miracles, what reason then has to judge is whether it can accept
miracles as such, or any set of miracles, as worthy of a reasonable
conception of the Divine Nature, and whether it can be fairly said that
such miracles have answered a purpose which approves itself to our
reason. Testimony will always speak at a disadvantage till we are
assured on these points. Into the subject of testimony Mr. Mozley
enters only in a general way, though his remarks on the relation of
testimony to facts of so exceptional a nature as miracles, and also on
the distinct peculiarities of Christian evidence as contrasted with the
evidence of all other classes of alleged miracles, are marked by a
characteristic combination of acuteness, precision, and broad practical
sobriety and moderation. He rebukes with quiet and temperate and yet
resolute plainness of statement the misplaced ingenuity which, on
different sides, to serve very different causes, has tried to confuse
and perplex the claims of the great Christian miracles by comparisons
which it is really mere wantonness to make with later ones; for, be
they what they may, it is certain that the Gospel miracles, in nature,
in evidence, and in purpose and result, are absolutely unique in the
world, and have nothing like them. And though the book mainly confines
itself to its proper subject, the antecedent question of credibility,
some of the most striking remarks in it relate to the way in which the
purpose of miracles is visible in those of Christianity, and has been
served by them. A miracle is an instrument--an instrument without which
revelation is impossible; and Mr. Mozley meets Spinoza's objection to
the unmeaning isolation of a miracle by insisting on the distinction,
which Spinoza failed to see, between a miracle simply as a wonder for
its own sake, and as a means, deriving its use and its value simply
from the end which it was to serve. He observes that all the stupendous
"marvels of nature do not speak to us in that way in which one miracle
does, because they do not tell us that we are not like themselves"; and
he remarks on the "perverse determination of Spinoza to look at
miracles in that aspect which does not belong to them, and not to look
at them in that aspect which does."
He compares miracles with nature, and then says how wise is the
order of nature, how meaningless the violation of it; how
expressive of the Almighty Mind the one, what a concealment of it
the other! But no one pretends to say that a miracle competes with
nature, in physical purpose and effectiveness. That is not its
object. But a miracle, though it does not profess to compete with
nature upon its rival's own ground, has a ghostly force and import
which nature has not. If real, it is a token, more pointed and
direct than physical order can be, of another world, and of Moral
Being and Will in that world.
Thus, regarding miracles as means to fulfil a purpose, Mr. Mozley shows
what has come of them. His lecture on "Miracles regarded in their
Practical Result" is excelled by some of the others as examples of
subtle and searching thought and well-balanced and compact argument;
but it is a fine example of the way in which a familiar view can have
fresh colour and force thrown into it by the way in which it is
treated. He shows that it is impossible in fact to separate from the
miracles in which it professed to begin, the greatest and deepest moral
change which the world has ever known. This change was made not by
miracles but by certain doctrines. The Epistle to the Romans surveyed
the moral failure of the world; St. Paul looked on the chasm between
knowledge and action, the "unbridged gulf, this incredible inability of
man to do what was right, with profound wonder"; but in the face of
this hopeless spectacle he dared to prophesy the moral elevation which
we have witnessed, and the power to which he looked to bring it about
was the Christian doctrines. St. Paul "takes what may be called the
high view of human nature--i.e. what human nature is capable of when
the proper motive and impulse is applied to it." He sees in Christian
doctrine that strong force which is to break down "the _vis inertiae_
of man, to set human nature going, to touch the spring of man's heart";
and he compares with St. Paul's doctrines and hopefulness the doctrinal
barrenness, the despair of Mohammedanism:--
If one had to express in a short compass the character of its
remarkable founder as a teacher, it would be that that great man
had no faith in human nature. There were two things which he
thought man could do and would do for the glory of God--transact
religious forms, and fight; and upon those two points he was
severe; but within the sphere of common practical life, where
man's great trial lies, his code exhibits the disdainful laxity of
a legislator who accommodates his rule to the recipient, and shows
his estimate of the recipient by the accommodation which he
adopts. Did we search history for a contrast, we could hardly
