Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865, by
THE AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY,
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.
GEO. C. RAND & AVERY,
STEREOTYPERS AND PRINTERS.
“WHAT do ye think of the Son of Man?” This is the religious question of the age. We rejoice in it, and thank the infidel biographers of Jesus for having urged it upon the attention of the world. The result of the renewed struggle can not be doubtful: in all theological controversies, truth is the gainer in the end. Though nailed to the cross, and buried in the tomb, it rises again triumphant over error, taking captivity captive, and changing at times even a bitter foe, like Saul of Tarsus, into a devoted friend. Goethe says: “The conflict of faith and unbelief remains the proper, the only, the deepest theme of the history of the world and mankind, to which all others are subordinated.” This very conflict centers in the Christological problem.
The question of Christ is the question of Christianity, which
is the manifestation of his life in
The object of this book is simply to show, in a popular style, that the Person of Christ is the great central miracle of history, and the strongest evidence of Christianity. The very perfection of his humanity is a proof of his Divinity. The indwelling of God in him is the only satisfactory solution of the problem of his amazing character.
From his miraculous Person, his miraculous works follow as an
inevitable consequence. Being a miracle himself, he must perform miracles with the
same ease with which ordinary men do their ordinary works. The contrary would be
unnatural. The character of the tree determines the nature of the fruit. “Believe
me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me; or else
Standing on this rock, I feel safe against all the attacks of infidelity. The person of Christ is to me the greatest and surest of all facts; as certain as my own personal existence; yea, even more so: for Christ lives in me, and he is the only valuable part of my being. I am nothing without my Saviour. I am all with him, and would not exchange him for ten thousand worlds. To give up faith in Christ is to give up faith in humanity. Such skepticism legitimately ends at last in the nihilism of despair.
This volume has grown out of an essay of the author, on the
Moral Character of Christ, originally prepared for the Porter
Rhetorical Society, of the Theological Seminary at Andover, Mass., and delivered
at its anniversary, Aug. 1, 1860. The original title is: The Moral Character
of Christ; or, The Perfection of Christ’s Humanity a Proof of his Divinity.
A Theological Tract for the People. The essay was first published as an article
in the Mercersburg Review, Chambersburg, Penn., 1861, pp. 53; and twice republished
in England, in the British and Foreign Evangelical Review, and by the London
Religious Tract Society, 1863. It is referred to repeatedly in the seventh edition
of Dr. Ullmaun’s book on the Sinlessness of Jesus, as also in Dr. Dorner’s essay
on the same subject.
Infidels are seldom convinced by argument; for the springs of unbelief are in the heart rather than in the head. But honest inquirers and earnest skeptics, like Nathanael and Thomas, who love the truth, and wish only for tangible support of their weak faith, will never refuse, when the evidence is laid before them, to embrace it with grateful joy, and to worship the incarnate God. Blessed are they that seek the truth; for they shall find it.
P. S.
Bible House, New York, May 11, 1865.
WHEN the angel of the Lord appeared to Moses in the burning bush, he was commanded to put off his shoes from his feet; for the place whereon he stood was holy ground. With what reverence and awe, then, should we approach the contemplation of the great reality—God manifest in the flesh—of which the vision of Moses was but a significant type and shadow!1
The life and character of Jesus Christ is truly the holy of holies
in the history of the world. Eighteen hundred years have passed away since he appeared,
in the fullness of time, on this earth to redeem a fallen race from sin and death,
and to open a never-ceasing fountain of righteousness and life. The ages before
him anxiously awaited his coming, as the fulfillment of the desire of all
Thus he stands out to the faith of the entire Christian Church—Greek,
Latin, and Evangelical—in every civilized country on the globe. Much as the various
confessions and denominations differ in doctrines and usages, they are agreed in
their love and adoration of Jesus. They lay down their arms when they approach the
manger of Bethlehem or the cross of Calvary, where he was born and died for our
sins that we might live for ever in heaven. He is the divine harmony of
Blessed is he who from the heart can believe that Jesus is the
Son of God, and the fountain of salvation. True faith is indeed no work of nature,
but an act of God wrought in the soul by the Holy Ghost, who reveals Christ to us
in his true character, as Christ has revealed the Father. Faith, with its justifying,
sanctifying, and
This fact, however, does not supersede the necessity of thought
and argument. Revelation, although above nature and above reason, is not against
nature or against reason. On the contrary, nature and the supernatural, as has been
well said by a distinguished New-England divine, “constitute together the one system
of God.”2 Christianity satisfies the deepest intellectual as well as moral and
religious wants of man, who is created in the image and for the glory of God. It
is the revelation of truth as well as of life. Faith and knowledge, pistis and gnosis,
are not antagonistic, but complementary forces; not enemies, but inseparable twin-sisters.
Faith precedes knowledge, but just as necessarily leads to knowledge; while true
knowledge, on the other hand, is
As living faith in Christ is the soul and center
In the construction of the true doctrine of Christ’s person, we
may, with St. John in the prologue to his Gospel, begin from above with his eternal
Godhead, and proceed, through the creation and the preparatory revelation of the
Old Testament economy, till we reach the incarnation and his truly human life for
the redemption of the race. Or, with the other evangelists, we may begin from below
with his birth from the Virgin Mary, and rise, through the successive stages of
his earthly life, his discourses and miracles, to his assumption into that divine
glory which he had
The older theologians, both Catholic and Evangelical, proved the divinity of the Saviour in a direct way from the miracles performed by him; from the prophecies and types fulfilled in him; from the divine names which he bears; from the divine attributes which are predicated of him; from the divine works which he performed; and from the divine honors which he claims, and which are fully accorded to him by his apostles and the whole Christian Church to this day.
But it may also be proved by the opposite process,—the contemplation
of the singular perfection of Christ’s humanity; which rises by almost universal
consent, even of unbelievers, so far above every human greatness known before or
since, that it can only be rationally explained on the ground of such an essential
union with the Godhead as he claimed himself, and as his inspired apostles ascribed
to him. The more
Modern evangelical theology owes this new homage to the Saviour. The powerful and subtle attacks of the latest phases of infidelity upon the credibility of the gospel history call for a more vigorous defense than was ever made before, and have already led, by way of re-action, to new triumphs of the old faith of the Church in her divine Head.
Our humanitarian, philanthropic, and yet skeptical age is more
susceptible to this argument, which proceeds from the humanity to the divinity,
than the old dogmatic method of demonstration which follows the opposite process.
With Thomas, the representative of honest and earnest skepticism among the apostles,
many noble and inquiring minds refuse to believe in the divinity of the Lord, unless
supported by the testimony of their senses, or the convincing arguments of reason:
they desire to put the finger into the print of his nails, and to thrust the hand
into his side,
It is from this point of view that we shall endeavor, in as popular
and concise a manner as the difficulty and dignity of the subject permit, to analyze
and exhibit the human character of Christ. We propose to take up the man,
Jesus of Nazareth, as he appears on the simple, unsophisticated record of the plain
and honest fishermen of Galilee, and as he lives in the faith of Christendom; and
we shall find him in all the stages of
A full discussion of the subject would require us to consider Christ in his official as well as personal character; and to describe him as a teacher, a reformer, a worker of miracles, and the founder of a spiritual kingdom universal in extent and. perpetual in time. From every point of view, we should be irresistibly driven to the same result. But our present purpose confines us to the consideration of his personal character; and this alone, we think, is sufficient for the conclusion.
