MODERN CHRISTIANITY
With the death of Jesus, died also His dream of converting the Jews to His religious ideas. A few scattered bands of followers—Nazarites or Ebionites—survived Him. But they existed only in a moribund condition, exerted no influence over the nation, and, in the course of a few centuries, disappeared from history. The Jews as a people rejected, and have always rejected, both Jesus as a Messiah and His teachings as their religion. If the Jews had then been an independent nation, living in their haughty isolation from other peoples, the power and hatred of the Pharisees would probably have stamped out the last remnants of Jesus' followers, and He would have survived only as a name in history. But the disciples (or apostles) found under the Roman rule protection for their teaching, and ready access to the Gentile communities, not only in Palestine, but throughout all the coasts of the Mediterranean. Among these communities Jesus' Gospel found a quick and ready acceptance, and, within two or three centuries after His death, it had become a mighty living force in the evolution of mankind. In the reign of Constantine, Christianity became the dominant religion in the Roman empire, and it rapidly brought under its influence the Northern Barbarians, who, in their turn, were to be the conquerors of this empire.
As Christianity grew and spread and became more powerful, it lost almost all resemblance to the religion of "right living," which Jesus had taught and practiced. The spiritual and temporal powers were once more re-united, dogmas, creeds, theological disquisitions multiplied, "until the fair body of religion, revealed in almost naked purity by the prophets, is once more hidden under a new accumulation of dogmas and of ritual practices of which the primitive Nazarene knew nothing; and which He would probably have regarded as blasphemous if He could have been made to understand them."
"As, century after century, the ages roll on, polytheism comes back under the disguise of mariolatry and the adoration of saints; image worship becomes as rampant as in old Egypt; adoration of relics takes the place of the old fetich-worship; the virtues of the ephod pale before those of holy coats and handkerchiefs; shrines and calvaries make up for the loss of the ark and of the high places; and even the lustral water of paganism is replaced by holy water at the porches of the temples. A touching ceremony—the common meal originally eaten in pious memory of a loved teacher—was metamorphosed into a flesh-and-blood sacrifice, supposed to possess exactly that redeeming virtue which the prophets denied to the flesh-and-blood sacrifices of their day; while the minute observance of ritual was raised to a degree of punctilious refinement which Levitical legislators might envy. And with the growth of this theology, grew its inevitable concomitant, the belief in evil spirits, in possession, in sorcery, in charms and omens, until the Christians of the twelfth century after our era were sunk in more debased and brutal superstitions than are recorded of the Israelites in the twelfth century before it."
(Some Controverted Questions, Huxley, p. 159.)
In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the leaders of the Reformation and the New Learning began their relentless warfare upon the existing formalism and superstition, and from two different points of attack. After centuries of bloody wars, Protestantism succeeded in displacing Catholicism as the dominant religion over a large part of Northern Europe. Roman Catholicism still remained dominant in Southern Europe, and Greek Catholicism in Eastern Europe. In the meanwhile, to the eternal disgrace of the then Christendom, the followers of Mahomet had established his religion in some of the fairest portions of Southeastern Europe. If the Christian nations of the fifteenth century had expended on the practical cause of keeping Mohammedanism out of Europe one tithe of the energy and sacrifice that they did expend on the unpractical dream of recovering the Holy Sepulchre, Europe would have been spared the endless heritage of evil that has followed the introduction of the unspeakable Turk into European politics. But mutual jealousies, prejudices, petty ambitions, dissentions and discords permitted this calamity to occur, the end of which it seems is not yet.
As the Reformed churches became established in power, each one developed its own formalism, different from, but no more in consonance with, Jesus' simple religion, than that of the Catholics. As dogmatic theologians, Luther, Calvin, Knox and Jonathan Edwards were little improvement over Loyola, Augustine and Justin. Predestination, fore-ordination, change of heart, infant damnation, eternal punishment, the Thirty-nine Articles, the Augsburg Confession, would have been as unintelligible to Jesus, and would have met as summary condemnation at His hands, as the quarrels between the homoi-ousians and the homo-ousians, which rent the Christian world in the third century after His death.
But a more formidable champion had entered the lists against dogmatic theology and in favor of the creedless religion of Jesus. The invention of printing, the growth of science, the diffusion of education, and the development of a world-wide commerce were all working towards the eradication of superstition, the breaking down of national and racial and religious antipathies and prejudices, the cultivation of relations, first of business, and then of mutual regard and friendship between the peoples of different countries, the constant amelioration of the roughness, harshness and cruelty of earlier times, the encouragement of courtesy, consideration for others and charity towards all men. All these forces were making for Jesus' ideal of a common humanity, where the asperities of different religious creeds would cease to trouble, and each man might love his neighbor as himself. A tremendous victory had been won when the time came, that an Orthodox Catholic would admit that his righteous-living Protestant neighbor might inherit heaven as surely as himself.
The optimist of the early years of this century might have hugged himself with complacency over the rapid progress which the Gospel of Jesus was making in moulding mankind towards a realization of His ideals. Then came the cataclysm of 1914. The leading nations of Europe—all Christian except the Turks—plunged into the bloodiest war of history, and on the most petty of pretexts—the political administration of an insignificant Balkan state. The Gospel of Jesus, as an efficient force restraining these nations from war, was as though it had never existed. In the communications between England, France, Russia and Germany, preliminary to the war and ostensibly seeking to avert war, did any one statesman urge the argument that the law of Jesus forbade this war? Not a single syllable, and, for the sufficient reason, that each one knew that it would fall on deaf ears and would be laughed at as "old women's talk." So far as the efficiency of such arguments was concerned, they might as well have been used between the Persians and Egyptians before Jesus was born.
Then, when war broke out, came the supreme irony of each nation crowding its churches to pray for the assistance of the meek and gentle Jesus in slaughtering its enemies. Later, the victorious nations crowded their churches to thank Jesus that He had made them successful in their hellish business.
There are some who can quiet their consciences by shifting the responsibility for the incalculable misery of this brutal, barbarous conflict from the sins and evil ambitions of man to the shoulders of the Almighty. With those holding this (to the writer) blasphemous doctrine, argument is useless. But to the ordinary, sincere and candid follower of Jesus, does not the occurrence of this war give occasion to pause and think—as it were, to take an account of his stock-in-trade? Why did the mighty forces of Christianity fail to work with any practical effect at this, their supreme test—the prevention of war? What promise has the future to prevent the recurrence of such evils? How far has modern Christianity kept undefiled the pure religion of the Great Nazarene?
These are all questions demanding at this time the serious consideration of every thinking man, professed Christian or not.