THE CHRISTIANITY OF CHRIST.
It is hardly necessary to say that simply from the statements of the
gospels we cannot construct an historical life of Christ. Strauss and
Baur have finally determined the question of their historical value. In
the first three, it is true, after making allowance for the vast growth
of legend overspreading them, useful materials can still be found; but
even these can be depended on only so far as probability is distinctly
in their favour. The last is simply a philosophical romance, with the
theology of the second century as its basis. We see the figure of
Christ through a mist of legend, and its real outlines are hopelessly
lost. Characters like the hero of M. Renan’s historical novel are
merely the projections of imagination, coloured undisguisedly by the
medium through which they are viewed. Only by study of the religion he
founded can trustworthy knowledge of Christ be obtained.
But in this way, as far as general results are concerned, we can arrive
at almost certain knowledge. We can be sure, for instance, that the
exceptional goodness of Christ was no figment of the gospels. The new
morality which Christianity introduced into the world of practice,
the morality which makes inward purity a test of virtue rather than
outward actions, must have been derived from him. Its origin must have
been in personal influence, and Christ’s alone could have permanently
stamped it on Christianity. And this, of course, renders it likely that
sayings of striking moral beauty attributed to him in the gospels, such
as “Love your enemies,” “Judge not, that ye be not judged,” and the
perfect one not in the gospels, “It is more blessed to give than to
receive,” were in substance actually uttered by him, for they are in
harmony with the character of exceptional goodness which he must have
possessed. So far, at least, we can have a sure knowledge of Christ
which entitles him to our willing reverence.
Not only is it necessary to distrust the positive evidence of the
gospels, but even negatively their evidence cannot wholly be allowed.
They may suppress what is true as well as assert what is false. For
instance, they represent Christ as obtaining great success immediately
after his entrance on his ministry. Now nothing could be more unlikely
than this. He could not have been accepted as the Messiah by even a
small number of disciples without a long probation previously, a period
of struggle and unsuccess. In the gospels themselves the explanation
of this omission is suggested, when Christ is said to have been thirty
years old at the time he began to preach. At about this age, after a
youth of conflict and uncertainty, he probably was first recognized as
the Messiah. But naturally those who knew him only as the Messiah could
not dream of a period when none regarded him as such. Hence the account
in the gospels, the years of development and failure having passed out
of remembrance.
The true historical evidence on which to found a life of Christ
consists of the statements of the synoptical gospels, tested and
interpreted by probability. It is obvious that in this way only
knowledge of the broadest and most general nature can be obtained. If
special circumstances of Christ’s life, as reported in the gospels, are
accepted according as they appear to be probable, the result naturally
varies with the character of the student. In these cases probability,
in the scientific sense, does not exist. And thus far the greater part
of the statements of the gospels are properly outside the region of
historical investigation. Some are so distinctly improbable that we can
pronounce them inaccurate; some are so distinctly probable that we
can pronounce them accurate; but the vast majority of them, the test
of probability being absent, cannot be pronounced either accurate or
inaccurate; we simply cannot tell.
In endeavouring to determine the nature of the personal character and
religious ideas of Christ, it is on this general kind of probability
that I chiefly rely, appealing to the gospels to corroborate it more
than to it to corroborate the gospels. Such probability in certain
cases is the surest kind of historical evidence, and may safely be
depended on, even in the absence of written confirmation.
That Christ stood exceptionally high in moral development, was
exceptionally good, can be declared, as we have seen, with practical
certainty. The evidence of the gospels and the evidence of probability
are here in thorough harmony, and the fact has never been disputed. The
evidence of the gospels and the evidence of probability equally agree
in declaring that Christ was not exempt from the theological illusions
of his age, but their declaration is called in question by some. As
this point is of vital importance to our subject, we must now carefully
consider it.
Mr. Matthew Arnold has given the clearest expression to the belief that
the religion of Christ was wholly undogmatic in character. The dogmatic
assertions attributed to Christ in the gospels, were, according to
him, used only in a mystical sense which the grosser-minded disciples
misunderstood. When Christ, for instance, spoke of his resurrection,
he meant that his moral system would triumph after his death; but his
disciples understood his words in a personal sense. Christ, Mr. Arnold
says, spoke “over the heads of his followers,” and, in consequence,
they failed to understand him, and ascribed their own ideas to him. The
evidence on which Mr. Arnold founds his theory is extremely slight; in
fact, he practically rests it on the few stories in the gospels where
Christ uses figurative language, which his disciples misunderstand,
as in the case of his injunctions respecting the “leaven of the
Pharisees.” Now figurative language of this sort is quite distinct from
the mystical language Mr. Arnold attributes to him, Hebrew literature
being full of the former and absolutely empty of the latter, and the
only resemblance between them is that they can both be misunderstood.
