that "drew all men unto Him":--
To sum up the results of this chapter. We began by remarking that
an astonishing plan met with an astonishing success, and we raised
the question to what instrumentality that success was due. Christ
announced himself as the Founder and Legislator of a new Society,
and as the Supreme Judge of men. Now by what means did he procure
that these immense pretensions should be allowed? He might have
done it by sheer power, he might have adopted persuasion, and
pointed out the merits of the scheme and of the legislation he
proposed to introduce. But he adopted a third plan, which had the
effect not merely of securing obedience, but of exciting
enthusiasm and devotion. He laid men under an immense
_obligation_. He convinced them that he was a person of altogether
transcendent greatness, one who needed nothing at their hands, one
whom it was impossible to benefit by conferring riches, or fame,
or dominion upon him, and that, being so great, he had devoted
himself of mere benevolence to their good. He showed them that for
their sakes he lived a hard and laborious life, and exposed
himself to the utmost malice of powerful men. They saw him hungry,
though they believed him able to turn the stones into bread; they
saw his royal pretensions spurned, though they believed that he
could in a moment take into his hand all the kingdoms of the world
and the glory of them; they saw his life in danger; they saw him
at last expire in agonies, though they believed that, had he so
willed it, no danger could harm him, and that had he thrown
himself from the topmost pinnacle of the temple he would have been
softly received in the arms of ministering angels. Witnessing his
sufferings, and convinced by the miracles they saw him work that
they were voluntarily endured, men's hearts were touched, and pity
for weakness blending strangely with wondering admiration of
unlimited power, an agitation of gratitude, sympathy, and
astonishment, such as nothing else could ever excite, sprang up in
them; and when, turning from his deeds to his words, they found
this very self-denial which had guided his own life prescribed as
the principle which should guide theirs, gratitude broke forth in
joyful obedience, self-denial produced self-denial, and the Law
and Lawgiver together were enshrined in their inmost hearts for
inseparable veneration.
It is plain that whatever there is novel in such a line of argument
must depend upon the way in which it is handled; and it is the
extraordinary and sustained power with which this is done which gives
its character to the book. The writer's method consists in realising
with a depth of feeling and thought which it would not be easy to
match, what our Lord was in His human ministry, as that ministry is set
before us by those who witnessed it; and next, in showing in detail the
connection of that ministry, which wrought so much by teaching, but
still more by the Divine example, "not sparing words but resting most
on deeds," with all that is highest, purest, and best in the morality
of Christendom, and with what is most fruitful and most hopeful in the
differences between the old world and our own. We cannot think we are
wrong when we say that no one could speak of our Lord as this writer
speaks, with the enthusiasm, the overwhelming sense of His
inexpressible authority, of His unapproachable perfection, with the
profound faith which lays everything at His feet, and not also believe
all that the Divine Society which Christ founded has believed about
Him. And though for the present his subject is history, and human
morality as it appears to have been revolutionised and finally fixed by
that history, and not the theology which subsequent in date is yet the
foundation of both, it is difficult to imagine any reader going along
with him and not breaking out at length into the burst, "My Lord and my
God." If it is not so, then the phenomenon is strange indeed; for a
belief below the highest and truest has produced an appreciation, a
reverence, an adoration which the highest belief has only produced in
the choicest examples of those who have had it, and by the side of
which the ordinary exhibitions of the divine history are pale and
feeble. To few, indeed, as it seems to us, has it been given to feel,
and to make others feel, what in all the marvellous complexity of high
and low, and in all the Divine singleness of His goodness and power,
the Son of Man appeared in the days of His flesh. It is not more vivid
or more wonderful than what the Gospels with so much detail tell us of
that awful ministry in real flesh and blood, with a human soul and with
all the reality of man's nature; but most of us, after all, read the
Gospels with sealed and unwondering eyes. But, dwelling on the Manhood,
so as almost to overpower us with the contrast between the distinct and
living truth and the dead and dull familiarity of our thoughts of
routine and custom, he does so in such a way that it is impossible to
doubt, though the word Incarnation never occurs in the volume, that all
the while he has before his thoughts the "taking of the manhood into
God." What is the Gospel picture?
And let us pause once more to consider that which remains
throughout a subject of ever-recurring astonishment, the unbounded
personal pretensions which Christ advances. It is common in human
history to meet with those who claim some superiority over their
fellows. Men assert a pre-eminence over their fellow-citizens or
fellow-countrymen and become rulers of those who at first were
their equals, but they dream of nothing greater than some partial
control over the actions of others for the short space of a
lifetime. Few indeed are those to whom it is given to influence
future ages. Yet some men have appeared who have been "as levers
to uplift the earth and roll it in another course." Homer by
creating literature, Socrates by creating science, Caesar by
carrying civilisation inland from the shores of the Mediterranean,
Newton by starting science upon a career of steady progress, may
be said to have attained this eminence. But these men gave a
single impact like that which is conceived to have first set the
planets in motion; Christ claims to be a perpetual attractive
power like the sun which determines their orbit. They contributed
to men some discovery and passed away; Christ's discovery is
himself. To humanity struggling with its passions and its destiny
he says, Cling to me, cling ever closer to me. If we believe St.
