the first aspect, we might take it for one of those numerous attempts
on the Liberal side, partly impatient, partly careless of Christianity,
to put a fresh look on the Christian history, and to see it with new
eyes. The writer's language is at starting neutral; he speaks of our
Lord in the language indeed of the New Testament, but not in the usual
language of later Christian writers. All through, the colour and tone
is absolutely modern; and what would naturally be expressed in familiar
theological terms is for the most part studiously put in other words.
Persons acquainted with the writings of the late Mr. Robertson might be
often reminded of his favourite modes of teaching; of his maxim that
truth is made up of two opposites which seem contradictories; of the
distinction which he was so fond of insisting upon between principles
and rules; above all, of his doctrine that the true way to rise to the
faith in our Lord's Divine Nature was by first realising His Human
Life. But the resemblance is partial, if not superficial, and gives way
on closer examination before broad and characteristic features of an
entirely different significance. That one which at first arrests
attention, and distinguishes this writer's line of thought from the
common Liberal way of dealing with the subject, is that from the first
page of the book to its last line the work of Christ is viewed, not
simply as the foundation of a religious system, the introduction of
certain great principles, the elevation of religious ideas, the
delivery of Divine truths, the exhibition of a life and example, but as
the call and creation of a definite, concrete, organised society of
men. The subject, of investigation is not merely the character and
history of the Person, but the Person as connected with His work.
Christ is regarded not simply in Himself or in His teaching, as the
Founder of a philosophy, a morality, a theology in the abstract, but as
the Author of a Divine Society, the Body which is called by His Name,
the Christian Church Universal, a real and visible company of men,
which, however we may understand it, exists at this moment as it has
existed since His time, marked by His badges, governed by His laws, and
working out His purpose. The writer finds the two joined in fact, and
he finds them also joined in the recorded history of Christ's plan. The
book might almost be described as the beginning of a new _De Civitate
Dei_, written with the further experience of fourteen centuries and
from the point of view of our own generation. This is one remarkable
peculiarity of this investigation; another is the prominence given to
the severe side of the Person and character of whom he writes, and what
is even more observable, the way in which both the severity and the
gentleness are apprehended and harmonised.
We are familiar with the attempts to resolve the Christianity of the
New Testament into philanthropy; and, on the other hand, writers like
Mr. Carlyle will not let us forget that the world is as dark and evil
as the Bible draws it. This writer feels both in one. No one can show
more sympathy with enlarged and varied ideas of human happiness, no one
has connected them more fearlessly with Christian principles, or
claimed from those principles more unlimited developments, even for the
physical well-being of men. No one has extended wider the limits of
Christian generosity, forbearance, and tolerance. But, on the other
hand, what is striking is, that all this is compatible, and is made to
appear so, with the most profound and terrible sense of evil, with
indignation and scorn which is scathing where it kindles and strikes,
with a capacity and energy of deliberate religious hatred against what
is impure and false and ungodly, which mark one who has dared to
realise and to sympathise with the wrath of Jesus Christ.
The world has been called in these later days, and from opposite
directions, to revise its judgments about Jesus Christ. Christians, on
the one hand, have been called to do it by writers of whom M. Ernest
Renan is the most remarkable and the most unflinching. But the
sceptical and the unbelieving have likewise been obliged to change
their ground and their tone, and no one with any self-respect or care
for his credit even as a thinker and a man would like to repeat the
superficial and shallow flippancy and irreligion of the last century.
Two things have been specially insisted on. We have been told that if
we are to see the truth of things as it is, we must disengage our minds
from the deeply rooted associations and conceptions of a later
theology, and try to form our impressions first-hand and unprompted
from the earliest documents which we can reach. It has been further
urged on us, in a more believing spirit, that we should follow the
order by which in fact truth was unfolded, and rise from the full
appreciation of our Lord's human nature to the acknowledgment of His
Divine nature. It seems to us that the writer of this book has felt the
force of both these appeals, and that his book is his answer to them.
