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A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR RELIGION
A SHORT HISTORY
OF OUR RELIGION *
FROM MOSES TO THE PRESENT DAY
BY D. C. SOMERVELL
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1922
<4// rights reserved
t;i^ i;i:y/ YORK
TILDEN FOUNDATIONS
R 1928 i-
PRINTKD IN GREAT BRITAIN BY ROBERT MACLBHOSE AND CO. LTD.
: . : AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, GLASGOW.
PREFACE
THIS book has been written primarily as a contribution
towards that most difficult undertaking, the teaching
of ' Divinity.'
The teaching of this subject has, presumably, two closely
correlated aims : first, it would seek, on the purely intel-
lectual level, to give a clear idea of the nature of the Christian
religion and its historical development and achievement ;
secondly, it would seek to create, as a result of this purely
intellectual process, a sense of the overwhelming importance
of Christianity and its continuous and increasing vitality.
The latter aim will not perhaps be pursued directly in the
class-room, but its achievement would result spontaneously
from the achievement of the former aim.
At present neither aim is generally achieved. Many
reasons for failure might be suggested, but two in particular
': fall to be mentioned here since they explain the idea of the
- present book. In the first place we have, in our Bible
i teaching, been too much occupied with political, biographical,
' and geographical details, which, from the standpoint of
i^ Christian Divinity, are of secondary importance. For what
^ makes ' Bible history ' worth studying at all is the religious
history, and the rest is only useful in so far as it explains
, that.
. Secondly, we have far too much limited ' Divinity ' teaching
3g to * Bible ' teaching. This limitation encourages, it may be
vi PREFACE
unconsciously but none the less really, the most unfortunate
and unchristian idea that the relations of God and Man, if
they did not actually terminate round about lOO a.d.,
became after that date something very much less close and
less vital than before. We have a ' Bible period ' in which
God acted openly and directly, when religion must have been,
it would seem, a comparatively easy matter, and a post-
Biblical period when the existence of Divinity was so much
less obvious, and the relations of God and Man were so
entirely changed that lessons drawn from the Biblical period
could only have a very indirect applicability to ourselves.
Thus, the more the Bible is studied apart the more remote
does religion become from everyday life.
I am not pleading for less study of religion as revealed in
the Bible, but for a concentration on the religious aspects of
the Bible, together with an extension of the study of Chris-
tianity outside Bibhcal limits. And in saying this I am
considering only the secondary school stage. No one would
regret more than myself the disappearance of the old Bible
stories from the education of childhood : but comparatively
little is gained, and much is lost, when they are taught
afresh to the exclusion of other subjects during the period
of adolescence.
The present book attempts a continuous history of religious
development along a single line from the primitive foundations
laid by Moses down to the present day. Part I. deals with
the Hebrew religion out of which Christianity grew, and
covers the last thirteen centuries before Christ. Part II.
deals with the foundation of Christianity and its development
as a * rebel ' religion within the Roman Empire, carrying the
story down to the end of the fourth century. Part III.
contains the history of the Western Church from Augustine
down to and including the Reformation. Part IV. is,
illogically but perhaps inevitably, limited in scope to England
PREFACE vii
and Scotland, and outlines the development of religious life
and religious thought from the Elizabethan settlement to
the present day.
Such an undertaking is beset not only with the pitfalls
that lie in the way of all writers of ' outlines,' but also with
the special pitfalls of rehgious controversy. In the earlier
parts of the book there are the dilemmas presented by
modern criticism and old traditions : in the latter the con-
troversies of Protestant and Catholic. I have not sought to
promote the views of any party, but have aimed at bringing
out the merits of all alike.
One chapter in the book is critical rather than historical,
namely, the first. I rather regret its existence, but my
experience as a teacher has proved to me again and again
that the first step toward making the history of the Israehtes
really interesting to boys who have got beyond the childish
stage is an examination, sympathetic but also candid, of the
sources of the Old Testament. In many circles this will be
accepted as obvious. To those where it is not I would say
such knowledge is bound to come quickly enough to any boy
who is inteUigently interested in his religion : if he is left
to find out for himself what his teachers concealed from him,
he will not only think the worse of his teachers (which
perhaps matters little), but may also think the worse of the
religion which is considered to stand in need of obscurantist
defences. My account probably errs on the side of con-
servatism and tradition rather than on the other.
The book has been composed in the spare time of
a schoolmaster's life and may, I fear, contain some in-
accuracies of which I shall be glad to receive notice. It
would contain many more but for the kind help of Mr.
H. H. Hardy, Headmaster of Cheltenham, and two others
who read the work in manuscript.
Two small points remain. In my Biblical quotations I
viii PREFACE
have taken the liberty of using whatever version seemed
most suitable to my purpose, either Authorised or Revised
or, in one or two cases, translations made by modern
scholars to bring out particular points. Secondly, I have
rejected advice rather urgently pressed on me to use the
Greek alphabet when quoting Greek words. Now that so
many receive a liberal education which entirely excludes
Greek, this seems a concession which we, who have learnt
Greek, ought to be willing to make for the convenience
of others. I have, however, preserved the Greek letters
in a few cases where the Greek word can have no interest
except to those who know the language.
D. C. SOMERVELL.
ToNBRlDGE, January, 1922.
NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
The kindness of several correspondents enables me to make
a variety of small corrections and improvements in the
second edition. The alterations made are, however, not
conspicuous, and a class in which some members used the
first edition and some the second would not suffer any
inconvenience from this fact. The most considerable changes
are : on page 297, an emendation of my previous incorrect
account of the organisation of the Scottish Church ; and on
page 326, a paragraph on the work of the Student Christian
Movement.
D. C. S.
October, 1922.
CONTENTS
PAGE
Preface - v
PART I
THE PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY
CHAPTER
I. Structure of the Old Testament - - - - i
II. The Religion of Israel from Moses to Elijah - 15
(i) The Religion of Moses - - - - - 16
(ii) The Five Centuries after Moses - - - - 19
HI. The Prophets, 760-537 b.c. ----- 26
(i) Amos - - 27
(ii) Hosea -------- ^o
(iii) Isaiah 31
(iv) Deuteronomy ------- 35
(v) Jeremiah 40
(vi) Ezekiel ^3
(vii) Deutero- Isaiah ------- 46
IV. The Jewish Church of the Restoration - - 49
(i) The character of the Jewish Church - - - 51
(ii) The Messianic Hope ------ 59
Bibliography 64
PART II
THE FIRST FOUR CENTURIES OF CHRISTIANITY
V. Christ 5^
(i) The substance of Christ's teaching - - - 65
(ii) Christ's method in establishing the Church - 70
ix
X CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
VI. The Work of the First Generation - - - 77
(i) The Church in Jerusalem 79
(ii) Religious ideas in the Roman Empire at the time
of Christ ------- 82
(iii) St. Paul - - - 92
VII. The Gospels -------- ioi
(i) The First Three Gospels - - - - - loi
(ii) The Fourth Gospel - - - - - - 107
VIII. Christian Thought under the Roman Empire - 113
(i) The heretic Marcion - - - - - - "4
(ii) Clement and Origen - - - - - -117
(iii) The Arian Controversy and the Nicene Creed - 120
IX. The Triumph of Christianity over Paganism - 125
(i) The spread of Christianity - - - - 125
(ii) The Persecutions - - - - - -127
(iii) Constantine, Julian, and Theodosius - - - 132
(iv) Quantity and Quality - - - - - I34
Bibliography - 136
PART III
THE MEDIAEVAL CHURCH AND THE REFORMA-
TION
X. General Survey 137
XI. The Church and Christendom in the Dark Ages 142
XII. Great Christians of the Dark Ages - - - 149
(i) Augustine 149
(ii) Jerome 151
(iii) Gregory the Great and the beginnings of the
Papacy - - - - - - 153
(iv) Between Gregory and Charlemagne - - 1^6
(v) Charlemagne ------- 159
XIII. The Great Age of the Papacy - - - - 162
(i) Gregory VII. (Hildebrand) - - - - 164
(ii) Successors of Gregory VII. - - - 166
CONTENTS xi
CHAPTER PAGE
XIV. The Crusades 171
(i) The causes of the Crusades - - - - 171
(ii) The course of the Crusades - - - - 174
XV. Saints and Scholars of the Middle Ages - 180
(i) Abelard, Bernard and Thomas Aquinas :
mediaeval learning 180
(ii) Francis and Dominic : the Friars - - - 182
(iii) Dante 185
(iv) Saints of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries - 188
XVI. The Collapse of the Mediaeval Church - - 195
(i) Captivity, Schism and Rebellion - - - 195
(ii) The Councils of Constance and Basel - - I99
(iii) The Renaissance : Erasmus - - _ - 206
XVII, Reformation and Counter-Reformation - - 212
(i) Luther ------- 212
(ii) The Counter-Reformation : Loyola and the
Jesuits 217
(iii) Calvin and Calvinism 223
(iv) Religious Wars and Toleration - - - - 227
Bibliography 230
PART IV
GREAT BRITAIN SINCE THE REFORMATION
XVIII. Anglicans and Puritans 232
(i) The Elizabethan Settlement - - . . 232
(ii) The Puritans 235
(iii) John Bunyan 244
(iv) George Fox and the Society of Friends - - 247
XIX. Methodists and Evangelicals .... 252
(i) John Wesley 252
(ii) Evangelical clergy and laity - - - - 257
(iii) Church, Chapel, and the Industrial Revolution - 259
XX. The Victorian Age 265
(i) The State of the Church at the time of the
Reform Bill of 1832 265
(ii) The Oxford Movement 267
Xll
CONTENTS
CHAPTER FACiE
XX. The Victorian Age — continued
(iii) The " Christian Socialists " - - - - 275
(iv) Nonconformity 279
(v) Faith and Science 283
(vi) The Poetry of Robert Browning - - - 289
XXI. Scotland 293
(i) General Characteristics 293
(ii) The Kirk and the Stuarts 294
(iii) The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries - - 301
XXII. Missions 305
(i) From the Arians to the Jesuits - - - - 305
(ii) Protestant and modern Missionary Work - - 309
XXIII. The Present Day ------- 315
(i) The Lambeth Conference of 1920 - - -315
(ii) Self-Government in the Church of England - 319
(iii) Conclusion 324
Bibliography 328
Index 329
PART I
THE PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY
CHAPTER I
THE STRUCTURE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
OUR main authority for the history of the Hebrew or
Jewish religion, which Christ inherited and out of
which Christianity grew, is the Old Testament.
Before we can understand that history it is necessary to form
some idea of the nature of that great Library of Sacred Books
and of the kind of information we shall be able to get from it
The Bible is still and will of course always be the ' text-book '
of Christianity. But if we compare it for a moment with
' text-books ' in use for the study of secular subjects we
perceive at once an important difference. Our text-books
of History or of Chemistry have been written in our own day
and for our own use, with our own special needs in view.
The Old Testament as we have it to-day was similarly
compiled, not for our use but for the use of a Jewish com-
munity living two thousand years ago,^ and with not our
but their special needs in view. As I hope to show, the Old
Testament can become as valuable to us as it was to these
^ The collection of the various books of the Old Testament into
a Sacred Canon of Scripture, as distinguished from the writing of
the Books themselves, was accomplished mostly during the two
centuries before Christ.
2 THE PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY
ancient Jews, but for us its values, its true meaning, do not
by any means always lie on the surface.
Let us start, however, with a surface impression. What
are the contents of the Old Testament } — thirty-nine
* books,' which owe a certain outward similarity to the fact
that they are all clothed for us in the magnificent and other-
wise unfamiliar English of the early Stuart period. These
thirty-nine books would probably be divided by a modern
reader who approached them for the first time into five
groups.
(i) Genesis, which stands alone as an account of ' origins ' ;
first, the origin of the human race — the Creation, the Fall,
the Flood, etc. ; secondly, the origin of the Hebrew race in
the lives of Abraham and three generations of his descen-
dants, and at the end the removal of the family from Palestine
to Egypt. The dates in the margin of the Bible indicate that
the period covered is 4004 B.C. to 1689 B.C. These dates we
owe to the calculations of Dr. Ussher, Archbishop of Dublin
in the reign of Charles I., who worked them out from the
careful statements in the text as to the ages of the various
characters in the stories, but we now know that the earlier
date at any rate has no sort of historical value, as we possess
evidence of the existence of civilised man two thousand years
earlier than 4000 B.C.
(ii) Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. These
books describe the leading forth of the Israelites from their
Egyptian slavery, and their adventures in their passage across
the desert. The last chapter recounts the death of their
leader Moses on the threshold of the Promised Land. But
by far the greater part of these four books is taken up not
with narrative but with laws said to have been delivered to
the people by Moses from the slopes of Mount Sinai, or, in
Deuteronomy (meaning ' second law ') from the slopes of the
mountain to the south of Palestine on which he afterwards
THE STRUCTURE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 3
died. The dates covered by these books are given in the
margin as 1491-1451. This is probably about one hundred
and fifty years too early as regards the narrative parts. The
laws on the other hand date from widely different periods, as
will be shown later.
(iii) Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, Ezra,
Nehemiah, Esther. Here we have a fairly continuous history
of the Chosen People from the time of their invasion of
Palestine down to their conquest by Nebuchadnezzar. The
dates given are 1451-588, and from the time of David onwards
these dates may be taken as approximately correct. Of the
captivity in Babylon which followed, virtually nothing is told,
but Ezra and Nehemiah give some account of the re-establish-
ment of the Jewish community at Jerusalem (dates 536-445).
The Books of Chronicles, however, do not continue the
narrative of the Books of Kings, but contain another account
of the period described in the Books of Samuel and Kings.
The book of Ezra is easily seen to be continuous with
Chronicles, since the last paragraph of Chronicles is used as
the first paragraph of Ezra : and Nehemiah continues Ezra.
Ruth and Esther are biographical stories rather than histories.
In these first three groups of books of the Old Testament
the reader will find that the work is of diverse character ;
narratives brimful of romance and poetry and human interest
side by side with dry genealogies, fists of names, and masses
of detailed regulations regarding sacrifices and other religious
ceremonial. A moment's thought will suggest the probability
that these different types of work do not all come from the
same author.
(iv) Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon
{or Song of Songs). Here we pass from History to Poetry,
Job is a lyrical drama or dialogue, dealing, by means of a kind
of parable, with the old problem why God, since He is just,
allows the righteous to suffer instead of apportioning suffering
4 THE PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY
as a punishment for sin. The Psalms are a collection, or
several combined collections, of one hundred and fifty hymns.
The Proverbs are in part collections of pithy sayings or
epigrams, and in part hymns similar in character to the
Psalms though celebrating * wisdom ' rather than righteous-
ness. Ecclesiastes contains further collections of epigrams,
but in the main it is a somewhat melancholy essay on the
Vanity of Life. The Song of Solomon is a rapturous and
highly fanciful love song, or collection of love songs, which
was included in the Scriptures as an allegory of Jehovah's
marriage with Israel.
(v) Isaiah and the following sixteen hooks. These are books
of prophecy or preaching, collections of sermons we might
almost call them, each collection being headed by the name
of its author. Three books here mark exceptions from the
general character of the rest. Lamentations is a group of
psalms on the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar,
associated with the name of Jeremiah. Daniel (first six
chapters) and Jonah contain not prophecy but biographical
stories, and thus resemble Ruth and Esther rather than the
other prophetical books. The last six chapters of Daniel
are an example of the so-called * apocalyptic literature,' not
found elsewhere in the Bible except in a few chapters of
Ezekiel and in the Apocalypse or Revelation of St. John the
Divine at the end of the New Testament, a form of preaching
by means of strange visions of ' beasts ' and other super-
natural symbols.
Now it is obvious that we should learn much from these
books which must otherwise remain obscure, if we could
discover when and for what purpose they were written.
This is especially so with the historical books. The modern
scientific historian compiles his narrative from documents as
closely contemporary as possible with the period about which
he is writing. But the first historians of primitive peoples
relied mostly upon unwritten traditions, the common
THE STRUCTURE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 5
memories, the popular ballads, of their tribe, and these were
liable to all kinds of subtle processes of alteration as memory
faded or as fresh circumstances led people to view the past
in a different light. Our modern hard and fast distinction
between history and fiction simply did not exist for such
writers. . Their attitude of mind is nearer to that of the poet
than the historian, and the author of an historical poem will
compose his work in no spirit of antiquarian accuracy, but as
one inspired with a noble message to his own readers, a
message he can best convey by means of a tale drawn from
past history, but freely rearranged to suit his purpose. Even
if he should aim at the modern type of accuracy he will have
no means of achieving it. Many versions of the tale he
intends to use he will find already in existence. Each will
present differences from all the rest and no possible method
is available to him for deciding which is the truth. He com-
bines such elements as best suit his purpose and leaves the
rest. His choice will provide us with the clue to his own
character and outlook, and the character and outlook of his
times.
Thus, to take an extreme instance, the story of the Creation
and the Fall tells us, as we now know, nothing whatever about
the origin of the world and of human life : but it may tell us a
great deal about the religious ideas of the Hebrews at the
time when the story was composed, if we can discover when
it was composed.
During the last hundred years or so an immense work of
scientific investigation has been carried through regarding
the composition of the Old Testament. Much in detail
remains to be done, but the main facts are now established
almost beyond dispute ; and it is not too much to say that
they have revolutionised our ideas about the Old Testament
as completely as Natural Science has, during the same period,
revolutionised our ideas about the origins of life and variations
of species.
These discoveries have been of a startling character and
6 THE PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY
have upset old familiar ideas to which religious sentiment had
naturally become attached. Hence it was no uncommon
thing fifty years ago or even less for devout persons to regard
Biblical Criticism as something hostile to religious faith.
Such a view sprang from a mistaken idea as to the nature of
the Divine Inspiration or Revelation contained in the Bible.
This mistaken idea, reduced to its simplest terms, assumed
that God guided the hands of the writers of the Bible so that
they wrote nothing that was not absolutely and eternally
true. There is no need to-day to show how untenable this
idea of ' verbal inspiration ' is. What God revealed to His
Chosen People was not a Bible for them to copy out, but the
fundamental truths of religion. These Pie revealed, through
Moses and through the Prophets, and, at the same time, as
is His way, He left his Chosen People free to make what
they could of it, to accept or to reject. The Bible is the
record both of the revelation and of the manner in which it
was received, and, in large measure, rejected. The more
criticism can tell us the better shall w^e be able to under-
stand both God's part and man's part in the story. The
criticism itself is almost entirely the work not of atheists and
infidels but of men quite as devout as any of those who have
been shocked by the results of their labours.
What follows is a general account of the composition of
the Old Testament as revealed by modern research.^ In
reading it, bear in mind the following general dates :
Abraham, - - - - about 2100.?
Moses, . . - .
1300.
David, ....
1000.
Elijah, ....
850.
The Captivity,
600.
The career of Ezra,
450.
Wars of Judas Maccabaeus, -
160.
* For the sake of clearness and brevity I have stated as ascertained
facts what are actually only extremely probable suppositions on
which the great bulk of modern scholars are agreed.
THE STRUCTURE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 7
Let us begin with the first six books of the Bible, which
modern scholars group together as the Hexateuch (Greek
* hex ' = Latin sex = six). These books consist partly of
narratives of events down to the time of the conquest of
Canaan under Joshua, and partly of law.
To take the narrative parts first. Sometime in the ninth
century, about the time of Elijah, a collection was made in
written form of the ancient and hitherto probably mainly
unwritten traditions of the Hebrew peoples. This collection
was made in Judah, the southern kingdom. About a hundred
years later, say 750, about the time of Amos, the earliest
prophet to leave a written book, and only thirty years before
the extinction of the northern kingdom, another such collec-
tion of the old traditions was made in the northern kingdom.
These two collections were subsequently combined, but we
know that there were originally two from certain differences
of style and outlook. The first collection is known as J from
the fact that it gives God the name Jehovah, ^ the special
name of the god of the Hebrews, and thus corresponding say
to the Latin Jupiter ; the later collection is known as E
because it uses the name Elohim, a general term for a god
or gods, and thus corresponding to the Latin deus or di. The
writers can also be distinguished by their religious attitude.
J is anthropomorphic ; that is to say, he represents God as
moving familiarly on earth, ' walking in the garden ' of Eden,
or personally visiting and talking with Abraham : E on the
other hand conceives God as an invisible being of the skies,
manifest to man only in visions. They differ also on
various unimportant details, and the editor in his respect for
both texts has allowed the differences to appear in his com-
bined narrative. A curious example may be found in the
story of the ill-treatment of Joseph by his brethren. Accord-
ing to J Joseph was sold to Ishmaelites ; according to E
to Midianites. Owing to the curiously ' uncritical methods '
1 More correctly Yahweh or Jahveh, but I propose to use the old
familiar spelling.
8 THE PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY
(as we should now say) of the editor, our Bible now reads
" And behold a travelling company of Ishmaelites came . . .
and Judah said . . . Let us sell him to the IshmaeHtes . . . and
there passed by Midianites, merchantmen , . . and they sold
Joseph to the Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver. And
they brought Joseph into Egypt. . . . And the Midianites
sold him into Egypt unto Potiphar," (Gen. xxxvii. 25-36).
Two questions arise. What were these traditions .? and,
why were they thus compiled and written down ?
The traditions of the Hebrew people served with them the
many and varied purposes that such traditions serve with all
primitive peoples. They were the embodiment of the
national memory, the achievement of the national thought.
They enshrined the primitive religion, the primitive con-
ceptions of science, the primitive conceptions of history, and
these not separately but all as part so to speak of a single
subject. Thus the story of Abraham and Lot is primitive
religion inasmuch as it expresses the loving-kindness and long-
suffering of God and His readiness to listen to Abraham's
prayer on behalf of his kinsman ; primitive science inasmuch
as it offers an explanation (though a wrong one) of the origin
of the Dead Sea ; primitive history inasmuch as it attributes
to Abraham, the ancestor of Israel, his descendants' prefer-
ence for the hill country rather than the valleys.
Why were the traditions thus compiled and written down ?
Not, we may be sure, from any such purpose as might lead
a modern scholar to piece together the history of the distant
past, — not from any disinterested love of learning merely
for itself. They were compiled by the prophets, and the
whole aim of the prophets was to reform the religious life of
the people of their own day. Thus it is likely enough that
the compilers did more than copy the old traditions ; they
improved them, breathing into them a religious exaltation to
which earlier generations had never risen.
What precisely was the fortune of these books during the
next five hundred years we do not know, but it is certain that
THE STRUCTURE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 9
somewhere around 400 B.C., after the Return from Captivity
and the estabhshment of that rigid Jewish community whose
history hes between the Old and New Testaments, which
finally crucified Jesus Christ, another writer, called for
convenience P ( = priestly), compiled a kind of chronological
outline of the driest character, the purpose of which appar-
ently was to prove that the Jews were God's chosen people
by means of a genealogy connecting them with Adam.
Last of all, a century or so later, a final editor combined
all the above material, dovetailing the various parts together
as neatly as he could, but, in his anxiety to preserve all, not
always very careful to make sure that his various extracts
did not contradict one another.
Into this scheme we must conceive the legal portions to
have been fitted. Here it is even easier to distinguish three
wholly distinct works of very different dates.
(i) In Exodus xx.-xxiii. and xxiv. 3-8 we have a very
primitive body of law known as the Book of the Covenant.
This may well be the oldest passage in the Bible, and date
from Moses himself.
(ii) The Book of Deuteronomy consists of a series of noble
discourses intermingled with regulations aimed at securing
purity of worship in the Temple or Tabernacle. These
discourses are attributed to Moses, as the old hero's farewell
message to his people delivered on the ?lopes of Nebo, the
mountain which in the final chapter he ascends to meet his
mysterious end. But this is merely a literary device of the
author, for the discourses are plainly addressed to a people
living under a monarchy and long familiar with God's law,
from which they are described as having frequently lapsed.
There are very good reasons for thinking that Deuteronomy
is, in fact, the " Book of the Laws of the Lord " published so
impressively in the reign of Josiah in b.c. 621 (see p. 36).^
(iii) There remains the large mass of legislation, partly
moral but more largely ceremonial, which fills the whole of
^ II. Kings xxii., xxiii.
10 THE PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY
Leviticus, most of Numbers, and some of the later chapters
of Exodus. These laws belong to very different stages in
Israel's development: just as in our own English law,
regulations made last month and unrepealed statutes of
Edward III. may coexist side by side. But what we have
in the Bible is an ' edition ' of these miscellaneous laws
dating from a late period, after the restoration of the Jewish
Church by Ezra.
The other books can for our present purpose be more
shortly dealt with. Judges consists very largely of early
material dating from a period not much later than that of
the Judges themselves, and its barbaric character has been
but little softened by its later editors.
The two Books of Samuel are a compilation by a late
editor from two ancient sources. In his case, however, the
two sources belong, as it were, to opposite political and
religious parties ; and their discrepancies, which the final
editor has left quite plain for all to see, cannot but warn us,
were warning needed, that the ' historical ' books of the Old
Testament are not to be regarded as history in the modern
sense of the word. The earlier writer is a royalist, and he
represents Samuel as anointing Saul by Jehovah's command
in order that Israel may have a leader against the Philistines.
The later writer is an anti-royalist, no doubt influenced by
the wickedness displayed by the later kings whom his fellow-
prophets denounced. He represents Samuel and not Saul
as the conqueror of the Philistines. The people then demand
a king, a request which Samuel views as rebellion against
Jehovah. At the bidding of Jehovah, however, he consents,
and Saul is chosen king by lot, after Samuel has first plainly
told the people that kingship will lead to tyranny and
oppression.
With the two Books of Kings we border on the period in
which the narrative parts of the Old Testament were first
collected in writing. These books are mainly based on
narratives nearly contemporary with the events they describe.
THE STRUCTURE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT ii
They, however, have been edited by a 'Deuteronomic writer,'
that is to say, a writer influenced by the Deuteronomic
teaching which was only pubhshed in the reign of Josiah,
almost at the end of the period covered, i.e. Solomon to the
Captivity, 980-586. The editor is responsible for the
soimmary condemnation — " He did that which was evil in
the sight of the Lord," which concludes the account of nearly
every reign, the reason being that these pre-Deuteronomic
kings conducted sacrificial worship elsewhere than in Jerusa-
lem, which was contrary to the Deuteronomic teaching.
Such censure fell unfairly on good and bad alike. It is as
if a Puritan historian, editing a history of England, were to
have written as a footnote to every reign previous to Henry
VHL, " he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord,"
on the ground that adoration of the Virgin Mary and invo-
cation of the Saints under Roman Catholic rites prevailed
during the reign.
Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah, which form a single work,
were written at a late date, about 300 B.C., probably by a
Levite of the restored Jewish Temple. The writer, whose
methods are much the same as those of P, the latest contri-
butor to the Hexateuch, begins with a series of genealogies
tracing descent from Adam, and then proceeds to a history
of the kings from David onwards, ignoring however the
northern kingdom. He views the past through the spectacles
of the present and imagines the elaborate ceremonial of the
restored Jewish Church to have existed in the time of David.
David and Solomon he glorifies as faithful observers of this
law, and the Captivity he regards as the Divine punishment
for its non-observance by their successors. Throughout, his
main interest is in the ceremonial of the Temple, and, owing
to his late date, he is inferior as an authority to Kings. Ezra
and Nehemiah contain, however, amidst many genealogies
and lists of names, some personal memoirs of the two great
men, the priest and the soldier, who together established the
Jewish Church of the last four and a half centuries B.C.
12 THE PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY
It is difficult to assign precise dates to the poetical books :
Job^ Psalms, Proverbs, Song of Songs, and the half-poetical
Ecclesiastes. In the main they all belong to the period after
the return from the Captivity. Opinion is still much divided
as to the date of most of the Psalms. The Psalter has been
well called " The Hymn Book of the Second Temple " [i.e. the
Temple built after the return from captivity) ; no doubt
the collection was made for the purpose of the worship of the
Temple. But just as the hymns of our own modern hymn-
books date from every period from the fourth to the twentieth
centuries, so the psalms may date from every century from
the eleventh, the time of David, to the third or the second
century B.C. Many modern scholars, however, are very
doubtful as to the possibility of any of the psalms coming
from the hand of King David himself, and believe that the
great bulk were written during and after the Captivity. If
this be so, it throws a valuable light on the religious life of
the centuries that lie between the time of the Captivity and
the coming of Our Lord. We are too apt to think of that
period as a time when inspiration was dead, and Law and the
unprofitable Pharisees supreme. It is important to realise
that there also flourished during that period a spirit of
intimate religious devotion finding expression in sublime
poetry : that Christ came to live in a community that
produced the Psalmists as well as the Pharisees.
The results of modern criticism as applied to the parts of
the Old Testament already mentioned may seem a little
bewildering, as introducing many doubts in place of the
old famihar certainties or supposed certainties. It is in
connection with the Prophetic Books that the services of the
critics have been most unquestionable. In former days this
part of the Old Testament was, to tell the truth, a desert of
obscurities, dotted here and there with famous outbursts of
eloquence, which even so suffered from the obscurity of their
context. Modern criticism has established on a firm basis
the individuality of each prophet in his proper historical
THE STRUCTURE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 13
circumstances, and through the ' book ' revealed the ' man.*
The written prophecies cover a period of at least three
hundred years, from Amos, 760 b.c, to Malachi, about
450 B.C. One or two small books and parts of books may be
later still, and the book of Daniel (which is not strictly
prophecy at all but a narrative introducing a series of apoca-
lyptic visions) has been found to belong to the period of
Judas Maccabaeus, 160 B.C., and the Story of Jonah also
belongs to a late date.
Now, in what light should we view the results of modern
scientific research as above described }
Firstly, we should rejoice in the discovery of this as of all
other truth, but more particularly in the discovery of such
truth as throws light on the history of man's prime concern,
religion. The history of religion is the history both of man's
attitude towards God, and also of ' the ways of God to Man.'
Any help that science may give us towards solving the
problems of religion will be welcomed by all except those self-
satisfied (and to that extent irreligious) persons who feel that
the problems of religion are already settled, and that our
imperfect human minds have already done all that is possible
in the way of solving the Insoluble and defining the Infinite.
For them there can be no *fresh progress, no fresh discovery
in religion. Were that so, then God's work for Man were
done and finished, which surely we cannot believe it
to be.
Secondly, notice that while much is gained, nothing of
value is lost though its aspect be changed. The Twenty-
third psalm, "The Lord is my Shepherd," has no less a
message of comfort if we find that it was written not by David
but by an unknown poet centuries later. The noble sermons
of Deuteronomy are not the less inspired because they were
not taken down from the lips of Moses.
Even where modern criticism has thrown doubt on the
course of events, as in the case of the origin of the kingship,
or removed a great figure such as Abraham from the realm
14 THE PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY
of history to the realm of legend,^ though much supposed
* history ' is swept away, not a shadow of doubt is thereby
thrown on the fact of God's revelation. We must learn,
however, to see that revelation in a new light, and to try so
to see it is the purpose of the three following chapters. On
the whole, when so seen, the story becomes much more
inspiring, because much more progressive. According to
the old view the Israelites of Moses' day started fully
equipped as regards reUgious insight, and the whole story
that followed was one of backslidings. God had no more to
reveal after Moses' day till the time of Christ. He could only
intervene to remind His people of what lie had revealed
already. According to the modern view the work of Moses
was but a foundation, and the great prophets stand out as
marking, not a series of restorations, which is dull, but a
series of great ventures into the Unknown, of steps forward
in the revelation of God to Man. The history of religion
becomes, hke the history of science, a tale of pioneering and
discovery.
1 Modern writers differ greatly as to how far the stories of Abraham,
Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph can be regarded as history. The safest
plan is therefore to begin our definitely historical narrative with
Moses. This need not imply a definite denial of the historical reality
of the Patriarchs.
CHAPTER II
THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL FROM MOSES TO
ELIJAH, 1300-850 B.C.
THE last chapter has given us the following important
facts, (i) Our Old Testament as it has come down to
us was almost entirely composed during two periods,
the period of the Prophets, extending roughly from Elijah
to the end of the Captivity (850-450), and the period of
the Scribes from Ezra onwards (450-160). (ii) The writers,
being greatly concerned with the needs of their own genera-
tion and very httle concerned with what to-day would be
called historical scholarship, have viewed the past in the
light of what was to them the present, and attributed
to the periods of which they write ideas and institutions
which belong only to their own later day.
The present chapter attempts to sketch the history of the
rehgion of Israel during the five centuries from its beginnings
in Moses down to the time of Elijah and the first ' historians '
J and E. It is already plain that we are here very largely
dependent on conjecture, and that only a very general outline
is possible. Indeed we may content ourselves with attempt-
ing to answer two questions only.
(i) What was the religion which Moses gave Israel, and
how did it differ from the paganism of the Semitic or Arabic
tribes from which Israel was sprung and amongst which Israel
lived }
(ii) How far was the religion of Moses either preserved or
15
i6 THE PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY
developed during the five centuries that follow ; that is to
say, during the period of the Judges, Samuel, Saul, David,
Solomon, down to Ahab and Elijah ?
(i) The Religion of Moses. The religions of the world
are commonly divided into two classes, polytheistic (wor-
shipping many gods), and monotheistic (worshipping one god).
Neither of these terms, however, is suitable for describing
the religion of the Semitic tribes of the Old Testament
period. Each tribe normally worshipped one god only, the
god of the tribe. This tribal god, from whom the tribe
believed itself descended, was conceived as a kind of invisible
king, keenly interested in the pohtical and mihtary welfare
of his tribe, its champion in war, its guardian in peace, and,
like an earthly king, liable to fits of ill-humour, and very
ready to punish the tribe if it behaved disrespectfully towards
him and neglected the religious ceremonies which were the
symbols of its obedience to him. Like an earthly king, the
tribal god was not concerned with the personal morahty of
his people, except in so far as it affected the pohtical or
military efficiency of the tribe. Again, like an earthly king,
the tribal god's power was limited, — Hmited by the power
of other tribes and their tribal gods. For these Semitic tribes
no more denied the existence of other tribal gods than an
Englishman would to-day deny the existence of the President
of the United States ; only, they held that such gods were
no concern of theirs.
This type of religion, which combines characteristics both
of polytheism and of monotheism, is sometimes called heno-
theism (worship of one god), as distinct from monotheism,
which properly means worship of the only god. (Greek
* heno-' = Latin unus : Greek ' mono-' = Latin solus.)
Henotheism was always liable, however, to drift into
polytheism. Suppose you made an alliance with a neigh-
bouring tribe : it would then be common courtesy and
common sense to pay some respect to the gods of your allies.
RELIGION OF ISRAEL FROM MOSES TO ELIJAH 17
It was Solomon's policy of foreign alliances which led him
not only to multiply his wives but to introduce * heathen '
worships at Jerusalem. Conversely, the religious leaders of
a later date vehemently opposed foreign alliances and stood
for a policy of * glorious isolation ' in the political sphere,
as the only means of preserving the purity of Israel's re-
ligion.
Such we may assume to have been the religious ideas of
the Israelites of the Exodus, the ground on which Moses
had to build (for the evidence seems to show that the Israelites
did not bring with them from Egypt the religion of their
comparatively highly civiHsed Egyptian taskmasters). What
then did Moses achieve }
Moses came from the desert with a message of deliverance
to his distressed and enslaved fellow-countrymen. His
message was that Jehovah, the God of Mount Sinai away in
the desert, symbolical of freedom from the yoke of a crushing
alien civilisation, would help them to freedom if they would
first bestir themselves and face the enormous risks of in-
surrection. It is only on such terms that God will help Mar^
to whom He has given free will.
The miracle of rebellion after centuries of slavery was
accomplished. How great a miracle this was we may realise
when we remember that during the American Civil War,
when half the States were fighting for the freedom of the
negroes, the slaves hardly bestirred themselves at all to
assist their deliverers. Slavery crushes out at last even the
impulse towards freedom.
Moses led the Israelites into the desert, and there, as
tradition related, a solemn covenant was made between
Jehovah the delivering God and His people. This event
marks the birth of the Hebrew nation, and of the religion
from which world-wide Christianity is descended.
There is only one point on which we can be quite certain
that this religion differed from ordinary Semitic henotheism.
" Other Semitic peoples believed that the god-people relation,
S.R.H. B
i8 THE PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY
which subsisted between them and their gods, rested on
some fact of physical generation ; their god had begotten
them as his children, or else it was based upon some primeval
condition of things which was not defined. But the god-
people relation between Israel and Jehovah rested upon a
definite covenant — a covenant towards the formation of
which Jehovah had taken the first steps. He had sought
them in their affliction in Egypt and had in mercy brought
them to Sinai. And here, at this moment remembered by
everyone, a voluntary agreement was entered into." ^
Religions have been classified as nature religions and
historical religions. ^ Ancestor worship and the worship of
the sun or the moon or a sacred river are nature religions.
The religion of Israel, like Christianity or Mohammedanism,
is an historical religion, originating in a real and verifiable
historical event. The religion of Israel almost certainly owes
to its historical origin certain characteristics distinguishing
it from the outset from the nature religions of neighbouring
tribes.
The covenant was in itself a moral relationship, and this
fact may well have led Moses to condemn at the outset
various forms of rehgious ceremonial common to the neigh-
bouring nature religions. Among the Canaanite tribes,
tribal ancestor-gods were worshipped with human sacrifices,
and, what must seem even stranger, with an • organised
system of ceremonial acts of immorality. Though the
Israelites did not keep clear of these hideous errors there
seems to have been always a tradition of opposition to them,
and it seems natural to suppose that that tradition descends
direct from Moses.
Again, the fact that Jehovah had, of His own spontaneous
loving-kindness, chosen His people instead of merely beget-
^ Hamilton, The People of God, vol. i. page 43.
* The term ' nature religion ' is used rather than ' natural religion,'
because writers have often distinguished ' natural religion ' (religion
discovered by man's unaided faculties) from ' revealed religion '
(religion specially revealed by God).
RELIGION OF ISRAEL FROM MOSES TO ELIJAH 19
ting them after the manner of all parents good or bad, may
well have led Israel to realise a little more than their neigh-
bours the transcendent moral character of their God, and
His concern for man's spiritual welfare as well as for the
political and military welfare of the tribe.
Further than this we cannot go. The religion of Israel
during the five centuries following Moses was, even at its
best, only henotheism. Jehovah was only one god among
many, in spite of His special characteristics ; and He was
regarded mainly as the leader of Israel's host, who was apt
to resent honour given to other gods : of His moral require-
ments we hear comparatively little. He is, first and fore-
most, a ' Lord of Hosts,' champion of Israel's hosts fighting
both just and unjust wars against their neighbours.
(ii) The five centuries after Moses. The Book of Joshua
suggests, and it was at one time generally supposed, that the
Israelites rapidly conquered and virtually exterminated the
Canaanite tribes inhabiting the Promised Land, and formed
therein a compact homogeneous kingdom. This was far
from being the case, as, indeed, the following book. Judges,
shows. Such exterminations of native inhabitants are rare
in history, except when, as in certain regions of the British
Empire, the invading people are of a totally different race
and immeasurably higher civilisation. Indeed, early English
history here furnishes a close parallel to the history of Israel.
Fifty years ago it was quite generally believed by one school
of historians that the Anglo-Saxons virtually exterminated
the ancient Britons or drove them into Wales and Cornwall,
and that the history of Roman Britain was a detached
episode connected only by geographical considerations with
English History proper. We now know, however, that
there was no such extermination, that Saxons and Britons
survived side by side and intermarried, and that the Saxons
borrowed many of their ideas and institutions from the more
civilised ' Romanised ' Britons.
20 THE PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY
In the same way the Canaanites survived and became
assimilated with the Israehtes, and were responsible for much
in Hebrew history. They were, in fact, by economic
standards, the more highly civilised people of the two. From
them the Hebrew^s learnt the arts of agriculture. Now " the
Canaanites had no one national deity, but worshipped local
agricultural gods called Baalim, who were supposed to make
the soil fertile and the harvest plentiful. These Baahm were
celebrated in the three great agricultural festivals, at the
beginning and end of the wheat harvest, and at the in-
gathering of the grapes in the autumn. This serv^ice was
marked by specially gross indulgence in feasting and drinking,
and since the worship of the Baals w^as accompanied by that
of the Ashtaroths, or female goddesses of fecundity, im-
morality was unrestrained." ^
It was almost inevitable that the Hebrews should take over
this ' nature religion ' of agriculture from the people who
taught them the arts of agriculture. Had they been any
ordinary Semitic tribe they would probably have also
abandoned the worship of Jehovah, located in now distant
Sinai. This they did not do, though it is likely that the
w^orship of Jehovah owed its survival even more to its
military than to its moral qualities. Jehovah stood for
united Israel ; and foreign invasions, here as elsewhere in
history, supplied the cement of national unity. After each
triumph of the Judges we read, in the words of the later
historian, that *' the land had rest " for a certain number of
years, and " the people did evil in the sight of the Lord " ;
that is to say, their main concern was with agriculture and
the Baalim of agriculture. Then came another invasion,
and another judge who revived the worship of Jehovah as
the symbol of national patriotism. Thus Gideon's battle-
cry is " The sword of the Lord and of Gideon." *
The importance of Samuel seems to lie chiefly in the fact
that he saw that national unity and the worship of Jehovah
^ Hamilton, op. cit. p. 45. « Judges vii. 20.
RELIGION OF ISRAEL FROM MOSES TO ELIJAH 21
stood or fell together, and therefore established the monarchy,
for the tradition that represents the demand for a king as a
sin against Jehovah is certainly a late tradition. The kings
stood for the pre-eminence of Jehovah over the Baalim
exactly as our own sixteenth and seventeenth century kings
stood for the Church of England against both Rome and
Nonconformity. The Church of England represented
English unity as against the divisions of the Nonconformists
and English independence as against the claims of Rome.
The building of Solomon's Temple on the site of the old
Canaanite fortress conquered by David may be taken as the
triumph of the religion of Jehovah over the Canaanite
Baalim.
Yet the religion that thus triumphed was a very imperfect
religion ; and its imperfections, combined with the political
successes of the kings, were exposing it to fresh pitfalls. The
builder of the Temple of Jehovah also built temples for
Moloch and for Chemosh, and the rest.^ In doing all this
Solomon and his successors had no intention of abandoning
the religion of Jehovah. The editor of the Book of Kings
accuses them of doing so, but he wrote under the influence
of the purer rehgion of the prophets, and Solomon's ' heno-
theism * seemed as unnatural to him as it does to us.
Solomon's Jehovah, however, was only the God of Israel,
and he did not feel that Jehovah would be outraged by
diplomatic courtesies to Jehovah's colleagues, the gods of
the nations with whom Israel was in alliance.
This tendency reached its climax a little more than a
hundred years later in Ahab, a king of the Northern Kingdom
(876-854). Ahab was dominated by his Tyrian wife, Jezebel,
and the worship of Jehovah was dominated by that of the
1 I. Kings xi. 5-8. " For Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess
of the Zidonians and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites.
. . . Then did Solomon build an high place for Chemosh the abomina-
tion of Moab, in the mount that is before Jerusalem, and for Molech
the abomination of the children of Ammon. And so did he for all
his strange wives, which burnt incense and sacrificed unto their gods."
22 THE PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY
Tyrian Baal. It was this state of affairs that provoked the
protest of Ehjah, the forerunner of the great prophets. In
order to understand the position of Ehjah it is necessary to
give some account of the origin and character of the pro-
phetical movement.
Hebrew prophecy, like the other elements in the Hebrew
rehgion, can be traced back to a point at which it is scarcely,
if at all, distinguishable from parallel features in ordinary
Semitic * heathenism.' The Hebrew word for prophet, as
also the Greek word prophetes, does not mean a foreteller of
the future, but an interpreter, one who is ' spoken through,'
or in the language of modern spirituahsm, a medium. Any-
one who knows anything of Arab countries to-day knows of
the Mohammedan fakirs, or the dancing dervishes, ' holy
men * subject to strange visitations or trances, w^hose often
unintelligible outpourings are regarded as divine, mainly
perhaps because there seems to be no human explanation of
them. Not very different must have been that gift of
* speaking with tongues ' in the early Christian churches,
which St. Paul discouraged as unprofitable. The Bible offers
a vivid example of this in the story of the prophets of Baal
who contested with Elijah on Mount Carmel ; these prophets
*' leaped about the altar . . . and cried aloud, and cut them-
selves after their manner with knives and lances till the
blood gushed out upon them." ^
Not very far removed above these must have been the
wild unkempt prophets of Jehovah in the days of Samuel
and Saul. The story is difficult to interpret, but it appears
that Saul, after the emotional crisis occasioned by his
selection as king, fell in with a company of these prophets.
Samuel foretells it : " The spirit of the Lord will come
mightily upon thee, and thou shalt prophesy with them and
shalt be turned into another man." ^ And people said *' Is
Saul also among the prophets } " not meaning " How is it
that such a worldly-minded man finds himself in the company
* I. Kings xviii. 26, 28. " I. Samuel x. 6 sq.
RELIGION OF ISRAEL FROM MOSES TO ELIJAH 23
of such pious people ? " but rather, " How comes a person of
such distinction to find himself in such low company ? " ^
But it was not long before a higher strain appeared. Few
figures in Old Testament history are more impressive than
that of the prophet Nathan, who comes to rebuke David'a
sin in murdering Uriah, and, after his fable of the ewe lamb,
points the moral bluntly with his abrupt " Thou art the
man." - Here at once we have the very kernel of Hebrew
prophecy — Jehovah sending His interpreter to rebuke the
mightiest in the land for private sins of which no other
Semitic tribal god had ever taken account.
But the two types of prophet, the prophet of the God that
cares for righteousness and the mere ' medium ' long sub-
sisted side by side. It would be a great mistake to suppose
that the ' false prophets,' as their enemies the great pro-
phets called them, were frauds or impostors. In the great
bulk of cases it is reasonable to suppose that their prophetic
ecstasies were as genuine as those of the Mohammedan
dervish of to-day. At the same time we must hold that,
though not fraudulent, they were certainly ' false,' inasmuch
as their ecstasies were not divine inspirations, and their
messages came from elsewhere than from God, who was now,
under His chosen name of Jehovah, beginning to reveal more
of His Nature and His Will to man than man could ever
before have grasped. When two sets of prophets come
forward with contradictory messages it is possible that both
may honestly believe themselves to be speaking the word of
God. It is quite impossible that both should be right in so
believing. And how were people to decide between them }
The only way was to compare the messages they gave.
The Book of Kings contains a curious story in which the
two schools of prophecy, the new and the old, are brought
face to face, though on a question of politics rather than
religion or morals.^ Ahab is in doubt whether to undertake
* Cornill, Prophets of Israel, p. 13. " IL Samuel xii. 7.
' I. Kings xxii.
24 THE PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY
an expedition against Ramoth-Gilead. His four hundred
' false prophets,' men to whom no doubt Ahab's moral
character, already denounced by Elijah, was a matter of
indifference, urged him to pursue what one might call, in
modern journalese, "his policy of reckless imperialism."
One prophet, however, Micaiah, had the strength to stand
alone and foretell disaster. Being then challenged to defend
his message he does not, as one would expect, assert that the
four hundred have held no communication with Jehovah,
but prefers to suggest that Jehovah, to punish Ahab for his
sins, has " put a lying spirit into the mouths of his prophets "
in order to lure him to destruction.
In Elijah himself the dervish origin of prophecy is clearly
traceable. He is a wild man of the desert ; he girds up his
loins and runs before Ahab's chariot from Carmel to the
entrance of Jezreel : he withdraws and renews his strength
in the southern desert beyond Beersheba, whence the rehgion
of Jehovah had drawn its first inspiration. Whatever we
may think of the miraculous tales in which the life of Elijah
is embedded, it is manifest from them that Elijah was a man
of astonishingly vivid personality.
All this side of him, however, is apt to be the reverse of
impressive to the sceptical and unimaginative modern reader,
who finds " the chariot of fire and horses of fire " ^ an obstacle
rather than a help to taking Elijah seriously. For us the
important question is : What did Elijah preach } Two great
lessons, which are the corner-stones to the prophetical
movement :
(i) Jehovah is the only God with whom Israel may have
dealings. *' How long halt ye," he says, " between two
opinions } If Jehovah be God, serve him, but if Baal be
God, serve him." It is but a step from this to the mono-
theism of the later prophets, who preach that Jehovah, the
God who chose Israel as His people, is also the God of the
whole earth, and that all other gods are non-existent.
* II. Kings ii. ii.
RELIGION OF ISRAEL FROM MOSES TO ELIJAH 25
(ii) Jehovah will punish wickedness. Ahab, to secure for
himself the vineyard of Naboth, had permitted Jezebel to
organise a judicial murder. Naboth had been put on trial
for blasphemy and convicted on the evidence of hired per-
jurers, and his property had thus been confiscated to ' the
Crown.' Elijah is inspired to go and denounce Ahab. " And
Ahab said to Elijah, Hast thou found me, 0 mine enemy }
And he answered, I have found thee : because thou hast
sold thyself to do that which is evil in the sight of Jehovah."
What had Elijah accomplished when he died } Apparently
nothing whatever. The blood-stained house of Ahab was
still reigning, and the avenger, Jehu, whom Elisha, perhaps
inadvisedly, supported, proved as bad as Ahab. Idolatry
and immorality continued to flourish side by side. Such is
generally the fate of the prophets in all ages. In the eyes of
posterity, however, Elijah's achievement figured as second
only to that of Moses. He had founded the great prophetic
movement, and tradition, always seeking for history to
repeat itself, was persuaded that he and none other would
return again to open the Messianic Age.
CHAPTER III
THE PROPHETS (760-537 b.c.)
WE now approach what is incomparably the greatest
achievement in rehgious history before the
ministry of Christ, the achievement of the
prophets whose teaching is preserved in the later books of
the Old Testament. We shall have to pass in review a series
of men of genius who, undismayed by ridicule or persecu-
tion, poured forth in a torrent of inspired passion a message
so new to the world, so utterly in defiance of the notions of
all their contemporaries, that it is difficult to conceive how
they can have come by it without that direct intercourse
with God which they certainly claimed. As was natural
under the circumstances, the external and immediate results
of the work of each of them looked much more like failure
than success. Each prophet must have seemed to himself
to be dashing upon the rocks of invincible sinfulness and
stupidity. Only a later generation, who could survey the
whole field and measure the progress of three centuries, could
know that the achievement was perhaps the most astonishing
in the history of the human mind. The first prophets
preached to an almost completely paganised society : the
last, three centuries later, saw the foundation of the Jewish
Church, the impregnable citadel of a religion which was to
withstand successfully the philosophy of Greece, the political
oppression of Rome, and even to-day, twenty-five centuries
afterwards, build its synagogues in every city of Europe.
Nay more, though itself averse from missionary enterprise, it
THE PROPHETS (760-537 b.c.) 27
became the parent of both the great proselytising rehgions
of modern times — Christianity and Mohammedanism.
The Old Testament contains sixteen books bearing the
names of prophets. The number of prophets represented is,
however, somewhat greater, since some of the books are the
work of more than one hand. The Book of Isaiah, for
example, contains the work of two of the greatest prophets,
the second living a hundred and fifty years after the first. ^
Each of the prophets has, of course, his own distinctive per-
sonality, and his own place in history. At the same time each
builds on and as a rule emphatically repeats the main ideas of
his predecessors. The present chapter takes the six greatest
prophets in chronological order, and aims at showing how,
by their combined and successive efforts extending over more
than two centuries, the unique structure of Israel's faith was
built up. Some of the lesser prophets belong to a later date
and are mentioned in the next chapter ; for that chapter
also is reserved, in the main, the problem of the contribution
of the prophets to the expectation of a Messiah which was
widespread among the Jews of Our Lord's day.
(i) Amos, 760 B.C. About a hundred years had passed
since Elijah's day. Jeroboam H. was on the throne of the
Northern Kingdom, the most splendid and successful monarch
since Solomon. Israel was once again the greatest of the
small states that lay between the mighty empires of the Nile
and the Euphrates. Furthermore, during the past century
progress of another kind had been unusually rapid. Israel
was passing from a purely agricultural to a commercial
phase. Wealth was rapidly increasing, and with it a
luxurious ' idle rich ' class, such as had never before been
seen in the land. " There were palaces of ivory in Samaria,
and houses of hewn stone without number, castles and forts,
^ Probably it contains the work oifour prophets. Only two of them
will concern us here, but the fact is worth mentioning as an example
of the detailed work of modern criticism. For the allocation of
chapters between the various prophets see footnotes on pp. 32 and 46.
28 THE PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY
horses and chariots, power and pomp, splendour and riches,
wherever one might turn. The rich lay on couches of ivory
with damask cushions ; daily they slew the fatted calf,
drank the most costly wines, and anointed themselves with
precious oils." ^ On its own small scale it was a period like
the first half of the nineteenth century in England. In both
periods there was, among the rich, much shrewd and vigorous
energy and a rather coarse magnificence, and side by side
with it an atrocious oppression of the poor. As so often
happens when the rich are growing richer the poor were
growing poorer, and society as a whole was growing more
and more unsound.
As for religion, Elijah might seem to have lived in vain.
Jehovah was, of course, still the national God, but His wor-
ship was practically indistinguishable from that of any other
Semitic deity. It was a comparatively small matter that He
was worshipped under the semblance of a calf at Bethel and
Dan. What mattered far more was that His rehgion seemed
to have finally lost whatever connection it had ever esta-
blished with right conduct.
At one of the official festivals to Jehovah at Bethel a rude
unkempt herdsman appeared, Amos of Tekoa. This was his
message :
" I was no prophet, neither was I a prophet's son ; but I
was an herdman and a gatherer of sycomore fruit : And the
Lord took me as I followed the flock, and the Lord said unto
me. Go, prophesy unto my people Israel ... I hate, I despise
your feast days, and I will not smell in your solemn assemblies.
Though ye offer me burnt offerings and your meat offer-
ings, I will not accept them : neither will I regard the peace
offerings of your fat beasts. Take thou away from me the
noise of thy songs ; for I will not hear the melody of thy
viols. But let judgment run down as waters, and righteous-
ness as a mighty stream ... I will not turn away the punish-
ment of Israel ; because they have sold the righteous for
1 Cornill, The Prophets of Israel, p. 39.
THE PROPHETS {760-537 b.c.) 29
silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes . . . Ye that afflict
the just, that take a bribe, and that turn aside the needy in
the gate from their right . . . The end of my people Israel is at
hand, I can no longer forgive, saith the Lord . . . Thy wife
shall be an harlot in the city, and thy sons and daughters
shall fall by the sword, and thy land shall be divided ; line
from line, and thou shalt die in a polluted land." ^
Language such as this is so familiar to us, read year by
year in decorous ritual from the lecterns of our churches, that
it requires an effort of the imagination to realise how blas-
phemous, how mad it must have sounded to its first hearers.
It contradicted the fundamental doctrine of the orthodoxy
of the day, that prosperity is the divine reward of virtue.
" Jehovah displeased with the sacrifices of Bethel } How
obviously absurd, when the king is so mighty, and we so
rich and prosperous ! And the threat that Jehovah is going
to ' join the enemy ' — the Assyrian, whom we have ceased to
be afraid of, and destroy His own people ! How monstrously
unpatriotic ! Who ever heard of a god behaving in that
suicidal manner } It is true gods are sometimes unsuccessful
in securing victory for their own people — one cannot expect
too much — but for a god to desert, and all because of some
trivialities in the law courts and elsewhere which have no
more to do with religion than one's private life has ! " *
So they must have talked. But Amos had seen what
possibly no human being had been privileged to see before.
Jehovah is not the god of Israel only : He is God — God of
all the world. He has chosen Israel as His instrument, but
the instrument is breaking in His hand. The fall of the
people of Israel will be the victory of God, the triumph of
justice and truth over sin and delusion.
^ Amos vii. 14, 15, v. 21-24, ^i- ^> v. 12, viii. 2, vii. 17.
* I have already compared these people with our prosperous early
Victorians. It is related that on coming out of church Lord Mel-
bourne, Queen Victoria's first prime minister, remarked in disapproval
of the sermon, " Religion is all very well, but it's going a bit far
when it claims to interfere with a man's private life,"
30 THE PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY
Forty years later Israel fell and disappeared for ever from
human history. To regard Amos' prophecy as a clever
political forecast would be absurd. Under Jeroboam 11. the
political factors that brought the fall were simply not yet
visible. Amos' deductions were based on a knowledge of
God, not on a knowledge of politics.
Thus far Amos. His successor had a further revelation to
which Amos had been blind.
(ii) Hosea, 736 B.C. Amos has been called the Prophet
of Justice, and his religious message, though lifted immeasur-
ably above the ideas of his fellow- Israelites, is not, perhaps,
very far removed from a conception of Deity that some of
the Greeks arrived at quite independently two centuries
later ; — Aeschylus, for example, whose tragedies display
Divine Vengeance using human instruments to stalk down
and punish sin. Hosea, however, has a message for which
Greek literature offers no parallel : he is the Prophet of
Love.
" God is Love." The phrase is as familiar, one might
almost say as hackneyed as any phrase can be. Almost
equally hackneyed, perhaps, are such words as " Evolution "
or " Survival of the Fittest." Anyone of moderate intelli-
gence can understand them : any fool can, without under-
standing them, use them. Yet we recognise that the men
who worked out and verified the theories implied in the
words " Evolution " and " Survival of the Fittest " were
among the mightiest of scientific discoverers. Even so, but
on a higher plane, the man who first said " God is Love "
was among the greatest of religious geniuses. That man was
Hosea.
Hosea compares the relationship of God and Man with that
of marriage.^ The husband (God) has taken to himself a
wife of humble birth : she proves unworthy and forsakes
* Our Lord adopted the same metaphor in speaking of Himself
as ' the bridegroom.'
THE PROPHETS (760-537 b.c.) 31
him, and he is almost of a mind to let her go to ruin her own
way. But he cannot, for all his injuries. Was she not his
wife } Did she not at one time love him ? Would it not be
possible to wake the better self of the woman again } Such
love could not fail in the end, surely, to evoke genuine love
in return. So he takes her back into his house. He cannot
reinstate her at once in the position of a true wife ; she must
pass first through a period of severe trial : if she stands the
test, if she understands, appreciates, yields, then he will wed
her afresh in love and trust, and nothing again shall rend
asunder this new covenant.
Amos had foretold the Captivity : Hosea sees beyond the
Captivity to the Return. The God of Amos punishes in a
spirit of anger, almost a spirit of vengeance. The God of
Hosea punishes only to purify, to save. There is to be a
glorious future. The Golden Age is not behind us as the
pagans fancied, and the Israelites too in their legend of the
Garden of Eden, but ahead. The idea of a Messiah is already
dimly suggested.
Fifteen years later, the Northern Kingdom terminated its
existence in a welter of bloodshed and treachery. Sargon,
the great king of Assyria, transported his captives and
scattered them over his empire. Prophecy on the new and
higher scale had only been at work for forty years since Amos,
and the plant of prophetic religion, if it had taken root at all,
was not strong enough to survive the political earthquake.
Israel vanished, and the history of the prophets shifts to the
smaller but less distracted Kingdom of Judah.
(iii) Isaiah, 736-700. Amos and Hosea were humbly
born and, as we should say, ' private individuals,' who for
a brief period raised their voice in passionate and disregarded
protest. Isaiah, on the other hand, was born to power, and
for more than thirty years he was the leading statesman of his
country, first ' in opposition ' and then * in office.' The
short books of Amos and Hosea are, as it were, single sermons
32 THE PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY
on a single theme. The long Book of Isaiah,^ on the other
hand, might be compared to a collection of the public speeches
of a great statesman, ranging over nearly forty years, and
dealing from a religious standpoint with a variety of national
issues. During the first half of his prophetic career, covering
the reign of the feeble and vacillating Ahaz, Isaiah was more
feared than trusted by the government, but in the latter part
he is the chosen councillor of King Hezekiah. It is impossible
to over-estimate the effect this fact must have had upon the
fortunes of the prophetic cause. For the time being the faith
of the despised ' cranks,' Amos and Hosea, had become official
orthodoxy. Once the new prophetical party had * captured
the government ' they could never thereafter be despised or
ignored, however much they might be hated, by their enemies.
Isaiah's career was very largely concerned with foreign
policy. The Assyrian Empire (capital, Nineveh) was now
at its high-water mark. King Ahaz trembled to behold the
annexation first of Damascus, then of Israel (the Northern
Kingdom), and, as the only means of escape, placed himself
and his kingdom voluntarily under the protection of the
Assyrian king. Such a step was very naturally offensive to
sturdy patriots, and during the next twenty years there was
a constant pressure on the government to stake all for
freedom, and organise rebellion in alliance with Egypt. This
movement Isaiah opposed, much as Our Lord by His ' Render
unto Caesar ' discouraged rebellion against the omnipotent
Roman Empire.
An * unpatriotic ' policy, no doubt, and closely connected
with the new religious teaching which saw in God not a
partisan champion of ' my country, right or wrong,' but the
Ruler of the whole world, working for the salvation of the
whole world, using, it is true, Israel as His special instrument,
* Chapters i.-xxxix. Chapters xl.-lxvi. are not the work of Isaiah
(see section on Deutero-Isaiah, p. 46). Chapters xiii.-xiv., xxiv.-
xxvii., xxxiv. and xxxv. are generally attributed to yet a third
prophet.
THE PROPHETS (760-537 b.c.) 33
but not neglecting such other instruments as fell to His hand,
such as the Kingdom of Assyria. ** Ho, Assyrian, rod of
mine anger " ^ Isaiah makes Jehovah say. According to
Isaiah, Assyria's triumphs could only have been accomplished
through God's will, and he therefore drew the conclusion that
God had still need of Assyria, and had greater things in store
for her. To rise against the Assyrian was rebellion against
the will of God, and so Isaiah did all in his power to keep
Judah quiet, to discourage foolish enterprises, and, in parti-
cular, alliances with ' the broken reed ' of Egypt.
It is easy to imagine Isaiah's critics retorting : — " Yes, but
suppose your Assyrian decides to come and crush Jerusalem,
as under this new King Sennacherib seems not unlikely :
what of God's purposes then } " Isaiah himself supplied the
answer when the occasion arose. So long as Assyria was
content to leave Judah in the position of what we should call
to-day a self-governing protectorate, Isaiah's policy was
expressed in the words, " in returning and rest shall ye be
saved ; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength " ; ^
but when, in 701, Sennacherib decided to destroy Jerusalem,
Isaiah changed his tone completely. It might be God's will
that Judah should lose her political independence : it was
emphatically not God's will that the Holy City and its
religious life should be destroyed. The pacifist turned patriot
in a moment, and without a trace of inconsistency. He
became the life and soul of the defence of Jerusalem, and
boldly foretold its triumph. " The virgin daughter of Zion
shall laugh thee to scorn " was the answer little Jerusalem
might make to the threats of great Assyria.
Isaiah's policy was astoundingly justified. Sennacherib
came up to destroy in the year 701, " and the angel of the
Lord went forth and smote in the camp of the Assyrians a
hundred and fourscore and five thousand : and when men
arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses.
So Sennacherib king of Assyria departed." ^
^ Isaiah x. 5. ' xxx. 15. ' xxxvii. 36, 37.
S.R.H. c
34 THE PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY
The sudden destruction of Sennacherib's army by an out-
break of plague is an established fact, recorded by the Greek
historian Herodotus (Book ii. ch. 141), who drew his materials
from Persian sources.
This must have been Isaiah's greatest popular triumph,
and apparently it was practically the end of his long career.
Never before and perhaps never again would the prophetical
movement stand so high in the esteem of the masses. Yet
the permanent and religious results of his triumph were not
altogether good. Isaiah had proclaimed that God would
deliver Jerusalem because, in fact, Jerusalem was worthy to
be delivered. But before long national vanity read into
Isaiah's message a meaning he can never have intended. The
tradition arose that Isaiah had proclaimed that Jerusalem
was eternally inviolable, and that no enemy should ever
prevail against the * Holy City.' But it is not bricks and
mortar, but men, that make a city — much more a ' Holy
City.' The inviolability of Jerusalem depended on moral
and religious conditions. If these conditions were ignored
God's purposes might be fulfilled not by the survival of
Jerusalem but by its destruction.
Perhaps the most splendid passages in Isaiah are those in
which he expands Hosea's forecast of a ' Return ' following
Captivity. Where Hosea, the visionary ideahst, depicts a
Golden Age in which ' politics ' would be an incongruity,
Isaiah, ever a statesman, says that the remnant who return
shall form a new kingdom under the rule of the House of
David, which still held sway in Judah and in the person of
Hezekiah patronised the prophetical party. Of this line an
Ideal Prince shall be born, who will rule in peace and justice.
He shall be a child in innocence, a God in might, and He shall
be called * Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, the
Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.' ^ In another
passage we have a wonderful vision in which the Conversion
of Man finds its echo in the Conversion of Nature, no longer
^ Isaiah ix. 6.
THE PROPHETS (760-537 b.c.) 35
* red in tooth and claw.' ^ " The wolf shall dwell with the
lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid ; and the
calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little
child shall lead them." ^ And yet — strange and baffling
incongruity — only eight verses further on we read that Judah
and Ephraim, now combined, " shall fly down upon the
shoulder of the Philistines on the west ; together shall they
spoil the children of the east : they shall put forth their
hand upon Edom and Moab ; and the children of Ammon
shall obey them. And the Lord shall utterly destroy
the tongue (delta) of the Egyptian sea," etc. Absurd, no
doubt : but for many highly respectable people to-day there
is just the same inconsistency between the formulae in which
they express their religion and the formulae in which they
express their politics.^
(iv) Deuteronomy, 621 b.c Isaiah's ascendancy over
Judah was brilliant but insecure. He disappears from
history immediately after the discomfiture of Sennacherib,
His principles continued to rule till the death of his royal
disciple Hezekiah in 687. Then came the crash. Under
Manasseh the prophetical party was driven from power and
subjected to bitter persecution.
It is easy enough to understand this. Nowhere has con-
servatism a stronger hold than in the sphere of religion.
This is very natural, for the basis of such conservatism is the
belief that religion, unlike science or art or politics, has been
revealed from above. Shall man tamper with the divine }
Such an attitude overlooks, as it seems, two all-important
considerations. Firstly, is it not possible that God's original
gift has been ill-preserved, that the ' revelation,' whatever
^ Tennyson {not a quotation from Isaiah). ' Isaiah xi. 6.
3 It is quite possible that one or other of these passages is not
the work of Isaiah, but is inserted by a later editor. In that case
the charge of failure to apply his religious principles when his own
political passions are concerned must fall not on Isaiah but on the
editor of his Book.
36 THE PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY
it may have been, passed down through centuries of human
tradition, has been corrupted out of all recognition, nothing
remaining of it but its name ? Secondly, does not the very
fact on which the ' conservatives ' base their case, that God
once made a revelation, suggest the likelihood that He will
do so again ? The original vehicle of revelation, Moses him-
self or whom you w'ill, was a reformer in his day : is it not
possible that the reformers of a later day, even though they
go beyond his teaching, may be more truly his disciples than
those who, entrenching themselves behind Moses' name, call
the reformers blasphemers ?
Isaiah and Hezekiah had done much that might provoke
the grief and anger of worthy but uninspired people. Isaiah
had told them to cast away their useless idols of silver and
gold " to the moles and to the bats," ^ and Hezekiah had
followed out his instructions, breaking in pieces, for example,
the famous brazen serpent which tradition regarded as a holy
relic of the times of Moses, and connected with a legend telling
how, by its means, Moses had stayed a plague of serpents.
After Hezekiah's death (687) we have a long period of half a
century, covering the reigns of Manasseh, Amon, and perhaps
the minority of Josiah, when prophecy was crushed and sheer
heathenism reigned, accompanied by the horrors of human
sacrifice and public ritual immorality.
The end of this dismal period is closely connected with a
very curious incident occurring in the year 621, when Josiah
was twenty-six years old.^ In the course, apparently, of
some building repairs in the Temple a " book of the law of
the Lord " was found. The book was brought and read to
King Josiah, who when he heard it rent his clothes ; " for,"
said he, " great is the wrath of the Lord that is kindled
against us, because our fathers have not hearkened unto the
words of this book." The king then gathered together " all
the men of Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and
the priests, and the prophets, and all the people, both small
^ Isaiah ii. 20. * II, Kings xxii. xxiii.
THE PROPHETS (760-537 b.c.) 37
and great ; and he read in their ears all the words of the
book of the covenant which was found in the house of the
Lord. And the king stood by the pillar, and made a covenant
before the Lord, to walk after the Lord, and to keep his com-
mandments, and his testimonies, and his statutes, with all
his heart, and all his soul, . . . and all the people stood to the
covenant." ■ Then followed a thorough purgation of all the
places of worship : idolatrous priests were expelled, and all
the emblems of heathen worship cast forth into Hinnom,
the unsavoury rubbish-heap always to be found on the out-
skirts of a town where scientific sanitation is unknown.
•' And the king commanded all the people, saying, Keep the
passover unto the Lord your God, as it is written in this
book of the covenant. Surely there was not kept such a
passover from the days of the judges that judged Israel, nor
in all the days of the kings of Israel, nor of the kings of
Judah." 1
What was this ' book of the lav/ ' ? One of the earliest
and most fruitful of the now undisputed discoveries of
modern Biblical Criticism ^ has been the identification of this
book with Deuteronomy. The word Deuteronomy means
* Second Law,' and is due to the fact that the book purports
to be a series of discourses delivered by Moses, not from
Sinai (the ' First Law ') but from the slope of the mountain
which, at the conclusion of the discourses, he ascended to
meet his death. The book was written, it would appear, by
surviving members of the prophetical party and perhaps
priests of the Temple — sometime during the two generations
preceding its discovery. Some suppose that it dates from
Hezekiah's reign and had already been the law of his reform-
ing movement. Others suppose that it was compiled during
the persecution under Manasseh and laid by until a favour-
able opportunity should come for revolt. This much at
least is plain. The writer or writers are earnest disciples of
the prophetical movement, but at the same time they
^ II. Kings xxiii. 21, 22. - By De Wette in 1805.
38 THE PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY
wish to provide a formal religious constitution within
which the spirit of that movement could find adequate ex-
pression.
This translating of Ideas into Institutions is the hardest
of human undertakings. So much of the living water of the
Idea seems to be spilt in the process of pouring it into the
earthen vessel of an institution. The nobler the ideal, the
harder the task and the more inadequate the performance.
The extreme example is, of course, the contrast between the
Christian Ideal and the actual organisation of the Churches,
which has led the satirist to say, " Christianity has not failed,
for it has never yet been tried." But in the political sphere
one can trace the same contrasts. What a long step from
the soaring idealism of the American Declaration of In-
dependence to the mechanical contrivances of the American
Constitution ! Yet the men who made the Constitution,
Washington and Hamilton, were greater men than Jefferson,
the fluent enthusiast who penned the Declaration. Again,
what a long step from the idealism of the nobler sort of
Socialism to any actual experiment in socialistic rule yet
made !
Deuteronomy provided, or sought to provide, a vessel to
hold the religious outpourings of the school of Isaiah. In
one respect it was astonishingly successful. Deuteronomy
laid the foundations of Judaism in solid rock, and the edifice
still stands after all these centuries. Yet that institution,
the Jewish Church, is clearly seen, as we follow its history
through the succeeding centuries down to the time when it
crucified Christ, to have failed to capture and to express the
living spirit of the prophetic message.
The whole history of Israel had, so far, been that of a
people with an exceptional mission, and exceptional respon-
sibility, distracted from its purpose by ' the things of the
world ' — whether agriculture and its Baalim worship, or
commerce and foreign alliance and the consequent introduc-
tion of foreign worships. The prophets had taught that God
THE PROPHETS (760-537 b.c.) 39
is a spirit. Deuteronomy demanded, in Puritan style,^ the
destruction of all figurative representation of the deity.
Isaiah was believed to have taught the inviolable sanctity of
Jerusalem. Deuteronomy, seizing on this perversion of his
teaching, and desiring above all things to succeed in the
hitherto almost impossible task of ' policing ' religion in the
interests of purity, ordained that all worship should be
centred in Jerusalem and all other sanctuaries and places of
worship outside it destroyed. God was thus withdrawn from
Man, who had so long misunderstood Him, and safely locked
up in a Temple of which the priests had the key. For the
country-people religious worship is reduced to the three
great annual festivals, originally, as already mentioned,
agricultural and borrowed from the Canaanites, but now
elevated and linked up historically with the life of Moses ;
the festivals of beginning and end of wheat harvest being
connected with the Exodus (Passover) and the Giving of the
Law at Sinai (Pentecost), and the Grape Festival with the
Journey through the Wilderness (Feast of Tabernacles). ^
It is easy to condemn Deuteronomy as unworthy of the
spirit of the prophets. It remains, however, one of the
astonishing practical successes of history. It founded as
orthodoxy what had been religious rebellion. It founded the
canon of the Old Testament, of which it was the first officially
recognised ' Sacred Book.' Nor should we forget that when
Our Lord wished to sum up the spirit of the Ten Command-
ments as transformed by Christianity, Deuteronomy and its
successor Leviticus, supplied Him with words He needed :
" Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and
with all thy mind, with all thy strength ; ^ and thou shalt
love thy neighbour as thyself." ^
^ Historically, of course, it was the Puritans who, coming later,
demanded this in ' deut ironomic style.'
2 The first and second are for Christians Easter and Whitsunday.
The third corresponds to nothing in the Christian Year, but by the
Jews is still celebrated shortly after the Day of Atonement.
» Deuteronomy vi. 5. * Leviticus xix. 18.
40 THE PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY
(v) Jeremiah, 630-586. Thirteen years after the publi-
cation of Deuteronomy, Josiah was defeated and killed
in battle against Egypt (608). His successors, worthless and
foolish princes, were soon embroiled with the great Baby-
lonian Empire, which after the destruction of Nineveh by the
Medes in 606 had superseded the empire of Assyria in Meso-
potamia.^ In 586 Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon,
besieged and captured Jerusalem, destroyed the Temple,
blinded the last king, Zedekiah, and carried him and the
bulk of his people away into captivity.
Jeremiah upheld the cause of prophecy throughout this
period. What others had foretold it was his harder task to
experience and interpret. The old popular religion of a
* patriotic ' Jehovah was buried for ever under the ruins of
Solomon's Temple. The disciples of Isaiah were put to
confusion by the falsification of what they supposed to be
his most popular doctrine, the inviolability of the Holy
City. The disciples of Deuteronomy were confounded by
the destruction of their single sanctuary, the removal of the
keystone of their arch. All the external and material
supports of the faith were cut away. It was Jeremiah's
sublime yet heartrending vocation to preach acquiescence
in the loss of all that was so loved yet unessential, and to
point to what remained as the essential of true religion.
Most modern writers who have studied the prophets deeply
seem to agree that Jeremiah was the greatest of them all —
greatest, perhaps, because his task was the hardest, and he
proved not unequal to it. Yet he was hated and persecuted
and jeered at as was no other prophet in his life-time, and his
name, even to-day, is unpopular. He alone of the prophets
has bequeathed a slang-word to our language : a * jeremiad '
is an utterance of barren discontent, of nerveless pessimism.
It was natural enough. He lived in a time of desperate
^ Nineveh was on the E. bank of the Tigris, opposite the modern
Mosul ; Babylon, on the Euphrates, fifty miles south of the modern
Baghdad.
THE PROPHETS (760-537 b.c.) 4I
warfare for bare existence, and he was a * defeatist,' preach-
ing the uselessness of resistance, the inevitabihty of defeat,
the necessity of acquiescence in national extinction. As he
offended the patriots, so he equally offended the religious.
