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CHRISTIANITY.
I.
THE ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY FROM A STRICTLY
H HISTORICAL POINT OF VIEW, •
BEING
DELIVERED BEFORE THE
SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY,
ON
SUNDAY, 21st NOVEMBER, 1880,
BY
Dr. G. G. ZERFFI, F.R.S.L., F.R.Hist.S.
PUBLISHED BY THE SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY.
1881.
PRICE THREEPENCE.
�How to obtain a clear and intelligible notion of the Origin of
Christianity.
The component elements of Christianity.
Some questions to be answered by Historians of other creeds.
Universalism pervading Christianity
The Finite and the Infinite in the East and West.
The Jews and their Sects. The Pharisees, Zaducees, Essenes,
Ebionites, Therapeutics and Samaritans, Hebraism and Hel
lenism.
Description of the Social Condition of Humanity at the birth
of Jesus of Nazareth.
Universal Love the Essence of Christianity. An Arab Legend.
Christ’s conception of the Deity.
Reason, Science, and Truth.
The Historical Causes of the Spread of Christianity.
Buddha and Christ.
Difference between Christianity and Buddhism.
Early Christian Sects.—Dogmatists, Sophists, Talmudists,
Apologists, Fathers, Scholastics, Theologians. General History.
Justin Martyr.
Conclusion. The Second Lecture to treat of the Fathers
“ majorum gentium” and “minorum gentium.”
�CHRISTIANITY,
•------------- <-----------------------
I.
The Origin of Christianity from a strictly Historical Point
of View.
ISTORIANS may be divided into three distinct
classes—
(1.) The Obstructives,
(2.) The Destructives, and
(3.) The Constructives.
Until recently almost all theological historians were,
by their very nature, Obstructives—that is, they were
compelled to abide by facts as transmitted to them by
tradition, or in sacred records, and were therefore neces
sarily stationary. To inquire was in itself a dangerous
action—undermining the very foundations of faith. To
this class of historians belong the Brahmans, Bonzes,
Rabbis, Priests of the Romish Church, Ulemas, Clergy
men of the Anglican Church, or other Protestant sects,
and their disciples, educated in the same stationary way,
forced to regard certain assertions concerning events, or
certain calculations concerning the time in which these
events happened as facts—though they may have been
anything but facts. We may best classify these writers
as Orientalists. The past, in the received form of some
Sacred Book, was everything with them. The very word
History signified to them a sacrilegious attempt to un
settle the assumed truth of their particular facts,—which
alone could be true ; whilst they asserted with admirable
self-reliance and conceit that the records of all other
nations were nothing but falsehoods.
Next we have the Destructives, in whom doubt and
scepticism work supreme; who do not see how one and
the same fact could have happened in two different ways;
why one witness should be credited more than another;
or how two witnesses could have seen one and the same
fact happening in different places, under entirely different
circumstances, and with altogether different results.
H
�4
Christianity.
The Destructives began timidly to pull down, they shook
the foundation of credulity, they suddenly saw the whole
past tumble into ruins. Horrified at the havoc which
they had brought about, they stopped half-way, and the
past became nothing but a heap of dust, lumber, and
fact-rubbish. We may best classify these people as
Galileans. They are a necessary element in the progres
sive development of Humanity, for unless the old tottering
building of assumed facts, cemented together with dog
matic lime and sand were first destroyed, no new building
could be erected.
And last we have the Constructives—those who re-arrange
facts on the principles of probability and possibility; who
consult the ancient documents of different nations, not
with a mind filled with hatred and contempt for everything
not contained in their own sacred records, which they
were made to choose by mere chance of birth, education,
and established custom, but with an equal veneration for
those periods in which each tribe, race, and nation, had
their own sacred book—sacred because transmitted to them
from father to son ; and -what is more sacred to a son
than that which a kind and loving father has left him ?
That the ancient nations throughout the world, in the
fulness of their grateful hearts, should have assumed that
the first father who spoke to them was Gfod Himself,
proves only the Sameness and Oneness of Humanity, arti
ficially divided into innumerable quarrelling sects, tribes,
and peoples. The Constructives, therefore, compare,
draw analogies, separate the separables, dissect myths,
explain symbols, connect equals, inquire, sift, and finally
build up their historical edifice on the firm basis of cau
sation with facts that are facts, and cement them with
common sense—discarding all arbitrariness, all exceptional
providential interference in favour of Brahmans, Zoroastrians, Buddhists, Egyptians, Hebrews, Greeks, Bomans,
Scotch or Irish—anxious to discover what we have in
common as human beings—never fostering dissent, ani
mosity, contempt or hatred, but sympathy, forbearance,
kindness, and love. We may best-elassify the Construc
tive Historians as the Hellenic-Teuton element in Hu
manity.
The spirit of these three groups of historians may be
�Christianity.
5
studied in three works recently published on the “ Life
of Jesus,” by an anonymous English Professor of one of
our Universities, by Renan, the Frenchman, and by Dr.
Strauss, the German.
The Englishman is obstructive, the Frenchman destruc
tive, and the German constructive.
Dr. Strauss is learned, conscientious, and systematic.
He is full of veneration, and yet unflinchingly truthful
without predilection, bias, or prejudice, and gives us the
true history of the foundation of Christianity. His
great merit lies in his having drawn a distinction between
the historical and mythical Jesus of Nazareth. Histori
cally he describes the birth of Jesus, His relation to John
the Baptist, the laws of Moses, the Gentiles, and the
belief in His being the expected Messiah. The mythical
account is divided into three chapters and twelve sub
divisions concerning the pre-historic myths of Jesus, the
mythical account of the life of Jesus, and the mythical
record of His suffering, death, and resurrection. Dr.
