CHAPTER V.
RELIGION.
Theradical imperfection of paganism in the Periclean age consisted in the fact that all the sublime attributes of intellect but served to ennoble man in his present being. The strength of the moral affections, the perfection of beauty, the love of truth, and all that which for the Christian is to survive the grave and be immortally augmented when separate from earth, to them had little or no object beyond this life. To direct and enjoy the present was his chief concern, and in his view the universe was created only to this end. The god of day pursued his ceaseless round to cheer his waking toil, and the chaste queen of night watched over his repose. The universal Jove came down from Olympus to inspire him; Minerva protected him with her awful shield of wisdom; the graceful goddess of Love placed her shrine in his heart; and super-human beings, captivated with his superior charms, sought on earth a loveliness not to be found in heaven. Even the fates were subordinate to his welfare, and all existences centred round his destiny; so that, were he destroyed, all things would dissolve like an empty pageant, and heaven, earth, and hell, with all their denizens, would cease to be.
In the Augustan age the condition of paganism was still worse. When Rome rose, and steadily advanced to the attainment of universal empire, the religions of all the separate states subjugated were intimately interwoven with her political law, and that was concentrated in the metropolis, whither the religions, like all other spoils, were compelled to follow. Rent from their native soil, these religions, like so many automatons, were doubly senseless and impotent. The worship of Isis had a meaning in Egypt, it being a reverence for the powers of nature; in Rome it became an idolatry which signified only a sign and evidence of the victorious eagle ofthe city. The more beautiful and significant myths of Greece were equally perverted or stupidly ignored. Mythologies the most diverse and conflicting were brought together only to contend with and neutralize each other. There was but one power left that seemed real, the emperor. Temples were erected to his honor, oaths were taken in his name, sacrifices were offered before him, and his statues alone offered an asylum. There was no state religion, but power and religion were identical. Man sacrificing to man sank to the lowest degradation of spiritual vassalage. Inspiring sentiment and religious fervor were extinguished, leaving nothing more attractive or exalting on national shrines than the deification of power, the apotheosis of might. But when Rome had destroyed the various nationalities of the world, there was yet a susceptibility in the human heart which she could not annihilate—something through which men might hold communion with each other—a bond beyond the mere relation of a citizen to his state. The auspicious hour had come, in the midst of utter desolation, when humanity began deeply to feel this, and it was the first dawn of a glorious day. Christianity arose and called upon men as moral beings, to the humblest of whom its founder lowered himself. The apsis of the basilica contained an Augusteum, where the statues of the Cæsars were divinely worshiped; but these were to be exchanged for holier symbols and a higher truth.
God never abandons his dependent creatures, but affords them light according to their destinies here below. Even amidst the darkest idolatry true adoration was presented by Job in Arabia, Melchisedec in Syria, and the Queen of Sheba in Æthiopia or India. Orpheus, the Thracian, older than Homer, living more than sixteen centuries before Christ, taught many things to be admired respecting God, the word, and the creation of the world. Justin Martyr, in his first apology to the Roman senate, says, "Socrates was accused for the same crime as that of which we are accused, namely, of asserting that there is but one God." Irenæus says that Plato had sounder views of religion than the heretics of his own day whom he was refuting. The conformity of his doctrine to some features of the Hebrew scriptures is well known. Augustin says, that if Plato could return to the world, he would doubtless become a Christian, as most of the Platonicians of his time did.
But something more was needed than the aspirations of patriots, or the sacred suggestions of philosophers, and the world's greatest want was met in the divine lessons imparted through the elect people of God. Out of the Abrahamic tribe of faith Moses formed the Jewish nation. Natural stubbornness and the lingering superstitions contracted from the sacerdotal caste of Egypt, necessitated the ritual and ceremonial regulations by which they were first encompassed. Moreover, inspired prophets, called from the humblest ranks of the people, counteracted the hierarchical and regal tendencies of the more aristocratic classes, and by degrees elevated all to the conception and adoption of comparative republicanism in church and state. Disciplined by successive revelations, and decimated by death, they gradually became competent to enjoy unmixed truth and liberty governed by law. The rule of conscience which the father of the faithful had made the distinctive law of his particular household, Moses extended throughout the legislation of the first religious nation; it only remained, in due time, for the humanly realized God to divinize man by extending this celestial influence and control over all mankind. It was necessary that the gross fetichism of the East should be entirely eradicated from the race destined to plant true religion on earth; and so the wandering tribes sojourned in the wilderness until the generation, contaminated by actual contact and intercourse in Egypt, were all dead. Then prophets more enlightened and progressive arose, who occupied an intermediate position between the material dispensation of Moses and the pure spirituality of Christ. External forms are more and more discarded in the later portions of their writings; and their views of the old dispensation become increasingly independent of those who lived near its origin. In the Messianic system toward which they gladly advance, is evidently expected a clearer light and less cumbrous service. The Hebraic dispensation was provisional, and appointed to generate what was necessary for all men; but it was neither designed nor adapted to continue longer than to do a preparatory work, since it was circumscribed to a small portion of the human family, and was unfitted for extension throughout the world. It ended as soon as the ideas coined in the die prepared by Jehovah were thrown into the hands of Japhet, whose mission it was to transfer them into all historic languages, andgive them a free circulation co-extensive with the commerce of the globe.
