Had the slaves of the ancient world been as conscious of their own degradation, or as discontented with their lot, as are their proletarian successors, the wages-slaves of our day, the case would have been vastly different. But it was not so; on the contrary, the slave-class of old was the very class that least of all was susceptible of the sentiment of equality, and least disposed by inclination or habit to countenance equalitarian innovators. What Mr. Edward Smith says of the negroes of America is still more applicable to the ancient slave-populations:--“They never tasted freedom, and do not feel the want of it; and to be as happy as a nigger is a common phrase in free and slave States alike.” If the modern negro has never tasted freedom, he has at least heard of it, and heard that slavery is accounted a crime and a felony in most Christian countries. But the ancient slave never heard of, or imagined, any such a thing. Besides, except when he had a downright brute for his master, he was really comfortable and happy--“as happy as a nigger,” and for the self-same reasons. Here was the first great difficulty Christianity had to cope with--a difficulty almost impossible of conception in our times. To appreciate it properly, we must only try to conceive what a Chartist or Socialist lecturer’s difficulty would be as a propagandist in London or in the provinces, provided all our labourers, artisans, and other workpeople were so fully employed at light work and ample wages, that “as happy as a hand-loom weaver,” “as happy as a London needlewoman,” or “as happy as a Dorchester labourer” would be as current proverbial phrases in England as the phrase, “as happy as a nigger,” is in America. Add to this the difference between the toleration allowed to opinions now-a-days and formerly, and the fact that as slaves were the property of their masters, to tamper with them was, in the eye of the law and of public opinion, to tamper with the master’s rights of property and with his personal security. Just imagine these things, and we shall then have some faint idea of what the early Christians had to contend with from this source alone, in the first propagation of _liberty, equality, and fraternity_. But of this and their other difficulties, dangers, and sufferings more in the next chapter. [Illustration: Decoration] CHAPTER X. PROGRESS OF EARLY CHRISTIAN PROPAGANDA. Opposition from corrupt Slave-Caste--Detestation of Christian Doctrines by Slave-owners--Incomprehensibility of new Doctrine of Equality--Absence of a destitute Free People a Drawback on Reform--Spread of the New Teachings--Alarm, and Persecution of the New Faith.