en disinherited Jews, with religious habits which men of
other races and interests could never have adopted intelligently; the
Church was accordingly wise enough to perpetuate in its practice at
least an indispensable minimum of popular paganism. How considerable
this minimum was a glance at Catholic piety will suffice to convince us.

[Sidenote: Catholic piety more human than the liturgy.]

The Graeco-Jewish system of theology constructed by the Fathers had its
liturgical counterpart in the sacraments and in a devout eloquence which
may be represented to us fairly enough by the Roman missal and breviary.
This liturgy, transfused as it is with pagan philosophy and removed
thereby from the Oriental directness and formlessness of the Bible,
keeps for the most part its theological and patristic tone. Psalms
abound, Virgin, and saints are barely mentioned, a certain universalism
and concentration of thought upon the Redemption and its speculative
meaning pervades the Latin ritual sung behind the altar-rails. But any
one who enters a Catholic church with an intelligent interpreter will at
once perceive the immense distance which separates that official and
impersonal ritual from the daily prayers and practices of Catholic
people. The latter refer to the real exigences of daily life and serve
to express or reorganise personal passions. While mass is being
celebrated the old woman will tell her beads, lost in a vague rumination
over her own troubles; while the priests chant something unintelligible
about Abraham or Nebuchadnezzar, the housewife will light her
wax-candles, duly blessed for the occasion, before Saint Barbara, to be
protected thereby from the lightning; and while the preacher is
repeating, by rote, dialectical subtleties about the union of the two
natures in Christ's person, a listener's fancy may float sadly over the
mystery of love and of life, and (being himself without resources in the
premises) he may order a mass to be said for the repose of some departed
soul.

In a Catholic country, every spot and every man has a particular patron.
These patrons are sometimes local worthies, canonised by tradition or by
the Roman see, but no less often they are simply local appellations of
Christ or the Virgin, appellations which are known theoretically to
refer all to the same _numen_, but which practically possess diverse
religious values; for the miracles and intercessions attributed to the
Virgin under one title are