of Jesus, and no account made of him. His name has not been written
except where the common usage of speech made it necessary. The writer
has carefully avoided occasion for expressing an opinion in regard to
his character, his performance, or his claim; has carefully avoided so
doing; the omission has been intentional. The purpose of his essay is to
give the history of an idea, not the history of a person, to trace the
development of a thought, not the influence of a life, letting it be
inferred whether the life were necessary, and if necessary, wherein and
how far necessary to the shaping of the thought. But this task will not
be judged to have been fairly discharged unless he declares the nature
of the inference he himself draws. The question "What think ye of the
Christ?" meaning "What think ye of Jesus?" may be fairly put to him, and
should be frankly answered. That there are two distinct questions here
proposed, need not at the close of this essay be said. Jesus is the name
of a man; Christ, or rather The Christ, is the name of an idea. The
history of Jesus is the history of an individual; the history of the
Christ is the history of a doctrine. An essay on the Christ-idea touches
the person of Jesus, only as he is associated with the Christ-idea or is
made a representative of it. Had he not been associated with that idea,
either through his own design or in the belief of his countrymen, the
omission of all mention of his name would provoke no criticism. The
common opinion that he was in some sense the Christ; that but for him
the Christ-idea would not have been made conspicuous in the way and at
the time it was; that the existence of the Christian Church, the
conversion of Paul, the composition of the New Testament, the course of
religious thought in the eastern and western world was directed by his
mind; that the social life,--the morals and manners, the heart,
conscience, feeling, soul--of mankind, in the earlier and later
centuries of his era was determined by his character, renders necessary
a word of comment on the validity of his individual claim.
If either of the four gospels is to be accepted as biography it must be
the first, as being the earliest in date, and as containing less than
either of the others of speculative admixture. The first gospel rests,
according to an ancient tradition, on memoranda or notes taken by a
companion of Jesus and afterwards written out, in the popular language
of the country, for the use of the disciples and others in Judaea and
Galilee. The disappearance of all save a few fragments of this book, and
of any writing answering in description to it, the impossibility of
identifying it with the present Gospel of Matthew, or of proving that
the existing Gospel of Matthew rests upon it;[10] the comparatively late
date to which our Greek Matthew must be assigned--thirty years at least,
probably fifty or sixty after Jesus' death, and the absolute failure of
all attempts to trace its records to an eye witness of any sort, (say
nothing of a competent eye witness, clear of head, tenacious of memory,
veracious in speech,) all conspire to stamp with imprudence the
conjecture that the Christ of Matthew and the Jesus of history were one
and the same. This would be the case were the picture harmoniously
proportioned, as it is not.
[Footnote 10: The character and influence of the "Gospel of the Hebrews"
and of other books of the same kind is considered in full by Mr. S.
Baring-Gould in "The Lost and Hostile Gospels." Mr. Baring-Gould argues
that while neither of our present Gospels is entitled to be called
genuine in the ordinary sense, they contain authentic biographical
materials. It is his opinion that "at the close of the first century
almost every Church had its own Gospel, with which alone it was
acquainted. But it does not follow that these Gospels were not as
trustworthy as the four which we now alone recognize." (p. 23.) Mr.
Baring-Gould's argument is not strong. The first mention of the "Gospel
of the Hebrews" is no earlier than the middle of the second century; the
remaining fragments of it are too few and too undecisive to be of
weight; and it was, by all confession, written in the interest of the
Nazarene or Judaizing Christians. Mr. Baring-Gould himself classes it
with the Clementine writings and calls them "The Lost Petrine Gospels."]
The fourth Gospel is usually accepted as the work of a disciple, the
"loved disciple," the bosom friend, whose apprehension of the spiritual
character of Jesus was much keener and truer than that of any business
man, any mere follower, any commonplace, inconspicuous person like
Matthew. But the fourth Gospel, allowing that it was written by John the
disciple, must, to insist on a former remark, have been written in his
extreme old age, and after a mental and spiritual transformation so
complete as to leave no trace of the Galilean youth whom Jesus took to
his heart. The zealot has become a mystic; the Palestinian Jew has
become an Asiatic Greek: the "son of thunder" is a philosopher; the
fisherman is a cultivated writer, acquainted with the subtlest forms of
speculation. Is it conceivable that such a man should have retained his
impressions of biographical incidents and personal traits, or that
retaining them he should have allowed them their due prominence in his
record? can his picture be accepted as a portrait?
