inquiry into the truth of Christianity will depend upon the effect
produced upon you by the Personality of Jesus Christ. If a careful
study of His words, of His works, does not constrain you to recognize
in Him a divine Teacher, if it does not lead you to discern the Being
in whom alone humanity attained to that ideal perfection of which
philosophers had ever dreamed, but of which they deemed that the
realization was impossible, nay, more, a Being in whom the moral and
spiritual attributes of Deity, perfect holiness, and perfect love,
were manifested, then indeed I admit, nay, I am in truth convinced,
that no other evidences will have any real or permanent effect upon
your spirit. The completeness of those evidences may fill your minds
with anxious questionings, their adequacy may leave you without excuse
for their rejection; but without a personal influence they will also
leave you cold, and in a position, if not of outward antagonism, yet
of inward alienation. If, on the other hand, you accept Jesus as your
Teacher and Master, simply and wholly because He has won your heart and
conquered your spirit, then all other evidences will fall into their
proper place; they will not be set aside, contemned, or neglected--had
they been needless, they would not have been given--but they will be
used as subsidiary and supplementary; enabling you to give a reason for
the faith which is in you, both for your own satisfaction, and for the
defence and advancement of Christian truth. The one great evidence, the
master evidence, the evidence with which all other evidences will stand
or fall, is Christ Himself speaking by His own word.
Our first endeavour must therefore be to acquire a distinct and, so far
as may be possible, a complete conception of the personal character
of Jesus Christ. Here, however, we are met by the question, Are we
to consider Him at first in His human nature separately, or must we,
in order to appreciate Him truly, contemplate Him at once in the
completeness of His Personality, combining the human with the divine?
I answer, not without some hesitation, that the line seems pointed
out by Holy Scripture. We are told there that His nature is twofold,
that in Him we see God in man, that the whole work which He came to
accomplish depended upon that nature; but, on the other hand, we find
that the form in which He presented Himself to His contemporaries,
and through the medium of historical records to the Church, in which
and by which He drew mankind to Himself, was thoroughly human; and so
it seems to me clear that our first duty must be to collect from the
Gospel narrative all the characteristic traits of His humanity, and so
learn to know Him as perfect man. We may or may not avail ourselves of
external help in this part of the inquiry; but if we do, the utmost
caution and discrimination will be needed. It is certain that all
so-called lives of Jesus are written under some kind of prepossession,
and convey impressions which, however fair and honest they may be,
have a strong colouring of personal feelings. Doubtless by such lives
as those by Neander, Baumgarten, Pressensé, not to speak of the "Ecce
Homo," a student may have his attention drawn to traits which he might
otherwise fail to appreciate: but I believe that, until the mind is
saturated with the truth set forth with all plainness and in all
completeness in Scripture, the loss will outweigh the gain. I do not
say that, in an advanced stage of inquiry, those among us especially
who have to consult the wants of other minds, may not profitably
resort to these and similar writings for supplementary information or
suggestions: but this observation is to some extent true of other
works in which the false infinitely preponderates over the true; and
if you once go outside of the Gospels for aid in the natural attempt
to gain an independent position as an impartial inquirer, you may
entangle yourself in the subtle webs of sophistry, such as are woven
by Rénan, Keim, or Strauss. Speaking indeed of Pressensé's work on
our Saviour's life, which, on the whole, approaches most nearly to a
faithful and complete portraiture, a friend remarkable for sound strong
sense remarked to me that a careful perusal served but to convince him
of the needlessness of such remouldings of the sacred history. And for
my own part, I do not hesitate to say that you will act most wisely if
you keep to the gospel narrative exclusively until you have ascertained
to your own satisfaction what are the true characteristics of our Lord.
