With all its beauty and all its harmony with Greek culture, Greek religion had many weak nesses. In fact, its chief weakness lay along the very line of its strength. The gods were so truly Greek that they copied the frailties of the Greek nature all too well; these ideals of gener ous, beautiful life lacked the moral fibre of a sterner race; moreover, Greek religion was rooted in the past, so that popular worship, holding to traditional rites. could not rise to the idea of the gods which it had itself suggested. At length it could no longer satisfy religious thought and the needs of the religious life, so that the time was fully ripe for the introduction of Chris tianity.
Greek religion fulfilled its mission and in large measure disappeared. Estimated . . . . .
historically: (i) lt prepared the way for the introduction of Chris tianity; (2) its sacred places and sacred rites exercised a direct in fluence on Christianity; and (3) it offered a permanent contribu tion to the development of re ligion.
(1) When Christian missionaries came preaching that the world was lost in wickedness, and that men needed salvation (soteria) both for this life and for the life to come, it was a familiar message to their Greek hearers. Earnest minds in Greece had been seeking just this soleria fur centuries. A sense of spiritual need had been developed which neither Greek religion nor Greek art nor Greek philosophy Could entirely satisfy; and what the Greeks had ignorantly sought, that Christianity declared unto them. A conception of God had been wrought out that was infin itely beyond any Greek god; poets and philoso phers entertained a firmly-rooted belief in the righteous government of the universe and in a moral law at its fcundation; Greek worship taught men to look to the gods for communion and sym pathy only to disappoint them, for their gods were not equal to what men sought in them. These
needs and these ideals were met by Christianity, and the new religion found a rich soil in the re mains of an earlier growth.
(2) Although Greek religion disappeared, many features of it remained and were taken up into Christianity. Alany local shrines were conse crated to the use of Christianity. The very Parthenon became at length a Christian church. Heroes and gods of local worship in many in stances continued to be, and still are, worshiped as Christian saints. Some of the old feasts and processions, especially the processions by which help was sought in dine of need, became conse crated to Christian use. The old mystery rites were consistently fought by Christian leaders, but we can see that before they entirely disappeared the Christian sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Slipper had come to he celebrated some what as the inFsteries were celebrated, simply be cause the mysteries had done so much to define the ideas of solemn ritual for the Greek mind. Thus there were many threads of connection be tween the old worship and the new.
(3) Certain phases of religion were developed in Greece more perfectly than they had been devel oped before, and the modern world still has some thing to learn from Greece along this line: Greece developed the human side of religion to a high degree. Human experiences were reflected in the Divine world so that men might feel a peculiar sympathy with their gods. The gods were in closest touch with human life in all its phases. Their life was in the life of men; the work of the farmer and the smith, the experiences of the traveler hy land or sea, the daily life of the market, the activity of the state—all this was the sphere of Greek religion. It made all of life brighter and better by lending to it a spiritual side. • A. F.