The pagan gods were innumerable and their distinctive attributes were understood. They well might be, as they were only deified men and women. The next unfoldment caused them to raise altars to "the unknown God." Then came Jesus, the Nazarene, who told them that the "unknown God" was their Heavenly Father, not of a chosen people only, but of all the human race. The new religion, inspired by Jesus—our Christ—and which was to bear his name, naturally brought with it all the superstitions of the pagans, and these have been handed down through the ages, and accepted and believed as true.

The primitive conception of a god was of a being with qualities like their own, and as men delighted in rapine and every possible accompanying vice and crime, so they endowed their gods in like manner, fashioning beings to be feared and to whom must be given big offerings and sacrifices. So long as these were limited to beasts it was a good thing, because the priests who ate the flesh thus consecrated were sure of cheap meat for a long time thereafter. But when the "firstlings of the flock" failed to bring satisfactory responses to the demands of the suppliants, they began sacrificing human lives in the vain hope of allaying the anger and vengeance of the dissatisfied all-powerful gods, and beautiful young maidens were thrust into the fiery jaws of Moloch, or crushed in the coils of sacred serpents, or slain upon altars according to the special god whose propitiation was sought.

From all these inhuman practices to a recognition of a God of love and mercy was a step so long that even yet there remain in the teachings of religionists indications of similar ideas, wherein not only nature's culminating efforts, but all the painful experiences of human beings are accepted and feared as expressions of the "wrath of God."