Pioneers of Evolution from Thales to Huxley Part 2

Such, in very broad outline, is the legacy of suggestive theories bequeathed by the Ionian school and its successors, theories which fell into the rear when Athens became a centre of intellectual life in which discussion pa.s.sed from the physical to those ethical problems which lie outside the range of this survey. Although Aristotle, by his prolonged and careful observations, forms a conspicuous exception, the fact abides that insight, rather than experiment, ruled Greek speculation, the fantastic guesses of parts of which themselves evidence the survival of the crude and false ideas about earth and sky long prevailing. The more wonderful is it, therefore, that so much therein points the way along which inquiry travelled after its subsequent long arrest; and the more apparent is it that nothing in science or art, and but little in theological speculations, at least among us Westerns, can be understood without reference to Greece.

TABLE.

------------+-------------+-----------+------------------------------- Approximate NAME. Place. date Speciality.

B. C. ------------+-------------+-----------+------------------------------- Thales. Miletus 600 Cosmological } (Ionia). Theory as to} the Primary } Water.

Substance } Anaximander. " 570 " the Boundless.

Anaximenes. " 500 " Air.

Pythagoras. Samos (near 500 " Numbers: the Ionian "a Cosmos built coast). up of geometrical figures,"

or (Grote, Plato, i, 12) "generated out of number."

Xenophanes. Colophon 500 Founder of the (Ionia). Eleatic school.

Herac.l.i.tus. Ephesus 500 " Fire.

(Ionia). Empedocles. Agrigentum 450 " Fire, Air, Earth, (Sicily). and Water: ruled by Love and Strife.

Anaxagoras. Clazomenae 450 Nous.

(Ionia). Leucippus Democritus. Abdera 460 Formulators of the Atomic (Thrace). Theory.

Aristotle. Stagira 350 Naturalist.

(Macedonia). Epicurus. Samos. 300 Expounder of the Atomic Theory and Ethical Philosopher.

Lucretius. Rome. 50 Interpreter of Epicurus and Empedocles: the first Anthropologist.

_Part II._

THE ARREST OF INQUIRY.

A. D. 50-A. D. 400.

1. _From the Early Christian Period to the Time of Augustine._

"A revealed dogma is always opposed to the free research that may contradict it. The result of science is not to banish the divine altogether, but ever to place it at a greater distance from the world of particular facts in which men once believed they saw it."--RENAN, Essay on Islamism and Science.

A detailed account of the rise and progress of the Christian religion is not within the scope of this book. But as that religion, more especially in the elaborated theological form which it ultimately a.s.sumed, became the chief barrier to the development of Greek ideas; except, as has been remarked, in the degree that these were represented by Aristotle, and brought into harmony with it; a short survey of its origin and early stages is necessary to the continuity of our story.

The history of that great movement is told according to the bias of the writers. They explain its rapid diffusion and its ultimate triumph over Paganism as due either to its Divine origin and guidance; or to the favourable conditions of the time of its early propagation, and to that wise adaptation to circ.u.mstances which linked its fortunes with those of the progressive peoples of Western Europe. In the judgment of every unofficial narrator, this latter explanation best accords with the facts of history, and with the natural causes which largely determine success or failure. The most partisan advocates of its supernatural, and therefore special, character have to show reason why the fortunes of the Christian religion have varied like those of other great religions, both older and younger than it; why, like Buddhism, it has been ousted from the country in which it rose; and why, in compet.i.tion with Brahmanism, as Sir Alfred Lyall testifies in his Asiatic Studies (p. 110), and with Mohammedanism in Africa, it has less success than these in the mission fields where it comes into rivalry with them. Riven into wrangling sects from an early period of its history, it has, while exercising a beneficent influence in turbulent and lawless ages, brought not "peace on earth, but a sword." It has been the cause of undying hate, of b.l.o.o.d.y wars, and of persecutions between parties and nations, whose animosity seems the deeper when stirred by matters which are incapable of proof.

