elcome, we
need not wonder that a theosophy having so respectable a
core--something, indeed, like a true logic misunderstood--should gain
many adherents. Out of the names of things and of virtues a mystic
ladder could be constructed by which to leave the things and the virtues
themselves behind; but the sagacity and exigencies of the school would
not fail to arrange the steps in this progress--the end of which was
unattainable except, perhaps, in a momentary ecstasy--so that the
obvious duties of men would continue, for the nonce, to be imposed upon
them. The chief difference made in morals would be only this: that the
positive occasions and sanctions of good conduct would no longer be
mentioned with respect, but the imagination would be invited to dwell
instead on mystical issues.

[Sidenote: The Herbraic cry for redemption.]

Neo-Platonic morality, through a thousand learned and vulgar channels,
permeated Christianity and entirely transformed it. Original
Christianity was, though in another sense, a religion of redemption. The
Jews, without dreaming of original sin or of any inherent curse in being
finite, had found themselves often in the sorest material straits. They
hoped, like all primitive peoples, that relief might come by
propitiating the deity. They knew that the sins of the fathers were
visited upon the children even to the third and fourth generation. They
had accepted this idea of joint responsibility and vicarious atonement,
turning in their unphilosophical way this law of nature into a principle
of justice. Meantime the failure of all their cherished ambitions had
plunged them into a penitential mood. Though in fact pious and virtuous
to a fault, they still looked for repentance--their own or the
world's--to save them. This redemption was to be accomplished in the
Hebrew spirit, through long-suffering and devotion to the Law, with the
Hebrew solidarity, by vicarious attribution of merits and demerits
within the household of the faith.

Such a way of conceiving redemption was far more dramatic, poignant, and
individual than the Neo-Platonic; hence it was far more popular and
better fitted to be a nucleus for religious devotion. However much,
therefore, Christianity may have insisted on renouncing the world, the
flesh, and the devil, it always kept in the background this perfectly
Jewish and pre-rational craving for a delectable promised land. The
journey might be long and through a desert, but milk and