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History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science

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Title: History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science


Author: John William Draper

Release date: February 1, 1998 [eBook #1185]
                Most recently updated: June 3, 2013

Language: English



*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF THE CONFLICT BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE ***



Produced by Charles Keller





HISTORY OF THE CONFLICT BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE

By John William Draper, M. D., LL. D.

PROFESSOR IN THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK,

     AUTHOR OF A TREATISE ON HUMAN PHYSIOLOGY, HISTORY OF THE
     INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPE, HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN
     CIVIL WAR, AND OF MANY EXPERIMENTAL MEMOIRS ON CHEMICAL AND
     OTHER SCIENTIFIC SUBJECTS




PREFACE.

WHOEVER has had an opportunity of becoming acquainted with the mental
condition of the intelligent classes in Europe and America, must have
perceived that there is a great and rapidly-increasing departure from
the public religious faith, and that, while among the more frank this
divergence is not concealed, there is a far more extensive and far more
dangerous secession, private and unacknowledged.

So wide-spread and so powerful is this secession, that it can neither be
treated with contempt nor with punishment. It cannot be extinguished by
derision, by vituperation, or by force. The time is rapidly approaching
when it will give rise to serious political results.

Ecclesiastical spirit no longer inspires the policy of the world.
Military fervor in behalf of faith has disappeared. Its only souvenirs
are the marble effigies of crusading knights, reposing in the silent
crypts of churches on their tombs.

That a crisis is impending is shown by the attitude of the great powers
toward the papacy. The papacy represents the ideas and aspirations
of two-thirds of the population of Europe. It insists on a political
supremacy in accordance with its claims to a divine origin and mission,
and a restoration of the mediaeval order of things, loudly declaring
that it will accept no reconciliation with modern civilization.

The antagonism we thus witness between Religion and Science is the
continuation of a struggle that commenced when Christianity began
to attain political power. A divine revelation must necessarily be
intolerant of contradiction; it must repudiate all improvement in
itself, and view with disdain that arising from the progressive
intellectual development of man. But our opinions on every subject are
continually liable to modification, from the irresistible advance of
human knowledge.

Can we exaggerate the importance of a contention in which every
thoughtful person must take part whether he will or not? In a matter so
solemn as that of religion, all men, whose temporal interests are not
involved in existing institutions, earnestly desire to find the truth.
They seek information as to the subjects in dispute, and as to the
conduct of the disputants.

The history of Science is not a mere record of isolated discoveries; it
is a narrative of the conflict of two contending powers, the expansive
force of the human intellect on one side, and the compression arising
from traditionary faith and human interests on the other.

No one has hitherto treated the subject from this point of view. Yet
from this point it presents itself to us as a living issue--in fact, as
the most important of all living issues.

A few years ago, it was the politic and therefore the proper course to
abstain from all allusion to this controversy, and to keep it as far as
possible in the background. The tranquillity of society depends so
much on the stability of its religious convictions, that no one can
be justified in wantonly disturbing them. But faith is in its nature
unchangeable, stationary; Science is in its nature progressive; and
eventually a divergence between them, impossible to conceal, must take
place. It then becomes the duty of those whose lives have made them
familiar with both modes of thought, to present modestly, but
firmly, their views; to compare the antagonistic pretensions calmly,
impartially, philosophically. History shows that, if this be not done,
social misfortunes, disastrous and enduring, will ensue. When the old
mythological religion of Europe broke down under the weight of its own
inconsistencies, neither the Roman emperors nor the philosophers of
those times did any thing adequate for the guidance of public opinion.
They left religious affairs to take their chance, and accordingly those
affairs fell into the hands of ignorant and infuriated ecclesiastics,
parasites, eunuchs, and slaves.

The intellectual night which settled on Europe, in consequence of that
great neglect of duty, is passing away; we live in the daybreak of
better things. Society is anxiously expecting light, to see in what
direction it is drifting. It plainly discerns that the track along which
the voyage of civilization has thus far been made, has been left; and
that a new departure, on all unknown sea, has been taken.

Though deeply impressed with such thoughts, I should not have presumed
to write this book, or to intrude on the public the ideas it presents,
had I not made the facts with which it deals a subject of long and
earnest meditation. And I have gathered a strong incentive to undertake
this duty from the circumstance that a "History of the Intellectual
Development of Europe," published by me several years ago, which has
passed through many editions in America, and has been reprinted in
numerous European languages, English, French, German, Russian, Polish,
Servian, etc., is everywhere received with favor.

In collecting and arranging the materials for the volumes I published
under the title of "A History of the American Civil War," a work of very
great labor, I had become accustomed to the comparison of conflicting
statements, the adjustment of conflicting claims. The approval with
which that book has been received by the American public, a critical
judge of the events considered, has inspired me with additional
confidence. I had also devoted much attention to the experimental
investigation of natural phenomena, and had published many well-known
memoirs on such subjects. And perhaps no one can give himself to these
pursuits, and spend a large part of his life in the public teaching of
science, without partaking of that love of impartiality and truth which
Philosophy incites. She inspires us with a desire to dedicate our days
to the good of our race, so that in the fading light of life's evening
we may not, on looking back, be forced to acknowledge how unsubstantial
and useless are the objects that we have pursued.

Though I have spared no pains in the composition of this book, I am
very sensible how unequal it is to the subject, to do justice to which
a knowledge of science, history, theology, politics, is required; every
page should be alive with intelligence and glistening with facts. But
then I have remembered that this is only as it were the preface, or
forerunner, of a body of literature, which the events and wants of our
times will call forth. We have come to the brink of a great intellectual
change. Much of the frivolous reading of the present will be supplanted
by a thoughtful and austere literature, vivified by endangered
interests, and made fervid by ecclesiastical passion.

What I have sought to do is, to present a clear and impartial statement
of the views and acts of the two contending parties. In one sense I have
tried to identify myself with each, so as to comprehend thoroughly their
motives; but in another and higher sense I have endeavored to stand
aloof, and relate with impartiality their actions.

I therefore trust that those, who may be disposed to criticise this
book, will bear in mind that its object is not to advocate the views
and pretensions of either party, but to explain clearly, and without
shrinking those of both. In the management of each chapter I have
usually set forth the orthodox view first, and then followed it with
that of its opponents.

In thus treating the subject it has not been necessary to pay much
regard to more moderate or intermediate opinions, for, though they may
be intrinsically of great value, in conflicts of this kind it is not
with the moderates but with the extremists that the impartial reader is
mainly concerned. Their movements determine the issue.

For this reason I have had little to say respecting the two great
Christian confessions, the Protestant and Greek Churches. As to the
latter, it has never, since the restoration of science, arrayed itself
in opposition to the advancement of knowledge. On the contrary, it has
always met it with welcome. It has observed a reverential attitude to
truth, from whatever quarter it might come. Recognizing the apparent
discrepancies between its interpretations of revealed truth and the
discoveries of science, it has always expected that satisfactory
explanations and reconciliations would ensue, and in this it has not
been disappointed. It would have been well for modern civilization if
the Roman Church had done the same.

In speaking of Christianity, reference is generally made to the
Roman Church, partly because its adherents compose the majority of
Christendom, partly because its demands are the most pretentious, and
partly because it has commonly sought to enforce those demands by
the civil power. None of the Protestant Churches has ever occupied a
position so imperious--none has ever had such wide-spread political
influence. For the most part they have been averse to constraint, and
except in very few instances their opposition has not passed beyond the
exciting of theological odium.

As to Science, she has never sought to ally herself to civil power. She
has never attempted to throw odium or inflict social ruin on any human
being. She has never subjected any one to mental torment, physical
torture, least of all to death, for the purpose of upholding or
promoting her ideas. She presents herself unstained by cruelties and
crimes. But in the Vatican--we have only to recall the Inquisition--the
hands that are now raised in appeals to the Most Merciful are crimsoned.
They have been steeped in blood!

There are two modes of historical composition, the artistic and the
scientific. The former implies that men give origin to events; it
therefore selects some prominent individual, pictures him under
a fanciful form, and makes him the hero of a romance. The latter,
insisting that human affairs present an unbroken chain, in which each
fact is the offspring of some preceding fact, and the parent of some
subsequent fact, declares that men do not control events, but that
events control men. The former gives origin to compositions, which,
however much they may interest or delight us, are but a grade above
novels; the latter is austere, perhaps even repulsive, for it sternly
impresses us with a conviction of the irresistible dominion of law, and
the insignificance of human exertions. In a subject so solemn as that to
which this book is devoted, the romantic and the popular are altogether
out of place. He who presumes to treat of it must fix his eyes
steadfastly on that chain of destiny which universal history displays;
he must turn with disdain from the phantom impostures of pontiffs and
statesmen and kings.

If any thing were needed to show us the untrustworthiness of artistic
historical compositions, our personal experience would furnish it. How
often do our most intimate friends fail to perceive the real motives of
our every-day actions; how frequently they misinterpret our intentions!
If this be the case in what is passing before our eyes, may we not
be satisfied that it is impossible to comprehend justly the doings of
persons who lived many years ago, and whom we have never seen.

In selecting and arranging the topics now to be presented, I have been
guided in part by "the Confession" of the late Vatican Council, and in
part by the order of events in history. Not without interest will the
reader remark that the subjects offer themselves to us now as they did
to the old philosophers of Greece. We still deal with the same questions
about which they disputed. What is God? What is the soul? What is the
world? How is it governed? Have we any standard or criterion of truth?
And the thoughtful reader will earnestly ask, "Are our solutions of
these problems any better than theirs?"

The general argument of this book, then, is as follows:

I first direct attention to the origin of modern science as
distinguished from ancient, by depending on observation, experiment,
and mathematical discussion, instead of mere speculation, and shall show
that it was a consequence of the Macedonian campaigns, which brought
Asia and Europe into contact. A brief sketch of those campaigns, and of
the Museum of Alexandria, illustrates its character.

Then with brevity I recall the well-known origin of Christianity, and
show its advance to the attainment of imperial power, the transformation
it underwent by its incorporation with paganism, the existing religion
of the Roman Empire. A clear conception of its incompatibility with
science caused it to suppress forcibly the Schools of Alexandria. It was
constrained to this by the political necessities of its position.

The parties to the conflict thus placed, I next relate the story of
their first open struggle; it is the first or Southern Reformation. The
point in dispute had respect to the nature of God. It involved the rise
of Mohammedanism. Its result was, that much of Asia and Africa, with the
historic cities Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Carthage, were wrenched from
Christendom, and the doctrine of the Unity of God established in the
larger portion of what had been the Roman Empire.

This political event was followed by the restoration of science, the
establishment of colleges, schools, libraries, throughout the dominions
of the Arabians. Those conquerors, pressing forward rapidly in their
intellectual development, rejected the anthropomorphic ideas of the
nature of God remaining in their popular belief, and accepted other more
philosophical ones, akin to those that had long previously been attained
to in India. The result of this was a second conflict, that respecting
the nature of the soul. Under the designation of Averroism, there came
into prominence the theories of Emanation and Absorption. At the
close of the middle ages the Inquisition succeeded in excluding those
doctrines from Europe, and now the Vatican Council has formally and
solemnly anathematized them.