The literature on the Life and Character of Christ has of late
received very large additions in Germany, France, Holland, England, and the United
States. We confine ourselves to a list of such books and tracts as treat more immediately
of the moral character and sinlessness
Dr. Carl Ullmann (formerly Professor of Church History in Heidelberg, died Jan. 1865):—Die Sündlosigkeit Jesu. Eine apologetische Betrachtung (i.e., The Sinlessness of Jesus: An Evidence of Christianity). First published as an article in the German Theological Quarterly Review, Studien und Kritiken, for 1828, No. 1; then as a separate book, 6th edition, Heidelberg, 1853; 7th edition, partly rewritten, 1863. (The references to this book in the following tract are partly to the 6th, partly to the 7th, edition.) English translation from the 6th edition by Lundin Brown. Edinburgh: 1858.
Dr. James Waddell Alexander (of New York, died 1859):—The Character of Jesus: An Argument for the Divine Origin of Christianity. Published in the Lectures on the Evidences of Christianity delivered at the University of Virginia. New York: 1852. pp. 193-211.
John Young:—The Christ of History: An Argument grounded in the Facts of his Life on Earth. London: Republished in New York, 1858.
Dr. Horace Bushnell (of Hartford):—The Character of Jesus forbidding His Classification with Men. New York: 1861. (Originally the tenth chapter of his very able and interesting work, Nature and the Supernatural, as together constituting the one System of God. New York: 1858. pp. 276-299.)
Peter Bayne (M. A., of Scotland):—The Testimony of Christ to Christianity. Republished in Boston, 1862.
Dr. Isaac Dorner (Professor of Theology
at Berlin):—On the Sinless Perfection of Jesus (Ueber Jesu
Dr. J. J. van Oosterzee (Professor of Theology at Utrecht):—Das Bild Christi nach der Schrift. Hamburg: 1864. (The Image of Christ according to the Scriptures.) Translated from the Dutch by F. Meyeringh. It is the third part of a larger work of the author, published at Rotterdam, 1855-1861, in three parts,—part first treating of the Christology of the Old Testament, part second of the Christology of the New Testament, part third stating the results, and forming a complete work by itself. It describes the Son of God before his incarnation, the Son of God in the flesh, and the Son of God in glory.
Two French works, which seem to follow the same train of thought, I know only by name: E. Dandiran: Essai sur la divinité du charactère moral de Jésus-Christ. Genève: 1850. And Edm. de Pressensé:—Le Rédempteur. Paris: 1854. (Recently translated into English.) I also direct attention to M. Guizot:—Méditations sur l’essence de la religion chrétienne. Première série. Paris and Leipzig: 1864. The 8th Meditation, pp. 251-329, treats of Christ according to the Gospels.
For older works on the sinless character of Christ, see Ullmann’s book above quoted, pp. 231-240 of the seventh edition.
To this list may be added the works on the Life of
CHRIST passed through all the stages of human life from infancy to manhood, and represented each in its ideal form, that he might redeem and sanctify them all, and be a perpetual model for imitation. He was the model infant, the model boy, the model youth, and the model man.7 But the weakness, decline, and decrepitude of old age would be incompatible with his character and mission. He died and rose in the full bloom of early manhood, and lives in the hearts of his people in unfading freshness and unbroken vigor for ever.
Let us first glance at the INFANCY and
CHILDHOOD
Here we meet, at the very beginning of the earthly history of
Christ, that singular combination of humility and grandeur, of simplicity and sublimity,
of the human and divine, which characterizes it throughout, and distinguishes it
from every other history. He appears ill the world first as a child, as a poor child,
in one of the smallest
Yet, with all these marks of divinity upon him, the infant Saviour
is not represented, either by Matthew or Luke, as an unnatural prodigy, anticipating
the maturity of a later age, but as a truly human child, silently lying and smiling
on the bosom of his virgin mother; “growing” and “waxing strong in spirit,”11
and therefore subject to the law of regular development, yet differing from all
other children by his supernatural conception and perfect freedom from hereditary
sin and
Who can measure the ennobling, purifying, and cheering influence which proceeds from the contemplation of the Christ-child, at each returning Christmas season, upon the hearts of young and old in every land and nation! The loss of the first estate is richly compensated by the undying innocence of paradise regained.
Of the BOYHOOD of Jesus we know only one
fact, recorded by Luke; but it is in perfect keeping with the peculiar charm of
his childhood, and foreshadows at the same time the glory of his public life as
one uninterrupted service of his heavenly Father.12 When
Such an idea of a harmless and faultless heavenly childhood, of
a growing, learning, and yet surprisingly wise boyhood, as it meets us in living
reality at the portal of the gospel history, never entered the imagination of a
biographer, poet, or philosopher, before. On the contrary, as has been justly observed,14
“in all the higher ranges of character, the excellence portrayed is never the simple
unfolding of a harmonious and perfect beauty contained in the germ of childhood,
but is a character formed by a process of rectification in which many follies are
mended and distempers removed; in which confidence is checked by defeat, passion
moderated by reason, smartness sobered by experience. Commonly a certain pleasure
is taken in showing how the many wayward sallies of the boy are, at length, reduced
by discipline to the character of wisdom, justice, and public heroism so much admired.
Besides, if any writer, of almost any age, will undertake to: describe, not merely
a spotless but a superhuman
This unnatural exaggeration, into which the mythical fancy of
man, in its endeavor to produce a superhuman childhood and boyhood, will inevitably
fall, is strikingly exhibited in the myth of Hercules, who, while yet a suckling
in the cradle, squeezed two monster serpents to death with his tender hands; and
still more in the accounts of the apocryphal Gospels on the wonderful performances
of the infant Saviour. These apocryphal Gospels are related to the canonical Gospels
as a counterfeit to the genuine coin, or as a revolting caricature to the inimitable
original; but, by the very contrast, they tend, negatively, to corroborate the truth
of the evangelical history. The strange contrast has been frequently
WITH the exception of these few but significant hints, the youth of Jesus, and the preparation for his public ministry, are enshrined in mysterious silence. But we know the outward condition and circumstances under which he grew up; and these furnish no explanation for the astounding results, without the admission of the supernatural and divine element in his life.
He grew up among a people seldom and only contemptuously named
by the ancient classics, and subjected at the time to the yoke of a foreign oppressor;
in a remote and conquered province of the Roman Empire; in the darkest district
of Palestine; in a country-town of proverbial insignificance.16 He spent
his youth in
Hence the question of Nathanael: “What good can come out of Nazareth?”
Hence the natural surprise of the Jews, who knew all his human relations and antecedents.
