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THE
MANLINESS OF CHRIST
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THE
Manliness of Christ
BY
THOMAS HUGHES, Q.C.
AUTHOR OF
‘TOM BROWN’S SCHOOLDAYS,’ ETC.
London
MACMILLAN AND CO.
AND NEW YORK
1894
All rights reserved
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First Edition. Crown 8vo. 1879.
Reprinted 1880.
Second Edition. Fcap. 8vo. 1894.
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DEDICATORY PREFACE
WHEN this book was first published I was Principal of the Working Men’s
College in London, and had in my mind the students there, who came as a
rule from poorer homes, and had grown up under different surroundings
and influences from those in and under which I had myself been brought
up at Rugby and Oxford. It is now twelve years since I have retired from
the principalship of the W. M. C., and, except occasional visits at
Christmas to attend the anniversary meetings of the Old Students’ Club,
my direct connection with the College has practically ceased, though my
interest in its special work is as strong as ever. On the other hand, in
the last few years my direct connection with Rugby has been revived in
an unexpected manner. At the request of Dr. Percival I have delivered
“Layman’s Sunday evening addresses,” to the School in the course which
he, wisely in my opinion, established three years since. Judging by my
own case, it is a very healthy, and rather pathetic, experience for an
old man to be thus brought back into touch with that far-away time in
his own life,
“When all the world was young, lads,
And all the trees were green.”
At any rate it has been so with me, and has revived a wish I had long
entertained, in a fitful sort of way, of drawing somewhat closer the
bonds which connect the beginning and end of a long life, now that the
end is so well in sight. That wish came upon me again when, at the
request of the school, I agreed to print the first address of 1891, and
more strongly when the same request was renewed as to those of 1892 and
1894, and with it the question whether I might not put them in some less
ephemeral shape than that of pamphlets of ten pages, printed by the
School bookseller. While I was correcting the proofs of my last address
an unexpected offer came from Messrs. Macmillan for a new edition of
_The Manliness of Christ_, which has been for some time out of print.
This offer seemed to give me just the opportunity I was in search of. In
all human likelihood this is the last book I shall ever publish, and on
reading it again I cannot but think that the three addresses now added
are in harmony with, and fit well enough into, the text and argument of
the book. Of this at any rate I am sure, that no better specimen of true
Christian manliness has appeared in my day than that of my old
schoolfellow William Cotton Oswell. So these three addresses have been
added, and they give me some excuse for gratifying my wish, and
dedicating this enlarged edition of the book to my young schoolfellows
of this last decade of the century and the students of the Working Men’s
College. If, as I hope, it should lead to some alliance or connection
between the school and the Working Men’s College, and should incline
Rugby boys who settle in London, either as professional or business men,
to join the College and take part in its educational work, I believe
that both School and College will benefit. There remains one point upon
which I feel bound to say a few words, and which I have had to
reconsider carefully before consenting to the republication of this
book. On reading the _Second Charge of the Bishop of Oxford_, published
last year, I found that he insists strongly on the omniscience of Christ
being of the essence of His human personality, and that He did not
divest Himself of His almightiness or all-knowledge on becoming man. My
respect—I may say my reverence for Bishop Stubbs both as a theologian
and a man, is so deep that I hesitated before allowing a book of mine to
go forth again which assumes the opposite view; viz. that He did so
divest Himself, and that when He became man He became man in all things
like as we are, which of course excludes omniscience. After the best
consideration I could give, I found that I could not abandon my old
belief, in the face of Christ’s own sayings, and above all of that last
cry on the cross of “Eloi Eloi lama sabachthani.” However, the Bishop
says truly in this same charge, “the Church has lived patiently for 1900
years without having other mysteries solved or explained,” and I venture
to think that this of Christ’s omniscience while in the flesh is one of
those as to which it can safely be left for each of us to hold the faith
which best approves itself to his own conscience.
THOMAS HUGHES.
1894.
