The Cradle of the Christ Part 5

Lecky, the historian of European morals, a.s.signs as a reason why the Jews in Rome were less vehemently persecuted than the Christians, that "the Jewish religion was essentially conservative and unexpansive. The Christians, on the other hand, were ardent missionaries." Would it not be more exact to say that the Jews of one school were essentially conservative and unexpansive; that the Jews of another school were ardent missionaries? That the one school should be persecuted, while the other was left in peace, was perfectly natural, especially in communities where their essential ident.i.ty was not understood. There is no necessity for supposing that the two faiths were actually distinguished because one attracted attention and provoked attack, while the other did nothing of the kind. Not history only, but common observation furnishes abundant examples of faiths fundamentally the same, meeting very different fortunes, according to the att.i.tude which circ.u.mstances compelled them to a.s.sume. The Christians might have presented the aggressive front of Judaism, as Paul did, and still not have forfeited their claim to be true children of Israel.

There is, in fact, no doubt that discerning persons perceived the substantial ident.i.ty of the two religions. It is conceded on all sides, by Jewish and by Christian writers,--Milman and Salvador, Jost and Merivale, corroborating one another,--that Jews were taken for Christians and Christians for Jews. They were subjected to the same criticism; they were exposed to the same contumely. Indeed it may be questioned whether the early persecutions that were inflicted on the Christians were not really directed against the Jews, whose reputation for restlessness and fanaticism, for stiffness and intolerance, was established in the minds of all cla.s.ses of society. The Jews were a mark for persecution before there was a Christian in Rome, before the Christian era began. They were persecuted on precisely the same pretexts that were used in the case of the Christians. They had a recognized locality, standing and character. They were many in number and considerable in influence. The lower orders disliked their austerity; the higher orders dreaded their organization; philosophers despised them as superst.i.tious; politicians hated them as intractable; emperors used them when they wished to divert angry comment from their own acts. They were "fair game" for imperial pursuit. A raid on the Jews was popular.

It is possible, to say the least, that the Christians would have pa.s.sed unmolested but for their a.s.sociation with the Israelites. This is no novel insinuation; Milman hinted at it more than a quarter of a century ago, in his "History of Christianity." "When the public peace was disturbed by the dissensions among the Jewish population of Rome, the summary sentence of Claudius visited both Jews and Christians with the same indifferent severity. So the Neronian persecution was an accident arising out of the fire at Rome; no part of a systematic plan for the suppression of foreign religions. It might have fallen on any other sect or body of men who might have been designated as victims to appease the popular resentment. Accustomed to the separate wors.h.i.+p of the Jews, to the many, Christianity appeared at first only as a modification of that belief."[6] The same conjecture is more boldly ventured in the History of Latin Christianity. "What caprice of cruelty directed the attention of Nero to the Christians, and made him suppose them victims important enough to glut the popular indignation at the burning of Rome, it is impossible to determine. The cause and extent of the Domitian persecution is equally obscure. The son of Vespasian was not likely to be merciful to any connected with the fanatic Jews." "At the commencement of the second century, under Trajan, persecution against the Christians is raging in the East. That, however, (I feel increased confidence in the opinion), was a local, or rather Asiatic persecution, arising out of the vigilant and not groundless apprehension of the sullen and brooding preparation for insurrection among the whole Jewish race (with whom Roman terror and hatred still confounded the Christians), which broke out in the b.l.o.o.d.y ma.s.sacres of Cyrene and Cyprus, and in the final rebellion, during the reign of Hadrian, under Bar-Cochab."[7] If the Christians made themselves particularly obnoxious, they did so by their zeal for beliefs which they shared with the Jews and derived from them; beliefs in the personality of G.o.d, the immediateness of Providence, the law of moral retribution, and the immortal destinies of the human soul. Their belief in the ascended and reigning Christ gave point to their zeal; but the Jews, too, clung to their hope of the Christ, and through the vitality of their hope were known.

[Footnote 6: History of Christianity, II; p. 8.]

[Footnote 7: Vol. I.; p. 528.]

The importance ascribed to Christianity as a special moral force working in the const.i.tution of the heathen world, is, by recent admission, acknowledged to have been much exaggerated. The chapter on "The state of the world toward the middle of the first century" in Renan's "Apostles,"

sums up with singular calmness, clearness and easy strength, the influences that were slowly transforming the social condition of the empire; the n.o.bler ideas, the purer morals, the amenities and humanities that were stealing in to temper the violence, mitigate the ferocity, soften the hardness and uplift the grossness of the western world.