Here is the way in which he responds to both--to the latter indirectly,
but with a significance which no one can mistake; to the former
directly and avowedly. He undertakes, isolating himself from current
beliefs, and restricting himself to the documents from which, if from
any source at all, the original facts about Christ are to be learned,
to examine what the genuine impression is which an attempt to realise
the statements about him leaves on the mind. This has been done by
others, with results supposed to be unfavourable to Christianity. He
has been plainly moved by these results, though not a hint is given of
the existence of Renan or Strauss. But the effect on his own mind has
been to drive him back on a closer survey of the history in its first
fountains, and to bring him from it filled more than ever with wonder
at its astonishing phenomena, to protest against the poverty and
shallowness of the most ambitious and confident of these attempts. They
leave the historical Character which they pourtray still unsounded, its
motives, objects, and feelings absolutely incomprehensible. He accepts
the method to reverse the product. "Look at Christ historically,"
people say; "see Him as He really was." The answer here is, "Well, I
will look at Him with whatever aid a trained historical imagination can
look at Him. I accept your challenge; I admit your difficulties. I will
dare to do what you do. I will try and look at the very facts
themselves, with singleness and 'innocence of the eye,' trying to see
nothing more than I really see, and trying to see all that my eye falls
on. I will try to realise indeed what is recorded of Him. And _this_ is
what I see. This is the irresistible impression from the plainest and
most elementary part of the history, if we are to accept any history at
all. A miracle could not be more unlike the order of our experience
than the Character set before us is unique and unapproachable in all
known history. Further, all that makes the superiority of the modern
world to the ancient, and is most permanent and pregnant with
improvement in it, may be traced to the appearance of that Character,
and to the work which He planned and did. You ask for a true picture of
Him, drawn with freedom, drawn with courage; here, if you dare look at
it, is what those who wrote of Him showed Him to be. Renan has tried to
draw this picture. Take the Gospels as they stand; treat them simply as
biographies; look, and see, and think of what they tell, and then ask
yourself about Renan's picture, and what it looks like when placed side
by side with the truth."
This, as we have ventured to express it in our own words, seems to be
the writer's position. It is at any rate the effect of his book, to our
minds. The inquiry, it must always be remembered, is a preliminary one,
dealing, as he says, with the easiest and obvious elements of the
problem; and much that seems inadequate and unsatisfactory may be
developed hereafter. He starts from what, to those who already have the
full belief, must appear a low level. He takes, as it will be seen, the
documents as they stand. He takes little more than the first three
Gospels, and these as a whole, without asking minute questions about
them. The mythical theory he dismisses as false to nature, in dealing
with such a Character and such results. He talks in his preface of
"critically weighing" the facts; but the expression is misleading. It
is true that we may talk of criticism of character; but the words
naturally suggest that close cross-questioning of documents and details
which has produced such remarkable results in modern investigations;
and of this there is none. It is a work in no sense of criticism; it is
a work of what he calls the "trained historical imagination"; a work of
broad and deep knowledge of human nature and the world it works in and
creates about it; a work of steady and large insight into character,
and practical judgment on moral likelihoods. He answers Strauss as he
answers Renan, by producing the interpretation of a character, so
living, so in accordance with all before and after, that it overpowers
and sweeps away objections; a picture, an analysis or outline, if he
pleases, which justifies itself and is its own evidence, by its
originality and internal consistency. Criticism in detail does not
affect him. He assumes nothing of the Gospels, except that they are
records; neither their inspiration in any theological sense, nor their
authorship, nor their immunity from mistake, nor the absolute purity of
their texts. But taking them as a whole he discerns in them a Character
which, if you accept them at all and on any terms, you cannot mistake.