He must have seen to the heart of the weakness underlying
the reforms of the Deuteronomists. To Jeremiah God was
a Spirit to be worshipped in the Spirit, and between the
sober formalities of the reformed worship and the barbarous
rites of the old there was for him only a difference of degree.
It is Jeremiah who first seizes in its full significance that
aspect of rehgion which is to us, through the teaching of
Christ, the highest, one might almost say the only, aspect.
*' The longing for God is inborn in man ; he has only to
follow after that yearning of his heart as the animal after
its instinct, and this craving must lead him to God . . . But if
religion, or, as Jeremiah calls it, the knowledge of God, is
born in man, then there is no difference between Jews and
Gentiles . . . The ideal character and the universality of
religion — these are the two new grand apprehensions that
Jeremiah has given to the world. Every man as such is born
a child of God. He does not become such through the forms
of any particular sect or outward organisation, but he
becomes such in his heart. A pure heart and a pure mind
are all that God requires of man, let his piety choose what
form it will so long as it is genuine." ^
A life of lonely heroism is more inspiring than any teaching,
and such a life Jeremiah lived. By temperament he must
have been a gentle, sensitive, ' thin-skinned ' man. He was
not endowed by nature with the fiery force of Elijah, or the
iron steadfastness of Isaiah. He often sickened and quailed
before his task, but he went through with it, enduring
1 Cornill, The Prophets of Israel, p. g8. Some good authorities,
e.g. Hamilton already quoted, regard this passage from Cornill as
attributing to Jeremiah more ' modern ' notions than he was capable
of. Yet we have this negative cvid(;nce in his favour that Jeremiah
alone of the prophets is entirely free from passages which imply a
permanent and inevitable distinction between jew and Gentile.
42 THE PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY
imprisonment, risking life, and at last inspiring a kind of awe
even in the minds of his enemies. The end is characteristic.
After the Captivity he was left behind with the remnant,
over whom Nebuchadnezzar appointed one Gedaliah as
governor. Almost immediately Gedaliah was murdered by
a band of desperate patriots, who then fled to Egypt, strangely
enough carrying off the hated ' pacifist ' prophet with them.
In Egypt, so tradition tells, he still refused to preach what
his audience required of him, and was stoned to death.
It may have been with Jeremiah in mind that the author
of the later chapters of Isaiah (see section vii of this chapter)
wrote what has become the most familiar passage in the
whole range of prophecy.
" He was despised and rejected of men ; a man of sorrows
and acquainted with grief, and as one from whom men hide
their face he was despised, and we esteemed him not . . . He
was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our
iniquities ; the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and
with his stripes we are healed." ^
One point in the above account deserves a little more
consideration. Jeremiah, it seems, looked coldly on the
Deuteronomists. Yet were not the Deuteronomists in the
main on the right lines ? Did they not achieve the one thing
needful at the moment, the building of a solid bridge of law,
by which the true believer could cross the yawning gulf of
Captivity ? Yes, certainly. But was not Jeremiah a
prophet of unequalled inspiration ? Once again, — Yes,
certainly.
The true tragedy of history, it has been remarked, is not
the conflict of right with wrong, but the conflict of right with
right. In Deuteronomy and Jeremiah we have the two
types, both necessary to the preservation and progress of
religion ; and yet, so opposed in outlook and method, that
they can never act whole-heartedly in concert. The
Deuteronomists are the statesmen and lawgivers of religion.
^ Isaiah liii. 3-5.
THE PROPHETS (760-537 b.c.) 43
They build our churches, and draft our creeds, and organise
the Divine Society. But for them rehgion would withdraw
from common life and become the heritage of the religious
genius alone — the man who needs no human aid to bring him
into communion with God. But Jeremiah and his like are
the artists and poets of religion. It is they through whom
God speaks to man. But for them our churches would
enshrine idols, and our creeds hypocrisy and humbug, and
our Divine Society become a conspiracy of prigs. Of course,
the organisation of the Deuteronomists in every age is
inadequate to express the vision of the prophet. That is
always the way when ideas come to be translated into
institutions. " Ah, but," says Browning,
" a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what's a heaven for ? "
(vi) Ezekiel (592-570). The scene now shifts to 'the
waters of Babylon,' and prophecy enters on a new task in a
new atmosphere. The blow of Captivity has fallen : it now
remains to secure the preservation of " the remnant " and
their Return. The whole purpose of the conqueror in putting
himself to the trouble and expense of transplanting his
defeated enemies is to blot out their sense of national indivi-
duality. Assyria had succeeded with the Northern Kmgdom :
the *' Lost Ten Tribes " have disappeared and left no trace.
It was the special purpose of Ezekiel to defeat the similar
purpose of Nebuchadnezzar for the captives of Judah.
Ezekiel is practical and statesmanlike, of the type of Isaiah
rather than of Jeremiah, but he had thoroughly grasped
Jeremiah's leading idea, the prime concern of religion with
the soul of the individual, and he went on to deduce from
this the primary duty of the priest. Hitherto the priest had
figured in history as a keeper of holy places. Ezekiel points
to his mission as a guardian of holy lives. He is, so far as
we can tell, the author of the great metaphor of the Good
Shepherd, and thus the inspirer of the Twenty-third Psalm
44 THE PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY
and of the tenth chapter of St. John's Gospel. " Thus saith
the Lord God," he writes ; " Woe unto the shepherds of
Israel that do feed themselves ! should not the shepherds
feed the sheep ? Ye eat the fat, and ye clothe you with the
wool, ye kill the fatlings ; but ye feed not the sheep. . . For
thus saith the Lord God : Behold, I myself even I, will search
for my sheep and will seek them out. As a shepherd seeketh
out his flock in the day that he is among his sheep that are
scattered abroad, so will I seek out my sheep." ^ And again :
' ' When I say unto the wicked, Thou shalt surely die ;
and thou givest not him warning to save his hfe, the same
wicked man shall die in his iniquity ; but his blood will I
require at thine hand." ^
Jeremiah's conception of religion had been wholly personal,
a communion between the individual soul and God. Thus
he marks the extreme point of reaction from the purely
social, patriotic, non-moral religion of the populace. Ezekiel
works back towards the re-introduction of the social element
on a higher plane. The individual soul can only flourish in
a favourable environment : that environment a purified
priesthood, a purified ceremonial, must provide. He was,
of course, faced with the urgent practical problem of organis-
ing religious life during the Exile in such a way as to hold
the community together. The Temple was gone, and there
was no thought of building a new one in a strange and unholy
land.^ So Ezekiel turns to the institution of the Sabbath
and makes it the keynote of the religious life of the Exiles.
Regularly once a week, at any rate, the Exiles should realise
themselves as the holy people of God. The durability of his
teaching on this subject hardly needs pointing out. With the
same purpose in view he insisted with a fresh emphasis on
the importance of racial purity, and the depth of degrada-
^ Ezekiel xxxiv. 2, 3, 11, 12. * iii. 18.
3 The Jews resident in Egypt had a Temple at this period, but
the complete silence of the Bible on the subject probably indicates
that the Jews of Judaea .strongly disapproved.
THE PROPHETS (760-537 b.c.) 45
tion involved in marriage with the foreigners amidst whom
the Exiles lived. Here, again, is one of the marks of the
New Testament Jew, with his contempt for the Samaritan
and the Gentile, and his sense of hereditary privilege passed
on from generation to generation by the physical rite of
circumcision.
The curious thing about Ezekiel is the way in which, while
grasping the great idea of Jeremiah, he yet, owing to the
' practical ' turn of his mind and still more, perhaps, to the
necessities of his situation, works round to a conclusion
almost identical with that of the Deuteronomists. Like
nearly all the other prophets, he has left us his vision of the
ideal future, his Messianic forecast, his picture of ' the New
Jerusalem.' But it is a far cry from the poetic visions of
Hosea and Isaiah to the precise and carefully calculated
forecasts of Ezekiel. " The service and worship of God are
marked out most exactly, and the re-built Temple becomes,
not only spiritually but materially, the centre of the whole
life of the nation. The priests and Devites receive a definite
portion of land as the material foundation of their existence
. . . Should crime or transgression occur, it must be atoned
for by an ecclesiastical penance." ^ For the Church and the
State are one, or rather the Church has swallowed up the
State. A ' Prince ' is described who will be the supreme
head of the people, but his main function is that of High
Priest. " He has to look after the Temple, and supply the
materials for worship, for which purpose he can only collect
from the people gifts of such things as are needful for sacri-
fice: sheep, goats, bullocks, oxen, corn, wine, oil. All taxes
are exclusively Church taxes." ^
A remarkable forecast, for in its essentials it was fulfilled,
even though the fulfilment was a parody of the original as
Ezekiel conceived it. Ezekiel's ' New Jerusalem ' sketches
the Jerusalem of the Gospels, the Jerusalem that crucified
1 Cornill, Prophets of Israel, p. 122.
* Ibid. p. 123.
46 THE PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY
Christ. Ezekiel is a man with two voices ; the vigorous
outbursts of the prophet are giving place to the smooth
intonations of the priest.
(vii) Deutero- Isaiah (550-537). The name of the author
of the last half of the book of Isaiah ^ is unknown, and he is
variously described as Deutero- Isaiah, the Second Isaiah, the
Great Unknown, or the Prophet of the Return. He is the
greatest artist, the greatest poet among the prophets, and
his finest passages ^ are more famihar than anything else in
prophetic literature. They are frequently quoted in the
New Testament, and have furnished the words lor some of
the noblest solos and choruses of Handel's " Messiah."
The Babylonian empire did not long survive after the
death of its great founder, Nebuchadnezzar (604-561). The
Persians under Cyrus shook off the yoke of the Medes, con-
quered Asia Minor, overthrowing King Croesus of Lydia,
advanced down the Mesopotamian valley and entered
Babylon in 538.^ The conqueror at once gave the Jewish
exiles permission to return to their country, no doubt because
he was glad thereby to secure the establishment of a friendly
community, under his protection, on the borders of Egypt.
These events inspire the prophet to open on his topmost
note of exultation. " Comfort ye, comfort ye my people,
saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem and
cry unto her that her warfare (or trial) is accomplished, that
her iniquity is pardoned ; that she hath received of the Lord's
hand double for all her sins. The voice of one that crieth.
Prepare ye in the wilderness the way of the Lord, make
straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley
shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made
1 Chapters xl.-lxvi. (though some think that Ivi.-lxvi. is by a
later writer) .
2 Particularly chs. xl. liii. Iv. Ixiii.
3 The Persian Empire lasted just over two hundred years, failed
to conquer Greece in 490 and 480, and was destroyed by Alexander
the Great in 332.
THE PROPHETS (760-537 b.c.) 47
low ; and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough
places plain ; and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed . . .
O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion, get thee up into the
high mountain ; 0 thou that tellest good tidings to Jeru-
salem, lift up thy voice with strength ; lift it up, be not
afraid ; say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God !
Behold, the Lord God will come as a mighty one, and his arm
shall rule for him : behold his reward is with him and his
recompense before him. He shall feed his flock like a
shepherd, he shall gather the lambs in his arm, and shall
carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that
give suck." ^
Cyrus is recognised as God's instrument of mercy just as
Isaiah had recognised Assyria as God's instrument of chastise-
ment. For is not God the ruler of all the earth } God's
might and majesty are vividly portrayed — " Who hath
measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted
out heaven with a span, and comprehended the dust of the
earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and
the hills in a balance." ^ In contrast w4th such a God, the
idols of heathen worship are derided with overwhelming
scorn. " The workman melteth a graven image, and the
goldsmith spreadeth it over with gold. He that is too
impoverished for such an oblation chooseth a tree that will
not rot ; he seeketh unto him a cunning workman to set up
a graven image that shall not be moved . . . He burneth part
thereof in the fire ; with part thereof he eateth flesh ; he
roasteth roast and is satisfied : yea, he warmeth himself, and
saith, Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire : and the residue
thereof he maketh a god, even his graven image : he falleth
down unto it and worshippeth it, and prayeth unto it, and
saith, Deliver me ; for thou art my god." ^
But if the God of all the world has become the God of
Israel, that can only be as a temporary measure. Israel is
not the end of God's work, but the beginning, the means
^Isaiah xl. i-ii. ^xl. 12. 'xl, 19, 20; xliv. 16, 17
48 THE PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY
whereby the whole world shall learn the truth. Here, first,
we have the conception of a missionary Church. '* Go ye
into all lands and preach," says Our Lord. Cyrus is God's
Servant for the sake of Israel : but so also is Israel God's
Servant for the sake of all the world — God's Suffering Servant.
We have already quoted from the famous fifty-third
chapter *' He was despised and rejected of men . . . and with
his stripes we are healed." It is natural to think that that
splendid tribute was inspired by the memory of Jeremiah :
but its more particular reference is not to Jeremiah, but
to Israel herself. The Chosen People were chosen to suffer,
and through their sufferings true religion was to come to
all the world. It is magnificent poetry, and has not the last
two thousand years proved it a true interpretation of
history also ?
CHAPTER IV
THE JEWISH CHURCH OF THE RESTORATION
B.C. 537-A.D. 70
THE purpose of this chapter is to bridge the gulf
between two great periods of religious inspiration,
the period of the great prophets and the period of
Christ and His apostles. We have to describe the Restoration
of the Remnant, so confidently predicted by the prophets,
and the type of religious life developed within the restored
church during the six hundred years of its existence.
The period is contemporary with the most brilliant and
familiar epochs of Greek and Roman history. It opens with
Peisistratus, the enlightened tyrant, ruling in Athens, and the
Tarquins still seated on their throne in Rome. Both tyrannies
fall, almost simultaneously, shortly before the year 500.
Athens rapidly develops to the zenith of her immortal
splendour and Pericles (460-430) is the contemporary of Ezra,
the greatest of the Fathers of the Jewish Church. The
freedom of Athens, and her greatness also, are over before
330, and the Macedonian Alexander the Great, after conquer-
ing Greece, conquered Egypt, Judaea, Persia, and many
lands beyond them. Henceforth Judaea is within the sphere
of Greek influences, for Alexander's empire over the eastern
Mediterranean survived in three great fragments, Judaea
lying between two of them, Egypt under the Greek Ptolemies ^
and Syria under the Antiochi,^ just as in former days it had
1 Of whom the famous Cleopatra was one of the last.
* After whom Antioch was named.
S.R.TI. 49 D
50 THE PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY
lain between Egypt of the Pharaohs and Assyria. One of
these Greek kings of Syria, Antiochus Epiphanes, set himself
in 165 B.C. to extinguish the Jewish state and church, but
failed against the heroic defence of the Maccabees. Mean-
while, the stubborn and practical Roman was developing
much more slowly. Only after the decisive defeat of the
Carthaginian Hannibal (202 b.c.) did Rome begin to interfere
actively in the affairs of the eastern Mediterranean. The
annexation of Greece to the Roman Empire may be roughly
dated 150 B.C. The first appearance of the Roman in Judaea
is the arrival of Pompey in 63. Henceforth Judaea is within
the Roman sphere of influence, but Roman policy preferred
for a time to entrust it to an Edomite chieftain, who enjoyed
an independence conditional on his efficiency and his friend-
liness to Rome. This Edomite was Herod the Great, whose
reign ended about the year Our Lord was born. His relation-
ship to the Roman Empire resembled that of the Amir of
Afghanistan to our Indian Empire to-day. His descendants,
however, lacked his abiHty and were shorn by Rome of most
of the authority he had enjoyed. At the time of Our Lord's
crucifixion, a very feeble creature called Herod Antipas is
ruling in Galilee, but Judaea is under a petty Roman official,
Pontius Pilate, both alike being under the control of the
Roman governor of Syria. In 70 a.d. Vespasian, a very able
and vigorous emperor, who had just ascended the throne
and put an end to the chaos occasioned by the crimes and
the downfall of Nero, sent his son to destroy the ob-
stinately quarrelsome little community of Judaea. With
this event the history of the Jewish state ends, hav-
ing overlapped by about forty years the beginnings of
Christianity.
Such is the outHne of poHtical events. In this book we
are concerned with politics only in so far as they contribute
to the understanding of religious history. The religious
history of the period must be considered under two
headings :
JEWISH CHURCH OF THE RESTORATION 51
(i) The character of the Jewish Church and the evolution
of the parties that figure in the New Testament, Priests and
Scribes, Sadducees and Pharisees.
(ii) The growth of the idea of a * Messiah.'
(i) The character of the Jewish Church. In 537, the year
after the entry of Cyrus into Babylon, about fifty thousand
Jews of all classes,^ set out for Judaea with a Persian convoy.
Their leader was Zerubbabel, a member of the old royal
family. An altar was at once erected on the site where
Solomon's Temple had stood, and no doubt rehgious organi-
sation on the lines sketched by Ezekiel was carried as far as
the difficulties and poverty of the community would admit.
Seventeen years passed before, under the encouragement of
two prophets, Haggai and Zechariah, the rebuilding of the
Temple was attempted. At this point the Samaritans, the
mixed population dwelling in what had once been the country
of Ahab and Elijah, of Amos and Hosea, offered their assist-
ance, but were contemptuously repulsed. Here again we
see the influence of Ezekiel and the spirit of the New Testa-
ment Pharisee. Labouring on unaided, the Jews completed
their temple in five years.
Nearly a century elapsed between the ' Return ' under
Zerubbabel (537) and the achievements by which Ezra and
Nehemiah, as will be shown, restored the self-confidence and
self-respect of the Jewish community. This hundred years
leaves hardly any obvious traces in the Bible record and it is
easy to imagine what a depressing period it must have
been. What had become of all the magnificent promises
of the prophets ,'' Had they not, ' like the baseless fabric of
a vision,' dissolved and left ' not a wrack behind ? ' Were
they not proved to be ' such stuff as dreams are made on } '
The restoration of the House of David, if ever seriously
^ What proportion of the total nmiiber of exiles returned is much
disputed, as also what proportion of the inhabitants of Judaea was
carried into captivity fifty years before. It may be taken as certain
that in both cases a considerable body remained behind.
52 THE PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY
expected, proved an idle dream. The wretched poverty-
stricken community, pensioners dependent on a contemptuous
Persia to protect them from the neighbours whose hatred
their exclusiveness provoked, might well have despaired.
Was it not ridiculous to pretend that Jehovah was God of
all the earth when His new Temple was but a miserable
parody of that built by Solomon for a merely tribal
deity ?
The pathos of this position is one of the main motives of
the Psalmists. ' God has delivered them, and yet — has he
delivered them > ' Psalm 126 opens :
" When the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion, we were like
unto them that dream.
" Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with
singing ;
" Then said they among the nations. The Lord hath done great
things for them."
But two verses later it is as though this deliverance had
never been. The Psalmist prays,
" Turn again our captivity, O Lord, as the streams in the South."
The unnamed prophet who called himself Malachi (the
Messenger) belongs to the period, two generations after the
building of the Temple (450), and depicts the despondency
around him. " Ye have said," he writes, " It is vain to
serve God ; and what profit is it that we have kept his charge,
and that we have walked mournfully before the Lord Zebaoth.
And now we call the proud happy : yea, they that work
wickedness are built up." ^ Everyone who ever goes to
Church knows that the psalms are full of this complaint that
the wicked prosper and the good suffer. Some psalmists
seem to succeed in persuading themselves that this is really
an illusion, and that the prosperity of the wicked is but a
passing phase. But neither of the individual nor of the
nation could it honestly be said that God's rewards and
J r^Ialachi iii. 14, 15.
JEWISH CHURCH OF THE RESTORATION 53
punishments, if measured in terms of material prosperity and
adversity, were proportionate to deserts.
An adequate answer to such doubts and fears was not to
be had before the coming of Christ. Malachi, however, has
an answer of his own, and its very inadequacy is a sign of
what was to follow. The reason, says Malachi, why the Jews
suffer is that their ritual is imperfectly performed. " A son
honoureth his father, and a servant his master : if then I be
a father where is my honour ? and if I be a master where is
my fear ? . . . Ye offer polluted bread upon mine altar
... ye have brought the blind, the lame, and the sick :
thus ye bring the offering : should I accept this of your
hand .? " ^
Thus the well-meaning Malachi. It is a far cry from this
to Amos, three hundred years earlier : " I hate, I despise
your feast days : . . . but let judgment flow down as the
waters and righteousness as a mighty stream." ^ When the
prophet has become the ally of the priest, the work of
prophecy is over.
The two men, Ezra and Nehemiah, who turned this
despondent community into a vigorous Church, proceeded on
Malachi's Hnes. During the eighty years since Zerubbabel
had left Babylon, the Jews left behind had been carrying on
the work of Ezekiel, and had elaborated that astonishing
body of ritual which figures in our Bibles as the last half of
Exodus, all Leviticus, and most of Numbers. Armed with
this ' new Deuteronomy ' as one might call it, Ezra and
Nehemiah proceeded to Jerusalem with, we are told, seven-
teen hundred followers. We know little of the details of
their struggle with the * ungodly ' beyond the fact that they
won a complete victory. " In October, 444, a great gathering
of the people was held. Here the nation bound itself by
oath to Ezra's book of the law as it had bound itself to
Josiah's 177 years before. Many a hard and bitter struggle
was to be fought, but Ezra and Nehemiah carried their
* Malachi i. 6, 7, 13. 2 Amos v. 21-24.
54 THE PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY
cause through and broke down all opposition. Those who
could not adapt themselves to the new condition of affairs
left the country to escape in foreign lands the compulsion of
the law." I
In keeping the law down to its minutest particular the Jews
believed themselves to be holding the fortress of religious
truth for Jehovah, until such time as it seemed good to Him
to relieve the beleaguered garrison and inaugurate the great
triumph which the disappointments consequent on the
return from captivity had merely postponed. The nature of
the triumph expected, the history of the Messianic hope, is
dealt with in the second part of this chapter.
The characteristic institutions and parties of Judaism,
familiar to us through the gospels, originated fairly early in
the history of the restored Church. Ezekiel had foretold the
rule of a prince of the house of David, who should be the
chief officer of the Temple. His forecast proved wrong in
the letter only. As early as 520 B.C. we find mention of a
High Priest, of the house not of David, but of Zadok, the
priest of Solomon's Temple, and member of the old Levitical
tribe. The high priestly office became hereditary, and the
high priest, being treated by the Persian monarchy as the
head of the community, developed into a secular ruler ; or
rather, Church and State became identical. The priests grew
wealthy on the proceeds of the elaborate system of religious
taxation ordained by the law, and developed into a thoroughly
worldly aristocracy, the Sadducees ( = Zadokites) of the New
Testament. Finally, 153 B.C., Jonathan the Cunning,
younger brother and successor of Judas Maccabaeus, a highly
successful soldier and diplomatist, assumed the High Priest-
hood himself on the suggestion of a pretender to the throne
of Syria with whom he was acting in alliance. After the
extinction of the Maccabaean line in the time of Herod the
Great, the office was held by mere creatures of the Herodian
or Roman party. Hence the virtual identity of Sadducees
* Cornill, The Prophets of Israel, p. 161.
JEWISH CHURCH OF THE RESTORATION 55
and Herodians. The main religious significance of the
Sadducees is that they remained indifferent or hostile to the
Messianic movement hereafter to be described.
Side by side with the High Priesthood, but of later (and,
indeed, uncertain) origin, developed the Council of the
Sanhedrin.^ The politics of this body varied according as
the Sadducees or the Pharisees predominated in it.
The main current of religious life flowed not from the
Temple but from the Law. For the preaching and exposition
of the law synagogues, or as we should say, churches, were
built in every village of Judaea,^ and a body of teachers and
commentators of the law developed, and are known as the
Scribes or Rabbis. At first the Scribes may have been
mainly priests, i.e. members of the hereditary Levite caste,
but with the growing indifference of the priests, the work
devolved on a body of lay teachers, or rabbis. The necessity
for professional exposition of the law was increased by the
fact that Hebrew, the language of the Scriptures, rapidly
ceased to be a living language, being superseded by Aramaic,
the prevailing language of the western provinces of the
Persian empire. Thus the Hebrew Bible was for the unedu-
cated man in Our Lord's day as unintelligible as the Latin
Bible to the uneducated man of the Middle Ages.
^ The word Sanhedrin or Sanhedrim is the Hebrew spelling of the
Greek word Sunedrion, meaning Assembly. It is apparently alluded
to in II. Chronicles xix. 8. " Moreover in Jerusalem did Jehosaphat
set of the Levites and of the priests and of the chief of the fathers
of Israel, for the judgment of the Lord, and for controversies."
The writer of Chronicles is describing an institution of his own day,
and, after his manner (see page 11) attributing its foundation,
wrongly, to the period before the Captivity.
' The establishment of synagogues got rid of that complete
centralisation of all religious worship in Jerusalem which had been
the plan of the Deuteronomists. Yet the parallel between the
synagogues and our churches is in one way misleading, since the
most solemn religious rites could not be celebrated in the synagogues.
To imagine a modern parallel, we must suppose our churches as
existing only for matins and evensong, and Holy Communion as
being celebrated only in Westminster Abbey at Christmas, Easter,
and Whitsuntide.
56 THE PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY
A little more than a hundred years after Ezra came the
campaigns of Alexander the Great, sowing all over the Near
East the seeds of Greek culture, Greek art, and Greek philo-
sophy. Here was a new and subtler temptation for the
chosen people. Just as before the Captivity, ordinary
Semitic heathenism had exercised a fatal fascination and
defied the efforts of the prophets, so now Hellenism, as this
somewhat diluted and debased descendant of the noble
culture of free Greece is called, fascinated the Jews and
seemed to prove afresh the absurdity of their pretensions to
be the specially chosen people of an all-powerful God. When
the choice lay between the spirit of Ezra and the spirit of
Plato, it might seem fairly obvious that the latter was the
more enlightened choice. There were those, however, who
stood for Ezra, and these were the Scribes or Rabbis. They
became known as the Chasidim (Asideans), the Holy ; and
later as the Perushim (Pharisees), the Separate.
How the struggle would have gone had the two principles
been left to fight it out on their merits it is impossible to say,
but in 165 B.C. Antiochus Epiphanes, a tyrant whose
enthusiasm for the spread of Greek culture resembled King
Philip of Spain's enthusiasm for the Papal Church, attempted
to root out Judaism by military conquest and destruction.
Judas Maccabaeus sprang armed to the rescue and with him
the Chasidim. Phariseeism became for a time identical
with patriotism, just as Protestantism was identical with
patriotism in the days of Queen Elizabeth. It was only
later, when the successors of Judas turned from defence to
attack, conquered the neighbouring tribes and, in alliance
at times with the Romans, set about emulating the worldly
splendours of Solomon, that the Pharisees again assumed
their natural role of the party of opposition.^ As such we
see them in the New Testament. Nothing but Christ's
teaching, attacking as it did both the legal system of the
1 Much as, for a different reason, the sons of Elizabeth's sturdy
Protestants became the Puritans who opposed Charles I.
JEWISH CHURCH OF THE RESTORATION 57
Pharisees and also, so it was supposed, the temporal authority
of the Romans and their priestly parasites the Sadducees,
could have created a union of Pharisee and Sadducee against
a common foe.
For in the course of five centuries the Scribes had turned
the work of their founder Ezra into an enormous and inflated
parody of its original. We have already seen how the
Deuteronomists, in attempting to mould the teaching of
Isaiah into a code of religious law had lost in the process
most of the spirit of his teaching. As Deuteronomy stood to
Isaiah, so Ezra's Leviticus stood to Deuteronomy, and so
stood the Traditions of the Scribes to Ezra's Leviticus. Not
content with the written law-books, the Scribes had assumed,
to magnify their office, that Moses had transmitted to Joshua
by word of mouth a further body of rules. This had been
passed down similarly from generation to generation and
was now in the keeping of the Rabbis. Such are the
astonishing notions of which people are capable when a
scientific conception of history is unknown. It is against
this vast mass of tradition that Our Lord directed his attacks,
pointing out examples such as the Law of Corban, whereby
a man was encouraged to neglect his plain duty to his
parents in order that the priests might get hold of his
money. ^
It is easy to pile up an indictment against the Pharisees.
None the less they served a useful purpose and deserve the
gratitude more than the scorn of us who have opportunities
of profiting by their mistakes. They stood unflinchingly
for an arduous conception of duty. They misunderstood
the service of God, but at least they realised that there was
a God and that His service was the supreme concern. If we
recognise that, in the period before Christ, God was slowly
^ This finds a parallel in the practice of the mediaeval Church,
whereby priests, holding the terrors of Hell over the makers of wills,
induced them to impoverish their families and leave all their property
to the Church : Edward I.'s Statute of Mortmain (De donis religiosis)
was directed, not very successfully, against this practice.
58 THE PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY
working out a purpose and providing an environment in
which the seed of Christianity could be sown ; if we recognise
that the Chosen People were indeed chosen, that they were
a kind of garrison to hold a position till the time came for
them to be relieved, then we must recognise that it was the
Pharisees who did not lose faith in the promise of the prophets,
that it was they who held the fort. It is true that, when the
Rehef came, they failed to recognise the fact. But if the
Pharisees crucified Christ, they also produced St. Paul.
There is no excuse for being a Pharisee to-day : there was
some excuse for being one in the days of Herod.
Browning has a striking poem ^ in which he imagines the
persecuted Jews of the Middle Ages appealing to God to
forgive them, if indeed they mistook His Messiah and crucified
Him in days gone by. Let Him recognise that at least the
mistake was an honest mistake, and join hands with them
now against the Christian Sadducees of the corrupt Church
of Rome.
God spoke, and gave us the word to keep,
Bade never fold the hands nor sleep
'Mid a faithless world, — at watch and ward,
Till Christ at the end relieve our guard.
By His servant Moses the watch was set :
Though near upon cock-crow, we keep it yet.
Thou ! if thou wast He, who at mid-watch came.
By the starlight, naming a dubious name !
And if, too heavy with sleep — too rash
With fear — O Thou, if that martyr-gash
Fell on Thee coming to take thine own,
And we gave the Cross, when v/e owed the Throne —
Thou art the Judge. We are bruised thus.
But, the Judgment over, join sides with us !
Thine too is the cause ! and not more thine
Than ours, is the work of these dogs and swine.
Whose life laughs through and spits at their creed !
Who maintain Thee in word, and defy Thee in deed 1
^ Holy Cross Day.
JEWISH CHURCH OF THE RESTORATION 59
(ii) The Messianic Hope. What was it that kept these
Pharisees, and with them many devout Psalmists true to
their faith ? The answer is, the Messianic Hope.
As far back as their earhest written records go, we find that
the Israehtes, unHke the Greeks and Romans, pictured a
Golden Age which was ahead of them, not behind them.
The J narrative of Genesis, which must be a hundred years
earlier than Amos, describes Jehovah as promising to Abraham
descendants as numberless ' as the sands of the sea,' * in
whom all the families of the earth shall be blessed.' ^ In the
prophets this promise is recalled and emphasised again and
again as the privilege of the remnant who will survive the
national calamity that God is sending as a punishment for
Israel's unfaithfulness. " Israel will serve Jehovah in
righteousness and holiness, and Jehovah will bless Israel with
the fullness of his blessing in all matters, spiritual, material
and political. Material prosperity and political supremacy
are but the natural accompaniments and outward manifes-
tations of the great central feature of the Hope, the spiritual
and religious blessings that will come to Israel on that day
of union with Jehovah." ^ As a result of this manifestation
of God's power and glory, His worship will spread all over the
earth. This latter forecast appears both in nobler and in
baser forms. Sometimes the Gentiles are represented as
gladly accepting conversion : at other times they are repre-
sented as being exterminated. Or again, the two ideas are
combined and a remnant of the Gentiles is found worthy.
However, even in those passages in which the Gentiles are
found worthy, they do not receive equal treatment with
Israel. " Strangers shall stand and feed your flocks, and
aliens shall be your plowmen and your vinedressers.
But ye shall be named the priests of Jehovah ; men
shall call you the ministers of our God ; ye shall eat the
wealth of the nations, and in their glory shall ye boast
^ Gen. xii. 3, and elsewhere.
* Hamilton, The People of God, vol, i. p. 192.
6o THE PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY
yourselves." ^ Jeremiah alone appears to be free from this
taint of racial pride, of ' imperialism ' in the worse sense of
the word.
The idea of a future * Kingdom of God,' was much clearer
to the devout mind in the age of the prophets than the idea
of a future * Divine King ' or Messiah. We have, it is true,
Isaiah's picture of that future King as 'Wonderful, Counsellor,
the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace,' ^
but it is very doubtful if the other most famous passage which
the Church has taken as a Messianic forecast ought really to
be regarded as such. As has been already said, the passage in
the Second Isaiah beginning, ' He was despised and rejected
of men,' ^ is to be understood as referring to Israel herself, and
the sufferings she had already endured. After Our Lord's
crucifixion the passage was naturally adopted 'oy the
Christians as applicable to the Messiah,^ but the idea of a
* suffering Messiah ' was wholly out of keeping with all the
rest of the Messianic expectations, and was indeed the prime
cause of the Messiah's rejection by the faithful but mistaken
Pharisees.
To trace the development of the Messianic Hope during
the five and a half centuries between Deutero- Isaiah and
Christ, we must turn to the literature of that period, the great
^ Isaiah Ixi. 5, 6. * ix. 6.
' liii. 3. See page 48 above.
* In their anxiety to convince the Jews that Christ really fulfilled
the Messianic Hope, the early Christians, very naturally but we
must hold mistakenly, ransacked the Scriptures which both Jew
and Christian accepted to find passages which could by any means be
twisted into forecasts even of the most detailed and unessential
incidents in Our Lord's life. The Gospel of St. Matthew and the
Epistle to the Hebrews, both written for Jews, are full of examples
of this. One example may be quoted, from Matthew ii. 23, " And
he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth ; that it might be
fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets. He shall be called a
Nazarene." The only passages to which this can refer are Judges
xiii. 5 and I. Samuel i. 11, which describe the fact that Samson and
Samuel were bound under what was called the Nazmte vow, involving
abstinence from strong drink, etc. Any number of such examples
might be quoted.
JEWISH CHURCH OF THE RESTORATION 6i
bulk of which lies outside the Old Testament. Some of it
is found in a collection of books which is in some Christian
communities included in the Bible but in Protestant
Churches is given an inferior position as ' The Apocrypha,'
meaning the * hidden ' books. More important for the
present purpose are certain books that have never been
regarded by Christians as Sacred Scriptures, notably the Book
of Enoch, written during the two centuries preceding Our
Lord's birth. These successors of the prophets are known
as Apocalyptic writers. The word apocalypse means revela-
tion, and the most familiar examples of this type of writing
are the last book of the New Testament, and the second
half of the Book of Daniel, written during the Maccabaean
war. The method of apocalyptic writers differs from
those of the prophets in several respects. The apocalypses
are purely literary works and not, as one might say,
sermons collected and printed. They are less political
and moral and more purely religious : less concerned with
the present and more with the future ; less direct, and
filled with strange metaphors under which various kingdoms
or parties are, for instance, described under the names of
animals ; usually anonymous and ascribed, by a literary
fashion which cannot have been intended to deceive, to
celebrated figures of the distant past such as the mys-
terious holy man of the days before the Flood, Enoch,
who ' walked with God, and he was not : for God took
him.'^
These apocalyptic writers of the two centuries before
Christ were gradually driven to the conclusion that the
Kingdom of God foretold by the prophets was too vast a
conception to be staged in this limited and imperfect world.
The End of the World must first come. But previous to
this, ' God would send His Messiah,' that is to say His
* Anointed one,' His Christ, to prepare men for the Last
Judgment. In the Book of Enoch this Messiah is already
^ Genesis v. 24.
62 THE PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY
described as Son of Man,^ a title which imphes divinity,
because owing to the metaphorical scheme of the book, men
are always spoken of in it under the names of animals. At
the same time, however, this Divine King is expected to
display the characteristics of an earthly monarch, though on
a more magnificent scale. He is to be a * Son of David,' and
is to ' shatter unrighteous {i.e. Gentile) rulers.' We have
proof of this materialistic side of the idea in the astonishing
fact that at one time, when the Pharisees were in close
alliance with the Maccabees, they expected a prince of that
family to prove himself Messiah, and shifted their expecta-
tions from the House of David to the Tribe of Levi, to which
the Maccabaean family belonged. ^
The Reign of the Messiah was, then, to be a transitional
stage on earth, ushering in the ' Kingdom ' which was to
follow the End of the World. This idea led the early Church
to expect Christ's ' Second Coming ' within the lifetime of
the Apostles.
This changed conception of the Messianic Hope led directly
to the evolution of the idea of a Future Life, which the
Pharisees accepted and the Sadducees denied in Our Lord's
time. The idea is quite foreign to the writers of the Old
Testament, with the exception of the authors of the Book of
Daniel and one or two Psalms, which are assigned to a very
late date. The belief of Old Testament Israel on this subject
was practically the same as that of the Greeks and Romans.
They believed only in a vague and shadowy ' ghost-world,'
the Sheol of the Hebrews, and the Hades of the Greeks, far out-
side God's jurisdiction. " In the grave who shall give thee
thanks? " ^ says the Psalmist. Job, crying out for death to end
his agonies, speaks of it as the place, * where the wicked cease
1 The term ' Son of Man ' also occurs in Daniel vii. 13, but then
it appears to mean Israel as contrasted with the ' beasts ' which
are the heathen empires.
2 See, for example, Charles, Between the Old and New Testaments
(Home University Library), pp. 78-84.
3P . vi. 5.
JEWISH CHURCH OF THE RESTORATION 63
from troubling and the weary are at rest.' ^ The Ghost of
Achilles in the IHad tells Odysseus who is privileged, while
yet alive, to visit him, that he would rather be the meanest
of slaves on earth than king over all the ' perished corpses,'
and such a view would be as natural to a Hebrew writer.
Relationship with the ' ghosts,' which was one of the leading
principles of Egyptian religion, was not regarded as impossible
by the Israelites, but was condemned by their religion as
wicked magic, as in the case of Saul, who deserted the true
worship of Jehovah and sought the aid of the Witch of Endor,
that he might communicate with Samuel.
The idea of a Kingdom of God beyond the End of the
World, however, implied a life of blessedness beyond the
grave for those alive on earth at the time of the Last Judg-
ment, and it was an inevitable step from this to assume the
resurrection of those already dead. The inclusion of the very
late Book of Daniel {165-3 B.C.) in our Old Testament enables
us to show one easily accessible passage where the ideas of
Heaven and Hell, familiar to the Christian world, but un-
known in what we call the Old Testament period, are clearly
stated. It is as follows : " At that time shall Michael stand
up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy
people : and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never
was since there was a nation even to that same time : and at
that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall
be found written in the book. And many of them that sleep
in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life,
and some to shame and everlasting contempt. And they
that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament. . . .
Then said I, 0 my Lord, what shall be the issue of these
things ? And he said. Go thy way, Daniel : for the words
are shut up and sealed till the time of the end." ^
If then we would understand the part played by the
conception of the Kingdom of God, or of Heaven, or of the
Messiah or Christ, in New Testament times, we must realise
' Job iii. 17. 2 Daniel xii, i-io.
64 THE PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY
that many different conceptions of these things existed side
by side, that the popular mind entertained on the subject only
vague and often inconsistent ideals. A great gift of God was
confidently expected. Jesus proclaimed that in Himself that
gift was reahsed.
BOOKS RECOMMENDED
My aim is to make this list as short as possible, to provide a list,
with brief descriptions, of a sort of ' minimum library,' which should
be available to those giving Divinity lessons on the lines of this
book. All the books mentioned would also be found interesting
by students who desire to go further into the subject.
I have divided the list into four sections corresponding to the
Parts of this book.
Part I
1. C. H. Cornill, The Prophets of Israel [The Open Court Publishing
Co., Chicago). A very short, clear, simple history of the prophetic
movement from Moses to Daniel, on chronological lines, based on
popular lectures.
2. H. F. Hamilton, The People of God, Vol. I. Israal [Oxford Univer-
sity Press). A more advanced and philosophic study, invaluable to
a Sixth Form teacher ; especially valuable on the comparison of
Jewish and Greek religious development. The titles of the chapters
will best indicate its scope.
I. Polytheism and Greek Monotheism.
II. Yahweh, the characteristic Semitic Deity.
III. Yahweh, the One and Only God.
IV. Yahweh, the Righteous God.
V. The Source of Mono-Yahwism.
VI. The value of the Jewish religion.
VII, The Messianic Hope.
VIII, Jesus and the Religion of the Jews.
Vol. II., The Church is of less interest, but contains an interesting
short account of the period of ' The Acts.'
3. C. G. Mnnteftore, Lectures on the Origin an.i Groivth of Rcliginyi^
as iUiistro.ted by the religion of the Ancient Hebrews [Williams <&• Nor-
gnte). Another good book on the same subject as the two above
mentioned, much larger and fuller than Cornill, and perhaps rather
simpler than Hamilton.
4. R. H. Charles, Religious Development between the Old and New
Testaments [Home University Library). A short study by the greatest
English authority on the Apocalyptic writers.
5. C. M. Grant, Between the Testaments [A. 6- C. Black). A
popular history, in brief compass, of the period indicated by the title.
6. Edivyn Bevan, Jerusalem -under the Lligh Priests [Arnold).
Covers the same ground as Grant, and is more scholarly and critical.
PART II
THE FIRST FOUR CENTURIES OF
CHRISTIANITY
CHAPTER V
CHRIST
IT is not part of the plan of this book to treat in detail
the story of Our Lord's life and death. That would
require a book to itself, and it is a subject with which
the reader ought to be already famihar. In the first part of
this book we traced through thirteen centuries the reHgious
history of a small nation, who believed themselves— not
without reason as it appears to us — to be God's Chosen
People. Throughout the rest of this book, after the present
chapter, we shall be concerned with the subsequent history
of God's Chosen People. That ' chosen people ' will, however,
be no more a small nation, membership of which is a matter
of lineage, but an ever expanding Society, voluntarily
entered and overriding national distinctions, known to history
as the Christian Church. It was the work of Christ to effect
that great transition, and it is from this point of view that
we must consider His work, the central and supreme event
in our religious history.
(i) The substance of Christ's teaching. The prophets had
foretold the coming of the Kingdom of God, and had con-
66 FIRST FOUR CENTURIES OF CHRISTIANITY
ceived it under various forms, but always as something with
a national basis, as a magnificent Expansion of Israel into a
state of religious perfection, not unaccompanied by political
and material glory. The apocalyptic writers of the last two
centuries before Christ had figured it rather as a kingdom
beyond the grave, heralded by the advent of a Messiah, who
would first come in glory and justify before all the world
the faithfulness of His chosen people. At the time of
Christ's ministry, both these conceptions were current, inter-
mingled with every variety of vague aspiration that piety or
national vanity could suggest. Before Jesus entered on his
ministry a new prophet had appeared, John the Baptist,
whom some took for Elijah, returned to earth to herald the
Messiah. His message was, " Repent : for the Kingdom of
Heaven is at hand ! " Many, however, had before now pro-
claimed it to be at hand, and it had not come.
Christ also preached the Kingdom of God, but His message
was startlingly new. He said, " The Kingdom of God is
within you." The Kingdom is already estabhshed ; it is
not a political kingdom, of which membership comes by
right of birth or by conquest : it is not a kingdom in another
world into which entry is only through the grave ; the
kingdom, it is true, extends beyond the grave and those who
enter it here do not forfeit their citizenship when they die ;
but its establishment is on earth, and, if you will, you may
enter it now.
What is the test of membership r The author of the First
Gospel has, with fine dramatic insight, placed at the very
beginning of his account of Christ's ministry a series of brief
challenging sentences which answer that question. *' Blessed
are the poor : ^ blessed are they that mourn : blessed are the
meek : blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after
righteousness : blessed are the merciful : blessed are the
^ Matt. V. 3-1 1. St. Matthew writes, "Blessed are the poor in
spirit." St. Luke, however (vi. 20), simply says, " Blessed be ye
poor," and many scholars consider this represents the original text
of both gospels.
CHRIST 67
peacemakers : blessed are they which are persecuted for
righteousness' sake : blessed are ye, when men shall revile
you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil
against you falsely, for my sake."
To become a member of the Kingdom a man has got to
look at life from a wholly new angle : he has got to be ' born
again.' " Before the rich man can enter the kingdom he
must realise that his wealth is so comparatively unimportant,
that he is ready to give it all away rather than allow it to
obscure his vision of God, and hinder him from entering the
kingdom. The man of good social position must be prepared
to become the servant of the poorest and meanest. The
passionate man must be ready to cut off his hand or pluck
out his eye, rather than lose the kingdom for the sake of
indulging his passions. The Jew must be prepared to
fraternise with the Samaritan, and the Pharisee with the
publican, on equal terms, admitting the; possibility that those
whom before he despised and abhorred are very likely better
and nearer to God's ideal than himself. All must be ready
to give up friends, home, wealth, position, life itself, rather
than miss entering the Kingdom of God."^
If a man love God, he will do these things. Love of God
is the first Christian virtue, which sums up in itself all the
others. For a man will show his love of God by loving his
fellow man. Love of God and Love of Man are two aspects
of the same thing.
Christ did not openly proclaim Himself as the Messiah.
Indeed, as will be seen later, He somewhat carefully avoided
the assertion of such a claim in words. But He acted in a
way which, according to Jewish ideas, would be impossible to
anyone not claiming divinity. He undertook to supersede
the Law, and that not merely the tiresome regulations of the
' Traditions ' of the Pharisees, but the sacred Ten Command-
ments themselves. The so-called ' Sermon on the Mount '
in St. Matthew's gospel, from which we have already quoted
^ Donald Hankey, The Lord of All Good Life, p. 33.
68 FIRST FOUR CENTURIES OF CHRISTIANITY
the opening sentences, goes on almost immediately to consider
some of the Ten Commandments. " Ye have heard," he
says, " that it was said to them of old time, Thou shalt not
kill ; . . . but I say unto you that every one who is angry
with his brother shall be in danger of the judgment." Again,
'• Ye have heard how it was said, Thou shalt love thy neigh-
bour and hate thine enemy ; but I say unto you. Love your
enemies and pray for them that persecute you." ^
Such teaching might well fill the hearts of its hearers with
despair, especially when they recollected the teaching of their
religion that Jehovah was a * jealous god,' and punished not
only the sins of the individual but " visited the sins of the
fathers upon the children." The Law must have been like
a millstone round the necks of all but the self-satisfied
Pharisee, every clause an occasion of sin, every sin set down
in an indelible record. This is what St. Paul alludes to when
he says, " The strength of sin is the law : — But " he goes on
immediately, " thanks be to God which giveth us the victory
through our Lord Jesus Christ." ^ Christ preached the
doctrine of forgiveness of sins.
Christ does not, as a rule, say, " I forgive you your sins."
He says, " Your sins are forgiven." Forgiveness is the
natural consequence and reward of repentance. The
Greek word for repentance simply means, ' change of mind,*
or ' change of character.' Once the sinner is genuinely
resolved to lead a new life, he is a member of the kingdom.
The consequences of the sin, of course, remain : external
consequences in the form of injury done to others and loss of
reputation by the sinner himself : even internal consequences
too in the form of the influence of bad habits, which cannot
be broken in a day. The members of the kingdom are not
a community of saints ; if they were the kingdom would not
be of much practical interest to most of us. The members of
the kingdom are those who are really doing their best, and
the benefit of membership is the help they receive from their
i Matt. V. 21, 22, 43. 44. ' I Cor. xv. 56, 57.
CHRIST 69
Invisible King, whom Christ taught men to think of not as a
King, but as a Father.
When we described the message of Amos, the first of the
great prophets, we pointed out how difficult it was for the
modern Church-goer to reaUse how revolutionary, how mad
such teaching must have seemed to those who first heard
it. So it is, in an even greater degree, with the teaching
of Christ. His words are so familiar that we know them
by heart. Let me quote then the appreciation of it by a
modern writer, who probably does not call himself a Christian
at all.
" In view of what he plainly said, is it any wonder that all
who were rich and prosperous felt a horror of strange things,
a swimming of their world at his teaching } Perhaps the
priests and the rulers and the rich men understood him better
than his followers. He was dragging out all the little private
reservations they had made from social service into the light
of a universal religious life. He was like some terrible moral
huntsman digging mankind out of the snug burrows in which
they had lived hitherto. In the white blaze of this kingdom
of his, there was to be no property, no privilege, no pride and
precedence ; no motive indeed and no reward but love. Is
it any wonder that men were dazzled and blinded and cried
out against him } . . . Is it any wonder that the priests
realised that between this man and themselves there was no
choice, but that he or priestcraft should perish } Is it any
wonder that the Roman soldiers, confronted and amazed by
something soaring over their comprehension and threatening
all their disciplines, should take refuge in wild laughter, and
crown him with thorns and robe him with purple and make
a mock Caesar of him } For to take him seriously was to
enter on a strange and alarming life, to abandon habits, to
control instincts and impulses, to essay an incredible happi-
ness. ... Is it any wonder that to this day this Galilaean is
too much for our small hearts ? " ^
1 H. G. Wells, Outline of History, p. 362. It may be doubted
70 FIRST FOUR CENTURIES OF CHRISTIANITY
(ii) Christ's method in establishing the Church. It has been
necessary to state very shortly the fundamental ideas of
Christ's teaching, partly because they are already familiar
but still more because they are essentially simple. We have
now to consider how the Christian Church, which was to
supply the external organisation of the kingdom, came to
be instituted. We are concerned, that is to say, not so much
with the substance of Christ's teaching as with its method.
We do not know for certain how long Christ's ministry
lasted. Some say it lasted three years and included several
visits to Jerusalem ; others, that it only lasted one year and
that the five days which began with the triumphal entry,
and ended with the crucifixion were His only visit to the
capital. St. Mark's Gospel on which, as regards the historical
sequence of events, we must mainly depend, does not contain
any clear information as to the length of the ministry. It
is not, however, of any great importance. Whatever the
length of the ministry, it falls into three clearly marked
divisions ; the public ministry in Gahlee ; a period spent
partly in Galilee and partly outside it, in which, though He
still sometimes addresses crowds of followers, Our Lord's
main concern is with an inner circle of disciples who are
continuously with Him ; and finally, the journey to Jerusalem
and the last days there.
Galilee, where Christ had grown to manhood and worked
as a carpenter, was a region that had played little part in
Old Testament history. It lay to the north of the rich plain
of Esdraelon, which had been the centre of the old Northern
Kingdom, with its capitals at Jezreel and Samaria. Since
the return from captivity, the country had been largely
colonised by an overflow of Jews from Judaea. These had
intermarried with the Gentile population and the result was
a people of mixed character, regarded with contempt by
the stricter Jews of the capital. No doubt they were a
whether Mr. Wells is on sure ground in saying there was to be ' no
property ' in the kingdom.
CHRIST 71
simpler folk, comparatively unspoiled by the Pharisaism of
Jerusalem. At any rate they did not suffer from the daily
consciousness that they lived on holy ground, or from the
ever recurring reminder, as each of the Great Feasts came
round and Jews flocked from far and near into Jerusalem,
that they lived at the hub of the universe and were * not as
other men.'
Christ preached the Kingdom in the villages of Galilee,
especially in the little fishing town of Capernaum, where
perhaps He was already well known. He was warmly
welcomed and gladly heard. His winning and gracious
personality, the telhng simplicity of His parables, most of
all perhaps the powers of healing the sick He possessed and
freely exercised, drew such crowds that He often found it
convenient to put out a few yards in a boat in order that
He might get freedom and space for addressing them.
These ' miracles ' as we call them were not done in order
to prove His divine powers, nor were they considered either
by His friends or His enemies as affording any proof of such.
They were done because it was impossible for Christ to witness
suffering without doing what He could to remove it. Indeed,
He found His fame as a healer a hindrance, rather than a help
to His Ministry, since it drew attention to what was irrelevant
and brought people to Him from the wrong motives. After
effecting a cure He would say to the patient, " See thou say
nothing of this to any man." But secrecy in the matter
proved impossible.
Christ did not lay claim to the title of Messiah. Indeed,
He spoke very little of Himself except to the chosen disciples
alone. Naturally, however, people began to wonder. It
was certainly not the kind of Messiah they had expected,
but — could He be a mere man } It seems to have been
agreed that if He was Messiah, He would give them a " sign,"
perform, that is, some unmistakable wonder or miracle that
would prove His powers superhuman beyond all possibility
of cavil.
72 FIRST FOUR CENTURIES OF CHRISTIANITY
That, however, was just what Christ did not do ; it was
the course He had rejected from the first. In both the First
and the Third Gospels we have accounts ^ of what is known as
'* The Temptation," and they represent, no doubt, what Our
Lord told His disciples of His own early spiritual doubts and
struggles. Each of the three proposals made by the Devil
in these accounts is a suggestion that, in one way or another,
Christ should fulfil the traditional expectations by astonishing
miracles in the materialistic sphere, — that He should provide
economic plenty by turning stones into bread ; that He should
replace the Roman by a Jewish Empire ; that He should
astound Jerusalem by a superhuman leap from the pinnacle
of the Temple. But Christ's appeal was addressed to the
heart, to the intelligence, to the conscience. These people
said, " Prove yourself divine by a miraculous display and we
will beheve all you say." Christ, however, demanded that
men give His teaching a trial in faith : if they did, they would
find therein and nowhere else the proof that He was divine.
It was not long before He attracted the attention of the
Scribes or Rabbis of the neighbourhood — the Pharisees, that
is, — and these sent reports to Jerusalem which quickly
brought down more important Pharisees from headquarters.
The hostility of the Pharisees began no doubt with mere
professional jealousy. Here was an uneducated carpenter
teaching in a new style, " with authority and not as the
Scribes," and securing a great popular following. What
business had He to teach at all ? He was what doctors would
call a ' quack,' a man setting up in practice without any
degrees or diplomas to show he had gone through the proper
training. They at once set themselves to pick holes, and
they were not long in finding holes to pick. He consorted
with publicans and sinners ! He and His disciples omitted
to fast at the proper times ! He performed a cure on the
Sabbath ! When it came to an encounter of words the
learned men fared much less well than they had expected.
^ Matt. iv. : Luke iv.
CHRIST 73
On occasions Our Lord beat them at their own favourite
game by justifying His action from Scripture — " Have ye
not read what David did when he was an hungered ? " At
other times He confounded their pedantries by going straight
to the plain issue between right and wrong as common-sense
or the common conscience must see it. " Is it right to do
good on the Sabbath day or to do evil, to save life or to
kill ? " And again, " I came not to call the righteous but
sinners to repentance."
Such were the general conditions of the public ministry in
Galilee. Very little came of it, so far as Galilee was con-
cerned. Galilee, no doubt, furnished the crowd that strewed
branches in the way and shouted ' Hosanna ! ' on His entry
into Jerusalem. But after that, what do we hear of Galilee >
Practically nothing. It was in Jerusalem and not in Galilee
that the faithful few established the Christian Church after
the Resurrection.
Meanwhile, being worsted in these verbal contests with
Our Lord, the Pharisees tried another plan. We read in
St. Mark's Gospel that after the incident of the healing of
the man with a withered hand on the Sabbath day, the
Pharisees approached the ' Herodians,' the courtiers, that is,
of Herod Antipas, the tetrarch of Galilee. This Herod had
already imprisoned and executed John the Baptist for de-
nouncing his immoral marriage with his brother's wife, and
no doubt he would have been ready enough to treat Jesus in
the same way. Henceforth, Jesus avoids Capernaum and the
western shore of Galilee where He is best known. He travels
to the north and to the east of Gahlee, largely non-Jewish
areas and outside the dominions of Herod. He devotes
Himself no longer to public preaching, but to intimate
converse with His disciples. The Feeding of the Five
Thousand was one of the last incidents of the Galilaean
Ministry, and it occurred when the grass was green, i.e.
between springtime and the midsummer heats which turn
the whole country brown. We may, then, place the incident
74 FIRST FOUR CENTURIES OF CHRISTIANITY
in June. From June to the following Easter, the time of the
Crucifixion, Christ is for the most part alone with His
disciples.
At the beginning of His ministry Christ had chosen twelve
disciples (pupils or learners) and attached them with special
closeness to Himself. They are also called Apostles (mis-
sionaries), and on one occasion during His life He sent them
out in pairs to teach in His name, but, in the main, we must
figure them as disciples rather than apostles during the
Master's hfe-time. What were they to learn } They were
to learn, with a conviction that nothing should shake, that
He was indeed the Messiah, the Christ, and that nothing in
the world mattered in comparison with the spread of the
Kingdom to which they were dedicated. Of them, as com-
pared with the kindly but fickle Galilaean crowd, Christ
spoke in the parable of the Sower. They were the ' good
ground,' on which alone the seed of the word bore fruit.
While all the rest withered away, the seed sown in their
hearts was not only to survive but to produce thirty-fold,
sixty-fold, and a hundred-fold.
As with the Galilaean crowd, so with the disciples. Christ
did not assert He was Messiah. He left them to find it out
for themselves by watching His work in Galilee and His
replies to the Pharisees ; still more through His private
converse with themselves. At last the time was ripe. , They
had journeyed away alone beyond the Jewish villages into
the Syrian country to the north. Christ turned to them, and
said, '* Whom do men say that I am } " They answered,
" Elijah, or Jeremiah, or one of the Prophets." Then He
said, " But whom say ye that I am ? " It was Peter who
took the awful plunge : " Thou art the Christ, the Son of
the Living God."
The first stage was now accomplished. The new * chosen
people,' the Church that was to be, had recognised that all
the pious hopes of Israel were thus strangely fulfilled in the
foundation of a httle society of humble, ignorant men, knit
CHRIST 75
together by a new view of God, a new attitude to life. At
once the second and harder stage began. He told them that
the Christ they had accepted must die the death of a felon :
that the road to success was through apparent failure. Once
more the doubts of the disciples were renewed, and coloured
now by fear more than by hope.
Our Lord, it would seem, went to Jerusalem prepared
to die. He voluntarily provoked His enemies to do their
worst. Unbidden, He entered the arena. Had He wished
to renew His Galilaean triumphs, had He wished to prolong
His time of quiet association with the disciples, all the
evidence seems to show that it was open to Him, even by
merely human means, to do so. But it was not needed. All
His life Christ had, like all great teachers, taught even more
by deeds than by words. It was what He was even more
than what He said that convinced. The Crucifixion was His
last and greatest parable, a parable not spoken but acted.
How else could He have clinched for ever His great argument
that nothing matters in comparison with the coming of the
Kingdom ?
At first the disciples could not understand it. On the
night of the Crucifixion " they all forsook Him and fled."
What followed .'' Very likely the opinions of Christians
will always differ somewhat as to what in detail followed.
In what exact sense did Christ ' rise from the dead ' } The
gospels themselves indicate that even the disciples, who
underwent those strange experiences of the next few days,
found it hard, or indeed impossible, to describe to others
precisely what had happened. But, at least, they knew
that though their Master's body had been crucified, His
Spirit had risen and returned to lead them. On the main
point there can be absolutely no doubt whatever. Christianity
rose from the grave. Those same disciples who had feared
and hesitated and doubted on the journey to Jerusalem :
who on the eve of the first Good Friday had simply mis-
understood and played the coward : — these same disciples
76 FIRST FOUR CENTURIES OF CHRISTIANITY
on the first Whitsunday appeared in Jerusalem, and in tones
of triumphant confidence that ring down the ages gave their
message to the world.
" Ye men of Israel, hear these words : Jesus of Nazareth,
a man approved of God unto you by mighty works and
wonders and signs, which God did by Him in the midst of
you, even as ye yourselves know ; Him being delivered up
by the determinate counsel and fore-knowledge of God, ye
by the hand of lawless men did crucify and slay : whom God
raised up, having loosed the pangs of death : because it was
not possible that He should be holden of it . . . Being there-
fore by the right hand of God exalted, and having received
of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, He hath poured
forth this, which ye see and hear . . . Let all the house of
Israel therefore know assuredly that God hath made Him
both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom ye crucified." ^
Thus the Christian Church was founded.
^ Acts ii. 22-36.
CHAPTER VI
THE WORK OF THE FIRST GENERATION
THE period covered by the book known as the Acts
of the Apostles is about thirty years (about 29 to
59 A.D.), but the developments which it records
constitute a rehgious revolution. At the beginning the
Christian Church is a small handful of Jews, passionately
devoted to their national traditions, and differing from the
rest of their fellow-countrymen only in that they believe that
the Messiah, still expected by the rest, has actually come
and, though unrecognised and rejected, has founded His
Kingdom. The Christians are, in effect, a new Jewish sect,
and their prime concern is to convert their fellow-countrymen
and co-religionists to their own way of thinking. The
Master's own work had been among the Jews, and though
He did not refuse to help the Gentile when called upon to
do so, and even contrasted at times the faith of the Gentile
with the indifference of the Jew, He had left it to His disciples
to discover for themselves that His Kingdom must, by its
very nature, come to include Jew and Gentile alike. At
present the disciples did not see this implication, and had
no thought of preaching further afield than their Master
had done.
At the end of the period covered by the Acts the Christian
Church has already become, as it remains to-day, a pre-
dominantly European institution, a religion not of the
Semites but of the Aryans. At Philippi, at Ephesus, at
Corinth, at Rome, at many other cities visited by St. Paul,
77
78 FIRST FOUR CENTURIES OF CHRISTIANITY
and at still more, probably, of which in the Acts we have no
mention, Christian communities, predominantly Gentile,
have been founded. They accept the God of the Jews as
their God ; they accept the rejected Messiah of the Jews as
their Christ, but they have not accepted the Jewish law nor
entered the Jewish community by circumcision. Further,
even those Jews, now a small minority in the Church, who
have accepted Christianity have come to admit that the Law
is no longer necessary to salvation. By the Jewish race as
a whole, however, Christianity has been once for all finally
rejected.
How did the Apostles, as we may now call the first disciples,
come to undertake enterprises going apparently so far beyond
anything suggested by the brief ministry of Christ } They
would have had, themselves, no difficulty in answering this
question : indeed, their answer stares us in the face on almost
every page of the Acts. They believed that, just as Christ
had once taught them by human act and speech, so now by
inward guidance they were taught, and led from point to
point in their great expansion, by the Holy Spirit.
In this chapter, for the first time, we pass out beyond the
narrow limits of the Jewish race into the wider world. The
conversion of the Gentiles remains incomprehensible unless
we have some notion of the religious ideas of the Gentile
world at the time when Christianity began to penetrate it.
The first task of the modern missionary is to understand both
the strong and the weak points of the religion of the people
to whom he is going. Thus the Indian missionary must
understand the Hindu religion : if he does not, he will be
as helpless as if he were ignorant of the Hindu language. The
time when all outside Christianity were conveniently lumped
together as ' poor benighted heathen ' is long passed. It is
because St. Paul, the Jew of Tarsus, understood so well the
religious aspirations of the typical thoughtful Gentile in
the Greek cities of the Levant that he proved the greatest of
missionaries.
THE WORK OF THE FIRST GENERATION 79
This chapter will, then, fall conveniently into three sections :
(i) The Church in Jerusalem, and the early relations of
Christians and Jews.
(ii) The religious ideas of the Roman Empire at the time
of Christ.
(iii) The spread of Christianity among the Gentiles ; more
particularly, the work of St. Paul.
(i) The Church in Jerusalem. The Apostles, it is generally
admitted, started on their missionary work suffering from
one serious but very natural delusion. The most spiritual
of the pre-Christian Messianic writers, as, for instance, the
writer or writers of the Book of Enoch, had figured the
appearance of the Messiah as a prelude to the End of the
World, which was to follow very shortly. This idea the
Apostles took over ; they foresaw Christ's Second Coming
as an awful event of the near future. Their task was to
prepare their fellow-countrymen, to convert them ; and
there was no time to be lost. Hence all apparently non-
essential differences between believers and unbelievers must
be kept in the background, and, in particular, differences as
to the sanctity of the Law and the Temple. We cannot
really tell to-day how far the Apostles, in the brief period
we are considering, had grasped Christ's real attitude as the
first three gospels now make it plain to us. Those gospels
were not written till after St. Paul's career. However that
may be, whether from a policy of conforming on non-essential
points or from genuine conservatism, the Apostles set them-
selves to treat the Law and the Temple ritual with scrupulous
respect.
Their policy had the desirable result of protecting them
from serious persecution. Their only enemies were the
Sadducees, who rejected the very idea of resurrection from
the dead. We gather from the Acts (chapters iv. and v.)
that the Sadducees tried to get them condemned to death by
the Sanhedrin, and that they were successfully defended
8o FIRST FOUR CENTURIES OF CHRISTIANITY
by the Pharisee GamaHel, famous otherwise as the teacher
of St. Paul.
But events forced their hands. Few incidents in the New
Testament are more puzzHng at first sight than what occurred
immediately before St. Peter's great speech proclaiming the
resurrection on the day of Pentecost. We read ^ that
" Parthians and Medes and Elamites, and the dwellers
in Mesopotamia, in Judaea and Cappadocia, in Pontus
and Asia . . . Cretes and Arabians " all heard the divine
message. Who were these } They were, as the narrative
tells us, not Gentiles but " Jews, devout men out of every
nation under heaven."
In the time of Our Lord the Jews were a race almost as
widely scattered, relatively to the Hmits of the then known
world, as they are to-day. The ' Dispersion,' as it is called,
began when a Jewish community remained behind in Babylon
after the return from the Captivity. It grew again westwards
when Alexander founded Alexandria at the mouth of the
Nile. Then the Jews spread and prospered, shrewd and
intrepid money-makers, obstinately unassimilable by their
surroundings, even as they are in London and Hamburg and
New York to-day. The Jews of the Dispersion were already
far more numerous and far more wealthy than the Jews of
Palestine.
An occasion hke the feast of Pentecost would bring back
crowds of these on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Many heard
the gospel and welcomed it, and, doubtless, prolonged their
visit in order to hear more. Thus a second Christian group
formed itself round the first. A system of generous
charitableness, amounting almost to a kind of rough and
ready communism of goods, was instituted, that all might
share alike, — for was not the end of the world at hand, and
what was the use of accumulating ' capital ' or returning to
the ordinary courses of bread-winning }
Difficulties in the administration of these charities led to
* Actsii. 1-13.
THE WORK OF THE FIRST GENERATION 8i
the appointment of seven Deacons, all of them apparently
Hellenists, as the Jews of the Dispersion are conveniently
called.
Now it was quite inevitable that the Hellenist Jew should
regard the Law and the claims of the Temple somewhat
differently from the Jew of Jerusalem. For the latter, they
were a source of unalloyed pride ; for the former, an impos-
sible incubus and a badge of his inferiority. Non-observance
of the Law was theoretically treason to Jehovah. But how
could the Jew of Alexandria, or Ephesus or Corinth, still more
the Jew living almost isolated from his fellow-nationals in
the smaller cities, keep pace with the demands of the orthodox,
or even attend the three annual feasts with anything
approaching regularity ? We know from the writings of the
Alexandrine Jew Philo that there was already a sect among
the Hellenists that had proclaimed that the Law was
allegorical, or, in plain words, that it did not mean what it
said.
Thus the Hellenist Jew was drawn to Christianity by the
very elements that repelled the Jew of Jerusalem. He
welcomed Christianity, and having done so proceeded to
emphasise those very elements in it which the Apostles were
keeping in the background. The first of the deacons was a
very bold, eloquent, and radical-minded preacher named
Stephen. It is difficult, perhaps impossible, from the brief
account we possess of his meteoric career to reconstruct his
point of view with entire certainty. One thing, however, is
plain. He created, as the Apostles had not done, the impres-
sion that Christianity was the enemy of Judaism. He
taught that Christ was the successor of the prophets, and
that those who had crucified Him, Pharisees and Sadducees
alike, were the successors of the enemies of God who had
stoned the prophets. Whipped up by their leaders, the
rabble of Jerusalem stoned him to death likewise.^ The
Christians fied from Jerusalem, and started preaching north-
^ Acts vii.
S.R.H. F
82 FIRST FOUR CENTURIES OF CHRISTIANITY
wards all the way to Antioch, with persecution dogging their
footsteps under the leadership of Saul of Tarsus.
Events now move rapidly. Another Hellenist deacon,
Philip, converts a Gentile, an Ethiopian of high position. ^
Saul, the persecuter, is converted. ^ Peter, the leader of
the Law-observing Apostles, is directed by a special inter-
vention of the Holy Spirit to convert the Gentile Cornelius.^
Finally we pass beyond particularised exceptions and read
that " men of Cyprus and Cyrene, when they were come
unto Antioch, spake unto the Grecians, preaching the Lord
Jesus." ^
(The duration of time between the Crucifixion of Christ
and the Conversion of Paul is uncertain ; possibly six years
(29-35).)
(ii) Religious ideas in the Roman Empire at the time of
Christ. We have seen how, through the work of the prophets,
Israel advanced from a religious state, differing little from
ordinary Semitic paganism, to a belief in one God, the omni-
potent creator of the world, and how within that Jewish
monotheism there was founded a sect of * Christians.' This
sect of Christians was now to enter into competition with and
finally supplant the religions of the Gentiles, of the Roman
Empire. Of what sort were those reUgions }
In considering this subject we may really ignore the
Romans and concentrate our attention on the Greeks. It
was not merely that the Greeks were nearer to Judaea than
the Romans and so came first. The Romans, though great
masters of war and politics, were always singularly destitute
of ideas in the realms of art, philosophy and religion. Nearly
everything of value in Latin literature has borrowed either
its form or its ideas from the Greeks. The Mediterranean
world of Our Lord's day, though a Roman Empire, was a
Greek civilisation. Alexander's conquests had sown Greek
ideas all over the eastern Mediterranean. Roman conquest
1 Acts viii. 27 sq. ^ ix. 4. ^ x. *■ xi. 20.
THE WORK OF THE FIRST GENERATION 83
did not Romanise the culture of the East, but Hellenised the
culture of the West. The Near East remained Greek for a
thousand years from Alexander's time, until the result of
another conquest from the opposite direction made it Arab
and Mohammedan, as it remains to this day.
To understand Greek religion in the time of Christ we
must make a brief survey of the previous five hundred years.
When the Greeks came into the broad daylight of history
with their victory over the Persians (battle of Marathon
(490 B.C.), midway in date between Zerubbabel and Ezra),
they were, for the most part, genuine worshippers of the
deities made familiar to us by their incomparable poetry and
sculpture. Everyone knows the name of Zeus, the father
of the Gods, and Hera his wife, Apollo, the sun-god, as also
the god of archery and much else besides, Pallas Athene, the
goddess of the arts, Aphrodite and Ares, Love and War, and
the rest. The Romans adapted their own dull deities to fit
in with the Greek mythology, and Jupiter, Juno, Minerva,
Venus and Mars figure as feeble imitations of their Greek
originals. The origin and real nature of this polytheism is a
fascinating subject, into which we cannot go here.^ It must
suffice for us that it was polytheism. The various deities
were associated with the various forces of nature, the sun,
the moon, the sea ; also with the various impulses of man,
wisdom, love, war, wine ; and also — for all polytheisms are
an amalgamation of inconsistent religious ideas — with various
tribes or cities. Thus Athene was the patron goddess of
Athens as Jehovah was the patron god of Israel, with this
difference that Athene was not a ' jealous ' goddess, and had
no objections to sharing the devotion of the /Athenians with
other deities. The main point to notice is that none of these
deities was omnipotent. They were personified ' forces,'
whether within or without man, and their power was limited
by the power of their rivals. Hence the idea of strife among
the gods. Hence, also, their immorality ; for stories of the
* See Gilbert Murray's Four Stages in Greek Religion.
84 FIRST FOUR CENTURIES OF CHRISTIANITY
strife between the gods inevitably led to stories of the strange
tricks whereby one god would steal a march on another.
These gods and goddesses are, in fact, magnified men and
women, magnified in power, and also, since power is with
man himself a source of severe temptation, magnified in their
unscrupulous use of power. They are full of ' devilry.'
Here we have, in fact, a ' nature r-eligion.' ^ Its source is
primitive man's attempt to explain to himself, in default of
natural science, the world of nature. With the rise of natural
science it is bound to fade into incredibility, and for natural
science the Greeks displayed an astonishing aptitude.
It is as impossible to explain the unique intellectual output
of the Greeks during the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. as it
is to explain the output of the Hebrew prophets. These
tw^o marvellous things happened, and the modern world is
built on the foundations laid by both. May we not say also
that God inspired both movements }
Polytheism assumes that each event in nature is due to
the direct action of the appropriate god. When it thunders,
it is because Zeus is angry ; when the harvest fails, Demeter,
the goddess of crops, has been offended and withholds her
gifts. The Greeks, however, began to * put two and two
together,' with a boldness and subtlety hitherto unequalled.
The idea of a Law of Causation, the idea that all the happen-
ings of the world formed an immense network of causes and
effects, each effect being in turn the cause of the next effect,
not only laid the foundations of science but doomed poly-
theism.
These early philosophers or scientists were, as we should
say, materialists. They sought to explain the uniformity of
nature's laws by suggesting that all the changes were
modifications of a single primary substance or element, be
it earth, air, fire, or water. Socrates, however, '* found the
world full of what was evidently intended to minister to
human well-being. From these evidences as to the purpose
^ See page i8.
THE WORK OF THE FIRST GENERATION 85
of the world he drew the conclusion that there is one omni-
present, omniscient, and benevolent Being, who is the source
and author of everything that is." ^ His disciple, Plato,
perhaps the most splendid intellect in history, regarded the
world as a unity, the parts of which work together for the
good of the whole. The soul of man is the ' divinest ' thing
in the world and is evidence of the existence of God. Aristotle,
again, the disciple of Plato and the tutor of Alexander the
Great, conceives of one transcendent Being, the Cause of all
things, the Universal Mind. Aristotle, under the patronage
of Alexander, was the first man to organise scientific research
on a large scale, and plan a complete exploration of the field
of human knowledge. If Plato is the greatest architect of
human knowledge, Aristotle is its first great master-builder.
These three men, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, cover a little
over a century — roughly 430 to 320 B.C.
In other spheres of Greek literature we can see the same
processes at work. Aeschylus, the first of the great Greek
tragedians, attempted, almost in the manner of a Hebrew
prophet, to ennoble and moralise the traditional rehgion,
giving the old legends a new meaning, and figuring Zeus as
an all-just Judge. This was in the first half of the fifth
century. In the second half comes Euripides, and with
deadly irony devotes himself to exposing by subtle hints all
that is incredible, and worse, immoral, in the old stories.
He shows that men and women are far nobler than the deities
they are deluded into worshipping.
Again, take the historians. Herodotus, roughly contem-
porary with Aeschylus, is full of incredible tales, and though
he hardly deserves to be called rehgious he is at least
superstitious. Thucydides, his successor, on the other hand,
knows of no superhuman intervention in human affairs save
the incalculable and unalterable decrees of fate.
Thus the Greeks, like the Hebrews, won through to mono-
^ Hamilton, The People of God, vol. i. p. 32 ; to whom I am
indebted for much in the first part of this section.
86 FIRST FOUR CENTURIES OF CHRISTIANITY
theism. But it is all-important to observe how different
were their processes, and how different the result. The
Hebrew prophets knew no more of science than their con-
temporaries, in fact a great deal less than the wise men of
Egypt and Chaldaea. They brought to bear on primitive
religion nothing but new and higher rehgious ideas. They
never disputed or doubted the existence of the popular deity,
Jehovah. Rather, they said in effect, "This Jehovah whom
'*you and I worship ahke and acknowledge as the God of
Israel, is not only this but more. He is the creator and
sustainer of the whole world, who has bestowed on us alone
the unique privilege of his protection, and his chief concern
is not for our sacrifices and our miUtary victories, but for
the purity and nobility of our common life." Thus the
Hebrews did not lose one religion and find another ; they
raised their old rehgion to a higher plane, and once the higher
plane had been reached the worship of Jehovah gathered
about itself all the love and reverence that ancient tradition
alone can bring. Their very ignorance of historical science
helped them here, for they were soon able to persuade them-
selves that the faith, which in reality they owed to the
prophets and to Ezra, had been theirs since the days of Moses
or even of Abraham.
