Doubtless the causes and the means were divine. They proved themselves to be so. The Spirit of God, who descended in power on the day of Pentecost, and who had taken up His abode in the church and in the individual Christian, is the true source of all success in preaching the gospel, in the conversion of souls, and in testimony for Christ against evil. "Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord." Besides, the Lord has promised to be with His people at all times. "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." (Zech. 4:6, 76Then he answered and spake unto me, saying, This is the word of the Lord unto Zerubbabel, saying, Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts. 7Who art thou, O great mountain? before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain: and he shall bring forth the headstone thereof with shoutings, crying, Grace, grace unto it. (Zechariah 4:6‑7); Matt. 28:18-2018And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. 19Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: 20Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen. (Matthew 28:18‑20).) But our object at present is to look at things historically, and not merely according to the assurance of faith.
One great cause of the rapid spread of Christianity is its perfect adaptation to man in every age, in every country, and in every condition. It addresses all as lost, and supposes a like want in all. Thus it suits the Jew and the Gentile, the king and the subject, the priest and the people, the rich and the poor, the young and the old, the learned and the ignorant, the moral and the profligate. It is God's religion for the heart, and there asserts His sovereignty, and His only. It announces itself as the "power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth." It proposes to raise man from the deepest depths of degradation to the loftiest heights of eternal glory. Who can estimate, in spite of every prejudice, the effect of the proclamation of such a gospel to miserable and benighted heathen? Thousands, millions, tired of a worthless and worn-out religion, responded to its heavenly voice, gathered around the name of Jesus, took joyfully the spoiling of their goods, and were ready to suffer for His sake. Love ruled in the new religion, hatred in the old.
Its sanction and maintenance of all earthly relations, according to God, were other reasons for the acceptance of the gospel among the heathen. Each one was exhorted to remain in these relationships, and seek to glorify God therein. The blessings of Christianity to wives, children and servants, are unspeakable. Their love, happiness, and comfort were an astonishment to the heathen, and a new thing amongst them. Yet all was natural and orderly. A Christian, who is said to have lived about this time—the early part of the second century—thus describes his contemporaries: "The Christians are not separated from other men by earthly abode, by language, or by customs. They dwell nowhere in cities by themselves, they do not use a different language, or affect a singular mode of life. They dwell in the cities of the Greeks, and of the barbarians, each where his lot has been cast: and while they conform to the usages of the country, in respect to dress, food, and other things pertaining to the outward life, they yet show a peculiarity of conduct wonderful and striking to all. They obey the existing laws, and conquer the laws by their own living."
3. The blameless lives of the Christians; the divine purity of their doctrines; their patient, cheerful endurance of sufferings worse than death, as well as death itself; their disregard for all the objects of ordinary ambition; their boldness in the faith at the risk of life, credit and property, were chief means in the rapid spread of Christianity. "For who," says Tertullian, "that beholds these things, is not impelled to inquire into the cause? And who, when he has inquired, does not embrace Christianity; and when he has embraced it, does not himself wish to suffer for it?"
These few particulars will enable the reader to form a more definite judgment as to what it was that tended on the one hand to hinder, and on the other to further the progress of the gospel of Christ. Nothing can be more interesting to the christian mind than the study of this great and glorious work. The Lord's workmen, for the most part, were plain unlettered men; they were poor, friendless and destitute of all human aid; and yet, in a short time, they persuaded a great part of mankind to abandon the religion of their ancestors, and to embrace a new religion which is opposed to the natural dispositions of men, the pleasures of the world, and the established customs of ages. Who could question the inward power of Christianity with such outward facts before them? Surely it was the Spirit of God who clothed with power the words of these early preachers! Surely their force on the minds of men was divine. A complete change was produced: they were born again—created anew in Christ Jesus.
In less than a hundred years from the day of Pentecost the gospel had penetrated into most of the provinces of the Roman empire, and was widely diffused in many of them. In our brief outline of the life of St. Paul, and in the chronological table of his missions, we have traced the first planting of many churches, and the propagation of the truth in many quarters. In large central cities, such as Antioch in Syria, Ephesus in Asia, and Corinth in Greece, we have seen Christianity well established, and spreading its rich blessings among the surrounding towns and villages.
We also learn from ecclesiastical antiquity, that what these cities were to Syria, Asia, and Greece, Carthage was to Africa. When Scapula, the president of Carthage, threatened the Christians with severe and cruel treatment, Tertullian, in one of his pointed appeals, bids him bethink himself. "What wilt thou do," he says, "with so many thousands of men and women of every age and dignity as will freely offer themselves? What fires, what swords, wilt thou stand in need of! What is Carthage itself likely to suffer if decimated by thee: when every one there shall find his near kindred and neighbors, and shall see there matrons, and men perhaps of thine own rank and order, and the most principal persons, and either the kindred or friends of those who are thy nearest friends? Spare then, therefore, for thy sake, if not for ours."
We now resume the narrative of events, and the next in order to be related is