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tortures for the love of Christ. This spectacle, while it may have
served only to enrage a Nero and urge him on to even more Satanic
cruelty, could not be wholly lost upon the more thoughtful Marcus
Aurelius and others like him. It was impossible to resist the moral
force of so calm and resolute a surrender unto torture and death.
Moreover, an age which produced such relinquishment of earthly
possessions as was shown by men like Anthony and Ambrose, who were ready
to lay down the emoluments of high political position and distribute
their large fortunes for the relief of the poor; and such women as Paula
and others of high position, who were ready to sacrifice all for Christ
and retire into seclusion and voluntary poverty--an age which could
produce such characters and could show their steady perseverance unto
the end, could not fail to be an age of resistless moral power; and it
would be safe to say that no heathen system could long stand against the
sustained and persistent force of such influences. Were the Christian
Church of to-day moved by even a tithe of that high self-renunciation,
to say nothing of braving the fires of martyrdom, if it possessed in
even partial degree the same sacrifice of luxury and ease, and the same
consecration of effort and of influence, the conquest of benighted
nations would be easy and rapid.

The frugality of the early Christians, the simplicity of life which the
great body of the Church observed, and to which even wealthy converts
more or less conformed, was also, doubtless, a strong factor in the
great problem of winning the heathen to Christ. Probably in no age could
Christian simplicity find stronger contrasts than were presented by the
luxury and extravagance, the unbridled indulgence and profligacy, which
characterized the later periods of the Roman Empire. Universal conquest
of surrounding nations had brought untold wealth. The Government had
hastened the process of decay by lavish distribution to the people of
those resources which obviated the necessity of unremitting toil. It had
devoted large expenditures to popular amusements, and demagogues had
squandered the public funds for the purpose of securing their own
preferment. Over against the moral earnestness of the persecuted
Christian Church, there was in the nation itself and the heathenism
which belonged to it, an utter want of character or conviction. These
conditions of the conquest, as I have already indicated, do no