Not only were the old Romans superstitious, but we know, by historical testimony coming from the heathen themselves, that at the time when Christianity appeared there was an increase of superstition; there was a general feeling of a want of something definite, something like a sort of atonement; and at that time all sorts of ceremonies, all sorts of bloody sacrifices, were introduced from Syria, from Libya, from the most remote countries, and the Romans tried to find for their consciences some satisfaction in those rites. For instance, you all know they had a custom of having their sins expiated by means of what they called _taurobolium_. A man had a grave dug in the ground, and then over that grave was put a marble slab, with a great many holes in it, like a sieve. In that grave the man stretched himself at full length, and over the marble slab a bull was killed, in such a way that the blood fell through the holes into the grave. When the bull was taken away, and the marble slab was lifted, the man rose out of that grave perfectly covered with the blood of the bull, entirely bathed in that blood. Then he was supposed to be a new man, supposed to be washed of all his sins. He believed that from that moment the anger of the gods had passed to the bull, and that the blood of the bull had been shed instead of his own. We find in Ovid, one of the poets of the time, the prayer of a man for whom was about to be offered up the sacrifice of the black hen. He asks the gods to take the heart of the hen instead of his own, the fibres of the hen's body instead of the fibres of his own body. The poor black hen was sacrificed in the most cruel way they could find; she must suffer as long as possible, because then the anger of some god who was supposed to pursue the man found full satisfaction. The ferocity of the god had ample satisfaction in the torture of the poor black hen, and the sins of the man were expiated. Then there was superstition upon superstition, because, when the mangled remains of the unfortunate hen were thrown into the street, if any person unconsciously put his foot on that body, then he became the inheritor of the crimes of the first man, and of the anger of the gods. They had a special name for those bloody remains of the sacrificed fowl: they called them _purgamentum_, because they thought that such a sacrifice purged a man of his sins. As nobody dared lift or touch the body of the victim, they put a fence around it; and, as long as there remained on the ground in the streets of Rome a vestige of the poor bird, nobody would tread on that place; and the fence was put there to prevent this. These were the superstitions of that time; and Plutarch wrote a treatise to which he gives the title [Greek: Deisidaimonia], which is translated very often by the word "superstition;" but it means more than that, it means "terror of the gods." It means that feeling which was more and more prevailing in the