on adhering to it. This was farther
improved by successive psalmists and prophets, until Judaism
culminated. The Jewish faith was eminently grand and pure; but
there is nothing[11] in this history which we can adduce in proof of
preternatural and miraculous agency.

II. The facts concerning the outward spread of Christianity have also
been disguised by the party spirit of Christians, as though there were
something essentially _different in kind_ as to the mode in which it
began and continued its conquests, from the corresponding history
of other religions. But no such distinction can be made out. It is
general to all religions to begin by moral means, and proceed farther
by more worldly instruments.

Christianity had a great moral superiority over Roman paganism, in
its humane doctrine of universal brotherhood, its unselfishness, its
holiness; and thereby it attracted to itself (among other and baser
materials) all the purest natures and most enthusiastic temperaments.
Its first conquests were noble and admirable. But there is nothing
_superhuman_ or unusual in this. Mohammedism in the same way conquers
those Pagan creeds which are morally inferior to it. The Seljuk and
the Ottoman Turks were Pagans, but adopted the religion of Tartars and
Persians whom they subjugated, because it was superior and was blended
with a superior civilization; exactly as the German conquerors of the
Western Empire of Rome adopted some form of Christianity.

But if it is true that _the sword_ of Mohammed was the influence which
subjected Arabia, Egypt, Syria and Persia to the religion of Islam,
it is no less true that the Roman empire was finally conquered to
Christianity by the sword. Before Constantine, Christians were but a
small fraction of the empire. In the preceding century they had gone
on deteriorating in good sense and most probably therefore in moral
worth, and had made no such rapid progress in numbers as to imply that
by the mere process of conversion they would ever Christianize the
empire. That the conversion of Constantine, such as it was, (for he
was baptized only just before death,) was dictated by mere worldly
considerations, few modern Christians will deny. Yet a great fact is
here implied; viz., that Christianity was adopted as a state-religion,
because of the great _political_ power accruing from the organization
of the churches and the devotion of Christians to their ecclesiastical
citizenship. Roman statesmen well k