Strauss wrote his work with the view of furthering
Protestantism on the firm basis of historical continuity,
and eliminating from the glorious teachings of Jesus of
Nazareth whatever was merely accidental, secondary,
symbolic, and allegorical, borrowed from more ancient
creeds, which at the time of Christ were in a state of
spontaneous and natural dissolution. For whoever
wishes to have a clear and unbiassed notion of the his
torical Christ, must free Him and His doctrine from the
obscuring veil of dogmatism.
The Frenchman, Renan, is learned, but his learning- is
too much tainted with emotional outbursts of refined
phrases; his imagination outruns his criticism, and his
criticism loses itself in romantic dreams and visions. He
is far more bent on destroying an idol of the Romish
Church, than on discovering to what extent it had become
in time an entity, to dissolve which will need more than
the superficial pen-strokes of a witty Frenchman.
The English professor is grave—very grave. He pub
lished his work under the title of “ Ecce Homo,” but he
has neither the learning nor the courage of Dr. Strauss,
nor the sprightliness and imagination of Renan. He has,
however, his inherited predilections, which are apparently
�6
Christianity.
shaken by his studies and the intellectual atmosphere of
the nineteenth century. He has heard of Strauss with
conventional horror; he has heard of Renan with in
herited contempt, and he wishes to free his soul from all
doubts by arguing himself out of doubt; and yet, of the
three books, this one, written with apparent obstructive
faith, is the most destructive. It must necessarily lead to
a despairing scepticism, because the positive assertions are
made so timidly, that one sees the trembling writer afraid
to touch his subject, lest his dogmatic Christ might crumble
into dust under his own hands, and turn into a true
“ Bcce Homo,”—“ Behold a Man I ”
To be able to give a clear and intelligible picture of the
origin and spread of Christianity from a strictly historical
point of view, we must make ourselves acquainted with
the moral, political, religious, and intellectual elements
that pervaded Humanity at the advent of Christ. To
detach Christianity from the influences of the different
creeds that preceded its foundation, is to know nothing of
Christianity. The essence of the teachings of all law
givers and founders of religious systems was the redemp
tion of man from the bondage of his animal nature, and
the development and culture of his higher intellectual and
spiritual nature. To separate Christianity from the
causes of which its origin and working were a necessary
effect or sequence, is to transport it into the realm of
miracles. But in assuming Christianity to have been a
miracle, we raise terrible phantoms of doubt, or rather
of piety and veneration for the Diety, in the shape of
grave questions which necessarily present themselves to
the thinking mind:
Why was the advent of this miracle so long delayed ?
Why were millions and millions of creatures left with
out salvation, and, as some pious divines will have it,
predestined to eternal damnation ?
Why should the sanguinary miracle of a self-sacrificing
God have had so partial and sloiv an effect 1
Why was the miracle not made universally known ?
Why had Christianity to be established in torrents
of blood, amidst the horrible shrieks of tortured and
martyred human sacrifices ?
Why was the efficacy of the miracle quite imperceptible,
�Christianity.
7
save in such progress as was natural to any creed, sup
ported by fire and sword, by money, and state authority ?
Why should the early Christian authorities have deli
berately destroyed all writings bearing on the origin,
growth, and development of Christianity, if it was a
miracle ordained by God ?
Why should the Emperor Theodosius have felt him
self compelled to issue the following proclamation?:—
“We decree, therefore, that all writings whatever
which Porphyry, or any one else, has written against the
Christian religion, in the possession of whomsoever they
shall be found, should be committed to the fire; for we
would not suffer any of these things so much as to come
to men’s ears, which tend to provoke God and so offend
the minds of the pious.”
In a spirit of true tolerance, the same Emperor ordered,
“ that all those who should object to the dogma of the
Trinity, besides the condemnation of Divine justice,
would have to expect to suffer the severe penalties which
our authority, guided by heavenly wisdom, may think
proper to inflict upon them.”
Why should it have been an axiom of the Church
“ that it was an act of virtue to deceive and to lie, when by
that means the interest of the Church might be promoted?”
Why all these threatening laws, these anxious jealousies,
the falsifications of documents, the oppression of learning,
the abhorrence of our reasoning power, if this was a
miraculously ordained divine act, performed for the sal
vation of Humanity ?
In historically analysing the elements which compose
Christianity, we cannot blind ourselves to the fact that it
has become the universal storehouse of all the different
creeds that have swayed the human mind from the first
dawn of its arising consciousness. We find in Christianity
the strictest Monotheism mixed with the Trinitarian mys
teries of the Brahmans, Buddhists, and Egyptians; the
Incarnation and Atonement theories of the Indians and
Egyptians; the dualistic principle of the Avesta; the
Jewish and Persian assumptions of angels and devils; the
lofty moral enactments of Confucius and Sokrates; the
dreamy idealism of Plato, and the more practical realism
of Aristotle.
�8
Christianity.
Mystics and Rationalists, Believers and Free-thinkers,
Fanatics and Latitudinarians, Spirit-rappers and Philo
sophers, rich and poor, mighty and weak, learned and
ignorant, may find in the tenets of Christianity some
congenial and sympathetic, some suggestive and comfort
ing elements.
The most important fact with regard to the “ new
faith ” was that Christianity became but another name for
those universal principles and eternal laws which, if
recognised, and put in motion, stimulate the innate dor
mant moral and intellectual forces of our human nature
into activity. This fact must explain the superior vitality
of Christianity, which has led Humanity in the West and
North-West of the world slowly, gradually, yet unin
terruptedly on the path of progress in arts, discoveries,
inventions, and sciences to the very highest achievements.
