Such was the world which the Christian missionaries undertook to convert. It may now be readily perceived, it seems to me, that the enterprise was nothing impossible, and that its success was no miracle. The world was fermenting with moral longings to which the new religion answered admirably. Manners were losing their rudeness; a purer religion was looked for; and the notions of human rights and social improvement were everywhere gaining ground. On the other hand, credulity was extreme, and the number of educated persons very limited. To such a world, a few earnest apostles had only to present themselves, believing in one God and, as disciples of Jesus, imbued with the most beneficent moral doctrine the ears of men ever listened to, and they could not fail to be heard. The imaginary miracles which they mingled with their teaching would not hinder their success; for the number of those who would refuse to believe in the supernatural or miraculous was very small. If the apostles were humble and poor, so much the better. Humanity, in the condition it had then arrived at, could not be saved but by an effort springing from the masses. The ancient heathen religions were not susceptible of reform. The Roman state was what the state always will be—rigid, dry, and unyielding. In such a world perishing for want of love, the future is the property of him who can touch the living spring of popular devotion, to do which, Greek liberalism and the old Roman gravity were alike impotent.

The founding of Christianity is in this view the mightiest work which the men of the people have ever accomplished. At an early day, it is true, we find men and women of high rank at Rome joining themselves to the Church; and about the end of the first century, the examples of Flavius Clemens and Flavia Domitilla show that Christianity was penetrating almost within the palace of the CÆsars.[19.1] From the time of the first Antonines there were some rich men in the Christian communities; and near the close of the second century we find in them a few of the most distinguished persons of the empire.[19.2] But at the commencement, all or nearly all were of humble condition.[19.3] The noble and powerful of the earth were found in the earliest churches no more than in Galilee, following the footsteps of Jesus. Now in these great movements the beginning is the decisive moment. The glory of a religion belongs entirely to its founders. Religion, in fact, is an affair of faith, and to exercise faith is an easy thing; the master-work is to inspire it.

When we try to become acquainted with the marvellous origin of Christianity, we ordinarily regard matters by the standards of our own day, and are thus led into grave errors. The man of the people in the first century, especially in the Greek and Oriental countries, was in no wise similar to what he is amongst us, and at this day. Education had not then separated classes as widely as at present. The Mediterranean races, excepting the Latin tribes, which had lost all importance since the empire by the conquest of the world had become a mixture of vanquished nations, were less solid than moderns, and were more vivacious, excitable, imaginative, and quick of apprehension. The heavy materialism of our lower classes, and their apparent melancholy and dulness, which are in part the result of climate, and in part the sad legacy of the Dark Ages, and which stamp our poor with so distressful a physiognomy, did not operate upon the same classes in the early times. Although they were indeed very ignorant and credulous, they were not much more so than the rich and powerful of their day.

The establishment of Christianity cannot then be considered analogous to a popular movement in the present age, starting from the common people and at last commanding the assent of the educated class. This would with us be simply impossible. The founders of Christianity belonged to the common people in a certain sense, it is true. They were clothed in the same manner, lived poorly and frugally, and spoke without polish, or rather sought only to express their thoughts with energy. But they were inferior in intelligence to only a very small and constantly diminishing class of men, the survivors of the refined age of CÆsar and Augustus. In comparison with the philosophers who flourished from the time of Augustus to that of the Antonines, the first Christians were of course illiterate. In comparison with the great mass of their fellow-subjects, they were enlightened men. At times they were even looked on as free-thinkers, and the cry of the populace arose, “Down with the Atheists!”[19.4] This need not surprise us. The world was making startling progress in credulity. The two earliest strongholds of Gentile Christianity, Antioch and Ephesus, were of all the cities in the empire the most superstitious. The second and third centuries carried the love of the marvellous close to the borders of folly and madness.

Christianity arose outside of the official world, but not entirely beneath it. It was only in appearance, and as viewed according to worldly prejudices, that the disciples of Jesus were of an insignificant class. The worldling admires pride and strength, and wastes no affability on inferiors. Honor in his view consists in repelling insult. He despises the spirit which is meek, long-suffering, humble, which yields its cloak also, and turns its cheek to the smiter. He is wrong; the meekness which he disdains is the mark of a loftier soul than his own; and the highest virtues dwell more contentedly with those who obey and serve than with those who command and enjoy. And this accords with reason; for power and pleasure, so far from aiding us in the practice of virtue, are hindrances in the way.

