Excerpt from The History of the Origins of Christianity, Vol. 7
This volume closes the series of essays which I have dedicated to the History of the Origins of Christianity. It contains the exhibition of the development of the Church during the reign of Marcus-Aurelius, and the parallel picture of the efforts of philosophy to improve civil society. The second century of our era has had the double glory of definitely founding Christianity - that is to say, the grand principle which hits wrought the reformation of manners by faith in the supernatural, and of unrolling, thanks to stoical teaching and without any element of the marvellous, the unset attempt of the laic school of virtue which the world has known till now. These two attempts were strangers to cacti other, and rather contradict than aid each other reciprocally; but the triumph of Christianity is only explicable when we have taken account of what there was of force and of insufficiency in the philosophical attempt. Marcus-Aurelius is on this point the subject of study to which we must constantly refer. He sums up all that there was of good in the ancient world, and he offers criticism this advantage, of presenting himself to it unveiled, thanks to a writing of an uncontested sincerity and authenticity.
More than ever do I think that tho period of the beginning, if we might so express it, closed at the death of Marcus-Aurelius, in 180. At that date the child had all its organs; it is separated from its mother; it shall henceforth live its own life. The death of Marcus-Aurelius could have been considered as marking the end of ancient civilisation. What good bay been done alter that, has been done by the Hellene-Roman principle; the Jud?o-Syrian principle gains, and, although more than a hundred years shall pass away before its final triumph, we see well already that the future is its own. The third century is the agony of a world, which, in the second century, is still full of life and energy.
Far from me be the thought of lowering the ages which follow the epoch with which I have closed my work. These are sad days in history: there are no days barren and without interest. The development of Christianity remains a spectacle highly interesting, while the Christian Churches count such men as St. lren?us, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, and Origen. The development of Christianity, which was wrought at Rome and in Africa, in the time of St. Cypriao, and of Pope Cornelius. ought to In- studied with tho most extreme care. The martyrs of the time of Decius and Diocletian do not yield in heroism to those of Rome, Smyrna, and Lyons in the first and second centuries. But it is there we have what is called Ecclesiastical History - a history eminently curious and worthy of being written with love aim all the refinements of the most attentive scheme, but essentially distinct, nevertheless, from the history of Christian ongins - that is to say, of the analysis of the successive transformations which the germ laid by Jesus in the bosom of humanity has submitted to before becoming a complete and durable Church. It needs methods quite different to treat the different ages of a grand formation, whether religious or political.
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