Meantime, through the cultivation of astronomy, geography, and other
sciences, correct views had been gained as to the position and relations
of the earth, and as to the structure of the world; and since Religion,
resting itself on what was assumed to be the proper interpretation
of the Scriptures, insisted that the earth is the central and most
important part of the universe, a third conflict broke out. In this
Galileo led the way on the part of Science. Its issue was the overthrow
of the Church on the question in dispute. Subsequently a subordinate
controversy arose respecting the age of the world, the Church insisting
that it is only about six thousand years old. In this she was again
overthrown The light of history and of science had been gradually
spreading over Europe. In the sixteenth century the prestige of Roman
Christianity was greatly diminished by the intellectual reverses it
had experienced, and also by its political and moral condition. It was
clearly seen by many pious men that Religion was not accountable for
the false position in which she was found, but that the misfortune was
directly traceable to the alliance she had of old contracted with Roman
paganism. The obvious remedy, therefore, was a return to primitive
purity. Thus arose the fourth conflict, known to us as the
Reformation--the second or Northern Reformation. The special form it
assumed was a contest respecting the standard or criterion of
truth, whether it is to be found in the Church or in the Bible. The
determination of this involved a settlement of the rights of reason, or
intellectual freedom. Luther, who is the conspicuous man of the epoch,
carried into effect his intention with no inconsiderable success; and at
the close of the struggle it was found that Northern Europe was lost to
Roman Christianity.

We are now in the midst of a controversy respecting the mode of
government of the world, whether it be by incessant divine intervention,
or by the operation of primordial and unchangeable law. The intellectual
movement of Christendom has reached that point which Arabism had
attained to in the tenth and eleventh centuries; and doctrines which
were then discussed are presenting themselves again for review; such are
those of Evolution, Creation, Development.

Offered under these general titles, I think it will be found that all
the essential points of this great controversy are included. By grouping
under these comprehensive heads the facts to be considered, and dealing
with each group separately, we shall doubtless acquire clear views of
their inter-connection and their historical succession.

I have treated of these conflicts as nearly as I conveniently could in
their proper chronological order, and, for the sake of completeness,
have added chapters on--

An examination of what Latin Christianity has done for modern
civilization.

A corresponding examination of what Science has done.

The attitude of Roman Christianity in the impending conflict, as defined
by the Vatican Council.

The attention of many truth-seeking persons has been so exclusively
given to the details of sectarian dissensions, that the long strife, to
the history of which these pages are devoted, is popularly but little
known. Having tried to keep steadfastly in view the determination to
write this work in an impartial spirit, to speak with respect of the
contending parties, but never to conceal the truth, I commit it to the
considerate judgment of the thoughtful reader.

                              JOHN WILLIAM DRAPER

UNIVERSITY, NEW YORK, December, 1873.





HISTORY OF THE CONFLICT BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE.



CHAPTER I.

     THE ORIGIN OF SCIENCE.

     Religious condition of the Greeks in the fourth century
     before Christ.--Their invasion of the Persian Empire brings
     them in contact with new aspects of Nature, and familiarizes
     them with new religious systems.--The military,
     engineering, and scientific activity, stimulated by the
     Macedonian campaigns, leads to the establishment in
     Alexandria of an institute, the Museum, for the cultivation
     of knowledge by experiment, observation, and mathematical
     discussion.--It is the origin of Science.

GREEK MYTHOLOGY. No spectacle can be presented to the thoughtful
mind more solemn, more mournful, than that of the dying of an ancient
religion, which in its day has given consolation to many generations of
men.

Four centuries before the birth of Christ, Greece was fast outgrowing
her ancient faith. Her philosophers, in their studies of the world, had
been profoundly impressed with the contrast between the majesty of the
operations of Nature and the worthlessness of the divinities of Olympus.
Her historians, considering the orderly course of political affairs,
the manifest uniformity in the acts of men, and that there was no event
occurring before their eyes for which they could not find an obvious
cause in some preceding event, began to suspect that the miracles and
celestial interventions, with which the old annals were filled, were
only fictions. They demanded, when the age of the supernatural had
ceased, why oracles had become mute, and why there were now no more
prodigies in the world.

Traditions, descending from immemorial antiquity, and formerly accepted
by pious men as unquestionable truths, had filled the islands of
the Mediterranean and the conterminous countries with supernatural
wonders--enchantresses, sorcerers, giants, ogres, harpies, gorgons,
centaurs, cyclops. The azure vault was the floor of heaven; there Zeus,
surrounded by the gods with their wives and mistresses, held his court,
engaged in pursuits like those of men, and not refraining from acts of
human passion and crime.

A sea-coast broken by numerous indentations, an archipelago with some of
the most lovely islands in the world, inspired the Greeks with a taste
for maritime life, for geographical discovery, and colonization.
Their ships wandered all over the Black and Mediterranean Seas. The
time-honored wonders that had been glorified in the "Odyssey," and
sacred in public faith, were found to have no existence. As a better
knowledge of Nature was obtained, the sky was shown to be an illusion;
it was discovered that there is no Olympus, nothing above but space and
stars. With the vanishing of their habitation, the gods disappeared,
both those of the Ionian type of Homer and those of the Doric of Hesiod.

EFFECTS OF DISCOVERY AND CRITICISM. But this did not take place without
resistance. At first, the public, and particularly its religious
portion, denounced the rising doubts as atheism. They despoiled some
of the offenders of their goods, exiled others; some they put to death.
They asserted that what had been believed by pious men in the old times,
and had stood the test of ages, must necessarily be true. Then, as the
opposing evidence became irresistible, they were content to admit that
these marvels were allegories under which the wisdom of the ancients had
concealed many sacred and mysterious things. They tried to reconcile,
what now in their misgivings they feared might be myths, with their
advancing intellectual state. But their efforts were in vain, for there
are predestined phases through which on such an occasion public opinion
must pass. What it has received with veneration it begins to doubt, then
it offers new interpretations, then subsides into dissent, and ends with
a rejection of the whole as a mere fable.

In their secession the philosophers and historians were followed by
the poets. Euripides incurred the odium of heresy. Aeschylus narrowly
escaped being stoned to death for blasphemy. But the frantic efforts
of those who are interested in supporting delusions must always end in
defeat. The demoralization resistlessly extended through every branch of
literature, until at length it reached the common people.

THE PERSIAN EMPIRE. Greek philosophical criticism had lent its aid to
Greek philosophical discovery in this destruction of the national faith.
It sustained by many arguments the wide-spreading unbelief. It compared
the doctrines of the different schools with each other, and showed from
their contradictions that man has no criterion of truth; that, since his
ideas of what is good and what is evil differ according to the country
in which he lives, they can have no foundation in Nature, but must be
altogether the result of education; that right and wrong are nothing
more than fictions created by society for its own purposes. In Athens,
some of the more advanced classes had reached such a pass that they not
only denied the unseen, the supernatural, they even affirmed that the
world is only a day-dream, a phantasm, and that nothing at all exists.

The topographical configuration of Greece gave an impress to her
political condition. It divided her people into distinct communities
having conflicting interests, and made them incapable of centralization.
Incessant domestic wars between the rival states checked her
advancement. She was poor, her leading men had become corrupt. They were
ever ready to barter patriotic considerations for foreign gold, to sell
themselves for Persian bribes. Possessing a perception of the beautiful
as manifested in sculpture and architecture to a degree never
attained elsewhere either before or since, Greece had lost a practical
appreciation of the Good and the True.

While European Greece, full of ideas of liberty and independence,
rejected the sovereignty of Persia, Asiatic Greece acknowledged it
without reluctance. At that time the Persian Empire in territorial
extent was equal to half of modern Europe. It touched the waters of
the Mediterranean, the Aegean, the Black, the Caspian, the Indian, the
Persian, the Red Seas. Through its territories there flowed six of the
grandest rivers in the world--the Euphrates, the Tigris, the Indus, the
Jaxartes, the Oxus, the Nile, each more than a thousand miles in length.
Its surface reached from thirteen hundred feet below the sea-level to
twenty thousand feet above. It yielded, therefore, every agricultural
product. Its mineral wealth was boundless. It inherited the prestige of
the Median, the Babylonian, the Assyrian, the Chaldean Empires, whose
annals reached back through more than twenty centuries.

THE PERSIAN EMPIRE. Persia had always looked upon European Greece as
politically insignificant, for it had scarcely half the territorial
extent of one of her satrapies. Her expeditions for compelling its
obedience had, however, taught her the military qualities of its people.
In her forces were incorporated Greek mercenaries, esteemed the very
best of her troops. She did not hesitate sometimes to give the command
of her armies to Greek generals, of her fleets to Greek captains. In the
political convulsions through which she had passed, Greek soldiers had
often been used by her contending chiefs. These military operations were
attended by a momentous result. They revealed, to the quick eye of
these warlike mercenaries, the political weakness of the empire and
the possibility of reaching its centre. After the death of Cyrus on the
battle-field of Cunaxa, it was demonstrated, by the immortal retreat of
the ten thousand under Xenophon, that a Greek army could force its way
to and from the heart of Persia.

That reverence for the military abilities of Asiatic generals, so
profoundly impressed on the Greeks by such engineering exploits as the
bridging of the Hellespont, and the cutting of the isthmus at Mount
Athos by Xerxes, had been obliterated at Salamis, Platea, Mycale. To
plunder rich Persian provinces had become an irresistible temptation.
Such was the expedition of Agesilaus, the Spartan king, whose brilliant
successes were, however, checked by the Persian government resorting to
its time-proved policy of bribing the neighbors of Sparta to attack her.
"I have been conquered by thirty thousand Persian archers," bitterly
exclaimed Agesilaus, as he re-embarked, alluding to the Persian coin,
the Daric, which was stamped with the image of an archer.

THE INVASION OF PERSIA BY GREECE. At length Philip, the King of Macedon,
projected a renewal of these attempts, under a far more formidable
organization, and with a grander object. He managed to have himself
appointed captain-general of all Greece not for the purpose of a mere
foray into the Asiatic satrapies, but for the overthrow of the Persian
dynasty in the very centre of its power. Assassinated while his
preparations were incomplete, he was succeeded by his son Alexander,
then a youth. A general assembly of Greeks at Corinth had unanimously
elected him in his father's stead. There were some disturbances in
Illyria; Alexander had to march his army as far north as the Danube to
quell them. During his absence the Thebans with some others conspired
against him. On his return he took Thebes by assault. He massacred
six thousand of its inhabitants, sold thirty thousand for slaves, and
utterly demolished the city. The military wisdom of this severity was
apparent in his Asiatic campaign. He was not troubled by any revolt in
his rear.

