of an old one, and therein lies a marked difference for the imagination and
emotions of the multitude.

THE SUCCESS OF CHRISTIANITY.--The prodigious rapidity of the success
of Christianity is easily explicable. Polytheism had no longer a great hold
on the masses, and no philosophic doctrine had found or had even sought the
path to the crowd; Christianity, essentially democratic, loved the weak and
humble, had a tendency to prefer them to the great ones of this world, and
to regard them as being more the children of God, and was therefore
received by the masses as the only doctrine which could replace the
worm-eaten polytheism. And in Christianity they saw the religion for which
they were waiting, and in the heads of Christianity their own protectors
and defenders.

ITS EVOLUTION.--The evolution of Christianity was very rapid, and
from a great moral doctrine with a minimum of rudimentary metaphysics it
became, perchance mistakenly, a philosophy giving account, or desirous of
giving account of everything; it so to speak incorporated a metaphysic,
borrowed in great part from Greek philosophy, in great part from the Hebrew
traditions. It possessed ideas on the origin of matter, and whilst
maintaining that God was eternal, denied that matter was, and asserted that
God created it out of nothing. It had theories on the essence of God, and
saw Him in three Persons, or hypostases, one aspect of God as power,
another as love, and the other as intelligence. It presented theories on
the incarnation and humanisation of God, God being made man in Jesus Christ
without ceasing to be God. It conceived new relationships of man to God,
man having in himself powers of purgation and perfection, but always
needing divine help for self-perfection (theory of grace). And this he
must believe; if not he would feel insolent pride in his freedom. It had
ideas about the existence of evil, declaring in "justification of God" for