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CONTENTS
INTRODUCTORY
PAGE
The Motive of the Book 1
PART I
The Holy Land, A.D. 30—The 9
Battle-Field of the Great
Captain
PART II
The Tests of Manliness 20
PART III
Christ’s Boyhood 42
PART IV
The Call of Christ 73
PART V
Christ’s Ministry, Act I. 92
PART VI
Christ’s Ministry, Act II. 113
PART VII
Christ’s Ministry, Act III. 131
PART VIII
The Last Act 150
CONCLUSION
An Address delivered at Clifton 163
College, Sunday Evening,
October 1879
An Address delivered at Rugby 189
School, February 1891
An Address delivered at Rugby 209
School, June 1892
William Cotton Oswell, 1894 231
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INTRODUCTORY
THE MOTIVE OF THE BOOK
SOME time ago, when I was considering what method it would be best to
adopt in Sunday afternoon readings with a small class in the Working
Men’s College, I received a communication which helped me to come to a
decision. It came in the form of a proposal for a new association, to be
called “The Christian Guild.” The promoters were persons living in our
northern towns, some of which had lately gained a bad reputation for
savage assaults and crimes of violence. My correspondents believed that
some organised effort ought to be made to meet this evil, and that there
was nothing in existence which would serve their purpose. The Young
Men’s Christian Associations had increased of late indeed in numbers,
but had failed to reach the class which most needed Christian
influences. There was a widespread feeling, they said, that these
associations—valuable as they allowed them to be in many ways—did not
cultivate individual manliness in their members, and that this defect
was closely connected with their open profession of Christianity. They
had separated their members too much from the ordinary habits and life
of young men; and had set before them a wrong standard, which taught,
not that they were to live in the world and subdue it to their Master,
but were to withdraw from it as much as possible.
Therefore they would found their new “Christian Guild” on quite other
principles. They aimed, indeed, at something like a revival of the
muscular Christianity of twenty-five years ago, organised for missionary
work in the great northern towns. The members of the Guild must be first
of all Christians, but selected as far as possible for some act of
physical courage or prowess. It was proposed that the medal of the Royal
Humane Society, or the championship of a town or district in running,
wrestling, rowing, or other athletic exercise, should qualify at once
for membership. These first members were to form the root, as it were,
out of which branches of the Guild were to grow—one, they hoped, in
every great centre of population. Each branch, if properly supported,
might attract the most vigorous and energetic young men of its district,
and so by degrees give a higher tone to the sports and occupations which
absorb the spare time and energies of young Englishmen.
I did not see my way to joining any such movement, which indeed never
seemed at all hopeful to me: nor do I know whether anything more has
been done in the matter. But the proposal set me thinking on the state
of things amongst us which “The Christian Guild” was intended to meet. I
was obliged to admit that my own experience, now stretching over a
quarter of a century in London, agreed to some extent with that of my
northern correspondents. Here too this same feeling exists, or it may be
this same prejudice, as to “Young Men’s Christian Associations” amongst
the class from which their members are for the most part taken. Their
tone and influence are said to lack manliness, and the want of manliness
is attributed to their avowed profession of Christianity. If you pursue
the inquiry, you will often come upon a distinct belief that this
weakness is inherent in our English religion; that our Christianity does
appeal and must appeal habitually and mainly to men’s fears—to that in
them which is timid and shrinking, rather than to that which is
courageous and outspoken. This strange delusion is often alleged as the
cause of the want of power and attraction in these associations.
I do not myself at all share this opinion as to the Young Men’s
Christian Associations, for, so far as I have had the means of judging,
they seem to me, especially in the last few years, to have been doing
excellent service, though they work in a narrow groove. But whether this
be so or not, is a matter of comparative indifference, and the
controversy may safely be left to settle itself. But the underlying
belief in the rising generation that Christianity is really responsible
for this supposed weakness in its disciples, is one which ought not to
be so treated. The conscience of every man recognises courage as the
foundation of manliness, and manliness as the perfection of human
character; and if Christianity runs counter to conscience in this
matter, or indeed in any other, Christianity will go to the wall.
