on the world which we found in the poems of Virgil, and which is
associated throughout them with the idea of duty and honourable service.
The husbandman toiling cheerfully and doing his simple acts of worship,
among the patient animals that he loves, and the scenes of natural
beauty that inspire him with pure and tender thoughts; and then again in
the _Aeneid_ the warrior kept true to his goal by a sense of duty
stimulated by supernatural influence: both these sides of the Virgilian
spirit show well how the soil is being prepared for another and a richer
crop. Love and Duty are the essentials of Christian ethics; they are
both to be found in this poet, and through him made their way into the
ideas of the better Romans of the next generation, and so into the
philosophy of Seneca and Marcus Aurelius. "To minds touched with the
same sense of life's problems which pervades the poetry of Virgil, the
ideas that came from Galilee brought the rest and peace which they could
not find elsewhere."[959] The early Christian writers loved the "vates
Gentilium," and St. Augustine in particular is for ever quoting him; but
I should be going beyond the limits of my subject if I were to follow
his gentle influence farther down the stream of time.
In my last lecture we discussed the revival of the old religious forms
by Augustus, and the consummation of this work of his in the splendid
ritual of the _Ludi saeculares_. Can it be said that such an astute and
worldly policy as this had any value in the way of preparation for
Christianity? Only, I think, in one way; it renewed the idea of the
connection between religion and the State, and of the religious duties
of the individual citizen towards the State. It preserved the outward
features of the old State religion, such as the calendar, the ritual,
and the terminology or vocabulary, and handed these down to a time when
they could be of service to a Latin Christian church.[960] Had the old
forms been allowed to go utterly to rack and ruin, as they had been
already doing for the last two centuries, the Roman State would have
been as such without religion, or the worship of the Caesars would have
become disastrously powerful and prominent, or maybe the State would
have adopted the religion of Isis or Mithras or some other Oriental cult
and belief, before Christianity could lay a firm grasp on it. I think it
might be shown that the continuity of the old religion in its connection
with the State was really of value in keeping these growths from
occupying too much ground: of value in checking too rapid a growth of
individualism:[961] of value too in cherishing certain really precious
religious characteristics, orderliness and decency in ritual, for
example, which, as we have seen, were very early developed in the Roman
religious system, and which owed their continued vitality to the
overwhelming influence of the Roman State over all her citizens and
their ideas. Thus when at last, after a period of anxious conflict
between rival religions, the State proclaimed itself Christian, and
henceforward for good or ill extended its protection to the Church, its
religious tradition was still one of decency and order, still free from
almost all that the old Roman State knew and dreaded as _superstitio_.
There was, in fact, a legacy, not indeed a spiritual one, but yet one of
some small value, left by the old Roman religion to the Latin Church:
and this I will turn for a few minutes to examine.
As an example of the orderly, sane, and decent character which the
Church inherited from the Roman religion, I might recall what I said in
Lecture IX. about _lustratio_, that slow and orderly processional
movement in which the old Romans delighted, and which is familiar still
to all travellers in Italy.[962] Another is the tender and reverential
care for the resting-places of departed relatives. I am not sure that
Prof. Gardner is right in asserting that the prayers for the dead of the
Catholic Church took the place of the worship of the dead in the Roman
family;[963] for it is not easy to say how far it is true that the dead
were ever really worshipped at Rome, and the idea of prayer for the
dead, if it can be traced to Roman sources at all, may be rather due to
those tendencies which we discussed under Mysticism, than to anything
inherent in the old Roman attitude to the departed. None the less there
is in the _sacra privata_ of the Parentalia, and especially of the
Caristia which concluded it--a kind of love-feast of all members of the
family, where all quarrels and differences were to be laid
aside,[964]--something that suggests the Christian attitude towards the
dead, and in some dim way too the doctrine of the Communion of Saints.
And we may also notice how closely in regard to externals the great
events of family life,--those critical moments when the aid of the
_numina_ was most needed--the first days of infancy, the eras of puberty
and of marriage, passed on in their sober and orderly ritual into the
baptism, confirmation, and sacramental wedding of the Christian Church.