“How knoweth this man letters,” they asked when
The difficulty here presented can by no means be solved by a reference
to the fact that many, perhaps the majority of great men, especially in the Church,
have risen, by their own industry and perseverance, from the lower walks of life,
and from a severe contest with poverty and obstacles of every kind. The fact itself
is readily conceded; but, in every one of these cases, schools or books, or patrons
and friends, or peculiar events and influences,
Luther, for instance, was indeed the son of poor peasants, and had a very hard youth: but he went to the schools of Mansfeld, Magdeburg, and Eisenach; to the university of Erfurt; passed through the ascetic discipline of convent life; studied and labored among professors, students, and libraries; and was innocently, as it were, made a reformer by extraordinary events, and the irresistible current of his age.
Shakspeare is generally and justly regarded as the most remarkable
and most wonderful example of a self taught man; who, without the regular routine
of school education, became the greatest dramatic poet, not only of his age and
country, but of all times. But the absurd idea that the son of the Warwickshire
yeoman or butcher or glover—we hardly
In the case of Christ, no such natural explanation can be given.
He can be ranked neither with the school-trained nor with the self-trained or self-made
men; if by the latter we understand, as we must, those who, without
At the same time, it is easy to see, from the admission of Christ’s divinity, that by this condescension he has raised humble origin, poverty, manual labor, and the lower orders of society, to a dignity and sacredness never known before, and has revolutionized the false standard of judging the value of men and things from their outward appearance, and of associating moral worth with social elevation, and moral degradation with low rank.
WE now approach the public life of Jesus. In his thirtieth year, after the Messianic inauguration through the baptism by John as his immediate forerunner, and as the representative of the Old Testament, both in its legal and prophetic or evangelical aspect, and after the Messianic probation by the temptation in the wilderness,—the counterpart of the temptation of the first Adam in paradise,—he entered upon his great work.
His public life lasted only three years; and, before he had reached
the age of ordinary maturity, he died, in the full beauty and vigor
And yet, unlike all other men of his years, Christ combined, with the freshness, energy, and originating power of youth, that wisdom, moderation, and experience, which belong only to mature age. The short triennium of his public ministry contains more, even from a purely historical point of observation, than the longest life of the greatest and best of men. It is pregnant with the deepest meaning of the counsel of God and the destiny of the race. It is the ripe fruit of all preceding ages, the fulfillment of the hopes and desires of the Jewish and heathen mind, and the fruitful germ of succeeding generations,—containing the impulse to the purest thoughts and noblest actions down to the end of time. It is “the end of a boundless past, the center of a boundless present, and the beginning of a boundless future.”20
How remarkable, how wonderful, this contrast between the short
duration and the immeasurable
Other men require a long succession of years to mature their mind
and character, and to make a lasting impression upon the world. There are exceptions,
we admit. Alexander the Great, the last and most brilliant efflorescence of the
ancient Greek nationality, died a young man of thirty-three, after having conquered
the East to the borders of the Indus. But who would think of comparing an ambitious
warrior, conquered by his own lust, and dying a victim of his passion, with the
spotless Friend of sinners? a few bloody victories of the one with the peaceful
triumphs of the other? and a huge military empire of force, which crumbled to pieces
as soon as it was erected, with the spiritual kingdom of truth and love which stands
to this day, and will last for ever? Nor should it be forgotten, that the true significance
and only value of Alexander’s conquest lay beyond the horizon of his ambition and
intention; and that by carrying
There is another striking distinction of a general character,
between Christ and the heroes of history, which we must notice here. We should naturally
suppose that such an uncommon personage, setting up the most astounding claims and
proposing the most extraordinary work, would surround himself with extraordinary
circumstances, and maintain a position far above the vulgar and degraded
But the very reverse is the case. His greatness is singularly
unostentatious, modest, and quiet; and, far from repelling the beholder, it attracts
and invites him to familiar approach. His public life never moved on the imposing
arena of secular heroism, but within the humble circle of every-day life, and the
simple relations of a son, a brother, a citizen, a teacher, and a friend. He had
no army to command, no kingdom to rule, no prominent station to fill, no worldly
favors and rewards to dispense. He was an humble individual, without friends and
patrons in the Sanhedrin or at the court of Herod. He never mingled in familiar
intercourse with the religious or social leaders of the nation, whom he had startled
in his twelfth year by his questions and answers. He selected his disciples from
among the illiterate fishermen of Galilee, and
And yet this Jesus of Nazareth, without money and arms, conquered
more millions than Alexander, Caesar, Mohammed, and Napoleon;
We will now attempt to describe his personal or moral and religious character as it appears in the record of his public life, and then examine his own testimony of himself as giving us the only rational solution of this mighty problem.
THE first impression which we receive from the life of Jesus is that of perfect innocency and sinlessness in the midst of a sinful world. He, and he alone, carried the spotless purity of childhood untarnished through his youth and manhood. Hence the lamb and the dove are his appropriate symbols.
He was, indeed, tempted as we are; but he never yielded to temptation.21
His sinlessness was at first only the relative sinlessness of Adam before
the fall; which implies the necessity of trial and temptation, and the peccability,
or the possibility of the fall. Had he been endowed with absolute impeccability
from the start, he could not be a true man, nor our model for imitation: his holiness,
instead
In vain we look through the entire biography of Jesus for a single
stain or the slightest shadow on his moral character. There never lived a more harmless
being on earth. He injured nobody, he took advantage of nobody. He never spoke an
improper word, he never committed a wrong action. He exhibited a uniform elevation
above the objects, opinions, pleasures, and passions of this world, and disregard
to riches, displays, fame, and favor of men. “No vice that has a name can be thought
of in connection with Jesus Christ.
The apparent outbreak of passion in the expulsion of the profane
traffickers from the temple is the only instance on the record of his history which
might be quoted against his freedom from the faults of humanity. But the very effect
which it produced shows that, far from being the outburst of passion, the expulsion
was a judicial act of a religious reformer, vindicating, in just and holy zeal,
the honor of the Lord of the temple. It was an exhibition, not of weakness, but
of dignity and majesty, which at once silenced the offenders, though superior in
number and physical
The perfect innocence of Jesus, however, is based, not only negatively
on the absence of any recorded word or act to the contrary, and his absolute exemption
from every trace of selfishness and worldliness, but positively also, on the unanimous
testimony of John the Baptist, and the apostles who bowed before the majesty of
his character in unbounded veneration, and declare him “just,” “holy,” and “without
sin.”26 It is admitted, moreover,
The objection that the evangelists were either not fully informed
concerning the facts, or mistaken in their estimate of the character of Christ,
is of no avail. For, in addition to their testimony, we have his own personal conviction
of entire freedom from sin and unworthiness; which leaves us only the choice
The very fact that Christ came for the express purpose of saving
sinners, implies his own consciousness of personal freedom from guilt and from all
need of salvation. And this is the unmistakable impression made upon us by his whole
public life and conduct. He nowhere shows the least concern for his own salvation,
but knows himself to be in undisturbed harmony with his heavenly Father. While calling
most earnestly upon all others to repent, he stood in no need of conversion and
regeneration, but simply of the regular harmonious unfolding of his moral powers.
