Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

10 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMh a temper appear in the surviving literatues in the history of that period, All these fese subsequently, but the contact of the GreelJewish mind for two full centuries had not pduced them. They were biding their time to becomefruitful, when a higher power, which had not yetappeared, should impregnate the nations, satisfying thewants which it had taught the human heart to feel.It is quite another state of mind which Philo portrayso us in his picture of the nations at the accession ofCaius, an intense enjoyment of the goods of life, andan exultation in the peace and tranquillity which thestrong hand of the Emperor had established over threecontinents. Men were absorbed in outward thingsrather than pining for inward sources of strength.The settlement of Jews in the great cities of the worldbefore our Lord's coming must be viewed as a mostimportant disposition of Providence, but to appreciateit fully we must contrast the sterility of the effectproduced before with the fruitfulness which ensuedafter His coming. Up to the time of Claudius, inspite of a large number of Jews settled at Rome, andoying Roman citizenship, Isis and Anubis hadinfluenced Roman society quite as much as the religionof Moses. They were the favourite gods whichthe great Roman ladies worshipped with calamitousresults.If then we would rightly appreciate the externaland internal condition of the times in which the first1 Dubois-Cuchan, vol. i. 382, says, '* Le Judaisme resta commeenfoui dans un coin de Torient, et n'en sortit que par la transformationchretienne. Jusque lit ce ne fut qu'un germe cache, qu'une sortede cbrysalide religieuse, et ce ivest qu'en brisant sa vieille enveloppeque 1'esprit qu'il renfermait put planer, sur la terre." See alsoFriedlaender, SittcnyescMchte Roms, iii. p. 505, who gives good reasonsfor this.