The followers of any other creed must endeavour to
answer the following questions in their turn: Why did
empires and communities professing other beliefs remain
stationary in their development, in spite of their undoubted
priority in many useful arts and inventions ? and why
should the Christians have succeeded, by degrees, in
working out wise and beneficial laws, in producing poetical
works of unsurpassed excellence, and in raising sciences
to a climax never attained before ? Suns and planets are
measured by Christians ; the rays of light analysed; the
gradual formation of the earth’s crust is recognised; the
different chemical elements, in apparently indivisible
atoms, are traced; Christians speak by means of electri
city at distances of thousands of miles, reducing space in
its dimensions; and travel by means of fire and water
at an unheard-of speed, reducing time in its duration.
The Universalism pervading true Christianity alone
can serve as an explanation of this phenomenon. As we
may trace in nature positive and negative electricity, so we
can see the working of positive and negative intellectual
currents in humanity.
The currents in the East were generally negative. To
look backwards, to hope, as it were, everything from the
past, was the characteristic of Oriental nations. The
intellectual currents in the West were positive ; to look to
and to trust in the future, whether worldly or spiritual,
�Christianity.
9
was and is the distinguishing feature of the Western
World. Man in the East shuns new spheres of thought,
and is content to move round and round in the ever
unchangeable circle of fixed notions, ceremonies, and
customs. Man in the West strives for freedom and an
eternal activity; he must have some goal to long for,
which presents itself in the form of religious enthusiasm,
chivalrous daring, a thirst for inquiry and learning, a
contempt for all danger, and a struggle with real or
imaginary monsters.
The finite submitted in humble acquiescence to the
infinite in the East. In the West the finite strove to
grasp the infinite, and to bring harmony into the dis
cordant elements of good and evil, light and darkness,
mind and matter, God and nature. These contradictory
phenomena led the East very early to endeavour to cast
a light upon the mysterious nature of self-conscious man,
the mystic phenomena of nature, and to attempt the
solution of the riddle of life by means of allegories, sym
bols, wild fictions, incredible fables, and inspired guesses.
The nation that felt the double nature of humanity
most keenly, and first proclaimed a more spiritual concep
tion of a God, was the Jewish. In the mystic schools of
the priests of Egypt, their leaders were made acquainted
with the universal “ Monotheos,” but the Jews deprived
Him of his universality, and transformed Him into a
national Deity, who was only a merciful God to His
chosen people, under certain outward ceremonial con
ditions, and a God of wrath and merciless persecution to
all those who had not the good fortune to belong by
mere chance of birth to that chosen people. The Chinese
taught Humanity filial love, and social order; the Indians
unravelled the beauties of the universe in the eternal
Trinitarian process of Creation, Preservation, and Trans
formation ; the Egyptians established the “ I am I” mys
tery; the Persians endeavoured to practice purity in
thoughts, purity in words, and purity in deeds; the
Greeks fostered taste and refinement in arts, exalted
humane feelings in their poetry, and manifested a deep
critical discernment in philosophy; the Romans organised,
regulated, conquered, and developed an unsurpassed
patriotism ; and the Jews ?—they taught humanity reli
�10
Christianity.
gious exclusiveness, proud and fanatical intolerance, and
have had themselves to suffer under these curses for more
than 2,900 years.
Even at this very moment we see them harassed and
persecuted in Germany, a country which boasts of the
highest civilization, a country which produced a Lessing,
the Apostle of true Christian Tolerance, and a Herder,
the founder of “Humanism.” To the honour of that
country, it may be said that every distinguished German,
every learned Historian, and every true Christian abhors
the anachronistic movement of the Ultramontanes, which
is worthy of the dark middle ages of superstition and
gross ignorance. The Jews, as ever in the past, are
still at war with the Grentiles all over the world; they
use up the Gentiles for their special purposes, but never
look upon them as their equals. The Jews hoping
against hope, sublimely singing and prophesying in their
despair, loudly proclaiming their thirst after God, their
fervid longing for righteousness and holiness, formed
with their theological sentiments a terrible sanguinary
leaven of a new faith, which was a possibility only after
Persian ethics, Brahmanic tenets, Egyptian mysteries
and rituals, Buddhistic miracles and dogmas, Jewish
prophesies, Greek philosophical researches, and Boman
disciplinary organisations, had been pounded together by
the pestle of time in the mortar of History.
The Jews became the most important element in the
historical development of Humanity. They inherited the
dualistic theory of God and Devil from the Egyptians
and Persians, and worked it out theologically through
their deeply-learned prophets, who saw the terrible con
flict manifested in virtue and sin, of which they became
conscious at an earlier period and in a higher sense. By
means of this consciousness they approached a state of
reconciliation ; for self-conscious virtue must be based on
a self-conscious knowledge of evil, bringing harmony into
man’s animal and spiritual nature, developing to the
utmost his moral and intellectual faculties. In spite of
this higher moral state, they found themselves cruelly
oppressed. They prayed, sighed, and mourned at Babylon,
and mingled their scalding tears with the waves of the
Euphrates; they were driven from state to state; they
�Christianity.
11
waited and watched; they fought like despairing lions;
they clung to their God, who had so few blessings, and so
many sufferings for them on earth. They were still con
vinced “that the sceptre should not depart from Judah;
and unto him should the gathering of the people beand
yet they were trampled under foot by Boman Tetrarchs
and Praetors, had no political or social freedom, and were
themselves divided by religious sects and factions.
