nmen. The oldest versions were made in Alexandria. Finally
the intense fervor of the Egyptian mind exercised its natural influence on
Christianity, as it did on Judaism and Heathenism. The Oriental
speculative element of Egyptian life was reinforced by the African fire;
and in Christianity, as before in the old religion, we find both working
together. By the side of the Alexandrian speculations on the nature of God
and the Trinity appear the maniacal devotion of the monks of the Thebaid.
The ardor of belief which had overcome even the tenacity of Judaism, and
modified it into its two Egyptian forms of the speculations of Philo and
the monastic devotion of the Therapeutae, reappeared in a like action upon
Christian belief and Christian practice. How large a part of our present
Christianity is due to these two influences we may not be able to say. But
palpable traces of Egyptian speculation appear in the Church doctrines of
the Trinity and atonement, and the material resurrection[202] of the same
particles which constitute the earthly body. And an equally evident
influence from Egyptian asceticism is found in the long history of
Christian monasticism, no trace of which appears in the New Testament, and
no authority for which can be found in any teaching or example of Christ.
The mystical theology and mystical devotion of Egypt are yet at work in
the Christian Church. But beside the _doctrines_ directly derived from
Egypt, there has probably come into Christianity another and more
important element from this source. The _spirit_ of a race, a nation, a
civilization, a religion is more indestructible than its forms, more
pervasive than its opinions, and will exercise an interior influence long
after its outward forms have disappeared. The spirit of the Egyptian
religion was reverence for the divine mystery of organic life, the worship
of God in creation, of unity in variety, of each in all. Through the
Christian Church in Egypt, the schools of Alexandria, the monks of the
Thebaid, these elements filtered into the mind of Christendom. They gave a
materialistic tone to the conceptions of the early Church, concerning God,
Satan, the angels and devils, Heaven, Hell, the judgment, and the
resurrection. They prevented thereby the triumph of a misty Oriental
spiritualism. Too gross indeed in themselves, they yet were better than
the Donatism which would have turned every spiritual fact into a ghost or
a shadow. The African spirit, in