While directing all his followers, in the fourth petition of his model prayer, to
ask daily for the forgiveness of their sins as well as their daily bread, he himself
never asked God for pardon and forgiveness except in behalf of others. While freely
conversing with sinners,
The assumption that Christ was a sinner, and knew himself such,
although he professed the contrary, and made upon friends and enemies the impression
of spotless innocency,
It is an indisputable fact, then, both from his mission and uniform
conduct, and his express declaration, that Christ knew himself free from
sin and guilt. The only rational explanation of this fact is that Christ was no
sinner. And this is readily conceded by the greatest divines, even those who are
by no means regarded as orthodox.30 The admission ol this fact implies the
further admission, that Christ differed from all other men, not in degree only,
but in kind. For although
The Bible, the conscience of man, and the daily experience of
life, unite in testifying to the universal fact of sin, no matter how we may explain
it. Sin is the deep, dark mystery of existence, the stumbling-block to reason, the
problem of problems, the fruitful source of all misery and woe. The literature of
all nations and ages is full of lamentations over
“Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor;”
and that other:—
“Nitimur in vetitum semper cupimusque negata,”—
have often been quoted as a striking response of the heathen
conscience and experience to the inspired description of this ethical conflict betwen
heaven and hell in every soul (
If this is the testimony of the sages of heathenism, what shall
we say of the Christian, whose sense of sin and guilt is deepened and sharpened
in proportion to his knowledge of God’s holiness and his experience of God’s redeeming
grace. The entire Christian world, Greek, Latin, and Protestant, agree in the scriptural
doctrine of the universal depravity of human nature since the apostasy of the first
Adam. Even the modern and unscriptural dogma of the Roman Catholic Church, that
the Virgin Mary was free from hereditary as well as actual
But in Christ we have the one solitary and absolute exception
to this universal rule,—an
A SINLESS Saviour, surrounded by a sinful world, is an astounding fact indeed; a sublime moral miracle in history. But this freedom from the common sin and guilt of the race is, after all, only the negative side of his character; which rises in magnitude as we contemplate the positive side,—namely, absolute moral and religious perfection.
It is universally admitted, even by deists and rationalists, that
Christ taught the purest and sublimest system of ethics, one which throws all the
moral precepts and maxims of the wisest men of antiquity far into the shade. The
Sermon on the Mount alone is worth infinitely more than all that Confucius, Cakya-Mouni,
But the difference between Christ and the great moralists of ancient
or modern times is still greater if we come to the more difficult task of practice.
All the systems of moral philosophy combined could not regenerate the world. Words
are nothing unless they are supported by deeds. A holy life is a far greater power
for good than the finest moral maxim or essay. In this respect, the difference between
Jesus and the great sages is so radical and fundamental, that all comparison ceases.
Cicero, who,
But how is it with Christ? He fully carried out his perfect doctrine
in his life and conduct. He both was and did that which
We find Christ moving in all ordinary and essential relations
of life,34 as a son, a brother, a friend, a citizen, a teacher, at home and
in public. We find him among all classes of society,—with sinners and saints; with
the poor and the wealthy; with the sick and the healthy; with little children, grown
men and women; with plain fishermen and learned scribes; with despised publicans
and honored members of the Sanhedrin; with friends and foes; with admiring disciples
and bitter persecutors; now with an individual, as Nicodemus or the woman of Samaria;
now in the familiar circle of the twelve; now in the crowds of the people. We find
him in all situations,—in the synagogue and the temple; at home and on journeys;
in villages and the city of Jerusalem; in the desert and on the mountain; along
the banks of Jordan and the shores of the Galilean Sea; at the joyous wedding-feast
and the solemn
In all these various relations, conditions, and situations, as
they are crowded within the few years of his public ministry, he sustains the same
consistent character throughout, without ever exposing himself to censure. As God,
according to the Bible, is one and the same always, so also Christ, according to
the gospel. Guizot (in his recently published “Meditations on the Essence of the
Christian Religion”) justly remarks: “The most perfect, the most constant unity
reigns in Jesus, in his life as in his soul, in his words as in his acts. He progresses
according to the circumstances in which he lives; but his progress produces in him
no change of character or design. As he appeared already in his twelfth year in
the temple, full of the sense of his divine nature, so he
THE first feature in this singular perfection of Christ’s character which strikes our attention is the perfect harmony of virtue and piety, of morality and religion, or of love to God and love to man. He is more than moral, and more than pious: he is holy in the strict and full sense of the word. There is a divine beauty and perfection in his character, the mere contemplation of which brings purity, brightness, peace, and bliss to the soul.
Piety was the soul of his morality, and lifted it far above the
sphere of legality or conformity to law. Every moral action in him proceeded from
supreme love to God, and looked to the temporal and eternal welfare of
With all this, the piety of Christ was no inactive contemplation,
or retiring mysticism, and selfish enjoyment, but thoroughly practical, ever active
in works of charity, and tending to regenerate and transform the world
THE next feature we would notice is the completeness or pleromatic fullness of the moral and religious character of Christ. While all other men represent, at best, but broken fragments of the idea of goodness and holiness, he exhausts the list of virtues and graces which may be named. His soul is a moral paradise full of charming flowers, shining in every variety of color under the blue dome of the skies, drinking in the refreshing dews of heaven and the warming beams of the sun, sending its sweet fragrance around, and filling the beholder with rapturous delight.
History exhibits to us many men of commanding
Abraham, the father of the faithful; Moses, the lawgiver of the
Jewish theocracy; Elijah among the prophets; Peter, Paul, and John among the apostles;
Athanasius and Chrysostom among the Greek, Augustine and Jerome among the Latin,
fathers; Anselm and Thomas Aquinas among the schoolmen; Leo I. and Gregory VII.
among the popes; Luther and Calvin in the line of Protestant reformers and divines;
Socrates, the patriarch of the ancient schools of philosophy; Homer, Dante, Shakspeare
and Milton, Goethe and Schiller, in the history of poetry among the various nations
to which they belong; Raphael
But all these characters represent only sectional, never universal,
humanity: they are identified with a particular people or age, and partake of their
errors, superstitions, and failings, almost in the same proportion in which they
exhibit their virtues. Moses, though revered by the followers of three religions,
was a Jew in views, feelings, habits, and position, as well as by parentage; Socrates
never rose above the Greek type of character; Luther was a German in all his virtues
and faults, in his strength and weakness, and can only be properly understood as
a German; Calvin,
What these representative men were to particular ages or nations
or sects, or particular schools of science and art, Christ was
Witness his freedom in the observance of the Sabbath, by which
he offended the scrupulous literalists, while he fulfilled, as the Lord of the Sabbath,
the true spirit of the law in its universal and abiding significance;39 his
reply to the disciples, when they traced the misfortune of the blind man to a particular
sin of the subject or his parents;40 his liberal conduct toward the Samaritans,
as contrasted with the inveterate hatred and prejudice of the Jews, including his
own disciples, at the time;41 and his charitable judgment of the slaughtered
Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices, and the eighteen
upon whom the tower in Siloam fell and slew them (
As the pyramid rises high above the plains of Egypt, so Christ
towers above all human teachers and founders of sects and religions. lie is, in
the language of Renan, “a man of colossal” (we may well add, of infinite) “dimensions.”
