Robert Browning has described in his _Christmas Eve_ a certain German
professor lecturing upon the myth of Christ and the sources whence it
is derivable. But as the listeners wait for the inference that faith
in Him should henceforth be discarded, 'he bids us,' says the supposed
narrator of the story, 'when we least expect it take back our faith':
Go home and venerate the myth
I thus have experimented with.
This Man, continue to adore Him
Rather than all who went before Him,
And all who ever followed after.
This is a correct though humorous summary of much prevalent scepticism.
While critics destroy with the one hand, they build up {201} with the
other; while they seem intent on rooting out every remnant of trust in
Christ, they frequently conclude by passionately beseeching us to make
Him our Model and our King, our Pattern and our Guide. If there is
anything which is calculated at once to arouse us who profess and call
ourselves Christians and to make us ashamed, it is that the diligence
with which His Example is followed, the earnestness with which His
words are studied, by some whom we hold to have abandoned the Catholic
Faith, throw into the shade the obedience, the love, the earnestness
which prevail among ourselves. They who follow not with us are casting
out devils in His name. It is with us, they are careful to say, and
not with Him that they are waging war. They may dispute the incidents
of His recorded Life: they may insist on reducing Him to the level of
humanity, but they also insist that in so doing they act according to
His Own {202} Mind, that they refuse, for the very love which they bear
Him, to surround Him with a glory which He would have rejected. Devoid
of the errors which have led astray His successors, exalted far above
the wisest and the best of those who have spoken in His Name, it is the
function of criticism to show Him in His fashion as He lived, to sweep
away the falsehoods which have gathered round Him in the course of
ages.[14]
We do not seek to read into the emotional language of such writers a
significance which they would repudiate, but we are surely entitled to
point out that in spite of themselves they are bringing their tribute
of homage to the King of the Jews, the King of all mankind. They grant
so much that, it seems to us, they must grant yet more. We, at any
rate, cannot stop where they deem themselves obliged to stop. We must
go further, we hear other voices swell the {203} chorus of adoration,
we have the witness not only of those who, in awe and wonderment have
exclaimed, 'Truly this was a Son of God,' but we have the witness of
those who from heartfelt conviction are able to say, 'The life which I
now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, Who loved
me and gave Himself for me.' And to them we humbly hope to be able to
respond, 'Now we believe not because of the language of others, whether
honest doubters or devout disciples, for we have heard Him ourselves,
and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world.'
'Restate our doctrines as we may,' to sum up all in the words of one
who began his career as a teacher in the confidence that Jesus of
Nazareth was merely a man, but whom closer study and deepening
experience have brought to a fuller faith, 'reconstruct our theologies
as we will, this age, like every age, beholds in Him the Way to God,
the {204} Truth of God, the Life of God lived out among men: this age,
like every age, has heard and responds to His call, "Come unto Me all
ye that labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest": this age,
like every age, finds access to the Father through the Son. These
things no criticism can shake, these certainties no philosophy
disprove, these facts no science dissolve away. He is the Religion
which He taught: and while the race of man endures, men will turn to
the crucified Son of Man, not with a grudging, "Thou hast conquered, O
Galilean!" but with the joyful, grateful cry, "My Lord and my God."'[15]
V
He who was lifted up on the Cross is drawing all men to Himself, wise
and unwise, friend and foe, devout and doubting, is ruling even where
His authority is disavowed, is {205} causing hearts to adore where
intellects rebel. The patriotic English baron, Simon de Montfort, as
he saw the Royal forces under Prince Edward come against him, was
filled with admiration of their discipline and bearing. 'By the arm of
S. James,' he cried, recalling with soldierly pride that to himself
they owed in great measure their skill, 'they come on well: they
learned that not of themselves, but of me.' The Church of Christ, when
confronted with the benevolence, the integrity, the zeal of some who
are arrayed against her, may naturally say, 'They live well indeed:
they learned that not of themselves, but of me.' 'You are probably,'
was the homely expostulation of Benjamin Franklin with Thomas Paine,
'you are probably indebted to Religion for the habits of virtue on
which you so justly value yourself. You might easily display your
excellent talents of reasoning upon a less hazardous subject, and
thereby obtain a rank amongst {206} our most distinguished authors.
