Books: The Old Roman World

J >> John Lord >> The Old Roman World

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And this principle of benevolence has never been relinquished by the
church. It was one of the foundation-pillars of monastic life in the
Middle Ages, when monasteries and convents were blessed retreats for the
miserable and unfortunate, where all strangers found a shelter and a
home; where they diffused charities upon all who sought their aid. The
monastery itself was built upon charities, upon the gifts and legacies
of the pious. In pagan Rome men willed away their fortunes to favorites;
they were rarely bestowed upon the poor. But Christianity inculcated
everywhere the necessity of charities, not merely as a test of Christian
hope and faith, but as one of the conditions of salvation itself. One of
the most glorious features of our modern civilization is the wide-spread
system of public benevolence extended to missions, to destitute
churches, to hospitals, to colleges, to alms-houses, to the support of
the poor, who are not left to die unheeded as in the ancient world.
Every form of Christianity, every sect and party, has its peculiar
charities; but charities for some good object are a primal principle of
the common creed. What immeasurable blessings have been bestowed upon
mankind in consequence of this law of kindness and love! What a
beautiful feature it is in the whole progress of civilization!

The early church had set a good example of patience under persecution,
and practical benevolence extended into every form of social life which
has been instituted in every succeeding age, and to which the healthy
condition of society may in a measure be traced.

The next mission of the church was to give dignity and importance to the
public preaching of the Gospel, which has never since been lost sight
of, and has been no inconsiderable element of our civilization. This was
entirely new in the history of society. The pagan priest did not exhort
the people to morality, or point out their religious duties, or remind
them of their future destinies, or expound the great principles of
religious faith. He offered up sacrifices to the Deity, and appeared in
imposing ceremonials. He wore rich and gorgeous dresses to dazzle the
senses of the people, or excite their imaginations. It was his duty to
appeal to the gods, and not to men; to propitiate them with costly
rites, to surround himself with mystery, to inspire awe, and excite
superstitious feelings. The Christian minister had a loftier sphere.
While he appealed to God in prayer, and approached his altar with
becoming solemnity, it was also his duty to preach to the people, as
Paul and the Apostles did throughout the heathen world, in order to
convert them to Christianity, and change the whole character of their
lives and habits. The presbyter, while he baptized believers and
administered the symbolic bread and wine, also taught the people,
explained to them the mysteries, enforced upon them the obligations,
appealed to their intellects, their consciences, and their hearts. He
plunged fearlessly into every subject bearing upon religious life, and
boldly presented it for contemplation.

What a grand theatre for the development of mind, for healthy
instruction and commanding influence, was opened by the Christian
pulpit. There was no sphere equal to it in moral dignity and force. It
threw into the shade the theatre and the forum. And in times when
printing was unknown, it was almost the only way by which the people
could be taught. It vastly added to the power of the clergy, and gave
them an influence that the old priests of paganism could never exercise.
It created an entirely new power in the world, a moral power, indeed,
but one to which history presents no equal. The philosophers taught in
their schools, they taught a few admiring pupils; but the sphere of
their teachings was limited, and also the number whom they could
address. The pulpit became an institution. All the Christians were
required to assemble regularly for public instruction as well as
worship. On every seventh day the people laid aside their secular duties
and devoted themselves to religious improvement. The pulpit gave power
to the Sabbath; and what an institution is the Christian Sabbath. To the
Sabbath and to public preaching Christendom owes more than to all other
sources of moral elevation combined. It is true that the Jewish
synagogue furnished a model to the church; but the Levitical race
claimed no peculiar sanctity, and discharged no friendly office beyond
the precincts of the temple. In the synagogue the people assembled to
pray, or to hear the Scriptures read and expounded, not to receive
religious instruction. The Jewish religion was as full of ceremonials as
the pagan, and the intellectual part of it was confined to the lawyers,
to the rabbinical hierarchy. But the preaching of the great doctrines of
Christianity was made a peculiarly sacred office, and given to a class
of men who avoided all secular pursuits. The Christian priest was the
recognized head of the society which he taught and controlled. In
process of time, he became a great dignitary, controlling various
interests; but his first mission was to preach, and his first theme was
a crucified Saviour. He ascended the pulpit every week as an authorized
as well as a sacred teacher, and, in the illustration of his subjects,
he was allowed great latitude in which to roam. It is not easy to
appreciate what a difference there was between pagan and Christian
communities from the rise of this new power, and we might also say
institution, since the pulpit and the Sabbath are interlinked and
associated together. Whatever the world has gained by the Sabbath, that
gain is intensified and increased vastly by public teaching. It placed
the Christian as far beyond the Jew, as the Jew was before beyond the
pagan. It also created a sacerdotal caste. The people may have had the
privilege of pouring out their hearts before the brethren, and of
speaking for their edification, but all the members were not fitted for
the secular office of teachers. Christianity claims the faculties of
knowledge, as well as those of feeling. Teaching was early felt to be a
great gift, implying not only superior knowledge, but superior wisdom and
grace. Only a few possessed the precious charisma to address profitably
the assembled people, [Greek: charisma didaskalias], and those few
became the appointed guides of the Christian flocks, [Greek: didaskaloi].
Other officers of the new communities shared with them the administration,
but the teacher was the highest officer, and he became gradually the
presbyter, whose peculiar function it was to discourse to the people on
the great themes which it was their duty to learn. And even after the
presbyter became a bishop, it was his chief office to teach publicly,
even as late as the fourth and fifth centuries. Leo and Gregory, the
great bishops of Rome, were eloquent preachers.

