44 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION PART 



tianity as a more or less systematised creed, and 

 all the developments of dogma which followed are 

 integral parts of the structure raised by him. He 

 converted it from a local religion into a widespread 

 faith. This came about, at the start, through his 

 defeat of the narrower section headed by Peter, who 

 would have compelled all non-Jewish converts to 

 submit to the rite of circumcision. 



The unity of the Empire gave Christianity its 

 chance. Through the connection of Eurasia from 

 the Euphrates to the Atlantic by magnificent roads, 

 communication between peoples followed the lines 

 of least resistance. ,) Happily for the future of 

 Christianity, the early missionaries travelled west- 

 ward, in the wake of the dispersed Jews, along the 

 Mediterranean seaboard, and thus its fortunes became 

 identified with the civilising portion of mankind. 

 Had they travelled eastward, it might have been 

 blended with Buddhism, or, as its Gnostic phases 

 show, become merged in Oriental mysticism. The 

 story of progress ran smoothly till A.D. 64, when 

 we first hear of the ' Christians ' for by such name 

 they had become known in * profane' history, as 

 it was once oddly called. Tacitus, writing many 

 years after the event, tells how on the night of the 

 1 8th July, in the sixty-fourth year of our era, a 

 fierce fire broke out in Rome, causing the destruction 

 of magnificent buildings raised by Augustus, and of 

 priceless works of Greek art. Suspicion fell on 

 Nero, who, as has been suggested, was instigated 

 by his wife Poppaea Sabina, an unscrupulous 

 woman, and, according to some authorities, a 

 convert to Judaism, ' to put an end to the com- 