For among us,' continued Franklin satirically, 'it is not necessary, as
among the Hottentots, that a youth, to be raised into the company of
men, should prove his manhood by beating his mother.' The blows
inflicted on Christianity come from unfilial hands and hearts, from
hands and hearts which have been strengthened and nurtured on
Christianity itself, from hands and hearts which, but for the lingering
Christianity that still impels them, would soon be paralysed and dead.
The ideals which systems intended to supersede Christianity set before
them are, to all intents and purposes, only Christianity under another
name. Where the ideals go beyond ordinary Christian practice, they are
only a nearer approximation to the Supreme Ideal which has never been
fulfilled save in Jesus Christ Himself. Wherever there is truth in
them which is not generally accepted, or which comes as a surprise,
investigation {207} will show that it is an aspect of Christianity
which Christians have been neglecting, that it is a manifestation of
the mind of Christ, a development of His principles. Look where we
will, the men that are making real moral and spiritual progress are
those who are in touch with Him. Their beliefs about Him may not be
accurate, their conception of His nature and work may be defective, but
it is His Name, His Spirit, His Power, it is Himself that is the secret
of their life. One part of His teaching has sunk into their hearts,
one element of His character has mysteriously impressed them. They
have touched the hem of His garment, the shadow of His Apostle passing
by has glided over them, and they have been roused from weakness and
death. 'He that was healed wist not Who it was, for Jesus had conveyed
Himself away.' So it happened in the days of His flesh: so is it
happening still: they that are set free may not yet know to Whom {208}
their freedom is to be ascribed. Now, as on the way to Emmaus, when
men are communing together and reasoning, Jesus Himself may be walking
with them, though their eyes are holden that they do not know Him.
John Stuart Mill, whose acute intellect, whose spotless rectitude,
whose public spirit, whose non-religious training naturally made him
the idol of those to whom Christianity was a bygone superstition, came
in his later days, not indeed to accept the orthodox creed, but yet to
stretch out his longing hand to Christ, believing that He might have
'unique commission from God to lead mankind to truth and virtue.'
George Eliot, whose genius was ever labouring to fill up the void which
the rejection of her early faith had made, consoled her dying hours, as
she had inspired her most ennobling pages, with the _Imitation of
Christ_. Matthew Arnold, most cultured of critics, joins hands with
the most fervid of evangelists in maintaining that {209} 'there is no
way to righteousness but the way of Jesus.' The name of Christ--none
other name under heaven given among men will ever prove a substitute
for that.
Renouncing faith in Christ, is there life, is there salvation for man
to be found in the doctrines, the names, the influences which are so
vehemently extolled? Is there one of them which so satisfies the
cravings of the heart, which enkindles such glorious hopes, which
inspires to such holy living, which inculcates so universal a
brotherhood, as Christianity? Is there one of them which, at the best,
is more than a keeping of despair at bay, than a resolute acceptance of
utter overthrow, than a blindness to the tremendous issues which are
involved?[16] Will the culture which is devoted, and cannot but be
devoted, exclusively to the outward, which imparts a knowledge of
Science or Art or Literature, be found sufficient to {210} rescue men
from the slavery of sin or from the torment of doubt? Will the
progress which is altogether occupied with the material and the
physical, with providing better houses and better food and better
wages, produce happiness without alloy and remove the sting and dread
of death?[17] Will the reiteration of the dogma that we are but
fleeting shadows, that there is nothing to hope for in the future, that
we are all the victims of delusion, tend to elevate and benefit our
downcast race? Will the attempt to worship what has never been made
known, what is simply darkness and mystery, be more successful in
raising men above themselves than the worship of the Righteousness and
the Love which have been made manifest in Christ? Will the attempt to
supplant the worship of Jesus Christ, in Whom was no sin, by the
worship of Humanity at large, of Humanity stained with guilt and crime
as {211} well as illumined here and there with deeds of heroism, of
Humanity sunk to the level of the brutes as well as exalted to the
level of whatever we may suppose to be the highest, seeing that there
is really no higher existence with which to compare it--will this
worship of itself, with all its baseness and imperfection, this turning
of mankind into a Mutual Adoration Society, make Humanity divine? Will
even the assurance that far-distant ages will have new inventions,
fairer laws, more abundant wealth be any deliverance to us from our
burdens, any salvation from our individual sorrow and guilt and shame?
Can we to whom the likeness of Christ has been shown, can we imagine
that any of these efforts to answer the yearning of mankind for
deliverance from the body of this death will prove an efficient
substitute for Him? And if we forsake Him, it must be in one or other
of these directions that we go.
{212}