Now on the first example of the attempt of theology to meet the claims of philosophy I will not here dwell at length.  I will only remark in passing that it is an utter fallacy to suggest, as for instance Mr. Wells suggests in his fascinating Outline of History, that the subtleties of theology were a mere falling away from the simplicities of religion.  Religion may be better simple for those who find it simple; but there are bound to be many who in any case find it subtle, among those who think about it and especially those who doubt about it.  To take an example, there is no saying which the humanitarians of a broad religion more commonly offer as a model of simplicity than that most mystical affirmation “God is Love.”  And there is no theological quarrel of the Councils of the Church which they, especially Mr. Wells, more commonly deride as bitter and barren than that at the Council of Nicea about the Co-eternity of the Divine Son.  Yet the subtle statement is simply a metaphysical explanation of the simple statement; and it would be quite possible even to make it a popular explanation, by saying that God could not love when there was nothing to be loved.  Now the Church Councils were originally very popular, not to say riotous assemblies.  So far from being undemocratic, they were rather too democratic; the real case against them was that they passed by uproarious votes, and not without violence, things that had ultimately to be considered more calmly by experts.  But it may reasonably be suggested, I think, that the concentration of the Greek intellect on these things did gradually pass from a popular to a more professional or official thing; and that the traces of it have finally tended to fade from the official religion of the East.  It was far otherwise with the more poetical and therefore more practical religion of the West.  It was far otherwise with that direct appeal to pathos and affection in the highly coloured picture of the Shepherd and the King.  In the West the world not only prolonged its life but recovered its youth.  That is the meaning of the movement I have described as the awakening of the West and the resurrection of Rome.  And the whole point of that movement, as I propose to suggest, was that it was a popular movement.  It had returned with exactly that strange and simple energy that belongs to the story of Bethlehem.  Not in vain had Constantine come clad in purple to look down into that dark cave at his feet; nor did the star mislead him when it seemed to end in the entrails of the earth.  The men who followed him passed on, as it were, through the low and vaulted tunnel of the Dark Ages; but they had found the way, and the only way, out of that world of death, and their journey ended in the land of the living.  They came out into a world more wonderful than the eyes of men have looked on before or after; they heard the hammers of hundreds of happy craftsmen working for once according to their own will, and saw St. Francis walking with his halo a cloud of birds.