Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

WHEN CHEIST APPEARED.31suppose the reality of a diabolic power exercisedupon them. The polytheism which we have witnessedholding all human life in its grasp, while itdid not teach and uphold the great laws of morality,did, on the other hand, actively inculcatethe violation of those laws by continually representingto the minds and eyes of men such a violationin the acts of the deities worshipped. It wasa perpetual incitement of men to crimes, as wellagainstOsocial order as againstOall the sanctities ofprivate life ; it fostered the savageness of slavery,and the utmost cruelty in carrying on war, becauseits deities, being diverse for every nation, and belongingexclusively to the nation, had obliteratedthe idea that all men were of one blood, and thusdelivered over the captive and the slave to thepitiless hatred or equally pitiless luxury of theirfellow-men. So much for its action on humsociety as terminating with this life, while for alife to come it had no doctrine and made no preparation,but had suffered the earlier teaching ofa future retribution to be considered as a fablefit for children and old women. Looking at sucha condition of human society from the moral pointof view, we may conclude with certainty that manwould never, " if Jfc-K. left JLV-/JL !_' to VX*T himself, AAJL^.JLAK^ V^^JL* have devised it.dly, regarding this polytheism as anesented to the human intellect, nothingmore unreasonable and monstrous than this crowdof deities can even be conceived.The human rea-