His voice—and this all know who have once stood near the dark exit-gate of this life—his voice we shall be able to hear at last, when all else has already sunk away behind us. Then, only one step further, and
“I hope to see my pilot face to face,
When I have crossed the bar.”
VII. THE PROLEGOMENA OF CHRISTIANITY
VII. THE PROLEGOMENA OF CHRISTIANITY
THE cardinal fault of Christianity, which has persisted from generation to generation for centuries, is perhaps this: that Christianity has for long been no genuine, vigorous conviction of all those who bear its name, but only a general notion of somewhat the same meaning as “humanity” or “civilization.” Thus year after year many thousands are received into its formal constituency without ever in their lives receiving a correct idea of its demands, or a firm trust in its promises, or, least of all, any definite resolution and will to hold themselves in duty bound by these demands and promises. The “Christian” nations distinguish themselves from the non-Christian in much the same way as the ancient “Greeks” distinguished themselves from the “Barbarians”; and the Christian faith has grown to be a special confession within the borders of Christendom; while quite other convictions, never shared by Christ and his first confessors, and conceptions of the world which claim an equal right in a “Christian” state, venture to stand opposed to Christianity.
We may leave it undecided whether this is a fate that overtakes every religion which ripens into a “world-religion,” but may nevertheless doubt whether the formation of such a world-religion by means of a great attenuation of all religious demands ever lay in the original meaning and task of Christianity; even if one may grant that, even in this form it has been a magnificent tool of civilization and, in fact, is still such.
Yet it is certain that this course of evolution was dimly felt, even by the first generation of Christians, as an unavoidable though deplorable fate, and that the formal victory of the Christian religion over the heathen cults in the Roman Empire, and the consequent transformation into a Roman state religion, brought into it an element that Christ himself, before Pilate, the Roman governor of Judæa, had disavowed in the most distinct manner. All which has since been called “the Church,” or “the relations between the Church and the State,” and which has taken up so great a space in the thoughts of the nations, has, as an organization, no support in the original records of Christianity; indeed, it often almost seems as though the attainment of a definite goal of human development and the consequent end of the present age of the world were dimly surmised by the early Christians to be nearer than proved possible, in the sequel. The Kingdom of God is wholly founded upon the freedom of the human will, and it depends on that with what speed and intensity Christianity will or can come to realization in an individual, or in a nation, or in an epoch.
It is a serious article of belief with the Protestant group of churches, that not merely in a general way, but for every single individual during his earthly life, Christianity is to be realized through a “church”; this “church” stands for the continuous visible embodiment of Christianity, and accordingly it receives the individual into its constituency as a mere unit in the totality, in order that it may furnish him a safe passage through the judgment that shall finally take place on all the deeds of men. And this does not prevent many men, in all the Christian communions, from believing that membership in these communions is the chief matter; and they busy themselves about the fundamental conditions of such a membership only for a couple of hours on Sundays.