Aurelian | Page 9

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 one who, if he may indulge his own feelings in his own way, is not unwilling to concede to others the same freedom.
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As I was writing these last sentences, I became conscious of a voice muttering in low tones, as if discoursing with itself, and upon no very agreeable theme. I heeded it not at