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Revolulioneffect

ed by

anity.

And thus, in this struggle between the old household deities of the established faith, and the half domiciliated gods of the stranger, undermined by philosophy, supplanted by still darker superstition, Polytheism seemed, as it were, to await its death-blow; and to be ready to surrender its ancient honours to the conqueror, whom Divine Providence should endow with sufficient authority over the human mind to seize upon the abdicated supremacy.

Such is the state in which the ancient world leaves the mind of man. On a sudden a new era commences; a rapid yet gradual reChristi volution takes place in the opinions, sentiments, and principles of mankind; the void is filled; the connection between religion and morals re-established with an intimacy of union yet unknown. The unity of the Deity becomes, not the high and mysterious creed of a privileged sacerdotal or intellectual oligarchy, but the common property of all whose minds are fitted to receive it: all religious distinctions are annihilated; the jurisdictions of all local deities abolished; and imperceptibly the empire of Rome becomes one great Christian commonwealth, which even sends out, as it were, its peaceful colonies into regions beyond the limits of the Imperial power. The characteristic distinction of the general revolution is this, that the physical agency of the Deity seems to recede from the view, while the spiritual character is more distinctly unfolded; or rather, the notion of the Divine Power is merged in the more prevailing sentiment of his moral Goodness. The remarkable passage in the Jewish history, in which God is described as revealing himself to Elijah," neither in the strong wind, nor in the earthquake, nor in the fire, but in the still small voice," may be considered, we will not say prophetic, but singularly significant of the sensations to be excited in the human mind by the successive revelations of the Deity.

Immortal

soul.

:

The doctrine of the immortality of the soul partook in the same ity of the change with the notion of the Deity; it became at once popular, simple, and spiritual. It was disseminated throughout all orders of society it admitted no aristocratic elysium of heroes and demigods, like that of the early Greeks (1); it separated itself from that earlier and widely prevalent form, which it assumed in the theogonies of the Nature-worship, where the soul emanating from the source of Being, after one or many transmigrations, was re

Propertius may be considered in one sense the most religious poet of this period: his verses teem with mythological allusion, but it is poetical ornament rather than the natural language of piety; it has much of the artificial school of the Alexandrian Callimachus, his avowed model, nothing of the simplicity of faith which breathed in Pindar and Sophocles.

(1) It is curious to see, in another mythology, the same martial aristocratic spirit which, in the earlier religions, excluded the duevnva

xapava, the inglorious vulgar, from the seats of bliss, where Achilles and Diomed pursued their warlike amusements. It was not proper to appear poor before Odin; and it is very doubtful whether a poor man was thought worthy of any place in his dwellings, unless he came from the field of battle in the bloody train of some great chieftain. Slaves at least were distinctly excluded, and after death turned away from the doors of Valhalla. Geijer, Hist. of Sweden. Gerin. Transl. i. 103.

absorbed into the Divine Essence. It announced the resurrection of all mankind to judgment, and the re-union of the spirit to a body, which, preserving the principle of identity, nevertheless should be of a purer and more imperishable nature. Such are the great primary principles, which became incorporated with the mind of man; and, operating on all human institutions, on the common sentiments of the whole race, form the great distinctive difference between the ancient and the modern, the European and the Asiatic world. During the dark ages there was a strong reaction of barbarism: in its outward form Christianity might appear to recede towards the polytheism of older times; and, as has been shown, not in a philosophic, but in a narrow polemic spirit of hostility to the Church of Rome, many of the rites and usages of heathenism were admitted into the Christian system; yet the indelible difference between the two periods remained. A higher sense and meaning was infused into these forms; God was considered in his moral rather than his physical attributes-as the Lord of the future as much or even more than of the present world. The saints and angels, who have been compared to the intermediate deities of the older superstitions, had, nevertheless, besides their tutelar power against immediate accidents and temporal calamities, an important influence over the state of the soul in the world to come; they assumed the higher office of ministering the hopes of the future, in a still greater degree than the blessings of the present life.

of this

History.

