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STUDIES 
 
 IN 
 
 CHEISTIAN HISTOEY 
 
 E. MOERIS STEWAET 
 
 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS 
 
 EDINBURGH AND LONDON 
 
 MDCCCLXXXV 
 
PEEFACE. 
 
 The present volume is intended as a contribution 
 to the history of the development of Christianity, or, 
 assuming its supernatural origin, it endeavours to trace 
 wherein it was modified by the different influences with 
 which from time to time it came in contact. If 
 Christianity was not to remain a mere theory, but was 
 to become a living and acting influence among man- 
 kind, to such modifications it must inevitably submit. 
 Other religious have perished through adhering rigidly 
 to some exclusive formula or idea, in process of 
 time outgrown. Christianity has triumphed by in- 
 corporating whatever truth and goodness were to be 
 found in preceding systems. Some find the pure age 
 of Christianity only in its infancy, others foresee its 
 greatest triumph iji ages yet to come ; and in both views 
 there may be truth. Its highest development will 
 assuredly only manifest the power and promise which 
 have been in it from the beginning. For the full un- 
 folding of such a glorious work of Providence many 
 ages are required, and we may be certain that each 
 new phase through which Christianity passes wiU not 
 
VI PREFACE. 
 
 exhaust, but will cast some new light and meaning on 
 it. There is much truth in Dr ISTewman's comparison 
 of Christianity to a river, which by degrees gets rid of 
 its impurities and becomes clearer and fuller as it rolls 
 on. The present volume considers the Christian reli- 
 gion as manifesting itself successively in dogma, in 
 asceticism, as a civilising influence aiding in recon- 
 structing a new society upon the ruins of the Eoman 
 Empire, and finally in its collision with Moham- 
 medanism. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 I. THE PAGAN EMPIRE, 
 
 II. DOGMA, .... 
 
 III. PERSECDTION, 
 
 IV. DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMA, 
 V. ASCETICISM, 
 
 VI. THE CONVERTED EMPIEE, 
 VII. MOHAMMED A>; ISM, . 
 
 PAGE 
 1 
 
 25 
 . 42 
 
 55 
 . 73 
 . 97 
 . 119 
 
STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN HISTOET. 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 THE PAGAN EMPIRE. 
 
 In order to understand the working of the new influ- 
 ence Christianity, when it was first introduced into 
 society, we must take into account the elements with 
 wliich it had to deal, the composition of the society 
 which it was to permeate. It is evident that the effects 
 which any new force acting upon an organism will 
 exert depend very much upon the condition of that 
 organism. If it be a healthy one, it wUl be able to 
 assimilate the new influence to itself, nay, may receive 
 from it additional vitality and strength. If, however, 
 it be decaying beyond possibility of recovery, this new 
 influence will only hasten its decline. An old and 
 wasted frame cannot be reconstructed ; an old life can- 
 not be abruptly transported into surroundings altogether 
 different without giving way under the shock. If the 
 old Eoman society and government was founded on 
 certain ideas, an understood hierarchy of virtues sup- 
 posed to be essential to its wellbeing, this order could 
 
 A 
 
2 STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY. 
 
 not be supplanted and a new order introduced without 
 a violent shock to the whole existing order of things. 
 
 One who would give an exact picture of the civilised 
 world of Augustus's time, of its cities, its manners, its 
 amusements — who could make it live again in the pages 
 of history and render its modern equivalent — would at 
 the same time afford an explanation of its decay. The 
 first impression left on us by such a sketch would no 
 doubt be one of vast outward prosperity. Never had 
 life seemed more brilliant and more gay than in the first 
 century of our era. Never had the elements of dispeace 
 and confusion seemed more utterly banished. Never 
 had a civU. Government reached more that centralisa- 
 tion of power which seemed to guarantee its perpetuity. 
 The Eoman peace brooded over all the quarters of the 
 civilised world. The vast Eoman State, stretching out 
 its arms in all directions, was only the visible represen- 
 tation of the power of one man, who had absorbed all 
 lesser powers and magistracies in his own person — who, 
 through his ministers and agents, was present in every 
 part of its remote dominions, conscious of the minutest 
 actions, and of the slightest throb of life, powerful 
 ever to reward or punish. The only real unity indeed 
 existing in that immense dominion was expressed by 
 the Autocrat's absolute will, and by the supreme power 
 of the conquering people. All the subject-races re- 
 tained, no doubt, to some extent, their own individuality, 
 more so in the East than in the West. The picture of 
 the empire at this period is a varied and majestic one. 
 
 On the very outskirts of th'e Roman power one might 
 come on rich and populous cities. Seleucia, on the 
 Tigris, rebuilt and enlarged, occupied, after the capital, 
 the most important position in point of population ; 
 Antioch came next. It had lately been laid out by 
 
THE PAGAN EMPIRE. 3 
 
 Ajatiochus Nicator in magnificent style; its streets 
 arranged in rectangular form after the manner of 
 Grecian architecture, were splendid and imposing. It 
 comprised withia its walls four towns ; its suburb 
 Daphne was noted centuries afterwards for its splendour 
 and luxury. Situated on a beautiful and spacious plain, 
 about fifteen miles from the sea, and sheltered by lofty 
 mountains on the rear from severe storms, it enjoyed 
 a continued temperate breeze ; it was a great com- 
 mercial city, and a centre of exchange for the surround- 
 ing districts. It enjoyed in addition the distinction of 
 ' being the seat of the proconsular government of Syria ; 
 and often the Eoman legionaries, amidst its luxurious 
 retreats, became forgetful of the duties of their calling, 
 and relapsed from the sternness of their discipline. 
 Alexandria, a great emporium of trade, standing on the 
 boundaries of two continents, was fitted to distribute 
 the productions of both, and was inhabited by an unruly 
 crowd of Copts and Jews, living in fierce hostility to 
 one another, united only in dislike to the dominant 
 Greek. Corinth, restored to somewhat of its former 
 glories by the munificence of Julius Ceesar, was also 
 important commercially ; seated on its narrow isthmus, 
 it united the trade of the East and West which shrank 
 from a voyage round the stormy Cape of Malea. 
 Athens lived again in more than a mere reminiscence of 
 former splendours ; temple after temple had been rebuilt 
 or restored by the generosity of successive kings ; its 
 walls were fiUed with statues, its streets lined with 
 public buildings ; and if the unevenness of the ground 
 on which it stood prevented any approach to general 
 splendour of architecture ; if the mass of its inhabi- 
 tants dwelt in squalid cabins approached by tortuous 
 and narrow lanes, in point of climate, of situation, of 
 
4 STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY. 
 
 attractiveness, it was unsurpassed in the whole world. 
 Its university still brought together students from all 
 quarters of the world, especially from Eome. To have 
 studied within its walls was one of the requisites of a 
 polite education ; and if its lecture - rooms resounded 
 with the echoes of old controversies rather than with 
 any striking and original views ; if no new truth was 
 brought to light or invention published; if it lived 
 mostly on the glories of the past, still nothing could 
 deprive Athens of its charm, no degeneracy of the pres- 
 ent could rob it of its ancient prestige. It is probable 
 that some of the cities we have mentioned in outward 
 appearance surpassed Eome itself, yet it is with peculiar 
 feelings we regard the capital of the world. It is the 
 heart of all this vast system, the centre of its manifold 
 activities. Not architecturally imposing, if we consider 
 it before its rebuilding in Nero's time, the mass of its 
 population were huddled together in wretched dwellings 
 of wood or brick, rising storey upon storey, even to the 
 elevation of the adjoining hills, and enclosed by narrow 
 and uneven lanes. In those great blocks or insulm, 
 which might find a parallel in modern Paris or Edin- 
 burgh, lived the mass of the Eoman citizens — or rather 
 they offered them a retreat by night, for during day- 
 time the townsmen were to be found chiefly in the 
 Campus Martins, the theatre, or the baths. The 
 Eoman noble, again, dwelt in a stately mansion on the 
 heights, enclosed in gardens which filled up the interval 
 between the adjoining hills, and stretched in some cases 
 even beyond the walls of the city. Attached to these 
 elegant mansions, or clustered at some distance around 
 them, were the lowly dwellings of the numerous freed- 
 men or retainers of the great man. Yet changes and 
 improvements were ever altering the appearance of this 
 
THE PAGAN EMPIRE. 5 
 
 vast collection of human habitations. Great buildings 
 continually rising up took the place of the squalid 
 dwellings of the poor, who were ever huddled more 
 closely together in the unhealthy swamps of the 
 Suburra or Velabrum. The Forum, during the reigns 
 of successive Emperors, was cleared of its shops and 
 dwelling-houses to make room for spacious Temples and 
 Basilicas, and invested with a splendour worthy of the 
 official seat of the sovereign people. If we inquire as 
 to the outward condition of the population, we shall 
 find that if there was no wealth, there existed no great 
 want. There was enough to satisfy the necessities of a 
 careless and improvident people. Living much in the 
 open air, in a climate indisposing them to great exertion, 
 their needs were few ; the public dole of corn and of 
 money sufficed them. 
 
 N'ever at any former period of the Eoman State had 
 it been more completely guarded from internal com- 
 motion or from outward attack. Communication by 
 water and by land was safe and easy; by the energy 
 of Pompey the sea had been completely cleared of 
 pirates ; the empire was traversed by excellent roads, 
 whose milestones indicated everywhere the distance 
 from the capital, and seemed an invisible finger denot- 
 ing, even in the remotest regions, the presence of the 
 sovereign people. 
 
 And yet, though the outward aspect of things was 
 imposing and brilliant, decay was written on all this 
 vast structure. Decrepitude was already there — not of 
 age, but as of one who lived a too severe or dissipated 
 youth, and has prematurely exhausted his energies. 
 Something gross and material had ever been the pros- 
 perity of Eome; even at its best and palmiest days 
 it had been sustained by nothing much higher than 
 
6 STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY. 
 
 the rude military virtue of courage, and the endurance, 
 self-reliance, and devotion to a common interest which 
 are necessary to ensure success. And now in the mass 
 of the citizens these virtues were declining, and there 
 was no regenerating principle ready to take their place, 
 to inspire society with a new glow of heroism and patri- 
 otic zeal, to give it a new tenure of vigorous life. The 
 peace that prevailed was outward and deceitful. To 
 the watchful ear, amidst the still flow of the national 
 existence, there might be heard a murmur showing it 
 was approaching rapidly a fearful abyss. The cohesion 
 that held together the jarring elements of the vast 
 empire might at any moment be dissolved. It was 
 the peace of exhaustion, or of a volcano lulled into 
 a short repose, but only gaining time to burst into a 
 final and fearful overthrow. The peace of Eome during 
 the early emperors was that of the lake which has 
 gathered its waters from opposite , and distant sources, 
 and for a time they seem to rest in its calm depths ; but 
 it is only a seeming pause — ^they are hurrying on to 
 the noise and fury of the cataract. To a prescient mind, 
 even in Augustus's time, or to one who had thoughtfully 
 studied the history and signs of the past, it would not 
 have been difficult to foretell that a great revolution was 
 impending. All the elements of change and dissolution 
 were already at work, though not so manifest as a few 
 generations afterwards. 
 
 Look at the social aspects of the time. The small 
 Italian farmers, who had hitherto been the strength 
 and backbone of military Eome, who had preserved 
 later than any others its antique style of virtue, had 
 disappeared : their holdings had been sold or absorbed 
 in the possessions of great landlords, wrought by slaves 
 hired on lease, or in many cases suffered to fall out 
 
THE PAGAN EMPIEE. 7 
 
 of cultivation; and they themselves had been floated 
 into the idle and improvident population of the capital 
 and of the larger towns. In the neighbourhood of Eome 
 wheat and corn were no longer grown ; it was found 
 more profitable to use the land as gardens to rear fruit 
 and vegetables, by the sale of which large sums were 
 realised. The population of the city was dependent on 
 the supplies of wheat from Egypt, North Africa, Sar- 
 dinia ; and the gradual exhaustion of the soils of these 
 countries, and the evils connected- with forced labour, 
 were every year making this source of supply more 
 precarious. If we turn to the condition of the Roman 
 people, we find them thoughtless and improvident — a 
 source of real danger to the State. We find the Senate 
 — the ancient nobUity of Eome — clinging tenaciously to 
 the traditions of their class, priding themselves upon 
 their wealth and their descent, but shorn by the caprice 
 of successive emperors of real power and of the privileges 
 they once so lavishly enjoyed — shut out from the respon- 
 sibilities of a public career, and in too many cases be- 
 taking themselves instead to a life of luxury and excess. 
 During the bloodshed of the civil war their ranks had been 
 decimated, and their place was occupied by the sons of 
 wealthy speculators and contractors — a class who, under 
 the reign of Augustus, had come forward into place and 
 favour. These were the equites, or knights, who now 
 constituted a middle class in Eome. In them the Eonian 
 blood was less pure and unmixed. They were the wealthy 
 traders — the men who, under Government, had farmed 
 provinces, and had grown rich, often in consequence of 
 their exactions. Thirdly, came the freedmen, the eman- 
 cipated slaves and retainers of the Eoman noble — 
 a class often insolent in the consciousness of their 
 newly acquired privileges, often flatterers and sycophants 
 
8 STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY. 
 
 of the great ; yet possessed of a fair share of intelli- 
 gence and versatility, and by means of these qualities 
 winning their way to the imperial notice and favour, to 
 the exclusion of the nobility. 
 
 If now we ask what was the moral condition of this 
 society, the answer must be a very unfavourable one. 
 Society was profoundly corrupt at its root and through- 
 out all its departments. It was not merely corrupt in 
 some of its sections; but as a whole, though individuals 
 might here and there present brilliant exceptions, it was 
 disorganised. At no time has the moral standard of any 
 pagan society been high ; but here was a society rapidly 
 losing its old virtues of courage, constancy, love of coun- 
 try, without acquiring those suited to a new stage of 
 existence. The demoralisation of Eoman society has 
 been ascribed to three causes — the empire, slavery, and 
 gladiatorial shows. But is not this to confound cause 
 with effect ? These three great evils were merely the 
 outcome of the depravity of a society which had utterly 
 lost every standard of truth and rectitude. Lust, cruelty, 
 excess of all kinds in the highest quarters, reigned un- 
 checked ; and the moral contamination, descending from 
 the Palatine, speedily found its way to the low and 
 squalid dens of the multitude. The Gladiatorial games 
 were a perpetual school of cruelty. Masters had un- 
 limited power of torture and death over their slaves ; 
 and this power, notwithstanding the humane efforts of 
 some emperors to moderate it, seems to have been freely 
 exercised. The banquets of the great and wealthy were 
 scenes of lust, of excess, of cruelty, seasoned with the 
 most petty and childish amusements. Legitimate mar- 
 riage was denied to slaves ; their union was unrecognised 
 by law. In the excesses of wickedness women went to 
 such lengths, that men refused to go through the forms 
 
THE PAGAN EMPIRE. 9 
 
 of marriage with persons so abandoned ; and in vain did 
 Augustus pass laws with the view of encouraging legiti- 
 mate unions. Eoman matrons of the highest rank, in 
 order to escape the legal penalties against infidelity, and 
 to shake off the last remaining restraints of decency, in- 
 scribed their names in the lists of legalised vice. It has 
 sometimes been said that these pictures of the depravity 
 of Eoman society have been overdrawn ; but looking at 
 the unanimous consent of writers, serious and sarcastic 
 alike — of the grave historian Tacitus, and of the indig- 
 nant satirist Juvenal — it is impossible to exaggerate the 
 completeness of the corruption. 
 
 With this decay in morals coincided the decay and 
 extinction of positive religious belief. There probably 
 never was a time in which scepticism has reigned more 
 triumphant than in the century that preceded, or the 
 half century that followed, the beginning of the Chris- 
 tian era. The old national and local beliefs as a power 
 and influence had died out of men's minds ; the newer 
 forms of a universal world- embracing faith were yet 
 scarcely visible. The Eoman religion had never been 
 more than a local worship, an institution of their 
 national life, the accompaniment of their mUitary power, 
 the genius of the people expressed under a religious 
 form. It was not like the Egyptian rites and symbols, 
 a vast system of nature worship — or like the light 
 and graceful creations of Greek fancy, a system of 
 philosophy or poetry clothed in a religious garb ; it 
 was merely the frigid personification of certain virtues 
 deemed essential to the Eoman type of character. 
 Under these sanctions, invoking the aid of Jupiter, or 
 Juno, or Mars, or the lesser tutelary deities, making 
 vows to them, presenting offerings upon their shrine, 
 the Eoman legionaries had often marched to unexpected 
 
10 STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY. 
 
 spoils and victory. Under the patronage of these 
 powerful beings, the enterprises of his State had pros- 
 pered, but the real Goddess, whom every true Eoman 
 worshipped, was Eome herself. The religious cere- 
 monies were merely an ornament and supplement of 
 his national existence — a bribe to the gods to be pro- 
 pitious to the commonwealth. Eome was the only 
 object of his sincere devotion, the love of country was 
 the only principle that had power to kindle a religious 
 warmth in his cold heart ; but now, under the growth 
 of other influences, this love, too, was fading. The 
 Eoman citizen was ever more and more debarred from 
 any share in the management of his country's affairs ; 
 the government had passed into the hands of one man. 
 Luxury and vice were fast dissolving the public spirit ; 
 a crowd of diverse and strange nationalities were press- 
 ing into the bounds of the empire, were mixing with 
 the free Eoman, and acquiring gradually the rights of 
 his citizenship. Eome was no longer a conquering 
 queen sitting in the midst of her subject populations, 
 she was rather the centre and metropolis of a vast 
 heterogeneous dominion. The deities of the conquered 
 peoples had been annexed as well as the countries over 
 whom they presided — they had been received and en- 
 rolled in the Eoman Pantheon ; and this mixture of 
 conflicting creeds, this conciliation of jarring mytho- 
 logies, this comparative theology of the day, had added 
 immensely to the confusion of thought and scepticism 
 which prevailed. Eome, though she had conquered 
 Greece, had never borrowed much of its theology, which 
 was probably in genius and character too akin to her 
 own. But the venerable religions of the East, the 
 mysterious rites, the solemn initiations and new births, 
 had found favour and acceptance in the capital. Isis, 
 
THE PAGAN EMPIEE. 11 
 
 Jisculapms, Mithras, Serapis, had many votaries in the 
 fashionable circles of Eome. Among the ladies of rank 
 were their most enthusiastic and ardent worshippers. 
 A tide of Oriental customs and superstitions was borne 
 into the capital, probably it had its source at Alexan- 
 dria, where a vast discordant population of Eastern 
 nationalities dwelt together. Prom the same source, 
 also, it is possible Jewish rites and beliefs had been 
 introduced, and had also, among the female population 
 of the capital, a large following. 
 
 "We have attempted to draw a faint sketch of the 
 Eoman Empire at the time of its greatest outward 
 prosperity, in the first century of our era, and it must 
 be allowed the picture is a melancholy one. The out- 
 come of many centuries of progress, military success, 
 national consolidation, material wellbeing, was a scep- 
 ticism and a despondency unparalleled in history, dis- 
 solution of moral ties, decline of public spirit, and of 
 domestic virtues. It is a warning to those of our own 
 day who so confidently point to a steady growth of 
 materialism in science, in public manners, in individual 
 belief, as the symptom and agent of social wellbeing 
 and of national progress, that in the age when such 
 materialism had attained its most assured triumph, was 
 the time when society stood on the verge of utter ruin. 
 Not from any quarter of the heathen world came the 
 counter influence which was to save society in its need, 
 not from currupt Eome, not from Greece which had 
 outlived its glories, not from civilisation or philosophy 
 or material progress came the needed succour, but from 
 a quarter of the world which was singularly deficient 
 in all these respects. From the little country of Syria, 
 and the despised nation of the JeVs, came an influence 
 which, when the glories of Augustus and the virtues 
 
12 STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY. 
 
 ctf ancient Eome faded, was to take up the work of 
 civilisation and of regeneration, and carry it into higher 
 developments. Stoicism might rear a few fine char- 
 acters, men of strong will and unconquerable fidelity to 
 duty, but it was powerless to affect the mass of society. 
 The stern school of war might raise up along the 
 frontiers of the empire men of the old Eoman type — 
 patient, brave, loyal to their country and to the un- 
 grateful masters whom they served ; but these were only 
 brilHant exceptions to the general depravity — regener- 
 ation was to come from another source. 
 
 We have said that the society of the epoch was hope- 
 lessly corrupt, and if we look at the outward and 
 representative types of it, the statement is worthy of 
 acceptance. Court life, as seen in the early Emperors 
 and their favourites, was certainly altogether corrupt ; 
 official life, as represented by the rapacious Procon- 
 sul, the usurer and extortioner of subject provinces ; 
 aristocratic life, as represented by the degenerate noble 
 of the empire, were altogether corrupt. The rabble 
 of the great city — those who divided their existence 
 between the theatre, the Campus Martins, and the 
 baths, between mean partaking of the State bounty 
 and outcry against the State which fed them — was cer- 
 tainly corrupt. Still the same, or nearly the same thing, 
 might be said of other conditions of society far removed 
 from that of which we are speaking. In the pages of 
 History it is ever the evil which comes most prominently 
 to view, while the everyday toil, the quiet flow of life, 
 the intercourse of business or of friendship, the chari- 
 ties that bind together human life, pass unheeded and 
 unrecorded. We may be certain that even in the worst 
 days of the Eoman 'State there was that amount of 
 mutual trust and goodwill without which society could 
 
THE PAGAN EMPIRE. 13 
 
 not continue to exist, the duties of daily life were 
 discharged with sufficient fidelity among large portions 
 of people. There were stUl the charities of parent and 
 child, husband and wife, brother and sister, friend and 
 neighbour. There must have been a large amount of dis- 
 sent from the wickedness around ; a public opinion form- 
 ing silently in disapproval of these evils and a desire of 
 better things. It could have been no utterly hopeless 
 condition of society in which Christianity achieved so 
 signal and remarkable triumph. Divine providence did 
 not present its last crowning gift to mankind until it had 
 prepared a soil fit for receiving it. There must have 
 been not only the sinful, the weary, the burdened, who 
 welcomed this solace to their spiritual natures, but the 
 nobler sort, whose souls rebelled against the existing 
 order of things and anxiously sought for a better. Let 
 us try to consider how far those influences extended 
 which have been supposed to account completely for 
 the progress of the Gospel. An opinion had spread 
 throughout the world, shared by Jew and Gentile 
 alike, that one should come forth from the East who 
 should be master of the world. This opinion is re- 
 corded in terms so distinct, alike in the glowing verses 
 of Virgil and in the sober prose of the historian Tacitus, 
 that there can be no hesitation in admitting it. So 
 firm a hold had this presentiment obtained over the 
 minds of men, that Vespasian, who had fulfilled a term 
 of office as proconsul of Syria, was held to have fulfilled 
 it ; and to him a series of miracles and prodigies were 
 referred in some respects answering to those ascribed to 
 our Lord. So rapid were the means of communication, 
 so constant the intercourse maintained in those days 
 between all parts of the civilised world, that the Gospel, 
 not long after it was published in Judea, found its way 
 
14 STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY. 
 
 to Eome. St Paul, on his first visit to the city (a.d. 
 61), found a community of Christians already estab- 
 lished and separate from the Jews. If we may judge 
 from the names mentioned ia his salutations at the 
 close of his letter to the Eomans, the converts were 
 principally of Greek or Jewish origin, probably the. latter 
 constituted the majority of the Christian community; 
 they were Jews who had already renounced even a 
 nominal connection with Judaism, many of them freed- 
 men or retainers, whose dwellings were clustered beside 
 the spacious mansions of the emperor or nobles. They 
 had separated, it is probable, from the bulk of their 
 countrymen — from their narrowness, their turbulence, 
 their unspirituality, the political aspect they gave to 
 their religious beliefs, and their hopes of a Messiah. 
 They were perhaps, as regards moral tone, the best men 
 of the city — men in whom had long existed germs of 
 a higher life, and the hope of a regenerated society, 
 religious, but not fanatical, profoundly dissatisfied with 
 the existing state of things, yet not deluding themselves 
 with the hope of improvement from mere outward 
 change or political deliverance, brother-spirits to those 
 who in another city had waited for the coming Messiah 
 and found Him, not in a secular prince, but in one who 
 had sway over their hearts and lives. Their hopes, their 
 wishes, their particular views, they would, doubtless, be 
 willing to communicate to those around them as occasion 
 suggested, or they might find men willing to receive them. 
 The frightful persecution which, three years after the 
 arrival of St Paul, overtook them under Nero, if it deci- 
 mated their ranks, would not have the effect of quelling 
 their spirit or of making their hopes and longings less 
 keen ; on the contrary, it would bring their opinions and 
 their way of life more decidedly under the public view, 
 
THE PAGAN EMPIRE. 15 
 
 and win for them, if not converts, a number of interested 
 and sympathising friends. 
 
 Meanwhile the organisation of the infant Church was 
 steadily progressing ; it was being consolidated into that 
 form in which it would best be fitted to resist alike 
 the fiery ordeal of persecution and the temptations of 
 worldly ease and prosperity, which now for centuries 
 alternately would be its portion. The communities of 
 pagan worshippers had been a loose and disorganised 
 body, scarcely admitting of any corporate union. The 
 Christian Church was to present the spectacle of a com- 
 pact unity — knit around one head, built upon one founda- 
 tion, and extending its cares and its interests even to the 
 humblest and remotest of its members. The imposing 
 unity of the empire, with its prince at Rome, repre- 
 sented by his legates and deputies throughout all the 
 world, was to have its counterpart in the Christian 
 Church, with its graduated hierarchy and officers ex- 
 tending over all lands. It has been represented by one 
 school of writers that the Christian Church was at first 
 a pure democracy, there being only one class of officers, 
 or if several classes, that these were on a footing of 
 equality with one another, that a usurping hierarchy 
 gradually crept in destroying the beautiful parity of the 
 primitive believers. In the face of history and the 
 known facts of human nature it is difficult to credit 
 this. There are no traces in the New Testament of 
 such primitive equality. The different orders are already 
 there, though perhaps less defined and specialised than 
 afterwards.-^ If human nature then was what it is 
 nowadays, the presbyters of the early Church would 
 not easily have yielded to an unjust encroachment 
 and invasion of their rights, without some signs of 
 1 See note at end of this chapter. 
 
