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But nothing of this ought to be allowed to blind us to the truly spiritual and holy developments of historical Christianity, much less, make us revert to the old Paganism or Pantheism which it supplanted. The great doctrine on which all practical religion depends, the doctrine which nursed the infancy and youth of human nature, is, "the sympathy of God with the perfection of individual man."
Thus the same disposition towards completeness which was the ruin of paganism, here, too, was found generating the same evils; the half truth rounding itself out with falsehoods.
A land once christianized thus actually fell back into paganism, so that the work of converting it to Christianity had to be done over again. The century and a half between 449 and 597 is therefore one of the most important epochs in the history of the people that speak the English language.
The empire might have lasted centuries longer but for this incubus, the standing disgrace of the Pagan world. Paganism never recognized what is most noble and glorious in man; never recognized his equality, his common brotherhood, his natural rights.
To be, through all time, the high-priest of that very 'paganism' which he died to repudiate: the one most potent survival throughout Christian times of the joyous old order he would fain supplant! Could anything be more characteristic of the whimsical humour of Time, which loves nothing better than to make a laughing-stock of human symbolism?
Christianity and Mohammedanism are offshoots of Judaism; through them we have won the world from Paganism and taught it that God is one with the moral law." "Then we are somewhat in the position of an ancient school-master lagging superfluous in the school-room where his whilom pupils are teaching." "By no means.
At the Sandwich Islands, the potent institution of the Taboo, together with the entire paganism of the land, was utterly abolished by a voluntary act of the natives some time previous to the arrival of the first missionaries among them. The next most striking change in the Tahitians is this.
Paul taught a more cheerful doctrine of forgiveness, based on divine and infinite love, on faith and repentance. The Middle Ages also believed in repentance, but taught that repentance and penance were synonymous. The asceticism of the Church in its conflict with Paganism led to this perversion of apostolic theology.
It is said that Paganism is a religion of joy and Christianity of sorrow; it would be just as easy to prove that Paganism is pure sorrow and Christianity pure joy. Such conflicts mean nothing and lead nowhere. Everything human must have in it both joy and sorrow; the only matter of interest is the manner in which the two things are balanced or divided.
For thirteen or fourteen years, through a thousand employments and a thousand cares, amid the panics and continual alarums which kept the Africans on the alert in those times, Augustin worked at his City of God, the most formidable machine of war ever directed against paganism, and also the arsenal fullest of proofs and refutations which the disputants and defenders of Catholicism have ever had at their disposal.
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