organization could not continue the emphasis of Jesus upon the social problem of rich and poor. Catholicism, like Judaism, unconsciously rejected the social problem. The same principles apply in both cases. The Catholic church, like the Jewish church, became an aristocratic institution; and only in this form could it have passed over to the barbarians.

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CHAPTER XXIX

THE CONVERSION OF THE BARBARIANS

Western civilization, like the classic and oriental civilizations, began on the level of nomadic barbarism.-The barbarians of Europe moved about in kinship groups under the rule of clan chiefs. As numbers increased, the various clans and tribes waged war in a deadly struggle to control the physical resources of the world. The effect of war upon social evolution was to bring competitive groups together into larger groups. When the curtain rose on the history of Europe, the barbarians consisted of numerous hostile communities, which were passing out of the stage of nomadism, and settling here and there upon the soil. These communities, like their predecessors in the great historic civilizations, were stratified into classes; the upper class being free, the lower being in bondage.

The barbarians resembled the ancient civilized peoples not only in their social machinery, but in religion as well. They emerged upon the field of history on a pagan basis. Their beliefs and practices resembled those of other heathen peoples. It is impressive to observe how human nature and human society obey the same forces in all parts of the world. Among the barbarians in the forests of Germany, as among the Romans, the Greeks, and the Semites, religion lay within the circle of thought and activity that made up the round of daily, secular life. Each clan, or social organization, had its own god or gods; and religion was a bond holding groups together.

Among the barbarians, Christianity spread from above downward; whereas, in the Roman empire, it spread from below upward. From the sociological standpoint, the conversion of the barbarians to Christianity was precisely opposite to that of Roman civilization. The upper classes in France, England,

Germany, and other countries were converted by Catholic missionaries; and then the religion of the chiefs became the religion of all. The Roman church appealed to the barbarians as the heir of a great empire which had long held sway over the world. The new peoples of the West were not converted in the sense in which we now understand that word; and it is more exact to say that they were converted to the church. rather than to Christianity. The conquest of barbarian paganism by the religion of the Bible was at first the displacement of old state-religions by a new state-religion. The God of the Bible, represented by the figure of Jesus (which had now acquired the "religious value" of God), was accepted by the new peoples of Europe almost on the basis of the paganism which they abandoned. The heathen gods were displaced by the Roman Catholic system, with God the Father at the head, and in connection with him the Son, the Holy Spirit, the Virgin Mary, and a host of saints. The new religion was accepted uncritically. The chiefs no doubt saw something better in it than in the old heathenism; and the masses professed it because their leaders did. In regard to the conversion of the Germans we read the following:

Clovis was more than a conqueror, he was also a far-seeing statesman; no wiser political move was ever made than when, in 496 a.d., he determined to become a Christian. . . . . The conversion took place publicly and with dramatic effect. The king had registered a vow that, should he prove successful in the battle of Tolbiacum against the Allemani, he would yield to the entreaties of his Burgundian wife and accept her God. After the battle, with a number of his followers, he received baptism. ... Old heathen rites continued to be performed under the guise of Christian ceremonial; and saints' images, like idols, were carried round as a protection against fire, illness, and death. It was a change of name, but not of substance; Siegfried's dragon became the dragon of St. George, while the virtues of the old goddesses were transferred to the Virgin Mary.1

I

1 Henderson, History of Germany (New York, 1908), pp. 14, 15.

The conversion of the early English people took place under practically the same social conditions:

Eadwine promised to become Christian if he returned successful from Wessex; and the wise men of Northumbria gathered to deliberate on the new faith to which he bowed. To finer minds, its charm lay then as now in the light it threw on the darkness which encompassed men's lives. Coarser argument told on the crowd. "None of your people, Eadwine, have worshiped the gods more busily than I," said Coifi, the priest, "yet there are many more favored and more fortunate. Were these gods good for anything they would help their worshipers." Then leaping on horseback, he hurled his spear into the sacred temple at Godmanham, and with the rest of the Witan embraced the religion of the king. But the faith of Woden and Thunder was not to fall without a struggle. . . . . Mercia, which had as yet owned the supremacy of Northumbria, sprang into a sudden greatness as the champion of the heathen gods. Its King, Penda, saw in the rally of the old religion a chance of winning back his people's freedom and giving it the lead among the tribes around it. . . . . In 655 he met Oswiu in the field of Winwed by Leeds. . . . . Victory at last declared for the faith of Christ. Penda himself fell on the field. The river over which the Mercians fled was swollen with a great rain; it swept away the fragments of the heathen host, and the cause of the older gods was lost forever.'

....

These examples of the spread of Bible religion in Europe could be multiplied indefinitely. Another passage relating to England is of profit in this connection:

The first missionaries to the Englishmen, strangers in a heathen land, attached themselves necessarily to the courts of the kings, who were their earliest converts, and whose conversion was generally followed by that of their people. The English bishops were thus at first royal chaplains, and their diocese was naturally nothing but the kingdom. In this way realms which are all but forgotten are commemorated in the limits of existing sees. That of Rochester represented till of late an obscure kingdom of West Kent, and the frontier of the original kingdom of Mercia may be recovered by following the map of the ancient bishopric of Lichfield.2

'Green, History of the English People, Book I, chap. ii.

2 Green, op. cit., Book I, chap. ii.

CHAPTER XXX

CATHOLICISM AS EXTERNAL AUTHORITY

The authoritative organization of ancient and mediaeval society went along with an authoritative theology.-In view of the facts already considered, it is easy to see that under the Catholic church the religion of the Bible was interpreted as a matter of external authority. This religion was thought to have been handed down from heaven by the Deity, in a miraculous and purely supernatural way. The only form in which men could understand the Christian religion was that of an "establishment" ordained by God in the same way that kings issued their decrees. If some hardy inquirer had possessed the curiosity to ask a church Father, or a mediaeval churchman, why the law went forth from Israel and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem, he would have encountered amazement that such a query should even be raised, and then he would have been crushed with the reply that the word of the Lord went forth from Israel just because God willed it so. But such questions were not raised. The human mind was docile; and people easily took things for granted.

The church conformed itself to the principle of external authority when it made terms with the upper class. Theology went hand in hand with sociology. It is not that there was any deliberate or conscious adjustment of theological doctrine to the social situation. The church did not say, "We have the principle of authority in social organization; and therefore we must have it in our theology." Matters never work out that way. The fact is that the principle of authority reigned over all departments of life; and so it found expression in theology without conscious effort on the part of anybody. From the conventional historical standpoint, the principle of J