The supernatural, in the ancient world, was something vague and indefinite: and the classical theologies at any rate, though they were to some extent formal embodiments of it, could embody really but a very small part.

Zeus and the Olympian hierarchies were dimly perceived to be encircled by some vaster mystery; which to the popular mind was altogether formless, and which even such men as Plato could only describe inadequately.

The supernatural was like a dim and diffused light, brighter in some places, and darker in others, but focalised and concentrated nowhere.
Christianity has focalised it, united into one the scattered points of brightness, and collected other rays that were before altogether imperceptible.

That vague '_idea of the good_,' of which Plato said most men dimly augured the existence, but could not express their augury, has been given a definite shape to by Christianity in the form of its Deity.
That Deity, from an external point of view, may be said to have acquired His sovereignty as did the Roman Caesar.

He absorbed into His own person the offices of all the gods that were before him, as the Roman Caesar absorbed all the offices of the state; and in His case also, as has been said of the Roman Caesar, the whole was immeasurably greater than the mere sum of the parts.