THE EFFECTS OF CONSTANTINE'S CONVERSION.

187

downwards, and that men have their feet higher than their heads?" Then he admits that the philosophers, whom the Church was pronouncing to be heretical, had the true theory, for he says: "If you ask them how things do not fall away from the earth on that side, they [the philosophers] reply that heavy bodies tend towards the centre." Augustine, another Father of the Church, and canonized as a saint, said: "It is impossible that there should be inhabitants on the opposite side of the earth, since no such race is recorded by Scripture among the descendants of Adam"! And again : "In the day of judgment men on the other side of a globe could not see the Lord descending through the air." With such theories as these, and with the effacement of all true scientific discoveries, and of the labour of thinking men for centuries before, commenced the Dark Ages, which represented and was coeval with the supremacy of the Church in Europe.

We should have much difficulty in identifying early Christianism, which Arius so bravely and rationally fought to preserve, with modern Christianism. Council after Council has met, and frequently opposed each other; new theories have been enunciated and new doctrines evolved, until a perfect chaos of Christian sects has been produced, numbering in this country alone 293! Among these the three chief (doctrinally) are: (1) "The English Church as by law established "; (2) the Roman Catholic; and (3) the Unitarian. The first is an episcopal body, founded by an Act of Parliament of Queen Elizabeth, which came into force June, 1559, out of the confiscated property and revenues of the previously existing Catholic Church. The second is the modern representation of the Church of Constantine, Theodosius, Theophilus, and Cyril, and of the Madonna-worship which they helped to institute; and of Augustine, who placed theology in antagonism to science. The third is the modern representative of the early Christian Church, which differed but little from the belief of the Jessæans, or followers of Jesus, with neither Trinity, Madonna, nor Ghost.

Let us pause for a moment to consider what was the moral and social effect of Constantine's conversion. Did the Christianizing of the Roman Empire effect any improvement in the conduct of the people or further civilization?

Emphatically, no; the early Christian Emperors were not a bit more moral than the Pagan Cæsars. "If their vices were less flagrant and monstrous than those of a Nero or a Caligula, their virtues were insignificant beside those of an Augustus or an Antoninus "; the gladiatorial shows of Rome, or the torturing of Christians by Pagans, were no worse than the faction fights at Alexandria and Constantinople, or the burnings and torturing of witches and heretics by their fellow Christians. Christianism merely substituted a new and vigorous superstition for an old and dying one, which was gradually being supplanted among the educated classes by a rational philosophy. "The gods of Olympus gave place to a triune deity, and a devil, possessing all the arbitrary power of their predecessors, without exhibiting any of their grace or bonhomie." The national (Pagan) religions succumbed to one of numerical pretensions, and the toleration of the former gave place to a malignant fanaticism, which considered every difference of opinion a crime. While the national religions were always more or less subservient to temporal welfare, the new religion reduced this world to a mere vestibule of Heaven or Hell. Under such circumstances, it was almost impossible for intellectual development to make any progress.

For fourteen centuries-from the second to the sixteenth -the Christian Church was wasting its time in disputes respecting the nature of its deity, and in struggles for ecclesiastical power; its attention being engrossed with imageworship, transubstantiation, the merits of the saints, miracles, shrine cures, etc. "The authority of the 'Fathers,' and the prevailing belief that the Scriptures contained the sum of all knowledge, discouraged any investigation of nature." If any interest were taken in any astronomical question, it was not settled by appeal to the phenomena of the heavens, but by reference to the writings of Lactantius (Nicomedia, d. 325) or Augustine (Hippo, d. 430); the first observatory being built by the Saracens. Tertullian's sage remark, that "knowledge other than of Jesus" was unnecessary, simply re-echoed the voice of the whole Christian hierarchy. "During six or seven centuries of undisputed supremacy Christians could not point to a single new discovery in science, or to a single new book of the least importance to literature, and there was no sign of improvement till Arabian

DECLINE OF INTELLECTUAL PROGRESS.

