I.

You have asked me to retrace before you one of those pages of religious

history which places the thoughts which I come to express in their

fullest aspect. The origins of Christianity form the most heroic episode

in the history of humanity. Man never drew from his heart more devotion,

more love of the ideal, than in the one hundred and fifty years which

elapsed from the sweet Galilean vision, under Tiberius, to the death of

Marcus Aurelius. The religious consciousness was never more eminently

creative, and never laid down with more authority the law of the future.

This extraordinary movement, to which no other can be compared, came

forth from the bosom of Judaism. But it is doubtful if Judaism alone

would have conquered the world. It was necessary that a young and bold

school, coming out of its midst, should take the audacious part of

renouncing the largest portion of the Mosaic ritual. It was necessary,

above all, that the new movement should be transported into the midst of

the Greeks and Latins, while awaiting the Barbarians, and become like

yeast in the bosom of those European races by which humanity

accomplishes its destinies. What a beautiful subject he will discourse

upon who shall one day explain to you the part which Greece took in that

great common work! You have commissioned me to show to you the part of

Rome. The action of Rome is the first in date. It was scarcely until the

beginning of the third century that the Greek genius, with Clement of

Alexandria and Origen, really seized upon Christianity. I hope to show

you, that, since the second century, Rome has exercised a decisive

influence upon the Church of Jesus.

In one sense, Rome has diffused religion through the world, as she has

diffused civilization, as she has founded the idea of a central

government, extending itself over a considerable part of the world. But

even as the civilization which Rome has diffused has not been the small,

narrow, austere culture of ancient Latium, but in fact the grand and

large civilization which Greece created, so the religion to which she

definitely lent her support was not the niggardly superstition which was

sufficient to the rude and primitive inhabitants of the Palatine: it was

Judaism, that is to say, in fact, the religion which Rome scorned and

hated most, that which two or three times she believed herself to have

finally vanquished to the profit of her own national worship. This

ancient religion of Latium, which contented a race endowed with narrow

intellectual wants and morals, among which customs and social rank

almost held the place of a religion during some centuries, was a

sufficiently despicable thing. As M. Boissier has perfectly proved, a

more false conception of the divinity was never seen. In the Roman

worship, as in most of the ancient Italiote worships, prayer was a magic

formula, acting by its own virtue, independent of the moral dispositions

of him who prayed. People prayed only for a selfish end. There exist

some registers called _indigitamenta_, containing lists of the gods who

supply all the wants of men; thus there was no need of being deceived.

If the god was not addressed by his true name, by that under which it

pleased him to be invoked, he was capable of misapprehension, or of

interpreting capriciously. Now these gods, who are in some degree the

forces of the world, are innumerable. There was a little god who made

the infant utter his first cry (_Vaticanus_); there was another who

presided over his first word (_Fabulinus_); another who taught the baby

to eat (_Educa_); another who taught him to drink (_Potina_); another

who made him keep quiet in his cradle (_Cuba_). In truth, the good wife

of Petronius was right, when, in speaking of the Campagna, she said,

"This country is so peopled with divinities, that it is easier to find a

god than a man." Besides these, there were unending series of

allegories, or deified abstractions, Fear, the Cough, Fever, Manly

Fortune, Patrician Chastity, Plebeian Chastity, the Security of the Age,

the Genius of the Customs (or of the _octroi_), and above all (listen,

that one who, to say the truth, was the great god of Rome), the Safety

of the Roman People. It was a civil religion in the full force of the

term. It was essentially the religion of the State. There was no

priesthood distinct from the functions of the State: the State was the

veritable god of Rome. The father had there the right of life and death

over his son; but if this son had the least function, and the father met

him in his path, he descended from his horse, and bent himself before

him.

