CHRISTIANITY AND LIBERTY.--The founders of Christianity had no thought of becoming the authors of a political revolution. They had a very different purpose in view. To overthrow the existing order of society would have been equally unwise and impracticable. What was needed was a new spirit of justice and of love. The virtues that were called for then were the _passive_ virtues,--gentleness, forbearance, the calm endurance of ills of which there was no present remedy. The Christian spirit, therefore, did not evoke in the disciples of the new faith sentiments of liberty akin to those which had belonged to Greek and Roman heroes. Indirectly, however, Christianity brought into human society the germs of liberty. In the _first_ place, while it enjoined absolute submission to rulers, it made an exception whenever their commands should require disobedience to God's law. This position involved the denial to the state of that absolute supremacy accorded to it by the ancients. The allegiance to the state became a _qualified_ allegiance. _Secondly_, there arose within the state another community, which took into its hands, to a large extent, the regulation of social life. The boundaries of the two authorities might be indistinct, but there was a real division of control between them. It is true that tyranny might arise within the Christian organization itself: still, its very existence planted on the earth a principle of liberty, which was destined ultimately to work out the destruction of all tyranny, whether civil or religious. For the first time the rulers of the Roman world were faced by an opposition, meek yet too inflexible for all their power to overcome. This is the first stage in the history of modern liberty. The "heroic and invincible _Athanasius_" as _Milton_ styles him, boldly confronted _Constantine_ and his successors, and chose to spend twenty years of his life in voluntary or enforced exile rather than bow to their tyrannical decrees. _Ambrose_, the great archbishop of _Milan_, compelled the Emperor _Theodosius_--who, in a fit of anger had ordered a massacre at _Thessalonica_--to do penance before he could be admitted to the communion. Such occurrences indicate that the days of imperial omnipotence, even over unarmed subjects, were past.