CHAPTER XIII.

THE CHRISTIAN HOPE.

ONE is always glad to turn aside from the theology of this period to the personal religion of the age, for here we can trace the personal influence of Jesus. Never has the theology of any age been identical with its Christianity. Never has it been anything else than an attempt at harmonizing the Gospel with the spiritual force of each age. St Paul was a true disciple of Jesus in his conception of personal religion, of that which we call the life with God. It was only in his apologetics, in his proof of the way, the one sole way, which leads to this piety, that he did not keep close to his Master, but fashioned a theology of his own in his controversy with the Jews, which he then took to be the Gospel itself. So it was again in the course of the second century. Theological systems were often put forward so prominently that one was tempted to mistake them for the Christianity of that age. We can assure ourselves of our mistake if we trace the power of the Gospel on the lives of men even in this age of the growth of Catholicism.

It is not the eschatology of the Catholic Church which we here intend to portray, how the spiritualism of St Paul, Jewish apocalyptic writings, Greek fancies as to Hades, Gnostic longing for heaven, were successively added to Jesus’ preaching of the kingdom, and how out of this chaos of opinions regarding the future there gradually arose a firmly established eschatological dogma of the Church. All with which we have to do here is the influence of this hope on the emotions and imaginations, and consequently upon the practical life. Though the conceptions are entirely different, the hope remains the same in its intensity and fervour, and conversely we may trace the identical eschatological dogma with varying degrees of zeal and enthusiasm. And besides this, however much the eschatologies may differ, they all agree in one principal point. Unlike the modern idea of the kingdom of God, they never take the future history of this earth into account. Even the millenary theory clings to the old opinion that the kingdom of God on earth will be brought about by wonders and catastrophes. No Christian, no Gnostic even, ever built up his hopes on anything but a supernatural basis.

Had the promises, however, which Jesus had made in the first instance, and St Paul had confirmed, been fulfilled? Jesus had promised certain of His disciples that they should not taste death until they had seen the kingdom of God come with power. In like manner His contemporaries, especially His judges, were to witness His second coming.

Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “We shall not all die, but we shall all be changed”; and to the Romans, 299 “Now is salvation nearer to us than when we first believed. The night is far spent; the day is at hand.” Not one of these promises was fulfilled.

It is true that the destruction of the Temple at Jerusalem confirmed one of Jesus’ prophetic words. But the second coming did not, as was expected, follow immediately thereupon. All the evangelists, from the first to the last, try in their narratives to meet the difficulties occasioned by the disappointment, i.e., the postponement of the coming of Jesus. In the old apocalyptic pamphlet, dating from the sixties, which Mark has inserted in his eschatological discourses, there stood originally, in all probability, “Immediately after the tribulation of those days cometh the Son of man”; but Mark omitted the word “immediately.” Following the prevailing mood of his day Luke reports a sad utterance of the Lord. “The days will come when ye shall desire to see one of the days of the Son of man, and shall not see it.” Jesus had spoken of the unexpected coming of the Master by night. Luke describes the impatience of his age, if He shall come only in the second watch or even only in the third. He revises Mark’s eschatological discourse so that the date of the second coming is postponed. “These things must needs come to pass first, but the end is not immediately.” Between the destruction of Jerusalem and the Parousia he inserts the seasons of the Gentiles.

