on a larger scale: "One soweth, and another reapeth. I sent you to
reap that whereon ye have not
labored: others have labored, and ye are entered into their labor" (John 4:38).
Christianity once established was its own best missionary. It grew naturally from within. It
attracted people by its very presence. It was a light shining in darkness and illuminating the darkness.
And while there were no professional missionaries devoting their whole life to this specific work,
every congregation was a missionary society, and every Christian believer a missionary, inflamed
by the love of Christ to convert his fellow-men. The example had been set by Jerusalem and Antioch,
and by those brethren who, after the martyrdom of Stephen, "were scattered abroad and went about
preaching the Word."
5
Justin Martyr was converted by a venerable old man whom he met "walking
on the shore of the sea." Every Christian laborer, says Tertullian, "both finds out God and manifests
him, though Plato affirms that it is not easy to discover the Creator, and difficult when he is found
to make him known to all." Celsus scoffingly remarks that fuller, and workers in wool and leather,
rustic and ignorant persons, were the most zealous propagators of Christianity, and brought it first
to women and children. Women and slaves introduced it into the home-circle, it is the glory of the
gospel that it is preached to the poor and by the poor to make them rich. Origen informs us that the
city churches sent their missionaries to the villages. The seed grew up while men slept, and brought
forth fruit, first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear. Every Christian told his
neighbor, the laborer to his fellow-laborer, the slave to his fellow-slave, the servant to his master
and mistress, the story of his conversion, as a mariner tells the story of the rescue from shipwreck.
The gospel was propagated chiefly by living preaching and by personal intercourse; to a
considerable extent also through the sacred Scriptures, which were early propagated and translated
into various tongues, the Latin (North African and Italian), the Syriac (the Curetonian and the
Peshito), and the Egyptian (in three dialects, the Memphitic, the Thebaic, and the Bashmuric).
Communication among the different parts of the Roman empire from Damascus to Britain was
comparatively easy and safe. The highways built for commerce and for the Roman legions, served
also the messengers of peace and the silent conquests of the cross. Commerce itself at that time, as
well as now, was a powerful agency in carrying the gospel and the seeds of Christian civilization
to the remotest parts of the Roman empire.
The particular mode, as well as the precise time, of the introduction of Christianity into the
several countries during this period is for the most part uncertain, and we know not much more
than the fact itself. No doubt much more was done by the apostles and their immediate disciples,
than the New Testament informs us of. But on the other hand the mediaeval tradition assigns an
apostolic origin to many national and local churches which cannot have arisen before the second
or third century. Even Joseph of Arimathaea, Nicodemus, Dionysius the Areopagite, Lazarus,
Martha and Mary were turned by the legend into missionaries to foreign lands.
§ 7. Extent of Christianity in the Roman Empire.
Justin Martyr says, about the middle of the second century: "There is no people, Greek or
barbarian, or of any other race, by whatsoever appellation or manners they may be distinguished,
however ignorant of arts or agriculture, whether they dwell in tents or wander about in covered
5
11:19.
18
Philip Schaff
History of the Christian Church, Volume II: Ante-Nicene
Christianity. A.D. 100-325.
wagons—among whom prayers and thanksgivings are not offered in the name of the crucified Jesus
to the Father and Creator of all things." Half a century later, Tertullian addresses the heathen
defiantly: "We are but of yesterday, and yet we already fill your cities, islands, camps, your palace,
senate and forum; we have left to you only your temples."
6
These, and similar passages of Irenaeus
and Arnobius, are evidently rhetorical exaggerations. Origen is more cautious and moderate in his
statements. But it may be fairly asserted, that about the end of the third century the name of Christ
was known, revered, and persecuted in every province and every city of the empire. Maximian, in
one of his edicts, says that "almost all" had abandoned the worship of their ancestors for the new
sect.
In the absence of statistics, the number of the Christians must be purely a matter of
conjecture. In all probability it amounted at the close of the third and the beginning of the fourth
century to nearly one-tenth or one-twelfth of the subjects of Rome, that is to about ten millions of
souls.
But the fact, that the Christians were a closely united body, fresh, vigorous, hopeful, and
daily increasing, while the heathen were for the most part a loose aggregation, daily diminishing,
made the true prospective strength of the church much greater.
The propagation of Christianity among the barbarians in the provinces of Asia and the
north-west of Europe beyond the Roman empire, was at first, of course, too remote from the current
of history to be of any great immediate importance. But it prepared the way for the civilization of
those regions, and their subsequent position in the world.
Notes.
Gibbon and Friedländer (III. 531) estimate the number of Christians at the accession of
Constantine (306) probably too low at one-twentieth; Matter and Robertson too high at one-fifth
of his subjects. Some older writers, misled by the hyperbolical statements of the early Apologists,
even represent the Christians as having at least equalled if not exceeded the number of the heathen
worshippers in the empire. In this case common prudence would have dictated a policy of toleration
long before Constantine. Mosheim, in his Hist. Commentaries, etc. (Murdock’s translation I. p.
274 sqq.) discusses at length the number of Christians in the second century without arriving at
definite conclusions. Chastel estimates the number at the time of Constantine at 1/15 in the West,
1/10 in the East, 1/12 on an average (
Hist. de la destruct. du paganisme,
p. 36). According to Chrysostom,
the Christian population of Antioch in his day (380) was about 100,000, or one-half of the whole.
§ 8. Christianity in Asia.
Asia was the cradle of Christianity, as it was of humanity and civilization. The apostles
themselves had spread the new religion over Palestine, Syria, and Asia Minor. According to the
younger Pliny, under Trajan, the temples of the gods in Asia Minor were almost forsaken, and
animals of sacrifice found hardly any purchasers. In the second century Christianity penetrated to
Edessa in Mesopotamia, and some distance into Persia, Media, Bactria, and Parthia; and in the
third, into Armenia and Arabia. Paul himself had, indeed, spent three years in Arabia, but probably
6
ola vobis relinqitimus templa."Apol.c. 37. Long before Tertullian the heathen Pliny, in his famous letter to Trajan (Epp. x.
97) had spoken of "desolata templa" and "sacra solemnia diu intermissa, " in consequence of the spread of the Christian superstition
throughout the cities and villages of Asia Minor.
19
Philip Schaff
History of the Christian Church, Volume II: Ante-Nicene
Christianity. A.D. 100-325.