is not only rare, but nowhere."^84 Thus far the negative. On the other hand, the universal empire of
Rome was a positive groundwork for the universal empire of the gospel. It served as a crucible, in
which all contradictory and irreconcilable peculiarities of the ancient nations and religions were
dissolved into the chaos of a new creation. The Roman legions razed the partition-walls among the
ancient nations, brought the extremes of the civilized world together in free intercourse, and united
north and south and east and west in the bonds of a common language and culture, of common laws
and customs. Thus they evidently, though unconsciously, opened the way for the rapid and general
spread of that religion which unites all nations in one family of God by the spiritual bond of faith
and love.
The idea of a common humanity, which underlies all the distinctions of race, society and
education, began to dawn in the heathen mind, and found expression in the famous line of Terentius,
which was received with applause in the theatre:
"Homo sum: humani nihil a me alienum puto."
This spirit of humanity breathes in Cicero and Virgil. Hence the veneration paid to the poet
of the Aeneid by the fathers and throughout the middle ages. Augustine calls him the noblest of
poets, and Dante, "the glory and light of other poets," and "his master," who guided him through
the regions of hell and purgatory to the very gates of Paradise. It was believed that in his fourth
Eclogue he had prophesied the advent of Christ. This interpretation is erroneous; but "there is in
Virgil," says an accomplished scholar,^85 "a vein of thought and sentiment more devout, more humane,
more akin to the Christian than is to be found in any other ancient poet, whether Greek or Roman.
He was a spirit prepared and waiting, though he knew it not, for some better thing to be revealed."
The civil laws and institutions, also, and the great administrative wisdom of Rome did much
for the outward organization of the Christian church. As the Greek church rose on the basis of the
Grecian nationality, so the Latin church rose on that of ancient Rome, and reproduced in higher
forms both its virtues and its defects. Roman Catholicism is pagan Rome baptized, a Christian
reproduction of the universal empire seated of old in the city of the seven hills.§ 13. Judaism and Heathenism in Contact.
The Roman empire, though directly establishing no more than an outward political union, still
promoted indirectly a mutual intellectual and moral approach of the hostile religious of the Jews
and Gentiles, who were to be reconciled in one divine brotherhood by the supernatural power of
the cross of Christ.- The Jews, since the Babylonish captivity, had been scattered over all the world. They
were as ubiquitous in the Roman empire in the first century as they are now throughout, Christendom.
According to Josephus and Strabo, there was no country where they did not make up a part of the
population.^86 Among the witnesses of the miracle of Pentecost were "Jews from every nation under
(^84) De Ira, II. 8.
(^85) Principal Shairp, in an article on "Virgil as a Precursor of Christianity," in the "Princeton Review" for Sept., 1879, pp.
403-420. Comp. the learned essay of Professor Piper, in Berlin, on "Virgil als Theologe und Prophet," in his "Evang. Kalender"
for 1862.
(^86) Jos., Bell. Jud., VII. c. 3, § 3: "As the Jewish nation is widely dispersed over all the habitable earth," etc. Antiqu., XIV. 7,
2: "Let no one wonder that there was so much wealth in our temple, since all the Jews throughout the habitable earth, and those
A.D. 1-100.