of Jesus of Nazareth. The truth he
taught and lived was in some ways made more applicable and transmissible
by his followers, and in some ways lowered. There grew up the society of
the Christian church. Gradually it took its place among the important
forces of the Roman empire. It won at last the nominal allegiance of the
civilized world. Aiding or thwarting it, coloring and changing it, were
a thousand influences,--side-currents from other religions and
philosophies, social changes, Roman law and tradition, the new life of
the barbarians; old ingrained habits of blood and brain; the constant
push of primal instincts--hunger and sex; tides of war and trade and
industry; slavery and serfdom; strong human personalities, swaying a
little the tide that bore them; all the myriad forces that are always at
work in history.

One can scarcely pass by a leap of thought from the age of Paul to the
age of Dante without an instant's glance at the intervening tract. There
are the early Christian communities, bound together by tender ties of
brotherhood; storms of persecution fanning high the flame of courage and
faith; a new purity and sweetness of domestic life spreading itself like
the coming of the dawn. There are wild vagaries of the mind, taking
shape in fantastic heresies. There is the degeneracy of a faith held in
pureness and peril into a popular and fashionable religion. There are
enthroned monsters like Nero and Commodus; "Christian" emperors, like
Constantine, ambitious, crafty, and blood-guilty; and noble "heathen"
emperors like Trajan and Aurelius. There is the peace of the Empire in
its best days, with some wide diffusion of prosperity and content. There
are incursions of barbarians--the strange, little-known life of nomadic
tribes--with pristine virtues of valor and chastity, half-pictured,
half-imagined, by Tacitus. There is conquest, rapine, subjugation,
suffering. There are ages in which violence is master, and in the
disordered struggle of the violent among themselves the weak are trampled
under foot. There are scenes of humble happiness and content, the toiler
in the fields, the family about the hearth-stone, which scarcely are seen
by the chronicler busy with kings and popes. There are superstitions and
mummeries; wild fears of spectres and devils; sentimental piety handed
with cruelty and debauchery. There are inward struggles, sorrows,
achievements; rapturous glimpses, tender consolations; the m