Pagan philosophers and rulers saw in the early Christians only a new sect of the Jews, and thus the conflict manifested all the features of a civil war. We must therefore start with Pagan unbelief and opposition to Christianity, and find in these the fore-gleams of nineteenth century Scepticism.

A recent writer, dealing with this theme, reminds us that in three ways the unbelievers of the first centuries differ from the Sceptics of our day. To-day the conflict is based on reason; both parties appeal to argument, to what may be termed moral forces. In the first ages the 'deniers of Christianity were on the defensive, and were defending a publicly held and settled religion, among other means, by force." Argument was partially used, it is true, but the chief appeal was to force, or what may be identified therewith. The Jews stoned Christ as a blasphemer, and used all the force at their disposal to put down His teaching; the Pagans followed too eagerly this evil example, and attempted to suppress by violence the new religion of peace and charity. Sceptics often remind us that these are Christian modes of warfare; history tells a truer tale, and points a higher moral. Christians, alas! have persecuted, have used the sword in order to establish a reign of peace and love; the first believers knew better, and were more loyal to the Spirit of their Master. Their first works of evidence, their apologies for the truth, were their heroic faith, their saintly lives, and the sweet patience under suffering and injustice which had been taught them by the Cross of Christ. That handful of men,' says Pressensè, 'who believed eighteen centuries ago in the Gospel miracles, were not brought, it is true, before official examiners, but they went down with calm conviction in presence of a furious populace into the arena, and sealed with their blood their faith in a risen Lord. Evidence thus attested ceases to be contemptible and deserves to be examined."2

This, then, is the first contrast between the unbelief of our time and that of the first age. Scepticism does not now appeal 1 'Unbelief in the Eighteenth Century,' by Professor Cairns, D.D. 2 'Jesus Christ: His Times, Life and Work,' by E. de Pressensè, D.D.

to force-it seeks by argument, by appeal to fact and history, as misinterpreted by itself, to gain adherents. Not that unbelief might refuse to persecute again, if it were strongly tempted. Science, and the purely scientific impulse, can be very cold and very cruel, and can entirely ignore the moral and even humane aspect of things, when it gets its way. Those who are familiar with the 'State regulation of vice,' in modern times, will understand what we mean. The pursuit of knowledge, and the protection of the physical part of our humanity, may be so dwelt upon, that deeper, holier, and more human interests are easily sacrificed-all, too, in the interests of science.1

Force, then, and not argument, was the first weapon of unbelief. The philosophers and great men of the first centuries seemed to have utterly ignored the presence and progress of Christianity. Hence the attack was left to men of a different type, and they fought with such weapons as they knew and understood.

2

Another contrast is this: the early deniers of Christianity 'made common cause with Polytheism, and thus admitted the principle of a Divine revelation, as well as the legitimacy of all its supernatural evidence."3 Men who themselves believed in 'Gods many and Lords many,' could hardly find fault with Christians for believing in one God. When amongst themselves there was so much dissatisfaction with Polytheism, that Paul found at Athens an altar to the 'Unknown God,' they could not well ridicule this sublimer aspect of what was the common faith. Later on in the struggle, indeed, this faith in the supernatural was ridiculed and denied, but this only shows how the great depths of heathen life were being broken up, and

1 The history of the 'Laws Regulating Vice,' and the discussions of vivisection in Parliament and elsewhere furnish ample justification for the above remark. Our forefathers were blind as bats about slavery; we are, with far less excuse, blind to the higher light in relation to this painful subject. Christians even forbid discussion, in the interests of purity! 2 See Lecky's 'History of European Morals,' chap. iii.

3 Cairns.

that men were ceasing to believe in the good-whether human or Divine.

Once more: 'the deniers of Christianity in the early ages granted, with hardly an exception, the genuineness and integrity of the Christian documents;' this makes a most emphatic and most suggestive contrast. The modern Apologist can point to the fact that the first Sceptics actually appealed to the sacred books as if genuine. As Dr. Cairns well says, 'It is impossible. for modern unbelief to shake this foundation, or to resolve those materials which Celsus has attested as so solid and documentary into the mist and vapour of shifting tradition.' The bearing of a fact like this upon modern controversies as to the age of certain books, and as to the growth of what are called 'myths,' will readily be seen.

