THE ORIENTAL RELIGIONS.

nation, ancestor-worship, devotion to a deified sovereign, pessimism, and deliverance through annihilation—a confusion in which all these priests erected temples of exotic architecture in our cities and celebrated their disparate rites therein. Such a dream, which the future may perhaps realize, would offer a fairly accurate picture of the religious chaos in which the ancient world was struggling before the reign of Constantine.”

But it is also necessary to realize that, had there not been an essential solidarity among all these different faiths, the triumph of Christianity would have been achieved with much less difficulty and in much less time. We should not assume that religions are long-lived and tenacious unless they possess something vital that enables them to resist. In his chapter on “The Transformation of Roman Paganism,” M. Cumont explains the vitality of these old faiths: “The mass of religions at Rome finally became so impregnated by Neo-Platonism a philosophical system based on Plato's work, emphasizing the 'One' and Orientalism that paganism may be called a single religion with a fairly distinct theology, whose doctrines were somewhat as follows: adoration of the elements, especially the cosmic bodies; the reign of one God, eternal and omnipotent, with messenger attendants; spiritual interpretation of the coarse rites surviving from primitive times; assurance of eternal happiness to the faithful; the belief that the soul was on earth to be tested before its final return to the universal spirit, of which it was a spark; and the existence of an abysmal abode for the evil, against whom the faithful must keep up an unceasing struggle; finally, the destruction of the universe.”