Page:An Essay on the Age and Antiquity of the Book of Nabathaean Agriculture.djvu/156

140 exceptions of minor importance, the world in a manner has been entirely subdued by the spreading of Shemitic Monotheism.

Are we to admit, then, that the Indo-European nations have completely renounced their individuality in adopting the Shemitic creed? By no means. While adopting the Shemitic religion, we have greatly modified it. Christianity, in its usual acceptation, is in reality our own work; Primitive Christianity, consisting essentially, in the apocalyptic belief, of a kingdom of God yet to come, Christianity such as it appeared to the mind of a St. James, a Papias, was very different from our Christianity, overlaid with metaphysics by the Greek Fathers, and the Scholastic teaching of the middle ages, reduced to a system of morality and charity by the enlightenment of modern times. The victory of Christianity was only secured when it completely cast aside its Jewish clothing; when it became again what it had been in the lofty conception of its Founder, a creation divested of