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WEEK-DAY SCHOOL SERIES GEORGE HERBERT BETTS, Editor
THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY
BY
PAUL HUTCHINSON
THE ABINGDON PRESS
NEW YORK CINCINNATI
Cop3n-ight, 1922, by
PAUL HUTCHINSON
All Rights Reserved
Printed in the United States of America
To LYNN HAROLD HOUGH
AT WHOSE TOUCH
THE PAST SPRINGS TO LIFE THE PRESENT TAKES MEANING AND THE FUTURE BECKONS
CHAPTER
11.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
VIII.
IX.
X.
XI.
XII.
XIII.
XIV.
XV.
XVI.
XVII.
XVIII.
XIX.
XX.
XXI.
XXII.
XXIII.
XXIV.
XXV.
XXVI.
XXVII.
XXVIII.
XXIX.
XXX.
XXXI.
XXXII.
CONTENTS
PAGE
Preface 5
The Christian Message in the Mediterranean World 7
Christianity Faces the Danger of Success 16
The Break-Up of the Roman Empire 24
The Winning of Northern Europe 33
The Popes Come to Power 42
The Later Church in the East 51
Christianity's Greatest Rival 60
The Church Goes to War 69
Life and Worship in the Medi/EVAL Church .... 77
Church and State 85
The Dawn of a New Age 94
New Channels for Christianity's Spread 102
The Roman Theory of the Church Challenged iio
Catholicism Enters New Worlds 120
Who Was to Spread Christianity? 129
Geneva — A City for God 137
The Reformation in England and Scotland .... 146
Early Missionaries in the Americas 156
Protestantism Faces the Wider World 164
Methodism Brings New Energy 172
Spreading Religion in America 180
Christianity in Modern India 188
China and Christianity 197
The Approach to Islam 205
The Cross in the Japanese Empire 213
In the Dark Continent 221
Religion in Latin-America 229
Other Fields for Christianity's Advance 237
The American Churches 244
Modern Catholicism 252
How Christianity is Spread 260
Christianity To-day and To-morrow 267
Aids in the Study of This Book 275
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS The Extent of Christianity About 600 a. d Frontispiece
FACING PAGE
The Church in the Life of Mediaeval Europe 82
Jerusalem, the Center of the Universe 104
Luther Before the Diet at Worms 117
Wesley Preaching in Wales 176
India's Response to the Gospel 193
The Challenge of Mohammedanism to Christianity 209
The Extent of Christianity, 1920 a. d 269
PREFACE
Of the making of church histories there seems to be no end, nor of the discovery of new facts that have a bearing on the story. The only reason for a new text, in view of the adequate volumes that already exist, is the hope of winning the interest of a new group — in this case, pupils in the eleventh grade of the American school.
In writing for this group (which is generally found in the sophomore or junior years of the high school) no effort has been made to mention all the facts, or even all the names, that must be included in any complete record of the Christian enterprise. It is conceivable that some church historians, chancing on this book, might be overwhelmed by its omissions. To any such it can only be said that the omissions have been deliberate.
The attempt has been to throw into bold relief the significant developments in Christian history since the days of Constantine. Christianity as a growing power is the theme, with the hope that young Christians may find some pride in belonging to a body that, with all its long traditions, lives ever on the move. Likewise, the spread of Christianity has been presented, not as some unique phenomenon in a water-tight compartment of its own, but as an integral part of the movement of all history. The repetition of much that is included in the usual school course seems justified if this branch of history is to be seen in its proper frame.
In every case the publishers named in the footnotes
5
6 PREFACE
have generously granted permission to quote from the books mentioned.
The cooperation of the editors and publishers of the Abingdon Series of Week-Day Religious Education Texts is gratefully acknowledged.
Teachers of this course will find added material and suggested methods of approach and treatment in the Teacher's Manual soon to follow this text.
So the book goes forth, with all its shortcomings. May these not mar for any the challenge of the Chris- tian adventure, hard-bound toward the establishment of a universal kingdom. For there is ever a place for any youth that would share in that high endeavor.
The Author.
CHAPTER I
THE CHRISTIAN MESSAGE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD
From its birth Christianity has prospered as it has traveled. The days of its missionary vigor have been the days of its greatest power. Ahnost the last authen- tic echo from the life of its Founder centers about the imperative "Go!" and it has seemed as though the destiny of the gospel were bound up with the degree of fidelity that the church has shown that command.
It is our purpose to trace the process by which Chris- tianity developed from a small sect within the Jewish faith to a religion spread throughout the continents. We will not find a story of unimpeded advance. We will encounter defeats, retreats, and — what is perhaps worse — periods of self-centered stupor. But we will find, after twenty centuries, a vast body of believers and multiplying agencies, inspired by common ideals, owning allegiance to a common Lord, and moving ever toward distant horizons.
The Christian Message Enters the World
What is the Christian message? — Christianity has spread because it has brought men such a message as they have heard nowhere else. For that reason it is well for us to ask, as a foundation for our study, what the Christian message is.
It was first given form by Jesus, a member of the Hebrew tribe of Judah, who came from the town
7
8 THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY
of Nazareth, preaching throughout Judasa during the early years of the Roman Empire. Jesus followed in the line of the Hebrew prophets, proclaiming the neces- sity for inner righteousness that should express itself in a life able to stand the most searching ethical tests. He found the impulse for such a life in the realization of the character of God, whom he spoke of as always actuated by motives of love and good will, and directly interested in the spiritual welfare of every human being. His conception of God was epitomized in the term by which he habitually spoke of the Deity, a term that has become characteristic of Christian devo- tion: "the heavenly Father."
Jesus taught that the heavenly Father is seeking a regenerated human society, to which he gives the name of "the kingdom of God," or "the kingdom of heaven," and conceived it as distinctively his mission to lead men into the understanding of God that he himself possessed, and so into membership in this kingdom. Such relationship with God, Jesus prom- ised, would result in transformation of life, both in- wardly and outwardly, and ultimately in transformation of all human society.
After a brief career as a teacher Jesus came into conflict with the conservative religious forces of his own nation. To some extent the universality of his outlook brought this to pass; to some extent his claim to possession of unique spiritual truth outside the bounds of the established church. The Roman adminis- tration of Palestine was induced to regard the teacher from Nazareth as a disturber of the pubhc order, and he was crucified.
The message of Jesus begins to spread. — The execution of Jesus was one more instance of the answer
THE CHRISTIAN MESSAGE 9
that authority is generally moved to make to agitation. In this case, however, the application of force failed to put an end to the new ideas that had come out of Galilee, Declaring that they had knowledge that Jesus had risen from the dead, as an evidence of the truth of his teaching and the validity of his claim to be the Messiah (or, in Greek, the Christ), the group of followers who had formed about Jesus by the time of his death formed a band within the Jewish church marked by evangelistic fervor and philanthropic effort.
There must have been about a hundred in this group of original disciples, among whom the eleven who had been most intimately in association with Jesus naturally took the leadership. Among these apostles, as they are known to history, Peter stood out at the beginning by reason of the boldness of his preaching, which led to great additions to the community of believers at Pentecost and after.
Within a few months or years (it is difficult to determine the precise chronology of this portion of the story), this group had grown to such size, and had so disturbed the conservative elements within the Jewish Church by the radicalism of its teaching, that it was practically forced to separate places and forms of worship, and was subjected to persecution. This persecution drove out of Jerusalem many of the pro- fessed believers in Christ, and these, in the language of the New Testament, "went everywhere (through Palestine) preaching the word." Thus began the diffusion of the Christian message.
The first approach to the Gentile world. — Some of the more adventurous of these refugees from Jerusalem, or those who had relatives in the Jewish quarters of Gentile cities, pushed beyond the borders of Palestine.
lo THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY
The first contact with this vast Gentile life came within Palestine itself, when a Roman centurion, already in some touch with the Jewish faith, received baptism at the hand of Peter. This apostle thus became the champion of the element that opposed the poUcy of restricting the Christian message to the Hebrews. Others followed his lead, and soon there were followers of Jesus banded together in many of the great cities of Asia Minor. Of these the most important was Antioch, the great trade center of the eastern part of the Roman Empire. Here a remarkable group was gathered in the infant church, and here the necessity for some distinguishing name first resulted in the appli- cation of the term "Christian."
These Christians in Antioch were largely Jews who possessed the cultural advantages of that Greek civil- ization that had been so determinedly repulsed from Palestine. They felt the urge of all the lands bordering the Mediterranean, and it was not long before two of their leaders had been sent to bear the Christian message to their brethren in the other cities of the Dispersion.
Paul takes the gospel to Rome.— The larger part of the book of Acts deals with the labors of the greater of these two Antiochan missionaries. This was Saul, a native of Tarsus, who soon, in his wanderings about the Roman world, became known as Paul.
Paul combined with a thorough grounding in Jewish theology the outlook of a Roman citizen and the cul- ture of a home in a Greek city. As a result, when he turned to Christianity he was fitted to give the new faith its first formulated doctrine, and to respond to the inherent internationalism of the teaching of Jesus.
So it was that, from the day when he left Antioch
THE CHRISTIAN MESSAGE ii
upon the first of his three great missionary journeys, Paul felt the call of his world so compellingly that before he suffered martyrdom he had seen the Chris- tian message carried to the Roman provinces of Asia Minor, to the leading cities of Greece, to islands such as Cyprus and Crete, to imperial Rome and minor cities of Italy, and perhaps even to Spain.
At the beginning of his ministry Paul confined his labors to the Jews found in the cities he visited. These provided a natural constituency in which to preach of one who claimed to be the Jewish Messiah. But when the Jews refused to accept his gospel, Paul did not hesitate to extend his invitation to the Gentiles.
After a brief but intense struggle he won the church to support of his position. When he died he left Chris- tianity planted in the capital of the world of that day, and committed to a pohcy of universalism. So influ- ential, in fact, had he been in rescuing the new faith from the parochiahsm threatened by its Jewish ante- cedents, that some have claimed that Paul, rather than Jesus, should be regarded as the founder.
The Struggle for the Mediterranean
In the early Christian writings that form the New Testament, frequent references will be found to the proposed extension of the gospel throughout "the world." It is doubtful if the first-century writers employed that term in the same sense in which it would be used to-day. Geography was a very restricted science in those days. In fact, compared with our present geographical knowledge, it remained restricted for fifteen hundred years after the days of Saint Paul.
The world of the early Christians. — The world that the New Testament writers knew, and of which they
12 THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY
thought when they employed the term, was practically coextensive with the Roman Empire. The first phase of Christian history, therefore, consisted of the effort to evangehze this world. As wiU be seen by a glance at any map, the Roman Empire was composed largely of the lands that bordered the Mediterranean Sea. To be sure, the imperial eagles were carried to Gaul, Germany, and Britain. But control in these provinces was always disputed. Roman civilization really gripped only the lands about the Mediterranean.
The story of the first three hundred years of Chris- tianity concerned the penetration of these lands by the gospel. It has been told in detail in another volume in this series.^ Here it is sufficient to say that the campaign Saint Paul launched continued with increasing power, despite severe repressive measures, until Constantine, the greatest of the emperors to make his capital in the city named after him, Constantinople, placed the sign of the cross upon his imperial banners and gave Christianity legal standing as a permitted, and even favored, religion.
On his death-bed, Constantine was baptized. The year 313 is generally remembered as the year in which Christianity won its struggle for dominance in the Roman Empire, for it was in that year that the Edict of Milan, granting toleration, was signed.
Early Christian worship. — When Justin Martyr wrote his Apology, in the middle of the second century, Christian worship as he described it was a very simple thing: "On Sunday a meeting is held of all who live in the cities and villages, and a section is read from the memoirs of the Apostles and the writings of the Prophets, as long as the time per-
'See The Early Days of Christianity, The Abingdon Press, by Frederick C. Grant.
THE CHRISTIAN MESSAGE 13
mits. When the reading has finished, the president, in a discourse (or homily) gives the admonition and exhortation to imitate these noble things. After this we all arise and offer a common prayer. At the close of the prayer, as we have before described, bread and wine and water are brought. The president offers prayer and thanks for them according to his ability, and the congregation answers, 'Amen.' Then the con- secrated elements are distributed to each one and partaken of, and are carried by the deacons to the houses of the absent. The wealthy and the willing then give contributions according to their free will; and this collection is deposited with the president, who therewith supplies orphans and widows, the poor and needy, prisoners and strangers, and takes care of all who are in want."
The development of a church organization. — While the Christian message was thus sweeping around the Mediterranean, and even penetrating into Meso- potamia, Persia, Media, Parthia, Bactria, and Britain, the church itself was developing from the group of single-minded enthusiasts, with a simple, direct form of worship, to a complex organization, with symbolic and sometimes even secret rites. In part this came from a desire to protect the precious elements in the Christian faith from unworthy outside influences; in part it was the effect of those influences, particularly of the elab- orate rituals of worship that marked the many mystery religions then competing for prominence in the Roman world.
Various views have been advanced as to the precise manner in which this development from the simplicity of apostolic days to the intricacies of the established church of Constantine's empire took place. It is
14 THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY
sufficient for our purpose to remember that "very early in their existence the churches required for their spiritual life certain officers. Thus overseers and teachers were needed at once and they appeared as bishops, or presbyters, or pastors. The care of the poor and the proper distribution of alms led to the appointment of deacons. Very soon, therefore, the two great offices of the early church — the pastorate and the diaconate — were fixed. . . . The very ablest became the leader among his equals, and gradually combined several functions in himself, and if his ability sustained him, he became the chief source of power and influence in the community. . . .
"Towns became centers varying in their influence according to their size, the degree of their culture, their historical position, and their geographical situation. Questions too difficult or of too general interest to be settled by local communities were carried up to synods composed of representatives of all the communities, and usually the ablest man presided at the sessions of the synod. In the course of this process gradually and naturally each member seemed to fall into his proper place. The clergy and laity are separated, and ecclesi- astical orders arise. "^
By the reign of Constantine this development had reached the point where the chief pastors of the churches in important cities were regarded as bishops, where the bishops in such cities as Antioch, Alexandria, and Rome had won recognition as archbishops, or metropolitans, and where an extended and standardized form of wor- ship and church life had won acceptance.
A lofty claim. — What, then, was the condition of the Christian Church at the beginning of our period of
1 Moncrief : A Short History of the Christian Church, F. H. Revell Co., pp. 49, 70.
THE CHRISTIAN MESSAGE 15
study? Justin could claim that "There is not a single j race of human beings, barbarians, Greeks, or whatever I name you please to call them, nomads or vagrants, or herdsmen living in tents, where prayers in the name of Jesus the crucified are not offered up." We know within what narrow geographical limits the early Chris- tian writers were thinking when they made such state- ments, but it is clear that by the opening of the fourth century, Christianity had spread from an incon- siderable group of enthusiasts within the Jewish religion to a highly organized system of worship and doctrine that had penetrated throughout the Roman Empire, and could even require the approval of Constantine on the throne.
Suggestions for Discussion
1. From what other religion did Christianity emerge, and what were its points of likeness to the parent faith?
2. What, in the minds of his fellow countrymen, was regarded as new in the teaching of Jesus?
3. What evidences can be shown of the statesmanship of Saint Paul?
4. Was the spread of Christianity hastened or de- layed by the presence of Jewish communities in the cities of the Roman Empire? by the strong government of Rome? by the widespread use of Greek?
5. To what extent had Christianity conquered the world by the opening of the fourth century?
6. What was the worship and organization of the Christian Church like in the days of Constantine?
CHAPTER II
CHRISTIANITY FACES THE DANGER OF SUCCESS
"Nothing succeeds like success!" quotes one man. "Perhaps; but nothing is as dangerous as success," maintains another, with a clearer view of the lessons of history.
With the signing of the imperial edict granting toleration, Christianity entered upon a new phase. Gone were the days when meetings had to be held in secret places; gone was the menace of persecution and martyrdom. But in place of those dangers there arose others, more subtle, yet more destructive. Christianity was struggling with these inner perils all through the fourth century.
Christianity a Favored Religion
Constantine the Christian.— Although Constantine granted the Christian Church full rights in 313, and became a candidate for membership in the church about the time he founded his capital at Constantinople, he was not actually baptized until the year of his death, 337. However, Christianity was clearly the favored religion of the court throughout his reign. Although he re- tained the title of pontifex maximus, or high priest of the old pagan worship of Rome, Constantine allowed only Christian worship at Constantinople and built many churches in various parts of his empire. Also, as we shall see, he frequently exercised the imperial powers within the affairs of the church.
16
THE DANGER OF SUCCESS 17
Why did Constantinc thus favor Christianity, break- ing with the pohcy of all the emperors who had gone before him? The story of his battle at the Milvian Bridge, when he adopted the sign of the cross, is famiMar.^ But why was he ready to adopt that sign?
We discover the answer to that question when we remember that Constantine came from the extreme western part of the Roman Empire to the rule of the whole. He felt that Rome was too far from the center to make a proper capital, and so built a new imperial city where Europe and Asia met. He felt the pressure being exerted upon the empire from with- out by barbarian tribes, and he saw the disintegration that soft living and loose thinking were bringing within. He realized that some unifying principle must be found if this huge empire was to be held together much longer, and that this principle must be moral if it was to purge the life of his realm of its inner rottenness. For this reason he embraced the religion that had shown its power to mold lives in every part of the empire. Con- stantine's conversion, if such it can be called, was a piece of statesmanship of the highest order.
Baptized pagans.— The effect of the Emperor's con- version was seen immediately throughout the empire. For one thing, it became fashionable to be a Christian. Baptism became, not the outward sign of an inner spiritual experience, but a means to imperial favor. Thousands rushed to enter the Christian fold.
Probably there were bishops and presbyters who saw in this great ingathering the fulfillment of early Christian prophecies of a time when the worship of Jesus should be universal. If they had not been dazzled by appearances, they would have been frightened
'See, for example, SchafE's History of the Christian Church, ii, 2o5.
i8 THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY
rather than have rejoiced. For these new church members were only so many baptized pagans, who brought with them to the fellowship of the church all their old debauchery, worldliness, and an utter lack of any appreciation of the meaning of the message or life of Jesus. Far from being a blessing, the addition of these unspiritualized thousands must be regarded as a major cause of the stagnation that settled upon the church, and remained during the centuries we know as the Dark Ages.
The Church as a Political Instrument
The "catholic" church idea favored. — Constantine, as we have seen, saw in Christianity a unifying force to tie his scattered realms together. But this required that the church itself be a unit. And the Emperor had not gone far in his relations with the new religion before he found that this was far from the case.
It is not our purpose here to go into the details of the struggles over doctrinal points that were to furnish so much of the history of the church during ensuing centuries. Our course is concerned with the spread of Christianity, and Christianity has done little spread- ing while all its energies have been devoted to theolog- ical disputations. But we can see, here in the reign of Constantine, the beginning of the struggle between "catholic" and "heretic" that was to result in wars, exiles, and executions, and the branching out of Chris- tian truth (and sometimes error) in unexpected ways and to unexpected places.
The idea of a "catholic" church came to the fore as Christianity pressed toward power in the third century. The name, which means all-embracing, defines the theory. It was precisely such a conception as
THE DANGER OF SUCCESS 19
Constantine was seeking. It meant to bind all congre- gations in all lands into one body, acknowledging the authority of one statement of truth, and excluding from the fellowship and privileges of true Christians all who might, in any detail, differ from this statement.
The Emperor was quick to make these privileges of the "catholic" church worth considering. For not only were great churches built and the basilicas (build- ings something akin to a courthouse) of the Roman cities turned over to the Christian congregations, but the clergy were exempted from certain taxes, were permitted to receive bequests, were given certain judicial powers, and were licensed to harry to the point of death any heretics who taught in disagreement to the accepted, or orthodox, doctrine.
Catholic versus heretic. — It is interesting to see how Constantine, in his effort to weld the empire through a catholic church, brought on the first clear-cut division between orthodoxy and heresy. About the year 320 reports were brought to the Emperor of an uproar that was being fomented in and about the city of Alex- andria by a dispute between the bishop Alexander and one of the clergy, Anus. Alexander found a champion in a young priest, Athanasius, and he waged wordy warfare for years with Arius over the question as to whether the Father and the Son in the Christian Trinity were identical in nature, or whether the Father had created the Son, thus making the latter subordinate to the former. It was really, as can be seen, a struggle to define the place of Jesus in Christian thinking, and the controversy soon raged throughout all the eastern half of the empire.
Constantine was no theologian. He did not sense the gravity of the issues at stake. It seemed to him
20 THE SPREAD OR CHRISTIANITY
that a word from the throne ought to be sufficient to stop all this uproar, and accordingly he wrote Bishop Alexander as follows: "There is a new discord. And there is no real ground for it. The subjects in dispute are trivial. I offer myself as an arbiter. ... It is a pity that the question was ever raised. No Christianity requires the investigation of such subjects; they arise from the disputatious cavils of ill-employed leisure. Few can understand these difficult matters in which there ought to be mutual tolerance. In reality you are agreed. Return to your former charity and restore to me my quiet days and tranquil nights, or you will force me to weep and to despair of any personal peace."^
A Christian creed adopted. — Unfortunately for Constantine's sleep, it took more than an imperial letter to end this debate. A church gathering in Alex- andria condemned Arius, and denied him the right to preach his doctrines in the churches. So he took to the open air, set his ideas to music, and soon had the streets and markets resounding with popular songs setting forth his position.
Finally Constantine determined to end it all by gathering the bishops of the church in a general council that was held at Nicea, about twenty-five miles from his capital. We cannot describe this gathering in detail, although it must have been one of the most remarkable in Christian history. An early Christian historian, Eusebius, tells how the three hundred and eighteen bishops, all but ten of whom were from the eastern part of the empire, came with their attendants as fast as they could run, in a frenzy of excitement and enthusiasm. And another sketches them: ''The old and the young, the learned and the unlearned —
>From Socrates, Ecclesiaslical History, quoted by Moncrief, op. cit.
THE DANGER OF SUCCESS 21
from city, from forest and from caves in the mountains. Many of them came bearing the marks of Diocletian's persecution, with eyeless sockets, scarred faces, twisted and withered limbs, and paralyzed hands. "^
Under the presidency of an emperor who was not yet even a baptized Christian, and certainly knew but little of the issues at stake, this gathering proceeded, after long debate, to condemn the Arian position, and to draw up the first generally accepted Christian creed.
Not as a complete or final statement of Christian teaching, but as a first attempt at such a statement, it is interesting to study what those three hundred and eighteen bishops of the fourth century (some of them with mental reservations) signed as embodying their creed :
We believe in one God the Father, Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible; and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father, only begotten, that is, of the substance of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, very God from very God, begotten not made, of the same substance with the Father, through whom all things were made, who for us men and our salvation, came down and was incarnate, and became man, suffered and rose again the third day, ascended to heaven and will come to judge the living and the dead; and in the Holy Ghost.
Those who say that there was when He was not, and that He was made from things that are not or from another substance or nature, saying that the Son of God is changed or changeable, the Holy, Catholic and Apostolic church anathematizes.
Christianity Outside the Roman Empire
Missionary effort by heretics. — One unexpected result of this Council of Nicea, which placed the curse
'Moncrief, Op. cit., p. 134.
22 THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY
of the orthodox church on the followers of Anus, was the beginning of missionary work among the barbarian tribes of central and northern Europe who were so soon to overwhelm the western part of the Roman Empire.
Thrust out of the churches where the authority of the Emperor was supreme, the Arians went preaching along the northern shores of the Black Sea, where some were captured by Goths. These, under the leadership of a missionary named Ulfilas, were con- verted to an Arian form of Christianity, and later from the Goths the gospel, in this form, spread to the Vandals. So it happened that when these peoples swept down over the cities of Italy, they came not as utter bar- barians, but as Christians, the shortcomings of whose practice was probably of less detriment to their faith than the degenerate supineness of the Christians they conquered.
Before the end of the fifth century Christianity had reached the Franks, that race destined to decide the fate of Europe. But it was Catholic Christianity that won the Franks, and so, finally, overcame the Arian influence among Goths and Vandals.
The last effort of paganism. — We cannot close this chapter without mentioning the Emperor Juhan, and his futile attempt to revive the old worships. Julian was a nephew of Constantine, who came to the throne in 361, after the sons of Constantine had made a failure of their attempts at rule. A man of high character, Julian was disgusted at the hypocrisy he saw in those who crowded into the Christian Church when it obtained imperial favor. He repressed the churches and Chris- tian clergy, and did what he could to restore the pagan temples and philosophy.
THE DANGER OF SUCCESS 23
Had Julian lived, he probably would have further purified the church by another great persecution. But he fell in battle two years after ascending the throne. Perhaps he realized, before he died, the futility of his efforts to destroy the march of the church to power. At any rate, tradition represents him as crying out at the moment of his death, "Thou hast conquered, O GaUlaean!"
Suggestions for Discussion
1. In what way was the conversion of Constantine a good thing for the cause of Christianity? In what way did it work harm?
2. Why did Constantine hope to find help in solidify- ing his empire in Christianity?
3. Has heresy helped or hindered Christian advance?
4. What do you believe to be the best method of dealing with heresy?
5. What would you select as the important ideas in the Nicean creed? Why are these important? Do you know any creed to-day that includes ideas from the Nicean creed?
CHAPTER III THE BREAK-UP OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
We come now to one of the periods when there was little advance on the part of the church. Many have even dismissed it as a time of retreat. To appreciate this tragic time we must put ourselves in the place of the Christians who Hved within what had been the western part of the Roman Empire between the fifth and the ninth centuries.
Let us suppose that we were the immediate descend- ants of the men to whom had been given that mighty- vision of a world conquered by a new religion. Let us suppose that the courage and faith of our fathers had brought this vision to fulfillment despite awful persecution. Then let us suppose that, just as the victory seemed won, as persecution ceased and our churches replaced the heathen temples, this whole world we had been struggling to convert came crashing down in ruin about us. And, through the din of that disaster, suppose we heard voices declaring that we had been guilty of destroying this civilization. Would it not seem as if we were in the midst of some gigantic nightmare, and would it not be natural if our forces halted and turned from vigorous advance to personal introspection?
The Long Battle Line
Maps of the Roman Empire in the days of the early Caesars show it stretched out to include most of the
24
BREAK-UP OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 25
then known world. But this extent was won only by the incessant valor of the legions, and even this did not suffice to hold back the tribes of ''barbarians" forever. By the time of the great Emperor Marcus Aurelius — that is, before the end of the second century — until the empire of the West had been swept away, Rome was engaged in a battle to preserve her existence.
In many ways this struggle resembled that of the World War. In the World War, as you will remember, the so-called Central Empires faced the Allies on a hne that ran from the Persian Gulf, and later the Bos- phorus, to the North Sea. The Central Empires found it necessary to withstand smashes, sometimes in Flanders, sometimes in Asia Minor, and sometimes in the Balkans. Finally they proved unable to hold off this continuous pounding along such an extended Hne.
An early World War. — For a rough approximation to the battering that finally destroyed the western Roman Empire, take this picture of the fighting in the recent World War and turn it just around. Again run the hne of battle from the Bosphorus to the North Sea. Your map again shows you one civilization defending itself in arms along the natural entrenchments pro- vided by the Danube and Rhine. The great difference is that, in this struggle of fifteen centuries ago, the center of defense was south of the line, rather than north.
Who were the fighters? South of the line we naturally say, the Romans. But this judgment must be safe- guarded by the reminder that the old Roman traditions had disintegrated; that Rome now hired her defenders; and that the men who marched behind her eagles were, as often as not, German barbarians who would spend their time when not fighting on the frontiers fighting with each other for the privilege of ruling the
26 THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY
supine Romans. North of the line we see principally Goths and Franks and those nomads who brought such terror from the steppes of Asia, the Huns.
The barbarians break through. — The Roman dis- missed all men outside the limits of his citizenship with the contemptuous title, "barbarian." And there was plenty in the character of these tribes that kept smash- ing at the long Danube-Rhine line in accord with the idea that we have given the adjective "barbarous." However, great as were their shortcomings, they pos- sessed some tremendous virtues. No one ever ques- tioned their courage; they seemed able to call forth physical strength for any undertaking; their daring knew no bounds. And the life of mankind will never advance fast or far unless those quaHties are in evidence. The Rome that the barbarians smashed had largely lost them.
The first break in the long line came only forty years after the passing of Constantine. It was a result, curiously enough, of an exhibition of strength by another great civilization that the Romans scarcely knew existed. For on the other side of the Continent of Asia the Chinese thrust an impregnable defense before the advance of wild tribes from the northern steppes. These Huns were thus forced to turn west, and came pushing across what is to-day Siberia and Russia until they forced a smaller people, the West Goths, to cross the Danube for safety. Immediately the Emperor Valens came marching to repulse the attack on the sacred line, but near Adrianople, in 378, the Roman army was annihilated by the Goths and the Emperor killed. In the language that became so familiar to us during the World War, this was the first "break through" by the barbarians.
BREAK-UP OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 2^
Rome in German hands. — Now commenced a grim struggle. For a time it would seem as if the empire, under determined emperors and by the help of mer- cenary bands, would be able to hold off further invasion, and then the hammering at the long line would begin again, and the invaders would come closer. To the West Goths were added the East Goths, and to these the Vandals. All these were Germanic tribes, and all felt behind them the pressure of the Huns.
To make the problem of defense harder for the em- perors, these barbarians were always on the move. If they struck one time in the Balkans, they were likely to strike next in what is now France. By the opening of the fifth century the West Goths were pressing into northern Italy. By 410 they had cleared from before their path the last of the hired bands upon which Rome rehed for salvation, and, under the leadership of Alaric, took what had been proudly called the Eternal City.
Now came a period of vast confusion. These German tribes had no idea of settling down to develop the country they had conquered. The West Goths wan- dered about through Gaul and then over into Spain, despoiling as they went. In Spain they fought the Vandals, who had moved south from the shores of the Baltic, and the Vandals, when defeated, crossed the Straits of Gibraltar to found a kingdom in north Africa. Later they sailed from Africa to sack Rome, an adven- ture that appealed to all the loose-footed tribes who now dominated Europe.
Meanwhile the Huns came pushing on. Romans and West Goths combined to defeat them in France, but they still had strength left to sweep down over Italy to the gates of Rome. Under their leader, Attila, they
28 THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY
devastated the country in a manner that has made their name dreadful during all the succeeding centuries. But, for reasons which are now obscure, when the Huns reached Rome they were persuaded by the head of the Christian Church there, to turn back and, their leader dying the next year, they soon passed off the stage of great events.
On the Ruins of the Western Empire
In all this confusion the western Roman Empire passed away. To be sure, for centuries after men tried to keep up the fiction of being ruled from Con- stantinople, but the real Roman Empire, that came to birth with Augustus Caesar, that pushed its roads and its laws and its officers and its teachers and its literature and its language and its taxation and all the other evidences of its power throughout western Europe, was a thing of the past. Just when it died we need not, dogmatically, say. No single date can cover so stupendous an event.
The kingdoms of the conquerors. — With the pass- ing of the last of the emperors in Rome, western Europe became a battle ground for the Germanic tribes, until finally the Franks, under Clovis, asserted their superior power. These were the days that men remember as the Dark Ages, and they persisted until the great warrior, Charles Martel, broke the Moorish invasion at the battle of Tours, more than two hundred and fifty years after the dethronement of the last emperor in Rome. A few years after Charles Martel saved Europe from the Moslems his grandson became king of the Franks. He was that Charles the Great who was to lead Europe from the disorder of her Dark Ages into the feudal order of her mediaeval years.
BREAK-UP OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 29
Charlemagne. — The first part of the reign of Charlemagne was given to conquest. The Saxons proved able to withstand for years, but finally sub- mitted. Then, at the request of the Pope, the Lombard kingdom in northern Italy was conquered. Later Charles subdued the Slavs, who touched his Saxon frontiers, the Bohemians, and even established his rule over a part of northern Spain. So it was but natural that, on Christmas Day in the year 800, as Charlemagne was kneeling in prayer in Saint Peter's Church in Rome, the Pope should have put upon his head a crown and proclaimed him "Emperor of the Romans." Upon the ruins of the earlier empire another had been founded that was to last, with varying fortunes, until the days of Napoleon.
But it was of immense significance, as we shall see later, that the Emperor should have been crowned as he was.
Christianity and a Smashed World
And what of Christianity in all these confused cen- turies? Among the Christians of the Roman Empire a feeling of despair seemed at first to triumph. They saw the settled order of things being swept away by men who, although they had been touched by Christian preaching, were still "barbarians." They had been looking, from the first days of the church, for the time when their rehgion should triumph in Rome, believing that then Christ would return in person to reign. Now they saw that dream of earthly glory fall in ruin.
Worse still, there were plenty who had not embraced the new faith who were loudly declaring that it was the decay of the belief in the ancient gods and the end- ing of the worship of the Emperor that had been respon-
30 THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY
sible for the downfall of the state. Within and with- out Christians felt themselves dismayed.
"The City of God." — We find a remarkable evidence of this condition in a book written at that time by Augustine, called The City oj God. Augustine was a Christian from North Africa, converted in Milan, and a man of such piety and mental vigor that his influence placed him at the head of the Christian teachers of his day and has persisted through the ages.
During the dark days when Rome was falling before the barbarian hordes Augustine wrote this book to prove, first, that Christianity was not responsible for these sorrows, because the old gods had failed to give Rome strength, and, second, that the ultimate Chris- tian goal is a city (or state) made up of those who are saved. As the only means of salvation was then con- ceived to be membership in the catholic church, this was equivalent to saying that the organized church was the goal of history, and must ultimately rule the world.
Christians withdraw from the world. — The result of such teaching was to induce Christians to withdraw more and more from the affairs of everyday Hfe. Long before this, in the eastern empire, men had formed the habit of going off into deserts as hermits or gather- ing in monastic colonies, where days were spent in meditation and prayer, apart from the confusion and cares of life. The influence of Augustine combined with the despair of the age to spread this same move- ment in the West. Here, to be sure, there was a healthier tone in monastic life than in the East. The inhabitants of the western monasteries, known as monks, worked as well as prayed. There was very little of the foolish and even harmful asceticism such as was shown in the
BREAK-UP OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 31
East when Simeon the Stylite climbed his column and perched there as an act of worship for thirty years.
The contribution of the monasteries. — It is easy to criticize the monasteries. In this day we do not greatly appreciate a type of religion that is constantly pointed toward the salvation of one's own soul while ignoring the needs of others. At the same time it is clear that but for the teaching, studying, and copying of manu- scripts that went on in these monasteries during the dark and upset years of which we have been speaking, the last bit of learning would have died out in Europe.
Learning fell to a low enough ebb, as it was. Even the best of the monks had to acknowledge that he could not write good Latin, and outside the clergy there was almost complete illiteracy. Charlemagne stood out above his contemporaries because, after infinite effort, he learned to sign his name. He never reached the point where he could read or write. The only reason why all the learning of the past, the philos- ophy of Greece, the poetry and prose of Rome, together with the Christian scriptures, was not utterly lost in those days was because, in monasteries left at peace from the general fighting, gentle monkish souls pre- served these treasures, even when they could not fully comprehend them.
Suggestions for Discussion
1. Compare the battle line in the World War with the frontier defended by the later western Roman Empire.
2. What suggestion of the unity of all history, and so of all men, is there in the presence of the Huns in the break-up of the Roman Empire?
3. Would the world have been better off if the bar- barian invasion had been repulsed? If so, why? If not, why not?
32 THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY
4. What passed out of the life of Europe when the Roman Empire fell?
5. Give a sketch of the life of Charlemagne, Upon what principles did he proceed to found his empire?
6. Was monasticism a proper form of Christian life diuing the age in which it came into being? Is it still?
CHAPTER IV THE WINNING OF NORTHERN EUROPE
We have seen the despair that came upon men in the Roman Empire as that civilization fell before the assaults of the barbarians, and Europe passed into what have been called the Dark Ages. Instead of the impulse that sent the eariy Christians everywhere preaching we have seen men who would be religious withdraw into monasteries and the cells of hermits.
But was there no missionary activity during these centuries? Indeed there was. For while the Roman Empire was passing, and the church about the Mediterranean was suffering, elsewhere Christianity was finding new sources of power as it tasted the fresh energies of the young peoples who were rising to the control of western Europe.
In its effect upon later world history this was one of the most important periods of missionary advance, for it saw Christianity spread through northern Europe. Many of us will study in this chapter the story of the coming of the message of Jesus to our own ancestors.
The Gospel and the Conquerors of Rome
As was told in a previous chapter (see Chapter II) the Goths and Vandals who swept away what was left of the western Roman Empire in the fifth century were not utter pagans. They had been reached by the Arian form of Christianity preached by the great missionary, Ulfilas, and when they poured down into
33
34 THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY
Italy they were able to get along on comparatively peaceful terms with the churches they found there.
Moreover, Ulfilas had given them the foundations of a culture, when he reduced their language to writing, inventing a Gothic alphabet and translating most of the Bible into this tongue. (It is interesting to note that the moment a Christian missionary began to work beyond the hmits of the Latin and Greek in the midst of which Christianity had grown, he turned to that work of translation which has in later centuries placed Christian missionaries in the vanguard of cul- tural transformations the world around. To-day missionaries are still inventing languages for the same cause that inspired Ulfilas, and so bringing the birth of a literature to young peoples.)
The gospel and the Franks. — Christianity ap- proached the Franks, who were finally to rule western Europe, through a man of far different spirit than the gentle Ulfilas. Martin of Tours was a fighter, and marched at the head of an army of militant monks who demolished pagan temples and felled sacred groves, and would by violence have swept the Franks into the kingdom.
The method did not prove immediately successful, but, after a century of effort, when King Clovis found himself hard-pressed in battle, he called upon the Christian God, won, and returned home to be baptized. When he underwent the rite he took with him three thousand of his soldiers, and from that time on fought as an orthodox, or Catholic, Christian, until he had wiped out the last vestige of the heterodox, or Arian, belief in western Europe.
Conversions en masse. — With this baptism of Clovis and his soldiers we see the beginning of a prac-
THE WINNING OF NORTHERN EUROPE 35
tice that was to bring great spiritual loss to Christianity, namely, the baptism, often for material motives, of large numbers who had slight knowledge of the significance of the rite or the sort of community into which they were supposed to be entering.
Here, for example, is one such instance, as recorded by a writer of that period: "There is a barbarous nation which have their abode beyond the river Rhine; they are called the Burgundians. These people lead a quiet life; they are for the most part woodcutters. The nation of the Hunni, by making continual inroads upon these people, frequently destroyed many of them. The Burgundians, therefore, reduced to great straits, flew for refuge to no man, but resolved to intrust them- selves to some god to protect them ; and having seriously considered with themselves that the God of the Romans did vigorously assist and defend those that feared him, they all came over to the faith of Christ. Repairing, accordingly, to one of the cities of Gaul, they made request to the bishop that they might receive Chris- tian baptism. The bishop ordered them to fast seven days, in which interval he instructed them in the grounds of the faith, and on the eighth day baptized and so dismissed them. Being encouraged thereby, they marched out against the Hunni, and were not deceived in their expectation; for the king of the Hunni having burst himself in the night by overeating, the Burgundians fell upon his people, destitute of a commander, and, few though they were, engaged and conquered very many. For the Burgundians, being in number only three thousand, destroyed about ten thousand of the Hunni. And from that time the nation of the Bur- gundians became zealous professors of Christianity."^
* Socrates the Scholar, quoted by Hodgkins, Via Christ*, The Macmillan Co., p. 69.
36 THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY
About all that is needed to make such a narrative com- plete would be the statement that those of the Hunni who were lucky enough to escape likewise promptly sought baptism.
It takes little imagination for us to realize what sort of Christians converts of that type must have made, and we need to bear in mind, in all our study of this period, whether conversion was or was not of this sort. Where it was we cannot expect much in the way of ethical transformation.
Christianity in Ireland, Scotland, and England
After the conversion of the Franks the next great advance of Christianity came when, in the fifth cen- tury, a Scottish lad who had been carried into cap- tivity in Ireland, after escaping, returned to that island with this gospel.
Patrick, who won Ireland. — No more romantic career is to be found in Christian history than that of this apostle to the Irish, Saint Patrick. He had almost reached middle age, having undergone a second captivity and having spent years studying the Chris- tian institutions of Gaul, before he was able to respond to the appeal of the voices from the Irish coast that kept sounding in his ears, "We beseech thee, child of God, come and again walk among us." He faced the fierce opposition of the Druids, chanting a hymn that deserves to rank among the finest Christian poetry:
"May Christ, I pray, Protect me to-day Against poison and fire, Against drowning and wounding; That so, in his grace abounding, I may earn the preacher's hire.
THE WINNING OF NORTHERN EUROPE 37
"Christ, as a light,
Illutnine and guide me ! Christ, as a shield, o'ershadow and cover me ! Christ be under me ! Christ be over me !
Christ be beside me
On left hand and right! Christ be before me, behind me, about me! Christ be this day within and without me !
