Excerpt from Luxury and Sacrifice The new religion appeared at first as an element of antagonism in the world. To the minds of primitive men a vast dualism seemed to offer itself, both in nature and in all human conduct. Christianity came into the world to wage war on evil. The world, the flesh, and the devil was the evil trinity against which the sons and daughters of God were called to contend. Real life was rather to be expected in another existence than actu ally to be found here. This earth at its best was a school of probation. With such a conception of the earthly life, the attitude of the Christian before the practical problems of civilization was naturally that of suspicion and hostility. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.