[1] Eternal Atonement, p. 11.

GENIUS, AND THE DEBT OF STRENGTH.

“Paul says:  ‘I am a debtor.’  But what had he received from the Greeks that he was bound to pay back?  Was he a disciple of their philosophy?  He was not.  Had he received from their bounty in the matter of art?  No.  One of the most striking things in history is the fact that Paul abode in Athens and wrote about it, without having any impression made upon his imaginative mind, apparently, by its statues, its pictures or its temples.  The most gorgeous period of Grecian art poured its light on his path, and he never mentioned it.  The New Testament is as dead to art-beauty as though it had been written by a hermit in an Egyptian pyramid who had never seen the light of sun.  Then what did he owe the Greeks?  Not philosophy, not art, and certainly not religion, which was fetichism.  Not a debt of literature, nor of art, nor of civil polity; not a debt of pecuniary obligation; not an ordinary debt.  He had nothing from all these outside sources.  The whole barbaric world was without the true knowledge of God.  He had that knowledge and he owed it to every man who had it not.  All the civilized world was, in these respects, without the true inspiration; and he owed it to them simply because they did not have it; and his debt to them was founded on this law of benevolence of which I have been speaking, which is to supersede selfishness, and according to which those who have are indebted to those who have not the world over.”—­Henry Ward Beecher.

CHAPTER V.

Genius, and the debt of strength.

Booksellers rank “Quo Vadis” as one of the most popular books of the day.  In that early era persecution was rife and cruelty relentless.  It was the time of Caligula, who mourned that the Roman people had not one neck, so that he could cut it off at a single blow; of Nero, whose evening garden parties were lighted by the forms of blazing Christians; of Vespasian, who sewed good men in skins of wild beasts to be worried to death by dogs.  In that day faith and death walked together.

Fulfilling such dangers, the disciples came together secretly at midnight.  But the spy was abroad, and despite all precautions, from time to time brutal soldiers discovered the place of meeting, and, bursting in, dragged the worshipers off to prison.  Then a cruel stratagem was adopted that looked to the discovery of those who secretly cherished faith.  A decree went forth forbidding the jailer to furnish food, making the prisoners ‘dependent’ upon friends without.