church, or were baptized only with wafer, not with the fire and Spirit of the gospel. It is well known with what peculiar tenacity a people cleave to religious usages ; and it could not be expected that they should break off in an instant from the traditions of centuries. Nor, in fact, are things which may have descended from heathenism, to be by any means sweepingly condemned. Both the Jewish cultus and tlie heathen are based upon those § 74. THE REVOLUTION IN CULTU8. 377 universal religions wants which Christianity must satisfy, and which Christianity alone can truly meet. Finally, the church has adopted hardly a single existing form or ceremony of re- ligion, without at the same time breathing into it a new spirit, and investing it with a high moral import. But the limit of such appropriation it is very hard to fix, and the old nature of Judaism and heathenism, which has its poiut of attachment in the natural heart of man, continually betrayed its tenacious presence. This is conceded and lamented by the most earnest of the church fathers of the Nicene and post-Nicene age, the very persons who are in other respects most deeply involved in the Catholic ideas of cultus. In the Christian martyr-worship and saint-worship, which now spread with giant strides over the whole Christian world, we cannot possibly mistake the succession of the pagan wor- ship of gods and heroes, with its noisy popular festivities. Augustine puts into the mouth of a heathen the question : " Wherefore must we forsake gods, which the Christians them- selves worship with us ? " He deplores the frequent revels and amusements at the tombs of the martyrs ; though he thinks that allowance should be made for these weaknesses out- of regard to the ancient custom. Leo the Great speaks of Chris- tians in Rome, who first worshipped the rismg sun, doing homage to the pagan Apollo, before repairing to the basilica of St. Peter. Theodoret defends the diristian practices at the graves of the martyrs by pointing to the pagan libations, propitiations, gods, and demigods. Since Hercules, JEscula- pius, Bacchus, the Dioscuri, and many other objects of pagan worship were mere deified men, the Christians, he thinks, can- not be blamed for honoring their martyi's — not making them gods, but venerating them as witnesses and servants of the only true God. Chrysostom mourns over the theatrical cus- toms, such as loud clapping in applause, which tlie Christians at Antioch and Constantinople brought with them into the church. In the Christmas festival, which from the fourth cen- tury spread from Rome over the entire church, the holy com- memoration of the birth of the Redeemer is associated — to this day, even in Protestant lands — with the wanton merriments 378 THIRD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590, of the pagan Saturnalia. And even in the celebration of Sunday, as it was introduced by Constantine, and still con- tinues on the whole continent of Europe,"