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

surprise: it can, however, be easily explained. The

success of Christianity among the people, and its want of success among

the philosophers, were due to the same cause—the superstition of the

Christian teachers.

 

Among the missionaries of the present day there are many men who in

earnestness and self-devotion are not inferior to those of the apostolic

times. Yet they almost invariably fail—they are too enlightened for their

congregations. With respect to their own religion, indeed, that charge

cannot be justly brought against them. Set them talking on the forbidden

apple, Noah´s ark, the sun standing still to facilitate murder, the donkey

preaching to its master, the whale swallowing and ejecting Jonah, the

miraculous conception, the water turned to wine, the fig-tree withered by

a curse, and they will reason like children, or in other words they will not

reason at all; they will merely repeat what they have been taught by their

mammas. But when they discourse to the savage concerning his belief

they use the logic of Voltaire, and deride witches and men possessed in a

style which Jesus and the twelve apostles, the fathers of the Church, the

popes of the Middle Ages, and Martin Luther himself would have

accounted blasphemous and contrary to Scripture. Now it is impossible

to persuade an adult savage that his gods do not exist, and he considers

those who deny their existence to be ignorant foreigners unacquainted

with the divine constitution of his country. Hence he laughs in his sleeve

at all that the missionaries say. But the primitive Christians believed in

gods and goddesses, satyrs and nymphs, as implicitly as the pagans

themselves. They did not deny and they did not disbelieve the miracles

performed in pagan temples. They allowed that the gods had great power

upon earth, but asserted that they would have it only for a time; that it

ceased beyond the grave; that they were rebels, and that God was the

rightful king. Here then were two classes of men whose intellects were

precisely on the same level. Each had a theory, and the Christian theory

was the better of the two. It had definite promises and threats, and

without being too high for the vulgar comprehension, it reduced the

scheme of the universe to order and harmony, resembling that of the great

empire under which they lived.

 

But to the philosophers of that period it was merely a new and noisy form

of superstition. Experience has amply proved that minds of the highest

order are sometimes unable to shake off the ideas which they imbibed

when they were children; but to those of whom we speak Christianity was

offered when their powers of reflection were matured, and it was

naturally rejected with contempt. They knew that the pagan gods did not

exist. Was it likely that they would sit at the feet of those who still

believed in them? They had long ago abandoned the religious legends of

their own country; they had shaken off the spell which Homer with his

splendid poetry had laid upon their minds. Was it likely that they would

believe in the old Arab traditions, or in these tales of a god who took

upon him the semblance of a Jew, and suffered death upon the gallows

for the redemption of mankind? They had obtained by means of

intellectual research a partial perception of the great truth that events

result from secondary laws. Was it likely that they would join a crew of

devotees who prayed to God to make the wind blow this way or that way,

to give them a dinner, or to cure them of a pain? When the Tiber

overflowed its banks the pagans declared that it was owing to the wrath

of the gods against the Christians: the Christians retorted that it was

owing to the wrath of God against the idolaters. To a man like Pliny,

who studied the phenomena with his notebook in his hand, where was the

difference between the two?

 

In the Greek world Christianity became a system of metaphysics as

abstract and abstruse as any son of Hellas could desire. But in the Latin

world it was never the religion of a scholar and a gentleman. It was the

creed of the uneducated people, who flung themselves into it with

passion. It was something which belonged to them and to them alone.

They were not acquainted with Cicero or Seneca: they had never tasted

intellectual delights, for the philosophers scorned to instruct the vulgar

crowd. And now the vulgar crowd found teachers who interpreted to

them the Jewish books, who composed for them a magnificent literature

of sermons and epistles and controversial treatises, a literature of

enthusiasts and martyrs written in blood and fire. The people had no

share in the politics of the empire, but now they had politics of their own.

The lower orders were enfranchised; women and slaves were not

excluded. The barbers gossiped theologically. Children played at church

in the streets. The Christians were no longer citizens of Rome. God was

their emperor, heaven was their fatherland. They despised the pleasures

of this life; they were as emigrants gathered on the shore waiting for a

wind to waft them to another world. They rendered unto Caesar the

things that were Caesar´s, for so it was written they should do. They

honoured the king, for such had been the teaching of St. Paul. They

regarded the emperor as God´s vice-regent upon earth, and disobeyed him

only when his commands were contrary to those of God. But this

limitation, which it was the business of the bishops to define, made the

Christians a dangerous party in the state. The Emperor Constantine,

whose title was unsound, entered into alliance with this powerful

corporation. He made Christianity the religion of the state and the

bishops peers of the realm.

