Christianity and the Social Crisis; A Theology for the Social Gospel

and sent aid to a distance? The duty of working was strict]y urged in the primitive Church; holy idleness was the outgrowth of later asceticism. But if a man was out of work, the churches assumed the responsibility either of finding him a job or of caring for himJ Thus the means of life were guaranteed him in either case. The church at Rome, living in the midst of vast pauperism, could boast that it had no beggar in its membership. The troubles coming upon them for their faith ruade Christians even more migratory than the test of the city population of that day. But wherever they went, they were sure of Christian hospitality and the first aid needed to get a foothold in a strange place. Hospitality was one of the fundamental Christian virtues in primitive Chrisflan life. 3 It was so open-handed that it invited exploitation by professional beggars. The heathen writer Lucian ruade the gullibility of the Christians part of the plot of his novelette, "On the Death of Peregrinus Proteus." By the end of the third century charity began to be institutionalized. There were Christian lodging-houses for strangers, homes for the aged, the sick, the poor. In the first and second century it was more a matter of direct neighborly help from man to man. Probably the chier help was not given in the form of money, but of human service and 1 See the account of the pestilence in AIexandria, A.D. 259, in Eusebius, "Church History," VII, 22. Also Cyprian's letter to the Numidian bishops, forwarding a gift of ioo, ooo sestertia from the church at Carthage to redeem the captives of brigands. "Ante-Nicene Fathers," V, 355-  Harnack quotes from the "Pseudo-Clementine Homilies" (Ep. Clem. 8), the fine mam: «X[/ po, cp«u« gkeoç, "to the workman a job, to the man unable to work pity," i.e. altos. - CIement of Rome (about a.P. 9 6) always couples faith and hospitality in characterizing the Old Testament saints. I Clement, X-XII, "Ante- Nicene Fathers," I, 7-8.

influence. In Paul's epistles we get glimpses of influential familles in whose homes the church-groups met and upon whom the task of hospitality and watch-care chiefly devolved. They put their property, their influence and social standing, at the service of the Christian community. Paul speaks of such with deep respect. Stephanas, who came from Corinth to visit Paul at Ephesus, was a man of that kind. t He probably ruade this journey on behalf of the Church at his own expense, just as men of wealth would undertake to defray some public function at Athens, or paid for common expenses in the voluntary associations of Greek social life. The poor and the alien were without political rights or social importance, and found protection by close relation to some citizen of wealth and standing. The relation of client and patron was widespread and of great social importance. It is interesting that where out conditions are similar to those of the ancient world, a similar relation of clientage has grown up in the protection given to the poor by the political boss and the service exacted by him in return. It is probable that the wealthier members of the Christian communities served as the patroni of their poorer brethren. Phoebe, of the Corinthian harbor-town Cenchreoe, was probably not a poor deaconess, but a woman of social standing who had served Paul and many others as patrona. 2 Christianity spread at first chiefly in the cities and among the lower middle class, the working class, and the slaves. The poorer classes of the Empire were a proletariat much like that of out great cities. They were largely composed of x3 2 CHRISTIANIT¥ AND THE SOCIAL CRISIS slaves and of freemen who were econornically submerged through the cornpetition of organized slave labor, through the drift of the peasantry toward the cities, and through the increasing economic breakdown of the Empire. The Chrisflan Church was of immense social value to these people. It took the place in their life which life insurance, sick benefits, accident insurance, friendly societies, and some features of trades-unions take to-day. The individual found in the community a hold when any wave of misfortune threatened to sweep him off his feet and drag him out to sea in the undertow of rnisery. It is now generally recognized that this element of mutual help waa quite as strong a factor in the growth of the Christian movement as the attractiveness of the truth it presented. Harnack justly makes "The Gospel of Love and Charity" one of the chief chapters in his account of the rnissionary expansion during the first three centuries. 1 The historian Schiller in his history of the imperial age of

