declined before the superior pomps of a
sensuous and even idolatrous Christianity. The Theodosian code,
published by Theodosius the Younger, A.D. 438, while it incorporated
Christian usages and laws in the legislation of the Empire, did not,
however, disturb the relation of master and slave; and when the Empire
fell, slavery still continued as it was in the times of Augustus and
Diocletian. Nor did Christianity elevate imperial despotism into a wise
and beneficent rule. It did not change perceptibly the habits of the
aristocracy. The most vivid picture we have of the vices of the leading
classes of Roman society are painted by a contemporaneous Pagan
historian,--Ammianus Marcellinus,--and many a Christian matron adorned
herself with the false and colored hair, the ornaments, the rouge, and
the silks of the Pagan women of the time of Cleopatra. Never was luxury
more enervating, or magnificence more gorgeous, but without refinement,
than in the generation that preceded the fall of Rome. And coexistent
with the vices which prepared the way for the conquests of the
barbarians was the wealth of the Christian clergy, who vied with the
expiring Paganism in the splendor of their churches, in the ornaments of
their altars, and in the imposing ceremonial of their worship. The
bishop became a great worldly potentate, and the strictest union was
formed between the Church and State. The greatest beneficent change
which the Church effected was in relation to divorce,--the facility for
which disgraced the old Pagan civilization; but Christianity invested
marriage with the utmost solemnity, so that it became a holy and
indissoluble sacrament,--to which the Catholic Church, in the days of
deepest degeneracy has ever clung, leaving to the Protestants the
restoration of this old Pagan custom of divorce, as well as the
encouragement and laudation of a material civilization.

The spirit of Paganism never has been exorcised in any age of Christian
progress and triumph, but has appeared from time to time in new forms.
In the conquering Church of Constantine and Theodosius it adopted Pagan
emblems and gorgeous rites and ceremonies; in the Middle Ages it
appeared in the dialectical contests of the Greek philosophers; in our
times in the deification of the reason, in the apotheosis of art, in the
inordinate value placed on the enjoyments of the body, and in the
splendor of an outside life. Names are nothing. To-day we are swinging
to the Epicure