In the lectures which I addressed to you this last year, I took as my subject the early history of Christianity while it was still unrecognised by Roman law, and, therefore, treated as an enemy of the State. On this occasion I purpose to trace the stream a little further from its source, when Christianity has forced itself into recognition and become the predominant religion of the empire. The struggle between Christianity and Paganism has entirely changed its outward character. The only weapons which the Church could wield at a former epoch were moral and spiritual. She is now furnished with all the appliances of political and social prestige; yet these, however imposing, and to some extent serviceable, are not her really effective arms. She can afford to be deprived of them for a time, and her career of victory is unchecked. Her substantial triumphs must still be won by the old weapons. The source of her superiority over Paganism is still the same as before--a more enlightened faith in the will of the unseen, a heartier devotion to the cause of humanity, a more reverential awe for the majesty of purity, a greater readiness to do and to suffer. The change has been as startling and as sudden as it was momentous. All at once the Church had passed from hopeless, helpless oppression to supremacy and power. For several years after the opening of the fourth century the last and fiercest persecution still raged, Christians were hunted down, tortured, put to death with impunity and without mercy. The only limit to their sufferings was the weariness or the caprice of their persecutors. Yet before the first quarter of this century has drawn to a close the greatest sovereign who had worn the imperial diadem for three hundred years is found presiding at a council of Christian bishops discussing the most important questions of Christian doctrine as though the fate of the empire depended upon the result. In the short period of fifteen years which elapsed between the death of Galerius and the Council of Nicæa, the most stupendous revolution which the pages of history record had been brought about. We cannot wonder that the contemporary heathen failed altogether to recognise its completeness and its permanence. Even to ourselves, who look back at the struggle between Christianity and Paganism from the vantage ground of history, it is difficult to realise the suddenness of the transition. To those who lived in the heat of the conflict, and whose estimate of relative proportions was necessarily confused by the nearness of this position, it was altogether unintelligible. The one thing which most astonishes us in heathen writers at this period is their blindness to the real significance of the change. They ignore it, or they make light of it; they speak of Christian sects, of Christian offices and Christian rites, in a tone of cold indifference where they think fit to mention them at all. Obviously they look at Christianity as a phenomenon which