THE
CHRIST
A Critical Review and Analysis of
the Evidences of His Existence
By
JOHN E. REMSBURG
"We must get rid of that Christ."
--Emerson
New York
THE TRUTH SEEKER COMPANY
Forty-nine Vesey Street.
To My Wife
Nora M. Remsburg
This Volume is Inscribed
Humbly he came,
Veiling his horrible Godhead in the shape
Of man, scorned by the world, his name unheard
Save by the rabble of his native town,
Even as a parish demagogue. He led
The crowd; he taught them justice, truth, and peace,
In semblance; but he lit within their souls
The quenchless flames of zeal, and blessed the sword
He brought on earth to satiate with the blood
Of truth and freedom his malignant soul.
At length his mortal frame was led to death.
I stood beside him; on the torturing cross
No pain assailed his unterrestrial sense;
And yet he groaned. Indignantly I summed
The massacres and miseries which his name
Had sanctioned in my country, and I cried
"Go! Go!" in mockery.
--Shelley.
PREFACE.
"We must get rid of that Christ, we must get rid of that Christ!" So
spake one of the wisest, one of the most lovable of men, Ralph Waldo
Emerson. "If I had my way," said Thomas Carlyle, "the world would
hear a pretty stern command--Exit Christ." Since Emerson and Carlyle
spoke a revolution has taken place in the thoughts of men. The more
enlightened of them are now rid of Christ. From their minds he has made
his exit. To quote the words of Prof. Goldwin Smith, "The mighty and
supreme Jesus, who was to transfigure all humanity by his divine wit
and grace--this Jesus has flown." The supernatural Christ of the New
Testament, the god of orthodox Christianity, is dead. But priestcraft
lives and conjures up the ghost of this dead god to frighten and
enslave the masses of mankind. The name of Christ has caused more
persecutions, wars, and miseries than any other name has caused. The
darkest wrongs are still inspired by it. The wails of anguish that
went up from Kishenev, Odessa, and Bialystok still vibrate in our ears.
Two notable works controverting the divinity of Christ appeared in
the last century, the Leben Jesu of Strauss, and the Vie de Jesus of
Renan. Strauss in his work, one of the masterpieces of Freethought
literature, endeavors to prove, and proves to the satisfaction of a
majority of his readers, that Jesus Christ is a historical myth. This
work possesses permanent value, but it was written for the scholar
and not for the general reader. In the German and Latin versions, and
in the admirable English translation of Marian Evans (George Eliot),
the citations from the Gospels--and they are many--are in Greek.
Renan's "Life of Jesus," written in Palestine, has had, especially in
its abridged form, an immense circulation, and has been a potent factor
in the dethronement of Christ. It is a charming book and displays
great learning. But it is a romance, not a biography. The Jesus
of Renan, like the Satan of Milton, while suggested by the Bible,
is a modern creation. The warp is to be found in the Four Gospels,
but the woof was spun in the brain of the brilliant Frenchman. Of
this book Renan's fellow-countryman, Dr. Jules Soury, thus writes:
"It is to be feared that the beautiful, the 'divine,' dream, as he
would say, which the eminent scholar experienced in the very country
of the Gospel, will have the fate of the 'Joconda' of Da Vinci, and
many of the religious pictures of Raphael and Michael Angelo. Such
dreams are admirable, but they are bound to fade.... The Jesus who
rises up and comes out from those old Judaizing writings (Synoptics)
is truly no idyllic personage, no meek dreamer, no mild and amiable
moralist; on the contrary, he is very much more of a Jew fanatic,
attacking without measure the society of his time, a narrow and
obstinate visionary, a half-lucid thaumaturge, subject to fits of
passion, which caused him to be looked upon as crazy by his own
people. In the eyes of his contemporaries and fellow-countrymen he
was all that, and he is the same in ours."
Renan himself repudiated to a considerable extent his earlier views
regarding Jesus. When he wrote his work he accepted as authentic the
Gospel of John, and to this Gospel he was indebted largely for the
more admirable traits of his hero. John he subsequently rejected. Mark
he accepted as the oldest and most authentic of the Gospels. Alluding
to Mark he says:
"It cannot be denied that Jesus is portrayed in this gospel not as
a meek moralist worthy of our affection, but as a dreadful magician."
This volume on "The Christ" was written by one who recognizes in the
Jesus of Strauss and Renan a transitional step, but not the ultimate
step, between orthodox Christianity and radical Freethought. By
the Christ is understood the Jesus of the New Testament. The Jesus
of the New Testament is the Christ of Christianity. The Jesus of
the New Testament is a supernatural being. He is, like the Christ,
a myth. He is the Christ myth. Originally the word Christ, the Greek
for the Jewish Messiah, "the anointed," meant the office or title of a
person, while Jesus was the name of the person on whom his followers
had bestowed this title. Gradually the title took the place of the
name, so that Jesus, Jesus Christ, and Christ became interchangeable
terms--synonyms. Such they are to the Christian world, and such,
by the law of common usage, they are to the secular world.
It may be conceded as possible, and even probable, that a religious
enthusiast of Galilee, named Jesus, was the germ of this mythical
Jesus Christ. But this is an assumption rather than a demonstrated
fact. Certain it is, this person, if he existed, was not a realization
of the Perfect Man, as his admirers claim. There are passages in
the Gospels which ascribe to him a lofty and noble character, but
these, for the most part, betray too well their Pagan origin. The
dedication of temples to him and the worship of him by those who deny
his divinity is as irrational as it will prove ephemeral. One of the
most philosophic and one of the most far-seeing minds of Germany,
Dr. Edward von Hartmann, says:
"When liberal Protestantism demands religious reverence for the man
Jesus, it is disgusting and shocking. They cannot themselves believe
that the respect in which Jesus is held by the people and which they
have made use of in such an unprotestant manner, can be maintained for
any length of time after the nimbus of divinity has been destroyed, and
they may reflect on the insufficiency of the momentary subterfuge. The
Protestant principle in its last consequences, disposes of all kinds
of dogmatic authority in a remorseless manner, and its supporters must,
whether they like it or not, dispense with the authority of Christ."
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I. PAGE
Christ's Real Existence Impossible 13