16 STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY. 
 
 struggle being left on record. The definite unity which 
 was afterwards to emerge had not yet distinctly ap- 
 peared, but it was there already in germ and outline. 
 Circumstances would vary in different churches, but the 
 course of development in each would be essentially the 
 same. The hand of Providence was guiding them to 
 that form of government which was the only one fitted 
 to accomplish the great mission of the Church, to gird 
 it with the strength and constancy which it needed un- 
 der the fires of persecution, to secure for it union and 
 perpetuity. An uncontested and seemingly authentic 
 succession of bishops, from the Apostolic times down- 
 wards, has been recorded for the leading cities and 
 churches of the empire, and we may not inconsiderately 
 set aside the universal testimony of Christian antiquity. 
 The Episcopal authority, if we do not admit our Lord's 
 commission, and primitive tradition pointing to its im- 
 mediate institution, may have originated in a manner 
 somewhat like the following. The Apostles were at 
 first the sole depositaries of authority, the governing 
 body in the several churches which they had founded ; 
 but as each apostle was in fact a missionary, an itinerant 
 teacher or evangelist, over a large range of territory, as 
 his communications with and visit to the churches he 
 had founded became fewer and more irregular, it was 
 found necessary in his absence to set apart the presby- 
 tery, the body of religious teachers, or some distinguished 
 member of them to act as his substitutes. Of the latter 
 we have an instance in the appointment of Titus as 
 bishop of Crete in the absence of the Apostle Paul. But 
 as the places of the apostles gradually became vacant 
 by old age, persecution, or death, it would be fitting 
 to associate with them in their office or name as their 
 successors some distinguished member of the Church 
 
THE PAGAN EMPIRE. 17 
 
 whom the general voice of the community agreed in 
 nominating for this dignity. The manner of nomi- 
 nation thus begun would continue, the fittest man by 
 assent of the Christian community being designated for 
 this office. In the days when the episcopate was a post 
 of special danger, the competition for it would naturally 
 not be great ; but the bravest champion of Christ would 
 be named, and the office would be one not so much of 
 power as of influence, not conferred in a formal manner 
 but on account of pre-eminent goodness, and its powers 
 and privileges would not be so clearly defined as after- 
 wards. "The principle of subordination," says Dean 
 Milman, " was inseparable from the humility of the 
 early converts. Eights are never clearly defined till 
 they are contested, nor is authority limited so long as 
 it rests on general reverence. When on the one side 
 aggression, and on the other jealousy and mistrust 
 begin, then it must be fenced by usage and defined by 
 law." But whatever may be our opinion as to the 
 origin and validity of the Episcopal office, there can 
 be no question that, iu the circumstances of the early 
 Church, it was the only system which, humanly speak- 
 ing, could have preserved itself under the perpetual and 
 fierce attacks to which it was exposed. The principle 
 of subordination and unity that actuated the whole 
 body, the one spirit pervading the head and the humblest 
 member alike, the ready obedience to the counsels and 
 commands of a recognised superior — these were the real 
 causes of the strength and compactness of the infant 
 Church, of its advance in spite of failure and discom- 
 fiture, of its triumph though the waves of persecution 
 beat thick and fast upon it, of the admiration which 
 it was able to extort even from its adversaries. As 
 wonderful success crowned the efforts of the Church, as 
 
 B 
 
18 STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY. 
 
 one point after another was gained from heathenism, as 
 the Eoman empire fell helplessly under its sway, the 
 enthusiasm of the believers was heightened and con- 
 firmed, a wonderful confidence and joy possessed them ; 
 they beheld the promises of the Lord visibly fulfilled, and 
 they had an assurance firmer than any outward evidence 
 could give that His mission and His gospel were divine. 
 Various natural causes have been assigned for the 
 success of Christianity. In a question so large, and 
 where so many different elements come into play, it is 
 difficult to assign to each cause its due importance. 
 We need not hesitate to allow that divine providence 
 launched the Gospel on a world prepared to receive it, 
 but we may easily exaggerate the value to be allotted to 
 each separate influence. Some of these in earlier times 
 and states of society would have wrought not favourably 
 for Christianity, but the reverse. It is said that the 
 softening and humanising influence of Greek manners 
 and refinement predisposed men to the reception of the 
 Gospel. But these had been introduced into Eome a 
 century and a half before the Christian era, and instead 
 of disposing the Eomans to a nobler and purer life, had 
 greatly corrupted them. It is said that the long peace 
 of the Antonines, the prosperity and even the luxury of 
 the empire, favoured the cause of Christ. But in them- 
 selves these influences were likely to deter men from 
 a pure and spiritual religion. It is alleged that the 
 advance of scepticism, the disintegration of old ideas, 
 was a powerful auxiliary to the spread of the Gospel. 
 But rejection of an old faith, and eager reception of a 
 new, do not always go hand in hand. In Japan, at 
 the present time, we are told there is rapid decay 
 of the old beliefs ; there is great eagerness to advance 
 the outward and material prosperity of the country, 
 
 o 
 
THE PAGAN EMPIRE. 19 
 
 but we do not hear of any marked disposition to receive 
 Christianity ; on the contrary, the popular attention is 
 turned away towards secular pursuits. We may then 
 allow their due weight to the causes assigned by Gibbon, 
 the imposing organisation of the Church, its alleged 
 miracles, its higher morality, its promises and threats of 
 a future life, and yet hold these to be only an imperfect 
 explanation of the success of Christianity. We may 
 admit with him that natural causes were at work in 
 the spread of Christianity, without admitting his im- 
 plied inference that Christianity is no more than the 
 product of natural causes. These were the mere in- 
 struments, prepared and arranged by God himself, for 
 the working out of His purposes. Some influence we 
 must allow to Prophecy— not only the fulfilling of the 
 prophecies of the Jewish Scriptures to the extent of 
 which men could estimate and measure, but also the 
 accomplishment of the vague expectations and wishes 
 of the heathen world. Something we must allow to 
 Miracles, not only an indispensable accompaniment to 
 every religious manifestation of those times — the bell 
 which summoned men to inquire into the claims of 
 the religion presented; but making every allowance 
 for their credulous disposition, their tendency to see 
 everywhere the wonderful and miraculous, there are 
 still a number of well-authenticated facts which cannot 
 be disposed of on the ground of imposture or invention. 
 Some of those are extraordinary coincidences midway 
 between the providential and the miraculous, suggest- 
 ing faith rather than compelling it ; others, again, are 
 plainly supernatural. Conceding to these causes their 
 due importance, there were certain powerful natural in- 
 fluences at work which assisted to procure the triumph 
 of Christianity in the Eoman Empire. 
 
20 STUDIES IN CHEISTIAN HISTORY. 
 
 There was a dreary political outlook; a blaiik and 
 utter despair had fallen upon men's minds. The 
 dark spectre of Barbarism had looked in upon them ; 
 its shadow had threatened to close upon the civil- 
 ised world. The miseries of family life, the failure 
 of other religious systems, the exposure of the shame- 
 less deceptions which attended them, were the means, 
 even in the most favoured centres of civilisation, of 
 drawing many disciples to the cause of Christianity. 
 These causes — active more or less in every stage 
 of the world's history — have never been so potent 
 and operative as in the declining days of the Eoman 
 power. 
 
 The spiritual instincts of men were powerfully 
 awakened. In the hearts of the religious heathen the 
 sense of sin, the agony of remorse, the crying out for 
 a fuller light than they had yet attained, the misery 
 of the ever-present struggle between the flesh and the 
 spirit, were tendencies which found expression in the 
 later and softened school of Stoicism. To the same 
 system, which furnished some of the noblest men in 
 the early stages of the empire — men who were as 
 the glimmerings of the dawn between the darkness 
 of heathenism and the full glories of Christianity — 
 we owe also the recognition of the tnith of all men's 
 equality before God in the common relation of sons 
 to a Father ; a prolific thought which, amalgamating 
 with and fortifying the improved expanding Eoman 
 jurisprudence, gradually opened a way to the obliter- 
 ation of all distinction between freeman and slave, 
 master and subject, Eoman and provincial, leading to 
 the recognition of the equal rights and privileges of 
 mankind as members of a civil society, and so, by- 
 natural consequence, as members and citizens of a 
 
THE PAGAN EMPIRE. 21 
 
 spiritual society reaching throughout all lands and to all 
 races, whose Founder and Euler is God. We are far 
 from saying that this thought was original in the 
 Stoical philosophy ; it was probably borrowed from the 
 Jewish or Christian writings, where the thought of the 
 Equality and the Brotherhood of all men, and of the 
 calling of all to the knowledge of God equally with 
 the Jew, is a familiar and a favourite one. If, how- 
 ever, both these lines of thought were independent, it 
 is interesting to see how they combine and coalesce to- 
 wards a common end. It is difficult to disentangle and 
 assign to each respective influence its proper place and 
 importance — the secular and the sacred react on each 
 other; the outward unity of the Empire may have 
 familiarised men's minds to the idea of the unity of 
 the Church. From a view of the combined influences 
 alone, we are able to gain an intelligent apprehen- 
 sion of the whole situation. Christianity, as embodied 
 in the gracious person of its Founder, satisfied all 
 wants ; it had an answer to the questions of the philo- 
 sopher ; it met the needs of the aspiring spirit ; it con- 
 descended to the humblest, to soothe the mourner and 
 the penitent, and, by the power of a divine indwelling 
 presence, to combat the spirit of lust, of covetousness, 
 of intemperance, with which the world was possessed. 
 Above all, it was in the holy lives of its disciples that 
 the Christian writers had their most powerful grounds 
 of appeal, and the heathen the most convincing proof 
 of the truth of the new religion. They might dispute 
 its credentials, they might cavil at its arguments, but 
 they could not deny the fact of a new and regenerating 
 agency powerfully displayed before them. They saw 
 that, unlike the proud and exclusive systems of their 
 philosophy, Christianity was able to reach the masses. 
 
22 STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN HISTOEY. 
 
 and strangely to influence them. They saw the Chris- 
 tian disciple glorying in his profession, and striving to 
 vindicate his position as a member of the Christian 
 Church, and to evince his gratitude for the benefits con- 
 ferred on him by a worthy and consistent life. They 
 beheld the licentious become chaste, the intemperate 
 sober, and the gladiator and the pander to vice re- 
 linquish their shameful but profitable callings ; they saw 
 the spirit of brotherly love that prevailed, the care of 
 the Christian community for the young, the aged, and 
 the feeble of its members ; they saw the care and sym- 
 pathy it extended to the poor, the infirm, the suffering, 
 even beyond its pale. They saw the Hospital arise, an 
 institution unknown before ; they saw the courage and 
 constancy of the Christian confessor even amidst suffer- 
 ings and death ; and as they beheld all this, expressed 
 and realised beforehand in the person of its Founder, so 
 loving and attractive, so divine and yet so human, they 
 were fain to own that here was a system unheard of 
 before, carrying with it its own credentials, that God 
 was with it of a truth. 
 
 Lastly, the Zeal of the Converts was one principal 
 means of promulgating the new faith, as it was one of 
 the clearest proofs of the sincerity of their profession. 
 The heathen worshipper and the philosopher having 
 no clear or deep-rooted conviction, being perhaps in- 
 credulous as to the attainment of truth, or selfish and 
 indifferent as to the possession of it, or thinking that 
 truth was the exclusive possession of a few, cared 
 not to communicate his opinions, was imbued with no 
 propagandist zeal. Every Christian, on the contrary, was 
 a missionary of the faith he professed. In the dif- 
 fusion of it nothing came amiss to him, — no sex, nor age, 
 nor condition was beyond the scope of his proselytising 
 
THE PAGAX EMPIRE. 23 
 
 activity. No occasion was too trivial, no place too 
 solemn or too mean to be passed over as the scene of 
 his activity. Alike on the Sabbath, in the house of 
 prayer, among devout Jews and proselytes, and on the 
 ordinary occasions of life, in a walk by the seaside, or 
 a chance meeting in some desert way, the Missionaries 
 of the new faith sought to impress others with a sense of 
 those truths of which they themselves were so profound- 
 ly convinced. There was a freemasonry, so to speak, 
 among Christian believers ; a new and secret society 
 had sprung up within the empire, having its own signs 
 and watchwords, and the family and ■ the social meet- 
 ing were the scenes of its activity. The Christian 
 priest or missionary, disguised perhaps as a traveller or 
 man of commerce, entered quietly the Christian house- 
 hold ; by certain sacred words he is recognised and wel- 
 comed; his mission fulfilled, he is forwarded on his 
 dangerous way. Wonderful was the success which 
 attended those first efforts for the promotion of the 
 Gospel. Christianity, repulsed in the land of its birth, 
 achieved a wonderful success throughout the Eoman 
 empire. Within nine years of the death of its Founder, 
 a community of Christians was established at Eome. 
 Travelling was easier and m.ore rapid in those times 
 than in any subsequent age up to the present century. 
 The teachers of the new faith, making Eome their centre, 
 went up and down the world, indefatigably publishrag 
 the good news of the Gospel. Asia Minor was filled 
 with disciples. In the second century so numerous 
 were they in Eithynia, that it is stated by Fliny, the 
 procurator of the province, that the temples were al- 
 most deserted. Africa and Greece were filled with 
 Christian communities. Spain and Gaul too had caught 
 the infection, and were filled with the glow of a new 
 
24 STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY. 
 
 life. The Apostle Paul is said to have preached the 
 Gospel in both these countries. The Eoman power and 
 language provided the medium by means of which the 
 new religion was propagated. The Christian Churches 
 were becoming powerful in numbers, but they were still 
 more powerful in their faith and zeal. 
 
 Note. 
 
 Confusion on the subject of the Orders of the early Church 
 has arisen from the fact that, in Apostolic times, owing 
 to the Christian communities being small and scattered, the 
 Bishop had probably in some cases no Presbyter under him. 
 The Bishops of the JiTew Testament were numerous, mission- 
 ary, probably with no very defined territorial jurisdiction, 
 and sometimes absorbed in their own office the Presbyterate, 
 having under them only Deacons. Hence the passages in 
 the Epistles in which Bishops and Deacons alone are men- 
 tioned. 
 
25 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 DOGMA. 
 
 Of the new Eeligion tiius bursting suddenly upon the 
 world, one of the principal characteristics was the 
 prominence it assigned to Dogma. In this it differed, 
 essentially from the cultus of heathenism : they main- 
 tained no dogma, no scheme of Theology as part of their 
 system. They were simply acts of devotion to various 
 deities, conceived according to the tastes and feelings 
 of the worshipper. But with Christianity appeared a 
 number of dogmas, some of them new and distinctive. 
 The Trinity, the Atonement, the office of the Holy 
 Spirit, the spiritual communion of Christians with God 
 by means of the Church and Sacraments ; aU these, 
 implicitly contained in the Scriptures, were in process 
 of time embodied in a creed and offered to the accept- 
 ance of Christendom. They have been objected to as 
 mere subtleties of speculation, as lying beyond the 
 region of human reason, of no importance to human 
 life, incapable of proof or disproof. This view of them 
 is most incorrect. They would assuredly not have 
 been offered to mankind if they had not met some 
 spiritual want, presented a solution of some haunting 
 problem of the human mind. The doctrine of the 
 Triaity meets the discouragement which every one has 
 
26 STUDIES IJSr CHRISTIAN HISTOEY. 
 
 felt in the thought that God is a remote inaccessible 
 Being, dwelling apart from His creatures, entering into 
 no fellowship with them. By its doctrine of the Son 
 it bridges over the gulf which separates the finite from 
 the infinite ; it gives us, too, the idea of our sonship. 
 It separates Christianity both from Judaism and 
 Mahometanism, and from a cold and arid Deism which 
 has never truly influenced human life. The Atonement 
 appeals to man's sense of sin and desire of deliverance 
 from it; it represents to some extent the old pagan 
 idea of sacrifice, but free from the imperfections and 
 immorality attending it ; it is connected with that law 
 of association innate in human nature by which we 
 ( transfer the feeling due to one being to another, by 
 which we regard even a stranger with friendly eyes, 
 because he is related to one dear to us. It is involved, 
 too, in the headship of Christ over His Church. He, 
 as the typical Man, head of humanity, must share in 
 the sufferings of His members, in their trials and im- 
 perfections. The doctrine of the Holy Spirit supplies 
 the invaluable truth that human life and history are 
 in every age the scene of a Divine activity, that men 
 are guided perpetually and strengthened and purified by 
 a power other than themselves. It teaches that the 
 supernatural and miraculous are not relegated to the 
 distant past, that Christians are not tied to any un- 
 bending rule or mere letter of Scripture, but are free 
 to guide themselves according to the dictates of their 
 conscience and the enlightenment of their age. The 
 doctrine of the Church and Sacraments confirms to us 
 the truth that the Divine life is still moving in the 
 world, and shows us some of the points through which 
 it comes into contact with human life. 
 
 The great interest of our religion, of course, centres 
 
DOGMA. 27 
 
 around the person of its Founder. It seems an astound- 
 ing assertion that He who moved in lowly form among 
 the most narrow and provincial people of antiquity, the 
 Jewish peasant, seemingly ignorant of many things, sub- 
 ject to physical weakness, should be Incarnate God, the 
 Son of God, or even a nature higher than human. It 
 may be asked. Is such a statement, even if true, capable 
 of verification ? Is it possible for any human mind to 
 pass the barrier which divides the visible from the in- 
 visible world, and to substantiate this assertion ? Yet 
 the same objection may be urged to any statements 
 that deal with a region beyond the phenomenal, that 
 profess to transcend the limits of human experience. 
 May not the same objection be raised to the arguments 
 in favour of the existence of God ? There is here also 
 a process which the strict rules of inductive reasoning 
 do not justify, from narrow and finite premises we arrive 
 at a conclusion touching the Infinite. If the one pro- 
 cess is regarded as a mere concession to the devout 
 imagination, the craving of the soul after a religious 
 ideal, may not the other be regarded as a concession 
 to an equally subjective emotion ? ^ In this case we 
 possess the only evidence which the nature of the sub- 
 ject permits. We have the distinct assertion of Christ 
 Himself as to His divine origin and nature. We have 
 the deep and ineradicable craving of mankind for one 
 who should be truly God, perfect and supreme, yet 
 representative of the human side of God, bridging over 
 the immense gulf which separates between perfect 
 strength and holiness, and weakness and unholiness ; 
 the Son of God not blinding mankind by the display 
 of dazzling splendour, but in a softened and subdued 
 light reveahng the divine glory according as men could 
 ^ See R. H. Hutton's ' Theological Essays.' 
 
28 STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY. 
 
 bear it. This is the very idea of a divine revelation, 
 that it makes accessible to man that which was before 
 overpowering and inaccessible. That the divine nature 
 should be confined in a human nature has been illus- 
 trated by the supposed case of a great genius crippled 
 and paralysed by disease, yet stUl preserving under this 
 semblance of weakness his mighty strength of soul and 
 intellect. These thoughts wiU doubtless appear unreal 
 and speculative to the mind which believes that the only 
 knowledge possible is the power of tracing outward 
 sequences, or to the spirit dazzled by the march of phys- 
 ical discovery; but to one who holds, as a primary truth, 
 that there lies beyond the sphere of our knowledge, not 
 mere necessary and mechanical laws, but a Free or Intelli- 
 gent Will, they wOl have a certain worth and cogency. 
 
 Looking from the mere historical standpoint, and 
 striving to disengage the question from all doctriual 
 prepossessions, the simplest impression of Jesus of 
 Nazareth is, that He was a representative of the old 
 race of Jewish saints and prophets, like Elijah and 
 EUsha in the Old Testament, reproving sLu, recalling the 
 people to the ways of truth, disentangling the law from 
 the mass of fable and of tradition which had- gathered 
 around it ; working miracles, and by the holiness of His 
 life, and the beauty and elevation of His teaching, lead- 
 ing men into deeper and more earnest fellowship with 
 their heavenly Father. But we cannot even super- 
 ficially examine the documents in which His life is 
 recorded without concluding that this first impression 
 does not at all answer to the full reality of His life and 
 character. Profoundly he differs from the Old Testa- 
 ment saiut and wonder-worker. He does not deliver 
 prophecies about some great one to come. He is Himself 
 the sum and fulfilment of prophecy. He is the Messiah 
 
DOGMA. 29 
 
 to set free His people from oppression, and to restore 
 the faded glories of David; He is also the Deliverer 
 who comes to break down the wall of separation be- 
 tween Jew and Gentile, to bring the latter into the 
 privileges of the Jews. But whUe we gaze at the figure 
 thus presented to us, the aspect of His countenance 
 changes, a superhuman form rises fuU before us. The 
 Jewish garb and colouring disappears, and we behold 
 a Son of Man, at once the representative, the flower, 
 the ideal, of our race. But does the impression given 
 us of His character stop here ? He is a Being more 
 than human, the medium between God and man, 
 softening and shading for our vision those views of the 
 divine nature which else would be too dazzling. Nay, 
 at times the stupendous secret bursts upon us in the 
 Scriptures that He is God Incarnate, coequal with the 
 Father, answering to the Logos of Greek and Jewish 
 sages, invested wi:h all those attributes which theology 
 has assigned to that person. He is also the second 
 Adam, by His self-conquest and victory over sin, re- 
 versing the defeat of the first Adam, and opening up 
 a new vista of hope for mankind by His death on the 
 cross, in which He appears both priest and victim. 
 He is the true Paschal Lamb and atonement for sin, 
 dispensing with all ancient sacrifices, annulling the 
 law by fulfilling it. As the substitute for His per- 
 sonal presence with His disciples, and to continue the 
 work He had begun, the Holy Spirit, third person of 
 the Trinity, is promised to abide with His Church 
 for ever. This simple personality of Jesus of Nazareth 
 becomes transfigured as we contemplate it, and almost 
 without leaving the historical treatment of the subject, 
 or wandering into theological discussion, we find at- 
 tached to it the whole circle of doctrine — the Trinity, 
 
30 STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY. 
 
 the Atonement, the Holy Spirit, the conception of a 
 continued Divine presence and indwelling with the 
 Church. We refer to these at present, not so much in 
 view of their intrinsic truth or Scriptural warrant, as of 
 the part they were afterwards to play in the history of 
 the Church, and of its doctrinal development. 
 
 Much has been said as to the originality of Jesus 
 Christ, His character and teaching ; but originality 
 must here be taken rather in the sense of expanding 
 and illustrating old truths, of summing up and setting 
 them in new lights, than of constructing a system out 
 of nothing. If we look on History as the grand evolu- 
 tion of a divine purpose, the unfolding of germs which 
 existed from the beginning, — if we regard it rather as a 
 succession of Divine communications reaching from the 
 primitive one given to man in conscience, through the 
 patriarchal and Jewish dispensations than as a series of 
 leaps and surprises — then in this ordered succession of 
 events Christianity must take its place as the highest and 
 latest Eevelation. It must move on old lines, and be 
 a continuance of that which was from the beginning ; 
 and not the continuance only, but the completion of it. 
 And this is what we find in the teaching of Christ. It 
 is cast in the mould of old Jewish prophecy ; it pre- 
 supposes the truth of the Jewish religion. The tone, 
 the treatment, the lines of thought, are the same. It is 
 not in one sense a new creation so much as the rearrang- 
 ing of old materials to form another structure. The 
 utterances of Jewish psalmist and prophet, treasured in 
 his heart, combined with what Christ drew from His own 
 loving study of nature and from fellowship with His 
 heavenly Father, furnished those rich stores of truth 
 and wisdom which He poured forth in many a parable 
 and pregnant saying. It is said that the substance of 
 
DOGMA. 31 
 
 some of His parables is to be found in Eabbinical writ- 
 ings, and that even portions of what is called the Lord's 
 Prayer are to be found elsewhere ; and this may be so. 
 But never had they been employed with such range and 
 application to the varying wants of humanity. Some 
 of the parables of Christ are prophecies, which in their 
 fulfilment authenticate His mission. Those wonderful 
 parables of the kingdom He established, its gradual 
 growth, its final success, its universality and spirituality 
 — spoken at a time when all probability pointed to 
 failure in His mission — are without a parallel in the 
 history of human insight or successful conjecture. It 
 has been usual with some writers to argue from the per- 
 fect human nature of Jesus Christ to His Divine nature. 
 But fully recognising their good intentions, this seems 
 to us a reversal of the proper procedure. If we look at 
 Christ merely as man, we shall meet with some things 
 in His character which stagger us, a boundless self- 
 assertion and confidence strangely at variance with a 
 perfect humanity. Adopting the other course, arguing 
 from His divine to His human attributes, all these 'seem- 
 ing difficulties are reconciled and fall into their proper 
 place and harmony. 
 
 Let us look now at the moral code Christ adopted as 
 the laws of His new kingdom. A new order of virtues 
 was inaugurated— a new qualification was demanded as 
 necessary for admission into its citizenship. The old 
 heathen virtues of patriotism, public spirit, courage, were 
 replaced by meekness, gentleness, poverty of spirit, sub- 
 mission to injury. These are the graces of a passive, 
 yielding spirit. They belong to the womanly rather 
 than the manly type of character. They are to be 
 looked for rather in the poor and despised of society 
 than in the wealthy and the prosperous. Here was a 
 
32 STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY. 
 
 vast revolution in the virtues held up to public ad- 
 miration, but it was a revolution profoundly signifi- 
 cant of the outward change society was about to 
 undergo. It was in conformity with the views of the 
 higher spirits of the Jewish race, who represented the 
 chosen people always under the guise of a suffering 
 people. It was an appropriate choice, for the class 
 to whom the Gospel was first mainly preached was 
 the poor, the slave, the neglected, those who wanted 
 help and consolation. It was a symbol of that power 
 by which Christianity was to overcome ; for it was to 
 conquer through weakness, was to employ the forgotten 
 and despised portions of humanity to build up a struc- 
 ture of enduring strength. The old fiery virtues of 
 courage, public spirit, proud resistance to calamity, had 
 died out amidst the corruption and dissolution of the 
 times, or survived only in a few isolated grand ex- 
 amples ; and the experiment was to be made of a society 
 constituted on a different model and reared on another 
 foundation. The experience of centuries has justified the 
 preference due to these passive graces, and has shown 
 that a society constituted on a supernatural basis, on 
 the sense of human weakness and dependence on God, 
 has even, as regards material stability, an advantage 
 over a society in which the manly virtues are alone 
 recognised. The paradox has been realised — that out 
 of the weakness and extreme spirituality of Christianity 
 have been evolved the robustness and manly strength 
 of the middle ages and the vast fabric of modern civilis- 
 ation, with the material triumphs and scientific success 
 characteristic of it. These have been the fruit not of a 
 heathen, but of a Christian civilisation. 
 
 It has been objected by the Agnostic that the Chris- 
 tian standard is extreme and impracticable, that men 
 
DOGMA. 33 
 
 must live for and benefit themselves before they can 
 benefit others, that did the Christian attempt to realise 
 the ideal of his fine enthusiasm for humanity, the re- 
 sults would be disastrous both to the society and 
 the individual. The answer is — -first, that Christian- 
 ity does not forbid, but everywhere assumes, the exist- 
 ence of those self-regarding virtues which must be the 
 basis of enlightened benevolence. Next, that the pre- 
 cept of disinterested welldoing to others would bear a 
 little more strain upon it than it has yet experienced ; 
 that it remains to be proved that a society into which 
 more of the sympathetic and disinterested element en- 
 tered, would be unstable or short-lived. If mutual con- 
 sideration were shown by employers and employed; if 
 more hearty goodwill were the rule in life ; if selfish- 
 ness and jealousy were replaced by kindness and sym- 
 pathy, — it remains to be proved that this conduct would 
 hurry on the dissolution of the society in which it was 
 exemplified. 
 
 Or if, again, it be said that the cultivation of passive 
 graces of character would lead to want of energy and 
 public spirit, there is here an assertion which cannot be 
 proved. It is among the societies most profoundly 
 influenced by those spiritual ideas — the societies con- 
 stituted on a religious basis — that the greatest amount 
 of outward energy has been displayed and the triumphs 
 of civilisation have been most conspicuous. He must 
 have read history to little purpose who would attribute 
 to the people of England or Scotland at any stage of 
 their history an inert or phlegmatic character. 
 
 One other point deserves to be noticed. The in- 
 fluence of Christianity or of grace on natural disposition 
 does not eradicate nature, does not fuse the character of 
 individuals or of societies into one unvarying mould. 
 
 c 
 
34 STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN HISTOEY. 
 
 It does not destroy individuality ; it sometimes refines 
 and accentuates it. If to-day Englishmen and Irish- 
 men, Teuton and Celt, Slave and Magyar, were to adhere 
 to the same outward form of Christianity, their manners, 
 their institutions, their mental constitutions, would Still 
 display diversity. This fact, while it throws light upon 
 the diverse types of the. Christian character, explains 
 also much of the seeming failure of Christianity. Ee- 
 ligion, while it elevates men to a higher state than they 
 would otherwise attain, is to some extent lowered by 
 its contact with humanity. Its ideal purity is compro- 
 mised, the lofty standard which at first it set up is 
 departed from. In order to play its part on the theatre 
 of humanity, with its interests, its passions, its inevi- 
 table limitations, it has to accommodate itself to human 
 weakness. Eeligion has been ridiculed for condescend- 
 ing to human weakness and sin : in reality, it was in- 
 evitable it should make a compromise with it if it 
 would play its part at all in human life. 
 
 Christianity was not, then, to efface the old ethical 
 standard, but to incorporate it with its own higher 
 morality, to modify and elevate it. The virtues on 
 which the old heathen world pre-eminently prided it- 
 self, were patriotism, friendship, disinterested love of 
 truth. These, however higher elements might enter 
 into them, were not ethically deserving of high com- 
 mendation. Friendship was largely the gratification of 
 a natural sympathy or affinity of character ; patriotism 
 the pride of clan or family diffused over a wider sur- 
 face; pursuit of truth often mere intellectual gratification, 
 curiosity, or overweening confidence in one's own opinion. 
 Such, doubtless, in the average man of antiquity, these 
 virtues were, though a nobler specimen was here and 
 there to be found. Christianity incorporated them with 
 
DOGMA. 35 
 
 its own code, and gave them a nobler meaning and ex- 
 planation. The selfish element disappeared when the 
 true love and devotion of man were directed towards a 
 society, a brotherhood, at once intensely human and 
 divine, holding the supreme law of love of one towards 
 another, yet based upon the love of God. 
 
