HISTORY OF OUR SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume I, Issue 60, 3 May 1873, Page 13

HISTORY OF OUR SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST.

BY THE ABBE J. E. DARRAS. (Translated from the original French for the New 2 ea ] aQ(J TabliET n [Ix is our intention to publish a- translation of the « History of Christ ' by the Abbe J E. Darras, and the first part of the ££££& £S7 * 7' Tfhiß/li9T f hiB / li9t ° r7> Writt6n iD aD cl °* vent a^le, addresses itself to the tone of thought prevailing in many minds at the present day,.and whilst instructing and interesting all, will be found to prove amongst many, other important points, the need the world had of a Saviour,, the impossibility of its being saved by philosophy, or any other human, means, and that Christ is the Saviour expected of all nations foreshadowed in the Law of Moses, and foretoW by all the Prophets. We consider it will be at once more interesting to our readers and more useful to publish such a translation than burden our pages w!th some story of fiction. Even the little of the introduction SoTf t7t 7 T f ° Ur r6aderS t0 «**«>Sfc»P«rf what is in abiSv oVfrib^B &n& n 6Stimate ° f th 6 ° leVafcion of Bt^ -d abuity of the Abbe Darras. Care will be taken that this translation hall be accurate and as faithful to the original-that is, as literal-as tho differences of the idioms of the two language will p ' emifc . The following ia the first part of the introduction :— TT,« 7 • THB i W°IPJ)W ° I P J) BEPOBE JSSra CHRIST.

to the Forum the eloquence of Demosthenes, could not sustain the' manly vigor of his model. Notwithstanding its many shortcomings however, the literary oplendour of the Augustan age has long dazzled eveu to blindness, the strongest gaze, by hiding the ahallowneas of its foundations under the richness of its mouldings. Even in. our otoday it is a common-place idea to maguify the moral greatness; poweriull civihsation, institutions, customs, laws, of what in 'classical style isemphatically called— Antiquity. But, if the Pagan world realised the ideal of human perfection, what need was there here below of Christ the Redeemer, the Word, " whose light enlighteneth every man that" cometh into this world ?" Where then were "the nations seated in > darkness, in the shadow of death," whom the splendour of the Divine Incarnation, according to the prophecy oi Ifcaias, were to illuminate ?.• If pagan antiquity merits the eulogiums too liberally awarded to it. . the Prophets must be impostors ,• the expectation of nations, a hallucination; the Messiah, a superfluity; the Gospel, a barbarity.': This is a question worthy our investigation. Let us search out the truth, then, as well beneath the) flowers of poetry and the rhythmd of ' prose as under the garlands and gildings of the pagan temples. Let^ us raise the mask to come to the reality, and draw- aside the veils • which conceal these mysteries as far as Christian- modesty will allow. . What can concern us more closely than- to probe the wounds the ■ Saviour came to heal ?— bleeding wounds, that the oil of human-, wisdom had failed to close, the balm of pagan literature to soothe, and' which the united mythologies of Polytheism had only tended to? aggravate. The Greco-Roman theology is a^ direef descendant from Sodom,having, for beginning, the absence of. God,' and for end, the most--fearful corruption that ever existed. The absence of God from pagan' societies may possibly astonish some superficial minds, who have adopted, without rightly understanding its meaning, a well-known-phrase of Bossuet's, intended to stamp the character of Polytheism. - " All was God but God Himself," said the great Bishop of' Meaux. After-giving an eloquent and powerful resnmS of the mythological ' doctrine and of the philosophy reigning on the shores of the Tiber and 1 the binks of the Eurolas, which, however, we cannot insert in this paper,- and also of the immoral practices of the leading nations of! antiquity, our author proceeds thus : - ; The entire world sought to shape itself on the model of th<» pagan > •heaven, and the earth was one vast theatre of infamy. Vain is it for • the poets to conceal under their flowing numbers the horrors of Polytheistic theology ! They cannot disguise the truth. What do I say ?■ Far from seeking to dissimulate, the Greek and Roman literaturesteach theßO horrors, ea> professo. The lyre of Virgil has attuned itself; to other praises as well as those of sylvan woods and smiling meadows. It 1 has lent its inspiration to themes which might be tolerated in* Gomorrah ! Homer pours nectar into the wine cup of the Master of the Gods by other hands than Hebe's. Cornelius Nepos undertakesthe task of initiating our youthful students into secrets discreditableto Alcibiades, Socrates, and Plato. The absence of God simply meant in that degenerate world 1 absence of soul. What had become of the dignity of mankind during this reign of unutterable depravity. After drawing so sad and revolting ' a picture of its horrors, I have no heart to unveil its ludicrous side,and expose to ridicule a religion which set up for adoration and mutation monsters of iniquity in the persons of its Gods. The solemn Romans, in their warlike enterprises, carried sacred fowls along with the army. These birds were to furnish omens at all times to the soothsayers. It might hapoen that at the moment for consulting the • oracle no birds could be found, and the military operations should have - to be suspended. A certain quantity of grains, forming the ritual,, paste, were placed outside the cage, within reach of the birds -offh', pultis. If the winged animals set on the food with avidity, especially it, in their eagerness, they let some grains fall to the earth, this wastbe Inpudium, the happiest of auspices. On the contrary, if they obstinately remained in their cage and refused to eat, the omen was an unhappy one, and the enterprise was condemned. Who is it that has . left us an official account of these details?' Cicero, himself an augur Possibly tie did not believe in them; he says somewhere that two', augurs OJuld not look each other in the face without laughing But it was important that the plebeians should be the dupes- of theirfaithless priests, whose trade it was to speculate-in the credulity of thevulgar. Will not the philosophers at least make amends to us for. those shameful and absurd superstitions ? Alas ! philosophy, separated. from, religious belief, what is it but the perpetual restlessness of human ignorance, heaving amidst the angry billows of self-debate, and ever tailing backinto the abyss of its-own impotence. ThJ» he f®™^ ph^Py tookv its ~ BtMtiu S point from materialism.. Thales, of Miletus (600), founder of the lonic School, maintained that, water is the source out of which everything arises, and into which everything resolves itself. In physics, this doctrine was an absurdity, ra religion, a blasphemy. Pythagoras (608-500), the father of the Italian school, after having visited Egypt and many countries- in the East, and being initiated in the mysteries of Bacchus and Orpheus, repudiated the physics of Thales as incomplete, and substituted for them a mathematical system, according to which God is nothing more, than a complete monad; the soul, a living member: the world a. harmonious assemblage of numbers. The Eleatic School (600), with its leaders, Xenophanos, Parmenides, and; Zeno, developed the pantheistic germ of the two preceding philosophers. The entire world a collective being, all-powerful, immutable, eternal, was proclaimed the Deity. Leucippides,. the founder of the atomio theory: resolved this vast divinity into an infinite number of atoms, floating eternally in infinite space. Each of these atoms was a fractional part of their Deity. The school of Sophists (V. century 8.C.), soon came to draw from these wild theories a practical inference. Georeias o£" Leontim, Protagoras of Abdea,. Prodicus of Oeos, Hippias of Elis, ThrasymacW Euthedemus, taught that truth and error were twoterms equally devoid of meaning and reality. Scepticism thus becamethe nnal sentence of human reason. This glorious conquest achieved,, the labors of the first philosophical period draw to a close..