(4) There was another reason why the power of the
Sec. i. The Imperial and the Christian Policy. 137
new religion was necessarily thrown on the side of the Roman policy. Greek civilisation was strongly opposed to the social system that was inseparably connected with the native religion in all its slightly varying forms in different localities. The opposition is as old as the landing of the earliest Greek emigrants on the Asian coasts: the colonists were the force of education, and progress and freedom, the priests arrayed against them the elements that made for stagnation and priest-ridden ignorance and slavery. Throughout Greek history the same opposition constantly appears. The Phrygian religion was always reckoned as the antithesis of Hellenism. That is all a matter of history, one might say a commonplace of history. But the same opposition was necessarily developed in the Romanisation of the provinces of Asia Minor. The priests of the great religious centres were inevitably opposed to the Roman policy ; but their power was gone, their vast estates had become imperial property, and their influence with the population was weakened by the growth of the Greek spirit. This subject might be discussed at great length ; but I must here content myself with referring to the full account of the districts in my Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia.
In this conflict there can be no doubt on which side the Christian influence must tell. When we consider the social system which was inculcated as a part of the native religion, it is evident that every word spoken by Paul or Barnabas must tell directly against the prevalent religion, and consequently on the side of the Roman policy. It is true that in moral tone the Greek society and religion were low, and Christianity was necessarily an enemy to them. But Greek religion was not here
I $& Si. Paul in Galatia. Chap. VI.
present as the enemy. The native religion was the active enemy ; and its character was such that Greek education was pure in comparison, and the Greek moralists, philo- sophers, and politicians inveighed against the Phrygian religion as the worst enemy of the Greek ideals of life. Greek society and life were at least founded on marriage ; but the religion of Asia Minor maintained as a central principle that all organised and settled social life on the basis of marriage was an outrage on the free unfettered divine life of nature, the type of which was found in the favourites of the great goddesses, the wild animals of the field and the mountains. The Greek and Roman law which recognised as citizens only those born from the legitimate marriage of two citizens had no existence in Phrygian cities.
Thus in Galatia the Graeco-Roman education, on the side of freedom, civilisation and a higher social morality, was contending against the old native religious centres with their influential priestly colleges, on the side of ignorance, stagnation, social anarchy, and enslavement of the people to the priests. Christian influence told against the latter, and therefore in favour of the former.
In all these ways Christianity, as a force in the social life of the time, was necessarily arrayed on the side of the Roman imperial policy. " One of the most re- markable sides of the history of Rome is the growth of ideas which found their realisation and completion in the Christian Empire. Universal citizenship, universal equality of rights, universal religion, a universal Church, all were ideas which the Empire was slowly working out, but which it could not realise till it merged itself in Christianity." M The path of development for the Empire
Sec i. The Imperial and the Christian Policy 139
lay in accepting the religion which offered it the possibility of completing its organisation."
With the instinctive perception of the real nature of the case that characterises the genius for organisation, Paul from the first directed his steps in the path which the Church had to tread. He made no false step, he needed no tentatives before he found the path, he had to retract nothing (except perhaps the unsuccessful compromise em- bodied in the Decree of the Apostolic Council, pp. 172, 182). It is not necessary to assert or to prove that he consciously anticipated all that was to take place ; but he was beyond all doubt one of those great creative geniuses whose policy marks out the lines on which history is to move for generations and even for centuries afterwards.