which the Crusaders inflicted upon Moslem and Jew alike when they captured the city in the year A.C. 1099. And during all the intervening centuries it was the Moslems, and not the Christians, who had held alight the torches of Science and Civilisation.
Moreover, though it is true that our present knowledge of the old Greek and Latin classics still extant is derived from manuscripts saved by Christian monks—saved, that is, from their own destroying hands—the revival of Science and of Learning in these latter days is due, not to the Christian Church, which to some extent stamped out Science and Learning, but to the Moslems against whom, in crusades begotten of ignorance and bigotry, all the so-called chivalry of Christendom was repeatedly flung in vain.
In vain; for it is not the Banner of the Cross but the Banner of the Crescent which for the last seven centuries has waved, and still waves, o’er Calvary. In vain; for not to the Three-in-One but to The Only, is dedicated the sacred building which crowns the topmost height of Mount Moriah.
Yet not altogether in vain. For the seven great Crusades, by helping to destroy the civilisation of the Saracens or Moors, and to develop marine intercourse between the nations, caused the evolution of a Christian civilisation, and now enables the Church to claim as its peculiar product a result achieved in spite of itself.
In spite of itself; for from the destruction of the Alexandrian Library in A.C. 390 and the murder of Hypatia, down to the persecutions of Galileo and of Bruno, and the invectives which, even as late as the present century, the Greek, Roman, and Protestant Churches have alike thundered forth against scientific facts and their promulgators, the Church has everywhere and always used its influence in as adverse a manner towards science as it dared.
But even if the reader has just possibly been able to free himself or herself sufficiently from the prejudices of a Christian education and environment to assimilate the foregoing facts, such an one may yet be quite unaware, or unable to realise, that Christianity as well as Civilisation existed before our era, and, like it, was not due either to the advent, life, or teaching, of Jesus the Nazarene.
This was admitted by more than one of the Fathers, however, and amongst others by the great St. Augustine. For toward the close of his remarkable career, that famous Bishop of Hippo wrote the following ever-to-be-remembered passage:—
“Again, in that I said ‘This is in our time the Christian Religion, which to know and also follow is most sure and certain salvation’; it is affirmed in regard to this name, not in regard to the sacred thing itself to which the name belongs. For the sacred thing which is now called the Christian Religion existed in ancient times, nor indeed was it absent from the beginning of the human race until the Christ Himself came in the flesh, whence the true religion, which already existed, came to be called ‘the Christian.’ So when after His resurrection and ascension to heaven the Apostles began to preach and many believed, it is thus written, ‘The followers were first called Christians at Antioch.' Therefore I said 'This is in our time the Christian Religion,' not because it did not exist in earlier times, but as having in later times received this particular name."
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