PKOSEUCHA
663
PKOSEUCHA
large their borders and increase their numbers, but to give to all the world the great truths to establish which Christ came into the world in the form of man and suffered death upon the cross. It is, moreover, be- cause of the direct command given by the Saviour of mankind that Christians feel impelled to make converts of all non-believers. See Christianity; Missions. A very different thing it is, however, for anybody, or for bodies of men, to force conversion upon their fellows. The Jews were the chosen people of God. They had a right to consider themselves the armor-bearers of divine truth, and if they felt impelled to carry " the law and the prophets" to the strangers (C1""^), it was only a reasonable consequence of the divine revelation which they had enjoyed. But it was by the fair means em- ployed that they could best indicate the moral sublim- ity of divine teachings over philosophic schemes and heathenish systems of religion. When, therefore, the Jews, after the establishment of Maccabaean rule, com- pelled, under Hyrcanus, the Idumaeans, and, under Aris- tobulus, the Iturians, to embrace the Jewish faith and to subject themselves to circumcision, there was an adop- tion of measures for which the Old-Test, dispensation furnished no warrant; and though it may be conceded that their object was probably to advance the interests of true religion, they yet, by the adoption of unauthor- ized measures, evinced an unrighteous zeal which must have been underlaid by a selfish purpose. Thus the Roman Catholics have constantly striven for the propa- gation of the Christian faith by measures wholly un- warranted and not in uniformity with the lofty state of its ethics.
The Jesuit Sambuga says, in defence of the Jesuitic proselytism : •• The mania of proselytism in priests is no mania, but a holy zeal." The prince-cardinal von Ho- henlohe approves of this defence in his Lichtblicke und Erlebnisse ausder Welt unddem Priesterleben (Katisbon, 1836, 8vo), p. xxxix. But this defence is, after all, a simple Jesuitic sophism. The mania of proselytism is a mania, and because priests are subject to it, it does not become therefore a holy zeal; or else we must admit that anything done by avaricious and ambitious priests of all persuasions (Christians and pagans) was holy, or was the result of a holy zeal, and therefore not blame- worthy, but, on the contrary, praiseworthy and com- mendable. When proselytes are gained in such a wily or violent manner as that resorted to by Jesuits; when the means employed are money and promotions on one side, threats and persecutions on the other, we perceive in it the evidence of a most unholy zeal, against which the founder of Christianity pronounced his anathema in his condemnation of the priests of his time, the doctors of the law, and Pharisees. For this very reason Christ called them "children of hell." See Romanism. It is a curious fact worth remembering that one of the main features of the times of the Messiah was to be, accord- ing to Jewish tradition, the utter abolition of proselyt- ism, and the entire ceasing of all distinctions of an op- probrious nature among men. The evil repute into which the term proselyte hail fallen in the times of Christ also caused the early converts to Christianity to adopt the name of Neophytes (newly planted) instead. See Neophyte. (J. H. W.)
Proseucha (Trpoatvxh'), a word signifying "pray- er" and always so translated in the A. V. It is, how- ever, applied, per meton., to a place of prayer — a place where assemblies for prayer were held, whether a build- ing or not. In this sense some hold it to be mentioned in Luke vi, 12, where it is said that our Saviour went up into a mountain to pray, and continued all night in the proseucha of God (tv ry Trpoffiv\tj rov &tov), which can very well bear the sense our translators have put upon it — "in prayer to God." Yet Whitby and others infer, from the use of parallel phrases, such as " the mount of God," " the bread of God," " the altar of God," " the lamp of God," etc., which were all things
consecrated or appropriated to the service of God, that this phrase might here signify "an oratory of God," or a place that was devoted to his service, especially for prayer. In this sense the word must certainly be un- derstood in Acts xvi, 13, where we are informed that Paul and his companions, on the Sabbath day, went out of the city, by the river side, ov tvopi&TO irpoatvx>) Eivat, which the A. Y. renders " where prayer was wont to be made." But the Syriac here has, " because there was perceived to be a house of prayer ;" and the Arabic, "a certain place which was supposed to be a place of prayer." In both these versions due stress is laid upon ob ivopi&ro, where there was taken, or supposed to be — or where, according to received custom, there was, or where there was allowed by law— a proseucha, oratory, or chapel; and where, therefore, they expected to meet an assembly of people. Bos contends (Exercit. Philol. ad loc), however, that the word ivofii^ero is redundant, and that the passage ought simply to be, "where there was a proseucha;" but in this he is ably opposed by Eisner (Observ. Sacr. ad loc). See Philippi.