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THE GROWTH OF
CHRISTIANITY

OTHER VOLUMES BY Dr PERCY GARDNER

EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA
A BRIEF EXAMINATION OP THE BASIS
AND ORIGIN OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF
Demy 8vo^ Cloth, Price 155.
" We think it likely that Dr Gardner's book will mark the
opening of a new and better era in religious controversy. . . .
It should be easier henceforth for the rationalist critic and the
Christian advocate to understand and respect each other." —
Daily Chronicle.

A HISTORIC VIEW OF THE
NEW TESTAMENT
THE JOWETT LECTURES DELIVERED AT
THE PASSMORE EDWARDS SETTLEMENT
IN LONDON, 1 90 1
Cheap Edition^ Crown 8v0y Paper Covers^ Price 6d.

Evangelica, _ is now so generally reckoned by liberal theo
logians in this country as the most important English publi
cation of its class that has appeared since ' Ecce Homo,' that
a new work from the same hand is bound to attract attention.
. . . The lectures deserve to be widely read, as being thought
ful, scholarly, and illuminating."— Westminster Gazette.

PUBLISHED BY A. AND C. BLACK, SOHO SQ,, LONDON, W.

THE GROWTH OF
CHRISTIANITY

LONDON LECTURES

BY
PERCY GARDNER, Litt.D., LL.D.

LONDON
ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK
1907

PREFACE
These lectures were begun in 1903, when the rector
of a London parish invited me to give a course of
lectures in his church on the relations of Christianity
to early culture. They were never delivered, owing to
reasons which it is unnecessary to relate. Having
begun to write the lectures, I decided to complete them
for publication, preserving for convenience the lecture
form. And in fact, so wide is the ground covered,
and so many the subjects at which it is necessary to
glance, that one could scarcely venture to deal with
the subject save in the tentative form of lectures, the
object of which is rather to interest and stimulate than
to inform or satisfy. A necessary consequence of the
brevity of this sketch is its optimism in leaving out
much of the shadow : outlines are not shaded.
Having written so much by way of preface, I might
very well stop. But I have found by experience that
so many readers judge of a book by the preface, and
so many reviewers scarcely go beyond it, that I may
be allowed briefly to state the point of view maintained
in this work. It is not a mere outline of the early
history of Christianity, but a treatise dominated by a
point of view deliberately adopted — in fact an apologetic
treatise. I have aimed at impartiality, and loved the

vi PREFACE
white light as much as man can. But in dealing with
history, a writer can no more secure perfect imparti
ality than perfect knowledge. Everyone must read
the records of the past in the light of formed moral ten
dencies and intellectual views. And my chief reason
for publishing is that I know of comparatively few works
which show at once a strong belief in spiritual, as dis
tinct from what I should call materialized, Christianity,
and an acceptance of evolutionary views of the history
of the Christian society. I write as a member of the
school of Jowett and Arnold, of Maurice and Stanley,
not, however, uninfluenced by the philosophic and
historic developments of the last half century. I
regard Christianity as the supreme religious pheno
menon, but one by no means standing apart from the
general course of European developmenb, but influenced
by it and in turn dominating it.
The increasing pressure of university duties has
delayed the publication of these pages, and prevented
me from pursuing my reading in various directions so
far as I could have wished. I had hoped also to
speak of the relations between Christianity and culture
in our own times. But this subject I have been
obliged to lay aside, in the hope of a time of greater
leisure hereafter. The detailed table of contents may
serve as an index. I wish to thank my sister, Miss
Alice Gardner, for helping me with several useful
suggestions.
P. GAEDNEE.
OxFOED, March 1907.

CONTENTS LECTURE I
THE GEEM OF CHEISTIANITY
I. Crises in the lives of individuals and in the world's history, 2.
Such a crisis in the sixth century B.C. and in the first century
A.D., culminating in Christianity, 4.
II. The essential elements in Christianity to be found in the Lord's
Prayer, 5. Analysis of this : it centres in the idea of a divine
will and its realization in the world, 7.
III. Submission to the divine will, and active co-operation with it, 7.
Three steps, to know the divine wUl, to do it, and to love it,
corresponding to the three parts of man's nature, 9. Reasons
given in the Gospels for loving God's will, 11. The Christian
legislation, 12.
IV. The intellectual assumptions of the Lord's Prayer, 14. It does
not strictly imply divine personality, 15. The divine Father
hood rests on two facts : (1) that divine power works in human
hearts, (2) that co-operation with it leads to blessedness, 15.
v. It is assumed that man is the end of nature, and God the end
of man, 16.
VI. Comparison of Christianity in this respect with other religions, 20.
LECTURE II
BAPTISM INTO CHEIST
Limitations in the first preaching of Christianity, 23.
I. The process whereby the seed grew into a great tree, 24. Con
tinuation of the teaching of the doctrine of God's will by the

viii CONTENTS
Apostles, 25. They add a new element, the continued working
of the spirit of Christ in the werld, 27.
II. Baptism the great initiatory rite in the Church : it was into the
name of Christ, 30. Accompanied conversion, a real and
important phenomenon of life, 31. How it worked in practice :
the classical example St Paul, 33.
III. The baptism of ideas, 35. Some baptized by the Founder, some
by the disciples, 37. Baptism into the name, and baptism
into the spirit, of Christ, 38. Sometimes inappropriate ideas
baptized and fruitful ones excluded, 38.
IV. The Jewish idea of God baptized by the Founder by His method of
inwardness, 39. The early disciples re-baptized it, 42.
V. Philanthropy when baptized into Christ became charity by being
connected closely with the love of God, 43.
VI. Practical incorporation of the Christian ideas in the early Church
in love to God and man : hence the victory of Christianity, 45.

LECTURE III
THE BAPTISM OF JUD^A
The Founder naturally most in contact with Jewish ideas, 49.
I. Jewish idea of Messiahship baptized by Jesus, by being translated
into what was inward, 50. This too spiritual for the disciples,
who externalized their Master's Messiahship in various theories :
(1) of the Davidic genealogy, (2) of the adoption at baptism,
(3) of the miraculous birth, 53.
II. The Messianic idea a part of the Jewish eschatology universally
prevalent, 66. How far accepted by Jesus, and how inter
preted by Him, 57. Much care about the future inconsistent
with the teaching of the Master, 60. Eschatological views
revived in the early Church, and baptized rather into the
name than into the spirit of Christ, 61. Later, the doctrine
of the Church grew out of them, 62. Survivals in the form of
an expectation of a speedy end of the world, 62.
III. Jewish morality baptized in the Sermon on the Mount, 64.
Asceticism and the Mosaic legislation altered by being turned
inward, 65. Little positive legislation in the Gospels, 66.
Jesus baptized the Old Testament into the spirit, the
disciples into the name : St Paul less literal than the others,

CONTENTS ix
68. Some parts of the Old Testament, such as the Psalms,
scarcely needed baptism, 70. We may, however, regret that
the cosmogony of Genesis was adopted by Christianity, 71.
IV. The Jewish demonology, an interpretation of certain facts of
human nature, 73. This in some degree accepted by Jesus,
but moralized, 75. Possession contrary to the divine will, 76.
Doctrine of Satan in modern times, 78.
V. The Jewish racial feeling might seem to defy baptism, 79 ; but
it was baptized by St Paul, using the method of inwardness,
79. Christians the new people of God, 81. The racial feeling
of the Jews who did not accept Christianity became stronger
and more bitter, 81.

LECTURE IV
THE BAPTISM OF HELLAS
This baptism not the work of Jesus, but mainly that of Paul ,84.
I. Defect of modern education, which passes over later Jewish
history and Hellenistic developments of the spirit of Greece,
86. Greece had pervaded the civilized world, 88.
II. Various strata of religion in the Greek world, 89. The religion of
Olympus was out of date, 89. It was incapable of expansion,
inconsistent with the facts of the world, and so unequal to
resisting Christianity, 91. Local pagan cults had local in
fluence, 93. Greece also contributed to Christian demon
ology, 93.
III. Influence of Greek philosophy both speculative and practical, 94.
Contempt of St Paul for it, 94. This philosophy the intel
lectual interest of Christianity, 95. Philo and the Logos, 97.
Predominance of later Platonism, 98. Attempt of Gnosticism
to absorb Christianity, 99. Clement and Origen baptize
Greek philosophy, 100. Base alloy in formulation of doc
trine, 101.
IV. Residuary phenomena in Greece : mens Sana in corpore sano, 102.
This never taken in by Christianity, though by no means
contrary to the spirit of it, 103. The love of Jesus for nature,
104. Paul's consecration of the body, 105. Lofty idealism of
Greece, 107. Necessity of this as a supplement to current
Christianity, 108.

X CONTENTSLECTURE V
THE BAPTISM OF ASIA
I. A great influence exercised on Christianity by the mystic religions
of Asia, of Babylon, and Egypt, which in the Hellenistic age
took new forms, 111. They rose and grew, grafted on to the
wild stem of primitive Anatolian religion, 113. They preserved
many valuable primitive religious ideas, 114. They made their
appeal not to the city or clan, but to the individual, 115.
II. They insisted on the possibility of communion between God and
man, 117. The initiated sought salvation under the protection
of the deity in life and death, 119. Based on a sacred ritual
of communion, 121. Striving after purity, 123. The bath oi
blood by which men are born anew, 123.
III. These ideas carried to a higher plane in Christianity, 124. Small
trace of them in the Synoptic Gospels ; much in Paul and John,
125. This development only possible after the Founder's
departure, 128. Shifting of the centre of gravity from the
present to the future life, 129.
IV. Rites of the Church : baptism, confirmation, the Lord's Supper,
131. The historic origin of these very hard to trace, 132 ;
but we can discern their meaning and their value in
the Church, 133. Unconscious adaptation to ends not yet
revealed, 135.
V. The baptism of mysticism took place in the manner of Jesus :
(1) rites were dematerialized and humanized, (2) the ideas
were changed by the infusion of a loftier idea of God, 136.

LECTURE VI
THE BAPTISM OF EOME
I. The religion of the family and of the clan, 139. We may compare
the facts of modern India and Japan, 140. Christianity came
into necessary contact with this religion, 142. It early baptized
the filial and the conjugal relation, 142. Later it baptized
civic cults bv substitutins- saints for heroes. 143 : and Hnrnp-stin

CONTENTS xi
religion by introducing the doctrine of Purgatory, 145. Both
developments liable to abuse, but each contains permanent
elements, 145.
II. Roman state-religion, 146. The religion of the Roman poets
Greek, 147. The real religion of Rome became mere ritual
apart from belief, 147. After Constantine this was not baptized
into Christianity, but influenced it, 149.
III. Christianity had to make terms with ordinary civic life, 150. Paul
exaggerates the vice of the Grseco-Roman world, as do Tacitus
and Juvenal, 152. There was a strong, healthy life in the
middle classes, 154.
IV. Influence on conduct of Stoicism, 155. Seneca, Epiotetus, and
Aurelius, 158. Christianity took over the Stoic notion of the
brotherhood of men, 159. Cicero and his friends, 160. St
Paul began the conversion of civic life by substituting the fear
of God for respect for men as a motive, thus turning morality
inward, 162,
V. Roman law affected some of the doctrines of Christianity, but not
its principles, in early times, 163. The principle of patriotism,
the great gift of Rome to the world, not appreciated by
Christianity, 165.

LECTURE VII
THE CATHOLIC CHUECH
Stability of Rome in the Antoniue age : yet the spirit in the Church
was then working for future needs, 167. This seen in
I. (1) Formation of a canon of Scripture about A.D. 180 ; the Jewish
sacred books ; need of a canon, 171.
II. (2) The settlement of the Creed ; this the work of the second and
third centuries ; its need, 173. Its source in philosophic
schools, 174. A strong ethical purpose added ; whence ortho
doxy and heterodoxy, 175. Fight with heresy ; need for
intellectual education of barbarians, 177.
III. (3) Materialization of the Sacraments ; a natural human tend
ency, 178. The Eucharist, Revolt of the mystic spirit of the
north, 179.
IV. (4) Rise of the Order of Bishops ; need for an authority to pre
serve unity, 181. The prophets in the Church give way to an

xii CONTENTS
organized priesthood, 182. Stages in the growth of Episcopacy,
185. The bishop as ruler and protector : he survives the
decay of Rome, 185.
V. (5) The primacy of Rome ; the Popes a continuation of the
Emperors, 189.
VI. (6) Monastioism ; the spear-head of Christianity ; source obscure :
the uses of celibacy : a refuge for the unwarlike, and a
focus of enthusiasm, 190.

LECTURE VIII
THE MEDIAEVAL THEOCEACY
I. Splendour of the thirteenth century : in some senses the culmina
tion of Christianity, 194. To be judged of partly by our
cathedrals, which embody the spirit of the age, 195.
Attraction of the century to modern minds : Dante, 198.
II. Discipline of the Catholic Church, 199. Its power based on
intellectual unity, 200. The use of the Latin tongue, 201.
Teutonic contributions to scholasticism, 202. The system of
confession and penance, 203. Materialization and dominance
of the Sacraments, 204. Franciscans and Dominicans, 205.
III. Smaller success of the Church in dealing with the spirit of the
northern nations, 207. Chivalry : St Louis, 208. Growth
of the spirit of nationality, 210.
IV. The age presents a baptism not into the name nor into the spirit,
but into the body of Christ, 211. Bodies always liable to
decay, 212. Revolt against materialism : Abelard, Gothic art,
213. Reply of Charles the Great to Hadrian, 214. Beghards
and Beguines of Germany, 215. Eokhart and his followers,
215. R. Bacon, Wyclifie, 216.

LECTURE IX
THE EEVIVAL OF CHEISTIANITY
Tendency to reversion to type, 219.
I. Reformation and counter-Reformation, 219. Divine control of
elements out of which they sprung, 221. At its origin

CONTENTS xiii
Christianity took in Greek philosophy, but not literature and
art, 221. The Renascence began with re-reading of Plato, 222.
Its first result corruption of morals, 223. At the same time
intellectual expansion, 223. Results on the documents of
religion : L. Valla, Colet, Erasmus, 224. Reformation had
to be reached through struggle, 225. Anarchy : hence re
action, victorious in Southern Europe, 225. The mind of the
time not historic : hence the type an ideal, not real one, 226.
II. The Reformers accepted (1) and (2) of Lecture VII. and rejected the
rest ; especially the materialism of the Sacraments and the
primacy of Rome, 228. Our difficulties arise less from what
was rejected than from what was kept : (1) uncritical way of
regarding Scripture, whence an infallible Bible made a corner
stone ; (2) Christianity regarded rather as a body of opinions
than as a way of life, 229.
III. The revival of the Pauline spirit, 233. Reformation and
counter-Reformation both had the defects of their qualities,
yet both recognized the root principle of Christianity, the
relation of the human will to the divine, 234. The prophetic
spirit in Northern Europe, the priestly in Southern Europe,
235. In Southern Europe the Church hostile to science, in
Northern Europe makes terms with it, and inclines to mysti
cism, 237.

LECTURE X
CHEISTIANITY AND DEVELOPMENT
I. Summary of early history of Christianity, 242. If Christianity
thus grew, is it a definite religion ? Continuity of spirit, 244.
Ordinary Roman view : reads New Testament in non-natural
light, 246. Ordinary Protestant view : regards history of
Christianity as a process of degeneration, 247.
II. Newman's doctrine of development, 249. Truth of much that he
says about ideas and their working : quotations, 249. His
weaknesses, 251: (1) while he regards the history of the Church
as an evolution, he does not so regard the history of other
religions, 252 ; (2) he ignores Biblical criticism, 253 ; (3)
does not understand the Reformation, which succeeded because
needed, 254.

xiv CONTENTS
III. Psychological weakness of Newman, 256. He sometimes speaks
of ideas as objects or as purely intellectual, 256. Growth of
Christianity not logical but biological, 257. Perversity of his
judgment of the tiend of ideas, 258.
IV. Newman only considers parts of the history of the Church, 259.
Tests of corruption mainly intellectual : the real test that of
fruits, 260.
V. Further developments of Newman's teaching, 261. Loisy
thoroughly critical in questions of history, but not in those of
doctrine, 262. Such dichotomy of the mind impossible, nor
does Rome allow it, 264. Mignot, like Loisy, says that Protes
tants cannot accept evolution, 265.
VI. 'Ehxha.x&'a Katholizismus, 266. He agrees that Rome has neglected
Teutonic ideas, yet thinks we should adhere to her, 267. His
nightmares are individualism and subjectivism, 268. Indivi
dualism a source both of strength and weakness : subjectivism
the result of a great philosophic movement, from Descartes to
Kant, 269. Ehrhard wants to go back to Aquinas, 270.
Vague talk of adopting modern tendencies, 270.
VII. Is the critical and historic spirit more easily to be reconciled with
the Roman than with the Reformed faith ? 271. A question
of the working of a spirit rather than of the continuity of an
organism, 273. The kind of religion which can really be re
conciled to modem culture is a religion not of authority but of
the spirit ; a trust in and love of the divine will, 275. Modern
culture a divine revelation, but needs Christianizing, 277.

THE
GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY

LECTURE I
THE GERM OF CHEISTIANITY
I HAVE been asked to lay before a London audience —
consisting, I suppose, largely of men of business who
have intellectual interests, and of students of various
kinds — an outline of what I conceive to be the rela
tions between Christianity and the various kinds of
thought and belief with which it has come in contact.
Our modern culture is a much compounded thing,
with roots reaching back not only to Judaea but to
Greece and Eome and the far East, as well as to
the hills of Wales and the forests of Germany. It is
important to see how far this civilization of ours is
really Christian, how far it may be Christianized,
which of its elements have never been much affected
by Christianity.
Our subject, in short, is the relations between
Christianity and Culture. In the present course of

2 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
lectures I shall deal with the past, down to the time
of the Eeformation, not neglecting to exhibit any
light which the past history of Christianity may re
flect upon modern needs and present problems. The
subject is vast, perhaps too vast; it is clear that I
can but open up the ground a little, and make a few
suggestions.

When we read the lives of those men and women
who have by their contemporaries or successors been
regarded as saints, men and women in whom the
flame of the higher life has burned with an intense
glow, we often find that the whole tone of those lives
was indelibly set by some noteworthy event, either of
outward life or of inner experience. At a point of
time which can be discerned, their whole being was
lifted by divine grace to a higher level, and, to the end,
the echoes which the calling of a divine Providence
aroused in their souls have never wholly died away.
They have had relapses, times of torpor and coldness,
times of yielding to temptation, times of isolation and
of the valley of the shadow of death ; and yet, on
looking back, they have said that since the great time
of their calling they have always lived in greater
nearness to God, as citizens of a spiritual world, as
conscious of a higher purpose in life.
Such, then, is not uncommonly the testimony of
Christians of more than usual insight and devotion.
The lives of nations show similar crises. Such a time
of spiritual awakening, of a calling to higher destinies,
came upon the world, the civilized world which lay

THE GERM OF CHRISTIANITY 3
around the Mediterranean Sea, at the beginning of
our era. The calling was concentrated in the lite
and the death of the Founder of Christianity. In
Him, and in Him alone, was the consecration of
mankind consciously accomplished. He, and He alone,
is the captain of our salvation.
Yet before enlarging on this truth, I may pause
for a moment — I am as a historian bound to pause —
to point out that though the purification of the world
by the spirit of Jesus Christ was an unique event in
the history of mankind, yet it was by no means an
isolated event, or one without parallel. Before the
rise of Christianity there had been times when a
large outpouring of the divine spirit had taken place.
For example, the marvellous sixth century before
our era had been marked, in Asia, by the rise of the
civilizing Persian empire, by the return of the Jews
to their own country, the establishment of the Jewish
theocracy, and the prophecies of the later Isaiah, by
the origin and spread of Buddhism in India, and the
teaching in China of the great Confucius. In Europe
it had been marked by the sudden blossoming, among
the most gifted of nations, the Greeks, of poetry and
art, of philosophy and history. Such times remind
us of the verse of Joel : ' And it shall come to pass
afterwards that I will pour out my spirit upon all
flesh.' In a short period the human race made a
greater advance than in previous millennia. So also
the beginning of our era, quite apart from the rise of
Christianity, was a time of general stirring 'in all the
higher fields of human activity ; the age of Csesar and
of Virgil, of the consolidation of the Eoman govern-

4 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
ment and the revival of decaying religion both east
and west, of the growth of a splendid literature.
God, as St Paul says, has in no age left Himself
without witnesses. Christ, as Justin the Martyr in
sists, was born from the foundation of the world.
Every good gift, as St James says, is from above.
At all times both before and after the founding of
Christianity, and in all regions, men have arisen
inspired and sent by God to redeem their brethren
from sin and from suffering, and to lead them in the
way of peace. And whatever movement makes men
wiser and more urbane, or increases the security and
sweetness of domestic life, or brings higher ideals
before the minds of statesmen and men of action, or
enriches the imagination and gives us works of im
perishable art, is a religious movement, and is akin,
though sometimes but distantly akin, to that greatest
of all religious movements, Christianity.
But I must return to my theme. It is of Chris
tianity that I have to speak, it is the historic working
of the spirit of Jesus Christ which I have to trace,
however slightly and imperfectly. Of other religions I
shall speak only so far as they have come into contact
with Christianity; and of other movements of the
human spirit I shall only speak so far as they can be
brought into relations with the spirit of Christ. My
theme is not merely religion and culture, but Chris
tianity and culture.
That which the sixth century is in the history of
the ancient world, that which conversion has been to
men like Paul and Augustine, Luther and Bunyan,
that was the coming of Christianity to the human

THE GERM OF CHRISTIANITY 5
race. It was a sudden outpouring of the spirit of God
through a consecrated channel, an opening of the
doors of the spiritual world by the power of a visible
hfe. It is the turning-point in the growth of the
human spirit. And we have to inquire what is the
essence of this great expansion, this divine revelation.
II
Where can we hope to find a clear expression
of the essential spirit of Christianity, save in the
words of the Founder ? And in which of His sayings
are we so likely to find that expression as in that
wonderful prayer^ which He gave as an everlasting
possession to His disciples, and which has almost ever
since been uttered day by day by thousands or
millions of Christians ? We cannot be wrong in
thinking that in the Lord's Prayer we shall find a
key alike to the earthly hfe of the Founder and to the
splendid career of the society which He founded. It
matters little that, as Dr Lightfoot showed, the
petitions of the Lord's Prayer are to be found in the
Jewish liturgies. The important point is that the
Founder of Christianity selected these petitions for
the use of His disciples, and thus made them, so to
speak, the daily bread of the Christian life. ,
The Lord's Prayer is not only the central document
of Christianity, but also, although not found in the
Gospel of Mark, one of the most authentic utter
ances of its Founder. How could the disciples have
' Whether we regard the longer form, given in Matthew, or the
shorter, given in Luke, as more authentic, matters little to the present
purpose.

6 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
forgotten or greatly altered these few brief sentences,
probably uttered not once only, but over and over
again on many occasions ? If some parts of the
teaching of Jesus, as reported by the Synoptists, are
coloured with the hght of a later age and altered to
meet the changing surroundings of Christianity, in this
case there is nothing which raises a suspicion of later
interpretation. We feel ourselves here, to use a
common expression, standing on the bed-rock of
Christianity, and any construction reared on this as a
foundation may despise the buffetings of wind and
water, and will remain a permanent abode of the
Christian spirit.
The Lord's Prayer is sufficiently familiar to all the
world. But not everyone may have noticed its re
markable and balanced construction, which is like that
of a growing flower or a pediment by a Greek sculptor.
In the midst of the prayer stands that petition for
daily bread, which seems to bring the formula within
the reach of ordinary men, who are obliged to eat that
they may exist, and cannot live to God save on a
basis of physical nutriment. ' Man shall not live by
bread alone,' yet without bread he cannot receive the
words which come from the mouth of God.
On either side of this central point stands a group
of sentences which repeat in more than one form a
great truth of the Christian faith. The petition which
precedes asks that the Kingdom of God may come and
His will be done on earth. The petition which
follows begs for forgiveness of sins and deliverance
from the power of evil. And in fact these two prayers
are closely connected together. They bring before us

THE GERM OF CHRISTIANITY 7
life as a struggle against what is evil and a striving
towards what is good, a striving which makes up the
sum of man's duty, and in which he is hindered by
spiritual foes and in constant need of the divine aid.
The world is regarded, in accordance with the funda
mental ideas of the later religion of Israel, as a battle
field between the powers of good and the powers of
evil, in which every man and every community takes
a side. Sin is set forth as a terrible reality ; and there
must be forgiveness of sins as a first step in the better
path. But even when sin is forgiven, the struggle still
goes on. Without the help of God man would be
carried away by the spiritual powers which tend to
evil. Yet without the conscious help of man, the
purposes of God in the world could never be carried
out. The whole stress of the prayer, its spiritual passion,
is concentrated on a single aspiration. Thrice in so
short a formula we meet the same thought, in a three
fold expression, Hallowed be Thy name, Thy Kingdom
come, Thy wUl be done. So possessed is Jesus by a
passionate love and adoration of the divine will, that
its doing in the world is set forth as the first, the
second, the third of all objects of prayer; all other
petitions and aspirations live only in its shadow, and
seem to be things comparatively indifferent. But a
special turn is given to the threefold cry for the
realization in the human world of the will of God by
the opening words 'Our Father,' implying a kindly
and loving attitude in the hearer of prayer, and
an unfailing confidence and trust in the utterer of
prayer.

8 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
Thus it is affirmed in the most authentic, the
central, document of Christianity, that God may be
approached by man, and approached in a spirit of
trustful reliance. It is affirmed that the essence of
all goodness, the secret of all progress in the world
lies in the doing of God's will, the spread of a
spiritual kingdom among men. And it is almost
superfluous to point out that the hfe of Jesus as
recorded for us in the Synoptic Gospels is wholly
set in this key : ' Whosoever shall do the will
of my Father which is in Heaven, the same is my
brother and sister and mother ' ; '0 my Father, if
this cup may not pass away from me except I drink
it, Thy will be done ' ; ' Not every one that saith unto
me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the Kingdom of
Heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father
which is in Heaven.' And in the Fourth Gospel, which,
if less historic, is not less Christian than the others,
the same note is repeatedly struck : ' I came not to do
mine own will, but the will of Him that sent me ' ;
' My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me, and
to finish His work.' Some of these sayings may not
have been uttered by Jesus quite in the form in which
they come to us ; but it would be a most unreasonable
scepticism which would doubt that such words were
often on the lips of our Founder. But they were not,
as we all know, mere words, but rather the rendering
in language of a practical purpose, of an unswerving
devotion which ran like a golden thread through the
whole life which ended, or rather which passed
through its supreme crisis, on Calvary.

THE GERM OF CHRISTIANITY 9
III
The phrase ' The will of God be done ' has often
been used by eminent Christians in the face of persecu
tion or death. They have been speaking in the mood
of the garden of Gethsemane, determined to set aside
their own hopes and fears, and to merge all personal
feeling in the consciousness of a larger life. They
have been right. And yet submission to the will of
God is but one, and not the highest form of veneration
of the divine will. When one's forces are at an end,
or when one has fallen into the hands of bitter foes,
then indeed it is the noblest of virtues. But Jesus
constantly speaks, not only of submission to the divine
will, but of co-operation with it, as the chief end and
purpose of life. It was to do rather than to suffer
the will of God that Himself came into the world.
And His followers are to be judged, not by their
protestations, but by the degree of devotedness with
which they carry out the mission confided to each.
Such parables as that of the talents clearly lay down
that man has it in his power either to forward, or in
some degree to frustrate, the divine will ; and that,
accordingly as he forwards or frustrates it, is the final
doom of his soul. Active service so long as any
strength remains, willing submission when our forces
are at an end : such is to be our relation to the eternal
purposes of God.
Let us a little further analyze the Founder's
teaching in this matter. Our faculties make up three
groups : those of knowing, of feeling, and of willing.
How does the teaching of Jesus connect each of these

lo THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
groups with the divine will ? I have mentioned them
in the order in which they are ranged in the works of
psychologists and philosophers. But that is not the
religious order. In the Synoptic Gospels the faculties
of feeling and of willing are scarcely separated ; while
the faculties of knowing are treated last, and put in a
subordinate position.
Though to do the will of God be man's whole duty,
his main purpose in life, yet he could not in any
degree accomplish it unless in the first place there
were springing up within him a well of love to God.
Jesus spoke of it as the secret of eternal life to
love God with heart and soul and mind and strength :
this, He declared, was the great commandment. It
may seem strange that this passage should stand some
what isolated, and that the teaching of love to God
should not take in the Gospels anything like the
place which it takes in the Theologia, Germanica, and
other works of the mystics. But though not frequently
expressed, it underlies every page. The hfe of Jesus
was such a practical demonstration of love to God
that words were unnecessary. And in quoting the
phrase of Deuteronomy as to the love of God, Jesus
put Himself into line with His nation, with whom the
love of God was the principle, the condition of
existence. And as it is impossible in the world to
love a person in any worthy way without finding
delight in trying to please him, so it is not possible to
love God without desiring to do His will in the world.
Love is the great spring of will and action. When a
feeling burns in the heart, it drives a man to will and
to do that which will give it a vent.

THE GERM OF CHRISTIANITY ii
And on the other hand, as has often been pointed out,
there is no more certain stimulus of love than the
attempt to give happiness to relative or friend. So,
too, in religion. In the few, love to God may be an
overpowering mystic passion ; in the many, it arises
more slowly out of daily endeavour to promote the
divine Kingdom in the world. By adhering to the
path of duty many a man by degrees attains to a love
of God of which perhaps he is scarcely conscious and
which he would not call by that name, yet which is
in reality strong enough to lightly overcome tempta
tion, and to make the progress of the divine will in
the world a source of constant though sober happiness.
If we search the Gospels for reasons why we should
love God and do His will, we shall not find them stated
very explicitly. But implicitly two grounds of love
are implied. In the first place, gratitude to God who
gives us all good, who counts the hairs of our heads,
and has perfect knowledge of all our needs, is spoken
of as natural to man. And above all other gifts, the
gift of the Holy Spirit, the most divine of all divine
favours, is cited as that which must, if we have a
sense of gratitude, call it into activity. A further
reason frequently urged for loving God is that it leads
to blessedness. Men naturally feel love to those from
whom they have received, or expect to receive,
happiness. And there is no more pure or perennial
source of happiness than comes from loving what is
worthy of love, and being in harmony with the life
of God.
In the Synoptic Gospels, beside the motive of love
is sometimes placed that of fear. In the early Church

12 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
the hope of reward beyond the grave and the fear of
eternal punishment acted very strongly as a balance
against the seductions and the terrors of a world which
was opposed to it. The teaching of heaven and hell,
which had its origin, so far as we know, to the east
of the Mediterranean, occupied a prominent place in
the thoughts, hopes, and passions of the disciples.
But in the Gospels this teaching is far less dominant.
In a few passages the fate of the soul for good or for
evil is spoken of, briefly but with great solemnity.
But in the great mass of the teaching of Jesus, it is
the present life, not that beyond the grave, which is
the subject of discourse. The life of obedience to
God is represented as in itself blessed, and so
consonant to the true nature of men that it leads
inevitably to what is good, and away from all that
defiles and degrades. The pressure which the original
Christian teaching puts upon man to lead him to
deny his worse nature and follow what is better is
a pressure of attraction, not one of hard compulsion
or of craven fear. 'That ye may be the children of
your Father in Heaven ' is the high motive for which
a man should study the will of God as revealed in
the world, and further it in the lives of men.
It may be said that our Lord not only preached the
doctrine of obedience to the divine will, but also re
vealed to His followers what that will was in the
various affairs of life. And in this saying there would,
of course, be some truth. In the Sermon on the
Mount, for example, there is a certain amount of
legislation binding on all members of the Christian
society, though some parts of that legislation were

THE GERM OF CHRISTIANITY 13
only adapted to the present condition of the infant
society, and unfit to be the law of churches or of
nations. In regard to prayer and fasting, in relation
to our duties to our neighbours, general rules are laid
down. And in one or two matters, notably the
relations of husband and wife, definite principles are
set forth with authority. Yet everyone must feel
that the legislation in regard to conduct in the Gospels,
luminous and suggestive as it is, covers but a small
part of the active life of men as citizens. In the main,
it is the great principle of obedience to the divine will,
with a few of its immediate corollaries, which is set
forth, and the application is left to the future and to
the experience of life.
A learned Mohammedan has made it a reproach to
Christianity, in a paper recently printed in the Hibbert
Journal, that there is not in the Gospels anything like
such a code of regulations as is set forth in the Mosaic
writings or in the Koran. The writer thinks this a
great defect ; and it cannot be denied that it makes
Christianity less suited to backward and fleshly races.
Christianity, in fact, differs from all the systems of code
and authority by insisting on the inwardness of true
religion, on the spirituality of the spring of actions.
It insists on looking at man in the light of the ideal,
and regarding not what men are, but what they might
be or ought to be. Thus it lays upon the conscience
and intelligence of Christians a heavy burden, the duty
of searching out, by all indications of history, of reason,
and of experience, to what the will of God as revealed
in the world really points. I do not, of course, mean
that this burden is laid on every man individually ;

14 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
but it is laid on men in nations, in societies, in
churches, and on men of religious power and insight
individually. IV
It is surprising how small are the intellectual
assumptions of such documents as the Lord's Prayer
and the Sermon on the Mount. Yet even in these
most simple documents there is a certain amount of
intellectual postulate. It is indeed impossible to use
human language in regard to the divine basis of life,
or even to think of it, without some vestiges of what
may be called doctrine. Without some simple mental
framework, the essence of Christianity could not be
held together or taught to the disciples.
I have indeed already mentioned what may be
regarded as the two great intellectual postulates of
primitive Christianity : first, that God is the Father in
Heaven ; second, that His will may be done on earth.
It is very difficult to us in modern days, accustomed to
the constructions of successive generations of Christian
theologians, to go back to the original meaning of these
simple phrases. They have been worked into many
schemes of doctrine, which, if we would find their
original essential meaning, we must try to dismiss
from our minds. At least, it will be said, they lay
down clearly the personality of God. Ah, no ! the
word personality is one of those fundamental words of
philosophy which are crowded with the meaning forced
into them by successive schools of thought. One
cannot discuss it save in volumes. The word person
ality would have been unintellicrible to thosfi wlin

THE GERM OF CHRISTIANITY 15
wrote the books of the New Testament. The Fourth
Evangelist puts into the mouth of Jesus the- phrase,
' God is spirit ' ; but it seems likely that even that
phrase belongs to another plane of thought from that
of the Founder of Christianity, since we do not find
such phrases in the Synoptists.
No ; the two phrases of the ' Father in Heaven,' and
the ' Will of God ' seem to be the rendering, in the
language of our common humanity, almost of childhood,
of the simplest facts of the religious consciousaess : the
fact of the constant working of the divine power in
human hearts, while those hearts can side either with
or against that divine power, and the fact that
obedience to the divine power leads men to blessedness,
while disobedience leads them to misery and shame.
If these be indeed facts, it is impossible to express
them in language which conveys less of theory, which
less needs adapting to the intellectual conditions of
various ages. If, for a moment, such phrases as
' Father in Heaven,' ' Thy will be done,' seem archaic,
yet no phrases, however modern and technical, could
better contain the real facts. Our philosophers and
theologians cannot, of course, be content with anything
so simple. But they seem to me often to bring in
more difficulties than they remove. The personality
of God ! The divine working in our consciousness often
seems to us personal, but with a personality as much
wider than ours as a cube is greater than a point. We
may attribute personality to God if we please, but it
is throwing out words at what is far too vast to be
enclosed by words. And if the term personality be
taken as a counter in a logical game, we may easily be

i6 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
led by it into utter absurdities. ' My thoughts are not
your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith
the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the
earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and
my thoughts than your thoughts.'
Has not St Augustine, the great founder of Church
doctrine, warned us, in memorable words, of the danger
of applying human categories to the divine ? ' Some
men,' he says, ' frame whatever idea they have of God
after the pattern of the nature and affections of the
human mind : and through this error, in disputing
concerning God, they argue by distorted and fallacious
rules.' Affirmations in regard to the divine nature
cannot be taken literally ; they are symbolic, helps to
feeling and imagination rather than fit to serve as the
basis of argument.

What, then, is implied in the Christian way of
regarding the supreme claims of the will of God in
the world ? In order that God's will may be done on
earth, it is necessary, first, that the surroundings of
man should be made subordinate to man himself, to
that which is reasonable, active, conscious. The visible
world must be read in terms of humanity. Man must
be seen as ' the roof and crown of things,' the being
for whom the world was made, and whose welfare is
the supreme end of creation. And then, when the
world is chiefly regarded as the condition of human
life and as mirrored in the human spirit, we may
pass to the second of the two processes of which I am
speaking, the subordination of man to God, of

THE GERM OF CHRISTIANITY 17
personahty to divine purpose, of human desire and
natural pleasure to the claims of the ideal.
Even the phenomena of the visible world, when
illumined with the light of the spirit, change their
character. They remain, it is true, the realm of
unvarying law and order. But beneath the material
surface one sees the working of ideas, transfiguring it
with beauty and with purpose. To the eye of the
poet or the artist, nature becomes full of beauty and
charm, so that his spirit is kindled to admiration and
love, and he spends his life in trying to set before
others what he himself discerns of underlying loveli
ness. In every healthy man there is some touch of
the artist, so that the face of nature is a source of ever-
springing delight to him, and the joy in hfe which
plants and animals show flnds a profound echo in his
heart. To the sterner moralist the beauty of the
world is less impressive than the opportunities which
it offers of reaching through the visible to the invisible,
through the material to the spiritual. He finds
purpose where a superficial observation might discover
only sequence. He reads the world in the light of
moral possibilities, and it becomes the field and the
condition of moral progress. Thus is nature read in
the light of humanity, and humanity is regarded as a
revelation of the will of God.
In the teaching of the Gospels the human view of
nature and the divine view of man are alike conspicu
ous. There is in it not a little even of the pastoral
love of nature, the enjoyment of the life of the open
air ; but, of course, there is far more of an ethical
interpretation of man's surroundings, whereby, as in
2

i8 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
historical paintings, men and their doings are placed in
the foreground, and nature only fills the background.
' Is not the life more than meat, and the body than
raiment ? ' ' What shall it profit a man if he gain the
whole world, and lose his own soul ? ' ' Lay not up
for yourselves treasures upon earth.' We have indeed
here that inwardness which Matthew Arnold set forth
as the main principle of the method of Jesus. As He
looked on the world, outer things melted away and the
human spirit appeared beneath ; and everything was
estimated in relation to the worth of man. It was
the Founder of Christianity who set that value on the
individual soul which has persistently been in all ages
one of the most fully recognised principles of Christian
thought and action.
But when He had insisted upon the transcendant
importance of the human spirit in relation to its
material possessions and surroundings, Jesus went on
to teach that in the spiritual world things were other
wise. As the individual is of infinitely greater value
than what is material, so he shrinks into nothingness
in the presence of the Father of Spirits, in a right
relation towards whom alone consists the dignity and
the safety of man. ' If thy right hand causeth thee
to stumble, cut it off, and cast it from thee ' : better
any self-maiming or self-cramping than a wrong
attitude in relation to God. 'Whosoever he be of
you that renounceth not all that he hath, he cannot
be my disciple.' ' Seek ye first the Kingdom of God,
and His righteousness.'
The Christian teaching, then, lies mainly in the two
theses: Man the end and crown of the natural

THE GERM OF CHRISTIANITY 19
world ; God the end and ruler of man. And in
regard both to man and to God, Jesus had a teaching
which, if not altogether new to the world, yet pro
foundly modified and transformed the existing ways of
thought both in philosophy and in religion.
In regard to man He taught the primacy of will
and purpose over thought, that obedience was the
organ of spiritual knowledge, that the rightness of the
heart was the thing acceptable to God, that men were
to be judged by the intention rather than the result
of their actions.
And the whole of His life and doctrine was a new
revelation of God. He spoke of God as loving men
and willing their salvation, as giving the Holy Spirit
to those that asked, as the source of hfe and happiness
to mankind.
These views have, in all the history of Christianity,
served to transmute and ennoble the beliefs with which
they came in contact. They are the leaven which
worked in the world until the whole was in some
degree leavened. They are the mustard seed which
grew into a tree, under the branches of which the
nations of the earth found shelter.
As mere philosophic theses, as contributions to the
understanding of the world, these views might have
gained disciples, but would not have prepared martyrs ;
they might have produced a school like that of Zeno
or Plotinus, but they would not have conquered the
world. It was the spiritual passion which went with
these views which built up the Christian society, and,
through it, the world of modern Europe.
If the principle of Christianity had been at variance

20 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
with the facts of human nature, it could not have
stood the test of life. Any edifice built on falsehood
and misunderstanding must in the end collapse.
Christianity had to make its way under certain con
ditions, and unless it was suited to those conditions it
must fail. Its scientific and philosophic value would
not have sufiiced, unless it had interpreted the realities
of life in a really practical and effective way.
VI
To think, to feel, to will, these three strands make
up the cord of human life. In the same way, to
discern the will of God, to love the will of God, to do
the will of God, makes up the essence of the
religion of Christ. But, it may be said, have we here
any note of distinction ? Have not other religions
also been founded on the same basis ? To which I
would reply : Yes, to some extent, but never, so far as
my knowledge goes, completely. Stoicism and Islam
have taught, in very different ways, a cheerful sub
mission to the divine will. Buddhism has taught, in
a supreme degree, the renunciation of self-will ; but
Buddhism knows nothing of the Father in heaven.
The nearest approach to the Christian position is made
by the later religion of Israel, as it was working, under
divine control, towards a wider faith, and setting aside
the narrowness of a mere tribal consecration, the
religion of the Psalms and of some of the Jewish
Apocrypha. But even here we find approach and not
attainment. But even if the attitude of the Christian faith
towards the divine will had been fully anticipated

THE GERM OF CHRISTIANITY 31
by the religious consciousness of an earlier time, there
would yet be something wanting. Christianity is at
bottom not a creed but a life, not a body of doctrine
but an inspiration. And the source of this inspiration
is the life both past and present of the Founder.
Historically, the past life is known to us but im
perfectly; it can be known as a matter of science
only to those who approach it by the way of careful
historic study. But the stream which has flowed
from that source comes down from the regions where
the foot of man cannot easily tread, and reaches the
plain where all may see it and drink of it. If we
regard the Church not primarily as an organized and
visible institution, but as a spiritual underlying power,
then we may say that the inspiration of the Church
is continuous, and under all its various outward
manifestations is one from the day when the Founder
accepted His first disciple down to the present, and on
into the unknown future.
The facts of human nature which lie at the root
of Christianity are always with us. But they are
not always equally with us, nor are they equally
prominent in all men. Had they been so, Chris
tianity would have taken a very different form. Men
are in very various degrees susceptible of the divine
inspiration. Some men seem to be almost void of
the potentiality, and those who have it find it very
hard to live at the level of their best thoughts and
noblest aspirations. It is this fact which made the
self-sacrifice of the Founder of Christianity and the
continued existence of the Church which He founded
necessary to humanity. The inspiration of the

22 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
Founder was unique ; His life and His death were
unique ; and the whole history of Christianity is
the story of an attempt to live up to an example
once set by the aid of a spiritual force which came
into the world with the Founder of Christianity, and
has been working, sometimes with greater and some
times with less intensity, from that day to this.

LECTUEE II
BAPTISM INTO CHRIST
That the Founder of Christianity directed His
mission to the Jews almost exclusively, and that
on various occasions He expressed unwillingness to
extend it beyond the limits of that nationality, is
quite clear. And at first this fact may be dis
concerting. We, for example, are Gentiles ; can we
think that our Saviour would have felt in regard to
us as He is reported to have felt towards the Syro-
Phoenician woman ? ' It is not meet to take the
children's bread and cast it to the dogs.' This
difficulty can be satisfactorily met if we consider the
earthly mission of our Lord as in time and place
strictly limited. He belonged to a race and to a
family as certainly as He belonged to a particular
time in the history of the world and to a particular
country. But these limitations do not affect the germ
of the teaching and work of the Master, which goes
down beyond the distinctions of family and race, of
land and of period, to the roots of the nature of man

24 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
as man, and to those relations between man and God
which belong to all time.
But how was this secret, this essential mystery of
Christianity, to be brought to bear upon the world ?
How was this golden thread to be woven into the
future history of mankind ?

If I may venture to repeat the comparisons which
were used by the Founder Himself, I would say that
in the life of Jesus Christ the mustard seed was
planted, but it had yet to adapt itself to soil and
cUmafce ; the leaven was added to the meal, but it had
yet to bring its modifying force to bear upon its
surroundings. The first disciples may well have felt
that they had found salvation, that their feet were on
the narrow path, and they had but to follow in the
steps of their Master to attain to eternal life. But
there remained the vast problem, which, perhaps, few
of them ventured consciously to attack: how Christ
was to be the life, not only of the group of disciples,
but of the whole world around them. It was this
translation of personal salvation into a world-wide
religion, this pouring of the breath of revelation into
the great complex of human society which was the
work of the last half of the first century. And it was
a work accomplished, not by the wisdom of man, but
by the power of God, working through the spirit of
Christ. I propose, however briefly and imperfectly, to trace
the main lines of the process by which the germ of
Christianity grew into a great tree, the leaven of

BAPTISM INTO CHRIST 25
Christianity leavened the western world. That the
tree is not in all respects like the germ, and that the
leavened mass contains much besides the leaven, is no
proof of want of continuity. The vital principle in
all growth is not conspicuous ; it is judged by its
working. But if it goes on from first to last in a
continuous though varied career of conquest and
absorption, we have a right to treat it as a real and
objective force.
The history of the Church is a continuation of the
life of Christ ; its victory over the world is a continua
tion of His victory. He had laid it down as one of
the cardinal points of His teaching that obedience is
the road of spiritual progress. By listening to the
voice of God one becomes aware of His purposes in
the world. First the will is stimulated, and then the
eyes of the intellect are enlightened to see what is in
accordance with the will of God and what is opposed
to it. The same gospel of spiritual loyalty, the same
devotion to the divine will is constantly present in the
writings of all the leaders of the early Church. In
many ways they add to or deviate from the teaching
of the Master ; but in this, the cardinal point of all,
they continue without a turn or an interruption the
hne which He had traced. As the shoot issues from
the germ, so it grows.
It is scarcely necessary that I should cite passages
from the Pauline epistles, in which the doctrine of
the divine will is set forth. I will but glance at two
or three. ' As the servants of Christ,' Paul writes,
' doing the will of God from the heart.' And again,
'This is the will of God, even your sanctification.'

