en place
pre-eminently, or even exclusively, in Christ was not an impossible
concession to make to pious enthusiasm, at least if the philosophy
involved in the old conception could be retained and embodied in the new
orthodoxy. Sacred history could thus be interpreted as a temporal
execution of eternal decrees, and the plan of salvation as an ideal
necessity. Cosmic scope and metaphysical meaning were given to Hebrew
tenets, so unspeculative in their original intention, and it became
possible even for a Platonic philosopher to declare himself a Christian.

[Sidenote: The resulting orthodox system.]

The eclectic Christian philosophy thus engendered constitutes one of the
most complete, elaborate, and impressive products of the human mind. The
ruins of more than one civilisation and of more than one philosophy were
ransacked to furnish materials for this heavenly Byzantium. It was a
myth circumstantial and sober enough in tone to pass for an account of
facts, and yet loaded with enough miracle, poetry, and submerged wisdom
to take the place of a moral philosophy and present what seemed at the
time an adequate ideal to the heart. Many a mortal, in all subsequent
ages, perplexed and abandoned in this ungovernable world, has set sail
resolutely for that enchanted island and found there a semblance of
happiness, its narrow limits give so much room for the soul and its
penitential soil breeds so many consolations. True, the brief time and
narrow argument into which Christian imagination squeezes the world must
seem to a speculative pantheist childish and poor, involving, as it
does, a fatuous perversion of nature and history and a ridiculous
emphasis laid on local events and partial interests. Yet just this
violent reduction of things to a human stature, this half-innocent,
half-arrogant assumption that what is important for a man must control
the whole universe, is what made Christian philosophy originally
appealing and what still arouses, in certain quarters, enthusiastic
belief in its beneficence and finality.

Nor should we wonder at this enduring illusion. Man is still in his
childhood; for he cannot respect an ideal which is not imposed on him
against his will, nor can he find satisfaction in a good created by his
own action. He is afraid of a universe that leaves him alone. Freedom
appals him; he can apprehend in it nothing but tedium and desolation, so
immature is he and so barren does he think himself to be. He has