of very unequal difficulty. He accounts for the origin of the Christian
belief and religion, and he writes the history of its first
propagation. These are very different things, and to do one of them is
by no means to do the other. M. Renan's historical sketch of the first
steps of the Christian movement is, whatever we may think of its
completeness and soundness, a survey of characters and facts, based on
our ordinary experience of the ways in which men act and are
influenced. Of course it opens questions and provokes dissent at every
turn; but, after all, the history of a religion once introduced into
the world is the history of the men who give it shape and preach it,
who accept or oppose it. The spread and development of all religions
have certain broad features in common, which admit of philosophical
treatment simply as phenomena, and receive light from being compared
with parallel examples of the same kind; and whether a man's historical
estimate is right, and his picture accurate and true, depends on his
knowledge of the facts, and his power to understand them and to make
them understood. No one can dispute M. Renan's qualifications for being
the historian of a religious movement. The study of religion as a
phenomenon of human nature and activity has paramount attractions for
him. His interest in it has furnished him with ample and varied
materials for comparison and generalisation. He is a scholar and a man
of learning, quick and wide in his sympathies, and he commands
attention by the singular charm of his graceful and lucid style. When,
therefore, he undertakes to relate how, as a matter of fact, the
Christian Church grew up amid the circumstances of its first
appearance, he has simply to tell the story of the progress of a
religious cause; and this is a comparatively light task for him. But he
also lays before us what he appears to consider an adequate account of
the origin of the Christian belief. The Christian belief, it must be
remembered, means, not merely the belief that there was such a person
as he has described in his former, volume, but the belief that one who
was crucified rose again from the dead, and lives for evermore above.
It is in this belief that the Christian religion had its beginning;
there is no connecting Christ and Christianity, except through the
Resurrection. The origin, therefore, of the belief in the Resurrection,
in the shape in which we have it, lies across M. Renan's path to
account for; and neither the picture which he has drawn in his former
volume, nor the history which he follows out in this, dispense him from
the necessity of facing this essential and paramount element in the
problem which he has to solve. He attempts to deal with this, the knot
of the great question. But his attempt seems to us to disclose a more
extraordinary insensibility to the real demands of the case, and to
what we cannot help calling the pitiable inadequacy of his own
explanation, than we could have conceived possible in so keen and
practised a mind.
The Resurrection, we repeat, bars the way in M. Renan's scheme for
making an intelligible transition, from the life and character which he
has sought to reproduce from the Gospels, to the first beginnings and
preaching of Christianity. The Teacher, he says, is unique in wisdom,
in goodness, in the height of his own moral stature and the Divine
elevation of his aims. The religion is, with all abatements and
imperfections, the only one known which could be the religion of
humanity. After his portraiture of the Teacher, follows, naturally
enough, as the result of that Teacher's influence and life, a religion
of corresponding elevation and promise. The passage from a teaching
such as M. Renan supposes to a religion such as he allows Christianity
to be may be reasonably understood as a natural consequence of
well-known causes, but for one thing--the interposition between the two
of an alleged event which simply throws out all reasonings drawn from
ordinary human experience. From the teaching and life of Socrates
follow, naturally enough, schools of philosophy, and an impulse which
has affected scientific thought ever since. From the preaching and life
of Mahomet follows, equally naturally, the religion of Islam. In each
case the result is seen to be directly and distinctly linked on to the
influences which gave it birth, and nothing more than these influences
is wanted, or makes any claim, to account for it. So M. Renan holds
that all that is needed to account for Christianity is such a
personality and such a career as he has described in his last volume.
But the facts will not bend to this. Christianity hangs on to Christ
not merely as to a Person who lived and taught and died, but as to a
Person who rose again from death. That is of the very essence of its
alleged derivation from Christ. It knows Christ only as Christ risen;
the only reason of its own existence that it recognises is the
Resurrection. The only claim the Apostles set forth for preaching to
the world is that their Master who was crucified was alive once more.