"Christ, the lowly and meek,
Christ, the All-Powerful, be In the heart of each to whom I speak, In the mouth of each who speaks to me !
In all who draw near me,
Or see me or hear me."
It is no wonder that a man with a spirit of that kind soon won Ireland. Then, with insight into what was demanded if a permanent and far-reaching change was to come in the lives of his converts, Saint Patrick opened schools everywhere, and had boys and girls taught the alphabet he invented. It is notable that, even at that date, his schools were coeducational, and that he gave women a large part in the work of evan- gelizing the country. The most renowned of these women who labored by the side of Saint Patrick was Saint Bridget.
The gospel in Scotland. — Saint Patrick was one of those men who have had an influence that has extended visibly far beyond their own personal reach. For not only did he transform Ireland, giving it a type of piety and a standard of culture better than that of any other part of the Europe of his day, but he inspired a whole line of Christian heroes, who ultimately took the gospel through all the rest of northern Europe.
Scotland, as the nearest, was the first land to receive
38 THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY
one of these ambassadors. Columba was his name, and during the thirty-four years that he labored after his little wicker-woven skiff had brought him to the islet of lona, he saw the fruit of his efforts increase and increase until, by the time he died, about the opening of the seventh century, Scotland might be said to be Christian.
At the same time Columba worked in Scotland another missionary, Columban, also inspired by Saint Patrick, began to work in Gaul. Here his task was to make real Christians of those who had been bap- tized at a king's command. Because he chose as his motto the phrase, "Be bold in the cause of truth and impregnable against falsehood," the king drove him into exile. But when, in what is now Switzerland, he found a chance to work with avowed pagans, he achieved great success.
Both Columba and Columban established what we would now call industrial schools in connection with their missions. It is the glory of this mighty missionary movement that flowed out of Ireland that it based its work everywhere on education.
The gospel for the Angles. — The story of the begin- ning of permanent Christian work in England is almost too well known to need repetition. During the years while the Romans ruled Britain a flourishing church had sprung up, only to be obliterated by the gods of the tribes that blotted out the authority of the empire. One day in the sixth century the Abbot Gregory saw exposed for sale in Rome some boys whose beauty moved him to inquire their race. Told that they were Angles he replied, "Not 'Angles,' but 'angels,' " and would have started as a missionary to the distant island had he not been restrained by the Pope. Soon
THE WINNING OF NORTHERN EUROPE 39
Gregorj' was Pope himself, and soon he had sent Augustine (not the Augustine abeady mentioned) as his proxy in the quest.
Augustine first won the king of the Httle reahn of Kent, whose wife had become a Christian in Gaul. Later the kingdom of Northumbria, through its king, was won over. But it was not until after centuries of fighting, and after missionary work along the Baltic had brought about the conversion of Denmark, that, in the reign of King Canute, in 1030, Christianity fin- ished its conquest of England.
When Augustine came to England he found mission- aries at work there sent by Columba from Scotland. The two groups did not get along together very well. The missionaries who owed their inspiration to Columba and Saint Patrick had little contact with the church in Rome, and Augustine was under direct orders from the Pope. The trouble increased until, in the middle of the seventh century, a conference decided that the Roman Church was to have the preference.
The Gospel in Germany and Scandinavia
It was one of the habits of Charlemagne, after he had conquered a people, to give it the choice of Chris- tian baptism or slaughter. What must have seemed very gratifying increases in the so-called Christian population took place in this manner, particularly in Germany. But it required immense labors, leading even to martyrdoms, by many missionaries to trans- form these people into anything remotely resembling true Christians.
Boniface. — Of these apostles to the Germans an English monk, Boniface, was the greatest. He was killed when, as an old man of seventy-five, he was on
40 THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY
his way to preach to the heathen ancestors of the Dutch.
Hah' a century after Boniface, and Charlemagne was dead. For a time it seemed as though his empire could not weather the storm, which beat in greatest fury from the north, from whence, led by the Danes, the Norsemen swept south to harry Gaul and the lands of the Mediterranean.
Ansgar. — A quick shift in the internal politics of Denmark and there came a chance to send a Christian missionary there. A volunteer was found in Ansgar, the quaUty of whose consecration was shown when a friend asked him if he meant to persist in so danger- ous an enterprise. "When I was asked whether I would go for God's name among the heathen to pub- lish the gospel," he answered, "I could not dechne such a call. Yes, with all my power I wish to go hence, and no man can make me waver in this resolu- tion."
Ansgar was the first medical missionary, as well as the great apostle to Denmark. Later he took the gospel to Sweden, and from there it was carried to Norway and even Iceland. We are not, however, to think of this as any easy conquest. A Swedish king was persecuted for his Christianity as late as the eleventh century. And the struggle to convert East Prussia took even longer. As one writer says, "The story of Christianizing Germany and Scandinavia is a thousand years long."
Suggestions for Discussion
1. Why has Christianity always been eager to pre- serve culture?
2. What conception of baptism lay behind the methods
THE WINNING OF NORTHERN EUROPE 41
that Clovis, Charlemagne, and others took to add to the Christian community?
3. Give an account of the careers of Patrick, of Au- gustine, of Boniface, of Ansgar.
4. What was the condition of your ancestors before they were reached by Christianity? How long ago was this?
5. Compare the progress of Christianity in India with that in Germany.
6. What methods used by the missionaries mentioned in this chapter are used by modern missionaries? What is their value?
CHAPTER V THE POPES COME TO POWER
As our history has proceeded we have seen that one great institution with which we are dealing is the papacy. It takes a leading part alike in the affairs of congregations and kings. A Pope anoints Charlemagne, and a Pope sends Augustine to the conversion of England.
The papacy remains to-day one of the important powers of the world, and although much of its past glory has departed, there are still many states that think it necessary to maintain formal diplomatic rela- tions with the head of the Church of Rome. One cannot pretend to know the course of Christian his- tory who has not studied the record of the papacy. So we naturally ask. Where did this institution come from?
The Answer of the Roman Church
It is always best to seek an answer to a question first from those most directly concerned. If we con- sult those who to-day acknowledge the authority of the Pope, we find that they have a clear conception of the cause that has placed the occupant of the bishopric of Rome in a place of such conspicuous power. Their answer places great importance upon a statement attributed to Jesus.
A text that has made history. — In the Gospel according to Saint Matthew (i6. i8, 19) are these words: "I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will
42
THE POPES COME TO POWER 43
give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."
One historian has said that this passage "has afifected history more profoundly than the edicts of the most powerful monarch."^ For it has been interpreted to mean that the leadership of the organized church was to be placed in the hands of Saint Peter, with power to include or exclude whom he would from the benefits of that body. And the Popes of Rome have been regarded as the legitimate successors of Saint Peter, holding by that succession the powers thus claimed to have been placed in his keeping.
Why are the Popes so regarded? Because from very early times there was a tradition within the church that Saint Peter came to Rome to act as leader of the church there, and that he suffered martyrdom in that city. And while there is no certain proof of this fact (as there is, for example, of the presence of Saint Paul in Rome) the tradition is so old, and has been so little questioned, that it is generally believed. The Church of Rome, then, stood for centuries in the thought of orthodox Christians as preeminently the church of Saint Peter, and the bishops of Rome as his successors. And the power that came to these bishops has been held to be promised by Christ himself in the passage we have quoted.
The Answer of History
When the historian approaches this question he is not apt to stop with the quotation of Scripture. He looks for the conditions that made men ready finally
» J. H. Robinson, Medieval and Modern Times, Ginn & Company, publishers, p. 46.
44 THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY
to agree to this interpretation of the passage as being correct. For he finds, as soon as he starts investigating, that good members of the church did not always agree that such supreme power was to be handed down from one bishop of Rome to his successors. "Why," he asks, "did they finally accept that interpretation?"
Bishops and metropolitans.— We have already (see Chapter I) seen how the elementary organization of the Christian churches in the first years of their existence developed into more rigid forms, with clergy sharply divided from laity, and then the chief pastors of im- portant cities set aside as bishops, and finally the bishops of the most important cities known as arch- bishops or metropolitans. We have seen how Con- stantine relied upon Christianity to cement his extended empire together, and so we can understand what in- creasing power came to these bishops, and particularly to the archbishops, as they were accorded the support of the great emperor.
To begin with, this power was confined to church affairs. We have seen how the bishops were gathered to pass judgment on what was true Christian teaching and what false. Similar questions were likewise coming up constantly within the local congregations, and the word of the bishop was generally regarded as sufficient to settle them.
But gradually these bishops began to exercise author- ity on secular matters. The law came to recognize their claim to special courts in matters that concerned them, and when the church began to pile up property under imperial favor there were many such matters. So that, by the beginning of the fifth century, these heads of important churches had accumulated great powers, both churchly and secular.
THE POPES COME TO POWER 45
The bishop of Rome. — In the beginning, these im- portant, or metropoHtan, churches were the ones located at Rome, Antioch, and Alexandria. The Council of Nicea (see Chapter II) formally acknowledged the leadership of these great cities of the empire.
But at the same time a new power was rising in the capital that Constantine was building, and by the middle of the fifth century Constantinople was not only re- garded as a metropolitan church but was competing with Rome for the leadership of all. To this day Con- stantinople has never admitted that Rome has won that contest. And at the same time the force of his- tory was great enough to include Jerusalem in the group of leaders. Sometimes the bishops of these five churches were known as metropolitans, and sometimes as patriarchs. Those titles still persist in the Catholic churches that do not recognize the claims of Rome.
The struggle for leadership among these five churches, as we have said, resolved itself into a contest between the bishop of Constantinople and the bishop of Rome. On the roll of bishops of both cities we find some great names. To only a slight extent was the personality of the bishop to incline the outcome one way or the other. Why, then, did Rome finally win out?
The influence of the emperor. — One reason is to be found in the part played by the emperors. There was no imperial authority in Italy after the middle of the fifth century, as we have seen. But an emperor remained upon the throne in Constantinople almost until the time when Columbus was to sail for the New World. And these emperors, from the time of Con- stantine down, largely dominated the local patriarchs.
On the surface it might seem that a patriarch with an emperor at his back would have an immense advan-
46 THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY
tage in asserting his power. But the trouble was that the emperor was apt to be on the back of the patriarch rather than at his back. The church instinctively felt the need of some independence from temporal commands, and that the bishop of Rome, away off in Italy, had, while the patriarch of Constantinople, under the imperial eye, frequently seemed but a puppet of the throne. So the self-respect of the church inclined it to look to Rome for leadership.
The influence of doctrine. — These years were filled with controversies as to theological questions. The patriarchs of the East were found now on one side and again on another in these disputes. The side tempo- rarily in control would banish and persecute the other side, and constant confusion was the result. For exam- ple, in Alexandria the great Athanasius had to undergo five exiles, and in Constantinople the great Chrysostom was banished twice and finally died while on the way to a farther place of exile.
There was little of this in Rome. The Roman bishops had a good supply of common sense; they had a clear body of Christian teaching that had come down from the earhest days of the church; in some way or other they generally managed to line up on the side of a dis- pute that was to win the verdict of time. Thus it came to pass that a large part of the church, wearied and confused by these disputations, caught the habit of thinking: "What does the bishop of Rome say? He is generally right." And the doctrine of the Church of Rome became famous for its correctness.
The influence of disorder. — The bishop of Rome was, as we have said, a long way from Constantinople. As the empire gradually fell to pieces, he became almost the only leader in the city who was always at his post.
THE POPES COME TO POWER 47
The citizens came to look to him for leadership in matters of all sorts, many of them purely secular. When the Huns swept down to the gates of the city (see Chapter IH) it was the bishop who went out to meet them and persuaded them not to sack it. Such a triumph, when all other means of defense had failed, would add tremendously to the prestige of the position.
The bishop came to be the custodian of the election of city officers, and to have authority to say how the public money should be spent. Great tracts of land in other parts of Italy were deeded to his church, and he exercised the powers of a temporal sovereign over these. Finally he came to negotiate with the nations beyond Italy and give orders to generals just like any other monarch. In fact, in that time of constant change, this continuing rule soon became the most powerful in western Europe.
The influence of tradition. — Moreover, the bishop of Rome had the advantage of being the bishop of Rome. There is a glamour still about that city, the Eternal City. For so many centuries before Constanti- nople even was, it had ruled the world. The magic of its name was strong upon men. Add to this the fact that this church alone in the West traced its his- tory back to two apostles, and you have two mighty streams of tradition, one secular and the other churchly, both working to exalt the bishop of Rome.
The Supremacy of the Pope Affirmed
By the middle of the fifth century the emperor at that time ruUng in the western empire had been per- suaded to publish a decree declaring the power of the bishop of Rome supreme over that of all other bishops. At the end of that century the bishop of Rome declared
48 THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY
his power supreme over that of any king, for, said he, "Two powers govern the world, the priestly and the kingly. The first is assuredly the superior, for the priest is responsible to God for the conduct of the em- perors themselves."
From that time on the power of the bishop of Rome increased in the West almost without interruption. An interesting sidelight is thrown on the period when we learn that missionaries like Boniface (see Chapter IV) were quick to publish to the Germans the superior power of the bishop in far-off Rome as a means of free- ing themselves from interference at the hands of nearer bishops. And, finally, the day came when the kings realized that the support of these Roman bishops was an invaluable asset in their struggles for power.
Gregory the Great. — The bishop of Rome who finally won for his office the leadership of all western Europe, both secular and ecclesiastical, was that Gregory whom we have seen sending Augustine to the con- version of the Angles. He it was who declared that the title of Pope (equivalent to "father" in Latin) which had been applied to many bishops in the past, should be regarded as the exclusive property and title of the bishop of Rome, and used as a mark of his headship of all the church on earth. "Without making himself offensive, he practically succeeded in acquiring almost universal dominion."
The Pope crowns the Emperor. — After Gregory's death, at the beginning of the seventh century the papacy continued to develop as an institution with great power. Finally, when Charlemagne had fought his way to supremacy in Germany, France, northern Spain, and most of Italy, the Pope then in Rome felt himself ready to disregard the fiction that had been fostered
THE POPES COME TO POWER 49
since the deposing of the last Roman emperor in 476, that western Europe was being ruled by the Emperor in Constantinople, and crowned the German warrior, as previously stated, as "Emperor of the Romans." It was a far cry from the day when the emperor crucified the first bishop of Rome to that Christmas day, 800, when the bishop of Rome made a new emperor in a church named for the apostoHc martyr!
The result of the rise of the papacy. — And what happened within the church as the bishop of Rome thus came to power? We have spoken as if, in the struggle with Constantinople, the victory lay with Rome. But this is because we are speaking from the standpoint of the West. If we hved in the East, we would repudiate such a conclusion.
The church in the East refused to recognize these claims of the Pope. The patriarchs of Constantinople, Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch went on claiming to be equal in authority with any other Christian leaders on earth. Gradually the split between East and West, emphasized by the political conditions of those times, broadened. Finally there was a complete break, and the "catholic" church went on to its destiny in two branches, generally known as Roman and Greek, that persist to this day.
Suggestions for Discussion
1. To what extent do you believe that Jesus expected his followers to build such a highly organized church as we see in this chapter?
2. What is your interpretation of Matthew 16. 18, 19?
3. Summarize the reasons that led to the supremacy of the papacy.
4. Can you think of any reasons, beyond those men-
50 THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY
tioned in this chapter, that may have helped Rome to assert its power, or may have hindered Constantinople?
5. Why did the churches in Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem not exercise as large an influence as those in Rome and Constantinople?
6. Was it a good thing, or a bad thing, for the progress of Christianity that the Pope came to hold such power?
CHAPTER VI THE LATER CHURCH IN THE EAST
The churches that were under the dominance of the metropoUtan cities of the East (Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem) never acknowledged the supremacy that was claimed for Rome. As a conse- quence they developed a life that has been distinct from that of all the rest of Christendom.
In this chapter we are attempting to sketch the history of the Greek Catholic Church, and the churches that have been kindred to it. It is, of course, impossible to give more than the barest outline. We are constrained to this course, not because the later history of the Eastern church is not important, but because it is not particularly important to us. We are of the West, and so the story of the spread of Christianity in and through and by the West is bound to interest us in greater meas- ure. But we must remember that there is a wonderful Christian history in the lands that trace their religious descent from Constantinople.
The Mental Life of the Greek Church
The Greek always showed aptitude for adventure in realms of the mind. The Roman was practical; he built an empire and bound it together with roads. The Greek was a dreamer; he built an Acropolis and thronged to the schools of the philosophers. So when the Roman became a Christian he was ready to give most of his time to the work of building an organiza- tion that would make his religion, through its leaders,
51
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a ruler of affairs; when the Greek became a Christian he gave most of his time to disputes on matters of doctrine and custom, and even art.
Controversies in the East. — The story of the church in eastern Europe from the time of Constantine on is one of almost unending dispute. Church councils were frequently called to put an end, by authoritative de- cisions, to these disputes, but they won only indifferent success. Even if one question was settled, it would not be long before the subtle mind of the Greek would provoke another question that would stir the whole church up again. Various emperors tried to stop these disputations, but, on the whole, these efforts by the throne only increased the trouble.
We have no time to outline these disputes. In the realm of doctrine, they had to do mainly with the rela- tion of Jesus to God and the Holy Spirit. The Western church was, in later years, to dispute long concerning the work done by Jesus; just what it was he did, and how he did it. The Eastern church seemed more in- clined to dispute as to who Jesus was. The Western church was ready to worship Jesus when they saw what he had done; the Eastern church declared it abso- lutely necessary to know all about his person in order to find the true ground for worship.
Then there were disputes as to church adminis- tration. There was the great dispute as to what metro- politan was to hold precedence. And there were minor disputes, such as whether the clergy were to be allowed to marry or not. In the Greek church that was answered in the affirmative, with the understanding that priests should marry before and not after ordination, and with the highest places generally reserved for celibate clergy.
THE LATER CHURCH IN THE EAST 53
Curiously, one of the fiercest controversies had to do with the use of pictures and images in worship. In the beginning the fear of idolatry, strong upon those who had been so close to the Orient, lined the Eastern church up in strong opposition. The Council of Con- stantinople, meeting in 754, even went so far as to condemn the "godless art of painting." But finally the supporters of the images won, and the Greek church is to-day marked by its worship of these and of sacred pictures (ikons).
The Final Break with Rome
While the clergy throughout the Eastern empire were engaging in these disputes, both theological and otherwise, designed to weaken the bonds between them and the practical-minded west, the patriarch of Constantinople was likewise showing that he had no intention of submitting to the pretensions of the Pope of Rome. The struggle between the two lasted for five hundred years.
Constantinople and Rome excommunicate each other. — At the time of Gregory the Great (see Chapter V) the patriarch claimed the title of "Universal Arch- bishop," much to the indignation of that great Pope. Less than two hundred years later another patriarch, Photius, claimed to be equal with the Pope, and was solemnly excommunicated for his presumption.
The ill-feeling grew for another two hundred years, until finally, just before the Normans were setting out for the conquest of England, the patriarch closed all the churches in the East that used the Latin rite. The Pope replied with another excommunication, and the year in which this was pubhshed in Constantinople,
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1054, is usually spoken of as the year in which East and West finally divided.
The East after the division. — Meantime the Eastern empire was facing a new enemy. The Mohammedan invasion (see Chapter VII) was pressing close to the walls of Constantinople. By 1080 the Turks were in Nicea,
Before that the frightened Eastern Emperor had appealed to the Pope, now the strongest figure in the West, for help. The Pope saw here an opportunity to bring the church in the East under his control, and the crusades (see Chapter VIII) were his attempt to win command of the situation. The crusades relieved the pressure on Constantinople for a time, and various councils were held at which a reunion of the Eastern and Western churches on the basis of acknowledgment of the supremacy of the Pope was negotiated. But nothing came of these efforts. When certain church dignitaries signed the documents they were imme- diately repudiated by the people they were supposed to represent. In 1453 the Turks finally captured Constantinople, and since then there has never been a serious attempt to bring the two churches together.
Missionary Efforts of the Greek Church
With Constantinople in Turkish hands, and the patriarch appointed by a Mohammedan court, it might have been expected that the Greek Church would disappear, as had the church in North Africa. Why did it not? We discover that it lived largely because in its past it had sent out missionaries who had planted the seeds of its life among other nations, where now it was to find vigor in its hour of need.
Cyril and Methodius. — The two great missionaries
THE LATER CHURCH IN THE EAST 55
of the Greek Church were brothers, who were members of the church in Thessalonica that had been originally founded by Saint Paul. They were well educated, and when one day a call came asking for volunteers to go and help an obscure king in the Crimea decide whether Judaism, Mohammedanism, or Christianity should dis- place idolatry, Cyril started. His success fired him for further missionary efforts, and together with his brother he set off to convert the savage Bulgarians.
The story of the conversion of the Bulgarians illus- trates the manner in which, in all ages, the Christian missionary has made all sorts of talents contribute to the success of his mission. The king of the Bulgarians proved impervious to the preaching of Cyril. There- upon Methodius obtained consent to paint a picture upon a wall of the palace, and evolved such a terrifying conception of the terrors of the Last Judgment that, when the king and his warriors saw it, they demanded baptism.
Preaching that spread far. — With Bulgaria won the brothers pressed on into what is to-day Hungary and secured the conversion of the Moravians hving there. It has interested some scholars to point out the sort of "apostoUc succession" thus opened to modern Protes- tant missions. For, as we wiU later see, these Moravians were to give birth to the Protestant missions of Germany in the eighteenth century, as well as to the stirring in the heart of John Wesley that brought on the evan- gelical revival in England, and so led to much of the missionary enthusiasm of the Protestant churches of England and America. It is a strange coincidence that a missionary named Methodius should have so directly contributed to the rise, a thousand years later, of a branch of the church known as the Methodists.
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The most significant work done by these brothers, as has been that of multitudes of other missionaries, was that of reducing the Slavonian dialects of these peoples whom they had evangeHzed to writing, and turning the Scriptures into a language that common men could understand. These versions are still in use in much of the Greek Church, notably in Russia, although they are to-day as unintelligible as were the Greek and Hebrew versions they originally superseded.
The gospel in Russia. — ^At about the time when missionaries from Ireland, England, and France were taking the gospel throughout Scandinavia, the last great stretch of unevangelized territory in the East, Russia, was opening to Christianity. This is the way in which one writer has told the story:
"In many an art gallery may be found the picture of the baptism of the Princess Olga, the first prominent disciple of Christ in Russia, who, in 955, journeyed to Constantinople to learn more of the Christian faith. Her inquiries led to her baptism while in the city. Yet the flow of Christianity from this royal source was a varying stream, choked by Olga's grandson, Vladimir, who was a pagan of pagans, offering human sacrifices in any great stress of experience. But Vladimir finally became Christian, after the fashion of many another sign-seeking chief of those days, vowing that if he succeeded in taking the stronghold Kherson, in the Crimea, and if he might have the sister of the Greek emperor, the Christian Princess Ann, as his wife, he would adopt Christianity as the state religion. Vladimir was beset by missionaries from the Mohammedan, Roman and Greek Churches, as well as by the ancient Jewish Church, each presenting the claims of his religion, before he finally committed himself and his people to
THE LATER CHURCH IN THE EAST 57
Christianity. The story of carrying the gospel to Russia differs from that of other nations in that it is not accompanied by persecution. The people followed Vladimir in a simple faith, and the Bible had been pre- pared for them a hundred years before by Cyril and Methodius."^ By the end of the twelfth century all Russia was nominally Christian.
During the ages when much of Russia was over- run by the Mongols, the Greek Church lived on in security. By the middle of the sixteenth century, with the country again free and unified, Moscow was declared a patriarchate in place of Rome, which was held to be heretical. When Peter the Great came to the throne the church came under full control of the Tsar, and so remained until the revolution of 191 7. Since then the church has suffered much purifying repression, and there are many hopes expressed that, when the confusion of the present passes, the church in Russia will emerge with a spiritual vitality and mes- sage worthy of the persistent devotion of the common people of that great land.
Other Churches That Grew in the East
The Nestorian missions. — In the middle of the fifth century, about the time the Western empire was passing, the Eastern church and empire cast out, for alleged heresies which we to-day have difficulty in distinguish- ing, the bishop of Constantinople, Nestorius, and his followers. The banished men finally found a resting place in Persia, and there the Nestorian church grew strong.
Intensely missionary in spirit, there are evidences that missionaries of the Nestorian church won consid-
'L. M. Hodgkins, op. cii., p. 105.
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erable success in lands as remote as India and China. The church, with some offshoots, still remains, although it has been greatly reduced in numbers by centuries hved in lands controlled by Mohanunedan powers.
The Armenians, — So large a place have Armenian Christians filled in the eyes of the West during recent years, that it is well to remind ourselves that this church, also, originally separated from the Greek Church. That separation took place, however, over fourteen hundred years ago, and despite their sufferings at the hands of Turks and Kurds, the Armenians have remained a distinct national church.
Copts and Abyssinians. — Two other churches that have branched off from the Greek Church require men- tion. The first is the Coptic, which still holds its place in Egypt despite the fact that "it may perhaps be said that here Christianity has suffered more continuous persecution than in any other part of the world."^
From the same church in North Africa came the church in Abyssinia. Strong efforts have been made to win this church to allegiance to the Pope, but without result. It represents to-day a very debased form of Christianity, largely affected by the traditions connect- ing the Abyssinian court with the ancient Hebrews.
Suggestions for Discussion
1. Map the territory of the Greek Church at the time of the split from Rome; at the present.
2. What arguments can be brought forward in favor of the use of images and pictures in worship? in opposi- tion to such use?
3. Why did the church in the East refuse to recognize the supremacy of the Pope?
»A. W. Harrison, The Church of Twenty Centuries, p. 119.
THE LATER CHURCH IN THE EAST 59
4. Why do missionaries, as in the case of Cyril and Methodius, regard the securing of a written language for their converts as important? Does the principle still hold?
5. What is the tradition connecting the Abyssinian court with the ancient Hebrews?
6. What can you find out about the condition of the church in Russia to-day? What is its prospect for the future?
CHAPTER VII
CHRISTIANITY'S GREATEST RIVAL
In tracing the history of the church during its first thousand years we have seen how its growth was retarded by weaknesses within its ranks. But it must not be forgotten that Christianity also faced acknowledged enemies without. The greatest of these was a rehgion that came out of Arabia about the time that the Pope was sending missionaries to convert England, and that remains to-day the most active opponent of the Chris- tian faith, Mohammedanism.
The Prophet of Mecca
The Hebrews used to speak of themselves as God's chosen people. Some basis for that claim may be seen in the fact that the three great monotheistic religions of mankind have all come out of that little strip of country that was the home of the Semites. The last of these to arise came from the same region in which the Christian apostle, Saint Paul, hid himself while he evolved his system of doctrine. The lonely wastes of Arabia seem to have been a good place for the nurture of spiritual teaching.
The camel driver who saw visions. — Early in the seventh century there lived in the city of Mecca, an unimportant town in the Arabian peninsula, a guide for the desert caravans named Mohammed. He had reached mid-life without attracting attention, when he entered the employment of a widow considerably older than himself, named Kadijah. Something about the camel
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CHRISTIANITY'S GREATEST RIVAL 6i
driver attracted the wealthy widow, and they were married.
Given the leisure that became a man of affairs, Mohammed began to develop the quahties of religious leadership with which he had been richly endowed. He found himself living in the midst of a debased idol- atry, with every city at war with its neighbors. In his journeys he came into contact with Jews and Chris- tians, and responded to the conception of God they taught. Finally he became convinced that God was speaking to him, through his angel Gabriel, just as he had spoken to the Hebrew prophets.
The flight to Medina. — Mohammed's first attempts to win his fellow-townsmen to the sort of worship thus revealed to him met with little success. The people of Mecca first laughed at him, and when he persisted, prepared to kill him. Life was cheap in that half- civilized city, and the people were jealous of the pros- perity of their Kaaha, a sort of temple for idols, con- taining in particular a sacred black stone, to which pilgrims— a source of easy profit — came to worship from many parts of Arabia. The teaching of Mohammed, which was unflinchingly against idolatry, menaced this income, and so aroused the wrath of most of Mecca.
A tribute to the sincerity of Mohammed, however, is to be seen in the fact that those who knew him best believed in him most. His wife, his father-in-law, other members of his household and close friends, accepted his teaching as a true revelation. When it became clear that his life was in danger in Mecca, they banded together to make possible flight. In 622 Mohammed and his close followers fled to the neighboring city of Medina, and the year of this Hegira, or flight, became the first from which all foUowers of the prophet reckoned time.
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Mohammed triumphs. — Mohammed lived for ten years after his flight to Medina. In that short period he led the citizens of his adopted home to a military conquest of Mecca, and when once established in that city repelled all attacks. His military triumphs appealed to the other Arab chiefs, and before his death the prophet was exercising authority over all Arabia, and had sent embassies proclaiming his power throughout the Eastern world.
Probably the worst thing that happened to Moham- med was this success, coupled with the death of Kadijah. As long as this wife lived Mohammed held true to the clear, ethical message with which he first commanded attention. But when Kadijah died, and the prospect of wide acceptance was dangled before his eyes if he would abate somewhat the moral severity of his teach- ing, Mohammed compromised with what must have been his truest convictions. So it came to pass that, in the closing years of his life, he permitted the intro- duction of those elements of superstition, excess, and cruelty that have done so much to blight the work of Mohammedanism.
To be sure, by lowering his standards Mohammed secured the allegiance of many chieftains who would never have been attracted by a religion of ethical mono- theism. But ethical compromise is never a sure founda- tion upon which to build spiritually, and the last years of Mohammed show the melancholy picture of a true prophet who had sold his revelation for a little earthly authority.
The Religion Called Islam
At his death Mohammed left a well-developed re- hgion, to which he gave the name of Islam, which
CHRISTIANITY'S GREATEST RIVAL 63
means "submission." The central idea thus expressed is submission to the will of God. Since Islam has proved to be Christianity's most vigorous rival, we need to know its main characteristics.
The Koran. — The basis of Islam is the Koran, its sacred book. This purports to be a collection of the revelations given to Mohammed, and was given its final form only a few years after his death. It con- tains not only the theological ideas that underhe his teaching, but detailed instructions as to how his follow- ers were to live. Parts of it are of great distinction, while other parts, when read to-day, seem meaningless or terribly dull.
The heart of Mohammedanism, as Islam is frequently called, lies in its insistence upon the fact that there is only one God — in Arabic known as Allah — and that Mohammed is his truest prophet. There have been other prophets, such as Abraham, Moses, Jonah, and Jesus, but the greatest of all is Mohammed.
In addition, the Koran enjoins the faithful to "honor his parents, aid the poor, protect the orphan, keep his contracts, give full measure, and weigh with a just balance."^ Prayer must be offered five times a day — before sunrise, after noon, before and after sunset, and after dark — with the worshiper kneeling toward Mecca. During the whole month of Ramadan nothing may be eaten between sunrise and sunset. Wine is forbidden, and although this injunction is frequently flouted, the extent to which it has been obeyed has helped to make the Moslems as mighty as they have proved to be. If possible, every Mohammedan is to make a pilgrimage to Mecca.
The Koran holds out hope of a voluptuous heaven
>J. H. Robinson, Op. cil., p. 66.
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to the faithful, and threatens those who have not ac- cepted Islam with a fearful hell, compounded mainly of fire. The surest road to this heaven is offered those who fall in battle while fighting under the standards of the prophet.
Allah is conceived as all-powerful, and all-deter- mining, so that the whole course of life is unchangeably- fixed — death, sorrow, and all other experiences being given men in a way that cannot be escaped. For this reason Mohammedans are complete fatalists, braving the dangers of battle with utter indifference, since they believe that what Allah wills is to be their portion.
The weaknesses of Mohammedanism. — Great as has been its power, Islam has been cursed by many defects. For one thing, it is based to a great extent upon a supposedly inerrant holy book, and the Moham- medan holds that all truth for all ages was contained in this book when it was finished twelve centuries ago. This has made impossible a mental life in keeping with the advances in knowledge of later generations.
For another thing, slavery has flourished under Mohammedanism, and the Moslem slave-trader is still, in Africa, the most determined opponent of the effort to wipe out human bondage.
Again, the position of women in Islam is distinctly inferior. They become creatures of the harem, utterly subservient to their lords. In wealthy homes polygamy and concubinage are frequent.
Finally, Mohammedanism has always been ready to resort to any methods, however cruel, to impress others into the worship of the prophet. Death, slavery or conversion has been the alternative presented con- quered peoples. And this barbarity remains.
CHRISTIANITY'S GREATEST RIVAL 65
The Spread of Mohammedanism
Mohammed died master of Arabia. He left a religion with temporal powers almost as great as its religious interests. His successors, or caliphs, rapidly extended this power until it comprised one of the largest empires the world has known.
Damascus and Bagdad become world capitals. — The first of the caliphs, Ali, the father-in-law of Mohammed, rapidly extended the rule of Islam over Syria, Egypt, and Persia. A hard fighter and a man of exceedingly simple habits, Ali made of his followers the most formidable fighting force in the seventh cen- tury. Soon it became necessary to transfer the capital from inaccessible Medina to Damascus, and later, when northern Africa and Asia Minor had been con- quered, the caliphate was again moved, this time to Bagdad.
In this rapid expansion, which can be followed on the map, Islam came into conflict with Christianity at almost every point. Frequently this was Christianity with a glorious history, such as in North Africa, where had been the great schools that had produced such teachers as Origen and Athanasius, and the churches that had brought forth such leaders as Augustine.
But this Christianity had sunk into a sterile intel- lectual dormancy, with almost no real spiritual vigor, so that there was no power with which seriously to dis- pute the progress of Islam. Within a very short time most of the Christian worship in these regions was obliterated.
There is a tendency to lament this overrunning of Christian lands by the Moslems, but it must be ad- mitted that the weaker fell before the stronger. For
66 THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY
there is no question but that Damascus, and to a greater degree Bagdad, were the finest cities of their day, the capitals of a culture surpassing that of any other part of the world except China. When Islam finally pene- trated into Europe it came with a civilization superior to that which it found there.
The Moors invade Europe. — For centuries the Mohammedans tried unsuccessfully to enter Europe by the East. Foiled by the desperate resistance of the eastern Roman Empire, Islam sought another entrance in the West, and here succeeded. The West Goths, who had taken possession of Spain at the time of the break-up of the western Roman Empire (see Chapter III), had degenerated to the point where they could present no effective resistance. Spain was soon in the hands of the Moslem invaders from northern Africa whom history knows as the Moors.
Across the Pyrenees beckoned the fair lands of France, and soon the Moors were marching to fresh conquests there. At first they seemed invincible, and all Europe fated to Moslem rule. But in 732, near Tours, the Prankish army, under Charles Martel, met the invading host in what has been called one of the decisive battles of the world. The Franks were at least able to stop the advance, and the Moors withdrew sullenly to Spain. Here they remained in undisputed possession until Charlemagne began the long warfare against them that was to continue with varying fortune until, just before the ships of Columbus were ready to haul up their anchors on that most memorable of all voyages, the last Moorish stronghold fell into the hands of the Christian monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella.
The greatest Moslem nation. — It remained, how- ever, for another Mohammedan nation, the Turks, to
CHRISTIANITY'S GREATEST RIVAL (yj
establish the most lasting empire under the standard of the prophet. By the eleventh century the Seljuk Turks, who had come from the steppes of western Asia, had obtained control of most of the Moslem world. They had none of the tolerance that marked the Arabs, and their persecution of pilgrims to Christian shrines in Palestine, together with their desperate attacks on Constantinople, led directly to the crusades.
At the opening of the fourteenth century another tribe of Turks, named the Ottomans, after their great- est leader, secured the ascendency. These soon accom- plished what their forerunners had failed to do, and in 1453 shook all Europe by capturing Constantinople and wiping out the last vestige of the eastern Roman Empire.
The empire that the Ottoman Turks established has endured. In fact, as late as 1683, Turkey was fighting at the gates of Vienna for the rule of eastern Europe.
In later centuries the Turk has lost much of his power. To-day, at the close of two Balkan wars and the World War, he seems utterly impotent. But he still manages to hold some empire in Asia and to retain his capital at Constantinople. It is significant, however, that to-day, for the first time since Mohammedanism swept out of Arabia to world conquest, the majority of the followers of the prophet, a multitude about equal to those who acknowledge the authority of the Pope, are under the temporal rule of non-Moslem powers.
Suggestions for Discussion
1. Tell the story of the life of Mohammed.
2. What are the strong features, and what the weak, of Islam?
68 THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY
3. Where did Mohammedanism come into conflict with Christianity, and why did it prevail?
4. Do you agree that Tours was one of the decisive battles of the world? Why?
5. What evidences of the superiority of Moslem to Christian civilization at the time of the Moorish con- quest of Spain can you find?
6. What is the present condition of Islam? To what extent is it now a dangerous enemy of Christianity?
CHAPTER VIII THE CHURCH GOES TO WAR
In all the history of the Christian Church there is surely no more romantic period than the two hundred years between the close of the eleventh and the thir- teenth centuries when the crusades were in progress. There is something in the picture of kings, knights, monks, peasants, even children, pinning upon them- selves the sign of the cross and marching out to fight with the infidel for the possession of the Holy Land that thrills us all.
It has been the fashion to speak of the crusades as mistaken efforts that failed to accomplish their objects and merely drained the strength of Europe. But, when we look closer, we find that they made a real contribu- tion to the growth of Christianity.
Feudal Europe
The crusades grew out of feudalism. With the main features of that curious social organization that once flourished all over western Europe we are familiar. We know how the kings were forced to pay their nobles for help in time of war by grants of land, exacting in re- turn only an oath of allegiance. We know how the nobles again subdivided their lands, exacting the same oaths from their lesser lords. And so this passed down from king to prince, from prince to duke, from duke to count, from count to baron, until all society stood in this pyramid pattern, with the serfs — the common people who tilled the lands — at the bottom supporting all.
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Life was a rough affair for these feudal lords. They built themselves great fortresses in which they might resist attack, and then devoted most of their time to warfare with each other. Their bonds of fealty to their overlords were slight, and the kings were generally mere figureheads. In Germany, for example, while there always remained an emperor, the land was really ruled, or terrorized, by almost five hundred independent nobles.
The truce of God. — So universal became this prac- tice of plundering one's neighbors that the church began to feel that it must be checked if any civilization was to survive. So the famous "truce of God" was proclaimed, under which the church threatened its most terrible penalties to such lords as did not confine their fighting to Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of each week, and did not leave churches, monasteries, churchmen, pilgrims, merchants, and women alone all the time.
The kings were inclined to support such measures by the church, for they saw many of their lords becom- ing too strong for the throne to control. But it is hard to tell just how much effect the truce had, even with royal approval. Fighting on any terms was too popular a pastime to be abandoned, even for four days a week.
So it was that both church and monarchy, at the close of the eleventh century, were eager to find some outlet for the martial activities of the barons. This outlet the crusades supplied.
The Cause of the Crusades
At least three causes combined to induce the Popes to launch the crusades.
The Holy Land in infidel hands. — Most histories place emphasis upon the thrill of horror that went
THE CHURCH GOES TO WAR 71
through Europe when it became known that the Seljuk Turks, that warhke tribe from western Asia who had succeeded the Arabs in the leadership of Islam, had taken over the control of Syria and were mistreating Christian pilgrims on the way to the shrines of Palestine. Next to monastic retirement, pilgrimage was the most popular form of religious hfe in the Middle Ages. All sorts of virtues were thought to be obtained by those who personally touched spots connected with the earthly hfe of the Christ, or famous saints. During the first centuries of Mohammedan rule in Asia Minor the Arabs made no objection to Christian pilgrimages to spots that were almost as sacred to them as to the Christians. But the fierce Turks, who looked upon Christians as intolerantly as the Christians looked upon them when they called them "infidels," by cruel torture soon put an end to the making of pilgrimages.
The Eastern empire under attack. — Furthermore, the Turks were desperately seeking to capture Con- stantinople. They had pushed their way up to the walls of that city, and the emperor of what was left of the eastern Roman Empire was able, with truth, to warn western Europe that the city could not hold out much longer, and that, once it fell, the Moham- medan, who had been checked in the West three hun- dred years before, would sweep through this breach in the east to the peril of all Europe. To preserve its own life, Europe must thrust back the menace before Constantinople.
The chance to unite the church. — Terribly fright- ened by the approach of the Turks, the emperor in Constantinople made his appeal for help to the Pope as the outstanding leader of the West. This was not long after the Greek Catholic Church had finally sep-
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arated from the Roman (see Chapter VI). The Pope saw in this situation a chance to heal the split, with his own authority as head of the church acknowledged in the East as well as in the West. Accordingly, he prom- ised to rally the West to the help of the East, at a price. So it is that several times during the crusading centuries we see representatives of the Popes and representatives of the Eastern empire meeting, each time formally agree- ing to pay that price — acknowledgment of the supremacy of the Pope — and each time discovering that no Eastern envoy can secure delivery of the promised recognition by the masses of members of the Greek Church. But always this possibility kept dangling before the eyes of the Popes to move them to the proclamation of further crusades.