26 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
In another place he speaks of the knowledge of God's
will thus : ' Be ye not foolish, but understand what
the will of the Lord is.' In one of the speeches
reported as Paul's in Acts, he says that Ananias at
Damascus addressed him thus : ' The God of our
fathers hath appointed thee to know his will.'
And beside these phrases which belong to St Paul,
or at all events to his immediate disciples, we may
set the words of other early teachers of the church.
In 1 Peter we read : ' So is the will of God that by
well-doing ye should put to silence the ignorance of
foolish men.' And the Johannine writer has a
memorable sentence in his own style : ' He that doeth
the will of God abideth for ever.' We may venture
to say that there is no phrase so completely wrought
into the foundations of Christian teaching as this
phrase, will (thel^ma) of God.
This is in exact accord with the teaching of the
Founder, as set forth in the Synoptic Gospels. But
the Church at once added another element to this, an
element which could not be added while He was alive,
which implied a spiritual nearness but a bodily
separation. This element is faith in Christ. On
this faith the society relied in its conflict with the
world, and by it the world was overcome. The
Church recognized her Lord as not only a Founder, a
Teacher, and an Inspirer in the past, but as the
present Word or Son of God, the channel by which
divine grace came into the heart of the believer, a
revealer to mankind of the Father of whom Jesus had
in His lifetime continually spoken. It is as if the
risen Christ had continually addressed to His Church

BAPTISM INTO CHRIST 27
the exhortation, ' Do the will of God,' and the Church
had as continually replied, ' Without Thee we can do
nothing.' From the first, Christ and His Church have lived
together ; the Church has been inspired by her
Founder and continued on earth His divine obedience.
She has been well aware that her strength did not
come from herself. From St Paul downward the
great Christians have said : ' Not I, but Christ liveth
in me.' And from time to time there have arisen
great leaders in the Church in whom some side of the
Founder seemed to live again. There has been a
great stream of life and influence flowing on in the
spiritual world parallel to the life of the Christian
community. Sometimes the barriers between the
heavenly kingdom and the earthly Church have been
almost impervious; sometimes they have been less
thick. But ever, through chosen personalities and
great movements, there has been maintained some
relation between the two. Prayer and the Christian
Communion have ever remained as lines of connection
between the seen and the unseen.
If we turn to the records of the life of the Church,
and especially of the early Church, though we may
find very much of human weakness and folly, we shall
yet see reason to think that there is apparent in it
divine leading and help. That the Church itself did
not perish in the terrible days that ended with the fall
of Jerusalem, was among the earliest proofs of divine
aid. Again, the more one studies the Gospels, the more
one is amazed, not at their historic accuracy, but at
their power of inspiration. The career of St Paul is

28 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
wonderful, and it is most wonderful that so mighty
and original a genius did not break the Church asunder,
but only widened it. The sudden spread of Christianity
can only be accounted for by the working of mighty
spiritual power in conjunction with the missionaries ;
and since the early days, however the light of the
Church has died down, it has ever revived in new forms
and fresh organizations.
The exact way in which this spiritual power has
worked, the nature of the relations between the
Founder and the Church, has been one of the chief
subjects of thought and one of the main sources of
doctrine in all Christian history. It would take me
too far if I began to comment upon it here. I must
be content to affirm the presence of Christ in the
Church in all ages as the source of her life.
But the growth of the Church, though the power
was from within, was not a growth like that of the
butterfly from the chrysalis. She did not develop in
isolation, nor merely expand her earliest beliefs. From
the first she had to devote her energies to absorbing
and assimilating whatever was suited to her in the
world around, in order to transmute its character by a
translation into the life of faith and obedience. Some
elements in the world could readily be thus transmuted —
seemed already on the way to Christianity. Some ele
ments seemed opposed in spirit, and the natural objects
of the enmity of the Church. Other elements she
failed to transmute, though they might well have borne
the translation, because of her lack of faith, because
her loyalty was wavering. And sometimes, alas ! what
the Church absorbed, she made, through narrowness and

BAPTISM INTO CHRIST 29
the spirit of bigotry, rather worse than better. This
was no consequence of loyalty to her Master, but of
the debasement which His spirit so often underwent
amid human surroundings. But the story of the
Church is not yet ended. The faults which in the
past she may have committed are not yet past expia
tion. The spirit of Christ yet works, and may even
now distil gold from what seems to be worthless
dross. If the analysis which I have attempted of the germ
and the root principles of the tendency and the teach
ing of the Founder of Christianity be correct, then in
the history of the Church, so far as it is Christian and
in line with the Founder, we shall find the working of
one and another of these principles. And as the
various faiths and systems with which Christianity has
had to do have been, from the Christian point of view,
defective in various ways, we shall expect to find
them Christianized, sometimes by a truer and more
worthy way of regarding man, sometimes by altering
and raising the view taken in such religions of the
nature of God. But we can scarcely expect of any of
them that they will be entirely transformed, so as to
become vehicles perfectly adapted to embody the
Christian spirit. All of them belong to their respec
tive times, embody the spirit of their times, and meet
the special needs of their times. Much of what the
Christian Church took in from rival faiths was very
imperfectly adapted to the new life.
I shall speak of the process by which Christian
ideas conquered the world about them as a kind of
baptism.

30 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
II
The great initiatory rite, which occupied in early
Christianity a place which we can scarcely reaUze, is
baptism. Baptism was the door through which the
Christian fold was entered; the line which existed
between the baptized and the unbaptized separated
sheep from goats. It is therefore the more remarkable
that the origins of Christian baptism cannot, from a
historical point of view, be satisfactorily traced. The
Synoptic Evangelists mention baptism as an institution
introduced by John the Baptist, but they never speak
of it as a custom of the band of Christian disciples
who followed their Master in His journeys in Judsea
and Galilee. Had it been a custom they could scarcely
have failed to mention it. For example, near the
beginning of the first two Gospels we find an account
of the calling of the chief apostles, Simon and Andrew,
James and John ; but not a word is said as to their
baptism. It is true that we are told in the Fourth
Gospel that though Jesus Himself did not baptize, His
disciples did so. But this Gospel, in spite of its
wonderful inspiration, obviously does not lie so near
to historic fact as do the others. It seems more than
likely that the Evangelist has in this, as in other cases,
carried back to the lifetime of the Founder a custom
established in the early Church. The last two verses
of the Gospel of Matthew contain a direction from
the risen Christ to preach among all nations, baptizing
them in the name of the divine Trinity. But this
verse, as some critics have long seen, is almost certainly
an interpolation of a later time, for in the book of

BAPTISM INTO CHRIST 31
Acts baptism is always into the name of Jesus Christ,
not into that of the Trinity. Is it possible that the
first disciples should have gone on baptizing only in
the name of their Master, when He had Himself
solemnly required them to do otherwise ? It seems,
then, according to historic probability, that the great
rite of early Christianity, baptism into the name of
Christ, was introduced into the society soon after the
death of the Founder, why and when we cannot hope
to ascertain, and that baptism into the Trinity is later
still. But however the rite of baptism arose, no reader
of early Christian history can doubt of its importance
in apostolic times. It was administered on a declara
tion of belief in Jesus as Christ, and it was often
accompanied, as we are told in Acts, by a great re
ligious exaltation, sometimes preceding and sometimes
following the rite, and manifesting itself in joy, in
enthusiasm, and in the strange expressions of emotion,
such as speaking in tongues, which have in many ages
and many places accompanied religious revivals.
The phenomena of religious conversion have been
in recent years carefully studied by able psychologists,
such as James, Granger and Starbuck. The facts
discovered by these and other trained scientific
observers strongly confirm the teaching of the Bible
and the Church on the subject, if we clear that teach
ing from temporary and unessential elements. They
show that rehgious conversion is a regular process
which may be put in line with many other facts of
human nature, and is at once natural and supernatural,
real experience, but experience outside the line of

32 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
ordinary daily growth and development. They show
that the results of religious conversion are often per
manent ; that it is a real crisis in the life, which may
afterwards proceed at a higher and more spiritual
level. But they do not show — and here surely they
agree with the experience of all who have given
attention to the matter— that religious awakening and
conversion entirely break the thread of the life, change
the mental powers and the inherited moral character
istics, or suddenly alter the nature of man or woman.
Spiritual awakening may put a stop to vices long
indulged, may mark the beginning of a total renova
tion of heart, may even let into the intellect the light
of a purer day ; but under all the new conditions,
beneath the fresh consecration, the old powers,
qualities, traits of mind and of character still work,
though they work to nobler ends.
It is among the most marked features of the
modern historic spirit that it is set upon interpreting
the records of the past by the experiences of present
life. What we see going on around us enables us to
reconstruct the past to our imaginations. We are
sure that the essential facts of human nature are the
same in all ages, that forces which work to-day worked
in the past also, though amid very different intellectual
and moral conditions. Unless this is the case, history
is a mere dead heap of records, without bearing on the
future, without interest in the present. As science
will no longer allow catastrophes in the physical
evolution of the earth, so history will no longer allow
moral catastrophes which draw an impassable line
between us and phases of past history. Thus we are

BAPTISM INTO CHRIST 33
sure that what religious conversion is in modern days,
that, in essential character, it was at the beginning of
our era. The Jews and the Pagans who were con
verted to Christianity, from St Paul downwards, were
not entirely wrenched from their previous standing-
ground. They found a nobler life, a better hope ; they
found, indeed, salvation in Christ Jesus. But for all
that, they did not suddenly change their mental habits
and moral characters.
What was it that took place in the hearts of
those who were the earliest converts to Christianity,
at the time of their baptism, or rather, at the
time of that conversion which might either precede,
accompany, or follow that baptism, which was its out
ward and visible sign ? This we can ascertain in at
least one case, the case of the Apostle Paul, since he
has himself laid bare to us the secrets of his heart in
those inestimable letters, which are not merely primary
treatises of religion, but also some of the most im
portant historic documents in the world. That the
Pauline epistles come really from St Paul I must not
attempt to prove ; and it is unnecessary, since modern
criticism seems finally to have determined that if at
all events the more important of those epistles do not
in substance come from the writer whose name they
bear, all historic criticism is bankrupt. In the light
of his epistles St Paul becomes better known to us
perhaps than any character of antiquity, known in
his strength and his weakness, his mental habits and
moral ideals, his heart and soul. And in this light
we can very well see what changes were wrought in
the apostle by his conversion. We see that it did
3

34 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
not destroy the results of his rabbinical education, his
intellectual love of symboUsm, his exaggerated subtlety
of mind. It did not remedy the occasional hastiness
of his temper, the jealousy which is so often the
shadow of a great love, the fierceness of his indigna
tion at ingratitude. It did not change the ways in
which his mind worked, nor the salient features of his
character. But all these it coloured with the light of a
new revelation, and fused with the heat of a passionate
purpose. He himself, in speaking of his conversion,
uses a phrase which seems to sum up its results for
his life : ' It pleased God to reveal his Son in me.'
And in another place he writes : ' I live, yet not I, but
Christ liveth in me.' And again : ' To me to live is
Christ.' Now, it appears from many passages in his
letters that St Paul knew but few facts in the life of
his Master, and had heard but little of His actual
teaching. Strange as it may seem, he regarded the
knowledge of Christ after the flesh — that is, of the hfe
passed by his Lord in Galilee and Judaea — as a matter
of comparative indifference. Here, no doubt, he was
wrong; and this feeling laid the churches which he
founded open to a great danger, the danger of anti-
nomianism, of spiritual pride which values the spirit so
much more than the outward fact, as to be indifferent
to the first principles of morality in conduct. But he
far more than made up for the weakness of one side of
his teaching by the divine inspiration of another side.
He was really baptized into the spirit of Christ. He
had received in a greater measure than any other man
of the time the divine enthusiasm which radiated from
the person of his Master. Little as he knew of the

BAPTISM INTO CHRIST 35
teaching of Jesus, he had thoroughly assimilated the
two great principles which, as I tried to show in the
first lecture, lay at the root of it : surrender to the will
of God, and active love of that will. The phrase,
' win of God,' meets us, as we have seen, continually in
his writings.
Many able critics and theologians have found it
difficult to understand how St Paul can have imbibed
the spirit and continued the life of his Master, when
the line of connection between them is so indistinct.
To my thinking the problem is insoluble, unless one
believes in divine inspiration and in the presence of a
spiritual world in and around the soul of every man
that lives. He who holds that men can hear but
with their ears, and see but with their eyes, will find
all history full of impossibilities which have yet come
to pass, of waves of influence flowing from nowhere,
of inexplicable coincidences and impossible sequences.
I will not further speak of this matter, with which
I deal elsewhere. It is indeed a ground on which one
should not lightly tread. We will content ourselves
with reaffirming the historic fact that the greatest of
the early Christians received his inspiration, not from
the narrative of a life, and not from apostolic
preaching, but direct from the spiritual world, the
doors of which had recently been opened to men.
Ill
But the baptism into Christ, of which I shall have
to speak in these lectures, is a baptism, not of men, but
of ideas. Ideas, thoughts, and beliefs, no less than
persons, can be raised from a lower to a higher plane, can

36 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
be changed in character, translated from the language of
the ordinary and sensual life, or from the language of
superstition, to that of the true life of the spirit.
Now, it is certain that but few of the ideas and beliefs
of historic Christianity are to be found in the teachiug
of the Founder and His Apostles. They came in from
somewhere, but it is in fact seldom easy to ascertain
the actual germ, the first origin of an idea. In the
mental and spiritual, as in the physical world, every
thing arises out of something else ; there is something
corresponding to the conservation of energy. We can,
by careful investigation, trace the history of ideas in
the world, but the earliest stages are ever the least
easy to trace.
If, however, we take up the early documents of
Christianity, and study in them, in primitive form,
some of the great ideas which have been valuable
elements in the Christian Church, it is usually possible,
if not very easy, to discern in what part of the ancient
world they arose, to what race they primarily belonged,
before they were taken over by Christianity, baptized,
as I would put it, into the name of Christ. It is much
less easy to be sure by whose hand the baptism was
administered. In this matter our historic evidence is
very imperfect. Some of the religious ideas of the
pre-Christian world were baptized into the Church by
the Master himself, some by His Apostles, some by
uncertain authorities of the early community, the
history of which is known to us very imperfectly.
There can be no question that the Synoptic Gospels
and the Acts were not committed to writing until
many years after the crucifixion, when the first genera-

BAPTISM INTO CHRIST 37
tion of Christians had mostly passed away. And such
was the vitality and energy of the infant society that
into one generation were concentrated changes which in
a more stagnant age might have taken centuries. The
whole working life of Stephen, the missionary journeys
of St Paul, the preaching of Apollos, and many other
events of which we have scant record, had deeply
influenced Christianity. All these changes could not
fail to have a profound effect on the plastic material of
which the Gospels were made up. The best way of
tracing the process is by a comparison with the
formation of the life of St Francis of Assisi, which
was moulded on a basis of historic fact by his disciples
in the half century which followed his death. The
records of this life show in many respects a marked
parallel to the successive strata of the Gospel
narratives.^ Thus, if it were necessary for me to attempt rigidly
to determine the line which divides the actual teach
ing of Jesus from that teaching as modified by the
earliest history of the Church, I should have before
me a task of the greatest difficulty, one in which it
would be necessary to use all the methods of critical
investigation, and to compare in detail the views of
learned commentators. But we can avoid this task,
for the performance of which the present is by no
means a suitable occasion, if we suppose — as I have
already declared my intention to suppose — that it was
rather a crisis than a complete break which took place
in Christian history at the death of the Founder, that
His spirit went on working in the society, and led His
^ Exploraiio Evangelica, ch. xiv. p. 174.

38 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
followers further in the direction in which they had
already started. Infallibility the spirit of Christ
certainly did not impart to the disciples. They re
mained limited in intelligence and in outlook, mere
provincials compared with the cosmopolitan dwellers
in Eome and Athens and Alexandria. But yet the
early history of Christianity shows a continuous and
marvellous growth, a power of mastering and as
similating what was good in its surroundings, and
building up a mighty doctrine, though at the same
time it clung tenaciously to certain errors and supersti
tions which belonged to the country and the age.
There are two ways of baptizing into Christ. In
the Gospel, John the Baptist is represented as saying :
' I indeed baptize you with water ; but there cometh
He that is mightier than I : He shall baptize you
with the Holy Ghost and with fire.' There is a
baptism which only touches the surface, and there is
a baptism which enters into and affects the whole
nature. Some of the ideas and institutions which
came in contact with early Christianity were
merely baptized with water : their bearing was
changed, but not their nature. Other ideas and in
stitutions were filled with the spirit of the Church and
the fire of a divine enthusiasm. We may well call
the first of these processes a baptism into the name of
Christ, the second a baptism into the spirit of Christ.
Both were common at all periods of Church history.
And not only was Christian baptism often but
superficial, but it must be confessed that it did not
always choose its subject with wisdom. Sometimes
it passed by what was best in the religions and the

BAPTISM INTO CHRIST 39
society by which it was surrounded, and chose the
worse. It accepted into the society the mysticism of
Asia, but rejected the Greek worship of health and of
beauty. It accepted the organization and policy of
Eome, but rejected the spirit of Eoman patriotism.
In working back towards the Christian origins we
find on all sides ideas of value thrown aside, and in
many cases it seems to us that the Church gave way
more than it need have given way to materialism and
superstition. But in all matters of history, what we
have to seek for is not the ideal best, but the best
which was possible amid the surroundings of the time
and in the face of existing necessities. Often, though
by no means always, a course which we regret, and
which has had for us evil results, was the only course
really open to the Church.
And after all, had the Church from the first been
gifted with perfect wisdom in such matters, there
would have arisen the one good custom which corrupts
the world. If any age were perfect, the next age
would be without vitality. We live by struggle and
stress ; and the burden of an infallibility in the past
would be enough to crush the human race.
IV
The greatest of all the borrowings of Christianity
from Judaism, the most remarkable of all its baptisms
was this : the new religion baptized into Christ the
Jewish idea of God.
It is true that at the beginning of our era some
kind of monotheism was accepted by all persons of
thought and education, by the Stoic and the Peripatetic

40 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
as well as by the Jew. But monotheism is precisely
a doctrine which may be regarded in many ways with
vastly different moral and intellectual results. From
the historic point of view, it is sufficiently clear that it
would not be from Stoicism that the doctrine would
come into Christianity. And after all, the Jewish
doctrine was very different from that of the philo
sophers. In a recent admirable work,^ Dr E. Caird has
shown by what steps the thought of the Greeks
advanced from the belief in many deities to the
recognition of the divine unity. It was a gradual
process, and never quite complete. Most of the Greek
thinkers held that although the divine power in the
world was one, yet there was no strong opposition
between such a belief and polytheism ; and that while
as thinkers they could recognize one eternal basis of
the world of phenomena, yet as patriots they were
quite justified in bringing offerings to the deities
recognized by the state, to Apollo, Athena, or Hermes,
who were indeed mere personifications of certain sides
of the divine being. Ordinary people did not rise
to the level of monotheism, but, at most, to what
Max Miiller called henotheism, the exclusive devotion
to one deity recognized as supreme among spiritual
powers. Between the speculative monotheism of the
philosophers or the henotheism of many of the people,
and the ardent passion for the solitary majesty of
Jehovah which possessed the Jews, there was a vast
gap. And it was the Jewish idea which was taken
into Christianity.
But surely, it may be said, the Jewish doctrine of
^ Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers, 1904.

BAPTISM INTO CHRIST 41
Jehovah was in itself Christian, and needed no baptism
into Christianity. I have, however, already observed
that there are many kinds of monotheism; and
although into some of the earlier schools of Christianity
the Jewish doctrine passed unmodified, yet it did
receive baptism for the Church both from the hands
of the Founder and from those of some of the first
apostles of the faith.
Every student of the Old Testament is aware that
in the earlier books Jehovah is often spoken of in the
language of extreme anthropomorphism. In Genesis
we read how the God Jehovah walked in the Garden
of Eden in the cool of the evening; and the vision
of Jehovah granted to Moses was only of the back part,
since no man could see His face and live.-^ By degrees
the idea of God among the Jews was refined and
raised, through the influence of a succession of pro
phets, until in Nehemiah we have the phrase, ' God of
Heaven ' in the place of ' God of Israel' But even at
the beginning of our era, there was among the mass
of the people much that was tribal in the conception.
Jehovah was the God of the Jews rather than of the
human race. The Jews were as far from the Christian
idea of a great spiritual ruler and father of the human
race in one direction as the Greek philosophers were
in another direction.
It was precisely by His method of inwardness, by
His regarding all things in relation to man and human
conduct, that Jesus transformed Jewish into Christian
monotheism. We do not find in the Gospels any
statement of the abstract omnipotence and omniscience
^ Exodus, xxxiii. 23.

42 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
of God ; but we have definite statements of the rela
tion of God to every man and every living thing. He
will give all good gifts to those who ask Him. He
counts the hairs of the head of every man, and no
sparrow falls to the ground without His permission.
Jesus did not say that His followers must give up their
tribal narrownesses in regard to God ; but He showed
how God is near to every one of us, and close to the
source of every word and deed. He cut away the
roots of the Jewish exclusiveness, and the plant soon
withered within the limits of the Christian society.
It does not appear that Jesus ever set forth in
definite form His relationship to the God of Spirits.
He declared that God was His Father ; He accepted
the call to the Messiahship ; and in a few passages
in the Synoptic Gospels He seems to claim a special
relation, a peculiar closeness to the Heavenly Father.
But there can be no reasonable doubt that the phrases
put into His mouth in the Fourth Gospel, in which He
speaks of Himself as the Light of the World, the Door
of the Sheepfold, the Stem of the Viae, were not
uttered during the earthly ministry, but belong to the
consciousness of the second generation of believers.
They re-baptized, so to speak, the doctrine of the divine
unity by adding to it that Christ was the Word of
God, the only begotten Son of the Father, in whom
God was revealed to men.
Clearly, it is impossible for me here to go into all the
momentous results of this further translation of the
idea. Alike, for good and for evil, it has worked with
incomparable force in the history of the Church. It
contains, I doubt not, truth for all time ; but it is

BAPTISM INTO CHRIST 43
truth which may be only too easily travestied, and may
become the source of unmeasured superstition. But
this second transformation of monotheism is no longer
in accordance with the spirit of Judaism. It is an
outgrowth of the contact between the spirit of Greece
and that of Mysticism ; and what more I may have to
say in regard to it will find a more appropriate place in
later lectures.

No Christian can ever forget that when our Master
gave His formula as to the love of God,^ He added to
it an assertion of our duty to love our neighbour as
ourself. This is not the first and the great command
ment, but it is like unto it. It would, of course, be
quite absurd to try to find an origin in place or in time
for the love of one's neighbour, which was thus adopted
into Christianity, and assigned the second place among
Christian virtues. If men had not learned, at least in
some degree, to love their neighbours, mankind could
never have risen above the most debased savagery.
And in the republics of the ancient world the love of
one's neighbour became one of the ruling passions of
life, the bond which bound together the members of a
city or a family, the inspiration which made it easy to
meet death in battle, or to spend one's life in the service
of the state.
Such an universal and necessary feeling of the
human heart might seem to belong naturally to
^ It is strange that whereas in Mark this formula is attributed to
Jesus, both Matthew and Luke say that it originated with a certain
lawyer who was tempting Him. We cannot give up to an anonymous
author so striking a collocation of two Old Testament laws.

44 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
Christianity, without need of baptism. Baptism was
for such as needed to wash away their sins. Surely
a feeling which was always on the side of good, and
tended always to the salvation of society, needed no
baptism. Had Christianity been less original it might
have taken this line. But Jesus, by what Mr Monte-
fiore calls ' a brilliant flash of the highest religious
genius,' saw that philanthropy needed to be changed by
the introduction of a Christian spirit.
The baptism is certainly not given in the added
words ' as thyself.' The phrase seems almost cold ;
for many of the heroes of Greece and Eome had loved
others more than themselves, and given their lives
freely for the sake of their friends. But though to
a pagan moralist the limitation of the love to others
might seem wanting in ideality, yet it is no restriction
when considered in its real connection. The baptism
lies in the attaching of the phrase about the love of
one's neighbour to the other part of the rule, which
speaks of the love of God. It is through loving God
that we are to love our neighbour; and our love for
our neighbour and our love for ourselves are ahke to
be part of our love of God.
It is this grounding of the love of our neighbour
on the love of God, as the author of Ecce Homo has
admirably set forth, which constitutes the most striking
element in Christianity. The Jew had loved his
Jewish neighbour ; the votaries of Mithras and other
particular deities had based love for one another on
their relation to their guardian divinity. But the
scope of the Christian version of love is shown by the
parable which in Luke is brought in to enforce the

BAPTISM INTO CHRIST 45
precept, the parable of the Good Samaritan. In this
tale it is made clear that what is really lovable in
man is the divine spirit which lies at the root of all
individual being. The common life of each must needs
yearn towards the common element in the life of
the race, unless it is choked by egotism or indolence,
or some of the hundred forms in which 'I am I '
appears to shut off the soul from God and man. The
parable of the Good Samaritan does not reach beyond
the limits of the surroundings of Jesus ; the hero of
it is not a Syrian nor a Greek, but a member of a
despised section of the Jewish nation. But the prin
ciple which it embodies embraces the whole of mankind,
and proves Christianity suited to be a world religion.
VI
If we examine the histories of early Christianity,
and, in particular, the admirable Expansion of
Christianity of Professor Harnack, we shall see that
in fact it was the practical working out of the doctrine
of Christ as to God and man which attracted disciples,
and brought about a world-wide triumph.
The passion for the unity of God, His nearness to
man. His love for His creatures, was directly opposed
to, and finally brought to destruction the polytheism
of the Greek world. The Christian teachers were
never tired of attacking, with anger and contempt,
the numberless deities of the heathen, the gods of
Greece and Eome, the gods of Egypt and of Persia,
the gods whom the popular enthusiasm had made out
of deceased heroes and kings. They ridiculed them
as mere men who had lived on the earth, and were

46 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
now raised to divine rank ; they attacked them as evil
spirits, who had persuaded mankind to do them
homage; and in the long run, they persuaded or
compelled, by the force of a divine enthusiasm, the
worshippers of Apollo, Mithras, Isis and Sabazius to
allow that the God of the Christians and the Eedeemer
who had revealed Him to men were incomparably
greater than the beings they had adored. They
degraded the gods of the old world to that rank of
demons in which they survived for ages in the
superstitions of the ignorantly conservative. When
the Christian exorcists cast evil spirits out of the
possessed, these spirits often confessed that they were
heathen deities, Apollo or another. In the long
warfare waged in the realm of the human spirit Christ
was victorious, aud the Deity whom He revealed
survived alone.
And just as Christian monotheism vanquished
heathen polytheism, so did Christian humanity and
charity drive out and destroy the ordinary relations
between man and man as accepted in the Greek world.
Nothing more tended to bring in converts to the new
faith than the spirit of gentle and kindly beneficence
which at first, on the whole, prevailed between the
followers of Christ, and which was the direct result of
the Christian enthusiasm. There were, of course, many
divisions and disputes in the Church, and much feel
ing which was wholly unchristian. But the callous
ness which looked unmoved on suffering, the indifference
which men commonly felt towards those who had on
them no special claim of race or kinship, gradually
gave way before the Christian enthusiasm for man as

BAPTISM INTO CHRIST 47
man, for man as a Son of God, and a being for whom
Christ died.
So it was in early days of Christianity, and so it has
been ever since. The mass of mankind judge a religion,
not by its tenets, still less on historic grounds, but
mainly by considering how it works in private life,
whether its professors show gentleness, sympathy, self-
denial in their dealings with others, whether they are
just and generous towards their fellowmen. And
since experience showed that on the whole an accept
ance of the Christian faith made men better and
happier, there was set up in the world an inevitable
drift towards that faith, a drift which even persecution
rather increased than diminished, since it raised the
standard of Christian ethics and kept aloof the corrup
tion which inevitably arises when the conditions of life
are too easy.
Looking back, after many centuries, on the
enthusiasm of the early Christians, we see that it was
not altogether lovely. We see that they often failed
to discern and to admire what was good in the religion
and morals of the heathen world. They were often
narrow, sometimes unjust. After all, this merely
amounts to saying that they were men. Did any
great social movement in the world ever succeed except
in the hands of enthusiasts who passed beyond the
bounds of decorum, and had a fanatical belief in the
value of their own principles ? The visible Church
upon earth has been, at the best, but a rude and cor
rupt embodiment of the Kingdom, of the ideal Church
which exists in Heaven and in the eternal purposes of
God. The earthly Church is in Christianity ever what

48 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
the writer to the Hebrews shows the Jewish Church
always to have been, a partial realization of a divine
type or idea, a reflection in the clouds of the glory of
the rising sun.
You may be very sure that you will not hear from
me any defence of the infallibility of the Christian
Church, still less of the infallibility of any branch of
it. Bishops have erred, and Councils and Popes. The
Church is no more infallible than is the Bible or any
of the outward expressions of divine inspiration. But
taking the word Church in its broad sense, as the
whole body of Christians wheresoever assembled and
howsoever organized, we can see that the secret of
its mission in the world lies in its continuation
upon earth of the obedience of its Founder, in its re
solve to do so far as it may the will of God among
men. How it has fared in this great mission I shall
try in future lectures to set forth.

LECTUEE III
THE BAPTISM OF JUD^A
As the Founder of Christianity was of Jewish birth,
and lived all His human life amid Jewish surroundings
and in contact with Jewish men and women, it was
natural that the baptism of Judaism was very largely,
or indeed almost entirely, His work. To contempor
aries it might have seemed, and in fact it did seem,
that Christianity was but a new sect of Judaism.
And this view, which now seems to us so perverse, had
in it some truth. The earliest form of Christianity
was obviously and predominantly Jewish. On some
of the early Christian sarcophagi, where Jesus is
represented. He appears with markedly Jewish features.
This representation was, of course, not based on any
evidence, since it was impossible that any Jew of that
age should have made a portrait, or allowed a portrait
of himself to be made. It is rather an appearance in
art of a moral conviction, a parable for us. But
though the features of our Lord are thus represented,
they are soon idealized into a type of the highest
humanity. In the same way did Jesus Himself read
49 4

so THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
through the mask of Judaism the essential spiritual
nature of man, and He translated the beliefs and
principles of Judaism into such as belonged to the
inmost spirit of humanity, and such as were fit for
survival through future ages.

If there be one Jewish idea which was by the
Master Himself built into the Christian fabric in a
changed and renovated form, it is the Messianic idea.
As the Jews in the Hellenistic age found their
nationality more and more hemmed in by the world
wide culture of Greece and the conquering power of
Eome, they more and more took refuge in the hope of
a coming deliverer, who should break the power of
their enemies and set up again the throne of David in
Jerusalem. There was a merely racial and secular
element in the hope : the Jews eagerly believed that
they were a race chosen out of all the world by God.
But it was not merely racial ; it included a behef in
the triumph of goodness, so that the Gentiles should
not merely bring wealthy tribute to Mount Zion, but
also look up to it as the home of righteousness, and to
the people who dwelt there as the priests of the most
high God. The English reader is familiar with this
fact from the reading of Isaiah and some of the later
prophets. It is expressed less nobly, but with equal
persistence, in the books of the Jewish Apocrypha, by
the writer of the Book of Daniel and others of the
Hellenistic age.
I have already tried to set forth the fundamental
principle alike of the teaching and of the life of the

THE BAPTISM OF JUD/EA 51
Founder of Christianity. I have shown how it was
His way ever to pass from what was without to what
was within, from the material to the spiritual, from
the merely apparent to the real. And in the depths
of the consciousness thus reached, the deepest reality
discerned by Him was the will of God as a law and
as a power, the law of the ideal, and a power which
ever bears men in the direction of the ideal.
We see how Jesus applied this method of regarding
things to the Messianic expectation, and how that hope
changed in His hands. According to the synoptic
writers, Jesus was not in the least degree anxious to
be regarded as the Messiah, though by degrees He
accepted the designation. But as to the way in which
He interpreted the Messianic idea, we are clearly
informed. The kingdom of the Messiah, according to
His way of regarding all things, could not be a mere
worldly dominion. It was not to be brought in by
any warlike triumph. It was quite consistent with
the maintenance of the Eoman Empire. His sway
was to be in the hearts of men : 'not seen, but felt
within. It was to spread like leaven, but not with
observation. And its laws were not to be written and
preserved in chanceries, but such as had been from
the beginning written in human nature by the hand
of God, and such as God revealed to mankind from
time to time by the mouth of His servants and of His
Son. I think that nearly all those who have written on
the life of Jesus have gone too far in crediting Him
with statesmanship and elaborate schemes for the
salvation of mankind. To form such plans seems to

52 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
me a thing foreign to a nature resting wholly in God,
caring only that God's will should be done. Even the
disciples were bidden, when summoned before tribunals,
to take no thought what words they should utter, but
to trust to the spirit of the Father which spoke in
them. Thus I do not find any proof — and I do not
feel sure — that Jesus ever tried, consciously, to form
a view of His own nature and office, or to discern the
future which lay before the society which He founded.
So long as there was no barrier of sin and of self
between His soul and His Father in Heaven, He would
have at all times a power beyofid that of men, and a
wisdom which came from above. This was His life,
the life which He lived ever in God. It seems from
our records that there was one moment only when that
abiding consciousness of God was for a moment, not
lost, but obscured, the moment when physical pain on
the cross was cruelly racking a sensitive frame. If
our accounts are in that matter accurate, a new and
intensely human touch is given to a life which might
otherwise have seemed, as it seemed to the Gnostics,
to have been lived really in Heaven, and only appar
ently among men. Having regard, then, to the
untroubled divine consciousness of the life of our
Founder, I should venture to say that to Him the
nature of the Messiah was a self-evident perception,
and that He was less anxious than we should naturally
suppose to explain His own claim to the great office.
This frame of mind is admirably described by one
of the greatest theologians of the Church, the anony
mous author of the Epistle to the Hebrews. In de
scribing it he uses, as his Master often used, the

THE BAPTISM OF JUD^A 53
language of the Psalms. He sums up the Messianic
attitude in the phrases ' Sacrifice and offering thou
wouldest not,' ' Lo ! I come to do thy will, 0 God ! '
The consecration and devotion of the will is the crown
and end of all the ancestral piety which had found an
outlet in sacrifice since man had passed out of the
savage life.
But naturally, this was too lofty a flight for the
mass of the disciples, who were, after all, but average
human beings, though inspired by a divine enthusiasm.
For them the doctrine of the Messiah in this new and
inward form was too hard, and the great interest
which it had for them was that it enabled them to
regard their Master as the Messiah, although He was
not outwardly victorious, and to apply to Him the
numberless passages in the Old Testament writings
which had a Messianic interpretation. Immediately
upon the Master's death began the speculation as to
His nature and His relation to God, which has gone on
until the present day, and will go on hereafter.
We can trace in the New Testament remains of the
various ways in which the early disciples endeavoured
to embody their feeling and sense of their Master's
divine kingship. Into these I cannot go at any
length, but I will briefly mention them. The simplest
and most primitive way was to connect Jesus by
pedigree with David, and thus to make Him the right
ful heir and representative of the Davidic kingship.
In Matthew this tendency is decidedly prominent.
The descent had, of course, according to Jewish custom,
to be traced through the male and not through the
female line. The genealogies prefixed to two of our

54 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
Gospels are relics of this attempt. Obviously, ii
involved taking the Messianic kingdom in a Utera
and outward fashion, and confining it to Palestine ; anc
as the facts of history as well as of religion were incon
sistent with this rendering, it soon passed out of fashion
the more rapidly when it began to be believed thai
Jesus was not properly the son of Joseph.
Another interpretation, almost as early but mon
spiritual, made the Messianic character of Jesus dat(
from His baptism, on which occasion, as we read in on«
apocryphal Gospel, a voice from Heaven proclaimed
' Thou art my beloved son, this day have I begotten thee.
To find the origin of the attachment of such extreme im
portance to baptism, we have to pass outside the pale o1
Judaism, into the dim region of contemporary religions ol
the near East. But though baptism, when once adoptee
into Christianity, always preserved a sacred and indeec
sacramental character, yet the application of such £
view to the vocation of the Master did not long remaii
in the front line of Christian theory. It belongs rathei
to less orthodox and more obscure sects. In tht
writings of St Paul it may be perhaps traced, since h(
speaks of the disciples as ' buried with Christ ii
baptism.' And among the specially Pauline sects
such as the Paulicians, it long survived ; it seems t(
survive even now among some of the obscure com
munities of Asia Minor. ^
But in the Christian Church, the notion of ai
adoption of Jesus Christ to the Messiahship at baptisn
met a rival, in the long run a completely successfu
^ See Mr_F. C. Conybeare's publication of an ancient liturgy still ii

THE BAPTISM OF JUD^A 55
rival, in the view that the birth of the Master was
purely miraculous, that He had no human father, but
was born of a pure virgin. In the prefaces to two
of our Gospels this view is adopted; and the two
Evangelists tell varying tales as to the circumstances
of the birth, agreeing as to its supernatural char
acter, and that it took place at Bethlehem. The
last point is noteworthy, as birth at Bethlehem,
the town of David, would seem more properly to
belong to the view which regarded Jesus Christ as of
the royal family of David, rather than the view that
his birth was altogether exceptional. But nothing is
more usual in the writings of all ancient historians
than contamination, by the transference of circum
stances suited only to one version of a piece of history,
or supposed history, to another version to which they
are inappropriate. Of the tales of the birth of Christ
I have spoken sufficiently elsewhere,^ and I need not
further pursue the matter.
The Fourth Evangelist, so often a leader in the
higher ways, puts into the mouth of his Master phrases
which lift to another level the crude views of kingship
over Israel, and sonship to God current in the early
society. He represents Jesus before Pilate as resting
His claim to royalty on His divine inspiration : ' My
kingdom is not of this world,' ' To this end have I
been born, and to this end am I come into the world,
that I should bear witness unto the truth.' Similarly,
in regard to the Messianic sonship, the Fourth Evange
list represents his Master as saying : ' Say ye of Him
whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world,
1 Exploratio Evangelica, ch. xix.

56 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
Thou blasphemest : because I said, I am the Son of
God ? ' The sonship to God consists not in physical
descent, but in spiritual consecration.
Such were the earliest attempts to explain the
divine personality of the Master ; of later attempts I
shall have to speak in another lecture. The notable
point is how early the Messianic idea was baptized
into Christ, was transported from the Jewish to
the Christian camp. The first crude theory of descent
from David was set aside because it was purely
national, was inconsistent with the destinies of a
rehgion which was already universal in scope. Noth
ing could more clearly show the mastering and
assimilating force which the Christian spirit exercised
from the very first. II
The Messianic belief did not stand isolated in the
Jewish mind, but was part of a whole scheme of
beliefs in regard to the approaching end of the world,
or of the existing constitution of society, beliefs with
which all the students of the Bible are familiar,
because they are prominent in the Book of Daniel in
the Old Testament, and in the Apocalypse in the New.
The victory of the Messiah was not to be only a
warlike triumph, but was to be accompanied by signs
in the heaven above and in the earth below, by vast
cataclysms in which a great part of the human race
would perish, and which should usher in a new and a
better state of things, wherein the hand of God should
no longer be hidden in clouds, but should visibly
direct mankind.

THE BAPTISM OF JUD^A 57
The Jewish literature dealing with these great
catastrophes is little known to the ordinary reader, and
has not in fact been long known to the learned. It
stretches from the second century before to the second
century after our era,^ growing in force and distinct
ness, and shows with what purpose of heart the Jews
of that time turned from the meanness of their con
dition in the existing world, the political subjection to
Eome, the intellectual domination of Greece, to a
state of things about to be revealed, when the Jewish
race should have wide sway, and Jewish ideas be the
life of mankind. The Gentiles, as least in the view
of the less fanatical of the Apocalyptic writers, were
to be changed rather than destroyed ; but their salva
tion was to be the act of the God of Israel, working
through the race which He had chosen, from of old,
as His representative on earth.
Since the Apocalyptic ideas were amongst the most
vivid and living of the beliefs of the Jews, it was
impossible that they should fail to influence Christi
anity from the first. The Founder would have at
once to take up a position in regard to them, to
determine whether or not they could in any form be
admitted into His society, or whether they were to be
opposed to the uttermost. They were a prominent
feature of the early surroundings of the faith, and
must be converted or rejected.
We reach now one of the most difficult parts of
the early history of Christianity, one as to which the
opinions of able writers most widely differ. Some of
' A good account of it by a high authority, Dr Charles, in the
Emyclopoedia Biblica : article, Apocalypses.

S8 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
them find no difficulty in supposing that Jesus adopted
the Apocalyptic beliefs of His contemporaries in a literal
fashion, and applied them to Himself; that He fully
expected the death upon the cross to usher in a series
of supernatural manifestations, in the midst of which
He would return from the unseen world in great
power and glory, and establish a vast spiritual dominion
on the earth.
Now, I am quite ready to accept this view if it can
be established. It was the life, the divine obedience
of Jesus Christ which saved the world, not His theories
as to the past or the future of the visible earth. It
would not be very disturbing to be assured that the
Founder of Christianity looked forward to a speedy
return in the clouds of heaven, an expectation which,
as we know, was not fulfilled. But I do not think
that such a view can be made probable, still less
proved to demonstration, in spite of what may be, and
has been, said for it.^ In the first place, the evidence
on which it rests is very untrustworthy ; and in the
second place, it appears to be inconsistent with what
we know as to the mental habits and tendencies of
our Master. Although it is quite certain that the
first disciples lived in constant expectation of the
speedy end of the existing frame of society and the
return in power of their Lord, yet such belief was
probably not based on the teaching of Jesus, but was
rather a Jewish survival to which He gave no
countenance. No doubt there is evidence which tells for the
' The most recent advocate is Schweitzer, in his Von Eeimarus
zu Wrede.

THE BAPTISM OF JUD^A 59-
announcement by Jesus before His death of His speedy
return. Passages will occur to everyone familiar with
the New Testament. The great discourse on the end
of the world in the simplest and most primitive of
our Gospels, that of Mark, is very lengthy and
detailed, and at first sight it does not seem easy to
doubt its authenticity. But the highest English
authority -^ on the subject of Jewish Apocalypses tells
us that he is persuaded that it is of composite
character. Some parts of it probably represent the
sayings of Jesus, but in these there is nothing of the
Jewish Apocalypse : only an anticipation of the dis
turbance of secular society by the preaching of the
new doctrine. Other parts, such as those where signs
ia the skies and catastrophes on earth are detailed,
have in them nothing which resembles the sayings of
Jesus, but are exactly like the ordinary stock imagery
of the Jewish Apocalypses. If any intelligent person
reads carefully the passage in Mark he will be able
to separate the two sources ; for though they are in
order intermixed, they no more mingle in sense than
does oil mix with water. Surely there is nothing
unnatural in the supposition that the first disciples,
having their heads full of the language of Jewish
Apocalyptics, misunderstood sayings of their Master
and repeated them in such a connection that they make
Him seem to countenance much that in reality He
did not approve.
There are doubtless some other passages in the
Synoptic Gospels in which a speedy and cataclysmic
return of the Son of Man is spoken of, such passages
1 R. H. Charles, I.e.

