VOLUME VI SLICE III Chitral to Cincinnati (continued 3)

CHRÉTIEN, or Crestien, DE TROYES, a native of Champagne, and the most famous of French medieval poets. Unfortunately we have few exact details as to his life, and opinion differs as to the precise dates to be assigned to his poems. We know that he wrote the Chevalier de la Charrette at the command of Marie, countess of Champagne (the daughter of Louis VII. and Eleanor, who married the count of Champagne in 1164), and Le Conte del Graal or Perceval for Philip, count of Flanders, who died of the plague before Acre in 1191. This prince was guardian to the young king, Philip Augustus, and held the regency from 1180 to 1182. As Chrétien refers to the story of the Grail as the best tale told au cort roial, it seems very probable that it was composed during the period of the count’s regency. It was left unfinished, and added to at divers times by at least three writers, Wauchier de Denain, Gerbert de Montreuil and Manessier. The second of these states definitely that Chrétien died before he could finish his poem. Probably the period of his literary activity lies between the dates 1150 and 1182, when his patron, Count Philip, fell into disgrace at court. The extant poems of Chrtien de Troyes, in their chronological order are, Érec et Énide, Cligés, Le Chevalier de la Charrette (or Lancelot), Le Chevalier au Lion (or Yvain), and Le Conte del Graal (Perceval), all dealing with Arthurian legend. Besides these he states in the opening lines of Cligés that he had composed a Tristan (of which so far no trace has been found), and had made certain translations from Ovid’s Ars Amatoria and Metamorphoses. A portion of the last has been found by Gaston Paris included in the translation of Ovid made by Chrétien Legouais. There exists also a poem, Guillaume d’ Angleterre, purporting to be by Chrétien, but the authorship is a matter of debate. Professor Foerster claims it as genuine, and includes it in his edition of the poems, but Gaston Paris never accepted it.

Chrétien’s poems enjoyed widespread favour, and of the three most popular (Érec, Yvain and Perceval) there exist old Norse translations, while the two first were admirably rendered into German by Hartmann von Aue. There is an English translation of the Yvain, Ywain and Gawain, and there are Welsh versions of all three stories, though their exact relation to the French has not been determined. Chrétien’s style is easy and graceful, such as might be expected from a court poet; he is analytical, but not dramatic; in depth of thought and power of characterization he is decidedly inferior to Wolfram von Eschenbach, and as a poet he is probably to be ranked below Thomas, the author of the Tristan, and the translator of Thomas, Gottfried von Strassburg. Much that has been claimed as characteristic of his work has been shown by M. Willmotte to be merely reproductions of literary conceits employed by his predecessors; in the words of a recent writer, M. Bédier, “Chrétien semble moins avoir été un créateur épique qu’un habile arrangeur.” The special interest of his pcems lies in the problems surrounding their origin. So far as the MSS. are concerned they are the earliest Arthurian romances we possess. Did Chrétien invent the genre, or did he simply turn to account the work of earlier, and less favoured, poets? Round this point the battle still rages hotly, and though the extensive claims made by the enthusiastic editor of his works are gradually yielding to the force of critical investigation, it cannot be said that the question is in any way settled (see Arthurian Legend).

Chrétien’s poems, except the Perceval, have been critically edited by Professor Foerster (4 vols.). There is no easily available edition of the Perceval, which was printed from the Mons MS. by M. Potvin (6 vols., 1866-1871), but is difficult to procure. For Ywain and Gawain see the edition by Schleich (1887). The German versions are in Deutsche Classiker des Mittelalters, 1888 (Iwein), 1893 (Erec); the Welsh, in Lady Charlotte Guest’s translation of the Mabinogion (Nutt, 1902); Scandinavian translations, ed. E. Kölbing (1872). For general criticism see Willmotte, L’Évolution du roman français aux environs de 1150 (1903); also Legend of Sir Lancelot and Legend of Sir Percival (Grimm Library); and M. Borodine, La Femme et l’amour au XIIe siècle, d’après les poèmes de Chrétien de Troyes (1909).

CHRISM (through Lat. chrisma, from Gr. χρῖσμα, an anointing substance, χρίειν, to anoint; through a Romanic form cresma comes the Fr. crême, and Eng. “cream”), a mixture of olive oil and balm, used for anointing in the Roman Catholic church in baptism, confirmation and ordination, and in the consecrating and blessing of altars, chalices, baptismal water, &c. The consecration of the “chrism” is performed by a bishop, and since the 5th century has taken place on Maundy Thursday. In the Orthodox Church the chrism contains, besides olive oil, many precious spices and perfumes, and is known as “muron” or “myron.” The word is sometimes used loosely for the unmixed olive oil used in the sacrament of extreme unction. The “Chrisom” or “chrysom,” a variant of “chrism,” lengthened through pronunciation, is a white cloth with which the head of a newly baptized child was covered to prevent the holy oil from being rubbed off. If the baby died within a month of its baptism, it was shrouded in its chrisom; otherwise the cloth or its value was given to the church as an offering by the mother at her churching. Children dying within the month were called “chrisom-children” or “chrisoms,” and up to 1726 such entries occur in bills of mortality. The word was also used generally for a very young and innocent child, thus Shakespeare, Henry V., ii. 3, says of Falstaff: “A’ made a finer end and went away an it had been any Chrisom Child.”

CHRIST (Gr. Χριστὁς, Anointed), the official title given in the New Testament to Jesus of Nazareth, equivalent to the Hebrew Messiah. See Jesus Christ; Messiah; Christianity.

CHRIST, WILHELM VON (1831-1906), German classical scholar, was born in Geisenheim in Hesse-Nassau on the 2nd of August 1831. From 1854 till 1860 he taught in the Maximiliansgymnasium at Munich, and in 1861 was appointed professor of classical philology in the university. His most important works are his Geschichte der griechischen Literatur (5th ed., 1908 f.), a history of Greek literature down to the time of Justinian, one of the best works on the subject; Metrik der Griechen und Römer (1879); editions of Pindar (1887); of the Poëtica (1878) and Metaphysica (1895) of Aristotle; Iliad (1884). His contributions to the Sitzungsberichte and Abhandlungen of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences are particularly valuable.

See O. Crusius, Gedächtnisrede (Munich, 1907).

CHRISTADELPHIANS (Χριστοῦ ἂδελφοι, “brothers of Christ”), sometimes also called Thomasites, a community founded in 1848 by John Thomas (1805-1871), who, after studying medicine in London, migrated to Brooklyn, N.Y., U.S.A. There he at first joined the “Campbellites,” but afterwards struck out independently, preaching largely upon the application of Hebrew prophecy and of the Book of Revelation to current and future events. Both in America and in Great Britain he gathered a number of adherents, and formed a community which has extended to several English-speaking countries. It consists of exclusive “ecclesias,” with neither ministry nor organization. The members meet on Sundays to “break bread” and discuss the Bible. Their theology is strongly millenarian, centering in the hope of a world-wide theocracy with its seat at Jerusalem. Holding a doctrine of “conditional immortality,” they believe that they alone have the true exegesis of Scripture, and that the “faith of Christendom” is “compounded of the fables predicted by Paul.” No statistics of the community are published. It probably numbers from two to three thousand members. A monthly magazine, The Christadelphian, is published in Birmingham.

See R. Roberts, Dr Thomas, his Life and Work (1884).

CHRISTCHURCH, a municipal and parliamentary borough of Hampshire, England, at the confluence of the rivers Avon and Stour, 1½ m. from the sea, and 104 m. S.W. by W. from London by the London & South Western railway. Pop. (1901) 4204. It is famous for its magnificent priory church of the Holy Trinity. The church is cruciform, lacking a central tower, but having a Perpendicular tower at the west end. The nave and transepts are principally Norman, and very fine; the choir is Perpendicular. Early English additions appear in the nave, clerestory and elsewhere, and the rood-screen is of ornate Decorated workmanship. Other noteworthy features are the Norman turret at the north-east angle of the north transept, covered with arcading and other ornament, the beautiful reredos, similar to that in Winchester cathedral, and several interesting monuments, among which is one to the poet Shelley. Only fragments remain of the old castle, but an interesting ruin adjoins it known as the Norman House, apparently dating from the later part of the 12th century. Hosiery, and chains for clocks and watches are manufactured, and the salmon fishery is valuable. There is a small harbour, but it is dry at low water. The parliamentary borough, returning one member, includes the town of Bournemouth. The municipal borough is under a mayor, 4 aldermen and 12 councillors. Area, 832 acres.

Christchurch is mentioned in Saxon documents under the name of Tweotneam or Tweonaeteam, which long survived in the form Christchurch Twineham. In 901 it was seized by Aethelwald, but was recaptured by Edward the Elder. In the Domesday Survey, under the name of Thuinam, it appears as a royal manor, comprising a mill and part of the king’s forest; its value since the time of Edward the Confessor had decreased by almost one-half. Henry I. granted Christchurch to Richard de Redvers, who erected the castle. The first charter was granted by Baldwin earl of Exeter in the 12th century; it exempted the burgesses from certain tolls and customs, including the tolls on salt within the borough, and the custody of thieves. The 2nd Earl Baldwin granted to the burgesses the tolls of the fair at St Faith and common of pasture in certain meads. The above charters were confirmed by Edward II., Henry VII. and Elizabeth. The Holy Trinity fair is mentioned in 1226. Christchurch was governed by a bailiff in the 13th century, and was not incorporated till 1670, when the government was vested in a mayor and 24 capital burgesses, but this charter was shortly abandoned. The borough was summoned to send representatives to parliament in 1307 and 1308, but no returns are registered until 1572, from which date it was represented by two members until the Reform Act of 1832 reduced the number to one. The secular canons of the church of Holy Trinity held valuable possessions in Hampshire at the time of Edward the Confessor, including a portion of Christchurch, and in 1150 the establishment was constituted a priory of regular canons of St Augustine. Baldwin de Redvers confirmed the canons in their right to the first salmon caught every year and the tolls of Trinity fair. The priory, which attained to such fame that its name of Christchurch finally replaced the older name of Twineham, was dissolved in 1539.

See Victoria County History—Hampshire; Benjamin Ferrey, Antiquities of the Priory of Christchurch, 2nd edition, revised by J. Britton (London, 1841).

