Christianity is a fact. We sometimes hear of men who are said to 'deny'
'Christianity.' The expression is nonsense. Men cannot deny the sun.
Christianity has been a visible thing, on this planet, for eighteen
hundred years. It has done a heavy amount of work, which is very visible
too. It is altogether too late in the day to '_deny_ Christianity.'
That is the first thing to be understood. There is no arguing against
the fact. You must take the fact and make the best of it. If your theory
requires the annihilation of the fact, it's a bad thing for your theory,
for the fact insists on staying. What an amount of fearfully laborious
stupidity we would have been saved, if only that plain principle had
been remembered!
Christianity has stood face to face with the world, for ages, a hard,
stern, uncompromising reality. With a pair of tremendous arms it has
worked, fought, endured, conquered, destroyed, builded, all over the
earth. It has burned its brand into time. It has stamped its footprints
in fire and brightness on earth and sea. It so stands, a great,
wonderful, triumphant, flaming fact, blazing through the ages, flaming
to the stars, melting, moulding, enlightening humanity.
The first thing to be remembered, then, by Christian and unbeliever
alike, when they come to speak of Christianity, is that these things are
not the matters in debate. They are the facts to be explained, to be
accounted for. In all argument they themselves must first be taken for
granted.
That is to say, here is this religion, certainly to any thoughtful man
the most wonderful thing, take it all in all, that history has to tell
about. It starts in an obscure corner of an obscure province. Its
founder dies as a felon among felons. Its teachers are stupid peasants,
fettered by a narrow dialect of an almost unknown tongue. Its whole
origin is barbarous, ignorant, disgraceful by any worldly judgment. So
it begins. As it spreads, imperial Rome takes alarm, and turns to crush
the barbarous fanaticism, in the pride of her learning, civilization,
and power. She plants her iron heel on the neck of the creeping sect.
She presses it down with her gigantic weight. Time passes. The little
sect that began in an obscure city of an obscure province, 'the number
of the names together being an hundred and twenty,' in less than three
centuries masters the world's crowned mistress, and plants its standard
in triumph, to remain forever, on the Seven Eternal Hills. Resistless
Rome is beaten to her knees, every national reverence, every national
divinity trampled on, and spit upon, and the barbarous and disgraceful
sect sets its ignominious mark, _the cross of the condemned slave_, on
every monument of Roman reverence, on every trophy of Roman greatness.
There never was such an utter conquest. A pure idea, without a material
hand or weapon, domineers over the greatest empire under the sun, in
spite of the whole power of that empire armed to crush it.
And, after Rome fell, the huge carcase beaten to the dust, and torn to
fragments by the wild creatures that hung upon her borders, this
wondrous mystery, this barbarous, obscure faith alone remained,
invincible among the powers of Rome. Roman civilization was crushed to
the earth, as the Roman legions were. Roman law was trampled out of
sight, as Roman art and literature were; but Christianity stood up and
faced the Vandal and the Goth, the Frank and Saxon, as it had faced the
Cæsars before, and dragged the conquerors of the empire suppliants at
the feet of the church. It built a Christian Europe out of the savage
hordes of Asia, and made an England, and a Germany, and at last an
America out of wild Goth and Ungar, out of bloody Frank and savage Dane.
Now all this is simply _matter of fact_. My belief in Christianity does
not add one jot to these facts. My disbelief does not take one tittle
from them. So far as they are concerned, every man is a believer in
Christianity. He believes it exists. He believes it has existed, has had
such and such a history, has produced such and such results. 'Christian'
and 'infidel' alike, to be reasonable, to have any ground for reasonable
discussion, go thus far together.
_They may differ in their explanations of the facts._ That is the only
ground of difference. There is the point of separation. It is perfectly
logical too. _Prima facie_, we have no complaint to make that they do
differ. And here lies the improvement in the modern type of
'unbeliever.' He does not take the line of his older brethren, and
rudely assail Christianity as a mere imposture with Voltaire and Paine.
