the written reason of the Roman law has been silently and studiously transfused" into all our modern legal and political life. The Roman judicial system is incomparable in the history of jurisprudence. Judea gave religion, Greece gave letters, and Rome gave laws to mankind. ”

“ 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? ”

“ How could a religion, so poverty-stricken of thought, with its troops of phantom gods, beingless shadows and deified abstractions, remain unscathed and unaltered when it came in contact with the profusion of the Greek religion, with its circle of gods, so full of life, so thoroughly anthropomorphised, so deeply interwoven into everything human?" [135]
Not only from Greece but from every conquered country, strange gods were brought into Italy and placed in the Roman pantheon. ”

“ The masterpieces of the Greek artists have been the astonishment and despair of all succeeding ages; and the triumphs of modern art have been but poor imitations of the models of the first masters. But it is, nevertheless, true that the embodiment in marble of certain obscene myths was destructive of ancient morals. The paintings in the temples and houses of the cities of Greece and Italy were a constant menace to the mental purity of those who gazed upon them. ”

“ Let no persecutor of the Jew lay the unction to his soul that he is justified by the tragedy of Golgotha; for he who persecutes in the name of religion is a spiritual barbarian, an intellectual savage. Let this same persecutor not make the mistake of supposing that the Jews are wholly responsible for the persecution that has been heaped upon them. Before he falls into the foolish blunder of such a supposition, let him ponder the testimony of several Gentile experts upon the subject. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Where shall created beings find rest if you suppose that shades in hell and souls in heaven continue to have any feeling? You rob us of man's greatest good—death. Let us rather find in the tranquillity which preceded our existence the pledge of the repose which is to follow it.
When skepticism had destroyed their faith in the gods, and had robbed them of the consolations of religion, educated Romans sought refuge and solace in Greek philosophy. Stoicism and Epicureanism were the dominant spiritual and intellectual forces of the Roman empire at the time of Christ. ”

“ Christ's over their souls. The strength of Cæsar's kingdom was in citadels, armies, navies, the towering Alps, the all-engirdling seas. The strength of the kingdom of the Christ was and is and will ever be in sentiments, principles, ideas, and the saving power of a divine word. But, as clever and brilliant as he must have been, Pilate could not grasp the true meaning of the words of the Prophet. The spiritual and intellectual grandeur of the Galilean peasant was beyond the reach of the Roman lord and governor. In a cynical and sarcastic mood, Pilate turned to Jesus and asked: "What is truth?" ”

“ 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? ”

“ Herod Antipas, Tetrarch of Galilee, was the man before whom Jesus, his subject, was now led to be judged. The pages of sacred history mention the name of no more shallow and contemptible character than this petty princeling, this dissolute Idumæan Sadducee. Compared with him, Judas is eminently respectable. Judas had a conscience which, when smitten with remorse, drove him to suicide. It is doubtful whether Herod had a spark of that celestial fire which we call conscience. He was a typical Oriental prince whose chief aim in life was the gratification of his passions. ”

“ In the face of such low morality, avowed by the least to be suspected of our own nation, is it possible to restrain one's indignation against those who sat at the trial of Christ as members of the chamber of priests? This indignation becomes yet more intense when one remembers that an ambitious hypocrisy, having for its aim the domineering over the people, had perverted the law of Moses in these men. The majority of the priests belonged, in fact, to the Pharisaic order, the members of which sect made religion subservient to their personal ambition ”

“ 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. ”

“ Romans, to no former assembly was this solemn supplication to the gods more suitable or even more necessary: as it serves to remind you, that these are the deities whom your forefathers pointed out as the objects of your worship, veneration and prayers: and not those which infatuated men's minds with corrupt and foreign modes of religion, and drove them, as if goaded by the furies, to every lust and every vice. ”

“ A splendid example this, the conduct of Pilate, for the youth of the world, not to imitate but to shun! Let the young men of America and of all the earth remember 91that a crisis is allotted to every life. It may be a great one or a small one, but it will come either invited or unbidden. The sublime courage of the soul does not avoid, but seeks this crisis. The bravest and most holy aspirations leap at times like angels from the temple of the brain to the highest heaven. ”