Thus the church gradually claimed the great prerogative of eloquence.
Eloquence was not born in the church, but it was sanctified, and set
apart, and appropriated to a thousand new purposes, and especially
identified with the public teaching of the people. The great mysteries,
the profound doctrines, the suggestive truths, the touching histories,
the practical duties of Christianity were seized and enforced by the
public teacher; and eloquence appeared in the sermon. In pagan ages,
eloquence was confined to the forum or the senate chamber, and was
directed entirely into secular channels. It was always highly esteemed
as the birthright of genius--an inspiration, like poetry, rather than an
art to be acquired. But it was not always the handmaid of poetry and
music; it was brought down to earth for practical purposes, and employed
chiefly in defending criminals, or procuring the passage of laws, or
stimulating the leaders of society to important acts. The gift of tongue
was reserved for rhetoricians, lawyers, politicians, philosophers; not
for priests, who were intercessors with the Divine. Now Christianity
adopted all the arts of eloquence, and enriched them, and applied them
to a variety of new subjects. She carried away in triumph the brightest
ornament of the pagan schools, and placed it in the hands of her chosen
ministers. The pulpit soon began to rival the forum in the displays of a
heaven-born art, which was now consecrated to far loftier purposes than
those to which it had been applied. As public instruction became more
and more learned, it also became more and more eloquent, for the
preacher had opportunity, subject, audience, motive, all of which are
required for great perfection in public speaking. He assembled a living
congregation at stated intervals; he had the range of all those lofty
inquiries which entrance the soul; and he had souls to save--the
greatest conceivable motive to a good man who realizes the truths of the
Gospel. All human enterprises and schemes become ultimately insipid to a
man who has no lofty view of benefiting mankind, or his family, or his
friend. We were made to do good. Take away this stimulus, and energy
itself languishes and droops. There is no object in life to a seeker of
pleasure or gain, when once the passion is gratified. What object of
pity so melancholy as a man worn out with egotistical excitements, and
incapable of being amused. But he who labors for the good of others is
never ennuied. The benevolent physician, the patriotic statesman, the
conscientious lawyer, the enthusiastic teacher, the dreaming author, all
work and toil in weary labors, with the hope of being useful to the
bodies, or the intellects, or the minds of the people. This is the great
condition of happiness. There is an excitement in gambling as in
pleasure, in money-making as in money-spending; but it wears out, or
exhausts the noble faculties, and ends in ennui or self-reproach and
bitter disappointment. It is not the condition of our nature, which was
made to be useful, to seek the good of others. They are the happiest and
most esteemed who have this good constantly at heart. There can be no
unhappiness to a man absorbed in doing good. He may be poor and
persecuted like Socrates; he may walk barefooted, and have domestic
griefs, and be deprived of his comforts--but he is serene, for the soul
triumphs over the body. Now, what motive so grand as to save the
immortal part of man. This desire filled the ancient Christian orator
with a preternatural enthusiasm, as well as gave to him an unlimited
power, and an imposing dignity. He was the most happy of mortals when
led to the blazing fire of his persecutors, and he was the most august.
The feeling that he was kindling a fire which should never be quenched,
even that which was to burn up all the wicked idols of an idolatrous
generation, unloosed his tongue and animated his features. The most
striking examples of seraphic joy, of a sort of divine beauty playing
upon the features, are among orators. In animated conversation, a person
ordinarily homely, like Madame de Stael, becomes beautiful and
impressive. But in the pulpit, when the sacred orator is moving a
congregation with the fears and hopes of another world, there is a
majesty in his beauty which is nowhere else so fully seen. There is no
eloquence like that of the pulpit, when the preacher is gifted and in
earnest. Greece had her Pericles and Demosthenes, and Rome her
Hortensius and Cicero. Many other great orators we could mention. But
when Greece and Rome had an intellectual existence such as that to which
our modern times furnish no parallel, in our absorbing pursuit of
pleasure and gain, and amid the wealth of mechanical inventions, there
were, even in those classic lands, but few orators whose names have
descended to our times; while, in the church, in a degenerated period,
when literature and science were nearly extinct, there were a greater
number of Christian orators than what classic antiquity furnished. Yea,
in those dark and miserable ages which succeeded the fall of the Roman
empire, there were in every land remarkable pulpit orators, like those
who fanned the Crusades. There was no eloquence in the Middle Ages
outside the church. Bernard exercised a far greater moral power than
Cicero in the fullness of his fame. And in our modern times, what
orators have arisen like those whom the Reformation produced, both in
the Roman Catholic church, and among the numerous sects which protested
against her? What orator has Germany given birth to equal in fame to
Luther? What orator in France has reached the celebrity of Bossuet, or
Bourdaloue, or Massillon? Even amid all the excitements attending the
change of government, who have had power on the people like a Lacordaire
or Monod? In England, the great orators have been preachers, with a very
few exceptions; and these men would have been still greater in the arts
of public speaking had they been trained in the church. In our day, we
have seen great orators in secular life, but they yield in fascination
either to those who are accustomed to speak from the sacred desk, or to
those whose training has been clerical, like many of our popular
lecturers. Nothing ever opened such an arena of eloquence as the
preaching of the Gospel, either in the ancient, the mediaeval, or the
modern world, not merely from the grandeur and importance of the themes
discussed, but also from the number of the speakers. In a legislative
assembly, where all are supposed to be able to address an audience, and
some are expected to be eloquent, only two or three can be heard in a
day. Only some twenty or thirty able speeches are delivered in Congress
or Parliament in a whole session; but in England, or the United States,
some thirty thousand preachers are speaking at the same time, many of
whom are far more gifted, learned, and brilliant than any found in the
great councils of the nation. Nor is this eloquence confined to the
Protestant church; it exists also in the Roman Catholic in every land.
There are no more earnest and inspiring orators than in Italy or France.
Even in rude and unlettered and remote districts, we often hear
specimens of eloquence which would be wonderful in capitals. What chance
has the bar, in a large city, compared with the pulpit, for the display
of eloquence? Probably there are more eloquent addresses delivered every
Sunday from the various pulpits of Christendom than were pronounced by
all the orators of Greece during the whole period of her political
existence. Doubtless there are more touching and effective appeals made
to the popular heart every Sunday in every Christian land, than are made
during the whole year beside on subjects essentially secular. Then what
an impulse has pulpit oratory given to objects of a strictly
philanthropic character! The church has been the nurse and mother of all
schemes of benevolence since it was organized. It is itself a great
philanthropic institution, binding up the wounds of the prisoner,
relieving the distressed, and stimulating great enterprises. For all of
this the pulpit has been called upon, and has lent its aid; so that the
world has been more indebted to the eloquence of divines than to any
other source. Who can calculate the moral force of one hundred and fifty
thousand to two hundred thousand Christian preachers in a world like
ours, most of whom are arrayed on the side of morality and learning. It
may be said that these benefits may more properly be considered to flow
from Christianity as revealed in the Bible; that the Bible is the cause
of all this great impulse to civilization. We do not object to such an
interpretation; nevertheless, in specifying the influence of the church,
even before the empire fell, the creation of pulpit eloquence should be
mentioned, since this has contributed so much to the moral elevation of
Christendom. Christianity would be shorn of half her triumphs were it
not for the public preaching of her truths. Paganism had no public
teachers who regularly taught the people and stimulated their noblest
energies. It was a new institution, these Sabbath-day exercises, and has
had an inconceivable influence on the progress and condition of the
race. The power of the Gospel was indeed the main and primary cause; but
the church must have the credit of appropriating what was most prized in
the intellectual centres of antiquity, and giving to it a new direction.
Christian oratory is also an interesting subject to present in merely
its artistical relations. Its vast influence no one can question.

