3. The Jews, as a nation, however, rejected and bitterly persecuted it, and the Romans, who were, on principle, extremely tolerant of all foreign religions, soon became extremely hostile. It was humble, unostentatious, very simple in all its forms, carefully refrained from all interference with established government, and presented many new and consoling truths, with great force. It would have seemed that it had only to speak to gain a hearing and take a leading place at once in the work of the future. The few unprejudiced among the great, and thousands of the poor and oppressed whom the cruel power of the Romans had deprived of nationality, property and personal liberty, and many whose minds recoiled from the vices, crimes and skepticism of the age, heard and embraced it with joy. But it rebuked with most severity the ambitions, the injustice and the love of luxury that were most prevalent in that age and that were most distinctly Roman. It was peculiarly severe against all other systems of religion, and that formed the strongest barrier against its immediate spread over the pagan world at large. It was, therefore, persecuted with the greatest rigor for three hundred years. 4. But persecution called public attention to it and won it sympathy, and it continually spread beneath the surface of society. The brutal features of Roman character were gradually softened; very gradually, indeed, for Roman manners and morals were an Augean stable which it was a more than herculean task to cleanse; but after a time, the gigantic crimes of a Marius, a Sylla, a Nero, or Domitian became impossible, and the horrors of the theatre, where gladiators killed each other and men were thrown to wild beasts for the amusement of the populace, became rare. Atrocious crimes awakened a disgust that showed a different view and a new standard of judgment in the community. Christianity created a purer moral atmosphere even in Rome, and while it was persecuted with the utmost barbarity. 5. It is then no matter of surprise that Christianity did not at once meet with general acceptance, and did not fully reconstruct Roman society and manners. The marvel is that it could be produced at all by an age to whose whole spirit it was so absolutely contrary. It was the doctrine of peace proclaimed among nations who knew no occupation so glorious as war; whose institutions all rested on conquest; whose dominant race—admired as much as feared—was the very genius and embodiment of martial force arrayed against the independence of all nationalities by an organization the most complete. It proclaimed the _rights_ of _man_ and the equality of all classes and persons before the Divine Law, to a people who had plunged in a common ruin Carthage and Corinth, the Republics of Greece, and the absolute rulers of monarchical Asia. It scorned equally gorgeous ceremonies of worship, the subtleties of an imperfect philosophy and pride of place and power.