Certainly, some are impatient to say, and for this very reason; as the
perfect, the only portrait; the picture of the very man, the biography
of his soul; we accept it as we accept Plato's portrait of Socrates. But
do we accept Plato's portrait of Socrates, as a piece done to the life?
Plato was a great artist, as all the world knows from his authentic
works. But even in his case, we do not know whether he, in depicting
Socrates, meant to paint the man as he really was, or an ideal head,
conceived according to the Socratic type. To compare John's portrait of
Jesus with Plato's portrait of Socrates, is besides, a proceeding quite
illogical; for we must assume, in the first place, that John painted
this portrait of Jesus, and in the next place that the portrait must be
a good one because he painted it,--this being the only piece of his ever
on exhibition.
To say with Renan and others that the idealized likeness must from the
nature of the case be the correct one, because such a person as Jesus
was, is best seen at a distance and by poetic gaze, is again to beg the
question. How do we know that Jesus was such a person? How do we know
that the most spiritual apprehension of him, was the truest; that they
judged him most justly, who judged him from the highest point; that the
glorifying imaginations alone presented his full stature and
proportions, that the ordinary minds immediately about him necessarily
misconstrued and misrepresented him? In the order of experience,
historical and biographical truth is discovered by stripping off layer
after layer of exaggeration and going back to the statements of
contemporaries. As a rule, figures are reduced, not enlarged, by
criticism. The influence of admiration is recognized as distorting and
falsifying, while exalting. The process of legend-making begins
immediately, goes on rapidly and with accelerating speed, and must be
liberally allowed for by the seeker after truth. In scores of instances
the historical individual turns out to be very much smaller than he was
painted by his terrified or loving worshippers. In no single case has it
been established that he was greater, or as great. It is no doubt,
conceivable that such a case should occur, but it never has occurred, in
known instances, and cannot be presumed to have occurred in any
particular instance. The presumptions are against the correctness of the
glorified image. The disposition to exaggerate is so much stronger than
the disposition to underrate, that even really great men are placed
higher than they belong oftener than lower. The historical method works
backwards. Knowledge shrinks the man. Eminent examples that jump to
recollection instantly confirm this view.
The case of Mahomet is in point. Here, the critical procedure was
twofold; first to rescue a figure from the depths of infamy and then to
recover the same figure from the cloudland of fancy. Under the pressure
of christian hate the fame of Mahomet sank to the lowest point. He was
impostor, liar, cheat, name for all shamefulness. From this muck heap he
has been plucked by valiant hands, and placed on the list of heroes. Now
another process is beginning, to find precisely what kind of hero he
was; and it is safe to say that under this process the dimensions of the
hero shrink. The arabian estimate of the prophet will not bear close
examination. The glamor of pious enthusiasm being dispelled, the traits
of nationality show themselves; the ecstasy is seen to be complicated
with epilepsy; the revelations partake of the general oriental
character; the truths are the cardinal truths of the semitic religions;
the personal qualities are of the same cast that distinguishes the
arabian mind. The detestation and the homage are both unjustifiable.
Another example in point is Buddha; a name covered by ages of fable, and
so thickly that his historical existence was long doubted. It was
questioned whether he was anything more substantial than a vision. The
mist of legend has already been so far dispersed that a grand form is
discerned moving up and down in India. Presently it will be measured and
outlined. It is safe to predict intellectual and moral shrinkage of the
person under the operation of this scrutiny. Just now the impression of
his greatness is somewhat overpowering. He looks morally gigantic as
compared with teachers who are better known. We quote his sayings with
unbounded admiration; we commend his life as an illustration of whatever
most exalts humanity. But if the time ever comes when his lineaments are
fully revealed to sight, he will be found neither much greater nor much
better than his generation justified.
