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 CHRISTIANITY

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CHRISTIANITY

corruption, those new religions, concentrating wor- ship on a single prominent deity, were monotheistic in effect. Moreover, many of them were character- ize.! by rites of expiation and sacrifice, which familiar- ized men's minds with the idea of a mediatorial religion. They combined to destroy the notion of a national cultiis, and to separate the service of the Deity from the service of the State. Finally, as a contributory cause to the diffusion of Christianity, we must not fail to mention the widespread Pax Romania, resulting from the union of the civilized races under one strong central government.

Thus much may oe said with regard to the remote preparation of the world for the reception of Chris- tianity. What immediately preceded its institution, as it was born in Judaism, concerns the Jewish race alone, and is comprised in the teaching and miracles of Christ, His death and resurrection, and the mission of the Holy Spirit. During His whole mortal life on earth, including the two or three years of His active ministry, Christ lived as a devout Jew, Himself ob- serving, and insisting on His followers observing, the injunctions of the Law (Matt., xxiii, 3). The cum of His teaching, as of that of His precursor, was the approach of the "Kingdom' of God", meaning not only the rule of righteousness in the individual heart ("the kingdom of God is within you" — Luke, xvii, 21), but also the Church (as is plain from many of the parables) which He was about to institute. Yet, though He often foreshadowed a time when the Law as such would cease to bind, and though He Himself in proof of His Messiahship occasionally set aside its provisions ("For the Son of man is Lord even of the sabbath", Matt., xii,8), yet, as, in spite of His mira- cles, Hi' did not win recognition of that Messiahship, still less of His Divinity, from the Jews at large, He confined His explicit teaching about the Church to His immediate followers, and left it to them, when the time came, openly to pronounce the abrogation of the Law. (Acts, xv, 5-11, 28; Gal., iii, 19; 24-28; Eph., ii, 2, 14-15; Coloss., ii, 16, 17; Heb., vii, 12.) It was not so much, then, by propounding the dogmas of Christianity as by informing the Old Law with tin' spirit of Christian ethics that Christ found Himself able to prepare Jewish hearts for the religion to come. Again, the faith which He failed to arouse by the numerous miracles He wrought, He sought to provide with a further and stronger incentive by dying under every circumstance of pain, disgrace, and defeat, and then raising Himself from the dead in triumph and glory. It was to this fact rather than to tin' wonders II. worked in His lifetime that His accredited wit- nesses always appealed in their teaching. On the marvel of the Resurrection is based in the counsels of God tin- faith i>f Christianity. "If Christ is not risen again, your faith is vain", declares the Apostle Paul (I Cor., xv, 17), who says no word of the other won- ■ hrist performed. By His death, therefore, and His return from the dead, Christ, as the event proved, furnished the strongest means for the effective preach- ing of the religion He came to found.

third antecedent condition to the birth of Christianity, as we learn from the sacred records, was a special participation of the Holy Spirit given to the Irs on the day of Pentecost. According to Christ's promise, the function of this Divine gift was to teach them all truth and bring hack to thi membrance all that [Christ] had said to them (John, xiv, 26; xvi, 13). "I send the Promised of my Father upon you, but remain ye in the city till ye shall be clothed with power from on high" (Luke, xxiv, 49). "John indeed baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost, not many days hence" (Acts, i, 5). As a result of that Divine visitation we find the Apostles preaching the Gospel with wonderful courage, persuasiveness, and assur- ance in the face of hostile Jews and indifferent Gen-

tiles, "the Lord working with them and confirming their words by the signs that followed" (Mark, xvi, 20).

We have now to consider the circumstances of Christianity at the outset, and to estimate to what extent it was affected by the already existing religious beliefs of the time. It took its rise, as we have seen, in Judaism: its Founder and His disciples were ortho- dox Jews, and the latter maintained their Jewish prac- tices, at least for a time, even after the day of Pente- cost. The Jews themselves looked upon the followers of Christ as a mere Israelitish sect (aXpe<ns) like the Sadducees or the Essenes, styling St. Paul "the in- stigator of the revolt of the sect of the Nazarenes" (Acts, xxiv, 5). The new religion was at first wholly confined to the synagogue, and its votaries had still a large share of Jewish exelusiveness; they read the Law, they practised circumcision, and they wor- shipped in the Temple, as well as in the upper room at Jerusalem. We need not wonder, then, that some modern rationalists, who reject its supernatural origin and ignore the operation of the Holy Spirit in its first missionaries, see in early Christianity Judaism pure and simple, and find the explanation of its character and growth in the pre-existing religious environment. But this theory of natural development does not fit the facts as narrated in the New Testament, which is full of indications that Christ's doctrines were new, and His spirit strange. Consequently, the records have to be mutilated to suit the theory. We cannot pretend to follow, here or in other places, the ration- alists in their New Testament criticism. There is the less need of doing so that their theories are often mutually destructive. A dozen years ago an observer computed that since 1850 there had been published 747 theories regarding the Old and New Testaments, of which 608 were by that time defunct (see Hastings, "Higher Criticism"). The effect of these random hypotheses has been greatly to strengthen the ortho- dox view, which we now proceed to state.

Christianity is developed from Judaism in the sense that it embodies the Divine revelation contained in the latter creed, somewhat as a finished painting em- bodies the original rough sketch. The same hand was employed in the production of both religions, and by type and promise and prophecy the Old Dispensation I mints clearly to the New. But type, and promise, and prophecy as clearly indicate thai the New will be something very different from the Old. No mere or- ganic evolution connects the two. A fuller revelation, a more perfect morality, a wider distribution wa to mark the Kingdom of the Messias. "The end [or object] of the Law is Christ ", says St. Paul (Rom., x, ■I. meaning that the Law was given to the Jews to '\iiti' their faith in the Christ to come. "Where- fore", he says again (Gal., iii, 24), "the law wa oui pedagogue unto Christ", leading the .lews to Chris- tianity as the slave brought his charges to the school door. Christ reproached the Jews for not reading their Scriptures aright. "For if you believed Moses, you would perhaps believe me also; for he wrote of me" (John, v, 46). And St. Augustine sums the whole matter up in the striking words: "In tin- ( fid Testament . the New lies hidden; in the New, the < Hd is made manifest" (De catechtz. rud., iv, 8). But claimed to fulfil the Law by substituting the nee for the shadow and the gift for the promise, and, the end having been reached, all that was tem- porary and provisional in Judaism came to a conclu- sion. Still, a direct Divine intervention was neces- sary to bring this about, just as, in any rational ac- count of the theory of evolution, recourse must be had to supernatural power to bridge tin gulf between be- ing and non-being, life and non-life, reason and non- reason. "God, who, at .sundry times and in divers manners, spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets, last of all in these lays hath spoken to us