discover a deeper one than that between St. Paul's overflowing
standard of the capabilities of human nature and the oracular
cynicism of the great false Prophet. The writer of the Koran does,
indeed, if any discerner of hearts ever did, take the measure of
mankind; and his measure is the same that Satire has taken, only
expressed with the majestic brevity of one who had once lived in
the realm of Silence. "Man is weak," says Mahomet. And upon that
maxim he legislates.... The keenness of Mahomet's insight into
human nature, a wide knowledge of its temptations, persuasives,
influences under which it acts, a vast immense capacity of
forbearance for it, half grave half genial, half sympathy half
scorn, issue in a somewhat Horatian model, the character of the
man of experience who despairs of any change in man, and lays down
the maxim that we must take him as we find him. It was indeed his
supremacy in both faculties, the largeness of the passive nature
and the splendour of action, that constituted the secret of his
success. The breadth and flexibility of mind that could negotiate
with every motive of interest, passion, and pride in man is
surprising; there is boundless sagacity; what is wanting is hope,
a belief in the capabilities of human nature. There is no upward
flight in the teacher's idea of man. Instead of which, the notion
of the power of earth, and the impossibility of resisting it,
depresses his whole aim, and the shadow of the tomb falls upon the
work of the great false Prophet.
The idea of God is akin to the idea of man. "He knows us," says
Mahomet. God's _knowledge_, the vast _experience_, so to speak, of
the Divine Being, His infinite acquaintance with man's frailties
and temptations, is appealed to as the ground of confidence. "He
is the Wise, the Knowing One," "He is the Knowing, the Wise," "He
is easy to be reconciled." Thus is raised a notion of the Supreme
Being, which is rather an extension of the character of the
large-minded and sagacious man of the world than an extension of
man's virtue and holiness. He forgives because He knows too much
to be rigid, because sin universal ceases to be sin, and must be
given way to. Take a man who has had large opportunity of studying
mankind, and has come into contact with every form of human
weakness and corruption; such a man is indulgent as a simple
consequence of his knowledge, because nothing surprises him. So
the God of Mahomet forgives by reason of His vast knowledge.
In contrast with the fruit of this he observes that "the prophecy in
the Epistle to the Romans has been fulfilled, and that doctrine has
been historically at the bottom of a great change of moral practice in
mankind." The key has been found to set man's moral nature in action,
to check and reverse that course of universal failure manifest before;
and this key is Christian doctrine. "A stimulus has been given to human
nature which has extracted an amount of action from it which no Greek
or Roman could have believed possible." It is inconceivable that but
for such doctrine such results as have been seen in Christendon would
have followed; and were it now taken away we cannot see anything else
that would have the faintest expectation of taking its place. "Could we
commit mankind to a moral Deism without trembling for the result?" Can
the enthusiasm for the divinity of human nature stand the test of
clear, unsparing observation? Would it not issue in such an estimate of
human nature as Mahomet took? "A deification of humanity upon its own
grounds, an exaltation which is all height and no depth, wants power
because it wants truth. It is not founded upon the facts of human
nature, and therefore issues in vain and vapid aspiration, and injures
the solidity of man's character." As he says, "The Gospel doctrine of
the Incarnation and its effects alone unites the sagacious view of
human nature with the enthusiastic." And now what is the historical
root and basis from which this one great moral revolution in the
world's history, so successful, so fruitful, so inexhaustible, has
started?
But if, as the source and inspiration of practice, doctrine has
been the foundation of a new state of the world, and of that
change which distinguishes the world under Christianity from the
world before it, miracles, as the proof of that doctrine, stand
before us in a very remarkable and peculiar light. Far from being
mere idle feats of power to gratify the love of the marvellous;
far even from being mere particular and occasional rescues from
the operation of general laws,--they come before us as means for
accomplishing the largest and most important practical object that
has ever been accomplished in the history of mankind. They lie at
the bottom of the difference of the modern from the ancient world;
so far, i.e., as that difference is moral. We see as a fact a
change in the moral condition of mankind, which marks ancient and
modern society as two different states of mankind. What has
produced this change, and elicited this new power of action?