Even if the copy is ever so imperfect, ever so unskilful, ever so
blurred and defaced, there is no missing the features any more than a
man need miss the principle of a pattern because it is rudely or
confusedly traced. He looks at these "biographies" as a geologist might
do at a disturbed series of strata; and he feeds his eye upon them till
he gets such a view of the coherent whole as will stand independent of
the right or wrong disposition of the particular fragments. To the mind
which discerns the whole, the regulating principle, the general curves
and proportions of the strata may be just as visible after the
disturbance as before it. The Gospels bring before us the visible and
distinct outlines of a life which, after all efforts to alter the idea
of it, remains still the same; they present certain clusters of leading
ideas and facts so embedded in their substance that no criticism of
detail can possibly get rid of them, without absolutely obliterating
the whole record. It is this leading idea, or cluster of ideas, to be
gained by intent gazing, which the writer disengages from all questions
of criticism in the narrow sense of the word, and sets before us as
explaining the history of Christianity, and as proving themselves by
that explanation. That the world has been moved we know. "Give me," he
seems to say, "the Character which is set forth in the Gospels, and I
can show how He moved it":--
It is in the object of the present treatise to exhibit Christ's
career in outline. No other career ever had so much unity; no
other biography is so simple or can so well afford to dispense
with details. Men in general take up scheme after scheme, as
circumstances suggest one or another, and therefore most
biographies are compelled to pass from one subject to another, and
to enter into a multitude of minute questions, to divide the life
carefully into periods by chronological landmarks accurately
determined, to trace the gradual development of character and
ripening or change of opinions. But Christ formed one plan and
executed it; no important change took place in his mode of
thinking, speaking, or acting; at least the evidence before us
does not enable us to trace any such change. It is possible,
indeed, for students of his life to find details which they may
occupy themselves with discussing; they may map out the chronology
of it, and devise methods of harmonising the different accounts;
but such details are of little importance compared with the one
grand question, what was Christ's plan, and throw scarcely any
light upon that question. What was Christ's plan is the main
question which will be investigated in the present treatise, and
that vision of universal monarchy which we have just been
considering affords an appropriate introduction to it....
We conclude then, that Christ in describing himself as a king, and
at the same time as king of the Kingdom of God--in other words as
a king representing the Majesty of the Invisible King of a
theocracy--claimed the character first of Founder, next of
Legislator; thirdly, in a certain high and peculiar sense, of
Judge, of a new divine society.
In defining as above the position which Christ assumed, we have
not entered into controvertible matter. We have not rested upon
single passages, nor drawn upon the fourth Gospel. To deny that
Christ did undertake to found and to legislate for a new
theocratic society, and that he did claim the office of Judge of
mankind, is indeed possible, but only to those who altogether deny
the credibility of the extant biographies of Christ. If those
biographies be admitted to be generally trustworthy, then Christ
undertook to be what we have described; if not, then of course
this, but also every other account of him falls to the ground.
We have said that he starts from a low level; and he restricts himself
so entirely at the opening to facts which do not involve dispute, that
his views of them are necessarily incomplete, and, so to say,
provisional and deliberate understatements. He begins no higher than
the beginning of the public ministry, the Baptism, and the Temptation;
and his account of these leaves much to say, though it suggests much of
what is left unsaid. But he soon gets to the proper subject of his
book--the absolute uniqueness of Him whose equally unique work has been
the Christian Church. And this uniqueness he finds in the combination
of "unbounded personal pretensions," and the possession, claimed and
believed, of boundless power, with an absolutely unearthly use of His
pretensions and His power, and with a goodness which has proved to be,
and still is, the permanent and ever-flowing source of moral elevation
and improvement in the world. He early comes across the question of
miracles, and, as he says, it is impossible to separate the claim to
them and the belief in them from the story. We find Christ, he says,
"describing himself as a king, and at the same time as king of the
Kingdom of God"; calling forth and founding a new and divine society,
and claiming to be, both now and hereafter, the Judge without appeal of
all mankind; "he considered, in short, heaven and hell to be in his
hands." And we find, on the other hand, that as such He has been
received. To such an astonishing chain of phenomena miracles naturally
belong:--
When we contemplate this scheme as a whole, and glance at the
execution and results of it, three things strike us with
astonishment. First, its prodigious originality, if the expression
may be used. What other man has had the courage or elevation of
mind to say, "I will build up a state by the mere force of my
will, without help from the kings of the world, without taking
advantage of any of the secondary causes which unite men
together--unity of interest or speech, or blood-relationship. I
will make laws for my state which shall never be repealed, and I
will defy all the powers of destruction that are at work in the
world to destroy what I build"?