Amongst these were the Phabisees, who clung to the
dead letter of the law.
The Gaulonites or Galileans, a still more fanatical
branch of the Pharisees, who professed “that no one
must obey any mortal in authority, for God alone is our
Lord.” (This sentence enables us to understand those
Pharisaical survivals who, under the pretence of obeying
the self-constituted authority of their God, defy the law
of the land, and turn true religion into mockery.) These
fanatics hoped everything from the internal dissolution of
the Boman Empire. The Pharisees brought into religion
the most contemptible spirit of trading; they always
tried to make a profitable bargain with their God.
Plenty on earth was the reward of godliness. Their
piety had to manifest itself in eating and drinking. “ At
even ye shall eat flesh, and in the morning ye shall be
filled with bread, and ye shall know that I am the Lord
your God,” was the foundation of the egotistical creed of
the Pharisees. To eat and drink was, with the Jews, the
most solemn initiation and termination of all their reli
gious ceremonies. The Greeks cultivated man’s higher
artistic and philosophical aspirations ; the Persians ruled,
the Bomans legislated; the Egyptians built imperishable
monuments; the Indians worked out mystic problems—
the Jews did eat and drink. When the seventy (properly
seventy-two) elders accompanied Moses on Mount Sinai
and saw the God of Israel, they did eat and drink. If
we do not correctly study the principles of the different
Jewish sects of this period, we can never properly under
stand the peculiar fanatics, intolerant bigots, eating and
drinking pious hypocrites, who still grace our own social
organisation, as so many survivals in the flesh of a preChristian world.
The Sadducees (the just) were next in importance
�12
Christianity.
to the Pharisees; they were the broad-minded followers of
Zadak. They rejected all artificial explanations of the
Scriptures, and studied the prophets most diligently; they
had a supreme contempt for all those who continually
occupied their minds with mysterious benedictions, sancti
fications, days of atonement, fasting and feasting, leavened
or unleavened bread, palm branches, trumpets, sacred
vessels, offerings, defiled or undefiled gifts, trespasses, red
cows, the blood of calves and goats, scarlet wool, hyssop,
and dead bodies; and despised all those who neglected
doing good to their fellow creatures. The Sadducees
believed neither in the immortality of the soul, nor in
punishment or reward after death. They denied the
existence of angels and devils—although they thoroughly
believed in the Scriptures. They were notorious for their
virtue, honesty, tolerance, learning, and, above all, for
their justice and humanity.
The Essenes, so called from the Hebrew “ asa ” or the
Chaldaean “ asaya,” meaning “to heal”—or according to
others “ the retired ”—were still more important. They
lived a solitary life ; they devoted themselves to the study
of medicine, to the art of working miracles, and to pre
dicting the future. They practised baptism. In con
formity with the ancient Indians and Egyptians, water
was with them the mysterious life-giving element.
Water had been the essence of life when the earth was
still barren and uninhabited. They considered water to
be the fountain of regeneration, the symbol of life ; man
to be good and free from sin was to be born anew of
water. Water mystically washed away the sins of the
world. Water made the Essenes, like the Indians, twice
horn. John the Baptist and Jesus of Nazareth were both
Essenes, and were both baptized. The opinions advanced
by Matthew Tyndal in a work, published 150 years ago,
entitled “ Christianity as old as the Creation,” are borne
out by Eusebius, who has a whole chapter under the title,
“The Religion published by Jesus Christ is neither new
nor strange; ” and this author also states, in the most
unqualified manner, in the 17th Chapter of his 2nd Book
that the ancient Therapeutics were Christians, and that
their ancient writings were our Gospels and Epistles.
The Therapeutics, Ebionites or Essenes were “ Chres-
�Christianity.
13
tianse,” from “ Chrestos,” good. They were Eclectics;
they held Plato in. the highest esteem, though they
scrupled not to add to his doctrines whatever they
thought conformable to reason in the tenets and opinions
of other philosophers. According to Thomas Burnet,
the Essenes were offshoots of the Brahmans and Bud
dhists, devoting themselves to the contemplation of the
transitoriness of human life.
At last we must mention the Samakttans, who were
the independent among the Jews. They considered Jews
and Heathens equal, if good and kind, and because of
this very cosmopolitan sentiment were held in abomina
tion by all the other Jewish sects, who most furiously
quarrelled both with the outer world and amongst them
selves.—-When the Jewish Scriptures became more gene
rally known through the Greek translation, the “ Septuagint ” there suddenly sprang into unparalleled activity—
Hebraism as the static, ’and Hellenism as the dynamic
force, working in Humanity, in History, and Religion.
Dogmatism and morals were so closely interwoven in
these Scriptures that the study of history became a
religious duty. The past was to be taken on faith ; the
assertions of the Hebrew writers were not to be doubted ;
everything was to be declared credible or incredible by
reference to some scriptural passage and inquiry, and
Scepticism was to be banished from the world. This
banishment aroused a mighty spirit of controversy; the
classic writers were looked upon as perverse liars, desti
tute of light, since they had not known the True God
who had revealed Himself exclusively to the Jews. An
infinite number of lying spirits were assumed to have
deluded Humanity. The glorious works of art, sculp
ture, architecture, poetry and philosophy of the numerous
nations of the Earth were suddenly decried as the out
growths of sin, inherited from Adam. The Greeks had
been taught by Satan; the Persians, Assyrians, and
Babylonians had been annihilated by the God of Israel
for their idolatry; the Indians were children of Beelzebub;
the Buddhists horrible Atheists. All the monuments
of antiquity became objectionable works, conceived in
pride by the fallen angels ; all the historical writings and
records of all nations were considered false and untrue,
�14
Christianity.
and the Jewish records placed above them as the only
true revealed Word of God who had forsaken and
abandoned all His other creatures, and held communica
tion exclusively with the Jews.
