The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1898-02-13

up money they knew not how to use, save
in luxurious self-indulgence One man, it
is said, gave feast, IL single feast, which
cost 100000, and that at a time when the
wages of q workingman were Il 10 Is cents
a day Feasts, drunken orgies bacchanalian
scenes went on from day TO day, lasting
sometimes an entire week. One of the most
graphic pictures in Quo Vadis' is a picture
of one of these Roman feasts, and though
/ may assume that some of you have read
it, j shall venture to read a little picture
from the picture because it shows us
graphically what was the social life of that
cruel sensuous age. | know it is a novel,
but / read it because this novelist has with
vivid and true colors portrayed what there
is abundant authority for in the Roman
time"
The speaker here read from Quo Vadis''
partial description of a Roman feast III
Nero'S palace garden, illustrating the com
bined senSuality and cruelty of the age. He
then proceeded as follows:
'TThat was the social life of Rome in the
first century. Sensuality and cruelty are
twins. They grow together. Despotlc gov
eminent, serVie labor. sensuous society.
What was the home? Into that might men
and women flee for refuge and for purity.
Alas! there were no homes. The very word
had no existence in the language. There
was nothing we could call marriage Once
it had been a sacrament and when man
and woman were married in Rome the mar
riage was for better for worse, till death
do US part, as it still is with us nomlnally
to-day. But that period had passed away.
Marriage was now but civil contract. Man
and woman plighted their troth to live to-
gether as long as it was agreeable to them
both Either might get Il divorce. Either
might send the other away at will. There
was no home; there was no marriage; there
were only bargains for men and women to
hive together at mutual pleasure. And yet
this freedom of divorce which in our own
time men are seeking to bring back from
pagan Rome, had done nothing to lessen
the Righteousness of the age, rather to in
crease it, and RIGHTEOUSNESS ran beyond all
metes and bounds into all horrible excesses.
Greece had once educated its few, Rome
more, but now education had died There
were no public schools nothing for the edu-
cation of the common people; nothing real
ly for the education of any, except in two
parts that of the gymnast and that of the
orator All other arts We're ignored. In
deed, to write was rather q sign of servi-
tude, and even to read was not highly eSti-
mated. In Palestine there were still schools
connected with the synagogue; but there
was not in Rome any provision for popular
and general education; scarcely any prOY1-
sion for any education at ALL except in the
art that gave victory IN the arena ard in
the art that equipped man for politics,
in an age UNNECESSARILY more corrupt than
any we know.
AS TO RELIGION.
How, then, was the church, the temple,
religion? Religion had no relation to morali-
ty The temples, as we have already seen,
were often themselves nesting places of
vice There was indeed no real attempt to
make men better through religion. 1t had
lost it's grip and power. Says Gibbon, in a
famous sentence familiar to most of you,
though reciting again: The various forms
of worship which prevailed in the Roman
world were considered by the people as
equally true, by the philosophers as equally
false, and by the magistrates as equally
useful The sentence is q little too skillful
to be quite truthful. but it is certainly true
that religion no longer had power in Rome
and no longer even attempted to make the
world a better world.
This was the society out upon which
Paul looked. Not that there We're not some
fair women and some brave men, Not that
there were not some attempts ut ref0rma-
ton and a higher and better life But, on
the whole looking at society in 4 large way,
as we must in these evening lectures, the
government was absolute desspotism, the
labor was SeTvile and degraded, society was
given over to RIGHTEOUSNESS and self-1ndul-
gence the family was broken and in frsg-
ments, education there was none. and the
object of the religious institutions was TO
appease the wrath of angry gods or bride
corruptible ones, not TO make men
righteous.
1T is to a Christian church in the metrop-
oils of an empire in such a state of society
Paul writes his epiStle to the Romans. And
his first word to them Is this: The world
cannot be made better by law. Rome had
one virtue left-laW 1t had power to en-
force law From time TO time emperors had
ruption which was eating out the life of the
empire. Paul's first word to his Roman
Christians is this. You have tried law. You
once knew God and you have left Him. You
once knew righteousness ard you have
4 abandoned it. You have been in a republic
under law and YOU have been In an empire
under law now look in the glass and see
what kind OF person law human law has