Social Service and Influence of Church. 71

bow in the name of Jesus. Where man was, the Church had felt itself bound to be. It had taught slaves, but it had gained the free and highborn also.1 Its philosophers and apologists were second to none for learning and force. It was a

vast and world-wide power. The number of its professed adherents is not the criterion of its influence. Perhaps, not a twentieth, not more than a tenth certainly, of the population of the Empire was Christian, when Constantine saw and accepted the cross. But the proportion of Christians, whatever it was, represented the moral earnestness, the vital and progressive force, of the Empire. And the social life which surrounded it had in many respects been struck, as with a wedge driven near to its base.

In all parts of the world, substantially the same type of social life was reproduced. In respect of polity, there were the bishops or overseers, the officers of various kinds, the administrations and administrators of the brotherhood. In respect of aims, it might be an exaggeration to affirm that the idea of a community held bound in its solidarity for all its constituents, especially for the sick

1 "The Christian religion spread at first among the educated more rapidly than among the uneducated, and nowhere had it a stronger hold (as Mommsen observes) than in the household and at the court of the Emperor."-The Church in the Roman Empire, P. 56.

and the poor, was a distinctively Christian idea; for anticipations of it are to be found in Greek writers, and the alimentations of the Roman Empire grew to be a burden too heavy for the imperial exchequer. But there were features that dissociated the Church from all such alimentations. The policy that promoted them had respect to the maintenance of order and the suppression of revolution. It meant the demoralisation of the people. In the Church there was found a unity inspired by an utterly different spirit and motive. It interpreted a covenant of sympathy. The sanctuaries of Christians had orphanages or institutions of healing attached to them. We read of provision for widows, and children bereft of parents, of hospices, of hospitals for lepers, of benevolences of many kinds, of practical philanthropies which moderated the excitements of controversy, and were, to all without, a sign of brotherly love. And, in our contemplation of the earlier Church, we must not overlook the ethical and spiritual ideal which it ever kept in view. If Christians were held bound to love one another, it was for the sake of Him who had given them His cross to bear and had called them to be holy even as He is holy.

This society, mirroring, amidst all its imper

fections, a lofty ideal of purified humanity, reached many sides of the surrounding life. Even the heathenism which opposed it was influenced by it.1 It tended to form atmospheres of thought and feeling in which the inhumaneness and ghastliness of some of the features of this heathenism were evidenced. A public opinion condemnatory of infanticide, of exposure of children, of the cruelties of many kinds with which the records of the centuries are filled, had been formed and was rapidly spreading. Bloody spectacles, gladiatorial exhibitions, the brutal sports offered to prince and slave, were discountenanced by the diffusion of a gentler type of manners. A higher value was being put on human life, and a new ethic was silently salting the earth.

1 "One of the most interesting facts in the history of religion under the Empire is the influence which was exerted by the new religion on the old, and the progress of discovery is gathering a store of information on this point which will at some future time make a remarkable picture."-The Church in the Roman Empire, p. 144.

Sume today

74

CHAPTER V.

THE AGGRESSIVE SOCIAL ACTION OF THE

CHURCH-Continued.

A NEW era dawned on both the Church and the Empire, bringing with it new social conditions, when the Roman Cæsar, the founder of Constantinople, recognised Christianity as the religion of the State. We have no occasion to discuss the character, and the policy, imperial and ecclesiastical, of Constantine. The story of the six centuries which followed the peace that he proclaimed is eventful and troubled. But it is outwith the limits of our review to do more than glance at these periods of storm and stress, of dissolution and reconstruction. The object

aimed at in this chapter is merely an illustration of the aggressive action of the Church on the social life of humanity. And we revert to the times between the fourth and the tenth century on whose threshold we take our stand, only in so

Beginning of Tenth Christian Century. 75

far as they shed light on the Christian civilisation which from this vantage-ground we survey, tracing thence some features of the bent given to public sentiment and life, prior to that mighty moral upheaval which has made the sixteenth century one of the outstanding epochs in the world's history.

I.

What was the religious and social position of the world and the Church at the beginning of the tenth century? To understand this, we must glance at the periods anterior to it, especially at those usually designated "The Dark Ages."

From the day of Constantine's peace, with the exception of a brief period, the Roman Empire was a Christian Power, and the beneficent effect of the change was marked in the spirit of legislation. The Code and Institutes of Justinian are the sign of the immense advance which had been made in the policy, and, indeed, in the whole conception, of government.1 A new consciousness of the worth of life, of the rights of the individual, of the honour due to woman, of

"The grand legacy of Roman law as reformed by Christian ideas."