CHRISTCHURCH, a city near the east coast of South Island, New Zealand, to the north of Banks Peninsula, in Selwyn county, the capital of the provincial district of Canterbury and the seat of a bishop. Pop. (1906) 49,928; including suburbs, 67,878. It stands upon the great Canterbury plain, which here is a dead level, though the monotony of the site has been much relieved by extensive plantations of English and Australian trees. A background is supplied by the distant mountains to the west, and by the nearer hills to the south. The small river Avon winds through the city, pleasantly bordered by terraces and gardens. The wide streets cross one another for the most part at right angles. The predominance of stone and brick as building materials, the dominating cathedral spire, and the well-planted parks, avenues and private gardens, recall the aspect of an English residential town. Christchurch is mainly dependent on the rich agricultural district which surrounds it, the plain being mainly devoted to cereals and grazing. Wool is extensively worked, and meat is frozen for export. Railways connect with Culverden to the north and with Dunedin and the south coast, with many branches through the agricultural districts; also with Lyttelton, the port of Christchurch, 8 m. S.E. There are tramways in the city, and to New Brighton, a seaside suburb, and other residential quarters. The principal public buildings are the government buildings and the museum, with its fine collection of remains of the extinct bird, moa. The cathedral is the best in New Zealand, built from designs of Sir G. Gilbert Scott in Early English style, with a tower and spire 240 ft. high. Among educational foundations are Canterbury College (for classics, science, engineering, &c), Christ’s College (mainly theological) and grammar school, and a school of art. There is a Roman Catholic pro-cathedral attached to a convent of the Sacred Heart. A large extent of open ground, to the west of the town, finely planted, and traversed by the river, comprises Hagley Park, recreation grounds, the Government Domain and the grounds of the Acclimatization Society, with fish-ponds and a small zoological garden. The foundation of Christchurch is connected with the so-called “Canterbury Pilgrims,” who settled in this district in 1850. Lyttelton was the original settlement, but Christchurch came into existence in 1851, and is thus the latest of the settlements of the colony. It became a municipality in 1862. In 1903 several populous suburban boroughs were amalgamated with the city.

CHRISTIAN II. (1481-1559), king of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, son of John (Hans) and Christina of Saxony, was born at Nyborg castle in 1481, and succeeded his father as king of Denmark and Norway in 1513. As viceroy of Norway (1506-1512) he had already displayed a singular capacity for ruling under exceptionally difficult circumstances. Patriotism, insight, courage, statesmanship, energy,—these great qualities were indisputably his; but unfortunately they were vitiated by obstinacy, suspicion and a sulky craftiness, beneath which simmered a very volcano of revengeful cruelty. Another peculiarity, more fatal to him in that aristocratic age than any other, was his fondness for the common people, which was increased by his passion for a pretty Dutch girl, named Dyveke, who became his mistress in 1507 or 1509.

Christian’s succession to the throne was confirmed at the Herredag, or assembly of notables from the three northern kingdoms, which met at Copenhagen in 1513. The nobles and clergy of all three kingdoms regarded with grave misgivings a ruler who had already shown in Norway that he was not afraid of enforcing his authority to the uttermost. The Rigsraads of Denmark and Norway insisted, in the haandfaestning or charter extorted from the king, that the crowns of both kingdoms were elective and not hereditary, providing explicitly against any transgression of the charter by the king, and expressly reserving to themselves a free choice of Christian’s successor after his death. But the Swedish delegates could not be prevailed upon to accept Christian as king at all. “We have,” they said, “the choice between peace at home and strife here, or peace here and civil war at home, and we prefer the former.” A decision as to the Swedish succession was therefore postponed. On the 12th of August 1515 Christian married Isabella of Burgundy, the grand-daughter of the emperor Maximilian. But he would not give up his liaison with Dyveke, and it was only the death of the unfortunate girl in 1517, under suspicious circumstances, that prevented serious complications with the emperor Charles V. Christian revenged himself by executing the magnate Torben Oxe, who, on very creditable evidence, was supposed to have been Dyveke’s murderer, despite the strenuous opposition of Oxe’s fellow-peers; and henceforth the king lost no opportunity of depressing the nobility and raising plebeians to power. His chief counsellor was Dyveke’s mother Sigbrit, a born administrator and a commercial genius of the first order. Christian first appointed her controller of the Sound tolls, and ultimately committed to her the whole charge of the finances. A bourgeoise herself, it was Sigbrit’s constant policy to elevate and extend the influence of the middle classes. She soon became the soul of a middle-class inner council, which competed with Rigsraad itself. The patricians naturally resented their supersession and nearly every unpopular measure was attributed to the influence of “the foul-mouthed Dutch sorceress who hath bewitched the king.”

Meanwhile Christian was preparing for the inevitable war with Sweden, where the patriotic party, headed by the freely elected governor Sten Sture the younger, stood face to face with the philo-Danish party under Archbishop Gustavus Trolle. Christian, who had already taken measures to isolate Sweden politically, hastened to the relief of the archbishop, who was beleagured in his fortress of Stäke, but was defeated by Sture and his peasant levies at Vedla and forced to return to Denmark. A second attempt to subdue Sweden in 1518 was also frustrated by Sture’s victory at Bränkyrka. A third attempt made in 1520 with a large army of French, German and Scottish mercenaries proved successful. Sture was mortally wounded at the battle of Börgerund, on the 19th of January, and the Danish army, unopposed, was approaching Upsala, where the members of the Swedish Riksråd had already assembled. The senators consented to render homage to Christian on condition that he gave a full indemnity for the past and a guarantee that Sweden should be ruled according to Swedish laws and custom; and a convention to this effect was confirmed by the king and the Danish Rigsraad on the 31st of March. But Sture’s widow, Dame Christina Gyllenstjerna, still held out stoutly at Stockholm, and the peasantry of central Sweden, stimulated by her patriotism, flew to arms, defeated the Danish invaders at Balundsäs (March 19th), and were only with the utmost difficulty finally defeated at the bloody battle of Upsala (Good Friday, April 6th). In May the Danish fleet arrived, and Stockholm was invested by land and sea; but Dame Christina resisted valiantly for four months longer, and took care, when she surrendered on the 7th of September, to exact beforehand an amnesty of the most explicit and absolute character. On the 1st of November the representatives of the nation swore fealty to Christian as hereditary king of Sweden, though the law of the land distinctly provided that the Swedish crown should be elective. On the 4th of November he was anointed by Gustavus Trolle in Stockholm cathedral, and took the usual oath to rule the realm through native-born Swedes alone, according to prescription. The next three days were given up to banqueting, but on the 7th of November “an entertainment of another sort began.” On the evening of that day Christian summoned his captains to a private conference at the palace, the result of which was quickly apparent, for at dusk a band of Danish soldiers, with lanterns and torches, broke into the great hall and carried off several carefully selected persons. By 10 o’clock the same evening the remainder of the king’s guests were safely under lock and key. All these persons had previously been marked down on Archbishop Trolle’s proscription list. On the following day a council, presided over by Trolle, solemnly pronounced judgment of death on the proscribed, as manifest heretics. At 12 o’clock that night the patriotic bishops of Skara and Strängnäs were led out into the great square and beheaded. Fourteen noblemen, three burgomasters, fourteen town-councillors and about twenty common citizens of Stockholm were then drowned or decapitated. The executions continued throughout the following day; in all, about eighty-two people are said to have been thus murdered. Moreover, Christian revenged himself upon the dead as well as upon the living, for Sten Sture’s body was dug up and burnt, as well as the body of his little child. Dame Christina and many other noble Swedish ladies were sent prisoners to Denmark. It has well been said that the manner of this atrocious deed (the “Stockholm Massacre” as it is generally called) was even more detestable than the deed itself. Christian suppressed his political opponents under the pretence of defending an ecclesiastical system which in his heart he despised. Even when it became necessary to make excuses for his crime, we see the same double-mindedness. Thus, while in a proclamation to the Swedish people he represented the massacre as a measure necessary to avoid a papal interdict, in his apology to the pope for the decapitation of the innocent bishops he described it as an unauthorized act of vengeance on the part of his own people.

It was with his brain teeming with great designs that Christian II. returned to his native kingdom. That the welfare of his dominions was dear to him there can be no doubt. Inhuman as he could be in his wrath, in principle he was as much a humanist as any of his most enlightened contemporaries. But he would do things his own way; and deeply distrusting the Danish nobles with whom he shared his powers, he sought helpers from among the wealthy and practical middle classes of Flanders. In June 1521 he paid a sudden visit to the Low Countries, and remained there for some months. He visited most of the large cities, took into his service many Flemish artisans, and made the personal acquaintance of Quentin Matsys and Albrecht Dürer, the latter of whom painted his portrait. Christian also entertained Erasmus, with whom he discussed the Reformation, and let fall the characteristic expression: “Mild measures are of no use; the remedies that give the whole body a good shaking are the best and surest.”

Never had King Christian seemed so powerful as on his return to Denmark on the 5th of September 1521, and with the confidence of strength he at once proceeded recklessly to inaugurate the most sweeping reforms. Soon after his return he issued his great Landelove, or Code of Laws. For the most part this is founded on Dutch models, and testifies in a high degree to the king’s progressive aims. Provision was made for the better education of the lower, and the restriction of the political influence of the higher clergy; there were stern prohibitions against wreckers and “the evil and unchristian practice of selling peasants as if they were brute beasts”; the old trade gilds were retained, but the rules of admittance thereto made easier, and trade combinations of the richer burghers, to the detriment of the smaller tradesmen, were sternly forbidden. Unfortunately these reforms, excellent in themselves, suggested the standpoint not of an elected ruler, but of a monarch by right divine. Some of them were even in direct contravention of the charter; and the old Scandinavian spirit of independence was deeply wounded by the preference given to the Dutch. Sweden too was now in open revolt; and both Norway and Denmark were taxed to the uttermost to raise an army for the subjection of the sister kingdom. Foreign complications were now superadded to these domestic troubles. With the laudable object of releasing Danish trade from the grinding yoke of the Hansa, and making Copenhagen the great emporium of the north, Christian had arbitrarily raised the Sound tolls and seized a number of Dutch ships which presumed to evade the tax. Thus his relations with the Netherlands were strained, while with Lübeck and her allies he was openly at war. Finally Jutland rose against him, renounced its allegiance and offered the Danish crown to Duke Frederick of Holstein (January 20th, 1523). So overwhelming did Christian’s difficulties appear that he took ship to seek help abroad, and on May 1st landed at Veere in Zealand. Eight years later (October 24th, 1531) he attempted to recover his kingdoms, but a tempest scattered his fleet off the Norwegian coast, and on the 1st of July 1532, by the convention of Oslo, he surrendered to his rival, King Frederick, and for the next 27 years was kept in solitary confinement, first in the Blue Tower at Copenhagen and afterwards at the castle of Kabendborg. He died in January 1559.