The Greek philosophers, on the other hand, cut the roots
of primitive Greek religion and it withered away into mere
superstition. It was only after the philosophic teaching
had done its essential work of destruction that it offered, as
a kind of after-thought, as an alternative to materialism, a
philosophic faith in a Supreme Being, a Universal Mind.
This Supreme Being was often described as ' Zeus,' but he
was quite demonstrably a different being from the genial and
spasmodic patriarch of Mount Olympus. The position of
the new ' Zeus ' in relation to the old may be compared with
that of a new commercial firm which adopts, for the purpose
of securing custom, the name of the senior partner in the old
bankrupt estabhshment, whose business it has bought up
THE WORK OF THE FIRST GENERATION S;
and whose premises it has occupied. The ' real name ' of
Aristotle's God was not * Zeus,' but ' Universal Mind.'
Behef in this new 'Zeus' could only be attained as the result
of a long process of philosophic argument. The argument in
question was perhaps a good one, but most people are too
lazy or too stupid to follow philosophic arguments. And
even if you followed the argument and grasped its con-
clusion, you were not, from a rehgious point of view, much
better off. The only thing that could be known about this
' Zeus ' was that he was Unknowable. It was difficult to
suppose, and unreasonable to assume, that the fate of the
mere individual man was his close concern, or that he was to
be influenced by prayer.
In 1883 a great debate took place in the House of Commons
when Mr. Gladstone scandahsed old-fashioned people by
proposing that a professed atheist should be allowed to sit
as a member, and dispense with the customary oath of
allegiance. One of the speakers remarked, " After all, we
all beheve in a God of some sort or other," — all, that is,
except the atheist under discussion. Gladstone's reply was
to the effect that behef in " a God of some sort or other "
does not deserve the name of religion. For the ordinary
citizen of the Roman Empire, belief in the God of Greek
philosophy could be no more than belief in a God of some
sort or other.
It is impossible not to admire the position of the genuine
disciple of Greek philosophy, proudly independent in the
midst of a world whose meaning he has explored as deeply
as human intellect could then go, — standing alone, with
nothing above him but this passionless Universal Mind which
his own logic has led him to conceive. But such a faith is
of no use to ordinary man. We have now to see how the
rehgious vacuum created by the great philosophers was filled
in the four centuries that he between Aristotle and St. Paul.
After the deaths of Aristotle and Alexander we pass into
an age of inferior men, just as surely as when we pass from
88 FIRST FOUR CENTURIES OF CHRISTIANITY
the prophets to the scribes. Greek culture was spread all
over the East, but, as is the way with things that are spread
over a wide area, it was spread rather thin, and the proudly
independent Httle republics of Greece in which Greek culture
had arisen were destroyed. At Alexandria, indeed, for a
century and more, great things were done in the sphere of
natural science. Euclid wrote his geometry ; Eratosthenes
measured the size of the earth and came within fifty miles of
its true diameter ; others developed the science of medicine
and the study of human anatomy.^ But in the sphere of
philosophy and rehgion we are among scribes and rabbis
rather than prophets and philosophers.
Two great schools arose which sought to bring philosophy
nearer to practical life, to make it ' more religious ' by
establishing a close contact between philosophy and conduct.
These were the Stoics and the Epicureans.
The Stoic ^ school of philosophy was founded by Zeno at
Athens about 300 B.C., but it attained its greatest importance
in later times as the rule of life of some of the noblest of the
Romans, such as Cato, the opponent of JuHus Caesar (died
46 B.C.), Seneca, the tutor and minister of Nero (died 65 a.d.),
and the Emperor Marcus Aurehus (died 180 a.d.), whose
Meditations have been a favourite book with men of many
different schools of thought since the time of the Renaissance.
The leading idea of the Stoics, on the ethical and religious
side, was the cultivation of self-sufficiency. Man steers a frail
barque in a storm-tossed world. He can only steer a true
course by the diUgent cultivation of wisdom and virtue.
God, or the gods (for the Stoics use both terms indifferently),
rule all, and man must live in harmony with their will.
" Would you,'* says Seneca, " propitiate the Gods } Be
good ! He has worshipped them enough who has imitated
them." In raising its disciples above human weakness
Stoicism goes dangerously near raising them above human
^ Wells, Outline of History, p. 249.
2 Stoic is derived from the ' Porch ' {stoa) in which Zeno lectured.
THE WORK OF THE FIRST GENERATION 89
sympathy also. It is well to be fortified against the threats
and bribes of ' the world.' When the Stoic is consistent
(as, to his own credit, he often is not) he must be fortified
against its love, its pity, and its cry for help also. The Stoic
despises emotion and seeks to subordinate it to reason ; — a
creed which can only result in an attempt to enslave what
should be the prime source of human energy. The religions
that have helped ordinary, sinful humanity are those which
enlist the emotions, the passions, in their service.
Epicurus founded the Epicurean school at Athens at about
the same time as Zeno founded the Stoic. The Epicureans
taught that the gods, though they existed, were totally un-
concerned with the life of man and the affairs of this world, —
a belief equivalent, for all practical purposes, to the denial
of their existence. They found that the aim of life was
Happiness, and that happiness could only be attained by a
life of moderation and virtue. The essence of happiness is
a quiet conscience : so be prudent. Prudence is the founda-
tion of all the virtues. " We cannot," Epicurus says, " live
pleasantly without living wisely and nobly and righteously."
Virtue is a means to happiness, and apart from that it has
no meaning. This emphasis on Happiness and Pleasure gave
rival schools of philosophy a pretext for circulating scandal
about the Epicureans. They were accused of exalting the
pleasures of the body as the end and aim of life. Our word
' epicure ' is evidence of the disgrace into which the term
Epicurean ultimately fell. The poet Horace humorously
describes himself as ' a pig from Epicurus' herd.' Epicurus
himself, however, was a teetotaller and a vegetarian, and
preached moderation in things physical as a means of happi-
ness ; and Lucretius, the most austere of Latin poets, the
* Milton ' of Ancient Rome, was a devout Epicurean.
These philosophies, however, were of little use to the
ordinary man and woman. They felt the need of a religion
that would satisfy their emotions, and what they needed
they took care that they got. Philosophy was only for the
90 FIRST FOUR CENTURIES OF CHRISTIANITY
educated. For the rest, the old gods Uved on and were
worshipped at local shrines and oracles, and new gods, more
fascinating and mysterious, were imported from the East —
Cybele, the Phrygian Earth-Mother, goddess of fertihty,
and the Egyptian Isis. These reHgions, full of romance and
mystery, offered the attractions of sensational ritual. There
were baths and purifications, vigils spent by night in temples,
strange costumes, barbaric music, and, of course, miracles.
To the emotions they made a gross appeal, but they scarcely
touched moraUty. To the terrors of life, already many
enough, they added crowning fears, and cramped and dwarfed
the minds of men and women.
Many philosophers thought this was all for the best. * The
people ' are fools and knaves by nature : nothing but a strong
dosing in superstition will keep them docile. As one Roman
writer says, " It is the interest of states to be deceived in
rehgion." Polybius, a Greek writing a history of Rome
about 150 B.C., says that the rulers of Rome " use religion as
a check upon the common people. Seeing that the multitude
is fickle and full of lawless desires, the only resource to keep
them in check is by mysterious terrors and scenic effects." ^
Far nobler was the attitude of the Epicurean Lucretius,
who wrote
" Tantum rehgio potuit suadere malorum '*
(" To such evils can religion bring mankind.").
" Human life," he says elsewhere, " lay visibly before men's
eyes foully crushed under the weight of Religion, who showed
her head from the realms of Heaven hideously lowering upon
men," till Epicurus " dared first to uplift mortal eyes against
her face and first to withstand her . . . The living force of
his soul gained the day ; on he passed far beyond the flaming
ramparts of the world and traversed in mind and spirit the
immeasurable universe. Thence he returns a conqueror . . .
^ Polybius vi. 56, quoted in Glover, Conflict of Religions in the
Early Roman Empire, p. 4.
THE WORK OF THE FIRST GENERATION 91
and so Religion is put under our feet and trampled on in its
turn." 1
Nevertheless, the religion of Isis and kindred cults offered
something that men wanted and Lucretius could not give.
They offered initiation into a ' Mystery,' as it was called,
" the offer of happiness in this world and salvation in a world
to come to all who by initiation into their sacraments joined
in the risen hfe of a Redeemer God, such as Horus the son
of Isis who died and rose again. The members of the cult
thus secured knowledge of a great secret which would guard
the traveller when he passed hence through the gate of death
on his long and dangerous journey, and bring him safely to
the eternal life which he desired." -
But there were some for whom Epicurus and Zeno were
too abstract, and Isis and Cybele too sensational. These
found something that irresistibly appealed to them in the
religion of the Jews who were to be found in every Greek
city. Some became complete converts to Judaism and
underwent the rite of circumcision. A much larger number,
in all probability, remained active sympathisers and fellow-
worshippers without undergoing the somewhat repulsive rite.
These are mentioned more than once in the New Testament
as ' God-fearers.' CorneHus was one of them, whom Peter
converted as the result of a vision. " They adopted the
Jewish form of worship, with its monotheism and absence of
images, and frequented the Jewish synagogues, but confined
themselves with regard to the ceremonial law to certain
cardinal points . . . such as the observance of the Sabbath
and the laws regarding food." ^ Others probably, like certain
of the Jews themselves, treated the Law as allegorical and
observed only Jewish monotheism and the Jewish moral law.
These God-fearers stood midway between the Jewish and
^ Lucretius, i. 62-79, Glover, p. 25.
2 Lake, The Earlier Epistles of Saint Paul, p. 40 (slightly expanded
to supply context).
3 Ibid. p. 38.
92 FIRST FOUR CENTURIES OF CHRISTIANITY
the Gentile worlds, and provided the bridge by which Chris-
tianity crossed from the one to the other.
(iii) St. Paul. We broke off the narrative of events (see
page 82) at the martyrdom of St. Stephen and the conversion
of St. Paul.
St. Paul was the son of a Jew of Tarsus and had received
his education in the Pharisee schools of Jerusalem. His
views at the time of the first preaching of Christianity were
probably those of his master GamaUel. He was prepared to
allow the new sect a contemptuous toleration, since by
observing the Law and upholding the doctrine of resurrection
they at least showed themselves Pharisees rather than
Sadducees. What he and his fellow-Pharisees could not
afford to tolerate for a moment was the new form Christianity
was assuming in the hands of the Hellenist Jews. When
these proclaimed that the Law had been superseded by
Christ, all the Pharisee in St. Paul was revolted, and he led
the savage heresy-hunt w^hich followed the execution of St.
Stephen.
" What caused the sudden change which so astonished
the survivors among his victims } To suppose that nothing
prepared for the vision near Damascus, that the apparition
in the sky was a mere ' bolt from the blue ' is an impossible
theory. The best explanation is furnished by a study of the
Apostle's character, which we really know very well. The
author of the Epistles was certainly not a man who could
watch a young saint being battered to death by howling
fanatics and feel no emotion. Stephen's speech may have
made him indignant ; his heroic death, the very ideal of
martyrdom, must have awakened very different feelings.
An under-current of dissatisfaction, almost of disgust, at the
dry and unspiritual seminary teaching of the Pharisees now
surged up and came very near the surface. His bigotry
sustained him as a persecutor for a few weeks more ; but
how if he could himself see what the dying Stephen said that
THE WORK OF THE FIRST GENERATION 93
he saw ? Would not that be a welcome liberation ? The
vision came in the desert where men see visions and hear
voices to this day. ' The Spirit of Jesus,' as he came to call
it, spoke to his heart, and the form of Jesus flashed before
his eyes. Stephen had been right ; the Crucified was indeed
the Lord from Heaven. So Saul became a Christian ; and
it was to the Christianity of Stephen, not to that of the first
Christians of Jerusalem, that he was converted." ^
From this date onwards (the Conversion of St. Paul is
generally dated 35 a.d., or about six years after Our Lord's
Crucifixion), there were two rival centres of Christian
activity, Jerusalem and Antioch. The Church at Jerusalem
was still occupied with the forlorn hope of converting the
Jews ; that of Antioch addressed itself to the Gentiles. Gentile
converts no doubt accepted much that was strictly Jewish
theology, the belief, for example, in the Messianic Kingdom,
but in seeking to enter this they were in no mind to enter the
Jewish Church : they were baptised, but not circumcised.
The history of the rivalry between the two Christian
movements has been to a large extent lost. Three incidents
only need be mentioned here, (i) St. Barnabas, a Hellenist
but a member of the Jerusalem community, was sent down
to Antioch to investigate. He was completely converted to
St. Paul's point of view and became his closest fellow-worker,
and his companion on his first missionary journey, (ii) The
Judaizing party, i.e. those who wished to exclude from the
Christian Church all who refused to accept circumcision and
the Jewish Law, organised a rival mission which followed
St. Paul round the course of his first journey and attacked
his ' heresies.' (iii) This incident led to a conference between
St. Paul and St. Barnabas on the one side and the leading
apostles of the Church of Jerusalem on the other, particularly
St. Peter, and St. James, thebrother of Our Lord. St. Peterand
St. James recognised that the marvellous success of St. Paul's
mission clearly proved that the Divine blessing was upon it.
^ Inge, Outspoken Essays, p. 218.
94 FIRST FOUR CENTURIES OF CHRISTIANITY
Their aim was to find a formula which, while leaving St.
Paul free on all essentials, would satisfy the more timid-
minded of the Jewish believers. The results of the con-
ference were wholly satisfactory to St. Paul. It was agreed
that Gentiles should be accepted as members of the Church
without any conformity to Judaism, so long as they gave
evidence by their life of the sincerity of their conversion.
The agreed formula was that they should be required to
refrain from idolatry, murder, and fornication.^
After the Council, of which the accepted date is 49 a.d.,
St. Paul undertook his second and third missionary journeys,
visiting and founding churches in the great cities round the
Aegean, the cradle of Greek civilisation. He spent a year
and a half in Corinth and two years at Ephesus, the chief
1 I adopt here a view held by various modern writers and stated,
for example, in Lake's The Earlier Epistles of St. Paul, pp. 31-33.
The text of the Acts (xv. 29) in the Revised Version reads,
" that ye abstain from things sacrificed to idols, and from blood,
and from things strangled, and from fornication." There are
two serious difficulties in the way of accepting this as a true
version of the formula. In the first place it seems against common
sense and almost against decency to couple together, as of equal
importance, the first, second and third terms, which imply the
Jewish food law, and the fourth, which relates to a serious moral
offence. Secondly, if this was really the decision of the Council,
later history shows it was never observed, and it would be unlike
St. Luke, who was a skilful historian, to give such prominence as
he does to a decision which was from the first a dead letter and
therefore of no practical importance. St. Paul's Epistles are
also completely silent on the subject.
Examination of the Greek text shows, however, that the word
for ' things sacrificed to idols ' {eiduXodvTo) may equally well mean
' idolatry,' and that ' blood ' may mean not the blood in meat
killed after the Gentile manner, but ' bloodshed.' There remains
' things strangled,' and it is suggested that these words were inserted
in the text by some early commentator as an explanation (a wrong
explanation) of ' blood.'
If the old view is accepted, the decision of the Council was a
compromise between Judaizing and Pauline demands. The
Judaizers abandoned the claim to circumcision but made good, for
the moment and in the letter, their claim to the Gentile observance
of the food law. If the view I have adopted is accepted, the decision
becomes, as stated in the text, a complete victory for St. Paul's
party. It is impossible to state in full the case for or against
either view here.
THE WORK OF THE FIRST GENERATION 95
cities of the two Roman provinces of Achaia and Asia, and
made shorter sojourns at Phihppi, Thessalonica, Athens and
elsewhere. St. Luke, the author of the Acts and St. Paul's
fellow-traveller, is obviously impressed by the orderliness
and tolerance of the Roman government and the important
part it unconsciously played in facilitating St. Paul's work.
Gallio, for example, the Roman governor of Achaia (he was
also the brother of the Stoic Seneca) has generally been
regarded, on the strength of St. Luke's narrative, as the type
of worldly indifference to religion. He * cared for none of
these things.' Such was not at all St. Luke's idea in bringing
him to the readers' notice. For St. Luke he is the strong,
impartial ruler who ensures fair play between religious dis-
putants and refuses to deliver over the Christian missionary
to the tender mercies of his clamorous Jewish rivals. Gallio
is, in fact, the prototype of the British Government of India,
which is ' neutral ' in religion and ensures freedom for Hindu,
Moslem, and Christian missionary alike.
St. Paul's procedure in all cases was to preach first to the
Jews in their synagogue. Only when rejected by them did
he turn to the Gentiles. It is here that the great importance
of the Gentile God-fearers attending the synagogue comes in.
Probably many God-fearers who had attended the synagogue
and heard him there followed him to his meeting-place out-
side and formed the nucleus of the new Gentile congregation.
For the God-fearers must have found that, amid much that
attracted them, there was not a little that repelled them in
the faith of their Jewish friends. The narrow race-pride of
the Jews refused to admit the equality of the God-fearer with
themselves. But the Christian missionary abolished this
invidious distinction once for all. He proclaimed that the
Jewish Messiah had come, that the barriers between Jew and
Gentile were thrown down, that all could enter on terms of
equality into the Kingdom of God. It is easy to understand,
therefore, the virulence with which the Jews hated these
Christian missionaries. That mere pagan Gentiles should be
96 FIRST FOUR CENTURIES OF CHRISTIANITY
converted to a faith which the Jews would regard as a blas-
phemous parody of Judaism might have been bad enough,
but it was much worse when they saw the Christian * playing
pied piper ' on those particular Gentiles whom they had
attracted to Judaism, whose children they hoped, perhaps,
to be allowed to circumcise and thus secure as full members
of the Jewish community.
And what of the rest of St. Paul's Gentile audience > —
for the God-fearers, having forsaken the Jews, would no
doubt bring with them anti-Jewish Gentile friends. Some
of these might be followers of the philosophers. To such
St. Paul would show that the ' Unknown God ' who figured
as a dim shadow in their philosophical treatises, the Omni-
potent Being who loved Righteousness, was in very truth
the God he had come to preach to them. Others would
perhaps be initiates in the mysteries of Isis or Cybele. To
such St. Paul could offer * mysteries ' or, to use our own
word, ' sacraments,' far more impressive and convincing than
their own. In place of the vague and shadowy man-god
Horus, a being without place, time, or character, on whose
resurrection they pinned the hope of their own resurrection
and future salvation, he could offer Christ, who had lived
and died within their own life-times ; whose resurrection had
been acclaimed by His followers immediately after His death ;
whose life and character was the evidence of His divinity
and the pattern for His followers.
Thus marvellously was Christianity adapted to satisfying
the craving of each of the three main religious types in the
Gentile world. Thus marvellously did St. Paul, in his own
words, " become all things to all men that perchance I might
gain some." St. Paul himself speaks of the Law of the Jews
as a schoolmaster to lead us to Christ. A century later
Gentile converts were remarking that Greek philosophy was
a schoolmaster to lead men to Christ. The mystery rehgions
were schoolmasters also, for St. Paul brought into prominence
just that element in Christianity which makes it (besides being
THE WORK OF THE FIRST GENERATION 97
much else) the greatest of * mystery ' reHgions. To St. Peter,
at his first preaching of the gospel, the one essential fact had
been Christ's resurrection : it proved Him Messiah. The
Crucifixion is thought of only as a 'defeat' that is wiped out
by * victory ' that immediately follows it. St. Paul, how-
ever, seizes on the Crucifixion and shows it as no mere
martyrdom. Christ sacrificed Himself to redeem us. This
idea of redemption by sacrifice is, of course, familiar in every
religion in which animals are sacrificed to secure Divine
favour for man. The Christian doctrine of redemption
through Christ grows naturally out of the doctrine of redemp-
tion through animal sacrifices. But the idea of the voluntary,
human, self-sacrifice of the man-god, who bows before Death,
only to rise again and break Death's fetters, not only for
himself, but for all of us, is also the idea which the popular
mystery reHgions were trying to express.
The Christians of Jerusalem had believed that Jesus was
the Messiah, and that He was speedily coming again to judge
the world. This last belief was, as we know, a delusion. It
is difficult to resist the impression that, had the faith of the
first Apostles remained undeveloped, the failure of their
forecast in the matter of the Second Coming would have
discredited the whole movement. St. Paul started with his
hopes set on a speedy Second Coming, as his earliest Epistle,
First Thessalonians, shows, but he rapidly outgrew this
belief. His emphasis is more and more on the Spirit of
Christ indwelling in the soul of the believer. The ' resurrec-
tion of the dead ' and the ' second coming ' are no longer only
or even mainly conceived as world-shattering occurrences in
the sphere of external nature. There is a ' second coming '
of Christ every time an unbeliever is converted and Christ
enters his soul. There is a resurrection from the dead every
time one who has lived in spiritual death for the sake of the
things of this world, is ' born into life eternal ' and enters the
Kingdom which is ' on Earth as it is in Heaven.' ^
1 See for example Galatians ii. 19, 20, iv. 6 ; Colossians iii. i,
S.R.H G
98 FIRST FOUR CENTURIES OF CHRISTIANITY
And the most obvious feature of this Kingdom of Heaven
on Earth seems to have been its cheerfulness. Whatever
Christianity may have since become in the hands of some of
its sectaries, it was not a * kill-joy ' affair in the time of the
Apostles, but very much the reverse. The words ' joy ' and
* rejoice ' occur over a hundred times in the New Testament.
Nothing is so exhilarating as adventure, and these people
felt they were out on a great spiritual adventure. Probably
Christian smiles, and the Christian habit of laughing at
misfortune, won more converts than Christian arguments.
It is worth while, perhaps, to add at this point a few lines
concerning the personality of St. Paul. He is described,
in a work^ written sufficiently near his own time to be con-
sidered trustworthy, as short and bald, with a hook nose and
shaggy brows. He suffered from some physical trouble
which he calls a ' thorn in the flesh,' but its nature is quite
unknown to us. He is sometimes described as short
tempered and irascible, but there is really Httle evidence for
this view. A man who accomplished so much and concihated
so many opponents from so many different camps, cannot
have been wanting in tact, nor in personal charm. No
doubt he was vehement, and occasionally failed to * suffer
fools gladly.' The men who plan and carry out achievements
as vast as those of St. Paul cannot always afford time for
compHments. He was ever a fighter, a fearless fighter, and
an honourable fighter, and he bore the marks of his battles.
Five times he received the maximum number of lashes from
Jewish tribunals : three times he was scourged by the
Romans, once stoned, and a day and a night he spent batthng
with the waves after a shipwreck. The whole impression is
of a tireless energy, nourished by an unquenchable faith in
Christ. He thinks of Christ not as a dead hero, nor even
mainly as a God in the skies, but as something within himself.
^ The so-called ' Acts of Paul,' written in Asia Minor about 150 a.d.
The fact that, though the writer is an admirer, the description is
unflattering, is in favour of its truthfulness.
THE WORK OF THE FIRST GENERATION 99
Christ is within him and inspiring and guiding his work :
one feels that St, Paul might have used words like those of
the elder Pitt, and exclaimed, " I believe that I can save this
Church and that no one else can — yet not I," he would have
added, " but Christ working in me."
Yet St. Paul has not always been a popular character with
modern men. Some writers, who love the Spirit of Christ
but care not much for our Churches, feel that St. Paul was
the first and worst of a long line of offenders who buried the
simple teaching of Christ under a pile of obscure and useless
theological doctrines. This is not really fair to St. Paul.
His letters, it is true, are full of theological argument, and
much of that argument is difficult for us to appreciate because
our outlook on life is so different from that of those for whom
St. Paul wrote. He is at his best for us when he is least
theological, as in the thirteenth chapter of the First Epistle
to the Corinthians. The prose poem in praise of Love in
that chapter is as fresh to-day as when it was written, and
is as fine as anything in Plato or in any prose writer that
ever lived. As for his theological arguments, he lived in an
age of theological speculation, and argument was one of his
weapons. We should think of him not as a theologian but
as a great man of action and leader of men, one who planned
missionary enterprises as boldly and carried them through as
heroically as any Alexander or Napoleon planned and
executed his campaigns. " To the historian," writes Dr.
Inge,^ " there must always be something astounding in the
magnitude of the task he set himself, and in his enormous
success. The future history of the civilised world for two
thousand years, perhaps for all time, was determined by his
missionary journeys and his hurried writings. It is impos-
sible to guess what would have become of Christianity if he
had never lived ; we cannot even be sure that the religion
of Europe would be called by the name of Christ. That
stupendous achievement seems to have been due to an almost
^ Outspoken Essays, p. 229.
100 FIRST FOUR CENTURIES OF CHRISTIANITY
unique practical insight into the essential factors of a very
complex and difficult situation. We watch him, with breath-
less interest, steering the vessel which carried the Christian
Church and its fortunes through a narrow channel full of
sunken rocks and shoals. With unerring instinct he avoids
them all and brings the ship, not into smooth water, but into
the open sea, out of that perilous strait."
On the events of St. Paul's life following the third and last
missionary journey we need not stop long. On his return
to Jerusalem he was prosecuted by the Jews before the
Roman governor, as was Our Lord before him. We do not
discover what part the Christians of Jerusalem played in this
affair. Probably they were too weak a body to accompHsh
anything of importance. They had decisively failed by this
time to win any real hold on their fellow-citizens. Felix,
the Roman governor, was of the type of Pilate rather than of
Gallio and, since Paul was accused of * teaching against the
Law' and 'moving tumults among all the Jews throughout all
the world,' it seemed the safe course to throw so troublesome
a man into prison. Here Paul remained two years : then
followed another trial, the appeal to Caesar — for St. Paul
was a Roman citizen — and the journey to Rome.
At this point the narrative of the Acts terminates.
Tradition tells that a few years later St. Paul suffered
martyrdom in Nero's persecution of the Christians, probably
about 65 A.D. It sufficed for St. Luke that the greatest of
the Apostles had reached the capital of the world, a prisoner
and fated to be, like his Master, a martyr. As an old com-
mentator expressed it : ** Paulus Romae, apex Evangelii,
finis Actorum."
CHAPTER VII
THE GOSPELS
(i) The First Three Gospels
THE Gospels are not the earliest writings of the New
Testament. St. Paul's Epistles belong to the
* fifties ' and * sixties ' of the first Christian century,
and the dates within which the four gospels were written are
about 70-110 A.D.
At first sight this seems odd. When a great man dies
to-day the publication of a biography as soon as circumstances
allow, may be taken as a matter of course. When the subject
is the founder of a religion, surely the very first care of his
disciples would be to secure for the Church a full and authori-
tative account of his life and teaching before memory dimmed
and tradition became confused. It is not enough to say, as
used to be said, that a written account was not needed seeing
that the first Christians were His contemporaries and had
known Him in the flesh. From the first Christianity spread
widely among Hellenist Jews who had never so much as
heard of Our Lord during His brief ministry.
The fact seems to be that the Church of the Apostles
concerned itself very little with the past. Its eyes were
fixed on the future. Christ's resurrection was much more
important than His life, His Second Coming than His First.
What was the need of a written record when the End of the
World was close at hand.^* Thus we find St. Paul's Epistles are
very little concerned with the incidents of Our Lord's earthly
lOI
102 FIRST FOUR CENTURIES OF CHRISTIANITY
life. There is never so much as an allusion to a single parable
or miracle. For St. Paul and his Gentile converts the gospel
is not the life of Christ, but the death and resurrection.
Christ was God : He was crucified : He rose again, and those
who believe in Him rise with Him and partake in His risen
life. Nothing else mattered to them in comparison with this
final fact.
But time passed on and the world did not come to an end.
It became apparent that the Church would survive the
Apostles, and that it had before it an earthly career of
indefinite duration. In 70 a.d. Jerusalem was destroyed by
the Romans, and the Jewish State obliterated and the
earthly setting of Our Lord's career passed away for ever.
The Church was predominantly Gentile, and there was a real
danger lest for the Gentile Christian this ' Son of God ' he
worshipped might rapidly become as vague and unsubstantial
a figure as any pagan deity, not a historical character but an
item in a creed.
It was at this point that the Gospels came to the rescue
of the Church.
St. Mark's Gospel is the earliest and the briefest, and all
modern scholars agree that, from the purely historical point
of view, it is the most valuable of the four. This gospel says
nothing of Our Lord's miraculous birth : it begins with His
baptism and plunges at once into a condensed but detailed
and vivid narrative, consisting of brief parables, miracles,
and fragments of discussion between Our Lord and His
disciples or Our Lord and the Pharisees. Our Lord's
humanity is emphasised at every turn ; His anger, annoyance
or surprise are frankly described. It was probably written
between 70 and 80 a.d. by John Mark, once the companion
of St. Paul. There is also almost certainly truth in the
ancient tradition that it is based on the personal remini-
scences of St. Peter. Mark himself had lived in Jerusalem,
and maybe he met Jesus for the first and last time on
the eve of the Crucifixion, if indeed it is himself that he
THE GOSPELS 103
describes in the curious passage (xiv. 51, 52) telling how
* a certain young man ' followed Jesus a short way after His
betrayal, when all the disciples had forsaken Him and fled.
The young man had nothing on but a linen cloth, and when
people tried to arrest him he escaped by leaving the linen
cloth in their hands and fleeing away naked into the dark-
ness. This sounds like a personal reminiscence of the writer.
The first three gospels are called the Synoptic Gospels,
because they ' look together ' or take the same point of view
of Our Lord's life. But they are not really three independent
witnesses, for St. Matthew and St. Luke both wrote with St.
Mark's work before them, copying it extensively with such
slight alterations as seemed good to them. These altera-
tions generally take the form of abbreviations. Picturesque
but unimportant details from St. Mark are omitted, and in
general the two later evangelists suppress those phrases of
St. Mark's which call attention to Our Lord's human
emotions, His anger, surprise, and the hke. St. Matthew
and St. Luke also used another earlier source which has been
lost, consisting of a collection of ' Logia ' or * sayings ' of
Our Lord. This lost document is sometimes called Q, from
the German ' Quelle,' meaning ' source.' There is some
reason for thinking that this collection, and not our first
gospel, was the work of St. Matthew the Apostle.
St. Matthew's Gospel is not concerned to relate the develop-
ment of Our Lord's teaching. St. Mark's work appears to be
chronological in its general arrangement, but St. Matthew
freely re-arranges his material in order to bring out what he
finds to be the main features. After four chapters devoted
to the birth, the baptism and the temptation, he proceeds at
once to * The Sermon on the Mount.' It is easy to see that
this is not a sermon in the modern sense of the word but a
collection of groups of sayings, brought together to illustrate
the most characteristic feature of Our Lord's teaching,
namely, the foundation of the Kingdom. The Beatitudes
already quoted in brief (cf. p. 66) describe the tests of
104 FIRST FOUR CENTURIES OF CHRISTIANITY
citizenship ; and all that follows contrasts the Principles of
the Kingdom with the Laws of Moses, the life and standards
of the new society with the life and standards of the old.
St. Matthew (as it is convenient to call the author) is writing
principally for the Christians of Palestine. He has been
described as a ' Christian Rabbi.' ^ The righteousness of
the Christian must exceed the righteousness of the Jew, and
those for whom the Law of Moses is superseded must be
quite clear as to what has taken its place.
Being written primarily for Jewish converts the First
Gospel is for us, in some of its aspects, less valuable than the
others. St. Matthew insists, as the other gospels do not,
on Our Lord's descent from King David, and on His fulfil-
ment of Hebrew prophecy. With St. Matthew begins that
rather mechanical handhng of Old Testament texts, which
can still sometimes be heard from modern pulpits. Allusion
has already been made to this subject (cf. page 60 and foot-
note). It would be easy to go through St. Matthew's Gospel
and with the knowledge at our disposal show that on this
occasion and on that his quotations from the Old Testament
reveal a misunderstanding of the passage he quotes. It is,
therefore, all the more interesting to note that whenever
St. Matthew represents Our Lord Himself as quoting from
the Old Testament or using it as a basis of argument, the
quotations are always given their true and original meaning.
This affords very strong evidence that the words of Our Lord
recorded in the Synoptic Gospels are a faithful reproduction
of Our Lord's manner of teaching, and not merely the
invention of the evangelists.-
^ Burkitt, The Gospel History and its Transmission, p. 190.
* An example may be given of the two types of Old Testament
quotation. Our Lord quotes from Hosea vi. 6 the words, ' I will
have mercy and not sacrifice.' Our Lord gives the words exactly
the meaning Hosea had intended them to bear, and his point is that
His own teaching had, in this particular, been already anticipated
by the first ' prophet of love ' (see Part I. on Hosea). St. Matthew
on the other hand, after recording the flight of the Holy Fam.ily
into Egypt to escape from Herod the Great, adds, " That
THE GOSPELS I05
St. Luke's Gospel is, it is generally agreed, the work of
St. Paul's companion, and the author of the Acts. He uses
the same material as St. Matthew and some further sources
of his own. It is to him that we owe the longer and more
dramatic parables, the Prodigal Son, the Good Samaritan,
Dives and Lazarus, and the Pharisee and the Publican. A
feature of his Gospel is the emphasis he lays on the Christian
virtue of poverty. Where St. Matthew writes " Blessed are
the poor in spirit; blessed are they which do hunger and thirst
after righteousness," St. Luke writes simply " Blessed be ye
poor ; blessed are ye that hunger." There is about him,
as about his master St. Paul, a tendency to asceticism. The
End of the World now appeared to many to be indefinitely
postponed. The Christian Churches maintained a precarious
foothold, scattered over the length and breadth of the Roman
Empire. Christians must learn to do without and to despise
most of the tempting things the world had to offer. Perhaps
St. Luke gives this side of Our Lord's teaching undue pro-
minence. Our Lord Himself was so far from despising the
simple pleasures of Hfe that His enemies accused Him of
being a gluttonous man and a wine-bibber. He associated
with the poor not so much because they were poor as because
they were honest and free from pride and hypocrisy.
A marked feature of the Gentile Churches of the end of
the first century was the honour paid to women. The
Christians maintained a standard of purity and chivalry in
private life such as no Greek or Roman community had ever
known, and it is only where purity and chivalry prevail that
the special gifts of womanhood can be recognised. St. Paul
several times mentions women by name as among the most
it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the
Prophet saying, Out of Egypt did I call my son." It is true
these words or something like them occur in Hosea xi. i, but Hosea
is referring to the Exodus. We do not to-day believe that the
prophetsfilled their works with sayings that were intended to convey
their true meaning only to people who lived hundreds of years
afterwards.
100 FIRST FOUR CENTURIES OF CHRISTIANITY
important members of the Churches to which his epistles are
addressed. So St, Luke in his Gospel has a special tenderness
for and interest in the women with whom Our Lord came in
contact. To him we owe our picture of the Virgin Mary, of
Anna the prophetess, of Mary and Martha, the sisters of
Lazarus, of the woman that wiped the feet of Jesus with her
hair.
In conclusion, we may say that St. Mark's Gospel presents
a plain historical outline ; to it we are chiefly indebted for
our knowledge of the external events of Our Lord's life. St.
Matthew and St. Luke use that outline and add material that
would be specially interesting to their own first readers.
To St. Matthew we owe the clearest and fullest teaching about
' the Kingdom ' : to St. Luke we owe most of those stories,
some parables and some not, which are the most human, the
most touching, the most picturesque elements in the New
Testament and portray, for most of us, the ' gentle Jesus '
of whom we learnt at our mother's knee.
But the great merit of all these gospels alike is that in
reading them we feel that we are reading the authentic words
of Our Lord. We have no external proof of this, but the
internal proof is irresistible. Nowhere else in early Christian
literature do we find that inimitable style, so simple, so
gracious, so subtle, so profound, St. Matthew loses it as
soon as he begins to explain ; St. Luke loses it as soon as he
passes to the Acts. It is utterly alien to St. Paul. The only
explanation is that, in spite of the forty years that had
passed since Our Lord's Crucifixion, the gospels have caught
the actual tones and phrases of His speech on earth. They
have penetrated behind the Divine Redeemer to the Human
Master.^
^ A very interesting example of the way in which a disciple may
recreate, many years after, the conversation of a beloved master
may be quoted here. In 1920 Mr. Bruce Glasier published a book
on William Morris, who died twenty-five years before. He writes :
" I have found that my memory is, on many occasions, subject to
what seems to be a sort of ' illumination ' or ' inspuation.' Thus
The gospels to'j
(ii) The Fourth Gospel. The Fourth Gospel has inspired
perhaps more devotion than any other book in the Bible.
At the same time, its peculiarities raise some very difficult
questions, and there is to-day no general agreement as to
the answers to them. It is necessary to indicate briefly what
those difficulties are, and then to offer what is at any rate
a possible solution of them and an explanation of the position
of this gospel in the history of the early Church.
We have already described, in Chapter V., the main
features of Our Lord's Ministry as related by St. Mark, and,
with certain differences noticed above, by St. Matthew and
St. Luke. The scene of Our Lord's public ministry is
Galilee : He teaches by means of parables and short, pithy
sayings or 'proverbs,' and performs many miracles of healing:
He preaches ' the Kingdom,' but carefully keeps in the back-
ground His own Messianic claims. Later He leaves Galilee
from fear of Herod, and wanders with His chosen disciples
in the country to the north and east of the Lake. At the
end of this period they finally recognise Him as ' the Christ,
the Son of the Living God.' Almost immediately afterwards
He sets forth to Jerusalem. No other visit to Jerusalem is
recorded, except the occasion described in St. Luke when
His parents took Him to Jerusalem at the age of twelve.
Four days after His triumphal entry He is arrested.
When we come to the Fourth Gospel we find the scene
laid very largely in Jerusalem, where Our Lord celebrates at
least one Passover previous to that which coincided with the
Crucifixion. Though certain incidents, such as the Feeding
of the Five Thousand, are common to all four gospels, the
Fourth Gospel contains others that are entirely absent in the
when I have fixed my mind on one, say, of the incidents recalled
in these chapters, the scene has begun to unfold itself, perhaps
slowly at first, but afterwards rapidly and clearly. Meditating
upon it for a time, I have lifted my pen and begun to write. Then,
to my surprise, the conversations, long buried or hidden somewhere
in my memory, have come back to me sometimes with the greatest
fulness, word for word, as we say. Nay, not only the words, but
the tones, the pauses, and the gestures of the speaker."
lo8 FIRST FOUR CENTURIES OF CHRISTIANITY
Synoptic Gospels. Some of these, such as the conversations
with Nicodemus and the Woman of Samaria, present no
difficulties, for the Synoptic Gospels do not profess to give
complete biographies, and another independent writer would
naturally make a different choice of incidents. But the
miracle of the Raising of Lazarus presents a different problem.
It is hard to believe that the Synoptics could have passed
over so unique and astounding a * sign ' — to use St. John's
word — had they known of it.
Then again, the style of Our Lord's teaching is very
different in the Fourth Gospel. The simple parables, the
direct, pithy sayings, are for the most part replaced by highly
abstract, spiritual, and often difficult discourses. In the
Synoptics Our Lord hardly alludes at all to His own claims,
and does not admit His Messiahship till close on the end of
the Ministry. In the Fourth Gospel He claims from the first
the titles of Son of God and Son of Man, and bases His whole
teaching on these claims. Take as an example of this con-
trast the two accounts of Our Lord's words on the occasion
when He healed a man on the Sabbath day. In St. Mark's
account (Mark iii. 4) before healing the man He challenged
the Pharisees, " Is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath days
or to do evil } To save life or to kill .? " No conversation
after the healing is recorded. In St. John's account (John v.
17 onwards), Jesus said, after the man was healed, " My
Father worketh hitherto, and I work . . . Verily, verily I say
unto you, the Son can do nothing of himself, but what he
seeth the Father do : for whatsoever things he doeth, these
also doeth the Son likewise. For the Father loveth the Son
and showeth him all things that himself doeth ; and he will
show him greater works than these that ye may marvel.
For as the Father raiseth up the dead and quickeneth them ;
even so the Son quickeneth whom he will. For the Father
judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the
Son," and so on through twenty-five more verses.
Now the easiest solution of these difficulties, at first sight.
THE GOSPELS 109
is to suppose that the Fourth Gospel is simply a religious
romance ; that its author had had no personal knowledge of
Christ on earth but expressed, in the form of an imaginary
biography with imaginary discourses, what he found to be
the essential truths of Christianity. In favour of this view
is the fact that the Gospel cannot have been written earlier
than about 100 a.d., and any companion of Our Lord on
earth must at that date have been an extremely old man.
Many such religious romances, of which fragments survive,
were indeed written in the second century. They are for
the most part very inferior works and are known as the
Apocryphal Gospels. Some of them bear the names of
apostles : there is, for example, a ' Gospel of St. Peter,'
which was certainly not written by that Apostle.
All lovers of the Fourth Gospel would be very sorry if
compelled to accept this view. If, however, the balance of
evidence as revealed by the scholars inclined with over-
whelming force in favour of it, we should have to accept it
or behave like the ' deaf adder that stoppeth her ears,' — not
a good model for Christian imitation. As it happens, how-
ever, there is strong evidence on the other side, though it is
not easy to state it in a few words. Roughly speaking it
amounts to this. Though writing thirty or forty years after
Jerusalem had been destroyed and all its religious ceremonies
had become a matter of ancient and unimportant history, the
writer shows an accurate knowledge of them which, since it
contributes nothing to the main purpose of his work, would
be almost inconceivable in a writer who was not a Jew
familiar with the old Jerusalem. Notice, again, such a verse as
the following: " It was the Feast of the Dedication at Jeru-
salem ; it was winter ; and Jesus was walking in the Temple
in Solomon's Porch " (John x. 22, 23). Here is no proof ;
but the more such a verse is considered, the less does it look
like the work of a mere religious romancer ; it bears all the
marks of an odd scrap of distant but distinct recollection,
connecting a particular discourse with a certain locality, a
no FIRST FOUR CENTURIES OF CHRISTIANITY
certain Feast day, and a certain type of weather, even though
neither the locahty, the Feast day, nor the weather are in
themselves matters of importance.
It seems probable, then, that the Gospel is either the work
of an eye-witness, or of some writer of the next generation
who was in close personal touch with an eye-witness, and
used the material afforded by the eye-witness's conversation
or notes. The date of the Gospel (loo-iio a.d.) makes the
second alternative the more probable, but the choice between
them is really unimportant. In either case we have as our
authority a * disciple whom Jesus loved.'
There is no figure in early Christian history that makes
quite the same appeal to the devout imagination as this
mysterious ' St. John,' who, unhke St. Peter and St. Paul,
passes at once from the sphere of history to the sphere of
legend. The early Church told of his exile to the barren
ivsland of Patmos in the Aegean, and of his old age in Ephesus.
He had lived to old age, pondering over Our Lord's teaching
until he had made it his own and could no longer express it
in any words but those which came natural to his own ripe
experience. In any case, the writer of the gospel makes no
attempt to translate these discourses back into the language
of Christ as we know it in the Synoptics. " The old disciple
needs no documents. . . . The whole is present to his memory,
shaped by years of reflection, illuminated by the experience
of a life-time. He knows Christ now far better than he
knew Him in Galilee or Jerusalem." ^
We pass to the question — what was the special purpose of
this gospel }
We have seen how the Church started with the idea that
the Messiah would soon return again in glory to judge the
world ; that Christ would fulfil at least this part of the
current Jewish expectations even though His life on earth
had in other respects so little conformed with their Messianic
^ J. A. Robinson, The Study of the Gospels, p. 148, quoted by Burkitt,
The Gospel History and its Transmission, p. 230.
THE GOSPELS lit
programme. St. Mark's Gospel, just because it is so wonder-
fully faithful a historical sketch, is coloured throughout with
this idea. St. Matthew and St. Luke copy St. Mark, and
where they differ from him they tend to tone down and
weaken the vividness of St. Mark's dehneation of Our Lord's
human character from reverence for His divinity. Here they
are, in a sense, disciples of St. Paul, who presents Christ to
his Gentile converts primarily as a mystic Redeemer in-
dwelhng in the human heart, and, if we may trust the
evidence of the Epistles, emphasises His death and resur-
rection rather than the human aspects of His life. Hence
there was a danger — and as the next chapter will show, a
very real danger — that Christ should come to be regarded
with the lapse of years and the death of all who had known
Him in the flesh, as a mere mystical * demi-god.' We have
a curious piece of evidence of this danger in the fact, which
seems established, that the First and Third Gospels rapidly
became more popular than St. Mark's.
It was to combat this tendency that St. John wrote. Even
more than St. Mark, he emphasises Christ's humanity, even
His human weaknesses of the flesh. ^ At Jacob's Well He was
tired and asked for water (John iv. 6) ; He wept at the tomb
of Lazarus (xi. 35) ; even on the Cross, He said, *' I thirst"
(xix. 28). It is to St. John alone that we owe these details.
And yet — let there be no mistake. This Human is also
Divine, and of a divinity more august than even the early
Church realised ; no mere tempera/ Messiah ; no mere future
Judge. Christ was God before the world was created, and
will be so to the end. " I am the Resurrection and the Life,"
he says ; " I and the Father are One."
St. John sums up the whole idea of his Gospel in a kind of
preface or prologue, which may also be regarded as an
epilogue or summing up of the whole matter. " In the
beginning," he writes (i. 1-4), " was the Word, and the Word
^ Here, and in what follows, I am specially indebted to Burkitt
The Gospel History and its Transmission, pp. 233-24^,
112 FIRST FOUR CENTURIES OF CHRISTIANITY
was with God, and the Word was God . . . All things were
made by him ... In him was Life, and the Life was the
Light of men." This term * Word ' — * Logos ' in Greek —
was a very convenient one for the purpose, since it was
familiar in a religious use both to Jew and to Gentile. The
Stoics and other philosophers used to speak of the * Sperma-
ticos Logos,' the Seed-bearing Word, as the agency through
which God communicated with man. On the other hand,
the Old Testament contains several passages in which ' the
word' stands for God's power manifest on earth. "He
sendeth his word and healeth them, and delivereth them from
their destructions" (Psalms, cvii. 20). " The grass withereth,
the flower fadeth ; but the word of our God shall stand for
ever " (Isaiah, xl. 8).
Mark, then, the next step. " And the Word was made
Flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the
glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and
truth." The Church has cherished the Fourth Gospel
because it most emphatically expressed the general con-
viction of the Church, that Christ was both Man and God.
St. Mark gives us the Jesus of History, St. John the Christ
of Christian experience. If we refuse to believe that the
Apostles were, after Christ's Crucifixion, guided by the Holy
Spirit, then no doubt the Christ of St. John is a product of
human delusion. If, however, we believe that they were so
guided, then the Christ of St. John is as truly the revelation
of Christ in the year 100 as the Christ of St. Mark is the
revelation of Christ in the year 30, as preserved by human
memory and recorded forty years later.
CHAPTER VIII
CHRISTIAN THOUGHT UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE
WHEN we pass from the first century of the Christian
Era to the second, third, and fourth centuries,
we cannot help being rather disappointed. St.
Paul and the Gospels have led us to expect something better
than we actually get. This inferiority is most pronounced
when we fix our attention, as we shall do in this chapter, on
some of the leaders. It was an age of small men, in the
Pagan as well as the Christian world. One is tempted to
wonder how it would have been had a man of the calibre of
Aeschylus or Plato, of Jeremiah or St. Paul, arisen in the
Church during these centuries. But it was not to be. We
shall see the brighter side of the picture in the following
chapter when we consider the quahty of the Christian com-
munity as a whole, their heroism under persecution, and the
tributes of unwilling admiration that not only countless brave
deaths but countless virtuous lives extorted from their
persecutors.
Donald Hankey states the case in his usual trenchant way ^ :
" A lot of second rate philosophers, who had hitherto confined
their attentions chiefly to the Greek philosophies and
Oriental religions, started to explain Christianity. They were
generally not very good Christians, and just looked upon the
faith as an intellectual problem. ... If the Christians had
been wise they would have stuck to their guns and said, ' We
can't know all about God. We can only know what God has
1 Hankey, The Lord of All Good Life, pp. 112, 113.
S.R.H. H
114 FIRST FOUR CENTURIES OF CHRISTIANITY
chosen to tell us. We know that so much is true and if you
try to work it out in practice you will find that it is true.
But exactly how it ought to be put philosophically we neither
know nor care.' Unfortunately the Christians tried to argue,
with the result that they argued for about 200 years. . . .
Meanwhile the faith had got tied up in little fifth century
boxes like our Athanasian Creed. We have never stopped
making dogmas and arguing about them."
This is all very well, but the attitude Donald Hankey
recommends to the Christians is impossible, and it is to the
credit of the human mind that it is so. We have got to try
and be philosophers, to try to state our experience of life in
terms that satisfy our intellects. It is unfortunate that
most of us cannot hope to be more than ' second-rate '
philosophers, but that fact does not condemn philosophy.
As a continuous history of the Christian thought of this
period might become somewhat long and wearisome, I have
contented myself with taking a few representative men and
movements.
(i) The heretic Marcion [about ioo-i6o). Marcion was born
a Christian, being the son of the bishop of Sinope, a port on
the southern coast of the Black Sea. After studying the
Epistles of St. Paul and the Gospel according to St. Luke —
for there was at this time no ' New Testament ' — he passed
to the study of the Old Testament and being repelled by
the vindictive and ' jealous ' God depicted in many of its
chapters, came to the conclusion that the God who was the
Father of Christ could not possibly be the God of the Jews.
In other words he sought to cut all connections between
Christianity and Israel, or, as we might say, between Part II.
and Part I. of this book. He seems to have put it somewhat
as follows. There are two Gods, the God of the Law, who
stands for Justice, and the God of Christ, who stands for
Mercy. " Jesus, the Son of God, appeared on earth, doing
good without reward and healing those who for their sins
CHRISTIAN THOUGHT UNDER ROMAN EMPIRE 115
were sick, until at last the God of the Law was jealous ; and
the God of the Law stirred up his servants and they took
Jesus and crucified Him, and He became like the dead, so
that Hell opened her mouth and received Him. But Death
could have no dominion over Jesus, nor could Hell retain one
who was alive within its bounds. Jesus therefore burst the
bonds of Hell and ascended to His Father, carrying with Him
the spirits that lay there in prison. Then Jesus came down
in His glory and appeared before the God of the Law, who
was obliged to confess that he was guilty according to his
own Law ; for Jesus had only done good to the race of men
and yet he had been crucified. ' I was ignorant,' said the
God of the Law to Jesus, ' and because I sinned and killed
thee in ignorance, there shall be given to thee in revenge all
those who shall be willing to believe in thee, to carry away
wherever thou wilt.' Then Jesus left the God of the Law
and betook himself to Paul, and revealed this to him and sent
him to preach that we have all been bought with a price.
All who believe in Jesus were then and there sold from
dominion of the Just Power to the Good and Kind One." ^
Marcion is here attempting to explain the very difficult
problem of the Atonement. Why was it that God the Son
had to suffer in order to fulfil the purposes of God the Father }
We can only answer the question by saying that God the
Son and God the Father are, though two ' persons ' [i.e.
aspects or manifestations) One God, and that God's agony
on the Cross is only a manifestation on earth of God's eternal
suffering for tjie sins of his children. This is the answer of
the Church.
Marcion also taught that Christ was not Human except
in outward appearance. He was a new God, suddenly
emerging upon a world that had not hitherto known Him.
Marcion was a very earnest and virtuous man, but there is
no doubt that the Church did well to reject his view of
^ Burkitt, The Gospel History and its Transmission, p. 297, on
which the whole of the present section is based.
ii6 FIRST FOUR CENTURIES OF CHRISTIANITY
Christianity. The orthodox doctrine of the Humanity of
Christ is the secret of the optimism of our rehgion. If Christ
has taken on Him our flesh, then the body, rightly used, is a
glory. In denying Christ's humanity Marcion went near
asserting that Matter, or the Body, is necessarily evil. This
leads straight to all those views which preach mere asceti-
cism, mere refraining from the harmless pleasures and
business of life, as a virtue in itself. Again, Marcion's
rejection of the religious progress of Israel as the earthly
basis of Christianity is contrary to all that scientific history
has taught us about the origin and growth of rehgions. If
in one aspect rehgion is a Divine revelation, it is equally truly
a product of human effort. Modern missionary work has
done more than anything else to impress this on us. Chris-
tianity cannot start in vacuo, in a void. As in Africa to-day,
so also in Judaea and in the Roman Empire nineteen hundred
years ago, it could only build on the foundations already laid
for it. The Church has believed, and surely consistently,
that God laid those foundations just as truly as He ordained
the superstructure. This Marcion denied.
The Marcionite Church survived until the fourth century,
when Christianity was adopted as the official religion of the
Emperors. Then, sad to say, the orthodox, having learnt
nothing from their own persecutions, turned and rent the
Marcionites (as all other Christian heretics) and, accusing
them of every horrible crime that a diseased imagination
could suggest, wiped them off the face of the earth.
In one other respect Marcion is curiously important. As
he was the first Christian to reject the Old Testament as a
Divine revelation, so he was the first to compile a New
Testament of Sacred Scriptures. His * New Testament '
seems to have consisted of St. Luke's Gospel, out of v/hich
he cut certain passages that conflicted with his views, and
of ten Epistles of St. Paul, which he diligently collected on
his travels. To these he wrote brief introductions which were
long afterwards, when their authorship was forgotten,
CHRISTIAN THOUGHT UNDER ROMAN EMPIRE 117
placed at the head of each epistle in the Vulgate, the Latin
Bible of the Church (cf. p. 152). Marcion's New Testament
is the basis of the New Testament as we have it to-day. To
him we almost certainly owe the great preponderance of
St. Paul's Epistles in the latter part of the book.
(ii) Clement of Alexandria {about 150-212) and Origen
[about 185-254). Clement and Origen are important in the
history of the Church because they were the first writers to
attempt to clothe Christianity in the dress of a Greek philo-
sophical system. Both were essentially learned men, of the
type of University professors, in an age when learning was
revolving on an immovable axis rather than progressing from
discovery to discovery as it had been progressing in the days
of Socrates and is again to-day. Clement was born a pagan,
and the facts of his conversion are unknown. He became
head of a Christian school in Alexandria, which ever since
Alexander's day had been the leading centre of learning in
the Mediterranean world. Origen was his most distinguished
pupil, and indeed the greater mind of the two. Origen in
fact was so steeped in Greek philosophy that he was ulti-
mately regarded as a heretic, and the Church refused him
the honour of canonisation. So, unlike many lesser men,
he is not a ' Saint ' of the Roman Church. Clement became
a ' Saint ' and long remained so, but an eighteenth century
Pope came to the conclusion that his views on the Incarnation,
that is, the miraculous birth, of Our Lord were unsound, and
struck him off the list. Both were men of immense industry
and blameless life.
Clement held the view, with which the modern thinker
strongly sympathises, that God had through the ages been
preparing not only Israel but also the whole world for the
coming of Christianity. St. Paul had said that the Law
was a ' schoolmaster ' leading us to Christ. Clement adds
that Greek philosophy was also such a schoolmaster. If
God sent Moses, He also sent Plato. Unfortunately he some-
ii8 FIRST FOUR CENTURIES OF CHRISTIANITY
times combines this view — and he is a most haphazard and
inconsistent writer — with the impossible theory that all that
was valuable in the Greek philosophers had been borrowed
from the Jewish Scriptures. This theory he carried to an
absurd point. Not content with finding traces of the Old
Testament in Homer, Plato, and Demosthenes he asserts that
Miltiades won the battle of Marathon by imitating the tactics
of one of the battles of Moses. This theory that the classical
Greeks borrowed from the Old Testament can be traced as
late as the eighteenth century, and was propounded by an
English clergyman named Waterland in 1731.^
Clement adopts from St. John the term Logos (Word) as
symbolising Christ, but, whereas in St. John the Logos is God's
power, in Clement it is Divine Wisdom or Reason. Clement
exalts Reason as the highest Christian virtue. He says true
religion begins in Faith ; its second stage is Love ; its final
perfection is Reason. Christianity in fact is simply the
greatest of philosophies. In the human and historical Jesus
he seems little interested.
Origen's mind moved in the same channels. He wrote
voluminous commentaries on books of the Old and New
Testaments and was much addicted, like all Christian writers
of his period, to a very dangerous intellectual exercise, namely
the search for allegorical meanings. Clement did the same.
He takes for instance that miracle of the Feeding of the Five
Thousand and finds that the five barley loaves stand for the
Jewish Law (" for barley is sooner ripe for harvest than
wheat ") and the fishes for Greek philosophy, " born and
moving among Gentile billows." ^ This allegorising habit,
being based on an uncritical devotion to the mere words of
Scripture, infected the teaching of the Church down to quite
modern times. In fact, we owe our freedom from it to-day
entirely to the modern scientific and historical spirit.
The most interesting work of Origen is one in which he
1 Lecky, History of Morals, vol. i. 345.
* Glover, Conflict of Religions, p. 277.
CHRISTIAN THOUGHT UNDER ROMAN EMPIRE up
refutes an anti-Christian writer named Celsus. Fortunately
he quotes his adversary very fully, and thereby enables us to
see the grounds on which an intelligent and honest adversary
attacked the Faith at the end of the second century. The case
of Celsus against Christianity can be reduced to three points.
First, he says that the idea of God taking human form is
degrading and ignoble : the very idea of the crucifixion is
repulsive to him, and he suggests that Jesus, to prove his
Godhead, ought to have vanished from off the cross before
the eyes of his enemies. This is as much as to say that Our
Lord ought to have yielded to the Temptation in the Wilder-
ness. It proves that Celsus simply did not understand the
spirit of the rehgion he was criticising.
His second point is that the Christian writers, by allegor-
ising their Scriptures, defy common-sense. Here we may
admit that Celsus was right.
But his main charge against the Christians is that they were
what we to-day should call anarchists, in that they refused
to accord the customary formal worship to the Emperor.
He writes, " If all men were to do as you do, nothing will
prevent the Emperor from being left deserted, and all things
on earth falling into the power of the most lawless and
barbarous savages, with the result that neither of your
religion nor of the true wisdom would there be left among
men so much as the name." ^ This is very shrewd criticism,
and it is interesting to notice that the danger from the
Barbarians was realised as early as this : Celsus wrote about
1 80 A.D. In the course of the next century and a half it
did indeed become clear that the Roman Empire must either
accept Christianity as its official religion or perish from the
combined hostility of the Christians within and the Barbarians
without. This supreme fact was realised by Constantine,
the last great statesman of the Ancient World (see p. 122).
Even then the Roman Empire was not saved, but Celsus
would have been surprised indeed and perhaps partly consoled
* Glover, Conflict of Religions, p. 256.
120 FIRST FOUR CENTURIES OF CHRISTIANITY
could he have reaHsed that a new ' Roman Empire,' the
Christian Papacy, would build up a great civilising power on its
ruins and in the fulness of time, in 800 a.d., crown the greatest
of the Barbarians, Charlemagne, as the founder of a new line
of ' Roman Emperors ' — Carolus Augustus, a Deo coronatus.
One last point may be noted. Celsus does not, like many
inferior enemies of the early Christians, accuse them of
practising abominable vices. There has always been a
tendency in men to impute immoral habits to those with whom
they disagree on religious grounds, and the Christian sects
have been as bad offenders here as any pagan. That Celsus
refrained shows him to have been an honourable man.
(iii) The Avian Controversy and the Nicene Creed (^iS-^gg).
We have already seen how Marcion found it impossible to
regard Jehovah, the Jewish God of the Law, as the God
whom Christ called Father. One hundred and fifty years
after his death another heresy arose, the Arian heresy,
which was in reahty Marcionism in a more subtle and compli-
cated form. Its author was Arius, a priest of Alexandria,
but his personal importance is quite dwarfed by the im-
mensity of the controversy he set going, which shook the
Church to its foundations.
Arius, like many others who combined a belief in Christ
with an affection for Greek philosophy, was troubled by the
thought that, if Christ was God and the Father also God, then
there were two Gods and Christianity was a form of poly-
theism. He did not therefore assert that Christ was mere man;
he allowed Christ every conceivable honour short of Godhead :
He was a special and divine creation of God, a Son of God,
a ' demigod ' if you will, but no more. God remains supreme
and apart, unknowable, the God of the Greek philosophers.
The effect of such a view would be to strike at the very
roots of Christianity as we understand it. By asserting that
Christ is God, Christianity also asserts that God is Christlike.
The Supreme Creator and Ruler of the Universe is, in the
CHRISTIAN THOUGHT UNDER ROMAN EMPIRE 121
human sense, not unknowable but good. He loves His
Creation and desires its happiness. If once the thinnest
thin end of a wedge is driven between God and Christ, if
once the equation, so to speak, is tampered with, the Supreme
Creator and Ruler drifts away and becomes a cold abstraction,
and Christ figures as a heroic rebel, perfect in goodness, but
not perfect in power.
The easiest way for the modern reader, unskilled in
theology, to get at the root idea of Arianism is to study it
in a modern equivalent. Mr. Wells may fairly be called a
modern Arian, and his book, God the Invisible King, an
Arian Confession of faith. He sharply contrasts the Creator
God, whom he calls the * Veiled Being,' and the Redeemer
God (or Christ),^ whom he calls ' God the Invisible King.'
The attempt of Christianity to get these two different ideas
of God into one focus, to make the God of Nature a loving
God, accessible to prayer, and the God of the Heart an all-
powerful God : — this attempt, he says, has failed. Of the
Veiled Being — ' Fate,' if you will — man can know nothing.
His sole concern is with God the Invisible King, the Good
God who strives with man's own strivings, and leads him in
his eternal warfare with evil.^
This is an attractive creed, but it will not stand examina-
tion. A God who is not Almighty is to the modern mind
simply not a god at all. The worship of this Invisible King
is merely sentimental hero-worship offered to a dead or
non-existent hero.
The great champion of Christianity against the Arians was
Athanasius, also an Alexandrian. Athanasius bears a bad
name as the author of the complicated and unattractive Creed
1 Mr. Wells does not himself identify the Redeemer God with
Christ, but he expresses sympathy with those who do so.
2 The Prometheus legend offers an example of the Arian type of
religion. Prometheus the demigod friend of man defies Zeus the
all-powerful tyrant of the Universe, and suffers for his heroic efforts
on man's behalf. Shelley in his Prometheus Unbound shows himself
a kind of Arian.
122 FIRST FOUR CENTURIES OF CHRISTIANITY
which many reformers would hke to exclude from the
Anglican Prayer Book. In a sense Athanasius does not
deserve this unpopularity, for the creed in question was not
written till long after his death. None the less, it must be
admitted that its rigid definitions and fierce denunciations
(" except a man believe faithfully he cannot be saved ") are
typical of its reputed author. Athanasius was a fierce
fighter for the faith, heroic but ruthless.
The controversy was already in full blaze when the Emperor
Constantine, who had already made himself the champion of
Christianity, won the victory over his rivals which made him
supreme throughout the Empire (323). Constantine valued
Christianity as a moral force which, properly guided by a
Christian Emperor, should make for unity and patriotism.
A Christianity divided against itself was totally useless for
his purpose. So he summoned the first General Council of
the Church at Nicaea, on the south side of the Sea of Marmora,
about fifty miles over the water from his new capital, Constan-
tinople. No doubt Constantine was neutral as between the
rival theologians. His one aim was to secure a united front.
The main business of the Council was to agree on a creed
that should be henceforth a universal test of orthodoxy.
Hitherto there had been no common creed. The churches
of the various cities and provinces had each gone their own
way and only interfered with each other's beliefs and practices
when some particular church attracted attention by straying
over-far from the normal and customary. Most churches had
evolved from themselves very simple tests of admission, such
as a declaration of belief in God the Father, God the Son, and
God the Holy Ghost, without further definition.
About three hundred bishops from every province of the
Empire attended at Nicaea in 325. Constantine presided.
Arianism was condemned by a large majority. Then
Eusebius, famous afterwards as the first historian of the
Church, put forward for general acceptance the creed of
Caesarea, a vague, comprehensive, popular document, easily
CHRISTIAN THOUGHT UNDER ROMAN EMPIRE 123
understood by the simple, but equally liable to diverse inter-
pretations by the learned. This was clearly useless as an
instrument for defining orthodox doctrine, and so the party,
of which Athanasius afterwards became the leader, proposed
and carried, with the emperor's approval, a series of amend-
ments which transformed the creed of Caesarea into a rigid
and complex statement, which henceforth became the banner
of orthodoxy. This is not the so-called Nicene Creed of the
Anglican Prayer Book. Both that Creed and the so-called
Apostles' Creed were unofficial documents composed later
in the same century. The true Nicene Creed deserves
quotation, though it is not possible here to explain the
precise bearing of all its clauses. It is as follows :
We believe in one God, the Father Almighty,
maker of all things, both visible and invisible ;
And in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the Son of God,
begotten of the Father, and only-begotten —
that is from the essence of the Father —
God from God
Light from Light
true God from true God
begotten not made,
being of one essence with the Father ;
by whom all things were made,
both things in heaven and things on earth :
who for us men and for our salvation came down and was made
flesh,
was made man, suffered, and rose again the third day
ascended into heaven,
Cometh to judge quick and dead ;
And in the Holy Spirit.
But those who say that
' there was once when he was not ' and
' before he was begotten he was not,' and
' he was made of things that were not '
or maintain that the Son of God is of a different essence
or created, or subject to mortal change or alteration,
— these doth the Catholic and Apostolic Church anathematise.'
Quoted from H. M. Gwatkin, The Arian Controversy, p. 29.
124 FIRST FOUR CENTURIES OF CHRISTIANITY
The acceptance of this creed and the conclusion of the
Council settled nothing. The majority, who had unwillingly
accepted it, quickly abandoned it, and a most undignified
war of words ensued and lasted for more than half a century.
Arius himself soon died, but Athanasius, who must have
been a young man at the time of the Council of Nicaea, lived
on another fifty years, incessantly at war with the conserva-
tive and the unstable. Five times he was exiled by Roman
Emperors in the vain hope that his removal would ensure
peace.
At length — about 380 a.d. — Arianism was defeated in the
Greek world, and it never got much hold in the Latin west.
Meanwhile, however, the Goths and other Barbarians, already
engaged in breaking up the Empire, had been converted to
the Arian form of the faith. The Arian missionary Ulfilas
produced the first translation of the Bible in a Teutonic
language in about 360.^ Thus the Arian-Athanasian con-
troversy merged in the struggle between Roman and Teuton.
The last barbarian invaders to abandon Arianism and accept
orthodoxy were the Lombards of Italy, and their conversion
was the work of the celebrated Pope Gregory the Great who
sent Augustine to England. The Lombards renounced
Arianism in 599, two years after the beginning of the con-
version of Saxon England.
* Recent research has thrown doubt on the existence of the Bible
of Ulfilas, but not, of course, on the Arian missionary achievements.
CHAPTER IX
THE TRIUMPH OF CHRISTIANITY OVER
PAGANISM
(i) The Spread of Christianity.
IT has already been shown in Chapter VI. how well
prepared in advance was the soil of the Gentile world
for the sowing of the seed of Christianity. That world
had lost its simple polytheistic faiths, and neither philosophy
nor the oriental mystery religions proved an adequate
substitute. On all sides and to a degree unparalleled in
history, we find men who were no longer satisfied with old
religions, and were yet thirsting for belief, passionately and
restlessly seeking for something new.
At such a moment as this Christianity gainedits ascendency;
for none of its rivals combined so many distinct elements
of power and attraction. Unhke the Jewish religion, it was
bound by no local ties or theories of racial privileges. Unlike
Stoicism, it offered all the charms of a picturesque ritual and
all the securities of a fixed creed. Unlike the oriental
mystery religions, it upheld a pure and noble rule of conduct
and proved itself capable of inspiring heroic endurance and
self-sacrifice. Its keynote was brotherly love. To the woman
it offered respect and chivalry, to the slave equality with the
freeman in God's eyes and an eternity of freedom beyond the
grave.
" But Christianity was not merely a moral influence, or
a system of opinions, or an historical record, or a collection
125
126 FIRST FOUR CENTURIES OF CHRISTIANITY
of wonder-working men ; it was also a Church, an institution
definitely, elaborately and skilfully organised, possessing
a weight and a stability which isolated teachers could never
rival, and evoking to a degree before unexampled in the
world, an enthusiastic devotion like that of the patriot for
his country. The many forms of Pagan worship were pliant
in their nature. Each offered certain advantages, but there
was no reason why all should not exist together, nor why
worshippers should not divide their attentions between two
or more religions. But Christianity was emphatically
exclusive ; its adherent was bound to detest and abjure the
faiths around him as the workmanship of demons, and to
consider himself placed in the world to destroy them. Hence
there sprang a stern, aggressive, and, at the same time,
disciplined enthusiasm, wholly unlike any other that had
been witnessed upon earth. The duties of public worship,
and the sacraments which were represented as the oaths of
the Christian warrior, both served to strengthen this. Above
all, the doctrine of salvation by belief, which then for the
first time flashed upon the world ; the persuasion, realised
with all the vividness of novelty, that Christianity opened
out to its votaries eternal happiness, while all beyond its pale
were doomed to an eternity of torture, supplied a motive of
action as powerful as it is perhaps possible to conceive. It
struck ahke the coarsest chords of hope and fear, and the
finest chords of compassion and love." ^
As will be shown in the next section, the persecutions of the
Christians were not in any case sufficiently prolonged or wide-
spread to endanger the cause. Such as they were they seem
to have had the opposite effect. Men and women enthusi-
astically sought martyrdom as a sacrament, a ' second
baptism,' a means of forgiveness of sins and a secure passage
to heaven. Ignatius of Antioch, one of tlie most notable of
the second century martyrs, speaks of himself as ' the
*Lecky, History of European Morals (vol. i. p. 389), on which
much ol this chapter is based.
TRIUMPH OF CHRISTIANITY 127
wheat of God,' longing for the day when he should be
' ground by the teeth of wild beasts into the pure bread of
Christ.'
(ii) The Persecutions. Whatever the defects of Paganism,
it is generally free from the spirit of intolerance and perse-
cution. On the whole there existed in the Roman Empire
a freedom of intellectual enquiry and discussion such as was
not seen again in Europe until the eighteenth century or
even the nineteenth. It is therefore interesting to notice
why an exception was made in the case of Christianity.
If we could have interrogated one of the persecuting
emperors and asked him why he treated Christianity with
an intolerance not meted out to any other form of religion,
he would probably have replied that it was the Christians
themselves who first introduced the spirit of intolerance.
The Christians alone, he would have said, denounce all other
religions as the worship of demons, and miss no opportunity
of insulting them. This was true enough. The progress of
Christianity threatened, and the triumph of Christianity
extinguished, that intellectual freedom which had been the
finest feature of the ancient world. No doubt Christianity
has to-day learnt the lesson of toleration, and thereby drawn
nearer to the spirit ahke of Christ and of Socrates, but it was
many centuries in learning it. The Roman emperors might
reasonably have said that it was as champions of toleration
that they refused to tolerate the one intolerant sect.^
Closely connected with their intolerance was another
characteristic of the Christians, specially detestable to the
philosophers. They terrorised the human mind by threats
1 The best contemporary evidence for the official attitude of the
Roman Government early in the second century is the correspondence
that passed between Pliny as governor of Bythinia in Asia Minor
and the Emperor Trajan. It displays the reluctant and high-
principled spirit in which persecution was undertaken. A full
paraphrase of the correspondence will be found in the article " Pliny
the Younger " in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
128 FIRST FOUR CENTURIES OF CHRISTIANITY
of eternal torture after death. Against such practices the
good Emperor Marcus Aurelius made a decree saying, " if
anyone shall do anything whereby the weak minds of any
may be terrified by superstitious fear the offender shall be
exiled to an island." ^
Then again the special appeal of Christianity to women
made it odious to a society based on the absolute supremacy
of the ' paterfamilias.' The Christians would get hold of
the women and the slaves ; these would get hold of the
children ; and the master would find himself isolated in his
own estabHshment, estranged from his own family. Plutarch,
the great moralist and biographer, may be referring to the
Christians of about 100 a.d. when he writes : "A wife should
have no friends but those of her husband ; and as the gods
are the first of friends, she should know no gods but those
whom her husband adores. Let her shut the door then
against idle religions and foreign superstitions. No god can
take pleasure in sacrifices offered by a wife without the
knowledge of her husband."
Lastly, on political grounds, the case against Christianity
from the Roman point of view was very strong, as has been
already noticed (see p. 119). The Church was a vast, highly
organised society, entirely separate from and in many
respects hostile to the government, and claiming from its
members an absolute obedience. No doubt it was difficult
to bring home against the Church any particular charges of
treason. The Christians as a rule were conspicuously law-
abiding, sober, moral, and industrious. None the less it was
true that they regarded the Empire as a temporary, and at
bottom an evil, institution, and looked forward dimly to some
great future event which would bring about the overthrow
of the Empire and the establishment of ' the Kingdom ' in
its place. ^
* Lecky, History of European Morals, vol. i. p. 422.
* In fact, from the political point of view, the Roman Emperors
must have regarded the Church much as many Conservatives to-day
TRIUMPH OF CHRISTIANITY 129
Such were the causes of the persecutions. Christians were
persecuted, not because they were a new sect, nor because
they refused to offer worship to the Emperors (for the Jews
also refused and were left unmolested), but because Chris-
tianity possessed certain unique and, to the Roman Empire,
intolerable features.
The persecutions, however, though cruel while they lasted,
were not such as to interfere seriously with the growth of the
Church.
The first persecution occurred in the reign of Nero, and
probably involved the martyrdom of both St. Peter and St.
Paul. It was, however, confined to the capital. The date
of Nero's persecution is between 64 and 68 a.d., and but for a
very brief and obscure persecution in 95 under Domitian,
the Christians were unmolested by the central government
until the year 176, in the reign of Marcus Aurelius. No
doubt they suffered during the long period from occasional
local attacks, at the hands either of city mobs or provincial
governors. An occasional bishop, too, possibly from active
desire for martyrdom, might provoke the authorities to
destroy him. Such was Ignatius of Antioch already referred
to, who was for reasons now unknown brought to Rome and
thrown to the wild beasts in the reign of Trajan (about
IIOA.D.). But until 176 there was no consistent persecu-
tion of Christians, and for the most part they lived entirely
unmolested.
During the last four years of Marcus Aurelius (176-180)
regard the Trade Union organisation. Like the Church, the Trade
Unions constitute a vast, highly organised society, separate from
and in many respects hostile to the government, and claiming from
their members absolute obedience (within the industrial sphere).
Similarly many, though not all, Trade Unionists regard the State,
as at present organised on a basis of capitalism, as a temporary
and at bottom evil institution, and look forward to some form of
revolution which will result in the establishment of Socialism. The
parallel is a curious one. My object in indicating it is not to suggest
any conclusions about modern Labour movements, but to help
the reader to see how the Church would appear, at any time between
200 and 300 A.D., to a Roman statesman.
S.R.H. I
130 FIRST FOUR CENTURIES OF CHRISTIANITY
severe persecutions took place in several provinces of the
Empire. On his death, however, a period of seventy years
intervened, during which the Christians were again for the
most part unharassed (180-249). One Emperor in this
period, Alexander Severus, warmly supported them ; it is
said that he intended to build temples in honour of Christ
but was dissuaded by the priests, who said that all the other
temples would be deserted ; so he contented himself with
putting up statues of Abraham, Orpheus, and Christ in his
private chapel.
