Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

WHEN CHRIST APPEARED.17moral and religious teaching, they were ruled byan ever - watchful anxiety to gain acquaintancewith that will. On this sense rested the universalbelief that it was in man's power to hold intercourse. by, means of charms, spells, adjurations,with spirits of greater might and knowledge thanhis own-that is, magic or witchcraft. Hence theevocation of the spirits of the dead to reveal secretsof their prison-house, or necromancy. Hencethe recurrence to oracles, running through all paganhistory, of which there were many scatteredthrough the Roman world, - and which, after atemporary discredit, rose again into name in thetime of Hadrian. Not less general was the beliefthat t men and women might be possessed byspirits who ruled their words and actions accordingto an overmastering will. Then divinationexisted in endlessly various forms ; and of itsforce we can gather a notion by Cicero's remarkthat it lay like an oppressive burden on the mindsof men, so that even sleep, which should be therefuge from anxieties, became through the meaningattached to dreams the cause of a multitudeof cares.14 To this must be added the use ofsortileges, amulets, and talismans, in countlessnumber and variety ; and the belief that the actionsand fortune of men were swayed by thecourse of the stars-that is, astrolosrv. It wasnot the vulgar and ignorant merely whose minds" De Divinat. ii. 72.II.C