He found disciples and worshipers
IT must not be supposed that a complete catalogue of virtues would do justice to the character under consideration. It is not only the completeness, but still more the even proportion and perfect harmony of virtues and graces apparently opposite and contradictory, which distinguishes him specifically from all other men. This feature gives the finish to that beauty of holiness which is the sublimest picture that can be presented to our contemplation. It has struck with singular force all the more eminent writers on the subject.42
Christ was free from all one-sidedness; which constitutes the
weakness as well as the strength of the most eminent men. He
We can not properly attribute to him any one temperament. He was neither sanguine, like Peter; nor choleric, like Paul; nor melancholy, like John; nor phlegmatic, as James is sometimes, though incorrectly, represented to have been: but he combined the vivacity without the levity of the sanguine, the vigor without the violence of the choleric, the seriousness without the austerity of the melancholic, the calmness without the apathy of the phlegmatic, temperament.
He was equally far removed from the excesses of the legalist,
the pietist, the ascetic, and the enthusiast. With the strictest obedience to the
law, he moved in the element of freedom; with all the fervor of the enthusiast,
he was always calm, sober, and self-possessed. Notwithstanding his complete and
uniform elevation above the affairs of this world, he fireely mingled with society,
male and female, dined with publicans and sinners, played with little children and
blessed them, sat at the wedding-feast, shed tears at the sepulcher, delighted in
God’s nature, admired the beauties of the lilies, and used the occupations of the
husbandman for the illustration of the sublimest truths of the kingdom of heaven.
His virtue was healthy, manly, vigorous, yet genial, social, and truly human; never
austere and repulsive; always in full sympathy with innocent joy and pleasure. He,
the purest and holiest of men, provided wine for the wedding-feast; introduced the
fatted calf and music and dancing into the
His zeal never degenerated into passion, nor his constancy into obstinacy, nor his benevolence into weakness, nor his tenderness into sentimentality. His unworldliness was free from indifference and unsociability, his dignity from pride and presumption, his affability from undue familiarity, his self-denial from moroseness, his temperance from austerity. He combined child-like innocence with manly strength, all-absorbing devotion to God with untiring interest in the welfare of man, tender love to the sinner with uncompromising severity against sin, commanding dignity with winning humility, fearless courage with wise caution, unyielding firmness with sweet gentleness.
He is justly compared with the lion in strength, and with the
lamb in meekness.
These are indeed opposite traits of character, yet as little contradictory as the different manifestations of God’s power and goodness in the tempest and the sunshine, in the towering Alps and the lily of the valley, in the boundless ocean and the dew-drop of the morning. They are separated in imperfect men indeed, but united in Christ, the universal model for all.
AS all active virtues meet in Jesus, so he unites the active or heroic virtues with the passive and gentle. He is the highest standard of all true martyrdom.
No character can become complete without trial and suffering;
and a noble death is the crowning act of a noble life. Edmund Burke said to Fox,
in the English Parliament, “Obloquy is a necessary ingredient of all true glory,
Calumny and abuse are essential parts of triumph.” The ancient Greeks and Romans
admired a good man struggling with misfortune, as a sight worthy of the gods. Plato
describes the righteous man as one who, without doing any injustice, yet has the
appearance
Christ has set up a far higher standard by his teaching and example,
never known before or since, except in imperfect imitation of him. He has revolutionized
moral philosophy, and convinced the world that forgiving love to the enemy, holiness
and humility, gentle patience in suffering, and cheerful submission to the holy
will of God, are the crowning excellency of moral greatness. “If thy brother,” he
says, “trespass against thee seven times in a day, and seven times in a day turn
again to thee, saying, I repent; thou shalt forgive him” (
Christ’s passive virtue is not confined to the closing scenes
of his ministry. As human life is beset at every step with trials, vexatious, and
hindrances, which should serve the educational purposes of developing its resources
and proving its strength, so was Christ’s. During the whole state of his humiliation,
he was “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief” (
To all this must be added the constant sufferings from sympathy with human misery as it met him in ten thousand forms at every step. What a trial for him, the purest, gentlest, most tender-hearted of men, to breathe more than thirty years the foul atmosphere of this fallen world; to see the constant outbursts of sinful passions; to hear the great wail of humanity borne to his ears upon the four winds of heaven; to be brought into personal contact with the blind, the lame, the deaf, the paralytic, the lunatic, the possessed, the dead; and to be assaulted, as it were, by the concentrated force of sickness, sorrow, grief, and agony!
But how shall we describe his passion, more properly so called,
with which no other suffering can be compared for a moment?
Never did any man suffer more innocently, more unjustly, more
intensely, than Jesus of Nazareth. Within the narrow limits of a few hours, we have
here a tragedy of universal significance, exhibiting every form of human weakness
and infernal wickedness; of ingratitude, desertion, injury, and insult; of bodily
and mental pain and anguish; culminating in the most ignominious death then known
among the Jews and Gentiles,—the death of a malefactor and a slave. The government
How did Christ bear all these little and great trials of life, and the death on the cross?
Let us remember first, that, unlike the icy Stoics in their unnatural
and repulsive pseudo-virtue, he had the keenest sensibilities and the deepest sympathies
with all human grief, that made him even shed tears at the grave of a friend and
in the agony of the garden, and provide a refuge for his mother in the last dying
hour. But with this touching tenderness and delicacy of
And yet he never murmured,—never uttered discontent, displeasure,
or resentment. He was never disheartened, discouraged, ruffled, or fretted, but
full of unbounded confidence that all was well ordered in the providence of his
heavenly Father. His calmness
But, when the hour came, with what self: possession and calmness,
with what strength and meekness, with what majesty and gentleness, did he pass through
its dark and trying scenes! A prisoner before Pilate, who represented the power
of the Roman Empire, he
SUCH was Jesus of Nazareth,—a true man in body, soul, and spirit,
yet differing from all men; a character absolutely unique and original from tender
childhood to ripe manhood, moving in unbroken union with God, overflowing with the
purest love to man, free from every sin and error, innocent and holy, teaching and
practicing all virtues in perfect harmony, devoted solely and uniformly to the noblest
ends, sealing the purest life with the sublimest death, and ever acknowledged since
as the one and only perfect model of goodness and holiness! All human greatness
loses on closer inspection; but Christ’s character
No biographer, moralist, or artist can be satisfied with any attempt
of his to set forth the beauty of holiness which shines from the face of Jesus of
Nazareth. It is felt to be infinitely greater than any conception or representation
of it by the mind, the tongue, or the pencil of man or angel. We might as well attempt
to empty the waters of the boundless sea into a narrow well, or to portray the splendor
of the risen sun and the starry heavens with ink. No picture of the Saviour, though
drawn by the master hand of a Raphael or Dürer or Rubens; no epic, though conceived
by the genius of a Dante or Milton or Klopstock,—can improve on the artless, narrative
of the Gospels, whose only but all-powerful charm is truth. In
This conviction has forced itself more or less clearly even upon
some opponents of Christianity, and many of the greatest worldly intellects, in
proportion as they allowed themselves to yield to the light of truth and the power
of facts. Jean Jacques Rousseau, one of the leaders of French infidelity in the
eighteenth century, admitted, in his “Émile,” that there could be no comparison
between Socrates and Christ; as little as between a
Yes: Christ’s person is, indeed, a great but blessed mystery.
