Now, you saw how the Jews from time to time were dispersed—to Egypt, to Babylonia, to various parts of Asia Minor, to the islands and to the Greek cities. The Greeks, not caring deeply for religious things, although greatly interested in philosophy and speculations about the mysteries of life, allowed the Jews to follow their own religion and customs wherever they settled. And the Jews adhered to their own religion and customs very strictly and tenaciously. They did not lose them in the countries in which they were dispersed. But they did not bring the people among whom they settled to their own way of thinking. They did not try to do so. Their idea of their religion was that it was for them only, for the Jews, for "the seed of Abraham"—that is, the descendants of Abraham.
When Christianity came, founded on the Jewish religion, this was all altered. Yet it was not altered just at first. You will remember that it was said that the Gospel, the good message, of Christianity was "for the Jew first, and also for the Gentile." By "Gentile" was meant any man or woman who was not a Jew. But you will also remember that this idea, the idea that Christianity—the religion which branched out from the old Jewish religion—could be for any others than the Jews came as quite a new idea—almost as a shock, as we might say. You will remember perhaps how St. Peter dreamed that dream about the meats that were "common or unclean," as he considered them. In his dream he declined to eat those meats. Then he was rebuked for calling these things, which had been divinely created, common and unclean.
When he awoke, he accepted that dream as a warning to him that he was not to look on the Gentile as a man so "common and defiled" in comparison with the Jew as not to be able to receive the message of Christianity.
Message to the Gentiles
But in order to spread Christianity from its source and around Jerusalem, it was not necessary in the first instance to go actually to the Gentiles. You have seen how the Jews were dispersed throughout the cities of the world. The gospel could be carried to these first, to these Jews of the various dispersals which had taken place in course of their terribly troubled story. They were everywhere, all over the known world; and to these the Christian message could, and did, go; and many of them received it and became Christians. From them, no doubt, as well as from St. Paul, "the apostle to the Gentiles," and other special messengers and missionaries, Christianity spread to those among whom these dispersed and exiled Jews were living, but it was only gradually that the idea grew that it was a world religion, and not for the Jews only.
To one other point I would draw your attention. Most of Christ's followers were very humble men, of little or no education. They heard the words and carried His message among their own people. But the cities of the world, as we have seen, were inhabited by men whose minds were filled with Greek thought, Greek philosophy. They had no religion that made a real difference in their lives, although they speculated eagerly about "the unknown god," and paid reverence to such deities as "Diana of the Ephesians"; but they were highly educated.
If these fishermen of the Sea of Galilee, who were Christ's first disciples, these humble men of whom I wrote just now, had gone about from city to city and spoken of Christ and of Christianity in the very simple language in which they must have spoken of these things, what effect could they have had on the people whose minds were full of philosophical speculations? Very little. To accept the gospel of Christ "like a little child" would have been quite impossible for these men whose minds were formed by the Greek thought.
But after those first humble fishermen and the like came others, men of learning: St. Luke, who was a doctor, a medical man, a scientific man; St. John and St. Paul. All these, and many more, no doubt, who became fervent Christians, had been educated in the Greek philosophy. The writings of St. John and of St. Paul show beyond possibility of mistake that this philosophy was familiar to them and that their minds and thoughts worked in the ways that it had taught them.
Directly they began to feel the reality of Christ's message, and that He really was a divine Person, then they, naturally, were able to see in His message and teaching a great deal that the fishermen had not understood. They saw that it was a message which could be interpreted in such a way as to fit in with all that philosophical speculation with which the minds of all educated men in the world were full. It not only fitted in with that speculation, but it seemed to come as the crown and the completion of it all. It gave it just what it had been very badly wanting. It brought God into a world that had been seeking, seeking very hard, to find God, but a world, as we have seen, that, in spite of all the seeking, was practically Godless.
The designed end