By the middle of the third century the Church had assumed
vast proportions, and now for the first time arose an Emperor,
Decius, who, filled with the idea of restoring the spirit of
ancient Roman discipHne, set himself to exterminate Chris-
tianity. The Decian persecution was, no doubt, the severest
the Church had yet endured, but it was soon terminated
by the death of Decius (249-251), and only once was his
policy whole-heartedly revived. This was the last and
worst persecution, that of Diocletian (303-305). Almost
immediately afterwards Constantine ascended the throne,
and Christianity, still probably the religion of a minority,
became the religion of the Emperor.
It is impossible to estimate with any kind of accuracy the
number of the Christian victims of these pagan persecutions,
but they were probably fewer than the sixteenth century
Protestant victims of Spanish persecution in the Netherlands
alone, and compared with the amount of destruction that
Christian sects in general have inflicted on one another in
the name of Christ, they sink into insignificance.
How did persecution affect the spirit of the Church }
Persecution affects a Church very much as war affects a
nation. It is indeed a kind of warfare in which all the
aggressive violence is on one side and all the passive
endurance on the other. We are concerned here only with
its effect on the persecuted. Persecution, like war, calls
forth countless displays of almost incredible heroism. It
TRIUMPH OF CHRISTIANITY 131
would be easy, but it is unnecessary, to fill page after page
with such tales of heroism, from that of the aged Polycarp,
bishop of Ephesus, to that of Perpetua, the young mother
of a three days old baby. Like soldiers they were fortified
by a confidence that they died in a righteous cause, and that
their deaths served the cause. Nay, more, hke some soldiers
of old, such as the Crusaders or the soldiers of Islam, they
believed that their deaths ensured them an immortality of
perfect bhss. But, as in war, there is a danger of emphasising
too exclusively the good effects at the expense of the evil.
Persecution, beyond doubt, bred in all but the greatest a
spirit of bitterness and revenge which is far from the spirit
of Christ. We see these evil effects in the way in which,
when the Christians themselves got the upper hand, they
turned upon their own heretics and upon the pagans the evil
instruments that had been used against themselves.
No one displays the evil effects of persecution more clearly
than Tertullian (about 150-220), the first great Christian
writer in Latin. In a celebrated passage he gloats over the
prospect of revenge beyond the grave. " You are fond of
spectacles," he writes, *' expect the greatest of all spectacles,
the last and eternal judgment of the universe. How shall I
admire, how laugh, how rejoice, how exult, when I behold
so many proud monarchs, and fancied gods, groaning in the
lowest abyss of darkness ; so many magistrates who per-
secuted the name of the Lord, liquefying in fiercer fires than
they ever kindled against the Christians ; so many sage
philosophers 'blushing in red-hot flames with their deluded
scholars ; so many celebrated poets trembling before the
tribunal not of Minos, but of Christ ; so many tragedians
more tuneful in the expression of their own sufferings," etc.
The anti-Christian historian Gibbon ^ quotes this passage in
mockery and derision of the early Christians. It seems,
however, a case where only those who have themselves been
through persecutions are entitled to throw the stone. But
^ Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ch. xv.
132 FIRST FOUR CENTURIES OF CHRISTIANITY
one may note, without mockery, that it is a far cry from
TertuUian to Christ's " Love your enemies : pray for them
that persecute you."
(iii) Constantine, Julian, and Theodosius (306-395). The
Emperor Diocletian, the last persecuting emperor, had made
the experiment of dividing the unwieldy Roman Empire
into four governments, each with its own semi-independent
emperor. This only led to civil wars ; and Constantine
(306-337), being proclaimed Emperor by his troops in Britain,
worked his way eastwards by war and diplomacy until, by
324, he had made himself sole Emperor. Two years later he
established his capital in the Greek city of Byzantium, hence-
forth called Constantinople. This remained the centre of a
united Roman Empire during the period covered by this
section. After the death of Theodosius, the Empire was
again divided. The western half, centred on Rome, quickly
crumbled into ruin and w^as over-run by the barbarians.
The eastern half, however, survived with gradually diminish-
ing territories for more than a thousand years, and was at
last destroyed by the Turks in 1453.
By the beginning of the fourth century Christianity had
become so strong that the Empire w^as bound either to accept
it or to suppress it. Diocletian tried the latter plan and
failed. Constantine accepted the former alternative. Having
conquered Rome in 313, Constantine met his one remaining
rival, the eastern Emperor Licinius, at Milan, and they agreed
to issue an Edict (the Edict of Milan) terminating the per-
secution and securing toleration for Christianity throughout
the Empire.
The part played by Constantine in settling disputes
within the Church at the Council of Nicaea has already been
recorded (see page 122). How far Constantine was a genuine
believer, and how far he was simply actuated by political
motives cannot be known, and does not much matter. He
postponed the ceremony of baptism till he was on his death-
TRIUMPH OF CHRISTIANITY 133
bed, but it was quite common even for the devout in the
early Church to postpone as long as possible what was
originally intended as the ceremony of admission, for the
rather quaint reason that since baptism gave forgiveness of
sins, and since the rite could not be repeated, its efficacy was
most certain if it was administered when there was no longer
any chance of further sinning.
Constantine's nephew, the Emperor Juhan (361-363),
commonly known as Julian the Apostate, made one last
attempt to restore paganism. Needless to say, his character
has been painted in the blackest colours by Christian writers
of his own day, but actually he was a much nobler man than
the ' Christian ' Constantine. While he rivals or surpasses
Constantine as a soldier, he was also a man of saintly life,
a fine scholar, and an accomplished and often humorous
writer. It is sad and strange that the noblest of fourth
century Emperors should have been the only one to set him-
self against the now irresistible tide of Christianity. No
doubt he had seen the religion at its worst in the Imperial
Court, where Christian professions had become the best
trick of the courtiers' trade. He loved also the great Greek
classics and felt that Christian intolerance was going to
condemn them to oblivion ; from this point of view he is
a sort of far-off herald of the Renaissance. Further, he was
something of a sentimentalist and antiquary, and loved
ancient pagan rituals and superstitions simply because they
were ancient. Christians jeered, not without excuse, at his
revival of animal sacrifices. Indeed his paganism was a
curious mixture of philosophy and superstition.
Such a man had a horror of the brutalities of persecution.
In name he adhered to a policy of general toleration, but
he set himself to hamper the Christians by closing their
schools.
Julian was killed in battle at the age of thirty-two, after
reigning only two years. Probably he had already realised
that his religious policy was doomed to failure. Legend — it
134 FIRST FOUR CENTURIES OF CHRISTIANITY
is no more than legend — records that his last words were :
" Vicisti, Galilaee!" ("Thou hast conquered, 0 Galilaean.")^
Julian's successors were all Christians. The final step was
taken by Theodosius, who established the Nicene Creed as
the exclusive religion of the Empire, forbade pagans and
heretics to hold assemblies, and ordered the destruction of
heathen temples. Thus paganism also had its martyrs, one
of the most notable being Hypatia, mathematician and
philosopher, one of the most admirable women of history,
who was brutally murdered by the Christian mob of Alex-
andria in 415.2
Perhaps the most striking incident in the reign of
Theodosius, an incident which shows that we are already in
mediaeval rather than classical times, is the Emperor's
encounter with Ambrose, bishop of Milan. Theodosius had
put down a riot at Thessalonica with what Ambrose con-
sidered excessive violence. The bishop therefore rebuked
him, and refused to admit him to communion until he had
done public penance. This makes Theodosius seem nearer
to Henry II. and Becket, eight hundred years after him, than
to his pagan predecessors on the Imperial throne.
(iv) Quality and Quantity. During these first few centuries
Christianity had grown from the rehgion of a handful of
Jewish peasants to the religion of the Roman Empire. Yet
the total result is in many ways disappointing. As much
seems lost in quality as gained in quantity. The Nicene
Creed is a poor affair compared with the Sermon on the
^ The poet Swinburne has expanded this into the famous couplet :
" Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilaean
And the world is grown grey at thy breath."
This is mere musical nonsense. Christianity in the fourth century
had many faults. It was full of strife and bitterness, envy, hatred,
and malice, against heretics and also pagans, but it was not ' grey '
or ' pale.' The Church was the one institution pulsating with the
vigorous blood of youth in the midst of a ' grey,' ' pale,' worn out
classic culture.
* Her story is told in Kingsley's novel, Hypatia.
TRIUMPH OF CHRISTIANITY 135
Mount, and it is difficult to resist the impression that most
Christians of the fourth century were more concerned about
the Creed than about the Gospels.
What had happened ? Christ had come preaching the
Kingdom, and membership of the Kingdom was not a matter
of creed but of human quality. The first Christians were
Christians because they really tried to look at Hfe through
Christ's eyes : they had, so far as was possible to them, the
Faith of Christ. Then Jesus passed from human sight. The
Church arose and it became necessary to define its relation-
ship to its Master, and its Master's relationship to God.
This proved a very difficult matter : it absorbed an ever
increasing amount of Christian energy. In fact, belief about
Christ came to be considered the most important thing, the
one and sufficient test of a Christian. But the merest glance
at the Synoptic Gospels will show that the all-important
thing is not belief about Christ but the Christ-like point of
view, the faith of Christ.
Thus, what conquered Paganism was not Christianity in
the proper sense of the word, but an institution called the
Christian Church, — and rightly so-called because it did in
fact contain elements which drew their inspiration from
Christ, elements of which Christ could not be ashamed. But
the Church contained much else besides which was not
Christian, much that was pagan, even more that was
Pharisaical.
In the two remaining Parts of this book we shall be con-
cerned with the history of the Church. The key to that
history is only found when we remember that the so-called
Christian Church was (and is) only partly Christian, and its
history is the history of the struggle of the better elements
in the Church to make the Church more truly Christian.
136 FIRST FOUR CENTURIES OF CHRISTIANITY
BOOKS RECOMMENDED
Part II
It is not necessary to indicate here any of the well-known detailed
studies of the life and teaching of Christ.
1. Donald Hankey, The Lord of All Good Life {Longmans), a simple,
devout, outspoken little book addressed to ' the man in the street,'
consisting of " Part I. : Jesus of Nazareth, His Life and Work.
Part II. : The Church : its Ideal, its Failure, and its Future."
2. W. R. Inge, Outspoken Essays (Longmans) contains an excellent
essay on St. Paul.
3. Kirsopp Lake, The Earlier Epistles of St. Paul (Rivingtons)
contains a good chapter on the development of the Church from the
Resurrection to the time of St. Paul's missionary work.
4. F. C. Burkitt, The Gospel History and its Transmission [T. &> T,
Clark), an exceedingly interesting book, and indispensable for the
study of the gospels ; consists of ten lectures, the last two being
devoted to Marcion and the Apocryphal Gospels.
5. W. E. H. Lecky, History of European Morals from Augustus
to Charlemagne {Longmans). Though fifty years old this book is
not and possibly never will be superseded. " Chapter II., The
Pagan Empire," examines the religious condition of the Roman
Empire apart from Christianity. " Chapter III., The Conversion
of Rome," explains itself by its title. " Chapter IV., From Con-
stantine to Charlemagne," is mainly occupied with the influence
of the Church in the Dark Ages. (It should be said that these
chapters are long essays of 150 or more pages apiece.)
6. T. R. Glover, The Conflict of Religions in the Early Roman
Empire {Methuen). The title is to some extent a misnomer, as
the book consists of a series of interesting biographical studies
of leading Pagan and Christian thinkers from Christ down to
Tertullian.
7. H. M. Gwatkin, The Arian Controversy {Longmans), a brief
text-book in the " Epochs of Church History Series." This cannot
be called an interesting book, but it contains useful information in a
convenient form by an authority on the subject.
PART III
THE MEDIAEVAL CHURCH AND THE
REFORMATION
CHAPTER X
GENERAL SURVEY
WE have to cover in this section a vast tract of
history. In Part I., it is true, we covered
thirteen centuries, but we were concerned
throughout only with a single small nation. In Part II. we
covered only four centuries, and were concerned with a quite
limited though widely spread society, the early Church, living
within the Roman Empire. In this Part III. we have to
cover as many centuries as in Part I., and our subject em-
braces the whole community of European peoples professing
the Christian faith. It will, therefore, be worth while to
make a rough survey first of all of the ground we have to
cover, dividing the whole up into periods of manageable
length and indicating some of the main events of each.
Our whole period may be described as extending from the
collapse of the Roman Empire to the end of the Reformation,
or, using dates, 400- 1 700. These dates are mere round
numbers and, indeed, it is impossible to fix on a single precise
date for either event. The Roman Empire did not fall in a
crash ; it simply faded away, — faded so gradually that for
centuries people refused to believe that it had gone. Charle-
magne, the great King of the Franks (France and western
s.R.H. 137 K
138 MEDIAEVAL CHURCH AND REFORMATION
Germany), was hailed as a Roman Emperor by the Pope in
800 A.D., and the title was borne by rulers of Austria (Holy
Roman Emperors) down to the time of Napoleon. Again, so-
called Roman Emperors continued to rule in Constantinople
till overthrown by the Turks in 1453. Still, we may say that
after 410, when Alaric the Goth sacked Rome, the Empire
was, so far as Western Europe was concerned, a ruin and a
sham, and the real Hfe of history flowed into other channels.
Again, there is no precise date for the end of the Reforma-
tion, but we may say that by 1700 Catholic and Protestant
Churches had wearily abandoned their struggles for supremacy
and settled down to live side by side, and the ideal of a single
united Christian Church was given up as hopeless, only to
revive in the twentieth century under very different con-
ditions.
These thirteen centuries may be divided into four periods,
to which again we may attach dates in round numbers.
(i) The Dark Ages (400-1050). The main external feature
of this period is the endless strife of the barbarian tribes or
peoples out of which the European nations were to grow.
No settled life is possible. All the arts and sciences decay,
and the Church itself is barbarised. The monastery is the
only refuge of civilisation. People looked back to the orderly
and prosperous life of the Roman Empire and longed for
the return of that Golden Age. Others despaired of this and
looked forward only to the end of the world. A great new
world-religion arose in the east, Islam or Mohammedanism,
a reversion to the strictest Jewish monotheism with the
addition of a new revelation through Mohammed. This
religion seemed likely to wipe Christianity out of existence.
It conquered Jerusalem, northern Africa and Spain, and was
only stayed in the centre of France in 732. Gathering its
forces again it attacked by a different route, conquered Asia
Minor in the eleventh century, crossed into the Balkan
country about 1350, and from 1530 onwards held Hungary
GENERAL SURVEY 139
right down to the seventeenth century. Even to-day the
earhest homes of Christianity, Jerusalem and Antioch, are for
the most part inhabited not by Christians but Mohammedans.
In English history this period begins with the Anglo-Saxon
invasions and ends with the Norman Conquest.
(ii) The Papal Period (1050-1300). Out of this dismal
confusion arose a new and beautiful civilisation, unhke any-
thing that had been seen in the world before or that has been
seen since. At the centre of this new order stood the Papacy,
which in its great days was perhaps the most remarkable
institution in history. The JuHus Caesar of this new and
strange * Roman Empire ' — for such it may well be called —
was Hildebrand, also known under his papal name as Gregory
VII. He was a contemporary of William the Conqueror and
gave his blessing to the Norman Conquest. This great
Christian civihsation covered Western Europe with splendid
monuments of architecture, the Gothic Cathedrals : it
organised those romantic adventures, the Crusades : it
founded the Universities, and produced in them a great
school of learning in which some part at least of the wisdom
of the Greeks and Romans was re-discovered and applied to
new uses : it produced great saints, such as Anselm and Francis
of Assisi, and, in Dante, one of the great poets of the world.
The English history of this period begins with William the
Conqueror and ends with our greatest mediaeval king,
Edward I.
(iii) The collapse of the Papal order (1300-1521). The
Papacy fell through its own fault, as will be told. The Popes
began to use their religious authority for worldly ends. In
the great period of the Papacy, when kings defied Popes, the
people were generally and quite rightly on the side of the
Popes. Now the peoples, and even the national leaders of
the Church, tended to support the kings. Soon thoughtful
Churchmen, such as the English Wycliffe, began to put
140 MEDIAEVAL CHURCH AND REFORMATION
forward theories which suggested that the whole Papal
organisation was contrary to true Christianity. The Papacy,
meanwhile, allowed itself to be captured by the kings of
France. For seventy years (1305-1378) the Popes deserted
Rome and lived at Avignon in France. The Papacy became
a French institution, little likely to be respected in England,
for example, which was during most of that period at war
with France. Then followed the Great Schism (i 378-141 5) ;
rival Popes, one at Avignon and one at Rome, each denouncing
the other as the agent of the devil. Then came an attempt
to restore the central organisation by setting up a great inter-
national Parliament or Council side by side with the Papacy.
This only led to quarrels between Pope and Council. Mean-
time, a great revival of interest in classical culture, the
Renaissance, was leading many of the best minds of the day
to despise Christian civilisation altogether. Men contrasted
the Athens of Pericles and Plato with the ' Christian ' world
they lived in : was not every advantage on the side of the
former } The Popes themselves were caught in the tide of
the new movement. Leo X., the Pope who condemned
Luther, had spoken jestingly of the life of Christ as a * fable.'
Rome itself was a sink of immorality. One of the Renais-
sance Popes, Alexander VL, has always been famous,
deservedly or not, as an expert poisoner. He openly recog-
nised, and promoted the interests of, his illegitimate children.
Thus, when Luther raised the standard of revolt in
Germany, attacking Popery in the cause of Christ, half
Europe sprang to his support.
In English history we have here covered the period from
Edward II. to Henry VIII., including all the crimes and
follies of the Plundred Years' War and the Wars of the
Roses, the Tudor Restoration and the rule of Wolsey, the
last great ' Archbishop Prime Minister ' in English history.
(iv) The Strife of Creeds. Luther's Reformation failed to
' reform ' ; it became a rebellion, a revolution. The Church
GENERAL SURVEY 141
was split into rival camps. This horrifying event compelled
Rome to reform itself, and a great movement set in called
the Counter-Reformation, in which the leading part was
played by a new order, the Jesuits, founded by Ignatius
Loyola, who was as truly a reformer as Luther himself. The
old immorality was expelled, and with it all that was best
in the intellectual and artistic movements of the Renaissance.
Both sides grimly prepared for a war to the death. On the
Protestant side a second and more vigorous and consistent
form of Protestantism was founded by the great Frenchman
Calvin, in the city of Geneva. John Knox and the Scottish
Presbyterians and Covenanters, Cromwell, Bunyan, Milton
and the English Puritans are disciples of Calvin. Rome
fought the Calvinists with the Inquisition.
Then ensued the religious wars. Kings and princes chose
their sides less from religious motives than from political
convenience. All the horrors of religious fanaticism, political
greed, and the hypocrisy which disguised the latter as the
former, were seen combined. The strife only ended with the
exhaustion of the combatants and the grudging recognition
that complete victory was impossible for either party.
In English history we have covered the period from
Henry VIII. to William III. This includes the Tudor
Reformation, the persecutions of Queen Mary, the largely
religious war with Spain, the Puritan rebeUion against
Charles I., the attempt of James II. to re-establish ' Popery,'
and the first Toleration Act, carefully limited to the more
moderate types of Dissenter, under William III.
Stated thus in outHne it seems an appalling story, and so
in many ways it is. None the less, when we look beneath
the surface we shall find much splendid energy, much devoted
idealism.
Most of what concerns the Reformation in England will
be left over for Part IV. of this book, which gives a sketch
of Christianity in England from the Reformation to the
present day.
CHAPTER XI
THE CHURCH AND CHRISTENDOM IN THE DARK
AGES
THE good old word Christendom has for several
centuries been little more than a meaningless
slang-word ; as when James I. was called by his
brother monarch of France ' the wisest fool in Christendom.'
In the Dark Ages and the Middle Ages, however, it had a
quite definite meaning. It meant the society of peoples that
accepted Christ, the Christian World. Thus it may be
opposed on the one hand to Heathendom, the peoples to
whom the gospel had not been preached, and on the other
hand it may be opposed to the Church, the society of those
within Christendom who definitely dedicated themselves to
furthering the cause of Christ as a professional duty, — as we
should say the clergy. We have here to examine what
influence the Church succeeded, during these six ' Dark '
centuries, 400-1000, in exercising over those who professed
Christianity.
It is, to the Christian, somewhat disappointing that the
first period during which Christianity was accepted as
orthodoxy should be universally recognised as ' Dark.' Anti-
Christian writers have often suggested that the Church was
a prime cause of that darkness. ' Barbarians and Christians,'
they say, combined to destroy the ancient civilisation. We
cannot dismiss this view as absurd without disproving it.
How much truth there is in it we shall see in the course of
this chapter.
142
CHRISTENDOM IN THE DARK AGES 143
The distinguishing feature which marked Christianity off
from all the pagan religions was its emphasis on morahty.
It made moral teaching the main duty of its clergy, moral
disciphne and inspiration the leading object of its services,
and a moral life a necessary condition of communion. By
its system of excommunication it excluded from the blessings
of the Lord's Supper those who had broken, not the laws of
the State, but the moral laws enacted by the Church for its
members. English history teaches us to think of excom-
munication as a rather futile political weapon used by Popes
against kings with whom they quarrelled on pohtical grounds.
But long before this it was used to enforce a standard of
personal morality. Before the excommunicated person was
readmitted to communion he was required publicly, before
the assembled Christians, to appear clad in sackcloth, with
ashes strewn upon his head, with his hair shaven off, and
thus to throw himself at the feet of the minister, to confess
aloud his sins, and to implore the favour of absolution. It
was only at a much later date that the modern Catholic
practice of secret confession by all members of the congrega-
tion was substituted for this awe-inspiring treatment of the
backslider.
In what directions did this moral energy succeed in
improving the standards of Christendom .?
Its first and most striking triumph was the abolition of
gladiatorial shows. These shows, at which specially trained
slaves fought and shed one another's blood to gratify the
brutal lusts of holiday crowds, were the worst blot on the
civilisation of the Roman Empire. Their suppression was
wholly the work of the Church. The Christians steadily
refused to admit any gladiator to baptism unless he pledged
himself to abandon his calling, and any Christian who
attended the games was excluded from communion. The
last gladiatorial show in the western half of the Empire took
place in Rome in 404, when a monk named Telemachus
rushed into the amphitheatre and attempted to part the
144 MEDIAEVAL CHURCH AND REFORMATION
combatants. He perished beneath a shower of stones flung
by the angry spectators : but his death led to the final
abolition of the games.
In another very different direction the Church emphasised
the sacredness of human life, teaching that our lives are not
a form of property for us to use as we will but a trust to be
used in God's service. The Church opposed with all its
might the pagan teaching as to the dignity and even the
glory of suicide.
As regards slavery the Church set a wholly new standard.
In relation to God all Christians were equal. The slave and
the slave-owner knelt together at communion. In the penal
system of the Church, the system of excommunication and
penance, the distinction between wrongs done to a freeman
and wrongs done to a slave, which lay at the root of the
ordinaiy civil law, was entirely abolished. Again, the
Christian ideal of virtue, which exalted the previously
despised qualities of gentleness, patience, and resignation,
brought about a more sympathetic attitude to the slave.
The ceremony of freeing slaves was placed by Constantine
under the control of the clergy, who made it a special feature
of Church festivals, and especially of Easter. Wealthy
Christians began to free their slaves as a means of finding
favour in God's sight. It was not, however, till about the
thirteenth century that slavery disappeared from Europe.
And when, later on, the colonising movement of the six-
teenth century brought Christian nations into contact with
helpless coloured peoples, it took the Church several centuries
to realise that what was unchristian treatment of the white
man was also unchristian treatment of the black.
Love is the highest Christian virtue, and in its narrower
form of ' charity ' it made a special appeal to Christians living
amidst the misery and confusion of the Dark Ages. The
government of pagan Rome had for centuries distributed
bread and free gladiatorial shows (panem et cir censes), cold-
heartedly and as a device for keeping the poor quiet. It
CHRISTENDOM IN THE DARK AGES 145
was left for Christians to cover Christendom with a vast
network of voluntary charitable associations whose avowed
aim was to imitate their Master in relieving every form of
human distress. A Christian lady named Fabiola founded
the first charity hospital at Rome in the fourth century, and
Christian hospitals quickly spread all over Christendom.
Where charity took the form of giving money in relief of
beggary, however, no doubt it often encouraged the evil it
was meant to cure. Charity too often means pauperisation,
and does more harm than good to those that receive it.
Many gave more to save their own souls than to save the
poor. Such is the difference between ' charity ' and love.
But, when all allowances are made, the spirit of charity must
be written down as one of the great contributions of the
Church of the Dark Ages.
But there were other enthusiasms of the Church of this
period which were less beneficial to Christendom. The
contrast between the Church and the World, so much dwelt
upon in certain religious circles, is in some ways misleading.
The Church must keep itself unspotted from the World ; but
at the same time its life is in the World, and its duty is to
serve and rescue the World. None the less, as soon as men
begin to concentrate on the salvation of their own souls and
forget the gospel of love, there is apt to come over them a
longing to make, as it were, a short cut to saintliness by
abandoning ordinary human ties and seeking perfection ' in
a vacuum.' The first form in which this disease, for it is
nothing less, affected the Church was a glorification of the
single life as more pure than marriage, fatherhood and
motherhood. Then came an extraordinary enthusiasm for
the hermit Hfe. Men fled by hundreds and by thousands
into the deserts and the mountains : they lived upon
starvation diet : they deliberately cultivated dirt and
disease, St. Eusebius lived for three years in a dried-up
well : St. Sabinus would only eat corn that had become
rotten by remaining for a month in water : St. Besarion
S.R.H. L
146 MEDIAEVAL CHURCH AND REFORMATION
spent forty days and nights in the middle of thorn
bushes.
But the extreme example of these excesses is St. Simeon
Styhtes (St. Simeon of the Pillar). Of him we read that *' he
bound a rope round him so that it became embedded in his
flesh, which putrified around it. A horrible stench, intoler-
able to the bystanders, exhaled from his body, and worms
dropped from him whenever he moved. He built a pillar
sixty feet high and scarcely a yard in circumference on
which, during thirty years, he remained exposed to every
change of climate. For a year St. Simeon stood upon one
leg, the other being covered with hideous ulcers while his
biographer was commissioned to stand by his side, to pick
up the worms that fell from his body, and to replace them
in the sores, the saint saying to the worm, ' Eat what God
has given you.' From every quarter pilgrims of every
degree thronged to do him homage. When he died a crowd
of prelates followed him to the grave, and the general voice
of mankind pronounced him the highest model of a Christian
saint." 1
Such stories are exaggerated, you will say. That is very
probable, but the exaggerations themselves show most
clearly the ideals of the age which committed them.
We are far indeed here from the spirit of Christ. It
becomes almost impossible to believe that such persons as
St. Simeon had ever heard the gospel story. None the less
it is possible to despise overmuch even the hermits or
anchorites, 2 as they are called. Perverted and narrow-
minded as their methods may have been, they had at least
heard the call to self-sacrifice and they answered it, according
to their lights, in no half-hearted manner. Whatever they
were they were not idle triflers with life.
^ Condensed from Lecky, European Morals, ii. p. ii2.
2 Hermit is derived from the Greek eremites, a dweller in the
desert, anchorite from the Greek anachoretes, one who withdraws
apart.
CHRISTENDOM IN THE DARK AGES 147
In the sixth century St. Benedict (480-544) turned this
impulse of hatred of the world into more fruitful channels.
For some time past some of the hermits had adopted the
practice of living in small communities or * monasteries.'
Benedict may, however, be regarded as the founder of
monasticism, in that he first laid down for the monks that
gathered round him a regular disciplinary system.
The word ' monastery ' means, by derivation, a place
where you can be alone (Greek ' monos '). The original
' monk ' was the hermit, and his monastery was his cave, or
whatever other inconvenient place he chose to live in.
Benedict's monasteries, however, were places where those
who desired the life * unspotted by the world ' could
live together in a kind of boarding school. Benedict, in
fact, defines his monastery as * a school of the service
of the Lord.' The monks are ruled by an abbot, but
both monks and abbot alike are subject to rules laid down
by Benedict himself. In these rules the extremer forms of
asceticism such as the hermits practised are forbidden.
Sufficient food, sufficient clothing, and sufficient sleep are
ordained. The monks are to find holiness not in injuring
themselves but in benefiting others. ' Laborare est orare ' :
work is prayer. Besides the work of daily religious services
the monks are to do ' whatever work is useful,' whether
manual or intellectual. Agricultural work predominated in
early days, but soon schools grew up and the monasteries
became the centres of education and of learning throughout
the Middle Ages, until they were superseded in this respect
by the universities.
The monastic movement once started drew to itself most
of the religious energy of the Dark Ages. The monasteries
appealed to rich and poor alike. The post of abbot in a
conspicuous monastery was quite a suitable ambition for a
member of a princely family : and the poorest of the poor
could gain admittance as monks. The monasteries became
oases of culture amid the deserts of ever-increasing barbarism,
148 MEDIAEVAL CHURCH AND REFORMATION
harbours of refuge from the storms of unceasing war and
pillage. In them the cult of Latin literature was preserved,
and many Latin and Greek manuscripts were stored away
and forgotten until unearthed by the curiosity of the
Renaissance.
It is very difficult to estimate how much Christendom
gained and how much it lost by the spread of monasticism.
Some say, but for the monasteries civihsation and even
Christianity itself must have utterly perished. Just as
certain animals go to sleep in winter and bury themselves for
protection from the cold, in order that they may come up
alive again in the spring, so Christianity hibernated in the
monasteries throughout the winter of the Dark Ages. On
the other hand it may be said, suppose all this religious
energy, instead of being absorbed in the monasteries, had
gone out into the active life of the world, — how then } might
not the Dark Ages have been less dark }
We can partly answer this charge against them by saying
that, after all, the monks themselves by no means confined
their energies within the four walls of their monasteries.
Only fifty years after Benedict's death one of his monks
becomes the virtual founder of the Papacy, a great Christian
statesman, w^th energies reaching from Canterbury to
Constantinople. All through the Dark and Middle Ages we
shall find monks playing great parts.
None the less, it remains true that the Christianity of the
Dark Ages did too often despise the concerns of this world.
The failure of government in the Dark Ages is very largely
a failure of patriotism : the best men simply would not
trouble to discharge those political and social duties which
are necessary to the maintenance of social order. And the
blame for this must partly be laid at the door of the Church,
which too easily despised patriotism as * worldly.'
CHAPTER XII
GREAT CHRISTIANS OF THE DARK AGES
(i) Augustine (354.430).
ST. AUGUSTINE,! the greatest of the ' Latin Fathers '
of the Church, was the most important Christian
thinker and writer of this period, and he has pro-
bably exercised a wider influence on Christian thought than
any writer except those of the New Testament. His life
covers the period of the downfall of the Roman Empire in
the west. The sack of Rome by Alaric the Goth was the
most striking event of his lifetime, and when he died the
Vandals were overrunning the Roman province of Africa,
in which he was born and spent most of his life, and he was
himself besieged by them in the town of Hippo, of which
he was bishop.
He has left us, in his Confessions, an autobiography which
enables us to trace the growth of his mind in detail.
His mother, Monica, was a Christian of saintly character,
but, after the custom of those times, Augustine was not
baptised in infancy, and when he grew to manhood Chris-
tianity entirely lost its hold over him. But though he ceased
to be Christian he did not cease to be religious, and sought
eagerly for a faith that would satisfy his longings. For a
time he was attracted by the Manichaeans, a religious sect of
Persian origin who held that God and the Devil were equal
* Not to be confused with the later Augustine who brought
Christianity to the Anglo-Saxons in 597.
149
150 MEDIAEVAL CHURCH AND REFORMATION
powers, and that human Hfe was originally created by the
Devil and is therefore naturally evil. From these he turned
to the Neo-Platonists, who, like the Stoics, attempted to
base a religion on Greek philosophy. Then he went to Milan
and sought to learn Christianity from its great bishop, St.
Ambrose. It was during this period that he experienced a
' conversion ' as sudden and dramatic as that of St. Paul.
His mind was much overwrought by his struggle between
the claims of religion and human love for a woman to w^hom
he w^as betrothed ; for Christian thought of the day regarded
lawful marriage itself as inferior in holiness to celibacy. In
an agony of doubt he threw himself under a fig tree in the
garden and poured forth tears and prayers. Suddenly he
heard a voice crying, " Tolle, lege " : — take up and read. So
he took up the New Testament, and opening it at random
lighted upon the text in the Epistle to the Romans : " Not
in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wanton-
ness, not in strife and envying. But put ye on the Lord Jesus
and make not provision for the flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof."
Henceforth his course was clear, and we need not follow
his later life. Augustine was thirty-two at the time of his
conversion. Some two years later he became bishop of
Hippo. Of all the many controversies with which his writings
are concerned, two only can be mentioned here. A new and
dangerous heresy had arisen called Pelagianism, its founder
Pelagius being a Christian from Roman Britain. Pelagius
denied the doctrine of Original Sin ; that is to say, he
asserted that it was possible for man to lead a completely
good life without the assistance of God. Against this
Augustine asserted that it is impossible to struggle success-
fully against sin without the aid of God supplied through
Christ, and Augustine's view is upheld by the Church to this
day. In stating his case, however, Augustine was driven by
his natural vehemence to assert that salvation was impossible
without baptism, and that infants dying unbaptised were
irretrievably damned. So hard has it always been to keep
GREAT CHRISTIANS OF THE DARK AGES 151
theology true to the spirit of Christ. This was particularly
difficult for the ' Latin Fathers.' The dominant intellectual
influence in Rome was not, as in Greece, philosophic specula-
tion, but Roman law, and those who came under this influence
tended to view religion as a hard and fast contractual relation-
ship between God and man. Augustine's teaching on this
subject had, however, a powerful influence towards intro-
ducing the practice of infant baptism.
A second controversy produced Augustine's greatest work,
the De Civitate Dei (Concerning the City of God). After the
sack of Rome by Alaric, many enemies of the new religion
had asserted that it was Christianity that had undermined
the Roman Empire and delivered it over a prey to the
barbarians. The De Civitate Dei is Augustine's reply. He
surveys in bold outline the past, present, and future. He
shows convincingly that it was by their virtues, their valour,
their frugality, their purity, their contempt for self-indulgence
that the old Romans had built up their Empire. Similarly
it was through their vices, their immorality, luxury, and
effeminacy that the Empire had fallen in ruins. With this
picture of the rise and fall of the old City, he contrasted the
rise of the new City, the City of God, Christendom. The old
Rome was fated to fall that in its place might rise a new and
more glorious Rome, the Christian World. The forecast had
a strange fulfilment in the rise of the Papacy and the founda-
tion of the Holy Roman Empire. Augustine's great book is
the link between the Gospels and the Middle Ages. Like many
great forecasts, it helped to fulfil that which it prophesied.
(ii) Jerome (340-420). Augustine's contemporary Jerome,
though a much less remarkable man, exercised an important
influence on the Church in two ways. He made a translation
of the Bible in Latin which became the Textum Vulgatum
(Common Text) or Vulgate, the authorised version of the
Scriptures used in the Roman Church down to this day.
Also, as he lived a great part of his life at Bethlehem in a
152 MEDIAEVAL CHURCH AND REFORMATION
monastery of his own foundation, he may be reckoned the
first great ' pilgrim ' ; in fact, from Jerome dates that
romantic interest in the ' Holy Land ' which ultimately
produced the Crusades.
Jerome was before all things a scholar. In his youth, he
tells us, he could not help feeling the prophets and the epistles
crude and ugly compared with the polished styles of Plato
and Cicero. He dreamt that Christ appeared to him and
reproached him with being more of a Ciceronian than a
Christian, and henceforth he vowed to devote his scholarship
to Holy Scripture. It is a mark of his scientific spirit that
he was not content with the Greek translation of the Old
Testament which was used all over the eastern part of the
Empire, but set to work to learn Hebrew so that he might
base his Latin translation on the original. He secured the
assistance of Jewish rabbis, and when the Vulgate was
finished he said, " Let him who would challenge anything in
this translation, ask the Jews."
To Jerome we owe the distinction between the Old Testa-
ment and the Apocrypha. The Apocrypha consists of the
books found in the Septuagint (the Greek translation begun at
Alexandria in the third century B.C. for the use of the Jews
of that city), but excluded from the Hebrew scriptures.
Jerome includes the Apocryphal books in his text, but adds
that the Church reads them " for the edification of the people,
not for confirming the authority of ecclesiastical doctrine."
Jerome's Vulgate served to introduce the ordinary man of
Italy and the West, the man who could read but was no
scholar, to the actual text of Scripture. Hitherto, though
certain Latin translations had been made, the Bible was
usually only available in Greek, and Greek, though the
common tongue of the Eastern Empire, was only known to
scholars in the west. Even in the west, of course, few could
read any language at all, and the number of such, outside
the monasteries, diminished steadily during the centuries of
the Dark Ages that ensued. Yet, just as the English Bible
GREAT CHRISTIANS OF THE DARK AGES 153
has proved the foundation-stone of the Enghsh Church, so
the Vulgate helped to create the sense of religious unity among
Latin as distinct from Greek speaking peoples, and it was
thus one of the forces that paved the way for the creation of
the Papacy.
(iii) Gregory the Great (540-604) and the beginnings of the
Papacy. Gregory the Great — known in English history as
the author of the pun ' Non Angli sed Angeli,' the Pope who
sent Augustine to preach Christianity to the Anglo-Saxons —
is the last of the Fathers and the first of the great Popes.
This, then, is the convenient place to give some account of
the origins of the Papacy.
Christianity appears to have reached Rome ten or fifteen
years before St. Paul was brought there as a prisoner, and
the Church of the capital of the world at once assumed
importance, as is shown by the fact that St. Paul addressed
to it his longest and most elaborate Epistle, the only Epistle
addressed to a community which he had not, at the time
of writing, personally visited. A few years later the
martyrdoms of both Peter and Paul at Rome gave the
Roman Church further prestige. So long as Christianity
was a ' rebel religion ' the bishop of Rome seems to have
been recognised as the highest authority within the Church,
though there was but little attempt at centralised control.
When, however, the Emperor adopted Christianity and
left Rome for Constantinople all this was changed. Accord-
ing to the Imperial theory the Emperor was head of the
Church, and under him were five ' patriarchs ' of equal
standing, the bishops of Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria,
Antioch and Jerusalem. Of these Rome might well seem the
least, when the West was being more and more given over
to barbarians who were either heathens or, what was con-
sidered just as bad, Arians. The difficulties of the bishops
of Rome proved, however, their opportunities. Deserted by
its emperors, Rome and Italy too came to look to the Pope
154 MEDIAEVAL CHURCH AND REFORMATION
or bishop of Rome as its bulwark of defence against bar-
barism. When the Arian Alaric the Goth sacked Rome
(410) he spared the Christian Churches out of respect for
Pope Innocent I. When the far more terrible heathen
Attila the Hun threatened to invade Italy (452), Pope Leo I.
went to meet him in the neighbourhood of Venice, and by
his eloquence persuaded him to turn back. Forty years
later the fierce conqueror Clovis the Frank was baptised (496)
by the bishop of Reims and founded the first Catholic (i.e.
not Arian) barbarian kingdom in Gaul. This alliance of the
Papacy and the Franks was to be of enormous importance
three centuries later.
When Gregory became Pope in 590, Italy had for twenty-
two years been suffering from the last and in some ways the
worst of her barbarian invaders, the Arian Lombards.
Gregory was born of wealthy parents, received a good
education, and adopted a political career. In 573 he was
Prefect of the city of Rome. The next year, however, he
felt himself irresistibly draw^n to the ' rehgious ' life ; he
devoted his fortune to founding seven monasteries, and
himself became a monk. He was the first monk to be bishop
of Rome, and this combination of political experience and
monastic ideals affords the key to his career. In 590 he was
literally forced to take up the burden of the Papacy : " While
he was preparing for flight," his biographer tells us, *' he was
seized and carried off and dragged to the Church of St.
Peter " and there consecrated bishop.
The Pope w^as at this date already the greatest landlord
in Italy. The Lombards had encroached on his estates and
could only be dislodged by force. In fighting for his own
estates Gregory was fighting the battle of Italy and of
civilisation, and he was quickly recognised as the national
leader. He appointed governors of cities, issued orders to
generals, organised the provision of munitions, and finally,
through the Catholic queen of the Lombards, Theodelinda,
brought about a favourable peace. The Lombards aban-
GREAT CHRISTIANS OF THE DARK AGES 155
doned Arianism, and, though they were a troublesome and
unteachable folk, began to improve in other respects also.
As regards Christian Churches outside Italy, Gregory
maintained the principle that all were subject to the Apostolic
See {i.e. the bishopric of Rome as founded by St. Peter,
according to legend). But he was wise enough to refrain
from pressing the claim too far, and he recognised the
superior authority of the Emperor at Constantinople.
His missionary enterprise in England had an importance
that extends far beyond our own country. It was the first
great province that the Dark Ages recovered from heathen-
dom, and the first great achievement of Papal ' foreign
policy.' Moreover, the EngHsh Church became in the next
two centuries the centre of the most vital and vigorous
Christianity that the world could then show. England
produced Bede, the best historian of the Dark Ages, Boniface,
who brought Christianity to the Frisians of Holland and
north-west Germany, and Alcuin the chief adviser of
Charlemagne. It is a curious thing, this temporary
splendour of Anglo-Saxon, or rather Northumbrian, Chris-
tianity. When the invasions of the Northmen began, the
English Church declined in spite of all the efforts of Alfred
and Dunstan, and by the time of the Norman Conquest
England had become one of the most backward provinces of
Christendom.
Gregory must have been one of the hardest workers that
ever lived. " He never rested," says his biographer ; " he
was always engaged in providing for the interests of his
people, in writing some composition worthy of the Church,
or in searching out the secrets of heaven." He wrote a
commentary on the Book of Job, and delivered lectures on
other books of the Bible. Tradition says that he was the
author of the famous Gregorian system of Church music.
This appears to be untrue, but there is no doubt that he
greatly interested himself in the ritual of Church services,
and sightseers are, I believe, still shown the rod with which
156 MEDIAEVAL CHURCH AND REFORMATION
Gregory is supposed not only to have conducted his music
but also maintained order among his choir boys.
(iv) Between Gregory and Charleynagne (604-768). The rise
of Mohammedayiism. Two hundred years after Gregory, on
Christmas Day 800, Pope Leo III. crowned the Prankish
King Charles, while he was kneeling at mass in St. Peter's, and
saluted him as Carolus Augustus a Deo coronatus (Charles
Augustus crowned by God) and thus founded that extra-
ordinary institution, afterwards the bitter enemy of the
Papacy, the Holy Roman Empire. Before describing the
life and character of the great Christian Emperor we must
survey the events that led up to this new departure.
In 622 Mohammedanism as a distinct and miUtant religion
was founded by the expulsion of the prophet and his followers
from Mecca. The new religion at once proclaimed a Holy
War against all unbeHevers, and began to spread with the
irresistible rapidity of an epidemic. Indeed the nearest
parallel is to be found in the conquests of Alexander which,
moving even more rapidly in the opposite direction, carried
Hellenism from Greece eastwards to the Indus. By 640
Antioch and Jerusalem, the two first centres of Christianity
had fallen. Before 700 Constantinople had experienced
(but survived) its first Mohammedan investment, and
Christian Africa, the home of Augustine, had been lost. In
711 the Saracens, as they were called, entered Spain and
overthrew the kingdom of the Christian Visigoths. In 732
they were in the centre of France, and only here reached their
limit. The tide was stayed and turned back to the Pyrenees
by the victory of Charles Martel at Tours ^ in 732.
What was the cause of this astounding triumph ? It lies
in the character of the new religion. * Islam ' means ' sub-
mission.' It is the religion, it has been said, of submission
to God, while Christianity is the religion of co-operation with
God. Certain it is that, in Mohammedanism, everything
^ The battle is sometimes called Tours, sometimes Poitiers.
GREAT CHRISTIANS OF THE DARK AGES 157
made for the complete fusion of the rehgious and the political
and military organisation. Christ taught his disciples to
rely on spiritual forces alone. Mohammed made war a
religious duty and taught that those slain in battle against
the infidel were the surest of eternal blessedness. His
heaven was a pagan Valhalla of heroic warriors. Apart
from this, the Mohammedan movement enlisted that
enthusiasm which it seems novelty alone can secure :
Christendom was six centuries old and distracted by political
and sectarian jealousies, as it is to-day. Further, the
Mohammedans were everywhere helped by the Jews, whom
they treated much more generously than the Christians had
done. Indeed Mohammedanism preferred to live upon its
conquered enemies rather than to exterminate them : if
unbelievers would submit to Mohammedan government and
taxation they were otherwise unmolested.
Such a movement naturally led Christians to reflect on
their own shortcomings. They would try and find what
sources of efficiency there were in this new rehgion which
Christendom could imitate without being untrue to Christ.
This movement of ideas produced two results, one in the
east and one in the west of Christendom.
In the east, a great Roman Emperor, Leo the Isaurian
(717-740), became convinced that Mohammedanism was sent
by God to punish Christendom for its idolatrous worship of
images and saintly relics. In fact, he viewed Islam very much
as the Hebrew prophets viewed Assyria and Babylon. So
he issued an edict for the destruction of all images in the
churches. The reader will at once be reminded of our own
Puritan movement, which has left its destructive marks on
almost every ancient church in the country. The parallel
is a fair one up to a certain point, but this Puritanism of the
Dark Ages, the Iconoclastic Movement as it is called (Greek
ico7i = Sin image, clazo^l break), did not win popular support
as the Puritan movement did. The reason may be that it
was purely negative. The Puritan movement said in effect,
158 MEDIAEVAL CHURCH AND REFORMATION
" Break your images and turn to your Bibles " ; the Icono-
clastic movement merely said, " Break your images." In
any case, popular opposition sprang up and the Papacy
skilfully placed itself at its head. In 731 Gregory III. held
a Council at Rome, issued edicts against image-breakers, and
anathematised, i.e. laid a curse upon, the Emperor whose
subject he was still supposed to be.
The Greek and the Roman Churches had indeed been
drifting apart ever since the time of Constantine. It would
seem as if the final rupture had now taken place. As a matter
of fact Iconoclasm was abandoned and the quarrel patched
up. None the less the union of Christendom was henceforth
only nominal. The final separation on a point of doctrine
came in 1054.^ From that date there are two entirely
distinct organisations, the Catholic Church centring on Rome
and the Orthodox Church, centring first on Constantinople
and, after the Turkish occupation, on Moscow.
At the same time as the Papacy turned its back on Con-
stantinople it turned its face towards the rulers of the Franks.
Who so proper a champion of Rome as Charles Martel, the
* Hammer ' of the Saracens .? The Pope was again at war
with the Lombards. Charles was too busy in France to
assist him, but after his death his son Pipin was inclined to
strike a bargain with the Papacy. The great missionary
Boniface acted as mediator between them. Pipin, like his
father Charles, was virtually king of the Franks, but by title
he was only ' Mayor of the Palace,' a kind of Prime Minister.
If the Pope would make him king and dethrone the powerless
Childeric, descendant of Clovis, Pipin would invade Italy and
destroy the Lombard power.
So it was arranged. In 750 Pipin was made king of the
Franks by the ' command ' of the Pope, who absolved him
from his oath of allegiance to King Childeric. He was
anointed by Boniface. Four years later Pipin crossed the
Alps, defeated the Lombards, and presented to the Pope the
* See note on p. 161.
GREAT CHRISTIANS OF THE DARK AGES 159
great province of Ravenna on the Northern Adriatic shores
of Italy. This province had for three hundred years and
more been under an Exarch, or Viceroy of the Emperor at
Constantinople. In 751 the Lombards had expelled the
Exarch, and now in 754 it was taken from the Lombards by
the Franks and presented to the Papacy.
Here we have two significant beginnings. First, a Pope
claims to create kings, reviving the ceremony of anointing
with oil. Thus Samuel the prophet of God had anointed
Saul and David. Secondly, the Popes figure definitely as
temporal princes ruling ' States of the Church.' The province
of Ravenna was to remain Papal territory until Cavour and
Garibaldi created the modern kingdom of Italy eleven
hundred years later.
Just about this time an extraordinary historical forgery
was composed and circulated in support of the Pope's
temporal pretensions. It purported to be an edict of the
Emperor Constantine handing over to the bishop of Rome
the government of the whole of the western provinces of the
Empire. Though no such edict had in fact ever been issued,
nor was likely to have been issued, it seemed, amid the
ignorance of the Dark Ages, to fit in well enough with the
two main facts about Constantine, his removal of the seat
of government to Constantinople and his acceptance of
Christianity. Thus this forged ' Donation of Constantine,' as
it was called, deceived the whole world until the forgery was
denounced by Valla, one of the scholars of the Renaissance,
in 1450. Martin Luther was brought up to believe in the
' Donation,' and he tells us that the reading of Valla's
pamphlet was one of the first things that shook his faith in
the divine claims of the Papacy.
(v) Charlemagne'^ (742-814). Charlemagne succeeded his
father Pipin as king of the Franks in 768. The events
1 Charlemagne = Carolus IMagnus, Charles the Great. A determined
effort was made by some Victorian historians under German influence
i6o MEDIAEVAL CHURCH AND REFORMATION
recorded in the last section have already shown how natural
it was that he should become a ' Holy Roman Emperor.'
The Eastern emperors had alienated Western Christendom
by their iconoclastic policy. They had also lost their last
province in Italy. At the same time the Prankish kings had
entered Italy and were in close aUiance with the Papacy.
Pinally, there was the example of Islam pointing to the value
of a close union between Church and State under a single
powerful ruler.
Charlemagne had made himself in fact Emperor or supreme
ruler of all the western Christians before the Pope conferred
the title on him by solemn religious ceremonial. He
conquered the Lombard kingdom and assumed their ' iron
crown,' w^orn by all his successors and finally by Napoleon.
His wars against the Saxons of Germany carried Christianity
and Prankish rule beyond the Elbe. He helped the Spanish
Christians to drive back the Saracens as far as the Ebro. He
intervened in the affairs of the petty kingdoms of England.
He corresponded with the Mohammedan Caliph of Baghdad,
Haroun-al-Raschid of The Arabian Nights, and secured a
kind of vague protectorate over Christians in Asia with the
right of pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
The actual imperial coronation during mass on Christmas
Day 800 seems to have been sprung on Charles as a surprise
by the Pope. Charles was already preparing to revive in his
own person the glorious unity of the old Roman Empire,
but by other means. Emperors still ruled at Constantinople,
and to defy their authority would be to sow fresh seeds of
discord. At the moment an Empress, Irene, was on the
throne, and there is little doubt that Charles aimed at a
marriage which would reunite eastern and western Christen-
dom and reverse the policy of Constantine by bringing the
capital back to Rome. The Pope cut short and frustrated
to depose the name ' Charlemagne ' in favour of Karl on the ground
that the Franks were by origin Teutonic. This is scarcely more
sensible than calling Napoleon ' Buonaparte' (four syllables) on the
ground that he was born a Corsican.
GREAT CHRISTIANS OF THE DARK AGES i6i
these plans, which were perhaps in any case doomed to
failure, and by crowning the Emperor himself laid the basis
of the theory that Popes ranked above Roman Emperors
and could make and unmake them at will. This view
Charles and his successors always disputed.
So long, however, as Charles reigned, the Pope was likely
to be little more than his first subject. Charles ruled the
Church as he ruled the state : he lectured Popes, appointed
bishops, watched over the morals of the clergy, presided over
Church councils, and, extraordinary as it may seem, secured
a slight alteration in the wording of the Creed, contrary to
the wishes of the Pope.^ Charles grew to manhood without
ever having learnt to write, and his attempts to acquire this
art in old age proved unsuccessful, but he had a real love of
learning, and could read though he could not write. His
favourite book was Augustine's City of God. He was energetic
in founding schools for the clergy, and, by encouraging and
assisting men more learned than himself, undoubtedly brought
about a faint flickering revival of learning that helped to keep
the two or three remaining centuries of the Dark Ages from
becoming altogether pitch dark.
For darkness returned on Church and State after Charle-
magne. The Empire fell to pieces, and the Papacy fell into
a seemingly bottomless pit of incompetence and corruption.
We may draw a veil over two centuries, and recommence
the story with the events, roughly contemporary with the
Norman Conquest, which ushered in the great civilisation
of the Middle Ages.
* Addition of the word ' filioque,' describing the Holy Ghost as
" proceeding from the Father and the Son." The objection of the
Eastern Church to this insertion caused the final rupture between
the two Churches in 1054.
3.R.H.
CHAPTER XIII
THE GREAT AGE OF THE PAPACY (1073-1303)
IT is always difficult for one age to understand another,
and it is perhaps peculiarly difficult for us of the
twentieth century to understand the Middle Ages. It
is so much easier either to idealise or to condemn. On the
whole the popular view in England has been condemnation.
The Crusades, we have been told, were the product of mere
superstition, playing upon a lust for useless adventures.
The monasteries were homes of idleness or, at best, of a very
stupid kind of learning. The ' saints ' were narrow-minded
folk, and the scholars only wrote bad Latin. And no
institution has fared worse in popular judgment than the
Papacy. All our Protestant and all our patriotic instincts
turn us against it. The Pope is a foreigner interfering with
our English liberties, and, however much he may disguise it,
it always turns out to be our 7noney that he's after. He
interferes with the king's law-courts, and attempts to get the
clergy tried in courts of his own, — for the money it brings.
He appoints foreigners to English bishoprics — for money.
He puts up Heaven itself for sale and offers tickets of ad-
mittance, called ' Pardons ' — for money.
Yet another view is possible. A distinguished modern
English historian,^ not a Roman Catholic, describes the
Papacy as ' the greatest institution in human history,' and
* taking it all in all the greatest power for good that existed
at the time (the Middle Ages) or perhaps has ever existed.'
1 A. L. Smith, Church and State in the Middle Ages.
162
THE GREAT AGE OF THE PAPACY 163
The Papacy, in fact, stood for ' the united action of the
civilised world in pursuit of the highest aims which it could
conceive.' What were these aims ? — the realisation of the
dream of St. Augustine, the establishment of the * City of
God,' the establishment, if you prefer the modern phrase,
of a ' League of Nations ' working together harmoniously for
the maintenance of Christ's law and the enlargement of God's
kingdom.
The men of the Middle Ages were reckless idealists, and
their actions were often absurdly unworthy of their principles.
They failed, and for centuries we, with our acceptance of
religious disunion and national rivalries, treated their ideals
as moonshine. But in so far as we are to-day attempting
(i) to found a League of Nations which will put an end to
war ; (ii) to establish friendliness and co-operation between
our various Christian Churches ; (iii) to carry civilisation and
with it Christianity to the ends of the earth : — in so far as we
are trying to do these things we are returning to the ideals of
the Middle Ages.
Perhaps the be?t way to begin to understand the Middle
Ages is to visit the great cathedrals they have left us. We
have built nothing since in England that is even distantly
comparable with them. The present writer was once being
shown round Ely Cathedral, and someone remarked to our
guide : " Ely must have been a big place in those days to
need such a big church." He was answered : " The people
that built this cathedral did not build for the people of Ely :
they built for the glory of God."
Of course it is easy to go from one extreme to the other
and to ' white-wash ' the Middle Ages, pretending they were
better than they were. This book will not attempt to ' white-
wash ' them. Still, on the whole, if we wish to understand
either an age or an individual, it is better to err on the side
of sympathy than on the side of fault-finding, to dwell on
the ejood points more than on the bad ones.
I64 MEDIAEVAL CHURCH AND REFORMATION
(i) Gregory VI I. [Hildehrand) (1073-1085). As the founder
of the greatness of the mediaeval Papacy Hildebrand, or,
to call him by the name he assumed when Pope, Gregory VII.,
must always rank as one of the great figures of history.
We left both Papacy and Empire crumbling into decay
after the death of Charlemagne. In 962 the Holy Roman
Empire was revived by the German King Otto the Great.
This is the Holy Roman Empire of the Middle Ages. These
emperors could not claim, like Charlemagne, a universal
empire over all western Christians. They limited them-
selves to Germany and Italy, some preferring Italy, some
Germany as their centre of government. The Papacy, on
the other hand, went from bad to worse for some time longer.
It reached its low-water mark in the first half of the eleventh
century, when it became practically the family property of
the nobles of Tusculum. One of the Popes of this period,
Benedict IX., became Pope at the age of twelve, and developed
all the qualities which will get a boy expelled from school
or a man turned out of the better sort of society.
In 1046 a strong Emperor, Henry III., intervened, deposed
three rival Popes and nominated a stern and godly German,
his cousin Leo IX., in their place. Leo IX. brought with him
the young Itahan scholar called Hildebrand, who for nearly
forty years, first as a kind of prime-minister to a succession
of Popes, and finally as Pope himself, was the life and soul
of the great reform for which all devout Christians were
longing.
Hildebrand's work was to express in a visible, that is to say
a * political,' organisation the deep rehgious conviction of
the best minds of his day, that the Pope as head of the Church
was God's Viceroy on earth and ought to be supreme over
all the * Kingdoms of this world.' The Emperor had freed
the Papacy from the control of the Tusculan nobles : the next
step must be to free it from the control of the Emperor. It
was convenient for this purpose that Henry III. died in 1056,
leaving a mere boy, Henry IV., as his successor. A new
THE GREAT AGE OF THE PAPACY 165
system was established, and Popes henceforth were elected
by the cardinals in secret session or ' conclave.' The
cardinals were ecclesiastical officials appointed by the Popes ;
thus the election was kept free from external or lay inter-
ference and a general continuity of policy assured. This
system, though often assailed by the emperors m the next
two centuries, has lasted in all essentials to the present day.
Far more difficult was it to secure for the Papacy the
control of the national Churches. Gregory demanded that
bishops should in future be appointed not by the kings but
by the Pope. Such a demand illustrates well the reckless
idealism of the Middle Ages, for its fulfilment was quite
impossible. The bishops of the Middle Ages were much more
than merely ecclesiastical officials : they were great landlords,
and hence feudal barons : also, since the clergy were the only
educated class, they performed much of the work of civil
government. Right down to the time of Wolsey in England
the king's chief ministers were clerics and were given bishoprics
as payment for their pohtical work. Hildebrand's demand
then would mean that the kings should give up the control
of their own great landlords and the most convenient method
of paying their higher officials.
In this particular cause the Papacy was bound to fail, but
no lesser claim would perhaps have been as effective. Here
was a new ' Great Power,' challenging the mightiest
monarchies as David challenged Goliath, ' in the name of the
Lord of Hosts.' One incident in the long quarrel between
Pope and Emperor has become celebrated as the proudest
day in the history of the Papacy, as Trafalgar is the proudest
day in the history of the British Navy. The Emperor sought
to depose the Pope: the Pope excommunicated the Emperor:
his subjects, glad of the religious pretext, rose against his
misgovernment. Henry fled to Italy and sought the Pope :
his only escape from political ruin was through penance.
For three January days and nights, so runs the story, did
the Emperor humbly wait in the courtyard of the castle of
166 MEDIAEVAL CHURCH AND REFORMATION
Canossa, where the Pope was staying, before the Pope would
consent to admit him. Not a shot was fired : not a drop of
blood was shed : none the less Canossa (1077) deserves to
rank as one of the great battles of history. (Modern research
has shown that the incident at Canossa was less important
at the time than later tradition made it out to be : it has also
thrown doubts on the Emperor's three nights in the courtyard.
None the less these exaggerations themselves show the
impression the event made on the mediaeval mind, and the
impression it made is the measure of its real and permanent
importance. It is the mark of a really great event that the
prose of fact gets buried under the poetry of legend. Two
other good examples are Magna Carta and the Fall of the
Bastille.)
(ii) Successors of Gregory VII. { 1086- 1 303). It will be
simplest to complete here our outline of the Great Age of the
Papacy, so far as the Popes themselves are concerned. The
next chapter will deal with the Crusades, that is to say, papal
foreign poHcy, and the chapter following will illustrate a few
of the many religious movements of the age as personified
in their leaders.
At first sight the history of the Papacy in this period
appears to be nothing but an endless struggle with the
Empire, both Pope and Emperor alike claiming to be God's
viceroy on earth. True it is, and the struggle first degraded
and then destroyed them both. Before we touch this
struggle, therefore, let us set down some of the worthier but
less sensational undertakings in which the Popes led the
Church and the Church led the world.
(i) The Church, led by the Popes, particularly Innocent III.
(1198-1216), compiled and enforced a reasonable and uniform
marriage law in place of the barbarous confusion of customs
that had prevailed throughout the Dark Ages.
(ii) The Church law-courts, though often vexatious to
kings, as Becket's courts were to Henry II., none the less
THE GREAT AGE OF THE PAPACY 167
provided a model of legal procedure (canon law) based on
Roman law, far in advance of the law of the secular kingdoms.
(iii) The Church, led by the Popes, exerted itself to limit,
even though it could not abolish, the savage superstitions
which beset the people, and were indeed the survivals of
heathenism : "to bring this world of terrors within rule and
measure ; to make the achievement of victory over it a plain
matter of business, a thing to be done by hard prayer,
penance and good works." ^
(iv) The Papacy secured the establishment of celibacy
(non-marriage) of priests. No doubt this was in some respects
a bad principle, and based on false ideas about marriage
already mentioned. Many priests, too, when forbidden
wives, kept mistresses. Still it marks a great effort of self-
denial. Also it effectively prevented the clergy from
becoming, as in most eastern religions, a hereditary caste.
In fact the Church, in which peasants often became Popes,
was much the most democratic institution of the middle ages.
(v) The Papacy struggled, and not without success, to
abolish simony, i.e. sale of bishoprics and livings for money.
(vi) Lastly, the immense controversies that its struggles
with the Empire and national authorities provoked stimulated
intellectual activity in all directions, particularly theology
and law, and thus promoted the welfare of the infant univer-
sities.
Four names alone among these Popes need be mentioned :
Urban H. (1088-1099), the organiser of the First Crusade:
Innocent III. (1198-1216), the most powerful of the Popes :
Innocent IV. (1243-1254), the Pope who first consciously and
deliberately used the papal power for base ends : Boniface
VIII. (1294- 1 303) with whom it fell. (We shall return to
Urban II. in the next chapter.)
Innocent III. was the most powerful of all the Popes. His
reign happened to coincide with a period of disunion in the
Empire, and Philip Augustus, one of the greatest kings of
1 Smith, op. cit. p. 18.
168 MEDIAEVAL CHURCH AND REFORMATION
France, was his firm supporter. On the whole Hildebrand's
policy of freeing the bishops from the control of the kings had
failed. Innocent tried to secure the same end by a different
means : he sought to make the kings mere ' feudal barons '
of the Pope. He had a long quarrel with King John of
England, in which he was completely victorious. John
submitted when in 1 2 13 Innocent threatened him with a
French invasion. The movement for Magna Carta was
led by Stephen Langton, whom Innocent had nominated
archbishop against the king's wishes. After John's death
William Marshall Earl of Pembroke became regent, and on his
own death two years later (12 18) left the young king in the
charge of the papal legate Pandulph, who practically ruled
England for the next few years. Indeed England was
practically under papal control until 1254. Enghsh histories
are fond of pointing out the iniquities of papal influence
during this period, but the fact remains that Bishop Grosse-
teste, the greatest Englishman of the time both as church-
man and statesman, held that the papal influence did far
more good than harm.
The previous Popes from Hildebrand onwards, though
their moral influence had swayed the Christian world,
possessed hardly any material resources except such as they
could get from alliances with secular princes. Often they
were exiled from their own capital, being driven out some-
times by the Emperor, sometimes by the turbulent Roman
citizens, who from time to time set up a kind of rebel repubhc
in imitation of the repubhc of classical times. Innocent III.,
however, as the result of a series of fortunate accidents, was
practically King of Italy. It was natural that the Popes
should value temporal dominions, since a vast adminis-
trative system like the Papacy could not be run without
solid financial resources, and revenues due from kingdoms
beyond the Alps were often hard to raise. None the less,
this political power of Innocent III. proved the ruin of the
Papacy. In their eagerness to maintain it the Popes adopted
THE GREAT AGE OF THE PAPACY 169
measures which discredited their religious authority. In
grasping the shadow of worldly power they lost the substance
of spiritual leadership.
Innocent IV. (1243-1254) marks the turning point. A
mighty Emperor had arisen again, Frederick II. of Hohen-
stauffen, one of the ablest rulers in history. For various
reasons he made Sicily, not Germany, the centre of his
empire. Innocent IV. devoted his whole energies to the
destruction of Frederick. He preached a ' crusade ' against
him : he turned the whole power of the Church into a machine
for extorting money by fair means or foul (mostly foul) from
every corner of Christendom. He won his battle because
Frederick died and left no one who could carry on his task as
he had done. But it was one of those victories in which
victor and vanquished are ahke ruined. For it was plain to
all the world that this Pope was no true viceroy of Christ.
He was, as a modern historian says, simply ' a consummate
man of business,' a bold, daring, and unscrupulous statesman
of the type that made modern Prussia. His very success
dealt the Papacy a moral blow from which it never recovered.
What this meant was shown when Boniface VIII. (1294-
1303), another Innocent IV. in character, tried to play once
again the part of Innocent III. He issued a bull (or edict)
' Clericis laicos ' forbidding the taxation of the clergy for
purposes of war by national kings. In Edward I. of England
and Phihp le Bel of France he had to meet two very able
and powerful adversaries. Edward I., with his parliament
behind him, defied the bull with complete success. Philip
le Bel took more violent measures. He threw a papal legate
into prison. He had the bull pubHcly burnt in front of Notre
Dame in Paris, thus anticipating the more famous action of
Luther (see page 214). Finally, he authorised his Italian
alhes to kidnap the Pope himself. As Boniface sat un-
suspecting in the retirement of his native city Anagni, he
was suddenly surprised and maltreated, without a blow being
struck on his behalf. Three days later he was rescued, but
170 MEDIAEVAL CHURCH AND REFORMATION
his authority and his mental balance were gone. Frenzied
or broken hearted, he died a month afterwards.
The great age which began at Canossa ended at Anagni.
It was a brutal act, but why was it a successful one ? Had
such a blasphemous outrage been perpetrated against Hilde-
brand all Europe would have rung with indignation, and
assuredly the Papacy would not have been the loser, what-
ever fate might have befallen the individual Pope. But
now no one seemed to mind. The moral authority was gone.
Philip le Bel could act as he did because the French Church
was on his side.
Two years later (1305) a new Pope, elected under French
influence, took up his residence at Avignon, in the south of
France. The ' captivity ' of the Papacy had begun. The
Middle Ages were crumbHng down towards the Reformation.
CHAPTER XIV
THE CRUSADES
(i) The Causes of the Crusades.
N' 0 great movement in history sprang from more
various motives than the Crusades. Some of these
— motives were not religious at all. We are here
concerned with the crusades only in so far as they belong to
the history of Christianity, but it is necessary to notice some
of the non-religious causes, since without these the Crusades
could never have taken place. It was the skill of the Papacy
that turned into religious channels and used for the greater
glory of the Church a variety of purely secular motives.
The Crusades may be viewed as part of the age-long
warfare between east and west. This warfare is as ancient
as the struggle between the Greeks and the Persians and
as modern as the campaigns of General Allenby in Palestine
and General Maude in Mesopotamia. It is only partly
religious in character.
They may also be viewed as a continuation or revival of
the old Viking spirit of adventure. It is notable that the
Norman colonists in France and in Sicily played a leading
part from the first. These were the latest and most en-
thusiastic converts to Christianity, and their enthusiasm
expressed itself both in the architecture of their cathedrals
and in the adventures of their Crusades.
Again, the Crusades have an important commercial aspect.
The rising Italian seaports, Venice and Genoa, wanted to open
171
172 MEDIAEVAL CHURCH AND REFORMATION
up trade with the east, and a Christian kingdom of Jerusalem
stretching from the port of Joppa to the northern extremity
of the Red Sea furnished them with just the sort of ' Suez
Canal ' that they required. Indeed it may be said that
religious enthusiasm, though it conquered Jerusalem, could
never have held it for nearly a hundred years but for the
' sinews of war ' supplied by these traders for their own
commercial purposes.
None the less, it was religious enthusiasm that gave the
Crusades their splendid and romantic character. A crusade
may be defined simply as an * armed pilgrimage,' a ' Pil-
grim's Progress ' grown into a * Holy War.' * The idea of
pilgrimage to the Holy Land had grow^n increasingly popular
since the time when Jerome had translated the Scriptures in
his monastery at Bethlehem. The Church had seized upon
the idea and made pilgrimage, w'hether to Jerusalem or some
other holy shrine, a part of its system of penances, whereby
members of the Church paid the penalty for their sins, escaped
the penalty of excommunication, or obtained merit in God's
eyes. Pilgrimage w^as a popular and agreeable form of
penance, combining spiritual benefits with the joys of travel.
The characters in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales are pilgrims
travelling to the shrine of St. Thomas of Canterbury, but
their spirit is that of holiday makers rather than penitents.
(But the Canterbury Tales belong to a later and less religious
age.) How much more popular would be a penance which
afforded not only the gentle pleasures of travel but also the
fiercer dehghts of battle with God's enemies ! If the
Crusader fell in battle, then the glory of one who laid down
his life for his Church would certainly not be less than that
of one who to-day lays down his life for his country.
It has often been noticed that nothing unites a country
so effectively as a foreign war, if the war be just. So nothing
did so much to unite Christendom under the Papacy as the
Crusades. They were, in fact, papal foreign policy. It was
1 Barker, " Crusades," article in Encyclopaedia Britannica.
THE CRUSADES 173
natural that the kings at first stood aloof from them. No
kings went on the first and greatest Crusade. Sullenly they
watched the Pope playing the part of Pied Piper and leading
off the best and bravest of their subjects on a cause they
could not openly oppose. Later they found it best to fall in
with the movement they could not check. The second and
third Crusade are led by kings and emperors.
In (i^J Jerusalem had fallen into the hands of the Mo-
hammedans, but these Arab conquerors were tolerant and
pilgrimages increased unimpeded. The position was changed
when the first wave of Turkish invaders reached the Mediter-
ranean. In 107 1 these Seljukian Turks (to be distinguished
from the Ottoman Turks of the Modern ' Turkey ' who do
not appear till after the Crusades are over) conquered Asia
Minor from the Eastern Roman Emperors. In 1076 they
occupied Jerusalem,
Between these two events Hildebrand had become Pope
(1073) as Gregory VII. The Emperor appealed to him for
help. Gregory formed schemes, not for a Crusade but for a
great expedition of the west to succour the eastern empire.
By this means he hoped to bring about the reunion of the
eastern and western Churches under the Papacy. Nothing
came of this scheme. The Crusades when they were launched
went straight for Jerusalem, and, far from helping the eastern
Emperor in his difficulties, quarrelled with him. It is
possible that Gregory's policy was the wiser and that the
indirect approach to Jerusalem might have led to the best
results in the long run. Still, no appeal for the succour of
Constantinople could have struck the chord of rehgious
enthusiasm which launched Christendom on Jerusalem in
frontal attack.
The Pope who launched the first Crusade was Urban II.
(1088- 1099), 3, Frenchman whom Gregory had singled out
as a worthy successor to himself. During most of his life he
was an exile from Rome, where Gregory's old enemy, Henry
IV., set up a rival or ' anti-pope.' The Crusade was preached
174 MEDIAEVAL CHURCH AND REFORMATION
at Clermont in 1095 in the south of France, and cries of ' Deus
vult ' (God wills it) burst forth from a vast congregation
representing every rank of society.
(ii) The course of the Crusades (1095-1272). We have no
space here for the great pageant of military history which
stretches over the next two centuries, ending only thirty
years before the collapse of the Papacy itself at Anagni.
But an outline of events is necessary to show how this
religious impulse fared when put to the test of practice.
After the first Crusade it will be found rather a melancholy
story. Where worldly motives conflicted with religious the
worldly usually got the upper hand, and finally the movement
was destroyed by the growing worldhness of the Papacy itself.
The First Crusade (1095-1099) really includes two Crusades,
the Crusade of the people and the Crusade of the princes.
The Crusade of the people is a pathetic and horrible story.
Ignorant and enthusiastic preachers, such as Peter the
Hermit, set forth from Clermont and gathered around them-
selves vast crowds of vagabonds and fanatics. The call of
' Jerusalem ' acted upon them like stronc^ drink. Some fell
upon the Jews and are said to have massacred ten thousand
in the valley of the Rhine. Two great bands reached Con-
stantinople, sadly diminished by the way. The Emperor
shipped them across the straits, to preserve the peace of his
own capital, and they were at once annihilated by the Turks.
Meanwhile, the princes with their armies gathered at
Constantinople, where they were soon involved in quarrels
with the Emperor, who claimed that the prospective con-
quests must be regarded as his territory and themselves as
his vassals. Urban had appointed a bishop as leader, but
the real direction of the enterprise quickly passed to an able
and ambitious Norman, Bohemund, who regarded the whole
enterprise less in the spirit of a Crusader than in that of a
modern empire-builder. On reaching Antioch Bohemund
carved out a kingdom for himself and took no further interest
THE CRUSADES 175
in Jerusalem. However, the religious enthusiasm of the
majority successfully asserted itself under the leadership of
a true Crusading knight, Godfrey de Bouillon. In July, 1099,
Jerusalem fell : a terrible slaughter followed, more worthy
of the fierce religion of the Book of Joshua than of the faith
of Christ. It was Islam that had first preached the Holy
War. The Christian Church had adopted the methods of its
rival and won its revenge. Godfrey de Bouillon died the
next year, and his brother Baldwin became the first King
of Jerusalem.
The Kingdom of Jerusalem (i 100- 1 187) and the Second
Crusade (1147). The Kingdom of Jerusalem suffered from
many inevitable handicaps. The adventurous qualities
which made a good Crusader were by no means the qualities
most useful in the difficult task of establishing orderly
government in an oriental colony. From the beginning the
worst vices of feudalism were conspicuous, anarchy and
brutality, and the kings proved quite unable to control their
vassals. The two great Crusading orders of knighthood, the
Templars and Hospitallers, were among the worst offenders.
In all periods, not least in our own, it has proved difficult for
white races to preserve their moral standards in their deal-
ings with races they regard as * inferior.' The difficulty was
greatly increased by the fact that in this case the whites
regarded the natives as * infidels,' and found, even in their
religion, excuses for every kind of wickedness in their treat-
ment of them. " Islam," a modern historian writes, " might
have endured a kingdom of infidels ; it could not endure a
kingdom of brigands." In the words of a contemporary,
** The Crusaders forsook God before God forsook them."
The success of the first Crusade owed something to the
fact that the Mohammedans happened at that date to be
weak and divided. Now a strong power was rising again
under Zengi at Mosul on the upper Tigris. In 1 144 he cap-
tured the Christian outpost of Edessa on the upper Euphrates.
This disaster was the occasion of the second Crusade.
176 MEDIAEVAL CHURCH AND REFORMATION
The second Crusade, though led by the Emperor Conrad
and the French King, Louis VII., was a miserable failure,
partly owing to the incompetence of its leaders, and partly
because many of the Crusaders never came to Palestine at
all. The idea that there might be other and easier ' crusades '
than that of Jerusalem boded ill for the Christian colony.
The Germans were allowed to fulfil their Crusading vows by
attacking the heathen Wends on their Baltic coast, and the
English and Flemings landed at Lisbon and stormed that
city of the Moors, thus founding the Christian Kingdom of
Portugal.
Meanwhile the kingdom of Zengi grew under his son,
Nureddin. Nureddin's general Saladin conquered Egypt,
and destroyed the Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1187,
Third Crusade (1189-1192). It so happened that when
Jerusalem fell there was no great Pope to rise to the occasion.
The third Crusade was planned by three of the greatest Kings
of the Middle Ages, the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa,
Philip Augustus of France, and Henry II. of England.
