The Roman marriage of the East and West was a more real thing, for behind it lay three centuries of growing intercourse and knowledge along Alexander's lines. In the sphere of religion we find it most clearly. There rises a resultant world-religion—a religion that embraces all the cults18, all the creeds, and at last all the philosophies, in one great system. That religion held the world. It is true, there were exceptions. There was a small and objectionable race called Jews; there were possibly some Druids in Southern Britain; and here and there was a solitary19 atheist20 who represented no one but himself. These few exceptions were the freaks amongst mankind. Apart from them mankind was united in its general beliefs about the gods. The world had one religion.
First of all, let us try to estimate the strength of this old Mediterranean Paganism. It was strong in its great traditions. Plutarch, who lived from about 50 A.D. to 117 or so, is our great exponent21 of this old religion. To him I shall have to refer constantly. He was a writer of charm, a man with many gifts. Plutarch's Lives was the great staple22 of education in the Renaissance—and as good a one, perhaps, as we have yet discovered, even in this age when there are so many theories of education with foreign names. Plutarch, then, writing about Delphi, the shrine24 and oracle25 of the god Apollo, said that men had been "in anguish26 and fear lest Delphi should lose its glory of three thousand years"—and Delphi has not lost it. For ninety generations the god has been giving oracles27 to the Greek world, to private people, to kings, to cities, to nations—and on all sorts of subjects, on the foundation of colonies, the declaration of wars, personal guidance and the hope of heirs. You may test the god where you will, Plutarch claimed, you will not find an instance of a false oracle. Readers of Greek history will remember another great writer of as much charm, five hundred years before, Herodotus, who was not so sure about all the oracles. But let us think what it means,—to look back over three thousand years of one faith, unbroken. Egyptian religion had been unchallenged for longer still, even if we allow Plutarch's three thousand years. The oldest remains28 in Egypt antedate29, we are told, 4000 B.C., and all through history, with the exception of the solitary reign23 of Amen-Hotep III., Egypt worshipped the same gods, with additions, as time went on. Again an unbroken tradition. And how long, under various names, had Cybele, Mother of Gods, been worshipped in Asia? By our era all these religions were fused into one religion, of many cults and rites30 and ancient traditions; and the incredible weight of old tradition in that world is hard to overestimate31.
The old religion was strong in the splendour of its art and its architecture. The severe, beautiful lines of the Greek temple are familiar to us still; and, until I saw the Taj, I think I should have doubted whether there could be anything more beautiful. Architecture was consecrated32 to the gods, and so was art. You go to Delphi, said Plutarch, and see those wonderful works of the ancient artists and sculptors33, as fresh still as if they had left the chisel34 yesterday, and they had stood there for hundreds of years, wonderful in their beauty. Think of some of the remains of the Greek art—of that Victory, for instance, which the Messenians set on the temple at Olympia in 421 B.C. She stood on a block of stone on the temple, but the block was painted blue, so that, as the spectator came up, he saw the temple and the angle of its roof, and then a gap of blue sky and the goddess just alighting on the summit of the temple. From what is left of her, broken and headless, but still beautiful, we can picture her flying through the air—the wind has blown her dress back against her, and you see its folds freshly caught by the breeze. And all this the artist had disentangled from a rough block of stone—so vivid was his conception of the goddess, and so sure his hand. There are those who say that the conventional picture of God of the great artists is moulded after the Zeus of Pheidias. Egypt again had other portrayals35 of the gods—on a pattern of her own, strange and massive and huge, far older. About six hundred years before Christ the Egyptian King, Psammetichos (Psem Tek), hired Greek soldiers and marched them hundreds of miles up the Nile. The Greek soldiers, one idle day, carved their names on the legs of the colossal36 gods seated at Abu Symbel. Their names are found there to-day. So old are these gods.
The religion was strong in the splendour of its ceremony. Every year the Athenian people went to Eleusis in splendid procession to worship, to be initiated37 into the rites of the Earth-Mother and her virgin38 daughter, who had taught men the use of grain and the arts of farming-rites linked with an immemorial past, awful rites that gave men a new hope of eternal life. The Mother of the Gods, from Phrygia in Asia Minor, had her rites, too; and her cult13 spread all over the world. When the Roman poet, Lucretius, wants to describe the wonder and magic of the pageant39 of Nature in the spring-time he goes to the pomp of Cybele. The nearest thing to it which we can imagine is Botticelli's picture of the Triumph of Spring. Lucretius was a poet to whom the gods were idle and irrelevant40; yet to that pageant he goes for a picture of the miraculous41 life of nature. More splendid still were the rites of the Egyptian Isis, celebrated42 all over the world. Her priests, shaven and linen-clad, carried symbols of an unguessed antiquity43 and magical power. They launched a boat with a flame upon it—on the river in Egypt, on the sea in Greece. All these cults made deep impressions on the worshippers, as our records tell us. The appeal of religious emotion was noticed by Aristotle, who remarked, however, that it was rather feeling than intellect that was touched—a shrewd criticism that deserves to be remembered still.
