III. The work of Jesus Christ in the world is a patent fact,

and it is still in full progress before our eyes. The question remains, How are we to account for its success ἢ
1. If this question is asked with respect to the ascendancy of such a national religion as the popular Paganism of Greece, it is obvious to refer to the doctrine of the prehistoric mythus. The Greek religious creed was, at least in the main, a creation of the national imagination at a period when reflection and ex- perience could scarcely have existed. It was recommended to subsequent generations, not merely by the indefinable charm of poetry which was thrown around it, not merely by the antiquity which shrouded its actual origin, but by its accurate sympathy with the genius as with the degradations of the gifted race which had produced it. But of late years we have heard less of the attempt to apply the doctrine of the mythus to a series T well-
LECT.
Not parallel to the Success of false religions. 135
ascertained historical events, occurring in the mid-day light of history, and open to the hostile criticism of an entire people. The historical imagination, steadily applied to the problem, re- fuses to picture the unimaginable process by which such stupen- dous ‘myths’ as those of the Gospel could have been festooned around the simple history of a humble preacher of righteousness ®. The early Christian Church does not supply the intellectual agencies that could have been equal to any such task. As Rousseau has observed, the inventor of such a history would have been not less wonderful than its Subject®; and the utter reversal of the ordinary laws of a people’s mental development would have been itself a miracle. Nor was it to be anticipated that a religion which was, as the mythical school asserts, the ‘creation of the Jewish race,’ would have made itself a home, at the very beginning of its existence, among the Greek and the Roman peoples of the Western world. If however we are re- ferred to the upgrowth and spread of Buddhism, as to a pheno- menon which may rival and explain the triumph of Christianity, it may be sufficient to reply that the writers who insist upon this parallel are themselves eminently successful in analysing the purely natural causes of the success of Cakya-Mouni. They dwell among other points on the rare delicacy and fertility of the Aryan imaginationP, and on the absence of any strong counter-attraction to arrest the course of the new doctrine in Central and South-eastern Asia. Nor need we fear to admit, that, mingled with the darkest errors, Buddhism contained elements of truth so undeniably powerful as to appeal with great force to some of the noblest aspirations of the soul of man4, But Buddhism, vast as is the population which professes it, has not yet made its way into a second continent; wlule the religion of Jesus Christ is to be found in every quarter of the globe. As for the rapid and widespread growth of the religion of the False Prophet, it may be explained, partly by the practical
Ὁ Luthardt, Grundwahrheiten des Christenthums, p. 234.
ο The well-known words of the Emile are these: ‘Jamais des auteurs juifs n’eussent trouvé ce ton ni cette morale; et l’Evangile a des caracttres de vérité si grands, si frappants, si parfaitement inimitables, que l’inventeur en serait plus étonnant que le héros.’ .
P Cf. on this point the interesting Essay of M. Taine, Etudes Critiques,
pasats
4 Cf. Saint-Hilaire, Le Bouddha et sa Religion, pp.142-148. Yet M. St. Hilaire describes Buddhism as presenting ‘un spiritualisme sans Ame, une vertu sans devoir, une morale sans liberté, une charité sans amour, un aie sans nature et sans Dieu.’ Ib. p. 182. 111
