The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 05, March, 1858

The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 05, March, 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics

* * * * * * * * * * "Roma Sotterranea,"the underground Rome of the dead,the buried city of graves. Sacred is the dust of its narrow streets. Blessed were those who, having died for their faith, were laid to rest in its chambers. In pace is the epitaph that marks the places where they lie. In pace is the inscription which the imagination reads over the entrance to the Christian Catacombs. Full as the upper city is of great and precious memories, it possesses none greater and more precious than those which belong to the city under ground. Republican Rome had no braver heroes than Christian Rome. The ground and motives of action were changed, but the courage and devotion of earlier times did not surpass the courage and devotion of later days,while a new spirit displayed itself in new and unexampled deeds, and a new and brighter glory shone from them over the world. But, unhappily, the stories of the early Christian centuries were taken possession of by a Church which has sought in them the means of enhancing her claims and increasing her power; mingling with them falsehoods and absurdities, cherishing the wildest and most unnatural traditions, inventing fictitious miracles, dogmatizing on false assertions, until reasonable and thoughtful religious men have turned away from the history of the first Christians in Rome with a sensation of disgust, and with despair at the apparently inextricable confusion of fact and fable concerning them. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 12373
Author: Various
Release Date: May 1, 2004
Format: eBook
Language: English