M. Renan, ‘ was prevalent throughout the educated class. The

very statesman who most ostentatiously upheld the public wor- ship of the empire made very amusing epigrams at its expense.’ What was the moral and social condition of Roman Paganism 4 Modern unbelief complains that St. Paul has characterized the social morality of the Pagan world in terms of undue severity 9. Yet St. Paul does not exceed the specific charges of Tacitus, of Suetonius, of Juvenal, of Seneca, that is to say, of writers who, at least, had no theological interest in misrepresenting or exagge- rating the facts which they deplore. When Tacitus summarizes the moral condition of Paganism by his exhaustive phrase ‘corrumpere et corrumpt, he more than covers the sorrowing invective of the Apostle. Indeed our modern historian of the Apostolic age, who sees nothing miraculous in the success of the Gospel4, has himself characterized the moral condition of the Pagan world in terms yet more severe than those of the Apostle whom he condemns. According to M. Renan, Rome under the Ceesars ‘became a school of immorality and cruelty™; it was a ‘very hells;’ ‘the reproach that Rome had poisoned the world at large, the Apocalyptic comparison of Pagan Rome to a prosti-
= Renan, Les Apétres, pp. 340, 341.
° Ibid. p. 309, note 1: ‘L’opinion beaucoup trop sévére de Saint Paul (Rom. i. 24 et suiv.) s’explique de la méme manitre. Saint Paul ne connais- sait pas la haute société Romaine. Ce sont 1a, d’ailleurs, de ces invectives comme en font les prédicateurs, et qu’il ne faut jamais prendre ἃ la lettre.’- Do the Satires of Juvenal lead us to suppose that if St. Paul had ‘known the high society of Rome,’ he would have used a less emphatic language P And is it a rule with preachers, whether Apostolic or post-Apostolic, not to mean what they say?
P Juvenal, Sat. i. 87, ii. 37, iii. 62, vi. 293. Seneca, Epist. xcvii.; De Beuefic. i. 9, iii. 16. Tacitus, Hist. i. 2; Germ. xix. See other quotations in Weistein, Nov. Test. in loc. It may be that Tacitus, in his affection for the old régime of the republic, was tempted to exaggerate the sins of the empire, and that Juvenal dwelt upon the vices of the capital with somewhat of the narrow prejudice of provincialism. Still, after allowing for this, there a εἰ groundwork of fact in these representations which amply justifies
t. Paul.
4 Renan, Les Apétres, p. 366: ‘Tel était le monde que les missionaires chrétiens entreprirent de convertir. On doit voir maintenant, ce me semble, qu une telle entreprise ne fut pas une folie, et que sa réussite ne fut pas un miracle,’
t Ibid. p. 305.
§ Ibid. p. 310: ‘L’esprit de vertige et de cruauté débordait alors, et faisait de Rome un véritable enfer.? P. 317: ‘A Rome, il est vrai, tous les vices 8’affichaient avec un cynisme révoltant ; Jes spectacles surtout avaient intro- duit une affreuse corruption:’ This statement is not an exaggeration. See Dillinger, Heidenthum und Judenthum, bk. ix. pt. ii. § 3, 4, pp. yee
LECT.
contrasted with the teaching of the Gospel. 143
tute who had poured forth upon the earth the wine of her immoralities, was in many respects a just comparisont. Nor was the moral degradation of Paganism confined to the capital of the great empire. The provinces were scarcely purer than the capital. Each province poured its separate contribution of moral filth into the great store which the increasing centraliza- tion of the empire had accumulated in the main reservoir at Rome; each province in turn received its share of this recipro- cated corruption". In particular, the East, that very portion of the empire in which the Gospel took its rise, was the main source of the common infection’. Antioch was itself a centre of moral putrefaction¥. Egypt was one of the most corrupt countries in the world; and the same account might be given generally of those districts and cities of the empire in which the Church first made her way, of Greece, and Asia Minor, and Roman Africa, of Ephesus and Corinth, of Alexandria and Car- thage. ‘The middle of the first century of our era was, in point of fact, one of the worst epochs of ancient history *.’
