Sources

FOOTNOTES:

[15:1] Extracts in Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History and in Ante-Nic. Ch. Fathers (Chr. Lit. ed.), viii., 762.

CHAPTER III
PREPARATION OF THE CIVILISED WORLD FOR THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH

Outline: I.—The ancient world. II.—Condition of the civilised world at the time Jesus came. III.—How the condition of the world prepared the way for Christianity. IV.—Sources.

The ancient world included the many independent tribes surrounding the Mediterranean Sea and spreading into the interior. This independence was institutional. Each tribe had its own government, laws, and customs; its own religion and gods; its own ideals of education; its own commercial and industrial methods. But all these diversities of life and thought were broken down by the ascendancy of Rome. The independent laws, gods, and institutions fell before the onward march of those of the Mistress of the World.

When Jesus was born, the Roman Empire extended from the Euphrates to the Atlantic, and from the African desert to the Danube, Rhine, and Weser. It formed a wide fringe around the Mediterranean Sea, included the best parts of three continents, and had a population of 100,000,000.[40:1] The Empire was called "the world." Roman law was predominant throughout the provinces as well as at Rome, but local usages were tolerated. Citizenship had become so widely

extended that the different peoples began to feel themselves a single race, bound together by one Emperor, one government, and one code of laws.

The era of the boyhood of Jesus was one of comparative peace, since there was no important war after the naval battle of Actium (31 B.C.).[41:1] Hence the industries of the Empire prospered greatly. Across the Mediterranean as the great highway, up and down the rivers, and along the incomparable Roman roads, an enormous trade was carried on between the colonies and the capital, Rome.[41:2] Factories thrived in every direction and commerce flourished. Showers of wealth fairly fell upon the Eternal City.

The trade of the Empire was carried on in Latin, the official language of the Empire for law and war. Greek was also a universal tongue, but used more especially for art, science, philosophy, education, and religion.[41:3] Cicero complained: "Greek is read in almost all nations. Latin is confined by its own natural boundaries." Hebrew and other tongues were sectional. The literature of the opening century of the Christian era, however, was largely in Latin,[41:4] which had been fertilised by Greek culture.

Education had made far greater progress in this old world than is generally thought. Judea,[41:5] Greece,[41:6]

and Rome[42:1] had excellent systems of education, though differing much in purpose and in subjects studied. Pronounced schools of philosophy grew up. Art, comparatively little developed among the Jews, culminated with the Greeks, and from them was transplanted to Rome. Travel, always liberalising and educational, was widespread among scholars, tradesmen, soldiers, and public officials. All these factors had produced a superior intelligence and general culture throughout the Empire.

The religious condition of the Empire was very significant. The Roman religion, a mixture of Grecian and Etrurian religions[42:2]—of licentiousness and puritanism—was alone legal over the whole Empire.[42:3] The Emperor, as Pontifex Maximus, was head of the religion. Worship, however, had become mere form—even priests ridiculed the gods. Cicero declared: "One soothsayer could not look another in the face without laughing," and "even old women would no longer believe either in the fables of Tartarus or the joys of Elysium." This loss of faith engendered skepticism and superstition, and gave magicians and necromancers a wide patronage. The best men in Rome were demanding reformation, and were longing for and predicting a new era. Cicero prophesied: "There shall no longer be one law at Rome, and another at Athens; nor shall it decree one thing to-day, and

another to-morrow; but one and the same law, eternal and immutable, shall be prescribed for all nations and all times, and the God who shall prescribe, introduce, and promulgate this law shall be the one common Lord and Supreme Ruler of all."[43:1]

The Grecian religion,[43:2] so closely resembling the Roman, was of course tolerated in the Empire. The gods were ideal Greeks with virtues and vices magnified. They were born, had passions, senses, and bodies like men, but never died. They committed crimes, had troubles, and were given to wrath, hatred, lust, cruelty, perjury, deception, and adultery, yet were omnipotent and omniscient.[43:3] While the conception of Zeus, as the father of the gods, ruled by fate, had a vague idea of monotheism in it, still the Greek religion lacked the Christian conception of sin and righteousness, for with the Greeks sin was only a folly of the understanding—even the gods sinned. Small wonder then that Plato banished the gods from his ideal republic.[43:4] Pindar, Eschylus, and Sophocles also urged loftier views of the gods, and preached a higher morality.[43:5] With the Roman conquest national honour and patriotism died out, and superstition, infidelity,

refined materialism, and outright atheism came in. The best hearts were longing for a new and purer religion, and were ready to accept it when it came.

The Jews,[44:1] intensely religious, with several thousand years of spiritual history back of them, divided the known world into the followers of the true God and the heathen idolaters. Even they were separated into factions:

(1) The Pharisees,[44:2] numbering 6000, stoical casuists, rigidly orthodox, prone to analyse the Mosaic law to death, intensely patriotic, and bitter against all non-Jewish tendencies, were very popular, guided public worship, and controlled the Jews in politics.

