Various

“ Whatever were his qualities as a fighter, the Cid was but indifferent material out of which to make a saint,—a man who battled against Christian and against Moslem with equal zeal, who burnt churches and mosques with equal zest, who ravaged, plundered and slew as much for a livelihood as for any patriotic or religious purpose, and was in truth almost as much of a Mussulman as a Christian in his habits and his character. ”

“ It is no longer merely the scene for the drama of the soul and God, nor is man independent of it, but man and nature constitute an organism, humanity being a part of the vaster whole. Man’s place is not even central, as he appears a temporary inhabitant of a minor planet in one of the lesser stellar systems. Every science is involved, and theology has come into conflict with metaphysics, logic, astronomy, physics, chemistry, geology, zoology, biology, history and even economics and medicine. ”

“ Thus Christianity, as religion, is on the one hand the adoration of God, that is, of the highest and noblest, and this highest and noblest as conceived not under forms of power or knowledge but in the form of ethical self-devotion as embodied in Jesus Christ, and on the other hand it meets the requirements of all religion in its dependence, not indeed upon some absolute idea or omnipotent power, but in the belief that that which appeals to the soul as worthy of supreme worship is also that in which the soul may trust, and which shall deliver it from sin and fear and death. ”

“ No great church has yet modified its articles of religion so as to admit, for example, that the Garden of Eden was not a definite place where Eve was tempted, yet the doctrine is contradicted with approval by individuals, and the results of modern science are accepted and taught without rebuke. In all this the Church shows its essential oneness with other organizations of society, the government, the family, which are at once deeply rooted in the past, and yet subject to the influences of the present. For Christianity is by no means wholly intellectual, nor chiefly so. ”

“ While the Church, like a careful mother, sought to lead her children, never allowed to grow up, safely from time into eternity, the men of the Renaissance felt that they had come of age, and that they were entitled to make themselves at home in this world. They wished to possess the earth and enjoy it by means of secular education and culture, and an impassable gulf yawned between their views of religion and morality and those of the Church. ”

“ It is not only in things to which we commonly confine the word miracle that the Divine appears. It may appear not less in the whole tone and spirit of the Church’s life, in the varied Christian virtues of her members, in the general character of their Christian work, and in the grace received by them in the Christian sacraments. When that life is exhibited, as it ought to be, in its distinctively heavenly character, it bears witness to the presence of a power in Christian men which no mere recollection of a past example, however heroic or beautiful, can supply. ”

“ With emphasis upon God as creator and ruler, and upon man as made in God’s image, endowed with an unending existence, and subject to eternal torture if not redeemed, the concept of personality has been exalted at the expense of that of nature, and the future has been magnified at the expense of the present. Thus a future heaven is man’s true home, and theology instead of philosophy or natural science is his proper study. ”

“ This inner life constitutes the oneness of believers and forms the true Church which is invisible. It expresses itself in outward forms, yet there are not two Churches visible and invisible, but only one. The spiritual experience of the individual utters itself in words, and desires association with others who know the same grace. There is formed a body of teaching in which all agree, and an organization in which the common experience finds expression and aid. ”

“ CHRISTIANITY, the religion which accepts Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour, embracing all who profess and call themselves Christians, the term derived from his formal title (χριστός, i.e. the anointed) . Within this broad characterization are found many varieties of cult, organization and creed (see Church History) . Christianity is classed by the students of the science of religion as a universal religion; it proclaims itself as intended for all men without distinction of race or caste, and as in possession of absolute truth. ”

“ Yet the present generation accepts the antiquity of man as a mere matter of fact. Here, as so often elsewhere, the heresy of an elder day has come to seem almost an axiomatic truth.
If we go back in imagination to the beginning of the Victorian era and ask what was then known of the history of Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, we find ourselves confronted with a startling paucity of knowledge. ”

“ Thus the Church ever receives God and has a twofold nature; its sacraments through material and earthly elements impart a divine power; its teachings agree with the highest truths of philosophy and science, yet add to these the knowledge of mysteries which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive; it sanctifies human relationships, but the happiness of earth at purest and best is only a shadow of the divine bliss which belongs to the redeemed soul. ”

“ In the years of conflict that followed Gregory looked far beyond this point; he set his aim ever higher; until, in the end, his idea was to concentrate all ecclesiastical power in the hands of the pope, and to raise the papacy to the dominion of the world. Thus was to be realized the old dream of Augustine: that of a Kingdom of God on earth under the rule of the Church. But it was not given to Gregory to reach this goal, and his successors had to return again to the strife over investiture. ”

