Dead, yet arisen; crucified, yet here!
THE PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY IN THE SIX CENTURIES BEFORE CHRIST.
The period of six centuries before Christ may be taken as the immediate period of preparation for Christianity—not in a precise numerical sense of exactly six hundred years, but as a general term denoting an epoch whose beginning is somewhat vague and indeterminate. Some of the great events are prior to B.C. 600, and the larger number of those which are important are much later. What we would do is to describe an historical cycle including the great prophetic cycle of Daniel, which embraces seventy weeks in the mystical numeration of Holy Scripture—i.e., a period of four hundred and ninety years; beginning at the rebuilding of the city and temple of Jerusalem, and ending with the promulgation of the New Law to the nations of the earth by St. Peter. We consider this last event as the culmination and ultimate term of the preceding historical period of preparation, from which history takes a new point of departure, thenceforward moving directly towards its final consummation through its last period, the one in which we live. These six centuries comprise what is specially the pre-Christian historical period. The greatest part of ancient profane history is taken up with the record of its events. The history of the ages going before is vague and scanty, and even the chronology is uncertain. A few dates will show how great a portion of what is known to us from childhood as historical antiquity is comprised within this relatively recent and modern period.
Herodotus, the father of history, is said to have recited parts of his history at the Olympic games, B.C. 456, and Thucydides, who was then a boy, to have heard him; and this is also the date of the death of Æschylus. The date of the battle of Thermopylæ is 480, of the death of Socrates 399, of the birth of Alexander 356. The period of Confucius, Lao-Tseu, and Pythagoras is in the vicinity of the year 550. The beginning of the Persian Empire under Cyrus was in 559. The common date of the building of Rome is 753 B.C. Carthage was destroyed in 146. Julius Cæsar began his career in the year 80. Within this period occurred also the restoration of the Jews to their own country, the founding of the Jewish temple and community at Alexandria, the translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek, the rise and triumph of the Asmonæan dynasty of the Machabees, the usurpation of Herod, and the beginning of Roman supremacy in Palestine.
We now proceed to show the relation between this period and its great events, as making the most important chapter in ancient universal history, with the origin and extension of Christianity. The modern rationalist theory of a purely natural origin of the Christian religion by development from previous stages of purely natural phases of the human intellect, should be refuted by a true exposition of the connection between the natural and the supernatural causes which concurred in producing the great historical phenomenon of Christianity. The history of the one true and revealed religion, and specifically of its latest form in Christianity, is not isolated and separate from the general history of mankind.
It is a topic in universal history. The Christian era succeeds by a close historical connection to the period which preceded it, and that period was the outcome of the ages going before. These preceding ages appear to us historically under a merely natural aspect. That is to say, the nations of the earth have no divine revelation or religion. Their religions are different and national, mere human creations, and their polity, morals, philosophy, and literature are products of natural intelligence. Their early history loses itself in obscurity or fable. Hence the manifest connection of the Christian period with the ages foregoing gives some plausible ground for the hypothesis that the origin of Christianity is natural, that it is only an outcome of mere natural progress and development. When we proceed to show a preparation for Christianity in the ages immediately preceding, we may be asked if we do not thereby tacitly admit and argue from this hypothesis. If God created all mankind for a supernatural destiny, under a supernatural providence; needing a divine revelation, in which a divine religion, one, unchangeable, demanding absolute, universal faith and obedience, is made known and imposed on the intellect and will of man as obligatory; how is it that we seek for the causes and events which prepared the way for its promulgation in a previous state of things so unlike that which we declare God intended to produce by Christianity?
The answer to this is easy. God began by giving a revelation and a divine religion to all mankind. The general falling away from this primitive religion was not so far advanced as to make it necessary for God to select a special race as the recipient and preserver of a renewed form of the divine religion until two thousand years before Christ. The period of the old and universal form of religion, therefore, embraces all the time from the calling of Abraham to the creation of man, at least two thousand years, and, according to the opinion of many, from two thousand five hundred to four thousand years. During the entire period of human history, therefore, from the creation of man to the present moment, embracing from sixty to eighty centuries, the divine religion derived from revelation has been more or less universally promulgated, with the exception of its mediæval portion—that is, during a time including from two-thirds to three-fourths of the whole time in which the human race has existed. The period in which the mass of mankind was left to itself apparently, without the law of God manifested by revelation—the period called by St. Paul “the time of ignorance which God winked at”—embraces only the remaining third or fourth part of time, that is, twenty centuries. This state of ignorance was not original, and not natural in the sense of being conformed to the exigencies of human nature and human destiny, or intended and directly produced by the Author of nature. It was the result of an apostasy, a degeneration, a wilful departure, a rebellion, a schism, a voluntary fall from the primitive state. Moreover, in this very state of apostasy, the principles of all the good which remained, the principles of civilization, science, virtue; political, social, and personal well-being and improvement; were all remnants from the first period in which the divine religion was universal. Therefore, when we point out in heathendom the preparation for a new promulgation of the universal religion, we are not tracing Christianity back to its natural causes and to its origin, but are tracing the movement of humanity along its re-entering curve, from the ultimate term of its departure, to its point of contact with a new motive power, the true and divine cause of the re-conversion and restoration of mankind through Christ, qui restauret omnia.