As Montaigne says, "Nothing is so firmly believed as that which is least known." To bring the Christian religion, or, rather, its manifold forms, from the purest spiritualistic to such degraded type as exists, for example, in Abyssinia, within the operation of the law which governs development, and which, therefore, includes partial and local corruption; is to make its history as clear as it is profoundly instructive; while, to demand for it an origin and character different in kind from other religions, is to import confusion into the story of mankind, and to raise a swarm of artificial difficulties. "If," as John Morley observes in his criticism of Turgot's dissertation upon The Advantages that the Establishment of Christianity has conferred upon the Human Race (Miscell., vol. ii, p. 90), "there had been in the Christian idea the mysterious self-sowing quality so constantly claimed for it, how came it that in the Eastern part of the Empire it was as powerless for spiritual or moral regeneration as it was for political health and vitality; while in the Western part it became the organ of the most important of all the past transformations of the civilized world? Is not the difference to be explained by the difference in the surrounding medium, and what is the effect of such an explanation upon the supernatural claims of the Christian idea?" Its inclusion as one of other modes, varying only in degree, by which man has progressed from the "ape and tiger" stage to the highest ideals of the race, makes clear what concerns us here, namely, its att.i.tude toward secular knowledge, and the consequent serious arrest of that knowledge. That a religion which its followers claim to be of supernatural origin, and secured from error by the perpetual guidance of a Holy Spirit, should have opposed inquiry into matters the faculty for investigating which lay within human power and province; that it should actually have put to death those who dared thus to inquire, and to make known what they had discovered; is a problem which its advocates may settle among themselves. It is no problem to those who take the opposite view.

In outlining the history of Christianity stress will be here laid only upon those elements which caused it to be an arresting force in man's intellectual development, and, therefore, in his spiritual emanc.i.p.ation from terrors begotten of ignorance. It does not fall within our survey to speak of that primary element in it which was before all dogma, and which may survive when dogma has become only a matter of antiquarian interest. That element, born of emotion, which, as a crowd of kindred examples show, incarnates, and then deifies the object of its worship, was the belief in the manifestation of the divine through the human Jesus who had borne men's griefs, carried their sorrows, and offered rest to the weary and heavy-laden. For no religion--and here Evolution comes in as witness--can take root which does not adapt itself to, and answer some need of, the heart of man. Hence the importance of study of the history of all religions.

Evolution knows only one heresy--the denial of continuity. Recognising the present as the outcome of the past, it searches after origins. It knows that both that which revolts us in man's spiritual history has, alike with that which attracts, its place, its necessary place, in the development of ideas, and is, therefore, capable of explanation from its roots upward. For this age is sympathetic, not flippant. It looks with no favour on criticism that is only destructive, or on ridicule or ribaldry as modes of attack on current beliefs. Hence we have the modern science of comparative theology, with its Hibbert Lectures, and Gifford Lectures, which are critical and constructive; as opposed to Bampton Lectures, Boyle and Hulse Lectures, which are apologetic, the speaker holding an official brief. Of the Boyle Lecturers, Collings the "Deist"

caustically said that n.o.body doubted the existence of the Deity till they set to work to prove it. Religions are no longer treated as true or false, as inventions of priests or of divine origin, but as the product of man's intellectual speculations, however crude or coa.r.s.e; and of his spiritual needs, no matter in what repulsive form they are satisfied.

For "proofs" and "evidences" we have subst.i.tuted explanations.

Nevertheless, so strong, often so bitter, are the feelings aroused over the most temperate discussion of the origin of Christianity that it remains necessary to repeat that to explain is not to attack, and that to narrate is not to apportion blame, for no religion can do aught than reflect the temper of the age in which it flourishes.

Let us now summarize certain occurrences which, although familiar enough, must be repeated for the clear understanding of their effects.

Some sixty years after the death of Lucretius there happened, in the subsequent belief of millions of mankind, an event for which all that had gone before in the history of this planet is said to have been a preparation. In the fulness of time the Omnipotent maker and ruler of a universe to which no boundaries can be set by human thought, sent to this earth-speck no less a person than His Eternal Son. He was said to have been born, not by the natural processes of generation, but to have been incarnated in the womb of a virgin, retaining his divine nature while subjecting it to human limitations. This he had done that he might, as sinless man, become an expiatory sacrifice to offended deity, and to the requirements of divine justice, for the sins which the human race had committed since the transgression of Adam and Eve, or which men yet to be born might commit.

