“How, then, did the concentration of the religious sentiment upon Jesus originate? Not, as the Church insists, in the undeniable rights of a perfect Being to the everlasting allegiance of mankind, for there is no evidence of his perfection, intellectual or spiritual, but in the fact that the religious sentiment, at a certain stage of its historical progress, demanded a single human centre, and knew how to satisfy its own demand by its own process of idealization. “The ideal itself was sent in the soul of the age. It was bound to do what it would with its materials by its own divine gift. It was the creative force of the time. It is not the whole truth to say with Merivale, then, that( the religion of Christ seized and developed, with a divine energy, the latent yearnings of mankind for social combination, having for its essence, in a human point of view, the doctrine of the equality of man/ Rather did that religion catch a spirit of universality already abroad in the age—not latent, but mighty to transform society, to inspire both Hebrew Messiah and Gentile philosopher, _to make its god in its own image_, and to transform the little Jewish sect at last into a Church of civilization.... “And this, at least, is sure; always there is a man for the hour. Somehow or other, a great demand will find satisfaction. But the man is not what the hour reports him when it has crowned him with all that faith and fancy can bestow, and set up, through him, its own special demand as valid for all time. Future ages will revise, from a freer standpoint, the image it transmits for their adoration.... “The earliest types and emblems of Christ-worship betray this powerful element in its origination. Jesus is represented in the form of the old deities and in conjunction with them. Between the images of Mercury Criophorus and Apollo Nomius, and that of the ‘Good Shepherd/ the transition is so gradual that it is hard to decide whether the picture is pagan or Christian. In the Catacombs Jesus sits as Pluto on the judgment-seat, with Mary as Proserpine, while Mercury leads in souls. Still earlier emblems of Jesus, the Lamb, the Fish, the Ship, the Cross, the Dove, are all associated with older heathen mysteries or mythological beliefs, as are also the Christian festivals and rites.