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10 - Jesus of History by Terrot R. Glover · Jesus of History

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Speaker 1: Chapter nine of The Jesus of History by T. R. Glover.
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Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter nine.
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Speaker 1: The Christian Church in the Roman Empire, Imperial Rome governed
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Speaker 1: the whole of the Mediterranean world, a larger proportion and
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Speaker 1: a greater variety of the human race than has ever
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Speaker 1: been under one government. So far as numbers go, the
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Speaker 1: Russian Empire to day, the Chinese and the British each
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Speaker 1: far exceed it, for the population of the world is
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Speaker 1: vastly greater than it was in Rome's days. But there
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Speaker 1: was a peculiar unity about the Roman Empire, for it embraced,
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Speaker 1: as men thought, all civilized mankind. It was known that
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Speaker 1: far away in the east there were people called Indians,
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Speaker 1: who had fought with Alexander the Great, but there was
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Speaker 1: little real knowledge of them. Beyond India, there were vague
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Speaker 1: rumors of a land where silk grew on the leaves
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Speaker 1: of the trees. But civilized mankind was under the control
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Speaker 1: of Rome. It was one rule of many races, many kingdoms, princedoms, cities, cantons,
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Speaker 1: and tribes. A wise rule, a rule that allowed the
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Speaker 1: maximum of local government and traditional usage. Rome not merely conquered,
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Speaker 1: but captured men all over the world, ruled them, as
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Speaker 1: a poet said, like a mother, not a queen, and
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Speaker 1: bound them to herself. Men were eager, not so much
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Speaker 1: as to shake off her yoke, as to be Romans.
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Speaker 1: And from the Atlantic to the Euphrates, men not of
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Speaker 1: Roman blood were proud to bear Roman names and to
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Speaker 1: be Roman citizens. I was free born, said Saint Paul,
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Speaker 1: not without such satisfaction. A general peace prevailed through the
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Speaker 1: Roman world, a peace that was new to mankind. There
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Speaker 1: was freedom of intercourse. One of the boasts made by
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Speaker 1: the writers of the Roman Empire is of this new
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Speaker 1: freedom to travel, to go anywhere unpleased. Piracy on the sea,
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Speaker 1: brigandige of the land had been put down, and there
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Speaker 1: was a very great deal of travel. The Roman became
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Speaker 1: an inveterate tourist. He went to the famous scenes of
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Speaker 1: Asia Minor, to Troy above all, to Sunny Roads and Mitolin,
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Speaker 1: to Egypt. Merchants went everywhere, and there was a fusing
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Speaker 1: of cultures, traditions, and creeds all over the Mediterranean world.
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Speaker 1: Centuries before Alexander the Great had struck out the splendid
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Speaker 1: idea of the marriage of East and West. He secured
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Speaker 1: it by breaking down the Persian Empire and making one
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Speaker 1: empire from the Adriatic to this side of the sutledge
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Speaker 1: or bias. He desired to cement this marriage of East
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Speaker 1: and West in a way of his own. He took
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Speaker 1: three hundred captive princesses and ladies and married them in
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Speaker 1: abatched Macedonian officers, a very characteristic piece of symbolism. But
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Speaker 1: his idea was greater and truer than the symbol. The
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Speaker 1: Roman marriage of East and West was a more real thing,
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Speaker 1: for behind it lay three centuries of growing intercourse and knowledge.
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Speaker 1: Along Alexander's lines. In the sphere of religion we find
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Speaker 1: it most clearly there rises a resultant world religion, a
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Speaker 1: religion that embraces all the cults, all the creeds, and
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Speaker 1: at last all the philosophies, in one great system. That
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Speaker 1: religion held the world. It is true there were exceptions.
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Speaker 1: There was a small and objectionable race called the Jews.
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Speaker 1: There were possibly some Druids in southern Britain and here,
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Speaker 1: and there was a solitary atheist who represented no one
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Speaker 1: but himself. These few exceptions were the freaks amongst mankind,
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Speaker 1: apart from them, mankind was united in its general beliefs
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Speaker 1: about the gods. The world had won religion. First of all,
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Speaker 1: let us try to estimate the strength of this old
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Speaker 1: Mediterranean paganism. It was strong in its great traditions. Plutarch,
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Speaker 1: who lived from about fifty eighty two hundred and seventeen
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Speaker 1: or so, is our great exponent of this old religion.
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Speaker 1: To him I shall have to refer constantly. He was
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Speaker 1: a writer of charm, a man with many gifts. Plutarch's
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Speaker 1: lives was the great staple of education in the Renaissance,
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Speaker 1: and as good as one, perhaps as we have yet discovered,
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Speaker 1: even in this age where there is so many theories
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Speaker 1: of education with foreign names. Plutarch, then, writing about Delphi,
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Speaker 1: the shrine and oracle of the god Apollo, said that
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Speaker 1: men had been in anguish and fear lest Delphi should
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Speaker 1: lose its glory of three thousand years. And Delphi has
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Speaker 1: not lost it. For ninety generations, the God has been
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Speaker 1: giving oracles to the Greek world, to private people, to kings,
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Speaker 1: to cities, to nations, and on all sorts of subjects.
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Speaker 1: On the foundation of colonies, the declaration of wars, personal guidance,
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Speaker 1: and the hope of heirs. You may test the god
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Speaker 1: where you will, Plutarch claimed, you will not find an
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Speaker 1: instance of a false oracle. Readers of Greek history will
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Speaker 1: remember another great writer of as much charm, five hundred
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Speaker 1: years before, Herodotus, who was not so sure about the oracle.
