362 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



their nature, the former went outside the realm of his human na- 

 ture to blight by supernatural means the happiness of others and 

 to destroy the peace of the Church. He was therefore held in ex- 

 ecration — the enemy of God and man. And after a time — i. e., in 

 the fourth century — the Church obtained secular power, Chris- 

 tianity became the state religion. Then began those awful perse- 

 cutions that have left an indelible stain upon the Christian name. 

 Constantine, the first Christian emperor, had been reared a pagau. 

 He was inclined, therefore, to be lenient. But Constantius and his 

 successors enacted the severest laws. " All who attempted to fore- 

 tell the future were emphatically condemned. Magicians who 

 were captured in Rome were to be thrown to the wild beasts, and 

 those who were seized in the provinces to be put to excruciating 

 torments and at last crucified. If they persisted in denying their 

 crime, their flesh was to be torn from their bones with hooks of 

 iron. These fearful penalties were directed against rites which 

 had loug been universal ; and which, if they were not regarded as 

 among the obligations, were at least among the highest privileges 

 of paganism." Of course, the sufferings produced by these laws 

 may have been exaggerated — the laws are plain, they are still pre- 

 served in the official Latin — and of course a large part of the bar- 

 barity is to be laid not to the Christian priests or to the better 

 classes of the Christians, but to fanatical mobs and cruel officers. 

 But still two things are plain : the Christians believed in magic 

 and witchcraft as the results of Satanic agency ; and, again, they 

 indulged in very severe persecution against suspected persons. 

 These laws, however, proved ineffective; they but showed two 

 things which the world has not quite learned even yet : First, that 

 the mere passing of a law does not change human nature ; and, 

 second, that a law that is not sustained very strongly by public 

 opinion is worse than useless. It was thus found impossible by 

 law to suppress the old pagan magic handed down from genera- 

 tion to generation among those who had not become Christians. 

 And so, by a very natural process, there grew up in the Church 

 a counter-system, a sort of rival, the talismans of which were 

 holy water, crucifixes, and other signs and symbols, which became 

 in the succeeding centuries the visible means wherewith the de- 

 signs of the evil spirits were thwarted. 



Gradually paganism grew weaker, but it did not entirely dis- 

 appear. It merged itself into Christianity, a fact never to lose 

 sight of, for it explains so many apparent mysteries. Just as 

 the Roman Catholic Church to-day in various lands — e. g., in 

 Spanish America — has accepted old heathen customs and festivals, 

 and has changed them into Christian customs and festivals ; just 

 as, to take another group of examples, the Druidical May day and 

 Harvest Home, and the Oriental Christmas were adopted by the 



