All religions have given a prominent place to the problem of
existence and the origin of evil; all have attempted its
solution.
{56}
The good and the evil genius, Ormuzd and Ahriman among the
Persians; God the Creator, God the Preserver, and God the
Destroyer--Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva--in India; the Titans
overwhelmed by the thunderbolts of Jove while scaling Olympus;
Prometheus chained to the rock for having snatched fire from
heaven; all are so many hypotheses to explain the conflict
between good and evil, between order and disorder in the world
and in man. But all these hypotheses are complicated, confused,
and encumbered with chimeras and fables; all attribute the
derivation of evil to incongruous causes, none assign any term to
the conflict, nor find a remedy for the evil. The Christian
religion alone clearly states and effectually solves the
question; it alone imputes to man himself, and to him alone, the
origin of evil; it alone represents God as intervening to raise
man from his fall, and to save him from his peril.
{57}
In the course of the sixth and fifth centuries before the
Christian era, a great fact appears in history; a breath of
reform, religious, moral and social, arises, and spreads from
east to west, among all the nations then at all progressing in
the path of civilization. Notwithstanding the uncertainties of
chronology, it may be said, according to the most recent and
accurate researches, that Confucius in China, the Buddha
Càkya-Mouni in India, Zoroaster in Persia, Pythagoras and
Socrates in Greece, are all included in the limits of this epoch;
[Footnote 5] men as dissimilar as they are celebrated, but who
have all, in different ways and in unequal degrees, undertaken a
great work of reforming both the men and the social institutions
of their times.
[Footnote 5: These researches give the following dates:--1.
Confucius, from 551 to 478 B.C.; 2. Zoroaster, from 564 to
487, or from 589 to 512 B.C.; 3. Buddha Càkya-Mouni, in the
seventh and sixth centuries B.C. (he died, according to
Burnouf, 543 B.C.); 4. Pythagoras, from 580 to 500 B.C.; 5.
Socrates, 470 to 400 or 399 B.C.]
{58}
Confucius was above all a practical moralist, skilled in
observation, counsel, and discipline; Buddha Càkya-Mouni, a
dreamer, and a mystical and popular preacher; Zoroaster, a
legislator, religious and political; Pythagoras and Socrates,
philosophers, bent upon instructing the distinguished bands of
disciples whom they gathered around them. There is no doubt,
notwithstanding the trials of their life, that neither power nor
glory amongst their contemporaries was wanting to them. Confucius
and Zoroaster were the favourites and counsellors of kings.
Buddha Càkya-Mouni, himself the son of a king, became the idol of
innumerable multitudes. Pythagoras and Socrates formed schools
and pupils who were an honour to the human mind. By their
personal genius and by the excellence of some of their ideas and
actions, these men have ensured themselves the admiration of all
posterity. Did they act up to their teachings, and accomplish
what they attempted? Did they really change the moral and social
condition of nations? Did they cause humanity to make any great
progress, and open to it horizons which it had not before known?
{59}
By no means. Whatever fame attaches to the names of these men,
whatever influence they may have exerted, what ever trace of
their passage may have remained, they rather appeared to have
power than really to possess it; they agitated the surface far
more than they stirred the depths; they did not draw nations out
of the beaten tracks in which they had lived. They did not
transform souls. In considering the facts at large, and
notwithstanding the political and material revolutions which they
underwent, China after Confucius, India after Buddha, Persia
after Zoroaster, Greece after Pythagoras and Socrates, followed
in the same ways, retained the same propensities, as before.
Still more, among these very different nations, stagnation was
only be succeeded by decay. Where are these nations at the
present day, more than two thousand years after the appearance of
these glorious characters in their history? What great progress,
what salutary changes, have been effected? What are they in
comparison and in contact with Christian nations?
{60}
Outside of Christianity there have been grand spectacles of
activity and force, brilliant phenomena of genius and virtue,
generous attempts at reform, learned philosophical systems, and
beautiful mythological poems; no real profound or fruitful
regeneration of humanity and of society.
A few ages only after these barren efforts among the great
nations of the world, Jesus Christ appears among a small, obscure
people, weak and despised. He Himself is weak and despised in the
midst of his people; He neither possesses nor seeks any social
power, any temporal means of action and of success; He collects
around Him only disciples weak and despised as Himself. Not only
are they weak and despised, they proclaim it themselves, and, far
from being troubled at this, they glory in it, and derive from it
confidence. St. Paul writes to the Corinthians: "And I, brethren,
when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of
wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God. For I determined
not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him
crucified.
