It is admitted by students of history of every shade of belief that the
origin of Christianity and its rapid spread over the ancient world is
the most remarkable fact in the recorded annals of the human race. When
we remember that it was, from the first, more or less closely identified
with the despised religion of the despised Jews; that largely for this
reason it had to make its way against a united front, presented by the
learned and intelligent in the whole gentile world, while the Jews
themselves almost unanimously repudiated it; that the most efficiently
organized government that had existed until then, was indifferent or
hostile; that it set before the heathen world a condition of society in
which all current economic ideas were transformed, and that it demanded
a complete renunciation of its time-honored creeds, we may well ask in
amazement, “How came these things to pass?”
Second in order among the great facts of ancient history is the growth
of the Roman Empire. Here we see a people at first occupying a few
square miles of territory, compelled for nearly fifteen generations to
exert themselves to the utmost to keep their enemies at bay, suddenly
bursting the barriers that confined them and in less than half this time
bringing under their scepter almost the whole of the then known world.
Rome’s conquests have been exceeded in rapidity, but they have never
been equalled in permanence.
The triumphs of Christianity and those of Roman arms stand in a certain
relation to each other, notwithstanding the fact that the latter were
gained with material, the former with spiritual, weapons. When the
conquests of the one were ended, the other began. When material forces
had spent themselves, men began to turn, reluctantly indeed, to
spiritual agencies and undertook to subdue the powers of darkness that
had so long held sway in the human breast. While the arms of Rome were
engaged in overcoming the martial opposition of her enemies, Greece was
occupied with the effort to subjugate the passions of men by the weapons
of the intellect. By the time Roman conquests had reached their limits
it had been demonstrated that Greece, too, could go no farther. But
Greece did not fail because there were no more worlds to conquer: it was
because men had learned that her weapons were powerless to compass the
end in view. “He that ruleth his own spirit is mightier than he that
taketh a city,” was the lesson that the best of the Greek philosophers
strove to impress upon men, but strove in vain.
It will always remain a matter of interest to study the intellectual
sphere in which the old doctrines and the new faith conflict. What was
the best that Greek thought had to offer to the world, and for what
reasons did the world reject it?
In the following pages I have attempted to put before my readers a
solution of some of the problems to which this question gives rise. No
one will deny that Seneca stood on the threshold of Christianity, while
in the opinion of many he had already passed within; yet all will admit
that, at best, he fell far short of the standard Christianity sets up
for its converts. Plutarch is not claimed by Christians, but he
exemplifies many of their virtues, and commends many of the precepts
they endeavored to put in practice. These two men best represent the
strong and the weak points of characters formed under the stimulus of
earnest effort to lead upright lives and to discharge faithfully their
duties to themselves, their fellow men, and the higher power that
controlled their destinies. I have selected a typical work from the
writings of both as a nucleus around which to group such reflections and
facts as seem best fitted to illustrate the environment in which they
lived and the intellectual inheritance to which they had fallen heir,
while I have allowed each to speak for himself on one of the profoundest
problems that has ever engaged the serious attention of man.
Surely, it cannot be a merely accidental coincidence that a Greek at
Delphi, a Roman in his adopted city, a Jew in Alexandria, and another
Jew in Palestine, who had been converted to Christianity and had adopted
the profession of a traveling evangelist, should at the same time, yet
almost or quite independently of each other, maintain the doctrine of a
divine Providence or preach a gospel that recognized it as a fundamental
dogma. The treatise of Philo, though no longer extant in the original
Greek, is more extensive than the tracts here brought together. The
three united in a single volume would make a remarkable trinity in the
history of human thought. The feeling was evidently widespread, both
consciously and unconsciously, that God had never before been so near to
men, though but a few had learned that the Word had become flesh and
dwelt among them, full of grace and truth.