"In this way Christianity became popular, and the Semitic idea was invested with pagan forms, in order to carry on the gradual and more intimate spiritual transformation which is not yet terminated. Its teaching was at first decidedly rejected and opposed by cultivated minds, accustomed as the Greeks were with few exceptions to use their reason. Among philosophers, the popular belief in a personal Olympus had disappeared, and a more rational study of mankind did not allow them to understand or comprehend a dogma which re-established anthropomorphism under another aspect, so that this new and impious superstition became the object of persecution. These were, however, mere exceptions, an anticipation of the opposition of reason to mythical ideas, which became more vigorous in every successive age, until the time arrived when reason, educated by a long course of exercise, was able to renew the effort with greater authority and success. The common people gradually became Christian, and so also did educated men, who thus added the authority of the schools to a teaching accepted by the feelings and innate inclination of the race, and hence followed the theological development of Christian dogma. "These new principles and beliefs, eventually accepted by all the nations of Europe, both barbarous and civilized, not only brought to perfection the religious intuition characteristic of the morality and civilization of the race, but they produced a new and renovating power in historical and social life. This fresh virtue consisted in the belief in a power consubstantially divine and human. Although the pagan gods were human in their extrinsic and intrinsic form, only differing from mortals by their mighty privileges, yet they were personally distinct from men, and while the acts of Olympus mingled with those of earth, they had an habitation and destinies apart. But by the new dogma, the one God who was a Spirit took on him the substance of man and was united with humanity as a whole, according to the Pauline interpretation, which was generally accepted by our race. The divine nature was continually imparted to man, the body and members in which the divine spirit was incarnated, since the Church or mystical community of Christians was the temple of God. Through this lively sense of the divine incarnation, the Christian avatar with which the race had been acquainted under other forms, God was no longer essentially distinguished from mankind in the form of a number of concrete beings, but was spiritually infused into men and acted through them. The Christian as man felt himself to be a participator with God himself by a mystic intercourse. Since, therefore, the human faculty was historically identical with the divine, and shared in the spiritual work which was to effect the redemption of society, this new and Christian civilization added daring, confidence, and virtue to the natural energy of the race.