Again, who can estimate the debt which civilization, in its largest and
most comprehensive sense, owes to the fathers of the early church, in
the elaboration of Christian doctrine. They found the heathen world
enslaved by a certain class of most degrading notions of God, of deity,
of goodness, of the future, of rewards and punishments. Indeed, its
opinions were wrong and demoralizing in almost every point pertaining to
the spiritual relations of man. They met the wants of their times by
seizing on the great radical principles of Christianity, which most
directly opposed these demoralizing ideas, and by giving them the
prominence which was needed. Moreover, in the church itself, opinions
were from time to time broached, so intimately allied with pagan
philosophies and oriental theogonies, that the faith of Christians was
in danger of being subverted. The Scriptures were indeed recognized to
contain all that is essential in Christian truth to know; but they still
allowed great latitude of belief, and contradictory creeds were drawn
from the same great authority. If the Bible was to be the salvation of
man, or the great thesaurus of religious truth, it was necessary to
systematize and generalize its great doctrines, both to oppose dangerous
heathen customs and heretical opinions in the church itself. And more
even than this, to set forth a standard of faith for all the ages which
were to come; not an arbitrary system of dogmas, but those which the
Scriptures most directly and emphatically recognized. Christian life had
been set forth by the martyrs in the various forms of teaching, in the
worship of God, in the exercise of those virtues and graces which Christ
had enjoined, in benevolence, in charity, in faith, in prayer, in
patience, in the different relations of social life, in the sacraments,
in the fasts and festivals, in the occupations which might be profitably
and honorably carried on. But Christianity influenced thought and
knowledge as well as external relations. It did not declare a rigid
system of doctrines when first promulgated. This was to be developed
when the necessity required it. For two centuries there were but few
creeds, and these very simple and comprehensive. Speculation had not
then entered the ranks, nor the pagan spirit of philosophy. There was
great unity of belief, and this centered around Christ as the Redeemer
and Saviour of the world. But, in process of time, Christianity was
forced to contend with Judaism, with Orientalism, and with Greek
speculation, as these entered into the church itself, and were more or
less embraced by its members. With downright Paganism there was a
constant battle; but in this battle all ranks of Christians were united
together. They were not distracted by any controversies whether idolatry
should be or should not be tolerated. But when Gnostic principles were
embraced by good men, those which, for instance, entered into monastic
or ascetic life, it was necessary that some great genius should arise
and expose their oriental origin, and lay down the Christian law
definitely on that point. So when Manichaeism, and Arianism, and other
heretical opinions, were defended and embraced by the Christians
themselves, the fathers who took the side of orthodoxy in the great
controversies which arose, rendered important services to all subsequent
generations, since never, probably, were those subtle questions
pertaining to the Trinity, and the human nature of Christ, and
predestination, and other kindred topics, discussed with so much acumen
and breadth. They occupied the thoughts of the whole age, and emperors
entered into the debates on theological questions with an interest
exceeding that of the worldly matters which claimed their peculiar
attention. It is not easy for Christians of this age, when all the great
doctrines of faith are settled, to appreciate the prodigious excitement
which their discussion called forth in the times of Athanasius and
Augustine. The whole intellect of the age was devoted to theological
inquiries. Everybody talked about them, and they were the common theme
on all public occasions. If discussions of subjects which once had such
universal fascination can never return again, if they are passed like
Olympic games, or the discussions of Athenian schools of philosophy, or
the sports of the Colosseum, or the oracles of Dodona, or the bulls of
mediaeval popes, or the contests of the tournament, or the "field of the
cloth of gold," they still have a historical charm, and point to the
great stepping-stones of human progress. If they are really grand and
important ideas, which they claimed to be, they will continue to move
the most distant generations. If they are merely dialectical deductions,
they are among the profoundest efforts of reason in the Christian
schools of philosophy.

