Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

12 THE GODS OF THE NATIONSthe hundred millions of men ruled by him a polytheisticidolatry bewildering by its multiplicity,internal contradictions, fluctuations, * and UU^LVt. mixtures XJLA-L-t:*- \J lA-JL v-/K^ayet imposing by its universal extent and prevalence.The only exception seems to have beenthe Jewish worship of one God, whether in itschief seat, the small province of Juda?a, or as itwas seen in the lives of Jewish settlers scatteredthroughout the empire. It must be remarkedthat this Jewish worship of the true God wassanctioned as that of a national god belonging tothe Jews, and sacrifice was perpetually offered forAugustus in the Temple at Jerusalem. But theJews did not, as a rule, make efforts to convertthe Gentiles to their religion, nor seek to exhibitit as antagonistic to the prevailing idolatry, andas claiming to subdue and cast it out. Theywere content to keep their own worship to themselves,and with the toleration which the Romanlaw thus allowed them. Yet even so in everyplace where they dwelt in any numbers some ofthe better heathens were found to be attracted totheir worship by the intrinsic beauty of their beliefin one God.. But such an exception as this hardly madea perceptible break in that continuous mass of eviland falsehood which then surrounded young andold, learned and ignorant, rich and poor, in itsgrasp. The sea stands in Holy Writ as the well-known image of the world's disobedience to the