Mr. Arnold, indeed, by an elaborate criticism of the last gospel,
makes it to support his theory, its mysticism readily allowing this
to be done; but the fourth gospel has no historical value. The real
basis of the theory is the reverence which all men feel for Christ,
which renders it difficult for them to believe that he held opinions
differing from their own, and which also disposes them to imagine that
a vast distinction separated him from those whom he addressed.
The strongest argument in favour of the theory is drawn from the
unquestionable fact of the greatness of Christ. His moral superiority
cannot be disputed, and the success of his system shows that he must
have possessed unique personal power. But does his moral superiority,
or his possession of wonderful personal power, really prove that he
was free from theological illusion? It is obvious to every one that
the most exalted goodness may be united with the most implicit belief
in the dogmas of supernatural religion. It is nearly as obvious that
extreme fascination of character, far from indicating that one who
possesses it is superior to ordinary illusions, is a clear presumption
that he is peculiarly under their control. The popular power which
Christ must have exercised is strong evidence that he shared the
popular beliefs. The essence of popularity is sympathy; the popular
man must be in sympathy with the people he meets, and must be ruled
by the same ideas, whether they happen to be right or wrong. Christ’s
popularity, his influence over his simple Jewish followers, is a
fair proof that he was subject to their religious illusions, that no
difference of deep insight separated him from them. People always are
irritated by hearing what they do not understand. Had Christ been in
the habit of speaking over the heads of his disciples, not many would
have remained with him; he might thus have acquired a reputation as a
philosopher, but he certainly would not have founded a Church.
In considering this question, we must keep the facts of experience
steadily before us. All who have ever been widely loved and greatly
popular among average men have had characters remarkable for moral
beauty, and have also been peculiarly steeped in religious illusions.
St. Francis of Assisi and St. Teresa resembled Christ in spiritual
goodness and in the power of fascinating others, and they held the
crudest religious ideas of their times. In our own days, men who are
justly called heroes, men like Stonewall Jackson and General Gordon,
who win the love and reverence of all who come near them, are sure to
believe in the most absurd dogmas. Stonewall Jackson feared that he
would lose a battle if he fought it with powder obtained by labouring
on Sunday, and General Gordon believed an island in the Pacific to be
the private residence of the devil. Christ’s fascination of character
is additional evidence of his supreme goodness, but it is far from
proving that he rose above the religious ideas of the crowd.
The reverence we feel for Christ need not in the least be impaired by
recognizing that he was subject to the illusions of dogmatic religion.
Of his moral superiority we have certain evidence; and this, and not
wisdom, is the true object of reverence. Had he been profoundly wise,
seeing with perfect clearness through the deluding phantasms of life,
he could not have been so good. To be supremely good, to rise far above
the standard of negative morality, and to be inspired by a passionate
devotion to others which leaves no room for a thought of self, is not
compatible with the colder temperament which examines the foundations
of belief. Wise men may die for a just cause, but they are never
willing martyrs; they lack not merely the fanaticism, but the power
of forming the exaggerated estimate of the value of the sacrifice,
which martyrdom requires. But we never hesitate in choosing between
calm wisdom and pure enthusiasm as objects of our praise. And in the
same way, Christ’s belief in much that we think unfounded should be
no hindrance to our reverent admiration of him; we ought rather to
recognize that it is the inevitable accompaniment of such greatness
as his. Only a noble fanaticism, which leaves no guard against error,
could have inspired his life and secured his success.
We may conclude, then, that Christ accepted the common religious ideas
of his time, that he believed in the personal God to whom the prophets
addressed their prayers and complaints, and in the resurrection of the
dead. And now, after this unavoidable digression, we will take up our
subject at the point where we left it at the close of the last chapter.
In referring to the gospels, I shall always mean the synoptical
exclusively, the last being put aside as hopelessly unhistorical.
