Freedom was conditioned by man's physical body, heredity, and environment.
From Kenneth Scott Latourette
Compared with the thousands of years in which human life has been on this planet, Christianity is a recent development.
The Psalms, the anthology of the hymns of Israel, are still used by Christians.
In the third century after Christ the faith continued to spread.
This means that to man God gave a degree of free will.
When contrasted with the much longer time that life has been present, the course of Christianity thus far is but a brief moment.
We must, however, note that what are usually called the high religions made their appearance within about twenty-five hundred years - most of them within fifteen hundred years.
Christianity emerged from the religion of Israel. Or rather, it has as its background a persistent strain in that religion. To that strain Christians have looked back, and rightly, as the preparation in history for their faith.
Religiously the Empire was pluralistic and marked by a search for a faith which would be satisfying intellectually and ethically and would give assurance of immortality.
Although when Christianity appeared the total population of the planet was only a fraction of that of the twentieth century, most of the earth's surface was quite outside the Mediterranean world, Persia, India, and China.
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