Christianity still moves, as in the fii'st three centm'ies, upon the geographical scene of the Graeco-Koman empire and the ancient classical cultm'e, the countries around the Mediter- ranean Sea. But its field and its operation are materially enlarged, and even touch the barbarians on the Kmit of the empire. Above all, its relation to the temporal power, and its social and political position and import, undergo an entire and permanent change. We have here to do with the church of the Graeco-Koman empire, and with the beginning of Chris- tianity among the Germanic barbarians. Let us glance first at the general character and leading events of this important period. The reign of Constantino the Great marks the transition of the Christian religion from under persecution by the secular government to union with the same ; the beginning of the state-church system. The Graeco-Roman heathenism, the most cultivated and powerful form of idolatry, which history knows, surrenders, after three hundred years' struggle, to Christianity, and dies of incurable consumption, with the con- fession: Galilean, thou hast conquered! The ruler of the civilized world lays his crown at the feet of the crucified Jesus of Nazareth. The successor of Nero, Domitian, aiid Diocletian § 1. INTRODTICTION' AND GENERAL VIEW. 5 appears in the imperial purple at tlie council of Nice as pro- tector of the church, and takes his golden throne at the nod of bishops, who still bear the scars of persecution. The despised sect, which, like its Founder in the days of His humiliation, had not where to lay its head, is raised to sovereign authority in the state, enters into the prerogatives of the pagan priest- hood, grows rich and powerful, builds countless churches out of the stones of idol temples to the honor of Christ and his martyrs, employs the wisdom of Greece and Rome to vindicate the foolishness of the cross, exerts a molding power upon civil legislation, rules the national life, and leads off the history of the world. But at the same time the church, embracing the mass of the population of the empire, fi'om the Csesar to the meanest slave, and living amidst all its institutions, received into her bosom vast deposits of foreign material from the world and from heathenism, exposing herself to new dangers and imposing upon herself new and heavy labors. '"^ The union of church and state extends its influence, now healthful, now baneftil, into every department of our history. The Christian life of the ISTicene and post-Nicene age re- veals a mass of worldliness within the church ; an entire abate- ment of chiliasm with its longing after the return of Christ and his glorious reign, and in its stead an easy rej)ose in the present order of things ; with a sublime enthusiasm, on the other hand, for the renunciation of self and the world, particu- larly in the hermitage and the cloister, and with some of the noblest heroes of Christian holiness. Monasticism, in pursuance of the