Produced by Turgut Dincer, Craig Kirkwood, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive.) Transcriber’s Notes: Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_), and text enclosed by equal signs is in bold (=bold=). Additional Transcriber’s Notes are at the end. * * * * * PAGANISM SURVIVING IN CHRISTIANITY BY ABRAM HERBERT LEWIS, D.D. AUTHOR OF “BIBLICAL TEACHINGS CONCERNING THE SABBATH AND THE SUNDAY,” “A CRITICAL HISTORY OF THE SABBATH AND THE SUNDAY IN THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH,” “A CRITICAL HISTORY OF SUNDAY LEGISLATION FROM 321 TO 1888, A.D.,” ETC. G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS NEW YORK 27 WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET LONDON 24 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND The Knickerbocker Press 1892 * * * * * COPYRIGHT, 1892 BY ABRAM HERBERT LEWIS Electrotyped, Printed, and Bound by The Knickerbocker Press, New York G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS * * * * * TO GEORGE H. BABCOCK CO-WORKER IN HISTORIC RESEARCH AND FRIEND THROUGH MANY YEARS, THIS VOLUME IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED THE AUTHOR PREFACE. He who judges the first century by the nineteenth will fall into countless errors. He who thinks that the Christianity of the fourth century was identical with that of the New-Testament period, will go widely astray. He who does not look carefully into the history of religions before the time of Christ, and into the pagan influences which surrounded infant Christianity, cannot understand its subsequent history. He who cannot rise above denominational limitations and credal restrictions cannot become a successful student of early Church history, nor of present tendencies, nor of future developments. History is a series of results, not a medley of happenings. It is the story of the struggle between right and wrong; the record of God’s dealing with men. The “historic argument” is invaluable, because history preserves God’s verdicts concerning human choices and actions. Events and epochs, transitions and culminations, are the organized causes and effects which create the never-ceasing movement, and the organic unity called history. Hence we learn that ideas and principles, like apples, have their time for development and ripening; that the stains of sin, the weakness of error, and the influence of truth commingle and perdure through the centuries; that good and evil, sin and righteousness, persist, or are eliminated, in proportion as men heed God’s voice, and listen to His verdicts. The scientific study of history reveals the norm by which ideas, creeds, movements, and methods are to be tested. Such a standard, when contrasted with the speculations of philosophy, is granite, compared with sand. God’s universal law, enunciated by Christ, is: “By their fruits ye shall know them.”