But does it? On the contrary, is not perfection of character—“Be ye
perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect,” perfection to be reached
by moral effort in the faithful following of our Lord’s life on
earth—the final aim which the Christian religion sets before individual
men—and constant contact and conflict with evil of all kinds the
necessary condition of that moral effort, and the means adopted by our
Master, in the world in which we live, and for which He died? In that
strife then, the first requisite is courage or manfulness, gained
through conflict with evil—for without such conflict there can be no
perfection of character, the end for which Christ says we were sent into
this world. But was Christ’s own character perfect in this respect—not
only in charity, meekness, purity, long-suffering, but in courage? If
not, can He be anything more than the highest and best of men, even if
He were that; can He be the Son of God in any sense except that in which
all men are sons?
This was the question which was forced on me at the time by the
proposals of “The Christian Guild,” and it gave me the hint I was in
search of as to the method of our Sunday readings. We followed it up as
well as we could through the events recorded in the gospels, applying
the test at every stage of the drama. The results are collected in the
following papers.
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PART I
THE HOLY LAND A.D. 30—THE BATTLE FIELD OF THE GREAT CAPTAIN
“Phœnicia and Palestine were sometimes annexed to and
sometimes separated from the jurisdiction of Syria. The
former was a narrow and rocky coast; the latter was a
territory scarcely superior to Wales in fertility or extent!
Yet Phœnicia and Palestine will ever live in the memory of
mankind, since America as well as Europe has received
letters from the one and religion from the other.”—GIBBON,
Chap. i.
IN order to approach our subject with any chance of making the central
figure clear to ourselves, and getting out of the atmosphere of
unreality in which our ordinary religious training is too apt to leave
us, we must make an effort to understand the condition and the
surroundings of life in Palestine when our Lord appeared in it as a
leader and teacher.
Take first the southern portion, the scene of the opening and closing
days of His ministry, and of periodical visits during those three years.
While He was still a boy under ten years of age, the Romans had deposed
Herod Archelaus, and had annexed Judæa, which was from thenceforth ruled
as a province of the empire by a Roman procurator. The rebellion of
Judas of Gamala, which followed shortly afterwards, was a fierce protest
of the Jews against the imperial taxation and the yoke of Rome. It was
suppressed in the stern Roman fashion, and from that time till the
commencement of Christ’s public ministry, Jerusalem and the surrounding
country were on the verge of revolt, a constant source of anxiety to the
Roman procurators, and held down with difficulty by the heavy hand of
the legions which garrisoned them.
All that was best and worst in the Jewish character and history combined
to render the Roman yoke intolerably galling to the nation. The peculiar
position of Jerusalem—a sort of Mecca to the tribes acknowledging the
Mosaic law—made Syria the most dangerous of all the Roman provinces. To
that city enormous crowds of pilgrims, of the most stiff-necked and
fanatical of all races, flocked three times at least in every year,
bringing with them offerings and tribute for the Temple and its
guardians, on a scale which must have made the hierarchy at Jerusalem
formidable even to the world’s master, by their mere command of wealth.
But this would be the least of the causes of anxiety to the Roman
governor, as he spent year after year face to face with these terrible
leaders of a terrible people.
These high priests and rulers of the Jews were indeed quite another kind
of adversaries from the leaders, secular or religious, of any of those
conquered countries, which the Romans were wont to treat with
contemptuous toleration. They still represented living traditions of the
glory and sanctity of their nation, and of Jerusalem, and exercised
still a power over that nation which the most resolute and ruthless of
Roman procurators did not care wantonly to brave.
At the same time the yoke of high priest and scribe and pharisee was
even heavier on the necks of their own people than that of the Roman.
They had built up a huge superstructure of traditions and ceremonies
round the law of Moses, which they held up to the people as more sacred
and binding than the law itself. This superstructure was their special
charge. This was, according to them, the great national inheritance, the
most valuable portion of the covenant which God had made with their
fathers. To them, as leaders of their nation—a select, priestly, and
learned caste—this precious inheritance had been committed. Outside that
caste, the dim multitude, “the people which knoweth not the law,” were
despised while they obeyed, accursed as soon as they showed any sign of
disobedience. Such being the state of Judæa, it would not be easy to
name in all history a less hopeful place for the reforming mission of a
young carpenter, a stranger from a despised province, one entirely
outside the ruling caste, though of the royal race, and who had no
position whatever in any rabbinical school.