The critics of Strauss' "Life of Jesus" insisted on the necessity of a
historical foundation for his character. Such a person they declared
must have lived; he could not have been invented. Strange position to
take, in view of the fact that idealization is one of the commonest
feats of mankind; that the human imagination is continually constructing
heroes out of poltroons, and transmuting lead into gold! Some
idealization there is, by the general confession of unprejudiced men.
The whole cannot be received as literal fact. There is here and there a
bit of color put on to heighten the effect. Who shall decide how much?
If the figure is glorified a little, why not a great deal? If a great
deal, why not altogether? The materials for constructing the person
being given, as they are, in the hebrew genius, and the plastic power
being provided as it is, by the hebrew enthusiasm, the result might have
been predicted, a good way in advance of history. The argument against
Strauss' method proves too much.
The critics of Baur urged with ceaseless iteration the absurdity of
accounting for the New Testament, and explaining the developments of the
first century, by means of bodiless ideas, substituting phantoms of
thought for persons, intellectual issues for the interactions of living
men. Life, it was said, presupposes life; life alone generates life. To
create a New Testament out of rabbinical fancies is preposterous. True
enough. History is not spectral; but neither are ideas spectral. Ideas
imply living minds, and living minds are persons. But the persons are
not of necessity single individuals. They may be multitudes; they may be
generations; they probably are a nation. The individuals that loom up
conspicuously represent multitudes, an epoch, of which they are mouth
pieces and agents. Do no individuals whatever loom up? None the less
creative is the epoch; none the less vital are the ideas. The great
events of the world depend not on individuals, but on the cumulative
force and providential meeting of wide social tendencies that have been
gathering head for ages and pointing in certain directions. Mahomet, a
sensitive, receptive, responsive spirit, gave a name to the arabian
movement; he neither originated it, nor finally shaped it. Luther,
brave, self-poised, independent soul, was not the author of the
Reformation, though he gave character to it. Others had gone before him,
and broken a way. The time for reformation had come, thousands were
watching for the light which Luther descried, and eagerly aided in its
diffusion. Innumerable sparks burst into flame. He was child, not father
of the movement; so it may have been with Jesus, with Peter, with Paul.
They presupposed the ideas of their age, and the agency of living men.
The literature of the New Testament, which is all that Baur concerned
himself with, stands for what it is, a literature; a product of
intellectual activity in the age that created it. The popular notion
that Scripture was penned by men whose minds were full of thoughts not
their own, but God's, contains a rational truth. All great literature,
all literature that is not occasional, incidental, ephemeral, is
inspired in this sense. The writers held the pen while the spirit of
their age, of many ages, of all ages at length, rolled through them. It
is true of all representative, of all national books. It is true of the
"Iliad" of Homer, of Dante's Divina Commedia, of the Book of Job, the
Koran, the "Three Kings," the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the Dhammapada,
the elder Edda. Such books as express the mind of an epoch are
productions of an era, not of a man. The productive force is in the
time. The man is of moment but incidentally. In discussing such works,
all consideration of the man may be dispensed with. Strauss and Baur
were Hegelians, who regarded the world-movements described in
literatures and events, as moments in the experience of God. Nothing to
them, therefore, was spectral. In tracing the pedigree of ideas, they
felt themselves to be tracing the footprints of Deity.
The difficulty of constructing one harmonious character from the four
gospels of the New Testament need not be expatiated on here. It is a
difficulty that never has been overcome, and that increases in
dimensions with our knowledge of the book. It is, of course possible,
not easy, but possible, for one standing at either extreme to drag the
opposite extreme into apparent accord. The believer in the divinity of
the Christ planting himself on the doctrine of the Logos, reads his
theory into the earlier gospels, loads the language with meaning it was
never meant to bear, stretches the homely incidents on the rack of his
hypothesis, and painfully excavates the figure he has already laid
there. The believer in the humanity of the Christ, pursuing the opposite
method, belittles the Johannean conception till it comes within the
compass of his argument, dilutes the statements, expurgates and
attenuates the thought, till nothing remains but sentimentalism. Each
vindicates one view by sacrificing the other. To one who would preserve
both representations, the task of combination is desperate. They are the
centres of two opposite systems. One is a human being, a man; the other
is a demi-god. One is a teacher of moral and religious truth; the other
is an incarnation of the truth. One indicates the way; the other _is_
the way. One invites to life; the other _is_ the life. One talks about
God and immortality; the other manifests God, and _is_ immortality. One
points to heaven; the other "is in heaven." One is a helpful human
friend; the other is a divine Saviour. One claims allegiance on the
ground of his providential calling; the other demands spiritual
surrender on the ground of his transcendent nature. One collects a body
of disciples; the other forms and consecrates a church, and puts it in
charge of a Holy Spirit, that shall save it from error and evil. After
what has been said in previous chapters it is unnecessary to enlarge.
