“If I give you all the money you need to support your school at Autun, will you guarantee to solve all my knotty problems for me?” Constantine asked with a smile.
“Not guarantee no one can do that. But scholars must eat and be protected from harm like anyone else. You have brought peace and prosperity to Gaul and with it a climate favoring the search for knowledge. Be sure that our minds will always be available to you.”
“Then tell me whether I’m right in encouraging the Christians.” “You ask me, when you know I am not one of them?”
“I ask you because you are not one of them,” Constantine told him. “And because I trust you to give me an honest answer.”
Eumenius assured him
“I think you are right,” Eumenius assured him. “The uprising of the bagaudae here in Gaul showed that the day when great land owners can disregard the welfare of those who till the land is over, but we will always have the poor with us. Christianity appeals to the poor, the downtrodden and the hopeless more than to any other group, so it is certain to grow until it too becomes rich and powerful, as did the priests and temples of Jupiter in Rome.” “Will it go the way of the other religions then?”
“Yes, unless their god is really stronger than all others, as they claim. And unless his son really did come to earth to give men the gift of eternal life.”
“If you think that might be true, why aren’t you a Christian, Eumenius?”
“Perhaps I’m too old to change.”
“You’re younger in spirit and thought than I am.”
“Perhaps that’s a reason too,” Eumenius admitted. “Logic tells me what the Christians claim is impossible. After all, many religions include belief in a god who becomes a man, is killed, and then rises again. But none of them give men the courage to die willingly for their faith, as many thousands of Christians did during the persecution. And I have friends who swear they have heard the man they call Christ speak to them in their hearts, as he is supposed to have done to their Apostle Paul on the road to Damascus.”
“Would you believe if he appeared to you in a dream, or a vision?” “Yes, I think I would, if I could be sure my mind had not conjured up something that wasn’t there, as men see visions in the desert when dying of thirst. Why do you ask?”
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