The fountain of faith was enlarged in Shem simultaneously with the immense development of admiration in Japhet. Both were equally aside from Egypt, and its reminiscences of Ham. The Hebrews were an alphabetic people, and never used a hieroglyphic, but despised symbolism in all its forms. They were the depository of that pure and sublime monotheism, which has been the special glory of the Shemitic races from the earliest time to the present day. The Indo-Germanic races, to which the Persians were allied closely in antiquity, and of which the Greeks were the purest exponent, borrowed temple-worship from over the sea, like every other element of artistic decoration, and perfected it. So far as the Jews possessed art, they appropriated it from the banks of the Euphrates, perhaps, but never from the Nile. In their best days, and under the auspices of two mighty kings, father and son, they were incapable of erecting a suitable religious edifice without foreign aid. Had it not been for his fortunate alliance with Hiram of Tyre, it is probable that Solomon would never have seen executed the temple which so greatly enhanced his fame. That was of Tyrian art, fashioned after Phœnician types, and foretokened how, still further west, the splendor of Shem, and taste of Japhet, would yet more closely commingle, and be mutually benefitted in the joint works of faith and love.
While colonization bore the Pelasgic into Italy, and there transmuted the ancient Shemitic tongue by a mixture of the Etruscan, and other dialects of that central peninsula, into the Latin, another matchless source of improvement was laid up in ancient literature. The sepulchre of human hope seemed to grow dark, but a lamp burned therein, which was yet to kindle a bright flame on purer altars. Fugitives from the smoldering ruins of Grecian glory, transported their gods through the flames, to establish a new worship in more favored climes. In the cause of mankind, apparent defeat has ever been positive victory; and all its triumphs have achieved increased benefits for all. When the hour is darkest, and the air most chill, then expect the first dawn on the edge of a sky that shall pour increased light upon all nations; the first lifting of a trumpet that with louder peals shall break up the sleep of the great tomb of destiny.
The translation of the Scriptures into Greek was begun aboutB.C.285. The statement received in the time of Josephus was, that Ptolemy Philadelphus, desiring to possess a copy for his celebrated library at Alexandria, sent Aristeas and Andreas, two persons of rank, on a formal mission to Eleazer, the Jewish High Priest, for the purpose. It is perfectly natural that a rich and cultivated sovereign should have wished to possess, even as a literary curiosity, the book of the laws, history, and poetry of a nation, lying in his vicinity. But great numbers of Jews were within his own borders, and they must have constantly appealed to their law in their governmental transactions, which appeals could not be answered but by reference to an authority recognized by both parties. Hence, the Pentateuch alone was translated in the first instance; but the other books followed, at long intervals, and in other reigns. The important fact is, that the Septuagint was received as an authority nearly, if not quite, equal to the original, from the first, and could be read by the Jew in the synagogue, or the Christian in the church. Then note how striking was the epoch of this translation. It was exactly between the completion of the Jewish Canon by the prophecies of Malachi, and the long series of Jewish desolations which began with the Epiphanes. It was late enough to contain the entire body of old revelation vouchsafed to Shem, and sufficiently early to prepare the way for that more glorious unfolding of the divine purpose which it was reserved for the Japhetic race to execute.
Then followed the other appropriate preparatives for the coming of our Lord; the rebuilding of that temple which was thus to be more honored than by the Glory from heaven; the visions and predictions of those who looked for the great coming, day and night watching in the temple; the solemn and startling denunciations of the Baptist; the visible presence of theEternalin the flesh; His mission; His power over nature, the human heart, and the Evil Spirit; His death for human sin; His rising again for human justification; His visible ascent to the throne of Heaven; the overwhelming miracles by which fortitude, knowledge, faith, and the power of communicating them all, were inspired into the peasants of Galilee; form an unspeakable display of light and wisdom, an illustration of Providence, which, through all the clouds of time and things, still fixes the eye on that spot above, where theSun of the Spirit shall break forth at last, and the full aspect of the heavens be shown to man. Thus it was that the old religion put on a newer and more perfect form. The seed planted in the day of Abraham was at first shut up, but in the day of Judah began to grow, and shot majestically above the earth in the day of Christ. The primal faith, which long lay buried in weakness, was raised in power, and the mortal body of the patriarchal dispensation put on immortal glory.
