Another idea found in this body of religious doctrines, an idea rich in ethical consequences, was the conception of God as one and as the Universal Father. We have seen that the great defect in primitive morality was the limited range of the moral feelings. The circle of moral obligation was bounded by the clan, the tribe, the city. This resulted in large part from the notion that each kin group had an origin and ancestry different from that of every other. One group thought themselves to be the offspring of Zeus; another proclaimed themselves to be the descendants of Heracles; and still another believed themselves to be the children of Mars. So long as this view of men’s origin and descent prevailed there could arise no conception of their spiritual relationship and ethical oneness. Tacitus merely expressed the common opinion of the ancient world when he declared absurd the doctrine that all men are brothers. But from the doctrine of the common fatherhood of God there arises naturally the conception of the essential brotherhood of men. The apostle’s declaration, “We are the offspring of God,”[624]--phrasing the teachings of the Master in terms understood by the men to whom he spoke,--announced the opening of a new era in the moral development of the race. The proclamation of this practically new thought[625] meant, at once in ethical theory and sooner or later in actual practice, the widening of the narrow class and race circle of moral obligation to include all tribes and peoples. [Sidenote: The doctrine of a future life of rewards and punishments] Greco-Roman morality was influenced but slightly by a belief in a life after death. The vision of the other world was in general too indistinct for it to exert any decided influence upon the conduct of men.[626] The conception of Hades, though it did undergo with the lapse of time a process of moralization, was never so far ethicalized as to have a positive moral value.