THE MACEDONIAN CAMPAIGN. In the spring B.C. 334 Alexander crossed the
Hellespont into Asia. His army consisted of thirty-four thousand foot
and four thousand horse. He had with him only seventy talents in money.
He marched directly on the Persian army, which, vastly exceeding him in
strength, was holding the line of the Granicus. He forced the passage of
the river, routed the enemy, and the possession of all Asia Minor, with
its treasures, was the fruit of the victory. The remainder of that
year he spent in the military organization of the conquered provinces.
Meantime Darius, the Persian king, had advanced an army of six hundred
thousand men to prevent the passage of the Macedonians into Syria. In
a battle that ensued among the mountain-defiles at Issus, the Persians
were again overthrown. So great was the slaughter that Alexander, and
Ptolemy, one of his generals, crossed over a ravine choked with dead
bodies. It was estimated that the Persian loss was not less than ninety
thousand foot and ten thousand horse. The royal pavilion fell into the
conqueror's hands, and with it the wife and several of the children of
Darius. Syria was thus added to the Greek conquests. In Damascus were
found many of the concubines of Darius and his chief officers, together
with a vast treasure.

Before venturing into the plains of Mesopotamia for the final struggle,
Alexander, to secure his rear and preserve his communications with the
sea, marched southward down the Mediterranean coast, reducing the cities
in his way. In his speech before the council of war after Issus, he told
his generals that they must not pursue Darius with Tyre unsubdued, and
Persia in possession of Egypt and Cyprus, for, if Persia should regain
her seaports, she would transfer the war into Greece, and that it was
absolutely necessary for him to be sovereign at sea. With Cyprus and
Egypt in his possession he felt no solicitude about Greece. The siege
of Tyre cost him more than half a year. In revenge for this delay,
he crucified, it is said, two thousand of his prisoners. Jerusalem
voluntarily surrendered, and therefore was treated leniently: but the
passage of the Macedonian army into Egypt being obstructed at Gaza, the
Persian governor of which, Betis, made a most obstinate defense, that
place, after a siege of two months, was carried by assault, ten thousand
of its men were massacred, and the rest, with their wives and children,
sold into slavery. Betis himself was dragged alive round the city at the
chariot-wheels of the conqueror. There was now no further obstacle. The
Egyptians, who detested the Persian rule, received their invader with
open arms. He organized the country in his own interest, intrusting
all its military commands to Macedonian officers, and leaving the civil
government in the hands of native Egyptians.

CONQUEST OF EGYPT. While preparations for the final campaign were being
made, he undertook a journey to the temple of Jupiter Ammon, which was
situated in an oasis of the Libyan Desert, at a distance of two hundred
miles. The oracle declared him to be a son of that god who, under
the form of a serpent, had beguiled Olympias, his mother. Immaculate
conceptions and celestial descents were so currently received in those
days, that whoever had greatly distinguished himself in the affairs of
men was thought to be of supernatural lineage. Even in Rome, centuries
later, no one could with safety have denied that the city owed its
founder, Romulus, to an accidental meeting of the god Mars with the
virgin Rhea Sylvia, as she went with her pitcher for water to the
spring. The Egyptian disciples of Plato would have looked with anger on
those who rejected the legend that Perictione, the mother of that
great philosopher, a pure virgin, had suffered an immaculate conception
through the influences of Apollo, and that the god had declared to
Ariston, to whom she was betrothed, the parentage of the child. When
Alexander issued his letters, orders, and decrees, styling himself "King
Alexander, the son of Jupiter Ammon," they came to the inhabitants of
Egypt and Syria with an authority that now can hardly be realized. The
free-thinking Greeks, however, put on such a supernatural pedigree its
proper value. Olympias, who, of course, better than all others knew the
facts of the case, used jestingly to say, that "she wished Alexander
would cease from incessantly embroiling her with Jupiter's wife."
Arrian, the historian of the Macedonian expedition, observes, "I cannot
condemn him for endeavoring to draw his subjects into the belief of his
divine origin, nor can I be induced to think it any great crime, for it
is very reasonable to imagine that he intended no more by it than merely
to procure the greater authority among his soldiers."

GREEK CONQUEST OF PERSIA. All things being thus secured in his rear,
Alexander, having returned into Syria, directed the march of his army,
now consisting of fifty thousand veterans, eastward. After crossing the
Euphrates, he kept close to the Masian hills, to avoid the intense heat
of the more southerly Mesopotamian plains; more abundant forage could
also thus be procured for the cavalry. On the left bank of the Tigris,
near Arbela, he encountered the great army of eleven hundred thousand
men brought up by Darius from Babylon. The death of the Persian monarch,
which soon followed the defeat he suffered, left the Macedonian general
master of all the countries from the Danube to the Indus. Eventually he
extended his conquest to the Ganges. The treasures he seized are almost
beyond belief. At Susa alone he found--so Arrian says--fifty thousand
talents in money.

EVENTS OF THE CAMPAIGNS. The modern military student cannot look
upon these wonderful campaigns without admiration. The passage of the
Hellespont; the forcing of the Granicus; the winter spent in a political
organization of conquered Asia Minor; the march of the right wing and
centre of the army along the Syrian Mediterranean coast; the engineering
difficulties overcome at the siege of Tyre; the storming of Gaza; the
isolation of Persia from Greece; the absolute exclusion of her navy from
the Mediterranean; the check on all her attempts at intriguing with
or bribing Athenians or Spartans, heretofore so often resorted to with
success; the submission of Egypt; another winter spent in the political
organization of that venerable country; the convergence of the whole
army from the Black and Red Seas toward the nitre-covered plains of
Mesopotamia in the ensuing spring; the passage of the Euphrates fringed
with its weeping-willows at the broken bridge of Thapsacus; the crossing
of the Tigris; the nocturnal reconnaissance before the great and
memorable battle of Arbela; the oblique movement on the field; the
piercing of the enemy's centre--a manoeuvre destined to be repeated
many centuries subsequently at Austerlitz; the energetic pursuit of
the Persian monarch; these are exploits not surpassed by any soldier of
later times.

A prodigious stimulus was thus given to Greek intellectual activity.
There were men who had marched with the Macedonian army from the Danube
to the Nile, from the Nile to the Ganges. They had felt the hyperborean
blasts of the countries beyond the Black Sea, the simooms and
sand-tempests of the Egyptian deserts. They had seen the Pyramids which
had already stood for twenty centuries, the hieroglyph-covered obelisks
of Luxor, avenues of silent and mysterious sphinxes, colossi of monarchs
who reigned in the morning of the world. In the halls of Esar-haddon
they had stood before the thrones of grim old Assyrian kings, guarded by
winged bulls. In Babylon there still remained its walls, once more than
sixty miles in compass, and, after the ravages of three centuries and
three conquerors, still more than eighty feet in height; there were
still the ruins of the temple of cloud encompassed Bel, on its top was
planted the observatory wherein the weird Chaldean astronomers had held
nocturnal communion with the stars; still there were vestiges of the two
palaces with their hanging gardens in which were great trees growing in
mid-air, and the wreck of the hydraulic machinery that had supplied
them with water from the river. Into the artificial lake with its vast
apparatus of aqueducts and sluices the melted snows of the Armenian
mountains found their way, and were confined in their course through
the city by the embankments of the Euphrates. Most wonderful of all,
perhaps, was the tunnel under the river-bed.

EFFECT ON THE GREEK ARMY. If Chaldea, Assyria, Babylon, presented
stupendous and venerable antiquities reaching far back into the night of
time, Persia was not without her wonders of a later date. The pillared
halls of Persepolis were filled with miracles of art--carvings,
sculptures, enamels, alabaster libraries, obelisks, sphinxes, colossal
bulls. Ecbatana, the cool summer retreat of the Persian kings, was
defended by seven encircling walls of hewn and polished blocks, the
interior ones in succession of increasing height, and of different
colors, in astrological accordance with the seven planets. The palace
was roofed with silver tiles, its beams were plated with gold. At
midnight, in its halls the sunlight was rivaled by many a row of naphtha
cressets. A paradise--that luxury of the monarchs of the East--was
planted in the midst of the city. The Persian Empire, from the
Hellespont to the Indus, was truly the garden of the world.

EFFECTS ON THE GREEK ARMY. I have devoted a few pages to the story of
these marvelous campaigns, for the military talent they fostered led
to the establishment of the mathematical and practical schools of
Alexandria, the true origin of science. We trace back all our exact
knowledge to the Macedonian campaigns. Humboldt has well observed that
an introduction to new and grand objects of Nature enlarges the human
mind. The soldiers of Alexander and the hosts of his camp-followers
encountered at every march unexpected and picturesque scenery. Of all
men, the Greeks were the most observant, the most readily and profoundly
impressed. Here there were interminable sandy plains, there mountains
whose peaks were lost above the clouds. In the deserts were mirages,
on the hill-sides shadows of fleeting clouds sweeping over the forests.
They were in a land of amber-colored date-palms and cypresses, of
tamarisks, green myrtles, and oleanders. At Arbela they had fought
against Indian elephants; in the thickets of the Caspian they had roused
from his lair the lurking royal tiger. They had seen animals which,
compared with those of Europe, were not only strange, but colossal--the
rhinoceros, the hippopotamus, the camel, the crocodiles of the Nile
and the Ganges. They had encountered men of many complexions and many
costumes: the swarthy Syrian, the olive-colored Persian, the black
African. Even of Alexander himself it is related that on his death-bed
he caused his admiral, Nearchus, to sit by his side, and found
consolation in listening to the adventures of that sailor--the story of
his voyage from the Indus up the Persian Gulf. The conqueror had seen
with astonishment the ebbing and flowing of the tides. He had built
ships for the exploration of the Caspian, supposing that it and
the Black Sea might be gulfs of a great ocean, such as Nearchus had
discovered the Persian and Red Seas to be. He had formed a resolution
that his fleet should attempt the circumnavigation of Africa, and come
into the Mediterranean through the Pillars of Hercules--a feat which, it
was affirmed, had once been accomplished by the Pharaohs.

INTELLECTUAL CONDITION OF PERSIA. Not only her greatest soldiers, but
also her greatest philosophers, found in the conquered empire much that
might excite the admiration of Greece. Callisthenes obtained in Babylon
a series of Chaldean astronomical observations ranging back through
1,903 years; these he sent to Aristotle. Perhaps, since they were on
burnt bricks, duplicates of them may be recovered by modern research
in the clay libraries of the Assyrian kings. Ptolemy, the Egyptian
astronomer, possessed a Babylonian record of eclipses, going back
747 years before our era. Long-continued and close observations were
necessary, before some of these astronomical results that have reached
our times could have been ascertained. Thus the Babylonians had fixed
the length of a tropical year within twenty-five seconds of the truth;
their estimate of the sidereal year was barely two minutes in excess.
They had detected the precession of the equinoxes. They knew the causes
of eclipses, and, by the aid of their cycle called Saros, could predict
them. Their estimate of the value of that cycle, which is more than
6,585 days, was within nineteen and a half minutes of the truth.

INTELLECTUAL CONDITION OF PERSIA. Such facts furnish incontrovertible
proof of the patience and skill with which astronomy had been cultivated
in Mesopotamia, and that, with very inadequate instrumental means, it
had reached no inconsiderable perfection. These old observers had made
a catalogue of the stars, had divided the zodiac into twelve signs; they
had parted the day into twelve hours, the night into twelve. They had,
as Aristotle says, for a long time devoted themselves to observations of
star-occultations by the moon. They had correct views of the structure
of the solar system, and knew the order of the emplacement of the
planets. They constructed sundials, clepsydras, astrolabes, gnomons.

