There were many Christians before Christ, just as there were many pagans after the death of Paganism. For centuries the new ideas, afterwards called Christian, had been fermenting in the minds of thoughtful pagans. The spirit of the age called for their crystallisation in a leader and the call of the West again received its answer from the East. But just as Naaman, a believer in the God of Israel, was yet permitted to bow down in the house of Rimmon--or as the theory and practice of modern Socialism are time after time directly contrary--so, save for martyrs and enthusiasts--the Tolstoys of their age--the general public accepted Christianity as filling up awkward gaps in their earlier beliefs rather than as superseding them altogether. Roman witchcraft--continually reinforced from the Orient--grew in importance as faith in the greater gods decreased. Frowned upon by the police, as being contrary to public order, it was thus liable to be confounded with Christianity--which was forbidden on similar grounds--both alike being practised in secret and penalised if brought too prominently into public notice. Christianity, as being the more aggressive, was more severely repressed--and was accordingly destined to more success. And it was reserved for the successful Christian to prove upon his former companions in misfortune the utter uselessness of persecution. Just as we may thank the pagan persecutor that we now live in the Christian era, so the mediæval--and modern--witch owed much of her existence to the persevering efforts of the early Christian towards the suppression of witchcraft and the witch. It was natural--and indeed praiseworthy--that the prominent features of paganism should be relegated to the realms of darkness by the successors to the pagan empire--the god of one religion inevitably becomes the devil of its supplanter. But whereas it was easy enough to lump together satyr, faun, centaur and siren, as varieties of demon, the witch was on a different footing. She really existed, for one thing--in so far as that she was of flesh and blood at any rate--and she exercised more personal functions than any number of divinities. Everyone was ready to acclaim reforms which did not interfere with his own comfort--and the witch was a fireside necessity. She was family doctor, lawyer, and spiritual director--and payer-off of your old scores to boot--a factor in your life the loss of which could be compensated by no amount of religion. Also she stood for tradition, "the good old times," the respectability of unchanging conservatism. Christianity--novel and iconoclastic--might make head among the inconstant townsfolk, always ready for some new thing; the provinces, the village, the lonely farmhouse or the fishing hamlet clung tenaciously to what had been good enough for their grandfathers--as, indeed, they have been doing ever since.