Secondly, we are astonished at the calm confidence with which the
scheme was carried out. The reason why statesmen can seldom work
on this vast scale is that it commonly requires a whole lifetime
to gain that ascendency over their fellow-men which such schemes
presuppose. Some of the leading organisers of the world have said,
"I will work my way to supreme power, and then I will execute
great plans." But Christ overleaped the first stage altogether. He
did not work his way to royalty, but simply said to all men, "I am
your king." He did not struggle forward to a position in which he
could found a new state, but simply founded it.
Thirdly, we are astonished at the prodigious success of the
scheme. It is not more certain that Christ presented himself to
men as the founder, legislator, and judge of a divine society than
it is certain that men have accepted him in these characters, that
the divine society has been founded, that it has lasted nearly two
thousand years, that it has extended over a large and the most
highly-civilised portion of the earth's surface, and that it
continues full of vigour at the present day.
Between the astonishing design and its astonishing success there
intervenes an astonishing instrumentality--that of miracles. It
will be thought by some that in asserting miracles to have been
actually wrought by Christ we go beyond what the evidence, perhaps
beyond what any possible evidence, is able to sustain. Waiving,
then, for the present, the question whether miracles were actually
wrought, we may state a fact which is fully capable of being
established by ordinary evidence, and which is actually
established by evidence as ample as any historical fact
whatever--the fact, namely, that Christ _professed_ to work
miracles. We may go further, and assert with confidence that
Christ was believed by his followers really to work miracles, and
that it was mainly on this account that they conceded to Him the
pre-eminent dignity and authority which he claimed. The accounts
which we have of these miracles may be exaggerated; it is possible
that in some special cases stories have been related which have no
foundation whatever; but on the whole, miracles play so important
a part in Christ's scheme, that any theory which would represent
them as due entirely to the imagination of his followers or of a
later age destroys the credibility of the documents not partially
but wholly, and leaves Christ a personage as mythical as Hercules.
Now, the present treatise aims to show that the Christ of the
Gospels is not mythical, by showing that the character those
biographies portray is in all its large features strikingly
consistent, and at the same time so peculiar as to be altogether
beyond the reach of invention both by individual genius and still
more by what is called the "consciousness of an age." Now, if the
character depicted in the Gospels is in the main real and
historical, they must be generally trustworthy, and if so, the
responsibility of miracles is fixed on Christ. In this case the
reality of the miracles themselves depends in a great degree on
the opinion we form of Christ's veracity, and this opinion must
arise gradually from the careful examination of his whole life.
For our present purpose, which is to investigate the plan which
Christ formed and the way in which he executed it, it matters
nothing whether the miracles were real or imaginary; in either
case, being believed to be real, they had the same effect.
Provisionally, therefore, we may speak of them as real.
Without the belief in miracles, as he says, it is impossible to
conceive the history of the Church:--
If we suppose that Christ really performed no miracles, and that
those which are attributed to him were the product of
self-deception mixed in some proportion or other with imposture,
then no doubt the faith of St. Paul and St. John was an empty
chimera, a mere misconception; but it is none the less true that
those apparent miracles were essential to Christ's success, and
that had he not pretended to perform them the Christian Church
would never have been founded, and the name of Jesus of Nazareth
would be known at this day only to the curious in Jewish
antiquities.
But he goes on to point out what was the use which Christ made of
miracles, and how it was that they did not, as they might have done,
even impede His purpose of founding His kingdom on men's consciences
and not on their terrors. In one of the most remarkable passages
perhaps ever written on the Gospel miracles as they are seen when
simply looked at as they are described, the writer says:--
He imposed upon himself a strict restraint in the dse of his
supernatural powers. He adopted the principle that he was not sent
to destroy men's lives but to save them, and rigidly abstained in
practice from inflicting any kind of damage or harm. In this course
he persevered so steadily that it became generally understood.