I do not entertain any doubt as to the result. No healthy moral nature
ever came into contact with that Personality without recognizing its
unapproached and unapproachable excellence. Nay, I will add, no human
heart susceptible of tender or noble emotions ever fixed its gaze upon
Jesus without acknowledging in Him the embodiment of love. Attestations
to this effect might be adduced in abundance from writings of men who
have passed their lives in ineffectual efforts to extricate themselves
from the perplexity arising from their inability to reconcile that
impression with their intellectual system: but we need no testimony
from without. Go to Christ, hear Him speak, watch His actions, and you
will have an evidence, at once complete and adequate, that in Him was a
human nature which, in its entire freedom from all moral evil, and in
its perfect development of all moral goodness, stands absolutely alone.
You may say this is mere assumption. I can only answer, You have to
judge for yourselves. I do not profess to draw out the evidence, but
simply to show what is its nature, and where it is to be found. I do
not attempt to delineate that character; at the utmost, I could but
give you but a very imperfect account of the impression which it has
made on my own very imperfect nature. I simply assert that the evidence
is there, and that upon you rests the responsibility of examining it.
Its effect, as I doubt not, will depend upon your moral nature; not
indeed upon your moral goodness--Christ speaks to sinners--but upon
your moral susceptibility, your capacity to discern and appreciate
moral goodness. If that character does not attract, subdue, and win
you, I freely admit all other evidence will be useless so far as your
innermost convictions are concerned. But numerous as are the cases
of individuals who have remained in, or relapsed into, a state of
scepticism from various causes, intellectual or moral, few indeed are
the cases of men who have not borne with them into that dreary region
an abiding sense of the personal and supreme goodness of Jesus.
But the more carefully you examine that character, the more forcibly
you will be struck by the fact that this Man, of whom the most special
and most distinctive characteristics are absolute truthfulness and
absolute humility, speaks throughout with an authority which involves
the assumption of a divine nature. This statement does not rest on
particular texts open to misconstruction or evasion, but on the tenor
of each and every discourse, on His acts not less than His words.
He addresses man as man's Master; He speaks as the Son of God, as
one with God. This fact is stated in strong, not to say irreverent,
terms by the author of "Ecce Homo": "During His whole public life
Jesus is distinguished from the other prominent characters of Jewish
history by His unbounded personal pretensions." Two writers, differing
widely in tone of mind, but alike in depth of thought and earnestness
of purpose, prove, were proof needed, that those pretensions are
justified by the truth of the Incarnation, and by that alone. (See the
Rev. M. F. Sadler, "Immanuel," pp. 264-309; and Mr. Hutton's "Essay
on the Incarnation.") You will, in fact, soon find that you have no
alternative but either to give up all that has wrought itself into your
moral nature, and intwined itself around the fibres of your affections,
all your convictions of the moral excellence of Jesus, or to accept
Him, even as He presents Himself, the God-man. His enemies felt this.
They persecuted Him because He made Himself, as they said truly,
equal with God. They crucified Him because He claimed the powers and
attributes of the Son of God. Modern sceptics of loftier strain feel
this keenly. They might be content to accept Him as a moral teacher;
for, in that case, they could deal with Him as their equal by nature,
receiving or rejecting His teaching as it might accord or not with
their own judgment; if they reject Him it is simply or mainly, as they
will tell you, because He claims to be more than man, and, as they well
know, to be no less than God. They ask (perhaps you will ask), how
did He justify the claim? The answer, of course, involves the whole
controversy; but I will once more state my own conviction. If you put
yourselves under His teaching, He will not leave you in doubt. You will
attain by degrees only to any real appreciation of His human goodness;
but together with the growth of that appreciation will dawn upon you
the consciousness, ever increasing in clearness and intensity, that
in Him you are gazing upon the Incarnate God. You will have a twofold
evidence: the evidence of a perfectly logical conviction, founded on
sure inferences from sure premises, upon the inseparability of truth
and goodness, self-knowledge and perfect wisdom, and the evidence of
direct intuition; you will feel yourselves in the presence of God.