But was such an epoch, such a world, such a ‘civilization’ as this calculated to ‘force success’ on an institution like ‘the kingdom of heaven,’ or on a doctrine such as that of the New Testament? If indeed Christianity had been an ‘idyll’ or ‘pastoral,’ the product of the simple peasant life and of the bright sky of Galilee, there is no reason why it should
Ὁ Les Apdétres, p. 325: ‘Le reproche d’avoir empoisonné la terre, l’assi- milation de Rome & une courtisane qui a versé au monde le vin de son im- moralité était juste ἃ beaucoup d’égards.’ Yet M. Renan is so little careful about contradicting himself that he elsewhere says, ‘Le monde, ἃ l’époque Romaine, accomplit un progrés de moralité et subit une décadence scienti- fique.’ (p. 326.) The nature of this progress seems to have been somewhat Epicurean: ‘Le monde s’assouplissait, perdait sa rigeur antique, acquérait de la mollesse, et de la sensibilité.’ (p. 318.)
ἃ Jbid. p. 326: ‘La province valait mieux que Rome, ou plutdt les élé- ments impurs qui de toutes parts s’amassaient & Rome, comme en un égottt, avaient formé Ἰὰ un foyer dinfection.’
Vv Ibid. p. 305: ‘Le mal venait surtout de l’Orient, de ces flatteurs de bas étage, de ces hommes infimes que l’ Egypte et la Syrie envoyaient & Rome.’ P. 306: ‘Les plus choquantes ignominies de l’empire, telles que l’apothéose de l’empereur, sa divinisation de son vivant, venaient de l’Orient, et surtout de Egypte, qui était alors un des pays les plus corrumpus de l’univers.’
w Thid. p. 218: ‘Lalégereté Syrienne, le charlatanisme Babylonien, toutes les impostures de l’ Asie, se confondant & cette limite des deux mondes avaient fait d’Antioche la capitale du mensonge, la sentine de toutes les infamies.’ P. 219: ‘L’avilissement des Ames y était effroyable. Le propre de ces foyers de putréfaction morale, c’est d’ amener toutes les races au méme niveau,’
x Ibid. p. 343. m1 |
144 The Spirit of Paganism and Fesus Crucified.
not have attracted a momentary interest in literary circles, although it certainly would have escaped from any more serious trial at the hands of statesmen than an unaffected indifference to its popularity. But what was the Gospel as it met the eye and fell upon the ear of Roman Paganism? ‘ We preach,’ said the Apostle, ‘Christ Crucified, to the Jews an offence, and to the Greeks a folly. ‘I determined not to know any- thing among you Corinthians, save Jesus Christ, and Him Crucified 2.’ Here was a truth linked inextricably with other truths equally ‘foolish’ in the apprehension of Pagan intellect, equally condemnatory of the moral degradation of Pagan life. In the preaching of the Apostles, Jesus Crucified confronted the intellectual cynicism, the social selfishness, and the sensualist degradation of the Pagan world. To its intellect He said, ‘I am the truth; He bade its proud self-confidence bow be- fore His intellectual Royalty. Τὸ its selfish, heartless society, careful only for bread and amusement, careless of the agonies which gave interest to the amphitheatre, He said, ‘A new commandment give I unto you, that ye love one another, as I have loved you».’ Disinterested love of slaves, of bar- barians, of political enemies, of social rivals, love of man as man, was to be a test of true discipleship. And to the sen- suality, so gross, and yet often so polished, which was the very law of individual Pagan life, He said, ‘If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me¢;’ ‘If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee; it is better for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell4.” Sensuality was to be dethroned, not by the negative action of a prudential abstinence from indulgence, but by the strong positive force of self-mortification. Was such a doctrine likely, of its own weight and without any assistance from on high, to win its way to acceptance ¢? Is it not certain that debased souls are so far from aspiring naturally towards that which is holy, elevated and pure, that
¥ 1 Cor. i. 23: ἡμεῖς δὲ κηρύσσομεν Χριστὸν ἐσταυρουμένον, ᾿Ιουδαίοις μὲν σκάνδαλον, “Ἕλλησι δὲ μωρίαν.
