THE FIRST CHRISTIAN EMPEROR. It had now become evident that the Christians constituted a powerful party in the state, animated with indignation at the atrocities they had suffered, and determined to endure them no longer. After the abdication of Diocletian (A.D. 305), Constantine, one of the competitors for the purple, perceiving the advantages that would accrue to him from such a policy, put himself forth as the head of the Christian party. This gave him, in every part of the empire, men and women ready to encounter fire and sword in his behalf; it gave him unwavering adherents in every legion of the armies. In a decisive battle, near the Milvian bridge, victory crowned his schemes. The death of Maximin, and subsequently that of Licinius, removed all obstacles. He ascended the throne of the Caesars—the first Christian emperor.

Place, profit, power—these were in view of whoever now joined the conquering sect. Crowds of worldly persons, who cared nothing about its religious ideas, became its warmest supporters. Pagans at heart, their influence was soon manifested in the paganization of Christianity that forthwith ensued. The emperor, no better than they, did nothing to check their proceedings. But he did not personally conform to the ceremonial requirements of the Church until the close of his evil life, A.D. 337.

TERTULLIAN'S EXPOSITION OF CHRISTIANITY. That we may clearly appreciate the modifications now impressed on Christianity—modifications which eventually brought it in conflict with science—we must have, as a means of comparison, a statement of what it was in its purer days. Such, fortunately, we find in the "Apology or Defense of the Christians against the Accusations of the Gentiles," written by Tertullian, at Rome, during the persecution of Severus. He addressed it, not to the emperor, but to the magistrates who sat in judgment on the accused. It is a solemn and most earnest expostulation, setting forth all that could be said in explanation of the subject, a representation of the belief and cause of the Christians made in the imperial city in the face of the whole world, not a querulous or passionate ecclesiastical appeal, but a grave historical document. It has ever been looked upon as one of the ablest of the early Christian works. Its date is about A.D. 200.

With no inconsiderable skill Tertullian opens his argument. He tells the magistrates that Christianity is a stranger upon earth, and that she expects to meet with enemies in a country which is not her own. She only asks that she may not be condemned unheard, and that Roman magistrates will permit her to defend herself; that the laws of the empire will gather lustre, if judgment be passed upon her after she has been tried but not if she is sentenced without a hearing of her cause; that it is unjust to hate a thing of which we are ignorant, even though it may be a thing worthy of hate; that the laws of Rome deal with actions, not with mere names; but that, notwithstanding this, persons have been punished because they were called Christians, and that without any accusation of crime.

He then advances to an exposition of the origin, the nature, and the effects of Christianity, stating that it is founded on the Hebrew Scriptures, which are the most venerable of all books. He says to the magistrates: "The books of Moses, in which God has inclosed, as in a treasure, all the religion of the Jews, and consequently all the Christian religion, reach far beyond the oldest you have, even beyond all your public monuments, the establishment of your state, the foundation of many great cities—all that is most advanced by you in all ages of history, and memory of times; the invention of letters, which are the interpreters of sciences and the guardians of all excellent things. I think I may say more—beyond your gods, your temples, your oracles and sacrifices. The author of those books lived a thousand years before the siege of Troy, and more than fifteen hundred before Homer." Time is the ally of truth, and wise men believe nothing but what is certain, and what has been verified by time. The principal authority of these Scriptures is derived from their venerable antiquity. The most learned of the Ptolemies, who was surnamed Philadelphus, an accomplished prince, by the advice of Demetrius Phalareus, obtained a copy of these holy books. It may be found at this day in his library. The divinity of these Scriptures is proved by this, that all that is done in our days may be found predicted in them; they contain all that has since passed in the view of men.

Is not the accomplishment of a prophecy a testimony to its truth? Seeing that events which are past have vindicated these prophecies, shall we be blamed for trusting them in events that are to come? Now, as we believe things that have been prophesied and have come to pass, so we believe things that have been told us, but not yet come to pass, because they have all been foretold by the same Scriptures, as well those that are verified every day as those that still remain to be fulfilled.

These Holy Scriptures teach us that there is one God, who made the world out of nothing, who, though daily seen, is invisible; his infiniteness is known only to himself; his immensity conceals, but at the same time discovers him. He has ordained for men, according to their lives, rewards and punishments; he will raise all the dead that have ever lived from the creation of the world, will command them to reassume their bodies, and thereupon adjudge them to felicity that has so end, or to eternal flames. The fires of hell are those hidden flames which the earth shuts up in her bosom. He has in past times sent into the world preachers or prophets. The prophets of those old times were Jews; they addressed their oracles, for such they were, to the Jews, who have stored them up in the Scriptures. On them, as has been said, Christianity is founded, though the Christian differs in his ceremonies from the Jew. We are accused of worshiping a man, and not the God of the Jews. Not so. The honor we bear to Christ does not derogate from the honor we bear to God.

On account of the merit of these ancient patriarchs, the Jews were the only beloved people of God; he delighted to be in communication with them by his own mouth. By him they were raised to admirable greatness. But with perversity they wickedly ceased to regard him; they changed his laws into a profane worship. He warned them that he would take to himself servants more faithful than they, and, for their crime, punished them by driving them forth from their country. They are now spread all over the world; they wander in all parts; they cannot enjoy the air they breathed at their birth; they have neither man nor God for their king. As he threatened them, so he has done. He has taken, in all nations and countries of the earth, people more faithful than they. Through his prophets he had declared that these should have greater favors, and that a Messiah should come, to publish a new law among them. This Messiah was Jesus, who is also God. For God may be derived from God, as the light of a candle may be derived from the light of another candle. God and his Son are the self-same God—a light is the same light as that from which it was taken.

The Scriptures make known two comings of the Son of God; the first in humility, the second at the day of judgment, in power. The Jews might have known all this from the prophets, but their sins have so blinded them that they did not recognize him at his first coming, and are still vainly expecting him. They believed that all the miracles wrought by him were the work of magic. The doctors of the law and the chief priests were envious of him; they denounced him to Pilate. He was crucified, died, was buried, and after three days rose again. For forty days he remained among his disciples. Then he was environed in a cloud, and rose up to heaven—a truth far more certain than any human testimonies touching the ascension of Romulus or of any other Roman prince mounting up to the same place.

Tertullian then describes the origin and nature of devils, who, under Satan, their prince, produce diseases, irregularities of the air, plagues, and the blighting of the blossoms of the earth, who seduce men to offer sacrifices, that they may have the blood of the victims, which is their food. They are as nimble as the birds, and hence know every thing that is passing upon earth; they live in the air, and hence can spy what is going on in heaven; for this reason they can impose on men reigned prophecies, and deliver oracles. Thus they announced in Rome that a victory would be obtained over King Perseus, when in truth they knew that the battle was already won. They falsely cure diseases; for, taking possession of the body of a man, they produce in him a distemper, and then ordaining some remedy to be used, they cease to afflict him, and men think that a cure has taken place.

Though Christians deny that the emperor is a god, they nevertheless pray for his prosperity, because the general dissolution that threatens the universe, the conflagration of the world, is retarded so long as the glorious majesty of the triumphant Roman Empire shall last. They desire not to be present at the subversion of all Nature. They acknowledge only one republic, but it is the whole world; they constitute one body, worship one God, and all look forward to eternal happiness. Not only do they pray for the emperor and the magistrates, but also for peace. They read the Scriptures to nourish their faith, lift up their hope, and strengthen the confidence they have in God. They assemble to exhort one another; they remove sinners from their societies; they have bishops who preside over them, approved by the suffrages of those whom they are to conduct. At the end of each month every one contributes if he will, but no one is constrained to give; the money gathered in this manner is the pledge of piety; it is not consumed in eating and drinking, but in feeding the poor, and burying them, in comforting children that are destitute of parents and goods, in helping old men who have spent the best of their days in the service of the faithful, in assisting those who have lost by shipwreck what they had, and those who are condemned to the mines, or have been banished to islands, or shut up in prisons, because they professed the religion of the true God. There is but one thing that Christians have not in common, and that one thing is their wives. They do not feast as if they should die to-morrow, nor build as if they should never die. The objects of their life are innocence, justice, patience, temperance, chastity.

To this noble exposition of Christian belief and life in his day, Tertullian does not hesitate to add an ominous warning to the magistrates he is addressing—ominous, for it was a forecast of a great event soon to come to pass: "Our origin is but recent, yet already we fill all that your power acknowledges—cities, fortresses, islands, provinces, the assemblies of the people, the wards of Rome, the palace, the senate, the public places, and especially the armies. We have left you nothing but your temples. Reflect what wars we are able to undertake! With what promptitude might we not arm ourselves were we not restrained by our religion, which teaches us that it is better to be killed than to kill!"

Before he closes his defense, Tertullian renews an assertion which, carried into practice, as it subsequently was, affected the intellectual development of all Europe. He declares that the Holy Scriptures are a treasure from which all the true wisdom in the world has been drawn; that every philosopher and every poet is indebted to them. He labors to show that they are the standard and measure of all truth, and that whatever is inconsistent with them must necessarily be false.

