Page:Collier's New Encyclopedia v. 02.djvu/565

LEFT CHRISTIANITY 491 CHRISTIANITY It has a very spacious harbor, regular steamship connection with many foreign countries, including the United States, and handles about one-half the imports and about one-third the exports to and from Norway. The enviror^ are exceed- ingly beautiful. Pop. (1918) 259,445. CHRISTIANITY, the religion of which Jesus Christ is not only the founder, but also the object, since it is by Him and in Him that man recovers his union with God by an effective recon- ciliation. This may be said to be in a general manner its true character, and to mark the difference that exists between it and all the religions which preceded it. About primitive Christianity we possess a number of documents which are at least authentic, whatever the authority we attribute to them from a doctrinal point of view. Confining ourselves to those documents alone, whose authen- ticity is not disallowed by the most negative criticism, we have in the epistles of Paul to the Corinthians, the Galatians, the Romans, and the Thessalonians, a testimony to primitive Christianity which falls between the year 55 and the year 64 after Jesus Christ. It emanates from an apostle who had been in direct con- tact with the earliest associates of Christ, with those who had both seen and heard Him. The first three gospels, in which a historical basis is generally recognized in what concerns the actions as well as the discourses of Jesus, point back to the same date. We are thus led back to the very origin of Christianity. Moreover, we recognize in the Church of the earliest period made known to us, whether in the Acts of the Apostles or in writings as authentic as the letters of James and those of Peter, the living impress upon simple and honest hearts of the direct re- membrance of Christ. It is undeniable that if Christianity claims to carry to the world a revealed doctrine, revealing completely the true nature of God as well as that of man, and the normal rela- tions of union between them, it attaches that doctrine to a personality considered not only as the organ of the revelation, but as its object. We have thus the right to assert that Christianity is Jesus Christ, without fearing to detract any- thing from the attributes of God, for Jesus Christ is His ambassador, His son, the sole mediator between God and man — in one word, the Redeemer, the Sav- iour, as His name implies. He has never ceased to require faith in Himself as the means of again finding God by Him. Fragmentary quotations on this point are vain. The whole gospel demands this faith in His person, and St. Paul sums it up in the words addressed to the gaoler at Philippi: "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." (Acts xvi: 31.) Christianity is herein distinguished from all other religions. The revelation which it brings to the world is something other than a supernatural communica- tion of a transcendent doctrine about God, and about our origin and purpose in the world. It consists essentially in a gi'eat work accomplished by a single per- son — a work which is the supreme mani- festation of the holy love of God. The mere exhibition of this divine work casts a bright light upon God as well as upon man and results in a doctrine which im- plies a complete metaphysic, a complete anthropology, and an entire system of ethics, as well as far-reaching views on the history of the human race in its ter- restrial development and in its future destiny. For had it been otherwise, Christianity must have contented itself with communicating to us the outward fact without explaining it — without mak- ing us grasp it by its inward side in its profound significance; which would have been to alter its nature completely. It none the less remains true that for Christianity doctrine is only a secondary and complementary element — ^the inter- pretation of the fact of the great work, which is its first object. This is why it addresses itself before everything to the heart and to the conscience, though at the same time it opens up to the intellect the vastest possible horizons. Christianity is pre-eminently the reli- gion of redemption and of the redeemer. It has introduced to the world the grand reparative influence of a victorious love, inaugurating in Jesus Himself an unceas- ing struggle; for that reparative in- fluence must struggle constantly against the powers of evil, which are not magi- cally suppressed. But this reparative work cannot consist alone in the salva- tion of individual souls; to be worthy of God it must strive to restore all that the original fall has blighted or destroyed— to make the fallen creature realize all his lofty destiny — that is to say, to recon- stitute in man all the greatness kept in store for him, and to give him up without reserve to God, making the re- generating spirit penetrate into every sphere of his activity as into all his facul- ties. Hence the wide mission of Chris- tianity to purify and raise everything that is human in the most diverse spheres of society, from the institutions which regulate the relations of men to each other to the highest culture of the in- tellect. This restoration of man after the divine type is the continuation and ap- plication of the redemptive work of Christ, which, after having had for its