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THE SOUL. The primitive Christians, whose conceptions of a future life and of heaven and hell, the abodes of the blessed and the sinful, were far more vivid than those of their pagan predecessors, accepted and intensified these ancient ideas.
A remarkable characteristic of the converts, both adult and young, was their ardour for the propagation of the faith among their countrymen; not only, then, had the Mothers the consolation of seeing the fruit of their labours among their immediate pupils, but that also of knowing that through the zeal of these, the heavenly word would be borne far and wide over the pagan land.
The Christian church, in the time of the Romans, immediately succeeded the Pagan, and scrupulously adopted the same method; which has been strictly adhered to. By what obligation the Christian is bound to follow the Pagan, or wherein a church would be injured by being directed to any of the thirty-two points in the compass, is doubtful.
Then, each evening, he would humbly accuse himself before God of not having disputed with his pupil from a sufficiently Christian point of view; he would confess to his guardian angel that pride in his own learning and joy at being listened to so devoutly had carried him somewhat beyond the bounds of religious instruction; that he had quoted profane writers too complacently; that he had even experienced a dangerous pleasure in roaming with his disciple through the fields of the past, plucking pagan flowers unsprinkled by the waters of baptism, flowers in whose fragrance a priest should not have found such delight.
Based on purely pagan motives, they succeed in capturing the wandering attention on some sacred subject, by overloading it with a luxury of ornament and an exuberance of gesture unknown to the primitives. The treatment may be free, it is even necessary that it should be so in order to flatter the taste of the period, but the repertory of subjects becomes more and more limited.
The followers of different forms of worship which are established, accuse one another of superstition and impiety. Christians look with abhorrence upon the Pagan, Chinese, and Mahometan superstition. Roman Catholics treat, as impious, Protestant Christians; and the latter incessantly declaim against the superstition of the Catholics. They are all right.
"I am," she interrupted passionately, "I'm a Pagan and the daughter of a Pagan. My father was a Sun Worshiper like you." "Tell me about yourself and your people," he said, and Donna told him the story with which the reader is already familiar. He questioned her carefully about Sam Singer and the man who had murdered her father and despoiled him of his fortune.
I suppose his instinct rightly tells him, that I shall not be likely to reason, "Because God can be so very cruel or careless to-day, he is sure to be very merciful and vigilant hereafter." If I adopt this alternative, I become a Pagan or an Atheist, one or other of which Mr. Rogers seems anxious to make me.
A spot more drowsy and secluded, more steeped in the dreams of the older ages, is not to be found in the whole city. In front of the church there is a long, narrow portico, supported by eight antique columns of the simplest construction, in all likelihood borrowed from some old pagan temple. Under this portico is a beautiful fresco of the Madonna and Child by Domenichino.
The article of religion I shall divide into Christian, Jewish, Mahometan, and Pagan; and shall now and then hint at the particular sect of them that prevails in the places which I shall describe.
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