the present. Persecution was the inevitable experience of those who allied themselves to the new faith. During the earlier years the struggle for existence was constant and absorbing. The children were necessarily kept at home and taught only the simple forms of the new faith, or were sent to heathen schools for instruction in reading and writing. This practice continued until persecution had relaxed its grasp sufficiently to allow some r on upon the new religion as a body of belief and teaching. With this reflection came the supposed discovery that Christianity was something purely spiritual and heavenly, having no concern with earthly affairs. The error here, though natural, was fatal. A misunderstood Christianity led men astray and multiplied sorrow for the race. With the growth of this religion it became necessary to instruct the converts in the faith they were about to adopt. During the first century a. d., institutes for the catechumens, or schools for the teaching of Christianity, were established. The heathen converts at first grown persons, and were taught nothing but the principles of the new religion: all other training they must receive from heathen schools. Christianity was a train for heaven, not for earth. The order of the monks appeared in Palestine, Constantinople, and Rome. Education was the special care of these men, who had forsaken all worldly interests, and education consisted wholly in such instruction as would fit for the duties of the order.
With further advance Christianity began to reach out all over departments of life. Now, for the first time, leading men among the Christians demanded that the children should be taken from the heathen schools and receive all their education at the hands of Christians. That the catechetical schools made no break with heathenism. is plain. Clement was a leader of these schools at Alexandria from 189 a. d. He was master of classical training, and brought his learning to the service of the new religion. He felt no pronounced opposition to heathenism, but believed it could illustrate and advance Christianity. He says, "Mosaic law and heathen philosophy do not stand in opposition to one another, but are related as parts of one truth; both prepare, but in different ways, for Christianity." The new force, however was irresistibly working in contrary direction. A few years from the death of Clement the new religion announces its direct and uncompromising hostility to heathenism and all forms of heathen education. There was war to the death against everything connected with Greece and Rome. Education must train for heaven and for nothing else. By imperial order the schools of philosophy closed, 529 a. d. No more were children to be suckled in a creed outworn, no more could one "have sight of Proteus rising from the sea or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn." From the fourth to the sixth century heathen culture was trampled out by the march of the barbarians over the empire.
To estimate in any sense justly the course of events through this
