secution existed, no doubt, but was sporadic at worst; being stirred up usually by some enthusiastic Mobed, and started by some act of "apostasy." But with the conversion of the Roman Emperor, all this was changed. Christians were thereafter politically suspect, and from the Persian point of view naturally and properly suspect, as co-religionists and presumably sympathizers with Persia's enemy. It was inevitable that this should be so. The State establishment of Christianity was a good, if not an unmixed good, for the Church in the empire; but the Church outside it had to pay the bill. In lands where religion and politics were, and still are, inextricably mingled, it was simply impossible that the Government official (whether Sassanid Persian or modern Ottoman) should not suspect those whose faith cut them off from the body politic, and linked them with its enemies. Whether the suspicion was just or not, is beside the point; to ask that it should not be entertained, was to ask too much of oriental human nature. In the collision of these two activities, political and religious—a disaster as inevitable and as hopeless as that brought on by "Nemesis" in a Greek tragedy—we nave the key to much (perhaps one half) of the sadness of the history of Christianity in what we now call "the middle East." The natural suspicion of the governing class produces what one side calls "precautions"; and what the other calls "persecutions," if the date be 340, and "massacres" if the year be 1896. It produces, too, on the side of the Christians, constant efforts to hold fast their faith, and yet avoid persecution. The efforts may take the shape of the corporate adoption of a form of Christianity different from that in favour over the border[1] (an act which people
- ↑ It must not be forgotten that, as we hope to show later, there is a second and important motive, for these
