of trivial people, very ignorant and very common; fishermen and publicans, as the Gospels show us, “the baker and the fuller,” as Celsus said with a sneer.  Yes, and every kind of unclean and disreputable person they urged to join them, quite unlike all decent and established religions.  And they took the children and women of the family away into a corner, and whispered to them and misled them—­“Only believe!” was their one great word.  The whole thing was incredibly silly.  Paul went to Athens, and they asked him there about his religion; and when he spoke to them about Jesus rising from the dead, they sniggered, and the more polite suggested “another day.”  Everybody knew that dead men do not rise.  It was a silly religion.  Celsus pictured the frogs in symposium round a swamp, croaking to one another how God forsakes the whole universe, the spheres of heaven, to dwell with us; we frogs are so like God; he never ceases to seek how we may dwell with him for ever; but some of us are sinners, so God will come—­or send his son—­and burn them up; and the rest of us will live with him for eternity.  Is not that very like the Christian religion?  Celsus asked.  It has been replied that, if the frogs really could say this and did say this, then their statement might be quite reasonable.  But our main purpose for the moment is to realize the utterly inconceivable absurdity of this bunch of Galilean fishermen—­and fools and rascals and maniacs—­setting out to capture the world.  One of them wrote an Apocalypse.  He was in a penal settlement on Patmos, when he wrote it.  The sect was in a fair way of being stamped out in blood, as a matter of fact; but this dreamer saw a triumphant Church of ten thousand times ten thousand—­and thousands of thousands—­there were hardly as many people in the world at that time; the great Rome had fallen and the “Lamb” ruled.  Imagine the amusement of a Roman pagan of 100 A.D. who read the absurd book.  Yet the dream has come true; that Church has triumphed.  Where is the old religion?  Christ has conquered, and all the gods have gone, utterly gone—­they are memories now, and nothing more.  Why did they go?  The Christian Church refused to compromise.  A pagan could have seen no real reason why Jesus should not be a demi-god like Herakles or Dionysos; no reason, either, why a man should not worship Jesus as well as these.  One of the Roman Emperors, a little after 200 A.D., had in his private sanctuary four or five statues of gods, and one of them was Jesus.  Why not?  The Roman world had open arms for Jesus as well as any other god or demi-god, if people would be sensible; but the Christian said, No.  He would not allow Jesus to be put into that pantheon, nor would he worship the gods himself, not even the “genius” of the Emperor, his guardian spirit.  The Christian proclaimed a war of religion in which there shall be no compromise and no peace, till Christ is lord of all; the thing shall be fought out to the bitter end.  And it has been.  He was resolved that the old gods should go; and they have gone.  How was it done?