historians who pride themselves on their sense of
values should not allow themselves to be deceived by
appearances. They should recognize in His insig-
nificance His greater significance. For it is a miracle,
with the like of which they have nowhere else the
opportunnity to deal, that a carpenter from a Jewish
village should turn out of its channel the stream of
history and rule the lives of millions of men cen-
turies and millenniums after His death, and that,
having risen from the dead, He should finally gov-
ern the ages as King of kings and Lord of lords.
History offers no parallel to this.
Revolutions and reformations are the results
of unsatisfactory conditions plus an understand-
ing — it may be only a partial understanding —
of the difficulty and a definite desire for im-
provement. The period of the labors of the Son of
God is no exception to the rule. It is true He came
in the Augustan, or Golden, Age. But this brilliant
period of Roman history is a peak and not a plateau.
It was of very short duration. Before the peak was
reached the forces of decay and dissolution were plain-
lv at work. Public and private morality were at a low
ebh. The brilliance of the age was due to the genius
of one man, the emperor. The famed literature of the
age was produced, much of it, at his command, as
propaganda to strengthen the tottering social order.
But he could not rebuild; he could only postpone the
inevitable collapse. Tacitus, writing of the age im-
mediately following the reign of the great Augustus,
has this to say:
“I am entering upon the history of a period rich
in disasters, gloomy with wars, rent with seditions,
nay, savage in its very hours of peace. Four em-
perors perished by the sword; there were three
civil wars; there were more with foreigners — and
some had both characters at once. . . . Rome was
wasted by fires, its oldest temples burnt, the very
capitol set on fire by Roman hands. There was defile-
ment of sacred rites; adulteries in high places; the sea
crowded with exiles; island rocks drenched with
murder. Yet wilder was the frenzy in Rome; no-
bility, wealth, the refusal of office, its acceptance —
everything was a crime, and virtue the surest ruin.
One found his spoils in a priesthood or consu-
late; another in a provincial governorship; another
behind the throne; and all was one delirium of hate
and terror; slaves were bribed to betray their mas-
ters, freedmen their patrons. He who had no foe
was destroyed by his friend.”
GopLEss TEMPLES
S MIGHT be expected, religion was at low ebb
at the coming of Christ. The Olympian deities,
at their best, supplied nothing to guide man through
life or to console him in the hour of death. They were
gods of the tribe or of the nation, not of the indi-
vidual soul. To them were attributed the virtues and
the vices of men. They differed from men only in
that they were magnified men. It is possible that the
Greeks who invented them saw spiritual lessons in
JULY, 1929
the stories they wove about them. Augustus and
those who followed him endeavored to awaken a
new reverence for the gods, that they might again
serve as the state police. As a result there was prob-
ably never a time when the temples were more
splendid or pagan worship more magnificent than
in the days when the Lord appeared on earth. But
it was too late. The educated classes, at least, had
long before ceased to believe in the ancient my-
thologies as divine or authoritative. They were for
the commons, to keep them out of trouble and to
hold them in submission.
A Spiritual. Vacuum
HE state of the Roman world is well set forth
in Fisher's ‘Church History,” in the following
words: ‘‘T'he condition of the civilized nations at
the birth of Christ was propitious for the introduc-
tion and spread of the new religion, in its nature
adapted to all mankind. . .. The old mythological
religions, which sprang originally from a deifying
of nature, had fallen into decay and lost their hold
on the intelligent class. Nothing had arisen to fill
the void thus created. The loss of faith, as might be
expected, engendered the two extremes of super-
stition and infidelity, neither of them satisfying, and
both repugnant to the best minds. Philosophy had
done an important work in enlarging and educating
the intellect, but it had proved itself powerless to
keep alive religious faith, to curb the passions, or
to provide hope and consolation in distress. ‘Hav-
ing no hope and without God in the world,” an
apostle’s description of the heathen in general, was
eminently true of this period. . . . The loosening of
the bonds of morality, the prevalence of vice, not
to dwell on the remorse and fears of conscience that
haunted souls not hardened in evil, could not fail
to awaken in many a sense of the need of a more
effectual restraint than heathen worship, or Greek
letters and philosophy, or Roman civil law could
furnish. There was a craving, more or less ob-
scurely felt, for a new regenerative force that should
enter with life-giving efficacy into the heart of an-
cient society.”
The existence of a spiritual vacuum was not the
only factor in the preparation of the Roman world
for Christ. The others may be listed briefly as fol-
lows:
t. The Roman conquests had welded the whole
civilized world into one organic whole, uniformly
administered.
2. The excellent military highways extending
throughout the empire made travel easy, rapid, and
safe for those who would spread the new faith.
3. The extension of Roman citizenship to the prov-
inces was of immense value, to such Christian teach-
ers as possessed it, in their journeys to the far cor-
ners of the empire.
4. The use of Greek as the language of culture
and of Latin as the official tongue greatly aided the
spread of the gospel. The (Continued on page 33)
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