Every one knows that this was the burden of all their words, the
corner-stone of all their work. We may believe them or not. We may take
Christianity or leave it. But we cannot derive Christianity from
Christ, without meeting, as the bond which connects the two, the
Resurrection. But for the Resurrection, M. Renan's scheme might be
intelligible. A Teacher unequalled for singleness of aim and nobleness
of purpose lives and dies, and leaves the memory and the leaven of His
teaching to disciples, who by them, even though in an ill-understood
shape, and with incomparably inferior qualities themselves, purify and
elevate the religious ideas and feelings of mankind. If that were all,
if there were nothing but the common halo of the miraculous which is
apt to gather about great names, the interpretation might be said to be
coherent. But a theory of Christianity cannot neglect the most
prominent fact connected with its beginning. It is impossible to leave
it out of the account, in judging both of the Founder and of those whom
his influence moulded and inspired.
M. Renan has to account for the prominence given to the Resurrection in
the earliest Christian teaching, without having recourse to the
supposition of conscious imposture and a deliberate conspiracy to
deceive; for such a supposition would not harmonise either with the
portrait he has drawn of the Master, or with his judgment of the
seriousness and moral elevation of the men who, immeasurably inferior
as they were to Him, imbibed His spirit, and represented and
transmitted to us His principles. And this is something much more than
can be accounted for by the general disposition of the age to assume
the supernatural and the miraculous. The way in which the Resurrection
is circumstantially and unceasingly asserted, and made on every
occasion and from the first the foundation of everything, is something
very different from the vague legends which float about of kings or
saints whom death has spared, or from a readiness to see the direct
agency of heaven in health or disease. It is too precise, too
matter-of-fact, too prosaic in the way in which it is told, to be
resolved into ill-understood dreams and imaginations. The various
recitals show little care to satisfy our curiosity, or to avoid the
appearance of inconsistency in detail; but nothing can be more removed
from vagueness and hesitation than their definite positive statements.
It is with them that the writer on Christianity has to deal.
M. Renan's method is--whilst of course not believing them, yet not
supposing conscious fraud--to treat these records as the description of
natural, unsought visions on the part of people who meant no harm, but
who believed what they wished to believe. They are the story of a great
mistake, but a mistake proceeding simply, in the most natural way in
the world, from excess of "idealism" and attachment. Unaffected by the
circumstance that there never were narratives less ideal, and more
straightforwardly real--that they seem purposely framed to be a
contrast to professed accounts of visions, and to exclude the
possibility of their being confounded with such accounts; and that the
alleged numbers who saw, the alleged frequency and repetition and
variation of the instances, and the alleged time over which the
appearances extended, and after which they absolutely ceased, make the
hypothesis of involuntary and undesigned allusions of regret and
passion infinitely different from what it might be in the case of one
or two persons, or for a transitory period of excitement and
crisis--unaffected by such considerations, M. Renan proceeds to tell,
in his own way, the story of what he supposes to have occurred,
without, of course, admitting the smallest real foundation for what was
so positively asserted, but with very little reproach or discredit to
the ardent and undoubting assertors. He begins with a statement which
is meant to save the character of the Teacher. "Jesus, though he spoke
unceasingly of resurrection, of new life, had never said quite clearly
that he should rise again in the flesh." He says this with the texts
before him, for he quotes them and classifies them in a note. But this
is his point of departure, laid down without qualification. Yet if
there is anything which the existing records do say distinctly, it is
that Jesus Christ said over and over again that He should rise again,
and that He fixed the time within which He should rise. M. Renan is not
bound to believe them. But he must take them as he finds them; and on
this capital point either we know nothing at all, and have no evidence
to go upon, or the evidence is simply inverted by M. Renan's assertion.
There may, of course, be reasons for believing one part of a man's
evidence and disbelieving another; but there is nothing in this case
but incompatibility with a theory to make this part of the evidence
either more or less worthy of credit than any other part. What is
certain is that it is in the last degree weak and uncritical to lay
down, as the foundation and first pre-requisite of an historical view,
a position which the records on which the view professes to be based
emphatically and unambiguously contradict. Whatever we may think of it,
the evidence undoubtedly is, if evidence there is at all, that Jesus
Christ did say, though He could not get His disciples at the time to
understand and believe Him, that He should rise again on the third day.