Rorne says: "As the gospel of the poor and oppressed, of the despairing and guilty, Christianity naturally sought its adherents first in the lower strata of population, and if we remernber what moral degradation prevailed in the Greek seaports, we realize the more the power of the new faith, which was able to awaken a higher and somewhat more ideal conception of life even arnid such surroundings. The fundamental idea of Christianity.. could unfold but slowly, and only a few of the nobler spirits could fise to such lofty conceptions. With the majority of believers the deterrnining motives were the socialist elements on the one hand and the Messianic hope and the expectation of a better life beyond on

the other hand." 1 Karl Kautsky, in his history of socialism, thinks the practical aid was a stronger element than the hope of the golden age. "Like the Social Democracy to-day, primitive Christianity grew to a power irresistible by the ruli_ug classes of that day because it became indispensable to the masses of the population." Speaking of the decay of communistic enthusiasm in the Church after Constantine, he says: "But even in this weakened form Christianity for centuries accomplished great things in counteracting pauperism. Though it did not abolish poverty, it was the most effective organization for alleviating the misery growing out of the general poverty within its reach. And that was perhaps the strongest lever which lifted it to success." 2

The history of Christian charity has been a favorite part of popular church history. It is delightful to think of heathen men coming under the influence of Jesus and the Christian Church and developing such tenderness of affection and such ardor of self-sacrifice amidst "a world without love." But Christianity was not simply the culture of the faculty of love. It brought with it a strong leaven of democracy and protest which unsettled men. It created social unrest and carried disturbance in its train. Shortly after Paul left the little church at Thessalon[ca he got word that some of the Christians there had quit working. They seem to have been unusually poor. Consequently the hope of the Lord's coming had taken powerful hold on them and they expected it immediately. 2 But if relief was coming so soon, why go on breaking their backs? It is all very well for men in comfortable arm-chairs to write about the dignity of labor, but those who have had nothing but labor in their life have an instinctive hankering for the dignity of leisure. Grinding social pressure and tense millennial expectations have again and again in the history of Christianity caused crowds to drop their work and wait for the Lord,.who would be their emancipator from drudgery. Paul very wisely explained to them that the Lord's coming was hot quite as near as they supposed, and that in any case "he that will hot work, shall hot eat." 1 At Corinth the social unrest seized the women. They felt the hot promptings of the Spirit in their souls just like the men, and rose to prophesy. They, too, felt their intellectual life enriched with new thoughts and a wider outlook; why should they hOt bave the right to teach in the Church? They felt the emancipating sense of equality and the glad sweep of the new brotherhood in the meeting and put off the veil, which the lustfulness of men and long-standing social inferiority had compelled women to wear when in presence of strangers. Paul in one of his bold, prophetic strains asserted that in Christ ail the old distinctions of race and social standing would disappear, including the difference between man and woman. The spirit of Christianity bas accomplished that result in the slow progress of centuries, and our women are now free and our equals. If these Corinthian women tried to take at once that heritage of liberty which was to be theirs eventually, we cannot help sympathizing with them. But we can also understand the unusual vexation and distress in Paul's mind when he heard of this disorder, and agree with t 2 Thessalonians 3- 6-15- his prudence in bidding them keep within the bounds of customary rnodesty and restraint. 1 The social unsettlernent even reached farnily relations and created a religious tendency to divorce. There were Christians who felt that it was impossible for thern to live a Chrisflan life while rnarried to a heathen. The question whether it was not the right or even the duty of a Christian to sever so incompatible a relation had become so pressing at Corinth that it was one of the chief subjects on which the Church consulted Paul by letter and cornrnittee. There were others with whom the new passion for sexual purity had awakened scruples even about the relations within wedlock, and who were ready to assert the right of the individual to himself on high religious grounds. Here, too, we have the anticipation of later results of Christian influences: a keener feeling that marriage should rest on spiritual affinity and syrnpathy and not on physical or conventional grounds, and a finer sense of the right of the soul to its ovn body. Of course it is exceedingly likely, as hurnan nature goes, that in sorne cases old dislikes and aversions xvere sirnply seeking cover under these new religious pleas. But in any case it rnust have been a leaven of unrest in various farnilies. 2 We catch a glimpse, too, of a new stirring arnong the Chrisflan slaves. In discussing the question whether Christians ought to sever rnarriages with heathen, Paul sers up the general principle that a Christian can be a Christian in any outward set of circurnstances, and that he ought to rernain in that condition in which the call of God found him. In that connection he turns to address the slaves: "Were you a slave when you were called? Do not let that trouble you. Nay, even   Corinthians xx. -x6, 4- 33-36.   Corinthians 7- if you have the chance to gain your freedom, prefer to remain as you are. For he that was called to be a Christian while a slave, is henceforth a freed-rnan of the Lord; likewise he that was called in freedorn, is henceforth the slave of Christ." 1 Evidently there were Christian slaves who were troubled by their servile status. They were dependent on the permission of their masters for the right tobe Christians at all. They were liable to be cornrnanded to perform immoral or idolatrous acts, and they had no legal right to refuse. But Paul's argument indicates that the cause of untest lay even deeper, in a newly awakened sense of dignity and human worth. How could a soul belonging to Christ still bend to the yoke of man? Paul says it can be done; the Christian slave is spiritually free in Christ and that ought to content him. Let him wear the badge of slavery with that inward sense of emancipation. There are other passages in the New Testament touching on the relations of Christian slaves to their rnasters. In heathen literature the commonest vice of slaves was stealing. The most serious danger of Christian slaves apparently was the independence and aggressiveness begotten of a new sense of equality and worth. Especially if their rnasters were also their brethren in Christ, the moral problem thereby created was not always satisfactorily solved. 2 We bave already touched on the views taken by Christians about the Roman Empire. These theoretical views were sure to manifest themselves at least occasionally in practical conduct. Christians were citizens of a higher kingdorn. The Empire was not their highest good. It was soon to corne 1 Cor;_'nthians 7- 7-4 -  See Ephesians 6. 5-9;  Peter . 8- 5; x Timothy 6. -.

