The coincidences of our present conquest of the non-Christian races with
that to which the Apostolic Church was called are numerous and striking.
Not even one hundred years ago was the struggle with heathen error so
similar to that of the early Church.
To a great extent the missionary efforts of the mediæval centuries
encountered only crude systems, which it was comparatively easy to
overcome. The rude tribes of Northern Europe were converted by the
Christianity of the later Roman Empire, even though they were
conquerors. Their gods of war and brute force did not meet all the
demands of life. As a source of hope and comfort, their religion had
little to be compared with the Christian faith, and as to philosophy
they had none. They had inherited the simple nature worship which was
common to all branches of the Aryan race, and they had expanded it into
various ramifications of polytheism; but they had not fortified it with
subtle speculations like those of the Indo-Aryans, nor had their
mythologies become intrenched in inveterate custom, and the national
pride which attends an advanced civilization.
At a later day Christian missionaries in Britain found the Norse
religion of the Saxons, Jutes, and Angles, scarcely holding the
confidence of either rulers or subjects. They had valued their gods
chiefly for the purposes of war, and they had not always proved
reliable. The king of Northumbria, like Clovis of France, had vowed to
exchange his deities for the God of the Christians if victory should be
given him on a certain battle-field; and when he had assembled his
thanes to listen to a discussion between the missionary Paulinus and the
priests of Woden on the comparative merits of their respective faiths,
the high priest frankly admitted his dissatisfaction with a religion
which he had found utterly disappointing and useless; and when other
chief counsellors had given the same testimony, and a unanimous vote had
been taken to adopt the Christian faith, he was the first to commence
the destruction of the idols.[20]
The still earlier missionaries among the Druid Celts of Britain and
France, though they found in Druidism a more elaborate faith than that
of the Norsemen, encountered no such resistance as we find in the great
religious systems of our day. Where can we point to so easy a conquest
as that of Patrick in Ireland, or that of the Monks of Iona among the
Picts and Scots?
The Druids claimed that they already had many things in common with the
Christian doctrines,[21] and what was a still stronger element in the
case, they made common cause with the Christians against the wrongs
inflicted on both by pagan Rome. The Roman emperors were not more
determined to extirpate the hated and, as they thought, dangerous
influences of Christianity, than they were to destroy every vestige of
Druidism as their only hope of conquering the invincible armies of
Boadicea. And thus the mutual experience of common sufferings opened a
wide door for the advancement of Christian truth.
The conquests of Welsh and Irish missionaries in Burgundy, Switzerland,
and _Germany_, encountered no elaborate book religions, and no profound
philosophies. They had to deal with races of men who were formidable
only with weapons of warfare, and who, intent chiefly on conquest and
migration, had few institutions and no written historic records. The
peaceful sceptre of the truth was a new force in their experience, and
the sympathetic and self-denying labors of a few missionaries tamed the
fierce Vikings to whom Britain had become a prey, and whose incursions
even the armies of Charlemagne could not resist.
How different is our struggle with the races now under the sceptre of
Islam, for example--inflated as they are with the pride of wide
conquest, and looking contemptuously upon that Christian faith which it
was their early mission to sweep away as a form of idolatry! How
different is our task in India, which boasts the antiquity of the noble
Sanskrit and its sacred literature, and claims, as the true
representative of the Aryan race, to have given to western nations their
philosophy, their religion, and their civilization! How much more
difficult is our encounter with Confucianism, which claims to have laid
the foundations of the most stable structure of social and political
institutions that the world has ever known, and which to-day, after
twenty-five centuries of trial, appeals to the intellectual pride of all
intelligent classes in a great empire of four hundred millions! And
finally, how different is our task with Buddhism, so mystical and
abstruse, so lofty in many of its precepts, and yet so cold and thin, so
flexible and easily adapted, and therefore so varied and many sided! The
religious systems with which we are now confronted find their
counterparts only in the heathenism with which the early Church had to
deal many centuries ago; and for this reason the history of those early
struggles is full of practical instruction for us now. How did the early
Church succeed in its great conquest? What methods were adopted, and
with what measures of success?
In one respect there is a wide difference in the two cases. The Apostles
were attempting to convert their conquerors. They belonged to the
vanquished race; they were of a despised nationality. The early fathers
also were subjects of Pagan powers. Insomuch as the Roman emperors
claimed divine honors, there was an element of treason in their
propagandism. The terrible persecutions which so long devastated the
early Church found their supposed justification in the plea of
self-defence against a system which threatened to subvert cherished and
time-honored institutions. Candid writers, like Archdeacon Farrar, admit
that Christianity did hasten the overthrow of the Roman Empire.
