character of ideal perfection. But it is scarcely bolder than the case
warrants. The privilege to pick and choose material has its limits. We
have no right to take what pleases us and leave the rest. Statements
that rest on equal evidence deserve equal acceptance. If the result be
not agreeable, the responsibility is not with the critic.
The only wonder is that such a person as the literal record justifies,
should be accepted as the founder of a religion. How can Renan stand
before his portrait of Jesus, and say, "the man here delineated merits a
place at the summit of human grandeur;" "this is the supreme man; a
sublime personage;" "every day he presides over the destiny of the
world; to call him divine is no exaggeration; amid the columns that, in
vulgar uniformity crowd the plain, there are some that point to the
skies and attest a nobler destiny for man; Jesus is the loftiest of
these; in him is concentred all that is highest and best in human
nature." Such a conclusion is not justified by the premises. The homage
is not warranted by the facts. It will not do to make out a catalogue of
human weaknesses, and then urge those very weaknesses as a chief title
to glory.
In the opinion of some it is wiser and kinder to confess at once that
the image of Jesus has been irrecoverably lost. In the judgment of
these, it is unphilosophical to set up an ideal where none is required.
No doubt every effect must have a cause, but to assume the cause, or to
insist on the validity of any single or special cause, is unscientific.
Each event has many causes, a complexity of causes. Renan himself says:
"It is undeniable that circumstances told for much, in the success of
this wonderful revolution. Each stage in the development of humanity has
its privileged epoch, in which it reaches perfection without effort, by
a sort of spontaneous instinct. The Jewish state offered the most
remarkable intellectual and moral conditions that the human race ever
presented. It was one of those divine moments when a thousand hidden
forces conspire to produce grand results, when fine spirits are
supported by floods of admiration and sympathy."
In truth, was such a person as Jesus is presumed to have been, necessary
to account for the existence of the religion afterwards called
Christian? As an impelling force he was not required, for his age was
throbbing and bursting with suppressed energy. The pressure of the Roman
empire was required to keep it down. The Messianic hope had such
vitality that it condensed into moments the moral results of ages. The
common people were watching to see the heavens open, interpreted peals
of thunder as angel voices, and saw divine portents in the flight of
birds. Mothers dreamed that their boys would be Messiah. The wildest
preacher drew a crowd. The heart of the nation swelled big with the
conviction that the hour of destiny was about to strike, that the
kingdom of heaven was at hand. The crown was ready for any kingly head
that might dare to assume it. That in such a state of things
anticipation should fulfil itself, the dream become real, the vision
become solid, is not surprising. It was not the first time faith has
become fact. The first generation of our era exhibited no phenomena
that preceding generations had not prepared for and could not produce.
No surprising original force need have been manifested. The spirit was
the native spirit of the old vine growing in the old vineyard.
Jesus is not necessary to account for the ethics of the New Testament.
They were as has been said, the native ethics of Judaism, unqualified.
The breadth and the limitation, the ideal beauty and the practical point
were alike Jewish. The gorgeous abstractions, gathered up in one
discourse, look like fresh revelations of God; as autumn leaves plucked
and set in a vase seem more luminous than do myriads of the same leaves
covering the mountains and the meadows, their crimson and gold blending
with the brown of the soil and the infinite blue of the sky. The ethics
of the New Testament, like the ethics of the Old, have their root in the
faith that Israel was a chosen people; in the expectation of a king in
whom the faith should be crowned; in the anticipation of a judgment day,
a national restoration, a celestial sun-burst, a final felicity for the
faithful of Israel. The enthusiasm, the extravagance, the fanaticism,
the passive trust, the active intolerance, the asceticism, the
arbitrariness, bespeak in the one case as in the other, the presence of
an intense but narrow spirit. They are not the ethics of this world.
They are not temporal. The power of an original, creative soul should be
attested by some modification of the popular code, rather than by an
exaggeration of it. We should look for something new, not for a more
emphatic repetition of the old. But nothing new appears. The
exaggerations are exaggerated; the precepts suggested by the distant
prospect of the kingdom are simply reiterated in view of its speedy
establishment. Trust in Providence and faith in the Messiah are all in
all; the virtues of common existence are less and less. The inhumanities
that Renan ascribes to an access of fanaticism in Jesus are the
humanities of an unreal Utopia.