That sort of work has had its day. He, on the other hand, freely admits
its beneficent achievements. He has grown reasonable. He accepts
Christianity, as the believer does, as a fruitful, beneficent, and
conquering fact. He only holds that its existence and its achievements
may be accounted for in a far more satisfactory way than we 'believers'
have discovered.
Now all this is comprehensible, and it is really, now, the ground of
difference between those who believe in Christianity as divine, and
those who hold it to be merely human. It is a clear and simple issue.
Christianity accounts for itself and its work on a certain plain,
straightforward, and consistent theory. It holds that theory to be
reasonable, complete, ample, for all the facts. A number of people join
issue just here with Christianity. They admit its facts, but they deny
its manner of explaining them. They claim to put forward other methods
of explanation, which shall be more reasonable, more natural, and, at
the same time, just as ample for the facts. We have had a number of
these philosophers, with their theories, and they have had various
fortunes. On the whole, the Christian world has gone on about as usual,
accepting the old explanation, adopting the old theory, a hundred to
one, and has dropped the new theories one after another, after more or
less investigation, into profound oblivion.
Now we are free to admit the old theory has its difficulties. There are
'things in it hard to be understood.' There are mysteries and wonders
which it does not attempt to explain. There are 'hard sayings' which it
leaves hard. And the new theories always claim to have no difficulties.
They blame the old one bitterly because it tolerates them. They
themselves claim to be 'reasonable,' they 'explain' everything.
They therefore challenge the trial. If they fail to be 'reasonable,' or
if they can only be reasonable at the expense of some of the facts--that
is to say, if they find no place for some of the authentic facts, and so
have to explain them away; or if, on the whole, they make too large
drafts on our credulity, and demand too great a power of faith--we have
the logical right to dismiss them out of our presence with scant
courtesy, and are bound to hold by the old explanation still.
The last man who has come forward with his theory of Christanity is
Monsieur Ernest Renan, a Frenchman, a member of the Institute, and a
Semitic scholar of some considerable pretensions. He broaches his theory
in a book, which he calls 'The Life of Jesus.' He offers it to the
world, through that book, as an improvement on the accepted one. We
propose here to look at M. Renan's theory, and see whether it has any
advantages to offer over that usually taught in churches in America, and
which the present writer learned, some _lustra_ ago, while catechized at
the chancel veil, and which his children are learning now.
It makes the examination easier that M. Renan freely and fully admits
the achievements of Christianity. Indeed he glories over them. The
beneficence of Christianity, its hallowing and elevating power in the
history of the world, its wondrous blessedness among men, the glory it
has cast over human life and human aims, the nobleness it has conferred
on human character, all these he takes a pride in confessing and
appreciating. He will not be a whit behind the stanchest believer in
acknowledging the power of these, or in the capacity of prizing these.
But he cannot accept the explanation Christianity gives of itself. He
proposes another of his own. We may take his theory as the fruit and
flower of all 'liberal' thought. Here, at last, is what unbelieving
learning and philosophy have to offer in lieu of the divine origin of
Christianity. After a good deal of loud boasting, after a large amount
of supercilious sneering, we have here the result of that 'profound
criticism' and that 'careful scholarship' which have been laboring for
years, in Europe, to destroy the supernatural bases of faith. We are
justified, from M. Renan's position and character, in taking it for
granted, that his book is the best that modern unbelief has to offer,
his theory the most satisfactory that the deniers of the divine origin
of Christianity can frame.
In examining that theory, at the first, a suspicious thing strikes a
calm observer. It is the reckless way in which M. Renan deals with his
authorities. For, be it remarked that, with only one or two outside
hints in Josephus and Tacitus, the Four Gospels contain _all_ that we
know of the 'Life of Jesus.' They are formally and professedly His
biographies. They were expressly written to present the outlines of His
life and teaching in connected form. All that we know of Him, His birth,
life, and death, is contained in these four narrations. The utmost
learning and the utmost simplicity here stand side by side. The most
unlearned reader of THE CONTINENTAL is just as well informed,
with the Four Gospels in his hand, as any 'member' of any 'Academy'
under the sun. Out of these Four Gospels, M. Renan has to construct his
'Life of Jesus.' But he has _a theory_, and that theory does not seem to
be the one set forth in the Four Gospels; so he just rejects whatever
goes against his theory, garbles, clips, denies, assents, and colors,
with an assurance, amusing for its impudence, if it were not so criminal
for its recklessness.
