he will see that the two
seasons, though in many points so like each other, are yet, in a far
deeper way, different.

And so it is with the world's history. Isolate certain phenomena, and
they do, without doubt, repeat themselves; but it is only when isolated
that they can be said to do so. In many points the European thought and
civilisation of to-day may seem to be a repetition of what has been
before; we may fancy that we recognise our brothers in the past, and
that we can, as the writer above quoted says, shake hands with them
across the intervening years. But this is really only a deceiving fancy,
when applied to such deep and universal questions as those we have now
to deal with--to religion, to positive thought, and to the worth of
life. The positivists and the unbelievers of the modern world, are not
the same as those of the ancient world. Even when their language is
identical, there is an immeasurable gulf between them. In our denials
and assertions there are certain new factors, which at once make all
such comparisons worthless. The importance of these will by-and-by
appear more clearly, but I shall give a brief account of them now.

The first of these factors is the existence of Christianity, and that
vast and undoubted change in the world of which it has been at once the
cause and the index. It has done a work, and that work still remains:
and we all feel the effects of it, whether we will or no. Described in
the most general way, that work has been this. The supernatural, in the
ancient world, was something vague and indefinite: and the classical
theologies at any rate, though they were to some extent formal
embodiments of it, could embody really but a very small part. Zeus and
the Olympian hierarchies were dimly perceived to be encircled by some
vaster mystery; which to the popular mind was altogether formless, and
which even such men as Plato could only describe inadequately. The
supernatural was like a dim and diffused light, brighter in some places,
and darker in others, but focalised and concentrated nowhere.
Christianity has focalised it, united into one the scattered points of
brightness, and collected other rays that were before altogether
imperceptible. That vague '_idea of the good_,' of which Plato said most
men dimly augured the existence, but could not express their augury, has
been given a definite shape to by Christianity in the form of its Deity.
That Deity, from an external point of view,