The phase assumed by Christianity in the fourth Gospel
demanded a new class of miracles from those given in the
first three.--A labored effort in this Gospel to sink the
humanity of Christ.--His address to Mary.--The temptation in
the wilderness ignored, and the last supper between him and
his disciples suppressed.--Interview between Christ and the
women and men of Samaria.--A labored effort to connect
Christ with Moses exposed.
When the incarnation became a leading feature of Christianity, its whole
spirit underwent a change from what it was in the first three Gospels.
The miracles which they describe are too tame for the new phase which
Christ is made to assume. None of the five, except one, in the Gospel
of John, are mentioned in the first three, for the apparent reason that
those in the Synoptics all fall short of upholding the claims set up
for Christ in the fourth. The subsidence of the sea at Tiberias, at his
command, was some proof that he held control of the wind and waves, but
a lucky coincidence might account for part, and ocular deception for the
rest. But, in that case, the constituents of the water were not changed.
Not so with the water at the feast at Cana. The restoration of the
widow's son at Nain, and of the daughter of Jairus, might admit of
doubt, for the first had not shown signs of decided death, and the
latter may have been a case of _coma_--"For the maid is not dead, but
sleepeth." (_Matt_. ix. 24.) But in the case of Lazarus there could be
no mistake. For four days the seal of death sat upon his brow, and flesh
and blood were fast returning to their native dust. Christ, in the first
three Gospels, heals diseases and cures the blind; but how much was
to be referred to his power as a god, and how much to the skill of a
_Thera-peutae_, might invite discussion. But in the cases of the man who
had an infirmity for eight-and-thirty years, and the one born blind,
there could be no ground for dispute. The miracles selected proved all
that was claimed for Christ in the first part of the Gospel. He was
master of the elements, death heard and obeyed his voice, and he held
the avenues which led from fife to the grave. The miracle of the loaves
and fishes is the only one in the first three Gospels repeated by John,
because it proved his power over nature; for if he did not change the
elements, as he did at Cana, he multiplied them. We see in this Gospel
a studied effort to avoid anything like a human parentage for Christ, as
stated in the first three Gospels. The trip to Bethlehem, the birth in
the manger, the journey of the wise men from the East, are all omitted.
The name of Mary in this Gospel is studiously kept in the background.
She is barely mentioned twice, once at the feast of Cana: "And when
they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto him, They have no wine;
Jesus saith unto her, _Woman, what have I to do with thee?_" The true
answer intended by the question was--_nothing_. Christ could not be
entirely oblivious of earthly ties. He had lived under the same roof
with Mary. He had received from her many acts of kindness; and if nature
was allowed her empire over the heart; he must have felt for her the
affection of a son. For him she had all the feelings of a mother. She
followed and stood by him at the cross. As she stood and wept in his
sight, the only words of consolation and endearment he could give her
were as cold and heartless as a Lapland wind: "_Woman_, behold thy son"!
The word "_woman_" was ever on his lips. When he recommends her, at the
last scene, to the care of the disciples, he is studied and guarded in
his language: "Then saith he to the disciple, Behold _thy mother_." The
scenes at the cross were too solemn to permit the studied purpose of an
artful bigot to muzzle the voice of nature. Truth turns away from the
story.