 The specially Christian virtues have at times been 
 misrepresented by writers of the anti-Christian school. 
 None appear more specially Christian than humility, 
 self-sacrifice, and self-forgetfulness. Humility has its 
 root in the sense of our relation to God, our weak- 
 ness in comparison with His strength, our sin as 
 opposed to His holiness. It is clearly a true and 
 natural attitude of the soul, once our relationship to 
 God is acknowledged. Yet it has been spoken of by 
 some writers as incompatible with self-respect. Hu- 
 mility, we are told, is the virtue that distinguishes the 
 Christian ; self-respect distinguished the heathen. In 
 reality there is no opposition at all between them. The 
 Christian, because his creed assures him that he is heir 
 and partaker of a divine and immortal nature, is bound 
 to entertain a higher sense of self-respect than he who 
 regards himself from a natural point of view as merely 
 the highest of the animals. Self-forgetfulness and self- 
 sacrifice have, we are told, an exaggerated value in the 
 Christian system. But they are recommended to us, 
 not from any romantic ideas of their own intrinsic ex- 
 cellence, but because at the command of God and of 
 conscience the lower animal nature is to be sacrificed. 
 Again — and this is a formidable objection— we are told 
 that Christianity discourages the pursuit of knowledge 
 for its own sake, that it gives to the mind a bias and 
 predisposition unfavourable to impartial inquiry. Re- 
 garding this objection we would only say that it cannot 
 
36 STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN HISTOEY. 
 
 be well maintained in view of the immense impetus 
 given to all kinds of intellectual pursuit by our Christian 
 civilisation. 
 
 But, again, it is said an ethical standard is set up by- 
 Christianity, which not only aims at controlling and 
 improving the natural element, but almost at destroy- 
 ing it, introducing not only the supernatural but the 
 unnatural. Christianity, as we learn it from the words 
 of its Founder, as interpreted and understood by the early 
 Church, seems bent on making war on those primitive 
 instincts of our nature, those innocent and legitimate 
 feelings which form the foundations of human activity. 
 It is unquestionable, however some seek to explain 
 away the fact, that Christ recommends counsels of per- 
 fection — enjoins on certain of His followers who can 
 attain to this rule, perfect chastity, poverty, and obe- 
 dience, seeming thus to do violence to these instincts, 
 which lead to the upbuilding of the family, to the ac- 
 quisition and diffusion of wealth, to all social enterprise, 
 and to the achievements of genius. He thus seeks to 
 control man in the exercise of his highest powers, his 
 will, his intellect, his social ambition ; and the timid 
 or interested apologists of religion who seek to ex- 
 plain away those portions of Scripture which are at 
 variance with their views, will be forced in the end to 
 take up the position of the sceptical opponents of 
 Christianity. But, in truth, this seeming antagonism 
 is the simple result of the fact that Christianity claims 
 to be a supernatural religion. If this element be ad- 
 mitted at all, it must sometimes curb and control the 
 natural ; if man has duties as the citizen of a heavenly 
 kingdom as well as of a temporal, these may at times 
 come into collision ; if the present condition of man and 
 his relations towards God be abnormal and dislocated 
 
DOGMA. 37 
 
 by sin, then mortification, a certain imperfection as 
 regards this world, may be his chief duty. The medi- 
 cine which in a healthy constitution is hurtful and 
 unneeded, may be the greatest benefit when introduced 
 into a wounded and sickly frame. Assuming man is 
 a being spiritually diseased, Asceticism may be the high- 
 est law of life that can be set before him. Chris- 
 tianity comes before us not merely as a revelation of 
 the unseen, a guide to the higher life, but as a remedy 
 for the sinful and diseased state of man. 
 
 Besides, in recommending this voluntary mortifica- 
 tion, the Gospel speaks to those who are under a special 
 call, who have a special and dangerous post allotted to 
 them, and who are bound to it by a special profession. 
 " No man who warreth entangleth himself in affairs of 
 this life," says the apostle. " Every one who striveth in 
 the games is temperate." Every one who is intensely 
 earnest in any pursuit, must in some points deny him- 
 self, strip himself of many things convenient and allow- 
 able to others not circumstanced as he is. The in- 
 quirer after knowledge must deny himself hours of rest, 
 the sailor must watch through the long night, the sen- 
 tinel must not slumber when the enemy's outposts are 
 at hand. The sceptic has often told the Christian that 
 he is only half in earnest ; and we must not accuse those 
 first simple disciples of want of knowledge, whatever we 
 may think of their worldly discretion or of their exeget- 
 ical resources, who, in denuding themselves of worldly 
 good, felt they were only carrying out the counsels of 
 their dearly loved Master. 
 
 Let us look, before closing this subject, at some of 
 the leading doctrines of Christianity, and see how far 
 these have modified or incorporated the teachings of 
 nature and the truths embodied in other systems. 
 
38 STUDIES IN CHEISTlAN HISTORY. 
 
 The Trinity was a protest against a rigid impassive 
 unity in the Divine Being — the idea that God has never 
 revealed Himself, never stooped to man, but remains in 
 the repose, the isolation of His essential nature. So 
 strong and deep-rooted in man is the antagonism to 
 this idea of a mere unity, that we find traces of an 
 opposite tendency even in systems in which that unity 
 has been most severely maintained. Even the rigid 
 unity embodied in the Creed of the Chinese Confucius 
 is forced in some measure to give way before the desire 
 to find a twofold principle in the origin of the universe. 
 The Logos principle appearing in the later religion of 
 the Jews denoted a like tendency. Traces of a Trinity 
 are to be found in religious systems furthest removed 
 from the Jews ; but this may be a mere apparent 
 resemblance. A recent able writer^ has found a pre- 
 sentiment of this doctrine in ideas prevalent in the 
 pre-Christian world, but among systems widely remote 
 from each other. The Indian mind in the presence of 
 the Infinite found itself very helpless and dependent ; it 
 was overmastered by the greatness of outward nature ; 
 it grasped the idea of the begetting principle, the Father- 
 hood of Grod. The Platonist grasped the idea of the 
 greatness of man ; his system told of a universal soul 
 within the individual soul. In the popular mythology 
 man felt himself to be isolated ; he felt the need of some 
 one like himself with whom he could hold intercourse. 
 " Mythology broke the solitude by lifting to the level of 
 the Divinity those sharers of man's nature who were 
 believed to be noblest ; he found companionship in the 
 glorification of humanity." Thus we arrive at a three- 
 fold thought of God reached by the natural theologian 
 — that is, by the religious world which lived before the 
 ^ Dr Matheson : Baird Lecture. 
 
DOGMA. 39 
 
 Cross. "We find the thought of a Fatherly or begetting 
 principle, from which humanity emanated ; the thought 
 of a Divine Spirit, in which humanity lives and moves 
 and has its being ; and the thought of a human form, 
 which humanity can give to the Divine, and through 
 which it can hold communion with the Divine. These 
 various thoughts of God existed in collision or contra- 
 diction in the old heathen world ; they were drawn to- 
 gether and reconciled, to give a most majestic and sooth- 
 ing, and yet sublime, view of the Divine nature in the 
 Christian doctrine of the Trinity. 
 
 Let us only cast a glance on the doctrine of man's 
 immortality. Christianity casts a new light upon it 
 also — surrounding it with new motives and a higher 
 significance. It cannot be said that Christianity dis- 
 covered this as a new truth ; on the contrary, it assumes 
 it as a truth already known, and founded on the in- 
 stincts of man's nature, but it clears it from the false 
 associations which had grown around it. It had often 
 been dwelt upon in heathen writings ; it had been treated 
 as a pleasing hope or dream of mankind in poetry ; and 
 its mysteries. But Theology, feeling it was too grave a 
 subject to be trifled with, published it as a Dogma, to be 
 philosophy had expatiated on the thought, trying to con- 
 jure up what the future life was like and penetrate into 
 reverently received along with the other truths of Eeve- 
 lation. Heathen speculation had viewed it very much 
 as a physical change, a transition in locality, to be in- 
 augurated by death — a change in man's constitution 
 coincident with a change in his outward circumstances ; 
 the Gospel raised it to the rank of a great moral truth, 
 a change begun even in this life, the immortal life of 
 Christ imparted to all who are in communion with Him, 
 overcoming death, and assuring eternal life to His people. 
 
40 STUDIES IN CHEISTIAN HISTORY. 
 
 Note. 
 
 There are two different aspects under which Christianity 
 may be regarded : either as the natural growth and product of 
 the human mind and of the religious instinct — the highest 
 and noblest, doubtless, but still only one of the products to 
 which the tree of humanity has from time to time given 
 birth ; or, on the other hand, as a supernatural manifestation. 
 According to the latter view, Christianity is the revealing of 
 the supernatural in the sphere and nature of man — subject to 
 limitations and imperfections, but still bearing traces of its 
 heavenly origin — the highest stage in the unfolding of a 
 divine purpose, the concentration of the scattered lights which 
 in various ages and religions have appeared to mankind. It 
 is a stream which, fed and nourished from a divine source, 
 has never ceased to wind among the landscape of human life 
 and history, to refresh and gladden it — now discoloured by 
 the unseemly mixture of human ambition, or priestly arro- 
 gance, or sectarian hate and rivalry — now almost hidden or 
 flowing beneath the surface of worldly interests ; but still by 
 its presence beautifying human existence, and in every age 
 reaching with its blessings some quiet souls, to elevate and 
 comfort them, to raise them above the storms of life, to bring 
 them to a higher and spiritual existence. According as we 
 adopt one or other of these views, will be our criticism of the 
 value and meaning of Christianity — our philosophy of religion. 
 Assuming that religion is merely a natural phenomenon, wo 
 shall judge of its worth from its effects on the character and 
 intellect of man, on the wealth and wellbeing of nations ; and 
 some such estimate, we find, has often been unconsciously 
 adopted, as when, e.g., the truth of Protestantism as opposed to 
 Catholicism is inferred from the fact that the former has gen- 
 erally been professed by nations conspicuous for wealth and for 
 enterprise. If we adopt the latter view, Christianity, though 
 affected by the human medium through which it flows, pre- 
 sents distinctive features, is not a mere human growth, and 
 must not be judged by the mere standard applicable to 
 human affairs. No mean contribution towards the settlement 
 
DOGMA. 41 
 
 of the question is afforded by strictly defining the term super- 
 natural. It may best be defined by contrasting it with its 
 correlatives. There is first the unnatural, which is often con- 
 founded with it. Such would be the case supposed by Hume, 
 of a feather being raised in the air when the wind wants ever 
 so little of the force requisite for the purpose ; or the marvels 
 of spirit-rapping, as ascribed to the Thaumaturgists of our day. 
 The preternatural is confined to some inexplicable manifesta- 
 tion which can only be ascribed to a malevolent or sinister 
 agency. The supernatural may mean one of two things : 
 first, display of divine power, either by direct fiat of divine 
 will, or the bringing in some higher law of nature to effect 
 some great moral or benevolent purpose, such as healing the 
 sick, or giving sight to the blind ; or secondly, an order of 
 supernatural graces and virtues which have no direct bearing 
 on human happiness, such as meekness, chastity, the spirit of 
 martyrdom. It is. impossible to leave out of view in this con- 
 nection remarkable coincidences, providential and bordering 
 on the supernatural, which by the believing mind will be 
 referred to the latter class. 
 
42 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 PERSECUTION. 
 
 One of the marks of the new religion, and proofs of its 
 heavenly origin, was martyrdom. From the beginning 
 of His ministry, Christ had foretold that His disciples 
 should be persecuted and hated of all men for His sake. 
 This was a new manifestation in the history of religious 
 opinion. Eeligious sects had before persecuted each 
 other out of mere' bitterness and strife, or they had 
 been denounced to the State as dangerous to the public 
 peace or morality ; but it was a new era in history when 
 a religious body, quiet and inoffensive, piishing its 
 doctrine of non-resistance and non-interference in polit- 
 ical affairs to an extreme, was punished solely on account 
 of the unpopularity of its opinions. Yet if we look 
 more steadily at the causes which mainly determine the 
 course of human affairs, the strangeness will in great 
 measure disappear. We shall see that these persecu- 
 tions, these stonings, burnings, and torments, inflicted 
 on the weak and unoffending Christians, were the price 
 at which a great moral revolution was to be wrought 
 out, and the world rescued from the dominion of evil. 
 The turbid flow of those centuries of embittered passions 
 and wrongs was to issue in the clear majestic expanse 
 of Christian peace and unity. Here, as in other respects. 
 
PEKSECDTION. 43 
 
 the conformity was complete between the Church and 
 its Founder. The family likeness was perfect in all 
 these persecutions, in which the Church was ever suf- 
 fering, yet ever triumphant. In the first great decision 
 before the tribunal of Pilate, we see the type of all the 
 other decisions. Christ suffered in virtue of that mys- 
 terious law which enlists against the good the passions, 
 the interests, the prejudices of our nature ; and not 
 otherwise was it to be with His disciples. 
 
 Look at the history of Christianity thoughtfully ; we 
 shall see less reason to wonder at the persecution it en- 
 countered. We shall rather, unless we admit a ground- 
 work of good-sense and righteousness in humanity which 
 responds to outward influences, be forced to wonder how, 
 in the face of so many adverse influences, Christianity 
 could make way at all. Against it was arrayed every 
 interest. Consider the intense malice and hatred it pro- 
 voked among the Jews, who saw their own venerable 
 and glorious system superseded by what seemed a wrong- 
 headed secession from their ranks. Consider how it 
 shocked Philosophy by a system and ideas so adverse 
 to its own ; how it came into collision with Paganism, 
 with its vast array of superstitions, and its dependent 
 interests of temples and priesthood, tradesmen and 
 artificers, who under its sanction found a profitable 
 occupation ; how it offended the Eoman rulers because 
 of its secrecy, its unity, its far-reaching hierarchy, 
 which seemed the counterpart and rival of their own ; 
 how it offended the vile because of their vileness, the 
 devout because of their devoutness, the wise because 
 of their wisdom. It arrayed against itself from the 
 beginning a confederacy of the world's powers. On the 
 day of its first trial in the person of its Founder, it 
 enlisted against it Pilate, the stern Eoman governor, the 
 
44 STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY. 
 
 flippant, cultured Herod, and the passionate Jewish 
 priests and people ; and these were a prophecy of the 
 opposition it was shortly to meet with in the world. 
 Eoman authority, Greek wisdom and subtlety, and 
 Jewish hate, formed a triple alliance against it. Fore- 
 most of these in point of time and of intensity we must 
 give the place to Jewish animosity. This appears 
 throughout the records of the Gospel as the inspiring 
 and animating piinciple of the early Christian persecu- 
 tions. As Jewish rancour had dragged Christ before a 
 careless judge, so, before the eyes of a careless and wonder- 
 ing pagan world, the Jews followed up the early Christian 
 disciples, ever appearing as their enemies, their accusers, 
 and their executioners. To gratify their embittered and 
 angry feelings, they do not scruple to have recourse to 
 falsehood, pretending to be loyal subjects of Caesar, con- 
 cerned only lest the new sect sprung from their midst 
 should endanger his authority, should compromise their 
 position with regard to him. They conspire against Paul 
 at Jerusalem, binding themselves by an oath to put him to 
 death ; they employ assassins, they appeal to the interests 
 of the artificers at Ephesus, representing to the powerful 
 guild of workmen that their craft was in danger ; they 
 excite against him the populace of Philippi, telling them, 
 if this new sect has its way, the hope of their gains is 
 gone. They drag him before the proconsul Gallic at 
 Corinth ; in every city they follow him, scheming and 
 calumniating him; in the excess of their persecuting 
 zeal they outrage even the Eoman law. They work upon 
 the inconstancy of the weaker sex, and are not above 
 having recourse to any artifice, provided only they could 
 ruin this cause, so much hated, so much dreaded. 
 
 This was but the beginning of sorrows, of that reign 
 of persecution which, having its origin in the fury of 
 
PERSECUTION. 45 
 
 Nero, was to land the Church at last in the peace of 
 Constantine. The Jews were successful in stirring up 
 persecution, in exciting the jealousy of the Eoman power 
 against the new religion. For three centuries the fires 
 of persecution never ceased to burn. There were times 
 when they slumbered, when they burned less brightly ; 
 there were intermittent seasons of repose and relaxation 
 for the Church : but these were a truce rather than a 
 peace — a short suspension of .hostilities rather than a 
 definite reconciliation in that long duel between the 
 secular power and Christianity. 
 
 We said that martyrdom was a feature distinctive of 
 the new religion ; and in saying so we are not forget- 
 ting the many noble and almost voluntary deaths under- 
 gone by noble men in former ages, because of their virtues 
 unjustly persecuted. We are not forgetting the noble end 
 of Socrates, shamefully put to death by his jealous and 
 fickle countrymen because of the superior tone of his 
 character and teaching. Yet his death bears the aspect 
 rather of an unjust sentence against the innocent than 
 of one wrongfully put to death because of his testimony 
 to some distinct cause or principle. In the genuine 
 martyr three qualities must be found united — sanctity, 
 truth, and suffering. These distinguish him on the one 
 hand from the philosopher, who merely holds certain 
 opinions or belongs to a certain school, without being 
 prepared to suffer for his opinions; and on the other, 
 from the fanatic, who courts persecution on account of 
 some crotchet of his own. Humility is ever a mark of 
 the genuine martyr. Suffering and persecution find him ; 
 he does not go forward wilfully to meet them. He waits 
 God's time, when his sufferings shall be profitable for 
 the advancement of God's truth. He does not precipi- 
 tate himself upon a voluntary doom. Again, certainty — 
 
46 STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY. 
 
 or at least certitude — of the truth is a mark of the 
 genuine martyr ; his suffering is at least evidence of 
 the sincerity of his belief. Applying these tests to 
 discriminate the genuine martyr from the pretender, we 
 find they all meet in the first records of Christianity ; 
 and in this, again, we find overwhelming proof of its 
 supernatural origin. For the martyr is one who bears 
 witness in the most striking and unequivocal form to 
 the existence of spiritual truths, which are above and 
 beyond all temporal interests and concerns — which have 
 no direct bearing on this world, yet are of overwhelming 
 importance to a moral and spiritual Being — in the strength 
 and conviction of which he lives, to attest his belief in 
 which he is not unwilling to die. Heavenly things are 
 in his eyes so incomparably greater than temporal bless- 
 ings, that for the former he is willing to sacrifice home 
 with its sweet and seductive joys, culture, ease, good 
 name. He counts not his life dear to him. He is willing 
 to descend into the gloomy portals of death — so awful 
 to other men, so fearful to all in their mystery^ — so that 
 he may bear witness to that which has been his life and 
 his joy. He is himself, then, evidence of the truth of 
 that for which he is willing to endure so much. 
 
 We have said that ere long the clamours and enmity 
 of the Jews against the Christians began to have their due 
 effect upon the Eoman authorities. They retreated from 
 their attitude of impartiality or indifference. The com- 
 bined influences of Jewish hate and pagan ignorance, the 
 jealousy of the priests, the disdain of the philosophers, 
 and the suspicions of the well-to-do classes, began to 
 withdraw them from that position of disdain and of con- 
 temptuous toleration with which they had hitherto viewed 
 the religions of the subject races. And yet it was not 
 any deep or far-reaching views of political interest which 
 
PERSECUTION. 47 
 
 moved the first great persecution against the Christians ; 
 an accident, as it seemed, determined it. The city of Eome 
 was laid waste by a tremendous fire — a calamity greater 
 than any that had befallen it since the sacking of the 
 city by the Gauls. Of the sixteen quarters into which 
 the city was divided, three only escaped uninjured. A 
 vast population was left in utter destitution, homeless 
 and unsheltered. Loud and terrible was the cry that 
 burst forth from the suffering multitude ; and all the 
 more dangerous was the situation, because public report 
 pointed to the emperor himself as the author of this 
 crime. There was no excess of depravity of which 
 ISTero might not reasonably be supposed capable ; and 
 he who lived in perpetual dread of the people, who 
 amidst all his autocratic power and his tyrannical rule 
 was supported rather by the passive acquiescence of the 
 populace than by any great display of armed force, 
 was constrained to divert the public indignation against 
 himself to those whose isolated mode of life and un- 
 social habits furnished against them a plausible ground 
 of accusation. The unfortunate Christians were made 
 the scapegoat of Nero's sins, and multitudes of them 
 suffered the most atrocious punishments. The gardens 
 of Nero, where now stand the palace of the Vatican 
 and the Church of St Peter, were the scenes of these 
 cruelties. A festive tone was given to them ; mocking 
 was added to torture. Many Christians were not only 
 nailed to crosses, but, dressed in the skins of beasts, 
 were exposed to the attacks of wild animals, or smeared 
 with wax were held up as torches to illuminate the 
 darkness of the night. 
 
 Upon this occasion the Church of Eome had its first 
 experience of imperial persecution, had its baptism of 
 blood. Much obscurity surrounds the beginnings of the 
 
48 STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN HISTOKY. 
 
 Church of Eome. We gain our first knowledge of it 
 only from scattered hints in the New Testament, or 
 from the more uncertain notices of ecclesiastical tradi- 
 tion. We know that it had been founded about nine 
 years after the death of Christ. We know that it had 
 increased considerably in numbers and in influence, 
 although it was composed principally of persons of 
 foreign origin. Intelligent freedmen constituted a 
 large portion of its members. It had adherents and 
 sympathisers in the palace of Csesar. It had enjoyed, 
 we are credibly informed, the presence and personal 
 teaching of the two great apostles Peter and Paul. The 
 latter had sent to it a letter partly referring to certain 
 controversies that had arisen in it as to the relation 
 between the works of the law and the grace of the 
 Gospel. But the persecution of Nero casts an additional 
 and lurid light upon the state of the early Eoman 
 Church. We see the Christians living in considerable 
 numbers in a state of isolation from the pagan com- 
 munity, already distinguished from the Jews, but shar- 
 ing the hatred and obloquy which in great measure 
 attached to that race. Questions have been raised as 
 to the origin and extent of the persecution directed 
 against the Christians at this time : whether it was 
 confined to Eome, or extended over the whole of Italy ; 
 who were the accusers of the Christians, and on what 
 plausible grounds they were selected for attack. We 
 think there is evidence that the persecution was general, 
 and that at this time the martyrology of the Church was 
 enriched with many names ; but the latter question will 
 require some preliminary statement to elucidate it. 
 
 The stand-point of the Pagan religion was essentially 
 different from that of the Christian. The former was quite 
 unable to enter into the spirit and meaning of the new 
 
PEHSECUTION. 49 
 
 religion. To the Eoman, Eeligion and Patriotism 
 were only two sides of the same universal obligation ; 
 or rather Eeligion was a means of animating his patriotic 
 spirit by procuring for his country those advantages 
 and blessings which it seemed the only rational aim of 
 a citizen to procure. The State religion was intended 
 to propitiate the gods, by sacrifices, prayers, and cere- 
 monial to render them favourable to the common- 
 wealth. And as no assent to any long or cumbrous 
 theological system was involved in this compliance with 
 the State worship, as each was allowed to hold in private 
 the opinions which pleased him best on the great sub- 
 jects of God and Providence as long as he showed an 
 outward deference to the duties of a Eoman citizen, as 
 no inquiry was made into his private life and habits, 
 so it was not impossible — it was, in fact, a frequent 
 occurrence in the later days of the republic — that a 
 man should be a regular worshipper of the gods, or 
 even a minister of the religion of which in private 
 he was known to be a mocker or denier. Cicero was 
 a member of the Eoman priesthood, Caesar held the 
 of&ce of chief pontiff of the national religion ; yet one of 
 these great men doubted and speculated, while the other 
 openly averred his disbelief in any immortality or future 
 retribution. The members of the Eoman priesthood, 
 the pontiffs, the augurs, the haruspices, were selected 
 from the noblest families of the city ; their offices were 
 regarded as an appanage of the Eoman aristocracy. 
 Eeligion was looked upon as a valuable cement of the 
 national constitution — a conservative element tending 
 to maintain the national spirit, the old military pride 
 of Eome. To comply outwardly with the required rites 
 was simply a becoming exhibition of patriotic feeling, a 
 concession to usages graceful, or at least innocent, and 
 
 D 
 
50 STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY. 
 
 hallowed by the traditions of so many hundred years. 
 To rebel against the religion of Eome was as unnatural 
 and unbecoming as it would be to protest against her 
 manners, her dress, even her language. Judge, then, 
 of the surprise and the irritation excited against the 
 new sect when its members refused to conform to or 
 take part in these national usages. But the obstinacy 
 of the Christian in this respect — that perverseness of 
 spirit which singled him out for the dislike of mankind 
 — was a key to what seemed his eccentricities in other 
 respects. With the Eoman the true end of his existence 
 was to serve the State, to fulfil all the duties of the citi- 
 zen, whether in high or humble position, whether in the 
 senate, the forum, or the camp. To accomplish this 
 he married, he had children, he took part in the worship 
 of the gods as beings who were bound in a federal rela- 
 tion to the great object of his worship, — Eome. And 
 as the taint of Idolatry ran throughout the whole of 
 ancient life, as there was no one duty engaged in, 
 scarcely any object or scene of daily existence which did 
 not bear its impress, the citizen was called upon at each 
 step of his career to pay some recognition, more or less 
 marked, to the ever-present powers among which he 
 lived. But the Christian boldly proclaimed that he 
 belonged to no one place or country ; that his Father- 
 land was heaven, his fellow-citizens the whole com- 
 munity of believers spread over the world. He showed 
 no patriotic regard for the interests of Eome ; no 
 jealousy for her honour ; no pride in the extension of 
 her power. Perhaps he would speak of her, though 
 with bated breath, as the great Babylon, the mother 
 of abominations, the great evil power which hindered 
 the manifestation of the kingdom of God, and would 
 continue to do so until she was removed. Her divinities 
 
PERSECUTION. 5 1 
 
 he regarded as demons, her badges of empire as temp- 
 tations to sin, and engaging in her public offices, with 
 their attendant obligations, as an unholy dallying with 
 the evil one. When such a lamentable want of public 
 spirit prevailed, such a misconception of the true ends 
 of existence, nay, such inveterate animosity against 
 established laws and usages, it is plain there could be 
 no compromise, no half-way course between the Eoman 
 statesmen and the Christian innovators. 
 
 The fears of superstition came in also to add to the 
 apprehensions of the pagan people, and give seeming 
 justification for the severities which were practised 
 towards the unfortunate Christians. If any public 
 calamity occurred, it was in the minds of the ignorant 
 populace immediately connected with some offence given 
 wittingly or unwittingly to the gods. If the omens 
 were unpropitious, if the gods when consulted seemed 
 to return an unfavourable answer, the interpreters of 
 their will were not slow to refer it to some circumstance 
 which for the time had made the worshippers displeas- 
 ing to the deity. Especially if any event occurred to 
 awaken panic among the ignorant ; if there was any 
 unusual or startling event for which the knowledge of 
 the age was unable to account ; if a meteor or comet 
 hung in the air ; still more, if there was any public cal- 
 amity, if there was an earthquake or pestilence, if there 
 was famine or destruction of any kind, if the Tiber 
 overflowed its banks, or the Nile delayed to overflow 
 them, the probable cause was immediately sought in 
 some departure from the old rites, some offence given 
 to the tutelary divinities of Eome. The Christians 
 were always selected as the scapegoat. Most of the 
 great persecutions of the Church were coincident with 
 great public calamities. The Neronian persecution 
 
52 STUDIES IlSr CHRISTIAN HISTORY. 
 
 followed upon the burning of ancient Eome, the perse- 
 cution of Domitian upon the destruction of the Temple 
 of the Capitoline Jupiter, that of Trajan coincided with 
 the earthquake of Antioch, that of Marcus Aurelius 
 with the great pestilence which wasted the empire. 
 
