Controversy has the mischievous power of the Homeric Jupiter: it
collects clouds amidst which the light that we seek for
disappears.
The Old and the New Testament, the history of the Jews and the
history of Jesus Christ, lie before us. Do these two monuments
form but one single edifice? That second history, is it comprised
and written beforehand in the first?
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Such is the question which has for the last eighteen centuries
occupied and divided the learned. Some affirm that Jesus Christ
was foreseen and predicted among the Jews, and that the series of
prophecies continued from the very time of Moses until the advent
of Christ. Others lay stress upon the hiatus--the want of
connection and cohesion--the contradictions to be detected here
between the Old and New Testament; and thence they conclude that
the text of the Old Testament by no means contains the facts that
appear in the New Testament, and that the miraculous history of
Jesus Christ was, in the bosom of Israel, neither miraculously
foreseen nor predicted.
Why was it, and how was it possible, that two assertions so
contradictory came to be both adopted and maintained by men most
of them as sincere as learned?
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They have all committed the fault of plunging into the petty
details of facts and texts, searching in all places, without
exception, for the complete demonstration of their particular
theses, and losing sight of the great fact, the general and
dominant fact to which we should refer as alone capable of
solving the question. They descend into the mazy paths which
perplex the plain below, instead of grasping from the summit of
the mountains, the whole comprehensive view, and the grand road
leading to the goal itself. Believers have insisted upon
discovering, fact by fact, in the biblical prophecies the whole
mission and all the life of Jesus. The incredulous, on the other
hand, have minutely adverted to all the discrepancies, all the
difficulties, suggested by a comparison of the texts of the Old
Testament and of the Gospel narrative; they have contrasted the
glories of the Messiah, the powerful King of Israel, so often
announced by the prophets, with the humble life, the cruel death
of Jesus, and with the ruin of Jerusalem.
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In my opinion, they have on both sides lost sight of the inward
and essential characteristic of this sublime history; the special
action of God is revealed therein, but without suppressing the
action of men; miracles take their place in the midst of the
natural course of events; the ambitious aspirations of the Jews
connect themselves with the religious perspective opened to them
by the prophets; the divine and the human, the inspiration from
on high and the impulse of the national imagination, appear
together. These two elements should be disentangled: the mind
should be raised above the perplexing influences which they
exercise, and the attention directed to that heavenly beam which
pierces the vapours of this earthly atmosphere. Thus, all the
embarrassment that controversy occasioned vanishing, the history
yields to us its profound meanings, and, in spite of
complications having their origin in the wordy explanations of
man, the design of God makes itself manifest in all its majestic
simplicity.
Discarding all discussion and commentary, let us merely collect,
from epoch to epoch, the principal texts which speak of the
advent of the future Messiah. I might here multiply citations,
but I limit myself to those where the allusion is evident. It is
the Bible, and the Bible alone, that is speaking.
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The first act of disobedience to God, the act of original sin,
has just been committed. The Eternal God says to the serpent that
has seduced Eve: "Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed
above all cattle, and above every beast of the field. ... And I
will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed
and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his
heel." [Footnote 78]
[Footnote 78: Genesis iii. 14, 15.]
He that shall bruise the head of the serpent shall belong, says
the Book of Genesis, to the race of Shem, to the posterity of
Abraham and Jacob, to the kingdom of Judah. "But thou, Beth-lehem
Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet
out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be Ruler in
Israel." [Footnote 79]
[Footnote 79: Genesis ix. 26; xii. 3; xlix. 10; Micah v. 2.]
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Israel is at its apogee of splendour: David prophesies alike the
sufferings and the glory of that Saviour of the world who is to
be not merely the King of Zion, but "the Son and the Anointed of
the Eternal:" "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" is the
expression attributed to him by the prophet king. ... "All they
that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake
the head. ... They gave me also gall for my meat, and in my
thirst they gave me vinegar to drink. ... They part my garments
among them, and cast lots upon my vesture. ... He trusted on the
Lord that he would deliver him; let him deliver him, seeing he
delighted in him. ... Ye that fear the Lord, praise him; all ye
the seed of Jacob, glorify him; and fear him, all ye the seed of
Israel. ... All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn
unto the Lord: and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship
before thee." [Footnote 80]
[Footnote 80: Psalms ii. 2, 6, 7; xxii. 1, 7; lxix. 21; xxii.
