In short, the history of the pre-Christian religion is like that of pre-Christian philosophy, a long preparation for the Gospel. We are familiar enough with this thought in its Jewish application from the teaching of the Epistle to the Hebrews. But it seems to be often forgotten that the principles laid down in that Epistle admit of no limitation to any single race of men. They are naturally illustrated from Hebrew history in a writing addressed to Hebrews. But their scope is universal. They compel their own application to every religious history, which the growth of our knowledge brings to light. And from this point of view the many pagan adumbrations of Christian doctrine, similarities of practice, coincidences of ritual, analogies of phrase and symbol, fall naturally into place. The fathers and early missionaries were often perplexed by these phenomena, and did not scruple to attribute them to diabolic imitation. And even in the present day they are capable of disturbing timid minds, when unexpectedly presented before them. But all this is unphilosophical, for in the light of evolution the occurrence of such analogies is a thing to be expected; while to the eye of faith they do but emphasize the claim of Christianity to be universal, by shewing that it contains in spiritual summary the religious thoughts and practices and ways of prayer and worship, not of one people only, but of all the races of men. 'In the whole of our Christian faith,' says Thomassin, 'there is nothing which does not in the highest degree harmonize with that natural philosophy which Wisdom, who made all things, infused into every created mind, and wrote upon the very marrow of the reason; so that, however obscured by the foul pleasures of the senses, it never can be wholly done away. It was this hidden and intimate love of the human mind, however marred, for the incorruptible truth, which won the whole world over to the gospel of Christ, when once that Gospel was proclaimed[213].'