ring every day our hair, and feeding the sparrows, and
clothing the grass in the field--He is a greater warrant for our
patriotic justice than any of our exaggerated calculations and
sentiment about our country and our nation. Alas, no European nation has
right to blame the Jews because of their persecution of Christianity in
the name of their Patriotism. There exists no country in Europe which
has not at some time in the name of a false Patriotism either directly
persecuted or abased the Church, or at least subordinated her to the
cause of the country or put her in the service of its local and temporal
cause. The purest Christianity in the nineteenth century had a struggle
against patriotic and nationalistic exclusiveness not much less dramatic
than the primitive Church, struggling in Judasa against Judaism and in
Greece against Hellenism. The national hero-saints were exalted in
Europe over the merely Christian saints: in France, Jeanne d'Arc; in
Russia, Serge of Radonez; in Germany, Luther; among the Serbs, St Savva,
and St Peter of Cettinje.

Another enemy of the Church from the beginning was Imperialism. First of
all Roman Imperialism. Christ's second "crime," for which He was brought
before Pilate, was His disregard of Caesar. And Caesar was the symbol of
the Roman world-dominion. Therefore, one Caesar after the other did
their best to exterminate this dangerous Christian sect. Therefore,
among hundreds of religions only Christianity practically was prohibited
in the Roman Empire, as a religio illicita. No wonder! All other
religions which swarmed in Rome were tolerated as naive curiosities by
the people who had lost their own religion. But Christianity was marked
as an enemy from the first. Not only a corrupted Caesar, like Nero,
persecuted the Church, but the wise ones like Trajan and Diocletian, and
the wisest, like Marcus Aurelius. There were plenty of pretexts to
excite the public mind: burnings, earthquakes, diseases, etc. It was
Trajan who prohibited by an edict the Christian secret clubs, Hetoerias,
as dangerous to the State. And it was the philosopher Marcus Aurelius
who sentenced to death the Christian philosopher, Justin, on
Imperialistic grounds.

Rome was armed to the teeth and the Church had no arms at all except an
ardent belief and the inspired word. Rome drew the sword against the
unarmed Christians, and the Christians armed only with Jesus Christ, and
with empty hands, took the challenge. The en