Let whoever will take Furness' portrait of Jesus on one hand, and
Pressense's on the other; let him place them side by side; let him
subject them to close scrutiny, comparing each with the original
sketches; and he will rise from the contemplation satisfied that the two
pictures cannot represent the same person.
Scarcely less is the difficulty of constructing a harmonious character
from the first gospel alone. Renan brought to this experiment rare
powers of mind, and a singular skill in letters. An orientalist, well
versed in the productions of eastern genius; an accomplished literary
investigator, practised in discerning between the genuine and the
spurious; without dogmatic prejudice or predilection, neither christian
nor anti-christian; enthusiastic, yet critical; approaching the subject
from the historical direction; preparing himself laboriously for his
task, and devoting to it all the capacity there was in him, Renan yet
signally failed to construct a morally harmonious figure. Though
conceiving Jesus as simply a man, he was obliged to resort to most
obnoxious extravagances to make the narratives cohere. The "Vie de
Jesus" is a standing refutation of the theory that the elements of a
harmonious biography are to be found in the first gospel. It is the
Christ of the first gospel who curses unbelieving and inhospitable
cities; who threatens to deny in heaven those that deny him on earth;
who speaks of the unpardonable sin, that "shall not be forgiven, either
in this world, or in the world to come;" who will have none called
"Master" but himself; who condemns to "everlasting fire, prepared for
the devil and his angels" those who have not assisted "these my
brethren;" who bids his friends regard as no better than "a heathen man
and a publican," the offender who will not listen to the Church; who
launches indiscriminate invective against scribes and pharisees; who
anticipates sitting on a throne, a judge of all nations, with his chosen
followers sitting on twelve thrones of authority in the same kingdom.
These statements must be qualified, allegorized, "spiritualized" a good
deal, before they can be made congenial with the attributes of meekness,
humility, gentleness, patience, loving-kindness, human sympathy,
benevolence, justice, that adorn the image of a human Jesus. One set of
qualities or the other, must be disavowed, unless we would incur the
reproach that has fallen on Renan, of transforming Jesus into a terribly
magnificent, and superbly unlovely person. Of this there is no
necessity, for there is no necessity for constructing a harmonious
character, on any hypothesis. We are not called on to construct a
character at all. We may frankly own that the materials for constructing
a character are not furnished. The first gospels exhibit stages in the
development of the Christ idea; they do not give a portraiture of the
man Jesus.