On the very threshold he asserts, in the teeth of his sole authorities,
that Jesus was born in _Nazareth_! He refers his startled reader to a
footnote. That footnote informs him that the 'assessment under Quirinus,
by which He is sought to be connected with Bethlehem,' took place ten
years after. We are to take this on M. Renan's sole authority. We are to
fling the Gospels over on the strength of a footnote! Now it is simply
impossible that M. Renan can be ignorant that there are very
satisfactory ways of explaining this difficulty, otherwise than by
charging a _forgery_. Josephus, whom he cites to prove the _assessment_
to be ten years after, would have informed him that the preliminary
_enrolment_ took place at the time mentioned, and that it _did_ extend
over Herod's dominions. Moreover, the authorities for this last fact are
_not_ Christian _only_, as he says. They are Josephus, a Jew, and
Suetonius, a pagan.
This is only an instance, on the threshold, of what occurs, a hundred
times, in the book. Any statement which stands in the way of the
writer's hypothesis, is swept out of existence at one pen-stroke. Calm
historical relations, evidently most essential portions of the writings,
are treated as forgeries, or deceptions, without a condescending why or
wherefore, if they embarrass the writer.
That large portion of the Gospels, the miracles, is scarcely worth a
thought from M. Renan. He dismisses the whole question of miracles with
a _bon mot_. 'Many people followed Jesus into the desert. Thanks to
their extreme frugality, they lived there. They naturally believed they
saw in that a miracle.' Now is not that wonderful! The circumstantial
relation of the miraculous feeding is supposed to be satisfactorily
explained by people 'naturally believing' that _frugality_ was 'a
miracle'! But the great miracle of all, the miracle which seals the
story, which gives ground of hope and faith to all Christian men, that
miracle, without which they have always felt the Gospel would be
preached in vain, that grand consummating and awful miracle, which
flashed brightness into the sepulchre, which shot the light of
immortality athwart the darkness of Death, and gave mortal man a sure
grasp on immortality, that great crowning miracle, the resurrection of
our Lord, on which so much depended, which so many jealous eyes were
watching, which was so early asserted on the very spot where it claims
to have occurred--this M. Renan treats as unworthy serious refutation.
It is not even necessary to try to disprove it. It is simply sufficient
for him to mention 'the strong _imagination_ of Mary Magdalene,' and to
exclaim so _beautifully_!--'Divine power of love, sacred moments in
which the passion of a hallucinated woman gives to the world a
resurrected God!'
There it is! The _doctrine_ of the resurrection, and all that clings
around it for humanity, the doctrine preached always as one of the
foundations of the faith ('because he preached unto them Jesus and the
resurrection'), and the _fact_ of the resurrection, the fact always put
forth as the clinching argument, the justification of the whole story,
thrown into the face of Jew and Greek as a perpetual challenge--this
doctrine and this fact are disposed of by a bit of sickly sentiment!
Now, this sort of thing may be very rhetorical, and very beautiful, when
done up in approved, sentimental French, but it is certainly neither
logical nor philosophical. We have a right to insist that M. Renan shall
come with no theory which compels him to reject half the facts
unexamined, and to garble and misuse half the rest. Those facts stand on
the same ground as all the others. The same authority which tells us
that Christ lived at Nazareth, tells us also that He fed five thousand
with five loaves and two small fishes. M. Renan accepts the first
statement, without examination, and denies the second, without
examination. He does this because he has made up his mind beforehand
that _prima facie_ a miracle is impossible. But that carries us out of
the line of historical investigation altogether. That is a question of
metaphysics. M. Renan's decision of the question is not admitted by an
means universally, not even frequently. The truer decision as well as
the more philosophical is that, _prima facie, all things are possible_,
except contradictions.
At all events, we hold that the Four Evangelists stand on their own
merits. They are not to be declared impostors, either in whole or in
part, beforehand, in order to save a metaphysical theory.