136 Success of false religions and of Christianity.
genius of Mohammed, partly by the rare qualities of the Arab race. If it had not claimed to be a new revelation, Moham- medanism might have passed for a heresy adroitly constructed out of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures. Its doctrine re- specting Jesus Christ reaches the level of Socinianism'; and, as against Polytheism, its speculative force lay in its insistance upon the truth of the Divine Unity. A religion which consecrated sensual indulgence could bid high for an Asiatic popularity against the Church of Christ; and Mohammed delivered the scymetar, as the instrument of his apostolate, into the hands of a people whose earlier poetry shews it to have been gifted with intellectual fire and strength of purpose of the highest order. But it has not yet been asserted that the Church fought her way, sword in hand, to the throne of Constantine ; nor were the first Christians naturally calculated to impose their will forcibly upon the civilized world, had they ever desired to do so. Still less is a parallel to the work of Jesus Christ to be found in that of Confucius. Confucius indeed was not a warrior like Moham- med, nor a mystic like Cakya-Mouni; he appealed neither to superior knowledge nor to miraculous power. Confucius col- lected, codified, enforced, reiterated all that was most elevated in the moral traditions of China; he was himself deeply penetrated with the best ethical sentiments of Chinese antiquity’. His success was that of an earnest patriot who was also, as a patriot, an antiquarian moralist. But he succeeded only in China, nor could his work roll back that invasion of Buddhism which took place in the first century of the Christian era. Confucianism is more purely national than Buddhism and Mohamme- danism; and in this respect it contrasts more sharply with the world-wide presence of Christianity. Yet if Confucianism is unknown beyond the frontiers of China, it is equally true that neither Buddhism nor Mohammedanism have done more than spread themselves over territories contiguous to their original homes. Whereas, almost within the first century of her exist- ence, the Church had her missionaries in Spain on one hand, and, as it seems, in India on the other; and her Apostle pro- claimed that his Master’s cause was utterly independent of all distinctions of race and nationt, In our own day, Christian charity is freely spending its energies and its blood in efforts to
® See Koran, sura 3. The family of Imran. ed. Rodwell, pp. 428-9. ε Cf. Max Miiller, Chips from a German Workshop, vol. i. p. 308. * Col, iii, 11; Rom. i, 14,
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Gibbon's account of the success of Fesus Christ. 137
carry the work of Jesus Christ into regions where He has been so stoutly resisted by these ancient and highly organized forms of error. Yet in the streets of London or of Paris we do not hear of the labours of Moslem or Buddhist missionaries, instinct with any such sense of a duty and mission to all the world in the name of truth, as that which animates, at this very hour, those heroic pioneers of Christendom whom Europe has sent to Delhi or to Pekin ¥,
2. From the earliest ages of the Church, the rapid progress of Christianity in the face of apparently insurmountable diffi- culties, has attracted attention, on the score of its high evidential value ¥. The accomplished but unbelieving historian of the De- cline and Fall of the Roman Empire undertook to furnish the scepticism of the last century with a systematized and altogether natural account of the spread of Christianity ¥. The five ‘causes’ which he instances as sufficient to explain the work of Jesus Christ in the world are, the ‘zeal’ of the early Christians, the ‘doctrine of a future life,’ the ‘miraculous powers ascribed to the primitive Church,’ the ‘ pure and austere morals of the first Christians, and ‘the union and discipline of the Christian republic.’ But surely each of these causes points at once and irresistibly to a cause beyond itselfx. If the zeal of the first Christians was, as Gibbon will have it, a fanatical habit of mind inherited from Judaism, how came it not merely to survive, but to acquire a new intensity, when the narrow nationalism which provoked it in the Jew had been wholly renounced? What was it that made the first Christians so zealous amid surrounding lassitude, so holy amid encompassing pollution? Why should the doctrine of a life to come have had a totally different effect
® We are indeed told that ‘if we were to judge from the history of the last thousand years, it would appear to shew that the permanent area of Christianity is conterminous with that of Western civilization, and that its doctrines could find acceptance only among those who, by incorporation into the Greek and Latin races, have adopted their system of life and morals.” International Policy, p. 508. The Anglo-Positivist school how- ever is careful to explain that it altogether excludes Russia from any share in ‘Western civilization;’ Russia, it appears, is quite external to ‘the West.’ Ibid. pp. 14-17, 58, 95, &c.
Y St. Justin. Dialog. cum Tryph. 117, 121; St. Ireneus, adv. Her. i. c. 10, § 2; Tertull. adv. Judzos, vii; Apolog. 37; Orig. contr. Celsum, i. 26, ii. 79. Cf. Freppel, Examen Critique, p. 110.
w No reader of Gibbon will be misled by the sarcasm of the opening paragraphs of Decl. and Fall, c. xv. Would that Gibbon had really sup- posed himself to be describing only the ‘secondary causes’ of the progress of oe * Eclipse of Faith, p. 186. ul
138 Recent theory of the success of our Lord.
when proclaimed by the Apostles from any which it had had when taught by Socrates or by Plato, or by other thinkers of the Pagan world? How came it that a few peasants and tradesmen could erect a world-wide organization, sufficiently elastic to adapt itself to the genius of races the most various, sufficiently uniform to be everywhere visibly conservative of its unbroken identity? If the miracles of the early Church, or any one of them, were genuine, how can they avail to explain the natural- mess of the spread of Christianity? If they were all false, how extraordinary is this spectacle of a moral triumph, such as even Gibbon acknowledges that of Christianity to be, brought about by means of a vast and odious imposition! Gibbon’s argument would have been more conclusive if the ‘causes’ to which he points could themselves have been satisfactorily accounted for in a natural way. As it was, the historian of Lausanne did an in- direct service to Christendom, of that kind for which England has sometimes been indebted to the threatening preparations of a great military neighbour. Gibbon indicated very clearly the direction which would be taken by modern assailants of the faith ; but he is not singular in having strengthened the cause which he sought to ruin, by furnishing an indirect demonstration of the essentially supernatural character of the spread of the Gospel.