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Speaker 1: But let us think what it means to look back
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Speaker 1: over three thousand years of one faith unbroken. Egyptian religion
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Speaker 1: had been unchallenged for longer. Still, even if we are
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Speaker 1: now Plutarch three thousand years the oldest remains in Egypt,
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Speaker 1: and to date we are told four thousand BC, and
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Speaker 1: all through history, with the exception of the solitary reign
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Speaker 1: of Amenhotep, the Third Egypt worshiped the same gods with
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Speaker 1: additions as time went on, again an unbroken tradition. And
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Speaker 1: how long under various names had Sibylly, mother of the gods,
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Speaker 1: been worshiped in Asia? By our era, all these religions
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Speaker 1: were fused into one religion of many cults and rites
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Speaker 1: and ancient traditions, and the incredible weight of old tradition
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Speaker 1: in that world is hard to overestimate. The old tradition
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Speaker 1: was strong in the splendor of its art and its architecture.
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Speaker 1: The severe, beautiful lines of the Greek temple are familiar
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Speaker 1: to her still, And until I saw the targe, I
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Speaker 1: thought I should have doubted whether there could be anything
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Speaker 1: more beautiful. Architecture was consecrated to the gods, and so
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Speaker 1: was art. You go to Delphi, said Plutarch, and see
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Speaker 1: those wonderful works of the ancient artists and sculptors, as
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Speaker 1: fresh still as if they had left the chisel yesterday,
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Speaker 1: and they had stood there for hundreds of years, wonderful
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Speaker 1: in their beauty. Think of some of the remains of
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Speaker 1: the Greek art of that victory, for instance, which the
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Speaker 1: Messenians set on the Temple of Olympia in four hundred
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Speaker 1: twenty one b c. She stood on a block of
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Speaker 1: stone on the temple, but the block was painted blue,
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Speaker 1: so that as the spectator came up he saw the
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Speaker 1: temple and the angle of its roof, and then a
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Speaker 1: gap of blue sky, and the goddess just alighting on
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Speaker 1: the summit of the temple. From what is left of her,
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Speaker 1: broken and headless, but still beautiful, we can picture her
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Speaker 1: flying through the air. The wind has blown her dress
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Speaker 1: back against her, and you see its folds freshly caught
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Speaker 1: by the breeze, and all this the artist has disentangled
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Speaker 1: from a rough block of stone. So vivid was his
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Speaker 1: conception of the goddess, and so sure his hand. There
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Speaker 1: are those who say that the conventional picture of God
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Speaker 1: of the great artists is molded after the Zeus of
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Speaker 1: Padius Egypt, and other portrayals of the gods, on a
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Speaker 1: pattern of her own, strange and massive and huge, far older.
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Speaker 1: About six hundred years before Christ, the Egyptian king Samticos
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Speaker 1: hired Greek soldiers and marched them hundreds of miles up
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Speaker 1: the Nile. The Greek soldiers, one idle day carved their
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Speaker 1: names on the legs of the colossal gods seated at Abucymnal.
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Speaker 1: Their names found there today. So old are these gods.
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Speaker 1: The religion was strong in the splendor of its ceremony.
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Speaker 1: Every year the Athenian people went to Eleusis in splendid
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Speaker 1: procession to worship, to be initiated into the rights of
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Speaker 1: the Earth Mother and her virgin daughter, who had taught
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Speaker 1: men the use of grain and the arts of farming,
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Speaker 1: rights linked with an immemorial past, awful rites that gave
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Speaker 1: men a new hope of eternal life. The mother of
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Speaker 1: the gods from Phrygia in Asia Minor, had her rights too,
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Speaker 1: and her cults spread all over the world. When the
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Speaker 1: Roman poet Lucretius wants to describe the wonder and magic
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Speaker 1: of the pageant of Nature in the springtime, he goes
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Speaker 1: to the pomp of Sybylly. The nearest thing to it,
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Speaker 1: which we can imagine, is Botticelli's picture of the Triumph
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Speaker 1: of Spring. Lucretius was a poet to whom the gods
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Speaker 1: were idle and irrelevant. Yet to that pageant he goes
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Speaker 1: for a picture of the miraculous life of nature. More
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Speaker 1: splendid still were the rites of the Egyptian Isis, celebrated
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Speaker 1: all over the world. Her priests, shaven and linen clad,
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Speaker 1: carried symbols of an unguest antiquity in magical power. They
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Speaker 1: launched a boat with a flame upon it on the
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Speaker 1: river in Egypt, on the sea in Greece. All these
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Speaker 1: cults made deep impressions on the worshippers, As our records
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Speaker 1: tell us, the appeal of religious emotion was noticed by Aristotle,
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Speaker 1: who remarked, however, that it was feeling rather than intellect
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Speaker 1: that was touched, a shrewd criticism that deserves to be remembered. Still,
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Speaker 1: the gods were strong in their actual manifestations of themselves.