These and other contrasts, upon which it is not necessary to dwell, show that the unbelief of the early ages had a character of its own, and that the Scepticism amid which we live, move, and have our being, must not be held to be merely its distant echo. Of course, the spirit animating both may be largely the same, but the point of view is different, and the weapons used are very different; these contrasts must be carefully considered by all who would really understand either the one period or the other.

Those who wish to study this period more fully may find materials within easy reach of them that will enable them to form a sound judgment. That victory, along the whole line of attack, was with Christianity can hardly be questioned. The words of the dying Julian may fairly be applied here: 'Oh, Galilean, Thou hast conquered!' Lecky and Renan are very differently constituted men, and their respective attitudes towards Christianity, though Sceptical, are unlike; yet both wax warm as they tell the story of the suffering patience and saintly fortitude of the martyrs and confessors, who conducted this defence. Speaking of the attack by Nero, Renan says: 'Next to the day on which Jesus died on Golgotha, the day of the festival in the gardens of Nero-we may fix it as the 1st of August, 64

-was the most solemn in the history of Christianity. The solidity of a construction is in proportion to the sum of virtue, of sacrifice, of self-devotion, which has been built into its foundations. Only fanatics can found anything; Judaism still exists because of the intense ardour of its prophets and zealots; Christianity because of the courage of its first witnesses. . . The orgy of Nero . . . was the taking possession of the Vatican Hill by a triumphant army of a kind the world had not yet known."1

Not only by heroic and self-sacrificing deeds, but quite as much by clear, strong, and convincing arguments, did Christianity conquer. As Canon Farrar reminds us, dying Paganism was no match intellectually, even with all its high culture and its haughty pride, for young Christianity. Clemens and Origen more than refuted the 'calumnies of their opponents; better than this, for each refuted error they offered a beautiful convincing truth; and recognizing the Divine spark which glimmered even in the white embers of heathen wisdom, they summoned their adversaries to drink with them of the living water, and share with them the eternal light.'2

Pressensè has made a special study of this subject for many years, has made himself familiar with attack and defence, has told us the story of the sufferings and the faith of martyrs, confessors, and heroes, in eloquent and sympathetic words—has also given us valuable analyses of both arguments against and arguments for Christianity; he is therefore entitled to a hearing when he gives his opinion on the merits of this controversy. According to him, 'it is a capital error to suppose that to renounce the vain pride of reason is to renounce intellectual superiority; the apology of the fathers gives striking evidence to the contrary. . . . They did not make their sufferings a shield against all attacks, nor did they consider that the honourable wounds of the persecuted Church were an adequate refutation of her assailants. The representatives of the new religion did 1 Renan's Hibbert Lecture,' p. 89.

2 Farrar's Hulsean Lecture' for 1870.

...

not allow a single accusation, a single objection, to fall to the ground; they overcame Pagan philosophy with it own weapons. The intellectual superiority of Christianity is no less marked than the high tone of its morals. . . . Though Christianity had for its first witnesses fishermen from the Lake of Galilee, it was, nevertheless, itself the grandest of all philosophies; and as soon as the Church had leisure to add to its faith the advantages of high culture, as soon as it found itself constrained by the tactics of its assailants to plead its cause before the bar of science, its defenders took their place at the head of the intellectual movement of their day.'1

It is not necessary to dwell on the period between the destruction of Paganism and the age of the Reformation in Europe. Not that there was no Scepticism in those dark ages, so-called; there may be a great deal of unbelief even where there is little open and avowed antagonism to the creed of the Church. Had unbelief assumed dangerous dimensions, or manifested itself with boldness during this period, it would have been attacked by very different weapons from those used by Christians in the earlier days of Christianity. The Church, alas ! forgot her early faith, forgot also the direct teachings of her Divine Lord, and, misled by false ideals, grasped the sword instead of the pen. This period is usually touched lightly by professed apologists, and we need not hesitate to pass it over. A deeper study would enable inquirers, we believe, to find much Scepticism both within and without the Church; but when expression of hostile opinion subjects to pains and penalties, only the bolder spirits utter their beliefs.

After Augustine, whose works may be regarded as a constructive setting forth of the truth as he understood it, the work of defence was left to self-denying and devoted missionaries— perhaps the best of all defenders of the Christian faith. These godly men went forth in the spirit of their Master, armed with the

1 'The Martyrs and Apologists,' p. 559. See also Professor Redford's 'Review of the History of Unbelief,' in his 'Handbook of Christian Evidence.'