In answer to the question, “Dost Thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” St Luke makes even the risen Lord to give an evasive answer, and when Jesus ascends to heaven shortly afterwards the angels 300 do not, according to St Luke, say to the disciples: “You shall see Him come again in like manner as you saw Him ascend,” but only “He shall so come again in like manner as ye beheld Him.” This conclusion of the life of Jesus in St Luke cannot fail to remind us of that in St Matthew, which is composed in an exactly similar spirit: “So I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.” In fact the first evangelist expresses the delay of the great event no less forcibly than the third in the parable of the wise and the foolish virgins. The bridegroom defers his coming. Some of the virgins fall asleep. Instead of the longed-for golden age the Christians have to face evil days of trial: the love of many shall wax cold. And the reason is just the postponement of the coming. But for all that the first age hoped and continued to hope. When one disciple of Jesus after another died and thus tasted of death without having seen the kingdom of heaven, then all remaining hope was centred upon the last handful of survivors. It would seem that one John (probably not the son of Zebedee to whom Jesus promised the martyr’s death) survived all the other disciples, so that the Christians began to say to each other, “This disciple will not die before the Parousia.” Finally he, too, died, and the fourth evangelist hastened to remove from Jesus the reproach of an unfulfilled promise. But a similar legend was also in circulation concerning St Peter. Words of Jesus were handed down which purported to have been addressed to him, such as “The gates of Hades shall not prevail against thee”; or, “Verily thine eyes shall never to all eternity be 301 closed unto the light of this world.” This hope, too, turned out to be deceptive. The sayings of Jesus were either laid aside or only entered into the canon in an entirely changed form. Like the discourse of Jesus concerning the last days, other eschatological passages in ancient writings had to be toned down as the expected end of the world did not arrive. In the Epistle of Barnabas we find this passage: “The whole time of our faith will profit us nothing if we do not withstand, as it beseemeth the children of God, now in this godless age and in the tribulations that are to come, so that Satan find no entrance.” Compare with this the form of this saying in the apostolic Didache: “The whole time of your faith will profit you nothing if ye attain not to perfection in the last age.” The very word that gave life to the saying, the “now,” has been omitted. And in like manner the Didache concludes with the dogmatic saying, “Then the whole world shall behold the Lord coming upon the clouds of heaven.” The “whole world,” not, as we find in the earlier version, “you” or “we.”

It is worth noting all these little utterances of hope disappointed or deferred, very carefully. They prove to us that the authors of these writings were no mere heedless copyists, but took an exact account of the difference between the actual course of events and prophecy. Jesus did riot come. The kingdom of God was still in the future. Now whilst the evangelists tried to forget their disappointment by setting up the theory of postponement, many Christians began to murmur, some secretly, others 302 openly, because of their deceived expectations. Our oldest proof of this is the Epistle to the Hebrews. The people to whom it is addressed were on the point of giving up the Christian hope. They appealed to the fact that a whole generation of Christians had died, “not having obtained the promises nor received salvation.” Hence the whole edifice of Christianity struck them as mean and poor. There were lofty promises but without any guarantee, and the result was deception. From the last decade of the first century onwards ecclesiastical writers have continually to take account of such murmurs and such doubts. In an apocryphal passage quoted by the two so-called Epistles of St Clement, we read of sceptics who say: “Such things we heard in the time of our fathers already, and lo, we have become old and nothing thereof has come to pass.” If the authors of the two Epistles of St Clement quote this saying and endeavour at the same time to allay the uneasiness expressed therein, then the inference is that similar doubts were expressed in their own day. In the Second Epistle of St Peter we read of mockers giving utterance to doubts of much the same nature. “Where is the promise of His coming? For from the day that the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.” Those to whom the Epistle of St James was addressed are likewise deceived and have become impatient. They are forever hearing the word soon, but it never came to pass. Very much the same state of things may be inferred from the Didache, the Epistle of St Barnabas, the “Shepherd” of Hermas. 303 Everywhere the doubt is expressed: “Is it true after all?” We may perhaps draw a very far-reaching conclusion from these scattered indications. A very large portion of Christians felt all the force of this deception, and hence lost all joy and courage. That is why the Christianity presupposed in the Churches by the Pastoral epistles, the letter of St James, Hermas, and other writings, is so nerveless, indifferent and frivolous. It could not overcome this great deception.

All the more admirable because of this background of doubt and despair are the joyful gladness and the full assurance of hope which speak to us from most of the writings of the teachers of the Church. Even though the kingdom is not yet come and the Parousia delayed, hope still abides firm and triumphs over all doubts and scruples. Nearly all the catholic letters and the apostolic fathers are full of plain indications: it is the last time. Most of them agree in seeing in this last time the beginning of the great tribulation with the last terrible temptations for Christians. Otherwise they often differ greatly in the vivacity and energy of their hope, but only to prove their truthfulness; for in hoping, each preserves his individual character.

