In like manner the human race, in its youth, went forth from the cradle-land of Armenia to take possession of the wide inheritance of the earth. Carried away by the illusions of the senses and the imagination, in the pride of its youthful strength, the human race sought to find its destiny and create its paradise on the earth, forgetful of God, of his law, of his doctrine, and of his promises. The colonization of new countries, the foundation of empires and cities, the cultivation of science, literature, art, and every sort of commerce, handicraft, and industry, all that is included in the term civilization, employed the energies of that portion of mankind whose doings find a place in universal history, until everything was accomplished which was possible to man and God saw fit to permit him to achieve. As for his relations with the world above this earth, with the duration which is beyond time, and with superhuman and divine powers, since he could not ignore them or confine his intellect of divine origin and immortal destiny to merely temporal and earthly things, he invented religions, or sought by the light of reason to discover the truth about the supersensible world. The result of all was that a state of things was produced in which mankind, unable to proceed further, dissatisfied and sighing after something better, cried out for God to come and accomplish the work which was too much for man. A young man or a young woman, feeling deeply the emptiness of all the enjoyments to be obtained by wealth, gives up his or her fortune for charitable purposes. A prince, tired of war and politics, devotes his castle and domain to the foundation of a monastery and assumes the religious habit. An artist, a poet, an orator, a great scholar, convinced of the futility of chasing the shadow of earthly glory, consecrates his gifts and acquisitions to religion. In like manner all that the human race had gained in civilization, in empire, in wealth, in philosophy and literature and art, was so much material accumulated for the spirit and genius of Christianity to appropriate and employ in the work of the regeneration of mankind.
This statement is, of course, restricted to that part of the human race which forms the principal subject of universal history and is included within the sphere of the Greco-Roman intellectual and political dominion. The Chinese, and the nations of similar origin and character, are a nullity in universal history. The Hindoos have remained to this day outside of the current of the catholic movement of Christianity. The barbarian and savage races have only been capable of receiving Christianity together with civilization from nations previously civilized. What conquests Christianity may yet make among the great mass of the heathen who constitute the numerical majority of mankind, only the future can disclose. Probably the dominion of European intelligence and political power will be a necessary condition for the extension of the spiritual dominion of the Catholic Church in those regions of the world, if it is ever accomplished. Leo says of the Mongolian races:
“It seems to us that it is only their conversion to Christianity which can entitle them to admission into the domain of universal history as we have conceived its plan, and this conversion can hardly become general except through some kind of political subjugation and dependence. Certainly, the place of these nations in history is one foreseen by God; but the period of their intellectual importance for us has not yet arrived, and will perhaps never come until they are conquered by the Caucasian race and mingled with it. It is therefore only upon the Caucasians, in their great division of Semites, Japhetians, and Chamites, that we can direct our view, as being hitherto the workmen whose labors are recorded by universal history.”
It is only with the past history of that select portion of the human race which has advanced steadily on the road of progress toward the completion attained in Christianity that our theme is concerned. Even some portions of the Aryan race, as the Hindoos, have but little connection with it. And in that later period upon which our attention is at present specially directed, the Jews, the Greeks, and the Romans make the principal factors in producing the result which we wish to estimate—viz., the preparation for the actual conquest and extension of Christianity as a universal religion, which has been thus far achieved, and has become an historical fact. Jewish faith, Hellenic intellectual culture, Roman polity, were the chief agents in preparing the way for Christianity as the world-religion and the world-subduing power. The Hellenic philosophy and literature we leave aside for the present. The Roman imperial and universal monarchy is the topic to be specially considered in this article. This great world-subduing power is historically and logically connected with the great monarchies of a similar character which preceded it, and which are all presented under one figure, that of a colossal statue, whose members are cast from different metals, in the celebrated vision of Nabuchodonosor, interpreted and recorded by the prophet Daniel. It is remarkable that this vision, which presents emblematically a summary of the universal political history of the world in prophecy, was given to the monarch of the great Assyrian Empire, yet in such a way that it passed before his mind like an evanescent flash. He could not understand or even remember it until the great prophet of Juda repeated and explained it. The date of this vision is a little later than B.C. 600, just at the beginning of the period we are considering. “Thou, O king! didst begin to think, in thy bed, what should come to pass hereafter: and He that revealeth mysteries showed thee what shall come to pass. Thou, O King! sawest, and behold there was, as it were, a great statue: this statue, which was great and tall of stature, stood before thee, and the look thereof was terrible. The head of this statue was of fine gold, but the breast and the arms of silver, and the belly and the thighs of brass: and the legs of iron, the feet part of iron and part of clay. Thus thou sawest, till a stone was cut out of a mountain without hands: and it struck the statue upon the feet thereof, that were of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces: but the stone that struck the statue became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.”