The gods were strong in their actual manifestations44 of themselves. Apollo for ninety generations had spoken in Delphi. At Epidauros there was a shrine of Asclepias. Its monuments have been collected and edited by Dr. Caton of Liverpool. There sick men and women came, lived a quiet life of diet and religious ceremony, preparing for the night on which they should sleep in the temple. On that night the god came to them, they said, in that mood or state where they lay "between asleep and awake, sometimes as in a dream and then as in a waking vision—one's hair stood on end, but one shed tears of joy and felt light-hearted." Others said they definitely saw him. He came and told them what to do; on waking they did it and were healed; or he touched them then and there, and cured them as they lay. Some of the cures recorded on the monuments are perhaps strange to our ideas of medicine. One records how the god came to man dreadfully afflicted46 with dropsy, cut off his head, turned him upside down and let the fluid run out, and then replaced his head with a neat join. Some modern readers may doubt this story; but that the god did heal people, men firmly believed. We, too, may believe that people were healed, perhaps by living a healthy life in a quiet place, a life of regimen and diet; and perhaps faith-healing or suggestion played as strong a part as anything else. Even the Christians48 believed that these gods had a certain power; they were evil spirits.
Not only the gods of the temples would manifest themselves of their grace. Every man had a guardian49 spirit, a "genius"; and by proper means he could be "compelled" to show himself visibly. The pupils of Plotinus conjured50 up his "genius", and it came—not a daemon, but a god. The right formula ("mantram") and the right stone in the hand—and a man had a wonderful power over the gods themselves. This was called "theurgy".
But the great strength of this old religion was its infinite adaptability51. It made peace with every god and goddess that it met. It adopted them all. As a French scholar has said, where there is polytheism there are no false gods. All the religions were fused and the gods were blended. The Roman went to Greece and identified Jupiter with Zeus; he went to Egypt and found him in Amun (Ammon); he went to Syria and found him in Baal. If the Jew had not been so foolish and awkward, there might have been a Jupiter Jehovah as well. It was a catholic faith, embracing everything—cult and creed15 and philosophy—strong in all the ways we have surveyed and in many more, above all because it was unchallenged.
And yet, where is that religion to-day? That, to me, is one of the most significant questions in history—more so, the longer I stay in India. Men knew that that religion of Greece and Rome was eternal; yet it is utterly52 gone. Why? How could it go? What conceivable power was there, I do not say, to bring it down, but to abolish it so thoroughly53, that not a soul in Egypt worships Isis—how many even know her name?—not a soul in Italy thinks of Jove but as a fancy, and Pallas Athene in Athens itself is a mere6 memory? That is the problem, the historical problem, with which we have now to deal.
First of all, let us look again, and more closely, at that old religion—we shall find in it at least four cardinal54 weaknesses.
First, it stands for "the unexamined life," as Plato called it. "The unexamined life," he says, "is not liveable for a human being." A man, who is a man, must cross-examine life, must make life face up to him and yield its secrets. He must know what it means, the significance of every relation of life—father and child, man and wife, citizen and city, subject and king, man and the world—above all, man and God. We must examine and know. But this old religion stood by tradition and not reflection. There was no deep sense of truth. Plutarch admired his father, and he describes, with warm approval, how his father once said to a man: "That is a dangerous question, not to be discussed at all—when you question the opinion we hold about the gods, and ask reason and demonstration55 for everything." Such an attitude means mistrust, it means at bottom a fundamental unfaith. The house is beautiful; do not touch it; it is riddled56 by white ants, by dry rot, and it would fall. That is not faith; it is a strange confession57; but all who hesitate at changes, I think, make that confession sooner or later. There is a line of Kabir which puts the essence of this: "Penance58 is not equal to truth, nor is there any sin like untruth." This was one of the essential weaknesses of that old religion—its fear, and the absence of a deep sense of truth.
In the next place, there is no real association of morals with religion. The old stories were full of the adventures of Jupiter, or Zeus, with the heroines, mortal women, whom he loved. Of some 1900 wall paintings at Pompeii, examined by a German scholar and antiquary, some 1400 represent mythological59 subjects, largely the stories of the loves of Jupiter. The Latin dramatist Terence pictures the young man looking at one of these paintings and saying to himself, "If Jupiter did it, why should not I?" Centuries later we find Augustine quoting that sentence. It has been said that few things tended more strongly against morality than the stories of the gods preserved by Homer and Hesiod. Plato loved Homer; so much the more striking is his resolve that in his "Republic" there should be no Homer. Men said: "Ah, but you don't understand; those stories are allegories. They do not mean what they say; they mean something deeper." But Plato said we must speak of God always as he is; we must in no case tell lies about God "whether they are allegories or whether they are not allegories." Plato, like every real thinker, sees that this pretence60 of allegory is a sham61. The story did its mischief62 whether it was allegory or not; it stood between man and God, and headed men on to wrong lines, turned men away from the moral standard.
