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Christianity. I have to show how a variation of opinion proceeded and reached its culmination; how it was closed by the establishment of a criterion of truth, under the form of ecclesiastical councils, and a system developed which supplied the intellectual wants of Europe for nearly a thousand years.

The reader, to whom I have thus offered a representation of the state of Roman affairs, must now prepare to look at the consequences thereof. Together we must trace out the progress of Christianity, examine Introduction the adaptation of its cardinal principles to the to the study of wants of the empire, and the variations it Christianity. exhibited a task supremely difficult, for even sincerity and truth will sometimes offend. For my part, it is my intention to speak with veneration on this great topic, and yet with liberty, for freedom of thought and expression is to me the first of all earthly things.

But, that I may not be misunderstood, I here, at the outset, emphatically distinguish between Chris- Distinction tianity and ecclesiastical organizations. The between former is the gift of God; the latter are the Christianity product of human exigencies and human tical organiza invention, and therefore open to criticism, or, if need be, to condemnation.

and ecclesias

tions.

From the condition of the Roman empire may be indicated the principles of any new system adapted to its amelioration. In the reign of Augustus, Moral state of violence paused only because it had finished its the world at work. Faith was dead; morality had disappeared. Around the shores of the Mediterranean the conquered nations looked at one another-partakers of a common misfortune, associates in a common lot. Not one

this period.

of them had found a god to help her in her day of need. Europe, Asia, and Africa were tranquil, but it was the silence of despair.

Unpitying

Rome never considered man as an individual, but only as a thing. Her way to political greatness was pursued utterly regardless of human suffering. tyranny of If advantages accrued to the conquered under her dominion, they arose altogether from incident, and never from her purposed intent. She was no self-conscious,

Rome.

deliberate civilizer. Conquest and rapine, the uniform aim of her actions, never permitted her, even at her utmost intellectual development, to comprehend the equal rights of all men in the eye of the law. Unpitying in her stern policy, few were the occasions when, for high state reasons, she stayed her uplifted hand. She might in the wantonness of her power, stoop to mercy; she never rose to benevolence.

When Syria was paying one third of its annual produce in taxes, is it surprising that the Jewish peasant sighed for a deliverer, and eagerly listened to the traditions of Prepares the his nation that a temporal Messiah, "a king way for the of the Jews" would soon come? When there recognition of the equality was announced the equality of all men before of all men. God, "who maketh his sun to shine on the good and the evil, and sendeth his rain on the just and the unjust," is it surprising that men looked for equal rights before the law? Universal equality means universal benevolence; it substitutes for the impersonal and easily-eluded commands of the state the dictates of an ever-present conscience; it accepts the injunction, “Do unto others as you would they should do to you."

Attitude of

In the spread of a doctrine two things are concernedits own intrinsic nature, and the condition of him on whom it is intended to act. The spread of Christianity is not difficult to be understood. Its antagonist, Paganism. Paganism, presented inherent weakness, infidelity, and a cheerless prospect; a system, if that can be called so, which had no ruling idea, no principles, no organization; caring nothing for proselytes; its rival pontiffs devoted to many gods, but forming no political combination occupying themselves with directing public worship and foretelling future events, but not interfering in domestic life; giving itself no concern for the lowly and unfortunate; not recognizing, or, at the best, doubtfully admitting a future life; limiting the hopes and destiny of man to this world; teaching that temporal prosperity may be selfishly gained at any cost, and looking to suicide as the relief of the brave from misfortune.

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On the other side was Christianity, with its enthu siasm and burning faith; its rewards in this life, and

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everlasting happiness or damnation in the next; the precise doctrines it by degrees gathered of sin, repentance, pardon; the efficacy of the blood of the Son of God; its proselytizing spirit; its vivid dogmas Atitud of of a resurrection from the dead, the approach- Christianity. ing end of the world, the judgment-day. Above all, in a worldly point of view, the incomparable organization it soon attained, and its preaching in season and out of season. To the needy Christian the charities of the faithful were freely given; to the desolate, sympathy. In every congregation there were prayers to God that he would listen to the sighing of the prisoner and captive, and have mercy on those who were ready to die. For the slave and his master there was one law and one hope, one baptism, one Saviour, one Judge. In times of domestic bereavement the Christian slave doubtless often consoled his pagan mistress with the suggestion that our present separations are only for a little while, and revealed to her willing ear that there is another world-a land in which we rejoin our dead. How is it possible to arrest the spread of a faith which can make the broken heart leap with joy?

