As the Christians grew in numbers they were no longer regarded
in the light of superstitious, misguided people, but as people who were
dangerous to the foundations and pillars of society. The Christians
were accused of being cannibalistic, ghoulish in their religious services ;
it was charged that at their secret meetings they drank the blood
of children as a sacrament, that they consumed the flesh of human
victims as a sacrosanct piaculum, that they were drunk with human
blood, and generally rejoiced in offering theanthropic victims to
Christ, a crucified, criminal Jew. The Christians were abandoned
criminals and degenerates who hated mankind, who delighted in ex-
cess, in ruin and destruction of civilization. The Christians were ac-
cused of crimes more heinous and nefarious than those brought at
present against anarchists, Bolsheviki, and I. W. W. Incendiary



54 The Source and Aim of Human Progress

crimes in large cities throughout the empire, conflagrations in Rome,
robberies, incest, foul murders of men, women, and children for sacri-
ficial purposes were charged against those inhuman Christians who
consorted with slaves and with criminals of the most abject and de-
praved kind, belonging to the Spartacus group, full of sedition and
treason, conspiring for the overthrow of the Roman government, and
undermining the most sacred foundations of human life.
