"The explicit power of mental reasoning and of science was added to this spontaneous evolution of the religious idea, so far as the improved morality of the race perfected the heavenly justice which was its own creation. The pagan Olympus was gradually simplified by sages and philosophers; the illicit passions of the gods were set aside, and it was transformed into a providential government of individuals and of society, much more remote from direct contact with men. The conception of the immortal gods included one supreme power, formative, protecting or avenging, and this conception bordered on the Semitic idea of the absolute Being, although without quite attaining to it. God was confounded with the order of things, his laws were those of the universe, by which he was also bound, and the righteous man lived in conformity with these laws. When Christianity began, pagan rationalism had arrived at the idea of a spiritual and directing power, organically identical with the universe. It was neither the Olympus of the common people, nor the Semitic Jehovah, but rather the conscious and inevitable order of nature. Although, either as an Olympus or as a dogma, the deity was confounded with men or constrained them to follow a more rational rule of life, yet paganism clearly distinguished the gods from men in their concrete personality, and the action of humanity was therefore distinct from that of the deity.
"When Christianity began, the peoples of the Aryan race in Europe, or at least those of more advanced civilization, had constituted for themselves a heavenly Pantheon, which contained nearly all the primitive deities, but in a more human form and exercising a juster rule over the world, while at the same time they were regarded as quite distinct from the society of men. Although there was in this multiplicity of divine forms an hierarchical order of different ranks, there was no general conception to include the destinies of the whole human race, and to manifest by its unity its providential and historical development. Each people believed in their own special destiny, which should either raise them to greater glory and power or bring them to a speedy and inevitable end; but there was no common fate, no common prosperity nor disaster. Rome had, as far as possible, united these various peoples by the idea of her power, by the inforcement of her laws, and by the benefits of her citizenship, yet the Roman unity was external, and did not spring from the intimate sense of a common lineage. While the nations were so closely united to Rome by brute force, the subject peoples were agitated by a desire for their ancient independence and self-government. Some of these pagan multitudes advanced in civilization through their education in the learning of the Romans, and in morality through their spontaneous activity, but they did not possess any deep sense of a general providence, and heaven and earth continued to be under the sway of an incomprehensible fate.