Latin or Medieval Christianity. LATIN OR MEDIEVAL CHRISTIANITY.* 255 The Pontificate of Gregory the Great (590-604,) marks the final Christianization of the world. Heathenism was utterly extinct. The Christian hierarchy has full possession of the minds of men. Ecclesiastical Latin is the only language of letters; art, so far as it exists at all, is exclusively Christian. But the transition from the primitive Gospel has become no less striking than the triumph over Paganism. The creeds of the church now form but a very small portion of Christian belief. The Almighty Father has receded, as it were, from human vision into a vague sanctity; the divine Saviour himself occupies but a comparatively small portion of the heart of the worshipper, absorbed with other objects of reverence, more open (as it seemed) to human sympathies. The shrines and the relics of martyrs are now the favourite resort of the great multitude of the believers. Hero worship-the heroism being of the monastic type-is in the ascendant. Legends of saints rival, if they do not supplant, the narratives of Scripture in the possession of the popular mind. The ordinary providence of God gives place to a perpetual strife between evil spirits and good angels about the person of every individual believer. No protection against the former is so effective as the presence of the departed saints, especially if in the vicinity of their own places of sepulture. Happy the churches which possessed the inestimable treasure of the body, or even a portion of the body, of an early confessor. The sacred talisman was an effectual security against calamity; nay, its virtue extended even to the absolving from sin. Relics have attained a self-defensive power; profane hands which endeavoured to remove them withered; the chains of St. Paul sometimes refused to yield filings-an inestimable gift, when they could be procured, for a barbaric king. The taunt which the Christian writers of earlier times threw out against their Pagan adversaries, that their temples were most of them tombs of dead men, could now be retorted with interest. The possession of the bones of Orestes was not more ardently coveted by the Lacedæ monians than the remains of departed worthies by Gregory himself, intellectually as well as spiritually, by the confession of all, the model of his age. He himself obtained an arm of St. Andrew and the head of St. Luke from Constantinople, although to the petition of the Empress Constantia he refused anything beyond a cloth which had touched the sacred body of St. Paul at Rome. Thus, moulding together elements derived from all sources-Jewish, Pagan, and Christian-arose the vast and complicated system of medieval Christianity, a system as little to be despised as the offspring of fraud as to be justified as a genuine development of the primitive Gospel. * From a review of Dr. Milman's Latin Christianity: Times, 1859. ORIGIN OF THE LITANY. The proceedings of Gregory in the early part of his pontificate, to avert from his people the miseries of pestilence and famine, are highly characteristic of the zealous Christian pastor and the paternal ruler. His estates in Sicily supplied the corn which kept the poor population of Rome from perishing. In the meantime he constantly addressed them from the pulpit, and encouraged them by his presence. The origin of that kind of service which goes by the name of Litany, or Processional, dates from this time. The whole population of Rome was marshalled in seven bodies, and traversed the streets with prayers and penitential hymns. The clergy and the sacred virgins, the widows and the children, the laity, rich and poor, all had their assigned share in this solemnity. The cry of the whole city literally ascended to the throne of the Almighty. The pestilence was not stayed; no less than 80 victims fell dead during the procession; but neither the faith of the people nor of their bishop failed, and after ages moulded this fact into a picturesque tradition, which contemporary accounts do not justify, that as the last troop of suppliants reached the monument of Hadrian the Destroying Angel was seen to sheathe his sword. The statue which crowns the castle of St. Angelo, as it is now called, commemorates the miracle. VITAL FORCE-WHAT IS MATERIALISM? Dr. W. Brinton, in a lecture on Physiology, delivered by him at St. Thomas's Hospital, London, observes: The charge of Materialism is difficult to deal with, mainly because of the sophistical sense in which the word has been used, and the odium it has therefore come to convey. The only decently scientific hypotheses which represent the material and its antagonist theory, are both of them, so far as I dare venture to judge, as perfectly compatible with religion as are the Books of Euclid. Indeed, I question whether they are not quite compatible with each other-whether the difference be not in great degree one of terms or words, rather than of ideas. One side, for example-well represented by one of the most able physiologists of the day, Dr. Carpenter, is inclined to assume the existence of a force or forces, so unlike anything we meet with in the inorganic creation-that is, so characteristic of Life-as to be fitly named vital. These forces ceasing at death, allow the substances they previously tenanted and governed to fall back, as it were, into the domain of the ordinary laws of matter, in obedience to which they now decay and disperse into the world around them. The other side, which I will instance by the illus Mysteries and Miracles. 257 trious Valentin, regard Life and Organization as sustained in great measure by the same laws as those which, in different degrees and modes of working, operate in the inorganic world. Declining to separate the physical and chemical phenomena of dead and living nature by a line of demarcation hitherto not definitely proved to exist, and confidently resting on the innumerable and undoubted facts which prove that such forces as heat, light, magnetism, chemical affinity, are every moment operating in the living body, it supposes that even the most peculiar and fleeting of these operations which we sum up as Life, are effected, in obedience to natural laws, by the use of forces everywhere present. Of the theologian who should call this "Materialism,” I would ask, "How does it affect revealed religion, or infringe our common creed?" Its supporters, in assuming that "the vital functions are the result of an infinitely wise plan of organization," do but modify, and indeed modify by exalting, our notions of the infinite wisdom they explicitly acknowledge. The materials, so to speak, they regard as fewer, simpler, more general, less heterogeneous, than had hitherto been imagined. Scientifically, they must only gain their position more fully by proving it more fully than they have yet done. But, theologically, if there be any difference, surely it is that the simpler the materials, the more unimaginable must be the skill and wisdom of the workmanship.