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Speaker 1: Apollo for ninety generations had spoken. In Delphi. At Epidauros,
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Speaker 1: there was a shrine of Asclepius. Its monuments have been
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Speaker 1: collected and edited by doctor Caton of Liverpool. There sick
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Speaker 1: men and women came, lived a quiet life of diet
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Speaker 1: and religious ceremony, preparing for the night on which they
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Speaker 1: should sleep in the temple. On that night, the God
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Speaker 1: came to them, they said, in that mood or state
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Speaker 1: where they lay between asleep and awake, sometimes as in
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Speaker 1: a dream, and then as in a waking vision, one's
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Speaker 1: hair stood on end, but one shed tears of joy
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Speaker 1: and felt lighthearted. Others said they definitely saw him. He
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Speaker 1: came and told them what to do. On waking, they
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Speaker 1: did it and were healed. Or he touched them then
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Speaker 1: and there and cured them as they lay. Some of
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Speaker 1: the cures recorded on the monuments are perhaps strange to
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Speaker 1: our ideas of medicine. One records how the God came
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Speaker 1: to man, dreadfully afflicted with dropsy, cut off his head
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Speaker 1: turned him upside down and let the fluid run out,
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Speaker 1: and then replaced his head with a neat join. Some
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Speaker 1: modern readers may doubt this story, but that the God
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Speaker 1: did heal people men firmly believed. We too, may believe
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Speaker 1: that people were healed, perhaps by living a healthy life
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Speaker 1: in a quiet place, a life of regimen and diet,
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Speaker 1: and perhaps faith healing or suggestion played as strong a
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Speaker 1: part as anything else. Even the Christians believed that these
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Speaker 1: god had a certain power. They were evil spirits. Not
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Speaker 1: only the gods of the temples would manifest themselves of
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Speaker 1: their grace. Every man had a guardian spirit, a genius,
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Speaker 1: and by proper means he could be compelled to show
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Speaker 1: himself visibly. The pupils of Plotinus counted up his genius,
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Speaker 1: and it came not a demon, but a god, the
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Speaker 1: right formula and the right stone in the hand, and
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Speaker 1: a man had a wonderful power over the gods themselves.
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Speaker 1: This was called theogy. But the great strength of this
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Speaker 1: old religion was its infinite adaptability. It made peace with
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Speaker 1: every God and goddess that it met. It adopted them all.
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Speaker 1: As a French scholar has said, where there is polytheism,
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Speaker 1: there are no false gods. All the religions were fused
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Speaker 1: and the gods were blended. The Roman went to Greece
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Speaker 1: and identified Jupiter with Zeus. He went to Egypt and
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Speaker 1: found him in Amon. He went to Syria and found
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Speaker 1: him in Bahle. If the jew had been not so
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Speaker 1: foolish and awkward, there might have been a Jupiter Jehovah
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Speaker 1: as well. It was a Catholic faith, embracing everything cult
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Speaker 1: and creed and philosophy, strong in all the ways that
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Speaker 1: we have surveyed, and in many more, above all because
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Speaker 1: it was unchallenged. And yet where is that religion? To day?
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Speaker 1: That to me is one of the most significant questions
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Speaker 1: in history, more so the longer I stay in India.
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Speaker 1: Men knew that religion of Greece and Rome was eternal,
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Speaker 1: Yet it is utterly gone. Why how could it go?
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Speaker 1: What conceivable power was there? I do not say to
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Speaker 1: bring it down, but to abolish it so thoroughly that
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Speaker 1: not a soul in Egypt worships isis how many even
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Speaker 1: know her name. Not a soul in Italy thinks of
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Speaker 1: Jove but as a fancy and pallis Athenian Athens is
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Speaker 1: a mere memory that is the problem, the historical problem
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Speaker 1: with which we now have to deal. First of all,
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Speaker 1: let us look again and more closely at that old religion.
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Speaker 1: We shall find in it at least four cardinal weaknesses. First,
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Speaker 1: it stands for the unexamined life, as Plato called it.
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Speaker 1: The unexamined life, he says, is not livable for a
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Speaker 1: human being. A man who is a man must cross
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Speaker 1: examine life, must make life face up to him and
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Speaker 1: yield its secrets. He must know what it means, the
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Speaker 1: significance of every relation of life, father and child, man
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Speaker 1: and wife, citizen and city, subject and king, man and
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Speaker 1: the world above all, Man and God. We must examine
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Speaker 1: and know. But this old religion, stood by tradition and
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Speaker 1: not reflection, was no deep sense of truth. Plutarch admired
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Speaker 1: his father, and he describes with warm approval how his
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Speaker 1: father once said to a man, that is a dangerous
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Speaker 1: question not to be discussed at all, when you question
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Speaker 1: the opinion we hold about the gods, and ask reason
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Speaker 1: and demonstration for everything. Such a latitude means mistrust. It means,
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Speaker 1: at bottom, a fundamental unfaith. The house is beautiful, do
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Speaker 1: not touch it. It is riddled by white ants by
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Speaker 1: dry rot, and it would fall that is not faith.
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Speaker 1: It is a strange confession. But all who hesitate at changes,
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Speaker 1: I think, make that confession sooner or later. There is
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Speaker 1: a line of Caboo which puts the essence of this
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Speaker 1: penance is not equal to truth, nor is there any
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Speaker 1: sin like untruth. This was one of the essential weaknesses
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Speaker 1: of that old religion, its fear and the absence of
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Speaker 1: a deep sense of truth. In the next place, there
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Speaker 1: is no real association of morals with religion. The old
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Speaker 1: stories were full of the adventures of Jupiter or Zeus
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Speaker 1: with the heroines mortal women whom he loved. Of some
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Speaker 1: nineteen hundred wall paintings at Pompeii, examined by a Jerned
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Speaker 1: scholar and antiquary, some fourteen hundred represent mythological subjects, largely
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Speaker 1: as stories of the loves of Jupiter. The Latin dramatist
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Speaker 1: Terence pictures the young man looking at one of these
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Speaker 1: paintings and saying to himself, if Jupiter did it, or
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Speaker 1: why should not I. Centuries later we find Augustine quoting
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Speaker 1: that sentence. It has been said that few things tended
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Speaker 1: more strongly against morality than the stories of the gods
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Speaker 1: preserved by Homer and Hesiod. Plato loved Homer so much more,
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Speaker 1: the striking his resolve that in his republic there should
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Speaker 1: be no Homer. Men said, ah, but you don't understand.
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Speaker 1: Those stories are allegories. They do not mean what they say.