The "miraculous" birth of Jesus took place at Nazareth in Galilee, in the reign of Caesar Augustus, about 750 A. U. C., as the Romans reckoned time. Tradition afterward fixed his birthday on the 25th December, which, curiously enough, although, perhaps, explaining the choice, was the day dedicated to the sun-G.o.d Mithra, an Oriental deity to whom altars had been raised and sacrifices performed, with rites of baptisms of blood, in hospitable Rome.

Jesus is said to have lived in the obscurity of his native mountain village till his thirtieth year. Except one doubtful story of his going to Jerusalem with his parents when he was twelve years old, nothing is recorded in the various biographies of him between his birth and his appearance as a public teacher. Probably he followed his father's trade as a carpenter. The event that seems to have called him from home was the preaching of an enthusiastic ascetic named John the Baptist. At his hands Jesus submitted to the baptismal rite, and then entered on his career, wandering from place to place. The fragments of his discourses, which have survived in the short biographies known as the Gospels, show him to have been gifted with a simple, winning style, and his sermons, brightened by happy ill.u.s.tration or striking parable, went home to the hearts of his hearers. Women, often of the outcast cla.s.s, were drawn to him by the sympathy which attracted even more than his teaching.

Among a people to whom the unvarying order of Nature was an idea wholly foreign--for Greek speculations had not penetrated into Palestine--stories of miracle-working found easy credit, falling in, as they did, with popular belief in the constant intervention of deity.

Thus, to the reports of what Jesus taught were added those of the wonders which he had wrought, from feeding thousands of folk with a few loaves of bread to raising the dead to life. His itinerant mission secured him a few devoted followers from various towns and villages, while the effect of success upon himself was to heighten his own conception of the importance of his work. The skill of the Romans in fusing together subject races had failed them in the case of the Jews, whose belief in their special place in the world as the "chosen people"

never forsook them. Nor had their misfortunes weakened their belief that the Messiah predicted by their prophets would appear to deliver them, and plant their feet on the neck of the hated conqueror. This hope, as became a pious Jew, Jesus shared, but it set him brooding on some n.o.bler, because more spiritual, conception of it than his fellow-countrymen nurtured. Finally, it led him to the belief, fostered by the ambition of his nearer disciples, which was, however, material in its hopes, that he was the spiritual Messiah. In that faith he repaired to Jerusalem at the time of the Pa.s.sover feast when the city was crowded with devotees, that he might, before the chief priests and elders, make his appeal to the nation. According to the story, his daring in clearing the holy temple of money-changers and traders led to his appearance before the Sanhedrin, the highest judicial council; his plainness of speech raised the fury of the sects; and when, dreaming of a purer faith, he spoke ominous words about the destruction of the temple, the charge of blasphemy was laid against him. His guilt was made clear to his judges when, answering a question of the high priest, he declared himself to be the Messiah. This, involving claim to kingship over the Jews, and therefore rebellion against the Empire, was made the plea of haling him before the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, for trial. Pilate, looking upon the whole affair as a local _emeute_, was disinclined to severity, but nothing short of the death of Jesus as a blasphemer (although his chief offence appears to have been his disclaimer of earthly sovereignty) would satisfy the angry mob. Amidst their taunts and jeers he was taken to a place named Calvary, and there put to death by the torturing process of crucifixion, or, the particular mode not being clear, of transfixion on a stake.

This tragic event, on which, as is still widely held, hang the destinies of mankind to the end of time, attracted no attention outside Judaea. In the Roman eye, cold, contemptuous, and practical, it was but the execution of a troublesome fanatic who had embroiled himself with his fellow-countrymen, and added the crime of sedition to the folly of blasphemy. Pilate himself pa.s.sed on, without more ado, to the next duty.

Tradition, anxious to prove that retribution followed his criminal act, as it was judged in after-time to be, tells how he flung himself in remorse from the mountain known as Pilatus, which overlooks the lake of Lucerne. With truer insight, a striking modern story, L'Etui de Nacre, by Anatole France, makes Pilate, on his retirement to Sicily in old age, thus refer to the incident in conversation with a Roman friend who had loved a Jewish maiden.

