|
And what a motley crowd of gods they were on whose caprice
or
indifference he pours his vials of anger and contempt! The
tolerant
pantheon of Rome gave welcome to any foreign deity with
respectable
credentials; to Cybele, the Great Mother, imported in the shape
of a
rough-hewn stone with pomp and rejoicings from Phrygia 204 B. C.;
to
Isis, welcomed from Egypt; to Herakles, Demeter, Asklepios, and
many
another god from Greece. But these were dismissed from a man's
thought
when the prayer or sacrifice to them had been offered at the due
season.
They had less influence on the Roman's life than the crowd of
native
godlings who were thinly disguised fetiches, and who controlled
every
action of the day. For the minor gods survive the changes in
the
pantheon of every race. Of the Greek peasant of to-day Mr. Rennel
Rodd
testifies, in his Custom and Lore of Modern Greece, that much as
he
would shudder at the accusation of any taint of paganism, the ruling
of
the Fates is more immediately real to him than divine omnipotence.
Mr.
Tozer confirms this in his Highlands of Turkey. He says: "It is
rather
the minor deities and those associated with man's ordinary life
that
have escaped the brunt of the storm, and returned to live in a
dim
twilight of popular belief." In India, Sir Alfred Lyall tells us
that,
"even the supreme triad of Hindu allegory, which represents the
almighty
powers of creation, preservation, and destruction, have long ceased
to
preside actively over any such corresponding distribution of
functions."
Like limited monarchs, they reign, but do not govern. They
are
superseded by the ever-increasing crowd of godlings whose influence
is
personal and special, as shown by Mr. Crooke in his instructive
Introduction
to the Popular Religion and Folk-lore of Northern India.
The old Roman
catalogue of spiritual beings, abstractions as they
were, who guarded life in
minute detail, is a long one. From the
_indigitamenta_, as such lists are
called, we learn that no less than
forty-three were concerned with the
actions of a child. When the farmer
asked Mother Earth for a good harvest,
the prayer would not avail unless
he also invoked "the spirit of breaking up
the land and the spirit of
ploughing it crosswise; the spirit of furrowing
and the spirit of
ploughing in the seed; and the spirit of harrowing; the
spirit of
weeding and the spirit of reaping; the spirit of carrying corn to
the
barn; and the spirit of bringing it out again." The country,
moreover,
swarmed with Chaldæan astrologers and casters of nativities;
with
Etruscan haruspices full of "childish lightning-lore," who
foretold
events from the entrails of sacrificed animals; while in
competition
with these there was the State-supported college of augurs to
divine the
will of the gods by the cries and direction of the flight of
birds. Well
might the satirist of such a time say that the "place was so
densely
populated with gods as to leave hardly room for the men."
It
will be seen that the justification for including Lucretius among
the
Pioneers of Evolution lies in his two signal and momentous
contributions
to the science of man; namely, the primitive savagery of the
human race,
and the origin of the belief in a soul and a future life.
Concerning the
first, anthropological research, in its vast accumulation of
materials
during the last sixty years, has done little more than fill in
the
outline which the insight of Lucretius enabled him to sketch. As to
the
second, he anticipates, well-nigh in detail, the ghost-theory of
the
origin of belief in spirits generally which Herbert Spencer and
Dr.
Tylor, following the lines laid down by Hume and Turgot (see p.
255),
have formulated and sustained by an enormous mass of evidence.
The
credit thus due to Lucretius for the original ideas in his
majestic
poem--Greek in conception and Roman in execution--has been obscured
in
the general eclipse which that poem suffered for centuries through
its
anti-theological spirit. Grinding at the same philosophical
mill,
Aristotle, because of the theism assumed to be involved in
his
"perfecting principle," was cited as "a pillar of the faith" by
the
Fathers and Schoolmen; while Lucretius, because of his denial of
design,
was "anathema maranatha." Only in these days, when the
far-reaching
effects of the theory of evolution, supported by observation in
every
branch of inquiry, are apparent, are the merits of Lucretius as
an
original seer, more than as an expounder of the teachings of
Empedocles
and Epicurus, made clear.
* *
* * *
Standing well-nigh on the threshold of the Christian
era, we may pause
to ask what is the sum of the speculation into the causes
and nature of
things which, begun in Ionia (with impulse more or less slight
from the
East, in the sixth century before Christ), by Thales, ceased, for
many
centuries, in the poem of Lucretius, thus covering an active period
of
about five hundred years. The caution not to see in these
speculations
more than an approximate approach to modern theories must be
kept in
mind.
1. There is a primary substance which abides amidst the
general flux of
things.
_All modern research tends to show that the
various combinations of
matter are formed of some _prima materia_. But its
ultimate nature
remains unknown._
2. Out of nothing comes
nothing.
_Modern science knows nothing of a beginning, and, moreover,
holds
it to be unthinkable. In this it stands in direct opposition to
the
theological dogma that God created the universe out of nothing; a
dogma
still accepted by the majority of Protestants and binding on
Roman
Catholics. For the doctrine of the Church of Rome thereon, as
expressed
in the Canons of the Vatican Council, is as follows: "If any
one
confesses not that the world and all things which are contained in
it,
both spiritual and mental, have been, in their whole substance,
produced
by God out of nothing; or shall say that God created, not by His
free
will from all necessity, but by a necessity equal to the
necessity
whereby He loves Himself, or shall deny that the world was made for
the
glory of God: let him be anathema."_
3. The primary substance is
indestructible.