go naught by God's hand. Its laws were not to them the supreme laws, nor in any sense identical with the moral law. They were often placed in a position where it was their religious duty to disobey the commands of the public officers. Even Paul, who takes so respecfful an attitude toward the moral value of government, had no real use for the State so far as Christians were concerned. He did hot think of trying to bring Christian influences to bear on the State; but neither did he want any in.fluence of the State in the affairs of Christians. If brethren had trouble between them, they were not to begin litigation before the courts of the Empire, but ta settle by the arbitration of other brethren. 1 Christians withdrew from the surrcnding heathen life and rninimized all contact with it. This involved that they had to reproduce and parallel the necessary institutions of society within their own community. The churches legislated for their members and exercised judicial functions, enforcing them with various grades of disciplinary punishments. In heathen life the religious and civil organizations were one: the officers of the State as such performed the public religious acts. Through the hostile relation of the Christian Church and the heathen State, which continued for nearly three centuries, the Church developed a permanent organization of its own, which controlled and directed the life of its members with a pressure often more insistent and searching than that of the State. The Church was, in fact, a Statewithin the State. The ecclesiastical courts and the canon law of later times were an outgrowth of thls situation. It was the realization of this which finally roused the Empire to active hostility against the Church. There were only two persecutions in 1I Corinthian 6. I-II.

which the Empire took the initiative and exerted its vast strength to destroy the Church, the one beginning A.P. 35o and the other,OP. 303, each lasting about ten years. Each of these was directed, hot against the belief of Christians, but against this all-pervading, tenacious organization which paralleled and rivalled the organization of the Empire and seemed to threaten its sovereignty. With such an inward emancipation from the ordnary patriotism and enthusiasm for the Empire; with such a parallel organization to absorb the obedience and devotion of Christians; and under the painful pressure of unjust persecutions and frequent chicanery, it would be strange if practical revolutionary sentiments had never sprouted within the fenced acreage of the Church. It is true, in all documents intended for the general public, especially in the writings of the apologists, there are emphatic assurances of the harmlessness and patient obedience of Christians. These writings had the very practical purpose of lightning rods to draw off the electricity that might gather in high places and be discharged in sudden strokes of persecuting anger. Doubtless all that the apologists said was true. Doubtless Christians did pray for the emperor. So do the persecuted sectarians in Russia or the Christian Armenians in Turkey; but perchance the cloth of their sentiments shows a different pattern and color on the lower side. The repeated injunctions in the New Testament to give honor to the emperor and to pay taxes wherever they were due, may indicate that these duties were hot self-evident to alh Paul clearly goes out of his way in his letter to the church at Rome to urge respect for the government and willing payment of taxes. 1  Romans 3. -7-