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Speaker 1: They mean something deeper. But Plato said, you must speak
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Speaker 1: of God always as he is. We must in no
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Speaker 1: case tell lies about God, whether they are allegories or
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Speaker 1: whether they are not allegories. Plato, like every real thinker,
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Speaker 1: sees that this presence of allegory is a sham. The
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Speaker 1: story did its mischief whether it was allegory or not.
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Speaker 1: It stood between man and God, and headed men on
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Speaker 1: to wrong lines, turned men away from the moral standard.
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Speaker 1: There was more every year, as we saw, men went
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Speaker 1: to be initiated into the rites of Demeter. At eleusis
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Speaker 1: a few miles from Athens, and we read how one
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Speaker 1: of the great Athenian orators, Lyseus, went there and took
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Speaker 1: with him to be initiated a harlot with whom he
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Speaker 1: was living, and the woman's proprietress, a scolid party, and
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Speaker 1: they were initiated. Their morals made no difference the priests
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Speaker 1: and the goddesses offered no objection. In the temple of
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Speaker 1: Aphrodite at Corinth, there were women's slaves dedicated to the goddess,
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Speaker 1: who owned them and who received the wages of their shame.
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Speaker 1: With what voice could religion speak for morality in Corinth?
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Speaker 1: At Commander in Syria we read in Strabo, the geographer,
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Speaker 1: about the time of Christ, there was a temple where
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Speaker 1: there were six thousand of these temple slaves. I say
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Speaker 1: again that is the unexamined life. God and goddess have
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Speaker 1: nothing to say about some of the most sacred relations
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Speaker 1: in life. God, Goddess, priest worshiper never gave a thought
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Speaker 1: to these poor creatures dedicated not by themselves to this
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Speaker 1: awful life human natures, with the craving of the real woman,
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Speaker 1: for husband and child, for the love of home, but
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Speaker 1: never to know it that was associated with religion, that
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Speaker 1: was religion. There was always a minimum of protest from
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Speaker 1: the Greek temples against wrong or for right. It is
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Speaker 1: remarked again and again that all the great lessons came
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Speaker 1: not from the temples, not from the priests, but from
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Speaker 1: the poets and philosophers, from the thinkers in revolt against
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Speaker 1: the religion of their people. Curiously enough, even in Homer himself,
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Speaker 1: it is plain that the heroes the men are on
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Speaker 1: a higher moral plain than the gods, and all through
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Speaker 1: Greek history the gods are a dragon morality. What a
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Speaker 1: weakness in religion? The sense of wrong and right is
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Speaker 1: innate in man. It may be undeveloped, or it may
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Speaker 1: be deadened, but it is instinctive. And a religion which
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Speaker 1: does not know it, or which finds the difference between
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Speaker 1: right and wrong to lie in matters of taboo or
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Speaker 1: ceremonial defilement, cannot speak to one of the deepest needs
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Speaker 1: of the human heart, the need of forgiveness. There is
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Speaker 1: no righteousness in the long run about these gods. In
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Speaker 1: the third place, the religion has the common weakness of
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Speaker 1: all polytheism. Men were afraid of the gods. There were
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Speaker 1: thousands and thousands hosts of them. At every turn you
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Speaker 1: ran into one a new one. You could never be
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Speaker 1: certain that you would not offend some unknown God or goddess.
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Speaker 1: Superstition was the curse of the day. You had to
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Speaker 1: make peace with all these god and goddesses, and not
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Speaker 1: with them alone, for there was another class of supernatural beings,
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Speaker 1: dangerous if unpropitiated. The demons, the spirits that inhabited the air,
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Speaker 1: that presided over life and its stages, that helped or
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Speaker 1: hated the human soul, spiteful and evil, half divine beings
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Speaker 1: that sent illness, bad luck, madness that stole the honors
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Speaker 1: of the gods themselves, and insisted on rituals and worship,
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Speaker 1: often unclean, often cruel, but inevitable. A man must watch
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Speaker 1: himself closely if he was to be safe from them all,
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Speaker 1: if he was to keep his wife and child and
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Speaker 1: home safe. Superstition men said was the one curse of
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Speaker 1: life that made no truce with sleep. A famous Christian
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Speaker 1: writer of the second century, Tatian, speaks of the enormous
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Speaker 1: relief that he found in getting away from the tyranny
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Speaker 1: of ten thousand gods to be under a monarchy of one.
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Speaker 1: A modern Japanese Uhumura said the same thing, one god,
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Speaker 1: not eight millions. That was joyful news to me. Fourthly,
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Speaker 1: this religion took from the grave none of its terrors.
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Speaker 1: There might be a world beyond, and they might not
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Speaker 1: at any rate be initiated, said the priests. You will
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Speaker 1: have to pay us something, but it is worth it.
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Speaker 1: Prophets and Quas said Plato came to rich men's doors
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Speaker 1: and made them believe that they could rid them of
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Speaker 1: all all alarmed for the next world, by incantations and charms,
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Speaker 1: and other by a series of feasts and jollifications. So
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Speaker 1: they said, And men did what they were told. But
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Speaker 1: it did not take away the fear of death. From
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Speaker 1: the first century onwards, men began systematically to defend this
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Speaker 1: old paganism. Plutarch wrote a series of books. In its behalf.
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Speaker 1: He brings in something like love of God for man.
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Speaker 1: He speaks of the friendly Apollo. But the weakness of
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Speaker 1: Plutarch as an apologist is his weakness as a biographer.
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Speaker 1: He never really gets at the bottom of anything. In biography,
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Speaker 1: he gives us the characteristic rather than the character. Here
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Speaker 1: he never faces the real issue. It is all defense, apology, ingenuity.