We cannot, of course, enter into the controversies through which the
church elaborated the system of doctrines now generally received, nor
describe those great men who gave such dignity to theological inquiries.
Clement was raised up to combat the Gnostics, Athanasius to head off the
alarming spread of Arianism, and Augustine to proclaim the efficacy of
divine grace against the Pelagians. The treatises of these men and of
other great lights on the Trinity, on the incarnation, and on original
sin, had as great an influence on the thinking of the age and of
succeeding ages, as the speculations of Plato, or the syllogisms of
Thomas Aquinas, or the theories of Kepler, or the expositions of Bacon,
or the deductions of Newton, or the dissertations of Burke, or the
severe irony of Pascal. They did not create revolutions, since they did
not labor to overturn, but they stimulated the human faculties, and
conserved the most valued knowledge. Their definite opinions became the
standard of faith among the eastern Christians, and were handed down to
the Germanic barbarians. They were adopted by the Catholic church, and
preserved unity of belief in ages of turbulence and superstition. One of
the great recognized causes of modern civilization was the establishment
of universities. In these the great questions which the fathers started
and elaborated were discussed with renewed acumen. Had there been no
Origen, or Tertullian, or Augustine, there would have been no Anselm, or
Abelard, or Erigena. The speculations and inquiries of the Alexandrian
divines controlled the thinking of Europe for one thousand years, and
gave that intensely theological character to the literature of the
Middle Ages, directing the genius of Dante as well as that of Bernard.
Their influence on Calvin was as marked as on Bossuet. Pagan philosophy
had no charm like the great verities of the Christian faith. Augustine
and Athanasius threw Plato and Aristotle into the shade. Nothing more
preeminently marked the great divines whom the Reformation produced,
than the discussion of the questions which the fathers had systematized
and taught. Nor was the interest confined to divines. Louis XIV.
discussed free will and predestination with Racine and Fenelon, even as
the courtiers of Louis XV. discussed probabilities and mental
reservations. And in New England, at Puritan firesides, the passing
stranger in the olden times, when religion was a life, entered into
theological discussions with as much zest as he now would describe the
fluctuations of stocks or passing vanities of crinoline and hair dyes.
Nor is it one of the best signs of this material age that the interest
in the great questions which tasked the intellects of our fathers is
passing away. But there is a mighty permanence in great ideas, and the
time, we trust, will come again when indestructible certitudes will
receive more attention than either politics or fashions.