See K.P. Arnoldson, Nordens enhet och Kristian II. (Stockholm, 1899); Paul Frederik Barfod, Danmarks Historie fra 1319 til 1536 (Copenhagen, 1885); Danmarks Riges Historie, vol. 3 (Copenhagen, 1897-1905); Robert Nisbet Bain, Scandinavia, chap 2 (Cambridge, 1905).

(R. N. B.)

CHRISTIAN III. (1503-1559), king of Denmark and Norway, was the son of Frederick I. of Denmark and his first consort, Anne of Brandenburg. His earliest teacher, Wolfgang von Utenhof, who came straight from Wittenberg, and the Lutheran Holsteiner Johann Rantzau, who became his tutor, were both able and zealous reformers. In 1521 Christian travelled in Germany, and was present at the diet of Worms, where Luther’s behaviour profoundly impressed him. On his return he found that his father had been elected king of Denmark in the place of Christian II., and the young prince’s first public service was the reduction of Copenhagen, which stood firm for the fugitive Christian II. He made no secret of his Lutheran views, and his outspokenness brought him into collision, not only with the Catholic Rigsraad, but also with his cautious and temporizing father. At his own court at Schleswig he did his best to introduce the Reformation, despite the opposition of the bishops. Both as stadtholder of the Duchies in 1526, and as viceroy of Norway in 1529, he displayed considerable administrative ability, though here too his religious intolerance greatly provoked the Catholic party. There was even some talk of passing him over in the succession to the throne, in favour of his half-brother Hans, who had been brought up in the old religion. On his father’s death Christian was proclaimed king at the local diet of Viborg, and took an active part in the “Grevens Fejde” or “Count’s War.”

The triumph of so fanatical a reformer as Christian brought about the fall of Catholicism, but the Catholics were still so strong in the council of state that Christian was forced to have recourse to a coup d’état, which he successfully accomplished by means of his German mercenaries (12th of August 1536), an absolutely inexcusable act of violence loudly blamed by Luther himself, and accompanied by the wholesale spoliation of the church. Christian’s finances were certainly readjusted thereby, but the ultimate gainers by the confiscation were the nobles, and both education and morality suffered grievously in consequence. The circumstances under which Christian III. ascended the throne naturally exposed Denmark to the danger of foreign domination. It was with the help of the gentry of the duchies that Christian had conquered Denmark. German and Holstein noblemen had led his armies and directed his diplomacy. Naturally, a mutual confidence between a king who had conquered his kingdom and a people who had stood in arms against him was not attainable immediately, and the first six years of Christian III.’s reign were marked by a contest between the Danish Rigsraad and the German counsellors, both of whom sought to rule “the pious king” exclusively. Though the Danish party won a signal victory at the outset, by obtaining the insertion in the charter of provisions stipulating that only native-born Danes should fill the highest dignities of the state, the king’s German counsellors continued paramount during the earlier years of his reign. The ultimate triumph of the Danish party dates from 1539, the dangers threatening Christian III. from the emperor Charles V. and other kinsmen of the imprisoned Christian II. convincing him of the absolute necessity of removing the last trace of discontent in the land by leaning exclusively on Danish magnates and soldiers. The complete identification of the Danish king with the Danish people was accomplished at the Herredag of Copenhagen, 1542, when the nobility of Denmark voted Christian a twentieth part of all their property to pay off his heavy debt to the Holsteiners and Germans.

The pivot of the foreign policy of Christian III. was his alliance with the German Evangelical princes, as a counterpoise to the persistent hostility of Charles V., who was determined to support the hereditary claims of his nieces, the daughters of Christian II., to the Scandinavian kingdoms. War was actually declared against Charles V. in 1542, and, though the German Protestant princes proved faithless allies, the closing of the Sound against Dutch shipping proved such an effective weapon in King Christian’s hand that the Netherlands compelled Charles V. to make peace with Denmark at the diet of Spires, the 23rd of May 1544. The foreign policy of Christian’s later days was regulated by the peace of Spires. He carefully avoided all foreign complications; refused to participate in the Schmalkaldic war of 1546; mediated between the emperor and Saxony after the fall of Maurice of Saxony at the battle of Sievershausen in 1553, and contributed essentially to the conclusion of peace. King Christian III. died on New Year’s Day 1559. Though not perhaps a great, he was, in the fullest sense of the word, a good ruler. A strong sense of duty, genuine piety, and a cautious but by no means pusillanimous common-sense coloured every action of his patient, laborious and eventful life. But the work he left behind him is the best proof of his statesmanship. He found Denmark in ruins; he left her stronger and wealthier than she had ever been before.

See Danmarks Riges Historie, vol. 3 (Copenhagen, 1897-1901); Huitfeld, King Christian III.’s Historie (Copenhagen, 1595); Bain, Scandinavia, cap. iv. v. (Cambridge, 1905).

(R. N. B.)

CHRISTIAN IV. (1577-1648), king of Denmark and Norway, the son of Frederick II., king of Denmark, and Sophia of Mecklenburg, was born at Fredriksborg castle in 1577, and succeeded to the throne on the death of his father (4th of April 1588), attaining his majority on the 17th of August 1596. On the 27th of November 1597 he married Anne Catherine, a daughter of Joachim Frederick, margrave of Brandenburg. The queen died fourteen years later, after bearing Christian six children. Four years after her death the king privately wedded a handsome young gentlewoman, Christina Munk, by whom he had twelve children,—a connexion which was to be disastrous to Denmark.

The young king’s court was one of the most joyous and magnificent in Europe; yet he found time for work of the most various description, including a series of domestic reforms (see Denmark: History). He also did very much for the national armaments. New fortresses were constructed under the direction of Dutch engineers. The Danish navy, which in 1596 consisted of but twenty-two vessels, in 1610 rose to sixty, some of them being built after Christian’s own designs. The formation of a national army was more difficult. Christian had to depend mainly upon hired troops, supported by native levies recruited for the most part from the peasantry on the crown domains. His first experiment with his newly organized army was successful. In the war with Sweden, generally known as the “Kalmar War,” because its chief operation was the capture by the Danes of Kalmar, the eastern fortress of Sweden, Christian compelled Gustavus Adolphus to give way on all essential points (treaty of Knäred, 20th of January 1613). He now turned his attention to Germany. His object was twofold: first, to obtain the control of the great German rivers the Elbe and the Weser, as a means of securing his dominion of the northern seas; and secondly, to acquire the secularized German bishoprics of Bremen and Werden as appanages for his younger sons. He skilfully took advantage of the alarm of the German Protestants after the battle of White Hill in 1620, to secure the coadjutorship to the see of Bremen for his son Frederick (September 1621), a step followed in November by a similar arrangement as to Werden; while Hamburg by the compact of Steinburg (July 1621) was induced to acknowledge the Danish overlordship of Holstein. The growing ascendancy of the Catholics in North Germany in and after 1623 almost induced Christian, for purely political reasons, to intervene directly in the Thirty Years’ War. For a time, however, he stayed his hand, but the urgent solicitations of the western powers, and, above all, his fear lest Gustavus Adolphus should supplant him as the champion of the Protestant cause, finally led him to plunge into war against the combined forces of the emperor and the League, without any adequate guarantees of co-operation from abroad. On the 9th of May 1625 Christian quitted Denmark for the front. He had at his disposal from 19,000 to 25,000 men, and at first gained some successes; but on the 27th of August 1626 he was utterly routed by Tilly at Lutter-am-Barenberge, and in the summer of 1627 both Tilly and Wallenstein, ravaging and burning, occupied the duchies and the whole peninsula of Jutland. In his extremity Christian now formed an alliance with Sweden (1st of January 1628), whereby Gustavus Adolphus pledged himself to assist Denmark with a fleet in case of need, and shortly afterwards a Swedo-Danish army and fleet compelled Wallenstein to raise the siege of Stralsund. Thus the possession of a superior sea-power enabled Denmark to tide over her worst difficulties, and in May 1629 Christian was able to conclude peace with the emperor at Lübeck, without any diminution of territory.

Christian IV. was now a broken man. His energy was temporarily paralysed by accumulated misfortunes. Not only his political hopes, but his domestic happiness had suffered shipwreck. In the course of 1628 he discovered a scandalous intrigue of his wife, Christina Munk, with one of his German officers; and when he put her away she endeavoured to cover up her own disgrace by conniving at an intrigue between Vibeke Kruse, one of her discharged maids, and the king. In January 1630 the rupture became final, and Christina retired to her estates in Jutland. Meanwhile Christian openly acknowledged Vibeke as his mistress, and she bore him a numerous family. Vibeke’s children were of course the natural enemies of the children of Christina Munk, and the hatred of the two families was not without influence on the future history of Denmark. Between 1629 and 1643, however, Christian gained both in popularity and influence. During that period he obtained once more the control of the foreign policy of Denmark as well as of the Sound tolls, and towards the end of it he hoped to increase his power still further with the assistance of his sons-in-law, Korfits Ulfeld and Hannibal Sehested, who now came prominently forward.