Henry II. died before the expedition was launched, and the
Emperor was drowned in Cilicia on the way out : the two
great figures are therefore Philip Augustus and Henry's
son, Richard Coeur de Lion. Now England and France
were deadly enemies : Philip, a cool, calculating statesman,
knew well enough that the main business of his reign was to
be the expulsion of the English rulers from France and
consolidation of his own kingdom. These rivalries they
carried with them to the east. Each supported rival
pretenders to the throne of Jerusalem : each was backed for
commercial purposes by a rival Italian seaport.
Much more remarkable, however, were the changed
relations between Christian and Infidel. To the first
Crusaders, the Saracens had been simply devils to whom no
quarter should be given. But a century of familiarity had
brought, not contempt, but a certain well-merited admira-
tion. In many respects the Arab civilisation was far in
THE CRUSADES 177
advance of the Christian, and Saladin was as fine a knight
as any Crusader. Hence Richard pursued his end not only
by war but by negotiation. He even proposed that Saladin's
brother should marry his sister Joanna and rule Jerusalem
as a kind of neutral state. This spirit of toleration is a fine
thing, and Europe owes much to it, but its entry was the
death-blow to the Crusades as a religious movement. The
marriage-policy came to nothing as it happened, but when
Richard left, though he had failed to enter Jerusalem as a
conqueror, he had secured for the Christians the right of
pilgrimage.
The later Crusades (1202- 1272). The remainder of the
story can be quickly told. The Fourth Crusade^ planned by
Innocent HI. himself, was diverted in spite of his wishes into
an attack on Constantinople, where a ' Latin Empire ' was
founded and lasted amidst much confusion till 1261, when
the Greek dynasty reconquered the city. Meanwhile Innocent
III. preached a * crusade ' against the heretic Albigensians ^
in the south of France.
The Children's Crusade of 12 12 is an incredible and horrible
story. A mere boy, Nicholas of Cologne, led some thousands
of children into Italy, where they were kidnapped by slave
dealers and sold into Egypt. The picturesque tale of " The
Pied Piper " is said to have grown out of this tragedy.
The Fifth Crusade (12 18) was an unsuccessful expedition
to Egypt. The Sixth Crusade (1228- 1229), on the other
hand, was brilliantly successful, but its success had nothing
to do with religion. It was the work of the great Emperor
Frederick II., the arch foe of the Papacy on account of his
Italian power, and also, as his conversation gave much
ground for thinking, an infidel himself. The Pope, Gregory
^ The Albigensians held the old Manichaean belief, brought back
from the east. They believed that God and the Devil were equal
powers struggling for the mastery of the world : also that matter,
and consequently life, were essentially evil, and that suicide was not
a sin. They are in no sense forerunners of the Protestant Reforma-
tion, though they have sometimes been described as such.
S.R.H. N
178 MEDIAEVAL CHURCH AND REFORMATION
IX., the predecessor of Innocent IV., excommunicated him
before he started, and proclaimed a ' crusade ' against the
Crusader. Arrived in Palestine, Frederick at once opened
negotiations, and by skilfully playing upon the rivalries of
his enemies induced them to concede to him a kingdom of
Jerusalem embracing also Galilee and the port of Acre.
When the excommunicated crusader entered Jerusalem the
Holy City automatically fell under a papal interdict !
Frederick's kingdom lasted till 1244 ; Jerusalem was then
finally lost.
When Jerusalem fell Pope Innocent IV. was much more
interested in his ' crusade ' against Frederick than in the
recovery of Jerusalem. One great king, however, was
reigning at the time, the perfect Christian king of the
Middle Ages, in whom the crusading fire once more blazed
with all its original vigour, St. Louis of France. The
Seventh and Eighth Crusades (1248 and 1270) were personal
ventures of the French king and his followers. But the
efforts of one m.an could not turn back the religious energies
of Christendom into a channel they had already forsaken.
Both expeditions are unimportant failures, the first in Egypt,
the second in Tunis where Louis died. Some of his followers
under the future Edward I. of England sailed on from Tunis
to Palestine, where Edward was still engaged in gallant
military operations when news of his father's death recalled
him to England.
The Crusades were over. The following is the judgment
of a modern English historian upon them.^
" When all is said, the Crusades remain a wonderful and
perpetually astonishing act in the great drama of human life.
They touched the summits of daring and devotion, if they
also sank into the deep abysms of shame. Motives of self-
interest may have lurked in them, — otherworldly motives
of buying salvation for a little price, or worldly motives of
achieving riches or acquiring lands. Yet it would be treason
^ Barker, op. cit.
THE CRUSADES 179
to the majesty of man's incessant struggle towards an ideal
good, if one were to deny that in and through the Crusades
men strove for righteousness' sake to extend the Kingdom
of God upon earth. . . . The ages were not dark in which
Christianity could gather itself together in a common cause
and carry the flag of its faith to the grave of its Redeemer :
nor can we but give thanks for their memory, even if for us
religion is of the spirit, and Jerusalem in the heart of every
man who believes in Christ."
CHAPTER XV
SAINTS AND SCHOLARS OF THE MIDDLE AGES
(i) Abelard, Bernard, and Thoynas Aquinas :
Mediaeval Learning
THE form of learning that dominated the Middle Ages
is known as scholasticism. Like so much else of
its day it attempted the greatest of tasks with very
insufficient means. Roughly speaking, its aim is to express
the whole truth of Christianity in the form of a vast logical
system or theorem ; to make reason the handmaid of faith.
The logical system was borrowed from Aristotle, a few of
whose works were known in Latin translations in the eleventh
century.
The first great master of this art was the Frenchman
Abelard (1079-1142). His life illustrates what must have
been a common tragedy in the mediaeval Church, for he
devotedly loved a beautiful and highly gifted girl named
Heloise, and the story of their love is one of the most
celebrated love-tragedies of real life. His lectures at Paris
drew hundreds, or rather, it is said, thousands, of students
from all the country round. Indeed, they may be said to
have founded the fame of the great university of Paris, of
which Oxford was afterwards a kind of colony.^ His most
influential treatise was the Sic et Non, a collection of
1 When Henry II. quarrelled with the King of France in 1168 he
ordered English students to withdraw from Paris, and they appear
to have settled at Oxford.
180
SAINTS AND SCHOLARS OF MIDDLE AGES i8i
apparently contradictory statements from the early Christian
Fathers. This collection was not made, as might be thought,
with a view to exposing the unsoundness of the Fathers.
Abelard believed that these apparently contradictory state-
ments could be reconciled, since they came from an inspired
source, and that it was the task of the human intellect to
serve the cause of God's truth by reconciling them.
It was natural, however, that this bold appeal to the
tribunal of reason should alarm many more than it attracted.
Abelard found himself opposed by Bernard, who, in the last
year of his life, secured his condemnation by the Pope.
If Abelard was the great radical of his age, Bernard — St.
Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) — was the great con-
servative, and a more typical, though to the modern mind
less interesting, figure. He was the greatest of monks, and
the monastery was as much the typical institution of
mediaeval Christendom as the factory is of modern Lanca-
shire or the army of modern Prussia. For twenty years
Clairvaux, his monastery, overshadowed Rome as a spiritual
centre. He could of course have been Pope : he preferred
to exercise greater power as a Pope-maker.
St. Bernard is typical of that anti-worldliness against
which the Renaissance afterwards rose in protest. The
world to him was a place of banishment and trial, where
men are but strangers and pilgrims. The way of escape to
Heaven had been marked out by authority long ago : it was
only necessary to follow it. ' Rationahsts ' like Abelard
were only playing the Devil's game, and breeding fresh
heresies. St. Bernard was no lover of persecution : he
preferred exile to death as a punishment, partly perhaps
because, being less sensational, it created less sympathy for
the victims. None the less, heretics were * dogs,' and their
bravery in facing death was derived from the help not of God
but of the Devil.
Yet not even St. Bernard and the millions that shared
his bigotry without sharing his saintliness could suppress the
1 82 MEDIAEVAL CHURCH AND REFORMATION
free life of intellect. The great scholastic debate went its
way. The greatest product of the movement was the
famous Stimma Theologiae of St. Thomas Aquinas (1227-
1274). Through this work St. Thomas exercised a greater
and more permanent influence on the Roman Church than
any writer since Augustine. It is in fact to this day the
authoritative textbook of Roman Catholic theology, as is
illustrated by the fact that in 1 880 Pope Leo XIII. declared
St. Thomas the patron saint of all Roman Catholic educa-
tional establishments.
It is impossible to make any useful summary of such a
treatise here. The general principle is the same as that of
Abelard : there are two sources of knowledge, revelation and
reason. The channels of revelation are the Bible and the
Church ; the channels of reason are the various systems of
heathen philosophy. But while they are two distinct sources,
they are not contradictory ; for both come alike from God.
The controversy continued after St. Thomas. One of the
greatest of the later ' schoolmen ' (as the scholastic philo-
sophers are generally called) was an Englishman from the
Scottish border, Duns Scotus (1265-1308). He has obtained
a popular immortality that would certainly have surprised
an(^ disappointed him. He has given his native language
the word ' dunce.' When the struggle between the new
classical learning and the old scholastic philosophy broke
out in Oxford at the time of the Renaissance, the eager
students of the new learning, such as Thomas More, called
their conservative opponents ' dunces ' from the name of
the author of their favourite textbook. Thus ' dunce ' does
not mean a stupid or ignorant person, but a devotee of useless
learning.
(ii) Francis and Dominic: the Friars. Among a/l the great
figures of the Middle Ages St. Francis of Assisi (i 181 -1226)
is the most lovable and the nearest to Christ, his Master.
He was the son of a merchant of Assisi in northern-central
SAINTS AND SCHOLARS OF MIDDLE AGES 183
Italy, and in his youth seems to have been the leading spirit
among the gay young men of the town. At the age of
twenty-one he had a serious illness, during which he under-
went the experience common among men of religious genius,
known as ' conversion,' a suddenly deepened sense of the
presence of God in the world and of His call to service. He
went on a pilgrimage to Rome, and finding the usual crowd
of beggars outside St. Peter's, he exchanged his clothes with
one of them, and experienced an overwhelming sense of joy
in spending the day begging among the rest. Later, on his
return to Assisi, he met a leper who begged alms of him.
Francis had always had a special horror of lepers, and he
rode past turning his face away. Immediately afterwards
he remembered Jesus and alighted, gave the leper all he had
and kissed his hand. From that day he devoted himself to
the service of the lepers and the hospitals.
These incidents give the key to his hfe and to the movement
he set on foot. The text which was his special inspiration
was : — " Everywhere on your road preach and say, ' The
Kingdom of God is at hand.' Cure the sick, raise the dead,
cleanse the leper, drive out devils. Freely ye have received,
freely give. Carry neither gold, nor silver, nor money in
your girdles, nor bag, nor two coats, nor sandals, nor staff,
for the workman is worthy of his hire." His aim was a
literal imitation of the life of the earliest disciples. In 1209
he went with eleven friends to Rome and secured from the
great Innocent III. the recognition of the new order, the
Fratres Minores, Lesser Brothers, commonly called Friars
(brothers) or Mendicants (beggars).
In later years Francis felt the call to preach the gospel to
the heathen. He went to Egypt at the time of the wretchedly
unsuccessful fifth Crusade (1219), got himself taken prisoner
and was led before the Sultan, to whom he publicly preached
the gospel. The Sultan gallantly sent him back to the
Christian camp and he afterwards spent a year in Palestine,
but without achieving any results.
i84 MEDIAEVAL CHURCH AND REFORMATION
The most striking feature of his character, as of that of the
first Christians, was his joyousness. He loved music, and,
like the EngHsh poet Blake, sang on his death-bed. He
loved all living things and, with gentle humour, called all
things his brothers and sisters, not only animals and birds
but sun and moon, wind and fire. He is said to have
preached a sermon to the birds, which is after all no more
ridiculous than writing poems to them, and therefore not
ridiculous at all, provided the sermon was a suitable one.
On his deathbed he quaintly apologised to ' brother ass,
the body,' for all the hardships he had inflicted on it.
The fame of the Spanish Dominic (1170-1221) has been
overshadowed by that of Francis, and indeed he was cast
more in the common mediaeval mould. His first important
work was to preach Christianity to the Albigensian heretics.
During the latter part of his ten years' mission the horrible
crusade against these heretics was in full blast. Dominic
seems to have approved the crusade, but only on account of
the unwillingness of the heretics to accept conversion, whereas
many of the crusaders were actuated by motives of vulgar
land-grabbing. His order of ' Preaching Friars ' was formed, a
few years later than that of Francis and largely in imitation
of it, from among his associates in the Albigensian mission.
Both orders spread with amazing rapidity, and during the
lifetimes of their founders had already many thousands of
members scattered over every country in Europe. In fact
they enlisted the religious enthusiasm which a hundred years
earlier had gone into the first Crusade. They devoted them-
selves not only to work among the poor and the sick, but
also to learning and teaching. Schoolmen like St. Thomas
Aquinas and Duns Scotus, and also their contemporary,
Roger Bacon, the greatest scientific genius of the Middle
Ages, were friars. Both orders also contained an order for
women. The first friars to reach England (1221) came
barefooted and destitute of the commonest necessities, and
in no country did they do more good. In almost every town
SAINTS AND SCHOLARS OF MIDDLE AGES 185
arose a priory and a chapel, planted in the poorest quarters
which the ordinary clergy generally left severely alone.
Their first houses were built of mud and timber, and their
food was vegetables, porridge, and cheap ale. When gifts
and legacies flowed in they were invested under trustees.
The monks and parish priests watched jealously, and eagerly
noted any falling from their high ideals. No doubt all friars
were not Francises, but it is probably fair to say that for
about a hundred years they worked in such a manner as to
put most other Christians of their time to shame.
In popular speech the various orders of Friars came to be
called after the colours of the long cloaks which they wore
as uniforms. Thus the Franciscans were Grey-friars, the
Dominicans Black-friars, and a later order, the Carmelites,
White-friars. These names still persist as street names, and
mark the sites of their priories in many of our cities, e.g.
Blackfriars Bridge.
(iii) Dante (1265-1321). When a great period of history
is drawing to a close it is sometimes the privilege of a great
poet to sum up its character in a great work of art. Thus
Shakespeare gave, in his comedies, his histories, and his
tragedies, the completest expression, in an idealised form, of
the gaiety, the energy and patriotism, and the deep strivings
and aspirations of the heroic age of Elizabeth. Thus also
Dante, in his Divine Comedy,^ has left us a monument
expressing the peculiar character of mediaeval Christendom,
a monument as stately and as expressive as the Gothic
cathedrals.
Dante was a Florentine, and a vigorous actor in the stormy
politics of his city, which, though owing nominal allegiance
to the Emperor, was actually an independent republic. In
^ Dante called his poem a Comedy for two reasons : first because
it has a happy ending, since it records a pilgrimage through Hell
and Purgatory to Heaven ; secondly, because it is written in Italian,
the language of common speech, and not in Latin. The epithet
' Divine ' was added not by Dante but by his admirers.
i86 MEDIAEVAL CHURCH AND REFORMATION
1302 he was sentenced to perpetual banishment as the result
of a civil war in which his party was defeated. His great
epic was written during the nineteen years of exile and
wandering that followed.
The poem consists of three Books, entitled Inferno (Hell),
Purgatorio (Purgatory) and Paradiso (Paradise),^ and records
the visionary journey of the poet through all the regions of
that Other World upon which mediaeval thought brooded
so deeply. On the first two stages of his journey his guide
is the poet Virgil, honoured above all classical poets in the
Middle Ages because in one of his poems, the Fourth Eclogue,
he was supposed to have foretold the coming of Christ. In
Heaven his guide is Beatrice, the Florentine lady whom he
had once loved, who had died before the time of his exile.
To the modern mind the most extraordinary feature of
Dante's poem is the precise detail with which he invests his
descriptions of these shadowy worlds. For us Heaven and
Hell, however real they may be to us, have no place in the
maps of our atlases or the charts of our astronomers. Dante
fits the seen and the unseen worlds into a single scheme. The
Earth is the centre of the Universe, and is divided into a land
hemisphere and a water hemisphere. In the centre of the
land hemisphere is placed Jerusalem. Hell is conceived as a
Pit shaped like a funnel and stretching to the very centre
of the Earth, the upper or broad end of the funnel lying
immediately under the crust of the land hemisphere. From
the centre of Hell a narrow passage leads through to the
surface of the Earth at the centre of the water hemisphere,
that is to say the antipodes of Jerusalem. Here is Purgatory,
an island mountain with the Garden of Eden, the Terrestrial
Paradise, on its summit. Above the top of this mountain
and stretched in a series of spheres all round the Earth is
^ Each Book is divided into thirty-three cantos, and contains
about 4500 lines. The total length of the poem is about the same
as that of the Iliad, and half as long again as the Aeueid or Paradise
Lost.
SAINTS AND SCHOLARS OF MIDDLE AGES 187
Heaven. Dante here makes use of the Ptolemaic system of
astronomy, as worked out at Alexandria in the second
century a.d., and generally accepted till overthrown by the
researches of Copernicus, Kepler and Newton in the six-
teenth and seventeenth centuries.^ The Earth is conceived
as encased in a series of hollow revolving spheres, the
first containing the orbit along which the Moon circles
round the Earth, the second that of Mercury, the third
that of Venus, the fourth that of the Sun, the fifth that
of Mars, the sixth that of Jupiter, the seventh that of
Saturn, the eighth that of the Fixed Stars, the ninth the
Starless Crystalline Heaven, which is the root of Time and
Change, and, so to speak, the centre of the energy of the
whole Universe. In Dante's poem, each of these spheres is
allotted to an order of angels and to a particular type of
virtue as displayed on earth. Outside them all is a tenth
heaven, the motionless, boundless Empyrean. Here, too,
the saints and angels of the lower spheres are also present,
grouped in the form of a Rose about the presence of God
Himself.
Hell is divided into nine circles, in each of which a special
type of sinner receives eternal punishment appropriate to
his sin. Dante sees, as he passes, both his Florentine con-
temporaries and the famous men and women of old, and
often converses with them. It is notable that several of the
Popes are to be found in Hell, Innocent IV., for instance, who
preferred political to spiritual power, as well as his great
rival the Emperor Frederick II. At the centre is Satan
himself, tearing and mauling to all eternity the three worst
traitors, Judas Iscariot, Brutus and Cassius. For, in the
great mediaeval controversy between Papacy and Empire,
Dante was an Imperialist. Caesar was to him second only
to Christ, and in the re-establishment of a Roman Empire
'- Milton also uses the Ptolemaic system in Paradise Lost, though
most scientists had in his day abandoned it. Bacon was one of the
last great thinkers to cling to it.
1 88 xMEDIAEVAL CHURCH AND REFORMATION
he saw the only hope for the good ordering of God's Kingdom
on Earth,
Purgatory, again, is divided into circles, each with its
appropriate punishment ; but here we are mounting up :
hope has replaced despair ; punishment is purification and
is gladly received. The prisoners of Purgatory will, when
their term is served, pass upward to Heaven.
Purgatory played a larger part in the practical religion of
the Middle Ages than either Heaven or Hell. Only great
saints went, it was supposed, direct to Heaven : and Hell
was reserved for unbelievers and exceptional sinners.
' Ordinary people ' would, it was assumed, spend long ages
in Purgatory doing penance for sins on earth, and thereby
fitting themselves for Heaven. Could the prayers of those
on earth avail to help loved ones in Purgatory .? It was
assumed that they could, and on this simple and touching
faith was gradually built up the vast system of sale and
purchase of Indulgences, whereby you could buy, either for
your own benefit or for others, remittance of so many years
or thousands of years penance in purgatory.
The Reformation began with Luther's protest against the
sale of these Indulgences in 15 17, and the Reformers refused
to believe in the very existence of Purgatory — "Purgatory
Pick-purse," as the English Latimer called it. So in the
Reformed Churches the choice was between Hell and Heaven,
and that was no doubt one of the causes of the prominence
of Hell-fire, the morbid delight in depicting the supposed
tortures of the damned, which was characteristic of the
Puritan and Evangelical type of preaching until the middle
of the nineteenth century.
(iv) Saints of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Suso^
Thomas a Kempis, Richard Rolle, St. Catherine of Siena,
Savonarola. In the next chapter will be shown how, with
the downfall of Boniface VIII. (1303, a year after Dante's
exile from Florence), the Papacy, and with it the Church
SAINTS AND SCHOLARS OF MIDDLE AGES 189
itself as an institution, entered on a long period of decay and
discredit which only terminated in the storms of the Refor-
mation. None the less this period, so dismal from the point
of view of the general history of the Church, was graced by
many saintly lives. Yet there is a marked difference between
the fate of these rehgious geniuses and that of their pre-
decessors in the heyday of the Mediaeval Church. Anselm,
Bernard, Francis, and Dominic sowed their seed in a fruitful
soil : the tide of popular admiration bore them along : they
became great historical figures. Men, perhaps equally
gifted, in the period we now enter upon, meet no such recep-
tion : they struggle against the tide : their admirers are a
few chosen spirits like themselves. Their permanent effect
upon society is hard to trace, and their lives belong more to
Chrictian biography than to Christian history in the wider
sense.
The fourteenth century has been described as the classical
age of Christian mysticism. A mystic is one who enjoys, or
believes that he enjoys, the religious experience of communion
with God in an altogether special degree. By means of
ecstatic vision he sees and knows what others can only
dimly feel and cling to with the aid of faith, authority, or
tradition. In fourteenth century Germany, which was con-
tinually ravaged with civil war and plague, there were many
small societies of mystics, both men and women, situated far
apart and grouped each around some honoured leader, but
kept in touch with one another by wandering prophets, who
carried letters from group to group. One of these mystics,
the Blessed Henry Suso, has left, among other writings, a
charming autobiography.^
There is much in Suso's life that strikes the modern reader
as strange and morbid. He carried to an extreme point the
practice of self-torture, lacerating his body by carrying on
his bare back a heavy cross studded with nails and needles.
^ The Life of Blessed Henry Suso (translated), with Introduction
by Dean Inge (Methuen <k Co.).
190 MEDIAEVAL CHURCH AND REFORMATION
The God he loves is to us an incredibly cruel God. Even
after Suso has been warned in a vision to abandon (after more
than twenty years) his self-inflicted tortures, he believes that
the many undeserved misfortunes that fell upon him were
sent by God for his special trial and benefit. Only at the
end of his life did God " gladden the heart of the sufferer
in return for all his sufferings with inward peace of heart,
so that he praised God with all his heart for his past
suffering."
In Suso, in fact, we see a man striving to live by a perverted
monkish religion, and continually led by his ow^n beautiful
nature to rise above (rather than fall below) his religious
principles. He writes " Sit in thy cell ; it will teach thee
all things," and " Live as if there were no other creature on
earth but thyself." Yet we see him, once his period of self-
torture is over, following not his principles but his Master,
and going about among the poor, gladdening simple and
sinful hearts by his transparent goodness.
Like St. Francis, he had all the instincts of a poet. " It
was his custom " (he writes of himself) " to go into his chapel
after matins ^ and sitting down upon his chair to take a little
rest. He sat there but a short time until the watchman
announced the break of day ; when, opening his eyes, he
used to fall at once upon his knees and salute the rising
morning star, heaven's gentle Queen, with this intention
that, as the little birds in summer greet the daylight and
receive it joyously, even so did he mean to greet with joyful
longings her who brings the light of the everlasting day ;
and he did not merely say these words, but he accompanied
them with a sweet still melody in his soul."
The greatest masterpiece of this mystical literature is the
famous Imitation of Christ, which has been translated into
more languages than any other book except the Bible. Its
author, Thomas a Kempis (1380-1471), was a man otherwise
so simple minded and obscure that his authorship has been
^ A service held in monasteries immediately after midnight.
SAINTS AND SCHOLARS OF MIDDLE AGES 191
doubted, and the book attributed to the great ecclesiastical
statesman Gerson (see p. 200) : but for these doubts there
is apparently no good ground. Born at Kempen, in western
Germany, he spent the last seventy-two years of his long
life as a monk in the Augustinian convent at ZwoUe on the
eastern side of the Zuyder Zee. The convent was poor and
the monks earned their living by copying devotional books
for sale (it was before the days of printing). Never did any
man live more ignorant of the world outside the convent
walls : — a cheerful but shy little man, with soft brown eyes ;
fond of little jokes and puns ; going about the ordinary
business of life with bent back, but standing upright and even
rising upon his tiptoes during the singing of the psalms ; a
fine example of the truth of the text which declares that
'* out of the mouths of babes and sucklings God hath per-
fected praise."
England was not without its mystics in this period, one of
the most notable being Richard Rolle, of Hampole, near
Doncaster (} 1290- 1349). Richard Rolle was sent to Oxford
at the expense of one of the famous Neville family, to which
his father was attached ; but he cared not for philosophy, and
on his return home made himself a hermit's dress out of two
kirtles belonging to his sister and took to a wandering life.
He carefully cultivated his pov/ers of supernatural vision,
and has left a precise account of the progressive stages of
his insight. His devotional writings attained a wide popu-
larity, particularly The Mending of Life, of which five
separate translations in different English dialects were made
from the Latin original, a fact which has, it need hardly be
said, an interest for the student of the development of the
English language.
One of the most striking figures of the fourteenth century
is Catherine of Siena (1347-1380). She was the daughter of
a dyer, and began to practise religious exercises of self-denial
of her own choice at an incredibly early age, and when seven
years old solemnly dedicated her virginity to Christ. This
192 MEDIAEVAL CHURCH AND REFORMATION
seems absurd and unattractive to the modern reader, but
St. Catherine grew up to exercise her saintliness in the most
admirable and practical manner. She worked among the
victims of the plague : she more than once healed bitter
family feuds which were the curse of the north Italian
aristocracy : above all, she sought to end what was called
the " Babylonish Captivity " of the Papacy, and bring back
the Popes from Avignon (whither they had moved in 1305)
to Rome. First by correspondence and afterwards by a
pilgrimage to Avignon she succeeded in persuading Gregory
XI. (1370-1378) to come to Rome. Her object seemed
attained when Gregory died and an Italian successor (Urban
VI.) was elected in the Holy City. But Urban proved a
ferocious despot, and his cardinals fled to Avignon and
elected a rival. Thus the Captivity was followed by the
Schism, and St. Catherine wore herself to death in vain
efforts to curb the intractable temper of her Roman Pope.
She is the Jeanne Dare of Papal history.
The last, the most romantic, and the most tragic of the
great men in whom burned the spirit of the old mediaeval
Christianity was Fra Girolamo Savonarola (1452-1498).
Growing up in the midst of the brilliant achievements of the
Italian Renaissance, he entered a monastery at the age of
twenty- two, having first written a treatise On Contempt for
the World. Called to be prior of the convent of St. Mark at
Florence, he openly defied the rule of Lorenzo dei Medici, the
uncrowned king of that brilliant republic. Even Lorenzo
was impressed, for on his death-bed (1492) he summoned his
great enemy to give him absolution. Savonarola refused
unless Lorenzo would give back to Florence the freedom of
which the tyranny of his family had for seventy years
deprived her. Lorenzo would not consent, and Savonarola
left him to die unabsolved.
As a preacher Savonarola exercised amazing influence and,
modelling himself on the Hebrew prophets, he undertook to
direct from the pulpit the foreign politics of his city. He
SAINTS AND SCHOLARS OF MIDDLE AGES 193
welcomed the French invasion of 1494, seeing in the invaders
the rod of God's anger,^ and thus raised up for himself a host
of enemies. After the confusion caused by the passage of
the French army, a revolution established a democratic
constitution, and for the next four years Savonarola was the
real ruler of Florence. The city was transformed. The
bread of the poor and not the artistic masterpieces of the
rich became the first concern. A city of Cavaliers was turned
into a city of Puritans, as the Middle Ages would have under-
stood Puritanism. Husbands and wives quitted their homes
for convents ; marriage became an awful and scarcely
permitted rite. Most remarkable was Savonarola's power
over the young, of whom he formed a kind of sacred militia
with its own officers, charged with the enforcement of his
rules for a holy Hfe.^ The gay and licentious annual carnival
was replaced by a picturesque religious festival. At the
carnival of 1496 the citizens gave their costliest possessions
in alms to the poor, and tonsured monks, crowned with
flowers, sang praises and performed dances to the glory of
God. At the carnival of 1497 was celebrated the famous
" burning of the vanities." A Venetian merchant offered
22,000 gold florins for the pile of objects of art destined for
the flames, and the authorities not only rejected his offer but
added his portrait to the pile.
It could not last. Perhaps there was from the beginning
something hysterical and unsound in this strange protest
against the spirit of the age. Savonarola's government had
many enemies on political grounds, and its bitterest was
Alexander VI., the most notoriously wicked of all the Popes.
Savonarola was excommunicated and ordered to come to
Rome. He refused, and issued an appeal to all Christendom
demanding the deposition by a General Council of the
unworthy Pope. The Franciscans sided with the Pope, and
^ Compare Isaiah's attitude to Assyria, Part I., p. 33.
2 A not altogether fanciful parallel might be drawn between this
and the Boy Scouts.
S.R.H. O
194 MEDIAEVAL CHURCH AND REFORMATION
Savonarola's influence was undermined. It is impossible to
tell here the strange and complicated story of his downfall.
He was arrested, tortured, and after a scandalous mockery
of a trial, condemned to death and executed.^
Thus perished the last great mediaeval Christian at the
hands of the most degraded of the Renaissance Popes. Less
than twenty years separates the death of Savonarola from
the outbreak of the Lutheran revolution.
1 There is an impressive account of Savonarola in George EUot's
novel, Romola.
CHAPTER XVI
THE COLLAPSE OF THE MEDIAEVAL CHURCH
(1305-1517)
(i) Captivity, Schisyn, and Rebellion (i 305-1414) ^
FROM 1305 to 1378, following upon the kidnapping of
Boniface VHL, the Popes resided at Avignon in the
south of France, the despised tools of the French kings.
The period is sometimes called the ' Babylonish Captivity ' of
the Papacy. The first conspicuous act of these Popes was to
co-operate with the French king in one of the worst crimes
of history, the destruction of the Templars. The Templars
had, it is true, degenerated : they had become exceedingly
wealthy bankers, and as such were owed vast sums by the
French king and his nobility. Hence their suppression would
mean a cancelling of debts. The pretext chosen was heresy,
and it is likely enough that the Templars had brought back
some unchristian notions from the east. From 1307 to 13 12
a series of criminal investigations were carried out, with the
aid of torture and burnings at the stake, which surpass the
most lurid efforts of Judge Jeffreys. In 13 12 the order was
suppressed and their wealth passed, nominally to their rivals
the Hospitallers, actually for the most part to the French
king and other lay creditors.
In 1378 one of these Avignon Popes died while on a visit
to Rome. The Romans rose and compelled the cardinals to
1 The narrative here recommences at the point where it was left
at the end of Chapter XIII.
195
196 MEDIAEVAL CHURCH AND REFORMATION
elect a Roman Pope on the spot. Their unwilHng choice was
Urban VI., a fiery old man, who proceeded to browbeat them
so vigorously that with the encouragement of the French
king the cardinals fled to Avignon, declared their previous
election void as carried out under pressure, and proceeded to
elect a Frenchman, Clement VII. Thus from 1378 to 1414
there were two Popes, each denouncing the other as the
emissary of the Devil, and each striving to extract from his
supporters as much revenue as previous Popes had extracted
from the whole of western Christendom. The principle of the
Balance of Power was already in vogue in Europe, though the
name was not yet invented. France, Scotland and Spain
supported Avignon : England, Germany and Italy supported
Rome.
Thus Christendom cried out for reform : but reform was
no easy matter. It is never easy to reform, without des-
troying, any ancient institution. Much more difficult was
it when the institution claimed Divine Authority, and its
subjects were divided into hostile nationalities. Roughly
speaking there were (and always are) two methods of reform :
one, by creating new institutions to supplement or supersede
the old : the other, by developing new ideas, which infuse
a new spirit into the old institutions. Of course these two
methods overlap, but it is convenient to treat them separately.
The first, new institutions, is treated in the second section
of this chapter, dealing with the Conciliar movement. We
will in this section limit ourselves to the project of reform
through a change of ideas.
With the Papacy at Avignon in French hands it is
natural to look to England as a centre of discontent. Crecy
and Poitiers were fought during the ' Captivity,' and the
Papacy might well appear to the patriotic Englishman as an
enemy institution. Edward III.'s Parliaments passed laws
forbidding the Papacy to nominate holders of English livings
(Statute of Provisors, 1 351), and forbidding appeals to Rome
(Statute of Praemunire, 1353). Chaucer, the first great
COLLAPSE OF THE MEDIAEVAL CHURCH 197
national poet, holds up monks, friars, and papal pardoners
(sellers of indulgences or exemptions from the penalties of sin),
to endless ridicule in his Canterbury Tales (about 1 384). Lang-
land, less humorous and ironical but more earnest and severe,
tells the same tale in his Piers Plowman, But all this was
merely destructive. What was wanted was a great religious
philosopher and statesman who would diagnose the disease
of the Church and prescribe the remedy. The first great
attempt to do this was made by John Wycliffe.
Wycliffe (i 320- 1384) was a Yorkshireman, and Master of
Balliol College, Oxford. The burning question of the day
was papal taxation which, when the country was impoverished
by a long war, drew off wealth year by year to * the sinful
city of Avenon ' as Englishmen called it. Wycliffe roundly
declared that the wealth of the Church was its curse, that
what was good for the Friars would be good for the Pope and
his hierarchy, — namely poverty. This theory was seized
upon with delight by John of Gaunt and the war party, and
for a year or so Wycliffe became their favourite pamphleteer.
The Pope, at the instance of the Archbishop of Canterbury,
condemned his doctrine, but that did not prevent the govern-
ment consulting him afresh on papal taxation (1378). He
replied, " The Pope cannot demand this treasure except by
way of alms, and since all charity begins at home, it would
be a work not of charity but of foolishness to direct the alms
of the realm abroad when the realm itself lies in need of them."
This he followed up by a pamphlet Concerning the Duty of
the King, in which he declared that the Church was a national
institution under the king's control and that it lay with the
king to reform it.
So far Wycliffe had dealt solely with the political aspects
of the Church ; but it was already clear to him that
these revolutionary political ideas involved a revolution in
the wider and deeper sphere of theology, the theory of man's
relation to God. The whole mediaeval Church was based
on the assumption that the priest war, a necessary and
198 MEDIAEVAL CHURCH AND REFORMATION
divinely instituted mediator between man and God ; that
God could not be fully known to man except through the
instrumentality of the priesthood. Was this true ? It is
the fundamental question that to this day divides Catholic
and Protestant schools of thought. Wycliffe gives the
Protestant answer, ' no.' " Crown and cloth make no priest,"
he says, "nor the Emperor's bishop,^ with his words, but
power that Christ giveth, and thus by life are priests known."
It follows from this that the only true priest is the good man.
Of the sacrament of the Mass he said that the priest performs
no miracle of turning bread and wine into the body and blood
of Christ. Only true worshippers receive the body and
blood ; the rest receive but bread and wine.-
In fact, this revolutionary thinker denied that the mediaeval
Church with its Pope and bishops was the Church of Christ
at all. The Church of Christ is the community of all true
Christians, and its organisation is not a matter of Divine
institution but of human convenience. In place of the
visible Church as the centre of authority he set up the Bible,
of which he made in part the first English translation.
But the Wycliffe who wrote thus in the last few years of
his life was no longer the ally of John of Gaunt. Politically,
he had gone out into the wilderness, and become the founder
of the first ' protestant ' sect, the Lollards. Persecution of
the Lollards began in 1 40 1 when Sawtry, the first English
Protestant martyr, was burned at the stake. The Lollards
never looked like winning the bulk of English people, but
they survived till the Reformation, a visible demonstration
that there was a * Christianity outside Christendom.'
Wycliffe was a typical ' don.' Though he translated part
of the Bible into English, his most important original works
were written in Latin, and he had none of the gifts of a
popular leader. Oddly enough it was not in England but
far away in Bohemia that Wyclifiism kindled a flame of
revolt that threw all Christendom into a panic.
^ I.e. the Pope. ^ ggg j^Q^g ^^ g^j^j qj ^j^jg section.
COLLAPSE OF THE MEDIAEVAL CHURCH 199
Bohemia was, until as part of Czecho-SIovakia it gained
independence after the Great War, a kind of German Ireland,
a wedge of Slavonic population thrust up between German
Saxony and German Austria. Thus a nationalist question
came in to complicate and embitter the religious dispute.
John Hus (1373-1415) was not an original thinker like
Wycliffe, but was converted to Wycliffism by reading some
of Wycliffe's pamphlets which had been brought to his
university of Prag. He was, however, a great popular
preacher, and a leader in the movement to turn the university
of Prag into a national Slavonic institution and oust German
control. In 141 1 Hus was excommunicated and Prag laid
under an interdict — without any results beyond intensify-
ing enthusiasm for reform. Hus made open-air speeches,
attacking indulgences, and was carried shoulder high through
the streets of the city.
Such was the position when, in 1414, Christendom made the
immense experiment of attempting the reform of the Church
by means of a General Council.
Note on the Catholic doctrine concerning the Body and Blood of
Christ in the sacrament. The doctrine against which Wycliffe
protested is known as transubstantiation. It is based on a now
obsolete distinction drawn by mediaeval philosophy between the
' substance,' or inner invisible nature, of a thing, and its ' accidents,'
or the material form and qualities in which its substance was em-
bodied. According to Catholic doctrine, while the ' accidents,' i.e.
the material form and quality, of the bread and wine remained, the
' substance ' was by consecration transformed into the Body and
Blood of Christ. Traces of this doctrine can be found in the earliest
Christian writings, but the language of the Fathers is conflicting,
and passages from their writings can be cited both in support of the
' real presence ' of Christ's Body and Blood, and against it. The
subject was regarded as matter for controversy in the early Middle
Ages, and the orthodox Roman doctrine was not defined until the
Lateran Council of Innocent III. (12 15).
(ii) The Councils of Constance and Basel (14 14- 1460).
Seeing the Church thus brought to the very brink of ruin by
200 MEDIAEVAL CHURCH AND REFORMATION
schism and rebellion, men naturally searched history to see
if it could suggest any means of deliverance. We have already
seen how, at the time of the Arian heresy, the Emperor
Constantine summoned a General Council at Nicaea, attended
by as many of the bishops of Christendom as were able to
be present.^ Between that date (325) and 869 seven more
such General or Ecumenical ^ Councils, were summoned by
eastern Emperors to meet at or near Constantinople. They
were not exactly organs of self-government, but rather, like
most mediaeval parhaments, a means whereby the monarch
sounded public opinion and issued his own commands. Then
after a long interval the practice of holding General Councils
had been revived by the Popes of the great period, who now
claimed the position previously occupied by the Emperors.
Four Councils were held at the Lateran (the papal palace in
Rome), the first in 1 1 23, and the last in 12 15 under Innocent
III. Could not this tradition of a General Council be revived
to heal the wounds of the Church } It was hardly possible
that either of the rival Popes should summon it, but there
was still a * Roman Emperor ' in the west, even though there
was nothing Roman about him except his title. He might
summon a General Council, in which the wisdom and
conscience of Christendom, guided by the Holy Spirit, might
find a way out and reform the Church.
We are, in fact, about to study an attempt to apply to
the government of the Church that parliamentary system
which was already playing such an important part in English
history.^ The great university of Paris took the lead in
pressing the idea, and two of its doctors, D'Ailly and Gerson,
proved themselves the wisest and most influential leaders of
the Council when it met at Constance.
^ Three hundred and eighteen are said to have been present, and I
have failed to discoverwhat proportion of the whole number this would
be. Of course the east was much more fully represented than the west.
* Ecumenical (Greek, ij oiKov^xivr) yrj, the inhabited world) is tlie
correct term, and means no more than General.
^ E.g. Richard II. deposed by Act of Parliament, 1399.
COLLAPSE OF THE MEDIAEVAL CHURCH 20i
The action of Christendom was hastened by the conduct
of the two rival sets of cardinals. After quarreUing with
their respective Popes they combined to summon a ' Council ' ^
at Pisa in 1409. About eighty bishops attended. They
declared both Popes deposed and elected a new one, who
died almost immediately. They then elected another, one
Cardinal Cossa, who took the name of John XXIII. Now
Cossa was, by training and profession, a pirate of great
energy and ability, who had migrated from sea to land,
become a captain of mercenary troops, and lent his valuable
aid to the Church. So there were now three Popes instead of
two, and one of them was * Barabbas.'
This was not at all what Christendom wanted. All the
more thoughtful could see that the schism itself was but the
outward sign of grave shortcomings in the Church, and what
was needed was not merely a deposition of Popes but a
thorough reform ' in head and members.' Here the Emperor,
Sigismund, came to the rescue. Pope John was at war with
the King of Naples and turned for help to the Emperor, who
persuaded him to summon a General Council at which the
Emperor was to preside. The Council was to meet, not in
Italy, where corrupt influences would be strong, but at
Constance, as a natural centre of western Christendom as a
whole. Pope John fell into the trap and consented.
The Council of Constance (1414-1418) is perhaps the most
impressive, and in its ultimate failure the most tragic,
incident in European history. It is the first great inter-
national Congress of Europe, and as such it can be compared
with the Congress of Vienna after the downfall of Napoleon,
or the Congress of Versailles at the end of the Great War.
But at those modern congresses Europe was sharply divided
into two groups, and the victors met to dictate terms to the
vanquished. At Constance, the representatives of the nations
met to co-operate in the highest of all human endeavours, the
restoration of the Church. We shall not see the like of the
^ This Council is not recognised as a true Council of the Church.
202 MEDIAEVAL CHURCH AND REFORMATION
Council of Constance again until the Churches are reunited
and the League of Nations has become a splendid reality.
The number of strangers present in Constance during the
Council seems to have varied from 100,000 to 50,000. 30,000
horses were stalled in the city. How food and accommodation
were provided for all these visitors, seeing that the normal
population of the town was about 8000, is one of the mysteries
of history. Excellent order was preserved by 2000 " special
constables," though it appears that 500 people were drowned
in the lake 1 There were present twenty-nine cardinals,
thirty-three archbishops, 150 bishops, lOO abbots, 300 doctors
of theology, lOO dukes and earls, and 2400 knights.^
Who was to vote } Pope John wished to confine the
voting to bishops and abbots, as had been done at previous
councils. He created fifty new bishops for the purpose.
Gerson and D'Ailly pointed out the importance of the
universities, and got the vote extended to doctors of law and
theology. Sigismund, properly recognising that the Church
is the concern of the laity as well as the clergy, extended it
to kings, princes, and their ambassadors. ^
A still more important question was, How should the
Council vote } If all had sat and voted in a single assembly,
Italy with its immense gangs of conservative-minded eccles-
iastics would have carried the day. So it was decided that
the Council should sit and vote in five ' nations,' Italy,
Germany, France, England, and Spain, and that decision
should be by majority of nations. This proposal was first
made by an English bishop, Hallam of Salisbury.
^ Creighton, History of the Papacy, i. p. 313.
* Sigismund was not a great man, and as President of the Council
he showed a rather ridiculous vanity. Still, he did well on the
whole, and historians have laughed at him more than he deserves.
His chief trouble was lack of money. He borrowed and begged
extensively from the wealthier German princes, and one of these,
Frederic of Hohenzollern, had to be rewarded with the gift of the
Duchy of Brandenburg. Thus the Council of Constance first brought
the Hohenzollerns to the central province of what afterwards became
the Kingdom of Prussia.
COLLAPSE OF THE MEDIAEVAL CHURCH 203
The programme of the Council fell under three heads :
(i) to restore unity, (ii) to reform the Church in head and
members, (iii) to purge the Church of erroneous doctrines.
The first was fairly easily accomplished. When John
XXHL found all turning against him he ran away. He
was brought back a prisoner and accepted his deposition, as
did the aged Roman Pope, Gregory XH. The Avignon
Pope, who had already been driven from France into Spain,
refused, but he had lost all following and could be ignored.
The Council decided to appoint no new Pope (who might
dispute the Council's powers) until it had finished the rest
of its work.
This done, it seemed easier to purge the Church of erroneous
doctrine than to reform it in head and members. Destruc-
tion is always easier than construction, though even des-
truction is sometimes not as easy as it seems. Hus was
invited to Constance and given a clear promise by the
Emperor that he should be allowed to depart unmolested.
The Council claimed that it was not bound by the Emperor's
promise, and that in any case promises made to heretics were
not binding ; the Wyclifiite doctrines were condemned in
advance, and Hus was burnt at the stake.
And now ' reform ' remained. Unfortunately, the re-
formers were hopelessly vague and divided as to what they
really wanted, whereas the anti-reformers presented a solid
united front. National rivalries comphcated the issue. It
is a humiliating thought for us that England seized this
occasion of all others to invade France : the battle of Agin-
court was fought during the Council of Constance.^ Also,
every one wanted to get home. Perhaps this last was the
most important point of all.
And so, after long and fruitless debates, nothing was done
for reform except a decree that councils should become
^ And it is a curious commentary on the way history is taught
that every Englishman has heard of the battle of Agincourt and —
how many per thousand of the Council of Constance ?
i04 MEDIAEVAL CHURCH AND REFORMATION
regular institutions and meet at intervals of eight years.
Otherwise, ' reform ' was entrusted to the newly elected Pope,
Martin V.
For various reasons no council (except an entirely un-
important Council of Siena, 1423) met till the Council of
Basel (143 1 -1449). Meanwhile the attempt of the Council
of Constance to suppress heresy by burning the honest heretic
had proved a signal failure. Bohemia sprang to arms and
found a leader of genius in Ziska, a kind of Bohemian Crom-
well with Cromwell's gift for adapting religious enthusiasm
to military purposes. Against his ' Ironsides ' the knighthood
of Germany were of no more avail than the cavalry of Rupert
against the Ironsides of Cromwell. Five ' crusades ' were
defeated before the Council of Basel met.
The Pope (Eugenius IV.) regarded the Council from the
first as an enemy, and aimed at its speedy dissolution. The
Council, on the other hand, was attended mainly by the more
radical spirits, and determined to succeed where Constance
had failed. It began by abohshing the division into nations,
and admitting all priests to the privilege of the vote. The
wretched story is soon told. The Council invited Bohemian
delegates to come and discuss the situation with them. The
Pope dissolved the Council for negotiating with excom-
municated heretics. The Council, undismayed, declared that
it could only be dissolved by its own consent, and threatened
to depose the Pope. At this point Sigismund stepped in
and secured a momentary reconciliation. Then the members
began to go home, only the boldest spirits remaining. After
eight years bickering the Council declared the Pope deposed
and elected a new Pope, Felix V. It looked as if Basel would
undo the one soHd achievement of Constance and restore
schism. However, no one paid much attention to either
the Council or its Pope. Finally the Council dissolved
in 1449 after being forcibly expelled from Basel by the
Emperor. One achievement remains to its credit. In its
earlier and better days the Council made a treaty with the
COLLAPSE OF THE MEDIAEVAL CHURCH 205
Bohemians, granting one of their leading demands. It had,
in the two past centuries, become the practice of the Church
to administer to lay communicants the bread only and not
the wine, thus granting a fuller communion, as it might
seem, to the priests. The Bohemians demanded communion
' in both kinds ' for all alike. This was granted by the
Council and confirmed by the Emperor Sigismund, who
combined with the shadowy glories of ' Roman Empire ' the
kingship of Bohemia and Hungary. Thus the Hussite heresy
became a recognised and tolerated variety within the Church;
and no doubt the future unity of Christendom, if it ever can be
achieved, will be achieved on these lines. Uniformity is
impossible and very likely not desirable. Unity in the
service of God, combined with diversity in the method of
worshipping him, is the hope of the future. (See page 316.)
Another result of the Council of Basel was that the national
rulers, kings and princes, used the Pope's difficulties with the
Council to extort concessions from him. A king would say,
in effect : I will support you and disown the Council if you
will sign a treaty with me granting me control over the
Church within my kingdom on this and that point, and will
abandon your claim to this and that tax on the Church
within my dominion. Both the King of France and the
Emperor made treaties of this kind during the sittings of the
Council of Basel. ^ Thus the Pope, crippled in his regular
income from national sources, was forced to rely more than
before on * trading ' with the piety of individuals by the sale
of indulgences and the like. It was this ' trading ' which
afterwards provoked the revolt of Luther.
In 1459 Pope Pius II. issued a bull proclaiming that anyone
who appealed from the Pope's decision to any future general
council became automatically excommunicated. This may
be taken as the deathblow to the Conciliar movement.
^ Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges 1438 and the Concordat of
Vienna 1448. These names and the details of the treaties are
important only to the specialist.
206 MEDIAEVAL CHURCH AND REFORMATION
Reform was defeated. But the defeat of reform is generally
only a prelude to the victory of revolution.
(iii) The Renaissance : E'm^mws (1466-1536). The period
of sixty-eight years from the close of the Council of Basel
to the first public protest of Luther (1449-15 17) roughly
coincides with the climax of the Renaissance. The movement
indeed had its seeds far back in the past and lasted, in one
form or another, long after the end of this period ; but, for
the purposes of this book — the effect of the Renaissance on
the Church, we may say that it fills the period between the
Councils and the Lutheran rebellion.
What was the Renaissance } Sometimes the term is
limited to the revival of classical scholarship, but that is far
too narrow. Sometimes it is made to include such diverse
events as the discovery of America, the discovery that the
earth goes round the sun, the painting of Raphael and the
plays of Shakespeare. What is the connecting link between
these events } what is their common factor }
The Renaissance can best be described as a re-assertion of
* worldliness,' not in the vulgar sense but in the best sense
that the word can bear ; an appreciation of this world as a
place of boundless glorious possibilities, and of Man as
capable of realising these possibilities in himself. Such a
spirit is not opposed to the Christianity of the Gospels or to
Christianity as understood by the best men of our own day ;
but it was very keenly opposed to much of the religion of the
mediaeval Church, to all that side of religion that despised
this world as a place of painful probation, a prison through
whose bars the soul looked out tov/ards Heaven ; which
despised the joys of life, or rather dreaded them as snares of
the devil.
There still remain in our hymn-books some hymns which
express this mediaeval attitude. For example,
" Weary of earth and laden with my sin
I look to Heaven and long to enter in."
COLLAPSE OF THE MEDIAEVAL CHURCH 207
Two lines of Browning, on the other hand, express to per-
fection the Renaissance outlook ;
" How good is man's life, the mere living ! how fit to employ
All the heart and the soul and the senses for ever in joy ! "
No true mediaeval mind would have bracketed the soul and
the senses like that : he would have regarded the senses as
the enemies of the soul. Or hear Shakespeare : *' What a
piece of work is a man ! how noble in reason ! how infinite in
faculty ! in form and moving how express and admirable !
in action how like an angel ! in apprehension how like a god !
the beauty of the world ! the paragon of animals ! "
We need not seek for the causes of such a movement :
they lie in human nature. The marvel is that the movement
was so long kept at bay. The revived interest in Greek art
and thought was a result rather than a cause : men turned
to the Greeks because the best of the Greeks had been what
they themselves wished to be.
The Renaissance did not attack the Church : it converted
it. The very Popes themselves became the leading patrons
of the new arts and the new learning, without realising that
in the new world they were so gaily helping to open up there
would be no place for themselves. In just the same way the
nobles and princely bishops of eighteenth century France
revelled in the anti-christian and democratic literature that
was preparing their own destruction in the French Revolution.
A glance at a few of these Popes will illustrate the conversion
of the leaders of the Church to the new ideas. Nicholas V.
(1447-1455) raised money for a * crusade ' to rescue Constanti-
nople from the Turks, but he spent it on beautifying Rome
with Renaissance architecture. Shortly before this time a
scholar, Valla, had written a pamphlet proving that the
supposed ' Donation of Constantine ' ^ was a forgery. Nicholas
employed Valla as his librarian, and got him to translate the
Greek historian Thucydides. Sixtus IV. (i 471 -1484) built
^ See p. 159
2o8 MEDIAEVAL CHURCH AND REFORMATION
the famous Sistine Chapel, and JuHus II. (1503-1513),
employed Raphael and Michelangelo to decorate it. Between
these two Popes came Alexander VL, who had seven acknow-
ledged children, and made the ablest of them, Caesar Borgia,
a cardinal at the age of sixteen. This Caesar also created a
certain scandal by murdering his own brother. Leo X.
(1513-1521) was mainly interested in the building of the new
St. Peter's, and it was the sale of indulgences to raise money
for this object that provoked the first protest of Luther.
But the artistic career distracted none of these Popes from
politics ; and papal politics now meant, not the control of
Christendom in the cause of Christ, but the defence or
enlargement of the papal dominions in Italy. Five little
* powers ' were in a constant state of war, Milan, Venice,
Florence, Naples, and Rome. Milan had called in France :
Spain came to conquer Naples : the Emperor came too from
Austria for his share. Amidst them all, neither better nor
worse than the rest, the Popes picked their way, winning
to-day and losing to-morrow, making ' Holy Alliances ' and
breaking them. The game ended, as it was bound to end,
in the victory of one of the great powers, and as it happened
this was Spain. In 1527 Rome was sacked by the troops
of Charles V., Emperor and King of Spain in one, and from
that time onwards till the end of the century the Pope was
as a rule, a puppet of Spain, even though he lived in Rome,
just as during the Avignon period he had been a puppet of
France.
In Germany the Renaissance took a different form. It
produced less in the way of masterpieces of art and scholar-
ship ; instead, it applied the new idea to the problems of
religion. The movement that resulted is known as Humanism,
and its greatest leader was Erasmus. Erasmus was by birth
not German but Dutch, but his life was one of constant
wandering, in England, France, Germany and Italy, and more
perhaps than any other man in history he may be called a
citizen of Europe. Induced rather against his will to become
COLLAPSE OF THE MEDIAEVAL CHURCH 209
a monk and a priest, he extricated himself from professional
religious duties as soon as he could and devoted himself to
scholarship and literature alone. He was, it has been said,
*' The first man of letters since the fall of the Roman Empire."
His vogue with the educated classes of every country in
western Christendom was immense. His Latin itself was a
delight to all good judges, being neither the clumsy mono-
tonous Latin of the Middle Ages nor a mere slavish copy of
the classical style, like that of most Renaissance scholars :
he found a style of his own, suggesting the limitations neither
of the monk nor of the schoolmaster.
The central idea of Erasmus was that Christianity should
be above all things something practical. It meant love,
humility, purity, first and foremost. But the Church had
more and more buried these Christian virtues under a mass
of doctrines and ceremonies. Christian religion, in fact, had
deteriorated in much the same way as Jewish religion under
the influence of the Law and the Pharisees had deteriorated
from the teaching of the great prophets. Erasmus did not
quarrel with this or that doctrine, this or that ceremony, or
desire to establish other doctrines or other ceremonies in
their place. He simply objected to the immense importance
attached to doctrine and ceremony in themselves : it struck
him as unintelligent. To Erasmus reasonableness was the
supreme virtue, and much that he saw in the monasteries and
the churches and the schools of theology seemed to him
frankly unreasonable.
He pursued his aim by two methods, critical and con-
structive. On the critical side he sought by means of
satire to display the absurdity of much that passed in his
day for * religious ' life. Of his books devoted to this purpose
the most famous is The Praise of Folly, written in England
in 1509.^ Folly, he says, is the chief source of happiness and
rules the world, but more particularly the Church. Folly
^ The Latin title ' Encomium Moriae ' is a pun on the name of his
friend Thomas More.
210 MEDIAEVAL CHURCH AND REFORMATION
claims credit for spreading belief in the miraculous power of
images of saints, belief that by purchasing indulgences you
will be excused periods of torment in Purgatory, belief that
the daily repetition of the psalter will get you to Heaven,
belief that ignorance and dirt are forms of piety. On the
constructive side he sought to recall men's minds to primitive
Christianity. He published volume after volume of the
Christian Fathers, translating the Greek Fathers into Latin,
and adding to each an admirable Introduction showing the
value of the text for the modern reader. Most important
of all, he published the Greek Testament with a new Latin
translation of his own, designed to bring out the errors of
the Vulgate. This, it has been said, " contributed more to
the liberation of the mind from the thraldom of the clergy
than all the uproar and rage of Luther's many pamphlets."
Similarly, with regard to The Praise of Folly, a contemporary
wrote, " The jokes of Erasmus did the Pope more harm than
the anger of Luther."
Erasmus lived through nearly twenty years of the Lutheran
rebellion, and the Protestant party naturally sought to gain
the support of the greatest writer of the day. But he
distrusted the Protestants and feared they were doing more
harm than good. One of the most conspicuous features of
Erasmus's mind was a horror of war of every kind, and
controversy as the Lutherans conducted it implied revolution,
which is the worst form of war. In spite of The Praise of
Folly Erasmus kept on good terms all his life with the princes
of the Church, not from timidity but because he dreaded
that in their violent overthrow civilisation itself would perish.
He sought to preserve, and trusted that the spirit of the
Renaissance would promote that gradual quickening of the
intelligence which was to him the only instrument of reform.
It must always remain an open question whether Erasmus
was right or wrong. If Erasmus was right, if the true
Christian spirit could have been brought back into the world
by his methods alone, then the Lutheran reformation was a
COLLAPSE OF THE MEDIAEVAL CHURCH 211
disaster, for that reformation became a revolution and split
Christendom into sects whose conduct towards one another
was the very opposite of Christian ; and, though we have
ceased to persecute, the divisions and rivalries remain with
us to this day. It may be, however, that the disease was
too deep to be cured by satire and by scholarship, which
could in any case appeal only to the educated minority.
Erasmus was aristocratic ; Luther was democratic ; Luther
appealed not to the intelligence but to the human heart : —
with results, good and bad, that will be seen in the next
chapter.
CHAPTER XVII
REFORMATION AND COUNTER-REFORMATION
(1517-1689)
(i) Luther (1483 -1 546)
MARTIN LUTHER was the son of a poor Saxon
miner. His parents were simple pious folk : they
taught him the Lord's Prayer and the Creed in
their native German, and they were very disappointed when
he became a monk. No doubt there were thousands of such
people in Germany, already half-way to Protestantism.
Luther showed brilliant intellectual promise as a boy, went
to the university of Erfurt, studied music and the Latin
poets, and intended to become a lawyer. Suddenly, however,
at the age of twenty-two, he gave up all this, and entered
a monastery of the Augustinian order. Why } because, as
he tells us, he " doubted of himself," — doubted whether by
a life in ' the World ' he could fit himself for Heaven. He
had, for example, seen a picture representing a great ship
sailing heavenwards, and in the ship none but priests and
monks, while in the sea around laymen lay drowning or
desperately clinging to ropes hung over the side of the ship
by the happy passengers ! This picture had deeply im-
pressed a mind already troubled.
So Luther tried, with characteristic honesty and thorough-
ness, the mediaeval way of salvation. He fasted till he
fainted, scourged himself till he bled, and became known as
a miracle of piety. But after two years he still remained
?I2
REFORMATION 213
unsatisfied and unconsoled. Then, like Augustine, and by
means of the same Epistle to the Romans, he experienced a
sudden * conversion.' The text " The just shall live by faith "
brought him sudden revelation and became in fact the basis
of all his future teaching : " by Faith," not " by works of
the Law." The true Christian is the man with a Christian
heart ; compared with this all the ceremonial pieties of the
Church are as nothing. This happened in 1 507 : Luther was
now a changed man. Shortly afterwards he moved to a
monastery in the university town of Wittenberg, where he
soon became a distinguished lecturer.
We see already that Luther had one thing which Erasmus
had not. He had religious genius. In its higher forms a
gift for religion is as strange and as uncommunicable a thing
as a gift for music. Erasmus had learning, wit, and virtue,
but he never knew the exquisite agonies of the sense of sin
nor the exquisite raptures of the sense of salvation. Luther,
like St. Paul and Augustine, understood these things and
could speak directly from experience.
Ten years after Luther's conversion, one Tetzel came
round to Wittenberg selling indulgences. Luther protested,
and nailed his protest on the door of the church (15 17). Put
briefly, Luther's argument was that an indulgence might
excuse you a penance imposed by the Church, but could not
excuse you punishment imposed by God after death ; still less
could it remove the guilt of sin. On the other hand, the
Christian who has already repented in his heart and rested
his faith on the crucified Saviour was already pardoned by
God and did not need an indulgence.
Now there was nothing new in these arguments. Erasmus
and others had said the same thing before, but there was
something in Luther's personality and his practical way of
putting things that fired the spark and set all Germany
ablaze. The Pope summoned him to Rome and would
probably have burnt him, but here Frederick of Saxony,
whose subject Luther was, stepped in, and refused to let him
214 MEDIAEVAL CHURCH AND REFORMATION
go. Frederick was perhaps the best and most honest ruler
of his day : a pious man and a good German, he would not
allow the best lecturer of his university to suffer the fate of
Hus. Luther now began to pour forth a flood of vigorous
and outspoken pamphlets, not in Latin but in German. It
is no exaggeration to say that these pamphlets, and Luther's
translation of the Bible, founded German popular literature.
In these pamphlets he maintained, like Wycliffe before him,
that priests are not specially privileged persons in God's eyes,
but that all true believers are priests of God. On the political
side he denied the right of the Pope to interfere with the
churches of Germany : he denied his right to interpret
Scripture contrary to its plain meaning : and called for a
General Council to settle the questions he had raised.
In 1520 he was excommunicated. The bull with un-
conscious humour spoke of him as a fox wasting the Lord's
vineyard. Indeed, Luther had spoilt the indulgence market,
and probably that was Leo X.'s main cause of quarrel with
him. Luther burnt the bull pubHcly, and half the states of
Germany refused to publish it. Then the young Emperor,
the great Charles V., ruler of Germany, Spain, the Nether-
lands and half Italy, took the matter in hand at the Diet of
Worms ^ (1521). The princes at the Diet refused to condemn
Luther till he had been heard in his own defence ; so Luther
attended, though many feared for him the fate of Hus.
Asked if he would retract he answered, No : — not until he
was proved wrong out of Holy Scripture.^ He was allowed
to depart in freedom. The Imperial ' Ban ' or condemnation
was with difficulty carried through the Diet, but it was, like
the bull, waste paper. At this date Wolsey's agent in
Germany wrote home, " A hundred thousand Germans are
ready to lay down their lives for Luther," and the Emperor's
brother, going still further, wrote, *' Not one man in a
thousand is free from the taint of Lutheranism."
1 Diet = Parliament. Worms, a city on the Rhine,
2 " Here I stand," said Luther, " I can no other."
REFORMATION 215
Had Luther died at this moment his would have been one
of the most uniformly triumphant careers in history : but
he did not, and disaster was ahead of him. In 1525 there
was a great rebeUion of the German peasantry, similar to the
Wat Tyler rebellion in England, but on a far larger scale.
The causes were mainly economic, rise of prices and harsh
treatment by masters, but the Lutheran movement was a
contributory cause. Luther had preached the equality of
all men in God's eyes, and if men were equal in God's eyes
why should their lots be so unequal in this world } The
peasants copied Luther in appeaHng to Scripture. They
demanded the abolition of serfdom, ' because Christ redeemed
us and made us free.' This Peasant's War was likely to
be disastrous to Luther, and he knew it. So far, men of
all classes had been with him, but it would be quite otherwise
if it appeared that Lutheranism meant anarchy, robbery, and
revolution. He must at all costs separate his cause from that
of the peasants, and with a view to doing so he published a
pamphlet. Against the murdering, thieving hordes of peasants,
that will always be a disgrace to his name. In it he urges
the princes to ' knock down, strangle, and stab ' the rebels,
adding, ' in such times a prince can merit heaven better by
bloodshed than by prayer.'
The pamphlet may have pleased some of the princes, but
it lost Luther the support of the masses ; and no wonder.
It lost him also the support of the great educated public
that had hitherto hesitated between Luther and Erasmus.
From this date Lutheranism degenerates. About half the
princes of Germany threw off the authority of Rome and
* Lutheranised ' their states. Some were genuinely religious
men, but most were of the type of our own Henry VIII.,
shrewd fellows who saw that there was money in the scheme,
and wanted to confiscate the wealth of the monasteries in
their states.
So Germany divided, Lutheran states mostly in the north,
the chief being Saxony and Brandenburg (the central province
2i6 MEDIAEVAL CHURCH AND REFORMATION
of what was afterwards known as the Kingdom of Prussia)
and CathoHc states in the south. Thirty years (1525-1555)
were occupied in trying to restore unity, either by the
forcible suppression of Lutheranism, or by the negotiation
of a compromise. Charles V. worked hard for unity, first
by the one method and then by the other : so did Cardinal
Contarini, the best and wisest of the agents of Rome ; but
it proved impossible. Strangely enough the Pope himself
did not really desire it. Charles was virtual ruler of Italy
and much too powerful for the Pope's convenience. His
weak spot was Germany : if he succeeded in re-uniting
Germany, he would be overwhelming. Therefore both the
Pope and the CathoHc king of France secretly encouraged the
Lutheran princes to hold out and defy their Emperor. So
strangely were politics and religion intermingled.
Thus reunion failed and permanent religious disunion was
recognised by the Treaty of Augsburg in 1555. Each prince
was free to choose his own religion, Catholic or Lutheran,
and to coerce his subjects : Catholics residing under Lutheran
rulers (and vice versa) had the choice of conversion or moving
on to a state with the other religion. This principle is
summed up in the Latin phrase, cuius regio, eius religio.
Meanwhile Luther had died nine years before, in 1546.
He must always remain one of the greatest figures in rehgious
history ; a man of profound convictions, immense force, and
unrivalled power of appeal to the minds and hearts of the
German people. The forces he set in motion made the great
breach in the unity of the Western Church. But he himself
was more fitted to destroy than to construct. Glaring abuses
and superstitions no doubt received from him their death-
blow, and the Pauline doctrine of Justification by Faith, as re-
asserted by Luther, came as a newhght to many troubled souls.
But no great and lasting revival of Christian brotherhood and
Christian effort in daily life can be traced to Luther's influence.
Puritanism, the positive and constructive side of the Refor-
mation, looks not to Luther but to Calvin as its apostle.
REFORMATION 217
Indeed the Lutheran movement, after the first enthusiasm
was over, lowered rather than raised the moral tone of those
whom it influenced. It swept away ancient and often, no
doubt, superstitious safeguards of the moral life, and did not
replace them by other safeguards. At his best Luther was
a brave, generous, and intensely human man, but there was
also a strain of violence and brutahty in his nature. He was
not one of those who, like St. Francis of Assisi or George Fox
the Quaker, elevate the movement they lead by setting it an
almost Christ-like example. He was by nature a destroyer,
and he was too reckless to distinguish with loving carefulness
between the good and the bad in what he attacked.
(ii) The Counter -Reformation, Loyola (1491-1556), and the
Jesuits. Ever since the Captivity there had been talk of
• reform.' WycHfTe and Hus had put forward schemes
which had been rejected, and their followers were branded
as heretics : the Councils had talked of reform but done
little or nothing ; Erasmus had approached the subject in a
new way but had only touched the surface ; and now Luther
had repeated the performance of Wychffe and Hus, but on
a vastly larger scale. The effect of Luther's movement
was that it led Rome at last to set about the task of reform
in earnest. This movement is called the Counter-Refor-
mation.
About 1520 a little society was formed in Rome called the
Oratory of Divine Love, whose members devoted themselves
to the study of the Fathers and particularly of Augustine,
and to the practice of a true Christianity. It was a small
but distinguished society and included the Italians, Contarini
and Caraffa, and the Englishman, Reginald Pole, who after-
wards became, under Queen Mary, the last Roman Catholic
Archbishop of Canterbury. Pope Paul III. (1534-1549) was
a shrewd and worldly old man, but he had the quickness to
see that piety was coming into fashion again and might be
useful, and he made Contarini, Caraffa, and Pole Cardinals.
2i8 MEDIAEVAL CHURCH AND REFORMATION
The fundamental question the new movement had to decide
was, should it aim at reconciliation with the Lutherans or at
destroying them ? Contarini stood for reconciliation, Caraffa
for destruction. Contarini was allowed to try his policy at
the Diet of Ratisbon in 1 541 : he failed, and henceforth
Caraffa (afterwards Paul IV., 1555- 1559) was the master-
spirit. But Caraffa was a mere persecutor,^ and the move-
ment would have accompHshed Httle if there had not come
to its aid a religious genius as remarkable in his way as
Luther, the Spaniard Inigo Lopez de Recalde de Loyola,
known to the Roman Church as St. Ignatius.
It was natural that the Lutheran movement should have
arisen in Germany, traditionally hostile to Rome ever since
the days of the great emperors. In the same way it was
natural that the Counter-Reformation should draw its vigour
from Spain, for in that country, perhaps on account of the
crusading spirit kept alive by the continual wars against
the Moors (whose last province was only conquered in 1493),
the Church preserved a vigour and a sincerity that had long
been lost elsewhere. Further, Spanish Christianity had
lately seen a great revival under the pious queen Isabella
and her great minister Cardinal Ximenes.
Loyola was by birth a noble and by profession a soldier.
At the age of twenty-eight, in the same year as Luther's
appearance before the Diet of Worms (1521), he was lamed for
Hfe by a wound. But he had an unquenchable passion for
fame. Military glory being denied him, could he not become
a great soldier of Christ, like his fellow-countryman Dominic }
He dedicated himself at the shrine of Our Lady of Montserrat,
hung up his now useless arms before her altar, and spent the
night in prayer before her shrine. Then he entered a
^ Caraffa was mainly responsible for the institution, in 1540, of the
Papal Inquisition. The Inquisition may be defined as a court-
martial for religious offences, with powers of life and death. It had
existed for sometime past in the Spanish dominions and in this as
in other respects the Counter- Reformation is an application of
Spanish methods to the Church in general.
REFORMATION 219
Dominican Convent and like Luther sought salvation by
fasts and scourgings. Like Luther he failed to win the sense
of salvation by this means, and like Luther he had the honesty
to admit it. Then, as in Luther's case, he suddenly experi-
enced ' conversion,' and was filled with a sense of God's
mercy. But here the parallel ends. Luther, after conversion,
took up the quiet humdrum life of a university lecturer and
never dreamt of fame till he suddenly found it thrust upon
him. But in Loyola there was a vein of adventurous eccen-
tricity. He got leave to go to Palestine to convert the Turks,
but was shipped back again by the Franciscan colony in
Jerusalem, who feared that his headlong methods would get
them into trouble. Then, in an access of humihty, he went
to school and sat among the boys learning Latin. He was
afflicted with strange visions, and twice he was imprisoned by
the Spanish Inquisition for infecting people with his strange
ideas.
During these years he began compiling his famous work,
the Spiritual Exercises. Loyola's religious life was nourished
by his gifts of vision : he studied his own experiences and
from them compiled a system which would enable others to
enjoy similar experiences to his own. Loyola had been a
soldier, and there can be no doubt that his extraordinarily
precise and detailed instructions are modelled on the lines of
military training. The course was to extend over four weeks,
during which the pupil was to live in complete solitude. A
scheme of meditations is outlined, grouped under four
headings : sin and death ; the Kingdom of Christ on Earth :
the Passion of Our Lord : and the Love of God and the
Glory of the Risen Lord. The pupil is required to use his
imagination to the utmost, to picture in his mind the flames
of hell, to feel their scorching heat, to hear the shrieks, to
smell the stench, and so on. The conclusion of each exercise
will, if successful, be a sense of immediate converse with God.
The detail is extraordinarily minute : precise hours of the day
or night are prescribed for each exercise : some should be
220 MEDIAEVAL CHURCH AND REFORMATION
undertaken standing, some kneeling, some lying flat on the
floor.
We cannot but notice that here we have passed much
further from the Renaissance spirit than Luther had done.
Luther appealed to the Bible : Loyola appeals to an ' inner
light,' which reason is powerless to criticise.
In 1540 Loyola, like Francis of Assisi three hundred and
thirty years before, presented himself to the Pope with nine
disciples. They vowed unconditional obedience to papal
orders, and were accepted as the original members of the
Society of Jesus.
The Jesuits were unlike any order of monks or friars that
had existed hitherto. They had no special dress, no special
homes, no special religious duties : fasting was discouraged, as
well as all other forms of ' indiscreet devotion.' The * spiritual
exercises ' were an essential part of the training of the Jesuit,
but once fully trained he was discouraged from using them.
Everything was to be sacrificed for the sake of efficiency in
service. For the sake of efliciency too, the keynote of the
order was implicit obedience. Its head, the General, always
resided in Rome, ' the Black Pope,' as he was called, the
servant of the real Pope, and often more formidable than his
master.
The greatest work of the Jesuits was done in education.
They quickly became far the best schoolmasters in Europe.
Men sent their sons to Jesuit schools because they were the
best schools, and their sons came home enthusiasts for the
Counter-Reformation. They invented * marks,' and thus
introduced the stimulus of competition : they improved
the teaching of mathematics and science : above all, they
trained their teachers in the art of teaching before they allowed
them to teach. Bacon had no reason to love the Jesuits, but
he writes : " As for pedagogy the shortest rule would be,
' Consult the Jesuits ' : for nothing better has been put in
practice." In Germany their university of Ingolstadt
quickly rivalled the fame of Luther's Wittenberg : and in
REFORMATION 221
Flanders their university of Douai trained Englishmen to go
forth and conquer the great island stronghold of Protestan-
tism. The educational system of the Jesuits was in fact a
perfect instrument for the purpose for which it was intended.
It carried intellectual efficiency as far as it is possible to carry
it without tempting the pupil to think for himself. In this
respect it closely resembled the marvellous educational
system erected by the Prussian state in the second half of
the nineteenth century.
Why have the Jesuits got such a bad reputation ? Mainly
for two reasons. It is said that they teach the dangerous
doctrine that ' the end justifies the means,' that is to say,
you may commit a sin if the result will be for God's glory.
They deny that they have so taught, but there is no doubt
that in the time of the religious wars they definitely en-
couraged the assassination of Protestant sovereigns. Jesuits
wove several assassination plots against Elizabeth and were at
the back of the Gunpowder Plot. Secondly, they made, it is
held, an unscrupulous use of the practice of Confession.
Confession confers immense power on the confessor, and the
Jesuits saw that to be popular confessors was second only
in importance to being popular schoolmasters. So they
elaborated a classification of sins whereby the penitent could
be persuaded that his sin was not as bad as it seemed ; in
fact their confessors became professional inventors of excuses.
This confessional art is known as Casuistry : as originally
used the word implied no suggestion of dishonesty. It was
the Jesuits who discredited it.^
By the time of his death in 1556 Loyola had seen his order
spread all over Catholic Europe and engaging in missionary
work in the East Indies and South America.
Five years after the foundation of the Jesuit order, Paul
III. summoned a General Council at Trent (1545) on the
frontiers of Italy and Austria. Luther just lived to see it
^ A famous French Jesuit was known as the man ' qui tollit
peccata mundi per definitioncm,'
222 MEDIAEVAL CHURCH AND REFORMATION
meet, but it was a very different kind of Council from that
which he had demanded. Caraffa and the leading Jesuits
were the dominant spirits, and the whole energies of the
Council were directed to defining the doctrines of the Church
in such a way as to present an ultimatum to the Lutherans,
which would be followed by war to the death. The doctrine
of Justification by Faith was condemned : the Church,
speaking through the Pope, was asserted to be an authority
equal to the Bible, and the sole interpreter of the Bible's
meaning : and the Hussite claim that the laity should receive
the cup at Communion was rejected. The Council, after two
long prorogations owing to the troubled state of Europe,
was dissolved in 1563.