In such ways the private religion of the Roman family had doubtless a
real continuity in the new era, though the line of connection is
difficult to trace. This, and many other examples of survival, the
worship of local saints which took the place of that of local deities,
the use of holy water and of incense as symbolic elements in worship,
and the general resemblance of the arrangement of festivals in the
Calendars, Roman and Christian, might be interesting matter for a
complete course of lectures, but must be omitted here.
Another point of interest, which might also be widely expanded, is the
influence of the Roman religious _spirit_, as distinct from the outward
form, on Christian thought and literature in the Western half of the
Empire. The subtle transcendentalism of the Greek fathers was foreign to
Latin Christianity; the characteristics of Roman life as reflected in
Roman worship are plainly visible in the Latin fathers. From Minucius
Felix onwards, the Christians who wrote in Latin, so far from being
imaginative and dreamy, are one and all matter-of-fact; historical,
abounding in illustration of life and conduct; ethical rather than
speculative; legal in their cast of thought rather than philosophical;
rhetorical in their manner of expression rather than fervent or
poetical. They were well versed in the great literature of Rome, but
most of them, and especially the African school (which carried Roman
tendencies to an extreme), knew comparatively little of Greek. St.
Augustine, for example, could not bring himself to work at Greek with
ardour, nor could he explain why this was so.[965] Of Augustine, as the
type of the literature of Latin Christianity, Bishop Westcott wrote with
something of an exaggerated criticism, lamenting that he had not the
Greek which had so large a place in the Bishop's own training. "He
looked" (more particularly in the _de Civitate Dei_) "at everything from
the side of law and not of freedom: from the side of God, as an
irresponsible sovereign, and not of man, as a loving servant. In spite
of his admiration for Plato, he was driven by a passion for system" (how
this reminds us of the old Roman religious lawyers!) "to fix, to
externalise, to freeze every idea into a rigid shape. In spite of his
genius he could not shake off the influence of a legal and rhetorical
training, which controversy called into active exercise."[966] The
lecture from which I am quoting is an interesting one, on the work and
character of Origen, the great Alexandrian of the third century A.D.,
with whom Augustine is contrasted, as in an earlier age we might
contrast Seneca with Philo; the Latin writers rhetorical, practical,
realistic; the Greek authors idealistic and fervent, apt to see deep
moral significance in all human life. And this is really the manner and
mental attitude of all the famous Latin fathers: of Lactantius, the
clear, precise Ciceronian, whose every page shows the perennial value of
the Latin tongue; of Tertullian, the subtle and acute rhetorician, more
gifted with imagination than his fellows; of Arnobius, another Roman
African, the reputed teacher of Lactantius.
One of the characteristics of these Latin fathers is their fondness for
using the famous words of the old Roman religion, but in new senses.
They inherit that Roman love for a strong technical word of pregnant
meaning which has left us so many imperishable legacies in terminology.
_Municipium_, _colonia_, _imperium_, _collegium_, rise in one's mind the
moment the subject is mentioned; and a few minutes' thought will reveal
another score of words which in various forms pervade all our modern
European terminology. So, too, with the language of religion. These
Latin advocates of Christian doctrine took the old words which we have
so often dwelt on in the course of these lectures, and gave them new but
almost equally clear and pregnant meanings. Let us glance at three or
four of these; for such a legacy as this is no mean property of the
Christian religion of the West.
Let us take, to begin with, the greatest of all these words--_religio_.