Doctrine. And what was the proof of that doctrine, or essential to
the proof of it? Miracles. The greatness of the result thus throws
light upon the propriety of the means, and shows the fitting
object which was presented for the introduction of such means--the
fitting occasion which had arisen for the use of them; for,
indeed, no more weighty, grand, or solemn occasion can be
conceived than the foundation of such a new order of things in the
world. Extraordinary action of Divine power for such an end has
the benefit of a justifying object of incalculable weight; which
though not of itself, indeed, proof of the fact, comes with
striking force upon the mind in connection with the proper proof.
It is reasonable, it is inevitable, that we should be impressed by
such a result; for it shows that the miraculous system has been a
practical one; that it has been a step in the ladder of man's
ascent, the means of introducing those powerful truths which have
set his moral nature in action.
Of this work, remarkable in so many ways, we will add but one thing
more. It is marked throughout with the most serious and earnest
conviction, but it is without a single word, from first to last, of
asperity or insinuation against opponents; and this, not from any
deficiency of feeling as to the importance of the issue, but from a
deliberate and resolutely maintained self-control, and from an
overruling ever-present sense of the duty, on themes like these, of a
more than judicial calmness.
IX
ECCE HOMO[11]
[11]
_Ecce Homo: A Survey of the Life and Work of Jesus Christ. Guardian_,
7th February 1866.
This is a dangerous book to review. The critic of it, if he is prudent,
will feel that it is more than most books a touchstone of his own
capacity, and that in giving his judgment upon it he cannot help giving
his own measure and betraying what he is himself worth. All the
unconscious guiding which a name, even if hitherto unknown, gives to
opinion is wanting. The first aspect of the book is perplexing; closer
examination does not clear up all the questions which present
themselves; and many people, after they have read it through, will not
feel quite certain what it means. Much of what is on the surface and
much of what is inherent in the nature of the work will jar painfully
on many minds; while others who begin to read it under one set of
impressions may by the time they have got to the end complain of having
been taken in. There can be no doubt on which side the book is; but it
may be open to debate from which side it has come. The unknown champion
who comes into the lists with barred vizor and no cognisance on his
shield leaves it not long uncertain for which of the contending parties
he appears; but his weapons and his manner of fighting are not the
ordinary ones of the side which he takes; and there is a force in his
arm, and a sweep in his stroke, which is not that of common men. The
book is one which it is easy to take exception to, and perhaps still
easier to praise at random; but the subject is put before us in so
unusual a way, and one so removed from the ordinary grooves of thought,
that in trying to form an adequate estimate of the work as a whole, a
man feels as he does when he is in the presence of something utterly
unfamiliar and unique, when common rules and inferences fail him, and
in pronouncing upon which he must make something of a venture.
In making our own venture we will begin with what seems to us
incontestable. In the first place, but that it has been questioned, we
should say that there could be no question of the surpassing ability
which the book displays. It is far beyond the power of the average
clever and practised writer of our days. It is the work of a man in
whom thought, sympathy, and imagination are equally powerful and
wealthy, and who exercises a perfect and easy command over his own
conceptions, and over the apt and vivid language which is their
expression. Few men have entered so deeply into the ideas and feelings
of the time, or have looked at the world, its history and its
conditions, with so large and piercing an insight. But it is idle to
dwell on what must strike, at first sight, any one who but opens the
book. We go on to observe, what is equally beyond dispute, the deep
tone of religious seriousness which pervades the work. The writer's way
of speaking is very different from that of the ascetic or the devotee;
but no ascetic or devotee could be more profoundly penetrated with the
great contrast between holiness and evil, and show more clearly in his
whole manner of thinking the ineffaceable impression of the powers of
the world to come. Whatever else the book may be, this much is plain on
the face of it--it is the work of a mind of extreme originality, depth,
refinement, and power; and it is also the work of a very religious man:
Thomas à Kempis had not a more solemn sense of things unseen and of
what is meant by the Imitation of Christ.