Palestine Captured by the West
It was in 1095 that the first Pope, Urban II, made the appeal that launched the first crusade. Addressing the nobility of France, he told the tale of the Holy Sepulcher in the hand of the Turk, and Islam pounding at the eastern gate of Europe. To those who would seek to plant the cross in place of the crescent over Syria, Urban promised forgiveness of sins, freedom from the payment of interest upon debts, the right ta mort- gage their property against the wishes of their feudal lords, and the protection of the church for their families and lands. A faithful crusader, dying in battle, was to have immediate entrance into heaven.
The appeal of the Pope caught the imagination of that warlike and romantic age. With a shout, "God wills it!" that was soon to echo over all Europe, an army was gathered in France and Germany that seem- ingly never doubted its ability to cross seas or deserts,
THE CHURCH GOES TO WAR 73
as well as fortified areas, and capture a Holy City two thousand miles away. And, in truth, the first crusade accomplished that very thing!
The kingdom of Jerusalem. — The most picturesque figure of that first crusade was the wild preacher, Peter the Hermit, whose eloquence enhsted so large a part of the host. But Peter proved a poor enough warrior, and nothing but failure would have come to the expedi- tion had not the knights, with their well-armed retainers, taken the lead.
The advance on Palestine was slow. At the beginning there were dreadful outrages perpetrated upon the Jews in certain parts of Europe. Then there was a long wait while the Turks, at that time hopelessly at war among themselves, were pushed back from before Constantinople. Then the knights turned aside still farther to carve out for themselves principalities in Asia Minor.
At last, however, in 1099, the crusade reached Jeru- salem, and captured it. The inhabitants were massacred in a way that seems hideous when we remember that this was a Christian expedition for the rescue of shrines connected with the career of the author of the Sermon on the Mount. A French knight was installed in Jeru- salem as "Defender of the Holy Sepulcher," and a whole kingdom was estabhshed, following Western models, and owning religious allegiance to Rome. Addi- tional crusaders came in shoals from Europe, drawn by reports of the easy wealth that had been carried back when first the cities of Asia Minor were captured.
The Disintegration of the Crusades
There was nothing in this sort of adventuring, with its mixture of motives good and bad, of a permanent
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nature. After the success of the first crusade, marred as that was, there is little in the history of the crusades that followed to claim our interest.
Templars and Hospitallers. — One curious outgrowth of the period was the orders of monkish knights formed to fight in the crusades. The most famous of these were the Knights of the Temple, and the Hospitallers, or Knights of Saint John.
The former was formed originally to protect pilgrims in the Holy Land; the latter to conduct a hospital first established in Jerusalem by Charlemagne. Both be- came great military bodies, the backbone of the war- fare against the Turk.
In much the same way that support is given to mis- sionaries to-day, both were given enormous grants of land and wealth by people in Europe who were not ready, in person, to go crusading. The Templars became so powerful that they aroused the fear of both kings and Popes, and were finally suppressed bloodily soon after the last crusade. The Hospitallers, after being forced out of Palestine, defied the Turks first from a base on the island of Rhodes, and later from Malta, where they maintained themselves until the British Empire took over their guardianship, after America had won its independence.
Other crusades. — In large measure, the success of the first crusade was due to internal dissensions among the Moslems. When they were able to put their full strength in the field it was not long before the Christian prin- cipalities in Asia Minor were wiped out. Saladin, the greatest of the Mohammedan leaders of that period, captured Jerusalem before the end of the twelfth century.
One crusade after another was launched to push back this Moslem counter attack, but in vain. The motives
THE CHURCH GOES TO WAR 75
of the crusaders steadily depreciated. The first fine enthusiasm was lacking. The crusades became mere political forays, often not even directed against the Holy Land. There was one terrible affair, participated in only by children, who perished by thousands or were sold into slavery. By the end of the thirteenth century the desire to conquer the Moslem by the sword was exhausted.
Raymond Lull. — But just at the time one sort of crusade was being abandoned another was beginning. In 1 291 Raymond Lull, who had been inspired to study Arabic in order that he might preach to Mohammedans, was expelled from Tunis after a year of missionary work. He tried a second time with a similar result. He then induced the Pope to order the teaching of Greek, Hebrew, Chaldee, and Arabic in the leading universities of Europe in order to equip other mission- aries— an order that was never carried out. Finally he again entered Tunis and there, in 13 14, he suffered martyrdom. Lull was a forerunner of the modern kind of Christian crusade, which still labors, in the truest sense, to overcome the crescent with the cross.
What the Crusades Accomplished
And what did these two centuries of warfare accom- plish? Much more than some have been willing to admit. Let us enumerate at least four results of the crusades:
1. The Turks were pushed back and the pressure on the eastern empire so lessened that it continued to exist for four centuries.
2. The nobles who mortgaged themselves and their retainers to make these expeditions were so impov-
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erished, in many cases, that they could not con- tinue their repression of the non-mihtary classes of Europe.
3. The horizons of thousands of men who had been unable to read or write, were broadened by their contact with the civilization of the East. The world became a bigger place in which to live.
4. Most important of all, the church, in an age of general disorder, showed its ability to rally all Europe to a single idea, and that, in the eyes of that age, a rehgious idea. Thousands of men, among them the proudest princes, were ready to enlist under the Pope to achieve a distant and difl&cult objective. So it was that the church came from this period immeasurably the strongest institution in Europe.
Suggestions for Discussion I. Was the feudal system a good or a bad thing for its
age
2. Can you trace any influences of the feudal system surviving to-day?
3. If you had lived at that time, what cause would have most moved you to join the first crusade?
4. What can you discover about the character of the men who made the crusades?
5. What do you consider the most important result of the crusades, and why?
6. What suggestions for the modern Christian crusade of missions are to be found in the career of Raymond Lull?
CHAPTER IX
LIFE AND WORSHIP IN THE MEDIEVAL CHURCH
If you visit the House of Lords in England, you will find bishops of the Church of England sitting with dukes and barons as peers of the realm. This is a modern reminder of mediseval days, when the officials of the church held a rank as high in the state as any others of the nobility, because the church was as much a feudal power as any duchy or principality.
But we must not conceive the mediaeval church only in terms of Popes and bishops and high dignitaries. We must remember that it rested upon the faith and allegiance of millions of humble folk. And if we want to know what the church in mediaeval times was really like, we must try to see it through the eyes of these commoners.
The Theory of the Medieval Church
By the time of the crusades the church had evolved a theory as to its place in society that put it at the very pinnacle. And, in that rough age, when there was little civil authority, we do not wonder that a great Pope, such as Gregory VII, could propound a doctrine that would to-day be instantly challenged.
Gregory VII. — Gregory sat upon the papal throne for only twelve years (he died just before his successor issued the call for the first crusade), but for years before his elevation he was the real power behind the Pope. He held the Pope to be the only universal bishop, who
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might depose and reinstate other bishops, and transfer them from place to place.
The Roman Church was declared never to have erred, and to be incapable of erring. No council could speak for the church without the Pope's consent. No person could be a true Christian outside the Roman Church, and no book could be authoritative that the Pope had not approved.
Then Gregory went ahead to assert his supremacy over all earthly rulers. He stated that he could depose kings and absolve their subjects from their oaths of allegiance. He could annul the decrees of all sovereigns or courts, and any person in any country might appeal from local jurisdiction to that of the Pope. The acts of the Pope might not be judged by others.
The church a feudal power. — It can be seen that such powers, if exercised, would have made the church supreme in every relation of life. And the attempt was made by Gregory and his successors to exercise these powers (see Chapter X). This attempt served to weave the church more closely into that leudal struc- ture we have already described.
All over western Europe there were monasteries and bishoprics that owned great stretches of land. Many of these had been the gifts of kings and lords in an age when currency was little used, and land the most common form of bestowal. To obtain these gifts the bishops and abbots frequently took the oath of fealty to their givers. And often the clergy tried to insure protection for their possessions by swearing fealty to some neigh- boring powerful lord.
The all-inclusive church. — One other fact that dis- tinguished the mediaeval church was its inclusiveness. The theory was that all the states of Europe were
LIFE AND WORSHIP 79
Christian, and that, therefore, all their subjects must be Christians. As membership in the church was the only way of showing such allegiance, everyone was considered a member of the church, and taxed accord- ingly. To deny that church membership was treason to the state as much as to the church, which accounts for the way in which Jews were ill treated, and for the terrible punishments visited upon condemned heretics.
Life in the Medieval Church
What sort of a life was it that went on inside this vast body? We see abuses, to be sure, but we must recognize that the church also rendered vast services.
Abuses in church leadership. — Every history of the period tells us much of the abuses that were frequently to be found in the high places of the church. So inter- mingled with the political order of the time had the church become that it was inevitable that unworthy men would aspire to the power inherent in its important positions. Men of worldly nature, frequently openly immoral, became bishops, cardinals, even Popes. Some- times kings, attempting to control the course of the church, appointed their courtiers to wealthy benefices. Rumors as to irregularities within the monasteries and convents were frequently heard. These evils actually existed, as they might be expected to grow up in a body that had no competition to cause it to be careful of the sources of its own power.
Faithful service predominant. — But while such con- ditions existed, it must not be forgotten that there were scattered over Europe thousands of humble parish priests and gentle scholarly souls within the monas- teries rendering faithfully the service expected of them. We do not read much about such men, just as to-day
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it is the outrageous act that is reported in the news- paper to the neglect of the daily performance of duty. But we know there were such, or inevitably the struc- ture of the church would have come crashing down. There were plenty of covetous lords who would have worked to bring this to pass, but the devotion of the masses of the people to their priests was so deep that they dared not try it.
We get a ghmpse of this same spirit in the career of Saint Francis of Assisi and the order of travehng brothers he founded. It was the ideal of Saint Francis that his Franciscans should embrace poverty, and go about Europe entirely dependent upon the bounty of the people, preaching as they went. The response to such an ideal was instant, and the order grew to vast pro- portions, losing, alas, its finest features as it grew.
The church's opportunity. — Not only did the church, as represented by many of the humbler priests, bring its ministries of comfort, of inspiration, and of wor- ship, but to thousands of poor people it offered the only hope of advancement for their sons. In the sense that its offices were open to men of all ranks, the church was the only element of democracy in mediaeval Europe. There were Popes whose fathers had been peasants. Luther, who achieved distinction as an Augustinian before he broke with the Roman Church, never ceased to boast that his father and his grandfather before him had been peasants. The church and the monastery symbolized to the common folk of feudal times that most precious of possessions — an opportunity for their children to rise in the world.
Worship in the Medieval Church So we find in mediaeval Europe a church that claimed
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all men as its members, that exacted taxes from all, and that probably meant more to most common men than king or court. What sort of worship did such a church offer?
The growth of ritual.— We have seen (see Chap- ter I) how simple was the worship in the Christian churches within the Roman Empire a century or so after Christ. But as time passed, as the church became the ally of the state, as the influence of various other faiths made itself felt, a far-reaching change took place. When the clergy became sharply distinguished from the laity, it was felt that they should have acts to perform that no layman would ever attempt. So there grew up an elaborate ritual, that only years of study could make one competent to conduct. By the Middle Ages, the proper performance of this ritual comprised the most important, and frequently the only, element in worship.
This ritual was conducted in Latin, which is still the official language of the Roman Catholic Church. Accordingly, in feudal times it was largely incompre- hensible to the congregations, and often, if some de- tractors were to be believed, to the priests themselves. Sir Walter Scott, in Ivanhoe, depicts a jester success- fully passing as a priest by the use of a single Latin phrase. It must be acknowledged that, in feudal Europe, the actual words of the ritual or of the Vulgate version of the Bible that was read in the churches had little meaning to hosts of worshipers.
The sacraments. — This ritual grew up largely in the celebration of the seven sacraments that were held to be essential to salvation. These were baptism, the Lord's Supper, penance, confirmation, matrimony, orders, and extreme unction. To these, particularly to the first two, was given a mysterious, almost magical,
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valuation, so that it was believed that one who had been baptized and who died at peace with the church, not debarred from any of these sacraments, was sure of eternal bliss.
So generally was this theory of the sacraments accepted that when the Pope placed an interdict upon a state, forbidding the sacraments to the people, terror ensued, and frequently popular uprisings. Kings learned to cower before this terrible weapon of the church. In the main, it can be said that worship in feudal Europe consisted in participation in the required sacra- ments.
The building of the cathedrals. — The place held by the church in the life of mediaeval Europe is suggested by the greatest survival of those times, the cathedrals. Immense fortunes must have been contributed to the making of these stupendous monuments, and centuries were required to complete many of them. How were the people encouraged to undertake such enterprises?
The normal income of the church, large as it was, would never have sufficed to build the cathedrals. But the church in those days fostered certain great fears that induced men to give large sums in addition to those they usually contributed. The greatest of these fears was that of the end of the world. It was univer- sally believed that this would occur in the year looo, and men of all ranks contributed to secure their own salvation. A study of the history of the cathedrals shows that most of them obtained their great impulse at that time. And we shall see (see Chapter XIII) that the greatest cathedral of Catholicism owed its completion to the purchases of indulgences, because of the fear of purgatory that had been inspired in men's hearts.
THE CHURCH IN THE LIFE OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE
Just as the cathedrals towered over the towns, so the church overshadowed the think- ing of those days.
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The Common Man and the Church
So the life of the common man in mediasval Europe was, from birth, tied up with the church. When he was a few days old he was baptized, and became, in theory, from that time a good Christian, At the middle of boyhood, after some slight teaching by the priest, he was confirmed in the church, and partook of his first communion. When he fell into sin he confessed his wrong to the priest, and did what penance was required.
Perhaps the land upon which he lived belonged to some monastery. Then most of his income went to sup- port that place. Or if he lived on land of his own, or was a tradesman, he gave a required tax yearly when the priest demanded it of him.
When he married, the priest performed the ceremony. When his son was born he determined that a better lot should be his, and gave him early into the keeping of the monastery for training as a priest. As long as the priest did not deny him participation in the Lord's Supper he felt himself spiritually satisfied. And when the last hours of his life drew near, the priest, who had been his friend so long, administered extreme unction, and he died sure of heaven.
It was a naive, and in many ways a mechanical, attitude toward religion. But it served for centuries to satisfy the inner longings of millions.
Suggestions for Discussion
1 . Give a more detailed account of the career of Gregory VII.
2. How did the church in feudal times differ from the church of the present?
3. Give a description of the life of Saint Francis of Assisi.
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4. How does the Protestant theory of the sacraments differ from that of the Roman CathoHc Church? Just what is a "sacrament"?
5. Describe the architecture of some of the great cathedrals. Name several of the most famous.
6. Explain what is meant by "indulgence" as used in this chapter. Does the Roman Catholic Church dis- pense indulgences to-day?
CHAPTER X CHURCH AND STATE
It was the Pope who ralKed western Europe to the crusades. But it was the nobihty who provided the soldiers for those great adventures. And it was the kings who, at the end, led.
Vast readjustments followed those expeditions. Many of the lords had been impoverished. While they had spent themselves in foreign lands, the merchant classes at home had seized the chance to increase in power. At the same time the weakness of the nobles made it possible for the kings to assert the authority of the crown. And behind all ruled the power in Rome that claimed to rule even the kings.
So that, by the end of the crusades, the stage was set in Europe for that struggle that has continued down to this day, the struggle for supremacy between church, the aristocratic state, and the common people.
When the Church Ruled Europe
In the beginning it seemed certain that the church would win this struggle. From the day when a Pope induced the Huns to turn from Rome without plunder- ing the city, the influence of the papacy had been grow- ing. Despite periods when weak men or unworthy men had been upon the papal throne, the papacy had re- mained throughout the centuries as the one fixed author- ity to which men might look while the kingdoms of mediaeval Europe were running their brief courses. And we have seen how, under such a Pope as Gregory VII, the theory of the church's authority was developed.
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Unenviable position of kings. — To anyone who travels in Europe to-day and sees the abbeys that still remain, or finds great cities that were once the possession of bishops, and then remembers that for eight centuries or more men have been busily wiping out these evidences of churchly ownership, it is graph- ically clear that, at the time about which we are speak- ing, a very large part of the surface of Germany, France, Italy, and England was owned by the church. So that the kings had above them a papacy claiming the right to rule them, and below them a large part of their realms in the hands of men who rendered their first allegiance to that same papacy. It is hardly to be won- dered that strong kings grew restive under such condi- tions, and determined to alter them.
The Power of the Kings Begins to Grow
At the beginning of the two centuries of crusading there was scarcely a strong king in Europe. But before the end of those two centuries, the kings had begun to assert the leadership which they have continued to hold in European affairs until almost the present.
The towns gather wealth. — When a feudal lord fell in with the fashion of that day and vowed to make a crusade, his first requisite was for equipment for his retainers. Relying upon the booty he meant to bring back from the East to repay his debts, he mortgaged himself to the merchants and mechanics of the towns and sallied forth to the rescue of the Holy Sepulcher.
But few of the crusaders came back wealthy. And when they did, they found that, in their absence, the towns had taken advantage of the rest from the con- stant raiding that had gone before the crusades, to
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throw up walls and consolidate their own position. It proved impossible for these barons to check the rising wealth of the town merchants, who foreclosed their mortgages in a most ungallant fashion.
Moreover, the towns threw in their lot with the kings as against the nobles. The lords lived in isolated castles; the kings built their palaces in the towns. The wealth of the towns was at the disposal of the king, who, in return, gave the protection of his army. Power has a way of gravitating into the hands of those with wealth, and it was not long before the king and the town formed an alHance of greater power than the isolated and almost bankrupt barons.
Frederick II. — Of all the kings of this period, Frederick II was the most interesting. For one thing, he did his own thinking. Although he was under the instruction of the papacy from boyhood, he exhibited a notable tolerance toward all systems of thought, whether orthodox or not. He seemed to be determined to rule his empire (he was King of Sicily as well as Em- peror of Germany) as he pleased, without interference by the Pope. As a youth he had pledged himself to make a crusade. When the Pope pressed him to start he was too busy making his throne secure, and was excommunicated for his tardiness. When Frederick got ready to go, the Pope was not ready to have him, and excommunicated him again for starting. None the less, he went and actually won control of Jerusalem, where he was recognized as King. To the end of his life he continued to go his own way, almost always at outs with the Pope.
Customs That Forced the Issue So, in the career of Frederick II, we see epitomized
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the struggle between the church, represented by the Pope, and the state, represented by the King, that filled the last years of mediaeval Europe. First the kings, as we have seen, won the upper hand over their nobles. Then they felt themselves strong enough to challenge the claims of the papacy. In studying that bitter struggle we find that there were one or two par- ticular issues upon which it was fought out. What were they?
Investiture. — The church, in its ownership of lands, had, as we know, become a part of the feudal system. Bishops and abbots frequently maintained their men- at-arms, and rode to war with all the zest of lay barons. These benefices were, in many cases, very rich, and naturally, they were greatly coveted.
But who was to fill these benefices? In the case of a lay baron, the title and lands descended from father to son, and when the line became extinct the king bestowed it upon whom he pleased, exacting a new pledge of fealty, or gathered it back into his own posses- sions. But when a bishop or an abbot died, unless he was married and left children, his title, land, and power would pass into other hands.
Who was to say whose hands these should be? The Pope claimed the right to name all clerical leaders. But that gave the real control of a large part of every kingdom to a man in Rome, who was already feared by the kings because of the powers he claimed. More- over, the kings felt that these great church holdings were only secondarily religious affairs, but that they were most sought for the temporal power they gave. And the kings proposed to say who should possess all temporal power in their realms.
As often as a strong king came to any of the thrones
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of western Europe this struggle with the Pope as to who was to fill these rich benefices was sure to be re- vived. It began with Charlemagne, and it persisted for four centuries. In the days of a strong Pope, such as Gregory VII, the papacy would control the choice of most bishops and abbots. Under a strong king, the crown would do the appointing, and frequently would name laymen or notoriously unworthy clerics as leaders in the church.
Both sides passed laws against each other. The effectiveness of such laws depended upon the force of the makers. In the end, as far as Germany, where the struggle was bitterest, was concerned, it was ended by a compromise, whereby the direct appointment of bishops and abbots was left in the hands of the clergy, who conferred the religious powers. But the king retained the power to invalidate such an election by refusing to turn over the temporal power connected with such offices, and so in reality held the control.
Married clergy. — Another issue, which was more largely within the church, was as to whether the clergy should marry. As we have said, if a bishop could marry and have children, it would not be long before his title and benefice would be inherited like that of any lay lord. But Gregory VII won the fight for a cehbate clergy.
Legal jurisdiction. — Greater trouble was made by the claim of the church that it alone had power to decide legal issues concerning itself, or in which clergy, monks, students, crusaders, widows, orphans, and the help- less were involved. "All cases where the rites of the church, or its prohibitions, were involved came ordinarily before the church courts, as, for example, those con- cerning marriage, wills, sworn contracts, usury, bias-
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phemy, sorcery, heresy, and so forth. "^ We do not wonder that the kings did not relish having such a wide range of matters affecting their subjects removed from their jurisdiction.
Taxes. — Finally, church and state broke on the question of who was to collect the more money. It took great sums to carry on the papal court; it took great sums to carry on each regal court. The church early provided for the needs of its court by collecting a tithe of the income (not to be reckoned as an exact tenth, but in this case a legal title for the tax) of all the faithful and forwarding it to Rome. Then the kings attempted to levy taxes, after the passing of the period when they raised most of the money they wanted by squeezing wealthy Jews, and, of course, tried to tax the wealthy churches and monasteries with the rest. The churchmen protested, and were upheld by the Popes. Popes would forbid the clergy to pay taxes to kings; kings would forbid the shipment of money out- side the country. So the contest went on.
Dramatic Moments in the Struggle
In that long struggle there were many dramatic moments. We can mention but three.
Canossa. — Germany to-day still remembers, and resents, the cold December night when Henry IV, the young Emperor, stood barefoot in the snow in the court- yard of the castle of Canossa, in Italy, seeking forgive- ness at the hands of Gregory VII, the Pope, who was within. The Pope and the Emperor had quarreled, principally on the subject of investitures. In the begin- ning, Henry had the upper hand, and had called a council of German prelates that had declared Gregory
»J. H. Robinson, Op. cit., p. 183.
CHURCH AND STATE 91
deposed. But Gregory replied by excommunicating the king, releasing his subjects from their oaths of allegiance; and unwise statecraft on the part of that monarch made it seem that his most powerful nobles would seize that opportunity to depose him. Only by obtaining pardon from the Pope could he hold his throne. The manner in which the Pope humihated him marks the apex of the temporal power of that office. Before he died Gregory had been shown that he could not exercise such despotic power unceasingly.
The humiliation of John. — Again the papacy showed its power when Innocent III forced King John of England, at the beginning of the thirteenth century, to surrender his entire country to the Pope, and receive it back again as a fief. John found himself in a quarrel with the monks of Canterbury. When the Pope at last rendered judgment the king refused to submit. The Pope placed all England under an interdict, thus closing the churches and keeping from all the people the sacraments.
In an age when it was thought necessary to salvation to partake of the sacraments this was a terrible pun- ishment. The people of England were incensed against the monarch who had brought it upon them. The Pope called upon the King of France to take an army to punish John, and the French king joyfully prepared to carry out the task. Fearing the anger of his people at his back and the invasion of an enemy from abroad, John hastened to Rome and handed over his kingdom to Innocent. The Pope gave it back to him as his vassal. This exhibition of kingly weakness and papal strength helped to make the English ready to take their fate into their own hands, and the signing of the Magna Charta was the result.
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The Babylonian captivity. — Now we see a picture of another sort. In 1300 the Pope proclaimed a jubilee, and hundreds of thousands of pilgrims thronged to Rome and rained money into the papal treasuries. Apparently, the papacy was never stronger. But, at the same time, a strong king was strengthening his position at the head of France, and while the papacy was celebrating, Philip the Fair was putting himself at the head of a nationalistic movement that would not recognize the right of Popes to rule in temporal affairs.
Philip first humihated the Pope, Boniface VIII, when one of his representatives publicly insulted him at Anagni. And when Boniface died of a broken spirit Philip secured the election of an archbishop of Bordeaux to the vacant papacy, and brought it to pass that the Popes for seventy years thereafter lived in Avignon, a city where they were almost geographically and wholly in practice under the control of the French monarchy.
Who Won?
This is the question we are bound to ask after read- ing of such a struggle. Who won. Pope or Emperor? Surely, the incident at Anagni and the Babylonian captivity gives us the answer. It was a long way from Canossa, with the barefoot Emperor humbly kneeling in the snow, to Anagni.
Christians have always declared, and still hold, that they work toward a day when God's will shall be the supreme factor in all afTairs. But, until the time when a priest or minister can be protected against the influ- ence of ignorance, personal prejudice or self-seeking, we will probably agree that the road from Canossa
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to Anagni was one that, for the welfare of the nations, had to be traveled.
Suggestions for Discussion
1. Upon what theory did the Pope base his assertion of supreme power? To what extent is that theory valid? How is it to be applied in practice?
2. Describe, more fully than in this chapter, the struggle between Gregory VII and Henry IV.
3. In what way did the effort of the papacy to control England contribute to the liberty of the English?
4. What other reasons, besides those given in the text, can you find for the opposition of the Pope to a married clergy?
5. Can you, using mediaeval Europe as an example, discover any connection between wealth and churchly vigor?
6. Give a comprehensive definition or explanation of these terms: Abbey; benefice; investiture; fief; interdict.
CHAPTER XI THE DAWN OF A NEW AGE
From the crusades, we have seen, Europe passed into the climax of that struggle that was to prove that the church was not to exercise supreme power, save in religious affairs. Now we are to study another develop- ment that grew out of the same period, and was of even more far-reaching importance.
Christianity has prospered as it has spread. That was the proposition with which we began our course. To it we now return for an explanation of that won- derful period men have spoken of as the revival of learning and the Renaissance — the days of a "new birth."
New Currents in the Minds of Europe
There are two transforming experiences that come to most men. The first is to read a book, and the second is to take a journey.
For years Europe, thrown into anarchy by the col- lapse of the western Roman Empire, had been struggling to work out a settled political order. Men had given their first attention to that effort, often bhndly. They had not traveled; they had not read. As a result, their minds — always excepting those who lived within the church — had gone to seed, and they had been con- tent to accept without critical examination such doc- trines as their priests gave them.
Then all Europe went on a journey. It brought contact with a civUization immensely superior in culture
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and learning to the rude, unlettered life of feudal Europe. And men of imagination of all ranks, priests as well as laymen, came back to begin to spread through the west the same sort of mental outlook that had been found in the east.
Scholasticism. — The first result was seen in the line of teachers who attempted to reduce the thought of that day to a system. These are generally known as the Schoolmen, and their contribution to European life as Scholasticism.
It is not necessary for us to call the roll of these Schoolmen, among whom were such keen minds as Anselm and Abelard and Aquinas. It is sufficient to remember that they first began to discuss theology and philosophy in much the same way that they are discussed to-day, and that they were not satisfied until they had worked out balanced and consistent systems for all these.
To be sure, they were badly restricted in their teach- ing. Only the orthodox doctrine of the church was then regarded as a proper subject for discussion, and practically the only permitted author outside the writers of the Bible was Aristotle, distorted by the bad Latin versions in which he was studied. But for all that, and despite the emptiness of much of the effort of these Schoolmen, we must admit that they awakened minds everywhere throughout western Europe to a desire to discover underlying truths and ultimate facts.
The rise of the universities. — Naturally, these teachers drifted toward various centers. And naturally, students followed to hear what the teachers might have to say. The teachers were, in practically every case, clergymen, but often the students had no intention of entering the church. This, in itself, marked a trans-
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formation from the days when all learning had been confined to the cloisters.
Cities and princes began to vie with one another to attract great teachers and large numbers of students. Thus the universities came into being. Before the end of the twelfth century the University of Paris was born. Followed that the University of Bologna. Then a group of English students became dissatisfied for some reason in Paris and returned to their homeland to found the University of Oxford. By the end of the thirteenth century there were universities scattered throughout Germany, France, Spain, and Italy, and in them was fomenting that exuberant mental life that was to change the whole history of the Christian Church.
Finding a Forgotten World
One of the first things that this awakening mental life did was to lead the students to suspect the great- ness of the past. Madly they began searching in the debris of the centuries beneath their feet.
The rediscovery of Latin and Greek. — The top layer, and so the first to be uncovered, was that Latin literature from which the speech of France and Spain and Italy derived. To be sure, Latin, in a debased form, had been kept alive by the church in all the cen- turies. But almost the only idea of the real glories of Latin literature was that preserved in some of the poems of Vergil.
To an Italian, Petrarch, who lived for seventy years in the fourteenth century, must go much of the honor for the real rediscovery of Latin literature. Under his enthusiasm there were brought to light Cicero and Horace and all the others of whom we think to-day when Latin is mentioned. And the students in the
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universities threw themselves in a frenzy of delight into a study of the mighty thoughts that these ancients, whose mental hfe had been so rich, had brought forth.
Before he died Petrarch had more than a hint of another and a greater literature hidden below Latin. Early in the fifteenth century men began to cross from Constantinople to Italy to teach Greek. At the middle of the century the eastern empire at last gave up the long struggle, and abandoned the city to the Ottoman Turks. And then there fled to western Europe a swarm of teachers who brought to the eager scholars Aristotle in his original Greek form, and Plato, and Homer, and all the rest of that glorious company who made the name Greek synonymous with outreaching, pen- etrating thought.
Secular literature again to the fore. — One imme- diate effect of this expanding mental life is to be seen in the books that began to be written. From the time of the downfall of the Roman Empire, practically the entire literary output had been of a religious nature. Even the great Schoolmen had confined themselves to theological subjects, or subjects that could be pre- sented under theological guises.
But when these mighty Latins and Greeks began to move about once more inside the minds qf men a new kind of literature began to be written. Its first, and greatest, expression came in Italy's poet, Dante. To be sure, Dante, in his Paradise and his Purgatory, held to religious subjects, even though he indulged in pene- trating social criticism. But in his Monarchy the great Italian struck out boldly into a discussion of the basis of government, and while he remains the preeminent poet of Catholicism, set forth a theory that repudiated the authority of the Pope in secular affairs.
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Hardly was Dante dead before Petrarch came with his sonnets, fashioned after the Latin model. Then came Boccaccio, whose studies, although they smack of the coarseness of that time, give us a satirical crit- icism of the mediaeval church. And a Venetian, Marco Polo, was recalled from oblivion by the widespread publication of his travels through the Far East.
Erasmus. — But probably the most influential voice that spoke out of this day of awakening was that of Erasmus. Born in Holland about ten years after Con- stantinople fell into Turkish hands, he lived in France, England, Italy, and Germany, and stood everywhere as the incarnation of his time.
Erasmus was a churchman. As a boy he had been forced into the church against his will, but once there he was content to remain, and to bring about such reforms as seemed necessary to him by working on the inside. In this we find the element that distinguished Erasmus from many who were his contemporaries. He believed in reform, but he feared revolution. To Erasmus, Luther and his friends must have seemed like anarchists.
Erasmus accompHshed most through two books. One of them was called The Praise of Folly. In it folly was personified, and pointed out the large part it was playing in human affairs. The hair-splitting disputes of the theologians were ridiculed, the monks were plainly told that they would find themselves among the goats on Judgment Day, and even the Pope was satirized as one who would "turn law, religion, peace, and all human affairs upside down." The book had an enormous sale, and everywhere it must have made men question the claims of the church to be an effective spiritual agency.
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Then he contributed to the discovery of a safe basis for religion by putting on the market a Greek New Testament. It was not a perfect piece of work, but it was immeasurably superior to the translations in which the Gospels and the letters of the apostles had been preserved. Europe was by this time full of men who were, in their souls, intensely dissatisfied with Chris- tian doctrine as the church offered it. These, by hun- dreds, turned to Erasmus' Testament, and there found themselves in what seemed a new world. And many claims that the church had been building through the generations found it hard to support themselves when faced with the actual Greek text upon which they were supposed to be based.
It was largely because of those two books that later men coined that epigram of the Reformation: "Erasmus laid the egg, and Luther hatched it."
Three Mighty Discoveries
We close our account of this dawning of a new age by speaking of three discoveries that were to have a great part in bringing this new time to its fruition. Curiously, we have learned, in later years, that these were really not discoveries, but rediscoveries. It may serve to make those of us who have sprung from Euro- pean stock humbler if we are reminded that these discoveries we once claimed so proudly as our own had been known for generations by people we called "uncivilized" in China.
Gunpowder. — If you mix together proper amounts of saltpeter, sulphur, and charcoal, you get a resultant powder that, when ignited, explodes with force suffi- cient to drive large bodies considerable distances with great power. The gunpowder that was brought into
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use at this time not only drove its solid cannon balls through the walls of the feudal castles, but through the structure of feudahsm itself. And it did much to wipe out the distinction in battle between the aristocrat and the commoner. To a cannon ball, it made no difference whether the man in its path wore steel armor or a leather jerkin. War became a speciahzed pro- fession, to be engaged in by trained bands who had control of these murderous weapons. Because of the costs, these professional armies could be supported only by states. And it was no longer possible for a lord to sit in his moated keep and defy the countryside.
The printing press. — If you have to produce every book by hand, it is certain that books will be so few, and their value so great, that you must chain them to reading desks, lest they be stolen. But when, by the use of type and presses, it is possible to produce any number of exact copies of an original, books may be made so cheaply that they may be possessed by almost anyone. Of course, before printing could be of much value, there must be something to print on. Parch- ment was too expensive, and too rare. But by the fourteenth century Europe was in possession of a Moor- ish process (which had been originally obtained by the Arabs from China) whereby cloth or certain grasses might be turned into paper. And then Gutenberg, or some other, showed that printing with movable types was feasible. And a further transformation of the mind of Europe was an inevitable result.
The compass. — If you let a magnetized needle swing freely in a plane parallel to the horizon, it will point you to the north. So that a bold man, even on an unknown sea, by the use of that instrument we know as a compass, can always know which way he is facing.
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And that proved knowledge enough to lure men forth on those great voyages which were to mark the final end of the Middle Ages and the opening of that age of discovery that was so greatly to affect Christianity.
Suggestions for Discussion
1. Can you suggest the contributions that univer- sities, and other centers of learning, have made to the spread of Christianity?
2. Why should the rediscovery of a past, at the time of the Renaissance, have preceded the awakening of new energies?
3. Why should the publication of a Greek New Testa- ment have been an important event in Christian history?
4. Can you see any relation between the discovery of gimpowder and the passing of feudalism?
5. What part did the printing press play in the rise of Protestantism?
6. How has the compass contributed to the spread of Christianity?
CHAPTER XII
NEW CHANNELS FOR CHRISTIANITY'S SPREAD
Now western Europe possesses the mariner's com- pass. Now the great ocean that has been tempting beyond the pillars of Hercules for so many centuries is no longer "trackless." Now the fire of adventure begins to burn within the seafaring men of Portugal and Spain and Italy and England. Now Christianity is bestirring itself to its last and greatest crusade.
The Opening of the Age of Discovery
Even to-day, when ocean travel has become a com- monplace, the sailing of an ocean liner is a stirring event. Crowds gather at the docks to bid the travelers bon voyage; often bands play; flags and handkerchiefs flutter in salute. How stirring must have been the departures of those years from the opening of the second half of the fifteenth century to the close of the first half of the sixteenth! Any caravel that dropped down with the tide might come back with word of new lands! In a hundred years the world more than doubled in size.
A world eager for knowledge. — If there is one phrase by which the period of the Renaissance may be described, it is, "a time of mental hunger." Men were seeking eagerly in every promising direction for material that would feed their appetite for more knowl- edge and a finer culture. We see, in the revival of learning and the wonderful examples of architecture,
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sculpture, and painting that date from this time, how richly this search was rewarded.
Inevitably, this desire to know more awoke within men the spirit of adventure. They wanted to know what was beyond the margin of their present expe- rience. The lands that thousands had seen during the crusades, and that a few, such as the Polo brothers of Venice, had seen while on solitary travels, whispered of yet other lands where wealth awaited the first comers. And always the sea-paths beckoned as the most direct route to these fabled cHmes.
The Portuguese take to the sea. — On the side of the Iberian peninsula that faced the Atlantic Uved a people who were, for a hundred years, to exercise an influence on human history out of all proportion to their size. Freed from the Moors before the Spaniards, the Portuguese began to feel early the call of the ocean.
"The northwest corner of Africa was the spot where the navigators, who were afterward to reach India and America, first learned their business. Here Genoese and Portuguese seamen disputed with the Barbary Moors for the glory of the cross and the conquest of the Guinea coast. This coast was to the Saracens the *Bilad Ghana,' or the Land of Wealth, and the wealth consisted in the first instance of Negro slaves, for whom the ships of Prince Henry of Portugal pressed down the coast and watched the shores."^
The discovery of Cape Verde. — But these Portu- guese seamen were really after something more than Negro slaves, readily as the social conscience of that, day allowed them to participate in that traffic. They were inspired by the dream that perhaps the commonly held belief that Africa, below its northern fringe, was
•F. S. Marvin, The Living Fast, Oxford University Press, pp. 151, 152.
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an arid waste, unfit for white residence, might be untrue, and that, even near the equator, a land might be found where Portugal might develop a great Christian de- pendency that would feed wealth into the impoverished homeland.
In 1445 the dream of the Portuguese came true! Sailing beyond the previously explored coast one day, a headland crowned with tropical trees and a great river flowing into the stream from the east were dis- covered. More Negroes were captured, and back the little ships sailed to tell their royal master of that Cape Verde (the green headland) they had found.
What a moment that year 1445 marked in the life of Europe! On the Bosphorus the thunder of the Turks at the gates of Constantinople was growing louder and louder. Apparently, the century-long fight to hold back Islam was to end in defeat. A German named Gutenberg had brought into Rome a new contrivance called a printing press, and, in a panic, the Pope hired him to strike off indulgences for all who would volunteer to serve against the infidel in the East. Good men everywhere, appalled by the excesses in the life of the West and the approach of the enemy in the East, had begun to fear lest Christianity be wiped out. And just at that moment came sailing back the little ships to report to Prince Henry the discovery of Cape Verde, and so to usher in a new age. For the stream of dis- coveries that were now to follow were to give Chris- tianity, in the vigor of occupying new territory, such a power as it had never held before!
The World a Globe
In Hereford Cathedral, in England, you may see a map of the world drawn in the Middle Ages. The work
JERUSALEM, THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE
Before the Age of Discovery, pious map-makers drew upon their imagination to show what the world was like. This map, preserved in Hereford Cathedral, Eng- land, shows Jerusalem as the axis about which all else centers.
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of some pious monk, it shows in a fantastic fashion all the lands and peoples, circling around Jerusalem as the divine center of the world.
The influence of Ptolemy. — As long as geographical knowledge was of the sort indicated by that Hereford map, men could not get very far in discovering the real facts about the world in which they hved. But the Renaissance turned the minds of the navigators away from the monkish map-makers, and back to the astronomer Ptolemy, who had lived in Egypt in the second century.
Ptolemy had taught that the world was a globe, and his teaching had been generally accepted by the educated. To be sure, certain parties in the church had tried to show that such a conception was not in keeping with some phrases in the Bible. But we do not want to place too great importance on the stories that have been told of general ignorance as to the world's shape. One of our best authorities goes so far as to state that "All intelligent people knew, all through the Middle Ages, that the world was a globe."^ In 1492 - — fated year! — a German mariner, Behaim, made a globe that is still preserved in Nuremberg, that shows Europe, Asia, much of Africa, and the East Indies, with Japan (then called Zipangu, the land of gold) lying about half-way across the ocean between Europe and Asia.
The influence of spices. — All these early navigators were eager for wealth. One easily transported form of wealth at that time was spices. Food was preserved in spices in that day when ice was unknown, and food that might have begun to decay could be eaten if heavily spiced. The spice market was constant and, because of the difficulty of bringing spices to Europe, high.
*J. H. Robinson, op. cit., p. 236.
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The Portuguese seem to have concentrated most of their attention upon the reaching of the regions where spices were produced. These were known to be in the East, somewhere beyond India, for the spices had been transported for generations by the Mohammedans from their home and deHvered at eastern Mediterranean ports to Itahan traders, who distributed them through western Europe.
By i486 Diaz, a Portuguese, had rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and the western coast of Africa was known to the white man. From that time it was inev- itable that the explorers would press on until, as hap- pened in 1498, they made the jump from the eastern coast across the Indian Ocean, to find themselves in Calicut. And from that base it was but a few years before the Portuguese were in possession of the richest of the islands to the southeast of Asia.
Columbus and the great discovery. — Now bring to- gether this desire for spices and easy wealth and this theory that the world is a globe. Mix them in the eager minds of such an age. What will inevitably happen? Keen heads began to believe that the long route of the Portuguese might be shortened, and the wealth they sought much more cheaply attained, by sailing westward until the East Indies should be reached.
