Oriental and Greek traditions,
even if Christianity had not intervened at that juncture and opportunely
pre-empted the ground.

[Sidenote: The episodes of life consecrated mystically.]

Christianity, as we have seen, had elements in it which gave it a
decisive advantage; its outlook was historical, not cosmic, and
consequently admitted a non-natural future for the individual and for
the Church; it was anti-political and looked for progress only in that
region in which progress was at that time possible, in the private soul;
it was democratic, feminine, and unworldly; its Oriental deity and
prophets had a primitive simplicity and pathos not found in pagan heroes
or polite metaphysical entities; its obscure Hebrew poetry opened, like
music, an infinite field for brooding fancy and presumption. The
consequence was a doubling of the world, so that every Christian led a
dual existence, one full of trouble and vanity on earth, which it was
piety in him to despise and neglect, another full of hope and
consolation in a region parallel to earth and directly above it, every
part of which corresponded to something in earthly life and could be
reached, so to speak, by a Jacob's ladder upon which aspiration and
grace ascended and descended continually. Birth had its sacramental
consecration to the supernatural in baptism, growth in confirmation,
self-consciousness in confession, puberty in communion, effort in
prayer, defeat in sacrifice, sin in penance, speculation in revealed
wisdom, art in worship, natural kindness in charity, poverty in
humility, death in self-surrender and resurrection. When the mind grew
tired of contemplation the lips could still echo some pious petition,
keeping the body's attitude and habit expressive of humility and
propitious to receiving grace; and when the knees and lips were
themselves weary, a candle might be left burning before the altar, to
witness that the desire momentarily forgotten was not extinguished in
the heart. Through prayer and religious works the absent could be
reached and the dead helped on their journey, and amid earthly
estrangements and injustices there always remained the church open to
all and the society of heaven.

[Sidenote: Paganism chastened, Hebraism liberalised.]

Nothing is accordingly more patent than that Christianity was paganised
by the early Church; indeed, the creation of the Church was itself what
to a Hebraising mind must seem a corruption, namely, a mixing of