Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/527

 CHAP. III. CHBISTIAIJITY. 621 as well as morals, in the course of time wore freed from its fetters. But this species of divorce came from the disappear- ance of the ancient religion ; if law and politics began to bo a little more independent, it was because m?u ceased to have religious beliefs. If t'Ociety was no longer governed by religion, it was especially because this religion no longer had any power. But thei'e came a day when the religious sentiment recovered life and vigor, and when, under the Christian form, be- lief regained its empire over the srul. Were men not then destined to see the reappearance of the ancient confusion of government and the priesthood, of faith and the law ? With Christianity not only was the religious senti- ment revived, but it assumed a higher and less material expression. Whilst previously men had made for them- selves gods of the human soul, or of the great forces of nature, they now began to look upon God as leally for- eign by his essence, from human nature on the one hand, and from the world on the other. The divine Being was placed outside and above physical nature. Whilst previously every man had made a god for him- self, and there were as many of them as there were families and cities, God now appeared as a unique, im- mense, universal being, alone animating the worlds,^ alone able to supply the need of adoration that is in man. Religion, instead of being, as formerly among the nations of Greece and Italy, little more than an as- semblage of practices, a series of rites which men re- peated without having any idea of them, a succession of formulas wiiich often were no longer understood be- cause the language had grown old, a tradition which had been transmitted from age to age, and which owed