At the time of Christ’s birth the expectation of the Messiah was rooted
more strongly than ever in the minds of the Jewish people. Nothing
but the Messiah seemed able to save them from the final loss of the
remains of their national independence at the hands of the irresistible
power of Rome. For in Rome they saw, not a mere conqueror exacting
tribute from subject peoples, but an empire that steadily absorbed
into its own vast mass all the nationalities of the civilized world.
To the Jews, who valued their nationality above all things, this fact
must have appeared a ground for absolute despair. The lower orders
might be roused to attempts at passionate resistance, but the higher
classes must have seen the hopelessness of a struggle against the Roman
power, and must have been impelled to gloomier forebodings by the fear
that at any moment the end might be precipitated by the unreasoning
fanaticism of their ignorant countrymen.[52] The religion of the Jews,
as Professor Kuenen has pointed out,[53] tended to encourage these
feelings. Pride in their religion stimulated their patriotism, and made
it harder for them to submit to the conditions of Roman rule. Thus the
circumstances of the time would heighten the ordinary Messianic hopes,
and make the people look more for the national saviour. The general
unrest, too, would deepen the sense of sin. Wandering preachers of
the class of John the Baptist, denouncing the sins of the people, and
asserting that their wickedness was bringing on them the threatened
calamity, and calling for repentance, in order that the Messiah might
be sent to deliver them, such a time would be sure to produce.
In the midst of these Messianic expectations Christ grew up. The
agitation and unrest of the period must have powerfully stimulated
a nature so impressible in its spiritual beauty. Exceptionally good
men are always keenly responsive to the religious influences around
them, so Christ must have passed his youth in a world of Messianic
dreams. The sacred literature of his race was familiar to every Jew;
and the spiritual predictions of the prophets, the vision of an Israel
reconciled to God, must early have enthralled his fancy. National
fanaticism could not have found a place in his character. In both
Messianic ideals, as we saw in the last chapter, the distinction
between Jew and Gentile was made to contribute either to the spiritual
or to the material glory of Israel. For the glory of Israel Christ
could not have cared; putting aside national distinctions, he must have
lived only for the welfare of man and for the glory of God.
From the beginning, his Messianic desires must have been for the
reconciliation of God and man by the conquest of human sinfulness.
As he watched the ceremonialism which was then the most distinctive
feature of the Jewish religion, he must have echoed the burning words
in which the prophets proclaimed righteousness to be alone acceptable
to God, and must have denounced all forms that tended to obscure this
truth. His sympathy would be sure to be with those whom the Pharisaic
rigidity of that ceremonialism shut out and degraded by exclusion, “the
lost sheep of the house of Israel.” The “inwardness” of Christ, the
stress he laid on the purity of the heart, in the first instance was
probably the result of a reaction against the formalism of his age,
with its minutely defined outward morality of law. To restore primitive
truths, and to make goodness the essence of religion, must have always
been his aim.
Judging simply from probability, we should say that there were likely
to be three clearly marked periods in the life of Christ. In early
manhood his longing for the Messianic times would naturally express
itself in the same form in which the longing of so many of his
countrymen was expressed—in the call to repentance. The wickedness of
the people being regarded as the cause of God’s anger, the best way
to remove his anger and, consequently, to obtain the Messiah, was to
turn the people from their sins, Christ’s own personal hatred of sin
also, of course, urging him in this direction. Thus at first probably
he was simply a preacher like John the Baptist, not claiming to be
the Messiah, but a forerunner of the Messiah, exhorting the people
to repent, and promising them that the Messiah would come as soon
as they had reconciled themselves to God. Gradually, while engaged
in this work, as he reached maturity and his powers grew to their
full development, and as with them came the consciousness of his
own greatness, the conviction would force itself on him that he was
himself the promised Messiah, to be revealed as such by succeeding in
his labour, by converting the people and banishing sin from Israel.
This second period would grow naturally out of the first. Compared
with the other preachers of repentance, he must have seemed able to
obtain success; his preaching, of course, would be far more effective
than theirs. Such being the case, hope—and natures like his are
always intensely hopeful—would lead him to imagine himself completely
successful, to believe that at his call all Jews would turn with pure
hearts to God. This result would be sufficient glory for the Messiah;
in the dreams of the prophets it had been the chief feature of the
Messianic times. During this period he would be uniformly gentle,
without bitterness against any class, would speak of coming “to call
not the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” Then as slowly but
surely it became evident that his task was impossible, that the Jews in
general cared nothing for his teaching and despised his pretensions,
he would enter on a third period, with the end not far off, in which,
still firmly holding himself to be the Messiah, he would appear as
the leader of a new departure like Moses, and, applying to himself
the spiritual ideal of the second Isaiah, would open his system to
the Gentiles, the obstinate and unrepentant Jews being left to perish
in their sins. During this period he would become a bitter assailant
of those who refused to accept him; he would denounce the scribes and
Pharisees, and, like the prophets, foretell destruction for Jerusalem,
and thus finally gain for himself the death of the cross.