But we find no conquering powers in our pathway. Christianity and
Christian civilization have become dominant in the earth. The weakness
of the Christian Church in its conquests now is not in being baffled and
crippled by tyranny and persecution, but rather in the temptation to
arrogance and the abuse of superior power, in the overbearing spirit
shown in the diplomacy of Christian nations and the unscrupulous
aggressions of their commerce. There is also a further contrast in the
fact that in the early days the advantages of frugality and simple
habits of life were on the side of the missionaries. Roman society
especially was beginning to suffer that decay which is the inevitable
consequence of long-continued luxury, while the Church observed
temperance in all things and excelled in the virtues which always tend
to moral and social victory.[22]
On the other hand, we who are the ambassadors to the heathen of to-day,
are ourselves exposed to the dangers which result from wealth and
excessive luxury. Our grade of life, our scale of expenditure, even the
style in which our missionaries live, excites the amazement of the
frugal heathen to whom they preach. And as for the Church at home, it is
hardly safe for a Persian or a Chinaman to see it. Everyone who visits
this wonderful eldorado carries back such romantic impressions as excite
in others, not so much the love of the Gospel as the love of mammon.
When the Church went forth in comparative poverty, and with an intense
moral earnestness, to preach righteousness, temperance, and the judgment
to come; when those who were wealthy gave all to the poor--like Anthony
of Egypt, Jerome, Ambrose, and Francis of Assisi--and in simple garments
bore the Gospel to those who were surfeited with luxuries and pleasures,
and were sick of a life of mere indulgence, then the truth of the Gospel
conquered heathenism with all that the world could give. But whether a
Church in the advanced civilization of our land and time, possessed of
enormous wealth, enjoying every luxury, and ever anxious to gain more
and more of this present world, can convert heathen races who deem
themselves more frugal, more temperate, and less worldly than we, is a
problem which remains to be solved. We have rare facilities, but we have
great drawbacks. God's grace can overcome even our defects, and He has
promised success.
But in the proud intellectual character of the systems encountered
respectively by the ancient and by the modern Church, there are
remarkable parallels. The supercilious pride of Brahminism, or the lofty
scorn of Mohammedanism, is quite equal to that self-sufficient Greek
philosophy in whose eyes the Gospel was the merest foolishness. And the
immovable self-righteousness of the Stoics has its counterpart in the
Confucianism of the Chinese literati. A careful comparison of the six
schools of Hindu philosophy with the various systems of Greece and
Rome, will fill the mind with surprise at the numerous
correspondences--one might almost say identities. And that surprise is
the greater from the fact that no proof exists that either has been
borrowed from the other.
The atomic theory of creation advanced by Lucretius is found also in the
Nyaya philosophy of the Hindus. The pessimism of Pliny and Marcus
Aurelius was much more elaborately worked out by Gautama. The Hindus had
their categories and their syllogisms as well as Aristotle. The
conception of a dual principle in deity which the early Church traced in
all the religious systems of Egypt, Phoenicia, and Assyria, and whose
influence poisoned the life of the Phoenician colonies, and was so
corrupting to the morals of Greece and Rome, was also elaborated by the
Sankhya philosophy of Kapila, and it has plunged Hindu society into as
deep a degradation as could be found in Pompeii or Herculaneum.[23] The
Indian philosophy partook far more of the pantheistic element than that
of Greece. Plato and Aristotle had clearer conceptions of the
personality of the deity and of the distinct and responsible character
of the human soul than any school of Hindu philosophers--certainly
clearer than the Vedantists, and their ethics involved a stronger sense
of sin.
German philosophy has borrowed its pantheism from India rather than from
Greece, and in its most shadowy developments it has never transcended
the ancient Vedantism of Vyasa.
As in the early centuries, so in our time, different systems of religion
have been commingled and interwoven into protean forms of error more
difficult to understand and dislodge than any one of the faiths and
philosophies of which they were combined. As the Alexandrian Jews
intertwined the teachings of Judaism and Platonism; as Manichæans and
Gnostics corrupted the truths of the Old and New Testaments with ideas
borrowed from Persian mysticism; as various eclectic systems gathered up
all types of thought which the wide conquests of the Roman Empire
brought together, and mingled them with Christian teachings; so now the
increased intercommunication, and the quickened intellectual activity
of our age have led to the fusion of different systems, ancient and
modern, in a negative and nerveless religion of humanity. We now have in
the East not only Indian, but Anglo-Indian, speculations. The
unbelieving Calcutta graduate has Hegel and Spinoza interwoven with his
Vedantism, and the eclectic leader of the Brahmo Somaj, while placing
Christ at the head of the prophets and recognizing the authority of all
sacred bibles of the races, called on Christians, Hindus, Buddhists and
Mohammedans to unite in one theistic church of the New Dispensation in
India. Not even the old Gnostics could present so striking an admixture
as that of the Arya Somaj. It has appropriated many of those Christian
ethics which have been learned from a century of contact with
missionaries and other Christian residents. It has approved the more
humane customs and reforms of Christendom, denouncing caste, and the
degradation of woman. It has repudiated the corrupt rites and the
degrading superstitions of Hinduism. At the same time its hatred of the
Christian faith is most bitter and intense.
