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96 to which we often owe our agonies of doubt and our moments of disappointment, is nevertheless far too beautiful and far too noble an acquisition to allow of any regret for the advantages we may seem to have lost. This is the price which we have had to pay for the illimitable progress of humanity in knowledge and in power. If we understand the Gospel rightly we shall find that it has taught us more than a knowledge of certain great and vital truths; it has created in us a thirst for truth itself, and it is with truth as it is with righteousness, the blessed are not those who think they possess it, but who are continually hungering and thirsting after it.

The brief summary we have now given of the state of religious inquiry as it fermented in men’s minds in the third century of our era shows us how many causes there were which combined to prepare the way for the ultimate triumph of Christianity in the reign of Constantine. In fact, the atmosphere which all thinkers breathed was full of Christian notions, even before many of them deigned to do