es are the price of
her conquests: she can neither abdicate nor dispossess herself."
Thus Rome had the facts and the law on her side. Her pretensions were
justified by universal custom and the law of nations. Her institutions
were based upon idolatry in religion, slavery in the State, and
epicurism in private life; to touch those was to shake society to its
foundations, and, to use our modern expression, to open the abyss of
revolutions. So the idea occurred to no one; and yet humanity was dying
in blood and luxury.

All at once a man appeared, calling himself The Word of God. It is not
known to this day who he was, whence he came, nor what suggested to
him his ideas. He went about proclaiming everywhere that the end of the
existing society was at hand, that the world was about to experience a
new birth; that the priests were vipers, the lawyers ignoramuses,
and the philosophers hypocrites and liars; that master and slave
were equals, that usury and every thing akin to it was robbery, that
proprietors and idlers would one day burn, while the poor and pure in
heart would find a haven of peace.

This man--The Word of God--was denounced and arrested as a public enemy
by the priests and the lawyers, who well understood how to induce the
people to demand his death. But this judicial murder, though it put the
finishing stroke to their crimes, did not destroy the doctrinal seeds
which The Word of God had sown. After his death, his original disciples
travelled about in all directions, preaching what they called the GOOD
NEWS, creating in their turn millions of missionaries; and, when their
task seemed to be accomplished, dying by the sword of Roman justice.
This persistent agitation, the war of the executioners and martyrs,
lasted nearly three centuries, ending in the conversion of the world.
Idolatry was destroyed, slavery abolished, dissolution made room for a
more austere morality, and the contempt for wealth was sometimes pushed
almost to privation.

Society was saved by the negation of its own principles, by a revolution
in its religion, and by violation of its most sacred rights. In this
revolution, the idea of justice spread to an extent that had not before
been dreamed of, never to return to its original limits. Heretofore
justice had existed only for the masters; [7] it then commenced to exist
for the slaves.

Nevertheless, the new religion at that time had borne by no means all
its fruits. There was a perceptible