From Tertullian's able work we see what Christianity was while it was suffering persecution and struggling for existence. We have now to see what it became when in possession of imperial power. Great is the difference between Christianity under Severus and Christianity after Constantine. Many of the doctrines which at the latter period were preeminent, in the former were unknown.

PAGANIZATION OF CHRISTIANITY. Two causes led to the amalgamation of Christianity with paganism: 1. The political necessities of the new dynasty; 2. The policy adopted by the new religion to insure its spread.

1. Though the Christian party had proved itself sufficiently strong to give a master to the empire, it was never sufficiently strong to destroy its antagonist, paganism. The issue of the struggle between them was an amalgamation of the principles of both. In this, Christianity differed from Mohammedanism, which absolutely annihilated its antagonist, and spread its own doctrines without adulteration.

Constantine continually showed by his acts that he felt he must be the impartial sovereign of all his people, not merely the representative of a successful faction. Hence, if he built Christian churches, he also restored pagan temples; if he listened to the clergy, he also consulted the haruspices; if he summoned the Council of Nicea, he also honored the statue of Fortune; if he accepted the rite of baptism, he also struck a medal bearing his title of "God." His statue, on the top of the great porphyry pillar at Constantinople, consisted of an ancient image of Apollo, whose features were replaced by those of the emperor, and its head surrounded by the nails feigned to have been used at the crucifixion of Christ, arranged so as to form a crown of glory.

Feeling that there must be concessions to the defeated pagan party, in accordance with its ideas, he looked with favor on the idolatrous movements of his court. In fact, the leaders of these movements were persons of his own family.

CHRISTIANITY UNDER CONSTANTINE. 2. To the emperor—a mere worldling—a man without any religious convictions, doubtless it appeared best for himself, best for the empire, and best for the contending parties, Christian and pagan, to promote their union or amalgamation as much as possible. Even sincere Christians do not seem to have been averse to this; perhaps they believed that the new doctrines would diffuse most thoroughly by incorporating in themselves ideas borrowed from the old, that Truth would assert her self in the end, and the impurity be cast off. In accomplishing this amalgamation, Helena, the empress-mother, aided by the court ladies, led the way. For her gratification there were discovered, in a cavern at Jerusalem, wherein they had lain buried for more than three centuries, the Savior's cross, and those of the two thieves, the inscription, and the nails that had been used. They were identified by miracle. A true relic-worship set in. The superstition of the old Greek times reappeared; the times when the tools with which the Trojan horse was made might still be seen at Metapontum, the sceptre of Pelops at Chaeroneia, the spear of Achilles at Phaselis, the sword of Memnon at Nicomedia, when the Tegeates could show the hide of the Calydonian boar and very many cities boasted their possession of the true palladium of Troy; when there were statues of Minerva that could brandish spears, paintings that could blush, images that could sweat, and endless shrines and sanctuaries at which miracle-cures could be performed.

As years passed on, the faith described by Tertullian was transmuted into one more fashionable and more debased. It was incorporated with the old Greek mythology. Olympus was restored, but the divinities passed under other names. The more powerful provinces insisted on the adoption of their time-honored conceptions. Views of the Trinity, in accordance with Egyptian traditions, were established. Not only was the adoration of Isis under a new name restored, but even her image, standing on the crescent moon, reappeared. The well-known effigy of that goddess, with the infant Horus in her arms, has descended to our days in the beautiful, artistic creations of the Madonna and Child. Such restorations of old conceptions under novel forms were everywhere received with delight. When it was announced to the Ephesians that the Council of that place, headed by Cyril, had decreed that the Virgin should be called "the Mother of God," with tears of joy they embraced the knees of their bishop; it was the old instinct peeping out; their ancestors would have done the same for Diana.

This attempt to conciliate worldly converts, by adopting their ideas and practices, did not pass without remonstrance from those whose intelligence discerned the motive. "You have," says Faustus to Augustine, "substituted your agapae for the sacrifices of the pagans; for their idols your martyrs, whom you serve with the very same honors. You appease the shades of the dead with wine and feasts; you celebrate the solemn festivities of the Gentiles, their calends, and their solstices; and, as to their manners, those you have retained without any alteration. Nothing distinguishes you from the pagans, except that you hold your assemblies apart from them." Pagan observances were everywhere introduced. At weddings it was the custom to sing hymns to Venus.

INTRODUCTION OF ROMAN RITES. Let us pause here a moment, and see, in anticipation, to what a depth of intellectual degradation this policy of paganization eventually led. Heathen rites were adopted, a pompous and splendid ritual, gorgeous robes, mitres, tiaras, wax-tapers, processional services, lustrations, gold and silver vases, were introduced. The Roman lituus, the chief ensign of the augurs, became the crozier. Churches were built over the tombs of martyrs, and consecrated with rites borrowed from the ancient laws of the Roman pontiffs. Festivals and commemorations of martyrs multiplied with the numberless fictitious discoveries of their remains. Fasting became the grand means of repelling the devil and appeasing God; celibacy the greatest of the virtues. Pilgrimages were made to Palestine and the tombs of the martyrs. Quantities of dust and earth were brought from the Holy Land and sold at enormous prices, as antidotes against devils. The virtues of consecrated water were upheld. Images and relics were introduced into the churches, and worshiped after the fashion of the heathen gods. It was given out that prodigies and miracles were to be seen in certain places, as in the heathen times. The happy souls of departed Christians were invoked; it was believed that they were wandering about the world, or haunting their graves. There was a multiplication of temples, altars, and penitential garments. The festival of the purification of the Virgin was invented to remove the uneasiness of heathen converts on account of the loss of their Lupercalia, or feasts of Pan. The worship of images, of fragments of the cross, or bones, nails, and other relics, a true fetich worship, was cultivated. Two arguments were relied on for the authenticity of these objects—the authority of the Church, and the working of miracles. Even the worn-out clothing of the saints and the earth of their graves were venerated. From Palestine were brought what were affirmed to be the skeletons of St. Mark and St. James, and other ancient worthies. The apotheosis of the old Roman times was replaced by canonization; tutelary saints succeed to local mythological divinities. Then came the mystery of transubstantiation, or the conversion of bread and wine by the priest into the flesh and blood of Christ. As centuries passed, the paganization became more and more complete. Festivals sacred to the memory of the lance with which the Savior's side was pierced, the nails that fastened him to the cross, and the crown of thorns, were instituted. Though there were several abbeys that possessed this last peerless relic, no one dared to say that it was impossible they could all be authentic.

We may read with advantage the remarks made by Bishop Newton on this paganization of Christianity. He asks: "Is not the worship of saints and angels now in all respects the same that the worship of demons was in former times? The name only is different, the thing is identically the same,... the deified men of the Christians are substituted for the deified men of the heathens. The promoters of this worship were sensible that it was the same, and that the one succeeded to the other; and, as the worship is the same, so likewise it is performed with the same ceremonies. The burning of incense or perfumes on several altars at one and the same time; the sprinkling of holy water, or a mixture of salt and common water, at going into and coming out of places of public worship; the lighting up of a great number of lamps and wax-candles in broad daylight before altars and statues of these deities; the hanging up of votive offerings and rich presents as attestations of so many miraculous cures and deliverances from diseases and dangers; the canonization or deification of deceased worthies; the assigning of distinct provinces or prefectures to departed heroes and saints; the worshiping and adoring of the dead in their sepulchres, shrines, and relics; the consecrating and bowing down to images; the attributing of miraculous powers and virtues to idols; the setting up of little oratories, altars, and statues in the streets and highways, and on the tops of mountains; the carrying of images and relics in pompous procession, with numerous lights and with music and singing; flagellations at solemn seasons under the notion of penance; a great variety of religious orders and fraternities of priests; the shaving of priests, or the tonsure as it is called, on the crown of their heads; the imposing of celibacy and vows of chastity on the religious of both sexes—all these and many more rites and ceremonies are equally parts of pagan and popish superstition. Nay, the very same temples, the very same images, which were once consecrated to Jupiter and the other demons, are now consecrated to the Virgin Mary and the other saints. The very same rites and inscriptions are ascribed to both, the very same prodigies and miracles are related of these as of those. In short, almost the whole of paganism is converted and applied to popery; the one is manifestly formed upon the same plan and principles as the other; so that there is not only a conformity, but even a uniformity, in the worship of ancient and modern, of heathen and Christian Rome."

DEBASEMENT OF CHRISTIANITY. Thus far Bishop Newton; but to return to the times of Constantine: though these concessions to old and popular ideas were permitted and even encouraged, the dominant religious party never for a moment hesitated to enforce its decisions by the aid of the civil power—an aid which was freely given. Constantine thus carried into effect the acts of the Council of Nicea. In the affair of Arius, he even ordered that whoever should find a book of that heretic, and not burn it, should be put to death. In like manner Nestor was by Theodosius the Younger banished to an Egyptian oasis.

The pagan party included many of the old aristocratic families of the empire; it counted among its adherents all the disciples of the old philosophical schools. It looked down on its antagonist with contempt. It asserted that knowledge is to be obtained only by the laborious exercise of human observation and human reason.

The Christian party asserted that all knowledge is to be found in the Scriptures and in the traditions of the Church; that, in the written revelation, God had not only given a criterion of truth, but had furnished us all that he intended us to know. The Scriptures, therefore, contain the sum, the end of all knowledge. The clergy, with the emperor at their back, would endure no intellectual competition.

