theory what Aristotle and the Greeks meant, not a visionary conjecture,
but an intellectual speculation by which the mind has true vision of
intelligible realities, as it has of sensible objects by ocular vision.
This true philosophy of history is partly identified with theology, or
the science of God and all that which is divine; not only in so far as
theology is the highest part of rational philosophy, but also inasmuch
as it transcends reason. The knowledge of God and that which is divine
transcending natural intelligence and reason, is the revelation of God
in and through the Word, who “enlighteneth every man coming into this
world,” and consequently casts light on everything pertaining to
humanity. The creation, destination, fall, redemption and glorification
of humanity in and through the Word, “who was made flesh and dwelt
among us,” is the object of Christian theology, to which the immediate
object of history is subordinate. The Incarnate Son of God is the
central figure in human history, its circumference is drawn around this
centre, and all its diameters pass through it.
A number of great historians have perceived this truth, and made
universal history render up its testimony, which is sometimes latent
and sometimes patent, to Christ and to his divine work of human
regeneration. Leo, for instance, having first convinced himself of the
truth of divine revelation by the study of history, made his entire
work on the universal history of mankind a splendid and irrefutable
demonstration of Christianity. The course of time and events before
Christ is a preparation for his coming. The one great event in human
history is the divine Epiphany, the visible manifestation of God in the
Person of the Word through his assumed human nature, in which he was
conceived and born of the Virgin, lived among men, died, and rose again
to an immortal and glorious life, for the fulfilment of the divine
purpose in creation and the consummation of the destiny of mankind. The
course of time and events after Christ is the successive fulfilment of
this divine purpose, to be completed in the final consummation at the
end of the present order of the world.
In the six centuries immediately preceding Christ the preparation and
convergence of events become more distinct and manifest; the features
of human evolution are more marked; the progress and tendency of the
universal movement are apparently accelerated in the direction of the
common point of convergence; all human affairs, the objects of history,
seem to rise out of its dim horizon, looming up in increasing
magnitude, like the great ships of a squadron hastening from all points
of the compass over a broad sea to their rendezvous. Before this period
the expanse of time is to our eye almost like the waste solitudes of
ocean. Confucius collected some remnants of Chinese historical
documents going back to the ninth century b.c. Some imperfect records
of Hindoo antiquity have been brought to light in modern researches.
Hieroglyphic and cuneiform inscriptions, like traces of a caravan on
the sand, present to the curious modern eye vestiges of a remote past.
Berosus wrote in the reign of Seleucus Nicator, Manetho in that of
Ptolemy Philadelphus, Herodotus four centuries and a half before
Christ. Varro, the most learned of the Romans, dates the beginning of
authentic Roman history from the first Olympiad, B.C. 776. Authentic
written history does not go back as far as Solomon, except as we find
it in the sacred writings of the Old Testament. These priceless
documents are the family records of the house of Nazareth, the
genealogy of Jesus Christ, the history of his predecessors and
precursors; of inchoate Christianity, of the prophecy and providence,
the promises and laws, the typical rites and preliminary covenants, the
elementary revelations and the other preludes, by which, in divers
places, times, and manners, the Word of God prepared the way for his
coming upon earth to fulfil all prophecy and accomplish the expectation
of all nations.
About five centuries and a half before Christ the prophet Daniel made
his celebrated prediction of the great period of seventy weeks—_i.e._,
four hundred and ninety years—from the rebuilding of the temple and
city of Jerusalem to the Messias. This period is marked as the one of
immediate expectation and preparation. As the time of the great Prophet
drew near the succession of the minor prophets in Judea ceased. The
Jewish people became less exclusively isolated, and came into relations
with other nations which were quite new and marked with a transitional
tendency. The Greek Scriptures of the second canon, like the writings
of St. Paul in the New Testament, are more like the classic works of
other nations than those of the first canon, which are marked with the
peculiar Hebrew characteristics. A diffusion of the Jews, of their
books and ideas; a general dissemination of the Greek language and
literature, a world-wide unification of civilized, and in part of
barbarous peoples under the Roman polity; a remarkable advancement of
the human mind in the great works of philosophy, poetry, literature,
art, and every species of civilization; are the principal second and
concurrent causes directed by divine Providence to fulfil a purpose,
analogous to the mission of St. John the Baptist, among the nations
predestined to a Christian vocation.
