We have seen Barnabas leaving Antioch in order to carry to the faithful at Jerusalem the contributions of their brethren in Syria, and arriving at Jerusalem in time to be present at several of the excitements occasioned there by the persecution of Herod Agrippa.[16.1] Let us now follow him again to Antioch, where, at this period, all the creative energy of the sect seems to have been concentrated.

Barnabas took back a zealous assistant, his cousin John-Mark, the disciple of Peter,[16.2] and the son of that Mary at whose house the chief apostle loved to stay. Doubtless in calling this new co-worker to his aid, he had already in view the great enterprise in which they were to embark. Perhaps he foresaw the disputes it would occasion, and was well pleased to engage in it one who was understood to be the right hand of Peter, whose influence in general matters was predominant.

The enterprise itself was no less than a series of great missions starting from Antioch and seeking the conversion of the world. Like all the great resolves of the early Church, this idea was ascribed to a direct inspiration of the Holy Ghost. A special call, a supernatural election, was believed to have been vouchsafed to the Church of Antioch while engaged in fasting and prayer. Perhaps one of the prophets of the Church, Menahem, or Lucius, uttered under the power of the gift of tongues the words intimating that Paul and Barnabas were predestined to this mission.[16.3] Paul was convinced that God had chosen him from his mother’s womb for this task, to which thenceforth he exclusively devoted himself.[16.4]

The two apostles took with them, as an assistant in the details of their enterprise, the John-Mark whom Barnabas had brought from Jerusalem.[16.5] When the preparations were completed, after fasting and prayer, and laying on of hands as a sign of the authority conferred by the Church itself on the apostles,[16.6] they were commended to the grace of God, and set out.[16.7] Whither they should journey, and what races they should evangelize, is what we are now to learn.

The early missions were all directed westward, or in other words adopted the Roman empire for their scene of operations. Excepting some small provinces between the Tigris and the Euphrates under the rule of the Arsacides, the Parthian countries received no Christian missions during the first century.[16.8] Until the reigns of the Sassanides, Christianity did not pass eastward beyond the Tigris. This important fact was due to two causes, the Mediterranean sea, and the Roman empire.

For a thousand years the Mediterranean had been the great pathway of ideas and civilizations. The Romans, in extirpating its pirates, had rendered it an unequalled method of intercourse. A numerous coasting-marine made it very easy to pass from point to point on the borders of this immense lake. The comparative safety of the imperial highways, the protection afforded by the civil authority, the diffusion of the Jews around the Mediterranean coasts, the spreading of the Greek language over their eastern portion,{16.9} and the unity of civilization, which first the Greeks, and then the Romans, had extended over those countries, all joined to make the map of the empire a map of the regions set apart for Christian missions, and destined to be Christianized. The Roman world became the Christian world, and in this sense the founders of the empire may be called the founders of the Christian monarchy. Every province conquered by the empire was a conquest for Christianity. Had the apostles been placed in presence of an independent Asia Minor; of a Greece or an Italy divided into a hundred little republics; of a Gaul, Spain, Africa; of Egypt with her ancient institutions—we cannot conceive of their succeeding, or even imagine that such a project could have been seriously formed. The unity of the empire was the preliminary condition of all great religious conversions which should transcend lines of nationality. This the empire saw clearly in the fourth century; it became Christian. It perceived that it had established Christianity without knowing it; a religion conterminous with the Roman territory, identified with the empire, and capable of inspiring it with new life. The Church, on the other hand, became entirely Roman, and has remained down to our own day as a fragment of the empire. Had any one told Paul that Claudius was his chief coÖperator, or Claudius that the Jew just setting out from Antioch was about to found the most enduring part of the imperial structure, both would have been much astonished. Nevertheless both sayings would have been true.

Syria was the first country out of Judea in which Christianity became naturally established. This was an evident result of the vicinity of Palestine and of the great number of Jews living in Syria.[16.10] The apostles visited Cyprus, Asia Minor, Macedonia, Greece, and Italy next in order, and only a few years after. Southern Gaul, Spain, and the coast of Africa, although made acquainted with the Gospel at an early period, may be considered as of a more recent epoch in the building up of the new faith.

