ART. IV. - THE CHURCH OF THE FIRST THREE We have not been unmindful in our pages heretofore of the great merits of Professor Hagenbach, a veteran of eighteen years' service in the field of Church history, and we are happy now to call attention to a new department of his labors. Our heart yearned towards this book the moment we saw its title, for what topic within the whole compass of human thought has been handled with more narrowness and dogmatism than the record of early Christianity, and what topic needs more the truth-seeking spirit, that is determined to state as certain what is so, and to leave all doubtful matters in the region of doubt? We have previously noticed the author's Dogmatic History and Theological Encyclopædia, and reviewed quite at length his Lectures upon the Christianity of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. These works, and also his Lectures upon the History of the Reformation, which preceded the work last named, were an excellent preparation for the treatment of the present subject. The difficulty with most authors who have dealt with the first centuries of the Church has been in the heaviness of their antiquarian learning, their disposition to cumber their pages with chronicles of defunct controversies, with very little eye to the points of view most interesting and important to the thought and life of our own time. How great then is the privilege of having through that dark and debated territory the guidance of a man who has qualified himself for the survey by a thorough study of the doctrines and literature of the Church in all ages, and who is fresh from his liberal and profound researches into the thought and policy of those three modern centuries which are so closely connected in their rule of faith, as well as in length of time, with the ante-Nicene age! We may be very sure that a man who keeps his candor undimmed through the cloud and smoke of recent sectarian controversy, and who * Die christliche Kirche der drei ersten Jahrhunderte. Vorlesungen von DR. K. R. HAGENBACH, Professor der Theologie in Basel. [The Christian Church of the first Three Centuries. Lectures by DR. K. R.HAGENBACH.] Leipzig. 1853. pp. xii. and 349. 1853.] Professor Hagenbach. 359 can treat of modern theology in a temper so catholic and so evangelical, appreciating the worthy element even in the poetry and art so often given over to Satan by dogmatists nominally of his own creed, yet preserving loyally his allegiance to Christianity as the Word of God to man, will not be very likely to belie himself into a bigot in the field of ancient theology. The result does not disappoint our anticipation, for the volume before us is marked at once by all the author's literary grace, and seems to have even more than his accustomed candor, from its contrast with the usual disposition among theologians to read antiquity through sectarian spectacles, and see nothing but their own church and creed among the early confessors. We are not aware that Hagenbach pretends to have added any new discoveries to our stores of antiquarian learning, or to have started any original theories touching the ante-Nicene doctrine or polity. Yet we are very sure that he exhibits the centuries which he treats, in a light so clear and interesting as to give even a scholarly reader the impression of great novelty, whilst to the general reader, to whom the heavier Church historians are invariably so dull, this volume will have an interest almost fascinating, from its happy combination of the taste of a man of letters with the learning of an historian. We have not taken up our pen with the purpose of perpetrating a labored article in the patristical domain, but with the single wish to impart some of the pleasure that we have received, by a few running observations upon the book and its contents, taking the liberty whenever we choose to quote the author's own words. He does not leave us long in doubt as to his point of view. Taking the day of Pentecost as the birthtime of the Christian Church as a visible body with an invisible head, he regards its origin as a creative act of the Divine Spirit, and not as a voluntary association got up in the same way as a literary society or a business partnership. He rejoices that our recent thought has gone back to the deeper laws of life, having repudiated the shallow and mechanical view of things once so prevalent, and that now all thinking men are convinced that Church and State are in their foundations divinely ordained creations, like the creation of Nature; creations, indeed, in which the human mind in every age freely participates, but which nevertheless transcend human opinion and will, following laws of development which the Creator has implanted. He maintains that "From this point of view the study of national as well as of Church history wins its higher interest, since we then have no longer to deal with the flighty notions of human caprice and humor, nor with the idle web of human follies and passions, but even with a history worthy the name, with a higher necessity which is at the same time fulfilled in the circle of human freedom, and in constant coöperation with it. As the individual soul once touched by the living breast of Christianity and held by its power, experiences a regeneration and receives the movings of grace not as something foreign and dead in itself, but appropri ates this as a new vital principle by which it is henceforth decided and guided, so we see the whole world, so we see all nations, celebrate their regeneration. A new life, which springs not from this world, is not to be conceived from the conditions of this world, comes nevertheless into the world, to possess, to rule, to transfigure it. The world strives against the power of this new life, a battle ensues between the old and the new, between darkness and light. In this conflict, meanwhile, the opposite issues do not always appear pure and distinct; even