6o THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
as the parable of the trial and separation of the sheep
and the goats in Matthew, and the narrative of the
trial before the High Priest. When one has studied
the question of the formation of the tradition embodied
in our Gospels, one is not disposed to attach very great
importance to detached phrases which appear in them.
It is reasonably held that the parable I have mentioned
is a very late part of the First Gospel. Passages
which speak of the Second Coming are but few, and
their insertion can easily be explained, without
supposing them to be the very words of Jesus. Since,
however, their separate consideration would not be on
this occasion suitable, let us fall back on more general
considerations. We have seen how Jesus completely changed the
character of the Jewish Messianic belief, how in a word
He baptized it into His Church, by making the mani
festation of the Messiah inward and spiritual instead
of outward and material. Is it reasonable to think
that He would have dealt otherwise with the Apocalyptic
beliefs which belonged to the same phase of thought
and belief ? Would He have spoken of an inward
salvation which would be revealed in an outward
convulsion of nature ? or of a deliverer from sin who
would be revealed in the clouds of Heaven ? His
doctrine that He was come to do the will of His Father
in Heaven applies not only to the supersession of
animal sacrifice, as the writer to the Hebrews teaches,
but also to the supersession of all mere outward
manifestations of power and splendour. The doctrine
is a direct denial of the whole spirit of the Jewish
Apocalypses. Jesus is represented as rejecting an

THE BAPTISM OF JUD^A 6i
appeal to the Heavenly Father to intervene through
legions of angels to save His Son from the cross. Could
He have thus spoken of supernatural aid if He hoped
soon to return by its help to triumph over His perse
cutors, and to forcibly deliver His followers ? In my
opinion, to suppose that our Master anticipated a
speedy return in glory is to take purpose out of His
life, and much meaning out of His teaching.
But what, it may be said, was the belief of our Lord
as to the future which lay beyond the violent death,
which He doubtless expected ? If I may, with all
humility and reserve, answer this question, I should
say that He left that future wholly in the hands of the
Father in Heaven, and did not speculate in regard to it.
Why should, we hesitate to think that He lived in the
light of His own teaching as to not taking thought for
the morrow, but entirely resigning the questions of life
and death and what comes after death to God ?
But in this case also the disciples, as was but
natural, could not rise to the level of their Master.
They were obliged to speculate as to the future. And
the less their Master had said upon the subject, the
more they would be driven to take up the current
Apocalyptic views. But they altered them, in making
their Lord the central figure of the landscape, the hero
of the sublime tragedy. He was to return soon, in
glory, to destroy His enemies, and to reign with His
saints in a renewed and glorified world. Even so
great a religious genius as St Paul did not, at least in
the earlier part of his life, escape the dominance of
such views. They became incorporated into mediaeval
Christianity. Could this be called a baptism of

62 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
Apocalyptic beliefs into Christ? Perhaps into the
name of Christ, but certainly not into the spirit of
Christ. When two of the Apostles were ready to call
down fire from heaven on an inhospitable village,
Jesus rebuked them, saying : ' Ye know not what spirit
ye are of.' We can well imagine His addressing the
same words to the author of our Apocalypse, and
indeed to all who expected His return in visible power.
At a later time parts of Jewish Apocalyptic belief
did receive a more spiritual translation into Christianity,
when mingled with other elements. The beliefs in a
visible Church on earth and in a great judgment of the
dead according to their works, both form an important
part of historic Christianity. And into these beliefs
some Jewish elements entered ; but they were pre
pared for Christian translation by being mingled with
other elements coming, not from Judaea, but from the
world of Hellenism, as we shall see in another lecture.
Meantime, half-Christianized Jewish beliefs as to the
end of the world, and a great day of judgment were
very persistent and very prominent in the early history
of Christianity. And as in all human affairs good and
evil are inextricably mingled, we need not be surprised
to find that they were in many ways a source of power
and of virtue. They had arisen among a small people
in dread of being crushed by powerful neighbours.
They persisted in a small society which soon found
arrayed against it the mighty forces of the Eoman
Empire. Belief in the transitory nature of civil
society gave to the early Christians an other-worldliness
which indeed made them less inclined to strive to alter
for the better the lands in which they dwelt, yet which

THE BAPTISM OF JUD^A 63
gave them a power of resistance, a force of contempt
for the merely visible and material, which greatly
helped them in persevering. They were like men
waiting for their Lord, and not knowing the day or
the hour of His appearing. We see in the Epistles of
St Paul alike the good and the mischief of such an
attitude. But the belief in the speedy and visible coming of
the Son of Man could not, in the nature of things, live
on long with full intensity : ' Hope deferred maketh
the heart sick.' Even from some of the expressions
as to the Second Advent used in the later Pauline
epistles we may gather that the Apocalyptic hope was
dying down in the minds of the disciples. Before
very long it gave way to a belief in the judgment of
souls, which came, not from a Jewish, but from an
Egyptian or Babylonic source. In modern days the
belief in a second coming is not openly abandoned by
Christians, and, indeed, retains its place in the Creed.
But the power has departed from it. Unlike the
doctrine of the future life, it could pass away without
much harm to the Church. It is like a garment
which is faded and decayed and can no longer be worn,
but which is retained in the closet because of associa
tions which belong to its earlier history.
Ill
Besides the Messianic hope and the national eschato
logy, there were other important features of Judaism
which were baptized into the new faith by Jesus and
by the disciples. Most prominent among these
features are those great classics of the higher life, the

64 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
Jewish sacred books, and the Jewish law which they
embody. One of the most striking sections of that summary
of Christian teaching, which is called ' The Sermon on
the Mount,' consists of a citation of a number of theses
of Jewish morality and law, and a deliberate attempt
to transform these theses by the introduction of a
new standard of ethics and a new way of regarding
the world. Everyone is familiar with the teaching of
Jesus there set forth in regard to marriage and the
family, in regard to fasting and prayer, in regard to
oaths, and the forgiveness of injuries, and many other
matters. That this teaching really, in all essentials,
comes from the Master, is rendered almost certain by
many indications. It is original, and it bears a strong
tinge of personality. The ' I say unto you ' recurring
again and again gives it an air of definite and official
legislation, which further study of it does but confirm.
The ethics of the Sermon on the Mount represents
the best current morality of the Jews, that of the
Pharisees, in part rejected, and in part carried further,
made deeper and broader, more spiritual and more
human, by the introduction of precisely those elements
in the original doctrine of Christianity on which I
have already dwelt, inwardness as opposed to formality,
and an abiding sense of a close relation to an in
dwelling spiritual power. This is the true Christian
baptism ; and in this case the baptism is administered
by the Founder Himself. The inward and spiritual
character of the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount
is so familiar to all, and so continually enforced from
the pulpit, that I need dwell on it but for a minute,

THE BAPTISM OF JUDAEA 65
to show how entirely it confirms the views I am setting
forth. I need but recall to your minds how the great
Teacher proclaims that prayer of the heart, though
made in secret, is of far more avail with God than
ostentatious prayer in public, and fasting which can
be detected by no outward sign is more real fasting
than that proclaimed to the world by outward squalor
of appearance. I need but remind you how, while
society is shocked by a crime of murder, and law is
intent on its punishment, Jesus Christ shows how
spiritual murder may be committed in a heart which
cherishes hatred, and repudiates the tie which binds
together all men as brothers and as sons of God ; and
how, while society does not regard illicit passion unless
it finds vent in anti-social act, Jesus Christ points out
that the whole essence of the sin of adultery, as
distinguished from the crime of adultery, lies in a
wrong direction of thought, a covetous disposition of
the heart, which will sacrifice the spiritual well-being
of the beloved one on the altar of a sensuous
gratification. In the same way does the Master speak of the
more ascetic virtues. In His time there were in
Egypt and Palestine many who had renounced the
world, and dwelt either in solitude, or, like the Essenes,
in small societies, in order to cultivate an ascetic
renunciation of all that the world most desires. In
the teaching of Jesus it is proclaimed that renunciation
also is of the heart, that the substance and kernel of
it consists in not desiring above measure the good
things of life, but in seeking rather the kingdom of
the divine will. He who, dwelling in ordinary civil
5

66 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
life, so far rises above it as to be ready in obedience to
divine calling to live at a lower level of comfort and
security, has vanquished the world more completely
than the professed anchorite, just as the conquerors
of a country, if they can dwell dispersed among tbe
inhabitants of that country, show a more complete
mastery of them than if they be gathered into garrisons
and dwell in fenced cities.
It does not appear that our Master condemned the
outward manifestation of what goes on in the heart.
He did not forbid public prayer, nor open almsgiving,
nor the professedly ascetic life. He neither condemned
nor commended. He contented Himself with showing
wherein lay the true goodness of ascetic abstentions and
of acts of charity. As to the forms in which the
inner life might find it necessary to manifest itself.
He does not give directions. The life must take its
own course, must find for itself ways of adaptation to
the existing frame of human society. And herein
lies the secret of the universality and perpetuity of the
teaching of Jesus. Being independent of any par
ticular intellectual atmosphere, any form of political
organization, any definite constitution of society, it
could coexist with whatever tendencies of thought
and organization might from time to time arise. To
use the comparison of the Gospel, it could be added
like leaven to any kind of meal or flour, and would
at once proceed to change it according to its own
nature. Most Christians are quite familiar with the turn
given by their Founder to many parts of the legisla
tion which passed as Mosaic, the law of marriage, the

THE BAPTISM OF ]\JDJEA 67
law of the Sabbath, the custom of oaths, and the like.
It is perhaps a less widely recognized truth that He
dealt with other parts of the Jewish Bible in the
same spirit. No disposition of mind in regard to the
Scriptures could have been more opposed to His than,
that of the Pharisees, who regarded the whole of them
as verbally inspired, or, I may add, than that of the
modern Christians, who wish to accept Old Testament
narratives as literal and accurate history. When His
opponents brought forward as an objection to His
mission that according to the Scripture the Messiah
must be descended from David, He replied in such a
way as to show that the question was not one of lineal
descent, but of spiritual predominance, for David called
the Messiah Lord, so that the claim of the Messiah
could be in no way dependent on mere genealogy.
We have already seen that this view was too spiritual
to be accepted by the disciples, who were obliged to
search for other and more outward claims to Messianic
rank. So again, when the Jews represented the
sacredness of the Sabbath as a result of the fact that
on that day God rested from His creation, Jesus inter
posed with the profound saying : ' The Sabbath was
made for man, and not man for the Sabbath,' showing
that it was the facts of human nature, and not any
argument drawn from history, which constituted a
proper basis for religious observance.
There is one partial exception to this custom which
is very noteworthy. In the matters of marriage and
divorce our Lord's words, if rightly reported, — and
there is no reason to think otherwise — do constitute a
definite rule of conduct. This is a very remarkable

68 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
fact ; and it is hard to see how any Christian com
munity which breaks away from the Master's law, in
these profoundly important matters, can claim to live
by His rule. If there is one thing in the world which
is definitely anti-Christian, it is a facile divorce law.
In relation to the whole of the Jewish Scriptures,
the method of Jesus is the same. In all the cases in
which, in the Synoptic Gospels, He is represented as
dealing with the Old Testament, it is thus treated as
-having direct contact with spiritual fact, not as a
series of documents having power of outward obhgation,
nor as historic record.
In the Hellenistic age many learned and pious Jews
had taught that the literal meaning of a passage of
Scripture was not its highest meaning. Writers like
Philo were certainly far from treating the Pentateuch
and the Prophets in a too literal sense. To them the
hidden and underlying meaning was, to all men who
could think seriously, the more important. So they
built up out of the lives of the patriarchs and the
fortunes of Israel a series of elaborate allegories,
conveying lessons, sometimes lofty and spiritual, some
times merely fanciful. But between this way of
treating Scripture and the way of Jesus there was
perhaps an even greater contrast than was offered to
it by pure literality ; for the Jewish philosophers did
not bring out of the sacred text its real psychological
value. They merely put into it their own teaching,
whether good or indifferent. They taught Platonism
or Stoicism with a Jewish tinge, using the stories of
Adam and Abraham and Moses as mere props for the
support of their doctrines, just as Cicero uses the old

THE BAPTISM OF JUD^A 69
Eoman tales of the heroes of his race. But Jesus
brings every passage to the touchstone of fact: not
historic fact, but fact of spiritual psychology.
It may well be said that thus our Lord baptized
the Old Testament into Christianity ; but the baptism
in this case, one must confess, only bore fruit after a
long while. The first disciples were resolutely set on
baptizing the Scriptures in quite another fashion ; into
the name, and not into the spirit of their Master. They
sought for literal correspondences between Old Testa
ment prophecies and the facts of their Founder's life.
Soon St Paul takes up the matter in a somewhat
different way. He is determined that the Jewish law
shall be closely connected with the grace which comes
through Jesus Christ. The relations between the two
he tries to work out with all the force of his subtle
intellect ; yet we must confess that he is more
successful in accentuating the differences between them
than in showing their near relations. So we are not
surprised to find that some of the more ardent disciples
of St Paul, such as the Gnostic Marcion, were disposed
to set aside the Old Testament altogether as a revelation
on a lower level than the revelation of Jesus Christ,
and even imparted by an inferior deity. Among the
writers of the New Testament, the one who has done
most to Christianize the Jewish scriptures is the writer
of the admirable Epistle to the Hebrews. This author,
anonymous, yet full of the noblest inspiration, has not
only baptized into Christ some of the root ideas of
early religion, such institutions as the priesthood and
the sacrifice of atonement, but he has also taken up
some parts of the primitive history or quasi-history of

70 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
the Jews and given them for all times a Christian
bearing, such as the building of the tabernacle in the
wilderness and the temple at Jerusalem, the priest
hood of Aaron and his sons, and especially the relations
of Abraham with Melchizedek. In the last example,
no doubt, we come to an allegorizing treatment not
unlike that of Philo; yet so pure and fine is the
Christian spirit of the writer that we scarcely notice
the excess of fancy.
There are certain parts of the Jewish scriptures of
which it may be said that they scarcely needed a
change, a baptism or consecration, to become part of
Christianity. Divines have spoken of a ' mind naturally
Christian' though dwelling outside the Christian pale.
There is a spirit naturally Christian to be found in
some of the Psalms, for example. Not in all the
Psalms, of course. It is a great misfortune that our
Anglican Church feels itself bound to repeat in service
every month the whole of the Jewish psalter ; for
some of the Psalms, as I need scarcely point out, are
not only not Christian in spirit, but even full of revenge
and uncharitableness, arid far below the level of what was
good in the contemporary literature of Greece. The
mere addition to them of the Christian doxology is only
a baptism into the name of Christ; into the spirit of
Christ they cannot be baptized. But some of the
Psalms need scarcely even verbal change, but are
ready and natural vehicles of real Christian feeling and
aspiration. Such Psalms as the 22nd, the olst, the
104th are, in their way, masterpieces of religious
expression. They stand so close to the facts of religious
psychology that they may be said to belong, not to one

THE BAPTISM OF JUD^A 71
age or nation, but, like the Sermon on the Mount itself,
to all men at all times. Other parts of the Old
Testament writings, such as parts of Proverbs, have also
this tone of natural Christianity.
On the other hand, one is disposed, futile and
perhaps wrong as the feeling may be, to regret that
the early Church, beginning with St Paul, was so
fully determined to baptize into Christ the Jewish
cosmogony. True though it be that the account of
the creation in Genesis, when compared either with
the parallel tales which have in recent years been
discovered on the clay tablets of Babylon, or the stories
of Greek mythology, show a nobler religious tinge, yet
one cannot but see how far astray the Church has
been led by her adoption of them in a too literal and
prosaic fashion. St Paul derived from them a doctrine
of the Fall, which has had enormous influence on the
history of the Church. Whether on the whole that
influence has been for good or not we cannot tell,
since, if it had not been there, we do not know what
would have taken its place. But we see how the
survival of the view, amid surroundings to which it
is ill adapted, has become an impediment. And from
the time of Galileo downwards, almost every great
scientific discovery has been regarded by the great
authorities of the Church as hostile to Christianity,
simply because those authorities cannot cut themselves
wholly loose from Jewish primitive views of the nature
and the origin of the visible universe, which, one may
venture to say, have no more connection with the
teaching of Jesus Christ than they have with the
dramas of Shakespeare. In this matter, as in all other

72 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
phenomena of religion, as well as of politics and ethics,
good and evil are intermingled. And it is safest in
most cases to think that on the whole, in the long run,
good has resulted rather than evil from nearly all the
modes of religious belief which have existed in the
world. Vet one cannot but feel that there lay ready
to hand, even in the Old Testament, a cosmogony
with infinitely more natural affinity for Christianity.
In a magnificent chapter of Proverbs Wisdom is
spoken of as the spirit which presided at the creation
of the world. ' When the Lord prepared the heavens,
I was there : when He set a compass on the face of
the depth : when He established the clouds above :
when He strengthened the fountains of the deep :
when He gave to the sea His decree, that the waters
should not pass His commandment: when He ap
pointed the foundations of the earth : then I was by
Him as a master workman, and I was daily His
delight, rejoicing always before Him.' The writer to
the Hebrews must have thought of this passage when
he wrote, ' The worlds were framed by the word of
God,' the word and wisdom being expressions of like
meaning. And that Christ was the Word of God was
soon believed. The cosmogony of the Fourth Evan
gelist and of Proverbs has in it nothing with which
science can quarrel or which is worn out with time.
We may next consider a feature in the Synoptic
Gospels which has been a stumbling-block to many,
which probably, at the present moment, keeps back
many a good man from full sympathy with Christianity.
I mean the constant mention in the narratives of
demonic possession and of the cure of demoniacs. It

THE BAPTISM OF JUD^A 73
would seem that in Judaea, at the beginning of our
era, the curious psychical and physical phenomena
summed up in the word possession were extremely
abundant. Many diseases which we regard as the
business of the physician were then supposed to result
from the usurpation of the bodies of men by evil spirits,
who used human organs for their own purposes ; and
between these intruding demons, and exorcists who
tried by various means to expel them, a constant war
fare was going on. According to our narratives, Jesus
not only accepted as a fact this demonic possession,
but also became one of the most successful of exorcists,
expelling evil demons from the bodies of which they
had taken forcible possession, and giving back those
bodies to their rightful possessors. IV
The whole subject of demons and possession is one
which can only be satisfactorily dealt with by those
who have studied with care and patience the ways of
thought and action which prevail among the uncivilized.
To the ordinary reader of the Bible it often appears
that in this matter Judaea, in the time of the Gospels,
was in a strange and unheard-of condition ; that a
pitched battle, not only for the souls but the bodies of
men, was going on between Jesus and His disciples on
the one side, and Satan with his angels on the other.
They regard every cure of a demoniac as a victory won
by the hosts of light. They suppose that after a time
the battle was won, and then the hosts of darkness
ceased to trouble men with fraud or violence.
Than such a way of looking at the matter, nothing

74 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
could be less historical. According to the beliefs of
all nations below a certain level of culture, the body of
man is a frequent prey to disembodied spirits. There
is no barbarous tribe in Africa or America but has its
medicine-man, its exorcist, one of whose main duties is
the struggle with evil spirits, though often the exorcist
is scarcely on a higher level of morality than the
spirits to which he is opposed. A hundred phenomena,
of which we have quite a different explanation, are in
the darker places of the earth attributed to the action
of spirits, which interfere in every event of life, guiding
men or misleading them, helping or hindering them,
conferring success or inflicting injuries, causing diseases
or removing them. We know, from early Christian
writers, that the same war with demons which marked
the life of the Founder of Christianity was continued in
the history of the Church ; and, if time served, I could
cite many passages to prove that the Fathers of the
second and third centuries believed as fully in demonic
agency as did the contemporaries of Jesus.
Thus the theory of demonic agency in the world
was but the explanation, at the time universally re
ceived, of certain phenomena of disease, physical and
mental ; and, of course, the universal belief in the
cause coloured all the actual facts. As is always the
way in mental and nervous diseases, those who suffered
regarded their sufferings in the light of an accepted
theory. The demons were heard to speak, they
entered and left the bodies in regular ways, they con
fessed their evil deeds ; sometimes they even became
visible. All these phenomena were rife among our
selves when witchcraft was believed in, a few centuries

THE BAPTISM OF JVDJEA. 75
ago. One point, however, is to be noted. Just as
spots in the sun seem to mark a time of unusual heat,
so a time of spiritual awakening or religious revival is
commonly accompanied by a recrudescence of demonic
phenomena. This has been seen in many ages — even
in the eighteenth century, in connection with the rise
of Methodism, — and in some degree in our own days.
It seems to me beyond question that the accounts
in our Gospels of the dealings with demoniacs are
rendered in some degree less trustworthy by the
prevalent convictions as to the nature and the work of
demons. No one had any doubts in regard to posses
sion, and so stories which went on the ordinary lines
in regard to it would not be suspected, and find a
ready acceptance. At the same time, it is most
probable that the tales of the cure of demoniacs by
Jesus rest in some cases upon fact. There is no
evidence that He rejected the ordinary current theory
that what we call nervous diseases were the work of
evil spirits. And that He should have had power to
cure these diseases by words of power and by a
spiritual predominance, is perfectly natural. We
cannot be sure that in particular cases the details are
rightly reported to us; but it would show an un
reasonable scepticism to reject as unhistoric all the
instances of the healing of demoniacs.
But what is often overlooked is, for our present
purpose, most important. If our Lord accepted the
hypothesis of the constant action of evil spirits in the
human world, He baptized the theory afresh. Among
most barbarous peoples there can scarcely be said to
be a germ of morality in the views held as to the

76 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
working of spirits. The spirits themselves are usually
not notably either bad or good ; usually untrustworthy
and mischievous, sometimes malicious, sometimes, on
the whole, innocuous. They have no clear relation to
the realm of conduct ; nor do the exorcists take a
strong ethical line in dealing with them. Usually it
is some spell or some recognized mode of treatment
which avails to expel the demon. There is a class of
people, wizards and witches, who make a business of
dealing with demons, are even on familiar terms with
them, and in their name levy blackmail on all who
have money to spare.
All the higher religions have made war upon
sorcery and witchcraft. They have tried to put it
down in the name of deities of nobler type. In
Greece the guardianship of Apollo or Athena secured
one from the attack of evil spirits. And when the
Olympic deities began to wane, other spiritual powers,
less radiant but still noble, took their place : Mithras,
and Sarapis, and Isis. In Judaea, the stern command,
' Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,' shows how
the religion of Jehovah trampled upon the remains
of barbarous sorcery which, in Palestine, as in all
countries, survived among the more remote or less
intelligent of the people.
But in the Gospels we have a somewhat different
and a higher note. The power of demons is recognized
as what it actually appeared to be, a source of in
firmity and disease. And the power of the demons
was to be broken, not by word or spell, not by priestly
interposition or religious ceremony, but by proclama
tion of the fact that all demonic possession was in

THE BAPTISM OF JUD^A 77
violation of the will of God, was an outrage upon
the scheme of things which had been divinely arranged.
The woman whom Satan had bound was to be loosed.
The spirits which had foully usurped the bodies of men
were to be expelled. The expulsion of demons was
the work, not only of the Master Himself, but of His
disciples. And it was a part of the process of realizing
the Kingdom of God which it was the great object of
all Christianity to promote.
And further, we may observe in the Gospels that
whereas the expulsion of demons may well be regarded
as an adaptation to the fixed beliefs of the people
rather than a characteristic trait of Christian teaching,
in other passages, where we come nearer to the essence
of the teaching of the Kingdom, the powers of evil are
regarded otherwise : not as the source of danger and
disease to the body, but as the inspirers of evil thought
and unlawful desire. That evil impulses do arise in
our hearts, introduced, as it were, by a whisper from
the unseen world, is one of the most fundamental facts
of religious psychology, to be read of in all the great
works of Christian experience. As there is always
waiting at the door of the heart a flood of divine
power and illumination, so there is also waiting a
crowd of evil suggestions and vile thoughts, which, if
indulged, will lead the soul to destruction. What
may be, according to scientific investigation, the origin
of this tendency to evil, I need not now inquire. It
does not at present concern us to investigate this
matter any more than it concerns us here to track out
the pathology of demonic possession. It is enough
that the facts are what they are; and indeed their

78 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
solid reality is only too undeniable. As presented to
human consciousness, the tempting voice appears to be
personal, and it has been thought of as personal
through almost all the past history of mankind.
As we all know, in the Jewish story of the Fall,
the principle of evil appears, not as a spirit, but as a
serpent. It is supposed that the Jews derived their
notion of a great Power of Evil ever opposed to the
Good Power from the religion of Persia. However
that may be, the conception of Satan, with which we
meet in the New Testament, has become a thoroughly
Christian idea. It interprets the universal tendency
to do what is evil in the sight of God, which is one of
the greatest of ethical facts. The voice which suggests
the indulgence of impure desire, the use of powers
divinely given for base or personal ends, the pursuit
of one's own will rather than the will of God, is the
voice of Satan. The power which opposes the
spread in the world of a new and divine enthusiasm is
the power of Satan ; and when that enthusiasm is
victorious, Satan is driven from earth to Hell, where
his will is done as is the will of God in heaven. As
the Angels of God are present at every crisis of life
to protect, to help, and to keep in the way of righteous
ness, so are the messengers of Satan ever close to us
to turn us away from the better course in the direction
of the worse, to tempt our feet into the broad way
which leads to destruction.
The Christian spirit is reconcilable with many kinds
of philosophy and many ways of regarding the world ;
but it cannot be reconciled with any which does not
regard the world as a battle-field, which denies the

THE BAPTISM OF JUD^A 79
existence of evil tendency, and fancies that all is for
the best. Christianity, like every ethical system of
any value, is essentially dualist. Monism belongs to
speculative philosophy, not to any system of practical
thought which has, or can have, any power to lead
men in the direction of righteousness. All Christians
are not indeed bound so fully to accept the personality
of Satan as it was accepted in the early Church, but
all Christians are bound to accept the truths for
which the personal existence of Satan was regarded
as an explanation. V
It might naturally be supposed that among the
elements of Judaism which could not possibly be
taken over by Christianity would be the racial feeling,
which has among Jews always been so prominent.
With this racial feeling, at the time of the rise of
Christianity, was closely bound up the expectation of
a national expansion and the hope of a great political
triumph over the Gentiles. How could this feeling,
by its very nature jealous, exclusive, and anti-social,
be adopted into a new world-religion ? That it
actually was taken over and baptized into Christ must
be considered one of the most astonishing triumphs of
the new faith.
The baptism was the work of St Paul; and the
method of it was merely an application of the method
of inwardness, of that distinction between the flesh and
the spirit which was present, at least in essence, from
the origin of Christianity. ' He is not a Jew,' writes
the Apostle, ' which is one outwardly ; neither is that

8o THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
circumcision which is outward in the flesh': but he is
a Jew which is one inwardly; and circumcision is
that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the
letter.' Never were uttered bolder words. At
a stroke, the feeling of race which had been
matured through ages of struggle and persecution, and
had become a part of the deepest passions of the Jews,
was to be done away, and there was to arise a new
Israel, a fresh people of God, set aside, not by blood,
but by a living relation to God. Yet such was the
astonishing spiritual force of early Christianity, that
the new society not only accepted the view of St Paul,
but believed it with an unhesitating fervour.
The first suggestion of the change comes in some
words of the Gospels attributed to John the Baptist,
yet the full bearing of which he can scarcely have
realized : ' Think not to say within yourselves we have
Abraham to our father : for I say unto you that God
is able of these stones to raise up children unto
Abraham.' These words do not occur in Mark, but
in Matthew and Luke ; and one may suspect that in
this case the words of John have been somewhat
expanded by the Christian consciousness. However
that be, the theme thus started goes on and grows
stronger and stronger. In the Epistle of Peter we
read : ^ ' Ye are an elect race, a royal priesthood, a
holy nation, a people for God's own possession.' The
words race and nation are here emphatic; yet the
writer, though doubtless a Jew by birth, is not think
ing of a race, but of a society ; of a spiritual, not a mere
ethnic nation. The Christians, if they seemed on
' L, ii., 9.

THE BAPTISM OF JUD^A 8i
earth a new sect, had really existed for all time in
the councils of God. For them the world had been
made, and all the deahngs of God with Jewish
patriarchs and people had been but a preparation for
the rise of the Church.
Throughout the Epistle to the Bomans St Paul
labours this view. Naturally, he divided the people
of the world into Jews and Gentiles ; but he felt that
this distinction was done away in Christ, and that in
Christ a new, a third people arose, who were elect,
chosen of God, within whose bounds both Jew and
Gentile must come, and be made one. And to this
new people, according to the teaching of some of the
early Christian writers, belonged, of right, not only
the Old Testament and the promises of God to the
Fathers of Israel, but also the wisdom of the Greeks,
the mystic sacraments of Mithras and Isis, the world
wide dominion of Eome. All these really belonged
to the Christians ; and if evil spirits had stolen and
perverted things laid up in the treasury of God for
those of the new race, the Christians had a right to
demand them back. All things were theirs, past,
present, and future, since what was God's was Christ's,
and what was Christ's had been given to the Church.
Here, indeed, was an empire for the spiritual Israel,
greater than any dreamed of by the seers of racial
Israel. And those Israelites who were such after the spirit
and not after the flesh mostly accepted the new
version of the promised deliverance. But not others.
Not only was Paul bitterly persecuted in his lifetime
by his own countrymen, but even down to our own
6

82 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
times Jews who have a strong racial feeling hate him
with a bitter hatred. While Christianity, thus raised
from the material to the spiritual, attracted to itself
the more spiritual and idealizing of the Jewish race,
it failed to attract those of another and a more literal
temperament. Thus, in the first century of our era
we find among the Jews a recrudescence of what was
narrow and bigoted in their race. Those who rejected
Christianity went by a natural revulsion to the opposite
pole of religion. Everyone knows the consequences.
The outbreak of a national fanaticism led the nation
through the frightful tragedy of which we find a
terrible record in the pages of Josephus. Historically,
the sack of Jerusalem by Titus was the natural
consequence of the death on Calvary. And in the
centuries following, even down to our own days, the
Jewish race has suffered never-ending miseries from
the continued working of the same causes. The long
martyrdom has not been only suffering; it has had
its effect in two directions. It has hardened and
narrowed the national type, but it has, at the same
time, refined and strengthened it. Even in those
elements of Judaism which resisted the influence of
Christianity, there was enough good to preserve the
race through untold sufferings. And there have con
tinually arisen great Jewish idealists, who, though
they were prevented by a hardened race-prejudice
from accepting Christianity, or repelled by some of
its unlovely developments, yet have carried on in the
world the work of Christ.
The residuum which, in any rehgion or any phase
of civilization, has not undergone the transmuting

THE BAPTISM OF JUD.^A 83
influence of the Christian enthusiasm, may persist as
a permanently hostile force to that enthusiasm, or
may, through meeting it under more favourable
circumstances, be at a later time baptized into Christ.
We shall see in later lectures how more and more of
Hellenism has, in successive ages, been absorbed into
Christianity, and that that process is even now not
complete. With Judaism it is otherwise. The inter
action of the Christian and the Jewish spirits was at
the very beginning so close and penetrating, that not
only was every element in Judaism which would
readily amalgamate with the rising religion included,
but even many elements which had no real affinity for
it. For example, the plenary inspiration of the
Jewish Scriptures was from the first accepted by
Christianity, and became in many ways one of its
most valued tenets. Yet, how was it possible for a
Church which did not keep the Jewish law really to
regard it as written by the finger of God ? All sorts
of symbolical and fanciful interpretations thus came
into vogue. And at the time of the Eeformation the
extreme veneration accorded to the Old Testament
became a great danger to some branches of the Church.
It is a commonplace to contrast the ready reception
accorded at first to Christianity among the Jews with
their almost complete absence of conversion to the
Christian faith in later times. It is natural that the
same phenomenon should appear also as regards the
baptism of Jewish ideas into Christianity after the
first age.

LECTURE IV
THE BAPTISM OF HELLAS
When we come to the subject of the baptism into
Christianity of Hellenic civilization, we reach a large
as well as a difficult subject. This baptism was not
the work of the Founder during His sojourn on earth.
Here, at all events, ' Jesus Himself baptized not, but
His disciples.' It was a work which occupied whole
generations : which, in fact, at the present day is not
completed. The relations of Christianity to Hellenism
have been the great intellectual interest of the history
of the Church. Christianity started as a reformed and
spiritual kind of Judaism. Unless it had had vital
force sufficient to grapple with aud to absorb what was
good and enduring in the existing civilization, it would
have remained a mere Jewish sect. Indeed, in the
infant Church which was collected at Jerusalem under
the presidency of James, about the year 40, there
might not, to a sceptical investigator, have been
apparent any cosmopolitan elements. The question,
humanly speaking, was whether it should adapt itself
to its environment, or whether it should perish ?
84

THE BAPTISM OF HELLAS 85
The adaptation of Christianity to a Hellenistic en
vironment was, of course, largely the work of St Paul.
There is, however, no justification of the notion that
St Paul so translated Christianity as to make of it
practically a new religion. There is no ground for
supposing that he could, under any circumstances, have
originated a religion. He was a chosen vessel, a
vehicle of untold value ; but he was a vehicle. The
spirit of Christianity worked in and through him ; but
he was the conduit, not the fountain. For, in the
first place, we find in the early Church others working
on the same lines; and though he overshadows them
all, yet if he had been absent they might have been
more conspicuous. There was the Deacon Stephen,
and Apollos, and Philip the Evangelist. We have still
better evidence in a treatise which has survived, the
Epistle to the Hebrews, the author of which shows
considerable independence of view, though he may
generally be regarded as a follower of St Paul.
But we must look beyond mere individuals. In
the great ages of the world individuals are but the
instruments which are used by ideas and tendencies.
If Paul had never become a Christian, the work he did
would have been done by others ; and no one felt
this more strongly than the Apostle himself. He was
always conscious that he was but a channel of an
inspiration which came from above. He was anxious
to merge all his words, his feelings, and his acts in the
stream of tendency by which he was borne along. And
when he tried to explain the source of his inspiration
he affirmed that everything was the doing of the spirit
of Christ Jesus, revealed alike in his own soul and to

86 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
the consciousness of the Church. On this subject,
however, I need not here speak further.

It is a great misfortune that the classical education
given in. our schools and universities is so partial and
so patchy. We learn something of the history and the
literature of Greece and Eome when these were at
their best ; but we do not study Greece and Eome or
ancient civilization as a whole. To us the history of
the pre-Christian age appears, as it were, in a series of
disconnected tableaux, and we do not observe the laws
of growth and decay which cause one of these tableaux
to pass into another. When we are investigating the
relations between early Christianity and contemporary
civilization, this defect in our education acts very
perniciously. Not so much in the case of Eome, for
the age of the first Caesars is the age of dawning
Christianity ; but we inveterately try to interpret the
Judaea of that age by help of the written Law and
Prophets which came into being many centuries before.
Any reader must recognize how different is the
atmosphere of some of the later Psalms written in the
Maccabean age from that of Jeremiah or the Books of
Samuel. But the observation, not being reinforced
with knowledge, soon dies away.
When we have to do with Greece the case is still
worse. Our young men are taught to read Homer;
and they have a fairly complete introduction to the
great fifth century literature of Athens, the plays of
Sophocles and Euripides, the histories of Herodotus
and Thucydides, the philosophy of Plato. A few later

THE BAPTISM OF HELLAS 87
writers, such as Demosthenes, Aristotle, and Theocritus,
come into the curriculum. Having thus formed an
estimate of the spirit of classical Greece, students
compare the writings of the New Testament with
Hellenic literature. And they not unnaturally soon
perceive that between these works and those there is a
great gulf; that the Greek spirit and the Christian
spirit lie far apart. So they try to keep their religion,
which is founded on the New Testament, in a different
part of the mind from their literary culture, which is
largely founded on Greek ideas.
Now the New Testament is full of Jewish ideas ;
but they are generally the ideas of the Maccabean
age rather than of the age of the Kings and the
Prophets. And the New Testament, in important
parts of it, is full of Greek or semi-Greek ideas ; but
they are not those of the great Athenian writers, but
those of ordinary people of five centuries later. These
centuries had been full of growth and of change. In
their course Athens had completed the cultivation of
Greece, and set about the education of the world. In
the age of Alexander the Great and his successors,
the waters of Greek civilization had flowed as if from
a reservoir, and had inundated all the lands bordering
the Mediterranean. Naturally, as this flood spread
widely, it grew shallow, and it was mixed in every
country with all sorts of national and local elements.
But still there had arisen in all the Levant a more
or less homogeneous culture. Greek was not only
the language of ordinary discourse in the great new
cities like Alexandria and Antioch, but it was the
language of educated men everywhere, almost more

88 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
than was Latin in mediaeval Europe. And with the
language went an enormous body of literature, poetic,
historic, philosophic, scientific, of which very little
remains to us, but which must have had an unmeasured
influence. We know from modern analogies how
vast is the effect on any country of the acceptance
from another of a standard literature — such an influence
as France has exerted on Belgium, or England in the
last century on America. Into every town there
penetrated the Greek schoolmaster or philosopher
trying to bring in reason and discourse. In Asia
Minor and Syria, Greek civic institutions began to
make way and cities to have an active, corporate life.
In the collections of Greek inscriptions we have an
almost endless record of the decrees passed by senates
and assemblies of the Greek cities. And though these
decrees are usually about trifles, since the strong hand
of Eome would not allow real political power to any
of the cities of the East, yet they prove that the forms
of civic government were carefully treasured, and
officials with high-sounding titles were appointed to
perform duties of no great importance. The machinery
was at work, though it only produced toys ; and it
was possible for the early Christians to imitate this
machinery, and at the same time to turn it to more
serious purpose.
Christianity, coming in contact with the Greece
of the Hellenistic age, was compelled either to absorb
it, or at least what in it could be reconciled with
Christianity, or else be absorbed by it. The Gnostics
would have absorbed Christianity into Hellenism ; but
it was the opposite process which, in a broad view,

THE BAPTISM OF HELLAS 89
took place. However, it was impossible for Chris
tianity to absorb the real Hellas, the Hellas of Pericles
and Epaminondas, for the undeniable reason that at
the beginning of the Christian era the real early
Hellas had passed away. II
The religion of Greece, like that of all countries
of which I have any knowledge, was really not one
but several. There were in it strata, corresponding
to the strata of the population. Three strata we may
clearly recognize. First : there was the religion of the
poets and of the artists ; the beautiful and orderly
worship of an Olympus, of an assembly of gods which
were the personified powers of Nature — Zeus, Apollo,
Athena, and the rest. Second : there was the religion
of the masses, largely tinged with superstition and
materialism, uncivilized, and yet containing in it many
great religious ideas which the world could not afford
to lose. Third : there was the religion of the philo
sophers, not merely theistic but monotheistic, with
very noble and lofty ideas of the divine nature.
Speaking in a summary way, we may say that the
Greek Olympus was not baptized into Christianity, but
that the popular religious beliefs of the masses were
in a great measure absorbed by Christianity, and that
Greek philosophy also found a long resting-place in
the Church.
When Greek religion is mentioned, the mind of
the hearer at once turns to the splendid court of
Olympus familiar to us through Homer and the great
Attic literature. We think of Apollo and his oracle at

90 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
Delphi, of Zeus and the great festival of Olympia, of
Athena and all that she represented to the city of
Athens. Our minds turn to the brilliant city festivals
in honour of the gods, to sacrifices and ceremonies, to
temples full of dedicated offerings, and priesthoods of
great dignity. Such was the religion of Greece in the
classical age. But all this pomp and splendour, closely
related to poetry and art, had very little influence on
Christianity. The life of real belief had departed
from it for centuries. Festivals and ceremonies were
retained in a spirit of conservatism and civic rivalry ;
but beneath their show there was little conviction.
Even in Greece itself the worship of Zeus and Apollo
and the other great deities of Olympus had grown pale.
When we turn the pages of the travels of Pausanias,
who visited Greece in the second century a.d., and
read of all the treasures of art preserved in the great
temples, of the local religious legends kept up with
duteous care, of the festivals handed down from im
memorial times and still celebrated with pomp and
majesty, it is not easy at first to reahze how little life
lay behind this seeming. In fact, in the great cities
of Greece, state religion was closely bound up with
civic existence, and so long as the cities still retained
some vestiges of autonomy they kept up their religious
usages. And the respectable citizens cultivated re
ligion with other civic virtues. Eeligion, as we all
know, may exist for a long while in a country in a
state of suspended animation, without much influence
on life and conscience.
The real test of Greek religion had come at the
time when the astonishing campaigns of Alexander

THE BAPTISM OF HELLAS 91
had laid all that was known of Asia at his feet, and
the Greek and Macedonian passed from country to
country of Asia as master, as educator, aud as organizer.
The empires of the successors of Alexander were held
together by the chains of Greek cities which they
founded, and which served as channels to introduce
into the heart of Asia the knowledge and the commerce
of Greece. The one thing which the Macedonian rulers wanted
to give coherency and permanency to their rapidly
formed kingdoms, was some satisfactory form of
religion. Into the great cities of their dominions the
kings of Syria and Pergamon could easily import the
cults of the Greek cities whence they came. And to
these cults they could give official patronage and
prestige ; but they could not give them real vitality,
nor enable them to spread from the cities to the
countries round. Whenever the imported Greek cults
came into collision with a strong living religion, as in
Judaea and among the Zoroastrians of Persia, they
completely failed. The cults which best maintained
themselves were those which had close connection
with Oriental religion, like the cult of Artemis at
Ephesus ; or those which fell in with the ways of the
time, like the worship of the Tyche or Fortune of cities
and of kings, a worship which was really the trans
ference of religious cult to worldly powers.
Greek Paganism being thus far past its prime, and
unsuited to the surroundings of the age, could offer
but little resistance to the new Gospel of the divine
will. The teaching of a plurality of deities, by no
means always on terms one with the other, was in-

92 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
stinctively felt to be in contradiction with the facts of
the world. Monotheism had long prevailed in the
world of thought, and was in various forms making
its way even among the people. The spread of more
exact and scientific thought had made it impossible to
any thinking man to suppose the powers of Nature to
be governed by partiality and caprice ; and the pro
found demoralization which had resulted when the
balance of the world was upset by Alexander, had
made men extremely sceptical as to the power of
ancestral deities to protect their worshippers. In
poetry, the tradition of the Hellenic Pantheon held its
own for ages ; and, in fact, almost down to our own
days. But poetry is often the ghost of dead religion;
and it was the inevitable effect of the unrivalled poetry
of Homer that the religion which had inspired it
should be accepted by poets, when it was moribund
and decaying.
No doubt in Christian martyrologies, and other
works of the kind, one hears a good deal of old Greek
cults as persisting. And in the small towns and
country districts of really Hellenized lands, a great
deal of obstinate conservatism might cling about them ;
but certainly their vitality was low. And the test
usually applied to the Christians was rather whether
they would sacrifice at the altar of the emperor, than
whether they would acknowledge some heathen deity ;
for politics was more serious than religion.
Certainly Christianity did borrow some things from
the local cults of Greece and Asia Minor. When
victorious, she took some spoils from the vanquished ;
but the borrowings did not concern larger matters of

THE BAPTISM OF HELLAS

93

doctrine or of organization, but rather may be traced
in the details of local worship. In a brilhant paper
Mr Eendel Harris has shown that the Christian pair,
Florus and Laurus, in Asia Minor succeeded to some
of the worship paid to Castor and Pollux. This
process was far spread. In a hundred cases we find
some Christian saint succeeding to the shrine and the
honours of a local deity. Thus at one shrine we find
St Elias succeeding Helios the sun-god; and at an
other Apollo, the slayer of the python, gives way to
St George. The Parthenon of Athena was by the
Christians dedicated first to the divine Sophia or
wisdom, then to the Virgin-Mother. This process,
however, interesting as it is, is not of any great
moment to the general history of Christianity. It
lies at a level below that of the higher religion and
the writings of the Christian Fathers. It is scarcely
necessary on this occasion to investigate it further.
No doubt, also, the popular religion of Greece made
great contributions to the Christian demonology. It
is the usual course of religious history that when a
Pantheon is worsted in its own country its members
sink to the rank of sprites or demons, in which form
they long continue to live in the superstitions of the
people, like the Venus of Wagner. But if we wish to
trace any valuable and fruitful influence exercised on
Christianity by her early rivals, we must look in
another direction rather than at the great civic cults.
We must investigate the relations of Christianity to
the religions of the family and the clan, to the new ,
mystic cults which had sprung up or risen to a new
level in the Hellenistic age, and to cults such as that

94 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
of Aesculapius which had been strongly affected by
them. On these subjects I shall speak in the next
two lectures. But first it is necessary to say a few
words aa to the debt of Christianity to that philosophy
which at the time was the religion of the educated
classes. Philosophy, though it had existed in India
for ages before it arose in Greece, was yet an intensely
Greek development, III
Nothing could be more natural than that St Paul,
inheriting from his Jewish ancestry tendencies strongly
opposed to the mental habits of the Greeks, and heated
with the flush of a passionate new faith, should speak
of the philosophy of the Greeks as a thing which was
of no value for the spiritual life. The world, he said,
by philosophy attained to no knowledge of God ; the
Greeks who sought for wisdom found in the cross of
Christ nothing but foolishness ; the wisdom of man
attained not to the righteousness of God. He regarded
the methods and the results of Greek thought as
things to be thrown wholly aside, to be sacrificed to
Christ and nailed to His cross. ' Where,' he asked, ' is
the wise, where is the scribe, where is the disputer of
this world ? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom
of this world ? ' St Paul owed to Greek philosophy
more than he knew of, but he did not acknowledge
the debt. In some of the speeches attributed to him
in Acts, and in some of his genuine Epistles, this
appears clearly. He had a philosophy of religion
in which the revelation of God to the Gentiles had a
part as well as the revelation to the Jews. Though

THE BAPTISM OF HELLAS 95
we may regard the account in Acts of Paul's speech
at Athens, with its appeal to Greek philosophy and
Athenian cultus, as not to be entirely relied on, yet
the whole of the Epistles to the Eomans and the
Galatians is an attempt to think out the place of
revelation in God's dealings with man, and in the
facts of human life. St Paul was so original a thinker,
and so little influenced by the traditions of the schools,
that some parts of his view belong to the peculiarities
of his nature and his circumstances, and could scarcely
have a future. But the problems which he attempted
were taken up by others after an interval.
The relations between Greek philosophy and
Christian teaching form the main intellectual interest
in the history of Christianity. The Church had soon
settled her relations with Judaism ; determined what
she would take and what she would leave. But her
relations with Hellas were far more enduring and
more complicated. Through all ages Greece has been
the Helen of the nations, whose fascinating beauty
none can wholly resist. Over and over again has the
Christian spirit tried to tear itself away from the
charmer, but ever it has returned. In the course of
church history we can trace the influence of all the
moods of Hellenic thought, from the time of Socrates
to that of Plotinus. But this influence comes in an
order almost opposite to that of history. In the first
centuries of Christianity, it is the contemporary Greek
philosophy which touches and influences the rational
developments of the teaching of the Church. At
Alexandria, a sort of compromise or syncretism between
living philosophy and living Christianity is effected.