And there are other alliances, not a few, between the East and the West.
In India and Japan the old Buddhism is compounded with American
Spiritualism and with modern Evolution, under a new application of the
ancient name of Theosophy. In Japan representatives of advanced
Unitarianism are exhorting the Japanese Buddhists to build the religion
of the future on their old foundations, and to avoid the propagandists
of western Christianity.
The bland and easy-going catholicity which professes so much in our day,
which embraces all faiths and unfaiths in one sweet emulsion of
meaningless negations, which patronizes the Christ and His doctrines,
and applies the nomenclature of Christianity to doctrines the very
opposite of its teachings, finds a counterpart in the smooth and vapid
compromises of the old Gnostics. "Gnosticism," says Uhlhorn, "combined
Greek philosophies, Jewish theology, and ancient Oriental theosophy,
thus forming great systems of speculative thought, all with the object
of displaying the world's development. From a pantheistic First Cause,
Gnosticism traced the emanation of a series of æons--beings of Light.
The source of evil was supposed to be matter, which in this material
world holds light in captivity. To liberate the light and thus redeem
the world, Christ came, and thus Christianity was added as the crowning
and victorious element in this many-sided system of speculation. But
Christ was regarded not so much as a Saviour of individual souls as an
emancipator of a disordered kosmos, and the system which seemed to
accord great honor to Christianity threatened to destroy its life and
power." So, according to some of our Modern Systems, men are to find
their future salvation in the grander future of the race.[24]
Not only do we encounter mixtures of truth and error, but we witness
similar attempts to prove that whatever is best in Christianity was
borrowed from heathenism. Porphyry and others maintained that Pythagoras
and Theosebius had anticipated many of the attributes and deeds of
Christ, and Philostratus was prompted by the wife of Severus to write a
history of Appolonius of Tyana which should match the life of Christ.
And in precisely the same way it has been variously claimed in our time
that the story of Christ's birth, childhood, and ministry were borrowed
from Buddha and from Krishna, and that the whole conception of his
vicarious suffering for the good of men is a clever imitation of
Prometheus Bound. Now, in the earlier conflict it was important to know
the facts on both sides in order to meet these allegations of Porphyry,
Marinus, and others, and it is equally important to understand the
precise ground on which similar charges are made with equal assurance
now.[25] The very same old battles are to be fought over again, both
with philosophy and with legend.
And it is very evident that, with so many points of similarity between
the early struggle of Christianity with heathenism and that of our own
time, it is quite worth our labor to inquire what were the general
methods then pursued. Then victory crowned the efforts of the Church.
That which humanly speaking seemed impossible, was actually
accomplished. From our finite standpoint, no more preposterous command
was ever given than that which Christ gave to his little company of
disciples gathered in the mountains of Galilee, or that last word before
his ascension on Mt. Olivet, in which He placed under their responsible
stewardship, not only Jerusalem, but all Judea and Samaria, and the
"uttermost parts of the earth." The disciples were without learning or
social influence, or political power. They had no wealth and few
facilities, and so far as they knew there were no open doors. They were
hated by their Jewish countrymen, ridiculed by the ubiquitous and
cultured Greeks, and frowned upon by the conquering powers of Rome. How
then did they succeed? How was it that in three or four centuries they
had virtually emptied the Roman Pantheon of its heathen deities, and
had gained the sceptre of the empire and the world?
It is easy to misapprehend the forces which won the victory. The
disciples first chosen to found the Church were fishermen, but that
affords no warrant for the belief that only untutored men were employed
in the early Church, or for the inference that the Salvation Army are to
gain the conquest now. They were inspired; these are not; and a few only
were chosen, with the very aim of setting at naught the intolerant
wisdom of the Pharisees. But when the Gospel was to be borne to heathen
races, to the great nations whose arrogance was proportionate to their
learning and their power, a very different man was selected. Saul of
Tarsus had almost every needed qualification seen from a human point of
view. Standing, as he must, between the stiff bigotry of Judaism and the
subtleties of Greek philosophy, he was fortunately familiar with both.
He was a man of rare courtesy, and yet of matchless courage. Whether
addressing a Jewish governor or the assembled philosophers and
counsellors of Athens, he evinced an unfailing tact. He knew how to
conciliate even a common mob of heathen idolators and when to defy a
high priest, or plead the immunities of his Roman citizenship before a
Roman proconsul.
In tracing the methods of the early Church in dealing with heathenism,
we begin, therefore, with Paul; for although he was differentiated from
all modern parallels by the fact that he was inspired and endowed with
miraculous power, yet that does not invalidate the force of those
general principles of action which he illustrated. He was the first and
greatest of all missionaries, and through all time it will be safe and
profitable to study his characteristics and his methods. He showed the
value of thorough training in his own faith, and of a full understanding
of all the errors he was to contend with. He could reason with Jews out
of their own Scriptures, or substantiate his position with Greeks by
citing their own poets. He was certainly uncompromising in maintaining
the sovereignty of the one God, Jehovah, but he was not afraid to admit
that in their blind way the heathen were also groping after the same
supreme Father of all. The unknown God at Athens he accepted as an
adumbration of Him whom he proclaimed, and every candid reader must
admit that in quoting the words of Aratus, which represent Zeus as the
supreme creator whose offspring we are, he conveys the impression of a
real resemblance, if not a partial and obscured identity.
