OCR Text |
Show CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHS Its Suppression Impossible. Intollerant i Edict. Dollinger's Testimony. Deter mined Efforts to Wipe Out Christianity. ,j Conspiracy Against God, Truth and I : Justice. Persecutions Prove Her Vi- ' vitality. vi-tality. Failure Would Mean Failure of , it Christ's Mission. Error Cannot Sur- j : J vive Persecution. Poor Soldiers of tha i ;j Cross. Paganism, Fighting Christianity l j at Zenith of Its Power. 3 -.!.' t ",- . (Written for The Intermountain Catholic.) ', The early Christian Church, persecuted by pa ' ! gan Rome and defended by pagan converts, wal j ' .: victorious in the bloody battles which raged from ( '! X'ero to Diocletian. When the persecutions raged j 't -, fiercest, Christianity was steadily gaining ground.. When Diocletian, through the powerful influencw ; j Galorius Caesar, issued his awful edict, tha ;;! pagan world was expecting that the last sad ritei ; ; ;i would soon be paid to Christian belief, and thatri V j as a religion, it would be buried in oblivion. It! ' " funeral knell was tolled, thought the pagan world, when the infamous edict was published in tha '; j year 303. Mark the intolerance and cruelty of , j : the pagan emperor in every worth "All Chris ' . j tians, without exception, are to be stripped ofj j 't their honors; no rank, no position will serve a J , ; a protection against torture; all persons are atj .: liberty to bring actions against them, but they' ' (Christians) can not bring an action againsC; ; . anyone, however, great the injustice of which theyi j . may have to complain; churches are to bo de-1 i : v j stroyed, ecclesiastical property confiscated, reli-J ' . . ' gious books burnt; Christians are to be allowed ! ;;; no liberty and no voice in public matters." Thaj j j : decree was put in force at the beginning of tha. . . j yedr 304, and for seven years the earth was! ' ' J drenched with Christian blood. Referring to thlal , ; i ! period of church history, Doctor Dollinger wrote jj i "It is impossible to depict the atrocious emulation. . ; of the persecutors in the invention and application j-- .... j of infernal tortures; the words of Lactantiua 8 ' too weak to describe it when he says, 'A voice of: w groaning was heard over the whole earth, which , j from the east to the west (with the exception of: 1 " Gaul). was devastated by the fury of three fero-j ' ,! cious beasts Diocletian, Maximianus and ; . v Galerius." So confident were the pagans, sup- i ported and backed by all the power of the Empirv; i ) ' of final victory, that they ordered medals struck f ': : ! off with the inscriptions: "The name of Christian, ' v' is destroyed, the Christian superstition is every- j I j where abolished, and the worship of the gods prop- ,. 1. agated." Study the results. How vain all human j greatness, power and majesty when directed against' ! God. The church may bleed and suffer, but defeat' ' ..j never. Her very existence rested on a di- : , vine principle, truth, God himself, the Rock of i Ages, against which all human conspiracy or any- ! , ' thing created will rage and beat in vain. "On ! , ; this rock I will build my church, and the gates of - . j' hell shall not prevail against it." By her consti- i 1 ; tution and the very law of her existence, the Chris- I ' ' ; tian Church was bound to prevail against her ene- 1 , . mies. Otherwise the divine and human, the super- .: . ; natural and natural are mere words to be played , ' if on to deceive mankind. She was not built on any ' individual, nor upon the state, nor the people, s i .' but upon divine truth and between truth and error, J ' i whilst there can be no compromise, truth is bound ,' '' to prevail. Herod and Pilate, Nero and his sue- j ' cessors, conspired for her destruction, but in vain, ! because their conspiracy was directed against some- , ' thing real and all reality is indestructible. Tho j ! I more they tried to efface her or overthrow her, the ! stronger she grew and the more courageous be- i came her martyred heroes, because she was founded 1 in the truth and reality of things, on the divinity i j j of Christ, or the unalterable will of God, in whom i I I all creatures have their principle live, move and j ' . have their being. ; Failure of the church to fulfill the mission. f; j given her would mean a failure of Christianity. ? ; j From this it would logically follow that Chrit j . j was not equal to the task which he undertook. On i ; I the supposition that Christ was the Son of God, j ; .'