20 THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVOLUTION 



present to the world. 1 What was tribal in the Jewish con- 

 ception vanished under Christ's preaching of the Fatherhood 

 of God, and St. Paul's extension of this principle to the 

 entire human race. In a short space of time, Christ, con- 

 sidered as being himself God, the divine ideal of suffering 

 humanity, the infinite power of mercy and self-sacrifice, but 

 also the inexorable power of justice destined to judge the 

 world, thrust Jehovah into the background. Simultaneously, 

 the Greek conception of God, as prime principle of law and 

 order in the universe, disappeared beneath a multitude of 

 metaphysical definitions, for the most part designed to 

 establish the divinity of Christ, and to bring this dogma into 

 accordance with previous stages of religious and speculative 

 thought. Independent of the Trinity, as it were, there grew 

 up a secondary series of conceptions, which centred in the 

 man-God Christ : his mother, his cortege of saints, disciples, 

 apostles, martyrs, shared the adoration which was paid to 

 him. This highly anthropomorphic and almost polytheistic 

 Christianity, devotionally more potent than the metaphysical 

 fabric out of which it had emerged, controlled the imagina- 

 tion of the Middle Ages. But, at their close, a thorough -going 

 mental revolution was effected. Through criticism, Science 

 sprang into being ; and Science, so far as it touches the idea 

 of Deity, brought once more into overwhelming prominence 

 the Greek conception of God as Law. On the other hand, 

 the claims of humanity upon our duty and devotion grew 

 in importance, so that the spirit and teaching of Christ, the 

 suffering, the self-sacrificing, the merciful, and at the same 

 time the just, survived the decay of his divinity. In other 

 words, the two factors of primitive Christianity are again 

 disengaged, and again demand incorporation in a religion 

 which shall combine the conceptions of obedience to supreme 

 Law and of devotion to Humanity, both of which have been 

 spiritualised, sublimed, and rendered positive by the action of 

 thought and experience. What religion has to do, if it 



1 This point has been ably brought out by Mr. J. Cotter Morrison, in 

 his Service of Man, p. 182 ; a book which I had not read before I wrote 

 this essay. 