To the more complete development of this fact we shall descend Design in the course of our history, which will endeavour to trace all the modifications of Christianity, by which it accommodated itself to the spirit of successive ages; and by this apparently almost skilful, but in fact necessary condescension to the predominant state of moral culture, of which itself formed a constituent element, maintained its uninterrupted dominion. It is the author's object, the difficulty of which he himself fully appreciates, to portray the genius of the Christianity of each successive age, in connection with that of the age itself; entirely to discard all polemic views; to mark the origin and progress of all the subordinate diversities of belief; their origin in the circumstances of the place or time at which they appeared; their progress from their adaptation to the prevailing state of opinion or sentiment: rather than directly to confute error or to establish truth; in short, to exhibit the reciprocal influence of civilisation on Christianity, of Christianity on civilisation. To the accomplishment of such a scheme he is well aware, that besides the usual high qualifications of a faithful historian, is requisite, in an especial manner, the union of true philosophy with perfect charity, if indeed they are not one and the same. This calm, impartial, and dispassionate tone he will constantly endeavour, he

dares scarcely hope, with such warnings on every side of involuntary prejudice and unconscious prepossession, uniformly to maintain. In the honesty of his purpose he will seek his excuse for all imperfection or deficiency in the execution of his scheme. Nor is he aware that he enters on ground pre-occupied by any writers of established authority, at least in our own country, where the History of Christianity has usually assumed the form of a History of the Church, more or less controversial, and confined itself to annals of the internal feuds and divisions in the Christian community, and the variations in doctrine and discipline, rather than to its political and social influence. Our attention, on the other hand, will be chiefly directed to its effects on the social and even political condition of man, as it extended itself throughout the Roman world, and at length entered into the administration of government and of law; the gradual manner in which it absorbed and incorporated into the religious commonwealth the successive masses of population, which, after having overthrown the temporal polity of Rome, were subdued to the religion of the conquered people; the separation of the human race into the distinct castes of the clergy and laity; the former at first an aristocracy, afterwards a despotic moChristian narchy: as Europe sank back into barbarism, the imaginative state ity differ of the human mind, the formation of a new poetic faith, a mythology, form in and a complete system of symbolic worship; the interworking of periods of Christianity with barbarism, till they slowly grew into a kind of civilisa semi-barbarous heroic period, that of Christian chivalry; the gradual

ent in

different

tion.

expansion of the system, with the expansion of the human mind; and the slow, perhaps not yet complete, certainly not general, dcvelopment of a rational and intellectual religion. Throughout his work the author will equally, or as his disposition inclines, even more diligently, labour to show the good as well as the evil of each phasis of Christianity; since it is his opinion that, at every period, much more is to be attributed to the circumstances of the age, to the collective operation of certain principles which grew out of the events of the time, than to the intentional or accidental influence of any individual or class of men. Christianity, in short, may exist in a certain form in a nation of savages as well as in a nation of philosophers, yet its specific character will almost entirely depend upon the character of the people who are its votaries (1). It must be considered, therefore, in constant connection with that character it will darken with the darkness and brighten with the light of each succeeding century; in an ungenial time it will recede so far from its genuine and essential nature as scarcely to retain any

:

(1) By the accounts of Bruce, Salt, and recently of Pearce, the Christianity of Abyssinia may be adduced as an instance of the state to which it may be degraded among a people at a very low state of barbarism. The conversions

among the South Sea islanders, it will of course be remembered, were effected, and are still superintended by strangers in a very different stage of civilisation.

sign of its divine original : it will advance with the advancement.of human nature, and keep up the moral to the utmost height of the intellectual culture of man.