_The modern doctrine of the Conservation of Energy
teaches that both
matter and motion can neither be created nor
destroyed._
4. The universe is made up of indivisible particles called
atoms, whose
manifold combinations, ruled by unalterable affinities, result
in the
variety of things.
_With modifications based on chemical as
well as mechanical changes
among the atoms, this theory of Leucippus and
Democritus is confirmed.
(But recent experiments and discoveries show that
reconstruction of
chemical theories as to the properties of the atom may
happen.)_
5. Change is the law of things, and is brought about by the
play of
opposing forces.
_Modern science explains the changes in
phenomena as due to the
antagonism of repelling and attracting modes of
motion; when the latter
overcome the former, equilibrium will be reached, and
the present state
of things will come to an end._
6. Water is a
necessary condition of life.
_Therefore life had its beginnings in water;
a theory wholly indorsed by
modern biology._
7. Life arose out of
non-living matter.
_Although modern biology leaves the origin of life as
an insoluble
problem, it supports the theory of fundamental continuity
between the
inorganic and the organic._
8. Plants came before animals:
the higher organisms are of separate sex,
and appeared subsequent to the
lower.
_Generally confirmed by modern biology, but with qualification as
to the
undefined borderland between the lowest plants and the lowest
animals.
And, of course, it recognises a continuity in the order and
succession
of life which was not grasped by the Greeks. Aristotle and others
before
him believed that some of the higher forms sprang from slimy
matter
direct._
9. Adverse conditions cause the extinction of some
organisms, thus
leaving room for those better fitted.
_Herein lay the
crude germ of the modern doctrine of the "survival of
the
fittest."_
10. Man was the last to appear, and his primitive state was
one of
savagery. His first tools and weapons were of stone; then, after
the
discovery of metals, of copper; and, following that, of iron. His
body
and soul are alike compounded of atoms, and the soul is extinguished
at
death.
_The science of Prehistoric Archæology confirms the theory
of man's slow
passage from barbarism to civilization; and the science of
Comparative
Psychology declares that the evidence of his immortality is
neither
stronger nor weaker than the evidence of the immortality of the
lower
animals._
* * * *
*
Such, in very broad outline, is the legacy of suggestive
theories
bequeathed by the Ionian school and its successors, theories which
fell
into the rear when Athens became a centre of intellectual life in
which
discussion passed from the physical to those ethical problems which
lie
outside the range of this survey. Although Aristotle, by his
prolonged
and careful observations, forms a conspicuous exception, the fact
abides
that insight, rather than experiment, ruled Greek speculation,
the
fantastic guesses of parts of which themselves evidence the survival
of
the crude and false ideas about earth and sky long prevailing. The
more
wonderful is it, therefore, that so much therein points the way
along
which inquiry travelled after its subsequent long arrest; and the
more
apparent is it that nothing in science or art, and but little
in
theological speculations, at least among us Westerns, can be
understood
without reference to
Greece.
TABLE.
------------+-------------+-----------+-------------------------------
|
|Approximate|
NAME. | Place. | date |
Speciality.
| | B. C.
|
------------+-------------+-----------+-------------------------------
Thales.
|Miletus | 600 |Cosmological }
|
(Ionia). | | Theory as to}
|
| | the Primary } Water.
| | |
Substance }
Anaximander.| " | 570 | " the
Boundless.
Anaximenes.
| " | 500 | " Air.
Pythagoras. |Samos
(near | 500 | " Numbers:
| the
Ionian | | "a Cosmos built
|
coast). | | up of
|
| | geometrical
|
| | figures,"
| |
| or (Grote,
| |
| Plato, i, 12)
| |
| "generated
| |
| out of number."
Xenophanes. |Colophon
| 500 | Founder of the
|
(Ionia). | | Eleatic school.
Heraclitus.
|Ephesus | 500 | " Fire.
|
(Ionia). | |
Empedocles. |Agrigentum
| 450 | " Fire, Air, Earth,
| (Sicily).
| | and Water:
|
| | ruled by Love
|
| | and Strife.
Anaxagoras. |Clazomenae
| 450 | Nous.
| (Ionia). |
|
Leucippus | | |
Democritus. |Abdera
| 460 |Formulators of the Atomic
| (Thrace).
| |
Theory.
Aristotle. |Stagira | 350 |Naturalist.
|
(Macedonia).| |
Epicurus. |Samos. | 300 |Expounder
of the Atomic
| | | Theory and
Ethical
| | |
Philosopher.
Lucretius. |Rome. | 50 |Interpreter of Epicurus
and
| | | Empedocles: the
first
| | |
Anthropologist.
------------+-------------+-----------+-------------------------------
_Part
II._
THE ARREST OF INQUIRY.
A. D. 50-A. D. 400.
1.
_From the Early Christian Period to the Time of Augustine._
"A revealed
dogma is always opposed to the free research that may
contradict it. The
result of science is not to banish the divine
altogether, but ever to
place it at a greater distance from the
world of particular facts in
which men once believed they saw
it."--RENAN, Essay on Islamism and
Science.
A detailed account of the rise and progress of the Christian
religion is
not within the scope of this book. But as that religion, more
especially
in the elaborated theological form which it ultimately assumed,
became
the chief barrier to the development of Greek ideas; except, as has
been
remarked, in the degree that these were represented by Aristotle,
and
brought into harmony with it; a short survey of its origin and
early
stages is necessary to the continuity of our story.