There was more. Every year, as we saw, men went to be initiated into the rites of Demeter at Eleusis, a few miles from Athens. And we read how one of the great Athenian orators63, Lysias, went there and took with him to be initiated a harlot, with whom he was living, and the woman's proprietress—a squalid party; and they were initiated. Their morals made no difference; the priests and the goddesses offered no objection. In the temple of Aphrodite at Corinth there were women slaves dedicated64 to the goddess, who owned them, and who received the wages of their shame. With what voice could religion speak for morality in Corinth? At Comana in Syria (we read in Strabo the geographer65, about the time of Christ) there was a temple where there were six thousand of these temple slaves. I say again, that is the unexamined life. God and goddess have nothing to say about some of the most sacred relations in life. God, goddess, priest, worshipper, never gave a thought to these poor creatures, dedicated, not by themselves, to this awful life—human natures with the craving66 of the real woman for husband and child, for the love of home, but never to know it. That was associated with religion; that was religion. There was always a minimum of protest from the Greek temples against wrong or for right. It is remarked, again and again, that all the great lessons came, not from the temples, not from the priests, but from the poets and philosophers, from the thinkers in revolt against the religion of their people. Curiously67 enough, even in Homer himself, it is plain that the heroes, the men, are on a higher moral plane than the gods; and all through Greek history the gods are a drag on morality. What a weakness in religion! The sense of wrong and right is innate68 in man; it may be undeveloped, or it may be deadened, but it is instinctive69; and a religion which does not know it, or which finds the difference between right and wrong to lie in matters of taboo70 or ceremonial defilement71, cannot speak to one of the deepest needs of the human heart, the need of forgiveness. There is no righteousness, in the long run, about these gods.
In the third place, the religion has the common weakness of all polytheism. Men were afraid of the gods; there were thousands and thousands, hosts of them. At every turn you ran into one, a new one; you could never be certain that you would not offend some unknown god or goddess. Superstition72 was the curse of the day. You had to make peace with all these gods and goddesses—and not with them alone. For there was another class of supernatural beings, dangerous if unpropitiated, the daemons, the spirits that inhabited the air, that presided over life and its stages, that helped or hated the human soul, spiteful and evil half-divine beings, that sent illness, bad luck, madness, that stole the honours of the gods themselves and insisted on rituals and worship, often unclean, often cruel, but inevitable73. A man must watch himself closely if he was to be safe from them all, if he was to keep wife and child and home safe.
Superstition, men said, was the one curse of life that made no truce74 with sleep. A famous Christian47 writer of the second century, Tatian, speaks of the enormous relief that he found in getting away from the tyranny of ten thousand gods to be under a monarchy75 of One. A modern Japanese, Uchimura, said the same thing: "One God, not eight millions; that was joyful76 news to me."
Fourthly, this religion took from the grave none of its terrors. There might be a world beyond, and there might not. At any rate, "be initiated," said the priests; "you will have to pay us something, but it is worth it." Prophets and quacks77, said Plato, came to rich men's doors and made them believe that they could rid them of all alarm for the next world, by incantations and charms and other things, by a series of feasts and jollifications. So they said, and men did what they were told; but it did not take away the fear of death.
From the first century onwards men began systematically78 to defend this old paganism. Plutarch wrote a series of books in its behalf. He brings in something like love of god for man. He speaks of "the friendly Apollo." But the weakness of Plutarch as an apologist is his weakness as biographer—he never really gets at the bottom of anything. In biography he gives us the characteristic rather than the character. Here he never faces the real issue. It is all defence, apology, ingenuity79; but he defends far too much. He admits there are obscene rites; there had been human sacrifices; but the gods cannot have ordained80 them; daemons, who stole the names of gods, imposed these on men—not the gods; men practised them to avert81 the anger of daemons. The gods are good. Waiving82 the fact that he had not much evidence for this in the mythology83, how was a man to distinguish god from daemon, to know which is which? He does not tell us. Again he speaks of the image of Osiris with three "lingams". He apologizes for it; he defends it; for the triplicity is a symbol of godhead, and it means that God is the origin of all life. Yes, but what that religion needed was a great reformer, who should have cut the religion clear adrift from idols84 of every kind, from the old mythology, from obscenity. It may very well be that such a reformer was unthinkable; even if he had appeared, he would have been foredoomed to fail, as the compromise of the Stoics85 shows. Plutarch and his kind did not attempt this. They loved the past and the old ways. At heart they were afraid of the gods and were afraid of tradition. Culture and charm will do a great deal, but they do not suffice for a religion—either to make one or to redeem86 it.