18, 8, 23, 27.]
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The kingdom of David and of Solomon has begun to decay; Judah and
Israel are separating; both kingdoms have their prophets, who at
one time struggle against the crimes and evils of their
respective ages, and, at another, occupy themselves in disclosing
prospects of the future.
"Hear ye now, O house of David. ...
"Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a
virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name
Immanuel. ...
"The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light:
they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them
hath the light shined. ...
"For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the
government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be
called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting
Father, The Prince of Peace. ...
"And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and
a Branch shall grow out of his roots:
"And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of
wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the
spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord;
"... and he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes,
neither reprove after the hearing of his ears:
"But with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and reprove
with equity, for the meek of the earth. ...
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"Listen, O isles, unto me; and hearken, ye people, from far;
The Lord hath called me from the womb; from the bowels of my
mother hath he made mention of my name. ...
"And said unto me, Thou art my servant, O Israel, in whom I
will be glorified.
"Then I said, I have laboured in vain, I have spent my strength
for nought, and in vain: yet surely my judgment is with the
Lord, and my work with my God.
"And now, saith the Lord that formed me from the womb to be his
servant, to bring Jacob again to him, Though Israel be not
gathered, yet shall I be glorious in the eyes of the Lord, and
my God shall be my strength.
"And he said, It is a light thing that thou shouldest be my
servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the
preserved of Israel: I will also give thee for a light to the
Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the
earth. ...
"Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of
Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and
having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a
colt the foal of an ass.
"... For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as
a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and
when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire
him.
"He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and
acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from
him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
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"Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet
we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.
"But he was wounded for our trangressions, he was bruised for
our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and
with his stripes we are healed.
"All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one
to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of
us all.
"He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his
mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep
before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.
"He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall
declare his generation? for he was cut off out of the land of
the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken.
...
"Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to
grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he
shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure
of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.
"He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be
satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify
many; for he shall bear their iniquities.
"Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he
shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he hath poured
out his soul unto death: and he was numbered with the
transgressors; and he bare the sin of many, and made
intercession for the transgressors." [Footnote 81]
[Footnote 81: Isaiah vii. 13-14; ix. 26; xi. 14; xlix. 1-6;
Zechariah ix. 9; Isaiah liii.]
{228}
Whatever controversies may arise out of these texts, and many
others which I might cite, one fact subsists and rises above all
question and all controversy. Seventeen centuries passed in the
interval between the Decalogue being received by Moses upon Mount
Sinai, and the actual approach of the Messiah announced by the
prophets; and at the end of these seventeen centuries, the God,
from whom Moses received the Decalogue, He who defined himself to
be "I am that I am." Jehovah, still is, has never ceased to be
the God, the sole God of Israel. Israel has passed through all
governments, undergone all vicissitudes, fallen into all the
errors to which it is possible for a nation to succumb: the Jews
have had a hierarchy, and judges, and kings; they have been
alternately conquerors and conquered, masters and slaves; they
have had their days of power and their days of humiliation, their
temptation to idolatry and paroxysms of impiety; still they have
ever returned to the One God: to the true God; their faith has
survived all their faults and all their misfortunes; and after
those seventeen centuries, Israel is waiting at the hand of
Jehovah a Messiah, to be, according to the affirmation of its
greatest prophets, the Liberator and the Saviour, not of Israel
alone, but of all nations.
{229}
Fact without parallel in history! In vain shall men exhaust
against it all their science, and all their scepticism: there is
here more than the work of man; the fact itself is not human. But
what more shall that fact become, and what shall be our belief,
when all shall have received its consummation,--the prophecies
their accomplishment,--when Jehovah shall have given to the
world Jesus Christ?
{230}
Eighth Meditation.
