The fact was, that Monotheism had
become congenial to the cultivated mind: and a belief which has gained
the cultivated minds of any society, unless put down by force, is
certain, sooner or later, to reach the multitude. Indeed the multitude
itself had been prepared for it, as already hinted, by the more and more
complete subordination of all other deities to the supremacy of Zeus;
from which the step to a single Deity, surrounded by a host of angels,
and keeping in recalcitrant subjection an army of devils, was by no
means difficult.
By what means, then, had the cultivated minds of the Roman Empire been
educated for Monotheism? By the growth of a practical feeling of the
invariability of natural laws. Monotheism had a natural adaptation to
this belief, while Polytheism naturally and necessarily conflicted with
it. As men could not easily, and in fact never did, suppose that beings
so powerful had their power absolutely restricted, each to its special
department, the will of any divinity might always be frustrated by
another: and unless all their wills were in complete harmony (which
would itself be the most difficult to credit of all cases of
invariability, and would require beyond anything else the ascendancy
of a Supreme Deity) it was impossible that the course of any of the
phaenomena under their government could be invariable.
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