The Stoics reached, I think, the highest moral level in that Roman world—great men, great teachers of morals, great characters; but as for the crowd, they said, let them go on in the religions of their own cities; what they had learnt from their fathers, let them do. So much for the ignorant; for us, of course, something else. That seems to be a fundamentally wrong defence of religion. It gets the proportions wrong. It means that we, who are people of culture, are a great deal nearer to God than the crowd. But if we realize God at all, we feel that we are none of us very far apart down here. The most brilliant men are amenable87 to the temptations of the savage88 and of the dock labourer. There was a further danger, little noticed at first, that life is apt to be overborne by the vulgar, the ignorant, if there is not a steady campaign to enlighten every man. The Roman house was full of slaves; they taught the children—taught them about gods and goddesses, from Syria, from Egypt, and kept thought and life and morals on a low plane. An ignorant public is, an unspeakable danger everywhere, but especially in religion.
The last great system of defence was the New Platonism. It had not very much to do with Plato, except that it read him and quoted him as a great authority. The Neo-Platonists did not face facts as Plato did. They lived on quotations89, on authority and fancy, great thinkers as some of them were. They pictured the universe as one vast unity. Far beyond all things is God. Of God man can form no conception. Think, they would say, of all the exalted90 and wonderful and beautiful concepts you can imagine; then deny them. God is beyond. God is beyond being; you can conceive of being, and therefore to predicate being of God is to limit him. You cannot think of God; for, if you could think of God, God would be in relation with you; God is insusceptible of relation with man. He neither wills, nor thinks of man, nor can man think of him. A modern philosopher has summed up their God as the deification of the word "not." This God, then, who is not, willed—no! not "willed"; he could not will; but whether he willed or did not will, in some way or other there was an emanation; not God, but very much of God; very divine, but not all God; from this another and another in a descending91 series, down to the daemons, and down to men. All that is, is God; evil is not-being. One of the great features of the system was that it guaranteed all the old religions—for the crowd; while for the initiated, for the esoteric, it had something more—it had mystic trance, mystic vision, mystic comprehension. Twice or three times, Plotinus, by a great leap away from all mortal things, saw God. In the meantime, the philosophy justified92 all the old rites.
Side by side with this great defence were what are known as the Christian heresies93. They are not exactly Christian. Groups of people endeavoured to combine Christianity with the old thought, with philosophy, theosophy, theurgy, and magic. They were eclectics; they compromised. The German thinker, Novalis, said very justly that all eclectics are sceptics, and the more eclectic the more sceptic. These mixtures could not prevail.
But religions have, historically, a wonderful way of living in spite of their weaknesses—yes, and in spite of their apologetics. A religion may be stained with all sorts of evil, and may communicate it; and yet it will survive, until there is an alternative with more truth and more dynamic. The old paganism outlived Plato's criticisms and Plutarch's defences. For the great masses of people neither might have written.
Into this world came the Christian Church. I have tried to draw the picture of the great pagan religion, with its enormous strength, its universal acceptance, its great traditions, its splendours of art and ceremony, its manifest proofs of its gods—everything that, to the ordinary mind, could make for reality and for power; to show how absolutely inconceivable it was that it could ever pass away. Then comes the Christian Church—a ludicrous collection of trivial people, very ignorant and very common; fishermen and publicans, as the Gospels show us, "the baker94 and the fuller," as Celsus said with a sneer95. Yes, and every kind of unclean and disreputable person they urged to join them, quite unlike all decent and established religions. And they took the children and women of the family away into a corner, and whispered to them and misled them—"Only believe!" was their one great word. The whole thing was incredibly silly. Paul went to Athens, and they asked him there about his religion; and when he spoke45 to them about Jesus rising from the dead, they sniggered, and the more polite suggested "another day." Everybody knew that dead men do not rise. It was a silly religion. Celsus pictured the frogs in symposium96 round a swamp, croaking97 to one another how God forsakes98 the whole universe, the spheres of heaven, to dwell with us; we frogs are so like God; he never ceases to seek how we may dwell with him for ever; but some of us are sinners, so God will come—or send his son—and burn them up; and the rest of us will live with him for eternity99. Is not that very like the Christian religion? Celsus asked. It has been replied that, if the frogs really could say this and did say this, then their statement might be quite reasonable. But our main purpose for the moment is to realize the utterly inconceivable absurdity100 of this bunch of Galilean fishermen—and fools and rascals101 and maniacs—setting out to capture the world. One of them wrote an Apocalypse. He was in a penal102 settlement on Patmos, when he wrote it. The sect103 was in a fair way of being stamped out in blood, as a matter of fact; but this dreamer saw a triumphant104 Church of ten thousand times ten thousand—and thousands of thousands—there were hardly as many people in the world at that time; the great Rome had fallen and the "Lamb" ruled. Imagine the amusement of a Roman pagan of 100 A.D. who read the absurd book. Yet the dream has come true; that Church has triumphed. Where is the old religion? Christ has conquered, and all the gods have gone, utterly gone—they are memories now, and nothing more. Why did they go? The Christian Church refused to compromise. A pagan could have seen no real reason why Jesus should not be a demi-god like Herakles or Dionysos; no reason, either, why a man should not worship Jesus as well as these. One of the Roman Emperors, a little after 200 A.D., had in his private sanctuary105 four or five statues of gods, and one of them was Jesus. Why not? The Roman world had open arms for Jesus as well as any other god or demi-god, if people would be sensible; but the Christian said, No. He would not allow Jesus to be put into that pantheon, nor would he worship the gods himself, not even the "genius" of the Emperor, his guardian spirit. The Christian proclaimed a war of religion in which there shall be no compromise and no peace, till Christ is lord of all; the thing shall be fought out to the bitter end. And it has been. He was resolved that the old gods should go; and they have gone. How was it done?