Daniel then interpreted the vision as a prophecy of the destinies of the world under four universal monarchies, the Assyrian being the first, represented by the head of gold. The other three are manifestly the Medo-Persian, Macedonian, and Roman. The weak feet and toes of the statue are the extension of the empire among the barbarians of the West. The prophet finishes by declaring that after the decadence of the last empire God will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed or transferred to another power, but which shall destroy entirely the whole fabric of world-monarchy which was represented by the statue of gold, silver, brass, and iron, terminating in clay—i.e., the Babylo-Roman Empire. Thus, at the very beginning of the course of events which took place during the six centuries of the period preceding the Messianic epoch, the great prophet who is inspired to foretell with minute distinctness the times of the Messianic kingdom is made the counsellor and prime minister of the last monarchs of the Assyrian Empire, and of the first of the succeeding Medo-Persian kings, and Nabuchodonosor and Cyrus are instructed by divine revelation in the designs and purposes for which God has raised them up to prepare the way for the coming and reign of his Son upon the earth. The great world-empire, whose seat is first established in Babylon, and afterwards transferred to Rome, has a mission to accomplish, and, when that has been fulfilled, it is finally abolished to make way for the Catholic Church and the Christendom of which it is the nucleus, the Christian political, social, and moral order, the unification and restoration to one universal fraternity of the regenerated human race.
The Roman Empire, the inheritor of all the power, the civilization, the intellectual and material wealth and grandeur of its predecessors, with its own new and specific force in addition, made of the whole world one dominion, brought the East into subjection to the West, and established in Rome, the Eternal City, the permanent capital of the earth. Thus the way was prepared, by the general diffusion of the Greek and Latin languages, by universal commerce and communication between all nations, by the organizing and educating force of political and military discipline, and by many other efficient agencies, for a rapid and irresistible transmission of the spirit, the doctrine, the moral law, the entire supernatural and regenerating grace of Christianity throughout the civilized world. At the same time the civilizing power was brought into contact with that great mass of European barbarians who were destined to form the most vigorous portion of Catholic Christendom. Julius Cæsar is considered as the great author of modern European civilization. The empire reached its acme in the reign of Augustus. Near the close of his reign, and somewhere in the vicinity of A. U. C. 747, the Temple of Janus was closed, and the epoch of universal pacification, the effect of irresistible, triumphant Roman power, came to a world which was expecting the advent of the Prince of Peace, and made a moment’s stillness, a brief pause of silent wonder through the universe, while the mystery of the incarnation and human birth of the great King was accomplished.
Let us turn now to Judea, whose mission was much higher in the order of moral grandeur, though not so dazzling to the imagination as that of Rome. Daniel foretold the end of the captivity of the Jews when a period of seventy years should be completed, and the birth and death of the Messias after another period of seven times seventy years from the rebuilding of the city and Temple. The schism and captivity of the ten tribes had freed the kingdom of David from putrescent parts and given a more pure and healthy life to Juda. The corruption of Juda found a severe and efficacious remedy in the captivity which befell that tribe also at a later period. A purified remnant, the élite of the nation, were restored to their own land under Cyrus. The city and temple were rebuilt. Alexander the Great extended the same favor to the Jewish nation which had been granted by the Persian monarchs. Under his successors, the kings of Syria and Egypt, Judea flourished both in a political and a religious sense for three centuries, although not exempt from vicissitudes, a second temple was established in Egypt, and in Alexandria, the new capital founded by Alexander, the Jews became numerous and attained to great consideration and importance. The Hebrew Scriptures were translated into Greek and the important books of the second canon were written. Under Antiochus Epiphanes a new crisis arrived, which threatened the total extinction of Judaism. A large portion of the priests and people were infected with the corrupted Greek civilization of that period, the practice of the Mosaic law was forbidden and suppressed by the most oppressive edicts sanctioned by the most cruel penalties, and Jerusalem was changed into an apparently heathen city. The sacred ark containing all the hopes of the world in the ages to come seemed about to be wrecked. But God raised up the heroic family of the Machabees to rescue once more Jerusalem and Judea from the ruin which seemed to be imminent.
There is no greater and more wonderful hero in all history than Judas Machabeus, a new and more sublime Leonidas, standing with his small but invincible host in the world’s Thermopylæ, as the defender, even unto death, not of Greece but of all mankind; the saviour, not of mere national and temporal interests, but of the precious inheritance of faith, the supernatural treasure by which all men were to be enriched with those blessings which are eternal. The history of the Asmonæan dynasty, its period of glory and of decay, and, next, of the Idumæan usurpation in the person of the cruel tyrant, Herod the Great, a mere creature and dependent viceroy of the Roman emperor, brings us to the end of the dispensation of Abraham and Moses, to the epoch of the new Prophet, Priest, and King, who teaches, sanctifies, and rules mankind by his own personal and inherent might and right, as the Emmanuel, who is both the Creator and the Redeemer of the world.
