THE progress of christianity during the first years of its existence, is the most triumphant proof of the presence with it and in it of the finger of God. Let us recall some of the interesting facts of its early struggles. Thirty years after the ascension of our blessed Lord we read in the pages of Tacitus, the accomplished Latin historian, who was a Pagan, and hated, not merely tolerated christianity—"This dire superstition," that is, christianity, "was checked for a while, but it again burst forth, and not only spread over Judea, the first seat of mischief, but even introduced itself into Rome. The confessions of those who were seized discovered vast multitudes of accomplices. They were convicted of hatred to the human race." Such is the statement of Tacitus.
Another Roman writer, Pliny the younger, who was governor of Pontus and Bithynia, writing to his royal master, says, "The number of Christians is so great as to call for serious consultation. The contagion of this superstition has spread, not only through cities, but through all the villages of the country." This was seventy years after the ascension of our blessed Lord, and is a triumphant proof from the mouth of one of its enemies of the rapid spread of the Christian faith, in spite of every obstruction that political ingenuity could devise, or malice could invent.
Justin Martyr, a Christian apologist, who was born in the year 106 says, "There is not a nation, Greek or barbarian, even those who wander in tribes, and live in tents, amongst whom prayers and thanksgivings are not offered, to the Father in the name of Jesus crucified."
Clement of Alexandria, writing in the year 160, says, "The doctrines of christianity are not limited to Judea, but are spread throughout the whole world, into every nation, village, and city, Greek and barbarian."
Thus have we from the mouths of friends and foes, evidence the most irresistible, that christianity spread most rapidly during the first hundred years, after the ascension of our blessed Lord.
Let us ask and answer the question, How did it spread? Was it by the aid of men, by the patronage of princes, by the eloquence of its advocates; or can we trace in its majestic progress, as I believe we can, the finger of God? Let us see what it had to overcome, and what weapons it could or would wield in overcoming; and then, I think we shall conclude that it is impossible to account for the early spread of the Christian faith upon any other hypothesis, than that it was signally sustained, maintained and spread by the presence and power of God.
First of all, it had to overcome the Jew, its earliest, bitterest, and most unrelenting foe. The Jews, we must recollect, were disappointed expectants, and of all the passions that occupy the human heart, disappointed pride is the most bitter and malignant. They expected and prophesied a glorious conqueror; they hoped for emancipation from the Roman yoke, as their supposed only slavery; they believed that the Messiah would lead them to battles, which in every case would be victorious, and enthrone Jerusalem over the nations. Therefore, when he came, and was crucified in their capital; when they found that his emissaries were not princes and nobles, but the poor fishermen of Galilee, and the Jew and Gentile laid low as sinners in the common dust; their resistance became intense, their indignation irrepressible, their spite was keen and inexhaustible, and they left no stone unturned or untouched, that they could throw against the bulwarks and battlements of the Christian faith.
But what was the result notwithstanding? Thousands upon thousands of these very Jews were converted in a single day. Hebrew prejudices the most inveterate melted before the warm love of the gospel. The granite heart of the Jew, like Horeb's rock, when touched by the Rod of Jesus, broke into springs of beneficence, and love, and sympathy; and the most unconvincible of all the unconvincible tribes of the earth repented of their first cry, "Crucify him," and joined in the deepening swell of multiplying nations, "Hosanna in the highest!" Now how, I ask, was it that this religion, the origin and development of which the Jew thoroughly knew, the facts of which he was perfectly master of,—a religion which blasted his fond hopes, lowered his national pride, and placed him upon a level with the humblest tribes of the Gentiles—how was it that this religion so rapidly subdued his proud heart, so melted his obdurate nature, that the Jews became the most successful preachers of that Christ, whom they and their fathers crucified? Was it not the finger of God?
If I look at its progress amongst the Gentiles, I see the same evidence of a divine presence. It was said to be a stumbling-block to the Jew, and it was proclaimed to be foolishness to the Gentiles. A handful of men preaching a religion recently introduced, according to the popular notion, came into collision with the overwhelming force that sustained the religion of the Empire, the worship of Jupiter and Mercury and the gods of the Pantheon. Polytheism had struck its roots deep in the national soil. Its gods and the names of its gods were associated with their weddings, were hallowed by their funerals, and interwoven with the whole history of their domestic and social life. Poets, painters, sculptors, earned their bread by supporting the national faith. Interest, sympathy, patronage, power, eloquence, poetry, satire—all between Cæsar himself and the meanest of his subjects, conspired to beat back a religion that they felt would revolutionize the Empire, and render insecure the throne of all the Cæsars. And yet, in spite of all this, it made way, and gained converts where it seemed impossible that a single convert should be made to the Christian faith. It was a religion, too, that did not suit fallen nature. To the guilty it proclaimed, "Repent;" to the proud it said, "God resisteth the proud," to the revengeful, "Love your enemies;" to the greedy, "Lay not up treasures upon earth;" to the rich, "How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of heaven;" to the ambitious, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven;" to masters, who had half the population as their slaves, "Forbear threatening;" to the slaves, who formed a vast proportion of the population, "Be subject to your own masters for conscience sake;" and told all its converts, "Ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake. They shall persecute you, and cast you into prison and put you to death." The resistance or treatment it received was just what might have been expected. The dungeon, the cross, the wild beasts—these were the arguments employed by imperial Rome, to put down the religion that Jew and Gentile equally detested. And hence, Tacitus, the Pagan historian, records: "The Christians died in torments. They were nailed to crosses, or sewed up in the skins of wild beasts, and exposed to the fury of dogs, or smeared with combustible materials and used as torches to illuminate the darkness of Rome." This was the treatment Christians then received. And Gibbon, generally an impartial historian says, "If the Empire was afflicted by any calamity; if the Tiber154overflowed, if the earth shook, or if temporary order of the seasons was interrupted, the superstitious Pagans were convinced that the crimes and impiety of the Christians had provoked the divine justice."
