Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. II.djvu/101

Rh gaze. What a concentration of life is here! What history, with the highest questions and the highest answers! I see the Roman city and soil full of temples to gods and goddesses, from all the known lands of the world, that they might reply to the still more urgent questionings of humanity:

“Is there a God?—What and who is He? Is there a life after death for us who suffer, love, and die? Is there reparation for those who testify to the truth, and fall victims to lies? What have we to hope for? What shall we believe?” And the temples multiply ever more and more, and the gods and their priests increase. People sacrifice to Isis and Fortuna, to the sun and to Jupiter, to Hertha, Cybele, Ceres and Diana, to the unknown gods, to evil and good demons; to Roman Cæsars who made themselves gods, and lastly, to the horrible Mithras, who came out of the East, worshiped in gloomy grottoes, amidst horrible torturings and punishments of the body, which prove that the human soul knows itself to be sinful, and endeavors to appease the divinities by self-chastisements. The unfortunate! It prays and sacrifices in vain upon all these altars; their gods are silent, or give, through their priests, merely obscure or insufficient answers. And the Mithras worshipers,—they were numerous in Italy,—obtained no peace from their savage self-inflicted severities!

Whilst this was taking place on the surface of the earth, people were singing below, in the night of the Catacombs, of “God revealed in Christ as the eternally compassionating Father; of the Saviour who