The essential principle here is that Paul frankly acknowledged whatever
glimpses of truth he found in heathen systems, and made free use of them
in presenting the fuller and clearer knowledge revealed in the Gospel.
No man ever presented a more terrible arraignment of heathenism than
that which he makes in the first chapter of his epistle to the Romans,
and yet, with marvellous discrimination he proceeds, in the second
chapter, to show how much of truth God has imparted to the
understandings and the consciences of all men. And he seems to imply
the Holy Spirit's regenerative work through Christ's atonement, when he
maintains that whoever shall, "by patient continuance in well doing,
seek glory and immortality," to him shall "eternal life" be given; but
"tribulation and anguish upon every soul of man that doeth evil, to the
Jew first, and also to the Gentile." Peter was not prepared to be a
missionary till he had been divested of his Jewish narrowness by
witnessing the power of grace in the Roman centurion at Cesarea. That
widened out his horizon immensely. He saw that God in his ultimate plan
was no respecter of persons or of races.
There has been great difference of opinion as to whether the annual
worship of the supreme God of Heaven in the great imperial temple at
Peking is in any degree a relic of the worship of the true God once
revealed to mankind. Such Chinese scholars as Martin and Legge and
Douglass think that it is; others deny it. Some men raise a question
whether the Allah of the Mohammedan faith is identical with the Jehovah
of the Old Testament. Sales, the profoundest expositor of Islam,
considers him the same. Moslems themselves have no doubt of it: the
intent of the Koran is that and nothing else; Old Testament teachings
are interwoven with almost every sura of its pages. I think that Paul
would have conceded this point at once, and would the more successfully
have urged the claims of Jesus, whom the Koran presents as the only
sinless prophet. Of course Mohammedans do not recognize the Triune God
as we now apprehend Him, from the New Testament standpoint; neither did
ancient believers of Israel fully conceive of God as He has since been
more fully revealed in the person and the sacrifice of his Son--Jesus
Christ.
Both the teachings and the example of Paul seem to recognize the fact
that conceptions of God, sometimes clear and sometimes dim, may exist
among heathen nations; and many of the great Christian fathers evidently
took the same view. They admitted that Plato's noble teachings were
calculated to draw the soul toward God, though they revealed no real
access to Him such as is found in Christ. Archbishop Trench, in his
Hulsean lectures on "Christ the Desire of the Nations," dwells
approvingly upon Augustine's well-known statement, that he had been
turned from vice to an inspiring conception of God by reading the
"Hortensius" of Cicero. Augustine's own reference to the fact is found
in the fourth book of his "Confessions," where he says: "In the ordinary
course of study I fell upon a certain book of Cicero whose speech almost
all admire--not so his heart. This book contains an exhortation to
philosophy, and is called 'Hortensius.' But this book altered my
affections and turned my prayers to Thyself, O Lord, and made me have
other purposes and desires. Every vain hope at once became worthless to
me, and I longed with an incredible burning desire for an immortality of
wisdom, and began now to arise that I might return to Thee. For not to
sharpen my tongue did I employ that book: nor did it infuse into me its
style, but its matter."
The "Hortensius" of Cicero has not survived till our time, and we know
not what it contained; but we cannot fail to notice this testimony of a
mature and eminent saint to the spiritual benefit which he had received
at the age of thirty-one, from reading the works of a heathen
philosopher. And a most interesting proof is here furnished for the
freedom with which the Spirit of God works upon the hearts of men, and
the great variety of means and agencies which He employs,--and that
beyond the pale of the Christian Church, and even beyond the actual
knowledge of the historic Christ. It would be interesting to know
whether the regeneration of Augustine occurred just then, when he says
in such strong language, that this book altered his affections and
turned his prayers unto God, and made him "long with an indescribable
burning desire for an immortality of wisdom." All men are saved, if at
all, by the blood of Christ through the renewing of the Holy Ghost; but
what was the position of such men as Augustine and Cornelius of Cesarea
before they fully and clearly saw Jesus as the actual Messiah, and as
the personal representative of that Grace of God in which they had
already reposed a general faith, is at least an interesting question.
Not less positive is the acknowledgment which Augustine makes of the
benefits which he had received from Plato. And he mentions many others,
as Virgininus, Lactantius, Hilary, and Cyprian, who, like himself,
having once been heathen and students of heathen philosophy, had, as he
expresses it, "spoiled the Egyptians, bringing away with them rich
treasures from the land of bondage, that they might adorn therewith the
true tabernacle of the Christian faith." Augustine seems to have been
fond of repeating both this argument and this his favorite illustration.