2 1 Cor. ii. 2: οὐ γὰρ ἔκρινα τοῦ εἰδέναι τι ἐν ὑμῖν, εἰ μὴ Ἰησοῦν Χριστὸν, καὶ τοῦτον éoravpwusvor. a St. John xiv. 6.
> Ibid. xiii. 34. © St. Matt. xvi. 24; St. Mark viii. 34.
ἃ St. Matt. xviii. 9; St. Mark ix. 47.
© M. Renan himself observes that ‘la dégradation des 4mes en Egypte y rendait rares, d’ailleurs, les aspirations qui ouvrirent partout (!) au christianisme de si faciles accts.” Les Apdtres, p. 284. [
LECT,
Attitude of Pagan society towards the Church. 145
they feel towards it only hatred and repulsion? Certainly Rome was unsatisfied with her old national idolatries; but if she turned her eyes towards the East, it was not to welcome the religion of Jesus, but the impure rites of Isis and Serapis, of Mithra and Astarte. The Gospel came to her unbidden, in obedience to no assignable attraction in Roman society, but simply in virtue of its own expansive, world-embracing force. Certainly Christianity answered to the moral wants of the world, as it really answers at this moment to the true moral wants of all human beings, however unbelieving or immoral they may be. The question is, whether the world so clearly recognised its real wants as forthwith to embrace Christianity. The Physician was there; but did the patient know the nature of his own malady sufficiently well not to view the presence of the Physician as an intrusion? Was it likely that the old Roman society, with its intellectual pride, its social heartlessness, and its unbounded personal self-indul- gence, should be enthusiastically in love with a religion which made intellectual submission, social unselfishness, and personal mortification, its very fundamental laws? ‘The history of the three first centuries is the answer to that question. The kingdom of God was no sooner set up in the Pagan world than it found itself surrounded by all that combines to make the progress of a doctrine or of a system impossible. The thinkers were opposed to it: they denounced it as a dream of folly f. The habits and passions of the people were opposed to it: it threatened somewhat rudely to interfere with them. There were venerable institutions, coming down from a distant antiquity, and gathering around them the stable and thoughtful elements of society : these were opposed to it, as to an audacious innovation, as well as from an instinctive perception that it might modify or destroy themselves. National feeling was opposed to it: it flattered no national self-love; it was to be the home of human kind; it was to embrace the world; and as yet the nation was the highest conception of associated life to which humanity had reached. Nay, religious feeling itself was opposed to it; for religious feeling had been enslaved by ancient falsehoods. There were worships, priesthoods, beliefs,
* Tac. Ann. xv. 44: ‘Repressa in presens exitiabilis superstitio rursus erumpebat.’ Suetonius, Claudius, xxv.; Nero, xvi.: ‘Christiani, genus hominum superstitionis nove ac malefice.’ Celsus apud Origenem, iii, 17. Celsus compared the Church’s worship of our Lord with the Egyptian worship of cats, crocodiles, &c. oy ee ee a 11} ᾿
146 TheChurch triumphsthrough persistent suffering.
in long-established possession; and they were not likely to yield without a struggle. Picture to yourselves the days when the temple of the Capitoline Jupiter was still thronged with worshippers, while often the Eucharist could only be celebrated in the depths of the Catacombs. It was a time when all the administrative power of the empire was steadily concentrated upon the extinction of the Name of Christ. What were then to a human eye the future prospects of the kingdom of God? It had no allies, like the sword of the Mahommedan, or like the congenial mysticism which welcomed the Buddhist, or like the politicians who strove to uphold the falling Paganism of Rome. It found no countenance even in the Stoic moral- ists&; they were indeed among its fiercest enemies. If, as