as have been its
fruits, had the development perfectly worthy of its inestimable germ? Who
will venture to affirm that, by the alliance of Christianity with the
virtue and intelligence of men like the Antonines,--of the best product of
Greek and Roman civilization, while Greek and Roman civilization had yet
life and power,--Christianity and the world, as well as the Antonines
themselves, would not have been gainers?

That alliance was not to be. The Antonines lived and died with an utter
misconception of Christianity; Christianity grew up in the Catacombs, not
on the Palatine. Marcus Aurelius incurs no moral reproach by having
authorized the punishment of the Christians; he does not thereby become,
in the least, what we mean by a _persecutor_. One may concede that it was
impossible for him to see Christianity as it really was, as impossible as
for even the moderate and sensible Fleury to see the Antonines as they
really were; one may concede that the point of view from which
Christianity appeared something anti-civil and anti-social, which the
State had the faculty to judge and the duty to suppress, was inevitably
his. Still, however, it remains true that this sage, who made perfection
his aim and reason his law, did Christianity an immense injustice and
rested in an idea of State-attributes which was illusive. And this is, in
truth, characteristic of Marcus Aurelius, that he is blameless, yet, in a
certain sense, unfortunate; in his character, beautiful as it is, there is
something melancholy, circumscribed, and ineffectual.

For of his having such a son as Commodus, too, one must say that he is not
to be blamed on that account, but that he is unfortunate. Disposition and
temperament are inexplicable things; there are natures on which the best
education and example are thrown away; excellent fathers may have, without
any fault of theirs, incurably vicious sons. It is to be remembered also,
that Commodus was left, at the perilous age of nineteen, master of the
whole world; while his father, at that age, was but beginning a twenty
years' apprenticeship to wisdom, labor, and self-command, under the
sheltering teachership of his uncle Antoninus. Commodus was a prince apt
to be led by favorites; and if the story is true which says that he left,
all through his reign, the Christians untroubled, and ascribes this lenity
to the influence of his mistress Marcia, it shows that he could be led to
good as well as to evil; for such