Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

58 THE FIRST AND THE SECOND MAN.distinct employments, some agricultural, some commercial,some inland, some nautical, but alike inthis, that they were enthralled by systems of a falseworship, of which it is hard to say whether it wasthe more revolting to the reason by its absurdity,or to the conscience of man by its foulness. Andthis false worship does not lie distinct and apartfrom the concerns of daily civil and domesticlife, but is intertwined with all the public andprivate actions of men, forming their habits andruling their affections. Moreover, the polytheisticidolatry described above as existing at the time ofAugustus in every province of his empire exceptone, in almost1 every country which touched uponit, or was known to it, is the result, the summing-up, the embodiment of man's whole history upto that time, so far as we know it : it is thatinto which this history had run out, its palpable,it almost seemed its irresistible, form. And itamounts to a complete corruption, first of the relationbetween man and his Creator, secondly ofthe relation between man and his fellow, thirdly ofthe relations of man in civil government, that is,of states and political communities, to each other.Now, looking at this polytheistic idolatry simplyas a fact, without for the moment any attemptto give a solution of it from authority, looking atit just as modern science would regard the facts of1 An exception must be made in favour of Persia, where the originalmonotheism was preserved with more or less corruption.