Aurelian | Page 9

But all the teaching I shall attempt will be
to narrate events as they occur, and state facts as they arise, and leave
them to make what impression they may.
When I just spoke of the sensation which my adoption of the Christian
system had caused in Rome, I did not mean to convey any idea like this,
that it has been rare for the intelligent and cultivated to attach
themselves to this despised religion. On the contrary, it would be true

were I to say, that they who accept Christianity, are distinguished for
their intelligence; that estimated as a class, they rank far above the
lowest. It is not the dregs of a people who become reformers of
philosophy or religion; who grow dissatisfied with ancient opinions
upon exalted subjects, and search about for better, and adopt them. The
processes involved in this change, in their very nature, require
intelligence, and imply a character of more than common elevation. It
is neither the lowest nor the highest who commence, and at first carry
on, a work like this; but those who fill the intermediate spaces. The
lowest are dead as brute matter to such interests; the highest--the rich,
the fashionable, the noble, from opposite causes just as dead; or if they
are alive at all, it is with the rage of denunciation and opposition. They
are supporters of the decent usages sanctioned by antiquity, and
consecrated by the veneration of a long line of the great and noble.
Whether they themselves believe in the system which they uphold or
not, they are equally tenacious of it. They would preserve and
perpetuate it, because it has satisfied, at any rate bound and overawed,
the multitude for ages: and the experiment of alteration or substitution
is too dangerous to be tried. Most indeed reason not, nor philosophize
at all, in the matter. The instinct that makes them Romans in their
worship of the power and greatness of Rome, and attachment to her
civil forms, makes them Romans in their religion, and will summon
them, if need be, to die for the one and the other.
Religion and philosophy have accordingly nothing to hope from this
quarter. It is those whom we may term the substantial middle classes,
who, being least hindered by prejudices and pride of order, on the one
hand, and incapacitated by ignorance on the other, have ever been the
earliest and best friends of progress in any science. Here you find the
retired scholar, the thoughtful and independent farmer, the skilful
mechanic, the enlightened merchant, the curious traveller, the
inquisitive philosopher--all fitted, beyond those of either extreme, for
exercising a sound judgment upon such questions, and all more
interested in them. It is out of these that Christianity has made its
converts. They are accordingly worthy of universal respect. I have
examined with diligence, and can say that there live not in Rome a
purer and more noble company than the Christians. When I say

however that it is out of these whom I have just specified, that
Christianity has made its converts, I do not mean to say out of them
exclusively. Some have joined them in the present age, as well as in
every age past, from the most elevated in rank and power. If in Nero's
palace, and among his chief ministers, there were Christians, if
Domitilla, Domitian's niece, was a Christian, if the emperor Philip was
a Christian, so now a few of the same rank may be counted, who
openly, and more who secretly, profess this religion. But they are very
few. So that you will not wonder that when the head of the ancient and
honorable house of the Pisos, the friend of Aurelian, and allied to the
royal family of Palmyra, declared himself to be of this persuasion, no
little commotion was observable in Rome--not so much among the
Christians as among the patricians, among the nobility, in the court and
palace of Aurelian. The love of many has grown cold, and the outward
tokens of respect are withheld. Brows darkened by the malignant
passions of the bigot are bent upon me as I pass along the streets, and
inquiries, full of scornful irony, are made after the welfare of my new
friends. The Emperor changes not his carriage toward me, nor, I believe,
his feelings. I think he is too tolerant of opinion, too much a man of the
world, to desire to curb and restrain the liberty of his friends in the
quarter of philosophy and religion. I know indeed on the other hand,
that he is religious in his way, to the extreme of superstition, but I have
observed no tokens as yet of any purpose or wish to interfere with the
belief or worship of others. He seems like