It was the same with Egypt. Egypt plays hardly any part in the apostolic history, and the missionaries seem to have systematically passed it by. Although after the third century it was the scene of such momentous events in religious history, it was at first very backward in Christian progress. Apollos was the only teacher of Christianity who came from the Alexandrian school, and he learned it during his travels.[16.11] The cause of this remarkable fact will be found in the meagreness of the intercourse between the Egyptian and the Palestinian Jews; and above all in the circumstance that Jewish Egypt had a separate religious development in the teachings of Philo and the TherapeutÆ, which were its special Christianity, and which indisposed it to lend an attentive ear to any other.[16.12] As to heathen Egypt, her religious institutions were much more tenacious than those of Greco-Roman paganism.[16.13] The Egyptian idolatry was yet in full vigor. It was almost the epoch when the enormous temples of Esneh and Ombos were constructed, and when the hope of finding a last Ptolemy, a national Messiah in the little Cesarion, inspired the building of Dendera and Hermonthis, which will compare with the finest works of the Pharaohs. Christianity planted itself everywhere upon the ruins of national feeling and local worships. The degradation of mind in Egypt also made very rare those religious aspirations which opened so easy a road to Christianity in other regions.

A flash of light from Syria, illumining almost at once the three great peninsulas of Asia Minor, Greece, and Italy, and soon followed by a second, which extended over nearly the whole Mediterranean seaboard—such was the first apparition of Christianity. The course of the apostolic vessels was always much the same. The Christian preaching seems to have followed a road already laid out, and which is no other than that of the Jewish emigration. Like a contagion which, having its point of departure at the head of the Mediterranean, appears all at once at a number of separate points on the shore by a secret communication, Christianity had its points in a manner marked in advance. They were nearly all places where there existed colonies of Jews. The synagogue generally preceded the church. It was like a train of powder, or more correctly, an electric cord, along which the new idea ran with almost instantaneous rapidity.

During a century and a half Judaism, which had previously been confined to the East and to Egypt, had been spreading westward. Cyrene, Cyprus, Asia Minor, and certain cities of Macedonia, Greece, and Italy, contained large Jewish colonies.[16.14] The Jews first exemplified that species of patriotism which the Parsees, the Armenians, and in some degree the modern Greeks, have shown in later ages;—a patriotism of great warmth, though not attached to any particular locality; a patriotism of a nation of merchants wandering everywhere, and everywhere recognising each other as brothers; a patriotism which results in forming no great compact states, but small autonomic communities within other states. Closely associated among themselves, the dispersed Jews formed quasi-independent congregations within the cities, having their own magistrates and their own councils, some of whom were invested with powers approaching sovereignty itself. They dwelt in quarters by themselves, outside of the ordinary jurisdiction, despised by the other citizens, and happy enough at home. They were rather poor than rich. The epoch of the great Jewish fortunes had not yet arrived; they began in Spain under the Visigoths.[16.15] The monopoly of finance by the Jews resulted from the lack of administrative capacity in the barbarians, and from the hatred manifested by the Church against monetary science and her superficial notions about usury. Nothing of the kind occurred in the Roman empire. But when a Jew is not rich, he is poor; bourgeois comfort is not his forte. He is capable of enduring poverty; and he is still more capable of combining the fiercest religious energy with the rarest commercial skill. Theological eccentricities are not at all inconsistent with good sense in conducting business. In England, America, and Russia, the strangest sectaries, Irvingites, Latter-Day Saints, Raskolniks, are able business-men.

It has always been characteristic of unadulterated Jewish life to produce much gaiety and cordiality. In that little world of theirs they loved each other, they revered their common history, and their religious ceremonies mingled pleasantly with their daily existence. It was analogous to the separate communities which still exist in Turkish cities, such as the Greek, the Armenian, and the Hebrew quarters at Smyrna, where they are all acquainted, and live and intrigue together. In these little republics, religious affairs always control politics, or rather supply the want of the latter. Amongst them a heresy is an affair of state, and a schism always arises out of some personal difficulty. The Romans, with rare exceptions, never penetrated these secluded quarters. The synagogues published decrees, awarded honors, and acted like real municipalities.[16.16] Their influence was extreme. In Alexandria, it is predominant in all the internal history of the city.[16.17] At Rome the Jews were numerous{16.18} and constituted a body, the support of which was by no means to be despised. Cicero claims the credit of courage for having resisted some of their demands.[16.19] CÆsar protected them, and found them faithful.[16.20] Tiberius was obliged, in order to control them, to resort to the severest measures.[16.21] Caligula, whose reign was most calamitous to them in the East, allowed them freedom of association at Rome.[16.22] Claudius, who favored them in Judea, found it necessary to expel them from the city.[16.23] They were encountered everywhere,[16.24] and it was even said of them as of the Greeks, that when themselves subdued, they had succeeded in imposing laws on their conquerors.[16.25]