The consequence of this essentially political character was, that the

Roman religion remained always an aristocratic religion. A man became

pontiff as he became prætor or consul. When a man desired these

religious functions, he submitted to no examination; he went into no

retreat in a seminary; he did not ask himself whether he had the

ecclesiastical vocation: he proved that he had served his country well,

and that he had been wounded in a certain battle. There was no

sacerdotal spirit. These civil pontiffs remained cold, practical men,

and had not the least idea that their functions should separate them

from the world. The religion of Rome is, in every respect, the inversion

of theocracy. Civil law rules acts: it does not trouble itself with

thoughts; thus did the Roman religion. Rome never had the least idea of

dogma. The exact observation of the rites commanded by the divinity, in

which it did not regard piety or the sentiments of the heart, if the

request was in form, was all that was required. Even more,--devotion was

a fault; calmness, order, regularity, only, were necessary: more than

that was an excess (_superstitio_). Cato absolutely forbade that a slave

should be allowed to conceive any sentiment of piety. "Know," said he,

"that it is the master who sacrifices for all the household." It was not

needful to neglect what was due to the gods; but it was not needful to

give them more than was due: that was superstition, of which the true

Roman had as much horror as of impiety.

Was there ever, I ask you, a religion less capable of becoming the

religion of the human race than that? Not only was the access to the

priesthood for a long time forbidden to the plebeians, but they were

also excluded from the public worship. In the great struggle for civil

equality which fills the history of Rome, religion is the great argument

with which the revolutionists are opposed. "How," say they, "could you

become a prætor or consul? You have not the right to take the omens."

Above all, the people were very little attached to religion. Each

popular victory was followed, as one may say, by an anti-clerical

re-action: on the contrary, the aristocracy remained always faithful to

a worship which gave a divine sanction to its privileges.

The matter became still more pressing when the Roman people, by their

manly, patriotic virtues, had conquered all the nations upon the borders

of the Mediterranean. What interest, think you an African, a Gaul, a

Syrian, took in a worship which concerned only a small number of high

and often tyrannical families? The local religions were continued

everywhere; but Augustus, who was still more a religious organizer than

a great politician, made the Roman idea to hover everywhere by the

establishment of the Roman worship. The altars of Rome and of Augustus

became the centre of a hierarchical organization of Flamens and Augustan

_Sevirs_, who served to found, more than one imagines, the divisions of

the dioceses and ecclesiastical provinces. Augustus admitted all the

local gods as Lares; he allowed more than the number of Lares in each

house; at each cross-road an additional Lare was placed,--the Genius of

the Emperor. Thanks to this fellowship, all the local gods and all the

special gods became "Augustan gods." It was a great advance. But this

grand attempt of the worship of the Roman State was notoriously

insufficient to satisfy the religious needs of the heart. There was

elsewhere a god who could not accommodate himself in any way to this

fraternity: it was the God of the Jews. It was impossible to make

Jehovah pass for a Lare, and associate with the Genius of the Emperor.

It was evident that a conflict must be established between the Roman

State and this unchangeable and refractory God, who did not bend to the

complaisant transformations exacted by the politics of the times.

Ah, well! behold the most extraordinary historical phenomenon, the most

intense irony of all history: it is that the worship which Rome has

diffused through the world is not in the least the old worship of

Jupiter Capitolinus, or Latiaris, still less the worship of Augustus and

of the Genius of the Emperor: it is, in truth, the worship of Jehovah.

It is Judaism in its Christian form that Rome has propagated, without

wishing it, in so powerful a manner, that, from a certain epoch,

Romanism and Christianity have become almost synonymous words.

Truly, I repeat it, it is more than doubtful if pure Judaism--that which

is developed under the Talmudical form, and which is still in our day so

powerful--would have had this extraordinary fortune. Judaism propagates

itself through Christianity. But one understands nothing of religious

history (some one, I hope, will demonstrate it to you some day), unless

it is fixed as a fundamental principle that Christianity had its origin

in Judaism itself,--Judaism with its fruitful principles of alms and

charity, with its absolute confidence in the future of humanity, with

that joy of the heart of which it has always had the secret,--only

Judaism freed from some observances and distinctive traits which had

been invented to characterize the special religion of the children of

Israel.