From that moment up to our own times, there has been
something wonderfully majestic in this terrible conflict
between Hebraism and Hellenism, keeping humanity in a
continuous exertion of its moral and intellectual forces ;
now devoting every thought to theology, then again pro
moting the loftiest inquiries of science, leading us to a
state in which morals and knowledge will no more be
considered as antagonistic, but completing elements of
man’s progressive development.
We have to deal with the beginning of the new historical phase of a spiritual life that took its origin in
the Eastern provinces of the Boman Empire.
False prophets and philosophical teachers abounded
everywhere. Greek mock philosophers discussed the most
abstruse spiritual problems in the market-places. Egyptian
priests of Osiris, Isis and Horus, divulged the unintel
ligible symbolisms of their ancient creed; and the Persian
worship of Mithras (meaning the Bedeemer or Inter
mediator) was revived with all its deep mysticism.
Numbers of Boman legal casuists engaged in searching
for lawsuits, discussed everything, whilst knowing very
little of anything. The Jewish sects, in spite of their
dissensions and mutual hatred, were all equally oppressed
and plundered by Herod the Great; superstition, ignor
ance, despair and credulity were the distinguishing fea
tures of the Boman world.
The East was crowded with dreamers, visionaries,
traders in charms, augurs, horoscopists, miracle-workers
(Thaumaturgi), soothsayers, cabalists and priests of an
infinite variety of gods and goddesses. All was spiritual
chaos, like that at the dawn of the Creation of the
material world, when Jesus oe Nazareth was Born.
We have very little reliable historical information con
cerning the life of “ Christ,” meaning the Anointed. So
much we do know, that we may make of Christ what we
please; we may comment upon His recorded teachings
exegetically or in any other form. We may altogether
deny the whole later Ecclesiastical structure, built upon
�Christianity.
15
His utterances. We may demonstrate that all that was
asserted of Him, was also believed of Melchisedech,
Krishna, Osiris, Buddha, Apollo or Mithras. We may
trace in Him and to Him all the legends of divine incar
nations through which man, having become conscious,
wished to find an explanation of his own low animal
desires, and the lofty intellectual longings of his mind,
thus working out divine models of human beings, or gods
in human form.
We may study the Gospels and their contradictory
views, and critically wade through the still more contra
dictory writings of the Bathers. We may show how
dogma after dogma was attributed to Christ, which He
neither enunciated nor ever could have thought of,
because, whatever contradictions may be recorded of Him,
there was no contradiction between His teachings, and
His own self-sacrificing life. We may prove how the
Councils of the Church changed the true doctrine of
Christ, misunderstanding it altogether; we may reject
the dictates of certain synods and accept others. We
may be Papists, Episcopalians or Methodists, Presby
terians or Ritualists, Lutherans or Quakers, Dissenters
or Shakers, Idealists or Realists, Believers or Free
thinkers ; we may quarrel and hate one another with the
same fervour as did the Jewish sects, and curse every one
who does not hold our own opinions as to the sensations
of the beatitude, the length of the wings of the angels
in heaven, or the horns of the devils in hell.
We may laugh at our petty controversialists who talk
of vestments and postures, candlesticks, crosses, rubrics,
grace, conscience, transubstantiation, real and unreal
presence, and the thousand and one unintelligible, anagogical, parabolical, allegorical and symbolic niceties and
difficulties, which may all be easily settled, if no one asks
questions, and if all men have faith, and do not use their
thinking and reasoning faculty, the brightest gift of the
Creator, under whatever name He be worshipped.
But we cannot deny the immense influence which
Christ’s teachings have exercised on the Western miud.
Let all the circumstances and details have been what they
may, historians must deal with Christ’s Spirit, as it pre
sents itself, as one of the greatest of historical phenomena.
�16
Christianity.
For though we may divest Christ of all the miracles,
rightly or falsely attributed to Him, we cannot divest
Him of one grand immortal fact, “ That he died for Love,
murdered by those whom He taught with a heart full of
universal love—that the whole of humanity was one great
brotherhood ; that every human being was to love his
neighbour as himself; that every human being was the
cherished child of one Father, who loved all His children
equally, and who was in heaven ! ” Had but this simple
doctrine of mutual and universal love been taught for the
last 1880 years with the same fervour as the mystiff
dogmas with which Christ’s teachings were perverted,
and which were each and all borrowed from Egyptian,
Assyrian, Persian, Indian and Homan religious systems,
the world would undoubtedly be more Christian, and
humanity would have saved millions of precious lives
which have been wasted on the propagation, not of
Christianity, but “ of prejudiced credulity, and priestly
tyranny.” We have, unfortunately, failed to learn to look
upon Christ as He is characterised in the following ancient
Arab legend:—“ A dog had stolen some meat from a Jewish
butcher’s shop; the dog was stoned, then hanged, then
thrown into the street, and the angry Jews formed a circle
round the dog, spat on him and cursed him; all at once a
mild and gentle voice was heard asking the enraged crowd,
whether they could find nothing worthy of admiration in
the poor dead animal; there was suddenly a deep silence,
and the speaker pointed to the beautiful pearly-white
teeth of the dog. The people grumbled, and it was
whispered among them that the speaker must be Jesus of
Nazareth, for He alone was capable of finding something
good even in a dead dog! ”
This is Chbistiajstity.
