to which it properly belonged-that of Religion. Never have religions flourished with such wild luxuriance and in such wide variety, from the purest to the most abominable shapes, as in the three first centuries after Christ. No wonder, then, that even the philosophers of this time often appeared as priests and apostles. Stoicism, whose doctrine had naturally a theological turn, first yielded to this tendency, and was therefore the longest respected of the older schools, till it was outbid and supplanted by the ascetic mysteries of Neo-Platonism.5 It has been often said that incredulity and superstition further and excite each other; yet we must not allow ourselves to be dazzled by the antithesis. Only by weighing the specific causes and by the severe discrimination of time and circumstance can we see how far it is true. When a rigorously scientific system, resting upon solid principles, on well-considered grounds excludes faith from science, it will most certainly, and even more entirely, exclude all vague superstitions. In times, however, and under circumstances in which scientific studies are as much disordered and disorganised as the national and primitive ... 5 Zeller, Phil. d. Griech., iii. 1, S. 289, E. T. tr. Reichel (= Stoics, &c.), P. 323: "In a word, Stoicism is not only a philosophic, but also a religious system. As such it was regarded by its first adherents, and as such, together with Platonism, it afforded in subsequent times, to the best and most cultivated men, a substitute for declining natural religion, a satisfaction for religious cravings, and a support for moral life, wherever the influence of Greek culture extended." Lecky, Hist. Eur. Morals, i. 327, says of the Roman Stoics of the first two centuries: "On occasions of family bereavement, when the mind is most susceptible of impressions, they were habitually called in to console the survivors. Dying men asked their comfort and support in the last hours of their life. They became the directors of the conscience of numbers who resorted to them for a solution of forms of faith, this proposition has indeed its application. So was it in imperial times. There was then, in truth, no tendency, no need of life. which had not a corresponding religious form; but by the side of the wanton festivals of Bacchus, the secret and alluring mysteries of Isis, there silently spread, wider and wider, the love of a strict and self-denying asceticism. As in the case of individuals who have become blasé and enervate after exhausting all pleasures, at last the one charm of novelty remains-that of an austere, selfdenying life; so was it on a large scale in the ancient world; and thus it was only natural that this new tendency, being as it was in sharpest contrast with the cheerful sensuousness of the older world, led men to an extreme of world-avoidance and self-renunciation.6 Christianity, with its wonderfully fascinating doctrine of the kingdom that is not of this world, seemed to offer the most admirable support to these views. The religion of the oppressed and the slave, of the weary and heavy-laden, attracted also the luxurious rich who could no longer be satisfied with luxury and wealth. And so with the principle of renunciation was allied that of universal brotherhood, which contained new spiritual delights for the heart seared by selfishness. The longing of the wandering and isolated spirit after a close tie of community and a positive belief was satisfied; and the firm coherence of the believers, the imposing union of communities ramifying everywhere through the wide world, effected more for the propagation of the new religion than the mass of miracles that was related to willingly believing ears. Miracle was, in short, not so much a missionary instrument as a necessary complement of faith in a time that set no measure to its love or its belief in miracles. In this respect not only did priests of Isis and magicians compete with Christianity, but even philosophers appeared in the character of miracle-workers and God6 An account of this extreme, as it made itself specially felt after the third century, is to be found in Lecky, Hist. Eur. Morals, ii. 107 foll. accredited prophets. The feats of a Cagliostro and a Gassner in modern times are but a faint copy of the performances of Apollonius of Tyana, the most famous of the prophets, whose miracles and oracles were partly believed even by Lucian and Origen. But the result of all this was to show that only simple and consistent principles can work a lasting miracle-that miracle, at least, which gradually united the scattered nations and creeds around the altar of the Christians.7 Christianity, by preaching the gospel to the poor, unhinged the ancient world. 