Thus came into prominence what were termed sacred and profane knowledge; thus came into presence of each other two opposing parties, one relying on human reason as its guide, the other on revelation. Paganism leaned for support on the learning of its philosophers, Christianity on the inspiration of its Fathers.

The Church thus set herself forth as the depository and arbiter of knowledge; she was ever ready to resort to the civil power to compel obedience to her decisions. She thus took a course which determined her whole future career: she became a stumbling-block in the intellectual advancement of Europe for more than a thousand years.

The reign of Constantine marks the epoch of the transformation of Christianity from a religion into a political system; and though, in one sense, that system was degraded into an idolatry, in another it had risen into a development of the old Greek mythology. The maxim holds good in the social as well as in the mechanical world, that, when two bodies strike, the form of both is changed. Paganism was modified by Christianity; Christianity by Paganism.

THE TRINITARIAN DISPUTE. In the Trinitarian controversy, which first broke out in Egypt—Egypt, the land of Trinities—the chief point in discussion was to define the position of "the Son." There lived in Alexandria a presbyter of the name of Arius, a disappointed candidate for the office of bishop. He took the ground that there was a time when, from the very nature of sonship, the Son did not exist, and a time at which he commenced to be, asserting that it is the necessary condition of the filial relation that a father must be older than his son. But this assertion evidently denied the coeternity of the three persons of the Trinity; it suggested a subordination or inequality among them, and indeed implied a time when the Trinity did not exist. Hereupon, the bishop, who had been the successful competitor against Arius, displayed his rhetorical powers in public debates on the question, and, the strife spreading, the Jews and pagans, who formed a very large portion of the population of Alexandria, amused themselves with theatrical representations of the contest on the stage—the point of their burlesques being the equality of age of the Father and his Son.

Such was the violence the controversy at length assumed, that the matter had to be referred to the emperor. At first he looked upon the dispute as altogether frivolous, and perhaps in truth inclined to the assertion of Arius, that in the very nature of the thing a father must be older than his son. So great, however, was the pressure laid upon him, that he was eventually compelled to summon the Council of Nicea, which, to dispose of the conflict, set forth a formulary or creed, and attached to it this anathema: "The Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church anathematizes those who say that there was a time when the Son of God was not, and that, before he was begotten, he was not, and that he was made out of nothing, or out of another substance or essence, and is created, or changeable, or alterable." Constantine at once enforced the decision of the council by the civil power.

A few years subsequently the Emperor Theodosius prohibited sacrifices, made the inspection of the entrails of animals a capital offense, and forbade any one entering a temple. He instituted Inquisitors of Faith, and ordained that all who did not accord with the belief of Damasus, the Bishop of Rome, and Peter, the Bishop of Alexandria, should be driven into exile, and deprived of civil rights. Those who presumed to celebrate Easter on the same day as the Jews, he condemned to death. The Greek language was now ceasing to be known in the West, and true learning was becoming extinct.

At this time the bishopric of Alexandria was held by one Theophilus. An ancient temple of Osiris having been given to the Christians of the city for the site of a church, it happened that, in digging the foundation for the new edifice, the obscene symbols of the former worship chanced to be found. These, with more zeal than modesty, Theophilus exhibited in the market-place to public derision. With less forbearance than the Christian party showed when it was insulted in the theatre during the Trinitarian dispute, the pagans resorted to violence, and a riot ensued. They held the Serapion as their headquarters. Such were the disorder and bloodshed that the emperor had to interfere. He dispatched a rescript to Alexandria, enjoining the bishop, Theophilus, to destroy the Serapion; and the great library, which had been collected by the Ptolemies, and had escaped the fire of Julius Caesar, was by that fanatic dispersed.

THE MURDER OF HYPATIA. The bishopric thus held by Theophilus was in due time occupied by his nephew St. Cyril, who had commended himself to the approval of the Alexandrian congregations as a successful and fashionable preacher. It was he who had so much to do with the introduction of the worship of the Virgin Mary. His hold upon the audiences of the giddy city was, however, much weakened by Hypatia, the daughter of Theon, the mathematician, who not only distinguished herself by her expositions of the doctrines of Plato and Aristotle, but also by her comments on the writings of Apollonius and other geometers. Each day before her academy stood a long train of chariots; her lecture-room was crowded with the wealth and fashion of Alexandria. They came to listen to her discourses on those questions which man in all ages has asked, but which never yet have been answered: "What am I? Where am I? What can I know?"

Hypatia and Cyril! Philosophy and bigotry. They cannot exist together. So Cyril felt, and on that feeling he acted. As Hypatia repaired to her academy, she was assaulted by Cyril's mob—a mob of many monks. Stripped naked in the street, she was dragged into a church, and there killed by the club of Peter the Reader. The corpse was cut to pieces, the flesh was scraped from the bones with shells, and the remnants cast into a fire. For this frightful crime Cyril was never called to account. It seemed to be admitted that the end sanctified the means.

So ended Greek philosophy in Alexandria, so came to an untimely close the learning that the Ptolemies had done so much to promote. The "Daughter Library," that of the Serapion, had been dispersed. The fate of Hypatia was a warning to all who would cultivate profane knowledge. Henceforth there was to be no freedom for human thought. Every one must think as the ecclesiastical authority ordered him, A.D. 414. In Athens itself philosophy awaited its doom. Justinian at length prohibited its teaching, and caused all its schools in that city to be closed.

PELAGIUS. While these events were transpiring in the Eastern provinces of the Roman Empire, the spirit that had produced them was displaying itself in the West. A British monk, who had assumed the name of Pelagius, passed through Western Europe and Northern Africa, teaching that death was not introduced into the world by the sin of Adam; that on the contrary he was necessarily and by nature mortal, and had he not sinned he would nevertheless have died; that the consequences of his sins were confined to himself, and did not affect his posterity. From these premises Pelagius drew certain important theological conclusions.

At Rome, Pelagius had been received with favor; at Carthage, at the instigation of St. Augustine, he was denounced. By a synod, held at Diospolis, he was acquitted of heresy, but, on referring the matter to the Bishop of Rome, Innocent I., he was, on the contrary, condemned. It happened that at this moment Innocent died, and his successor, Zosimus, annulled his judgment and declared the opinions of Pelagius to be orthodox. These contradictory decisions are still often referred to by the opponents of papal infallibility. Things were in this state of confusion, when the wily African bishops, through the influence of Count Valerius, procured from the emperor an edict denouncing Pelagins as a heretic; he and his accomplices were condemned to exile and the forfeiture of their goods. To affirm that death was in the world before the fall of Adam, was a state crime.

CONDEMNATION OF PELAGIUS. It is very instructive to consider the principles on which this strange decision was founded. Since the question was purely philosophical, one might suppose that it would have been discussed on natural principles; instead of that, theological considerations alone were adduced. The attentive reader will have remarked, in Tertullian's statement of the principles of Christianity, a complete absence of the doctrines of original sin, total depravity, predestination, grace, and atonement. The intention of Christianity, as set forth by him, has nothing in common with the plan of salvation upheld two centuries subsequently. It is to St. Augustine, a Carthaginian, that we are indebted for the precision of our views on these important points.

In deciding whether death had been in the world before the fall of Adam, or whether it was the penalty inflicted on the world for his sin, the course taken was to ascertain whether the views of Pelagius were accordant or discordant not with Nature but with the theological doctrines of St. Augustine. And the result has been such as might be expected. The doctrine declared to be orthodox by ecclesiastical authority is overthrown by the unquestionable discoveries of modern science. Long before a human being had appeared upon earth, millions of individuals—nay, more, thousands of species and even genera—had died; those which remain with us are an insignificant fraction of the vast hosts that have passed away.

A consequence of great importance issued from the decision of the Pelagian controversy. The book of Genesis had been made the basis of Christianity. If, in a theological point of view, to its account of the sin in the garden of Eden, and the transgression and punishment of Adam, so much weight had been attached, it also in a philosophical point of view became the grand authority of Patristic science. Astronomy, geology, geography, anthropology, chronology, and indeed all the various departments of human knowledge, were made to conform to it.

ST. AUGUSTINE. As the doctrines of St. Augustine have had the effect of thus placing theology in antagonism with science, it may be interesting to examine briefly some of the more purely philosophical views of that great man. For this purpose, we may appropriately select portions of his study of the first chapter of Genesis, as contained in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth books of his "Confessions."

These consist of philosophical discussions, largely interspersed with rhapsodies. He prays that God will give him to understand the Scriptures, and will open their meaning to him; he declares that in them there is nothing superfluous, but that the words have a manifold meaning.

The face of creation testifies that there has been a Creator; but at once arises the question, "How and when did he make heaven and earth? They could not have been made IN heaven and earth, the world could not have been made IN the world, nor could they have been made when there was nothing to make them of." The solution of this fundamental inquiry St. Augustine finds in saying, "Thou spakest, and they were made."