The history
of that great movement is told according to the bias of the
writers. They
explain its rapid diffusion and its ultimate triumph over
Paganism as due
either to its Divine origin and guidance; or to the
favourable conditions of
the time of its early propagation, and to that
wise adaptation to
circumstances which linked its fortunes with those
of the progressive peoples
of Western Europe. In the judgment of every
unofficial narrator, this latter
explanation best accords with the facts
of history, and with the natural
causes which largely determine success
or failure. The most partisan
advocates of its supernatural, and
therefore special, character have to show
reason why the fortunes of the
Christian religion have varied like those of
other great religions, both
older and younger than it; why, like Buddhism, it
has been ousted from
the country in which it rose; and why, in competition
with Brahmanism,
as Sir Alfred Lyall testifies in his Asiatic Studies (p.
110), and with
Mohammedanism in Africa, it has less success than these in the
mission
fields where it comes into rivalry with them. Riven into
wrangling
sects from an early period of its history, it has, while exercising
a
beneficent influence in turbulent and lawless ages, brought not
"peace
on earth, but a sword." It has been the cause of undying hate, of
bloody
wars, and of persecutions between parties and nations, whose
animosity
seems the deeper when stirred by matters which are incapable of
proof.
As Montaigne says, "Nothing is so firmly believed as that which
is
least known." To bring the Christian religion, or, rather, its
manifold
forms, from the purest spiritualistic to such degraded type
as exists, for
example, in Abyssinia, within the operation of the law
which governs
development, and which, therefore, includes partial and
local corruption; is
to make its history as clear as it is profoundly
instructive; while, to
demand for it an origin and character different
in kind from other religions,
is to import confusion into the story of
mankind, and to raise a swarm of
artificial difficulties. "If," as John
Morley observes in his criticism of
Turgot's dissertation upon The
Advantages that the Establishment of
Christianity has conferred upon the
Human Race (Miscell., vol. ii, p. 90),
"there had been in the Christian
idea the mysterious self-sowing quality so
constantly claimed for it,
how came it that in the Eastern part of the Empire
it was as powerless
for spiritual or moral regeneration as it was for
political health and
vitality; while in the Western part it became the organ
of the most
important of all the past transformations of the civilized world?
Is not
the difference to be explained by the difference in the
surrounding
medium, and what is the effect of such an explanation upon
the
supernatural claims of the Christian idea?" Its inclusion as one
of
other modes, varying only in degree, by which man has progressed
from
the "ape and tiger" stage to the highest ideals of the race, makes
clear
what concerns us here, namely, its attitude toward secular
knowledge,
and the consequent serious arrest of that knowledge. That a
religion
which its followers claim to be of supernatural origin, and secured
from
error by the perpetual guidance of a Holy Spirit, should have
opposed
inquiry into matters the faculty for investigating which lay
within
human power and province; that it should actually have put to
death
those who dared thus to inquire, and to make known what they
had
discovered; is a problem which its advocates may settle
among
themselves. It is no problem to those who take the opposite
view.
In outlining the history of Christianity stress will be here laid
only
upon those elements which caused it to be an arresting force in
man's
intellectual development, and, therefore, in his spiritual
emancipation
from terrors begotten of ignorance. It does not fall within our
survey
to speak of that primary element in it which was before all dogma,
and
which may survive when dogma has become only a matter of
antiquarian
interest. That element, born of emotion, which, as a crowd of
kindred
examples show, incarnates, and then deifies the object of its
worship,
was the belief in the manifestation of the divine through the
human
Jesus who had borne men's griefs, carried their sorrows, and
offered
rest to the weary and heavy-laden. For no religion--and here
Evolution
comes in as witness--can take root which does not adapt itself to,
and
answer some need of, the heart of man. Hence the importance of study
of
the history of all religions.
Evolution knows only one heresy--the
denial of continuity. Recognising
the present as the outcome of the past, it
searches after origins. It
knows that both that which revolts us in man's
spiritual history has,
alike with that which attracts, its place, its
necessary place, in the
development of ideas, and is, therefore, capable of
explanation from
its roots upward. For this age is sympathetic, not flippant.
It looks
with no favour on criticism that is only destructive, or on ridicule
or
ribaldry as modes of attack on current beliefs. Hence we have the
modern
science of comparative theology, with its Hibbert Lectures, and
Gifford
Lectures, which are critical and constructive; as opposed to
Bampton
Lectures, Boyle and Hulse Lectures, which are apologetic, the
speaker
holding an official brief. Of the Boyle Lecturers, Collings the
"Deist"
caustically said that nobody doubted the existence of the Deity
till
they set to work to prove it. Religions are no longer treated as true
or
false, as inventions of priests or of divine origin, but as the
product
of man's intellectual speculations, however crude or coarse; and of
his
spiritual needs, no matter in what repulsive form they are
satisfied.
For "proofs" and "evidences" we have substituted
explanations.
Nevertheless, so strong, often so bitter, are the feelings
aroused over
the most temperate discussion of the origin of Christianity that
it
remains necessary to repeat that to explain is not to attack, and
that
to narrate is not to apportion blame, for no religion can do aught
than
reflect the temper of the age in which it flourishes.
Let us now
summarize certain occurrences which, although familiar
enough, must be
repeated for the clear understanding of their effects.
