Yet with all the advantages which came to Christianity through the support of the state; with the intelligence and wealth of Europe behind it; with the privilege of following in the wake of its commerce and conquests; what has Christendom done in the way of converting the world to its religion? But a little over one-fourth of the inhabitants of the earth are even nominally Christian! There are in the world, according to statistics published on the subject:
Roman Catholics ...........................206,588,206
Protestants (all sects) ................... 89,825,348
Greek and Russian Churches ................ 75,691,382
Oriental Churches ......................... 6,770,000
Making the total of all Christians........ 378,874,936.
The other religions stand as follows:
Brahminical Hindoos .......................120,000,000
Followers of Buddha, Shinto and
Confucius .................................482,600,000
Mohammedans ...............................169,054,789
Jews ....................................... 7,612,784
Parsees (fire-worshipers in Persia) ........ 1,000,000
Pagans not otherwise enumerated ...........277,000,000
Making a total of .......................1,007,267,5738
Surely when the superior advantages for the propagation of the Christian religion are taken into account, one could reasonably expect better results than this, after a period of nineteen centuries, sixteen of which may be said to have been of a character favorable to the extension of the borders of the church.
But let us take a nearer view of the status of Christendom. As seen in the foregoing, but a little more than one-fourth of the population of the earth is even nominally Christian. No one will contend that all those nominally Christians are really Christians. Church membership may be one thing, conversion to the Christian religion quite another. If those who are Christians in name only, and church members from custom or for worldly advantage were separated from those who are Christians upon principle, upon conversion and real faith, the number of Christians in the world would be materially reduced. For it cannot be denied that when any religion becomes popular there are multitudes of insincere men who will outwardly accept it, and give it lip-service in return for the advantages that accrue to them socially, financially or politically.
Moreover, Christendom is not united in one great body or church; but on the contrary it is divided into numerous contending factions whose differences are so far fundamental that there appears no prospect of reconciliation among them. The Catholics refuse to recognize any power of salvation in Protestantism. To the Catholic the Protestant is an heretic, a renegade child; and on the other hand, to the Protestant, the Catholic is an idolator, and the pope the very anti-Christ, prophesied of in scripture.
Nor are the Roman and Greek Catholics much nearer at one with each other than the Roman Catholics and Protestants. Away back in the ninth century, as a result of the controversy between the Eastern and Western Churches, Pope Nicholas, in a council held at Rome, solemnly excommunicated Photius, the patriarch of Jerusalem, and had his ordination declared null and void. The Greek emperor resented this conduct of the pope, and under his sanction Photius, in his turn, convened what he called an acumenical council, in which he pronounced sentence of excommunication and deposition against the pope, and got it subscribed by twenty-one bishops and others amounting in number to one thousand.
Although this breach was patched up after the death of the Emperor Michael, difficulties broke out again between the East and the West from time to time, until finally in the eleventh century, when Michael Cerularius, patriarch of Constantinople, opposed the Western Church with respect to their making use of unleavened bread in the sacrament, their observation of the Sabbath, and fasting on Saturdays, charging therein that they lived in communion with the Jews. Pope Leo IX. replied, and in his apology for the Western Churches, declaimed warmly against the false doctrine of the Greeks, and ended by placing on the altar of Santa Sophia, by his legates, a deed of excommunication against the Patriarch, Michael Cerularius. This was the final rupture. From that time the mutual hatred of the Greeks and the Latins became insuperable, insomuch that they have continued ever since separated from each other's communion.9
Though both the Greek and the Protestant Churches are separated from the Roman Catholic Church, yet there is no union or fellowship between them; on the contrary, they hold doctrines so opposite that union between them is out of the question. At least so remote is the prospect, that all attempts at union have been ineffectual.
Turn now to Protestant Christendom. Surely we shall find a union of organization and agreement of sentiment here! But no; division, on the contrary, is multiplied. Protestant Christendom is divided into numerous sects between some of which the gulf of separation is almost as broad and deep as that which separates Protestants from Catholics. Such is the distracted condition of Protestant Christendom that sects are daily multiplying, and confusion is constantly increasing. Nor can one refrain from saying with Cardinal Gibbons, that "This multiplying of creeds is a crying scandal, and a great stumbling-block in the way of the conversion of the heathen nations."10 And I will add, equally a stumbling-block to the conversion of the unbelievers living among Christians.
This last class of persons named, the unbelievers living among Christians, we must now consider; and note the effect of their assaults upon Christianity. They are, for the most part, without organization; without unity of purpose, except in so far as they are united in their disbelief of revealed religion. Their position being essentially a negative one, the incentive to organization is not active. It requires unity of purpose and organization of effort to build; those who content themselves with pointing out the defects, real or imagined, of the work of the builders, or saying the structure does not answer well the purposes for which it was erected, feel no such necessity for organization as the builders do.
In consequence of having no organization, infidels keep no account of their numerical strength; they publish no statistics, and therefore we have no way of estimating how numerous they are. But no one with large acquaintance in Christian countries, and who is in touch with the trend of modern religious thought, can doubt that the number of unbelievers is considerable, and their influence upon the Christian religion more damaging than Christian enthusiasts are willing to admit.
What a motley crowd this great body of unbelievers is! First is the downright atheist who says plainly, "There is no God. Nothing but blind force is operating in the universe; there is no Providence whose will can interrupt the destined course of nature." Providence they set down as a dream. "The universe and all its varied phenomena are generated by natural forces out of cosmic atoms, and into atoms to be again resolved," is their creed.
Following the atheist is the deist, who, while not one whit behind the atheist in rejecting revealed religion, is of the opinion that mind is somewhere operating in the universe, but refuses to recognize that intelligence as associated with a personality. Still that Intelligence, whatever or wherever it be, is God; but with them is always "It," never "He."
Then comes the agnostic. He prefers to suspend his judgment on the question of Deity; and with a modesty, not always free from affectation, says, "I don't know. The evidence in the case is not quite clear; in fact it is