-Lancet, Nov. 10, 1860. MYSTERIES AND MIRACLES. Mysteries are those great and hidden things of our religion, whose truth we are assured of by divine authority; but the manner of their being surpasses our understanding: such as the Plurality of Persons in the Divine Unity; God manifest in the Flesh; the operation of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of believers; the Spiritual Presence of Christ in the Eucharist; and the uniting our scattered parts from the dust of death.-The Centaur not Fabulous, by Dr. Young. Ignorant sceptics are accustomed to attempt to justify their doubt of Miracles by their non-occurrence in the present times. Such persons overlook, in reading the Scriptures, the striking difference between the dispensations of God in the time of our Saviour and his apostles, and in our own. Then miracles were wrought on the bodies and minds of Christians, in order to establish the truth of the Gospel. That object being effected, miracles became rare, or ceased altogether. The Pilgrim's Progress. IN 1858 there was published The Ancient Poem of Guillaume de Guileville, entitled "Le Pelerinage de l'Homme," compared with the 'Pilgrim's Progress" of John Bunyan: edited from Notes collected by the late Mr. Nathaniel Hill. De Guileville was a French monk, who was born in 1295, and died about 1360. His writings were popular in England, portions of them having been translated by Chaucer and Lydgate. That Bunyan knew directly anything of De Guileville does not appear, but it is clear that he was acquainted with those fragments of the old chivalrous literature which were still handed about in the form of cheap books. Whether any portions of De Guileville himself survived in this shape may well be doubted; but as De Guileville himself confessedly borrowed from the Romance of the Rose, nothing is more likely than that a common element may be found in De Guileville and in Bunyan. It is, however, absurd to say this resemblance supports a charge of plagiarism between the Pelerinage and the Pilgrim's Progress. The general idea of representing the Christian's course under the figure of a pilgrimage is so obvious that it could hardly fail to occur to many minds independently, especially in days when pilgrimages were things of daily occurrence. De Guileville and Bunyan are by no means the only authors who have worked out the idea. And, besides the general similarity of idea, a certain resemblance could hardly fail to occur in the details of the story. Of any Pilgrim's Progress the groundwork must be found in certain Scriptural phrases and descriptions. The Celestial City in the Apocalypse must of necessity be the pilgrim's goal. Then much of the detail must be drawn from medieval history or romance. The fiends and personified vices against which the Christian has to contend, naturally assume the form of the giants and ogres of medieval romance-of the Turks and Saracens of medieval reality. The pilgrim fought his way to Jerusalem-so the Christian fights his way to Heaven. St. Paul's parable of the Christian armour, St. John's picture of the combat between Michael and the Dragon, stood ready to be pressed into the service. There was thus a vast mass of floating material, ready to the hands of all writers of pilgrimages, and of which all writers of pilgrimages availed themselves. But we see no ground for The Pilgrim's Progress. 259 supposing that Bunyan borrowed from De Guileville, or did more than draw upon a common stock of ideas and images, which, even in De Guileville's time, were not absolutely new. But there is nothing in all this which at all derogates from originality. Granting that Bunyan borrowed his idea from De Guileville, there is nothing which lays him open to the charge of "plagiarism." Whatever Shakspeare, Eschylus, Homer, or Bunyan borrowed from anybody else, they fairly made their own. De Guileville's allegory is dead-Bunyan's is alive. De Guileville may have dug up some dry bones, and arranged them in the form of a skeleton-Bunyan is the real enchanter who gave them flesh and blood, and the breath of life. And this is even more remarkable when we consider that what was natural in the days of De Guileville had become somewhat unreal in the days of Bunyan. In Bunyan's time people no longer went on pilgrimages, least of all people of Bunyan's own way of thinking. De Guileville may well have sent more than one pilgrim on an actual journey to Jerusalem-Bunyan would doubtless have dissuaded any Bedford burgess from such an undertaking, as being little better than one of the works of the flesh. Bunyan's theology is of course Calvinistic; and one cannot but see, with Lord Macaulay, that the real battles and the real persecutions of his own time have helped to give much of their life to his descriptions of imaginary battles and persecutions. But, nevertheless, the costume of Bunyan's book is essentially Crusading and not Covenanting. This may well arise from the fact of Bunyan's drawing from the common stock of all pilgrim-mongers. But it may also have something to do with that great characteristic difference between an early and a late literature. In Palestine, in early Greece, in medieval Europe, poetry consisted very much in describing to people what they themselves said and did every day. We, for the most part, in anything professing to be poetical or romantic, sometimes of set purpose, sometimes because we cannot help it, get as far as possible from the realities of our own life.* The Pilgrim's Progress, in its invention and plan, is generally supposed to have been the child of John Bunyan's own fancy; and he has, in his advertisement, strongly vindicated his claim to it. The necessity of this vindication, at least, proves that the matter was called in question in his own time; and the following extract contains at once his defence, and his own account of the origin and execution of the work: Some say the Pilgrim's Progress is not mine, In name and fame by the book of another; * Abridged from the Saturday Review, Dec. 4, 1858. |