It has sometimes been maintained that the old polytheism of Greece and Rome was already moribund by the reign of Augustus; that, although its forms still persisted, they persisted only as conventions of literature and art, or as political conveniences; that genuine religious emotion had either ebbed away or found other channels,—the Eastern religions, Judaism, Christianity, or the moral philosophies. This thesis, however, ceases to appeal, when we realize how vigorous the old idiom still was. It is not simply that things once expressed in it continued to be repeated. It was still used to express what was actually being thought and felt in the present. What is true is that it was now used to express something different from its earlier contents. It is this ‘something different’ that I wish to explore in this paper.

The writers on Mormonism have with one exception assumed that shortly after the assassination of Joseph Smith, the founder and leader, the membership of that sect quitted Nauvoo and made their way to Utah. Although the spectacular usurpation of Brigham Young as the leader is carefully noted, the subsequent stay of the Mormons in Illinois is slurred over.

In his essay, “On God and the Absolute,” F. H. Bradley declares that the “assertor of an imperfect God is, whether he knows it or not, face to face with a desperate task or a forlorn alternative. He must try to show (how I cannot tell) that the entire rest of the Universe, outside his limited God, is known to be still weaker and more limited. Or he must appeal to us to follow our Leader blindly and, for all we know, to a common and overwhelming defeat.” The appeal of the second course, even when it is set forth in the spirited and heroic manner of William James, cannot survive a full realization of what is involved in such a prospect. It is not surprising, therefore, to find that most of the more sober-minded theologians who hold the idea of a limited God attempt to do so in the first form suggested by Bradley. F. R. Tennant belongs to this group. And it is his attempt to accomplish the “desperate task” that we propose to examine.

The mystagogical catecheses of Theodore of Mopsuestia which were published for the first time in the year 1933 by Mingana have enriched our knowledge of the Eastern Liturgy in an unexpected way. Investigations have been made concerning the Eucharistic service which he describes. The rite of Baptism which he presents is of no less importance, as we find the more we study its details.