Not without interest do we still look on specimens of their method of
printing. Upon a revolving roller they engraved, in cuneiform letters,
their records, and, running this over plastic clay formed into blocks,
produced ineffaceable proofs. From their tile-libraries we are still
to reap a literary and historical harvest. They were not without some
knowledge of optics. The convex lens found at Nimroud shows that they
were not unacquainted with magnifying instruments. In arithmetic they
had detected the value of position in the digits, though they missed the
grand Indian invention of the cipher.

What a spectacle for the conquering Greeks, who, up to this time, had
neither experimented nor observed! They had contented themselves with
mere meditation and useless speculation.

ITS RELIGIOUS CONDITION. But Greek intellectual development, due thus
in part to a more extended view of Nature, was powerfully aided by the
knowledge then acquired of the religion of the conquered country. The
idolatry of Greece had always been a horror to Persia, who, in her
invasions, had never failed to destroy the temples and insult the fanes
of the bestial gods. The impunity with which these sacrileges had
been perpetrated had made a profound impression, and did no little to
undermine Hellenic faith. But now the worshiper of the vile Olympian
divinities, whose obscene lives must have been shocking to every
pious man, was brought in contact with a grand, a solemn, a consistent
religious system having its foundation on a philosophical basis. Persia,
as is the case with all empires of long duration, had passed through
many changes of religion. She had followed the Monotheism of Zoroaster;
had then accepted Dualism, and exchanged that for Magianism. At the time
of the Macedonian expedition, she recognized one universal Intelligence,
the Creator, Preserver, and Governor of all things, the most holy
essence of truth, the giver of all good. He was not to be represented by
any image, or any graven form. And, since, in every thing here below, we
see the resultant of two opposing forces, under him were two coequal and
coeternal principles, represented by the imagery of Light and Darkness.
These principles are in never-ending conflict. The world is their
battle-ground, man is their prize.

In the old legends of Dualism, the Evil Spirit was said to have sent
a serpent to ruin the paradise which the Good Spirit had made. These
legends became known to the Jews during their Babylonian captivity.

The existence of a principle of evil is the necessary incident of the
existence of a principle of good, as a shadow is the necessary incident
of the presence of light. In this manner could be explained the
occurrence of evil in a world, the maker and ruler of which is supremely
good. Each of the personified principles of light and darkness, Ormuzd
and Ahriman, had his subordinate angels, his counselors, his armies. It
is the duty of a good man to cultivate truth, purity, and industry. He
may look forward, when this life is over, to a life in another world,
and trust to a resurrection of the body, the immortality of the soul,
and a conscious future existence.

In the later years of the empire, the principles of Magianism had
gradually prevailed more and more over those of Zoroaster. Magianism was
essentially a worship of the elements. Of these, fire was considered as
the most worthy representative of the Supreme Being. On altars erected,
not in temples, but under the blue canopy of the sky, perpetual fires
were kept burning, and the rising sun was regarded as the noblest object
of human adoration. In the society of Asia, nothing is visible but the
monarch; in the expanse of heaven, all objects vanish in presence of the
sun.

DEATH OF ALEXANDER. Prematurely cut off in the midst of many great
projects Alexander died at Babylon before he had completed his
thirty-third year (B.C. 323). There was a suspicion that he had been
poisoned. His temper had become so unbridled, his passion so ferocious,
that his generals and even his intimate friends lived in continual
dread. Clitus, one of the latter, he in a moment of fury had stabbed to
the heart. Callisthenes, the intermedium between himself and Aristotle,
he had caused to be hanged, or, as was positively asserted by some who
knew the facts, had had him put upon the rack and then crucified. It
may have been in self-defense that the conspirators resolved on his
assassination. But surely it was a calumny to associate the name of
Aristotle with this transaction. He would have rather borne the worst
that Alexander could inflict, than have joined in the perpetration of so
great a crime.

A scene of confusion and bloodshed lasting many years ensued, nor did it
cease even after the Macedonian generals had divided the empire. Among
its vicissitudes one incident mainly claims our attention. Ptolemy, who
was a son of King Philip by Arsinoe, a beautiful concubine, and who
in his boyhood had been driven into exile with Alexander, when they
incurred their father's displeasure, who had been Alexander's comrade
in many of his battles and all his campaigns, became governor and
eventually king of Egypt.

FOUNDATION OF ALEXANDER. At the siege of Rhodes, Ptolemy had been of
such signal service to its citizens that in gratitude they paid divine
honors to him, and saluted him with the title of Soter (the Savior).
By that designation--Ptolemy Soter--he is distinguished from succeeding
kings of the Macedonian dynasty in Egypt.

He established his seat of government not in any of the old capitals
of the country, but in Alexandria. At the time of the expedition to
the temple of Jupiter Ammon, the Macedonian conqueror had caused the
foundations of that city to be laid, foreseeing that it might be
made the commercial entrepot between Asia and Europe. It is to be
particularly remarked that not only did Alexander himself deport many
Jews from Palestine to people the city, and not only did Ptolemy Soter
bring one hundred thousand more after his siege of Jerusalem, but
Philadelphus, his successor, redeemed from slavery one hundred and
ninety-eight thousand of that people, paying their Egyptian owners a
just money equivalent for each. To all these Jews the same privileges
were accorded as to the Macedonians. In consequence of this considerate
treatment, vast numbers of their compatriots and many Syrians
voluntarily came into Egypt. To them the designation of Hellenistical
Jews was given. In like manner, tempted by the benign government of
Soter, multitudes of Greeks sought refuge in the country, and the
invasions of Perdiccas and Antigonus showed that Greek soldiers would
desert from other Macedonian generals to join is armies.

The population of Alexandria was therefore of three distinct
nationalities: 1. Native Egyptians 2. Greeks; 3. Jews--a fact that has
left an impress on the religious faith of modern Europe.

Greek architects and Greek engineers had made Alexandria the most
beautiful city of the ancient world. They had filled it with magnificent
palaces, temples, theatres. In its centre, at the intersection of its
two grand avenues, which crossed each other at right angles, and in the
midst of gardens, fountains, obelisks, stood the mausoleum, in
which, embalmed after the manner of the Egyptians, rested the body of
Alexander. In a funereal journey of two years it had been brought with
great pomp from Babylon. At first the coffin was of pure gold, but
this having led to a violation of the tomb, it was replaced by one of
alabaster. But not these, not even the great light-house, Pharos, built
of blocks of white marble and so high that the fire continually burning
on its top could be seen many miles off at sea--the Pharos counted
as one of the seven wonders of the world--it is not these magnificent
achievements of architecture that arrest our attention; the true, the
most glorious monument of the Macedonian kings of Egypt is the Museum.
Its influences will last when even the Pyramids have passed away.

THE ALEXANDRIAN MUSEUM. The Alexandrian Museum was commenced by Ptolemy
Soter, and was completed by his son Ptolemy Philadelphus. It was
situated in the Bruchion, the aristocratic quarter of the city,
adjoining the king's palace. Built of marble, it was surrounded with
a piazza, in which the residents might walk and converse together. Its
sculptured apartments contained the Philadelphian library, and were
crowded with the choicest statues and pictures. This library eventually
comprised four hundred thousand volumes. In the course of time, probably
on account of inadequate accommodation for so many books, an additional
library was established in the adjacent quarter Rhacotis, and placed
in the Serapion or temple of Serapis. The number of volumes in this
library, which was called the Daughter of that in the Museum, was
eventually three hundred thousand. There were, therefore, seven hundred
thousand volumes in these royal collections.

Alexandria was not merely the capital of Egypt, it was the intellectual
metropolis of the world. Here it was truly said the Genius of the East
met the Genius of the West, and this Paris of antiquity became a focus
of fashionable dissipation and universal skepticism. In the allurements
of its bewitching society even the Jews forgot their patriotism. They
abandoned the language of their forefathers, and adopted Greek.

In the establishment of the Museum, Ptolemy Soter and his son
Philadelphus had three objects in view: 1. The perpetuation of such
knowledge as was then in the world; 2. Its increase; 3. Its diffusion.

1. For the perpetuation of knowledge. Orders were given to the chief
librarian to buy at the king's expense whatever books he could. A body
of transcribers was maintained in the Museum, whose duty it was to make
correct copies of such works as their owners were not disposed to sell.
Any books brought by foreigners into Egypt were taken at once to the
Museum, and, when correct copies had been made, the transcript was given
to the owner, and the original placed in the library. Often a very large
pecuniary indemnity was paid. Thus it is said of Ptolemy Euergetes
that, having obtained from Athens the works of Euripides, Sophocles,
and Aeschylus, he sent to their owners transcripts, together with about
fifteen thousand dollars, as an indemnity. On his return from the Syrian
expedition he carried back in triumph all the Egyptian monuments from
Ecbatana and Susa, which Cambyses and other invaders had removed from
Egypt. These he replaced in their original seats, or added as adornments
to his museums. When works were translated as well as transcribed, sums
which we should consider as almost incredible were paid, as was the
case with the Septuagint translation of the Bible, ordered by Ptolemy
Philadelphus.

2. For the increase of knowledge. One of the chief objects of the Museum
was that of serving as the home of a body of men who devoted themselves
to study, and were lodged and maintained at the king's expense.
Occasionally he himself sat at their table. Anecdotes connected with
those festive occasions have descended to our times. In the original
organization of the Museum the residents were divided into four
faculties--literature; mathematics, astronomy, medicine. Minor branches
were appropriately classified under one of these general heads; thus
natural history was considered to be a branch of medicine. An officer of
very great distinction presided over the establishment, and had general
charge of its interests. Demetrius Phalareus, perhaps the most learned
man of his age, who had been governor of Athens for many years, was the
first so appointed. Under him was the librarian, an office sometimes
held by men whose names have descended to our times, as Eratosthenes,
and Apollonius Rhodius.

ORGANIZATION OF THE MUSEUM. In connection with the Museum were a
botanical and a zoological garden. These gardens, as their names import,
were for the purpose of facilitating the study of plants and animals.
There was also an astronomical observatory containing armillary spheres,
globes, solstitial and equatorial armils, astrolabes, parallactic
rules, and other apparatus then in use, the graduation on the divided
instruments being into degrees and sixths. On the floor of this
observatory a meridian line was drawn. The want of correct means of
measuring time and temperature was severely felt; the clepsydra of
Ctesibius answered very imperfectly for the former, the hydrometer
floating in a cup of water for the latter; it measured variations of
temperature by variations of density. Philadelphus, who toward the close
of his life was haunted with an intolerable dread of death, devoted much
of his time to the discovery of an elixir. For such pursuits the Museum
was provided with a chemical laboratory. In spite of the prejudices of
the age, and especially in spite of Egyptian prejudices, there was
in connection with the medical department an anatomical room for the
dissection, not only of the dead, but actually of the living, who for
crimes had been condemned.

