That they were correct in their judgment of the world about them,
contemporary history proves abundantly. That they were correct,
likewise, in believing that some fearful judgment was about to fall
on man, is proved by the fact that it did fall; that the first half
of the fifth century saw, not only the sack of Rome, but the
conquest and desolation of the greater part of the civilized world,
amid bloodshed, misery, and misrule, which seemed to turn Europe
into a chaos,--which would have turned it into a chaos, had there
not been a few men left who still felt it possible and necessary to
believe in God and to work righteousness.

Under these terrible forebodings, men began to flee from a doomed
world, and try to be alone with God, if by any means they might save
each man his own soul in that dread day.

Others, not Christians, had done the same before them. Among all
the Eastern nations men had appeared, from time to time, to whom the
things seen were but a passing phantom, the things unseen the only
true and eternal realities; who, tormented alike by the awfulness of
the infinite unknown, and by the petty cares and low passions of the
finite mortal life which they knew but too well, had determined to
renounce the latter, that they might give themselves up to solving
the riddle of the former; and be at peace; and free, at least, from
the tyranny of their own selves. Eight hundred years before St.
Antony fled into the desert, that young Hindoo rajah, whom men call
Buddha now, had fled into the forest, leaving wives and kingdom, to
find rest for his soul. He denounced caste; he preached poverty,
asceticism, self-annihilation. He founded a religion, like that of
the old hermits, democratic and ascetic, with its convents, saint-