There is nothing in this view which favors rationalism. Grace supposes
nature, and God is the author of both. Natural and supernatural
providence are distinct but not separate. Rational science and revealed
doctrine are portions of the universal truth which has its measure in
the divine intelligence and its primal origin in the divine essence. It
is, moreover, characteristic of the divine operation to act on the rule
of parsimony in the use of means. Where second causes are sufficient
the first cause does not immediately intervene and supersede their
action; where natural forces are sufficient they are not supplanted by
those which are supernatural. What a long period elapsed before the
earliest of the inspired books was written! How few have been the
prophets, how comparatively few and rare miracles of the first order!
In the beginning, religion, the church, the whole spiritual order, was
identified with the common social and civil order. The special
intervention of God in the calling of Abraham, the legation of Moses,
the entire Jewish system, was a renovation of the more ancient and
universal dispensation, confined within the limits of one nation,
protected by special legislation, sanctioned by miracles, manifested in
revelations through inspired men and prophets. As the time draws near
when the church and religion were to become once more and finally
Catholic, the supernatural providence of God over the Jewish people
becomes less extraordinary, and his natural providence over the other
nations more conspicuous. The great Prophet himself, the Messias, the
Son of God in human form, performs miracles and appeals to them, as it
were, with reserve and reluctance, hides his wisdom and power from men,
refuses to exert his dominion over men and nature in defence of his own
life, discloses himself after his resurrection to a few only, and
departs, so to speak, _incognito_ from the earth to return to his
heavenly abode with the Father. The gift of inspiration, by virtue of
which the written documents of revelation are completed, is imparted to
a small number only; their writings fill but a small compass; within
fifty years from the opening of the New Testament canon by the first
Gospel it is closed by the last book of the last of the apostles, St.
John. No new David, or Isaias, or Daniel, or Paul, or John is
henceforth to appear in the church. All this shows the purpose of God
not to oppress the human by the divine in the deification of humanity,
not to supersede the natural by the supernatural, or to supplant the
activity of the human intelligence and will by an overbearing divine
power. The Spirit of God brooded over the face of chaos in the
beginning, gradually bringing it into form and order, and the same
Spirit has been waving his wings[91] over the waters of human history
during the entire period of the explication of God’s creative act in
time and space through human actions and events. Where creative power
is required—_i.e._, where it is the will of God to give being to a term
educed from non-existence and from no pre-existing subject—God acts
alone and immediately as first cause with no concurrent cause. He has
created and continues to create all simple substances. Where
supernatural power is required to bring from created substances certain
results which presuppose a new form of being in them above their
intrinsic substantial actuality, or some other augmentation of their
natural force by an immediate divine act, God intervenes directly as
the efficient cause of the effect produced. He is the author of second
causes and principles, of the first germs of evolution, of generative
powers, of all origin, and of all that is called in the German language
_Urwesen_. He preserves everything, concurs with everything, directs
everything toward proximate, remote, and final ends, bringing the
creation which proceeded from him as first cause back to himself as
final cause. And therefore, whenever there is a sufficient reason, he
intervenes directly to overrule the order of second causes and the
natural laws he has himself established. The especial reason for this
is to prevent the thwarting of the legitimate action of beings endowed
with con-creative power, through the illegitimate interference of other
beings endowed with the same power. All spiritual beings have this
con-creative power by virtue of intelligence and free-will. They may
fail to exercise it when they should; they may be hindered from
exercising it by equal or superior force. The order of moral probation
requires that great freedom of movement should be allowed to these
forces in voluntary efforts and in conflicts. But the final cause of
this probation also exacts that the predetermined plans of God shall be
infallibly executed, and that he shall overrule the wills both of men
and angels for the fulfilment of his own sovereign will.
The natural and the supernatural are, therefore, not separate, much
less disconnected, least of all hostile, in the order of divine
providence, although they are distinct and placed in logical opposition
to one another. Sacred and secular history, religion and civilization,
theology and science, the eternal and temporal interests of mankind,
cannot be separated from each other and relegated to mutually distant
or hostile kingdoms, like the kingdoms of light and darkness in the
system of the Manicheans. Any view which considers mankind as separated
into two divisions of the elect and the reprobate by an antecedent
decree, is false. The doctrine that the nature of man has become
totally depraved, and that his entire rational and physical activity
develops only sin which tends fatally to perdition, is utterly
unchristian as well as unphilosophical. It is only from this doctrine
that we could deduce a theory by which the society of the elect would
be considered as a separated, isolated tribe, a small invisible church,
without any real relation through a spiritual bond with the mass of
mankind. The Catholic doctrine is expressed by the author of the Book
of Wisdom in these beautiful words: “God created all things that they
might be: and he made the nations of the earth for health: and there is
no poison of destruction in them, nor kingdom of hell upon the earth.