Some sixty years
after the death of Lucretius there happened, in the
subsequent belief of
millions of mankind, an event for which all that
had gone before in the
history of this planet is said to have been a
preparation. In the fulness of
time the Omnipotent maker and ruler of a
universe to which no boundaries can
be set by human thought, sent to
this earth-speck no less a person than His
Eternal Son. He was said to
have been born, not by the natural processes of
generation, but to have
been incarnated in the womb of a virgin, retaining
his divine nature
while subjecting it to human limitations. This he had done
that he
might, as sinless man, become an expiatory sacrifice to offended
deity,
and to the requirements of divine justice, for the sins which the
human
race had committed since the transgression of Adam and Eve, or which
men
yet to be born might commit.
The "miraculous" birth of Jesus took
place at Nazareth in Galilee, in
the reign of Cæsar Augustus, about 750 A. U.
C., as the Romans reckoned
time. Tradition afterward fixed his birthday on
the 25th December,
which, curiously enough, although, perhaps, explaining the
choice, was
the day dedicated to the sun-god Mithra, an Oriental deity to
whom
altars had been raised and sacrifices performed, with rites of
baptisms
of blood, in hospitable Rome.
Jesus is said to have lived in
the obscurity of his native mountain
village till his thirtieth year. Except
one doubtful story of his going
to Jerusalem with his parents when he was
twelve years old, nothing is
recorded in the various biographies of him
between his birth and his
appearance as a public teacher. Probably he
followed his father's trade
as a carpenter. The event that seems to have
called him from home was
the preaching of an enthusiastic ascetic named John
the Baptist. At his
hands Jesus submitted to the baptismal rite, and then
entered on his
career, wandering from place to place. The fragments of his
discourses,
which have survived in the short biographies known as the
Gospels, show
him to have been gifted with a simple, winning style, and his
sermons,
brightened by happy illustration or striking parable, went home to
the
hearts of his hearers. Women, often of the outcast class, were
drawn
to him by the sympathy which attracted even more than his
teaching.
Among a people to whom the unvarying order of Nature was an
idea
wholly foreign--for Greek speculations had not penetrated
into
Palestine--stories of miracle-working found easy credit, falling in,
as
they did, with popular belief in the constant intervention of
deity.
Thus, to the reports of what Jesus taught were added those of
the
wonders which he had wrought, from feeding thousands of folk with a
few
loaves of bread to raising the dead to life. His itinerant
mission
secured him a few devoted followers from various towns and
villages,
while the effect of success upon himself was to heighten his
own
conception of the importance of his work. The skill of the Romans
in
fusing together subject races had failed them in the case of the
Jews,
whose belief in their special place in the world as the "chosen
people"
never forsook them. Nor had their misfortunes weakened their belief
that
the Messiah predicted by their prophets would appear to deliver
them,
and plant their feet on the neck of the hated conqueror. This
hope,
as became a pious Jew, Jesus shared, but it set him brooding on
some
nobler, because more spiritual, conception of it than his
fellow-countrymen
nurtured. Finally, it led him to the belief, fostered
by the ambition of his
nearer disciples, which was, however, material in
its hopes, that he was the
spiritual Messiah. In that faith he repaired
to Jerusalem at the time of the
Passover feast when the city was crowded
with devotees, that he might, before
the chief priests and elders, make
his appeal to the nation. According to the
story, his daring in clearing
the holy temple of money-changers and traders
led to his appearance
before the Sanhedrin, the highest judicial council; his
plainness of
speech raised the fury of the sects; and when, dreaming of a
purer
faith, he spoke ominous words about the destruction of the temple,
the
charge of blasphemy was laid against him. His guilt was made clear
to
his judges when, answering a question of the high priest, he
declared
himself to be the Messiah. This, involving claim to kingship over
the
Jews, and therefore rebellion against the Empire, was made the plea
of
haling him before the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, for trial.
Pilate,
looking upon the whole affair as a local _emeute_, was disinclined
to
severity, but nothing short of the death of Jesus as a
blasphemer
(although his chief offence appears to have been his disclaimer
of
earthly sovereignty) would satisfy the angry mob. Amidst their
taunts
and jeers he was taken to a place named Calvary, and there put to
death
by the torturing process of crucifixion, or, the particular mode
not
being clear, of transfixion on a stake.
This tragic event, on
which, as is still widely held, hang the destinies
of mankind to the end of
time, attracted no attention outside Judæa. In
the Roman eye, cold,
contemptuous, and practical, it was but the
execution of a troublesome
fanatic who had embroiled himself with his
fellow-countrymen, and added the
crime of sedition to the folly of
blasphemy. Pilate himself passed on,
without more ado, to the next duty.
Tradition, anxious to prove that
retribution followed his criminal act,
as it was judged in after-time to be,
tells how he flung himself in
remorse from the mountain known as Pilatus,
which overlooks the lake of
Lucerne. With truer insight, a striking modern
story, L'Etui de Nacre,
by Anatole France, makes Pilate, on his retirement to
Sicily in old age,
thus refer to the incident in conversation with a Roman
friend who had
loved a Jewish maiden.
"A few months after I had lost
sight of her I heard by accident that
she had joined a small party of men
and women who were following a
young Galilean miracle-worker. His name was
Jesus, he came from
Nazareth, and he was crucified for I don't know what
crime. Pontius,
do you remember this man? Pontius Pilate knit his brow, and
put his
hand to his forehead like one who is searching his memory;
then
after a few moments of silence: 'Jesus,' murmured he, 'Jesus
of
Nazareth. No, I don't remember him.'"
