Under the influence of these new doctrines,the old Greek and Roman gods were rapidly losing their hold on the masses.
First of all,the upper classes deserted the ancient temples.
Men like Caesar or Pompey still went through all the forms prescribed by the worship of Jupiter,but they regarded the story about a Mighty Thunderer,enthroned high above the clouds of Mount Olympus,as a fairy tale which might impress little children and the uneducated masses of the suburbs on the other side of the Tiber.But that such fables should be taken seriously by men who had been trained to use their brains,that seemed simply preposterous.
Of course,no society has ever been entirely composed of intelligent and high-thinking people.From the beginning of its history,Rome had been full of war-profiteers.As the capital of the world for more than three centuries,it had attracted that strange international society which inevitably drifts towards such cities as New York or London or Paris,where social success is comparatively easy and where no embarrassing questions are asked about one's antecedents.
The conquest of so much new land in Europe and western Asia had turned many a poor Roman into a rich country squire.
His sons and daughters,living on the revenue of the parental estates,had joined the ranks of that smart society which regarded religion as a question of the latest fashion.They found little to attract them in the simple and unostentatious doctrines of the Epicureans and the Stoics (not to speak of such unwashed monomaniacs as Diogenes,who insisted upon living in an old barrel for the sake of greater convenience)They demanded something a little more picturesque and perhaps not quite so serious.Something that should appeal to the imagination without interfering to any considerable extent with the agreeable demands of daily life.
Their wish was fulfilled.Impostors and visionaries and swindlers and medicasters from all over the world,from Egypt and from Asia Minor and from Mesopotamia,hastened to Rome and in return for a certain pecuniary remuneration preached short-cuts to happiness and salvation which would have earned them millions in our own enlightened days.
They called their spiritual quackeries by the dignified name of “mysteries.”
They knew that most men (and most women)dearly love to be the owners of some secret which they are not obliged to share with their neighbours.
A Stoic would bluntly state that his rules of life could make all the people of this world,both rich and poor,white,yellow or black,happy and contented and virtuous.
The shrewd possessors of the invisible knowledge upon which the wonderful Oriental mysteries were based never made that mistake.
They were very exclusive.
They appealed only to small groups and sold their wares dearly.
They did not preach under the high dome of Heaven,which was free to all.They withdrew to a badly lighted little room,filled with the smell of incense and with strange pictures.There they performed that wonderful hocus-pocus which never fails to impress the half-educated.
Undoubtedly a few of those new missionaries were honest.They believed in their own visions and actually thought that they heard those voices which spoke to them in the dark and which brought them messages from the other world.But the great majority was composed of clever adventurers who fooled their public because that public insisted upon being fooled and paid well for the privilege.
For quite a long time they were very successful.The competition in mysteries was almost as eager as that among the palmists and horoscope professors of our modern cities.Then there was a sudden slump.The public was growing tired of this novelty,and its indifference was the result of certain outward changes which were taking place in the Empire.
Usually the happiness of a people is in inverse ratio to their riches.When they grow rich and prosperous beyond a certain definite point,they begin to lose interest in those simple pleasures without which life becomes a vast span of boredom which stretches from the cradle to the grave.
The Empire was perhaps the best example of this historical axiom.To a rapidly increasing number of Romans,existence became a burden.They had eaten too much and drunk too much and enjoyed too many pleasures to get the slightest satisfaction out of normal human experiences.They asked for a solution of their problems and they received no answer.
The old Gods failed them.
The dispensers of the new Truth failed them.
The learned doctors connected with the worship of Isis and Mithras and Bacchus failed them.
Nothing was left but despair.
And then Jesus was born.
It was the fourth year before the beginning of our era.
On the sloping hillside of a quiet valley in Galilee stood the village of Nazareth.
There lived Joseph the carpenter and his wife Mary.
They were not rich,and they were not poor.
They were just like all their neighbours.
They worked hard and they told their children that the world expected something of them as both their parents were descended from King David,who,as they all knew,was a great-great-grandson of the gentle Ruth,whose story was well known to all Jewish boys and girls.
Joseph was a simple man who had never been outside of his own country,but Mary had once spent quite a long time in that big city called Jerusalem.
This had happened while she was still engaged to Joseph.
Mary had a cousin,by the name of Elisabeth,who had been married to a certain Zacharias,a priest connected with the service of the Temple.
Both Zacharias and Elisabeth were old folk and they were quite sad because they never had had any children.