solidarity, and whose parts continually influenced each other.

The ancient Semites believed therefore that the divinity could be regarded
as embodied in the waters, in the fire of the lightning, in stones or
plants. But the most powerful gods were the constellations and the planets
that governed the course of time and of all things.

The sun was supreme because it led the starry choir, because it was the
king and guide of all the other luminaries and therefore the master of the
whole world.[87] The astronomical doctrines of the "Chaldeans" taught that
this incandescent globe alternately attracted and repelled the other
sidereal bodies, and from this principle the Oriental theologians had
concluded that it must determine the entire life of the universe, inasmuch
as it regulated the movements of the heavens. As the "intelligent light" it
was especially the creator of human reason, and just as it repelled and
attracted the planets in turn, it was believed {134} to send out souls, at
the time of birth, into the bodies they animated, and to cause them to
return to its bosom after death by means of a series of emissions and
absorptions.

Later on, when the seat of the Most-High was placed beyond the limits of
the universe, the radiant star that gives us light became the visible image
of the supreme power, the source of all life and all intelligence, the
intermediary between an inaccessible god and mankind, and the one object of
special homage from the multitude.[88]

Solar pantheism, which grew up among the Syrians of the Hellenistic period
as a result of the influence of Chaldean astrolatry, imposed itself upon
the whole Roman world under the empire. Our very rapid sketch of the
constitution of that theological system shows incidentally the last form
assumed by the pagan idea of God. In this matter Syria was Rome's teacher
and predecessor. The last formula reached by the religion of the pagan
Semites and in consequence by that of the Romans, was a divinity unique,
almighty, eternal, universal and ineffable, that revealed itself throughout
nature, but whose most splendid and most energetic manifestation was the
sun. To arrive at the Christian monotheism[89] only one final tie had to be
broken, that is to say, this supreme being residing in a distant heaven had
to be removed beyond the world. So we see once more in this instance, how
the propagation of the Oriental cults levelled the roads for Christianity
and heralded its