THE HERMIT CHRISTIAN NATION OF AFRICA.
By George H. Schodde
BY PROF. DR. GEORGE H. SCHODDE. None have better reasons than the Christians to feel a deep interest in the Abyssinians. In reality they are the hermit Christian people of the globe, the oldest national church in existence. Organized as early as the fourth century, and adopting the tenets and teachings of the Greek Church of that period, Abyssinian Christianity of to-day has still preserved, altho in the form of a petrified formalism, the doctrines and liturgies, the morals and literature, of the age which witnessed the conversion of this unique and gifted people. Ever since the conquest of Egypt by the Moslems, the Abyssinians have been separated from the church at large. In fact, the rupture between it and the mother Greek Church took place as early as A.D. 451, when the synod of Chalcedon condemned as heretical the Monophysitic dogmas of the Egyptian and other churches. With the exception of a passing and unfortunate acquaintance with the Portuguese in the fifth century, which led to the temporary establishment of a Jesuitic supremacy and the acknowledgment of the jurisdiction of the see of Rome, Abyssinian Christianity has been an unknown quantity to western Christianity for more than a dozen centuries, a vague knowledge of it being traditionally spread under the name of “the Christianity of the Presbyter John.” Even to the present day, the type of ecclesiastical life here represented has been an enigma to western minds, as neither Protestant nor Roman Catholic missionaries have succeeded in bringing these people into touch and tone with the living Christianity of the west. All these data, together with the surprising experiences of the Italians in Abyssinia during the past decade, have naturally aroused the inquiry as to what manner of men these people are. The Abyssinian, who is the modern representative of the Ethiopian of history, can boast of an excellent kinship, pedigree, and descent. He is really no Ethiopian at all,—that is, he is not black, nor a member of the negro race. He is of purely Semitic extraction, a brother of the Hebrew, the Arab, the Babylonian, the Assyrian, the Phenician, the Syrian, and other history-making peoples. His physiology, his language, his method of thought, clearly indicate his extraction. His color is, indeed, to use a word employed by a prominent German missionary, Krapft, “coffee-colored,” but this is manifestly the result of climatic influences. Between his tongue and that of the Old Testament and of the Koran, there exists as close a relationship as is found, on the one hand, between French, Spanish, and Italian, and on the other between the German and the Scandinavian languages. The religious traditions of the Abyssinians are exceedingly old. The royal house traces its origin back to Solomon—the first king of Abyssinia, Menelik, being regarded as a son of the wise king of Israel from the queen of Sheba. The native chronicles, as these are reproduced in the monumental thesaurus of Ludolf, Historia Æthiopica, trace this line through all its members up to the son of David, and the royal house of Abyssinia claims an ancestry as ancient as the houses of China and Japan. Tradition also claims that this first Menelik, who was educated at Jerusalem, took with him the original ark of the covenant from the temple, and brought it to his own capital city of Axum, the ruins of which are still in existence. In this tradition there is evidently a kernel of truth. Altho the Abyssinians are Christians, yet in their faith and church life they have many Jewish elements. Thus they still practice circumcision as well as baptism; they observe the seventh day as well as the first; they have an abundance of fast days after Jewish models. It seems highly probable that, before they became Christians, the Abyssinians had adopted the tenets of Judaism. The existence in their midst of a peculiar people called “Falashas,” or “Black Jews,” with a Jewish type of faith of the ante-Talmudic period, makes this view probable, as the Falashas would then be that portion of the people who would not exchange their Jewish faith for the Christian. That there was a mighty struggle between these two faiths in Abyssinia is indicated by the undoubted fact that, probably during the eleventh century, a Jewish dynasty ruled Abyssinia for several decades, and was suppressed only after a bitter contest. This whole Jewish interlude in Abyssinian history strongly recalls the Hyksos episode in the early annals of Egypt. Abyssinian Christianity has a noble record in defending its existence against Moslem aggression. While the Mohammedan propaganda of fire and sword was able to overthrow the Christian Orient, and the green flag of the prophet of Mecca was carried in triumph over northern Africa and in western Europe almost to the Rhine, and in eastern Europe to the very gates of Vienna, this same power was not able to supplant the cross by the crescent in the mountain fastnesses of the “Switzerland of Africa,” just across the Red Sea from Mecca and Medina, and bring to the feet of the false prophet the kindred people of Abyssinia. For more than twelve hundred years, down to the last war between the Madhi and the Negus John, the Abyssinians have defended and maintained against fearful odds the cause of Christian culture and civilization against the Moslem foe. It is true that the Christianity and civilization of Abyssinia is not much to boast of, being a stereotype petrification of the Christian Greek culture of the fourth century; yet, with such historic factors and forces to deal with, the surprise really consists in the fact that even a semblance of Christianity is left to tell the story of former greatness. As it is, the Abyssinian church is probably the greatest, as it is the old ecclesiastical ruin of Christianity, and, as such, has its story to tell and its lesson to teach. Of special value has the peculiar history of Abyssinia been for the Christian church in this, that it has, in its isolation and separation, preserved a large number of valuable works of early Christianity, which have been lost to the Græco-Latin literature of the church. To these belong, among other works, also the book of Enoch, the book of Jubilees, and a number of excellent texts of patristic writings. The literature of Abyssinia is fairly large, but is almost entirely composed of translations, and is throughout, either directly or indirectly, theological and Christian. Much of it yet remains to be published and examined.—S. S. Times.