3. For the diffusion of knowledge. In the Museum was given, by lectures,
conversation, or other appropriate methods instruction in all the
various departments of human knowledge. There flocked to this great
intellectual centre, students from all countries. It is said that at one
time not fewer than fourteen thousand were in attendance. Subsequently
even the Christian church received from it some of the most eminent of
its Fathers, as Clemens Alexandrinus, Origen, Athanasius.

The library in the Museum was burnt during the siege of Alexandria by
Julius Caesar. To make amends for this great loss, that collected
by Eumenes, King of Pergamus, was presented by Mark Antony to Queen
Cleopatra. Originally it was founded as a rival to that of the
Ptolemies. It was added to the collection in the Serapion.

SCIENTIFIC SCHOOL OF THE MUSEUM. It remains now to describe briefly the
philosophical basis of the Museum, and some of its contributions to the
stock of human knowledge.

In memory of the illustrious founder of this most noble institution--an
institution which antiquity delighted to call "The divine school of
Alexandria"--we must mention in the first rank his "History of the
Campaigns of Alexander." Great as a soldier and as a sovereign, Ptolemy
Soter added to his glory by being an author. Time, which has not been
able to destroy the memory of our obligations to him, has dealt unjustly
by his work. It is not now extant.

As might be expected from the friendship that existed between Alexander,
Ptolemy, and Aristotle, the Aristotelian philosophy was the intellectual
corner-stone on which the Museum rested. King Philip had committed the
education of Alexander to Aristotle, and during the Persian campaigns
the conqueror contributed materially, not only in money, but otherwise,
toward the "Natural History" then in preparation.

The essential principle of the Aristotelian philosophy was, to rise
from the study of particulars to a knowledge of general principles or
universals, advancing to them by induction. The induction is the
more certain as the facts on which it is based are more numerous; its
correctness is established if it should enable us to predict other facts
until then unknown. This system implies endless toil in the collection
of facts, both by experiment and observation; it implies also a close
meditation on them. It is, therefore, essentially a method of labor
and of reason, not a method of imagination. The failures that Aristotle
himself so often exhibits are no proof of its unreliability, but
rather of its trustworthiness. They are failures arising from want of a
sufficiency of facts.

ETHICAL SCHOOL OF THE MUSEUM. Some of the general results at which
Aristotle arrived are very grand. Thus, he concluded that every thing is
ready to burst into life, and that the various organic forms presented
to us by Nature are those which existing conditions permit. Should
the conditions change, the forms will also change. Hence there is an
unbroken chain from the simple element through plants and animals up to
man, the different groups merging by insensible shades into each other.

The inductive philosophy thus established by Aristotle is a method of
great power. To it all the modern advances in science are due. In
its most improved form it rises by inductions from phenomena to their
causes, and then, imitating the method of the Academy, it descends by
deductions from those causes to the detail of phenomena.

While thus the Scientific School of Alexandria was founded on the maxims
of one great Athenian philosopher, the Ethical School was founded on the
maxims of another, for Zeno, though a Cypriote or Phoenician, had for
many years been established at Athens. His disciples took the name of
Stoics. His doctrines long survived him, and, in times when there was no
other consolation for man, offered a support in the hour of trial, and
an unwavering guide in the vicissitudes of life, not only to illustrious
Greeks, but also to many of the great philosophers, statesmen, generals,
and emperors of Rome.

THE PRINCIPLES OF STOICISM. The aim of Zeno was, to furnish a guide
for the daily practice of life, to make men virtuous. He insisted that
education is the true foundation of virtue, for, if we know what is
good, we shall incline to do it. We must trust to sense, to furnish the
data of knowledge, and reason will suitably combine them. In this the
affinity of Zeno to Aristotle is plainly seen. Every appetite, lust,
desire, springs from imperfect knowledge. Our nature is imposed upon
us by Fate, but we must learn to control our passions, and live free,
intelligent, virtuous, in all things in accordance with reason. Our
existence should be intellectual, we should survey with equanimity all
pleasures and all pains. We should never forget that we are freemen, not
the slaves of society. "I possess," said the Stoic, "a treasure which
not all the world can rob me of--no one can deprive me of death." We
should remember that Nature in her operations aims at the universal, and
never spares individuals, but uses them as means for the accomplishment
of her ends. It is, therefore, for us to submit to Destiny, cultivating,
as the things necessary to virtue, knowledge, temperance, fortitude,
justice. We must remember that every thing around us is in mutation;
decay follows reproduction, and reproduction decay, and that it is
useless to repine at death in a world where every thing is dying. As a
cataract shows from year to year an invariable shape, though the water
composing it is perpetually changing, so the aspect of Nature is nothing
more than a flow of matter presenting an impermanent form. The universe,
considered as a whole, is unchangeable. Nothing is eternal but
space, atoms, force. The forms of Nature that we see are essentially
transitory, they must all pass away.

STOICISM IN THE MUSEUM. We must bear in mind that the majority of men
are imperfectly educated, and hence we must not needlessly offend the
religious ideas of our age. It is enough for us ourselves to know that,
though there is a Supreme Power, there is no Supreme Being. There is an
invisible principle, but not a personal God, to whom it would be not
so much blasphemy as absurdity to impute the form, the sentiments, the
passions of man. All revelation is, necessarily, a mere fiction. That
which men call chance is only the effect of an unknown cause. Even of
chances there is a law. There is no such thing as Providence, for Nature
proceeds under irresistible laws, and in this respect the universe is
only a vast automatic engine. The vital force which pervades the world
is what the illiterate call God. The modifications through which all
things are running take place in an irresistible way, and hence it may
be said that the progress of the world is, under Destiny, like a seed,
it can evolve only in a predetermined mode.

The soul of man is a spark of the vital flame, the general vital
principle. Like heat, it passes from one to another, and is finally
reabsorbed or reunited in the universal principle from which it came.
Hence we must not expect annihilation, but reunion; and, as the tired
man looks forward to the insensibility of sleep, so the philosopher,
weary of the world, should look forward to the tranquillity of
extinction. Of these things, however, we should think doubtingly, since
the mind can produce no certain knowledge from its internal resources
alone. It is unphilosophical to inquire into first causes; we must deal
only with phenomena. Above all, we must never forget that man cannot
ascertain absolute truth, and that the final result of human inquiry
into the matter is, that we are incapable of perfect knowledge; that,
even if the truth be in our possession, we cannot be sure of it.

What, then, remains for us? Is it not this--the acquisition of
knowledge, the cultivation of virtue and of friendship, the observance
of faith and truth, an unrepining submission to whatever befalls us, a
life led in accordance with reason?

PLATONISM IN THE MUSEUM. But, though the Alexandrian Museum was
especially intended for the cultivation of the Aristotelian philosophy,
it must not be supposed that other systems were excluded. Platonism was
not only carried to its full development, but in the end it supplanted
Peripateticism, and through the New Academy left a permanent impress on
Christianity. The philosophical method of Plato was the inverse of that
of Aristotle. Its starting-point was universals, the very existence of
which was a matter of faith, and from these it descended to particulars,
or details. Aristotle, on the contrary, rose from particulars to
universals, advancing to them by inductions.

Plato, therefore, trusted to the imagination, Aristotle to reason.
The former descended from the decomposition of a primitive idea into
particulars, the latter united particulars into a general conception.
Hence the method of Plato was capable of quickly producing what seemed
to be splendid, though in reality unsubstantial results; that of
Aristotle was more tardy in its operation, but much more solid. It
implied endless labor in the collection of facts, a tedious resort
to experiment and observation, the application of demonstration. The
philosophy of Plato is a gorgeous castle in the air; that of Aristotle
a solid structure, laboriously, and with many failures, founded on the
solid rock.

An appeal to the imagination is much more alluring than the employment
of reason. In the intellectual decline of Alexandria, indolent methods
were preferred to laborious observation and severe mental exercise. The
schools of Neo-Platonism were crowded with speculative mystics, such
as Ammonius Saccas and Plotinus. These took the place of the severe
geometers of the old Museum.

PHYSICAL SCIENCE IN THE MUSEUM. The Alexandrian school offers the first
example of that system which, in the hands of modern physicists, has
led to such wonderful results. It rejected imagination, and made its
theories the expression of facts obtained by experiment and observation,
aided by mathematical discussion. It enforced the principle that the
true method of studying Nature is by experimental interrogation. The
researches of Archimedes in specific gravity, and the works of
Ptolemy on optics, resemble our present investigations in experimental
philosophy, and stand in striking contrast with the speculative vagaries
of the older writers. Laplace says that the only observation which the
history of astronomy offers us, made by the Greeks before the school
of Alexandria, is that of the summer solstice of the year B.C. 432.
by Meton and Euctemon. We have, for the first time, in that school,
a combined system of observations made with instruments for the
measurement of angles, and calculated by trigonometrical methods.
Astronomy then took a form which subsequent ages could only perfect.


It does not accord with the compass or the intention of this work to
give a detailed account of the contributions of the Alexandrian Museum
to the stock of human knowledge. It is sufficient that the reader should
obtain a general impression of their character. For particulars, I
may refer him to the sixth chapter of my "History of the Intellectual
Development of Europe."

EUCLID--ARCHIMEDES. It has just been remarked that the Stoical
philosophy doubted whether the mind can ascertain absolute truth. While
Zeno was indulging in such doubts, Euclid was preparing his great work,
destined to challenge contradiction from the whole human race. After
more than twenty-two centuries it still survives, a model of accuracy,
perspicuity, and a standard of exact demonstration. This great geometer
not only wrote on other mathematical topics, such as Conic Sections and
Prisms, but there are imputed to him treatises on Harmonics and Optics,
the latter subject being discussed on the hypothesis of rays issuing
from the eye to the object.

With the Alexandrian mathematicians and physicists must be classed
Archimedes, though he eventually resided in Sicily. Among his
mathematical works were two books on the Sphere and Cylinder, in
which he gave the demonstration that the solid content of a sphere is
two-thirds that of its circumscribing cylinder. So highly did he esteem
this, that he directed the diagram to be engraved on his tombstone. He
also treated of the quadrature of the circle and of the parabola; he
wrote on Conoids and Spheroids, and on the spiral that bears his name,
the genesis of which was suggested to him by his friend Conon the
Alexandrian. As a mathematician, Europe produced no equal to him for
nearly two thousand years. In physical science he laid the foundation
of hydrostatics; invented a method for the determination of specific
gravities; discussed the equilibrium of floating bodies; discovered the
true theory of the lever, and invented a screw, which still bears
his name, for raising the water of the Nile. To him also are to be
attributed the endless screw, and a peculiar form of burning-mirror, by
which, at the siege of Syracuse, it is said that he set the Roman fleet
on fire.

ERATOSTHENES--APOLLONIUS--HIPPARCHUS. Eratosthenes, who at one time had
charge of the library, was the author of many important works. Among
them may be mentioned his determination of the interval between
the tropics, and an attempt to ascertain the size of the earth. He
considered the articulation and expansion of continents, the position
of mountain-chains, the action of clouds, the geological submersion of
lands, the elevation of ancient sea-beds, the opening of the Dardanelles
and the straits of Gibraltar, and the relations of the Euxine Sea.
He composed a complete system of the earth, in three books--physical,
mathematical, historical--accompanied by a map of all the parts then
known. It is only of late years that the fragments remaining of his
"Chronicles of the Theban Kings" have been justly appreciated. For
many centuries they were thrown into discredit by the authority of our
existing absurd theological chronology.