 We can understand how it was often the best em- 
 perors, or those most jealous of the honour and tradi- 
 tions of Eome, or desirous of a revival of the national 
 religion, who were the most unrelenting persecutors. 
 The voluptuary or adventurer from the East who had 
 come to wear the purple, favoured or tolerated a sect 
 which had its origin in Syria ; while the prince of the 
 old Koman stamp, lamenting the decline of antique 
 Eoman manners, and affecting a return to the old 
 austerity, bitterly disliked a religion which seemed to 
 him only one of the upstart Eastern superstitions. 
 Domitian in his eccentric zeal for the revival of the 
 Eoman ritual, Trajan in his zeal to revive and extend the 
 military power, Marcus Aurelius in his zeal for philo- 
 sophy, Decius and Diocletian in their desperate efforts 
 to exterminate a rival with which it was impossible to 
 live in concord, represent to us, in varying degrees and 
 with every variety of character, almost all the diverse 
 influences which were arrayed against Christianity. 
 
 Another unfavourable influence for the Christians was 
 their connection with Judaism. This was from the first 
 prejudicial, and was soon severed, but it must not be 
 omitted as one of the causes that militated against the 
 early Church. It shared in all the unpopularity which 
 attached to the Jews from the earliest days of the 
 empire, and especially after the fall of Jerusalem. The 
 interest of their enemies was to involve them in the 
 general hatred with which the Jewish name was re- 
 garded. But, over and above their Jewish origin and 
 
PERSECUTION. 53 
 
 the mistakes produced by regarding them as a Jewish 
 sect, there were special disadvantages which weighed 
 upon the Christians. The Jews were a little emigrant 
 nation, oddly mixed up with all the nations of the 
 earth, yet holding, under the Eoman authority, laws, 
 usages, and immunities of their own, having their own 
 magistrates, holding often the right of citizenship, their 
 rites protected and even patronised by the authorities. 
 In addition, they were not as a rule a proselytising sect : 
 they maintained strenuously their own ritual and usages, 
 but they kept the Gentiles sternly at a distance. The 
 Christians, on the other hand, were people of no one 
 nation exclusively. They were keen and ardent mis- 
 sionaries, finding their way into the recesses of every 
 household, sapping the old religion, seeking to turn men 
 and women away from the old paths. 
 
 Add another cause of persecution — the calumnies 
 industriously heaped upon the Christians. These were 
 foolish and reckless in the extreme. They were accused, 
 in addition to many silly and foolish charges, of deliber- 
 ately slaying infants, of indulging at their secret meet- 
 ings in unnatural and incestuous unions. The secrecy 
 in which the Christian assemblies were involved seemed 
 to countenance any charges that might be brought 
 against them ; yet this secrecy was itself the result of 
 compulsion, not of choice. At first they met in public, 
 in the market-place, the temple, or the Jewish house of 
 prayer — wherever they found an audience and liberty 
 of worship. But when the hand of persecution was 
 heavy upon them, they were forced to retire into private 
 houses or subterranean vaults ; and the accounts of 
 these meetings, falsified by malice or by gossip, were 
 evidently widely circulated in the capital, and were a 
 formidable item in the charges brought against them. 
 
54 STUDIES m CHKISTIAN HISTOBY. 
 
 These practices, as alleged against the community of 
 Catholic Christians, were utterly false and groundless ; 
 but if orthodox writers are to be believed, there were 
 certain practices among heretical sects which afforded 
 grounds for public dislike. 
 
 And now we have mentioned the chief reasons which 
 explain, if they do not justify, the violent opposition 
 everywhere raised- against the Church. The persecution 
 under jSTero was but the prelude to still greater perse- 
 cutions — the beginning of that gigantic duel between 
 the Empire and the Church, extending over three cen- 
 turies, in which the Church was at last to triumph 
 through suffering, the Empire to perish through its 
 violence. These persecutions, at first perhaps mere out- 
 bursts of popular fury, were soon recognised and sanc- 
 tioned by the law. Fierce statutes were promulgated 
 against the believers ; they were put under the open 
 ban of the empire. And the secular power was right in 
 its instincts and its dislikes. Between it and the new 
 power which had risen up claiming a spiritual authority 
 extending to every act of man, and to his heart and 
 conscience, no reconciliation was possible. 
 
 The Empire at this time has been compared to a dull 
 and sleeping giant, at times awakened to a consciousness 
 of coming danger, and dealing random blows against a 
 clever and agile adversary. But an impartial observer 
 would rather say that all the policy and foresight, as 
 well as the power, was on the side of the imperial 
 tyrant, and that he dealt his blows at a weak and 
 hysterical victim. 
 
00 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMA. 
 
 Ancient paganism, we have said, had no doctrines. It 
 was essentially a national or local cultus, intended to 
 secure favour or protection for the nation or the in- 
 dividual. A poetic dream or a patriotic appeal, it made 
 no profession to penetrate into the deep mysteries of 
 existence, to expound any of the problems which from 
 age to age have exercised the human spirit. It left 
 that to philosophy. It was different, however, with 
 Christianity : it professed to be a philosophy ; a religious 
 philosophy, it is true, looking always from the divine 
 rather than the human point of views ; still it offered 
 a theory as to the existence of God, His nature. His 
 character. His relation to created beings and to the 
 soul of man His living image, and it also professed to 
 give an account of man, his origin, his duties, and his 
 destinies. In the order of things this was inevitable, 
 if Christianity was to be a rational religion, if it was to 
 lay hold of man, not alone on the social or emotional 
 side of his nature, but of his intellect, his conscience, 
 his sense of relationship to One felt to be the Author of 
 his being. Hence we see how much importance the 
 sacred writers attach to correct beliefs, to right think- 
 ing ; how naturally the simple beliefs of the first Chris- 
 
56 STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN HISTOEY. 
 
 tians flowed forth and were crystallised into the form 
 of dogma. Scattered throughout the writings of the 
 New Testament we see germs and detached portions 
 of what afterwards were arranged into definite articles 
 of faith ; nor can we doubt that many of these writings 
 were composed under the influence of some guiding 
 motive, to correct an error or misapprehension, to 
 refute soine growing or threatening heresy, or to eluci- 
 date some forgotten or unnoticed aspect of divine truth. 
 Great indeed was the need of this filial care, exercised 
 by the first doctors of the Church towards their spiritual 
 offspring. The net of the Gospel had been let down 
 freely into the sea of the world, but from the first it 
 had brought with it almost as many impure elements 
 as pure. Early had the adversary sown the tares 
 among the pure wheat of Gospel truth. From various 
 motives many had sought admission into the Church ; 
 but they had brought with them their old habits, their 
 old ways of thinking, not unfrequently their old pre- 
 judices and sins. It was long before the pure stream 
 of Gospel truth could be cleared of this impure admix- 
 ture ; perhaps that process has not been accomplished 
 fully even yet. 
 
 From the first two different streams of tendency, 
 two opposite currents of opinion may be traced in the 
 Church. To these respectively the name of the Judaising 
 and the paganising parties may be applied. Utterly 
 opposed as they were in their sympathies and ten- 
 dencies, they agreed in derogating from the work of 
 Christ ; they gave the Gospel in their systems a subor- 
 dinate place. The Judaising parties were the first in 
 point of time. Their numbers might be small, they 
 were continually declining in importance, but they 
 were a noisy and troublesome faction in the early 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMA. 57 
 
 Church. We meet with them continually in the Acts 
 of the Apostles and in the letters of St Paul, stirring up 
 strife among the first disciples, gaining over to their 
 side even some of the Apostles, introducing the element 
 of national preferences and dislikes, insisting on the 
 observance of the letter of the law, and vehemently 
 opposing the admission of the heathen except on the 
 condition of their complying with its requirements. 
 According to them, the Gospel was only an appendix 
 to the law, a supplement to the patriarchal dispensation. 
 Christ was only the last and perhaps the greatest of the 
 prophets who came to fulfil the law, not in the sense of 
 absorbing it in the greater fulness of the Gospel, but of 
 impressing it more firmly upon the hearts and con- 
 sciences of men. They were Jews first and Christians 
 afterwards. Christianity was only a new sect, a new de- 
 velopment of the Jewish system. This party insisted 
 on the necessity of good works and of ceremonial observ- 
 ance for salvation, and by way of the Church led men 
 back again to the synagogue. They certainly were a 
 considerable and noisy faction in the Church of Jerusa- 
 lem ; but the destruction of that city forty years after 
 the crucifixion, the downfall of the national worship, 
 the continually accumulating disasters of the Jewish 
 nation, contributed always to lessen their number and 
 importance, and after lingering for some time under 
 the name of Ebionites as a small and despised faction, 
 they seem to have died out altogether. 
 
 The other party were more numerous and dangerous, 
 and left a more lasting impress on the Church. They 
 .probably consisted not so much of misguided Christians 
 as of men only half converted to the faith, who under 
 the profession of the Christian still preserved the garb 
 and habits of the philosopher. Their opinions seem to 
 
58 STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY. 
 
 have been a curious mixture of Eastern superstition and 
 of Christian ideas. According to them, the world was 
 not created or governed by God, but by angels, and 
 these bad angels. Their opposition to the Jewish law 
 went so far as to lead some of them to maintain that 
 the angels had raised up Moses, appointed the rites 
 and institutions of the law, and inspired the prophets. 
 Hence in their view Christ had come, not to expound, 
 to fulfil, to spiritijalise the law, but to deliver the 
 world from the dominion of the angels. It was only 
 the natural consequence of this opinion that the flesh 
 was essentially evil, incapable of being purified or em- 
 ployed for any spiritual purpose. There was no resur- 
 rection for this corrupt companion of the soul ; the resur- 
 rection of which the Gospel spoke was accomplished 
 spiritually in baptism. As a natural consequence, it 
 was indifferent how the flesh was employed. To live 
 in continence and purity like the Christian ascetic, 
 or to indulge in debauch and excess like the heathen, 
 were both courses of action equally devoid of any moral 
 quality or significance. Christ could not be clothed, 
 therefore, in this impure embodiment. God had not 
 taken our nature, was not clothed in our humanity ; the 
 flesh He had seemed to assume was only a phantom, an 
 illusion. It is evident that these views struck a blow 
 at the root of all Christian doctrine, indeed of all mor- 
 ality. This scheme of opinion, equally with the preced- 
 ing, laid the axe to the very root of Christianity — the one 
 by denying Christ's humanity, the other His divinity — 
 the one by denying creation, the other redemption — the 
 one by denying the value of all good works, the other 
 by giving them an independent and exclusive value. 
 Hence we easily understand the indignation with which 
 these views were regarded by the Apostles and early 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMA. 59 
 
 rulers of the Church — the unanimous voice of censure 
 ■which is directed against them in the sacred writings. 
 There was here a danger springing up in the very 
 centre of Christianity, a danger more to be dreaded than 
 outward hostility, because it was the voice of a traitor 
 inspiring evil counsels in the very citadel of the truth. 
 Had these opinions been allowed to gain the ascendancy, 
 humanly speaking, it would have been the doom of the 
 faithful Church. Souls for a moment led to regard Christ 
 as the Way, the Truth, and the Life, would soon have 
 been turned back by another road to the synagogue, or 
 to the heathen school or temple. The stream of Chris- 
 tian truth, after some windings, would soon have been 
 lost in the ocean of paganism. 
 
 But the eye of authority was not slow to mark, or 
 its voice to protest, against these excesses. The errors 
 of those early heretics give us the key to the meaning 
 and tendency of many of the Books of the New Testa- 
 ment. The eye of the Christian teacher charged with 
 the care of souls, full of paternal regard for the simple 
 of the flock, follows these errorists through all the wind- 
 ings of their tortuous career, shows them as the raven- 
 ing wolves and robbers they really were ; detects on the 
 one hand those Judaisers who sought to deprive converts 
 of the liberty they had in Christ, to impose on them the 
 wearisome and fretting bond of the Jewish ceremonial, 
 and on the other hand the still more dangerous men 
 who sought, by subtle reasoning and philosophy (gnosis) 
 falsely so called, to turn men aside from the simplicity 
 that was in Christ, tracing them in the natural conse- 
 quences of their erroneous opinions, their pride, their 
 contention, their love of gain, their love of dominion, 
 their immorality, their prying and meddling disposition, 
 entering into houses and leading captive silly women, to 
 
60 STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY. 
 
 whom they promised easier terms than the Gospel, an 
 easier remission of their sins. 
 
 In order to understand the writings of the Apostles, 
 we must see them often in combat with these heretics, 
 answering their objections, often without naming them, 
 even in language borrowed from themselves. St Paul 
 in particular hastens to counteract the evil of their 
 doctrines by teaching the full truth of which their doc- 
 trines were but the travesty. The true gnosis, the know- 
 ledge of Christ crucified, he opposes to their pretended 
 knowledge ; the pleroma Jesus Christ, in whom the ful- 
 ness of the Godhead dwells bodily, he opposes to the 
 multiplied pleroma of the heretics. They had sought 
 to degrade Jesus Christ in the scale of being, by placing 
 Him several degrees beneath the Divinity, and by the 
 pretended omnipotence of angels. St Paul places Him 
 at the head of all creation, above all principalities and 
 powers, the Pirst-born of the Father, the brightness of 
 His glory, and the express Image of His person, by whom 
 He made all aeons, the ages and powers of this world, 
 the Heir of all things, raised above all angels, inasmuch 
 as they are but His humble messengers and ministering 
 spirits. 
 
 We have here the birth of Theology. Heresy has 
 ever been the appointed means in God's providence of 
 bringing out the fullest expression of divine truth. The 
 early Christian teacher would have loved better to muse 
 over these great truths in silence, to revolve them in the 
 loving contemplation of the heart, than to formulate 
 them in words. Words and confessions, even the most 
 clear and perfect, do to a certain extent disfigure and 
 narrow divine truth by the very inadequacy of the 
 human medium of expression. But this necessity was 
 laid upon the Church, if it was to be maintained in 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMA. 61 
 
 purity or even in existence. If the flock of Christ was 
 to be preserved from the guile of evil men, its rulers and 
 saints must be transformed into doctors. They would 
 have liked better to pursue their great work of evangel- 
 isation ; but when even the work and life of Jesus Christ 
 were disfigured by false versions, it was necessary that 
 they should present to the faithful the true good news 
 of Christ. 
 
 These varieties of individual and local character, 
 which were afterwards to be represented by different 
 schools of theology in the Church, are to be found in 
 the writings of St Paul and St John. St Paul, though 
 Eastern by birth and training, represents to us essentially 
 the Western cast of thought. He is the man of the 
 civilised world, of the modern world, we inay say. 
 He claims everywhere his birthright of Eoman citizen- 
 ship; he is at home pleading before the Eoman pro- 
 consuls FeHx, Festus, and Lysias ; he is not unacquainted 
 with the heathen classics ; he is acquainted with, and 
 sometimes borrows his illustrations from, the usages 
 of the Eoman law. The character of his writings, 
 leaving aside metaphysical subtleties and abstract ques- 
 tions of existence, bears that practical aspfect with 
 which the Eoman law was conversant. It turns on the 
 relation of man to God and to a holy law ; the sin of 
 man ; the duty of man ; the ineqixality of his needs 
 and of his strength ; the action of grace to deliver him 
 from his sin ; that is the constant subject of St Paul's 
 teaching. Morality is his theme ; duties rather than 
 mysteries, man more than God, the end of existence 
 rather than the essence of things. St John, on the 
 other hand, seems never to come out of that Eastern 
 atmosphere in which he was born ; his mind retains to 
 its last days its primitive and mystical character. 
 
62 STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN HISTOEY. 
 
 Nursed on a soil which had been the birthplace of so 
 many religious systems, in which the theogonies and 
 cosmogonies of the East seemed to take root, at the foot 
 of the Temple of the great Diana of Ephesus, his con- 
 ceptions bear that vast, grand, and almost indistinct 
 character which separates them widely from the clear 
 and precise ideas of the West. He seems to gaze in an 
 atmosphere, cloudy yet luminous, in which the forms of 
 things are seen gigantic yet indistinct, and only half 
 detached from the mist. He seems to have been pres- 
 ent at the beginning of the world, to witness the de- 
 velopment of things, to tell us the intimate nature of the 
 Divine Being, the procession of the divine persons, the 
 glories and employments of the other world. He lives 
 in an atmosphere of ecstasy and contemplation ; he sees 
 truth by the intuition of tlie spiritual eye rather than 
 thinks it out ; he feels more than he reasons ; he grasps 
 spiritual realities rather by an upward flight of love 
 than by any cool mastery of the understanding. Like 
 St Paul, as one has well said, he seems to remain ever 
 in the attitude in which the stroke of grace lias found 
 him. He is ever the disciple leaning on the Master's 
 breast, as St Paul is the impatient horseman on the 
 way to Damascus. Scarcely does he come out of his 
 meditative silence ; as scarcely does St Paul, during the 
 thirty years of his eventful history, cease from his 
 career of activity. Even persecution scarcely disturbs 
 the apostle of love and the prophet of Patmos ; and 
 he falls asleep with the same words upon his lips which 
 had been the theme of his message and the con- 
 tinued burden of his life, " Little children, love one 
 another." 
 
 Yet this writer, so large and profound in his views 
 of spiritual truth, so massive in his conceptions, so 
 
DEVELOPMENT OE DOGMA. 63 
 
 penetrated with Christian love, shows himself most 
 keenly sensitive — almost with a feminine jealousy — of 
 the details even of divine truth, and of the honour of 
 his Master. In his old days he becomes a contro- 
 versialist. His gospel was written to refute the heresy 
 of Corinthus, which had sprung up near Ephesus, where 
 he lived ; and all his other writings evince the keenest 
 distrust, amounting to personal dislike, of the heretics 
 springing up on every side, who denied the humanity of 
 Christ, and treated Him as a mere phantom who had 
 only an illusory communion with the joys, the sorrows, 
 and the sympathies of our nature. 
 
 Great need was there of this watchful jealousy on 
 the part of the rulers of the Church. On every side 
 heresies were invading it. In the second century 
 ecclesiastical writers counted no fewer than thirty-two 
 of these foolish dreams, philosophical and theological 
 speculations belonging to other times, other countries, 
 other states of society, but which were now seeking to 
 contract an alliance with Christianity, to overlay its 
 purity with worldly and corrupt additions. This was 
 the penalty Christianity was to pay for its success, 
 for its reception, no longer among the poor and sim- 
 ple, but among the refined and educated of the earth. 
 The Gnostics, the general name given to those early 
 heretics, were, we may believe, half-converted sages who 
 sought to form a universal eclecticism, to make of Chris- 
 tianity an odd amalgam with the elements of Jewish, 
 Greek, and Oriental learning. 
 
 Church writers of this time distinguish three periods 
 in the development of Church doctrine. The first was 
 that in which Christian doctrines were simply held in 
 trust, received as part of the divine revelations, contem- 
 plated with gratitude and awe, not eagerly scrutinised 
 
64 STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY. 
 
 and canvassed; then came the time in which they 
 were distorted and perverted by heresy ; and lastly, the 
 period when in self-defence the Christian teachers were 
 forced to articulate their beliefs, to give logical explana- 
 tions of them, when, against their own will they were 
 transformed into doctors. 
 
 The Christian University of Alexandria was the first 
 fruit of this rationalising movement in the Church. 
 Clement and Origen were its two brightest names. While 
 the earlier Christian teachers had looked with suspicion 
 on all heathen learning and culture as a delusion and a 
 trap to draw them aside into error, the new teachers 
 looked with friendly or tolerant eye on the scattered 
 lights of heathen wisdom as emanations from the Father 
 of Light, who had never been wanting to any of His 
 creatures, who had in a sense inspired those early sages, 
 who had given those flickering lights of knowledge as 
 a foretaste of the great effulgence which was soon to 
 dawn upon them. They indeed pushed their meta- 
 physical speculations, their love of finding points of 
 contact with heathen learning, their allegorising of 
 Scripture, often to a dangerous excess ; and if the eyes of 
 authority had not been fixed on these Christian philo- 
 sophers, warning them of dangers and protesting against 
 the excesses of their speculation, in their hands the 
 whole Christian system might have dissolved away into 
 an airy dream, a revived Platonism, a graceful and 
 touching allegory. But at every moment in which 
 there was danger to the simplicity of Christian truth, 
 there was always an appeal against mere philosophical 
 glosses or explanations, against mere human additions 
 to the Deposit of faith contained in the Church, " those 
 truths which had been surely believed from the be- 
 ginning." 
 
DEVELOPMEKT OF DOGMA. 65 
 
 Philosophical speculation' once opened about the per- 
 son of Christ, this course of inquiry was pursued by 
 successive theologians in a way which threatened danger 
 to the pure doctrine of the Gospel. TertulUau had 
 endeavoured to make the doctrines level, or, at least, 
 accessible to human reasoning, by dwelHng on the 
 double meaning of the term Logos or word as applicable 
 both to the inward thought and to that thought as 
 expressed in words. Thought exists in intelligence 
 before it finds expression in words ; a moment comes in 
 which it passes into words, and then it goes forth, it 
 proceeds from him who speaks ; it is always united to 
 him, for it is always his thought ; it is distinct, for it 
 goes forth from him and appears openly. Eeasouing in 
 this manner in regard to the relation of Christ the Logos, 
 the Word to the Fountain of Deity, TertuUian endeav- 
 oured to explain both the unity of the Divine Nature 
 and the distinction of the Divine Persons. His theory 
 was carried out, enriched, and expanded by the school 
 of Alexandria, and especially by Clement and Origen. 
 According to them, Christ is Logos, that is to say. 
 Thought and Word of God, is Truth Itself, the Essence 
 of Order, Goodness, and Justice. But this Word sub- 
 sists both in God who thinks and in the world which 
 He has created in His wisdom and in conformity with 
 His thought. The Word of God subsists in the Divine 
 Intelligence as type of all possible wisdom ; it is realised 
 in the world as the model and rule of all real creation. 
 In so far as it is the thought of God, it is God Himself, 
 but it is expressed also in finite Intelligence, and in the 
 world which realises itself. Thus it is at once united 
 to God and distinct from God. Origen illustrated this 
 by the example of a house or vessel constructed after a 
 certain type. So all things, he says, have been made 
 
 E 
 
66 STUDIES IN CHEISTIAX HISTORY. 
 
 after the type of possible things already manifested in 
 the Divine wisdom. These ideas, which cannot fail to 
 recall the lofty speculations of Plato, have often since 
 been reproduced in the history of Christian thought. 
 They form the central idea of the vision of God of 
 Malebranche; they form the foundation of almost aU 
 Christian metaphysics. 
 
 Theologians "were not slow to push forward in the 
 road of inquiry thus opened up. The path of theo- 
 logical speculation was indeed beset with difficulties. 
 The question of the nature of Christ and of the three 
 persons in the Trinity, was one of the inquiries in which 
 danger lurked on every side. On the one side was the 
 Scylla of denying the diversity of the Divine persons 
 with the view of establishing the unity of God ; on the 
 other, the Charybdis of injuring that unity in order 
 to establish the diversity of the Persons. Into the 
 first of these errors the Sabellians fell. According 
 to them the Divinity should be considered as perfectly 
 one, an absolute monad. The three persons are only 
 three different ways of looking at it, or three develop- 
 ments it has assumed. God creating the world is the 
 Father, God saving the world is the Son, God in His 
 relation to the Church and to the faithful soul, is the 
 Spirit ; but these three are only names of the same 
 Being, three different relations which He assumes. So 
 energetically was this view combated by Dionysius of 
 Alexandria, that seeking to establish the divinity of the 
 Persons he brought upon himself the suspicion of im- 
 pugning the identity of Substance. Here first was 
 brought to light the term " Consubstantial," which was 
 destined afterwards to assume so vast importance in the 
 Church. 
 
 The other error was adopted by Paul of Samosata, 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMA. 67 
 
 Bishop of Antioch. A man of worldly or even immoral 
 life, of violent passions, of unbridled ambition, his 
 doctrinal views were no less charged with danger to the 
 purity of the Church. Carrying out the theories which 
 Dionysius was unjustly accused of holding, he so sub- 
 ordinated the Son in nature to the Father as to main- 
 tain that Christ was only a man descended from heaven, 
 become God by the sovereign will of the Father. He 
 was condemned by two councils held at Antioch, who 
 yet, while branding his heresy, declined to make use of 
 the unambiguous word " Consubstantial." 
 
 Fifty years followed before the condemnation of the 
 errors of Paul and the outbreak of the heresy of Arius, 
 and these were years of quietude in the Church, so far 
 as controversy was concerned. Doubtless the questions 
 of the nature of the Godhead and of the three Persons 
 were eagerly agitated in the schools of Alexandria ; and it 
 was this seat of controversy and of metaphysics which 
 was to have the ambiguous honour of giving birth to 
 the new heresy which was for so many years to distract 
 the Church and even to rend it in pieces. Arius, a 
 presbyter of this city, a man respectable in character 
 and attainments, propounded the notion that Christ the 
 "Word was inferior to the Father in nature and posterior 
 in the order of Being. He did not, like Paul of Samo- 
 sata, maintain that He was only a man elevated to 
 the rank of Godhead by the sovereign wiU of God — he 
 allowed that He was God, one of the persons of the 
 Trinity, that He had made all things and existed before 
 all time ; he refused to Him only two attributes, iden- 
 tity with the Father and Eternity. It is difficult often 
 to reach the exact point in a dispute, considered 
 by the controversialists of vital consequence; but it 
 appears that Arius made a distinction, difficult for 
 
68 STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN HISTOEY. 
 
 US to comprehend, between existing before all time 
 and existing from Eternity. It is evident, too, that 
 amidst all the dexterity of his reasoning, the fence of 
 his words, the ambiguities with which he surrounded 
 himself, the clear instincts of the Church perceived that 
 in reality he made the Son a creature, higher, doubtless, 
 than other creatures, but still only one of them, owing 
 His existence to God Himself, not co-eternal with Him. 
 What was this but a return to the old discarded 
 heathenism ? Jesus Christ, according to this view, was 
 only a demigod, a new Prometheus come to revisit the 
 earth, a creature beside or before which men would not 
 be long in placing other creatures, and of according to 
 them too an idolatrous worship. With clear vision 
 Athanasius perceived this, and told the Arians that in 
 reality, like the heathen, they had two worships, one for 
 the God who had created, the other for the creature. 
 It was the want and the weakness of Paganism that it 
 effected a complete divorce between philosophy and 
 religion, between the wisdom of the wise and the piety 
 of the humble. It was by no means incapable of rising 
 to the idea of one God ; but this abstraction, this crea- 
 ture of philosophy when contemplated closely became 
 the mere Absolute or Infinite of thought, a mere neg- 
 ative term, vanished in the clouds of Idealism, in- 
 capable of affecting a single heart or inspiring a single 
 lofty action. It was at once the excuse and the 
 strength of the popular religions, even amidst their 
 coarseness and evil, that in their rebound from this 
 dreary idealism, they presented to men's view deities of 
 flesh and blood, in some points like ourselves, who could 
 share man's feelings, with whom he could in some sense 
 sympathise. It was the glory of Christianity that it 
 reconciled these two opposite views. The great God, 
 
DEVELOPMENT OP DOGMA, 69 
 
 the Father of heaven and earth, the Infinite and Eternal, 
 the Incomprehensible, clothed with all the attributes 
 with which philosophy has invested Him, was still there ; 
 but He had come out from the mysteries of His essence, 
 He had left His solitary Being, He had been revealed 
 in Jesus Christ, in Him He had been known to us. He 
 had indeed been one of us. The same Being who in 
 the depths of His nature was invested with the strength 
 and majesty of Divinity had been manifested in the 
 tenderness, the pity, the grace, the weakness even of 
 our humanity ; the same Being who was able to exer- 
 cise the intellect of the proudest philosopher was able 
 to melt the heart of a poor child or woman. It was 
 the glory of the Fathers of Mcsea that they seized the 
 vital point of the controversy; they saw that in tlie 
 heresy of Arius was a vital attack upon Christianity. 
 Whatever words of profound respect might be ex- 
 pressed towards the person of the Son, whatever am- 
 biguities might be mixed up with the discussion, across 
 the cloud of subtleties they perceived clearly that 
 Christianity was attacked in that which had been its 
 distinguishing point in the eyes of the heathen and of 
 the world at large. 
 
