St Augustine, speaking in the same strain, says: “What is now called the Christian religion, has existed among the ancients, and was not absent from the beginning of the human race, until Christ came in the flesh, from which time the true religion, which existed already, began to be called Christian” (Retr. i. 13).
We know by heart certain passages of the New Testament, but it is rather the sound than the meaning which is impressed on our memory; when we come upon similar remarks made some centuries before the Gospel was preached, they strike us forcibly; and it is as though we heard them for the first time. Jesus Christ declared before the assembled multitude: “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” These words were said to a ruler of the Jews named Nicodemus, who had come to Jesus by night, and he asked Him to explain how these things could be. Jesus answered: “Art thou the teacher of Israel, and understandest not these things?”
No, the teacher of Israel understood not these things, but the heathen Aristotle knew them; he had said in speaking of the contemplation of God: “Such a life is superior to the ordinary life of man; it is not as man that man lives this life, but by merit of a divine principle living in him.”
Jesus said unto the woman of Samaria who was sitting at the foot of Mount Gerizim, a place sacred to those of her belief: “Woman, believe Me, the hour cometh, when neither in this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, shall ye worship the Father; ... but the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth.” Although nearly two thousand years have passed men do not yet believe it.
Origen, one of the early Fathers of the Church, wrote: “If we wish at last to emerge from infancy, we must translate the temporal and visible Gospel into that which is eternal and intelligible.” This same Father was condemned by a council for certain opinions deemed erroneous, amongst others those on the plurality of worlds, which he said he found in the Gospel, this opinion might well be true. St Jerome mentions the anathema used: “Like Satan, of whom he is the son, Origen fell as lightning from heaven.” As a piece of eloquence it rivals the condemnation of the philosopher of Amsterdam.
Many legends were disseminated amongst the people, they were the natural productions of the moral atmosphere of Europe at the time when the first germs of Christianity sank into a soil strewn with the debris of ancient mythology. What happened then will always happen when the multitudes learn the language of their rulers without at the same time assimilating their ideas.
It is related that in the thirteenth century, in a little town of Italy, a Brother Thomas asked Brother Bonaventure whence came the power and unction of which all his sermons were so full. Bonaventure pointed to a crucifix hanging on the wall of his cell: “He it is who dictates to me all that I say.” This reply was reported to the people, who believed it literally, and the inhabitants of the town were convinced that Brother Bonaventure possessed a crucifix that spoke. The painters adopted the subject, amongst the first were those of Spain. Thus a symbol took the place of a sacred truth.
The Church has often been accused of tolerating like superstitions; yet she endeavours to stop their propagation; but the task of trying to restore each stone to its place is one of great delicacy, lest the foundations should be shaken upon which the spiritual life of long centuries has been built. Miracles are a prominent feature in all religions; nevertheless, when the disciples of Buddha asked their master to enable them to perform them, he replied: “I will teach you to perform the greatest moral miracle. Hide your good deeds, and confess before the world the sins you have committed” (Phy. Religion, p. 339).
Mohammed, in the Koran, expresses the strongest contempt for miracles, in the usual sense of that word, and he appeals to the true miracles, the great works of Allah in nature: “I cannot show you,” he said to his disciples, “signs more wonderful than what you see every day and every night.” But the orthodox Mohammedans delight in relating the miracles wrought by Mohammed, and which have made him the marvel of Arabia.