Outlines of Ecclesiastical History

by B. H. Roberts

14. Describe Herod's last illness and death. (Note 5.)

15. Where did Joseph settle on his return from Egypt?

16. What prophecies were fulfilled by Messiah being taken into Egypt and Nazareth?

Section II.^[[11]]

1. State of the Religious World at Messiah's Birth.—At the time of the birth of the Son of God, the enfeebled world was tottering on its foundations. The national religions which had satisfied the parents, no longer proved sufficient for the children. The new generations could not repose contented within the ancient forms. The gods of every nation, when transported to Rome—then the dominant political power in the world—there lost their oracles, as the nations themselves had there lost their liberty. Brought face to face in the capital they had destroyed each other, and their divinity had vanished. A great void was thus occasioned in the religion of the world.

2. A kind of deism, destitute alike of spirit and of life, floated for a time above the abyss in which the vigorous superstitions of antiquity had been engulfed. But like all negative creeds it had no power to reconstruct. All nations were plunged in the grossest superstition. Most of them, indeed all except the Jews, supposed that each country and province was subjected to a set of very powerful beings whom they called gods, and whom the people, in order to live happily, must propitiate with various rites and ceremonies. These deities were supposed to differ materially from each other in sex, power, nature and offices. Some nations went beyond others in impiety of worship, but all stood chargeable with absurdity, if not gross stupidity in matters of religion. (See note 1, end of section.)

3. Thus every nation had a class of deities peculiar to itself, among which one was supposed to be pre-eminent over the rest, and was their king, though subject himself to the laws of fate, or to an eternal destiny. The oriental nations had not the same gods as the Gauls, the Germans, and the other northern nations; and the Grecian deities were essentially different from those of the Egyptians, who worshipped brute animals, plants, and various productions of nature and art. Each nation, likewise, had its own method of worshiping its gods; differing widely from the rites of other nations. But, from their ignorance or from other causes the Greeks and Romans maintained that their gods were universally worshipped; and they therefore gave the names of their own gods to the foreign deities which has caused great confusion and errors in the history of ancient religions even in the works of the learned.

4. Heathen Toleration—Its Cause.—The variety of gods and religions in the pagan nations produced no wars or feuds among them. Each nation without concern allowed its neighbors to enjoy their own views of religion, and to worship their own gods in their own way. Nor need this tolerance greatly surprise us. For they who regard the world as divided like a great country into numerous provinces each subject to a distinct order of deities, cannot despise the gods of other nations nor think of compelling all others to pay worship to their national gods. The Romans in particular, though they would not allow the public religions to be changed or multiplied, yet gave the citizens full liberty to observe foreign religions in private, and to hold meetings and feasts and to erect temples and groves to these foreign deities, in whose worship there was nothing inconsistent with the public safety and existing laws. (See note 2, end of section.)

5. Character of Heathen Gods.—The greater part of the gods of all nations were ancient heroes, famous for their achievements and their worthy deeds; such as kings, generals and the founders of cities; and likewise females who were highly distinguished for their deeds and discoveries, whom a grateful posterity had deified. To these some added the more splendid and useful objects in the natural world, among which the sun, moon, and stars being pre-eminent, received worship from nearly all, and some were not ashamed to pay divine honors to mountains, rivers, trees, the earth, the ocean, the winds, and even to diseases, to virtues and vices, and to almost every conceivable object, or, at least, to the deities supposed to preside over these objects.