But the difficulty does not end here. St. Augustine goes on to remark that the syllables thus uttered by God came forth in succession, and there must have been some created thing to express the words. This created thing must, therefore, have existed before heaven and earth, and yet there could have been no corporeal thing before heaven and earth. It must have been a creature, because the words passed away and came to an end but we know that "the word of the Lord endureth forever."

Moreover, it is plain that the words thus spoken could not have been spoken successively, but simultaneously, else there would have been time and change—succession in its nature implying time; whereas there was then nothing but eternity and immortality. God knows and says eternally what takes place in time.

CRITICISM OF ST. AUGUSTINE. St. Augustine then defines, not without much mysticism, what is meant by the opening words of Genesis: "In the beginning." He is guided to his conclusion by another scriptural passage: "How wonderful are thy works, O Lord! in wisdom hast thou made them all." This "wisdom" is "the beginning," and in that beginning the Lord created the heaven and the earth.

"But," he adds, "some one may ask, 'What was God doing before he made the heaven and the earth? for, if at any particular moment he began to employ himself, that means time, not eternity. In eternity nothing transpires—the whole is present.'" In answering this question, he cannot forbear one of those touches of rhetoric for which he was so celebrated: "I will not answer this question by saying that he was preparing hell for priers into his mysteries. I say that, before God made heaven and earth, he did not make any thing, for no creature could be made before any creature was made. Time itself is a creature, and hence it could not possibly exist before creation.

"What, then, is time? The past is not, the future is not, the present—who can tell what it is, unless it be that which has no duration between two nonentities? There is no such thing as 'a long time,' or 'a short time,' for there are no such things as the past and the future. They have no existence, except in the soul."

The style in which St. Augustine conveyed his ideas is that of a rhapsodical conversation with God. His works are an incoherent dream. That the reader may appreciate this remark, I might copy almost at random any of his paragraphs. The following is from the twelfth book:

"This then, is what I conceive, O my God, when I hear thy Scripture saying, In the beginning God made heaven and earth: and the earth was invisible and without form, and darkness was upon the deep, and not mentioning what day thou createdst them; this is what I conceive, that because of the heaven of heavens—that intellectual heaven, whose intelligences know all at once, not in part, not darkly, not through a glass, but as a whole, in manifestation, face to face; not this thing now, and that thing anon; but (as I said) know all at once, without any succession of times; and because of the earth, invisible and without form, without any succession of times, which succession presents 'this thing now, that thing anon;' because, where there is no form, there is no distinction of things; it is, then, on account of these two, a primitive formed, and a primitive formless; the one, heaven, but the heaven of heavens; the other, earth, but the earth movable and without form; because of these two do I conceive, did thy Scripture say without mention of days, In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. For, forthwith it subjoined what earth it spake of; and also in that the firmament is recorded to be created the second day, and called heaven, it conveys to us of which heaven he before spake, without mention of days.

"Wondrous depth of thy words! whose surface behold! is before us, inviting to little ones; yet are they a wondrous depth, O my God, a wondrous depth! It is awful to look therein; an awfulness of honor, and a trembling of love. The enemies thereof I hate vehemently; O that thou wouldst slay them with thy two-edged sword, that they might no longer be enemies to it: for so do I love to have them slain unto themselves, that they may live unto thee."

As an example of the hermeneutical manner in which St. Augustine unfolded the concealed facts of the Scriptures, I may cite the following from the thirteenth book of the "Confessions;" his object is to show that the doctrine of the Trinity is contained in the Mosaic narrative of the creation:

"Lo, now the Trinity appears unto me in a glass darkly, which is thou my God, because thou, O Father, in him who is the beginning of our wisdom, which is thy wisdom, born of thyself, equal unto thee and coeternal, that is, in thy Son, createdst heaven and earth. Much now have we said of the heaven of heavens, and of the earth invisible and without form, and of the darksome deep, in reference to the wandering instability of its spiritual deformity, unless it had been converted unto him, from whom it had its then degree of life, and by his enlightening became a beauteous life, and the heaven of that heaven, which was afterward set between water and water. And under the name of God, I now held the Father, who made these things; and under the name of the beginning, the Son, in whom he made these things; and believing, as I did, my God as the Trinity, I searched further in his holy words, and lo! thy Spirit moved upon the waters. Behold the Trinity, my God!—Father, and Son, and Holy Ghost Creator of all creation."

That I might convey to my reader a just impression of the character of St. Augustine's philosophical writings, I have, in the two quotations here given, substituted for my own translation that of the Rev. Dr. Pusey, as contained in Vol. I. of the "Library of Fathers of the Holy Catholic Church," published at Oxford, 1840.

Considering the eminent authority which has been attributed to the writings of St. Augustine by the religious world for nearly fifteen centuries, it is proper to speak of them with respect. And indeed it is not necessary to do otherwise. The paragraphs here quoted criticise themselves. No one did more than this Father to bring science and religion into antagonism; it was mainly he who diverted the Bible from its true office—a guide to purity of life—and placed it in the perilous position of being the arbiter of human knowledge, an audacious tyranny over the mind of man. The example once set, there was no want of followers; the works of the great Greek philosophers were stigmatized as profane; the transcendently glorious achievements of the Museum of Alexandria were hidden from sight by a cloud of ignorance, mysticism, and unintelligible jargon, out of which there too often flashed the destroying lightnings of ecclesiastical vengeance.

A divine revelation of science admits of no improvement, no change, no advance. It discourages as needless, and indeed as presumptuous, all new discovery, considering it as an unlawful prying into things which it was the intention of God to conceal.

What, then, is that sacred, that revealed science, declared by the Fathers to be the sum of all knowledge?

It likened all phenomena, natural and spiritual, to human acts. It saw in the Almighty, the Eternal, only a gigantic man.

THE PATRISTIC PHILOSOPHY. As to the earth, it affirmed that it is a flat surface, over which the sky is spread like a dome, or, as St. Augustine tells us, is stretched like a skin. In this the sun and moon and stars move, so that they may give light by day and by night to man. The earth was made of matter created by God out of nothing, and, with all the tribes of animals and plants inhabiting it, was finished in six days. Above the sky or firmament is heaven; in the dark and fiery space beneath the earth is hell. The earth is the central and most important body of the universe, all other things being intended for and subservient to it.

As to man, he was made out of the dust of the earth. At first he was alone, but subsequently woman was formed from one of his ribs. He is the greatest and choicest of the works of God. He was placed in a paradise near the banks of the Euphrates, and was very wise and very pure; but, having tasted of the forbidden fruit, and thereby broken the commandment given to him, he was condemned to labor and to death.

The descendants of the first man, undeterred by his punishment, pursued such a career of wickedness that it became necessary to destroy them. A deluge, therefore, flooded the face of the earth, and rose over the tops of the mountains. Having accomplished its purpose, the water was dried up by a wind.

From this catastrophe Noah and his three sons, with their wives, were saved in an ark. Of these sons, Shem remained in Asia and repeopled it. Ham peopled Africa; Japhet, Europe. As the Fathers were not acquainted with the existence of America, they did not provide an ancestor for its people.

Let us listen to what some of these authorities say in support of their assertions. Thus Lactantius, referring to the heretical doctrine of the globular form of the earth, remarks: "Is it possible that men can be so absurd as to believe that the crops and the trees on the other side of the earth hang downward, and that men have their feet higher than their heads? If you ask them how they defend these monstrosities, how things do not fall away from the earth on that side, they reply that the nature of things is such that heavy bodies tend toward the centre, like the spokes of a wheel, while light bodies, as clouds, smoke, fire, tend from the centre to the heavens on all sides. Now, I am really at a loss what to say of those who, when they have once gone wrong, steadily persevere in their folly, and defend one absurd opinion by another." On the question of the antipodes, St. Augustine asserts that "it is impossible there should be inhabitants on the opposite side of the earth, since no such race is recorded by Scripture among the descendants of Adam." Perhaps, however, the most unanswerable argument against the sphericity of the earth was this, that "in the day of judgment, men on the other side of a globe could not see the Lord descending through the air."

It is unnecessary for me to say any thing respecting the introduction of death into the world, the continual interventions of spiritual agencies in the course of events, the offices of angels and devils, the expected conflagration of the earth, the tower of Babel, the confusion of tongues, the dispersion of mankind, the interpretation of natural phenomena, as eclipses, the rainbow, etc. Above all, I abstain from commenting on the Patristic conceptions of the Almighty; they are too anthropomorphic, and wanting in sublimity.

Perhaps, however, I may quote from Cosmas Indicopleustes the views that were entertained in the sixth century. He wrote a work entitled "Christian Topography," the chief intent of which was to confute the heretical opinion of the globular form of the earth, and the pagan assertion that there is a temperate zone on the southern side of the torrid. He affirms that, according to the true orthodox system of geography, the earth is a quadrangular plane, extending four hundred days' journey east and west, and exactly half as much north and south; that it is inclosed by mountains, on which the sky rests; that one on the north side, huger than the others, by intercepting the rays of the sun, produces night; and that the plane of the earth is not set exactly horizontally, but with a little inclination from the north: hence the Euphrates, Tigris, and other rivers, running southward, are rapid; but the Nile, having to run up-hill, has necessarily a very slow current.