And now to crown all came at last the election of the ideal
Counter-Reformation Pope, the man in whose personality
the whole movement seemed to be summed up, the saintly
persecutor, Pius V. (1566-1572), who excommunicated Queen
Elizabeth, blessed Alva's bloody work in the Netherlands and
might, very possibly, if he had lived three months longer,
have laughed for joy, as did Philip II. of Spain, at the news
of the massacre of St. Bartholomew. Yet according to his
lights he was a saintly man, pure-minded, unselfish, generous,
and kindly. When people beheld him in processions, barefoot
and with uncovered head, his face beaming with unaffected
piety, they were excited to enthusiastic reverence : it
was said that Protestants had been converted by the mere
sight of him.
The great achievement of this Pope was the compilation
of a Catechism, based on the decrees of the Council of Trent
and summing up Catholic doctrine in the most precise terms. ^
Another offspring of the Council of Trent was the famous
" Index," the list, ever increasing in length, of books which
the Catholic laity were forbidden to read. Fifty years later
^ It is a much longer and more elaborate document than the
catechism of the English Prayer Book, which is intended only for
educational purposes.
REFORMATION 223
Paolo Sarpi, himself a Catholic, was to declare that the Index
was the finest instrument ever devised for making men
stupid. The armoury of the Counter-Reformation was now
complete.
(iii) Calvin (i 509- 1 564) and Calvinism. While the Roman
Church was thus arming itself for the struggle and drawing
fresh energy from Spain, Protestantism was doing much the
same thing in a different way and drawing fresh strength from
Geneva. Luther's aim had been not rebellion but reform :
when driven into rebeUion the Lutheran movement, though
clear as to its beliefs, was very vague in organisation. Luther
had to fall back on the secular princes to organise his churches
for him, and that fact gave to the movement, when the first
few glorious years were over, a touch of worldliness and
compromise from which it never recovered. It was the
special work of Calvin to provide a pattern of Protestant
organisation.
John Calvin was the son of a lawyer of Picardy in northern
France. He received a good education and showed extra-
ordinary intellectual gifts. His commentary on the Stoic
Seneca, written at the age of twenty-three, is a work of
prodigious learning. Probably he was already more or less
a Protestant, but on the subject of his inner Hfe he always
maintained an aristocratic reserve, and consequently he is
much less intimately known to us than Luther and Loyola.
Four years later (i 536) at the age of twenty-seven he published
his great book. The Institutes of the Christian Religion.
Francis I. of France was at that date assisting the Lutherans
of Germany in order to injure his rival Charles V., and at
the same time persecuting the Protestants of France. He
excused himself by pretending that the French Protestants
held abominable doctrines quite different from their German
brethren. Calvin's book is a defence of the French Pro-
testants, but it was more than this, for it rapidly came to be
recognised as the ablest and completest statement of the
224 MEDIAEVAL CHURCH AND REFORMATION
Protestant position that had yet appeared. Luther's works
were pamphlets hastily composed on the spur of the moment,
but Calvin's was an elaborate treatise. His method was to
take the Apostles' Creed clause by clause and show that the
doctrines and practices of the Protestants are in better accord
with the Creed than those of the CathoHcs.
During the same year he happened to spend a night in
Geneva while on a journey, and was persuaded, much against
his inclination, by Farel, the leader of the Protestants there,
to stay awhile and help them. The stay lasted, except for
a brief exile, for the whole of the rest of his life, twenty-eight
years.
Geneva was, at that date, neither in Switzerland nor
France. It was a city of the Empire and had been ruled by
its bishop : the bishopric was a family property of the Dukes
of Savoy (ancestors of the present king of Italy), and they
appointed members of their own family as bishops, regardless
of their suitability from the religious point of view. So
there was an old quarrel between the townsfolk, represented
by the Town Council, and the bishop. Now Protestantism
had come to complicate the issue. Geneva had become
Protestant and the bishop had been expelled.
Calvin was, like all the Reformers and Humanists, a close
student of early Christianity, and he saw in Geneva materials
for the creation of just such a religious unit as the primitive
Churches had been. The Church had grown in its first
centuries as a federation of little Christian republics, —
Churches such as those to which St. Paul had written his
Epistles. The new beginning must be made on the old lines.
The existing municipal government of the town, with its
Little Council (or Cabinet), its Council of Two Hundred (or
Parliament), and its General Council of all the citizens,^
^ The population of Geneva was about 13,000, about half the size
of Canterbury to-day. Towards the end of Calvin's life this popula-
tion was increased by the presence of about 6000 religious refugees
from Catholic countries, especially England under Mary.
REFORMATION 225
summoned to decide issues of special importance, provided
a framework. Calvin added a * Consistory ' consisting of
twelve pastors and twelve representatives of the Councils.
In fact, the self-governing city State and the self-governing
city Church were combined in one, and over all was the
ubiquitous energy of Calvin, directing and controlling not
only religion but education, sanitation (a matter in which
Geneva became a model city by the standards of those
times), and trade. His position reminds us of the half-
legendary legislators of ancient Greece, a Lycurgus or a
Solon.
Calvinism was thus democratic : but it left small room for
liberty. Public worship was compulsory : gay clothes and
dancing were punishable offences : unchastity was at times
punished with death. Calvin brought back the Sacrament
of the Lord's Supper to the place it had occupied in the early
Church, a solemn privilege from which moral offenders were
excluded by excommunication.
Calvin held firmly the Lutheran doctrine of Justification
by Faith : he held that, apart from Christ, man inherits the
curse of Adam, and that it is only through faith in Christ that
the gift of redemption through Christ can be secured. But
he also held the terrible doctrine of Predestination, — that,
since God is the supreme controller of all things, some must
be destined to everlasting happiness and others to everlasting
damnation. Such a belief might well, it would seem, have
crushed the spirit of human effort ; for if one's destiny is
predetermined what could poor human endeavour avail ?
Yet all history shows that the very opposite result followed.
We may or we may not like the stern and somewhat harsh
Calvinist (or Puritan) type of religion, but its worst enemies
cannot deny that it has been productive of splendid energy.
The peoples that adopted Calvinism, the Scots and the Dutch,
are proverbial for their sturdy self-reliance ; the French
Huguenots were, at the time of their expulsion, the most
industrious citizens of France : the English Puritans defied
S.R.H. Q
226 MEDIAEVAL CHURCH AND REFORMATION
the king, established the power of Parhament, and laid the
solid foundations of the United States of America. How can
we account for this ?
Two reasons may be suggested. First, Calvinism made a
direct appeal to the individual soul. The Church could
punish, but it could not save. There was no priest to sell
indulgences or Jesuit confessor to explain the sin away.
Calvinists, one may almost say, forgot that they were pre-
destined, or rather they determined to prove by their manner
of life that they were predestined to salvation. Secondly,
the democratic organisation gave the layman a sense of
religious self-respect ; he felt himself an active and respon-
sible citizen of Christ's kingdom on earth. He could not
regard his Church as a convenience provided for him by a
special class of professional priests. In fact, if we value
democracy we must thank the Calvinists for having first
made it a living force in the modern world.
Before Calvin's death Calvinism had spread far beyond
Geneva. Henry II. of France (1547- 15 59) began a vigorous
persecution of French Lutherans, and he found that if you
persecute a Lutheran you make a Calvinist. The French
Calvinists or Huguenots organised themselves in city churches
on Genevan lines. In 1 560 there were forty-nine of these,
and Calvin supplied them with a hundred and twenty pastors
trained in Geneva. For Calvin, like Loyola, realised the
importance of education, and the Calvinist university of
Geneva was one of the greatest of his institutions.
Then came the sensational reUgious revolution of Scotland.
After the death of King James V. in 1542 Scotland was
ruled by his widow the French Mary of Guise on behalf of
her infant daughter Mary Queen of Scots. Scottish Pro-
testants rebelled, with the support of the English government
which was seeking to conquer the country. Among the
rebels was a fierce peasant priest, John Knox. He was made
prisoner in 1547, and spent nineteen months in the French
galleys ; thence he passed to England, where he refused a
REFORMATION 227
bishopric under the Protestant regime of Edward VI., and,
on the accession of the CathoHc Mary, went to Geneva, now
the recognised headquarters of Protestantism. In 1558 the
Scottish Protestant nobiHty again rose in rebeUion and invited
Knox to come to their assistance. In two years, with the
assistance of the EngHsh fleet, the revolution was successfully
accomplished. Scotland was not, Hke France, a land of
populous cities, and the Calvinist or Presbyterian * Kirk ' of
Scotland was organised under a General Assembly which
quite eclipsed the old Scottish Parliament as the expression
of the national will. Under the General Assembly the unit
of government is the Presbytery, consisting of a group of
parishes controlled by the presbyters or lay elders, who
elected the ministers of each parish. The parish itself was
controlled by the Kirk Session, consisting of the minister and
the lay elders.
This ecclesiastical democracy fashioned anew the character
of Scotland, and transformed an unstable and a barbarous
people into one of the most vigorous, resolute, and highly
educated nations of Europe. It was a system that ill agreed
with monarchy, and from the days of Knox to the expulsion
of the Stuarts, from England and Scotland alike, in 1689, the
history of Scotland is the history of the bitter struggles
between Kirk and King.^
(iv) Religious Wars and Toleration (1560- 1689). It is no
part of the plan of this book to follow through the history
of the terrible wars and persecutions which followed the
break-up of the mediaeval Church, but a few brief notes on
their character and results are unavoidable.
The wars fall into two great groups with an interval of
about twenty years between them. In the first group of
wars (i 560-1600) the Calvinist Dutch won their independence
from the CathoHc Philip II. of Spain, and the Huguenots of
France secured their right to toleration except within five
^ See chapter on Scottish Church in Part IV.
228 MEDIAEVAL CHURCH AND REFORMATION
miles of Paris, and were given the control of eight cities as a
guarantee of their rights (Edict of Nantes, 1598). The
second group (1618-1648) is known as the Thirty Years' War.
Calvinism had spread to Germany and the Calvinist Elector
Palatine was offered the crown of Bohemia as the result of
a Calvinist revolution on the scene of Hus's rebellion two
centuries before. Thereupon the Emperor Ferdinand IL, a
pupil of the Jesuit university, made a determined effort to
stamp out Calvinism and possibly Lutheranism also, and
make himself a real king of Germany, ruling a united country
after the manner of the kings of England or France. The
Protestants were supported by the Lutheran king of Sweden,
who wished at the same time to extend his empire to the
south side of the Baltic, and by the Catholic government
of France, which has always dreaded the establishment
of a strong and united Germany. The result was that,
though the Emperor conquered Bohemia and suppressed its
Calvinists he failed in his larger policy, and the old prin-
ciple was reestabHshed by which each German prince chose
the religion of his state. When the Thirty Years' War
ended, another rehgious war was still in progress in England
between the episcopal Church of England and the EngHsh
and Scottish Calvinists. Finally, between 1680 and 1690,
we see Louis XIV. expeUing the Huguenots from France
and James II. seeking to restore Roman Catholicism
in England.
All these wars were only in part religious. Religion was
often a mere excuse to cover political ambitions. One may,
perhaps, in each one of the wars distinguish three types of
attitude. There were (i) those who fought for one or other
creed from sheer conviction and in a true crusading spirit ;
(ii) those who, with varying degrees of hypocrisy, supported
one or other creed because they thought they could gain
something thereby. For example, many French nobles
became Huguenots simply because they desired to weaken
the crown and maintain their independence : (iii) those v/ho
REFORMATION 229
desired peace and toleration, either because they had the
truly Christian spirit and believed that the service of Christ
was to be found in love and not in persecution, or because
they were indifferent to religion and hated to see their
country torn in pieces by rival armies of fanatics both of
which they equally despised.
To temperaments of this last type the spirit that made
these religious wars possible must have been well nigh incom-
prehensible. And we too find this passion for religious
uniformity hard to understand. It was the legacy of the
Middle Ages. Mediaeval Christendom conceived itself as
the Kingdom of God planted in the midst of a surrounding
Heathendom. Citizenship of that Kingdom meant eternal
blessedness, and the test of citizenship was acceptance of
orthodox behef. The Reformers inherited this conception
of a necessary and universal orthodoxy. There could be
only one true system of Christian doctrine and Church govern-
ment, and those who possessed it, as each party believed
themselves to do, felt bound to suppress heterodoxies of any
description. When it had become plain that unity of
Christendom was no longer possible, the secular governments
picked up the old mediaeval notion of orthodoxy and applied
it to their own states. To a Protestant king, the eternal
welfare of a Catholic subject might or might not be a matter
of importance, but in either case he could not bring himself
to believe that one who differed from himself in religion could
be loyal to his government even in purely secular matters.
Yet the secular governments failed to secure religious unity
as completely as the Papal government had failed to secure
the unity of Christendom.
Thus toleration crept in first as a necessary evil, then as a
matter of course. Persecuting laws ceased to be enforced
long before they were actually repealed. The ' heretic ' was
deprived of many of his privileges as a citizen, but he was
allowed to exist, and, more or less openly as the case might be,
to organise his religious worship as he pleased. It was only
230 MEDIAEVAL CHURCH AND REFORMATION
long afterwards that full citizenship of his country was
accorded him. Roman Catholics could not sit in the English
Parliament till 1 830, nor Jews till 1858, nor openly professing
Atheists till 1886.
Note. — The Missionary work of the mediaeval Church and the
Jesuits in heathen countries will be briefly described in the chapter
on Missions in Part IV.
BOOKS RECOMMENDED
Part III
The history of the Church from Constantine to the Reformation
is not only dealt with in Church Histories but is also, of course, a
conspicuous topic in general works,
1. W. E. H. Lecky, History of European Morals from Augustus
to Charlemagne {Longmans), as already recommended under Part II.
2. H. W. C. Davis, Mediaeval Europe [Home University Library),
a compact and careful description.
Z- A. L. Smith, Church and State in the Middle Ages {Oxford
University Press), six lectures on the period of Innocent IV., designed
to show both the greatness of the Papacy and its irremediable fall
in that period.
4. E. Barker, Crusades {Encyclopaedia Britannica, 191 1). This
long article is much the best general account in English. The
biographical articles on important men are nearly always good also.
5. Father Cuthbert, St. Francis of Assisi {Longmans). A pleasant
popular life ; a more scholarly and critical biography is that by
P. Sabatier, which has been translated into English.
6. R. W. Church, Dante {Macmillan), the best general study.
7. M. Creighton, History of the Papacy {Longmans), covers in
detail the period from the Schism to the Sack of Rome in 1527.
The excellent table of contents makes it easy to use.
8. T. M. Lindsay, History of the Reformation {T. cS- T. Clark),
the work of a Protestant, but on the whole very fair in its treatment
of both sides : contains much interesting biographical detail of both
Luther and Loyola.
9. J. A. Froude, Times of Erasmus and Luther {Short Studies in
Great Subjects, Vol. I., Longmans), three brilliantly readable lectures,
Protestant in sympathy.
PART IV
GREAT BRITAIN SINCE THE
REFORMATION
INTRODUCTORY NOTE.
THE first three parts of this book have traced the history
of Christianity from its far-distant source among the
ancient IsraeHtes down to the end of the Reforma-
tion period. Already, however, it has been necessary to
drop out of sight one part of the subject, the Eastern Church,
and to Hmit ourselves, for the Middle Ages, to Western
Europe. Up to the end of the Reformation period. Western
Europe — the countries that acknowledged or had acknow-
ledged the authority of the Pope — could be treated as a
single unit. In recent centuries there has, however, been
no such unity. It seems best, therefore, to limit Part IV.
to the study of the non-Roman Churches in England and
Scotland during the last three and a half centuries. The
omission of any special treatment of the Roman Catholics
is, of course, open to criticism ; but it appeared well-nigh
impossible to do justice to the religious life of the small body
of English Romanists without opening up the vast subject
of the history of the Roman Church as a whole since the
Council of Trent, and this clearly lay outside the scope of the
volume.
A general chapter on Missions is also included.
231
CHAPTER XVIII
ANGLICAN AND PURITAN
(i) The Elizaheihan Settlement (1559- 1640)
POLITICAL, economic, and religious motives curiously
combined in the Reformation. In the Lutheran
revolution in Germany we have seen a movement,
in origin entirely religious, degenerate into something mainly
political and economic, whose chief defenders were princes
intent on getting control of the religious organisation, and
pillaging the monasteries within their estates. In England
the order is almost exactly reversed. The political and
economic part of the Reformation, the substitution of King
for Pope as Head of the Church, and the dissolution of the
monasteries and other mediaeval religious organisations, was
carried through by Henry VIII. and his parliament at a
time when the new religious enthusiasm had hardly touched
England. Edward VI.'s reign saw the beginnings of Pro-
testant doctrine in the Prayer Book of 1552, but the main
feature of the reign was the continuance of the shameless
pillage of the Church by wealthy nobles who disgraced the
name of Protestant. The bulk of Englishmen were con-
servative and Catholic in sympathy, and their conversion to
Protestantism v/as only begun when they saw the Catholic
Queen Mary burning the Protestant bishops and making
over her country to the rule of her hated Spanish husband.
In fact, national feeling at that date was as strong as religious
feeling was weak. The great bulk accepted on patriotic
232
ANGLICAN AND PURITAN 233
grounds whatever form of Church the government ordained.
It is notable that among the two hundred and fifty martyrs
there was not a single layman of wealth or high position.
The aim of Elizabeth and her counsellors was to establish
not so much religious truth as rehgious peace. Toleration
was not accepted in theory. The Church must be all-
inclusive, but if it was to be all-inclusive it must be made as
acceptable and as comprehensive as possible. It was, in
fact, a compromise. Henry VIII.'s settlement was restored
with its more offensive features omitted, as, for example, the
petition in the Litany praying that we may be delivered
*' from the bishop of Rome and all his detestable enormities."
The English Prayer Book was restored, but the central
passages of the Communion Service were so worded as to be
acceptable both to Protestants who denied the * real presence '
of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Sacrament and to
Catholics who accepted it. Thus for eleven years the Pope
refrained from excommunicating Elizabeth, and it was only
after the excommunication (1570), which made neutrality as
regards Rome impossible, that the Catechism and the Thirty-
Nine Articles were added to the Prayer Book.
Most men accepted the settlement because it was at once
moderate and national, still more, perhaps, because it was
a settlement and Queen and Parliament had made it. As
for those who did not accept it in their hearts, Elizabeth knew
well that persecution would only advertise them. It was her
boast that her government " made no windows into men's
souls," and, indeed, for nearly twenty years after EHzabeth's
accession there was no persecution. Her first Archbishop,
Matthew Parker, summed up in himself the spirit of the
Church over which he presided. Parker, it is said,
" reverenced monarchy, loved decency and order, and
nothing shocked him so much as violent enthusiasm."
Such a settlement was at the moment the best thing
possible. We have to thank Elizabeth and Parker and their
supporters that England was spared the horrible religious
S.R.H. R
234 GREAT BRITAIN SINCE THE REFORMATION
wars that were just breaking out in Holland and France.
But in itself the settlement was hardly religious at all : it
was a mere empty house in which the spirit of religion might
or might not make its temple. Would it prove an adequate
temple } If not, the spirit of religion, which was now
reviving in England, would assuredly pull it down and build
afresh.
Two types of rehgion, Catholic and Protestant, were
striving for mastery in Europe across the Channel. What
would be the attitude of the genuinely rehgious Cathohc and
the genuinely religious Protestant to the Ehzabethan settle-
ment } The Catholics in England long hesitated, but as the
reign advanced and the Queen was excommunicated (1570)
and the first Jesuits landed in England (1580), they split
into two parties. The smaller party renounced the Eliza-
bethan settlement and became ' Papists,' subject to a variety
of persecuting * Recusancy ' Laws, w^hich were only
occasionally enforced with vigour : the larger party accepted
the settlement, and became Anghcan as distinct from
Roman. How far they can be said to have remained
* Catholic ' is a much disputed point and depends upon the
definition of terms. In relation to the Puritans they were
' Catholic ' : in relation to Rome they were ' Protestant.'
This party, though not large in numbers, was in possession
of power in the Church during most of the period from the
Elizabethan settlement to the Puritan Revolution.
The Protestants in England, who soon became known as
the Puritans,^ did not hesitate, like the Catholics, to accept
the settlement, but from the first they sought in one way or
another to alter its character. The Puritans quickly came
to include the greater part of the genuinely religious people
in the country, but down to 1 640 they were almost entirely in
opposition. They will be described more fully in the next
section.
We generally think of the Reformation as bringing with
^ The term Puritan first appears in 1564, in a contemptuous sense.
ANGLICAN AND PURITAN 235
it an immediate increase of religious energy, but the political
and economic Reformation hitherto effected in England had
had the opposite result. In fact, the moral standard of the
parish clergy, not very high before the Reformation, broke
down completely. The Church service was read on Sunday
as a State test, because those who failed to attend were
supposed to be fined. Sermons were rare, and were actually
discouraged because they promoted religious controversy.
As inoffensive substitutes for the sermon composed by the
preacher, two books of official sermons or ' homilies ' had
been issued, the first at the end of Henry VIII. 's reign and
the second in 1563, containing together thirty-three homilies.
The country people often disliked the new Prayer Book,
because they felt the old Latin prayers possessed a magical
value. As late as 1608 a clergyman complained that his
congregation refused to pray in their own language, and
muttered instead such confused recollections of the Latin
Creed as " Creezum zuum patrum onitentem ejus amicum,
Dominum nostrum qui sum sops, Virgini Mariae, crixus
fixus, Ponchi Pilati audubiticus, morti by Sunday, father a
furnes, scerest ut judicarum, finis a mortibus."
Such was the state of provincial religious life when, about
I573> some of the more earnest clergy, who were also Puritan
in outlook, began organising meetings amongst themselves
for the purpose of discussing religious subjects and training
one another by mutual helpfulness in the art of preaching ;
for it was admitted even by their opponents that the few
churches at which sermons were preached drew far better
congregations than the others. These meetings, called
• Prophesyings,' began at Northampton and rapidly spread
over the country. The Queen was at once alarmed and
issued a letter to the bishops, commanding them to suppress
the prophesyings. Archbishop Parker was now dead and
his successor, Archbishop Grindal, boldly protested and
refused to send out any injunction for the suppression of
these meetings. He realised that in its dread of religious
236 GREAT BRITAIN SINCE THE REFORMATION
controversy the government was in danger of trying to
suppress religion itself. The Queen angrily suspended him
from his duties (1577), and his death six years later enabled
her to appoint as his successor Archbishop Whitgift, a
vigorous disciphnarian of the type of the more famous Laud.
Whitgift established the High Commission Court, which was
empowered to enquire into all offences against the Acts of
Parliament defining the Church ; to punish persons absenting
themselves from Church, and to deprive all beneficed clergy
who held opinions contrary to the Articles. The Court was
empowered to dispense with the time-honoured institution of
the jury, by which persons prosecuted in ordinary courts are
protected against tyranny. Lord Burghley told Whitgift
that the procedure of the Court " savoured too much of the
Romish Inquisition," and, indeed, it differed from the
Inquisition hardly at all, except that it w^as unable to make
use of the death penalty.
None the less, in spite of this repressive policy, the Church
began to gather around itself a spirit of rehgious devotion.
It is perhaps not fanciful to connect this in part with the
thanksgiving for the great victory over the Armada to which
the Church gave expression and in which all Englishmen
joined. Soon after Anghcanism received powerful support
in the sphere of literature when Richard Hooker published,
in 1 594, the first four Books of his Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity^
one of the earliest classics of modern English prose literature.
The story of the origin of Hooker's work is interesting as
illustrating the curious conditions that prevailed in the
Church at that time. In 1585 Hooker was appointed Master
of the Temple. His predecessor had not been in the habit
of preaching, and a Puritan named Travers had been
appointed to * lecture ' in the Temple church on Sunday
evenings. Hooker now preached in the mornings, and
Travers attempted the refutation of his doctrines in the
evenings. Soon afterwards Travers was deprived of his
lectureship by Whitgift, and issued a pamphlet in protest.
ANGLICAN AND PURITAN 237
Hooker replied with another pamphlet, but, feeling the
subject required more detailed treatment, got himself
transferred to a country living so that he might devote him-
self wholly to a great literary undertaking. Hooker denies
the Puritan contention that all problems of ecclesiastical
government can be solved by reference to the Bible, and that
every institution must be wrong which is not literally backed
by a text. God's Law is operative not only in the Bible but
in man's reason and conscience. The State is a necessary
and therefore a divine institution, and episcopacy and royal
supremacy are justified because through them the unity of
Church and State, as different aspects of one Divine Common-
wealth, are best maintained.
Throughout the reigns of James I. and Charles I. Anglican-
ism was gaining in religious depth. It produced its first
notable 'saint' in Bishop Andrewes (died 1626), whom all
from the king downwards united in revering, and in 1 63 1
was published George Herbert's little volume of religious
poems. The Temple^ which exercised the same sort of influence
in its day as Keble's Christian Year two hundred years later.
None the less, though Anglicanism was gaining, Puritanism
was gaining faster, and the last great Anglican name before
the Puritan Revolution is that of the man who strained
the bands of Elizabethan uniformity till they broke in
his hands. Laud, who became Archbishop of Canterbury
in 1633.
It is very easy to state the case against Laud. He was a
true disciple of Queen Elizabeth born a generation too late.
The deep problems of theology simply did not interest him,
and he sought to suppress theological discussion by persecut-
ing the Puritan theologians with a vigour unknown before.
The deep ecstasies of religious emotion, whether Puritan or
Catholic, were quite outside his ken. Like Parker he stood
for decency and order, and dreaded ' enthusiasm.' His main
pre-occupation was with ritual. He was not, as his enemies
thought, a Papist in disguise. In his last speech on the
238 GREAT BRITAIN SINCE THE REFORMATION
scaffold, when he had nothing more to hope or fear, he spoke
of himself as a Protestant. But he saw a united Counter-
Reformation on the Continent still gaining ground as it
seemed against the divided Protestant sects, and above all
things he longed for unity, and as the first step towards
unity, uniformity. Hence his regulations, which seem to
some so tedious, about the wearing of vestments and the
position of the altar. Ritual, in fact, was discipHne, and
should be enforced as such. The greatest and the fairest
modern historian of that period, S. R. Gardiner, writes, " To
him the Church was not so much the temple of a living
Spirit, as the palace of an invisible King."
But to understand Laud's point of view we must hear him
in his own defence. He writes : "No one thing hath made
conscientious men more wavering in their own minds or more
apt and easy to be drawn aside from the sincerity of the
religion professed by the Church of England than the want
of uniform and decent order in too many churches of the
Kingdom. It is true the inward worship of the heart is the
great service of God, and no service is acceptable without
it ; but the external worship of God in His Church is the
great witness to the world that our heart stands right in that
service of God. And a great weakness it is not to see the
strength which ceremonies — things weak enough in them-
selves, God knows — add even to religion itself."
These are not the words of a man to be despised, as Laud
too often is by the champions of the Puritan and Parlia-
mentary cause. The policy of uniformity and repression for
which Laud and Charles laid down their lives was a wrong
one. But part of what they stood for was sound and has
survived all the onslaughts of their enemies.
(ii) The Puritans. Puritanism is not the name of a sect.
The name Puritan was given to all those sturdy Protestants
who, from the time of the Elizabethan settlement onwards,
wished to ' purify ' the Church from such ' Romish ' errors
ANGLICAN AND PURITAN 239
as in their opinion still adhered to it. Some of the first
Puritans were Protestants who, like John Knox, had fled
from England to Geneva and other places on the Continent
where the influence of Calvinism was already active, during
the Marian persecution.
Three main types of Puritan policy can be distinguished.
First, there were those — probably the large majority right
down to the time of the Civil War — who were content to
accept the main lines of the Elizabethan settlement, but
disliked the way it worked : they objected, not to episcopacy
as such, but to the type of man promoted, and the policy of
Whitgift, Laud, and the High Commission Court. Secondly,
there were those who condemned episcopacy, partly because
it savoured of Rome rather than Geneva, but still more
because the royal appointment and royal control of bishops
was contrary to the principles of self-government which
Calvin had made a feature of Protestantism in France and
Scotland ; these were Presbyterians, and aimed at a radical
reorganisation of the government of the Church. Thirdly,
there were those who, either because they thought reform of
the State Church impossible, or because they disbelieved in
the very principle of central control, demanded liberty for
each congregation to worship according to its own desires :
these were known as Sectaries or Independents, and were
what we should to-day call Dissenters or Nonconformists.
What then were the common characteristics of these
different types of Puritan } The vitality of Puritanism in
all its branches was drawn from the Bible. The translation
of the Bible had been begun by Wycliffe, but before the days
of printing and the spread of education that came with the
Renaissance, a wide-spread ' Bible religion ' as distinct from
a ' Church religion ' was impossible. The first complete and
officially authorised translation was published by the anti-
Roman government of Henry VIII. A succession of versions
followed, the last being that authorised by James I.'s govern-
ment in 161 1 and still m general use. None of these
240 GREAT BRITAIN SINCE THE REFORMATION
governments realised that they were authorising the dis-
tribution of a kind of spiritual dynamite that would blow
sky-high their carefully built edifice of uniformity. Alone
with his Bible by his own fireside, the Puritan deciphered for
himself the will of God without priestly intermediary, and
established in his own heart a standard by which he criticised
his Church and found it falling short in many particulars.
** A deep and splendid effect was wrought by the monopoly
of this book as the sole reading of common households in an
age when men's minds were instinct with natural poetry and
open to receive the light of imagination. A new religion
arose ... of which the pervading spirit was the direct
relations of man with God, exemplified in human life. And
while the imagination was kindled, the intellect was freed by
this private study of the Bible. For its private study
involved its private interpretation. Each reader, even if a
Churchman, became in some sort a Church to himself. Hence
the hundred sects and thousand doctrines that astonished
foreigners, and opened England's strange path to intellectual
liberty. The Bible cultivated here, more than in any other
land, the growth of individual thought and practice." ^
Thus the characteristic of Puritanism was individualism.
For the Catholic practice of confession to the priest it sub-
stituted the duty of rigid self-examination, which, while free
from the dangers of confessionahsm, has dangers of its own :
for while exalting the ' tribunal of conscience ' it cannot
always secure that that tribunal judges by the right standards.
To Puritanism also we owe the peculiarly British practice of
family prayers.
But Puritanism was not without its permanent achieve-
ments in the sphere of social life. It established what is
known abroad as the " English Sunday." The Puritans
prohibited both work and play on the ' Day of Rest.' We
are apt to suppose that they only prohibited play, and as a
result we are not sufficiently grateful to them. But they did
^ Trevelyan, England under the Stuarts, p. 6i.
ANGLICAN AND PURITAN 241
a great deal in suppressing work as well, as is shown by the
fact that the anti-Puritan government of Elizabeth deliber-
ately encouraged work, buying and selling, on Sundays as
well as week-days. The modern ' week-ender ' who laughs
at * Sabbatarianism ' has the Sabbatarian to thank for his
week-end freedom.
Puritan opposition goes back to the very beginning of
Elizabeth's reign. The first important controversy was over
surplices. The surplice was to the Puritan an ' Aaronic '
garb, and a sign of superstition. According to the Protestant
or Puritan view the clergy were not a divinely privileged
order, but simply a * profession ' — the noblest of professions,
no doubt — instituted by man for human convenience, Hke
doctors and lawyers ; not ' priests ' but * ministers.' Open
defiance in the matter of the surplice the government could
not allow. Two heads of Oxford colleges were called upon
to show cause why they did not wear surplices. Their
reply, which quoted Scripture as refuting the ordinances of
the English Church, touched Elizabeth to the quick. The
rule was enforced, and thirty-seven clergy in London alone
refused to comply and resigned their livings. From this
date (1566) secret conventicles for ultra-Protestant worship
begin. But it was not the way of the government to proceed
to extremities ; and uniformity was not strictly enforced
until the time of Archbishop Laud.
The House of Commons was from the first the stronghold
of Puritan sentiment. Strickland and Peter Wentworth ^ in
Elizabeth's reign played the same parts as Eliot and Pym
under her successors. In 1571 Strickland proposed a reform
of the Prayer Book, and Wentworth later died in prison for
his Parliamentary attacks on the bishops, as true a martyr
as Eliot. When the Puritans failed to secure reform of the
Prayer Book they began to attack the book itself, and this
was probably the least popular as well as the most unwise
part of their policy.
' A distant relative of Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford.
242 GREAT BRITAIN SINCE THE REFORMATION
The 1570's were the critical period. During these years
the prophesyings were suppressed and the semi-Puritan
Archbishop Grindal suspended (see above p. 235) ; the
burning, on rare occasions, of Protestant heretics was
revived ; and the first important Nonconformist sect, the
Brownists, was founded by Robert Browne. Before the end
of EHzabeth's reign Whitgift had already driven to Holland
some of the stern unbending Puritans who afterwards (1621)
crossed to America in the Mayflower and founded the New
England colonies. Indeed, the part played by persecution
of Puritans in founding the American colonies is greater than
one likes to think. The emigrant for religion's sake was less
likely to return home than the emigrant for adventure or
money-making. Laud was, in his unconscious way, as great
an empire-builder as Raleigh.
When James I. came to the throne the Puritans hoped for
more generous treatment, and several hundred Puritan clergy
presented to the King the ' Millenary Petition,' ^ asking that
the use of the surplice should be optional, and that the clergy
should not be required to declare their belief in the absolute
truth of all contained in the Prayer Book, provided they
signed the Articles and used the services. James summoned
a conference at Hampton Court to consider the Petition, but
at the mention of the word * synod ' he broke in on the
discussion with violent denunciations of the Presbyterian
system (for which, incidentally, the Petition had not asked),
and refused the Puritan demands. " I will make them
conform themselves," he said, " or I will harry them out of
the land."
Thus was created the situation which led to the Puritan
Revolution. That story need not be told here as it is one of
the most famihar episodes in English history. A few points,
however, may be noticed.
In the history of that Revolution we find questions of
^ So called because it claimed to express the views of a thousand
clergymen.
ANGLICAN AND PURITAN 243
religion and questions of taxation curiously, almost comically,
intermingled; — Tonnage, Poundage, and Predestination stand
side by side in the famous ' Three Resolutions ' of March,
1629. The fact is that two Revolutions, logically distinct,
were being carried through side by side by men who believed
equally in Puritanism and Parliamentary government. But
of the two motives religion was the deeper. Cromwell him-
self, who won the war, states that his party would never have
taken up arms but for the cause of Puritanism. Thus,
though in the long run the Parliamentary cause was won and
the Puritan cause partly, though not wholly, lost, it is to
Puritanism that we owe the survival of Parliamentary
institutions.
When once the Revolution was launched by the Long
Parliament, the three-fold division of Puritan policy described
at the beginning of this section proved the ruin of the party.
The great bulk of that unanimously Puritan Parliament of
1 64 1 would have wished to retain both Episcopacy and the
Prayer Book, if the king would have agreed to grant the
demands of the Millenary Petition, Since he would not, a
bare majority unwillingly adopted the Presbyterian scheme
and military alliance with the Scottish Presbyterians. But
a Presbyterian tyranny was Hkely, in the opinion of many
Puritans, to be worse than the tyranny of Laud. As Milton
wrote, wittily playing on the derivation of the words, " New
presbyter is but old priest writ large." ^ So the army and
Cromwell stood for Independency, and suppressed the
Presbyterians. But Independency, even though combined
with as much toleration as Cromwell dared to grant, entirely
failed to satisfy the great bulk of Englishmen, who not only
wanted the restoration of the Prayer Book, which Cromwell
was compelled to forbid, but also wanted to feel themselves
members, not of some little experimental sect, but of a great
Church, standing for all England and deeply rooted in the
traditions of the past. There was, in fact, only one solution,
1 Both words are derived from the Greek presbuteros, an elder.
244 GREAT BRITAIN SINCE THE REFORMATION
preservation of a national Church and toleration for those
who preferred to dissent from it. This did not come till the
Toleration Act of 1689, and even then Unitarians and Roman
Catholics were excluded from the benefits of the Act. In
practice, however, toleration went beyond its legal limits.
After the Restoration, two thousand Puritan clergymen
and their followers were driven out of the Church.^ Those
who held fast to their Puritan views became Dissenters,
and were persecuted under the Clarendon Code, until the
Roman CathoHc schemes of James II. forced the Church to
offer them terms of aUiance, and so toleration. There was a
change, too, in the social status of Puritanism. Before the
Puritan Revolution, not only most of the wealthier townsfolk
but many of the gentry had been Puritan. After the Revolu-
tion the Puritan Squire was but seldom seen in the land : he
had learnt what Puritanism led to ! So he made friends with
his old enemy, the Anglican parson, and both combined to
persecute the Puritan village grocer, now a Dissenter.
Yet the movement had done its work : it had established
the family Bible, family prayers, and the '* English Sunday "
as fruitful traditions in English life. Indeed, two of the most
remarkable products of Puritanism belong to the period after
the failure of the Puritans to capture control of the Church :
Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, and the Society of Friends,
commonly called the Quakers.
(iii) John Bunyan (1628- 1688). The best way to get a
real understanding of what religion meant to the Puritans
is to read the lives of some of their heroes, particularly the
1 Surplices became compulsory again under the Act of Uniformity
of 1662, but the sermon was preached in a black gown until the
influence of the Oxford movement spread over England in the
middle of the nineteenth century. There are still a few churches
left where the surplice is not worn in the pulpit. Pepys notes in
his Diary on 26 October, 1662 : "To church, and there saw the first
time Mr. Mills in a surplice ; but it seemed absurd for him to pull
it over his ears in the reading-pew, after he had done, before all the
church, to go up to the pulpit to preach without it."
ANGLICAN AND PURITAN 245
lives of those who have recorded their own spiritual ex-
periences as Bunyan did in his Grace Abounding and George
Fox in his Journal.
John Bunyan was the son of a tinker of Bedfordshire and
learnt his father's trade, and served in the Parliamentary
Forces in 1645, the year of Naseby. He learnt to read and
write in childhood but, as has so often happened to the sons
of the poor, forgot it again when he began to earn his living,
and (as less often happens) learnt the art afresh from his wife.
Like Abraham Lincoln he achieved supreme mastery of the
literary style he needed for his purpose, without ever being,
in the ordinary sense, an educated man.
Like so many of the great religious geniuses he suffered
very deeply in his struggle for faith and salvation. For long
he believed himself to be, like the hero of his Pilgrim's
Progress, a dweller in the ' City of Destruction,' yet could
find no way of getting away from it. He, too, bore a * burden'
on his back which he could not cast off. It was probably a
real relief to him when, at the Restoration, the persecution of
the sectaries began, and, as a Baptist preacher who refused
to stop preaching, he was thrown into prison. Here he
remained for most of the next twelve years studying his
Bible and that favourite book of the Puritans, Foxe's Book
of Martyrs, written during the reign of Elizabeth and com-
memorating the victims of Mary's persecution. During this
imprisonment Grace Abounding was written, and The
Pilgrim- s Progress followed, written during a short imprison-
ment in 1675. During the later years of his life Bunyan was
free from molestation, as the persecuting laws were not
rigorously enforced after Charles II.'s Declaration of
Indulgence ; for the Church was beginning to feel the need
of Puritan support in the reviving struggle with Rome as
personified by the heir to the throne, the future James II.
Bunyan became a leading preacher among the Baptists and
received, owing to the fame of his books, the friendly nick-
name of ' Bishop Bunyan.'
246 GREAT BRITAIN SINCE THE REFORMATION
Like Cromwell and Milton, he combined Puritan fervour
with a large-minded tolerance. He realised that the special
tenets of the Baptists were not the supreme truths of Chris-
tianity, and wished to combine diversity of Christian practice
with unity of Christian fellowship. " Christ, not baptism,"
he writes, " is the way to the sheepfold." The Pilgrim's
Progress is, considering its date, remarkably free from hits at
Christian sects to which its author did not belong. " Giant
Pope " is, it is true, set beside " Giant Pagan," but this is a
solitary exception.
The Pilgrim's Progress enjoyed an immediate and enormous
success, and is the greatest allegory in all literature. A
hundred thousand copies w'ere sold in the ten years
between its publication (1678) and the author's death. This
is a sale which many popular modern novelists would envy,
in spite of the vast increase that has taken place both in the
population itself and in the proportion of the population that
have learnt to read. To-day the book is said to have been
translated into over a hundred languages. Historians of
English literature have called it the first great English novel.
No writer except Shakespeare and Dickens has contributed
so much to our common stock of popular phrases : — the
Slough of Despond, Vanity Fair, Giant Despair, the Valley
of Humiliation, all find their origin in The Pilgrim's Progress.
It is the most vivid literary expression of Puritanism, as
Dante's Divine Comedy is the most vivid literary expression
of mediaeval Christianity. Dante's poem has, of course, a
breadth and grandeur for which we cannot look in Bunyan's
prose. The Dante of Puritanism is the author of Paradise
Lost. But Bunyan presents life more as we ought to see it.
In Dante earthly life seems crushed into insignificance
between Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory. But Bunyan shows
us life as a great adventure : that is perhaps the secret of his
success.
Two other books of Bunyan may be mentioned here.
The Life and Death of Mr. Badman is the tale of a Pilgrim
ANGLICAN AND PURITAN 247
who took the wrong road, and never got away from the City
of Destruction. It presents an interesting picture of seven-
teenth century commercial dishonesty. The Holy War
depicts once again, in allegorical form, the conflict of good
and evil, but the theatre is now not the single human soul
but the whole world. The City of Mansoul has been founded
by God, and its walls cannot be broken down except by its
townsmen's consent. Diabolus rebels and makes war upon
the City, and the citizens consent to parley with him. He
persuades a party among the citizens that the Founder of the
City is a tyrant, and Mr. Conscience is deposed from his
office of Town Recorder, and the city surrendered. Then
God intervenes, the treacherous citizens are defeated and
punished. Yet the seed of treachery remains and later the
War is renewed. The subject is far more difficult to handle
than that of The Pilgrim's Progress, since the tale can have
no ending short of the Day of Judgment. But it is full of
splendid descriptions, especially of battle pieces. Bunyan
seems to have drawn upon his old memories of the Civil
War in which he fought, and when we read that " the handling
of their arms was marvellously taking," we are reminded of
the military side of Puritanism, and of Cromwell's " Trust
God and keep your powder dry."
(iv) George Fox (1624-1691) and the Society of Friends. Of
all the sects that sprang up amidst the ' religious anarchy '
of the Puritan Revolution the most admirable was the
Society of Friends, commonly called the Quakers, a name
which, first used in mockery like ' Whig ' and ' Tory,' has
come to be accepted by the Friends themselves.
George Fox, like Bunyan, was of humble birth, and was
apprenticed to a shoemaker of Drayton in Leicestershire.
In youth his religious experiences were as vivid as Bunyan's,
but otherwise markedly different and far happier. " People,"
he tells us with frank simplicity, " had generally a love to
me for my innocency and honesty." At the age of nineteen
248 GREAT BRITAIN SINCE THE REFORMATION
he was brought face to face with evil in the form of drink in
the village public house. '* When I had done what business
I had to do I returned home but did not go to bed that night,
nor could I sleep, but sometimes walked up and down, and
sometimes prayed and cried to the Lord, who said to me,
' Thou seest how young people go together unto vanity and
old people unto the earth ; thou must forsake all, both
young and old, and keep out of all, and be a stranger unto
all.' Then at the command of God, on the ninth day of
the seventh month, 1643, I left my relations and broke off
all famiharity or fellowship with old or young."
Such was Fox's * call ' to his life's work, a call as direct
and vivid as those described by the Hebrew prophets. From
this date onwards Fox believed himself to be in continual
and direct communion with Christ, who * opened to him *
what he should do and what forbear from doing. The
general character of his message, and of the Society he
founded, is disclosed by an incident at Nottingham in 1649.
Entering a church he found a Puritan clergyman expounding
the text *' We have also a more sure word of prophecy," and
enforcing the usual Puritan doctrine of the supreme authority
of Scripture. Lifting up his voice against the preacher's
doctrine, Fox declared that it was not by Scripture alone,
but by the divine light by which the Scriptures were given,
that doctrines ought to be judged. Thus Quakerism, though
generally regarded as an extreme form of Puritanism, is
really a reaction from the narrow and mechanical dependence
on Scripture which was the weakest point in the orthodox
Puritan's faith. The Puritan view implied that God had
once given direct revelation to the Jews, and that revelation
now only came indirectly through the study of the historical
record of that ancient revelation. Fox, on the other hand,
maintained that as God once revealed Himself to man so
does He still do, directly. Over against the authority of
Scripture he set the authority of the " Inner Light." This
seems to come near the Catholic doctrine of a divinely
ANGLICAN AND PURITAN 249
inspired Church. But the difference — and it is a very big
difference — is that Fox was thoroughly Puritan in his
individuahsm. The CathoHc (whether AngHcan or Roman)
accepts the Divine Church with its organised hierarchy of
priests as the medium of inspiration to whose authority the
individual must bow. Fox, on the other hand, believed that
God reveals Himself direct to the individual : his ' Society
of Friends ' was no Church but a league of individuals, with-
out priests, without formal creeds, and without sacraments.
For his protest at Nottingham Fox was imprisoned under
the Blasphemy Act. Indeed, he and his friends underwent
several short terms of imprisonment even during the Common-
wealth period. Their conscientious objection to taking oaths
made them an object of suspicion. Puritans in general hated
them and with some reason, for their doctrine was funda-
mentally opposed to Puritan orthodoxy. Bunyan's first
published work, the only work he wrote before his imprison-
ment, is an attack on the Quakers. But the deep religious
instinct and practical common-sense of Cromwell welcomed
the new movement. Twice at least Cromwell and Fox, per-
haps the two greatest Englishmen alive at that time, met and
conversed. On the first occasion Cromwell said, ** Come
again to my house ; for if thou and I were but an hour a day
together, we should be nearer one another." On the second
occasion Fox urged Cromwell " to lay down his crown at the
feet of Jesus," a suggestion which Cromwell treated as rather
a joke, and, as Fox tells us, " continued speaking against the
light of Christ Jesus, and went away in a light manner."
Perhaps Fox hardly realised how much he and all other
Puritans were dependent for their very existence on the
strong arm of Cromwell's government.
After the Restoration persecution began in earnest. In
1662 there were 4500 Quakers in prison, and 400 died there.
But here, again, the Quakers distinguished themselves from
the other Puritan sects. They alone persisted in meeting
openly in time of persecution and refused to hold secret
250 GREAT BRITAIN SINCE THE REFORMATION
assemblies for purposes of worship, a practice by which the
other sectaries merely encouraged the suspicions of the
government that they were engaged in treasonable plots.
There is no doubt that by their steadfast courage in this
matter the Quakers hastened the coming of toleration not
only for themselves but for all Puritans alike.
In 1669 Fox married a moderately wealthy wife, and in
his later years visited Holland, Germany, America and the
West Indies. The Society of Friends was established as a
distinct organisation in 1666. Unlike most of the Puritan
sects after the Restoration its membership included many
gentlemen of wealth and education, such as William Penn,
the son of Cromwell's admiral and the founder of Penn-
sylvania. Fox died in 1 69 1 and his Journal was published
three years later, with an introductory account by Penn of
" The Rise and Progress of the People called Quakers."
The central idea of Quakerism is an attempt to live the
Christian life untrammelled by any of those external rules
and customs which, intended as aids to Christianity, are so
apt to become hindrances to it. It marks, in fact, the
extreme of reaction from the faults characteristic of the
Pharisees and of the mediaeval Church in its decline. They
have no consecrated churches, only ' meeting-houses,' for
one building is as sacred as another. They have no
ministers, and no set form of service. They meet in silence,
and it is open to any men or women at the meeting to offer
prayer aloud, or quote, but not read, the Scriptures, or
speak, according as he or she may feel inspired to do. They
recognise no sacraments, for every action in life may be
made a sacrament, or means of grace, according to the spirit
in which it is done. They refuse to take an oath in law-
courts or elsewhere, since in all his words man is under
obligation to tell the truth. They refuse to join armies, since
war is both the outcome and the cause of ambition, pride and
hatred, and they consider that no end to be attained can
justify the use of such means.
ANGLICAN AND PURITAN 251
The most striking exploit of the Quakers was the founda-
tion of Pennsylvania in 1676. The colony was to be run on
Quaker principles, to be governed without armies, to convert
the Indians to friendship and Christianity by kind and
generous treatment, to administer justice without oaths, and
establish toleration and equality of citizenship for all who
professed belief in God. On the whole, these high principles
were maintained with amazing success. Complete toleration
was established from the first, and though force had to be
used to suppress piracy, murderous warfare with the Indians,
which had disfigured the history of all the earlier colonies
(and not least the Pilgrim Fathers), was entirely avoided, and
fair and friendly trade quickly sprang up between the two
races. For this alone the Quakers deserve a very honourable
place in the history of the British Empire.
Charles Lamb's beautiful little essay "A Quakers' Meet-
ing " shows how the Quakers impressed one of the kindliest
of men outside their own sect, in the first quarter of the
nineteenth century. The essay opens : " Reader, wouldst
thou know what true peace and quiet mean ; wouldst thou
find a refuge from the noise and clamour of the multitude ;
wouldst thou enjoy at once solitude and society ; wouldst
thou possess the depth of thy own spirit in stillness, without
being shut out from the consolatory faces of thy species ;
wouldst thou be alone and yet accompanied ; solitary, yet
not desolate . . . : — come with me into a Quakers' Meeting."
CHAPTER XIX
METHODISTS AND EVANGELICALS
(i) John Wesley (1703-1791)
THE Elizabethan settlement survived almost un-
changed into the eighteenth century, but only at
the very serious cost of driving out from its midst
many of those who wished to change it. As Bunyan said
during his imprisonment, those who cared most for the spirit
of prayer were to be found in the prisons and those who
cared most for the form of prayer [i.e. the Prayer Book) were
to be found in the alehouses ! First came the expulsion of
the Puritans after the Restoration : then the expulsion of
the Non-jurors after the Revolution. The Non-jurors were
eight bishops, four hundred clergy, and a considerable body
of laity who, having taken the oath of allegiance to James II.,
felt that they could not honestly take the oath of allegiance
to the new sovereign who had seized his throne. We may
regard their scruple as unreasonable ; none the less, they were
among the most earnest and distinguished members of the
Church.
For this reason among others the Church throughout most
of the eighteenth century was at a very low ebb. The
laziness and indifference of bishops and clergy reached a
point almost incredible to-day. Several bishops never
went near their dioceses. In many churches services were
only held once a month by a visiting curate hired for the
purpose by a non-resident rector. It was an age when
252
METHODISTS AND EVANGELICALS 253
* reason ' was glorified as the highest of faculties and * enthu-
siasm ' condemned as the worst of folHes. Tillotson,
appointed Archbishop by WilHam IIL in place of the Non-
juror Sancroft, and throughout the eighteenth century
regarded as a model preacher, said in a sermon that Chris-
tianity " only requires of us such duties as are suitable to the
light of nature and do approve themselves to the best reason
of mankind." When this was the language of the clergy,
there can be little wonder that the laity found small use for
religion, and many of the most able, vigorous, and honest
men abandoned Christianity altogether.
The one great and honoured name among the EngHsh
bishops of this period is that of Bishop Butler (1692-1752),
and it is interesting to notice that Butler was brought up as
a Presbyterian. But Butler, though a great philosophic
writer (his work, The Analogy of Religion, is one of the most
important Enghsh contributions to the philosophy of
rehgion), was not the man to stir popular enthusiasm. He
seems to have frankly despaired of the prospects of religion
in his day. It is said that, when he was offered the Arch-
bishopric of Canterbury, he declined it on the ground that
*' it was too late for him to try to support a faUing Church." ^
When these words were spoken (1747) a little group of
men, of whom Butler strongly disapproved, had already set
about saving the falling Church. From 1729-1735 there
existed in the gay, roystering, port-drinking University of
Oxford, as it was in those days, a little society of dons and
undergraduates nicknamed the Holy Club or the Methodists.
There were sixteen members, including John Wesley and his
brother Charles, and, near the end of the time, George
Whitefield. They owed their inspiration to a book just
published by a Non- juror, William Law's Serious Call to a
Devout and Holy Life. They read and studied and debated
^ Doubt has been thrown on this anecdote, but the fact that it
has been generally believed is as good evidence of the state of the
Church at the time as can be needed.
254 GREAT BRITAIN SINCE THE REFORMATION
over the Greek Testament and the Early Fathers. Then
they applied themselves to practical Christianity and took
to visiting the fever-stricken prison, and holding services for
its inmates. They also started a school in the slums of
Oxford. In 1735 the society broke up and Wesley with
some of his friends went as missionaries to America, where
they proved completely unsuccessful with the rough colonials.
A fresh beginning of the movement that will always be
associated with Wesley's name was made when Whitefield
started preaching at Kingswood. Kingswood was a colliery
district outside Bristol : there was no church or school, and
the miners were not only savages but were frankly recognised
as such by the government, which employed troops to
prevent them from plundering Bristol. But Whitefield had
a gift for popular open-air oratory equal to that of the
Irishman Daniel O'Connell, or to anyone who ever lived.
His congregations soon numbered two thousand, and the
effects of his oratory were displayed by the white gutters
made by the tears which trickled down their blackened faces.
Whitefield was himself of humble birth and no great scholar,
and Wesley, who was a scholar and a gentleman, was at
first loth to do anything so unusual and * enthusiastic ' ^ as
preaching in the open air. However, he took the plunge and
at once found his life's work.
For the ne:Kt fifty -one years, from 1739 to his death in 1 79 1
at the age of eighty-seven, Wesley travelled continually up
and down England and Scotland on horseback, preaching as
he went. He averaged fifteen sermons a week and 5000
miles on horseback a year. Here is a typical day : " preached
at Gloucester at five in the morning to two or three thousand
people ; at eleven preached at Runwick to more than a
thousand, and again in the early afternoon ; then at Stanley
a sermon two hours long to about three thousand ; and
finally a sermon at Ebbly." It is all recorded in Wesley's
1 It is a mark of the religious spirit of the eighteenth century that
this word was commonly used as a terra of disapproval.
METHODISTS AND EVANGELICALS 255
Journal, which has been described as " the most amazing
record of human exertion ever penned by man."
In his last years Wesley's pilgrimage often assumed the
character of a triumphal procession, but at first it was very
much the reverse. Both he and Whitefield, and the many
disciples they enlisted in their work, had to endure persecu-
tion of the most practical kind, kicks and blows and mauhngs,
and missiles ranging from eggs to the traditional ' half -brick.*
To the ordinary prejudice against piety was added the
respectable parson's prejudice against the field preacher who
came interfering with his parish, — the old mediaeval quarrel
of the rector with the itinerant friar revived. When Wesley
was coming to Colne in Lancashire the enterprising curate
announced that " if any man be mindful to enlist under the
command of the Rev. George White for the defence of the
Church of England, let him repair to the cross where he shall
have a pint of ale in advance and other proper encourage-
ments."
As a preacher Wesley reduced his style to the extreme of
simplicity by reading over his sermons in the early days to
an old maid-servant and crossing out every phrase she could
not understand. His sermons were as effective as White-
field's, though in a different way. His brother Charles
assisted the movement chiefly by his hymns. The followers
of Wesley were the first to realise the religious value of
congregational hymn-singing, as distinguished from per-
formances by professionals during which the congregation
sat and slept or whispered among themselves. A glance at
the names of Wesley, Newton, Cowper, Toplady, to name no
more, in the Index of Authors in any modern hymn-book, will
show how many of the most popular hymns spring from this
movement.
But what made Wesley the leader of the movement
was his gift for organisation, a gift which, combined
with the stupid hostility of the Church, ultimately led him
and half his followers outside the Church of England. Always
256 GREAT BRITAIN SINCE THE REFORMATION
a scholar, he could justify each step he took by quoting the
practices of the Early Church. First came the appointment
of lay preachers. Then the formation of ' Societies,' on the
lines of the old Oxford Holy Club, for mutual help and
instruction. In all he did Wesley emphasised the idea of
Christian fellowship : " The Bible," he said, " knows nothing
of a soHtary religion." Then came the need of Meeting
Houses : for often the ' Societies ' grew too large to meet in
private houses, the churches were barred against them, and
an alternative to the open air was, to say the least, convenient.
Here his enemies found an ingenious means of persecution.
One of the ' Societies ' was prosecuted for meeting in an
*' unhcensed chapel." The only way of countering the
prosecution was to take out a license, and by doing so the
* Methodists ' (as we may already call them) became techni-
cally Dissenters. Finally, to meet the needs of his followers
in the revolted American colonies, Wesley took the
momentous step of sending a clergyman to America to
ordain as many Methodists as the circumstances in America
seemed to require.
In the English Church ordination can only be performed
by the bishop. Wesley was convinced that in the primitive
Church of the first century bishop and priest were different
names for the same thing, from which fact he deduced that
one priest could in eighteenth century England ordain
another. As regards the historical facts of the primitive
Church Wesley was probably right, but the deduction drawn
from them is clearly illogical. In the last year of his life he
wrote, " I never had any design of separating from the
Church ... I live and die a member of the Church of England,
and none who regard my judgment or advice will ever
separate from it." None the less, by his action he had taken
his stand as a rebel, and his followers had to choose between
repudiating the action of their leader, and repudiating the
Church of which their leader claimed membership to his
dying day. Those who chose the former alternative and
METHODISTS AND EVANGELICALS 257
remained Churchmen became part of the EvangeHcal Party
(see next section) : those who chose the latter and became
Dissenters are known as Methodists.
It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of the movement
of which Wesley was the leader. Three-quarters of the
religious energy generated for the next hundred years both
within the Church and among the Dissenting Churches can
be traced back to it. During the same period in France
Voltaire was attacking Christianity itself with a power and
effect unknown in previous centuries, and Rousseau was
preaching the doctrines of social revolution. When Wesley
died the French Revolution had begun. How much England
gained by remaining almost untouched by the revolutionary
enthusiasm and how much she lost it is very hard to say.
Those who think that she gained (and it is the usual view)
by remaining outside the revolutionary area owe more
thanks to Wesley than to any of the politicians. On this
point a very good authority writes : " Many causes conspired
to save England from revolution, but among them a pro-
minent place must, I believe, be given to the new and
vehement religious enthusiasm which was at that very time
passing through the middle and lower classes of the people,
which had enlisted in its service a large proportion of the
wilder and more impetuous reformers, and which recoiled
with horror from the anti-Christian tenets associated with
the Revolution in France."^
(ii) Evangelical clergy and laity. While Wesley and his
friends were travelling up and down England a new type of
parish priest began to appear, roughly speaking, the hard-
working, conscientious type that is happily common to-day.
Among them, however, were exceptional men who had to
cope with exceptional difficulties. The case of William
Grimshaw, rector of Haworth, is interesting not only because
^ Lecky. England in the FAghteenth Century, vol. iii. p. 146 (cheap
edition).
S.R.H. T
258 GREAT BRITAIN SINCE THE REFORMATION
of the man himself, but because his experiences illustrate the
type of society to be found in those wilder parts of England,
which, fifty years later, were to be turned into centres of new
population by the Industrial Revolution.
Haworth, the village where the Brontes afterwards wrote
their novels, is on the edge of the Yorkshire moors. When
Grimshaw arrived, in 1742, there had been no rector for some
years, and Christianity, even in its outward forms, was
apparently extinct. The dead were buried with drunken
orgies but with no burial service. All the village lived in
mortal terror of the demon Barguest, a phantom dog that
roamed the moors at night. Grimshaw not only established
Sunday services : he had methods of his own for getting a
good congregation. As many as turned up for service of
their own accord were given something to sing that would
take time, preferably the 119th Psalm, while the rector went
the round of the village ale-houses collecting the laggards.
His methods of preaching were direct and to the point. Once
the eloquent Whitefield came to preach at Haworth and
began to praise the improvements that had taken place in
the life of the village, whereupon Grimshaw sprang to his
feet, and cried, " For God's sake do not speak so. I pray
you do not flatter them. The greater part of them are going
to Hell with their eyes open."
Such was one of the rough pioneers. Towards the end of
the eighteenth century Cambridge had become a regular
training school for the production of the new type of Evan-
gehcal parson, under the influence of Charles Simeon, fellow
of King's College and vicar of Holy Trinity Church. Oxford,
on the other hand, where the movement had been born, long
hardened its heart, as is shown by a singular incident which
occurred in 1768. Six harmless undergraduates were
* prosecuted ' by their tutor before the Vice-chancellor of the
university on the ground that they were " enthusiasts who
talked of regeneration, inspiration, and drawing nigh to
God." The prosecution was successful, and they were
METHODISTS AND EVANGELICALS 259
expelled from the university as enemies of the Church of
England.
In 1780 Robert Raikes, a layman and a friend of Wesley,
founded a ' Sunday School ' in Sooty Alley, Gloucester. He
had begun life as a prison reformer, and turned to education
on the principle that prevention was better than cure. His
school differed from the Sunday schools of to-day in that
there were no elementary schools to teach his children
reading and writing, so that he had to begin not with the
Bible, but with the alphabet. The hours were ten to twelve
and one to five-thirty, the afternoon period including atten-
dance at Church. The treatment sounds rigorous, but it is
mildness itself compared with the twelve- and fourteen-hour
days which children at that time had to work in the mines.
The movement rapidly spread over the country and was
taken up by both Churchmen and Dissenters.
The most conspicuous group of Evangelical laymen were
the so-called " Clapham Sect," a group of wealthy Londoners
resident in the then desirable suburb of Clapham. Their
generosity helped to finance all the good works of the move,
ment. The most conspicuous members of the " Sect " were
William Wilberforce, member of Parliament and friend of
Pitt, who, with Clarkson and some of the Quakers, took the
lead in the movement for the abolition of the Slave Trade
(carried through Parliament in 1807), and Hannah More, an
indefatigable authoress of popular tracts, and promoter of
Sunday schools.
(iii) Church, Chapel, and the Industrial Revolution. During
the heyday of Methodism and Evangelicalism (roughly 1770-
1830), the Industrial Revolution changed the whole character
of English social life. Factory life, hitherto the exception,
became the rule for a large part of the population. A com-
paratively small body of men found themselves, as a result
of luck, cunning, or merit, in control not only of vast new
sources of wealth, but also of an almost unlimited power over
26o GREAT BRITAIN SINCE THE REFORMATION
the destinies of their fellow-men. As is well known and
universally recognised to-day, the conscience of the new
holders of powder proved unequal to the strain that the new
power laid on it. The wage-earners were unmercifully
exploited : wages were forced down below starvation level :
hours of work were stretched to a point that seems incredible
— twelve, fourteen, fifteen hours a day. Worse still, children
of any age from four or five upwards w^ere put into the mills
and the mines, and strained and tortured so that they grew
up mere caricatures of humanity. In fine, the warfare
between Capital and Labour, from which society still suffers
to-day, was begun by the great crime committed by Capital.
And statesmanship, as represented by the younger Pitt,
the most powerful minister of the time, looked on and
applauded it all as ' economical.'
The scientific study of the laws regulating the production
and distribution of wealth, known as political economy or
economics, was first fully elaborated during this period, and
reinforced the natural selfishness of the rich with a variety
of ingenious arguments.^ Adam Smith, in his Wealth of
Nations (1776), had attacked state interference with trade
and upheld " the obvious and simple system of natural
liberty " — which was taken to mean the liberty of the poor
to starve and of the child to work in the mines. Burke
(1795) had proved to his own satisfaction that since the poor
were the tools of the rich, it was the obvious interest of the
rich not to injure their tools, and therefore it might be
assumed that the poor could be safely left to the care of
their masters. Malthus, a clergyman,- proved (1798), as
1 It is hardly fair to blame the economists for the result. In part,
no doubt, their teaching was at fault, but the politicians neglected
any arguments of the economists that made in favour of a fairer
treatment of the poor and attended only to those that worked the
other way.
2 Shelley wrote that he " would rather go to hell with Plato and
Bacon than to heaven with Paley and Malthus. ' ' (Paley was another
contemporary clergyman who combined theology and economics.)
METHODISTS AND EVANGELICALS 261
he sincerely believed, that the poor must always remain on
the border line of starvation, since if they were paid higher
wages they would only take the opportunity to have more
children, and remain as poor as ever. Finally, Ricardo
(181 7) laid down the so-called " iron law of wages." Self-
interest, he said, was the only possible motive force in
industry. The laws governing wages were as mechanical
and unalterable as the law of gravitation. The forces of
supply and demand, sheer competition, fixed the market
price of labour and fixed it at ' the minimum of subsistence,'
i.e. the wage which would just suffice to keep the labourer
alive and at work.
We have, then, to ask : What line did official Christianity
take in this the greatest crisis of English history previous to
the crisis that is following the war } As regards that part of
the Church of England — and it was still the larger part —
which was untouched by the Evangelical movement, we need
hardly ask. True to its character, like the House of Lords
in Gilbert and Sullivan's opera, it " did nothing in particular
and did it very well." In 1807 the Archbishop of Canterbury
took the lead in securing the defeat in the House of Lords of
a bill for the provision of elementary schools throughout
England, and his action was typical of the Church he repre-
sented. But what line was taken by the Evangelicals } It
must be admitted that they took a very bad line indeed.
We have seen that after Wesley's death the movement of
which he was the leader split into two, the Evangelicals
within the Church and the Dissenting Methodists. Roughly
speaking, the Evangelicals were to be found among the rich
and influential, and the Methodists among the wage-earners
themselves. So the two bodies must here be treated
separately.
Among the Evangelicals by far the most powerful in the
sphere of politics was Wilberforce. His is a most perplexing
character. Read the history of the crusade against the
slavery of black men in the tropics and Wilberforce will
262 GREAT BRITAIN SINCE THE REFORMATION
appear one of the heroes of the time : read the history of the
enslavement (for such is the right word) of white men,
women, and children in the factories of England, and
Wilberforce will appear very like one of Dickens's immortal
hypocrites, Uriah Heep or Mr. Pecksniff. For example, he
played a leading part in promoting the Combination Acts of
1799 and 1800, which made illegal for a quarter of a century
the only method by which the workers could improve their
position, namely the Trade Unions. And why } In his
Practical View of the System of Christianity he explains that
" the more lowly path (of the poor) has been allotted them
by the hand of God ; that it is their part faithfully to dis-
charge its duties and contentedly to bear its inconveniences ;
that the present state of things is very short ; that the
objects about which worldly men conflict so eagerly are not
worth the contest ; that the peace of mind which Rehgion
offers indiscriminately to all ranks affords more true satis-
faction than all the expensive pleasures that are beyond the
poor man's reach ; that in this view the poor have the
advantage ; that if their superiors enjoy more abundant
comforts, they are also exposed to many temptations from
which the inferior classes are happily exempted," etc. etc.
If Dickens had composed this passage and put it into the
mouth of one of his pious humbugs, we should have said that
he had spoilt his effect by exaggeration.
Yet Wilberforce was not a hypocrite : he was simply a
very earnest and, at bottom perhaps, a rather stupid man,
with a very defective religion. He suffered from the opposite
defect from that of the worldly man. He was ' other-
worldly.' He was so impressed with the reality of the
human soul, and the reality of eternity, that he failed to
realise that the human soul is not independent in this life
of the human body ; that to accept the conditions of life as
they existed in the factories was to deny to half the popula-
tion the possibility of development whether for soul or body.
He denied, in fact, that cardinal and fruitful principle that
METHODISTS AND EVANGELICALS 263
the Renaissance contributed to the Christian Church:^
"How good is man's Hfe ! " "What a piece of work is a
man ! " But there was no good life for the sweated worker
even if he did go to church on Sunday and Hsten to prayers
and praises he had never been taught to understand. And
if a man was indeed such a ' piece of work,' he ought not to
be broken in childhood on the wheels of factory discipline.
Hannah More showed just the same blindness. She was
teaching in a Sunday school in a Mendip mining village where
the wages were a shilling a day and two hundred people
were crammed into nineteen cottages. It never occurred to
her that such conditions of life were a crying iniquity : she
only deplored the immorahty of the villagers, and comforted
herself with the thought that the children " understood
tolerably well the first twenty chapters of Genesis." During
the first thirty years of the nineteenth century the champion-
ship of the factory workers was almost entirely in the hands
of Free-thinkers influenced by the humanitarian ideals of the
French Revolution,
After 1830, however, the Evangelical world produced a
great leader of the cause of the poor in Lord Shaftesbury,
whose unwearied efforts carried through Parliament in the
teeth of the opposition of the mill-owners the great Factory
Act of 1847.
When we pass from Church to Chapel we come out upon
another world altogether. Methodism flourished nowhere so
much as among the new industrial towns and villages of
Lancashire and Yorkshire. Chapels sprang up everywhere,
ugly little buildings paid for with the hard-earned coppers
of their overdriven worshippers. It is impossible to ex-
aggerate the benefit these must have derived from a worship
which provided the one outlet for emotion and idealism in
their drab lives. The masters were, as a rule, glad to
encourage the chapel-going habit. It tended to keep the
workmen docile. In fact, the spirit of its teaching was
1 Cf . Part III. p. 206.
264 GREAT BRITAIN SINCE THE REFORMATION
exactly the opposite of the spirit of the Trade Union move-
ment. " It taught patience, where the Trade Union taught
impatience. The Trade Union movement taught that men
and women should use their powers to destroy the supremacy
of wealth in a world made by men ; the Methodist, that they
should learn resignation amid the painful chaos of a world
so made, for good reasons of His own, by God." ^
From the masters' point of view Methodism might seem
a convenient and unexpected ally. At the moment
Chapel and Trade Unionism might be rival claimants
for the workers' scanty supply of spare energy and spare
money. In the long run, however, it is probable that the
Chapels helped the workers to train themselves to fight
their own battles. They provided education in Sunday
schools. Also the old Calvinistic system of democratic
management helped to train the Chapel-goer in the arts of
democracy for secular as well as religious purposes. The
management of the Chapel affairs, the choosing of the
minister, the committees and debates, even the little quarrels
and faction-making that such affairs always involve : — all
these things helped to fit the Chapel-goer to play his part in
the Trade Union when, after 1824, Trade Unions ceased to
be secret conspiracies and were again recognised by the law
as the workman's organisation for defence.
^ Hammond, The Town Labourer, p. 283.
CHAPTER XX
THE VICTORIAN AGE
(i) State of the Church at the time of the Reform Bill, 1832.
IF we take our stand at the date of the great Reform Bill
which marks the real beginning of the Victorian Age,
and look back over the history of the Established
Church during the two hundred and seventy-three years
since the Elizabethan settlement, it is impossible to regard
that history as satisfactory or creditable. There had been
two great rehgious movements originating in the Protestant
wing of the Church, the Puritan movement and the Evan-
gelical movement. Both had been wholly or partly driven
out of the Church, and their force both within and without
it was visibly ebbing. In the main the Church might fairly
be described as a section of the old Tory party. Its bishops
had voted against Catholic Emancipation, and they had
voted against the Reform Bill. They were opposed in
general to the reform of all abuses ; and no wonder, for
nowhere were abuses more rampant than in the Church.
Many, perhaps most, of the bishops were simply amiable and
respectable members of the idle rich class. Many of them
enjoyed five-figure incomes, and distributed rich livings
among members of their families. Archbishop Manners
Sutton (1805 -1 828) gave sixteen rich livings, besides various
cathedral appointments, to seven members of his family. A
third of the clergy held more than one living apiece. It is
said that one clergyman held two livings worth in all
265
266 GREAT BRITAIN SINCE THE REFORMATION
£1200 and got the work of both done by curates at a total
cost of £84 a year. Any number of examples could be
given. ^
In fact, the Church, though it contained many devout and
energetic men, especially among the Evangelicals, had long
lacked worthy leadership. Appointment of bishops was in
the hands of the Prime Ministers, and bishoprics were the
reward not of piety and energy, but of political intrigue. If
we take the list of the Archbishops of Canterbury from the
Reformation to the Reform Bill or, indeed, to thirty years
later, and compare it with the list of the Popes during the
two hundred and fifty years after Hildebrand (see Chapter
XII.), it is impossible not to be struck with the enormous
inferiority of the Archbishops in energy and idealism. There
is not a single one among them that could be called a great
man, unless it be Bancroft, who was expelled as a Non-juror.
Or we might take another and more gratifying comparison
and say, with truth, that the four Archbishops who cover the
last fifty years. Archbishop Tait (1868- 1 882) and his three
successors, have shown more statesmanship and more saint-
Hness than all their predecessors from Matthew Parker
onwards (1559-1868).
In 1832, the year of the Reform Bill, Dr. Arnold,
Headmaster of Rugby, wrote, *' the Church, as it now
stands, no human power can save." There was, in fact, a
new spirit abroad, the spirit of modern Liberahsm, applying
with more caution and moderation the ideas of the French
Revolution to English institutions, and the Reform Bill
would give the Liberalism of the middle classes the control
of English politics. That Liberalism was ready and eager
to ask the Church, " What are you doing with all the power
1 The twin evils of plurality (of livings in the possession of one
man) and non-residence were common throughout the Middle Ages
and had never been eradicated. Even the energetic and con-
scientious Laud held the rich living of Lydd in Kent and never
visited it. Only in the Victorian Age was this evil finally
eradicated.
THE VICTORIAN AGE 267
and the wealth that the nation has hitherto allowed you to
retain ? " To that question no very satisfactory answer
could be given.
In 183 1 an anonymous pamphlet appeared, entitled The
Extraordinary Black Book. Its title was an allusion to the
famous " Black Book " prepared by Thomas Cromwell's
officials for Henry VIII. previous to the abolition of the
monasteries. This new " Black Book " was written in a
hostile spirit and contained a few exaggerations, but in the
main its facts were correct and it created a wide impression.
It gave an account of the revenues of the Church and the
uses to which they were put. It asserted that the clergy
of the Church of England cost seven times as much as the
Catholic Church in France, and yet ministered to no more
than eight million people.
Some reforms soon followed. In 1835 Peel appointed an
Ecclesiastical Commission of five bishops and four laymen to
investigate the uses of Church property. As a result, the
incomes of the wealthiest bishops were reduced, the number
of canonries attached to cathedrals diminished, and altogether
a better distribution of the wealth of the Church was effected.
In 1838 an Act was passed forbidding Pluralities, i.e. the
holding by one clergyman of more than one living, except
under special circumstances and with a license from the
Archbishop.
But such reforms, though necessary, were merely negative
and touched only the fringe of the problem. You cannot
revive religion in a Church by Acts of Parliament. How-
ever, a new and remarkable religious revival had just
begun.
(ii) The Oxford Movement (1833-1845) and its results. We
have seen how the Elizabethan settlement was a compromise
designed to satisfy as far as possible two parties : the
Catholics who, while ceasing to be Roman Catholics and
repudiating the Pope and various ' errors ' (such as the sale
268 GREAT BRITAIN SINCE THE REFORMATION
of Indulgences) which had crept into the Roman Church in
comparatively recent times, considered themselves the true
heirs of the Church of the best period of the Middle Ages ;
and the Protestants who inclined to the doctrines of the
Reformed Churches of the Continent, which they considered
had returned to the true doctrines of primitive or PauHne
Christianity, and laid their emphasis on the Bible and the
faith of the individual rather than on the traditions of a
divinely guided Church. Both parties had persisted in the
Church, the Catholic party represented by Andrewes, Laud,
and the Non-jurors, and the Protestant represented by the
Puritans and the Evangelicals.
The great rehgious revival of the nineteenth century, the
Oxford movement, came from the Catholic party, which
since the days of the Non-jurors had been almost extinct
as a living religious force. The Oxford movement, as has
been said, took as its text the almost forgotten clause in the
creed, " I beheve in the Holy Catholic Church." As John
Henry Newman (i 801-1890), its greatest leader, wrote, " I
have ever kept before me that there was something greater
than the Established Church, and that was the Church
Cathohc and Apostolic, set up from the beginning, of which
she was but the local presence and organ." In the eyes of
Newman and his friends the Reformation had been a disaster,
due in part to the wickedness of Rome, but due also to the
blindness and intemperance of the Reformers. The so-called
Protestant Churches were like plants cut off from their roots.