Samuel Johnson's little essay on "The Wors.h.i.+p of Jesus" is a subtle glance into the same facts, tracing the efficacy of powers that co-operated in producing the atmospheric change which was as summer succeeding winter over the civilized earth. Mr. Lecky, with broader touch, but accurately and conscientiously, paints a n.o.ble picture on the same subject. But other artists, of a different school, make the same representation. Merivale, lecturing in 1864, on the Boyle foundation, in the Chapel Royal, at Whitehall, on the "Conversion of the Roman Empire,"

in the interest of the christian Church, says, "the influence of Grecian conquest was eminently soothing and civilizing; it diffused ideas of humanity and moral culture, while the conquerors themselves imbibed on their side the highest of moral lessons, lessons of liberality, of toleration, of sympathy with all G.o.d's human creation." "Plutarch, in a few rapid touches, enforced by a vivid ill.u.s.tration which we may pa.s.s over, gives the picture of the new humane polity, the new idea of human society flashed upon the imagination of mankind by the establishment of the Macedonian Empire. Such, at least, it appeared to the mind of a writer five centuries later; but there are traces preserved, even in the wrecks of ancient civilization, of the moral effect which it actually produced on the feelings of society, much more nearly contemporaneous. The conqueror, indeed, perished early, but not prematurely. The great empire was split into fragments, but each long preserved a sense of the unity from which it was broken off. All were leavened more or less with a common idea of civilization, and recognized man as one being in various stages of development, to be trained under one guidance and elevated to one spiritual level. In the two great kingdoms of Egypt and Syria, which sprang out of the Macedonian,--in the two great cities of Alexandria and Antioch, to which the true religion owes so deep a debt,--the unity of the human race was practically a.s.serted and maintained." "After three centuries of national amalgamation, the result of a widespread political revolution, after the diffusion of Grecian ideas among every people, from the Ionian to the Caspian or the Red Sea, and the reception in return, of manifold ideas, and in religious matters of much higher ideas, from the Persian, the Indian, the Egyptian and the Jew, the people even of Athens, the very centre and eye of Greece, were prepared to admit the cardinal doctrine of Paul's preaching."

The same writer cordially admits the moral grandeur and the moral power of the philosophers whose teaching had, for several generations, been leavening the thought and enn.o.bling the humanity of the Roman world.

"The philosophy of the Stoics, the highest and holiest moral theory at the time of our Lord's coming,--the theory which most worthily contended against the merely political religion of the day, the theory which opposed the purest ideas and the loftiest aims to the grovelling principles of a narrow and selfish expediency on which the frame of the heathen ritual rested--was the direct creation of the sense of unity and equality disseminated among the choicer spirits of heathen society by the results of the Macedonian conquest. But for that conquest it could hardly have existed at all. It was the philosophy of Plato, sublimed and harmonized by the political circ.u.mstances of the times. It was what Plato would have imagined, had he been a subject of Alexander."

"It taught, nominally at least, the equality of all G.o.d's children--of Greek and barbarian, of bond and free. It renounced the exclusive ideas of the commonwealth on which Plato had made s.h.i.+pwreck of his consistency. It declared that to the wise man all the world is his country. It was thoroughly comprehensive and cosmopolitan. Instead of a political union it preached the moral union of all good men,--a city of true philosophers, a community of religious sentiment, a communion of saints, to be developed partly here below, but more consummately in the future state of a glorified hereafter. It aspired, at least, to the doctrine of an immortal city of the soul, a providence under which that immortality was to be gained, a reward for the good, possibly, but even more dubiously, a punishment of the wicked."

Merivale, it will be understood, writing in the interest of Christianity, makes note of the limitations of the Stoic Philosophy, calls it vague, unsatisfactory and aristocratic, the "peculiarity of a select cla.s.s of minds;" and so it was, to a degree; but that it had a mighty influence throughout the intellectual world, as much as any system of belief could have, must be confessed. So far as ideas went, it comprehended the wisest and best there were. As respected the authority by which the ideas were recommended and guaranteed, it was the authority of the intellectual lights of the world. To say that the truths were limited, is to say what may be said of every intellectual system under the sun, including the beliefs of christian apostles which the christian Church has outgrown. To say that they were not final, is to say what will be affirmed of every intellectual system till the end of time.

There the beliefs were, stated, urged, preached with earnestness by men of live minds, fully awake to the needs of the society they adorned, thinking and writing, not for their own entertainment, but for the improvement of mankind. Their books were not read by the mult.i.tude, the mult.i.tude could not read: scarcely can they read now. But the men influenced the directors of opinion, the makers of laws, the builders of inst.i.tutions, the wealthy, the instructed, the high in place.