On the third day after his
death, Jesus is said to have risen from the
grave, and appeared to a faithful
few of his disciples. On the fortieth
day after his resurrection he is said
to have ascended to heaven. Both
these statements rest on the authority of
the biographies which were
compiled some years after his death. Jesus wrote
nothing himself;
therefore the "brethren," as his intimate followers called
one another,
had no other sacred books than those of the Old Testament. They
believed
that Jesus was the Messiah predicted in Daniel and some of
the
apocryphal writings, and they cherished certain "logia" or sayings
of
his which formed the basis of the first three Gospels. The earliest
of
these, that bearing the name of Mark, probably took the shape in
which
we have it (some spurious verses at the end excepted) about 70 A.
D.
The fourth Gospel, which tradition attributes to John, is
generally
believed to be half a century later than Mark. It seems likely that
the
importance of collecting the words of Jesus into any permanent form
did
not occur to those who had heard them, because the belief in his
speedy
return was all-powerful among them, and their life and attitude
toward
everything was shaped accordingly.
Without sacred books,
priesthood, or organization, these earliest
disciples, whom the fate of their
leader had driven into hiding for a
time, gathered themselves into groups for
communion and worship. "In
the church of Jerusalem," says Selden in his Table
Talk (xiv), "the
Christians were but another sect of Jews that did believe
the Messias
was come." From that sacred city there went forth preachers of
this
simple doctrine through the lands where Greek-speaking Jews, known
as
those of the Dispersion, had been long settled. These formed a
very
important element in the Roman Empire, being scattered from Asia
Minor
to Egypt, and thence in all the lands washed by the Mediterranean.
As
their racial isolation and national hopes made them the least
contented
among the subject-peoples, a series of tolerant measures securing
them
certain privileges, subject to loyal behaviour, had been
prudently
granted by their Roman masters. The new teaching spread from
Antioch to
Alexandria and Rome. But early in the onward career of the
movement a
division broke out among the immediate disciples of Jesus which
ended in
lasting rupture. A distinguished convert had been won to the faith
in
the person of the Apostle Paul. He is the real founder of
Christianity
as a more or less systematized creed, and all the development of
dogma
which followed are integral parts of the structure raised by him.
He
converted it from a local religion into a widespread faith. This
came
about, at the start, through his defeat of the narrower section
headed
by Peter, who would have compelled all non-Jewish converts to submit
to
the rite of circumcision.
The unity of the Empire gave Christianity
its chance. Through the
connection of Eurasia from the Euphrates to the
Atlantic by magnificent
roads, communication between peoples followed the
lines of least
resistance. Happily for the future of Christianity, the
early
missionaries travelled westward, in the wake of the dispersed
Jews,
along the Mediterranean seaboard, and thus its fortunes
became
identified with the civilizing portion of mankind. Had they
travelled
eastward, it might have been blended with Buddhism, or, as its
Gnostic
phases show, become merged in Oriental mysticism. The story of
progress
ran smoothly till A. D. 64, when we first hear of the
"Christians"--for
by such name they had become known--in "profane" history,
as it was once
oddly called. Tacitus, writing many years after the event,
tells how on
the night of the 18th July, in the sixty-fourth year of our era,
a
fierce fire broke out in Rome, causing the destruction of
magnificent
buildings raised by Augustus, and of priceless works of Greek
art.
Suspicion fell on Nero, and he, as has been suggested, was instigated
by
his wife Poppaea Sabina, an unscrupulous woman, and, according to
some
authorities, a convert to Judaism, "to put an end to the common talk,
by
imputing the fire to others, visiting, with a refinement of
punishment,
those detestable criminals who went by the name of Christians.
The
author of that denomination was Christus, who had been executed in
the
time of Tiberius, by the procurator, Pontius Pilate." Tacitus goes
on
to describe Christianity as "a pestilent superstition," and
its
adherents as guilty of "hatred to the human race." The indictment,
on
the face of it, seems strange, but it has an explanation, although
the
Christians were brutally murdered on the charge of arson, and not
of
superstition. So far as religious persecution went, they suffered
this
first at the hands of Jews, the Empire intervening to protect
them.
Broadly speaking, the Roman note was toleration. Throughout
the
Empire religion was a national affair, because it began and ended
with
the preservation of the State. Thereupon it was the
binding
duty--_religio_--of every citizen to pay due honour to the
protecting
gods on whose favour the safety of the State depended. That done,
a man
might believe what he chose. Polytheism is, from its nature,
easy-going
and tolerant; so long as there was no open opposition to the
authorized
public worship, the worshipper could explain it any way he chose.
In
Greece a man "might believe or disbelieve that the Mysteries taught
the
doctrine of immortality; the essential thing was that he should
duly
sacrifice his pig." In Rome, that vast Cosmopolis, "the ordinary
pagan
did not care two straws whether his neighbour worshipped twenty gods
or
twenty-one." Why should he care?
Now, against all this, the
Christians set their faces sternly, and the
result was to make them regarded
as anti-patriotic and anti-social.