In his "Doctrine of Christ" he expands it more fully than in his
"Confessions." He says: "Whatever those called philosophers, and
especially the Platonists, may have said conformable to our faith, is
not only not to be dreaded, but is to be claimed from them as unlawful
possessors, to our use. For, as the Egyptians not only had idols and
heavy burdens which the people of Israel were to abhor and avoid, but
also vessels and ornaments of gold and silver and apparel which that
people at its departure from Egypt privily assumed for a better use, not
on its own authority but at the command of God, the very Egyptians
unwittingly furnishing the things which themselves used not well; so all
the teaching of the Gentiles not only hath feigned and superstitious
devices, and heavy burdens of a useless toil, which we severally, as
under the leading of Christ we go forth out of the fellowship of the
Gentiles, ought to abhor and avoid, but it also containeth liberal arts,
fitter for the service of truth, and some most useful moral precepts; as
also there are found among them some truths concerning the worship of
the One God Himself, as it were their gold and silver which they did not
themselves form, but drew from certain veins of Divine Providence
running throughout, and which they perversely and wrongfully abuse to
the service of demons. These, the Christian, when he severs himself from
their wretched fellowship, ought to take from them for the right use of
preaching of the Gospel. For what else have many excellent members of
our faith done? See we not how richly laden with gold and silver and
apparel that most persuasive teacher and most blessed martyr, Cyprian,
departed out of Egypt? Or Lactantius, or Victorinus, Optatus, Hilary,
not to speak of the living, and Greeks innumerable? And this, Moses
himself, that most faithful servant of God, first did, of whom it is
written, that 'he was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians.'"
Let us for a moment pause and see of what these treasures of Egypt
consisted, and especially what Plato taught concerning God. Like
Socrates, he ridiculed the absurd but popular notion that the gods could
be full of human imperfections, could make war upon each other, could
engage in intrigues, and be guilty of base passions. And he earnestly
maintained that it was demoralizing to children and youth to hold up
such beings as objects of worship. Such was his condemnation of what he
considered false gods. He was equally opposed to the idea that there is
no God. "All things," he says, "are from God, and not from some
spontaneous and unintelligent cause." "Now, that which is created," he
adds, "must of necessity be created by some cause--but how can we find
out the Father and maker of all this universe? If the world indeed be
fair, and the artificer good, then He must have looked to that which is
external--for the world is the fairest of creatures, as He is the best
of causes."
Plato's representation of the mercy of God, of his providential care, of
his unmixed goodness, of his eternal beauty and holiness--are well-nigh
up to the New Testament standard. So is also his doctrine of the
immortality of the soul. The fatal deficiency is that he does not
_know_. He has received no divine revelation. "We will wait," he said in
another passage, "for one, be it a god or a god-inspired man, to teach
us our religious duties, and as Athene in Homer says to Diomede, to take
away the darkness from our eyes." And in still another place he adds:
"We must lay hold of the best human opinion in order that, borne by it
as on a raft, we may sail over the dangerous sea of life, unless we can
find a stronger boat, _or some word of God which will more surely and
safely carry us_."[26]
There is a deep pathos in the question which I have just quoted, "How
can we find out the Father and maker of all this universe?" And in the
last sentence quoted, Plato seems to have felt his way to the very
threshold of the revelation of Christ.[27]
Augustine shows a discrimination on this subject too important to be
overlooked, when he declares that while the noble philosophy of the
Platonists turned his thoughts away from his low gratifications to the
contemplation of an infinite God, it left him helpless. He was profited
both by what philosophy taught him and by what it could not teach: it
created wants which it could not satisfy. In short, he was prepared by
its very deficiencies to see in stronger contrast the all-satisfying
fulness of the Gospel of Eternal Life. Plato could tell him nothing of
any real plan of redemption, and he confesses with tender pathos that
he found no Revealer, no divine sacrifice for sin, no uplifted Cross, no
gift of the transforming Spirit, no invitation to the weary, no light of
the Resurrection.[28] Now, just here is the exact truth; and Augustine
has conferred a lasting benefit upon the Christian Church by this grand
lesson of just discrimination. He and other Christian fathers knew where
to draw the lines carefully and wisely with respect to heathen errors.
We often have occasion to complain of the sharpness of the controversies
of the early Church, but it could scarcely be otherwise in an age like
that. It was a period of transitions and of rude convulsions. The
foundations of the great deep of human error were being broken up. It
was no time for flabby, jelly-fish convictions. The training which the
great leaders had received in philosophy and rhetoric had made them keen
dialectics. They had something of Paul's abhorrence of heathen
abominations, for they saw them on every hand. They saw also the
specious admixtures of Gnosticism, and they met them squarely.
