Between Heathenism and Christianity

PREFACE.

It is admitted by students of history of every shade of belief that the origin of Christianity and its rapid spread over the ancient world is the most remarkable fact in the recorded annals of the human race. When we remember that it was, from the first, more or less closely identified with the despised religion of the despised Jews; that largely for this reason it had to make its way against a united front, presented by the learned and intelligent in the whole gentile world, while the Jews themselves almost unanimously repudiated it; that the most efficiently organized government that had existed until then, was indifferent or hostile; that it set before the heathen world a condition of society in which all current economic ideas were transformed, and that it demanded a complete renunciation of its time-honored creeds, we may well ask in amazement, “How came these things to pass?”

Second in order among the great facts of ancient history is the growth of the Roman Empire. Here we see a people at first occupying a few square miles of territory, compelled for nearly fifteen generations to exert themselves to the utmost to keep their enemies at bay, suddenly bursting the barriers that confined them and in less than half this time bringing under their scepter almost the whole of the then known 

6

world. Rome’s conquests have been exceeded in rapidity, but they have never been equalled in permanence.

The triumphs of Christianity and those of Roman arms stand in a certain relation to each other, notwithstanding the fact that the latter were gained with material, the former with spiritual, weapons. When the conquests of the one were ended, the other began. When material forces had spent themselves, men began to turn, reluctantly indeed, to spiritual agencies and undertook to subdue the powers of darkness that had so long held sway in the human breast. While the arms of Rome were engaged in overcoming the martial opposition of her enemies, Greece was occupied with the effort to subjugate the passions of men by the weapons of the intellect. By the time Roman conquests had reached their limits it had been demonstrated that Greece, too, could go no farther. But Greece did not fail because there were no more worlds to conquer: it was because men had learned that her weapons were powerless to compass the end in view. “He that ruleth his own spirit is mightier than he that taketh a city,” was the lesson that the best of the Greek philosophers strove to impress upon men, but strove in vain.

It will always remain a matter of interest to study the intellectual sphere in which the old doctrines and the new faith conflict. What was the best that Greek thought had to offer to the world, and for what reasons did the world reject it?

7

In the following pages I have attempted to put before my readers a solution of some of the problems to which this question gives rise. No one will deny that Seneca stood on the threshold of Christianity, while in the opinion of many he had already passed within; yet all will admit that, at best, he fell far short of the standard Christianity sets up for its converts. Plutarch is not claimed by Christians, but he exemplifies many of their virtues, and commends many of the precepts they endeavored to put in practice. These two men best represent the strong and the weak points of characters formed under the stimulus of earnest effort to lead upright lives and to discharge faithfully their duties to themselves, their fellow men, and the higher power that controlled their destinies. I have selected a typical work from the writings of both as a nucleus around which to group such reflections and facts as seem best fitted to illustrate the environment in which they lived and the intellectual inheritance to which they had fallen heir, while I have allowed each to speak for himself on one of the profoundest problems that has ever engaged the serious attention of man.

Surely, it cannot be a merely accidental coincidence that a Greek at Delphi, a Roman in his adopted city, a Jew in Alexandria, and another Jew in Palestine, who had been converted to Christianity and had adopted the profession of a traveling evangelist, should at the same time, yet almost or quite independently of each other, maintain the doctrine of a 

8

divine Providence or preach a gospel that recognized it as a fundamental dogma. The treatise of Philo, though no longer extant in the original Greek, is more extensive than the tracts here brought together. The three united in a single volume would make a remarkable trinity in the history of human thought. The feeling was evidently widespread, both consciously and unconsciously, that God had never before been so near to men, though but a few had learned that the Word had become flesh and dwelt among them, full of grace and truth.

C. W. S.