The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1907-03-24

is also said that as soon as Cincinnatus
left the dictatorship he again returned.
like Washington, to his pillow. II the
moral life ITALY was not domestcally
pure and wholesome, how can you acs
count for the purity and the nobility and
the virtue of Octavia, the sister Of Au
gustus, whose beauty and Virtus for cen
tnries have been sounded by every Roman
historians lips? Again. when Julia, the
only daughter of Augustus. became prof
ligate. how can you account for the fact
that her father in anger eXiled her to the
barren island of Pandateria and sent one
of her guilty paramours to the grove?
Would Augustus ever have done that un-
less vlrtus and purity were intrenched in
thousands of moral homes? All. no.
Rome's debauchery was not the moral
type of rural Italy! 1t was not the crl.
terion by which the pure fireside of An
gustus boyhood home Is to be judged. If
all men of Italy We're debased and all wo-
men their companions In sin, Augustus
would not have wrung his hands at the
perfldity of his only child and cried out
in agony, "Ah, would that I had never
entered wedlock and had died a childless
man. 1t was in a pure. noble, high
thinking. simple living home of rural
Italy that I think the centurion of my
text was born.
Scene Changes.
Again the scene changes. Now | would
have you stand in the very center of all
the sin and debauchery and moral filth
of the great capital of the Caesars. Ths
year Is about 10 AID. The Augustinian
reign was drawing to a close. The great
est of Roman rulers next go Julius Caesar
himself was about to die. The political
world was filed with plots and counter
plots and Instructions. THE king is al
most dead. Who shall be the next Ring?'
was the question upon every lip. The
hand of Augustus. that royal master OF
men, that hand which was soft as velvet,
and yet as strong as steel, was beginning
to loose Its viselike grip. The splendor of
the Roman capital had drawn the
wealthy prodgals into it's debauching
maelstrom and Righteousness. and UNI
bridled passions were running riot every
where.
1t was into such mad scene of wassail
and carousal that, l think, this centurion
of my text, then a young man Of sixteen
or eighteen summers. was indicted. In
order to understand what kind of teinpta-
lions assailed the moral character and the
spiritual life Of this young man l would
have you for a little while wander
through the excavated ruins of old POM
peii. You know that tho most famous
eruption of Mount Vesuvius took place
only since three score years after Angus
tus died. AT that eruption of 20 AID.
God seemed to put out his hand and say.
II will cover up this city in beds of lava.
1nen nearly 1000 years later I will lift
my hand and show to the world how low
and vile and beastial and immorally cor
rupt a great capital can become when 1t
is drunk with wealth and sinful revelries
and when men unbridled in his evil de-
Sirpg ln0On1p NiIaT in his desires
than the four footed swine shouting for
their food amid the repulsive stencil of a
city's refuse" And this is just what God
did. In an instant the earth was rocking
in the agony of an earthquake. In an in
slant the heavens were covered with
leaping flames In an instant the great
rivers of molten lava were rolling down
the sides of the volcano. In an instant
life ceased to exist in the Newport of old
Rome Thus the sentinel was found dead
at the gate and the bread was found half
cooked In the oven, and the mother was
found dead trying to shield her baby UNI
derneath her body. But what else do We
find in old Pompeii?
Life of Pompeii.
There upon the walls of some of these
excavated houses of Pompeli we find pic
tured the degenerate lives of those an
Client inha bitants. One glance at some of
those pictures reveals to us what the be-
sotted lives of the men and women who
inhabited those homes must have been.
Those pictures tell us more than whole
libraries of written words could ever re-
veal oh, no; the charge of hypocrisy
which Christ hurled against the ancient
Pharisees could not be applied to the Inn
moral and drunken degenerates of an
cient Rome. Then the followers of Bac-
chus not only sinned, but the y gloried in
their sins. They not only snned, but they
pictured upon the walls of their homes
down to the minutest details the vileness
and the repulsive corruptions of their
sins. There they welcomed their guests
with such words as these: Come and see
me inmy lewdness. Come and see me in
any domestis crimes Come and see me
an nhuman monster Come and see my
inner sinful life as IT is And into such