We had occasion in a previous lecture to point out that this great stream of miracle-working which has run thus through the history of the church was not original to the church, but entered it from without.5 The channel which we then indicated was not the only one through which it flowed into the church. It was not even the most direct one. The fundamental fact which should be borne in mind is that Christianity, in coming into the world, came into a heathen world. It found itself, as it made its way ever more deeply into the world, ever more deeply immersed in a heathen atmosphere which was heavy with miracle. This heathen atmosphere, of course, penetrated it at every pore, and affected its interpretation of existence in all the hap- penings of daily life. It was not merely, however, that Christians could not be immune from the infection of the heathen modes of thought prevalent about them. It was that the church was itself recruited from the heathen com- munity. Christians were themselves but baptized heathen, and brought their heathen conceptions into the church with them, little changed in all that was not obviously at variance with their Christian confession. He that was unrighteous, by the grace of God did not do unrighteous- ness still; nor did he that was filthy remain filthy still. But he that was superstitious remained superstitious still; and he who lived in a world of marvels looked for and found marvels happening all about him still. In this sense the conquering church was conquered by the world which it conquered.
It is possible that we very commonly underestimate the marvellousness of the world with which the heathen imagi-
A WORLD OF MARVELS 75
nation surrounded itself, crippled as it was by its ignorance of natural law, and inflamed by the most incredible super- stition. Perhaps we equally underestimate the extent to which this heathen view of the world passed over into the church. Th. Trede bids us keep well in mind that Chris- tianity did not bring belief in miracles into the world; it found it there. The whole religion of the heathen turned on it; what they kept their gods for was just miracles. As Theodore Mommsen puts it in a single sentence:6 "The Roman gods were in the first instance instruments which were employed for attaining very concrete earthly ends" — and then he adds, very significantly, "a point of view which appears not less sharply in the saint-worship of present-day Italy." "The power," says Trede,7 "which in the Roman Empire set the state religion going, as well as the numerous local, social, and family cults, was belief in miracles. The gods, conceived as protecting beings, as undoubted powers in the world, but as easily offended, were, by the honor brought to them in their worship, to be made and kept disposed to interpose in the course of nature for the benefit of their worshippers, in protecting, helping, succoring, rescuing them; that is to say, were to work miracles. Belief in miracles was involved in belief in the gods; only denial of the gods could produce denial of miracles." Enlarging on the matter with especial refer- ence to the third century, Trede continues:8 "In the third century religious belief was steeped in belief in miracles. In their thinking and in their believing men floated in a world of miracles like a fish in water. The more miraculous a story the more readily it found believing acceptance. There was no question of criticism, however timid; the credulity of even educated people reached an unheard-of measure, as well as the number of those who, as deceived or deceivers, no longer knew how to distinguish between truth and falsehood. Those of the old faith (the heathen) had no doubt of the miracles of those of the new faith (the
76 COUNTERFEIT MIRACLES
Christians), and vice versa. The whole population of the Roman Empire was caught in a gigantic net of superstition, the product of the combined work of East and West. There never was a society so enlightened and so blase that lived so entirely in the world of the supernatural." And he too draws the parallel with our own times. He adduces the incredible things related by an Aristides and an /Elian, and then adds:9 "Things just like this are still related . . . /Elian and Aristides are still living, as the miracle-stories at the famous places of pilgrimage show. We mention here the miracles at Lourdes and Pompeii nuova, which afford a very close likeness of the doings of the third cen- tury. The miracles of the nineteenth century recall those of the third."