Here we touch what I think one of the greatest wonders that history has to show. How did the Church do it? If I may invent or adapt three words, the Christian "out-lived" the pagan, "out-died" him, and "out-thought" him. He came into the world and lived a great deal better than the pagan; he beat him hollow in living. Paul's Epistles to the Corinthians do not indicate a high standard of life at Corinth. The Corinthians were a very poor sort of Christians. But another Epistle, written to the Corinthians a generation later, speaks of their passion for being kind to men, and of a broadened and deeper life, in spite of their weaknesses. Here and there one recognizes failure all along the line—yes, but the line advances. The old world had had morals, plenty of morals—the Stoics overflowed106 with morals. But the Christian came into the world, not with a system of morality—he had rules, indeed—"which," asks Tertullian, "is the ampler rule, Thou shalt not commit adultery, or the rule that forbids a single lustful107 look?"—but it was not rules so much that he brought into the world as a great passion. "The Son of God," he said, "loved me and gave himself for me. That man—Jesus Christ loved him, gave himself for him. He is the friend of my best Friend. My best Friend loves that man, gave himself for him, died for him." How it alters all the relations of life! Who can kill or rob another man, when he remembers whose hands were nailed to the Cross for that man? See how it bears on another side of morality. Tertullian strikes out a great phrase, a new idea altogether, when he speaks of "the victim of the common lust108." Christ died for her—how it safeguards her and uplifts her! Men came into the world full of this passion for Jesus Christ. They went to the slave and to the temple-woman and told them: "The Son of God loved you and gave himself for you"; and they believed it, and rose into a new life. To be redeemed109 by the Son of God gave the slave a new self-respect, a new manhood. He astonished people by his truth, his honesty, his cleanness; and there was a new brightness and gaiety about him. So there was about the woman. They sang, they overflowed with good temper. It seemed as if they had been born again. As Clement110 of Rome wrote, the Holy Spirit was a glad spirit. The word used both by him and by St. Augustine is that which gives us the English word "hilarious111." There was a new gladness and happiness about these people. "It befits Truth to laugh, because she is glad—to play with her rivals because she is free from fear," so said Tertullian. Of course, there were those who broke down, but Julian the Apostate112, in his letters to his heathen priests, is a reluctant witness to the higher character of Christian life. And it was Jesus who was the secret of it.
The pagan noticed the new fortitude113 in the face of death. Tertullian himself was immensely impressed with it. He had never troubled to look at the Gospels. Nobody bothered to read them unless they were converted already, he said. But he seems to have seen these Christian martyrs114 die. "Every man," he said, "who sees it, is moved with some misgiving115, and is set on fire to learn the reason; he inquires and he is taught; and when he has learnt the truth, he instantly follows it himself as well." "No one would have wished to be killed, unless he was in possession of the truth." I think that is autobiography116. The intellectual energy of the man is worth noting—his insistence117 on understanding, his instant resolution; such qualities, we saw, had won the admiration118 of Jesus. Here is a man who sacrifices a great career—his genius, his wit, his humour, fire, power, learning, philosophy, everything thrown at Christ's feet, and Christ uses them all. Then came a day when persecution119 was breaking out again. Some Christians were for "fleeing to the next city"—it was the one text in their Bible, he said. He said: "I stay here." Any day the mob might get excited and shout: "The Christians to the lions." They knew the street in which he lived, and they would drag him—the scholar, the man of letters and of imagination—naked through the streets; torn and bleeding, they would tie him to the stake in the middle of the amphitheatre and pile faggots round him, and there he would stand waiting to be burnt alive; or, it might be, to be killed by the beasts. Any hour, any day. "I stay here," he said. What does it cost a man to do that? People asked what was the magic of it. The magic of it was just this—on the other side of the fire was the same Friend; "if he wants me to be burnt alive, I am here." Jesus Christ was the secret of it.
