e destruction of the universe, {ix} the death of the
wicked, and the eternal happiness of the good in a reconstructed world."[1]

If this formulation of pagan doctrine surprises those who have been told
that paganism was "a fashion rather than a faith," and are accustomed to
think of it in terms of Jupiter and Juno, Venus and Mars, and the other
empty, cold, and formalized deities that have so long filled literature and
art, it will be because they have failed to take into account that between
Augustus and Constantine three hundred years elapsed, and are unfamiliar
with the very natural fact that during all that long period the character
of paganism was gradually undergoing change and growth. "The faith of the
friends of Symmachus," M. Cumont tells us, "was much farther removed from
the religious ideal of Augustus, although they would never have admitted
it, than that of their opponents in the senate."

To what was due this change in the content of the pagan ideal, so great
that the phraseology in which the ideal is described puts us in mind of
Christian doctrine itself? First, answers M. Cumont, to neo-Platonism,
which attempted the reconciliation of the antiquated religions with the
advanced moral and intellectual ideas of its own time by spiritual
interpretation of outgrown cult stories and cult practices. A second and
more vital cause, however, wrought to bring about the same result. This was
the invasion of the Oriental religions, and the slow working, from the
advent of the Great Mother of the Gods in B. C. 204 to the downfall of
paganism at the end of the fourth {x} century of the Christian era, of the
leaven of Oriental sentiment. The cults of Asia and Egypt bridged the gap
between the old religions and Christianity, and in such a way as to make
the triumph of Christianity an evolution, not a revolution. The Great
Mother and Attis, with self-consecration, enthusiasm, and asceticism; Isis
and Serapis, with the ideals of communion and purification; Baal, the
omnipotent dweller in the far-off heavens; Jehovah, the jealous God of the
Hebrews, omniscient and omnipresent; Mithra, deity of the sun, with the
Persian dualism of good and evil, and with after-death rewards and
punishments--all these, and more, flowed successively into the channel of
Roman life and mingled their waters to form the late Roman paganism which
proved so pertinacious a foe to the Christian religion. The influence that
underlay their pretensions w