When the men had disappeared the freedman explained to his protector what had happened.
“But,” asked Pudens, when he had heard the story, “what made the fellows behave in this fashion to you? I presume that they don’t commonly go about compelling people to do reverence to wayside statues.”
Linus hesitated for a while before he replied to this question. “Sir,” he said at last, “I will be frank with you. I won’t ask you to keep secret what I tell you. You are not, I know, the man to betray a confidence; and, besides, there can hardly be any question of secrecy in this matter hereafter. These men have got hold of the notion that I do not worship the gods whom they worship. An ill-conditioned fellow, whom I once employed, and had to discharge for his laziness and dishonesty, told them something about me, and since then I have been very much annoyed by them.”
“I don’t understand you,” said Pudens, who was quite unused to hear it treated as a serious matter whether a man did or did not believe in the gods. He was conscious of not believing in them himself in [144] any real sense of the words; but he went through the usual forms of respect to their images, would put, for instance, a portion of food before the household god, when he remembered it, and, equally when he remembered it, would salute a wayside Mercury or Terminus. “What do you believe in then? The Egyptian trio, or what?”
Linus sank his voice to a whisper: “I am a Christian,” he said.
The word conveyed, it may be said, no meaning to the young soldier. He had heard it, and that was all. Subrius, he now remembered, had said, when he was about to introduce him to Pomponia, “A really good woman, though they do say that she is a Christian,” but the remark had made no impression on him.
“A Christian,” he repeated. “What is that?”
“No harm, certainly,” Linus answered; “but, on the contrary, I hope much good. One thing I have learnt from it, that there is but one God in heaven and earth, and that all these gods, as they call them, are but vain things, or worse. But don’t suppose,” he went on, “that I go out of my way to insult what others hold in reverence. That I have not learnt to do. Only, when any one would compel me, as those drunken soldiers would have compelled me, to pay honour to the idols, as we call them, I cannot do it. ‘Thou shalt not bow down to them nor worship them,’ says my law, and I should be false and disobedient if I did. They say dreadful things about us, sir, I [145] know, things that it would be a shame to repeat; but they are not true, believe me, sir, they are not true. I have done many wrong things in other days, but my dear Lord, who died for me, has delivered me from the curse of evil.”
He uttered these last words with a fervent earnestness which greatly impressed his hearer, though he had scarcely even the dimmest notion of what was meant. The young man, whose heart was touched and purified by an honest emotion which made the follies of the past seem hateful to him, was deeply interested and eager to hear more.
In the course of the next few weeks many conversations on the subject followed. Linus at first expressed himself with much reserve. Already a bitter experience had taught the disciples the need of their Master’s caution, that they were not to cast their pearls before swine. But the earnestness of the inquirer was so manifest, he was so unmistakably absorbed in what he heard, that the freedman soon told him all that he himself knew. He even permitted him to see what he held to be the choicest of all his possessions, a record of the Master’s life. Pudens was half disposed to be disappointed when the treasure, kept, it was evident, with the most elaborate care,�for three caskets, each fastened with the most elaborate locks that the ingenuity of the age could devise, had to be opened before it could be seen,�proved to be a parchment volume of the very [146] plainest kind. None of the customary ornaments of a book were there. The edges had been left in their native roughness; the knobs of the wooden pin, so to call it, round which the parchment had been rolled, were not painted, much less gilded. A bailiff’s account-book or tradesman’s ledger could not well have had a plainer exterior. But when Linus opened the volume and read some of its contents, there was no more disappointment. He made choice of what was most suitable to his listener with much care. If we had the book now in our hands we should not be able, it may be, actually to identify it with any one of the four Gospels which we now possess. Still, it is not impossible that it may have been an early draft of that which bears the name of St. Luke, the companion, it will be remembered, of the long imprisonment of St. Paul, and not unreasonably believed by many to have availed himself of this opportunity of putting together his “narrative concerning those matters which were fully established among” the early believers. If so, what could have been more appropriate for the needs of the inquirer than the story of the Prodigal’s Return to his Father, of the Rich Man and the Beggar, of the Good Samaritan? As the reader went on to other passages less easy of comprehension, Pudens began to ask questions to which the freedman was not able to give a satisfactory answer. “He was unlearned and ignorant,” he hastened to explain, “knowing and under- [147] standing enough to satisfy his own wants, but not competent to explain difficulties.”
“But you have teachers and wise men among you, I presume,” said the young soldier.” Why should I not go to them?”
Linus hesitated. Circumstances had compelled him to put his own life in the young man’s hands, for though there had been as yet no persecution, a man who owned himself to be a Christian felt himself to be doing as much as that. But to bring the lives of others into the same danger, to trust the safety of the little community to one who, a few weeks before, had been an absolute stranger, was another matter. And then the interests of the young man himself were to be considered. It was no light thing to suggest that he should openly associate with people of whom Rome, as far as it had heard anything at all about them, had the very worst opinion. Hence he had never proposed to his friend a visit to the Christian places of assembly, and when the young man himself had suggested it, he was conscious of no little perplexity. However, he had now gone too far to be able to draw back. If the young soldier had been trusted so far, he would have to be trusted altogether. Without making any further difficulty, Linus agreed to take his friend to an assembly that was to be held on the following day.
The meeting-place was outside the city walls. It [148] was the old club-house of a guild of artisans, disused partly because it had fallen into bad repair, partly because the burial-ground in which it stood, and which had much to do with its original purpose, had been filled up by interments. The guild had removed its quarters to larger and more commodious premises elsewhere, and had been glad to lease what was almost a valueless property to the representative of the Christian community, in this case no other than Linus himself. It was an oblong building with a semicircular end, something like that form of chancel which we know under the name of apse. The place was absolutely without ornament, though at the back of the seat which lined the apse were curtains of some very rough material. No religious symbol of any kind was visible. It was important that in case of any investigation nothing should be seen that could give the meeting the character of a secret society. Against secret societies the government of the Empire was then, as always, mercilessly severe.
Pudens was not destined on that occasion to hear any such exposition of mysteries as he had been expecting from the authorized teachers to whom Linus had referred him. The community were intensely agitated by an unexpected blow which had suddenly fallen upon them. It had always, indeed, a certain consciousness of danger, for it was aware that it was undisturbed only because it was unknown; but some [149] years had passed without any interference from the authorities, and a general feeling of security had been the result. This was now to be destroyed, and, indeed, till more than two centuries and a half had passed, was not to be known again by the Christian Church.