Page:The Greek and Eastern churches.djvu/59

Rh still more marvellous and much later account of Sozomen, according to which angels appeared at the time of the vision and gave the explanation there and then; or fall back on the sober statement of Lactantius, whose report is the earliest of all, and who resolves the whole occurrence into a dream —whichever of these narratives we accept, or whether we attempt to combine any of the elements contained in them, we cannot well escape from the conclusion that something happened to bring Constantine to a definite decision at this great crisis of his life. Possibly there was some curious effect of sunlight—such as that known to astronomers as the "parhelion," in which a cross of light may be seen radiating from the sun, which the emperor's mood at the time could not but lead him to welcome as a sign from heaven. That is the point. The fascination for a supposed physical miracle has diverted attention from a most interesting psychological process. Unlike St. Paul, Constantine had never been opposed to Christianity. He had inherited from his father a friendly feeling towards the Christians. Eusebius prefaces his report of what the emperor had said to him about the vision with a description of Constantine's perplexity and his prayer for light at a moment of terrible anxiety. None of the narratives will allow us to assign his adoption of Christianity to mere statecraft or cunning policy.

When the battle at the Milvian Bridge in which the tyrant Maxentius was killed gave Constantine a magnificent victory, he felt in this a confirmation of his resolve to accept the Christian faith and adopt its sign. It is plain that he threw in his lot with the Church on conviction. How deep that conviction went it is not easy to say. His subsequent syncretism and his vague treatment of the essentials of Christian truth forbid us to believe that he had any definite intellectual grip of the subject. Still, he honestly accepted Christ as a Divine Lord, and he consistently leaned to the side of the Christians in their differences with the pagans. It scarcely lies within