Romance | Page 5

whom she had had traffic and war, put herself to school to the Greeks.
She accepted the Greek pantheon, renamed the Greek gods and
goddesses, and translated and adopted Greek culture. The real Roman
religion was a religion of the homestead, simple, pious, domestic, but
they now added foreign ornaments. So also with literature; their own
native literature was scanty and practical--laws and rustic proverbs--but
they set themselves to produce a new literature, modelled on the Greek.
Virgil followed Homer; Plautus copied Menander; and Roman
literature took on that secondary and reminiscent character which it
never lost. It was a literature of culture, not of creed. This people had so
practical a genius that they could put the world in harness; for the
decoration of the world they were willing to depend on foreign loans.
In so far as Latin literature was founded on the Greek, that is, in so far
as it was a derivative and imitative literature, it was not very fit for
missionary purposes. One people can give to another only what is its
own. The Greek gods were useless for export. An example may be
taken from the English rule in India. We can give to the peoples of
India our own representative institutions. We can give them our own
authors, Shakespeare, Burke, Macaulay. But we cannot give them
Homer and Virgil, who nevertheless continue to play an appreciable
part in training the English mind; and we can hardly give them Milton,
whose subtlest beauties depend on the niceties of the Latin speech. The
trial for Latin literature came when obscurely, in the purlieus and
kennels of Rome, like a hidden fermentation, Christianity arose. The
earliest Christians were for the most part illiterate; but when at last
Christianity reached the high places of the government, and controlled
the Empire, a problem of enormous difficulty presented itself for
solution. The whole elaborate educational system of the Romans was
founded on the older literature and the older creeds. All education, law,
and culture were pagan. How could the Christians be educated; and
how, unless they were educated, could they appeal to the minds of
educated men? So began a long struggle, which continued for many
centuries, and swayed this way and that. Was Christianity to be
founded barely on the Gospel precepts and on a way of life, or was it to
seek to subdue the world by yielding to it? This, the religious problem,

is the chief educational problem in recorded history. There were the
usual parties; and the fiercest, on both sides, counselled no surrender.
Tertullian, careful for the purity of the new religion, held it an unlawful
thing for Christians to become teachers in the Roman schools. Later, in
the reign of Julian the Apostate, an edict forbade Christians to teach in
the schools, but this time for another reason, lest they should draw
away the youth from the older faith. In the end the result was a practical
compromise, arranged by certain ecclesiastical politicians, themselves
lovers of letters, between the old world and the new. It was agreed, in
effect, that the schools should teach humane letters and mythology,
leaving it to the Church to teach divine doctrine and the conduct of life.
All later history bears the marks of this compromise. Here was the
beginning of that distinction and apportionment between the secular
and the sacred which is so much more conspicuous in Christian
communities than ever it has been among the followers of other
religions. Here also was the beginning of that strange mixture, familiar
to all students of literature, whereby the Bible and Virgil are quoted as
equal authorities, Plato is set over against St. Paul, the Sibyl confirms
the words of David, and, when a youth of promise, destined for the
Church, is drowned, St. Peter and a river-god are the chief mourners at
his poetic obsequies. This mixture is not a fantasy of the Renaissance;
it has been part and parcel, from the earliest times, of the tradition of
the Christian church.
History is larger than morality; and a wise man will not attempt to pass
judgment on those who found themselves in so unparalleled a position.
A new religion, claiming an authority not of this world, prevailed in
this world, and was confronted with all the resources of civilization,
inextricably entangled with the ancient pagan faiths. What was to be
done? The Gospel precepts seemed to admit of no transaction. "They
that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country. And truly,
if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out,
they might have had opportunity to have returned. But now they desire
a better country, that is an heavenly." The material prosperity and
social order which Law and Politics take such pains