philosophy of Heracleitus "the Obscure" (at Ephesus, 500 B.C.) has received in modern times widely different interpretations; but whether or not the Stoics were right in understanding his doctrine of the Logos to imply the existence of a cosmic reason universally diffused, present both in nature and man, it is certain that such ideas appear soon afterwards in Greek literature. Pindar affirms the derivation of the soul from the gods. Plato and Euripides declare the intelligence of man both in nature and origin to be divine; and Pseudo-Epicharmus lays it down (in the second half of the fifth century) that "there is in man understanding, and there is also a divine Logos; but the understanding of man is born from the divine Logos." On this basis the Stoics worked out the conception of a fellowship between man and God which explained the universality of religion. Its seat was in human nature. Every one shared in the Generative Reason, the Seminal Word (the Logos spermatikos). In the long course of ages, says Cicero, when the time arrived for the sowing of the human race, God quickened it with the gift of souls. So we possess a certain kinship with the heavenly Powers; and while among all the kinds of animals Man alone retains any idea of Deity, among men themselves there is no nation so savage as not to admit the necessity of believing in a God, however ignorant they may be what sort of God they ought to believe in.

The part played by this doctrine in the early Church is well known. When the new faith began to attract the attention of the educated, it was impossible that the resemblances between Christian and Hellenic monotheism should be ignored. Philosophy had reached many of the same truths, and poets and sages bore the same witness to the unity and spirituality of God as the prophets and psalmists of Israel. It was easy to suggest that the Hebrew seers had been the teachers of the Greek; might not Plato, for instance, have learned of Jeremiah in Egypt? On the other hand, the pleas of chronological and literary dependence might be insufficient; there were radical differences as well as resemblances; the Apologist might deride the diversities of opinion and make merry over the contradictions of the schools. Nevertheless Christianity was often presented by its defenders as "our philosophy." The Latin writer Minucius Felix (in the second century) is so much struck by the parallels in the higher thought that he boldly declares, "One might think either that Christians are now philosophers, or that philosophers were then already Christian." The martyr Justin (about A.D. 150) incorporates such teachings into the scheme of Providence by the aid of the Logos. For Justin, as for his co-believers, the popular religion was the work of demons. But philosophy had combated them in the past like the new faith. If Socrates had striven to deliver men from them, and they had compassed his death through evil men, it was because the Logos condemned their doings among the Greeks through him, just as among the barbarians they were condemned by the Logos in the person of Christ. The great truths of God and Providence, of the unity of the moral government of the world, of the nature and destiny of man, of freedom, virtue, and retribution, which were to be found in the writings of the wisest of the past, were the product of "the seed of the Logos implanted in every race of men." Those who had lived with the Logos were Christians before Christ, though men might have called them atheists, like Heracleitus and Socrates. All noble utterances in theology or legislation arose through partial discovery or contemplation of the Logos, and consequently Justin could boldly claim "whatever things have been rightly said among all men" as "the property of us Christians."

The cultivated and mystical Clement, who became head of the catechetical school of Alexandria towards the close of the second century, enforced the same theme. An enormous reader, he loved to compare the truths enunciated by Greek poets and philosophers with the wisdom of the barbarians. Philosophy, indeed, was a special historical manifestation of thought along a peculiar line of development. It affected a particular race, it spread over a distinct area, and appeared in a definite time. In these respects it resembled the preparatory work of Israel itself. It was a discipline of Providence, so that beside the generalisation of St. Paul that the Law had been a tutor to bring the Jews to Christ, Clement could set another, that philosophy had played the same part for the Greeks. On the field of common speech Clement's contemporary, the fiery Tertullian of Carthage, appealed to the worshipper who bore the garland of Ceres on his brow, or walked in the purple cloak of Saturn, or wore the white robe of Egyptian Isis—what did he mean by exclaiming "May God repay!" or "God shall judge between us?" Here was a recognition of a supreme authority and power, the "testimony of a soul naturally Christian."

Such comparisons, however, had a very different side. Greece had long had its secret mysteries, with their sacred initiations, their rites of purity and enlightenment, their promises of welfare beyond the grave. When the new deities from Asia Minor, from Egypt, Syria, and the further East, were brought to Italy, the resemblances of their practice to that of the Christian Church excited the believer's alarm, and roused at once the charge of plagiarism. There was a congregation of Mithra at Rome as early as 67 B.C., and towards the end of the first century of our era his mysteries began to be widely spread. Here was a baptism; here was a "sacrament" as the neophyte took the oath on entering the warfare with evil; here were grades of soldiership and service; here were oblations of bread and water mingled with wine which were naturally compared with the Lord's supper; here were doctrines of deliverance from sin, of judgment after death and ascent to heaven, which brought the theology and practice of Mithraism very close to that of the Church. So Mithra bore the august titles of the holy and righteous God; or he was the Mediator, author of order in nature and of victory in life between the ultimate powers of good and evil.

For a time the rivalry was acute, as his worship was carried through the West as far as York and Chester and the Tyne. But with the triumph of Christianity in the fourth century the sounds of conflict die away. The men of learning, Eusebius of Cæsarea (about A.D. 260-340), Augustine (A.D. 354-430) bishop of Hippo, surveyed the religions and philosophies of antiquity as conquerors. The faiths of Egypt, Phœnicia, Greece, and Rome, are passed in review. With a broad sweep of learning Eusebius comments on the ancient mythologies, the oracles, the theory of demons, the practice of human sacrifice, the history of Mosaism. His treatise on the "Preparation for the Gospel" is the first great work on comparative religion which issued out of Christian theology. With generous recognition of what lay beyond the Church he taught (in the Theophania) that all higher culture was due to participation in the Logos. Idolatry might be the work of demons; the world might be filled with the babblings of philosophers and the follies of poets; but the Logos had been continuously present, sowing in the hearts of men the rudiments of the divine laws, of various orders of teaching, of doctrines of every kind. Thus ethics, art, science, and the fairest products of human thought, were genially brought within the scope of Revelation.

II

The panorama of religions unrolled before the student of the present day is far vaster than that which offered itself to the thinkers of Greece and Rome, and its meaning is far better understood. When Pausanias describes the daily sacrifice to a