The Catholic Church, founded by Christ to be the depositary, the guardian, and the interpreter of his word, was from all eternity in the mind of God, not in the same manner as the other things that were made by him, and which constitute the visible universe, but as a creation apart, far superior to the world that we see, the completion of the designs of love which he entertained for men, and the reason of the existence of everything else inferior to it. It is the sublime theology of St. Paul: “All things are yours,” he writes to the Corinthians—“the world, life, death, things present and things to come. And you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.” From this it is easy to see the rank which the church holds in the divine plan. Christ stands first in the scale; he is the link, the Supreme Pontiff by whom all creatures are united with God; the church, his spouse, is for him and forms one with him, and has been ordained for the good of the elect and the sanctification of souls; she is the mother of the living. As Christ is first in the intention of God, the church, which is so intimately connected with him, is conceived along with him in the Divine mind, and has in it the precedence over all other things. Thus she can apply to herself the words of the inspired writer: “The Lord possessed me at the beginning of his ways. I was set up from eternity, and of old before the earth was made. When he established the sky above, and poised the fountains of waters; when he compassed the sea with its bounds, and set a law to the waters that they should not pass their limits, I was with him forming all things.”
Such being the case, it is not astonishing to see the whole drama of human history turned towards a central figure, Christ and his church, which are the grand objects contemplated by God in the universe. Nations rise and fall, empires are founded which are succeeded by other empires, each having a special mission, that of preparing the way for the kingdom of God; and when that mission is accomplished they disappear from the scene. The barriers set up to divide nationalities are forcibly broken down; conquest, commerce, the sciences and arts form a link between them; languages are modified, ideas are interchanged, intellectual systems are brought in contact; efforts are made sometimes in the right, sometimes in the wrong, direction; men grope in the dark, but some ray of light, however faint it may have been, is still there to urge them in their researches after truth; views are conflicting, but their very conflict paves the way to a broader spirit and more universal conceptions. When we glance at the state of the human mind before the coming of Christ, it seems that all is confusion and a perfect chaos from which there is no possible issue; but an attentive observer will easily discern, even when obscurity is most intense, the Spirit of God, as of old, brooding over the vast abyss and ordering all things so as to make light finally shine out of darkness.
The providential action of God manifested in the gradual preparation of the world for the acceptance of Christianity has always been considered one of the most striking proofs of its supernatural character, and modern rationalism has completely failed in its attempt to destroy it. To confine ourselves to the theories invented for that purpose, and bearing on the subject which we have undertaken to treat in the present article, the relation of Judaism to Christianity, they may be briefly summed up as follows: they peremptorily deny all supernatural agency in the march of events recorded in the sacred writings; they equally deny the divine mission of Jesus Christ; the apostles were, it is affirmed, men of their age, and did not escape the influence of popular opinions, which they knew how to use for their own ends; as to Christian dogmas, they followed in their formation the law of progressive development and growth; Christianity is nothing else but an evolution of Judaism or its various sects by a natural process and under the pressure of circumstances and prevailing ideas. Now, every page of the Jewish history contains a refutation of these doctrines. There we see a people especially chosen by God, among all others, to be the authentic and accredited witness of the truth among the nations; to keep alive in the world the belief in one true God and the hope of a future Redeemer already promised to our first parents after the fall; to be the depositary of that promise and the organ of its promulgation. Judaism, therefore, is related to Christianity, not as the seed to the plant, but as the well-prepared soil to the harvest; as the figure to the reality, as the prophecy to its accomplishment; as the harbinger to the King whose coming he announces to the populations that are to receive him. It is, as Isaias expresses it, “the voice of one crying in the desert: Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the wilderness the paths of our God” (Isaias xl. 3).