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Speaker 1: But he defends far too much. He admits they are obscene. Right,
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Speaker 1: there had been human sacrifices, but the gods cannot have
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Speaker 1: ordained them. Demons who stole the names of gods imposed
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Speaker 1: those on men, not the gods. Men practiced them to
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Speaker 1: avert the anger of the demons, the gods are good.
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Speaker 1: Waiving the fact that he had not much evidence for
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Speaker 1: this in the mythology, How was a man to distinguish
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Speaker 1: God from demon? To know which was which? He does
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Speaker 1: not tell us. Again, he speaks of the image of
25:31
Speaker 1: a Siris with three lingams. He apologizes for it, he
25:36
Speaker 1: defends it, for the triplicity is a symbol of Godhead,
25:40
Speaker 1: and it means that God is the origin of all life. Yes,
25:44
Speaker 1: but what that religion needed was a great reformer, who
25:48
Speaker 1: should have cut the religion clearertrift from idols of every kind,
25:52
Speaker 1: from the old mythology, from obscenity. It may very well
25:57
Speaker 1: be that such a reformer was thinkable. Even if he
26:01
Speaker 1: had appeared, he would have been foredoomed to fail, As
26:05
Speaker 1: the compromise of the Stoics shows, Plutarch and his kind
26:09
Speaker 1: did not attempt this. They loved the past and the
26:13
Speaker 1: old ways at heart. They were afraid of the gods,
26:18
Speaker 1: and were afraid of tradition. Culture and child will do
26:21
Speaker 1: a great deal, but they do not suffice for a religion,
26:25
Speaker 1: either to make one or to redeem it. The Stoics reached,
26:31
Speaker 1: i think, the highest moral level in that Roman world.
26:34
Speaker 1: Great men, great teachers of morals, great characters. But as
26:40
Speaker 1: for the crowd, they said, let them go on in
26:42
Speaker 1: the religions of their own cities what they had learnt
26:46
Speaker 1: from their fathers. Let them do so much for the ignorant.
26:50
Speaker 1: For us, of course, something else that seems to be
26:54
Speaker 1: a fundamentally wrong defense of religion. It gets the proportions wrong.
27:00
Speaker 1: It means that we, who are people of culture, are
27:03
Speaker 1: a great deal nearer to God than the crowd. But
27:06
Speaker 1: if we realize God at all, we feel that we
27:09
Speaker 1: are none of us very far apart. Down here, the
27:13
Speaker 1: most brilliant men are amenable to the temptations of the
27:16
Speaker 1: savage and of the dock laborer. There was a further danger,
27:21
Speaker 1: little noticed at first, that life is apt to be
27:24
Speaker 1: overborne by the vulgar, the ignorant, if there is not
27:28
Speaker 1: a steady campaign to enlighten every man. The Roman house
27:32
Speaker 1: was full of slaves. They taught the children, taught them
27:36
Speaker 1: about God and godesses from Syria, from Egypt, and kept
27:42
Speaker 1: thought and life and morals on a low plane. An
27:46
Speaker 1: ignorant public is an unspeakable danger everywhere, but especially in religion.
27:55
Speaker 1: The last system of defense was the new Platonism. It
27:58
Speaker 1: had not very much to do with Plato, except that
28:01
Speaker 1: it read him and quoted him as a great authority.
28:05
Speaker 1: The neo Platonists did not face fact as Plato did.
28:09
Speaker 1: They lived on quotations on authority and fancy great thinkers,
28:13
Speaker 1: as some of them were. They pictured the universe as
28:16
Speaker 1: one vast unity far beyond all things is God of God.
28:22
Speaker 1: Man can form no conception. Think. They would say, of
28:26
Speaker 1: all the exalted and wonderful and beautiful concepts you can imagine,
28:30
Speaker 1: then deny them. God is beyond God is beyond being
28:35
Speaker 1: you can conceive of being. And therefore to predicate being
28:39
Speaker 1: of God is to limit him. You cannot think of God,
28:44
Speaker 1: for if you could think of God, God would be
28:46
Speaker 1: in relation with you. God is insusceptible of relation with man.
28:52
Speaker 1: He neither wills nor thinks of man, nor can man
28:56
Speaker 1: think of him. A modern philosopher has summed up their
28:59
Speaker 1: God as the deification of the word. Not this God, then,
29:04
Speaker 1: who is not willed, No, not willed, He could not will.
29:10
Speaker 1: But whether he willed or did not will, in some
29:13
Speaker 1: way or other, there was an emanation, not God, but
29:17
Speaker 1: very much of God, very divine, but not all God
29:23
Speaker 1: from this another and another, in a descending series, down
29:27
Speaker 1: to the demons and down to men. All that is
29:32
Speaker 1: is God, evil is not being. One of the great
29:38
Speaker 1: features of the system was that it guaranteed all the
29:41
Speaker 1: old religions for the crowd, while for the initiated, for
29:45
Speaker 1: the esoteric, it had something more. It had mystic trance,
29:51
Speaker 1: mystic vision, mystic comprehension twice or three times. Plotinus, by
29:58
Speaker 1: a great leap away from mortal things, saw God. In
30:03
Speaker 1: the meantime, the philosophy justified all the old rights. Side
30:09
Speaker 1: by side with this great defense were what are known
30:12
Speaker 1: as the Christian heresies. They are not exactly Christian, groups
30:18
Speaker 1: of people endeavored to combine Christianity with the old thought,
30:22
Speaker 1: with philosophy, theosophy, theogy, and magic. They were eclectics. They compromised.
