Complete religious freedom never existed upon earth until the present century, and even now it is found only in North America and some of the colonial possessions of Great Britain. The ancient world seems never to have formed the conception of such a thing. Religion was always allied with the State. Each people was supposed to have its own gods whom it worshipped in its own way. And rarely did even foreign conquest deprive the subdued people of their religion. Thus Assyria allowed the settlers who took the place of exiled Israel to have a priest of Israel to “teach them the manner of the God of the land.” 2 Kings xvii., 27. And when the Jews were carried off to Babylon, it appears that they were allowed to retain their own religious usages without hindrance. But whenever propagandism was attempted, or any attack made or supposed to be made on the faith or worship of a people, there came at once a violent reaction. Thus the main charge upon which Socrates was condemned at Athens, was that he did not worship the gods that the city worshipped, but introduced new divinities of his own. Imperial Rome rarely disturbed the religion of the nations which one after another submitted to her authority, yet there was a distinction made in regard to the worships introduced into the Eternal City. Some were allowed, others were forbidden. Christianity with its exelusive claims soon came to be numbered among the latter.