Of course no evidence for the first of these three periods can be
derived from the gospels. For reasons already mentioned, when Christ
was once recognized as the Messiah all the previous part of his life
must have passed into oblivion. But in the gospels the second and
third periods are clearly indicated; in fact, by referring to them we
explain most of the contradictions in the sayings ascribed to Christ.
As probability and tradition are so strongly in favour of them, we may
assume the existence of at least these periods to be proved.
The greater part of Christ’s active life probably belonged to
the second period. Declaring that the kingdom of heaven had come,
and exhorting to righteousness as the condition of sharing in its
blessedness, he wandered through the country districts of Galilee and
Judæa. To the country he would naturally keep, as there, where the
people were less fiercely national and fanatical, his purer conception
of the Messiah would more readily find acceptance. In the towns, and
especially in Jerusalem, only the national type of Messiah would be
recognized; and so the gospels are probably correct in stating that
he came first to Jerusalem in the closing days of his life. The term
“Son of man,” which in the gospels is his favourite name for himself,
was, it is likely, the Messianic title he claimed, as it marks the
recognition of humanity alone by the minister of God. “Son of David”
was the accepted title of the national Messiah, and though his
followers, we may be sure, often applied it to him, he would rather
shrink from it himself. He must have gained many adherents during
this period; in the unrest of the age men would easily yield to the
fascination of his character, its gentleness and hopefulness being
still unspoiled by failure.
As he extended the area of his labours and began to come in contact
with the people of the towns, he would find himself in face of
serious opposition. Here he would meet, not simple rustics who cared
little about ritual and politics, but legalists and nationalists
prompt to condemn him as irreligious and unpatriotic. The credulity
of his country disciples would be challenged and his Messianic
claims subjected to a hostile scrutiny. The tendency to dwell on the
supernatural inseparable from such a character as his would be in
sharp contrast to the spirit of worldliness he would encounter. Some
Sadducees even would be likely to confront him, requiring proof of the
postulates of his teaching, and infecting others with their scepticism.
Then would begin a time of struggle and irritation. All who looked
for the national Messiah would be enemies of Christ. They would be
eager upholders of the formal and exclusive elements of Judaism, and
his disregard of these would excite their bitter opposition. If he
neglected traditional ceremonies or associated with the outcasts of
formalism, he would be denounced as a breaker of the law, and the
friend of publicans and sinners. Gradually this opposition would
produce its effect. As the minor customs of the law were more and
more put before him as matters of sole importance, he would be forced
into hostility against them; as the outcries of the legalists grew
stronger, the whole system of legalism would become more discredited
with him. But, above all, he would lose his expectation of converting
Israel. When he realized by experience the strength of the obstacles
to his ideal, he would be compelled to reconsider his whole position as
Messiah.
The effect of this would be to drive him strongly towards
supernaturalism. From the beginning he must have been disposed to put
aside the ordinary conditions of life. The exaggerated and unworkable
morality of the gospels is probably an accurate representation of his
teaching. With his attention fixed on the spiritual glories of the
Messianic age, the worldly arrangements around him must have seemed
too transient to be worthy of attention. This feature of his character
would now enable him to meet the difficulty of his position. He would
turn from earth to heaven. Believing in the resurrection of the dead,
he would use it to justify his claim to be the Messiah. Rejected by the
greater part of his countrymen, no demonstration of his power on earth
could be pointed to, but he still could proclaim for himself the future
glory of a second coming in the clouds of heaven.
Opposition, of course, would only strengthen his belief in himself.