The psychological motive for that passage must have been either to conciliate the good-will of influential men at the capital into whose hands the letter might fall, or the knowledge and fear that contrary sentiments existed either at Rome or in other places with which Paul was acquainted. Christians who v«ere brought before Roman officials did not always manifest the ideal meekness with which we are apt to invest their memory; they displayed their human nature by taunts and prophecies of disaster. During the Decian persecution, when the vacant seat o[ the Roman bishop was once more filled, an eminent Christian leader boasted that the emperor would rather have heard of a rival emperor being proclaimed than of a bishop being seated at Rome. The tone of pugnacity and antagonism is unmistakable. 1 Thus the spirit of primitive Christianity did not spread only sweet peace and tender charity, but the leaven of social unrest. It caused some to throw down their tools and quit work. It stirred women to break down the restraints of custom and modesty. It invaded the intimacies of domestic relations and threatened families w'ith disruption. It awakened the slaves to a sense of worth and a longing for freedom which ruade slavery doubly irksome and strained their relations to their masters. It disturbed the patriotism and loyalty of citizens for their country, and intervened between the sovereign State and its subjects. All this is neither strange nor reprehensible. No great historic revolution has ever worked its way without breaking and splintering the old to make way for the new. New wine is sure to ferment and burst the old wineskins. More- * Cyprian, Episfle 5» 9» «Ante'Nicene Fathers»" V» 329.

over, it is likely to taste sour and yeasty, and some will say, "The old is better." Jesus foresaw that the Christian movement would work incidental harm and pain. He had corne to cast a tire upon the earth. He had not corne to bring peace but the sword. Families would be riven in twain and set in antagonism, two against three. But he was willing to pay the cost of the kingdom of God in tears and blood if need be. Our argument here is simply this, that Christianity must have had a strong social impetus to evoke such stirrings of social unrest and discontent. It was not purely religious, but also a democratic and social movement. Or, to state it far more truly: it was so strongly and truly religious that it was of necessity democratic and social also.

In spite of the defectiveness and one-sidedness of the historical sources furnishing the material for our study, we have round an abundant and throbbing social lire in primitive Christianity. All of its theories involved a bold condemnation of existing society. Whether that society was to be overthrown by a divine catastrophe of judgment or displaced and absorbed in the higher lire of the Christian community, in any case it was to go. The future of society belonged to that new lire originated by Christ. Christianity was conscious of a farreaching and thorough political and social mission. This is the more remarkable because it was weak in numbers, apparently withdrawn from the larger lire of society, and without any present or any apparent future influence on the organized lire of ¢he civilized wofld. Such convictions, cherished in the face of such odds, argue that it was launched with a powerful and invincible social impetus, and that the consciousness of a regenerating mission for social lire is inseparable from the highest form of religion. The strength of its social tendencies was not exhausted by its hopes for the future. It immediately began to build a society within which the new ideals of moral and social lire were to be realized at once, so far as the limitations of an evil environment permitted. The primitive Christian churches were not e«lesiastical organizations so much as fraternal communities. They withdrew their members from the social lire outside and organized a complete social lire within their circle. Their common meals expressed and created social solidarity. Their organization at first was executive and was devised to meet social and moral, rather than religious and doctrinal, needs. Their income was completely devoted to fraternal help. As organizations for mutual help and ri'aternal co6peration the Christian churcheg became indispensable to the city population and invincible by the government. This fraternal helpfulness was more than mere religious kindliness. It was animated by the consciousness of a creative social mission and a«ompanied by a spirit of social unrest which proves the existence of powerful currents of democratic feeling. Under the first impact of its ideas and spirit, men and women tried to realize at once those social changes which have actually been a«omplished in centuries of development. This impulse proves that a reconstructive social dynamic inheres in Christianity and must find an outlet in some form, slow or swift. We were prepared to fmd a long drop downward when we passed from Jesus to the thoughts and doings of his followers. We did find it so. In their religious lire not even the greatest maintained his level, and the lowest groped in a density of superstition and puerile legalism whîch makes it seem queer to put the great naine of Jesus upon them. And yet the higher impulse was implanted. Give it time! Humanity is an organism that passes through a long series of metamorphoses, and it measures its seasons by centuries. The purification of the religious life, the comprehension of the real meaning and spirit of Christ, bave ruade marvellous progress in recent times. In the social direction of the religious spirit we fotmd a like decline. There is hot the saine unerring penetration of judgment on social morality, not the saine eagle-eyed boldness of hope and faith for the future, not the saine sweet reasonableness about the slow methods of realizing the ultimate goal, hot the saine lovable love nor the saine power to heal and save the broken and diseased members of the social body. There is a good deal of crude thinking, of sectarian narrowness and pride, of ecclesiastical ambition, of complete forgetfulness of the high mission to the world. And yet there is the germ of a new social life for humanity, the conception of a social morality based on love and wofld-wide in its obligation. Give it rime! This, too, under ever changing Iorms, may work its way, and triumph yet. The modern emancipation of the intellectual life began in the Renaissance of the fifteenth century and is not fmished yet. The modern emancipation of the religious life began in the Reformation of the sixteenth century and is hOt finished yet. The modem emancipation of the political life began in the Puritan Revolution of the seventeenth century and is not fmished yet. The modem emancipation of the industrial life began in the nineteenth century and is hot finished yet. Let us bave patience. Let us bave hope. And above ail let us bave IaioE