The same logical viciousness shows itself in M. Renan's treatment of the
Prophets. Daniel never could have written the book attributed to him, he
says, because that book contains statements of fact which occurred long
after Daniel! That is to say, M. Renan does not believe in such a thing
as prophecy, and, by consequence, Daniel never wrote the book of Daniel!
This is taking things for granted with a witness.
And, by the way, we may as well ease our minds just here concerning
another trick of the school to which M. Renan belongs, and of which he
furnishes many marked examples. We mean the trick of arbitrarily
deciding by what they are pleased to call 'philological criticism,' all
about all the books and nearly all the chapters in the Bible. 'Learned
men are agreed that such and such chapters were not written by Isaiah.'
'It is clear, from internal evidence of style, that this book was made
up of earlier scattered memoranda.' 'These chapters, it is evident, were
not written till such and such a time.' 'The best critics are agreed
that this narration was added long after the writing of the book.' This
is the way they write, to the astonishment of the simple.
When we were younger, this sort of talk seemed to our simplicity to be
exceedingly imposing. We actually believed that there were a set of
people, in Germany, at least, who could look at a Hebrew chapter and
tell you who wrote it, when he wrote it, how he wrote it, and why; and
the who, when, how, and why, should be each different from those
mentioned by the author of the book himself. As years removed the
credulous simplicity of childhood, we found out that this was only a
trick of the trade. We discovered that no two of these doctors agreed
among themselves, that the line of argument they followed would disprove
the authorship of any page ever written, that decisions from difference
of style, wise as they might be, philologically, were, rationally and
logically, nonsensical; for Burns, no doubt, wrote his _letters_ as well
as his _poems_, and Shakspeare's 'Sonnets' were written by the hand that
wrote 'King Lear,' although, according to these wise doctors, it is
assumed to be utterly impossible that the same man can use two styles,
or that a man at seventy will write otherwise than he did at thirty. In
short, we discovered that there is nothing more arbitrary, more
opinionated, and more unphilosophical than this 'philological
criticism.' Applied, as these wonderful German doctors apply it, to any
book ever penned, and it can be shown, 'as the result of high critical
ability,' that no author ever wrote his own book. It is the easiest
thing in the world to prove that Shakspeare never wrote 'Shakspeare,'
that Milton never wrote 'Paradise Lost,' that 'Johnson's Dictionary'
just 'growed' like Topsey, and was never made at all, and, to name small
things with great, that M. Renan never wrote the 'Life of Jesus.'
When we read, then, that 'it is certain that Isaiah never wrote this
chapter,' that 'St. John could not possibly have written the fourth
Gospel,' that 'this book is composed, undoubtedly, of fragments of
earlier writings,' or that 'this' other 'is the growth of a certain
school,' we advise simple Christians to take it easy. They are to
understand that the world goes on much as usual, and that their family
Bibles still contain the old Table of Contents. There has been no
wonderful discovery made, no ancient book catalogues have come to light,
no files of ancient documents have been dug up. There are still just the
old facts and the old evidence on which Christians made up their minds
sixteen or seventeen hundred years ago. The amount of all this talk is
only that 'the great Doctor Teufelsdroeck' or 'the learned Professor Von
Baum' has hazarded a guess, and made an assertion, which every other
'great doctor' and 'learned professor' will contradict, and displace
with another guess just as probable, in three months' time. There are
men just as learned and just as honest who have examined their guesses,
and find them poor inventions indeed. And we have a right to deny point
blank the assertions so flippantly made by men like M. Renan. 'It is
_universally acknowledged_ that this book was never written by Daniel or
Isaiah or Jeremiah,' '_It is certain_ this chapter is an addition of
such and such a date,' etc. It is _not_ universally acknowledged. It is
_not_ certain. The whole thing is pure guesswork. There is only one way
to prove the authorship of a book, and that is by _testimony_. There is
nothing under the sun more absurd, philologically, than that a common
and very poor stock-actor should have written 'Hamlet.' We know he did
write it, however, not by 'internal evidence,' or from 'philological
criticism,' but by plain human testimony to the _fact_. We cite that,
and leave the 'internal' critics to their profound babble on vowels and
consonants, on long and short syllables, and let them do with the fact
the best they can.