The Venerable Bede, writing in the seventh century, tells us that "the creation was accomplished in six days, and that the earth is its centre and its primary object. The heaven is of a fiery and subtile nature, round, and equidistant in every part, as a canopy from the centre of the earth. It turns round every day with ineffable rapidity, only moderated by the resistance of the seven planets, three above the sun—Saturn, Jupiter, Mars—then the sun; three below—Venus, Mercury, the moon. The stars go round in their fixed courses, the northern perform the shortest circle. The highest heaven has its proper limit; it contains the angelic virtues who descend upon earth, assume ethereal bodies, perform human functions, and return. The heaven is tempered with glacial waters, lest it should be set on fire. The inferior heaven is called the firmament, because it separates the superincumbent waters from the waters below. The firmamental waters are lower than the spiritual heaven, higher than all corporeal beings, reserved, some say, for a second deluge; others, more truly, to temper the fire of the fixed stars."

Was it for this preposterous scheme—this product of ignorance and audacity—that the works of the Greek philosophers were to be given up? It was none too soon that the great critics who appeared at the Reformation, by comparing the works of these writers with one another, brought them to their proper level, and taught us to look upon them all with contempt.

Of this presumptuous system, the strangest part was its logic, the nature of its proofs. It relied upon miracle-evidence. A fact was supposed to be demonstrated by an astounding illustration of something else! An Arabian writer, referring to this, says: "If a conjurer should say to me, 'Three are more than ten, and in proof of it I will change this stick into a serpent,' I might be surprised at his legerdemain, but I certainly should not admit his assertion." Yet, for more than a thousand years, such was the accepted logic, and all over Europe propositions equally absurd were accepted on equally ridiculous proof.

Since the party that had become dominant in the empire could not furnish works capable of intellectual competition with those of the great pagan authors, and since it was impossible for it to accept a position of inferiority, there arose a political necessity for the discouragement, and even persecution, of profane learning. The persecution of the Platonists under Valentinian was due to that necessity. They were accused of magic, and many of them were put to death. The profession of philosophy had become dangerous—it was a state crime. In its stead there arose a passion for the marvelous, a spirit of superstition. Egypt exchanged the great men, who had made her Museum immortal, for bands of solitary monks and sequestered virgins, with which she was overrun.



CHAPTER III.

CONFLICT RESPECTING THE DOCTRINE OF THE UNITY OF GOD.—THE FIRST OR SOUTHERN REFORMATION.

The Egyptians insist on the introduction of the worship of the Virgin Mary—They are resisted by Nestor, the Patriarch of Constantinople, but eventually, through their influence with the emperor, cause Nestor's exile and the dispersion of his followers.

Prelude to the Southern Reformation—The Persian attack; its moral effects.

The Arabian Reformation.—Mohammed is brought in contact with the Nestorians—He adopts and extends their principles, rejecting the worship of the Virgin, the doctrine of the Trinity, and every thing in opposition to the unity of God.— He extinguishes idolatry in Arabia, by force, and prepares to make war on the Roman Empire.—His successors conquer Syria, Egypt, Asia Minor, North Africa, Spain, and invade France.

As the result of this conflict, the doctrine of the unity of God was established in the greater part of the Roman Empire— The cultivation of science was restored, and Christendom lost many of her most illustrious capitals, as Alexandria, Carthage, and, above all, Jerusalem.

THE policy of the Byzantine court had given to primitive Christianity a paganized form, which it had spread over all the idolatrous populations constituting the empire. There had been an amalgamation of the two parties. Christianity had modified paganism, paganism had modified Christianity. The limits of this adulterated religion were the confines of the Roman Empire. With this great extension there had come to the Christian party political influence and wealth. No insignificant portion of the vast public revenues found their way into the treasuries of the Church. As under such circumstances must ever be the case, there were many competitors for the spoils—men who, under the mask of zeal for the predominant faith, sought only the enjoyment of its emoluments.

ECCLESIASTICAL DISPUTES. Under the early emperors, conquest had reached its culmination; the empire was completed; there remained no adequate objects for military life; the days of war-peculation, and the plundering of provinces, were over. For the ambitious, however, another path was open; other objects presented. A successful career in the Church led to results not unworthy of comparison with those that in former days had been attained by a successful career in the army.

The ecclesiastical, and indeed, it may be said, much of the political history of that time, turns on the struggles of the bishops of the three great metropolitan cities—Constantinople, Alexandria, Rome—for supremacy: Constantinople based her claims on the fact that she was the existing imperial city; Alexandria pointed to her commercial and literary position; Rome, to her souvenirs. But the Patriarch of Constantinople labored under the disadvantage that he was too closely under the eye, and, as he found to his cost, too often under the hand, of the emperor. Distance gave security to the episcopates of Alexandria and Rome.

ECCLESIASTICAL DISPUTES. Religious disputations in the East have generally turned on diversities of opinion respecting the nature and attributes of God; in the West, on the relations and life of man. This peculiarity has been strikingly manifested in the transformations that Christianity has undergone in Asia and Europe respectively. Accordingly, at the time of which we are speaking, all the Eastern provinces of the Roman Empire exhibited an intellectual anarchy. There were fierce quarrels respecting the Trinity, the essence of God, the position of the Son, the nature of the Holy Spirit, the influences of the Virgin Mary. The triumphant clamor first of one then of another sect was confirmed, sometimes by miracle-proof, sometimes by bloodshed. No attempt was ever made to submit the rival opinions to logical examination. All parties, however, agreed in this, that the imposture of the old classical pagan forms of faith was demonstrated by the facility with which they had been overthrown. The triumphant ecclesiastics proclaimed that the images of the gods had failed to defend themselves when the time of trial came.

Polytheistic ideas have always been held in repute by the southern European races, the Semitic have maintained the unity of God. Perhaps this is due to the fact, as a recent author has suggested, that a diversified landscape of mountains and valleys, islands, and rivers, and gulfs, predisposes man to a belief in a multitude of divinities. A vast sandy desert, the illimitable ocean, impresses him with an idea of the oneness of God.

Political reasons had led the emperors to look with favor on the admixture of Christianity and paganism, and doubtless by this means the bitterness of the rivalry between those antagonists was somewhat abated. The heaven of the popular, the fashionable Christianity was the old Olympus, from which the venerable Greek divinities had been removed. There, on a great white throne, sat God the Father, on his right the Son, and then the blessed Virgin, clad in a golden robe, and "covered with various female adornments;" on the left sat God the Holy Ghost. Surrounding these thrones were hosts of angels with their harps. The vast expanse beyond was filled with tables, seated at which the happy spirits of the just enjoyed a perpetual banquet.

If, satisfied with this picture of happiness, illiterate persons never inquired how the details of such a heaven were carried out, or how much pleasure there could be in the ennui of such an eternally unchanging, unmoving scene, it was not so with the intelligent. As we are soon to see, there were among the higher ecclesiastics those who rejected with sentiments of horror these carnal, these materialistic conceptions, and raised their protesting voices in vindication of the attributes of the Omnipresent, the Almighty God.

EGYPTIAN DOCTRINES. In the paganization of religion, now in all directions taking place, it became the interest of every bishop to procure an adoption of the ideas which, time out of mind, had been current in the community under his charge. The Egyptians had already thus forced on the Church their peculiar Trinitarian views; and now they were resolved that, under the form of the adoration of the Virgin Mary, the worship of Isis should be restored.

THE NESTORIANS. It so happened that Nestor, the Bishop of Antioch, who entertained the philosophical views of Theodore of Mopsuestia, had been called by the Emperor Theodosius the Younger to the Episcopate of Constantinople (A.D. 427). Nestor rejected the base popular anthropomorphism, looking upon it as little better than blasphemous, and pictured to himself an awful eternal Divinity, who pervaded the universe, and had none of the aspects or attributes of man. Nestor was deeply imbued with the doctrines of Aristotle, and attempted to coordinate them with what he considered to be orthodox Christian tenets. Between him and Cyril, the Bishop or Patriarch of Alexandria, a quarrel accordingly arose. Cyril represented the paganizing, Nestor the philosophizing party of the Church. This was that Cyril who had murdered Hypatia. Cyril was determined that the worship of the Virgin as the Mother of God should be recognized, Nestor was determined that it should not. In a sermon delivered in the metropolitan church at Constantinople, he vindicated the attributes of the Eternal, the Almighty God. "And can this God have a mother?" he exclaimed. In other sermons and writings, he set forth with more precision his ideas that the Virgin should be considered not as the Mother of God, but as the mother of the human portion of Christ, that portion being as essentially distinct from the divine as is a temple from its contained deity.

PERSECUTION AND DEATH OF NESTOR. Instigated by the monks of Alexandria, the monks of Constantinople took up arms in behalf of "the Mother of God." The quarrel rose to such a pitch that the emperor was constrained to summon a council to meet at Ephesus. In the mean time Cyril had given a bribe of many pounds of gold to the chief eunuch of the imperial court, and had thereby obtained the influence of the emperor's sister. "The holy virgin of the court of heaven thus found an ally of her own sex in the holy virgin of the emperor's court." Cyril hastened to the council, attended by a mob of men and women of the baser sort. He at once assumed the presidency, and in the midst of a tumult had the emperor's rescript read before the Syrian bishops could arrive. A single day served to complete his triumph. All offers of accommodation on the part of Nestor were refused, his explanations were not read, he was condemned unheard. On the arrival of the Syrian ecclesiastics, a meeting of protest was held by them. A riot, with much bloodshed, ensued in the cathedral of St. John. Nestor was abandoned by the court, and eventually exiled to an Egyptian oasis. His persecutors tormented him as long as he lived, by every means in their power, and at his death gave out that "his blasphemous tongue had been devoured by worms, and that from the heats of an Egyptian desert he had escaped only into the hotter torments of hell!"

