s
bondservant to death, he was considered to be acting within his right,
providing that he declared that the killing was not in his intention.
For offences which to-day are treated with great leniency, slave women
were then punished by having melted lead poured down their throats.
Moreover, it was during the first centuries of the Christian state that
the fetters of feudalism were forged, by which the poor were bound down
to their hopeless wretchedness. Of the artisans the law said: "Let them
not dare to aspire to any honor, even if they might deserve it, the men
who are covered with the filth of labor, and let them remain forever in
their own condition."

The leaven of Christian morality was present in the lump of traditional
social conditions; but it had not yet begun to work extensively.
Nineteen centuries have produced only the immature results we see at
present. The evolution of human kindliness is slow, though, as we may
believe, inevitable. A learned and lively English writer of the
beginning of the last century, referring to those Church doctors who
would have the world venerate the Nicene period as the ideal age of
Christianity, says that if "they could but be blindfolded (if any such
precaution, in their case, were needed) and were fairly set down in the
midst of the pristine Church, at Carthage, or at Alexandria, or at Rome,
or at Antioch, they would be fain to make their escape, with all
possible celerity, toward their own times and country; and that
thenceforward we should never hear another word from them about
'venerable antiquity' or the holy Catholic Church of the first ages. The
effect of such a trip would, I think, resemble that produced sometimes
by crossing the Atlantic, upon those who have set out, westward,
excellent Liberals, and have returned, eastward, as excellent Tories."

There never has come to the world an opportunity to make substantial and
unusual progress in its moral development, but that there have been
plenty to turn the newly-acquired wisdom into foolishness. The great
opportunity in the history of Christianity came in the century marked by
the Nicene Council and in that succeeding it.

With the exception of the interlude during the reign of the reactionist
Julian, Christianity was the established religion of the Empire. It was
popular; the whole world was becoming Christian. Wealth poured into the
Church: kings and princes came into its pale bringing their presents.
The learned