The feelings of the native population towards these foreigners were very diverse. On the one hand that strong sentiment of repulsion and antipathy which the Jews have invariably inspired where sufficiently numerous and organized, by their jealous love of isolation, their revengeful nature, and their exclusive habits, manifested itself with great force.[16.26] When they were free they were in fact a privileged class, for they enjoyed the advantages of society, without sustaining its burdens.[16.27] Charlatans took advantage of the curiosity inspired by their religious rites, and under pretence of exposing their secrets, acted all sorts of impostures.[16.28] Violent and semi-burlesque pamphlets, like that of Apion, nourished the pagan enmity, and were too often the sources whence the profane historians derived their information.[16.29] The Jews seem to have been generally sullen and full of complaints. They were looked upon as a secret society, malevolent towards others, the members of which were pledged to push forward their own interests at any cost, regardless of injury to their fellow-men.[16.30] Their singular customs, their aversion to certain kinds of food, their filth and unpleasant odor,[16.31] their religious scruples, their minute observances on the Sabbath, all appeared absurd and ridiculous.[16.32] Placed under a social ban, it was a natural consequence that they should care nothing about refined appearances. They were met everywhere travelling with garments shiny with dirt, with an awkward air, a weary mien, a cadaverous skin, and large, sunken eyes,[16.33] assuming a hypocritical and obsequious manner, and herding apart with their women and children, and their bundles and hamper, which composed their whole movable possessions.[16.34] In the towns they exercised the meanest trades; they were beggars,[16.35] rag-pickers, match-venders,[16.36] and small peddlers. Their history and their law were alike unjustly reviled. Sometimes they were called cruel and superstitious;[16.37][16.38] sometimes atheists and despisers of the gods.[16.39] Their hatred of images appeared purely impious. Above all, circumcision afforded a theme for endless raillery.[16.40]But such superficial estimates were not concurred in by every one. The Jews had as many friends as detractors. Their gravity and good morals, and the simplicity of their religion, were attractive to many persons, who recognised in them something superior. A vast monotheistic and Mosaic propaganda was organized,[16.41] as it were a powerful vortex around this singular race. The poor Jew peddler of the Transteverine,[16.42] setting out in the morning with his basket of small wares, often returned at evening enriched with alms from some pious hand.[16.43] Women in particular were attracted towards these ragged missionaries.[16.44] Juvenal enumerates their leaning towards the Jewish religion as one of the vices of the ladies of his time.[16.45] Those who were converted, gloried in the treasure they had found and the happiness they enjoyed.[16.46] The old Greek and Roman mind resisted stoutly; contempt and hatred of Jews were the sure emotions of cultivated intellects, such as Cicero, Horace, Seneca, Juvenal, Tacitus, Quintilian, and Suetonius.[16.47] On the other side, the enormous mass of mingled populations which had become subject to the empire and to whom the old Roman intellect and Greek learning were foreign or indifferent, gladly and spontaneously welcomed a community where they observed such touching examples of concord, charity, and mutual aid,[16.48] of content, industry,[16.49] and proud poverty. The institution of mendicity, which afterwards became entirely Christian, was at that time Jewish. The mendicant by profession, “formed to it by his mother,” presented himself to the minds of the poets of the day as a Jew.[16.50]