For justice is perpetual and immortal.”[92]
The true philosophy of Christianity must, therefore, take into view the
providence of God over the Gentiles, their history, philosophy, polity,
and civilization, in order to appreciate the period of preparation for
the Messias who was the expected of the nations. The philosophy of
history, also, must take into view the whole cycle of special acts of
divine providence recorded in the books of the Old Testament, and
fulfilled between the epochs of the calling of Abraham and the
appearance of the Messias in the history of the peculiar people of God.
Mr. Formby, with his peculiar originality and vigor of thought, has
brought out into more striking relief than any other author we know of
the idea common to several excellent modern writers respecting the
position of the two cities, Jerusalem and Rome, in the historical order
of divine Providence. They are, as it were, the two great citadels of
God, the two great capitals of the universal kingdom of Christ. During
the thousand years immediately before the Incarnation the city of
David, the seat of the royal ancestors of Jesus Christ our Lord, was
the citadel of all the highest interests of humanity. All the hopes,
the whole future destiny, of mankind were in David’s royal line, the
sweet psalmist, the prophet, the king of Israel. For seven centuries
God was preparing Rome, first the ally, then the arbiter, and finally
the conqueror of Judea, to take the place of Jerusalem, and by its
world-wide polity to serve as a medium for the promulgation and
extension of the divine religion throughout the whole earth.
The true philosophy of history sets aside all theories which are
exclusive on the one side or on the other—those which exclude the
ordinary providence of God over all mankind under the natural law, and
those which exclude his extraordinary providence over the church under
the supernatural law—and includes both under one synthesis. The one
exclusive view proceeds from an _à priori_ theological principle
resulting in a conclusion with which a logical induction from facts
cannot be reconciled, and therefore denies or misrepresents the facts.
The other proceeds from an _à priori_ metaphysical principle with a
similar result. The one is a pseudo-supernaturalism, the other a
pseudo-naturalism. The first pretends to be the genuine spiritual
religion, or pure Christianity; the second professes to be the genuine
rational philosophy, or pure science. Both are counterfeits of the
truth. The best corrective of these theoretical tendencies is to be
found in the correct knowledge and exposition of history. Lacordaire
has well said: “_On ne brûle pas les faits_.” Facts are incombustible;
they cannot be made to evaporate in the gaseous elements of
transcendental metaphysics, or vanish in clouds of smoke from the pipes
of German neologists. Each of these make their gas or blow their clouds
from products of their own imagination adroitly substituted for facts.
Facts resist with an invincible inertia every combination with false
theories of supernatural religion. In all branches of science pure
reasoning and the investigation of facts must go together in harmony
and mutually complete each other. Even in divine revelation God is
careful to present facts with their evidence in connection with
doctrine, and a large portion of the Bible is made up of historical
records. The divine legation of Moses and the divine mission of Jesus
Christ are great historical facts, and they are in synthetical
connection with all the great events and epochs of human universal
history. In this concurrence and harmony we find the most evident and
tangible proof and corroboration in the order of natural reason of the
truth revealed by God in Jesus Christ, which is the object of divine
faith, and the soul of the complete substance of Christianity.
Jesus Christ came on the earth at the very juncture of the ages, at the
moment for crystallization, at the epoch of crisis in human affairs,
when Judaism, Grecian culture, and Roman jurisprudence combined with
Roman valor, were ready to blend in a new combination; when the three
strands spun by no blind fate, but by all-seeing Providence, were ready
to be intertwined: the pure tradition of the patriarchs, the philosophy
of the heathen sages, the organic polity of the imperial legislators—an
electric cable to bind the earth and transmit the new movement of
divine impulse. The Jews preserved and handed down the pure doctrine of
monotheism, the promise of redemption, and the moral law—the germ of
revealed doctrine and ethics, which, in the state of development, is
the faith and law of Christianity. The Greeks furnished the
intellectual human culture in philosophy, poetry, and art, of which the
Christian religion availed itself, as of a precious vase in which to
detain its subtle and sublime essence—an ideal atmosphere for the
communication of its influence to the minds and imaginations of men in
all ages and countries. Rome opened the way for diffusion and
unification. Immobility in tradition, mobility in intelligence, motive
power in organization, are the characters of Jewish, Greek, and Roman
civilization, which were united in Christianity under a higher and
controlling vital force.