3. But you remind me that if the sceptical artillery of Gibbon is out of date, yet the ‘higher criticism’ of our day has a more delicate, and, as is presumed, a more effective method of stating the naturalistic explanation of the work of Jesus Christ in the world. Jesus Christ, you say, was born at a time when the world itself forced victory upon Him, or at least ensured for Him an easy triumphy. The wants and aspirations of a worn- out civilization, the dim but almost universal presentiment of a coming Restorer of mankind, the completed organization of a great world-empire, combined to do this. You urge that it is possible so to correspond to the moral and intellectual drift of a particular period, that nothing but a perverse stupidity can escape a success which is all but inevitable. You add that Jesus Christ ‘had this chance’ of appearing at a critical moment in
Υ Renan, Les Apétres, pp. 302, 303. M. Renan is of opinion that ‘la conversion du monde aux idées juives (!) et chrétiennes était inévitable ;’ his only astonishment is that ‘cette conversion se soit fait si lentement et si tard.’ On the other hand, the new faith is said to have made ‘de proche en proche d’étonnantes progrés’ (Ibid. p. 215); and, with reference to Antioch, ‘on s’étonne des progres accomplis en si peu de temps.’ Ibid. p. 2 iz
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Was our Lord’s triumph due to Fudaism? 139
the history of humanity; and that when the world was ripe for His religion, He and His Apostles had just adroitness enough not to be wholly unequal to the opportunity. The report of His teaching and of His Person was carried on the crest of one of those waves of strange mystic enthusiasm, which so often during the age of the Cesars rolled westward from Asia towards the capital of the world; and though the Founder of Christianity, it is true, had perished in the surf, His work, you hold, in the nature of things, could not but survive Him.
(2) In this representation, my brethren, there is a partial truth which I proceed to recognise. It is true that the world was weary and expectant; it is true that the political fabric of the great empire afforded to the Gospel the same facilities for self-extension as those which it offered to the religion of Osiris, or to the fable of Apollonius Tyaneus. But those favourable circumstances are only what we should look for at the hands of a Divine Providence, when the true religion was to be introduced into the world ; and they are altogether unequal to account for the success of Christianity. It is alleged that Christianity cor- responded to the dominant moral and mental tendencies? of the time so perfectly, that those tendencies secured its triumph. But is this accurate? Christianity was cradled in Judaism; but was the later Judaism so entirely in harmony with the temper and aim of Christianity ? Was the age of the Zealots, of Judas the Gaulonite, of Theudas, likely to welcome the spiritual empire of such a teacher as our Lord#? Were the moral dispo- sitions of the Jews, their longings for a political Messiah, their fierce legalism, their passionate jealousy for the prerogatives of their race, caleulated—I do not say to further the triumph of the Church, but—to enter even distantly into her distinctive spirit and doctrines? Did not the Synagogue persecute Jesus to death, when it had once discerned the real character of His teaching? It may be argued that the favourable dispositions in question which made the success of Christianity practically inevitable were to be found among the Hellenistic Jews». The Hellenistic Jews were less cramped by national prejudices, less strictly observant of the Mosaic ceremonies, more willing to welcome Gentile proselytes than was the case with the Jews of Palestine. Be it so. But the Hellenistic Jews were just as
5 Renan, Les Apdtres, c. 19, pp. 366, sqq. _ ® Freppel, Examen Critique, p. 114. b Renan, Les Apdtres, c. 6, p. 113. 11 |
140 Was Christ’s triumph due to Fewish sympathy ?
opposed as the Jews of Palestine to the capital truths of Chris- tianity. A crucified Messiah, for instance, was not a more wel- come doctrine in the synagogues of Corinth or of Thessalonica than in those of Jerusalem. Never was Judaism broader, more elastic, more sympathetic with external thought, more disposed to make concessions, than in Philo Judzus, the most representa- tive of Hellenistic Jews. Yet Philo insists as stoutly as any Palestinian Rabbi upon the perpetuity of the law of Moses. As long, he says, as the human race shall endure, men shall carry their offerings to the temple of Jerusalem¢. Indeed in the first age of Christianity the Jews, both Palestinian and Hellenistic, illustrate, unintentionally of course, but very remarkably, the supernatural law of the expansion of the Church. They perse- cute Christ in His members, and yet they submit to Him; they are foremost in enriching the Church with converts, after en- riching her with martyrs. Wherever the preachers of the Gospel appear, it is the Jews who are their fiercest persecutors4; the Jews rouse against them the passions of the Pagan mob, or appeal to the prejudice ot the Pagan magistrate®. Yet the synagogue is the mission-station from which the Church’s action originally radiates; the synagogue, as a rule, yields their first spiritual conquests to the soldiers of the Cross. In the Acts of _ the Apostles we remark on the one hand the hatred and opposi- tion with which the Jew met the advancing Gospel, on the other, the signal and rapid conquests of the Gospel among the ranks of the Jewish populationf, The former fact determines the true significance of the latter. Men do not persecute systems which answer to their real sympathies; St. Paul was not a Christian
© De Monarchié, lib. ii. § 3, ii. 224: ἐφ᾽ ὅσον γὰρ τὸ ἀνθρώπων γένος Sia μενεῖ, del καὶ ai πρόσοδοι τοῦ ἱεροῦ φυλαχθήσονται συνδιαινωνίζουσαι παντὶ τῷ κόσμῳ : quoted by Freppel.