It can not be explained on purely humanitarian principles, nor derived from any
intellectual and moral forces of the age in which he lived. On the contrary, it
stands in marked contrast to the whole surrounding world of Judaism and Heathenism,
which presents to us the dreary picture of internal decay, and which actually crumbled
into ruin before the new moral creation of the
Here is just the logical inconsistency, contradiction, and absurdity
of those unbelievers who admit the extraordinary character of Christ’s person, and
yet deny his extraordinary works. They admit a cause without a corresponding effect,
and involve the person in conflict with his works, or the works with the person.
You may as well expect the sun to send forth darkness as to expect ordinary works
from such an extraordinary being.
The supernatural and miraculous in Christ, let it be borne in
mind, was not a borrowed gift or an occasional manifestation, as we find it among
the prophets and apostles, but an inherent power in constant silent or public exercise.
An inward virtue dwelt in his person, and went forth from him, so that even the
fringe of his garment was healing to the touch through the medium of faith which
is the
Thus from every direction we arrive at the conclusion, that Christ, though truly natural and human, was at the same time truly supernatural and divine. The wonderful character of his person forces upon us the inevitable admission of the indwelling of the Divinity in him, as the only rational and satisfactory explanation of this mysterious fact; and this is the explanation which he gives himself.
THERE is but one rational explanation, of this sublime mystery; and this is found in Christ’s own testimony concerning his superhuman and divine origin and character.49
This testimony challenges at once our highest regard and belief from the absolute veracity which no one ever denied him, or could deny, without destroying at once the very foundation of his universally conceded moral purity and greatness.
Christ strongly asserts his humanity, and calls himself; about
eighty times in the Gospels, the Son of man.50 This expression, while
it places him in one view on common ground with us as flesh of our flesh, and bone
The appellation the Son of man does not express, then,
as many suppose, the humiliation and condescension of Christ simply, but his elevation
rather above the ordinary level, and the actualization, in him and through him,
of the ideal standard of human nature under its moral and religious aspect, or in
its relation to God. This interpretation is suggested
But he calls himself at the same time, as he is most frequently
called by his disciples, the Son of God, in an equally emphatic sense. He
is not merely a son of God among others,—angels, archangels, princes and judges
and
Christ founds his whole doctrine and kingdom on his own person.
His divine-human person is his constant theme, his cause. He
Christ represents himself constantly as being “not of this world,”
but “sent from God,” as having “come from God,” and as “being in heaven” while living
on earth (
The only choice here is between a truly
Jesus, moreover, repeatedly represents himself as the Lawgiver
of. the new and last dispensation (
Finally, he claims such a relation to the Father as implies both the equality of substance and the distinction of person, and which, in connection with his declarations concerning the Holy Spirit, leads with. logical necessity, as it were, to the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. For this doctrine alone saves the divinity of Christ and of the Holy Spirit, without affecting the fundamental truth of the Unity of the Godhead; and keeps the proper medium between an abstract and lifeless monotheism and a polytheistic tritheism.
Christ always distinguishes himself from God the Father, who sent
him, whose works he came to fulfill, whose will he obeys, by whose power he performs
his miracles, to whom he prays, and with whom he communes, as a self-conscious personal
being. And so lie distinguishes himself with equal clearness from the Holy Spirit,
whom he received at his baptism, whom he breathed into his disciples, and whom he
promised to send and did send on them as the other Paraclete, as
For he claims, as the Son, a real, self-conscious pre-existence
before man, and even before the world: consequently, also, before time; for time
was created with the world.64 Hence the Arian notion of a temporal
preexistence of Christ is metaphysically untenable. It assumes a creature to have
existed before the creation, and a finite being to have begun existence before time.
Before the act of creation, there was nothing but God and eternity. Time is the
necessary form under which the world exists successively, as space is the form under
which
These are the most astounding and transcendent pretensions ever
set up by any being. He, the humblest and lowliest of men, makes them repeatedly
and uniformly to the last, in the face of the whole world,—even in the darkest
hour of suffering. He makes them, not in swelling, pompous, ostentatious language,
which almost necessarily springs from false pretensions, but in a natural, spontaneous
style, with perfect ease, freedom, and composure, as a native prince would speak
of the attributes and scenes of royalty at his father’s court. He never falters
or doubts, never apologizes for them, never enters into an explanation: he sets
them forth
Now, suppose for a moment a purely human teacher, however great and good; suppose a Moses or Elijah, a John the Baptist, an Apostle Paul, or John,—not to speak of any church-father, schoolman, or reformer,—to say: “I am the Light of the world;” “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life;” “I and the Father are one;” and to call upon all men, “Come unto me;” “Follow me,” that you may find “life” and “peace,” which you can not find elsewhere: would it not create a universal feeling of pity or indignation? No human being on earth could set up the least of these pretensions, without being set down at once as a madman or a blasphemer.69
But from the mouth of Christ these colossal pretensions excite
neither pity nor indignation, nor even the least feeling of incongruity or impropriety.
We read and hear them over and over again without surprise.70 They
Is not this fact most remarkable? Is it not a triumphant vindication
of Christ’s character, and an irresistible proof of the truth of his pretensions?
And can we deny the truth, and refuse to acknowledge his divinity, without destroying
his veracity, and overthrowing the very foundation of his moral goodness and purity,
as universally acknowledged even by heretics and unbelievers? If he, the wisest,
the best, the holiest of men, the greatest
This is the “testimonium animæ naturaliter
Christianæ,” to use a celebrated expression of Tertullian. It is the
testimony of the soul which is originally made for Christ, and longs for him, and
finds no satisfaction of its infinite
THERE is no other solution of the mighty problem within the reach of t human learning and ingenuity.
All the infidel and semi-infidel theories of Christ’s person substitute
an unnatural wonder in the place of the supernatural miracle which they endeavor
to escape. The falsehood of Christ’s testimony concerning himself, as understood
and accepted by the universal belief of Christendom, is not only a mightier wonder
than the truth of the same, but a moral absurdity and monstrosity. Hume says, in
his famous “Essay on Miracles:” “When any one tells me that he saw a dead man restored
to life, I immediately consider with myself, whether it be
Let us briefly review, in detail, the various attempts of Unitarians and unbelievers to account for the character of Christ without admitting his divinity.
The semi-infidelity of the older Socinians and modern Unitarians is singularly inconsistent. Admitting the faultless perfection of Christ’s character, and the truthfulness of the gospel-history, including the miracles, and yet denying his divinity, they must either charge him with such egregious exaggerations and conceit as would overthrow at once their concession of his moral perfection, or they must so weaken and pervert his testimony. concerning his relation to God as to violate all the laws of grammar and sound interpretation.
