The Martyrdom of Man, Winwood Reade [best book club books TXT] 📗

body into hell. He cursed a fig tree

because it bore no fruit, although it was not the season of fruit—an action

as rational as that of Xerxes, who flogged the sea. He retorted to those

who accused him of breaking the Sabbath that he was above the Sabbath.

 

It is evident that a man who talked in such a manner—who believed that

it was in his power to abrogate the laws of the land, to forgive sins, to

bestow eternal happiness upon his friends, and to send all those who

differed from him to everlasting flames—would lay himself open to a

charge of blasphemy, and it is also evident that the “generation of vipers”

would not hesitate to take advantage of the circumstance. But whatever

share personal enmity might have had in the charges that were made

against him, he was lawfully condemned according to Bible law. He

declared in open court that they would see him descending in the clouds

at the right hand of the power of God. The High Priest tore his robes in

horror; false prophecy and blasphemy had been uttered to his face.

 

After the execution of Jesus his disciples did not return to Galilee: they

waited at Jerusalem for his second coming. They believed that he had

died as a human sacrifice for the sins of the people, and that he would

speedily return with an army of angels to establish the kingdom of God

on earth. Already in his lifetime these simple creatures had begun to

dispute about the dignities which they should hold at court, and Jesus,

who was not less simple than themselves, had promised that they should

sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. He had assured

them again and again, in the most positive language, that this event would

take place in their own lifetime. “Verily, verily,” he said, “there are some

standing here who shall not taste of death till they see the Son of Man

coming in his kingdom.” They therefore remained at Jerusalem and

scrupulously followed his commands. They established a community of

goods, or at least gave away their superfluities to the poorer members of

the Church, and had charitable arrangements for relieving the sick. They

admitted proselytes with the ceremony of baptism. At the evening repast

which they held together they broke bread and drank wine in a certain

solemn manner, as Jesus had been wont to do, and as they especially

remembered he did at the Last Supper. But in all respects they were

Jews, just as Jesus himself had been a Jew. They attended divine service

in the temple; they offered up the customary sacrifices; they kept the

Sabbath; they abstained from forbidden meats. They held merely the one

dogma that Jesus was the Messiah, and that he would return in power and

glory to judge the earth.

 

Jerusalem was frequented at the time of the pilgrimage by thousands of

Jews from the great cities of Europe, North Africa, and Asia Minor.

These pilgrims were of a very different class from the fishermen of

Galilee. They were Jews in religion but they were scarcely Jews in

nationality. They were members of great and flourishing municipalities;

they enjoyed political liberty and civil rights. They prayed in Greek and

read the Bible in a Greek translation. Their doctrine was tolerant and

latitudinarian. At Alexandria there was a school of Jews who had

mingled the metaphysics of Plato with their own theology. Many of these

Greek Jews became converted, and it is to them that Jesus owes his

reputation, Christianity its existence. The Palestine Jews desired to

reserve the Gospel to the Jews. They had no taste or sympathy for the

Gentiles, from whom they lived entirely apart, and who were associated

in their minds with the abominations of idolatry, the payment of taxes,

and the persecution of Antiochus. But these same Gentiles, these poor

benighted Greeks and Romans, were the compatriots and fellow-citizens

of the Hellenic Jews, who therefore entertained more liberal ideas upon

the subject. Two parties accordingly arose—the conservative or Jewish

party, who would receive no converts except according to the custom of

the orthodox Jews in such cases, and the Greek party, who agitated for

complete freedom from the law of Moses. The latter were headed by

Paul, an enthusiastic and ambitious man who refused to place himself

under the rule of the twelve apostles, but claimed a special revelation. A

conference was held at Jerusalem, and a compromise was arranged to the

effect that pagan converts should not be subjected to the rite of

circumcision, but that they should abstain from pork and oysters and

should eat no animals which had not been killed by the knife.

 

But the compromise did not last. The Church diverged in discipline and

dogma more and more widely from its ancient form, till in the second

century the Christians of Judea, who had faithfully followed the customs

and tenets of the twelve apostles, were informed that they were heretics.

During that interval a new religion had arisen. Christianity had

conquered paganism, and paganism had corrupted Christianity. The

legends which belonged to Osiris and Apollo had been applied to the life

of Jesus. The single Deity of the Jews had been exchanged for the

Trinity, which the Egyptians had invented and which Plato had idealised

into a philosophic system. The man who had said “Why callest thou me

good? There is none good but one, that is God,” had now himself been

made a god—or the third part of one. The Hebrew element, however, had

not been entirely cast off. With some little inconsistency, the Jewish

sacred books were said to be inspired, and nearly all the injunctions

contained in them were disobeyed. It was heresy to deny that the Jews

were the chosen people, and it was heresy to assert that the Jews would

be saved.

