It is with institutions and religions as with individuals--they should be judged not by what they pretend in their weakness, but by what they do when they are strong. Christianity, Mohammedanism and Judaism, the three kindred religions--we call them kindred because they are related in blood and are the offspring of the same soil and climate--these three kindred religions must be interpreted not by what they profess today, but by what they did when they had both the power and the opportunity to do as they wished. When Christianity, or Mohammedanism, was professed only by a small handful of men--twelve fishermen, or a dozen camel-drivers of the desert--neither party advocated persecution. The worst punishment which either religion held out was a distant and a future punishment; but as soon as Christianity converted an Emperor, or Mohammed became the victorious warrior,--that is to say, as soon as, springing forth, they picked up the sword and felt their grip sure upon its hilt, this future and distant punishment materialized into a present and persistent persecution of their opponents. Is not that suggestive? Then, again, when in the course of human evolution, both Christianity and Mohammedanism lost the secular support--the throne, the favor of the courts, the imperial treasury--they fell back once more upon future penalties as the sole menace against an unbelieving world. As religion grows, secularly speaking, weaker, and is more completely divorced from the temporal, even the future penalties, from being both literal and frightful, pale into harmless figures of speech. It was but a short time after the conversion of the Emperor Constantine, that the following edict was published throughout the provinces of the Roman Empire: "O ye enemies of truth, authors and counsellors of death--we enact by this law that none of you dare hereafter to meet at your conventicles...nor keep any meetings either in public buildings or private houses. We have commanded that all your places of meeting--your temples--be pulled down or confiscated to the Catholic Church."