I have maintained throughout these lectures that the original sense of
this word was the natural feeling of man in the presence of the
supernatural; and though this has actually been questioned since I began
them,[967] I see no good reason to alter my conviction. But in the age
of Cicero and Lucretius the word begins to take on a different meaning,
of great importance for the future. Though Cicero as a young man had
defined _religio_ as "the feeling of the presence of a higher or divine
nature, which prompts man to worship,--to _cura et caerimonia_,"[968]
yet later on in life he uses it with much freedom of that _cura et
caerimonia_ apart from the feeling. To take a single example among many:
in a passage in his _de Legibus_ he says that to worship private or
strange or foreign gods, "confusionem habet religionum";[969] and again
he calls his own imaginary _ius divinum_ in that treatise a _constitutio
religionum_, a system of religious duties.[970] In many other passages,
on the other hand, we find both the feeling which prompts and the
cult-acts which follow on it equally connoted by the word; for example,
the phrase _religio sepulcrorum_ suggests quite as much the feeling as
the ritual. So it would seem that _religio_ is already beginning to pass
into the sense in which we still use it--_i.e._, _the feeling which
suggests worship, and the forms under which we perform that worship_. In
this broad sense it is also used by Lucretius, who included under it all
that was for him the world's evil and folly, both the feeling of awe
which he believed to be degrading, and the organised worship of the
family and the State, which he no less firmly believed to be futile.
"Tantum _religio_ potuit suadere malorum."[971] The fact is that in that
age, when the old local character of the cults was disappearing, and
when men like Posidonius, Varro, and Cicero were thinking and writing
about the nature of the gods and kindred subjects, a word was wanted to
gather up and express all this religious side of human life and
experience: it must be a word without a definite technical meaning, and
such a word was _religio_.
Thus while _religio_ continues to express the feeling only or the cult
only, if called on to do so, it gains in the age of Cicero a more
comprehensive connotation, as the result of the contemplation of
religion by philosophy as a thing apart from itself; and this enabled
the early Christian writers, who knew their Cicero well, to give it a
meaning in which it is still in use among all European nations.
But there was yet to be a real change in the meaning of the word, one
that was inevitable, as the contrast between Christianity and other
religions called for emphasis. The second century A.D. was that in which
the competition was keenest between various religious creeds and forms,
each with its own vitality, and each clearly marked off from the others.
It is no longer a question of religion as a whole, contemplated by a
critical or a sympathetic philosophy; the question is, which creed or
form is to be the true and the victorious religion. Our wonderful word
again adapts itself to the situation. Each separate religious system can
now be called a _religio_. The old polytheistic system can now be called
_religio Deorum_ by the Christian, while his own creed is _religio Dei_.
In the _Octavius_ of Minucius Felix, written about the end of the second
century, the word is already used in this sense. _Nostra religio, vera
religio_,[972] is for him the whole Christian faith and practice as it
stood then--the depth of feeling and the acts which gave it outward
form. The one true religion can thus be now expressed by the word. In
Lactantius, Arnobius, Tertullian, in the third century A.D., this new
sense is to be found on almost every page, but a single noble passage of
Lactantius must suffice to illustrate it. "The heathen sacrifice," he
says, "and leave all their religion in the temple; thus it is that such
_religiones_ cannot make men good or firm in their faith. But 'nostra
_religio_ eo firma est et solida et immutabilis, quia mentem ipsam pro
sacrificio habet, quia tota in animo colentis est.'"[973]
Here at last we come upon a force of meaning which the word had never
before attained. _Religio_ here is not awe only or cult only, but _a
mental devotion capable of building up character_. "The kingdom of God
is within you." Surely this is a valuable legacy to the Christian faith
from our hard, dry, old Roman religion.