In other words, there is no way by which I can determine whether St.
John wrote his Gospel except by _testimony_. I do not know beforehand
_how_ St. John would write. I can therefore judge nothing by 'style.'
All I can do is to ask of competent witnesses. I do ask. I am told by
such witnesses, straight up to his own day, that he _did_ write this
Gospel, that this is the very one which we now have, for they cite it
and mention its peculiarities. I accept the fact, as I do in the case of
Shakspeare, and let the wise 'critics' settle it among them.
The attempt, therefore, on the part of M. Renan, to get rid of those
large portions of the Gospels which embarrass him in his theory, by
attempting to discredit their authorship, while, at the same time, he
accepts other parts, that stand on the same authority, and the
supercilious way in which he ignores that large part which the miracles
fill, turning them off with a small witticism, or a smaller bit of
sentiment, suggest, at the start, decided suspicions of the honesty of
his intentions and the sufficiency of his theory.
We only hint at these things here. They occur all through his book. They
are not evidence of learning or critical skill. There are no _secrets_
for deciding such matters. The whole _data_ have been public for ages.
All the 'members of the Institute' together do not possess one grain of
evidence that any ordinary scholar in America does not possess as well.
M. Renan rejects, or discredits, or garbles, or slips over silently,
because he finds it necessary for his theory. That is all. He pettifogs
with his witnesses to establish his theory.
That theory is, that He, whom all Christians have called Our Lord, was a
mere man, of what race is uncertain, born in Galilee of a man named
Joseph and of a woman named Mary; who taught in Galilee and a little in
Judea, and who was at last killed and buried, and so an end of _Him_.
This theory M. Renan has to find in the Gospels, and there is, as we
have hinted, very little of the Gospels left when he gets through. It is
so palpably against them that he has to get rid of the most of them to
make it stand.
Now this theory, like all others, must be put to the test. Will it
explain the facts? We have seen how it is compelled to get rid of the
Gospels. But we put that aside. Will it explain the history of
Christianity? Will it explain its place to-day? Will it account for its
effects?
The Jesus of M. Renan is a strange character. He is more difficult of
comprehension than any mystery of orthodoxy. We ask where He gets His
wondrous wisdom, this young carpenter, how _He_ learned to speak 'as man
never spoke?' and M. Renan sentimentalizes. We ask how He got this
wondrous power over men, to lead them and control them, so that they
followed Him and 'heard Him gladly,' and M. Renan goes off into
ecstasies over the 'delicious climate' and 'the lovely villages,' and
the Arcadian simplicity of Galilee, as he fancies they once were, and
expects us to be answered. His influence over women is accounted for
more readily. M. Renan tells us, in his peculiar way, that 'this
beautiful young man' had great power over the 'nervous' susceptibilities
of Mary Magdalene; and Pilate's wife, having once seen him, 'dreamed
about him' the next night, and sent to her husband to save him in
consequence!
However, He begins His teaching. Where He learned it, how He learned it,
why it took the form it did, how _He_ came to give moral law to the
world, where He found the words of wisdom and consolation--the divine
words of power--for all generations, there is positively not one
sentence of explanation. Of all the young Jews of His day, how came He
by these powers and this omnipotent wisdom? Now the Christian theory
_does_ attempt an explanation. It gives an ample answer to the question.
M. Renan gives no answer whatever. He flies to sentiment. We have all
sorts of adjectives--'delicious,' 'enchanting, 'beautiful,' 'sweet,'
'charming'--he beats a whole female seminary at the business, in
attempting to describe how, like full-grown babes, everybody in Galilee
lived, _so_ innocent, so simple, so Arcadian were they all--_and that is
all_! What shall a man do, whom this fine style of novel writing doesn't
answer--to whom, in fact, it seems just a bit of disgusting nonsense? Is
this wonderful power, this omnipotent wisdom, a production of the
'delicious' climate? Is this all 'philosophical criticism' has to offer,
and is he to accept that as more reasonable than the Gospel theory that
they were supernatural and divine?