Nor must it be forgotten that these ideas of philosophy did not remain cold speculations. They bore characteristic fruits in humanity of every kind. The brotherhood was not a sentiment, it was a principle of wide beneficence. The charities of this gospel attested the presence of a warm heart in the metropolis of the heathen world. Of this there can no longer be any doubt. Works like that of Denis' "Histoire des Theories et des Idees Morales dans l'Antiquite," reveal a condition of becoming in the Roman Empire that might dispel the fears of the most skeptical in regard to the continuous moral progress of the race. The immense popular distributions of corn which from being occasional had become habitual in Rome, were as a rule prompted by no humane feeling, were not designed to mitigate suffering or express compa.s.sion. They were in the main, devices for gaining popularity. Caius Gracchus, who, more than a century before Christ, carried a law making compulsory the sale of corn to the poor at a nominal price, was perhaps actuated by a worthier motive; but it is doubtful whether his successors were. Cato of Utica was not. Clodius Pulcher was not. The emperors were obliged to purchase popularity by these enormous bribes. It is said that Augustus caused the monthly distribution to be made to two hundred thousand people. Half a million claimed the bounty under the Antonines. The addition of a ration of oil to the corn; the subst.i.tution of bread for the corn; the supplementing of this by an allowance of pork; a subsequent supply of the article of salt to the poor on similarly easy terms; the distribution of portions of land; the imperial legacies, donations, gratuities, mentioned as bestowed on occasion; the public baths provided and thrown open to all at a trifling expense, were also means of winning or retaining the good will of a fickle and turbulent populace. They neither expressed a humane sentiment nor produced a humane result. They were suggested by ambition, no better sometimes than that of the demagogue, and they begot idleness, and demoralization. But some part of the beneficence must have sprung from a more generous motive. The interest manifested by several emperors in public education, and the appropriation made for the maintenance of the children of the poor, five thousand of whom are said, by Pliny, to have been supported by the government, under Trajan, who presume never heard of Christianity,--cannot fairly be ascribed to political motives.

The private charities of the younger Pliny, who devoted a small patrimony to the maintenance of poor children in Como, his native place; of Coelia Macrina, who founded a charity for one hundred at Terracina; Hadrian's, bounties to poor women; Antonine's loans of money to the poor at reduced rates of interest; the inst.i.tutions dedicated to the support of girls by Antoninus and Marcus Aurelius; the private infirmaries for slaves; the military hospitals, certainly owed their existence to a humane feeling. Pliny is responsible for the statement that both in Greece and Rome the poor had mutual insurance societies which provided for their sick and infirm members. Tacitus expatiates on the generosity of the rich, who, on occasion of a catastrophe near Rome, threw open their houses and taxed their resources to relieve the suffering.[8]

[Footnote 8: For references, see Lecky's "European Morals," II., p.

79-81.]

Such acts attest a genuine kindness. The protests of the best citizens against the b.l.o.o.d.y gladiatorial shows,--a protest so eager and persistent that the trade of the gladiator was seriously injured--must have been in the highest degree unpopular, for the populace found in these shows their favorite amus.e.m.e.nt. The remonstrances of philanthropic men against the barbarities of the penal code; the call for the abolishment of the death penalty; the pity for the woes of neglected children; the indignation at the crime of infanticide; the earnest interest taken in the problems of prost.i.tution and the most revolting aspects of pauperism were such as might have proceeded from nineteenth century people.[9] Stronger words were never spoken by American abolitionists than were uttered by pagan lips against the slavery that was pulling down the Roman State.

[Footnote 9: See Denis, II., p. 55-218.]

That beneficence in the Roman Empire during the latter half of the first century and the first half of the second was fitful, formal, limited, and unimpa.s.sioned, as compared with the charities of Christians in their communities, need not be said; of course it was. The Christians succeeded to the legacies of kindness left by the pagans; they were comparatively few in number, and were bound to one another by peculiar ties; they were themselves of the great family of the poor; they were obliged to help one another in the only way they could, by personal effort and sacrifice. Their traditions, too, of beneficence were oriental. The difference in spirit between Roman and Christian charity cannot be fairly described as a difference between heathen charity and christian; it is more just to call it a difference between Eastern charity and Western. The Orientals, including the Jews, made beneficence in its various forms, an individual duty. Kindness to the sick, the unfortunate, the poor, compa.s.sion with the sorrowful, almsgiving to the dest.i.tute, hospitality to the stranger, are virtues characteristic of all eastern people. The New Testament chiefly echoes the sentiment of the Old on this matter, and the Old Testament chimes in with the voices of eastern teachers. In the West, government undertook responsibilities which in oriental lands, were a.s.sumed by individuals; people were to a much greater degree ma.s.sed in orders and cla.s.ses; the distance was wider between the governors and the governed, and considerations of state more gravely affected the actions which elsewhere seemed to concern only the private conscience and heart. The question of advantage between these two systems is still an open one. In every generation there have been some, christians too, who preferred the western method to the eastern, as being less costly, and more methodical; the debate on the relative advantages and disadvantages of the personal and the impersonal methods still goes on in modern communities; neither system prevails exclusively in any christian land; the Latin races still, as a rule, prefer the Roman way, France for example, where charity is a matter of public rather than of private concern.

The mischiefs of the oriental method were apparent before Christianity appeared, and its zealous adoption of them early awakened misgivings.