(2) The Sadducees,[44:3] rationalistic and skeptical, were aristocratic Epicureans who rejected oral traditions, and denied resurrection,[44:4] angels,[44:5] and an all-ruling, foreknowing Providence. They formed a smaller political party in opposition to the Pharisees, held many priestly offices, were in league with the Romans, and therefore had less influence with the people.[44:6]

(3) The Essenes,[44:7] a mystic brotherhood of 4000 whose purpose was to attain holiness, received their

ideas from eastern Theosophists; lived communal lives on the shores of the Dead Sea; took the Old Testament allegorically; wore a white dress; were over-scrupulously clean for the purpose of purification; and rejected animal food, bloody sacrifices, oaths, slavery, and marriage. They had little to do with politics; were forerunners of Christian monasticism; and may have influenced the ideas of Jesus.[45:1]

(4) The Samaritans,[45:2] in origin half Jewish and half heathen Babylonian, practised their reformed Judaism about Gerizim under an established Levitical priesthood. They rejected all Scriptures but the Pentateuch, held pure Messianic expectations, looked with favour upon Christianity, and were bitterly hated by the orthodox Jews.[45:3]

(5) The Zealots, led by Judas of Galilee, a sort of a nationalistic party, were imbued by a very materialistic conception of the hope of Israel. They sprang from the Pharisees and followed them in religious things. They confidently expected the realisation of the kingdom of God, the Messiah, and a new Israel. In their patriotic zeal they did not hesitate to use the sword and dagger to drive out their Roman foes in order to realise their dreams for a purely Jewish kingdom. Their followers came mostly from the lowest classes.[45:4]

(6) The common people accepted the Pharisees, in a general way, as leaders. They believed in tradition and in the resurrection, but they were prone to

neglect the law and formalism so stoutly insisted upon by the scribes. This class of Jews had a vital, living fellowship with God, and might be called pietists. Such characters as Simeon and Anna, Zachariah and Elizabeth, Joseph and Mary, and most of those influenced by John's call to repentance were of this class. They stood for the pure religion of the early prophets, and in a way opposed the sacerdotalism of the Jewish Church. They were in a spiritual and ethical mood to accept the great teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, and were consequently his first converts. While they constituted the majority of the Jews, and were scattered all over the Roman Empire yet they were not organised as a political party. To these Christianity meant a great and much needed reformation.[46:1]

The moral condition of the Empire, east and west, makes a dark picture as drawn by such men as Paul,[46:2] Seneca,[46:3] Tacitus,[46:4] Juvenal, Persius, and Sallust. "The world is full of crimes and vices" moaned Seneca. Foreign conquest and plunder brought in their wake luxury, sensuality, cruelty, and licentiousness. Slavery was fostered; infanticide tolerated; marriage lax, and divorce shamefully common. Amusements became bloody and brutal; 20,000 lives were sacrificed in one month to appease the populace, who cared only for "panem et circenses." The stern virtue and morality of old Greece and Rome were dead. The huge

Empire was a giant body without a soul going to final destruction.

It is evident, then, that forces both positive and negative were at work to prepare the civilised world for the reception of Christianity:

(1) The universal Empire of Rome was a positive groundwork for the universal empire of the Gospel. The imperial organisation suggested a form of organisation for the Church, so that Latin Christianity was simply Rome baptised. The unity of the Empire afforded concrete illustration of God's spiritual kingdom, and implied fatherhood and brotherhood.[47:1] Imperial toleration of harmless provincial religions protected Christianity, and thus enabled it to get a foothold before persecution came. Universal peace also was a boon to the Christian crusade.

The flourishing commerce, the good roads uniting the Empire, the extensive travel, and the various military expeditions all made the spread of new ideas easier and quicker.

(2) Pagan theology became a stepping-stone to Christian theology.[47:2] The decay of polytheism, because of its unspiritual and unsatisfying character, made spiritual monotheism acceptable. Pagan temples, priests, and rites made the conception of, and the transition to, Christianity easier. Even the low

moral condition and widespread skepticism strongly emphasised the need of a better religion.

(3) The schools of the Empire prepared men's minds for an intellectual consideration of the new faith, though not necessarily for its adoption. The Greek and Latin tongues were excellent mediums for propagating the new doctrines. Greek particularly was excellent for the expression of abstract and lofty truth, and the Old Testament had been translated into it more than two centuries before Jesus.[48:1] Grecian eloquence became the model for sacred oratory. The philosophy of Plato and Aristotle formed the scientific basis for Christian theology. The spiritual flights of Plato,[48:2] the religious reflections of Plutarch, and the moral precepts of Seneca were all used as arguments of revealed religion. Even pagan art, with its love for the beautiful, was early employed to give material expression to Christian ideas.

(4) The Jews, scattered over the world,[48:3] befriended by Julius Cæsar, given legal status as a sect by Augustus, expelled in vain by Tiberius and Claudius, spread a knowledge of the living God over the whole Empire before Christ appeared. Synagogues were numerous, and many Gentiles became converts to monotheism.[48:4] These converts were the first to accept the teachings of Jesus, and in this way formed the nuclei of the Christian Church.

Thus Jerusalem the Holy City, Athens the city of culture, and Rome the city of power, combined to prepare the world so that the matchless ethical and religious

teaching of Jesus of Nazareth could capture the hearts and heads of men, replace the national religions, and become realised in the outward forms and inward beliefs of the Christian Church, which was soon to exercise a controlling power in the civilised world.