THE EVOLUTION OF RELIGION 153 



permanent is not a matter, so much of its creed or belief as 

 of the manner in which it can adapt its teachings to the re- 

 quirements of the people, and its suitability to the creation 

 of the forms of state government in vogue, or rather in course 

 of evolution at the period in question amongst the people under 

 discussion. 



For instance, taking more recent developments of modern 

 history, because they are the best known, had not Christianity 

 been the most suited to the revolution and reconstitution of 

 the Roman Empire, it would not have been the main religious 

 belief of to-day amongst the western nations, on the one 

 hand ; and had it not contained the belief of one God and His 

 Trinity it would have failed, on the other hand, to fulfil its 

 duty in the evolution of soul, and so would soon have suc- 

 cumbed to a more suitable religious belief. But Rome, by 

 her mighty power of Government and by the enormous wealth 

 she had acquired came to attain to an enormous amount of 

 indolence and luxury, which brought crime and vice to a state 

 of artistic perfection that was fast carrying her people into the 

 worst forms of materialism and corruption. This made her 

 people yearn for a new form of state government, otherwise 

 they would have adhered to the old paganism that had made 

 the tiny Rome of Romulus and Remus the mighty mistress 

 of the world. Its people being rebellious against the vice and 

 corruption of its patrician element, which up to that time they 

 had adored, caused the masses of the freemen who having 

 become so waited upon by Rome's millions of slaves that the 

 people had lost their ancient energy and their respect for their 

 leaders, were therefore ripe for rebellion. Hence the fact 

 that its revolutionary spirits, for the spirit of revolution nearly 

 always rises amongst the fools and discontents and wasters of 

 a community, finding scattered amongst them a small 

 body of higher class men who had been expelled from their 

 kingdom of Jerusalem, owing to their rebellious desire to have 

 freedom of self-government in religion, found in the Jewish 

 emigrants a clever lot of men with like interests, of a better 

 quality of intellect, who could act as leaders in their rebellions, 

 and whose religious meetings gave a safe excuse for their 

 revolutionary organisation. So grew Christianity. 



But this is only one of the forces that decide the evolution 

 of religion, the natural or material one. On the other hand 