Their success among the lower classes had
been rapid. Christianity
levelled all distinctions: it welcomed the master
and his slave, the
outcast and the pure: it treated woman as the spiritual
equal of man: it
held out to each the hope of a future life. Thus far, all
was to the
good, although the old Mithraic religion had done well-nigh as
much. But
Christianity held aloof from the common social life, putting itself
out
of touch with the manifold activity of Rome. It sought to apply
certain
maxims of Jesus literally; it discouraged marriage, it brought
disunion
into family life; it counselled avoidance of service in the army
or
acceptance of any public office. This general attitude was wholly due
to
the belief that with the return of Jesus, the end of the world was
at
hand. For Jesus had foretold his second coming, and the earliest
epistles of
the apostles bade the faithful prepare for it. Here there
was no continuing
city; citizenship was in heaven, for the kingdom of
Christ was not of this
world. Therefore to give thought to the earthly
and fleeting was folly and
impiety, for who would care to heap up
wealth, to strive for place or to
pursue pleasure, or to search after
what men called "wisdom," when these
imperilled the soul, and blocked
the way to heaven?
The prejudice
created by this belief, expressed in such direct action as
refusal to worship
the guardian gods and the "genius" of the Emperor,
was deepened by ugly,
although baseless, rumours as to the cruel and
immoral things done by the
Christians at their secret meetings. And so
it came to pass that Tacitus
spoke of Christianity in the terms quoted;
that Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius
(who refers to it only once in his
Meditations) dismissed it with a scornful
phrase; that the common people
called it atheistic; and that, finally, it
became a proscribed and
persecuted religion.
Further than this there
is no need to pursue its career until, with
wholly changed fortunes, we meet
it as a tolerated religion under a
so-called Christian Emperor. The object in
tracing it thus far is to
indicate how enthusiasts, thus filled with an
anti-worldly spirit, would
become and remain an arresting force against the
advance of inquiry and,
therefore, of knowledge; and how, as their religion
gathered power, and
itself became worldly in policy, it would the more
strongly assert
supremacy over the reason. For intellectual activity would
lead to
inquiry into the claims and authority of the Church, and
inquiry,
therefore, was the thing to be proscribed. Then, too, the committal
of
the floating biographies of Jesus to written form, and their
grouping,
with the letters of the apostles, into one more or less
complete
collection, to be afterward called the New Testament (a collection
held
to embrace, as the theory of inspiration became formulated, all that
it
is needful for man to know), would create a further barrier
against
intellectual activity. Then, as Christianity came into nearer touch
with
the enfeebled remnants of Greek philosophy, and with other
foreign
influences shaping its dogmas, discussions about the person of
Christ
became active. The simple fluent creed of the early Christians
took
rigid form in the subtleties of the Nicene Creed, and as "Very God
of
Very God" the final appeal was, logically, to the words of Jesus.
Hence
another barrier against inquiry.
Conflict has never arisen on
the ethical sayings of Jesus, which, making
allowance for the
impracticableness of a few, place him high among the
sages of antiquity.
Comparing their teaching with his, it is easy to
group together maxims which
do not yield to the more famous examples in
the Sermon on the Mount as guides
to conduct, or as inspiration to high
ideals. The "golden rule" is
anticipated by Plato's "Thou shalt not take
that which is mine, and may I do
to others as I would that they should
do to me" (Jowett's translation, v, p.
483). And it is paralleled by
Isocrates, a contemporary of Plato, in those
words spoken by the King
Nicocles when addressing his governors, "You should
be to others what
you think I should be to you." But if there was nothing new
in what
Jesus taught, there was freshness in the method. Conflict is waged
only
over statements the nature and limits of which might be expected
from
the place and age when they were delivered. They who hold that Jesus
was
God the Son Eternal, and therefore incapable of error, may reconcile,
as
best they can with this, his belief in the mischievous delusions of
his
time. If they say that so much of this as may be reported in the
records
of his life are spurious, they throw the whole contents of the
gospels
into the melting-pot of criticism.
Taking the narratives as we
have them, documents stamped with the
hall-mark of the centuries,
"declaring," as a body of clergymen
proclaimed recently, "incontrovertibly
the actual historical truth in
all records, both of past events, and of the
delivery of predictions to
be thereafter fulfilled," we learn that Jesus
accepted the accuracy of
the sacred writings of his people; that he spoke of
Moses as the author
of the Pentateuch; that he referred to its legends as
dealing with
historical persons, and as reporting actual events. All these
beliefs
are refuted by the critical scholarship of to-day. We need not go
to
Germany for the verdict; it is indorsed by eminent Hebraists,
officials
of the Church of England. Canon Driver, Professor of Hebrew at
Oxford,
says that "like other people, the Jews formed theories to account
for
the beginnings of the earth and man"; that "they either did this
for
themselves, or borrowed from their neighbours," and that "of
the
theories current in Assyria and Phoenicia fragments have been
preserved
which exhibit parts of resemblance to the Bible narratives
sufficient to
warrant the inference that both are derived from the same cycle
of
traditions." If, therefore, the cosmogonic and other legends
are
inspired, so must also the common original of these and
their
corresponding stories be inspired. The matter might be pursued
through
the patriarchal age to the eve of the Exodus, showing that, here
also,
the mythical element is dominant; the existence of Abraham
himself
dissolving in the solution of the "higher criticism." As to
the
Pentateuch, the larger number of scholars place its composition, in
the
form in which we have it--older documents being blended
therein--about
the sixth and fifth centuries B. C.
Jesus spoke of the
earth as if it were flat, and the most important
among the heavenly bodies.
