ad men's bones and all uncleanness."
So it is now. So it was in the era of the Caesars, out of
which Christianity arose; and Christianity, in the form
which it assumed at the close of the Arian controversy,
was the deliberate solution which the most powerful
intellects of that day could offer of the questions which
had grown out with the growth of mankind, and on
which Paganism had suffered shipwreck.

Paganism, as a creed, was entirely physical. When
Paganism rose men had not begun to reflect upon
themselves, or the infirmities of their own nature. The
bad man was a bad man--the coward a coward--the
liar a liar--individually hateful and despicable. But in
hating and despising such unfortunates, the old Greeks
were satisfied to have felt all that was necessary about
them; and how such a phenomenon as a bad man came
to exist in this world, they scarcely cared to inquire.
There is no evil spirit in the mythology as an antagonist
of the gods. There is the Erinnys as the avenger of
monstrous villanies; a Tartarus where the darkest
criminals suffer eternal tortures. But Tantalus and
Ixion are suffering for enormous crimes, to which the
small wickedness of common men offers no analogy.
Moreover, these and other such stories are but curiously
ornamented myths, representing physical phenomena.
But with Socrates a change came over philosophy; a
sign--perhaps a cause--of the decline of the existing
religion. The study of man superseded the study of
nature: a purer Theism came in with the higher ideal
of perfection, and sin and depravity at once assumed an
importance the intensity of which made every other
question insignificant. How man could know the good
and yet choose the evil; how God could be all pure and
almighty, and yet evil have broken into his creation,
these were the questions which thenceforth were the
perplexity of every thinker. Whatever difficulty there
might be in discovering how evil came to be, the leaders
of all the sects agreed at last upon the seat of it--whether
matter was eternal, as Aristotle thought, or created, as
Plato thought, both Plato and Aristotle were equally
satisfied that the secret of all the shortcomings in this
world lay in the imperfection, reluctancy, or inherent
grossness of this impracticable substance. God would
have everything perfect, but the nature of the element
in which He worked in some way defeated His purpose.
Death, disease, decay, clung necessarily to everything
which