Even at the lowest ebb of his fortunes Christian had never lost hope of retrieving them, and between 1629 and 1643 the European situation presented infinite possibilities to politicians with a taste for adventure. Unfortunately, with all his gifts, Christian was no statesman, and was incapable of a consistent policy. He would neither conciliate Sweden, henceforth his most dangerous enemy, nor guard himself against her by a definite system of counter-alliances. By mediating in favour of the emperor, after the death of Gustavus Adolphus in 1632, he tried to minimize the influence of Sweden in Germany, and did glean some minor advantages. But his whole Scandinavian policy was so irritating and vexatious that Swedish statesmen made up their minds that a war with Denmark was only a question of time; and in the spring of 1643 it seemed to them that the time had come. They were now able, thanks to their conquests in the Thirty Years’ War, to attack Denmark from the south as well as the east; the Dutch alliance promised to secure them at sea, and an attack upon Denmark would prevent her from utilizing the impending peace negotiations to the prejudice of Sweden. In May the Swedish Riksråd decided upon war; on the 12th of December the Swedish marshal Lennart Torstensson, advancing from Bohemia, crossed the northern frontier of Denmark; by the end of January 1644 the whole peninsula of Jutland was in his possession. This totally unexpected attack, conducted from first to last with consummate ability and lightning-like rapidity, had a paralysing effect upon Denmark. Fortunately, in the midst of almost universal helplessness and confusion, Christian IV. knew his duty and had the courage to do it. In his sixty-sixth year he once more displayed something of the magnificent energy of his triumphant youth. Night and day he laboured to levy armies and equip fleets. Fortunately too for him, the Swedish government delayed hostilities in Scania till February 1644, so that the Danes were able to make adequate defensive preparations and save the important fortress of Malmö. Torstensson, too, was unable to cross from Jutland to Fünen for want of a fleet, and the Dutch auxiliary fleet which came to his assistance was defeated between the islands of Sylt and Rönnö on the west coast of Schleswig by the Danish admirals. Another attempt to transport Torstensson and his army to the Danish islands by a large Swedish fleet was frustrated by Christian IV. in person on the 1st of July 1644. On that day the two fleets encountered off Kolberge Heath, S.E. of Kiel Bay, and Christian displayed a heroism which endeared him ever after to the Danish nation and made his name famous in song and story. As he stood on the quarter-deck of the “Trinity” a cannon close by was exploded by a Swedish bullet, and splinters of wood and metal wounded the king in thirteen places, blinding one eye and flinging him to the deck. But he was instantly on his feet again, cried with a loud voice that it was well with him, and set every one an example of duty by remaining on deck till the fight was over. Darkness at last separated the contending fleets; and though the battle was a drawn one, the Danish fleet showed its superiority by blockading the Swedish ships in Kiel Bay. But the Swedish fleet escaped, and the annihilation of the Danish fleet by the combined navies of Sweden and Holland, after an obstinate fight between Fehmarn and Laaland at the end of September, exhausted the military resources of Denmark and compelled Christian to accept the mediation of France and the United Provinces; and peace was finally signed at Brömsebro on the 8th of February 1645.

The last years of the king were still further embittered by sordid differences with his sons-in-law, especially with the most ambitious of them, Korfits Ulfeld. On the 21st of February 1648, at his earnest request, he was carried in a litter from Fredriksborg to his beloved Copenhagen, where he died a week later. Christian IV. was a good linguist, speaking, besides his native tongue, German, Latin, French and Italian. Naturally cheerful and hospitable, he delighted in lively society; but he was also passionate, irritable and sensual. He had courage, a vivid sense of duty, an indefatigable love of work, and all the inquisitive zeal and inventive energy of a born reformer. Yet, though of the stuff of which great princes are made, he never attained to greatness. His own pleasure, whether it took the form of love or ambition, was always his first consideration. In the heyday of his youth his high spirits and passion for adventure enabled him to surmount every obstacle with élan. But in the decline of life he reaped the bitter fruits of his lack of self-control, and sank into the grave a weary and broken-hearted old man.

See Life (Dan.), by H.C. Bering Lüsberg and A.L. Larsen (Copenhagen, 1890-1891); Letters (Dan.), ed. Carl Frederik Bricka and Julius Albert Fridericia (Copenhagen, 1878); Danmarks Riges Historie, vol. 4 (Copenhagen, 1897-1905); Robert Nisbet Bain, Scandinavia, cap. vii. (Cambridge, 1905).

(R. N. B.)

CHRISTIAN V. (1646-1699), king of Denmark and Norway, the son of Frederick III. of Denmark and Sophia Amelia of Brunswick-Lüneburg, was born on the 15th of April 1646 at Flensberg, and ascended the throne on the 9th of February 1670. He was a weak despot with an exaggerated opinion of his dignity and his prerogatives. Almost his first act on ascending the throne was publicly to insult his consort, the amiable Charlotte Amelia of Hesse-Cassel, by introducing into court, as his officially recognized mistress, Amelia Moth, a girl of sixteen, the daughter of his former tutor, whom he made countess of Samsö. His personal courage and extreme affability made him highly popular among the lower orders, but he showed himself quite incapable of taking advantage permanently of the revival of the national energy, and the extraordinary overflow of native middle-class talent, which were the immediate consequences of the revolution of 1660. Under the guidance of his great chancellor Griffenfeldt, Denmark seemed for a brief period to have a chance of regaining her former position as a great power. But in sacrificing Griffenfeldt to the clamour of his adversaries, Christian did serious injury to the monarchy. He frittered away the resources of the kingdom in the unremunerative Swedish war of 1675-79, and did nothing for internal progress in the twenty years of peace which followed. He died in a hunting accident on the 25th of August 1699.

See Peter Edvard Holm, Danmarks indre Historie under Enevaelden (Copenhagen, 1881-1886); Adolf Ditleva Jörgensen, Peter Griffenfeldt (Copenhagen, 1893); Robert Nisbet Bain, Scandinavia cap. x., xi. (Cambridge, 1905).

CHRISTIAN VII. (1749-1808), king of Denmark and Norway, was the son of Frederick V., king of Denmark, and his first consort Louisa, daughter of George II. of Great Britain. He became king on his father’s death on the 14th of January 1766. All the earlier accounts agree that he had a winning personality and considerable talent, but he was badly educated, systematically terrorized by a brutal governor and hopelessly debauched by corrupt pages, and grew up a semi-idiot. After his marriage in 1766 with Caroline Matilda (1751-1775), daughter of Frederick, prince of Wales, he abandoned himself to the worst excesses. He ultimately sank into a condition of mental stupor, and became the obedient slave of the upstart Struensee (q.v.). After the fall of Struensee (the warrant for whose arrest he signed with indifference), for the last six-and-twenty years of his reign, he was only nominally king. He died on the 13th of March 1808. In 1772 the king’s marriage with Caroline Matilda, who had been seized and had confessed to criminal familiarity with Struensee, was dissolved, and the queen, retaining her title, passed her remaining days at Celle, where she died on the 11th of May 1775.

See E.S.F. Reverdil, Struensee et la cour de Copenhague, 1760-1772 (Paris, 1858); Danmarks Riges Historie, vol. v. (Copenhagen, 1897-1905); and for Caroline Matilda, Sir F.C.L. Wraxall, Life and Times of Queen Caroline Matilda (1864), and W.H. Wilkins, A Queen of Tears (1904).

CHRISTIAN VIII. (1786-1848), king of Denmark and Norway, the eldest son of the crown prince Frederick and Sophia Frederica of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, was born on the 18th of September 1786 at Christiansborg castle. He inherited the talents of his highly gifted mother, and his amiability and handsome features made him very popular in Copenhagen. His unfortunate first marriage with his cousin Charlotte Frederica of Mecklenburg-Schwerin was dissolved in 1810. In May 1813 he was sent as stadtholder to Norway to promote the loyalty of the Northmen to the dynasty, which had been very rudely shaken by the disastrous results of Frederick VI.’s adhesion to the falling fortunes of Napoleon. He did all he could personally to strengthen the bonds between the Norwegians and the royal house of Denmark, and though his endeavours were opposed by the so-called Swedish party, which desired a dynastic union with Sweden, he placed himself at the head of the Norwegian party of independence, and was elected regent of Norway by an assembly of notables on the 16th of February 1814. This election was confirmed by a Storthing held at Eidsvold on the 10th of April, and on the 17th of May Christian was elected king of Norway, despite the protests of the Swedish party. Christian next attempted to interest the great powers in his cause, but without success. On being summoned by the commissioners of the allied powers at Copenhagen to bring about a union between Norway and Sweden in accordance with the terms of the treaty of Kiel, and then return to Denmark, he replied that, as a constitutional king, he could do nothing without the consent of the Storthing, to the convocation of which a suspension of hostilities on the part of Sweden was the condition precedent. Sweden refusing Christian’s conditions, a short campaign ensued, in which Christian was easily worsted by the superior skill and forces of the Swedish crown prince (Bernadotte). The brief war was finally concluded by the convention of Moss on the 14th of August 1814 (see Norway: History). Henceforth Christian’s suspected democratic principles made him persona ingratissima at all the reactionary European courts, his own court included, and he and his second wife, Caroline Amelia of Augustenburg, whom he married in 1815, lived in comparative retirement as the leaders of the literary and scientific society of Copenhagen. It was not till 1831 that old King Frederick gave him a seat in the council of state. On the 13th of December 1839 he ascended the Danish throne as Christian VIII. The Liberal party had high hopes of “the giver of constitutions,” but he disappointed his admirers by steadily rejecting every Liberal project. Administrative reform was the only reform he would promise. He died of blood-poisoning on the 20th of January 1848.

See Just Matthias Thiele, Christian den Ottende (Copenhagen, 1848); Yngvar Nielsen, Bidrag til Norges Historie (Christiania, 1882-1886).