In addition to this, we must remember that it is only wilful ignorance and sophistical perversion of historical truth which assigns the origin of the human race and its institutions to an unknown, pre-historic chaos. Far back of the period of written, profane history, of hieroglyphic and cuneiform inscriptions, of the scattered, uncertain records of every kind which we can gather up from the remote past, the authentic, written documents of the people of Judea throw a clear light on the beginning of things. Divine revelation is in possession from the beginning. Profane history is modern history. We alone are ancient; and we may say to the infidel, as the Egyptian said to Solon: “You have neither knowledge of antiquity, nor antiquity of knowledge.”
Even during the period of the universal excommunication of mankind from the church of God that church existed, the divine revelation was preserved and increased, and the line of continuity between the past and the future was kept unbroken, in the nation of the children of Abraham. It was from Juda that the Lawgiver and the law came forth to the subjugation of the nations. The historical and rational basis of the supernatural origin and power of Christianity reaches down, therefore, to the first foundations of the world and the human race. So, then, we can have no fear of searching after and pointing out any natural and concurrent causes in the progress of human events which have prepared the way for Christianity and facilitated its universal conquests. The state of heathendom is not to be considered as a normal, natural, and necessary stage in the evolution and progress of mankind, from which Christianity was educed. The plan of divine Providence proposed to conduct mankind from one degree of development to another, until the perfection of religion and civilization was attained in the Catholic Church and carried forward to its last results in the universal resurrection and the everlasting kingdom of heaven, for which all the progeny of Adam, without exception, were destined. According to this plan, the church would always have been one and universal, and whatever might have been the special mission and privileges of the people of Israel, the covenant of God with them, and the possession of divinely-revealed doctrine, discipline, and worship would not have been exclusive. The national and exclusive constitution of the church in the posterity of Abraham and Jacob through the Law of Moses was a dispensation established on account of the general apostasy of mankind, a measure of protection against an absolute and final defection of the human race. And the preparation which went on in heathendom for the new promulgation of the divine law to all the world by Jesus Christ was also a measure of remedy and rescue, a “second plank after shipwreck,” thrown to the nations who were drowning in a sea of errors and miseries.
The object of that preparation was to furnish a sufficient ground and territory for the kingdom of Christ, the Catholic Church; to make ready the people who were fit to receive his law and doctrine; to produce the conditions and circumstances requisite for the universal conquest and permanent dominion of Christianity in the world. The discipline of divine Providence over the nations during the long centuries of their wandering through the waste and howling wilderness of ignorance, error, sin, warfare, and misery of all kinds, is like that over the children of Israel during their wandering of forty years in the desert which lay between Egypt and Palestine. They were condemned to this wandering as a punishment for their unbelief and disobedience. This punishment was nevertheless made the means of their training and education as a nation, and a better generation, born in the wilderness, was formed, which was fit to go into, conquer, and possess the Promised Land. We can also draw an illustration front individual examples, of which history furnishes a great number. A youth, highly gifted, brought up in faith and virtue, well educated, and with every kind of means and opportunity for pursuing a noble career to the glory of God, the welfare of men, and his own highest advantage both in time and eternity, comes to the morning of his manhood, with the straight path of duty stretching out its narrow and ascending course before him. Instead of pursuing this path steadily from the beginning, he is seduced to turn aside and wander over the more pleasant lands which are on the border of his right road, following the illusions of ambition, of pride, and of pleasure. For a while God leaves him to his wanderings, but his mercy does not abandon him. Through circuitous paths, through the lessons of experience, through trials, disappointments, and sufferings, he is led back to the right road. He becomes a hero, a saint, an apostle. The science, the fame, the influence, the wealth, the experience he acquired during those years, and which he labored to acquire for a low and unworthy end, are all now made the means and instruments of fulfilling a noble and holy purpose. Even his errors and sins serve as a warning lesson to others, and cause in himself a more vivid appreciation of the goodness of God, the value of divine faith and grace, and the happiness of a holy life.