What M. Renan had to do, if he thought the contrary, was not to assume,
but to prove, that in these repeated instances in which they report His
announcements, the Evangelists mistook or misquoted the words of their
Master.
He accepts, however, their statement that no one at first hoped that
the words would be made good; and he proceeds to account for the
extraordinary belief which, in spite of this original incredulity, grew
up, and changed the course of things and the face of the world. We
admire and respect many things in M. Renan; but it seems to us that his
treatment of this matter is simply the _ne plus ultra_ of the
degradation of the greatest of issues by the application to it of
sentiment unworthy of a silly novel. In the first place, he lays down
on general grounds that, though the disciples had confessedly given up
all hope, it yet _was natural_ that they should expect to see their
master alive again. "Mais I'enthousiasme et l'amour ne connaissent pas
les situations sans issue." Do they not? Are death and separation such
light things to triumph over that imagination finds it easy to cheat
them? "Ils se jouent de l'impossible et, plutôt que d'abdiquer
l'espérance, ils font violence à toute réalité." Is this an account of
the world of fact or the world of romance? The disciples did not hope;
but, says M. Renan, vague words about the future had dropped from their
master, and these were enough to build upon, and to suggest that they
would soon see him back. In vain it is said that in fact they did not
expect it. "Une telle croyance était d'ailleurs si naturelle, que la
foi des disciples aurait suffi pour la créer de toutes pièces." Was it
indeed--in spite of Enoch and Elias, cases of an entirely different
kind--so natural to think that the ruined leader of a crushed cause,
whose hopeless followers had seen the last of him amid the lowest
miseries of torment and scorn, should burst the grave?
Il devait arriver [he proceeds] pour Jésus ce qui arrive pour tous
les hommes qui ont captivé l'attention de leurs semblables. Le
monde, habitué a leur attribuer des vertus surhumaines, ne peut
admettre qu'ils aient subi la loi injuste, révoltante, inique, du
trépas commun.... La mort est chose si absurde quand elle frappe
l'homme de génie ou l'homme d'un grand coeur, que le peuple ne
croit pas à la possibilité d'une telle erreur de la nature. Les
héros ne meurent pas.
The history of the world presents a large range of instances to test
the singular assertion that death is so "absurd" that "the people"
cannot believe that great and good men literally die. But would it be
easy to match the strangeness of a philosopher and a man of genius
gravely writing this down as a reason--not why, at the interval of
centuries, a delusion should grow up--but why, on the very morrow of a
crucifixion and burial, the disciples should have believed that all the
dreadful work they had seen a day or two before was in very fact and
reality reversed? We confess we do not know what human experience is if
it countenances such a supposition as this.
From this antecedent probability he proceeds to the facts. "The Sabbath
day which followed the burial was occupied with these thoughts....
Never was the rest of the Sabbath so fruitful." They all, the women
especially, thought of him all day long in his bed of spices, watched
over by angels; and the assurance grew that the wicked men who had
killed him would not have their triumph, that he would not be left to
decay, that he would be wafted on high to that Kingdom of the Father of
which he had spoken. "Nous le verrons encore; nous entendrons sa voix
charmante; c'est en vain qu'ils l'auront tué." And as, with the Jews, a
future life implied a resurrection of the body, the shape which their
hope took was settled. "Reconnaître que la mort pouvait être
victorieuse de Jésus, de celui qui venait de supprimer son empire,
c'était le comble de l'absurdité." It is, we suppose, irrelevant to
remark that we find not the faintest trace of this sense of absurdity.
The disciples, he says, had no choice between hopelessness and "an
heroic affirmation"; and he makes the bold surmise that "un homme
pénétrant aurait pu annoncer _dès le samedi_ que Jésus revivrait." This
may be history, or philosophy, or criticism; what it is _not_ is the
inference naturally arising from the only records we have of the time
spoken of. But the force of historical imagination dispenses with the
necessity of extrinsic support. "La petite société chrétienne, ce
jour-là, opéra le véritable miracle: elle ressuscita Jésus en son coeur
par l'amour intense qu'elle lui porta. Elle décida que Jésus ne
mourrait pas." The Christian Church has done many remarkable things;
but it never did anything so strange, or which so showed its power, as
when it took that resolution.
