ow the ideas and
characteristics of the leading types of religion in the civilised world
of which he speaks were absorbed or "baptized" into the spirit of
Christianity. In other words, we may ask what was the contribution of
each of these religious types to the formation of the Christian type of
religion; for however new was the inspiration which was the essential
living germ of our religion, yet that germ was of necessity planted in
soil full of other religious ingredients, which found their way into the
sap of the plant as it grew towards maturity.

I have all along wished to bring our subject, the religious experience
of the Roman people, into touch with Christianity, whether by marking
points of contact, or of contrast, or both. In the last few lectures I
have laid stress on certain points likely to be useful to us in this
last stage of our studies, and these will, I hope, furnish us with some
amount of material. But I confess that I have approached this subject
with great hesitation. What I shall have to say will be tentative and
suggestive only; but I hope that the account that I have given in these
lectures of Roman religious experience may be of use in helping a better
qualified student to carry on the work more adequately.

Let us glance back for a moment at the results of the last four
lectures, in which I have been dealing with Roman religious experience
after the paralysis or hypnotism of the old religion of the State. We
saw, in the first place, that the educated part of Roman society had
been brought to the very threshold of a new and more elevating type of
religion, by Greek philosophy transplanted to Roman soil, and chiefly by
Stoicism. True, one great Epicurean genius had had his share in this
process, by denouncing the weakness and wickedness of the Roman society,
and the futility of all the religious forms and fancies with which they
still dallied; but Lucretius had nothing to offer in the place of these
forms and fancies--nothing, that is, which could grip the conscience and
act as a real force upon conduct. The Roman was in a religious sense
destitute, both of a real sense of duty to his fellow-men of all grades,
and in regard to God; and for this destitution Lucretius' remedy, the
accurate knowledge of a philosophical theory of the universe, was wholly
inadequate. The first real appeal to the conscience of the Roman came
from Stoicism, the reasonable and less austere type of Stoicism which
Panaeti