{61}
And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much
trembling. ... Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in
reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for
Christ's sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong." [Footnote
6]
[Footnote 6: 1 Corinthians ii. 13; 2 Corinthians xii. 10.]
And in truth, Jesus Christ, the Master of St. Paul, is strong in
his sufferings, and imparts his strength to his disciples; from
his cross, He accomplishes what erewhile, in Asia and Europe,
princes and philosophers, the powerful of the earth, and sages,
attempted without success; He changes the moral state and the
social state of the world; He pours into the souls of men new
enlightenment and new powers; for all classes, for all human
conditions, He prepares destinies before his advent unknown; He
liberates them at the same time that He lays down rules for their
guidance; He quickens them and stills them; He places the divine
law and human liberty face to face, and yet still in harmony; He
offers an effectual remedy for the evil which weighs upon
humanity; to sin He opens the path of salvation, to unhappiness
the door of hope.
{62}
Whence comes this power? What are its source and its nature? How
did those who were its witnesses and instruments think and speak
of it at the moment when it was manifested?
They all, unanimously, saw in Jesus Christ, God; most of them,
from the first moment, suddenly moved and enlightened by his
presence and his words; some, with rather more surprise and
hesitation, but soon penetrated and convinced in their turn.
"When Jesus came into the coasts of Cæsarea Philippi, he asked
his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I the Son of man am?
And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist; some,
Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets. He saith
unto them, But whom say ye that I am? And Simon Peter answered
and said, Thou art the Christ, the son of the living God.
{63}
And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon
Barjona; for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but
my Father which is in heaven." [Footnote 7] Another day, meeting
with a similar instance of doubt, Jesus says to Thomas, "If ye
had known me, ye should have known my Father also: and from
henceforth ye know him, and have seen him. Philip saith unto him,
Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us. Jesus saith unto
him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not
known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father."
[Footnote 8]
[Footnote 7: Matthew xvi. 13-17.]
[Footnote 8: John, xiv. 7-9.]
It has been remarked, that there are certain variations in the
language of the Apostles, and certain shades of difference in
their leading impressions; and this is indeed true: they call
Jesus Christ at one time the Son of God, at another the Son of
Man; they regard Him and represent Him now under his divine
aspect, at another under his human aspect; they do not present
exactly the same image of Him; they do not all equally dwell upon
the same traits of his nature, or the same facts of his earthly
life.
{64}
St. Matthew is more a narrator and moralist; it is he who relates
with fuller details the birth and childhood of Jesus Christ, and
who gives at the greatest length the Sermon on the Mount. St.
John is more in the habit of contemplating and depicting the
divine nature of Jesus Christ and his relation to God: "In the
beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word
was God. ... And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt amongst us,
and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the
Father, full of grace and truth. ... No man hath seen God at any
time; the only-begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father,
he hath declared him." [Footnote 9]
[Footnote 9: John, i. 1, 14, 18.]
{65}
It is also St. John who relates the testimony of the Forerunner,
St. John the Baptist, answering to those who had said to him that
all men come to Jesus Christ: "Ye yourselves bear me witness,
that I said, I am not the Christ, but that I am sent before him.
... He that cometh from above is above all. ... He whom God hath
sent speaketh the words of God: for God giveth not the Spirit by
measure unto him. ... The Father loveth the Son, and hath given
all things into his hand" [Footnote 10] St. Paul is more
systematic, and enters more fully into the questions and
principles of the Christian doctrine, and he regards the divinity
of Jesus Christ as the first of these principles. He writes to
the Philippians: "Let this mind be in you, which was also in
Christ Jesus: who, being in the form of God, thought it no
usurpation to be equal with God: but made himself of no
reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made
in the likeness of men: and being found in fashion as a man, he
humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death
of the cross." [Footnote 11]
[Footnote 10: John iii. 28, 31, 34, and 35.]
[Footnote 11: Philippians ii. 5-6. I have given this verse in
Osterwald's translation, which is also that of the Vulgate;
but my son Guillaume, who is following out a careful course
of study of Latin and Greek philology in sacred and profane
literature, reminds me that the text of this passage presents
a difficulty which furnished a field for the labours of
Erasmus, Cameron, Grotius, Méric Casaubon, in the sixteenth
century, as well as many others before and after them. The
Greek word [Greek text] admits of two meanings, an active and
a passive sense--it may designate the _action of
ravishing, of carrying off by force,_ or the _object
carried off_--the act of depredation, or the spoil.