30:31
Speaker 1: The German thinker Novaralis said very justly that all eclectics
30:35
Speaker 1: are skeptics, and the more eclectic, the more skeptic. These
30:41
Speaker 1: mixtures could not prevail, But religions have historically a wonderful
30:48
Speaker 1: way of living in spite of their weakness. Yes, and
30:52
Speaker 1: in spite of their apologetics. A religion may be stained
30:56
Speaker 1: with all sorts of evil. And may communicate it, and
31:00
Speaker 1: yet it will survive until there is an alternative with
31:03
Speaker 1: more truth and more dynamic. The old Paganism outlived Plato's
31:10
Speaker 1: criticisms and Plutarch's defenses, for the great matters of people,
31:15
Speaker 1: neither might have been written. Into this world came the
31:21
Speaker 1: Christian Church. I have tried to draw the picture of
31:25
Speaker 1: the great pagan religion, with its enormous strength, its universal acceptance,
31:31
Speaker 1: its great traditions, its splendors of art and ceremony, its
31:35
Speaker 1: manifest proofs of its gods, everything that to the ordinary
31:40
Speaker 1: mind could make for reality and for power, to show
31:44
Speaker 1: how absolutely inconceivable it was that it could ever pass away.
31:50
Speaker 1: Then comes to the Christian Church, a ludicrous collection of
31:54
Speaker 1: trivial people, very ignorant, and very common and publicans, as
32:01
Speaker 1: the Gospels show us, the Baker and the Fuller, as
32:05
Speaker 1: Celsus said, with a sneer yes, and every kind of
32:08
Speaker 1: unclean and disreputable person. They urged to join them, quite
32:13
Speaker 1: unlike all decent and established religions. And they took the
32:17
Speaker 1: children and women of the family away into a corner
32:20
Speaker 1: and whispered to them and misled them. Only believe was
32:25
Speaker 1: their one great word. The whole thing was incredibly silly.
32:30
Speaker 1: Paul went to Athens and they asked him there about
32:32
Speaker 1: it religion, And when he spoke to them about Jesus
32:36
Speaker 1: rising from the dead, they sniggered, and the more polite
32:39
Speaker 1: suggested another day everybody knew that dead men do not rise.
32:47
Speaker 1: It was a silly religion. Celsus pictured the frogs and
32:51
Speaker 1: symposium around a swamp, croaking to one another. How God
32:55
Speaker 1: forsakes the wholy universe, the spheres of heaven to dwell
32:59
Speaker 1: with us us we frogs are soul like God. He
33:04
Speaker 1: never ceases to seek how we may dwell with him forever.
33:09
Speaker 1: But some of us are sinners, so God will come
33:12
Speaker 1: or send his son and burn them up, and the
33:15
Speaker 1: rest of us will live with him for eternity. Is
33:18
Speaker 1: not that very like the Christian religion? Celsus asked. It
33:23
Speaker 1: has been replied that if the frogs really could say this,
33:26
Speaker 1: and did say this, then their statement might be quite reasonable.
33:30
Speaker 1: But our main purpose for the moment is to realize
33:33
Speaker 1: the utterly inconceivable absurdity of this bunch of Galileean fishermen
33:39
Speaker 1: and fools and rascals and maniacs setting out to capture
33:43
Speaker 1: the world. One of them wrote an apocalypse. He was
33:49
Speaker 1: in a penal settlement and patternss when he wrote it.
33:53
Speaker 1: The sect was in a fair way of being stamped
33:55
Speaker 1: out in blood. As a matter of fact. But this
33:59
Speaker 1: dreamer a triumphant church of ten thousand times ten thousand
34:04
Speaker 1: and thousands of thousands. There were hardly as many people
34:07
Speaker 1: in the world at that time. The great Rome had fallen,
34:11
Speaker 1: and the Lamb ruled imagined the amusement of a Roman
34:15
Speaker 1: pagan of one hundred a d. Who read the absurd book.
34:19
Speaker 1: Yet the dream has come true, that Church has triumphed.
34:26
Speaker 1: Where is the old religion? Christ has conquered, and all
34:30
Speaker 1: the old gods have gone utterly gone their memories now
34:36
Speaker 1: and nothing more? Why did they go? The Christian Church
34:41
Speaker 1: refused no compromise. A pagan could have seen no reason
34:45
Speaker 1: why Jesus should not be a demigod like Heracles or Dionysus.
34:49
Speaker 1: No reason either why a man should not worship Jesus
34:52
Speaker 1: as well. Of these. One of the Roman emperors, a
34:56
Speaker 1: little after two hundred a d. Had in his private
34:59
Speaker 1: sancti cury four or five statues of gods, and one
35:03
Speaker 1: of them was Jesus. Why not. The Roman world had
35:08
Speaker 1: opened arms for Jesus as well as any other god
35:10
Speaker 1: or dami god, if people would be sensible. But the
35:14
Speaker 1: Christian said no. He would not allow Jesus to be
35:18
Speaker 1: put into that pantheon, nor would he worship the gods himself,
35:22
Speaker 1: not even the genius of the Emperor his guardian spirit.
35:27
Speaker 1: The Christian proclaimed a war of religion, in which there
35:31
Speaker 1: should be no compromise and no peace till Christ is
35:36
Speaker 1: Lord of all. The thing should be fought out to
35:40
Speaker 1: the bitter end, and it has been. He was resolved
35:45
Speaker 1: that the old gods should go, and they have gone.
35:49
Speaker 1: How was it done? Here we touch what I think
35:55
Speaker 1: is one of the greatest wonders that history has to show.
