There never was, perhaps, in the history of this tumultuous world, prosperity so great, so far-spreading, so lasting, as that which began throughout the vast Empire of Rome, at the time when the Prince of Peace was born into it. Preternatural as was the tyranny of certain of the Cæsars, it did not reach the mass of the population; and the reigns of the Five good Emperors, who succeeded them, are proverbs of wise and gentle government. The sole great exception to this universal happiness was the cruel persecution of the Christians; the sufferings of a whole world fell and were concentrated on them, and the children of heaven were tormented, that the sons of men might enjoy their revel. Their Lord, while His shadow brought peace upon earth, foretold that in the event He came to send “not peace but a sword;” and that sword was first let loose upon His own people. “Judgment commenced with the House of God;” and though, as time went on, it left Jerusalem behind, and began to career round the world and sweep the nations as it travelled on, nevertheless, as if by some paradox of Providence, it seemed at first, that truth and wretchedness had “met together,” and sin and prosperity had “kissed one another.” The more the heathens enjoyed themselves, the more they scorned, hated, and persecuted their true Light and true Peace. They persecuted Him, for the very reason that they had little else to do; happy and haughty, they saw in Him the sole drawback, the sole exception, the sole hindrance, to a universal, a continual sunshine; they called Him “the enemy of the human race:” and they felt themselves bound, by their loyalty to the glorious and immortal memory of their forefathers, by their traditions of state, and their duties towards their children, to trample upon, and, if they could, to stifle that teaching, which was destined to be the life and mould of a new world.
But our immediate subject here is, not Christianity, but the world that passed away; and before it passed, it had, I say, a tranquillity great in proportion to its former commotions. Ages of trouble terminated in two centuries of peace. The present crust of the earth is said to be the result of a long war of elements, and to have been made so beautiful, so various, so rich, and so useful, by the discipline of revolutions, by earthquake and lightning, by mountains of water and seas of fire; and so in like manner, it required the events of two thousand years, the multiform fortunes of tribes and populations, the rise and fall of kings, the mutual collision of states, the spread of colonies, the vicissitudes and the succession of conquests, and the gradual adjustment and settlement of innumerous discordant ideas and interests, to carry on the human race to unity, and to shape and consolidate the great Roman Power.
And when once those unwieldy materials were welded together into one mass, what human force could split them up again? what “hammer of the earth” could shiver at a stroke a solidity which it had taken ages to form? Who can estimate the strength of a political establishment, which has been the slow birth of time? and what establishment ever equalled pagan Rome? Hence has come the proverb, “Rome was not built in a day:” it was the portentous solidity of its power that forced the gazer back upon an exclamation, which was the relief of his astonishment, as being his solution of the prodigy. And, when at length it was built, Rome, so long in building, was “Eternal Rome:” it had been done once for all; its being was inconceivable beforehand, and its not being was inconceivable afterwards. It had been a miracle that it was brought to be; it would take a second miracle that it should cease to be. To remove it from its place was to cast a mountain into the sea. Look at the Palatine Hill, penetrated, traversed, cased with brickwork, till it appears a work of man, not of nature; run your eye along the cliffs from Ostia to Terracina, covered with the debris of masonry; gaze around the bay of Baiæ, whose rocks have been made to serve as the foundations and the walls of palaces; and in those mere remains, lasting to this day, you will have a type of the moral and political strength of the establishments of Rome. Think of the aqueducts making for the imperial city, for miles across the plain; think of the straight roads stretching off again from that one centre to the ends of the earth; consider the vast territory round about it strewn to this day with countless ruins; follow in your imagination its suburbs, extending along its roads, for as much, at least in some directions, as forty miles; and number up its continuous mass of population, amounting, as grave authors say, to almost six million; and answer the question, how was Rome ever to be got rid of? why was it not to progress? why was it not to progress for ever? where was that ancient civilization to end? Such were the questionings and anticipations of thoughtful minds, not specially proud or fond of Rome. “The world,” says Tertullian, “has more of cultivation every day, and is better furnished than in times of old. All places are opened up now; all are familiarly known; all are scenes of business. Smiling farms have obliterated the notorious wilderness; tillage has tamed the forest land; flocks have put to flight the beasts of prey. Sandy tracts are sown; rocks are put into shape; marshes are drained. There are more cities now, than there were cottages at one time. Islands are no longer wild; the crag is no longer frightful; everywhere there is a home, a population, a state, and a livelihood.” Such was the prosperity, such the promise of progress and permanence, in which the Assyrian, the Persian, the Greek, the Macedonian conquests had terminated.