IN the preceding chapters we have studied the origins of Christianity. It rested historically on the religion of the Hebrew prophets, and the great aire of the prophets was to constitute the social and political lire of their nation in accordance with the will of God. The fundamental purpose of Jesus was the establishment of the kingdom of God, which involved a thorough regeneration and reconstitution of social life. Primitive Christianity cherished an ardent hope of a radically new era, and within its limits sought to realize a social life on a new moral basis. Thus Christianity as an historical movement was latmched with all the purpose and hope, all the impetus and power, of a great revolutionary movement, pledged to change the world-as-it-is into the world-as-it-ought-to-be. The organization in which this movement was embodied, after three centuries of obscurity and oppression, rose triumphant to be the dominant power of the civilized world. Christian churches were scattered broadcast over the Roman Empire. Their numbers were so great and their organization so flexible and tenacious that the final attempts of the Empire to uproot the Church proved futile and the Empire capitulated and ruade terres. Christianity supplanted heathenism as the State religion of the Empire. Its churches were endowed with the ancient properties and rights of the temples. _ I43

Its clergy were given irnrnunity from the taxes and exactions which crushed all other classes. Its members filled the civil service, lts great bishops had the ear of the men in power. The population of the ancient world entered the Church en masse, and though the great rnajority may have had little experience of the inner power of the new faith, yet the people lay open to the instruction and guidance of the Church. The bishops came tobe the leaders of the local nobility which controlled the municipal lire of the Roman cities. In the East the great Justinian forrnally placed the administration of public charity and the supervision of the public officials under the bishops. When the machinery of imperial administration broke down in the provinces under the invasion of the barbarians in the fifth century, the machinery of the Church remained unbroken. The provincial cities rose like islands of the old Roman civilization arnid the flood of barbarian lire that covered the provinces, and in the cities the bishops were the leaders, the protectors of the poor, and the organizers of the forces of law and order. Amid the general disorder and insecurity the Church offered the stable points and thereby gathered power to itself. Ancient familles became extinct and the Church became the heir of their lands and slaves and serfs. Srnall proprietors sought security by cornmitting their lands to the Church and becoming its tenants. The landed wealth of the Church alone sufficed to rnake it a pow'er of the highest rank in the feudal systern of the Middle Ages, in which all power finally rested on the possession of the land. Bishops and abbots became feudal dignitaries, sometimes almost sovereign princes in their own domains, and alvays with a potent voice in the government of their nations. The

HE WORK OF SOCIAl, IOECONSTRUCTION 145 pope became a sovereign over a large part of Italy, and his material po»ver and spiritual influence were so vast that he could wrestle on even terres for supremacy with the emperors. The Church was the preserver of the remnants of intellectual culture, the sole schoolmistress of the raw peoples. Her clergy long had almost a monopoly of education, and were the secretaries of the nobles, the chancellors and prime ministers of kings. The Church had its own law code and its own courts of law which were supreme over the clergy, and had large rights of jurisdiction even over the laity, so that it could develop and give effect toits own ideas of law and right. Throughout the Middle Ages the sway of the Church over the moral and spiritual life of the people, her power to inspire and direct their enthusiasms and energies, her chance for moulding their conceptions of life, were amazing and unparalleled by any other force. In modern life the relation between Church and State has grown looser, the reverence for the Church has sensibly waned, and other intellectual and spiritual forces have risen by her side and successfully claimed part of the field which she formerly held alone. But the potential eflciency of the Church in affecting public opinion and custom is still almost incalculable, even in the least religious countries of Europe. In our own country, if the Church directed its full available force against any social wrong, there is probably nothing that could stand up against it. Here, then, is a vast force which by all the tradition of its origin and by its very essence is committed to the moral reconstruction of human society. It has had rime and opportunity. Why, then, has it not reconstituted the social life of Christendom?