Some Christians—there will probably have been a great number of them—live rather in fear of the coming judgment than in hope of mercy: so the prophet Hermas and the preacher to whom the Second Epistle of St Clement is to be ascribed. Hermas never really got quit of the Jewish uncertainty of salvation. Even as a Christian 304 he is full of anxious fear, and is acquainted with every feeling but that of confidence. The revelation, too, which he receives, “Fulfilled are the days of repentance for the saints,” must have greatly increased his sense of responsibility for the future life and therefore his anxiety. He realizes that whole classes of Christians will not enter the kingdom. To which does he belong? The end alone will show that. Then he sees the great tribulation approach in the shape of the hostile beast. True, he fights his way through bravely enough in the spirit, but only at the cost of the most anxious care. He knows nothing of eager longing. The only thing that he wishes is a clear separation between sinners and the righteous. The Second Epistle of St Clement shows us how a Christian preacher declares his message of judgment, and summons to repentance his readers, entangled as they are in a maze of sins, and given over to worldliness. He does indeed begin with God’s promises and the need of thankfulness, but he is only in his own element when he threatens. As long as we are still here upon earth let us repent, for when once we leave this world there is no longer any possibility of repentance. Then he summons up the day of judgment to his readers fancy and the end of the world in flames, and pictures to them the dismay of the sinners and the triumph of the righteous. Nothing can save us from everlasting punishment if we obey not God’s commandments. We have no advocate with God. Each man receives according to his deserts. Such were the thoughts of the majority of the Christians. 305 At bottom their Christianity was the Jewish and pagan fear of the unknown terrors of retribution after death—nothing better.

In other Christians hope assumes the shape of a firm, quiet, even somewhat dogmatic belief in requital. To this number belong the authors of the First Epistle of Clement and of the Epistle of James, and Justin Martyr. None of these are acquainted with any real longing for perfection, though James comes very near to it. Apart from this, too, thoughts of the return of Christ with all its dramatic concomitants and their appeal to the fancy, enter but little into their hope. The word requital contains everything for them. Sinners are to be punished, the just and righteous shall inherit the promises and become partakers of God’s grace—that is to say, the grace they have earned. This faith in requital is strong enough to become a real living power, for it places the whole of this life in the presence of eternity. But it seldom inspires the soul with that glad rejoicing, that anxious expectancy, that impatience with which St Paul hoped. Nor is there anything distinctively Christian in it. Jews and Stoics met in the same faith in requital—the parables and commandments of Hermas, mainly Jewish in their character, are one of our chief authorities in this matter. The First Epistle of Clement dates from the end of the first century. How very rapidly, therefore, did the first wild enthusiastic hope cool down and assume a rigid dogmatic shape. Here the form was already found which assured the thought of eternity a place in the Christian life after the fading away of all dramatic fancies. This belief in 306 requital was proof against all disappointment caused by the delayed Parousia.

Hope’s real heartfelt tones are heard most seldom where the ecclesiastical interests of the present entirely engross the writer. This applies to the author of the Pastoral epistles. He, too, is of course a man of hope, as were all the early Christians; when he thinks of the duty of martyrdom he utters even enthusiastic words of hope. But when he is fighting the Gnostics all along the line, or when he is establishing the constitution of the Church, his thoughts seldom go beyond the task of the present moment. It was difficult for such an eager worker in the cause of ecclesiastical order and discipline to think that all this was merely a provisional measure for possibly a week or two. In His own time God shall show the appearing of the Lord Jesus Christ. The writer is not to be blamed for this attitude: the time was not one for idle expectation, but for a strenuous struggle for the right. Nevertheless he affords us an illustration of the truth that zeal for the Church and longing for the kingdom are not easily combined, or at least not in a like measure.