And now let me read a passage which is a very remarkable attestation
to the effect produced upon a man of strong sense and thorough
independence of character, by an honest and reverent study of our
Lord's Person and teaching. You will find it in the treatise on the
Incarnation, published within the last few months, in Mr. Hutton's
Essays: "And now let me honestly ask myself, and answer the question
as truly as I can, whether this great, this stupendous fact of the
Incarnation is honestly _believable_ by an ordinary man of modern
times, who has not been educated into it, but educated to distrust
it; who has no leaning to the orthodox creed, as such, but has
generally preferred to associate with heretics; who is quite alive to
the force of the scientific and literary criticisms of his day; who
has no antiquarian tastes, no predilection for the venerable past;
who does not regard this truth as part of a great system, dogmatic
or ecclesiastical, but merely for itself; who is, in a word, simply
anxious to take hold, if he so may, of any divine hand stretched out to
help him through the excitement and the languor, the joy, the sorrow,
the storm and sunshine, of this unintelligible life. From my heart I
answer, Yes--believable, and more than believable, in any mood in which
we can rise above ourselves to that supernatural spirit which orders
the unruly wills and affections of sinful men; _more_ than believable,
I say, because it so vivifies and supplements that fundamental faith in
God as to realize what were else abstract, and, without dissolving the
mystery, to clothe eternal love with breathing life."[162]
Let me call your attention to the remarkable resemblance, of which
I believe the writer to have been unconscious, between these most
striking words and those which I quoted from Plato. What the ancient
inquirer longed for, but sought in vain, the modern has sought and
found, and with it the one and the only imaginable solution of the
mystery of life.
I speak to persons able to bring the stores of varied reading to bear
upon these questions, and we live in a time when learning has fairly
rivalled science in bringing regions of thought hitherto unknown,
or known only to solitary students, within the cognizance of men of
general cultivation. As a matter of a deep interest and importance,
I would ask you, when you have attained to a complete conception of
our Lord's Person, to compare His teaching with that of men whose
influence has been most widely and abidingly felt in the world. I will
not insult our Master by placing His name in juxtaposition with the
founder of Islamism, nor indeed would it fairly enter into the inquiry;
for if you separate the elements of truth derived from Judaism
and from Christianity, through the medium of a corrupt tradition,
the Koran will yield you but a mass of idle legends. It is indeed
the fashion at present to speak of Mahomet as "a great and genuine
prophet, with a Divine mission" (see Hutton's Essays, i. p. 277).
Now I do not doubt his sincerity at the beginning of his career, or
his steadfast adherence to the one great truth which he proclaimed;
but it must never be forgotten that he invented a special revelation
to justify indulgence in his master-sin (see the Koran, c. 66), and
that he commanded the propagation of his religion by the sword.
There are, however, three great names connected with those mighty
revolutions of thought which have permanently affected the moral or
religious convictions of mankind; I speak of them specially, because
their character and teaching were wholly uninfluenced by revelation,
and because they severally represent the highest development of
pre-Christian character: Buddha, Confucius, and Socrates. Of two
I have already spoken, and will now simply refer you to the clear
and impartial accounts given by Ampère, Francke, and Barthélemi
St. Hilaire, to justify my statement, that although, as might be
expected, in some points of their moral teaching and in their spiritual
aspirations they bear a true resemblance to Him in whom human nature
was perfectly represented, yet each of them differed, as indeed all
other men differ, from Him, in one special characteristic; each of
them is the creature of his race and of his age; the influence of each
is felt in the full development of the peculiar tendencies of his own
section of the human family; in the one case, of physical languor
and mental dreaminess; in the other, of a formal and conventional
morality, and of political unity secured by the sacrifice of all
independent action and thought. I turn to Socrates. There is a special
reason why we should direct our attention to his character. It has
at various times been brought into comparison with that of our Lord;
even when that comparison is not distinctly brought out, it is often
intentionally, or it may be unintentionally, suggested. That character
has been delineated by Mr. Jowett, in the prefaces of his translation
of the Platonic dialogues, with a sagacity beyond all praise, with an
impartiality which trenches upon indifference, not merely in questions
of merely speculative interest, but of moral concernment.[163] It is
a noble work, representing the labour of long years devoted almost
exclusively to the study of the master-mind of Greece. Socrates
there stands before us. We enter into his thoughts, we know him as
a living man. His character may indeed have undergone some change of
representation in passing through the mind of the most imaginative of
human teachers, his greatest disciple, Plato; but it is a change which
does but magnify and idealize his loftiest characteristics. Let us
see, then, in what respects this wisest and best of men, this teacher
whom the great Fathers of Christendom justly reverenced as a true
though unconscious preparer of men's spirits for the coming Teacher,
resembles, in what respects, not less than the other two, he especially
differs, from our Lord.
