These facts show why Christianity for a long time presented itself at Rome as a kind of funeral association, and why the earliest Christian sanctuaries were the tombs of the martyrs.[18.65] If Christianity had been nothing more, it would not have provoked so much hostility. But it was much more. It provided a common treasury;[18.66] it considered itself a complete municipality; it believed in its own assured permanency and continuity. When one enters on a Saturday night one of the Greek churches in Turkey, for example that of St. Photinus at Smyrna, he is struck with the power of those associated religious memberships existing in the midst of a persecuting or hostile community. That irregular collection of buildings (church, presbytery, school, prison); these brethren passing to and fro in their little inclosed city of refuge; these newly-opened tombs, with the lighted lamps within; this odor of dampness, decay, and mould; this murmur of prayer; these appeals for alms—create a deadened and subdued atmosphere which may, to a stranger, appear sufficiently monotonous or repulsive, but which must be full of attraction to the affiliated members.
The societies, when once provided with a special authorization, possessed at Rome all the rights and privileges of civil persons.[18.67] This authorization was, however, granted only with many restrictions whenever the society possessed a treasury and sought to concern itself with anything but sepulture.[18.68] The pretext of religious observances, or the performance of vows in common, was guarded against by law, and formally declared to be one of the circumstances which attached to an assembly the character of crime;[18.69] and the crime was nothing less than high treason, at least as regards the person who called the meeting together.[18.70] Claudius even closed the taverns where the brethren met, and the small eating-houses where the poor were furnished cheaply with hot water and boiled meat.[18.71] Trajan and the more liberal monarchs continued to view all these societies with distrust.[18.72] Low rank was an essential condition without which the privilege of religious assemblage was never accorded, and even then it was granted most sparingly.[18.73] The lawyers who built up the Roman jurisprudence, so eminent in legal science, displayed their ignorance of human nature by opposing in every way, even with the menace of death, and by hedging in with all sorts of odious and puerile restrictions an everlasting need of the soul of man.[18.74] Like the authors of the “Code Civil,” they regarded life with a wintry glance. If man’s life consisted in amusing himself under the orders of his superiors, in munching his crust and tasting his puny pleasures in his rank under the eye of a taskmaster, all this would be well devised. But the retribution awarded to social systems which follow this false and contracted view, is first a melancholy disgust, and next a violent triumph of religious partisans. Never will man consent to breathe that icy air. He needs the little circle, the brotherhood where he may live and die amongst his fellows. Our vast abstract social organizations are not sufficient to supply all the social instincts which exist in man. Let him alone to attach his heart to something, to seek consolation where it may be found, to make brothers to himself, and to draw closer the ties of affection. Let not the cold arm of the state break into this kingdom of the soul, which is also the realm of liberty. True life and happiness will not spring up again in this world until that sad heritage left us by Roman law, our inveterate distrust of the private assembly (collegium), shall have disappeared. Association independent of the state, without injury to the state, is the great question of the future. The laws to be made in regard to associations will determine whether or not modern society will tend to the same destiny as ancient. One example should suffice. The Roman empire bound its own existence to the law relating to unlawful assemblages. Christians and barbarians, accomplishing in this respect the task of human conscience, broke down that law, and the empire having planted itself thereon, went down with it.
The Greek and Roman world, a secular and profane world, which possessed not the true conception of a minister of religion, which had neither divine law nor a revealed word, had here stumbled upon a problem which it was unable to solve. And we may add that if it had possessed a body of consecrated priests, a severe theology, and a strongly organized system of religion, it would not have created the secular state, or inaugurated the idea of a social system founded merely on reason, and on the human wants and natural relations of individuals. The religious inferiority of the Greeks and Romans was the result of their political and intellectual superiority. The religious superiority of the Jews, on the contrary, has proved the cause of their political and philosophical inferiority. Judaism and primitive Christianity comprised the negation of the civil authority, or perhaps we may more accurately say the putting it under guardianship. Like the system of Mahomet, they established social order upon the basis of religion. When human affairs are controlled from that direction, great and universal proselytisms are made, apostles traverse the world from end to end, reforming and converting it; but in that manner are not constructed political institutions, national independence, a dynasty, a code, or a homogeneous people.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE FUTURE OF MISSIONS.