The influence of the fathers is equally seen in the music and poetry
which have come down from their times. The church succeeded to an
inheritance of religious lyrics unrivaled in the history of literature.
The _Magnificat_ and the _Nunc dimittis_ were sung from the
earliest Christian ages. The streets of the eastern cities echoed to the
seductive strains of Arius and Chrysostom. Flavian and Diodorus
introduced at Antioch the antiphonal chant, which, improved by Ambrose,
and still more by Gregory, became the joy of blessed saints in those
turbulent ages, when singing in the choir was the amusement as well as
the duty of a large portion of religious people. So numerous were the
hymns of Ambrose, Hilary, Augustine, and others, that they became the
popular literature of centuries, and still form the most beautiful part
of the service of the Catholic church. Who can estimate the influence of
hymns which have been sung for fifty successive generations? What a
charm is still attached to the mediaeval chants! The poetry of the early
church is preserved in those sacred anthems. They inspired the
barbarians with enthusiasm, even as they had kindled the rapture of
earlier Christians in the church of Milan. The lyrical poets are
immortal, and exert a wide-spread influence. The fervent stanzas of
Watts, of Steele, of Wesley, of Heber, are sung from generation to
generation. The hymns of Luther are among the most valued of his various
works. "From Greenland's icy mountains"--that sacred lyric--shall live
as long as the "Elegy in a Country Church-yard," or the "Cotter's
Saturday Night," yea, shall survive the "Night Thoughts," and the
"Course of Time." There is nothing in Grecian or Roman poetry that fills
the place of the psalmody of the early church. The songs of Ambrose were
his richest legacy to triumphant barbarians, consoling the monk in his
dreary cell and the peasant on his vine-clad hills, speaking the
sentiment of a universal creed, and consecrating the most tender
recollections. So that Christian literature, in its varied aspects, its
exegesis, its sermons, its creeds, and its psalmody, if not equal in
artistic merit to the classical productions of antiquity, have had an
immeasurable influence on human thought and life, not in the Roman world
merely, but in all subsequent ages.