her crocodiles and Anubis; the Persians were yet devoted to Ormuzd
and Ahriman, holding them in equal honor; in hope of the Nirvana,
the Hindoos moved on patient as ever in the rayless paths of Brahm;
the beautiful Greek mind, in pauses of philosophy, still sang the
heroic gods of Homer; while in Rome nothing was so common and cheap
as gods. According to whim, the masters of the world, because they
were masters, carried their worship and offerings indifferently from
altar to altar, delighted in the pandemonium they had erected. Their
discontent, if they were discontented, was with the number of gods;
for, after borrowing all the divinities of the earth they proceeded
to deify their Caesars, and vote them altars and holy service. No,
the unhappy condition was not from religion, but misgovernment
and usurpations and countless tyrannies. The Avernus men had been
tumbled into, and were praying to be relieved from, was terribly
but essentially political. The supplication--everywhere alike,
in Lodinum, Alexandria, Athens, Jerusalem--was for a king to
conquer with, not a god to worship.

Studying the situation after two thousand years, we can see and
say that religiously there was no relief from the universal
confusion except some God could prove himself a true God,
and a masterful one, and come to the rescue; but the people of
the time, even the discerning and philosophical, discovered no
hope except in crushing Rome; that done, the relief would follow in
restorations and reorganizations; therefore they prayed, conspired,
rebelled, fought, and died, drenching the soil to-day with blood,
to-morrow with tears--and always with the same result.

It remains to be said now that Ben-Hur was in agreement with the
mass of men of his time not Romans. The five years' residence in
the capital served him with opportunity to see and study the
miseries of the subjugated world; and in full belief that the
evils which afflicted it were political, and to be cured only
by the sword, he was going forth to fit himself for a part in the
day of resort to the heroic remedy. By practice of arms he was a
perfect soldier; but war has its higher fields, and he who would
move successfully in them must know more than to defend with shield
and thrust with spear. In those fields the general finds his tasks,
the greatest of which is the reduction of the many into one, and
that one himself; the consummate captain is a fighting-man armed
with an army. This