ty was still--at least in the eyes of Roman pagans--only one of a
numerous array of foreign Eastern religions struggling for recognition in
the Roman world, and especially in the city of Rome. To understand the
conditions under which the new faith finally triumphed, we should first
realize the number of these religions, and the apparently chaotic condition
of paganism when viewed as a system.

"Let us suppose," says M. Cumont, "that in modern Europe the faithful had
deserted the Christian churches to worship Allah or Brahma, to follow the
precepts of Confucius or Buddha, or to adopt the maxims of the Shinto; let
us imagine a great confusion of all the races of the world in which Arabian
mullahs, Chinese scholars, Japanese bonzes, Tibetan lamas and Hindu pundits
should all be preaching fatalism and {viii} predestination,
ancestor-worship and devotion to a deified sovereign, pessimism and
deliverance through annihilation--a confusion in which all those priests
should erect temples of exotic architecture in our cities and celebrate
their disparate rites therein. Such a dream, which the future may perhaps
realize, would offer a pretty accurate picture of the religious chaos in
which the ancient world was struggling before the reign of Constantine."

But it is no less necessary to realize, in the second place, that, had
there not been an essential solidarity of all these different faiths, the
triumph of Christianity would have been achieved with much less difficulty
and in much less time. We are not to suppose that religions are long-lived
and tenacious unless they possess something vital which enables them to
resist. In his chapter on "The Transformation of Roman Paganism," M. Cumont
thus accounts for the vitality of the old faiths: "The mass of religions at
Rome finally became so impregnated by neo-Platonism and Orientalism that
paganism may be called a single religion with a fairly distinct theology,
whose doctrines were somewhat as follows: adoration of the elements,
especially the cosmic bodies; the reign of one God, eternal and omnipotent,
with messenger attendants; spiritual interpretation of the gross rites yet
surviving from primitive times; assurance of eternal felicity to the
faithful; belief that the soul was on earth to be proved before its final
return to the universal spirit, of which it was a spark; the existence of
an abysmal abode for the evil, against whom the faithful must keep up an
unceasing struggle; th