The Christians out-thought the pagan world. How could they fail to? "We have peace with God," said Paul. They moved about in a new world, which was their Father's world. They would go to the shrines120 and ask uncomfortable questions. Lucian, who was a pagan and a scoffer121, said that on one side of the shrines the notice was posted: "Christians outside." The Christians saw too much. The living god in that shrine was a big snake with a mask tied on—good enough for the pagan; but the Christian would see the strings122. Even the daemons they dismissed to irrelevance123 and non-entity. The essence of magic was to be able to link the name of a daemon with the name of one's enemy, to set the daemon on the man. "Very well," said the Christian, "link my name with your daemons. Use my name in any magic you like. There is a name that is above every name; I am not afraid." That put the daemons into their right place, and by and by they vanished, dropped out, died of sheer inanition and neglect. Wherever Jesus Christ has been, the daemons have gone. "There used to be fairies," said an old woman in the Highlands of Scotland to a friend of mine, "but the Gospel came and drove them away." I do not know what is going to keep them away yet but Jesus Christ. The Christian read the ancient literature with the same freedom of mind, and was not in bondage124 to it; he had a new outlook; he could criticize more freely. One great principle is given by Clement of Alexandria: "The beautiful, wherever it is, is ours, because it came from our God." The Christian read the best books, assimilated them, and lived the freest intellectual life that the world had. Jesus had set him to be true to fact. Why had Christian churches to be so much larger than pagan temples? Why are they so still? Because the sermon is in the very centre of all Christian worship—clear, definite Christian teaching about Jesus Christ. There is no place for an ignorant Christian. From the very start every Christian had to know and to understand, and he had to read the Gospels; he had to be able to give the reason for his faith. He was committed to a great propaganda, to the preaching of Jesus, and he had to preach with penetration125 and appeal. There they were loyal to the essential idea of Jesus—they were "sons of fact." They read about Jesus,[32] and they knew him, and they knew where they stood. This has been the essence of the Christian religion. Put that alongside of the pitiful defence which Plutarch makes of obscene rites, filthy126 images, foolish traditions. Who did the thinking in that ancient world? Again and again it was the Christian. He out-thought the world.
The old religion crumbled127 and fell, beaten in thought, in morals, in life, in death. And by and by the only name for it was paganism, the religion of the back-country village, of the out-of-the-way places. Christ had conquered. "Dic tropoeum passionis, dic triumphalem Crucem", sang Prudentius—"Sing the trophy128 of the Passion; sing the all-triumphant Cross." The ancients thought that God repeated the whole history of the universe over and over again, like a cinema show. Some of them thought the kingdoms rise and fall by pure chance. No, said Prudentius, God planned; God developed the history of mankind; he made Rome for his own purposes, for Christ.
What is the explanation of it? We who live in a rational universe, where real results come from real causes, must ask what is the power that has carried the Christian Church to victory over that great old religion. And there is another question: is this story going to be repeated? What is there about Shiva, Kali, or Shri Krishna that essentially129 differentiates130 them from the gods of Greece and Rome and Egypt? Tradition, legend, philosophy—point by point, we find the same thing; and we find the same Christian Church, with the same ideals, facing the same conflict. What will be the result? The result will be the same. We have seen in China, in the last two decades, how the Christian Church is true to its traditions; how men can die for Jesus Christ. In the Greek Church—a suffering Church—on the round sacramental wafer there is a cross, and in the four corners there are the eight letters, IE, XE, NI, KA, "Jesus Christ conquers." That is the story of the Christian Church in the Roman Empire. That is the story which, please God, we shall see again in India. "Jesus Christ conquers."
