ST. PAUL AND THE PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY.

W

E assume that it was the divine intention to reveal a religion which should suffice for the moral and intellectual elevation of ALL MANKIND; which, laying its foundations in individual convictions, should clear and exalt the conscience, purify the affections, ennoble the intellect, while, at the same time, it disclosed a hope common to all men, and capable of sustaining under every possible trial of humanity. We assume further, that this religion was Christianity. And we are thus led to the contemplation of definite historical facts. Christianity was introduced into the world at a certain time, and under certain circumstances. Can we, by examination of the state of mankind at the time, perceive any remarkable preparations for the assumed work which Christianity had to accomplish? Periods of this world's history may be conceived singularly unfitted for the promulgation of a religion which was to take general hold on mankind. Does the period of the promulgation of Christianity present any remarkable contrast to these? Again: if it was the intention of the Allwise to bring the whole of mankind under one bond of union, we might imagine that there would be visible in history some traces of previous preparation; that amid the wars of states, and the conflict of opinions, we should find some advance made toward the possibility and efficacy of such a blending of both as was destined hereafter to take place. Nay, we may go further than this. Excluding mere chance from any part in the arrangement of man's world, we may fairly say a priori, that we might expect to find some adaptions in local circumstances themselves to the end which was to be answered. Situations might be conceived which should be most adverse to the accomplishment of the end assumed. Was Christianity introduced in those situations, or in others of a very different character?

Again: if Christianity is to be founded in individual convictions, the weapon of its warfare, above all others, must be persuasion; and in order to persuasion, there must be one able to persuade. Do we find any provision made for such a persuader? The work will be no ordinary nor easy one. The conflicting ele

ments of the ancient social system could never be analgamated, but by one specially and unusually prepared for the task. The hierarchical prejudice of the Jew, the intellectual pride of the Greek, the political preeminence of the Roman, would present insuperable obstacles to any man who was not capable of entering into and dealing with each, not as extraneous to himself, but as a part of his own character and personality. And more than this. The religion of Christ was, from each of these elements, itself in danger. It might become hierarchical and Judaistic, or philosophic and Grecian, or might lose its great characteristics in the political liberalism of Rome. It would need one singularly fitted by education and temperament to mark boldly and keenly the outlines of the faith to be preached; who, while he recognized the legitimacy of the Judaistic and Grecian elements in Christianity, and laid down the canons of civil and political conformity, might yet be under exclusive subjection to none of these, but able to wield and attemper them all.

Have we any traces of the preparation of a workman for such a work? Does any appear on the stage of the early Christian period answering to these unusual and difficult requirements? Can we find any person able, at that time of strange complication and difficulty, to carry out all men's religion among all men?

Mr. Howson strikingly remarks,"The city of God was built at the confluence of three civilizations." The Jews, the Greeks, the Romans, had each borne their part in the preparation of the world for the gospel. "They were" (it is the saying of Dr. Arnold, Life, vol. ii, p. 413, 2d edition,) "the three peoples of God's election: two for things temporal, one for things eternal. Yet even in the things eternal they were allowed to minister: Greek cultivation and Roman polity prepared men for Christianity."

The first pages of the father of history are devoted to tracing the original quarrels and reprisals between the inhabitants of the opposite coasts of Europe and Asia. And if ever two continents were designed for intercourse, these surely were. The Grecian or Asiatic fisherman could hardly sail out from the beach of his native creek without being tempted onward by the blue islands in the distance, which, like so many stepping-stones to

be done, not by unaided human power, but by a revelation from above, and it is manifest that a very important part of the preparation for receiving such a gift would be the demonstration of the insufficiency of man himself to attain to this ennoblement of his powers. And this is the work which, in the designs of Providence, was accomplished by that wonderful development of the human intellect witnessed in ancient Greece. That a height of intellectual excellence should there have been reached which has never since been attained that in philosophy, in art, and in poesy, the patterns for the world should there have been set once for all, will surprise only those who do not bear this purpose in mind.

But while the failure of Greek philosophy to regenerate mankind was thus in progress of demonstration, these highest exercises of man's intellect were but preparing the way for Him who was to come. The language of the Greeks is itself a wonderful monument of the culminating intellectual period of our race. In no

creasing. All the dynasties which sprang from his grave were Greek, and tended to consolidate the Grecian element which his victories had first introduced. Greek letters and arts became everywhere cultivated; the language usurped the place of the indigenous tongues in all polite intercourse. Nor was Judea exempt from this influence. Lying between the contending kingdoms, and ever involved in their quarrels, it too received, although slowly and reluctantly, the unhallowed boon of Grecian culture.

There yet wanted a political power which might adjust to equilibrium these disturbing forces. Had the world been seething in tumult, as it was under the successors of Alexander, the propagation of Christianity would have been, humanly speaking, impossible.

And we must here express our opinion that there are few things more instructive in history than the relation of the Roman empire to the spread of Christianity. Whether we regard it in its rise, at its height, or in its decline, we see in it a vast instrument to subserve the purposes of Providence with regard to the religion of Christ. In its rise, with which we are here more immediately concerned, by a rapid succession of conquests and annexa

of meaning or emphasis is given. In no other language have we so many apparently insignificant particles by which the exact reference of secondary clauses to the main subject and to one another can be marked off and determined. In that language, every term relating to things human or divine had already been discussed, and its meaning labored out with marvelous patience and accuracy.