"A few months after I had lost sight of her I heard by accident that she had joined a small party of men and women who were following a young Galilean miracle-worker. His name was Jesus, he came from Nazareth, and he was crucified for I don't know what crime. Pontius, do you remember this man? Pontius Pilate knit his brow, and put his hand to his forehead like one who is searching his memory; then after a few moments of silence: 'Jesus,' murmured he, 'Jesus of Nazareth. No, I don't remember him.'"

On the third day after his death, Jesus is said to have risen from the grave, and appeared to a faithful few of his disciples. On the fortieth day after his resurrection he is said to have ascended to heaven. Both these statements rest on the authority of the biographies which were compiled some years after his death. Jesus wrote nothing himself; therefore the "brethren," as his intimate followers called one another, had no other sacred books than those of the Old Testament. They believed that Jesus was the Messiah predicted in Daniel and some of the apocryphal writings, and they cherished certain "logia" or sayings of his which formed the basis of the first three Gospels. The earliest of these, that bearing the name of Mark, probably took the shape in which we have it (some spurious verses at the end excepted) about 70 A. D.

The fourth Gospel, which tradition attributes to John, is generally believed to be half a century later than Mark. It seems likely that the importance of collecting the words of Jesus into any permanent form did not occur to those who had heard them, because the belief in his speedy return was all-powerful among them, and their life and att.i.tude toward everything was shaped accordingly.

Without sacred books, priesthood, or organization, these earliest disciples, whom the fate of their leader had driven into hiding for a time, gathered themselves into groups for communion and worship. "In the church of Jerusalem," says Selden in his Table Talk (xiv), "the Christians were but another sect of Jews that did believe the Messias was come." From that sacred city there went forth preachers of this simple doctrine through the lands where Greek-speaking Jews, known as those of the Dispersion, had been long settled. These formed a very important element in the Roman Empire, being scattered from Asia Minor to Egypt, and thence in all the lands washed by the Mediterranean. As their racial isolation and national hopes made them the least contented among the subject-peoples, a series of tolerant measures securing them certain privileges, subject to loyal behaviour, had been prudently granted by their Roman masters. The new teaching spread from Antioch to Alexandria and Rome. But early in the onward career of the movement a division broke out among the immediate disciples of Jesus which ended in lasting rupture. A distinguished convert had been won to the faith in the person of the Apostle Paul. He is the real founder of Christianity as a more or less systematized creed, and all the development of dogma which followed are integral parts of the structure raised by him. He converted it from a local religion into a widespread faith. This came about, at the start, through his defeat of the narrower section headed by Peter, who would have compelled all non-Jewish converts to submit to the rite of circ.u.mcision.

The unity of the Empire gave Christianity its chance. Through the connection of Eurasia from the Euphrates to the Atlantic by magnificent roads, communication between peoples followed the lines of least resistance. Happily for the future of Christianity, the early missionaries travelled westward, in the wake of the dispersed Jews, along the Mediterranean seaboard, and thus its fortunes became identified with the civilizing portion of mankind. Had they travelled eastward, it might have been blended with Buddhism, or, as its Gnostic phases show, become merged in Oriental mysticism. The story of progress ran smoothly till A. D. 64, when we first hear of the "Christians"--for by such name they had become known--in "profane" history, as it was once oddly called. Tacitus, writing many years after the event, tells how on the night of the 18th July, in the sixty-fourth year of our era, a fierce fire broke out in Rome, causing the destruction of magnificent buildings raised by Augustus, and of priceless works of Greek art.

Suspicion fell on Nero, and he, as has been suggested, was instigated by his wife Poppaea Sabina, an unscrupulous woman, and, according to some authorities, a convert to Judaism, "to put an end to the common talk, by imputing the fire to others, visiting, with a refinement of punishment, those detestable criminals who went by the name of Christians. The author of that denomination was Christus, who had been executed in the time of Tiberius, by the procurator, Pontius Pilate." Tacitus goes on to describe Christianity as "a pestilent superst.i.tion," and its adherents as guilty of "hatred to the human race." The indictment, on the face of it, seems strange, but it has an explanation, although the Christians were brutally murdered on the charge of arson, and not of superst.i.tion. So far as religious persecution went, they suffered this first at the hands of Jews, the Empire intervening to protect them.