They had no tradition except the barren tradition of protest
against Rome. Their religious revivals, such as that
associated with Wesley, had been purely emotional, and,
lacking root in tradition, had withered away when the
original impulse was spent. The Church of England, on the
other hand, though it had long thought of itself as Protes-
tant, possessed in its Prayer Book, which was an English
translation but slightly adapted from ancient Catholic service
books, and in its bishops, who could trace unbroken descent
THE VICTORIAN AGE 269
by ordination back through the Middle Ages to the primitive
Church, all the essentials of a true branch of the Catholic
Church.
The origin of the movement is generally traced to a sermon
preached by Keble in 1833 and published under the title of
National Apostasy. Keble was already well known as the
author of The Christian Year, a collection of tender and grace-
ful religious poems arranged as a kind of commentary on the
Prayer Book, each poem being allotted to a Sunday or a
Saint's day and usually developing the idea of the epistle or
gospel for the day. The poems of The Christian Year were
known by heart in thousands of families throughout the
middle years of the nineteenth century. The sermon on
National Apostasy was simply a proclamation of the dangers
threatening the Church. As a result first of Catholic
Emancipation, and secondly of the enfranchisement of masses
of middle-class Dissenters by the Reform Bill, the Church was
now at the mercy of a Parliament bound by no ties of loyalty
to the Establishment. In this emergency the Church must
proclaim its divine character and rouse its rightful leaders,
the bishops, to assert the authority that they derived from
God alone.
But Keble would have made little impression outside
Oxford without Newman, who quickly constituted himself
the real leader of the revival. Newman at this date was
a Fellow of Oriel college and vicar of St. Mary's Church :
he was a man of striking appearance and great charm of
manner, and he had command of a literary style as effective,
both in argument and in rhetoric, as that of any writer of
English. He did not, like Wesley or St. Paul, undertake the
life of a travelling missionary. He made Oxford his head-
quarters, and by his sermons created a band of ardent
disciples among the rising generation. To the wider public
he appealed by his pen. In September, 1833, he started a
series of pamphlets called Tracts for the Times, most,
though not all, of which he wrote himself : ninety of
270 GREAT BRITAIN SINCE THE REFORMATION
these tracts appeared in the course of the following eight
years.
The first tract, addressed to the clergy, is an uncompromis-
ing attack on all that was conventional and easy-going in the
Church, and an open glorification of what many regard as
the errors of the Middle Ages, its superstitions, its asceticism,
its intolerance. The second tract, entitled The Catholic
Church, is an equally vigorous attack on Erastianism, i.e. the
theory that the State ought to control the Church. The
earlier tracts were quite frankly intended to create a stir, to
provoke controversy and irritation. They were journalism
of a high order. As they succeeded in drawing attention,
the tracts grew longer, more learned, and more argumentative.
But some people soon began to ask, is not this Popery in
disguise } The Roman Catholics had only just been admitted
to the full privileges of citizenship : old men were still alive
who could remember the ' No Popery ' riots of Lord George
Gordon in 1 780. There was still a strong feeling that
Roman Catholicism was a subtle and dangerous conspiracy
against religious truth and national independence.
Suspicion was deepened by the publication, in 1838, of the
Remains of Hurrell Froude, an ally of Keble and Newman,
who had recently died, and whose writings and character
expressed all that was most intolerant and aggressive in the
movement. One product of these controversies was the
erection of the well-known Martyrs' Memorial at Oxford.
Froude was reported to have said : " I never heard any good
of Cranmer except that he burnt well " ; so the Protestants
of Oxford expressed in visible form their reverence for
Ridley, Latimer, and Cranmer (who had been burnt at
Oxford in the reign of Mary) as a protest against what was
coming to be called ' Tractarianism.'
The climax came with the ninetieth tract (1841), entitled
Remarks o?i Certain Passages in the Thirty-Nine Articles.
The tract opens : " It is often urged and sometimes felt and
granted that there are in the Articles propositions or terms
THE VICTORIAN AGE 271
inconsistent with the Catholic faith." The object of the
tract is " to show that, while our Prayer Book is acknowledged
on all hands to be of Catholic origin, our Articles, alas ! the
offspring of an uncatholic age, are, through God's good
providence, to say the least, not uncathohc, and may be
subscribed by those who aim at being Catholic in heart and
doctrine."
The Thirty-nine Articles had been drawn up by Cranmer
and were published in 1553, just after the Second and more
definitely ' Protestant ' Prayer Book of Edward VI. They
were intended not as a complete confession of faith but as an
instrument for excluding from the Church certain errors both
of the Roman Church and of the extremer Protestant sects.
In 1563 they were revised by Parker with a view to con-
ciliating the moderate and non-Roman Catholic elements in
the Church, and after Elizabeth's excommunication an Act
of Parliament ordained that all the clergy should subscribe
to them. A modern writer may approach these Articles
from two points of view. He may, on the one hand, take
them in conjunction with the history of the times in which
they were written and attempt to explain what their authors
originally meant by them. On the other hand, he may
treat them as a lawyer is bound to treat an Act of Parliament
and, ignoring their historical origin and the supposed inten-
tions of their authors, concentrate solely on their text and
interpret the actual meaning of words used. Newman's
method was the second of these, and his opponents felt that
he had used his literary skill to extract from the Articles a
Catholic interpretation which they would not really bear.
On the whole it may be said that Newman's conclusions were
sound. No doubt his interpretation is not the only sound
interpretation of the Articles, and it was certainly not the
interpretation that had been current in the Church during
the last two centuries, but it was a logical interpretation, and
the Articles had been purposely framed, as was all the rest
of the Elizabethan settlement, to satisfy diversities of
272 GREAT BRITAIN SINCE THE REFORMATION
religious opinion, and to exclude only extremists, whether
Catholic or Protestant.
Anyhow, war was now declared on Newman and his friends.
The Bishop of Oxford requested that the issuing of the
tracts should be discontinued, and two years later Pusey,
one of the most prominent leaders of the movement, was for
two years suspended by the Vice-Chancellor from preaching
within the university on the ground that he had ' taught
certain things disagreeing with and contrary to the doctrine
of the Church of England.' In 1844, W. G. Ward of Balliol,
one of the most ardent of the disciples, published The Ideal
of a Christian Church, in which he claimed the right to accept
the whole of the doctrines of the Roman Church while
remaining a member of the Church of England. The
University condemned his book and deprived him of his
B.A. and M.A. degrees : — for at that date (and until 1871)
membership of the university was limited to members of the
Church of England. Ward then joined the Roman Church;
several of his friends followed him, and, a few months later,
Newman himself.
The secession of Newman seemed like a death-blow to the
movement. " We always said it was bound to come to
that ! " was the triumphant rejoinder of its enemies. But
Keble and Pusey stood firmly Anglican, and it was soon
found that, though the movement, as an * Oxford movement,'
was over, its wider work in the Church of England was only
beginning. One more last service Newman was long after
to render to the cause he had abandoned. In 1864 he
published the history of his religious opinions down to the
time of his secession, under the title of Apologia pro Vita sua
(Defence of his Life). The extraordinary charm of the
narrative made it at once a classic autobiography, and
restored its author to his rightful place in the minds of
Englishmen as one of the greatest religious geniuses this
country ever produced. On the whole it may fairly be said
that Newman not only set going a great revival in the Church
THE VICTORIAN AGE 273
of England, but taught Englishmen of all creeds to form a
juster and more kindly opinion of the Church of Rome : for
people realised that the Church which held the allegiance of
such a man as Newman could not be so base as was commonly
supposed.
One of the results of the Oxford movement was the
appearance of a new type of bishop, the type which is almost
universal to-day. The old ' idle rich ' bishop gradually
disappeared and made way for the working bishop, the active
director of every kind of diocesan activity, a man who takes
his day's work every bit as seriously as a cabinet minister or
a first-rate man of business. In converting the episcopate
the Oxford movement succeeded where the Evangelical
movement had failed. One of the first of the * new bishops '
was Samuel Wilberforce,^ (1805 -1873) bishop, first of Oxford
and afterwards of Winchester, a man of untiring energy in
the organisation of his diocese. He was as eloquent and
witty as he was energetic. His eloquence gained him the
nickname of * Soapy Sam,' and his ready wit enabled him to
reply to one who asked him why he was so called : " Because,"
he said, '* I am always getting into hot water and always
come out of it with clean hands."
But the new bishops were not all " High Churchmen," as
the disciples of the Oxford leaders were called. Among
them may be mentioned Tait (Archbishop of Canterbury,
1868-1882), probably the greatest Archbishop of Canterbury
since the Middle Ages, and Temple, who became bishop of
Exeter in 1869 and died as Archbishop of Canterbury in
1902. When Temple left Exeter, his Dean said to him,
" Every clergyman is half -unconsciously doing twice as
much as he did before, and they all say it is your doing."
Both of these were ' Broad Churchmen ' (see page 287).
Perhaps no one played a greater part in the raising of the
general level of the episcopate than Lord Shaftesbury, who
called himself * an Evangelical of the Evangelicals.' Lord
^ Son of the famous leader of the ' Clapham sect.'
S.R.H. u
274 GREAT BRITAIN SINCE THE REFORMATION
Palmerston, during his ten years as Prime Minister (1855-
1865), employed his cousin Lord Shaftesbury as his ' bishop-
maker,' and the result was that good men of all parties in
the Church were chosen and promotion no longer depended
on social or political influence.
Another and less obviously good result of the Oxford
movement was the so-called ' ritualistic controversy ' which
raged throughout the last half of the century. The Oxford
leaders had concentrated on doctrine and concerned them-
selves very little with ritual, but it was inevitable that
revival of Catholic doctrines should lead to a revival of
Catholic ceremonial. The extremer section of the Evan-
gelical party were strongly hostile and instituted a series of
prosecutions of ritualistic clergy. Serious difficulties were
involved. Firstly, many of the prosecuted clergy denied
the authority of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council
(which was the supreme authority in such cases), to pass
judgment on them, since the court was a State-made institu-
tion. Secondly, the ' Ornaments Rubric,' that is to say,
the directions for the proper ordering of services contained
in the Prayer Book, were found on examination to be am-
biguous and confused. Among the bishops there was great
division of opinion, and many, even if they disliked rituaHstic
practices, were unwilling to drive out of the Church some of
its most energetic and devoted clergy.
In the long run the ritualists gained their point, and the
result should not be regretted even by those who are not in
sympathy with them. Good clergy are never too common,
and the Elizabethan plan of finding room in the Church for
diversities of opinion and practice on minor points is the
sound rule, especially for a Church whose ideal is to be a
national institution. Nor should the long controversy itself
be entirely regretted. Keen controversy, even if it become
occasionally bitter, has its value. We have seen how the
enormous claims of Hildebrand on behalf of the Papacy,
though impossible of realisation, played a great part in
THE VICTORIAN AGE 275
educating the mind of the Middle Ages. In the same way,
the ritualistic controversies of the Victorian Age, though
they may have shocked and disgusted some, brought many
also to take a keen interest in the history, traditions, and
practices of the Church.
So much may fairly be said. But the whole controversy
showed the lamentable inability of the Church to speak with
a living voice on a disputed point. The questions at issue
had to be decided by antiquarian research into the meaning
of statutes and rubrics three centuries old, and perhaps even
to the most vigorous and learned controversialists it may
sometimes have occurred to wonder whether this was the
right method of meeting the spiritual needs of the nineteenth
century. The doctrine of the verbal inspiration of Elizabethan
ecclesiastical legislation is open to all the same objections
as the doctrine of the verbal inspiration of the Bible.
(iii) The " Christian Socialists.'^ Both of the two parties
that in the Victorian period divided the religious energy of
the Church between them, the Evangelicals and the Oxford
movement, were lamentably indifferent to the crying social
evils of English industrial life. Among the Evangelicals
Lord Shaftesbury was quite an exception. The majority
held that *' God made some men poor just as He made some
men black : Scripture guaranteed that poverty and blackness
were alike immutable : the Christian was no more concerned
with the white man's hovel or wages than with the Ethiopian's
skin : his duty was to bring to white and black alike the
blessed news of salvation from sin and of a glorious im-
mortality for those that believe ... Of the hopelessness of
working on purely individualistic lines he, in common with
the general thought of his time, had no understanding
whatever." ^ The Oxford leaders, on the other hand, were
not merely blind to the need of social reform ; they were
often positively hostile to it as being a part of that liberalism
^ Raven, Christian Socialism, p. 10.
276 GREAT BRITAIN SINCE THE REFORMATION
which they regarded as the enemy of the Faith. Newman,
quite near the end of his life, said that he *' had never con-
sidered social questions in their relation to faith and had
always looked upon the poor as objects for compassion and
benevolence."
To-day it is recognised that the Church must try not only
to train up Christian individuals but to secure that the
relations of man with man are based on Christian principles :
the former aim is the end, but it can never be reached unless
the latter aim is also pursued unflinchingly. The group of
men who first emphasised this idea within the Church boldly
took for themselves in 1848 the name of " Christian
Socialists." At that date Socialism was a name even more
dreaded by the respectable than it is to-day. It was associ-
ated with the blood-stained riots that had accompanied the
suppression of the socialistic experiment of National Work-
shops in Paris in the spring of that year. The only con-
spicuous English Socialist hitherto, Robert Owen, had, by
an unfortunate coincidence, been also a keen opponent of
Christianity. The Christian Socialists, however, were
determined to rescue Socialism from its ill-repute and to
show that properly understood it meant simply the applica-
tion of Christian principles to industrial organisation. The
key-note of Christianity was love : the key-note of Socialism,
as they understood it, was co-operation in place of competi-
tion, and co-operation is the application of the spirit of love
to the organisation of industry.
The four leading figures in the movement, two laymen and
two clergymen, were all remarkable men. The brains of the
movement, so far as practical organisation was concerned,
was John Ludlow, a barrister who had been educated in
France and was in touch with the French Socialist leaders.
The other layman was Thomas Hughes, soon afterwards
famous as the author of Tom Brown's Schooldays, himself an
ideal specimen of the ' typical public school man.' Of the two
clergymen, Charles Kingsley was the most effective spokes-
THE VICTORIAN AGE 277
man of the movement, a vigorous radical country parson,
whose pamphlet Cheap Clothes and Nasty is a thorough
exposure of the evils of sweated labour. Its lesson was
afterwards expanded in Alton Locke, the autobiography of
a Cockney tailor poet, with which Kingsley won his reputa-
tion as a novelist.
But the man whom they all revered as their leader was
Frederick Denison Maurice, professor of Divinity at King's
College, London, and chaplain of Lincoln's Inn. Maurice
is in many ways the most attractive and in spirit the most
' modern ' of the religious leaders of England in the Victorian
Age. While the Evangelicals were enslaved by an over-
literal interpretation of Biblical texts, and the Oxford leaders
by an over-dogmatic interpretation of doctrines, so that both
parties assailed with unchristian vehemence other Christians
who disagreed with them on these points, Maurice ever kept
his mind focused on the spirit of Christ Himself and sought
fellowship with all who shared that spirit, however different
the forms in which they expressed it. It is to Maurice more
than to any other leader in the Church that we owe our
deliverance from the appalling doctrine that God (whom we
believe to be the God of Love) will condemn sinners to
eternal punishment in Hell. For his unorthodox views on
this and other subjects he was deprived of his professorship
in 1853. Unfortunately Maurice was not a good leader.
His literary style was difficult and confused, and in practical
affairs his humility and his gift for seeing with painful clearness
the difficulties and objections in the way of any particular
course, made him hesitating and irresolute.
In 1848 the group started a weekly paper called Politics
for the People. In its first leading article they write :
" Politics have been separated from Christianity ; religious
men have supposed their only business is with the world to
come ; political men have declared that the present world
is governed on entirely different principles from that . . .
But Politics for the People cannot be separated from Religion
278 GREAT BRITAIN SINCE THE REFORMATION
. . . The world is governed by God ; this is the rich man's
warning : this is the poor man's comfort."
In the course of the six following years (1848- 1 854) they
promoted and supervised a series of experimental Associa-
tions in a variety of trades — tailors, builders, shoemakers.
The workers elected their managers, and profits were devoted
in various ways to the benefit of the associated workers
instead of going to employers or capitalist shareholders. The
Associations were, in fact, minute ' toy-models ' of the
National Guilds, advocated as the ideal future industrial
organisation by Guild Sociahsts to-day.
All these practical undertakings failed, and for a variety
of reasons. The workers were uneducated and inexperienced,
mere children compared with the Trade Unionists of the
twentieth century : the one great Trade Union of that
period, the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, began to take
a friendly interest, but was in 1852 absorbed in the first great
English strike, after which it had no funds or energy to
spare : also, the Christian Sociahsts themselves lacked
economic knowledge and experience. There was not a
single business man of importance among them.
It is easy to say the movement failed. It is easy to point
to mistakes and absurdities in the methods and utterances
of its leaders. The refusal of Maurice and Kingsley to
support the great Engineers' Strike of 1852 will seem to many
to be industrial * pacifism ' of the most futile description.
None the less, some failures are worth more than successes.
The " Christian Sociahsts " lit a candle which has not been
put out. Ever since their failure there have been more and
more professed Churchmen who, whether they call them-
selves Socialists or not, have realised that Christianity and
Politics cannot be kept in separate compartments, and that
it is part of the work of the Church to protest against every
form of social injustice and to take its stand on the economic
and political battlefield where the fight against social injustice
has to be fought. The task in which they temporarily failed
THE VICTORIAN AGE 279
was taken up again forty years later by the Christian Social
Union, and is carried on by the Industrial Christian Fellowship.
After the failure of their experiments, the Christian
Socialists turned to education and founded the Working
Men's College in North London, which has lasted ever since
and done good work. They had made a gallant frontal
attack; and after its failure they rightly turned to the
slower and less exciting but surer methods of education.
(iv) Nonconformity. The Nonconformists or Dissenters
are the members of the Protestant Churches who at various
times and for various reasons have spht off from the
Established Church. This history has already noticed the
chief occasions of these separations. They are three in
number. The earHest Nonconformists were the Sectaries or
extremer Puritans who left the Church of England as early
as Elizabeth's reign. They were followed by a far larger
body when the Puritans in general left the Church after the
Restoration. Lastly came the secession of the followers of
Wesley more than a hundred years later.
To-day the Nonconformists are about equal in numbers
with the Church of England, so far as England and Wales
are concerned : but if we take into account the whole
Enghsh-speaking world in the British Empire and the
United States, the Nonconformists are at least four times as
numerous as members of the AngHcan Church in England
and abroad. The Nonconformists are divided into a very
large number of separate Churches, Presbyterians, Con-
gregationalists. Baptists, Wesleyan Methodists, Primitive
Methodists, etc., but on the whole these divisions 'do not
now mark differences of rehgious outlook. Indeed, it may
be said that in the Nonconformist world there is variety
of organisation combined with unity of religious outlook,
while in the Church of England there is unity of organisation
combined with variety of religious outlook. All Noncon-
formists are essentially Protestant, whereas the Church of
28o GREAT BRITAIN SINCE THE REFORMATION
England is divided between Protestant and Catholic, the
Evangelical tradition and the Oxford movement tradition.
The rehgion of the bulk of the Nonconformists ^ is not
markedly different from that of the Evangelicals. It is a
Bible-rehgion rather than a Church-rehgion. They em-
phasise the emotional appeal of Christianity to the individual
soul. They stand by Luther's doctrine that ' all believers
are priests ' and regard their ministers as fellow-workers and
helpers, but not as inheritors by ordination of a special
divine privilege. The question on which they differ from
the Evangelicals is political rather than religious. They are
opposed to the very idea of an Established Church. " They
believe," writes a leading Nonconformist, " that it is contrary
to the very genius of Christianity that it should require the
countenance and support of the State, and they beheve that
the State connexion is a real hindrance to the spiritual
development of the Church. They know that this view is
shared by many Anglicans, and they feel with them that
in advocating disestablishment they are acting in the highest
interests both of religion and of the Church itself."
The external history of Nonconformity during the Victorian
Age is an important chapter in the history of the growth of
toleration. The Toleration Act of 1689 had given the Non-
conformists the right to worship after their own fashion, but
it had given them nothing else. At the beginning of the
nineteenth century they were still unable to hold any public
ofhce, to enter Oxford and Cambridge Universities, to be
married in their own churches or buried according to their
own rites, and they had to pay church rates for the main-
tenance of the parish church. As always happens when a
group of people are unjustly treated, they were also suspected
of disloyalty to the government that treated them unjustly,
and of harbouring ' revolutionary ' ideas, even though, as has
^ Exceptions are the Quakers (see p. 247), the Unitarians, and
some small sects whose outlook is more characteristic of the seven-
teenth than of the twentieth century.
THE VICTORIAN AGE 281
been shown already, the influence of ' chapel ' in the new
centres of industry was on the whole unfavourable to the
growth of the ' revolutionary ' Trade Unions. It was a great
scandal to many Churchmen that Nonconformists were
allowed to co-operate with the Evangelicals in the work of
the Bible Society, founded m 1804 for missionary purposes.
The story of the removal of these disabilities one by one
by a series of Acts of Parliament covers the period from 1828,
the date of the repeal of the Test Act, to 1880, the date of
the Burials Act. The only grievance of this character that
now remains is in connexion with elementary education, in
that Nonconformists have to support, as ratepayers, ' Church
schools ' in which the doctrines of the Church of England
are taught. The difficulty of removing this grievance lies
in the fact that the schools in question were originally built,
and are still maintained so far as the building fabric is
concerned, by the Church of England, and it seems almost
impossible to redress the grievance of the Nonconformists
without inflicting another grievance in some form or other
on the members of the Established Church. The problem is
further complicated by the fact that there are also a certain,
though much smaller, number of schools that were built and
are still maintained, as regards the fabric, by Nonconformists
and Roman Catholics. During the years 1 906-1 908 the
Liberal Government made a determined effort to find a
solution that would satisfy all sides. They failed, and since
then the question has, very wisely, been dropped out of
controversial politics.
Owing to their position Nonconformists have been as
closely associated with the Liberal party as the Established
Church with the Conservatives. In their efforts to redress
their own grievances they have helped on many other good
causes besides their own. Daniel O'Connell, the great Irish
' Liberator,' publicly testified to the debt which Roman
Catholics owed to the Nonconformists in helping to bring
about Catholic Emancipation in 1829, and they were also the
282 GREAT BRITAIN SINCE THE REFORMATION
backbone of the agitation for the Reform Bill of 1832, which
enfranchised the Nonconformist ' lower-middle ' classes.
The Liberal Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, said: "I
know the Dissenters. They gave us the emancipation
of the slave. They gave us the Reform Bill. They gave us
Free Trade. And they will give us the abolition of Church
Rates." And Lord Palmerston said : " In the long run
English politics will follow the consciences of the Dissenters."
Neither of these Premiers was a Nonconformist.
Nonconformity has often been criticised on the ground
that its main idea has been negative rather than constructive,
namely, opposition*to the Established Church. This seems
no more reasonable than to criticise, let us say, the Poles of
the pre-War period on the ground that their main idea was
opposition to Germany and Russia. We can only condemn
the Nonconformists for opposition if we regard their
grievances as unreasonable. None the less, there is no doubt
that their religious life suffered from being too much pre-
occupied wuth political grievances, and the removal of the
grievances has benefited them in an inward as well as in an
outward sense. The ' opposition ' habit of mind is dying
out. The tendency to drop the words ' Nonconformists '
and ' Dissenters,' and to speak of themselves rather as " the
Free Churches " is a good sign.
Two of the most remarkable Nonconformist leaders of the
Victorian Age were Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892) and
General Booth (1829-1912). Spurgeon was the most popular
preacher of the nineteenth century. To find his parallel we
must go back to Wesley and Whitefield. At the age of
twenty-two he was already preaching to congregations of
from seven to ten thousand, and his influence continued
unabated for more than thirty years. His headquarters was
the Metropolitan Tabernacle, London. On one occasion he
preached to twenty-four thousand people in the Crystal
Palace. He preached extempore, and the sermons, taken
down in shorthand for publication, were sold " by tons,"
THE VICTORIAN AGE 283
and have been translated into many languages. Spurgeon
was not at all a well-educated man and his ideas on such
subjects as the interpretation of the Bible belonged to a
by-gone age; but he was clear, forcible, simple, highly
emotional, and overflowing with humanity and humour.
General Booth succeeded in carrying Christian enthusiasm
into realms of vice, poverty, and ignorance, where it had never
penetrated before. His work had much of the quaUty of that
of the early Friars. The Salvation Army, founded under its
present name in 1878, but originating in the experiment of
the " Hallelujah Band " at Walsall fifteen years earlier,
expresses the idea of " the Church mihtant here on earth "
in a dramatic form. Like all original religious geniuses
Booth had his share of persecution. A parody of his organisa-
tion called " The Skeleton Army " was organised to break
up his meetings, and for many years (in the l88o's) Booth's
followers were subjected to fine and imprisonment for breach
of the peace. Soon, however, he received that sincerest form
of flattery which is imitation, and the Church Army was
founded to carry on work on similar lines on behalf of the
Established Church. Booth, like Wesley, combined with
his missionary gifts an unusual degree of skill in practical
organisation. It is as yet too soon to say how well the
organisation he founded will be able to carry on when the
impetus his own personality gave it has declined.
(v) Faith and Science. The Victorian Age witnessed an
immense advance in all the sciences. The mere machinery
of life was transformed out of all knowledge by the intro-
duction of railways, telegraphy, and so forth : — that is well
known, and it is not, from the standpoint of rehgion, impor-
tant. What is important from the standpoint of religion is
that science at the same time transformed our habits of
thought. The result was what is sometimes called " the
conflict of religion and science." It would have been better
if it had been called " the conflict of churchmen and
284 GREAT BRITAIN SINCE THE REFORMATION
scientists," for there is no real conflict between true science
and true religion, and the quarrels that arose were due to
churchmen on one side and scientists on the other failing to
realise where the boundary line between science and religion
lay. It must also be admitted that the Church was more to
blame than the scientists for the contentions that arose.
Science in the widest sense means the growing body of
organised knowledge about jnaterial things. By material
things we mean not only lifeless substances, like the subject-
matter of chemistry, but all that can be apprehended
through the senses : thus the human body is subject-
matter for science and the human mind also in its physical
aspects : and a document written by a human being is
material of scientific knowledge just as much as a fossil.
Science is concerned with what happened at the battle of
Waterloo just as much as with what happened at an eruption
of Vesuvius.
Religion, on the other hand, in its widest sense, is a belief
in the existence of non-material (i.e. spiritual) forces or
personalities with which it is possible for men to establish
contact, through prayer or otherwise. Christian religion
involves, of course, much more than this : it involves
beliefs as to the character of the Divine Person, and the
belief that a particular man, Jesus of Nazareth, was Him-
self the Divine Person in human guise.
It ought to be clear at once from the two preceding para-
graphs of definition that there is no contradiction between
any particular piece of scientific knowledge about material
things and religious belief, which is not concerned with
material things. How then did these conflicts arise } They
arose because each party tried to apply its arguments out-
side their proper sphere, scientists laying down the law about
spiritual things and Churchmen about material things.
The mistake of the men of science was on these lines.
Scientific studies disposed a good many people to believe
that no knowledge lies outside the sphere of science, that all
THE VICTORIAN AGE 285
talk of spiritual things is moonshine, that the universe is a
vast mechanism, that every fact is capable of a materialistic
explanation. We need not consider here whether this view,
which is called * materialism,' is true or not ; but it is im-
portant to notice that * science,' properly understood, does
not, and does not pretend to, prove it true. ' Science ' says :
— " My business is with material facts " : it does not say : —
" There are no facts except material facts." Materialism is
not scientific knowledge. It is a theory, a faith, a kind of
anti-Christian religion, and as between it and Christianity,
science is neutral, having nothing to do with the matter.
The mistake of the Churchmen was somewhat as follows.
Christianity has a long history behind it, and its Scriptures
date from a time when science barely existed. Now the
purpose of Christianity, as of any other religion, is practical :
its aim is not so much to put forward a certain theory as to
form and encourage a certain type of character : not to
analyse God, but to love Him. With this practical purpose
in view, this purpose which involves appealing to the emotions
rather than to the intellect, religion will always make use of
material images to express its idea of God. It will speak of
God as if He were a man : it will describe His actions as if
they were human actions. But as soon as we begin to
describe God's action in the material sphere, even though our
real purpose is to show the nature not of material but of
spiritual things, we enter the sphere of science, about which
we must accept what the scientific experts tell us.
A single familiar example will suffice. In the first chapter
of Genesis we have an account of how God created the
world. We believe as Christians that God revealed Himself
to the leaders of the Israelites in so far as they were capable
of understanding Him (for to no finite human being can
there be a complete revelation of the Infinite Godhead), and
we find in that first chapter a great spiritual truth, namely,
that God created the world for the sake of man and from love
for man. But the author of tliat chapter, being ignorant of
286 GREAT BRITAIN SINCE THE REFORMATION
science as we understand it, gives an account of the ynaterial
order of creation which modern science shows to be quite
wrong. Two notable books of the early Victorian period
proved this more conclusively than before, Vestiges of
Creation (1844), by Robert Chambers, and The Origin
of Species (1859), by the naturalist Charles Darwin.
Churchmen to-day have accepted the scientists' accounts of
these things, but most Churchmen of sixty years ago took
their stand on the belief that every word of the Bible was
true, whether it dealt with scientific or religious topics, and
that therefore geology and evolution must be false. No
wonder then that scientific men confused Christianity with
its mistaken defenders and said Christianity must be false.
When The Origin of Species appeared, Bishop Wilberforce,
who knew nothing about science, reviewed the book in the
Quarterly Review and believed he had demolished arguments
which he regarded as ' atheistical.' In the following year
Wilberforce attempted to debate the point with the biologist
Huxley at the meeting of the British Association. Naturally,
he was badly worsted in argument, and, as a modern Church
historian says, " his attempt to destroy Darwinian theory
by theological weapons damaged the current theology more
than it damaged the theory."
During the same period historical science was doing even
more than the physical sciences to change men's habits of
mind in matters closely concerning religion. The historical
study of the Bible, which is sometimes called ' higher criti-
cism,' though almost entirely carried out by religious men,
was reaching conclusions which seemed obnoxious and even
' atheistical ' to those who did not study the matter them-
selves.^ It was found that most of the books of the Bible
were not written contemporaneously with the events they
record ; that as scientific history they are inaccurate and
misleading. We can now see that all this scientific historical
work has made the Bible far more valuable, far more inter-
^ See Part I., ch. i of this book.
THE VICTORIAN AGE 287
esting, far more intelligible to us than it was before. But it
upset the old doctrine of 'verbal inspiration,' the belief that
every word of the Bible was Hterally and scientifically true,
and so the critics were treated as Darwin was treated, and
regarded as enemies of Christianity.
So there was warfare not only between the Church and
the scientists, but also between those within the Church who
held obstinately to the old views and those others within
the Church whose belief in Christianity was more robust, and
who held that the results of science must be welcomed and
felt confident that they would not and could not injure
religion. These latter were known as ' Broad Churchmen,'
and they were opposed both by the High Church or Oxford
party and by the Evangelicals. It is not necessary to
follow the controversy through all its stages. Two famous
incidents may be mentioned, both of which occurred shortly
after the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species.
In i860, a volume called Essays and Reviews was published.
It consisted of a series of articles by different writers, two of
the most notable being Temple, Headmaster of Rugby and
afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, and Jowett, afterwards
Master of Balliol College, Oxford. The aim of the book was
to promote free discussion of religious topics, about which
differences of opinion, though known to exist, were being
suppressed by Churchmen who feared to give offence to one
another by open discussion. When the book appeared
Frederic Harrison, a well-known Positivist, i.e. one who
believed that science in itself contained the clue to all religion,
welcomed the book as showing that its authors had already
gone half-way along the road from Christianity to infidelity,
and invited them to step on boldly and cover the rest of the
journey. This misrepresentation at once stirred Bishop
Wilberforce, who attacked the book as vigorously as he had
attacked Darwin the year before. Others followed. New-
man's old ally, Pusey, joined hands with the Evangelical Lord
Shaftesbury in the onslaught. The bishops met at Fulham
288 GREAT BRITAIN SINCE THE REFORMATION
Palace and issued an official circular to the clergy condemning
the book, and hinting that the opinions expressed in it were
inconsistent with the profession of faith enjoined upon the
clergy by the Thirty-nine Articles. Two of the essayists
were prosecuted before the ecclesiastical courts and were
condemned, but the sentences were reversed in the Judicial
Committee of the Privy Council. To-day the book is for-
gotten : it has played its part in broadening men's minds
and better books on similar lines have taken its place. But
if any one were to pull down a dusty copy of Essays and
Reviews from the shelves of an old library to-day, he would
be amazed that such moderate and cautious views should
ever have produced such a storm.
Two years later (1862) Bishop Colenso published a book
called The Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua critically
examined. Colenso was a brilliant mathematician who had
been made Bishop of Natal, in which diocese he had done
excellent work on behalf of the native population. His book
is concerned almost entirely with matters that are now
regarded as the legitimate sphere of scientific criticism ; he
stated that only a small portion, if any, of the Pentateuch
(first five books of the Old Testament, described in the Bible
as ' Books of Aloses ') can have been written in the Mosaic
age : that the historical existence of both Moses and Joshua
is doubtful ; that these books are compiled from two different
and often contradictory sources ; that Deuteronomy cannot
be earlier than the reign of Manasseh, and that most of the
rest of the legislation, e.g. the book of Leviticus, cannot be
earlier than the Captivity. On nearly every one of these
points — all, in fact, except the historical existence of Moses
and Joshua — all modern students agree with Colenso, and
his statement which gave so much offence at the time — " The
Bible is not God's Word : but assuredly God's Word will be
heard in the Bible by all who will humbly and devoutly
listen for it " — is merely a rather vague way of stating a
fact which is now generally accepted, namely, that the Bible
THE VICTORIAN AGE 289
contains inspired truths of religion but is not * verbally
inspired,' nor authoritative as regards non-religious subjects.
In 1863, however, the Church, led by the bishops, was
unanimous in its condemnation of the book. The English
bishops begged Colenso to resign his bishopric so as to
avoid further scandal. Colenso refused and his own superior,
the Bishop of Capetown, took measures to deprive him of
his office. Legal difficulties made this impossible and, so far
as the South African Church was concerned, the quarrel was
only terminated by the death of Colenso in 1883.
The failure to realise the true relations of religion and
science has been the greatest misfortune of the Church during
the last half century. Again and again the Church has
attempted to defend indefensible positions. Thus it has
created in many minds the impression that religion itself
is indefensible and opposed to truth. Even to-day many of
the clergy, who understand the position well enough, are
unwilling to express in the pulpit the views they hold in
private from fear of offending earnest and worthy but
narrow-minded and ignorant sections of their congregations.
But Christianity has nothing to fear from the truth and
everything to gain from it. To-day, as in Our I,ord's day,
the worst enemy of religion is hypocrisy.
(vi) The Poetry of Robert Browning (18 12- 1889). At a
time when the official leaders of the Church were conducting
so unskilfully their disastrous controversy with the scientists,
one of the greatest influences keeping thoughtful and earnest
people true to the Christian faith was the poetry of Browning.
Bishop Westcott, one of the greatest of Victorian bishops in
scholarship, in saintliness, and in influence over men, is said
to have declared that the three writers to whom he owed most
were St. John, Origen, and Browning ; and a bishop of our
own day has made for himself a similar list, except that he
substitutes Plato for Origen. Many people regard Browning as
in certain important respects, particularly in his deep insight
290 GREAT BRITAIN SINCE THE REFORMATION
into human nature, the greatest EngHsh poet since Shake-
speare. Since the days of Milton our greater poets had
hardly been Christian at all in any strongly defined sense,^
and our most popular writers of religious poetry, Keble,
Wesley and others, had certainly not been ' great.' But
here, in Browning, was a poet of the first order with an
unusually wide range, a master of love poetry, a student of
the Renaissance, a critic of music and of painting, who
asserted again and again that in the Christian Faith alone
could be found the solution of life's mysteries.
Three poems may serve as examples. The first is called
Cleon. Cleon is an imaginary Greek pagan poet and philo-
sopher of the first century a.d. He has just received gifts
and congratulations from Protus, the tyrant of a neighbouring
state : the poet, s^ys Protus, is greater than the statesman
because the work of the statesman is for his own generation
only, whereas the poet * lives for ever ' in his works. Not so,
says Cleon :
" Thou diest while I survive ?
Say rather that my fate is deadlier still,
In this, that every day my sense of joy
Grows more acute, my soul (intensified
By power and insight) more enlarged, more keen ;
While every day my hairs fall more and more,
My hand shakes, and the heavy years increase —
The horror quickening still from year to year.
The consummation coming past escape
When I shall know most, and yet least enjoy —
When all my works wherein I prove my worth,
Being present still to mock me in men's mouths.
Alive still, in the praise of such as thou,
I, I the feeling, thinking, acting man,
^ Wordsworth is a partial exception, but he only began to vrrite
on definitely Christian lines after he had ceased to write great poetry.
Another partial exception is Blake, who might be defined as a great
Christian heretic. Apart from Milton and Blake and Browning, our
only Christian religious poets who approach or attain greatness are
Vaughan and Crashaw, poets of the Stuart period ; Newman ; and,
at the end of the Victorian Age, Francis Thompson. It is interest-
ing to notice that the last three named were Roman Catholics.
THE VICTORIAN AGE 291
The man who loved his life so overmuch,
Sleep in my urn. It is so horrible,
I dare at times imagine to my need
Some future state, revealed to us by Zeus,
Unlimited in capability
For joy, as this is in desire for joy.
But no !
Zeus has not yet revealed it ; and, alas.
He must have done so, were it possible ! "
Here we have the thoughtful pagan who has reasoned out
for himself the idea that there must be a future life, to
justify this one. Another poem is called An Epistle con-
taining the strange medical experience of Karshish, the Arab
physician. Here we have the opposite case of a simple man
who has never speculated upon life or immortality, but
suddenly runs up against the evidence for it and is over-
whelmed. Karshish is a travelling physician : he has just
reached a village called Bethany, so he says in the report he
is writing to Abib, his master in medicine. Here he has
come across a very curious kind of village idiot, who had had
a kind of epileptic fit many years before, and has ever since
been talking nonsense about the man who cured him.
" It is one Lazarus, a Jew."
The above is the medical explanation, but Karshish cannot
restrain himself from describing, with many apologies, the
strange " hallucinations " of this " idiot." He excuses him-
self for wasting Abib's valuable time :
" And after all, our patient Lazarus
Is stark mad : should we count on what he says ?
Perhaps not : though in writing to a leech
'Tis well to keep back nothing of a case."
At the very end of the poem the truth breaks out. Karshish
is converted in spite of himself.
" The very God ! think, Abib ; dost thou think ?
So, the All-great were the All-loving too ! "
292 GREAT BRITAIN SINCE THE REFORMATION
The third poem, Saul, is the tale of how the shepherd poet
David was brought to Saul and by his singing charmed away
Saul's evil spirit. What did David sing ? He himself tells
over the story on the following day. First he sang all the
familiar incidents of life, the shepherds' song, the reapers'
song, the marriage song, the burial song, the priests' song,
and gathered them all up in a great psalm in praise of natural
human life. ** Oh ! the wild joys of living ! " Then he
passes beyond the mere span of mortal life and depicts Saul's
immortal fame as the first of Israel's kings. But all, it
seemed, in vain.
" Then first was I 'ware
That he sat, as I say, with my head just above his vast knees
Which were thrust out on each side around me, like oak-roots
which please
To encircle a lamb when it slumbers. I looked up to know
If the best I could do had brought solace ; he spoke not, but slow
Lifted up the hand slack at his side, till he laid it with care
Soft and grave, but in mild settled will, on my brow : thro' my hair
The large fingers were pushed, and he bent back my head, with
kind power —
All my face back, intent to peruse it, as men do a flower.
Thus held he me there with his great eyes that scrutinised mine — ■
And, oh, all my heart how it loved him ! "
And that was David's inspiration. Suddenly he saw in a
flash that if he loved Saul and would do simply anything for
him, then God must love all mankind and be ready to suffer
for us.
" Would I suffer for him that I love ? So would'st thou — so wilt
thou !
He who did most shall bear most ; the strongest shall stand the
most weak;
'Tis the weakness in strength that I cry for ! my flesh that I seek
In the Godhead ! I seek and I find it. O Saul, it shall be
A Face like my face that receives thee ; a Man like to me.
Thou shalt love and be loved by for ever ; a Hand like this hand
Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee ! See the Christ
stand ! "
CHAPTER XXI
SCOTLAND
(i) General Characteristics.
THE history of the Scottish Church since the Reforma-
tion is strikingly unhke that of the EngHsh. In
England the Reformation, on its political side, was
carried through by the government, and consequently the
Established Church has enjoyed the advantages and also
suffered from the drawbacks of an institution under govern-
ment patronage. In Scotland the Reformation was a rebel
movement, and the Church a national democratic organisa-
tion in almost continuous opposition to the government from
its foundation in 1560 down to 1707, when it obtained
recognition as the Established Church of Scotland in the
Act of Union. Since 1707 it has been, like the Church of
England, an Established Church, but its different traditions
have stamped upon it a permanently different character, and
it remains an independent self-governing body. Certain
elements of State-control were, it is true, introduced after
the Union, but these, though insignificant compared with the
State-control accepted by the Church of England, were
always resented by the best elements in the Scottish Church
and were the cause of most of the ' secessions ' which have
led to the formation of ' free ' Churches in Scotland.
A very rough parallel from the industrial world may make
this clearer. The Church of England, with its bishops
appointed by the Prime Minister and its affairs controlled by
293
294 GREAT BRITAIN SINCE THE REFORMATION
Parliament, may be compared to a civil service department,
for example, the Board of Education and the schools under
its control. The ' Kirk ' (to employ the old Scots word) in
its rebel period of nearly a hundred and fifty years, may be
compared to a Trade Union, a self-governing organisation
recognised indeed by law, but existing mainly for the purpose
of defending its interests against the government and against
classes normally in alliance with the government. The
Estabhshed Church of Scotland since the Union, again, may
be compared with a nationalised industry as the term is now
understood, or a ' National Guild,' an industry in which the
Trade Union organisation ceases to be an ' opposition ' and
takes over the government of the industry with the approval
of and in collaboration with the State.
It is interesting to note that the Church of England to-day
shows signs of moving cautiously in the direction of the
Scottish Church and introducing an element of Presby-
terianism ^ or democratic control by its lay members. The
Enabling Act of 1919 and the elected parochial councils
established under that Act mark a beginning, but the move-
ment has not yet gone far enough for its importance to be
judged. (See Chapter XXIII., Section ii.)
(ii) The Kirk and the Stuarts (i 560-1 707). The Scottish
Reformation was carried through with surprising sudden-
ness, completeness, and unanimity. Practically it was the
work of a single year, 1560. It is true that during the
previous thirty years the doctrines of the Reformers had been
preached, notably by George Wishart, the first of the small
band of Scottish Protestant martyrs. None the less, in
1558, Scotland was a nominally Catholic country ruled by a
French Catholic Regent, Mary of Guise, on behalf of her
1 The word is here used in its strict sense, meaning ' eldership,'
and suggesting a particular political organisation. No allusion is
intended to the religious doctrines which are usually associated with
the Presbyterian organisation but are not necessarily connected with
it.
SCOTLAND 295
daughter Mary Queen of Scots, then in France ; and in
1560, the French had gone and Scotland was virtually a
Protestant Republic with John Knox, recently returned
from Geneva and Calvin, as its * President.' Scotland at
that date was a small and poor country, with a population
of only about half a million. And when we speak of Scotland
during this period we should more correctly speak of the
Lowlands. The larger northern half of the country, the
Highlands, inhabited by wild, Gaelic-speaking clansmen,
counted scarcely more than the ' wild West ' counted in
Canada and the United States before the days of railways.
For the next two hundred years the Highlands remained
largely outside ' the Kirk,' and were the source of picturesque,
heroic, and futile rebellions in the Royalist cause from the
days of Mary to the days of her great-great-great-grandson,
' bonnie Prince Charlie.'
In Scotland, as elsewhere, the Reformation was the work
of an unnatural but unavoidable alliance between those who
wanted pure religion and those who wanted pillage. Nowhere,
probably, was the condition of the Church more scandalous
in the period before the Reformation than in Scotland. The
Church owned more than half the wealth of the country, but
rich benefices were purchased for money by nobles or given
to the king's bastards, and these in turn dilapidated them in
favour of their own children, legitimate or illegitimate. Thus
the great pillage had already begun under the old order, and
to many of the nobles the Reformation was simply a device
for throwing the bishoprics and abbeys on to the open market
at low prices. When the Scots Parliament of 1560 enacted
the new Confession of Faith drawn up by Knox and his
colleagues, and abolished the Roman control and the ancient
worship, the religious leaders also demanded that the tithe
and the whole of the property of the Church should be
made available for the support of the ministry, the schools
and the poor ; but this was dismissed as a ' devout
imagination.'
296 GREAT BRITAIN SINCE THE REFORMATION
In this financial struggle victory went, as might be ex-
pected, to the Mammon worshippers, but they disguised their
victory under one of the oddest hypocrisies in religious
history. The Reformation had swept away prelacy (i.e.
bishops) along with popery, but certain respectable argu-
ments could be advanced in favour of the restoration of
bishops. It would bring the Church of Scotland into closer
conformity with the Church of England, its natural ally
against the forces of Rome, and it would give the Kirk
representation in Parliament. None the less, the strictly
religious held that prelacy was contrary to the Word of God.
A compromise was arranged in 1572. Mary Queen of Scots
was by then a prisoner in England and Morton, one of the
worst of the Protestant pillagers, was Regent. It was arranged
that bishops should be appointed to the old sees as a tem-
porary expedient, for purposes of supervision until the
organisation of the Kirk was more complete, but that they
should be subject to the authority of the General Assembly
of the Kirk. Appointments were then made, and it was soon
discovered that these bishops were mere conduit-pipes
through whom the wealth of the old Church was transferred
to the nobility. For example, John Douglas was appointed
to St. Andrews, the Scottish equivalent of Canterbury, after
a compact by which he surrendered to Morton the greater
part of the income of the see. These bishops were nick-
named "tulchans," a name given to calf skins stuffed with
straw set up to persuade cows to yield their milk more freely.
Perhaps the Scottish Church did not lose much when it
lost the bulk of its funds. In any case, with or without
adequate funds, churches and schools were spread over
Scotland with unflagging energy. The Scots have long been
about the best educated nation in Europe, and Scottish
education was the gift of the Kirk.
In general, the Kirk was from the first the embodiment
of the Lowland Scots' national character ; often harsh,
narrow, and intolerant, but fired with a terrific energy alike
SCOTLAND 297
in thought and action. A modern Scots Presbyterian,
defending his Church against an Anghcan critic, writes of the
leaders of the first hundred years ^ : — " They were Scotsmen,
and therefore, when they went wrong they did it energetically,
blowing a trumpet before them and defying all the world to
refute them. Yes, and being Scotsmen they had, like our-
selves, the moral and intellectual physiognomy which the
world knows so well ; an ungainly people, shall I say, wearing
our principles in a serious pedantic way, angular, lumbering,
roundabout in our motions, argumentative, inflexible."
In doctrine the Scottish Reformers carried to its extremest
hmits the principle that all truth is to be found in the Bible
literally interpreted, and that whatever is ' unscriptural ' is
wrong. Thus not only Saints' days but the observation of
Christmas and Easter were abolished, and the Communion
was administered sitting round a table, in literal imitation of
the Last Supper. Old and New Testament they revered
alike, and their religious spirit, like that of the English
Puritans, is sometimes nearer to Judaism than to Christianity.
Much of what has already been said of Calvin and Calvinism
(see Chapter XVIL) and of the English Puritans (see Chapter
XVIIL) is apphcable to the Scots, but the Scots brought to
their religion an intellectual energy all their own.
The most distinctive feature of the Scottish Church, and
one to be paralleled neither at Geneva nor in England, is the
Presbyterian system of government applied on a national
scale. Self-government within the Church is the logical
outcome of Luther's doctrine, adopted by all the Reformers,
of ' the spiritual priesthood of all believers.' In details the
system took some time to establish itself in Scotland ; it is
here described in its complete form.
At the base of the organisation is the Congregation of the
parish itself, which appoints the minister. All matters
affecting the spiritual well-being of the parish are entrusted
^ R. Rainy, Three Lectures on the Church of Scotland (in reply to
Dean Stanley).
298 GREAT BRITAIN SINCE THE REFORMATION
to the Kirk-session, consisting of the minister, who is mode-
rator (or chairman) thereof, and the elders, who are chosen,
usually by election, from the communicant members of the
Congregation. The minister alone is responsible for the
actual conduct of public worship. Above the Kirk-session
is the Presbytery, consisting of the ministers of a group of
parishes and one elder elected from each parish. Above
this is the Synod, embracing the equivalent of a diocese,
and above the Synods the General Assembly or Parliament
of the Kirk ; each of these bodies consists of combinations
of ministers and elders. Any complaint against a minister
by his congregation must be brought before the Presbytery.
From the decision of the Presbytery it is possible to appeal
to the Synod and thence to the General Assembly, and, in
practice, if the question of deposition is raised, the case
generally comes up for final decision in this supreme court.
During the long struggle between the Kirk and the Stuarts,
the General Assembly was for long periods extinguished. It
met indeed much more seldom than the English Parliament ;
but it would be a mistake to suppose that Scottish Presby-
terianism was as completely eclipsed as English political
liberties. England had no democratic local government, but
the Scottish Church had, and this maintained its existence
through the worst periods.
Scots are rightly proud of this ancient organisation, and
regard it as the mainstay of their religious life. " Take from
us the freedom of Assemblies," said John Knox, " and you
take from us the Evangel " ; and the modern writer already
quoted says: " Presbyterianism meant a system in which
everyone, and first of all the common man, had his recognised
place, his defined position, his ascertained and guarded privi-
leges, his responsibilities inculcated and enforced, felt himself
a part of a great unity, with a right to care for its welfare
and to guard its integrity . , . When Episcopacy [in England]
shall have trained the common people to care, as those of
Scotland have cared, for the public interest of Christ's
SCOTLAND 299
Church, and to connect that care with their own rehgious
life, as a part and a fruit of it, then it may afford to smile
at the zealous self-defence of Scottish Presbyterianism."
It is impossible here to follow through in detail the story
of that long self-defence. John Knox died in 1572, the
year of the appointment of the first " tulchan " bishops,
and found a worthy successor in Andrew Melville, who
maintained the cause of the Kirk against James VI. (after-
wards James I. of England) until, in 1606, he was summoned
to London, imprisoned in the Tower, and afterwards allowed
to go into exile and die abroad. Melville's position may be
stated in his own words : " I must tell you," he said to James,
" there are two kings and two kingdoms in Scotland ; there
is King James the Head of this Commonwealth ; and there
is Christ Jesus the King of the Church, whose subject James
the Sixth is, and of whose kingdom he is not a king nor a
lord nor a head, but a member." James's religion, on the
other hand, was the Divine Right of Kings, and it is small
wonder that he found, as he told the English Puritans, that
" a Scots presbytery agreeth as well with a monarchy as
God with the devil." Melville's claim is really the claim of
the mediaeval Popes in a new guise.
But it was not till 1637 that Charles I. and Archbishop
Laud attempted to carry the policy of James to its logical
conclusion and to destroy the whole Presbyterian system,
setting up the Anglican system in its place. The intro-
duction of a Prayer Book on English lines was the spark that
fired the explosion. A National Covenant was drawn up,
pledging all who signed it to defend the liberties of the Kirk.
The King bowed before the storm and agreed to hold a
General Assembly of the Kirk at Glasgow, the first for twenty
years. The Assembly abolished Episcopacy : the King's
High Commissioner dissolved the Assembly ; but it con-
tinued to sit and prepared for war.
What followed is well known to readers not only of Scottish
but also of English history. The so-called Bishops' Wars
300 GREAT BRITAIN SINCE THE REFORMATION
(1639- 1 640), in which the army of the Kirk defeated the
King's forces and invaded England, forced the King to
summon the Long Parhament, and gave the Enghsh Puritan
Parhamentarians their chance. The Enghsh Civil War began
in 1642, and at the end of the next year the Scots made a
Solemn League and Covenant ^ v/ith the English Parha-
mentary leaders, under which the latter bound themselves
to estabhsh the Presbyterian system in England. Thus the
Scots retaliated for the attack on their own Church. It was
but the beginning of further troubles. There was no strong
Presbyterian party in England, Cromwell and his army
preferring Independency or Congregationalism, under which
each congregation manages its own affairs unfettered by
central control. In 1645 an Assembly was summoned at
Westminster to create the Enghsh Presbyterian Church. Its
labours were vain so far as England was concerned, but its
famous Shorter Catechism was adopted by the Scottish Church.
But the Scots would not see their treaty torn up without
a struggle. One party within the Kirk allied with the King,
now Cromwell's prisoner, and invaded England, only to be
crushed at Preston. Charles I. was executed, and Charles II.
landed in Scotland and readily accepted the Covenant, just
as he would have committed any other perjury to regain his
throne. There was some point in Cromwell's rebuke when
he told his former Scots allies that the Church of Christ could
not be built with such untempered mortar. So another war
followed : the Scots were defeated at Dunbar and Worcester
(1650, 165 1), and their country conquered and controlled by
an English garrison. Yet Presbyterianism lived on in its
indestructible Kirk-sessions.
After the Restoration Episcopacy was restored and the
General Assembly prohibited. The next thirty years was a
time of persecution, when many atrocities were committed
by both sides.
^ This treaty between English and Scottish parties should not be
confused with the previous National Covenant.
SCOTLAND 301
William of Orange was himself a Dutch Presbyterian, and
after the Revolution the Scots Parliament was allowed to
abolish episcopacy and to restore the proscribed Confession
of Faith. The people in many districts violently ejected
ministers who had made themselves the tools of the bishops
and the previous government : this incident is known as
the *' rabbhng of the curates." Everything was restored
except the General Assembly. Finally, in 1 707, the Act of
Union expressly restored the full rights of the Scottish
Church by providing that each British Sovereign should at
his accession take an oath to maintain " the government,
worship, rights and privileges of the Church of Scotland."
The struggle of a hundred and forty-seven years was over.
(iii) The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The
eighteenth century saw in Scotland as in England a general
lowering of religious vitahty. It was the era of ' Moderatism.'
The Moderates, as the dominant party in the Church were
called, had their good as well as their bad points. They were
free from the narrow-mindedness of Puritanism, which con-
demned so many harmless or excellent amusements, such as
the theatre, and made the observation of Sunday an intolerable
burden to ordinary people and particularly to children ; but
they were, undoubtedly, an indolent and lukewarm set, and the
verdict of Scotland is against them. Their most distinguished
representative was the historian Robertson, who caused scan-
dal by his friendship with the infidel EngUsh historian Gibbon.
There were many reasons for the rise of Moderatism. In
part it was mere reaction from the storms and fanaticisms of
the Covenanting epoch. In part it was the growth of culture.
Scotland emerged from her century of religious passions to
find herself a member of the society of modern European
nations, a backward member with much to learn. Art,
literature, and trade became more interesting than religion.
Thirdly, an Act passed by the more or less Jacobite Parlia-
ment of 1 71 2 restored to their ancient patrons the right of
302 GREAT BRITAIN SINCE THE REFORMATION
nominating ministers to Scottish benefices, thus destroying
an important part of the Presbyterian system, the right of
election by Kirk-sessions. The Kirk did not cease to protest
against this Act, but its most important consequences did
not appear till the nineteenth century.
It was not likely that the Covenanting spirit, which still
survived, would be at ease in the eighteenth century Church,
and in 1732 came the first of a series of ' secessions.' These
seceders, led by Ebenezer Erskine, were in truth men of the
seventeenth century born too late. They protested, not
only against presentation by patrons, but also against the
growth of toleration and the aboHtion of the penal statutes
against witches in defiance of the ' law of God,' which says,
" Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." Other secessions
followed, and also secessions from the seceders themselves,
but they all alike agreed in attacking the principle of a
Church Establishment as illustrated by the evils of the
patronage system.
By far the most important secession occurred in the
middle of the nineteenth century. By this time religious
life had greatly revived and there was in Scotland as in
England a strong Evangelical party. Since 1752 the General
Assembly had established a compromise between Presby-
terianism and the patronage system, whereby the presbytery
was empowered to satisfy itself as to the ' life, learning, and
doctrine ' of the patron's nominee. In 1834, however, the
General Assembly went further and declared it to be a
fundamental law of the Church that no pastor should be
intruded on any congregation contrary to the will of the
people, as ascertained by the vote of the male heads of
families in the parish. Thus the old question of the * two
kingdoms in Scotland,' the Church and the State, on which
James I. had quarrelled with Andrew Melville (see p. 299)
was raised afresh. The Parliament of the Kirk had repu-
diated the Patronage Act of the Parliament of the United
Kingdom. A case of a rejected presentee quickly came, as
SCOTLAND 303
it was bound to do, before the civil courts, and on an appeal
the House of Lords declared that the resolution of the General
Assembly was null and void. A long struggle followed
within the Kirk. At first it was hoped that Parliament would
repeal the Patronage Act. When this hope was disappointed,
a large part of the Church of Scotland preferred to go back
on its former resolution. The rest, however, were prepared
to face the consequences of their action and, at the General
Assembly of 1843, nearly half the members left the Assembly
and formed the Free Church, which with magnificent energy
quickly established itself side by side with the Established
Church in every part of Scotland.
The central figure in the long struggle was Thomas Chalmers
(l 780-1847), one of the greatest characters in Scottish Church
history. He was in many respect a typical Evangelical,
and he tells us that he owed his first real insight into
religion to reading a book by Wilberforce. He was the
first Moderator (or chairman) of the Free Church, but
his services to the Established Church which he left were
almost equally great, for he more than any other single man
gave the victory to the Evangehcals in their struggle against
the domination of the Moderates, and the movement which
culminated in the secession of the Free Church ultimately
led, thirty years later, to the abolition of patronage within
the Established Church.
The Free Church movement coincided in date almost
exactly with the English Oxford movement. Dr. Chalmers
and his followers left the Established Church of Scotland
just two years before Newman left the established Church
of England, and though Newman did not carry most of his
followers with him, there were many at the time who thought
that he would and that the two movements taken together
would demonstrate that Established State Churches were
incompatible with a vivid religious life. But the influence
both of Newman and of Chalmers bore fruit in the State
Churches they had left and falsified these expectations.
304 GREAT BRITAIN SINCE THE REFORMATION
Yet there is a profound difference between the Scottish
and the English controversies, for the Scottish controversy
was concerned with no fundamental religious issue, no
question of Christian doctrine^ but only with a constitutional
issue of Church government.' The fact is that on points of
doctrine the Scottish Christians are, apart from the com-
paratively small Episcopalian and Roman Cathohc bodies,
remarkably well agreed, and it has sometimes been made a
matter of reproach against them that they have fallen into
disunion on apparently trivial points. Their reply would
be that these points are not trivial and that the Scots have
realised more fully than the Churchmen of some other
countries the importance of having a sound constitution in
Church as much as in State. It must also be added that the
Scots have preserved a sense of the unity of the Divine
Church amidst the divisions of their Churches. Their
Churches, in fact, are not rival sects but only rival organisa-
tions. They have been much less liable than Episcopalians
to fall into the error of supposing that members of other
Churches are inferior in the sight of God. Hence the seces-
sions have been followed by reunions. In 1847 most of the
seceding bodies of the eighteenth century combined to form
the United Presbyterian Church, and in 1900 this Church
combined with the Free Church to form the United Free
Church.^ There are now, therefore, two great Churches, the
United Free Church and the Established Church, dividing
Presbyterian Scotland almost equally between them, and
the union of these two Churches seems today (1921) to be on
the verge of accomplishment.
1 This union again brought a Scottish Church into the law courts
-with singular results. It was decided that the Free Church had not,
under the articles of its foundation, the right to combine with the
United Presbyterian Church and that, therefore, the whole of its
property passed from it to the very small minority of its members
that persisted in standing outside the combination. These were
nicknamed the ' Wee Frees.' An Act of Parliament subsequently
^remedied this injustice.
CHAPTER XXII
MISSIONS
THE writer of a short history of England always has
to (or ought to) apologise for the inadequate treat-
ment he has given to the growth of the British
Empire beyond the seas. For the same reason it is impossible
within the scope of this book to give an adequate account
of Christian missions. The subject is a vast one and requires
a book or a series of books to itself. The barest outline is
all that is possible here.
(i) From the Avians to the Jesiiils. In the widest sense the
Church is* itself a missionary society and missionary work
began when St. Peter first preached the gospel on the first
Whitsunday, or, indeed, when Our Lord first spoke in parables
to the villagers of Galilee. If we restrict the word ' mission '
to mean the preaching of the gospel to foreign and less
civilised peoples, missionary work may be said to have begun
when Christians of the Roman Empire first preached to the
barbarians outside its frontier. From this point of view the
first great missionary is Ulfilas (313-383), himself an Arian
heretic, who preached Christianity as he understood it to
the Goths beyond the Danube. He translated the Bible
into Gothic, reducing the barbarous language to literary
form and inventing an alphabet for the purpose.^ The Bible
1 Modern research has thrown doubts on the existence of this
Gothic Bible.
S.R.H. Y
306 GREAT BRITAIN SINCE THE REFORMATION
of Ulfilas is the first literary production in the Teutonic
group of languages to which not only German, but in large
part EngHsh, belongs. The service he thus rendered to
literature and education has been repeated since by hundreds
of missionaries, who have translated the Bible into previously
unwritten languages of Asia, Africa, America, and Austraha.
The great missionary work of the Church during the Dark
Ages was the conversion of Europe. When people speak
of the slowness of missionary progress in Asia and Africa
to-day, they forget that the conversion of Europe took well-
nigh a thousand years, and that in most regions outside
Europe active and continuous missionary work has only
been in progress for a hundred and fifty years or less.
The intercourse with the Mahommedan world, which
sprang up as a result of the Crusades, naturally turned
missionary activity in the direction of Islam. The story of
how St. Francis of Assisi went as a non-combatant missionary
on the Fifth Crusade has already been told. Missionary
work was to be one of the chief undertakings of the new
Orders founded by Francis and Dominic. The greatest of
these missionaries to the Mohammedans was Raymond Lull
(1236- 13 1 5), a Spanish nobleman who entered the Franciscan
Order. Like all great missionaries Lull realised that
missionary work required careful preparation. He bought
an Arab slave that he might learn Arabic, and founded a
monastery where Arabic was taught to prospective mission-
aries. Owing to his efforts professorships of Arabic were
founded at the universities of Paris, Oxford, and Salamanca.
Finally he went to Africa alone at the age of fifty-six, and
after twenty-three years of labour and hardship was stoned
to death at the age of seventy-nine.
Lull had tackled what is still regarded to-day as the hardest
and also the most important of missionary problems, the
conversion of Islam. Meanwhile brilliant prospects were
opening in Asia where the great Mongolian emperors, whose
dominions stretched in the fourteenth century from Russia
MISSIONS 307
to the Pacific coast, welcomed Christian missionaries, and a
long Hne of bishoprics soon stretched itself from Jerusalem
to Pekin. But owing to the difficulties and hardships of
travel combined with the indifference of Christian Europe,
where the mediaeval Church was already entering on its
long decline, these magnificent beginnings were not- followed
up. The Mongolian power fell : a new dynasty in China,
the Mings, excluded foreign religions, and the Ottoman
Turks cut off Christendom from the East and carried the
Moslem faith right into the heart of Europe.
At the end of the fifteenth century (1492) Columbus dis-
covered America, and the Portuguese opened up the sea
route to India and the East. Empire building on modern
lines began, and was at first closely associated with missionary
effort. Wherever the Spaniards sent traders and conquerors
they also sent missionaries, generally Dominican friars, and
the struggle began that has gone on ever since, between
missionaries who want to give something to the native, and
traders and settlers who want to get something out of him.
The greatest of these early Spanish missionaries in South
America was the Dominican, Las Casas. He devoted his
life to the protection of the native, whether converted or
unconverted, and it was in order to save them from slavery
that he acquiesced in the plan of importing negro slaves
from Western Africa. Before he died he realised that he
had avoided one evil only by sanctioning a worse one.
But the greatest of all missionaries previous to modern
times were the Jesuits. In South America their great
achievement was the foundation of Paraguay in 16 10.
They saw that the only way to bring Christianity to the
native was to rescue him first of all from the so-called
" Christian " colonist, so they got leave to establish a
missionary settlement far away in the centre of South
America. Two Jesuit fathers first settled in Paraguay with
200 native Christians in 1610, and in spite of the hostility
of neighbouring settlers the country was controlled by a
308 GREAT BRITAIN SINCE THE REFORMATION
benevolent despotism of Jesuit priests for the next hundred
and fifty years.
Even more remarkable was the work of Jesuit missionaries
in India, begun by Francisco Xavier, one of the first asso-
ciates of Loyola. He was an impetuous enthusiast and his
career, heroic as it was, illustrates one of the temptations
that beset the path of missionaries, the eagerness for quick
results. He was almost entirely ignorant of native languages,
being only able to recite a few prayers and the creed in Tamil ;
but, as he said, " I want no interpreter to baptize infants
just born, nor to relieve the famished and naked who come
in my way." His charming personality led many thousands
to accept baptism, but they can hardly have been more than
nominal Christians. His greatest successor, the Italian
Nobili, who worked in the early seventeenth century, chose
a wiser course in adapting himself to the habits of the
Brahmins among v/hom he preached. He adopted their
dress and their vegetarian diet, studied sympathetically
their sacred books, dwelt on the similarities rather than the
differences between Hinduism and Christianity, and even
went so far as to assert that the Jesuits were descended
from the god Brahma ! He went, no doubt, much too far in
the way of concession to native prejudice, but in attempting
to train a native Christian priesthood, he was on right
lines. He saw that Christianity in the East must be an
oriental Christianity and not simply an imported foreign
product.
At the present day Roman Catholic missions are still in
advance of Protestant and Anglican missions so far as
numbers are concerned. In 1910 there were said to be nine
million Roman Catholic converts in the world and eight
thousand priests as against five and a half million Protestant
and Anglican converts and five thousand live hundred
ordained missionaries. The figures in each case take no
account of medical missionaries, women, and other lay
missionaries. The strength of the Roman Catholic missions
MISSIONS 309
lies in their religious orders, whose members dedicate them-
selves to life-long service and never return home.
(ii) Protestant and modern missionary work. It is a de-
plorable fact that while the Counter-Reformation spurred
the Roman Church to missionary energy hitherto un-
exampled, as though to " call a new world into existence to
redress the balance of the old," the early Protestants were
quite indifferent to missionary work. Some of the leading
reformers actually opposed it. As late as 1 796 the General
Assembly of the Church of Scotland passed a resolution that
" to spread abroad the knowledge of the Gospel amongst
barbarous and heathen nations seems to be highly pre-
posterous . . . whilst there remains at home a single individual
without the means of religious knowledge." The first active
missionary leader of importance in England was Dr. Bray,
a clergyman of the Church of England, who was struck by
the ignorance of the clergy at home and by the still greater
ignorance of the clergy in the American colonies. His
efforts led to the foundation of two great societies which are
still actively at work to-day, the Society for the Promotion
of Christian Knowledge (1698), to provide parish libraries
and books for the clergy, and the Society for the Propagation
of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (1701), to organise direct
missionary work among settlers and natives in the colonies.
Just a hundred years later two other societies were founded
by the energy of the Evangelicals, the Church Missionary
Society (1799), which is the most extensive Protestant
missionary society in the world, and the Bible Society (1804),
which has translated the Bible in whole or in part into four
hundred languages, many of which it has for the first time
reduced to writing and equipped with alphabet, grammar,
and dictionary. Missionary interest was, however, slow to
produce volunteers and much of the early work of both
missionary societies was done by Germans.
The chief Nonconformist missionary societies are the
310 GREAT BRITAIN SINCE THE REFORMATION
London Missionary Society, founded 1795, which is mainly
supported by the Congregationalists, and the Wesleyan
Missionary Society, founded 18 13.
In British eyes the greatest missionary field is naturally
India, with its immense and varied populations under
British rule. The pioneer of British missions in India was
Wilham Carey (1761-1834), a poor shoemaker, who became
a Baptist minister and by constant study learnt Latin,
Greek, and Hebrew. He met with every discouragement.
At the Baptist Conference he was denounced as ** a miserable
enthusiast," and the East India Company, in an outburst
of unwonted eloquence, declared that the scheme of sending
missionaries to India w^as " pernicious, imprudent, useless,
harmful, dangerous, profitless, fantastic. It strikes against
all reason and sound poHcy, and brings the peace and safety
of our possessions into peril." Times changed. Before the
end of his long life Carey was employed by the Governor-
General as a teacher of Bengali in his college for training
young servants of the company ; and forty years or so after
his death Lord Lawrence, one of the greatest of Indian
Viceroys, said, " Notwithstanding all that the English people
have done to benefit India, the missionaries have done more
than all other agencies combined."
The number of native Christians in India to-day is about
four million, a little over one per cent, of the whole popula-
tion. Though the number is steadily growing, it is small ;
but missionaries to-day are not much concerned with
statistics of conversions. In India such statistics are specially
misleading. Most of the open converts come from among
the poor and ignorant, the outcasts : more important is the
genuine but secret change of ideas that is going on among
the high caste Brahmins themselves. Many of these are
very closely in sympathy with Christianity, but are unwilhng
to sacrifice their social position by open conversion. Some,
of course, come over and sacrifice all for Christianity, but it
is very likely best for the cause of the Church in the long
MISSIONS 3n'
run that the slow change of outlook should proceed for the
time being uninterrupted by sensational results.
In the sphere of education, mission schools which are now
under government inspection and receive state grants, have
proved a valuable supplement to the government schools.
The government schools, ever since, under the influence of
Lord Macaulay (1834), it was decided to provide a purely
western type of education, have been dominated by the
examination system, and train the memory to acquire a mass
of superficial and ill-digested knowledge. The mission
schools, on the other hand, nearly all of which are open
equally to converts and non-converts, are free to build up
a more elastic and truly educational system, based on an
understanding of Indian history, and a pride in Indian
literature and Indian institutions.
After India, the greatest British mission field has un-
doubtedly been Africa. Here the great pioneers were Robert
Moffat (1795 -1 883), by training a gardener, and David
Livingstone (1813-1873), by training a cotton-spinner, both
Scotsmen. In Africa the work of the missionary is not to
transform an old unchristian civilisation, but to give Christian
civilisation to savages. The missionary's worst enemy has
generally been the agent of civilisation who is there for other
purposes. In Livingstone's day the enemy was the Arab
slave-raider. His activities are now a thing of the past,
but his place is taken, in a more respectable and at least
externally humane form, by the European settler. European
settlers demand cheap labour, and if they cannot get it by
fair means, they will not be content to go without. In
many parts of Africa the native has been robbed of his land,
and is now practically forced to work on it in someone else's
interest. At the very moment of writing (1920) three bishops
are appealing to the British Colonial Office against the
introduction of an extended system of forced labour for the
benefit of settlers in British East Africa.
It is natural, therefore, that the missionaries should often
312 GREAT BRITAIN SINCE THE REFORMATION
be disliked by the English settlers and distrusted by the
English colonial governments. Secular authorities have
quite openly regretted the spread of Christianity, and given
a preference to Mohammedan missionaries. Islam seems
to them a much more suitable religion for natives. It
maintains a certain low level of civilisation, and keeps the
black man within his own sphere. Christianity teaches the
equality of all men in the eyes of God, and however loyal to
their government the missionaries may desire to be, the voice
of Christ is heard in the Gospel they preach. Before we
can decide which is right, the missionary or his critic, we
must answer the question. What is the British Empire for }
Does it exist to provide wealth for colonists and for share-
holders at home in colonial companies, or does it exist to
spread civihsation among the backward races } and, if it
exists for both purposes, which is to be regarded as the more
important when they happen to conflict } This is a question
ever^^one must answer for himself. To many it appears that
the missionaries are upholding the honour of the British
Empire as truly as any soldier ever upheld it by death on
the battlefield, and this view is by no means confined to
missionary or even Christian circles. Sir Harry Johnston is
one of our greatest authorities on Central Africa, and he
is not a member of any Christian Church ; but in his
little book, The Backward Peoples and our Relations with
them, he says, " The names of the missionaries should be
inscribed in letters of gold on the temples of fame . . . when
the Back^'ard peoples reach independence and search true
historical records for the personalities of their regenerators."
One of the most remarkable products of African Chris-
tianity is Khama, the great chief of Bechuanaland, who was
baptised by a German missionary in boyhood. On his own
small scale he deserves to rank with the great civilising kings
of history. His whole reign was devoted to the gradual
eradication of heathen customs, such as the killing of un-
wanted children and old people, but his hardest struggle was
MISSIONS 313
with the European traders and the drink traffic. " Beer,"i
he said, " is the source of all quarrels and disputes. I will have
it stopped." After a long struggle he gained his point and
was upheld by the British Government, which has now
assumed a protectorate over his dominions. A British Blue-
book of 1888 says of him : " Khama rules the tribe more by
kindness than by severity. He is probably the best example
of what a black man can become by means of a good dis-
position and of Christianity."
Every mission field has its own characteristics, and it is
impossible to look at more than a few. One of the most
interesting is Japan, the only non-Christian Great Power.
There is no strong native rehgion in Japan, and the people
as a whole are materialists whose substitute for religion is
a very " Prussian " type of patriotism. Japanese Christians
are not strong in numbers but they are strong in distinction.
Among them in 1910 were numbered fourteen members of
parliament, an admiral, a cabinet minister, several judges,
and officers in the army and navy.
During the last half century our conception of missionary
work has broadened. Missionaries no longer regard the
' direct method ' of preaching as the only or even the most
important method. Example counts for more than words.
If the missionary goes and lives a life of Christlike helpful-
ness, whether as doctor or schoolmaster or instructor in
farming and the arts of trade and civilisation, those whom
he helps will discover the source of his energy and self-
sacrifice, and he will be preaching Christianity indirectly all
the time. Perhaps the most successful of all missionaries
have been the medical missionaries, who seem to be carrying
on the tradition of Christ's own work on the shores of Galilee.
It is only recently, too, that the importance of women in
missionary work has been fully realised. Perhaps they are
more important than men. For the central social evil of
^ Apparently this is much more intoxicating liquor than English
beer.
314 GREAT BRITAIN SINCE THE REFORMATION
nearly all heathen societies, whether high caste Brahmins,
wealthy Mohammedans, or ignorant African savages, is the
degrading treatment of the women, and here European
women can help in ways impossible to men.
In 1895 Bishop Tucker of Uganda, the most flourishing
missionary centre in Africa, wrote : " For the sake of the
women and children — in other words, for the sake of the
future of Uganda — it is absolutely essential that the ministry
of English women should take its part in the work." Five
ladies ventured the eight hundred miles' march from the
coast, convoyed by the Bishop in person. On arrival they
received such a welcome as is usually reserved for conquering
kings, and on the first Sunday after they reached the capital,
six thousand people thronged in and around the cathedral for
a service of thanksgiving.
What are the main obstacles in the way of missions ?
One is our sectarian divisions. In 1 89 1 there was a civil
war in Uganda between English Protestant and French
Catholic parties ! But this difficulty is being overcome by
mutual forbearance. Undoubtedly the worst obstacle to the
success of missions is the way white Christians conduct them-
selves. The native who listens to the missionary cannot
understand how it is that the people who oppress him and
swindle him are called Christians also. And when he comes
to Europe he sees much which makes him wonder whether
Christianity is not a dream. And then came the Great War
of the great Christian nations. There is no doubt that the
Great War has been a heavy blow to the credit of Christianity
in every field of missionary enterprise.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE PRESENT DAY
(i) The Lambeth Conference of 1920.