The design of this Gospel to keep out of view the carnal nature of
Christ, as it appears in the first three Gospels, is marked with
Jesuitical cunning. He who was born, not of blood, nor of the will
of the flesh, but of God, must be so constituted as to be above the
weaknesses and frailties of those who are born of earth. The temptations
in the wilderness, which supply the most remarkable scenes in the life
of Christ, and, as given in the first three Gospels, proved the power of
the Son of God over the Powers of Darkness, are wholly unnoticed in the
Gospel of John. He who was all God, without a link to connect him
with humanity, must be so superior to Satan as to be above his arts
of seduction. John will not allow Christ to be tempted, because he was
above it; but, in sinking his humanity to favor a dogma, he keeps out of
sight the most sublime and god-like portion of his character--the power
to rise above the allurements of wealth, power, and dominion. It was by
such things he proved himself a god. The design of the fourth Gospel is
overdone. In making Christ all God, no chord of sympathy is left between
him and man. Even in the last supper, dwelt upon with so much tenderness
by Matthew, Mark and Luke, we detect, by the silence of John, the spirit
of the Jesuit. He makes no mention of it. Who can mistake the reason of
this silence? The tender scenes of this last interview between Christ
and his disciples are sacrificed to make way for a senseless and
heartless dogma. In the last supper, given in the Synoptics, the bread
and wine are mere symbols of the death and sufferings of Christ. It was
this symbolic character of the sacrament that the writer of John wished
to avoid. As the Lord's supper is with John a real sacrifice, each
repetition is a fresh atonement, and the bread and wine, by a miraculous
conversion, are made flesh and blood. There could be no sacrifice of
the body of Christ _until death_, and, for that reason, the last supper
between him and his disciples before the crucifixion is omitted. This
miraculous conversion of the elements has been one of the holy mysteries
of the Church for ages past. It has been the bigot's wand. Millions have
fallen down before the Host. It led the crusades. The fair fields of
Europe and Asia have been whitened by the bones of its victims. In fine,
it has been the armory in which fanaticism has forged her most fatal
and dangerous weapons. With John, the body of Christ is never dead--the
grave cannot hold it; but it exists in a mysterious union with the
Church, so that every time the devout believer eats of the bread, or
touches the sacred cup to his lips, he partakes of the flesh and drinks
the blood of the Son of God. Such is the dogma which took its rise in
the last half of the second century, the offspring of a bitter, heated
controversy which demands that reason be strangled to make room for
faith. It is the fate of this dogma, as it is of all like it, to
be associated with others equally false and absurd. It can have no
fellowship with truth. Speaking of Christ, John says: "The same was in
the beginning with God. All things were made by him, and without him
was not anything made that was made." (Chap. i. 2, 3.) Christ says of
himself: "For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the
will of him that sent me." (Chap. vi. 38.) He was on earth thirty-three
years. In what business was this creator of worlds engaged for thirty
years of this time? If anything, so far as we can know, it was the
business of a carpenter. Did he do his Heavenly Father's business all
this time? This is what he says himself he was sent to do. The first
proof he gave of the power of a god, while here, was at Cana. It
was here that he first manifested forth his glory, and inspired his
disciples with faith. The first three Gospels leave Christ to his
humanity to the time the angels took charge of him, and subject him,
like other mortals, to human employments. In John, a god with power to
create worlds is bound up in the fate of mortals for thirty years, and
only escapes thralldom when the spell is broken at the marriage feast.
Would he, who was with God in the beginning, whose word was sufficient
to create worlds, submit to a fate like this?
The interview between Christ and the woman of Samaria affords abundant
evidence of the spurious character of the fourth Gospel, and that the
writer was some Greek who was ignorant of the religion of Moses and the
Jews.
The temple of Jerusalem being destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, the
Samaritans proposed to join the Jews after their captivity in rebuilding
it; but the Jews refused the coalition. (_Ezra_ iv. 1-3.) This gave rise
to other causes of dispute, until the most inveterate hatred grew up
between the two peoples. At length, by permission of Alexander the
Great, the Samaritans erected a temple at Mount Gerizim, in opposition
to the one at Jerusalem. The same worship was observed in both cities,
and both people avoided the idolatry of surrounding nations. All the
followers of Moses in Judea shared alike in the calamities which befell
the Jewish people; so all shared a common belief that God would at some
time, by the hand of a deliverer, restore to them all they had lost.
If by the hand of Cyrus the power of the Assyrian empire had been torn
down, the Temple rebuilt, and the Jews and Samaritans placed back in
their homes in Judea; so, if some like calamity should befall them,
the same hand would again restore them to liberty and the land of their
inheritance. The Jews and Samaritans, though divided on some things,
were alike the chosen people of God, and the promises made to one were
made to both. At the time Christ made his appearance in Samaria, the
people of that country had settled convictions as to what they might
expect from the promises made to them by Jehovah through Moses, their
great lawgiver and prophet. These convictions, like the concretion of
ages, had solidified, and made up the Jewish and Samaritan character.
