the first in the New Testament, was also really at work, in that
earlier "Peace," under [118] the Antonines--the minor "Peace of the
church," as we might call it, in distinction from the final "Peace of
the church," commonly so called, under Constantine. Saint Francis,
with his following in the sphere of poetry and of the arts--the voice
of Dante, the hand of Giotto--giving visible feature and colour, and
a palpable place among men, to the regenerate race, did but re-
establish a continuity, only suspended in part by those troublous
intervening centuries--the "dark ages," properly thus named--with the
gracious spirit of the primitive church, as manifested in that first
early springtide of her success. The greater "Peace" of Constantine,
on the other hand, in many ways, does but establish the
exclusiveness, the puritanism, the ascetic gloom which, in the period
between Aurelius and the first Christian emperor, characterised a
church under misunderstanding or oppression, driven back, in a world
of tasteless controversy, inwards upon herself.

Already, in the reign of Antoninus Pius, the time was gone by when
men became Christians under some sudden and overpowering impression,
and with all the disturbing results of such a crisis. At this period
the larger number, perhaps, had been born Christians, had been ever
with peaceful hearts in their "Father's house." That earlier belief
in the speedy coming of judgment and of the end of the world, with
the consequences it so naturally involved in the temper [119] of
men's minds, was dying out. Every day the contrast between the
church and the world was becoming less pronounced. And now also, as
the church rested awhile from opposition, that rapid self-development
outward from within, proper to times of peace, was in progress.
Antoninus Pius, it might seem, more truly even than Marcus Aurelius
himself, was of that group of pagan saints for whom Dante, like