als of Paganism

LECTURE V
John Bunyan

LECTURE VI
Pepys' Diary

LECTURE VII
Sartor Resartus

LECTURE VIII
Pagan Reactions

LECTURE IX
Mr. G.K. Chesterton's Point of View

LECTURE X
The Hound of Heaven

LECTURE I

THE GODS OF GREECE

It has become fashionable to divide the rival tendencies of modern
thought into the two classes of Hellenistic and Hebraistic. The division
is an arbitrary and somewhat misleading one, which has done less than
justice both to the Greek and to the Hebrew genius. It has associated
Greece with the idea of lawless and licentious paganism, and Israel with
that of a forbidding and joyless austerity. Paganism is an interesting
word, whose etymology reminds us of a time when Christianity had won the
towns, while the villages still worshipped heathen gods. It is difficult
to define the word without imparting into our thought of it the idea of
the contrast between Christian dogma and all other religious thought and
life. This, however, would be an extremely unfair account of the matter,
and, in the present volume, the word will be used without reference
either to nationality or to creed, and it will stand for the
materialistic and earthly tendency as against spiritual idealism of any
kind. Obviously such paganism as this, is not a thing which has died out
with the passing of heathen systems of religion. It is terribly alive in
the heart of modern England, whether formally believing or unbelieving.
Indeed there is the twofold life of puritan and pagan within us all. A
recent well-known theologian wrote to his sister: "I am naturally a
cannibal, and I find now my true vocation to be in the South Sea
Islands, not after your plan, to be Arnold to a troop of savages, but to
be one of them, where they are all selfish, lazy, and brutal." It is
this universality of paganism which gives its main interest to such a
study as the present. Paganism is a constant and not a temporary or
local phase of human life and thought, and it has very little to do with
the question of what particular dogmas a man may believe or reject.

Thus, for example, although the Greek is popularly accepted as the type
of paganism and the Christian of idealism, yet the lines of that
distinction have often been reversed. Christianity has at times become
hard and cold and lifeless, and has swept away primitive national
idealisms wi