St. Paul declares that the mystery of divine Providence respecting both the Jews and the Gentiles, made known in the full Christian revelation, was to “establish all things in Christ, in the dispensation of the fulness of times” (Eph. i. 10). We infer from this statement, that all the ages preceding the birth of Christ were a preparation for the foundation of the Catholic Church, which was completed at the epoch of his coming. The work of Judaism was done and its mission completed. Henceforth it was only an obstacle in the way of the universal religion which it had been created to serve. The oracles of God which it preserved and transmitted, the faith which it inherited from Abraham, its genuine spirit, the essence of religion which had been embodied in its outward organization, were transmitted to Christianity. The lifeless mass which was left behind was only fit to be buried as a putrescent carcass. The mission of the Roman Empire was also completed, its destruction decreed, and dimly foretold by the apostles. The entire Greco-Roman civilization, with its philosophy, its literature, its religious superstitions, had run its course, and its ultimate result was an intellectual and moral abyss of vacancy and unfulfilled longing for the truth and the good which alone can fill the frightful void in the human soul and in universal humanity caused by the absence of God. St. Paul says that Christ, having first descended to the lowest depth, ascended to the highest celestial summit, “ut impleret omnia”—that he might fill all things. The Emmanuel, the God in humanity, the very sovereign truth and sovereign good impersonated in a twofold nature, divine and human, is the only fulfilment of universal history, of human destiny, as the term and expression of the thoughts and purposes of God. His kingdom on the earth, the Catholic Church, is the instrument and medium by which he extends his action through time and upon universal humanity during the period of universal history which is now in the process of fulfilment. The material part of the substantial essence of this new Messianic empire was furnished by the commingling of the elements of Judaism and Greco-Roman civilization. The vital and informing principle was supernatural and divine, inspired into the now organic structure by a new out-breathing of the creative and life-giving Spirit.
This supernatural character of Christianity is capable of a rigorous historical and rational demonstration. Rationalists, as they call themselves, having first made themselves their own dupes, have duped the great mass of the unlearned and the unthinking in this age, and even imposed to a greater or a lesser degree on numbers of Catholics whose instruction in sound Christian knowledge is defective and superficial, by a shallow and pretentious system vaunted under the name of scientific criticism. Like the pseudo-Smerdis, its pretence to be the true, legitimate possessor of dominion, and heir to the acquisitions of reason and experience historically transmitted from the past, is founded on an illusory semblance of likeness to genuine science. As the impostor who passed himself off on a credulous people for the son of Cyrus was detected and exposed by stripping off the royal head-dress which he had stolen, and showing that his head had long since been deprived of the ears as an ignominious punishment for crime, so this base-born rationalism, when the logic of facts and sound reasoning seizes hold of it, meets the fate which befell the Persian usurper under the iron grasp and death-dealing sword of Darius, the son of Hystaspes. It is an old culprit, long since marked by the sword of truth, and doomed to perish under the blows of the genuine offspring of the noble, ancestral chiefs in the intellectual kingdom. Christianity is historical and rational, resting on the principles of contradiction and of the sufficient reason. That which has occurred and which exists cannot be denied or doubted, and must be referred to a sufficient reason and an adequate cause. The facts and events of the religion of Christ, as well those which preceded as those which have followed his human birth, are historically certain. The flimsy hypotheses of sceptical criticism have been destroyed by critical science. The penetrating acid of critical investigation, a solvent which is destructive of all counterfeits and semblances, has only made more manifest and clear of all accidental adhesions the real substance and imperishable solidity of the great historical structure of the primeval and universal religion. The books of Moses and his successors, the four Gospels and the other apostolic documents, together with all else that is accessory and corroborative of sacred history in the genuine records and works of antiquity, have come unscathed, and with brighter and clearer evidence than before, out of the restless and audacious researches of that modern school of rationalists who have sought to destroy all ancient science and belief, to make way for a new fabric of hypothesis which they call modern science and philosophy. Their visionary systems stand confronted with unassailable facts and convicted of falsehood. These great facts, from the creation of man to the resurrection of Christ, and from his resurrection to the present, actual existence of the Catholic Church, irresistibly, and with all the force of invincible logic, demand the recognition of their sole, assignable sufficient reason, a supernatural cause. It is because of this necessary connection of the great facts upon which Christianity is founded with a supernatural cause that rationalists deny, in so far as that is possible, these facts. But, as they cannot deny altogether the reality of all, they deny the principle of causality itself, like Hume and the whole sceptical sect of pseudo-philosophers, or, at least, by their hypotheses, ignore and subvert the principle of causality, through the contradiction of necessary deductions from the principle which is contained in these hypotheses.