 To settle this important question, and to give 
 peace to the long disturbed Church, a general coun- 
 cil of the Christian world was convoked by the 
 Emperor Constantine, to meet at the city of Nicsea in 
 Bithynia. An intense interest attaches to this assem- 
 bly. It was the first general council of the Christian 
 Church, met under the auspices and by the desire of a 
 Christian Emperor. It was the first really free assem- 
 bly of the empire which had met for three hundred 
 years, convoked not slavishly to carry out the demands 
 of an imperial master, under the show of free deliber- 
 
70 STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN- HISTORY. 
 
 ation and the forms of legality, but to deliberate on 
 matters of highest concern to the Christian community 
 ■with the consent, the approbation, the respect of the 
 ruler of the world. Bishops to the number of about three 
 hundred from all parts of the world gathered in June 
 325 in the small city of Nicsea. The deliberations of 
 the Council are not very well known to us ; no formal 
 records of the meetings have been preserved. It is 
 difficult to arrive at the exact truth amidst the exagger- 
 ations of the orthodox writers and the ambiguities of 
 those who were suspected of Arianising tendencies. One 
 thing is evident — that the feeling of the assembly from 
 the beginning was very adverse to Arius. He appeared 
 at the citation of the council, and stated his views with 
 a boldness amounting almost to insolence, which excited 
 the indignation of the assembly. His friends — among 
 whom, notably were the two Eusebius', Bishops respec- 
 tively of Cesarea and of Nicomedia — alarmed, took 
 measures to shelter him from the consequences of his 
 temerity and to cover his retreat. They drew up a for- 
 mula which, beneath expressions of profound respect for 
 the Son, in reality evaded the question at issue, kept it 
 unsettled, and would have left the sore ready at any 
 moment to break out afresh in the Church. Eusebius 
 of Cesarea drew out a declaration of faith, in which the 
 Son was styled " the First-born of all creation." This 
 ambiguous expression for a moment deceived the Em- 
 peror, but it could not for a moment deceive or be satis- 
 factory to the clear-sighted Athanasius. There was one 
 expression which Eusebius of Nicomedia said he could 
 not receive, which seemed to remove ambiguity and to 
 express the views of the Council on every point which 
 was in debate. This was the Greek term Homoousios, 
 equivalent to the Latin Consubstantial, of the same 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMA. 71 
 
 essence or nature. The Arians and their allies were 
 willing to go great lengths in the way of compromise, 
 but they were not willing to concede this. The word 
 was at once fixed on by the majority of the council as 
 the expression of their judgment ; and those who main- 
 tained that there was a time when the Son was not, or 
 that He was not before being begotten, or that he was 
 brought out of nothingness, or that He is of another 
 substance or essence than God, were formally banished 
 from the communion of the Church. 
 
 The Council at Nice was regarded with intense inter- 
 est by the society of the time, as well pagan as Chris- 
 tian. AU sorts of legends have gathered around it ; 
 supernatural and miraculous occurrences, are said to have 
 accompanied it. This contemporary opinion of its vast 
 importance will be indorsed by the judgment of history. 
 It forms a crisis, a new era, in the history of the Church 
 and of the world. Here for the first time we have an 
 example of anxious care for the estabhshment of correct 
 views in matters beyond the range of human experience, 
 and to some extent speculative and metaphysical. We 
 have the usual concomitants of religious interest, heat, 
 vehemence, even intolerance. This must appear a sad 
 and startling occurrence to the thinker accustomed to 
 the airy and passionless speculations of the heathen 
 world, or disinclined to believe that there is any ab- 
 solute truth beyond the fleeting range of phenomena, 
 much less truth for which it is worth contending. 
 Truth to the speculative thinker of antiquity was a 
 mere plaything, or at least so uncertain that every one 
 was entitled to hold his own opinion without disturb- 
 ing that of others. The decision of Nicaa was the 
 testimony of the Christian Church to a Truth super- 
 sensuous and eternal, beyond the shifting opinion of 
 
72 STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY. 
 
 men. It was" the testimony of a once suffering but 
 now triumphant Church to the truths which had 
 been its strength and solace in times of suffering 
 and trial. The heathen philosopher had been tolerant, 
 because he did not believe in any fixed standard of truth 
 to which he was bound to conform ; he was liberal, 
 because he had no deposit of sacred truth of which he 
 was bound to be sparing. The Christian was less liberal 
 of what he regarded as truth, because he felt it was not 
 his own to be liberal with. He was more jealous and 
 even intolerant of errorists, because he was concerned 
 for what he believed to be the honour and glory of 
 God. 
 
73 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 ASCETICISM. 
 
 By the decisions of the Council of Nicsea the Church 
 had escaped a great danger. A latent enemy had been 
 unmasked, a sore which threatened to breed corruption 
 in the bosom of the Church had been removed. The 
 Arians generally had been of a character alien to that 
 of the Christian community. They had been sophists, 
 men trained in the schools in the fence of words and 
 metaphysical distinctions ; men who looked rather to 
 verbal refinements than to the spirit and meaning of 
 Scripture ; who would fain have turned the truth of 
 Jesus into a mere mythology or philosophy, a modified 
 paganism. The forces of the enemy routed within the 
 Church, rallied outside of it, and constituted still a 
 formidable adversary. Arianism, discomfited in the 
 first council, and after various fortunes finally con- 
 demned in the Council of Constantinople (a.d. 381), 
 was cast out of the Church to linger beyond it a bitter 
 and opposing sect, or finding shelter beyond the out- 
 skirts of the empire, to become in its barbarian inva- 
 ders a source of weakness and trouble to Catholicism. 
 
 But meanwhile another stream of tendency was re- 
 vealing itself. Coincident with the rise and develop- 
 ment of the dogmatic spirit within the Church, was the 
 
74 STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY. 
 
 rise and development of the Ascetic spirit. These two 
 tendencies have their origin in two real and natural 
 dispositions of man. He has a desire to know God, to 
 rise above himself to the source of Infinite Being ; but 
 this tendency may find satisfaction in two ways, either 
 by reasoning about God, by inquiries as to His nature 
 and attributes, or by retiring within oneself, by ecstas/, 
 mortification, and prayer, striving to rise to the con- 
 templation of God. In other words, the same tend- 
 ency, whether it take the form of mystery or of 
 dogmatism, will lead men either to discuss God in the 
 philosopher's- chair, or by monastic severity to seek to 
 find Him in the recesses of our own being. Equally 
 manifested were these two tendencies at Alexandria in 
 the third century of our era. Men sought either to reason 
 about God in the schools, or to find Him in the desert 
 by a life of austerity and prayer. 
 
 There was here but the development in fuller measure 
 of a tendency long latent in the Church. Asceticism, 
 it is well known, is not peculiar to any creed, it has its 
 root in a craving of man's nature which is anterior to 
 all actual creeds or positive religions. Who has not at 
 times felt in his soul a desire for solitude, a longing to 
 escape from the giddy or self-seeking crowd, and to 
 meditate on those things which concern his higher self 
 — these spiritual realities which underlie his being, and 
 which, though forgotten awhile amidst the engage- 
 ments of life, in the end vindicate their place as all 
 •important ? The anchorite of India who, with his 
 painful maceration, his rag cast over his loins, his 
 wooden platter in his hands, sustains himself on grass 
 or on roots, presents a picture most repugnant to our 
 ideas. The Cenobites whose institutions are scattered 
 over the vast uplands of Tibet and Tartary, live under 
 
ASCETICISM. 75 
 
 a common rule and present curious analogies to the 
 monasteries of the West. The Essenes, with their 
 community of goods and spirit of active and practical 
 benevolence, inhabiting the shores of the Dead Sea be- 
 fore the beginning of our era; the Therapeutse more 
 mystical and contemplative, dwelling in the deserts 
 of Egypt some centuries later, all exhibited in systems 
 diverse to one another the universality of this feel- 
 ing of our. nature. In the Christian Church this tend- 
 ency to a life of seclusion and retreat, for the purpose 
 of cultivating the higher graces of the Christian charac- 
 ter or carrying out more fully those counsels of perfec- 
 tion recommended by our Divine Lord, exhibited itself 
 from the beginning. Individuals forsook their own 
 homes and the commerce of men, to be more alone 
 with God and with their own hearts. As yet, how- 
 ever, it was the age of martyrdom. The Church in 
 the energy of her fiery struggle against the opposing 
 forces that closed in around her, had need of the 
 courage and zeal of all her sons and daughters to 
 sustain her in the conflict. The impulse to the new 
 life came from Egypt, the cradle of the most venerable 
 faiths and most solemn and imposing rites of the world, 
 whose religion had always been characterised by a burn- 
 ing zeal and an enthusiasm almost intemperate. An- 
 tony appears to us as the first great hermit. Eich, 
 and born of a good Christian family, he had, while a 
 youth of eighteen, heard the words of the Lord, " Go, 
 sell all that thou hast and give to the poor, and come 
 follow me." He took these words literally. He was 
 filled with a burning desire to follow so closely in the 
 steps of his Lord, to be so near to Him in spirit, that 
 no outward hindrances should have power over him. 
 He sold his acres of rich ground for behoof of the poor. 
 
76 STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN HISTOKY. 
 
 made over his sister to the care of some pious Christian 
 females, and hastened to bury himself in the desert. 
 
 He chose the ruins of an old castle for his abode, and 
 here was the scene of his most fearful spiritual com- 
 bats : alone, given up to the meditations of his own 
 heart, the wild desert around calculated to inspire him 
 only with images of terror, and to heighten the fervour 
 of his spirit, Antony undertook the double task of sub- 
 duing the natural desires of the flesh, and, by austerity, 
 of becoming fit to draw near acceptably to God. In his 
 retreat he was not unmolested by the terrible powers of 
 evU. Images of surpassing loveliness hovered round the 
 devoted youth, and tried to turn him aside from the 
 life of penitence, renunciation, and devotion to God on 
 which he had entered. Demons of hideous form and 
 unshapely monsters visited his lonely retreat, or with 
 horrid cries molested the silence of the vigil in which 
 his praying spirit was alone with God. Even the sun 
 seemed to rise upon him to put a period to his devo- 
 tions. " Oh, sun," he said once, when the light had 
 surprised him in the midst of his religious duties, 
 " wherefore dost thou rise already and turn me from 
 contemplating the splendour of the true light ? " And 
 yet with this intense earnestness of soul, there was 
 nothing savage or repulsive in the course of solitary 
 devotion he pursued. Antony, even amidst the austeri- 
 ties by which he sought to subdue the rebellious flesh, 
 preserved that humane and kindly temper, that love of 
 the beautiful in nature, which we find to be everywhere 
 a mark of the genuine monk. His retreat, we are told, 
 was a high and rocky mountain, from which welled 
 forth a stream of limpid water, bordered by palms, 
 which afforded an agreeable shade. Antony had planted 
 this pleasant spot with vines and shrubs : there was an 
 
ASCETICISM. 77 
 
 enclosure for fruit-trees and vegetables, and a tank from 
 ■which the labour of the monk irrigated the garden. He 
 was by no means unsocial or misanthropic in his way of 
 life ; to restrain any feeling of spiritual pride, to quicken 
 his sympathy with others like-minded, he made a round 
 of visits to the most distinguished anchorites who already 
 inhabited the desert, striving to imitate the gentleness 
 of one, the constancy in prayer or charity of another, 
 the distinctive excellence of each. At last the life of 
 superhuman exertion and heroic effort after holiness was 
 rewarded with success. His ambition was attained. 
 Antony had reached that subjugation of his passions, 
 that absolute self-control after which saints and philo- 
 sophers have sighed in every age. The fame of his 
 wonderful conflicts with the powers of evil, and of 
 his spiritual attainments, had gone abroad. Multi- 
 tudes sought the devoted hermit, to wonder at him or 
 to imitate him. He withdrew further into the desert, 
 but it was only to be followed by the multitudes, to 
 escape whom he had fled into solitude. The faded 
 voluptuaries of the city, who sought after conversion 
 and a higher life, the disappointed seeker after happi- 
 ness, the ascetic seeking after a model, the wondering 
 philosopher seeking after wisdom in another direction 
 than in the mere questionings of the understanding, 
 came to inquire after the saintly ascetic, who seemed 
 able to point out a new road to happiness and wisdom. 
 Antony knew well how to discriminate between those 
 different classes of inquirers. To the earnest he offered 
 hospitality and attention ; with the frivolous he spent 
 whole nights speaking to them about the state of their 
 soul. Though not possessed of stores of worldly wis- 
 dom, Antony, as the fruit of his communings with 
 nature and with his own heart, possessed a wisdom of 
 
78 STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY. 
 
 the heart which enabled him to reach to a solution of 
 questions inaccessible to the mere philosopher. He 
 had grappled in his own way with many of those ques- 
 tions which perplex the most practised intelligence, and 
 he possessed a strong common-sense which told him the 
 limits within which thought is distinctly to be carried 
 on. Many myths and legends have gathered around 
 his memory ; but through the veil they have cast upon 
 him, we can still see the man, saintly and mortified, full 
 of zeal for the glory of his Divine Master and the 
 truth He had taught and intrusted to His disciples, 
 severe towards himself, but kindly towards his fellow- 
 men, to the inquirers who came seeking wisdom and 
 instruction, and the penitent and fallen who came seek- 
 ing pardon and restoration. Occasionally only he left 
 his solitude and visited the city, in times of great peril 
 to the Church and to the truth, and in seasons of 
 persecution, to comfort and strengthen the confessors 
 of the Christian faith. Then so great was the vener- 
 ation inspired by his virtues, that even the Eoman 
 executioner feared to touch him. And in the no less 
 dangerous times, when the purity of Christian truth was 
 assailed by Arianism, he was not wanting to uphold the 
 tradition of the faith. In this latter case he proved 
 himself as the monks of late days always did, a strong- 
 hold of orthodoxy. He died at an advanced age, but 
 his system was extended and consolidated by his suc- 
 cessor Pacomius, who gave to the religious communities 
 of Egypt a rule — regulations, that is — for their common 
 life and their religious observance. 
 
 Here it may be proper to break off for the present 
 the thread of narrative, in order to inquire into the 
 motive which led multitudes to embrace a life seemingly 
 so strange and repugnant to our nature, and to the 
 
ASCETICISM. 79 
 
 active spirit of Christianity as exemplified by its founder. 
 Especially at present such an inquiry may be useful, 
 ■when a life of seclusion and retirement for religious 
 purposes is condemned and pitied by the world as 
 tame and cowardly, the hiding of a light, the desertion 
 of a post, the withdrawing of an influence, the virtual 
 abdication of our manhood, and of all that makes life 
 worth living. The dreariness and unwholesomeness of 
 such an existence has been eloquently dwelt upon by 
 writers of the Utilitarian and " greatest happiness " 
 school, its unhealthy moping and groping into self, its 
 aimlessness, its barrenness. Fully recognising the exist- 
 ence of those dangers, it might be retorted that a life 
 exclusively devoted to worldly occupation, whether in 
 pursuit of pleasure or of gain, is liable to objections 
 quite as grave. What shall we say of the life of in- 
 trigue, of ambition and scrambhng after precedence and 
 social position which the fashionable novel so powerfully 
 depicts, the mean devices used in the attainment of ends 
 deemed so valuable, the love of appearance to the neglect 
 of solid and homely happiness ; or, on the other hand, 
 the unscrupulous desire to be rich, heedless of the in- 
 terest and rights of others, the building up of colossal 
 fortunes, sometimes by disgraceful means, often to be 
 bequeathed to imbecile or spendthrift children, features 
 so characteristic of our day ? 
 
 It has often been alleged that monasticism is a cor- 
 ruption of Christianity. Let us see how far this accusa- 
 tion is true. Different and opposed motives may lead 
 to the same course of action. The Indian fakir, the 
 Mohammedan dervish, the Christian monk, live lives 
 in some respects .similar, but it would be difficult to 
 imagine cases in which the governing motives were 
 more entirely at variance. With the Indian ascetic the 
 
80 STUDIES IN CHEISTIAN HISTORY. 
 
 governing idea is that of Ms religious creed, that matter 
 is in itself and essentially an evil; that individual 
 exertion, too, is an evU, something to be got rid of as 
 speedily as possible, as a drop that is lost in the im- 
 mensity of ocean. But this was far from the idea 
 that inspired the Christian ascetic. No thought of the 
 essential evil of matter moved him ; he had not to 
 unlearn the idea that the body in which he dwelt, and 
 through which he held communion with the outward 
 world, was essentially debased, for he read that in the 
 beginning God created all things' very good ; that all 
 things around bore the impress of His power and good- 
 ness ; that the body of man was a temple of the Holy 
 Ghost, set aside and sanctified to holy uses ; that the 
 seat of corruption and evil lay in the mind and heart. 
 The true monk believed that civil society and the 
 domestic institutions, public life and marriage, were 
 good and an ordinance of God, might be devoted to the 
 service of God and holiness. But besides and above this 
 natural order, he believed there was a supernatural 
 order, a divine Master and country, which had a stronger 
 claim upon his obedience than any earthly lord or 
 country, — a union of the soul with God, higher and 
 holier than any earthly tie ; a life of holiness and peace 
 and devotion more worthy than any which the most 
 enlightened patriotism could suggest. To attain this was 
 the object of his intense desire. He strained after it 
 with the same enthusiasm which the sage or patriot had 
 shown in behalf of his country, or what he might think 
 was the truth. Doubtless, like them, he was often 
 disappointed in the object of his quest ; he found the 
 way of perfection too high or narrow or difficult of 
 access ; but we might as well deny that there is any true 
 patriotism or attainable truth as any standard of Chris- 
 
ASCETICISM. 81 
 
 tian perfection, because men have been misled in the 
 pursuit of all these. Certain words were always 
 recurring to the genuine monk about the narrow way, 
 and the few who sought or gaiued admittance to it; or 
 the competition of the Grecian games came aptly to his 
 mind, in which few were so fortunate as to be adorned 
 with the crown of laurels. And thus all life was pre- 
 sented to him under the aspect of a striving for some- 
 thing higher, a severe discipline needful for one who 
 would attain spiritual proficiency. He did not more 
 than other men love suffering and privation, cold, fast- 
 ing, and poverty for their own sake, but as means by 
 which he was to obtain dominion over the flesh, and 
 rise to liberty of spirit. Above all, his constant aim 
 was to secure his personal salvation. We shall mis- 
 understand the true aim of the monastic calling if we do 
 not give this consideration a foremost place. Whatever 
 other motives may have led men to assume a life of mon- 
 astic seclusion, whatever collateral advantages may have 
 ilowed from it in the preservation of ancient literature, 
 agriculture, learning, and the like, this was the thought 
 ever foremost and prevailing with the true monk, that 
 he was thereby working out his own salvation. Even 
 in days like the present, when this may be condemned 
 as a mercenary consideration, an attempt to gain future 
 blessedness at the expense of present pain, a regard 'to 
 the truth constrains us not to forego this, to many 
 so damaging a confession. The founders of monastic 
 orders have sometimes been credited with far-reaching 
 political sagacity, with foresight to perceive that by 
 their means the valuable remains of antiquity would be 
 preserved from destruction, the world saved from the 
 tide of barbarism, and the civilisation of the future 
 constructed on a new model. But nothing in the 
 
 r 
 
82 STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN HISTOKY. 
 
 language which has been preserved to us, or in the 
 character of the first founders of monastic institutions, 
 justifies us in attributing to them so comprehensive 
 designs. They were simple, conscientious men, who, 
 in obedience to what they deemed to be the commands 
 of God's word and the suggestion of His Spirit, with- 
 drew into solitude that more entirely they might conse- 
 crate themselves to God. Their life has often been rep- 
 resented as one wanting in the sweet charities of home, 
 cold, gloomy, monotonous, useless, if not a criminal 
 withdrawal from the duties and obligations of life. Yet, 
 if we may judge from the letters and other productions 
 these solitaries have left us in the best times of their 
 system, nowhere do we discover a spirit more light- 
 hearted, tender, even gay, and at the same time more 
 manly and vigorous, than in those who are accused of 
 having condemned themselves to moral nonentity, to an 
 extinction of all the higher aims and uses of existence. 
 And this, be it observed, in exact proportion to the 
 rigour of the discipline to which they subjected them- 
 selves. Wone of that acrid misanthropy, that sour and 
 gloomy moping over imagined grievances, that over- 
 sensitiveness to personal comforts or conveniences, 
 which is so often to be met with in the disappointed 
 man of the world, the spoiled child of ease or fortune, 
 the morbid and irritable man of letters. Instead a free 
 joyousness of spirit, a want of reserve, a self -surrender, 
 which belongs only to the Christian warrior or pilgrim, 
 who has generously given up earthly good that more 
 entirely he may devote himself to the service of his 
 Captain and Lord. We need not hesitate to acknow- 
 ledge it, those dwellers in the desert, in the lonely and 
 retired monastic house, had a joy pure and strong 
 springing up within the soul — the joy of a good con- 
 
ASCETICISM. 83 
 
 science, of victory over sin, a joy ever fresh and 
 renewed, fed from the eternal source of joy and 
 peace. 
 
 For, as we before remarked, they attempted only to 
 carry out to the letter obligations which are incumbent 
 in their measure upon all Christians. Christ had said, 
 " Blessed are the meek, the poor in spirit ; for theirs is 
 the kingdom of heaven : " and their hearts were set on 
 obtaining this blessedness. Christ had told His first 
 disciples to sell all that they had and to follow Him, 
 and they took these words, not in a mere paraphrase, but 
 in the severe literalness with which they were spoken. 
 Christ had assured His disciples that it was better 
 to minister than to be ministered unto, to be the 
 servant of all for the Gospel's sake ; and they began to 
 find that the best secret of a life, free from anxiety 
 and from sin, from self-will and . spiritual pride, was a 
 life of community and brotherhood, exchanging their 
 experiences, confessing their sins one to another, being 
 ia subordination under one lawfully constituted head. 
 They lived this life because they recognised as a living 
 and ever-present reality what other men talk about, 
 the preciousness of their souls, the dignity of their nature, 
 the greatness of the immortality to come. Hence their 
 theory of life was quite opposed to the Materialism of 
 the, present day. They vindicated as no men had ever 
 so nobly done before the freedom of the will, the dignity 
 and independence of man ; they showed by their lives 
 that man was not a mere crank or wheel in the vast 
 machinery of nature, the creature of his surround- 
 ings, the slave of his destiny ; but that he was able to 
 impress his own will upon his surroundings, to mould 
 them in obedience to him. Hence they attained in 
 a measure unknown before that freedom of the wise 
 
84 STUDIES IN CHEISTIAN HISTOEY. 
 
 man of which the heathen sage had only talked or 
 dreamed. 
 
 It is not our purpose to enter into a panegyric of 
 the monastic system, any more than a defence against 
 the accusations which have been made against it, but we 
 cannot pass on without noticing the singular beauty of 
 some of the writings which emanate from the cloister. 
 There is perhaps no more attractive page in the whole 
 range of our Christian literature than those simple and 
 touching compositions, in which the writers breathe 
 forth the unseen struggles of their soul, their intense 
 aspiration after God, or the tenderness which dwelt in 
 their hearts towards one another. We repeat there is 
 no class of literature which seems to breathe more the 
 atmosphere of heaven and the very flower and perfume 
 of Christian charity than those works, many of them 
 by authors unknown,, of which the ' Imitation ' may be 
 considered as the type and masterpiece.'' 
 
 The monastic movement once begun in Egypt, even 
 its main features speedUy underwent a change, The 
 hermit disappeared before the Cenobite; the anchorite's 
 cell was replaced by the monastery. Even under the 
 burning sun, and amidst the dreary wastes of the 
 desert, which seem to favour only a life of contempla- 
 tion and of inactivity, that devotion to active pursuits 
 appeared which was afterwards so honourably char- 
 acteristic of the fraternities of the West. The monks 
 of Egypt not only plaited mats and baskets, and culti- 
 vated gardens, they had among them smiths, carpenters, 
 and shipbuilders. Athanasius, who had long known 
 
 1 See passages taken from those familiar epistles, which the various 
 communities were in the habit of sending to one another. Montalem- 
 bert's 'Monks of the West,' English Trans., vol. 1. p. 78; and from 
 Anselm, pp. 79, 80. 
 
ASCETICISM. 83 
 
 and admired the holy Antony, whose life he writes, was 
 the means of spreading his beloved institution in the 
 West. During his banishment at the hands of Constan- 
 tine, he introduced the system into Treves and other 
 seats of the imperial power. It speedily spread, and 
 was popularised in the world of the West. Jerome at 
 Eome was the special advocate and promoter of these 
 religious establishments. The system speedily found 
 favour and support, especially among the female portion 
 of the Eoman aristocracy ; and the strange sight was 
 beheld of these delicate and luxurious women, the de- 
 scendants of the Fabii and ^milii, who lately could 
 scarcely alight on the ground or go abroad except in 
 litters or supported by slaves, urged by the eloquence 
 of the great Eoman doctor, undertaking long and pain- 
 ful journeys by sea to the places consecrated by the 
 life and death of their Saviour, and in penance and 
 austerity spending there their remaining days. The 
 great doctors and bishops of the Church, alike in the 
 East and the West, warmly favoured the monastic 
 movement. Ambrose at Milan was its patron. Augus- 
 tine in Africa supported it, and himself lived with his 
 clergy in a sort of monastic community. In the East, 
 the great names of Chrysostom and Basil were found 
 among those who either were themselves monks or 
 were earnest advocates of the institution. Many of the 
 most able and devoted bishops of the Church were 
 translated from monastic life to the duties of the 
 Episcopate. The calmness and repose of mind, the 
 ascetic zeal, perhaps the concentration and energy of 
 character already displayed in the cloister, formed 
 a good preparation for the difficulties, the trials, the 
 opposition of the more exalted office. As yet, how- 
 ever, if we except the imperfect rules of Pacomius and 
 
86 STUDIES IN CHEISTIAN HISTORY. 
 
 Basil, there was no common rule for holding these 
 communities together. 
 
 The monastic system at this stage of its existence 
 was invaded with great disorders, or even was threatened 
 with premature dissolution. Bands of pretended monks, 
 making their profession a cloak for indolence and men- 
 dicancy, and by the excesses and irregularities of their 
 lives, causing scandal to the faithful, wandered to and 
 fro. The monastic establishments were in danger of 
 breaking up into a number of isolated and discordant 
 institutions, each with its own rules and economy, each 
 with its own jealousies and interests. The withdrawal 
 at this period of the monastic system from the elements 
 of public life would have been an occurrence fraught 
 with disaster to the future of civilisation and of human- 
 ity. Humanly speaking, it is impossible to see how, 
 in the absence of monasticism, the future of society 
 could have been assured; but this danger was, in the 
 providence of G-od, averted by the appearance of Bene- 
 dict, a man of noble Eoman origin, who gave to the 
 monastic system precisely that uniformity and regularity 
 which had hitherto been wanting to it. He founded 
 the famous and noble monastery of Monte Cassino, not 
 far from the retreats where first he had entered on his 
 ascetic career, combated and overthrew the remains of 
 the paganism which even in the sixth and seventh cen- 
 turies still lingered in remote parts of Italy, and trained 
 missionaries who from that centre were to go forth, 
 bearing the seed of the Gospel, to enrich and fertilise 
 distant lands. One of his disciples, St Maur, became 
 the Apostle of G-aul, and carried thither the institutions 
 of his master ; yet the conversion of Gaul and the con- 
 solidation of its monastic institutions were due not so 
 much to him as to a crowd of Irish monks and mission- 
 
ASCETICISM. 87 
 
 aries, who, under the guidance of Columban, established 
 a flourishing monastery at Luxeuil in the country of the 
 Vosges, whose offshoots penetrated to almost all the 
 other parts of Gaul, and even passing the Alps, were 
 represented in Lombardy by the famous monastery of 
 Bobbio. Columban, like others of his race, was a man 
 of much independence of character ; his adventurous dar- 
 ing led him often into positions of danger and trouble, 
 while his uncompromising assertion of his own views 
 in matters of slight importance led him frequently into 
 antagonism to the bishops of his adopted country, or 
 even to the supreme authorities at Eome. His rule 
 was marked by the same local and national peculiarities ; 
 it was unsystematic, but rigorous and unbending to a 
 degree beyond what the weakness of human nature 
 could endure. It remained for some time in existence 
 as a monument of the genius of its author, his fiery 
 zeal, his dauntless temperament, which bore him trium- 
 phantly over difficulties which would have crushed 
 weaker men, and it was well suited to make an im- 
 pression on those barbarous times; but it was never 
 adopted by the authorities of the Church, and event- 
 ually it was merged in the milder, more judicious, and 
 liberal rule of Benedict. 
 
