Rome had no use for the wonderful principle of "self-determination" which has cursed Europe since the end of the war. By it every trifling group of people is to be an independent nationality, all with their own expensive army and beaurocracy. A wretched state lof things. The greatest pity of the war is the break-up of the old Austrian empire. Rome had no nonsense like that. What became like wanted, as he says, to visit the! Of the Philistines? They were a church' in Roma, but as a live, Powerful people in Old Testament reading man, who was keenly in-; times. Rome absorbed them. The terested in the world he lived in, race that once produced a Goliath b> must have wanted to see Rome! ended in an actor, for the last before he died, church or no church known Philistine was an actor in Rome had the secret of impressing the early emperors. Thus Goliath mankind that no ancient Power, and his people ended in sheer and few modern ones ever had.} futility and a painted face. A When the barbarians took Rome in, good thing too. The end of the "the fourth century B.C., they: little nationalities was the end of entered the Senate where the. frightful race hatreds and divisions. Senators were sitting. The bar-} And there were no tariffs. The parians thought they were gods.' world is more cursed by them now, There was always something {and split up and handicapped by majestic about Rome and the great them _now than the world of Rome Romans. jand Paul was.
No wonder Paul wanted to see'
No wonder the man wanted to Rome: He was, we say, ''dying'' sce Rome! How could he have got to sce Rome. Of course he was. about the world, preaching the Think frst of her conquest of the Gospel, if it had been as full of known world. Rome was not a national suspicions and jealousies state, a city. Yet "one city con-! as it is at the present day? The quered all other cities and coun-/ wretched Apostle would have had tries. There is a place called to spend half his time getting his Schnectady in New York State. Now, passports vised. And he would just imagine Schnectady setting; have been locked up as a man out on a career of conquest!) "without visible means of Imagine her annexing Boston, subsistence." The truth is that, New York and then New York, until Rome took the world over, State, then Pennsylvania, then the! and knocked all the heads of whole of the Union. and Canada' miserable little nationalities and Mexico. Then ing across! together. it would have been useless for God to send His a trifling little country over there. the Atlantic and saying there is) 3 into the world to save it, and she goes and eats her up, and For this plain reason the Apostles her colonies. No Paul} wonder in the old days of national "must sce Rome also divisions could not have travelled all. want to see. reely as Paul did. In 500 B.C., had done what Rome. Paul, i man like Paul would have had too, was out to found a kingdom, to have a life as long as and he was full of respect for a!
Methuselah's to get over the race that had founded one, albeit: ground Paul got over to the glory of a different type. See also!" of his Lord, in 30 years. It will Of course he wanted. be said, by people who always see Rome did one mighty service to! the seamy side of the achievements humanity, to human progress and} of nations first, instead of the goad to the Gospel itself, in bringing! side, that slavery and other evils frequent in countless useless and quarrelsome} nationalities to an end. She broke: and smashed them all up. Till she! began to conquer, the world was existed. They did. Paul knew that, but he was not one of those fools who let the universal good be blotted from sight by particular evils, as so many religious people do, and who hence wallow in per. petual pessimism. No; Paul exult.
in the openness of the empire, so the Gospel could have free course and be glorified."
After 700 years of war, there wae universal peace, the Paz Romano, As Milton sings in the most magnificent Ode ever written "No war or battle's sound Was heard the world around:
The irle spear and shield were high uphung The hooked chariot stood Unstained by hostile blood, The trumpet spoke not to the armed throng And kings sat still with awful eye, As if they surely knew their sovran Lord was by."
We do not realize how utter the Paz Romano was. It is said that, if the Town Clerk of Ephesus had had to call in military force at the time of the riot over Diana of the Ephesians, he would have had to send 200 or 300 miles for them, Asia Minor was kept in order by a few cohorts. So was Gaul, the modern France. Gaul was far more peaceful in Paul's time than it is now. Peace was reality. It has been pointed out that there were villas out in the country in England in Roman times. That is alway a sign of the existence of law and order, and of a peaceful life, because rich men will never commit the folly of filling country houses with their valuables in insecure times. China is a case of it. The Chinese live in villages because it never has been safe to live in an isolated house. It was safe under Rome,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.