The Apostles

by Ernest Renan

Christianity arose outside of the official world, but not entirely beneath it. It was only in appearance, and as viewed according to worldly prejudices, that the disciples of Jesus were of an insignificant class. The worldling admires pride and strength, and wastes no affability on inferiors. Honor in his view consists in repelling insult. He despises the spirit which is meek, long-suffering, humble, which yields its cloak also, and turns its cheek to the smiter. He is wrong; the meekness which he disdains is the mark of a loftier soul than his own; and the highest virtues dwell more contentedly with those who obey and serve than with those who command and enjoy. And this accords with reason; for power and pleasure, so far from aiding us in the practice of virtue, are hindrances in the way.

Jesus knew well that the heart of the common people was the great reservoir of the self-devotion and resignation by which alone the world could be saved. Hence he called the poor blessed, deeming it easier for them to be good than for others. The primitive Christians were essentially “poor;” it was their rightful title.[19.5] Even if a Christian possessed riches in the second and third centuries, he was poor in spirit, and classed himself among the poor, and was saved from persecution by claiming the privilege of the law concerning the “collegia tenuiorum.”[19.6] It is true that all the Christians were not slaves or persons of low rank; but the social equivalent of a Christian was a slave, and the same terms were applied to both; while the cardinal virtues of the servile condition—gentleness, humility, and resignation—were aimed at by both alike. The heathen writers are unanimous on this point. All of them without exception recognise in the Christian the traits of servile character, such as indifference to public affairs, a subdued and melancholy air, a severe estimate of the vices of the age, and a settled aversion to the theatres, baths, gymnasia, and public games.[19.7]

In a word, the heathen were the world; the Christians were not of the world. They were a little flock apart, hated of the world, reproving its iniquities,[19.8] seeking to keep themselves “unspotted from the world.”[19.9] The ideal of the Christian was wholly opposed to that of the worldling.[19.10] The sincere Christian loved to be humble, and cultivated the virtues of the poor and simple and self-abasing. He had also the defects which accompany these virtues. He considered as vain and frivolous many things which are not so. He belittled the universe, looking on beauty and art with a hostile or contemptuous eye. A system under which the Venus of Milo is only a stone idol is erroneous, or at the least partial; for beauty is almost the equivalent of goodness and of truth. When such ideas prevailed, the decay of art was inevitable. The Christian set no store by architecture, sculpture, or painting; he was too much of an idealist. He cared little for the advancement of science, for it was to him nothing but idle curiosity. Confounding the higher enjoyments of the soul, by which we touch upon the infinite, with vulgar pleasures, he denied himself all amusement. He pushed his virtues to excess.

Another law demands our attention at this period, which will not fail to have its influence upon the history we are to recount. The establishment of Christianity corresponds in time with the suppression of political life in the Mediterranean world. The subjects of the imperial sway had ceased to have a country. If any one sentiment was wholly wanting in the founders of the Church, it was patriotism. They were not even cosmopolites, citizens of the world; for the planet was to them only a place of exile, and they were idealists in the most absolute sense. The country is a composite object; it has body and soul. The soul is its recollections, customs, legends, misfortunes, hopes, and common regrets; the body its soil, race, language, mountains, rivers, characteristic productions. But never were any people so regardless of all this as the primitive Christians. Judea could not retain their affection. A few years passed, and they had forgotten the walks of Galilee. The glories of Greece and Rome were foolishness to them. The regions in which Christianity first rooted itself—Syria, Cyprus, and Asia Minor—could not recall the period when they had been free. Greece and Rome still possessed much national pride. But at Rome the patriotism was hardly felt outside of the army and a few families; while in Greece, Christianity flourished only at Corinth, a city which, after its destruction by Mummius and its rebuilding by Cæsar, was a mixture of men from every land. The true Greek tribes were then, as now, very exclusive in their notions, absorbed in the memory of their past; and paid little heed to the new doctrine. They proved but half-way Christians. On the other hand, the gay, luxurious, and pleasure-loving inhabitants of Asia and Syria, accustomed to a life of enjoyment, of easy manners, and used to accept the customs and laws of every new conqueror, had nothing in the shape of national pride or cherished traditions to lose. The early centres of Christianity—Antioch, Ephesus, Thessalonica, Corinth, and Rome—were, if I may so express it, public cities; cities like modern Alexandria, whither all races gather, and where that union and tie of affection between the citizen and the soil which constitutes a nation, were entirely unknown.

The interest of the public in social questions is always in inverse ratio to its preoccupation with politics. Socialism advances when patriotism becomes weak. Christianity was an explosion of social and religious ideas which could not have had free scope until Augustus had suppressed political contests. It was destined, like Islamism, to become in essence an enemy of the tendency to separate nationality. Many ages and many schisms would be necessary before national established churches could be derived out of a religion which started with the negation of the idea of any earthly home or country; which arose at an epoch when the distinctive city and citizen of early Greece and Italy had ceased to exist; and when the stern and vigorous republican spirit of a former period had been carefully sifted out as deadly poison to the state.