The corresponding preparation, which was attained through secular power, is equally worthy of special regard. When Christianity was to be given to the world, the Roman empire had received that form of government which most fully combined enterprise with solidity; the daring energy of a Republic, with the comprehensive ambition of a monarchy. Like all the great leaders of mankind, the genius of the Cæsars might stand for the representative of the empire. The unequaled union of the bold, the sagacious, and the indomitable, rendered that wonderful series of instruments superlatively adapted to cast up a highway, and gather out the stones from the path of human progress. When the shadow of the Roman eagle stretched over all nations, and the mandate of the emperor touched the extreme points of civilization, the final use of martial force was subordinate to that divine religion which was destined to spread speedily from Caucasus to Mauritania, and from the rising to the setting sun. The mighty empire was not to perish as it fell, but to cast off its pagan wretchedness, and become invested with the unsullied robe, and starry diadem, of a loftier sovereignty. The Babylonish, Persian, Grecian, and Roman empires, which successively constituted civilization, formed the central channel of life to the earth; they were the spine, whence issued sensation and motion to the general frame, the meridian, to which all the lines of the chart of human progress must be referred. These four had exercised an unceasing influence on Judah, as invaders, or sovereigns, up to the time when retributive justice opened the way for the immediate incarnation of infinite Love. The capture of Jerusalem by Titus, was the beginning of the consummation. A false Messiah was proclaimed to a people already morally ruined, and the frenzied insurrection under Barchochebas,A.D.132, closed the existence of Judah. Hadrian completed the terrible work.He built a theatre with the stones of the Temple, dedicated a temple to Jupiter on the spot where the altar of God had stood, placed the image of a swine on the city gates, and thenceforth excluded the Jews from their beloved metropolis. At that moment the church chose their chief presbyter from the Gentiles, instead of the race of Abraham, as was the custom before, and thus the bridge between Judaism and Christianity was forever broken down.
But the Roman empire was now, in turn, to perish. One of the high ends for which it was permitted, had been fulfilled in the extirpation of Judah, and its own final use was the diffusion of a diviner system. The tokens of coming doom multiplied from the hour the arch of Titus was completed. Leviathan still dashed the political ocean into foam, but the ebb was inevitably come, and he must soon be laid dry upon the shore. Let us briefly review the facts.
Tradition assigns to Numa, a Sabine, the establishment of the laws and regulations of the Roman polity, both civil and religious; but in the absence of authentic records, it is difficult to say how far the statements respecting this regal law-giver are to be relied upon. The spirit of the Roman religion was originally quite different from that of the Grecian. The former was plastically flexible, the latter sacerdotally immutable. After the bloody proscriptions and civil wars of preceding centuries, Octavius, under the name of Augustus, appeared as the restorer of general peace, and was the first absolute monarch of the Roman world. His long and comparatively tranquil reign was a brilliant period of national history. Under the supremacy of the Augustan age, innumerable divinities, from Syria, Egypt, Arabia, Persia, Africa, Spain, Gaul, Germany, and Britain, received Roman forms and personifications; but in all instances, wherever traces of grandeur or beauty appeared, they attested that which had been pillaged and transferred from ancient Greece. The distinguishing character and leading principle of the Roman state, from the earliest to the latest period of its history, was political idolatry in its most frightful shape, the greatest aberration of paganism. The spoils of all nations were made to flow into the "Eternal City," and the known world wore her chains. The Orontes and the Ganges, the Nile and the Thames, were tributary to the Tiber. The invincible legions held every province in awe, gold and silver were as profuse as iron, and to be a Roman citizen was theambition of a life. The Capitol, from its rocky height looked serenely down on a thousand temples, sacrificial processions went daily forth, and numberless victims bled at the altars of Neptune and Mars. The Pontifex ascended with supreme dominion to the loftiest shrine; while beneath, the Pantheon, and the temple of Apollo of the Palatine, and of Diana of the Janiculum, and the glorious house of Victory, were redolent with Sabæan incense. All worldly wisdom, wealth, and art, waited on the mistress of the world. Popularly considered, the ancestral deities of Rome had invested her children with such glory, that they lived in their worship, throve by their favor, and as long as they served them they were invincible. The pagan religion had a powerful control over unreflecting devotees. Its temples, priests, mysteries, sacrifices, and magnificent processions, which called to their aid the varied attractions of sculpture, painting, and music, awakened a variety of entrancing emotions, and conspired to work the most effective delusion. Moreover, the more enlightened took especial pains to cherish the prejudice that, to the deep popular respect for the gods of the Republic, the unexampled success of the national arms was to be attributed. The piety of Romulus and of Numa was believed to have laid the foundations of their greatness. To use their own language, "It was by exercising religious discipline in the camp, and by fortifying the city with sacred rites, with vestal virgins, and the various degrees of a numerous priesthood, that they had stretched their dominion beyond the paths of the sun and the limits of the ocean." So strongly were the Romans attached to their religion, that Æmilius Paulus, in his consulship, ordered the temples of Isis and Serapis, gods not legally