8 What will appear in the fulness of time as an actual fact, the spirit of faith already apprehended in imagination-the kingdom of love, in which the last are to be first. The stern legal idea of the Romans, which built order upon force, and made property 7 As to the spread of Christianity, compare the celebrated fifteenth chapter of Gibbon, which is full of material for the estimation of this fact from the most varied standpoints. More correct views, however, are put forward by Lecky in his "History of European Morals," and in the "History of Rationalism in Europe." As the chief work on the theological side, may be named Baur, das Christenthum, u. die christliche Kirche der drei ersten Jahrhunderte. From the philosophico - historical standpoint, E. von Lasaulx, der Untergang des Hellenismus u. die Einziehung seiner Tempelgüter durch die christl. Kaiser, München, 1854. For further literature, see in Ueberweg in the "History of the Patristic Philosophy," a section of his history which unfortunately has not met with the approbation it deserves (comp. mny Biographie Ueberwegs, Berlin, 1871, S. 21, 22). On the miracle-mania which marked this period, compare particularly Lecky, Hist. of Eur. Morals, i. 393. Also p. 395 as to miracleworking philosophers: "Christianity Boated into the Roman Empire on the wave of credulity that brought with it this long train of Oriental superstitions and legends. . . . Its miracles were accepted by both friend and foe as the ordinary accompaniments of religious teaching." 8 How much the influence of the Christian care for the poor was felt is shown by the remarkable fact that Julian 'the Apostate,' în his attempt to supplant Christianity by a philosophic Greek State-religion, openly recognised the superiority of Christianity in this respect to the old religion. He recommended, accordingly, in order to rival the Christians in this respect, the establishment in every town of Xenodocheia, in which strangers should be received without respect to creed. For the maintenance of them, and also for distribution to the poor, he devoted considerable sums of money. "For it is disgraceful," he wrote to Arsacius, the high- priest of the Galatians, "that no one of the Jews begs, while the atheistic Galileans not only maintain their own poor, but also any whom we leave helpless."-Lasaulă, Untergang des Hellenismus, S. 68. the immovable foundation of human relations, was met by a demand, made with incredible weight, that one should renounce all private claims, should love one's enemies, sacrifice one's treasures, and esteem the malefactor on the scaffold equally with one's self. A mysterious awe of these doctrines seized the ancient world, and those in power sought in vain by cruel persecutions to repress a revolution which overturned all existing things, and laughed not only at the prison and the stake, but even at religion and law. In the bold self-sufficiency of the salvation which a Jewish traitor, who had suffered the death of a slave, had brought down from heaven as a gracious gift from the eternal Father, this sect conquered country after country, and was able, while clinging to its main principles, little by little to press into the service of the new creation the superstitious ideas, the sensuous inclinations, the passions, and the legal conceptions of the heathen world, since they could not be wholly destroyed. The place of old Olympus, with its wealth of myth, was occupied by the saints and martyrs. Gnosticism constituted the elements. $ Compare Tacitus, Annals, xv. 44, where it is said that Nero laid the blame of the burning of Rome upon the Christians. He "inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin,suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius, at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out, not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatied against mankind." Their asso ciating amongst themselves, together For the threatening of the whole human race with the everlasting torments of hell, and the in. fluence of this threat upon the Romans, comp. Lecky, Hist. Eur, Morals, i. 447 foll. of a Christian philosophy. Christian schools of rhetoric were opened for all those who sought to combine the ancient culture with the new belief. From the simple and austere discipline of the early Church were developed the elements of a hierarchy. The bishops gathered unto themselves riches, and led an arrogant and worldly life; the rabble of the great cities became intoxicated with hatred and fanaticism. The care of the poor disappeared, and the usurious rich protected their nefarious gains by a system of police. The festivals speedily resembled in their wantonness and ostentation those of the decaying heathenism, and the piety of devotion in the surge of disordered emotions appeared bent upon destroying the life-germs of the new religion. But it was not so destroyed. Struggling against the foreign forces, it made its way. Even the ancient philosophy, which, from the turbid sources of Neo-Platonism, poured into the Christian world, had to adapt itself to the character of this religion; and whilst cunning, treachery, and cruelty helped to found the Christian state-in itself a contradiction-the thought of the equal calling of all men to a higher existence remained the basis of modern popular development. So, says Schlosser, was the caprice and deceit of mankind one of the means by which the Deity developed a new life from the mouldering ruins of the ancient world.10 It now becomes our duty to examine the influence that the carrying out of the Christian principle must have exercised upon the history of Materialism, and with this we will connect the consideration of Judaism and of Mohammedanism, which latter is of special importance. What these three religions have in common is Monotheism. When the heathen regards everything as full of gods, and has become accustomed to treat every individual event as the special sphere of some daemonic influence, the 10 Schlosser, Weltgesch. f. d. deutsche Volk, bearb. v. Kriegk, iv. 426 Gesch. der Römer, xiv. 7). |