The Worship of Relics by C. M. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Feb 18, 1915

The Worship of Relics

By C. M. S.

“Rome Never Changes”—No. 13

The Worship of Relics

(Concluded)

THE victory won over paganism by the professed church of Jesus Christ by absorbing into its system the rites and ceremonies of the pagan religions and baptizing and renaming them, was one of those victories that are far worse than defeat. As a result of that process—victory by absorption—that glory-loving church of the early centuries of the Christian era drew farther and farther away from the primitive and fundamental principles of the gospel, and partook more of the characteristics of the systems she absorbed.

That recognized principle of dietetics, that we become that which we consume and assimilate, proved true also of this conquest of paganism by formal Christianity in the days of Constantine, Constans, Constantius, and their successors. Christian in name, that system showed unmistakable characteristics of the paganism it had superseded and absorbed; whereas paganism, defeated in outward form, was soon permeating all the features and functions of the nominal church of Christ. During those dark and superstitious centuries the nominal Christian church was lost in the bewitching idolatries of saint and relic worship, and the spiritual guides of the church were the abetters and leaders in that terrible apostasy. The people became infatuated with relics and relic worship; large sums of money were paid for them, and the belief in their efficacy was practically unbounded.

The superstitious veneration of the fragments of departed saints was not restricted to any class. Rich and poor, high and low, princes and peasants, were alike brought under its deceptive spell. It is related of Alfred, king of England, that in confirming a treaty with his enemies in the year 876, the oath of confirmation was taken over “the Christian relics, which (relics), with Alfred, were next in veneration after the Deity.”—Life of Alfred, by Asser, at A. D. 876. We hear also of King Richard paying over to Saladin, the conqueror of Jerusalem, fifty-two thousand bezants for the redemption of four chests of bones, “relics of the saints,” which Saladin had confiscated ‘so that “Christians might no longer believe that they had as intercessors in heaven those whose bones they worshiped on earth.”’—Matthew Paris, at A. D. 1191.

In that heyday of relic worship the claims made for the performance of miracles by the power of relics rivaled anything recorded of the work of our Saviour. Kings visited the tomb of Thomas a Becket for healing, and thousands of their subjects followed their example. It is declared in the biography of Thomas a Becket that through the instrumentality of that dead saint’s prayers and relics “lepers were cleansed, the blind, the deaf, the dumb, and others sick of all kinds of distempers were cured,” and “some dead restored to life,” and criminals escaped punishment or had members of their body restored that had been cut off as a penalty for their transgressions. One manuscript dealing with the miracles alleged to have been performed by the relics of this saint, credits him and them with two hundred and sixty-three miracles. In one of the instances mentioned an infant forty days old who had

died of rupture is said to have been restored to life when the mother placed a small fragment of a relic of St. Thomas in the child’s mouth and prayed to the dead saint for the child’s recovery. Rich gifts were lavished upon the shrine in which the bones of a Becket were deposited. These consisted chiefly of gold and precious stones. The largest of these precious stones was a royal diamond, given by King Louis of France. The timber work of this shrine was “covered with plates of gold, damasked and embossed, garnished with brooches, images, angels, chains, precious stones, and great Oriental pearls; the spoils of which shrine in gold and jewels of an inestimable value filled two great chests, one of which six or eight men could do no more than convey out of the church.” See “Lives of the Saints,” by Rev. Alban Butler, Vol. XII, pages 800-810, under “Life of St. Thomas.”

Soon after the day of Pentecost, Peter, whom Rome claims as the first pope, had occasion to defend himself for preaching the gospel and healing in the name of Christ. The divine record of that occasion reads:—

‘And when they [the Jewish leaders] had set them [Peter and John] in the midst, they inquired, By what power, or in what name, have ye done this? Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said unto them, Ye rulers of the people, and elders, if we this day are examined concerning a good deed done to an impotent man, by what means this man is made whole; be it known unto you all, and to all the people of Israel, that in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, whom God raised from the dead, even in him doth this man stand here before you whole. He [Christ] is ever the stone which was set at naught of you the builders, which was made the head of the corner. And in none other is there salvation: for neither is there any other name under heaven, that is given among men, wherein we must be saved.’ Acts 4:7-12.

