The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1896-09-26

death IN the Declae persecution" DIR.
Farrar pays this splendid testimony
to the great Universalist father of
the third century.
THE splendor of his attainraents raised
b i'm host of enemies; the cepth of his
thoughts frightened the conventional
ignorance which took itself for orthodox
belief. This greatest and holiest of men
was branded as Q hereto nearly three
centuries after his death by the COM
bined intrigues of cunning and worth
less bishop and cruel emperor. For
centuries it continued d to be debated
whether he was not suffering torments;
and though, in the fifteenth century,
when learning revived once more, and
ray of light out of Gods eternity woke
the Middle Ages from their dark and
CHASTITY dream, when ancient Greece
once more started into life, but with the
New Testament in her hand'-though |
say. since then the best and greatest,
have ever honored the name of Origen,
every raw sciolist and every full fed
Pharisee still thinks that he may cast
stone. Why? Because Origen was a
prophet; he escaped the average; he is,
even still, too great for their comprehen-
sion, too wide and deep and brave a
thinker for the average mediocrity of
common and cringing thought"
Of the monk who abolished the
Christian Roman gladiatorial exhibi-
tions Dean Farrar says:
I'VE know how, in ancient days, ex.
listed the horrible cruelty of public
games in which criminals and gladiators
oft en- barbarians fought each other
and stabbed each other to death before
the Yelling and gaping multitude. Who
would have thought that such custom
would have survived no less than four
centuries of Christianity? Yet it did;
and we need not be 80 much surprised
when we remember that our fathers
looked on unmoved at the English bru-
talities of bear batting and cock fighting;
that dog lighting still secretly survives,
that there may be men even among my
readers who have looked on at the foul
and filthy spectacle of a prizefgh
But who stopped gladiatorial shows?
Who wiped that infamy from the man
ners and morals of nominally Christian
empire? Not emperors, or consuls. or
lawyers, or writers of genius, or eloquent
preachers, or learned divines, but Just a
rhde, illiterate, unknown Aeiatie monk,
who had the courage to say, This is
wrong and the courage to say, so far
as | am concerned, it shall not be- The
show was going on; the myriads we're
assem- bled in the Coliseum; the gIadia-
tors we're matched; the Emperor was in
the chair; there was clash of swords
and stream of blood, and the horrible
spectacle had fairly begun. Then, in
his monks rude dress, down into the
arena leaped the intrepid man, and, un-
armed as he was, thrust himself between
the weapons of that murderous struggle,
1t was the poor blind monk Telemachus.
Who is he? What presumptuous inso.
lence! Down with himp The mob hooted,
yelled, ragged, leaped over the barriers.
hurled stones at him, would have rent
him limb from limb. The very gladia
tors, whom he would have saved, turned
their swords against him. He fell a
mangled mass, beaten to death by innu.
merable blows. 1t the only day of all
his life of which single fact is known.
But what day! it was day in which
his plain sense of right and wrong, his
plain courage in acting up to it, had
done nothing less than liberate the
world"
Farrar describes boy-prophet:
more than forty years ago, at great
English school land in those days that
state of things was common). no boy in
the large dormitories ever dared to say
his prayers. A young new boy-neither
strong, distinguished. nor brilliant. nor
influential, nor of high rank-came
to the school. The first night that he
slept in his dormitory not one boy kneIt
to say his prayers. But the new boy
knelt down, as he had always done. He
was jeered at, insulted. pelted, kicked
for it; and so he was the next night, and
the next. But, after night or two, not
only did the persecution cease, but an
other boy knelt down as we'll as himself,
and then another, until it became the
custom for every boy to kneel nightly
at the altar Of his own bedside. From
that dormitory, in which my informant
was, the custom spread to other dormi-
tories, one by one. When that young
new boy came to the school. no boy said
his prayers; when he left it. without one
act or word on his part beyond the silent
influence of quiet and brave example,
all the boys said their prayers. The
right act had prevailed against the bad
custom and the blinded cowardice of
that little world. That boy still lives;
and il he had never done one good
deed besides that deed, be sure if
stands written for him in golden
letters on the Recording Angels book.
Now, is not that kind of act an act
which any one Of us from the richest
statesman down to the youngest bow.
might initiate? Are there no bad Gus.