to show that Christians originally desired to break away from Judaism or to approach the Greeks; yet they did both. When their fellow-countrymen refused to hear they turned to the Gentiles, and there ensued rapidly the abandonment of Jewish practice and the assimilation of Greek and Graeco-Oriental thought.

From that time on the history of Christianity might be written as a series of syntheses with the thought and practice of the Roman world, beginning with the circumference and moving to the centre. The first element which was absorbed was the least Roman, the Graeco-Oriental cults. Christianity had been originally the worship of God, as he was understood by the Jews, combined with the belief that Jesus was he whom God had appointed, or would appoint, as his representative at the day of judgement. To this were now joined the longings for private salvation of the less fortunate classes in the Roman Empire, and their belief that this salvation could come from sacraments instituted by a Lord who was either divine by nature or had attained apotheosis. It thus became, partly indeed, the recognition of the Jewish God as supreme, but chiefly the recognition of Jesus as the divine Lord who had instituted saving mysteries for those who accepted him. Christianity became the Jewish contribution to the Oriental cults, offering, as the Synagogue never did, private salvation by supernatural means to all who were willing to accept it.

Such Christianity became, and such in some districts, notably in Rome, it remained for one or two generations. But in Ephesus and possibly elsewhere a further synthesis was accomplished. This sacramentalised Christianity began to come to terms with Greek philosophy, as the other mystery religions tried to do. It asked what was the philosophic explanation of its Lord, and it hit on the device of identifying him with the Logos—a phrase common to several types of philosophy though used in quite different meanings.

The development of this second synthesis was comparatively slow. Probably some of the systems which are loosely described as gnostic were unsuccessful attempts at its accomplishment; but in the end the Alexandrian theologians Clement and Origen followed the lead given them by the Fourth Gospel and some of the apologists to the triumphant construction of a system which really reconciled in part and seemed to reconcile entirely the Christian cult and the later Platonic metaphysics.

Although the general fabric of the Christian philosophy which was thus built up was in the main Platonic, not a little was borrowed also from the system of the Stoics, especially on the border ground between metaphysics and ethics. This paved the way for a further synthesis, accomplished more easily, more thoroughly, and with less perceptible controversy than had attended either of the others. Probably the culmination of this conquest of the Christian Church by the ethics of the Stoa was reached by Ambrose, who gave to the Christian world Cicero's popularisation of Panaetius and Posidonius in a series of sermons which extracted the ethics of Rome from the scriptures of the Christians. The ethics of the Stoics were almost wholly adopted by the leaders of Christian thought, especially in the West, and the teaching of Jesus as represented in the Gospels was interpreted in the interests of this achievement, which, like the other syntheses, was largely effective in proportion as it was unconscious.

Probably it was the early stages of this movement which had rendered possible the acceptance by one another of Christianity and the Empire. Certainly there is still much need of study, even if it produce only the statement of problems, as to the changed character of Christianity between the time of Tertullian and Eusebius.

The next few centuries, so far as they were not occupied in struggling against the eclipse of civilisation which began in the fifth century, were occupied in working out the implications of these syntheses. The results were codified in Catholic theology and in the civil and canon law of the early Middle Ages. But one more step remained; after nearly a thousand years Aristotle was rediscovered, and the final achievement of Christian theology was the synthesis effected by St. Thomas Aquinas between the Christian theology and the philosophy of Aristotle.

It is a great record of great achievement, for no one who studies the history of religions with any degree of sympathetic insight can doubt but that each synthesis was a real step in progress towards that unification of aspiration with knowledge which it is the task of theologians to bring about, and to express as clearly as they may.

Many centuries have passed since the time of St. Thomas Aquinas; and the element of tragedy in the study of the history of religions for the Christian theologian is that he is forced to admit that never again has there been a time when the unification of aspiration and knowledge has been so completely realised by organised Christianity. It was not long after this time that epoch-making changes were made, first in the domain of astronomy and afterwards in other sciences. They have revolutionised human knowledge. Nor have human aspirations stayed where they were. The ideal of justice which men see to-day is different and assuredly better than that of a thousand years ago. It extends beyond the sphere of the law-courts to every branch of human life. But the doctrines of the Church remain formulated according to the knowledge and aspirations of the past. The divergence between knowledge and theological statement has become more and more obvious every year. There has been no synthetic progress in theology since the time of St. Thomas Aquinas,[3] for it is impossible for the student of history to feel that the Reformation can be regarded as a synthesis. Indeed it seems ominously like the first step in that disintegration which has always been the last stage in the story of each religion. It is absolutely certain that the world will once again some day achieve what it has often had and often lost—the closer approximation of knowledge and aspiration—so that its religious system may satisfy the soul of the saint without disgusting the intellect of the scholar. What is uncertain is whether this achievement will be made by any form of organised Christianity or is reserved for some movement which cannot at present be recognised.[4]

To trace the whole of these syntheses would be a reasonable programme for many volumes. These lectures are limited to the discussion of the evolution of the first and the beginning of the second—that is to say, the change of Christianity from a Jewish sect to a sacramental cult and the beginning of the movement which introduced Greek metaphysics into its theology.

At the beginning of the first century the control of the Jewish nation was in the hands partly of Rome, partly of the high-priests and their families. The latter, as was natural, held in the main a conservative attitude towards the laws and customs of their people. They were rich men—some of them probably could appreciate the culture if not the thought of Rome—and the class in modern Europe which most closely resembles them is that of the aristocratic Turks of Constantinople—orthodox but not enthusiastic adherents of the religion of their fathers. They doubtless regarded themselves as the leaders of the people: it was