And when we come to Christianity it must be remarked that, so long as that nascent religion was regarded as merely a variety of Judaism, it was actually protected by the Roman power, and owes no little of its original progress to the fact. In the Acts of the Apostles it is always from the Roman governor that St. Paul receives, not only the fairest, but the most courteous treatment. It is the Jews who persecute him and work up difficulties against him, because to them he is a renegade and is weaning away their people. To the philosophers at Athens he appears as the preacher of a new philosophy, and they think him a "smatterer" in such subjects. To the Roman he is a man charged by a certain community with being dangerous to social order, to wit, causing factious disturbances and profaning the temple; and since he refuses to let the local authorities judge his case, and has exercised his citizen privilege by appealing to Caesar, to Caesar he is sent. And, when a prisoner in somewhat free custody at Rome, note that he is permitted to speak "with all freedom," and that in the first instance he is acquitted. True, but the fact remains that Nero burnt Christians in his gardens after the great fire of Rome, and that certain later emperors are found punishing Christians merely for avowing themselves such. Why was Christianity thus singled out? It was not through what can be reasonably called "religious intolerance," for, as has been said, the Romans did not seek to force Roman religion on other peoples nor did they make any inquisition into the beliefs of Romans themselves. The reasons for singling out Christianity for special treatment are obvious enough. The question is not whether the reasons were sound, whether the Romans properly understood or tried to understand, whether they could be as wise before the event as we are after it, but whether the motive was what we should call a "religious" one. To allow Epicureans to deny the existence of gods at all, and to make scornful concessions to the peculiar tenets of Jews, could not be the action of a people which was bigoted. If there was bigotry and intolerance, it was political or social bigotry and intolerance, not religious. To prevent any possible misconception let the present writer say here that he considers the principles of Christianity, as laid down by its Founder and as spread by St. Paul, to have been the most humanizing and civilising influence ever brought to bear upon society. But that is not the point. The early Christians were treated as they were, not because they held non-Roman views, but because they held anti-Roman views; not because they did not believe in Jupiter and Venus, but because they refused to let any one else believe in them; not because they threatened to weaken Roman faith, but because they threatened to weaken and even to wreck the whole fabric of Roman society; not because they were known to be heretics, but because they were supposed