 And now, recognising the enormous importance of the 
 monastic movement at that particular stage of society 
 in which it arose, and the incalculable blessings it con- 
 ferred on civilisation, let us try to state, as briefly as 
 possible, a few of the leading results which this decried 
 system, so opposed to the habits of our modern life, gave 
 rise to, as well as some of the objections which may be 
 urged against it. Let us not omit at the outset the 
 great benefit which by modern sociologists will be deem- 
 ed paramount, that it saved society at a time when no 
 
So STUDIES IN CHEISTIAN HISTORY. 
 
 other influence was sufficient to save it. It came a 
 regenerating agency at that most painful and critical 
 period when the old civilisation, corrupt at heart, and 
 stricken with mortal disease, was lingering in the agonies 
 of dissolution, while the new civilisation was not yet 
 born. To replace the one by the other, to fill up the 
 interval which separated them, was the great task to 
 which the monks, along with the barbarians, were called. 
 We say along with the barbarians; for without the 
 irruption of the Germanic tribes — whom the Eomans in 
 their haughty ignorance styled barbarians — spreading 
 like a tide over the empire, fiercelessly and ruthlessly 
 it is true, but leaving behind everywhere fertilisiag 
 germs, even the genius and daring zeal of these true 
 soldiers of Christ would scarcely have been able to 
 accomplish the miracle of saving that effete mass of 
 corruption which was called the empire. But without 
 the monks the barbarians would have sunk hopelessly 
 into its nameless horrors and abominable sins. In many 
 cases they were already beginning to do so. Eoman 
 society was hopelessly evil, and not even the nominal 
 profession of Christianity was able to remove the deadly 
 taint of paganism which pervaded its ideas and its 
 social life. The purifying tide must come from two 
 quarters, from a natural and from a supernatural source. 
 
 Tracing this crowning achievement of monasticism 
 into details, let us look at some of the services which 
 at this critical season it rendered to humanity. 
 
 I. The monasteries have preserved to us through 
 dark ages the remains of ancient classic literature. By 
 their care in preserving, and their industry and skill 
 in transcribing these precious remains, the monks have 
 laid us under a debt which can never be overestimated. 
 Often, too, they were dihgent students, and adepts in 
 
ASCETICISM. 89 
 
 that classical literature which they have preserved. By 
 the side of Scriptural quotations are often to be found 
 in monkish writers quotations from Livy, Virgil, and 
 Seneca, showing how familiar they were with these 
 authors. 
 
 II. It follows from this that they were centres of light 
 and refinement in very dark and troubled times. What- 
 ever refinement and civilisation survived the tide of 
 barbarism, was to be found in cloistral life. Outside 
 the walls of those tranquil abodes was a dark surging 
 sea of disorder, passion, and ignorance ; within was 
 peace and knowledge. The gentle, the refined, and the 
 timid, who were ill fitted to contend with the rough 
 world in the midst of which they lived, found within 
 the gates of the monasteries a welcome and permanent 
 shelter. Here they found the only schools and imiver- 
 sities the times afforded. The feeble lights of learn- 
 ing that remained unextinguished were concentrated in 
 them. 
 
 III. They were almost the only secure abodes of 
 purity and morality. Society under the late Eoman 
 and early barbarian rule was hopelessly disordered 
 and corrupt. The old world passing away bequeathed 
 the leaven of its evil practices and beliefs to the new 
 world which was forming at its side. Christian life 
 and practice, withdrawing from a hopeless struggle with 
 evil over the wide range of public life, burned with in- 
 tense brightness in the monastery. 
 
 IV. As far as the influence of the monastic insti- 
 tution went, it softened and humanised the manners 
 of the times. Although the founders and rulers 
 of those institutions were often men of gentle birth, 
 yet the peasant and the slave were admitted on a 
 footing of equality. Men of noblest birth submitted to 
 
90 STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY. 
 
 the lowliest drudgery. Here was an intensely peaceful 
 and democratic institution flourishing in the midst of 
 an intensely aristocratic and predatory society. A les- 
 son was perpetually being given to the turbulent kings 
 and nobles of the time, as they came within hearing 
 of the chime of bells or the voice of praise floating 
 from those peaceful walls, that there wa§ something 
 higher than brute force, nobler than oppression of the 
 weak, telling them by a quiet yet often effectual admon- 
 ition of the sin of those lives of feud and of oppression 
 which they habitually lived. Those founders of the 
 monastic life sternly rebuked the injustice and sins of 
 rulers. In the interference of the Abbot Aredius to 
 mitigate the oppressive burdens imposed on their sub- 
 jects by the Merovingian princes, in the long struggle 
 of Columban against the cruelty and impurity of Brune- 
 haut and Thierry II., we have proof how little consid- 
 erations of rank or fear of consequences were able to 
 move the monks when they were called to the discharge 
 of duty. A beautiful instance of their humanity and 
 gentleness is to be found in the care and protection 
 which they extended to the lower animals, and the 
 familiar intercourse in which they lived with them, as 
 exemplified in the numerous fine and touching legends 
 handed down to us. It seemed as if the old intercourse 
 between man and the lower creatures, and his dominion 
 over them interrupted by sin, were restored in what 
 seemed almost a new garden of innocence. 
 
 V. Think of their boundless hospitality. This was 
 one of the foremost duties enjoined on the monks, 
 and it was one which, even in their declining days, 
 was carefully attended to. The monastery, situated in 
 a secluded spot, or on some of the great routes at a time 
 when communications were difficult or dangerous, was a 
 
ASCETICISM. 9 1 
 
 hospice in which the weary and famishing traveller was 
 welcomed in a room set apart for the purpose, and the 
 unremitting care and attention of Christian charity be- 
 stowed upon him. "With those who at the end of a toil- 
 some day's journey have found lodgings only in a cold 
 and solitary inn, or encountered a shapeless and unten- 
 anted mass of ruins, this consideration ought to have 
 some weight. 
 
 VI. By their manual toils monks consecrated la- 
 bour, so lightly esteemed in ' a military and aristocratic 
 society. They were the genuine precursors of the 
 working men of to-day. Think of those dense and 
 sombre forests girding what are now the fairest and 
 most fertile parts of Europe, from Northern Gaul and 
 from the Elbe and Weser reaching to and including 
 Switzerland, trackless and uninhabited save by bands 
 of robbers or by wolves and beasts of chase — from the 
 mountains and uplands of the interior extending to the 
 banks of the great rivers, where alone some cultivated 
 spots were to be found, and imparting to the climate of 
 Central Europe a rigour now unknown. All these were 
 in time to be reclaimed by the patient industry of these 
 men of peace and prayer. After the wild waves of 
 barbarian invasion, culminatinfg in the Frankish mon- 
 archy, had in turn swept over G-aul and iipturned its 
 Eoman civilisation, it was monks who were again to 
 restore its faded glories, its flourishing civilisation, to 
 reclaim what was now a dense mass of copse, separated 
 by swamps and morasses into swelling pastures and 
 meadows. 
 
 VII. Think of their jealous defence of orthodoxy. 
 In times of terrible danger to the Christian faith, the 
 monks were ever steady and warm supporters of an- 
 cient and sound doctrine. Leaving for a time their 
 
92 STUDIES IN CHEISTIAN HISTOKY. 
 
 retreats and their prayers, they appeared in the crowded 
 cities of Egypt to support the wavering spirits of the 
 orthodox, to confront even rulers and officials when they 
 seemed unfaithful to the interests of truth. In times 
 of laxity in morals or discipline within the orthodox 
 pale, their earnest zeal and impassioned devotion often 
 stirred up the bishops and secular clergy to emulate them 
 hy a more earnest discharge of duty. 
 
 Lastly. Think of their wonderful missionary zeal 
 and success. Everywhere they were the earnest and 
 indefatigable pioneers of the Gospel. The wild desert, 
 the tangled forest, which by their hands they reclaimed, 
 was a type of the still harsher moral wilderness which 
 was to yield to the persevering efforts of their faith, 
 charity, and industry. Britain was converted by Augus- 
 tine and those bands of monks whom Gregory had sent 
 forth from Eome on this new conquering expedition ; 
 Gaul by Maur, disciple of Benedict ; Germany by Boni- 
 face. And then when the work was almost to be done 
 over again ; when these countries, overrun by Alemanni, 
 Saxons, Slavs, had to be reconverted, Columban and 
 his intrepid throng of Irish missionaries came forth, 
 struggled against the disasters of the Prankish mon- 
 archy, and restored to those fierce but still manly and 
 uncorrupt races the light of Christian truth. St Gall, 
 the disciple of Columban, was the apostle of Switzer- 
 land ; St Adalbert converted the Huns and Slavs, still 
 fresh from their conquests. At a later period we have 
 the same victory virtually repeated. Columban and his 
 band of monks, issuing from Ireland and from his shrine 
 in the little desert Isle of lona, shed forth the light 
 which was to illuminate the wild Picts and Scots of the 
 North. His institutions, vigorous and hardy, though 
 tinged perhaps too much with the spirit of individuality 
 
ASCETICISM. 93 
 
 and independence, spread everywhere throughout the 
 northern regions of Britain ; and transferring their seat 
 from lona in the west to Lindisfarne in the east, 
 became a centre of light to the Northumbrian Ijingdom. 
 The complete victory of the Saxons over the Eomanised 
 Britons had seemed a defeat of Christianity — a success 
 achieved by the old gods of paganism. But a few years 
 pass, and we behold these wild and ferocious tribes, 
 whom we look back upon as our ancestors, become the 
 willing and grateful subjects of the Cross. There is 
 perhaps no more beautiful and touching incident in 
 history than the sight of those savage worshippers of 
 Thor and Odin listening reverently to the teaching of 
 the gentle monks of Columba, nor any more pleasing 
 spectacle than the stalwart and warlike kings of North- 
 umbria, subdued as by magic to the gentleness and pur- 
 ity of Christianity, accompanying the missionaries of the 
 new faith as their humble interpreters and inducing 
 their subjects to listen ; and practical result of this 
 conversion to Christian truth, the peace and welfare of 
 their kingdoms. 
 
 Such, briefly sketched, are some of the services rend- 
 ered to humanity by the monastic orders ; and mention- 
 ing these, we have merely admitted their claims to 
 be the chief or almost exclusive Institutions of Light 
 and Civilisation in a period signally destitute of these. 
 As countervailing disadvantages, what is there to 
 allege? 
 
 One ever - repeated objection is, that this system 
 withdrew many, and often the best individu.als, from the 
 active duties of life, and thus removed a health-giving 
 element, and hastened the downfall of a society which 
 was abandoned to its evil impulses. But in a society 
 so hopelessly corrupt and so despairing, . in a political 
 
94 STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY. 
 
 system where favoiaritism and venality ruled supreme, 
 where every access to merit was closed except _ through 
 the caprices of the priuce, it was doubtless felt by many 
 that higher service to their fellows could be rendered 
 by withdrawing from a hopeless struggle than by main- 
 taining it. There are times when it is true wisdom and 
 true courage to seek a retreat rather than to lead a 
 forlorn - hope. The story of the two officers of the 
 Imperial court at Treves, who, entering a monastery 
 and lifting up a volume containiag the life of St An- 
 tony, at once resolved upon a life of seclusion, is but 
 a type of many in that unhappy and despairing age, 
 as their cry was doubtless but the echo of that of 
 ■ multitudes — " Where does all our toil lead us 1 What 
 hope have we except that of becoming the friends of 
 the emperor 1 It is our main duty to become the 
 friends of God, and from to-day." 
 
 The old Eoman religion had denied the rights of God 
 and of the individual soul. The sole virtue it extolled 
 was civic virtue ; its one duty, patriotism. Man, in its 
 view, had access to the gods only in virtue of his 
 federal relation to the State of which they were the 
 protectors. Yet the patriotism of the Eoman was of 
 a narrow and selfish, as it was of an exaggerated, char- 
 acter. With the Eoman patrician it meant the right 
 of the sovereign people to lord it over the subject-races 
 of the earth ; for himself, the right to absorb the chief 
 places of power ■ and of profit, and to exact from the 
 groaning provincial, by cruelty and oppression, the hard- 
 won fruits of his toils. But Christianity told of a 
 wider and closer bond of community which embraced 
 all nations, though the blood of Quirinus did not flow 
 in their veins, of whose members a common faith and 
 hope and love were the only necessary requirements. 
 
ASCETICISM. 95 
 
 It did not say that men, at the bidding of an exaggerated 
 self-importance, calling itself patriotism, was to sacrifice 
 conscience, his sense of justice, and his duty to himself; 
 on the contrary, it sought to reinforce the great duty 
 of man to cultivate his own higher nature, to bring out 
 the best parts of his character, to work out his own 
 salvation. Thus before the light of closer scrutiny 
 vanishes the sophism that monachism was untrue to 
 the interests of mankind, because it did not bid man 
 sacrifice the highest and purest fruits of his being to 
 a hollow and insincere public life. 
 
 Again, monachism has been accused of an habitual 
 tendency to falsehood, of a neglect of the duty of truth- 
 fulness, because of the exaggerations and legends, the 
 accounts of miracles, the romantic occurrences with which 
 its chronicles and lives of saints are embellished. In 
 an uncritical age no doubt the duty of exact and literal 
 reproduction of fact was less realised than at present ; 
 tilings are expressed through a poetic or idealised 
 medium which often expresses the meaning better than 
 the dry exactness of the chronicler, and petty and un- 
 generous would be the criticism which would carp at 
 those touching and beautiful legends which often do 
 credit to human nature. We are at a loss, indeed, some- 
 times to separate what is intended for history from what 
 is meant as symbolism. When we are told of the won- 
 derful conquests of the Gospel over external nature, how 
 it held spell-bound in obedience to its gentle bidding the 
 most savage animals, we seem to read in parable of the 
 wonderful power the new-born faith in Christ exerted 
 over the rudest natures ; how the conquering barbarian 
 became speedily the willing captive and subject of the 
 Cross ; and how this same power, exerted over outward 
 nature, led to the overcoming of obstacles, the reclaim- 
 
96 STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY. 
 
 ing of barren wastes, the conquering of the earth again 
 by the sweat of man's brow, as a new paradise devoted 
 to God. Taking then all the points of the case into 
 consideration, Monasticism appears one of the most 
 beneiicent institutions which Providence has made to 
 appear in its season in the history of humanity. 
 
97 
 
 CHAPTEK VI. 
 
 THE CONVERTED EMPIRE. 
 
 To the simple minds of the first Christians the idea 
 that the Eoman power should ever be converted to 
 Christianity and become an instrument in propagating 
 it, would have seemed an absurdity. Notwithstanding 
 certain passages occurring in the Holy Scriptures show- 
 ing that the kingdoms of this world should become the 
 kingdoms of Christ, that kings should be nursing fathers 
 to the Church, it would have seemed to them the wild- 
 est of delusions to suppose that a being so steeped in 
 cruelty, vice, and antagonism to the cause of truth as 
 the Eoman emperor should ever become its protector, 
 its ally, nay, its obedient child. Yet towards this 
 consummation all events were tending. Earnestness, 
 strength, vigour of moral life, were fast departing 
 from that great unwieldy structure called the Eoman 
 Empire, and were concentrating themselves in a society 
 hated, despised, in part invisible, small in comparison, yet 
 extending its ramifications on all sides, which, in compact- 
 ness, in intelligence, in clearness of purpose, in vigour of 
 execution, was far superior to the Eoman power. The 
 population of the Empire might be regarded roughly as 
 composed of two classes : on the one hand, the learned 
 and wealthy, the official and patrician caste, engrossing the 
 
 G 
 
98 STUDIES IN CHEISTIAN HISTORY. 
 
 offices and emoluments of State and of religion, hating 
 all innovation, adhering keenly to the traditions of 
 ancient Eome, because in virtue of these they believed 
 the greatness of the State had been achieved ; and on 
 the other hand, the populace, plunged in superstition 
 and in vice, living a dull objectless existence, or a sullen 
 discontented one, under the sway of masters who by 
 turns oppressed or pampered them. 
 
 The vigorous mind of Constantine saw that some 
 change was inevitable. The Christians were becoming 
 every day more popular. During the latest persecu- 
 tion under Diocletian, the populace often sided with 
 them, and exclaimed loudly against the cruelty of their 
 oppressors. The motives that were likely to influ- 
 ence a character like Constantine, must indeed have 
 been very mingled ; motives of State policy must have 
 been powerful ; but along with these there is no reason 
 to doubt he had a strong conviction of the truth of 
 Christianity, an almost overpowering awe and reverence 
 in the presence of that mysterious power which in its 
 weakness and obscurity had been able to overcome the 
 strong visible and material forces which were arrayed 
 against it. The impartial historian cannot reasonably 
 doubt the sincerity of the conversion of Constantine ; 
 but whatever motives may have influenced him in his 
 change, and in however small a degree he imbibed the 
 spirit of Christianity, even whilst he embraced its out- 
 ward forms, it is undeniable that a vast improvement 
 was at once effected in the laws and institutions of the 
 Empire. The laws became more austere, as was fitting in 
 a State professing to be governed on Christian principles, 
 while at the same time the penal code was shorn of 
 some of its more cruel and barbarous enactments. The 
 position of women was at once elevated, and attacks on 
 
THE CONVERTED EMPIEE. 99 
 
 female virtue were punished with extreme severity. 
 The condition of the vast slave population was amelior- 
 ated, as the first step towards their complete emanci- 
 pation. In the prevailing temper of the Eoman popu- 
 lace it must have appeared dangerous and impracticable 
 to abolish at once the gladiatorial contests ; but restric- 
 tions were placed upon them ; they were officially 
 discouraged, as well as placed under the ban of an 
 enlightened public opinion. Freedom of worship was 
 proclaimed to all ; the ceremonies of paganism were still 
 tolerated. But in practice it was found impossible to 
 maintain this tolerance; the rites of the old religion 
 had in many places become a mere cloak for de- 
 bauchery, and therefore at the bidding of the sovereign 
 power many of the temples were destroyed, and the 
 priests dispersed or punished as the ministers of im- 
 morality. 
 
 Yet we must remember that this great work, this 
 peacefvd revolution, was the work of a minority. Even 
 should we refuse to admit Gribbon's estimate of the vast 
 disproportion between Christians and heathens, it is 
 evident, from facts stated by contemporaries, and infer- 
 ences founded upon these, that the ancient worship still 
 counted its adherents by thousands, while Christianity 
 had only its hundreds ; that large masses of the popu- 
 lation in the great towns, and the bulk of the country 
 population, remained aliens to that religion, their out- 
 ward admission to which at a later period proved so in- 
 jurious to its purity. Although the emperors were pro- 
 fessedly Christian, the Empire, in its traditions, its ideas, 
 its literature even, was stOl unconverted. Paganism was 
 slowly dying ; but its dissolution was caused, not by 
 stern repression or persecution from without, but by the 
 force of argument, the superior sanctity of the new 
 
100 STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY. 
 
 religion — above all, by the want of vitality, the inherent 
 feebleness belonging to itself. Polytheism counted 
 scarcely any martyrs in defence of its claims : that would 
 have been contrary to the spirit of a religion which made 
 no pretensions to a monopoly of the truth, and rested 
 indeed rather on poetry and legend than on any well- 
 sustained evidence addressed to the reason. 
 
 By successive princes the privileges of Paganism were 
 further curtailed. Under the stern Theodosius the rev- 
 enues of its templeswere alienated, the temples themselves 
 in many places destroyed : but still in Eome its birthplace 
 the old religion obstinately held its ground ; and though 
 the temples were closed and the sacrifices forbidden, the 
 associations of the city remained heathen, hundreds of 
 temples and of shrines disputed the supremacy of the 
 Cross, the consuls entering upon office still consulted 
 the diviners, and the pagan population seemed waiting 
 scornfully till this folly of the new religion should 
 pass away. 
 
 But this feeble resistance of paganism, the protests of 
 the more eager of its partisans, could not effectually 
 check the tide of Christianity. The statue of Victory 
 in the senate-house at Rome, which had so often wit- 
 nessed the deliberations of that body during the palmy 
 days of the republic, on which so many generations of 
 consuls had offered sacrifice before proceeding on their 
 career of conquest, was removed by Constantine to the 
 rival capital on the Bosphorus, but had been restored 
 by the piety or superstition of Julian. A decree came 
 forth that it should be dragged from its pedestal and 
 worship of it discontinued. This decree we are told fell 
 like a thunderbolt among the partisans of the old Ee- 
 ligion ; but a deputation of senators, headed by the elo- 
 quent Symmachus, Prefect of Eome, was coldly dis- 
 
THE CONVERTED EMPIRE. 101 
 
 missed by the Emperor, on the ground that they did not 
 represent the unanimous voice of the senate. The feeble 
 though eloquent arguments of Symmachus, and the bold 
 and crushing reply of Ambrose on the Christian side, 
 have both been published, and well represent the com- 
 pleteness of the victory which Christianity had achieved 
 over its antagonist. About the same time all the privi- 
 leges and immunities of the priesthood were swept away. 
 The vestal virgins, whose order was almost coeval with 
 Rome itself, were dismissed from their office. Their 
 scanty numbers, the occasional irregularities and scan- 
 dals which disgraced their order, formed a subject of 
 mockery to the Christians, who contrasted with them 
 the flourishing communities of those who among them- 
 selves had embraced a solitary and virgin life, not from 
 compulsion, not from motives of temporal reward, or 
 with any hope of returning after a period to the world, 
 but as the free and unrestrained choice of their hearts. 
 
 The final blow to polytheism came from Honorius in 
 408, so that eighty years had elapsed from the profes- 
 sion of Christianity by Constantine to the final sup- 
 pression of paganism. By this edict all the funds re- 
 served for the support of heathen festivals were alienated, 
 and devoted to the more liberal pay of the soldiery. 
 The temples, now useless and deserted, were made over 
 to the imperial officers, and devoted to useful public 
 purposes, and were thus preserved from the destructive 
 zeal of the more fanatical Christians. All heathen 
 festivals and ceremonies were forbidden. All who did 
 not profess the Christian faith were excluded from 
 public offices ; but as we find pagans afterwards in 
 offices of high trust under Christian emperors, it is 
 evident that this edict of intolerance was never carried 
 out. 
 
102 STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY. 
 
 At length came the great crowning blow to the im- 
 perial city. Eome, burdened with centuries of glory 
 and of conquest, of cruelty and of licentiousness, was 
 now to fall under the violence of the barbarian invader. 
 Alaric, with his bands of Goths, thundered at the gates 
 of the city; the fire of his encampments was to be 
 seen from the temple of the Capitoline Jupiter. In 
 this emergency, what was the resource of the pagan 
 aristocracy who still constituted the majority of the 
 senate ? True to the traditions of heathenism, they 
 still displayed that bloodthirsty and relentless char- 
 acter which seems its attribute, whether it be covered 
 by the rags of the proletariat, or by the robe and the 
 polished exterior of the courtier or the man of letters. 
 The reiined and liberal Symmachus had shown his zeal 
 for the expiring religion by burying alive a vestal who 
 had been guilty of a violation of her vow of chastity. 
 At the instigation of the senate, Serena, the widow of 
 Stilicho and niece of the Emperor Theodosius, was 
 strangled because this sacrilegious Christian was guUty 
 of removing the necklace from the image of Cybele. 
 But the patriciate of Eome, though not wanting in the 
 cruelty which had distinguished their ancestors, were 
 wanting in that energy of character which alone at this 
 critical moment would have saved their country. They 
 were sunk in the utmost excesses of corruption, of 
 effeminacy, and of vice. The Etruscan priests were 
 called in to save the city by their spells, but a more 
 effectual resource was the payment of a vast ransom to 
 Alaric. The victorious Goth entered the city ; his fury 
 fell upon all classes, heathen and Christian alike. Yet 
 though he spared the lives of the inhabitants, the down- 
 fall was complete ; the institutions of the city which had 
 lingered on through so many ages of decay were finally 
 
THE CONVERTED EMPIRE. 103 
 
 broken up, the halo of glory and majesty that invested 
 it was gone ; the fatal news that Eome was captured and 
 destroyed resounded to the ends of the earth, and filled 
 all classes, friends and enemies, believers and unbelievers, 
 alike with horror and with awe. The lioman patricians, 
 driven from those seats of authority and power which 
 they had so long abused .and disgraced, were dispersed, 
 and finally absorbed into the rapidly growing Christian 
 body — an element, it is to be feared, of weakness and 
 danger to the Church. 
 
 At this awful period Christianity came in an invigor- 
 ating and purifying, a new creating power. It mitigated 
 the sufferings of the vanquished, it softened the violence of 
 tlie barbarian, it opened the way for a new and better 
 order of things. It did not break violently with the 
 past, it did not abruptly hasten over the transitional 
 period which marks the change from an old and decay- 
 ing civilisation to a new ; it took up and incorporated 
 with itself the better elements, the measure of truth, 
 goodness, and nobility, which had existed in the older 
 system. Many of the Christian churches in Eome are 
 either built upon the site or formed of the materials 
 of the old heathen temples — only the distribution, the 
 ground-plan, is different ; and this is no inapt symbol 
 of the relation of the new religion to the old. It 
 kept out of sight, it failed to build into its system no- 
 thing that was noble, humanising, and elevating in the 
 old world. It respected the continuity of things, the 
 evolution of new forms out of old which ought to pre- 
 vail in the moral as it does in the natural world. 
 Neutral itself, born in a foreign soil to Eome, owing no 
 debt of gratitude to that power which through centuries 
 had oppressed it, y'et cherishing towards it no resentment, 
 but borrowing to some extent its traditions, its discipline, 
 
104 STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY. 
 
 its language, its supreme and universal authority, the 
 Church stood in a proper position to be mediator between 
 the Empire and the barbarian world outside. 
 
 Victorious Christianity did not, then, blindly proclaim 
 war against the past ; it adopted what in it was good. 
 One strong point in the old religion by which it attached 
 to itself cultured and sensitive minds, was its love of 
 beauty, its festivals, its chaplets, its incense. The 
 bishops and doctors of the Church declared that they 
 had nothing to find fault with in those graceful and 
 touching observances, and directed the missionaries of the 
 new faith to leave the heathen alone in their innocent 
 usages — nay, in due time, after the danger from paganism 
 had passed away, adopted many of these practices into 
 the Christian ritual, purifying them from their heathen 
 associations. To such an extent did this kindly con- 
 sideration and accommodation to the feelings of the 
 heathen proceed, that the authorities of the Church even 
 permitted that some of the great festivals and commem- 
 orations of the Church should be held at those seasons 
 which had been consecrated by venerable usage to the 
 holidays and festivals of the heathen. 
 
 Another good point in the heathen religion was the 
 respect it entertained towards the dead, the family wor- 
 ship, the veneration of those ancestors who from their 
 niches in the family hall still seemed to watch over the 
 doings of their descendants, to feel a kindly interest 
 in the fortunes of their families. Christianity conse- 
 crated this feeling by the respect and honour it paid 
 to martyrs, passing on to veneration, in time even to 
 invocation. 
 
 No less did Christianity in process of time assimilate 
 to itself, exalt to the higher uses of true religion, ancient 
 art. Painting, in spite of the iconoclastic fury which 
 
THE CONVERTED EMPIRE. 105 
 
 in the East ravaged the Empire, as the barbarians did 
 the West, was in due time domesticated in the Christian 
 Church, found there its warmest ally, and those sus- 
 taining and elevating influences which, after a due de- 
 velopment, were to find their loftiest expression in the 
 noble frescoes and mosaics of the middle ages, and in 
 the marvels of more modern Italian art. The stately 
 but cold metres of the flourishing period of Eoman 
 poetry were to give place to that Christian hymnology 
 in which we trace almost the beginning of our modern 
 rhymed verse, being themselves probably an adaptation 
 from the songs and melodies of the soldiery, and of the 
 lower classes of the Eoman population. 
 
