What Was the World Like?
March 21, 2016
Bird’s Eye View of the Forum as Jesus Hears his Death Sentence; James Tissot
FROM God, The Teacher of Mankind by the Rev. Michael Müller (1880):
In what condition was mankind at the coming of the Redeemer?
With the exception of the Jews, all mankind had fallen into idolatry and all kinds of vices.
God the Father had promised a Redeemer to our first parents, but he did not send him immediately after their fall. He waited about four thousand years before sending him, in order that men might feel their weakness and misery, and the need they had of a Redeemer, sigh for his coming, and appreciate the great blessings which they were to receive through him. When Christ came at length, the grossest ignorance and immorality prevailed everywhere. The true God was hardly known, save in one single corner of the earth, in Judea: and even there, how very few knew and loved him! As to the rest of the world, some worshipped the sun, some the brutes, some the very stones, and others again even viler creatures still; nay, many even worshipped the very demons as gods.
Everywhere there reigned the night of sin which blinds souls, and hides from them the sight of the miserable state in which they are living as enemies of God, condemned to hell. The most degrading vices were extolled even as virtues. The world cried for light. Men could no longer see their way. Why are we here? Who made us? Whither are we going? Whence the evil in the world? Why have we a desire for immortality? Why does nothing on earth satisfy us? Why are our yearnings for perpetual happiness? Such were the questions that resounded everywhere in the schools of philosophy, in the forum, in the market-place, in the temple, at the fireside. No one could answer; and yet the social, domestic and religious happiness of the world was at stake on these questions then, as it is now. What remedy could be applied to heal such inveterate evils of the mind and the will? Pagan philosophers, poets and orators, had tried their best to elevate mankind, but they had tried in vain. It had become evident to all that no human means were adequate to remedy the evils of the world, and make mankind truly happy. “God himself,” exclaimed the great Plato,”must come down and be our master and our guide.” (De Legib. 1, 4.)