The author of the Johannine writings, an opponent of the Gnostics just as much as the pseudo-Paul of the Pastoral letters, is his exact contrary in one point. He is not very greatly concerned in the Church—as an external organization—and her ordinances. But as an immediate consequence of this he is filled with a mighty longing and an earnest expectation. He clearly realizes the provisional character of all personal conditions—even that of our relation as children to the heavenly Father. 307 He reminds worldly Christians of the fact that the world perishes with all the lust therein, whilst the moral personality alone endures forever. But to the serious-minded, too, he exclaims: “It is not yet made manifest what we shall be. When He is manifested we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him even as He is.” That is a cry of earnest expectation which reminds us of Paul. It is true indeed that the great judgment day precedes the opening of the doors of blessedness, a day on which many of the Lord’s slothful servants shall be put to shame. But our author’s aim is that he and his friends shall have entirely done with the religion of fear and anxiety. The Christian is to be able to come into the presence of his Lord with courage and confidence and with true joyfulness. And that he can do, as soon as he stands rooted and grounded in love, in the love of God to him, and in his love to the brethren. He that loves has nothing to fear on the day of judgment. In consequence of this glad certainty of salvation, everlasting life comes to be for him a sure and present possession. The Christian has everlasting life now; he does not look for it as something uncertain, a something that will perhaps fail him, but he is absolutely assured of it. Neither death nor judgment can terrify him. Every sentence in epistle or gospel about life everlasting is a sentence of hope. The only point in which John is distinguished from most other Christians is in the stronger emphasis which he lays upon the certainty of his hope, and—as this hope lies in the present—upon the joy of this hope. He is one of those great men 308 who can walk securely upon earth because heaven is a certainty to them. The awaking of Lazarus expresses his own hope very impressively. Death is a sleep; even though the body decay and begin to stink, what matters that? Christ has power on the last day to summon forth body and soul from the grave by a loud word. This belief is of supreme importance for the age of the martyrs in which the author now lives. Christ is the resurrection and the life; he that believeth on Him, even though he die, yet shall he live. With such a faith as this it was worth going forth to meet death.

In fact, persecution was the strongest impulse of all for the renewal of hope. At such times all the old Christian longing for the future burst into flame again. It is evident now that without hope the Christians are the most wretched of men. All manner of temptations, sufferings and tortures threaten them. Only he that hopeth can overcome. The First Epistle of St Peter is written with the object of awakening congregations that are in the midst of persecution to an ardent, earnest hope. It sets before them the greatness of this last great time of trial. For them that confess Christ there is consolation, for nominal Christians condemnation. Now the end must be awaited in prayer and in striving after righteousness, for the devil is going about like a roaring lion and is seeking whom he may devour. But our author is one of those Christians whose fear has been entirely cast out by their enthusiasm. “Praised be God, who begat us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” 309 The phrase “to give an answer concerning the hope that is in you,” instead of “your faith,” shows us to what an extent this hope is his one and all.

The somewhat earlier Epistle to the Hebrews was written during dark days, when the hearts of men failed them because the promise tarried and doubts arose and joy was crushed. That which gives St Peter’s Epistle its force and fire, the terrible earnestness of the struggle for life and death, is wanting here. The author of this Epistle is a man who looks back wistfully to the golden age of persecution, and would possess the martyr’s courage and the martyr’s hope in full measure, should the call come to him. The tedious dryness of the Melchizedek theories gives way at once to heartfelt tones of longing and enthusiasm as soon as he touches that which is his inmost possession, his hope. Even in the midst of learned disquisitions the reader is interrupted by the call: “Awake and look forward. He is coming. Hold your hope firm until the end.” This hope really constitutes his religion. Just like the author of the First Epistle of St Peter, he speaks of the confession of hope instead of the confession of faith. And as some of those to whom he was writing began to complain that the hope was never fulfilled, that Christians died without having inherited the promise, he added his well-known 11th chapter, in which he draws up the long roll of the Old Testament men of faith, down to Jesus. All of them were men of hope, all were apparently deceived; but their hope possessed vigour enough to overcome all deceptions. Here, too, he 310 finds the simplest words for his longing. Here we have no continuing city, but we seek one to come. We are strangers and pilgrims upon earth, on our way to our home on high. “There is a land of pure delight”: that and many another similar strain has its source in the Epistle to the Hebrews.