96 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
When complete, this syncretism is embalmed and pre
served. It cannot be further developed, because Greek
philosophy has died, and the power of Christian thought
is obscured in the age of partial darkness. Then in
scholasticism there is a sudden reversion from Diony-
sius and Plotinus to Aristotle ; and, at the Eenaissance,
a revival of the still earlier teaching of Plato and
Socrates. The waves of scholastic discussion and of
Platonic revival have by no means yet died down,
least of all perhaps at Oxford, where the Ethics of
Aristotle and the Republic of Plato are still chief text
books in the schools, and are made a life-long posses
sion of most of the abler of the men who there pursue
their studies.
It is in bare outline only that I can sketch the
phases of the process whereby Greek philosophy was
baptized into the faith of Christ. It is a process
which began with St Paul and the Fourth Evangelist,
and is in our day scarcely yet complete. There are
even now elements in the Greek wisdom which have
never been baptized, and by the acquisition of which
our faith might be made richer and more human.
But, on the other hand, no part of Christian doctrine
more urgently requires revision than that which is
ultimately of Hellenic origin. It is a realm of ghosts
of the mighty dead, of gigantic ruins, of constructions
which look strong to a superficial regard, but are really
crumbled away inwardly.
It is not easy to separate in treatment the specula
tive from the practical side of Greek philosophy. In
the age of the Christian origins, theory and practice
were closely intermingled. Yet it is desirable to

THE BAPTISM OF HELLAS 97
attempt a separation, and to speak first of philosophy
in its more speculative and afterwards in its more
practical aspects.
The task of amalgamating Greek and Semitic re
ligious elements was accomplished at Alexandria by
the pious Jew, Philo, at the very beginning of the
Christian era. We cannot be surprised to find that
just as Jerome recognizes Seneca as a Christian moral
ist, so Eusebius treats Philo as the earliest of the
Christian Fathers. In regard to speculative questions
as to the person of the Deity and His relations to the
world, it is almost impossible to draw a line between
Philo on one side and the early Christian theologians
and apologists on the other. The writer of the Fourth
Gospel stands very near to Philo, though there may
well have been no conscious borrowing. It is true
that we find in Philo an abstract and fanciful tendency,
an extreme love of symbolical interpretation, a want
of clearness, which make his writings a not very
satisfactory subject of study. One cannot easily divine
his real meaning ; and when his meaning is traced, it
usually seems very remote from practical life. But if
we set aside the Fourth Evangelist, a man of almost
unique spiritual genius, we shall find no little of these
same qualities and tendencies in the speculative
writings of early Christianity. Philo had introduced
the notion of the Logos, as a means for connecting a
transcendent Deity with the world, without staining
His perfection. Not unlike the spirit of Philo is that
of the Christian apologists of the second century. With
them the Logos is the Organ of creation, of all revela
tion, who is further incorporated as the human Christ,
7

98 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
and who brings to men not only a fresh revelation of
God, but the only satisfactory philosophy — a salvation
of man from speculative doubt. Small indeed is the
interest which the apologists, even Justin the Martyr,
take in the human life of Christ. What they care for
is a Logos-philosophy, and in some of them even the
name of Jesus does not occur.
At the time, it was quite impossible for anyone who
thought in a speculative way to think otherwise than
according to the methods and the formulae which Plato
and his successors had introduced as a sort of grammar
of the art of thought. As is always the way when a
science is made methodic, a number of technical
words, which at once abridge and control the process
of thinldng, had made their way into philosophy ;
such contrasts as that between the formal and the
material, between original and final causes, between
ethos and pathos, had become familiar, and words like
being, becoming, embodiments, emanations, hypostases,
were in general use in the schools and in the market
places, where many of the discussions took place.
From the very first, as we have seen, the subject of
supreme interest to the Christian community was the
nature of the person of its Founder, and His relation
to the one God ; and this question could not be
seriously discussed in any of the cities of Greece or
Italy or Asia without use of Greek philosophic terms
and argument. Some eminent modern theologians
have regretted the triumph of metaphysics in early
Christianity. I venture to think that this view is
historically not to be defended. For what were the
alternatives ? Was it possible for the early Christians

THE BAPTISM OF HELLAS 99
to take up a position of agnosticism, and openly to
declare that their experience of the presence of their
Founder's spirit was sufficient for them quite apart
from any intellectual theory in regard to it? Such
an attitude of mind would have been an effectual bar
to keep out of the Church not only all intelligent
Greeks, but all cultivated men. To that age meta
physical speculation was what science is to us, or
even what science and philosophy together are to us.
We cannot regret that the eager Christian intellect
in the second and third centuries found a field for its
exercise in the tenets of the faith. A succession of
Christian doctors, from the time of St Paul onwards,
translated or baptized into Christianity the philosophic
speculations which had acted on the whole so bene
ficially in the Graeco-Eoman world. But philosophy
was no docile catechumen ready to lay aside all that
it had believed, and to accept the faith of Christ in
humility. It was a world-power, full of intellectual
pride and ambition, and accustomed not to learn but
to teach. Early in the second century there was a
great and memorable attempt made, instead of baptiz
ing philosophy into Christ, to draw Christianity into
the field of philosophy. Such was the task which the
Gnostic teachers set before themselves.
Harnack has called Gnosticism the acute or exces
sive Hellenization of Christianity. It was, however,
largely mixed with Oriental elements. To a hasty
study there may seem no great difference between the
theological theories of the Fourth Evangelist and those
of the Gnostics. The Apocalypse was by some writers
supposed to be tbe work of the Gnostic Cerinthus.

100 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
The Gnostic Marcion had an extreme veneration for
the writings of St Paul. But things superficially alike
are often in principle very dissimilar. There ran a
line between Christianity and Pagan philosophy ; and
the question was whether Christianity or philosophy
should be dragged across that line into the territory
and the power of the enemy ?
To the modern mind this conflict may be most
readily understood by recurring to our original
thesis, that baptism into Christ was an adoption into
the higher life of the Church, which carried on upon
earth the divine obedience of Christ. Gnosticism
would have evaporated Christianity into a theory or
a set of theories, which would try to explain the
origin of the world, the nature of Christ, the character
of sin, and the process of redemption, but would lose the
life-blood of self-surrender. It was on the practical
side — understanding of the nature of will, and respect
for fact — that Gnosticism was defective. Like the
philosophy of Hegel in our own day. Gnosticism
would resolve ethical and spiritual life into a rational
cosmic process.
Gnosticism perished through a want of inner vitality,
and left the world of thought to be fought for by two
powers which joined issue over its corpse. On the
one side contended the revived Pagan enthusiasm
which appeared in philosophy as Neo-Platonism, and
in the field of politics inspired the Emperor Julian.
On the other side stood the learned and able Christian
Fathers of Alexandria, Clement and Origen, and those
who followed them, who were not merely Christian
writers, but thinkers worthy to be compared with

THE BAPTISM OF HELLAS loi
ancient philosophers of any school. Alexandria
passed on Christian philosophy to Augustine in
Numidia; and Augustine not only to the great European
leaders, but to subsequent ages, as we shall see later.
What we have a good right to regret, is, that with
philosophic speculation in Christianity there was
mingled so much of baser human alloy. In so far as
that speculation embodied the intellectual side of the
life of the Church, it was necessary to her vitality.
That it suffered from such faults as too great love of
abstract terms, too strong a rhetorical bent, ignorance
of the actual limits of our knowledge, was quite
natural and at the time inevitable. But, unfortun
ately, there were mingled with it other elements of
baser origin and greater power for corruption. Clerical
jealousies and rivalries constantly intruded themselves ;
there was a strong tendency to make concession to
superstition for the sake of popular support ; and, in
particular, the politics of the Empire had continual
effect on the shaping of doctrine. Nicene orthodoxy
triumphed not merely by any intrinsic superiority in
spirituality or as regards Christian life, but largely in
consequence of the decree of Theodosius, who, in 380,
declared it the only orthodox Christian faith. Questions
of orthodoxy and of local patriotism were inextricably
intermixed. It was certainly no purely intellectual
conviction, and certainly no spiritual enthusiasm,
which made the mobs of Constantinople and of
Alexandria wild with enthusiasm for certain meta
physical unintelligibilities, and bitterly hostile to others.
How can we, in a very different age and amid quite
changed surroundings, feel in any way committed to

I02 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
decisions obtained from councils by such means as
were freely used by the contending leaders ?
However, the subject before us is not the infalli
bility of church councils or of the recognized creeds,
but the way in which the Church baptized into Christ
the best of Greek speculative thought. There were
before the Eenaissance two great ages of speculative
theology. The first was dominated by the successors
of Plato; indeed, one may fairly say that where
St Paul moves on un-Platonic lines, in his doctrines
of predestination, of sin and grace, he failed greatly
to influence the Church until the time of Augustine.
The second period, which begins in the depth of the
Middle Ages, was dominated by the writings of Aris
totle, which came to Europe, in part, through the
instrumentality of great Arabian philosophers, and
soon had great influence in the universities. It gives
one a vivid impression of the dominance of the Greek
mind in the world of thought, that the teaching of
Aristotle should flrst convince the Mohammedan
conquerors of Asia and Spain, and thence pass on to
Bologna, Paris, and Oxford. And in turn Aristotle was
conquered and made tributary by the great living
religions of the Middle Ages, Islam and Christianity,
which took all that they could adapt and use of him
in order to organize and express their own thought.
IV
We have seen that in the case of Judaea the un-
absorbed or unbaptized residuum was of no great
account in the world's history. In the case of Greece

THE BAPTISM OF HELLAS 103
the loss to Christianity has been very different.
There the residuum has been of untold value : Greek
philosophy the Church did take in ; the early Hellenic
rehgion it could not be expected to accept. But the
misfortune is that with the religion of Hellas was re
jected a noble civilization which was indeed intertwined
with Greek religion, yet which went far beyond it.
Literature, science, and art were all among the gifts of
Greece to the world. The free spirit of inquiry and
of enjoyment, the love of the true and the beautiful,
belong for all time first of all to Greece. She raised
the culture, not indeed of the world, but of certain
small societies and even of certain cities, to a height
before undreamed of and since seldom attained. The
very name of Hellas stands to this day for all that is
simple, charming, ideal in poetry and in art, for all
that is free in thought and speculation, for the love of
soundness and health in mind and body.
This is what Greece represents to us. But we
must never forget that this Greece never came into
direct contact with Christianity. In the three cen
turies which preceded Christianity the delightful
bloom which seems to adorn the pages of Herodotus
and Sophocles passed away ; the Greek world lost the
freshness of youth and grew old and hypochondriac.
Christianity could not bring back this fulness of
healthy vitality. Greece was buried, to rise again at
the time of the Eenascence of Europe in the fifteenth
century, and then to appear as a spirit hostile to
Christianity, belonging to the world and not to the
spirit. But could the gospel of health, enjoyment, and

I04 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
beauty, of mental freedom and self-development, which
belonged to early Hellas, ever have been brought into
harmony with the gospel of self-denial and the spiritual
life taught by the Founder of Christianity ? I am not
at all sure that it could not. It would have needed
baptism, a thorough internal change and renewal ; but
at least something in it is not irreconcilable with the
essence of Christianity. Whole passages of the Sermon
on the Mount, for example, breathe a fresh delight in
life and in our natural surroundings, an appreciation
of the beauty of the world and the charm of human
character which is by no means contrary to the spirit
of Greece.
In fact, it is really another form of the same spirit
of health which is evident in the dealings of Jesus with
disease. This is clear from the narrative of the heal
ing of the palsied woman in Luke xiii. The ruler of
the synagogue protested because the healing was on the
sabbath day, and Jesus answered him with indignation,
' Ought not this woman, whom Satan hath bound these
eighteen years, to be loosed from this bond on the sab
bath day ? ' The removal of disease was a good work,
because all disease was contrary to the divine will
We may compare every illness to a pebble in the bed
of a river, which tends to stop its flow, the removal of
which makes the stream in a minute degree faster and
smoother. Surely our Lord in thus teaching approved
the Greek gospel of health, and at the same time con
secrated it by bringing it into immediate relation to
the will of God. How different would have been the
history of Christianity if the Church had adopted this
view of disease and physical degeneracy, instead of the

THE BAPTISM OF HELLAS 105
view that God finds pleasure in physical pain and
suffering !
Perhaps even the teaching of St Paul, prone as he
is to be hard upon the body, was not wholly adverse
to the passion for physical health and beauty. Is it
not St Paul who tells his converts that their bodies are
temples of the Holy Spirit, temples which must be
kept free from corruption by physical lust ? We have
here the true principle, though we could scarcely
expect a Hebrew to realize that principle in all its
fulness. Surely, if our bodies are temples, it is not
enough that they should be kept free from defilement
and from profane revels ! It is a starved and narrow
race which will be content with a white-washed barn
for a temple. Temples should be well adorned with
sculpture and painting, with song and music ; should
be made beautiful for the sake of Him who dwells
within. A beautiful and healthy body is surely a
more appropriate dwelling for God than a deformed
and weakly one. The latter may, indeed, by the
spirit within, be transformed into a beauty not robust
but yet attractive. Yet health and vigour are really
in accord with the will of God, and the gospel of the
divine will cannot despise them without revolting
against the very conditions of our humanity.
Afterwards, under the influence of asceticism, views
such as those of Jesus and His immediate successors
died away in the Church more and more, until not
only was beauty in man and woman regarded as a
snare, but even cleanliness was considered to be unfit
for one devoted to religion.
The fact is that, if the spirit of original Christianity

io6 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
be as I have described it, there is a marked parallelism
between it and the spirit of Greek literature and art.
The subordination of nature to man, of things visible
and tangible to the human spirit, could scarcely be
carried further than it was carried in Greece. It was
man and man alone that profoundly interested the
Greek poet and sculptor. Even his own beautiful
country was to him but the background to the drama
of humanity. Socrates called back thought from the
speculation about material things to the study of man,
the nature of happiness and of virtue, the character of
individuals and of societies. The Greek painter and
sculptor scarcely troubles himself to represent anything
but the human form and face. In the Attic drama, as
it appeared in the theatre of Dionysus, background was
nothing and dress conventional ; it is the tragic course
of events with its effect on the life of man which is the
subject of interest. Even to the Greek historian mere
fact of history is but a stone to build into a purposeful
palace of art.
Nor does the Greek in any of his literary or artistic
efforts stop short at the visible and tangible. With
him, what is seen is but the embodiment of an idea.
Behind the individual athlete or soldier the sculptor
sees the type ; through the beauty of many women he
reaches out towards women's beauty as an ideal. To
the painter the group does not consist of so many
figures each represented as an individual ; but it is a
whole, with one thought penetrating every part, and
ranging the composition like the petals of a flower or
the facets of a crystal. The heroes of Homer are
types ; so are the characters of Aeschylus and Sophocles.

THE BAPTISM OF HELLAS 107
Even in the later age of Greece the rural scenes of
Theocritus are no Dutch pictures, but scenes of an
ideal Arcady, where everyone is young, happy, and
music-loving. In their own way the ideas of Greek literature and
art are ideas of God, as much a part of the higher
and spiritual order as even the ideas of a Paul or a
Francis. They represent not that which is in a
particular place at a particular moment, but that which
might be and should be, that which exists in the
Divine thought, in heaven rather than on earth. These
poets and artists are causing the Kingdom of God to
descend and His will to be done on earth. It is a
mistake to confuse the love of beauty with sensualism,
for sensualists soon lose the sense of beauty. To
appreciate true beauty a man must live an abstemious
life in the closest communion with what is healthy
and natural. Of course as individuals the Greeks
often fell into sensuality, though scarcely into the
bestial sensuality of the degenerate Eomans. But in
the great age of Greece, the healthy mind in the
healthy body appears to have been more usual than
anywhere else.
As we have seen, the Christian enthusiasm pro
ceeds from reading the world in terms of humanity
to reading humanity in the light of the relation of man
to God. At this latter point, of course, its superiority
to the gospel of Hellas is strongly marked. If
Christianity had baptized the real Hellas, it would
have been by the addition of this element. Hellas
had indeed gone far in the very opposite direction, and
had read the divine element in life in very human

io8 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
terms. Not only did the forces of Nature present
themselves to the Greek imagination in the likeness of
men and women, but even the most august and
dignified members of the Pantheon — Zeus, Apollo, and
Athena — were represented, as art grew to its climax,
in more and more human guise. To the Greeks the
gods did indeed ' come down in the likeness of men,'
not only in beauteous human form, but by no means
free from human weakness and passion. Even the
philosophers, who approached nearer and nearer to
monotheism, had no difficulty in accepting in daily
life the usages of the state cultus: their universal
deity was rather a cold abstraction in the background
than the Father of Spirits, and a very present help in
trouble. The cultivation of mind and body was wedded to
Hellenic religion ; but in truth it did not owe very
much to that association, beyond the occasions of
athletic games and musical contests. A far larger
debt was in fact owed by the religion of Apollo and
Zeus to the Greek natural love of the beautiful, and
this was a direct gift of God to the race : a gift as
naturally belonging to its deeper nature as did the
sense of the spiritual belong to the Jew. It is true
that when religion decayed in Hellas, art and literature,
the sense of form and fine taste, decayed also. But it
cannot be said that we have here cause and effect.
Eather, the decay in all its phases came from a
national degeneracy and apostacy. Matthew Arnold
has said that Greece died of faithfulness to her mission.
We may reply, in the first place, that Greece is not
dead, and can never die, since the Greek spirit

THE BAPTISM OF HELLAS 109
survives in European civilization ; and in the second
place we may answer that, as a nation, Greece perished
through what was evil in her, not through what was
good, through intestine quarrels, the growth of
luxury, love of money, and the other vices which have
destroyed many nations before and since. If Greek
religion had been strong enough to check these evils,
the decay might have been stayed. As it was, a few
noble souls remained at a high level ; but the mass of
the people fell away, and the race died of anaemia.
At the time of the Eenascence, Greece was in a sense
born again. But it was an irreligious Greece. Greek
piety and Greek idealism were lost ; so that Greek
freedom became an occasion of lawlessness, and Greek
love of beauty an occasion for sensuous enjoyment.
In that age there were some who, like Milton, could
combine the love of beauty with Christian and even
Puritan morality ; but they were few. And generally
speaking, in the modern world we see the spirit of
Hellas and the Christian spirit in opposite camps.
This is profoundly to be deplored. The loss of the
influence of Hellas in our lives would debase and
narrow them beyond imagination. It would be giving
up a great part of our spiritual patrimony, a narrowing
of the range of the ideal which would profoundly
injure the character of Europe.
The Eoman Church made war on the Greek revival,
and the great Eeformers had little sympathy with
it. But yet from time to time, in the Christian
churches, there has been some attempt to combine the
freedom and beauty of Greece with the spirituality of
Christianity. Some effort has been made to baptize

no THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
into Christ that side of the spirit of Hellas which is
the best gift of Hellas to the world. Of one such
attempt I have been a witness, for I am a pupil of
Maurice and of Kingsley. That school has few
representatives in our days. Is it too much to hope
that it may yet revive, and fill a deep need in the
Christianity of to-day ? One of the great defects and
dangers of popular Christianity in England is its
tendency to what is morbid, to petty asceticism in
eating and drinking, to a deadness to the beauties of
nature and the aspirations of art, to acquiescence in
a low level of mental and bodily existence. Yet the
Son of Man came eating and drinkii^, and very
keenly alive to the beauty of nature and of human
character. Greece has for us in these days as clear
a message as Judaea; and both one and the other
may contribute more in the future than in the past
to the perfection of the Christian life.

LECTURE V
THE BAPTISM OF ASIA
It appears that an influence upon Christianity even
greater than that of Hellas was exercised by an older
and deeper stratum of belief. When the Greeks
brought with them into Hellas from the north their
poetic pantheon, it lay upon the surface of a great
morass or sea of religion belonging to the older
inhabitants of Greece and Asia Minor, whom they
conquered but did not absorb. The classic lands of
this religion were Egypt and Babylon ; and from such
centres the influence spread wide and deep over all
parts of the Levant. Much of it was incorporated in
the local cults and religious customs of Asia Minor.
Babylon was, if we go back far enough, a great
religious metropolis, as much so as Eome or Mecca
in later ages.

I can at present speak of the religions of the
Hellenistic world, of Isis, Mithras, and Cybele, only
in the somewhat novel forms in which they came forth

112 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
to claim the adhesion of mankind. But though they
might appear novel to Greek writers, they owed their
power to roots which stretched far back into the soil
of primitive religion. They were really in essentials
a reversion to type ; though, as always happens in
such cases, the new forms differed in appearance from
the old.
Eeligion is a harvest which grows naturally in the
soil of the human heart. When a particular inter
pretation of religious fact and tendency is outworn,
and no longer serves its purpose, a fresh growth,
starting from the primary facts of the religious life,
will spring up to take its place. Thus, at the time
of the rise of Christianity in the Hellenistic world the
cultus of ancient oriental deities in new forms had
come in, as that of the Greek deities had become
formal and empty. And in some places the worship
of the Greek deities had taken a new lease of life by
borrowing elements from the invading religions. We
may fairly call the result of the contact between the
mystic religions of Hellenism and Christianity the
baptism of Asia.
Over the names given by men to the deities of the
mystic cults we need not linger. It is not the names,
nor even the historic source, which is of great moment
to us ; we need to penetrate beyond names and
appearances to fact and to idea. The worship of
Sabazius and of Cybele, which came from Phrygia in
Asia Minor, that of Sarapis and Isis which was of
Egyptian origin, that of Mithras which came westward
from Persia, were all rivals for the favour of mankind.
All had many elements in common, and their

THE BAPTISM OF ASIA 113
introduction and rapid growth in popular favour
indicates the opening of a new chapter in the religion
of the western world. In setting forth these elements,
I shall be obliged to speak in general terms. And
doubtless, in such a case, generality involves inaccuracy.
The differences between these various religions are,
from the historic point of view, as important as their
resemblances. But my subject is not the religions
of the Hellenistic world as such, but those religions
as seen from the standpoint of early Christianity.
And from this standpoint their likenesses are more in
evidence than their points of difference.
It is an interesting question what part of the later
religious cults and tendencies came from old and what
part from new sources. The question is not an easy
one. To my thinking the answer is as follows. In
Greece and Asia Minor, as in most countries, there
were various strata of population, belonging probably
to quite different ethnological stocks, and certainly at
very different stages of culture. The Greeks whom
we know, the Greeks of literature and philosophy and
art, were an intellectual ^lite, probably of purer blood,
certainly of rare natural endowment. The Olympic
religion, like the Homeric poems and the Attic
tragedy, was the creation of the spirit of this race,
formed out of a mass of heterogeneous materials, and
rounded off into a beautiful whole. But with the sad
decay of the Greek race, in the centuries immediately
preceding our era, this fair construction lost its
beauty and its convincing power. And as the higher
religion died, the more popular and more emotional
elements of popular belief, which had always been
8

114 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
present, especially among the races of Asia Minor,
came up to the surface. And undoubtedly there were
here important elements of belief which the world
could not afford to lose : a sense of sin, a need of
divine forgiveness and help, a doctrine of the future
life. Such elements as these had not been very
prominent in the artistic and articulate religion of
Olympus, and the time had come for their fuller and
fresher embodiment.
The time had come ; and the sudden and wide
spread of Hellenism furnished the opportunity, since
it mingled class with class, destroying the old rigid
patrician lines, and it brought the more inquisitive
and enterprising spirits of Greece into the presence of
other religions of great antiquity and great repute.
The Greek mind made acquaintance with the mystic
materialism of Cybele in central Asia Minor. It met
the ancient worship of Isis in Egypt, in a land where
the thought of the people seemed to turn naturally
from the present life to that of the future, to the
eternal abodes where spirits dwelt under the guardian
ship of Osiris and Isis. It came in contact with the
Persian religion of light and darkness, a religion
destined for centuries to have a profound effect upon
the beliefs of Europe. It was brought even into the
presence of the strange ascetic religion of the sages of
India, a religion more intellectual than any then
existing in the world, except possibly that of some of
the sects of Greek philosophy.
It was, I think, the contact between the wild
religion, so to speak, which existed beneath the
polished and civilized surface of Hellenistic society.

THE BAPTISM OF ASIA 115
and the great and ancient faiths of Persia, Egypt, and
Asia Minor, which gave birth to the enthusiastic cults
of later Greece, the Isiac, Mithraic, and other religions,
which certainly belonged in some respects to the same
class as Christianity, and which were for centuries her
rivals in the provinces of the Eoman Empire.
Perhaps the most striking and essential feature of
all these religions was that they appealed not to the
community but to the individual. All the religions
which up to that time had held sway in Greece had
made their appeal not to the individual, but to the
clan or the city. "When a clan became a ruling caste,
or a city controlled an empire, the deity which be
longed to either might become national, like the
Assyrian Asshur or the Eoman Jupiter. But, prim
arily, it was ever the gens or tribe to which the
god appertained. He was the bond between the
various members, and stood for their ideal unity ; in
his worship their united personality found expression.
Thus there was no clear dividing line between religion
on the one side, and loyalty to one's relatives or one's
fellow-citizens on the other. An Athenian who
despised the festival of Athena, an Ephesian who did
not resort to the temple of the great goddess Artemis,
failed as much in patriotism as in religion. The man
who did not cultivate, at least with all outward
honour, the deity of his clan or family became an
outcast from the clan. In one sense it might be said
that the god was the property of the clan, in another
that the clan was the possession of the god, bound to
bring to him offerings at all stated seasons, dependent
upon him for aid against rivals and enemies.

ii6 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
In such a state of things there could be no spirit of
proselytism. Those who were adopted into the clan
were adopted into the religion of the clan, and took up
duties towards its divine patron. But the possession
of this deity was a privilege from which those outside
the clan were rigidly excluded. Their worship would
at once be offensive to the deity, and an invasion of
cherished prerogative. It would be like admitting
foreigners to the city franchise.
I recently heard it stated in the Oxford University
pulpit, by a learned preacher, that the Christian
religion was the first to step outside the city and the
clan and to appeal to man as man. This is a striking
instance of the partiality and patchiness in our
knowledge of antiquity : the statement is utterly in
correct. There was no more distinctive feature of the
later cults of Hellenism than the way in which they
made their appeal. Their propaganda was directed
not to cities and families, but to individuals. They
claimed women apart from their husbands, slaves apart
from their masters. They taught that each individual
had needs which they alone could satisfy ; that their
priests had power to impart to each the favour of the
deity, conferring certain privileges both in the present
and the future life. Their trains wandered through
the cities, setting up new shrines or using mere
temporary habitations, calling upon all to receive tbe
privileges which they had to bestow, and to enter into
communion with their saving deity. The fashion of
the appeal was not likely to attract the educated or the
fastidious. We may judge of it from Apuleius, and
from Demosthenes' attack on his rival Aeschines, who

THE BAPTISM OF ASIA 117
had once been mixed up with a travelling troupe of
worshippers of Sabazius. The priests were often
eunuchs, the priestesses scarcely to be distinguished
from witches. Their constant demand was for money,
without which nothing was to be had of the venial
officials. Tame serpents were carried by the leaders ;
barbarous music attracted the populace ; all kinds of
fanatic excesses marked the course of the cortege.
Philosophers held that their teaching had no bearing
upon conduct, and statesmen would gladly have done
away with them as interfering with the normal civic life.
Like our own Salvation Army, it was a wild outburst
of popular belief, a reaction against the tendency to
make religion merely formal as it was in the hands
of civic officials, or merely intellectual as it was with
the philosophers. The grafted branches of the tree of
religion had become sterile and atrophied ; therefore
vigorous though wild shoots were coming up from the
hidden roots. The ideas of primitive religion, embodied
in uncouth and extravagant forms, were surging up
from the lower strata of humanity ; and, in spite of
statesmen and poets and philosophers, the new cults
had a true relation to fact and reality, had a vital
connection with some of the primary data of religious
psychology. II
The first great truth which constituted, as it were,
their lifeblood, was the possibility, nay, the actuality,
of communion between God and man. Even the most
superstitious of the priestesses of Isis or the priests of
Cybele did not think that the help they had to bring

n8 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
came merely from their own powers and personalities.
Eather they claimed to be favoured instruments, chosen
mediators through whom the Divine favour could be
transmitted to men. They claimed monopolies, but
those monopolies rested on a spiritual, not a mere
human base. They put men in communication with
powers which were beyond and outside man. And in
that age this was much. In Homer the Greek deities
are represented as in continual contact with man,
rewarding and punishing, advising and directing,
leading and helping. After Homer they seemed to
recede ever further and further. In the Apolhne
oracles man could still ask counsel of Heaven. In the
Eleusinian mysteries he could still feel sympathy with
the divine influence which makes the corn grow in the
spring. But after Alexander the Great the Apolhne
oracles fell into decay; and the Eleusinian mysteries
were attacked by formalism until they fell under the
influence of the religious revival. So distant were the
gods of Hellas felt to be from the ordinary votary
that in the third century the custom sprang up of
diverting religious worship to the successful generals
who succeeded in carving out for themselves kingdoms
in those unquiet days. The degenerate Athenians sang
in an ode to Demetrius Poliorcetes, ' To thee we pray,
for other gods either are afar off, or do not exist, or
care nothing about us ; but thee we see before us, not
in wood or marble, but in real presence.'
Let anyone pass direct from this bankruptcy of the
classical religion of Greece to the last book of the
Metamorphoses of Apuleius, in which the hero Lucius
expresses in language of extreme fervency his devotion

THE BAPTISM OF .ASIA 119
to the goddess Isis, and he will see how different was
the spirit of the new belief from that of the old. Isis
had herself appeared in splendid form to Lucius in a
dream, and told him how, by sharing in her worship,
he might recover his human form which had been by
sorcery changed into that of an ass. Full of faith
in the goddess, in spite of his bestial form, Lucius
approaches the pomp of Isis, and humbly drawing
near to the priest, who had also had his warning in a
dream, he eats some of the roses which the priest
bore, and in a moment returns to his natural shape.
With fervent gratitude he prostrates himself at the
feet of the goddess, and vows a perpetual adoration.
I cannot here repeat the passage, interesting as it is.
Isis appears as one who, in the language of the
Athenians, is neither far off nor indifferent, but as
a present help in trouble; one remaining always in
communion with her votaries, and holding the keys
of happiness in the present Hie, and of a blissful
immortality beyond the grave.
What, then, were the boons which the less educated
classes of the great cities of Asia sought of Isis and
Sabazius and Mithras ? If we wish to put it in one
word, the best that we can choose is soteria, safety or
salvation. This salvation was regarded as at bottom a
liberation of the spirit from the bondage of the flesh by
various ways of mortification or inspiration. Among
other kinds of release they sought in the present life
health and immunity from disease. We may think of
the long search of Aelius Aristides, who went from
shrine to shrine seeking relief from maladies, some of
which were probably imaginary. In all ages faith-

120 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
healing goes on ; and when the schools of medicine arc
strongly materialist in tendency, by natural reaction
faith-healing comes more into vogue. In the history of
the cult of Aesculapius in Greece, we have a valuable
record of the progress of faith-healing in later Greece.
It was not until the Hellenistic age that Aesculapius
became an important person in the Greek Pantheon.
After that his boons are more and more in request ;
some of the places connected with his worship, such
as Epidaurus and Pergamon, became regular goals of
pilgrimage from other parts of Greece. The treat
ment in such shrines, based upon dreams and prayers,
was in part a sensible regimen, but also largely of a
faith - healing kind. And by degrees we see the
Divine Physician exalted, until he is sometimes spoken
of as on a level with Zeus and the Sun-God, as ruler
of the world which is unseen as well as of that which
appears. In inscriptions and dedications Aesculapius
is constantly spoken of as Soter, the Saviour ; and what
he was to the more conservative, that Isis and her
rivals were to the crowd. The priests sold spells and
incantations which gave back health to the diseased,
and secured for votaries success in all the transactions
of daily life.
But the main stress of the new cults bore not upon
the present life, but on that beyond the grave. Man
had come to think a great deal more about his chances
and his destinies in a future life. Everyone acquainted
with the great Attic literature, or familiar with the
beautiful Athenian tombs of the fifth and fourth
centuries B.C., knows how small a part in the thought
of the city which intellectually dominated Hellas was

THE BAPTISM OF ASIA 121
taken by any fears or hopes as to the life beyond the
grave. So long as life in Greece was thoroughly enjoy
able, surrounded by beautiful monuments of art, full
of splendid festivals, made interesting by a lively
participation in politics which was making history,
so long the future world did not loom large before
the pleasure-loving people. In the darker days of
dependence and depression which followed, men turned,
as under such circumstances men always do turn, from
the visible to the unseen world, and sought compensa
tion for the hardness and want of interest which
invaded their lives in hopes which went beyond the
tomb. Socrates, in Plato's Republic, speaks of the Orphic
prophets as guaranteeing to their followers a happy
arrival in the world of shades. To Plato this promise
is, of course, a mere imposture. But such guarantees
were in a later age eagerly sought, and not merely by the
poor and ignorant. The loneliness of the last journey,
its obsession by crowds of evil demons, its doubtful
termination, made men anxious to put themselves in
the hands of some saving deity, or some priest who
would guarantee his help in the hour of need and
secure a welcome from him in the world of shades.
The means to this end were much the same in all
the religions of salvation. First there was an initia
tion; the convert had to prove the reality of his
adhesion by going through some test or probation.
We are especially well informed in regard to the
initiation undergone by the worshippers of Mithras.-'
They had to pass through seven grades successively
1 Roscher's Lexikm., art. " Mithras," by F. Cumont.

122 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
before they could attain to the highest rank. At the
entrance to each grade they had to submit to tests of
various kinds, as to which we have the not altogether
satisfactory testimony of some early Christian writers,
such as Tertullian, who hated Mithraicism too bitterly
to be good witnesses in regard to it. For example,
Tertullian tells us that when a votary of Mithras
aspired to the rank of a miles or soldier, a wreath was
offered him with a sword between ; he had to throw it
from his head, and in future to regard Mithras as
his only crown. Tertullian also gives us an account
of what he calls the sacraments of Mithraicism —
of sprinklings with sacred water to remove moral
stains, of anointings with oil, and even of the solemn
partaking by the Mystae in common of consecrated
bread and water or wine, in memory of the banquet
which Mithras and the Sun had enjoyed together at
the end of their exploits performed for mankind.
Few things in history are more vexing than the
slightness of our knowledge of the Mithraic rehgion,
for so long the rival of Christianity, and so like it in
some of its external aspects, though probably very
different in tone and spirit. We know that the
Christian Church borrowed from the religion of
Mithras the sacred season of the turning back of the
sun in winter, and used it as the birthday of the
Founder of Christianity. But as to other mutual
borrowings of ceremony or belief of one religion from
the other, we know very little.
In several of the later cults of Greece there existed,
in one form or another, a sacred feast in which the
deity and his votary shared. The importance of the

THE BAPTISM OF ASIA 123
sacrifice of communion in early religion was first
clearly shown by Eobertson Smith, since whose time
it has become a commonplace with anthropologists.
By consuming together some chosen victim, under the
shadow of the spiritual presence of a hero or deity,
men were bound together into a religious society and
partook of a common life which flowed from the
invisible head through the members ; and communion
thus begun did not cease at death, but was continued
in the future life. This communion was the pledge
of that safety or salvation of which I have spoken as
the keynote of this group of religions.
Other religious ideas of the same range found
expression in the new cults, and other religious needs
were met by them. The desire of purity, whether
merely ceremonial, or a deeper purity of the heart,
was fully recognized by them, and no one was admitted
to the inner circles who had not sought purity in some
way recognized by the society. And as a result of
ceremonies of purification and sacraments of com
munion the votaries expected not merely to secure
the favour and help of a guardian power, but also to
learn secrets of the divine nature, which raised those
who knew them to a higher level than the crowd.
Purification, divine communion, a knowledge of sacred
things, all these were imparted to the members of the
mystic coteries.
In Eoman inscriptions one sometimes reads how such
and such a man was ' reborn to eternal life.' Naturally
a modern student might fancy that such inscriptions
were the work of Christians. Not at all. They
refer to the strange ceremony belonging to Phrygian

124 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
religion whereby a votary was sprinkled, or rather
steeped, in the blood of a slain bull, and from that
terrible bath arose to a new life. It is the extreme
realization of the idea of cleansing by blood, of a
piacular sacrifice, the transference by a recognized
ritual of life from one being to another, the taking
away of sin by a vicarious sacrifice. It is not to
be supposed that in these repulsive ceremonies of
Phrygia there was any deep-seated ethical element.
It is a long iind a slow process in history whereby
the ethical is developed out of, or attached to, those
ceremonies which spring out of the unconscious
tendencies of the human spirit. But there must
have been many devout seekers after God who never
came nearer to Him than in the bath of blood.
Ill
No one who in a historic spirit compared Christianity
with its early rivals could fail to see the enormous
differences between them, as well as certain points
of resemblance. In fact, our difficulty lies not in any
danger of mixing up Christianity with the crowd of
mystic religions, but rather in understanding how
such religions as those of Isis and Mithras could be
for a moment rivals to Christianity. They had no
historic founder, they had no fine sacred literature,
their moral level was by no means high. One is
disposed to think that they must have had merits
greater than the writers of the time allow us to see,
or perhaps their attractive power may in part have
consisted in this, that they did not involve, as did the

THE BAPTISM OF ASIA 125
acceptance of Christianity, a decided breach with the
past. We may well suppose that if Christianity had
fallen instead of triumphing in the struggle, it would
have been depicted to us in colours as little alluring
as those in which the figures of Isis and Mithras
appear amid the mists of history.
But things beautiful and things foul may belong to
one class, and have points of likeness one to the other.
While there was little direct borrowing on the part of
Christianity from rival religions, Christianity had to
satisfy the same religious feehngs and needs which
they had endeavoured to meet. And in meeting these
needs she found it necessary to depart in some measure
from the character which she had received from her
Founder, and to take another complexion. She could
only defeat her rivals by satisfying what was good and
legitimate in the religious needs of the people. That
she was able thus to change and grow, proved that she
was alive, and could adapt herself to her surroundings.
A simple use of the concordance will show that
in the Synoptic Gospels such words as salvation and
saviour scarcely occur except in quotations from the
Old Testament. In the Jewish Scriptures, indeed,
they are by no means infrequent ; and in these
Scriptures we may trace the steps whereby the terms
passed from a merely temporal meaning, from implying
deliverance from enemies or death, to a spiritual sig
nification. But the notion of salvation in the present
aud in the future life by mystic communion with the
Divine, belongs less to the religion of Israel than to
that of other and more contemplative races. And the
notion grows stronger in Christianity as it turns from

126 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
the Jews to the nations of Asia Minor, Syria, and
Europe. Among the Jews a stern and rigorous duahsm
between God and man is the prevalent view. Man
may obey God, may rejoice in God, may subordinate
his will to the Divine law, and may, by so doing, be
saved from sin and misery. The Jew would rise to
the full appreciation of the phrase, ' Our wills are ours
to subordinate them to thine.' But he would scarcely
appreciate the expression, ' Our wills are ours to muke
them thine.' The possible blending of the divine and
the human will, the development of the divine within
us, does not appear to belong to the sphere of Jewish
inspiration, at least in the age before the Jewish
religion was largely modified by that of surrounding
nations. But these ideas are embodied, in however
degraded and materialist a form, in the Pagan mystic
cults. When, directly after the departure of the Master,
the first disciples accepted His continued life as a con
stant bond of union between man and God, as a way
of approach to the Eternal, it is clear that the centre
of gravity was shifted from the rigorous monotheism of
Israel towards the ideas of mysticism. And although,
as I have already observed, the constant hostility
between Christianity and Paganism makes it very un
likely that the Christian leaders would consciously
borrow anything from cultus and rites which they
regarded as diabolically inspired, yet they developed,
for better and for worse, religious ideas and customs
which have a kinship with those of the heathen
mystics, a likeness of kind if not of origin.

THE BAPTISM OF ASIA 127
The Pauline phrases are so familiar to us that our
minds rest in them, and we do not care to compare
them with the phrases of other religions. And sayings
in the Fourth Gospel which belong to the same
mystical phase of belief are, by the Evangelist, in
accordance with the literary custom of the age, put in
the mouth of Jesus Himself. The great mass of
Christians, not unnaturally, take this attribution as
historic fact, and thus read mysticism even into the
parables of the Synoptists. In a sense there may be
mysticism in the Synoptic discourses; but it is
mysticism of a different kind from that which is to
be found in the words of St Paul and the Fourth
Evangelist. It was not possible that the life which
arose out of a relation to an unseen spiritual Lord
could arise so long as Jesus moved among His disciples.
The Evangelist himself seems to feel this, for he writes :
' Ye have heard how I said unto you, I go away, and
come again unto you. If ye loved me, ye would
rejoice, because I said, I go unto the Father.' The
coming again is not the visible second coming of which
the Synoptics speak so fully, but the coming in the
spirit to dwell with men. Once more the Evangelist
writes : ' I will not leave you orphans, I will come to
you ' ; ' Yet a little while and the world seeth me no
more ; but ye see me ; because I live, ye shall live
also.' Many of the sublime sayings which, in accord with
the literary practice of the time, the Evangelist puts
into the mouth of his Master, and which are the
charter of Christianity, can only be fully appreciated
if they are regarded as spoken of One present in the

128 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
spirit and not in the flesh. The phrase, ' I am the
light of the world,' is surely far more applicable to
the Saviour of the early Church than to the preacher
who confined his mission to Jerusalem and Galilee.
The saying, ' I am the living bread which came down
from heaven ; if any man eat of this bread, he shall
live for ever,' could only be understood, in an age when
the rites of mysticism were familiar to all, as an
allusion to a common meal in which the saving deity
is spiritually present. And so of other phrases.
And we may fairly ask, in the name of reason and
good sense, how the mystic relation between the Head
and the members, between the Vine and the branches
could possibly be established while the Head visibly
walked the earth, shared the wanderings, the hard
ships, the eating and drinking of His followers, and
discoursed daily to them on the things of the visible
world. Such relation is only possible to those who do
not see, but believe. It could not be combined with
earthly companionship ; but it took its place when
earthly companionship had come to an end.
Many parts of the Pauline teaching which deal
with baptism into Christ's death, and burial with Him
to rise to a new life, with salvation by the blood of
Christ ; the statements of St Paul that his life is in
Christ, that he is dead to the world but alive through
faith ; — these all belong to the theology of mysticism.
So does the saying in the Johannine Epistle that the
blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin, and the
phrase of the writer to the Hebrews, that Jesus Christ
' became the author of eternal salvation unto all them
that obey Him.' Indeed, in almost all parts of the

THE BAPTISM OF ASIA 129
New Testament, except the Synoptic Gospels, the
Epistle of James, and the Revelation, we find a mystic
substratum which sometimes comes to the surface.
We may especially trace the influence of the mystic
cults of later Greece, and of the frame of mind which
they produced, in a remarkable shifting of the centre
of gravity of Christianity, from the present life to that
beyond the grave. In the Synoptic Gospels there is
much about the second coming of the Son of Man to
judge the nations, but there is very little as to the
world beyond the grave : a few general phrases only,
such as ' life eternal ' and ' everlasting fire.' The whole
stress is laid on the coming of the Kingdom on earth,
and the relation of human souls to the divine. It
was but natural that, as the hope of the second coming
died away into the far future, and the reign of saints
on the earth became more and more dreamlike, the
thoughts of Christians became more concentrated on the
heavenly world where the Master dwelt and the mansions
which He had prepared there for His followers.
We must distinguish from Jewish apocalyptic hopes,
both the doctrine of the natural immortality of the
soul, which was due to the philosophy of Greece, and
the lore of the place of judgment in the future world,
the realms of bliss and of torture, which had indeed
found a place in most religions, but which essentially
and originally belonged to the mystic cults of Asia
and Egypt, of which in this lecture I am speaking.
Plato speaks of the Orphic lore of the future world,
and the pretensions of its votaries to secure a happy
reception there for their friends. And in Egypt, as
far back as history will carry us, the fate of souls in
9

I30 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
the world beyond death was one of the chief objects
of thought and preparation among the living.
By the discovery in recent years of the book called
the Apocalypse of Peter, it has been made clear by
what way the visions of heaven and hell which so
vividly stirred the imaginations of the Christians of the
third and fourth generations passed into the Church.
Directly, it would seem that they were taken over
from Orphism ; at least, the likeness between the
descriptions of the future world contained in the
Apocalypse of Peter and those of Orphic books is so
close that it is scarcely possible to doubt that there
was a close connection between them. We need not
trace back further the sources of the lore of the
future world in the beliefs of the peoples of Asia;
nor need we follow its history in the Christian Church
to its culmination in the poem of Dante. It is suffi
cient to insist on the main point that this lore was
one of the spoils taken by Christianity from the
mystic religions of Hellenism.
It was indeed eminently suited for conversion
to Christian purposes. If the Jewish apocalyptic
ideas could be baptized, as they are in the Johannine
Apocalypse, much more readily could baptism be
administered to ideas so other-worldly, so independent
of race and creed, as the beliefs in reward and punish
ment in a future life. By the Egyptians they had
been connected with ordinary civic morality; by the
Orphists they were brought into close relations with a
saving deity. The morality could be translated to a
higher level, and the saving deity could give way to
the Saviour new born into the world.

THE BAPTISM OF ASIA 131
Time would fail me if I tried to set forth all the
other beliefs which found their way into Christianity
by degrees from the same fountain of mystic religion.
Such notions as that the priests as a class formed a
means of approach by man to his deity, that as inter
cessors or mediators they could ensure the bestowal
on votaries of the Divine favour, the notion that the
body was the source of all evil, and had to be
tamed by self-mortification, the value of propitiatory
sacrifice, the importance of ceremonial ablutions, and
many other such beliefs, belong more or less to
all primitive religions ; but they were adapted to
Christianity by a previous passage through the more
developed religions of Asia. The debt of Christianity
in this direction is being more fully recognized year by
year ; and in such a debt there is nothing of which
any Christian need be ashamed. Of course, if we start
with the crude notion that Christianity is the only
good religion and all others vile and misleading, we
shall be shocked to hear of the passing into Christianity
of Pagan beliefs. But few who so think will have
gone with me thus far. From the first I have tried to
represent Christianity, not as a system revealed entire,
but as a principle of life and growth, and nowhere is
the absorbing power of life more clearly shown than in
the relations of Christianity to its early rivals of the
Hellenistic age. IV
When we study the Christianity of the first age, as
it is brought before us in the history of the Acts and
in the Apostolic Epistles, we find already established

132 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
in the Church certain rites, which had an important
and a clearly defined meaning to believers. These
rites were, in particular, three : baptism, the laying on
of hands, and the Lord's Supper. The origin of all of
these is obscure, but the meaning which attached to
them is not doubtful. Baptism was specially connected
with the washing away of sins and the beginning of a
new and higher life. By the laying on of hands the
spirit of Christ was imparted by the Apostles to their
converts. In the Lord's Supper all had communion
with their risen and glorified Lord, and became par
takers of the heavenly life.
Baptism was probably taken over into the Church
from the followers of John the Baptist. We have no
satisfactory proof that in the lifetime of the Master
those who intended to follow Him were admitted by
the rite of baptism. The only passage in the Gospels
which seems to imply this is John iv. 2, where it is
stated that the disciples of Jesus baptized largely, but
not Himself, and this passage cannot be taken as a
good historic authority. The command to baptize all
nations, with which Matthew and Mark end, is also
open to doubt, for it probably reflects the inspired
mind of the early Church and is not strictly a
narrative of events. But however the custom first
came in, it played a part of extraordinary importance
in the Church, of which it became, as it were, the portal.
Those who had been baptized into the name of Jesus
Christ became a visible community with mutual ties,
the germ of the future Church.
It is not represented in our documents that the
laying on^of hands was ever enjoined by the Founder.

