THE ARREST OF INQUIRY. 59 



in the Empire; and hence the prominence and au- 

 thority, from an early period, of the bishop of Rome. 

 In the simple and business-like act of his election as 

 chairman of the gatherings lay the germ of the au- 

 dacious and preposterous claims of the Papacy. 



On the pagan side, the course of development is 

 not so easily traced. To determine when and where 

 this or that custom or rite arose is now impossible; 

 indeed, we may say, without exaggeration, that it 

 never arose at all, because the conditions for its 

 adoption were present throughout in human tend- 

 encies. The first Christian disciples were Jews: and 

 the ritual which they followed was the direct outcome 

 of ideas common to all barbaric religions, so that 

 certain of the pagan rites and ceremonies with which 

 they came in contact in all parts of the Empire fitted 

 in with custom, tradition, and desire. And this ap- 

 plies, with stronger force, to the converts scattered 

 from Edessa, east of the Euphrates, to the Empire's 

 westernmost limits in Britain. Moreover, we know 

 that a policy of adaptation and conciliation wisely 

 governed the ruling minds of the Church, in whom, 

 stripped of all the verbiage about them as semi- 

 inspired successors of the apostles, there was deep- 

 seated superstition. Paganism might, in its turn, be 

 suppressed by Imperial edict, but it had too much 

 in common with the later forms of Christianity not 

 to survive in fact, however changed in name. 



It may be taken as a truism that in the cere- 

 monies of the higher religions there are no inven- 