Broadly speaking, the Roman note was toleration. Throughout the Empire religion was a national affair, because it began and ended with the preservation of the State. Thereupon it was the binding duty--_religio_--of every citizen to pay due honour to the protecting G.o.ds on whose favour the safety of the State depended. That done, a man might believe what he chose. Polytheism is, from its nature, easy-going and tolerant; so long as there was no open opposition to the authorized public worship, the worshipper could explain it any way he chose. In Greece a man "might believe or disbelieve that the Mysteries taught the doctrine of immortality; the essential thing was that he should duly sacrifice his pig." In Rome, that vast Cosmopolis, "the ordinary pagan did not care two straws whether his neighbour worshipped twenty G.o.ds or twenty-one." Why should he care?

Now, against all this, the Christians set their faces sternly, and the result was to make them regarded as anti-patriotic and anti-social.

Their success among the lower cla.s.ses had been rapid. Christianity levelled all distinctions: it welcomed the master and his slave, the outcast and the pure: it treated woman as the spiritual equal of man: it held out to each the hope of a future life. Thus far, all was to the good, although the old Mithraic religion had done well-nigh as much. But Christianity held aloof from the common social life, putting itself out of touch with the manifold activity of Rome. It sought to apply certain maxims of Jesus literally; it discouraged marriage, it brought disunion into family life; it counselled avoidance of service in the army or acceptance of any public office. This general att.i.tude was wholly due to the belief that with the return of Jesus, the end of the world was at hand. For Jesus had foretold his second coming, and the earliest epistles of the apostles bade the faithful prepare for it. Here there was no continuing city; citizenship was in heaven, for the kingdom of Christ was not of this world. Therefore to give thought to the earthly and fleeting was folly and impiety, for who would care to heap up wealth, to strive for place or to pursue pleasure, or to search after what men called "wisdom," when these imperilled the soul, and blocked the way to heaven?

The prejudice created by this belief, expressed in such direct action as refusal to worship the guardian G.o.ds and the "genius" of the Emperor, was deepened by ugly, although baseless, rumours as to the cruel and immoral things done by the Christians at their secret meetings. And so it came to pa.s.s that Tacitus spoke of Christianity in the terms quoted; that Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius (who refers to it only once in his Meditations) dismissed it with a scornful phrase; that the common people called it atheistic; and that, finally, it became a proscribed and persecuted religion.

Further than this there is no need to pursue its career until, with wholly changed fortunes, we meet it as a tolerated religion under a so-called Christian Emperor. The object in tracing it thus far is to indicate how enthusiasts, thus filled with an anti-worldly spirit, would become and remain an arresting force against the advance of inquiry and, therefore, of knowledge; and how, as their religion gathered power, and itself became worldly in policy, it would the more strongly a.s.sert supremacy over the reason. For intellectual activity would lead to inquiry into the claims and authority of the Church, and inquiry, therefore, was the thing to be proscribed. Then, too, the committal of the floating biographies of Jesus to written form, and their grouping, with the letters of the apostles, into one more or less complete collection, to be afterward called the New Testament (a collection held to embrace, as the theory of inspiration became formulated, all that it is needful for man to know), would create a further barrier against intellectual activity. Then, as Christianity came into nearer touch with the enfeebled remnants of Greek philosophy, and with other foreign influences shaping its dogmas, discussions about the person of Christ became active. The simple fluent creed of the early Christians took rigid form in the subtleties of the Nicene Creed, and as "Very G.o.d of Very G.o.d" the final appeal was, logically, to the words of Jesus. Hence another barrier against inquiry.