In Galilee the surroundings were slightly different, but scarcely more
promising. Herod Antipas, the weakest of that tyrant family, the seducer
of his brother’s wife, the fawner on Cæsar, the spendthrift oppressor of
the people of his tetrarchy, still ruled in name over the country, but
with Roman garrisons in the cities and strongholds. Face to face with
him, and exercising an _imperium in imperio_ throughout Galilee, was the
same priestly caste, though far less formidable to the civil power, and
to the people, than in the southern province. Along the western coast of
the Sea of Galilee, the chief scene of our Lord’s northern ministry, lay
a network of towns densely inhabited, and containing a large admixture
of Gentile traders. This infusion of foreign blood, the want of any such
religious centre at Jerusalem, and the contempt with which the southern
Jews regarded their provincial brethren of Galilee, had no doubt
loosened to some extent the yoke of the priests and scribes and lawyers
in that province. But even here their traditionary power over the masses
of the people was very great, and the consequences of defying their
authority as penal, though the penalty might be neither so swift nor so
certain, as in Jerusalem itself. Such was the society into which Christ
came.
It is not easy to find a parallel case in the modern world, but perhaps
the nearest exists in a portion of our own empire. The condition of
parts of India in our day resembles in some respects that of Palestine
in the year A.D. 30. In the Mahratta country, princes, not of the native
dynasty, but the descendants of foreign courtiers (like the Idumæan
Herods), are reigning. British residents at their courts, hated and
feared, but practically all-powerful as Roman procurators, answer to the
officers and garrisons of Rome in Palestine. The people are in bondage
to a priestly caste scarcely less heavy than that which weighed on the
Judæan and Galilean peasantry. If the Mahrattas were Mohammedans, and
Mecca were situate in the territory of Scindiah or Holkar; if the
influence of twelve centuries of Christian training could be wiped out
of the English character, and the stubborn and fierce nature of the Jew
substituted for that of the Mahratta; a village reformer amongst them,
whose preaching outraged the Brahmins, threatened the dynasties, and
disturbed the English residents, would start under somewhat similar
conditions to those which surrounded Christ when He commenced His
ministry.
In one respect, and one only, the time seemed propitious. The mind and
heart of the nation were full of the expectation of a coming Messiah—a
King who should break every yoke from off the necks of His people, and
should rule over the nations, sitting on the throne of David. The
intensity of this expectation had, in the opening days of His ministry,
drawn crowds into the wilderness beyond Jordan from all parts of Judæa
and Galilee, at the summons of a preacher who had caught up the last
cadence of the song of their last great prophet, and was proclaiming
that both the deliverance and the kingdom which they were looking for
were at hand. In those crowds who flocked to hear John the Baptist there
were doubtless some even amongst the priests and scribes, and many
amongst the poor Jewish and Galilean peasantry, who felt that there was
a heavier yoke upon them than that of Rome or of Herod Antipas. But the
record of the next three years shows too clearly that even these were
wholly unprepared for any other than a kingdom of this world, and a
temporal throne to be set up in the holy city.
And so, from the first, Christ had to contend not only against the whole
of the established powers of Palestine, but against the highest
aspirations of the best of His countrymen. These very Messianic hopes,
in fact, proved the greatest stumbling-block in His path. Those who
entertained them most vividly had the greatest difficulty in accepting
the carpenter’s son as the promised Deliverer. A few days only before
the end He had sorrowfully to warn the most intimate and loving of His
companions and disciples, “Ye know not what spirit ye are of.”
We must endeavour to keep these external conditions and surroundings of
the life of a Galilean peasant in the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius
Cæsar in our minds, if we really wish honestly to understand and
appreciate the work done by one of them in those three short years, or
the character of the doer of it.
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