I ask, how can you believe that by its own, or by any human power, a religion that repudiated fraud and force, and rolled back the current of morality and belief, and reversed the inveterate instincts of man, made so great progress? It was met by sword, and fagot, and all that ingenuity could suggest, and all that power could achieve, in order to repress and put it down—yet it gained speed at every stage, and attained increasing popularity; it subdued the wills, and conciliated the affections of its bitterest foe,—made converts in the shops of Italy, and proselytes amongst the soldiers of the imperial army,—raised up its advocates from the orators of Rome, penetrated the palace of Cæsar, and literally had its detested symbols at length emblazoned upon the Roman labarum. Is it possible to suppose that such a religion, so opposed, so fitted to humble the proud and to rebuke the sinful, nevertheless spread in the face of all persecutions, using no policy, disdaining fraud, never employing carnal weapons, wielding only spiritual ones—owing to any other presence than a divine one, or that this is explicable on any other hypothesis than that it was the finger of God himself?
But perhaps you will say there are elements that will explain its progress of a purely human character as I might suppose, but I will refer to an historian I have already mentioned—Gibbon, an infidel but a very faithful narrator of facts, who assigns what he thinks satisfactory human reasons for the spread of christianity. He was so startled, I may add, with its rapid progress, and felt it to be so much an argument in its favor, that he exhausted his brilliant and inventive mind, in order to find reasons for it without admitting that it was the finger of God. Let us see what the reasons were, and we may depend upon it they are the very best that can be invented to account for a so very extraordinary phenomenon.
First, he says that the progress of this religion is to be accounted for by the inflexible zeal of the early Christians. In answer to this, we ask, Had the Jews no zeal? We read of their untiring and earnest attempts to repress christianity. Had the Pagans no zeal, who kindled the martyrs' fires, and who made such efforts to repress and put down christianity? We well know that zeal that has not good fuel very soon goes out. Zeal in a bad cause is generally the effervescence of a day, or of a passing hour; but the zeal of Christians seems to have had with the fervor of a passion, the fixity of a deeply-rooted principle; and instead of disposing of our assertion that the finger of God alone explains the progress of christianity, it appears rather that zeal, so pure, so sustained, so unpolluted by any earthly element, must have been kindled from the altar of heaven; and thus what Gibbon regards as a disproof, is a positive proof of the presence of the finger of God.
But the second reason, he says would be, the more complete manifestation of a future state, which the Christian religion revealed to its followers. I reply, both the Jews and the Pagans believed in a future state. Christianity in this respect could have no pre-eminence. But the future presented in the Polytheistic creed—the Pagan Elysium—was far more powerfully fitted to captivate the depraved nature of man; for he was taught to believe that he would be there admitted into all voluptuous and sensual enjoyments. And therefore, if the prospect of a future state was calculated to make converts, the future state that the Pagans put forward was more fitted, because far more congenial to the natural man, than the sublime, holy, and beautiful heaven, the everlasting Sabbath, the only future rest that Christianity reveals as remaining for the people of God.
And the third cause of the progress of this religion, he says, was the miraculous powers ascribed to the primitive Christian. To this I answer, If the miracles done by the apostles were impostures, there were sophists and advocates in Rome admirably able to detect the imposition. But if they were really proofs of a supernatural presence, then the admission of Gibbon is most candid, and it is at the same time most decisive; for a miracle, such as the apostles wrought, acknowledged to be so by the bitterest enemy of our religion, is only another and incontrovertible trace of the finger of God.
The historian says a fourth cause of the spread of this religion was the pure and austere morals of the early Christians. One rejoices to find a skeptic admitting that the morals of the early Christians were so pure; but we naturally ask, Can good fruit grow upon a bad tree? May we expect pure morals from impure men? Can thieves live honestly? Would liars speak truth? Could men who spent their days in spreading a conscious imposition and a fraud advocate whatsoever things were pure and just; and not only advocate them, but live, amplify, and illustrate them? The supposition is impossible. How hard is the skeptic pushed, in order to get rid of the only solution—"Truly this was the finger of God!"
Another reason assigned by Gibbon is the union and discipline of the Christian army. We answer, this union of the early Christians was not the result of compression. There was then no person pretending to be the Vicar of Christ; there was no Pope to drill and discipline the Christians into an army. If, therefore, there was union, it was the result of some common inner love and holy principle. Union in evil is a conspiracy; union without clear concord is only coalition; union that is lasting and real must be the growth of common principles, and the reciprocity of common affections and universal love toward a common Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. The admission, therefore, of the union of Christians is the compliment, if so any one may call it, that a skeptic pays to christianity.
Do any of these statements explain the rapid progress of christianity? Is it not much too credulous to infer, that the spread of a religion so pure in its nature, so repressing to the long-cherished lusts and passions of mankind, so fitted to make humble and lowly them who treated these graces as sins, deformities, and crimes; so spiritual in its nature, so resisted by great power, and persecuted by every mode that cruelty could invent, or calumny concoct, was the result of the presence of the finger of God?