The indiscriminate almsgiving, the elevation of poverty to the rank of a privilege, the glorification of self-impoverishment, the acceptance of feeling as a divine monitor, and of emotion as a heavenly instinct, the subst.i.tution of the wors.h.i.+p of the heart for deference to reason, the loose compa.s.sion, the practical and professed communism--for some of the fathers maintained that all property was based on usurpation, that all men had a common right in the earth, and that none was ent.i.tled to hold wealth except as a trust for others--soon disclosed disastrous results.

Against the evils that are fairly chargeable upon the wholesale measures of the imperial bounty, must be offset the equally grave, and in some respects, not dissimilar evils incident to the unprincipled practice of loving kindness on the part of the bishops and their flocks, the increase of the dependent, the encouragement of pauperism, the waste of wealth, the worse waste of humanity. National philanthropy in London and New York finds no more serious obstacle to its advance than the benevolence that is inculcated in the name of Christ, and by authority of the New Testament. It is the battle of science against sentiment.

The increased devoutness that showed itself in the empire, about the beginning of the second century, the pious pa.s.sion that broke out, is attributable to natural causes, that have been mentioned by every author who has written on the subject. It is familiar knowledge that the decay of inst.i.tutions, the disintegration of social bonds, the general decline of positive religious faith, a decline partly due, possibly, to the tolerance which placed all faiths side by side, was followed, or we might say accompanied by a longing after divine things that was wild in the fervor of its impulse. The complacent reign of skepticism was succeeded by a volcanic outbreak of superst.i.tion. What has been called "a storm of supernaturalism" burst forth, with the usual accompaniments of frenzy, and took possession of all cla.s.ses. Only general causes of this can be a.s.signed. That it was due to any special influence cannot be alleged. That it was due to any "supernatural" interposition of heaven, is an unnecessary supposition. The cursory reader of the history of the empire, as written by intelligent modern scholars, of whatever school, sees plainly enough the pa.s.s that things had come to and how they came to it. Christianity came in on the wave of this movement, felt its force, struck into its channel, was borne aloft on its bosom. It is customary to speak of all this spiritual ferment as a preparation for Christianity; it was such a preparation as left Christianity little of a peculiar kind to do. What new element it introduced, it would be hard to say now, however easy it seemed half a century ago. The desert land of heathenism has been explored, and the result is a discovery of fertile plains instead of barrenness. The distinction between the ante-Christian and the post-christian eras is, if not obliterated, yet so far effaced, that the transition from one to the other is natural and facile.

The longing for spiritual satisfaction that stirred in the heart of the empire, found neither its source nor its gratification exclusively in the religion that afterwards became the professed faith of Rome. It slaked its thirst at older fountains. Such longings will, at need, open fountains of living water for their own supply. Pa.s.sing through the valley of Baca they create a well, the streams whereof fill the pools.

The smitten rock pours out its torrents. The hungry soul creates its harvest as it goes along, feeding itself by the way with food that seems to fall miraculously from the sky. It makes a religion if there be none at hand. A new heaven peopled with angels; a new earth full of providences come into being at its call. But in this emergency the religion was extant in the world, already venerable, already proved. It was the religion of Israel, with all that was necessary to attract attention and command reverence; a holy G.o.d, an immediate providence, a solemn history, a glorious prophecy, an inspiring hope, traditions, inst.i.tutions, a temple, a priesthood, sacrifices, a code of laws, ceremonial and moral, poetry, learning, music, mystery, stately forms of men and women, judges, kings, heroes, martyrs, saints, a superb literature, legends of virtue, festivals of joy, visions of resurrection and judgment, precepts of righteousness, promises of peace, songs of victory and of sorrow, dreams of a heavenly kingdom to be won by obedience to divine law, tender lessons of charity, stern lessons of denial, fascinating attractions and yet more fascinating fears, gentle persuasions and awful menaces, calculated to lay hold on every mood, to thrill and to satisfy every human emotion. The religion of Israel lacked little but outward prestige of power and wealth to make it precisely what the time required; and in times of real earnestness the prestige of power and wealth is readily dispensed with. The unfas.h.i.+onable faith is the very one to attract worldly people on their first awakening to spiritual sensibility. The show of worldliness is then, to the worldly, particularly offensive. "The l.u.s.t of the flesh, the l.u.s.t of the eyes, the pride of life," delight in abasing themselves before rags and filth, wis.h.i.+ng to reach the opposite extreme. The graces of the religious character, humility, meekness, self-accusation, contrition, find in a.s.sociations with the coa.r.s.e, the hard, the repulsive, their fittest expression. Hence it was that Judaism, heretofore the faith of the despised, became the faith of the despisers.

Its very dogmatism, its proud exclusiveness and intolerance, were in its favor. Its haughty reserve a.s.sisted it; its superb disdain of other faiths, its boast of antiquity, its claim to a monopoly of the future of the race, exerted a weird spell over the dazed and decrepit minds of the superst.i.tious, high and low. Its lofty belief in miracle and sign, fairly constrained the skeptical to bow the head.

