He respected the religion of the Roman State as an
institution established by the laws. He encouraged or left unmolested the
creeds and practices of the uncounted sects or tribes who were gathered
under the eagles. But his own writings contain nothing to indicate that he
himself had any religious belief at all. He saw no evidence that the gods
practically interfered in human affairs. He never pretended that Jupiter
was on his side. He thanked his soldiers after a victory, but he did not
order _Te Deums _to be sung for it; and in the absence of these
conventionalisms he perhaps showed more real reverence than he could have
displayed by the freest use of the formulas of pietism.
He fought his battles to establish some tolerable degree of justice in the
government of this world; and he succeeded, though he was murdered for
doing it.
Strange and startling resemblance between the fate of the founder of the
kingdom of this world and of the Founder of the kingdom not of this world,
for which the first was a preparation. Each was denounced for making
himself a king. Each was maligned as the friend of publicans and sinners;
each was betrayed by those whom he had loved and cared for; each was put
to death; and Caesar also was believed to have risen again and ascended
into heaven and become a divine being.
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