Another legacy in words is that of _pius_. Our English word "pious" has
suffered some damage from the sanctimoniousness of a certain type of
Puritanism; but _piety_ still remains sweet and wholesome, and, like its
Latin original in the middle ages it seems to express one beautiful
aspect of the Christian life better than any other word. In the old
Roman religion _pius_ meant the man who strictly conforms his life to
the _ius divinum_; this we know from the very definite ancient
explanations of its contrary, _impius_. The _impius_ is the man who
_wilfully_ breaks the _ius divinum_ and the _pax deorum_; for him no
_piaculum_ was of avail.[974] Such a crime is the nearest approach in
Roman antiquity to our idea of sin. _Pius_ is therefore, as we saw in
discussing Aeneas, the man who knows the will of the gods, and so far as
in him lies adjusts his conduct thereto, whether in the life of the
family or as a citizen of the State. As applied to things, to a war for
example, the word _pium_ is almost equivalent to _iustum_ or _purum_,
_i.e._, _pium bellum_ is a war declared and conducted in accordance with
the principles of the _ius divinum_.[975] _Pietas_ is therefore a
virtue, that of obedience to the will of God as shown in private and
public life, and it herein differs from _religio_, which is not a
virtue, but a feeling. But we need not be surprised to find that in
Lactantius _pietas_ can be used to explain _religio_; for _religio_ is
no longer a feeling only or a cult only, but, as we saw just now, a
mental devotion capable of building up character. In one passage he says
that it is no true philosophy which "veram religionem, id est summam
pietatem, non habet."[976] In another interesting chapter he shows
plainly enough that he uses _pietas_ just as he uses _religio_, to
express the whole Christian mental furniture.[977] He begins by
scornfully pointing to Aeneas as the typical _pius_, and asking what we
are to think of the _pietas_ of a man who could bind the hands of
prisoners in order to slaughter them as a sacrifice to the shade of
Pallas[978] (little dreaming, indeed, that Christian piety should ever
be guilty of such slaughter in the cause of the faith); and ends by
asking, "What, then, is _pietas_? Surely it is with those who know not
war; who keep at peace with all men; who love their enemies and count
all men their brethren; who can control their anger and curb all mental
wilfulness." And once again, _pietas_ is the main ingredient in
_iustitia_, that is, in Christian righteousness, for "pietas nihil aliud
est quam Dei notio." Even here it is not so far removed from its old
meaning; but in a Christian writer it can mean conformity to the will of
God, based on a real knowledge of Him, in a sense which shows us by a
sudden illuminating flash the deep gulf set between the old religion and
the new.
Another word, bequeathed in this case rather by the Latin language than
the Roman religion, in which it held no strictly technical meaning, is
_sanctus_, which has played so large a part in the terminology of the
Catholic Church, and passed thence into the language of Puritanism for
the living Christian, as in Baxter's famous book, _The Saints' Rest_.
The exact meaning of _sanctus_ is extremely difficult to fix, and this
may be why it was found to be a convenient word for a type of character
negative rather than positive. The lawyers defined it as meaning what is
_sancitum_ by the State,[979] without tracing it back to a time when the
State was a religious as well as a civil entity. But there was beyond
doubt a religious flavour in it from the beginning, as in other old
Italian words connected with it; and thus it seems to be able to express
a certain conjunction of religious and moral purity which finally
brought it into the hands of the Christian writers. A single verse of
Virgil will serve to explain what I mean. Turnus, before he rushes forth
to meet his death at Aeneas' hand, and knowing that he is to meet it,
asks the Manes to be good to him, "quoniam superis aversa voluntas,"
for--
_sancta_ ad vos _anima_ atque istius nescia culpae
descendam magnorum haud unquam indignus avorum.[980]
He goes to the shades with a conscience clear of guilt or of _impietas_;
as the ancient scholiast interprets the word, it is equivalent to
_incorrupta_.[981] In this sense it became one of the favourite
superlatives to describe in sepulchral inscriptions, pagan or Christian,
the purity of departed women and children.[982]
Lastly, we have the great word _sacer_, with its compounds _sacrificium_
and _sacramentum_. The adjective itself has no new or special
significance, I think, in the language of the early Christians, and in
our Teutonic languages the Roman sense of it, "that which is made over
to God," is expressed by the word _holy_, _sacred_ being retained in a
general sense for that which is not "common." But _sacrificium_, the act
of making a thing, animate or inanimate, or yourself, as in _devotio_,
over to the gods, is indeed a great legacy on which I do not need to
dwell. _Sacramentum_, on the other hand, needs a word of explanation.