The prodigious manifestation of mental and spiritual force that broke
out in Paul requires no explanation apart from his own genius. He never
saw Jesus and apparently was incurious about him. His originality was
intellectual, and his system bears no trace of a foreign personality. As
Renan says: "The Christ who communicates private revelations to him is a
phantom of his own making;" "It is himself he listens to, while fancying
that he hears Jesus." If ever man was self-motived, self-impelled,
self-actuated, it was he. He needed no prompter. Hot of brain and heart,
he was only too swift to move. Whether, as some think, driven by
over-mastering ambition to lead a new movement, or, as others contend,
constrained by inward urgency to attempt a moral reform on a speculative
basis, or, according to yet a third supposition, eager to bear the glad
tidings of the gospel to the gentile world, his own genius was from
first to last, his guide and inspiration. There is no evidence to prove
that his "conversion" added anything new to the mass of his moral
nature, or changed the quality of ruling attributes, or determined the
bent of his will to unpremeditated issues. He was converted to the
Christ, not to Jesus; and his conversion to the Christ, was nothing
absolutely unprepared for. His zeal for Israel blazed furiously against
the disciples who claimed that the Christ had come, and to the end of
his stormy days it still continued to burn against disciples of the
narrow school who would not believe he had come to any but Jews. His
zeal for Israel, sent him away by himself to meditate a grander Christ.
The Christ, not Jesus, was his watch-cry. A man of ideas, intensely
interested in speculative questions, keenly alive to the joy of
controversy and the ecstasy of propagandism, he filled his boiler with
water as he rushed along, leaving Peter and the rest to fill theirs at
the nazarene spring. So little is Jesus to be credited with Paul's
achievement, that it is the fashion to call his a distinct movement.
Enthusiastic admirers of his genius, call him the real founder of
Christianity. Severe critics of his claim accuse him of corrupting the
religion of Jesus in its spirit, and diverting it from its purpose. On
either supposition, he was not a disciple.
The worship of Jesus, it has been said, is the redeeming feature of
Christianity. This evidently is the opinion of John Stuart Mill, who
writes, confounding, as is usual, Jesus with the Christ: "The most
valuable part of the effect on the character which Christianity has
produced by holding up in a divine person a standard of excellence and a
model for imitation, is available even to the absolute unbeliever, and
can nevermore be lost to humanity. For it is Christ rather than God whom
Christianity has held up to believers as the pattern of perfection for
humanity. It is the God incarnate, more than the God of the Jews or of
nature, who being idealized has taken so great and salutary a hold on
the modern mind;" and more to the same effect, in the essay on Theism.
Before Mr. Mill's intellectual eccentricities were as well understood as
they are now, this testimony to the humanizing influence of christian,
as distinct from philosophical theism, would have possessed great
weight. As it is, it only excites our wonder that so keen and inexorable
a thinker should so completely lose sight of facts. That Christendom has
worshipped the Christ is true. Is it true that it has worshipped Jesus?
Again we might say: Yes;--the Jesus who demanded faith in himself as the
condition of salvation; the Jesus who depicted the Son of Man, sitting
on a throne of judgment, summoning before him all nations, and placing
the sheep on his right hand, the goats on his left; the Jesus who
threatened everlasting fire, and spoke of the devil and his angels; the
Jesus who made the church umpire in matters of faith and works; the
Jesus who bade his friends forsake father and mother, brother and sister
for his sake. But did Christendom ever deify the man of the Beatitudes,
the relator of the parables of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son,
the friend of publicans and sinners? Is Jesus the central figure in the
Nicene, or the Athanasian creed? Is he the God of Calvin, or of Luther,
of Augustine, even of Borromeo, or Fenelon? Long before the dogmatical
or ecclesiastical system of Christendom was formed, the image of Jesus
had faded away from the minds of christians, if it ever was stamped
there. That it was ever stamped there is not quite apparent. In the east
there exists no trace of it after the apostolic age, or beyond the
circle of his personal friends. In the west the personal influence is
not distinctly visible at any distance. From the reported heroism of the
early christian centuries no solid conclusion can be drawn, for the
reason that the reports come from panegyrists like Tertullian, and from
a period when the apostolic age had become a tradition. Writers like
Neander make the most of a few recorded instances of devotion which
distinguished the christians from the pagans about them; and James
Martineau uses them as evidence of an original spiritual genius in the
young religion. They are indeed beautiful, but they do not refer back
so far as the historical Jesus for their source of inspiration. That in
a community composed, with scarcely an exception, of poor people, the
ordinary social distinctions should be unobserved; that slaves, among
whom in early times many converts were made, should have been
acknowledged as brethren in Christ; should have appeared in public
religious meetings as equal with the rest _before the Lord_; should have
partaken of the communion on the same terms, taking their place among
the believers, and receiving the passionless kiss of brotherhood and of
sisterhood, is not surprising, especially when it is considered that
these slaves belonged to hardy, white races, that they discharged, some
of them at least, the most honorable offices of labor, and were, except
for the mere accident of their condition, physically as well as morally,
peers of the best.
