ought she, on the other hand, to remain, as she had been at first, a society of religious devotees, separated and shut out from the world by a rigorous discipline, and working on it only through a direct propaganda?"
The Church, as a whole, took that step, while Montanism was the protest of a minority against it. The Church—
"Marched through the open door into the Roman State, and settled down there for a long career of activity, to Christianize the State along all its thoroughfares by the word of the Gospel, but at the same time leaving it everything except its gods."
A special interest therefore belongs to such literature as can help to illustrate the intellectual and moral conditions of the pagan world at the moment when the Church was about to take this step. And there is, perhaps, no pagan writer of precisely that time who is more suggestive in this respect than Lucian. We will consider first, then, what he has to tell us concerning the condition of the old polytheism and the superstitions which engrafted themselves upon it. Here a concrete example, with details, will be more illuminating than any abstract statement. We may begin with one of his most instructive pieces, that which is entitled Alexander, or the False Prophet—an account of a person whom he had known and of a career which he had watched.
This Alexander entered on his course of imposture with many personal advantages. He was tall, well-looking, and of a commanding presence; his fair complexion, his brilliant eyes, and the comely locks to which he added a profusion of false curls,