“ There is certainly no place for religious intolerance and race prejudice beneath our flag. Fake and hypocritical our religion, if while professing faith in Jesus we continue to persecute those for whom He prayed! In vain did Washington, marching in Liberty's vanguard, "lead Freedom's eaglets to their feast" ”

“ Believing this, he went out to the rabble and pronounced a verdict of acquittal: "I find in him no fault at all."
Pilate had tried and acquitted Jesus. Why did he not release Him, and, if need be, protect Him with his cohort from the assaults of the Jews? Mankind has asked for nearly two thousand years why a Roman, with the blood of a Roman in him, with the glorious prestige and stern authority of the Roman empire at his back, with a Roman legion at his command, did not have the courage to do the high Roman act. Pilate was a moral and intellectual coward of arrant type. ”

“ Coming back from antiquity and the Greeks to modern times in America, let us express the hope that all forms of race prejudice and persecution will soon cease forever. It is a truth well known of all intelligent men that racial prejudice against the Jew has not completely vanished from the minds and hearts of Gentiles; that political freedom in an enlightened age has not brought with it full religious tolerance and social recognition; that the Jew enjoys the freedom of the letter, but is still under the ban of the spirit. It is not necessary to go to Russia to prove this contention. ”

“ If the Roman masters maltreated and destroyed the bodies of their slaves, the slaves retaliated by corrupting and destroying the morals of their masters. The institution of slavery was one of the most potent agencies in the demoralization of ancient Roman manners. The education of children was generally confided to the slaves, who did not fail to poison their minds and hearts in many ways. In debauching their female slaves, the Roman masters polluted their own morals and corrupted their own manhood. ”

“ There are seated the collective people and senate, consuls and consulars, while Venus, the mother of the Roman race, is danced to the life, and in shameless mimicry is represented as reveling through all the phases of meretricious lust. ”

“ But why a crime? Because the Roman religion, built upon polytheism, was an integral and inseparable part of the Roman State, and whatever menaced the life of the one, threatened the existence of the other. The Romans regarded their religion as "an engine of state which could not be shaken without the utmost danger to their civil government." Cicero further says: "The institutions of the fathers must be defended; it is the part of wisdom to hold fast the sacred rites and ceremonies." ”

“ To limit our inquiry to the moral characters of the judges alone, the issue of the trial can be but fatal to the accused; and so, when the three chambers constituting the Sanhedrin council had entered into session, we can well imagine that there was no hope for the acquittal of Jesus; for are not all the high priests, as well as the majority of the scribes and ancients, against him? ”

“ If the perpetrators of the great injustice of the Sanhedrin and of the Prætorium are to be forgiven because they knew not what they did, is there any justice, human or divine, in persecuting their innocent descendants of all lands and ages? ”

“ The human soul could not forever feed upon myths, however brilliant and bewitching. The mysterious and melancholy rites of Isis came to establish themselves by the side of those of Janus and Æsculapius. The somber qualities of the Egyptian worship seemed to commend it. Even so good and grand a man as Marcus Aurelius avowed himself an adorer of Serapis; and, during a sojourn in Egypt, he is reported to have conducted himself like an Egyptian citizen and philosopher while strolling through the temples and sacred groves on the banks of the Nile. ”

“ The Sixth Satire is a withering arraignment of Roman profligacy and wickedness. "To see the world in its worst estate," says Professor Jowett, "we turn to the age of the satirists and of Tacitus, when all the different streams of evil, coming from east, west, north, south, the vices of barbarism and the vices of civilization, remnants of ancient cults, and the latest refinements of luxury and impurity, met and mingled on the banks of the Tiber." ”

“ The elders and the chief priests and the Levites say to them: If you have come to offer prayer to God, why, then, have you told these idle tales in the presence of all the people? Says Phinees, the priest, and Adas, the teacher, and Haggai, the Levite, to the rulers of the synagogues, and the priests and the Levites: If what we have said and seen be sinful, behold, we are before you; do to us as seems good in your eyes. ”