4 How far St. Paul thought that Judaism contributed to the triumph of the Church might appear from 1 Thess. ii. 15, 16. Compare Acts xiii. 50, X1V.:5,.10),XVil, 5,13, XVill,, 12, χιπ, Ὁ KX11. 21,022.
9 Renan, Les Apétres, p. 143: ‘Ce qu’il importe, en tout cas, de remar- quer, c’est qu’’ l’époque ot nous sommes, les persécuteurs du Christianisme ne sont pas les Romains; ce sont les Juifs orthodoxes. . . C’était Rome, ainsi que nous l’avons déja& plusieurs fois remarqué, qui empéchait le Judaisme de se livrer pleinement ἃ ses instincts d’intolérance, et d’étouffer les développements libres qui se produisaient dans son sein. Toute dimi- nution de l’autorité juive était un bienfait pour la secte naissante.’ (p. 251.) See Martyr. St. Polyc. c. 13.
‘ Acts vi. 7. This one text disposes of M. Renan’s assertion as to the growth of the Church, that ‘les orthodoxes rigides s’y prétaient peu.’ Apétres, Ρ. 113. i
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Was Christ's triumph due to Pagan aspirations? 141
at heart, and without intending it, before his conversion. The Church triumphed in spite of the dominant tendencies and the fierce opposition of Judaism, both in Palestine and elsewhere ; she triumphed by the force of her inherent and Divine vitality. The process whereby the Gospel won its way among the Jewish people was typified in St. Paul’s experience; the passage from the traditions of the synagogue to the faith of Pentecost cost nothing less than a violent moral and intellectual wrench, such as could be achieved only by a supernatural force, interrupting the old stream of thought and feeling and introducing a new one.
(8) But if success was not forced upon the Christian Church by the dispositions and attitude of Judaism ; can it be said that Paganism supplies us with the true explanation of the triumph of the Gospel? What then were those intellectual currents, those moral ideals, those movements, those aspirations, discover- able in the Paganism of the age of the Cesars, which were in such effective alliance with the doctrine and morality of the New Testament ἢ What was the general temper of Pagan intellect, but a self-asserting, cynical scepticism? Pagan intellect speaks in orators like Cicero 8, publicly deriding the idea of rewards and punishments hereafter, and denying the intervention of a higher Power in the affairs of men}; or it speaks in statesmen like Cesar, proclaiming from his place in the Roman senate that the soul does not exist after deathi; or in historians like Tacitus, repudiating with self-confident disdain the idea of a providential government of the worldj; or in poets like Horace, making profession of the practical Atheism of the school of Epicurus, it is hard to say, whether in jest or in earnest*; or in men of science like Strabo! and Pliny™, maintaining that religion is a governmental device for keeping the passions of the lower orders under restraint, and that the soul’s immortality is a mere dream or nursery-story. ‘ Unbelief in the official religion,’ says
® Cicero however, in his speculative moods, was the ‘only Roman who undertook to rest a real individual existence of souls after death on philo- sophical grounds.’ Déllinger, Heidenthum und Judenthum, bk. viii. § 3.
h Cic. pro Cluentio, c. 61; De Nat. Deor. iii. 32; De Off. iii. 28; De Divin. ii, 17.
i Sallust. Catilin. 50-52.
J Tacitus, Ann. xvi. 33, vi. 22. Yet see Hist. i. 3, iv. 78.
* Hor. Sat. i. 5, 100, sq.; οἵ, Lucret. v. 83, vi. 57, 8q-; Milman, Hist, Christ. i. 41.
1 Geogr. i. c. 2; ef. Polyb. Hist. Gen, vi. 56,
τὰ Plin, vii. 55. mm |
142 Moral characteristics of the Pagan world