"'Tis not merely
The human being's pride that peoples space
With life and mystical predominance,
Since likewise for the stricken heart of Love
This visible nature, and this common world
Is all too narrow; yea, a deeper import
Lurks in the legend told my infant years
That lies upon that truth, we live to learn.
For fable is Love's world, his home, his birthplace;
Delightedly dwells he 'mong fays and talismans,
And spirits, and delightedly believes
Divinities, being himself divine.
The intelligible forms of ancient poets,
The fair humanities of Old Religion,
The Power, the Beauty, and the Majesty,
That had their haunts in dale or piny mountain,
Or forest by slow stream, or pebbly spring,
Or chasms or wat'ry depths;--all these have vanished.
They live no longer in the faith of Reason.
But still the heart doth need a language; still
Doth the old instinct bring back the old names."

_The Piccolomini_, Act II. Scene 4.

As a matter of fact we find the believers in the Greek religion more ready
to receive Christianity than were the Jews. All through Asia Minor and
Greece Christian churches were planted by Paul; a fact which shows that
the ground was somehow prepared for Christianity. It was ready for the
monotheism which Paul substituted for their multitude of gods, and for
their idolatry and image-worship. The statues had ceased to be symbols,
and the minds of the Greeks rested in the image itself. This idolatrous
worship Paul condemned, and the people heard him willingly, as he called
them up to a more spiritual worship. We think, therefore, that the Greek
religion was a real preparation for Christianity. We have seen that it was
itself in constant transition; the system of the poets passing into that
of the artists, and that of the artists into that of the philosophers; so
that the philosophic religion, in turn, was ready to change into a
Christian monotheism.

It may be said, since philosophy had undermined the old religion and
substituted for it more noble ideas, why did it not take the seat of the
dethroned faith, and sufficiently supply its place? If it taught a pure
monotheism and profound ethics, if it threw ample and adequate light on
the problem of God, duty, and immortality, what more was needed? If ideas
are all that we want, nothing more. That Greek philosophy gave way before
Christianity shows that it