recognized, to be destroyed, and, observing the religious fear which checked the people, he himself seized an axe, and struck the first blow against the portals of the sacred edifice. On several occasions the senate exerted its power to prevent religious innovations. Augustus directed his state-policy and energy to the restoring of the ancient laws, and the maintenance of the primitive belief. The effort was, however, too late; the impossibility of success in such an endeavor lay in the fact that old things were passing away, and all was soon to become new. The emperor strove to effect the closest union of divine worship with the state; but when a Nero was clothed with the highest priestlydignity, when a Divus Tiberius, or a Divus Caligula received divine honors after death, surely redemption, rather than restoration, was what the world most required. Roman society was rapidly decaying through excessive vice and the outrageous inequality of conditions. The palaces of the rich were more like luxurious cities, while the middle class had totally disappeared, and the great mass of the population was composed of slaves. Immense speculations were made upon human beings. Atticus, the friend of Cicero, had slaves taught and trained, to sell at a higher price. Many citizens possessed from ten to twenty thousand vassals. They were decimated by famine, sufferings, and in gladiatorial combats; yet they formed about three-fourths of the whole population. Increasing fear was manifested in the murder of Pontius; in the cold-blooded destruction of all prisoners of distinction at the close of every triumph; in the ruin of Carthage; in the proscriptions and massacres of Marius and Sylla, and of the successive triumvirates; and in those of Tiberius, Nero, and their wretched successors. The greatness of Rome was exclusively heathen, until men mightier than the Cæsars trod her soil. The adherents of the old pagan creed might truly say, that when the altars of Victory ceased to smoke on the Capitol, she herself ceased to wait on the imperial eagles; the existence of Rome seemed bound up in the worship of the gods to whom the Tarquins had bowed, and under whose auspices Camillus and Scipio had marched forth to conquest. It is long since Æneas found Evander and Pallas celebrating on the supreme mount those services of religion for which Rome has always been noted, and through which she became so great. But the preparatory work which her sword has performed over dominions so immense, has come to an end; and before she can unfold the infinitely sublimer influence which is destined for her to employ, she has herself to bend before the Cross. All things of earth seemed about to perish. The antique civilization was drawing to a close, and creeds, manners, science, letters, sank to the lowest degradation, and chaos the most dismal was imminent.
It was then that the last of the prophets found an echo in the first of the Evangelists, and the new revelation began where the old ended. The words which Isaiah originally recorded, "Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight," and which announcedthe mission of all natural forces ruled by a divine purpose, were repeated by Malachi at the close of the Hebrew scriptures, and constituted the first command of the precursor of the true Messiah. These words were writtenB.C.420, at the time when philosophy was enlightening the Greeks with moral wisdom, and Rome was advancing toward the grandeur of her republican greatness; and were resounding in the accents of a living tongue when Darius and Alexander met at Arbela,B.C.331, and the East fell into the embrace of the West. While these and such like potsherds were contending with each other from first to last, the splendor and omnipotence of the Deity were revealed to the prophet Elias, as he journeyed forty days toward the holy mountain, and divinely illuminated his mortal eyes. There came a great and mighty wind, which made havoc of trees and rocks, but God was not in the wind. There came afterward a violent earthquake with fire, but he was in neither the earthquake nor in the fire. Then there arose the soft breath and gentle movement of tender air; in this was the immediate presence of God, and in awe and reverence the prophet veiled his face. Such was the origin and nature of Christianity, compared with the crash and cruelty of war it came to supersede. In the lifetime of Augustus, Christ was born; under Tiberius, the foundation of the Christian religion was laid; and during the reign of Nero the authentic record of that infinite mercy brightened the first fair page of Roman history.
Of all ancient literatures, the Roman was most insensible to past beauty, and future progress. The only voice among them, which chimed with the continuous prophets and evangelists of advancing humanity was the vague aspiration of Virgil, expressed in his Eclogue to Pollio. Therein, the blessings of peace are celebrated, and the prospects of a yet better age are foreshadowed. Notwithstanding the power of prejudice and imperialism, the better instincts of enlightened man in every age have anticipated a still fairer golden age, and prepared for its advent. When the great orient from on high rose over the wilderness of Roman life, the Gentiles, with prompt gratitude hailed from the East its long-desired beams. At that time earth afforded nothing better for the soul to feed upon than the mere dross of religion, which remains in the crucible of a godless reason, after the evaporation of all spirit and life. Somethingpositive and inspiring was needed in palpable manifestation, and the blessedness of Heaven came into the great middle path of humanity to roll on the ages in brightening splendors. Says Bunsen, "Judaism died of having given birth to Him who proclaimed the Spirit of the Law. Hellenism met Christianity by its innate consciousness of the incarnation, and then died; surviving only by eternal thought and imperishable art. Romanism taught young Christianity to regulate the spirit in its application to the concerns of human society; when, after it became powerful, it taught a religious corporation to resist a despotic and corrupt court, and to civilize barbarians."