What the writer wishes his book to be understood to be we must gather
from his Preface:--
Those who feel dissatisfied with the current conceptions of
Christ, if they cannot rest content without a definite opinion,
may find it necessary to do what to persons not so dissatisfied it
seems audacious and perilous to do. They may be obliged to
reconsider the whole subject from the beginning, and placing
themselves in imagination at the time when he whom we call Christ
bore no such name, but was simply, as St. Luke describes him, a
young man of promise, popular with those who knew him, and
appearing to enjoy the Divine favour, to trace his biography from
point to point, and accept those conclusions about him, not which
church doctors or even apostles have sealed with their authority,
but which the facts themselves, critically weighed, appear to
warrant.
This is what the present writer undertook to do for the
satisfaction of his own mind, and because, after reading a good
many books on Christ, he felt still constrained to confess that
there was no historical character whose motives, objects, and
feelings remained so incomprehensible to him. The inquiry which
proved serviceable to himself may chance to be useful to others.
What is now published is a fragment. No theological questions
whatever are here discussed. Christ, as the creator of modern
theology and religion, will make the subject of another volume,
which, however, the author does not hope to publish for some time
to come. In the meanwhile he has endeavoured to furnish an answer
to the question, What was Christ's object in founding the Society
which is called by his name, and how is it adapted to attain that
object?
Thus the book comes before us as a serious facing of difficulties. And
that the writer lays stress on its being so viewed appears further from
a letter which he wrote to the _Spectator_, repeating emphatically that
the book is not one "written after the investigation was completed, but
the _investigation_ itself." The letter may be taken to complete the
statement of the Preface:--
I endeavoured in my Preface to describe the state of mind in which
I undertook my book. I said that the character and objects of
Christ were at that time altogether incomprehensible to me, and
that I wished to try whether an independent investigation would
relieve my perplexity. Perhaps I did not distinctly enough state
that _Ecce Homo_ is not a book written after the investigation was
completed, but the _investigation_ itself.
The Life of Christ is partly easy to understand and partly
difficult. This being so, what would a man do who wished to study
it methodically? Naturally he would take the easy part first. He
would collect, arrange, and carefully consider all the facts which
are simple, and until he has done this, he would carefully avoid
all those parts of his subject which are obscure, and which cannot
be explained without making bold hypotheses. By this course he
would limit the problem, and in the meanwhile arrive at a probable
opinion concerning the veracity of the documents, and concerning
the characteristics, both intellectual and moral, of the person
whose high pretensions he wished to investigate.
This is what I have done. I have postponed altogether the hardest
questions connected with Christ, as questions which cannot
properly be discussed until a considerable quantity of evidence
has been gathered about his character and views. If this evidence,
when collected, had appeared to be altogether conflicting and
inconsistent, I should have been saved the trouble of proceeding
any further; I should have said that Christ is a myth. If it had
been consistent, and had disclosed to me a person of mean and
ambitious aims, I should have said, Christ is a deceiver. Again,
if it had exhibited a person of weak understanding and strong
impulsive sensibility, I should have said Christ is a bewildered
enthusiast.
In all these cases you perceive my method would have saved me a
good deal of trouble. As it is, I certainly feel bound to go on,
though, as I say in my Preface, my progress will necessarily be
slow. But I am much engaged and have little time for theological
study. But pray do not suppose that postponing questions is only
another name for evading them. I think I have gained much by this
postponement. I have now a very definite notion of Christ's
character and that of his followers. I shall be able to judge how
far he was likely to deceive himself or them. It is possible I may
have put others, who can command more time than I, in a condition
to take up the subject where for the present I leave it.
You say my picture suffers by my method. But _Ecce Homo_ is not a
picture: it is the very opposite of a picture; it is an analysis.
It may be, you will answer, that the title suggests a picture.