John, he represented himself as the Light of the world, as the
Shepherd of the souls of men, as the Way to immortality, as the
Vine or Life-tree of humanity. And if we refuse to believe that he
used those words, we cannot deny, without rejecting all the
evidence before us, that he used words which have substantially
the same meaning. We cannot deny that he commanded men to leave
everything and attach themselves to him; that he declared himself
king, master, and judge of men; that he promised to give rest to
all the weary and heavy-laden; that he instructed his followers to
hope for life from feeding on his body and blood.
But it is doubly surprising to observe that these enormous
pretensions were advanced by one whose special peculiarity, not
only among his contemporaries but among the remarkable men that
have appeared before and since, was an almost feminine tenderness
and humility. This characteristic was remarked, as we have seen,
by the Baptist, and Christ himself was fully conscious of it. Yet
so clear to him was his own dignity and infinite importance to the
human race as an objective fact with which his own opinion of
himself had nothing to do, that in the same breath in which he
asserts it in the most unmeasured language, he alludes, apparently
with entire unconsciousness, to his _humility_. "Take my yoke upon
you, and learn of me; _for I am meek and lowly of heart_." And
again, when speaking to his followers of the arrogance of the
Pharisees, he says, "They love to be called Rabbi; but be not you
called Rabbi: _for one is your master, even Christ_."
Who is the humble man? It is he who resists with special
watchfulness and success the temptations which the conditions of
his life may offer to exaggerate his own importance.... If he
judged himself correctly, and if the Baptist described him well
when he compared him to a lamb, and, we may add, if his
biographers have delineated his character faithfully, Christ was
one naturally contented with obscurity, wanting the restless
desire for distinction and eminence which is common in great men,
hating to put forward personal claims, disliking competition and
"disputes who should be greatest," finding something bombastic in
the titles of royalty, fond of what is simple and homely, of
children, of poor people, occupying himself so much with the
concerns of others, with the relief of sickness and want, that the
temptation to exaggerate the importance of his own thoughts and
plans was not likely to master him; lastly, entertaining for the
human race a feeling so singularly fraternal that he was likely to
reject as a sort of treason the impulse to set himself in any
manner above them. Christ, it appears, was this humble man. When
we have fully pondered the fact we may be in a condition to
estimate the force of the evidence which, submitted to his mind,
could induce him, in direct opposition to all his tastes and
instincts, to lay claim, persistently, with the calmness of entire
conviction, in opposition to the whole religious world, in spite
of the offence which his own followers conceived, to a dominion
more transcendent, more universal, more complete, than the most
delirious votary of glory ever aspired to in his dreams.
And what is it that our Lord has done for man by being so truly man?
This then it is which is wanted to raise the feeling of humanity
into an enthusiasm; when the precept of love has been given, an
image must be set before the eyes of those who are called upon to
obey it, an ideal or type of man which may be noble and amiable
enough to raise the whole race and make the meanest member of it
sacred with reflected glory.
Did not Christ do this? Did the command to love go forth to those
who had never seen a human being they could revere? Could his
followers turn upon him and say, How can we love a creature so
degraded, full of vile wants and contemptible passions, whose
little life is most harmlessly spent when it is an empty round of
eating and sleeping; a creature destined for the grave and for
oblivion when his allotted term of fretfulness and folly has
expired? Of this race Christ himself was a member, and to this day
is it not the best answer to all blasphemers of the species, the
best consolation when our sense of its degradation is keenest,
that a human brain was behind his forehead, and a human heart
beating in his breast, and that within the whole creation of God
nothing more elevated or more attractive has yet been found than
he? And if it be answered that there was in his nature something
exceptional and peculiar, that humanity must not be measured by
the stature of Christ, let us remember that it was precisely thus
that he wished it to be measured, delighting to call himself the
Son of Man, delighting to call the meanest of mankind his
brothers. If some human beings are abject and contemptible, if it
be incredible to us that they can have any high dignity or
destiny, do we regard them from so great a height as Christ? Are
we likely to be more pained by their faults and deficiencies than
he was? Is our standard higher than his? And yet he associated by
preference with the meanest of the race; no contempt for them did
he ever express, no suspicion that they might be less dear than
the best and wisest to the common Father, no doubt that they were
naturally capable of rising to a moral elevation like his own.
