Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

372 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMbearers were fishermen relieved by a publican and atent-maker, all of them from a despised and odiousprovince. It laid hold of the ignorant, of women,and of slaves, and its adherents among the culturedclasses were for a long time few and far between.Under these conditions the contest began and wascarried on, and at the end of ten generations Philosophyhad proved a rope of sand, utterly powerless toform a society out of its adherents. On the other hand,stretching her organisation throughout the empire anddischarging her triple yet simultaneous work of theteaching, the pastoral, and the sacerdotal function witha unity which no persecution could mar, and no sectrival, the Church presented to the emperor's searchingeye a divine society. To it he certainly looked for therevivifying of his empire, when he took the banner ofthe Cross for his Oriflamme, and inscribed upon it thewords of the heavenly vision, " In this sign shalt thouconquer."It was on such a victory that St. Jerome lookedback a hundred years later when he wrote to the nobleRoman ladies Paula and Eustochium, c< If any oneseeks for eloquence and takes pleasure in declamations,he has in the one language Demosthenes and Polemo,in the other Tullius and Quintilian. The Church ofChrist was drawn together not from the Academia orthe Lyceum, but from the meanest of the multitude.Whence too the Apostle said, ' Consider your vocation,brethren, that you are not many wise according tothe flesh, not many powerful, not many noble, butGod chose the foolish things of this world to confoundthe wise, and the weak things of the world to confoundthe strong, and the base things of the world and the1 In Epist. ail Crdfdtas. torn. vii. 486.