Gathering Clouds: A Tale of the Days of St. Chrysostom

In Darkness and Dawn' I endeavoured to illustrate in the form of a story an epoch of surpassing historical and moral interest--the struggle in the first century between a nascent Christianity armed only with the irresistible might of weakness,' and a decadent Paganism supported by the wit, the genius, the religion, the philosophy, the imperial power, and all the armies of the world. I showed that the victory of Christianity was won by virtue of the purity and integrity which it inspired; and that nothing was able to resist a faith which placed the attainment of the ideal of holiness within the reach of the humblest of mankind. I tried to show some glimpse--so far as it was possible--of the frightful spiritual debasement for which a heathendom which had become more than half atheistical was responsible; and of the noble characters which Christianity developed into a beauty till then not only unattained, but unimagined, alike in the high and in the low. So far as the historic outline was concerned the picture was not an imaginative landscape, but an absolute photograph. Every circumstance, every particular, even of costume and custom, was derived directly from the history, poetry, satires, and romances of classic writers, or from the literature and remains of the early days of Christianity. If I had not followed this method I should not have been faithful to the main object which I set before me.