IT is always difficult to write the history of the recent
past, and this is particularly so in the case of religious
history, where the importance of events has to be
measured more by their future results than by any par-
ticular stir they may make at the time. It is as yet too
early to measure the effects of the war upon the Churches.
During the war itself an excessive optimism prevailed, and
it was supposed that the trials of the time were bringing the
thought of God back into the minds of many who had ignored
Him. Since the war the outlook seems to have been rather
pessimistic, owing to the failure of the Churches to mitigate
the bitter and unchristian feehngs that the war necessarily
engendered. But it is too early to attempt a history of
religion during the war period.
The Report of the Lambeth Conference of 1920 provides
a convenient standpoint from which to review the position
of the Church of England to-day. The first Lambeth Con-
ference met in 1867 at the suggestion of the Canadian Church,
and it has since met every ten years, the last meeting being
postponed till 1920 on account of the war. It is a Conference
of the bishops, not only of the Church of England in the
stricter sense, but also of the Episcopal Churches in the self-
governing Dominions and the United States which are in
communion with the English Church, and have been built
315
3i6 GREAT BRITAIN SINCE THE REFORMATION
up on identical lines except for the fact that they are not
* estabhshed,' i.e. they are independent ' free ' Churches in
no way connected with the governments of the countries in
which they work. The Conference has, of course, no binding
authority on its members, but meets for the purpose of
mutual discussion and mutual help. The number of arch-
bishops and bishops who attended was 252, a figure which
it is interesting to compare with the 318 bishops present at
the Council of Nicaea sixteen centuries before. Dioceses are
of course far larger to-day, and the smaller number at
Lambeth represents a very much larger organisation.
The Conference reahsed that the most important of all
subjects was the reunion of the Churches. Ever since the
Reformation, indeed ever since the split of the Eastern and
Western Churches five hundred years earlier, the cause of
Christianity has been crippled by disunion. But it is realised
now, much more fully than in the past, that reunion cannot
and indeed ought not to be brought about by restoration of
uniformity. It is as impossible and as undesirable to abolish
the distinguishing characteristics of the various Churches as
it would be to abohsh the distinguishing characteristics of
the various nations. We want a League of Nations and a
League of Churches. " It is not by reducing the different
groups of Christians to uniformity, but by rightly using
their diversity . . . But we are convinced that this ideal
cannot be fulfilled if these groups are content to remain in
separation or to be joined together only in some vague
federation." ^
Reunion will not be achieved in a day or in a year, but,
like the ideal (as distinct from the actual and nominal)
League of Nations, it must be achieved, and the task of
achieving both Leagues must be pursued steadily and
patiently. For of both it may be said, either they will be
achieved or Christian civilisation will fail.
^ From the Encyclical Letter introducing the Report (which has
been published by the S.P.C.K.).
THE PRESENT DAY 317
For the task in hand the Enghsh Church has unique
opportunities. Like the Roman Church it is world-wide :
unhke the Roman Church it is highly flexible in organisation,
and stands mid-way between the Catholic and the Protestant
positions, embracing much if not all of both.
The second topic of the Encyclical Letter drawn up
by the Conference is the position of women in the Church.
The bishops recognise that the Church, like the State,
has been in the past far too much of a man-made and
man-controlled institution. At the same time they seek
to avoid the modern error of supposing that differences of
sex are of no account in public life. They suggest the
revival of the order of Deaconesses as it existed for a time in
the primitive Church, to prepare candidates for Baptism and
Confirmation, and to assist in all branches of parish work
specially connected with women. They also agreed that
opportunities should be given to women duly approved by
the bishop of the diocese, to preach in the churches.
A committee of the Conference was appointed to examine
three modern movements which, though outside the Christian
faith, yet recognise the existence of the unseen spiritual
world : Christian Science, Spiritualism, and Theosophy.
The report of the committee is remarkably sympathetic.
While pointing out what it conceives to be the errors of these
movements, it lays stress on their good points and the lessons
that the Church can learn from them. More particularly, it
is admitted that the existence and the popularity of these
movements is largely due to the failure of the Church to live
up to its own high ideals. It may safely be said that no
body of bishops would have issued so broad-minded and
charitable a report at any time before the twentieth century.
The committee appointed to consider Industrial and Social
Problems write : " We (the Church) cannot claim a good
record with regard to Labour questions. Since the beginning
of the industrial revolution only a minority of the members
of our Church have insisted on the social application of the
3i8 GREAT BRITAIN SINCE THE REFORMATION
Gospel. Now that the conscience of the Christian com-
munity has been stirred, we must be content to bear the
accusation that we are only trying to make ourselves popular
with Labour, because Labour is now a dominant power. The
accusation is not true. We are honestly trying to see and
to speak the truth."
The Report on Industrial Problems is on the whole a
rather disappointing document on account of the anxiety of
the bishops to avoid taking a side in party politics. The
relationship of the Churches to politics is always difficult.
If the Church throws its weight on to one side in a con-
troversial question it will alienate sincere Christians who
hold the opposite political opinion. And yet politics are
closely bound up with morals, and morals are closely bound
up with religion. It is easy, but not very helpful, to say
that the Church ought to stand for the right ends, for instance,
the abolition of poverty and slums, and remain neutral as
between various means of securing those ends. Ends and
means are not so easily distinguishable.
In the international sphere the Conference whole-heartedly
supports the League of Nations, and points out that its work
can only be successful if it has an enthusiastic public opinion
behind it. It is plain that the effort to create that public
opinion is a prime duty of the Church.
The Report on Missions contains some important remarks
on the relationship of missionary work and empire.
'* In dealing with the large number of persons in their
colonies and dependencies who profess different faiths, the
policy of the British and American Governments has always
been that of strict religious neutrality. We heartily endorse
this policy, having no desire to see any kind of political
influence brought to bear upon people to induce them to
change their religion. But we cannot fail to notice that in
certain instances the ferment produced among primitive
races who have received the Gospel of Christ has led to
hindrances being placed in the way of missionaries in the
THE PRESENT DAY 319
prosecution of their work, and to a preference being shown
for other faiths. The Church would be faihng in her work
if the acceptance of the truths did not awaken in her converts
a higher sense of their dignity as human beings, of their
rights as well as their duties, and any government which has
the real interest of the subject races at heart will be glad of
such awakening even though, in civil life, it raises new pro-
blems to be solved.
" We hold it to be the duty of missionaries to look at their
work from the Government point of view as well as from their
own, and to adapt their methods, as far as is consistent with
Christian morality and justice, to the policy which the
Government is following in dealing with such peoples. On
the other hand, we claim that no discrimination should be
shown against the Christian Faith . . .
" In the present state of international relations there is
a real danger that missionaries may be tempted to forward
the commercial and political aims of their own nation, and
we emphatically declare that such action lies entirely outside
the scope of their proper functions."
(ii) Self-government in the Church of England. As has
already been shown, the Scottish Reformation, starting as
a rebel movement, developed and has always retained a
system of democratic self-government. The English Refor-
mation, on the other hand, being controlled throughout by
the Crown, led to the establishment of royal supremacy over
the Church. Queen Elizabeth tried to maintain that Parlia-
ment had no right to discuss Church questions, and Laud,
while supporting king against Parhament in the political
sphere, regarded the king as his master to be consulted in
all points with regard to the Church.^ When Parhament
^ This policy of subjection of a Church to the civil authority is
called Eraslianism, i'rom Erastus, a sixteenth century German
writer. Laud, unlike modern High Churchmen, was a thorough
Erastian.
320 GREAT BRITAIN SINCE THE REFORMATION
took the place of the king as the supreme civil authority it
also replaced him as the controlling authority over the
Church, as is illustrated by the fact that the bishops are
to-day selected by the Prime Minister, even though he might
happen not to be a Christian at all.
This arrangement worked satisfactorily so long as Parlia-
ment was practically an assembly of lay Churchmen. But
it became indefensible, at any rate in theory, when, early in
the nineteenth century. Parliament was thrown open to
Roman Catholics, Nonconformists and others. Even after
this date — until, say, l88o — Parliament continued to take
an intelligent and sympathetic interest in Church affairs,
and placed many valuable reforms on the Statute Book.
What has finally unfitted Parliament for this duty is the
immense growth of political business, as a result of which
scarcely any important and controversial measures outside
the official programme of the Government can hope to become
law. Out of 217 Church Bills introduced between 1888 and
1913, 33 were passed, one was defeated, and the remaining
183 were simply abandoned from lack of time.
Hence there arose a movement to create a self-governing
machinery within the Church, and to secure from Parliament
a recognition of its rights. This movement is strictly
parallel with other movements quite outside the sphere of
religion. One of the most fruitful political ideas of the last
fifty years or so is the recognition that the principle of
representative government is applicable not only to states
and geographical units, such as towns and countries, but
also to voluntary societies, membership of which depends on
common aims or common occupations. The most striking
examples are the Trade Unions, out of which has grown the
movement which claims that, in one way or another, in-
dustries should themselves become self-governing units or
' guilds,' ruled by a ' cabinet ' of Directors responsible to
workers in the same way as the Cabinet of the nation is
responsible to the House of Commons and the electorate.
THE PRESENT DAY 321
This movement in the Church has a long history behind
it, though the decisive steps have only been taken since the
war.
In 1852 the ancient institution of Convocation was revived
for the province of Canterbury, and eight years later that of
the province of York in the same way. These assembhes
were the * parhaments ' of the Church in the Middle Ages,
and as such voted and controlled the taxation of the clergy.
Their powers had been taken away by Henry VHI., but they
continued to meet as Httle more than debating societies until
1 7 17, when they were suspended on account of the Jacobite
sympathies of the Church. Their revival, however, though
it stimulated discussion within the Church, had no very
great importance. The legislative powers of the Convoca-
tions were, of course, not restored, and their composition
gave very meagre representation to the ordinary parish
clergy, on whom the whole life of the Church must necessarily
depend.
In the latter half of the nineteenth century a variety of
assemblies were developed, containing both clerical and lay
representatives. The chief were the Diocesan Conferences
which are summoned by the bishop of the diocese to advise
and assist him, especially in matters of finance ; and the
Church Congress, an informal annual gathering of Church
people of both sexes, open to all who choose to attend.
Further, two ' Houses of Laymen ' were added to the Con.
vocations, consisting of lay members of each diocese elected
by the lay members of the Diocesan Conferences. Finally,
in 1902, the two Convocations agreed to hold occasional
joint meetings as a National Church Council, with three
Houses, of Bishops, Clergy, and Laity.
Parliamentary supremacy remained, however. The first
important step towards modifying it was taken in 1913 when
the National Church Council passed, with only one dis-
sentient vote, a resolution requesting the Archbishops to
appoint a committee " to inquire what changes are advisable
S.R.H. Z
322 GREAT BRITAIN SINCE THE REFORMATION
in order to secure in the relations of Church and State a fuller
expression of the spiritual independence of the Church." A
committee, containing both clergy and laymen (among the
latter being an ex-Prime Minister, Mr. Balfour), was appointed,
and produced its report in 1916, and an association was
thereupon founded, known as the Life and Liberty Movement,
to rouse the interest of church people throughout the country
in the cause. The president of the Life and Liberty Move-
ment was Dr. (now Bishop) Temple, the son of one of the
greatest of recent Archbishops of Canterbury. As a result, in
1919 an Enabling Bill was carried through Parliament, which
constitutes a ' charter of liberty ' for the Church of England.
The Enabhng Act enables a National Assembly of the
Church of England to legislate for the Church under the
following conditions. Measures passed by the National
Assembly are to be submitted to an Ecclesiastical Committee
of the two Houses of Parliament, consisting of fifteen members
of the House of Lords nominated by the Lord Chancellor and
fifteen members of the House of Commons nominated by the
Speaker. If the measure is accepted by the Ecclesiastical
Committee, it is to be laid before both Houses of Parliament,
and it will become law if both Houses of Parliament pass
resolutions to that effect.
It might seem at first sight that these elaborate arrange-
ments make very little real difference. Parliamentary
supremacy remains in a new form. But it must be borne
in mind that the main objection to the old form of Parlia-
mentary supremacy was that it blocked reform not by ill-will
but by sheer inattention or inability to find time for Church
legislation. By the Enabling Act all the laborious business
of first, second, and third readings, and " committee stage "
is lifted from the shoulders of Parliament. The authentic
will of the Church is already expressed in suitable legislative
form and Parliament has merely to say ' yes ' or ' no,' and
it is reasonable to assume that, if the Church has the energy
and intelligence to use its new machinery in such a way as
THE PRESENT DAY 323
to inspire the respect of outsiders, Parliament will normally
say ' yes.'
It has been shown in the chapter on Scotland that the
centre of indestructible vitaHty in the Presbyterian system
of the Scottish Church lay not in the General Assembly but
in the local Kirk-sessions. It will have to be the same with
the new organisation of the English Church. In 192 1 a
Parochial Church Councils Act was passed by Parliament
under the new machinery of the Enabling Act, defining the
constitution and the powers of the new Parochial Councils.
Much controversy had taken place during the preceding
years as to the franchise. Should the electorate be limited
to communicants or extended to all baptised persons who
signed a declaration of membership of the Church of England }
The latter and wider franchise has been adopted, and the
electoral roll is open to all baptised persons of both sexes
and eighteen years of age who sign such a declaration. The
powers of the Parish Councils are so framed as to safeguard
the proper rights of the parson. Their success would seem to
depend, first, on the keenness and energy of the elected coun-
cillors, and, second, on a generous recognition by both parson
and council of the position and responsibilities of the other.
The National Assembly consists, like its fore-runner, the
Representative Church Council, of three Houses — Bishops,
Clergy, and Laity.
The House of Clergy is identical with the Lower House of
Convocation, the system of election to which was reformed
under a Canon, following the Convocation of the Clergy
Measure, 1920 (the first measure passed by the Assembly).
The new House of Clergy, in which a considerably enlarged
representation is given to the parochial clergy, sat for the
first time in the July session of 1 92 1. The House of Laity
is chosen by indirect election, the members of the parochial
Church Councils electing members of the Diocesan Conference
and the Diocesan Conference electing members of the House
of Laity,
324 GREAT BRITAIN SINCE THE REFORMATION
The new constitution is typically English in that it avoids
a violent breach with the past. The Church remains in the
legal sense a national institution, connected to the State by
special ties. It does not become a " Free Church " in the
sense in which Nonconformists use the term. The nomina-
tion of bishops by the Prime Minister remains untouched.
Those who prefer the ** Free Church " tradition must regard
it as a half-hearted measure. To such one may reply : —
first, that a completely ** Free " Church could not possibly
continue its claim to be the " Established " Church of
England under modern conditions, and secondly, that, when
exercised wisely and sympathetically, the nomination of the
bishops by the Prime Minister is a security against the
monopoly of high ofBce by the members of any one pre-
dominant party. It has generally been the wisdom of the
English Church to recognise and even welcome diversities of
opinion, and what survives of the old Erastian tradition is
a wholesome safeguard against mechanical majority rule.
(iii) Conclusion. Optimism and pessimism are two oppo-
site tendencies of the human mind and both sway it unreason-
ably. In the sphere of secular affairs people are generally
optimists. The history of England is generally treated as
an almost continuous progress : Parliament gets stronger
and stronger, the Empire gets bigger and bigger, wealth,
comfort and luxury steadily increase. In the sphere of
religious affairs people are more often pessimists : they
point backwards to ' ages of faith ' ; they note that it is a
continually dwindling proportion of the population that
' profess and call themselves Christians ' ; they note that
the Church itself seems to beat a continuous retreat and
abandon as untenable beliefs taken for granted in previous
generations.
This pessimism is not justified. In matters of religion
there has certainly been no continuous progress, any more
than there has been continuous progress in art or literature.
THE PRESENT DAY 325
but the attitude of mind which is simply content to deplore
the ' good old times ' is not only unhealthy but is based on
ignorance.
Each of the four periods into which this book is divided
illustrates the falseness of the pessimistic view.
The old and discarded conception of Hebrew history
seemed to favour the pessimistic interpretation. Moses was
supposed to have revealed all the religious truth contained
in the Old Testament, and the story that followed was a long
succession of backslidings. We now know, however, that
what was revealed through Moses was only a rudiment : that
the story of the successive generations of prophets is a ' pro-
gress ' of the most inspiring kind : that it is only after the
Captivity that the Jews as a whole can be said to have been
a religious nation.
In the second period, again, the decHne from the period
of the Apostles to the period of the Arian controversy was in a
sense, no doubt, very steep. But one must not overlook the
fact that it was the price that had inevitably to be paid for
an equally real gain. When a small and picked band of
leaders set out to convert an empire and succeed, we cannot
turn their success into failure simply by taking the average
quality of the small band of leaders and comparing it with
the average quality of the millions of their followers four
centuries later.
The third period is so vast and various that it seems to
support neither the optimistic nor the pessimistic theory.
But the fourth period strongly supports a reasonable and
sober optimism. The history of Christianity in England
from the days of Elizabeth down to quite recent times
is the history of a series of vigorous attempts to galvanise
the Established Church into a state of real and active
Christianity, and of the failure of them all, followed
by nonconformist secessions and sectarian bitterness. To-
day, the Church of England, though reduced in numbers
(like Gideon's army), is probably more alive than it ever
326 GREAT BRITAIN SINCE THE REFORMATION
was before, more earnest, more humble, more intelligent,
and the spirit of intolerance and persecution, though not
dead, is dying.
This is not the place to enumerate and enlarge upon the
activities of strictly contemporary movements and organisa-
tions, which witness to the vitality of contemporary Christi-
anity. It is significant, however, that the most vigorous and
active of such movements are not confined within the limits
of any particular Church or sect, but are simply Christian in
the broadest sense of the word. Everyone, for example,
remembers the astonishing expansion of the Young Men's
Christian Association to minister to the comfort of our
soldiers and sailors in the Great War. Some might object
that there was nothing specially Christian or religious about
this excellent work. A full rejoinder to this objection
would involve us in definitions of what we mean by ' Chris-
tian ' and by ' rehgion.' Let it suffice to say that the work
was there to be done and that it was a definitely religious
organisation that stepped forward to do it. Less con-
spicuous in the Press but perhaps even more important in
its probable influence in the future is the Student Christian
Movement. The Student Christian Movement began in 1892
as a federation of Christian Unions formed by students in
the various universities of Great Britain. In '1896 it com-
bined with similar movements in America and Germany to
found the World's Student Christian Federation, and this
organisation has now spread itself all over the globe. At
the moment of writing there are over a quarter of a million
members, and these, be it noted, are all university students,
for ex-students (' old boys ') are not counted on the roll of
membership. It is difficult to exaggerate the influence that
such a Movement may have as the generations pass rapidly
through its hands. The ideal of the Movement is the
sublime purpose of Christianity itself, the establishment of
the Kingdom of God on Earth. Many movements have set
before themselves this purpose in many ages, but never
THE PRESENT DAY 327
before perhaps has there been a movement so unhampered by
sectarian and poHtical divisions, so free from entanglement
in the controversies that have made Christians enemies of
one another.
Optimism is, indeed, better justified as regards rehgious
history than as regards secular, for it is attended by fewer
dangers. In secular history there is a real danger that
pride in the achievements of our own nation may lead to a
stupid arrogance and self-satisfaction, because we have no
obvious standard or ideal to set against our achievement to
show how miserably inadequate it is. But we are not likely
to take a too satisfied view of the Church of to-day so long
as we compare it not only with its past self but also with
what Christ meant it to be.
Perhaps the extraordinary vicissitudes through which the
Church has passed, its many crimes and follies, and its long
periods of stagnation, are in themselves an argument for
optimism. A devout Catholic of our own day is reported to
have said that the strongest evidence of the Divine guidance
of the Church is its history, since no merely human institu-
tion could have survived so many crimes and errors. There
is truth in this paradox. " Christianity," another modern
writer has said, " has not failed, for it has not yet been tried."
Both in the international and in the industrial sphere we
have assumed (without trial) that Christian principles were
not practical. For ' Love your neighbour ' we have sub-
stituted competition, and competition unrestrained is always
apt to lead its votaries down the slope towards force and
fraud, violence and robbery, the principles of Barabbas.
And now we have had a forcible reminder that these principles
at any rate are not practical, for, whether in the international
or in the industrial sphere, they would lead, at the bitter
end, to the suicide of the human race. Meanwhile all down
the ages some have bjeen trying to try Christianity, and each
generation has taken up the task afresh undeterred by the
apparent failures of its predecessors.
328 GREAT BRITAIN SINCE THE REFORMATION
Many of the best minds in the world to-day claim to be
disciples of Christ, but reject the Churches as unworthy of
Him after whom they are called. The debt of these men to
the Churches they despise is greater than they know, for but
for the work of the Churches during nineteen hundred years,
the figure of Christ would have dropped out of human know-
ledge. Still, this wide-spread acknowledgment of Christ in
combination with rejection of the Churches is one of the most
striking features of modern thought, and for Churchmen in
all the Churches would seem to suggest two conclusions :
first, that our Foundation is Rock : secondly, that our
superstructure is in need of repair.
BOOKS RECOMMENDED.
Part IV.
1. Wakeman, H. 0., History of the Church of England (Rivingtons) .
A useful text book with a strong Anglo-Catholic bias.
2. Trevelyan, G. M., England under the Stuarts {Methuen). Con-
tains brilliant and sympathetic descriptions of various aspects of
Puritanism.
3. Balleine, G. R., History of the Evangelical Party (Longmans).
A good book, with interesting biographical details of Wesley and
others : rather ignores the shortcomings of Evangelicalism.
4. /. L. & B. Hammond, The Town Labourer, 1760- 1832 {Long-
mans). The two chapters in this brilliant book entitled " The
Conscience of the Rich " and " The Religion of the Poor " serve to
fill in the gaps in No. 3.
5. F. Warre Cornish, History of the English Church in the Nine-
teenth Century (Macmillan), 2 vols. A sound, conservative book,
full of useful detail on all subjects except the Christian Socialists.
6. C. E. Raven, Christian Socialism, 1 848-1 854 (Macmillan). An
interesting account, full of detail, but inclined to overrate the
capacity of the Christian Socialists, which unhappily fell far short
of their good intentions.
7 and 8. Mrs. Creighton, Missions, and W. B. Selbie, Noncon-
formity (Williams & Nor gate). Both good specimens of the Home
University Library.
INDEX
Abelard, i8o.
Abraham : Date of, 6 ; His-
torical or legendary, 13, 14;
see also Genesis.
Acts of the Apostles, 77, 94.
Aeschylus, 85.
Africa : Forced Labour. Bis-
hops and, 311 ; Mission
Work, 311 ; Mohammedan
Conquests, 138; Slaves sent
to S. America, 307.
Ahab, King, 21, 23-25.
Ahaz, King : Isaiah in opposi-
tion, 32.
Alaric the Goth : Sack of
Rome, 138, 151, 154.
Albigensians: Crusade against,
177, 184.
Alcuin, Adviser of Charle-
magne, 155.
Alexander the Great : Con-
quests, 46^, 49, 82.
Alexander VI., Pope, 140,
193, 208.
Alexander Severus, Emperor,
130.
Alexandria : Clement's School
of Philosophy, 117; Hy-
patia murdered at, 134 ;
Jewish Community, 80.
Alfred, King : Church in Eng-
land, 155.
Ambrose, St. (Bishop of
Milan) : Rebukes Theo-
dosius, 134 ; St. Augustine
and, 150.
America, North : Puritan
Colonisers, 242, 251.
America, South : Jesuit Mis-
sion, Paraguay, 221, 307 ;
Negro Slaves, 307 ; Spanish
Mission, 307.
Amon, King : Idolatry, 36.
Amos, Book of: Prophecy of,
7, 13, 27-30, 69.
Anagni : Pope Boniface VIII.
a prisoner, 169, 170.
Anchorites, 146.
Andrevves, Bishop, 237.
Anselm, St., 139.
Antioch : Christian Church,
82, 93 ; jMohammedan rule,
139, 156.
Antiochus Epiphanes, King of
Syria, 49, 50, 56.
Apocalyptic Writers : Mes-
sianic Hope, 61-64, 66.
Apocrypha, 61, 152.
Arianism : Nicene Creed, 120-
124 ; Rome, 154.
Aristotle, ?>$.
Armada Defeat : Thanks-
giving, 236.
Arnold, Dr. : despairs of the
Church, 266.
Assyrian Empire : Attack on
Jerusalem, 33 ; Destruc-
tion of Nineveh, 40 ; Israel
annexed. 32 ; Protectorate
over Jews, 32.
Astronomy : Ptolemaic Sys-
tem, 187.
329
330
INDEX
Athanasian Creed, 120-124.
Athens : Epicurean School,
89 ; Peisistratus Tyrant in
Athens, 49 ; St. Paul 's visit,
95 ; Stoic School of Philo-
sophy, 88.
Attila the Hun, 154.
Augustine, St. (Bishop of
Hippo), 149 ; City of God,
151, 161 ; Confessions, 149,
150 ; Conversion, 150.
Augustine, St. (of Canter-
bury), 149, 155-
Augsburg, Treaty of, 155, 216.
Austria : Holy Roman Em-
perors, 138.
Avignon : Papal ' Captivity,'
192, 195.
Baalim Worship, 20, 21, 22,
24.
Bacon, Roger : Order of
Friars, 184.
Baldwin : King of Jeru-
salem, 175.
Balleine, G. R. : History of the
Evangelical Party, 328.
Babylonian Empire : Fall of,
46, 51 ; Jewish Captivity,
40, 80.
Baptists : Mission Work, 310.
Barker, E. : " Crusades,"
article on, 172^ 178s 230'.
Barnabas, St., 93.
Basel : Council of, 204, 205.
Bede, 155.
Benedict, St., 147.
Benedict IX., Pope, 164.
Bernard of Clairvaux, St.,
181.
Besarion, St., 145, 146.
Bible, The : Apocrypha, 61,
152 ; Family Prayers, 244 ;
Higher Criticism, 286-289;
Translations, 124^ 151, 198,
239, 240, 305, 306 ; see
also Testament, Old, and
New, and titles of separate
Books.
Bishops : position of mediae-
val, 165.
Blake : Christianity and
Poetry, 290^.
Bohemia : Hussite movement,
199; Thirty Years' War,
228.
Bohemund : First Crusade,
174.
Boniface, St., 155.
Boniface VHI., Pope, 169.
Booth, " General," 283.
Brahmins : Jesuit Mission,
308; Modern Missions, 310.
Brandenburg : Lutheranism,
215.
Bray, Dr. : Missionary Socie-
ties, 309.
Browning, Robert : Christi-
anity and Poetry, 289-292 ;
Cleon, 290 ; Holy Cross Day,
58 ; An Epistle, 291 ; Saul,
292 ; quoted on Renais-
sance, 207.
Brownist Sect Founded, 242.
Bunyan, John, 141, 244 etseq.;
Grace Abounding, 245 ; Holy
War, The, 247 ; Imprison-
ment, 245 ; Large-minded-
ness, 246 ; Life and Death
of Mr. Badman, The, 246,
247 ; Pilgrim's Progress,
244, 245 ; Quakers, attack
on, 249.
Burghley, Lord : High Com-
mission Court, 236.
Burials Act, 1880, 281.
Burke : Capital and Labour,
260.
Burkitt, F. C. : The Gospel
History and its TransmiS'
sion, 104^ 115^ 136*.
Butler, Bishop : Analogy of
Religion, 253.
Byzantium, s^^ Constantinople.
INDEX
331
Caesar Borgia, 208.
Calvin, John, 141, 223 et seq. ;
Geneva, Democratic Rule
in, 223-225 ; Institutes of
the Christian Religion, 223.
Calvinism : Democracy, 225,
226 ; Dutch Independence,
227 ; Energy and self-
reliance, 225 ; French Hu-
guenots Independence, 227,
228 ; Scotland, 226 ; Thirty
Years' War, 228.
Cambridge : Evangelicalism
at, 258.
Canaan : Hebrew Conquest
19, 20 ; Religion of, 20.
Canossa : Papal victory at,
165, 166.
Capernaum : Christ's Min-
istry, 71.
Caraffa, Cardinal, 217, 2i8\
222. See also Paul IV.,
Pope.
Carmelites : Order of Friars,
185.
Casuistry, 221.
Catechism : Anglican, 233 ;
Presbyterian " Shorter Cate-
chism," 300 ; Tridentine,
222.
Cathedral Building, 139, 163.
Catherine of Siena, St., 191,
192.
Catholic Emancipation, 265.
Cato : Stoicism of, 88.
Celibacy, 167.
Celsus, 119, 120.
Chalmers, Dr. Thomas : 303.
Chambers, Robert : Vestiges
of Creation, 286.
Charles I., 299, 300.
Charles II. : Declaration of
Indulgence, 245 ; Quaker
Imprisonments, 249 ; Re-
storation, Expulsion of Puri-
tans, 252 ; Scotland and,
300.
Charles V., Emperor : Luther
and the Diet of Worms,
214; Rome, sack of, 208;
Unity of German Catholics
and Lutherans, 216.
Charles, R. H. : Between the
Old and New Testaments,
622, 643.
Charles Martel, 156.
Charlemagne, Emperor :
Christian Empire, 120 ;
Christians in Asia, 160 ;
Crowned Emperor, 156, 160 ;
Holy Roman Empire, 137,
138, 160 ; England, 160 ;
King of the Franks, 159 ;
Lombard Conquest, 160 ;
Reign and Power, 160, 161.
Chaucer : Canterbury Tales,
172, 196, 197.
China : Christian missions to,
306, 307.
Christ : the Crucifixion, 75 ;
Forgiveness of Sins, 68 ; in
Galilee, 70 ; the Kingdom of
God, 66 ; Messianic Claims,
67, 71, 74; Pharisees, 72;
the Temptation, 72 : St.
Paul and the Second
Coming, 97 ; attitude of
Synoptic Gospels, 101-106;
attitude of the Fourth
Gospel, 107- 1 12.
Christian Science, 317.
Christian Socialism : Experi-
mental Associations or
Guilds, 278 ; Industrial
Christian Fellowship, 279 ;
Industrial Evils, 275-279 ;
Politics for the People, 277,
278; Christian Social Union,
279 ; Success and failure of,
278.
Chronicles : Contents, 3, 11.
Church, R. W. : Dante, 230«.
Clarendon Code : Puritan
Persecution, 244.
2 A 2
332
INDEX
Clarkson : Slave Trade, 259.
Clement of Alexandria :
Christianity and Greek Phi-
losophy, 117, 118.
Clement VII., Antipope, 196.
Clermont : First Crusade, 174.
Clovis the Frank, 154.
Communion, see Holy Com-
munion.
Concordat of Vienna, 205^.
Confession, 143 ; Casuistry,
221.
Conrad, Emperor : Second
Crusade, 176.
Constantine, Emperor :
Christianity officially ac-
cepted, 119, 130, 132 ;
" Donation of Constan-
tine," 159, 207 ; Edict of
Milan, 132 ; Empire of,
132 ; Council of Nicaea,
122-124, 200.
Constantinople or Byzan-
tium : Capital of Roman
Empire, 132, 160 ; Coun-
cils at, 200 ; attacked by
Mohammedans, 156, 207;
Orthodox Church, 158.
Contarini, Cardinal : Luther-
ans, 216, 218 ; Oratory of
Divine Love, 217.
Copernicus, 187.
Corinth : Church at, 'j'j ; St.
Paul's visit, 94.
Cornelius : Conversion, 82,
90.
Cornill : Prophets of Israel,
231,281,411, 451-2. 54I, 64I.
Councils of the Church : Basel,
204 ; Constance, 200-203 ;
Jerusalem, 93, 94 ; Lateran,
200; Nicaea, 120-124, ^32,
154, 1611, 200; Pisa, 201;
Siena, 204 ; Trent, 221, 222.
Colenso, Bishop, 288, 289.
Cowper : Hymns, 255.
Crashaw, 2901.
Creighton, M. : History of the
Papacy, 2021, 230*.
Creighton, Mrs. : Missions,
328.
Croesus, defeat by Cyrus, 46.
Cromwell, Oliver ; Puritan and
Parliamentary Revolution,
243 ; Quakers, Friendship
with Fox, 249 ; relations
with Scotland, 300.
Crusades, 1 71-179.
Cyrus, king of Persia, 46, 51.
D'Ailly: Council of Constance,
200.
Daniel, Book of : Contents, 4 ;
Future life, 62, 63 ; Date, 13.
Dante : Divine Comedy, 185-
188,246; Imperialist views,
187.
Darwin, Charles : The Origin
of Species, 286.
David, King, 6, 11, 12.
Davis, H. W. C. : Mediaeval
Europe, 230'.
De Wette : Deuteronomy, 37.
Deaconesses : Revival of
Order, 317.
Decius, Emperor : Persecutes
Christians, 130.
Deuteronomy, Book of, 35 et
seq. ; " Book of the Laws
of the Lord," 9, 11, 36, 37 ;
Christ's quotation from, 39 ;
Contents, 2, 9, 37, 38 ;
Foundation of the Canon
of the Old Testament, 39.
Deutero-Isaiah, 46-48.
Diocletian, Emperor : Chris-
tian Persecution, 130.
Dissenters, see Nonconform-
ists.
Dominic, St., 184.
Dominicans, 184 ; Missionary
work, 306, 307.
Domitian, Emperor : Perse-
cutes Christians, 129.
INDEX
333
Douai University, 221.
Douglas, Bishop of St. An-
drews : ' Tulchans,' 296.
Duns Scotus, 182, 184.
Dunstan, St., 155.
East India Company ; Mis-
sion work, 310.
East Indies : Jesuit mission,
221.
Easter, 39, 297.
Eastern Catholic Church :
Constantinople, 158 ; Split
with the West, 158, 1611.
Ecclesiastes : Contents, 3, 4.
Edessa: Capture by Turks, 175.
Education : Dark Ages, 161 ;
India, 311 ; Monastic
Schools, 147, 148 ; Scholas-
ticism, 180, 182 ; Schools
closed by Julian, 133 ; Scot-
land, 296 ; English Noncon-
formist grievance, 281.
Edward I. of England : Eighth
Crusade, 178 ; Papal Bull
defiance, 169 ; Statute of
Mortmain, 57^.
Edward III. of England :
Restriction of Papal Power,
196.
Edward VI. : Prayer Book,
232 ; Thirty-nine Articles,
271.
Egypt : Fifth Crusade, 177 ;
Greek Ptolemies, 48 ; Isis
Worship, 90, 91. See Alex-
andria.
Elijah : Baal Worship, 22 ;
Date of, 6 ; Prophecy of,
24. 25.
Elisha : Support of Jehu, 25.
Elizabeth, Queen of England :
Prayer Book Revision, 233 ;
Settlement and. Religious
Compromise, 233, 234, 252.
267.
Enabling Act (1919), 322.
Enoch, Book of, 61, 62.
Ephesus : Christian Church,
77 ; St. Paul's visit, 94.
Epicurean School, 89, 90,
91.
Erasmus : Fathers of the
Church, translation, 210 ;
Greek Testament with
Latin Translation, 210 ;
Praise of Folly, The, 209,
210 ; Protestants, distrust
of, 210 ; Renaissance Spirit,
208-211 ; Scholarship, 209.
Erastianism, 270, 293, 294,
319, 320, 322, 324.
Eratosthenes : Earth Mea-
surement, 88.
Esther, Book of, 3, 4.
Essays and Reviews, 287, 288.
Euclid, 88.
Eugenius IV., Pope, 204.
Euripides, 85.
Eusebius : Church historian,
122.
Evangelicalism : Bible So-
ciety, 281 ; Clapham Sect,
259; Industrial Problems,
262, 275 ; Missions, see that
title ; Protestant outlook,
280 ; Ritualistic Clergy, op-
position to, 274 ; Wesley's
followers, 256.
Exodus : Contents, 2, 9, 10.
Ezekiel : Prophecy of, 4, 43-46,
54-
Ezra, Book of : Book of the
Law, 53 ; Contents, 3, 11 ;
date, 6 ; Founder of the
Jewish Church, 49 ; Res-
toration of the Jewish
Church, 10.
Fabiola : First Charity Hos-
pital, 145.
Farel, Protestant leader, 22^.
Felix, Governor, 100.
Felix v., Antipope, 204.
334
INDEX
Ferdinand II., Emperor :
Thirty Years' War. 228.
Florence : Dante, 185 ; Poli-
tical Factions, 185, 186 ;
French Invasion, 193 ; Sa-
vonarola's Rule, 193, 194.
Fox, George : Cromwell and,
249 ; Imprisonment, 249 ;
Journal, 245; Life, 247, 248;
Marriage, 250 ; see Quakers.
Foxe, George : Book of Mar-
tyrs, 245.
France : Huguenots, 225, 227,
228 ; Mohammedan Inva-
sion, 156 ; Papacy at Avig-
non, 192, 195 ; Protestant
Persecution, 223.
Francis I., King of France :
Protestant Persecution, 223.
Francis of Assisi, St., 139,
182-184.
Franciscans : Founding, 183 ;
Mission work, 306.
Frederick Barbarossa, Em-
peror; Third Crusade, 176.
Frederick II., Emperor : Papal
Struggles, 169; Sixth Cru-
sade, 177, 178.
Frederick of Saxony : Luther
and the Pope, 213.
Free Churches, see Noncon-
formists.
Friars : Orders of, 183-185.
Froude, Hurrell : Remains,
270.
Froude, J. A. : Times of
Erasmus and Luther, 230'.
Galilee : Christ's Life and
Ministry, 70, 71, 72, 73,
107 ; People of, 70, 71.
Gallio, Governor of Achaia, 95.
Gamaliel, 78, 80, 92.
Gardiner, S. R. : quoted on
Archbishop Laud, 238.
Gedaliah : Governor in Jeru-
salem, 42.
Genesis, Book of : Contents,
2, 7 ; Dates of Period, 2 ;
" Golden Age," 59 ; Evolu-
tion and, 285, 286.
Geneva : Calvinism, 141, 223,
224, 225 ; Episcopal Rule,
224 ; Refugees, 224^ ; Re-
public, Protestant, 224, 225.
Gentiles : Christian Converts,
95, 96 ; ReUgion of, and
Christianity, 78.
Germany : Catholic States,
216 ; Charlemagne's Con-
quests, 160 ; Lutheranism,
216; Mysticism, 189;
Thirty Years' War, 228.
Gerson : Council of Constance,
200 ; Imitation of Christ,
attributed to, 190, 191.
Gibbon : Decline and Fall of
the Roman Empire, 131^,
301.
Gladiatorial Shows : Aboli-
tion of, 143.
Gladstone, W. E., 87.
Glasier, Bruce : Life of Wil-
liam Morris, 106^.
Glover, T. R. : Conflict of
Religions in the Early Roman
Empire, 90^ 91 S 118', ii9\
136*.
Godfrey de Bouillon : First
Crusade, 175.
Gordon, Lord George, 270.
Gospels, The : Authentic
Words of Our Lord, 106 ;
Christ's Ministry, main
features, 107 ; Date of
Writings, loi, 102 ; Syn-
optic Gospels, 103, 107.
Gospel of St. John : con-
trasted with Synoptic Gos-
pels, 107 ; theory that it is
a ' theological romance, '
109; evidence for its his-
torical value, 109 ; its pur^
pose, the Logos, iii.
INDEX
335
Gospel of St. Luke : Author-
ship, 105 ; Characteristics,
105, 106 ; Copies from St.
Mark's Gospel, 103 ; Stories
and Parables, human tender-
ness, 106 ; Womanhood,
honour paid to, 106.
Gospel of St. Mark : Author-
ship, 102, 103 ; Commence-
ment, 102 ; Copies by S.
^Matthew and S. Luke, 103 ;
Date, 102 ; Historical
Value, 70, 102, 103, 106 ;
Humanity of Our Lord, 102,
103.
Gospel of St. Matthew : Ar-
rangement and Order, 103,
104; Hosea quotation, 104*;
" Kingdom, The," 106 ;
" Logia " source, 103 ; Old
Testament, quotations, 104*.
Grant, C. M. : Between the
Testaments, 64.
Greece and the Greeks Chris-
tian Converts, 95, 96 ;
Christian Philosophy, 117-
119; Jewish Proselytes,
90, 91, 93, 94 ; Persians,
Victory of Marathon, 83 ;
Religious Development,
82-92.
Gregory the Great, Pope, 124,
153-156.
Gregory VH. (Hildebrand),
Pope, 139, 164-167, 173.
Gregory IX., Pope, 178.
Gregory XL, Pope, 192.
Gregory XH., Pope, 203.
Grimshaw, Rev. William : Rec-
tor of Haworth, 257, 258.
Grindal, Archbishop : " Pro-
phesyings," 235 ; suspen-
sion, 242.
Grosseteste, Bishop : Papal
Influence, 168.
Gwatkin, H. M. : The Arian
Controversy, 123^ 136'.
Haggai, Prophet, 51.
Hallam, Bishop of Salisbury,
Council of Constance, 202.
Hamilton, H. F. : The People
of God, i8\ 201, 592, 642.
Hammond, J. L. and B. : The
Town Labourer, 264^, 328*.
Hankey, Donald : The Lord
of All Good Life, 6j^, 113^,
1361.
Harrison, Frederic ; Criticism
of Essays and Reviews, 287.
Henry II. of England : Third
Crusade, 176.
Henry II. of France : Luther-
ans and Calvinists, 226.
Henry III., Holy Roman Em-
peror : Papacy, 164.
Henry IV., Emperor of the
Holy Roman Emperor :
Succession, 164 ; Papacy,
rival Popes, 173.
Henry VI 1 1, of England :
Bible Translation, 239 ;
" Black Book," 267 ; Con-
vocations, restriction of
power, 321 ; Reformation,
232.
Herbert, George : The Temple,
237-
Hermits, 145.
Herod Antipas, 50.
Herod the Great : Judean
Rule, 50.
Herodians : Christ, hostility
to, 73 ; Priestly Office, 54.
Herodotus, Historian, 34, 85.
Hezekiah, King : Idols, de-
struction of, 36 ; Isaiah
chosen councillor, 32, 35 ;
Reforms, prophetic move-
ment, 37.
Hildebrand, see Gregory VII.,
Pope.
Holland : Calvinism, 225, 227.
Holy Communion or Mass :
" Both Kinds," 205, 222 ;
336
INDEX
Transubstantiation, 198,
199.
Hooker, Richard, 236, 237.
Horace : Epicurean School,
89.
Hosea, Book of : Prophecy,
30, 31 ; St. Matthew quotes,
104*.
Holy Roman Empire. See
Roman Empire.
Hospitallers, Knights, 175,
195-
Hospitals : First Charity Hos-
pital, 145.
Hundred Years' War, 140.
Hungary : Mohammedan Con-
quests, 139.
Hughes, Thomas, 276.
Huguenots : Calvinism., 225 ;
Expulsion from France, 228;
Independence, Edict of
Nantes, 227, 228,
Hus, John : Burnt, 203 ;
Lollardism, preaching, 199 ;
Toleration of followers by
the Church, 205.
Huxley : Wilberforce and,
286.
Hypatia : Murder of, 134.
Iconoclasts : Puritan, 157 ;
Roman, 157, 158.
Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch,
126, 127 ; Martyrdom, 129.
Ignatius Loyola, St. : Con-
version, 218, 219 ; Jesuit
Order, 220-222 ; Mission to
Turks, 219; Reformer, 141 ;
Spiritual Exercises, 219,
220.
Iliad, The : Future Life, 63.
Independents : Liberty of Con-
gregational Worship, 239.
India : Baptist Missionary,
William Carey, 310 ; East
India Company, opposition
to Mission work, 310 ;
Jesuit Mission, 308 ; Mis-
sion Schools, 310, 311 ;
Missions, benefit of, 310.
Industrial and Social Work :
Capital and Labour, 259-
264; " Chapel Going " and,
263, 264 ; Christian Fellow-
ship, 279 ; Christian Social-
ism, 275-279 ; Church's
Altitude, 261, 275, 276 ;
Combination Acts, 262 ;
Lambeth Conference (1920),
317, 318 ; National Work-
shops, Paris, 276 ; Political
Economy, 260, 261 ; Trade
Unions, 262, 264.
Inge, W. R. : Life of Blessed
Henry Suso, 189^ ; Out-
spoken Essays, 93, 99^,
136^
Ingolstadt University, 220.
Innocent I., Pope, 134.
Innocent III., Pope, 166-168,
177, 183, 200.
Innocent IV., Pope, 167, 169,
178.
Irene, Empress of Constanti-
nople, 160.
Isabella, Queen of Spain, 218.
Isaiah, Book of : Compilation,
27 ; Contents, 4, 31, 32 ;
Prophecy, 31-35 ; Prophet
of the Return, 46-48.
James I., King : Bible Trans-
lation, 239 ; Puritan Mille-
nary Petition, 242 ; Pres-
byterians and, 299.
James II., King : Non-jurors,
252; Roman Catholic policy,
141, 228, 244, 245.
James V. of Scotland : Death,
226.
James, St., Bishop of Jerusa-
lem, 93, 94.
Japan : Missions, 313.
Jehu, 25.
INDEX
337
Jeremiah, Book of : Life and
Character, 40-42.
Jeroboam II. : Reign, 27, 28.
Jerome, St. : ' The Vulgate,'
151, 152; Holy Land, so-
journ in, 151, 152, 172.
Jerusalem : Centre of Wor-
ship, 39 ; Christ's Ministry,
see Christ ; Christian Com-
munity, 93 ; Council at,
93 » 94 .' Crucifixion of
Christ, 75 ; Crusaders' King-
dom, 175, 178 ; Destruc-
tion, 70 A.D., 102, 109 ;
Mohammedan Conquest,
138, 139, 156, 173, 176 ;
Papal Interdict, 178 ; Pil-
grimages to, 160 ; siege of
Sennacherib, 33.
Jesuits (Society of Jesus) :
Confessional, 221 ; Educa-
tion, 220, 221 ; Founding,
220, see also Ignatius
Loyola ; Missions, 221, 307,
308 ; Obedience, 220, 221 ;
Protestants, Assassinations
and plots against, 221.
Jezebel, 21.
Job, Book of: Contents, 3, 4,
12; Future life, 62, 63.
John, St., no. See also
Gospel.
John, King of England, 168.
John XXIII., Pope, 201, 203.
Johnston, Sir Harry : on Mis-
sionaries, 312.
Jonah, Book of : Contents, 4 ;
Date, 13.
Joshua, Book of: Canaan,
Conquest of, 19, 20 ; Con-
tents, 3.
Josiah, King : " Book of the
Laws of the Lord," 9, 11,
36, 37 ; Killed, 40 ; Reign,
36.
Jowett : Essays and Reviews,
287, 288.
Judges, Book of: Contents, 3,
10, 19, 20,
Julian, Emperor, 133.
Keble, John : Christian Year,
237,269; National Apostasy,
2.bc) ; Oxford Movement,
see that title.
Kempis, Thomas k : Imita-
tion of Christ, 190 ; life, 191,
Kepler : Astronomer, 187.
Khama, Chief of Bechuana-
land, 312, 313.
Kings, Book of: Contents, 3,
10 ; Prophecy, 23, 24.
Kingsley, Rev. Charles : Alton
Locke, 277 ; Cheap Clothes
and Nasty, 277 ; Christian
Socialism, 277 ; Hypatia,
134'-
Knox, John : Death, 298 ;
Genevan sojourn, 227 ; Scot-
tish Protestant Rebellions
and Leadership, 141, 226,
227, 295.
Lake, Kirsopp : Earlier
Epistles of Saint Paul, 91^,
94S 136^
Lambeth Conference of 1920,
315-318.
Langland : Piers Plowman,
197.
Las Casas : Mission to South
America, 307,
Latimer : Purgatory, 188.
Law, William : Serious Call
to a Devout and Holy Life,
253-
Lawrence, Lord : Mission-
aries' benefit to India, 310.
Laud, Archbishop : Erasti-
anism, 319 ; Religious Atti-
tude, 237, 238 ; Ritual
Uniformity, 238.
League of Nations : Lambeth
Conference, 318.
338
INDEX
Lecky : England in the Eigh-
teenth Century, 257 ; His-
tory of European Morals
from Augustus to Charle-
magne, n8^ 126^ i28\
136*, 146^, 230^
Leo I., Pope, 154.
Leo III., Pope, 156.
Leo IX., Pope, 164.
Leo X., Pope, 208, 213, 214.
Leo XIII., Pope, 182.
Leo the Isaurian, 157, 158.
Leviticus, Book of: Christ's
quotation, 39 ; Contents, 2,
10 ; Date of, 288.
Licinius, Emperor : Edict of
Milan, 132.
Life and Liberty Movement,
322, 323.
Lindsay, T. M. : History of
the Reformation, 230*.
Lisbon : Crusaders conquer
the Moors, 176.
Livingstone, David, 310.
" Logia " or " Quelle " :
Source of S. Matthew's
Gospel, 103.
LoUardism : Founding, 198,
199 ; Persecution of, 198 ;
Toleration by the Church,
205 ; Ziska of Bohemia, 204.
Lombards of Italy : Arianism,
124, 154 ; Catholic Con-
verts, 155 ; Conquered by
Charlemagne, 160 ; Con-
quered by Pipin, 158 ;
Peace with Rome, 154.
Louis VII. of France : Second
Crusade, 176.
Louis XIV. of France : Hu-
guenots expelled, 228,
Louis, St. (King of France),
178.
Loyola, see Ignatius of Loyola.
Lorenzo dei Medici, 192.
Lucretius : Epicurean School,
89, 90, 91.
Ludlow, John : Christian
Socialism, 276.
Luke, St., III. See also
Gospel.
Lull, Raymond : Missionary,
306.
Luther, Martin : Beliefs and
Teaching, 213, 216, 217 ;
Bible, translation of, 214 ;
Christian Breach and Dis-
union, 216, 217 ; Educa-
tion, 212 ; Excommuni-
cated, 214 ; German Parti-
sans, 215 ; Indulgences,
Sale of, 188, 208 ; Monastic
career, 212, 213 ; Papacy
and the " Donation of Con-
stantine," 159 ; Papal con-
demnation, 140 ; Peasants'
War, 215 ; Popularity, 214,
215 ; Reformation Revolt,
140 ; Revolutionary Mea-
sures, 210, 211 ; Worms,
Diet of, 214.
Maccabees : Greek Culture
opposition, 56 ; High Priest-
hood, 54 ; Messianic Hope,
62 ; Wars of, 6, 50.
Magna Carta and Stephen
Langton, 168.
Malachi, Book of, 13, 52.
Malthus : Poor and Low
wages, 261.
Manasseh, King : Persecution
of Prophetical Party, 35,
36, 37-
Manichaean Sect, 149, 177.
Manners Sutton, Archbishop,
265.
Marcion, Heretic : Teaching
of, 114-117.
Marcus Aurelius, Emperor :
Meditations, 88 ; Persecutes
Christians, 128, 129, 130.
Martin V., Pope, 204.
Mary of Guise, 226, 294, 295.
INDEX
339
Mary Queen of England : Per-
secutions, 141, 232.
Mary Queen of Scots, 226,
294-296.
Mass, see Holy Communion.
Matins : Monastic Service,
190^
Maurice, F. D. : Christian
Socialism, 277 ; Hell, Doc-
trine of, 277.
Melbourne, Lord, 29^.
Melville, Andrew, 299.
Messiah : Christ's Claim, 67,
71, 72, 74, 108, III, 112 ;
Future Life, 62, 63, 66 ;
Gentile Hope, 59 ; Hope of
a Messiah, 27, 59, 61, 62 ;
Kingdom of God, 59, 60,
62, 63, 65, 66 ; Materialistic
Hope, 59, 62 ; Resurrec-
tion, Proof of the, 97 ;
Sadducees' hostility, 55 ;
Second Coming, 62, 79, 80,
97, loi, 102 ; " Suffering
Messiah," 60.
Methodists : Club, Oxford,
253, 254 ; Importance of
Movement, 257 ; Indus-
trial World, 263, 264; Open-
Air Preaching, 254, 255 ;
Ordination, 256. 5e^ Wesley,
John.
Micaiah : Prophecy of, 24.
Milan : Edict of. Toleration
for Christians, 132 ; Wars,
208.
Milton, John : 141 ; Christi-
anity and Poetry, 290^ ;
Paradise Lost, 187^ ; Pres-
byterianism, 243.
Miracles of Christ, 71, 73,
107.
Missions, Christian : Africa,
311, 312, 313; Apostolic
Church, 78 ; Baptist to
India, 310 ; Bible Society,
309 ; China, 306, 307 ;
Church Missionary Society,
309; Education, 311 ; Enter-
prises, 308, 309 ; European,
in the Dark Ages, 306 ;
India, 309, 310; Japan,
313 ; Jesuit, 307, 308 ;
Lambeth Conference, 318,
319 ; London Missionary
Society, 310 ; Medical Mis-
sionaries, 313 ; Methods
of Missionaries, 313 ; Mo-
hammedanism, 306 ; Ob-
stacles, 314 ; S. Francis of
Assisi with the 5th Crusade,
306 ; Secular Authorities'
attitude, 312 ; S.P.C.K.,
309 ; S.P.G., 309; Spanish,
to South America, 307 ;
Ulfilas to the Goths, 305,
306 ; Wesleyan Missionary
Society, 310; Women's
work, 313, 314 ; Workers,
309.
Moffat, Robert, 310.
Mohammedanism, 157 ; Con-
quests in the " Dark Ages,"
138 ; Crusaders, see that
title ; Fakirs, 22 ; " Hol>
War," 156 ; Jerusalem Con-
quest, 173 ; Jewish Foun-
dation, 26, 27 ; Jewish
help, 157.
Monastic Orders : Education,
147, 148 ; S. Benedict, 147 ;
see also Names of Orders.
Monica, St., 149.
Moors: Lisbon, 176.
More, Hannah : Industrial
Problems, 263 ; Sunday
School promoter and Tract
writer, 259.
More, Sir Thomas, 182.
Morris, William, io6^
Morton, Regent : Pillage of
the Church, 296.
Moscow : Orthodox Church,
158.
340
INDEX
Moses : Date of, 6 ; Deutero-
nomy attributed to, 9 ;
Revelation, Religion of the
Israelites, 2, 3,15, 19, 325.
Murray, Gilbert : Four Stages
in Greek Religion, 83 ^
Mysticism in the Middle Ages,
189-192.
Nantes, Edict of, 228.
Nathan, Prophet, 23.
National Assembly, 322-324.
Nature Religions, 20, 84.
Nebuchadnezzar : Jerusalem
taken, and the Captivity,
40.
Nehemiah, Book of : Book of
the Law, 53 ; Contents, 3,
II.
Neo-Platonists, 150,
Nero, Emperor : Downfall,
50 ; Persecutes Christians,
129.
Newman, John Henry : Apo-
logia pro Vita Sua, 272 ;
Oxford Movement, 268-273 ;
Poetry, 290 ; Roman Cath-
olic Secession, 272, 303 ;
Tracts for the Times, 269,
270.
Newton : Hymns, 255.
Nicaea: General Council of,
122, 316; Arianism and the
Nicene Creed, 120-124, i6iS
200 ; Disputes, Settlement
of, 132. 134.
Nicholas V., Pope, 207.
Nicholas of Cologne : Child-
ren's Crusade, 177.
Nobili : Jesuit Missionary,
308.
Nonconformists : Bible So-
ciety, 281 ; Disabilities
Removed, 269, 281 ; Dis-
establishment, 280 ; Di-
visions, 279 ; Elementary
Schools, 281 ; Industrial
World and Trade Unions,
281 ; Leaders, 282, 283 ;
Liberal Party Politics, 281 ;
Missionary Societies, 309,
310 ; Opposition to the
Church, 282 ; Prospects,
280 ; Puritans, see that title ;
Roman Catholics, aid given
to emancipation of, 281 ;
Sunday Schools, 259 ; Tole-
ration Act, 280 ; Unity of
Beliefs, 280 ; Wesleyans,
see that title ; for parti-
cular sects, see their titles,
also titles Protestants and
Puritans.
Numbers, Book of : Contents,
2, 10.
Nureddin : Turkish Moham-
medan Leader, 176.
O'Connell, Daniel, 281.
Origen: Christianity and Greek
Philosophy, 117-119.
Otto the Great : Roman Em-
peror, 164.
Owen, Robert : Socialist, 276.
Oxford Movement, 268-275 ;
Beliefs, 268, 269 ; Episco-
pate Influence on, 273, 274 ;
Industrial Evils, indiffer-
ence, 275 ; Origin of, 269 ;
Protestant Protests, 270,
272 ; Ritualistic Contro-
versy, 274, 275 ; Seces-
sions to Roman Catholicism,
272 ; Tracts for the Times,
269-272
Oxford University : Evangeli-
calism, 258 ; Methodists,
253 ; Students from the
University of Paris, 180.
Palmerston, Lord : Dissen-
ters and Politics, 282.
Pandulph, Papal Legate, 168.
INDEX
34:
Papacy : Authority, 222 ;
Avignon, 192, 195; Bishops,
165 ; Catechism, 222 ;
Councils of the Church, 200-
206 ; Crowning of Kings,
159 ; Crusaders, see that
title ; Decline of Power,
139, 140, 161, 164, 169, 170;
Donation of Constantine,
159, 207 ; Election of Popes,
Elizabeth excommunicated,
233 ; English Mission, 155 ;
Estates, 154, 159 ; French
Alliance and Ascendancy,
140, 154, 158 ; Holy Com-
munion or Mass, see that
title ; Holy Roman Empire,
156, 160 ; " Index," 222 ; In-
dulgences, sale of, 208, 213 ;
Lombards, war with, 158 ;
National Churches Juris-
diction, 165, 168, 205 ; Op-
position to, 140 ; Political
Struggles and Intrigues, 208;
Power of, 139, 140, 159, 162-
170 ; Protestant Condem-
nation, 162 ; Reforms, 166,
167 ; Renaissance Spirit,
140, 207, 208; Revenue,
Sources of, 205 ; Rise of,
151, 153 ; Rival Popes, 164,
173, 192, 196 ; Spanish
Control, 208 ; Supremacy
Struggles, 164-170 ; Taxa-
tion, 169, 197 ; Templars,
suppression of the Knights,
195-
Paraguay, Missions, 307, 308.
Parker, Archbishop Matthew :
Religious Spirit and Gov-
ernment, 233 ; Thirty-nine
Articles, 271.
Paris : National Workshops,
276; University of, 180,
306.
Passover Feast : Wheat Har-
vest, 39.
Paul, St. : Asceticism, 105 ;
Conversion, 82, 92, 93 ;
Epistles, loi, 102, 116, 117,
153 ; Law, The, 68 ; Life,
92, 100 ; Martyrdom, 129,
153 ; Persecutor, 82 ; Per-
sonality, 98, 99, 100 ;
Teaching and Missionary
Journeys, 77, 78, 93, 94, 96,
99, 100 ; Prisoner at Rome,
153 ; Womanhood, honour
paid to, 106.
Paul III., Pope, 221, 222.
Paul IV., Pope. 218.
Peel, Sir Robert, 267.
Peisistratus : Rule in Athens,
49.
Pelagian Heresy, 150.
Pembroke, William Marshall,
Earl of, 168.
Pennsylvania : Foundation
of, 251.
Pentateuch, The : Contents,
2, 3, 7-10.
Pentecost : Wheat Harvest,
39, 80.
Pepys, Samuel, Diary, 244.
Pericles, 49.
Perpetua : Martyrdom, 131.
Persian Empire : Defeat by
the Grecians, 83 ; Jews
return from Captivity, 46 ;
Power of, 46.
Peter, St. : Cornelius' Conver-
sion, 82, 90 ; Council at
Jerusalem, 93, 94 ; Gospel
of St. Mark, Personal
reminiscences, 102 ; Mar-
tyrdom, 129, 153.
Peter the Hermit : First
Crusade, 174.
Pharisees : Christ, hostility
to, 73 ; Development of,
56 ; Patriotism, 56 ; Pro-
phecy and Faith, upholders
of. 57. 58.
Philip, St.. 82.
342
INDEX
Philip Augustus of France :
Supports Pope, 167 ; Third
Crusade, 176.
PhiHp II. of Spain : Calvinist
Dutch Independence, 227.
Philip le Bel of France :
Papal Bull defiance, 169.
Philippi : St. Paul's visit, 77,
95-
Pipin, King of the Franks :
Lombards, defeat of, 158 ;
Papal alliance, 158.
Pius v.. Pope, 222.
Pisa : Council of Cardinals at,
20I^
Pitt (the younger) : Capital
and Labour, 260.
Plato, 85.
Pliny, Governor of Bythinia :
Persecution of the Chris-
tians, 1271.
Plutarch : Christianity spread
by women, 128.
Pole, Cardinal, Archbishop of
Canterbury : Oratory of
Divine Love, 217.
Political Economy, 260, 261.
Polybius: History of Rome, 90.
Polycarp, Bishop : Martyr-
dom, 131.
Pompey : Judean Campaign,
50.
Pontius Pilate, 50.
Portugal : Christian King-
dom founded, 176.
Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges
(1438), 205^
Predestination, 225.
Presbyterianism, 293-304 ;
Act of Union, 1707, 301 ;
" Bishop's Wars," 299, 300 ;
Characteristics, 296, 297 ;
Church Property and Tithe,
Confiscation of, 295, 296 ;
Confession of Faith, 1560,
295 ; Doctrines, 297 ; Edu-
cation, 296 ; Episcopacy,
296, 300 ; Establishment
in Scotland, 293, 304 ;
Evangelical Party, 302 ;
Free Church founded, 303 ;
General Assembly, 227, 298,
300, 301 ; Kirk Sessions,
227, 323 ; Lollards, 198 ;
Missionary Work, 309 ;
Moderatism, 301 ; Organi-
sation and Self-Govern-
ment, 227, 239, 294, 297,
298, 304 ; Patronage
System, 301, 302, 303 ;
Persecution, 300 ; Puritan
Alliance, 243 ; Restoration,
The, 300 ; Secessions and
Disunion, 302, 303, 304 ;
Shorter Catechism, 300 ;
Solemn League and Cove-
nant, 300 ; United Free
Church, 304.
Provisors, Statute of, 196.
Praemunire, Statute of, 196.
Preston, Battle of, 300.
Prophecy, 26 et seq. ; Books
of the Old Testament, see
their titles ; Messianic
Hope, see Messiah.
Protestants: Beliefs of, 198,
225 ; Calvinism, see that
title ; " Justification by
Faith," 225 ; Lutherans,
see that title ; Missionary
Enterprise, 308, 309 ;
Motives of Reform, 232 ;
"No-Popery" Riots, 270;
Organisation under Calvin,
223 ; Predestination, 225 ;
Puritans, see that title ;
Reform under Luther, 223 ;
Religious Wars, 227, 228,
229 ; Toleration, 229, 230 ;
Wycliffe and the Lollards,
198, 199 ; for Particular
Sects, see their titles.
Proverbs. Book of: Contents,
3. 4. 12.
INDEX
343
Psalms, Book of: Collection,
12; Contents, 3, 4; Future
Life, 62 ; Period when
written, 12.
Ptolemies : Rule in Egypt, 49.
Puritans, 238-244 ; Bible In-
spiration, 239, 240 ;
Brownists, 242 ; Calvinism,
141, 225 ; Charles I., Op-
position to, 56 ; Clarendon
Code Persecution, 244 ;
Conventicles, 241 ; De-
claration of Indulgence,
245 ; Deuteronomic Style,
39^ ; Elizabethan Settle-
ment, 234 ; Episcopacy
condemned, 239 ; Expul-
sion, 252 ; Family Prayers,
240 ; Iconoclastic Move-
ment, 157 ; Literary Ex-
pression, 246, 247, 250 ;
Ministry, the, 241 ; Parlia-
mentary support, 241, 243 ;
Persecutions, 242, 245 ;
Presbyterian Alliance, 243 ;
" Prophesyings, " 235 ;
Quakers, see that title ;
Reform Methods and
PoUcy, 238, 239 ; Revolu-
tion, 242-244 ; Sabba-
tarianism, 240, 241 ; Sur-
plices Controversy, 241,
244I.
Pusey : Oxford Movement,
see that title ; Essays and
Reviews, 287, 288.
Quakers or Society of Friends :
Beliefs and Practices, 250 ;
Founding of, 244 ; Im-
prisonment of, 249 ; " Inner
Light," Authority and In-
dividualism, 249 ; Or-
ganised as a Sect, 250 ;
Pennsylvania founded 1676,
251 ; Slave Trade Aboli-
tion, 259.
Rainy, R. : Three Lectures on
the Church of Scotland, 297^.
Raikes, Robert, 259.
Ratisbon : Diet of, 1541, 218.
Raven, C. E. : Christian
Socialism, 275^, 328.
Ravenna : Papal States, 159.
Reform Bill, 1832 : Church
Dangers, 269 ; Church Op-
position, 265 ; Noncon-
formist work for, 281.
Reformation, 566 titles, Luther,
Protestants, Presbyterian -
ism.
Religions : Christianity, see
that title, also Church, etc. ;
Definition, 284 ; Heno-
theism, 16, 21 ; Historical
Religions, 18 ; Nature Re-
ligions, 18, 19, 20 ; Poly-
theism, 16.
Renaissance : Problems of
Religion, 208 ; Spirit of,
206, 207.
Resurrection of Christ, The :
Effect on the Disciples, 75,
76 ; Proof of Messiah, 97.
Ricardo : •' Iron Law of
Wages," 261.
Richard I. (Cceur de Lion) :
Third Crusade, 176, 177.
Richard II. of England : De-
position, 200^.
Ritualistic Controversy, 274,
275-
Robertson, Scottish His-
torian, 301.
Robinson, J. A., Study of the
Gospels, iio^
Rolle, Richard : Life, 191 ;
Pficke of Conscience, The,
191.
Roman Catholics : Anglican
Secessions, 272 ; Catholic
Emancipation, 281 ; Holy
Church Medium of Inspira-
tion, 249 ; Inquisition, the,
344
INDEX
141, 218 ; Missions, 308,
309 ; excluded from Tolera-
tion Act, 244 ; Scotland,
304-
Rome, City of : Arian and
Barbarian Enemies, 154 ;
Bishops of Rome, prece-
dence, 153 ; Christian
Church, 77, 153 ; Councils
of the Church, 200 ; Mar-
tyrdom of SS. Peter and
Paul, 100, 153 ; Religion
and State, 90, 91 ; Re-
ligious Toleration, 95 ; St.
Peter's, building, 208 ; Sis-
tine Chapel, 208 ; Spanish
Wars, 208 ; Tarquins'
Rule, 49.
Roman Empire : Christianity
accepted, 119, 120; Con-
solidation under Constan-
tine, 132 ; Constantinople
capital, 132 ; Downfall of,
124, 132, 137, 138, 151, 161 ;
Greece annexed, 50 ; Ju-
dean Conquest, 50 ; Greek
influence, 82 ; Holy Roman
. Empire, 156, 160, 164 ;
Iconoclastic Movement, 157,
158 ; Papacy, 165 ; Perse-
cution of Christians, 126-
132 ; Religion, 82.
Russell, Lord John, 281, 282.
Ruth, Book of : Contents, 3, 4.
Sabbatarianism, 44, 241, 244,
301.
Sabinus, St., 145.
Sadducees, 54, 79.
Saladin, Conquest of Jeru-
salem, 176 ; Treaty with,
177.
Samaria : under Jeroboam
II., 27, 28.
Samuel, Book of : Contents, 3,
10 ; National Unity and
Worship, 20, 21.
Sancroft, Archbishop : Non-
Jurors, 66, 253.
Sanhedrin, 55.
Sargon, King of Assyria, 31,
32.
Sarpi, Paolo, 223.
Saul, King : Election of, 22;
Witch of Endor, 63.
Savonarola, Fra Girolamo,
192-194.
Savoy, Dukes of : Geneva,
224.
Saxony : Lutheranism, 215.
Science : Definition of, 284 ;
Religion and, 283-289, 303 ;
Greek Intellect, 84 ; Ma-
terialism, 284, 285.
Scribes or Rabbis : Develop-
ment, 55 ; Traditions of
the Law, 57.
Scotland : Calvinism, 225 ;
Catholic Country, 294 ;
Church Scandals and
Abuses, 295 ; Highland
Royalists, 295 ; Mary-
Queen of Scots, 226 ; Pres-
byterianism, see that title ;
Reformation, 226, 227, 293-
304-
Selbie, W. B. : Nonconformity,
327-
Semitic Tribes : Religion, 16-
22.
Seneca : Stoic Philosopher,
8S.
Sennacherib : Destruction of
Army, 33, 34 ; Power of,
33-
Sermon on the Mount, 66, 67,
103, 104 ; Law, The, 68.
Shaftesbury, Lord : Episco-
pate, 273, 274 ; Essays and
Reviews, condemnation of,
287, 288 ; Factory Act,
(1847). 263.
Shakespeare, 185, 207.
Shelley : Quoted, 260^.
INDEX
345
Siena : Council at, 204.
Sigismiind, Emperor, 201,
204.
Simeon, Rev. C. : Evan-
gelical, 258.
Simeon Stylites, St., 146.
Simony, Abolition of, 167.
Sixtus IV., Pope, 207.
Slavery, the Church and, 144,
259-
Smith, Adam : Wealth of
Nations, 260.
Smith, A. L. : Church and
State in the Middle Ages,
162^, 167^, 230*.
Socrates, 84, 85.
Solomon, King : 11, 21,
Song of Solomon, 3, 4, 12.
Spain : Christians and Sara-
cens, 160 ; Missions to S.
America, 307 ; Moham-
medan Conquests, 138, 156 ;
Papal Control, 208 ; Re-
ligious War, 141 ; Spiritual
Revival, 218.
Spiritualism, 317.
Spurgeon, Charles : Preach-
ing, 282, 283.
Stephen, St., 81, 92.
Stoic School, 88.
Strickland : Prayer Book Re-
form, 241.
Suicide : the Church and, 144.
Sunday Schools : Founding
of, 259.
Suso : The Life of Blessed
Henry, 189, 190.
Swinburne : Quoted, 134.
Synagogues, Establishment of,
55^.
Tabernacles, Feast of, 39.
Tait, Archbishop of Canter-
bury, 266, 273.
Tarquins Ruling in Rome, 49.
Telemachus, Monk, and the
Gladiators, 143.
Templars, Knights, 175 ; Sup-
pression of, 195.
Temple, Solomon's, 21 ; De-
struction, 40.
Temple, The Second : Central
Life of the Nation, 45 ;
Rebuilding, 51, 52.
Temple, Archbishop, 273 ;
Essays and Reviews, 187.
Temple, Bishop : Life and
Liberty Movement, 322.
Tennyson : Quotation, 35 ^
Tertullian : Persecuting Spirit,
131-
Test Act repealed, 281.
Testament, New : Earliest
Writings, loi ; Epistles of
S. Paul, collection by Mar-
cion, 116, 117; see also
Bible and titles of separate
books.
Testament, Old : Apocryphal
Writings, 61, 152 ; Books
of, 2-4, 6-13 ; Canon of, 39 ;
Chronology, 9 ; Compila-
tion, ii, 6-13, 15 ; Future
Life, 62 ; Criticism, 5, 6,
12, 13, 286-289; Language,
need for Scribes, 55 ; Laws,
moral and ceremonial, 9,
10; Poetical Books, 4, 12;
Progressive Religion, 14 ;
Prophetic Books, see Pro-
phecy ; Purpose and Man-
ner of Writing, 4, 5, 8 ;
Quotations in the Gospels,
1042 ; Revelation and In-
spiration, 6, 14 ; Septua-
gint, 152 ; Traditional
Material, 7, 8, 9 ; see also
Marcion ; for special Books,
see their names.
Tetzel : Sale of Indulgences,
213.
Theodelinda, 154.
Theodosius, Emperor of Rome,
132, 134.
346
INDEX
Theosophy, 317.
Thessalonians, 1st Epistle, 97.
Thessalonica : St. Paul's Visit,
95-
Thirty-Nine Articles, 233.
Thirty Years' War, 228.
Thomas Aquinas, St., 182 ;
Summa Theologiae, 182.
Thucydides, 85.
Tillotson, Archbishop, 253.
Toleration Act, 141, 244, 280.
Toplady : Hymns, 255.
Tours, Battle of, 156.
Tractarianism, see Oxford
Movement.
Trade Unions, 1281, 262, 264,
278, 320.
Trajan, Emperor : Perse-
cution by, 127^, 129.
Transubstantiation, 198, 199.
Travers, Puritan Lecturer,
236.
Trent, Council of, 221, 222.
Trevelyan, G. M. : England
under the Stuarts, 240^, 328-.
Tucker, Bishop, 314.
Turks : Conquests of Asia
Minor, 173 ; Crusades, see
that title ; Roman Empire
overthrown, 132, 138.
Ulfilas, Arian Missionary, 124,
305.
Uniformity, Act of, 244^
Unitarians, 244.
Urban II., Pope, 167, 173, 174.
Urban VI., Pope, 192, 196.
Ussher, Archbishop of Dublin :
Biblical Dates, 2.
Valla : " Donation of Con-
stantine," 159, 207.
Vaughan : Christian Poet,
290^.
Venice, 171, 208.
Vespasian, Emperor, 50.
Victorian Period, 265-292.
Voltaire : Attack on Chris-
tianity, 257.
Wakeman, H. O. : History of
the Church of England, 328^
Ward, W. G. : The Ideal of
a Christian Church, 272 ;
Oxford Movement, 272 ;
Roman Catholic Secession,
272.
Warre Cornish, F. : History
of the English Church in the
Nineteenth Century, 328.
Wells, H. G. : God, The In-
visible King, 121 ; Outline
of History, 69s 88^
Wentworth : Puritan Leader,
241.
Wesley, Charles, 253, 254, 255.
Wesley, John : Importance
of Movement, 257 ; Jour-
nal, 255, 256 ; Lay-
Preachers, 256 ; Methodist
Club, Oxford, 253, 254 ;
Missionary to America, 254 ;
Ordination, 256 ; Organis-
ing Gifts, 255 ; Open-air
Preaching, 254, 255 ; " So-
cieties," 256.
Wesleyan Missionary Society,
310.
Westcott, Bishop, 289.
Whitgift, Archbishop : High
Commission Court, 236.
Whitefield, George, 253, 254,
255. 258.
Whitsunday, 76 ; see also
Pentecost.
Wilberforce, Bishop : Energy
and Eloquence, 273
Essays and Reviews, con
demnation of, 287, 288
Origin of Species, The
Review of, 286.
Wilberforce, William : Aboli-
tion of Slave Trade, 259,
261 ; Industrial Problems
INDEX
347
262 ; Practical View of the
System of Christianity, 262 ;
Religious Views, 262.
William III., 252, 253 ; Pres-
byterianism, 300, 301 ;
Toleration Act, 141.
Wishart, George : Preaching,
294-
Wittenberg University, 220.
Wolsey, Cardinal, 140,
Women : Church, Position in,
317 ; Honour paid to, 105,
125, 128 ; Missionaries, 313,
314-
Wordsworth : Christianity
and Poetry, 290*.
Worms, Diet of, 214.
Wycliffe, John, 139, 140, 197-
199 ; Bible, Translation of.
198 ; Concerning the Duty
of the King, 197.
Xavier, Francis : Mission to
India, 308.
Ximenes, Cardinal, 218.
Zadok, Priest, 54.
Zechariah : Temple rebuild-
ing, 51.
Zedekiah, King : Captivity,
40.
Zengi, 175, 176.
Zeno : Stoic School of Philo-
sophy, 88.
Zerubbabel : Jewish Restora-
tion, 51.
Ziska, 204.
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