The overthrow and punishment of Nestor, however, by no means destroyed his opinions. He and his followers, insisting on the plain inference of the last verse of the first chapter of St. Matthew, together with the fifty-fifth and fifty-sixth verses of the thirteenth of the same gospel, could never be brought to an acknowledgment of the perpetual virginity of the new queen of heaven. Their philosophical tendencies were soon indicated by their actions. While their leader was tormented in an African oasis, many of them emigrated to the Euphrates, and established the Chaldean Church. Under their auspices the college of Edessa was founded. From the college of Nisibis issued those doctors who spread Nestor's tenets through Syria, Arabia, India, Tartary, China, Egypt. The Nestorians, of course, adopted the philosophy of Aristotle, and translated the works of that great writer into Syriac and Persian. They also made similar translations of later works, such as those of Pliny. In connection with the Jews they founded the medical college of Djondesabour. Their missionaries disseminated the Nestorian form of Christianity to such an extent over Asia, that its worshipers eventually outnumbered all the European Christians of the Greek and Roman Churches combined. It may be particularly remarked that in Arabia they had a bishop.

THE PERSIAN CAMPAIGN. The dissensions between Constantinople and Alexandria had thus filled all Western Asia with sectaries, ferocious in their contests with each other, and many of them burning with hatred against the imperial power for the persecutions it had inflicted on them. A religious revolution, the consequences of which are felt in our own times, was the result. It affected the whole world.

We shall gain a clear view of this great event, if we consider separately the two acts into which it may be decomposed: 1. The temporary overthrow of Asiatic Christianity by the Persians; 2. The decisive and final reformation under the Arabians.

1. It happened (A.D. 590) that, by one of those revolutions so frequent in Oriental courts, Chosroes, the lawful heir to the Persian throne, was compelled to seek refuge in the Byzantine Empire, and implore the aid of the Emperor Maurice. That aid was cheerfully given. A brief and successful campaign restored Chosroes to the throne of his ancestors.

But the glories of this generous campaign could not preserve Maurice himself. A mutiny broke out in the Roman army, headed by Phocas, a centurion. The statues of the emperor were overthrown. The Patriarch of Constantinople, having declared that he had assured himself of the orthodoxy of Phocas, consecrated him emperor. The unfortunate Maurice was dragged from a sanctuary, in which he had sought refuge; his five sons were beheaded before his eyes, and then he was put to death. His empress was inveigled from the church of St. Sophia, tortured, and with her three young daughters beheaded. The adherents of the massacred family were pursued with ferocious vindictiveness; of some the eyes were blinded, of others the tongues were torn out, or the feet and hands cut off, some were whipped to death, others were burnt.

When the news reached Rome, Pope Gregory received it with exultation, praying that the hands of Phocas might be strengthened against all his enemies. As an equivalent for this subserviency, he was greeted with the title of "Universal Bishop." The cause of his action, as well as of that of the Patriarch of Constantinople, was doubtless the fact that Maurice was suspected of Magrian tendencies, into which he had been lured by the Persians. The mob of Constantinople had hooted after him in the streets, branding him as a Marcionite, a sect which believed in the Magian doctrine of two conflicting principles.

With very different sentiments Chosroes heard of the murder of his friend. Phocas had sent him the heads of Maurice and his sons. The Persian king turned from the ghastly spectacle with horror, and at once made ready to avenge the wrongs of his benefactor by war.

THE EXPEDITION OF HERACLIUS. The Exarch of Africa, Heraclius, one of the chief officers of the state, also received the shocking tidings with indignation. He was determined that the imperial purple should not be usurped by an obscure centurion of disgusting aspect. "The person of this Phocas was diminutive and deformed; the closeness of his shaggy eyebrows, his red hair, his beardless chin, were in keeping with his cheek, disfigured and discolored by a formidable scar. Ignorant of letters, of laws, and even of arms, he indulged in an ample privilege of lust and drunkenness." At first Heraclius refused tribute and obedience to him; then, admonished by age and infirmities, he committed the dangerous enterprise of resistance to his son of the same name. A prosperous voyage from Carthage soon brought the younger Heraclius in front of Constantinople. The inconstant clergy, senate, and people of the city joined him, the usurper was seized in his palace and beheaded.

INVASION OF CHOSROES. But the revolution that had taken place in Constantinople did not arrest the movements of the Persian king. His Magian priests had warned him to act independently of the Greeks, whose superstition, they declared, was devoid of all truth and justice. Chosroes, therefore, crossed the Euphrates; his army was received with transport by the Syrian sectaries, insurrections in his favor everywhere breaking out. In succession, Antioch, Caesarea, Damascus fell; Jerusalem itself was taken by storm; the sepulchre of Christ, the churches of Constantine and of Helena were given to the flames; the Savior's cross was sent as a trophy to Persia; the churches were rifled of their riches; the sacred relics, collected by superstition, were dispersed. Egypt was invaded, conquered, and annexed to the Persian Empire; the Patriarch of Alexandria escaped by flight to Cyprus; the African coast to Tripoli was seized. On the north, Asia Minor was subdued, and for ten years the Persian forces encamped on the shores of the Bosporus, in front of Constantinople.

In his extremity Heraclius begged for peace. "I will never give peace to the Emperor of Rome," replied the proud Persian, "till he has abjured his crucified God, and embraced the worship of the sun." After a long delay terms were, however, secured, and the Roman Empire was ransomed at the price of "a thousand talents of gold, a thousand talents of silver, a thousand silk robes, a thousand horses, and a thousand virgins."

But Heraclius submitted only for a moment. He found means not only to restore his affairs but to retaliate on the Persian Empire. The operations by which he achieved this result were worthy of the most brilliant days of Rome.

INVASION OF CHOSROES Though her military renown was thus recovered, though her territory was regained, there was something that the Roman Empire had irrecoverably lost. Religious faith could never be restored. In face of the world Magianism had insulted Christianity, by profaning her most sacred places—Bethlehem, Gethsemane, Calvary—by burning the sepulchre of Christ, by rifling and destroying the churches, by scattering to the winds priceless relics, by carrying off, with shouts of laughter, the cross.

Miracles had once abounded in Syria, in Egypt, in Asia Minor; there was not a church which had not its long catalogue of them. Very often they were displayed on unimportant occasions and in insignificant cases. In this supreme moment, when such aid was most urgently demanded, not a miracle was worked.

Amazement filled the Christian populations of the East when they witnessed these Persian sacrileges perpetrated with impunity. The heavens should have rolled asunder, the earth should have opened her abysses, the sword of the Almighty should have flashed in the sky, the fate of Sennacherib should have been repeated. But it was not so. In the land of miracles, amazement was followed by consternation—consternation died out in disbelief.

2. But, dreadful as it was, the Persian conquest was but a prelude to the great event, the story of which we have now to relate—the Southern revolt against Christianity. Its issue was the loss of nine-tenths of her geographical possessions—Asia, Africa, and part of Europe.

MOHAMMED. In the summer of 581 of the Christian era, there came to Bozrah, a town on the confines of Syria, south of Damascus, a caravan of camels. It was from Mecca, and was laden with the costly products of South Arabia—Arabia the Happy. The conductor of the caravan, one Abou Taleb, and his nephew, a lad of twelve years, were hospitably received and entertained at the Nestorian convent of the town.

The monks of this convent soon found that their young visitor, Halibi or Mohammed, was the nephew of the guardian of the Caaba, the sacred temple of the Arabs. One of them, by name Bahira, spared no pains to secure his conversion from the idolatry in which he had been brought up. He found the boy not only precociously intelligent, but eagerly desirous of information, especially on matters relating to religion.

In Mohammed's own country the chief object of Meccan worship was a black meteoric stone, kept in the Caaba, with three hundred and sixty subordinate idols, representing the days of the year, as the year was then counted.

At this time, as we have seen, the Christian Church, through the ambition and wickedness of its clergy, had been brought into a condition of anarchy. Councils had been held on various pretenses, while the real motives were concealed. Too often they were scenes of violence, bribery, corruption. In the West, such were the temptations of riches, luxury, and power, presented by the episcopates, that the election of a bishop was often disgraced by frightful murders. In the East, in consequence of the policy of the court of Constantinople, the Church had been torn in pieces by contentions and schisms. Among a countless host of disputants may be mentioned Arians, Basilidians, Carpocratians, Collyridians, Eutychians, Gnostics, Jacobites, Marcionites, Marionites, Nestorians, Sabellians, Valentinians. Of these, the Marionites regarded the Trinity as consisting of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Virgin Mary; the Collyridians worshiped the Virgin as a divinity, offering her sacrifices of cakes; the Nestorians, as we have seen, denied that God had "a mother." They prided themselves on being the inheritors, the possessors of the science of old Greece.