 Above all, in the church architecture, which soon 
 became general, we see Christianity desiring to assimi- 
 late and adopt to its own purposes what was useful in 
 the past. The heathen temple was altogether unsuited 
 for the purposes of Christian worship and instruction ; 
 it was small, and often roofless ; but the Eoman basilica 
 or hall of justice supplied just such a building as was re- 
 quired. It was frequently of vast proportions, divided 
 longitudinally by parallel lines of columns, often of un- 
 equal height, into different avenues, so as to admit of 
 storeys, and of piercing the wall with windows ; it had 
 parts running transversely to the body of the building, 
 occupied by the notarii and others engaged in public 
 business ; and at the extreme end from the entrance, 
 fronting the central avenue, an Apse or tribunal, rounded 
 off from the general building, approached by steps, on 
 which were seated the judge and his assessors. This 
 form of architecture was adopted by the Christians for 
 the purposes of their worship. The central nave, with 
 its side aisles, was set aside for the general body of wor- 
 shippers, the men and women being ranged on different 
 
106 STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY. 
 
 sides ; the transept was occupied by the choir and in- 
 ferior clergy ; the apse became the sanctuary set aside 
 for the bishop and officiating clergy. 
 
 No less did Christianity make a legitimate and hon- 
 ourable conquest of the art of Eloquence. On this the 
 ancients had set the highest store ; to proficiency in 
 it they had awarded the highest honours and emolu- 
 ments, as indeed the foremost distinction in it had been 
 achieved by some of the greatest names of antiquity. 
 But the eloquence of the heathen was stilted and pedan- 
 tic, looking to the manner, tones, and attitude of the 
 speaker rather than the substance of what he had to 
 say ; often his speech was accompanied by a player 
 on the flute, who was to sustain his modulation on 
 the required pitch. In the system of the Church all 
 was directed to a loftier purpose. The speaker had no 
 longer to deliver a premeditated and formal harangue 
 before a small circle of frivolous or fantastic hearers. 
 His subjects were of the loftiest that could engage 
 human interests — the immortality of the soul, man's 
 duties here, his destiny hereafter. His discourses were 
 delivered often before vast assemblages of eager and 
 passionate hearers hanging on his lips, often testifying 
 to the strength of their feelings by broken exclamations 
 of interest or delight. 
 
 If Christianity thus adorned and elevated those arts 
 which were held in the highest esteem by antiquity, no 
 less was its action beneficial in a different direction. It 
 restored to their true and proper dignity classes and 
 occupations which were degraded and despised in 
 antiquity. 
 
 Notice first its elevating influence on woman. As has 
 been often observed, their position in antiquity had been 
 one of a despised character. In the Grecian States the 
 
THE CONVERTED EMPIEE. 107 
 
 brilliant gifts of mind and person in woman, which 
 should have secured their equality and respect as the 
 companions of men, had led to their dishonour. The 
 type of the respectable classes was the quiet and un- 
 noticed matron engaged in an unremitting round of 
 household tasks, rearing citizens for the State, the house- 
 keeper of her husband, rather than his companion shar- 
 ing his confidence and affections. Among the Eomans 
 much the same sentiment as to the duties and position 
 of women prevailed, only, in keeping with the habitual 
 cruelty and harshness of the Eoman character, the posi- 
 tion of the feebler sex was still more humiliating. "Where 
 the woman was not the mere slave of her husband, the 
 helpless and dependent object of his cruelty or caprice, 
 the utmost privilege she could expect to attain was to 
 be treated as his daughter, a child for life incapable of 
 rising to true dignity or responsibility of character, a 
 plaything to be petted or punished according to the 
 whim of the moment. Such was her condition in the 
 earlier and better days of the Eoman State ; but in the 
 later and utterly corrupt stages, she became a power for 
 evil, fearfully taking vengeance for the contempt and 
 injustice iufiicted on her. The facilities. of divorce gave 
 her unbounded opportunities of exchanging the odious 
 servitude of the Eoman matron for a life of habitual or 
 professional profligacy ; and among the figures that 
 appear prominently in the sad annals of the late repub- 
 lic or of the Empire, none are darker, or play a more 
 sinister part, than the high-born Eoman lady set free 
 from any regard to morality, and from those rigorous 
 restrictions which in primitive times had played the 
 part of moral principles, — the shameless Livias, Julias, 
 and Messalinas. In no department of life was the 
 beneficial influence of Christianity more immediately 
 
108 STUDIES IN CHEISTIAN HISTORY. 
 
 felt than in this. In the person of the Jewish maid 
 who was privileged to give birth to the Saviour of the 
 world, the highest honour was conferred upon the weaker 
 sex, and an unfailing type presented of the highest 
 moral loveliness, of purity and tenderness, strength and 
 weakness blended, which has never failed in every age 
 to secure a train of followers who have walked in her 
 steps and imbibed her spirit ; and one feels what a dis- 
 tinct advance has been made in the amelioration of 
 woman, when, from the abandoned women of the Em- 
 pire, or the fierce matron of Eoman history who, to 
 show her superiority to death, slew herself by dashing 
 her head against a wall, one turns to the Fabiolas, 
 the Paulas, the Marcellas of Christian and monastic 
 times, praying, fasting, visiting the hovels of the poor, 
 founding hospitals, and traversing distant seas that 
 they might establish in foreign lands their institu- 
 tions of piety and benevolence. Alike by her con- 
 stancy in suffering and martyrdom, her zeal and de- 
 votion in religion, and her unwearied benevolence, 
 woman proved herself everywhere the equal or superior 
 of man ; and thus came about that transition from her 
 inferior position in antiquity to the position she now 
 holds as the equal and confidant of her husband. 
 
 Turning to the slave, we see the influence of Chris- 
 tianity in improving his position. His emancipation 
 was not effected immediately ; no edict of manumission 
 was published by the Christian emperors. Yet a great 
 moral influence was at work which was insensibly, 
 through the intermediate stage of serfdom, to lead to the 
 complete deliverance of the slave. No words are sufii- 
 cient to describe the horrors of the servile condition 
 among the Eomans. Cruelties which, if committed now 
 on the lower animals, would be reprehended and pun- 
 
THE CONVERTED EMPIRE. 109 
 
 ished by the law, were inflicted daily on the slave un- 
 punished and almost unnoticed. Chained as a watch in 
 the Atrium of the great house, he was subject to the 
 caprice of his master or of his mistress, who at will 
 would plunge pins or broaches into his face, or for the 
 slightest fault or inadvertency would torture or put him 
 to death. Yet pitiable as was the outward and material 
 degradation of the slaves, their moral degradation was 
 still more complete. They were looked upon as an 
 accursed class, abandoned by destiny to their lot ; and 
 the necessary result of this fatalistic behef on their part 
 was that, reckless of consequences, they yielded them- 
 selves to every vice and crime. At times, indeed, a 
 gleam of humanity, or a sense of interest, would dictate 
 a milder treatment of the slave in the edicts of emperors 
 or writings of philosophers ; but these wise enactments 
 and milder views remained a dead letter, never effecting 
 any real mitigation in the lot of the oppressed. It was 
 the interest or caprice of those monsters of cruelty, the 
 earlier Emperors, to raise their freedmen to a lofty posi- 
 tion beside them, as the instruments of their pleasure, 
 or the rivals and terror of the haughty aristocracy ; but 
 though often flattered and feared, the freedmen were 
 never respected, the stigma of their vile origin still 
 adhered ineffaceably to them. Christianity by its doc- 
 trines could alone effect the great marvel of restoring 
 them to the true rank of humanity. Christ, dying the 
 death of a slave, had consecrated their condition and 
 their sufferings ; the blood-stained cross was to become 
 the Charter of their moral emancipation. The Gospel, 
 teaching the common blood that flowed in all men 
 under outward inequalities of rank, made it impossible 
 henceforth for a master to treat his slave as a mere 
 chattel or beast of burden ; and still more, by introduc- 
 
110 STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY. 
 
 ing the slave on terms of equality into the Church, by- 
 giving him equal rights in the sight of God, by admit- 
 ting him to the same communion with his master, a 
 blow was struck at the very foundation of slavery. Once 
 admit that a slave has a conscience, a sense of right, or 
 of individual responsibility, that he has a moral nature as 
 others have, a dignity and a respect due to himself, and 
 we concede the principle that slavery is founded not on 
 nature, but in sin ; an institution which, for purposes of 
 expediency or of State, it may not be proper at once to 
 abolish, but which is doomed in the eyes of all just and 
 true men. Still more, give the slave a conscience by 
 which he will faithfully serve his master, and the real 
 slavery of the mind — those fetters by which it eats 
 into the soul — are abolished. Christianity was not 
 slow in perceiving and following up these consequences. 
 Slaves henceforth had a right to their family ; their life, 
 honour, and repose were protected. They were entitled 
 to rest upon the great holidays of the Church. In the 
 event of their being sold, care was to be taken not to 
 separate families. The work of manumission went on 
 with increasing rapidity ; it was considered a pious act 
 on the festivals of the Church, or on auspicious occa- 
 sions, to release slaves. At the end of the thirteenth 
 century there were in France no slaves to release ; the 
 slave passed into the serf, he into the yeoman or small 
 proprietor. Thus was laid the origin of that middle 
 class which is destined so powerfully to influence modern 
 society. 
 
 No less did Christianity ennoble the lot of the work- 
 ing man. The free labourer had stood at a fearful dis- 
 advantage in a society where all manual labour was 
 , assigned to slaves. Although some of the most dis- 
 tinguished statesmen and philosophers of Eome had 
 
THE CONVERTED EMPIRE. Ill 
 
 realised immense sums by usury, trade was looked upon 
 as mean and contemptible. Small trades and profits 
 were regarded as petty and sordid, extensive trading 
 operations as unjust. In a military and slave-hold- 
 ing State like Eome, the only honourable occupations 
 were war, public life, and letters. Christianity conse- 
 crated toil ; it gave the first impetus to that industrial 
 spirit which was so happily to replace the military 
 spirit. Its Founder had wrought at His own craft, a, 
 carpenter. His first disciples, in accordance with a 
 wise Jewish regulation, had each practised a trade. 
 Paul, in the midst of his apostolic labours, was a 
 tentmaker. It was made a subject of reproach to the 
 first Christians that they were generally labouring men. 
 Honest labour at some trade, however humble, was 
 almost a requisite for discipleship. Manual labour was 
 enforced in the monasteries of Christendom. 
 
 Let us now look very briefly at the beneficial in- 
 fluence of Christianity in mitigating suffering. 
 
 : I. Its care for the Poor. — This was considered one 
 of the first duties of the converted Christian. Mul- 
 titudes in an excess of charity gave up their own 
 possessions for the sake of the poorer members of 
 the community; a special order of officers in the 
 Christian Church were set apart to look to the in- 
 terests of the poor. This generous readiness to assist 
 extended to the needy and suffering, not only of 
 their own communion, but to all who were brought 
 \yithin their reach. In vain the Emperor Julian tried 
 to stir up the pagans to emulate it. Fabriola and 
 Psammachia, both of noble Koman family, who had 
 embraced monastic life, founded the one an hospital 
 for the sick at Eome, the other an asylum for the poor 
 at Ostia — the first of a series of benevolent institutions 
 
112 STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY. 
 
 by which Christianity was to be distinguished from the 
 older religions. The Christian town of the middle ages 
 differed profoundly from the city of classic Greece or 
 Eome; in it the central buildings were the cathedral, 
 and the hospital for the relief of the sick and aged, 
 around which were clustered a number of insignificant 
 dwellings. In classical antiquity the temples were small; 
 but the theatres, the baths, the circus, were immense, a 
 characteristic type of the differences between the two 
 periods. 
 
 II. Influence of Gfiristianity on War. — The first 
 Christians had a Quakerish dislike of war. To such an 
 extent did they carry out this aversion to blood- 
 shed, that any who were engaged in the execution of 
 even a just punishment of death, were considered 
 thereby to have incurred pollution, and were separated 
 from the communion of the Church. They who daily 
 suffered themselves the most atrocious punishments, had 
 an insuperable dislike to being the instruments of pain 
 and punishment to others. But as Christianity ex- 
 tended itself and penetrated among all ranks of the 
 Empire, it was inevitable that this excessive scrupu- 
 losity should be modified. Christians, though not 
 without some controversy as to the lawfulness of the 
 proceeding, sought admission into the army and into 
 the other branches of the public service, and the 
 only question was as to their presence at idolatrous 
 rites in honour of the Gods or the Emperor. Yet one 
 of the first acts of a Christian prince was to mitigate 
 the horrors of war. It was the uncontested right of 
 the victor in ancient times to put to death, to torture, 
 to enslave those who, in the struggle of war, had the 
 misfortune to be vanquished. Constantine, whether 
 out of compliment to the religion which he had em- 
 
THE CONVERTED EMPIEE. 113 
 
 braced, or from some really conscientious feeling, after 
 the battle of the Milvian Bridge', which decided the fate 
 of the Empire, gave orders to spare the lives of his 
 enemies, and oifered rewards for all captives brought in 
 alive. 
 
 III. Gladiatorial Shows suppressed. — The passion 
 for these was a disease deep seated in all the cities 
 of the Koman Empire. Christianity, even when vic- 
 torious, was unable at once to suppress this pas- 
 sion; but it gradually modified these exhibitions, and 
 at length suppressed them. This change, let us re- 
 member, was the result not of any feelings of hu- 
 manity or of State interest, but of the direct influence 
 of the Gospel. Constantino, after his conversion, issued 
 some decrees forbidding gladiatorial exhibitions in times 
 of peace, and forbidding men to volunteer as gladiators. 
 Constantius forbade soldiers and servants of the Im- 
 perial Court hiring themselves to Lanistse, or purveyors 
 of gladiators. An edict of Honorius excluded any one 
 who had been a gladiator from being admitted into the 
 service of a senator. These abominable displays had 
 still however continued, tolerated by the weakness or 
 connivance of the Emperor, and supported by the sym- 
 pathy of the Pagan population, until one of those un- 
 expected incidents in human history, those outbursts 
 of fanaticism which often hurry on great issues or 
 defeat the wisest purposes of statecraft, brought about 
 the final suppression of this relic of paganism. A 
 monk named Telemachus journeyed from the East with 
 the express intention of putting an end to these exhi- 
 bitions. The crowd were gathered in the arena, the 
 gladiators had stepped forth to the contest, when, 
 regardless of consequences, he cast himself between and 
 sought to separate the combatants. This black-frocked 
 
 H 
 
114 STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY. 
 
 fanatic was stoned or torn in pieces by the indignant 
 multitude ; but the scandal caused by this event led to 
 an edict of Honorius, by which these disgracefid ex- 
 hibitions were finally suppressed. 
 
 IV. Democratic Spirit encouraged hy the Christian 
 Church. — By its industrial spirit in the midst of a 
 slave-holding oligarchy, by its hatred of war in the 
 midst of a military power, early Christianity stood out 
 in marked contrast to the spirit of its time, and seemed 
 to anticipate the spirit of modern times. By its demo- 
 cratic character it contrasted severely with the despot- 
 ism and exclusiveness of its own age. This character 
 it displayed not only in the classes from which its ad- 
 herents were principally drawn, not only in the prin- 
 ciples of equality and brotherhood which animated the 
 Christian community, but in the freedom and daring 
 with which Christian bishops and rulers rebuked tyranny 
 and vice even in the highest ranks. In these bold 
 denunciations of sin, even when the offender was a 
 crowned head and lord of the world, we see the work- 
 ings of a new spirit. It is impossible to conceive the 
 pontiff of Jupiter in the old religion rebuking one of 
 the early Csesars as Athanasius dared to rebuke Con- 
 stantine, as Ambrose dared to denounce the great Theo- 
 dosius, or Chrysostom the shameless Eudoxia. 
 
 Yet although Christianity was able in some degree to 
 mitigate the evils of the time and to spread countless 
 blessings around it, it was unable to save the corrupt 
 society amid which it was planted. That was hopelessly 
 corrupt, beyond recall, beyond possibility of restoration. 
 Christianity might save individual souls ; it could not 
 save a society which was pagan at heart, which had 
 received the baneful inheritance of centuries of wrong 
 and evil-doing. In spite of the saints who adorned the 
 
THE COJf^VERTED EMPIRE. 115 
 
 annals of the time ; in spite of the philosophers who 
 vainly dreamt of recalling the traditions of the past ; 
 in spite of the illustrious examples of wisdom, courage, 
 and heroism given by the statesmen and warriors who 
 from time to time were raised up in that effete civilis- 
 ation, the Empire, after the conversion of its head to 
 Christianity, was doomed, the sceptre was passing swiftly 
 to those legions of barbarians who, amidst all their 
 faults, still preserved two virtues unknown to ancient 
 Eome^ — the sense of honour in man, and of respect 
 towards women. 
 
 We may trace those relentless and unwearied bands, 
 which from the first recorded times of the Roman 
 State had never ceased to pour down upon the 
 West, invading its frontiers, and like a storm dashing 
 against the barriers that resisted them — following, 
 seemingly, a natural law, and urged forward in their 
 progress by still fiercer tribes behind ; we may trace 
 them, from their obscure retreats, ascending the Rhine 
 and Danube, where the Roman power had estab- 
 lished its greatest military strength, passing the Alps, 
 the Vosges, the Pyrenees, and, as successive waves 
 spent themselves in ever-widening circles, establishing 
 themselves, the Lombards, the Burgundians, the Franks 
 in Gaul, the Ostrogoths in Italy, the Visigoths in Spain, 
 the Vandals in Africa, the vast tide of barbarian invasion 
 reaching even to Phoenicia and Egypt. They brought 
 with them manliness and strength of character, but at 
 the same time an unrestrained ferocity; and in their 
 kings and rulers was often a sensuality which even the 
 influence of Christianity was unable to control. At this 
 terrible time of transition, this birth of a new era, the 
 Gospel was mercifully present to mitigate its miseries, 
 to relieve the afflicted, to redeem the captives, and by 
 
116 STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY. 
 
 means of its monks and solitaries to lead the conquer- 
 ing barbarian gradually to the foot of the Cross. But 
 still so closely are the past and the present interwoven, 
 so stern is the law of solidarity which binds men and 
 ages together, that into the hopeful future enter the sins 
 and vices of the forgotten past : we cannot dissociate 
 ourselves from our ancestors in mind and spirit, any 
 more than we can help bearing a likeness to those who 
 have begotten us. The old pagan religion and Eoman 
 civilisation expiring bequeathed their deadly legacy 
 to the Teutonic kingdoms and the Christian civilisation 
 which were rising in their stead : in religion, divination, 
 witchcraft, astrology; in domestic life, sensuality; in 
 philosophy, the Neoplatonic Theories, which were to be 
 a source of heresy and confusion in the middle ages ; in 
 the State, the despotism, the oppression, the miserable 
 fiscal system which had disgraced the Eoman empire. 
 
 In the East the state of affairs was infinitely worse. 
 The lower Empire presents a picture of imbecility, of 
 corruption, and of vice, which has made it the object of 
 contempt to all succeeding times. The corrupt Eoman 
 civilisation, dislodged from the West, reigned supreme 
 in the East, and furnished a picture of what the con- 
 verted "Western empire would have been, had not the 
 tide of barbarian invasion come to fertilise and give 
 it new life. No gleams of genius, few traces of heroism 
 or devotion, come to enliven those gloomy times, which 
 in corruption, in meanness, in despotism, if not in 
 cruelty, rival the darkest ages of Eome ; in which reli- 
 gion was made the cloak of hypocrisy, and its ministers 
 the instruments and accomplices of the imperial tyranny 
 and vice ; in which slaves and eunuchs, females of the 
 Court and Christian bishops, strove unceasingly together, 
 now in controversy about microscopic points of doctrine, 
 
THE CONVERTED EMPIRE. 117 
 
 now in base and miserable Court intrigues. Constan- 
 tine had set the dangerous example of a crowned 
 head who was also a theologian ; and even the weakest 
 and raost vicious of the Byzantine princes were not slow 
 to follow in his steps. Perpetually they interfered in 
 matters of Church doctrine and worship, so that in time 
 the ministers of the Eastern Church became the mere 
 slaves and instruments of their despotic will. After 
 Chrysostom, no Eastern bishop dared to raise a voice 
 against the follies and corruptions of the Court, and 
 there was bred incessantly a crowd of heresies, in 
 which melancholy list figured Eutychians, Macedon- 
 ians, Nestorians. The Eastern clergy, severed from 
 the unity of the Church and from its centre in Eome, 
 which had so often proved a just and dignified court of 
 appeal, sank hopelessly into heresy and schism : the 
 melancholy spectacle was presented of a Christianity 
 entirely orthodox and deeming itself wise in all matters 
 of controversy, yet almost totally divorced from morality 
 or spiritual life ; while the populace, given over alike to 
 frivolity and vice and to superstition, contended now 
 over hard points of doctrine regarding the procession of 
 the Holy Ghost, or the Lights of the Transfiguration, 
 and again were divided into bitter factions, often filKng 
 the capital with bloodshed, regarding the success of 
 rival charioteers, the drivers in the circus in the blue 
 or the green jacket. In such circumstances, where 
 scarcely a trace of Christian morality or even of natural 
 manliness was left, where century after century of 
 heaven's mercy and forbearance gave no impulse to 
 amendment, but only seemed to leave deeper the im- 
 press of folly and crime, a severer doom than that 
 allotted to the West was in store, l^o merciful tide 
 of barbarians was to pour down upon the East to re- 
 
118 STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY. 
 
 generate it, even while it seemed to lay it waste : the 
 fatal and destructive forces of Islamism were at hand. 
 
 The historian is tempted to draw beforehand a flat- 
 tering picture of what the Empire, converted to Christ, 
 would be, — a State in which the prince published only- 
 just and righteous laws, willingly obeyed by a loyal and 
 God-fearing people ; in which brotherly concern for the 
 good of one another should be the predominating feature 
 of its citizens. How miserable a contrast to this do the 
 actual facts of history present ! The outward face of 
 society might be changed ; its real condition remained 
 much the same. The ruler might be called and profess 
 himself Christian, but among the mass of his subjects 
 the old pagan institutions and traditions prevailed. 
 Christianity, coming down from its lofty position as 
 the religion of a spiritual few, might to some extent 
 soften and ameliorate the outward face of society and 
 save individual souls ; the forces opposed to it were 
 too solid to yield before its influence. 
 
119 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 MOHAMMEDANISM. 
 
 There are periods of human history in which advance 
 seems to be made at a rate quite disproportionate to 
 former progress ; the tide within a few years covers as 
 much space as in preceding centuries or millenniums. 
 There are other periods in which progress seems to be 
 at a standstill. But there are others, again, in which, 
 from causes not alM'ays obvious or ascertained, there is 
 loss of ground already gained, decay, retrogression to a 
 more elementary and barbaric state of things. In 
 the outward and political history of man, as in the 
 natural history of created beings, there is degenera- 
 tion as well as progress and ascent. In our historical 
 survey we have now reached a stage in which this 
 tendency is evident in a series of movements — violent, 
 disruptive, breaking in upon the continuity of human 
 affairs, having seemingly little connection with the order 
 of events which preceded it, leaving behind it only ruin 
 and disorder. We refer to the outbreak of Mohammedan- 
 ism, which can only be considered as a backward move- 
 ment in the history of our race — a wild volcanic force 
 breaking in upon the steadiness of those operations by 
 which progress is made and human society is built up 
 in orderly sequence. Considering it from all points of 
 
120 STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY. 
 
 view, its genesis, continuance, and effects upon those 
 races which it has influenced, we shall be forced to take 
 an unfavourable view of this most simple and primi- 
 tive form of Deism, this seeming return to the earliest 
 cuUus of the Semitic race, this unadorned and unalloyed 
 natural religion. We shall discern in it a movement 
 of demoniac energy, leaving its malign effects upon the 
 regions which it has traversed ; a singular bar to the 
 improvement of mankind, and to those favouring influ- 
 ences by which society is ever being led on to more 
 perfection ; a subtle and deadly enemy to the forms of 
 truth and goodness already existing ; a scheme calculated 
 with singular skill to frustrate the kind intentions of 
 Providence towards our race. In almost every preced- 
 ing form of religion we recognise some distinctive features 
 which recommend it to our favourable view. In Buddh- 
 ism we recognise the lofty moral tone of many of its 
 precepts — the gentleness, the tolerance, the respect for 
 life as a sacred gift from heaven. In Zoroastianism we 
 perceive an intense consciousness of the foulness of sin, 
 and a regard for purity symbolised as light ; an effort to 
 solve the great mystery of sin and evil, of the struggle 
 between light and darkness. In the manifold forms of 
 Greek worship we perceive an intense sympathy with 
 the beautiful in humanity, a recognition of the revela- 
 tion of the Divine in the Beautiful, which blinds us 
 almost to the moral deformity which accompanied it. 
 Even in the State religion of Eome we see many civic 
 virtues, a thoughtful and grateful feeling towards the 
 departed, a sense real though vague of a superintending 
 Providence displeased with evil. In the Ethnic religions 
 of the world, of Scandinavia, of Gaul, and even of 
 China, we discern much pure and noble teaching. But 
 in Mohammedanism, as presented to us in the character 
 
MOHAMMEDANISM. 121 
 
 of its founder, in its scriptures, in its historical develop- 
 ment, we are unable to discover more than a more or 
 less adroit adaptation, a compilation from various sources, 
 or a political manifesto. 
 
 That the social and political face of the world should 
 at this stage of history have been changed by the irrup- 
 tion of half- civilised bands from Arabia, is an event 
 which affects us with surprise. It is an event which 
 the student who does not reflect that the unexpected is 
 often that which occurs in public life is unprepared for. 
 Yet there was at this epoch a combination of circum- 
 stances which renders the fact less wonderful than at 
 first sight it seems. Arabia was a vast country teem- 
 ing with possibilities of greatness, containing on its un- 
 exhausted soil numerous tribes, bold, chivalrous, adven- 
 turous, endowed by nature with a wonderful and irre- 
 pressible vitality. It was not, as has been sometimes 
 asserted, an unconquered country: great regions of it 
 had been subject to a foreign yoke, the Persian and 
 Abyssinian had ruled by turns in Yemen and Bahrein ; 
 its north-western frontiers had formed the Eoman pro- 
 vince of Arabia ; many of its tribes had submitted to 
 the rule of the Greek emperor. Still from its isolated 
 position it had long retained its original laws, customs, 
 traditions, in a more unaltered state than any of the 
 countries in the East. Wor were its inhabitants the 
 idolaters they have sometimes been supposed to be. In 
 common with the other Semitic races, they held a pure 
 monotheism; they believed in a God infinitely raised 
 above and separate from His living creatures and His 
 works. But into this pure and primitive creed a number 
 of foreign and superstitious usages had intruded : they 
 held in reverence the heavenly Bodies ; they attached an 
 excessive veneration to certain Localities ; they had their 
 
122 STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN HISTOHY. 
 
 tutelary Deities, who, they believed, had power to inter- 
 cede for them in heaven, and to whom it is probable 
 they offered a more sincere devotion than to the sub- 
 lime and ideal Being whom they acknowledged as the 
 First Great Cause of all. Above all, they paid a su- 
 perstitious homage to the black stone of the Caaba, 
 which they alleged had fallen from heaven with Adam, 
 and once white, had become black owing to its tears 
 and its shame at the iniquity of man. The Theology 
 of these wild and untamed races was, we may believe, 
 not very well defined or consistent, and along with 
 this body of primitive tradition they had adopted many 
 beliefs borrowed from the Jewish and Christian Scrip- 
 tures, which they altered in the way most gratifying to 
 their national pride. Thus the well which the Angel 
 of God had opened to the eyes of Hagar when to escape 
 death she fled into the wilderness with Ishmael her 
 son, became the well Zimzem at Mecca ; the founding of 
 the city which dated only from the fourth or fifth century 
 A.D., was associated with these ancient personages ; the 
 Holy House, the Caaba, had been the work of Abraham 
 and Ishmael. Yet although all these varying elements 
 had been adopted into their religious system, although it 
 was an eclecticism in which Persian and Chaldean, Jew 
 and Christian elements, alike found admission, no char- 
 acter could be further removed from the devout than 
 the Arab of the sixth century. Like his descendant 
 of to-day his religious profession sat lightly upon 
 him ; it did not interfere with the practices of his daily 
 life, with his enjoyments or his vices. The Arab is 
 refined, full of jest, fond of contests of eloquence and 
 poetry ; he is also prudent, reserved, a lover of adven- 
 ture and of enterprise, averse by nature to all mysticism 
 or extravagant devotion. In these latter respects he 
 
MOHAMMEDANISM. 123 
 
 has been compared to the Englishman of to-day. The 
 inhabitants of Arabia have always consisted of two 
 classes : the Bedouin, the wanderer of the desert, low 
 both intellectually and socially, base, treacherous, almost 
 wanting in the religious sense ; and the inhabitants of 
 the towns, who along with an incredible immorality 
 almost universal among the Arabs, exhibit many nobler 
 traits — a dignity, a manliness, a degree of culture, 
 which might qualify them for a higher social condition 
 than they enjoy. Among this latter class in the time 
 of Mohammed a sufficiently advanced culture prevailed. 
 The Arab of those days was distinguished, like the Arab 
 of to-day, for his sociable qualities, his politeness, his 
 humour, his refinement, combined with a natural shrewd- 
 ness which fits him eminently to be a successful merchant 
 or man of affairs. The pre-Islamite times in Arabia 
 had been the flourishing period of its hterature ; they 
 had given birth to several poets distinguished for the 
 verve and fire of their verses, and for the Anacreontic 
 freedom with which they devoted themselves to the 
 praise of wine and woman. Fairs were held at stated 
 seasons and localities, in which the pursuits of commerce, 
 and perhaps devotion, were varied by oratorical and 
 poetical displays. Eivalry produced among the different 
 tribes a healthy love of competition for honours, and 
 great was the distinction conferred by success in one 
 of these peaceful contests. 
 