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Mediterranean
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peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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unity
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| n.团结，联合，统一；和睦，协调 | |
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4
civilized
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| a.有教养的，文雅的 | |
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5
rumours
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| n.传闻( rumour的名词复数 )；风闻；谣言；谣传 | |
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6
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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7
yoke
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| n.轭；支配；v.给...上轭，连接，使成配偶 | |
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8
intercourse
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| n.性交；交流，交往，交际 | |
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9
piracy
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| n.海盗行为，剽窃，著作权侵害 | |
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10
brigandage
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| n.抢劫；盗窃；土匪；强盗 | |
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11
inveterate
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| adj.积习已深的，根深蒂固的 | |
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12
minor
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| adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修 | |
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13
cult
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| n.异教，邪教；时尚，狂热的崇拜 | |
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14
creeds
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| （尤指宗教）信条，教条( creed的名词复数 ) | |
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15
creed
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| n.信条；信念，纲领 | |
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16
bias
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| n.偏见，偏心，偏袒；vt.使有偏见 | |
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17
batch
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| n.一批(组，群)；一批生产量 | |
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18
cults
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| n.迷信( cult的名词复数 )；狂热的崇拜；（有极端宗教信仰的）异教团体 | |
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19
solitary
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| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
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20
atheist
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| n.无神论者 | |
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21
exponent
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| n.倡导者，拥护者；代表人物；指数，幂 | |
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22
staple
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| n.主要产物，常用品，主要要素，原料，订书钉，钩环；adj.主要的，重要的；vt.分类 | |
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23
reign
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| n.统治时期，统治，支配，盛行；v.占优势 | |
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24
shrine
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| n.圣地，神龛，庙；v.将...置于神龛内，把...奉为神圣 | |
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25
oracle
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| n.神谕，神谕处，预言 | |
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26
anguish
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| n.(尤指心灵上的)极度痛苦，烦恼 | |
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27
oracles
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| 神示所( oracle的名词复数 )； 神谕； 圣贤； 哲人 | |
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28
remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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29
antedate
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| vt.填早...的日期，早干，先干 | |
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30
rites
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| 仪式，典礼( rite的名词复数 ) | |
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31
overestimate
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| v.估计过高，过高评价 | |
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32
consecrated
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| adj.神圣的，被视为神圣的v.把…奉为神圣，给…祝圣( consecrate的过去式和过去分词 )；奉献 | |
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33
sculptors
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| 雕刻家，雕塑家( sculptor的名词复数 )； [天]玉夫座 | |
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34
chisel
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| n.凿子；v.用凿子刻，雕，凿 | |
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35
portrayals
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| n.画像( portrayal的名词复数 )；描述；描写；描摹 | |
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36
colossal
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| adj.异常的，庞大的 | |
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37
initiated
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| n. 创始人 adj. 新加入的 vt. 开始，创始，启蒙，介绍加入 | |
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38
virgin
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| n.处女，未婚女子；adj.未经使用的；未经开发的 | |
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39
pageant
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| n.壮观的游行；露天历史剧 | |
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40
irrelevant
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| adj.不恰当的，无关系的，不相干的 | |
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41
miraculous
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| adj.像奇迹一样的，不可思议的 | |
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42
celebrated
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| adj.有名的，声誉卓著的 | |
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43
antiquity
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| n.古老；高龄；古物，古迹 | |
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44
manifestations
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| n.表示，显示（manifestation的复数形式） | |
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45
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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46
afflicted
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| 使受痛苦，折磨( afflict的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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47
Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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48
Christians
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| n.基督教徒( Christian的名词复数 ) | |
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49
guardian
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| n.监护人；守卫者，保护者 | |
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50
conjured
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| 用魔术变出( conjure的过去式和过去分词 )； 祈求，恳求； 变戏法； （变魔术般地） 使…出现 | |
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51
adaptability
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| n.适应性 | |
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52
utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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53
thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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54
cardinal
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| n.(天主教的)红衣主教；adj.首要的，基本的 | |
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55
demonstration
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| n.表明，示范，论证，示威 | |
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56
riddled
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| adj.布满的；充斥的；泛滥的v.解谜，出谜题(riddle的过去分词形式) | |
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57
confession
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| n.自白，供认，承认 | |
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58
penance
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| n.（赎罪的）惩罪 | |
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59
mythological
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| adj.神话的 | |
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60
pretence
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| n.假装，作假；借口，口实；虚伪；虚饰 | |
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61
sham
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| n./adj.假冒(的)，虚伪(的) | |
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62
mischief
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| n.损害，伤害，危害；恶作剧，捣蛋，胡闹 | |
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63
orators
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| n.演说者，演讲家( orator的名词复数 ) | |
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64
dedicated
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| adj.一心一意的；献身的；热诚的 | |
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65
geographer
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| n.地理学者 | |
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66
craving
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| n.渴望,热望 | |
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67
curiously
