The united opinion. [volume] (Bradford, Vt.) 1881-1970, 1907-03-22

strength of the French republic is
found in the country life of France
and not in the haunts of the dissipated
youth of Paris.
The Life of Old Italy.
If the moral life of old Italy was moi
pure and domestically wholesome, how
can you account for the noble career
of Tiberius Gracious, the father of the
two famous Gracchi - how for that
firm, infeXible stole, the Count Lee
Tolstoi of julius Caesars time, Mar
Gus Porcius Cato? They say that Gin
cinnatus, the legendary hero of Rome
was twice offered the dictatorship OF
Rome when in farmers dress he was
guiding the pillow over his farm. 1t is
also said that as soon as Cincinnatus
left the dictatorship he again returned,
like Washington, to his pillow. If the
moral life of Italy was not domestic
ally pure and wholesome, how can you
account for the purity and the nobility
and the virtue of Octavia, the sister OF
Augustus, whose beauty and virtue for
centuries have been sounded by every
Roman historians lip? Again, when
Julia, the only daughter of Augustus,
became profigate, how can you ac-
count 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 grave? Would
Augustus ever have done that unless
virtue and purity were intrenched in
thousands of moral homes? All, no;
Romes debauchery was not the moral
type of rural Italy! 1t was not the
criterion by which the pure freside of
Augustus boyhood home is to be
judged. If all men of Italy were de-
based and all women their companions
in sin, Augustus would not have
wrung his hands at the perfidy of his
only child and cried out in agony, "Ah,
would that | had never entered we'd
lock and had died a childless man"
1t was in a pure, noble, high thinking,
simple living home of rural Italy that
1 think the centurion of my text was
born.
The Scene Changes.
| ARd1u TIE SCeuG CuuuS6S. NOW 1
would have you stand in the very cen
| ter of all the sin and debauchery and
moral filth of the great capital of the
| Caesars. The year is about IS A. D..
| The Augustinian reign was drawing to
a close. The greatest of Roman rulers
next to julius Caesar himself was
about to die. The political world was
filled with plots and counterplots and
instructions. "The king is almost
dead. Who shall be the next king?
was the question upon every lip. The
hand of Augustus, that royal master
Of men, that. hand which was as soft
as velvet and yet as strong as steel,
was beginning to loose its viseike
grip. The splendor of the Roman CAPT
tai had drawn the wealthy prodigals
into its debauching maelstrom and Ii
centiousness, and unbridled passions
were running riot everywhere.
1t was into such a mad scene of was
sail and carOusal that, l think, this
centurion of my text, then d young
man of sixteen or eighteen summers,
was inducted In order to understand
what kind of temptations asSailed the
moral character and the spiritual life
Of this young man 1 would have you
for a little while wander through the
excavated ruins of old POmpeii. You
know that the most famous eruption
of Mount Vesuvius took place only
some threescore years after Augustus
died. At that eruption of 70 A. d. God
seemed to put out his hand and say: 81
will cover up this city in beds of lava.
Then nearly 1000 years later l will lift
my hand and show to the world how
low and vile and bestial and immorally
corrupt a great capital can become
when it is drunk with wealth and sin
full revelries and when man, unbridled
in his evil desires, can become viler in
his desires than the four footed swine
shouting for their food amid the re-
pulsive stencil of a citys refuse" And
this is just what God did. In an in
slant the earth was rocking in the
agony of an earthquake. In an instant
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 underneath her
body. But what else do we find in old
POmpeii?
The Life of Pompeii.
There upon the walls of some of
these eXcavated homes of Pompeh we
find pictured the degenerate lives of
those ancient inhabitants. One glance
at some of those pictures reveals to us
what the besotted 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 reveal. Oh, no; the
charge of hypocrisy which Christ hurl-
ed against the ancient Pharisees could
not be applied to the immoral and
drunken degenerates of ancient Rome.
Then the followers of Bacchus not only
sinned, but they gloried in their sins.
They not only sinned, but they pictured
upon the walls of their homes down to