Note 86 — Chapter VI · —(Continued.) (continued 2)

In his recent work—“The Early Days of Christianity,” Canon Farrar remarks:—“Some have supposed a pleasant play of words founded on it, as ... between Chréstos (‘sweet’ Ps. xxx., iv., 8) and Christos (Christ)” (I. p. 158, foot-note). But there is nothing to suppose, since it beganbegan by a “play of words,” indeed. The name Christus was not “distorted into Chrestus,” as the learned author would make his readers believe (p. 19), but it was the adjective and noun Chréstos which became distorted into Christus, and applied to Jesus. In a foot-note on the word “Chrestian,” occurring in the First Epistle of Peter (chap. iv., 16), in which in the revised later MSS. the word was changed into Christian, Canon Farrar remarks again, “Perhaps we should read the ignorant heathen distortion, Chréstian.” Most decidedly we should; for the eloquent writer should remember his Master’s command to render unto Cæsar that which is Cæsar’s. His dislike notwithstanding, Mr. Farrar is obliged to admit that the name Christian was first INVENTED, by the sneering, mocking Antiochians, as early as A.D. 44, but had not come into general use before the persecution by Nero. “Tacitus,” he says, “uses the word Christians with something of apology. It is well known that in the N. T. it only occurs three times, and always involves a hostile sense (Acts xi. 26, xxvi. 28, as it does in iv. 16).” It was not Claudius alone who looked with alarm and suspicion on the Christians, so nicknamed in derision for their carnalizing a subjective principle or attribute, but all the pagan nations. For Tacitus, speaking of those whom the masses called “Christians,” describes them as a set of men detested for their enormities and crimes. No wonder, for history repeats itself. There are, no doubt, thousands of noble, sincere, and virtuous Christian-born men and women now. But we have only to look at the viciousness of Christian “heathen” converts; at the morality of those proselytes in India, whom the missionaries themselves decline to take into their service, to draw a parallel between the converts of 1,800 years ago, and the modern heathens “touched by grace.”