It is unnecessary to adduce the arguments relied upon by the
Alexandrians to prove the globular form of the earth. They had correct
ideas respecting the doctrine of the sphere, its poles, axis, equator,
arctic and antarctic circles, equinoctial points, solstices, the
distribution of climates, etc. I cannot do more than merely allude to
the treatises on Conic Sections and on Maxima and Minima by Apollonius,
who is said to have been the first to introduce the words ellipse and
hyperbola. In like manner I must pass the astronomical observations
of Alistyllus and Timocharis. It was to those of the latter on Spica
Virginis that Hipparchus was indebted for his great discovery of the
precession of the eqninoxes. Hipparchus also determined the first
inequality of the moon, the equation of the centre. He adopted the
theory of epicycles and eccentrics, a geometrical conception for the
purpose of resolving the apparent motions of the heavenly bodies on the
principle of circular movement. He also undertook to make a catalogue
of the stars by the method of alineations--that is, by indicating those
that are in the same apparent straight line. The number of stars so
catalogued was 1,080. If he thus attempted to depict the aspect of
the sky, he endeavored to do the same for the surface of the earth, by
marking the position of towns and other places by lines of latitude and
longitude. He was the first to construct tables of the sun and moon.

THE SYNTAXIS OF PTOLEMY. In the midst of such a brilliant constellation
of geometers, astronomers, physicists, conspicuously shines forth
Ptolemy, the author of the great work, "Syntaxis," "a Treatise on the
Mathematical Construction of the Heavens." It maintained its ground
for nearly fifteen hundred years, and indeed was only displaced by the
immortal "Principia" of Newton. It commences with the doctrine that the
earth is globular and fixed in space, it describes the construction of a
table of chords, and instruments for observing the solstices, it deduces
the obliquity of the ecliptic, it finds terrestrial latitudes by the
gnomon, describes climates, shows how ordinary may be converted into
sidereal time, gives reasons for preferring the tropical to the sidereal
year, furnishes the solar theory on the principle of the sun's orbit
being a simple eccentric, explains the equation of time, advances to the
discussion of the motions of the moon, treats of the first inequality,
of her eclipses, and the motion of her nodes. It then gives Ptolemy's
own great discovery--that which has made his name immortal--the
discovery of the moon's evection or second inequality, reducing it to
the epicyclic theory. It attempts the determination of the distances of
the sun and moon from the earth--with, however, only partial success. It
considers the precession of the equinoxes, the discovery of Hipparchus,
the full period of which is twenty-five thousand years. It gives a
catalogue of 1,022 stars, treats of the nature of the milky-way, and
discusses in the most masterly manner the motions of the planets. This
point constitutes another of Ptolemy's claims to scientific fame. His
determination of the planetary orbits was accomplished by comparing
his own observations with those of former astronomers, among them the
observations of Timocharis on the planet Venus.

INVENTION OF THE STEAM-ENGINE. In the Museum of Alexandria, Ctesibius
invented the fire-engine. His pupil, Hero, improved it by giving it two
cylinders. There, too, the first steam-engine worked. This also was the
invention of Hero, and was a reaction engine, on the principle of
the eolipile. The silence of the halls of Serapis was broken by the
water-clocks of Ctesibius and Apollonius, which drop by drop measured
time. When the Roman calendar had fallen into such confusion that it
had become absolutely necessary to rectify it, Julius Caesar brought
Sosigenes the astronomer from Alexandria. By his advice the lunar year
was abolished, the civil year regulated entirely by the sun, and the
Julian calendar introduced.

The Macedonian rulers of Egypt have been blamed for the manner in which
they dealt with the religious sentiment of their time. They prostituted
it to the purpose of state-craft, finding in it a means of governing
their lower classes. To the intelligent they gave philosophy.

POLICY OF THE PTOLEMIES. But doubtless they defended this policy by the
experience gathered in those great campaigns which had made the Greeks
the foremost nation of the world. They had seen the mythological
conceptions of their ancestral country dwindle into fables; the wonders
with which the old poets adorned the Mediterranean had been discovered
to be baseless illusions. From Olympus its divinities had disappeared;
indeed, Olympus itself had proved to be a phantom of the imagination.
Hades had lost its terrors; no place could be found for it.

From the woods and grottoes and rivers of Asia Minor the local gods and
goddesses had departed; even their devotees began to doubt whether they
had ever been there. If still the Syrian damsels lamented, in their
amorous ditties, the fate of Adonis, it was only as a recollection, not
as a reality. Again and again had Persia changed her national faith. For
the revelation of Zoroaster she had substituted Dualism; then under new
political influences she had adopted Magianism. She had worshiped fire,
and kept her altars burning on mountain-tops. She had adored the sun.
When Alexander came, she was fast falling into pantheism.

On a country to which in its political extremity the indigenous gods
have been found unable to give any protection, a change of faith is
impending. The venerable divinities of Egypt, to whose glory obelisks
had been raised and temples dedicated, had again and again submitted
to the sword of a foreign conqueror. In the land of the Pyramids, the
Colossi, the Sphinx, the images of the gods had ceased to represent
living realities. They had ceased to be objects of faith. Others of more
recent birth were needful, and Serapis confronted Osiris. In the shops
and streets of Alexandria there were thousands of Jews who had forgotten
the God that had made his habitation behind the veil of the temple.

Tradition, revelation, time, all had lost their influence. The
traditions of European mythology, the revelations of Asia, the
time-consecrated dogmas of Egypt, all had passed or were fast passing
away. And the Ptolemies recognized how ephemeral are forms of faith.

But the Ptolemies also recognized that there is something more durable
than forms of faith, which, like the organic forms of geological ages,
once gone, are clean gone forever, and have no restoration, no return.
They recognized that within this world of transient delusions and
unrealities there is a world of eternal truth.

That world is not to be discovered through the vain traditions that
have brought down to us the opinions of men who lived in the morning of
civilization, nor in the dreams of mystics who thought that they were
inspired. It is to be discovered by the investigations of geometry,
and by the practical interrogation of Nature. These confer on humanity
solid, and innumerable, and inestimable blessings.

The day will never come when any one of the propositions of Euclid will
be denied; no one henceforth will call in question the globular shape of
the earth, as recognized by Eratosthenes; the world will not permit
the great physical inventions and discoveries made in Alexandria and
Syracuse to be forgotten. The names of Hipparchus, of Apollonius, of
Ptolemy, of Archimedes, will be mentioned with reverence by men of every
religious profession, as long as there are men to speak.

THE MUSEUM AND MODERN SCIENCE. The Museum of Alexandria was thus
the birthplace of modern science. It is true that, long before its
establishment, astronomical observations had been made in China and
Mesopotamia; the mathematics also had been cultivated with a certain
degree of success in India. But in none of these countries had
investigation assumed a connected and consistent form; in none was
physical experimentation resorted to. The characteristic feature of
Alexandrian, as of modern science, is, that it did not restrict itself
to observation, but relied on a practical interrogation of Nature.



CHAPTER II.

     THE ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY.--ITS TRANSFORMATION ON ATTAINING
     IMPERIAL POWER.--ITS RELATIONS TO SCIENCE.

     Religious condition of the Roman Republic.--The adoption of
     imperialism leads to monotheism.--Christianity spreads over
     the Roman Empire.--The circumstances under which it
     attained imperial power make its union with Paganism a
     political necessity.--Tertullian's description of its
     doctrines and practices.--Debasing effect of the policy of
     Constantine on it.--Its alliance with the civil power.--Its
     incompatibility with science.--Destruction of the
     Alexandrian Library and prohibition of philosophy.--
     Exposition of the Augustinian philosophy and Patristic
     science generally.--The Scriptures made the standard of
     science.


IN a political sense, Christianity is the bequest of the Roman Empire to
the world.

At the epoch of the transition of Rome from the republican to the
imperial form of government, all the independent nationalities around
the Mediterranean Sea had been brought under the control of that central
power. The conquest that had befallen them in succession had been by no
means a disaster. The perpetual wars they had maintained with each
other came to an end; the miseries their conflicts had engendered were
exchanged for universal peace.

Not only as a token of the conquest she had made but also as a
gratification to her pride, the conquering republic brought the gods
of the vanquished peoples to Rome. With disdainful toleration, she
permitted the worship of them all. That paramount authority exercised by
each divinity in his original seat disappeared at once in the crowd of
gods and goddesses among whom he had been brought. Already, as we have
seen, through geographical discoveries and philosophical criticism,
faith in the religion of the old days had been profoundly shaken. It
was, by this policy of Rome, brought to an end.

MONOTHEISM IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE. The kings of all the conquered provinces
had vanished; in their stead one emperor had come. The gods also had
disappeared. Considering the connection which in all ages has existed
between political and religious ideas, it was then not at all strange
that polytheism should manifest a tendency to pass into monotheism.
Accordingly, divine honors were paid at first to the deceased and at
length to the living emperor.

The facility with which gods were thus called into existence had a
powerful moral effect. The manufacture of a new one cast ridicule on
the origin of the old Incarnation in the East and apotheosis in the West
were fast filling Olympus with divinities. In the East, gods descended
from heaven, and were made incarnate in men; in the West, men ascended
from earth, and took their seat among the gods. It was not the
importation of Greek skepticism that made Rome skeptical. The excesses
of religion itself sapped the foundations of faith.

Not with equal rapidity did all classes of the population adopt
monotheistic views. The merchants and lawyers and soldiers, who by the
nature of their pursuits are more familiar with the vicissitudes of
life, and have larger intellectual views, were the first to be affected,
the land laborers and farmers the last.

THE RISE OF CHRISTIANITY When the empire in a military and political
sense had reached its culmination, in a religious and social aspect
it had attained its height of immorality. It had become thoroughly
epicurean; its maxim was, that life should be made a feast, that
virtue is only the seasoning of pleasure, and temperance the means of
prolonging it. Dining-rooms glittering with gold and incrusted with
gems, slaves in superb apparel, the fascinations of female society where
all the women were dissolute, magnificent baths, theatres, gladiators,
such were the objects of Roman desire. The conquerors of the world had
discovered that the only thing worth worshiping is Force. By it all
things might be secured, all that toil and trade had laboriously
obtained. The confiscation of goods and lands, the taxation of
provinces, were the reward of successful warfare; and the emperor
was the symbol of force. There was a social splendor, but it was the
phosphorescent corruption of the ancient Mediterranean world.

In one of the Eastern provinces, Syria, some persons in very humble
life had associated themselves together for benevolent and religious
purposes. The doctrines they held were in harmony with that sentiment
of universal brotherhood arising from the coalescence of the conquered
kingdoms. They were doctrines inculcated by Jesus.

The Jewish people at that time entertained a belief, founded on old
traditions, that a deliverer would arise among them, who would restore
them to their ancient splendor. The disciples of Jesus regarded him
as this long-expected Messiah. But the priesthood, believing that the
doctrines he taught were prejudicial to their interests, denounced
him to the Roman governor, who, to satisfy their clamors, reluctantly
delivered him over to death.