Jesus Christ According To The Gospel.
Need I say that by the words, "the Gospel," here used, I
understand the four Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, the
Epistles, all the books, in fact, which compose the Canon of the
New Testament as it is received by all Christians?
These books have been variously studied: now with the design of
disproving, now of explaining the life of Jesus Christ; now with
the object of a Controversialist, now with that of a Commentator.
I approach the subject in neither character. I would wish to
study Jesus Christ in the New Testament solely to know Him well,
and to make Him well known; to place Him before the reader, and
to depict Him faithfully according to the evidence of his
history.
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I propose hereafter, in a second series of these
_Meditations_, to examine its authenticity, and the degree
of credit to which it is entitled. For the moment I assume the
testimony as good and valid. Beyond all doubt, at the outset, it
is at least entitled to this respect. The powerful influence of
these books, and of the accounts which they contain, such as they
remain to us, has been put to the test and proved. They have
overcome Paganism. They have conquered Greece, Rome, and
barbarous Europe. They are actually overcoming the world. And the
sincerity of the authors is no less certain than the virtue of
the books: however possible it may be to contest the
enlightenment, the critical sagacity of the original historians
of Jesus Christ, their good faith is beyond all question: it
appears in their language; they believed what they said; they
sealed their assertions with their blood: "I believe," said
Pascal, "only those histories, the witnesses to which confirm
their attestation by submitting to death." Although not always a
sufficient reason to believe an account, it constitutes a
decisive motive to believe in the sincerity of the witness.
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I have before cited from the Old Testament some of the texts
which contain the promises made to Israel of the Messiah. These
promises had evidently excited lively attention amongst the Jews;
the satisfaction felt at their accomplishment expressed itself
loudly at the birth of Jesus Christ: "And behold, there was a man
in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon ... waiting for the
consolation of Israel: and the Holy Ghost was upon him. ... Lord,
now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy
word: For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast
prepared before the face of all people; a light to lighten the
Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel." [Footnote 82]
[Footnote 82: Luke ii. 25-32.]
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Besides Simeon, a pious woman, Anna, "of about fourscore and four
years, which departed not from the temple, but served God with
fastings and prayers night and day. And she coming in that
instant gave thanks unto the Lord, and spake of him to all them
that looked for redemption in Jerusalem." [Footnote 83]
[Footnote 83: Luke ii. 37, 38.]
But there was far more than merely the demonstrations of Simeon
and Anna,--than these impulses of joy on the part of the faithful
followers of Jehovah: "In those days came John the Baptist,
preaching in the wilderness of Judæa. ... And the same John had
his raiment of camel's hair, and a leathern girdle about his
loins; and his meat was locusts and wild honey. ... And saying,
Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. For this is he
that was spoken of by the prophet Esaias, saying, The voice of
one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight. ... I indeed baptize you with water unto
repentance. ... But there standeth one among you, whom ye know
not.
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He it is who, coming after me, is preferred before me, whose
shoe's latchet I am not worthy to unloose. ... And I knew him
not: but that he should be made manifest to Israel, therefore am
I come baptizing with water. ... And I saw, and bare record that
this is the Son of God." [Footnote 84]
[Footnote 84: Matthew iii. 1-5; Mark i. 2-11; Luke iii. 1-18;
John i. 26-34.]
Attempts have sometimes been made, although with no very great
confidence on the part of the propounders of the theory, to
represent Jesus as the most eminent among several reformers, who,
about the same epoch, aspired to the title and character of the
Messiah predicted by the prophets and expected by Israel.
Reference has been particularly made to one of His predecessors,
Judas the Gaulonite, who, a few years after the birth of Jesus,
on the occasion of a census ordered by the Imperial Legate
Quirinius, undertook to raise Judæa in insurrection against this
measure--against the tribute that it imposed, and against the
Emperor himself--proclaiming that to God alone belonged the
appellation _Master_, and that liberty was worth more than
life. [Footnote 85]
[Footnote 85: Joseph. Antiq. Jud. 1. xvii. ch. 6; 1. xviii.
ch. 1. Acts of the Apostles, ch. v. 34-39.]
