It will be strange if, accepting even that scanty creed, we do not find
ourselves speedily accepting much more. When it is heartily
acknowledged that Jesus of Nazareth lived and died, and that His first
followers found strength and irresistible power in the conviction that
He had conquered death and the grave, it is of necessity that we go
further. The extreme sceptics who maintain that He never existed are,
for the purpose of controversy, wise in their generation, for, once His
existence is admitted, His mysterious power begins to tell. We are
confronted {184} with an Influence by which, consciously or
unconsciously, we must be affected, a knowledge which we must acquire,
an Authority to which we must bow. Let us not think merely of those
who have, in utter devotion, yielded their hearts and souls to Him
through all the centuries, of the institutions and customs which owe
their existence directly to Him; let us think of the manifestations
which are so often visible in those who do not suspect whence the
manifestations come, let us think of the tributes of affection, of
homage, of devotion which are paid by those to whom the ancient faith
in His Divinity appears to be an illusion or an impossible exaggeration.
Scarcely any critic of recent years has been regarded as more
destructive than Professor Schmiedel. Indignant attack after indignant
attack has been made upon him for arguing that only nine sayings
attributed to our Lord can be accepted as genuine, that {185} all else
is involved in suspicion. What Schmiedel really does maintain is that
these nine sayings must of necessity be accepted as genuine, cannot be
rejected by any sane canon of criticism, and that the acceptance of
these nine sayings, these 'foundation-pillars,' compels the acceptance
of a great deal besides. '_What then have I gained in these nine
foundation pillars_? You will perhaps say "Very little": I reply, "I
have gained just enough." Having them, I know that Jesus must really
have come forward in the way He is said to have done.... In a word, I
know, on the one hand, that His Person cannot be referred to the region
of myth; on the other hand, that He was man in the full sense of the
term, and that, without of course denying that the Divine character was
in Him, this could be found only in the shape in which it can be found
in any human being. I think, therefore, that if we knew no more we
should {186} know by no means little about Him. But as a matter of
fact the foundation-pillars are but the starting-point for our study of
the life of Jesus.'[4] And this study, he concludes, gives us nothing
less than 'pretty well the whole bulk of Jesus' teaching, in so far as
its object is to explain in a purely religious and ethical way what God
requires of man and wherein man requires comfort and consolation from
God.' The standpoint of Professor Schmiedel is not the standpoint of
the Church as a whole: he fearlessly and aggressively endeavours to
remove any misconception on that subject: all the more remarkable that,
renouncing so much, he incontrovertibly establishes so much,
incontrovertibly establishes, we may not unreasonably contend, a great
deal more than he admits: he cannot, we may think, stop logically where
he does. All this may, or may not, be legitimately argued: there can
{187} be no doubt that one whose dislike of traditional dogmas is
excessive, and whose scrutiny of the Gospel records is minute and
unsparing, forces us to say of Jesus, What manner of Man is this?
It is the same with the general tendency of modern criticism. From the
day that Strauss accomplished his destructive work, the Figure of Jesus
as a Historical Reality has been more and more endowed with power.[5]
No age has so occupied itself with Him, none has so endeavoured to
recall the features of His character, to apply His teachings to the
solution of social questions, as this age of ruthless inquiry. The
inquirers may have abjured tradition, but almost without exception they
have profoundly reverenced, if they have not actually worshipped, Jesus
of Nazareth, and they have found in His Gospel moral and spiritual
light and life.
{188}
Some thirty years ago, M. Andre Lefevre, a fervid disciple of
Materialism, an uncompromising and bitter opponent of every symptom of
religious manifestation, could not help discerning 'with the
clairvoyance of hatred,' the influence of Christianity in modern
thought. 'Descartes, Leibnitz, Locke, Condillac, Newton, Bonnet, Kant,
Hegel, Spinoza himself, Toland and Priestley, Rousseau, all are
Christians somewhere.... Voltaire himself has not completely
eliminated the virus: his Deism is not exempt from it.'[6] The same
thing is still occurring. In the most unexpected quarters we find the
fascination of Christ remaining. Men not acknowledging themselves to
be His followers, defiantly proclaiming that they are not His
followers, that they can hardly be even interested in Him, are yet
perpetually returning, in what they themselves will confess as their
higher moments, to the thought of {189} Him, trying to make plain why
it is that for them there is in Him no beauty that they should desire
Him. For example, this is how Mr. H. G. Wells, the popular author of
so many imaginative works, attempts frankly to explain his attitude:
'I hope I shall offend no susceptibilities when I assert that this
great and very definite Personality in the hearts and imaginations of
mankind does not, and never has, attracted me. It is a fact I record
about myself without aggression or regret. I do not find myself able
to associate him in any way with the emotion of salvation.' But Mr.
Wells goes on to say: 'I admit the splendid imaginative appeal in the
idea of a divine human friend and mediator. If it were possible to
have access by prayer, by meditation, by urgent outcries of the soul,
to such a being whose feet were in the darknesses, who stooped down
from the light, who was at once great and little, limitless in power
{190} and virtue, and one's very brother; if it were possible by sheer
will in believing to make and make one's way to such a helper, who
would refuse such help? But I do not find such a being in Christ. I
do not find, I cannot imagine such a being. I wish I could. To me the
Christian Christ seems not so much a humanised God as an
incomprehensibly sinless being, neither God nor man. His sinlessness
wears his incarnation like a fancy dress, all his white self unchanged.
He had no petty weaknesses. Now the essential trouble of my life is
its petty weaknesses. If I am to have that love, that sense of
understanding fellowship which is, I conceive, the peculiar magic and
merit of this idea of a Personal Saviour, then I need some one quite
other than this image of virtue, this terrible and incomprehensible
Galilean with his crown of thorns, his bloodstained hands and feet. I
cannot love him any more than I can love a man {191} upon the rack.'
'The Christian's Christ is too fine for me, not incarnate enough, not
flesh enough, not earth enough. He was never foolish and hot-eared and
inarticulate, never vain, he never forgot things, nor tangled his
miracles.'[7]
There is no disputing about tastes; and it is impossible to refute one
who tells us that he cannot see and cannot understand, though we may
lament and be astonished at his disabilities. Why a man upon the rack
should not be loved, or why the prime qualification for the Saviour of
mankind should be the plentiful possession of petty weaknesses, or why
it should be necessary for Him to be sometimes foolish and to have a
bad memory, or what necessary connection there is between hot-ears and
the salvation of the world, need not detain us long. For in spite of
this apparently curious longing for a Deliverer who shall be weak and
vain {192} and forgetful and hot-eared, and foolish, and of the earth
earthy, Mr. Wells shows us that the urgent outcry of his soul is for a
Being limitless in power and virtue and one's very brother; and though
he says that he does not find such a Being in Christ, it is exactly
what Christians have in all ages been finding. 'We have not an High
Priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but
was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us
therefore come boldly unto the Throne of Grace that we may obtain mercy
and find grace to help in times of need.'