Granting that Peter was the first pope (for which there is absolutely no shred of evidence), what, then, is the teaching of the first pope concerning help or healing or salvation from any other source than Jesus Christ himself? If some one on that occasion, or on any other occasion during Peter’s life, had said to him, ‘May not I obtain healing and help by praying to a dead saint? may not I obtain healing or restoration to life for my child by putting a piece of a bone of a saint in his mouth? may not I find salvation through praying to, and through the intercession of, Mary, the mother of Jesus?’ Peter would have replied, as he did to the rulers of Israel, that in the name and through the power of Jesus Christ alone can healing and help come; ‘neither is there any other name under heaven, that is given among men, wherein we must be saved.’ Relics are nothing; prayers to the dead fall dead, because the dead are not alive. Will not the dead saints work for us!—No; they cannot even work for themselves. But let God’s Word answer that question:—

‘But man dieth, and is laid low: yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he? As the waters fail from the sea, and the river wasteth and drieth up; so man lieth down and riseth not: till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, nor be roused out of their sleep. . . . If a man die, shall he live again? All the days of my warfare would I wait, till my release should come. Thou wouldest call, and I would answer thee: thou wouldest have a desire to the work of thy hands.’ Job 14:10-15.

‘Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.’ Eccl. 9:10.

‘The dead praise not the Lord, neither any that go down into silence.’ Ps. 115:17.

‘The living know that they shall die: but the dead know not anything. . . . Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished; neither have they any more a portion forever in anything that is done under the sun.’ Eccl. 9:5, 6.

‘Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help. His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish.’ Ps. 146:3, 4.

What can a dead saint or the relics of a dead saint do for the living, to help, to heal, and to save? Their very thoughts are perished, likewise their love, hatred, and envy; they “know not anything;” there is no work nor device nor knowledge in the place to which they go; and they have no “more a portion forever in anything that is done under the sun.” This testimony of infallible Scripture makes it absolutely certain that the dead have nothing whatever to do with anything that takes place in this world between the time of their death and the time of the general resurrection. For this reason, prayers to the dead and trust in relics are both useless and a mockery. God has laid help on One, Jesus Christ, and on him alone; and if we pray to the dead and to the relics of the dead, we are spurning the help of the only One who can help us, and putting in his place, in that respect, that which cannot help or heal or save; and that, too, in spite of the apostle Peter’s emphatic declaration.

The councils of the Roman Church which permit and command the veneration of relics, and thus foster in the hearts of the people the worship of relics and a trust in relics, is diametrically opposed to the teaching of the one whom they claim as the first pope. If Peter was the first pope, then there has been a tremendous change, a complete revolution. But Peter was not at any time a pope; and not until two hundred years this side of Christ was relic worship to any appreciable extent brought into the Christian church.

We have stated that the whole system of relic worship and trusting in relics and dead saints was brought into the Christian church from heathenism. The following from Hislop’s “Two Babylons” will substantiate the assertion:—

In the realms of heathendom the same worship [of relics] had flourished for ages before Christian saints or martyrs had appeared in the world. In Greece the superstitious regard to relics, and especially to the bones of the deified heroes, was a conspicuous part of popular idolatry. The work of Pausanias, the learned Grecian antiquary, is full of reference to this superstition. Thus, of the shoulder blade of Pelops, we read that, after passing through divers adventures, being appointed by the oracle of Delphi as a divine means of delivering the Eleans from a pestilence under which they suffered, it “was committed” as a sacred relic “to the custody” of the man who had fished it out of the sea, and of his posterity after him. (Pausanias, book 5, chap. 13, page 408.)

The bones of the Trojan Hector were preserved as a precious deposit at Thebes. “They” [the Thebans], says Pausanias, “say that his [Hector’s] bones were brought hither from Troy, in consequence of the following oracle: ‘Thebans, who inhabit the city of Cadmus, if you wish to reside in your country, blest with the possession of blameless wealth; bring the bones of Hector, the son of Priam, into your dominions from Asia, and reverence the hero agreeably to the mandate of Jupiter.’” (Id., book 9, chap. 18, page 746.)