189

science flashed its light upon the darkness of Europe." Even then the Church intercepted its rays as far as possible, and she might have succeeded in restoring the old darkness had it not been for the Renaissance, which was simply the restoration of the classic art, literature, and philosophy of Greece and Rome, and the political reconstruction of Europe, which, by inducing quarrels between princes and popes, led to the so-called Reformation, by which the bondage of one form of ecclesiasticism was exchanged for another-from the slavery of the Pope to that of the Bible. But, on the principle of two dictators being better than one, freedom of opinion to a large extent has been restored, with the result that science and knowledge have made wonderful progress throughout Europe; it is, however, not because of the reformed Christianism, but in spite of it. nize the release from the greater bondage as benefit, for by it we have obtained liberty. every branch of intellectual activity have always been accounted as heretics. And, while intellectual progress has thus been inspired by scepticism, the civil government still largely remains in the hands of orthodoxy.

Still we recogan inestimable The leaders in

XVI.

PYTHAGORAS AND JESUS-LEGENDARY CHARACTER OF THE MIRACULOUS BIRTH OF JESUS-THE SILENCE OF CONTEMPORARY HISTORY-MARKS OF DIVINITY-THE PLACE OF JESUS IN THE TRINITY-CHRISTIAN DEFINITION OF THEIR DEITY.

THERE is a striking similarity observable in the early histories of Pythagoras and Jesus, as there was between Bacchus and Jesus, which it is impossible to ignore. Both were natives of the same country, Syria; the former being born at Samos (B.C. 582), and the latter at Bethlehem; both were Essenian monks, which accounts for the conspicuous absence of the Essene name in the N. T.; both spent their early days in Egypt, being instructed in magic, astrology, and priestcraft; the fathers of both had "revelations" that their wives would miraculously conceive and bring forth sons who would be benefactors to mankind; and both were born when their mothers were from home on journeys. The history of Pythagoras gives us a good insight into the way legends are evolved, as that was evolved which contained the miraculous conception and birth of Jesus. The mother of Pythagoras was said to have had connection with the ghost of the god Apollo ("Sol" of Rome), which afterwards appeared to her husband in a vision, and forbade him to have connection with his wife during her pregnancy. The mother of Jesus was said to be pregnant by the ghost of Yahuh, and her husband Joseph had a vision in which he was commanded not to put her away because of her condition. There was nothing unusual in the idea of ghosts being the fathers of human offspring; and it not only offered an excuse for the condition when unlawfully acquired, but it had been a very ancient pagan custom for women,

apart from the vestal virgins generally kept on the premises, to sacrifice themselves to the gods or their ghosts in the temples, which meant, literally, prostitution with the priests.

Pythagoras was, like Jesus, called the "Son of God," and was carried from Egypt to Babylon by the Persian King Cambyses, son of Cyrus, where he was initiated into the doctrines and learning of the Persian Magi (magicians), and then to India, where he was instructed in Brahmanism. In later life he returned to Egypt to be instructed in astronomy and divination by the priests there.

The legendary character of the miraculous birth of the Christian Messiah as given in the N. T. is, of course, perfectly obvious when the narratives are looked into and examined. In the Matthew gospel we are told that it took place when Herod was king. Now, Herod was made Governor of Judæa (a province of Syria) B.C. 40, under the Emperor Anthony, and died at Jericho six years before the date fixed for the birth of Jesus, on his way home from Calirrhoe (a watering-place near Athens), where he had been to take the baths. So that he was not in Jerusalem at all after B.C. 6. The Luke gospel tells us that it took place when Quirinus (Cyrenius) was Governor of Judæa, and when Augustus was Emperor. Now Quirinus was proconsul of Syria from 5 to 14 C.E., and Augustus died 5 C.E. So that, according to Matthew, the birth took place B.C. 6 or 7, and, according to Luke, in the fifth year of the Christian era—a difference of eleven or twelve years. Both cannot be right.

As we have before seen, very little is known of Joshua called Jesus. The only person of this name known about the time when the events recorded of him are said to have occurred was Joshua-ben-Pandira, and he died_ about seventy years before the time pitched upon by the Essenes for his birth. In the Talmud he is spoken of as "the hanged one," and the same book states that he "learned magic, was a seducer of the people, and was stoned and subsequently hung as a blasphemer" at Lydia on the eve of the Passover B.C. 70. Everything in the life of this man tallies significantly with events recorded of Jesus, and there can be very little doubt that the detailslegendary and real—of that life have been utilized by the Essenes for the purpose of formulating the Jessæo-Messianic

14