How was the decision, involuntary and unconscious, and guiltless of
intentional deception, if we can conceive of such an attitude of mind,
carried out? M. Renan might leave the matter in obscurity. But he sees
his way, in spite of incoherent traditions and the contradictions which
they present, to a "sufficient degree of probability." The belief in
the Resurrection originated in an hallucination of the disordered fancy
of Mary Magdalen, whose mind was thrown off its balance by her
affection and sorrow; and, once suggested, the idea rapidly spread, and
produced, through the Christian society, a series of corresponding
visions, firmly believed to be real. But Mary Magdalen was the founder
of it all:--
Elle eut, en ce moment solennel, une part d'action tout à fait
hors ligne. C'est elle qu'il faut suivre pas à pas; car elle
porta, ce jour-là, pendant une heure, tout le travail de la
conscience chrétienne; son témoignage décida la foi de
l'avenir.... La vision légère s'écarte et lui dit: "Ne me touche
pas!" Peu a peu l'ombre disparait. Mais le miracle de l'amour est
accompli. Ce que Céphas n'a pu faire, Marie l'a faite; elle a su
tirer la vie, la parole douce et pénétrante, du tombeau vide. Il
ne s'agit plus de conséquences à déduire ni de conjectures à
former. Marie a vu et entendu. La résurrection a son premier
témoin immédiat.
He proceeds to criticise the accounts which ascribe the first vision to
others; but in reality Mary Magdalen, he says, has done most, after the
great Teacher, for the foundation of Christianity. "Queen and patroness
of idealists," she was able to "impose upon all the sacred vision of
her impassioned soul." All rests upon her first burst of entbusiasm,
which gave the signal and kindled the faith of others. "Sa grande
affirmation de femme, 'il est ressuscité,' a été la base de la foi de
l'humanité":--
Paul ne parle pas de la vision de Marie et reporte tout l'honneur
de la première apparition sur Pierre. Mais cette expression est
très~inexacte. Pierre ne vit que le caveau vide, le suaire et le
linceul. Marie seule aima assez pour dépasser la nature et faire
revivre le fantome du maitre exquis. Dans ces sortes de crises
merveilleuses, voir après les autres n'est rien; tout le mérite
est de voir pour la première fois; car les autres modèlent ensuite
leur vision sur le type reçu. C'est le propre des belles
organisations de concevoir l'image promptement, avec justesse et
par une sorte de sens intime du dessin. La gloire de la
résurrection appartient donc à Marie de Magdala. Après Jésus,
c'est Marie qui a le plus fait pour la fondation du Christianisme.
L'ombre créée par les sens délicats de Madeleine plane encore sur
le monde.... Loin d'ici, raison impuissante! Ne va pas appliquer
une froide analyse à ce chef-d'oeuvre de l'idéalisme et de
l'amour. Si la sagesse renonce à consoler cette pauvre race
humaine, trahie par le sort, laisse la folie tenter l'aventure. Où
est le sage qui a donné au monde autant de joie, que la possédée
Marie de Magdala?
He proceeds to describe, on the same supposition, the other events of
the day, which he accepts as having in a certain very important sense
happened, though, of course, only in the sense which excludes their
reality. No doubt, for a series of hallucinations, anything will do in
the way of explanation. The scene of the evening was really believed to
have taken place as described, though it was the mere product of chance
noises and breaths of air on minds intently expectant; and we are
bidden to remember "that in these decisive hours a current of wind, a
creaking window, an accidental rustle, settle the belief of nations for
centuries." But at any rate it was a decisive hour:--
Tels furent les incidents de ce jour qui a fixé le sort de
l'humanité. L'opinion que Jésus était ressuscité s'y fonda d'une
manière irrévocable. La secte, qu'on avait cru éteindre en tuant
le maître, fut dès lors assurée d'un immense avenir.
