And the kind of outward prosperity she was enjoying in those moments of her first "Peace," her modes of worship now blossoming freely above-ground, was re-inforced by the decision at this point of a crisis in her internal history.
In the history of the church, as throughout the moral history of mankind, there are two distinct ideals, either of which it is possible to maintain--two conceptions, under one or the other of which we may represent to ourselves men's efforts towards a better life--corresponding to those two contrasted aspects, noted above, as [121] discernible in the picture afforded by the New Testament itself of the character of Christ.

The ideal of asceticism represents moral effort as essentially a sacrifice, the sacrifice of one part of human nature to another, that it may live the more completely in what survives of it; while the ideal of culture represents it as a harmonious development of all the parts of human nature, in just proportion to each other.

It was to the latter order of ideas that the church, and especially the church of Rome in the age of the Antonines, freely lent herself.

In that earlier "Peace" she had set up for herself the ideal of spiritual development, under the guidance of an instinct by which, in those serene moments, she was absolutely true to the peaceful soul of her Founder.

"Goodwill to men," she said, "in whom God Himself is well-pleased!" For a little while, at least, there was no forced opposition between the soul and the body, the world and the spirit, and the grace of graciousness itself was pre-eminently with the people of Christ.