_Zeitschrift für Ägyptische Sprache und Alterthumskunde._ Leipzig, 1863, etc. In progress. (Quoted _infra_ as _Ä.Z._) _Zeitschrift für historische Theologie._ Leipzig, 1852, etc. In progress. INTRODUCTION The worships, beliefs, and religious practices of the age which saw the birth and infancy of Christianity must always be the most interesting of all subjects to the student of history, nor are there many more deserving the attention of the general reader. The opponent, quite as much as the adherent of Christianity, must admit that the early struggles of the faith which is professed by nearly a third of the human race, which for fifteen centuries wielded unchallenged sway over the whole of Europe, and which has grown with the growth of European colonization until it now has a firm settlement in every quarter of the inhabited world, must ever possess surpassing interest for humanity. Yet the popular ideas on the subject are not only vague but erroneous. A general notion that, shortly before the coming of Christ, the Pagans had tired of their old gods, and, lost to all sense of decency, had given themselves up to an unbridled immorality founded on atheistic ideas, is probably about as far as the man who has given no special study to the subject would venture to go. Such a view, founded perhaps on somewhat misty recollections of the Roman satirists and a little secondhand knowledge of the denunciations of the early Christian writers, is almost the reverse of the truth. There has probably been no time in the history of mankind when all classes were more given up to thoughts of religion, or when they strained more fervently after high ethical ideals, than in the six centuries which have been taken for the subject of this book[1].