AND WHERE SHALL I CARRY MY MONEY?' cried one who had just been made a
director."

(1) See Theocritus, Idyll xviii.

(2) Published at Leipzig about 1893.

XIII. THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIANITY

Referring back to the existence of something resembling a great
World-religion which has come down the centuries, continually expanding
and branching in the process, we have now to consider the genesis of
that special brand or branch of it which we call Christianity. Each
religion or cult, pagan or Christian, has had, as we have seen, a vast
amount in common with the general World-religion; yet each has had its
own special characteristics. What have been the main characteristics of
the Christian branch, as differentiating it from the other branches?

We saw in the last chapter that a certain ascetic attitude towards Sex
was one of the most salient marks of the Christian Church; and that
whereas most of the pagan cults (though occasionally favoring frightful
austerities and cruel sacrifices) did on the whole rejoice in pleasure
and the world of the senses, Christianity--following largely on
Judaism--displayed a tendency towards renunciation of the world and the
flesh, and a withdrawal into the inner and more spiritual regions of the
mind. The same tendency may be traced in the Egyptian and Phrygian cults
of that period. It will be remembered how Juvenal (Sat. VI, 510-40)
chaffs the priests of Cybele at Rome for making themselves "eunuchs for
the kingdom of heaven's sake," or the rich Roman lady for plunging in
the wintry Tiber for a propitiation to Isis. No doubt among the later
pagans "the long intolerable tyranny of the senses over the soul" had
become a very serious matter. But Christianity represented perhaps the
most powerful reaction against this; and this reaction had, as indicated
in the last chapter, the enormously valuable result that (for the time)
it disentangled love from sex and established Love, pure and undefiled,
as ruler of the world. "God is Love." But, as also indicated, the
divorce between the two elements of human nature, carried to an extreme,
led in time to a crippling of both elements and the development of a
certain morbidity and self-consciousness which, it cannot be denied, is
painfully marked among some sections of Christians--especially those of
the altruistic and 'philanthropic' type.

Another characteristic of Christianity which is also very fine in
its way but has its limits of utility,