It is simply in the course of nature that poor people, grouped in
communities, sharing a common and a painful lot, should help each other
in times of trouble. The christians did so. At every weekly or monthly
service collections were made for the relief of the poor, the sick, the
infirm, the aged, widows, prisoners, and toilers in the mines. These
contributions were sent to the points of greatest need, converging on
occasion from many directions at centres of extreme necessity. It is
recorded that about the middle of the third century several members of
the church in Numidia, men and women, were carried off captive by
barbarians. The Numidian churches being poor applied to the Metropolitan
church at Carthage. Cyprian, the bishop there, collected more than four
thousand dollars in his diocese and sent the money as ransom, with a
letter full of sentiments of kindness. On another occasion a portion of
the sacred vessels of the sanctuary were sold to raise funds for a
similar purpose. In this there was nothing strange. The acts were done
in strict conformity with a long established usage.
A more remarkable example often cited in evidence that the spirit of
Jesus was alive still in the societies that worshipped him as Lord,
occurred in the year 254, shortly after the Decian persecution, the most
general and the most hideous to which the church had been exposed. In
consequence of this persecution, which was attended with such slaughter
that the unburied bodies poisoned the air, a fearful pestilence broke
out in the city of Alexandria. Unhappily for the literalness of the
truth, it is Lactantius who tells the story. "The plague," he says,
"made its appearance with tremendous violence and desolated the city, so
that, as Dionysius, the Christian bishop writes, there were not so many
inhabitants left, of all ages, as heretofore could be numbered between
forty and seventy. In this emergency the persecuted christians forgot
all but their Lord's precept, and were unwearied in their attendance on
the sick, many perishing in the performance of this duty by taking the
infection. 'In this way,' says the bishop with touching simplicity, 'the
best of the brethren departed this life, some ministers, and some
deacons,' the heathen having abandoned their friends and relations to
the care of the very persons whom they had been accustomed to call
men-haters. A like noble self-devotion was shown at Carthage, when the
pestilence which had desolated Alexandria made its appearance in that
city, and, I quote the words of a contemporary, 'all fled in horror from
the contagion, abandoning their relations and friends, as if they
thought that by avoiding the plague, any one might also exclude death
altogether. Meanwhile the city was strewed with the bodies or rather
carcasses of the dead, which seemed to call for pity from the passers
by, who might themselves so soon share the same fate; but no one cared
for anything but miserable pelf; no one trembled at the consideration of
what might so soon befall him in his turn; no one did for another what
he would have wished others to do for him. The bishop hereupon called
together his flock, and, setting before them the example and teaching of
their Lord, called on them to act up to it. He said that if they took
care only of their own people, they did but what the commonest feeling
would dictate; the servant of Christ must do more, he must love his
enemies, and pray for his persecutors; for God made his sun to rise and
his rain to fall on all alike, and he who would be the child of God must
imitate his Father.' The people responded to his appeal; they formed
themselves into classes, and they whose poverty prevented them from
doing more gave their personal attendance while those who had property
aided yet further. No one quitted his post but with his life." The
example shows the more gloriously against the dark background of horror
that stood so near. Yet, to the misery of the persecution by which the
people were educated in sympathy, patience, fortitude, and willingness
to resign life, the benignant heroism must, in part, have been due.
Previous to the persecution the spirit of consecration had departed from
the church. Christianity had become a social and class affair. Luxury
had crept in, and eaten up the heart of conviction. The alliance of
church and state had been especially disastrous to the church, the
mingling of secular ambition with spiritual aspiration operating fatally
on the finer qualities of faith. Few could have suspected then that the
spirit of Jesus had ever been with the church. The persecution purged
the christian communities with fire. The surface was burned over, and
only the roots and seeds were left in the ground. The persecution ended,
tranquillity being restored, the roots burgeoned, the seeds sprung up,
all the heroism of the two dreadful years, all the patience and
fortitude turned to gentleness; and a copious rain of mercy, blessing
every body, even the persecutors, was the result of the battle's thunder
and flame. The suffering that had been endured softened the heart
towards all suffering. The persecutors no longer active or hateful,
their passive forbearance seemed, in contrast with their recent fury, a
species of mercy calling for positive gratitude. Not to be hated was
felt to be identical with being loved; not to kill was by sudden
revulsion of emotion, accepted as a kindly saving of life. To be kind to
those who had desisted from hurting was natural. Besides, the
persecution was incited and pressed by the government in Rome. The
populace even there were not responsible for it, and in the distant
provinces simply followed the metropolitan precedent. Their infatuation
had therefore its pitiable as well as its outrageous aspect. They too
were victims of the imperial policy, were perishing of the contagion
which that policy caused, and thus were paying a terrible penalty for
their own unwitting crime. It is unnecessary to suppose that any
personal contagion from the character of Jesus, stealing through the
murky ages of eastern and western life, communicated its saving grace to
the Carthaginian brotherhood. Uninspired human nature is sufficient to
explain the beneficent display.
