And so far as appears, their judgment was well founded. Man had done all he could. The Roman Empire exhibited the highest state of society, which, without some supernatural interference of a higher power in the affairs of the world, he was able to develope. Viewed in this light, as the last act of a vast drama which had been going on for ages, it must ever be most worthy of study. And in truth there was in it very much that was really great and noble. The impression left on the mind by ordinary histories, which is little more than a vague idea of mad and grotesque tyranny on the one side, and abject servitude on the other, is very far from doing it justice. If, as we know, there has in fact arisen out of its ashes a new world, on the whole vastly superior to the old, this is because, by the mercy of his Creator, man has no longer been left to find his way without light and guidance from on high; because after having, in the old world, left man to work out to the end all that he could do by himself, God Himself has been pleased, in the new world, to stretch out His own right hand and His holy arm, and to work in man and by him. Here, then, is the striking contrast between ancient and modern history. The one shows man working without God, the other God working by man; and man, alas! but too often, crossing, interfering with, and maiming His work. But this was not all; for although, while the Empire of Rome still lasted, the kingdom of God was not as yet visibly set up among men, yet, almost from its very foundation, the germs of that future kingdom were working in it. It was under the reign of the first heathen emperor that the Prince of Peace was born into the world. The grain of mustard-seed was already sown, and through all the centuries occupied by the heathen empire it was growing night and day, at first unobserved by men, in later times forcing itself on their notice, until it became a tree whose branches overshadowed the whole earth. There are, then, two subjects which must attract attention in any worthy description of the Roman Empire; first, the political, social, moral, and religious condition of the heathen world, both in itself and in comparison with that of Christian nations, and next the effect produced on the heathen themselves by the gradual growth and development of Christianity in the midst of them. The internal history of Christianity, indeed, belongs in strictness to ecclesiastical history, but no subject has a more direct claim upon the general historian than that of its effects upon the political, moral, and social standard, and upon the religious opinions of those who were not Christians.