Dr. W. E. Channing, the ablest and noblest
representative of modern Unitarianism, prefers to avoid the difficulty which he
was unable to solve. In his admirable discourse on the “Character of Christ,” he
goes as far almost as any orthodox divine in vindicating to him the highest possible
purity and excellency as a man; but he stops half-way, and passes by in
But this is not all. We have seen that Christ goes much farther
than in the passages here quoted; that he forgives sins in his own name; that he
asserts pre-existence before Abraham and before the world, not only ideally in the
mind of God,—for this would not distinguish him from Abraham or any other creature,—but in the real sense of self-conscious personal existence; that he claims and receives
strictly divine attributes and honors, and makes himself equal with the great Jehovah.
How can a being so pure and holy, and withal so humble and lowly, so perfectly free
from every trace of enthusiasm and conceit, as Dr. Channing freely and emphatically
asserts Christ to have been,
Unitarianism admits altogether too much for its own conclusions,
and is therefore driven to the logical alternative of falling back upon an infidel,
or of advancing to the orthodox, Christology. Theodore Parker felt this, and gave
up the supernatural altogether. Channing, who was certainly under the influence
of the holy example of Christ, inclined to the other alternative, as we may infer
from his general spirit, and from his last
The infidelity of the enemies of Christianity, which denies the
supernatural and miraculous altogether, is logically more consistent than Arianism,
Socinianism, and modern Unitarianism, but absolutely untenable in the premises.
It resorts either to IMPOSTURE, or ENTHUSIASM,
or POETICAL FICTION. These are the only possible hypotheses;
which may, however, assume various modifications; and their refutation leaves us
no alternative but either absolute skepticism,—which gives up the problem, and ends
in nihilism and despair,—
The hypothesis of imposture is so revolting to moral as well as common sense, that its mere statement is its condemnation. It has never been seriously carried out, and no scholar of any decency and self-respect would now dare to profess it openly.73 How, in the name of logic, common sense, and experience, could an impostor—that is, a deceitful, selfish, depraved man—have invented, and consistently maintained from beginning to end, the purest and noblest character known in history with the most perfect air of truth and reality? How could he have conceived, and successfully carried through, in the face of the strongest prejudices of his people and age, a plan of unparalleled beneficence, moral magnitude and sublimity, and sacrificed his own life for it?
The difficulty is not lessened by shifting the charge of fraud
from Christ upon the apostles and evangelists; for they were any
And who can seriously believe, for a moment, that the Christian
Church for these eighteen hundred years, now embracing nearly the whole civilized
world, and among them the strongest intellects and the noblest hearts, the greatest
divines, philosophers, poets, orators, statesmen, and benefactors of the race, could
have been duped and fooled by a Galilean carpenter or a dozen illiterate fishermen?
The hypothesis of enthusiasm or self-deception, though less disreputable,
is equally unreasonable, in view of the uniform clearness, calmness, self-possession,
humility, dignity, and patience of Christ,—qualities the very opposite of those
which characterize an enthusiast. We might imagine a Jew of that age to have fancied
himself the Messiah and the Son of God; but instead of opposing all the popular
notions, and discouraging all the temporal hopes, of his countrymen, he would, like
Barcokeba of a later period, have headed a rebellion against the hated tyranny of
the Romans, and endeavored to establish a temporal kingdom. Enthusiasm, which in
this case
Christ’s intellect is truly marvelous. He never erred in his judgment
of men and things; he was never deceived by appearances; he penetrated through the
surface, and always went straight to the heart and marrow; he never asked a question
which was not perfectly appropriate; he never gave an answer which was not fully
to the point, or which could be better conceived and expressed. How often did he
silence his cavilers, the shrewd and cunning priests and scribes, by a short sentence
which hit the nail on the head, or struck like lightning into their conscience,
or wisely evaded the trap laid for him! When the Pharisees and Herodians, with the
malicious intention to entangle him into their political party quarrels, asked him
whether it was lawful to pay taxes to
Is such an intellect—clear as the sky, bracing as the mountain air, sharp and penetrating as a sword, thoroughly healthy and vigorous, always ready and always self-possessed—liable to a radical and most serious delusion concerning his own character and mission? Preposterous imagination!
Let us hear the most eminent Unitarian divine on this hypothesis:—
“The charge,” says Dr. Channing, “of an extravagant, self-deluding
enthusiasm is the last to be fastened on Jesus. Where can we find the traces of
it in his history? Do we detect them in the calm authority of his precepts; in the
mild, practical, and beneficent spirit of his religion; in the unlabored simplicity
of the language with which he unfolds his high powers and the sublime truths of
religion; or in the good sense, the knowledge of human nature, which he always discovers
in his estimate and treatment of the different classes of men with whom he acted?
Do we discover this enthusiasm in the singular fact, that whilst he claimed power
in the future world, and always turned men’s minds to heaven, he never indulged
his own imagination, or stimulated that of his disciples, by giving vivid pictures,
or any minute description, of that unseen state? The truth is, that, remarkable
as was the character of Jesus,
But the champions of this theory may admit all this, and yet fasten
the delusion upon the disciples of Christ, who were so dazzled by his character,
words, and works, that they
This is the view of the older German Rationalism.75 It forms a parallel to the heathen rationalism of Euhemerus, of the Cyrenaic school: he explained the gods of the Greek mythology as human sages, heroes, kings, and tyrants, whose superior knowledge or great deeds secured them divine honors, or the hero-worship of posterity.76
The rationalistic explanation, after having been tried first,
by Eichhorn and others, with the miracles of the Old Testament, was fully developed
and applied to the gospel-history, with an unusual degree of patient and painstaking
learning and acumen, by the late professor H. E. G. Paulus,
of Heidelberg.77 This German Euhemerus takes the gospel-history as actual
history; but, by a critical separation of what he calls fact from what he
calls judgment of the actor or narrator, he explains it exclusively from
natural causes, and
This interpretation, however, which claims to be “natural,” turns
out to be very unnatural, and commits innumerable sins against the context, the
laws of hermeneutics, and against common sense itself. To prove this, it is only
necessary to give some specimens from the exegesis of Paulus and his school. The
glory
And yet these very evangelists, who, according to this most unnatural
“natural exegesis,” must have been destitute of the most
The last, the least dishonorable, and the most plausible, of the
false theories of the life of Christ, is the hypothesis of poetical fiction. This
may, again, assume two forms,—the mythical and the legendary. The
former derives its support mainly from the formation
The one was matured and carried out by Dr. David
Frederick Strauss, with all the patient research, learning, and solidity
of a German scholar; the other, by Prof. Joseph Ernest Renan,
with all the brilliancy, elegance, and levity of a Parisian novelist: the one was
written for students, the other for the people; the one rests on the philosophical
basis of a speculative or logical pantheism, the other on that of a sentimental
or poetical pantheism. Strauss’s “Leben Jesu” is related to Renan’s “Vie
de Jésus,” as the heavy armor of a mediæval knight to the parade uniform of
a holiday-soldier, or as a siege-cannon to a popgun, or as an iron statue to a tawdry
wax figure; but both start essentially from the same naturalistic premises, and
arrive at the same conclusions. They are equally opposed to the miraculous and supernatural
in the life of our Saviour, and leave a mere spectral
Dr. Strauss wrote two works on the life of Jesus: a large one for scholars, which appeared first in 1835, in two volumes; and a condensed one for the people, in 1864, in one volume.80 In both he maintains the same theory, with unimportant modifications. The former is no doubt the ablest and strongest work ever written against Christianity, and is at the same time a well-arranged storehouse of all the older arguments of infidelity in its attacks upon the gospel history. It is therefore worthy of a more serious examination and refutation than any other.
