Now it is precisely on this kind of evidence that we believe the great facts of the Christian Revolution. We have contemporary histories, formal and informal; letters, public and private, from the principal agents in it, and opposers of it, dispersed from Babylon to Rome, and addressed to Greeks, Romans, Jews, and Asiatics, written by physicians, fishermen, proconsuls, emperors, and apostles. We have miles of monuments, paintings, statuary, cabinets of coins, and all the heraldry of Christendom. And these great facts stand out more prominently on the theater of the world's business as effecting changes on our laws and lives, and their introduction as authenticated by public commemorations, more solemn and more numerous than those resulting from the English or the American Revolution. Our main difficulty lies in selecting, from the vast mass of materials, a portion sufficiently distinct and manageable to be handled in a single essay.
We shall be guided by the motto already announced as the rule of inductive research. One thing at a time; and the nearest first. The Epistles, being nearer our own times than the Gospels, claim our first notice, and first among these, those which stand latest on the page of sacred history, the letters of John; two from Peter to the Christians of Asia; and those which Paul, in chains for the gospel, dictated from imperial Rome.
From the abundant notices of the early Christians by historians and philosophers, satirists and comedians, martyrs and magistrates, Jewish, Christian, and heathen, I shall select only two for comparison with the Epistles and of the apostles; and both those heathen—the celebrated letter of Pliny to Trajan, and the well-established history of Tacitus; both utterly undeniable, and admitted by the most skeptical to be above suspicion. Not that I suppose that the testimony of men who do not take the trouble of making any inquiry into the reality of the facts of the Christian religion is more accurate than that of those whose lives were devoted to its study; or that we have any just reason to attach as much weight to the assertions of persons, who, by their own showing, tortured and murdered men and women convicted of no crime but that of bearing the name of Christ, as to those of these martyrs, whose characters they acknowledged to be blameless, and who sealed their testimony with the last and highest attestation of sincerity—their blood. Considered merely as a historian, whether, as regards means of knowledge, or tests of truthfulness, by every unprejudiced mind, Peter will always be preferred to Pliny. But because the world will ever love its own, and hate the disciples of the Lord, there will always be a large class to whom the history of Tacitus will seem more veritable than that of Luke, and the letters of Pliny more reliable than those of Peter. For their sakes we avail ourselves of that most convincing of all attestations—the testimony of an enemy. What friends and foes unite in attesting must be accepted as true.
The facts which we shall thus establish are not, in the first instance, those called miraculous. We are now ascertaining the general character for truthfulness of our letter writers and historians. If we find that their general historic narrative is contradicted by that of other credible historians, then we suspect their story. But if we find that, in all essential matters of public notoriety, they are supported by the concurred testimony of their foes, and that the narrative of the miracles they relate bears the seals of thousands who from foes became friends, from conviction of its truth, then we receive their witness as true. Even in Paul's day, heathen Greek writers bore testimony to the apostles, what manner of entering in they had unto the converts of Thessalonica; and how they turned to God from idols, to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—even Jesus, who delivered us from the wrath to come. Pliny wrote forty years later.
Pliny, the younger, was born A. D. 61, was prætor under Domitian, consul in the third year of Trajan, A. D. 100, was exceedingly desirous to add to his other honors that of the priesthood; was accordingly consecrated an augur, and built temples, bought images, and consecrated them on his estates; was, in A. D. 106, appointed Governor of the Roman Provinces of Pontus and Bithynia[73]—a vast tract of Asia Minor, lying along the shores of the Black Sea and the Propontis; and including the province anciently called Mysia, in which were situated Pergamos and Thyatira, and in the immediate vicinity of Sardis and Philadelphia. Pliny reached his province by the usual route, the port of Ephesus; where John had lived for many years, and indited his letters, A. D. 96, scarcely ten years before. The letters of Peter to the strangers scattered through Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, bring us to the same mountainous region, eight hundred miles distant from Judea; whence, in earlier days, our savage ancestors received those Phœnician priests of Baal, whose round towers mark the coasts of Ireland nearest to the setting sun; and whence, about the period under consideration, came the heralds of the Sun of Righteousness, who brought the "Leabhar Eoin"[74] which tells their children of him in whom is the life and the light of men. Natives of these countries had been in Jerusalem during the crucifixion of Jesus, and, though only strangers, had witnessed the darkness, and the earthquake, and had heard the rumors of what had come to pass in those days; and on the day of Pentecost had mingled with the curious crowd around the apostles, and heard them speak, in their own mother tongues, of the wonderful works of God. The remainder of the story of their conversion we gather from the letters of Peter, John, and Pliny.
"Pliny, to the Emperor Trajan, wisheth health and happiness:[75]
"It is my constant custom, Sire, to refer myself to you in all matters concerning which I have any doubt. For who can better direct me when I hesitate, or instruct me when I am ignorant?
"I have never been present at any trials of Christians, so that I know not well what is the subject matter of punishment, or of inquiry, or what strictures ought to be used in either. Nor have I been a little perplexed to determine whether any difference ought to be made upon account of age, or whether the young and tender, and the full grown and robust, ought to be treated all alike; whether repentance should entitle to pardon, or whether all who have once been Christians ought to be punished, though they are now no longer so; whether the name itself, although no crimes be detected, or crimes only belonging to the name ought to be punished.
"In the meantime, I have taken this course with all who have been brought before me, and have been accused as Christians. I have put the question to them, whether they were Christians. Upon their confessing to me that they were, I repeated the question a second and a third time, threatening also to punish them with death. Such as still persisted, I ordered away to be punished; for it was no doubt with me, whatever might be the nature of their opinion, that contumacy and inflexible obstinacy ought to be punished. There were others of the same infatuation, whom, because they are Roman citizens, I have noted down to be sent to the city.
"In a short time the crime spreading itself, even whilst under persecution, as is usual in such cases, divers sorts of people came in my way. An information was presented to me, without mentioning the author, containing the names of many persons, who, upon examination, denied that they were Christians, or had even been so; who repeated after me an invocation of the gods, and with wine and frankincense made supplication to your image, which, for that purpose, I have caused to be brought and set before them, together with the statues of the deities. Moreover, they reviled the name of Christ. None of which things, as is said, they who are really Christians can by any means be compelled to do. These, therefore, I thought proper to discharge.