_Sacramentum_ in Roman public law meant (1) a legal formula (_legis
actio_), under which a sum of money was deposited, originally in a
temple,[983] to be forfeited by the loser in a suit. The deposition _in
loco sacro_ gives the word to the process, and helps us to see that it
must mean some act which has a religious sanction. So with (2) its other
meaning, _i.e._ the oath of obedience taken by the soldier, who was
_iuratus in verba_, that is, sworn under a formula with a religious
sanction attached.[984] It is tempting to suppose that it is through
this channel that it found its way into the Christian vocabulary--the
soldier of Christ affirming his allegiance in the solemn rites of
baptism, marriage, or the Eucharist. It is a curious fact that it seems
to be used in this way in the religion of Mithras,[985] which was
especially powerful among the Roman legions of the Empire, and in which
there was a grade of the faithful with the title of _milites_.
_Sacramentum_ was here the word for the initiatory rites of a grade. In
the earliest Christian writers of Latin it usually means a mystery; thus
Arnobius writes of the Christian religion as revealing the "veritatis
absconditae sacramenta";[986] but in another passage the idea in his
mind seems to be that of military service. It is better, he says, for
Christians to break their worldly contracts, even of marriage, than to
break the _fides Christiana_, "_et salutaris militiae sacramenta
deponere_;"[987] and Tertullian more than once attaches the same
military meaning to it: "Vocati sumus ad militiam Dei vivi iam tunc _cum
in verba sacramenti spopondimus_."[988] Perhaps we may take it that the
word, though of general significance for a religiously binding force
produced by certain mysterious rites, had a special attraction for
writers of the painful third century A.D., as reflecting into the
Christian life from old Roman times something of the spirit of the duty
and self-sacrifice of the loyal legionary. In any case we have once more
a verbal legacy of priceless value.[989]
To sum up what I have been saying, there were certain ingredients in the
Roman soil, deposits of the Roman religious experience, which were in
their several ways favourable to the growth of a new plant. There were
also certain direct legacies from the old Roman religion, of which
Christianity could dispose with profit, in the shape of forms of ritual,
and, what was even of greater value, words of real significance in the
old religion, which were destined to become of permanent and priceless
value in the Christian speech of the western nations. There were also
other points in the society and organisation of the Roman Empire which
were of great importance for the growth of the new creed; but these lie
outside my proper subject, and have been dealt with by Professor Gardner
in the lecture to which I alluded at the beginning of this lecture, and
most instructively by Sir W. M. Ramsay in more than one of his books,
and especially in _St. Paul, the Traveller and Roman Citizen_.
And yet, all this taken together, so far from explaining Christianity,
does not help us much in getting to understand even the conditions under
which it grew into men's minds as a new power in the life of the world.
The plant, though grown in soil which had borne other crops, was wholly
new in structure and vital principle. I say this deliberately, after
spending so many years on the study of the religion of the Romans, and
making myself acquainted in some measure with the religions of other
peoples. The essential difference, as it appears to me as a student of
the history of religion, is this, that whereas the connection between
religion and morality has so far been a loose one,--at Rome, indeed, so
loose, that many have refused to believe in its existence,--the _new
religion was itself morality_,[990] but morality consecrated and raised
to a higher power than it had ever yet reached. It becomes active
instead of passive; mere good nature is replaced by a doctrine of
universal love; _pietas_, the sense of duty in outward things, becomes
an enthusiasm embracing all humanity, consecrated by such an appeal to
the conscience as there never had been in the world before--the appeal
to the life and death of the divine Master.
This is what is meant, if I am not mistaken, by the great contrast so
often and so vividly drawn by St. Paul between the spirit and the flesh,
between the children of light and the children of darkness, between the
sleep or the death of the world and the waking to life in Christ,
between the blameless and the harmless sons of God and the crooked and
perverse generation among whom they shine as lights in the world. I
confess that I never realised this contrast fully or intelligently until
I read through the Pauline Epistles from beginning to end with a special
historical object in view. It is useful to be familiar with the life and
literature of the two preceding centuries, if only to be able the better
to realise, in passing to St. Paul, a Roman citizen, a man of education
and experience, the great gulf fixed between the old and the new as he
himself saw it.