Mr. Blunt goes on to give interesting details of the close connection between the modern religious festival, ceremony, or service, and those of classical times, and the conclusion is obvious. In modern days Dr. Mommsen has lent the sanction of his great authority to the identification of the birthday of Christ with that of Mithra,[461] and Mr. Leland has given such numerous identifications not only of the cults of pagan and Christian Italy, but of the god-names of ancient Rome with the saint-names or witch-names of modern times,[462] that it seems impossible to deny a place for this evidence. "It was," says Gibbon, "the universal sentiment both of the Church and of heretics that the dæmons were the authors, the patrons, and the objects of idolatry; those rebellious spirits who had been degraded from the rank of angels were still permitted to roam upon earth, to torment the bodies and to seduce the minds of sinful men. It was confessed, or at least it was imagined, that they had distributed among themselves the most important characters of Polytheism, one dæmon assuming the name of Jupiter, another of Æsculapius, a third of Venus, and a fourth perhaps of Apollo."[463] This, then, is recognition and adoption of pagan beliefs, not the uprooting of them. If the Roman Jupiter was a Christian dæmon, his existence at all events was recognised. But even this negative way of adopting the old beliefs gave way as the Church spread further. The tribe of dæmons soon included the popular fairy, elf, and goblin. And then came the positive adoption of pagan customs. Gibbon describes how the early Christians refused to decorate their doors with garlands and lamps, and to take part in the ceremonial of lifting the bride over the threshold of the house.[464] Both these customs have survived in popular folklore, in spite of the recorded action of the early Church, and it would be curious to ascertain whether they have survived by the help of the Church. We cannot answer that question of historical evidence just now, but it is a question which, in its wider aspect, as including many other items of folklore, ought to be examined into. There is no doubt, however, that by analogy it can be answered, because we have ample evidence, if the writings of reformers may be taken as historical facts and not polemical imaginations, that many very important customs, among the richest as well as the poorest treasures of folklore, have been, so to speak, Christianised by the Church, and that the Church has taken part in and adopted non-Christian customs, the survivors of olden-time life in Europe.[465]