CHRISTIAN IX. (1818-1906), king of Denmark, was a younger son of William, duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg (d. 1831), a direct descendant of the Danish king Christian III. by his wife Louise, a daughter of Charles, prince of Hesse-Cassel (d. 1836), and grand-daughter of King Frederick V. Born at Gottorp on the 8th of April 1818, Christian entered the army, and alone among the members of his family served with the Danish troops in Schleswig during the insurrection of 1848; but he was a personage of little importance until about 1852, ten years after his marriage with Louise (1817-1898), daughter of William, prince of Hesse-Cassel (d. 1867), and cousin of King Frederick VII. At this time it became imperative that satisfactory provision should be made for the succession to the Danish throne. The reigning king, Frederick VII., was childless, and the representatives of the great powers met in London and settled the crown on Prince Christian and his wife (May 1852), an arrangement which became part of the law of Denmark in 1853. The “protocol king,” as Christian was sometimes called, ascended the throne on Frederick’s death in November 1863, and was at once faced by formidable difficulties. Reluctantly he assented to the policy which led to war with the combined power of Austria and Prussia, and to the separation of the duchies of Schleswig, Holstein and Lauenburg from Denmark (see Schleswig-holstein Question). Within the narrowed limits of his kingdom Christian’s difficulties were more protracted and hardly less serious. During almost the whole of his reign the Danes were engaged in a political struggle between the “Right” and the “Left,” the party of order and the party of progress, the former being supported in general by the Landsting, and the latter by the Folketing. The king’s sympathies lay with the more conservative section of his subjects, and for many years he was successful in preventing the Radicals from coming into office. The march of events, however, was too strong for him, and in 1901 he assented in a dignified manner to the formation of a “cabinet of the Left” (see Denmark: History). In spite of these political disturbances Christian’s popularity with his people grew steadily, and was enhanced by the patriarchal and unique position which in his later years he occupied in Europe. With his wife, often called “the aunt of all Europe,” he was related to nearly all the European sovereigns. His eldest son Frederick had married a daughter of Charles XV. of Sweden; his second son George had been king of the Hellenes since 1863; and his youngest son Waldemar (b. 1858) was married to Marie d’Orléans, daughter of Robert, duc de Chartres. Of his three daughters, Alexandra married Edward VII. of Great Britain; Dagmar (Marie), the tsar Alexander III.; and Thyra, Ernest Augustus, duke of Cumberland. One of his grandsons, Charles, became king of Norway as Haakon VII. in 1905, and another, Constantine, crown prince of Greece, married a sister of the German emperor William II. Christian was also the ruler of Iceland, where he was received with great enthusiasm when he visited the island in 1874. He died at Copenhagen on the 29th of January 1906, and was buried at Roskilde.

See Barfod, Kong Kristian IX.’s Regerings-Dagbog (Copenhagen, 1876); and Hans Majestet Kong Kristian IX. (Copenhagen, 1888).

CHRISTIAN, WILLIAM (1608-1663), Manx politician, a son of Ewan Christian, one of the Manx deemsters, was born on the 14th of April 1608, and was known as Illiam Dhone, or Brown William. In 1648 the lord of the Isle of Man, James Stanley, 7th earl of Derby, appointed Christian his receiver-general; and when in 1651 the earl crossed to England to fight for Charles II. he left him in command of the island militia. Derby was taken prisoner at the battle of Worcester, and his famous countess, Charlotte de la Tremouille, who was residing in Man, sought to obtain her husband’s release by negotiating with the victorious parliamentarians for the surrender of the island. At once a revolt headed by Christian broke out, partly as a consequence of this step, partly owing to the discontent caused by some agrarian arrangements recently introduced by the earl. The rebels seized many of the forts; then Christian in his turn entered into negotiations with the parliamentarians; and probably owing to his connivance the island was soon in the power of Colonel Robert Duckenfield, who had brought the parliamentary fleet to Man in October 1651. The countess of Derby was compelled to surrender her two fortresses, Castle Rushen and Peel castle, while Christian remained receiver-general, becoming governor of the island in 1656. Two years later, however, he was accused of misappropriating some money; he fled to England, and in 1660 was arrested in London. Having undergone a year’s imprisonment he returned to Man, hoping that his offence against the earl of Derby would be condoned under the Act of Indemnity of 1661; but, anxious to punish his conduct, Charles, the new earl of Derby, ordered his seizure; he refused to plead, and a packed House of Keys declared that in this case his life and property were at the mercy of the lord of the island. The deemsters then passed sentence, and in accordance therewith Christian was executed by shooting on the 2nd of January 1663. This arbitrary act angered Charles II. and his advisers; the deemsters and others were punished, and some reparation was made to Christian’s family. Christian is chiefly celebrated through the Manx ballad Baase Illiam Dhone, which has been translated into English by George Borrow, and through the references to him in Sir Walter Scott’s Peveril of the Peak.

See A.W. Moore, History of the Isle of Man (1900).

CHRISTIAN OF BRUNSWICK (1590-1626), bishop of Halberstadt and a general during the earlier part of the Thirty Years’ War, a younger son of Henry Julius, duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, was born at Gröningen on the 20th of September 1599. Having succeeded his father as “bishop” of Halberstadt in 1616, he obtained some experience of warfare under Maurice, prince of Orange, in the Netherlands. Raising an army he entered the service of Frederick V., elector palatine of the Rhine, just after that prince had been driven from Bohemia; glorying in his chivalrous devotion to Frederick’s wife Elizabeth, he attacked the lands of the elector of Mainz and the bishoprics of Westphalia. After some successes he was defeated by Tilly at Höchst in June 1622; then, dismissed from Frederick’s service, he entered that of the United Provinces, losing an arm at the battle of Fleurus, a victory he did much to win. In 1623 he gathered an army and broke into lower Saxony, but was beaten by Tilly at Stadtlohn and driven back to the Netherlands. When in 1625 Christian IV., king of Denmark, entered the arena of the war, he took the field again in the Protestant interest, but after some successes he died at Wolfenbüttel on the 16th of June 1626. Christian, who loved to figure as “the friend of God, the enemy of the priests,” is sometimes called “the mad bishop,” and was a merciless, coarse, and blasphemous man.

CHRISTIAN CATHOLIC CHURCH, the name assumed by a religious organization founded at Zion City near Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A., in 1896, by John Alexander Dowie (q.v.). Its members added to the usual tenets of Christianity a special belief in faith-healing, and laid much stress on united consecration services and the threefold immersion of believers. To assist Dowie, assistant overseers were appointed, and the operations of the community included religious, educational and commercial departments. Small branches sprang up in other parts of the United States, Mexico, Canada, Europe and Australasia. At the end of 1901 there were nearly 12,000 baptized believers. After 1903 considerable dissension arose among Dowie’s followers: he was deposed in 1906; and after his death (1907) the city gradually became a community of normal type.

CHRISTIAN CONNECTION, a denomination of Christians in North America formed by secession, under James O’Kelly (1735-1826), of members of the Methodist Episcopal Church in North Carolina in 1793. The movement resembled those under the Campbells and Stone in Kentucky in 1801-1804, and in Lyndon, Vermont, among the Baptists in 1800. The predisposing cause in each case was the desire to be free from the “bondage of creed.” Some of O’Kelly’s followers joined the Disciples of Christ (q.v.). Their form of church government is Congregational; they take the Bible as the sole rule of faith and practice, and while adopting immersion as the proper mode of baptism, freely welcome Christians of every sect to their communion. They number about 100,000 members, mainly in the states of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. The original seceders in Virginia and North Carolina bore for a time the name “Republican Methodists,” and then called themselves simply “Christians,” a designation which with the pronunciation “Christ-yans” is still often applied to them. Their position is curiously akin to that outlined by William Chillingworth (q.v.) in his famous work The Religion of Protestants (1637-1638).

CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOUR SOCIETIES, organizations formed for the purpose of promoting spiritual life among young people. They date from 1881, in which year Dr Francis E. Clark (q.v.) formed a Young People’s Society of Christian Endeavour in his (Congregational) church at Portland, Maine, U.S.A. The idea was taken up elsewhere in America and spread to other countries, till, under the presidency of Dr Clark, a huge number of affiliated societies came into operation throughout the world. They take as their motto “For Christ and the Church,” and have done much, especially in the non-episcopal churches, to prepare young men and women for active services in the Church. The organization is international and interdenominational, a World’s Christian Endeavour Union being formed in 1895. The members do not form a separate denomination, but remain attached to their respective churches, being grouped in voluntary district federations.

CHRISTIANIA (officially Kristiania), the capital of Norway, forming a separate county (amt), and the seat of a bishopric (stift). Pop. (1901) 229,101. It lies on the south-eastern coast, at the head of Christiania Fjord, about 80 m. from the open waters of the Skagerrack, is 59° 54′ N. (about the latitude of the southern extremity of the Shetland Islands) and 10° 45′ E., mainly on the west bank of the small Aker river. The situation is very beautiful, pine-wooded hills rising sharply behind the city, while several islands stud the fjord. The town is mainly modern, having increased rapidly in and since the second half of the 19th century, when brick and stone largely superseded wood as the building material. It is the seat of government, of the supreme courts, of the parliament (Storthing), and of a university. The harbour is of two parts, the Björvik, where the larger steamers lie, and the Pipervik, west of this. On the promontory intervening between these two inlets stands the old fortress of Akershus, occupied as an arsenal and prison, and having a pleasant promenade upon its ramparts. Until 1719 it was a royal palace. At the head of the Björvik the principal railway station (Hovedbanegaard) stands in the Jernbanetorv (railway square), and north-west from this runs the principal street, Karl-Johans-gade. In this street, passing the Vor Frelsers Kirke (Church of our Saviour), the Storthings-Bygning (parliament-house, 1866) is seen, facing a handsome square planted with trees. Beyond this is the National theatre (1899), with colossal statues of the dramatists Ibsen and Björnsen. It faces the Fridericiana University, housed in three buildings dating from 1853, but founded by Frederick VI. of Denmark in 1811, embracing the five faculties of theology, law, medicine, history and philology, mathematics and natural sciences. The equipment of the university is very complete: it has attached to it a large and valuable library, natural history, ethnological and numismatic collections, with one of Scandinavian antiquities; also botanical gardens and an observatory. The Karl-Johans-gade gives upon the beautiful Slotspark, a wooded elevation crowned with the royal palace (slot), a plain building completed in 1848. North of the university is the museum of art, containing a noteworthy collection of sculpture and paintings of ancient and modern foreign masters, and of native works. The historical museum adjoining this contains northern antiquities, including two viking’s ships, excavated, in 1867 and 1880 respectively, from the burial-places of the viking chiefs who owned and, according to custom, were buried in them. Another noteworthy collection is that of industrial art. The Bank of Norway, the exchange, and the courts of law lie between the harbours. Other institutions are the Freemasons’ Lodge, housed in one of the handsomest buildings in the city (1844), a conservatory of music, naval, military and art schools, Athenaeum, and the great Dampkjökken or kitchen (1858), where dinners are provided for the poor.