The conclusion is that no clearly defined traces of the personal Jesus
remain on the surface or beneath the surface of Christendom. The silence
of Josephus and other secular historians may be accounted for without
falling back on a theory of hostility or contempt. The Christ-idea
cannot be spared from Christian development, but the personal Jesus, in
some measure, can be.
In some measure, not wholly; the earliest period of the church does
require his presence; the first, the original, the only disciples lived
under the influence of a great personalty, and were moulded by it. Their
attachment to a commanding friend is avowed in the apparently authentic
parts of the New Testament. If we know anything about those men, it is
that they lived, moved and had their being in the memory of a great
friend. Their attachment to him took hold of their heart-strings. They
were haunted by him. This appears in their frequent meetings for the
expression and confirmation of their feelings, in their communion
suppers, memorial occasions purely and always, without a trace of
mysticism or a shade of awe; in their attachment to the places he had
consecrated by his presence; in their affection for each other. Ignorant
they were, unintellectual, unspiritual in the moral sense of the word,
rather impervious to ideas, dull, common place, simple-hearted. They
were not soaring spirits, audacious, independent like Paul, but exactly
the reverse, timid, self-distrustful, pusillanimous by constitution.
Their ambition flew low, fluttering round sparkling jewels on the
Messianic crown. Their master was not such an one as they would have
chosen, had they been allowed to select. He met none of their
expectations, he fulfilled none of their hopes. His rebuke was more
frequent and more cordial than his praise. Their stupidity annoyed him,
their selfishness grieved his heart. Instead of justifying their
confidence in him as the Christ, he utterly overthrew one form of it by
allowing himself to be captured, convicted and put to death. Still they
clung to his memory. True, they clung to him in the conviction that he
was the Christ and would have confessed themselves dupes had that
conviction been dispelled. But why was it not dispelled? Why did they
believe, in the face of the crushing demonstration of the cross? They
anticipated his return, because he had told them he should reappear in
clouds. But why did they believe him? Why did they believe, when month
after month, year after year, went by and still he did not return? It
was because they loved him, and trusted him in spite of evidence. When
he did not return, they thought he meant to try their faith; still they
met together; still they prayed and waited, imagining themselves to be
in intimate communion with him in his skies.
That these men, with their unworthy conceptions of the kingdom, accepted
him as their Christ, proves not only that his power over them was very
great, but that he himself lived on the highest level of hebrew thought,
and illustrated the highest type of hebrew character; that he was a
genuine prophet and saint; all the more so, perhaps, for the
completeness of his self-abnegation. Had he raised the standard of
revolt, and appealed to arms, his name might have been more conspicuous
in secular history. He sacrificed himself wholly; kept no shred of
preeminence for his own behoof.
Hence, the person of Jesus, though it may have been immense, is
indistinct. That a great character was there may be conceded; but
precisely wherein the character was great, is left to our conjecture. Of
the eminent persons who have swayed the spiritual destinies of mankind,
none has more completely disappeared from the critical view. The ideal
image which christians have, for nearly two thousand years worshipped
under the name of Jesus, has no authentic, distinctly visible
counterpart in history.
This conclusion will be distressing to those who have accorded to Jesus,
by virtue of a perfect humanity a certain primacy over the human race,
and even to those who, regarding him as the complete fulfilment and
perfect type of human character have looked to him as the beacon star
"guiding the nations, groping on their way." It will be welcome only to
the few calm minds who feel the force of ideas, the regenerating power
of principles. These will rejoice to be relieved of the last thin shadow
of a supernatural authority in the past, and committed without reserve
to the support and solace of simple humanity trained in the humble
observance of uninterrupted law. Their gratitude for the human influence
of the person is unqualified by distrust of the claims of the
individual.
The Christ of the fourth Gospel--the incarnate Word--who has been
asserting absolute spiritual creatorship over his disciples, calling
himself the vine whereof they were branches, the door by which they must
enter, the light by which they must walk, the way their steps must
tread,--says to them at the critical hour: "It is expedient for you that
I go away; if I go not away the Comforter cannot come to you." There was
danger in his personal continuance. They were to live not in dependence
on him, but in communion with the "Spirit of Truth," which, as
proceeding from him and from the Father also, was to bring freshly home
to them what he had said, and to guide them further on to all truth. How
many times must those words be repeated, with new applications in the
new exigencies of faith! How little disposition do we find in his
followers to heed them! They have gone on with the process of
idealization, placing him higher and higher; making his personal
existence more and more essential; insisting more and more urgently on
the necessity of private intercourse with him; letting the Father
subside into the background as an "effluence," and the Holy Ghost lapse
from individual identity into impersonal influence, in order that he
might be all in all as regenerator and saviour. From age to age the
personal Jesus has been made the object of an extreme adoration, till
now, faith in the living Christ is the heart of the gospel; philosophy,
science, culture, humanity are thrust resolutely aside, and the great
teachers of the race are extinguished in order that his light may shine.