From the early dawn of their history the destiny of the Hebrews is clearly defined. They are a nation set apart to be a living protest against the prevailing idolatry of the times. From the vocation of Abraham to the promulgation of the law on Mount Sinai, and throughout the succeeding periods of their existence, the fundamental dogma of their religion is monotheism: “I am the Lord thy God; thou shalt not have strange gods in my sight. Thou shalt not make to thyself a graven thing, nor the likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, nor of those things that are in the waters under the earth. Thou shalt not adore them, nor serve them.” Another article of their creed equally pre-eminent as their belief in one God is their expectation of One who was to be sent for the restoration of mankind. To Abraham, the progenitor of that race, it was revealed that “his posterity should be as the stars for multitude, and that from them a blessing should go forth to all other nations.” Later God had said to Isaac: “I will multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven, and I will give to thy posterity all these countries (that is, the land of Chanaan), and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.” Jacob had heard a voice from heaven, saying: “I am the most mighty God of thy father: fear not, go down into Egypt, for I will make a great nation of thee there. I will go down with thee thither, and will bring thee back again from thence”; and when the aged patriarch is on the point of death, God bids him fix his eyes upon the lion of Juda, and shows him all the nations blessed in a prince who is to come out from his lineage. Moses, raised by the Almighty to deliver the numerous posterity of Jacob from the bondage of Egypt, had led to the threshold of the promised land that nation which God had chosen to give birth to the Redeemer, and to maintain upon earth faithful worshippers of his name. He also was divinely apprised that a prophet would rise from his nation and from among his brethren whose voice all should hear. Hence it is that the Old Testament religion was prophetic in its whole nature. “The guides of the Hebrew people,” says Dr. Fisher,[[75]] “were ever pointing to the future. There, and not in the past, lay the golden age. The Jew might revert with pride to the victories of David and the splendor of Solomon, but these vanished glories only served to remind him of the lofty destiny in store for his nation, and to inspire his imagination to picture the day when the ideal of the kingdom should be realized and the whole earth be submissive to the monarch of Sion. The hopes of all patriotic Jews centred upon a personage who was to appear upon the earth and take in his hands universal dominion.” It is a most interesting study to follow the Hebrew prophets in delineating so many centuries in advance the history of the Messias, and the principal features of that kingdom which is to embrace the earth under its sway. The time and place of his birth, the circumstances by which it is accompanied, his character, life, sufferings, and humiliations, his death and final triumph—all is described with astonishing precision. They openly speak of the object of the kingdom he is to establish, which is the regeneration of man, of his mind as well as of his heart, the destruction of idol worship, the adoration of the true God, and the reign of holiness; and this at a time when all was God except God himself, when Greece deified nature and Egypt changed gods into beasts, whilst Babylon, more corrupt, fabricated impure monsters which they adored, and Gaul, more ignorant, saw the Deity on the summits of mountains and in the depths of forests. It was in this age of darkness that Isaias sang the glory of the new Jerusalem, the church like to a mountain on which will be broken the chain of iniquity that bound all nations and the web that had been woven around them. The universal diffusion of the Messianic kingdom is also foretold by the prophets. There is nothing more clearly expressed in the prophecies and so much insisted upon as this: that the new alliance is not to be local and limited to one nation, but that it will be extended to all nations. We have already alluded to the prophecy of Abraham and to that of Jacob. Later David proclaims all nations of the earth to be the inheritance of Christ. Isaias contemplates from afar a new sign, the standard of the cross raised before the eyes of all nations; he sees them bringing their children in their arms—that is, those barbarian tribes that come to prostrate themselves at the foot of the cross and present their sons to the baptism of the church; he announces the conversion of the kings of the earth and their submission to the spouse of Christ; he follows the apostles carrying the good tidings to the farthest ends of the world. “Who are those,” he exclaims, “who fly like clouds? The far distant islands are in expectation, and ships are waiting to carry them. I shall choose from among my people men whom I shall send to the Gentiles that are beyond the seas, in Africa, in Lydia, in Italy, in Greece, to the islands afar off, to them that have not heard of me and have not seen my glory.” Again, the reign of the Messias is everywhere represented as having no end; it is to endure for ever. We shall only mention the prediction of the Messianic kingdom contained in the book of Daniel, which was familiar to the Jews, and one in which they trusted. After a description of the four kingdoms, the last of which the Roman, as iron, breaketh in pieces and subdueth all things, the writer says that in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed.
