It is not possible to imagine a greater contrast to all the modes of habit and thought prevalent in those times. The most sensual of all races it exhorted to spirituality, to the most cruel and insolent it preached meekness and forbearance. It placed the slave to whom the recognized laws of war left no rights, beside the master who gloried in setting his foot on the neck of the prostrate; and recognized as equals the great and the small, the ignorant and the wise, the bond and the free.
We cannot be surprised that it did not obtain immediate currency, that it was everywhere scorned and cast out, that it aroused unheard of persecutions, and that it could only obtain, a triumph when the old Roman inflexibility and fierceness had died out of its degenerate children, and the spirit of the ancient world was burned out in the hot fires of its own passions. Character does not change in a day, and the ruling impulses of a race can be modified only by slow degrees. Such is the supreme law which has ruled all history.
6. From all these causes Christianity was slow in penetrating society and moulding institutions; but it spread so extensively that a clear sighted emperor at length found it politic to profess Christianity in order to gain the support of so large and vigorous an element against his rivals in power. Constantine was victorious and proceeded to make Christianity the state religion. It had maintained its growth by its real superiority and ever after remained the most powerful and productive among the influences that aided the progress of mankind. It was actively aggressive and had made the barbarians who overthrew Rome converts to the faith before the invasion, and thus broke the force and diminished the disastrous effects of that event. In after times, no sooner did a barbarian tribe appear and establish itself in any part of the old empire than Christianity commenced the work of teaching and proselyting, which aided much in restoring order and repairing ruin. Had Christianity preserved its purity its usefulness and power would have been much greater.
7. But as it gained in numbers and in position it lost internal strength. Both Oriental and Greek philosophy tainted its simple doctrines and introduced in various forms the hurtful speculations so dear to the ancients; and when it became the court religion the simplicity of its ceremonies was gradually replaced by the pomp and splendor of pagan worship. Constantine and his successors in the empire assumed the virtual headship of the church, called councils and packed them for political purposes, and pronounced for or against supposed heresies. The offices of the church became the rewards of ambition and gradually a hierarchy, or regular gradation, was established in the priesthood, and both faith and manners came to be strangely in contrast with their original simplicity. Yet, Christianity, aping the forms and infected with the superstitions of paganism, and become the tool of the aspiring, was still alive with a youthful vigor by which she eased the fall of the old civilization, and was abundant in valuable service for the civilization yet to be.
SECTION XI.
THE SERVICES OF GREAT MEN TO MANKIND.
1. It is difficult for us to comprehend the embarrassments which a want of diffused information presented to the progress of the ancient days. With no books, or, at best, but very few, with little or no record of the past, or the distant present, but what confused, distorted and uncertain tradition and rumor could give, with almost no instruments of thought and education, it would seem natural that they should fall into a hopeless barbarism. That they raised themselves so far out of a condition so low and so helpless, that they created so many instruments for us, is a proof of the wonderful capacity for advancement that lies in humanity, and a prophecy of stupendous things yet in store for mankind.
2. One of the most important elements of their progress lay in their great men. It is indispensable that a man, to become great, or famous, by exercising a wide influence, should represent in a large, well defined and successful way, the general tendency and aspiration of his times. He must unite a clear perception of these tendencies in his mind, with the power to give them adequate expression in his words or deeds. He must be so far ahead of his times as to be able to clearly work out what is lying unexpressed in the general mind, but not so far ahead that it cannot come into sympathy and co-operation with him; else he will not be recognized as great. Great men are a summary of their times, or of the people they dwell among; they gather its tendencies to a point and express the undefined desire of that period. Their value for later times is that they represent the spirit of their race at that time in a form to make a striking impression, and those who have the good fortune to represent the qualities of the best races, or of nations at the most important stage of their history, become the general exemplars of mankind; teaching in a forcible and striking way the lessons which have been wrought out in the experience of a whole people for ages.
3. The poets are the first of these great men of whom history gives us any account, except, perhaps, the heroes whose deeds they sung, which are more or less uncertain, because they clothed the common tradition of their times in an imaginative and fictitious dress. The poets Homer and Hesiod had great influence on early Greece. They summed up its theology and the history of its admired heroes, and gave expression to the early thought and literary turn of that people.
Their legislators came next. They gave expression to the genius of their people in institutions and laws. Lycurgus arranged the Spartan state into a military school. His laws remained in force more than five hundred years. Solon was the legislator of Athens and his laws were much admired for their wisdom and justice. The Greeks could think more wisely than they could act. Lycurgus organized the warlike spirit in Greece as well as Sparta. The small Grecian states, determined to keep Sparta and each one of the other states from destroying their individual liberties, were trained by the necessity of combating the vigorous military organization of Sparta to great ability in war.