But, though they were irreconcilable in matters of faith, there was one point in which all these sects agreed—ferocious hatred and persecution of each other. Arabia, an unconquered land of liberty, stretching from the Indian Ocean to the Desert of Syria, gave them all, as the tide of fortune successively turned, a refuge. It had been so from the old times. Thither, after the Roman conquest of Palestine, vast numbers of Jews escaped; thither, immediately after his conversion, St. Paul tells the Galatians that he retired. The deserts were now filled with Christian anchorites, and among the chief tribes of the Arabs many proselytes had been made. Here and there churches had been built. The Christian princes of Abyssinia, who were Nestorians, held the southern province of Arabia—Yemen—in possession.

By the monk Bahira, in the convent at Bozrah, Mohammed was taught the tenets of the Nestorians; from them the young Arab learned the story of their persecutions. It was these interviews which engendered in him a hatred of the idolatrous practices of the Eastern Church, and indeed of all idolatry; that taught him, in his wonderful career, never to speak of Jesus as the Son of God, but always as "Jesus, the son of Mary." His untutored but active mind could not fail to be profoundly impressed not only with the religious but also with the philosophical ideas of his instructors, who gloried in being the living representatives of Aristotelian science. His subsequent career shows how completely their religious thoughts had taken possession of him, and repeated acts manifest his affectionate regard for them. His own life was devoted to the expansion and extension of their theological doctrine, and, that once effectually established, his successors energetically adopted and diffused their scientific, their Aristotelian opinions.

As Mohammed grew to manhood, he made other expeditions to Syria. Perhaps, we may suppose, that on these occasions the convent and its hospitable in mates were not forgotten. He had a mysterious reverence for that country. A wealthy Meccan widow Chadizah, had intrusted him with the care of her Syrian trade. She was charmed with his capacity and fidelity, and (since he is said to have been characterized by the possession of singular manly beauty and a most courteous demeanor) charmed with his person. The female heart in all ages and countries is the same. She caused a slave to intimate to him what was passing in her mind, and, for the remaining twenty-four years of her life, Mohammed was her faithful husband. In a land of polygamy, he never insulted her by the presence of a rival. Many years subsequently, in the height of his power, Ayesha, who was one of the most beautiful women in Arabia, said to him: "Was she not old? Did not God give you in me a better wife in her place?" "No, by God!" exclaimed Mohammed, and with a burst of honest gratitude, "there never can be a better. She believed in me when men despised me, she relieved me when I was poor and persecuted by the world."

His marriage with Chadizah placed him in circumstances of ease, and gave him an opportunity of indulging his inclination to religious meditation. It so happened that her cousin Waraka, who was a Jew, had turned Christian. He was the first to translate the Bible into Arabic. By his conversation Mohammed's detestation of idolatry was confirmed.

After the example of the Christian anchorites in their hermitages in the desert, Mohammed retired to a grotto in Mount Hera, a few miles from Mecca, giving himself up to meditation and prayer. In this seclusion, contemplating the awful attributes of the Omnipotent and Eternal God, he addressed to his conscience the solemn inquiry, whether he could adopt the dogmas then held in Asiatic Christendom respecting the Trinity, the sonship of Jesus as begotten by the Almighty, the character of Mary as at once a virgin, a mother, and the queen of heaven, without incurring the guilt and the peril of blasphemy.

By his solitary meditations in the grotto Mohammed was drawn to the conclusion that, through the cloud of dogmas and disputations around him, one great truth might be discerned—the unity of God. Leaning against the stem of a palm-tree, he unfolded his views on this subject to his neighbors and friends, and announced to them that he should dedicate his life to the preaching of that truth. Again and again, in his sermons and in the Koran, he declared: "I am nothing but a public preacher.... I preach the oneness of God." Such was his own conception of his so-called apostleship. Henceforth, to the day of his death, he wore on his finger a seal-ring on which was engraved, "Mohammed, the messenger of God."

VICTORIES OF MOHAMMED. It is well known among physicians that prolonged fasting and mental anxiety inevitably give rise to hallucination. Perhaps there never has been any religious system introduced by self-denying, earnest men that did not offer examples of supernatural temptations and supernatural commands. Mysterious voices encouraged the Arabian preacher to persist in his determination; shadows of strange forms passed before him. He heard sounds in the air like those of a distant bell. In a nocturnal dream he was carried by Gabriel from Mecca to Jerusalem, and thence in succession through the six heavens. Into the seventh the angel feared to intrude and Mohammed alone passed into the dread cloud that forever enshrouds the Almighty. "A shiver thrilled his heart as he felt upon his shoulder the touch of the cold hand of God."

His public ministrations met with much resistance and little success at first. Expelled from Mecca by the upholders of the prevalent idolatry, he sought refuge in Medina, a town in which there were many Jews and Nestorians; the latter at once became proselytes to his faith. He had already been compelled to send his daughter and others of his disciples to Abyssinia, the king of which was a Nestorian Christian. At the end of six years he had made only fifteen hundred converts. But in three little skirmishes, magnified in subsequent times by the designation of the battles of Beder, of Ohud, and of the Nations, Mohammed discovered that his most convincing argument was his sword. Afterward, with Oriental eloquence, he said, "Paradise will be found in the shadow of the crossing of swords." By a series of well-conducted military operations, his enemies were completely overthrown. Arabian idolatry was absolutely exterminated; the doctrine he proclaimed, that "there is but one God," was universally adopted by his countrymen, and his own apostleship accepted.

DEATH OF MOHAMMED. Let us pass over his stormy life, and hear what he says when, on the pinnacle of earthly power and glory, he was approaching its close.

Steadfast in his declaration of the unity of God, he departed from Medina on his last pilgrimage to Mecca, at the head of one hundred and fourteen thousand devotees, with camels decorated with garlands of flowers and fluttering streamers. When he approached the holy city, he uttered the solemn invocation: "Here am I in thy service, O God! Thou hast no companion. To thee alone belongeth worship. Thine alone is the kingdom. There is none to share it with thee."

With his own hand he offered up the camels in sacrifice. He considered that primeval institution to be equally sacred as prayer, and that no reason can be alleged in support of the one which is not equally strong in support of the other.

From the pulpit of the Caaba he reiterated, "O my hearers, I am only a man like yourselves." They remembered that he had once said to one who approached him with timid steps: "Of what dost thou stand in awe? I am no king. I am nothing but the son of an Arab woman, who ate flesh dried in the sun."

He returned to Medina to die. In his farewell to his congregation, he said: "Every thing happens according to the will of God, and has its appointed time, which can neither be hastened nor avoided. I return to him who sent me, and my last command to you is, that ye love, honor, and uphold each other, that ye exhort each other to faith and constancy in belief, and to the performance of pious deeds. My life has been for your good, and so will be my death."

In his dying agony, his head was reclined on the lap of Ayesha. From time to time he had dipped his hand in a vase of water, and moistened his face. At last he ceased, and, gazing steadfastly upward, said, in broken accents: "O God—forgive my sins—be it so. I come."

Shall we speak of this man with disrespect? His precepts are, at this day, the religious guide of one-third of the human race.

DOCTRINES OF MOHAMMED. In Mohammed, who had already broken away from the ancient idolatrous worship of his native country, preparation had been made for the rejection of those tenets which his Nestorian teachers had communicated to him, inconsistent with reason and conscience. And, though, in the first pages of the Koran, he declares his belief in what was delivered to Moses and Jesus, and his reverence for them personally, his veneration for the Almighty is perpetually displayed. He is horror-stricken at the doctrine of the divinity of Jesus, the Worship of Mary as the mother of God, the adoration of images and paintings, in his eyes a base idolatry. He absolutely rejects the Trinity, of which he seems to have entertained the idea that it could not be interpreted otherwise than as presenting three distinct Gods.

His first and ruling idea was simply religious reform—to overthrow Arabian idolatry, and put an end to the wild sectarianism of Christianity. That he proposed to set up a new religion was a calumny invented against him in Constantinople, where he was looked upon with detestation, like that with which in after ages Luther was regarded in Rome.

But, though he rejected with indignation whatever might seem to disparage the doctrine of the unity of God, he was not able to emancipate himself from anthropomorphic conceptions. The God of the Koran is altogether human, both corporeally and mentally, if such expressions may with propriety be used. Very soon, however, the followers of Mohammed divested themselves of these base ideas and rose to nobler ones.

The view here presented of the primitive character of Mohammedanism has long been adopted by many competent authorities. Sir William Jones, following Locke, regards the main point in the divergence of Mohammedanism from Christianity to consist "in denying vehemently the character of our Savior as the Son, and his equality as God with the Father, of whose unity and attributes the Mohammedans entertain and express the most awful ideas." This opinion has been largely entertained in Italy. Dante regarded Mohammed only as the author of a schism, and saw in Islamism only an Arian sect. In England, Whately views it as a corruption of Christianity. It was an offshoot of Nestorianism, and not until it had overthrown Greek Christianity in many great battles, was spreading rapidly over Asia and Africa, and had become intoxicated with its wonderful successes, did it repudiate its primitive limited intentions, and assert itself to be founded on a separate and distinct revelation.