The interest felt in Judaism, and its influence on society in its high places, have already been alluded to, and need not be further insisted on. The testimony of Juvenal--the testimony of sarcasm and complaint--is enough to establish the fact that a curiosity amounting to infatuation had taken possession especially of the women of Rome.

If it be asked why Judaism, then, was not made the religion of the empire, instead of Christianity, which it hated with all the fervor of close relations.h.i.+p, the answer is at hand: _Judaism laid no emphasis on its cosmopolitan features, and discouraged belief in the historical fulfilment of its own prophecy_. The charge that it was a _national_ religion, the religion of a race, it was at no pains to repel; on the contrary, it seems to have exaggerated this claim to distinction, standing on its dignity, despising the arts of propagandism and demanding the submission of other creeds. This att.i.tude alone might have recommended the religion in some quarters, and would not have seriously embarra.s.sed it in any, supposing it to have been loftily and worthily sustained. A graver cause of its unpopularity was its failure to lay stress on its Messianic idea. It would abate nothing of its monotheistic grandeur. Its G.o.d was the everlasting, the infinite, the formless, the invisible. The command to make of Him no image whatever, either animal or human, to a.s.sociate Him with neither place nor time, was obeyed to the letter. Among a people extremely sensitive to grace of form and beauty of color, the Jews had no art; they set up no statue; they painted no picture; they allowed no emblem that could be wors.h.i.+pped.

Their Holy Spirit was an influence; their Messiah was a distant hope; their kingdom of heaven was a dream. The Christians of both schools--the conservative and the liberal--thrust into the foreground the conceptions which their co-religionists kept in the shadow of antic.i.p.ation. In their belief, prophecy was fulfilled. The Messiah had come; he had taken on human shape; he had pa.s.sed through an earthly career; he had ascended in visible form to the skies; he sat there at the right hand of the Majesty on high; he was active in his care for his own, suffering and sorrowing on earth; he sent the Holy Spirit, the comforter and guide to his friends in their affliction; he was the immediate G.o.d; he heard and answered prayer; he pardoned sin; he opened the gates of heaven to believers. They did not scruple to make images of him; to represent him in emblems; to eke out their own rude art by adopting the art which the heathen had ceased to venerate, and, where they could, re-dedicating statues of Apollo and Jupiter to their Christ. They were eager to have legendary portraits accepted as faithful likenesses of their Lord.

Fables were invented, like that of Veronica's napkin, to give currency to certain heads as the Christ's own image of himself miraculously imprinted on a cloth. They claimed to have seen him, in moments of ecstasy; they ascribed to his prompting, states of feeling, purposes and courses of action. By every means they created and deepened the impression that the Divinity they wors.h.i.+pped was a real G.o.d, and no intellectual abstraction.

This was the very thing the pagan world wanted--a _personal_ Deity, Providence, Saviour. Through their acquiescence in this demand, other oriental faiths, without a t.i.the of Israel's grandeur--mythological, superst.i.tious, sensual even--gained a popularity that Judaism could not attain. The strange Egyptian divinities drew many to their shrines.

Three emperors--Commodus, Caracalla and Heliogabalus--are said to have been devoted to the mysteries of Isis and Serapis. Juvenal describes Roman women as breaking the ice on the frozen Tiber, at the dawn of day, and plunging thrice into the stream of purification; as painfully dragging themselves on bleeding knees around the field of Tarquin; as projecting pilgrimages to Egypt, expeditions in search of the holy water required at the shrine of the G.o.ddess. The Persian Mithras had his throngs of adoring devotees. The prominence given at this period to the statues of Mithras, the existence of temples to Isis and Serapis, attest the power that these divinities exerted over the imagination of the Italian people. These people demanded deities human in shape and attributes. So clamorous were they for images, that they would consecrate them at any cost of decency. The emperor Augustus was deified. His statue on the public square, his insignia on a banner, his name on a s.h.i.+eld excited veneration. The n.o.blest religion without a human centre was less prized than the ign.o.blest with one, and the faith of Israel was compelled to yield to the degrading fascinations of the Bona Dea.

The Christian Jews, with their Messiah, took the popular desire at its best, and satisfied it. The image they presented, though to the mind's eye only, was so much more gracious than the loveliest that eastern or western art furnished that its acceptance was a.s.sured. Early in the fourth century the impression made was too deep to be overlooked by the controllers of public opinion. The politic Constantine, seeking a spiritual ally, and finding none among the faiths of his own land, called in the Nazarene to aid him in establis.h.i.+ng an empire over the souls of his subjects. Christ was king in fact before he was formally crowned.

But the true history of his reign began with the ceremony of his coronation; the history of Christianity as a distinct religion commences with the so-called "conversion" of Constantine. Latin Christianity was the first, some think the consummate, in fact the only, Christianity.

The adoption of the religion as the State Church, was for it a new creation. From that moment, began the efforts to complete its dogmatical system by a succession of councils, the first one, that of Nicaea, being held A. D. 325, about twelve years after the imperial "conversion;" that of Sardica--ecclesiastically of great importance--in 347, and the councils of Arles and of Milan in 352.