Knowledge of the active speculations that
went on centuries before his time
on the Ionian seaboard; prevision of
what secrets men would wrest from the
stars centuries hence--of neither
did he dream. That Homer and Virgil had
sung; that Plato had discoursed;
that Buddha had founded a religion with
which his, when Western activity
met Eastern passivity, would vainly compete;
these, and aught else that
had moved the great world without, were unknown to
the Syrian teacher.
Jesus believed in an arch-fiend, who was permitted by
Omnipotence, the
Omnipotence against which he had rebelled, to set loose
countless
numbers of evil spirits to work havoc on men and animals. Jesus
also
believed in a hell of eternal torment for the wicked; and in a heaven
of
unending happiness for the good. There is no surer index of
the
intellectual stage of any people than the degree in which belief in
the
supernatural, and, especially in the activity of supernatural
agents,
rules their lives. The lower we descend, the more detailed and
familiar
is the assumption of knowledge of the behaviour of these agents, and
of
the nature of the places they come from or haunt. Of this,
mediæval
speculations on demonology, and modern books of anthropology, supply
any
number of examples. Here we are concerned only with the momentous
fact
that belief in demoniacal activity pervades the New Testament
from
beginning to end, and, therefore, gave the warrant for the
unspeakable
cruelties with which that belief has stained the annals of
Christendom.
John Wesley was consistent when he wrote that "Giving up the
belief in
witchcraft was in effect giving up the Bible," and it may be added
that
giving up belief in the devil is giving up belief in the
atonement--the
central doctrine of the Christian faith. To this the early
Christians
would have subscribed: so, also, would the great Augustine, who
said
that "nothing is to be accepted save on the authority of
Scripture,
since greater is that authority than all the powers of the human
mind";
so would all who have followed him in ancient confessions of the
faith.
It is only the amorphous form of that faith which, lingering on,
anæmic
and boneless, denies by evasion.
But they who abandon belief in
maleficent demons and in witches; as
also, for this follows, in beneficent
agents, as angels; land themselves
in serious dilemma. For to this are such
committed. If Jesus, who came
"that he might destroy the works of the devil,"
and who is reported,
among other proofs of his divine ministry, to have cast
out demons from
"possessed" human beings, and, in one case, to have permitted
a crowd of
the infernal agents to enter into a herd of swine; if he verily
believed
that he actually did these things; and if it be true that the belief
is
a superstition limited to the ignorant or barbaric mind; _what value
can
be attached to any statement that Jesus is reported to have made about
a
spiritual world_?
Here then (1) in the attitude of the early
Christians toward all mundane
affairs as of no moment compared with those
affecting their souls'
salvation; (2) in the assumed authority of Scripture
as a full
revelation of both earthly and heavenly things; and (3) in the
assumed
infallibility of the words of Jesus reported therein; we have
three
factors which suffice to explain why the great movement toward
discovery
of the orderly relations of phenomena was arrested for centuries,
and
theories of capricious government of the universe sheltered and
upheld.
While, as has been said, the unity of the Empire secured
Christianity
its fortunate start; the multiform elements of which the Empire
was made
up--philosophic and pagan--being gradually absorbed by
Christianity,
secured it acceptance among the different subject-peoples. The
break up
of the Empire secured its supremacy.
The absorption of
foreign ideas and practices by Christianity, largely
through the influence of
Hellenic Jews, was an added cause of arrest of
inquiry. The adoption of pagan
rites and customs, resting, as these
did, on a bedrock of barbarism, dragged
it to a lower level. The
intrusion of philosophic subtleties led to terms
being mistaken for
explanations: as Gibbon says, "the pride of the professors
and of their
disciples was satisfied with the science of words." The inchoate
and
mobile character of Christianity during the first three centuries
gave
both influences--pagan and philosophic--their opportunity. For
long
years the converts scattered throughout the Empire were linked
together,
in more or less regular federation, by the acknowledgment of Christ
as
Lord, and by the expectation of his second coming. There was no
official
priesthood, only overseers--"episkopoi"--for social purposes, who
made
no claims to apostolic succession; no formulated set of doctrines;
no
Apostles' Creed; no dogmas of baptismal regeneration or of the
real
presence; no worship or apotheosis of Mary as the Mother of God;
no
worship of saints or relics.
_On the philosophic side_, it was the
Greek influence in the person of
the more educated converts that shaped the
dogmas of the Church and
sought to blend them with the occult and mysterious
elements in Oriental
systems, of which modern "Theosophy" is the tenuous
parody. That old
Greek habit of asking questions, of seeking to reach the
reason of
things, which, as has been seen, gave the great impulse to
scientific
inquiry, was as active as ever. Appeals to the Old Testament
touched not
the Greek as they did the Jewish Christian, and the Canon of the
New
Testament was as yet unsettled. Strange as it may seem in view of
the
assumed divine origin of the Gospels and Epistles, human judgment
took
upon itself to decide which of them were, and which were not,
an
integral part of supernatural revelation. The ultimate verdict, so
far
as the Western Church was concerned, was delivered by the Council
of
Carthage in the early part of the fifth century. There arose a school
of
Apologists, founders of theology, who, to quote Gibbon, "equipped
the
Christian religion for the conquest of the Roman world by changing
it
into a philosophy, attested by Revelation. They mingled together
the
metaphysics of Platonism, the doctrine of the Logos, which came from
the
Stoics, morality partly Platonic, partly Stoic, methods of argument
and
interpretation learnt from Philo, with the pregnant maxims of Jesus
and
the religious language of the Christian congregations." Thus the
road
was opened for additions to dogmatic theology, doctrines of the
Trinity,
of the Virgin Birth, and whatever else could be inferentially
extracted
from the Scriptures, and blended with foreign ideas. The
growing
complexity of creed called for interpretation of it, and this
obviously
fell to the overseers or bishops, chosen for their special gifts of
"the
grace of the truth." These met, as occasion required, to
discuss
subjects affecting the faith and discipline of the several groups.