the light is somewhat clouded, and the heavenly truth is alloyed by misunderstanding; error and sin crowd into the Church, and create phantoms of false doctrine and perverse practice." It will be seen at once from this train of thought, that our author belongs essentially to the school of Schleier macher, and that his view of the divine origin of the Church is not incompatible with the utmost latitude of opinion regarding priestly authority and theological doctrines. For ourselves, we regard his language as an under-statement rather than an over-statement of the providential beginning of the Christian Church. The spirit of God that moved of old upon the face of the waters, and educed order and beauty from the formless void, moved over the dark waters of our troubled humanity, and the new kingdom arose among men. We cannot compare Christianity with any historic fact so well as with the great creation itself, and the second Adam completes the divine order begun by the creation of the first Adam. But in the spiritual as in the physical world, the new creation worked upon a preëxisting basis; the fresh seed 1853.] Christianity and Paganism. 361 fell upon the old soil. The world, marked by the experience of ages, or humanity so full of error and sin, was the vineyard which the Divine sower went forth to sow. The harvest depends upon the soil as well as upon the seed, and therefore a survey of the state of character and opinion at the advent of the Gospel becomes a part of the history of primitive Christianity. Here we are met at the outset by the remarkable fact, that the new religion found itself arrayed at once in opposition to the whole culture of the human race. When we now talk of Christianizing tribes or nations, we mean pretty much the same thing as civilizing them, and since the days of Constantine the Gospel has had the intelligence and refinement of mankind at least nominally on its side. Imag ine then the task set before the disciples, those unlettered men, who by the grace of God claimed for the Gospel of Christ the allegiance of the ignorant and the wise, and laid siege as resolutely to the philosopher's academy as to the idolater's temple. The learning of Jew and heathen was alike against them, yet by the cross they conquered, and temples and synagogues became shrines of the God of the crucified Messiah. Benighted as Paganism and Judaism in many respects were, they must not be regarded as wholly in the dark, — without traces of early illumination or yearnings for coming light. The best modern investigation is glad to trace the devices of idolatry back to the promptings of a genuine religious sentiment, and is all the more earnest in behalf of Christianity, from the fact that this religious sentiment had been dying out from the old temples, and men must have been wholly godless, had no revelation been granted. Beautiful as were many traits of the Grecian polytheism, the system. had no moral unity or elevation, held out to man no spiritual aim, and ascribed to God no parental providence, no government of holiness. The unity of God was lost sight of in personifications of Nature, or confounded with the universe itself, so that pantheism entered wherever polytheism ceased. If the Greek mythology escaped the monstrous figments of Oriental superstition, and, instead of disgusting idols of beasts, adored the beautiful creations of the sculptor's genius, morality was little the gainer by the advancement of taste, and often the veil of artistic beauty was thrown around vices that would VOL. LV.4TH. S. VOL. XX. NO. III. 32 have been simply disgusting if seen in their actual character. If Rome escaped in many things the corrupting softness of the religion of Greece, it was only by exchanging state pride for sensual indulgence. The life of the soul languished quite as much under the foot of Roman ambition as in the arms of Grecian pleasure. Christianity, however, had a closer battle to fight with the philosophy than with the superstition of the Pagan world, for this superstition had lost much of its hold upon thinking people, and when vindicated by them, it was defended rather as a civil institution than as a philosophical faith. It was from Pagan philosophy that the Gospel had its severest assaults, and won its proudest triumphs. Socrates was of course the father of the best heathen wisdom, and he has fitly been called the John the Baptist of the Grecian world. Whilst his sharp logic must have led his admirers to question every marvellous pretence, his constant appeal to the conscience prepared them to favor a faith which found its choicest worship in the human breast. Plato, his pupil, deepened philosophy on its speculative side, and whilst he commended it to thinkers, he withdrew it from the perception of the multitude. His chief influence upon Christianity was in the bearing of his system upon the relation between reason and the Divine Mind, or the philosophy of revelation. Aristotle sharpened the Greek intellect by his severe analysis, and unconsciously forged and pointed the weapons by which the great doctrinal conflicts were to be fought. But the people at large were more influenced by those who aimed at a philosophy of practical life than by those intellectual schoolmen; and they whose heads were confused by the ideality of Plato or the subtilties of Aristotle, saw at once the difference between self-denial and indulgence, as exhibited in the rival schools of Zeno and Epicurus. Different as these two schools were, yet they had much in common. The Epicurean was the disciple of pleasure in all its varieties, and believed in enjoying himself to the utmost, thinking as little about the gods as he supposed the gods to think about him. The Stoic urged self-control with the strictness of a Christian; and yet the law which he held up to allegiance was rather an eternal necessity than the will of the living God, and the Stoic's faith came as near to |