Once seated on a throne of power, a crown on his head, a sceptre in his hand, clothed with authority, protected by armies, girded with law, instigator of policies, chief of ceremonies, the Christ in heaven rapidly completed the structure whereof Constantine had placed the corner-stone. The materials he gathered right and left, wherever they were to be found. Right of supremacy made them his. Judaism gave temple, and synagogue, the organization of its priesthood, the distinction between priest and layman, its wors.h.i.+p, music, scripture, litany, sentiment and usage of prayer, its ascetic spirit, its doctrines of resurrection and judgment, its code of righteousness, its altar forms, its history, and its prophecy. Paganism was laid under contribution for its military spirit. The "stations" of the Pa.s.sion, were copied from army usage, so were its practical temper, its regard for precedent law and policy, its rules of obedience, its distrust of speculation, its horror of schism, its pa.s.sion for unity, its skill in diplomacy, its solid respect for authority. Quietly, without leave asked, or apology offered, the insignia of the old faiths were transferred to the new. The t.i.tle of Sovereign Pontifex, or bridgemaker--given originally to the chief of the guild of mechanics, pa.s.sed along from the period of the earliest kings through persons of consular dignity, and finally bestowed on the Roman emperors; a t.i.tle given at first, in commemoration of the _pons Janicularis_, which joined the city to the highest of the surrounding hills--was conferred on the bishops or popes whose office it was to bridge over the gulf between the earth and the celestial mountains. The statues of Jupiter, Apollo, Mercury, Orpheus, did duty for the Christ. The Thames river G.o.d officiates at the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan. Peter holds the keys of Ja.n.u.s. Moses wears the horns of Jove. Ceres, Cybele, Demeter, a.s.sume new names as "Queen of Heaven,"

"Star of the Sea," "Maria Illuminatrix;" Dionysius is St. Denis; Cosmos is St. Cosmo; Pluto and Proserpine resign their seats in the hall of final judgment, to the Christ and his mother. The Parcae depute one of their number, Lachesis, the disposer of lots, to set the stamp of destiny upon the deaths of Christian believers. The _aura placida_ of the poets, the gentle breeze, is personified as Aura and Placida. The _perpetua felicitas_ of the devotee becomes a lovely presence in the forms of St. Perpetua and St. Felicitas, guardian angels of the pious soul. No relic of Paganism was permitted to remain in its casket. The depositories were all ransacked. The shadowy hands of Egyptian priests placed the urn of holy water at the porch of the basilica, which stood ready to be converted into a temple. Priests of the most ancient faiths of Palestine, a.s.syria, Babylon, Thebes, Persia, were permitted to erect the altar at the point where the transverse beam of the cross meets the main stem. The hands that constructed the temple in cruciform shape had long become too attenuated to cast the faintest shadow. There Devaki with the infant Crishna, Maya with the babe Boodha, Juno with the child Mars, represent Mary with Jesus in her arms. Coa.r.s.e emblems are not rejected; the a.s.syrian dove is a tender symbol of the Holy Ghost. The rag bags and toy boxes were explored. A bauble which the Roman school-boy had thrown away was picked up and called an "agnus dei." The musty wardrobes of forgotten hierarchies furnished costumes for the officers of the new prince. Alb and chasuble recalled the fas.h.i.+ons of Numa's day. The cast off purple habits and shoes of pagan emperors beautified the august persons of christian Popes. The cardinal must be contented with the robes once worn by senators. Zoroaster bound about the monks the girdle he invented as a protection against evil spirits, and clothed them in the frocks he had found convenient for his ritual.

The Pope thrust out his foot to be kissed, as Caligula, Heliogabalus, and Julius Caesar had thrust out theirs. Nothing came amiss to the faith that was to discharge henceforth the offices of spiritual impression.

Stoles, veils, croziers, were all in requisition without too close scrutiny of their antecedents. A complete investigation of this subject will probably reveal the fact that Christianity owes its entire wardrobe, ecclesiastical, symbolical, dogmatical, to the religions that preceded it. The point of difficulty to decide is in what respect Christianity differs from the elder faiths. This is the next task its apologists have to perform.

But this question does not concern us here. Having indicated the source whence the religion proceeded, and the process by which the successive stages in its development were reached, we have done all that was purposed. We have tried to make it clear that the Messianic conception from which it started, and from which its life was derived at each period of its growth, presided over its destiny in the western world, and introduced it to the place of honor it was afterwards called to fill.