Tertullian's controversy with Marcion, Augustine's sharp issue with
Pelasgius, Ambrose's bold and uncompromising resistance to Arianism,
Origen's able reply to Celsus, all show that the great leaders of the
Church were not men of weak opinions. The discriminating concessions
which they made, therefore, were not born of an easy-going
indifferentism and the soft and nerveless charity that regards all
religions alike. They found a medium between this pretentious extreme
and the opposite evil of ignorant and narrow prejudgment; and nothing is
more needed in the missionary work of our day than that intelligent and
well-poised wisdom which considers all the facts and then draws just
distinctions; which will not compensate for conscious ignorance with
cheap misrepresentation or wholesale denunciation.
1. Now, first of all, in considering the methods of the early Church and
its secret of power in overcoming the errors of heathenism, it must be
borne in mind that the victory was mainly due to the _moral earnestness_
which characterized that period. In this category we must place the
influence which sprang from the martyrdom of thousands who surrendered
life rather than relinquish their faith. That this martyr spirit did not
always produce a true symmetry of Christian character cannot be denied.
The tide of fanaticism swept in, sometimes, with the current of true
religious zeal, and inconsistencies and blemishes marred even the
saintliest self-sacrifice; but there was no resisting the mighty logic
of the spirit of martyrdom as a whole. The high and the low, the wise
and the unlettered, the rich and the poor, the old and the young, strong
men and delicate women, surrendered themselves to the most cruel
tortures for the love of Christ. This spectacle, while it may have
served only to enrage a Nero and urge him on to even more Satanic
cruelty, could not be wholly lost upon the more thoughtful Marcus
Aurelius and others like him. It was impossible to resist the moral
force of so calm and resolute a surrender unto torture and death.
Moreover, an age which produced such relinquishment of earthly
possessions as was shown by men like Anthony and Ambrose, who were ready
to lay down the emoluments of high political position and distribute
their large fortunes for the relief of the poor; and such women as Paula
and others of high position, who were ready to sacrifice all for Christ
and retire into seclusion and voluntary poverty--an age which could
produce such characters and could show their steady perseverance unto
the end, could not fail to be an age of resistless moral power; and it
would be safe to say that no heathen system could long stand against the
sustained and persistent force of such influences. Were the Christian
Church of to-day moved by even a tithe of that high self-renunciation,
to say nothing of braving the fires of martyrdom, if it possessed in
even partial degree the same sacrifice of luxury and ease, and the same
consecration of effort and of influence, the conquest of benighted
nations would be easy and rapid.
The frugality of the early Christians, the simplicity of life which the
great body of the Church observed, and to which even wealthy converts
more or less conformed, was also, doubtless, a strong factor in the
great problem of winning the heathen to Christ. Probably in no age could
Christian simplicity find stronger contrasts than were presented by the
luxury and extravagance, the unbridled indulgence and profligacy, which
characterized the later periods of the Roman Empire. Universal conquest
of surrounding nations had brought untold wealth. The Government had
hastened the process of decay by lavish distribution to the people of
those resources which obviated the necessity of unremitting toil. It had
devoted large expenditures to popular amusements, and demagogues had
squandered the public funds for the purpose of securing their own
preferment. Over against the moral earnestness of the persecuted
Christian Church, there was in the nation itself and the heathenism
which belonged to it, an utter want of character or conviction. These
conditions of the conquest, as I have already indicated, do not find an
exact counterpart with us now. There is more of refined Christian
culture than existed in the early Church; probably there is also more of
organized Christian effort. In many points the comparison is in our
favor, but earnestness, and the spiritual power which attends it, are on
a lower grade. There is no escape from the conviction that just here
lies the reason why the Christian Church, with all her numbers, her vast
material resources, and her unlimited opportunities, cannot achieve a
greater success.
2. But, on the intellectual side, and as relating to the methods of
direct effort, there are many points in which imitation of the early
example is entirely practicable. And first, the wise discrimination
which was exercised by Augustine and other Christian leaders is entirely
practicable now. There has prevailed in our time an indiscriminate
carelessness in the use of terms in dealing with this subject. The
strong language which the Old Testament employed against the
abominations of Baalism, we have seemed to regard as having equal force
against the ethics of Confucius or Gautama. "Heathenism" is the one
brand which we have put upon all the non-Christian religions. I wish it
were possible to exchange the term for a better.[29] Baalism was
undoubtedly the most besotted, cruel, and diabolical religion that has
ever existed on the earth. When we carefully study it we are not
surprised at the strong language of denunciation which the Old Testament
employs. But as I have already shown, we find in the New Testament a
different spirit exercised toward the types of error which our Saviour
and his disciples were called to meet. There is only gentleness in our
Lord's dealings with those who were without the Jewish Church. His
strongest denunciations were reserved for hypocrites who knew the truth
and obeyed it not. He declared that the men of Nineveh would rise up in
judgment against those who rejected the clear message of God's own Son.
The man who goes forth to the great mission fields with the feeling that
it is his province to assail as strongly as possible the deeply-rooted
convictions of men, instead of winning them to a more excellent way, is
worse than one who beats the air; he is doing positive harm; he is
trifling with precious souls. He does not illustrate the spirit of
Christ.
