THERE never was a book in this world half so much opposed as the Bible, and which so many persons have tried hard to destroy; and yet in spite of all (through God’s goodness) we are still privileged to have it, and can read it without fear. This was not always so. During the first three hundred years after Jesus was here on earth, the emperors of Rome tried all they could to destroy it, and keep people from becoming Christians. They got up ten long, dreadful persecutions against the Bible and those who read it; some of those persecutions lasted for ten years at a time, and during that fearful period all the power of the Roman government was directed against the Bible. During one of these persecutions, in one single country, one hundred and fifty thousand Christians were put to death.
Sometimes a house was tilled with Christians, and faggots were piled all-round the outside, and set tire to, and all were burnt alive. Sometimes companies of fifty were bound together and driven into the sea.
The Roman emperor built a huge theatre, which would hold more than twenty thousand people. It was built in the form of a circle, with seats, like a gallery, all round, rising to the top of the high walls. In the center was a large open space, with iron railings about it. Sometimes the cruel emperor would have a number of Christians put into that big sort of cage, and then would let fierce, hungry lions and tigers tear them to pieces and eat them alive, twenty thousand people sitting round and looking on as though it were sport. And so Christians by the thousands were butchered to make a Roman holiday.
One day a Christian man was being led to this dreadful place. The soldier who had charge of him said: “My friend, how easily you can save your life! Give up reading that book, and you need not be food for the lions.”
“I cannot give up my Bible,” said he, “because I am a Christian. Eternal life is in that book; and lions or no lions, I cannot give it up,” and thus he went to a martyr’s death.
The Roman emperors tried every way to destroy the Bible. One of them; Diocletian, thought he had done it. He had killed so many Christians, and destroyed so many Bibles, that because the Bible-lovers were quiet for awhile and hid themselves, he proudly had a medal struck off, with this on it, as a motto: “The Christian religion is destroyed, and the worship of the gods restored.”
Suppose that Diocletian could come back to earth now, and see the Bible going through all the nations of the world, I wonder what he would think of his famous medal!—Selected.
ML 02/04/1900