This strikes us at a glance. Socrates is altogether and throughout
a Greek. His intellect, his character, is Greek. The stamp of an
exclusive nationality is upon him. He has the feelings, the prejudices,
of a singularly exclusive section of an exclusive race. His code
of morals tolerates, I will not say sanctions, habits and feelings
"quite at variance," as Mr. Jowett says, "with modern and Christian
_notions_." Characters moulded to a great extent under his influence
became living embodiments of some of the worst characteristics
of heathenism, of force, pride (ὑβρις [Greek: hubris]), and
licentiousness, as, for instance, Critias, Charmides, and Alcibiades.
Exquisite and perfect as was his sympathy with all that was noble,
all that was graceful and beautiful in Hellenic culture, it went no
further. Graces which to the Christian are the very foundation of
spiritualist life, had no place, no name even, in his philosophy. I
cannot recall, among all his sayings, one that expresses sympathy
with man in his extremest degradation and misery, or indignation with
his countrymen for their treatment of their slaves. I would not be
unjust. I never turn to the pages in which his spirit breathes without
recognizing its attractions for the lover of man and the seeker after
God; but still the fact remains, and stands out more clearly the more
fully that spirit is made known, that Socrates, in his best and in his
worst characteristics, was out and out an Athenian by character, by
temperament, by moral sympathy, and by religion also, not less than
Confucius was a Chinese, and Siddartha a Hindoo.
I touch briefly on another important point Socrates was a true, honest,
earnest seeker after truth. I give this high praise unreservedly. As
such, he represents the best tendencies of Gentile thought. As an
honest seeker he had the fitting reward. So far as his search was not
impeded by moral causes to which I have alluded, it was successful.
He apprehended and taught truths of infinite value. But note this; he
had not, did not profess to have, definite convictions upon the most
important of all truths. Mr. Jowett says deliberately,[164] and as
I think truly, "Socrates cannot be proved to have believed in the
immortality of the soul." His speculations concerning a future state
of retribution, recorded doubtless with a considerable admixture
of Platonism in the Phædo, are deeply interesting; but they are
speculations only, resting partly on grounds of which he recognises the
insufficiency, or of which we cannot doubt the unsoundness. Socrates
gave what he found. He sought for life and immortality; he drew very
near to the region where they are to be found; he prepared the spirit
of man for their announcement; but he did not bring them to light That
was the work of Him who at once declares the truth, and justifies its
reception.
And now, keeping these characteristics in mind, let me ask you to
consider them in reference to our Lord's teaching. One of our most
popular and graceful writers--the Dean of Westminster--has done good
service to the truth by pointing out repeatedly the very conspicuous
and utterly peculiar characteristic of the Saviour, that He is wholly
devoid of national exclusiveness. This is the more striking since His
birth and all the circumstances of His early life would naturally have
imbued Him with the prejudices of the most exclusive of all nations: a
nation which was intended to be exclusive, which could only fulfil its
special mission by exclusiveness. Mr. Hutton puts this with his usual
force, but somewhat harshly: "To trust in Him really, to believe that
He can help us to reduce the vulgar chaos of our English life to any
order resting on an eternal basis, is far easier if we believe that
the very same mind is shining on our consciences which entered into
the poorest of lots among nearly the most degraded generation of the
most narrow-minded race that the world has ever known, and made it the
birthplace of a new earth" (Essays, vol. i., p. 283). Christ speaks
ever to man as man; His words find an echo in universal consciousness;
in Him there is neither Jew nor Gentile, and, _note specially this
point_, neither bond nor free.