Substantives derived from verbs frequently waver between
these two acceptations, and the word [Greek text], which is
merely another form of [Greek text], is unquestionably a case
in point. Æschylus, Euripides, Herodotus, have employed it in
the first sense; Æschylus, Euripides, Thucydides, and
Polybius in the second sense. Now, in the passage of St.
Paul, accordingly as one or the other sense is adopted, these
words must either be translated thus: "He did not consider it
a usurpation to be equal to God;" or thus, "He did not
display as a trophy his equality to God;" that is to say: He
did not display His equality with God as the conquerors of
the earth display the spoils and booty which they have
amassed; He did not make use of His divinity to reign, to
triumph, to pride himself in it; He was not the Messiah whom
the carnal Jews expected, a visible king and victorious in
arms; but, on the contrary, "he humbled himself, and took
upon him the form of a servant," etc., etc. This second
interpretation seems more probable; the reasoning on which it
is founded is thus more connected and flowing; and at the
same time, it leaves the doctrine of the Apostle intact; it
changes nothing in his conception or his conclusions. In this
passage, as in many others, St. Paul likewise affirms the
divinity of the Saviour whom he announces to men; and it is
from this majesty, subjected to a voluntary humiliation,
veiled under the form of a servant, obedient unto the death
of the cross, that He presents an august example and an
imperative lesson for Christians of humility and mutual
support. It is thus that this interpretation has been
admitted and defended by two eminent men, a scholar of the
sixteenth and a theologian of the nineteenth century, both of
whom were strongly attached to the dogma of the divinity of
Jesus Christ--I allude to Méric Casaubon (De Verborum Usu,
pp. 138-146, at the end of the letters of his father), and M.
A. Vinet (Homilétique, p. 116).]
{66}
.... It is he "who is the image of the invisible God, the
first-born of every creature: for by him were all things created,
that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible,
whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or
powers: all things were created by him, and for him: and he is
before all things, and by him all things consist." [Footnote 12]
[Footnote 12: Colossians i. 15-17.]
{67}
St. Peter and St. John, in their Epistles, speak in the same
terms as St. Paul. St. Peter says, "We have not followed
cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power
and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his
majesty. For he received from God the Father honour and glory,
when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory,
This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him."
[Footnote 13]
[Footnote 13: 2 Peter i. 16, 17.]
{68}
St. John writes: "Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not
the Father; but he that acknowledgeth the Son hath the Father
also." [Footnote 14] "Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: every
Spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is
of God; and every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is
come in the flesh is not of God." [Footnote 14]
[Footnote 13: 1 John ii. 23.]
[Footnote 14: 1 John iv. 2, 3.]
Such is the language of the Apostles; such are, at the same time,
its shades of variance and its harmony. They have all evidently
the same conception of Jesus Christ, they have all the same faith
in Him. St. Matthew, as well as St. John, St. Peter and St. Paul,
alike regard Jesus Christ as at once God and man, the
representative of God on earth, and the Mediator between God and
men--come from God, and re-ascended unto Him as the source and
centre of His being. The dogma of the Incarnation, that is to
say, of the divinity of Jesus Christ, pervades the Holy
Scriptures--the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, the Epistles
of the Apostles, the writings of the first Fathers. It is the
common and fixed basis, the source and essence of the Christian
faith.
{69}
This was affirmed and declared by Jesus Christ himself. What His
disciples believed and related of Him, is what He himself told
them of himself, as well as what they themselves witnessed and
thought of Him: "All things are delivered unto me of my Father:
and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father: neither knoweth any
man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will
reveal him." [Footnote 15] --"I and my Father are one." [Footnote
16]
[Footnote 15: Matthew xi. 27.]
[Footnote 16: John x. 30.]
And when He approaches the term of His mission, when, after
having announced to His disciples that the hour was coming when
they would be dispersed, each going his own way, leaving Him
alone, Jesus Christ raises His thoughts to God and says, "Father,
the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify
thee: as thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should
give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him.
{70}
And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true
God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. I have glorified thee
on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to
do. And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with
the glory which I had with thee before the world was. I have
manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the
world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have
kept thy word. Now they have known that all things whatsoever
thou hast given me are of thee. For I have given unto them the
words which thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have
known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed
that thou didst send me. I pray for them: I pray not for the
world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine.
