duct of his adherents. While Christianity certainly had
vigour enough to shape its own institutions, and may even be seen to
be doing so in some of the books of the New Testament, the agreement
between Greek and Christian practices amounts to something more than
coincidence.

It was towards the end of the second century that the alliance
between Christianity and the Greek world was finally ratified. Till
then belief and practice were determined mainly by custom and
tradition; but now these were to give way to definite laws and
settled institutions. There came to full development, about the
period we have mentioned, a highly-organised system of church
government, a canon of sacred books of Christian origin, and a creed
in which the beliefs of Christians were drawn together in one
statement. It cannot be denied that the elaborate external forms with
which the religion of Jesus was thus invested went far to change its
spirit also. But this happens to every religion which reaches the
stage of organising itself in order to continue in the world and to
rule permanently in human thought and in human society. No external
forms can adequately express living religious ideas; and yet there
must be external forms in order that religious ideas may be
perpetuated. The ministers of the new truth inevitably rise in
dignity till they grow into a hierarchy. That truth inevitably seeks
to establish itself as scientifically true, and with the aid of the
ruling philosophical tendency of the day clothes itself in a view of
the universe and in a creed. Thus the essence of Christianity came to
consist not in loving the Master and following him in faith and love,
but in upholding the authority of the Church, receiving her
sacraments, and believing various metaphysical and transcendental
statements. Here also a hard shell is formed round the spiritual
kernel of the religion which, if it is fitted to preserve the latter
in rude and stormy times, is also fitted to confuse and also apt to
conceal it.

In each of the countries to which it came, Christianity adopted what
it could of the religion formerly existing there. The old religions
of these lands were not all alike, and hence it came to pass that as
the language of Rome was transformed in various ways, and passed into
the different yet cognate tongues of the Romance nations, so the
religion of the Empire, combining with various forms of heathenism,
passed into several national religions, the