with an end in view which all could understand and appreciate, its success was assured from the beginning. But in her very beginning the Church was handicapped. A few miserable, unlettered fishermen confronting a world of Pagan idolaters and fanatical Jews, preaching them a gospel antagonistic to their inclinations and prejudices; commanding the former to abandon their idols, and the latter to renounce their ancient traditions; preaching peace and good will to savage warriors; supplanting Venus with Mary, and Bacchus with a figure of temperance and mortification; commanding assent to doctrines they themselves did not even pretend to understand, and when asked: "Whence your authority?" they answered: "The village carpenter of Nazareth." "Whom shall we adore?" "Yonder felon on the cross." "What shall we hope for, what shall we fear? " " A heaven and a hell whose existence we cannot even prove." What wonder King Agrippa laughed at St. Paul and told him to " go to, for a learned madman." But madness though it were, still there was method in it, for this doctrine and the Church that preached it spread everywhere, invaded every country, and, in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles, everywhere overcame. And wherever the Church went, there immediately began to be felt the humanizing effects of Christianity. Liberty, equality, and fraternity was her motto. Liberty for the wife and mother from the thraldom of her lord; liberty for the slave from the yoke of his master; liberty for the sinner from the dominion of