Jesus knew well that the heart of the common people was the great reservoir of the self-devotion and resignation by which alone the world could be saved. Hence he called the poor blessed, deeming it easier for them to be good than for others. The primitive Christians were essentially “poor;” it was their rightful title.[19.5] Even if a Christian possessed riches in the second and third centuries, he was poor in spirit, and classed himself among the poor, and was saved from persecution by claiming the privilege of the law concerning the “collegia tenuiorum.”[19.6] It is true that all the Christians were not slaves or persons of low rank; but the social equivalent of a Christian was a slave, and the same terms were applied to both; while the cardinal virtues of the servile condition—gentleness, humility, and resignation—were aimed at by both alike. The heathen writers are unanimous on this point. All of them without exception recognise in the Christian the traits of servile character, such as indifference to public affairs, a subdued and melancholy air, a severe estimate of the vices of the age, and a settled aversion to the theatres, baths, gymnasia, and public games.[19.7]

In a word, the heathen were the world; the Christians were not of the world. They were a little flock apart, hated of the world, reproving its iniquities,[19.8] seeking to keep themselves “unspotted from the world.”[19.9] The ideal of the Christian was wholly opposed to that of the worldling.[19.10] The sincere Christian loved to be humble, and cultivated the virtues of the poor and simple and self-abasing. He had also the defects which accompany these virtues. He considered as vain and frivolous many things which are not so. He belittled the universe, looking on beauty and art with a hostile or contemptuous eye. A system under which the Venus of Milo is only a stone idol is erroneous, or at the least partial; for beauty is almost the equivalent of goodness and of truth. When such ideas prevailed, the decay of art was inevitable. The Christian set no store by architecture, sculpture, or painting; he was too much of an idealist. He cared little for the advancement of science, for it was to him nothing but idle curiosity. Confounding the higher enjoyments of the soul, by which we touch upon the infinite, with vulgar pleasures, he denied himself all amusement. He pushed his virtues to excess.

Another law demands our attention at this period, which will not fail to have its influence upon the history we are to recount. The establishment of Christianity corresponds in time with the suppression of political life in the Mediterranean world. The subjects of the imperial sway had ceased to have a country. If any one sentiment was wholly wanting in the founders of the Church, it was patriotism. They were not even cosmopolites, citizens of the world; for the planet was to them only a place of exile, and they were idealists in the most absolute sense. The country is a composite object; it has body and soul. The soul is its recollections, customs, legends, misfortunes, hopes, and common regrets; the body its soil, race, language, mountains, rivers, characteristic productions. But never were any people so regardless of all this as the primitive Christians. Judea could not retain their affection. A few years passed, and they had forgotten the walks of Galilee. The glories of Greece and Rome were foolishness to them. The regions in which Christianity first rooted itself—Syria, Cyprus, and Asia Minor—could not recall the period when they had been free. Greece and Rome still possessed much national pride. But at Rome the patriotism was hardly felt outside of the army and a few families; while in Greece, Christianity flourished only at Corinth, a city which, after its destruction by Mummius and its rebuilding by CÆsar, was a mixture of men from every land. The true Greek tribes were then, as now, very exclusive in their notions, absorbed in the memory of their past; and paid little heed to the new doctrine. They proved but half-way Christians. On the other hand, the gay, luxurious, and pleasure-loving inhabitants of Asia and Syria, accustomed to a life of enjoyment, of easy manners, and used to accept the customs and laws of every new conqueror, had nothing in the shape of national pride or cherished traditions to lose. The early centres of Christianity—Antioch, Ephesus, Thessalonica, Corinth, and Rome—were, if I may so express it, public cities; cities like modern Alexandria, whither all races gather, and where that union and tie of affection between the citizen and the soil which constitutes a nation, were entirely unknown.

The interest of the public in social questions is always in inverse ratio to its preoccupation with politics. Socialism advances when patriotism becomes weak. Christianity was an explosion of social and religious ideas which could not have had free scope until Augustus had suppressed political contests. It was destined, like Islamism, to become in essence an enemy of the tendency to separate nationality. Many ages and many schisms would be necessary before national established churches could be derived out of a religion which started with the negation of the idea of any earthly home or country; which arose at an epoch when the distinctive city and citizen of early Greece and Italy had ceased to exist; and when the stern and vigorous republican spirit of a former period had been carefully sifted out as deadly poison to the state.

Here then is one of the causes of the grandeur of the new religion. Humanity is diverse and changeable in feeling, and constantly agitated by contradictory desires. Great is the love of country and sacred are the heroes of Marathon, ThermopylÆ, Valmy, and Fleurus. One’s country, however, is not everything here below. Man is a man and a child of God before he is a Frenchman or a German. The kingdom of God, that eternal vision which cannot be torn out of the heart of man, is the protest of his nature against the exclusiveness of patriotism. The idea of a great and universal organization of the race to bring about its greatest welfare and its moral improvement, is both legitimate and Christian. The state knows and can know only one thing, the organization of self-interest. This is something, for self-interest is the strongest and most engrossing of human motives. But it is not enough. Governments founded on the theory that man is composed of selfish wants and desires alone, have proved greatly mistaken. Devotion is as natural as egotism to the race, and religion is organized devotion. Let none expect, then, to do without religion or religious associations. Every forward step of modern society will render the need of religion more imperious.