Here then is one of the causes of the grandeur of the new religion. Humanity is diverse and changeable in feeling, and constantly agitated by contradictory desires. Great is the love of country and sacred are the heroes of Marathon, Thermopylæ, Valmy, and Fleurus. One’s country, however, is not everything here below. Man is a man and a child of God before he is a Frenchman or a German. The kingdom of God, that eternal vision which cannot be torn out of the heart of man, is the protest of his nature against the exclusiveness of patriotism. The idea of a great and universal organization of the race to bring about its greatest welfare and its moral improvement, is both legitimate and Christian. The state knows and can know only one thing, the organization of self-interest. This is something, for self-interest is the strongest and most engrossing of human motives. But it is not enough. Governments founded on the theory that man is composed of selfish wants and desires alone, have proved greatly mistaken. Devotion is as natural as egotism to the race, and religion is organized devotion. Let none expect, then, to do without religion or religious associations. Every forward step of modern society will render the need of religion more imperious.

We can now see how these recitals of strange events may prove illustrative and instructive. We need not reject the lesson because of certain traits which the difference of times and manners has invested with an odd or unusual aspect. In regard to popular convictions, there is always an immense disproportion between the greatness of the ideal aimed at by the system of belief, and the trifling nature of the actual facts which have given rise to it. Hence the particularity with which religious history mingles common details and actions approaching folly with its most sublime events and doctrines. The monk who contrived the “holy vial” was one of the founders of the French monarchy. Who would not willingly efface from the life of Jesus the story of the demoniacs of Gadara? What man of cool blood and common sense would have acted like Francis of Assisi, Joan of Arc, Peter the Hermit, or Ignatius Loyola? Terms attributing folly or fanaticism to the actions of past ages must of necessity be deemed merely relative. If our ideas are to be taken as the standard, there was never a prophet, apostle, or saint, who ought not to have been confined as a lunatic. Conscience is very unstable in periods when reflection is not mature, and then good becomes evil, and evil good, by insensible stages. Unless we admit this, it is impossible to form a just estimate of the past. The same divine breath vitalizes all history and gives to it wonderful unity, but human faculties have produced an infinite variety of combinations. The apostles differed less in character from us than did the founders of Buddhism, although the latter were allied more nearly to us in language and probably in race. Our own age has witnessed religious movements quite as extraordinary as those of former times; movements attended with as much enthusiasm, which have already had in proportion more martyrs, and the future of which is still undetermined.

I do not refer to the Mormons, a sect in some respects so degraded and absurd that one hesitates to seriously consider it. There is much to suggest reflection, however, in seeing thousands of men of our own race living in the miraculous in the middle of the nineteenth century, and blindly believing in the wonders which they profess to have seen and touched. A literature has already arisen pretending to reconcile Mormonism and science. But, what is of more importance, this religion, founded upon silly impostures, has inspired prodigies of patience and self-denial. Five hundred years hence, learned professors will seek to prove its divine origin by the miracle of its establishment.

Bab-ism in Persia was a phenomenon much more astonishing.[19.11] A mild and unassuming man, in character and opinion a sort of pious and modest Spinoza, was suddenly and almost in spite of himself raised to the rank of a worker of miracles and a divine incarnation; and became the head of a numerous, ardent, and fanatical sect, which came near accomplishing a revolution like that of Mahomet. Thousands of martyrs rushed to death for him with joyful alacrity. The great butchery of his followers at Teheran was a scene perhaps unparalleled in history. “That day in the streets and bazaars of Teheran,” says an eye-witness, “the residents will never forget.[19.12] To this moment when it is talked of, the mingled wonder and horror which the citizens then experienced appears unabated by the lapse of years. They saw women and children walking forward between their executioners, with great gashes all over their bodies and burning matches thrust into the wounds. The victims were dragged along by ropes, and hurried on by strokes of the whip. Children and women went singing a verse to this effect, ‘Verily we came from God, and to him shall we return!’ Their shrill voices rose loud and clear in the profound silence of the multitude. If one of these poor wretches fell down, and the guards forced him up again with blows or bayonet-thrusts, as he staggered on with the blood trickling down every limb, he would spend his remaining energy in dancing and crying in an access of zeal, ‘Verily we are God's, and to him we return!’ Some of the children expired on the way. The executioners threw their corpses in front of their fathers and their sisters, who yet marched proudly on, giving hardly a second glance. At the place of execution life was offered them if they would abjure, but to no purpose. One of the condemned was informed that unless he recanted, the throats of his two sons should be cut upon his own bosom. The eldest of these little boys was fourteen years old, and they stood red with their own blood and with their flesh burned and blistered, calmly listening to the dialogue. The father, stretching himself upon the earth, answered that he was ready; and the oldest boy, eagerly claiming his birthright, asked to be murdered first.[19.13] At length all was over; night closed in upon heaps of mangled carcasses; the heads were suspended in bunches on the scaffold, and the dogs of the faubourgs gathered in troops from every side as darkness veiled the awful scene.”

This happened in 1852. In the reign of Chosroes Nouschirvan, the sect of Masdak was smothered in blood in the same way. Absolute devotion is to simple natures the most exquisite of enjoyments, and, in fact, a necessity. In the Bab persecution, people who had hardly joined the sect came and denounced themselves, that they might suffer with the rest. It is so sweet to mankind to suffer for something, that the allurement of martyrdom is itself often enough to inspire faith. A disciple who shared the tortures of Bab, hanging by his side on the ramparts of Tabriz and awaiting a lingering death, had only one word to say—“Master, have I done well?”