Whatever might befall them, they had no expectations of a spiritual
deliverer of any kind. They recognized no spiritual bondage growing out
of the sins of the first parents, like the believers in Christianity,
for Moses taught nothing of the kind. A personal sacrifice, like that of
Christ, to save men from the condemnation of a broken law, never entered
into the mind of either Jew or Samaritan. Neither was cosmopolitan, and
with them a deliverer was a deliverer to the Jews and not the Gentiles.
After Christ had convinced the woman at the well that he was a prophet,
by telling her past life, she is made to say: "I know that Messiah
cometh which is called Christ; when he is come he will tell us all
things. Jesus saith unto her, I that speak unto thee am he." It is said
that the woman believed; if so, did she understand him? With Christ,
he was the Son of God, equal with the Father; was with him in the
beginning, and by him the universe was made--_he was the Creator_. We
ask again, did the woman believe in such a Messiah, and did she believe
that he who spoke to her, and told her how many husbands she had had,
was that august Being? If there is room in the breast of any people for
a hope or expectation of such a person as Christ claimed to be, not a
shade of either could be found in the hearts of the followers of Moses.
Let a belief in such a Being have made its way into the Jewish mind, and
the whole structure, as it was reared by their great leader, would fall
like a baseless tower. Strike out the Semitic idea which was thundered
from Sinai, and that very thing which cost the Jews ages of persecution
would with it be thrown away.
The woman was convinced by the arts of a fortune-teller, some of the
Samaritans by what befell the woman, and others, because of what they
saw and heard themselves, believed "_that Christ was the Saviour of the
world!_" Here we reach a climax: did the Samaritans, in so short a time,
renounce Moses and the institutions of their fathers? Christ claimed
before the Jews that he lived before Abraham. This they could not stand,
but took up stones and cast them at him, and, because he preached the
end of the Mosaic law, they crucified and put him to death.
There are still some of the descendants of the Samaritans at Naplosa
(the ancient Shech-em), at Gaza, Damascus and Cairo, who still retain
the faith held by their fathers in the time of Christ--a living protest
against the truth of the story of the women and men of Samaria. Let him
who wishes to be convinced go among the remnant of this persecuted
race, witness their poverty, their sad and careworn faces, the work of
centuries of injustice and oppression, and ask them if they believe
the story of the woman at the well. They will point you to two thousand
years of suffering for their Mosaic faith, enough to "bring tears down
Pluto's wan cheeks," and ask you, with a look of scorn, if the ancestors
of such a people could ever be apostles.
In talking to the Jews, Christ is made to say: "For had ye believed
Moses, ye would have believed me: for he wrote of me. But if ye believe
not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?" (_John_ v. 46,47.)
Christ here undertakes to make the Jews believe that he was the one
who had been foreseen and spoken of in ages past, and especially by the
great prophet of the Hebrew people. Had any Jew in the time of Moses
set up the claim that at some future day there would arise one among his
people who would be equal with God, but who would suffer death at their
hands, as a ransom for the salvation not only of the Jews but of the
Gentiles, he would have ordered that such a prophet be stoned to death.
By him and \ the Jews no such Saviour was expected or required. Adam and
Eve were the first to break the law, but God pronounced judgment upon
them before they left the Garden. The earth was cursed with thorns and
thistles, for Adam's sake. By the sweat of his brow he was bound to eat
of its fruits in sorrow all his days. Upon Eve were imposed the pains
and sufferings of childbirth, and the duty of obedience. All this
endured, both were to return to the dust from whence they came. This was
all the punishment and all the atonement God demanded. He asked no more.
With Moses, death was the end of punishment. Those who committed the
first sin made their own atonement, and so have all their descendants,
in the eyes of Moses and the Jews. "Had ye believed in Moses, ye would
have believed in me." Reverse this, and we have the exact truth: If ye
believe in Moses, it is impossible to believe in me. How could they?
"Moses wrote of me." What did he write? To connect Christ with prophecy,
language of the most indefinite character is selected from all parts of
the Hebrew scriptures. "The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's
head." Christ of the fourth Gospel is not of the seed of the woman.