Among
such, precedence, as a matter of course, would be accorded to
the
overseer of the most important Christian society in the Empire;
and
hence the prominence and authority, from an early period, of the
bishop
of Rome. In the simple and business-like act of his election as
chairman
of the gatherings lay the germ of the audacious and preposterous
claims
of the Papacy.
_On the pagan side_, the course of development
is not so easily traced.
To determine when and where this or that custom or
rite arose is now
impossible; indeed, we may say, without exaggeration, that
it never
arose at all, because the conditions for its adoption were
present
throughout in human tendencies. The first Christian disciples were
Jews:
and the ritual which they followed was the direct outcome of
ideas
common to all barbaric religions, so that certain of the pagan rites
and
ceremonies with which they came in contact in all parts of the
Empire
fitted in with custom, tradition, and desire. And this applies,
with
stronger force, to the converts scattered from Edessa, east of
the
Euphrates, to the Empire's westernmost limits in Britain. Moreover,
we
know that a policy of adaptation and conciliation wisely governed
the
ruling minds of the Church, in whom, stripped of all the verbiage
about
them as semi-inspired successors of the apostles, there was
deep-seated
superstition. Paganism might, in its turn, be suppressed by
Imperial
edict, but it had too much in common with the later forms
of
Christianity not to survive in fact, however changed in name.
It
may be taken as a truism that in the ceremonies of the higher
religions there
are no inventions, only survivals. This fact sent
thinkers like Hobbes, and
dealers in literary antiquities of the type of
Burton, Bishop Newton, and,
notablest of all, Conyers Middleton, on the
search after parallels, which
have received astonishing confirmation in
our day. Burton sees the mimicry of
the "arch-deceiver in the strange
sacraments, the priests, and the
sacrifices," as the Romanist
missionaries to Tibet saw the same diabolical
parody of their rites in
Buddhist temples. But Hobbes, with the sagacity
which might be expected
of him, recognises the continuity of ideas: "_mutato
nomine tantum_;
Venus and Cupid (Hobbes might have added Isis and Horus)
appearing as
'the Virgin Mary and her Sonne,' and the Αποθέωσις of the
Heathen
surviving in the Canonization of Saints. The carrying of the Popes
'by
Switzers under a Canopie' is a 'Relique of the Divine Honours given
to
Cæsar'; the carriage of Images in _Procession_ 'a Relique of the
Greeks
and Romans.' ... 'The Heathen had also their _Aqua Lustralis_, that
is
to say, _Holy Water_. The Church of Rome imitates them also in
their
_Holy Dayes_. They had their _Bacchanalia_, and we have our
_Wakes_
answering to them; They their _Saturnalia_, and we our Carnevalls
and
Shrove-tuesdays liberty of Servants; They their Procession of
Priapus,
we our fetching-in, erection, and dancing about _May-Poles_; and
Dancing
is one kind of worship; They had their Procession called
_Ambarvalia_,
and we our Procession about the Fields in the _Rogation
week_.'"
Middleton examined the matter on the spot, and in his celebrated
Letter
from Rome gives numerous examples of "an exact CONFORMITY between
POPERY
and PAGANISM." Since few read his book now-a-days, some of these may
be
cited, because their presence goes far to explain why the
conglomerate
religion which Christianity had become was proof against ideas
spurned
alike by pagans and ecclesiastics. Visiting the place for
classical
study, and "not to notice the fopperies and ridiculous ceremonies
of the
present Religion," Middleton soon found himself "still in old
Heathen
Rome," with its rituals of primitive Paganism, as if handed down by
an
uninterrupted succession from the priests of old to the priests of
new
Rome. The "smoak of the incense" in the churches transports him to
the
temple of the Paphian Venus described by Virgil (Æneid, I, 420);
the
surpliced boy waiting on the priest with the thurible reminds him
of
sculptures on ancient bas-reliefs representing heathen sacrifice, with
a
white-clad attendant on a priest holding a little chest or box in
his
hand. The use of holy water suggests numerous parallels. At the
entrance
to Pagan temples stood vases of holy liquid, a mixture of salt
and
common water; and, on bas-reliefs, the aspergillum or brush for
the
ceremony of sprinkling is carved. In the annual festival of
the
benediction of horses, when the animals were sent to the convent of
St.
Anthony to be sprinkled (Middleton had his own horses thus blest
"for
about eighteenpence of our money") there is the survival of a
ceremony
in the Circensian games. In the lamps and wax candles before the
shrines
of the Madonna and Saints he is reminded of a passage in Herodotus as
to
the use of lights in the Egyptian temples, while we know that lamps
to
the Madonna took the place of those before the images of the
Lares,
whose chapels stood at the corners of the streets. The Synod of
Elviri
(305 A. D.) forbade the lighting of wax candles during the day
in
cemeteries lest the spirits of the saints should be disquieted, but
the
custom was too deeply rooted to be abolished. As for votive offerings,
Middleton truly says that "no one _custom of antiquity_ is so frequently
mentioned by all their writers" ... " |
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