Of course, the great name that we remember as having neld this idea is that of Christopher Columbus. This Genoese sailor, stirred by the Portuguese successes, tried in vain for a time to secure enough backing to make it possible for him to try his better plan. The cities of his own Italy had been too hard hit by the capture of Constantinople by the Turks to be ready to finance such an undertaking. The Portuguese were content to develop the route they had already begun
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to open. But at last, at the court of Ferdinand and Isabella, where the new union of Spain as a power free from the Moor was bringing new energies, Columbus found his chance.
In five weeks Columbus had calculated that, by sail- ing east, he would reach Japan, with its fabled riches. In thirty-two days he did sight land, but we all know that it was not Japan. Three times the great adventurer returned to the scenes of his first quest, and although he came to know that he was not in Japan, to the day of his death he never dreamed that he had found a New World.
The Age of Discovery
And now, as the sixteenth century unfolds, we find ourselves in a perfect rush of exploration. Scarcely a year but sees new expeditions starting, and a resulting widening in the borders of our knowledge. We can only stop to get a brief impression of these mighty days.
The Portuguese sail east. — The Portuguese, as we have seen, held to the long route around the continent of Africa. Six years after Columbus first reached the New World, Vasco de Gama reached India. In 15 12 his successors were in Java, and within a few years these adventurers had explored and fortified that great Malay Archipelago, almost two thousand miles in extent. Then, in 15 19, a Portuguese named Magellan, after starting in the familiar southerly direction, turned west instead of east, and disappeared from men's knowl- edge on the other side of the Straits of Magellan, at the southmost tip of South America. Three years later Magellan's ship came sailing back, this time from the east, and lo, the world had been circumnavigated!
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The Spaniards follow Columbus. — Columbus had pointed the way for the mariners of Spain. Before his death the flags of Castile waved from almost every island in the West Indies, and a footing had been won in South America. In quick succession Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama to discover the Pacific from the other side of the continent; Cortez conquered the Aztec empire in Mexico; and Pizarro took possession of Peru. Spain's discoveries and conquests in the New World proved far more valuable than those of the Portuguese on the other side of the globe, and furnished much of the wealth upon which the great empire of Charles V and Philip II was built.
The English enter the game. — At the same time the English were bestirring themselves. They had in view the old goal of an easy access to the islands whence came the spices, but they were induced by another Genoese, Cabot, to seek it in a northwesterly direction. As a result, the English interests were first planted in Newfoundland, and were spread, during the next cen- tury, along the coast of North America. And soon adventurous EngUshmen, part traders, part pirates, and part slavers, were disputing with the Spaniards for the control of the West Indies and the northern coasts of South America.
In a hundred years. — At the half-way point in the fifteenth century we have seen the Pope in torment because the effort to hold back the power of Islam has failed, and Christianity is being compressed in upon itself. A hundred years pass, and we see the best blood in western Europe pressing to the conquest of lands distant by thousands of miles of ocean. What a cen- tury it must have been!
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New Roadways for the Gospel
In all this story of discovery we need to remember that these navigators were good members of the Catholic Church. Never the ship sailed into the unknown but that it had been blessed by the clergy, and carried at its masthead the banner of the cross. Never the new land was opened to exploration and colonization but that there came ashore with the soldier and his firelock the priest and his baptismal water. And when the age of discovery came to an end we see, as we study it from this distance, that there had been opened on every sea innumerable roadways down which the gospel was to pass to the evangelization of great por- tions of the earth.
Suggestions for Discussion
1. Who was Ptolemy, and how has he influenced history?
2. To what extent was Marco Polo a forerunner of the explorers of the fifteenth century?
3. Why did the fall of Constantinople seem a catas- trophe? Was it?
4. Which voyage accomplished most, that of Colimibus or that of Magellan?
5. Can you perceive how the landing of the Spanish in South and Central America, and of the English in North America, affected the later religious history of those regions?
CHAPTER XIII
THE ROMAN THEORY OF THE CHURCH CHALLENGED
See what a stage we now have set for events! The struggle between Pope and king for dominance in affairs of state has been decided in favor of the kings, and nationality begins to be a ruling force. The birth of the universities and the rediscovery of ancient Hter- atures fling open the doors of men's minds, and they are ready to embark upon all sorts of mental adven- tures. The mariners have sailed east and west, north and south, on the search for the elusive spices, and men prove ready for all sorts of physical adventures. And now we are to find them, under the spell of this same mood, ready to launch out upon all sorts of spiritual quests. For we have arrived at the time of the Reformation.
The Church a State
To understand what happened in this period we must remember what sort of an organization the church had become during the Middle Ages.
The mediaeval theory of the church.— To all in- tents, the church stood as a great state within all the other states. The kings had been able to repudiate its claim to be above all the other states, but none, up to this time, had challenged its right to exist coextensively with France and Germany and Italy and the rest.
Treason against the church. — The central idea, on no
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which this vast organization had been erected, was the necessity for a unity of faith. To secure this it was necessary, so it was held, to have one head, one author- itative body of doctrine, and one recognized body and fount of laws. The kings were ready to support this theory with their temporal power, because it helped to reduce disorder and increase discipline among the masses. It frequently happened, however, that on minor matters the kings and Popes disagreed.
Treason against this authoritative doctrine and uni- j5.ed organization became regarded as one of the worst of all possible crimes. The Inquisition was set up in order that the first signs of such treason might be de- tected and exterminated, and the record of the church was blotted with the hideous measures sometimes used in punishing alleged heresy. Furthermore, to make sure that bishops in distant places were not taking advantage of their remoteness to weaken the authority of the supreme pontiff, the Pope employed personal representatives, or legates, who traveled about from country to country, exercising absolute power wherever they went.
The empire of Charles V. — In the same year that Magellan embarked upon his great voyage, 1519, there came to the throne of the Holy Roman Empire the grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella, Charles V. Already he was Duke of Brabant, Margrave of Antwerp, Count of Holland, Archduke of Austria, Count of Tyrol, King of Spain and Naples, and of the Spanish possessions in America. To these were now added the emperorship of Germany and control of much territory in northern Italy. So that before he was twenty years of age, Charles ruled over one of the greatest empires of mod- em times.
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Charles shared very little the new movements that were changing Europe. He was a devout Catholic, and he determined to use the orthodox faith, as Con- stantine had done, to cement together the scattered units of his empire. Thus he became the Pope's chief secular support.
But the great mistake of Charles, in dealing with his empire, was his decision to transfer its center to Spain. In a way, that seemed the wise move, for it was to Spain that the immense wealth of the New World was flowing. But this served to increase the suspicion of the northern princes, and made them the more ready to support any movement that aimed at any authority in the south. Had it not been for this spirit of semi-independence on the part of the German lords, it is difl&cult to see how what did happen could have happened at that time.
Luther's First Challenge
Northern Europe had never been as closely knit to the papacy as the south. Early in the sixteenth cen- tury all Germany was in a mood of resentment against Rome that offered an opportunity to any revolt.
The part played by indulgences. — German princes and people found most exasperation in the steadily increasing demands made by the papal court upon the wealth of Germany. At that time the Pope, inspired by the artistic enthusiasm of the age (for the Pope, Leo X, with whom Luther had most of his troubles, was a member of the famous Medici family who gave Italy so many of its finest artistic possessions), desired to complete the papal cathedral, Saint Peter's in Rome, in the magnificent style in which we know it to-day.
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And to obtain the vast sum needed, a liberal sale of indulgences was fostered throughout Christendom.
These indulgences were an outgrowth of Catholic theology. It was held that most men could not, even by confession and the doing of penance, wipe out the full score of sins for which they must be punished in this life, but that they must, in an after-state called purgatory, be further punished and thus cleansed before they could be admitted to the holy presence of God.
But the Pope was the all-powerful representative of God. So it was held that the Pope could issue a pardon, or indulgence, that would reduce the punishment a contrite sinner would have to undergo in purgatory. The worst feature of the system was its use to raise revenue, for these indulgences came to be granted upon a regular scale of pay, so much to the poor man, and so much more to the rich.
At the beginning of the sixteenth century repre- sentatives of the Pope began to appear all over western Europe, zealously collecting money in this manner. In their enthusiasm they made many claims for the efficiency of the indulgences they were selling that no church authority would have upheld. But the cred- ulous people flocked to buy them, and the local lords became more and more incensed as they saw the stream of money thus increased that was flowing southward over the Alps.
The appearance of Luther. — ^This indulgence selling was to bring to public attention an Augustinian monk, Martin Luther, who had been rapidly coming to the front as one of the leaders of his order in Germany. Born shortly before Diaz rounded the Cape of Good Hope, the son of peasants, Luther, after a brilliant
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university career, when a life of prominence as a lawyer seemed assured, suddenly renounced the world, entered a monastery, and became a begging monk.
As a member of the Augustinians, Luther soon at- tracted the attention of the head of the order in Germany, and because of his mental powers was rapidly advanced. But he failed to find the spiritual peace he sought in the life of the church, even when the business of his order took him to Rome, until he was mastered by the great words of Saint Paul, "The just shall Hve by faith." Rejecting any hope of attaining merit by his own deeds, or the possibihty that a sinful man could so attain, Luther threw himself, with all his hopes and needs, alone, without help of church or priest or rite, into the hands of God, and rejoiced to find an inner peace that was to him evidence that God had pardoned and accepted him.
In 1508 Luther was made a professor in the recently established university at Wittenberg. Four years later he was made a Doctor of Theology, and began to thrill his students with lectures on the writings of Saint Paul and the Psalms that showed the influence of his own spiritual experience. Religion he knew, not so much as the playing of a carefully marked out part in a vast churchly organization, but as an immediate contact between the individual soul and God. And that was a return, in essence, to the teaching of Saint Paul.
The ninety-five theses. — By one of the deals all too common in that age, the Pope gave a certain German ecclesiastical lord, whom he had appvointed to certain benefices for which large tribute had to be paid to Rome, the right to half the proceeds from such sale of indulgences as might be made in his domains. The elector of Saxony, in which was Wittenberg, refused to
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allow this money-draining business to enter his terri- tory. But as one of the most successful hawkers of these indulgences approached the border, Luther, who saw the common people mulcting themselves to buy, determined to thresh out the whole question as to the right or wrong of the traffic. Accordingly, he posted on the door of the castle church in Wittenberg a thesis of ninety-five propositions, dealing with various phases of the matter, and invited all who would to discuss these with him.
To Luther, with his personal conception of religion, the theory on which the indulgences rested seemed wrong. But he was no man to forge blindly ahead, and his invitation to discussion was a sincere one. No one, however, appeared to dispute his propositions. Listead, they were greeted by princes and people, alike exasperated by the extortions of the clergy, with enthusi- asm. They were translated from the Latin in which Luther had written them into all the languages of western Europe, and within a month the young pro- fessor found himself an international figure.
Luther Defies the Pope
Luther now found himself launched on a tide that was to carry him to strange ports. But never has history known a man with more complete courage for the part he was called upon to play.
First efforts to suppress Luther. — Naturally, tne attack upon the indulgences, however it may have been received by the laity, did not arouse enthusiasm among the indulgence-sellers. Formal complaint was made to the Pope against the presumptuous pro- fessor and the cry raised that, in attacking the
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indulgences, their author, the Pope, was attacked. Luther was ordered, after a perfunctory examination of the case, to retract; refused, and appealed to a future general council of the church to sustain his position.
Followers came to him from both clergy and laity. One of his fellow professors at Wittenberg engaged in a debate with an orthodox champion, and Luther was drawn into the controversy. The supporter of the existing order skillfully maneuvered Luther to the point where he admitted that he believed that a general council of the church could err.
By this admission Luther had, in the view of the church, proved himself a heretic. First, he had rejected the absolute authority of the Pope; now he rejected that of the general councils. What room was there for one whose teaching ultimately came back to the author- ity of an individual's own spiritual experience, tested only by what that individual might discover in the Bible? A papal bull of condemnation was issued.
And Luther, to show his determination, publicly burned the bull!
The diet of Worms. — Now comes Charles V, em- peror-elect of the Holy Roman Empire, to gather his German princes in an imperial diet at Worms and settle the questions of this portion of his realms. It is a high moment in the history of his empire. It is also a high moment in world history, for Magellan's ship is just beating its way back from the first circum- navigation of the globe, and new ideas can travel fast and far. One of the first matters with which Charles finds it necessary to deal is the disciplining of a certain university professor, Martin Luther by name, who has been writing books that the Pope has condemned
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as heretical and for whom the papal legate seeks pun- ishment.
Probably the twenty-year-old Emperor knows very little about the case, but the representative of the Pope tells him that he has been unable to inflict pun- ishment previously because this professor enjoys the favor of the Elector of Saxony and the support of many other nobles. Charles feels that he must proceed care- fully in dealing with a man with such backing, and proposes that he be called to Worms for examination. The papal legate protests. The Pope has already examined and judged. It remains only for the Emperor to punish. But the Emperor cannot afford to offend the powerful Elector, and Luther is given a safe-conduct that brings him to Worms.
There is no chance, however, for him to argue his position. He is shown a pile of the condemned books.
"Did you write those?"
"Yes, and more."
"Will you retract what you have written?"
Everything hinges on the answer. Luther asks for a day in which to consider, and is granted it. The next day he is back, again facing the incarnation of the power of empire and church.
"Will you retract?"
"I cannot. Here I stand. God help me, Amen!"
The Emperor has no choice. To the excommunica- tion of the Pope is added the condemnation of the monarch. Luther from that day is, legally, an outlaw. But his friends prove powerful enough to protect him. He is hidden away for ten months in one of the castles of the Elector of Saxony, and then comes out to lead in the movement that history knows as the Reformation, until he dies in 1546.
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What Luther Accomplished
We cannot tell, in detail, the way in which the Prot- estant movement developed. Certain nobles, deter- mined that they would no longer see Germany ruled from abroad, gave Luther political support; many scholars, of whom the greatest was Philip Melanchthon, acclaimed this as a return to the simplicity of the apos- tolic church and an opportunity for a reverent but free study of Christian truth. The empire of Charles V was so widely scattered that the monarch was under the constant necessity of shifting from one part to another to put down incipient revolts. Thus he was never able to bring all his forces to the crushing of Luther and his supporters. To the support of nobles and scholars Lu- ther added that of the masses when he translated the Bible into idiomatic German — a version that remains standard to this day — and so identified himself and his Protestant cause with popular culture. The combina- tion of political strength, scholarly approval, and popu- lar enthusiasm soon made the Reformation permanent.
The princes choose their subjects' faith. — It was typical of the time that, when an adjustment was at last reached, about ten years after Luther had died, it was not the people who were left to decide whether they should be Catholic or Protestant, but their rulers. Europe to-day still shows division based upon the choices which, for varied reasons, the princes made at that time. In general, it can be said that all the old Roman Empire, save Britain, held to the Roman Catholic Church, and the rest of western- and northern Europe became Protestant.
Personal religion. — The great achievement of Luther, from a religious standpoint, was his reassertion of the
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rights of the individual. When he was born it was the welfare of the church that was paramount. When he died there was open to men a way of worship whereby they might assert their own priesthood, and might seek direct contact with the Divine. Protestantism represents the protest, echoed by increasing numbers as the years have passed, against any rite or any organ- ization coming between an individual soul and its God. On the other hand, Protestantism declared that any soul can find itself brought into the presence and favor of God at any time, by an act of faith.
Suggestions for Discussion
1. Give a complete outline of the life of Luther.
2. Why were many of the princes of Germany favor- able to Luther?
3. Tell of Luther's connection with the Peasants' Revolt. What were the results of his actions in that connection ?
4. Give a sketch of the life and work of Melanchthon.
5. What great contribution did Luther make to German literature?
6. How many differences can you discover between Catholic and Protestant doctrine?
7. How did the name "Protestant" originate? Do you consider it a good title for the movement led by Luther?
CHAPTER XIV CATHOLICISM ENTERS NEW WORLDS
We must not make the mistake of thinking that the effect of the Reformation was confined to the new Protestant churches, or to the regions in which they were in the ascendant. In fact, the movement led by Luther served to bring to a head the desire for reform that had been growing within the Roman Catholic Church for generations.
We know that thinking men, like Erasmus and many before him, had admitted the need of reform within CathoHcism. All Europe was scandalized when, for almost forty years about a century before the time of Luther, there were rival Popes, each cursing the other and declaring his own the only valid title to the office. Looseness of administration and living became common within the church.
How TO Reform a Church
The question in the minds of thoughtful CathoUcs was how the needed reform could be secured. They did not wish to follow Luther into a new church, but how could they make their own worthy of respect? The Protestant Reformation showed them that they must do something, and immediately. Three general methods of procedure were tried.
Rooting out heresy. — During the years while Spain had been gaining power as a unified monarchy, the church there had been coming to a place of great influ-
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CATHOLICISM ENTERS NEW WORLDS 121
ence. To a large extent leaders of the Spanish church ascribed this to the practice of the Inquisition. So they now urged that the same method be followed wherever the Catholic Church could command the support of the civil powers.
We view the Inquisition with such horror in this day that, if we are ever to understand how it came to be used, we must remember the sort of ideas that held the minds of the priests who promoted it. For they were men who honestly beUeved that a man's eternal salva- tion depended upon his mental acceptance of the the- ories that the Roman Catholic Church had pronounced true. If a man differed from those views in any par- ticular they held that he was doomed to eternal tor- ment. And so they came to think themselves justified in taking any means to force men to recant opinions that would doom them to a torment more horrible than any possible in this life.
But, however sincere the men who started the In- quisition, it soon became an institution so unruly that it could not be controlled. Anonymous testimony was accepted; the accused rarely had a full chance for de- fense. A man accused of heretical beliefs was held guilty until he proved himself innocent. And the pun- ishments meted out were horrible. A visitor to the torture chambers of the Inquisition that still remain in various parts of Europe finds it hard to believe that this monstrosity existed in the name of any religion, let alone that of Jesus.
Some apologists for the Inquisition have pointed out that it was not the church that executed its victims. Technically this is true. But it was the church that condemned, and then handed the condemned over to a complacent civil authority, knowing full well that tor-
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ture and death would result. The responsibility for hundreds of deaths lies squarely at the door of the Ro- man Catholic Church.
This method of reform, which was supposed to root out destructive ideas, was used largely throughout the Catholic portions of the empire of Charles V and his son, Philip II. It was successful in killing the Prot- estant stirrings that were just beginning in Italy and Spain, but it could not accomplish much in countries such as Germany, the Netherlands, England, and Scotland. And Catholicism came to see that stern repression alone would never bring the world back to what it thought was the true faith.
The adjustment of abuses. — A second method took the form of what politicians might call a house-cleaning. Years were spent, in the Council of Trent and elsewhere, reforming the inner life of the church. From this time there have been few leaders of the Roman Cathohc Church whose characters have not been in keeping with the offices they have held. The open forms of bribery that had accompanied appointments to some positions were abolished. To match the effort of the Protestants to reach the common people with versions of the Bible in the vernacular, there were printed other vernacular versions that were approved by the Pope. And it is a striking fact that at just about this time the Catholic Church was able to point to believers within its ranks as saintly as any it has ever produced.
A missionary church. — But it was left to another method to prove the real power of the Catholic counter- reformation. It is said that the great soldier, Marshal Foch, has laid down, as a military maxim, the sentence, "The best defensive is an offensive." Catholicism may have felt itself put on the defensive by the challenge
CATHOLICISM ENTERS NEW WORLDS 123
of Luther and his followers. But it possessed men of keen enough insight to see that the best answer to this would be a new offensive, and soon there were in every known land missionaries of the Roman Catholic Church, who launched the greatest campaign that church had ever undertaken. In that outreaching effort Cathol- icism found the regenerating virtue that has preserved it to these days.
Loyola and His Band
The story of this Catholic missionary expansion is largely the story of the Society of Jesus.
Ignatius Loyola. — In the year that Luther appeared in the Diet of Worms, a Spanish cavalier, Inigo Lopez de Recalde, received a wound in a battle with the French that sent him to the hospital, where he spent months in a slow convalescence. He knew that he could never fight again, but the reading of the lives of some of the saints and the influence of his own ideals of chivalry determined him to enlist in another kind of warfare. He would become a knight of the Virgin.
Rapidly he acquired the knowledge that in his former life had been neglected, but that now, as a soldier of the church, he knew he would need. In the year that another man of whom we will hear, John Calvin, left the University of Paris, Ignatius Loyola, to give him the name by which the church remembers him, entered the same institution. Here he found a group of con- genial spirits who were ready to unite with him in a vow to labor for the conversion of men, preferably in Jerusalem, or wherever else the church, through the Pope, might order.
As this little group left the university it began to take the form which has made it such a power. Loyola
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organized it as a military company, with each soldier required to give instant and complete obedience to his superiors, and the commanding general taking his orders directly from the Pope. Recruits were carefully studied in order that their individual talents might be discovered, and then they were set at tasks for which they were most fitted. But the wishes of individual members were always to be subordinated to the will of the whole.
To this company Loyola gave the name of the Society of Jesus. Much opposition was manifested to it at first by representatives of the older orders within the church, but the Pope saw what an instrument he pos- sessed in it for the carrying out of his will, and ap- proved it. From the day of the Pope's approval the Jesuits grew with amazing swiftness.
The work of the Jesuits. — Loyola had formed his order with the idea of working in the Holy Land. The Pope, however, had greater troubles on his hands than the Turks presented just then, and sent the order to conduct a counter-offensive against the preachers of the Protestant churches. The Protestants were divided among themselves, seeking to work out doctrinal state- ments to which aU would agree, and the Jesuits quickly took advantage of the opening to win back for the Roman Church much territory that might have been expected to be Protestant.
The Jesuits confined their attention to preaching, the practice of the confessional, and teaching. Of the three, the latter proved the most important. The order soon gathered within itself the keenest minds in Cathol- icism, and these were used to conduct schools of such a high grade that pupUs from the best families of Europe, some of them Protestant, crowded to be taught. There
CATHOLICISM ENTERS NEW WORLDS 125
was an avowed attempt to work with the upper grades of society. The result was inevitable. What the ter- rors of the Inquisition had not been able to do the training of the Jesuits in many cases accomplished.
Roman Catholic missions. — But there was in the Society of Jesus that which, from the beginning, made it not content to confine its labors to Europe. If it was a military company, it proved also an expeditionary force. As we have already seen (see Chapter XI) the men who were discovering new continents and new roads to old lands at this time were all good churchmen. Almost from the beginning of the voyages of discovery the missionary priest was an expected part of every crew.
The older Catholic orders, notably the Franciscans and Dominicans, had a great part in this missionary effort, but it was the zeal of the Jesuits that suppHed the driving power for the whole campaign. Before the end of the seventeenth century Catholic missions were firmly established in South, Central, and large parts of North America; India; Japan; China, and the islands of the Pacific.
The very eagerness of these Catholic orders often proved their undoing. Little love was lost between them, and they became involved in intrigues against one another that roused the fear of the rulers of the lands where they were working, leading sometimes to repression. Finally such tangles became so frequent that the Pope instituted a Congregation for the Prop- agation of the Faith, which, to this day, supervises the missionary work of the Roman Catholic Church in all the earth.
\ Great Catholic Missionary
Among the student friends of Loyola who formed
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the Society of Jesus was one, Francis Xavier, destined to be known as the greatest of aU Cathohc missionaries.
Xavier in India. — The early voyages of the Portu- guese had secured for them a colony at Goa, in India. In 1540 the Jesuit general, at the request of the king of Portugal, commissioned Xavier to proceed there for missionary work. It took him a year to reach his post. His principal work was with the pearl-fishers, low- caste natives who had accepted baptism in order to be protected from Mohammedan pirates. Xavier endeav- ored to give these pseudo-converts some idea of what it meant to be real Christians, but with results that he himself saw were far from ideal.
In Japan and at the gates of China. — Xavier's was a restless spirit. He never remained long enough in one place to master an Oriental language. In a few years he had worked his way to Malacca, and there he met a runaway Japanese criminal, whom he converted, and whose report of Japan determined him to press on to that island. For about two years and a half Xavier hved in Japan, trudging barefoot through its scenes of beauty, and laying the foundations for that Cathohc work that grew to such remarkable propor- tions, and was wiped out with such bloodshed in the first half of the seventeenth century, when Japan sealed itself away from the world for two hundred years. From Japan the great Jesuit attempted to enter China, but while still waiting for a propitious opportunity on a small island off the southern coast, he died. It has been said that his last words, as he viewed that rocky coast from which he had been turned back, were: "O rock, rock, wilt thou never break?"
Xavier's weakness and strength. — Xavier proved but the first of a great company of Jesuit missionaries,
CATHOLICISM ENTERS NEW WORLDS 127
most of whom followed in the paths he had marked out. The weaknesses of such work as his have been frequently pointed out. In a word, the CathoHc mis- sions have suffered from superficiaHty. There is all too often little change in the lives of those who are counted as converts.
This fault rises inevitably out of the acceptance of baptism as a saving rite. Not only Xavier, but to this day earnest Catholic missionaries in the Orient will baptize children, sometimes without the knowledge of the parents, believing that the act insures the ultimate presence of the chUd in heaven.
Yet the earnestness of such a man as Xavier is not to be questioned, and the heroism that he displayed in penetrating regions so hostile and inaccessible was of the highest order. His spirit with his converts was gentle, and he remains one of those Christians to whom all, of whatever communion, are glad to accord the title "saint." Reading one of his letters, one seems to be listening to just such an appeal as the Student Volunteer Movement is making in these days:
Would to God that these men who labor so much in gaining knowledge would give as much thought to the account they must one day give to God of the use they have made of their learning and of the talents intrusted to them! . . . They would exclaim from the bottom of their hearts, "Lord, here am I; send me whithersoever it shall please thee, even to India !" . . . I declare to God that I had almost made up my mind, since I coiild not return to Europe myself, to write to the University of Paris ... to show them how many thousands of infidels might be made Christians without trouble, if we had only men here who would seek not their own advantage, but the things of Jesus Christ. And, therefore, dearest
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brothers, "pray ye the Lord of the harvest that he send forth laborers into his harvest."
Suggestions for Discussion
1. In what European countries was the Catholic Church able to hold its position? By what methods did it do this?
2. What arguments might be made in justification of such an institution as the Inquisition?
3. Why did the Society of Jesus as organized make a special appeal to that age?
4. What can you discover about other Catholic mis- sionaries of this period, apart from Xavier?
5. How did the territory gained for the Catholic Church by the missionary enterprises of the counter-reformation compare with that lost by the Reformation?
6. What methods used by the Jesuits do you consider of especial value in Christian work, and why?
CHAPTER XV WHO WAS TO SPREAD CHRISTIANITY?
We have practically reached the half-way point in our study. We have been tracing sixteen centuries of development in the life of the Christian Church. We have seen it grow from a small group within the Jewish community to the mightiest organization in the world. And now that we have considered the Protestant Reformation and the missionary activities of the Catholic counter-reformation we are ready to pause and sum up what we have studied.
This we can do most successfully by facing the ques- tion that forms the title of this chapter. We are now at the opening of the period of Christianity's greatest expansion. Sixteen centuries of preparation are fin- ished. Who is it that Christianity will now rely upon to spread its message?
A Broadening World
How the world had grown since Jesus had spoken those parting words to his followers! "Go ye there- fore, and make disciples of all the nations," he had said. It had seemed an impossible commission, even in that day.
One world evangelized. — Yet those early Christians threw themselves into their task with such devotion that, within two centuries, they were able to claim that their world had been evangelized. Peter went to Rome; Paul beyond Rome to Spain, and perhaps even to Britain; Thomas, if tradition is to be accepted, even
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to India. And Origen, the great Christian teacher who died in the middle of the third century, could write: "In a few years and with no great store of teachers, in spite of the attacks that have cost us life and prop- erty, the preaching of the word has found its way into every part of the world."
Another world discovered. — But Christians soon discovered that there were nations in a world beyond the borders of that they had known in the days of the Roman Empire. So we have seen how Christian preach- ers reached the Goths, the Franks, the Irish, the Ger- mans, the Scandinavians. In another part of Europe we have seen them bringing the Bulgarians and then the Russians to the worship of Christ. They have penetrated into Armenia, Abyssinia, and other places that had been on the outer rim of the Roman world. There are even Nestorian missionaries who penetrate to India and China, but their work has not the sup- port necessary for permanence.
The world we know to-day. — Then follow long years when there is little missionary enterprise. The church is consoHdating its place as a ruler of the affairs of men. It becomes too busy with questions of poHtics to pay much attention to peoples in regions beyond its own territories. In the thirteenth century the great Kublai Khan sits on the throne of China. He hears enough of Christianity to send a request to the Pope that at least a hundred qualified missionaries be sent to work in his dominions. But the papal court is so engrossed in its own petty intrigues that the best it can do is to send off two timid monks, and this price- less opportunity is allowed to pass.
Then the ships of the explorers begin to come saiUng home. China, Japan, the Philippines, India, even a
WHO WAS TO SPREAD CHRISTIANITY? 131
New World, become, not fabled lands for the dwelling of a Prester John, but real places, inhabited by real men, and filled with real wealth. And immediately the rush toward this New World — the same world we know to-day — begins. And with the explorers go the missionaries, conscious of the immense broadening that has come in the bounds of "the world" to which they have been bidden "go."
A Broadening Christian Leadership
It is a heartening thing to see how, with this broaden- ing of the world, there had come a broadening of the church's conception of what makes a Christian saint. Let us recall the different ideals that had been held before men as the best type of Christian life and leader- ship.
The apostolic ideal.— Jesus called upon his immedi- ate followers to go out spreading the good news of his kingdom without encumbering themselves with any material things that might tend to tie them to any one place. They were to take neither scrip nor staff, and they were to go, and go, and go. The best disciple would be the one who gave himself most completely to the dis- semination of the gospel, and who separated himself most completely from other affairs of life. We can see how the apostolic group took this ideal to heart by the legends that surround their deaths. Only a few of them are reputed to have died in Palestine. The others were scattered even beyond the Roman world.
The earliest ideals of the church. — After the period of the apostles, when the church first began to become a powerful organization, it found itself in the midst of the licentiousness that marked the life of the decadent Roman Empire. It is not surprising,
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then, that it came to hold almost all social life as evil, and that, to attain Christian perfection, men were taught that they must withdraw themselves utterly from contact with the world.
The example of that type of Christian leader most often remembered was Saint Anthony, who was born about the middle of the third century. He Hved in solitude, as a hermit. He believed himself tormented by demons, and temptation came to him as it naturally would to one living such an unnatural sort of life. He spent his days in the strictest self-denial, subjecting his body to most rigorous discipline. And so power- fully did his example appeal to his fellow Christians that soon the deserts and sohtary places were full of the cells of hermits, living alone or in small colonies.
The monastic ideal in Europe. — This form of sol- itary self-torture went to most extreme lengths in the East. There was, in the nature of the peoples of Europe, something that saved them from such excesses as, for example, Simeon the Styhte practiced when he Hved for thirty years on top of a pillar. And within a couple of hundred years there arose a beHef in the West that the highest type of Christian would save himself from much needless temptation by spending the hours while he was withdrawn from the world in useful labor. Out of this advance in insight arose the monasteries.
Saint Benedict remains the finest illustration of the monastic ideal of Christian leadership. Although he still believed with all his heart that the world was essentially evil and that the only way to possess an unsullied Christian character was to flee from it, Saint Benedict went from his cave in the mountains east of Rome to found the first monastery of the order that bears his name.
WHO WAS TO SPREAD CHRISTIANITY? 133
In this monastery Saint Benedict ordered that as much time be given to work as to worship. "Idleness is the enemy of the soul," he declared. This work was partly in the fields and partly in the hbrary. And it is to the monasteries that we owe the preservation of such learning as lived through Europe's dark ages. It is no exaggeration to say that the best men of the Middle Ages were to be found within the monasteries.
The preaching orders.- — The monastic ideal sufficed to express the conception of Christian leadership until at least the thirteenth century. Then it began to dawn upon men that all the spiritual problems of the world would not be solved by gathering the best Christians in groups largely out of touch with the world. In some parts of Europe teaching became rife that the church declared heretical, and out of the desire to counteract this teaching arose the great preaching orders that were, for centuries, to provide the leadership of the church.
The best illustration of this type of Christian leader- ship is that given us by Saint Dominic. A child of the Middle Ages, this intense Spaniard, horrified by some of the heretical preaching which he touched in parts of Spain and France, determined to model his life on that of Saint Paul and win these mistaken ones by a superior purity of life combined with a continuous crusade of preaching.
Here was a type of Christian effort that appealed to men who had begun to recoil from the aloofness and abuses of monastic life. Although Dominic lived but five years after his order had been recognized, he saw it gather to its ranks men of the highest grade from all over Europe. Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Savonarola, and hundreds of other great men of that
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period were Dominicans. A recent historian thus sums up the contribution that Dominic's order made to the broadening of the conception of Christian leadership: "Its ideal was not contemplation apart from the world, but access to men in their needs. "^
The missionary. — There was one more step that was logically to come in this development. The preaching orders had brought Christians to realize that the best type of faith was that which spent itself in carrying its message to others. Now it was time for men to see that these others included not only the inhabitants of Europe, but those who lived in the New World, in Africa, in the Orient, and in the isles of the sea. So there appeared that leader whom we still know, the missionary.
We have spoken of Saint Francis Xavier as a typical example of this sort of Christian leader. We must remember that, with him, there went to the remote parts of the earth not only his brothers in the Jesuit order but Franciscans and Dominicans as well. And, after a long period of readjustment and consolidation had passed, we will see Protestants engaging in the same crusade. The Christian leader has become once more, as he was in the day of the apostles, one who seeks earth's farthest shore with the good news of Jesus.
The administrator. — Along with this development, there comes a parallel growth that, in another way, is to prove equally important for the final spread of Chris- tianity. This is the rise of the administrator, that may be traced in the history of the Popes.
It is not necessary to go over this long story again, nor even to suggest individual examples. But, by the
1 Williston Walker, A History of the Christian Church, Charles Scribner's Sons, publishers, p. 256.
WHO WAS TO SPREAD CHRISTIANITY? 135
time that Saint Francis Xavier and his companions are launching their missionary campaigns, we find that there has come, at the home base from which they set forth, a leader who is to supervise their efforts and provide their support. And increasingly this leader is to have his interests restricted until he is giving practically his full attention to the direction of the religious enterprise.
Ready for the Great Advance
We have come, then, to the perception of our modern world. We are facing the years of Christianity's great- est advance. The command, "Go!" now points us toward continents that its first hearers never knew existed. And we ask, Who was to spread Christianity through this tremendous area?
In our review of the development of these sixteen centuries we have tried to suggest the answer. It was not to be the hermit; not the monastic; not even the mendicant preacher. But, whether Protestant or Catholic, it was to he the missionary, commissioned and supported by the administrator. The spread of Chris- tianity was to follow from the carrying through of a carefully organized, world-embracing campaign.
This was, in essence, a return to the apostolic ideal. For the missionaries were those who would go any- where and everywhere, at whatever risk, to spread the gospel; and the administrators were those who, by a careful direction of the enterprise, would make it pos- sible for them to do so without being largely concerned with securing financial support. It is this combination of the missionary plus the administrator that makes possible the great Christian advance on every conti- nent to-day.
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Suggestions for Discussion
1. Were Christians of the third century justified in believing that they had fulfilled the command to go into all the world?
2. Why did the hermit ideal of Christianity arise? What other illustrations of this type of Christian can you recall?
3. What were the great contributions of monasticism to Christianity? What its shortcomings?
4. Give more complete accounts of the lives of Saint Dominic and Saint Francis of Assisi.
5. How did the Jesuits differ from the Dominicans and Franciscans?
6. Why is the administrator needed in the modem missionary enterprise?
CHAPTER XVI GENEVA— A CITY FOR GOD
It is the aim of the followers of Jesus not only to spread his teachings throughout the extent of the world, but throughout the life of the world as well. One form of social organization is the city, and Christians look toward the day when the vision of Saint Augustine of a "City of God" shall be fulfilled in the cities of earth.
This is an ideal toward which men slowly advance. How many of them know that the same ideal took possession of the imaginations of some as long ago as at the birth of the Protestant Reformation, and that, in the Swiss city of Geneva, there was carried through an experiment in Christian city government that has left its mark on history?
The City of Geneva
Switzerland is known the world over as a land of freedom. It has been a freedom hard won, and only maintained by constant vigilance. But since 1499 this group of German, French, and Italian "cantons" has been independent.
Protestantism enters Switzerland. — At about the same time that Luther was stirring Germany a priest from the monastery of Einsiedeln, near the Lake of Zurich, began to preach views similar to those held by the German reformer, although he had not even heard of the Saxon. When, in the year Luther was sum- moned before the Diet of Worms, this priest was made the preacher in the cathedral at Zurich, he seized the
U7
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opportunity to attack the abuses of Catholicism remorse- lessly, and soon the whole country was stirred.
Zwingli, this Swiss reformer, must ever be regarded as one of the most influential and attractive of the men who led the sixteenth-century revolt from Rome. He is regarded as the father of the Reformed churches of to-day, and might have impressed the course of the church even more powerfully than he did had not his career been cut short when he was killed while acting as chaplain to Protestant troops fighting against Catholic. His active career covered only about a dozen years.
At his death Zwingli left Switzerland torn between Catholic and Protestant. The older sections about the Lake of Lucerne stood for the old church. The center of Protestant influence came to be found in the part of the country nearer to France. And the breach re- mains to this day.
Geneva, a trade center. — There has been a tendency on the part of some, in telling what took place in Geneva, to depict that city as a sinkhole of iniquity. Prob- ably it did not differ greatly from other commercial centers of its time. The city lay just over the border from France and Italy, and astride the overland trade route between the two. For years it had struggled fiercely to maintain its freedom, especially from the powerful Duke of Savoy, whose lands, located in the north of Italy, extended almost up to its gates.
In 1530, by an alUance with the Protestant city of Bern and the Catholic city of Freiburg, Geneva threw off the power of the Duke of Savoy, exerted through the Catholic bishop. Bern then tried to win Geneva to the Protestant cause, and a French reformer, William Farel, led in the attempt. Relations were broken with Catholic Freiburg, and then the Savoyard bishop
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precipitated matters by attacking. The citizens, in their anger, swept out the last vestiges of Catholic worship, and repulsed the troops from Savoy. Bern then acknowledged the independence of Geneva, and Farel, the Protestant leader, found himself facing the task of drawing up a plan whereby the newly liberated city should be governed. He felt himself unequal to the task, and called to his aid a young Frenchman who, by one of those circumstances that make up the romance of history, happened to stop in his house one night while travehng from Italy to Germany.
John Calvin
On the night that John Calvin stopped to pay his respects to Farel while passing through Geneva, he was but twenty-seven years of age. Yet he was already one of the most widely known Protestant leaders of Europe.
The making of a reformer. — Calvin was born in a family whose close connections with nobility and church made life very comfortable for him. By the time he was twelve years old, in accord with those abuses that were so accepted a part of the religious life of his day, he had been endowed with the incomes of enough posts in the church to insure his freedom from want. He graduated from the University of Paris, having majored in philosophy, when he was nineteen. Two years later, after studying at the universities of Orleans and Bourges, he had graduated in law, making so brilUant a record that, before obtaining his degree, he was invited to lecture to his fellow students.
The spirit of the times, however, proved too strong a lure, and when the death of his father left him a free agent, young Calvin turned from the law to the study
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of Greek and Hebrew in the newly established College de France in Paris. The mark of this period is shown in Calvin's first book, a scholarly study of one of Seneca's treatises. If there was discussion of the questions raised by Luther in the circle in which the young scholar moved (and there was), at least he then considered questions of culture of more importance.
The leader of French Protestantism. — Take now this background: a brilliant young man, with intimate knowledge of the church, and as good a training in philosophy, law, and the so-called humanities as the time could give. Introduce a single element more: the "sudden conversion" that Calvin testifies he expe- rienced at the age of twenty-four. The result is the man who is to lead French Protestantism, and influence that of all other lands with his teaching.
It was perilous business to be a reformer in Europe, and for a long time young Calvin was shifting about from country to country, seeking a place where he might study and write in peace. In the midst of this exile, to defend his fellow French Protestants from the charges leveled against them by the French king, he wrote the first form of his system of Christian doctrine. It was the clearest exposition of Protestant thought that had appeared, and made its author famous overnight. It rejected the authority of church and Pope, accepted the authority of the Bible, and based all righteousness upon the will of God. This will of God was represented as all-powerful. If men were saved, it was because God willed it, not because of their own acts or will. If they were lost, it was for the same reason. So Calvin sponsored a hard-and-fast doctrine of human predestina- tion that has remained a subject for debate and division within Protestantism to this day.
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Calvin in Geneva
It was while hastening from one refuge in Italy to another in Germany that Calvin stopped overnight in Geneva. "Stay to build here a city for God," pleaded Farel. Active service of that sort held no appeal to the frail scholar. "I must go on in the morning," he in- sisted. "Put forward your studies as a pretext if you will," thundered the passionate Farel, "but if you refuse this work, the curse of God will rest upon you." Calvin was terror-stricken and remained.
