The growth of image worship from the fourth to the eighth centuries was due to certain explainable causes. The victory of Christianity under Constantine brought a wholesale conversion of pagans to the new faith, wealth, power, and extraordinary activity in building churches. What was more natural than that the architectural and artistic ideas of the day should be employed in beautifying them? The Christian Emperor himself set the example of using sacred pictures by embellishing his new capital with religious representations, such as Daniel in the Lion's Den and Christ as the Good Shepherd. Constantine's successors in showering their favours upon the Christians, cultivated this practice. It must be remembered, too, that Christianity had become more material and worldly than it was in the Apostolic Age. The conversion of the masses to Christianity was merely nominal and external. What was more natural than that they should bring with them their pagan ideas and love for show and ostentation, and that they should clamour for a material representation of their new faith? Following popular opinion and obeying private demands, the clergy themselves became champions of the use of images. In the West, Pope Gregory the Great gave his official sanction to the institution. Along with the use of images grew up, out of the spiritual worship of saints and martyrs, the worship of their relics and their images, and pilgrimages to the scenes of their labours. The ignorance and superstition of the period supplied an excellent atmosphere for this marvellous evolution. It appears, then, that the Christian Church, planted in the home of paganism, supported largely by converts from paganism, in a barbarous, credulous age such as that, naturally developed and abused the use of art in worship. Poetry, music, painting, sculpture, and architecture all are unquestionably legitimate handmaids of religion and may be made most serviceable. But the use of images for ornament, instruction, and enjoyment is one thing; the worship of images is quite another thing. In the Middle Ages only a few lofty souls here and there took the true view. Pictures were put into churches not as objects of art, but as aids and objects of worship. The pictures were reverently kissed, bows and prostrations were made before them, candles and lamps were used to illuminate them, and incense was burned to honour them.