In this wonderful romantic dialect, M. Renan describes the beginning of
our Lord's ministry. He is embarrassed, however, by the fact that, as
Jesus goes on, He Himself makes claims, and sets up pretensions, and
exercises powers, which are totally at variance with the proposed
explanation. M. Renan cannot deny that He claimed to be the Son of God,
the Messiah, the Son of David, that He claimed to work 'miracles,' to
possess supernatural powers, to be somewhat altogether different from
the amiable, sentimental, young carpenter of his modern biographer.
How is this to be got on with? Why, by declaring boldly that Jesus was
half deceiver and half deceived! by accepting the difficulty, and
confessing that He cheated men for their good--that, as they wished to
be deceived, He stooped to deceive them, and at last half deceived
Himself!
We know nothing more thoroughly _immoral_ than is M. Renan on this
matter. This Jesus of his, about whom he sentimentalizes, whom he
declares a thousand times to be so 'charming,' and so 'divine,' and the
rest, turns out to be a deliberate cheat and quack, putting out claims
He does not Himself believe, and acting in sham miracles which people
coax Him, according to his biographer, to perform.
The raising of Lazarus, for instance, which M. Renan would like to turn
out of the Gospels, but which he is forced to confess must
stay--according to him, was a deliberate, planned, stage performance, a
gross piece of juggling imposition. Now we do not object _per se_ to M.
Renan's taking that view of it. He has a perfect freedom of choice. We
_do_ object to the immorality, the essential blindness to right and
wrong, which lead him to apologize for the cheat, and try to prove it a
perfectly innocent and justifiable thing. We protest against confounding
eternal distinctions, against debauching conscience by proving wrong
right, and a cheat an innocent bit of acting, against claiming an
impostor and a liar as the high priest of the world's 'absolute
religion'!
But few of us, in this part of the world, can appreciate the
transcendental reasoning that makes an impostor half divine, or a cheat
holy. 'Good faith and imposture,' to quote our author, 'are words which,
in our rigid conscience, are opposed like two irreconcilable terms,'
though, he says, it is not so in 'the East,' from which our religion
came, and was certainly far from being so with our Teacher! We cannot
admire M. Renan here. The writing is very fine. He exhausts himself in
his 'charming' style to make it all right, and show us that we have
profound reason to admire this lying teacher, this cheating miracle
monger, whom he holds up between us and the pure 'Son of Mary.' But it
does not answer. In this cold climate a lie is a lie, a cheat is a
cheat, and a mountebank and impostor is not the teacher of 'the absolute
religion of humanity!'
As M. Renan writes His life, that is the way in which the Founder of
Christianity develops Himself. First we have the young man, amiable,
sweet, 'charming,' enacting a 'beautiful pastoral' in the 'delicious
climate of Galilee,' where it appears that nobody has anything to do
save to enact 'pastorals,' although we are told '_brigandage_ was common
in Galilee,' which seems a strange accompaniment to 'pastorals.' Where
He got His wisdom, how He came by these 'transcendent utterances,'
which, we are told, 'some few' only, even now, are lofty enough to
appreciate, we are not informed. There they are. But, right in the midst
of them, this wonderful young man, uttering these 'charming' lessons,
and these 'delicious' sayings, sets to work miracle-mongering, trying
His hand at thaumaturgy and legerdemain, becomes an impostor and a
mountebank, pretending, among other things, to raise a man who puts on a
shroud, gets into a grave, and shams dead! At last He is taken, and
then, in view of death, becomes penitent, reforms, and recovers His
purity!
Now Thomas Paine was, in a way, an honest man. We can say that of him.
Voltaire was, in his degree, honest too. Having said what M. Renan says,
they did not stultify themselves logically. They honestly pronounced
Christianity a delusion. We have respect for their consistency. But our
modern man says that a cheat in religion is no cheat, a lie no lie, that
a true saving faith can be built on a foundation of deception and
trickery! He says it, and undertakes to prove it by _the convincing
logic of sentimentality!_
M. Renan here is just _disgusting_. There are a few things in this world
that do not mix. Right and wrong have something of a ditch between them.
