Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

RESURRECTION OF CULTURED HEATHENISMI 5 7and supplementing them with a host of demons whofill up the gap between them and men.What can be more unlike the old Roman world ofCicero, and his bearing towards the immortal godswhom he parades, and the smile which he attributesto the augurs when they meet each other ? Whatcan be more unlike the stage religion or thinly-veiledO O vunbelief of Julius, Augustus, Tiberius, Strabo, Diodorus,Horace, Virgil, and Ovid ? But the contrast is broughthome to us because the successors of these men arestill to be found in some of Plutarch's exact contemporaries,in Tacitus and his friend Pliny. Thesestand very much upon the ground of Cicero still.Tacitus thinks the facts which he records as historianto be the severest comment upon the notion of a divineprovidence extending over the fortunes of men. Hemaintains the ancestral worship as a thing of customand as connected with the dominion of Rome. Butit is an outward, hesitating, sceptical maintenance,more of the politician than the man. Both he andPliny are utter strangers to Plutarch's heartiness ofbelief and spirit of piety.Now had anything happened between the accessionof Claudius and that of Trajan which would throwlight upon this change ? Certainly something hadhappened quite unknown to the history of philosophysince it arose with Thales six hundred years before.Men had gone throughout the whole empire preachingthe divine unity, spirituality, holiness, providence,and personality. Jews, and going forth from Judea,they had first approached the synagogues of theirown countrymen which were to be found in everycity, and strove within them to form a nucleus ofbelievers in the new doctrine. Next they proceeded