It would have lost none of its keenness if its theology had been taken from it.

And there, it is said, we see the positive worth of life; we see already realised what we are now growing to realise once more.

Christianity, with its supernatural aims and objects, is spoken of as an '_episode of disease and delirium_;' it is a confusing dream, from which we are at last awaking; and the feelings of the modern school are expressed in the following sentence of a distinguished modern writer:[2] '_Just as the traveller_,' he says, '_who has been worn to the bone by years of weary striving among men of another skin, suddenly gazes with doubting eyes upon the white face of a brother, so if we travel backwards in thought over the darker ages of the history of Europe we at length reach back with such bounding heart to men who had like hopes with ourselves, and shake hands across that vast with ...

our own spiritual ancestors._' Nor are the Greeks the only nation whose history is supposed to be thus so reassuring to us.

The early Jews are pointed to, in the same way, as having felt pre-eminently the dignity of this life, and having yet been absolutely without any belief in another.