Jesus came to do his work of salvation, not as a mighty one, nor as a High Priest, or even as a Jew; he does it simply as the "Son of Man," an inestimable blessing for all mankind. The material temple was therefore doomed to be destroyed, never to be rebuilt; for thenceforth the temple of God is man. This union, which the great Mediator declared to be the essence of true religion, will be carried on by that Spirit of God which was in Jesus, and which by his being One with the Father, made him the very mirror and eternal thought of divine love. As Jesus, in his progressive life and work glorified the Father, so believing humanity, in the progressiveness of the truth on earth will glorify God in heaven. As it was up to the point where universal history culminated in the advent of Christ, so doubtless will it continue to be. Nations may perish by the judgment of God, and new nations take their place; but the truth and righteousness of God will become increasingly manifest, until all divine purposes are realized, and the whole world is blessed.
The Romans were distinguished by their keen enjoyment of carnal pleasures, and their excess in every form of physical and mental indulgence. Never were a people mightier in strength or more lawless in action. From the time when Brutus first stained his name with the blood of assassination, to the darker period when Nero rioted in the most brutal vices, never were a people more colossal in moral guilt as well as in martial dominion. The profusion and luxury of a Roman life were commensurate with their capacity for gross excitement and the means of gratifying it, both of which were boundless. All that earth could furnish they commanded,but even this was insufficient to feed the flames of their lust, and, through grovelling debasement, they sank to the brink of extinction. The fitting symbol of their volcanic character and condition was Vesuvius when,B.C.73, Spartacus, a fugitive slave, at the head of a hoard of gladiators and fellow-vassals in revolt, encamped on the summit, where they were blockaded in the midst of impending flames. The fearful unsatisfied desire to soar into infinity common to every human breast, in them took no nobler form than that powerful instinct of patriotism which burned in a few heroes and patriots. Regulus, who, with eyes cast down, tore himself from his kindred, quitted Rome, and hurried to the country of his enemies;—Decius, who, devoting himself to the infernal gods, invoked their vengeance upon his head, and rushed into the arms of death, seemed rather demigods than men. But, compared with the glowing cheerfulness of Leonidas, they were barbarians, since the law they fulfilled was without love. Even those who died at Thermopylæ can scarcely be regarded to have been actuated by true patriotism; but in fulfilling a national vow as they fell, there was something sublimer manifested than Rome ever knew, when the Spartan leader dictated that lofty inscription on the mountain-monument, "Stranger, tell at Lacedæmon, that we died here in obedience to her sacred laws."
Having attained an almost boundless power over the earth, the Romans neglected the traditional deities of their forefathers, and set themselves up as gods. The Egyptians deified brutes; the Greeks, ideas; and the Romans, men. The religion of the latter, or bond which kept the tumultuous aggregation of conquered nations moving sympathetically round one centre, was glory and luxury; hence, the monuments which the Romans have handed down to us as the true chronicles of their times, are least of all religious, such as the Coliseum, the Baths, Theatres, and Triumphal Arches. At the darkest and most oppressive hour appeared Jesus, and a religion was preached which gave to monotheism, until then a national worship of the Hebrews, a cosmopolitic character. All men were invited to become Christians by the apostles of that great founder of this faith, who had abstained not only from touching upon politics in general, but from any question which does not directly belong to religion and morality, or is not nearly allied witheither. Nothing was permitted to be an obstacle in the way of his religion being received at once in all climes and by all classes of mankind. The spiritual value of the individual was immeasurably raised, and Jehovah was proclaimed to be the God of all men, high or low, distant or near, and before whom all are equal. A territory was made known beyond the state; and every man, slave or citizen, was shown to be a moral agent, bound under the highest law to fulfill his duties and receive his reward according to his deeds. Religion was no longer the apotheosis of might, but the discharge of duty and the worship of love.
By its own unaided wisdom, the ancient world could never comprehend the mystery of creation. The Mosaic writings were early rendered into Greek, and many critics, probably, before Longinus, felt and admired their sublimity; but they knew not what to make of these remarkable novelties, and the best of the Greeks and Romans never wrote as if they were at home in them. Nor could it well be otherwise, since their notions respecting the origin of man, as well as concerning the purpose of all knowledge, were so absurd. The grosser element of the human being, earth, occupied the chief consideration, while the spark of divinity in man was viewed as a theft from heaven, and the reward of successful knavery. Still less could they comprehend the mystery of redemption. Their consciousness with respect to God was thoroughly disorganized, and through thousands of years they oscillated between the lower and higher life in perpetual restlessness. They dwelt perpetually between atonement and thanksgiving, without one true and distinct comprehension of either. The smoke of sacrifice ascended from innumerable oblations perpetually renewed, but the effective sacrifice was never found, and the benighted worshiper still felt himself alienated from God. The heart of humanity bore an enigma which time and sense could never solve. Bunsen well states the facts as follows: "Christ put an end to this unhappy discord by the free and loving surrender of his own will to that of the Father; an act of life and death, in which Christ and the whole Christian Church throughout the world with Him, recognize the self-sacrifice of the Deity himself, and which philosophy (in other words, reason awakened to consciousness,) demands as an eternal act of God. Through this act of eternal love, the actof the Incarnate God, as many as believed in it, became recipients of the new spirit, of a new, divine, inward power. The inward consciousness of the eternal redeeming love of God (that is faith) imparted the capacity of feeling at one with God in spite of sin; for it gave men the power of severing sin, as an evil hostile element, from their real self, and therefore of freeing their life from that selfishness, which is the root of all evil in it. A free devotion to God and our brethren in thankful love now became possible—a devotion for God's sake, arising from a feeling of gratitude toward Him who first loved us. In the language of historical revelation this idea is thus expressed. The great atonement orsin-offeringof mankind was consummated by Christ, by means of his personal sacrifice: the greatthank-offeringof mankind became possible through Christ, by means of the Spirit."