Exemption from some civil burdens, especially military duty, may also have contributed to cause the lot of the Jews to be regarded as desirable.[16.51] The State at that period demanded many sacrifices, and afforded few moral advantages or pleasures. It created an icy coldness as in a uniform and shelterless plain. Human life, which was so melancholy under the rule of paganism, regained its charm and its value in the mild atmospheres of the synagogue and the Church. There was little enough liberty there, it is true. The brethren watched each other and tormented each other unceasingly. But although the internal life of these communities was anything but tranquil, it was very enjoyable, and people did not abandon it; it had no apostates. The poor enjoyed content within its circle; and dwelling in the quiet of an untroubled conscience, regarded riches without envy.[16.52] The truly democratic idea of the folly of worldly things, and the vanity of riches and profane honors, was there completely embodied. They were but little acquainted with the pagan world, and judged it with intemperate severity. Roman civilization appeared to them a mass of hateful vices and iniquities,[16.53] just as an honest ouvrier of our day, imbued with socialistic declamation, pictures the “aristocrat” to himself in the blackest colors. But there was abundance of life, gaiety, and interest amongst these people, and is to this moment in the poorest synagogues of Poland and Galicia. Their lack of refinement and elegance in habits was compensated for by a warm family attachment and patriarchal hospitality. In high circles, on the contrary, egotism and self-seeking had arrived at their fullest growth.

The words of Zachariah were being verified, that men of all nations should “take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew” and cry, bring us to Jerusalem![16.54] There was not a large city where were not observed the Sabbath, the fast, and the other ceremonies of the Hebrew faith.[16.55] Josephus ventured to challenge all who doubted this to look around in their own neighborhood or even their own houses, and see if they would not find his assertion confirmed.[16.56] The residence at Rome and access to the emperor permitted to several members of the family of Herod, who performed their own rites openly, contributed much to the impunity enjoyed by their religion.[16.57] Besides, the Sabbath prevailed as it were of necessity in localities where Jews resided. Their persistence in keeping their shops closed on that day, forced many of their neighbors to modify their own habits accordingly. Thus at Salonica it may be said that the Sabbath is observed to this day, the Jewish population being rich and numerous enough to make the law, and by the cessation of their own business to prescribe a day of repose.

Almost as much as the Jew, and often in company with him, was the Syrian an active instrument in the conquest of the West by the East.[16.58] They were sometimes confounded together, and Cicero thought he had discovered their common trait when he called them “nations born to be slaves.”[16.59] It was that which insured to them the control of the future, for the future then belonged to the slaves of the earth. Not less characteristic of the Syrian, was his readiness, quickness, and the superficial clearness of his thought. The Syrian nature is like the passing imagery of the clouds. We see every moment certain outlines of graceful form, but they never become united into a complete design. In the darkness, by the flickering light of a lamp, the Syrian woman with her veil, her wistful eyes, and her infinite languor, causes a brief illusion. Afterwards, when we would analyse her beauty, it disappears; it cannot endure examination, and it lasts only three or four years. What is most charming in the Syrian race is the child of five or six years old, contrary to Greece, where the child was nothing, the youth inferior to the man, and the man to the ancient.[16.60] Syrian intelligence attracts us at first with its air of promptness and vivacity, but it lacks fixedness and solidity, something like that “golden wine” of Libanus which causes an agreeable excitement, but soon palls on the taste. The true gifts of God have something about them at once fine and strong, exciting and enduring. Greece is more appreciated to-day than ever before, and will be more and more continually.

Many of the Syrian emigrants who were attracted westward in the pursuit of fortune were more or less attached to Judaism. Others remained faithful to the worship of their own village,[16.61] that is, to the memory of some temple dedicated to a local “Jupiter”[16.62] who was ordinarily the Supreme Deity designated by some special title;[16.63] and they thus carried with them a kind of monotheism under the disguise of their strange divinities. At least in comparison with the perfectly distinct divine personalities of the Greek and Roman polytheism, the Syrian gods being mostly synonymes of the sun, were almost the brothers of the one Deity.[16.64] Like their long and enervating chants, these Syrian rites appeared less dry than the Latin and less empty than the Greek. The women acquired from them a mixture of ecstasy and voluptuousness. Those Syrian women were always strange creatures, disputed for by God and Satan, and oscillating between the saint and the demon. The saint of serious virtues, of heroic self-denial, of accomplished vows, belongs to other races and climes. The saint of vivid imaginings, of absolute entrancements, and of sudden devotion, is the saint of Syria. The demoniac of our Middle Age became the slave of Satan through baseness or crime; that of Syria was distracted by the ideal—the woman of wounded affections, who avenges herself by madness or refusal to speak,{16.65} and who needs only a gentle word and kind look to restore her. Transported to the western world, the Syrian women acquired influence, sometimes by evil feminine arts, but oftener by real capacity and moral superiority. This happened in a special degree about a hundred and fifty years later, when the most important personages of Rome married Syrian wives, who at once acquired a great ascendency over affairs. The Mussulman woman of the present time, a noisy scold and foolish fanatic, existing for scarce anything but evil, and almost incapable of virtue, ought not to make us forget such as Julia Domna, Julia MÆsa, Julia MamÆa, and Julia Soemia, who introduced into Rome a spirit of toleration and a mystical feeling in religion which were till then unknown. What is also well worthy of remark is, that the Syrian dynasty thus established was friendly to Christianity, and that MamÆa, and afterwards the Emperor Philip the Arabian,{16.66} passed for Christians. In the third and fourth centuries Christianity was the predominant religion of Syria, and next to Palestine, Syria played the greatest part in its establishment.