36:00
Speaker 1: How did the Church do it? If I may invent
36:03
Speaker 1: or adapt three words, the Christian outlived the Pagan, outdied him,
36:09
Speaker 1: and outthought him. He came into the world and lived
36:13
Speaker 1: a great deal better than the Pagan. He beat him
36:17
Speaker 1: hollow in living. Paul's epistles to the Corinthians do not
36:21
Speaker 1: indicate a high standard of life at Corinth. The Corinthians
36:25
Speaker 1: were a very poor sort of Christians, But another epistle
36:29
Speaker 1: written to the Corinthians a generation later speaks of their
36:33
Speaker 1: passion for being kind to men and of a broadened
36:36
Speaker 1: and deeper life in spite of their weaknesses. Here and
36:41
Speaker 1: there one recognizes failure all along the line. Yes, but
36:46
Speaker 1: the line advances. The old world had morals, plenty of morals.
36:52
Speaker 1: The Stoics overflowed with morals. But the Christian came into
36:56
Speaker 1: the world not with a system of morality. He had rules, indeed,
37:01
Speaker 1: which asked Tertullian, is the amply rule thou shalt not
37:06
Speaker 1: commit adultery? Or the rule that forbids a single lustful look.
37:10
Speaker 1: But it was not rules so much that he brought
37:13
Speaker 1: into the world as a great passion. The son of God,
37:17
Speaker 1: he said, loved me and gave himself for me. That man,
37:22
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ, loved him, gave himself for him. He is
37:26
Speaker 1: the friend of my best friend. My best friend loves
37:30
Speaker 1: that man, gave himself for him, died for him. How
37:34
Speaker 1: it alters all the relations of life? Who can kill
37:38
Speaker 1: or rob another man? When he remembers whose hands were
37:42
Speaker 1: nailed to the cross for that man? See how it
37:45
Speaker 1: bears on another side of morality. Tertullian strikes out a
37:49
Speaker 1: great phrase, a new idea altogether. When he speaks of
37:54
Speaker 1: the victim of the common lust. Christ died for her.
37:59
Speaker 1: How it's safeguard her and uplifts her. Men came into
38:02
Speaker 1: the world full of this passion for Jesus Christ. They
38:07
Speaker 1: went to the slave and to the temple woman and
38:10
Speaker 1: told them the Son of God loved you and gave
38:13
Speaker 1: himself for you. And they believed it and rose into
38:18
Speaker 1: a new life to be redeemed by the Son of God.
38:22
Speaker 1: Gave the slave a new self respect, a new manhood.
38:26
Speaker 1: He astonished people by his truth, his honesty, his cleanness.
38:32
Speaker 1: And there was a new brightness and gaiety about him,
38:35
Speaker 1: so there was about the woman. They sang. They overflowed
38:39
Speaker 1: with good temper. It was as if they had been
38:43
Speaker 1: born again. As Clement of Rome wrote, the Holy Spirit
38:48
Speaker 1: was a glad spirit. The word used both by him
38:52
Speaker 1: and by Saint Augustine is that which gives us the
38:55
Speaker 1: English word hilarious. There was a new gladness and happyness
39:00
Speaker 1: about these people. It befits truth to laugh, because she
39:04
Speaker 1: is glad to play with her rivals, because she is
39:08
Speaker 1: free from fear, so said Totullian. Of course there were
39:13
Speaker 1: those who broke down, but Julian the Apostate, in his
39:16
Speaker 1: letters to his Heathen priests, is a reluctant witness to
39:20
Speaker 1: the higher character of the Christian life. And it was
39:24
Speaker 1: Jesus who is the secret of it. The pagan noticed
39:29
Speaker 1: the new fortitude in the face of death. Totullian himself
39:33
Speaker 1: was immensely impressed with it. He had never troubled to
39:37
Speaker 1: look at the Gospels. Nobody bothered to read them unless
39:40
Speaker 1: they were converted already, he said, But he seems to
39:44
Speaker 1: have seen these Christian martyrs die. Every man, he said,
39:49
Speaker 1: who sees it, is moved with some misgiving, and is
39:52
Speaker 1: set on fire to learn the reason. He inquires and
39:55
Speaker 1: is taught, And when he has learnt the truth, he
39:58
Speaker 1: instantly follows it himself as well. No one would have
40:02
Speaker 1: wished to be killed, and leth he was in possession
40:04
Speaker 1: of the truth. I think that is autobiography. The intellectual
40:10
Speaker 1: energy of the man is worth noting, his insistent on understanding,
40:15
Speaker 1: his instant resolution. Such qualities we saw had won the
40:19
Speaker 1: admiration of Jesus. Here is a man who sacrifices a
40:24
Speaker 1: great career, his genius, his wit, his humor, fire power, learning, philosophy,
40:32
Speaker 1: everything thrown at Christ's feet, and Christ uses them all.
40:40
Speaker 1: Then came a day when persecution is breaking out again.
40:44
Speaker 1: Some Christians were for fleeing to the next city. It
40:47
Speaker 1: was the one text in their Bible, he said, He said,
40:52
Speaker 1: I stay here. Any day the mob might get excited
40:56
Speaker 1: and shout the Christians to the lions. They knew the
41:00
Speaker 1: street in which he lived, and they would drag him,
41:03
Speaker 1: the scholar, the man of letters and of imagination, naked
41:07
Speaker 1: through the streets, torn and bleeding. They would tie him
41:12
Speaker 1: to the stake in the middle of the amphitheater and
41:14
Speaker 1: pile faggots around him, and there he would stand, waiting
41:19
Speaker 1: to be burnt alive, or it might be to be
41:22
Speaker 1: killed by the beasts. Any hour, any day, I stay here,
41:30
Speaker 1: he said. What does it cost a man to do that?
41:34
Speaker 1: People asked what was the magic of it? The magic
41:38
Speaker 1: of it was just this on the other side of
41:41
Speaker 1: the fire was the same friend. If he wants me
41:45
Speaker 1: to be burnt alive, I am here. Jesus Christ was
41:50
Speaker 1: the secret of it. The Christians out carought the pagan world.