Nor was Providence, which was thus preparing a garb for Christianity, wanting in making it generally known and used. The dispersion of Greeks is hardly less wonderful than that of Jews. In early times their colonies had spread along the coasts of Italy and Sicily, of Africa and Asia Minor. Their hostile intercourse or intrigues with Persia had gradually carried them further East; till finally the conquests of Alexander distributed the Greek tongue and influence over the whole of his vast but fleeting empire. Amid the struggles and confusion incident on his death, this one effect alone of his conquests remained undisturbed and in

curity the various conflicting powers whose struggles had hitherto distracted the world.

Crushing and afflicting as was the character of its rule over its provinces, it was everywhere the government of order and the friend of commercial intercourse. Among its works conducive to safe transit by sea and land we may reckon for the first the extinction of piracy in the Mediterranean; for the second, the admirable roads with which every part of its vast territory was intersected. It was through these seas and along these roads that "the noble army of martyrs," as well as the armies of Rome, advanced to the conquest of the world. In times of restricted intercourse and unsafe transit these missionary journeys would have been impracticable.

The Roman policy with regard to religion was entirely consistent with the other parts of the system. Every existing religion of nation or tribe was sanctioned by law; but no countenance was given to the introduction of new tenets or modes of worship. Thus Christianity, for many years after its promulgation, grew up undistinguished from Judaism, and under the shelter of this religio licita as one of its sects. It was not till the inhabitants of whole districts flocked to baptism amid the indignation of surrounding Jews and Pagans that we find systematic persecution enjoined; and by that time Christianity was strong enough in numbers to be aided, rather than crushed, by such hostility.

During and for some time after the reigns of the first twelve Cæsars, the citizen of Rome was endowed with considerable privileges. Among these, exemption from corporal punishment and the power of appealing to the people were the chief and best known. It is true that this last had now merged into an appeal to him who wielded, by his concentration of of fices, the power of the populus and the plebs alike; but it had not, on that account, lost its value as a means of rescue from arbitrary decisions, and from the warping of justice by the venality of provincial judges.

The foregoing sketch of the state of the world shortly after the Christian era will enable us to lay down a priori the necessary and desirable qualifications of the man who is to be the main agent in propagating the Christian faith.

First. It is absolutely necessary that he be a Jew. Founded as Christianity is on the ancient covenant and promises, its appeal to the world was mainly through Judaism; addressing itself "to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile." It is to the Jews that the preacher must look for his earliest and his most able converts: men who, having been reasoned with out of the law and the prophets, were thereby convinced, and prepared to convince others, that Jesus was the Christ. And none but a Jew would gain access to that exclusive and prejudiced people. The synagogues would be forbidden ground to a Gentile teacher: the ears of the Jews would be absolutely closed against him.

For the same reason the apostle of the world must be not a Hellenist, but of pure Hebrew descent. It is of the utmost importance that he should be able to speak and cite in the sacred language of the law and prophets. The Hellenists were looked on by the purer Jews with disparage

ment and contempt. They had their own synagogues, in which the sacred tongue was never heard, and to enter which would have been pollution to the scrupulous and rigid Pharisee. Thus a Hellenist would have acted at a great disadvantage in leaving the central fortress of Judaism untouched, because to him inaecessible.

This last consideration will at once bring before us another requisite. None but the straitest sect of Judaism will furnish the man who shall be sufficient for this work. The pretended mysteries of the Rabbinical teaching must be in his grasp to deal with and set aside. None must be able to say of him, "This man, who knoweth not the law, is cursed." In one point at least his message to the Jews should be without fault: all should be compelled to look up to him as one trained to teach, and thoroughly capable of doing it. If the question, "Whence hath this man letters?" was for other and wise purposes permitted to be asked respecting Him who came to be rejected and suffer and die, it would have been, as far as we can judge, a serious obstacle to the work of one who must be to the Jews as a Jew, in order to persuade and gain them.

But yet another reason existed (and this is ably brought out by Schrader and Neander why the great apostle of Christianity should be a Pharisee. Of all the opposition offered to Jesus of Nazareth, that of the Pharisees was the most consistent and entire. They saw in his teaching the abnegation of hierarchical Judaism. If he were a teacher from God, the ceremonial law had passed away, the barrier between Jew and Gentile was broken down, and Judaism became an empty husk henceforward. None thoroughly understood this but the bigoted Pharisee. The lapse of years, and the warning of heavenly visions, had not kept the greatest of the chosen twelve from vacillating on this vital point; and there is every reason to believe that the Church at Jerusalem remained to the end practically prejudiced against the free admission of the union of mankind in Christ. Amid all the difficulties and inconsistencies on this matter, he only would be sure never to go wrong, who having during his life of Pharisaic zeal keenly stigmatized as an abomination the anti-exclusive spirit of the religion of Jesus, had thus gained the clearest view of its universality, and