What that place was and how the Church filled it has been told in a mult.i.tude of historical books. The history of Christianity is not the story of a developing idea, but a record of the achievements of an idea developed, organized, inst.i.tuted. From the date of the established religion, the writings of the New Testament became the literature of the earliest period. In the western world the mind of Christendom expanded to deeper and wider thoughts, a new literature was originated of great richness, affluence and beauty, and gave expression to ideas which, in the primitive period could not have been formed. The Greek and Latin Fathers, the schoolmen, the catholic theologians, Italian, Spanish, French, the German mystical writers, the Protestant divines and preachers, have produced writings unsurpa.s.sed in intellectual strength and spiritual discernment. The possibilities of speculation have been exhausted; the abysses of reflection have been sounded; the heights of meditation have been scaled. The christian idea of salvation has been applied to every phase of human experience, and to every problem of social life. The rudimental conceptions have been distanced; the original limitations have been overpa.s.sed. Rites have been charged with new significance, symbols loaded with new meanings, doctrines interpreted in new senses. Christianity as the modern world knows it, is a new creation. The name of Messiah is spoken, but with feelings unknown to the Jews of the first and second century. The New Testament is regarded as a store house of germs, a magazine of texts to be interpreted by the light of the full orbed spirit, and unfolded to meet the needs of an older world. The cord which connected the religion with the mother faith of Israel was broken and the faith entered on an independent existence. To the cradle succeeds the cathedral.

IX.

JESUS.

It will be remarked that in the foregoing chapters no account is given of Jesus, and no account made of him. His name has not been written except where the common usage of speech made it necessary. The writer has carefully avoided occasion for expressing an opinion in regard to his character, his performance, or his claim; has carefully avoided so doing; the omission has been intentional. The purpose of his essay is to give the history of an idea, not the history of a person, to trace the development of a thought, not the influence of a life, letting it be inferred whether the life were necessary, and if necessary, wherein and how far necessary to the shaping of the thought. But this task will not be judged to have been fairly discharged unless he declares the nature of the inference he himself draws. The question "What think ye of the Christ?" meaning "What think ye of Jesus?" may be fairly put to him, and should be frankly answered. That there are two distinct questions here proposed, need not at the close of this essay be said. Jesus is the name of a man; Christ, or rather The Christ, is the name of an idea. The history of Jesus is the history of an individual; the history of the Christ is the history of a doctrine. An essay on the Christ-idea touches the person of Jesus, only as he is a.s.sociated with the Christ-idea or is made a representative of it. Had he not been a.s.sociated with that idea, either through his own design or in the belief of his countrymen, the omission of all mention of his name would provoke no criticism. The common opinion that he was in some sense the Christ; that but for him the Christ-idea would not have been made conspicuous in the way and at the time it was; that the existence of the Christian Church, the conversion of Paul, the composition of the New Testament, the course of religious thought in the eastern and western world was directed by his mind; that the social life,--the morals and manners, the heart, conscience, feeling, soul--of mankind, in the earlier and later centuries of his era was determined by his character, renders necessary a word of comment on the validity of his individual claim.

If either of the four gospels is to be accepted as biography it must be the first, as being the earliest in date, and as containing less than either of the others of speculative admixture. The first gospel rests, according to an ancient tradition, on memoranda or notes taken by a companion of Jesus and afterwards written out, in the popular language of the country, for the use of the disciples and others in Judaea and Galilee. The disappearance of all save a few fragments of this book, and of any writing answering in description to it, the impossibility of identifying it with the present Gospel of Matthew, or of proving that the existing Gospel of Matthew rests upon it;[10] the comparatively late date to which our Greek Matthew must be a.s.signed--thirty years at least, probably fifty or sixty after Jesus' death, and the absolute failure of all attempts to trace its records to an eye witness of any sort, (say nothing of a competent eye witness, clear of head, tenacious of memory, veracious in speech,) all conspire to stamp with imprudence the conjecture that the Christ of Matthew and the Jesus of history were one and the same. This would be the case were the picture harmoniously proportioned, as it is not.

[Footnote 10: The character and influence of the "Gospel of the Hebrews"

and of other books of the same kind is considered in full by Mr. S.

Baring-Gould in "The Lost and Hostile Gospels." Mr. Baring-Gould argues that while neither of our present Gospels is ent.i.tled to be called genuine in the ordinary sense, they contain authentic biographical materials. It is his opinion that "at the close of the first century almost every Church had its own Gospel, with which alone it was acquainted. But it does not follow that these Gospels were not as trustworthy as the four which we now alone recognize." (p. 23.) Mr.

Baring-Gould's argument is not strong. The first mention of the "Gospel of the Hebrews" is no earlier than the middle of the second century; the remaining fragments of it are too few and too undecisive to be of weight; and it was, by all confession, written in the interest of the Nazarene or Judaizing Christians. Mr. Baring-Gould himself cla.s.ses it with the Clementine writings and calls them "The Lost Petrine Gospels."]