We can now see how these recitals of strange events may prove illustrative and instructive. We need not reject the lesson because of certain traits which the difference of times and manners has invested with an odd or unusual aspect. In regard to popular convictions, there is always an immense disproportion between the greatness of the ideal aimed at by the system of belief, and the trifling nature of the actual facts which have given rise to it. Hence the particularity with which religious history mingles common details and actions approaching folly with its most sublime events and doctrines. The monk who contrived the “holy vial” was one of the founders of the French monarchy. Who would not willingly efface from the life of Jesus the story of the demoniacs of Gadara? What man of cool blood and common sense would have acted like Francis of Assisi, Joan of Arc, Peter the Hermit, or Ignatius Loyola? Terms attributing folly or fanaticism to the actions of past ages must of necessity be deemed merely relative. If our ideas are to be taken as the standard, there was never a prophet, apostle, or saint, who ought not to have been confined as a lunatic. Conscience is very unstable in periods when reflection is not mature, and then good becomes evil, and evil good, by insensible stages. Unless we admit this, it is impossible to form a just estimate of the past. The same divine breath vitalizes all history and gives to it wonderful unity, but human faculties have produced an infinite variety of combinations. The apostles differed less in character from us than did the founders of Buddhism, although the latter were allied more nearly to us in language and probably in race. Our own age has witnessed religious movements quite as extraordinary as those of former times; movements attended with as much enthusiasm, which have already had in proportion more martyrs, and the future of which is still undetermined.

I do not refer to the Mormons, a sect in some respects so degraded and absurd that one hesitates to seriously consider it. There is much to suggest reflection, however, in seeing thousands of men of our own race living in the miraculous in the middle of the nineteenth century, and blindly believing in the wonders which they profess to have seen and touched. A literature has already arisen pretending to reconcile Mormonism and science. But, what is of more importance, this religion, founded upon silly impostures, has inspired prodigies of patience and self-denial. Five hundred years hence, learned professors will seek to prove its divine origin by the miracle of its establishment.

Bab-ism in Persia was a phenomenon much more astonishing.[19.11] A mild and unassuming man, in character and opinion a sort of pious and modest Spinoza, was suddenly and almost in spite of himself raised to the rank of a worker of miracles and a divine incarnation; and became the head of a numerous, ardent, and fanatical sect, which came near accomplishing a revolution like that of Mahomet. Thousands of martyrs rushed to death for him with joyful alacrity. The great butchery of his followers at Teheran was a scene perhaps unparalleled in history. “That day in the streets and bazaars of Teheran,” says an eye-witness, “the residents will never forget.[19.12] To this moment when it is talked of, the mingled wonder and horror which the citizens then experienced appears unabated by the lapse of years. They saw women and children walking forward between their executioners, with great gashes all over their bodies and burning matches thrust into the wounds. The victims were dragged along by ropes, and hurried on by strokes of the whip. Children and women went singing a verse to this effect, ‘Verily we came from God, and to him shall we return!’ Their shrill voices rose loud and clear in the profound silence of the multitude. If one of these poor wretches fell down, and the guards forced him up again with blows or bayonet-thrusts, as he staggered on with the blood trickling down every limb, he would spend his remaining energy in dancing and crying in an access of zeal, ‘Verily we are God's, and to him we return!’ Some of the children expired on the way. The executioners threw their corpses in front of their fathers and their sisters, who yet marched proudly on, giving hardly a second glance. At the place of execution life was offered them if they would abjure, but to no purpose. One of the condemned was informed that unless he recanted, the throats of his two sons should be cut upon his own bosom. The eldest of these little boys was fourteen years old, and they stood red with their own blood and with their flesh burned and blistered, calmly listening to the dialogue. The father, stretching himself upon the earth, answered that he was ready; and the oldest boy, eagerly claiming his birthright, asked to be murdered first.[19.13] At length all was over; night closed in upon heaps of mangled carcasses; the heads were suspended in bunches on the scaffold, and the dogs of the faubourgs gathered in troops from every side as darkness veiled the awful scene.”

This happened in 1852. In the reign of Chosroes Nouschirvan, the sect of Masdak was smothered in blood in the same way. Absolute devotion is to simple natures the most exquisite of enjoyments, and, in fact, a necessity. In the Bab persecution, people who had hardly joined the sect came and denounced themselves, that they might suffer with the rest. It is so sweet to mankind to suffer for something, that the allurement of martyrdom is itself often enough to inspire faith. A disciple who shared the tortures of Bab, hanging by his side on the ramparts of Tabriz and awaiting a lingering death, had only one word to say—“Master, have I done well?”

