mation to the multitudes, of the coming of a kingdom of self-respect, a new order of society in which industrialism shall be glad and free because the world's workers shall be the world's owners, is hurting "vested interests. Therefore it tries persecution once more, and "entering into every house, and haling men and women, committed them to prison" - efforts to stamp out the fire which do but scatter the brands and spread the inflammatory work. It puts Stephen, one of the ringleaders, to death by stoning. Whereupon, "they which were scattered abroad upon the persecution that arose about Stephen travelled as far as Phenice, and Cyprus, and Antioch, preaching the word."

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One of the disciples, Philip, takes a decisive step. He transgresses the boundary between Jew and non-Jew. He goes to the city of Samaria, which is outside the pale of Judaism — had not The Carpenter expressly mentioned certain Samaritan" in eulogy? — and proclaims the "good news "there. His valorous example is contagious. Others of the fire-brand group went down there also and "preached the good news in many villages of the Samaritans." Worth noting, this. For if this liberation movement once reaches a point where it forgets Jewish lines and breaks loose among the proletariat of all countries, it will give Rome, inclined already to bad dreams because gorged with feeding, a nightmare that will be a nightmare indeed.

CHAPTER XII

ROME'S BLOOD LUST

THE new movement was known to its adherents as "The Way." This thing that was come into the world through The Carpenter was not a new philosophy or a new church or a new theology or a new religion. It was a new "Way." The purpose for which all philosophies and churches and theologies and religions exist, is to awaken people. In the person of the Galilean there was introduced into human society a leader who was proving universally an awakener. "He stirreth up the people," was the charge which the rulers brought against him. And it was a true charge. The proclamation of his "good news," namely, "God on the side of the people," stirred up the lower orders in a fashion that was new and wondrous, quickening the flow of their spirits and fructifying sterile natures. This awakened life then was "The Way" which we read of in The Acts. To be awake was a new way, a new state of affairs, for the common people. Previously they had been living a twilight existence, not complete darkness, and very far from complete light. For the proletariat to get out of that twilight state into broad noon, came upon the world with all the force of a discovery.

This new "Way" is seen to carry with it moral power,

so that character is transformed. It carries with it healing power, so that sickness collapses before it. It carries the power of reproducing itself, each awakened spirit being pricked on to awaken another; so that a propagandist zeal is manifest. It carries with it self-respect, which now narrowly interrogates some of the institutions of the day. The first eight chapters of the book of The Acts record the greatest liberation of human energies the world has seen. There is a swing and a sweep to the language, telling of elemental forces at work. Onlookers "were all amazed and were in doubt, saying one to another, What meaneth this?" Peter sought to explain it to them, and was not far wrong: "Ye men of Judea, these are not drunken. This is that which was spoken by the prophet: 'And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams."" And the dream they dreamed was, as we have seen, the dream of The Kingdom, that new and democratic order of society for whose coming the Galilean had lived and died, a society of happy-hearted workers, the industrial commonwealth of heaven.

However pleasant this dreaming of dreams might be for the lower orders, it was nothing less than nightmare for the master class. This "Way," implying as it did the awakenment of the masses, was a highly inconvenient thing to be loose in a world whose corner-stone was slavery. For slavery can not abide daylight, wide-awakeness. It loveth sleep and the dark, because its deeds are evil. Slavery and social sleep are twin brothers. Social sleep

brings on slavery; and slavery drugs people into a still deeper sleep. Between slavery and social arousement is a blood-feud irreconcilable.

Therefore the privileged class, living sumptuously by means of its exploitation of the workers, persecuted this "Way" unto the death. Jesus was an alarmclock in the bedroom, and was hated with a murderous hate by the pillagers, because in awakening the sleeper he spoiled their trade. Their attempt to suppress him and his followers after him, constitutes much of the history of the next two hundred years. As we have seen, their efforts to crush "The Way" in Palestine had as a result that "they that were scattered abroad went everywhere preaching the word." Thereupon the Roman Empire took up the task. The persecution at the hands of the Jerusalem oligarchy was a comparatively mild affair. But when Rome, past-master in the art of repression, set its hand to the task, it was the signal for a saturnalia of blood-lettings and fury savagery that is unmatched in human annals.

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That the Roman Empire set its ponderous machinery at work, officially and with a dogged persistence for over a century, to destroy "The Way" of The Carpenter and his followers, is highly significant. Because Rome cared not at all how many religions there were in her empire. If anything, her attitude toward them was one of encouragement; they kept the mind of the masses occupied. Polybius naïvely states that in Rome religion was "used as a check on the people. There were a hundred religions in the Roman Empire, and a hundred more could

have been added without interference from the imperial authorities. Her pantheon was crowded with heterogeneous gods; there was a niche for every kind, from Osiris of Egypt to the Druids of the cruel North. Her governors in the provinces were under orders to suffer the people to have all the "religion" they wished. Gallio is a good type. As long as the disputes brought before him seemed a mere matter of "religion," he looked on with an amused or bored air, for Rome "cared for none of these things." By "religion," however, Rome meant sects and doctrines and liturgies — anything that tended to take the mind off from every-day affairs, either in ascetic renunciation or in other-worldly absorption. The Fellowship of The Carpenter, however, came not under this head. There was in it a militant democratism which was unseemly and unheard-of in a "religion." The words of The Carpenter had too many "hard sayings" against organized privilege. He had been put to death charged with enmity against Cæsar; and that charge was found, in the attitude of his followers, to have been well founded. Rome and Nazareth could not continue on the earth at the same time. There was an oppugnancy between them, deep-set and irrepressible.

Other religions had been in large part the product of the priest or philosopher mind, and therefore were in the interests of the aristocratic class. This Galilean propaganda, however, had sprung from a carpenter. As such, it had taken its rise in a practical need, had set before itself a practical goal, and was seeking that goal by practical measures. It knew that the life of man is rooted and grounded in economics. However high his rhapsodizings