Thus, cotemporaneously with Augustus transpired that central event of all history. The free personal sacrifice of Christ offered once for all, gloriously realizing all that of which the whole Levitical priesthood and sacrifice was nothing but a shadow and a type. Man had already tenanted the earth thousands of years, when that child was born whose mission was to produce effects so incalculably great that even yet probably men are but seeing the beginning of them. As soon as the way was sufficiently prepared, Christ came to abolish the law by fulfilling it. He rendered manifest those sacred forms which a bigoted understanding had as yet failed to understand. From the bosom of a contracted people, the Son of Man arose to proclaim the Universal Father—that God who, as the most intelligent of Christians declared to the Athenians, "hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth." For this sublime doctrine the moment had at length arrived; a race of men existed who were ready to receive its announcement and appreciate its worth. Says Eusebius, "Like a sunbeam it streamed over the face of the earth." Mankind had now received something better than Greek or Roman cultivation, which is nothing but the varnish of civilization. The doctrines of Christ subdue and save humanity by making authority a thing inviolable, by making obedience a thing holy, and by making self-renouncement and charity things divine. Under the force of law, a Curtius or a Codrus could die for the salvation of his country, anda Regulus for the superstition of his oath; but the Christian martyrs made the like sacrifice for conscience, and the baptism of their blood, falling under the Cross, was the primary seed of earth's richest harvest. In the hands of Providence new wine is never put into old bottles. The leaven of Christianity for a season seemed lost in the lump of human sin; nevertheless, it was doing its great work with resistless power. Its first progress was marked by blood and flame, only to be more widely seen and longer remembered. The ashes of meek heroes sowed the earth with Cadmean germs, powerful in growth and prolific of good. All adverse winds were let loose, but they only blew the fires of divine illumination into a loftier and wider splendor.
During the first three hundred years after the promulgation of Christianity, it was assailed by the learned, ridiculed by the sarcastic, opposed by the mighty, and on all sides persecuted and oppressed. Yet the church grew and prospered. The disciples of Christ had other lessons to learn and other duties to perform than the schools of human wisdom could inculcate, but this did not prevent the existence of many learned Christians. The great Origen was surpassed by none of his cotemporaries among the Greeks; and Minucius Felix, Tertullian, and Lactantius stood first in Latin ranks. It was a time when injured rights and insulted virtue demanded the most exalted oratory, and the early fathers were not wanting in its divinest use. Chrysostom, for example, warmed his century like a sun. In good time certain men of the most despised nation came up to the great city of power and pride. They were regarded as the scum and offscouring of the lowest ranks, and their religious rites were declared to be impious. Their God had been crucified under the Procurator of Judea, and his body had been stolen from a hidden grave. But the new doctrines continued to spread, although the magistrates resisted them, and more than ten times the Augusti raised their swords against the "execrable superstition." The altars of the great gods were deserted, their temples decayed, their images were dethroned, and in their stead, in their very place often, rose the edifices of those who adored the Nazarene, and scorned the ancient deities of the Quirites. Thenceforth Rome ceased to be invincible. The East was encroached upon, and the West fell under the flood of hostile barbarians. Thesceptre was removed to another city, and the huge universal empire was dissolved. Rome was humbled to the lowest degree, and bowed her neck to her captors.
The adaptation of the primitive apostles to their respective missions is worthy of especial attention. Peter was the rock of the church, representing its firmness to endure rather than its aggressive force. He was the teacher of order, as John was the disciple of love, and Paul the great champion of spiritual freedom and doctrinal faith. At Joppa was vouchsafed to Peter the vision that rebuked his Jewish prejudice, and which at Cæsarea prompted this key-holder of the heavenly kingdom before Cornelius the Italian, to unfold doors to an empire which soon threw Rome into the shade, and hung the fragrant amaranths of peace above the bloody trophies of war. It is probable that he was carried to the imperial city to suffer martyrdom; but that this apostle was teaching there when the Epistle to the Romans was written it is impossible to believe. To prove that fact, or even to admit that he was a teacher there after his brother apostle's writings were received, is to annihilate the assumption that Peter was the founder of the Roman church. He doubtless planted Christianity in oriental Babylon, but a mightier head and heart were employed to distribute the same inestimable treasure in the West. The spheres of the two great leaders were unlike, but in life and death their aims and rewards were one.