THE BAPTISM OF ASIA 133
It seems to have been a way sanctioned in Oriental,
and especially Jewish custom, for blessing a younger or
less dignified person. The history of Mesmerism in
recent times shows with sufficient clearness that the
hand is an admirable instrument for conveying emotion
or volition.
The Lord's Supper is mentioned alike by the
Synoptists and St Paul. I need not here repeat the
examination which I have made in another work^ of
the very remarkable historic difficulties which cleave to
the view that Jesus just before His departure instituted
the rite in perpetuity. It must be confessed that any
other theory as to the way in which it was adopted by
the Church lies, perhaps, under equal difficulties.
But that which I have at present to insist upon is
not a matter of origin, but of use and meaning.
Whether baptism and the Lord's Supper were adapted
from Jewish usage by the express command of the
Founder, or were by the early Church taken from some
other source, is doubtful. In any case, they gained
a meaning which they could not have easily acquired
apart from the prevalence of certain religious ideas
and beliefs in the minds of the first Gentile converts.
Unless the ideas of initiatory ceremonies as the portal
of a religious society, and of the sacrifice of communion
as a means of union with a saving deity had already
been widely spread, especially in Asia Minor and
Syria, the countries of the earliest Christian propaganda,
the history of those institutions, would have been very
different from what it was. It was in the Gentile
Churches founded by St Paul that we find the full
' Exploratio Evangelica, oh. xxxvi.

134 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
meaning attached to them ; and it was reserved for
St Paul himself to state for the first time their mystic
value and import. As St Paul was the champion of
the admission of Gentiles to perfect equality in the
new community, so he baptized into Christ some of
the most valuable and deep-seated of religious ideas,
attaching them to ceremonies which, whencesoever
derived, were taking a firm root in the Church. The
Gospel of St Paul was essentially a gospel of that
soteria or salvation which was being recognized as the
great religious need of men. But in the place of
Zeus the Saviour, of .<Esculapius, or Mithras, he set
Christ risen and exalted. Thus he wrested from the
heathen one of the most effective of their weapons,
and raised the idea of salvation by so much as the
Christ of the Church was higher than the deities of
the pagan sects. And the value of ideas, as of man
himself, must be judged, not by their origin, but by
that to which they have power to attain.
It is always difficult, sometimes impossible, to trace
any actual line of connection between the existence
of religious ideas in the various heathen cults and
their growth in the Christian community. That any
borrowing, direct or conscious, took place is very
unlikely. The hostility between Christianity and
the rival beliefs was so keen and bitter that it would
not stoop to borrow from them. The paths of ideas
are in all ages too deep and indirect to be searched
out. In some cases a hint derived from a Pagan cult
might work unconsciously. The great point is that
the soil was prepared, and a seed falling from any
quarter would rapidly take root and flourish. A

THE BAPTISM OF ASIA 135
custom unconsciously followed, a dream or vision
which appeared to a Christian teacher, a mystical
interpretation of a text of Scripture : any of these
causes might be the origin of a movement. I would
even venture further, and say that the realm of spirit
is one, and influences which move in it often pass
without word or communication, save that between
spirit and spirit. The vast sea of the unconscious,
which lies beneath human consciousness, is agitated
by storms of which the results appear unexpectedly
on the surface, so that often effects appear to have no
cause, and movements pass like an epidemic from soul
to soul. Let us always keep apart the question of origins
in the Church from that of inspiration. What the
Christian life is and has been in the world, we know
or can know ; the source of the materials which she
chose to adopt, to build into her scheme, is another
matter. Their source may often have been humble,
sometimes heathen, but that does not prevent them
from having had a useful part in the life of
Christianity. It seems to me that one cannot understand history
unless one traces in it an unconscious adaptation to
ends not yet revealed. Even in biology, according to
many eminent biologists, we may see the powers of life
working in men and animals to ends of which they are
quite unconscious. The wing of a bird was developed
through long ages, during which it was useless to the
creature which possessed it until it came to its actual
purpose. The hand of the savage is too fine an
instrument for his rough uses, and his brain quite

136 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
unnecessarily large ; but both hand and brain find
their function as man grows toward civilization.
Something of the kind runs through history. And
thus in the growth and spread of popular superstitions,
if we may call them by so harsh a name, we may well
discern a gradual preparation for Christianity. Mithras
and Sabazius, no less than Judaism, served as peda
gogues to lead men to Christ. These religions stand
towards Christianity, to continue my biological com
parison, as the wing of a penguin stands towards that
of an eagle. And it is surely no slight on Christianity
to say that it met the blind longings of the Pagan
nations, and showed them a path towards which they
had been for long generations trying to feel their way.
The religious needs which were very imperfectly met
by the initiations and ceremonies and prayers of the
cults of the Pagan saving deities, found a complete
and permanent satisfaction from faith in an exalted
Christ. V
I have spoken of the christening of what was
outside early Christianity as taking place in history in
a double form : first, by a statement of it in really
human terms ; and second, by its domination by the
revelation of God in Jesus Christ. In the case of the
mystic tendencies of Hellenism, both of these changes
were needed. Their humanization was necessary
because, in spite of their essential subjectivity, there
yet clung to them much of sheer materialism. Many of
these cults were-, as I have observed, full of degrading
superstition. The salvation they brought was held

THE BAPTISM OF ASIA 137
to depend upon the performance of outward rite, not
on the change of will and heart which sometimes
but not always accompanied that rite. And this
materialism, though at first kept aloof by the spirit of
Christianity in the glow of its early fervour, made its
way in by slow degrees. For example, in the earliest
description which we have of the Lord's Supper, in the
letter of St Paul to the Corinthians, the rite appears
with as little of ritual as one can conceive. The
spirit in it is everything. We know how by degrees
it took on more and more of supernatural mechanical
efficacy, until we reach a mass of tales of miracles
wrought by the mere elements of the sacred com
munion. And the rite of baptism, which at first was
only administered to those who repented of sin and
professed the faith of Christ, was before long adr
ministered to children too young to know what faith
meant. I am not asserting that infant baptism is in
our day indefensible ; the present value of a rite is
always a different matter from its original purpose;
but, in its introduction, infant baptism may have been
a reversion towards materialism, and an abandonment
of the spirit of Christ.
But it was the second of the two Christian processes
for which there was most urgent need. For the idea
of deity which prevailed among the votaries of Sabazius
and Cybele was not only at a far lower level than
that of Greek philosophy, but it was at a lower level
than that of Greek poetry and art. The mystic cults
belonged to those who were without refined culture or
high ethical ideas; and it would be simply ludicrous
to place their conceptions of the divine on a level

138 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
with those even of the least instructed of the
Christians. He that was least in the new Kingdom
of Heaven had much to teach in this matter to the
mystagogue and his coterie.
It is, then, not merely the Christian spirit, but the
spirit traceable in the life of the Jesus of history,
which transformed the spirit of the mysteries by a
divine baptism. And, in spite of all their falling back,
there has probably never been within the limits of the
Christian Church any relapse into such foul super
stitions as those which roused the contempt of Plato
and the indignation of Clement.
As the adoption of the best of Judaism made
Christianity ethical, and as the inclusion of Hellenic
philosophy adapted it to the inteUeetuals, so the
infiltration of ideas from the mysteries adapted it to
the peasantry. The classes of the community who
are not intellectual or self-conscious usually have in
their unconscious tendencies a closer connection with
the past history of the race. They have religious
needs and dispositions of which they are unaware, but
which lie close to the centre of their being. The
dwellers in the country, the pagani, as the Eomans
called them, came over to Christianity but slowly ;
and when they came, they expected in the new religion
the satisfaction of needs which had been met by very
ancient cults.

LECTURE VI
THE BAPTISM OF EOME

Far more serious obstacles to the progress of Chris
tianity than were raised by the great cults of Greece
were offered by a kind of religion which lay at a lower
level, but was more closely connected with daily life
and the constitution of society. The further back we
go in human history the closer becomes the connec
tion between the organization of society and religion,
religion of such a kind as is recognized at that stage
of civilization. The full meaning of this connection is
very hard for us to realize ; partly because the ideas of
primitive religion seem to us strange and barbarous,
partly because we are accustomed to consider the
family relations as secular and standing in small need
of religious sanction, as full of duty and emotion, but
not closely related to any actual form of worship.
Even marriage, which is still in the more conservative
branches of the Church spoken of as a sacrament, is not
recognized as such by the great mass of any people.
Legislators would not now act upon such a supposition.

140 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
But at the time of the birth of Christianity no side
of religion had stronger practical force than that which
had to do with the life of the family. Among the
Eomans it was almost the only part of religion which
had not been flooded and obscured in the rush of in
coming Greek and Oriental cults. In Eoman houses
there was a little shrine where incense was offered to
Vesta and the Lares; and on the occasion of a
marriage or a birth, the spiritual powers which pro
tected the family had to be called in to give their
sanction, and to admit the fresh-coming wife or child
within the sacred circle of the home. It was much
the same in Greece also. At every banquet a libation
of wine was poured to the deities of the household ;
and the spirits of deceased ancestors were regarded as
closely concerned with all the doings of their descend
ants, and as requiring at stated seasons gifts of food
from those who survived.
And as the members of the family were united by
a common relation to the dead, so were families united
into clans by the veneration for a common ancestor
of the clan, real or fancied. Ancestral heroes guarded
each village and each field : an exchange of services
went on. The living brought to the shrine of the
hero offerings and veneration, and the hero in return
guarded the land and prevented it from passing into
the hands of strangers.
All this is strange to modern Europe ; but we have
only to turn to accounts of the life of India, China, or
Japan to find ideas parallel to the family worship of
the ancient world in full activity.
In particular, the valuable works of Mr Lafcadio

THE BAPTISM OF ROME 141
Hearn-' have exhibited to us the religion of the family
and the clan as a living force of inestimable power,
governing even in the smallest matters the daily life of
the people of Japan. ' It should be recognized,' he
writes,^ ' that no religion is more sincere, no faith
more touching than this domestic worship, which
regards the dead as continuing to form a part of the
household life, and needing still the affection and the
respect of their children and kindred. Originating in
those dim ages when fear was stronger than love, the
cult at last developed into a religion of affection ; and
this it yet remains. The belief that the dead need
affection, that to neglect them is a cruelty, that their
happiness depends upon duty, is a belief that has
almost cast out the primitive fear of their displeasure.
They are not thought of as dead: they are believed to
remain among those who loved them. Unseen they
guard the home, and watch over the welfare of its
inmates.' The belief in the manes of ancestors is more naive
and simple in Japan than it was in the great cities of
the Hellenistic world, but enough remained in the
latter to make it an important factor in life. It was
constantly kept in repair by the custom of feasts to
the dead, and the daily worship of the hearth. No
doubt this primitive worship was falling into decay
in Italy and Greece in the time of early Christianity.
Yet length of time had given it profound roots in the
heart of the people. It had survived the rise of
national deities and been mingled with their cults;
' Especially, Japan: an interpretation, 1904.
^ Japan, p. 52.

142 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
just as in Japan it has been apparently not destroyed,
but even strengthened and beautified by the invasion
of Buddhism, and now remains on friendly and peace
able terms with that noble religion.
How did Christianity deal with the religion of the
family and the clan ? Did the new faith act towards
it with unrelenting hostility ? or was something found
in it which could be preserved and consecrated ?
Such questions are not easy to answer, since they are
concerned with phenomena which the ambitious muse
of history passes by with contempt ; and we have to
recover the facts from chance allusions as best we can.
The modern history of Japan suggests that if the
religious base of family life had been as well pre
served and as potent in Greece and Eome as it still
is in Japan, there must have been a war to the death
between it and Christianity. The great Japanese
ruler, lyeyasu,^ of the seventeenth century, who was
determined to preserve the religious basis of Japanese
society, was tolerant to all religious except Christianity,
the professors of which he rigorously exterminated.
At the present day most Japanese find in the claims
of the Founder of Christianity to be preferred to father
and mother, an insuperable barrier to the acceptance
of Christianity. In the same way many of the saints
and martyrs of early Christianity had to choose
between the following of Christ and the adherence to
parents or family; whence many noted tragedies of
the Church. But since the religion of the family and
the home was in Greece and Asia in a decadent con
dition, it was not impossible for Christianity to make
' L. Hearn, Japan, p. 349.

THE BAPTISM OF ROME 143
terms with it, to take some part of it over and leave
the rest to decay.
Though the spiritual passion of Christianity might
easily find itself in conflict with organized family life,
yet some sides of that life at all events were from the
very first baptized into Christianity. The doctrine of
the Fatherhood of God seems to carry as a necessary
corollary the principle that earthly fathers should look
upon their position and duties in a more spiritual
light, and treat their sons as God treats His human
children, only, of course, with the difference of infinitely
less knowledge and authority. And as Jesus had con
secrated the filial relation by comparing human father
hood to that of God, so St Paul baptized the relation
of husband to wife by comparing it to the relation
between Christ and the Church.
We do not, however, in this way reach the relation
between the individual and the family or the clan,
which was in essence narrow and local, and could not
easily be brought into touch with Christianity. Here
the process of baptism took place at a later time,
and in a less complete degree. It was possible,
however, to baptize, at all events into the name of
Christ, the patron heroes of families, the tutelary
spirits of trades and corporations, and the like. The
Christian saint could easily and completely take the
place of the Pagan hero. Of such substitution we have
abundant instances : St Crispin became the patron
saint of tailors, St Hubert of huntsmen, and so on.
And though the saints could not well be regarded as
ancestors of clans, even in fancy, since so many of
them were celibates, yet locally saints or special

144 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
forms of the Madonna could establish a recognized
patronage, and become responsible for preserving lands
or cities from the hand of the enemy, from famine,
drought, and pestilence. In this case, at all events,
Christianity — not, of course, the Christianity of Jesus,
but that of the Eoman Empire — could easily meet
Paganism on its own ground, and adopt its ways..
The case was somewhat different in regard to the
worship of the dead; for here the phenomena were
not merely of cult, but of family feeling and affection.
To those who had been accustomed to feel their dead
near them, and to have frequent intercourse with
them by recognized channels, it was an insufficient
consolation if they were told to venerate the burial-
place of some saint or martyr for whom they had no
special affection. But the Catholic Church turned the
position by a stroke of great skill. If prayers must
not any longer be offered to deceased members of a
family, at all events prayers could be made for them :
prayers by which they might be released from the
pains of Purgatory, and admitted through the gates of
Paradise. The prayers for the dead acted well as a
practical substitute for the old family cultus, and
served to keep up the feeling that those who pass
away are not wholly lost to us, but still have the
claim of affection on our hearts, and may still be
benefited by self-denial and self-sacrifice on the part
of survivors. It may be thought that we have now come down
rather far both from the historic and the spiritual point
of view in church history, and are speaking of some of
the corruptions which Christianity suffered from con-

THE BAPTISM OF ROME 145
tact with Paganism rather than of any valuable elements
which she rescued from the wreck of ancient life.
No doubt the cultus of saints and martyrs was one of
the baser forms of the Christianity of the Eoman
Empire, and nothing tended more to materialize the
religion of the spirit, and to rivet the chains of
Eoman despotism that the doctrine of Purgatory. In
fact, in speaking of the relations of Christianity with
the religious basis of ancient society, before I speak
of its dealings with the ordinary civic society of
Greek and Eoman towns, I am to some extent trans
posing the order of events. Christianity grew up and
flourished in the towns long before it spread into
more primitive country regions ; and so it had to deal
with more advanced social institutions before it came
into contact with such as -were less advanced. I had
the option of following either the natural order of
development of ancient society, or the order of develop
ment of Christianity : and it matters very little which
of the two orders be accepted.
At the same time, in spite of all the evils and
abuses which arose in the Middle Ages from the
development of saint-worship and the doctrine of
Purgatory, we must not regard either of these as essen
tially bad, nor as destitute of elements of permanent
value. The worship of saints was but a primitive
and stereotyped form of that cultus of the good and
great men and women of the past which has been in
England too much neglected, but which is essential
to any really religious view of life. We should wish
not so much to set aside the saints of the Church as
to extend the list so as to include all those who
10

146 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
have lived well or nobly died on behalf of the race.
When Auguste Comte drew up his Positivist Calendar
he had a great and true idea ; but he also was defective
through want of breadth of culture and interest, and
he was unsuccessful in trying to include in a final
list the names of all who represent the highest
summits of human life.
And the idea of a communion of saints, of the unity
of life in families and nations through the ages, is
really an essential part of any working religion.
When the Eeformers rejected the doctrine of Purgatory
— which had been so mixed up with venality and
imposture that they could not help rejecting it —
and introduced the appalling doctrine that every
soul was at death destined for heaven or hell,
they strained human nature to the breaking point.
Such terribly stern doctrine may at the time have
been necessary to give resisting power to the Eeforma
tion ; but it may be doubted whether it has ever
been really accepted by the mass of Christians in any
country. And in our own day it is in a state of
complete decay, though it has not been easy in
England and America to find a working substitute for
it. But the rapid growth and wide success in
America of the religious bodies which profess a belief
in the ultimate salvation of all men, proves that what
the Church endeavoured to embody was an essential
part of religious belief. II
In another direction the influence of Eoman religion
told heavily upon the Christian Church. We must

THE BAPTISM OF ROME 147
always remember that the tales of the gods, which
are prominent in Virgil and Ovid, are mere borrow
ings from the unexhausted and perennial fountain
of Greek myth. As Virgil imitates the wanderings
of Odysseus and the deeds of prowess of Achilles in
his great poem, so he borrows the Homeric deities
with their loves and quarrels, their patronage and
caprices. And he borrows without belief. Nowhere
is the thesis that poetry is the ghost of dead religion
truer than in reference to the Latin poets: they
accept mythology merely as decorative ornament of a
tale or an ode, and do not expect their readers to take
it very seriously.
But it is not only the Eoman poets who were
attracted by the siren voice of Greek poetical
mythology. From the time when Greece first came
within the ken of the husbandmen of the Eoman
plain, those of them who had any sense of beauty
came under her sway. The Greek deities displaced
the vaguer and more primitive gods of Eome, not
only in state ceremonial but in all public and private
life. Temples arose to Apollo, Diana, and other gods,
and even when the name in use was a Latin name,
Diana or Juno, the deities really worshipped were
the Artemis and Hera of the Greeks. Festivals were
transferred from the local deities to the incoming
Pantheon ; and the Sibylline books, of Greek origin,
were regarded as the great authorities in matters of
eult and faith.
The reason of this was the want of imagination,
and the intellectual barrenness, of the old Eoman
religion. It so little exercised the intelligence, the

148 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
imagination, the emotions of the people, that it was
easily thrust into the background by the splendid
mythology of Greece. And yet we know that the
practices, the actual ritual, attaching to the Eoman
religion went on steadily, even to the later days of
the Empire. The safety of the State was supposed
to be involved in the exact performance on stated
occasions of certain rites handed down from antiquity.
These rites were performed by the civil magistrates, and
were a regular part of their duties. The dress which
these officials were to wear, the motions of their hands,
the formulae- — often scarcely intelhgible — which they
were to repeat, were all prescribed in the most rigid
manner. No inaccuracy was tolerated. But it was
a matter of indifference whether the officiating magis
trate believed in the deities to whom he was sacrificing.
The post of Pontifex Maximus, the headship of Eoman
religion, was held by such men as Sulla and Caesar, who
were complete sceptics. It is a strange state of things,
which we find it not easy to realise, when the mind,
the heart, the faith were eliminated from religion,
but postures and dress and formulae were retained
with unquestioning conservatism.
It is obvious what an astounding contrast this kind
of religion presented to primitive Christianity. And
so long as Christianity was an enthusiasm, it would
seem impossible that Eoman ritual could have any
influence upon it. Christianity was in its very essence
the negation of mere formality, the assertion of the
religion of the spirit. Yet there came a time — when
the Christian religion was established, and its head
quarters fixed at Eome — when the old Eoman official

THE BAPTISM OF ROME 149
nobility, the descendants of consuls and pontiffs, began
to have influence in the Church ; and they actually
succeeded in bringing into it something of their ancestral
conservatism of ritual apart from belief. The customs
of service and sacrament which had grown up to meet
the needs of the Church could be treated as the
Eoman state-ritual had been treated, and regarded as
more important than the beliefs in which they had
taken their rise.
Clearly it was not possible to baptize ritual into
Christ in any true sense of the phrase. Christian
baptism could not be given to a hfeless corpse, nor
could it be given to dead works and unmeaning
formulae. But for all that, the attachment of value
to ritual, to traditional words and motions and clothes,
could and did make its way into Christianity. There
is no conservatism like religious conservatism for
potency. And the customs of ritual, which had been
a part of public life and of the mental furniture of
the Eoman people, for untold generations, could not
evaporate without leaving a residuum.
It may be thought that the Eoman religion was too
local and too peculiar a cult to greatly affect rising
Christianity. But we must, in the first place, remember
how great has been in all ages the influence exercised
on Christianity by Eome, the head of government, the
centre of the civilized world. And in the second place
we must observe that the tendency to the establishment
of a sacrosanct ritual, though most strongly marked at
Eome, was a feature in almost all early cults ; and, in
fact, it has roots which go back far into the dim pre
historic life of the race. Eitual is an important part

I50 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
of all primitive religion. It was the extreme natural
conservatism of the Eomans which preserved among
them to a late time the respect for outward observance
which is so prominent among savage tribes.
In any case there can be no doubt that we are
speaking of a process which really took place. As
materialism crept into the sacraments through the
influence of Asia, so materialism crept into ritual
through Eoman influence. How deeply it became
rooted there we know very well. Anyone who even
now attends High Mass at some continental cathedral
can see how small is the part played in the service by
intelligence or belief, and how great the part played
by vestments, by ritual, by processions. This was even
more the case in the earlier, though of course not the
earliest, ages of the Church. It is the result of what
may be termed a process of ossification, as to which I
shall say more in the next lecture. Then, as now,
there might be found among the worshippers some
finer souls to whom the ceremony was but an elaborate
symbolism to raise the imagination to a higher plane ;
but then, as now, the masses did not look far beyond
the visible, nor hear more than met the ear.
Ill
I have next to speak of what is not precisely
religious, but yet is developed out of religion, and
dependent upon it for life and warmth, the ordinary
civic life of the people who dwelt in the cities of the
countries bordering on the Mediterranean, at the
time of the rise of the Christian faith. We must
remember that Christianity started as an enthusiasm, a

THE BAPTISM OF ROME 151
passion, without definite relations to the civil world
and to practical life. And the notion, so widely
spread among the early disciples, that the second
coming of their Lord was at hand, aud that they were
bound to stand ready for His advent, tended strongly
to divorce them from the ordinary everyday life of the
world. In the teaching of the Master, so far as it is
preserved to us, we have little which bears upon the
daily life of the family, the township, the nation. But
if Christianity was to go on as a living religion in the
world, it must needs take up some attitude in regard
to the simple and unostentatious duties of the life
of the master of the family, the landowner, the
merchant, the State official It is quite natural that
so long as the first passion of Christianity lasted, we
should hear but little of the ordinary civic background
against which the great drama of the salvation of the
world was being played. We are apt to suppose that
the early Christians were all unworldly enthusiasts,
ready to spend and to be spent for Christ. But this
could not have been the case. Even in the Gospels
we read of a young man who had great possessions
and was unwilling to give them up for the mission
life. And, from the Acts, it is clear that those who
cast in their lot with Christianity often went on with
their civic duties and continued the family life ; such
were the Centurion Cornelius, Philemon the friend of
Paul, and many others. I speak of private and family
life, not of that which was public and official. For
there was beyond doubt some foundation for the
general opinion that the Christians were deficient in
their discharge of duties to the State. This was the

152 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
defect of their qualities, and a cause of much of the
persecution which they endured. One cannot justify
them, except by saying that human nature is a one
sided thing, and that when men's minds are strongly
bent on the introduction of reforms in one direction,
defects in another direction escape notice.
In the early age of Christianity, just as among
ourselves, and indeed at all periods of history, the life
of States could not go on without the presence of a
mass of respectable and ordinary citizens, faithful to
the daily duties of life, not slothful in business, and
bringing up families to take their place and to carry
on the business of material civilization. The life of
such citizens did not require a complete renovation ;
but it did require a baptism, that the old duties might
be still discharged, but discharged in a new spirit, and
with a closer reliance on the divine aid which is ever
ready for those who seek it even for the performance
of the most trivial duties of lite.
We are apt to overlook this phase of early
Christianity. And many people may imagine that
there is truth in what we hear from the pulpit so
often, that the whole heathen world was sunk in vice
and corruption and had no sound elements in it.
This was far from being the case.
As St Paul poured contempt upon Greek philosophy
regarded as a means of attaining to knowledge of
God, so, with ancestral prejudice, he exaggerated the
immorality of the Graeco-Eoman world. No doubt,
in cities of commerce and pleasure like Corinth and
Ephesus, there were — and not only in the lowest classes
of the population — multitudes who lived a life of filth.

THE BAPTISM OF ROME 153
physical and moral, sunk in all the vices to which
a crowded city life too easily leads men. To such
might well apply the language used by the Apostle in
some of his epistles, ' Filled with all unrighteousness,
fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness ;
full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity.' I
need not go on with the citation. Everyone will
remember the foul catalogues of vices which come
again and again as a foil to the descriptions of the
Christian virtues. Just in such a way we should
expect a city-missionary or an officer in the Salvation
Army, accustomed to pioneer work in the slums of
our great cities, to speak of the unconverted of the
classes with whom he comes in contact.
The misfortune is that the writings of St Paul have
been invested with an infallibility which he would
have been the last to claim, or rather the first
energetically to repudiate. And his indignant out
bursts of disgust at the low level of the morality
which he found in the byways of the cities and the
workshops of the slaves have been taken for an
accurate description of the state of manners in the
Graeco-Eoman world. Our divines have not always
had enough of the spirit of historic criticism to judge
that discount must be taken from the statements of
great religious reformers as to the condition of those
whom they would reform. And they have not usually
been brought into contact with the class of facts which
would have formed a valuable means of correction,
namely, a knowledge of the social condition of the
Mediterranean world under the early Eoman emperors.
The writers of the period with whom educated men

154 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
have been familiar are Tacitus and Juvenal. Tacitus,
of course, conveys to us a profound impression of the
vices and follies of the ruling class at Eome at the
time of the rise of Christianity. But Tacitus is, above
all things, an artist and stylist, who lays on his colours
to produce a Eembrandt-like effect of strong light and
shade. And Juvenal is even less careful of measure.
No doubt, when Christianity came into the world,
there was something to justify both Tacitus and St
Paul. In the high aristocracy of Eome, the vices
which come of unbridled power were rife — sensuality,
effeminacy, cruelty ; though there were scattered
through the class men like Paetus, Galba, Agricola,
whose virtues were as conspicuous as the vices of their
colleagues. And there was a debased mob in the great
cities. But in every country the uppermost and the
lowest strata of society, the froth and the dregs, are
the most corrupt. Between the two there was a great
population of people, neither over-wealthy nor over-
poor, who attained a very respectable rank of decency
and honour. It is in fact well known that the period
which elapsed between Augustus and Commodus was
a period in which the general level of morality stood
high : men in general lived quiet, orderly, and
reputable lives. This is well known to be the verdict
of Gibbon, and it is the verdict of sound historic
criticism.^ There was indeed a time, at the end of
the Eoman Eepublic, when the constitution of society
had fallen sadly to pieces, a time when the Eomans
had not yet realized their obligations towards the
' Such recent works as Mr Dill's Roman Society from Nero to Marcus
Aurelius, or Mr Oakesmith's Religion of Plutarch, make this clear.

THE BAPTISM OF ROME 155
nations which they had subdued, and those nations,
degraded by conquest, had lost the national feeling
and self-respect which were the safeguards of their
morality. But the great reforms of Augustus bore
abundant fruit. He not only succeeded in inspiring
the Eoman, officials with a sense of responsibility, but
he was even able to introduce a loyalty to Eome and
Caesar which took in some measure the place of the
decaying civic religions. The external face of society
must have speedily undergone a marked improvement.
IV
And with the power of Eoman citizenship went
the elevating power of the later Greek philosophy,
especially of Stoicism, one of the noblest nurses of
manly spirit which the world has ever seen. The
notion which Macaulay in his Essay on Bacon enforces
with all the power of his rhetoric that the Greek
philosophers were mere splitters of hairs and archi
tects of words, who did nothing for practical life, is as
false as any view could be. In any intellectual move
ment originating in Greece, there would be sure to be
too much of speculation, too much of rhetoric, too
great reliance on words, and too little respect for fact.
Nevertheless, it would not be easy to exaggerate the
permanent good done to the human spirit by the suc
cessive schools of Greek philosophy. Nor did their
working reach only the few. Of course, none but
those who had leisure and a liking for intellectual
exercise could attain any rank in philosophy. In
every country, the governing tendencies of thought are
worked out by the few, followed only at second or

156 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
third hand by the many. But the many, not having
ideas of their own, are always willing to follow the
lead of those whom, either on intellectual or moral
grounds, they find worthy of being followed. Thus
Greek philosophy, like all other phases of Greek
culture, slowly filtered down from stratum to stratum
of the population. To many of the aspects of the
dying civic religions, philosophy was the only heir ;
and those aspects were intellectually the highest.
The followers of the new ecstatic cults might seek
the fulfilment of their wishes in this life, and the
safety of their souls in the life to come, in the com
munion with some saving deity. Great political
value attached to the worship of Eome and Augustus.
But those who sought a reasonable motive for their
actions, who wished to bring their lives into a state
of harmony with the world around them, and the
divine voice within them, could have recourse only to
Greek philosophy, and must seek among those who
wore the cloak of the professed Stoic or Academic for
some one to help them to subordinate their unruly
impulses to the law of a higher life.
A master in these matters, Dr E. Caird, has in a
recent work^ traced the way in which the Greek
mind and conscience worked its way in the course of
nearly a thousand years to a reasonable theology, a
lofty monotheism, which is in all essentials the same
as the monotheism held by cultivated men in our own
days, though of course the glow, the religious passion
of Christianity is absent. On the ethical side Stoicism,
on the speculative side Neoplatonism, are the best
' Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers.

THE BAPTISM OF ROME 157
religious achievements of the Greek spirit. One may
often hear it said that Stoicism and Neoplatonism re
present the highest that the unaided intellect of man
can achieve in feeling after God. The unaided intellect
of man ! Just as if man, cut off from the daily and
hourly inspiration of the divine spirit, were capable of
drawing near to God in any way. Without the help
of God we can never learn anything at all of His
nature, or take a step in the way of the higher divine
life. Even Cicero asserts that without divine
inspiration no man can becoine really great. It
was the aid of the spirit of God vouchsafed to
man which brought Stoicism and Neoplatonism to so
high a perfection that it is difficult to say that the
followers of those schools stood on a lower religious
level than any save the highest of those teachers who
professed the Christian name. But Stoicism and
Neoplatonism, it will be answered, had no future ;
they were destined to be destroyed and superseded by
the rising religion of Christ. Here again we have
but a small fraction of the truth. It is true that the
Pagan forms of theology and religion disappeared in
the general and vast wreck of ancient civilization,
while the germs of a new order were slowly developed.
But even at the time, some of the best of the ethical
and religious ideas of dying Paganism were taken over
by Christianity and baptized into the new faith ; and
at the time of the Eenascence the thought and the
beliefs of the Greek philosophers rose again in some
circles, and have since, at times, had their revenge
on conquering Christianity. Even in the present day,
it may be said of many of our greatest writers, Goethe,

iS8 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
Taine, Matthew Arnold, and many others, that they
have on the whole a closer intellectual relationship
to Epiotetus, Plotinus, Plutarch, than to the great
Christian Fathers who were the contemporaries of
those illustrious teachers. In this matter, as in so
many religious views, we must remember the advice
of Dr Johnson, and clear our minds of cant.
What is the meaning of the fact that Seneca, the
Eoman philosopher, seemed to the Christians so much
one of themselves that they believed in a long
correspondence between him and St Paul, and Jerome
mentions him in the list of Christian writers ? In
fact, between the writings of Seneca and the Epistles
of St Paul there is a remarkable parallelism in many
respects. Dr Lightfoot of Durham has drawn out the
comparison in a very striking way. Seneca and Paul
were contemporaries at Eome, but few now suppose
that they ever came into actual contact. Neither can
have directly borrowed from the other ; but both take
from the same source the divine revelation given by
God to the thinkers and moralists of the early Eoman
imperial age, which found its readiest expression in
the words of the philosophers of the Stoic schools, but
which must needs also make its way into Christianity.
In Paul's case there had been special opportunities for
studying the ethics of Stoicism, for his youth had
been passed at Tarsus, where was an actual Stoic
school. And we must remember that the Greek
philosophic teachers did not hide themselves in obscure
nooks, but disputed daily in the market-place. Their
views, as well as their persons, must have been well
known to all citizens. The young Saul, as he wandered

THE BAPTISM OF ROME 159
through the streets, must often and often have heard
eloquent tongues expounding the doctrines of Stoicism,
and however Jewish prejudice may have stopped his
ears, the words may yet have found a fitting soil in
his heart, and borne fruit. Zeno, the founder of
Stoicism, was of Semitic extraction ; and it may fairly
be said that Stoicism and Christianity comprised some
of the same elements, though differently mixed.
Christianity took over from the Stoics, and baptized
into Christ, one idea of most far-reaching importance,
the idea of a common humanity. The value of a man
as such, the relationship of all men one to another, are
tenets which lie on the surface of such Stoic writings
as those of Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus. And men
are related to one another as being all sons of God.
' He who has learned,' writes Epictetus,^ ' that the
greatest and supreme and the most comprehensive
community is that which is composed of men and God,
why should not such a man call himself a citizen of
the world, why not a son of God, and why should he
be afraid of anything which happens among men ? '
Nor were such sentiments confined to the great
philosophers. The Eoman audience enthusiastically
applauded the verse of the comedian Terence : ' I am a
man; I esteem nothing human foreign to me.' At
first sight one may even doubt whether such broad and
noble humanism needed anything from the Christian
spirit. Yet it did need something : the feeling of the
close relation of man to his Father in Heaven, and the
love of the Father for man. The sentiments of the
Stoics needed to be grafted on to the stem of a living
' Trans. Long, p. 30. I have omitted part of the passage.

i6o THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
and working Church. The monotheism of the Stoics
and the monotheism of the Jews had to be united
by the living bond of the Christian union, and each
placed on a higher level of faith and hope. From the
first, Christianity possessed the potentiality of an
universal religion. And in the parable of the good
Samaritan, recorded by Luke, we find the enthusiasm
of humanity expressed in memorable form. But it
took time before the new religion grew to the height
of its possibilities, before the profound and religious
view of man as man which we can trace in the
utterances of the Founder was the recognized basis
of the Christian society.
Nor did Stoicism stand alone. In the days of
Julius Caesar and of Augustus every educated man fell
strongly under the influence of many phases of current
philosophic teaching. The modern scholar most
readily appreciates the character of this teaching from
reading the moral works of Cicero. At first its ex
tremely rhetorical character unfavourably impresses
us, until we consider that this rhetorical character, an
extreme care for the form, even at the expense of the
substance, is an inevitable characteristic of all Greek
literature, and even of Greek art. The Greeks were
always, like the French of our own time, so intent
upon saying things well, that they would more readily
forgive jejuneness and poverty of thought than inele
gance in expression. In all this, Cicero and the
Eomans were their apt pupils. But when one has
passed beyond this first impression, one realizes what
a high level of urbanity, of patriotism, of conscious
pursuit of high ideals, is maintained in the philosophic

THE BAPTISM OF ROME i6i
discussions of Cicero and his friends. They appear
not only as cultivated men, but as high-minded and
almost Christian gentlemen.
My purpose is not to show that the Pagan world
had no great need of Christianity. The whole object
of these lectures is to prove the contrary ; and the
verdict passed by fact and history is one which cannot
be gainsaid. All that I wish to maintain is that
much admirable material existed for appropriation by
Christianity. The need of Christian baptism existed,
not only in case of the classes sunk in vice and misery,
but in case of those which lived an openly respectable
and virtuous life. But there was not a need for a
complete change in daily life, such as would have been
conspicuous to the world.
The baptism of Graeco-Eoman civic society was a
gradual process. It was begun by St Paul, who, as
Professor Eamsay has insisted, was proud of his
Eoman citizenship. He consecrated all life by his
principle, ' Whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of
God.' In place of the mere respect for custom, or
desire for the esteem of friends and neighbours, he
puts a consciousness of the presence of God, and of
His care for all the deeds of daily life. Here, surely,
we have the essential inwardness of Christianity.
Although Paul expected to live to see the second
coming of his Master, yet he had no scorn for the
duties of the father, the husband, and the tradesman.
His view is directed beyond the visible act to the
inner spirit. And, like his Master, he makes a right
relation to the will of God the sum of virtue and the
guiding principle of life. II

i62 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
There is no part of the teaching of St Paul which
is more full of the essential spirit of Christianity than
that which bears upon the sanctification of daily life.
Even in eating and drinking, the Christian was to do
all to the glory of God. If he was called being a
slave, his servile condition need be no hindrance to
the life of the spirit ; he was to' show his conversion
by abandoning eye-service and man-pleasing, and
acting as in the presence of God. He was to be
diligent in his secular business, but at the same time
full of Christian fervour. He was to labour diligently,
in order that he might be able to help his poorer
brethren, since such help when given to the deserving
is a sacrifice well-pleasing to God.
If we read these precepts and exhortations with
discernment, we shall see that they are not at all
applicable in a diseased, dishonest, corrupt state of
civil society. St Paul does not lay down, as some
members of the Christian Social Union in our day
assert, that the whole commercial system is out of
joint and needs renovation on fresh principles. He
seems to think that family life and trade and civic
business are in a fairly healthy condition : it is that
which is within which needs cleansing — motive, will,
and purpose, the hejirt out of which are the issues
of life. St Paul feels that everything in human
nature develops from within ; that when the grace of
God works in conscience and feeling it will turn what
is trivial and mechanical in daily life, what we feel
to be necessary rather than good or bad, into means
for showing in the world the glory of God, and
exhibiting His will working amid human surroundings.

THE BAPTISM OF ROME 163
The lofty line of Christian duty sketched out by
St Paul was not in all respects followed by his
successors. We know that the Eoman Government
from time to time, in some degree, though not at all
in the degree usually imagined, persecuted the
Christians as bad citizens and dangerous to the State.
How far the Government was justified in this view
I cannot now inquire. In the early history of
Christianity there are many turns and tendencies,
some leading to good and some to evil. I must be
content to observe that at all periods there must
have been a mass of Eoman citizens who fully per
formed their duties as such, and yet were good and
loyal followers of Christ, though they may not have
been among the most prominent members of the
Church. Though the Church in most periods has been 1,oo
ready to give up the ordinary civil life as beneath
the level of true Christianity, yet from time to time
efforts have been made within the pale of Christianity
to consecrate it afresh. One of the most notable of
these, at which I can but glance in passing, is the
formation of the third or lay order of Franciscans, an
order of men and women who, while remaining in
civic and family life, should yet devote themselves to
the cause of their society. V
The civic and domestic virtues of the Eomans were
after all but a phase of the sense of justice and law,
of rights and corresponding duties, which marked out
the Eoman people among all the nations of antiquity,

i64 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
and which made the Eoman legal system the basis
on which the stability of society has ever since
been built. Sir Henry Maine was among the first
to enforce the view, which in recent years has been
generally accepted, that it was the stable and solid
foundation of Eoman law which for the first time in
the history of mankind made a barrier which no
conquest by invading tribes could overthrow; on
which they were compelled to erect whatever civic
construction they might find necessary to secure the
countries of Europe from anarchy and senseless blood
shed. It is easily to be understood that between the
religion of the New Testament and the political and
_^ocial fabric of the Eoman Empire there were few
points of contact. The Founder of Christianity was
willing to render to Caesar what was Caesar's ; but His
Kingdom was not of this world; His legislation
applied to a region beyond the sway of all-powerful
Eome. And St Paul, though proud of the honour of
being a Eoman citizen, and always recommending
submission to existing political government, looks
upon that government as something wholly outside
his mission. It was not, indeed, until Christianity
became the religion of the Empire that it came into
close contact with the political institutions and the
legal system of that Empire. Still later, when all
that remained of the Eoman system in the West was
the civil institutions of Eome and the Christian
religion, which stood together in face of the loosely
organized but individually powerful Teutons, the
institutions and the religion were driven into closer

THE BAPTISM OF ROME 165
and closer contact. The Pope in Italy succeeded the
Emperor, and the Bishop took the place of the
magistrate, subject to the predominant power of the
invading kings. The Church preserved in Europe
the Canon Law, erected on a Eoman basis, and of
the greatest importance to the development of the
northern nations.
But that which was the chief gift of Eome to the
world has been set at naught by Christianity. I
speak of the Eoman spirit of patriotism, the intense
feeling of the early statesmen and soldiers of the
Eepublic that they belonged not to themselves, but to
Eome, for whom, as their mother, they were willing
to spend and be spent, to devote not only all their
goods, but every drop of their blood. This splendid
civic patriotism was, of course, not peculiar to Eome ;
in Greece the Spartans had given a memorable and
immortal example of it. But it was certainly the
life-blood of Eome. Christianity, rising in an age
when imperialism had succeeded the narrower patriot
ism, never came into contact with the latter in its
full freshness and force. Had it done so, it may be
doubted how far it would have regarded city-feeling
as a thing to be cherished and perpetuated. Christi
anity appealed to the individual, and proclaimed high
duties to man as man. The intermediate loyalties to
a clan, a city, a nation, it did not in the same way
favour. Whether there be any final irreconcilability
between these duties and the essential spirit of
Christianity is a question not only of the past but
one of great importance at the present time, since
in many countries — Italy, France, Austria, America

i66 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
— we see a keen collision between the power of the
Eoman Church and that of national feeling and
aspiration. It is by no means, as Eomanists often
think, a clashing between the spiritual and the
material, but rather between two spiritual forces,
Catholicism and Nationality. We watch this conflict
with the utmost interest ; but its final issue is yet
hidden in the clouds.
It must be remembered that just as Christianity
never came in touch with the true Hellas, so it
never came in touch with the true Eome, the noble
Eome of the Eepublic, the Eome which overthrew
Pyrrhus and Hannibal, and welded Italy into a great
power. The Eome of early Christianity was quite
other, the head of a vast empire. The special Eoman
virtues were largely decayed. What we have to deal
with in modern days is neither duty to a city nor
loyalty to an universal empire, but the feeling of
patriotism to a particular country. No feature of our
times is more marked than the revival on all sides of
strong national feeling, which perhaps has affected
England less than other nations because we are more
nearly than other nations in the cosmopoUtan position
of ancient Eome. But it is certain that in Europe
and in America Christianity will have to make fresh
terms with the spirit of nationality, so little appre
ciated by the Papal Curia.

LECTURE VII
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
Nothing is a surer indication of life than the power
of meeting new conditions. And in the evolution of
plants and animals, and to a far higher extent in
human evolution, we find a further adaptation, an
adaptation to conditions which are yet in the future.
This fact is one of the best and surest proofs that
purpose and intelligence lie at the roots of the universe.
Nothing in the history of the Christian Church is more
remarkable than the way in which, by Divine Providence,
it was thus adapted for meeting unseen contingencies.
It is true that we also find in the history of Christianity
another and less pleasing rule, that very often the ways
of progress are blocked by survivals, by the persist
ence of institutions and beliefs necessary at an earlier
stage of development, but now become useless and
even dangerous. At present it is the former of these
phenomena that calls for our attention.
In the age of the Antonines, when Christianity was
taking a definite and lasting form, it looked as if the
world had attained to an equilibrium which might last
167

i68 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
for an indefinite time. Within the Eoman Empire all
was order and system ; without there were indeed
scattered tribes of brave barbarians, but save the
Parthian Empire, no power which could inspire serious
alarm to the master of so many legions as the Eoman
Emperor. Eoman civilization seemed to rest on as
solid a basis as does now European civilization. But
within little more than a century, all was altered.
The Parthian power, which looked so stately, had
vanished after a single great defeat by the Persians.
The power and the prospects of the barbarians of the
north had steadily grown. Already Eome was
beginning to be dependent upon them for soldiers ;
already they were beginning to feel that before long
the ripe fruit of dominion would fall into their hands.
The waters of the flood, destined to sweep over all the
countries of the Eoman Empire and to destroy the
fair fruit of centuries of civilization, were growing
deeper and deeper, and were beginning to open for
themselves channels.
Great statesmen could not in the Antoniue age
foresee the fall of the Empire. And the Fathers of
the Church were not great statesmen, but men of very
limited outlook, and mainly occupied with what was
present. If they looked into the future it was not to
see on what lines the Church should develop, but to
anticipate the second coming of their Master in power
and glory to make for Himself a kingdom. But through
the unconscious leaders of the Church the ever-living
spirit of Christ worked to ends of which they did not
dream. The caterpillar does not know anything of its
future, but a power works in it to slowly transform it

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH 169
to something far higher in function, and while the
change is going on it is protected by the hard skin
of the chrysalis. Something like this took place in
the Church, which became hardened, and even given
over to materialism, as a preparation for the ages when
the old civilization had a hard battle to preserve any
part of its organization amid the storms of barbarian
invasion. It is a commonplace of liberal historians of the
Church that it was by an adaptation to her own society
of the organism and the legal ideas of Eome that
Christianity adapted herself for survival. There has
never been anything in the world like the name and
fame of Eome, when Eome was at her greatest. And as
at Antioch and Alexandria Christian teachers spoke in
the manner of Greek philosophy, just as naturally the
officials who were at the head of the churches of the
Western Empire, of Gaul, Italy, and Africa, used a
language like that adopted in the Eoman courts of
law, and thought of the Christian societies under their
charge as of civil communities which needed discipline.
The discipline which was of great value in holding
together the Christian communities under the Empire
became even far more necessary when it was available
for the restraint of the wild passions and savage
impulses of the barbarians of the North.
When Aetius, the last great soldier of Eome, had
fallen by assassination, and the Goths had sacked the
Eternal City, St Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo in
Africa, wrote his Civitas Dei, in which he may almost
be said to have baptized the dying Eoman Empire, and
secured to it spiritual life for the future. He taught

I70 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
that God had permitted the ruin of the visible Empire
of Eome in order that the new City of God might be
established. But to him the Kingdom of God was no
mere dream of the future, nor an invisible influence
spreading through the hearts of men, but a visible
reality, a great organized power stretching on from
generation to generation, and including all those who
had by baptism been admitted to it and maintained
their connection with it by the Christian Communion.
Looking back after many centuries we see that Augustine
was no dreamer, but one of those men of rare insight
who discern the tendencies which he far below the
surfaces of things. It was true that the Christian
Church was about to arise uninjured from the sack of
Italy, and to assert in a new form the centrality of
Eome in the history of Europe.
To one who believes in spiritual religion, and who
realizes that from the first the battle of Christianity
was for the transformation of Judaism and Paganism
by a gospel of the divine will, this process must needs
be repellent. We suffer so much every day from the
sacerdotalism, the materialism, the secularity which
came into the Church after the conversion of Constantine
had put it on another plane of being, that we find it
not easy to do justice to the Christianity of the early
Middle Ages. But the spirit of history is a spirit of
tolerance. Tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner.
Fanciful reconstructions of what might have been — for
example, if the Arianism of the Goths had led the way
to a broader religion, or the theology of Clement and
Origen had struck deeper roots — may interest us, but
cannot take us far. It may be that what took place had

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH 171
to take place, and we may conceive that the divine
will for a time changed its way of working. As St
Paul is reported to have said at Athens, ' The times of
ignorance God tolerated.'
The hardening and complete organization of the
Church took place on many lines. I cannot, of course,
treat of it in detail ; but I will select some of the
most notable parts of the process for a brief exposition.
I will speak of (1) the formation of the canon of
Scripture ; (2) the settlement of the creed ; (3) the
materialization of the sacraments ; (4) the formation
of the order of bishops ; (5) the primacy of Eome ; (6)
monasticism. And in each case I shall try to discover
what is the source from which the Church took the
idea which she absorbed.

