standing, young and old, delicate women, nursing mothers, suffered their flesh to be torn with red-hot pincers and would not commit the saving act.

Martyrdom is no proof of the truth of a religion, that is, of the truth of the opinions held by its votaries. Quite opposite opinions have had their martyrs. What it does prove, when it reaches the scope and strain of the Christian martyrologies, is-Spirit. The action of a spirit which transcends the ordinary limits and capabilities of human nature, takes captive the will, and makes it at once an invincible bar and an all-conquering force. The political success of Christianity was the work of that spirit. The secondary causes, by which Gibbon attempts to explain that success, are well put, but Gibbon does not perceive that those causes themselves require to be explained. Compact organization. What compacted it? Austere morals, intolerant zeal, belief in immortality. Yes! but whence derived, the morals, the zeal, the belief? How came they at that particular crisis to develop such exceptional potency? They point to another factorinspiration. It is the fashion of the current philosophy to derive new births from old antecedents by way of evolution. But there are births which this philosophy does not explain. Christianity had no such genesis. It cannot be said, in any proper sense, to be an evolution of Judaism, any more than Islam was an evolution of Christianity. Judaism was its matrix but not its sire. If in any sense "evolved" from given antecedents, it was as the whirlwind is evolved from atmospheric heat. This great world-force, which came with "a sound as of a rushing, mighty wind" and went cycloning through the lands, was surely no product of Mosaic tradition, but the immediate offspring of a Spirit which conducts the education of the human race and from time to time interpolates the course of events with new motives adjusted to a preordained ascending scale of spiritual life. I say interpolates, for is not all inspiration interpolation? A lift that breaks the dead mechanical sequence of things.

It is not to be supposed that all who joined the Christian confession partook of this spirit. Many were drawn to it by

quite earthly motives,- by the hope of a social revolution, the coming of a new kingdom in which, having nothing to lose, they might reasonably hope to gain; by the charm of equality, by the communism which secured them against want, as we learn from Lucian, an unintentional witness of the charity of the early Church. And there were lapses in times of persecution. The Church could afford them; the Church could afford to take back the lapsed, when persecution ceased. It was not the aim of the Spirit to have a faultless Church, a Church composed entirely of the "Katharoi." A mixture of tares with the wheat was not fatal to the Church, did not prevent its being a true Church, as Cyprian, earliest exponent of the Catholic idea, maintained in opposition to Novatian purists.

Nor did the Spirit care to have a constituency of such as are called in worldly phrase "respectable" people. Socially and intellectually, they seem to have been, with few exceptions, a low class,-"not many wise after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble." Paul, the high-hearted Roman citizen, who bravely cast in his lot with these people, could see with prophetic vision, how God was going to put to shame the wise and the strong by means of the weak and foolish, and the low. But how would it strike an outsider? Is it surprising that men of culture and good position, men like Tacitus and Suetonius, should have looked with contempt on the Christian Church, when they saw what sort of people it drew to its communion,- restless spirits, malecontents, radicals of every stripe, occasionally slaves, as we infer from the allusion to those of Cæsar's household, now and then an adventurer like Peregrinus Proteus? Not the kind of people that a self-respecting citizen would care to consort with. And I suppose that few of us, had we lived in those days, and had not caught, or been caught by, the Spirit, would have cared to be found in such company. And, when I see Christian zealots, proud of their orthodoxy, with conscious holiness looking down upon heretics and flouting new departures in theology, I amuse myself with thinking how heartily, had they been contemporaries of Paul,

these respectables would have spurned the writers of the New Testament and all that guild.

In the second century, Christianity assumed a new phase. It had developed an intellectual life. It had its men of letters, its learned essayists, its eloquent apologists. It had also developed heresies and schisms. Rival systems had sprung up. Gnosticism asserted its claims, assuming to teach a profounder doctrine than the gospel. The Church was called to contend with intellectual adversaries as well as civil authority. The latter half of this century witnessed the culmination and incipient decline of the Upper Empire. Marcus Aurelius, standing midway between the first appearance of Christianity and its civil enfranchisement, represents the high-water mark of Roman greatness, as he does the height of imperial virtue in the annals of mankind. Allen, in his valuable monograph, “The Mind of Paganism,” says: "We may have to come down as far as Louis IX. of France, to find his parallel." But neither in Saint Louis nor in English Alfred, to whom Merivale compares him, do I find the serene piety, the moral sublimity, which I admire in the Roman sovereign. The piety of Louis was reinforced by the stimulus of Christian memories, of a Christian ideal, in an age of unquestioning faith. Marcus had no such support. He dwelt amid decaying altars; he flourished in a dying world. I contrast in the two the lunar virtue with the solar. He is accused of weakness in his lenient treatment of Faustina. The justice of the charge depends on the truth of the alleged infidelity of Faustina, which is somewhat doubtful. He is blamed for bequeathing the empire to Commodus; but the choice of the natural heir, who might outgrow his youthful follies, seemed less dangerous than the inevitable conflict between rival claimants of the throne.