The fourth Gospel is usually accepted as the work of a disciple, the "loved disciple," the bosom friend, whose apprehension of the spiritual character of Jesus was much keener and truer than that of any business man, any mere follower, any commonplace, inconspicuous person like Matthew. But the fourth Gospel, allowing that it was written by John the disciple, must, to insist on a former remark, have been written in his extreme old age, and after a mental and spiritual transformation so complete as to leave no trace of the Galilean youth whom Jesus took to his heart. The zealot has become a mystic; the Palestinian Jew has become an Asiatic Greek: the "son of thunder" is a philosopher; the fisherman is a cultivated writer, acquainted with the subtlest forms of speculation. Is it conceivable that such a man should have retained his impressions of biographical incidents and personal traits, or that retaining them he should have allowed them their due prominence in his record? can his picture be accepted as a portrait?

Certainly, some are impatient to say, and for this very reason; as the perfect, the only portrait; the picture of the very man, the biography of his soul; we accept it as we accept Plato's portrait of Socrates. But do we accept Plato's portrait of Socrates, as a piece done to the life?

Plato was a great artist, as all the world knows from his authentic works. But even in his case, we do not know whether he, in depicting Socrates, meant to paint the man as he really was, or an ideal head, conceived according to the Socratic type. To compare John's portrait of Jesus with Plato's portrait of Socrates, is besides, a proceeding quite illogical; for we must a.s.sume, in the first place, that John painted this portrait of Jesus, and in the next place that the portrait must be a good one because he painted it,--this being the only piece of his ever on exhibition.

To say with Renan and others that the idealized likeness must from the nature of the case be the correct one, because such a person as Jesus was, is best seen at a distance and by poetic gaze, is again to beg the question. How do we know that Jesus was such a person? How do we know that the most spiritual apprehension of him, was the truest; that they judged him most justly, who judged him from the highest point; that the glorifying imaginations alone presented his full stature and proportions, that the ordinary minds immediately about him necessarily misconstrued and misrepresented him? In the order of experience, historical and biographical truth is discovered by stripping off layer after layer of exaggeration and going back to the statements of contemporaries. As a rule, figures are reduced, not enlarged, by criticism. The influence of admiration is recognized as distorting and falsifying, while exalting. The process of legend-making begins immediately, goes on rapidly and with accelerating speed, and must be liberally allowed for by the seeker after truth. In scores of instances the historical individual turns out to be very much smaller than he was painted by his terrified or loving wors.h.i.+ppers. In no single case has it been established that he was greater, or as great. It is no doubt, conceivable that such a case should occur, but it never has occurred, in known instances, and cannot be presumed to have occurred in any particular instance. The presumptions are against the correctness of the glorified image. The disposition to exaggerate is so much stronger than the disposition to underrate, that even really great men are placed higher than they belong oftener than lower. The historical method works backwards. Knowledge shrinks the man. Eminent examples that jump to recollection instantly confirm this view.

The case of Mahomet is in point. Here, the critical procedure was twofold; first to rescue a figure from the depths of infamy and then to recover the same figure from the cloudland of fancy. Under the pressure of christian hate the fame of Mahomet sank to the lowest point. He was impostor, liar, cheat, name for all shamefulness. From this muck heap he has been plucked by valiant hands, and placed on the list of heroes. Now another process is beginning, to find precisely what kind of hero he was; and it is safe to say that under this process the dimensions of the hero shrink. The arabian estimate of the prophet will not bear close examination. The glamor of pious enthusiasm being dispelled, the traits of nationality show themselves; the ecstasy is seen to be complicated with epilepsy; the revelations partake of the general oriental character; the truths are the cardinal truths of the semitic religions; the personal qualities are of the same cast that distinguishes the arabian mind. The detestation and the homage are both unjustifiable.

Another example in point is Buddha; a name covered by ages of fable, and so thickly that his historical existence was long doubted. It was questioned whether he was anything more substantial than a vision. The mist of legend has already been so far dispersed that a grand form is discerned moving up and down in India. Presently it will be measured and outlined. It is safe to predict intellectual and moral shrinkage of the person under the operation of this scrutiny. Just now the impression of his greatness is somewhat overpowering. He looks morally gigantic as compared with teachers who are better known. We quote his sayings with unbounded admiration; we commend his life as an ill.u.s.tration of whatever most exalts humanity. But if the time ever comes when his lineaments are fully revealed to sight, he will be found neither much greater nor much better than his generation justified.

The critics of Strauss' "Life of Jesus" insisted on the necessity of a historical foundation for his character. Such a person they declared must have lived; he could not have been invented. Strange position to take, in view of the fact that idealization is one of the commonest feats of mankind; that the human imagination is continually constructing heroes out of poltroons, and trans.m.u.ting lead into gold! Some idealization there is, by the general confession of unprejudiced men.

The whole cannot be received as literal fact. There is here and there a bit of color put on to heighten the effect. Who shall decide how much?

If the figure is glorified a little, why not a great deal? If a great deal, why not altogether? The materials for constructing the person being given, as they are, in the hebrew genius, and the plastic power being provided as it is, by the hebrew enthusiasm, the result might have been predicted, a good way in advance of history. The argument against Strauss' method proves too much.