The wisest of the early Fathers sometimes differed widely from each
other in their methods; some were denunciatory, others were even too
ready to excuse. The great African controversialist, Tertullian, was
unsparing in his anathemas, not only against heathen customs, which were
vile indeed, but against the teachings of the noblest philosophy. He had
witnessed the former; he had not candidly studied the latter. With a
blind zeal, which has too often been witnessed in the history of good
causes, he denounced Plato, Aristotle, and even Socrates with a violence
which marred the character of so great a man. On the other hand, Justin
Martyr and Clement of Alexandria were perhaps excessively broad. Of two
noted Alexandrines, Archdeacon Farrar says: "They were philosophers in
spirit; they could enforce respect by their learning and their large,
rounded sympathy, where rhetorical denunciation and ecclesiastical
anathemas would only have been listened to with a frown of anger, or a
look of disdain. Pagan youths would have listened to Clement when he
spoke of Plato as 'the truly noble and half-inspired,' while they would
have looked on Tertullian as an ignorant railer, who could say nothing
better of Socrates than to call him the 'Attic buffoon,' and of
Aristotle than to characterize him as the 'miserable Aristotle.'"
Tatian and Hermes also looked upon Greek philosophy as an invention of
the devil. Irenæus was more discriminating. He opposed the broad and lax
charity of the Alexandrines, but he read the Greek philosophy, and when
called to the bishopric of Lyons, he set himself to the study of the
Gallic Druidism, believing that a special adaptation would be called for
in that remote mission field.[30] Basil was an earnest advocate of the
Greek philosophy as giving a broader character to Christian education.
There were among the Fathers many different types of men, some
philosophically inclined, others better able to use practical arguments.
Some were more successful in appealing to the signs of the times, the
clear evidences of that corruption and decay to which heathenism had
led. They pointed to the degradation of women, the prevalence of vice,
the inordinate indulgence in pleasures, the love of excitement, the
cruel frenzy of the gladiatorial shows, the unrest and pessimism and
despair of all society. One of the most remarkable appeals of this kind
is found in a letter of Cyprian to his friend Donatus. "He bids him seat
himself in fancy on some mountain top and gaze down upon what he has
abandoned (for he is a Christian), on the roads blocked by brigands, the
sea beset by pirates, the camps desolated by the horrors of many wars,
on the world reeking with bloodshed, and the guilt which, in proportion
to its magnitude, was extolled as a glory. Then, if he would turn his
gaze to the cities, he would behold a sight more gloomy than all
solitudes. In the gladiatorial games men were fattened for mutual
slaughter, and publicly murdered to delight the mob. Even innocent men
were urged to fight in public with wild beasts, while their mothers and
sisters paid large sums to witness the spectacle. In the theatres
parricide and infanticide were dealt with before mixed audiences, and
all pollution and crimes were made to claim reverence because presented
under the guise of religious mythology. In the homes was equal
corruption; in the forum bribery and intrigue ran rife; justice was
subverted, and innocence was condemned to prison, torture, and death.
Luxury destroyed character, and wealth became an idol and a curse."[31]
Arguments of this kind were ready enough to hand whenever Christian
teachers were disposed to use them, and their descriptions found a real
corroboration in society as it actually appeared on every hand. None
could question the counts in the indictment.
3. While the Christian Fathers and the missionaries differed in their
estimates of heathenism, and in their methods of dealing with it, one
thing was recognized by all whom we designate as the great leaders,
namely, the imperative necessity of a thorough knowledge of it. They
understood both the low superstition of the masses and the loftier
teaching of the philosophers. On the other hand, they had the same
estimate of the incomparable Gospel of Christ that we have; they
realized that it was the wisdom of God and the power of God unto
salvation as clearly as the best of us, but they did not claim that it
was to be preached blindly and without adaptation. The verities of the
New Testament teachings, the transforming power of the Holy Ghost, the
necessity for a new birth and for the preternatural influence of grace,
both in regeneration and in sanctification, were as strongly maintained
as they have ever been in any age of the Church; but the Fathers were
careful to know whether they were casting the good seed upon stony
places, or into good ground where it would spring up and bear fruit. The
liberal education of that day was, in fact, an education along the old
lines of heathen philosophy, poetry, history, and rhetoric; and a broad
training was valued as highly as it has been in any subsequent period.
It was thoroughly understood that disciplined intellect, other things
being equal, may expect a degree of influence which can never fall to
the lot of ignorance, however sanctified its spirit. There has never
been a stronger type of men than the Christian Fathers. They were
learned men, for the age in which they lived, and their learning had
special adaptations to the work assigned them. Many of them, like
Cyprian, Clement, Hilary, Martin of Tours, had been born and educated in
heathenism; while others, like Basil, Gregory, Origen, Athanasius,
Jerome, and Augustine, though born under Gospel influences, studied
heathen philosophy and poetry at the instance of their Christian
parents.
