argument they themselves must first be taken for
granted.

That is to say, here is this religion, certainly to any thoughtful man
the most wonderful thing, take it all in all, that history has to tell
about. It starts in an obscure corner of an obscure province. Its
founder dies as a felon among felons. Its teachers are stupid peasants,
fettered by a narrow dialect of an almost unknown tongue. Its whole
origin is barbarous, ignorant, disgraceful by any worldly judgment. So
it begins. As it spreads, imperial Rome takes alarm, and turns to crush
the barbarous fanaticism, in the pride of her learning, civilization,
and power. She plants her iron heel on the neck of the creeping sect.
She presses it down with her gigantic weight. Time passes. The little
sect that began in an obscure city of an obscure province, 'the number
of the names together being an hundred and twenty,' in less than three
centuries masters the world's crowned mistress, and plants its standard
in triumph, to remain forever, on the Seven Eternal Hills. Resistless
Rome is beaten to her knees, every national reverence, every national
divinity trampled on, and spit upon, and the barbarous and disgraceful
sect sets its ignominious mark, _the cross of the condemned slave_, on
every monument of Roman reverence, on every trophy of Roman greatness.

There never was such an utter conquest. A pure idea, without a material
hand or weapon, domineers over the greatest empire under the sun, in
spite of the whole power of that empire armed to crush it.

And, after Rome fell, the huge carcase beaten to the dust, and torn to
fragments by the wild creatures that hung upon her borders, this
wondrous mystery, this barbarous, obscure faith alone remained,
invincible among the powers of Rome. Roman civilization was crushed to
the earth, as the Roman legions were. Roman law was trampled out of
sight, as Roman art and literature were; but Christianity stood up and
faced the Vandal and the Goth, the Frank and Saxon, as it had faced the
Caesars before, and dragged the conquerors of the empire suppliants at
the feet of the church. It built a Christian Europe out of the savage
hordes of Asia, and made an England, and a Germany, and at last an
America out of wild Goth and Ungar, out of bloody Frank and savage Dane.

Now all this is simply _matter of fact_. My belief in Christianity does
not add one jot to these facts. My disbelief does not take one tittle
from them. So far as the