The suburbs of Christiania are attractive and rapidly growing. On the east side of the river Aker is that of Oslo, with the existing episcopal palace, and an old bishop’s palace, in which James VI. of Scotland (I. of England) was betrothed to Princess Anne of Denmark (1589). In the environs of the city are the royal pleasure castle of Oscarshal (1847-1852), on the peninsula Bygdö (Ladugaard) to the west of the city, and the Norwegian national museum (1881), containing industrial and domestic exhibits from the various provinces. Close at hand is an interesting collection of old Norwegian buildings, brought here from all parts, and re-erected, including an example of the timber church of the 12th century (Stavekirke). A collection of ancient agricultural implements is also shown. On Hovedö (Head Island) in the fjord, immediately opposite to the Akershus, are the ruins of a Cistercian monastery, founded in 1147 by monks from Kirkstead in Lincolnshire, England, and burnt down in 1532. There are sanatoria and inns among the surrounding hills, on which beautiful gardens are laid out, such as Hans Haugen, Frognersaeter, Holmenkollen, where the famous ski (snow-shoe) races are held in February, and Voksenkollen. Electric tramways connect the city and suburbs, and local steamers run from the Pipervik to the neighbouring islands and fjord-side towns and villages.

Christiania has two railway stations, the Hovedbanegaard by the Björvik, and the Vestbanegaard by the Pipervik. From the first trains run south to Fredrikshald and Gothenburg, east to Charlottenberg and Stockholm, north to Hamar and Trondhjem, and Otta in Gudbrandsdal, and to Gjövik and the Valdres district. From the west station start the lines to Drammen, Laurvik, Skien and Kongsberg (for the Telemark district). The eastward extension of the railway between Bergen and Vossevangen, undertaken in 1896, had as its ultimate object the connexion of Christiania and Bergen by rail. With these extensive land communications Christiania is at once the principal emporium of southern Norway, and a favourite centre of the extensive tourist traffic. Regular passenger steamers serve the port from Hull, Newcastle, Grangemouth and London, from Trondhjem, Bergen and the Norwegian coast towns, from Hamburg, Amsterdam, Antwerp, &c. Except for two large shipbuilding yards, one with a floating dock, the other with a dry dock, most of the manufactories are concentrated in the suburb of Sagene, on the north side of the city, deriving their motive power from the numerous falls of the river Aker. They embrace factories for cotton and woollen spinning and weaving, paper, flour, soap and oil, bricks and tiles, matches, nails (especially horse-shoe nails), margarine, foundries and engineering shops, wood-pulp, tobacco, matches, linen, glass, sail-cloth, hardware, gunpowder, chemicals, with sawmills, breweries and distilleries. There is also a busy trade in the preparation of granite paving-stones, and in the storing and packing of ice. Imports greatly exceed exports, the annual values being about 7½ and 1½ millions sterling respectively. The former consist principally of grain and flour, cottons and woollens, coffee, iron (raw and manufactured), coal, bacon and salt meat, oils, sugar, machinery, flax, jute and hemp, paper-hangings, paints, colours, &c., wines and spirits, raw tobacco, copper, zinc, lead and tin, silk, molasses and other commodities. The principal exports are wood-pulp, timber, nails, paper, butter and margarine, matches, condensed milk, fish, leather and hides, ice, sealskins, &c. Of the imports, Great Britain supplies the greater part of the cotton and woollen yarn, the machinery (including ships), and the raw metals; the United States about one-half of the oils and fats, and a large proportion of the food-stuffs, and skins, feathers, &c. Of the exports, almost the whole of the timber goes to Great Britain, together with the larger portion of the paper and food-stuffs (butter, &c.). The harbour is ice-bound for three or four months in the winter, when ships lie at Dröbak, lower down the fjord; but ice-breakers are also used. Early in 1899 the municipality voted £47,000 for the construction of a pier, a harbour for fishing-boats, protected by a mole, and a quay, 345 ft. long, on the shore underneath the Akershus. These works signalized a great scheme of improvement, involving a general rearrangement of the entire harbour.

The present suburb of Oslo represents the original city, which was founded on this site under that name (or Opslo) by Harald Sigurdsson in 1048. By the close of the 14th century it was established as the chief city of Norway. Trade was long dominated by the powerful Hanseatic League, at least until the beginning of the 16th century. The town, built mainly of wood, was no less subject to fires than all Norwegian towns have always been, and after one of these King Christian IV. refounded the capital on the new site it now occupies, and gave his name to it in 1624. By the close of the century it was fortified, but this did not prevent Charles XII. from gaining possession of it in 1716.

See L. Daae, Det gamle Christiania, 1624-1824 (Christiania, 1890); Y. Nielsen, Christiania und Umgegend (Christiania, 1894); G. Amnéus, La Ville de Christiania ... Résumé historique, &c. (Christiania, 1900).

CHRISTIANITY, the religion which accepts Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour, embracing all who profess and call themselves Christians, the term derived from his formal title (χριστός, i.e. the anointed). Within this broad characterization are found many varieties of cult, organization and creed (see Church History). Christianity is classed by the students of the science of religion as a universal religion; it proclaims itself as intended for all men without distinction of race or caste, and as in possession of absolute truth. In fact, Christianity has been widely accepted by varied races in very different stages of culture, and it has maintained itself through a long succession of centuries in lands where the transformations in political structure, the revolutions in social conditions, and the changes in science and philosophy, have been numerous and extreme.

Beginning in Asia, Christianity extended itself rapidly throughout the Roman empire and beyond its borders among the barbarians. When the Empire in the 4th century adopted it, its cult, organization and teaching were carried throughout the western world. The influences and motives and processes which led to the result were many and varied, but ultimately in one way or another it became the religion of Europe and of the nations founded by the European races beyond the seas and in the northern part of Asia called Siberia. Beyond these bounds it has not greatly prospered. The explanation of the apparent bounding of Christianity by Europe and its offspring is not, however, to be found in any psychological peculiarity separating the European races from those of other continents, nor in any special characteristic of Christianity which fits it for European soil. For not only were its founder and his disciples Asiatics, and the original authoritative writings Semitic, but Asiatic tribes and nations coming into Europe have been readily converted. Missions in Asia too have achieved sufficient success to prove that there exists no inherent obstacle either in the gospel or in the Asiatic mind. Moreover, Christianity was once represented in Asia by a powerful organization extending throughout Persia and central Asia into India (see Persia). Mutatis mutandis, the same applies to Africa also, and Christianity still survives in both continents in the Coptic, Abyssinian and Armenian Churches. The explanation is rather to be sought in the political condition of the early centuries of the Christian era, especially in the rise of Mahommedanism. This may be regarded indeed as a form of Christianity, for it is not more foreign perhaps to the prevailing type than are some sects which claim the name. It exerted a strong influence upon Europe, but its followers have been peculiarly unsusceptible to missionary labours, and even in Europe have retained the faith of the Prophet. In the limitations of the Roman empire and in the separation of East and West consequent upon its decline, Christianity, as a dominant religion, was confined for a thousand years to Europe, and even portions of this continent for centuries were in the hands of its great foe. The East appeared as the Mahommedan dominions, and beyond these the continents of Asia and Africa were so dimly discerned that little reciprocal influence was felt. Thus the development of the two great civilized portions of the race in Europe and Asia followed independent lines in religion as in all else; and Africa, excepting its northern border, was left untouched by the progress of enlightenment.

Not only is Christianity thus the religion of a wide variety of races but across the divisions there cut other lines. In its organization Christianity exists in three great divisions, Roman, Greek and Protestant, and in various ancient sects in the Orient. The Roman Catholic and Greek divisions of the Christian Church are homogeneous in organization, but in Protestantism certain denominations are national, established by differing governments, and others are independent of governmental aid, making a large number of differing denominations. Some of these divisions are mutually antagonistic, denying to each other the name of Christian and even the hope of salvation.

According to a second classification, Christianity may be placed among the “individual” religions, since it traces its origin, like Islam and Buddhism, to an individual as its founder. This beginning is not in the dimness of antiquity nor in a multitude of customs, beliefs, traditions, rites and personalities, as is the case with the so-called “natural” religions. It is not implied that in the formation of the “natural” religions individuals were not of great importance, nor, on the other hand, that in individual religions the founder formed his faith independently of the community of which he was a part; but only that as undoubted historic facts certain religions, in tracing their lines to individuals, thereby acquired a distinctive character, and retain the impress of their founder. Such religions begin as a reform or a protest or revolt. They proclaim either a new revelation, or the return to an ancient truth which has been forgotten or distorted. They demand repentance and change of heart, i.e. the renouncing of the ordinary faith of the community and the acceptance of a new gospel. Thus demanding an act of will on the part of individuals, they are classed once more as “ethical” religions. To be sure, the new is built upon the old—in part unconsciously—and the rejection of the faith of the past, however violent, is never thoroughgoing. In consequence the old affects the new in various ways. Thus in Buddhism the presuppositions which Buddha uncritically took over work out their logical results in the Mahāyāna, so that great sects calling themselves “Buddhist” affirm what the Master denied and deny what he taught. Christianity takes Judaism (see Hebrew Religion) for granted—rejects it in part as a merely preparatory stage, in part reinterprets it, and does not submit what it accepts to rigorous scrutiny. As a result the Old Testament (see Bible) remains not only as the larger part of the Christian canon, but, sometimes, in some churches, as obscuring its distinctive truth. Moreover, in the transference of Christianity from the Jewish to the Greek-Roman world again various elements were taken into it. More properly perhaps we might consider the Greek and Roman civilization as the permanent element—so that the relationship to it was not different from the relationship to Judaism—in part it was denied, in part it was of purpose accepted, in still larger part unconsciously the Greek-Roman converts took over with them the presuppositions of their older world view—and thus formed the moulds into which the Christian truth was run. Here again, in some instances the pre-Christian elements so asserted themselves as to obscure the new and distinctive teaching.

