The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1896-12-26
THE REVELATION OF CHRISTIAN
ITY.

TIE question, what precisely does
the world owe to Christianity is one
naturally suggested by the Christmas
anniversary. What the usual answer
of faith and religion, and even of his
tory, is to this question every intelli-
gent Christian knows. But there are
phases of this question rarely dis
cussed by the homilists who picture
the condition of the old Roman world
at the advent of Christ, and it is these
rather out of the ordinary phases that
a writer in the Cornhill Magazine for
December discusses under the topic,
"The Greatest of Anniversaries" Re-
minding the reader that Christian
England and France have had their
satirists no less than Rome her Ju-
venal, who dashed the vices and follies
of his age, the writer endeavors to see
what were Roman and Grecian ideals
as contrasted with those set forth in
the life and words OF Christ. In this
work Renan has done much of it to
his hand in his volume" The Apostles"
where he collects examples of domes-
tic virtue and honor to show that such
ideals were not uncommon among
those not acquainted with the teach
ings of Christianity. wives accom-
panied their husbands into exile"
says Renan, "others shared their
noble deaths. The ancient Roman
simplicity was not lost; the educa-
ton of children was painstaking and
serious. In the majority of the prov
inces there was a middle class, where
goodness, probity, copjugal fidelity
were widely spread. Renan also
endeavors to show that philanthropy
was cultivated and that care for the
poor, universal sympathy and aims
giving had become virtues.
To deny that there were goodness,
virtue, and many admirable qualities
in the best pagan characters would
be to confess oneself ignorant of the
better qualities of the Greeks and
Romans, but, as Renan and the writer
Of the Cornhill article point out,
what was good in the old pagan world
undoubtedly came from the Stoics,
who, unlike the great Greek moral
philosophers, Socrates, Plato, and
Aristotle, "gave the preponderance in
their system to the inner life of the
individual soul, and thus introduced
new degree of earnestness."
Precisely what were these moral
and spiritual elements on which the
Stoics laid stress, the Cornhill writer
points out under five different heads.
We cannot now go over his argument,
but he proceeds to show with clear
ness and force the primary differen-
ces between Christianity and the ethi-
cal systems referred to above. Chris
tianity, as he points out, meant pri
marily revelation of God, "whom
ye ignorantly worship" as St. Paul
declared to the Athenians, 'him de-
clare l unto you" On this point the
writer's own words are most effective:
| "God is essentially the Father, essen
TALLY Love- secondly, that as God ex
| listed before all worlds, self-conscious
Mind, not requiring the universe as the
| object of his love and thought and will,
man is a creature, though made in God s
| image and thirdly, that as the Son could
take flesh, the whole of human nature
could be lifted up into the spirit of Son
| ship. These are the root-ideas of Chris
tianity, and it is not difficult to see of
what immense force they are capable. To
be convinced that God is; that he is not
the shade cast by the soul of man, or the
imagined Whole of which man is a part ;
to be convinced that in his proper nature
he is Love and nothing but Love, love
given and returned; finally, to be con-
WINGED that at certain point of time the
Son came into the world to show men the
Father and TO share with men this spirit
of love to the Father, man having by
birthright a certain freedom of will
these are ideas that cannot be entertained
without making a revolution in men S
lives-as in fact they did, and do
AS it was in the Cornhill magazine
that Matthew Arnold first published
the essays afterward collected into
book form under the title, Literature
and Dogma" the latter's definition of
God as not being person, but
stream of tendency making for right
eousness, comes in for review, and to
most readers, we think, is satisfac-
torily disposed of.
After quoting the passages in which
Jesus distinctly expresses his divine
sonship and oneness with the Father,
the writer adds:
sit is incredible that anyone reading
these passages, AMI there are many others
like them, could imagine that a Christian
ity which denied that Christ came from
the Father with revelation of his char
acter could remain Christianity at all.
But Christ himself puts the matter in