ianity. It left but a step to the downfall of the one and the
supremacy of the other in the empire of the Caesars.

This great epoch is marked by the reign of Constantine I. He understood
the signs of the time, and acted accordingly. He was the man for the
times, as the times were prepared for him by that Providence which
controls both and fits them for each other. He placed himself at the
head of true progress, while his nephew, Julian the Apostate, opposed
it, and was left behind. He was the chief instrument for raising the
church from the low estate of oppression and persecution to
well-deserved honor and power. For this service a thankful posterity has
given him the surname of the Great, to which he was entitled, though not
by his moral character, yet doubtless by his military and administrative
ability, his judicious policy, his appreciation and protection of
Christianity, and the far-reaching consequences of his reign. His
greatness was not indeed of the first, but of the second order, and is
to be measured more by what he _did_ than by what he _was_. To the Greek
Church, which honors him even as a canonized saint, he has the same
significance as Charlemagne to the Latin.

Constantine, the first Christian Caesar, the founder of Constantinople
and the Byzantine empire, and one of the most gifted, energetic, and
successful of the Roman emperors, was the first representative of the
imposing idea of a Christian theocracy, or of that system of policy
which assumes all subjects to be Christians, connects civil and
religious rights, and regards church and state as the two arms of one
and the same divine government on earth. This was more fully developed
by his successors, it animated the whole Middle Age, and is yet working
under various forms in these latest times; though it has never been
fully realized, whether in the Byzantine, the German, or the Russian
empire, the Roman church-state, the Calvinistic republic of Geneva, or
the early Puritanic colonies of New England. At the same time, however,
Constantine stands also as the type of an undiscriminating and harmful
conjunction of Christianity with politics, of the holy symbol of peace
with the horrors of war, of the spiritual interests of the kingdom of
heaven with the earthly interests of the state.

In judging of this remarkable man and his reign, we must by all means
keep to the great historical principle, that all representative
characters act consciously or unc