advancing light of Christianity. Neither contained anything which
could nourish the soul of man, and both had become simply badges of
nationality.

Druidism was the last stronghold of independent Gallic life. It was a
mixture of northern myth and oriental dreams of metempsychosis, coarse,
mystical, and cruel. The Roman paganism which was superimposed by the
conquering race was the mere shell of a once vital religion. Educated
men had long ceased to believe in the gods and divinities of Greece,
and it is said that the Roman augurs, while giving their solemn
prophetic utterances, could not look at each other without laughing.


In the year 312--alas for Christianity!--it was espoused by imperial
power. When the Emperor Constantine declared himself a Christian,
there was no doubt rejoicing among the saints; but it was the beginning
of the degeneracy of the religion of Christ. The faith of the humble
was to be raised to a throne; its lowly garb to be exchanged for purple
and scarlet; the gospel of peace to be enforced by the sword.

The empire was crumbling, and upon its ruins the race of the future and
social conditions of modern times were forming. Paganism and Druidism
would have been an impossibility. Christianity, even with its lustre
dimmed, its purity tarnished, its simplicity overlaid with
scholasticism, was better than these. The miracle had been
accomplished. The great Roman Empire had said, "I am Christian."

A belief in the gods of Parnassus, which Rome had imposed upon Gaul,
had now become a heresy to be exterminated. If fires were lighted at
Lyons or elsewhere, they were for the extermination not of Christians,