The Deity of the Jews was a stem, and revengeful
Despot; Christ’s Gfod was a loving Father. The beginning
of wisdom with the Jews was fear; with Christ, the
beginning of wisdom was love. With the Jews, God was
a God of wrath, persecution and slaughter ; with Christ,
a God of mercy, forgiveness, and boundless love.
The God of the Jews, who, like the inexorable Fate of
the Greeks, or the sanguinary monsters enthroned in the
Imperial purple of Home, punished the sins of the
�Christianity.
17
fathers unto the third and fourth generation, and de
manded holocausts of murdered sacrifices, was changed by
Christ into a God of infinite kindness, rejoicing over
one repentant sinner more than over ninety and nine
just persons. Christ’s doctrine in its primitive purity
was the ever true Law of Peace, Love and Tolerance,
satisfying Season, leading to Science, and to the Search
for Truth. These are the fundamental elements of Chris
tianity, towards which, freed of all dogmatic unintelligi
bilities, humanity is striving consciously or unconsciously,
in spite of the thousands of sects, and the numberless
commentators who have done their uttermost to destroy
the simplicity and universality of Christ’s teachings. But
Beason cannot be stifled by persecution ; Science cannot
be annihilated by superstition; and Truth cannot be
silenced by blind fanaticism. Christianity checked He
braism, fostered Hellenism, brought life into the Ancient
World, and established Humanism, the last possible phase
in the development of Humanity.
If we look for the principal historical causes of the
sudden spread of Christianity, we have :
1st. The extent of the Boman Empire, with two prin
cipal languages—Greek and Latin.
2nd. The scattering ofthe Jews and the Jewish Christians.
3rd. The general tendency to mysticism, fanaticism,
and symbolism, and the total absence of a correct know
ledge of the Laws of Nature.
4th. The immense number of freed men, slaves, and
beggars. To such people equality was preached; equality
before a God in whose eyes the living visible God on
earth—the Emperor was no more than the lowest beggar.
The poor grew proud, and condescended to admit the
rich into their now blessed community; and the rich,
terrified by the hungry and haggard looks of the people,
enervated by profligacy and licentiousness, were glad to
be made partakers of a future kingdom of bliss, since
they did not feel very safe on earth, and trembled equally
before the covetousness of the tyrants in power, and the
daily increasing number of homeless slaves.
5th. The decline of faith in the old gods of the
classical world, who were now proved to have been
mere idols of stone, or brass, as otherwise they could
�18
Christianity.
not have permitted humanity to sink to such a depth of
immorality as was reached under the Emperors, for men’s
lives had no value, justice was nowhere to be found.
6th. The sanguinary political and religious persecution
which the Emperors repeatedly ordered against the everincreasing Christians.
The Greeks and Romans were in general extremely
tolerant in religious matters. They had either a personal or
a political interest in persecuting some single individual,
and used the religious fanaticism of the mob as the means to
attain their special political or worldly object. They
never had priests in our sense of the word. The early
Christians began slowly to find favour at Court in conse
quence of their universalism. They proved that they did
not hold all the exclusive, national opinions of the Jews,
who would not recognise any other authority but that of
Javeh—they honestly referred to Christ’s command :
“ Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are
Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s ”—
and the new Religion was at last introduced at Court
under the Emperor Alexander Severus, whose mother,
Mammsea, was said to have been a true Christian. Decius
tried in vain to stamp out the Christians. Under
Gallienus they enjoyed peace ; and the last vain attempts
to abolish Christianity by means of sanguinary persecu
tions were made under the Emperor Diocletian. As is
invariably the case, cruelty only served the more to
develop the whole vitality of Christianity. At this
period certain causes were at work, which altogether
changed, if not the essence, at least the form of Chris
tianity. Some sudden disturbances occurred in the
provinces, situated between China aud the Caspian Sea,
which had been conquered about the first Century of
the Christian Era. “ It appears that, in consequence
of these convulsions, the Samanseans, disciples of Buddha,
(who probably lived about the time of the Israelitish
Kingdom of the Ten Tribes,) departed from their former
seat, the ancient Aria, and took refuge in the mountains
of Cashmere and Thibet.” Some of these disciples must
have also settled in the more western parts of Asia, and
must have come into contact with the then more and
more spreading Christians, who endeavoured with all the
�Christianity.
19
activity of their intellectual power to bring Christianity
into a system—a dogmatic system. In many of their
details, the tenets of Buddha bear the greatest resem
blance to certain superadded Christian dogmas; “Bor
the chief doctrine of the Sainansean Bonzes was, that
Buddha was of Royal descent, born of the Virgin Maja,
worthy of adoration as next in dignity to God whose
ninth incarnation he was, and that he would assume
at the end of all earthly things his tenth incarnation
as Kali, and appear on a white horse to judge the quick
and the dead.” The Samansean priesthood taught men
to prepare for this event, to lead a retired contemplative
life, to suffer persecution but never to persecute, humbly
to submit to any lay power, since this world was a mere
fleeting, transitory abode of misery and decay, prepara
tory to a higher spiritual life to be enjoyed in Eternity in
Nirvana, the unceasing contemplation of the Deity in
His eternal peace and glory. Christianity absorbed ail
these elements, but with the Christians, the endeavour to
spread this belief in the bliss of redemption became a
sacred duty, which they thought themselves justified in
performing by means of violence, inexorable cruelty, cruci
fixions, boilings and burnings, by fire and sword “Ad
majorem Dei gloriam.”