 The Arabia of the sixth century was also a land of 
 commerce and of considerable wealth, and in the inter- 
 vals of peace between the perpetual intertribal feuds, 
 mercantile enterprise was carried on with energy. 
 
 Two great tracks of commercial activity were tra- 
 versed at different seasons of the year by large caravans, 
 — the one leading from Yemen to Mecca, the other from 
 
124 STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY. 
 
 Mecca along the deserts into Syria. Mecca was, even 
 before the time of Mohammed, a town of some wealth 
 and importance, the centre of a large trade, the resort 
 of the tribes for purposes of business and amuse- 
 ment, as well as noted for its historical and religious 
 associations. Nor was the vast peninsula by any means 
 so isolated as to be unaffected by foreign influences. 
 The Jews possessed large and influential colonies, and 
 their rites and traditions had a wide diffusion through- 
 out the land. The Christians, too, owned adherents 
 scattered over the vast territory, and even were pre- 
 sided over by a bishop of their own. In their language, 
 again, the Arabians possessed a vast superiority over 
 the adjoining nations. It was a graceful and forcible 
 instrument of expression, wonderful in its complexity 
 and in its power of delineating minute shades of 
 meaning, admirably adapted for philosophical discussion, 
 in which respects, among the Semitic tongues, it occupies 
 a place similar to the ancient Greek or to the modern 
 German among the branches of the Aryan family. 
 
 If optimistic theories were correct, if the world 
 proceeded always on lines of improvement and of pro- 
 gress, if the hand of a superintending Providence 
 were always visible in human affairs, at this stage 
 the kindly influence of Christianity would have ap- 
 peared among the Arabian tribes, enlightening what 
 in them was dark, correcting what was false and 
 corrupt, healing what was disordered in their na- 
 tional life, becoming everywhere a source of light 
 and unity and civilisation. Instead of this, the sin- 
 ister presence of Mohammed is seen. To a religious 
 mind it will be impossible to view the permission of 
 this manifestation of evil except as a punishment in- 
 flicted upon Christendom of the decay and loss of its 
 
MOHAMMEDANISM. 125 
 
 first love and loyalty to Christ, of the endless divisions 
 and barren controversies which were supplanting the 
 life of true religion, of the sinful separation of the East 
 from the West, of the corruption of Byzantine Christian- 
 ity, and the excessive regard to rites and superstitious 
 observances to the neglect of true holiness. In addition 
 to these the political state of the world at this epoch 
 singularly favoured the spread of a new form of re- 
 ligion. The Eoman and Persian Empires, which alone 
 could offer resistance to the inroads of fanaticism, 
 were both exhausted after their long internecine 
 struggle. The numerous heretical and schismatical 
 sects which existed over the length and breadth of 
 the Eastern Empire, regarded their Byzantine master 
 with feelings of detestation, and forgetful of the duties 
 of their common religion, were only too glad to wel- 
 come any invader who should deliver them from his 
 yoke. In Egypt especially, which had ever been 
 the birthplace of new and strange worships, Monothe- 
 lites, Monophysites, Jacobites, and Nestorians main- 
 tained a long and bitter contest on subtle and invisible 
 points of metaphysics and theology, agreeing only in an 
 undying hatred of their brethren of the Greek rite, 
 and of the Byzantine ruler who presided over their 
 community. In the midst of this disturbed state of 
 affairs Mohammed appeared, the evil genius of his age, 
 the political Mephistopheles, who with the withering 
 breath of his contempt was to sweep away the cobwebs 
 of controversy and debate which had gathered around 
 the sublime and simple teachings of the Gospel; who, 
 by the keenness of his sword, and the simplicity of his 
 formula of one God, and Mohammed His prophet, was to 
 cut in twain the tangled knot of theological subtleties, 
 and by the wild and fiery independence of his character. 
 
126 STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY. 
 
 to put to shame and rout the priests and courtiers who 
 had committed their consciences and their honour to 
 the keeping of the Byzantine emperor. The time and 
 the situation lent themselves singularly to this enter- 
 prise, and the agent to conduct it appeared. In 
 Mohammed were united the qualities necessary to suc- 
 ceed in such an undertaking : a man of intense self- 
 confidence, passionate in temper, but cool, sagacious, 
 temporising, when the occasion demanded: a schemer 
 first, thoroughly acquainted with the capacities of his 
 countrymen ; a fanatic afterwards, commanding in pres- 
 ence, persuasive in his address, gracious to his friends, 
 relentless to enemies, and at all times utterly unscrupu- 
 lous in his dealings with those who stood in the way of 
 his designs. 
 
 So complicated is human nature, so subtle the wind- 
 ings of the human heart, so mingled the motives which 
 influence us in our actions, so unconscious are we our- 
 selves of our real motives, that in a character like Mo- 
 hammed's, additionally obscured by time and the mis- 
 representations alike of friend and enemy, it is difBcult to 
 decide when he was a sincere fanatic and when a conscious 
 impostor. The elder historians, as Maracci and Prideaux, 
 viewed him in this latter character alone. Later writers 
 have been disposed to the more lenient view, that at first 
 at least he was sincere. Theological and anti-theological 
 considerations have entered into this question. The 
 older writers are supposed to have reviled him because 
 he was anti-Christian ; for the same reason Gibbon and 
 others of his school have extolled him. We shall per- 
 haps come to the truest understanding of his character 
 if we view him not as an isolated phenomenon to be 
 judged on abstract considerations only, but view him as 
 one of a class to be met with in human history, as a 
 
MOHAMMEDANISM. 127 
 
 typical personage. Like the first Napoleon, he was a 
 man of intense pride and restless ambition, full of vast 
 plans and belief in his own destiny, utterly unscrupulous 
 as to means when his own projects were at stake, and 
 by a process of delusion not uncommon in enthusi- 
 asts, confounding opposition to himself with opposition 
 to the Divine will ; yet, like IsTapoleon too, in some 
 sense introducing a better state of things than the chaos 
 and disorder that reigned before, and knowing wonder- 
 fully how to adapt himself to the genius of the time 
 and of the people among whom he lived. Like Crom- 
 well, he powerfully took advantage of the religious idea 
 in the furtherance of his designs. He was in his own 
 eyes a missionary and prophet first, a conqueror and 
 ruler afterwards. Perhaps we may cast a still clearer 
 light upon his character by comparing him to another 
 personage of much more modern date. Between the 
 beginning of Mormonism and of Moslemism there are 
 striking parallels. It would indeed be unjust to the 
 inoffensive discoverer of the Book of Mormon to 
 compare him to the cruel and unscrupulous Mohammed 
 in his later days ; but the life of each illustrates a curi- 
 ous phase of human history, and shows how movements, 
 obscure and feeble in their beginning, develop into 
 vast consequences beyond the control of the individual 
 wiU, and surprising by their success those who originated 
 'them. Hence the seeming seal of heaven's approval 
 upon the mission, and renewed zeal and energy on the 
 part of those who diffuse it. Like Mohammed, Joseph 
 Smith gives himself out for a prophet, the reformer and 
 restorer of old faiths, gathering in one the scattered lights 
 of former revelations ; like him, he forges a revelation. 
 He is at first poor, obscure, persecuted, evil-spoken of. 
 Less fortunate than his brother prophet, he is at this 
 
128 STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY. 
 
 stage slain by his opponents. But tlie movement gains 
 fresh life under his successor ; the sect increases in num- 
 ber and in vigour, and sends forth its missionaries 
 abroad. By its offers of temporal gain and licensed 
 sensuality it gains many proselytes. Driven forth from 
 its first abode, it migrates to a new territory, where it 
 thrives and prospers ; its new chief conducts the affairs 
 of the community with prudence and success. The 
 early disciples of Mormonism were, like the first Mo- 
 hammedans, remarkable for sobriety, thrift, and energy; 
 even now they are among the most hardy and resolute 
 settlers in the wilds of America, and on account of their 
 marriage practices, so similar to those of the Eastern 
 religion, have even won the praise from a capable au- 
 thority of holding "the only scientific religion." Had 
 Mormonism made its appearance amidst a weak and 
 disorganised society, and been able to propagate its 
 conquests by the sword, the analogy between the two 
 religions would have been even more complete. 
 
 Looking at the known facts of Mohammed's life, it 
 is not easy to form a decided opinion as to the sincerity 
 of his belief in his own mission. As regards his earlier 
 years, previous to his retirement and ecstasy in the cave 
 of Hirah, it is open to debate whether he was even then 
 the conscious impostor or the wild Dreamer of the 
 Desert — the enthusiast of a new faith. Looking at the 
 glaring and deliberate imposture which marked his later 
 career, it is difficult to believe that his whole character 
 altered so suddenly, unless the excess of religious ecstasy 
 and solitary meditation had turned his brain and changed 
 him into the man he afterwards became. At first he 
 appears as the ordinary Arab lad, poor and utterly un- 
 lettered, but intelligent, of engaging presence, gaining 
 the goodwill of those with whom he comes in contact. 
 
MOHAMMEDANISM. 129 
 
 He conducts a caravan from Arabia into Syria ; he acts 
 as factor or agent for the rich widow, Kadijah ; he is 
 faithful in that trust, and afterwards marries her. Out- 
 wardly at least he is a faithful husband during the 
 long period of their married life. He publishes his 
 claim to be a divine messenger or restorer of the primi- 
 tive religion, his claims are contemptuously treated by 
 his near kinsmen, there appears not to be depth of con- 
 viction or religious feeling in the Arab character suffi- 
 cient to make it fruitfully receive any religion. But 
 soon Mohammed appears in a new character, the cloak 
 of moderation and forbearance which he assumed is cast 
 aside, no longer the gentle enthusiast, seeking to win 
 men by persuasion, he shows himself the wary and 
 cool tactician, the skilful and arrogant impostor, the un- 
 bridled sensualist, the deliberate assassin. Laying his 
 plans with consummate skill and far-reaching aim, by 
 bribes and promises he seeks to win over the tribes who 
 come up on pilgrimage to the yearly fairs of Mecca. 
 The chiefs of Tayif he seeks to enlist on his side by 
 promising them the sovereignty over Mecca. Assailed 
 and baffled in that city, he has a faction of zealous 
 partisans at Medina ready to receive him and to fight 
 for him with their last breath. Towards the Jews he 
 adopts at first a policy of conciliation. Availing him- 
 self of, and skilfully adapting Jewish legends, he en- 
 deavours to make out that he is the Messiah pro- 
 mised to the fathers. His knowledge of the Jewish 
 or Christian Scriptures seems to have been slender and 
 confused. It is not likely that he had ever seen or 
 read the Christian Scriptures ; he knew of them from 
 the same source from which he derived his knowledge 
 of the Jewish Scriptures — from Jews retailing to him the 
 traditions prevalent among the Christians of Syria, from 
 
 I 
 
130 STUDIES IN CHEISTIAN HISTORY. 
 
 ignorant Christian Arabs or Christian slaves. Cleverly 
 he endeavours to accommodate the Scriptures to his own 
 designs, to show that he is the Prophet promised to the 
 Jews, the Comforter promised to the Christians. The 
 wild legends and garbled Scripture stories circulated by 
 the Jews appear in his hands as the heavenly version of 
 the Koran. At first the Jewish and Christian Scrip- 
 tures are recognised as authoritative, the Koran is merely 
 supplementary to them ; then it is of equal authority ; 
 lastly, for true believers, it supersedes the others 
 altogether. 
 
 During the latter years of Mohammed's life, we see a 
 rapid deterioration even from the low standard of moral- 
 ity to which he had formerly laid claim. He had 
 doubtless from the first contemplated, if his pretensions 
 were rejected, war and conquest ; his forbearance and 
 moderation were only assumed. But how shall any 
 one justify the infamous treachery and cruelty that 
 marked his later career — his making war during the 
 sacred months, his bloodthirsty conduct towards his 
 prisoners after the skirmish of Bedr, his wholesale 
 assassination of the Jews who had surrendered to him 
 after the pretended judgment of Said, his cruelty to 
 his political opponents, his barbarous punishments, the 
 torture and crucifixion he inflicted upon his enemies ? 
 Who shall seek to extenuate his shameless sensuality 
 after he became the ruler of Medina, his exceeding 
 even the limits of that indulgence he had permitted 
 to himself, the scandal occasioned to the not over-sen- 
 sitive minds of his disciples being met by additional 
 pretended revelations ? How shall we accept as a 
 sincere and genuine, even though misguided production 
 of his brain, the Koran, with its vast tissue of extra- 
 
MOHAMMEDANISM. 131 
 
 vagances and puerilities, its utter insipidity, its pre- 
 tended appearances of angels, its manifest adaptation 
 to the political exigencies of the time ? In all these 
 respects Mohammed has often been judged by the 
 standard, not of a too severe but a too lenient criti- 
 cism. The eventual success of his mission has blinded 
 men to the real character of its founder. He has ap- 
 peared other than the barbarian he really was, — the 
 type of the reckless adventurer and impostor, who is 
 ever appearing on the troubled surface of Eastern life, 
 only achieving a more lasting success than such usually 
 have done. In the character of its founder we see a 
 wonderful type of the character of the system which 
 by its adaptation to human weakness, and especially 
 to the genius and habits of Eastern life, through cen- 
 turies of barbarism, cruelty, and imposture, has been able 
 to perpetuate itself among half -civilised populations. 
 Nay, over a great portion of the globe still flourishes, 
 in its ancient energy, its haughty iutolerance and defiant 
 eagerness and zeal. 
 
 Yet this system, ultimately so successful, was marked 
 during the lifetime of Mohammed by no great degree of 
 success — was borne on by no tide of sincere religious 
 enthusiasm. For years after his assumed apostolate, 
 in spite of his diplomacy, his compromise with the 
 so-called idolatry of Mecca, the prophet had gained only 
 forty converts. Those who professed allegiance to him 
 did so often with the most cynical professions on their 
 lips, and after his death his cause was quite abandoned 
 by the wild and wandering tribes of Arabia, and rallied 
 only under the able statesmanship of Abubekr and 
 Omar, and the chivalrous adherence of Ali. A tangible 
 cause of very real enthusiasm was now presented to the 
 
132 STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY. 
 
 believers in the war of spoliation and conquest they 
 were invited to undertake. The rich and fertile coun- 
 tries which surrounded them, the seats of ancient renown 
 and civilisation, by their degeneracy and their divisions 
 became an easy prey to the invader. 
 
 Turning from the character of Mohammed, let us 
 consider the doctrine which the potent argument of 
 the sword was invoked to publish and disseminate. 
 And here our task should be an easy one : no lengthy 
 confession of faith was required of the rude warriors 
 who were the first missionaries of Islam. " There is but 
 one God, and Mohammed is His Prophet," is a formula 
 which presents a charming simplicity of dogma, which 
 must have been welcome to the first disciples of the 
 desert, as it is acceptable to the Deist or Agnostic of 
 our day, who strenuously objects to the complicated 
 formulas, the deductions of theology, to which the pro- 
 fessor of belief in one or other of the Christian Churches 
 is supposed to commit himself. N"or will the satisfaction 
 of the Agnostic be diminished when he finds that by 
 the profession of belief in one G-od which Islamism 
 demands, he is by no means committed to any clear or 
 definite opinion as to the character and attributes of 
 that G-od. The God of the Koran and of the orthodox 
 Mussulman is by no means the God of the Christian, 
 a gracious and merciful Father, accessible to prayer, 
 forgiving the penitent, interested in human affairs, a 
 superintending Providence, holy Himself, yet seeking to 
 recover men from their unholiness and guilt. No, He 
 is a God without moral attributes, or rather an im- 
 personal and blind fate, a vast unknown force, absorb- 
 ing all in itself, jealous of every personality, using 
 men as its sport and plaything, for high and eternal 
 
MOHAMMEDANISM. 133 
 
 reasons of its own ordaining some to eternal happiness, 
 others to eternal destruction. This conception of a 
 rigorous and inexorable fate which distinguishes Is- 
 lamism, outstripping even Calvinism in the vigour of 
 its deductions, readily blends itself with the Material- 
 istic or Agnostic conception of a great unknown force or 
 underlying principle of all things, undefinable, without 
 moral or intellectual attributes, the object only of 
 vague emotions of mystery and awe. Hence the 
 Mohammedan religion has been much in favour with 
 freethinkers of every age ; and one eminent represen- 
 tative of this school, M. Eenan, has not hesitated to 
 give utterance to a prophecy that from the ad- 
 mirable simplicity of its doctrinal system, its free- 
 dom from priestly pretensions or mysteries of any kind, 
 it will probably supersede Christianity as the religion 
 of the future. As regards the question of fact, this 
 writer is unquestionably correct. Islamism is quite free 
 from Ecclesiasticism of any kind, it is an extreme and 
 rigorous Puritanism ; it has no Priests, < but Teachers 
 and Doctors only ; no Sacraments, but sermons and ex- 
 positions take their place; its Mosques are meeting- 
 places for prayer, reading, and interpretation of the 
 Koran ; it is devoid of those suggestive and pictur- 
 esque rites and soothing ceremonies which in other 
 religions are largely invoked to kindle and sustain 
 devout feeling. The bald and dreary Monotheism 
 which constitutes the central and indeed only necessarj'- 
 element of its creed, but which may easily pass into a 
 vague Mysticism or Pantheism, presents no fitting object 
 on which devout thought or meditation can gratefully 
 rest upon. 
 
 If we trace the effects of Islamism, in public or 
 
134 STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY. 
 
 in private life, we shall be forced to an unfavour- 
 able judgment. In public life it has led to the 
 crushing of political and social liberty, to the stag- 
 nation and decay of the society over which its rule 
 extends. There is in Mohammedan countries no steady 
 upbuilding of societies on the grand principles of consti- 
 tutional right and liberty, no evolution of order and 
 progress out of stormy periods of contest and strife, no 
 balancing of rival powers and interests such as ensures 
 the stability of societies, of authority on the one hand 
 and of individual right and liberty on the other. The 
 constitution of all Islamite societies is rude, stationary, 
 elementary. Times of spasmodic activity and passing 
 prosperity there may be as some energetic ruler or 
 conquerer for a time possesses the reins of power ; but 
 these are of short duration, the chill of reaction succeeds 
 speedily to the fever of excitement. The appeal to the 
 letter of the Koran, as the ultimate authority in all 
 civil and criminal questions, dispenses with the need 
 and the growth of any solid system of jurisprudence, 
 and gives to the most fallacious and arbitrary decisions 
 a quasi-divine sanction. The monarch and his subjects, 
 in lands cursed with Mohammedanism, represent to us, in 
 fact, the relation between the Supreme Being and His 
 creatures, sketched in the Koran, a despot reigning with- 
 out mercy or justice over a crowd of slaves, rebellious 
 or despairing, at his feet. The history of every Moham- 
 medan dynasty has been truly, if strongly, described as 
 that either of a pig-stye or a slaughter-house. Human 
 nature, injured or repressed, will of course avenge itself 
 in terrible ways ; and the fear of sudden acts of ven- 
 geance or of revolution has alone acted as a check upon 
 Eastern rulers in their career of rapacity and injustice. 
 
MOHAMMEDANISM. 135 
 
 If we look farther at the character of Islamism, we 
 see how it was contrived, with consummate skill, to 
 counteract the progress of Christianity. It was no 
 goodly tree springing from a fertile soil and laden 
 with fruits of blessing to mankind; it bears every- 
 where the marks of an artificial production, a clever 
 counterfeit or manufacture. In the carrying out of his 
 scheme the prophet sought in every respect to make 
 it the antithesis of Christianity. Christianity had per- 
 mitted to its followers the moderate use of wine, and 
 had consecrated it in its highest rite ; Mohammed abso- 
 lutely forbade it to his followers. Christianity looked 
 with kindness on the innocent amusements of mankind, 
 and incorporated with itself all that was good in the 
 preceding civilisation ; Mohammedanism sternly prohib- 
 ited all the genial and graceful observances of life, all 
 amusements and festivities unconnected with religion. 
 In the strictness with which it was first published it 
 prohibited, or greatly discouraged, all engaging in sea- 
 faring pursuits, all trade and agriculture. By its 
 doctrine of an inexorable fate presiding over human 
 events, as opposed to the Christian view of freewiU, it 
 checked that flow of energy by which individuals suc- 
 ceed and societies progress in life, — all originality and 
 invention. It gave rise to the harem, the antithesis to 
 the Christian home. It was actuated by the most 
 frantic jealousy and hatred of Christianity, and this 
 feeling extended even to the minutest injunctions given 
 by the prophet. The Jews and Christians in their 
 worship turned towards Jerusalem; Moslems were hence- 
 forth to worship with their faces turned towards Mecca. 
 The Jews used a trumpet, the Christians bells, in summon- 
 ing people to worship. These were to be discarded in 
 
136 STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY. 
 
 the new religion ; the voice of the muezzin from the 
 minaret-top was alone to proclaim the hours of prayer. 
 Three occupations alone were virtually permitted to the 
 Mussulman — prayer, fighting, and sensuality. The first 
 of these was almost a form of the second. The Moslem 
 prayer breathes a spirit of eager defiance and fiery and 
 insolent animosity against the enemies of the faith. 
 The sight of a number of Mussulmen at prayer reminds 
 the onlooker very much of a company of soldiers at 
 drill. There is something official and outward in the 
 character of the prayers offered up. This fiery char- 
 acteristic, once adopted into the Islamite religion, has 
 never departed from it, and is indeed a natural conse- 
 quence of its conception of God. According to the 
 Mohammedan idea, God does not deliver, He rules. The 
 supreme duty of religion is not to hold fellowship with 
 Him, but to obey Him. The mission of Islamism is 
 not one of instruction, but of conquest. The greatest of 
 all crimes is rebellion against God, or the prophet who 
 speaks in His name. Thus Islam is necessarily an 
 aggressive religion. The Moslem may have exchanged 
 his position of conqueror for that of conquered ; he may 
 be submissive in the presence of a superior force, of a 
 superior organisation and instruments of warfare; he 
 may be mute and resigned, as he is mute and resigned 
 before the awful decrees of Fate, — but intolerance is the 
 essence of his religion. The fiery fanaticism born of 
 his creed is still ready at the first opportunity to burst 
 forth into violence, as the lurking wild beast of the 
 desert leaps upon its prey; and as the Mussulman would 
 be true to his faith, loyal to his conceptions of duty, he 
 must be ready to exterminate every one whose creed is 
 alien to his own. 
 
MOHAMMEDANISM. 137 
 
 In its treatment of slavery, again, Mohammedanism 
 has inflicted a vast injury on mankind. Even by in 
 some sense ameliorating the condition of the slave — by 
 laying down rules for his treatment — it has recognised 
 this vast injustice, has perpetuated it as the normal 
 condition of Eastern society. 
 
 But, above all, in its treatment of woman Moham- 
 medanism has clearly shown the inherent barbarism of 
 its character. Nothing can be more degrading than the 
 position it has assigned to the female sex, and in all 
 lands cursed with its sway, the sweetness, the beauty, 
 and the sanctity of the family tie have utterly disappeared, 
 and the home which in Christian lands has often been 
 the fountain of moral health and purity, even to those 
 who have never acknowledged the sanctions of religion, 
 has been replaced by the odious impurity of the harem. 
 The wife, instead of being recognised as the equal and 
 companion of her husband — weaker, indeed, and leaning 
 on his strength, but by the gracefulness, the sweetness, 
 the sympathy of her nature abundantly returning the 
 obligation and enriching his sterner existence, — instead 
 of enjoying the dignified and responsible position of 
 being the sharer of his joys and sorrows, the confidant 
 of his life, is degraded to be his slave, or is regarded 
 as valuable chiefly as furnishing a stock of fierce and 
 valiant warriors. Again the unlimited liberty of divorce 
 sanctioned by Mohammed destroys the very idea of 
 matrimony as a sacred institution — degrading it into 
 a union of mere passing convenience or a mercantile 
 transaction, in which the interest and wishes of the 
 weaker sex are relentlessly sacrificed to the stronger. 
 Nothing can exceed the unutterable coarseness of the 
 Koran in all that regards the relation of the sexes — 
 
138 STUDIES m CHRISTIAN HISTORY. 
 
 its contemptuous tone in all that concerns woman. 
 But even the ample indulgence it permits has not 
 checked the further development of guilty passion, 
 for in Mohammedan countries unnatural vice is very- 
 prevalent. 
 
 Islamism has been on the whole a demoralising 
 agency, checking progress, perpetuating abuses, the 
 deadly enemy of enlightenment and civilisation ; and 
 even by being in a limited sense an improvement on 
 the preceding state of things, it has prevented the 
 introduction of a better creed and a purer and loftier 
 morality. Even at the present day, the traveller by 
 sea is struck by the vast extent of its sway as he notes 
 the green flag of Islam floating over hosts of pil- 
 grims collected from the farthest Dutch islands of the 
 east to Cape Town on the south. But wherever it has 
 penetrated, it has proved a barrier to the progress of 
 Christianity and of civilisation ; it has induced low 
 barbarous tribes to cast away their idols, only to plunge 
 them in a still worse fanaticism. Its solitary service 
 to Humanity is that it has enforced abstinence from 
 strong drink among races not particularly addicted to 
 that indulgence. 
 
 Such has the religion of Mohammed been in the past, 
 and such we may reasonably suppose would be its 
 course in the future if the forces of civilisation were 
 not now happily too strong for it. It is, we say again, 
 essentially a persecuting religion, admitting of no com- 
 promise with other creeds, further than conscious weak- 
 ness may suggest — kept in restraint only by the exer- 
 cise of that force which itself enjoins. Such as it was 
 in its fiery and turbulent youth, it is in the present 
 time of its decay ; and if in its after-course it was 
 
MOHAMMEDANISM. 139 
 
 modified by the influences of learning and civilisation^ 
 if it suggests to us the schools of Bagdad, or the 
 careless grace and elegance of Cordova and Seville, 
 these were but the phosphorescence that lit up for a 
 moment the dark and troubled sea of Barbarism — 
 the passing gleam kindled by the v?him or favour of 
 liberal Khan or Kaliph, soon to disappear again in 
 surrounding darkness. 
 
 PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AMD SONS. 
 

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