Many other similar instances from the same author might be adduced. The bones thus carefully kept and reverenced were all believed to be miracle-working bones. From the earliest periods, the system of Buddhism has been propped up by relics, that have wrought miracles at least as well vouched as those wrought by the relics of St. Stephen or by the “Twenty Martyrs.” . . . Who has not heard of the holy coat of Treves and its exhibition to the people? From the following the reader will see that there was an exactly similar exhibition of the holy coat of Buddha. [Hislop then refers to the miraculous manner in which the holy coat of Buddha was procured and exhibited, and continues:] . . . This holy coat of Buddha was no doubt as genuine, and as well entitled to worship, as the holy coat of Treves.

The resemblance does not stop here. It is only a year or two ago since the Pope presented to his beloved son, Francis Joseph of Austria, a “tooth” of “St. Peter,” as a mark of his special favor and regard. The teeth of Buddha are in equal request among his worshipers. . . . “King of Devas,” said a Buddhist missionary who was sent to one of the principal courts of Ceylon to demand a relic or two from the rajah, “King of Devas, thou possessest the right canine tooth relic (of Buddha) as well as the right collar bone of the divine teacher. Lord of Devas, demur not in matters involving the salvation of the land of Lanka.” (Pocoke’s “India in Greece,” page 321.) Then the miraculous efficacy of these relics is shown in the following: “The Saviour

of the world (Buddha) even after he had attained to Parinibanan or final emancipation (that is, after his death), by means of a corporeal relic, performed infinite acts to the utmost perfection, for the spiritual comfort and mundane prosperity of mankind.” (Ib.)—“Two Babylons,” pages 177, 178.

From a work entitled “Asiatic Researches” we learn that the bones of Buddha were “scattered all over the world, like those of Osiris and Jupiter Zagreus.”—“Asiatic Researches,” Vol. X, pages 128, 129. From this it is evident that the collecting and veneration of relics and trusting in them for protection is as old as heathenism. Osiris was believed to have been divided into fourteen parts and scattered through the world. These relics were sought for by the leaders in idolatry, and were entombed with every mark of veneration. Plutarch says that Isis, the wife of the god Osiris, sought these relics of her husband, and buried them where she found them. This accounts for the many sepulchers of Osiris in Egypt, and is the forerunner of the multiplication of relics seen even in our days. “Egypt,” says Hislop, “was covered with sepulchers of its martyred god; and many a leg and arm and skull, all vouched to be genuine, were exhibited in the rival burying places for the adoration of the Egyptian faithful. Nay, not only were these Egyptian relics sacred themselves, they consecrated the very ground in which they were entombed.”—“Two Babylons,” page 179. As the worship of Osiris in Egypt was really a Babylonian worship Egyptianized, we have relic worship traced back to Babylon of old.

Thus heathenism, with its back turned upon God and groping in the darkness for gods of its own and for help where no help was, instituted relic worship and prayers to the dead. With heathendom thus saturated with relic worship, it was but natural that half-converted heathen peoples brought into the church of Christ should bring many of their customs, inclinations, and religious prejudices with them. That they did, and that was what Paul saw developing in his day when he declared that “the mystery of iniquity doth already work.”

The Gospels and the letters of Peter and Paul and James and Jude and the Revelation do not so much as hint at the worship of relics as a Christian duty or a Christian privilege—do not mention it at all. The early church before the third century knew nothing of it except what it saw in heathendom. Peter (called the first pope by the Roman Church) declared plainly the futility of any such worship or basis of trust; but now the Roman Church is filled with relic worship, and her members offer unceasing prayers to the dead. Somewhere between the days of Peter and the days of Benedict XV there has been a change in the worship and the faith of that part of Christendom which claims to have the only true apostolic succession. If the Roman Church dates back to the days of Peter, she is unable successfully to deny the charge that she has changed, and that the change which she has made has been a revolutionary one. She stands, on the question of relic worship, where heathendom has stood since the days of ancient Babylon; but she does not stand with Peter.

C. M. S.