No. One of the most striking things in history is the fact that Paul
abode in Athens and wrote about it, without having any impression made
upon his imaginative mind, apparently, by its statues, its pictures or
its temples. The most gorgeous period of Grecian art poured its light
on his path, and he never mentioned it. The New Testament is as dead
to art-beauty as though it had been written by a hermit in an Egyptian
pyramid who had never seen the light of sun. Then what did he owe the
Greeks? Not philosophy, not art, and certainly not religion, which was
fetichism. Not a debt of literature, nor of art, nor of civil polity;
not a debt of pecuniary obligation; not an ordinary debt. He had
nothing from all these outside sources. The whole barbaric world was
without the true knowledge of God. He had that knowledge and he owed
it to every man who had it not. All the civilized world was, in these
respects, without the true inspiration; and he owed it to them simply
because they did not have it; and his debt to them was founded on this
law of benevolence of which I have been speaking, which is to supersede
selfishness, and according to which those who have are indebted to
those who have not the world over."--_Henry Ward Beecher_.




CHAPTER V.

GENIUS, AND THE DEBT OF STRENGTH.

Booksellers rank "Quo Vadis" as one of the most popular books of the
day. In that early era persecution was rife and cruelty relentless.
It was the time of Caligula, who mourned that the Roman people had not
one neck, so that he could cut it off at a single blow; of Nero, whose