At this point, however, we may be met with an objection which has
been presented with considerable skill, and appears to have seriously
affected the judgment of inquirers. It is asserted that, after all,
our Lord was but a Jewish Rabbi, differing indeed in some remarkable
characteristics from other teachers of the synagogue, but only to
an extent which may be accounted for, partly by His position and
education, and the influence of Essenian principles, partly by
peculiarity of nature and gifts which our opponents admit to have
been of the highest order, marking Him, as they would say, as a man
of transcendent genius, one of the few in the world's history in whom
men are compelled to recognise a master of the soul. Hebrew writers
of great learning, by whom this notion is gladly accepted, in their
efforts to establish it have done signal if unwitting service to our
cause. They have enabled readers of general culture and unbiassed
judgment to ascertain for themselves some important facts which were
formerly known thoroughly to those only who had sufficient learning
and leisure to enable them to penetrate into the depths of Rabbinical
literature, the most intricate and repulsive which human labour ever
produced. It is now comparatively easy to ascertain what was the true
character of the Jewish Rabbi, and of Rabbinical teaching; what, too,
was the special character of the Essenian teaching,[165] at and about
the period when our Lord impressed His stamp upon the mind of man. Now
I would challenge any controversialist to deny that our Lord's teaching
differed from that of all the Rabbis, not merely in degree, but in
kind. It differed in principle, in its processes, in its results, in
its tone, its spirit, in every essential characteristic. This was
felt at once by His hearers: the first and most abiding impression
made upon the mass of His countrymen was that He taught _not_ as the
scribes. This was the secret of the attraction which drew and retained
disciples. "_Where_ shall we go? _Thou_ hast the words of eternal
life." This was the cause of the fierce antagonism on the part of the
Rabbis. They felt that His system was incompatible with their own. The
scribe, as such, was a mechanical instrument; his authority was that
of the system under which he worked, he held the minds of his hearers
bound down and crippled by fetters by which he was himself bound even
more tightly. Properly speaking, he was not even an interpreter of the
law, with the principles of which he was little concerned, but simply
a referee on points of casuistry or of formal observance which had
been settled in past ages. The one merit which he claimed was that
of unswerving adherence to the old customs, the old interpretations,
the old applications of the law. Of all disqualifications for the
office of a scribe, the most fatal would be independence of spirit,
originality of thought or feeling. Many sayings of the Rabbis express
this principle with the utmost _naïveté_: _e.g._, "A scribe will have
no portion in the world to come, even should he be faithful to the
law of God, and full of good works, if his teaching be not wholly in
accordance with tradition." Our Lord's charge against them, that they
made the word of God of none effect by their tradition, scarcely puts
this point in a stronger light than their declaration "that it is
highly perilous for any learned man to read the Bible, since he may
be induced to trust to its guidance rather than to his teacher." For
the more advanced disciple the rule was, "that for one hour given to
the study of the Bible, two should be devoted to the Talmud." When we
read of different schools of Rabbis, and learn that they represented
different tendencies, we naturally suppose that there must have been
some movements of spirit, some struggles of moral and intellectual
spontaneity. And it is true that between the school of Shammai and
that of Hillel and the Gamaliels there was a wide divergence, the
one relaxing and the other enforcing rigorous observances, the one
encouraging, the other condemning all genial culture; but when we
compare the teaching of the two parties which is fully represented in
the Talmud, we see that the liberality of the most advanced is bounded
within very narrow limits. Hillel, the best of all, had the spirit of
his caste. Eternal life, according to him, was the portion of those who
had attained to a perfect knowledge of the unwritten and traditional
system to which he devoted his own life.