when men were awaking to the need of better and purer
living. To all who felt this need Christianity offered high moral
ideals, and a tremendous moral enthusiasm, in its devotion to a beloved
leader, in its emphasis upon the ethical possibilities of the meanest,
and in its faith in a future life of blessedness for the righteous. It
was a time of great religious interest, when old cults were being
revived and new ones were finding acceptance on all sides. Christianity,
with its one God, and its promise of redemption and a blessed
immortality based upon divine revelation, met as no other contemporary
faith did the awakening religious needs. It was a time also of great
social unrest. With its principle of Christian brotherhood, its emphasis
upon the equality of all believers in the sight of God, and its
preaching of a new social order to be set up at the return of Christ, it
appealed strongly to multitudes, particularly of the poorer classes.
That it won a permanent success, and finally took possession of the
Roman world, was due to its combination of appeals. No one thing about
it commended it to all, and to no one thing alone did it owe its
victory, but to the fact that it met a greater variety of needs and met
them more satisfactorily than any other movement of the age.
Contributing also to the growth of the Church was the zeal of its
converts, the great majority of whom regarded themselves as missionaries
and did what they could to extend the new faith. Christianity was
essentially a proselytizing religion, not content to appeal simply to
one class or race of people, and to be one among many faiths, but
believing in the falsity or insufficiency of all others and eager to
convert the whole world. Moreover, the feeling of unity which bound
Christians everywhere together and made of them one compact whole, and
which found expression before many generations had passed in a strong
organization, did much for the spread of the Church. Identifying himself
with the Christian circle from the 2nd century on, a man became a member
of a society existing in all quarters of the empire, every part
conscious of its oneness with the larger whole and all compactly
organized to do the common work. The growth of the Church during the
earlier centuries was chiefly in the middle and lower classes, but it
was not solely there. No large number of the aristocracy were reached,
but in learned and philosophical circles many were won, attracted bot