. I the fountain of truth, there must have been al- ; I ' ways a true church somewhere, for that church ! , is as indefectible as Christ is indefectible. This j was clearly established in its vigorous and success- ,: t! ; I ful contest with the Roman empire. ; if No false or natural religion could have sur- ' ' vived the long contest and severe persecutions that ' 1 j I Christianity endured during the first three cen- f !: : f turies of the Christian era. Bleeding and tor- J ';. ' t tured, it vanquishes an implacable foe. Its vie- - . tory was a peaceable one. The very fact that it 1 1 thrived when subjected to the most violent pere- ! cution is a proof of its truth and divinity. Grant- i 1 U ing that the blood of the martyrs was the seed ! j ' of the church, it is yet true that persecution is r j victorious only when it grapples with error, when '; ; it meets truth, that is. God, as a resisting power, r 1 1 never. Whilst superstition may have a powerful : hold, and fanaticism a tenacious grasp on the . minds of the people, yet it is historically evident !j ; j that in the face qf persecution these two elements j , never increased or multiplied the members of a 3 " false religion- or aided the growth of the false 2 . j creed. Against truth alone the gates of hell can ; ! not prevail, because it never succumbs. It is not , . ! enough to possess truth to withstand the terrors 4 ' of persecution. One must live up to its teachings, j that is, practice what they believe. They, who are j , allied with the world and yield to its spirit, are 1 j poor soldiers of the cross, when they face persecu- 1 tion for Christ's sake. Some allege that persecu- j tion is unable to extinguish any creed, be it true Continued on Page 5. i ' ' I N j :- : CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHS. (Continued From Page 1.) or false. History proves the contrary. Hence the very fact that Christianity, instead of being wiped out by the violent heathen persecutions .flourished and gained power and strength is a strong argument argu-ment in favor of its truth and supernatural aid. One thing certain is that "the gates of hell did not prevail against it." Some, to discredit the victory gained by Christianity, Chris-tianity, allege that paganism was in the wane and disproved by many of its philosophers when Christianity Chris-tianity was first preached. This is a grave error. There may be individuals, as there have been in every age, who were indifferent, or skeptical, but never had the pagan superstition a stronger and more tenacious hold on the great masses of the people in Rome and the western provinces than in the two first centuries. The government had , changed from a republic to an empire. It was 1 more powerful than at any epoch in its previous history. No Roman citizen was allowed to ignore or deny the state religibu. Vanquished provinces were permitted by the senate to place the images of their national deities side by side with the Roman Ro-man gods to be worshipped, but no one was allowed al-lowed to repudiate the state religion. A determined deter-mined effort was made to Romanize all conquered nations, a policy always adopted by England in her conquests, and by the United States in her newly acquired territories. This policy was adopted adopt-ed by the pagan emperors, and the first sign of the dissolution of the empire did not appear till the close of the third century. Paganism and the state were indissoluble, so. much so, that the pagans pa-gans attributed the decline and fall of the Roman Empire to the progress of Christianity. One undeniable un-deniable historical fact is that in proportion to the progress of Christianity, the growth and influence in-fluence paganism were in the wane, and that heathen temples consecrated by usage and covered cov-ered with the dust of ages crumbled and disappeared disap-peared as Christianity advanced. In the fierce struggle between paganism and Christianity, the former never relented in their cruelties. Even Trajan, who prevented the officers from hunting them, issued an edict that any person, accused and convicted of being a Christain, should be put to death. Notwithstanding the long and fierce conflict in which paganism fought valiantly, yet it stands out as a historical fact that a few illiterate fishermen fisher-men from the lake of Genesareth, belonging by race to the despised nation of the Jews, changed not only the creed, but the moral life of the whole Roman people. Then they had some secret power which the pagans did not have. What was it i The supernatural, and against that, "the gates of hell could not prevail." F. D. |