These doctrines were not to remain the exclusive appanage of the Hebrews. Divine Providence willed that they should be diffused among the nations, and moulded the destinies of the chosen people for the furtherance of this design. It is a remark of Ritter that the Supreme Wisdom has allotted to nations their place on the globe in view of their destination. It was by such a providential disposition that Palestine was singled out as the habitation of God’s chosen people. Assyria, Babylonia, and Persia on the east and north; Egypt and Ethiopia on the south; Greece and Rome on the west—all the great empires of antiquity will successively come in contact with it. It is there, at the confluence of human affairs, in the centre of ancient civilization, that the sacerdotal race is placed, called to spread everywhere the true religion, the knowledge of God and of Christ the Redeemer. From that central point it will be easy to send messengers of the eternal truth to the most flourishing cities, establish prosperous colonies in the important states by which it is surrounded, and thus accomplish its mission to be “a light for the Gentiles.”
The prodigies which, under Josue, Heaven had wrought in favor of the children of Jacob, had already fixed the attention of the other nations upon Israel, and had predisposed them to adore the God whom that people worshipped. Bossuet, speaking of those miracles, which were occasionally renewed, and of the effect they produced among the heathens, says that they undoubtedly brought about numerous conversions; so that the number of individuals who worshipped the true God among the Gentiles is perhaps much greater than is generally supposed. In the times of the Judges the frequent incursions of the neighboring tribes, their partial occupation of Judea, their repeated strifes with the Hebrews on the one hand, and on the other intervals of peace, commercial relations, the advantages offered to those who were willing to embrace the Jewish religion, contributed to propagate with that religion the expectation of a Messias. Under the Kings, the wars of Saul, the conquests of David reaching as far as the Euphrates, his domination over the country of the Moabites, of the Ammonites, the Philistines, spread among those nations the knowledge and fear of the true God. From the prosperous reign of Solomon to the glorious days of the Machabees, the alliances contracted with Egypt, Phœnicia, and the neighboring kingdoms, the great number of workmen whom those states placed at the disposal of Israel for the cultivation of the soil, the construction of its cities and fortresses—all contributes to the propagation of the sacred truth. The Israelites who repair to other countries for the sake of commerce speak of their traditions and leave after them the notion of their worship. Whilst the ships of Israel go and deposit on far distant shores its consoling hopes, travellers, attracted by the beauty of the country, the richness of its vegetation, the mildness of its climate come to visit the hospitable people by whom it is inhabited, and return initiated in the true faith. They recount to other nations the magnificence of the monarchs of Juda, the justice of their laws, the splendor of the solemnities of Jerusalem. Kings, legislators, philosophers come to the holy city from all parts; and Solomon, in the census he took of foreign proselytes, found that their number amounted to more than a hundred and fifty thousand.
