the red tongues of
cruel death to creep about their smoking bodies.

Men who believed that the Bible's influence was what infidelity says
it is, made the funeral pyre for Polycarp, the populace bringing fuel
for the fire, and while the flames made a glory of their lambent
glare, he cried out: "Six and eighty years have I served him and he
has done me nothing but good, and how could I curse him, my Lord
and Savior. If you would know what I am, I tell you frankly, I am a
Christian." He did his own thinking, and was brave enough to avow his
opinion, for which hate of Christianity duly burned him. This was the
way infidelity treated free speech. In that way it unchained the soul
of Polycarp. Infidelity's idea of Christianity sent the martyrs of
Numidia and Paulus out of the world while they were praying for their
murderers. Who believed in freedom then? Infidelity's idea of the
message of the Bible followed the Christian like a wild beast, and
in the catacomb of Calixtus drew from the pursued soul the pathetic
exclamation: "Oh, sorrowful times, when we can not even in caves
escape our foes!" And all this was true, because they said,
"Recompense to no man evil for evil"; "Pray for them that despitefully
use you and persecute you."

This spirit of hate has had at least one holiday at the expense of
Christian faith. On the night of the 18th of July, 64, Rome was swept
with fire. Six days and nights it raged. Ruined was the world's
metropolis and excited were the wo-stricken people. Nero, whose
opinions of Christianity, by the way, were wonderfully like the
orator's, was king, and the people suspected that this royal monster
did it. Men told of how he exulted over the sea of flame as he watched
it from the tower of Maecenas; and whatever the truth of this may be,
it is certain that for the rage of the people Nero must have a victim,
and Tacitus tells us that he charged the Christians with the crime.
Then opened in Rome the awful carnival of bloodshed that the orator
never mentions, in which horrible modes of torture and excruciating
methods of producing pain vied with each other in satisfying the
demands of death. Women bound to raging bulls and dragged to death
were not without the companionship of others who, in the evening, in
Nero's garden, were coated with pitch, covered with tar, bound to
stakes of pine, lighted with fire, and sent to run aflame with the
hatred of Christianity. Through the crowd of sufferers a gentlema