Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/707

Rh CHRISTIANITY 693 as much to detect and condemn false developments of the Mosaic economy (e.g., Pharisaism) as to test its true develop ment in Christianity. The apostles of Jesus carried out the principles of their Master. There is not a trace in the epistles of Peter, James, and John of the idea that salva tion and entrance into the kingdom of God could only be obtained by those who were first Jews and then Christians. There is no statement, for example, that Gentiles must be circumcised before they can be baptized. On the contrary, James speaks of the perfect law of liberty, and Peter and John have expressions equally strong. Within the writings of the apostolic circle everything goes to show that the church was taught from the beginning that Christianity was not to be confined within the limits of natural or adopted Jewish nationality. The iiiflu- But when we turn to the Acts of the Apostles, and to ence of ^ e epistles of Paul, especially to the Epistle to the sm Galatians, we find that the apostolic solution of the diffi culty was not acceptable to the early Jewish Christians, and was not accepted by many of them. We even find that the practice of members of the apostolic circle was not always in accordance with the principles which they had enounced in accordance with the guidance of the Holy Spirit. There was a strong ultra- Jewish party in the early Christian church, which was able in some measure to control the conduct of the apostles themselves. And this was what was to be expected. Men who had been trained in Judaism, where the connection between religion and poli tics was so very close, whose religious thoughts were always expressed in outward ordinances, could scarcely avoid insist ing upon some visible connection between Judaism and Christianity. They could not see that Christianity was the completion of Judaism if the practices of the Mosaic economy were not kept up. Thus we find at least two parties, a Judaizing and a Gentile party, in the early church. At first the Jewish party was so strong as to force a compromise upon the leaders of the Gentile church, and require that every Gentile Christian should at least become a proselyte of the gate by abstaining from things offered to idols, from things strangled, from blood, and from Tropvfia. or a breach of the Old Testament regulation about marriage ; and it is probable that Jewish Christians were required to keep up all the practices of the Jewish religion and more especially to share in the sacrificial worship of the temple. Afterwards this Jewish party grew weaker, and it became the universal belief in the early church that Christians born Jews did not need to observe the ceremonial law of Moses or to share in the temple-worship, and that Christians born Gentiles did not require to show, by keeping certain Jewish regulations, that they were believers in a creed which was a development of Old Testament ideas. The capture of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple separated the Christian Jews who were of the sect of the Pharisees from their fellow Christians, and the severe persecution of Jewish religion and rites which followed the revolt under Bar Cochba sent most of them over into the ranks of the Essenes, and thus the Christian church was left in peace to reconcile its intimate connection with Judaism with its abandonment of Jewish ritual on the principles of Christian liberty. But in solving the problem the early Christian church was scarcely true to the principles of its Master. In order to defend more stren uously their separation from Judaism, it was customary for the fathers of the church to look at Christianity as supply ing in detail all that Judaism possessed, and this led them almost as far from the fundamental principles of continuity laid down by Christ as the old Judaizers had gone. They required a new law to set over against the old law of Moses, a new service to take the place of the temple service of the Old Testament, a new daily sacrifice, &quot; the new law s new oblation &quot; instead of the sacrifices of Moses, a new ritual which after it had gradually grown complex enough was found to correspond bit by bit with the ritual of Jerusalem, and a new priesthood whose functions were to be not unlike the duties of the sons of Aaron. In church traditions, a ritual of worship, and a service of priests, they found the proof of their relation to the religion of the Old Testament, and forgetting the unseen continuity of sameness of spiritual principle, found a consolation in a fancied similarity in external routine of worship. In this way early Christianity succeeded and failed in realizing to herself the real con tinuity between the Old Testament and the New Testa ment kingdoms of God. But if early Christianity found it difficult to reconcile The influ- the New Testament idea of the kingdom of God with the ence * Old Testament conception, it was no less troubled when it came to work out this New Testament thought on the broad basis prepared for it by the existence and character of the Roman empire. There were difficulties without as well as difficulties within. Christians are men with bodies as well as souls, and Christian ideas tend to take sensible shape, sometimes false and sometimes true. No sooner had Christianity shaken off its Jewish thraldom than it seemed eager to betake itself to a new slavery eager to lay down the kingdom of God on lines already furnished by the government of pagan Rome, or the creeds of pagan philo sophy. At all events we can trace in early Christianity the workings of two subtle influences, the one of which strove to reduce the kingdom of God to a material and earthly empire, while the other would have dissolved it into a system of philosophy. The ecclesiastical empire of the Middle Ages and the scholastic theology overthrown at the Great Reformation were slowly built up by principles which Christianity almost unconsciously assumed during her long struggle with pagan Rome and with pagan philosophy. The relation of Rome to Christianity was very peculiar. Both aimed at world-wide dominion, and the one was the very incarnation of polytheism, while the other forbade in the sternest terms all idolatrous worship. The Christians, while citizens of the great empire which ruled the world, found the idolatry which they hated and denounced inter woven inextricably with the law of the land, possession of property, social observances, and public ceremonies. And Christianity had scarcely emerged from Palestine when it found itself engaged in a hand to hand struggle with the imperial power of Rome herself. The uniform policy of Rome was to respect the laws and Ewan the religion of the conquered peoples who came under her treatment dominion. The Roman system of jurisprudence, it is true, was extended to all parts of the empire, and capital offences were generally tried according to Roman law before Roman tribunals ; but, generally speaking, conquered nations lived under their own laws and were allowed to practise their own religions. By this wise policy Rome not only avoided stirring up religious wars, but contrived to be the religious and legal as well as political centre of all the conquered tribes. In one way only was the religion of the conquered interfered with, when the worship of the emperor was forced upon all his subjects. Whatever motives of policy urged this haughty indifference to all creeds, and this easy tolera tion of every form of pagan faith, they were in reality founded on an intense belief in the eternity ind almost divinity of Rome itself. Rome had remained for ages and seemed likely to endure the Eternal City, and when all other feelings of reverence had fled, the heart of the genuine Roman was full of awe for the majesty and might of perenduring Rome. It was no mere servile adulation which led to the deification of the emperors. The emperor was God, and divine honours were paid to him because he was the visible symbol of imperial Rome making manifest its