 

In the days of tribulation it had often been predicted that when the empire

became Christian war would cease, and men would dwell in brotherhood

together. The Christian religion united the slave and his master at the

same table and in the same embrace. On the pavement of the basilica

men of all races and of all ranks knelt side by side. If any one were in

sickness and affliction it was sufficient for him to declare himself a

Christian: money was at once pressed into his hands: compassionate

matrons hastened to his bedside. Even at the time when the pagans

regarded the new sect with most abhorrence they were forced to exclaim,

“See how these Christians love one another!” It was reasonable to

suppose that the victory of this religion would be the victory of love and

peace. But what was the actual result? Shortly after the establishment of

Christianity as a state religion there was uproar and dissension in every

city of the Empire; then savage persecutions and bloody wars, until a

pagan historian could observe to the polished and intellectual coterie for

whom alone he wrote that now the hatred of the Christians against one

another surpassed the fury of savage beasts against man.

 

It is evident that the virtues exhibited by those who gallantly fight against

desperate odds for an idea will not be invariably displayed by those who

when the idea is realised enjoy the spoil. It is evident that bishops who

possess large incomes and great authority will not always possess the

same qualities of mind as those spiritual peers who had no distinction to

expect except that of being burnt alive. In all great movements of the

mind there can be but one heroic age, and the heroic age of Christianity

was past. The Church became the state concubine; Christianity lost its

democratic character. The bishops who should have been the tribunes of

the people became the creatures of the Crown. Their lives were not

always of the most creditable kind, but their virtues were perhaps more

injurious to society than their vices. The mischief was done not so much

by those who intrigued for places and rioted on tithes at Constantinople as

by those who, often with the best intentions, endeavoured to make all

men think alike “according to the law.”

 

It was the Christian theory that God was a king, and that he enacted laws

for the government of men on earth. Those laws were contained in the

Jewish books, but some of them had been repealed and some of them

were exceedingly obscure. Some were to be understood in a literal

sense, others were only metaphorical. Many cases might arise to which

no text or precept could be with any degree of certainty applied. What

then was to be done? How was God´s will to be ascertained? The early

Christians were taught that by means of prayer and faith their questions

would be answered, their difficulties would be solved. They must pray

earnestly to God for help: and the ideas which came into their heads after

prayer would be emanations from the Holy Ghost.

 

In the first age of Christianity the Church was a republic. There was no

distinction between clergymen and laymen. Each member of the

congregation had a right to preach, and each consulted God on his own

account. The spiritus privatus everywhere prevailed. A committee of

presbyters or elders, with a bishop or chairman, administered the affairs

of the community.

 

The second period was marked by an important change. The bishop and

presbyters, though still elected by the congregation, had begun to

monopolise the pulpit; the distinction of clergy and laity was already

made. The bishops of various churches met together at councils or

synods to discuss questions of discipline and dogma, and to pass laws,

but they went as representatives of their respective congregations.

 

In the third period the change was more important still. The congregation

might now be appropriately termed a flock; the spiritus privatus was

extinct; the priests were possessed of traditions which they did not impart

to the laymen; the Water of Life was kept in a sealed vessel; there was no

salvation outside the Church: no man could have God for a father unless

he had also the Church for a mother, as even Bossuet long afterwards

declared; excommunication was a sentence of eternal death. Henceforth

disputes were only between bishops and bishops, the laymen following

their spiritual leaders and often using material weapons on their behalf.

In the synods the bishops now met as princes of their congregations, and

under the influence of the Holy Ghost (spiritu sancto suggerente) issued

imperial decrees. The penalties inflicted were of the most terrible nature

to those who believed that hell-fire and purgatory were at the disposal of

the priesthood, while those who entertained doubts upon the subject

allowed themselves to be cursed and damned with equanimity. But when

the Church became united with the state the secular arm was at its

disposal, and was vigorously used.

 

The bishops were all of them ignorant and superstitious men, but they

could not all of them think alike. And as if to ensure dissent they

proceeded to define that which had never existed, and which if it had

existed could never be defined. They described the topography of

heaven. They dissected the godhead and expounded the miraculous

conception, giving lectures on celestial impregnations and miraculous

obstetrics. They not only said that 3 was 1, and that 1 was 3: they

professed to explain how that curious arithmetical combination had been

brought about. The indivisible had been divided and yet was not divided:

it was divisible and yet it was indivisible; black was white and white was

black, and yet there were not two colours, but one colour; and whoever

did not believe it would be damned. In the midst of all this subtle stuff,

the dregs and rinsings of the Platonic school, Arius thundered out the

common-sense but heretical assertion that the Father had existed before

the Son. Two