Such was the world which the Christian missionaries undertook to convert. It may now be readily perceived, it seems to me, that the enterprise was nothing impossible, and that its success was no miracle. The world was fermenting with moral longings to which the new religion answered admirably. Manners were losing their rudeness; a purer religion was looked for; and the notions of human rights and social improvement were everywhere gaining ground. On the other hand, credulity was extreme, and the number of educated persons very limited. To such a world, a few earnest apostles had only to present themselves, believing in one God and, as disciples of Jesus, imbued with the most beneficent moral doctrine the ears of men ever listened to, and they could not fail to be heard. The imaginary miracles which they mingled with their teaching would not hinder their success; for the number of those who would refuse to believe in the supernatural or miraculous was very small. If the apostles were humble and poor, so much the better. Humanity, in the condition it had then arrived at, could not be saved but by an effort springing from the masses. The ancient heathen religions were not susceptible of reform. The Roman state was what the state always will be—rigid, dry, and unyielding. In such a world perishing for want of love, the future is the property of him who can touch the living spring of popular devotion, to do which, Greek liberalism and the old Roman gravity were alike impotent.
The founding of Christianity is in this view the mightiest work which the men of the people have ever accomplished. At an early day, it is true, we find men and women of high rank at Rome joining themselves to the Church; and about the end of the first century, the examples of Flavius Clemens and Flavia Domitilla show that Christianity was penetrating almost within the palace of the Cæsars.[19.1] From the time of the first Antonines there were some rich men in the Christian communities; and near the close of the second century we find in them a few of the most distinguished persons of the empire.[19.2] But at the commencement, all or nearly all were of humble condition.[19.3] The noble and powerful of the earth were found in the earliest churches no more than in Galilee, following the footsteps of Jesus. Now in these great movements the beginning is the decisive moment. The glory of a religion belongs entirely to its founders. Religion, in fact, is an affair of faith, and to exercise faith is an easy thing; the master-work is to inspire it.
When we try to become acquainted with the marvellous origin of Christianity, we ordinarily regard matters by the standards of our own day, and are thus led into grave errors. The man of the people in the first century, especially in the Greek and Oriental countries, was in no wise similar to what he is amongst us, and at this day. Education had not then separated classes as widely as at present. The Mediterranean races, excepting the Latin tribes, which had lost all importance since the empire by the conquest of the world had become a mixture of vanquished nations, were less solid than moderns, and were more vivacious, excitable, imaginative, and quick of apprehension. The heavy materialism of our lower classes, and their apparent melancholy and dulness, which are in part the result of climate, and in part the sad legacy of the Dark Ages, and which stamp our poor with so distressful a physiognomy, did not operate upon the same classes in the early times. Although they were indeed very ignorant and credulous, they were not much more so than the rich and powerful of their day.
The establishment of Christianity cannot then be considered analogous to a popular movement in the present age, starting from the common people and at last commanding the assent of the educated class. This would with us be simply impossible. The founders of Christianity belonged to the common people in a certain sense, it is true. They were clothed in the same manner, lived poorly and frugally, and spoke without polish, or rather sought only to express their thoughts with energy. But they were inferior in intelligence to only a very small and constantly diminishing class of men, the survivors of the refined age of Cæsar and Augustus. In comparison with the philosophers who flourished from the time of Augustus to that of the Antonines, the first Christians were of course illiterate. In comparison with the great mass of their fellow-subjects, they were enlightened men. At times they were even looked on as free-thinkers, and the cry of the populace arose, “Down with the Atheists!”[19.4] This need not surprise us. The world was making startling progress in credulity. The two earliest strongholds of Gentile Christianity, Antioch and Ephesus, were of all the cities in the empire the most superstitious. The second and third centuries carried the love of the marvellous close to the borders of folly and madness.