Romance | Page 5

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 to preserve and increase are no part of their care. They are strangers and pilgrims in the country where they pitch their tent for a night. How dare