Page:Essays and Addresses.djvu/322

 history than that which rests on the apotheosis of intelligent force; nobler, also, and truer than the view of modern Cæsarism, which differs from Mr Froude's about as widely as a "providential man" differs from a human Providence. But Mr Froude's statement requires some modification before it can bear scrutiny in the cold light of historical fact. It is true that the establishment of imperial order, the repression of such local violence as might otherwise have been exerted by local fanaticism, was so much gained in favour of Christianity, and Mr Froude may be right in conjecturing that, if St Paul had escaped the clutches of an independent Sanhedrim at Jerusalem, he would certainly have been torn to pieces by autonomous silversmiths at Ephesus. If, however, we have any lingering doubts as to whether Cæsar was obeying a necessity when he destroyed the Roman Constitution, these doubts are hardly removed by the suggestion that Providence meant him to pave the way for Christianity; since, though the establishment of imperial order may have been in favour of nascent Christianity, there is one thing which, so far as we can see, would have been more favourable to it still—namely, the establishment of order without the loss of those healthy conditions of public and private life which political freedom tends to conserve, and which despotism sooner or later crushes. The Empire meant political order, but it meant also moral deterioration, boundless luxury and enormous sensuality, a depravity among the highest of the earth from which, even in this