The Environment of Early Christianity (1915) by Samuel Angus

Author:Samuel Angus
Format: epub
Published: 2013-11-20T16:00:00+00:00

Personal Religion

There was a considerable advance in the recognition of the inwardness and personal nature of man's higher life. This was in fine with the general drift toward individualism. Man had turned from the investigation of the problems of the external world to probe the secret of his own nature. Although the ancient world did not arrive at any adequate conception of personality (the depths of which have not even yet been plumbed), there was a developing sense of personality with its pain and responsibility. The city-state had presented only the external and collective side of religion; the personal and inward aspect now overshadowed the other. Man turned aside from political life to regulate his own, and find satisfaction for Self in religion. Amid the terrible social strife and devastation in which the Empire was founded, men were compelled to think about themselves in a new way. It seemed as if God had set the emperors to keep guard in order to give men time to reflect about themselves. In the stillness of the pax Romana, the need for inward peace grew all the more clamant. The collective covenant with God had been broken, and as men cannot live without the supernatural, the personal bond was sought. The external sanctions and authority of morality being threatened, another sanction was discovered in the innate moral nature of man and in a God-implanted conscience which demanded obedience while states rise and fall. There was acknowledged an objective and eternal law of righteousness to which the God within bears testimony. The worthiest rewards of righteousness and the acutest penalties of sin are enacted in the theatre of the inner life. Socrates maintains that the worst consequences of our conduct are the disastrous effects upon our own spiritual nature. The famous line of Virgil represents the same truth, "each of us suffers in his own spiritual being." The call of the heathen preacher was for introspection and self-examination: this era dated from the "Know thyself," by which Socrates produced one of the most momentous epochs in the higher, life. The later schools without exception aimed at bestowing upon man independence in his inward life. Stoicism took the lead in asking men to retire to the: citadel of their own being where external things could not ruffle: the only worthy life was amid the secret; triumphs and agonies of ones soul. "Retire within yourself" was the motto of Aurelius. Peace may be found within when it is denied without. There are many pagan texts, especially in Seneca, Epictetus, and Aurelius, parallel to "the Kingdom of God is within you."

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