This may perhaps be true, and if so, it is no doubt a fault, but a
fault in the title, not in the book. For titles are put to books,
not books to titles.
Thus it appears that the writer found it his duty to investigate those
awful questions which every thinking man feels to be full of the
"incomprehensible" and unfathomable, but which many thinking men, for
various reasons both good and bad, shrink from attempting to
investigate, accepting on practical and very sufficient grounds the
religious conclusions which are recommended and sanctioned by the
agreement of Christendom. And finding it his duty to investigate them
at all, he saw that he was bound to investigate in earnest. But under
what circumstances this happened, from what particular pressure of
need, and after what previous belief or state of opinion, we are not
told. Whether from being originally on the doubting side--on the
irreligious side we cannot suppose he ever could have been--he has
risen through his investigation into belief; or whether, originally on
the believing side, he found the aspect so formidable, to himself or to
the world, of the difficulties and perplexities which beset belief,
that he turned to bay upon the foes that dogged him--must be left to
conjecture. It is impossible to question that he has been deeply
impressed with the difficulties of believing; it is impossible to
question that doubt has been overborne and trampled under foot. But
here we have the record, it would not be accurate to say of the
struggle, but of that resolute and unflinching contemplation of the
realities of the case which decided it. Such plunging into such a
question must seem, as he says, to those who do not need it, "audacious
and perilous"; for if you plunge into a question in earnest, and do not
under a thin disguise take a side, you must, whatever your bias and
expectation, take your chance of the alternative answers which may come
out. It is a simple fact that there are many people who feel
"dissatisfied with the current conceptions" of our Lord--whether
reasonably and justly dissatisfied is another question; but whatever we
think of it they remain dissatisfied. In such emergencies it is
conceivable that a man who believes, yet keenly realises and feels what
disturbs or destroys the belief of others, should dare to put himself
in their place; should enter the hospital and suffer the disease which
makes such ravages; should descend into the shades and face the
spectres. No one can deny the risk of dwelling on such thoughts as he
must dwell on; but if he feels warmly with his kind, he may think it
even a duty to face the risk. To any one accustomed to live on his
belief it cannot but be a hard necessity, full of pain and difficulty,
first to think and then to speak of what he believes, as if it _might
not_ be, or _could be_ otherwise; but the changes of time bring up ever
new hard necessities; and one thing is plain, that if ever such an
investigation is undertaken, it ought to be a real one, in good earnest
and not in play. If a man investigates at all, both for his own sake
and for the sake of the effect of his investigation on others, he must
accept the fair conditions of investigation. We may not ourselves be
able to conceive the possibility of taking, even provisionally, a
neutral position; but looking at what is going on all round us, we
ought to be able to enlarge our thoughts sufficiently to take in the
idea that a believing mind may feel it a duty to surrender itself
boldly to the intellectual chances and issues of the inquiry, and to
"let its thoughts take their course in the confidence that they will
come home at last." It may be we ourselves who "have not faith enough
to be patient of doubt"; there may be others who feel that if what they
believe is real, they need not be afraid of the severest revisal and
testing of the convictions on which they rest; who feel that, in the
circumstances of the time, it is not left to their choice whether these
convictions shall be sifted unsparingly and to the uttermost; and who
think it a venture not unworthy of a Christian, to descend even to the
depths to go through the thoughts of doubters, if so be that he may
find the spell that shall calm them. We do not say that this book is
the production of such a state of mind; we only think that it may be.
One thing is clear, wherever the writer's present lot is cast, he has
that in him which not only enables him, but forces him, to sympathise
with what he sees in the opposite camp. If he is what is called a
Liberal, his whole heart is yet pouring itself forth towards the great
truths of Christianity. If he is what is called orthodox, his whole
intellect is alive to the right and duty of freedom of thought. He will
therefore attract and repel on both sides. And he appears to feel that
the position of double sympathy gives him a special advantage, to
attract to each side what is true in its opposite, and to correct in
each what is false or inadequate.