A lie is not own brother to the truth. If he thinks it worth while to
write the life of an impostor, very well; only, when he has declared him
so, and insisted on his being so, we humbly beg he will not turn round
and insist on it that the religion _he_ taught is divine!
If the credulity of believers is great, what shall we say of the
credulity of Messieurs the philosophers, the unbelievers? But what shall
we say of their _morality_?
But if this new theory fails to account for Christianity as a _true_
system of religion, what shall we say of its coherence with
Christianity as a _successful_ system in action? This sentimental
impostor conquers the civilized world. This 'charming' worker of sham
wonders becomes a GOD to the millions who to-day lead mankind!
Here is where M. Renan's theory utterly breaks down, where it becomes
not only utterly illogical and incoherent, but where it becomes too
gross for any mortal credulity, and too blasphemously wicked for any
ordinary sinfulness.
It is utterly incoherent, for it requires us to believe that a system,
begun in fraud and deception, has proved itself the truest and most
beneficent and sacred treasure to the world. M. Renan insists on both.
From such a premise he drags such a conclusion.
Is there any plain Christian who dreads a sneer at Christian credulity?
Let him be comforted. What credulity is like this? What miracle in the
'Four Gospels' begins to be wonderful compared with this miracle of the
modern thaumaturge? The religion which has taught men truth--above all
things, _truth_--which teaches utter horror of a lie, which insists on
the bare, bald reality in heaven and earth, which has taught men hatred
of the false as the meanest and most unmanly thing existing--this
religion took its rise in claptrap miracles, was puffed into popularity
by boasting pretensions, was born in trickery and nurtured by
legerdemain! Its loftiest hopes, its deepest consolations are the
offspring of clumsy jugglery and cheap prestidigitation!
But more: this religion, so born and nurtured, becomes the mistress of
the earth. It is of no consequence that only a minority of men accept
it. That minority hold the world in their hands. In fact, it seems from
history, that any number of men, with this religion in their hearts,
become half omnipotent--that _twelve_ can take it and master humanity by
its power. To-day the men who profess it can do what they will on the
face of this planet. It has so seized temporal power, so moulded blind
force, so mastered strength--it has so conferred wisdom and valor and
might on men, that those who have accepted it have been crowned above
their kind, that they go everywhere as the acknowledged leaders and
lords of the race, the vanguard of humanity.
And a deception has brought all this to pass, a delusion has produced
these stern realities! Here's where the wickedness stands out nakedly!
Is there a true God in heaven, or is Ahriman rightful lord? Is the lying
devil, after all, supreme? Is a lie as good as the truth? Why, the very
earth reels beneath us! _Is there any God at all?_ Are truth and good
and God mere dreams, that a cunning fraud like this can so prosper and
prevail under the white heavens!
M. Renan's 'Life of Jesus' offers me that as a most reasonable theory!
Believing in a _true_ God and a _good_ God, being utterly incapable of
believing in the lying devil it proposes to me, this pleasant theory,
that, beneath the face and eyes of that true God, a poor imposture, a
cheap delusion becomes, not only the holiest thing, the purest thing,
the most sanctifying thing, but also the strongest thing, the most
victorious thing in all the world! If ever theory so played sleight of
hand with cause and effect, if it ever so mingled and mixed right and
wrong, and so taught that lies and truth were about the same, we have
failed to meet with it. And if ever any theory required power of
gullibility like this last and newest, we have failed to hear of that.
The fact is there is no escaping the honest conclusion that, unless
JESUS CHRIST is what He claimed to be, _divine_, 'GOD
manifest in the flesh,' 'the Son of the Father,' then He was simply an
_impostor_. (He could not have been a self-deceived fanatic.) Now any
man is free to accept the last horn of this dilemma, if he chooses. It
is a free country. But if he takes that, we insist that he is _logically
bound_ to call Christianity a _cheat_, a _delusion_, a _snare and a
curse to humanity_! He shall not ask us to swallow the monstrous and
immoral proposition, that this outrageous lie and imposture is the
glory, the blessing and hope of humanity!
And this is what M. Ernest Renan, in most melodious sentences, proposes.