41:55
Speaker 1: How could they fail to? We have peace with God,
41:59
Speaker 1: said Paul. They moved about in a new world which
42:03
Speaker 1: was their father's world. They would go to the shrines
42:06
Speaker 1: and ask uncomfortable questions. Lucian, who was a pagan and
42:11
Speaker 1: a scoffer, said that on one side of the shrines
42:14
Speaker 1: the notice was posted Christians outside. The Christians saw too
42:20
Speaker 1: much for living God, and that shrine was a big
42:23
Speaker 1: snake with a mask died on. Good enough for the pagan,
42:26
Speaker 1: but the Christian would see the strings. Even the demons
42:30
Speaker 1: they dismissed to irrelevance and nonentity. The essence of magic
42:36
Speaker 1: was to be able to link the name of a
42:38
Speaker 1: demon with the name of one's enemy, to set the
42:41
Speaker 1: demon on the man. Very well, said the Christian. Link
42:45
Speaker 1: my name with your demons. Use my name in any
42:48
Speaker 1: magic you like. There is a name that is above
42:51
Speaker 1: every name. I am not afraid. That put the demons
42:55
Speaker 1: in their right place. And by and by they vanished,
42:59
Speaker 1: dropped out, died of sheer, inignation and neglect. Wherever Jesus
43:05
Speaker 1: Christ has been, the demons have gone. There used to
43:09
Speaker 1: be fairies, said an old woman in the highlands of
43:12
Speaker 1: Scotland to a friend of mine, But the Gospel came
43:14
Speaker 1: and drove them away. I do not know what is
43:17
Speaker 1: going to keep them away. Yet, but Jesus Christ the
43:22
Speaker 1: Christian read the ancient literature with the same freedom of
43:26
Speaker 1: mind and was not in bondage to it. He had
43:30
Speaker 1: a new outlook. He could criticize more freely. One great
43:35
Speaker 1: principle is given by Clement of Alexandria. The beautiful wherever
43:40
Speaker 1: it is, is ours, because it came from our God.
43:45
Speaker 1: The Christian read the best books, assimilated them, and lived
43:49
Speaker 1: the freest intellectual life that the world had. Jesus had
43:54
Speaker 1: set him to be True to fact, why had Christian
43:58
Speaker 1: churches to be so much larger than pagan temples? Why
44:02
Speaker 1: are they so still? Because this sermon is in the
44:07
Speaker 1: very center of all Christian worship, clear definite Christian teaching
44:14
Speaker 1: about Jesus Christ. There is no place for an ignorant Christian.
44:21
Speaker 1: From the very start, every Christian had to know and
44:25
Speaker 1: had to understand, and he had to read the Gospels.
44:29
Speaker 1: He had to be able to give the reason for
44:31
Speaker 1: his faith. He was committed to a great propaganda to
44:37
Speaker 1: the preaching of Jesus, and he had to preach with
44:40
Speaker 1: penetration and appeal. There they were loyal to the essential
44:45
Speaker 1: idea of Jesus. They were sons of fact. They read
44:49
Speaker 1: about Jesus, and they knew him, and they knew where
44:53
Speaker 1: they stood. This has been the essence of the Christian religion.
44:58
Speaker 1: Put that alongside the pitiful deface dead which Plutarch makes
45:01
Speaker 1: of obscene rights, filthy images, foolish traditions. Who did the
45:07
Speaker 1: thinking of that ancient world? Again and again? It was
45:12
Speaker 1: the Christian He outthought the world. The old religion crumbled
45:20
Speaker 1: and fell, beaten in thought, in morals, in life, in death,
45:27
Speaker 1: and by and by the only name for it was paganism,
45:31
Speaker 1: the religion of the back country village of the out
45:35
Speaker 1: of the way places. Christ had conquered. San Prudentius sing
45:41
Speaker 1: the trophy of the passion since the all triumphant cross.
45:46
Speaker 1: The ancients thought that God repeated the whole history of
45:49
Speaker 1: the universe over and over again, like a cinema show.
45:55
Speaker 1: Some of them thought that kingdoms rise and fall by
45:58
Speaker 1: pure chance. No, said Prudentius. God planned, God developed the
46:04
Speaker 1: history of mankind. He made Rome for his own purposes.
46:10
Speaker 1: For Christ, what is the explanation of it? We who
46:16
Speaker 1: live in a rational universe, where real results come from
46:19
Speaker 1: real causes, must ask, what is the power that has
46:23
Speaker 1: carried the Christian Church to victory over that great old religion.
46:28
Speaker 1: And there is another question, is this story going to
46:32
Speaker 1: be repeated? What is there about Shiva, Kali or Shri
46:37
Speaker 1: Krishna that essentially differentiates them from the gods of Greece
46:42
Speaker 1: and Rome and Egypt. Tradition, legend, philosophy. Point by point,
46:50
Speaker 1: we find the same thing, and we find the same
46:53
Speaker 1: Christian Church, with the same ideals, facing the same conflict.
46:59
Speaker 1: What will be the result? The result will be the
47:02
Speaker 1: same we have seen in China in the last two decades.
47:07
Speaker 1: How the Christian Church is true to its traditions, how
47:11
Speaker 1: men can die for Jesus Christ. In the Greek Church,
47:15
Speaker 1: a suffering church. On the round sacramental wafer, there is
47:20
Speaker 1: a cross, and in the four corners there are eight
47:23
Speaker 1: letters I, E, X, E, N, I KA. Jesus Christ conquers.
47:33
Speaker 1: That is the story of the Christian Church in the
47:37
Speaker 1: Roman Empire. That is the story which please God, we
47:43
Speaker 1: shall see again in India. Jesus Christ Conquers. End of
47:53
Speaker 1: chapter nine.