{235}
These comparisons--I forbear to use the word assimilations--are
entirely without foundation. These men, who, as it is pretended,
anticipated the career of Jesus, were simply men who opposed the
Roman dominion, and who stood up, like the Maccabees before them,
in the name of national independence, and in a spirit of reaction
in favor of the Mosaic government. Jesus was not so anticipated:
His mission had no relation with any previous essay; and his sole
forerunner was John the Baptist, as strange as himself to any
political view or conspiracy, and as humble before Him--before
the true, the sole Messiah--as Judas the Gaulonite and his
adherents were bold and daring towards the Emperor.
{236}
There is an interval of thirty years between the birth of Jesus
and the day when He enters actively on the performance of his
divine mission. [Footnote 86]
[Footnote 86: The question as to the precise epoch of the
birth of Jesus Christ, as well as of the commencement and the
duration of His public career, has been well and concisely
considered in the Synopsis Evangelica of M. Constantin
Tischendorf (p. 16-19. Leipzig, 1864). The preferable
conclusion from these researches is, that Jesus Christ was
born in the year of Roma 750, that he commenced his divine
mission towards the end of the year of Rome 780, and that his
death took place in the fourth month of the year of Rome
783.]
These thirty years, however, were not idly passed, nor were they
without their peculiar testimony to Christ and the future in
store for Him:--
"And Joseph and his mother marvelled at those things which were
spoken of him. ...
"And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with
wisdom: and the grace of God was upon him.
"Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of
the Passover.
"And when he was twelve years old, they went up to Jerusalem
after the custom of the feast.
"And when they had fulfilled the days, as they returned, the
child Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem; and Joseph and his
mother knew not of it.
"But they, supposing him to have been in the company, went a
day's journey; and they sought him among their kinsfolk and
acquaintance.
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"And when they found him not, they turned back again to
Jerusalem, seeking him.
"And it came to pass, that after three days they found him in
the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing
them, and asking them questions.
"And all that heard him were astonished at his understanding
and answers.
"And when they saw him, they were amazed: and his mother said
unto him, Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? Behold, thy
father and I have sought thee sorrowing.
"And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? wist ye
not that I must be about my Father's business?
"And they understood not the saying which he spake unto them.
"And he went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was
subject unto them: but his mother kept all these sayings in her
heart.
"And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with
God and man." [Footnote 87]
[Footnote 87: Luke ii. 33, 40-52.]
{238}
Thus begins that manifestation in the person of the child Jesus
Christ, that mixture of humanity and divinity, of natural life
and miraculous life, which is his peculiar and sublime
characteristic. In the opinion of the men who, in principle,
reject the supernatural, this mixed divine-human nature, and
consequently Jesus Christ himself, is at once incomprehensible
and inadmissible. What wonder if Christ has in these days to
encounter such adversaries? Had He not to do so when invested
with the attributes of humanity, among contemporaries, and even
in his own family? In his first days of human existence, his
mother, Mary, saw Him and understood Him not. And nevertheless
"Mary kept all these sayings in her heart." Expression, at once
profound and touching; revealing the mysterious complication of
the nature of man! Man is not content to resign himself to the
limits imposed by the actual laws of the finite world; his
aspirations tend elsewhere. And still, when called upon to rise
above the present order of nature--that order which he is able to
appreciate--he experiences a certain astonishment, a certain
hesitation; he does not know if he ought to believe in that
supernatural that he was recently invoking, and that he never
ceases to invoke; for, like Mary, he preserves the instinct in
his heart!
{239}
It is just at the present day as it was nineteen centuries ago.
Jesus has ever to encounter such contradictory moods of human
nature: He is confronted at once by the hope of, the thirsting
after, the supernatural inherent in the human soul, and by all
the objections, all the doubts that the supernatural itself
suggests to the human mind. He has to satisfy that hope, to
surmount those doubts. The Gospel opens the history of this
solemn struggle, that gave rise to Christianity, and is the
source of all those agitations which afflict Christians at the
present day.