owing if not to them?"

"How have they produced this?"

"By their detestable teachings and practices. They teach that fighting
is wrong, that soldiers are the basest of men, that our glorious
religion under which we have prospered is a curse, and that the immortal
gods are accursed demons. In their teachings they aim to overthrow all
morality. In their private practices they perform the darkest and
foulest crimes. They always keep by themselves in impenetrable secresy,
but sometimes we overhear their evil discourses and lewd songs."

"All this is indeed serious, and if true they deserve severe punishment.
But according to your own statement they keep by themselves, and but
little is known of them. Tell me, did those who suffered yesterday seem
like this? Did that old man look as though he had passed his life in
vicious scenes? Did those fair young girls sing lewd songs as they
waited for the lions?"

"'Unto Him that loved us;
To Him that washed us from our sins:'"

And Marcellus sang in a soft voice the words which he had heard.

"I confess, my friend, that I mourned for them."

"And I," said Marcellus, "could have wept had I not been a Roman
soldier. Consider for a moment. You tell me things about these
Christians which you confess only to have learned from those who
themselves are ignorant. You assert that they are infamous and base, the
offscouring of the earth. I see them confronted with a death that tries
the highest qualities of the soul. They meet it nobly. They die grandly.
In all her history Rome can produce no greater scene of devotion than
that of yesterday. You say they detest soldiers, yet they are brave; you
tell me that they are traitors, yet they do not resist the laws; you
declare that they are impure, yet if purity is on earth it belonged to
those maidens who died yesterday."

"You are enthusiastic for those outcasts."

"Not so, Lucullus. I wish to know the truth. All my life I have heard
these reports. But yesterday for the first time I suspected that they
might be false. I now question you earnestly, and I find that your
knowledge is based upon nothing. I now remember that throughout all the
world these Christians are peaceable and honest. They are engaged in no
riots or disturbances, and none of these crimes with which they are
charged can be proved against them. Why, then, should they die?"

"The emperor has good reasons no doubt for his course."

"He may be instigated by ignor