"_The Word was made flesh?_" and "was not born of blood, nor the will
of the flesh, nor the will of man, but of God." "The scepter shall not
depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh
come." (_Gen_, xlix. 10). The Jews ceased to be an independent people,
and the scepter departed from Judah at the time Pompey invaded the
country, seized upon the Temple, deposed Aristobulus, the high priest,
and put Hyrcanus in his place. (Josephus, _Wars_, Book I. chap. vii.
sec. 6.) He deprived the Jews of all their conquests, restored the
conquered, and placed Syria, together _with Judea_ and the country as
far as Egypt and Euphrates, under the command of Scaurus. (Ibid, sec. 7.)
In view of these events, Josephus bitterly laments the results, and
says: "_We lost our liberty', and became subject to the Romans_, and
were deprived of that country which we had gained by our arms from the
Syrians, and were compelled to restore it to the Syrians. Moreover, the
Romans exacted of us, in a little time, above ten thousand talents."
(Josephus, _Antiquities_, Book XIV. ch. iv. sec. v.) When did the Jews,
after the conquest of Pompey, shake off the yoke of the Romans? Between
his conquest and the birth of Christ at least sixty-seven years had
intervened. In the meantime Caesar crossed the Rubicon, was assassinated
in the senate; the empire was distracted by civil wars; Mark Antony and
Augustus tried the fortune of battle with Brutus and Cassius, on the
field at Philippi, and the first of the Roman emperors had nearly
completed a long reign of four-and-forty years. When Christ was born,
the scepter had departed from Judea, and the Jews were a nation of
slaves.
Space will not allow us to pursue this subject farther. Throughout
the Gospel of John we discover the most studied and labored effort to
connect Christ with the religion of Moses, so that it may appear that in
himself he is only the response to the many prophesies contained in the
Hebrew scriptures. This Gospel is full of instances where the Jews, upon
Christ's bare word--and sometimes not even that--gave up everything, and
followed him, even to the cross. The day following the baptism, as John
stood by the side of the disciples, Jesus walked by, when the Baptist
exclaimed: "_Behold the Lamb of God!_" This was sufficient to induce two
of the disciples to follow Christ, and one of them was so carried away
that he hunted up his brother, who was Peter, and told him they _had
found the Messiah, who was the Christ_. On the next day, Christ went
to Galilee, and found Philip, whom he directed to follow him; and soon
Philip found Nathaniel, and told him, "We have found him of whom _Moses,
in the law, and the prophets, did write_." They had found no such
thing. The conversion of Paul formed a new era in religious history. We
may well say, that when he left Judaism, he left the twelve disciples
behind him, for they could neither climb over or break down the wall of
circumcision which separated the Jews from the Gentiles. Paul quarreled
with and then left them, but took along with him enough of the Mosaic
faith to keep up a connection between the old and new religion, so
that we can trace the features of the child in those of the parent. He
carried with him _Monotheism_, but it was qualified in the glare of his
vision at Damascus so that, in some sense, Christ was the Son of
God. Here was a clear departure from Moses, for which the Jews always
despised him. Then followed Paul's tug with the Greeks. In spite of him,
they established a dual government in Heaven. _The Son was equal with
the Father_, At this point there should have been an eternal separation
between Jewry and Christianity. For nearly two thousand years, the Jews
have protested against an alliance, while, on the other side, Christians
have striven to maintain it. The two parties, in the meantime, were kept
separate by an ocean of blood which flowed between. No bridge could
ever span it--no bridge ever can. In conclusion of this branch of the
subject, we repeat, that great efforts are made to have it appear in
this Gospel that Christ is in harmony with Moses and the prophets,
whereas there is scarce a word in it which declares his equality with
the Father (and it teaches little else) not met with a denial from
Sinai, amid "thunders and lightnings" and "the voice of the trumpet":
"_Thou shalt have no other gods before me?_" Moses is sublime in threats
and denunciations against those who depart from the true and _only_ God.
The men of the second century knew nothing of the spirit of the Mosaic
faith, or they never would have stultified themselves by such a work as
the fourth Gospel.