Page:An Essay on the Age and Antiquity of the Book of Nabathaean Agriculture.djvu/149

Rh people themselves. It was like an echo of Nature—a sort of Nature’s hymn,—in which the idea of a single Cause appeared but fleetingly and with great indistinctness. It was a religion of childhood, full of simplicity and poetry, but which was sure to crumble away as thought became more active. Persia first effected its reform, which is connected with the name of Zoroaster, under influences, and at a period, of which we know nothing. Greece, in the time of Pisistratus, was even then dissatisfied with her religion, and cast her look towards the East. In the Roman epoch, the old Pagan worship had become altogether insufficient. It no longer appealed to the imagination; it addressed itself but feebly to the moral sentiment. The early embodiments of the powers of Nature had become but legends, at times amusing and pointed, but destitute of all religious value. It was exactly at this epoch that the civilised world found itself face to face with the Jewish religion.