 

The Christian religion was at first spread by Jews who, either as

missionaries or in the course of their ordinary avocations, made the

circuit of the Mediterranean world. In all large towns there was a Ghetto

or Jews´ quarter, in which the traveller was received by the people of his

own race. There was no regular clergy among the Jews, and it was their

custom to allow, and even to invite, the stranger to preach in their

synagogue. Doctrines were not strictly defined, and they listened without

anger, and perhaps with some hope, to the statement that Jesus of

Nazareth was the Messiah, and that he would shortly return to establish

his kingdom upon earth. But when these Christians began to preach that

the eating of pork was not a deadly sin, and that God was better pleased

with a sprinkle than a slash, they were speedily stigmatised as heretics,

and all the Jewries in the world were closed against them.

 

Those strange religious and commercial communities, those landless

colonies which an Oriental people had established all over the world,

from the Rhone and the Rhine to the Oxus and Jaxartes—which

corresponded regularly among themselves, and whose members

recognised each other, wherever they might be and in whatever garb, by

the solemn phrase, “Hear, Israel, there is one God!”—afforded a model

for the Christian churches of the early days. The primitive Christians did

not indeed live together in one quarter like the Jews, but they gathered

together for purposes of worship and administration in set places at

appointed times. They did not establish commercial relations with the

Christians in other towns, but they kept up an active social

correspondence, and hospitably entertained the foreign brother who

brought letters of introduction as credentials of his creed. Travelling,

though not always free from danger, was unobstructed in those days:

coasters sailed frequently from port to port, and the large towns were

connected by paved roads with a posting-house at every six-mile stage.

All inn-keepers spoke Greek: it was not necessary to learn Latin even in

order to reside at Rome.

 

And now we return to that magnificent city which was adorned with the

spoils of a hundred lands, into which streamed all the wealth, the energy,

and the ambition of East and West. Ostia-on-the-Sea, where the ancient

citizens had boiled their salt.was now a great port in which the grain from

Egypt and Carthage was stored up in huge buildings, and to which in the

summer and autumn came ships from all parts of the world. The road to

Rome was fifteen miles in length, and was lined with villas and with lofty

tombs. Outside the city, on the neighbouring hills, were gardens open to

the public; and from these hills were conducted streams, by subterranean

pipes, into the town, where they were trained to run like rivulets, making

everywhere a pleasant murmur, here and there reposing in artificial

grottoes or dancing as fountains in the air. The streets were narrow, and

the tall houses buried them in deep shade. They were lined with statues;

there was a population of marble men. Flowers glittered on roofs and

balconies. Vast palaces of green and white and golden tinted marble

were surrounded by venerable trees. The Via Sacra was the Regent Street

of Rome, and was bordered with stalls where the silks and spices of the

East, the wool of Spain, the glass wares of Alexandria, the smoked fish of

the Black Sea, the wines of the Greek isles, Cretan apples, Alpine cheese,

the oysters of Britain, and the veined wood of the Atlas were exposed for

sale. In that splendid thoroughfare a hundred languages might be heard at

once, and as many costumes were displayed as if the universe had been

invited to a fancy-dress ball. Sometimes a squadron of the Imperial

Guard would ride by—flaxen-haired, blue-eyed Germans covered with

shining steel. Then a procession of pale-faces, shaven Egyptian priests,

bearing a statue of Isis and singing melancholy hymns. A Greek

philosopher would next pass along with abstracted eyes and ragged cloak,

followed by a boy with a pile of books. Men from the East might be seen

with white turbans and flowing robes, or in sheep-skin mantles with high

black caps; and perhaps beside them a tattooed Briton gaping at the

shops. Then would come a palanquin with curtains half drawn, carried

along at a swinging pace by sturdy Cappadocian slaves, and within it the

fashionable lady with supercilious, half-closed eyes, holding a crystal ball

between her hands to keep them cool. Next a senator in white and purple

robe, receiving as he walked along the greetings and kisses of his friends

and clients, not always of the cleanest kind.

 

So crowded were the streets that carriages were not allowed to pass

through them in the day-time. The only vehicles that appeared were the

carts employed in the public works; and as they came rolling and grinding

along, bearing huge beams and blocks of stone, the driver cracked his

whip and pushed people against the wall, and there was much squeezing

and confusion, during which pickpockets, elegantly dressed, their hands

covered with rings, were busy at their work, pretending to assist the ladies

in the crowd. People from the country passed towards the market, their

mules or asses laden with panniers in which purple grapes and golden

fruits were piled up in profusion, and refreshed the eye, which was

dazzled by the stony glare. Hawkers went about offering matches in

exchange for broken glass, and the keepers of the cook-shops called out

in cheerful tones, “Smoking sausages!” “Sweet boiled peas!” “ Honey

wine, O honey wine!” And then there was the crowd itself—the bright-eyed, dark-browed Roman people, who played in the shade at dice or

mora like the old Egyptians; who lounged through the temples, which

were also the museums, to look at the curiosities; or who stood in groups

reading the advertisements on the walls, and the programmes which

announced that on such and such a day