IN our previous sketches we have had before us the Church in its rise and progress always opposed, and generally persecuted, by the world. On the present occasion an entirely new scene presents itself.
We saw in our last sketch, that in the year A.D. 311, pagan Rome, finding persecution unavailing, by its edict, tolerated the Christian religion. Upon this great change in the policy of 'the state, multitudes joined the Church, so that in a short time the opposing beliefs of pagans and Christians were almost evenly balanced in the empire. It was a time of great internal strife in the empire, and Maxentius and Constantine were contending for the purple. Constantine, leading a considerably smaller army than his opponent, marched to meet him, and, according to the tradition, in view of the vast superiority of the numbers of the army opposed to him, considered to which god he should turn for help. His father had worshipped as supreme, the god of the sun, and accordingly to this god did Constantine address himself. A sign in the sky was sent him (so he affirmed) by this god. As the sun was setting a bright cross appeared upon it, with an inscription over it, signifying, “In this conquer." Not comprehending the sign he was greatly disturbed, but his perplexities were removed by a vision in the night, in which he was told to make the cross his banner, and so to go to battle, confident of conquering. Indeed, the emperor said it was Christ who so appeared to him!
Such as are reverent enough to believe in the words of our Lord, that His kingdom is not of this world, cannot by any possibility credit that He instructed any man to fight for his own glory and kingdom. While to suppose that He had ordered a pagan to do so under the banner of His cross, by which the world is crucified to His own, and they to the world, is to be infidel enough to suppose that the Scriptures can be broken. But it is quite within the compass of the Christian's belief that the sign was seen, and that thereupon began the great departure of Christianity from Christ, and the substitution of the sign of the cross for the person of the glorified but once crucified Savior.
So Constantine went to battle a pagan still, with a cross for his banner, and with crosses painted upon the shields of his soldiers, and in that sign he warred and slew, and, at length victorious, glorified himself by setting up his own statue in Rome, carrying a cross in its hand!
The pagan emperor—shall we not say, the world—had appropriated the sign of the cross for itself in which to conquer. For centuries since then the cross has usurped the place of Christ in the minds of millions, superstitions the most hopelessly pagan have prevailed, and atrocities the most terrible, and wars the most abominable have desolated the earth under the sign of the cross. Alas, that it should be so, but the world of Christendom can worship the cross while it rejects Christ.
The result of the astonishing victories of Constantine was an edict giving full liberty to everyone to worship in whatever form of religion he might choose, and commanding that the property of Christians confiscated in the former time of persecution should be restored to them.
The old heathen emperors had been termed, and had held the office of chief priest. This headship of the religion of the state Constantine maintained, and not only so, he appropriated it to the headship of the Christian religion. The head of the Church was the head of the world. Both spiritual and temporal dominion was centered in one man, and that man was really a heathen and respecter of the sun; for his laws which commanded the cessation of work on Sunday were ordained in honor of “the venerable day of the sun."
We are not discussing the personal faith of this most remarkable emperor, but merely noting the effects of his laws on the Church. However, we do well to remember that he was outwardly a heathen, even when he presided at the Church council of Nicea, and decided what Christians were to believe, being still, as had been his pagan predecessors, himself acknowledged as a god—a heathen deity! He would have Christianity preached at his court to convert the heathen of it, and, at the same time, he allowed the pagans to raise on their altars their sacrificial smoke to demons; indeed, he was only baptized upon his death-bed.
Henceforward there was no Church of Christ, such as the Scriptures portray, visible upon earth; but in the tares and the wheat growing together—the world and the Church combined—we find the fulfillment of the Scripture declarations of what Christendom would become.
In a very few more years the " Church," which now wore the shoes of the world, began to persecute the heathen, and in 341 it was made a law that "the heathen superstition must cease, the madness of offering sacrifices must be extirpated : whoever, contrary to this law, dares to offer sacrifices shall suffer punishment without mercy." Again, a little later, the state treasury was ordered to be enriched by the property of the pagans who had been slain for their religion!
Thus did the Church acquire the persecuting spirit of the world, thus, too, did it obtain the gold and jewels of the heathen for its own decoration, transferring these articles for its own use from the heathen idols! Indeed, in later years, the very images of heathen gods were absorbed by "the Church" to be regarded as images of saints, or perhaps of God Himself I And so true is "the Church" to the spirit of those early days, that the second commandment forbidding images is banished from many of its catechisms.
As we look upon the past and study the features of the Church as it appeared in these days of Constantine, and then turn to history of later years, and indeed to the Church of our own day, we cannot fail to perceive whence comes the persecuting spirit, the spiritual and the temporal headship, the superstitions attached to the sign of the cross, the images and their jewels, the incense and the altars, the processions and the feast days that now prevail. These things are one and all unchanged paganism, though christened Christianity.
The old, sweet simplicity of the early days of the Church is gone, and will never return, but if the Church have left her first love, and if she have embraced the world and become one with it, Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever, never varies in His love and grace to all who put their trust in Him, and the happy path of the Christian is to make much of Christ, and the more he makes of Christ, the better will he serve the Church.