His doctrines of benevolence and human brotherhood outlasted that
event. The disciples, instead of scattering, organized. They associated
themselves on a principle of communism, each throwing into the common
stock whatever property he possessed, and all his gains. The widows
and orphans of the community were thus supported, the poor and the sick
sustained. From this germ was developed a new, and as the events proved,
all-powerful society--the Church; new, for nothing of the kind had
existed in antiquity; powerful, for the local churches, at first
isolated, soon began to confederate for their common interest. Through
this organization Christianity achieved all her political triumphs.

As we have said, the military domination of Rome had brought about
universal peace, and had generated a sentiment of brotherhood among the
vanquished nations. Things were, therefore, propitious for the rapid
diffusion of the newly-established--the Christian--principle
throughout the empire. It spread from Syria through all Asia Minor,
and successively reached Cyprus, Greece, Italy, eventually extending
westward as far as Gaul and Britain.

Its propagation was hastened by missionaries who made it known in all
directions. None of the ancient classical philosophies had ever taken
advantage of such a means.

Political conditions determined the boundaries of the new religion. Its
limits were eventually those of the Roman Empire; Rome, doubtfully the
place of death of Peter, not Jerusalem, indisputably the place of the
death of our Savior, became the religious capital. It was better to have
possession of the imperial seven hilled city, than of Gethsemane and
Calvary with all their holy souvenirs.

IT GATHERS POLITICAL POWER. For many years Christianity manifested
itself as a system enjoining three things--toward God veneration, in
personal life purity, in social life benevolence. In its early days of
feebleness it made proselytes only by persuasion, but, as it increased
in numbers and influence, it began to exhibit political tendencies, a
disposition to form a government within the government, an empire within
the empire. These tendencies it has never since lost. They are, in
truth, the logical result of its development. The Roman emperors,
discovering that it was absolutely incompatible with the imperial
system, tried to put it down by force. This was in accordance with the
spirit of their military maxims, which had no other means but force for
the establishment of conformity.

In the winter A.D. 302-'3, the Christian soldiers in some of the legions
refused to join in the time-honored solemnities for propitiating the
gods. The mutiny spread so quickly, the emergency became so pressing,
that the Emperor Diocletian was compelled to hold a council for the
purpose of determining what should be done. The difficulty of the
position may perhaps be appreciated when it is understood that the wife
and the daughter of Diocletian himself were Christians. He was a man
of great capacity and large political views; he recognized in the
opposition that must be made to the new party a political necessity,
yet he expressly enjoined that there should be no bloodshed. But who can
control an infuriated civil commotion? The church of Nicomedia was razed
to the ground; in retaliation the imperial palace was set on fire, an
edict was openly insulted and torn down. The Christian officers in the
army were cashiered; in all directions, martyrdoms and massacres were
taking place. So resistless was the march of events, that not even the
emperor himself could stop the persecution.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER III.

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

OVERTHROW OF THE PERSIANS. The fall of Jerusalem! the loss of
the metropolis of Christianity! In the ideas of that age the two
antagonistic forms of faith had submitted themselves to the ordeal of
the judgment of God. Victory had awarded the prize of battle, Jerusalem,
to the Mohammedan; and, notwithstanding the temporary successes of the
Crusaders, after much more than a thousand years in his hands it remains
to this day. The Byzantine historians are not without excuse for the
course they are condemned for taking: "They have wholly neglected the
great topic of the ruin of the Eastern Church." And as for the Western
Church, even the debased popes of the middle ages--the ages of the
Crusades--could not see without indignation that they were compelled
to rest the claims of Rome as the metropolis of Christendom on a false
legendary story of a visit of St. Peter to that city; while the true
metropolis, the grand, the sacred place of the birth, the life, the
death of Christ himself, was in the hands of the infidels! It has not
been the Byzantine historians alone who have tried to conceal this great
catastrophe. The Christian writers of Europe on all manner of subjects,
whether of history, religion, or science, have followed a similar
course against their conquering antagonists. It has been their constant
practice to hide what they could not depreciate, and depreciate what
they could not hide.

INVASION OF EGYPT. I have not space, nor indeed does it comport with the
intention of this work, to relate, in such detail as I have given to
the fall of Jerusalem, other conquests of the Saracens--conquests which
eventually established a Mohammedan empire far exceeding in geographical
extent that of Alexander, and even that of Rome. But, devoting a few
words to this subject, it may be said that Magianism received a worse
blow than that which had been inflicted on Christianity; The fate of
Persia was settled at the battle of Cadesia. At the sack of Ctesiphon,
the treasury, the royal arms, and an unlimited spoil, fell into the
hands of the Saracens. Not without reason do they call the battle of
Nehavend the "victory of victories." In one direction they advanced to
the Caspian, in the other southward along the Tigris to Persepolis.
The Persian king fled for his life over the great Salt Desert, from the
columns and statues of that city which had lain in ruins since the night
of the riotous banquet of Alexander. One division of the Arabian army
forced the Persian monarch over the Oxus. He was assassinated by the
Turks. His son was driven into China, and became a captain in the
Chinese emperor's guards. The country beyond the Oxus was reduced.
It paid a tribute of two million pieces of gold. While the emperor
at Peking was demanding the friendship of the khalif at Medina, the
standard of the Prophet was displayed on the banks of the Indus.

Among the generals who had greatly distinguished themselves in the
Syrian wars was Amrou, destined to be the conqueror of Egypt; for the
khalifs, not content with their victories on the North and East, now
turned their eyes to the West, and prepared for the annexation of
Africa. As in the former cases, so in this, sectarian treason assisted
them. The Saracen army was hailed as the deliverer of the Jacobite
Church; the Monophysite Christians of Egypt, that is, they who, in the
language of the Athanasian Creed, confounded the substance of the
Son, proclaimed, through their leader, Mokaukas, that they desired no
communion with the Greeks, either in this world or the next, that they
abjured forever the Byzantine tyrant and his synod of Chalcedon. They
hastened to pay tribute to the khalif, to repair the roads and bridges,
and to supply provisions and intelligence to the invading army.

FALL OF ALEXANDRIA. Memphis, one of the old Pharaonic capitals, soon
fell, and Alexandria was invested. The open sea behind gave opportunity
to Heraclius to reenforce the garrison continually. On his part, Omar,
who was now khalif sent to the succor of the besieging army the veteran
troops of Syria. There were many assaults and many sallies. In one Amrou
himself was taken prisoner by the besieged, but, through the dexterity
of a slave, made his escape. After a siege of fourteen months, and a
loss of twenty-three thousand men, the Saracens captured the city. In
his dispatch to the Khalif, Amrou enumerated the splendors of the great
city of the West "its four thousand palaces, four thousand baths, four
hundred theatres, twelve thousand shops for the sale of vegetable food,
and forty thousand tributary Jews."

So fell the second great city of Christendom--the fate of Jerusalem had
fallen on Alexandria, the city of Athanasius, and Arius, and Cyril; the
city that had imposed Trinitarian ideas and Mariolatry on the Church.
In his palace at Constantinople Heraclius received the fatal tidings.
He was overwhelmed with grief. It seemed as if his reign was to be
disgraced by the downfall of Christianity. He lived scarcely a month
after the loss of the town.

But if Alexandria had been essential to Constantinople in the supply
of orthodox faith, she was also essential in the supply of daily food.
Egypt was the granary of the Byzantines. For this reason two attempts
were made by powerful fleets and armies for the recovery of the place,
and twice had Amrou to renew his conquest. He saw with what facility
these attacks could be made, the place being open to the sea; he saw
that there was but one and that a fatal remedy. "By the living God, if
this thing be repeated a third time I will make Alexandria as open to
anybody as is the house of a prostitute!" He was better than his word,
for he forthwith dismantled its fortifications, and made it an untenable
place.

FALL OF CARTHAGE. It was not the intention of the khalifs to limit their
conquest to Egypt. Othman contemplated the annexation of the entire
North-African coast. His general, Abdallah, set out from Memphis with
forty thousand men, passed through the desert of Barca, and besieged
Tripoli. But, the plague breaking out in his army, he was compelled to
retreat to Egypt.

All attempts were now suspended for more than twenty years. Then Akbah
forced his way from the Nile to the Atlantic Ocean. In front of the
Canary Islands he rode his horse into the sea, exclaiming: "Great God!
if my course were not stopped by this sea, I would still go on to the
unknown kingdoms of the West, preaching the unity of thy holy name, and
putting to the sword the rebellious nations who worship any other gods
than thee."

These Saracen expeditions had been through the interior of the country,
for the Byzantine emperors, controlling for the time the Mediterranean,
had retained possession of the cities on the coast. The Khalif
Abdalmalek at length resolved on the reduction of Carthage, the most
important of those cities, and indeed the capital of North Africa.
His general, Hassan, carried it by escalade; but reenforcements from
Constantinople, aided by some Sicilian and Gothic troops, compelled
him to retreat. The relief was, however, only temporary. Hassan, in the
course of a few months renewed his attack. It proved successful, and he
delivered Carthage to the flames.

Jerusalem, Alexandria, Carthage, three out of the five great Christian
capitals, were lost. The fall of Constantinople was only a question of
time. After its fall, Rome alone remained.

In the development of Christianity, Carthage had played no insignificant
part. It had given to Europe its Latin form of faith, and some of its
greatest theologians. It was the home of St. Augustine.

Never in the history of the world had there been so rapid and extensive
a propagation of any religion as Mohammedanism. It was now dominating
from the Altai Mountains to the Atlantic Ocean, from the centre of Asia
to the western verge of Africa.

CONQUEST OF SPAIN. The Khalif Alwalid next authorized the invasion of
Europe, the conquest of Andalusia, or the Region of the Evening.
Musa, his general, found, as had so often been the case elsewhere, two
effective allies sectarianism and treason--the Archbishop of Toledo and
Count Julian the Gothic general. Under their lead, in the very crisis
of the battle of Xeres, a large portion of the army went over to the
invaders; the Spanish king was compelled to flee from the field, and in
the pursuit he was drowned in the waters of the Guadalquivir.

With great rapidity Tarik, the lieutenant of Musa, pushed forward from
the battle-field to Toledo, and thence northward. On the arrival of Musa
the reduction of the Spanish peninsula was completed, and the wreck of
the Gothic army driven beyond the Pyrenees into France. Considering the
conquest of Spain as only the first step in his victories, he announced
his intention of forcing his way into Italy, and preaching the unity of
God in the Vatican. Thence he would march to Constantinople, and, having
put all end to the Roman Empire and Christianity, would pass into Asia
and lay his victorious sword on the footstool of the khalif at Damascus.

But this was not to be. Musa, envious of his lieutenant, Tarik, had
treated him with great indignity. The friends of Tarik at the court of
the khalif found means of retaliation. An envoy from Damascus arrested
Musa in his camp; he was carried before his sovereign, disgraced by a
public whipping, and died of a broken heart.

