The Judæans were deeply anxious to impart the burning convictions that filled their hearts to the blind, deluded heathens, and to attain that object, their religion being hated by the latter, some of the most cultivated among the Judæans had recourse to a sort of pious fraud, by which heathen poets and soothsayers were made to bear witness to the beauty and grandeur of Judaism. Skilful imitations in verse, enunciating Judæan doctrines, were placed by Judæan-Grecian writers in the mouth of the mist-shrouded singer Orpheus, and introduced among the strains of Sophocles, the tragic poet who had celebrated the all-powerful gods. When Rome had extended her empire far and wide, and the legends of the prophetic Sibyls had become known through many lands, Judæan poets hastened to make the latter stand sponsors to tenets and views which they durst not proclaim themselves, or which, if given in their own name, would have obtained no hearing. In an oracular form the Sibyl was made to reveal the deep meaning of Judaism, to stir the hearts of the people by pictures of the awful result of infidelity to God, and to offer to nations engaged in bloody conflict the olive branch of peaceful amity, opening out to them bright prospects of the happier times, predicted by the Seers, to those who believed in the eternal God of Judaism; and the Sibyl spoke in prophetic strains of the glorious future, when all the nations of the earth would rejoice in the blessings of the Messianic kingdom. "Unhappy Greece, cease proudly to exalt thyself; offer prayers for help to the immortal and lofty One, and take heed of thy ways. Serve the mighty God, so that thou also mayest find thy portion among the good when the end will have come and the day of judgment, according to the will of God, will rise up before man. Then will the teeming earth give abundantly to mortals the fairest fruits of the vine and the olive and choicest nourishing seeds. Also sweet honey dropping from heaven, and trees with their fruit, and fat sheep. Likewise oxen and lambs and the kids of the goat. For them rivers of milk will flow, sweet and white. The cities will be filled with merchandise, the earth will be rich, and there will be no more war or fearful sound of fighting. Nor will the earth, loud groaning, quake and be rent. War will cease, and there will be no drought upon the lands, no more famine or fruit-destroying hail. But great peace will reign over all the world, and to the end of time each king will be the other's friend, and under one law will the people of the whole world be governed by the Eternal God, enthroned in the starry heavens--one law for all weak, pitiable men; for He is one God, and there is no other, and the wicked He will cast into the flames."