Page:Jewish and Christian apocalypses.pdf/12

THE LAST JUDGEMENT 3 of origins. That the Powers above us are just and that evil will not go in the end unpunished has been the conviction of many races of mankind: it is not necessary to look for a historical nexus every time this belief finds expression. The same may be said of belief in the persistence of a man's spirit or ghost. And it is an easy, though not a logically necessary step, to combine the two beliefs and to hold that the comparative happiness or misery of a man in his future life depends on his past. Systems so different as Indian and Egyptian Religion agree in this. But the notion of a future general Assize, at which all wrong will be put right, not always with special reference to individual cases, is a peculiar conception. It is certainly not universal, or even widespread, and we may therefore suppose that it required a very special train of circumstances to develop it.

One thing appears to me to be quite certain. It seems to me certain that the doctrine of a future general Assize held no place in the Graeco-Roman world, apart from the beliefs of Jews and Christians. The period between the eras of Alexander the Great and the Emperor Constantine, those six centuries during which Christianity grew up, was an age of syncretism, of the mingling of religions, a period during which European civilization was especially influenced by Oriental beliefs. It was the age of the Mystery-religions, the religions of Isis, of Mithra, of Attis. The dominant philosophies, as we are more and more coming to see, were the result of the blending of Greek thought with Oriental beliefs and teachings. Oriental Astrology was in itself a religious philosophy; it was an attempt to formulate the influences which to a certain degree moulded the lives of all the dwellers under the roof of heaven. One school of Philosophers, the Stoics, even taught the doctrine of a future general conflagration, but this is quite a different thing from the Last Judgement. The Stoic conflagration merely started everything over again, to retread the old circle. Graeco-Roman religion, speaking generally, did not see in History the working-out of a Divine Purpose.

I said just now that the doctrine of a Last Judgement required a very special set of circumstances for its development. It will not be a part of my aim in these Lectures to trace the growth of this doctrine among the Jews from its origins. It is commonly said to have been taken over by the Jews from Zoroastrianism, and there may be some truth in this view. But for us the more important thing is to notice that the seed fell on congenial soil, from wherever it may have originally come. What I wish specially to emphasize is the difference between Judaism and the contemporary Hellenistic, Graeco-Roman, beliefs. Let us grant for the moment that the B2