and his restored divinity.

[Sidenote: Hebrew metaphors become Greek myths.]

The gospel, thus grown acceptable to the pagan mind, was, however, but a
grain of mustard-seed destined to branch and flower in its new soil in
a miraculous manner. Not only was the Greek and Roman to refresh himself
under its shade, but birds of other climates were to build their nests,
at least for a season, in its branches. Hebraism, when thus expanded and
paganised, showed many new characteristics native to the minds which had
now adopted and transformed it. The Jews, for instance, like other
Orientals, had a figurative way of speaking and thinking; their poetry
and religion were full of the most violent metaphors. Now to the classic
mind violent and improper metaphors were abhorrent. Uniting, as it did,
clear reason with lively fancy, it could not conceive one thing to _be_
another, nor relish the figure of speech that so described it, hoping by
that unthinkable phrase to suggest its affinities. But the classic mind
could well conceive transformation, of which indeed nature is full; and
in Greek fables anything might change its form, become something else,
and display its plasticity, not by imperfectly being many things at
once, but by being the perfection of many things in succession. While
metaphor was thus unintelligible and confusing to the Greek,
metamorphosis was perfectly familiar to him. Wherever Hebrew tradition,
accordingly, used violent metaphors, puzzling to the Greek Christian, he
rationalised them by imagining a metamorphosis instead; thus, for
instance, the metaphors of the Last Supper, so harmless and vaguely
satisfying to an Oriental audience, became the doctrine of
transubstantiation--a doctrine where images are indeed lacking to
illustrate the concepts, but where the concepts themselves are not
confused. For that bread should _become_ flesh and wine blood is not
impossible, seeing that the change occurs daily in digestion; what the
assertion in this case contradicts is merely the evidence of sense.

Thus at many a turn in Christian tradition a metaphysical mystery takes
the place of a poetic figure; the former now expressing by a little
miraculous drama the emotion which the latter expressed by a tentative
phrase. And the emotion is thereby immensely clarified and strengthened;
it is, in fact, for the first time really expressed. For the idea that
Christ stands upon the altar and mingles still with our human flesh is