It was especially at Rome that the Syrian in the first century exercised his penetrating activity. Intrusted with almost every kind of ordinary duty, guide, messenger, and letter-bearer, the Syrus[16.67] was admitted everywhere, bringing with him the language and manners of his own land.[16.68] He possessed neither the pride nor the philosophic loftiness of Europeans, much less their bodily vigor. Of weak frame, pale and often feverish, and not knowing how to eat or sleep at stated hours, after the fashion of our slower races; consuming little meat, and subsisting on onions and pumpkins; sleeping little and uneasily—the Syrian was habitually ailing and died young.[16.69] What did belong to him was humility, mildness, affability, and good-nature; no solidity of mind, but much that was agreeable; little sound sense, unless in driving a bargain; but an astonishing warmth and zeal, and a truly feminine seductiveness. Having never exercised any political functions, he was specially apt for religious movements. The poor Maronite, effeminate, humble, and destitute, has brought about the greatest of revolutions. His ancestor, the Syrus of Rome, was the most zealous messenger of the good news to all afflicted souls. Every year colonies of Syrians arrived in Greece, Italy, and Gaul, impelled by their natural taste for trade and small employments.[16.70] They could be recognised on board of the vessels by their numerous families, by the troops of pretty children nearly alike in age, and the mother with the childish air of a girl of fourteen keeping close to her husband’s side, submissive and smiling, and scarcely superior to her oldest offspring.[16.71] The heads of this peaceful group are not very strongly marked. There is no Archimedes there, no Plato or Phidias. But this Syrian trader, now arrived at Rome, will be a kind and merciful man, charitable to his countrymen, and a friend to the poor. He will talk with the slaves, and reveal to them an asylum where those miserable beings, condemned by Roman severity to a most dreary solitude, may find some solace. The Greek and Latin races, made to be masters and to accomplish great actions, knew not how to make any advantage of an humble position.[16.72] The slave of those races passed his life in revolt and in plotting evil. The ideal slave of antiquity has every fault; he is gluttonous, mendacious, mischievous, and the natural enemy of his master.[16.73] He thus, as it were, proved his nobility of race; he was a constant protest against an unnatural position. The easy, good-natured Syrian did not trouble himself to protest; he accepted his degradation and sought to do the best he could with it. He conciliated the kind feelings of his master, ventured to converse with him, and studied how to please his mistress. This great agent of democracy was thus gnawing apart, mesh by mesh, the net of the ancient civilization. The old institutions based upon pride, inequality of races, and military valor, were lost. Weakness and humble condition were about to become advantageous, and helps to virtue.[16.74] The Roman nobility, the Greek wisdom, will struggle for three centuries more. Tacitus will approve the deportation of some thousands of these wretches—“small loss if they had perished!”[16.75] The Roman aristocracy will fret, will be provoked that this canaille should have its gods and institutions. But the victory is written in advance. The Syrian, the poor man who loves his fellows, who shares with them and associates with them, will carry the day. The Roman aristocracy must perish, and perish without pity.

To explain the revolution which is about to take place, we must take note of the political, social, moral, intellectual, and religious condition of the countries through which Jewish proselytism has thus opened furrows for the Christian preaching to sow the seed. Such an examination will show convincingly, I hope, that the conversion of the world to the Jewish and Christian ideas was inevitable, and will leave us astonished at only one thing—namely, that that conversion proceeded so slowly and commenced so late.