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| adv.有求知欲地；好问地；奇特地 | |
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68
innate
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| adj.天生的，固有的，天赋的 | |
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69
instinctive
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| adj.(出于)本能的；直觉的；(出于)天性的 | |
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70
taboo
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| n.禁忌，禁止接近，禁止使用；adj.禁忌的；v.禁忌，禁制，禁止 | |
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71
defilement
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| n.弄脏，污辱，污秽 | |
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72
superstition
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| n.迷信，迷信行为 | |
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73
inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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74
truce
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| n.休战，(争执，烦恼等的)缓和；v.以停战结束 | |
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75
monarchy
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| n.君主，最高统治者；君主政体，君主国 | |
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76
joyful
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| adj.欢乐的，令人欢欣的 | |
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77
quacks
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| abbr.quacksalvers 庸医，骗子(16世纪习惯用水银或汞治疗梅毒的人)n.江湖医生( quack的名词复数 )；江湖郎中；（鸭子的）呱呱声v.（鸭子）发出嘎嘎声( quack的第三人称单数 ) | |
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78
systematically
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| adv.有系统地 | |
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79
ingenuity
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| n.别出心裁；善于发明创造 | |
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80
ordained
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| v.任命（某人）为牧师( ordain的过去式和过去分词 )；授予（某人）圣职；（上帝、法律等）命令；判定 | |
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81
avert
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| v.防止，避免；转移(目光、注意力等) | |
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82
waiving
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| v.宣布放弃( waive的现在分词 )；搁置；推迟；放弃（权利、要求等） | |
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83
mythology
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|
| n.神话，神话学，神话集 | |
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84
idols
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| 偶像( idol的名词复数 )； 受崇拜的人或物； 受到热爱和崇拜的人或物； 神像 | |
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85
stoics
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| 禁欲主义者，恬淡寡欲的人，不以苦乐为意的人( stoic的名词复数 ) | |
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86
redeem
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| v.买回，赎回，挽回，恢复，履行（诺言等） | |
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87
amenable
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| adj.经得起检验的；顺从的；对负有义务的 | |
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88
savage
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| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
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89
quotations
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| n.引用( quotation的名词复数 )；[商业]行情（报告）；（货物或股票的）市价；时价 | |
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90
exalted
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| adj.(地位等)高的，崇高的；尊贵的，高尚的 | |
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91
descending
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| n. 下行 adj. 下降的 | |
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92
justified
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| a.正当的，有理的 | |
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93
heresies
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| n.异端邪说，异教( heresy的名词复数 ) | |
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94
baker
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| n.面包师 | |
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95
sneer
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| v.轻蔑；嘲笑；n.嘲笑，讥讽的言语 | |
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96
symposium
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| n.讨论会，专题报告会；专题论文集 | |
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97
croaking
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| v.呱呱地叫( croak的现在分词 )；用粗的声音说 | |
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98
forsakes
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| 放弃( forsake的第三人称单数 )； 弃绝； 抛弃； 摒弃 | |
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99
eternity
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| n.不朽，来世；永恒，无穷 | |
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100
absurdity
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| n.荒谬，愚蠢；谬论 | |
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101
rascals
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| 流氓( rascal的名词复数 )； 无赖； （开玩笑说法）淘气的人（尤指小孩）； 恶作剧的人 | |
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102
penal
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| adj.刑罚的；刑法上的 | |
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103
sect
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| n.派别，宗教，学派，派系 | |
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104
triumphant
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| adj.胜利的，成功的；狂欢的，喜悦的 | |
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105
sanctuary
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| n.圣所，圣堂，寺庙；禁猎区，保护区 | |
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106
overflowed
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| 溢出的 | |
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107
lustful
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| a.贪婪的；渴望的 | |
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108
lust
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| n.性(淫)欲；渴(欲)望；vi.对…有强烈的欲望 | |
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109
redeemed
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| adj. 可赎回的，可救赎的 动词redeem的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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110
clement
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| adj.仁慈的；温和的 | |
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111
hilarious
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| adj.充满笑声的，欢闹的；[反]depressed | |
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112
apostate
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| n.背叛者，变节者 | |
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113
fortitude
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| n.坚忍不拔；刚毅 | |
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114
martyrs
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|
| n.martyr的复数形式；烈士( martyr的名词复数 )；殉道者；殉教者；乞怜者（向人诉苦以博取同情） | |
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115
misgiving
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| n.疑虑，担忧，害怕 | |
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116
autobiography
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| n.自传 | |
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117
insistence
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| n.坚持；强调；坚决主张 | |
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118
admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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119
persecution
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| n. 迫害,烦扰 | |
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120
shrines
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| 圣地，圣坛，神圣场所( shrine的名词复数 ) | |
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121
scoffer
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| 嘲笑者 | |
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122
strings
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| n.弦 | |
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123
irrelevance
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| n.无关紧要；不相关；不相关的事物 | |
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124
bondage
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| n.奴役，束缚 | |
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125
penetration
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| n.穿透，穿人，渗透 | |
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126
filthy
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| adj.卑劣的；恶劣的，肮脏的 | |
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127
crumbled
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| （把…）弄碎， （使）碎成细屑( crumble的过去式和过去分词 )； 衰落； 坍塌； 损坏 | |
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128
trophy
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| n.优胜旗，奖品，奖杯，战胜品，纪念品 | |
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129
essentially
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| adv.本质上，实质上，基本上 | |
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130
differentiates
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| 区分，区别，辨别( differentiate的第三人称单数 )； 区别对待； 表明…间的差别，构成…间差别的特征 | |
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