THE FIRST KHALIF. Mohammed's life had been almost entirely consumed in the conversion or conquest of his native country. Toward its close, however, he felt himself strong enough to threaten the invasion of Syria and Persia. He had made no provision for the perpetuation of his own dominion, and hence it was not without a struggle that a successor was appointed. At length Abubeker, the father of Ayesha, was selected. He was proclaimed the first khalif, or successor of the Prophet.

There is a very important difference between the spread of Mohammedanism and the spread of Christianity. The latter was never sufficiently strong to over throw and extirpate idolatry in the Roman Empire. As it advanced, there was an amalgamation, a union. The old forms of the one were vivified by the new spirit of the other, and that paganization to which reference has already been made was the result.

THE MOHAMMEDAN HEAVEN. But, in Arabia, Mohammed overthrew and absolutely annihilated the old idolatry. No trace of it is found in the doctrines preached by him and his successors. The black stone that had fallen from heaven—the meteorite of the Caaba—and its encircling idols, passed totally out of view. The essential dogma of the new faith—"There is but one God"—spread without any adulteration. Military successes had, in a worldly sense made the religion of the Koran profitable; and, no matter what dogmas may be, when that is the case, there will be plenty of converts.

As to the popular doctrines of Mohammedanism, I shall here have nothing to say. The reader who is interested in that matter will find an account of them in a review of the Koran in the eleventh chapter of my "History of the Intellectual Development of Europe." It is enough now to remark that their heaven was arranged in seven stories, and was only a palace of Oriental carnal delight. It was filled with black-eyed concubines and servants. The form of God was, perhaps, more awful than that of paganized Christianity. Anthropomorphism will, however, never be obliterated from the ideas of the unintellectual. Their God, at the best, will never be any thing more than the gigantic shadow of a man—a vast phantom of humanity—like one of those Alpine spectres seen in the midst of the clouds by him who turns his back on the sun.

Abubeker had scarcely seated himself in the khalifate, when he put forth the following proclamation:

In the name of the most merciful God! Abubeker to the rest of the true believers, health and happiness. The mercy and blessing of God be upon you. I praise the most high God. I pray for his prophet Mohammed.

INVASION OF SYRIA. "This is to inform you that I intend to send the true believers into Syria, to take it out of the hands of the infidels. And I would have you know that the fighting for religion is an act of obedience to God."

On the first encounter, Khaled, the Saracen general, hard pressed, lifted up his hands in the midst of his army and said: "O God! these vile wretches pray with idolatrous expressions and take to themselves another God besides thee, but we acknowledge thy unity and affirm that there is no other God but thee alone. Help us, we beseech thee, for the sake of thy prophet Mohammed, against these idolaters." On the part of the Saracens the conquest of Syria was conducted with ferocious piety. The belief of the Syrian Christians aroused in their antagonists sentiments of horror and indignation. "I will cleave the skull of any blaspheming idolater who says that the Most Holy God, the Almighty and Eternal, has begotten a son." The Khalif Omar, who took Jerusalem, commences a letter to Heraclius, the Roman emperor: "In the name of the most merciful God! Praise be to God, the Lord of this and of the other world, who has neither female consort nor son." The Saracens nicknamed the Christians "Associators," because they joined Mary and Jesus as partners with the Almighty and Most Holy God.

It was not the intention of the khalif to command his army; that duty was devolved on Abou Obeidah nominally, on Khaled in reality. In a parting review the khalif enjoined on his troops justice, mercy, and the observance of fidelity in their engagements he commanded them to abstain from all frivolous conversation and from wine, and rigorously to observe the hours of prayer; to be kind to the common people among whom they passed, but to show no mercy to their priests.

FALL OF BOZRAH. Eastward of the river Jordan is Bozrah, a strong town where Mohammed had first met his Nestorian Christian instructors. It was one of the Roman forts with which the country was dotted over. Before this place the Saracen army encamped. The garrison was strong, the ramparts were covered with holy crosses and consecrated banners. It might have made a long defense. But its governor, Romanus, betrayed his trust, and stealthily opened its gates to the besiegers. His conduct shows to what a deplorable condition the population of Syria had come. After the surrender, in a speech he made to the people he had betrayed, he said: "I renounce your society, both in this world and that to come. And I deny him that was crucified, and whosoever worships him. And I choose God for my Lord, Islam for my faith, Mecca for my temple, the Moslems for my brethren, Mohammed for my prophet, who was sent to lead us in the right way, and to exalt the true religion in spite of those who join partners with God." Since the Persian invasion, Asia Minor, Syria, and even Palestine, were full of traitors and apostates, ready to join the Saracens. Romanus was but one of many thousands who had fallen into disbelief through the victories of the Persians.

FALL OF DAMASCUS. From Bozrah it was only seventy miles northward to Damascus, the capital of Syria. Thither, without delay, the Saracen army marched. The city was at once summoned to take its option—conversion, tribute, or the sword. In his palace at Antioch, barely one hundred and fifty miles still farther north, the Emperor Heraclius received tidings of the alarming advance of his assailants. He at once dispatched an army of seventy thousand men. The Saracens were compelled to raise the siege. A battle took place in the plains of Aiznadin, the Roman army was overthrown and dispersed. Khaled reappeared before Damascus with his standard of the black eagle, and after a renewed investment of seventy days Damascus surrendered.

From the Arabian historians of these events we may gather that thus far the Saracen armies were little better than a fanatic mob. Many of the men fought naked. It was not unusual for a warrior to stand forth in front and challenge an antagonist to mortal duel. Nay, more, even the women engaged in the combats. Picturesque narratives have been handed down to us relating the gallant manner in which they acquitted themselves.

FALL OF JERUSALEM. From Damascus the Saracen army advanced northward, guided by the snow-clad peaks of Libanus and the beautiful river Orontes. It captured on its way Baalbec, the capital of the Syrian valley, and Emesa, the chief city of the eastern plain. To resist its further progress, Heraclius collected an army of one hundred and forty thousand men. A battle took place at Yermuck; the right wing of the Saracens was broken, but the soldiers were driven back to the field by the fanatic expostulations of their women. The conflict ended in the complete overthrow of the Roman army. Forty thousand were taken prisoners, and a vast number killed. The whole country now lay open to the victors. The advance of their army had been east of the Jordan. It was clear that, before Asia Minor could be touched, the strong and important cities of Palestine, which was now in their rear, must be secured. There was a difference of opinion among the generals in the field as to whether Caesarea or Jerusalem should be assailed first. The matter was referred to the khalif, who, rightly preferring the moral advantages of the capture of Jerusalem to the military advantages of the capture of Caesarea, ordered the Holy City to be taken, and that at any cost. Close siege was therefore laid to it. The inhabitants, remembering the atrocities inflicted by the Persians, and the indignities that had been offered to the Savior's sepulchre, prepared now for a vigorous defense. But, after an investment of four months, the Patriarch Sophronius appeared on the wall, asking terms of capitulation. There had been misunderstandings among the generals at the capture of Damascus, followed by a massacre of the fleeing inhabitants. Sophronius, therefore, stipulated that the surrender of Jerusalem should take place in presence of the khalif himself Accordingly, Omar, the khalif, came from Medina for that purpose. He journeyed on a red camel, carrying a bag of corn and one of dates, a wooden dish, and a leathern water-bottle. The Arab conqueror entered the Holy City riding by the side of the Christian patriarch and the transference of the capital of Christianity to the representative of Mohammedanism was effected without tumult or outrage. Having ordered that a mosque should be built on the site of the temple of Solomon, the khalif returned to the tomb of the Prophet at Medina.

Heraclius saw plainly that the disasters which were fast settling on Christianity were due to the dissensions of its conflicting sects; and hence, while he endeavored to defend the empire with his armies, he sedulously tried to compose those differences. With this view he pressed for acceptance the Monothelite doctrine of the nature of Christ. But it was now too late. Aleppo and Antioch were taken. Nothing could prevent the Saracens from overrunning Asia Minor. Heraclius himself had to seek safety in flight. Syria, which had been added by Pompey the Great, the rival of Caesar, to the provinces of Rome, seven hundred years previously—Syria, the birthplace of Christianity, the scene of its most sacred and precious souvenirs, the land from which Heraclius himself had once expelled the Persian intruder—was irretrievably lost. Apostates and traitors had wrought this calamity. We are told that, as the ship which bore him to Constantinople parted from the shore, Heraclius gazed intently on the receding hills, and in the bitterness of anguish exclaimed, "Farewell, Syria, forever farewell!"

It is needless to dwell on the remaining details of the Saracen conquest: how Tripoli and Tyre were betrayed; how Caesarea was captured; how with the trees of Libanus and the sailors of Phoenicia a Saraeen fleet was equipped, which drove the Roman navy into the Hellespont; how Cyprus, Rhodes, and the Cyclades, were ravaged, and the Colossus, which was counted as one of the wonders of the world, sold to a Jew, who loaded nine hundred camels with its brass; how the armies of the khalif advanced to the Black Sea, and even lay in front of Constantinople—all this was as nothing after the fall of Jerusalem.