Exiled and recalled. — It was no easy task to which Farel and Calvin thus committed themselves. The zealous Farel had already set laws governing the be- havior of individuals that irked the pleasure-loving citizens of Geneva. At Calvin's advice, these laws were made even more strict. Plain dress was required, and obnoxious sports — which included practically all — forbidden. Soon the people were in rebellion. When Calvin and Farel presented one creed, another was adopted. When they brought forward methods by which such as they deemed unworthy should be de- barred from the Lord's Supper, the Council of Two Hundred voted that the sacrament should be denied none. And when they refused compliance, they were banished.
Calvin found in this banishment, which he spent as pastor of a church in Strassburg, the happiest period of his life. But if Calvin enjoyed this period, Geneva did not. Finally, after the party that had secured his banishment had been overthrown, Calvin was persuaded to return, practically on his own terms. Farel refused to do likewise, with the result that Calvin was left in control of the city.
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A theocratic government. — The government that Calvin now set up was based on a separation between church and state, with the church having the power to regulate the life of its members to the smallest degree, and the state bound to enforce the penalties set by the church. The rule of the church was democratic, being in the hands of elders elected from the laity, with a minority of preachers.
All manner of sin was sternly repressed within the city, together with amusements that would to-day be regarded as entirely innocent. The preachers were held at a high level by frequent meetings for self-examina- tion and mutual criticism. Popular education was encouraged, and so brilliantly was the Protestant posi- tion expounded that Geneva became a center for non- Catholic theological training to which men came from all over western Europe.
Life under the reformers.— It must not be thought that there was not opposition to this program of Calvin's. There was. Sometimes this took the form of attacking Calvin's religious teaching, and such attacks were rigorously repressed. Calvin's position was that of a religious teacher, and if his authority in that field were once overthrown, his authority in all other fields was bound to follow. To this was due the awful penalty, death by fire, visited upon an eccentric Spaniard, Servetus, who published an attack upon the doctrine of the Trinity. That act remains as a blot upon Calvin's record, although it must be remembered that it was not so regarded in his day.
Sometimes Calvin's rule was attacked by the old families of Geneva because he was attracting so many outsiders to join with him in governing the city. Geneva, that set itself before the world as a city in which the
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will of God held sway, naturally attracted men of reforming tendencies who often became leaders.
And sometimes there was trouble from those who, in a city of twenty thousand inhabitants, would be sure to oppose any strict rule at all.
But, after years of struggle, the position of Calvin became secure. He never accepted civil ofi5ce, remain- ing always a simple minister among the many in the city. His power was that of character. He saw the laws he desired enacted and obeyed. He saw the schools he coveted founded and filled. He saw the cleanest and, in some ways, most influential city in Europe, grow. And at last, twenty-three years after his return from exile, after a life of fifty-five years, most of them lived in sickness and bodily weakness, he died, mourned as few men have been.
What Geneva Accomplished
It is hard to separate the contribution of Geneva, the city of the reformers, from that of Calvin, the great reformer.
The influence of Calvin. — Of Calvin it has been said, ''Thanks to his Institutes, his pattern of church government in Geneva, his academy, his commentaries, and his constant correspondence, he molded the thought and inspired the ideals of the Protestantism of France, the Netherlands, Scotland, and the English Puritans. His influence penetrated Poland and Hungary, and before his death Calvinism was taking root in southwestern Germany. Men thought his thoughts after him. His was the only system that the Reformation produced that could organize itself powerfully in the face of governmental hostility, as in France and England. It trained strong men, confident in their election to be
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fellow workers with God in the accomplishment of his will, courageous to do battle, insistent on character, and confident that God has given in the Scriptures the guide of all right human conduct and proper worship."^
The influence of Geneva. — But Calvin might not have accomplished all this had he not achieved a city in which his ideas had fair play. "Geneva became to the Romanic nations what Wittenberg was to the Germans. . . . Geneva was the refuge for the persecuted and the stronghold from which missionaries went forth to continue the battle. From its printing presses Bibles and numerous other publications in the French tongue were scattered abroad."' And in the midst of such an atmosphere men like John Knox could dream that even a country might be ruled in accord with the will of God, and go back to the transformation of Scotland. It is easy to point out shortcomings in the life of Geneva under the sixteenth-century reformers. When the dream of the city ruled by God is truly fulfilled, life within it will be a lovelier thing than they imagined. But the dream they had, and to it they gave expres- sion. So Geneva remains a landmark in Christian history.
Suggestions for Discussion
1. How did the ideal of Saint Augustine for a "City of God" differ from that of John Calvin?
2. Show how the various forms of preparation fitted John Calvin for different portions of his career.
3. What can you discover concerning the relations of Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin?
' Williston Walker, op. cit., p. 400.
»G. P. Fisher, History 0/ the Christian Church, Charles Scribner's Sons, pub- lishers, p. 338. ,
GENEVA— A CITY FOR GOD 145
4. What part did religious education play in the work that Calvin did in Geneva?
5. Why was there opposition to the rule of Calvin?
6. Will it ever be possible to rule a city as a part of the Kingdom of God? How will such a government differ from that of Calvin in Geneva? How will it be similar?
CHAPTER XVII
THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND
In the middle of the fourteenth century England was stirred by the teaching of an Oxford scholar, John Wiclif, who attacked the claims of the papacy to tem- poral power, and even asserted that in religious matters the word of the Pope had no validity unless it was in accord with the Scripture. To make that Scripture better known, Wiclif translated it, and the translations were scattered throughout England.
Naturally, the church took issue with Wiclif. Al- though he was protected during his life by English nobles who approved his denunciation of the ruler in far-off Rome, after his death the church condemned him, his body was disinterred and burned, and the ashes scattered on the water of the little stream that ran through the town where he had been buried.
But it was impossible to reduce all those versions of the Bible in the common tongue to ashes. They went on doing their work in scores of homes. Finally, a hundred and twenty-five years after Wiclif died, there came to the throne of England a king who was to separate that country from all allegiance to Rome.
A Political Reformation
The great difference between the revolt of northern Germany from the power of the Pope and the revolt of England was that the former was, at bottom, a
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religious, and the latter was a political movement. To be sure, there were religious elements aplenty in the English Reformation, just as there were political elements in the German. But the primary effect de- sired by most Englishmen was political — freedom from a foreign power.
The "Defender of the Faith."— When Henry VIII was crowned, in 1509, he was greeted with acclamation by his own subjects, and by the leaders of culture in every part of Europe. He had shown such an interest in the new movements of learning that such men as Erasmus flocked to his realm.
But as the reign of Henry VIII advanced he began to show a determination to have his own way, be the difficulties of law or custom what they might. When Luther first began to attract the notice of Europe the English king sought to pulverize his arguments with a discourse that drew from the Pope, in gratitude, the title of "Defender of the Faith." But when, a few years later, the King wanted to do something that the Pope would not sanction, Henry did not hesitate to defy the Pope, free the church in his realm from papal author- ity, and constitute himself "supreme head of the church" in England, despite the excommunication that the Pope launched against him.
The question on which the King and Pope came to the parting of the ways concerned Henry's marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Catherine had been the wife, nominally, of Henry's brother. At the brother's death the Spanish princess had been betrothed to the younger brother. As such a marriage of a widow to her de- ceased husband's brother was against the law, it was necessary to secure a special dispensation from the Pope before it could be consummated.
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After several years it became apparent that Henry could hope for no male heir while Catherine remained his wife. The absence of such an heir would, he feared, bring about a return to the civil war that had preceded his reign. Besides, he had discovered in the English court a young woman who attracted him. Alleging a religious scruple, he asked the Pope to rule that the pre- ceding Pope had had no power to make it possible for him to marry his brother's wife. When the Pope hes- itated too long, Henry declared himself the head of the church in England, secured the acceptance of that claim by the majority of English priests, and had the marriage annulled.
The Reformation in England during the reign of Henry VIII never went much further than that. Free- dom from the authority of an Italian or Frenchman in Rome was what the English, just feeling the stirrings of an assertive nationalism, wanted, and the King had ample support for his action. Moreover, when he closed the monasteries (often on trumped-up charges) and divided their huge revenues with favored families, he gained in support. But beyond that neither the King nor the majority of his subjects cared to go. Wor- ship within the church was the same after the King had been substituted for the pontiff as head. And although it was impossible to keep England entirely free from the influence of the ideas that were so powerful in Germany, France, Switzerland, and Holland, still the principal expression of those ideas seemed to be con- fined to the enlarged reading of the Bible in English among the common people.
England's first Protestant king.— When Henry VIII died and a boy nine years of age, Edward VI, came to the throne, England had its first experience
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with a truly Protestant monarch. For, whether the credit be that of the boy king or his counselors, the six years of his reign saw a real Protestantism estab- lished. Services in Latin ceased. The Prayer Book was introduced, and was distinctly Protestant in its theological positions. The ceHbacy of the clergy was no longer enforced. The fasts of the Roman Catholic Church were neglected. Ornate costumes for priests were abandoned. And the influence of the Protestant leaders on the continent was to be felt throughout the country.
The Catholic reaction.— Six years was a short time in which to introduce such sweeping changes. Before Edward's brief reign closed there were signs of trouble. With the coming to the throne of his half-sister, Mary, the Catholic reaction came with full force. Mary was the daughter of that Catherine of Aragon, who had been the innocent cause of the break between Henry VIII and the Pope. She had been reared as a strict Catholic, and her own position depended upon a repudi- ation of the annulment of her mother's marriage. Policy and personal inclination therefore combined to make her remorseless in her opposition to Protestanism.
Mary was on the throne but five years, yet, during that time, she sent three hundred Protestants to their deaths, reestablished the rule of the Pope in the affairs of the church, and brought back almost a complete restoration of Catholic worship, although she was unable to return to the church the wealth of the monas- teries that her father had seized.
What theological argument might never have done, those five years of Queen Mary — "Bloody Mary," as she is known to history — accomplished. For the reestab- lishment of Catholicism in such a manner was its ruin.
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Men became convinced that there was something fundamentally wrong with a church that employed such means of imposing its will. "Play the man, Master Ridley," cried Bishop Latimer as the two were bound to the stake. "We shall this day light up such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out." It was a true prophecy. Catholic rule has been impossible in England since the day Mary died.
Elizabeth establishes the English Church. — So, at the mid-point of the sixteenth century, there began, under Elizabeth, another daughter of Henry VIII, one of England's greatest reigns. Elizabeth was one of the great women of history. She had few warm religious beliefs, but she was a remarkable politician and she had the ability to secure the services of advisers of the first rank.
Elizabeth, seeking to secure the safety of her realm, feeling the reaction from the merciless policy of Mary, and at odds with Catholic Spain, gradually but inevitably swung toward Protestantism. Once more she declared the freedom of the church in her kingdom from the authority of the Pope. Once more the services were conducted in English, and a Book of Common Prayer adopted. Once more the Protestant theological posi- tions were approved in the Articles of Religion of the English Church. And although attempts were made to check the movement toward Protestantism that the Queen was so strongly leading, from the day when the English ships and the elements combined to defeat the Spanish Armada the future of England as a Protes- tant land was fixed.
Established Church and Nonconformist In every reform there are two elements. One seeks
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to change as little as possible and still secure the ends in view. The other seeks radical change. In the trans- formation in England from a Catholic to a Protestant country, Henry VIII and Elizabeth, together with a majority of the people, belonged to the first class.
The Anglican Church. — Thus it was that the church recognized by those monarchs, and by them construed to include every loyal subject of the throne, was changed very little in its forms from the Church of Rome. To be sure, the services were conducted in English, and during the reign of Edward VI there were extensive alterations in worship introduced. But under Elizabeth these alterations were held to a minimum. The old tradition of an unbroken succession of ordinations for bishops, stretching back to the time of the apostles, was guarded by having the archbishop the Queen selected consecrated by bishops who had themselves been con- secrated under the Church of Rome during the reign of Henry VIII.
The nonconformist churches. — At the same time, however, the death of Mary had brought back to England great numbers of men who, during exile, had been strongly impressed by the leaders of Continental Protes- tantism, especially by Calvin. These men could not be satisfied by the traces of Catholicism they found remaining in the English Church, and demanded a further purification. For this reason they came to be known as Puritans, and as such they were to exercise a profound influence on history.
There were two groups of Puritans. One preferred to remain within the Church of England and seek to change it until it resembled the church that Calvin held up as a model. The other believed that to be too long and difficult a course, and urged complete separation. In
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that day, when adherence to the church of which the sovereign was the head was a legal test of loyalty, such separation brought persecution. For that reason, men who were unwilling to conform to the laws of worship as established by the government were constantly being forced to flee to Holland or some other nearby country. And out of these, in the swift passage of the years, came the great nonconformist denominations.
We have not room here to tell in detail of the origin of these denominations. The Puritans who believed in a church governed by elders rather than by bishops — Calvin's idea — became known as Presbyterians, after the Greek name for an elder. Those who beHeved in the right of each congregation to govern its own Ufe and select its own minister became known as Congrega- tionalists. Those who placed emphasis upon a particular mode of baptism and rejected the infant baptism prac- ticed by the established church became known as Baptists. And finally, during the intense period of the English civil war, when the Puritans had estabHshed their ascendancy (particularly the nonconformist Puritans), there developed that Society of Friends, commonly known as the Quakers.
The Preacher Who Vanquished a Queen
The story of the Reformation in Scotland is largely the story of the struggle between Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, and John Knox, minister of the gospel.
John Knox. — History knows few more rugged or compelling figures than that of John Knox. Born in obscurity, he early aligned himself with the first stirrings of Protestantism, that were so ruthlessly repressed by the reigning Stuart family and the Catholic hierarchy in Scotland. Captured by French troops, Knox spent
THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND 153
nineteen months as a galley slave. Released, he obtained prominence as a Protestant minister in the England of Edward VI. Compelled to fly at the accession of Mary, he became, in Geneva, one of the greatest of the disciples of John Calvin. A short stay in Scotland, preaching Protestant doctrines, was followed by another sojourn in Geneva. Finally, a year after Elizabeth was crowned, Knox was ready for the great career that was to make him the uncrowned king of his native land.
Mary, Queen of Scots. — Four years before John Knox went to the French galleys a baby girl became Queen of Scotland. She lived most of her girlhood in France. In the year that Elizabeth became a queen, this cousin of hers married the heir to the French throne. In the next year her husband became King of France, and the fortunes of Scotland and France were united. In the next year this husband died, and in the next year the young widow returned to her kingdom to play out her part in history as Mary, Queen of Scots.
The struggle for Scotland. — It was an action of important Scottish nobles, inspired by a fear that their country was becoming nothing but a province of France, that encouraged Knox to return to Scotland. He found multitudes of the common people and many of the nobility eager to respond to his message. In fact, the ruthless way in which in some places the last vestige of the old Catholic worship was destroyed went beyond any- thing Knox himself desired.
For a time Knox and his supporters had to fight for their beliefs, but opportune help from England defeated the French troops that the Stuarts called to their aid, and the Scottish Parliament adopted a Calvinistic faith and a Presbyterian form of church organization for the coun- try. When Mary returned to her throne she found Knox
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in the full tide of enforcing for the nation a regime as strict as Calvin had, in Geneva, enforced for the city.
Mary went about her effort to undo the work that Knox had done in a careful fashion. Her principal weapon was her undeniable charm, and upon all but John Knox she was able to use that weapon with great effect. She made no secret of her own personal attachment to CathoHcism, but she sought to convince the leaders of Scotland that she was to be trusted with power. Knox never trusted her. She phed her arts of blandishment by the hour, and the next Sunday the pulpit of Saint GUes would echo with further denunciations of her by the stern Scotch preacher.
Finally Mary threw away her own cause. The story of her love affairs is too long, too muddled, too sordid to be retold here. At the last she was forced to turn over the throne to her infant son (afterward to be King of England as well as Scotland) and throw herself upon the mercy of Elizabeth. Nineteen years after she fled from Scotland she was executed as a conspirator against the life of the queen who had given her refuge.
Four years after Mary fled Knox died, "having in- fluenced not merely the religion but the character of the nation more than any other man in Scottish history." ^ He left a church that has been one of the bulwarks of Protestantism in all the succeeding centuries.
Suggestions for Discussion
1. Give a detailed account of the life and work of Wiclif.
2. What can you tell about Tyndale; Wolsey; Cranmer; Thomas Cromwell?
Williston Walker, op. cil., p. 42a.
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3. Why were the reformers so anxious to have the Bible in the vernacular?
4. Read the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion of the Church of England. Which ones would have been unacceptable to the Roman Catholic Church?
5. Were there ever persecutions of Catholics under Protestant monarchs in the period under study? To what extent? Can such persecutions be justified?
CHAPTER XVIII
EARLY MISSIONARIES IN THE AMERICAS
While England and Scotland, and other European countries, were settling their relations v/ith the papacy, the spread of Christianity was continuing. We have seen (see Chapter XIV) how Francis Xavier and his comrades carried the gospel to the oldest civilizations. Now we find others equally eager bearing the same mes- sage to a New World.
The Legacy of the Pope
In the same year that Columbus landed on San Salvador a member of the infamous Borgia family of Italy became Pope. He is known to history as Alexander VI, and with most of his acts we have no concern.
But this Pope was as excited by the prospect of new lands as were Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, or John of Portugal. Most of the first discoveries were made by subjects of these two monarchies. The rulers, as good Catholics, were anxious that the territories thus added to their crowns should recognize the "true faith." More- over, they desired such legalizing of their title to these new lands as was possible.
Alexander VI, acting upon the theory of the power of the Pope to rule in all matters, temporal as well as spiritual, proposed to legalize the claims of Portugal and Spain in return for the assurance that Catholicism should have complete control in the religious affairs of the colonies. Accordingly, "of his mere liberality," as one
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writer puts it, he divided all the lands to be discovered between the two nations. Spain was to have practically all in the New World and Portugal the rest. Generous Pope Alexander!
Catholic Missions in Latin-America
In an effort to take full advantage of the opportunities offered by the discoveries, Dominicans, Franciscans, and Jesuits pressed hard on the heels of Spanish and Por- tuguese conquerors. The legacy of Alexander VI thus became a missionary work among the natives of the New World as devoted as that carried on in India, China, or Japan.
The apostle of the West Indies. — The most attrac- tive figure that looms out of these attempts to convert the aborigines of New Spain was Bartholomew de Las Casas. Son of a Spaniard who had accompanied Colum- bus on his first voyage, the young missionary was himself in the West Indies ten years after that memorable dis- covery. He was the first man to be ordained in the New World, and few have proved more worthy of their calling.
Las Casas found the natives treated as slaves by the Spaniards. Some had even been shipped to Spain in that condition, where they had been released by the humane Queen Isabella. Driven to work in the mines and pearl- fisheries, under horrible conditions, the unfortunate West Indians suffered barbarously and died in great numbers.
To fight such evils Las Casas devoted his whole life. With flaming eloquence he enlisted support in Spain, and with unswerving devotion he lightened the lot of the native laborers in the West Indies. He was hated, threatened, balked in every possible way by most of the other Spaniards in the islands. Yet he drove doggedly
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ahead, an early apostle of social justice as a necessary ground for religious blessing.
"He crossed the ocean twelve times; he traversed every then known region of America and the islands; he made repeated journeys from Spain to Flanders and Germany, to see the Emperor on the affairs of his mission ; his hterary labors would have been remarkable even in a scholar who had no calling outside the halls of his college or the quiet of his private study." ^
Before his career closed. Las Casas had the joy of seeing most of the natives of the West Indies converted to an at least nominal form of Catholicism. But one act remains to stain the record of a hfe of singular unselfish- ness. In his zeal to protect his West Indian converts from the strain of work which they could not survive, Las Casas did not oppose the importation into the New World of slave labor from Africa. At the time the great missionary beheved Negroes able to undergo such toil without hurt, but later, when the consequences of the slave trade became clear, Las Casas bitterly repented. To secure relief for one group of men he had permitted a terrible injustice to be done another. It was too high a price.
In the footsteps of Cortez. — When Cortez, the fa- mous Spanish conqueror, marched to the overthrow of the ancient Aztec kingdom in Mexico, he bore with him instructions from Queen Isabella, again recalling the legacy of Alexander VI. "Speaking of the grant . . . as an endeavor 'to induce and bring the people thereof, by conversion, to the holy CathoHc faith,' and to send to these islands and continents prelates, clergymen, and gifted persons who fear God and who will instruct the residents in good doctrine and customs; then, with a
'Quoted by Fisher, op. cit., p. 450, 451.
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woman's heart, she entreats that they be well treated and receive no injury in their persons." ^
Cortez was glad to open the way for the missionary efforts of the priests who accompanied his expedition, and who came into Mexico in greater numbers after he had obtained control of the country. The priests, most of whom were Franciscans, threw themselves into their work with such enthusiasm that, within a generation, a form of Catholicism had been estabhshed in aU parts of the country.
Not much can be said for the ethical content of the rehgion thus estabhshed. The Catholic missionaries found it too easy to "convert" the natives from the worship that had flourished under the Aztecs to the new order by simply changing the names of the old feasts and observances. There was too little attempt to give the converts any true conception of either the spirit or doc- trine of real Christianity. And while, in the monasteries soon established, priests were trained who were able to take the Catholic message up through what is now our Spanish Southwest into California, and it is even de- clared that missionaries were sent from Mexico to the Phihppines, the common people remained wedded to such degraded forms that the country is still "mission territory."
An attempt at Christian communism.— In the meantime the Spanish and Portuguese adventurers were pressing down into South America, giving that continent the distinctive Latin flavor it wiU probably always retain. Everywhere they went they took Catholicism with them, although frequently in a form little better than that planted in Mexico.
No attempt of that period is of greater interest than
' Hodgkins, Via Christi, p. 173.
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that made in certain parts of Paraguay by the Jesuits. In the early part of the seventeenth century the Catholic missionaries had become convinced that they would never be able to secure the proper fruit of their evangel- izing efforts until they could, in some manner, separate their work from the influence of the soldiers, slavers, and traders who made up the rest of the Spanish population. Accordingly, the KLing of Spain was induced to give the Jesuits a portion of Paraguay which was to be outside the jurisdiction of the civil authorities, and into which no Spaniards save the priests could come.
In this protected area the Jesuits gathered colonies of their converts, to which were given the name of reduc- tions. Here the native Christians stood on a level. There was no private property, no private control of time or energy. The priest was in complete control, and governed each community as a paternal despot. There were no drones. All were taught to work at tasks that con- tributed directly to the good of the common body. The rudiments of an education were given each member of the community.
To a believer in individual initiative such a system might seem intolerable. But, when compared with the condition of the natives in other parts of the Spanish dominions, these inhabitants of the reductions appeared so well off that the system of priest-controlled com- munities became famous. This was felt to be an almost perfect form of Christian missions. It disappeared, how- ever, when the Jesuits were disbanded in the eighteenth century.
Among the North American Indians The record of missionary enterprises among the Indians
MISSIONARIES IN THE AMERICAS i6i
of the North American continent is as heroic as any page in Catholic history.
New France as a missionary base. — While mission- aries penetrated north to some extent from the Spanish colonies, the most famous work for the natives of North America was that carried on from the French settlements in Quebec, Montreal, and along the Saint Lawrence.
Three great Indian tribes challenged the Franciscans who moved to their conversion from the Canadian base. These were the Algonquins, the Hurons, and the Iroquois. The two latter were the most powerful native tribes of that period.
The story of the Catholic missions among these Indians is much like the story of all the dealings of red man and white. The Indians were constantly pressed westward, and the more intimate their contact with the missionaries the more disastrous seemed the results.
The Algonquins were the first reached to any large extent, only to be wiped out by disease and warfare. Then the Hurons, after a long resistance, began to accept baptism, and they too were extinguished. Finally the Iroquois, moved by the heroism of the Jesuits who had succeeded the Franciscans in the task, asked for mis- sionaries. But the efforts of the priests among them never came to much.
Probably the single feature of this Catholic effort to spread Christianity that is most remembered is the trip that Father Marquette made in 1673, when he accom- panied Joliet on his famous voyage down the Mississippi. The presence of this priest on this adventure of discovery serves to show how close upon the feet of the first ex- plorers pressed the evangelists.
Reaching the Indians in New England. — In the previous chapter we spoke of the rise of the Puritans in
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England, and of the dissatisfaction of some of them with the state of rehgion at that time within the established church. Eventually this moved groups of varying size to come to the New World, where, in New England, they founded those colonies that were to become a Puritan center for all the western world.
The New England pioneers were primarily interested in their own political and religious welfare, but they were sincere enough Christians to desire that the blessings of the gospel be shared with the Indians they found inhabit- ing the parts where they settled. To be sure, it has been possible for historians to point out that Indian wars preceded the Indian missions, but it was only a short time until men were preaching to the natives.
An early leader among these Protestant missionaries was John Eliot, a graduate of Cambridge University, who abandoned his position as minister to one of the colonies to give his whole strength to work among the Indians. Like many another missionary pioneer, his best work was the translation of the Bible into the Indian tongue. Roger Williams, also a graduate of Cambridge, labored mightily in the same field, and contributed to the knowl- edge of the Indian language.
Suggestions for Discussion
1. What lands were included within the grant of Alexander VI to the kings of Spain and Portugal?
2. Give a more detailed description of the life and work of Las Casas.
3. What can you discover about the religion of the Aztecs?
4. Woiild you recommend the policy followed in the reductions as a good one to be used in missionary work? Give reasons for or against.
MISSIONARIES IN THE AMERICAS i6
J
5. Why did the coming of the white man have a harm- ful effect upon the Indians of North America?
6. Would you consider missionary efforts among the American Indians as successful or otherwise?
CHAPTER XIX PROTESTANTISM FACES THE WIDER WORLD
As we have traced the exploits of Francis Xavier in the Orient, of Las Casas in the West Indies, of the Jesuits in Paraguay and among the Hurons and Iroquois, it has become apparent that, for the centuries immediately following the Reformation, the work of spreading Chris- tianity was left largely in the hands of the CathoUc Church.
To be sure, there were some attempts to reach the North American Indians by the Protestants who came to the New World, and in Brazil the French Huguenot leader. Admiral Coligny, tried to plant a colony that, had it not been betrayed, might have become a missionary center. But these were on so small a scale, and enlisted the support of so small a part of Protestantism, that it is almost true to say that for three centuries after its founding Protestantism had no world vision or world message.
The Early Protestant Attitude Toward the Non-Christian World
Until the Puritans sought freedom of worship on the shores of New England, Protestantism was confined to a relatively small portion of the world's surface.
The size of the non-Christian world. — Consider the world as it would have appeared on a religious map of the sixteenth or seventeenth century. All the countries of Europe, except a portion of the arctic regions, were
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nominally Christian. But in the far North the Christian colony that had been planted in Greenland in the year 1000 had disappeared. Asia Minor, Palestine, North Africa, where had once been flourishing churches, were in the hands of Islam. The Nestorian missions in India and China had disappeared, and the later Catholic mis- sions in the Far East were tending rapidly toward eclipse. The aborigines of the two great newly discovered conti- nents had scarcely been touched. Africa was the un- known continent, and would so remain for centuries. Most of the islands of the sea, including Australasia, had yet to be discovered. It was an enormous world of need and opportunity that lay in waiting.
"Casting pearls before swine." — It seems incredible that "the Reformers of the sixteenth century, in Germany and Switzerland, France and Sweden, Scotland and England, lived right through the greatest age of discovery the world has ever yet seen, but in vain so far as foreign missions are concerned."^ Yet that is precisely what happened.
Erasmus had a sense of the world responsibility of the church, but Luther and the other leaders who broke clear away from Rome did not. An attitude that it took centuries to dispel was expressed by a later Lutheran leader: "With respect to the heathen who are to be con- verted, they must not be barbarians who have hardly aught of humanity but the outward form, such as Green- landers, Lapps, Samoyedes, cannibals; they must not be fierce and tyrannical, allowing no strangers to live and associate with them, like the remote Tartars beyond the Caspian Sea, or whole nations in the northern regions of America. In short, they must not be headstrong blas- phemers, persecutors, despisers of the Christian religion.
1 George Smith, Short History of Christian Missions, p. 112.
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The holy things of God are not to be cast before such dogs and swine!" And it was easy for one who could think of men in non-Christian lands as "dogs and swine" to add the question that is sometimes still heard, "Have we not Jews and heathen among ourselves?"^
With such an attitude as this, it is no wonder that the powerful Protestant bodies, such as the Lutherans in Germany, the Presbyterians in Scotland, and the Church of England, did almost nothing to expand the reign of Christ beyond their own frontiers.
Why Protestantism was provincial. — Studying that time in the perspective supplied by these years, we can see some of the causes that helped to make those early Protestants so provincial in their thinking.
For one thing, it took them long years of struggle, lead- ing in many cases to bloody warfare, so to establish their position that they could be assured of permanency. Safety seemed to demand that they center their atten- tions upon their own situation.
Again, the Protestants soon fell into vigorous disputes among themselves, as well as with the Catholics, as to the truth of their various doctrines. So much strength was consumed in such arguments that Uttle was left to devote to other interests.
Finally, there was a general acceptance of a belief that the end of all earthly things was at hand. "Another hundred years and all will be over," said Luther. Sen- tences in the Bible were twisted to teach that, now that the "pure gospel" of Protestantism had been proclauned, Christ would return. And in view of the impending end it was felt scarcely worth the while to spend energy on efforts in other lands that would never have time to come to much fruition.
'Quoted by Hodgkins, op. cil., pp. 162, 163-
PROTESTANTISM FACES WORLD 167
The First Stirrings of Protestant Interest
But there were, here and there, men with largeness enough of heart and imagination to see the world task that lay before the church, and call men to it.
Early voices. — The first voices that spoke out were Dutchmen, who had been awakened to an interest in the non- Christian world as their nation drove the Portuguese out of possession of the Malay Archipelago, South India, and Ceylon. Their inspirer was Hugo Grotius, "the father of international law." Just because the great Dutch jurist thought internationally he inspired a few men to live in the same way, as missionaries in the East.
In the middle of the seventeenth century a German nobleman, Baron von Welz, startled Lutheranism with a pamphlet, Invitation for a Society of Jesus to Promote Christianity and the Conversion of Heathendom, in which were pressed home such questions as these: Is it right to keep the gospel to ourselves? Is it right that students of theology should be confined to home parishes? Is it right for Christians to spend so much on clothing, eating, drinking, and to take no thought to spread the gospel? Baron von Welz pleaded for the establishment of mis- sionary training courses in connection with German universities, and when the church turned a deaf ear to his challenge he renounced his title, went out to Dutch Guiana, and there became the first missionary martyr of the church that had proved two centuries behind him in thought.
The final appeal came not from a minister or a philan- thropist but from the great scientist, von Leibnitz, who, stirred by the success of the Jesuit teachers in China, urged Protestantism to duplicate that achievement by sending missionaries of outstanding mental ability to
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Peking by way of Russia. In fact, von Leibnitz carried the project to the point of inserting it in the statutes of the Berlin Academy of Sciences, which he founded in the first year of the eighteenth century.
The first regular mission. — It required a revival within Lutheranism, accompanied by the favor of a king, to send the first regularly organized Protestant mission to its monumental work in India.
During the closing years of the seventeenth century, the religious life of Protestant Germany was lifted from barren theological discussion to warm spiritual fervor by the activities of a group who are known to history as the Pietists. One of the leaders of this movement became chaplain to the King of Denmark, and aroused that monarch's concern for the conversion of the natives in the territory held by the Danish East India Company. So it was that, in 1706, in Tranquebar, a city on the coast of India one hundred and fifty miles south of Madras, two young graduates of the University of Copenhagen began their work.
As we have seen in other missionary enterprises, the first concern of these pioneers was to translate the Bible into Tamil, the native language. Other Christian literature was prepared, and recruits came to reenforce. Despite opposition on the part of the European officials, who did not want to see the natives brought to a position where they might assert their own rights, the mission prospered. Finally its success was assured by the addition of Christian Frederic Schwartz, who lived until within two years of the opening of the nineteenth century, five years after William Carey had started the first English Protestant work in the same land.
By all tests Schwartz is one of the great figures of Protestant missions. A graduate of the University of
PROTESTANTISM FACES WORLD 169
Halle, he evidenced such a linguistic ability that, within a year after his arrival in Tranquebar, he was preaching to multitudes. From the first he proved able to win the confidence of the native princes, and frequently mediated between them and the European officials when mutual suspicion seemed to have closed every other avenue of preserving the peace. "Send me the Christian," said a rajah when about to negotiate with the English. "He will not deceive me." He won the affection of the masses by storing rice in anticipation of a three years' famine, and then distributing it to those in need. He proved his farsightedness by establishing a system of vernacular schools, which British and native ofiicials were glad to support. When he died the Rajah of Tanjore, the British East India Company, and the foreign community erected monuments to his memory, but the true monument was the church that he left flourishing in that part of India.
The work of the Quakers. — Previously (see Chap- ter XVII) we have noted the formation of the Society of Friends in England by George Fox. The intense humanitarian interest of the Quakers — exhibited through all the years down to the present, when they are at work feeding the hungry in Central Europe and Russia — fired them with a resolve to uplift the degraded, especially Negro slaves.
It was this spirit that moved Fox to write, "All Friends everywhere, that have Indians or blacks, you are to preach the gospel to them and other servants, if you be true Christians, for the gospel of salvation was to be preached to every creature under heaven." And this spirit sent some Quaker enthusiasts to preach in Jeru- salem, Alexandria, and Constantinople, and inspired the more practical Christian example shown by William Penn
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and his associates in their dealings with the Indians in Pennsylvania.
The Church of the Brethren
From long years of persecution in Bohemia, there came to settle in Saxony in the early years of the eighteenth century, a group of Protestants who knew themselves as the United Brethren, but who are generally called the Moravians, because of the province from which they came.
Count von Zinzendorf. — It was at Herrnhut, on the estates of Count von Zinzendorf, that these wanderers found a home. Here, under the control of the count, they founded a religious community that has exerted an influence throughout the world out of all relation to its size.
Count von Zinzendorf was an attractive figure. At four years of age he is said to have made this covenant: "Be thou mine, dear Saviour, and I will be thine." Well educated, he refused to live the sort of life that was usual among the German nobility of his day, and brought down upon himself such hostility for his piety that he was banished from court. Probably he was well content to take up the quiet life of a rehgious enthusiast, spurred by his motto: "I have one passion, and that is He, He alone!"
Moravian missions. — Zinzendorf had a great mis- sionary outlook. Under his leadership the church of the United Brethren sent its members to what were con- sidered the neediest spots on earth. The count himself visited England, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Prussia, Switzerland, the West Indies, and America, and his repre- sentatives reached South America, South Africa, interior Africa, Greenland, and many of the Indian tribes of North America.
PROTESTANTISM FACES WORLD 171
Some have pointed out that these Moravian missions never reached large dimensions in the mass; that they were mainly carried on by men with little education ; that they were ''directed to races and tribes too obscure, savage, or transient to influence the great centers and citadels of heathendom, the great non-Christian and anti-Christian systems and civilizations." But still we must acknowledge the devotion of a church that has been able to place one missionary in the field for every fifty-eight members at the home base. No other body, Protestant or Catholic, can approach that record.
Suggestions for Discussion
1. How large was the area of Protestantism at the opening of the nineteenth century? How large is it now?
2. Give a fuller account of the life of Hugo Grotius.
3. What can you discover concerning the history of the British and Dutch East India companies?
4. How did the work of such companies affect Chris- tian missions?
5. How did the treatment accorded the Indians in Pennsylvania differ from that in other parts of the col- onies? With what results?
6. Why have missionaries so frequently begun their work by translating the Bible into the language of the region where they have gone?
CHAPTER XX METHODISM BRINGS NEW ENERGY
Historians agree that civilization in modern England reached its lowest ebb during the early years of the eighteenth century. Corruption in politics, formaUsm in reUgion, immorality in the lives of the rich, and besotted- ness in the hves of the poor, were the marks of the period. The church, both estabhshed and nonconformist, had almost ceased to have any real power in the lives of men.
"Rehgion seemed to be dying a natural death. Preachers taught a cold morality. Churchgoing was ceasing to be fashionable, and the masses of the people were increasing in brutality, ignorance, and drunkenness. ReHgion was saved not by argument but by men dis- covering the immediate presence of God in saving mercy in their own hearts."^
These revivals marked the birth of Methodism, as well as an awakening in other Protestant churches that was to lead directly to the missionary enthusiasm of the present.
The Moravians' Greatest Convert
We have seen how the Moravians, from their head- quarters in Saxony, sent their missionaries to many parts of the world. One such group was on a ship that crossed the Atlantic, carrying pioneers to the newly established colony of Georgia, in the year 1735.
The effect of a storm. — Winter on the Atlantic is
>A. W. Harrison, The Church oj Twenty Centuries, p. i68.
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seldom pleasant, and the little vessel passed through at least one storm when all but the Moravians showed their fear of death. Among the other passengers, busily- engaged with his duties as the minister of the Church of England for this group of colonists, was a slight, ascetic young man who had just turned his back on the Uni- versity of Oxford, lured largely by the prospect of preach- ing to the Indians. The calmness of the Moravians during the storm fascinated him. He spent hours with them, seeking their spiritual secrets. On land he imme- diately sought their bishop, intent upon further ques- tionings. A single question stopped him : *'Do you know Jesus Christ?" When he stammered, "I know he is the Saviour of the world," the Moravian inexorably pressed him: "True, but do you know he has saved you?"
Epworth, Oxford, the Holy Club. — That questioner was John Wesley, and behind his question lay years of seeking for spiritual certainty. Born in the Epworth rectory in 1703, John Wesley came from a long line of eminent ministers, most of them not members of the Church of England. His father was a man of scholarly tastes who devoted a lifetime to service within the establishment. His mother must rank as one of the remarkable women of modern times. John was the fifteenth, and his brother Charles the eighteenth, in a family of nineteen children. From early childhood the mother, in particular, succeeded in impressing her spirit of deep religious concern upon these two sons.
Despite the poverty of the family, three of the sons graduated from Oxford University, and all were ordained in the Anglican ministry. Such were the attainments of John that he was elected a Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford. While in the university, the two younger Wesley brothers became deeply concerned as to their own
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spiritual condition, and, finding a few other students in a similar state of mind, formed a group that soon came to give most of its time to religious studies and works of philanthropy. So strict were those in this circle in their manner of living that other undergraduates dubbed them the "Holy Club," and later, "Methodists." It was not the first time that a nickname, given in derision, has been adopted and become of marked significance.
The Georgia mission. — It was Charles Wesley who first turned the steps of the two brothers toward America. Offered a position as a sort of secretary to General Oglethorpe, the founder of Georgia, he secured a place as a missionary for his brother. Some idea of the culture of John Wesley is given by the knowledge that, while in Savannah, he conducted services in German, French, and Italian, as well as in English.
The work of the two Wesleys in Georgia can hardly be recalled as a success. The Indians gave no evidence of any desire to listen to their preaching. The colonists proved intractable under the extreme high-church usages of the two brothers. Finally Charles returned to Eng- land, soon to be followed by his brother. Nor had the spiritual restlessness of either of them been stilled while in the New World, although both had labored to the limit of their strength.
Wesley*s conversion. — Once back in England, John Wesley was fortunate to fall in with another Moravian, who was stopping over in London while on his way to America. Both brothers eagerly sought the inner spiritual satisfaction which this Moravian, Peter Bohler, taught might belong to any Christian. Charles obtained it first. Three days later the older brother, while attending a "society" that Bohler had organized before sailing, underwent the experience that has meant so much to
METHODISM BRINGS NEW ENERGY 175
Christian history. Listening to the reading of Luther's preface to his Commentary on Romans, Wesley himself says: "About a quarter before nine, while he [Lutherl was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death."
The Work of the Wesleys and Whitefield
After a short period spent in Germany with the Moravians, John Wesley began that lifework that was to have such a transforming effect upon English society. In it he was assisted from the first by his brother, and even more by George Whitefield, one of the greatest preachers, judging by the effects of his sermons, in the history of the church.
A new kind of preaching. — Whitefield had been a member of the "Holy Club" at Oxford. To him religious certainty and power had come soon after graduation, and he had been able from the day of his ordination as an Anghcan minister, while still scarcely out of his teens, to pack the churches of London with those who were eager to hear him. A successful sojourn in Georgia had brought him back to England to secure funds for work under- taken there, only to hold him there in the fervor that his evangelistic preaching evoked.
Whitefield invited John Wesley to preach in Bristol. Since, by this time, the Wesley brothers were barred from most London pulpits because of the "enthusiasm" of their preaching, John Wesley gladly accepted the op- portunity. However, he found, upon arriving in Bristol, that most of Whitefield 's work was being done in the
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open air. It seemed a radical departure from accepted methods, but after a brief hesitation Wesley embraced it, and soon proved, in London as well as Bristol, a field preacher with power equal to that of Whitefield.
