ments, when they have become hideous and tyrannical perversions of all the purposes for which governments were ordained. These were subjects on which they were to decide their own duties on Gospel principles in the fear of God and in love to man. The principles upon which established governments should be administered and obeyed clearly stated,the circumstances under which the revolution and overthrow of oppressive governments may be a right or duty left undefined and to be settled by the Christian conscience, this is St. Paul's mode of dealing with the powers that be.

IV. The institutions hitherto enumerated are divine in their origin but utterly perverted in their uses. There were many other established customs which were exceedingly evil in themselves, and in their effects, and wholly inconsistent with the spirit and principles of the Gospel, and of wide-spread disastrous influences, to which St. Paul makes no reference in his Epistles. There were desolating wars of aggression and ambition; there was a system of concubinage recognized by the government; there were corrupting spectacles and cruel gladiatorial fights, and the slaughters of the amphitheater, to which the hard Romans, as if retaining the fierceness of the ancestral wolf, were passionately devoted. Of these I will mention briefly only some of those spectacles which were at once a sign and an instrument of the moral corruption that so frightfully prevailed.

The extent to which these spectacles were carried, and the frenzy of devotion to them on the part of the Roman people, seems incredible. One of the chief cares of state was to provide them. No con

sul could be popular, no edile could be tolerated, no candidate for the favor and offices of the people could be successful, who did not provide or furnish them on a scale of great magnificence. A memorable example of the bloody and cruel spirit in which these spectacles were conducted is furnished in the reign of Claudius.

Julius Cæsar had examined the Lake Fucinus in the gorges of the Apennines, and had conceived the project of draining it and recovering it for agricultural uses. It was in an elevated position, of wide extent, and subject to an irregular rise and fall and overflow. Augustus had examined the subject and rejected the project of draining the lake as impracticable. Claudius, however, undertook the task from which Augustus had recoiled. He attempted to pierce the Apennines, and to turn the water into the River Liris. For eleven years thirty thousand men worked incessantly at the task of opening a channel three miles long. When it was supposed to be finished, Claudius wished to celebrate the event by a great fete. He surrounded the lake with the Prætorian guards, and with a rampart provided with instruments of war. Within this inclosure, twentyfour vessels, divided into two fleets, had sufficient space to move, and upon these vessels nineteen thousand men, condemned to death, were embarked, and commanded to fight to the death for the amusement of the people. Vast multitudes from Rome and from the neighboring country thronged the shores and the circling hills. Nature had provided an amphitheater far more vast than the Coliseum for a spectacle of blood too wide to be crowded into any structure of human make. Claudius presided, with

Agrippina seated by his side. The historian mentions that her robe was of woven gold with no admixture of other material. A silver triton rose from the water and sounded his shell in signal that the combat should begin. Then the poor victims cried, "Cæsar, about to die, we salute you!" His unskillful and confused answer led some of them to cry out that he had pronounced a pardon. A clamor for mercy rose among them, and for a space they delayed the fight. Claudius, in a rage, threatened to burn them all alive in the ships, and by rebukes and entreaties persuaded them to return to what he called their duty. The horrible slaughter commenced. The excitement and applause was unbounded. They fought fiercely. All perished. Thus was inaugurated an enterprise which was not in fact successful, and was never completed. It has been reserved for a Roman prince, Torlonia, to complete what a Roman emperor in vain attempted. The blood-stained waters refused to leave their bed. But the brutal Romans had enjoyed such a holiday as no potentate but a Roman emperor could have furnished, and no people but the degraded populace of the Empire could have relished.

But the spectacles at Rome,-what a picture do they present of the tastes and feelings of the people! A father of the church has thus designated them: "The infamy of the circus, the indecency of the theater, the cruelty of the amphitheater, the atrocity of the arena, and the folly of the games."

At this period all taste for intellectual power or genius in the amusements of the people of every class had disappeared. The only poetry which remained was that of the machinist and the painter

of the scenes. On the stage there must pass troops of horses, chariots, elephants, cavalry, and infantry. On one occasion six hundred mules passed over the stage, laden with the spoils of a captured city; and hundreds of warriors issued from the flanks of a gigantic Trojan horse. Gross reality; brute power; splendor without imagination and excitement of feeling only from the view of suffering;-these were the characteristics of this deplorable era.

A passion for pantomime pervades all ranks. Formerly forbidden at Rome, because of the facilities which it furnished for immorality, the professors of the art now teach it in the imperial and patrician halls.

But all this is frivolous amusement. The bloody arena of gladiators and beasts furnished the serious and stirring occupations of Roman life.

The more bloody the more acceptable. The combats of beasts with each other, and of men with beasts, constitute their deepest joys. They will sit twelve hours on the marble steps in order to lose no part of the absorbing performance. Pompey brings six hundred lions into the arena; Augustus four hundred panthers. In one day five hundred Gatulian prisoners fight against twenty elephants. Giraffes and rhinoceroses vary the scene. Augustus in one series of fights in the arena sacrifices thirtyfive hundred animals. Trajan holds games for one hundred and twenty-three days, and on each occasion from one thousand to ten thousand animals are slaughtered. Under Titus, five thousand perished in a day. When blood and agony and death become the pastime and exhilaration of a people, homes must be brutal, the government must be despotic,

and religion only the worship, because the dread, of power.

But more exciting than all the other Roman spectacles were the gladiatorial combats. It gave to Rome a taste of the excitements of war. The Lanista trained his gladiators in a school or gymnasium, and fed them with raw flesh, that they might be fierce and strong. What they were, or what they became, may be seen from the full-length delineation of some of the most celebrated of them in mosaic, which were found in the baths of Caracalla, and have been transferred to the museum of the Lateran. The view of those brutal heads and faces, and those brawny limbs, suggests a vivid and disgusting conception of the character of the Romans, who made heroes of those trained and stolid murderers. The Lanista bought the gladiators if they were slaves, or hired them if they were free. They bound themselves on the penalty of death never to fly or yield until absolutely overcome. In vain did Augustus endeavor to restrain this human slaughter. The Romans had surrendered to him their rights as citizens; but they refused to surrender to him the privilege of being cruel and remorseless. The art of slaying was diversified by pungent varieties of murder. The Essedari fought in chariots; the Rhetiarii, on foot; the Andabatæ, with their eyes bandaged. The Roman people attended these spectacles as connoisseurs. They criticised a becoming agony as they would a representation of it in a statue or a painting. They applauded a good murder. They hissed a victim who fell awkwardly on the arena, or seemed afraid to die. All around the inclosure there was a confused noise of plaudits, cries