With the death of Jesus, died also His dream of converting the Jews to
His religious ideas. A few scattered bands of followers--Nazarites or
Ebionites--survived Him. But they existed only in a moribund condition,
exerted no influence over the nation, and, in the course of a few
centuries, disappeared from history. The Jews as a people rejected, and
have always rejected, both Jesus as a Messiah and His teachings as their
religion. If the Jews had then been an independent nation, living in
their haughty isolation from other peoples, the power and hatred of the
Pharisees would probably have stamped out the last remnants of Jesus'
followers, and He would have survived only as a name in history. But the
disciples (or apostles) found under the Roman rule protection for their
teaching, and ready access to the Gentile communities, not only in
Palestine, but throughout all the coasts of the Mediterranean. Among
these communities Jesus' Gospel found a quick and ready acceptance, and,
within two or three centuries after His death, it had become a mighty
living force in the evolution of mankind. In the reign of Constantine,
Christianity became the dominant religion in the Roman empire, and it
rapidly brought under its influence the Northern Barbarians, who, in
their turn, were to be the conquerors of this empire.
As Christianity grew and spread and became more powerful, it lost almost
all resemblance to the religion of "right living," which Jesus had
taught and practiced. The spiritual and temporal powers were once more
re-united, dogmas, creeds, theological disquisitions multiplied, "until
the fair body of religion, revealed in almost naked purity by the
prophets, is once more hidden under a new accumulation of dogmas and of
ritual practices of which the primitive Nazarene knew nothing; and which
He would probably have regarded as blasphemous if He could have been
made to understand them."
"As, century after century, the ages roll on, polytheism comes back
under the disguise of mariolatry and the adoration of saints; image
worship becomes as rampant as in old Egypt; adoration of relics takes
the place of the old fetich-worship; the virtues of the ephod pale
before those of holy coats and handkerchiefs; shrines and calvaries make
up for the loss of the ark and of the high places; and even the lustral
water of paganism is replaced by holy water at the porches of the
temples. A touching ceremony--the common meal originally eaten in pious
memory of a loved teacher--was metamorphosed into a flesh-and-blood
sacrifice, supposed to possess exactly that redeeming virtue which the
prophets denied to the flesh-and-blood sacrifices of their day; while
the minute observance of ritual was raised to a degree of punctilious
refinement which Levitical legislators might envy. And with the growth
of this theology, grew its inevitable concomitant, the belief in evil
spirits, in possession, in sorcery, in charms and omens, until the
Christians of the twelfth century after our era were sunk in more
debased and brutal superstitions than are recorded of the Israelites in
the twelfth century before it."
(Some Controverted Questions, Huxley, p. 159.)
In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the leaders of the
Reformation and the New Learning began their relentless warfare upon the
existing formalism and superstition, and from two different points of
attack. After centuries of bloody wars, Protestantism succeeded in
displacing Catholicism as the dominant religion over a large part of
Northern Europe. Roman Catholicism still remained dominant in Southern
Europe, and Greek Catholicism in Eastern Europe. In the meanwhile, to
the eternal disgrace of the then Christendom, the followers of Mahomet
had established his religion in some of the fairest portions of
Southeastern Europe. If the Christian nations of the fifteenth century
had expended on the practical cause of keeping Mohammedanism out of
Europe one tithe of the energy and sacrifice that they did expend on the
unpractical dream of recovering the Holy Sepulchre, Europe would have
been spared the endless heritage of evil that has followed the
introduction of the unspeakable Turk into European politics. But mutual
jealousies, prejudices, petty ambitions, dissentions and discords
permitted this calamity to occur, the end of which it seems is not yet.
As the Reformed churches became established in power, each one developed
its own formalism, different from, but no more in consonance with,
Jesus' simple religion, than that of the Catholics. As dogmatic
theologians, Luther, Calvin, Knox and Jonathan Edwards were little
improvement over Loyola, Augustine and Justin. Predestination,
fore-ordination, change of heart, infant damnation, eternal punishment,
the Thirty-nine Articles, the Augsburg Confession, would have been as
unintelligible to Jesus, and would have met as summary condemnation at
His hands, as the quarrels between the homoi-ousians and the
homo-ousians, which rent the Christian world in the third century after
His death.
But a more formidable champion had entered the lists against dogmatic
theology and in favor of the creedless religion of Jesus. The invention
of printing, the growth of science, the diffusion of education, and the
development of a world-wide commerce were all working towards the
eradication of superstition, the breaking down of national and racial
and religious antipathies and prejudices, the cultivation of relations,
first of business, and then of mutual regard and friendship between the
peoples of different countries, the constant amelioration of the
roughness, harshness and cruelty of earlier times, the encouragement of
courtesy, consideration for others and charity towards all men. All
these forces were making for Jesus' ideal of a common humanity, where
the asperities of different religious creeds would cease to trouble, and
each man might love his neighbor as himself. A tremendous victory had
been won when the time came, that an Orthodox Catholic would admit that
his righteous-living Protestant neighbor might inherit heaven as surely
as himself.
The optimist of the early years of this century might have hugged
himself with complacency over the rapid progress which the Gospel of
Jesus was making in moulding mankind towards a realization of His
ideals. Then came the cataclysm of 1914. The leading nations of
Europe--all Christian except the Turks--plunged into the bloodiest war
of history, and on the most petty of pretexts--the political
administration of an insignificant Balkan state. The Gospel of Jesus, as
an efficient force restraining these nations from war, was as though it
had never existed. In the communications between England, France, Russia
and Germany, preliminary to the war and ostensibly seeking to avert war,
did any one statesman urge the argument that the law of Jesus forbade
this war? Not a single syllable, and, for the sufficient reason, that
each one knew that it would fall on deaf ears and would be laughed at as
"old women's talk." So far as the efficiency of such arguments was
concerned, they might as well have been used between the Persians and
Egyptians before Jesus was born.
Then, when war broke out, came the supreme irony of each nation crowding
its churches to pray for the assistance of the meek and gentle Jesus in
slaughtering its enemies. Later, the victorious nations crowded their
churches to thank Jesus that He had made them successful in their
hellish business.
There are some who can quiet their consciences by shifting the
responsibility for the incalculable misery of this brutal, barbarous
conflict from the sins and evil ambitions of man to the shoulders of the
Almighty. With those holding this (to the writer) blasphemous doctrine,
argument is useless. But to the ordinary, sincere and candid follower of
Jesus, does not the occurrence of this war give occasion to pause and
think--as it were, to take an account of his stock-in-trade? Why did the
mighty forces of Christianity fail to work with any practical effect at
this, their supreme test--the prevention of war? What promise has the
future to prevent the recurrence of such evils? How far has modern
Christianity kept undefiled the pure religion of the Great Nazarene?
These are all questions demanding at this time the serious consideration
of every thinking man, professed Christian or not.