Christianity, regarded objectively as one of the great religions of the world, owes its rise to Jesus of Nazareth, in ancient Galilee. (See Jesus Christ.) By reverent disciples his ancestry was traced to the royal family of David, Relation with Judaism. and his birth is ascribed by the church to the miraculous act of God. His life was spent, until the beginning of his public ministry, in humble circumstances as the son of a carpenter and his wife, Joseph and Mary. Of Joseph we hear nothing after the boyhood of Jesus, who followed the same trade, supporting himself and perhaps his mother and younger brothers and sisters. Of this period we have only a few fragmentary anecdotes and a stray reference or two. At thirty years of age he appeared in public, and after a short period (we cannot determine how long, but possibly eighteen months) he was crucified, upon the accusation of his countrymen, by the Roman authorities. He was without technical education, but he had been carefully trained in the sacred books, as was usual with his people. Belonging neither to the aristocracy nor to the learned class, he was one of the common people yet separate from them—a separation not of race or caste or education, but of unique personality.

His career is understood only in the light of his relations to Judaism (see Hebrew Religion). This faith, in a peculiarly vivid fashion, illustrates the growth and development of religion, for its great teachers in the highest degree possessed what the Germans call God-consciousness. The Hebrew national literature centres in the thought of God. It is Yahweh who is all and in all, the father, the leader, the hope, the hero of his people. No other national literature is so continuously and so highly religious. Another factor gives it still greater interest for the student of religion,—in it the progress of religious thought can be traced, and the varying elements of the religious life seen in harmony and in conflict.

In the early period the Hebrew religion was of the ordinary Semitic type. In its ancient stories were remnants of primitive religion, of tabu, of anthropomorphic gods, of native forms of worship, of magic and divination, of local and tribal cults. Out of these developed, by the labours of the prophets, a religion of high spirituality and exalted ethical ideals. According to it God demands not ritual nor sacrifice nor offerings. He does not delight in prayers and praise, but he demands truth in the soul and bids man to walk humbly and deal righteously and mercifully with his brother (Micah vi. 6-8; Isa. i. 2-20). He requires kindness, forgiveness and loving sacrifice from all to all (Isa. lviii. 3-12). This conception of God revealed itself as so essential to the prophets that their intense national feeling was modified. God would not deliver Israel because it was his people, descended from Abraham, his chosen, but he would punish it even more severely than the other nations because it denied him by its sins (Amos iii. 1-2). Yet Israel would not be destroyed, for a spiritual remnant, loving and obeying God, would be saved and purified (Ezek. xxxvi.-xxxvii.). Thus Israel survived its misfortunes. When the national independence was destroyed, the prophetic teaching held the people together in the hope of a re-establishment of the Kingdom when all nations should be subject to it and blessed in its everlasting reign of righteousness and peace (Isa. xlix., lx.).

Some of the prophets associated the restoration of the Kingdom with the coming of the Messiah, the anointed one, who should re-establish the line of David (Isa. ix. 6 f., xi. 1 f.; Micah v. 2; Ezek. xxxiv. 23, xxxvii. 24; Zech. ix. 9; Ps. ii. 72). Others said nothing of such a one, but seemed to expect the regeneration of Israel through the labours, sufferings and triumphs of the righteous remnant (Isa. liii., Ezek. xxxvi.-xxxvii.). By the strong emphasis upon righteousness, the tribal Lord of Israel was revealed as the universal God, of one relationship to all men. This monotheism was not primarily cosmological nor metaphysical, but ethical. The Jews showed little capacity for abstract reasoning and never pursued their inquiries to the discovery of ultimate principles. Thus they did not develop a systematic cosmology, nor formulate a system of metaphysics. Their religion was pre-eminently “theocratic”; God was thought of as King, enthroned in heaven and supreme. In the beginning as a tribal deity his powers were limited and he was involved in the fortunes of his people. But as the conception of Yahweh was deepened and broadened, and, especially after the development of ethical monotheism, not only was he believed to possess power sufficient to ensure the triumph of his chosen people, but to be the creator and ruler of all things in heaven and on earth, the God whom all peoples should worship and obey.

But the prophetic teaching was obscured in part by the nationalism of the prophets themselves, who exalted Israel as at once God’s instrument and the peculiar object of his love; and in part by the triumph of a legal-ritualistic sacrificial system. In the downfall of Jerusalem, the experiences of the exile in Babylon, and the return to Judaea, the nation was transformed into a church. Apart from the brief Maccabaean period, the intense patriotism of the people centred in the ecclesiastical organization. As a result, cult and organization and code hardened, forming a shell which proved strong enough to resist all disintegrating tendencies. Inevitably the freedom, spirituality and universality of the prophetic teaching were obscured. In the 1st century A.D. the national and priestly elements controlled; doubtless many individuals still were faithful to the purer prophetic message, though also zealous for the system of ritual and sacrifice, but for the ruling majority ritualistic service was the chief thing, justice, purity and mercy being subordinate. Hence in their view all who did not participate in the national worship and conform to the national usages were outcasts. The triumph of Israel was to be accomplished by the miraculous power of a Messiah who should descend out of heaven. His coming was delayed, in part by the opposition of demons, in part by the failure of the people to obey the law. This law embraced both moral and ceremonial elements derived from varied sources, but in the apprehension of the people it was all alike regarded as of divine origin. It was to be obeyed without question and without inquiry as to its meaning, because established by God. It was contained in the Sacred Scriptures (see Bible: Old Testament), which had been revealed by God supernaturally, and its meaning was set forth by schools of learned men whose interpretations were authoritative. The conception of salvation was mingled with ideas derived from the East during and after the period of captivity. The priesthood held still the ancient ideas. Salvation was for the nation, and the individual was not necessarily participant in it. Life after death was disbelieved or held as the existence of shades. There could be no resurrection of the body and no immortality (in the Greek sense). With these beliefs were associated a certain worldliness and want of fervour. The more actively and aggressively religious party, on the other hand, adopted the belief in the resurrection of the body, and in the individual’s participation in the Messiah’s kingdom; all the pious would have their share in it, while the wicked would be outcast. But these doctrines were variously conceived. By some the Messianic kingdom was thought of as permanent, by others as intermediary, the external kingdom being transcendent. So too some thought of a literal resurrection of the body of flesh and blood, while others thought that it would be transformed. The rudiments of some of these ideas can be found in the prophets, but their development took place after the exile, and indeed for the most part after the conclusion of the writings accounted canonical. Thus too the belief in a kingdom of demons held a large place in the mind of the people, though the references to such evil beings are almost absent from the sacred writings of the Old Testament. Again it is to the East that we must look for the origin of these ideas.

Jesus completed the prophetic teachings. He employed the old phraseology and imagery, but he was conscious that he used them in a new sense, and that he preached a new gospel of great joy. Jesus was not a historian, a critic or a The teaching of Jesus. theologian. He used the words of common men in the sense in which common men understood them. He did not employ the Old Testament as now reconstructed by scholarship or judged by criticism, but in its simple and obvious and traditional sense. And his background is the intellectual and religious thinking of his time. The ideas of demons and of the future, of the Bible and many other traditional conceptions, are taken over without criticism. So the idea of God which he sets forth is not that of a theologian or a metaphysician, but that of the unlearned man which even the child could understand. Yet though thus speaking in untechnical language, he revolutionized his terms and filled them with new meaning. His emphasis is his own, and the traditional material affords merely the setting for his thought. He was not concerned with speculative questions about God, nor with abstract theories of his relationship to the soul and to the world. God’s continual presence, his fatherly love, his transcendent righteousness, his mercy, his goodness, were the facts of immediate experience. Not in proofs by formal logic but in the reality of consciousness was the certainty of God. Thus religion was freed from all particular and national elements in the simplest way. For Jesus did not denounce these elements, nor argue against them, nor did he seek converts outside of Israel, but he set forth communion with God as the most certain fact of man’s experience and as simple reality made it accessible to every one. Thus his teaching contains the note of universality—not in terms and proclamations but as plain matter of fact. His way for others to this reality is likewise plain and level to the comprehension of the unlearned and of children.

For him repentance is put first, for how vastly changed is the conception of the religious life! The intricacies of ritual and theology are ignored, and ancient laws which contradict the fundamental beliefs are unhesitatingly abrogated or denied. He seizes upon the most spiritual passages of the prophets, and revives and deepens them. He sums up his teaching in supreme love to God and a love for fellow-man like that we hold for ourselves (Mark xii. 29-31). This supreme love to God is a complete oneness with him in will, a will which is expressed in service to our fellow-men in the simplest and most natural relationship (Luke x. 25-37). Thus religion is ethical through and through, as God’s inner nature, expressed in forgiveness, mercy, righteousness and truth, is not something transcendental, but belongs to the realm of daily life. We become children of God and he our Father in virtue of a moral likeness (Matt. v. 43-48), while of any metaphysical, or (so to speak) physical relationship to God Jesus says nothing. With this clearly understood, man is to live in implicit trust in the divine love, power, knowledge and forgiveness. Hence he attains salvation, being delivered from sin and fear and death, for the divine attributes are not ontological entities to be discussed and defined in the schools, but they are realities, entering into the practical daily life. Indeed they are to be repeated in us also, so that we are to forgive our brethren as we ask to be forgiven (Matt. vi. 12; Luke xi. 4).

As religion thus becomes thoroughly ethical, so is the notion of the Messianic kingdom transformed. Its essential characteristic is the doing of the Father’s will on earth as in heaven. Jesus uses parable after parable to establish its meaning. It is a seed cast into the ground which grows and prospers (Matt. xiii. 31-32). It is a seed sown in good ground and bringing forth fruit, or in bad ground and fruitless (Luke viii. 5-8; Mark iv. 1-32). It is a pearl of great price for which a man should sell all that he possesses (Matt. xiii. 44-46). It is not come “with observation,” so that men shall say “lo here and lo there” (Luke xvii. 20-21). It is not of this world, and does not possess the characteristics or the glory of the kingdom of the earth (Luke xxii. 24-26; Mark x. 13-16). It is already present among men (Luke xvii. 21). Together with these statements in our sources are still mingled fragments of the more ordinary cataclysmic, apocalyptic conceptions, which in spite of much ingenious exegesis, cannot be brought into harmony with Christ’s predominant teaching, but remain as foreign elements in the words of the Master, possibly brought back through his disciples, or, more probably, used by Jesus uncritically—a part of the current religious imagery in which he shared.