“ In the beginning Christianity had been the teacher of religion to highly civilized peoples—now it became the civilizing agent to the barbarians, the teacher of better customs, the upholder of law and the source of knowledge. ”

“ This school also represents historic Christianity, and maintains the continuity of its life through all the ages past with Christ himself. But this continuity is not then in theological systems or creeds, nor in sacraments and cult, nor in organization, but in the noble company of all who have lived in simple trust in God and love to humanity. It is this true Church of the spirit and purpose of Jesus which has been the supreme force for the uplifting of humanity.
Christianity has passed through too many changes, and it has found too many interpretations possible, to fear the time to come. ”

“ It was no longer the Jewish nation against the heathen empire, for the Jewish nation had ceased to be, and the empire and the Church were one. Salvation henceforth is not the descent of the New Jerusalem out of heaven, but the ascent of the saints to heaven; for the individual it is not the resurrection of the body but the immortality of the soul. So Jesus is no longer Christ or Messiah, but the Son of God. ”

“ In Catholic countries (notably in Ireland) great churches are still built out of the savings of a poverty-stricken peasantry; and from this point of view the destruction of churches in the 16th century was probably a benefit to the world. This, however, is a consideration altogether alien to the Christian spirit, the aspiration of which is to lay up treasures not on earth but in heaven.
The Reformation was a fateful epoch in the history of church architecture. The substitution of the Bible for the Mass destroyed the raison d’être of churches as the middle ages had made them. ”

“ The Christian Life.—The most notable thing about the life of the early Christians was their vivid sense of being a people of God, called and set apart. The Christian Church in their thought was a divine, not a human, institution. It was founded and controlled by God, and even the world was created for its sake (cf. the Shepherd of Hermas, Vis. ii. 4, and 2 Clement 14) . This conception, which came over from Judaism, controlled all the life of the early Christians both individual and social. They regarded themselves as separate from the rest of the world and bound together by peculiar ties. ”

“ In science the process has been reversed; nature ascends, so to speak, into the region of the supernatural and subdues it to itself; the marvellous or miraculous is brought under the domain of natural law, the canons of physics extend over metaphysics, and religion takes its place as one element in the natural relationship of man to his environment. Hence the new world-view threatens the foundations of the ecclesiastical edifice. This revolution in the world-view is no longer the possession of philosophers and scholars, but the multitude accepts it in part. ”

“ Though it has at times denied this spirit, been guilty of crimes, persecutions, wars and greed—still the Church has never quite forgotten him who went about doing good, nor freed itself from the contagion of his example. No age has been so responsive to the needs of man as our own; whatever doubts men have as to the doctrines or the cults there is an agreement wider than in the past in the good works whose inspiration is a divine love. ”

“ Using the word religion to cover all the imperfect ways in which men have felt after God, we note that in every case men have found the need alike of a teacher and of fellowship. Thus the idea of a church as “the pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Tim. iii. 15) corresponds to some of the primary needs of man. Even at Stonehenge, the oldest relic of prehistoric religion in England, where we picture in imagination the worship of the rising sun, nature worship degraded to a horrible depth by human sacrifice, we find struggling for expression the idea of a corporate religious life. ”

“ Is the authority of the church manifested in the decisions which a local church arrives at by a majority of votes, or in the decisions of apostles and prophets after taking counsel, of the episcopate in later times, ratified by common consent of Christendom? As has been well said, “the church is primarily a witness—the strength of its authority lies in the many sides from which the witness comes.” It witnesses to the Divine Life of Christ as a power of the present and of the future as of the past, ministered in the Word and sacraments. ”

“ This same purpose, namely, to hold fast to the historic Jesus, triumphed in the doctrine of the Trinity; Jesus was not to be resolved into an aeon or into some mysterious tertium quid, neither God nor man, but to be recognized as very God who redeemed the soul. Through him men were to understand the Father and to understand themselves as God’s children. Thus the doctrine of the Trinity satisfied at once the philosophic intelligence of scholars and the religious needs of Christians. ”

“ Contributing also to the growth of the Church was the zeal of its converts, the great majority of whom regarded themselves as missionaries and did what they could to extend the new faith. Christianity was essentially a proselytizing religion, not content to appeal simply to one class or race of people, and to be one among many faiths, but believing in the falsity or insufficiency of all others and eager to convert the whole world. ”

“ Christianity, with its one God, and its promise of redemption and a blessed immortality based upon divine revelation, met as no other contemporary faith did the awakening religious needs. It was a time also of great social unrest. With its principle of Christian brotherhood, its emphasis upon the equality of all believers in the sight of God, and its preaching of a new social order to be set up at the return of Christ, it appealed strongly to multitudes, particularly of the poorer classes. ”