took possession, giving their name to the new kingdom, were themselves a branch, though perhaps distant, of the Slavic family. Should that view, however, be successfully contested it would not still, we think, invalidate the Slavic character of the present Bulgarian people, inasmuch as this new element, if foreign it was, which came in with Asparuch and awakened into new life and activity the numerous Slavic population of Moesia and Thrace, and consolidated them into a kingdom under the name of Bulgaria, was numerically too feeble, in comparison with the overwhelming numbers of the pure Slavic element, to exert any marked physiological influence upon the whole race. So that if Russia be regarded as a Slavic nation in spite of the Scandinavian and Finnish element in the early history of the Russian empire, then with much better reason can the Bulgarian people of the present day claim to be called a Slavic people even if the foreign character of the Volga Bulgarians be admitted. The French are none the less as a Latin race, although they derive their name from the Franks, who were a German confederacy. At the commencement of the Christian era we find these territories now occupied by the Bulgarians in the possession of the Romans. Beginning with the delta of the Danube, called the Dobrudja, we find that district called the province of Scythia. Its capital town was Tomi, near Kustendje, on the Black Sea, from which there is now a railway intersecting the Danube at Tchernavoda. This Tomi was the place to which was banished Ovid, the last of that brilliant constellation of poets who brightened the Augustinian age, and the real cause of whose exile remains still a literary problem. There he wrote his mournful lays, the Tristia. It is said that he learned the language of the barbarians there, and even composed in it a poem, which he read before an assembly of delighted auditors. Could that poem be now found it would be a philological treasure, and doubtless shed some light upon the subject of our present investigations. The province of Moesia Inferior extended from the Dobrudja to the river Isker, and its capital was Marcianopolis, afterward, in Bulgarian times, Preslav, now a ruined town, called by the Turks Eski Stamboul, (old Stamboul,) not far from Shumla. The Hamus district extended from Adrianople to Burgas on the Black Sea. Thracia had its capital, Philippopolis. About the year 376 occurred the passage of the West Goths across the Danube, impelled, it is said, by fear of the Huns, who were pressing upon them. Having obtained an amicable permission from the Emperor Valens to take refuge in the Roman Empire, they were incensed at the treatment received from the Romans, and advanced and took forcible possession of Marcianopolis. From this event historians date the beginning of the destruction of the mighty Roman Empire. Then came the invasion of the Huns under the leadership of Attila, "the scourge of God," bearing the sword of Mars, who swept like a fearful tornado over the country from the Danube to the Adriatic. After the death of this mighty warrior in 453 the Huns almost disappear from history. In 475 the Ostrogoths came in and ravaged the country, and in the year 509 we find mention made of a wall built by the Emperor Anastas from Silivria, on the Sea of Marmora, to the Black Sea, about sixty miles long, to keep out the Bulgarians and the Scythians. After the middle of the fifth century for some time we lose trace of the Slavic population of these lands, but after awhile we see a Slavonian upon the throne of the Cæsars in the person of the great Justinian, who was born of peasant parents in the village of Vedriana, near the present town of Kustendil, in the district of Sophia. His name is the Latinized form of his Slavic name, Upravada, and he always betrayed by his foreign accent his barbarian origin. His great general, Belisarius, to whose genius he owed much of the luster of his reign, was of similar origin, his Slavic name being Velitzar, (the great king.) The cavalry of Belisarius in his Italian campaign consisted of Huns, Slavi, and Antæ. Two of his chief officers were Dobrogost and Vsegord, both pure Slavic names. The general in coinmand upon the borders of the Danube was likewise a barbarian, named Chivilibud, and it is quite probable that there was a constant flow of immigration of Slavonians coming in from the other side of the Danube, filling up the country, and replenishing the population wasted by so many destructive wars. We soon begin to see the inhabitants generally called Slaveni, Sklavini, Sklauni, Sthlavini, etc. After 657 we find the whole of the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire called Slavinia. Constantine Porphyrogenitus says that in the time of Constantine Copronymus the whole of Greece to its southern borders was Slavonized.* Fifteen different Slavonic tribes are mentioned by historic writers as spread from the Danube to the Peloponnesus, none of which came in later than the seventh century. These tribes were divided among themselves, and acknowledged no superior. In the year 679 Asparuch, the third son of Kubrat, from the kingdom of Bulgaria, came in with his conquering army and united these tribes into one kingdom bearing the name Bulgarian. Hilferding remarks upon this that as in Russia the coming in of the Waragians, so to the Danubian Slavonians the incursion of the Bulgarians was the beginning of a heroic period. The daring of a martial troop united itself with the hardiness and endurance of a numerous and industrious agricultural people. That Asparuch's Bulgarians were not a vast multitude is inferred from the fact that they consisted of only a fifth part of the fighting men