INVASION OF FRANCE. Under other leaders, however, the Saracen conquest
of France was attempted. In a preliminary campaign the country from the
mouth of the Garonne to that of the Loire was secured. Then Abderahman,
the Saracen commander, dividing his forces into two columns, with one
on the east passed the Rhone, and laid siege to Arles. A Christian army,
attempting the relief of the place, was defeated with heavy loss.
His western column, equally successful, passed the Dordogne, defeated
another Christian army, inflicting on it such dreadful loss that,
according to its own fugitives, "God alone could number the slain." All
Central France was now overrun; the banks of the Loire were reached;
the churches and monasteries were despoiled of their treasures; and
the tutelar saints, who had worked so many miracles when there was no
necessity, were found to want the requisite power when it was so greatly
needed.

The progress of the invaders was at length stopped by Charles Martel
(A.D. 732). Between Tours and Poictiers, a great battle, which lasted
seven days, was fought. Abderahman was killed, the Saracens retreated,
and soon afterward were compelled to recross the Pyrenees.

The banks of the Loire, therefore, mark the boundary of the Mohammedan
advance in Western Europe. Gibbon, in his narrative of these great
events, makes this remark: "A victorious line of march had been
prolonged above a thousand miles from the rock of Gibraltar to the banks
of the Loire--a repetition of an equal space would have carried the
Saracens to the confines of Poland and the Highlands of Scotland."

INSULT TO ROME. It is not necessary for me to add to this sketch of the
military diffusion of Mohammedanism, the operations of the Saracens on
the Mediterranean Sea, their conquest of Crete and Sicily, their insult
to Rome. It will be found, however, that their presence in Sicily
and the south of Italy exerted a marked influence on the intellectual
development of Europe.

Their insult to Rome! What could be more humiliating than the
circumstances under which it took place (A.D. 846)? An insignificant
Saracen expedition entered the Tiber and appeared before the walls of
the city. Too weak to force an entrance, it insulted and plundered the
precincts, sacrilegiously violating the tombs of St. Peter and St. Paul.
Had the city itself been sacked, the moral effect could not have been
greater. From the church of St. Peter its altar of silver was torn
away and sent to Africa--St. Peter's altar, the very emblem of Roman
Christianity!

Constantinople had already been besieged by the Saracens more than once;
its fall was predestined, and only postponed. Rome had received the
direst insult, the greatest loss that could be inflicted upon it;
the venerable churches of Asia Minor had passed out of existence; no
Christian could set his foot in Jerusalem without permission; the Mosque
of Omar stood on the site of the Temple of Solomon. Among the ruins of
Alexandria the Mosque of Mercy marked the spot where a Saracen general,
satiated with massacre, had, in contemptuous compassion, spared the
fugitive relics of the enemies of Mohammed; nothing remained of Carthage
but her blackened ruins. The most powerful religious empire that the
world had ever seen had suddenly come into existence. It stretched from
the Atlantic Ocean to the Chinese Wall, from the shores of the Caspian
to those of the Indian Ocean, and yet, in one sense, it had not reached
its culmination. The day was to come when it was to expel the successors
of the Caesars from their capital, and hold the peninsula of Greece in
subjection, to dispute with Christianity the empire of Europe in the
very centre of that continent, and in Africa to extend its dogmas and
faith across burning deserts and through pestilential forests from the
Mediterranean to regions southward far beyond the equinoctial line.

DISSENSIONS OF THE ARABS. But, though Mohammedanism had not reached its
culmination, the dominion of the khalifs had. Not the sword of Charles
Martel, but the internal dissension of the vast Arabian Empire, was the
salvation of Europe. Though the Ommiade Khalifs were popular in Syria,
elsewhere they were looked upon as intruders or usurpers; the kindred
of the apostle was considered to be the rightful representative of his
faith. Three parties, distinguished by their colors, tore the khalifate
asunder with their disputes, and disgraced it by their atrocities. The
color of the Ommiades was white, that of the Fatimites green, that of
the Abassides black; the last represented the party of Abbas, the uncle
of Mohammed. The result of these discords was a tripartite division
of the Mohammedan Empire in the tenth century into the khalifates of
Bagdad, of Cairoan, and of Cordova. Unity in Mohammedan political action
was at an end, and Christendom found its safeguard, not in supernatural
help, but in the quarrels of the rival potentates. To internal
animosities foreign pressures were eventually added and Arabism, which
had done so much for the intellectual advancement of the world, came to
an end when the Turks and the Berbers attained to power.

The Saracens had become totally regardless of European opposition--they
were wholly taken up with their domestic quarrels. Ockley says with
truth, in his history: "The Saracens had scarce a deputy lieutenant or
general that would not have thought it the greatest affront, and such
as ought to stigmatize him with indelible disgrace, if he should have
suffered himself to have been insulted by the united forces of all
Europe. And if any one asks why the Greeks did not exert themselves
more, in order to the extirpation of these insolent invaders, it is a
sufficient answer to any person that is acquainted with the characters
of those men to say that Amrou kept his residence at Alexandria, and
Moawyah at Damascus."

As to their contempt, this instance may suffice: Nicephorus, the Roman
emperor, had sent to the Khalif Haroun-al-Raschid a threatening
letter, and this was the reply: "In the name of the most merciful God,
Haroun-al-Raschid, commander of the faithful, to Nicephorus, the Roman
dog! I have read thy letter, O thou son of an unbelieving mother. Thou
shalt not hear, thou shalt behold my reply!" It was written in letters
of blood and fire on the plains of Phrygia.

POLITICAL EFFECT OF POLYGAMY. A nation may recover the confiscation
of its provinces, the confiscation of its wealth; it may survive the
imposition of enormous war-fines; but it never can recover from that
most frightful of all war-acts, the confiscation of its women. When
Abou Obeidah sent to Omar news of his capture of Antioch, Omar gently
upbraided him that he had not let the troops have the women. "If they
want to marry in Syria, let them; and let them have as many female
slaves as they have occasion for." It was the institution of polygamy,
based upon the confiscation of the women in the vanquished countries,
that secured forever the Mohammedan rule. The children of these unions
gloried in their descent from their conquering fathers. No better proof
can be given of the efficacy of this policy than that which is furnished
by North Africa. The irresistible effect of polygamy in consolidating
the new order of things was very striking. In little more than a single
generation, the Khalif was informed by his officers that the tribute
must cease, for all the children born in that region were Mohammedans,
and all spoke Arabic.

MOHAMMEDANISM. Mohammedanism, as left by its founder, was an
anthropomorphic religion. Its God was only a gigantic man, its heaven
a mansion of carnal pleasures. From these imperfect ideas its more
intelligent classes very soon freed themselves, substituting for them
others more philosophical, more correct. Eventually they attained to an
accordance with those that have been pronounced in our own times by the
Vatican Council as orthodox. Thus Al-Gazzali says: "A knowledge of God
cannot be obtained by means of the knowledge a man has of himself, or
of his own soul. The attributes of God cannot be determined from
the attributes of man. His sovereignty and government can neither be
compared nor measured."



CHAPTER IV.

     THE RESTORATION OF SCIENCE IN THE SOUTH.

     By the influence of the Nestorians and Jews, the Arabians
     are turned to the cultivation of Science.--They modify
     their views as to the destiny of man, and obtain true
     conceptions respecting the structure of the world.--They
     ascertain the size of the earth, and determine its shape.--
     Their khalifs collect great libraries, patronize every
     department of science and literature, establish astronomical
     observatories.--They develop the mathematical sciences,
     invent algebra, and improve geometry and trigonometry.--They
     collect and translate the old Greek mathematical and
     astronomical works, and adopt the inductive method of
     Aristotle.--They establish many colleges, and, with the aid
     of the Nestorians, organize a public-school system.--They
     introduce the Arabic numerals and arithmetic, and catalogue
     and give names to the stars.--They lay the foundation of
     modern astronomy, chemistry, and physics, and introduce
     great improvements in agriculture and manufactures.


"IN the course of my long life," said the Khalif Ali, "I have often
observed that men are more like the times they live in than they
are like their fathers." This profoundly philosophical remark of the
son-in-law of Mohammed is strictly true; for, though the personal, the
bodily lineaments of a man may indicate his parentage, the constitution
of his mind, and therefore the direction of his thoughts, is determined
by the environment in which he lives.

When Amrou, the lieutenant of the Khalif Omar, conquered Egypt, and
annexed it to the Saracenic Empire, he found in Alexandria a Greek
grammarian, John surnamed Philoponus, or the Labor-lover. Presuming on
the friendship which had arisen between them, the Greek solicited as a
gift the remnant of the great library--a remnant which war and time and
bigotry had spared. Amrou, therefore, sent to the khalif to ascertain
his pleasure. "If," replied the khalif, "the books agree with the Koran,
the Word of God, they are useless, and need not be preserved; if
they disagree with it, they are pernicious. Let them be destroyed."
Accordingly, they were distributed among the baths of Alexandria, and it
is said that six months were barely sufficient to consume them.

Although the fact has been denied, there can be little doubt that Omar
gave this order. The khalif was an illiterate man; his environment
was an environment of fanaticism and ignorance. Omar's act was an
illustration of Ali's remark.

THE ALEXANDRIAN LIBRARY BURNT. But it must not be supposed that the
books which John the Labor-lover coveted were those which constituted
the great library of the Ptolemies, and that of Eumenes, King of
Pergamus. Nearly a thousand years had elapsed since Philadelphus began
his collection. Julius Caesar had burnt more than half; the Patriarchs
of Alexandria had not only permitted but superintended the dispersion
of almost all the rest. Orosius expressly states that he saw the empty
cases or shelves of the library twenty years after Theophilus, the uncle
of St. Cyril, had procured from the Emperor Theodosius a rescript for
its destruction. Even had this once noble collection never endured such
acts of violence, the mere wear and tear, and perhaps, I may add, the
pilfering of a thousand years, would have diminished it sadly.
Though John, as the surname he received indicates, might rejoice in a
superfluity of occupation, we may be certain that the care of a library
of half a million books would transcend even his well-tried powers; and
the cost of preserving and supporting it, that had demanded the ample
resources of the Ptolemies and the Caesars, was beyond the means of a
grammarian. Nor is the time required for its combustion or destruction
any indication of the extent of the collection. Of all articles of
fuel, parchment is, perhaps, the most wretched. Paper and papyrus do
excellently well as kindling-materials, but we may be sure that the
bath-men of Alexandria did not resort to parchment so long as they could
find any thing else, and of parchment a very large portion of these
books was composed.

There can, then, be no more doubt that Omar did order the destruction of
this library, under an impression of its uselessness or its irreligious
tendency, than that the Crusaders burnt the library of Tripoli,
fancifully said to have consisted of three million volumes. The first
apartment entered being found to contain nothing but the Koran, all the
other books were supposed to be the works of the Arabian impostor,
and were consequently committed to the flames. In both cases the story
contains some truth and much exaggeration. Bigotry, however, has often
distinguished itself by such exploits. The Spaniards burnt in Mexico
vast piles of American picture-writings, an irretrievable loss; and
Cardinal Ximenes delivered to the flames, in the squares of Granada,
eighty thousand

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