The hypothesis of mental and sentimental development in the experience
of Jesus comes to the aid of the believers. Signs of such an interior
progress do certainly appear, or can be made to appear by force of
enthusiastic exegesis. The teacher who admonishes his disciples not to
cast their pearls before swine, relates, with approval, the parable of
the sower who flung his seed right and left, heedless that some fell on
thorns that grew up and choked them, and some on stony ground, where
having no root, they withered away. The man who twice frigidly repulsed
the Canaanite woman who begged on her knees the boon of his compassion,
telling her that he was not sent, save to the lost sheep of the house of
Israel, adding, "it is not meet to take the children's bread and cast it
to the dogs," not only extends his effectual sympathy to her in her
immediate need, but is found afterward, seeking and saving these very
lost, going into the wilderness to find them that had gone astray,
visiting the country of the pagan Gergesenes, and opening the blind eyes
of Samaritans. The twelve disciples called and sent to the twelve tribes
of Israel, one to each tribe, none to spare for the people beyond the
borders of Palestine, became later seventy apostles commissioned to
carry the message of the kingdom to all the tribes of the earth. The
exorciser of evil spirits begins by casting devils into the herd of
swine, thus "spoiling the pig-market" of a village, herein showing
himself a true Jew, and ends by sitting at meat with publicans and
sinners. By ingenious piecing, light skipping over dates and
discrepancies careless of sequence and consequence, with resolute
purpose to extract from the documents, by all or any means, a consistent
human character, the development theory may be pushed a little way. But
it soon comes against an insurmountable difficulty; the stream narrows
just where it ought to widen, namely, as it approaches the ocean. It is
towards the end of his career that the fanaticism discloses itself. The
terrible outbreaks of anger, the invectives, the diatribes, the superb
claims of authority, the horrid descriptions of the day of judgment, the
discouragement and despair, come at the last. The serenity disappears;
the sunlight pales; the day closes in mist. The man shrinks, instead of
expanding, as he grows.
This is Renan's account of it; an account more deeply colored with gloom
than need be; for that the baffled, tortured Jesus, lost his moral
poise, and became a deliberate impostor, is not fairly deducible from
any text; but the account is still essentially close and natural.
Starting, as Renan does, from the position that the four gospels contain
materials for an intelligible portraiture of Jesus; that those materials
may be discovered, sifted, and arranged so as to produce a well
proportioned figure; and that the principle of this human construction,
must, on the supposition, be the principle according to which the
characters of men are and must be constructed, namely, by tracing the
actions and reactions between them and the circumstances of their time
and place; starting, we say, from this position, it is difficult to
avoid the inferences that he draws in regard to the disastrous effect
that skepticism and opposition had on the mental and moral character of
the hero. That "he made no concession to necessity;" that "he boldly
declared war against nature, a complete rupture with kindred;" that "he
exacted from his associates an utter abandonment of terrestrial
satisfactions, an absolute consecration to his work," is no more than
the plain texts imply. Renan does not strain language when he says: "In
his excess of rigor, he went so far as to suppress natural desire. His
requirements knew no bounds. Scorning the wholesome limitations of human
nature, he would have people live for him only, love him alone."
"Something preternatural and strange mingled with his discourse; as if a
fire was consuming the roots of his life, and reducing the whole to a
frightful desert. The sentiment of disgust towards the world, gloomy and
bitter, of excessive abnegation which characterizes christian
perfection, had for its author, not the sensitive joyous moralist of the
earlier time, but the sombre titan, whom a vast and appalling
presentiment carried further and further away from humanity. It looks as
though, in these moments of conflict with the most legitimate desires of
the heart, he forgot the pleasure of living and loving, of seeing and
feeling." "It is easy to believe that from the view of Jesus, at this
epoch of his life, every thought save for the kingdom of God, had wholly
disappeared. He was, so to speak, entirely out of nature; family,
friends, country had no meaning to him." "A strange passion for
suffering and persecution possessed him. His blood seemed the water of a
second baptism he must be bathed in, and he had the air of one driven by
a singular impulse to anticipate this baptism which alone could quench
his thirst." "At times his reason seemed disturbed. He experienced
inward agitations and agonies. The tremendous vision of the kingdom of
God, ceaselessly flaming before his eyes, made him giddy. His friends
thought him, at moments, beside himself. His enemies declared him
possessed by a devil. His passionate temperament, carried him, in an
instant, over the borders of human nature. * * * Urgent, imperious, he
brooked no opposition. His native gentleness left him; he was at times
rude and fantastical. * * * At times his ill humor against all
opposition pushed him to actions unaccountable and preposterous. It was
not that his virtue sank; his struggle against reality in the name of
the ideal became insupportable. He hurled himself in angry revolt
against the world. * * * The tone he had assumed could not be sustained
more than a few months. It was time for death to put an end to a
situation strained to excess, to snatch him from the embarrassments of a
path that had no issue, and, delivered from a trial too protracted, to
introduce him, stainless, into the serenity of his heaven."