I am One of Them

This seems a cheerful world, Donatus, when I view it from
this fair garden, under the shadow of these vines. But if I
climbed some great mountain and looked out over the wide lands,
you know very well what I would see--brigands on the high
roads, pirates on the seas; in the amphitheaters men murdered
to please applauding crowds; under all roofs misery and
selfishness.


It is really a bad world, Donatus, an incredibly
bad world. Yet in the midst of it I have found a quiet and holy
people. They have discovered a joy which is a thousand times
better than any pleasures of this sinful life. They are
despised and persecuted, but they care not. They have overcome
the world. These people, Donatus, are the Christians--and I am
one of them.
... St. Cyprian (?-258), a letter in A Treasury of Sermon
Illustrations, Charles Langworthy Wallis, ed.,
Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1950, p. 59