But this belief required that he should realize the glorious ideal of
the prophets. If he could not realize it during his earthly life, he
would have to realize it after his death. The prophecy in the book of
Daniel of one like a son of man coming with the clouds of heaven, and
having everlasting dominion over all the world,[54] would now appear
to him to be a manifest reference to himself. Connecting it with the
fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, the chapter easily admitting of an
erroneous interpretation in a personal sense, he would readily form a
new conception of his mission. The failure to convert Israel would seem
part of his true glory as the suffering Messiah. Despised and rejected
of men, he would only be like all God’s envoys to the Jews; his
rejection would fill up the measure of Israel’s guilt; and after it the
wicked would finally be swept away, and he himself, as Messiah, proved
by his constancy under persecution and suffering, would judge those who
had rejected him, and establish his everlasting kingdom.[55]
The necessity of his own martyrdom would soon become part of his
belief. In the state in which Judæa was then, the forces tending in
this direction were sufficiently obvious. Only an increase of the
opposition he had already encountered, such as would be produced by
his coming into collision with the fanatical orthodoxy of Jerusalem,
was needed to secure his death as a criminal. There must have been
many reasons to make him welcome a speedy death. M. Renan is probably
right in conjecturing that Christ began to lose ground during the later
days of his life, the irritability produced by constant controversy
weakening the personal charm of his character. Death would seem the
only remedy for this. The fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, which Mr.
Arnold supposes to have been always present to Christ’s mind as the
embodiment of his Messianic ideal, is likely to have been thus before
him in this closing period. There death is represented as crowning the
afflictions of the righteous servant of Jahveh, and a glorious triumph
is promised as its result. Christ would of course apply the passage
to himself, and would look forward to his death as the condition
necessarily preceding his Messianic glory. Personal shrinking from
pain would count for nothing with him. If he believed himself to be
the divinely appointed Messiah, the central figure of all the world’s
history, he could not have had one feeling that was not subservient to
his mission.
As soon as this conception of his Messiahship was developed in his
thoughts, he would at once adopt in its fulness the spiritual Messianic
ideal. Rejected by the vast majority of the Jews—rejected, moreover,
because he was not the national Messiah, he would be irresistibly
impelled to proclaim himself the spiritual Messiah, in whose eyes no
distinctions of race separated men from God. Failing with the Jews,
there was the more need that he should turn to the Gentiles; defeated
by Jewish nationalism, Jewish nationalism must have become hateful to
him. He would look now for the establishment of a spiritual Israel,
formed of all mankind reconciled to God and delivered from sin. From
this time, though he probably did not preach to them himself, he must
have included the Gentiles in his system.[56]
He would, of course, impress this new ideal on his disciples as
strongly as he could. It was now necessary that his system should
be preached by them after his death, so that when he came again in
the clouds of heaven he might find faithful adherents to share in
the glories of his reign. He would strive to prepare his disciples
for his death, to prevent them from being disheartened by it, and in
doing so he would promise them his return in power. Thus he would
himself originate the dogma of his second advent, which was the main
support of the early Christian Church. It would not be very difficult
to induce his disciples to accept the doctrine. They believed in the
resurrection of the dead, and he would merely have to fix in their
minds a conviction that his resurrection would be immediate; that he,
as Messiah, would rise at once to heaven after his death, thence to
return with unlimited powers to punish and reward. To get the first
part of the doctrine into their heads may not have been easy; they
would not readily understand that their lord was to die still publicly
unrecognized, with no proclamation of his greatness; but once they
did understand this, his promised return in glory would seem best to
explain it, and would suit it to their ambitious dreams. Probably they
never fully understood this portion of his teaching until after his
death, when, of course, there would be every inducement to accept it.
It is unnecessary to state how strongly the evidence of the gospels
supports this conclusion. Again and again in them Christ appears
preparing his disciples for his death, and promising his return
afterwards in heavenly glory. But the evidence of probability would be
sufficient to establish it. It solves the great problem in the history
of Christianity; it explains the passage of Christianity through the
perilous period immediately after its founder’s death.
Being thus forced to justify himself by appealing to the supernatural
elements of Judaism, supernatural conditions would necessarily assume
more importance in his eyes. The post-prophetic additions to Judaism
mentioned in the last chapter had by this time developed a complete
system of salvation and damnation. Heaven and hell were now fully
established in the creed of the Jew, heaven being appointed for
himself and hell for the Gentile. Christ would naturally accentuate
this part of his religion, and adopt the same spirit of exclusiveness.
