The Caldwell tribune. [volume] (Caldwell, Idaho Territory [Idaho]) 1883-1928, 1919-06-27

1~ASAS koSSAhs ~ -oyPt = ASShS ~
call attention to an interesting historic
fact; the century between 600 B. c
and 500 B. c. is of remarkable note
in the worlds religious history. In
the early part of that century the
Jews were carried captive into the
center of Western Asia, into the very
center of the political world; the
spreading abroad of so many thous-
.ands all through that teeming and up.
heaving East, almost all of whom
were tenacious believers in the one
God, their Jehovah, the Supreme
Self-Existent Being, must have great
ly affected the religious ideas Of the
peoples among whom they were scat
tered; and to me it is deeply in
teresting fact that in the decades fol
lowing Gautama rose and became the
great religious teacher of India; Lao
tse and Confucius appeared in China
these three were contemporary with
Ezra and Nehemiah, who were then
leading the Jews back to Jerusalem
and back to the purer worship of the
God of their Fathers and at the same
time there was great upheaval all
through Persia the worship of the
One Supreme God coming to the
front in the vast do-Persian-Baby-
Ion empire the GREAT Darius Hystas-
pes being undoubtedly a Jehovah
worshipper although it is doubtful
if his knowledge and faith contained
the living power which possessed the
heart and controlled the lives of such
men as Ezra and Nehemiah.
The fact of Gautama, Lao-tse, Con-
fucius, Darius Hystaspes, Ezra and
Nehemiah all living and teaching at
one time in the eastern world shows
what an uoturning, seething, religious
century that one was.
The religion of Egypt is very an
cient and $ remarkable in many re-
spects. Apparently before Abraham's
day, and continuing for a long time,
the priests of Egypt had some knowl-
edge of a One Supreme God; but
very early whatever thay had lost its
power to uplift the people, and was
gradually covered up with a vast
of man-and-earth-mad gods;
and so mixed up their system that
while one god would be supreme in
one part of the land another would
be supreme in another part; and at a
later age another god would super
sede former one at the same
place. Ptah at one time and Ra at
another. Then, later still, and mostly
for the common people, isis and Osi-
ris-Osiris male and Isis female: and
almost always they had gods of both
en- -, a~1N t
was much worshipped as source of
life for the land of Egypt, the
people seeing that without thu annual
of that river there would
be no products of the earth to sup
port human life: therefore it was not
strange that an ignorant and super
stitious people worshipped it, The
subject of the Egyption religion Or re-.
ligions is too large to review hcic
But the one particular of good in it
which impresses me as | study it is
the teaching of Divine justice which
is always made prominent; that in the
spirit world every man will be &C
corded even justice for the deeds done
in his human body. On the walls of
the tombs, reaching back 10 30N B.
e., or even earlier, there is pictured
the arrival of the disemboiied spirit
in the neither world, where he is at
once put into the scales and weighed.
: But another and dreadfully debas-
ing side of the Egyptian religion is
its abundant Zoolstry, or worship of
animals. One of the early fathers of
the Christian church once described
II: After dwelling on the costliness
and splendor of the EGYPTIAN temples
and directing our attention to the
veil inwrought with gold by which
the inner sanctuary was curtained off
from the rest OF the temple, he con-
tinues: But if you lass beyond into
the remotest nart of the Enclosure,
fastening to behold something more
worthy of your search, and seek for
the image which dwells in the temple
shrine, -bearer. or some one else. oil
those who minister in sacred things
with grave air singing a paean ir
the Egyptian tongue. draws aside Z
small portion of the veil, as If to show
the god; and makes US burst into {
loud laugh. For the god you sough
is not there. but a. cat, a crocodile. OF
serpent. sprung from the soil. o.
some brute animal which is NOR,
suited to a cave than temple. TIL
Egyptian god appears-a beast roll
ing himself on purple coverlet."
And Juvenal in his XVIII Satir
says: Who knows what monster
crazy Egypt worships. One part o
the people adores the crocodile; an
other trembles before an ibis glutte