and evidently under the indirect, struggling, yet irre- sistible influence of the Christian spirit, legislation took a re- formatory, humane turn, which was carried by the Christian emperors as far as it could be carried on the basis of the an- cient Grseco-Roman civilization. Now, above all, the prin- ciple of justice and equity^ humanity and love, began to assert itself in the state. For Christianity, with its doctrines of man's likeness to God, of the infinite value of personality, of the original unity of the human race, and of the common re- demption through Christ, first brought the universal rights of man to bear in opposition to the exclusive national spirit, the heartless selfishness, and the political absolutism of the old world, which harshly separated nations and classes, and re- spected man only as a citizen, while at the same time it denied the right of citizenship to the great mass of slaves, foreigners, and barbarians.* * Vol. 1. §§ 86-93. ^ Comp. Lactantius: Inst, divin. I. v. c. 15. 108 THtED PEEIOD. A.D. 311-590. Christ himself began his reformation with the lowest ord< rt of the people, with fishermen and taxgatherers, with the poor, the lame, the blind, with demoniacs and sufferers of every kind, and raised them first to the sense of their dignity and their high destiny. So now the church wrought in the state and through the state for the elevation of the oppressed and the needy, and of those classes which under the reign of hea- thenism were not reckoned at all in the body politic, but were heartlessly trodden under foot. The reformatory motion was thwarted, it is true, to a considerable extent, by popular cus- tom, which is stronger than law, and by the structure of so- ciety in the Roman empire, which was still essentially heathen and doomed to dissolution. But reform was at last set in motion, and could not be turned back even by the overthrow of the empire ; it propagated itself among the German tribes. And although even in Christian states the old social maladies are ever breaking forth from corrupt human nature, sometimes with the violence of revolution, Christianity is ever coming in to restrain, to purify, to heal, and to console, curbing the wild passions of tyrants and of populace, vindicating the persecuted, mitigating the horrors of war, and repressing incalculable vice in public and in private life among Christian people. The most cursory comparison of Christendom with the most civilized heathen and Mohammedan countries affords ample testimony of this. Here again the reign of Constantine is a turning point. Though an oriental despot, and but imperfectly possessed with tlie earnestness of Christian morality, he nevertheless enacted many laws, which distinctly breathe the spirit of Christian justice and humanity : the abolition of the punishment of crucifixion, the prohibition of gladiatorial games and cruel rites, the discouragement of infanticide, and the enc^ouragement of the emancipation of slaves. Eusebius says he improved most of the old