antiquity accepted in large numbers
the new teaching. They found that their lives were uplifted by it, their
activities enlarged, their influence among men strengthened.

The status of woman among Oriental peoples was consequently considerably
changed. The recognition, so slowly won, that women had immortal souls
equalized them with the other sex, and with the permeation of
Christianity into the life of paganism began the real emancipation of
the female sex. Functions beyond those of housewifery and maternity were
conceded to woman. Chrysostom, in a letter to a Roman lady, after
speaking of the division of duties assigned by nature to men and women,
says that the Christian life had extended woman's sphere beyond the
duties of the home, and had given her an important part to perform in
the work and struggles of the Church for the elevation of mankind. Her
chief function, in his opinion, was that of consoler and ministering
angel. Thus woman was acknowledged to have a mission--a view that has
prevailed through all the Christian ages. In the pursuit of this idea,
many of the loveliest and most highly endowed women of ancient times
devoted themselves to the relief of sickness and suffering and extended
the influence of the Church by this exhibition of the spirit of
humanity.

Christianity was gradually transforming the spirit of the ancient world.
But these earlier centuries of the Christian era were a season of
twilight during which light and darkness mingled. Paganism and
Christianity were waging a silent but determined warfare, and the
latter, by absorbing the best that was in the former, left it but a
hollow shell, the connotation of worldliness and unbelief. The ethical
philosophy of the Greeks and the moral teachings of the Stoics and the
Epicureans had found their logical end in the philosophical doctrines of
Christianity and had prepared the way for the acceptance of the latter.
Christianity continued the idea of conformity to the divine government
of the world taught by the Stoics, and the insistence on friendship and
brotherly love emphasized by the Epicureans, and had given life to these
doctrines by the presentation of a divine example. This evolution of the
highest ethical ideas of the ancients in the nobler spirit of
Christianity had its logical outcome in the prevailing institutions of
the Christian world. Stoicism developed into the asceticism that
appealed so strongly to many consecrated men and women, an