astute and
worldly policy as this had any value in the way of preparation for
Christianity? Only, I think, in one way; it renewed the idea of the
connection between religion and the State, and of the religious duties
of the individual citizen towards the State. It preserved the outward
features of the old State religion, such as the calendar, the ritual,
and the terminology or vocabulary, and handed these down to a time when
they could be of service to a Latin Christian church.[960] Had the old
forms been allowed to go utterly to rack and ruin, as they had been
already doing for the last two centuries, the Roman State would have
been as such without religion, or the worship of the Caesars would have
become disastrously powerful and prominent, or maybe the State would
have adopted the religion of Isis or Mithras or some other Oriental cult
and belief, before Christianity could lay a firm grasp on it. I think it
might be shown that the continuity of the old religion in its connection
with the State was really of value in keeping these growths from
occupying too much ground: of value in checking too rapid a growth of
individualism:[961] of value too in cherishing certain really precious
religious characteristics, orderliness and decency in ritual, for
example, which, as we have seen, were very early developed in the Roman
religious system, and which owed their continued vitality to the
overwhelming influence of the Roman State over all her citizens and
their ideas. Thus when at last, after a period of anxious conflict
between rival religions, the State proclaimed itself Christian, and
henceforward for good or ill extended its protection to the Church, its
religious tradition was still one of decency and order, still free from
almost all that the old Roman State knew and dreaded as _superstitio_.
There was, in fact, a legacy, not indeed a spiritual one, but yet one of
some small value, left by the old Roman religion to the Latin Church:
and this I will turn for a few minutes to examine.

As an example of the orderly, sane, and decent character which the
Church inherited from the Roman religion, I might recall what I said in
Lecture IX. about _lustratio_, that slow and orderly processional
movement in which the old Romans delighted, and which is familiar still
to all travellers in Italy.[962] Another is the tender and reverential
care for the resting-places of departed relatives. I am not sure that
Prof. Gardner is right in