Two answers may be given to this question, each tha opposite of the other. It may be replied that in spire of the spread and power of the Church any actual reconstruction was impossible. Christianity was rising when the ancient world was breaking down. By the time the Church had gained sufficient power to exercise a controlling influence, the process of social decay, like the breakdown of a physical organism in a wasting disease, was beyond remedy. The unsolved social questions of pagan centuries had created a despotic government, a venal and rapacious bureaucracy, a vicious and parasitic aristocracy of wealth, and a vast mass of nerveless and hopeless hereditary paupers. The impact of the Teutonic barbarians merely crumpled up an organization that was hollow within. What power could save a State that was rotten to the core? A similar huge task confronted it in working on the raw clay of that new human material which covered the ancient civilization like a landslide in the great migration of nations. Amid the general anarchy, against the coarse vice and brutality of the barbarians, herself harried by the rapacity of the nobles and weakened by the ignorance and barbarism of her own clergy, the Church did what she could, but a thorough social reconstruction was impossible. In modern life ber power is broken by the prevalent doubt and apostasy," and the current of materialism and mammonism is now too great to be stemmed. Such a statement of the case deserves a more syinpathetic consideration than it is likely to get from either friend or foe of the Church. Impetuous Christians are apt to see only the duty that has been left undone, and not the difficulties which beset the stout hearts of the pa.st. Those who are no friends of the Church often have no realizing experience themselve what a task itis to counteract even a single, deep-rooted moral evil or to quicken a single group of human beings to a nobler life. Whoever thinks that Christianity ought to have accomplished more than it did, confesses great faith in it potency. I have that faith. I feel so deeply the inexhaustible powers of renewal pulsating in it, that its very achievements only make me ask: Why has it never done what it wa sent to do? Others again wiIl return the opposite repIy. If we ask why Christianity has not reconstituted society, they will say it ha done so. Has it not lifted woman to equality and companionship with man, secured the sanctity and stability of marriage, changed parental despotism to parental service, and eliminated unnatural vice, the abandonment of children, blood revenge, and the robbery of the shipwrecked from the customs of Christian nations? Has it not abolished slavery, mitigated war, covered all lands with a network of charitie to uplift the poor and the fallen, fostered the institutions of education, aided the progress of civil liberty and social justice, and diffused a softening tenderness throughout human life? * It has done all that, and vastly more. The influence of Christianity in taming selfishness and stimulating the sympathetic affections, in creating a resolute sense of duty, a stanch love of liberty and independence, an irrepressible hunger for justice and a belief in the rights of the poor, has been so subtle and penetrating that no one can possibly trace its effects. We might as well try to count up the effect in out organism of all the oxygen we have inhaled since out first • For a fine, popular sttement of these changes sec B»ace, « Gesta Chrisfi. » gasp for breath. In so far as humanity has yet been redeemed, Christianity has been its redemption. Many of us have ruade test of that regenerating power in our personal lires. Many, too, have marked the palpable difference in the taste of life between some social circle really affected by Christian kindliness and a similar circle untouched by Chrisflan motives and affections. What is true within such small spheres of social life has been true in the large area of Western civilization. And yet human society has not been reconstituted in accordance with the principles of Jesus Christ. In the first place, it is necessary to remind ourselves that Christian writers who describe the influence of Christianity on human life are alxvays tempted to emphasize the contrast between hcathenism and Christian society by selecting the darkest aspects of the former and the brightest sides of the IatterJ The witticisms of heathen satirists and the sombre invectives of Christian moralists are quoted to characterize heathen lire. But if some socialist historian of the tventy-fifth century should ransack the files of our comic papers and of our "muck-raking" magazines, what an appalling, unrelieved, and unfair picture he would get of society under our individualistic régime! On the other hand, in describing Christian society we are apt to assume that Chrisflan theory was identical xvith Christian practice; that the declamations of some ancient Christian rhetorician xvere sober scientific estimates; and that the highly moral edicts of Christian emperors were enforced better than the highly i This holds true not only of Brace, "Gesta Christi," but of such solid and admirable works as Doellinger, "Gentile and Jew," and Uhlhorn's "Conttict of ChristianitywithHeathenism" and lais "History of Chrisfian Charity."