We are willing to admit that Christian writers have often spoken
unreally and unsatisfactorily enough in their comments on this subject.
But what Christian comment, hard, rigid, and narrow in its view of
possibilities, ever equalled this in its baselessness and supreme
absence of all that makes a view look like the truth? It puts the most
extravagant strain on documents which, truly or falsely, but at any
rate in the most consistent and uniform manner, assert something
different. What they assert in every conceivable form, and with
distinct detail, are facts; it is not criticism, but mere arbitrary
license, to say that all these stand for visions. The issue of truth or
falsehood is intelligible; the middle supposition of confusion and
mistake in that which is the basis of everything, and is definitely and
in such varied ways repeated, is trifling and incredible. We may
disbelieve, if we please, St. Paul's enumeration of the appearances
after the Resurrection; but to resolve it into a series of visions is
to take refuge in the most unlikely of guesses. And, when we take into
view the whole of the case--not merely the life and teaching out of
which everything grew, but the aim and character of the movement which
ensued, and the consequences of it, long tested and still continuing,
to the history and development of mankind--we find it hard to measure
the estimate of probability which is satisfied with the supposition
that the incidents of one day of folly and delusion irrevocably decided
the belief of ages, and the life and destiny of millions. Without the
belief in the Resurrection there would have been no Christianity; if
anything may be laid down as certain, this may. We should probably
never have even heard of the great Teacher; He would not have been
believed in, He would not have been preached to the world; the impulse
to conversion would have been wanting; and all that was without
parallel good and true and fruitful in His life would have perished,
and have been lost in Judaea. And the belief in the Resurrection M.
Renan thinks due to an hour of over-excited fancy in a woman agonized
by sorrow and affection. When we are presented with an hypothesis on
the basis of intrinsic probability, we cannot but remember that the
power of delusion and self-deception, though undoubtedly shown in very
remarkable instances, must yet be in a certain proportion to what it
originates and produces, and that it is controlled by the numerous
antagonistic influences of the world. Crazy women have founded
superstitions; but we cannot help thinking that it would be more
difficult than M. Renan supposes for crazy women to found a world-wide
religion for ages, branching forth into infinite forms, and tested by
its application to all varieties of civilisation, and to national and
personal character. M. Renan points to La Salette. But the assumption
would be a bold one that the La Salette people could have invented a
religion for Christendom which would stand the wear of eighteen
centuries, and satisfy such different minds. Pious frauds, as he says,
may have built cathedrals. But you must take Christianity for what it
has proved itself to be in its hard and unexampled trial. To start an
order, a sect, an institution, even a local tradition or local set of
miracles, on foundations already laid, is one thing; it is not the same
to be the spring of the most serious and the deepest of moral movements
for the improvement of the world, the most unpretending and the most
careless of all outward form and show, the most severely searching and
universal and lasting in its effects on mankind. To trace that back to
the Teacher without the intervention of the belief in the Resurrection
is manifestly impossible. We know what He is said to have taught; we
know what has come of that teaching in the world at large; but if the
link which connects the two be not a real one, it is vain to explain it
by the dreams of affection. It was not a matter of a moment or an hour,
but of days and weeks continually; not the assertion of one imaginative
mourner or two, but of a numerous and variously constituted body of
people. The story, if it was not true, was not delusion, but imposture.
We certainly cannot be said to know much of what happens in the genesis
of religions. But that between such a teacher and such teaching there
should intervene such a gigantic falsehood, whether imposture or
delusion, is unquestionably one of the hardest violations of
probability conceivable, as well as one of the most desperate
conclusions as regards the capacity of mankind for truth. Few thoughts
can be less endurable than that the wisest and best of our race, men of
the soberest and most serious tempers, and most candid and judicial
minds, should have been the victims and dupes of the mad affection of a
crazy Magdalen, of "ces touchantes démoniaques, ces pécheresses
converties, ces vraies fondatrices du Christianisme." M. Renan shrinks
from solving such a question by the hypothesis of conscious fraud. To
solve it by sentiment is hardly more respectful either to the world or
to truth.