The character of the man is revealed in his self-communings, which have come down to us, an imperishable volume, the so-called Meditations of the Emperor Antoninus. Better preaching I have not found, nor thoughts more edifying, in any Christian writer of that time. A sombre spirit, but how

sweet, how grand! No soul was ever more impressed with the vanity of earthly things. As from under the shadow of impending doom, he urges upon himself the pursuit of the one thing needful. "What is immortal fame? Vanity and an empty sound. What is there, then, to which we may reasonably apply ourselves? This one thing alone: that our thoughts and intentions be just, our actions directed to the public good, our words inspired by truth, our whole disposition acquiescence in whatsoever may happen, as flowing from such a Fountain, the original of all things."

That Marcus authorized the persecution of the Christians is justly reckoned, from the Christian point of view, a blot on his fame. One could wish, indeed, that he had understood Christianity, that he had been in a position to judge it fairly. All he knew of it was, that the Christians, in the Roman sense, were atheists: they neglected sacrifice, they denied the gods. His father, Antoninus Pius, had checked the persecution in Asia, had even written to the authorities at Ephesus to punish the informers, and to let the accused, though Christians, go free. But the son had fallen on other times. A season of national prosperity, unbroken since the reign of Nerva, had come to a close. There was trouble on the German frontiers; the legions had been routed on the Danube, the Marcomanni were pouring down from the Carpathians. Worst of all, at home, a raging pestilence, imported from the East, was decimating the people. An inundation which destroyed the public granaries had brought famine and desolation on the land. The horizon was dark all round; the public mind was agitated with strange fears. In this agony, the religious sentiment, long dormant, was suddenly aroused. It was no longer social antipathy, but returning piety, that demanded the extermination of the Christians. For were not they the true cause of all this misery? They are atheists, they have denied the gods; and the gods in their wrath have sent these woes. The only way to appease the gods, and bring back the averted eye of their blessing, is to utterly destroy the Christians. How far the emperor shared these views, it is impossible to say; enough

he yielded to the popular cry; persecution was renewed, and the Church grew strong and stronger thereby.

In the third century, the elemental forces are the same, but their relative position and prospects have changed. The new religion has gained immensely in extent and repute. It no longer hides itself in the bowels of the earth, but moves freely in the face of day. It had grown to be a recognized and powerful member, or rather rival, of the State; no longer a doubtful adventure, but an accomplished fact. In every province, in every city of note, churches were established,-compact bodies bound together by laws of their own and a common aim. They constituted a state by themselves, an imperium in imperio, a vast confederation extending from the Pyrenees to the Caucasus. Men of all conditions had embraced the confession. There were Christians in the army, in the senate, and around the throne. Their doctrine could no longer be ignored: it challenged the attention of Gentile scholars, and could match an Arrian and a Celsus with a Clement, a Tertullian, and an Origen.

But Hellenism also presented a new front. It had grown devout; it had "got religion." The religious enthusiasm of the Christians had exerted an influence beyond their ranks. The public mind had sobered as the State declined. A moribund world in its sick dotage craved supports which custom could not furnish, satisfactions which sense could not supply. Sated with the gorgeous spectacles of the circus, on which the treasures of an empire had been lavished, and the world ransacked to furnish some new prodigy; surfeited with earthly splendor, the heart sickened with intolerable weariness of life. From this disease there were only two ways of escape. With the more refined, the selfish and despairing, suicide became the fashion and passion of the time; parties of pleasure were formed to witness, perhaps to unite in, voluntary death. On the other hand, those who still clung to life and hope sought in religion a refuge from the loathing and disgust of their lot. The religion which thus competed with the Christian was not a revival of the old cult; it was not the religion which instituted the Salian priesthood and