And all mine are thine, and thine are mine; and I am glorified in
them. And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the
world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep through thine own
name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we
are." [Footnote 17]
[Footnote 17: John xvii. 1-11.]
{71}
I might multiply these texts; but these surely suffice to show
that the words of Jesus Christ in relation to himself, and those
of His Apostles, are in perfect unison; He speaks of himself as
they speak of Him; He qualifies himself as they qualify Him; He
calls God His "Father," as His disciples call Him "the Son of
God." He has the same faith in himself, in His nature, and in His
mission, as St. Matthew, St. John, St. Peter, and St. Paul had in
Him.
It is a great source of error, in the study of facts, not to know
how to stop at their general and essential features, and, losing
sight of these, to give prominence to partial and secondary
features. On the subject of the divinity of Jesus Christ, that
fundamental principle of the Christian religion, the precise
meaning and import of such or such a word may be disputed; such
or such an expression may be thought an interpolation, and so
eliminated in any particular Gospel, in any particular Epistle;
nevertheless there will always remain infinitely more than
sufficient evidence of the fact that those who at the present day
believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ, believe simply what the
Apostles believed and said, and that the Apostles themselves only
believed and said, nearly nineteen centuries ago, what Jesus
Christ himself said to them.
{72}
The opponents of the dogma of the Incarnation and of the divinity
of Jesus Christ disregard equally man and history, the complex
elements of human nature, and the meaning of the great facts
which mark the religious life of the human race.
What is man himself, but an incomplete and imperfect incarnation
of God? The materialists who deny the soul, and the naturalists
who deny creation, are alone consistent in rejecting the
Christian dogma. All who believe in the distinction of spirit and
matter, who do not believe that man is the result of the
fermentation of matter, or of the transformation of species, are
constrained to admit the presence in human nature of the divine
element, and they must necessarily accept these words in Genesis:
"God created man in his own image;" that is to say, they must
acknowledge the presence of God in frail and fallible humanity.
{73}
I open the histories of all religions, of all mythologies, the
most refined as well as the grossest; I find at every step the
idea and the assertion of the Divine Incarnation. Brahmanism,
Buddhism, Paganism, all faiths, all religious idolatries, abound
in incarnations of every kind and date, primitive or successive,
connected with this or that historical event, adapted to explain
this or that fact, to satisfy this or that human propensity. It
is the natural and universal instinct of men to picture to
themselves the action of God upon the human race under the form
of the incarnation of God in man.
{74}
Like all religious instincts, that of the belief in the Divine
Incarnation may engender, and has engendered, the most absurd
superstitions, the most extravagant hypotheses. In the same way
as the natural faith in God has been the source of all
idolatries, so the tendency to incarnate God in man has given
rise to, and admitted, every kind of strange imagining and
spurious tradition. Are we then to pronounce all divine
incarnation false, every tradition of it spurious? Rather let us
say that it proceeds from the infirmity of the human mind, if we
see realities and mere chimeras, truths and errors, in such close
proximity, if we find them calling one another by the same names
and unceasingly confounding one another's attributes. The
pretended incarnation of Brahma, or of Buddha, proves no more
against the divinity of Jesus Christ than the adoration of idols
proves against the existence of God. Jesus Christ, God and Man,
has characteristics which appertain to Him alone. These have
founded His power and occasioned the success of His works, a
power and a success which belong to Him alone.
{75}
It is not a human reformer, but God himself, who, through Jesus
Christ, has accomplished what no human reformer has ever
accomplished, or even conceived,--the reform of the moral and
social condition of the world, the regeneration of the human
soul, and the solution of the problems of human destiny. It is by
these signs, by these results, that the divinity of Jesus Christ
is manifested. How was the Divine Incarnation accomplished in
man? Here, as in the union of the soul and the body, as in the
creation, arises the mystery; but if we cannot fathom the reason
of it, the fact not the less exists. When this fact has taken the
form of dogma, theology has sought to explain it. In my opinion,
this was a mistake; theology has obscured the fact in developing
and commenting upon it. It is the fact itself of the Incarnation
which constitutes the Christian faith, and which rises above all
definitions and all theological controversies. To disregard this
fact--to deny the divinity of Jesus Christ--is to deny, to
overthrow the Christian religion, which would never have been
what it is, and would never have accomplished what it has, but
that the Divine Incarnation was its principle, and Jesus
Christ--God and Man--its author.
{76}