“The divine benediction,” said Jesus, “rests upon the lowly in spirit, the pure in heart; upon the peacemakers; upon those who visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and who practise every thing that is true and lovely and of good report. Repent of sin, seek pardon through faith in a Saviour who has died to atone for your sins, commence a life of devotion to the glory of God and to the welfare of your brother-man, and death shall introduce you to realms of honor, glory, and immortality.” “God is no respecter of persons,” said Jesus. “The monarch and the slave stand alike at his tribunal. The wicked, and those who fear not God, shall be cast into hell. The smoke of their torment ascendeth for ever and ever.” These offers of salvation to all who would repent and commence the Christlike life, these good news and glad tidings, were joyfully accepted by hundreds and by thousands of the poor and the oppressed and the world-weary; but the denunciations of divine wrath upon those who, by their enormities, were converting this world into a realm of woe, fell appallingly upon the ears of proud and unrelenting oppressors. The teachings of Jesus were thus hateful to Nero. He hated that religion which condemned him. He hated those who preached it. He deliberately determined to blot out that religion from the world; to silence in death every tongue that proclaimed it. It was apparently an easy task to do this. Nero was monarch of the world. A resistless army moved unquestioning at his bidding. All power was apparently in his hands. He was a man, for the times, highly educated. He was endowed with intellectual shrewdness as well as physical energy, and could bring public opinion to bear against the Christians, while he assailed them with the axe of the headsman and the flames of martyrdom. The Christians were few and feeble. To turn against them popular indignation, atrocious libels were fabricated. The Christians were in the habit of taking their infants to church to be baptized. Pagan slanderers affirmed that they were taken there to be offered in bloody sacrifice. The Christians often met to celebrate the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper: they ate of that bread which represented the body of Jesus broken for us; they drank of that wine emblematic of the blood of Jesus, shed for our sins. The pagans declared that the Christians were cannibals; that they secretly met in midnight feasts, and, having murdered a man, ate his flesh, and drank his blood.