It was no new message that these preachers brought. It had most of its roots in the teaching of Saint Paul and Luther. Men were sinners, deserving condemnation and punishment. They might be saved by an act of faith in Christ. They might have an inner knowledge of such salvation, leading to a joyful Hfe. If they persisted in living right lives, they might finally come so under the sway of right motives — love to God and one's fellows — that they could be said to have obtained perfection in Christian character. Inner reHgion would show itself in outreaching forms of service. This was the message that proved able to transform the lives of hundreds of thousands.
The organization of Methodism. — There is a belief, generally accepted, that John Wesley was a relative of that Arthur Wellesley who, as the Duke of Wellington, remains the greatest soldier of modern England. Cer- tainly, he had many of the characteristics of a great general. When he found multitudes swayed by his preaching he was unwilling to let them work out their further spiritual career without assistance, but began to gather his converts in "societies" and "bands" for mutual examination and encouragement.
These groups were not, technically, outside the Anghcan Church, of which their founder remained a minister. But there was little place given them within the establishment, and gradually they became more and more sufficient to themselves. Finally, a passing need led Wesley to subdivide them into "classes" of about a dozen each, each under the direction of a "class-leader,"
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and these, while furnishing an efficient discipline, served to cut almost the last tie with the Church of England.
In the beginning the supervision of these "societies" and "classes" was entirely in the hands of the Wesleys, Whitefield, and the handful of AngHcan ministers who supported them. Then lay preachers began to appear in the ranks of the converts. At first the Wesley brothers would have discouraged these, but their aged mother cautioned against such a course, and lay preaching soon became one of Methodism's distinctive marks. After many years, under the pressure constantly applied, Wesley, who had become convinced that in the ancient church there was no distinction between bishops and other ministers, began to ordain these preachers. Yet he held tenaciously to the theory that he and his followers were acting within the ranks of the Anglican church.
The spread of Methodism. — From the year of his spiritual stirring in 1738 until his death in 1791, John Wesley was constantly on the go. Up and down the United Kingdom he traveled, at first on horseback and later by coach, until it was said that nobody in England had ever paid as many toUs. It was his custom to preach every morning at five; once again before noon; again in the late afternoon; and generally again at night. For a time he had an able lieutenant in his brother Charles, but when the brother's health became such that he was forced to deliver his message in song, other stalwarts came forward to man that "itinerancy" that has been the glory of the Methodist ministry.
Whitefield took the essential message of Methodism back to America, and other preachers, as we shall see, carrying Wesley's express command, traveled throughout the colonies and the republic. A flourishing Methodist community sprang up in Wales, and there were societies
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in Ireland, Scotland, and Holland. By the time Wesley died there were more than one hundred and thirty thou- sand Methodists in various parts of the world, and one of them, Thomas Coke, an Oxford doctor of laws, and the man chosen to be the founder's representative in setting up the Methodist Church in America, had died on shipboard and been buried in the Red Sea as he sailed toward Ceylon, Methodism's first missionary to the Orient.
Some By-Products of Methodism
Many historians and political students have given credit to Wesley for the manner in which he "largely revolutionized the religious condition of the English lower and middle classes," and stabilized Anglo-Saxon civilization at the time when the life of the continent had to pass through the upheaval of the French Revolution. But there were other effects worth noting. Perhaps we should call them by-products.
The arousing of the churches. — All the churches of England felt the stirring of the Methodist revival. With- in and without the establishment men began to preach with a warmth that brought large increases in member- ship to most of the churches. The power of this preach- ing stirred many men of influence who never came within the range of Wesley's work with the masses.
The quickening of a social conscience. — Many of the men thus touched caught a sense of their responsibility toward their fellows that led to various philanthropic efforts. So William Wilberforce went to fight slavery, until the trade was abolished throughout the British Empire in 1807, and all slaves freed in 1833. So John Howard began the crusade for prison reform. And so Robert Raikes began "the first systematic and successful
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efforts to reach the poor and unschooled with a Christian training on a large scale" when he opened the first Sun- day schools.
The impulse to foreign missions. — But even more to our purpose was the propulsion given Protestant mis- sions by the work of the Wesleys. For years some men of vision had been feeling the compulsion to preach in non- Christian lands. At the very beginning of the eighteenth century Isaac Watts wrote one of the greatest missionary hymns:
"Jesus shall reign where'er the sun Doth his successive journeys run."
Yet it needed the enthusiasm of the evangelical revival to break down the prejudice of the masses of English Protestants, and make it possible for Wilham Carey to lead in the organization of the society that sent him as the first missionary of Anglo-Saxon Protestantism to India.
Suggestions for Discussion
1. Give a detailed description of social and religious conditions in England at the opening of the eighteenth century.
2. Discuss the influence of heredity as shown in the case of the Wesley brothers.
3. What can you discover concerning John Wesley's experiences in America?
4. Give a brief character sketch of Whitefield; of Charles Wesley; of John Wesley.
5. What causes contributed most to the success of the work of the Wesleys?
6. Compare in importance the direct and indirect results of the Methodist revival.
CHAPTER XXI
SPREADING RELIGION IN AMERICA
We are familiar with the story of the occupation of what is now the United States of America by white men. Sometimes we forget that rehgious interests played a dominating part in that great migration. Before proceed- ing with the account of the world-spread of Christianity it is necessary to recall how America became a base for that spread.
Religion in the Colonies
We need only recount the general aspects of the groups that planted the American colonies to understand the forms of worship that distinguished them.
The settlement of the Atlantic seaboard. — In general, it was the cavalier who settled the Southern colonies. Even the settlements in Georgia, composed as they were of persons largely recruited from the ranks of the poor, had behind them such an aristocrat as General Oglethorpe. So it happened that the Southern colonies provided a natural home for the forms of the Church of England, and the usages of that church were about as well established there as in the homeland.
New England, as we know, was settled by the Puritans, who estabhshed a form of Congregationalism that was as rigorous in its efforts to control the life of the colonies as any established worship in the world. In time the men of New England largely freed themselves from political interference by their churches, but it was not until 1818 in Connecticut and until 1834 in Massachusetts that
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Congregationalism was disestablished and men relieved from paying taxes for its support.
Between the extremes south and north other forms of worship found root. Three of the intermediary colonies were estabhshed directly as a result of rehgious scruples. One was Maryland, planted by Lord Baltimore to provide a home for the Roman Catholics, who were denied full civil and rehgious privileges in most English com- munities. Another was Pennsylvania, where William Penn gave the Quakers their unmolested home. And then there was Rhode Island, where first Roger WiUiams and after him the Baptists sought freedom from what they considered the tyranny of conscience exercised by the Puritans in the older New England colonies. AU these colonies provided religious liberty for their settlers.
The other colonies in the center of the country— New York, New Jersey, Delaware — were largely commercial ventures, and took upon themselves readily the forms of the Church of England, with tolerance for any other mode of worship that might be desired. In New York the churches left by the original Dutch settlers were very strong. In New Jersey there were Presbyterian congre- gations of great strength.
Colleges in the wilderness.— ^One thing distin- guished the churches of the colonies, wherever planted. They were determined that their ministry should be well educated. The whole history of America has been pro- foundly affected by the devotion of the pioneers to learn- ing. One has a higher respect than ever for those first colonists when he sees them pausing, almost before they have cleared their lands, to estabhsh colleges.
Sixteen years after the landing at Plymouth the Puritan ministers of Massachusetts had established Harvard College. Before the end of that century the
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Anglican Church had founded William and Mary. In the first year of the eighteenth century Yale came into being to supply the needs of the Congregational colony of New Haven. Later in the century the Presbyterians were to establish Princeton, the Baptists Brown, and the Dutch Reformed Church was to plant what is now Rutgers. In fact, examination shows that it was the churches who were responsible for that large place given to popular education that has been so distinctive a feature of American life.
Colonial Christianity. — Despite the early fervor that took the Pilgrims to New England, it was not long before their worship, because it was so cut off from the rest of the world, became a hard, dogmatic, formal affair. In the south, as John Wesley found in Georgia, there was little zeal for rehgion. Occasional men, as we have seen (see Chapter XVIII), were ready to devote themselves to work among the Indians. But, for the most part, the approach of the middle of the eighteenth century saw religion becoming as cold an affair in the colonies as it had become in the mother country.
The Great Awakening
This condition made the revival that took place, be- ginning with the preaching of Jonathan Edwards in New England in 1734, and continuing about ten years, memorable as the Great Awakening.
The preaching of Whitefield. — It was in this move- ment that the power of George Whitefield was most plainly shown. He made his second visit to America in 1740, while still only twenty-five years old. He found the ground broken by the preaching of Edwards, and wher- ever he went remarkable results attended his preaching. "It is wonderful to see what a spell he casts over an
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audience by proclaiming the simplest truths of the gospel," wrote Mrs. Edwards. "I have seen upward of a thousand people hang on his words with breathless silence, broken only by an occasional, half-suppressed sob. He impresses the ignorant, and not less the half- educated and refined."
Hundreds were permanently changed by the preaching of Whitefield, but there was much discussion of the per- manency of such effort and many divisions in the ranks of the churches resulted. Before he died, while on his seventh visit to America in 1773, Whitefield had been able to dissipate the personal antagonism at first shown toward him by the conservative leaders in such schools as Harvard and Yale. But also by that time the fervor of the revival had died down.
Other leaders in the revival. — Besides Jonathan Edwards, the Great Awakening brought forward other leaders. Of these the Tennants, who founded the Log College in New Jersey out of which Princeton grew, were noted for even greater outbursts of emotion than marked the preaching of Whitefield. One Anglican wrote: "After him [Whitefield] came one Tennent, a monster! impudent and noisy, and told them that they were damn'd, damn'd, damn'd; this charmed them, and in the most dreadful winter I ever saw, people wallowed in the snow night and day, for the benefit of his beastly brayings, and many ended their lives under these fatigues."^
After the Awakening. — Reaction seems inevitable after such a general stirring up of the emotions. To this was soon added, in the colonies, the intrusion of political interests. Before the middle of the eighteenth century the colonists had few poUtical matters of large concern to
'Quoted by Moncrief, op. cit., p. 414.
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command their attention. After that they were caught in the full tide of events that began with the capture of Canada, continued with the agitation over taxes, and culminated in the Revolutionary War and the formation of the United States of America. And during aU that period of struggle, fine as were the goals in view, the power of religion steadily declined. By the end of the Revolutionary War the spiritual condition of the coun- try was deplorable.
The Days of the CiRcuiT-RroERS
The young republic was called back to a vital religious life very largely by the efforts of a new type of preacher — the circuit-rider. He was the distinctive gift of Methodism to the development of America.
Methodism enters America. — It was not long be- fore men who had been kindled by the fervor of the Methodist revival in England and Ireland began to spread the same message in America. Ten years before the signing of the Declaration of Independence Methodist societies came into existence in New York and Maryland. By 1 77 1 the growth had been so great that Wesley sent over a young man, Francis Asbury, to take charge of the societies. Asbury was assisted by quite a large body of lay preachers. They divided the parishes into "circuits," as had been done in England. But distances differed in the colonies and in Britain, and to cover their circuits the Methodist preachers found it necessary to travel hun- dreds of miles. This they did largely on horseback, and thus the Methodist circuit-rider, pushing his way along the rough roads and trails, and perhaps studying a Greek Testament as he rode, became a familiar figure in the most outlying settlements of those times.
The Revolutionary War brought the work of Asbury
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and his helpers to a temporary stop. John Wesley wrote a tract chiding the colonists for their attitude toward the mother country, which served no purpose other than to draw suspicion upon his American followers. At the out- break of fighting many of the preachers returned to England. Asbury stayed on, but for a time it was neces- sary for him to go into hiding. However, long before the end of the war the loyalty of the Methodists as a group had been proved, and Asbury had won the confidence of the American leaders to such an extent that he was able to resume his work on a scale even larger than before the break. At the end of the Revolution the Methodists found they had seventy preachers and twelve thousand members in the new repubhc.
Forward with the pioneers. — This very growth proved an embarrassment. In the mind of John Wesley his societies had always been thought of as a part of the Church of England. But during the Revolution the Church of England had ceased to exist in America. There was no way by which these Methodists could obtain the sacraments, and they became insistent that their preachers be given the right to administer them. Wesley endeavored to secure ordination for some of his preachers by bishops of the Anglican Church. When this proved unsuccessful, he ordained them himself, since he believed a minister had as much right to do this as a bishop.
Thomas Coke was the first man ordained by Wesley. He came to America and ordained Asbury. The two then ordained other Methodist preachers, who set up a church independent of Wesley in England, that has survived to this day in the Methodist Episcopal Church. It was a church of pioneers. Its circuit-riders followed every trail, crossing the mountains into Kentucky with Daniel Boone's comrades, pressing into Ohio, Indiana, and the
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other States of the Middle West as fast as white occupa- tion took place.
Asbury himself set the pace. Until he died, in 1816, he lived almost constantly in the saddle. His journeyings averaged six thousand miles a year. He ordained more than four thousand preachers. He proved an organizer equal to Wesley, and he combined with an intense evangelistic spirit an interest in education that made for permanency in all the work that he and his itinerant preachers did. "The records of the journeyings and toils of the Methodist preachers remind one vividly of the apostles and their helpers, and of the perils through which they passed in the first age of Christianity."^
The influence of the circuit-riders.^In estimating the effect of these itinerants upon the life of America mention must not only be made of their direct labors, leading as those did to the gathering of the most numer- ous body of Christians in the country. Nor can attention be confined to the fervid form of religious experience that, in campmeeting and revival, they helped to make familiar in most American communities. With these must be reckoned their influence upon other churches. For from this time comes a resurrection of energy on the part of all the communions that had been planted before the Revolution — the Presbyterians, the Congregational- ists, the Baptists, the Lutherans, the Episcopahans, the Catholics — which, whether it expressed itself in ways akin to those used by the Methodists, or in other means, was to lead to great accessions. And other denominations were to be called forth by the same period, and likewise were to affect American life. But of all this we will treat at more length in another chapter.
» Fisher, op. cil., p. S78.
SPREADING RELIGION IN AMERICA 187
Suggestions for Discussion
1. Was religious tolerance characteristic of aU the American colonies? What colony proved most tolerant?
2. What do you mean by saying that Congregational- ism was "established" in certain parts of New England?
3. Take a complete list of the colleges of America. How many of them owe their origin to some branch of the Christian Chiurch?
4. Why should a period of struggle for mdependence prove inimical to the cause of religion ?
5. Give a fuller account of the life of Asbury.
6. A statue of Asbury, as the typical circuit-rider, is being erected at the national capital. Why?
CHAPTER XXII
CHRISTIANITY IN MODERN INDIA
Legend maintains that the gospel was first carried into India by Saint Thomas, one of the apostles. Early- travelers, such as Marco Polo, have left historical evidence of the presence of Nestorian Christians in that country centuries ago. We have already seen how Saint Francis Xavier, and after him other Jesuits, planted Catholicism about the Portuguese settlements on the coast in the sixteenth century (see Chapter XIV). And we have seen the beginning of Protestant work under the Danish missions of the eighteenth century (see Chapter XIX). But it was not until the nineteenth century that Chris- tianity began vitally to affect the life of India.
Carey and the Pioneers
To understand the way in which Protestant missions gained their foothold in India it is necessary to recall the peculiar manner in which that empire came under western rule.
The British East India Company. — The Portuguese were the first Europeans to reach India, but they were soon followed by the Dutch, French, Enghsh, and Danes. British interests were mainly in the extension of trade, and were represented by the British East India Company, chartered in the time of Queen Elizabeth, and given extraordinary powers whereby it not only held a mo- nopoly of the Far Eastern trade of England, but was also given what amounted to the right to govern politically.
In India the empire of the Moguls disintegrated rapidly
1 88
CHRISTIANITY IN MODERN INDIA 189
after the seventeenth century. On the other hand, the ambition and power of the British and French increased. Finally, at the same time Britain was expelling France from Canada, the British, led by CHve, defeated the French at the battle of Plassey, and so achieved virtual control of India. But it is to be remembered that it was the British East India Company that won the victory, rather than Great Britain as a government. And it was the British East India Company that took up the rule of India, and maintained it for more than a century.
The British East India Company proved itself an en- lightened despotism in its rule. Its officers were, on the whole, men of character, who did what they honestly thought was for the best interests of the people, provided that the profits of the Company were not lessened. Abuses of power were frequent, but Warren Hastings, the greatest of the Company's governors, was telling the truth when at his trial he declared that in the light of the opportunities to amass wealth that had been his he marveled at his moderation ! So absolute was this rule, carried on at a distance from England and with only in- direct checks from the British government, that it was necessary for any one who would enter the country, whether as a missionary or otherwise, to obtain the con- sent of the Company.
William Carey. — In the closing years of the nine- teenth century the reports of the voyages of Captain Cook (see Chapter XXVIII) aroused a humble Baptist preacher in England, who supported himself by working as a cobbler, to write several pamphlets and deliver several sermons designed to move his fellow Baptists to engage in missionary work in the islands Cook had opened. The formation of the Baptist Missionary Society of England was the result, and the cobbler-preacher,
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known as the father of Protestant Anglo-Saxon missions, William Carey, was sent out as the first missionary, sus- tained by his famous motto: "Attempt great things for God; expect great things from God."
India, and not the South Seas, was the territory in which the Baptist society resolved to begin its work. The East India Company did its best to discourage Carey's coming, for it feared the political effect of work to im- prove the condition of the natives. But when Carey actually landed, and proved his ability to support him- self and master the native languages, the authorities perceived how valuable a man he might be. When the Company founded a college at Calcutta, Carey became professor of Sanskrit, Bengali, and Marathi. He held the chair for thirty years.
The cobbler-missionary proved to be a marvelous linguist. Missions in India are to this day hindered by the multiplicity of languages and dialects, of which there are more than a hundred. Carey sufficiently mastered twenty-four of these to translate the Bible, or parts of the Bible, into them. He early realized that the size of the task precluded hope of converting the entire empire through the preaching of foreigners, and concentrated most of his attention on the training of native workers. He was an unfailing advocate of various social reforms, chief among them the abolition of suttee, the ancient practice by which widows are burned on the funeral pyres of their husbands.
Alexander Duff. — Four years before Carey died, in 1834, there came to India the first missionary of the Established Church of Scotland, Alexander Duff. A university graduate whose scholarship would have been acknowledged in any circle, Duff gave to Indian mis- sions the ideal of education as a mode of approach to the
CHRISTIANITY IN MODERN INDIA 191
masses of that country. Schools were founded in large numbers, for which the East India Company proved ready to provide most of the funds, in which education was provided, especially for children of the higher classes. Most of the instruction was in English, and it is safe to say that the success of Duff's schools has fixed this feature of the higher educational system of India to this day.
The mutiny. — Long before Duff, American mission- aries had begun to arrive in India. Turned back from the territory of the Company, because they arrived while America and Britain were at war, the American pioneers went to Ceylon and Bombay. Work in Burma, which was then independent of India, was started by Judson, one of the greatest of American missionaries. Other American missions were planted in India as the pohcy of the Company became more liberal.
In 1857 long-smoldering discontent on the part of certain groups of the natives led to the revolt of the Sepoys, part of the Indian troops in the army main- tained by the Company. After some horrible butcherings the mutiny was wiped out in blood, but its recollection has had a profound effect on British policy since that time. It was realized that the point had been reached at which the Company could not successfully govern so huge a population and territory. The immediate result of the mutiny was, therefore, the revocation of the Com- pany's charter and the taking over of the empire by the British government, with the British queen proclaimed as empress.
Christian Effort Since the Mutiny
Christian missions suffered dreadfully during the mutiny. Not only were many missionaries killed, but
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hundreds of their converts, accused of treason in accept- ing the foreigner's religion, suffered martyrdom. Yet this suffering served to call forth even greater efforts than in the past. Numbers of British and American mis- sionary societies that had not previously been interested poured their representatives into the country. Forms of work that had scarcely been tried before were now pushed on a large scale.
Types of missionary work. — The foundation of the work was still evangelistic. Great numbers of Indian preachers worked side by side with men from overseas in vocal proclamation of the Christian message. In fact, the greater part of this work came to be done by natives, while the foreigners were employed increasingly as super- visors of the forces.
More and more attention was given to the educational approach. Not only were colleges established — there are nineteen degree-giving institutions under Protestant auspices in India to-day — but elementary education was provided on such a scale that it is possible to report: "The missions are far in advance of the government. . . . Until quite recently the only schools for women were mission schools. To this day, despite the excellency of the government schools in which strict religious neutrality prevails, and despite the founding of private schools for both sexes and all classes, . . . many pupils from non- Christian famihes attend the mission schools. They acknowledge that what they seek is the moral Ufe and religious atmosphere of these schools."^
Of great value was the industrial education developed for multitudes. India is dominantly agricultural, with nine tenths of her people at work on the land. Her
> E. C. Moore, The Spread of Christianity in the Modern World, University of Chicago Press, publishers, p. 134.
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CHRISTIANITY IN MODERN INDIA 193
craftsmen have proved through generations their sur- passing skiU. It has been the good fortune of the missions to be largely used by the goverimient in various methods of education whereby the productivity of both farmer and artisan has been increased.
Medical missions have greatly increased in India since the mutiny. There is no quicker way of winning the confidence of a people than by heahng their sick- nesses, as multitudes of devoted missionary-physicians have demonstrated.
Attention was also secured by a large use of literature. The education of so many offered a great market for books and periodicals in India, which publishers began to develop intensively. In the years succeeding the mutiny the missions entered the same field, and have planted India deep with a Christian literature of devo- tion and argument that has exercised a profound effect on the thinking of that country.
Results of Christian missions in India. — The early Jesuit missionaries claimed results for their labors which can only be accepted on the basis of a superficial work. By the time when Protestant work began in India the Catholic community had fallen to a low level, both in size and spirituaHty. It was a long time before large accessions began to be made to the Protestant churches, but during recent years they have grown much more rapidly than the population. In the decade from 1901 to 191 1 the population of India increased 6.4%. At the same time the number of Christians increased by 34-2%, or five times as fast as the population. The total number of church members, not counting foreigners, was shown by the government census of 191 1 to be 3,574,770.
At the present the missions are perplexed by the mass movements that are influencing whole communities.
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especially of the lowest castes, to seek Christian baptism. Social motives enter largely into these movements, whereby villages vote to become Christian, and then, led by their headmen, seek out the missionary. Protestant- ism always has held back from such movements en masse, waiting until the individual has given evidence of a certain amount of Christian knowledge and experience on his own part. But the challenge presented by these multitudes, who number at least a million people and will increase if encouraged, is not one from which the missionaries can lightly turn away.
A final development characteristic of Protestantism in India since the mutiny has been the growth of a native indigenous church. In the beginning, and to a large extent still, the work of the missionaries has been among the poor. These proved willing to order their lives in strict accord with the denominational distinctions and details of practice enjoined by the missionaries. Now this is changing. Men of a higher type are accepting the fearful social penalty that it frequently entails to become a Christian openly, but are at the same time providing leaders for the Indian Christians who are increasingly taking over the control of the Christian movement. This is a tendency that is bound to increase until the day comes when foreign missionaries are superfluous, and Indian Christianity orders and maintains its own life.
By-Products of Christianity in India
Many of the most significant effects of Christianity in India are to be seen outside the acknowledged Christian community.
The breakdown of caste. — India's most stagnating social custom has been her caste system, whereby men are born into certain places in the social order from which
CHRISTIANITY IN MODERN INDIA 195
it is impossible for them to move. The attack that Chris- tian teaching, with its doctrine of human equahty before God, is bound to make on such a conception is clear. It must not be thought that Christianity has been alone in working to overcome caste. Many agencies, notably the promiscuous travel on the railroads, have worked to the same end. But Christianity has borne its part, and the bands of caste are at least loosening, if they are not breaking, in India to-day.
The reform of Hinduism. — Equally significant is the restlessness within Hinduism itself. Several centuries be- fore Christ, Buddhism arose in India to reform the religious life of the country. But Buddhism was itself absorbed back into Hinduism, which went on its way without self-examination until the challenge of Chris- tianity's monotheism and ethical requirements began to make itself felt. Popular Hinduism, with its debasing and idolatrous customs, could not well undergo that challenge. As a result, any number of reform movements have appeared within Hinduism in the last few decades. Many of these seek a sort of a combination of the good elements of all religions, and represent a high level of thought. The trouble is that they are mostly just that — systems of thought — without that fervor of spirit which is needed to move the multitudes.
The awakening of national pride. — India is in the full tide of an awakened self-consciousness. She has demanded, and obtained, from the British Empire the first measure of self-government, but she presses on to- ward a status as a self-governing commonwealth, if not complete independence. The sacrifices she made in the World War, when she sent seven hundred thousand men to the front, have earned for her claims the deepest consideration on the part of the British. Many Indian
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leaders would deny that Christianity has contributed to this movement for Indian freedom. But the nature of the Christian gospel is such that it is impossible to intro- duce it in any society without the birth of a spirit of self-respect, which leads inevitably to just such a move- ment as now possesses India.
India To-morrow
One Indian in every eighty-six is to-day a Christian. That proportion will constantly be changing as the hundreds of thousands waiting outside the doors of the churches are instructed and baptized. It is not too much to hope that, a century hence, when India has taken her place in the ranks of the world's great self-governing nations, she will acknowledge as a dominating influence in her life the presence of an Indian Christian Church, Indian in thought, Indian in control, yet Christian in all its effects.
Suggestions for Discussion
1. How did the British East India Company help the spread of Christianity in India? How hinder?
2. What resemblances did the work of Carey hold to that of other pioneer missionaries of whom we have studied?
3. Has the church to which you belong a mission in India? When was it established and by whom?
4. Give an extended discussion of the caste system of India. In what way has this system affected Chris- tian missions?
5. How might industrial education be used to for- ward the Christian enterprise in such a country as India?
6. Give an outline of the present political situation in India. What relation, if any, has this to Christianity?
CHAPTER XXIII
CHINA AND CHRISTIANITY
China stands to-day in the focus of world attention. Politically, her future is regarded as of vast import to the rest of the nations. And religiously she presents Chris- tianity with a great challenge and a great opportunity. She is open just now to the Christian message as is perhaps no other large non-Christian country. If she accepts it, her adherence is bound profoundly to affect all future history.
The Problem of China
When the first Protestant missionary began his work in China he said that he doubted if, after a century of effort, there would be a thousand Christians in the coun- try. Such pessimism is not to be wondered at in view of the difficulties the task presented.
China's size. — China Proper, as the eighteen princi- pal provinces are known, is not much larger than the United States. But in this territory there lives almost a quarter of the entire human race. If you include the outlying provinces in your reckoning, it is safe to say that in converting China you undertake to convert more than twice as many people as there are in all the Protestant churches in the world. In mere size China presents the hardest task that has ever loomed before Christianity.
China's conservatism. — China's people are noted for their conservatism. Until very recent times they have not welcomed change. They were cut off for centuries from the rest of the world, so that their living and think-
197
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ing formed the habit of proceeding in certain grooves from which they cannot be easily moved. It is no small thing to change the customs of four millenniums, espe- cially when they are embraced by so many people. The attempt of one emperor to introduce reforms as recently as 1898 brought a total loss of power upon him.
China's religions. — China had her worships when Christianity came seeking entrance. There was the animism that filled the country with spirits, most of them malignant, and that made the religion of millions mainly an attempt to placate these bearers of ill-fortune. There was the Taoism, that had degenerated from a high- minded effort to live in accord with the universe, as taught by Lao-tze, to a mere necromancy and jumble of superstitious rites, aimed to ward off these same evil spirits. There was the Buddhism, that had been brought from India in the first Christian century, promising peace from the ills of this world, winning the allegiance of many thousands, but likewise showing signs of decay. And there was the Confucianism, really no religion at all, but a great system of philosophy, yet twisted in these twenty-five centuries since the death of Confucius to yield a form of worship to that great sage. And the presence of all these, together with that yearly worship of heaven performed by the Emperor for the entire nation, proved another barrier in Christianity's way.
The First Approaches to China
Because Protestants have come so recently to China we are apt to forget the long centuries of effort to open up that land by other Christian forces. But the Chinese had a way of carving their records on slabs that endure, and so we know that there were Nestorian Christians in China by the middle of the seventh century. Franciscans
CHINA AND CHRISTIANITY 199
reached Peking before the end of the thirteenth century, and one of their bishops was executed there in 1362. But these efforts came to nothing.
The Catholic missions. — The real start of CathoUc work in China came toward the close of the sixteenth century, when, after Xavier's heartbroken death off the closed coast of South China, another Jesuit, Matteo Ricci, reached Canton. Ricci pressed north to Peking, where, having made a reputation for himself as a scholar, he was given a place at the court. When one remembers the difficulty of the Chinese language, which is much greater in its literary than in its spoken form, the mag- nitude of Ricci 's scholastic achievements is clear. He left the Catholic work in a position of great promise when he died.
Encouraged by the reports of Jesuit success, the Franciscans and Dominicans soon entered the country. And it is a strange commentary on the jealousies that often arise within the Christian communion and thus hinder the work that, from that day to this, the various Catholic orders working in China have so sought to thwart one another that they have proved their own worst enemies. Early in the eighteenth century the Dominicans managed to get the Jesuits mixed up in a dispute with the Pope as to the translation of certain terms and the meaning of certain rites, and when the pontiff decided in a manner adverse to a previous de- cision by the Chinese emperor, that ruler, alarmed at the power of this unseen foreigner in far-off Italy, suppressed all Catholic missions.
Although by far the greater part of the Catholic work was wiped out, some priests managed to stay within the country, and converts remained when churches had been destroyed. The Catholic work revived rapidly after the
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country had been opened, following the wars with the EngHsh and French in the nineteenth century. The French Jesuits have again gathered large congregations, and there are considerable numbers under the training of Spanish and German fathers. There are about two thousand five hundred priests, of whom almost a half are Chinese, and two million communicants.
The Protestant pioneers. — The first Protestant mis- sionary landed in Canton in 1807. His name was Robert Morrison, and he came as a representative of the London Missionary Society. Because of EngHsh hostility, he was forced to make his voyage in an American vessel. Mor- rison found it impossible to preach, so gave himself to mastering the language and translating the Scriptures. It took him seven years to win his first convert, and when he died, in 1834, there had been just ten Chinese baptized by all the Protestant workers in the country! No wonder he made the prophecy we have already quoted.
In the year Morrison died the first American mission- ary was appointed to China in Peter Parker. He "opened China at the point of the lancet," for he was a doctor, and the hospital he founded in Canton proved the enter- ing wedge in that long history of medical work that has done so much to relieve suffering, remove prejudice, and open the way for other Christian service.
Growth of the Christian Movement
To understand Christian missions in China it is neces- sary to study the political history of the country since it began to have contact with Western nations, so that it will appear how such wars as those waged by Britain and France served to open new fields for work. But when we remember the causes for which those wars were waged
CHINA AND CHRISTIANITY 201
and the way in which China, at their conclusion, was mulcted, we cannot wonder that the Chinese held back from accepting a religion pressed upon them in such a fashion.
Before the Boxer year. — During generations the growth of the Protestant missions was very slow. Suc- ceeding treaties gave missionaries, with other foreigners, the right to reside in certain cities, and these were grad- ually pushed inland. But there were as degrading foreign forces in these cities as there were uphfting. As late as 1877 there were only thirteen thousand Protestant converts in all China.
The most romantic phase of Protestant work during this period was the formation of the China Inland Mission by Hudson Taylor. About the time of the American Civil War Mr. Taylor challenged believers in an evangelical faith to leave the shelter of the foreign settlements and push into the interior, trusting in the Lord for protection, food, and the opportunity to preach. Hundreds of devoted Christians, from many countries and many communions, accepted that challenge, and the China Inland Mission has, to this day, the largest mis- sion force in the land. Its work has been largely confined to the vocal proclamation of the gospel, so that it has not built as large Christian coimnunities as some other mis- sions. But, as pioneers, the workers of the China Inland Mission have been unequaled.
The Boxer year. — Slowly the exasperation of the Chinese at the despoliation of their country by the foreign powers had been mounting. In the year 1900 this reached a crisis when a general uprising in North China, led by the Society of Righteous Fists (mistranslated, "Boxers"), tried to exterminate all men from abroad, and make it possible for China to go back to her old modes
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of living. This uprising was not primarily aimed against Christianity, but because Christianity was the foreigners' religion it suffered horribly. One hundred and thirty-five Protestant missionaries, fifty-eight children in mission- aries' families, thirty-five Roman Catholic priests and nine sisters were martyred. Even worse was the fate that befell the Chinese Christians who were thought to have betrayed their country in accepting foreign re- ligion. Although a chance to recant and Hve was offered many, sixteen thousand died, frequently after fearful torture. In Peking, groups of foreigners and Chinese Christians were besieged for almost two months before the arrival of a rehef column brought the summer of madness to an end.
Since the Boxer year. — Heavy punishment was laid upon China for the terrible deeds of the Boxer uprising, but in centuries to come the historian may conclude that it was worth all the suffering because of the immediate and complete transformation that it produced. Over- night the Chinese began to clamor for the Western in- struction and methods of industry they had previously despised. Mission schools were crowded; the churches, with the sincerity of previous converts proved by their blood, multiplied at an amazing rate.
In 1907, a hundred years after Morrison and only seven after the Boxer uprising, there were almost 10,000 Chinese Christian preachers and 178,000 Protestant communicant members. The overthrow of the Manchus, that came in 191 1, added fresh impetus to the movement, and the latest statistics (those for 191 9) show that there are 344,974 communicants and 617,194 more under instruction, many of them baptized, in the Protestant churches. In addition to these, the Young Men's Chris- tian Association has made a great appeal to the Chinese,
CHINA AND CHRISTIANITY 203
and although it is only about twenty-five years old, can report a membership of 70,000 in its various branches. Almost every estabhshed mission in China to-day is embarrassed by the number of those who seek member- ship, for it is the general policy not to admit those who cannot be properly trained.
Features of the Christian Movement
We have space to mention only three distinctive features of present day Christianity in China.
Cooperation. — The Protestant forces long ago, in view of the size of their field, adopted a grand strategy where- by they seek to guard against overlapping in some sections to the neglect of others. Moreover, in facing certain great problems, they have resolved to pool their strength rather than attempt the impossible single- handed. An example is given by the union universities, where the Christians, seeking to establish schools that shall set the pace in higher education for all China, are combining to conduct a few great institutions, rather than remaining separate to carry on struggling colleges. Union schools, union hospitals, union presses, all feature the Protestant effort in China to-day.
Influence. — We have spoken of the rapid growth of the Christian community. Yet viewed in proportion to the total number of Chinese, we see how small a part of the population is yet Christian. Nevertheless, it is amazing to see the influence wielded by this com- paratively small group of Christians. Many of the leaders of the revolution that overthrew the Manchus were Christians. Sixty members of the first permanent Parliament of the republic were Christians. Leaders in education, in politics, in business are Christians. And many leaders who are not avowed Christians are the
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product of Christian schools and give evidence of Chris- tian influence in their lives. Chinese Christians are exercising an influence out of all proportion to their num- bers in the making of the new republic.
The growing church. — Equally significant is the growth of self-consciousness and power on the part of the Chinese Christians. Until very recently the control of Christian work has been in the hands of the foreign missionaries. Now it is rapidly passing into Chinese hands. There are flourishing churches entirely independ- ent of the missions. A Chinese Home Missionary Society, sending its own missionaries to parts of the country where the foreigners have hardly penetrated, has proved a success. The whole story is epitomized by the fact that, whereas the national Protestant gathering held in 1907 to celebrate the centennial of Morrison's landing, had no Chinese delegates, the gathering held in 1922 contained Chinese delegates in number equal to the foreigners. The time is not far distant when the con- trol of the Christian enterprise in China will pass into Chinese hands. And they will carry it on to complete victory.
Suggestions for Discussion
1. Give a description of Chinese animism; Buddhism; Taoism; Confucianism.
2. What do you think the relation of Christianity should be to Confucianism?
3. What can you find out about the Rites Controversy and its effect on Roman Catholic missions in China?
4. Give an outline of China's dealings with foreign nations since the landing of Morrison, and suggest what influence this has had on Christian missions.
5. Why do you think Christianity is more favorably received in China to-day than formerly?
CHAPTER XXIV
THE APPROACH TO ISLAM
In Islam Christianity has found her greatest mis- sionary rival and her hardest field of labor. Perhaps this is due to the measure of truth left to his followers by Mohammed; perhaps to the savage warfare of the past between Christians and Mohammedans. The fact re- mains that after all these centuries Christianity has scarcely begun to make a breach in the ranks of Islam, and that at least in parts of Africa the followers of the Prophet are increasing more rapidly than any other faith.
The Moslem Challenge
For centuries now Islam has been supreme in lands once most closely connected with Christian history. And despite political changes, there are still large regions where the majority of the inhabitants pray five times daily, with their faces turned toward Mecca.
Size of the Moslem world.— 'The Moslem world as a religious magnitude includes the whole of northern Africa, the area of former Moslem states or provinces now mainly under European rule. It is being rapidly extended by successful missionary propaganda among Negroes in Middle Africa, now also under the rule of various states of Christendom. It reaches Persia and makes itself felt in India, Burma, Siam, China, and the Dutch and English East Indies. It includes several populous provinces of Russia. Moslem elements in the Balkan states are not negligible."^ It is estimated that
>E. C. Moore, op. cit., p. 211.
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there are about two hundred million Moslems in this territory, of whom all but about thirty million live under the political rule of Christian states.
Raymond Lull and Henry Martyn. — The Crusades represented the first attempt of Christians aggressively to combat the amazing growth of Mohammedanism from its origin in an out-of-the-way part of Arabia to a position as a world power. We have seen (see Chapter VIII) how far short those miHtary expeditions fell of accomplishing their ultimate aims. Also we have seen, in Raymond Lull, who suffered martyrdom as a mis- sionary in Tunis near the close of the thirteenth century, the beginning of a new sort of crusade, such as the Christian Church still pursues.
It was many centuries, however, before the example of Lull led to further effort for the conversion of the Moslems. After the passage of years arrangements were made so that hundreds of thousands of pilgrims, most of them from Russia, could cross Mohammedan territory to worship at the shrines of Palestine. But no evangel- istic effort of any account came out of the presence of aU these Christians. Finally, soon after Protestant mis- sions began their work in India, there came to that land Henry Martyn, a graduate of Cambridge University, afire with ambition to carry the gospel to Moslem lands.
So completely did Martyn devote himself to the study of Arabic and its kindred tongues that his health was completely undermined. When he finally pushed his way into Persia he hved only a year, just long enough to complete his translation of the Bible into Persian. But he had opened the way, and the missionary societies by that time formed in England and America were quick to send others in his footsteps. When one protested at the manner in which Martyn threw himself into his mission
THE APPROACH TO ISLAM 207
he replied, "Let me burn out for God!" — a motto that has inspired hundreds to seek the same career that possessed him.
The American pioneers. — While Martyn and the English societies were approaching Islam from the Indian base, American missionaries were landing in Asia Minor — what is often called the Near East — to under- take what was intended as work for the Jews in Jeru- salem, but grew into the great missions for Moslems that have been conducted by the American Board of Com- missioners for Foreign Missions (the Congregational board).
Names mean httle, although it is impossible to study this advance without remembering such men as Fiske, Goodell, Dwight, SchaufBer, and Riggs. The mental attainments of these men are suggested when it is said that Riggs "had a working knowledge of twenty lan- guages and was master of twelve." The center of their work became Beirut, rather than Jerusalem, and atten- tion was largely given to the establishment of schools and the publication of the Bible and other Christian hterature.
Spreading Christianity Through Schools
The story of the Christian effort among the Moslems, from the establishment of the first schools in Beirut about a hundred years ago, has been largely the account of an effort to mold the future by forming the minds of the students.
Cooperating with ancient churches. — It must not be forgotten that in entering the Near East the mis- sionaries found there already certain Christian churches that had branched off from the Greek Orthodox Church. Of these the most important was the Armenian, includ-
2o8 THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY
ing what was perhaps the most progressive element within the Turkish Empire.
Protestant missions began their effort at a time when within the Armenian church there was discontent and a desire for a clergy with better character and better training. It seemed as though the greatest contribution possible would be to supply this training, and then leave the already established Christian bodies with the task of evangelizing the masses.
For a time this policy was followed, but at last the reactionary element within the Armenian church re- volted against the efforts being made to reform their priesthood, and all who had contact with the Protestants were excommunicated. Necessity thus forced the found- ing of a distinctive Protestant communion, which, despite the terrible persecutions of recent years, remains with increasing vitality.
Outposts of a new mind. — Finally the missionaries began to plant those educational institutions that have played so important a part in the recent history of Turkey, the Balkans, and the Near East. The first of these was Robert College, developed by Cyrus Hamlin on the shores of the Bosphorus, just outside of Constan- tinople. Here, under the control of the Regents of the University of the State of New York, has been built a college in every respect comparable to the institutions of the United States. It has drawn from every race and religion of the Turkish Empire, with large numbers from the Balkans, especially Bulgaria. That it has had a large part in fomenting the recent desires for reform is con- ceded.
