{"id":7169,"date":"2019-09-30T04:18:59","date_gmt":"2019-09-30T04:18:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/churchedge.com\/illustrations\/index.php\/2019\/09\/30\/the-christians-great-secret\/"},"modified":"2019-09-30T04:18:59","modified_gmt":"2019-09-30T04:18:59","slug":"the-christians-great-secret","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/the-christians-great-secret\/","title":{"rendered":"The Christians&#8217; Great Secret"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the third century, Cyprian, the Bishop of Carthage (and eventually a martyr), wrote to his friend Donatus:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This is a cheerful world as I see it from my garden under the shadows of my vines.  But If I were to ascend some high mountain and look over the wide lands, you know very well what I would see: brigands on the highways, pirates on the sea, armies fighting, cities burning; in the amphitheaters men murdered to please the applauding crowds; selfishness and cruelty and misery and despair under all roofs.  It is a bad world, Donatus, an incredibly bad world.  But I have discovered in the midst of it a quiet and holy people who have learned a great secret.  They are despised and persecuted, but they care not.  They are masters of their souls.  They have overcome the world.  These people, Donatus, are the Christians &#8212; and I am one of them.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the third century, Cyprian, the Bishop of Carthage (and eventually a martyr), wrote to his friend Donatus: &#8220;This is a cheerful world as I see it from my garden under the shadows of my vines. But If I were to ascend some high mountain and look over the wide lands, you know very well [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4425,35,5047,621,1022,13,5046],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7169"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7169\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}