(1) The Formation of the Canon of Scripture. — After
many discussions, by a slow process there emerged
about 180 A.D. at Eome a generally accepted list of
works admitted as a part of the Scriptures, and as
having divine authority. These of course fell into the
two groups, of Jewish works taken over from the
Jewish Church, and works written by Christian
apostles and teachers. In forming the canon the
Church went altogether on Jewish precedent. The
Jews had for ages attached an extraordinary value
to their sacred books, and placing them in a class
apart, had guarded them with astonishing care. Some
of the schools of thought regarded these books as the
immediate word of God, verbally inspired; while to
all Jews the books ascribed to the authorship of Moses

172 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
were the very foundation of the national life, a limit
in thought and a guide in action. It was some time
before it occurred to the Christians to place works of
their own writers on the same august level; and we
can imagine the horror which must have been aroused
by the boldness of Marcion and other Gnostics who
rejected the Jewish scriptures altogether from their
place of honour. To the Gnostics, indeed, the forma
tion of a canon of New Testament writings is largely
due, and they were the first commentators on it, though
their exegesis was extravagant enough. None of the
religions of the Greeks rested upon sacred books, though,
of course, further east the Zend Avesta and the Vedas
were in their way sacred. At a later time the Koran
was to the Mohammedans a foundation of faith even
more important than were the Scriptures to the Catholic
Church. The formation of a canon of Scripture did
not at once determine how its different books were to
be regarded; and in this matter there were wide
divergencies of opinion among authorities. Some
regarded the Jewish scriptures as belonging to a lower
stage of religion, as the writer of the Epistle to the
Hebrews teaches, and containing only types and
adumbrations of a fuller revelation to come. But the
catholic or victorious view is that which we find first
in the epistle of Barnabas, that Christianity was the
one absolute and perfect religion for all time, and so
was taught even in the Jewish sacred books, though
the Jews themselves failed to understand the true
meaning of them.
The need which existed for the exaltation of a
sacred book by the Church scarcely requires to be dwelt

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH 173
on. If, in spite of the veneration paid to the Prophets
and the Psalms, many abnormal phases of belief made
their appearance ; and if, in spite of the authority of
consecrated lives of the Founder, fanaticism and pious
romance were always at work to remove Him from a
natural historic setting, what would have become of
the Church without these restraints ? Her Bible has
been in all ages her most precious possession, and has
tended constantly to curb the aberrations of pious
unreason, and to keep open a way back to the original
basis of the faith. The extravagant veneration in
which the Scriptures as a whole were enshrined was
but a hard shell to protect them against assault and
injury, and to convey them safe to future generations.
II
(2) The Settlement of the Creed. — To those who read
early Church history, the whole life of the society may
well seem centred in the discussion of doctrinal views,
and the arrangement of them into schemes, to be
accepted by Christians under pain of being declared
heretical. Nor is there any feature in which the
Church of the second and third centuries differed more
fundamentally from the early society. In the Gospels,
as everyone knows, there is scarcely a vestige of any
thing that can be called doctrine. The Epistles of St
Paul contain a good deal of doctrine ; but then nothing
in the early history of Christianity is more striking
than the smallness of the influence upon it of the real
Pauline doctrine, which was far too intellectual and
difficult to be taken in by ordinary Christians. But
though the Church did not, like the reformers of the

174 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
sixteenth century, make out a creed based upon St
Paul, it did work out creeds in a very persistent
way. These creeds were usually enlargements of the
formulae used in Christian baptism, when a confession
of faith was required. And the simple formula of the
Ethiopian, ' I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of
God,'-^ was soon expanded into something far more
complicated. But while the use of a creed arose in the process
of missionary work, it is not difficult to see what was
the nearest parallel to a creed. No profession of
religious belief was in use among the Greeks and other
peoples of Asia or Egypt. Even in the case of the
Mysteries, it was purity of life and not acceptance of
doctrine which was a condition of initiation. Nor did
the Jew repeat any creed ; he had to observe the
law, but he had not to express his belief in the
miracles of Moses or Elijah, or as to the hierarchy of ¦
the angels. A creed is primarily an intellectual
thing ; and it is among the philosophers of Greece that
we must look for its historic origin, or at least for the
cause of its extraordinary development.
At the time of the Christian origins, well educated
men were ranged as followers of this or that way of
philosophy, as Stoics or Epicureans, Academics or
Sceptics. Each accepted a set of beliefs, formulated
by one of the great masters of thought, as to the
nature of the summum bonum, the being of the gods
and their relations to men, the constitution of the
visible universe. This creed, for it amounted to a
1 This phrase does not seem to belong to the original text of Acts.
See the Revised Version.

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH 175
creed, each was prepared to defend against all comers,
and by their creeds men fell into groups. According
to the principles of their creeds they in a measure
regulated their lives, and in the strength of them they
were prepared to meet danger and death. Now, to
men thus trained, the Christian religion would
naturally present itself as a new and more spiritual
philosophy. And we know that it did appear in
this light to the apologists such as Justin and Tatian,
as well as to the more highly educated of the Fathers,
such as Clement of Alexandria and Origen. There
was a gnosis or wisdom which abode in the Church as
well as a gnosis to which the Church was hostile.
And as philosophy decayed, and Christianity flourished
more and more, there was a great transference of
dialectical and rhetorical talent from the Pagan to
the Christian field; and the abilities which had
worked out philosophic schemes turned more and more
to the shaping of Christian creeds. This was done,
and at the time could only be done, in the language of
the current philosophy. Certain views in psychology,
in ethics, in cosmology, had become generally current,
most of them developed out of Platonism, and it was
around these views that the articles of the creed were
formed. The new speculations offered as fine a field
for intellectual subtleties as the old.
Yet in the formation of the Christian Creed there
was an entirely new element : a high ethical earnest
ness, and a conviction that there was a right and a
wrong in belief, and that right views as to God and
Christ led to salvation, and wrong views to destruc
tion, however deficient the Christian morals may

176 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
have been on the side of philosophic ethics. Thus,
instead of arguing one with another in the peaceable,
interminable manner of the Greek philosophers, the
Christian Fathers fought hard for their views by every
means in their power ; and the councils by which
the creeds were formulated became battle-grounds.
When the emperors took the matter up, every step
in the formulation of doctrine was followed by
proscription and exile of the defeated searchers after
truth. The Fathers of the Church had certainly some
justification for the grim war which they waged against
heresy. For in some cases Christian belief and
Christian practice were so closely linked together that
if the belief were not accepted the practice lost its
stability, and a serious moral danger threatened the
Church. The great strife, for instance, between
Athanasius and Arius as to the nature of Christ deeply
involved the whole character of Christianity ; and had
the victory gone otherwise, the history of the Church
would have been very different. But to a modern
critic it appears that with questions of practical and
vital import there were mingled others of a merely
speculative and otiose character. How could it greatly
matter, for instance, on what day of the year Easter
was kept ? Many of the speculations as to the person
of Christ had no ascertainable relation to fact, to
experience, or to conduct.
It is by no means an easy task for anyone to enter
fully into the conditions of a past age, and to see
why what now appears obvious was not at the time
recognized. But until we have done this our judg-

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH 177
ment is likely to be superficial. We stand amazed at
the elaborate distinctions of the so-called Athanasian
Creed, and the boldness of its assertions as to matters
on which human minds will certainly never gain any
clear knowledge. But at the same time we are bound
to recognize that creed as a masterpiece of a particular
kind of reasoning. When it was formulated Greek
philosophy was dead or dormant, and the intricacies
of the Christian Creed furnished one of the best fields
of exercise for the reason of man. When the fierce
and unintellectual races of the North poured into the
Eoman domain, what would have become of their wits
if they had not been able in some degree to sharpen
them on the discussion of points of Christian doctrine ?
If the Church had only cared about those doctrines
which had a close relation to practice, the logical and
speculative reason of mediaeval Christians would have
fallen far below even the moderate level to which it
attained. And, on the whole, in spite of the over-elaboration
of the creeds, and their attempt to express in words
what can never be matter of knowledge, in spite of
the bitterness of school against school, in spite of
the intrusion of politics and local elements, the
Church did in general adhere to what was essential in
Christianity. She clung tenaciously to certain fixed
data, the divinity of her Master and yet to His
humanity, to a monotheism which yet included the
variety of divine manifestation, to the reality of the
spiritual world, to the deadliness of revolt against the
Divine will. After all, we may trace the spirit of
the Master in the main currents of Church doctrine.
12

178 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
And even at the present day, though our intellectual
horizon is so vastly different from that of the Greek
Church of the third and fourth centuries, we may often
find in the phrases of the creeds which then arose a
meaning which has only to be set forth in other terms
to be recognized as profound truth. In refusing to
follow the lead of some of the gifted and original
heresiarchs, such as Marcion, Arius, and Pelagius, the
Church was really preserving for future ages a sacred
deposit which has for us in these latter days a value
and a meaning; though it must not, of course, be
allowed to prevent us from following fresh revelations
of the same spirit. Ill
(3) The Materialization of the Sacraments. — I have
already tried to show that the sacraments of Chris
tianity, though they probably did not arise from direct
borrowing of the ceremonies of the mystic religions of
later Greece, yet certainly sprang up in ground which
had been prepared for them by those religions. For
the materialization of the sacraments we need seek no
origin but the constitution of human nature. The
mass of mankind tends to be materialistic, dominated
by that which is seen and felt, unable to recognize
spiritual truth unless it is incorporated in some
material vehicle. The doctrine of St Paul as to
baptism and the Lord's Supper had been a mystic and
spiritual doctrine ; he would never have dreamed of
attributing any value to the mere ceremony apart
from faith and love in the person partaking. But, as
I have before observed, the Pauline teaching was far

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH 179
above the heads of the early Christians, and only a
few of them could thoroughly understand it. The
introduction of infant baptism, in addition to the
previously practised baptism of adults, paved the way
for a belief that grace was conveyed by the mere
sprinkling of water. And as the Eucharist has been
almost since the beginning of Christianity the very
centre of the religion, the occasion of the most vivid
of spiritual emotions, it was but natural that the
pious should vie one with the other in attributing to
it a miraculous efficacy, and that Christian Fathers
should try to find an explanation of that efficacy in
theories which made the connection of the sacrament
with the Founder not only close and constant, but
even of a material nature. The reception of the body
and blood of Christ could not be a mere metaphor, nor
a merely spiritual partaking, but must be an actual
fact, if a miraculous one, belonging to the world of
sense and time.
But although such materialism is quite natural in
all countries, yet there is a special reason why a
Church which more and more centred in Eome should
be especially liable to invasion by religious materialism :
because the religion of Pagan Eome was in a marked
degree materialist. We have already seen that, at the
beginning of the Christian era, what was accepted as
religion on the Tiber was a mere series of acts to be
performed daily as the Calendar went, strictly in
accordance with precedent. It was a matter of
dress, of posture, of action; the words had to be
recited, even if no meaning attached to them, and
the victims had to be sacrificed in recognized fashion,

i8o THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
though even the sacrificer did not know to what power
in the frame of the world he was offering them. It
astonishes us that men like Sulla and Caesar, who
seem to us complete agnostics, could be the heads of
Eoman religion. But so long as they performed the
right ceremonies on the right day, with the right
words and motions, no one insisted on inquiring what
at the time was passing in their minds.
It is easy to see how this burden of ceremoniahsm
pressed down on the Christian Church of Eome,
especially after the Empire had become nominally
Christian. The emperors, who had been High Pontiffs
of the Pagan religion of Eome, became the heads of
the Church ; and much of the formalism which had
belonged to the former office was retained in the latter.
And when the emperors passed away, their virtual
successors, the Popes, were ready to take their place.
It might seem very natural that a materialism
which was invading in the cultivated days of the
later Eoman Empire would become more deeply
rooted in the times of rudeness and barbarism which
followed. To some extent this was the case. No
doubt the materialism which was finally registered
in the doctrine of transubstantiation as accepted by
the Council of Trent became more and more fixed
in most of Europe. But in spite of the rudeness
and brutality of the invading Teutons, their tendency
towards materialism was less marked than that in
Latin countries. As we shall see later, the spirit
of the North had no sooner grown to maturity
than it rebelled, first and foremost, against the
materialization of the Communion.

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH i8i
IV
(4) The Rise of the Order of Bishops. — The necessity
of adopting some kind of organization was soon realized
by the primitive Church. Although, in that age of
fervour, spirit was everything and form indifferent, yet
it is an essential characteristic of human nature that
all inner feeling should struggle towards an outward
and visible expression. The Church as much required
some visible form as the mollusk at the bottom of the
ocean requires a shell to protect him against the
ravenous monsters of the deep. From the very
beginning there was a sort of oligarchy of the Twelve
Apostles, to whom was presently added St Paul as the
Apostle of the Gentiles, in many ways a force as
great as that of the rest combined, yet apparently
never quite received by them as a colleague. In Acts,
however, on certain occasions at Jerusalem, it is not
any of the Twelve who seems to hold the presidency,
but James, the brother of the Lord. It almost looks
as if, apart from the fall of Jerusalem, there might
have dwelt in that city an hereditary head of the
Christian community, just as in Islam the descendants
of the Prophet constitute a caste. But the Church
was called to other and wider destinies. Eome, not
Jerusalem, was to be its centre of government. We
also read in St Paul's Epistles of many kinds of leaders
in the PauUne churches. There appear the three grades
of apostles, prophets or preachers, and teachers ; but
we gain no impression of a regular organization ;
rather of a pure democracy in which every man is
estimated according to his gifts and his achievements,

l82 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
and exercises such power as by personal predominance
he can acquire.
But regular officials were soon seen to be necessary.
And here, as in other cases, the Church did not receive
any direct command from her Founder, nor did she
invent, but she adopted from her surroundings, and
put that which she adopted to serve her own purposes.
Now, it is a very suggestive fact that the earliest
Church organization that we know of is to be found
neither at Jerusalem nor at Eome, but in the churches
of Asia, most of which owed their foundation, at least
in part, to St Paul. We know that the bridge over
which Christianity passed from the Jewish to the
Greek world was the Jewish diaspora with its syna
gogue. The Jewish race had spread, in the times
after Alexander the Great, into almost all the great
cities of which he and his successors founded so many,
and there dwelt in a quarter of their own, abiding by
their own laws, meeting weekly in their synagogues,
occasionally even having long and bitter feuds with
the Greeks and Syrians who dwelt in the same
cities. As the Eoman governors did not for a while
distinguish between Jews and Christians, regarding
the Christians as a mere Jewish sect, it is clear that
the Christians must have been outwardly organized
in the cities of Asia in the same way as the Jews.
From the official point of view, there would be the
Jewish synagogue and the dissenting Jewish or the
Christian synagogue, to which Gentiles were admitted
without undergoing circumcision or strictly keeping
the Mosaic law.
As soon, however, as we can trace in the churches a

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH 183
definite organization, we find mention of the three
orders of officials who, even to this day, are usual in
the great churches : bishops, presbyters or priests, and
deacons. The origin of these offices has been much
in dispute, but it is at least a probable view which
regards all these terms, episkopos or overseer, presbyteros
or elder, and diakonos or attendant, as belonging to the
civil organization of the cities of Asia Minor and
Syria, which, having no part in serious politics,
developed in a marked degree the system of ornamental
and honorific posts to give a sort of dignity to those of
the citizens who excelled the rest in wealth or in
exertions for the common good. It was natural that
the religious societies in Asia Minor should adopt these
magistracies from the cities, often assigning to them
more serious and real functions. And therefore that
the early Christian churches should have taken the
same course is perfectly comprehensible. At first
the duties of the bishop seem to have been mainly
financial, he was scarcely more than a business head
of the society : but in time he gained a position as
teacher and responsible for doctrine. And after a
while still more imposing functions were attributed
to him.In the clergy of the Catholic Church another strain
makes its appearance in time. If in their hierarchy
we may trace the influence of civic organization, in
their functions we find elements which are by no
means secular. The sacred character of the priest,
who belongs to a consecrated order, and is guardian of
the divine mysteries, cannot be found either in Jewish
rabbi or in Hellenistic official. Its analogues will be

i84 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
found rather in the colleges of priests and of heirodules
which, from a very early time, belonged to the cult of
the gods and goddesses of Asia. At such cities as
Comana Hierapolis and Ephesus there was attached to
the service of the reigning deities a crowd of servants
and interpreters, with whom those deities lived, so to
speak, on terms of intimacy, who interpreted to men
their will, and promised their aid to those who
approached them with gifts and worship. Some
Asiatic cities, such as Olba in Cilicia, were governed
by a dynasty of priests who combined secular and
sacred offices, like the Prince-Bishops of the Middle
Ages, and constituted a kind of theocracy.
Naturally, the control of the mysteries to which
they could admit, or from which they could exclude
votaries, gave to the priests of such deities as Isis and
Cybele and Mithras a great power over the adherents
of their deities. A similar function fell in time to the
lot of the Christian priesthood, to whom were confided
the most sacred of the rites of Christianity : who held the
door of the sheepfold, and could excommunicate those
who opposed their power. By degrees in the Church
the personal inspiration of the prophet, the teacher,
and the missionary, who are so prominent in the
book of Acts, gives way to the power of an organized
priesthood, consecrated by the laying on of hands, and
entrusted with the power of the keys.
Of course the Christian priesthood stood always at
a higher level than the Pagan. The inwardness of
its origin abode always in some degree even in the
baser forms of Christianity. The stewards of the
Christian mysteries were not content with mere

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH 185
ceremonial purity in their votaries ; nor was religion
anywhere regarded as wholly independent of morality.
Yet the dying down of the fervid inspiration of the
first Christians, and the formation of a hard skeleton
of creed and a crust of mystery and ritual, cannot be
a pleasant thing to observe.
It is possible to trace the gradual growth of the
order of Bishops. Need for such rulers grew stronger
and stronger as the Gnostics tried to eat out the heart
of Christianity, and the Montanists tried to dissolve
the framework of the young society. It was in the
course of conflict with these foes that the guiding
strings fell more and more into episcopal hands, so
that we find Irenaeas affirming that the bishop re
presents and embodies his church, and that whoever
opposes the bishop opposes God ; while Cyprian goes
still further and boldly says that the church is in the
bishop. Hence there soon arose a fiction that the
Twelve Apostles had from the beginning appointed
bishops in the churches, and that the bishop held by
an uninterrupted tradition his authority from Jesus
Christ Himself. The historic facts are very different ;
it took a long time for the office of the bishop to
emerge out of the presbyterian form of government.
But history in all ages has consisted largely in accepted
fictions ; and what men believe to have taken place is
very often more important, even from the point of
view of the scientific historian, than what actually
took place.
In part the authority of the bishop accrued because
he stood for the organization which had the power of
formulating doctrine and of administering sacraments.

i86 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
He held the keys of the Church and of the future life.
He had the power to forgive sins and to expel from
the visible Church. But the position of the bishop
was important not only because of his spiritual powers ;
from the point of view of ecclesiastical politics he was
indispensable. The Christian churches in Turkey and
Syria have during the last centuries been saved from
ruin by their bishops. In those churches the ordinary
priests are allowed, and even expected, to marry ; but
the bishop must be unmarried, because he has to
protect his church against oppression and misrule, and,
being without a family, he is less easily bribed or
intimidated. The same function fell to the bishops
in the troubled days of Eoman decay and barbarian
invasion. When the civil rulers lost their power in
the Eoman provinces, the bishops remained and took
their place as the representatives of the civilized urban
population in their dealings with the conquering
invaders. Had the Teutonic tribes remained heathen,
the bishops would only have been, as in Turkey, a
power to mitigate a painful servitude. But since all
by degrees accepted Christianity, the bishops became
spiritual leaders of the invaders as well as the civil
leaders of the subject population, and a fusion of races
became possible which led directly to the rise of
modern civilization. It is not always easy to trace in
the maze of history the workings of divine power;
but the rise of the episcopal order is so clearly seen
to have been necessary to the salvation of the Church
and the gradual modification of barbarism in the early
Middle Ages, that we are justified in this case in
speaking, in language which is at least approximately

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH 187
true, of the control of events by divine Providence,
and the gradual working out of a divine purpose. As
the wings of birds are gradually developed through
long ages before their use in flying is possible, or as
the human brain appears among savages who do not
understand its full use, so the order of bishops seems
to have been destined to greater usefulness in ages
after the time when it first arose.
In these matters we must always keep apart two
things — the origin of an institution, and its value in
subsequent times. It is because these things have
been confused that the historians of the Church have
been very eager to prove that the organization of the
early Church was planned by the I'ounder, and was
from the very first in principle what it afterwards
became. In particular, a great deal of ingenuity has
been applied, from the third century onwards, in try
ing to provide links to connect the Apostles on the one
side and the earliest bishops of the great cities on the
other. For Eome a series of bishops has been provided,
beginning with Peter and going on continuously.
Of course this cannot be done without a good deal
of falsification of history. As a matter of fact, we are
able from our documents clearly to trace a gap of
time after the Apostles had died and before the
bishops had arisen, a time when the care of the
churches was in the hands of committees of presbyters
or elders. In the books of the New Testament — if
we except the First Epistle to Timothy, which is
not regarded as authentic — there is no mention of
bishops as a distinct order. In later documents we
can trace the gradual rise of the episcopal function.

i88 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
We see that the bishop was at first merely the pre
siding presbyter ; but that as necessity for stronger
organization and more discipline arose, his hands were
gradually strengthened.
We have to avoid two false extremes. To say
with the believer in apostolic succession that from the
beginning a series of bishops have handed down to
our times the sacred gift of the Holy Spirit communi
cated to them by the Apostles, is to defy the testimony
of history. To say, on the other hand, that since
bishops did not hold any definite function in the
Church untU the second century, therefore they re
present only a corruption of primitive Christianity, is
to deny the laws of evolution and the presence of
Christ in His Church. History clearly shows the
order of bishops to have been of great value to the
primitive society, and in later times. Whether for
us in these days the episcopal organization of the
Church is the best, is a question to be decided by the
study of history and the results of experience. The
growth of Episcopacy among the Methodists, and its
spread in North America and the Enghsh colonies, is
a very striking fact, which can scarcely be explained
save by attributing great value to the institution. As
the Free churches of Christendom organize them
selves more completely, and draw closer to one
another, a class of officers or overseers becomes more
necessary ; and there are obvious dangers in leaving
the duties of oversight to be exercised by volunteers
without recognized position or authority. I think
that the more the episcopal office is cut free from
fanciful claims and superstitious reverence, the more

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH 189
useful its true functions will appear. The whole
tendency of modern society, even in the freest states,
is towards more complete organization in education,
in commerce, in social matters ; and this tendency
must affect Christianity as well as other institutions.

(5) The Primacy of Rome.—Oi this in Western
Europe we must take much the same view as we took
of the institution of Episcopacy. As the bishops were
necessary to replace the civil authority of Eome, so the
Popes were necessary to continue the line of Eoman
emperors and to save for the world some of the
wisdom accumulated by the political genius of Eome.
Western Europe would have fallen to pieces and
become a chaos of independent states but for the unity
of the Church ; and the unity of the Church could only
be maintained by a spiritual ruler established at Eome
and inheriting the prestige of the Eoman name and
the Eoman political tradition. The great abuses of the
Papal power in the later Middle Ages have induced
many historians to regard that power as from the first
an usurpation and an impiety. No doubt it was based
in a great measure on successful ambition and intrigue,
and supported by forged documents and utterly false
views of history. Yet if one tries to think what
Europe would have been in the feudal days without a
well-organized spiritual power to curb the brutality of
the nobles, and to throw an aegis over the weak and
helpless, one realizes how vast have been the historic
contributions of the Papacy to the happiness of man-

190 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
kind. The more frankly we acknowledge this, the
freer shall we be in our inquiry whether in our own
days the extreme centrahzation of Christianity, and the
neglect of the particular genius of this or that nation
for a particular form of it, be a good thing.

VI
(6) Monasticism. — If the priests and deacons of the
Christian Church were the soldiers of Christ, warring
to preserve the spiritual life from being overcome by
the flesh, then the regular orders of monks were the
guard, the highly disciplined nucleus who formed, as it
were, the spear-head of the host.
It would require an elaborate historical investigation
to determine whence the monastic idea made its way
into the Church. There were many sources whence it
might have come. The Essenes of Palestine, about
whom very little is known, seem to have lived in
ascetic communities, with a spiritual ideal of hfe.
Four or five centuries before the rise of Christianity
the inner parts of Asia had been invaded by Buddhist
missionaries, leading the ascetic life which Buddhism
had adopted or adapted from the Gymnosophists
of India, living by alms and mortifying the flesh in
every painful way. But since the hermits and the
communities of hermits which made up the first
monasteries come to hght in the first instance in
Egypt, we are perhaps justified in supposing that it
was from the recluses of the Serapeum in Memphis
that the monastic idea passed into Christianity.
Whatever we moderns may be disposed to think of

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH 191
monasticism, there can be little question that it was a
marvellous antidote to many of the troubles and evils
of the time. Even St Paul, in the first Corinthian
Epistle, expresses himself as in favour of celibacy in
many cases, because the cares of the present life
interfere with the demands of that which is higher.
And in so saying he after all touched on the borders
of a profound and deep-lying truth. It is certainly
necessary to the spiritual health of the world that
those who are fitted for the studying of invisible things
and the exercise of religious influence should be freed
from material anxiety, and allowed to give unhindered
attention to the things of the spirit. And when the
whole civilized world was convulsed in the throes of
disease and decay, a marvellous refuge from the intoler
able strain of life was offered by the hermit's cell or
by the monastery to thousands who were wanting in
the natural spirits or the physical courage which
might have enabled them to hold their own in the
world. Later on, through the ages of fierce struggle
and triumphant barbarism, it was in the cloister as in
an ark that some remnants of learning and civilization
survived. Into the cloister flocked the flner, the more
intellectual natures, leaving the ordinary business of
the world to ordinary people. And to multitudes of
women the nunnery offered the one safe refuge from
persecuting lust or barbarous outrage.
But this is the lowest way of looking at the matter.
No great pursuit ever flourishes in the world unless
it be accompanied by a certain amount of fanaticism.
The monks and the hermits were the fanatics of the
spiritual life; their devotion was not according to

192 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
the measure of reason, but of passion. They, or at
least the best of them, wholly give themselves up to
the idea of a higher life to be lived amid human sur
roundings ; thus they kept the torch of Christian
passion alight in the dark ages of the world.
In all the movements of the Church of which I
have spoken, we see the same process going on, the
adoption from other religions or from secular life of
such institutions as were necessary to preserve Chris
tianity through a time of stress and danger. The
instinct of self-preservation, the most imperious in
stinct of our nature, acting sometimes to a conscious
end, but more often towards an end not yet visible,
formed a body to protect Christianity — and not
Christianity only, but all that escaped the wreck of
ancient society — to future ages. It may occur to many
that however necessary this organization was, it had
no relation to the Christian baptism of which I have
spoken hitherto. It was not a process of converting
what was in the world to a purer and more spiritual
hfe, but a process of conforming to the world. As a
general statement this can scarcely be denied. The
Church lost spirituality, and with every century seemed
to recede further from the essential Christianity of
the New Testament. . One can only reply that in the
world as we know it, good and evil, light and dark
ness, progress and retrogression, are inseparably mixed.
Divine Providence does not save the world by sudden
and conspicuous interpositions, but by the slow work
ing of human forces, not without some divine aid.
If the Teutonic invasions and the wreck of ancient
civilization were necessary as a means towards the

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH 193
birth of a new and, on the whole, a better order, why
may we not think that the temporary materialization
of the Church was also necessary to her more complete
development in the future ? On this subject, the
difficulty of which I fully recognize, I may have more
to say in future lectures.

13

LECTUEE VIII
THE MEDIAEVAL THEOCRACY

When we inquire of those who have made careful
study of the history of mediaeval Europe what age best
presents a picture of Christianity outwardly and
visibly triumphant, they point to the thirteenth
century ; and the glamour which hangs over the
Church at that time is so great that even one like my
self, who has made no detailed study of mediaeval
history, cannot but see the main outlines of its
splendour. It was the age of St Francis and of St
Louis, of Bonaventura and of Thomas Aquinas, of Pope
Innocent III. and of Dante. It was the culminating
point of a great process which had been going on since
the fall of the Roman Empire ; and in some ways
Europe stood as a Christian community at a higher
point than it has reached before or since.
In England, we have been used to speak with a
certain contempt of the ' dark ages ' which preceded
the Eeformation. In a limited degree the phrase is
justified, as we shall presently see; but it covers a

THE MEDIEVAL THEOCRACY 195
terrible want of historic knowledge and ethical appre
ciation. And we have in all our great cities that
which should have hindered us from despising the
high thoughts and noble deeds of our fathers. Let
any man who has any aesthetic sensibility, or power of
taking in ideas through the eyes, wander in one of our
great cathedrals, and let its magnificence slowly sink
into him, a magnificence which does not consist merely
in size and massiveness, but in the nobility of the
lines of the arches, the tracery of the windows, the
detailed beauty of the capitals of columns and of the
doorways. Our cathedrals are but a wreck of what
they were once. The glorious stained glass is lost, and
often replaced by vile imitations; the figures of the
saints vanished or mutilated ; often the whole arrange
ment made vulgar by the interference of the modern
architect or the prominence of tasteless tombs. The
bright colours of the ceilings, the rich decoration of
the chapels, the harmony of part with part — these are
mostly gone. Yet even as they stand, these vast
Christian temples fill with delight and with awe the
minds of all who have any native susceptibility.
We archaeologists have learned that great monu
ments of art do not spring up spontaneously or without
reference to their environment. They are the flowers ;
but the flowers must be fed with sap from the root,
and must be surrounded by the leaves which belong
to their kind. Every great work of art is part of
a whole, and by carefully considering it we see that
every line of its beauty grows directly out of some
thing sweet and rich in human nature. It is like the
wondrous sea-shells which reach us from Southern seas,

196 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
which have been formed fold on fold by the healthy
and vigorous life of the shell-fish which dwelt in them.
The comparison between a cathedral and a great
sea-shell from the Mexican Sea is one which has
often occurred to me, and which bears much dwelhng
on. They are alike in the symmetry of their forms,
in the rhythm with which their lines rise and fall, in
the way in which decoration follows use, and yet far
transcends it.
But a difficulty occurs at once. The cathedral was
worked out by an architect according to a careful
plan. He knew what he was doing, and strove for the
glory of God, and to delight the eyes of men ; whereas
the mollusk planned nothing, thought of nothing, only
existed : and the beauty of his shell is a thing of
which he could have no notion. This is a blot on the
comparison, yet not so deep a blot as at first one
might imagine. In all great works of art the un
conscious plays a great part. It is not wholly, or
even mainly, by thought that a great temple or
church is built. The architects of our cathedrals did
not work out a scheme in purely rational ways. The
main ideas were there already ; they belonged to the
age. In each new cathedral there was but a margin of
choice in every direction. In the course of a century
the style of building would undergo some change ; but
from decade to decade but little. The idea of the
cathedral was generic, rooted in the heart of the
nation, and the architect had but to embody it with
such variety as his individual tastes suggested ; but
not with any change of thought or design. His was
the hand which drew the plan, but the head whence

THE MEDIEVAL THEOCRACY 197
it really came and the heart which made it possible
were not his, but belonged to the Church and the
nation. It will be instructive for us, at the point we have
reached in history, to note some further important
facts. The beauty of a cathedral, and the splendid
harmonies of its design, are an incontrovertible proof
of excellence, moral and spiritual, in the race which
produced it. But if we would know what particular
kind of merit is thus proved, we must not merely make
assumptions, but examine carefully the records of
history. Few things are more beautiful than a sea-
shell ; but the creature by which it is produced is by
no means high in the scale of living creatures. Its life
is narrow and monotonous, its organization simple and
primitive. In the same way, a high level in some
particular art — architecture, or sculpture, or painting —
may go with very bad social arrangements, with a very
moderate level of intelligence, and even with a general
prevalence of conspicuous vices. We must beware of
taking a narrow view of the work of God in humanity.
There are many sides to human beauty and goodness,
and no age has shown excellence on all sides at once.
It is for us to cull and to enjoy what is best in the life
and the works of each age. But we must not fancy
that it is necessarily our duty to imitate the particular
forms of life and art which gave beauty to past times.
To us too is imparted some share in the divine spirit
which is ever working in the world ; but the excellence
suited to our times may be very different from that
which we have learned to admire in the vistas of the
past.

198 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
I have not been following any path of digression,
but only climbing over a little hill which lay in our
direct course ; for the problem of the thirteenth
century is not a mere historic question, but one having
close relations to all of us to-day. The mass of Eng
lishmen, as I have already observed, look back on the
great age of realized Christianity as on a time of mere
darkness. On the other hand, there is a tendency
which attracts many of our best men, and which seems
to be slowly gathering force, to turn away from all the
superficialities and vulgarities of modern life towards
the splendour of a past day, in which the rule of a
materialized Christianity was supreme, and swayed
public and private life with equal force.
Of this tendency there are many indications. The
daily growing appreciation of the cathedral is one ;
another is the rapid spread of the study of the great
poet who embodies more than any voice of the past the
spirit of the Middle Ages. It is astonishing how, in
the last half century, the appreciation of Dante has
grown among cultivated people. Formerly, only a
student here and there sometimes read his pages ; at
present his writings are an important element in the
spiritual life of thousands. And I must pause for a
moment to note one very suggestive fact. We often
hear that criticism of the Biblical literature is a merely
destructive force, bringing down the sacred writings to
a vulgar everyday level. But we may see in the case
of the Divine Comedy how criticism sometimes acts in
precisely the opposite way. It is the critics who have
placed Dante on the pedestal on which he now stands.
In fact, criticism is a force which is dangerous to what

THE MEDIEVAL THEOCRACY 199
is second-rate, but not to what is really best. Did the
fame of Shakespeare ever stand so high as to-day, after
a century of the most searching and unsparing criti
cism ? ^ Do any doubts as to the authorship of the
Iliad prevent it from standing now at the very head of
all literature ? No ! wise criticism is like a fire which
destroys the dross, but makes gold ever purer and
brighter. However, the importance of the mediaeval problem
is so great for us mainly because the natural tendency
to appreciate mediaeval Christianity ordinarily makes
men drift in the direction of the Eoman Church, or at
all events towards the extreme High Church party.
And this tendency, which on the whole is to be resisted,
though it is often productive of good, can only be
successfully combated if we learn really to appreciate
what was excellent in the mediaeval Church, while at
the same time we are keenly alive to her shortcomings.
Of both excellences and failures I have to speak in
this place, however briefly and imperfectly.
II
It is convenient to speak of the materialized
Christianity of the Middle Ages as a Theocracy,
though no doubt that term goes somewhat beyond the
precise facts. There has never been in Europe a
theocracy so complete as there has been among the
Jews and the followers of Islam. But in the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries the Catholic Church, which
^ One of the ablest of recent critics of Shakespeare has placed him
almost on a pedestal of infallibility (Bradley, Lectures on Shakespearean
Tragedy, 1905).

200 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
centred in Eome, had an enormous and almost un
disputed sway over all those parts of human life
which had to do with belief, with thought, and with
worship. And the first thing to observe in regard
to this theocracy, is that it was based, as such a
dominion must needs be, upon a general intellectual
consent and homogeneity. No doubt the universities
were full of various schools, and the schools lived on
disputes, but the range of these disputes was limited.
The general agreement was great, being based upon
the undisputed right of the Church to settle all points
of doctrine. In matters of civil right and of govern
ment the emperor and the kings held their own ;
but, if we except a few remote districts and a few
exceptional currents of opinion, it may be said that
whatever Eome chose to designate as heresy in
matters of opinion and belief, was utterly condemned,
and perished under the ban. The roads of thought,
in all matters worth thinking about, were guarded by
fences ; and whoso leapt over the fences was cast out
of the Christian commonwealth, and left as a prey
to Satan.
The fixity of doctrine did not, of course, prevent
considerable variety in religious philosophy and in
tellectual schemes of theology. While the bulk of
the schoolmen and doctors adhered in the main to the
Aristotelian philosophy, which had been reintroduced
into Europe from the Saracens, others, such as the
great Bonaventura, were more Platonic in basis ; and,
in fact, the writings of the Pseudo-Dionysius had a
wonderful influence all through the Middle Ages in
keeping alive the torch of Platonism, and preventing the

THE MEDIEVAL THEOCRACY 201
complete ascendancy of purely theological views. But
though mingled with fresh Platonic and Aristotelian
elements, the leading ideas of the schoolmen were
derived from the distinctive system of thought which
had been gradually moulded by the writings of the
Christian Fathers, more particularly the great Augus
tine, who adapted to the Western mind the thought
of the great theologians of Alexandria.
Another fact which tended strongly to produce
intellectual homogeneity in Europe was the universal
use of the Latin language. It is a truth which is
often impressed on us in modern times that language
is the vital breath of a nationality. The Latin tongue
had, throughout all Europe west of the Adriatic, become
the vehicle of the laws and the ideas of Eome before
it became the official language of the Church. When
Latin had been adopted by the Western Church and
adapted to her needs, it naturally became a common
means of intercourse between educated men in all
countries. And it furnished the key to a great
literature extending from the days of Cicero and
Virgil to those of Augustine and Jerome. We cannot
wonder that the national tongues of the invading races
seemed barbarous, and their attempts at poetry and
history crude, compared with the polished language
and the finished style of Eome. Even at the present
day our boys gain their first notions of literature and
history from Latin : in the same way the young
nations of the North for a while received all their
culture through Latin letters. The use of a common
language throughout Christendom was, in fact, an
enormous advantage ; we in the twentieth century still

202 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
lack a common vehicle of thought and expression,
and are disposed almost to envy the days when a
book written in Latin could be read by every per
son in Europe whose opinion of it was worth any
thing at all.
But while the new races stood under the influences
of the Latin tongue, it cannot be said that in the
Middle Ages they allowed their thinking to be done
by Italians. It has been well pointed out that through
the period of scholasticism the greatest names belong
to the races of the North : — ' From the eighth century
onward the constructive intellect was as specifically
Northern as the political and administrative was
Italian. The questions and controversies that mark
the end of the old world and the beginning of the
new are grouped round the names of Baeda and
Alcuin, Paschasius Eadbertus and Eatramnus, Eabanus
Maurus and John the Scot, Gottschalk and Hincmar
of Eheims — men all sprung from the new stock.
And their pre-eminence becomes even more evident in
the high days of scholasticism. Anselm, though of
Italian birth, was of Northern blood and culture ; the
same may be said of Peter the Lombard ; and of
Thomas Aquinas it is enough to say that he had in
his veins the blood of the Norman and the Hohen-
staufen. Eoscelinus and Abelard were alike sons of
Brittany.' ^ I need not further quote from the learned
author of this catalogue. It is clear how much the
religious thought of the Middle Ages owed to the
thinkers of Northern blood, the men of Paris and
Bologna, Oxford and Cologne. Nevertheless we may
' A. M. Fairbairn, Christ in Modem Theology, p. 113.

THE MEDIEVAL THEOCRACY 203
suggest that the consciousness of the new peoples was
as yet but half awaked, and did not find its real note
until the time of Descartes.
But though an intellectual basis was necessary for
the Catholic teaching of the great age, yet of course
in a society so little intellectual, so strongly emotional,
so given over to materialism and the dominion of
physical needs, the intellectual element in the organiza
tion of the Church could be but small. The two marked
features of that Church were its splendid organization
as a discipline, and its extreme materialism.
In theory, church government was very simple, and
a near parallel to the contemporary government in
states. As in the feudal state there was a system,
every man owing allegiance to some lord, and he to
a superior, until the apex was reached in the King,
so in spiritual matters there was a hierarchy culminat
ing in a Pope. As the civic government required from
all loyalty and obedience under penalty of imprison
ment or death, so the Church required submission in
all matters of faith and morals under penalty of
excommunication, and of punishment in the world to
come. The system of confession and of penance brought
every man directly under this spiritual discipline ;
and, strictly speaking, there was in these matters only
one virtue possible to the layman, the virtue of
obedience. The realm of conduct was mapped out
by ecclesiastical authority, so that everyone could tell
what his duty was ; and if he strayed, all that remained
was a duteous submission to discipline in the form of
penance or pilgrimage.
By an all-covering organization ecclesiastical disci-

204 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
pline was brought to bear in every corner of Europe.
But since human nature was necessarily restive
under the curb, the Church had by degrees brought
to high perfection a system of cult which swayed
not only the minds but the senses and passions of
the people, at every point of their lives from the
cradle to the grave. All the important crises of that
life were dominated by the sacraments of baptism,
marriage, and the rest. And more especially the
Communion had become an engine of enormous power
to bind the daily life of all men with links of adamant
to the ecclesiastical system. Every priest received at
ordination the power miraculously to transform the
bread and wine of the Sacrament into the very body
and blood of Christ ; body and blood which, passing
into the frame of the receiver, implanted in him the
seed of immortal life, and bound him to the Head
of the Church by a physical bond. Thus tbe Church
became the society where, in the phrase of Browning,
' God is made and eaten all day long.'
The same extreme materialism which in the thought
of the mass of the people marked the Communion,
spread to the other features of Christian cult. To the
sacred images all kinds of strange virtues were attri
buted. They were credited, like the bread and wine
of the Mass, with the power of working miracles.
Instead of being helps to bear up the mind of the
votary towards the sacred person whom they repre
sented, they absorbed worship for themselves ; and
cities came to think that their safety depended upon
the possession of this or that image, which would be
borne in solemn procession when there was a pressing

THE MEDIEVAL THEOCRACY 205
need of rain, or when the event of a campaign abroad
hung in doubt.
Even higher honour than that which attached to
sacred images belonged to the relics of the saints, the
traffic in which forms such a strange chapter in the
commerce of the Middle Ages. Without the relics
of some saint or martyr beneath the high altar no
great church was complete. To secure relics, the most
dishonest means were freely employed ; for the
materialism of the age was so profound that the soul
of the saint in bliss seemed less worthy of consideration
than his remains on earth : the latter had an inherent
power of healing the sick, and throwing around the
church where they lay a haze of miracle.
Nevertheless, beneath the thick crust of materialism
there glowed the heat of Christian passion, which in
many places blazed forth in splendid personalities or
noble enthusiasms. Mr Symonds has declared that
the two greatest figures of the age were St Francis and
St Dominic ; and in any case it cannot be denied that
the two great orders to which their religious passion
and genius gave birth had for a time a wonderful
effect through the length and breadth of Christendom.
They represented the one the heart, the other the
brain of the Christian Church. No figure who has
ever adorned the Christian Church since the days of
the Apostles has been more lovable than St Francis.
Of all the followers of Jesus he perhaps has been
nearest to Him in some of his most striking traits, in
the utter subordination of self to a divine calling, in
sweetness and gentle love for all mankind, in willing
acceptance of hardship and poverty, in overflowing

2o6 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
dehght in all the beauty and charm of the visible
world. For a short time the Franciscan Friars pre
sented to the world the picture of a set of men who,
through renouncement of all they had, and through a
never-failing love of all humanity, even of humanity in
its most loathsome forms, attained to a peace which was
not of the world, and a blessedness which only God
can bestow. Beside the Franciscans went the Domini
cans, these not content with the life of poverty and
of simple love to God and man, but men of thought
and education, the preachers of the age, bent on thor
oughly Christianizing the philosophy of the schools,
and eager to make theological orthodoxy triumph in
every Christian land.
Thus in the culminating period of the Middle Ages
the Christian Church succeeded in establishing among
men a wide and a deep dominion. And it is beyond
question that at the root of her success lay a perverted
appreciation and application of those same funda
mental ideas which had earlier served to transform
into the Christian image the piety of Judaea, the
thought of Greece, the discipline of Eome. The
subordination of nature to man and of man to God
was not merely the accepted idea of the Middle Ages ;
but it was an idea which dominated more than ever
the life and the organization of mankind. Before we
reach the end of this lecture we shall see the reverse
of the medal, and realize wherein the victory of the
Church was fatally weak; but if one does not look
beneath the surface, its triumph may well seem
complete.

