Dr. Harnack’s “Christianity” and Ancient Paganism Compared

Here, then, is the authoritative answer to the question, “What is there left us?” I have already compared the spirit of Dr. Harnack’s religion with that of Renan’s unbelief; let me now compare the results of that religion with the higher conceptions of ancient Paganism. Let me contrast the closing passage of Dr. Harnack’s treatise on “Christianity” with the closing passage of Cicero’s treatise on “Old Age.” In view of the heathen doctrine of the immortality of the soul the Pagan puts from him the desire to live his life over again. He refuses, “after having run his course, to be called back from the goal to the starting-place.” And he adds: — eee

Christianized Rationalism

“I retire from this world as it were from an inn, and not as if from a home, for nature has assigned it to us as an hotel for sojourn, not as a ‘local habitation.’ O glorious day! when I shall set out on my journey to that divine conclave and company of spirits, and when to this troubled, this polluted scene I shall bid farewell!”

The reader can judge between the Roman Paganism of 2000 years ago and the German “Christianity” of to-day. The one seems instinct with brightness and hope; the other aims no higher than to rescue us from “weariness and despair.”

And can it avail even for this? What message has it for the ordinary man of the world, who, being neither a Pharisee nor a fool, is conscious that he is a sinner and needs forgiveness? And this just because he is “certain of God, the God whom Jesus Christ called His Father” the God of the Bible, “the faithful God who keepeth judgment and mercy with them that love Him and keep His commandments, to a thousand generations.” But he has not loved Him, neither has he kept His commandments, but broken them.

Even if he is better than his neighbours, and

C has habitually tried to please God, he is oppressed by a sense of utter failure. And if he has lived like other men, the warning of conscience is still plainer and louder. It is not “the certainty of God” that he craves, for he is intelligent enough to know that Nature is but another name for God, and that Nature is stern and pitiless in punishing. Nothing will satisfy him but the certainty of a Saviour. And when Prof. Harnack speaks of “the summits of his inner life” and the “upward development of mankind’s history,” the words only mock him. In other circumstances, perhaps they might interest and amuse him; but in view of the realities of eternity they seem to savour of mere levity. Even a Romish priest with his crucifix would be a more welcome visitor.

And his preference would be right. For the position of Romanism to-day is akin to that of Judaism in Messianic times. It has not renounced the truth, but it “holds it down in unrighteousness.” The great doctrines of the Christian faith remain — the deity of Christ, redemption through His blood, ‘the divine authority of Holy Scripture — but they are corrupted and concealed by a mass of human tradition and error. Many a devout Romanist, therefore, may be acknowledged as a fellow-Christian. But infidelity absolutely separates from Christ. It is not a mere perversion of the faith; it is a denial of it. Apostate Christianity is not so hopeless as an apostasy that utterly undermines Christianity.