Those who regard as either miraculous or chimerical everything in history which transcends the ordinary calculations of common sense, will find such facts as these inexplicable. The fundamental condition of criticism is to be able to comprehend the diverse states of the human soul. Absolute faith is a thing entirely foreign to us. Beyond the positive sciences which possess a material certainty, all opinion is in our view only an approximation to the truth, and necessarily implies some error. The amount of error may be as small as you please, but is never zero in regard to moral subjects. Such is not the method of narrow and bigoted minds, like the Oriental for example. The mental vision of those races is not like ours; theirs is dull and fixed like the enamelled eyes of figures in mosaic. They see only one thing at a time, and that takes entire possession of them. They are not their own masters whether to believe or not. There is no room for an after-thought with them. People who embrace an opinion after this fashion will die for it. The martyr is in religion what the partisan is in politics. There have not been many very intelligent martyrs. The Christians who confessed their faith under Diocletian, would have been, after peace was gained for the Church, rather unpleasant and impracticable personages. One is never very tolerant when he believes himself entirely in the right, and his opponents entirely in the wrong.

Great religious movements, being thus the results of a confined method of viewing moral subjects, are enigmas to an age like the present, in which the strength of conviction is enfeebled. Among us, the man of sincerity is continually modifying his opinions, because both the world around him and his own nature are changing. We believe in many things at once. We love justice and the truth, and would expose our lives in their cause; but we do not admit that justice and truth can be the peculiar property of any sect or party. We are good Frenchmen, but we confess that the Germans and the English excel us in many respects. Not so in epochs and countries where every man belongs with his whole nature to his own community, race, or school of politics. Hence all the great religious developments have occurred in states of society when the general mind was more or less analogous to the oriental. In fact, it is only absolute faith that has hitherto succeeded in conquering souls. A pious servant-girl of Lyons named Blandina, who suffered for her religion 1700 years ago; a rough chieftain, Clovis, who saw fit some fourteen centuries back to embrace Catholicism—are still giving law to us.

Who is there who has not at some time while wandering through our old cities, now so rapidly being modernized, paused at the foot of one of the gigantic monuments of the faith of the Middle Age! Everything around is becoming new; not a vestige of ancient customs remains; the cathedral alone stands, a little lowered perhaps by men’s violence, but firmly rooted in the soil. Mole sua stat! Its strength is its right. It has withstood the flood which has washed away its surroundings. Not one of the men of old, should here visit the spots which once knew him, could find his former home. Of all the dwellers there, the rooks alone who built their nests in the lofty niches of the consecrated edifice, have never seen the hammer of destruction raised against their abode. Strange destiny! Those simple martyrs, those rude converts, those pirate church-builders, rule us still. We are Christians because it pleased them to be so. As in politics, it is only systems founded by barbarians which have endured; so in religion it is only the spontaneous, and, if I may so express it, fanatical movements, which are contagious. Their success depends not on the more or less satisfactory proofs they furnish of their divine origin, but is proportioned to what they have to say to the hearts of the people.

Are we then to conclude that religion is destined gradually to die away like the popular fallacies concerning magic, sorcery, and ghosts? By no means. Religion is not a popular fallacy; it is a great intuitive truth, felt and expressed by the people. All the symbols which serve to give shape to the religious sentiment are imperfect, and their fate is to be one after another rejected. But nothing is more remote from the truth than the dream of those who seek to imagine a perfected humanity without religion. The contrary idea is the truth. The Chinese, a very inferior branch of humanity, have hardly any religious sentiment. But if we suppose a planet inhabited by a race whose intellectual, moral, and physical force were the double of our own, that race would be at least twice as religious as we. I say “at least,” for it is likely that the religious sentiment would increase more rapidly than the intellectual capacity, and not in merely direct proportion. Let us suppose a humanity ten times as powerful as we are; it would be infinitely more religious. It is even probable that at this degree of sublime elevation, being freed from material cares and egotism, endowed with perfect judgment and appreciation, and perceiving clearly the baseness and nothingness of all that is not true, good, or beautiful, man would be wholly a religious being, and would spend his days in ceaseless adoration, passing from ecstasy to ecstasy of religious rapture, and living and dying in the loftiest delight of the soul. Egotism is the measure of inferiority, and decreases as we recede from the animal nature. A perfected being would no longer be selfish, but purely religious. The progress of humanity, then, cannot destroy or weaken religion, but will develop and increase it.

But it is time that we return to the three missionaries, Paul, Barnabas, and Mark, whom we left as they sallied forth from Antioch by the Seleucian gate. In my third book I shall attempt to trace the footsteps of these messengers of good report, by land and sea, in calm and storm, through good and evil days. I long to recount that unequalled epic; to depict those tossing waves so often traversed, and those endless journeyings in Asia and Europe, during which the Gospel-seed was sown. The great Christian Odyssey begins. Already the apostolic bark has spread its sails, and the freshening breeze rejoices to bear upon its wings the words of Jesus.

FINIS.