The Christian Democracy; A History of Its Suppression and Revival (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1896. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XV. Saint-Worship. IN the Mesopotamian plain the old Assyrian city Warka has been exposed by modern research to the sun. Possibly it was the burial place of the central region of the empire. Around it is a circle of tombs sixty feet deep, corpse piled above corpse, the solitary dead of cities and of generations. A more ghastly spectacle of mortality has never been unearthed. The coffins are cylinders of baked clay. In many are the remains of food deposited by friends for the relief of the departed. Here, then, we have proof that the ancient Assyrians believed that the spirits of the dead subsisted about the living, retained their individuality, and were even liable while bodiless to their old animal hunger. The Egyptians embalmed their corpses. Each mummy in the home was perpetual evidence of faith in the existence of the soul which had left its mortal clay but still hovered near. And this national belief molded the customs of the entire people, and especially expressed itself in their art, their literature, and in elaborate services for the dead. Grecian demigods were deified human heroes. Zeus and Heracles and Athene represented mythic male and female warriors elevated by battle exploits into divinities. Olympus was a celestial empire peopled with gods who had been earthly ideals. Demons were the spirits of the departed still lingering around their former terrestrial abodes. The Roman lemures and larva seem to have been the souls of persons unburied, which wandered homeless, restless, and revengeful until relieved by interment of the body which had been their habitation, and made happy by the affectionate offerings of the family. Wholly different from these, the Lares were the spirits of the dead whose mortal remains had been piously reduced t...