The zealous Pharisee who so long and learnedly sat at the feet of Gamaliel, and whose soul, so like a sea of glass mingled with fire, was thoroughly imbued with heavenly power on the plains of Damascus, was the predestined hero of liberty and truth to the progressive races. Asiatic by birth, but European in mental structure, his faculties were the best on earth for the work to which they were made subservient, when at Philippi his hand kindled the torch of salvation on the eastern edge of Europe, which thenceforth was to burn through all tempests, and with constantly increasing brightness, westward round the globe. Like the great law-giver of the old dispensation, this pioneer of the new was master of all the learning of the Egyptians, and when the completed accomplishments of Greece were superadded under the transforming power of divine grace, the mighty aggregate was thrown upon the greatdeep, and commerce became a grand instrument of civilization. With the pagan signal of Castor and Pollux floating at mast-head, and the wealth of Africa stowed in the hold, this son of Asia bore a message to central Europe which would soon make every kernel of that seed-wheat to spring up over a renovated hemisphere, and to shake like Lebanon. His bonds never restrained his heroic zeal, but continued preaching the Gospel, and converted many of every rank, even some who were "saints of Cæsar's household." When set at liberty, he sailed to Syria, rapidly passed through Asia Minor, and returned through Macedonia and Corinth to Rome. Britain may have witnessed his devotion, and Spain caught the inspiration of his heavenly zeal. But his chief anxiety was centred in that great fountain of influence, Rome, where he had founded a church containing a "vast multitude," according to the expression of Tacitus,A.D.65, and where, according to his own presentiment, he was martyred the same year.
The confessors who followed the apostles, like them won the approving testimony of conscience, and the profound esteem of all good men. Their blood was considered the seed of the church, which said concerning them: "To each victor is promised now the tree of life and exemption from the second death, now the hidden manna with the white stone, and an unknown name: now to be clothed in white, not to be blotted out of the book of life, and to be made a pillar in the temple of God, inscribed with the name of his God and Lord of the heavenly Jerusalem: and now to sit down with the Lord on his throne, once refused to the sons of Zebedee." About the beginning of the third century arose a discussion which throws light upon the spirit manifested by the martyr-victims of those days. Celsus, on the part of the heathen, reproached his opponents with the fortitude of Anaxarchus, who, when pounded in a mortar, exclaimed, "Pound the shell of Anaxarchus, himself you touch not." "What," he asks, "did your Deity say in his sufferings comparable to this?" Origen returned the appropriate answer, that a pious submission to God's will, or even a prayer, such as "if it be possible, let this cup pass from me," is more truly magnanimous than the affectation of insensibility, so lauded by stoical paganism. The martyr's surrender of his body to the executioner was esteemed an act of faith, a baptism unto Christ, and came to beregarded as a sacrament of certain efficacy, seeing that no subsequent fall could annul its power. "Be thou faithful unto death," was evermore whispered in the ear of the confessor, "and I will give thee a crown of life." Thus pacific and defenceless, the primitive church conquered the proud array of pagan and imperial power; and the doubting world, forced to admit a divine interposition in behalf of this new religion, beheld a testimony from heaven to its truth. Perhaps the strongest confidence in the resurrection, and the most energetic subscription to the declaration, "If our earthly house of this tabernacle be dissolved, we have a building of God," was expressed by Ignatius, who, knowing the danger often incurred in obtaining the remains of the martyrs, expressed a wish to be so entirely devoured by beasts, that no fragment of his body should be found.
The emperor Julian was ambitious of establishing the old polytheism on the ruins of Christianity; and, without doubt, Diocletian was resolved at all hazards to extirpate the new creed. But the cause of truth was strong, and its strength received imperial protection in the triumph of Constantine. Under his auspices, a new metropolis arose on the site of antique Byzantium, and soon left eclipsed the ancient capital of the world. Thus the old pagan traditions were annihilated, and itsprestige, so vivid and powerful in the imagination of all nations, was no more. The empire underwent a new division, and Constantine commenced a modification of the superseded institutions, which, under the law of continuous change, have lasted until our time. Fatal heresies arose during the fourth and fifth centuries, which caused much Christian activity to be wasted on purely theological subjects; still the church exercised the most pre-eminent influence, presenting the spectacle of a boundless and universal activity in intellectual labors, and in the progressive development, and advancement of civilization. Many, doubtless, like Celsus, were bold to say, "He must be void of understanding who can believe that Greeks and barbarians, in Asia, Europe, and Lybia, all nations to the ends of the earth, can unite in the reception of one and the same religious doctrine." But such happily was proved to be the fact. Such was the design of Jehovah, in that faith given to change all existing polities, Jewish as well as Gentile, into nations and states, governed by a law foundedupon justice and charity; and taking its highest inspirations from the love of God, as the common Father of mankind, declared, in the words of its great Founder, that "the field is the world."
