ntil the fair body of religion, revealed in almost naked purity by the
prophets, is once more hidden under a new accumulation of dogmas and of
ritual practices of which the primitive Nazarene knew nothing; and which
he would probably have regarded as blasphemous if he could have been
made to understand them.

As, century after century, the ages roll on, polytheism comes back under
the disguise of Mariolatry and the adoration of saints; image-worship
becomes as rampant as in old Egypt; adoration of relics takes the place
of the old fetish-worship; the virtues of the ephod pale before those of
holy coats and handkerchiefs; shrines and calvaries make up for the
loss of the ark and of the high places; and even the lustral fluid of
paganism is replaced by holy water at the porches of the temples. A
touching ceremony--the common meal originally eaten in pious memory of
a loved teacher--becomes metamorphosed into a flesh-and-blood sacrifice,
supposed to possess exactly that redeeming virtue which the prophets
denied to the flesh-and-blood sacrifices of their day; while the minute
observance of ritual is raised to a degree of punctilious refinement
which Levitical legislators might envy. And with the growth of this
theology, grew its inevitable concomitant, the belief in evil spirits,
in possession, in sorcery, in charms and omens, until the Christians of
the twelfth century after our era were sunk in more debased and brutal
superstitions than are recorded of the Israelites in the twelfth century
before it.

The greatest men of the Middle Ages are unable to escape the infection.
Dante's "Inferno" would be revolting if it were not so often sublime, so
often exquisitely tender. The hideous pictures which cover a vast space
on the south wall of the Campo Santo of Pisa convey information, as
terrible as it is indisputable, of the theological conceptions of
Dante's countrymen in the fourteenth century, whose eyes were addressed
by the painters of those disgusting scenes, and whose approbation they
knew how to win. A candid Mexican of the time of Cortez, could he
have seen this Christian burial-place, would have taken it for an
appropriately adorned Teocalli. The professed disciple of the God
of justice and of mercy might there gloat over the sufferings of his
fellowmen depicted as undergoing every extremity of atrocious and
sanguinary torture to all eternity, for theological errors no less than
for moral delinquencies; while, in th