ation. Not in the name of the ancestors, of
the traditions, of ideals of political power, did he seek to persuade
men to work, to refrain from vice, to live honestly and simply; but
in the name of a single God, whom man had in the beginning offended
through his pride, in the name of the Son of God, who had taken human
form and volunteered to die as a criminal on the cross, to appease
the Father's wrath against the rebellious creature. On the Graeco-Roman
idea of duty, Paul grafted the Christian idea of sin. Doubtless the
new theology must have seemed at first obscure to Greeks and Romans;
but Paul put into it that new spirit, mutual love, which the dry Latin
soul had hardly ever known, and he vivified it with the example of an
obscure life of sacrifice.

Paul was born of a noble Hebrew family of Tarsus, and was a man of
high culture. He had, to use a modern expression, simplified himself,
renounced his position in a time when few could resist the passion for
luxury, and taken up a trade for his living; with the scanty profit
from his work as a tent-maker, alone and on foot he made measureless
journeys through the Empire, everywhere preaching the redemption of
man. Finally, after numberless adventures and perils, he had come to
Rome and had, in the great city frenzied by the delirium of luxury and
pleasure, repeated to the poor, who alone were willing to hear him:
"Be chaste and pure, do not deceive each other, love one another, help
one another, love God."

If Nero had known the little society of pious idealists, he surely
would have hated it, but for other motives than the imaginary
accusations of his police. In this story St. Paul is exactly the
antithesis of Nero. The latter represents the atrocious selfishness of
rich, peaceful, highly civilised epochs; the former, the ardent moral
idealism which tries to react against the cardinal vices of power and
wealth through universal self-sacrifice and asceticism. Neither of
these men is to be comprehended without the other, because the moral
doctrine of Paul is partly a reaction against, the violent folly for
which Nero stood the symbol; but it certainly was not philosophical
considerations of this kind that led the Roman authorities to rage
against the Christians. The problem, I repeat, is insoluble. However
this may be, the Christians were declared responsible for the fire; a
great number were taken into custody, sentenced to death, executed in
different ways, during th