Other institutions of marked influence in the Near East have been the Syrian Protestant College at Beirut, the Constantinople College for women, and the Inter-
^
NVaOO 0UNV7XV
THE APPROACH TO ISLAM 209
national College at Smyrna. All these have been seeking to give students a conception of the world as the Chris- tian views it, and when we realize that such a college as that in Beirut had in its student body a few years ago 346 boys from Greek Orthodox homes, 127 from Moslem, 62 from Jewish, 20 from Druse, as well as its 147 from Protestant, we can understand how widespread must be its influence.
Turkey and the Christians
Political questions growing out of the disintegration of the Turkish Empire have deeply affected Christian work in Moslem lands during recent years.
Turkey as a ruler of Christians. — It must not be forgotten that the Turks, while enjoying special priv- ileges, have been a minority of less than twenty per cent of the people making up the Ottoman Empire. Many of the subject races, particularly the Greeks and Armenians, have been Christians. The social and civil disadvantages laid upon these subject races have been severe, because of the determination of the Turks to maintain their own ascendency. Whenever opportunity has been given, both Armenians and Greeks have proved their ability to rise to posts of high importance or places of business control. As a result, the feeHng of many Turks toward the Arme- nians has been akin to that of many Christians toward the Jews of the Middle Ages.
The desire of the Turks to repress the subject Christian races has been whetted by the policy of the Christian powers. These have used the wrongs inflicted upon the Armenians as a pretext for the furthering of their own political designs. As the Turkish government grew more degenerate, France, England, and Russia looked with longing eyes toward the control of the Dardanelles, the
2IO THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY
back door to Europe. Later Germany entered the con- test. Turkey found the powers so jealous of one another that she could play them off against each other, thus insuring her own safety, while she dealt with her subject races as she desired.
This has led to increasing massacres. In the '80s ana again in the '90s of the last century thousands of Ar- menians were killed, and the voice of the Christian world was raised in protest. Turkey, knowing that England would not permit Russia to move alone, nor Russia Germany, and that the three would not act in concert, seemed undisturbed. When the victory of the Young Turks in 1908 brought a constitution and an apparent new day, it also brought a renewal of the butchery, for the Turks were determined that the economic advantages of the new era should not be largely gathered by their more active Christian subjects.
Turkey in defeat. — In 191 2 the Balkan states, former parts of the Ottoman Empire, combined to attack Turkey. For a time they swept all before them, and it seemed as though the end of "the sick man of Europe" had come. But the little Balkan kingdoms proved no more able to act in harmony than the big powers, and soon fell to fighting among themselves to such an extent that Turkey regained almost all she had lost.
Then came the World War, in which Turkey threw in her lot with the Central Empires. Once more she has lost. Once more she has seemed at the mercy of the Christian powers, and the world has looked for some expiation of her record of bloodshed. During the war Turkey carried through the most systematic and awful massacre of the Armenians in her history, seeking abso- lutely to exterminate that race. In all history there is no record of deliberate fiendishness to surpass the Turkish
THE APPROACH TO ISLAM 211
atrocities of the past five years. Yet to-day, almost four years after the end of the war, Turkey remains in possession of Constantinople and bids fair to continue a political factor in Europe, because the Christian nations have not yet reached the point where they can sink their own jealousies sufficiently to deal with her.
The Outlook for Christian Missions
It is hard, in the confusion of these years following the Great War, to prophesy as to what the future holds for Christian work among the Moslems.
The present situation. — What is the effect to be of the gradual passing of almost all Moslem territory under the political domination of Christian states? At the be- ginning of this chapter we pointed out the spots where Mohammedanism now flourishes. Note that all these regions, with the exception of China (where the Moslems are not more than one twentieth of the population) are under Christian rule. Even Arabia, with the sacred cities of Mecca and Medina, is now practically under Enghsh control. At the least, this will make it possible for Christians to carry on missionary work among Moslems where they wish. And in some parts, par- ticularly in India, there have been noteworthy accessions to the Christian communities from Moslem ranks.
Possible difficulties. — This political advantage must not blind us to possible difficulties. Some may grow directly out of the political situation, as at present in India, where the Moslem subjects of Great Britain are greatly stirred up over what they declare to be the un- just treatment meted Turkey. But more likely is it that Mohammedanism, shut out from political influence by the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, will experience a spiritual renewal that will increase her missionary
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activity and make her adherents more than ever difficult of approach.
The goal in view. — However, although Christians should not be surprised if a long period of ill success at- tends their efforts with Islam, the final outcome cannot be doubted. Mohammedanism is on the down grade. Its weakness in providing poHtical energy has been demonstrated. It has no mental life wherewith to face the universe we now know. Spiritually we do not believe that, with all its contributions, it can completely supply men's inner needs. We can trust that the day wiU soon come when the so-called Christian nations will prove their power to deal with the political problems presented by the break-up of the Turkish rule in a more Christian spirit than they have shown. But all the time we can beheve that the continued attack on the foundations of the Moslem faith, through Christian schools and Chris- tian literature, will bring its ultimate reward in the final disappearance of Christianity's greatest rival.
Suggestions for Discussion
1. Outline the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire since the beginning of the nineteenth century.
2. What elements in Mohammedan teaching do you consider true?
3. Do you consider that Protestant missionaries to Asia Minor were wise in trying to cooperate with the Armenian Church? Why?
4. Give an outline of the various Armenian massacres.
5. Why do you believe education has been considered the most effective form of approach to Islam?
6. What dangers to the Christian enterprise may arise as a result of the political dominance of Christian powers over Moslem states?
CHAPTER XXV THE CROSS IN THE JAPANESE EMPIRE
Six small islands, part of a seventh, and a former kingdom on the adjacent Asiatic mainland, with a population of about sixty million, comprise an empire that has, within half a century, forged to a place among the world's great powers. In all history there is no parallel to the rapidity with which the Japanese Empire has become an arbiter of the destinies of the Far East.
Naturally, Christianity, as a missionary religion, has tried to place its impress upon Japan. We will consider this effort in three periods.
Japan's First Contacts With Christianity
Already we have seen (see Chapter XIV) how Xavier reached Japan, He stayed there but a short time, but when he left, bound on his fruitless attempt to enter China, there were other Jesuit missionaries on hand to take over the work.
The Jesuits in Japan. — In no field did the Jesuits achieve a success to equal that which came to their missions in Japan. It was only a few years before high officials were accepting baptism, and when one of the great barons of that feudal period showed his favor for the new faith accessions to its ranks came by the thou- sands. The great center of Christian worship was in Nagasaki, from which city at one time all non-Christians were banished.
The period of persecution. — The Jesuit missionaries 213
214 THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY
made the mistake of uniting the fortunes of their re- ligious work with the political fortunes of certain clans. Thus they found themselves mixed up in the internal poHtics of Japan, a fate that has frequently befallen Jesuit efforts. And when the lords who had favored the Christians gave way to other leaders, great resentment was exhibited against the foreign faith that had espoused the losing side. As a result Christianity began to be persecuted. In the early years of the seventeenth cen- tury the Catholic missions were apparently wiped out. Martyrs for the faith. — Studying the work of the Jesuits from this distance, it is easy to point out its superficial features, and to say that the conversions of such masses in so short a time could never have produced inner transformation in every individual. But when we read of those who chose to be crucified rather than recant, and of the massacre at Nagasaki in 1637, when something like twenty thousand fighting men with their women and children were slaughtered, we must admit that there was enough reality in their faith to command respect.
The Impenetrable Years
With the beginning of the seventeenth century Japan shut herself off from the rest of the world for more than two centuries. Alarmed at the designs of the foreigners who had reached her shores, she sought security in isolation.
Christians in secret. — The edicts that led to the extermination of the Jesuit missions were but a part of the effort to cut Japan off from the outside. Merchants who still sought to penetrate her guards were treated with as much cruelty as the missionaries. Yet, in the face of this determination, during years when a man's
THE CROSS IN JAPANESE EMPIRE 215
life was forfeit if he was simply found in possession of Christian symbols, some Japanese, cut off from all Chris- tian instruction, managed to retain a sense of their allegiance to Christ, for in 1872, when French priests were allowed to return to Nagasaki, they found more than eight thousand persons who called themselves Christians! A more striking testimony to the power of Christianity to survive, no matter what its difficulties, could not be asked.
The religions of Japan. — During these years when there could only be a few Christians living on in secret, the ancient reUgions held the field in Japan unchallenged. The dominant philosophy was Confucianism, imported from China. The religion with the greatest popular following was Buddhism, which had traveled north from India by way of China and Korea. "In all probability Buddhism is more progressive and in a more flourishing condition in Japan than in any other Buddhist country."^ Shintoism was the original worship that, beginning as a simple form of nature worship, has developed into what amounts to the state religion, with the veneration of ancestors and of the imperial house as its main charac- teristics. The imperial house is conceived as directly descended from the divinities who founded Japan (an event supposed to have taken place less than seven hundred years before the Christian era) , and the essential message of Shintoism has been declared to be, "Fear the gods and obey the emperor."^ It can be seen how direct an influence such a religion would have on the develop- ment of a strongly imperialistic state.
The coming of Perry. — After China had been
• E. D. Soper, The Religions of Mankind, The Abingdon Press, publishers, p. 2I0. »G. W. Knox, The Development cf Religion in Japan, p. 237. G. P. Putnam's Sons, publishers. New York and Loudon. Quoted by Soper.
2i6 THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY
opened up to the West it became inevitable that Japan should lay aside her isolation. The Island Empire managed to resist all pressure until 1853, when an American squadron, under the command of Commodore Perry, secured the first treaty, providing for a few com- mercial rights. Other nations followed the American lead, and soon Japan was completely open to the Occident. This proved the impulse needed to precipitate forces that had been working within the country for years, and after a few years the old feudal order was displaced in favor of a centralized government, with the Mikado as supreme ruler. A wave of patriotic enthusiasm swept the land, and men of all ranks vied with one another in introducing reforms that would increase the power of Japan.
Working to Win a World Power
The transformation of Japan along Western lines began in the year 1866. Six years later the Emperor granted an Act of Toleration, under which Christian effort has been pushed with great enthusiasm.
Japan's place in the sun. — While some young Japanese were sent abroad to fit themselves for future leadership, foreigners were brought to Japan to start the changes that were to put that country on a new basis. "Englishmen were employed to superintend the building of railways, the introduction of the telegraph, the coast survey, and the organization of the navy. To Frenchmen was intrusted largely the work of recasting the laws, estabhshing the courts, and training the army. Educa- tional affairs, the postal service, and the improvement of agriculture were put in the hands of Americans. The teaching of medicine, the compilation of a commercial code, and ultimately the training of military officers, was assigned to Germans. Italians were called as counselors
THE CROSS IN JAPANESE EMPIRE 217
in matters of art."^ When Japanese had been sufficiently trained they were placed in the positions which these foreigners had created.
By 1894 Japan felt strong enough to challenge China for the leadership of the Far East, and amazed the world by the ease with which she overwhelmed that cumbrous and still sleeping giant. Robbed of some of the fruits of her victory by certain European powers, and frightened by the approach of Russia across Siberia and down into Korea, she secured a treaty with Great Britain that guaranteed her against intervention by any third party, and then attacked Russia. The manner in which she won that war is familiar to all. As a result Japan entered the second decade of the present century not only the leader among the nations of the East, but entitled to that seat among the Great Powers that she has since then occupied at international gatherings. So swiftly had she been transformed by the acceptance and adaptation of certain elements in Western civilization.
Progress and aspects of the Christian movement. — During all this period of advance Christian missionaries — Protestant, Catholic, Russian Orthodox — had been at work. For a time their efforts prospered as they had never prospered in other non-Christian countries. Then came a period of reaction, when the Japanese were naturally asking themselves whether they had not gone too far in accepting things foreign. Out of that came a church more self-conscious, and with a larger measure of self-leadership and government than has yet arisen in any of the modern non-Christian lands. Practically all the Protestant churches in Japan are to-day under their own control, and increasingly the missionaries are serving in advisory capacities. This is a development that one
>E. C. Moore, op. cil., p. 157.
2i8 THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY
would expect in a nation with as ardent a nationalistic spirit as Nippon.
There are more than 113,000 Protestant communicants in Japan to-day, with 75,000 Roman Catholics and 36,000 members of the Russian Orthodox Church. This means about one Japanese in every 250 owns allegiance to some form of Christianity. But the work of Chris- tianity has only begun in that land. Particularly in the bringing of Christian conditions to industry and in im- proving the lot of women there is an immense task ahead. Japan is fast becoming a manufacturing nation. In a single year between 19 14 and 191 5 the factory employees of the country increased from 300,000 to 978,000. Now they number more than 2,000,000. And conditions in most of the factories are unspeakable.
The common temper of Japan to-day is hardly spiritual. Most men seem absorbed in the race for material success, and there are many signs of inner decay. This condition has had its effect upon the foreign policy of the empire, which has aroused such misgiving in recent years. It is the good fortune of Christianity that it can meet this condition with an effort that is largely Japanese and there are multiplying signs of a readiness to respond to a spiritual message coming from the lips of men of the same race.
Korea, Where the Morning Calm Has Passed
Korea, during the years of her isolation, was known as "the Land of the Morning Calm." Such a title scarcely fits the upheaval taking place in that country to-day.
The gospel in Korea. — The kingdom of Korea, until recent years a nominal dependency of the empire of China, for years maintained isolation with as much de- termination as Japan. And, as in the case of Japan, it
THE CROSS IN JAPANESE EMPIRE 219
was America that first penetrated the reserve of the "hermit kingdom." American missionaries led in the introduction of Christianity, which, after long years of effort, suddenly, in the early years of this century, began to attract converts in large numbers. At the present time, with a population of about 16,000,000, there are about 90,000 Protestant communicants, and many more in preparatory stages of church membership. It will be seen that, in comparison to the population, this is the largest Christian community in any of the modern non-Christian lands.
Korea in the Japanese Empire. — Korea was freed from Chinese suzerainty by the war between China and Japan in 1894. But the monarchy was so corrupt and weak that it proved unable to maintain itself. Japan fought Russia to keep that European power from swallowing the kingdom, and then, in 1910, formally annexed it, making it a part of her empire under the ancient name of Chosen.
Japan can point to an unusual record in developing the material resources of the country. Unfortunately, the work has not been done in a way to win the gratitude of the Koreans. Too many of the Japanese colonial officials have been educated in ways that make them strict bureaucrats, but without that imagination or sym- pathy that makes contact with subject peoples easy. The Koreans have piled up a bill of complaints that drove them, in 1919, to attempt to secure their independence by peaceful agitation. This independence movement has been sternly repressed, Japanese statistics showing that, before the end of 191 9, 631 Koreans were killed, nearly 29,000 arrested, 10,500 flogged, and 41 Christian churches were totally or partially destroyed.
The future in Korea. — The troubles in Korea have
220 THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY
led to improvement in the Japanese administration. Revolutionary agitation is still carried on, but there seems little chance but that the country must work out its destiny as a part of the Japanese Empire. Some official suspicion of Christian mission work has shown itself, but no direct connection with the uprising has been proven. However, the revolutionary effect of the Chris- tian message itself must be recognized. There may be a reaction against Christianity in Korea in the future, if the present hopes of freedom prove finally empty. But, for progressive Koreans, Christianity is likely to remain a compelling faith, until the day comes when they take over the conduct of the churches, which are still largely under missionary control. As a Korean-led body, the Christian Church should go forward to the complete Christianization of this portion of the Japanese Empire.
Suggestions for Discussion
1. What can you discover as to the contribution of American missionaries to the making of modem Japan?
2. What contribution do you think Christianity still has to make to the development of Japan?
3. If the church with which you are connected has representatives in Japan, what can you find out about the size of the work they are carrying on there?
4. Why do you think it natural that the churches in Japan should have won a large measure of self-gov- ernment?
5. In what way might the preaching of Christianity contribute to such an uprising as that for Korean independence?
CHAPTER XXVI
IN THE DARK CONTINENT
Africa, although one of the continents longest known, is almost a new problem before spreading Christianity to-day. Within the memory of living men, vast portions of its territory have ceased to be labeled "unknown." "It is difficult to realize that the Egyptians at Dendera and Thebes, the keen and curious Hallicarnassan who came to wonder at their greatness, Romans who honored Hadrian within the temple area at Luxor, Copts who built Christian churches out of stones taken from memorials of them all, Arabs in the frenzy of their conquering passion, from Omar to the Mahdi, all had lived under the glowing African sun, but the Africa which lay beyond the Cataracts was as much unknown to them as if it had been on some far star." ^ Yet to-day this continent is almost entirely open, and it will not be long before the dream of traveling by rail from Cape Town to Cairo will become an actuality.
Christian Beginnings in Africa
Let us not forget that Africa has an ancient Christian history.
The church that disappeared. — No chapter in the record of the church is sadder than that which deals with the disappearance of the congregations of North Africa. After the first century North Africa had been the seat of a vigorous Christian community. In Alexandria there developed the most original group of theologians of
'E. C. Moore, op. cil., p. 259.
221
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those days. Farther along the coast there was born such a man as Saint Augustine. The whole region was dom- inantly Christian. Then came the Vandals, so scourging the territory in which they settled that its powers of resistance were lowered. And then came the Moslems, on their way toward Spain. And North Africa has been from that day one of the strongholds of Islam.
Catholic missions in by-gone days. — But when the Portuguese navigators in the age of discovery (see Chapter XII) began to make the first landings on the African coast they brought Catholic missionaries in their wake. But their work, unfortunately, was of the most superficial kind. Records tell of the conversion of whole native courts within a few weeks after the arrival of the missionaries, and the enforced baptism of all the subjects. In some places the priests made gifts of beads and cloth to those natives who would receive baptism. Elsewhere, when the destruction of their idols produced trouble, they were given images of saints with which to console themselves. In one kingdom the quarrels between the various Catholic orders — Jesuits, Dominicans, Francis- cans, and Augustinians— became so fierce that they were all sent back to Portugal in irons.
Christianity and the slave trade.^ — The thing that the conquering whites really sought in Africa in those days was the easy wealth that came from the traffic in slavery. It is, alas, clear that the Christian missionaries were not always alive to the iniquity of that trade. "A marble chair used to be shown standing against a pier in the cathedral at Saint Paul de Loanda from which the bishops used to give their blessing to the slave ships as these sailed away with their precious cargo for Portuguese possessions in the West Indies and Brazil."^ Even as
>E. C. Moore, oi>. cit., p. 254-
IN THE DARK CONTINENT 223
late as 1772 a Protestant missionary, Thomas Thompson, a graduate of Cambridge University, published a pamph- let entitled, The African Trade for Negro Slaves Shown to Be Consistent with the Principles of Humanity and with the Laws of Revealed Religion. Of course the fact that such a pamphlet was written shows that by that time some were questioning the moral basis of the trade. It is to the honor of later Protestant missions that they led in the agitation which resulted in the outlawing of the business.
David Livingstone
The spirit and achievements of the early Protestant missionaries can largely be summed up in the career of the most famous of them.
A loom-taught missionary. — Livingstone began life under the humblest circumstances, going as a boy of ten to a place as a "piecer" at the looms of his native Scot- land. There he struggled for an education, placing his dearly bought textbooks on the frame beside him as he worked. On entering young manhood he dedicated him- self as a medical missionary to work in China, but when he was finally accepted for service it was to the then "Dark Continent" that he was sent. To the London Missionary Society went the honor of commissioning him, as it had commissioned that other pioneer, Robert Morrison of China.
Explorer and missionary. — In Africa Livingstone began work with Robert Moffatt, one of the great pioneers, whose daughter he married. Many were the difficulties placed in his way, mainly by white men who resented the attempt to uplift the Negroes. But the Scot would not be discouraged. Leaving his family in Eng- land he felt free to press into regions hitherto unopened.
224 THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY
Wherever he went he took with him a scientific zeal in exploration that matched his devotion to his rehgious task. He crossed the continent, after penetrating eleven thousand miles of jungle where no civilized man had ever been before. He made valuable discoveries as to the great lakes and rivers of Central Africa; and every- where he left natives touched with gratitude toward Christianity as it was incarnated in this man who brought healing and a message of love.
The foe of the slave trade.— Great Britain had outlawed the slave trade early in the nineteenth century, and other European nations followed her lead. But in his explorations through Central Africa Livingstone dis- covered that the traffic in human Hves continued. In 1858 he cut loose from connection with any missionary society, and from then until his death, fifteen years later, he gave himself above all other things to the ending of the slave trade.
Once he was lost for seven years from the knowledge of the world, only to be found by the man who was to become his greatest successor as an explorer, Henry M. Stanley. During aU the time he was weakened by illness peculiar to such a climate. But he struggled on.
At last one morning, in 1873, his Negro bearers entered his quarters at Chitambo's village on the south of Lake Bangweolo, to find him dead, on his knees. There is pathos in the fidelity with which his companions, having buried his heart there in the continent for which he gave his fife, brought his body back to the coast, and at last to England, where it lies in Westminster Abbey.
Above his tomb are these words: "For thirty years his life was spent in an unwearied effort to evangelize the native races, to explore undiscovered secrets, and abohsh the desolating slave trade of Central Africa, when, with
IN THE DARK CONTINENT 225
his last words, he wrote: 'All I can say in my solitude is, may Heaven's rich blessing come down on every one — American, English, Turk — who wiU help to heal this open sore of the world.' " Of such stuff are made the men who to this day lead in the spread of Christ's kingdom.
A Missionary Problem
This great continent, so recently explored, must be considered still rather as a problem for Christianity than an example of its power.
Africa in white hands. — As Livingstone and others opened up the resources of the continent, the nations of Europe rushed to possess them. The Dutch had made the first landing in the south. The English dreamed of a Hne of colonies that should extend from tip to tip. The Germans sought to make up for their lack of colonies in other parts of the world by securing vast tracts here. The French, the Portuguese, the Spanish, the Belgians all came in.
Some of this colonial development, particularly that carried on by the British, has been fairly enlightened. But for the most part the white man's first aim has been the possession of gold, diamonds, rubber, or ivory rather than the good of the natives.
To-day there remain in aU Africa only two states, the republic of Liberia and the kingdom of Abyssinia, that are not possessions or dependencies of European nations. The black man has practically no voice in the control of his own political destinies.
Effect of the West. — While the debased character of life under the old conditions, which still continue in some inaccessible parts of Central Africa, must be remembered, the white man cannot be proud of his record as a
226 THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY
"civilizer." Too frequently, when he has not stolen the Negro outright, he has pressed him into forms of labor that have been little better than slavery.
Records of brutaUty in connection with various indus- trial exploitations, such as disgraced the rule of King Leopold of Belgium in the Congo, have been frequent in most of the colonies. The white man's liquor, his com- merciahzed vice, his most degrading forms of self- indulgence have been pushed where his religion has hardly penetrated. A million and a half gallons of rum have been sent in a single year from Boston to West Africa. And some, marking the devastating effects of these importations on the morals and health of the Negroes, have asked whether Africa would not have been better off if the white man had never come there.
It is true that the missions have hardly been able to offset the evils done by unscrupulous adventurers from so-called Christian lands, let alone win the continent to the worship of their Lord. Africa illustrates the power of wrong in Christian lands to hinder Christi- anity's spread elsewhere.
The Moslem advance. — With the loss of power felt because of the necessity for combating European evils, the missionaries now find themselves facing an awakened Mohammedanism. For with the passing of pohtical authority (see Chapter XXV) there has come to Islam a quickened religious interest. From the Moslem cities of North Africa as a base, traders have spread down through the tribes of Central Africa, preaching the faith of the prophet as they have traveled.
Every Mohammedan is a missionary. The feeble at- tempts to convert the Mohammedans of North Africa to Christianity have made almost no impression, but the advance of Islam among the tribes of the interior of the
IN THE DARK CONTINENT 227
continent is so rapid that it constitutes one of the greatest challenges to Christianity in the world to-day.
What does the future hold? — Many elements com- bine to make the future of Christianity's enterprise in Africa difficult to determine. There are beginnings of self-assertion among the Negroes, such as led to the Pan- African Congress that met recently in London, Brussels, and Paris, and resolved that Africa must be protected from further white encroachments. There are signs that all the states with colonies in Africa must take their responsibihties toward the welfare of their native sub- jects more seriously. There are vast problems of the interrelations of whites and blacks, in such sections as South Africa, that are not different from the similar problems in America's South. There is the menace of the Moslem advance, and the almost untouched problem of Mohammedanism along the Mediterranean. And then there are the tribes to be raised, by education and the introduction of fitting forms of industry, to a standard of life in which Christianity can have some chance to function effectively.
It is anything but an easy outlook. The days ahead of the Christian workers look almost as dark as the conti- nent once looked in the geographies. But the African, in many individual instances, has proved his capacity for advance. We look with confidence to the coming of a time when all forces shall combine to make him a free, self-respecting Christian within a land he himself controls.
Suggestions for Discussion
1. Why have European nations been so anxious to stake out colonies in Africa?
2. Tell the story of the republic of Liberia.
228 THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY
3. Locate on the map the scene of Livingstone's prin- cipal labors in Africa.
4. Give in more detail the story of the Stanley expedi- tion to find Livingstone.
5. What problem is given Christianity by the develop- ment of the diamond and gold mines of South Africa?
6. Why has Islam been able to advance so rapidly in Central Africa?
CHAPTER XXVII RELIGION IN LATIN-AMERICA
Increasingly Latin-America, and particularly that portion of it comprising the South American continent, is attracting the attention of the world. The only continent untouched by the World War, with natural resources still undeveloped that promise more wealth than is to be found in any other part of the globe, South America may soon engage the attention of men as North America has already done.
When we speak of Latin-America we have in mind the group of republics lying south of the Rio Grande : Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Salvador, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Panama, Cuba, Haiti, San Domingo, Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia. Here is an area almost three times as large as that of the United States, with a population of eighty-five million.
Latin-America presents one of the most puzzling con- ditions that Christianity faces in aU the world. We can only seek to suggest some of its features in such a chapter as this.
The Spanish Conquests
We have seen how the Spaniards came into the New World, blessed with a dispensation from the Pope giving it all into their keeping. We have followed their efforts to establish themselves in North America, and to some extent, in South America as well (see Chapter XVIII).
In the footsteps of Pizarro. — The interest in the 229
230 THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY
success of the Catholic missionaries that marked the advance of Cortez into Mexico was also characteristic of the conquistadores who overthrew the native states in South America. When Pizarro conquered Peru he turned the palace of the Incas over to the priests for use as a cathedral, and everywhere Catholicism was quick to set up its altars in the place of the discredited native deities. The Spaniards spread rapidly down the western coast of the continent, then crossed the Andes and found them- selves on the fertile plains of what is now the Argentine Republic. The Portuguese came first to the settlement of Brazil, but they were as careful to plant CathoHcism as the Spaniards. By the time that South America had come under the rule of the white man Catholic Chris- tianity had been estabhshed in every part of the conti- nent.
An ill-fated colony. — Protestantism made just one effort of any consequence to enter South America in those early days, and that came to nothing. During the years when the French Protestants were fighting for their lives, their great leader, Admiral Coligny, determined to send a colony of Huguenots to the New World, where they might prepare a haven and a place of opportunity for others who might wish to escape from the persecutions of Europe. In the middle of the sixteenth century, ahnost seventy years before the Pilgrims carried through to success their adventure in New England, a colony went out to Brazil. Unfortunately, the man to whom CoHgny had intrusted the leadership proved unworthy. Some of the Huguenots were killed, some escaped into the forests where they lived with the Indians, a few made their way back to France in time to undergo the horrors of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew in which their patron perished.
RELIGION IN LATIN-AMERICA 231
The revolt from Spain and Portugal. — The colonial records of Spain and Portugal were no better in Latin- America than in other parts of the world. However, the natives were reduced to such a pitiable state, and the colonists seemed so closely tied to their mother countries, that it was not until after the opening of the nineteenth century that any attempt was made to win freedom. Then, when the Napoleonic wars had proven the weak- ness of Spain and Portugal in Europe, Simon Bolivar set afoot that long period of fighting that really did not close until, in 1898, the defeat of Spain by the United States freed the last Spanish possessions in the Caribbean. Most of the countries thus liberated became at once re- publics, at least in name. Mexico held to a form of monarchy until 1867, while Brazil kept its emperor until 1889. Political conditions have, however, been notori- ously unstable, particularly in the smaller countries.
The Religious Occupation
Nominally, South America is a Christian continent. Except in the deep interior it would be hard to find those who did not claim to be Christians. But in too many cases the Christianity thus espoused bears little resem- blance to that taught in the Bible.
A mixture of races.— There are many races mingled in Latin-America. An estimate made since the close of the World War placed the number of whites at 18,000,- 000, of Indians at 20,000,000, of Negroes at 6,000,000, of mixed white and Indian at 32,000,000, of mixed white and Negro at 8,000,000, of mixed Negro and Indian at 700,000, with 300,000 others.
The whites are, in many cases, immigrants. Immigra- tion from southern Europe and Germany has been heavy, as is seen in Argentina, where more than half the popula-
232 THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY
tion are immigrants or the children of those who have come to the country within fifty years. There have even been some attempts to encourage immigration from Japan.
Some of the whites are very wealthy, making possible great cities with a high standard of culture. It is often claimed that Buenos Ayres is the most expensive city in the world in which to live. But if a tenth of the popula- tion can afford to live in luxury, the rest is in poverty. There is almost no middle class.
Work of the Catholic Church. — With Catholicism everywhere recognized as the favored form of worship, the ministry of the church has been, in recent years, more and more rejected by the educated, and has tended to play upon the superstitions and credulities of the ignorant. We would not overlook the fine services rendered by many devoted priests, especially in the decades immediately following the Spanish conquests. "Whatever may be thought of the attention given to ringing of bells and swinging of censers, there is no ques- tion that the work of hundreds of heroic, self-sacrificing missionaries, who taught the wickedness of cannibahsm, of polygamy, of drunkenness, of idleness, with instruction of the men in the tillage of the land and of the women in spinning and weaving, was a great uplift to a heathen people."^
But in the course of time the CathoUc Church came to sufifer from the lack of incentive such as the presence of other forms of worship would supply. Until recently Protestantism has been outlawed in most of South America, the battle for religious liberty having been won in Peru only five years ago. So the priests have too often been content to allow their charges to go on in ignorance, self-indulgence, vice, placing only a thin veneer of
*L. M. Hodgkins. op. cit., p. i68.
RELIGION IN LATIN-AMERICA 233
Christian forms over the degradation of their old habits. The capitals of Latin-America are studded with great cathedrals, but it cannot be said that those lands are producing even the type of piety that may be found in other CathoKc lands to-day.
Protestant beginnings. — Religious toleration has come so recently and South America has been recognized as missionary territory so short a time, that the Prot- estant forces have scarcely begun their work on that continent. Of course, if only the spiritual needs of the Indians who have not been reached by the Catholic Church were taken into account, there would be a wide field of activity. But it is realized that the nominal adherence of vast masses can hardly be reckoned as the triumph of Christianity in any vital form.
Most of the Protestant work so far has centered about education, in which Latin-America is notably backward. Children frequently come from Catholic homes to schools conducted by evangelical missions, and in almost every country there is an eager desire, frequently officially expressed by the governments, for the expansion of this sort of work. Government subsidies to these Protestant schools are frequent.
The work of preaching has just begun. It is felt that there must be a vast amount of preparation, such as is supphed by the schools and by the distribution of evan- gelical literature, before Latin -Americans will be ready to listen, in large numbers, to Protestant preaching. It is not that Protestantism fears Catholic opposition, but that there is everywhere the apathy of the educated to overcome. Before advance is possible men of this class, who have turned from the superficiality of the old worship, must be convinced that there is a sound basis of reason as well as spiritual fervor for the new message.
234 THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY
The Present Situation
What, then, does Christianity face in Latin-America?
Undeveloped wealth. — More wealth is Hkely to be taken from Latin-America in the next two centuries than from any other part of the globe. Many countries there have increased their foreign trade a hundred per cent during the last five years. Others are still virtually un- touched by modern commerce and industry. There is more fertile land to be put under the plow here than anywhere else. "All the population of the world could find place here and be only one third as crowded as is the population of Porto Rico." The states with great indus- trial developments, seeking raw materials, are bound to look to South America, and immigration from the over- crowded and war-taxed states of Europe is also sure to increase, unless it be forbidden. Already statesmen are speaking of South America as "the continent of the twenty-first century."
The decay of faith. — It is disquieting to know that Latin-America is entering these days of great importance in the world's life without an adequate foundation of faith. Those who are anxious that the rule of Christ should circle the earth cannot but be saddened by the report of the late Viscount Bryce: "Both the intellectual life and the ethical standards of conduct of these coun- tries seem to be entirely divorced from rehgion. . . . Men of the upper or educated class appear wholly in- different to theology and to Christian worship. It has no interest for them. They are seldom actively hostile to Christianity, much less offensive in what they say about it, but they think it does not concern them, and may be left to women and peasants. . . . The ministers of religion had ceased not only to rouse the soul, but to
RELIGION IN LATIN-AMERICA 235
supply a pattern for conduct. There were always some admirable men to be found among them, some prelates models of piety and virtue, some friars devoted mis- sionaries and humanely zealous in their efforts to protect the Indians. Still the church as a whole had lost its hold on the conscience and thought of the best spirits, and that hold it has never regained. ... In the more advanced parts of South America it [the church] seems to be re- garded merely as a harmless Old- World affair which belongs to a past order of things just as much as does the rule of Spain, but which may, so long as it does not interfere with politics, be treated with the respect which its antiquity commands. . . . This absence of a religious foundation for thought and conduct is a grave mis- fortune for Latin- America,"^
The Christian program. — What, in such circum- stances, must the program be for Christian effort? Surely the present activity points the way. Schools must be established and literature produced and distributed until the minds of all men are aroused to the presence of new and vital mental forces. Discussion must be fostered. Christianity must be vindicated, as against materialism and as against formaUsm. More than all else, the attempt must be to awaken the Catholic Church to a sense of its shortcomings and responsibility, so that it shall rouse itself to the effort to make Latin-America Christian in fact as well as in name. It is a hard task, but one not impossible of performance.
Suggestions for Discussion
I. Compare Latin-America in size, population, and material resources with North America.
1 James Bryce, South America, The Macmillan Company, publishers, pp. 582, 583.
236 THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY
2. How do the political institutions of the two con- tinents compare?
3. Give a sketch of the career of Simon Bolivar.
4. Do you believe the establishment of schools is the proper method by which to seek to vitalize Christianity in Latin-America? Why?
5. Why do you consider the reform of the present Christianity in Latin-America important to the rest of the world?
6. Give a description of any Latin-American Chris- tians you have met, or of any Christian work in Latin- America of which you have read.
CHAPTER XXVIII
OTHER FIELDS FOR CHRISTIANITY'S ADVANCE
In the six preceding chapters we have dealt with Christianity's spread through some of the larger divi- sions of our modern world. It is impossible, because of our limitations of space, to show how this same advance has been going on in smaller portions of the earth. In this chapter we can only try to sketch the manner in which servants of Christ have taken his message wher- ever civilization has gone.
In the Wake of Captain Cook
In the closing half of the eighteenth century there sailed about the Pacific Ocean that Captain James Cook whose discoveries added so greatly to the territory of the British Empire, and whose account of his voyages awoke the missionary ardor within William Carey.
The rediscovery of Australia. — Captain Cook had been preceded in the southern Pacific by the Spanish and Dutch, but their original discoveries led to no coloniza- tion or other development. When, therefore, the Enghsh navigator claimed the continent, no counterclaims were presented.
English colonists were sent out, and some spots on the coast were used as penal colonies. Efforts were soon made to reach the natives with the gospel, but without much success. As the foreigners came in, the natives withdrew to the bush, as the wilderness that still covers much of the continent is called.
238 THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY
Such of the aborigines as attempted to live in contact with the EngHsh proved unable to withstand the tempta- tions of Western civilization and soon died. The Bush- men who remain, in the interior, are practically un- touched by Christianity. But Australia has become, like the North American continent, a white man's land. Every effort is being made to keep it that.
Among the Maoris. — In New Zealand, which Cap- tain Cook rediscovered before he reached Australia, the story of Christianity's attempt to reach the native Maoris was in striking contrast to the attempt in the larger island. Work begun early in the nineteenth cen- tury by English clergymen evoked from the first a re- markable response. The Maoris proved to have mental and moral capacity to stand up under the strain of life introduced by the whites, and the estabHshment of schools soon provided native preachers and teachers who gathered converts in large numbers.
The eagerness of the white man for land, and the natural reluctance of the native to surrender his birth- right, led to the Maori wars of the middle of the century, and almost ruined the work of the missionaries. Now the natives are dying out, and New Zealand is as much a white man's land as Australia. It is said that about half of such Maoris as remain are Christians.
The gospel in the South Seas. — A volume could be written about the way in which Christianity has been taken to the peoples of the South Sea Islands, and then the tale would be only half told. There are something like 1,500 of these islands scattered about the southern Pacific, and to most of them, in some way or other, the gospel has gone. Unfortunately, other things have gone after or before it, and the result to-day, in too many cases, is a perishing population. But some of the most romantic
OTHER FIELDS FOR ADVANCE 239
stories in Christian history tell of those who were the first messengers of the cross in the islands of the South Seas.
There was, for example, John Coleridge Patteson, a graduate of Cambridge University and a relative of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who went first to New Zealand, and later was made bishop of the Melanesian Islands. Bishop Patteson made his headquarters in the New Hebrides, and from thence reached his scattered diocese by sailing about in his vessel, the Southern Cross. Several of the island languages were reduced to writing by him, and the Bible made available to the natives. Responsibility for his martyr death must be laid upon the unscrupulous whites who have cursed the South Seas rather than upon the natives.
Approaching one of the islands one day he was mistaken for one of the white kidnappers of native laborers, who had been impersonating missionaries in order to come within reach of their prey. In a rage, the bishop was killed. Sorrow quickly followed when the natives dis- covered the true identity of their victim. The bishop's body was placed in a canoe covered with palm-fiber matting, a palm branch in his hand, and was set adrift to be found far out at sea. What an ending for the career of an apostle to the islands of the sea!
Tales of similar devotion could be told of John Williams, who, after years of remarkable success in vari- ous parts of the South Seas, was killed as he landed on one of the islands of the New Hebrides, or of John G. Paton, the apostle to the same group in which Williams met his death. Many other consecrated missionaries worked along with these leaders, and the transformation that they wrought, bringing whole islands from cannibal- ism to an ordered and Christian life, has scarcely been equaled in all the history of the church.
240 THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY
The trouble has been that, while the missionaries have gone with their help, other white men have pressed in with vice in most revolting forms. The people of the islands have generally fallen easy prey to these human vultures, for they have not, in their tropical cUmate, learned the necessity for hard work. In summing up the career of Paton, for instance, one writer has said: "One lifetime had sufficed to see his islanders raised from primitive savagery to the virtues of children in a devout home and then again demoraUzed and corrupted by the contagion of all the vices and crimes wherein civiKzed man so far outdoes the barbarian and descends below the beast. "^
As a result, the native population is disappearing in most of the South Seas. The only outstanding exception is in the Fiji Islands, where more than half the native population are members of the British Wesleyan Church, and where the birth rate is rising.
America's Island Responsibilities
Just before the beginning of the present century the United States of America assumed responsibility for the welfare of important island groups in the Pacific. In both the Hawaiian Islands and the Philippines there are challenging religious problems.
The evangelization of Hawaii. — Captain Cook fin- ished his career as the discoverer of the Sandwich Islands, the largest of which is Hawaii. For years after their first contact with the whites the native sovereigns tried to transform their governments so that they might retain control. But the number of foreigners steadily grew, while the number of pure-blooded natives diminished, until at last the queen gave up the struggle, a temporary
»E. C. Moore, op. cit., p. 311.
OTHER FIELDS FOR ADVANCE 241
republic was established with a white as president, and finally the Territory of Hawaii became a part of the United States.
The missionary work in the Hawaiian Islands was, from the beginning, very successful. Although the battle with white vices had to be fought here as elsewhere, the church proved strong enough to survive, and since the middle of the last century the Christian work in the islands has been under local direction, and has even sent missionaries to other parts of the Pacific. To-day Hawaii is a sort of crossroads for that ocean, and includes in its inhabitants as strange an intermingHng of races as this world ever knew. The presence of multitudes of Japanese and Chinese, as well as un evangelized descendants of some of the native tribes, still constitutes a missionary problem.
A new day in the Philippines. — From the days of Magellan to those of Dewey the Philippine Islands were Spanish possessions. Spanish colonial administration was no m.ore successful in the Far Pacific than in Latin- America, and the natives grew more and more restless. Civil war had been in progress for years when the United States took over the islands, pledging independence when the inhabitants showed themselves ready to carry on a modern form of government.
