sense to the Imperial government, creating and managing its own rival administration. We thus understand

better the hatred which the Imperial government could not but feel for it, a hatred which is altogether

misapprehended by those who regard it as springing from religious ground. We understand too how

Constantine at last recognised in the Church the one bond which could hold together the disintegrating

Empire. Whether or not he was a Christian, he at least possessed a statesman's insight. And his

statesmanlike insight in estimating the practical strength of rival religions stands out as all the more

wonderful, if he were not a Christian at heart; for (though many years of his youth and earlier manhood had

been spent in irksome detention in the East, where Christianity was the popular and widely accepted

religion), yet his choice was made in the West, the country of his birth and of his hopes, where Mithraism

was the popular and most influential religion: it was made amid the soldiery, which was almost entirely

devoted to the religion of Mithras.