Every one knew that this _king_, whose royal pretensions were so
prominent, had an absolutely unlimited patience, and that he would
endure the keenest criticism, the bitterest and most malignant
personal attacks. Men's mouths were open to discuss his claims and
character with perfect freedom; so far from regarding him with that
excessive fear which might have prevented them from receiving his
doctrine intelligently, they learnt gradually to treat him, even
while they acknowledged his extraordinary power, with a reckless
animosity which they would have been afraid to show towards an
ordinary enemy. With curious inconsistency they openly charged him
with being leagued with the devil; in other words, they acknowledged
that he was capable of boundless mischief, and yet they were so
little afraid of him that they were ready to provoke him to use his
whole power against themselves. The truth was that they believed
him to be disarmed by his own deliberate resolution, and they
judged rightly. He punished their malice only by verbal reproofs,
and they gradually gathered courage to attack the life of one whose
miraculous powers they did not question.
Meantime, while this magnanimous self-restraint saved him from
false friends and mercenary or servile flatterers, and saved the
kingdom which he founded from the corruption of self-interest and
worldliness, it gave him a power over the good such as nothing
else could have given. For the noblest and most amiable thing that
can be seen is power mixed with gentleness, the reposing,
self-restraining attitude of strength. These are the "fine strains
of honour," these are "the graces of the gods"--
To tear with thunder the wide cheeks o' the air.
And yet to charge the sulphur with a bolt
That shall but rive an oak.
And while he did no mischief under any provocation, his power
flowed in acts of beneficence on every side. Men could approach
near to him, could eat and drink with him, could listen to his
talk and ask him questions, and they found him not accessible
only, but warmhearted, and not occupied so much with his own plans
that he could not attend to a case of distress or mental
perplexity. They found him full of sympathy and appreciation,
dropping words of praise, ejaculations of admiration, tears. He
surrounded himself with those who had tasted of his bounty, sick
people whom he had cured, lepers whose death-in-life, demoniacs
whose hell-in-life, he had terminated with a single powerful word.
Among these came loving hearts who thanked him for friends and
relatives rescued for them out of the jaws of premature death, and
others whom he had saved, by a power which did not seem different,
from vice and degradation.
This temperance in the use of supernatural power is the
masterpiece of Christ. It is a moral miracle superinduced upon a
physical one. This repose in greatness makes him surely the most
sublime image ever offered to the human imagination. And it is
precisely this trait which gave him his immense and immediate
ascendency over men. If the question be put--Why was Christ so
successful?--Why did men gather round him at his call, form
themselves into a new society according to his wish, and accept
him with unbounded devotion as their legislator and judge? some
will answer, Because of the miracles which attested his divine
character; others, Because of the intrinsic beauty and divinity of
the great law of love which he propounded. But miracles, as we
have seen, have not by themselves this persuasive power. That a
man possesses a strange power which I cannot understand is no
reason why I should receive his words as divine oracles of truth.
The powerful man is not of necessity also wise; his power may
terrify and yet not convince. On the other hand, the law of love,
however divine, was but a precept. Undoubtedly it deserved that
men should accept it for its intrinsic worth, but men are not
commonly so eager to receive the words of wise men nor so
unbounded in their gratitude to them. It was neither for his
miracles nor for the beauty of his doctrine that Christ was
worshipped. Nor was it for his winning personal character, nor for
the persecutions he endured, nor for his martyrdom. It was for the
inimitable unity which all these things made when taken together.
In other words, it was for this that he whose power and greatness
as shown in his miracles were overwhelming denied himself the use
of his power, treated it as a slight thing, walked among men as
though he were one of them, relieved them in distress, taught them
to love each other, bore with undisturbed patience a perpetual
hailstorm of calumny; and when his enemies grew fiercer, continued
still to endure their attacks in silence, until, petrified and
bewildered with astonishment, men saw him arrested and put to
death with torture, refusing steadfastly to use in his own behalf
the power he conceived he held for the benefit of others. It was
the combination of greatness and self-sacrifice which won their
hearts, the mighty powers held under a mighty control, the
unspeakable condescension, the _Cross_ of _Christ_.