of the kingdom of Great Bulgaria. Kubrat died about 600, and his army was divided into five bands, of which two remained in the vicinity of their home, and three went abroad: one into Pannonia, one into Italy, and a third, that of Asparuch, to the mouths of the Danube, whence, after a short delay, it passed into Moesia, as narrated above. Thus was laid the foundation of the SlavenoBulgarian kingdom, to which Asparuch contributed only a few thousand fighting men, his warlike spirit, and his Bulgarian name. Their language, if indeed there ever was any essential difference, was soon lost, and now no distinct traces of it remain. During the following century we see the Bulgarian power consolidating, sometimes allied with, and often opposed to, the Greeks; and near the middle of the ninth century we see the dawn of Christianity breaking upon them in the conversion of King Boris, through the instrumentality of the two brothers, Constantine (afterward Cyril) and Methodius, natives of * “ Εσθλαβωθὴ πάσα ἡ χώρα καὶ γέγονε βάρβαρος." Const. Por., De Themat. II, § 6, Geog. vet. Scriptores Græci mores. Oxon., 1763, t. ii, p. 98. He took the name of Cyril only forty days before his death, which occurred on February 14, 868. Thessalonica,* to whom, in the providence of God, was permitted the distinguished honor of becoming the apostles of the Slavic people. It was to this Bulgarian branch of the Slavic people that the honor was given of taking the initiative in literature, and in the dissemination of Christianity among the Eastern Slavonians; and it was the old Bulgarian-whether the language of Kubrat and Asparuch matters but little, as it was the language of Boris and his court-which became the ecclesiastical or sacred language of all those Slavonians, whom Papal jealousy and priestly intrigue did not succeed in depriving of their God-given right of celebrating his praises in their own tongue. ART. III. THE LOGIC OF INFANT CHURCH-MEMBERSHIP. THE first question that meets us is whether or not children are entitled to membership in the Christian Church? We claim that infant Church-membership is a principle common to all three of the Bible dispensations of religion. The patriarchal dispensation assumes a definite form in the Abrahamic covenant. God appeared to Abraham, and established the Church in his family. The covenant was substantially that Jehovah would be a God to Abraham and to his seed; that in his seed all nations should be blessed; that circumcision should be the sign of the covenant, and that this sign should be administered to the child on the eighth day after his birth. Here we see that the sign of God's covenant which pledged him to be a God to the house of Abraham, and which made them his people, was given to little children only eight days old. The covenant said expressly that it was made with Abraham's seed, that is, with his children as well as with himself, and it states at what age they shall be taken into the covenant, namely, at the age of eight days. • Whether Slavonians or not by birth has been a mattter of much discussion. Diocles says that their father was a Roman patrician named Leo. They are claimed, however, as Slavonians, and the fact of Thessalonica being largely Slavonic at that time, as at the present day, and no mention being made of the brothers learning the Slavic language, gives considerable plausibility to the claim. Dobroffsky's Moravian Legend of Cyril and Methodius. Prague, 1826. This covenant became the basis of the Mosaic dispensation. The Church in the house of Abraham became a nation under Moses, but the nation was a hierarchy, a Church-State, in which God became at once civil and ecclesiastical ruler. The children still entered into covenant with God at eight days old. In this respect there was no change; the principle of infant Church-membership was simply transferred from the patriarchal to the Mosaic dispensation. In the fullness of time the Jewish dispensation gives place to the Christian; but the Church is still the same, that is, the Abrahamic Church. Paul argues this point most elaborately in the eleventh chapter of Romans, where he represents the Church under the figure of an olive-tree, from which the Jews have been broken off, and on to which the Gentile Christians have been grafted. The root and the trunk are still the same; the identity of the tree, that is, of the Church, is completely preserved. But the Apostle in the third chapter of Galatians goes still further. He takes particular care to demonstrate that the repeal of the Mosaic law does not touch the covenant with Abraham; that remains in all its original force. Hear him. He says, "Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ. And this I say, that the covenant, that was confirmed before of God in Christ, the law, which was four hundred and thirty years after, cannot disannul, that it should make the promise of none effect." Here, then, is an express declaration by the Apostle, not only that the Abrahamic Church still remains, but that the Abrahamic covenant has not been repealed, and cannot be repealed, and that this covenant was to find its highest, its prophetic fulfillment in Christ. And as a part of the very substance of that covenant was infant Church-membership, and that covenant becomes the basis of Christianity, does it not bring with it our children into the Church? If the covenant of God with his Church is one in all ages, and if infants were admitted into the Church under the patriarchal and the Mosaic dispensations of that covenant, then, unless it is clearly forbidden under the Christian dispensation of the same covenant, the inference is irresistible that they must be admitted under the Christian dispensation. |