profligate habits of the Emperor. The caustic satire. of Juvenal, and the grave narrative of Tacitus, all bear witness to the degeneracy of Roman manners. Tacitus contrasts the virgin purity and conjugal fidelity of the German women with the temptations of the theatres of Rome; he observes sarcastically, Nec corrumpere et corrumpi sæculum vocatur.' The purity of the early ages of Rome and of the barbarous ages of Germany was due no doubt to a state of society which had much of the rudeness of ignorance. The Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans. shows how the simplicity of the Roman Republic in its early days had been succeeded in the flourishing period of the Empire by the prevalence of vice the most gross, and crimes the most unnatural. The time was come to place the respect due to the sanctity of marriage on other grounds than those of rudeness of manners and absence of civilisation. Such was one task which, in the name and with the authority of the Almighty, our Saviour undertook. But there was another task, not less necessary, and not less calling for a revelation from Heaven-the worship of the true God. The gods and goddesses of the Homeric Olympus, whether they were names intended to represent the sun, the dawn, the dew, and other powers of nature, or whether they were meant to be real objects of worship, had, before the advent of Augustus, lost all credit with the people of Greece and Rome. Socrates was content to die, rather than profess a real belief in the gods of his country. Cicero laughed at the ceremonies of the augurs in which he pretended to share. Ovid has told in beautiful poetry the stories of Cadmus and of Phaeton, of one nymph changed into a laurel, of another into a fountain, of Danae, of Europa, of the birth of Bacchus, and the despair of Niobe. But no one could ever pretend to suppose that these stories of mythology were other than fictions of admirable invention. The poet Lucretius never pretended to pass off his Venus and Mars as more than airy nothings' to which the poet's pen' gave a local habitation and a name.' He relates in solemn and sublime strains the doctrines of his own Epicurean philosophy : 6 : Humana ante oculos fœdè quum vita jaceret, In terris oppressa gravi sub religione, Primum Graius homo mortales tollere contra Est oculos ausus primusque obsistere contra. So, when he has beautifully and pathetically related the sacrifice of Iphigenia, he adds: Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum. Virgil, while he worships the Muses, does not restrict their dominion to woods and lakes: Me vero primum dulces ante omnia Musa, In another passage he exults that hell does not really exist : Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas, Atque metus omnes et inexorabile fatum Subjecit pedibus, strepitumque Acherontis avari! Thus rendering a timid homage to the earlier and perhaps the greater poet. At length, in a succeeding reign, Juvenal spoke of the ancient superstition as almost universally exploded : Esse aliquos Manes, et subterranea regna, Et contum, et Stygio ranas in gurgite nigras, Nec pueri credunt, nisi qui nondum ære lavantur. So in the magnificent speech which Lucan puts into the mouth of Cato, when he is asked to consult the oracle of Jupiter, he proclaims as follows: Ille Deo plenus, tacitâ quem mente gerebat, Et cœlum, et virtus? Superos quid quærimus ultra? Sed mors certa facit: pavido fortique cadendum est. Non exploratum populis Ammona relinquens.1 It was in a society of political tranquillity, corrupted morals, and prevailing atheism, that Christ was revealed to the Roman world. 1 Lucan, Pharsalia, lib. ix. 564 et seq. 8 ESSAY II. RISE OF CHRISTIANITY. IT has appeared by the preceding chapter that in Rome liberty had been entirely lost, morality openly violated, and religion ridiculed or despised. It was in these circumstances that a new religion was revealed in the name of 'Glory to God in the highest; on earth peace, and goodwill towards men.' Jupiter and Juno, Minerva and Venus, Mars and Mercury, Apollo and Diana, were set aside as imaginary deities. The worship due from man to his Maker, and the goodwill which the creature man was bound to show to all others of the human race, were proclaimed as the sacred commandments of God. The time when John the Baptist foretold the coming of Jesus Christ is very definitely fixed by St. Luke. Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Cæsar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judæa, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of Ituræa and of the region of Trachonitis, and Lysanias the tetrarch of Abilene, Annas and Caiaphas being the high priests, the word of God came unto John, the son of Zacharias, in the wilderness.'1 The same chapter of St. Luke relates: And Jesus himself 1 St. Luke, chap. iii. began to be about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph.' The circumstances relating to the miraculous conception of the Virgin Mary need not be referred to here, being fully recorded in the Gospels of St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. Luke. It was not long before it was made manifest that the new religion was to be preached everywhere, to all, and for ever. For John the Baptist, having acknowledged the divine mission of Jesus, and Jesus knowing that the Pharisees had heard that he, together with his disciples, baptized more persons than John, went through Samaria to Galilee. Then coming to Sychar, a city of Samaria, he asked a woman of Samaria to give him to drink; the woman said to him, 'How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria? for the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans.' Soon afterwards the woman said, 'Sir, I perceive thou art a prophet; our fathers worshipped in this mountain, and ye say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.' Jesus saith unto her, Woman, believe me, that the hour cometh when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor at Jerusalem, worship the Father. Ye worship ye know not what; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship Him. God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.' The woman saith unto Him, I know that Messias cometh, which is called Christ: when He is come, He 6 |