This is his theory of Christianity, its origin and its success.
This is the best thing philosophic and philologic unbelief has to offer,
the most rational account it has to give in the year 1864. Surely
unbelief must have large faith in human nature's capacity of spiritual
swallow, if men are expected to take this down, as more reasonable than
what they will hear in the next pulpit!
Nay, after all, the Christian theory of Christianity is the most
rational yet. It has mysteries, but it calls them mysteries, things
above reason. It accepts them, and so escapes absurdity--ends with no
means, effects from no causes, wonders that spring out of the ground,
divine teachers produced by a 'charming' climate, and impostures that
are holy truths! Above all, it escapes moral idiocy, and holds there is
a line between right and wrong! On the whole, it is, as yet, the only
theory which explains all the facts, the only one of which the
consequences may be logically accepted, which makes Christ or His
religion reasonable or possible.
M. Renan's 'beautiful' young Galilean carpenter, with such power over
'hallucinated' Magdalens, conducting grand picnics in that 'charming'
climate, and making life a May day, is not the world's mighty Deliverer;
and his miracle-mongering demagogue, claiming to be the Son of David in
lying genealogies, and the Son of God in blasphemous audacity, is not
the world's Teacher of all Truth and Righteousness. The new Jesus is a
poor substitute for the Divine Man whom we adore.
We cannot, therefore, accept the new theory. It is not logically
competent to the facts. Established on garbled evidence with painful
struggles, it will not, when completed, fulfil the conditions. It is not
reasonable. It is not moral. We have desired to present this view of it.
The details of criticism we leave to others, who can easily deal with M.
Renan. We have aimed to show, what any plain reader can see, the
unreasonableness and immorality of this theory of Christianity's origin.
As long as we have faith in a righteous God, so long can we never
believe that the best, purest, and holiest religion is born in fraud and
trickery. M. Renan's theory declares the purity and the holiness of
Christianity, and yet insists on the trickery and the fraud: therefore
we must reject his theory.
So long as we believe that a true God is _omnipotent_, we cannot believe
that fraud and deception are masters of the world. But M. Renan insists
that Christianity has mastered the world, and yet declares it founded
upon fraud and deception. We must therefore reject M. Renan.
The fine writing, the sentiment, the abundant 'sweetness' of the book
cannot make beautiful this monstrous perversion of reason, this
insidious attack on the very distinction between God and Satan.
Voltaire's theory is comparatively honest, healthy, moral. Paine's is
so. These men called things by their right names. They never undertook
to upset the human conscience. Ernest Renan's theory is thoroughly
_immoral_, and he only can accept it who denies that the world is
governed by moral laws at all.
We reject his Jesus as a delusion and a dream. God never created such a
creature. He exists nowhere save in M. Renan's pages.
In this blind, reeling world, in this weary, painful time, while the
sobs of a dumb creation break along the shores of heaven in prayer, we
cannot spare the real Jesus, the world's strong Deliverer, its
conquering Lord! The vision He exhibited, of a stainless humanity,
omnipotent in purity, loyalty, and truth, has flashed and flamed before
the eyes of men, through the long night of the ages, their beacon fire
of hope, their star of faith! We cannot spare Him _now_. In Him all is
consistent, all is reasonable, all is harmonious. The Divine Man
accounts for His wisdom, vindicates the origin of His power. In the
vision of His face, Christianity and all its results are the natural
works of His hand.
We turn to _His_ Life. We leave M. Renan's little novel, and turn to the
Godlike life of the typal Man, the Omnipotent and Eternal Man, who
redeemed humanity, and bought the world, and conquered hell and death:
we turn to _that_ life, that death, that awful resurrection, and take
heart and hope. No mere amiable, sentimental, 'beautiful,' or 'charming'
young man will do. The world cries for its Lord! The race He ransomed
looks to the 'Lion of Judah,' the 'Captain of the Lord's Host.' The mad,
half-despairing struggle we have waged all these long centuries, can
find only in 'the Son of Man,' in the omnipotent 'Son of God,' its
explanation and its end: 'God was manifest in the Flesh, reconciling the
World unto Himself!'