It was the final destruction of their holy city which had been so disastrous to the Jewish-Christians. During several centuries afterwards, in the little villages of the Judaean hinterland colonies might have been found of strange people who called themselves “poor men” and who waited with great patience and amidst everlasting prayers for the end of the world which was at hand. They were the remnants of the old Jewish-Christian community in Jerusalem. From time to time we hear them mentioned in books written during the fifth and sixth centuries. Far away from civilization, they developed certain strange doctrines of their own in which hatred for the apostle Paul took a prominent place. After the seventh century however we no longer find any trace of these so-called Nazarenes and Ebionites. The victorious Mohammedans had killed them all. And, anyway, if they had managed to exist a few hundred years longer, they would not have been able to avert the inevitable. Rome, by bringing east and west and north and south into one large political union, had made the world ready for the idea of a universal religion. Christianity, because it was both simple and practical and full of a direct appeal, was predestined to succeed where Judaism and Mithraism and all of the other competing creeds were predestined to fail. But, unfortunately, the new faith never quite rid itself of certain rather unpleasant characteristics which only too clearly betrayed its origin. The little ship which had brought Paul and Barnabas from Asia to Europe had carried a message of hope and mercy. But a third passenger had smuggled himself on board. He wore a mask of holiness and virtue. But the face beneath bore the stamp of cruelty and hatred. And his name was Religious Intolerance. CHAPTER IV THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS The early church was a very simple organization. As soon as it became apparent that the end of the world was not at hand, that the death of Jesus was not to be followed immediately by the last judgment and that the Christians might expect to dwell in this vale of tears for a good long time, the need was felt for a more or less definite form of government. Originally the Christians (since all of them were Jews) had come together in the synagogue. When the rift had occurred between the Jews and the Gentiles, the latter had betaken themselves to a room in some one’s house and if none could be found big enough to hold all the faithful (and the curious) they had met out in the open or in a deserted stone quarry. At first these gatherings had taken place on the Sabbath, but when bad feeling between the Jewish Christians and the Gentile Christians increased, the latter began to drop the habit of keeping the Sabbath-day and preferred to meet on Sunday, the day on which the resurrection had taken place.