Heaven would be for those who accepted, hell for those who rejected
the Messiah. Probably he now began to lay special stress on the
salvation of the soul in his preaching. And thus we can understand
how Christianity came to possess in a heightened form the more Pagan
features of Judaism.
The same circumstances which were leading Christ to exaggerate the
portions of Judaism most favourable to general proselytism, would also
cause him to lay aside the portions of Judaism most unfavourable to it.
His opposition to the legal and ceremonial elements of Judaism would
now be greatly increased. His worst enemies, of course, were those
who attached most importance to these, and in their attacks on him
formalism must have supplied them with their most effective weapons.
This would lead him in time to reject formalism completely. In doing
so, he was, as we saw in the last chapter, strictly fulfilling the
spiritual Messianic ideal. To what extent he made the renunciation of
the law an actual part of his system we cannot tell, but we may be sure
it was to a larger extent than his disciples were ready to accept. The
forms of Judaism, at least, could not have been regarded by him as
necessary elements of his religion. He was forced to make his system
a movement out of orthodox Judaism, and he could not have cared to
encumber his new religion with the worn-out forms of the old.
The account in the gospels of the closing incidents of Christ’s life
is probably in the main strictly correct. Sooner or later he was sure
to go to Jerusalem. The need to justify his system by preaching it
in the capital, and the wish to found it securely by his death under
persecution, would alike impel him in this direction. And he would
naturally choose one of the great feasts as the occasion for his visit
to the city. Though the forms of Judaism had now probably ceased to be
an essential portion of his religion, there is no reason to suppose
that he personally objected to observing the more important of them.
Coming to Jerusalem to keep the passover, he would find it crowded with
strangers; practically the whole Jewish world would be concentrated
there; and thus he would obtain the widest possible publicity, both
for his preaching and his martyrdom. That the latter would necessarily
follow the former he must have clearly seen. In the capital of Judaism,
at a time when a great religious festival excited the fanaticism of
the people to the highest pitch, to preach a religion that involved
the overthrow of legalism and the equality of Jew and Gentile in the
sight of God, and to do this while claiming to fulfil the popular
expectations, obviously meant a speedy extinction. So we may conclude
that Christ came to Jerusalem at the time of the passover, probably
accompanied by many of his country adherents who were also going to
the feast, and that there by his preaching he provoked against himself
the fanaticism of the priests and the populace, and was put to death as
an offender against the law. Among the incidents related as occurring
now, is one that established a great dogma.
In the description which the gospels give of the institution of
the Lord’s supper, we have statements which are corroborated by an
important external authority. The first epistle of St. Paul to the
Corinthians is unquestionably genuine, and accordingly it ranks as
one of the earliest documents of the New Testament. In it Christ,
on the occasion of his passover feast in Jerusalem, is said to have
broken bread and distributed it among his disciples, and to have
poured out wine and given it to them, asserting that the bread was
his body and the wine his blood, and ordering them to continue the
practice as a memorial of him. Taking this passage in conjunction
with the corresponding passages of the gospels, we have in all four
statements so much distinctly expressed; while equally in all four
it is either expressed or clearly implied that this distribution of
his body and blood meant that his body was broken and his blood shed
for the remission of sins; the only variation in the passages being
the omission by the first two gospels of the injunction to repeat the
ceremony. Putting this point aside for the moment, we have in the rest
of the description an account in which the three gospels agree, and in
which they are corroborated by a trustworthy external authority. Unless
probability is decidedly against it, this concurrence of evidence is
sufficient to establish its truth.[57]
The account, however, has probability distinctly in its favour. If
Christ was alive on the day of the passover—and there is every reason
to suppose that the gospels are correct when they assert that he
was—he would naturally keep the passover supper with his disciples,
as otherwise his presence in Jerusalem would be inexplicable. But
keeping the passover, with the expectation of his immediate death
vividly before him, the celebration must have seemed to him to possess
a strange significance. He believed that the first passover feast had
been celebrated in the time of Moses, that the blood of the victim
sprinkled on their doorways had preserved the Israelites from harm
on the eve of their departure from Egypt, and that this had been
the earliest rite of the Jewish law. Now he, of course, must have
regarded his system, which was to be fully established by his death,
as the fulfilment of Judaism. The ceremonies of Judaism, of which the
passover, as first, was chief, belonged only to the old unfulfilled
religion, and not to the mature Judaism founded by him. So this
passover he was keeping would seem to him, not merely a commemoration
of the first, but, in a proper sense, actually the last ceremony of
the Jewish ritual. And as it was the last rite of the old, so it
was the first of the new Judaism. His disciples now, like the early
Israelites, were leaving old ways and beginning a new life as wanderers
on strange paths. As the first ceremony of Judaism had sanctified its
commencement, so this first ceremony of Christianity might well appear
to him to sanctify its commencement, and to mark the transition from
the old religion to the new.