THE MEDI.^VAL THEOCRACY 207
III
If we turn from the success of the Eoman organism,
and its power over the masses of the people, to its
dealings with the spirit of the Northern nations,
we shall find a more chequered course, a mixture
of success and of failure. The phrase ' Northern
nations ' is of course an exceedingly vague one. It
is impossible here to enter into an ethnological dis
cussion. At its broadest the term will include all
peoples to the north of Alps and Pyrenees. Since the
fall of Eome, the leading part among these peoples has
been taken by races predominantly Teutonic in type,
though mingled with other elements, Celtic, Slavonic,
and mixed. But in religion the two spirits which
have been the protagonists are the Eoman and the
Teuton. The most notable trait of the conquering
Normans and Franks and Saxons was their splendid
courage, and a manliness which commonly goes with
courage. All the higher developments of morality
grow from humble beginnings ; indeed, all may be
traced back, step by step, to the primitive instinct
of self-preservation and the desire to perpetuate the
race. On this basis the will of God slowly builds
up a series of virtues. Out of mere courage, in the
case of all barbarians who have potentiahties in them,
there arises some sort of chivalry, a code of manliness
and honour, of truth to one's superiors and respect
for the weak. Eecent history has furnished us with
ample proof of the value to a nation of a tradi
tional spirit of chivalry, since it is by the working
of such a spirit that Japan has accomplished the

2o8 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
remarkable military feats which have adorned her
late annals.
The spirit of chivalry, which is still alive in Japan,
is decadent among the nations of modern Europe.
But we know that in mediaeval times, especially in the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries, it was dominant in
the West. Tennyson has enshrined its principles in
deathless verse : ' To love one woman and to cleave
to her, to worship her with years of noble deeds.' To
forego, even in battle, a mean advantage ; to protect
the weak, and wage incessant war on cruelty : ' To
honour his own word as if it were his God's.' To
resent an insult, and still more an insult to friends or
to any lady ; to prefer at any moment death to a
mere breath of dishonour. Such were ideally the
principles of Teutonic knighthood in the Middle Ages ;
that the actuality fell far short of the ideal is, of
course, what we might expect.
Of this chivalry we find scanty traces in the
literature of the ancient world. To Greeks and Jews
alike it was unknown. It is not to be found in any
of the earlier teachings of Christianity. Like the
Bushido of Japan, it seems to be a racial product : a
gift of God to the chiefs and warriors of the races of
Northern Europe. Essentially warlike and national,
it could scarcely be very sympathetic towards a
religion of brotherhood adapted to the whole human
race. Yet the Church at the time of her greatest
power, in the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries, did
succeed to some extent in impressing her own image
even on the institutions of chivalry. Especially was
this the case at the time of the Crusades. Again and

THE MEDIEVAL THEOCRACY 209
again was the knighthood of Europe stirred up and
induced to leave possessions and ease, wife and family,
and all that it held most dear, to defend against the
Saracen invaders the sacred city of Jerusalem. If ever
war was waged for an idea, it was then ; and the idea
was, according to the feeling of the time, thoroughly
Christian. On the whole, in spite of the terrible loss
of blood, Europe found truth in the promise of Jesus,
' Whosoever will lose his life for My sake, the same
shall find it.' The final result of the Crusades was a
great moral stirring in Europe, and a rapid advance of
civilization. The spirit of self-renunciation, of following the will
of God to the death, may prevail in the pursuit of war
as in other pursuits. And probably nothing on the
Continent, in our own days, so much contributes to
the production of a manly and self-sacrificing spirit, a
spirit of high discipline, as does the military service,
which superficial observers set down as a cause of
brutality, and a waster of the vital force of nations.
Nor does there appear any impossibility in uniting the
Christian with the martial spirit. Saint Louis (IX.) of
France was the contemporary of Francis of Assisi.
The Christian Church canonized them both as saints,
and both left a long series of followers to follow in
some degree in their steps. The work of killing others
in war does not foster humane virtue ; but the con
stant expectation of meeting death oneself is in many
ways an admirable training, and quite in the line of
Christian ethics.
Unfortunately, this adoption of war into the Christian
fold was but temporary and partial The Christian
14

2IO THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
soldier has never been a common phenomenon. Nor
can it be said that the Church was on the whole
successful in consecrating the specific virtues of the
nations of the North. She was much disposed to
treat them as the Eoman Empire had treated their
ancestors : as barbarians, useful as alhes and mercen
aries, but standing at a lower level than Italians. The
high Teutonic virtues — respect for women, love of truth
and fact, an idealism which will not easily be quenched,
free intellectual outlook — were not such as were likely
to be highly appreciated at Eome. And thus it was
not until the age of the Eeformation that the national
spirit of the Northern peoples really had free course.
National spirit, indeed, has been, all through modern
history, a rival of the Eoman obedience : often a suc
cessful rival. All through the struggles between
Church and state in mediaeval times, and again notably
in our own days, we find a contest between the crush
ing uniformity of Eome and the struggling ideas
of national growth and character. The Eoman Curia
have often solaced themselves with the notion that in
this contest the Church is the force of spirit, and the
state merely physical power. But this is a false view.
Nationality is as much a spiritual force as is Catholic
ism, and national development is as close to the will
of God as the institutions of philanthropy or the rites
of divine worship. When nationality and the national
religion are on the same side they are an irresistible
force. When they are opposed one to the other, the
contest is long and severe, but in the end nationality
is usually victorious ; for a nation may change its
form of Christianity, but it cannot change its character

THE MEDIEVAL THEOCRACY 2U
and personality. If it is unfaithful to the trust com
mitted to it, it ceases to be a nation and becomes a
herd. IV
Already, in the second lecture, I have called attention
to a distinction in the manner of Christian baptism.
I observed that some ideas and institutions were
baptized into the spirit of Christ, and some into the
name of Christ. As regards the developments spoken
of in the last lecture, and still more as regards those
just mentioned, this distinction holds but imperfectly.
The adoption of Eoman means for fortifying and
organizing the Church can scarcely be said to be a
baptism merely into the Christian name, since what
was adopted was completely changed and turned to
new purposes. On the other hand, it certainly cannot
be called a baptism into the spirit of Christ, since
there could scarcely be a greater contrast than that
which exists between such processes as the formation
of a creed and the organization of a visible Church and
the pure spirituality of the Founder. A nearer phrase,
though one liable to some misunderstanding, would be
baptism into the earthly body of Christ. It seemed
to result from experience that the spirit of the Founder
could not be retained amid earthly surroundings unless
an earthly body was given to it. If Christianity was
to be adapted to the mass of men, not reserved for
those only who were spiritual, it must be mingled with
earth. We may allow the historic necessity, even if at the
same time we can scarcely help regretting it. But

212 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
there is eternal truth in the saying of St Paul, that
they who sow to the flesh will reap corruption. In
forming a body for Christianity, the disciples formed
that which must necessarily be subject to many
diseases, and which must in time decay and become
corrupt. And when a body decays, the imprisoned
spirit cannot, without much pain and deep affliction, be
rid of it.
Thus the materialization of the Christian enthusiasm,
however necessary, became a sore and heavy burden.
By a fatal necessity, it became grosser and grosser as
time went on, and hemmed in the spirit more and more.
The earthward road had been taken, and it continued
in an earthward direction.
We are justified by history in saying that the decay
of the Catholic Church which followed close upon the
time of her greatest splendour is an illustration of the
working of this inevitable divine law. In spite of her
devotion, her piety, her determination to subordinate
the secular to the religious, the Church of the Middle
Ages allowed herself to fall below the level of
spirituality to which she might have attained She
saw that men were very materialist, and on this
materialism she chose to work, instead of trying to
subordinate it to the spirit. She could not resist the
opportunity of carrying out her purposes, purposes in
their origin noble, by trading on the weaknesses and
folhes of men. Thus she sowed to the flesh, and of
the flesh she reaped corruption.
The foes which arose to discomfit her were those of
which I shall in the next lecture speak : in the south
of Europe a revival of the spirit of Greek thought

THE MEDIEVAL THEOCRACY 213
and civilization ; in the north of Europe, the rise of a
more spiritual faith.
Even in the days of the completest domination of
organized Catholicism, the beginnings of both of these
great movements were visible to those who had eyes to
see. From time to time there arose in the schools of
Europe men like Abelard, who had drunk too deep of
the waters of a philosophy which was always
essentially Greek, to fit themselves into the narrow
grooves of Catholic orthodoxy. But yet it may be
said that in the south of Europe, on the whole, to this
day, the religion of the thirteenth century has re
mained the one working and conquering religion. The
thought of Italy and Spain does not run easily into the
moulds of reformed and spiritual faith ; and the mass
of the people in those countries has a deeper dye of
materialism than the inhabitants of northern lands.
In the north of Europe, on the other hand, it may
fairly be said that the Catholicism of Eome had never
really satisfied the hearts of the finer and more
characteristic natures. The seeds of the Eeformation
were always present, and were constantly sending up
shoots, to be cut down by the organized force of the
hierarchy of Eome.
I have spoken of the great cathedrals of England
and of Northern France. It is agreed by those who
have the power to read in the lines of the architecture
of a nation the ideas which it embodies, that we have
here a spirit quite different from that of the Eoman
Church — a spirit of imagination and mysticism, of high
aspiration and vague worship, altogether different
from that encouraged by Eome. Where in Eome or

214 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
in Italy do we find anything to compare with Durham
or Salisbury, Chartres or Amiens ? It is an inspiring
thought to recognize that our cathedrals belong after
all to us and not to Eome, that the Eoman Curia
would never at any time have felt at home in them,
but would have regarded them as infected with the
barbarism of the Teutons.
The same spirit of mysticism, of toleration, of spiritu
ality has been in all ages the heirloom of the best
elements of the Teutonic races. Their kings have
bowed the knee to dominant Eome, but they have
never tolerated Papal usurpation. Even in matters of
faith and morals, the German spirit has never con
sented to be tied by the rigid bonds of Catholic
orthodoxy. Even the common people, rude and un
instructed as they have been, have yet been in some
measure free from the religious materialism which has
marked the peasantry of the south of Europe, and which
the Eoman Church has tolerated for the attainment of
her own purposes.
Full of instruction, in this matter, is the reply of
Charles the Great to the Pope Hadrian, when he
received from him, for promulgation in the Prankish
Church, the Nicene decrees of 787 sanctioning the
worship of images. The great Prankish king entirely
repudiated the authority alike of the Synod of Nicaea
and of Hadrian. In his dominions, he declared, alike
the worship and the destruction of images should be
forbidden : images are indifferent in themselves, and
neither worship is their due nor enmity ; their presence
or absence in a church has nothing to do with the
essence of Christianity. Here indeed spoke the bold

THE MEDIEVAL THEOCRACY 215
and tolerant voice of the North ; but the time was not
ripe, and for ages the Popes managed to dictate to
the Teutonic nations.
The same outpouring of the spirit which led in the
south of Europe to the great movement of the friars,
Franciscan and Dominican, led in the Teutonic north to
a parallel but a very different enthusiasm. Societies
were formed, called by the general name of the Beg
hards when male, and the Beguines when female,
which were devoted partly to works of charity,
and partly to the cultivation of a more free and m.ore
inward rehgion. In many points these societies
differed from the more orthodox communities of the
Catholic Church. Women had a large share in them ;
marriage was not strictly forbidden ; but especially
thought was among them much freer than among the
Eegular Orders. In an age so little instructed it
could not be but that liberty should often lead to
license, license alike in thought and in life ; and after
a while the dominant church made up her mind to
persecute the Beghards and Beguines as heretics, until
they were mostly absorbed in the Franciscan and
Dominican orders, which they leavened with a new
spirit of mysticism. It was a premature revolt of the
Teutonic spirit, a bright cloud which preceded the
dawn. But these enthusiasts left behind them works ^
which not merely kindled a fire in their own genera
tion, but served as a beacon for future times. The
books of Eckhart, the greatest of them, being formally
^ Extracts from the works of the early German Mystics, in transla
tion, are published by Mr Inge, under the title. Light, Life, and Love
(Methuen, 1904).

2i6 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
condemned by the Eoman Curia, were for the time
lost to sight. But works of his school, such as the
Theologia Germanica, which Luther valued next to the
Bible and St Augustine, and the still better known
Imitatio Christi, have always been considered as works
most full of the Christian spirit, though certainly
not of the spirit of Eome.
In England, besides the national cathedrals of which
I have spoken, other signs of a rising national spirit
were to be found in those who had the best right to
speak for Christianity. The career of Eoger Bacon,
the Franciscan (born 1214), was typically English.
He was among the first to give serious attention to the
pursuits of natural science ; and in the great turn of
thought which has led to the position of science in the
modern world, his share is almost as great as that of
his more celebrated namesake, Lord Bacon. The life
of Eoger Bacon was a continued struggle against the
spiritual authority of Eome : his books were condemned,
and himself languished for many years in prison. But
he, like Eckhart, kindled a fire destined never to be
put out.
It was not, however, the struggle of thought and
investigation to escape from the shackles of theology
which most tended to bring about the revolt against
Eome. There was in most countries a constant
irritation kept up by the tyranny of Eome, aud the
occupation of benefices by Italian priests. But in
itself this irritation might have gone on long without
producing actual revolt. The real spring of that revolt
was the revulsion of the free and idealizing spirit of
the North against the extreme materialism which was

THE MEDIEVAL THEOCRACY 217
crushing Christianity. What was eventually intoler
able to the northern spirit was the materialization of
the sacraments, the sale of indulgences, the worship of
images and relics, the whole series of links of the iron
chain whereby not the thought only but the soul of
the people was bound. It is notable that the great
reformers did not, in the first instance, rebel against
Eome ; they revolted against visible abuses, and the
raising of vast barriers between the soul and God.
They appealed to Eome against what was wrong in
Christianity ; and only when Eome answered the
appeal by anathema and fire did they throw off a
spiritual loyalty which had become deeply engrained
in every part of the Christian world.
An Englishman and a teacher at Oxford cannot help
feeling a glow of satisfaction at knowing that perhaps
the most powerful and original of all the workers for
reform in the pre-Eeformation age was an Englishman
and an Oxford teacher, Wycliffe. If one reads any
account of the life of this remarkable man,^ one is
astonished at the extent to which he anticipated
the views of the reformers of a century later. In
his opposition to the Papal claims, in his protest
against the abuse of the monastic life, in his appeal
to the Bible, in his spiritual view of the Sacraments,
even in his positive doctrines, he saw beyond all
other men the deep needs of the age and the future
of spiritual religion. It is a marvel that Wycliffe
did not perish at the stake, though his enemies
secured the appropriate satisfaction of digging up
and destroying his dead body. Wycliffe and his
' For example, England in the Age of Wycliffe, by G. M. Trevelyan.

2i8 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
followers were persecuted as heretics, and the advent
of reform was strangely delayed. But though the
movement which thus sprang up did not make a great
noise in the world, there can be no doubt that it
worked strongly beneath the surface in preparing the
minds of men for great changes.
Thus before the end of the fourteenth century, the
beginnings of intellectual revival were appearing ; and
the decay, which so often follows close on full ripeness,
was making way in the Eoman system. At first aU
Christendom awaited in hope a peaceable reform of
the Church. The Councils of Constance (1414-18)
and of Basel (1431-43) were expected to effect this
reform. But it is not thus that great changes take
place in the world ; a strong organization, like a
strong body, resists disintegration, and can only be
destroyed after fierce and long protracted struggles.
The mere desire of reform needed to be reinforced by
a stern and narrow passion.

LECTURE IX
THE REVIVAL OF CHRISTIANITY

I HAVE treated of the conquests of Christianity, of her
self-adaptation to fresh surroundings, and her power
to use those surroundings for her own purpose. But
there is another feature in the history of Christianity
of which I have said little, though it is prominent at
all periods : this is the power which she has shown
of constantly renewing her youth, reverting to the
original type, and setting out afresh on a new career.
The phrase ' reversion to type ' is, of course, borrowed
from biology. Species of animals and of plants under
certain conditions, especially when they have fallen
into an unhealthy and unnatural state, show a tendency
to revert to an earlier phase, one more in accord with
nature and with the original character of the species.
As Christianity resembles a living plant or animal in
its growth and in its power of absorbing what is with
out, so it resembles a living thing also in the power of
reversion to type. 219

220 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
It would be possible to take many instances from
the early and the mediaeval history of the Church.
But we will content ourselves with taking one instance,
by far the most interesting and remarkable of all,
which marks the transition from mediaeval to modern
history in Christianity at the time when the discovery
of printing and the revival of classical literature and
art made all things in Europe new.
The phrase, ' Eevival of Christianity,' seems to me
perhaps the least inadequate to describe the great
religious movements of the sixteenth century, the
Eeformation and the Counter-Eeformation with all
their consequences. This revival must in the last
result be regarded as an example of that occasional
outpouring of the spirit upon men, of which I spoke in
the first lecture. In some periods of history the hand
of God is far more clearly visible than at others ;
remarkable men arose when and where they were
needed to accomplish a mighty work. But still, look
ing at the matter in a historic way, we see that the
revival of Christianity rose not unnaturally out of the
circumstances of the time, out of the conjunction of a
Church full of abuses and corruption with new lights
shining and new forces working in every direction.
A singularly calm and impartial historian, Bishop
Stubbs, has written of the combination of events
whence the Eeformation sprang, as follows : ' The
change is a very wonderful, and, historically, a most
important one. The accumulation at one point of
time of so many various influences in one direction ;
the contemporaneous fruit-bearing of a quantity of
growths that had been advancing with no mutual

THE REVIVAL OF CHRISTIANITY 221
acquaintance for ages ; the co-operation in the same
work of the mistakes and vices of Popes, the lusts,
avarices, and ambitions of princes ; the learning of one
side and the ignorance of the other ; the almost
accidental appearance of some of the most powerful
causes, occasions, and influences ; the divorce, for
instance, of Catharine of Aragon, or the pecuniary
distresses of Leo X. ; and the common tendency of
these to the break-up of the Eoman power; — the
coincidence of all these things make a problem which-
philosophy cannot account for. We can but say with
humility, " It was so, for the time was come." ' ^
Perhaps an irresponsible layman may venture
beyond the limits assigned by the caution of the
Bishop, and say that in this remarkable convergence of
circumstances we may venture to trace a divine over
ruling. In the present lectures I cannot go into
details of history ; I can but try to set forth some of
the more certain and widely acting causes which seem
to have brought on the great crisis in Christianity.
The relations between the Eenascence in letters and
the Eeformation in religion are interesting. The two
movements were certainly closely connected, but quite
as closely in the way of opposition as of homogeneity.
We saw in the fourth lecture how it was that
Christianity failed to come in contact with what was
the best fruit of ancient civilization, the literature and
art of Athens at her great period. Christianity in
the second century had contact with Greek religion in
its decline, and the vigorous and enthuiastic cults of
more or less Oriental type which invaded later Greece.
1 Stubbs, Lectures on European History, p. 66.

222 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
And Christianity did succeed, in a large measure, in
taking to herself the results of the philosophy of Plato
and his followers. But the beautiful flower of Greek
literature and art remained strange to her; and as
the centuries passed by, the Church became harder and
less sympathetic, went further and further from the
Greek ways of regarding nature and life, became fixed
in a worldly unworldliness and a religion out of
relation to the spirit of God working in the realm
of nature and within the spirit of man.
Platonism, however, was always in some form or
other accessible to the Church, more especially in the
spurious writings which were accepted as the work of
Dionysius the Areopagite, the convert and pupil of St
Paul. Through these works and those of some of the
Fathers, such as Clement and Augustine, thinking men
always remained in touch with the great spiritual
philosophy of Greece. Again and again at intervals,
in such lives as those of Johannes Scotus and Abelard,
we find a return to a loftier and more philosophic
way of regarding God and man. But yet when in
the fifteenth century the actual works of Plato and
Plotinus began again to be read, we cannot wonder
that there came as it were a new breath of life over the
waters which had been made stagnant by rigid
Catholicism. And with the Platonic philosophy there
arose from the grave the other sides of Greek culture
of which I have spoken, and a really human or
humanist movement spread through Italy, and passed
on northwards to France, England, and Germany.
It can scarcely surprise us that the first result was
an extraordinary corruption of morals and spread of

THE REVIVAL OF CHRISTIANITY 223
license,^ For humanism laid stress on the innocence
of all natural enjoyments, the beauty of human nature
and the world, the delight of self-development and
self-reahzation ; and it dwelt on these things, not as
Greece itself had dwelt on them, as a part of the
national religion, but in opposition to all that at the
time passed as religion — the dreary yoke of asceticism,
the heavy burden of an infallible Church. The choice
seemed to be between man and God, and the new
culture presented man in so pleasing an aspect, and
the old religion presented God in an aspect so severe
and morose, that it is no matter of wonder that the
former was preferred even by Cardinal and Pope.
One may fairly consider the Eenascence as in the first
instance a revival of an unbaptized Paganism, accom
panied in the enlightened classes by a practice of all
the vices of Pagan society, unredeemed by its virtues
and nobleness.
This, however, is but one aspect of the matter.
The introduction to the splendid masterpieces of the
literature of Greece and Eome had naturally caused
a sudden and enormous expansion of intellectual
power. The minds of scholars turned back to the
great days of Greece and Eome as to a golden age,
lying beyond the barbarous mediaeval foreground ; the
society portrayed by Plutarch and Cornelius Nepos
became real to them ; they began to feel that other
modes of life than their own not only were possible but
had existed. Hence arose the historic spirit which had
died away from Europe for a long array of centuries.
' One best realizes this if one reads that most striking work, The
Biography of BenvemUo Cellini.

224 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
The Eenascence may fairly be said to have spread
to Christianity when scholars began to exercise on
the early documents of the rehgion, the New Testament
and the writings of the Fathers, the faculties trained
on the Greek and Eoman classics, and when the
vivification of ancient history spread from Plutarch to
the Gospels and the Acts. A brilliant writer, in a
recent sketch,^ has selected three names as most
conspicuous in this work. Lorenzo Valla, at Florence,
turned back from the Vulgate text of the New Testa
ment, — the Latin translation by Jerome, everywhere
accepted as a final authority, — to the Greek text.
John Colet, at Oxford, began to lecture upon the
writings of St Paul in the spirit of a more critical
age, and rejected the vast mass of lumber with which
the schoolmen had overlaid them. The third name
is that of the greatest of all the promoters of broader
views of the New Testament, Erasmus of Eotterdam,
whose Greek Testament, in spite of its critical imper
fections, must be considered as the starting-point of
a mighty movement.
These and other scholars floated on the crest of a
great wave which bore men on to compare the
Christianity of their own day with that of New
Testament times, and to long to restore to the ossified
Church something of the inspiration and of the
simplicity which had marked its beginnings. And as
the spirit of the Eenascence had strongly worked, not
only among laymen, but even among the Catholic
dignitaries, it might well seem that the ground was
prepared for a gradual and peaceful reform of the
^ Wernle, Lie Eenaissance des Christentums.

THE REVIVAL OF CHRISTIANITY 225
Catholic Church. But, alas ! it is not thus that
reforms take place in this world of ours. We at this
distance of time may well regret that the light and
reasonableness which belonged to the spirit of Erasmus
and Melancthon and Colet did not avail to cleanse
the Church of its abuses, and to initiate a gradual
change to a broader and more modern spirit. But it
is not in human nature to value highly such things as
are bought cheaply ; for the real rebirth of Christianity
a terrible price in misery and fire and blood had to be
paid. And the conflict was not by any means, as we in
England are apt to think, caused by the mere resist
ance of darkness to light, of ecclesiastical abuses and
usurpations to the spread of more Christian and more
spiritual views. As in almost all the great crises of
history, when ideas clash, good and evil, right and
wrong were everywhere mingled, and ranged on both
sides. If I try to disengage and to set out in a clear
light what I consider to be the main tendencies of the
time, I feel that I am attempting a hard task, and one
in which complete success is almost impossible.
As the revival of Pagan literature and art, un
accompanied by the guiding and controlling forces of
ancient religion and civic morality, had led to a
dissolution of morals, and spread self-indulgence in
Church and state, so the first attempts to revive
primitive Christianity led to terrible disorganization
and wild excesses. Of the early history of the Church
as recorded in Acts, some of the most prominent
features are religious equality, the reliance placed
upon direct visions and revelations from heaven,
IS

226 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
and the community of worldly possessions. It is no
wonder that the attempt in the sixteenth century once
more to realize these conditions produced in an
ignorant populace, under the leadership of fanatical
preachers, such painful convulsions as the peasants'
war in Germany. In England, the loss of the sacred
prestige which had belonged to abbeys and mon
asteries exposed them to the greed of a semi-barbarous
aristocracy, who seized the lands left for sacred
purposes, and confiscated and destroyed the works of
religious art which had accumulated during the ages
of faith. On every side society, which had been
gradually built upon a basis of which Christianity was
the uniting tie, seemed to be drifting towards dissolution.
And, as always happens, the conservative forces of the
world drew themselves together to resist the threatened
destruction. They fought against the license which
had grown out of the Eenascence, and afterwards
against the liberty of thought aud inquiry which had
given rise to that license. And in the result the
powers of conservatism were in great part victorious ;
they would have been completely victorious, and
drowned the Eeformation in a river of blood, but for
the divine elements which it contained, and which
saved it in some of the countries of Europe.
I have called the great Eeformation a Christian
reversion to type. But the phrase, though true,
requires modification and explanation. A literal
reversion, in the sixteenth century, to the conditions
and the beliefs which prevailed in Judaea fifteen
hundred years before was, of course, impossible. Not
only political and social conditions were entirely

THE REVIVAL OF CHRISTIANITY 227
different, but the whole mental outlook was com
pletely changed. Yet while the change had been
so vast, the Eeformers did not fully realize its great
ness. The historic spirit, which tries to see in a white
light the events of the past, and to realize them in
their naked truth, can scarcely be said to have
existed. So the Eeformers conjured up, with the help
of the documents which they possessed, an ideal past,
which in some ways was correct, while in other
respects they carried back to the origins of Christian
ity the beliefs and aspirations of their own time.
They clearly perceived many of the abuses which
flourished in the Eoman Church. The sale of in
dulgences, the veneration of relics, the domination of
Eome revolted their consciences ; and it was, of course,
very easy to see that there was nothing of all these to
be traced in the first age of Christianity. But the
Catholic Church had struck its roots so deep, had for
so many centuries governed the feelings and the
thoughts of mankind, that her influence was not at
once to be shaken off.
We may adopt the excellent classification of the
great leaders of the Eeformation given by Dr Ehrhard.^
The root of the Lutheran revival he calls religious
subjectivity, which I should prefer to designate the rise
of the Teutonic conscience and sense of the spiritual.
The foundation of Zwingli's movement was theological
criticism and philosophy : Zwingli was a humanist
like Erasmus, but he had greater courage and
more conviction than that eminent scholar. In
Calvinism we see the religious impulse give birth to
' Der Katholizismus, p. 100.

228 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
a kind of theocracy, and dominate practical life. Of
the three great leaders Calvin had the greatest im
mediate effect ; but, on the other hand, his legacy to
the Eeformed Church contained more of the base
elements which had to be sloughed away by time.
II
In the seventh lecture I set forth the main features
of the teaching and discipline of the Cathohc Church
in the Eoman Empire. We found them to be : (1) the
formation of the canon of Scripture; (2) the settle
ment of the creed; (3) the materiahzation of the
sacraments ; (4) the formation of the order of bishops ;
(5) the primacy of Eome ; (6) monasticism. The
reformers generally accepted the first two of these,
and rejected the rest. It was the materialization of
religion which first roused their passionate opposition ;
and then, when the authority of bishop and pope was
brought in to crush their movement, they were obhged
to revolt against the external authority of the Church
and the monastic army by which it was supported.
It is noteworthy that the many difficulties which
in our day surround the reformed churches spring
from their rejection of the Catholic tenets not less
than from what they retained of them. The Eeforma
tion, like every other great historic movement, had its
weaker as well as its better side. All good things
come from God, but they become mingled with human
weakness and folly. It was, in particular, two ways
of regarding Christianity, which the Eeformers inherited
from the Middle Ages and retained, which have had
on subsequent ages a sad influence.

THE REVIVAL OF CHRISTIANITY 229
The first of these was an unhistoric and uncritical
way of regarding the Bible. Driven to produce some
authority which could be put in the balances against
the authority of the visible Church, sternly arrayed
against them, to what could men appeal but to Scrip
ture, the recognized sacred books of the religion ? And
accepting these as an inspired and infallible authority,
they accepted them as a whole. To the Eeformers,
Scripture was the direct word of God, and not, as it is
to us, a series of books written at various times and
under various conditions, and bearing very different
degrees of inspiration and of value. They regarded
the Old Testament as like the Gospels and Epistles in
inspiration, and similar in teaching ; whence, of course,
the older documents had to be read as allegories, as
types and symbols, as foreshadowings and prophecies of
that which was later more fully revealed.
The greatest by far of all the troubles and dangers
at present threatening the reformed churches arises
from the fact that their founders made an inspired or
infallible Bible the corner-stone of their systems. The
growth of historic criticism, whatever be in the long
run the gain that it will bring, is at this moment
sapping the foundation on which these churches were
built. ¦ Their case is like that of some of our great
cathedrals which were set on a foundation which, to
the builders, seemed quite sufficient, but which has not
been able to resist the decomposing powers of the soil,
so that now we have with great labour to dig down to
the foundations, and underpin the structures with
modern concrete.
The second of the great misfortunes of the Eeformers

230 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
was that they often regarded Christianity as a body of
opinions, rather than as a way of life. I call this
their misfortune rather than their fault, because it was
quite impossible, considering how continually after the
first age the Christian Church had devoted itself to the
formulation of doctrine, and made the acceptance of
doctrine a condition of membership, that they should
take any other course. If they had been able to look
at the Bible in due perspective, they would have seen
that from the earlier accounts of the life of the Founder
preserved in the Synoptic Gospels, doctrine is almost
absent. But they looked upon the Fourth Gospel as
just as valuable historically as the other three; and
they accepted the Pauline Epistles as of the same
authority as the teaching of Jesus Himself. Taking
the Bible as a whole, it was only possible to interpret
it consistently by means of a formed scheme of doctrine.
Hence the importance which the great leaders of the
Eeformation attached to tbe drawing up of confessions,
and their refusal to join with any who would not
accept their formulae ; hence the bitter quarrels of
Lutherans and Calvinists ; hence the burning of Servetus
and the splitting up of the Church in England.
Out of the tumult of the wild and uncontrolled
movements of fanatic enthusiasm, crashing against a
hard and generally sceptical conservatism, there arose
in the sixteenth century two great religious movements,
each representing a form of the Christian inspiration,
each suited to particular national and racial types, both
necessary to the spiritual life of Europe. These were
the Eeformation and the Counter-Eeformation.
' It takes a soul to move a body.' And certainly the

THE REVIVAL OF CHRISTIANITY 231
party of religious reform in Europe would never have
been able to resist the pressure of the splendidly
organized Church of Eome, with all its allies among the
rulers of Europe, unless it had built itself up on some
spiritual principle. At first, in the history of the Ee
formation, one is certainly impressed by its dependence
upon the political support of princes, especially the
kings and queens of England and the dukes of
Saxony. But this support would soon have failed
had there not been a permanent spirit of life in the
movement. This spirit of life came from the passionate
acceptance by Luther and Calvin and their followers of
the ideas of that early phase of Christianity which is
best embodied for us in the writings of St Paul, and
from that maintenance of the possible and actual
communion between every human soul and the Father
in Heaven, which was so clearly taught by St Paul's
Master. This great idea took form in the Protestant theology
in the doctrine of salvation by faith. This doctrine
was not only the basis of Luther's theology, but the
basis of his whole character and being. His revolt
against Eome was at bottom the result of spiritual
experience, the assertion of spiritual fact. It rested
as much on truth and reality in opposition to authority
as did the revolt of Galileo against the Mosaic cosmo-
geny. The Church of the time ordered men, on penalty
of everlasting punishment, to accept her teaching that
the pardon of sin could be bought for money, that the
bread and wine of the sacrament were part of the
actual body and blood of Christ, that the life of the
cloister was in all cases nobler than that of the family.

232 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
The reformers perceived that these teachings were
false, not true, and they had the courage of their
convictions in drawing the inference that the Church
which maintained them, and its head the Pope, were
not infalhble. Many men had thought these things
before. The greatness of Luther lay in his faith that
the God who had shown him the truth ordered him
to proclaim it to the world, and promised him eternal
life as a reward. Ill
The Counter-Eeformation came in to do a great work
in the south of Europe, as well as in France and
Germany ; and in a short time completely to change
the character of monasticism, of the Papal court, of
the whole spirit of the Eoman Church. At Eome
itself it substituted rigour of morals for open licentious
ness ; in monasteries aud nunneries it brought in a
rigid rule in the place of loose hving ; it revived every
where the beliefs which seemed to be dying. The
Dominicans brought popular religious instruction with
in the reach of the masses. The Jesuits curbed the
passions of princes and nobles, and carried the message
of the Cross as far as China and Japan.
At the Council of Trent the creed and formularies of
the Church underwent complete revision and further
development. Many points which had remained
doubtful were now decided. The Vulgate text of the
Bible was declared the inspired book of the Church,
and its interpretation by the Fathers acknowledged
as authoritative ; the doctrine of the Mass and the
Sacraments was defined in an extreme sense ; stress

THE REVIVAL OF CHRISTIANITY 233
was laid on the belief in Purgatory, and on the vener
ation of the saints and their relics. And measures
were taken for inculcating these doctrines upon the
people, and especially for educating children in the
knowledge of them.
This council was, in fact, the reply of the Eoman
Church to the appeal of the reformers. And, as able
recent writers have insisted,^ the whole tendency of
the movement was anti-Teutonic. There had been
German popes, but the race came to an end. The lead
was handed over to Italians and Spaniards. Hitherto,
the Catholic Church had been indeed predominantly
Italian, but she had yet combined within her fold all
the main national tendencies of Europe. Hence
forward Christianity was divided. The Catholic
Church had, as a visible institution, disappeared. There
remained the Eoman Church representing the Christian
spirit as working mainly in the countries which re
tained the Latin speech. Eeformed Christianity had
escaped from her control, and pursued a fresh course,
still retaining the invisible headship of the exalted
Christ and a continual communion with the Heavenly
Father of mankind.
Both the Eeformation and the Counter-Eeformation
were marked by the defects of their qualities, of which
we naturally hear much from their opponents. To an
Englishman the horrors of the Inquisition, the material
ism of the Mass and relic-worship, and the sophistries
of the Jesuit ethics, make it very hard to do justice to
the deep faith, the splendid self-surrender, the noble
enthusiasm of the new orders of soldiers of the Cross.
^ Ehrhard, Der Katholizismus, pp. 140, 161, etc.

234 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
And the people of Eoman Catholic countries have had
their hearts hardened against the leaders of the
Eeform by tales of their looseness in the matter of
marriage, their desire of worldly possessions, their
mental and moral aberrations from a pure Christian
code, their tendency to quarrelling and to infinite sub
division. There is no good in the world which has
not its shadow of evil, and there is no movement in
religion which does not lead some of those who accept
it into sin and shame.
Yet at bottom, both the movements were adaptations
of the root principle of Christianity to a new age.
Each was in principle a reversion to type. We have,
in the first lecture, defined the germ of Christianity as
a passionate self-devotion to the divine will as
operative in the world. The reformers were filled
with so complete a recognition of the divine will that
the part of man in the work of redeeming the world
seemed to them scarce worthy of being taken into
account ; man had but to wait, to trust, to accept an
offered salvation. The Calvinists accepted as a basis
of their religion the principles of election and pre
destination. The will of God was to them so majestic
aud overpowering that in comparison with it the will
of man seemed but a mirage. They carried the
principle 'Without Thee we are not able to please
Thee ' to the length of fanaticism. God was to be
everything, and man nothing. No man could by any
striving save himself ; he could only be saved if it was
written in the book of the divine preordination. He
might be, by the same eternal decree, cast out from
eternal life.

THE REVIVAL OF CHRISTIANITY 235
Modern thought, even among the descendants of
the Puritans, has moved so far from this point of view
that we do not easily do it justice. Yet history shows
that a belief in predestination is a marvellous power
in battling with the world. Most great men of action
have believed in a directing Providence or destiny;
it was the belief in predestination which was the
secret of the wonderful success of the earliest disciples
of Islam. Apart from the belief in predestination,
which was so strong among the followers of Luther
and Calvin, they would scarcely have been able to
meet their foes in the battlefield.
The religion of the Jesuits, which was at the heart
of the Counter-Eeformation, though it took an opposite
doctrinal line, was yet quite as much based on a sense
of the intimate relations of the divine and human will
The human will they studied with utmost care, and
endeavoured by continual exercise and chastisement to
bring it into subordination to the divine purpose
revealed in the world. They found the divine will,
not as the Eeformers did in the continued inspiration
of the spirit of God, as imparted in Scripture and to
the living preacher, but in a system, in a visible
Church, and the power of its duly appointed ministers
to be the channels of divine grace.
The two ways of conceiving divine revelation are
the two ways embodied from the very beginnings of
religion in the conflicting claims of prophet and of
priest. The one way was suitable to the genius of
the northern races — spiritual, introspective, making
religion centre in the conscience, especially the con
science of the individual. The other way was suit-

236 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
able to the genius of the Latin races — more turned to
what is without, more social, less self-reliant, and less
mystic in temperament. In countries where the
Teutonic and the Latin elements were fused, as in
France and South Germany, both the Eeformation and
the Counter-Eeformation struck deep roots, and it was
long before their destiny was worked out.
I have spoken of some of the troubles which have
in Northern Europe followed the Eeformation. There
is no need that I should say much of the sinister
results which have in Southern Europe followed the
Counter-Eeformation ; they do not greatly concern
us here. But no one who knows much about the
prospects of Christianity in France, Spain, and Italy
will be disposed to triumph over us of the Eeformed
Faith. There is now far more of religious life among
the laity in England and America than in France
and Italy. When France ejected the Huguenots she
sent away her own best blood, a vast gain to England,
Germany, and remoter countries, but an irreparable
loss to herself. She lost exactly the element which
would have tended to moderation at the time of
the Eevolution, and which would have preserved her
from violent vicissitudes in following times. The
mass of intelligent men both in France and Italy
is now said to be not bitterly hostile to the Church,
but indifferent to it, watching with a distant interest
the feud between the organized religion and the
violent secularists and agnostics. Whatever be our
troubles in England, this indifference on the part of
the laity is not among them, at least in anything like
the same degree.

THE REVIVAL OF CHRISTIANITY 237
These racial and geographical facts suggest the real
explanation of the history of the time. When once the
classical Eenascence had set in, it led inevitably to
great mental changes, to the growth and conquests of
physical science, to the rise of the historic spirit, to
the rapid spread of a secular commercial spirit through
Europe. But these things came about in Southern
countries outside the Christian Church and made their
way in opposition to her. To this day the Church of
Eome shows no little hostility to these developments.
Among the Teutonic races of Northern Europe it has
been otherwise. Science, both physical and historic,
has always been making fresh terms with religion ;
every sort of material progress has come into some
kind of alliance with it. There has been a constant
give and take between religion on the one side, and
the ideas and forces of physical and intellectual
progress on the other.
The reason of this appears to be that at the
Eeformation the Teutonic spirit was for the first time
I'eally baptized into Christ. The Teutonic nations had
for many years been Christian ; they had cast away
their own gods and accepted the yoke of the Eoman
Church. But the national spirit and qualities had
never yet been amalgamated with the spirit of religion ;
they had lived in mental subjection to a system of
polity and a scheme of belief framed without any
consideration of their special tendencies.
But the Eeformers introduced into the religion of
the North the old Teutonic freedom, individuality, and
mysticism. They claimed for every man the right of
approach to God, not through any organized church,

238 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
not through a mediating priesthood, but directly.
They taught that every man was, or might be, a
channel of divine inspiration ; that man had to seek
his own salvation, and could not accept it from ec
clesiastical authorities. They brought, not only the
organized Christian community, but every worthy
member of it into direct relations with the spirit of
Christ in the Church.
In speaking thus of the Teutonic element as
dominant in the Eeformation, I have no notion of
overlooking other important elements in the movement.
Some of the earliest stirring took place among the
Albigenses and the Waldenses of France. Huss and
the Slavonians of Bohemia received the torch from
Wycliffe. Even Calvin cannot fairly be claimed as
belonging to the northern races ; in fact, in his
tendencies we may see a very different strain from the
Teutonic. And in our own day some of the most
extreme Protestant sects may be found in Wales and
the Highlands of Scotland. Broad views are neces
sarily inaccurate views. When one speaks of Wales,
for example, as a mountainous country, one does not
mean to assert that it contains no plains. In the
same way one does not deny Celtic, pre- Celtic, and
other elements in the Eeformation. But looking at
the matter broadly, one sees that Saxony, Holland,
England, Sweden are pre-eminently the lands of the
Eeformation, and that the whole movement is a phase
of the eternal conflict between Eome and the Teutonic
spirit. In all countries in which the Eeformation
had not a Teutonic backbone, it was eventually put
down.

THE REVIVAL OF CHRISTIANITY 239
It was, indeed, a real and essential Christianity to
which Luther and Calvin and Zwingli led back their
contemporaries. At the heart of it was exactly that
relation of the human will to the divine of which I
spoke as the kernel of the religion of Jesus Himself.
The pipes which had long been fed from cisterns were
once more placed in connection with the divine and
perennial spring ; hence an infinite possibility of
progress and development.
The particular form in which Christianity presented
itself to the Eeformers was, as I have already remarked,
the Pauline At many crises of the Church the
teaching of St Paul, or of Paul as interpreted by
Augustine, has arisen from the mists of the past to
guide the leaders of Christianity. It is one of the
great inexhaustible fountains of Christianity. In
particular the Pauline idea of salvation, that idea on
which I dwelt in detail in the fifth lecture, seems to
be in close relations with the intimate recesses of the
human heart, and to have an unlimited power of
serving as a basis for religious structures. This was
the corner-stone alike of Luther and of Calvin, and of
the most powerful movements, such as Methodism,
which have since arisen in the countries which
accepted the Eeformation. But, in spite of the vital
force of the Pauline doctrine, it is one which lends
itself in a marked degree to aberration ; to the abuse
of it is due much of the religious eccentricity and
particularism which is so marked a feature of the
religion of England and America. And it was not
long after the first appearance of the Eeformers when
the reformed theology was overloaded with a mass of

240 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
religious metaphysics as elaborate and as distant from
fact and reality as the theology of Duns Scotus and
Thomas Aquinas. No doubt some such hard shell of
theory was necessary to protect the reformed doctrine
in the troubled days of the Inquisition and of religious
wars. But the progress of science, both physical and
historic, is as clear a call to us to revise the Protestant
theology of our Fathers, as were the Eoman abuses
and oppression in the sixteenth century a call to a
revolt of the Teutonic religious spirit.
We have come to the time when the Western
Church, the Church which had acknowledged the sway
of Eome, breaks up into branches. When the
Eeformation and the Counter-Eeformation had spent
the strength of their first impulse, Christianity in
Europe settled down on fresh lines. The particular
branch of the Church which most interests us is the
Anglican, called in the Cambridge Bidding Prayer,
' the pure and reformed part of the Catholic Church
established in this country.' The Anglican Church is
an unique phenomenon, a very remarkable embodiment
of the genius of a nation singularly careless of logic
and consistency, but combining a profound conservatism
with a great spirit of enterprise and initiative.
The Anglican Church belongs not wholly either to
the Eeformation or the Counter-Eeformation. It was
started by the Continental Eeformation, but largely
moulded by a reaction peculiar to this country, and
not going anything like so far as the reaction at Eome.
It includes, and has always included, in its fold, both
men who accept most of the doctrine of Eome, only
rejecting Eoman supremacy, and men of strongly

THE REVIVAL OF CHRISTIANITY 241
Protestant or even Calvinistic tendency. It is not
surprising that in stirring times there is a tendency in
the case of the former class of men to break out
towards Eome, like Newman and Manning; and, in
the case of the latter class, to become Nonconformists
like the followers of Wesley. But the great merit of
the Anglican Church is to have been a practical and
working system for three centuries and a half. During
that time she has never stood in hopeless antagonism
to science, to culture, to social reform, like the Church
of Eome, nor has she allowed the endless particularism
or the moral obliquities which have disgraced some of
the reformed churches. At the present day, whatever
her difficulties may be, they are perhaps less formidable
than those which encompass other sections of the
Church. On the whole, she has stood on the side of
the divine will, and in the vast expansion of the
British Empire she has helped to preserve its
Christian character.