At its first organization Christianity embodied itself in a form of communism, the merging of the property of the disciples into a common stock, from which the necessary provision for the needy was made. Such a Its first system, carried out rigorously, is, however, organization. only suited to small numbers and a brief period. In its very nature it is impracticable on a great scale.

Scarcely had it been resorted to before such troubles as that connected with the question of the Hebrew and Greek widows showed that it must be modified. By this relief or maintenance out of the funds of the Church, the spread of the faith among the humbler classes was greatly facilitated. In warm climates, where the necessities of life are small, an apparently insignificant sum accomplish much in this way. But, as wealth accumulated, besides this inducement for the poor, there were temptations for the ambitious: luxurious appointments and a splendid maintenance, the ecclesiastical dignitaries becoming more than rivals to those of the state.

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Gradual

From the modification which the primitive organization thus underwent, we may draw the instructive conclusion that the special forms of embodiment which the Christian principle from time to time has assumed, and sectarian of which many might be mentioned, were, in divergences. reality, of only secondary importance. The sects of the early ages have so totally died away that we hardly recall the meaning of their names, or determine their essential dogmas. From fasting, penance, and the gift of money, things which are of precise measurement, and therefore well suited to intellectual infancy, there may be perceived an advancing orthodoxy up to the highest metaphysical ideas. Yet it must not be supposed that new observances and doctrines, as they emerged, were the disconnected inventions of ambitious men. If rightly considered, they are, in the aggregate, the product of the uniform progression of human opinions.

Authors who have treated of the sects of earlier times will point out to the curious reader how, in the beginEarly variation ning, the Church was agitated by a lingering of opinions. attachment to the Hebrew rites, and with difficulty tore itself away from Judaism, which for the first ten years was paramount in it; how then, for several centuries, it became engrossed with disputes respecting the nature of Christ, and creed after creed arose therefrom; to the Ebionites he was a mere man; to the Docetes, a phantasm; to the Jewish Gnostic, Cerinthus, possessed of a twofold nature; how, after the spread of Christianity, in succeeding ages, all over the empire, the intellectual peculiarites of the East and West were visibly impressed upon it-the East filled with speculative doctrines, of which the most important were those brought forward by the Platonists of • logy tends to Alexandria, for the Platonists, of all PhilosoDivinity, phical sects, furnished most converts; the West, in accordance with its utilitarian genius, which esteems the practical and disparages the intellectual, singularly aided by propitious opportunity, occupying itself with material aggrandizement and territorial power. The vanishing point of all Christian sectarian ideas of the East was in God, of those of the West in Man. Herein

Eastern theo

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consists the essential difference between them. The one was rich in doctrines respecting the nature of Western to the Divinity, the other abounded in regulations Humanity. for the improvement and consolation of humanity. For long there was a tolerance, and even liberality toward differences of opinion. Until the Council of Nicea, no one was accounted a heretic if only he professed his belief in the Apostles' Creed.

Christianity.

A very astute ecclesiastical historian, referring to the early contaminations of Christianity, makes Foreign modi this remark: "A clear and unpolluted fountain fications of fed by secret channels with the dew of Heaven, when it grows a large river, and takes a long and winding course, receives a tincture from the various soils through which it passes."

Thus influenced by circumstances, the primitive modifications of Christianity were three-Judaic Christianity, Gnostic Christianity, African Christianity.

Of these, the first consisted of contaminations from Judaism, from which true Christianity disen- Judaic Christangled itself with extreme difficulty, at the tianity. cost of dissensions among the Apostles themselves. From the purely Hebrew point of view of the early disciples, who surrendered with reluctance their expectation that the Saviour was the long-looked-for temporal Messiah, the King of the Jews, under which name he suffered, the faith gradually expanded, including successively proselytes of the Gate, the surrounding Gentiles, and at last the whole world, irrespective of nation, climate, or colour. With this truly imperial extension, there came into view the essential doctrines on which it was based. But Judaic Christianity, properly speaking, soon came to an untimely end. It was unable to maintain itself against the powerful apostolic influences in the bosom of the Church, and the violent pressure exerted by the unbelieving Jews, who exhibited toward it an inflexible hatred. Moreover, the rapid advance of the new doctrines through Asia Minor and Greece offered a tempting field for enthusiasm. The first preachers in the Roman empire were Jews; for the first years circumcision and conformity to the law of Moses were insisted on; but the first council

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