ABSTRACT
IF THE CRISIS in the life of the ancient world is anywhere clearly revealed, it is in the twilight of paganism which we have endeavored to present in its true colors. The question now arises whether Christianity might not have had the force to give new life to nationalities and new vigor to the state, whether it should not have refuted pagan complaint current as early as the third century that, after this new religion had begun to advance, the race of man was doomed. For the pagans were emphatic in their assertion that since Christianity the gods had forsaken the direction of human fate and that they had departed (exterminates) out of the wretched world, where now only pestilence, war, famine, drought, locusts, hail, and so forth prevailed, while barbarians were attacking the Empire from all sides. Christian apologists were constrained to undertake the circumstantial refutation of these charges. "How little credit," they said, "does such childish petulance do your pagan gods! Why do they not bestow health and happiness upon you and chastise us Christians alone? Nature has not altered; sun and moon shine as before, the harvest grows green, trees bloom, oil and wine are pressed, and civic life proceeds as it always has. There have always been wars from the days of Ninus the Assyrian, and since Christ they have in fact diminished. The undeniable evils of the present are part of the necessary world process by which earthly things seek to renew themselves (rerum innovatio)."
