CHRISTIANITY AND PATRIOTISM. 



223 



rally operated the other way. The one exception 

 to the general decay of patriotic feeling under 

 the empire was the Jewish nation, and it cannot 

 be said that patriotism, as interpreted either by 

 the Pharisees of the Sanhedrim in Pilate's days, 

 by John of Giscala under Titus, or by Bar- 

 Cochab in Hadrian's reign, was at all likely to 

 win admiring converts from outsiders. In fact, 

 until Christianity rose against the narrow spirit 

 of Hebrew nationality, and threw open the doors 

 of the Church to all the Gentile world, it was 

 practically a mere sect or school of opinion within 

 Judaism, and could no more have affected the Ary- 

 an races than the Essenes did. From the moment 

 when Paul of Tarsus laid down the broad prin- 

 ciple that in Christianity " there is neither Greek 

 nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, bar- 

 barian, Scythian, bond, nor free," he proclaimed 

 a more comprehensive citizenship than that of the 

 Roman Empire itself (which, even within its own 

 borders, included multitudes of unenfranchised 

 peregrini and servi), one, in truth, coextensive 

 with all humanity, an idea even lees compatible 

 with patriotism, as popularly understood, than 

 the unifying process which the mistress of the 

 world applied to her subjects. On the other hand, 

 those Gentile converts who had left the narrow 

 limits of Judaism behind were themselves ex- 

 cluded from political life for nearly three centu- 

 ries, owing to the manner in which the state re- 

 ligion permeated official acts, as completely as 

 Protestants were unenfranchised in the Pontifi- 

 cal states till the temporal power fell ; and, there- 

 fore, could not learn by experience the virtues 

 of acknowledged citizenship in a secular domin- 

 ion. 



It would seem, then, that as we feel here 

 in England a certain tendency to contempt for 

 that local attachment and sympathy which can- 

 not pass beyond the limits of a single village or 

 parish, and do not begin to treat it with any re- 

 spect till it is at least conterminous with a shire 

 or county, nor to look on it as a virtue till it em- 

 braces the whole nation, deeper thought would 

 lead us to recognize in the enthusiasm of human- 

 ity at least as much nobler a sentiment than the 

 patriotism of nationality, as this in its turn is no- 

 bler than the mere ■politique du docker. And so 

 far as Christianity holds out the higher ideal, as 

 it must wherever the Pauline principle has been 

 fully acknowledged, this loftier conception sup- 

 plants, in the finest minds, the inferior and local- 

 ized one. This is, one would apprehend, a merit, 

 not a fault, in Christian ethics. Why it has as- 

 sumed the semblance of a fault will be considered 



a little later. At present a prior question needs 

 to be discussed. 



Is patriotism, as popularly understood and 

 acted on, a virtue at all ? The historian and mor- 

 alist can hardly give any reply save No. Indeed, 

 the chief reason for hesitating at all upon the sub- 

 ject, when fairly considered, proves to be the gla- 

 mour which the intellectual brilliancy of Greece, 

 or rather of Athens, and the political might of 

 Rome, cast upon the imagination, enveloping in 

 a golden haze ideas and actions which will not 

 bear the daylight of pure morality or of social 

 philosophy. It is difficult to estimate now the 

 hurtful influence which the narrow civic patriot- 

 ism of the ancient Greek commonwealths, con- 

 stantly finding vent in wars of one petty state 

 against another, must have exerted on the Hel- 

 lenic race, and the quantity of sheer suffering 

 which it must have occasioned ; though we may 

 get some insight into the matter by noting the 

 mental barrenness of Sparta, and the evils of its 

 hyper-military organization. But even in the 

 case of Athens itself, should we succeed in for- 

 getting that it was no true commonwealth, but a 

 civic oligarchy resting on a far larger population 

 of slaves and serfs as a basis, an impartial inves- 

 tigation of facts compels acknowledgment that 

 zeal for the aggrandizement of the City of the 

 Violet Crown proved incompatible with the dis- 

 charge of higher duties toward the allied and de- 

 pendent states, not to say of the race in general, 

 in respect of its struggle against the great Asiatic 

 power. It is only necessary to refer to the mis- 

 appropriation of revenues intended for national 

 defense to the adornment of Athens with build- 

 ings having no federal character, in order to rec- 

 ognize the justice of the sentence by which her 

 headship over Greece was lost, and to understand 

 something of the truth. Nor is Athens alone to 

 blame for this spirit. Four of the very noblest 

 names in the records of patriotism that all the 

 rest of Greece can produce, Epaminondas, Cleom- 

 enes III., Aratus, and Philopoemen, all fail when 

 tested by any other standard than that of local 

 civism, despite the political combinations which 

 made the careers of the three latter more nearly 

 approach the ideal of modern statesmanship than 

 do those of any other among the eminent pub- 

 licists of Greece. Yet each and all of them sac- 

 rificed that federalism which was their professed 

 aim to schemes of local aggrandizement and ven- 

 geance, whose accomplishment in every instance 

 not only defeated their national efforts, but has 

 indelibly tarnished their memories. As for Rome, 

 it is only Prof. F. W. Newman who has in these 



