age of the world has seen.  It was the age of most scandalous monopolies, and disproportionate fortunes, and abandonment to the pleasures of sense.  Any Roman governor could make a fortune in a year; and his fortune was spent in banquets and fetes and races and costly wines, and enormous retinues of slaves.  The theatres, the chariot races, the gladiatorial shows, the circus, and the sports of the amphitheatre were then at their height.  The central spring of society was money, since it purchased everything which Epicureanism valued.  No dignitary was respected for his office,—­only for the salary or gains which his office brought.  All professions which were not lucrative gradually fell into disrepute; and provided they were lucrative, it was of no consequence whether or not they were infamous.  Dancers, cooks, and play-actors received the highest consideration, since their earnings were large.  Scholars, poets, and philosophers—­what few there were—­pined in attics.  Epictetus lived in a miserable cottage with only a straw pallet and a single lamp.  Women had no education, and were disgracefully profligate; even the wife of Marcus Aurelius (the daughter of Antoninus Pius) was one of the most abandoned women of the age, notwithstanding all the influence of their teachings and example.  Slavery was so great an institution that half of the population were slaves.  There were sixty millions of them in the Empire, and they were generally treated with brutal cruelty.  The master of Epictetus, himself a scholar and philosopher, broke wantonly the leg of his illustrious slave to see how well he could bear pain.  There were no public charities.  The poor and miserable and sick were left to perish unheeded and unrelieved.  Even the free citizens were fed at the public expense, not as a charity, but to prevent revolts.  About two thousand people owned the whole civilized world, and their fortunes were spent in demoralizing it.  What if their palaces were grand, and their villas beautiful, and their dresses magnificent, and their furniture costly, if their lives were spent in ignoble and enervating pleasures, as is generally admitted.  There was a low religious life, almost no religion at all, and what there was was degrading by its superstition.  Everywhere were seen the rites of magical incantations, the pretended virtue of amulets and charms, soothsayers laughing at their own predictions,—­nowhere the worship of the one God who created the heaven and the earth, nor even a genuine worship of the Pagan deities, but a general spirit of cynicism and atheism.  What does St. Paul say of the Romans when he was a prisoner in the precincts of the imperial palace, and at a time of no greater demoralization?  We talk of the glories of jurisprudence; but what was the practical operation of laws when such a harmless man as Paul could be brought to trial, and perhaps execution!  What shall we say of the boasted justice, when judgments were rendered on technical points,