The Roman bore little noblenesss of soul in life, and found corresponding gloom at its end. Brutus, whose patriotism was darkened by despair, and who died a suicide, exclaimed, "O, virtue! thou art but a name." In reviewing the moral condition of the ancients, we find something to admire, but much to condemn. All things that illustrate their religious views and customs, go not only to exemplify the apostolic declaration, "the world by wisdom knew not God," but equally attest the same writer's description of the vices common to the heathen world. Frivolity and mirth generally prevailed, but true happiness was unknown. A tone of sadness dwelt deepest in the popular heart, as appears not only in the choral odes of tragedy, but even in their comic writings; a sadness inseparable from the condition of gifted minds, conscious of present evils, ignorant of future bliss, and having no other resource than that insane philosophy, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." Gleams of divine Providence lay amid the gloomy abodes of polytheism; the great truth of future retribution was suggested in the poetic follies of Tartarus and Elysium. A few torn wreaths from the wreck of Paradise seem to have floated to the Italian shores, elegant to suggest, but impotent to save.
Many of the classic legends indicate a remote and universal consciousness of the natural and perpetual course of all civilizing powers. When Ulysses set sail from the isle of Circe, with tears he launched his dark vessel upon the sea, and, after sailing all day with a favorable wind, he arrived at sunset at the boundaries of the "deep flowing Oceanus," and the city of the Cimmerians, whose darkness is never dispelled. He there evokes the dead; then sails from outer ocean back into the sea, and when he returns to the Circean isle, whose site had been so clearly fixed in the West, he finds the gates of morning and of Aurora. In Læstrygonia, beyond the western horizon, were placed the herds of the sun, and the gardens of the Hesperides adjoined Eurythia, ruddy with the setting ray. There lived the aged Cronus, the three-bodied giant of the West, guarding his oxen, or the years sunk beneath the wave. But Hercules, in the character of Greek devotion, warring againstPhœnician superstition, slays the dog Orthos, and the gloomy herdsman Eurythion, and brings back the lost kine to Argos. Under the guidance of Minerva, or divine wisdom presiding over nature, he is enabled to wield his arms of light against the prince of darkness; but these labors have ever to be repeated, that the apples and the dog may be carefully restored by Minerva to their original and rightful places. These mythological fables are interesting, so far as they indicate the glimmerings of great events, but they also remind us of dark and desperate national characteristics. The Romans, especially, like the favorite deity, Bacchus, were terrible in war, but voluptuous and cruel in peace. Their demi-god, Hercules, who turned rivers from their courses, withdrew the dead from the world of shades, and struck terror into the powers of Orcus, was yet the slave of his appetites, and the dupe of his mistress. Mental imbecility was in him, as in his worshipers, the concomitant of extreme physical force. It was from no love of humanity that Cæsar led his warriors into Britain; and yet the circumstance of that conquest at exactly that time, affected the whole civilization of what is now earth's leading race. It is thus that every successive improvement rises, phœnix-like, from the ashes of the past.
In all ages, the most thoughtful have regarded religion as the unique foundation of duties, as, in turn, duties are the unique bond of society. Public conscience has never been obliterated, however much it has often been obscured. The legislators of antiquity were not in a condition well to understand the nature and relations of highest divinity, but such revelations as were in their possession they employed to consolidate the social edifice, by placing religion in the family, and in the state, as a part of the domestic constitution and general government. In a manner, they caused the laws of heaven to descend and become attached to all the events of human life, and every variety of civil compacts. They even submitted inanimate objects, as woods, waters, and the boundary-stones of their patrimonies, to celestial supervision; and, it would seem, strove to multiply their gods to an infinite extent, prompted by that instinctive consciousness which every where links the finite creature to his eternal Creator. "Let one attempt to build a city in the air," said Plutarch, "rather than expect to found and long preserve a state from which the gods are driven." Instructed by all precedingexperience, and universal tradition, ancient wisdom comprehended thoroughly that there was no national perpetuity save as religion contributed that divine force, foreign to the works of men, and indispensable to the creation of durable institutions. Aristotle recognized in this the common law, and Cicero declared it to be the source of all obligations, the base, support, and main regulator, of states constituted according to nature, and under the direction of supreme intelligence. Plato taught that in every Republic, the first endeavor should be to establish true religion, and to place the welfare of all youth under executive protection. When this was least regarded at Rome, as under the first Cæsars, all the bonds of society were at once loosened, and the empire subsequently suffered complete dissolution under the blows of those barbaric nations who were sent of God to overthrow an atheistic people, and prepare the way for a diviner faith. It is a sad prudence which, to obtain a few minutes of false peace, would sacrifice the future of faith and the life of society.
Jesus Christ changed neither religion, nor laws, nor duties; but by developing and consummating the primitive law in his own person, and through his disciples, he elevated a religious society into a body politic, the first perfect commonwealth, wherein he designed that all families should ultimately become one family, governed by his own legislation alone, himself their only chief.