Viii THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 369 



make up for the loss of the ark and of the high 

 places ; and even the lustral fluid of paganism is re- 

 placed by holy water at the porches of the temples. 

 A touching ceremony the common meal originally 

 eaten in pious memory of a loved teacher becomes 

 metamorphosed into a flesh-and-blood sacrifice, 

 supposed to possess exactly that redeeming virtue 

 which the prophets denied to the flesh-and-blood 

 sacrifices of their day ; while the minute observ- 

 ance of ritual is raised to a degree of punctilious 

 refinement which Levitical legislators might envy. 

 And with the growth of this theology, grew its 

 inevitable concomitant, the belief in evil spirits, in 

 possession, in sorcery, in charms and omens, until 

 the Christians of the twelfth century after our 

 era were sunk in more debased and brutal super- 

 stitions than are recorded of the Israelites in the 

 twelfth century before it. 



The greatest men of the Middle Ages are unable 

 to escape the infection. Dante's " Inferno " would 

 be revolting if it were not so often sublime, so 

 often exquisitely tender. The hideous pictures 

 which cover a vast space on the south wall of the 

 Campo Santo of Pisa convey information, as terrible 

 as it is indisputable, of the theological conceptions 

 of Dante's countrymen in the fourteenth century, 

 whose eyes were addressed by the painters of 

 those disgusting scenes, and whose approbation 

 they knew how to win. A candid Mexican of 

 the time of Cortez, could he have seen this 



VOL. IV B B 