The American administration in the Philippines has, on the whole, proved one of the most successful of all attempts at colonial government. Popular education has been fostered by the United States to such a degree that the islands, hopelessly illiterate twenty-five years ago, now rank next to Japan in the Far East. The civil service has been opened so rapidly to natives that an over- whelming majority of the posts in the administrative, legislative, and judicial branches, including the head-
242 THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY
ships of departments, are now held by Filipinos. The islands are attaining greater wealth with every year, and the day of independence seems not far off.
The effect of such a pohtical atmosphere upon the church has been remarkable. When the Spaniards con- trolled the islands the people in the civilized portions were nominally all Cathohc Christians. It was a nominal Christianity of a low order, and had moved some zealous souls to found an independent Filipino church that claimed three million members. Under American rule the Protestant churches have entered, and are growing at a more rapid rate than in any other part of the world. Where there were no Protestant Christians twenty-five years ago, to-day there are a hundred thousand, with another half million in the Protestant constituency. Many of these churches are self-supporting. And the spiritual life of the Catholic Church has been greatly purified.
Lands Still to be Reached
Great is the challenge set before Christianity in still other parts of the East.
The riches of Malaysia. — Take, for example, that group of islands stretching off from Singapore toward Australasia. Under British and Dutch rule, it holds out hope of easy wealth to any who will substitute energy for the indolence of its Malay inhabitants. Three hundred thousand Chinese a year are rushing into this garden of the East, and great numbers from India as well. Yet the greater part of Sumatra, Borneo, New Guinea, as well as hundreds of smaller islands, are without the circle of Christian influence.
Arabia and Persia. — The homeland of Islam has been practically closed to Christianity until now. Only a
OTHER FIELDS FOR ADVANCE 243
very little Christian work has been attempted in Persia. But now both Arabia and Persia find themselves in the full tide of international life, and both should soon be the scene of great Christian effort. If that effort is to succeed care must be taken that the relations of the so- called Christian powers with these states do not belie all the words of the missionaries.
Afghanistan and Tibet. — A hundred years ago there were vast stretches of the earth which no Christian agent could enter save at imminent peril of his Hfe. To- day those restricted areas have been wiped out until they practically include no more than Afghanistan and Tibet, those two lands on the roof of Asia. In Afghanistan no white men are allowed, and so fierce are those warriors who have often poured down through the famed Kyber Pass to menace northern India that it will probably be a long time before Christian missionaries of any other race can enter. Tibet, the land of Lamaism, a corrupt form of Buddhism, was cut off from all the rest of the world until a very few years ago. Christianity is still under the interdict there, but intrepid missionaries are already pressing in on the heels of the explorers.
Suggestions for Discussion
1. Give an outline of the voyages of Captain Cook.
2. Tell in more detail the story of the life of John G. Paton.
3. What can you discover concerning the Wesleyan Church in Fiji?
4. What part did the sacred cities of Islam play in the World War?
5. Why do the results of that war make Arabia and Persia more accessible to Christian missions?
6. What can you find out about the religion of Tibet?
CHAPTER XXIX
THE AMERICAN CHURCHES
We have already seen how, at the close of the Revolu- tionary War, the religious life of America was at a low ebb. Then we have seen how the ardent labors of pioneer preachers, known as circuit-riders, led in an awakening that made rehgion one of the potent factors in the life of the young nation. We are familiar with the social and political development that pushed out the frontiers until the republic stretched from Atlantic to Pacific, growing to such strength that it has become an acknowledged leader among all nations. With this there has gone a development of the Christian churches until they num- ber in their constituency far more than half the popula- tion and exert a powerful influence, not only in the domestic affairs of the United States, but in such mis- sionary efforts as we have studied in other lands as well.
Leading Christian Communions
We have space only to mention a few of the denom- inations in the United States. There are more than two hundred different religious bodies in America, but many of these represent minor divisions within the principal groups.
The Methodists. — As we know, the Methodists were formally organized as a church separated from their founder, John Wesley, as the Revolutionary War was closing. Their growth was phenomenal. Revivals marked the path of their preachers, who did not stay long in any
244
THE AMERICAN CHURCHES 245
pulpit, but "itinerated" from place to place. By dividing up all their stations into Conferences, and giving authority to their bishops to fill all pulpits at the annual sessions of these bodies, the Methodists provided a sys- tem whereby none of their churches were without pastors and none of their pastors without churches. There have been various branchings off from the original Methodist Episcopal Church, the most important being the breach over slavery that, fifteen years before the Civil War, led to the estabhshment of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. During all these years the Methodists have been successful in reaching the masses, and to-day they number more than seven million members. They are also taking a foremost place in the support of education and in missionary enterprises.
The Baptists.— About equal in members among the Protestant bodies are the Baptists, of whom there are now thirteen branches. The first Baptist congregations were planted in New England soon after the Puritans sought those coasts, and gradually spread toward the south. In organization each Baptist church is a law to itself, and none are supposed to be bound by any creed. For years the Baptist ministry was noted more for its zeal than its learning, but the denomination now stands in the front rank in promoting education and is supply- ing the Christian churches of America with many leaders of thought. Baptism by immersion remains a character- istic, but there is increasing liberality in the relations of Baptists with Christians who practice other forms of baptism.
The Presbyterians.^ — The immigration that came to America from Scotland and the north of Ireland pro- vided the backbone for the strong Presbyterian bodies, of which there are twelve. The Presbyterians hold that
246 THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY
the New Testament provides for only one order in the ministry, the presbyters, to whom the government of the churches is intrusted. With them are associated the elders of the churches. Each congregation meets as a "session," and elects an elder who, with the minister, represents it in the "presbytery," which includes the representatives of a given district. Above the presbytery is the "synod," which generally is formed on State lines, and above all, exercising legislative and judicial powers, is the "general assembly," meeting every year. The Presbyterians have, from the beginning, championed the cause of an educated ministry, and have exerted a pro- found influence in molding the thought and guiding the efforts of American Protestantism.
The Lutherans. — There are sixteen Lutheran bodies in the United States, the spiritual descendants of those who have come from Germany and Scandinavia to the new world. Much of the worship in Lutheran churches, until very recently, has been conducted in German. There is a large element of ritualism in Lutheran worship, and only a little mingling with other Protestant forces.
The Episcopalians.— It was some time after the Revolution before the congregations that had been mem- bers of the Church of England were able to reconstitute themselves as the Protestant Episcopal Church. Finally arrangements were made whereby American bishops were ordained in England, and the church has developed rapidly since. There are various groups within the Episcopalian body, one, known as the High Church, tending toward a strict rituahsm, one, known as the Broad Church, seeking to emphasize points of agreement with all schools of thought, and one, known as the Low Church, with a minimum of liturgy in worship. One group, rejecting the theory of an unbroken line of ordi-
THE AMERICAN CHURCHES 247
nations for the bishops from the days of the apostles, broke away to form the Reformed Episcopal Church. Although the Episcopalians have included many of wealth and high social station within their ranks, they have also produced many leaders in the effort to secure better social and economic conditions in American Hfe.
The Congregationalists.— The Mayflower brought Congregationahsm to New England, where it has re- mained the leading form of worship through the years. From it there grew the Unitarian school of thought that has exerted such an influence in certain quarters. But by far the larger part of Congregationahsm, somewhat under the influence of Horace Bushnell, stood for the historic form of Christian beHef. In theory, each Con- gregational church is independent, and the ministers only the chosen leaders of the congregation. From the be- ginning, the Congregationalists have stood for the highest possible type of culture. Their contribution to the cause of foreign missions, through their American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, has been very large.
The Disciples. — No body in America has had a more remarkable growth than the Disciples of Christ, or, as they are sometimes known, the Christian Church. Founded by Thomas Campbell, a Presbyterian mmister from Scotland, and pushed most vigorously toward their distinct entity by Alexander Campbell, the founder's son, this group, after periods of fellowship with Presbyterians and Baptists, finally became a separate denomination. The church has had two aims, the one to secure a restoration of primitive Christianity, and the other to unify the churches. It has pushed education, and is interested in missions on a large scale.
The CathoUcs. — There were few members of the
248 THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY
Roman Catholic Church in America when independence came, but the rush of immigration that featured the development of the country brought with it thousands of children of this faith. Until 1908 the United States was regarded as missionary territory, but since then has been on a plane of equality with the churches of Europe in the councils of the Roman Church, At the present time there are two cardinals heading a body that is claimed to contain almost sixteen million adherents. The Catholic investments in churches, hospitals, orphanages, schools and other institutions are enormous. There are also representatives of the Greek Orthodox Church to the number of about a quarter of a million.
The Rediscovery of Young Life
No more significant fact is to be found in Protestant history during the last few decades than the attempt to give a larger place to the training of young Ufe. Christian nurture is now accepted by most churches as the most important feature of their work.
The church school. — Instruction of children began in England in 1780 in the classes gathered by Robert Raikes as a result of the Methodist awakening. Before long, that which originally included instruction in all elementary subjects narrowed to instruction in the con- tents of the Bible, generally conducted on Sunday by volunteer teachers. The Sunday school has had a won- derful development in aU Protestant lands, and is now growing rapidly in mission lands. A convention of the World's Sunday School Association was recently held in Tokyo, Japan. The ideals of these schools have developed with the years, and to-day much care is given by expert leaders to the preparation of courses that shall not only
THE AMERICAN CHURCHES 249
instruct in Christian truth but induct into Christian service.
The young people's societies. — During the closing years of the last century there arose a group of societies, planned to give young Christians a chance to express their religious life in testimony and service. The most popular of these have been the United Society of Christian Endeavor, the Epworth League, the Luther League, and the Baptist Young People's Union.
Other agencies in great number have also been em- ployed to win for the young a larger place in the Protes- tant churches. Clubs for boys and girls, troops of Boy Scouts and Girl Guides, camps, daily vacation Bible schools — these are but a few in a list almost endless.
Social Implications of the Gospel
A great Scotchman, Henry Drummond, who combined a passion as an evangelist with a zeal as a scientist, once warned the churches that they should stop talking about saving souls and begin to talk about saving men. What he said pointed the way for one of the great develop- ments of church thought and activity during recent years.
Charity and organized philanthropy. — The first rec- ognition by the churches of social wrongs in the Ameri- can community led to a great increase in the number of organized philanthropies. There were the efiforts to aid the Negroes freed following the war between the States; to aid the Indians, who had too often been defrauded by land-hungry whites; to aid the immigrants, crowded into the tenement sections of the cities. Social settlements and charity organizations did much to relieve suffering and offer to the poor a chance for advancement.
250 THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY
The struggle for social justice. — It was not long, however, before the Christian conscience saw that it was not enough to alleviate social suffering after it had occurred, but that some effort should be made to get at the root causes of such troubles and eliminate them. So, in constantly increasing power. Christians have been trying to make clear the cause of social disorders and secure conditions of labor and life that will offer happi- ness and opportunity to every inhabitant of the country. Thus it comes that where, two hundred years ago, churches gave their attention to the formulation of creeds of theology, to-day the Protestant churches that are grouped in the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America have adopted what is called a Social Creed, caUing for far-reaching reforms in social and industrial Kfe.
Foreign missions. — One other expression of this same growing sense of social responsibility is the increasing interest in foreign missions. In all the efforts to take the gospel of Jesus Christ to other lands, such as we have surveyed in previous chapters, a large part has been taken by the churches of America. There are to-day about eleven thousand Protestant missionaries from the United States at work in other lands. And this mis- sionary enterprise seeks to improve the mental and social status of those whom it touches, as well as to give them a better spiritual outlook.
Suggestions for Discussion
1. Give a complete sketch of the history of the denom- ination with which you are connected.
2. What are its methods of church government?
3. Outline briefly its educational interests in America.
THE AMERICAN CHURCHES 251
4. What part is it taking in the foreign missionary enterprise ?
5. Give an outline of the organization of the Sunday school of which you are a member.
6. Select three important paragraphs from the Social Creed of the Churches, and tell why you think them important.
CHAPTER XXX MODERN CATHOLICISM
As we have traced the history of the Roman Catholic Church from the days of Constantine we cannot but have felt the power of such a body. It is the boast of that church that it has never changed in all the centuries, but a careful examination proves that it has changed greatly, both in the part it has played in society and in its doctrine.
In this chapter we shall attempt to summarize what has happened within the last few centuries to make the Roman CathoHc Church what we see it to be to-day. In general, we shall see that between the time of the Reformation and the present there has been a gradual decrease in the political power of Catholicism, and a growth in its religious power.
The Decay of the Catholic Realms
We recall that, just before the Reformation, the Pope thought he possessed temporal power sufficient to make it possible for him to divide all the new discoveries be- tween Spain and Portugal. What a change the years have brought!
The Pope's loss of temporal authority. — Strongly as the Catholic Church rebounded from the shock of the Protestant Reformation, it proved weak before the rise of that spirit of doubt that marked Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. With the out- break of the French Revolution the church was swept out
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MODERN CATHOLICISM 253
of existence in one of its strongholds. When Napoleon restored order and made his empire the mightiest power on the continent, he recognized Catholicism as the religion of the majority of his subjects only at the price of a complete political submission by the Pope. Napoleon did not hesitate to hold the Pope as a prisoner, and to confiscate the papal states in Italy.
After the downfall of Napoleon the Popes came back to a brief authority, but this could not persist in the face of the rise of democratic ideas that broke out again in Europe in the middle of the last century. In Italy this movement kept at work until, by 1870, the country was entirely freed from outside domination, the various states united in one kingdom, and the Pope a self-made prisoner within the Vatican palace in Rome. All the papal states, with the exception of the ground included in the Vatican and Saint Peter's Church, together with another church and a castle just outside Rome, have been taken from the rule of the Pope.
Catholic countries lose power. — While the papacy itself has been declining in temporal authority, the states upon which it has relied most strongly for support have been shpping to the rear in the family of nations. Spain and Portugal, once so strong, are now almost negligible as international factors. Austria, for years the center of the Holy Roman Empire and chief support of the Pope, is, as a result of the World War, reduced to a petty state. The governments of France and Italy have no official connection whatever with the Catholic Church. In fact, the record of the last century seems to be that if a country has remained resolutely Catholic it has lost political power, and if it has held or gained political power its leaders have increasingly cut loose from Catholicism. An interesting sidelight on this tendency
254 THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY
was thrown when Bismarck, striving to make a great empire of Germany, did all in his power to circumscribe the strength of the CathoUcism remaining in south Germany.
The present situation. — To-day, therefore, we see the states in which CathoHcism is legally established as the national religion of diminishing importance in the world, and the Pope shorn of all significance as a tem- poral ruler. It is possible that the Italian government, in an effort to eliminate one disturbing element from its internal situation, may effect some compromise whereby a slight measure of temporal authority may be restored to the Pope. But it seems certain that the day in which the Vatican might exercise great temporal power is gone.
The Growth of the Papal Power
But while the Pope has been losing authority of one kind, he has been gaining power in another, and perhaps more important, realm. The millions who acknowledge the religious rule of the bishop of Rome now accord him a spiritual authority beyond that claimed even in the Middle Ages.
Development of Catholic doctrine. — In the midst of the democratic uprisings of the nineteenth century the Pope came to feel that the fortunes of a church that claimed to be "always without change" depended upon a strongly conservative policy. Hence, about the middle of the century, the Pope did what no previous occupant of the throne of Saint Peter had ever dared to do. He formulated a doctrine as a dogma of the church which could not be doubted without peril to the soul. Always in the past the formulation of such doctrines had been in the hands of church councils, where leaders of thought from all quarters could express their opinions. But now
MODERN CATHOLICISM 255
the Pope claimed authority to do this. And the church acknowledged the validity of his act!
Less than twenty years later, at the very time Garibaldi and Cavour were eliminating the Pope as a civil ruler in Italy, a church council was called, and at this the final step toward establishing the spiritual supremacy of the pontiff was taken. It was voted that whenever the Pope speaks on a matter of faith or morals his words are infallible! There was some protest, but not sufficient to shake the readiness of the church as a whole to accept the doctrine. Upon it rests the spiritual dictatorship of the Pope over millions to-day.
Increase in Catholic populations. — In the mean- time, the Catholic population of the world has grown. In such a country as the United States, where the Cathohc element was insignificant at the formation of the re- public, immigration has increased it to the point where it equals a seventh of the population. Belgium, which be- came independent in 1830, is predominantly CathoHc. The states that won their freedom in Central and South America are Catholic. About seven milhons who were formerly within the Greek Orthodox Church now recog- nize the supremacy of the Pope, although they retain their Greek rites. An equal number of converts are said to have been baptized in Africa and Asia. The nominal Roman Catholic population of the world to-day is almost three hundred milHon.
In saying this, however, it is necessary to bear in mind that, in many Catholic countries, there are large elements of the population out of sympathy with the church. This is true in France and Italy to a striking degree. Equally is it the case in Mexico and parts of South America. Elements of the same dissatisfaction are to be found even in Portugal and Spain. The disquieting fact is that
256 THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY
as these groups drift away from Catholicism they drift into a practical atheism, or, at the best, agnosticism.
Policy of the recent Popes. — In Pius IX and Leo XIII, who reigned over the Roman Catholic Church during a large part of the nineteenth century, two men of large ability came to power. The former, when elected, had the reputation of being a progressive, but the end of his reign found the church totally divorced from the pro- gressive movements of the age. Leo XIII and his suc- cessors have followed the policy of conservatism. Obedience is still the prized virtue in Catholics. Indepen- dent thought is repressed, particularly in the religious realm. A study of the edicts of recent Popes shows that the most important are concerned with stamping out what has been called "modernism," by which is meant any scientific and historical study comparable to that which has so transformed Protestantism in the past few decades. Thomas Aquinas, that epitome of the thought of the Middle Ages, remains the model of Catholic thinking.
On the other hand, the Pope recently deceased, Benedict XV, showed a desire to reenter the field of popular politics on the part of the church. At the time of his death he was tending toward an understanding with the Italian monarchy that might have brought to an end the fiction of imprisonment in the Vatican and have launched the church on a new political career. It remains to be seen to what measure Pius XI will develop this policy.
The Future or the Catholic Church
Any prophecy as to the future of institutions is, in these days, difficult. Especially is this true of those which have their roots deep in the life of Europe. But
MODERN CATHOLICISM 257
there are some problems that Roman Catholicism must inevitably meet, and we may, with propriety, study what the outcome is likely to be.
Catholicism and democracy. — For more than a cen- tury the Catholic Church has been dealing with peoples stirred by democratic movements. These will increase rather than decrease. And they will take varying forms. It cannot be said that Catholicism has been fortunate in its dealings with democracy in the past. In Latin- America, in France, and in Italy, as democracy has in- creased, so has the breach between the national leaders and the church. What will be the outcome in Ireland, where we see now the formation of an Irish Free State, most of the leaders of which are devout sons of the church? Or in the United States, whence come a large share of the revenues that support the papal court? Or in the Catholic countries of Europe, as the revolutionary tendencies of the present penetrate? Is it possible for a religious absolutism to exist in comfort with a political democracy or socialism? It seems that Cathohcism must either prove that it is possible — something it has not been able to do in the past — or make readjustments in its own life allowing for a greater degree of incorporation with popular movements.
Catholicism and government. — In attempting to adjust itself to a democratic era, the Catholic Church must wrestle with inner tendencies nourished by its past. The democratic peoples are clear in their deter- mination to keep the functions of state and church sep- arate. Catholicism must accept that separation, or it will suffer more than the state in the effort to end it. Recent attempts by the papacy to influence the affairs of government, such as the launching of the Popular party in Italy, have shown that Catholicism is not yet
258 THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY
ready to give up this cause. If the attempt to interfere as a church in poHtical matters persists, the democratic peoples will not evade the issue.
Catholicism and liberal thought. — At present the modernists seem sternly repressed within the Catholic Church. Can they be kept so? Can the church continue indifferent to the vast new stores of truth that are, year by year, being opened to students of the Bible, of church history, of science? In past centuries the authorities of this church forced Gahleo to retract and rejected the teachings of Copernicus, but that served only to under- mine the authority of the church when the truth became generally known. To-day Catholicism feels a pervasive uneasiness among its intelligent sons in many lands. What will it do? It seems clear that it must either find a working basis with the modern intellectual processes, or it must resign itself to a constant loss of power as popular education advances.
The function of Catholicism. — What part, then, may the Roman Catholic Church play in the future? If it accepts reform, a great and helpful part. For there will always be those, particularly among the Latins, and per- haps in parts of the East, who will respond to the color of a worship that makes its appeal largely through re- ligious symbolism, provided it does not flout their intellectual capacity at the same time. But if it fails to align itself with modern forces, Catholicism will stand as the last bulwark of traditionalism, rallying the forces who face toward the past for a few centuries more, until its strength is utterly gone. May it choose the larger part!
Suggestions for Discussion
I. In what countries are a majority of the inhab- itants at present Catholics?
MODERN CATHOLICISM 259
2. What can you tell about the state of popular edu- cation in these countries?
3. Give an outline of the papacy of Pius IX.
4. Why does the Pope call himself "the prisoner of the Vatican"?
5. Do you think that the Worid War will have any effect upon the fortunes of the Catholic Chiuch?
6. In what way is the power of the Pope increasing? Decreasing ?
CHAPTER XXXI
HOW CHRISTIANITY IS SPREAD
We have tried to review briefly the expansion of Chris- tianity to the present, showing how its missionaries have penetrated all continents, until there remains scarcely a country in which the word of Jesus has not been heard. To-day we see these missionary enterprises conducted on a larger scale than ever before. It is well for us to understand how these thousands of missionaries are directed and supported.
The Missionary Societies
The societies that control most of the efforts of Chris- tendom to spread its message are comparatively recent institutions. But they exert immense influence, and do so very wisely.
The Catholic plan of campaign. — As the work of the Roman Catholic Church in new lands grew (see Chapter XIV) the necessity of holding its missionaries to some central plan became clear, and the Pope founded a Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, which remains to this day in control of Catholic missions. All the orders, such as the Jesuits, the Fran- ciscans, the Dominicans, the Augustinians, are required to conduct their efforts along the lines laid down by this Congregation, which has its headquarters in Rome. Some idea of the control exerted is given by the fact that the United States was conceived as requiring the super- vision of this body until as recently as 1908.
260
HOW CHRISTIANITY IS SPREAD 261
The British societies. — The first prominent Protes- tant missionary society to be founded was the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, which remains the body through which the high-church party within the Church of England exerts its missionary influence. It has been reenforced by the Church Mis- sionary Society, representing the low-church group within the same church. William Carey went to India as the first representative of the Baptist Mission Society of Great Britain, and the London Missionary Society, acting for the Congregational churches, bears on its rolls such names as Robert Morrison and David Livingstone. There are societies representing practically every Prot- estant body in England, and the Scotch societies have been notable in the character of the men they have pro- vided for the missionary enterprise.
American bodies. — Three students in WilHams Col- lege, holding a prayer meeting under a haystack in 1806, resolved to form a society the object of which would be *'to effect in the person of its members a mission to the heathen." The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions was the result, a society that at first directed the missionary work of three churches, but now represents only the Congregationalists of America.
The American Baptist Missionary Union soon followed, to send the great pioneer Judson to Burma. Then, in rapid succession, all the principal Protestant denomina- tions formed their societies and began sending abroad their workers. More than sixty such bodies now form the Foreign Missions Conference of North America.
Some did not begin with missionary work on other continents. The missionary work of the Methodist Episcopal Church, for example, traces back to the efforts of a Negro lay preacher to convert a tribe of Wyandot
262 THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY
Indians on the Upper Sandusky in Ohio. In size the missions supported by the American churches now out- rank those of aU the rest of the world combined.
Other organizations. — The Protestants of Continen- tal Europe have done their part in spreading the gospel. The Huguenots of to-day, through their Paris Evangel- ical Missionary Society, have done a fine work in South Africa among the Hottentots and in the French posses- sions in that continent. Before the World War several German societies were at work in many parts of the world. Even the small Protestant church in Belgium managed, when the Congo came under Belgian control, to plant a mission there.
Many continental Protestants have supported the work of the China Inland Mission, a body founded by Hudson Taylor in the middle of the last century to carry the gospel into the interior parts of China. The China Inland Mission is interdenominational and international, drawing its workers from many lands and many churches. It has done a remarkable pioneer work, and may take much credit for the manner in which China is open to Christianity to-day.
Other bodies at work without the denominations to spread the Christian message are the Bible societies, of which the most important are the British and Foreign Bible Society, the American Bible Society, and the Bible Society of Scotland. The first named had, by 1916, translated the Bible into 497 languages, and the American body had versions in 169 languages available. These societies have circulated more than 500,000,000 copies of the Scriptures within a century, and expended more than $100,000,000.
Very recently the Young Men's Christian Association and the Young Women's Christian Association have
HOW CHRISTIANITY IS SPREAD 263
entered upon work in non-Christian lands. Both are earning a large measure of success.
How A Missionary Society Works
It is of more value, however, to know how these societies work than to call the roll of their names. There is nothing haphazard about the way in which they are trying to spread the gospel throughout the world. While the administration of the societies differs in details, the main outlines of their work are the same. We will describe the working of one actual body.
The society's constituency. — This missionary so- ciety exists to carry on the work which the members of a certain denomination desire to support in non-Chris- tian lands. It obtains its revenue, which is now a little less than $6,000,000 a year, from this constituency, and to this group it must report annually. It prepares much literature to keep interest aroused, and knows always that the carrying through of its plans depends upon the measure of support received from the four miUion people in this group.
The society's control. — This constituency provides for the control of the society by means of a "board," which consists of about a hundred persons, some of them ministers and some laymen. This body meets annually, hears reports of the work of the year previous, votes what money shaU be spent during the year to come (basing these appropriations on the amount received in the previous year), and provides the necessary officers and committees for carrying out the policies approved.
The society's management. — Under this board there work the administrative officers. These are, in this case, two "corresponding secretaries" who act as the general administrative leaders. Under them are assistants, each
264 THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY
charged with responsibihty for knowledge of what is being done in certain fields. Thus, one assistant looks after the work in China, one after India, one after Africa, and so on. Then there is one man at the head of the department that seeks proper candidates for the mis- sionary force and examines those who offer themselves for this exacting service. Another, a doctor, heads a department that examines these candidates to see whether they can stand up under the physical strain of the mission field, and has charge of the health of the missionaries already at work. Another man has charge of the preparation of the hterature that is to keep alive the interest of the constituency. Another looks after the sending of missionaries and materials to the fields. Another cares for the legal interests of the society, an important matter in view of the enormous amount of property controlled in many lands and the bequests that are frequently made to such a body. Finally, one man, the treasurer, heads an extensive department that looks after the financial interests of the society.
Not only do these officers frequently consult among themselves as to the proper method of conducting their work, but they meet at least once a year with the officers of other societies, both from the United States and Canada, in the Foreign Missions Conference of North America, and there the responsibihties of the churches are faced as a whole. Thus it comes that increasingly the missionary boards are acting as bodies cooperating in one great task, rather than as competitors.
The society's forces. — Having planned what part it shall bear in the enterprise of spreading Christianity in other lands, the society sends its representatives abroad. In the case of the particular body that furnishes our ex- ample, its first missionary went to Africa in 1833. To-day
HOW CHRISTIANITY IS SPREAD 265
it has workers in more than thirty countries. Some of these give most of their time to preaching or the direction of native preachers. Even more work as teachers in schools of many different kinds. Many are doctors or nurses. Some are producing Christian literature. Some seek to improve the industrial and agricultural methods of the country in which they are stationed. Some give themselves to the intricate details of a business of such magnitude. Altogether this society has 1,133 missionaries at work, and a woman's society connected with the same church supports 575 more. With these work more than 16,000 preachers, teachers, and other workers who are natives of the countries in which the society is planted.
Laying Out the General Plan
Great as are the efforts being made by the churches to spread Christianity throughout the world, the size of the task is so great that Christian leaders have come to see that they must carefully distribute their forces. Other- wise there will be concentrations of effort in some places while others are deserted. Thus the spirit of cooperation in mission work grows among the Protestant bodies every year.
Edinburgh, 1910. — The most striking evidence of this up to the present was the convening in Edinburgh in 1 9 10 of representatives from practically every Prot- estant church in the world, where a general program for the capture of the world was worked out. The outbreak of the war, with its disruption of Europe, seriously in- terfered with the complete carrying out of the processes begun at Edinburgh, but the churches are now hard at work to repair the damage to their plans. An Inter- national Missionary Association has been formed that is helping to enhst in a new united advance, and it will not
266 THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY
be long before a world conference similar to that of 1910 will convene.
On many of the large mission fields, as well, there are now bodies that carefully study the needs and then advise the churches as to where they can throw their energies with most effect and without overlapping efforts already being made. So that, the world over, the Protestant forces are coming more and more to act as one army, aU working toward a common victory.
Suggestions for Discussion
1. On a map of the world, indicate the countries in which the missionary society of the church with which you are connected has work.
2. Give a resume of the work done by this society during the past five years.
3. On the average, how much do the members of the church give annually for the support of this society?
4. Describe the organization of the society, and name some of its leaders and missionaries.
5. What qualities do you think are needed to make a successful missionary?
6. What do you consider "intelligent support" for the missionary enterprise by an American Christian?
CHAPTER XXXII
CHRISTIANITY TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW
Do you remember that parting command of the Christ that we quoted as we began this book? "Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them, . . . teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you" (Matt. 28.19). It is now fitting for us, summing up the facts in the previous chapters, to de- termine how far the Christian Church has carried out this injunction, and how much remains to be done.
Baptizing All Nations
We began our study with the days of the Emperor Constantine. What an extension of the Christian mes- sage there has been since then!
Since the days of Constantine. — When Christi- anity, after more than three hundred years of suffering and effort, became the favored reUgion of the Roman Empire, it found itself established in the lands around the Mediterranean. To the men of those days that seemed a tremendous triumph, for outside that territory there were thought to be nothing but barbarians.
But on our modern maps of the world the territory held by Christianity sixteen hundred years ago seems small. The Mediterranean looks like some inland lake. And we see that to-day some form of Christianity prevails in most of Europe, North America, South America, Australia, and Siberia, with flourishing Chris-
267
268 THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY
tian churches growing in other parts of Asia and Africa.
There are more Christians to-day in the lands we call non-Christian than there were in the whole Roman Empire at the close of the first Christian century ! There are only four small countries left, in interior Asia, from which the gospel is excluded!
A Christian civilization. — Of even greater impor- tance is the fact that millions of people are living in a civilization that is largely influenced by Christianity.
Not all the people in the United States, for example, claim to be Christians. But all of them have the advantage of living under a civilization that has a Christian back- ground, even if they are ignorant of that fact. Even if we pay no attention to the influence of the churches in securing peace and order, there remain the schools, the hospitals, the homes for children and for other needy, the charity organizations, all characteristics of Christian lands.
The historians have testified that popular education owes its origin to the church. Philanthropic institutions are by-products of Christianity. One fact alone sets off the Western world to-day from that of the time of Constantine: slavery has ceased to be a legal institution.
One mark of the distance we have traveled in these centuries is given by a conference of the leading nations, such as that recently held at Washington, where the effort to diminish the chances of international conflict was begun and ended with Christian prayer.
The task remaining. — Yet, in saying this, we do not mean to hint that the task left Christians by their Master is done, or nearly done. A recent estimate of the world's population, divided according to their rehgious affilia- tions, shows:
Q O
l-H O t-H ^
^ s
t/5 I
o s
Si
Xi.-a§ W .3o.
o.S
5fc
c8
|
PERCENTAGE |
|
|
34-2 |
|
|
i8 |
3 |
|
13 |
44 |
|
12 |
8 |
|
9 |
7 |
|
8 |
4 |
|
I |
5 |
|
74 |
|
|
92 |
TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW 269
ADHERENTS
Christians 565,000,000
Taoists and Conf ucianists . . . . 301,000,000
Mohammedans 222,000,000
Hindus 211,000,000
Animists 158,000,000
*Buddhists 138,000,000
Shintoists 25,000,000
Jews 12,000,000
Unclassified 15,000,000
The Protestant churches have about 20,000 mission- aries at work among these miUions, and it is probable that the Roman and Greek Catholic Churches, taken together, have as many more. But the most conservative figures show that there are at least 160,000,000 people left in the world who are entirely beyond the present out- reach of Christianity! When we read facts of this kind we see the daring in the motto of the Christian students of to-day: "The evangelization of the world in this generation!"
Making Christ the King of All Life
But while there remain great victories to be won before Christianity can be said to have spread through all the world, there are other and more vital conquests needed in making the rule of Christ pervasive in the lands already nominally Christian. If Christianity must still be spread extensively, it must also be spread intensively.
The danger of formal religion. — For one thing, Christianity must guard against becoming a formality. The ritual of worship, as it has grown through the cen- turies, is a noble thing, able to stir deep emotions in
* The division of the 400,000,000 Chinese between Confucianists, Buddhists and Taoists is rough. The average Chinese is, to some extent, affected by all three.
270 THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY
many. But the performance of a ritual, with whatever grandeur, can never fulfill the religious purposes of Jesus. **God is spirit," he said, "and they that worship him must worship in spirit and truth" (John 4.24).
We say that there are about 272,000,000 Roman Catholic Christians in the world, about 172,000,000 Protestant Christians, about 120,000,000 Greek Orthodox Christians. But does this mean that all these know the worship of God as a vital force to order their lives? We know that to too many in Europe, in South America, and even in our own country, being a Christian means only adherence to certain forms of churchgoing. And one immediate task, if a world in sad need is to be helped, is to make all churches vital centers of religious energy, and all Christians men who not only call Jesus their Lord, but do what he commands.
Can politics be Christian? — Another great struggle that the Christian forces are just entering upon is that to make all the poHtical relations of men conform to the spirit of Jesus. We have studied the attempt of Calvin, in the early days of Protestantism, to make Geneva a city for God (see Chapter XVI). That same attempt is being made now, and must be, until not only our cities but our states and our nations and our international relations are conducted as in the sight of God. No man will claim that we have reached that goal yet, but we have set out toward it.
The noblest statesmen of the present, those whose work will live, are those who are seeking to rule in accord with the principles of Christ. Even the World War, with its revelation of the shallowness of much of the poHtical Life that we had thought Christian, has helped to rouse many to seek this new goal.
It seems as though the church was just at the be-
TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW 271
ginning of a new crusade. It will be a crusade to do away with force and deceit and selfishness as ruling powers in international relations. It will do away with war. It will bring nations to accept the highest code of Christian ethics as their standard of conduct. The goal of the ancient prophet will be won, men acting as nations to do what Jehovah doth "require, ... to do justly, to love kind- ness, and to walk humbly with God" (Micah 6. 8).
The gospel in industry. — One more intense struggle that lies before Christianity is the effort to bring all industry into line with the spirit of Jesus. There are few agricultural nations left, and these are rapidly turning to manufacturing as the basis for their life. But the effort to obtain wealth tends to become so absorbing that men lose sight of that commandment that Jesus put on a plane with love to God: "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" (Matt. 22. 39).
As long as little children and women have to work long hours and sap their strength in order that others may live in comfort or luxury, as long as honest labor does not bring freedom from want or the fear of old age, as long as a disproportionate part of the returns from industry go to those who provide only capital, as long as there remains a majority of the world's inhabitants on the ragged edge of starvation, the task of making all industry conform to the Christian ideal of human brotherhood has still to be completed. It is the glory of the church that Catholics and Protestants are to-day giving themselves to this sort of intensive spreading of Christianity, so that all the life of the Western nations may be in truth Christian.
The Great Adventure and the Great Goal As we study the marvelous things wrought for the
272 THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY
kingdom of God by the great Christians of the past, we may think that the day of high adventure for Christ's sake is past. No more can a man defy for the first time those who would Hmit the working of the individual conscience. No more can a man be the first to preach Christ in India, in China, in Africa. No more can a man gather the churches in a first world conference to plan for the evangelization of every nation. But let us not doubt that there are even greater opportunities before the men and women who start out to serve Christ to-day!
A groping world. — Never has our world been so torn up as we see it to-day. Modern science has thrown us all in upon one another, and we have not mixed well together. We are faint and bewildered with our fighting. Men are giving themselves to all sorts of experiments, hoping that they may find peace and content and a happier life than their fathers knew. Men are sure that the old ways were not the best ways. They will not go back to them. But they do not know what they may go forward to.
Our response to the challenge. — To those who have discovered that Jesus holds out all that men are seeking so desperately, this groping world presents a tre- mendous challenge. Every unjust and unrighteous fact in the life of the West, and every unfulfilled promise in the life of the East calls them. They feel that there are better things to be done than just make a living. They are ready to turn away from ease and from personal gain to join that company of modern crusaders of whom Vachel Lindsay has sung:
"An endless line of splendor,
These troops with heaven for home, With creeds they go from Scotland, With incense go from Rome.
TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW 273
These, in the name of Jesus,
Against the dark gods stand, They gird the earth with valor;
They heed the King's command.
"Onward the line advances.
Shaking the hills with power, Slaying the hidden demons.
The lions that devour. No bloodshed in the wrestling,
But souls new-bom arise — The nations growing kinder.
The child-hearts growing wise.
"What is the final ending?
The issue, can we know ? Will Christ outlive Mohammed?
Will Kali's altar go? This is our faith tremendous —
Our wild hope, who shall scorn — That in the name of Jesus
The world shall be reborn!"
The world that is to be. — Jesus sent his followers to teach men to do all things that he had commanded. We are a long way from that goal. But we press toward it. It shall be achieved. One day men will awake in a world in which there will be no war, no brutality, no injustice, no sorrow. Declared an ancient prophet: "They shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig- tree; and none shall make them afraid" (Micah 4. 4). Race prejudice will be gone from that world, and universal brotherhood will hold sway. Men will work for the common welfare, and so assure their own. That will be a world through which Christianity has spread com-
274 THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY
pletely. In it will be realized the vision granted to the Christian mystic :
The kingdom of the world is become the kingdom of our Lord, and of his Christ: and he shall reign for ever and ever
(Revelation ii. 15).
Suggestions for Discussion
1 . Make a map of the world, showing by various colors the predominant religious faiths in each part.
2. How does the Christian area compare in size now with that at the time of Constantine?
3. Can you add any to the list of victories still to be won by Christianity within the nominal Christian lands?
4. Which of the tasks remaining before Christianity makes the greatest appeal to you, and why?
5. Make a list of ten life-callings. Can a person in each one help in the spread of Christianity? How?
6. When do you consider that the work of spreading Christianity will have been completed?
AIDS IN THE STUDY OF THIS BOOK
Properly to discuss the development of Christianity some collateral reading, in addition to the material in this textbook, is needed. It is recognized that many- students and teachers will have access to only a small collection of books. The following will be found helpful :
For every topic in connection with church history and doctrine,' the Hastings Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics (New York. 1908).
For general history and biographies of the outstand- ing characters, the Encyclopcedia Britannica, nth edition (New York, 19 10).
For the Cathohc viewpoint on aU questions. The Catholic Encyclopcpdia (New York, 1907).
For the facts of church history the best- compact books seem to be: A History of the Christian Church, by Williston Walker (New York, 1918); The Course of Christian History, by W. J. McGlothlin (New York, 1 9 18); A Short History of the Christian Church, by John W. Moncrief (New York, 1902; revised edition, 1908). The latter is probably the most readable to the ordinary reader.
For the history of Christian missions: The Spread of Christianity in the Modern World, by E. C. Moore (Chicago, 1 919); History of Christian Missions, by C. H. Robinson (New York, 1915); Via Christi, by L. M. Hodgkins (New York, 1901). The latter is a popular handbook, and brings the account only to the time of Carey.
For a general background to the whole movement:
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2J^ THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY
The Outline of History, by H. G. Wells (New York, 1920) ; The Story of Mankind, by Hendrick Van Loon (New York, 192 1); Medieval and Modern Times, by J. H. Robinson (New York, 1916).
For an account of other religions than Christianity: The Religions of Mankind, by E. D. Soper (New York and Cincinnati, 192 1).
For the Social Creed of the churches : The Social Creed of the Churches, by Harry F. Ward (New York and Cincinnati, 1913). The creed itself may be obtained from the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America, 105 East 2 2d Street, New York City.
In the study of Christianity's growth in non-Christian lands all the books for mission study classes issued by the Missionary Education Movement are of value. Especial attention should be called to Social Aspects of Foreign Missions, by W. H. P. Faunce; Rising Churches in Non-Christian Lands, by Arthur R. Brown; The King- dom and the Nations, by Eric M. North.
Every chapter in the book can be fortified by references to important works. Because of lack of space no attempt is made at any such extensive bibliography. Teachers and students will find many pastors' hbraries of great help in obtaining additional material. And it is to be hoped that the background furnished by some of the great novels, such as The Cloister and the Hearth for the Middle Ages and Romola for the Renaissance, will not be neglected.
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