While, however, Christianity necessarily submitted to all these Christianity not modifications, I strongly protest against the opinion, that the origin self-deveof the religion can be attributed, according to a theory adopted by loped. many foreign writers, to the gradual and spontaneous development of the human mind (1). Christ is as much beyond his own age, as his own age is beyond the darkest barbarism. The time, though fitted to receive, could not by any combination of prevalent opinions, or by any conceivable course of moral improvement, have produced Christianity. The conception of the human character of Jesus, 'and the simple principles of the new religion, as they were in direct opposition to the predominant opinions and temper of his own countrymen, so they stand completely alone in the history of our race; and, as imaginary no less than as real, altogether transcend the powers of man's moral conception. Supposing the gospels purely fictitious, or that, like the "Cyropædia" of Xenophon, they embody on a groundwork of fact the highest moral and religious notions to which man had attained, and show the utmost ideal perfection of the divine and human nature, they can be accounted for, according to my judgment, on none of the ordinary principles of human nature (2). When we behold Christ standing in the midst of the wreck of old religious institutions, and building, or rather at one word commanding to arise, the simple and harmonious structure of the new faith, which seems equally adapted for all ages-a temple to which nations in the highest degree of civilisation may bring their offerings of pure hearts, virtuous dispositions, universal charity,—our natural emotion is the recognition of the Divine goodness, in the promulgation of this beneficent code of religion; and adoration of that Being in whom that Divine goodness is thus embodied and made comprehensible to the faculties of man. In the language of the apostle, "God is in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself (3)."

(1) This theory is sketched by no means with an unfair though unfriendly hand by Chateaubriand, Études sur l'Histoire; a book of which, I am constrained to add, the meagre performance contrasts strangely with the loftiness of its pre

tensions.

(2) Dirons-nous que l'histoire de l'Évangile est inventée à plaisir? Ce n'est pas ainsi qu'on invente et les faits de Socrate, dont personne ne doute, sont bien moins attestés que ceux de Jé

sus-Christ. Au fond c'est reculer la difficulté
sans la détruire; il seroit plus inconcevable que
plusieurs hommes d'accord eussent fabriqué ce
livre, qu'il ne l'est qu'un seul en a fourni le su-
jet. Et l'Évangile a des caractères de vérité si
frappans, si parfaitement inimitables, que l'in-
venteur en seroit plus étonnant que le héros.
Rousseau, Emile, liv. iv.
(3) 2 Cor. v. 19.

CHAPTER II.

Life of Christ ne

of Christi

LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST.-STATE OF JUDEA.-THE BELIEF IN THE MESSIAH.

THE history of Christianity without the life of its Divine Author cessary to appears imperfect and incomplete, particularly considering the close a history connection of that life, not only with the more mysterious doctrines, anity. but with the practical, and even political influence of the religion; for even its apparently most unimportant incidents have, in many cases, affected most deeply the opinions and feelings of the Christian world. The isolation of the history of Christ in a kind of sacred seclusion has no doubt a beneficial effect on the piety of the Christian, which delights in contemplating the Saviour, undisturbed and uncontaminated by less holy associations; but it has likewise its disadvantages, in disconnecting his life from the general history of mankind, of which it forms an integral and essential part. Had the life of Christ been more generally considered as intimately and inseparably connected with the progress and development of human affairs, with the events and opinions of his time, works would not have been required to prove his existence, scarcely perhaps the authenticity of his history. The real historical evidence of Christianity is the absolute necessity of his life, to fill up the void in the annals of mankind, to account for the effects of his religion in the subsequent history of man.

Its diffi

Yet to write the life of Christ, though at first sight it may appear culty. the most easy, is perhaps the most difficult task which an historian can undertake. Many Lives have been composed with a devotional, none at least to my knowledge, in this country (1), with an historic design; none in which the author has endeavoured to throw himself completely back into the age, when Jesus of Nazareth began to travel as the teacher of a new religion through the villages of Galilee; none which has attempted to keep up a perpetual reference to the circumstances of the times, the habits and national character of the people, and the state of public feeling; and thus, identifying itself with the past, to show the origin and progress of the new faith, as it slowly developed itself, and won its way through the adverse elements, which it encountered in Judea and the adjacent provinces. To depart from the evangelic simplicity in the relation of the facts would not merely offend the reverential feelings of the reader, but tend likewise to destroy the remarkable harmony between the facts and doctrines, which characterises the narrative of the Gospels, and on which their authenticity, as genuine historical

(1) See Appendix I., on the recent Lives of Christ.

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