Conflict has never arisen on the ethical sayings of Jesus, which, making allowance for the impracticableness of a few, place him high among the sages of antiquity. Comparing their teaching with his, it is easy to group together maxims which do not yield to the more famous examples in the Sermon on the Mount as guides to conduct, or as inspiration to high ideals. The "golden rule" is antic.i.p.ated by Plato's "Thou shalt not take that which is mine, and may I do to others as I would that they should do to me" (Jowett's translation, v, p. 483). And it is paralleled by Isocrates, a contemporary of Plato, in those words spoken by the King Nicocles when addressing his governors, "You should be to others what you think I should be to you." But if there was nothing new in what Jesus taught, there was freshness in the method. Conflict is waged only over statements the nature and limits of which might be expected from the place and age when they were delivered. They who hold that Jesus was G.o.d the Son Eternal, and therefore incapable of error, may reconcile, as best they can with this, his belief in the mischievous delusions of his time. If they say that so much of this as may be reported in the records of his life are spurious, they throw the whole contents of the gospels into the melting-pot of criticism.

Taking the narratives as we have them, doc.u.ments stamped with the hall-mark of the centuries, "declaring," as a body of clergymen proclaimed recently, "incontrovertibly the actual historical truth in all records, both of past events, and of the delivery of predictions to be thereafter fulfilled," we learn that Jesus accepted the accuracy of the sacred writings of his people; that he spoke of Moses as the author of the Pentateuch; that he referred to its legends as dealing with historical persons, and as reporting actual events. All these beliefs are refuted by the critical scholarship of to-day. We need not go to Germany for the verdict; it is indorsed by eminent Hebraists, officials of the Church of England. Canon Driver, Professor of Hebrew at Oxford, says that "like other people, the Jews formed theories to account for the beginnings of the earth and man"; that "they either did this for themselves, or borrowed from their neighbours," and that "of the theories current in a.s.syria and Phoenicia fragments have been preserved which exhibit parts of resemblance to the Bible narratives sufficient to warrant the inference that both are derived from the same cycle of traditions." If, therefore, the cosmogonic and other legends are inspired, so must also the common original of these and their corresponding stories be inspired. The matter might be pursued through the patriarchal age to the eve of the Exodus, showing that, here also, the mythical element is dominant; the existence of Abraham himself dissolving in the solution of the "higher criticism." As to the Pentateuch, the larger number of scholars place its composition, in the form in which we have it--older doc.u.ments being blended therein--about the sixth and fifth centuries B. C.

Jesus spoke of the earth as if it were flat, and the most important among the heavenly bodies. Knowledge of the active speculations that went on centuries before his time on the Ionian seaboard; prevision of what secrets men would wrest from the stars centuries hence--of neither did he dream. That Homer and Virgil had sung; that Plato had discoursed; that Buddha had founded a religion with which his, when Western activity met Eastern pa.s.sivity, would vainly compete; these, and aught else that had moved the great world without, were unknown to the Syrian teacher.

Jesus believed in an arch-fiend, who was permitted by Omnipotence, the Omnipotence against which he had rebelled, to set loose countless numbers of evil spirits to work havoc on men and animals. Jesus also believed in a h.e.l.l of eternal torment for the wicked; and in a heaven of unending happiness for the good. There is no surer index of the intellectual stage of any people than the degree in which belief in the supernatural, and, especially in the activity of supernatural agents, rules their lives. The lower we descend, the more detailed and familiar is the a.s.sumption of knowledge of the behaviour of these agents, and of the nature of the places they come from or haunt. Of this, mediaeval speculations on demonology, and modern books of anthropology, supply any number of examples. Here we are concerned only with the momentous fact that belief in demoniacal activity pervades the New Testament from beginning to end, and, therefore, gave the warrant for the unspeakable cruelties with which that belief has stained the annals of Christendom.

John Wesley was consistent when he wrote that "Giving up the belief in witchcraft was in effect giving up the Bible," and it may be added that giving up belief in the devil is giving up belief in the atonement--the central doctrine of the Christian faith. To this the early Christians would have subscribed: so, also, would the great Augustine, who said that "nothing is to be accepted save on the authority of Scripture, since greater is that authority than all the powers of the human mind"; so would all who have followed him in ancient confessions of the faith.

It is only the amorphous form of that faith which, lingering on, anaemic and boneless, denies by evasion.