There is nothing of which a man may be prouder than of this; it is
the most hopeful and redeeming fact in history; it is precisely
what was wanting to raise the love of man as man to enthusiasm. An
eternal glory has been shed upon the human race by the love Christ
bore to it And it was because the Edict of Universal Love went
forth to men whose hearts were in no cynical mood, but possessed
with a spirit of devotion to a man, that words which at any other
time, however grandly they might sound, would have been but words,
penetrated so deeply, and along with the law of love the power of
love was given. Therefore also the first Christians were enabled
to dispense with philosophical phrases, and instead of saying that
they loved the ideal of man in man, could simply say and feel that
they loved Christ in every man.
We have here the very kernel of the Christian moral scheme. We
have distinctly before us the end Christ proposed to himself, and
the means he considered adequate to the attainment of it....
But how to give to the meagre and narrow hearts of men such
enlargement? How to make them capable of a universal sympathy?
Christ believed it possible to bind men to their kind, but on one
condition--that they were first bound fast to himself. He stood
forth as the representative of men, he identified himself with the
cause and with the interests of all human beings; he was destined,
as he began before long obscurely to intimate, to lay down his
life for them. Few of us sympathise originally and directly with
this devotion; few of us can perceive in human nature itself any
merit sufficient to evoke it. But it is not so hard to love and
venerate him who felt it. So vast a passion of love, a devotion so
comprehensive, elevated, deliberate, and profound, has not
elsewhere been in any degree approached save by some of his
imitators. And as love provokes love, many have found it possible
to conceive for Christ an attachment the closeness of which no
words can describe, a veneration so possessing and absorbing the
man within them, that they have said, "I live no more, but Christ
lives in me."
And what, in fact, has been the result, after the utmost and freest
abatement for the objections of those who criticise the philosophical
theories or the practical effects of Christianity?
But that Christ's method, when rightly applied, is really of
mighty force may be shown by an argument which the severest censor
of Christians will hardly refuse to admit. Compare the ancient
with the modern world: "Look on this picture and on that." The
broad distinction in the characters of men forces itself into
prominence. Among all the men of the ancient heathen world there
were scarcely one or two to whom we might venture to apply the
epithet "holy." In other words, there were not more than one or
two, if any, who, besides being virtuous in their actions, were
possessed with an unaffected enthusiasm of goodness, and besides
abstaining from vice, regarded even a vicious thought with horror.
Probably no one will deny that in Christian countries this
higher-toned goodness, which we call holiness, has existed. Few
will maintain that it has been exceedingly rare. Perhaps the truth
is that there has scarcely been a town in any Christian country
since the time of Christ, where a century has passed without
exhibiting a character of such elevation that his mere presence
has shamed the bad and made the good better, and has been felt at
times like the presence of God Himself. And if this be so, has
Christ failed? or can Christianity die?
The principle of feeling and action which Christ implanted in that
Divine Society which He founded, or in other words, His morality, had
two peculiarities; it sprang, and it must spring still, from what this
writer calls all through an "enthusiasm"; and this enthusiasm was
kindled and maintained by the influence of a Person. There can be no
goodness without impulses to goodness, any more than these impulses are
enough without being directed by truth and reason; but the impulses
must come before the guidance, and "Christ's Theocracy" is described
"as a great attempt to set all the virtues of the world on this basis,
and to give it a visible centre and fountain." He thus describes how
personal influence is the great instrument of moral quickening and
elevation:--
How do men become for the most part "pure, generous, and humane"?
By personal, not by logical influences. They have been reared by
parents who had these qualities, they have lived in a society
which had a high tone, they have been accustomed to see just acts
done, to hear gentle words spoken, and the justness and the
gentleness have passed into their hearts, and slowly moulded their
habits and made their moral discernment clear; they remember
commands and prohibitions which it is a pleasure to obey for the
sake of those who gave them; often they think of those who may be
dead and say, "How would this action appear to him? Would he
approve that word or disapprove it?" To such no baseness appears a
small baseness because its consequences may be small, nor does the
yoke of law seem burdensome although it is ever on their necks,
nor do they dream of covering a sin by an atoning act of virtue.
Often in solitude they blush when some impure fancy sails across
the clear heaven of their minds, because they are never alone,
because the absent Examples, the Authorities they still revere,
rule not their actions only but their inmost hearts; because their
conscience is indeed awake and alive, representing all the
nobleness with which they stand in sympathy, and reporting their
most hidden indecorum before a public opinion of the absent and
the dead.
Of these two influences--that of Reason and that of Living
Example--which would a wise reformer reinforce? Christ chose the
last He gathered all men into a common relation to himself, and
demanded that each should set him on the pedestal of his heart,
giving a lower place to all other objects of worship, to father
and mother, to husband or wife. In him should the loyalty of all
hearts centre; he should be their pattern, their Authority and
Judge. Of him and his service should no man be ashamed, but to
those who acknowledged it morality should be an easy yoke, and the
law of right as spontaneous as the law of life; sufferings should
be easy to bear, and the loss of worldly friends repaired by a new
home in the bosom of the Christian kingdom; finally, in death
itself their sleep should be sweet upon whose tombstone it could
be written "Obdormivit in Christo."