But it is not enough that the name of the Lord should be known by the nations in the vicinity of Judea; the most distant tribes must be brought to adore him. To this effect Assyria, whose domination extends to the remotest regions of Asia, successively subjugates the kingdoms of Israel and of Juda, and disperses their inhabitants over the whole of its vast provinces. It is expressly forbidden to the captives of Israel to concentrate themselves on one point; for Providence intends that they should spread all over the East the light of truth and the earnest of salvation. Hala, Habor, Rages in Media, Ara on the river Gozan, are made the residence of the Jews of the ten tribes. They advance beyond the Tigris and the Euphrates, through Armenia as far as Colchis and Georgia, where they continue to dwell after the captivity, unwilling to abandon their new home. Numerous families fix their abode in Khaboul, in the most important cities of Chorasan and in Herat. Others established at first at the sources of the Indus, descending that river, reach India, and give rise to the tribe of the Afghans. Some even will cross the mountains of Central Asia, and will found establishments in Tartary, and chiefly in China, where later their descendants, raised to the first dignities of the empire, will teach the Chinese the Jewish religion. Some fragments of the books of Genesis and of Kings, passages of the prophets, written in the characters of that remote epoch, sufficiently indicate that those exiles transmitted to their children and propagated the revealed truth in that country. Confucius, the legislator of China, in his travels towards the west, derived from one of those colonies his ideas on the Supreme Being, whom he designates by the Hebrew name of Jehovah, scarcely altered, as Abel Rémusat tells us. At a later period the Persian reformer Zoroaster derived from the same source those flashes of truth which shine in the Zend-Avesta by the side of glimpses of primitive revelation. The Jews of the kingdom of Juda, grouped, on the contrary, in the centre of Chaldea, establish colonies at Sova, at Nahar, and in other places as far as the confines of the desert; and likewise at Teredon, at the confluence of the Tigris and the Euphrates; at Machusa, Annebar, Nisibis, and on the spot where later Bagdad shall rise. All these colonies, and many others, which after the restoration will still remain in those countries, will open schools to become centres of light to the heathens. That permanent contact with the Chaldeans shall allow the latter to recover a portion of the treasure of primitive truths which they had lost. Also do all agree in considering the Chaldeans as the men of antiquity the most conversant with theological science. Whilst the Jews of Israel are carrying their faith to the extremities of the vast empire, those of Juda, assisted by the translation of their sacred books into Chaldaic, diffuse it abundantly in the thickly-populated provinces of the centre. Assyria had fallen before the superior valor and military skill of the Persians. It was the time of the deliverance of the Jews. The most zealous among them availed themselves of the edict of Cyrus to return to Palestine and to rebuild the sacred places. But their destiny was not altered; they still went on fulfilling their sacred mission among the Gentiles. Under the Persian domination Hebrew princes tell the monarchs of Persia of the future divine Liberator, and these have sacrifices and prayers offered in the Temple at Jerusalem for the prosperity of their reign. Providence makes use of the high functions they exercise at the imperial court to lead those princes of Juda to Ecbatana, to Persepolis and Suza, that they might initiate the nobility of those important cities in the knowledge of the true God, to speak to them of the Messias whom the Magi shall from that time expect. Distinguished Jews are entrusted with the archives of Ecbatana. A great number of priests continue after the restoration to live among the Persians, and are disseminated all over the empire. They spread their traditions and their dogmas among the heathen populations. That sojourn of Jewish priests in the land of exile, after liberty had been restored to them, and when honors awaited them in their own country, evidently shows that it is the effect of a merciful design on the part of God, who devises means for those populations to receive the light of truth. Ochus, one of the last Persian monarchs, irritated against the children of Israel, sends a certain number of them in exile into Hyrcania and on to the shores of the Caspian Sea, and by this he unwittingly helps in spreading among those abandoned tribes the consoling promises of salvation; for those violent measures, as Hecatæus remarks in Josephus Against Apion, far from discouraging the Jews, serve to revive their patriotism, their attachment to the faith of their fathers, and their religious zeal.
