repaid in the next.
But with them also, as with the Aztecs, the future was dependent on the
character or mode of death rather than the conduct of life. He who died
the "straw-death" on the couch of sickness looked for little joy in the
hereafter; but he who met the "spear-death" on the field of battle went
at once to Odin, to the hall of Valhalla, where the heroes of all time
assembled to fight, eat boar's fat and drink beer. Even this rude belief
gave them such an ascendancy over the materialistic Romans, that these
distinctly felt that in the long run they must succumb to a bravery
which rested on such a mighty moment as this.[259-1]

The Israelites do not seem to have entertained any general opinion on an
existence after death. No promise in the Old Testament refers to a
future life. The religion there taught nowhere looks beyond the grave.
It is materialistic to the fullest extent. Hence, a large body of
orthodox Jewish philosophers, the Sadducees, denied the existence of the
soul apart from the body.

The central doctrine of the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, the leading
impulse which he gave to the religious thought of his age, was that the
thinking part of man survives his physical death, and that its condition
does not depend on the rites of interment, as other religions then
taught,[260-1] but on the character of its thoughts during life here.
Filled with this new and sublime idea, he developed it in its numerous
applications, and drew from it those startling inferences, which, to
this day, stagger his followers, and have been in turn, the terror and
derision of his foes. This he saw, that against a mind inwardly
penetrated with the full conviction of a life hereafter, obtainable
under known conditions, the powers of this world are utterly futile, and
its pleasures hollow phantoms.

The practical energy of this doctrine was immensely strengthened by
another, which is found very obscurely, if at all, stated in his own
words, but which was made the central point of their teaching by his
immediate followers. The Christianity they preached was not a
philosophical scheme for improving the race, but rested on the
historical fact of a transaction between God and man, and while they
conceded everlasting existence to all men, all would pass it in the
utmost conceivable misery, except those who had learned of these
historical events, and understood them as the church prescribed.

As the ancient world placed truth in