16

LECTUEE X
CHRISTIANITY AND DEVELOPMENT

OuE course thus far has been historic. We have
taken up one by one the chief phases of church
history, and submitted them to an examination, hasty
indeed, but such as was possible within the scope of
these lectures. I have tried to show how in each we
may discern on the whole, in spite of degeneracy and
corruption, something of the working of the spirit of
Christianity, which in the first lecture I defined as a
loving recognition of, and co-operation with, the will
of God. We have seen how the spirit of Christ,
working from a definite point, and in a visible society,
met and grappled with the great civilizations of the
ancient world, how it absorbed what was necessary for
its growth out of Hellenism, out of the religion of the
Jews, out of the Eoman dominion. Christianity did
not indeed, as we have seen, absorb the whole of those
cultures : like a grovring plant it took from without
what was necessary to its life and vigour. Sometimes
it came back again, after ages, as modern miners re-

CHRISTIANITY AND DEVELOPMENT 243
examine the rejected slag left by miners of old time,
to take up what earlier it had rejected. Sometimes
the society could not make up its mind that modes of
thought and action which were constant accompani
ments of human history could really be fitted into the
Christian framework, and so let them remain outside,
either as rivals or as allies. And sometimes it took
into the Church what was really utterly foreign to the
spirit of Christ.
We can easily see that the stronger and more
energetic the Christian spirit was, the more did it
exercise the power of assimilation ; only in ages of
stagnation did it remain in contented proximity to
that which was foreign to it. In the greater ages,
especially the earliest period and the period of the
Eeformation, it exercised on all sides a strong assimila
tive energy.
I think it better, in so slight a sketch as the present,
not to attempt to carry the history down beyond the
sixteenth century. We should be coming too near to
our own time ; it would be very difficult to maintain
a general and an impartial outlook; and questions
properly historical would be mingled with the present-
day questions, to which I hope to devote another
course of these lectures. Since the days of Descartes
and of Locke, we are under the empire of what may
be called modern thought. And it is better, as a
matter of method, to examine modern thought accord
ing to its provinces rather than in the order of history,
or according to countries. I doubt indeed whether,
even if I could claim a sufficient knowledge of modern
church history to be able to take a bird's-eye view of

244 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
it, it is possible to produce, on the scale on which I
have been working, an outline of it which would be
really satisfactory. In a recently pubhshed work,^
Professor Adams Brown, of New York, gives perhaps
as good an account of the working in Christianity of
modern European thought as can be accomplished in
a moderate-sized volume.
I must, however, attempt to bring together the
results thus far reached : and try to gain some more
general view of a Christianity thus stretching through
the ages, and forming a bridge to connect the old
world with the new, as well as man with God. Can
we trace in the long history of Christianity the golden
thread of an abiding purpose ? Can we be sure that it
is after all one religion amid all its varied surroundings ?
In some minds the question may have been dwell
ing, whether, if the growth of Christianity was of the
nature which I have outlined, it is right to speak of
Christianity as a definite religion ? In many ways the
Christians of later times have acted on quite different
lines from Christians of earlier times ; they have
changed their habits of thought, their methods of
organization, their way of regarding their own institu
tions. Are we not rather tracing the history of
European religion, than the history of Christianity ?
May there not have arisen with time a new body in
the old garments, a new spirit in the old body ?
In some branches of the Church this may have taken
place ; but, on the whole, we have more of the
opposite process. The garments have been repeatedly
renewed : even the body part by part has, at least in
' The Essence of Christianity, 1904.

CHRISTIANITY AND DEVELOPMENT 245
the reformed sections of the Church, been changed.
It is the spirit which persists. Christianity is not a
system but a life ; and the further one penetrates
through the outward shows, the nearer one comes to
the real motive power. The question of the identity
of Christianity amid all the changes is much like the
question of the identity of a nation or a person at
various stages of their lives. The nation changes its
ways ; emigrants go forth from it, and fresh blood pours
in from outside ; but so long as the language, the in
stitutions, the national spirit survive, so long it is the
same nation. The individual changes in the course of
years every particle of his body; he passes through
many phases of education and culture, he marries and
founds a family ; yet he remains the same personality.
So the Church in which the Gospels remain the text
books of the higher life, to which the Lord's Prayer is
a reality, and in which the spirit of Christ still works,
is a Christian Church in spite of all changes.
Our remaining task, then, must be to gain some
notion of the continuity of Christian history, of its law
of progress and development. On this subject the
views of Christian writers differ greatly. And these
views are far more often held in the form of underlying
assumptions than of expressed hypotheses ; it is often
not easy to extract them. And it is likely that some
of these writers, if they saw their real underlying
hypotheses expressed in definite words, would in
dignantly repudiate them, so liable are we all to take
for granted what comes into our minds through inherit
ance and education, however ill it may agree with what
we have learned in later times of life.

246 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
First there is what may be called the ordinary
Eoman Catholic view, which has very largely prevailed
in the past history of the Church, and still holds its
ground. This view does away with the sharp contrast
between the history of the Founder and His apostles
and the history of the society ; or at least conceals it,
by claiming for the authorities of the Church power to
interpret the New Testament, containing the beginnings
of church history, in an ecclesiastical manner — that is,
not according to the ordinary principles of the inter
pretation of historical documents, but in a special way.
The Gospels, it is maintained, must be read in the
light of the subsequent history of the Church, and the
Church must have the right so to stretch and adapt the
Gospels as to fit them for the part she wishes them to
play in the devotions of the clergy and the people.
As in ecclesiastical art, so in ecclesiastical history, the
Master and His disciples must never appear save with
the nimbus ; they must never be brought down to the
level of daily life. All the reported deeds of the
Founder must be made to fit in vrith the Church's idea
of Him ; all His sayings must be so interpreted as not
to come into conflict with Catholic doctrine.
It was a true instinct which made the Eoman Curia
in the sixteenth century maintain that if the laity
were allowed full access to Scripture, and permitted to
interpret it as best they could, the beliefs which then
swayed Christendom would be imperilled. And yet
for a long time after the Eeformation the full justifica
tion of that fear was not manifest. None of us ever
knows how far he is under the dominion of precon
ceived views ; how hard it is to see anything in another

CHRISTIANITY AND DEVELOPMENT 247
light than that which one has inherited from one's
parents, or learned from teachers whom one respects.
The Eeformers rejected many of the abuses which had
crept into the Western Church. Against Papal power
and ecclesiastical pretensions they obstinately revolted ;
but instead of looking at Scripture in a simpler and
more historic fashion, the great leaders of the Eevolt
attributed to Scripture an even higher authority than
before, and put its sacredness in the place of the idols
which they had shattered. They of course in some
degree reinterpreted various passages ; but they were
very far from taking a generally critical attitude : that
has come upon us by slow degrees in the course of
three centuries.
It was not against the creeds of the early Church
that the Eeformers revolted, but against the abuses of
the contemporary Church.. They continued to read
the Gospels and the Epistles of Paul in a non-natural
way. But in deahng with the subsequent history of
the Church, they proceeded with much freer hand.
Holding that the original doctrine of Christianity had
become by degrees corrupted, first by Pagan ideas,
and then by Eoman usurpation, they came to look on
the whole history of Christianity as a melancholy
course of corruption and degradation. The nearer
one approached the source, the purer flowed the stream.
First the Founder and His apostles set forth a sublime
and heavenly doctrine ; then the spirit of the
Founder in the Church for a time kept it on a higher
level But by degrees the corruptions of the world,
the flesh and the devil, dragged down the Christian
society until its light was all but quenched under the

248 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
darkness of the Middle Ages, and its inspiration
smothered by the corruptions of an unspiritual
hierarchy. The various reformed churches took the type
which they preferred to regard as ideal at various
points of the early development of the society. The
Anglican Church took as its model the Church of the
early Fathers ; Baptists and Independents tried to
go back to the first century. At the present moment
there is in England a movement which proposes to
take, on no clear ground but that of custom, the
Church of the first six centuries as authoritative in
regard to Christian ritual and usage, if not in regard
to Christian doctrine. No satisfactory reason, how
ever, can be given why the year a.d. 600, which falls
into a specially dark period of history, should be re
garded as the zenith of church development.
II
I suppose it is unnecessary that I should criticize
either of the above views at length. It is not likely
that any of those whom I am addressing will be
standing at the conservative Eoman point of view.
And the conservative Protestant point of view may
fairly be considered as out of date, though no doubt
still retained by many. It is, in fact, not to be
reconciled with some of the most strongly pronounced
intellectual tendencies of our day, tendencies which
occupy the minds not only of students in our uni
versities, but of the writers for newspapers and
magazines, and of their readers. One of these ten
dencies is the rise of the historic spirit, another is the

CHRISTIANITY AND DEVELOPMENT 249
spread of theories of evolution, which are scarcely to
be reconciled with a view, which tells of little but
decay and degradation. It is scarcely surprising that,
in recent years, a good many of those who adhered to
the Protestant view of Christian history have found
it more satisfactory to give it up for the Eoman view,
especially as the latter has been modified by Cardinal
Newman's theory of development.
If one reads the recently published book called
Roads to Rome, in which recent converts to Eomanism
recount the thoughts which led them to change their
faith, one remarks how great an effect has been
wrought in many minds by Newman's Development of
Christian Doctrine. This book I have recently studied
afresh, and I recognize in it, with men of all schools,
one of the greatest and most suggestive religious works
of the last century, an attempt, partially successful
and partially misleading, to guide the minds of men
into a broader and more reasonable view of the
Christian faith. When I wrote my Exploratio Evan
gelica I did not realize how closely I was following in
the footsteps of Newman in my statement and exposi
tion of the doctrine of ideas and their manifestation.
I have now better appreciated this. And, as a penance
for my dulness, I will here cite a few passages from
Newman's great work, which express the essence of
the views which I have tried in these lectures to
inculcate, in language the perfection of which I should
vainly try to imitate.
' When,' he writes,^ ' some great enunciation,
whether true or false about human nature, or present
1 Development of Christian Doctrine, ch. i. , sect. i. , par. 4-7.

250 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
good, or government, or duty, or religion, is carried
forward into the public throng of men, and draws
attention, then it is not merely received passively in
this or that form into many minds, but it becomes an
active principle within them, leading them to an ever
new contemplation of itself, to an application of it in
various directions, and a propagation of it on every
side.' ' At first men will not fully realize what it is
that moves them, and will express and explain them
selves inadequately.' ' After a while some definite
teaching emerges ; and as time proceeds, one view
will be modified or expanded by another, and then
combined with a third ; till the idea to which these
various aspects belong will be to each mind separately
what at first it was only to all together.' ' It will, in
proportion to its native vigour and subtlety, introduce
itself into the framework and details of social life,
changing public opinion, and strengthening or under
mining the foundations of established order. Thus in
time it will have grown into an ethical code, or into
a system of government, or into a theology, or into a
ritual, according to its capabilities.' ' And so as regards
existing opinions, principles, measures, and institutions
of the community which it has invaded; it develops
by establishing relations between itself and them ; it
employs itself in giving them a new meaning and
direction, in creating what may be called a jurisdiction
over them, in throwing off whatever in them it cannot
assimilate. It grows when it incorporates, and its
identity is found, not in isolation, but in continuity
and sovereignty.' ' Whatever be the risk of corruption
from intercourse with the world around, such a risk

CHRISTIANITY AND DEVELOPMENT 251
must be encountered if a great idea is duly to be
understood, and much more if it is to be fully ex
hibited. It is elicited and expanded by trial, and
battles into perfection and supremacy '
It will be evident to those who have followed these
lectures from the beginning, and still more to those
acquainted with previous works of mine, how nearly my
view of the penetration of history and the moulding of be
lief by the action of ideas corresponds to the fundamental
theories of Newman. When one reads his admirable
statements of the working power of ideas, of the varied
intellectual forms in which they find expression, of their
power to use and assimilate elements taken from the
world around, it is not easy to compel oneself to pause and
consider the deficiencies which are apparent on a closer
analysis. In spite of deficiencies, the construction of
Newman seems to me built upon permanent foundations,
though he is mistaken in thinking that it is the only
construction which those foundations will support. It
is possible to go a long way with him, and yet alto
gether to decline to see with him the necessity of an
infallible Church, or to find that infallibility concen
trated in the Church of Eome. But when I come to
the parting of the ways and take a path which leads
in a very different direction from that of Newman, I
do so with regret, and part from the master with all
respect and deference.
In no censorious spirit, but with perfect plainness, I
must show why one of the most highly gifted of the
sons of Oxford failed in his magnificent endeavour to
show that Eoman Catholicism was the only legitimate
representative on earth of the Christian faith, and not

252 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
irreconcilable with modern thought. If he missed his
mark, the blame lies less on him than on his Univer
sity, which had remained isolated from intellectual
progress, careless and contemptuous of the changes
going on in the world of thought.
Every work going, as does that of Newman, to the
roots of religious thought, must be built upon certain
historic and psychologic views. I will speak first of
Newman's historic theories; and second, of his psycho
logic and philosophic assumptions.
The attempt to apply an evolutionary hypothesis to
the history of the Christian Church was not only a
great conception, but one which bears the mark of
genius. We must remember that when the Develop
ment of Christian Doctrine appeared, Darwin's Origin
of Species had not been written. Theories of develop
ment were emerging from the high level of thought, as
we may imagine the mountains appearing one by one
when the flood of Noah subsided. Newman was the
dove who returned with the olive-leaf. It is, there
fore, only natural that his theory, being a work of
genius but not superhuman, should have some of the
faults of immaturity.
(1) In the first place, while he regards the life of
the Christian Church as an evolution under divine
control, it scarcely seems to occur to him that the
history of other religions must be regarded in the same
light. He speaks of the religion of the Pagan world
as made up of ' malignant and incurable superstitions ' ;
and it does not occur to him that there may be in
them also a portion of divine light, that they too may
incorporate beliefs revealed from above and gradually

CHRISTIANITY AND DEVELOPMENT 253
made clear to men. In a recent excellent work,^ Dr
E. Caird has traced the gradual raising and purifying
of the idea of God among the great thinkers of Greece.
And it may be truly said that not only was this process
as true an example of development, and of divinely-
led development, as the development of theology in the
Christian Church, but even that the Christian Church
inherited from Greece a great part of its theology.
The pre-Christian history of Christian doctrine is, as
has been amply shown by such writers as Hatch and
Lightfoot, of the utmost importance to its understand
ing. But to Newman, whatever is outside the Christian
society is falsehood and superstition.
In places, no doubt, he shows a wider tolerance.
He is willing to allow that the divine grace may shine
upon devout souls, even among Pagans ; and in one
place he writes in regard to the religion of Mohammed,
' No one would deny that there has been a living idea
somewhere in a religion which has been so strong, so
wide, so lasting a bond of union in the history of the
world.' ^ But the toleration which sometimes includes
Islam, excludes all forms of Christianity which do not
belong to the Eoman stem. To heresy not even so
much of sympathy is extended. All this, of course,
shows in how small a degree Newman had assimilated
the idea of the divine control of history. A belief in
the constant intercourse between God and man was
excluded from his mind by the profound scepticism
which was, after all, one of his leading characteristics.
(2) In the second place, sound historic criticism of
^ Evolution of Theology in the Gh'eek Philosophers.
2 Ch. v., sect, iii., par. 2.

254 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
the Bible was by Newman unknown or disregarded.
In his time it had a more anti-Christian aspect than it
has at present. We must remember that Baur's work
on the Gnostics and Strauss's Leben Jesu appeared in
1835, at the time when Newman's views were crystalUz-
ing. But however the fact may be explained, it is the
fact that Newman's notions in regard to the Old and
New Testament are altogether pre-cri tical. He holds
unmodified the old views as to Jewish prophecy. Of
progressive revelation in the Jewish theocracy he has
as little notion as of development in Pagan religion.
To him the Gospel of John is as much an accurate
historic record as is that of Mark. To him the
profound differences of outlook between the Judaizers
and St Paul are as nothing. All the words of the
great Apostle of the Gentiles are taken as authorita
tive, in spite of the vigorous disclaimers of their
author. Scripture stands together, not as a literature
spread over many centuries, and written by men of
many types and many kinds of belief, but as a formal
revelation of God. And this revelation was to be
interpreted by the Church as its authorized exponent,
not according to the methods of historic criticism, but
in allegoric and mystical fashion. ' Mystical inter
pretation and orthodoxy will stand or fall together.'
(3) Living in narrow High Church surroundings, it
is no wonder that Newman failed to understand the
true meaning of the Eeformation. Luther and Calvin
stood in his opinion in the same position as Marcion
and Sabellius, as heresiarchs, men who had dared to
differ from the views of the organized Church, and so
were cut off from the source of all goodness. Whether

CHRISTIANITY AND DEVELOPMENT 255
they embodied one side of the truth, what relation they
bore to the genius of the Northern nations, whether the
corruptions against which they protested were real —
none of these questions seemed to have disturbed
Newman. To him the saying extra ecclesiam nulla
salus, has reference not only to the judgment of souls ;
he applies it to spiritual life in the present world also.
No chapters in the Development of Christian Doctrine
are more striking than those which dwell upon the
victory of the Church over rival doctrines, of the
splendid march through the ages of the Society of
Christians. The writer seems ready to break into a
song of triumph like that of Deborah, or of Miriam
by the Eed Sea. Victory he regards as proving the
right to live and to conquer : every triumph of the
Church in antiquity and in the Middle Ages is a proof
of her right to claim authority in the present. No
doubt in such an attitude there is much which appeals
to an age accustomed to regard successful varieties of
animals and of plants as justified by success. It has
a certain biological satisfactoriness. But it is an
inversion of the order of things to suppose that the
teaching of the Eoman Church is justified because it
has been victorious over heresy in the past, — that it is
victorious because it is true ; it would be more
correct to say that the doctrine of the Eoman Church
is simply the teaching which is accepted as true because
it has been victorious. Of course, it is possible to add
that the victory could not have been won without
divine approval; but in that case, the vast success
in the world of the teaching of the leaders of the
Eeformation must also prove the divine approval of

256 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
their work. If Islam could not have prevailed with
out some power of a divine idea, then certainly the
Church of England, the Lutheran Church, the Church
of Wesley may claim a like divine favour.

Ill
Compared with the narrowness of his views as to
the history of religion, the imperfections of Newman's
psychological theories may seem small. But they are,
in fact, of fundamental importance ; for it is they
alone which make such historic views possible.
Although much of what he writes in regard to ideas is
admirable, yet occasional phrases seem to show want
of clearness as to their real nature. He speaks of
them sometimes as objects, whereas what they really
are is tendencies, power working not from without but
from within the human consciousness. He calls them,
as we have seen, enunciations or statements, whereas
they are impulses of the active nature ; which may,
indeed, take form in phrases, yet cannot be compre
hended in any. To Newman a doctrine is a state
ment about spiritual things which a man receives on
authority, and to which he can justify his adhesion.
This is far indeed from the view which I have
advocated, that doctrines are an expression, a tem
porary and provisional expression, in words, of some
experience of the inner life. To accept a statement
without understanding its meaning and feeling its
applicability, is valueless : to have the experience is a
thousand-fold a better thing than to be able to express
it in suitable and logical phrases.

CHRISTIANITY AND DEVELOPMENT 257
The thing which Newman most bitterly disliked was
what he called rationalism. Yet if rationahsm be, as
indeed it must be held to be, an over-valuing of the
logical faculties of man in comparison with his powers
of feeling and of action, then the system of Newman
himself may fairly be condemned as rationalist. It
puts correct thought before right action ; it summons
the intelligences of man not merely to guide the
emotions, but to drive them, or even to arouse them.
It has, in fact, a share in the old Socratic paradox that
if men know what is right they are sure to do it ; —
that faulty thinking is at the roots of all anti-social
action. It is true that many pages of the Development are
quite free from this tendency ; and the writer often
speaks as if religion developed from within instead of
crystallizing outside the individual and the society ;
but he cannot remain consistently at that level. And
a consciousness of this seems to be betrayed when in
one passage ^ he tries eagerly to defend himself against
the charge of rationalism.
But the greatest defect of his whole teaching as to
the development of doctrine lies in this, that Newman
does not fully realize that the growth of Christianity was
not logical but biological It did not progress and
conquer through a gradual unfolding of beliefs im
plicitly contained in the Synoptic or Apostolic teaching,
but by conquest and assimilation of that which was
without. It is true that it would be easy to find in
Newman splendid passages in which the conquest and
absorption of suitable elements in the heathen world
' Ch. v., sect, iv., par. 2. 17

258 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
are dwelt upon;^ yet his argument obliges him to
maintain that what is expUcit in later Christianity
was implicit in its earlier teaching, that the Church
has in its doctrine advanced steadily in one direction,
that its start involved its consummation. The
instances in which he tries to establish this con
tinuity are very remarkable, and obviously drive him
to special pleading. Infant baptism, the veneration
of the Virgin, the supremacy of the Pope, are surely
things of which there is not the smallest trace in the
New Testament ; and it is easy to imagine with what
surprise, and with what indignant hostility, they would
have been heard of by James or Paul. But the mind
of Newman, which was curiously like that of Gladstone,
by a subtle process persuaded itself that views in
obvious opposition to historic fact could be maintained.
In these lectures it is maintained, on the other hand,
that Christianity grew and expanded very largely by
accepting what was in no way involved in its earlier
teaching, in accepting and baptizing the results of the
working of divine ideas in other fields than those of
Judaism and Christianity. What Christianity added
was the baptism, the spiritual assimilation and conse
cration whereby she translated those results to another
sphere, not merely of knowledge, but of feeling and
action. But in the course of such assimilation and
translation the Church certainly often made mistakes
for which she suffered, and sometimes by suffering
escaped from them ; but in other cases the conse
quences of the mistakes remain to our days as blots
on her fair fame.
' For example, the beginning and the end of chap. viii.

CHRISTIANITY AND DEVELOPMENT 259
IV
A great part of the book on Development is taken
up with an inquiry how developments of Christian
ideas' may be distinguished from corruptions of those
ideas. The object, of course, is to prove that the
Church of Eome stands in the line of genuine Christian
progress, and that she cannot be accused of corruption.
The tests are these : — ' There can be no corruption if
it retains one and the same type, the same principles,
the same organization ; if its beginnings anticipate its
subsequent phases, and its later phenomena protect
and subserve its earlier ; if it has a power of assimila
tion and revival, and a vigorous action from first to
last.' Such is the text of which the greater part of
Newman's book is an exposition.
A recent editor of Newman, M. Henri Bremond,
has observed that we must never forget, in reading
these applications, that Newman directs them all
against the High Church position in the Anglican
Church, and that to other Eeformed Christians they
wUl often seem to miss the mark. It is, indeed, easy
to see that when Newman speaks of development in
the Church he does not include the whole history of it,
but begins with the Church when it was already
organized and had acquired a definitely episcopal and
ecclesiastical character. His ignorance of modern
criticism did not allow him to observe that he does
not compare the tree with the seed, but only with the
sapling ; and that it is easy for the mass of readers in
England to escape the force of his arguments by going
round the farther end of his line of development.

26o THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
This being the case, it does not seem necessary to
consider in any detail the latter part of the book. I
will only observe that the tests spoken of by Newman
are mainly intellectual, and have more to do with
outward and visible consistency in organization and
doctrine than with continuity of spirit. I will only
recall what the Founder of Christianity said when He
was forewarning His disciples as to the future, and
telling them how they might discern between true and
false continuers of His teaching. The same problem
was presented to Him as to Newman. But instead of
prescribing some of the tests on which Newman so
skilfully insists, He set forth but one rough and practical
test : ' Ye shall know them by their fruits : do men
gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles ? ' Im
measurably nearer to the heart and reality of things is
this simple utterance than is the elaborate construction
of Newman. Here we have a test which is quite
scientific. And, whatever the intellectuals may say,
it is the one test which to the end of time the mass
of mankind will insist on applying. Every system
of religion, every branch of the Church of Christ, is
every day being subjected to this test, the test of
living, and rising or falling according to the result of
living. I do not deny that it is part of the duty of men of
thought to seek in the intellectual sphere the causes
which make one form of the Church in the highest
sense successful, and another stagnant or retrograde.
Eeligious thought and philosophy are always necessary.
But I do fearlessly maintain that mere consistency of
organization and teaching in a Church which lives

CHRISTIANITY AND DEVELOPMENT 261
through ages of very different tendencies and characters
is no great virtue, and has a closer kinship to petri
faction than to hfe. The Church which will dominate
the future is likely to do so less because she has a
consistent history than because she knows how to
inspire men of the present, and to draw them to a
higher level of conduct. The test of fruits must ever
be the final test.

It is with regret that I am obliged to criticize
one whom I so greatly admire as Newman. But in
these matters we must be no respecters of persons, but
speak freely according to the light that is in us. And
if the writings of Newman are at this moment a power
to draw men into the Eoman Church, they must be
criticized not as the words of a departed classic, but
as the appeals of one who is in a sense still living
among us.
But if Newman still appeals with the force of
genius and conviction to large classes of readers, it is
certain that more thoughtful and better educated
moderns will be more attracted by the views of the
Eoman Catholic writers who of late have built on
the foundations of Newman, but have corrected his
failures in criticism, and who present to Christian
readers the enticing gift of a new Eomanism, pro
fessedly in harmony with modern thought. It is by
no means in a spirit of controversy that I approach
these writers. With many of their views I have the
strongest sympathy, and, in fact, I would move on
lines parallel to theirs. It is only the exclusive claims

262 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
put forward by the authorities of the Vatican, deny
ing the right of existence to all outside their organiza
tion, which we are bound to meet with unbending
rigour. Many of us have followed with deep interest the
career of the most brilliant writer of what may be
called the Neo-Catholic school of France, M. Alfred
Loisy. Certainly the reproach of being backward in
matters of Biblical criticism which I brought against
Newman, does not apply to M. Loisy. Not only is he
frankly critical in dealing with the Jewish Scriptures,
but he handles the text of the New Testament with
complete liberty, and is as bold in his historic views in
regard even to the life and teaching of the Founder of
Christianity as the most advanced theologians of the
German universities. The Gospel of John is to him
an elaborate allegory. He thinks that Jesus anticipated
an almost immediate end of the world, a cataclysm in
which He Himself should return to establish a kingdom
of saints. He regards the historic origin of the Lord's
Supper as a very doubtful matter.
This complete freedom of historic investigation is
made possible for M. Loisy by the broad distinction
which he draws between matters of history and
matters of faith. Whatever enters into the course of
history must be tested and measured by historic
method, must be received or rejected according to the
most rigid canons of historic probability. But doctrine,
and whatever is matter of faith, must be accepted at
the hands of the Church, and its legitimate head the
Pope, as something imposed by authority and taken in
humility. To take an extreme instance. The origin

CHRISTIANITY AND DEVELOPMENT 263
of the Lord's Supper is, according to M. Loisy, sur
rounded by historic doubt: it is improbable that it
was instituted by Jesus Himself before His departure.
But the doctrine that when Mass is celebrated there is
a transubstantiation of the bread and wine into the
actual body and blood of Christ, is to be accepted as a
matter of faith by all loyal members of the Christian
community on earth.^
Everyone who has thought much about such ultimate
questions as the relations of history to faith, knows
that in these matters one can always escape minor
difficulties and inconsistencies by taking up a frankly
extreme position. The complete dividing up of
religious belief between the two spheres of history
and doctrine, the dichotomy of all possible creeds, is
one of those extreme measures which please by
their logical thoroughness, but entail some other dis
advantages. It may be compared to a very complicated
and dangerous surgical operation, such as are oc
casionally resorted to as the only chance for life, but
which leave the patient marred and incomplete to
a short yet lingering existence.
It would be a tedious and unnecessary task to
examine at length all the difficulties inherent in
M. Loisy's scheme. I need but touch on two or three
of them. In the first place, the Curia of the Eoman
Church will not allow that history is outside the
province of faith. Her authorities have always
demanded the teaching of rehgious history for teachers
whom she herself controls. And in expressly con-
" I have stated my views as to M. Loisy's position more fully in the
Bibhert Journal, October 1904, p. 126.

264 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
demning the historic views of M. Loisy, the Papal
authorities have made it known to the world that
they intend to continue this line of action in the
future. But we English will feel that there are objections
to any such view as M. Loisy's which go deeper still.
The conflict between scientific knowledge and rehgious
faith is not one which can be adjusted by locking up
the two apart in separate cells of the human brain,
or building up between them an impossible wall.
Science is necessary and faith is necessary ; but they
must in some way come to terms and manage to live
together. It was the business of our fathers to
reconcile the knowledge of nature with Christian
belief ; and now that the extreme friction between
these two may be said to lie in the past, it is the
business of the present generation to find out how
the faith of the Church may be reconciled with the
new views in matters of philosophy, psychology, and
history which have become part of the mental
furniture of the living generation. It must be a
matter of give and take. The leaders in science must
abate some of their claims to utmost wisdom, and learn
their limitations ; and religion must learn to adapt
itself to new intellectual surroundings.
It is strange how deeply engrained in the minds of
the liberal Eomanists is the notion that there is some
thing radically inconsistent between theories of develop
ment in religion and all forms of Protestantism.
M. Loisy constantly affirms that there is no principle
of progress in the reformed churches. ' Protestantism,'
he says, ' implicitly affirms the sufficiency and absolute

CHRISTIANITY AND DEVELOPMENT 265
immutability of the revelation of the Gospels.' And
a man of wider outlook than M. Loisy, Mgr. Mignot,
the libera] Archbishop of Albi, writes : ^ ' Protestants,
not only those who are orthodox, but often also those
who are most liberal, obstinately refuse to allow any
sort of evolution of Christian dogma.' If there has
been in the past any justification for statements like
these, it is but a partial justification. Both the Arch
bishop and M. Loisy are Frenchmen, and have the
French tendency to look at things in a strictly
logical way. We English are dangerously near to the
other extreme, and make but little account of logic so
long as our affairs can go on in a practical way. Thus
though an extreme belief in Biblical inspiration ought
to unfit us for the appreciation of theories of evolution
as applied to religion, yet as a matter of fact those
theories have constantly made their way into, and
transformed, our conceptions of the Church and church
history. There are, of course, conservative schools of
bibliolatry among us ; but even with them the in
terpretation of Scripture has made progress. And
theories of evolution in religion, if evolution be taken
in a truer and broader sense, belong by origin to the
people of the North, and at present are more rife in
the reformed churches than in that of Eome. We
have no ecclesiastical authority which has power to
cut down those theories if they do not grow according
to an approved pattern.
How little even liberal members of the Eoman
Church know about Protestantism appears in all their
works. Another liberal Eomanist, Signor A. Fogazzaro,
' Introduction to Br^mond's Newman, p. xi.

266 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
has written in a recent work : ^ ' Protestantism is being
shattered upon the dead Christ, while Catholicism
evolves by virtue of the living Christ.' No doubt
Signor Fogazzaro never heard of Dr Dale's remarkable
book, The Living Christ.
But while we reject the exclusive claims of Eome,
whether her claims to be the sole dispenser of spiritual
life and death, or her claims to a monopoly of the
doctrine of development, we are quite ready to learn
all that we can from the Eoman Church in this matter
or any other. The thing that we specially have to
learn from her is to consider the growth of the
Christian society as an organism, distinguished alike
from the community of European nations, and from
the individuals who compose the society. The history
of the Church is not the history of Western civihzation,
though it be a great part of such history, nor is it the
mere history of an intellectual development, but some
thing apart from these.
A striking book published in Austria in recent
years is Professor Ehrhard's Katholizismus. It is
written with a view to checking the tendency promi
nent just now in South Germany to break away from
Papal domination, the los von Rom movement, and it
replies to the striking appeal written by Mr H. S.
Chamberlain,^ an Englishman settled in Germany,
calling on the German peoples to unite in leading the
modern movement in a direction opposite to that
desired by the Eoman Curia. Dr Ehrhard strongly
' 11 Santo ; Eng. trans., p. 316. This work has been placed upon
the Index.
^ Die Grundlagen des XIX'"" .Tahrhunderts.

CHRISTIANITY AND DEVELOPMENT 267
opposes the view, which has certainly been conspicuous
not only in the works which he criticizes, but also in
the present book, which regards Eoman Catholicism as
a system which has never done justice to the inspira
tion of the Teutonic and Northern nations and now
lies right across the path of their future progress.
Dr Ehrhard is far more appreciative of the position
and merits of the reformed churches than is Newman
or the French liberal Eomanists. He shows that at
the Council of Trent the German element was almost
entirely wanting, and that since it the peoples of
South Europe have wholly governed and directed the
Eoman Church. And he allows that between the
Teutonic nature and Protestantism there is a natural
affinity. ' Protestantism,' he writes,^ ' has preserved
in itself enough of the essence of Christianity to be
a vehicle of true religious life. It would indeed be
incomprehensible how millions of Christians for near
four centuries could adhere to it, if it had not satisfied
their religious needs.' He also allows that as yet no
philosophy has appeared which will prepare the
reconciliation of modern thought to the spirit of
Eome. Yet in spite of national leanings, and of
something like hopelessness in his outlook, he still
cleaves to the unity of the Church and the Papal
Infallibility. Nor is it difficult for a sympathetic reader to see
why he prefers to suffer the evils inherent in the
Eoman Catholic position in Teutonic countries, rather
than to secede. The nightmare terrors which drive
back every thought of his which strays in the direction
1 p. 126.

268 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
of reform, are two — individualism and subjectivism.
He sees no end to the divisions and the disorganiza
tion which must follow the abandonment of a visible
infallible Head. And he thinks that if the Church
gives up her claim to possess objective and absolute
truth, the Christian rehgion will melt away in a slough
of personal and mutually contradictory views of
religion and of God. On almost every page these
words, individualism and subjectivism, are set up as
warning notices to inform us beyond what point
the ice begins to be too weak to bear our weight,
and becomes a mere superficial coating covering a
death-trap. It is curious to note that a recent French writer,
M. E. Demolins, seeking the cause of what he calls
the ' Superiority of the Anglo-Saxons,' finds it in this
very individuality, the personal initiative and the
supremacy of the conscience, which go naturally with
the reformed religion, and urges his own countrymen
to cultivate exactly the qualities which seem to Dr
Ehrhard to lead to utter destruction.
Surely in this case, as in most, truth and wisdom
lie in the mean and not in either extreme. More
communism in action and in thought seems natural to
the Latin races ; greater freedom and bolder initiative
to the Teutonic peoples, and especially to the Saxon
branch. It is certain that alike in politics, war, and
religion the English, the Dutch, the Germans, the
Scotch, the Scandinavians owe their success in
a great degree to individualism. At the same time,
it must be allowed that the excess of individualism,
alike in politics, ethics, and religion, has produced

CHRISTIANITY AND DEVELOPMENT 269
among the Northern nations sad aberrations. We
cannot be surprised that there are many among us
whom these aberrations have so strongly impressed
that they revolt against the whole frame of mind from
which they result.
No one who studies the signs of the times will
doubt that the excess to which individualism, especially
in England and America, has in some matters run,
will bring about a great reaction in the direction of
some form of socialism. We see the socialist leaven
working on all sides of us, often in a very imperfect
and illogical way. But here we are clearly coming
to a new subject, and one far too great to be attacked
at the end of this lecture. All that we have at
present to note is that, supposing a modified socialism
to be a need of the time, the Eoman Church is certainly
not the body to which reformers would look for the
provision of such a remedy. It is far too closely
tied by tradition, and far too little in sympathy
with the practical needs of modern life, to be able
to set about the reorganization of civil society. A
saviour of society might well be accorded great
powers by the despair of modern philanthropists,
but that the Pope should be recognized as such a
saviour of society would seem to all practical men
an absurdity. And the same would apply to any
ecclesiastical authority recognized at the present time.
Similarly, what Dr Ehrhard calls subjectivism is a
strong and, on the whole, a healthy tendency, which
may run into excess. He declares that it marks the
whole course of modern philosophy from Descartes
to Kant and his followers. In opposition to it he

270 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
places the new scholastic, a movement in the Eoman
Church based on the theology of the Middle Ages,
and characterized by a return of the philosophy of
St Thomas Aquinas, which an encyclical of Leo XIII.
has imposed on all colleges under his rule. Most
educated Englishmen will feel that to go back from
Kant to Thomas Aquinas is just as possible as to
revert from our heliocentric system of astronomy to
that which makes the universe revolve around this
world of ours, or to go back from chemistry to
alchemy. Whether we are Kantians or not, we accept
the ' subjective ' outlook of Locke, of Kant, of Mill :
and can no more look on the world in the ' objective '
way of the old Aristotelian philosophy than we can
reconstitute the Heptarchy. Dr Ehrhard adds, rather
naively, ' Attempts hitherto made to incorporate in the
Catholic Theology the true results of modern thought
have all failed ' ; in much the same way, we may
suppose, as attempts to mix oil and water have failed.
I do not wish to drop into a philosophic discussion,
but I must observe in passing that the true remedy for
excessive subjectivity in modern philosophy does not
consist in harking back to the scholasticism of the
Middle Ages, but in recognizing that objectivity alike
in thought and in action is an element introduced by
the will and not by the intellect. This is a view
towards which recent philosophy has been tending.''
If one tries to make out, among the flowing
periods of Dr Ehrhard, which among the tendencies
of modern thought can be reconciled to Eomanism
and which are in hopeless opposition to it, one is
' This I have tried to enforce in Exploratio Evangelica, chaps. iii.-vi.

CHRISTIANITY AND DEVELOPMENT 271
completely baffled. In page after page of eloquent
commonplace the writer insists that it is only what
is evil in modern life and thought which is inconsistent
with Katholizismus ; but he gives us no clue whatever
to enable us to distinguish between bad and good.
He moves with timid steps, and eyes constantly
turned towards the Authority, which is likely to take
offence at any more definite pronouncement.
Meantime we have the dicta of Authority itself,
speaking in no undecided tones. We have the
Syllabus of Pius IX., in which we can read for our
selves what the voice recognized by the whole Eoman
world as infallible thinks of modern culture and
civilization. We have a formal statement that all
the tendencies which mark the developing spirit of
the modern world are of evil, that the causes for
which our ancestors gave their lives are steps in
opposition to the divine will Here the Church of
Eome has with all deliberation taken up a position,
and announced that the war between it and the age
is a war to the death. Can we doubt which side will
be in the end victorious ?

VII
It would take me too far if I attempted here to
deal with those members of the school of Newman
who have written in English. I could not venture to
dismiss them in a few minutes. But the more I read
of their views the more impossible does their position
appear : advocates of free thought and critical methods
in a Church which is a rigidly organized despotism.

272 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
One by one they are condemned by an authority which
they are not in a position to question, and reduced to
silence. Surely, if the final verdict as to truth in
belief rests with Eome, it is useless to spend one's
strength and wear out one's heart in the search for it.
It is like the labour of Sisyphus in Hades, or like that
of the daughters of Danaus, who were ever drawing
water to pour into a bottomless vessel. If I could
persuade myself that responsibility for my beliefs was
taken from my shoulders by the Church, I should not
be eager to bear the burden myself : it is only because
that responsibility is an essential part of my life and
personality that I cannot put it off on to any authority
on earth. To God alone am I prepared to answer
for it.
Seven years ago I expressed the opinion that ' the
new criticism of the Bible is a greater danger to the
Protestant than to the Catholic schools of theology.'^
It is not strange that such a view expressed by an
Anglican writer should have been eagerly welcomed by
some Eoman theologians, and quoted in their organs.
It was a natural view to take, and, from a strictly
logical point of view, easily defensible. But, neverthe
less, I have since found it to be untenable. The world
is not regulated by logic, but by tendencies ; and an
examination of the religious tendencies now working
shows how great is the improbability that the Eoman
Church will ever be reconciled to free historic and
psychologic inquiry.
It is quite possible to defend on what may be
called biological grounds many of the additions made
' Exploratio Evangelica, p. 3.

CHRISTIANITY AND DEVELOPMENT 273
by the Church to the earliest teaching. In fact, in
these lectures I have often thus defended these
additions. If bishops became necessary, there is
nothing in the doctrine of the Founder to forbid them.
The kernel has no cause of complaint against the hard
rind which protects it. If sacraments were necessary
as a vehicle for saving ideas, Christianity was justified
even in borrowing the forms of the sacraments from
rivals which she despised for their superstitions. Nay,
even doctrines of which there is no trace in the New
Testament, such as the doctrine of Purgatory, the
adoration of the Virgin Mother, the veneration of
saints, could very well be fitted to the stem of
Christian teaching and interpreted in the spirit of the
Founder. But there are other accretions of Christian
ity which, however they might be worked into the
scheme of the visible Church, could never really receive
Christian baptism, nor be tolerated by the spirit of
Christ. Sacerdotalism, or the insertion of a priestly
class between the soul of man and God, and material
ism, or the valuing of the outward and visible more
than the inward and spiritual — these are the very
evils against which the Founder of Christianity
revolted, and against which His spirit at all times
wages incessant war. If the hardness of men's hearts
has made these developments at times almost necessary
to the preservation of the Church, yet in the war
against them, the life of the Founder is always on our
side. Historic criticism, when pursued in a healthy and
positive, not in a merely sceptical and destructive
spirit, will not only call much in question, but will
18

274 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
also add greatly to the solidity of that which endures
all the tests. The study of the Christian origins has
now for a long while set in a somewhat conservative
direction, so that, while we see all the weaknesses of
the early Christian documents, we yet feel confident
that we can recover from them the main teachings of
the Founder of Christianity and His apostles. We
have only to place this teaching side by side with
history and doctrine as expounded in the authorized
schools of the Eoman Church to see what a glaring
contrast exists between the two. It is, no doubt,
possible to trace almost every step of the way between
the first promulgation of Christianity and the formulae
of the Council of Trent; and the reason for every
step may be in a measure recovered. But no human
intelligence can possibly reconcile the views of God,
of man, and of salvation contained in the Gospels and
Epistles with those contained in the handbooks in
use in Eoman seminaries. Yet the Eoman Church is
compelled by the necessities of its position to hold to
both these contradictory sets of views. I need not
labour the matter, since an authority which is most
intimately acquainted with the mind of the Eoman
Church, the Eoman Curia itself, places the thorough
going work of historic criticism on the Index.
Quite recently we have had an example of the
way in which Eome regards historic criticism in the
extraordinary pronouncement of the Pope that the
whole of the Pentateuch is the work of Moses, written
by himself or an immediate disciple. This view is
not held by any competent theologian or historian at
the present time. Eome, therefore, claims by an ipse

CHRISTIANITY AND DEVELOPMENT 275
dixit to decide questions of criticism and history in
defiance of all argument and all reason. After this,
of what use is it for liberal Eomanists to try to main
tain a double allegiance — on the one hand towards
historic science, on the other hand towards Papal
decrees ? They will find themselves compelled to
make a choice between the two.
Broadly regarded, tbe situation of the Eoman Church
at present nearly resembles that of its prototype the
Eoman Empire at some periods of its history. On
the frontiers it is still strong ; war keeps it healthy ;
and able leaders still repel the forces of invasion.
But within, it is under stress. In France, Italy, and
Spain it is tottering ; and though an inherited disci
pline and the dread of anarchy may for a long time
keep it together, its equilibrium is constantly be
coming more unstable. Many people think that a
reforming Pope might give it a new lease of life.
But the course of evolution seldom makes a sudden
turn in a fresh direction ; and the direction in which
the Eoman Church has for three centuries moved is
beyond mistake.
The defence of spiritual freedom against an oppres
sive tyranny, the maintenance of spiritual religion
against materialism, the claim of the human spirit
to a direct access to God — these are at bottom the
realities for which in England our ancestors have for
four centuries lived and died. If through despondency
or pessimism we give up the defence of these things
in order to sink into spiritual sloth, or for the sake of
a precarious peace, then the glory of Teutonic liberty
will depart, and the religion which Christ died to

276 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
bequeath to the world will becoAie a ' fen of stagnant
waters.' Thus in spite of all their intellectual confusions and.
shortcomings, the Eeformers were essentially right when
they framed their appeal to Scripture against the
abuses of the Church which had its centre in Eome.
Further study, and the growth of a critical spirit,
have enabled us to see what a mistake it is to attribute
infallibility either to Scripture or to the voice of the
Church. And further study has enabled us to trace
with truer illumination and greater precision the ideal
line of Christian progress, from which its actual or
historic hne often widely departs. When a traveller
has wandered from the proper path, he may often by
a bold push through rough country to right or to left
recover it. This is in effect what the Eeformers had
to do in the case of Christianity, and what has to be
done again in the present age.
The present lectures, which I here conclude, are
an attempt to show that religion and culture may
be reconciled, not by shutting them up into separate
cells of the human consciousness, but by letting them
freely penetrate one another so that each may discern
and appreciate what is good in the other. Writers of
the school of Newman say that Christianity met in the
field and fairly vanquished ancient culture, and is able
to do the same again in the case of modern culture.
The view which I take is different. Christianity did
indeed vanquish ancient culture ; but she took out of
it all that best suited her own nature. And because
she rejected so much of it which she perhaps might
have absorbed, she sank to the low level of mediaeval-

CHRISTIANITY AND DEVELOPMENT 277
ism. Her future n6w depends upon whether the
Christian spirit can really come to terms with the
spirit of science and of social progress. A mere victory
over these would take us back to the Middle Ages ;
a mere defeat by them would be a collapse of
Christianity, with which in the long run would dis
appear all the fruits earned by our fathers during
centuries by self-devotion and religious passion.
But the kind of religion which can be reconciled with
modern culture is certainly not Eomanism as understood
at Eome; nor is it sacerdotalism or sacramentalism
in any form ; it is a religion which cannot recognize
any authority as infallible, whether a book, a church,
or a Pope. Authority which a man loyally accepts
and intelligently follows is the best guide in every
field of thought and activity. In science as in art,
in politics as in religion, it checks aberration and
promotes a spirit of manly loyalty. But the moment
any authority is recognized as infallible, it becomes
a dead weight on mind and heart, making all free
motion impossible, producing hypocrisy and servility.
The essence of Christianity is a loving trust in the
will of God, such a trust as was the mainspring of the
life of the Founder, and has been ever since the great
treasure of the Christian Church. The Christian trust
is different from that which inspires other religions,
because the life and teachiug of the Founder stamped
it deeply; and that stamp has persisted through all
the ages, being ever reimpressed by an unseen spirit
which flows down in a constant stream into visible
organizations. This spirit reveals itself alike to individuals and to

278 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
communities. It works in the intellect of the Church
for the formation of doctrine, in the heart of the
Church to inspire institutions of charity and of self-
surrender, in the practical life of the Church to form
a strong organization which may ward off from the
inner hfe the blows of changing circumstance. But
when the doctrine hardens into dogma, and is imposed
by authority, the spirit leaves it and it becomes dead.
When the institutions lose their first love and inspira
tion, they grow corrupt ; when the outward organiza
tion becomes a soul-binding tyranny, it ceases to be
really Christian, and falls to the level of mere secular
despotism. I believe that the coming of the Kingdom of God
in the world is hindered by malign spiritual forces
working in the minds and hearts of men. But I do
not believe that all our modern progress in knowledge
and in ideals is the work of these forces ; rather it
is a new and further revelation of the same God who
spoke by Isaiah and Ezra, Socrates and Epictetus,
Paul and Luther. If the Christian revelation is the
fullest we possess, and if the Christian inspiration
outshines all others, it is because its throne is in the
very centre of the stream of life. Inspiration of
a somewhat different kind comes through the intel
lect, through the working of the forces of society,
through the stress of the spirit of nationality. And
the results of the lesser inspiration have to be read in
terms of the higher, if the Christian Church is to be in
the future, as in the past, the city set upon a hill
which cannot be hid, the salt without which society
would soon sink in a hideous corruption.

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