Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

WHEN CHRIST APPEARED.altars, and adore Egyptian, Asiatic, African, orGallic gods. These various systems agreed all inone point, that they were systems of polytheisticlatry: they all divided the attributes of thgodhead, assigning them to more or fewer objects,and worshipping all these by visible symbols whichthe power worshipped was deemed to inhabit:2but they did not make the same division with amere difference of name; on the contrary, theyran into and across each other with the most bewilderingmultiplicity, variation, and contradiction.Even in the same system, if we may givethis name to any of the various mythologies, the ftseveral divinities were perpetually interfering witheach other's province. When the Koman madevows for the removal of his ailments, in his uncertaintyto which god the ailment belonged, orwho was most proper to remove it, he addressed .his vow to several together ; or in public supplicationsoften uncertain whom actly theprayer or offering should be made, he cautiouslyexpressed himself, " whether it be a god or a goddess."And the various Hellenic, Asiatic, or Egyp-tian cities often possessed local gods, whose worshipwas supreme there, while they exercisedfluence, or were even scarcely known elsewhere.3Now merely as a specimen of what this worshipwas all over the Eoman empire, let us take2 See Aug. de Civ, Dei, 1. viii. 24.3 Dollinger, Heidentlmm und Judentkum, pp. 528, 529.