In the Romanized world, Judaism had never a really great success of proselytism, just because the more cultured had their own monotheism, and had in Greek literature something more satisfactory than the Hebraic, with its barbaric basis of racialism and its apparatus of circumcision, synagogues and Sabbaths. The proselytes were made in general among the less cultured—not the populace, but the serious men of religious predilections, who were the more impressed by the Sacred Books as rendered in the Septuagint because they were not at home in the higher literature of Greece. And if Judaism could not sweep the Roman empire in virtue of monotheism, Christism could not, especially while it lacked sacred books of its own.
Professor Smith’s thesis of a rapid monotheistic triumph is partly founded on his own vivid interpretation of many of the gospel stories of cast-out demons and diseases as a symbolism for successes against polytheism. And his symbolistic interpretation, which is at first sight apt to seem arbitrary, is really important at many points, accounting as it does convincingly for a number of gospel stories. But if we are to assume that all the gospel stories of casting out devils, curing lepers, healing the lame, and giving sight to the blind, were composed with a symbolic intent, we shall still be left asking on what grounds the Name of Jesus made any popular appeal before and after the symbolizing gospels were compiled.
Professor Smith draws a powerful picture of the relief given by monotheism to polytheists. In his eloquent words, the “tyranny of demons” had “trodden down humanity in dust and mire since the first syllable of recorded time”; and the new proclamation “roused a world, dissolved the fetters of the tyrannizing demons, set free the prisoners of superstition, poured light upon the eyes of the blind, and called a universe to life.”[109] But let us be clear as to the facts. If by “demons” we understand the Gods of the heathen, there was really no more “bondage” under polytheism than under monotheism. Spiritual bondage can be and is set up by the fear of One God who is supposed to meddle actively with all life;[110] and the Jewish law was in itself notoriously an intellectual and social bondage. It is expressly represented as such in the Pauline epistles. If again we have regard to the fear of “evil spirits,” there was really no difference between Jew and Gentile, for the “superstition” of the Jew in those matters was unbounded.[111] Nor is there any ground for thinking that the Jew had more confidence than other people in divine protection from the spirits of evil.
In what respect, then, are we to suppose Jesuist monotheism to have been an innovation? The argument seems to require that Jesuism delivered the polytheist from belief in the existence either of his daimon Gods or of his evil spirits. But obviously it negated neither of these. Daimons of all sorts are constantly presupposed in Jesuist polemic. The “freedom in Christ” proffered to Jews and Gentiles by the Pauline evangel is, in the terms of the case, not a freedom from the terrors of polytheism as such. It was certainly not regarded as a freedom, from “demons,” for exorcism against demons was a standing function in the early church for centuries; and the fear of a demon or demons is implicit in the “Lord’s Prayer.” What is proffered is primarily a freedom from the Jewish ceremonial law, and secondarily a freedom from fear in respect of the judgment-day and the future life, the divine sacrifice having taken away all sin. We are told by eloquent missionaries in our own day[112] that the Christian doctrine gives a new sense of freedom and security to negroes, in particular to the women; though we also learn on the other hand that where the two religions can compete freely Islam makes the stronger claim in respect of its exclusion of the race bar which Christianity always sets up in the rear of its evangel. But here, if the fear of evil spirits is really cast out, it is by a modern doctrine of their non-existence, not found in the New Testament, but generated by modern science.
Whatever preaching of monotheism, then, entered into early Jesuism, it gave no deliverance from belief in evil spirits: rather it added to their number by turning good daimons into bad. What is more, there enters into Christian polemic at a fairly early stage a use of the terms “God” and “Gods” for the “saints” which is on all fours with the common language of Paganism;[113] and this is a much more common note than the “high” monotheism of the Apology of Aristides, which has hardly any Christian characteristics. His monotheism is rather Pagan than Christian. The broad fact remains that so far as we can know the early Jesuist polemic from the gospels, the Acts, the Epistles, the Apocalypse, or the patristic literature, it was not a wide and successful assault on polytheism as such by an appeal to monotheistic instinct, but just a proffer to Jews and Gentiles of a kind of creed common enough in the pagan world, its inconsistent monotheism appealing only to a minority of the recipients.[114] The very miracle-stories which Professor Smith interprets as allegories of monotheistic propaganda became part of the popular appeal as soon as they were made current in documents; and they appealed (he will admit) as miracle-stories, not as allegories. Peter and Paul in their turn are represented as working miracles of healing. It was all finally part of the appeal to primary religious credulity.
Of two positions, then, we must choose one. Either the miracle-stories of the gospels, and by consequence those of the Acts, were as such otiose inventions for an audience which, on the view under discussion, would have been much more responsive to an explicit claim of triumph over polytheistic beliefs, the thing they are said to have been most deeply concerned about, or the miracle stories in general were meant as miracle-stories, only some later symbolists seeking to impose a symbolic sense on the records along with the Gnostic conception that the Christ had spoken in allegories which the people were not meant to understand. This later manipulation undoubtedly did take place. The parable of the Rich One, as Professor Smith convincingly shows, is an allegory of Jew and Gentile—the Rich One being Israel. But it is not by such manipulation that cults are made popular, congregations collected, and revenue secured. And it was on these practical lines that Christianity was “stablished.”
The factors which made this one Eastern cult gradually gain ground, and finally hold its ground, as against the many rival cults, were—
1. The system of ecclesiæ, modelled at once on the Jewish synagogue and the pagan collegia.
2. The practice of mutual help, making the churches Friendly Societies—again an assimilation of common pagan practice.
3. The colligation of the churches, primarily by means of a new sacred literature of gospels and epistles, and secondarily by a system of centralized government, partly modelled on the imperial system.