If Asia, the land of great empires, was favored in a special manner, Africa was not forgotten. The Hebrews had long before initiated Egypt in the knowledge of the one true God and of a Redeemer whose birth in future ages had been revealed to it by Jacob in his last moments. This first initiation had produced its fruits; we know by the testimony of Holy Writ that when the Hebrews went out of Egypt a considerable number of Egyptians followed them in the desert. In the reign of Solomon a small Jewish colony followed the Queen of Saba to Abyssinia. According to Bruce, in his travels, not only do the kings of that country claim to descend from Solomon, but, furthermore, the annals of Abyssinia are full of details about the voyage which the Queen of Saba made to Judea. Ethiopia thus received the sacred books and the religion of the Israelites—a religion which they kept afterwards, as the Jewish Ethiopian treasurer of the Queen of Candace, whom St. Philip found reading Isaias and whom he converted to Christianity, seems to prove. At the time of the Assyrian wars and of the great captivity a number of Jews took refuge in Egypt. Some went to Abyssinia and other parts of Ethiopia, where they established powerful colonies by the side of those which already existed. At a later period Ptolemæus I. brought two hundred thousand Jews into Egypt, where they established in all directions colonies which soon became prosperous under the protection of his successors. Numerous schools for the propagation of sound doctrine; houses of prayer in cities; a Sanhedrim at Alexandria, the residence of learned Greeks; a temple near Bubaste, in which the ordinary sacrifices prescribed by the Mosaic law were offered—all contributed to make of Egypt a second native land for the Jews. The name of the Lord was publicly revered and the worship of the true God practised everywhere. The infidels had consequently full opportunity afforded them of knowing him and serving him; and Isaias affirms that, in fact, a great number embraced the true religion.
As the times approach for the coming of the Messias, the nation chosen to announce him to the world and to prepare his way multiplies its colonies and its schools. During the whole period of the Greek domination the Hebrews avail themselves of the protection accorded them by Alexander and his successors to extend in the east and west their beneficial influence, and spread their salutary doctrines, which shall predispose the Grecian mind to receive the light of the Gospel. We find them in Seleucia, at Ctesiphon, and at Chalcis, where St. Jerome subsequently repaired to take lessons in the Hebrew language; at Berea, where he met with Jews converted to Christianity. We find them at Antioch, where they shall soon suffer martyrdom for their faith; at Damascus, a city in which they are in continual intercourse with the Greeks who flock around the celebrated teachers of its schools; at Emesus, Nisibis, and Edessa. In the principal cities of Asia Minor: Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamus, Sardis, Philadelphia, Laodicea possess Jewish colonies. Delos, Miletus, Halicarnassus, Iconium have their synagogues. At Philippi, in Macedonia, there are houses of prayer for the Israelites. Athens, Corinth, Salamis, Paphos count such a considerable number of Jews mixed with their populations that, as it is stated in the Acts of the Apostles, synagogues are to be found in those places. Now, synagogues were not only used for prayer but also for the interpretation of the sacred books, and consequently as public chairs from which the revelation and hope of a divine Redeemer were announced to the inhabitants. The prophet Abdias tells us that after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans Jews had sought refuge in Sparta; and Arius, King of the Spartans, writes to the pontiff Onias that “it was found in writing concerning the Spartans and the Jews that they are brethren, and that they are of the stock of Abraham.”
During the period of the Roman domination Judea had colonies in all countries—in Parthia, among the Medes and Elamites, in Mesopotamia, Cappadocia, Pontus, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, Libya, Arabia, in the island of Crete, and at Rome. It is an opinion which found credit with several learned men that some Hebrews, at the time of the Assyrian invasions, came to Rome in the reign of Numa and suggested to him what is best in his laws; and, in fact, several of them seem to be modelled upon the Hebrew legislation. But it is certain that one hundred and forty years before Christ the Jews had erected public altars in Rome, and that a decree banished them from Italy; which is an indication that they must have been there in great numbers for a long time previous. In the days of the Machabees, when the Jewish nation, to use the expression of the Scriptures and of Cicero, was the friend of the Romans, the senate, at the solicitation of Jewish ambassadors, wrote letters in favor of the Jews of Lampsacus, Sparta, Delos, Myndos, Sicyonia; of those who inhabited Gortyna, Cnidis, Caria, Pamphylia, Lycia, Samos, Cos, Sidon, Rhodes, Avadon, the island of Cyprus, and Cyrene. No nation escaped the action of their zeal; and the Acts of the Apostles, enumerating the Hebrews assembled at Jerusalem on the occasion of the solemnity of Pentecost, tell us that “there were Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven.”