Here the striking difference between Buddhism and
Christianity becomes apparent. Buddhism is passive
contemplation ; Christianity is positive activity. The
one remained stationary, the other progressively developed
and is still developing. The one acquiesced in any form
so long as the worship of Buddha was the aim ; the other
devoted itself to an unparalleled spiritual activity, en
dowing Christianity with mystic meanings, allegorical
beauties, dressed in the. shreds of myths and fables, col
lected from all the religious systems of the ancient
world, adorned with Platonic dreams and visions, and
Aristotelian sophistries and dialectics. Intolerance and
fanaticism spread more and more; and delusion and
ignorance served to build up that glorious spiritual
Revolution which brought new life into the world.
Scarcely had Christ expired on the Cross when a host
of pious preachers and teachers inundated the world with
descriptions of the details of His private and public life.
�20
Christianity.
St. Luke informs us “ that many have taken in hand
to set forth those things which are most surely believed
among us.” There were about 146 independent sacred
writings, among which were 34 Gospels, 20 Epistles,
22 Acts, 5 Revelations, and 22 miscellaneous works ;
several books published under the name of James, and
books under the name of Peter. That these works existed,
is undeniable, for the various diverging and quarrellinosects of early Christianity were founded on the very
possession of these different sacred books. Letters were
forged, interpolations fabricated, omissions resorted to,
fictions invented, exaggerations propounded, miracles pro
claimed, and interpretations given, so that it is exceed
ingly difficult to gather any reliable facts. To prove how
far such deceptions went, we may point out that Gregory,
of Tours, in the sixth Century a.d., firmly believed that
he possessed the authenticated account of the miracles at
the death and resurrection of Christ in the very docu
ment which Pilate had sent to the Emperor Tiberius.
Lucian, in the latter half of the second Century after
the birth of Christ, bitterly complained that the Christians
were so reserved respecting their mysteries.
Tacitus, Pliny, and others could not understand why
morals and truth should be proclaimed by miracle
workers, magicians and necromancers, who began to
drive a very profitable trade. At first, Jewish and
Pagan priests had heaped opprobrious calumnies upon
the Christians on account of the simplicity of their
worship, esteeming them little better than Atheists,
because they had no temples, altars, sacrifices, priests nor
any of that external pomp in which the vulgar are so
prone to place the essence of religion. The rulers of the
Christians now adopted external, mystic ceremonies, and
suddenly the primitive simplicity which had characterised
the first followers of Christ was gone, and a multitude of
half-Jewish and half-Pagan enthusiasts, visionaries, theosophists, snake-charmers, and adepts abounded in the Chris
tian communities, and proclaimed themselves to be Ascetic,
self-denying, miracle-working Christians. Mysticism and
symbolism became the leading elements in Christianity.
The mysteries engendered sects, in accordance with the
various explanations given ro the meaning of the different
�Christianity.
21
symbols, allegories, types, prophesies, gospels, epistles, or
any vague traditions. Sects persecuted sects, each stig
matising their opponents as heretics. Every one of these
sects pretended to have received certain traditions from
the founder of Christianity Himself, or at least from
prophets, apostles, or pious men who had stood near to
Christ; yet subsequently, all their dogmas were declared
to have been heresies by later councils and synods.
The Gnostics, Ebionites, Marcionites, Alogians, Manichaeans, Novitians, Sabellians, Patripassians, and Arians,
&c., may be adduced to prove that Christianity was at first
broad-hearted and broad-minded, so long as it was not
yet fettered by the inexorable power of the State. Dog
matists were permitted to put forward new dogmas and
mysteries, but unfortunately Constantine, in the fourth
century a.d., adopted Christianity as a state religion, and
employed learned converted Talmudists and Sophists to
shape the simple tenets of Christ, and from that time down
to the Reformation everything received a theological basis,
and was looked upon from a one-sided religious point of
view. Gregory of Nazianzen says of this period ; “ the
learned diatribes of Stoics, Platonists, Aristotelians, and
even the teachings of the most important Fathers were
silenced, and every “shop-boy” preached and talked on
the Trinity in Unity of God the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Ghost, or on the “ Hypostasis,” meaning the subor
dinate substances of the Trinity. The City of Constan
tinople was full of working men and slaves who were
profound theologians, and preached in their workshops
and in the streets. If you wanted of anyone change for
a silver coin, he informed you of the distinction between
Father and Son; if you asked for the price of a loaf of
bread, you were lectured on the inferiority of the Son to
the Father; and if you asked whether the bread were
baked, the rejoinder was that the Son had been created
out of nothing.”
It was in vain that Justin Martyr, one of the most
zealous defenders of Christianity, proved with trenchant
conviction that Christ was the Logos, or “ Universal
Reason,” of which mankind were all partakers: and,
therefore, those who lived according to the Logos or
Reason, were Christians, notwithstanding that they
�22
Christianity.
might pass for Atheists. Such among the Greeks were
Sokrates and Herakleitos, and the like; and such among
the Barbarians were Abraham and Ananias, and many
others. So on the other hand, those who had lived in
former times in defiance of the Logos or Reason were
evil, and enemies to Christ, and murderers of such as
lived according to the Logos or Beason; but those who
made or make the Logos or Reason the rule of their
actions, were and are “ Christians, and men without fear
and trembling.”
It is deeply to be regretted that Christ’s teachings
were deprived of their charming simplicity. But it could
not be otherwise. By the daily increasing number of
theological Sophists, Greek and Roman Dialecticians,
converted Talmudists and Cabalists, who made it their
duty to obscure every intelligible passage in the Old and
New Testaments; to find types where there were none;
to take allegories and metaphors to the letter; and to
transform into deep symbols what had been the literal
record of some every-day occurrence. Man was to be
forced into the narrow Procrustean bed of Dogmatism,
and to know nothing but incomprehensible mysteries.
Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy raised their spiteful and
venomous heads, aud spread like dragons the fire of
destructive disunion throughout the world. Councils
and Synods denounced and persecuted, excommunicated
and succeeded in bringing about a dead silence in the
realm of thought, or submissive professions of the pre
scribed religious formulae.
In the sixth century after Christ the Church, with the
aid of the lay power, at last was enabled to stamp out
by fire and sword all the so-called Heretics, and the
Bathers, Apologists, and the Church dignitaries began to
rule supreme. The writings of the Bathers are the only
important literary products of these times which throw a
considerable light on the gradual development of Chris
tianity from the second to the twelfth century a.d.
The Bathers, like the ancient Patricians of Pagan
Rome, were divided into two classes. Those from the
second to the sixth century a.d. were the “ Patres majorum gentiumwhilst those from the seventh to the
twelfth century A.D. were the “Patres minorum gentium.”
�Christianity.
23
During the mediseval period of history the priests of the
Romish Church, occupying themselves with writing on or
discussing theology, were called “ Scholastics,” and only
since the Reformation the Clergy treating religious mat
ters philosophically or ethically, assumed the title of
“ Theologians” (Scientists of God). We cannot fail to
perceive that the struggle between faith or religion, and
reason or science was the vital force that made it possible
for Christians to progress, morally as well as intellec
tually.
The principal tendency of the most learned and most
honest theologians of our day (like Dean Stanley, Prin
cipals Tulloch and Caird,—Stopford Brooke and many
others) is to restore to Christianity that universal spirit
of tolerance which will make culture and true civilisation
a common good, not dependent on rubrics, eastern postures,
vestments, or articles, but on a correct understanding of
our nature, humanising even the bigoted middle classes;
purifying society and making it a general philanthropic
brotherhood, turning capital into a blessing instead of a
curse ; and endowing our dogmatic and arbitrary educa
tional institutions with one analogous system, fitted to
bring out all our higher reasoning faculties. Thus the
pure spirit of true Christianity will once more sway our
hearts and vivify our lifeless and cold, yet eternally
quarrelling, denominational sects. Science and art will
work together, spiritualising our higher nature, foster
ing Hellenic-Teuton culture instead of Romano-Hebrew
narrow-mindedness, leading us to a universal bodily
and mental happiness, and establishing a practical—not
clerical—“ Millenium.”
We shall endeavour in future lectures to trace how the
historical development of Christianity commenced in a
controversial thunderstorm, fierce, terrible and destructive
at first; followed by a gloomy calm, silent, deadening
and oisZrucZwe; and at last arousing science, purifying
our moral and intellectual atmosphere, spreading the
broad daylight of culture in union with morals, enabling
humanity to be free, good, and truly constructive.
�The Society’s Lectures by Dr. Zerffi, which have been printed, are—
On “Natural Phenomena and their Influence on different Religious
Systems.”
On “The Vedas and the Zend-Avesta: the first Dawn of Religious Con
sciousness in Humanity.”
On “The Origin aud the Abstract and Concrete Nature of the Devil.”
On “ Dreams and Ghosts.”
On “ Ethics and ^Esthetics.”
The above are out of print.
On “ The Spontaneous Dissolution of Ancient Creeds.”
On “ Dogma and Science.”
On “ The Eastern Question; from a Religious and Social point of view.”
On “Jesuitism: and the Priest in Absolution.”
On “ Pre-Adamites; or, Prejudice and Science.”
On “ Long and Short Chronologists; or Egypt from a Religious, Social,
and Historical point of view.”
All price 3d., or post-free 3|d.
SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY.
To provide for the delivery on Sundays in the Metropolis, and to
encourage the delivery elsewhere, of Lectures on Science,—
physical, intellectual, and moral,—History, Literature, and Art;
especially in their bearing upon the improvement and social well
being of mankind.
THE SOCIETY’S LECTURES
are delivered at
ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLAGE,
On SUNT)A Y Afternoons, at FO UR o’clock precisely.
(Annually—from November to May.)
Twenty-four Lectures (in three series), ending 24th April, 1881,
will be given.
Members’ £1 subscription entitles them to an annual ticket, trans
ferable (and admitting to the reserved seats), and to eight single
reserved seat tickets, available for any lecture.
Tickets for each series (one for each lecture) as below,—
To the Shilling Reserved Seats—5s. 6d.
To the Sixpenny Seats—2s., being at the rate of Threepence each
lecture.
For tickets, and the printed Lectures, and for list of all the Lectures
published by the Society, apply (by letter) to the Hon. Treasurer,
Wm. Henry Domville, Esq., 15, Gloucester Crescent, Hyde Park, W.
Payment at the door:—One Penny;—Sixpence;—and (Reserved
Seats) One Shilling.
Kenny & Co., Printers, 25, Camden Road, London, N.W.
�
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Victorian Blogging
Description
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
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Christianity: the origin of Christianity from a strictly historical point of view, being a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, on Sunday, 21st November, 1880
Creator
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Zerffi, G. G. (Gustavus George)
Description
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Place of Publication: London
Collation: 23, [1] p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: List of the Society's lectures on unnumbered page at the end. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Printed at the Industrial Press Works, Greek Street, Soho, London.
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Sunday Lecture Society
Date
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1881
Identifier
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CT89
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Christianity: The origin of Christianity from a strictly historical point of view), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
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Text
Language
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English
Subject
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Christianity
Christianity
Conway Tracts