As we should naturally expect, Christian hope assumes its boldest, often its wildest, guise in the martyrs themselves a short time before their death. The bent of Ignatius mind, like that of the author of the Pastoral epistles, is ecclesiastical, and therefore, in so far, his nature is of this world. Even on his last journey when he is being conveyed to martyrdom, ecclesiastical concerns occupy him to the full. His six letters addressed to Asia Minor are almost wholly filled with the measures that are to be taken in the prosecution of the struggle against the Judaists and Docetae, and with the striving to subject the Churches entirely to the bishop. Nevertheless hope appears far more distinctly here than in the Pastoral epistles. The difference arises from the fact that here we have a martyr speaking to us—one who knows that within a few weeks he will be standing face to face with eternity. The writing addressed to Rome is the classical document for the martyr’s enthusiasm of this age. Ignatius’ one anxiety is lest certain members of the church should use their influence at the court and obtain his pardon. He begs the Romans to be sure not to do that. His one longing is to come to God as soon as possible—never mind how terrible the road. To come to God and to rise from the dead is identical for him. 311 The intervening space between his death and the last day is non-existent for him. He has bidden farewell to everything here below. “Nothing in this world of sense is good.” “The pleasures of this world, the kingdoms of this dispensation, shall avail me nothing. Better to die and be with Christ than to rule over all the ends of the earth. I seek Him who died for us. To Him would I go who arose from the dead for us. I am near to be born again; hinder me not to live; do not wish me to die.” “My love is crucified; there is no fire within me that loves mere matter, but there is living water that speaketh to me and that saith to me from within: ‘Up and to the Father.’” “The wild beasts are the road to God.” The language which the martyr uses is of course somewhat extravagant. Yet who can tell all that passes in the soul of a man doomed to certain death? Polycarp’s prayer, which is handed down to us in the acts of the martyrs, and which he is said to have uttered while tied to the stake, is far more composed and calm. Both in its tone and language it harmonizes with the character of sane sobriety which we gather Polycarp to have possessed from this letter. It runs as follows: “I praise Thee that Thou didst deem me worthy of this day and hour, that I should be of the number of Thy witnesses and partake of the cup of Thine anointed to the resurrection of everlasting life both in soul and body, in the immortal spirit. May I this day be received among them as a well-pleasing sacrifice such as Thou hast before prepared and before revealed and made ready. Thou the only true God, Thou who liest never.” If the prayer is genuine, then 312 we would infer that Polycarp had no stock of original ideas or words standing at his command. He is in every respect a Christian of the old tradition—but then how high an opinion we must form of a tradition which inspires a man at the stake with a prayer breathing such quietness and confident hope.

The hope of the early Christians had its limitations, no doubt, and there was an element of hostility to the world in it. No thoughts of progress can be traced back to it. The gradual amelioration of the world, the interpenetration of every sphere of life with the Christian spirit, the growth of a new Christian humanity, were unfamiliar ideas to the Christian of the first age. “The world is rotten ripe for change”: that is the motto of most Christians, at bottom of the millenarians, too, who expect the transformation of the world to be brought about by tremendous catastrophes. In all this we can trace the influence of an old civilization fast hastening to decay. The little company of harried and persecuted Christians could not fancy that they would one day come to play a great part in the history of humanity. Their citizenship was in heaven. Here upon earth they lived as strangers and sojourners, as pilgrims to their heavenly home.

But what a mighty power there lay in this future hope. It achieved two memorable results: it overcame the deceived expectation as to the coming of Jesus and the kingdom of God. Men like the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews and the Johannine writings derive such joy and confidence from their hope that the element of time, the question whether we come to Jesus or whether Jesus comes 313 to us, is a complete matter of indifference to them. And still more these men recognized that longing would cease to be longing if an attainable goal were set before it here upon earth. In the next place hope overcame the fear of death. Christ delivered all them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. Hope made of the Christians a people of martyrs who looked upon death as sleep and made light of all threats and tortures. Lastly, we have this great gain which serious-minded Christians drew from hope for their present life. Life in the light of eternity must itself become a life in the Eternal, in God, and in the good. Moral discipline, earnestness, self-denial, freedom from the world, are all fortified by this resolute looking forward to the judgment and the vision of God. It is true that this applies not to the general mass of the Christians, but only to the serious-minded.

Whilst theology underwent a complete transformation through its alternations of controversy and agreement with Jews, Greeks, and Gnostics, hope, the main element in personal religion, remained the same. The Christianity that hopes is the Christianity of the early days. The martyrs Polycarp, Ignatius, and Justin take up exactly the same attitude to the present and the future, to death and to life, as Paul and Jesus did a century before. When the flame of hope flickers or actually goes out, Christianity is immediately extinguished with it.