generally said that, in Rome at least, the issue lay between Stoicism and Epicureanism.

The one flattered its pride, the other gratified its sensuality; the one was in accordance

with the original national character, the other with its later decay and corruption. Both

ultimately led to atheism and despair - the one, by turning all higher aspirations self-

ward, the other, by quenching them in the enjoyment of the moment; the one, by making

the extinction of all feeling and self-deification, the other, the indulgence of every

passion and the worship of matter, its ideal.

That, under such conditions, all real belief in a personal continuance after death must

have ceased among the educated classes, needs not demonstration. If the older Stoics held

that, after death, the soul would continue for some time a separate existence - in the case

of sages till the general d estruction of the world by fire, it was the doctrine of most of

their successors that, immediately after death, the soul returned into 'the world -soul' of

which it was part. But even this hope was beset by so many doubts and misgivings, as to

make it practically without influence or comfort. Cicero was the only one who, following

Plato, defended the immortality of the soul, while the Peripatetics denied the existence of

a soul, and leading Stoics at least its continuance after death. But even Cicero writes as

one overwhelmed by doubts. With his contemporaries this doubt deepened into absolute

despair, the only comfort lying in present indulgence of the passions. Even among the

Greeks, who were most tenacious of belief in the non-extinction of the individual, the

practical upshot was the same. The only healthier tendency, however mixed with error,

came from the Neo-Platonic School, which accordingly offered a point of contact

between ancient philosophy and the new faith.

In such circumstances, anything like real religion was manifestly impossible. Rome

tolerated, and, indeed, incorporated, all national rites. But among the populace religion

had degenerated into abject superstition. In the East, much of it consisted of the vilest

rites; while, among the philosophers, all religions were considered equally false or

equally true - the outcome of ignorance, or else the unconscious modifications of some

one fundamental thought. The only religion on which the State insisted was the

deification and worship of the Emperor.2 These apotheoses attained almost incredible

development. Soon not only the Emperors, but their wives, paramours, children, and the

creatures of their vilest lusts, were deified; nay, any private person might attain that

distinction, if the survivors possessed sufficient means.3 Mingled with all this was an

increasing amount of superstition - by which term some understood the worship of

foreign gods, the most part the existence of fear in religion. The ancient Roman religion

had long given place to foreign rites, the more mysterious and unintelligible the more

enticing. It was thus that Judaism made its converts in Rome; its chief recommendation

with many being its contrast to the old, and the unknown possibilities which its

seemingly incredible doctrine s opened. Among the most repulsive symptoms of the

general religious decay may be reckoned prayers for the death of a rich relative, or even

for the satisfaction of unnatural lusts, along with horrible blasphemies when such prayers

remained unanswered. We may here contrast the spirit of the Old and New Testaments

with such sentiments as this, on the tomb of a child: 'To the unjust gods who robbed me