(1) It is said that the spread of Christianity is at least partly due to mere human and common-place causes.[145] It is said for instance, that the civilization of the heathen empire was effete, that society was corrupt, that the very world was wearied with its own wickedness. Very true: yet it was in the Augustan age that Christ lived and taught, the very climax of ancient art and letters, and refinement, and philosophy. Very true; but still, that which will be our only refuge if we are driven out of our faith, had offered everything that it can ever have to offer. Moral philosophy had done its best. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Epictetus, Seneca, had done all that could be done by reasoning and moral teaching, to win men from vice, and to train them to virtue. And earth, for all that, was wearing the very semblance of hell. Men, no doubt, were weary of it, and they listened the more readily to Him who promised to the weary rest. Is it no mark of design and wisdom, that the remedy was offered at that very time when it was the most needed, and when the need was the most keenly felt? (2) It is said, that the world then, in its deep dissatisfied restlessness and inquietude, was turning right and left for satisfaction, and that thus it readily lent an ear to the superstitious and the supernatural. It may have been so. It had apparently given up all faith; and the unbeliever passes readily into the credulous. But I cannot think it reasonable to conclude, that an age of philosophical scepticism, of unbridled licentiousness, even though it might combine with these some disposition in favour of the marvellous, would be likely to admit the pretensions of Christianity without careful investigation; when Christianity bore with it requirements of the most rigid morality, offered in exchange for its philosophy simple faith, in exchange for its licentiousness the sternest self-denial, and gave it no promise in this life, but of contempt and suffering, and very likely martyrdom. (3) It is said once more, that the unequalled organization of the Primitive Church made it a firm phalanx sure to win its way through the ranks of the fiercest foes. Very true. The economy of the Primitive Church, with its bishops, priests, deacons, and deaconesses in every city and suburb, with its strict and unbroken unity throughout the world which it had won and was winning, was, no doubt, an organization, a freemasonry, a secret society if you will, which constituted the best possible machinery for preserving and propagating its faith. Is it no sign of the superhuman wisdom of its Founder, that He not only taught the great secret of life; but that He devised means whereby that secret should be guarded and handed on to men?