In his treatment of this part of the subject, the work of Christ as the
true Creator, through the Christian Church, of living morality, what is
peculiar and impressive is the way in which sympathy with Christianity
in its antique and original form, in its most austere, unearthly,
exacting aspects, is combined with sympathy with the practical
realities of modern life, with its boldness, its freedom, its love of
improvement, its love of truth. It is no common grasp which can embrace
both so easily and so firmly. He is one of those writers whose strong
hold on their ideas is shown by the facility with which they can afford
to make large admissions, which are at first sight startling. Nowhere
are more tremendous passages written than in this book about the
corruptions of that Christianity which yet the writer holds to be the
one hope and safeguard of mankind. He is not afraid to pursue his
investigation independently of any inquiry into the peculiar claims to
authority of the documents on which it rests. He at once goes to their
substance and their facts, and the Person and Life and Character which
they witness to. He is not afraid to put Faith on exactly the same
footing as Life, neither higher nor lower, as the title to membership
in the Church; a doctrine which, if it makes imperfect and rudimentary
faith as little a disqualification as imperfect and inconsistent life,
obviously does not exclude the further belief that deliberate heresy is
on the same level with deliberate profligacy. But the clear sense of
what is substantial, the power of piercing through accidents and
conditions to the real kernel of the matter, the scornful disregard of
all entanglement of apparent contradictions and inconsistencies, enable
him to bring out the lesson which he finds before him with overpowering
force. He sees before him immense mercy, immense condescension, immense
indulgence; but there are also immense requirements--requirements not
to be fulfilled by rule or exhausted by the lapse of time, and which
the higher they raise men the more they exact--an immense seriousness
and strictness, an immense care for substance and truth, to the
disregard, if necessary, of the letter and the form. The "Dispensation
of the Spirit" has seldom had an interpreter more in earnest and more
determined to see meaning in his words. We have room but for two
illustrations. He is combating the notion that the work of Christianity
and the Church nowadays is with the good, and that it is waste of hope
and strength to try to reclaim the bad and the lost:--
Once more, however, the world may answer, Christ may be consistent
in this, but is he wise? It may be true that he does demand an
enthusiasm, and that such an enthusiasm may be capable of
awakening the moral sense in hearts in which it seemed dead. But
if, notwithstanding this demand, only a very few members of the
Christian Church are capable of the enthusiasm, what use in
imposing on the whole body a task which the vast majority are not
qualified to perform? Would it not be well to recognise the fact
which we cannot alter, and to abstain from demanding from frail
human nature what human nature cannot render? Would it not be well
for the Church to impose upon its ordinary members only ordinary
duties? When the Bernard or the Whitefield appears let her by all
means find occupation for him. Let her in such cases boldly invade
the enemy's country. But in ordinary times would it not be well
for her to confine herself to more modest and practicable
undertakings? There is much for her to do even though she should
honestly confess herself unable to reclaim the lost. She may
reclaim the young, administer reproof to slight lapses, maintain a
high standard of virtue, soften manners, diffuse enlightenment.
Would it not be well for her to adapt her ends to her means?
No, it would not be well; it would be fatal to do so; and Christ
meant what he said, and said what was true, when he pronounced the
Enthusiasm of Humanity to be everything, and the absence of it to
be the absence of everything. The world understands its own
routine well enough; what it does not understand is the mode of
changing that routine. It has no appreciation of the nature or
measure of the power of enthusiasm, and on this matter it learns
nothing from experience, but after every fresh proof of that
power, relapses from its brief astonishment into its old
ignorance, and commits precisely the same miscalculation on the
next occasion. The power of enthusiasm is, indeed, far from being
unlimited; in some cases it is very small....
But one power enthusiasm has almost without limit--the power of
propagating itself; and it was for this that Christ depended on
it. He contemplated a Church in which the Enthusiasm of Humanity
should not be felt by two or three only, but widely. In whatever
heart it might be kindled, he calculated that it would pass
rapidly into other hearts, and that as it can make its heat felt
outside the Church, so it would preserve the Church itself from
lukewarmncss. For a lukewarm Church he would not condescend to
legislate, nor did he regard it as at all inevitable that the
Church should become lukewarm. He laid it as a duty upon the
Church to reclaim the lost, because he did not think it utopian to
suppose that the Church might be not in its best members only, but
through its whole body, inspired by that ardour of humanity that
can charm away the bad passions of the wildest heart, and open to
the savage and the outlaw lurking in moral wildernesses an
entrancing view of the holy and tranquil order that broods over
the streets and palaces of the city of God....