They were each and all temporary and insufficient, subject to a law of
internal decay, evanescent in their nature, and about vanishing when
Jesus Christ came on the earth. That he came just in time to supersede
them and to begin the universal regeneration of mankind; that he really
did so without any purely human and natural means which were sufficient
causes of the effects produced; is a proof that the God whose
providence rules the world sent him to fulfil this mission, and that
his work was a divine operation. God’s hand alone could spin and twine
the threads of human destiny and make Time’s noiseless, incessant
shuttle weave the woof and web into the successive figures of
historical embroidery.
The miracles and resurrection of Jesus Christ, historically proved as
certain, indubitable facts, authenticate his divine mission; they stamp
a divine seal on his credentials as the Messias promised from the
beginning of the world. This divine legation gives divine authority to
his word and precepts. Whatever he teaches in the name of God is a
divine revelation, and whatever he commands is a divine law. The
authentic record of these miracles, the record of what Jesus said and
did; the authentic account of his teaching respecting his own person,
plan, doctrine, and law—that is, of the principles and the foundation
of the Christian religion—is historical; it is an authentic testimony
respecting facts. The authentic record of the actual founding of
Christianity on the principles and plan of the Master, by the disciples
to whom he entrusted the work of carrying his design into effect, is
historical. This divine design necessarily embracing all that is
contained in the idea of a continuity and development of divine
providence over human affairs and destinies from the beginning to the
end of the world, its actual carrying out through successive ages
becomes matter of history for the time present in respect to times
past. Its principles of continuity and development, in connection with
the order of providence anterior to Christ, and with the progress of
its movement from the apostolic age through the ages following, are to
be sought for in its history, not to the exclusion of reasoning from
abstract principles, but in connection with it. The historical
documents of the New Testament, considered merely as credible testimony
and apart from their inspiration, are of paramount importance in
respect to the inquiry into the nature of the genuine, authentic
Christianity promulgated and established as a world-religion by its
Founder and his apostles. After these come all other documents
containing historical record or indirect evidence respecting the
earliest age of the Christian religion. In this aspect the study of
dogmas of faith, of laws and rites, of the spirit and the organization
of Christianity, is directed toward an historical term. The object of
the inquiry is to ascertain what is Christianity, what was its
legitimate development, where is to be found through all ages the real
continuation, uninterrupted succession, perpetual life, and progressive
expansion which connote the identity of its essence and its specific
unity in all its distinct moments, as it proceeds from its beginning
towards its end. Although its intrinsic truth and authority are
established simultaneously with the exposition of its historical
character, the argument is nevertheless distinct, in respect to its
conclusive force in this direction, from the pure manifestation of the
real essence and nature of the religion. The question as to its
essential constituents and their logical connection is logically
distinct from the question as to its material truth, although they are
metaphysically one by an inseparable composition. Christ, manifesting
himself in history, is a revelation of the infinite wisdom, power, and
goodness of God in his divine works, which transcend the reach of all
created and dependent forces. It is the Eternal Word speaking
efficiently, as when he said: “Let there be light: and there was
light.” If we can only see all objects by this light, through a pure
medium, we cannot fail to be enlightened by the knowledge of the truth.
The able work of Dr. Fisher, the title of which is prefixed to this
article, and which was briefly noticed in our last number, is based on
the idea we have set forth in these preliminary remarks, although we do
not profess to have given an exposition of the learned author’s precise
thesis, or ascribe to him a view identical in all particulars with the
one we have presented. We will employ his own language for this
purpose, of showing his own individual conception of the historical
environment of Christianity, and the conclusions to which investigation
and reflection on the great facts and events connected with its
beginnings have led him.
“Christianity is an historical religion. It is made up of
events, or, to say the least, springs out of events which,
however peculiar in their origin, form a part of the history of
mankind.... The Apostle Paul refers to the birth of Christ as
having occurred ‘when the fulness of time was come’ (Gal. iv.
4).