another to-morrow; but one and the same law, eternal and immutable, shall be prescribed for all nations and all times, and the God who shall prescribe, introduce, and promulgate this law shall be the one common Lord and Supreme Ruler of all."[43:1]
The Grecian religion,[43:2] so closely resembling the Roman, was of course tolerated in the Empire. The gods were ideal Greeks with virtues and vices magnified. They were born, had passions, senses, and bodies like men, but never died. They committed crimes, had troubles, and were given to wrath, hatred, lust, cruelty, perjury, deception, and adultery, yet were omnipotent and omniscient.[43:3] While the conception of Zeus, as the father of the gods, ruled by fate, had a vague idea of monotheism in it, still the Greek religion lacked the Christian conception of sin and righteousness, for with the Greeks sin was only a folly of the understanding—even the gods sinned. Small wonder then that Plato banished the gods from his ideal republic.[43:4] Pindar, Eschylus, and Sophocles also urged loftier views of the gods, and preached a higher morality.[43:5] With the Roman conquest national honour and patriotism died out, and superstition, infidelity,
refined materialism, and outright atheism came in. The best hearts were longing for a new and purer religion, and were ready to accept it when it came.
The Jews,[44:1] intensely religious, with several thousand years of spiritual history back of them, divided the known world into the followers of the true God and the heathen idolaters. Even they were separated into factions:
(1) The Pharisees,[44:2] numbering 6000, stoical casuists, rigidly orthodox, prone to analyse the Mosaic law to death, intensely patriotic, and bitter against all non-Jewish tendencies, were very popular, guided public worship, and controlled the Jews in politics.
(2) The Sadducees,[44:3] rationalistic and skeptical, were aristocratic Epicureans who rejected oral traditions, and denied resurrection,[44:4] angels,[44:5] and an all-ruling, foreknowing Providence. They formed a smaller political party in opposition to the Pharisees, held many priestly offices, were in league with the Romans, and therefore had less influence with the people.[44:6]
(3) The Essenes,[44:7] a mystic brotherhood of 4000 whose purpose was to attain holiness, received their
ideas from eastern Theosophists; lived communal lives on the shores of the Dead Sea; took the Old Testament allegorically; wore a white dress; were over-scrupulously clean for the purpose of purification; and rejected animal food, bloody sacrifices, oaths, slavery, and marriage. They had little to do with politics; were forerunners of Christian monasticism; and may have influenced the ideas of Jesus.[45:1]
(4) The Samaritans,[45:2] in origin half Jewish and half heathen Babylonian, practised their reformed Judaism about Gerizim under an established Levitical priesthood. They rejected all Scriptures but the Pentateuch, held pure Messianic expectations, looked with favour upon Christianity, and were bitterly hated by the orthodox Jews.[45:3]
(5) The Zealots, led by Judas of Galilee, a sort of a nationalistic party, were imbued by a very materialistic conception of the hope of Israel. They sprang from the Pharisees and followed them in religious things. They confidently expected the realisation of the kingdom of God, the Messiah, and a new Israel. In their patriotic zeal they did not hesitate to use the sword and dagger to drive out their Roman foes in order to realise their dreams for a purely Jewish kingdom. Their followers came mostly from the lowest classes.[45:4]