lieve that they would. After the fall of Rome, whole populations
passed under the standards of Christianity, but they did it with their
baggage of senseless beliefs and superstitious practices. The church could
not repulse this crowd of self-styled Christians, and still less summon
them immediately to abandon all their ancient errors; she therefore made
concessions to circumstances, concessions which were not entirely
voluntary. They may be considered as calculations full of wisdom on the
part of the leaders of the church, as well as the consequence of that kind
of irruption which was made at the beginning of the fifth century into the
Christian society by populations, who, notwithstanding their abjuration,
were Pagans by their manners, their tastes, their prejudices, and their
ignorance.(19)

"Let us now calculate the extent of these concessions, and examine whether
it was right to say that they injured the purity of the Christian dogmas.

"The Romans had derived from their religion an excessive love of public
festivals. They were unable to conceive a worship without the pompous
apparel of ceremonies. They considered the long processions, the
harmonious chaunts, the splendour of dresses, the light of tapers, the
perfume of frankincense, as the essential part of religion. Christianity,
far from opposing a disposition which required only to be directed with
more wisdom, adopted a part of the ceremonial system of the ancient
worship. It changed the object of its ceremonies, it cleansed them from
their old impurities, but it preserved the days upon which many of them
were celebrated, and the multitude found thus in the new religion, as much
as in the old one, the means of satisfying its dominant passion.(20)

"The neophytes felt for the pagan temples an involuntary respect. They
could not pass at once from veneration to a contempt for the monuments of
their ancestors' piety; and in ascending the steps of the church, they
were casting a longing look on those temples which a short time before had
been resplendent with magnificence, but were now deserted. Christianity
understood the power of this feeling, and desired to appropriate it to its
own service; it consented, therefore, to establish the solemnities of its
worship in the edifices which it had disdained for a long time.(21) Its
care not to offend pagan habits was such, that it often respected even the
pagan names of those edifices.(22) In short, its policy, which, sinc