"But," says the believer, again, as a last resort, "Jesus, whether
real or mythical, has certainly saved the world, and is its only
hope." If this assertion can be supported with facts, then surely it
would matter very little whether Jesus really lived and taught, or
whether he is a mere picture. Although even then it would be more
truthful to say we have no satisfactory evidence that such a teacher
as Jesus ever lived, than to affirm dogmatically his existence, as it
is now done. Whatever Jesus may have done for the world, he has
certainly not freed us from the obligation of telling the truth. I
call special attention to this point. Because Jesus has saved the
world, granting for the moment that he has, is no reason why we should
be indifferent to the truth. Nay, it would show that Jesus has not
saved the world, if we can go on and speak of him as an actual
existence, born of a virgin and risen from the dead, and in his name
persecute one another--oppose the advance of science, deny freedom of
thought, terrorize children and women with pictures of hell-fire and
seek to establish a spiritual monopoly in the world, when the evidence
in hand seems clearly to indicate that such a person never existed.

We shall quote a chapter from Christian history to give our readers an
idea of how much the religion of Jesus, when implicitly believed in,
can do for the world. We have gone to the earliest centuries for our
examples of the influence exerted by Christianity upon the ambitions
and passions of human nature, because it is generally supposed that
Christianity was then at its best. Let us, then, present a picture of
the world, strictly speaking, of the Roman Empire, during the first
four or five hundred years after its conversion to Christianity.

We select this specific period, because Christianity was at this time
fifteen hundred years nearer to its source, and was more virile and