But they who abandon belief in maleficent demons and in witches; as also, for this follows, in beneficent agents, as angels; land themselves in serious dilemma. For to this are such committed. If Jesus, who came "that he might destroy the works of the devil," and who is reported, among other proofs of his divine ministry, to have cast out demons from "possessed" human beings, and, in one case, to have permitted a crowd of the infernal agents to enter into a herd of swine; if he verily believed that he actually did these things; and if it be true that the belief is a superst.i.tion limited to the ignorant or barbaric mind; _what value can be attached to any statement that Jesus is reported to have made about a spiritual world_?

Here then (1) in the att.i.tude of the early Christians toward all mundane affairs as of no moment compared with those affecting their souls'

salvation; (2) in the a.s.sumed authority of Scripture as a full revelation of both earthly and heavenly things; and (3) in the a.s.sumed infallibility of the words of Jesus reported therein; we have three factors which suffice to explain why the great movement toward discovery of the orderly relations of phenomena was arrested for centuries, and theories of capricious government of the universe sheltered and upheld.

While, as has been said, the unity of the Empire secured Christianity its fortunate start; the multiform elements of which the Empire was made up--philosophic and pagan--being gradually absorbed by Christianity, secured it acceptance among the different subject-peoples. The break up of the Empire secured its supremacy.

The absorption of foreign ideas and practices by Christianity, largely through the influence of h.e.l.lenic Jews, was an added cause of arrest of inquiry. The adoption of pagan rites and customs, resting, as these did, on a bedrock of barbarism, dragged it to a lower level. The intrusion of philosophic subtleties led to terms being mistaken for explanations: as Gibbon says, "the pride of the professors and of their disciples was satisfied with the science of words." The inchoate and mobile character of Christianity during the first three centuries gave both influences--pagan and philosophic--their opportunity. For long years the converts scattered throughout the Empire were linked together, in more or less regular federation, by the acknowledgment of Christ as Lord, and by the expectation of his second coming. There was no official priesthood, only overseers--"episkopoi"--for social purposes, who made no claims to apostolic succession; no formulated set of doctrines; no Apostles' Creed; no dogmas of baptismal regeneration or of the real presence; no worship or apotheosis of Mary as the Mother of G.o.d; no worship of saints or relics.

_On the philosophic side_, it was the Greek influence in the person of the more educated converts that shaped the dogmas of the Church and sought to blend them with the occult and mysterious elements in Oriental systems, of which modern "Theosophy" is the tenuous parody. That old Greek habit of asking questions, of seeking to reach the reason of things, which, as has been seen, gave the great impulse to scientific inquiry, was as active as ever. Appeals to the Old Testament touched not the Greek as they did the Jewish Christian, and the Canon of the New Testament was as yet unsettled. Strange as it may seem in view of the a.s.sumed divine origin of the Gospels and Epistles, human judgment took upon itself to decide which of them were, and which were not, an integral part of supernatural revelation. The ultimate verdict, so far as the Western Church was concerned, was delivered by the Council of Carthage in the early part of the fifth century. There arose a school of Apologists, founders of theology, who, to quote Gibbon, "equipped the Christian religion for the conquest of the Roman world by changing it into a philosophy, attested by Revelation. They mingled together the metaphysics of Platonism, the doctrine of the Logos, which came from the Stoics, morality partly Platonic, partly Stoic, methods of argument and interpretation learnt from Philo, with the pregnant maxims of Jesus and the religious language of the Christian congregations." Thus the road was opened for additions to dogmatic theology, doctrines of the Trinity, of the Virgin Birth, and whatever else could be inferentially extracted from the Scriptures, and blended with foreign ideas. The growing complexity of creed called for interpretation of it, and this obviously fell to the overseers or bishops, chosen for their special gifts of "the grace of the truth." These met, as occasion required, to discuss subjects affecting the faith and discipline of the several groups. Among such, precedence, as a matter of course, would be accorded to the overseer of the most important Christian society in the Empire; and hence the prominence and authority, from an early period, of the bishop of Rome. In the simple and business-like act of his election as chairman of the gatherings lay the germ of the audacious and preposterous claims of the Papacy.