Jesus declared formally to his disciples his authority over them, and the mission which it imposed upon them: "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain." [Footnote 45]
And when St. Paul, although exposed to all kinds of perils and struggles, spread abroad throughout the Roman Empire the doctrines of Jesus, he said to the new Christians, "Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. ... Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience' sake." [Footnote 46]
Nor can I here omit again to cite the words which Jesus himself addressed to the Pharisees: "Render under Cæsar the things which are Cæsar's, and unto God the things that are God's." [Footnote 47]
The respect for authority as much as for liberty, the right of power as well as the right of conscience, the separation of religious life from civil life,--all these were not, for the primitive Christians, simple necessities arising out of their situation, nor simple counsels of prudence; they were principles of doctrine and precepts of life, recognised and practised in the name of justice and of truth.
Christian doctrine and Christian practice have been, I know, greatly altered, lost sight of, violated, in the course of the history of the Christian world. Human nature succumbs readily to the temptations of victory and pleasure; when Christianity once became powerful it was too often invaded and disfigured by earthly interests and passions; ambition, cupidity, pride, the arrogance of power, and the lies of cunning; every evil inclination, every vice which the Christian faith rebukes and combats, displayed themselves in this world which Christianity had not conquered merely to hand it over to them, but from which, nevertheless, it had not expelled them. The grand and salutary doctrines of Christianity have been often themselves perverted and profaned to the service of an egotism assuming every shape and carried to every pitch. Still they never were lost, they never perished in this impure mixture and this unworthy use; they survived, they combated, sometimes in obscurity, sometimes in the broad light of day; everywhere, at every epoch, Christian voices, Christian lives, and Christian Reforms protested and struggled against the passions and the corruptions of mankind. And in spite of all these centuries, so sombre, so full of agitation, of violence, and of oppression, so full of moral and material ill, the decline of man and of human society did not ensue. { 205} Greece and Rome, in their state of youthful growth, were glorious and vigorous; and glorious, too, was the development in them of human intelligence and dignity; but their career was short, and these two brilliant forms of society did not find in their ideas, traditions, or models, a sufficiency of moral force to enable them to escape from, or even survive, the seductive and corrupting influence of material grandeur and of human success. Amidst all the sufferings, all the darkness, all the crimes which agitate her long career, Christianity has proved infinitely healthier and more sound; she has made herself an incessant subject of study; she has shifted her place upon her couch of sorrow; she has raised herself up, she has renewed, regenerated herself; she has grown and prospered at the same time that she has suffered; and in spite of the ills, vices, and perils against which Christianity has had to defend herself, and against which she will ever have to defend herself, she has before her, over the whole face of the world, a future immense and full of promise. This she owes to her origin--she was born in the manger of Jesus.