4. Some of the leaders familiarized themselves with the speculations of
the day, not merely for the sake of a wider range of knowledge, but that
they might the more successfully refute the assailants of the faith,
many of whom were men of great power. They were fully aware that it
behooved them to know their ground, for their opponents studied the
points of comparison carefully. The infidel Celsus studied Christianity
and its relation to the Old Testament histories and prophecies, and he
armed himself with equal assiduity with all the choicest weapons drawn
from Greek philosophy. How was such a man to be met? His able attack on
Christianity remained fifty years unanswered. To reply adequately was
not an easy task. Doubtless there were many, then as now, who thought
that the most comfortable way of dealing with such things was to let
them alone. But a wiser policy prevailed. Origen was requested to
prepare an answer, and, although such work was not congenial to him, he
did so because he felt that the cause of the truth demanded it. His
reply outlived the attack which it was designed to meet, and in all
subsequent ages it has been a bulwark of defence.[32]
Origen was not of a pugnacious spirit--it was well that he was not--but
with wide and thorough preparation he summoned all his energies to meet
the foe. Archdeacon Farrar says of him, that he had been trained in the
whole circle of science. He could argue with the pupils of Plato, or
those of Zeno, on equal terms, and he deems it fortunate that one who
was called, as he was, to be a teacher at Alexandria, where men of all
nations and all creeds met, had a cosmopolitan training and a
cosmopolitan spirit.
No less resolute was the effort of Ambrose in resisting the errors of
Arianism, and he also adapted himself to the work in hand. He had not
been afraid of Platonism. On the other hand, we are told that Plato,
next to his Bible, constituted a part of his daily reading, and that,
too, in the period of his ripest Christian experience, and when he
carried his studies and his prayers far into the hours of the night. But
in dealing with Arianism he needed a special understanding of all its
intricacies, and when among its advocates and supporters he encountered
a powerful empress as well as her ablest advocates, he had need of all
the powers within him--that power of moral earnestness which had led him
to give all his property to the poor--that power of strong faith, which
prepared him, if need be, to lay down his life--the power of a
disciplined intellect, and a thorough knowledge of the whole issue.
5. The early Fathers not only studied the heathen philosophies of Plato
and Aristotle, but they learned to employ them, and their successors
continued to employ them, even to the Middle Ages, and the period of the
Reformation. As an intellectual framework, under which truth should be
presented in logical order, it became a strong resource of the early
Christian teachers. Let me refer you on this point to the clear
statements of Professor Shedd.[33] He has well said that "when
Christianity was revealed in its last and beautiful form by the
incarnation of the Eternal World, it found the human mind already
occupied by human philosophy. Educated men were Platonists, or Stoics,
or Epicureans. During the age of Apologetics, which extended from the
end of the apostolic age to the death of Origen, the Church was called
to grapple with these systems, to know as far as possible what they
contained, and to discriminately treat their contents, rejecting some
things, utilizing others." "We shall see," he continues, "that Plato,
Aristotle, and Cicero exerted more influence than all other philosophic
minds united upon the greatest of Christian Fathers, upon the greatest
of the School men, and upon the greatest of the theologians of the
Reformation, Calvin and Melancthon; and if we look at European philosophy,
as it has been unfolded in England, Germany, and France, we can perceive
that all the modern philosophic schools have discussed the principles
of human reason in very much the same manner in which Plato and
Aristotle discussed them twenty-two centuries ago."
I need hardly say, in closing, that it is not necessary to borrow from
the heathen systems of to-day as extensively as the Fathers did from the
systems of Greece and Rome, and it would be discordant with good taste
to illustrate our sermons with quotations from the Hindu poets as
lavishly as good Jeremy Taylor graced his discourses with gems from the
poets of Greece. But I think that we may so far heed the wise examples
furnished by Church history as to face the false systems of our time
with a candid and discriminating spirit, and by a more adequate
knowledge to disenchant the bugbears with which their apologists would
alarm the Church.
We are entering upon the broadest and most momentous struggle with
heathen error that the world has ever witnessed. Again, in this later
age, philosophy and multiform speculation are becoming the handmaids of
Hindu pantheism and Buddhist occultism, as well as of Christian truth.
The resources of the East and the West are combined and subsidized by
the enemy as well as by the Church. As in old Rome and Alexandria, so
now in London and Calcutta all currents of human thought flow together,
and truth is in full grapple with error. It is no time to be idle or to
take refuge in pious ignorance, much less to fear heathen systems as so
many haunted houses which superstitious people dare not enter--as if the
Gospel were not as potent a talisman now as it was ages ago. Let us
fearlessly enter these abodes of darkness, throw open the shutters, and
let in the light of day, and the hobgoblins will flee. Let us explore
every dark recess, winnow out the miasma and the mildew with the pure
air of heaven, and the Sun of Righteousness shall fill the world.