Page:From Rome to Rationalism (1896).djvu/19

Rh restoration of that faith in the spiritual world which modern Scepticism seems determined to undermine. In the world at large we read only naturalism; the spirit-world is so completely veiled from our sight that we lose even our own spiritual identity. Humanity once saw on the outspread world a reflection of its Creator’s attributes, dim and troubled as on the ruffled surface of a lake; even that has passed away, and wearily it takes its life as part of the visible whole unvisited by faintest gleam of a brighter world. But we are told that a revelation has been given more in proportion to our materialized ways of thinking; the figure of Christ, appearing as the central point of the world’s history, is a striking embodiment of the higher power that encircles our life, intended to raise us from the naturalism to which we are ever succumbing by a revelation of supernatural wisdom, goodness, and power.

In the first place, it is urged that the very triumph of Christ, as it is written luminously on the history of the world, compels us to attribute to him a superhuman character. For three years he traversed Judea, a fervent and eloquent, but poor and untutored preacher; his life seemed to end in utter failure and ignominy. But, before the end of the first century, the sect that bore his name was rapidly spreading over the empire; every conceivable form of persecution was tried in vain to eradicate it; and, when its adherents were at length free to come forth into the light of day, it soon became conterminous with the Roman empire. And through 2,000 years it has retained its supremacy over Europe; through the rise and fall and redistribution of empires, through the moral corruption that repeatedly crept over the land, through the intellectual movements that successive eras of peace have developed; so that to-day 300 millions of the most civilized races of the earth bend their knees in adoration before the crucified figure of the Galilean.

For many this brilliant triumph, enlarged upon unceasingly by the ecclesiastical rhetorician, is proof enough of the divinity of Christ’s mission; they feel comparatively unconcerned at the fate of certain documents which purport to give a description of the still more wonderful life of this leader. Whatever may be thought of the doctrine of the Incarnation, we catch a glimpse of the divine in this marvellous page of history; a divine influence must have pervaded the world to win and preserve such a veneration. Now, such a thought is intelligible at a period when history was not a science, but a descriptive catalogue of events, and when Europe, with the sublime egoism of Judea or ancient Greece, looked down upon the rest of the human race as “barbarians,” in moral and intellectual matters. But there is more power of analysis in modern history, and its vision is infinitely wider, so that it is not surprising if inferences, drawn by a more superficial