Everywhere the
Christians were distinguished for their charity and general moral
excellence. But the Jews hated them, and drove them away; the Heathens
hated them, and put many to death with dreadful tortures; all the
magistrates were hostile. But when the common people saw a man or a
woman come out and die rather than be false to a religious emotion or
idea, there were always some who said, "That is a strange thing,--a man
dying for his God. There must be something in that religion! Let us
also become Christians." So the new doctrine spread wide; not the simple
religion of Jesus,--piety and morality; but what his followers called
Christianity,--a mixture of good and evil. In two or three hundred years
it had gone round the civilized world. Other forms of religion fell to
pieces, one by one. Judaism went down with the Hebrew people, Heathenism
went down, and Christianity took heir place. The son of Joseph and Mary,
born in a stable, and killed by the Jews, was worshipped as the ONLY GOD
all round the civilized world. The new form of religion spread very
much as SPIRITUALISM has done in our time, only in the midst of worse
persecution than the Mormons have suffered.
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