But where was the victim of this Christian passover? The Jewish
passover was essentially a sacrifice, and the idea of vicarious
atonement was clearly stamped on it. The Jews believed that, when the
first-born sons of the Egyptians had been destroyed, the first-born
sons of their ancestors had escaped, through the sprinkling on
their doorways of the blood of a _first-born_ lamb or kid of their
flocks.[58] Sacrificial substitution is unmistakable here. Now, as
mentioned above, Christ at this time had probably taken as his ideal
the suffering Messiah thought to be referred to in the fifty-third
chapter of Isaiah. There the supposed Messiah is spoken of as becoming
“an offering for sin,” and as bearing “the sin of many.”[59] To
Christ’s mind, we must remember, the idea of atonement for sin by
sacrifice was thoroughly familiar, rooted as it was in the Jewish law.
If, then, he believed that for him as Messiah a death at the hands
of others was ordained, he would at this moment naturally see in his
death an atonement offered for sin. Though he must have regarded the
sacrificial system of the law as only decreed for a time, he would
still feel that underlying it there was a divine principle. Recognizing
this principle, with the passage of Isaiah pressing on him a sense of
a connection between it and his death, he would be sure to find in
himself the victim of the Christian passover.
The idea that his death was an atonement for sin may have occurred
to him before. But whether it did or not, it must have been fully
developed in his mind by the circumstances under which he kept this
passover. It fitted like a key into the peculiarities of his religion.
As already explained, his object as Messiah was to found a system which
should secure the happiness of those who accepted him; on his second
coming, they were to enjoy the felicity of the Messianic period on
earth, as well as the everlasting joys of heaven. If they were to enjoy
felicity, to escape punishment, through his death, which necessarily
preceded his second coming, how readily would that death appear to him,
as a Jew, an atoning sacrifice for their sins! Just as the lamb of the
passover had borne, as a substitute for the Israelites, the penalty
that had fallen on the Egyptians, so he, as their substitute, would
bear for his followers the penalty that would fall on the rest of the
world, the time at which his death was to take place heightening the
parallel and making it seem to be providentially designed.
As the victim of the passover, part of it having been used
sacrificially as an expiation, had then been eaten as food by those
whom its sacrifice was meant to benefit, so here Christ would wish his
body thus to be partaken of sacramentally after it became an atonement
for sin. Sacrifice is usually followed by sacrament; the victim, being
accepted by the deity, becomes divine, and those who partake of it
are purified by receiving divine elements into their natures. The
sacramental side of the passover sacrifice was particularly marked.
To complete the parallel, Christ, as the new passover victim, needed
to make his body a sacrament. But in his case such a sacrament had
necessarily to precede, and not to follow the sacrificial death. It
could only be symbolical. He had, as the parables of the gospels
show, a natural tendency to use symbolism to express his thoughts.
Symbolically, the sacrament, to prevent coarse misconception, would
best be celebrated by himself. And so at this passover supper, after
the victim appointed by the law had been partaken of, Christ probably
distributed bread and wine as his body and blood, the symbolical
sacrament of his approaching sacrificial death, the new passover feast
of the new Christian Church. And as the first passover feast had been
commemorated in Judaism, so he probably commanded his disciples to
commemorate this second one, which fulfilled and abrogated the first,
even as his system fulfilled and abrogated the system to which the
first belonged, making it thus the only rite of Christianity, which
should symbolise in purity the coarse sacrificial ritual of Judaism.
Though, of course, there is no certainty in this conclusion,
probability is so much in its favour that we may assume it to be
proved. The positive evidence alone is sufficient to establish the
fact, and still stronger is the evidence for it arising from its being
an indispensable link in a great chain of development.
And so we may conclude that the first distinctive dogma of Christianity
was actually originated by Christ himself. The Church started with
belief in the Atonement, in the sacrificial death of Christ, the “Lamb
of God,” for the sins of men. The further explanation of this doctrine
belongs to our next chapter.