It is often declared that in these teachings there is nothing new, and indeed analogies can be found for many sayings; yet nowhere else do we gain so strong an impression of originality. The net result is not only new but revolutionary; His originality. so was it understood by the Pharisees. They and Jesus spoke indeed the same words and appealed to the same authorities, but they rightly saw in him a revolutionist who threatened the existence of their most cherished hopes. The Messianic kingdom which they sought was opposed point by point to the kingdom of which he spoke, and their God and his Father—though called by the same sacred name—were different. Hence almost from the beginning of his public ministry they constantly opposed him, the conflict deepening into complete antagonism.

Jesus has already been termed unique, one of the common people yet separated from them, and this description applies to the breadth, depth and reality of his sympathy. In the meagre records of his life there is evidence that he deemed no form of suffering humanity foreign to himself. This was not a mere sentiment, nor was his sympathy superficial, for it constituted the essential characteristic of his personality—“He went about doing good.” In him the will of the Father for the redemption of the race was incarnate. This led him into the society of those outcasts who were condemned and rejected by the respectable and righteous classes. In contemptuous condemnation he was called the friend of the outcasts (Matt. xi. 19; Mark ii. 16-17), and on his part he proclaimed that these sinners would enter into the Kingdom of Heaven before the self-righteous saints (Matt. xxi. 31). Even the most repulsive forms of disease and sin drew from him only loving aid, while he recognized in all other men who laboured for the welfare of their fellows the most intimate relationship to himself. These constituted his family, and these were they whom his Father will bless.

Jesus recognized his unique position; he could not be ignorant of his powers. Even the prophets had spoken in the name of God; they accepted neither book nor priesthood as authoritative, but uttered their truth as they were inspired to speak, and commanded men to listen and obey. As in Jesus the whole prophetic line culminates, so does its consciousness. Reverent toward the Holy Scriptures, he spoke not as their expositor but with a divine power which invests his words with immediate and full authority. The prophets use the formula, “Thus saith the Lord,” but he goes beyond them and speaks in his own name, “Amen, I say unto you.” He knew himself as greater than the prophets, indeed as him of whom the prophets spoke—the Messiah. Only through this self-consciousness can we explain his mission and the career of his disciples. The prophets up to John foretold the coming of the kingdom (Matt. xi. 11-13; Luke xvi. 16), but Jesus opened its doors and made possible entrance into it. Where he is there it is, and hence those who follow him are God’s children, and those who refuse his message are left outside in darkness. He is to sit as enthroned, judge and king, and by him is men’s future to be determined (Matt. xxv. 31 f.; Mark xiii. 26). Indeed it was his presence more than his teaching which created his church. Great as were his words, greater was his personality. His disciples misunderstood what he said, but they trusted and followed him. By him they felt themselves freed from sin and fear—and under the influence of a divine power.

Though his claims to authoritative pre-eminence thus took him out of the class of prophets and put him even above Elijah and Moses (Mark ix. 2-7; Luke vii. 28; Luke x. 23-24), and though naturally this self-assertion seemed His Messianic claims. blasphemous to those who did not accept him, yet as he had transformed the traditional notion of the kingdom, so did he the current thought of the Messiah. The pre-eminence was not to be of rank and glory but of service and self-sacrifice. In his kingdom there can be no strife for precedence, since its King comes not to be ministered unto but to minister and to give his life in the service of others (Mark ix. 33 f., x. 42-45). The formal acknowledgment of the Messiah’s worth and position matters little, for to call him Lord does not ensure entrance into his kingdom (Matt. vii. 21-23). It is those who fail to recognize the spirit of sympathy and self-sacrificing service as divine and blaspheme redeeming love, who are in danger of eternal sin (Mark iii. 28-29). All who do the will of the Father, i.e. who serve their fellows, are the brethren of Christ, even though they do not call him Lord (Mark iii. 31-35; Matt. vii. 21): and those are blessed who minister to the needy even though ignorant of any relation to himself (Matt. xxv. 37-40). Finally, membership in his own selected company, or a place in the chosen people, is not of prime importance (Mark ix. 38-40; Luke xiii. 24-30).

Jesus also refuses to conform to the current ideas as to the establishment of the kingdom. He wrought miracles, it is true, because of his divine sympathy and compassion, but he refused to show miraculous signs as a proof of his Messianic character (Mark viii. 12). The tradition of the people implied a sudden appearance of the Messiah, but Jesus made no claims to a supernatural origin and was content to be known as the son of Joseph and Mary (Mark vi. 3-4). His kingdom is not to be set up by wonders and miraculous powers, nor is it to be established by force (Matt. xxvi. 52). Such means would contradict its fundamental character, for as the kingdom of loving service it can be established only by loving service. And as God is love, he can be revealed not by prodigies of power but only by a love which is faithful unto death.

Even the disciples of Jesus could not grasp the simplicity and profundity of his message; still less could his opponents. When the crisis came, he alone remained unshaken in his faith. He was accused of blasphemy to the ecclesiastical authorities and of insurrection to the civil rulers. He was condemned and crucified. His followers were scattered every man to his own place as sheep without a shepherd. Of his work nothing remained, not a written word, nor more than the rudiments of an organization. The decisive event, which turned defeat into victory and re-established courage and faith, was the resurrection of Jesus from the dead and his reappearance to his disciples. Our sources will not permit the precise determination of the order or the nature of these appearances, but in any case from them arose the faith which was the basis of the Christian Church and the starting-point of its theology.

The death of Jesus as a criminal, and his resurrection, profoundly aroused the belief and hopes of the little group of Jews who were his followers. His person and mission assumed the first place in their affections and their thinking. He had been to them a prophet, mighty in word and deed, but he now becomes to them the Messiah, Christ. It is not his word but his person which assumes first place, and faith is acceptance of him—crucified and risen—as Messiah. Hence his followers early acquire the name Christians from the Greek form of the word. With this emphasis upon the Messiah the Jewish element would seem to be predominant, but as a matter of fact it was not so. The earlier group of disciples, it is true, did not appreciate the universality of the teaching of Jesus, and they continued zealous for the older forms, but St Paul through his prophetic consciousness grasped the fundamental fact and became Jesus’ true interpreter. As a result Christianity was rejected by the Jews and became the conquering religion of the Roman empire. In this it underwent another modification of far-reaching consequence.

In our earliest sources—the epistles of St Paul—Christ is the pre-existent man from heaven, who had there existed in the form of God, and had come to earth by a voluntary act of self-humiliation. He is before and above all things. Christianity and Greek thought. By him all things exist. In the Johannine writings he is the Son of God—the Logos who in the beginning was with God—of whom are all things—who lightens every man—and who was incarnate in Jesus. Here the cosmological element is again made prominent though not yet supreme, and the metaphysical problems are so close at hand that their discussion is imperative. Even in Paul the term Messiah thus had lost its definite meaning and became almost a proper name. Among the Greek Christians this process was complete. Jesus is the “Son of God”; and the great problem of theology becomes explicit. Religion is in our emotions of reverence and dependence, and theology is the intellectual attempt to describe the object of worship. Doubtless the two do not exactly coincide, not only because accuracy is difficult or even impossible, but also because elements are admitted into the definition of God which are derived from various sources quite distinct from the religious experience. Like all concepts the meaning of religious terms is changed with a changing experience and a changing world-view. Transplanted into the Greek world-view, inevitably the Christian teaching was modified—indeed transformed. Questions which had never been asked came into the foreground, and the Jewish presuppositions tended to disappear. Especially were the Messianic hopes forgotten or transferred to a transcendent sphere beyond death. When the empire became Christian in the 4th century, the notion of a kingdom of Christ on earth to be introduced by a great struggle all but disappeared, remaining only as the faith of obscure groups. Immortality—the philosophical conception—took the place of the resurrection of the body. Nevertheless the latter continues because of its presence in the primary sources, but it is no longer a determining factor, since its presupposition—the Messianic kingdom on earth—has been obscured. As thus the background is changed from Jewish to Greek, so are the fundamental religious conceptions.

The Semitic peoples were essentially theocratic in their religion; they used the forms of the sensuous imagination in setting forth the realities of the unseen world. They were not given to metaphysical speculation, nor long insistent in their inquiries as to the meaning and origin of things. With the Greeks it was far otherwise. For them ideas and not images set forth fundamental reality, and their restless intellectual activity would be content with nothing else than the ultimate truth. Their speculation as to the nature of God had led them gradually to separate him by an infinite distance from all creation, and to feel keenly the opposition of the finite and the infinite, the perfect and the imperfect, the eternal and the temporal. To them, therefore, Christianity presented itself not primarily as the religion of a redemption through the indwelling power of a risen saviour, as with Paul, nor even as the solution of the problem how the sins of men could be forgiven, but as the reconciliation of the antinomy of the intellect, indicated above. The incarnation became the great truth: God is no longer separated by a measureless distance from the human race, but by his entering into humanity he redeems it and makes possible its ultimate unity with himself. Such lines of thought provoke discussion as to the relationship of Jesus to God the Father, and, at a later period, of the nature of the Holy Spirit who enters into and transforms believers.

Greek philosophy in the second century A.D. had sunk for the most part into scepticism and impotence; its original impulse had been lost, and no new intellectual power took its place; only in Alexandria was there a genuine effort made to solve the fundamental problems of God and the world. Plato had made God accessible to the highest knowledge as the transcendent idea, remote from the world. For Aristotle, too, God in his essence is far above the world and at most its first mover. The stoics, on the other hand, taught his immanence, while the eclectics sought truth by the mingling of the two ideas. They accomplished their purpose in various ways, by distinguishing between God and his power—or by the notion of a hierarchy of super-sensible beings, or in a doctrine which taught that the operations of nature are the movement of pure spirit; or by the use of the “Word” of “Wisdom,” half personified as intermediate between God and the world. While these monotheistic, pantheistic doctrines were taught in the schools, the people were left to a debased polytheism and to new superstitions imported from the Orient; the philosophers themselves were by no means unaffected by the popular beliefs. Mingled with all these were the ancient legends of gods and heroes, accepted as inspired scripture by the people, and by philosophers in part explained away by an allegorical exegesis and in part felt increasingly as a burden to the intelligence. In this period of degeneracy there were none the less an awakening to religious needs and a profound longing for a new revelation of truth, which should satisfy at once the intellect and the religious emotions.