Forerunners and Rivals of Christianity: Being Studies in Religious History From 330 B.C. to 330 A.D. (Complete)
9781465682598
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
The worships, beliefs, and religious practices of the age which saw the birth and infancy of Christianity must always be the most interesting of all subjects to the student of history, nor are there many more deserving the attention of the general reader. The opponent, quite as much as the adherent of Christianity, must admit that the early struggles of the faith which is professed by nearly a third of the human race, which for fifteen centuries wielded unchallenged sway over the whole of Europe, and which has grown with the growth of European colonization until it now has a firm settlement in every quarter of the inhabited world, must ever possess surpassing interest for humanity. Yet the popular ideas on the subject are not only vague but erroneous. A general notion that, shortly before the coming of Christ, the Pagans had tired of their old gods, and, lost to all sense of decency, had given themselves up to an unbridled immorality founded on atheistic ideas, is probably about as far as the man who has given no special study to the subject would venture to go. Such a view, founded perhaps on somewhat misty recollections of the Roman satirists and a little secondhand knowledge of the denunciations of the early Christian writers, is almost the reverse of the truth. There has probably been no time in the history of mankind when all classes were more given up to thoughts of religion, or when they strained more fervently after high ethical ideals, than in the six centuries which have been taken for the subject of this book. The cause of this misconception is, however, clear enough. Half a century ago, the general public was without guide or leader in such matters, nor had they any materials on which to form opinions of their own. The classical education which was all that the majority of men then got, carefully left all such matters as the origins of Christianity on one side. The treatises of the Fathers of the Church, for the most part written in late and inelegant Greek, were held to be too corrupting to the style of scholars reared on the texts of the purest period to be attempted by any but professional theologians, by whom indeed they were often very imperfectly understood. Nor was much to be gathered from the profane historians of the early Christian centuries, who maintained such an obstinate silence with regard to Christianity as to give rise to the theory that they must have conspired to ignore the new religion of the lower classes as something too barbarous for ears polite. Moreover, the ruling maxim of education, especially of English education until the end of theXIXth century, was that it was better to know one thing thoroughly than to acquire a smattering of a great many, and that a scholar was better served by an intimate knowledge of second aorists than by any wide extent of reading; while the comparative method of study was still confined to sciences of analysis like anatomy and philology. Above all, what has been called the catastrophic view of the Christian religion was still in fashion. Although our spiritual pastors and masters were never tired of reminding us that God’s ways were not as our ways, they invariably talked and wrote on the assumption that they were, and thought an Omnipotent Creator with eternity before Him must needs behave like a schoolboy in control of gunpowder for the first time.
