pictured the universe as one
vast unity. Far beyond all things is God. Of God man can form no
conception. Think, they would say, of all the exalted and wonderful
and beautiful concepts you can imagine; then deny them. God is
beyond. God is beyond being; you can conceive of being, and
therefore to predicate being of God is to limit him. You cannot
think of God; for, if you could think of God, God would be in
relation with you; God is insusceptible of relation with man. He
neither wills, nor thinks of man, nor can man think of him. A modern
philosopher has summed up their God as the deification of the word
"not." This God, then, who is not, willed--no! not "willed"; he
could not will; but whether he willed or did not will, in some way
or other there was an emanation; not God, but very much of God; very
divine, but not all God; from this another and another in a
descending series, down to the daemons, and down to men. All that
is, is God; evil is not-being. One of the great features of the
system was that it guaranteed all the old religions--for the crowd;
while for the initiated, for the esoteric, it had something more--it
had mystic trance, mystic vision, mystic comprehension. Twice or
three times, Plotinus, by a great leap away from all mortal things,
saw God. In the meantime, the philosophy justified all the old
rites.

Side by side with this great defence were what are known as the
Christian heresies. They are not exactly Christian. Groups of people
endeavoured to combine Christianity with the old thought, with
philosophy, theosophy, theurgy, and magic. They were eclectics; they
compromised. The German thinker, Novalis, said very justly that all
eclectics are sceptics, and the more eclectic the more sceptic.
These mixtures could not prevail.

But religions have, historically, a wonderful way of living in spite
of their weaknesses--yes, and in spite of their apologetics. A
religion may be stained with all sorts of evil, and may communicate
it; and yet it will survive, until there is an alternative with more
truth and more dynamic. The old paganism outlived Plato's criticisms
and Plutarch's defences. For the great masses of people neither
might have written.

Into this world came the Christian Church. I have tried to draw the
picture of the great pagan religion, with its enormous strength, its
universal acceptance, its great traditions, its splendours of art
and ceremony, its manifest proofs of its gods--everythin