Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/777

Rh evil, and are fully intelligible to the historian only in virtue of his own experience of at least germinal evil, a vast num ber of other events are due to men who were in their degree reproductions of Christ, animated by the single desire to bring about what they believed he would have sought had he been in their circumstances, and ready to submit to any sacrifices that might be demanded as the price of success. To understand fully the genesis of transactions arising out of such a spirit would seem possible only to those who possess the key to their explanation in what is essentially Christian experience. The historical materials having been subjected to criti cism of the kind indicated, the way is open for the actual construction of the history. Construction embraces ar rangement, proportion, and style. Under the head of arrangement there falls to be considered how the material of history is to be divided so as to give the most complete and just conception of what has occurred within the time to be dealt with. It is obvious that we cannot take in all the events of so great a narrative at one view. &quot;We must break it up into a succession of parts, and study each by itself; and the question is on what principle should this partition of time be made. In history the element of time has to be considered in two phases succession and con temporaneousness. Biography properly records succession alone. An individual can do only one thing at once ; whereas a society like the church, consisting of a number of individuals, can be doing a number of different things at one and the same time. Proselytism, worship, the development of sacred art, the formation of doctrine, the activities of Christian life, may all be in progress simul taneously. Biography is a thread; history is a web, in which time is broad as well as long. In dividing the breadth or contemporaneous movement of the church, no other classification is possible than that natural one, which has already been mentioned, into some such categories as progress, constitution, doctrine, worship, and life. But in dividing history lengthwise, there may be a choice of prin ciples, unless indeed it be denied that events hang together by a causal nexus. The time was when such a denial would have been maintained, when the history of the church was regarded as determined by a series of special interpositions of the Divine will, resulting in a succession of events among which it was not given to human reason to trace the sway of law. That view of things, however, has passed away, and for the modern mind, whatever may be thought of the origin of the church, its history is a sequence of cause and effect, in which the moving forces and tendencies can be accounted for, and their operation traced as the evolution of internal ideas dominating the events of distinct periods, and shaping them into orderly processes. Hence arises the possibility of a natural and an artificial division of history. Arbitrary periods such as centuries or half centuries may be chosen, and an acquaint ance with the events of one of such sections acquired before proceeding to those of its successor. This is the artificial mode of division. It has no reference to the nature of the progress made by the church as a growth which is deter mined by an inner formative thought. But a division in harmony with this latter view of things is possible. There are for instance in the history of the church greater or smaller crises continually occurring, for which the intermediate events are preparations ; or there is a certain character stamped upon one era different from that which belongs to another. The conversion of Constantine, or the sitting of the Councils of Xice, Trent, or the Vatican, is an instance of the one ; the prevalence of the ancient and patristic, the mediaeval and scholastic, the modern and scientific mode of thought is an instance of the other. Divisions of the matter of church history according to such events or 763 characteristics are natural divisions ; they correspond with the nature of the thing, and rise out of the subject itself, instead of being imposed upon it from without, like the division into centuries and half -centuries, which in many cases may lead to a misconception of the meaning of his tory, cutting into the very middle of a development before it has reached its climax, so rendering both parts unintel ligible, or at all events misrepresenting both. The natural division is thus much better adapted than the artificial to impart a view of the subject as it exists in its real parts. If a framework is to be taken to pieces, with a view to un derstand its structure, it ought to be separated at the joints, not broken, as it were, across the bones. At the same time, within the great natural periods, once their limits and determining conditions are clearly understood, the subdivision into more or less artificial periods of years facilitates the taking up of all the requisite information as we go along, very much as in a long journey, when once we know the direction or destination of travel, it is necessary to divide the intervening space into such arbitrary stages as are suitable to our footsteps or other modes of progress. Proportion has to be considered in the construction of church history for two reasons, one depending on the relative prominence of different phases of church life at different times, the other on the relation of church life to its territorial or sectarian distribution. As regards the first of these reasons, while the categories of progress, con stitution, doctrine, worship, and life furnish, in the order of interdependence, a summary of headings under which the movement of the church at any time may be exhaus tively described, it is obvious that whichever of these cate gories represents the main feature of the ecclesiastical con dition during any particular period should receive a corresponding prominence and fulness of treatment in the history of the period. At one time the progress of the church in the conquest of adverse religions may be the most striking thing about it, at another it may be the for mation of doctrine, at another development of ritual, and so on. To be a faithful reflex of the facts, history must proportion its treatment to the case, assigning the principal place to the principal thing, and grouping the rest around it. The other reason for observing proportion in historical treatment lies in the territorial and sectarian distribution of the church s life. National almost necessarily imply eccle siastical distinctions. The German, Swiss, French, English, Scottish churches, &c., have all separate domestic histories, so that while one has been growing in one direction, another may have been growing in a direction entirely dif ferent. Controversial differences have had the same result. The Eastern and Western churches for example, ever since the period of the final schism, have had in each case a self- contained development. The same remark applies also to Protestantism and Catholicism, in regard to that vast extent of thought and action in which they are separated from one another. This state of things compels many to spe cialize their work, and to pursue one national or sectional stream of ecclesiastical movement to the end, before explor ing another ; but wherever church history on anything like the universal scale is attempted, the writer must determine where and how .the vitality and force of the church are for the time evolving themselves most characteristically and influentially, and give to such localities or forms the cen tral position in his delineations. Thus in the earlier cen turies, the East, the conquest of paganism and the rise of theology may claim his chief attention ; in the Middle Ages, Home and the Papacy, or scholasticism ; in the reformation period Germany may seem the centre of Christendom; in the modern period the disintegrating influence of philo sophy and historical criticism may be regarded as the leading phenomenon, itc.