Strauss has found an eloquent advocate in the erratic genius and misguided philanthropist, Theodore Parker, who passed like a brilliant meteor over the American skies to disappear in a foreign land.81
What Gabler, Vater, Bauer, De Wette, and other critics, had already done with the miracles of the Old Testament, and some portions of the New, Strauss fully matured and carried out with reference to the whole life of Christ. He sinks the gospel history, as to the mode of its origin and realness, substantially on a par with the ancient mythologies of Greece and Rome.
A myth is the representation of a religious idea or truth in the
form of a fictitious narrative; and in this respect it resembles the fable and the
parable, but differs from both by blending the idea with the fact, without any consciousness
of a difference between them. The fable is a fictitious story, based upon palpable
impossibilities,—as thinking and speaking animals,—and invented for the express
purpose of inculcating some moral maxim, or lesson of prudence; the parable is likewise
a fictitious narrative, deliberately produced, but based upon possibilities, and
thus intrinsically truthful, for the purpose of
Strauss does not deny by any means, as is sometimes ignorantly
or maliciously asserted, the historical existence of Jesus, and even admits him
to have been a religious genius of the first magnitude. But from pantheistic and
naturalistic premises, and by a cold process of hypercritical dissection of the
apparently contradictory accounts of the witnesses, he resolves all the supernatural
and miraculous elements of Christ’s person and history, from his birth to the resurrection
and ascension, into myths, or imaginative representations of religious ideas in
the form of facts, which were honestly believed by the authors to have actually
occurred. The ideas symbolized in these facts, especially the idea of
In the execution of his task, Strauss avails himself, at the same time, of all the difficulties and objections which the ingenuity of unbelievers of opposite philosophical tendencies, from Celsus and Porphyry to Reimarus and Paulus, have urged against the credibility of the gospel narrative; grouping them with consummate skill for rhetorical effect; presenting the most complex details with rare clearness; changing his mode of attack from round assertion to cautious insinuation or suggestive inquiry, and then massing his forces for a final assault upon the citadel, against which the gates of hell shall never prevail.
Let us now proceed to examine this system.
First, The philosophic foundation on which the mythical hypothesis
professedly rests is the alleged impossibility of a miracle; which, again, has its
root in a pantheistic denial of
Creation is the first miracle; and the Almighty Will, which called
the world into existence, still lives with his power undiminished. God is the Lord
of nature, and can reveal himself in his own realm. Geological discovery tells us,
that, even before man, new races of animals and plants have at different times been
created. The testimony of the rocks is full of such miracles. Mlan must have had
a beginning,—even according to the pantheistic theory of development, if we trace
it back in an unbroken line to the first link,—and he can not be explained from
a lower kingdom, but only by a creative
The belief in the supernatural, far from being a sign of a weak
mind, has been held by intellectual giants among all nations and
In the case of Christ, the presumption is altogether in favor
of his having performed miracles; and the onus probandi
lies on those who take the opposite view. Christ, we have seen, is himself a miracle,
compared with all ordinary men before and after him. His doctrine and life not only
rise far above his age and nation, but have never been surpassed or equaled since.
Even Strauss, Renan, and Parker can not deny this fact, which is itself
Secondly, The critical foundation of the mythical theory is as
unsafe as the philosophical, and is one of the weakest parts of the book of Strauss,
who was justly censured by his teacher, Baur, for attempting to write a criticism
At one time, feeling the force of the unanimous voice of Christian
antiquity and modern critical investigation, Strauss was disposed to admit the authenticity
of the Gospel of John; but, seeing the fatal effect of this concession upon his
conclusions, he soon after withdrew it, in the third edition of his large work.
But suppose we give up the four Gospels: there still remain the
Acts and the Epistles of the New Testament to substantiate all the fundamental facts
of the life of Christ, especially the resurrection,—the great crowning and sealing
miracle of his work, without which the Apostolic Church could never have risen at
all. Even Dr. Baur, who, in bold negative and reconstructive criticism, went farther
than any skeptic ever did, and who resolved most of the New-Testament writings into
“tendency” books written in the conscious interest of contending parties and sections
of the post-apostolic age, ultimately blended in the system of ancient Catholicism,—a
theory, by the way, which is quite inconsistent with the unconscious mytho-poetic
origin of the Gospels,—leaves the Apocalypse of St. John, and four Epistles of St.
Paul, viz., those to the Romans (excepting the last two chapters), the Corinthians
and Galatians, standing as genuine apostolic writings. This is enough for our purpose.
It may perhaps be
The difficulty presented here to the infidel biographers of Jesus
is absolutely insurmountable; and the chapter on the resurrection is the weakest
part of Strauss’s book, where his mythological hypothesis breaks down completely.
He himself must admit that all the apostles believed in the resurrection,
A third fundamental error of the mythical hypothesis consists
in a radical inversion of the natural order and relation of history and poetry,
as it exists in any historical age like that in which Christ made his appearance
on earth. Facts give rise to songs, and not vice versâ.
Prophecies, and expectations, too, may foreshadow events, but do not create them.
The real object precedes the picture of the artist; the hero, the epic. Bunyan’s
“Pilgrim’s Progress” presupposes the Christian experience of which it is a beautiful
allegory. Milton’s “Paradise Lost” could never have
In the case before us, the difficulty is greatly increased by
making, not one great towering genius, as Homer, but an illiterate and comparatively
ignorant multitude, responsible for the gospel poem, which in purity and sublimity
rises infinitely above all ancient mythologies. Strauss assumes a Messianic community
in some terra incognita, probably in the midst of
Palestine, independent of the apostles, about thirty or forty years after the death
of Christ, to have produced the gospel history. But this is a mere fiction of his
brain. At that time, Christianity was already planted all over the Roman Empire,
as is evident from the Epistles of Paul as well as from the Acts; and all these
congregations stood under the guidance of apostles and apostolic men who were eye-witnesses
of the events of Christ, and controlled the whole Christian tradition. The Gospels,
moreover, with the
But admitting such a consolidated, central, and yet independent
mytho-poetic community of the second generation of Christians, how could this Messianic
congregation itself originate without a Messiah? How could the disciples believe
in Jesus, without the indispensable
The poets must in this case have been superior to the hero. John must have surpassed Jesus, whom he represented as the incarnate God.84 And yet the hero is admitted by these skeptics themselves to be the purest and greatest man that ever lived!
But where are the traces of a fervid imagination and mytho-poetic
art in the gospel history? Is it not, on the contrary, remarkably free from all
rhetorical and poetical ornament, from every admixture of subjective notions and
feelings, even from the expression
Verily, the gospel history, enacted not in an obscure corner (
The mere fact of the Christian Church, with its unbroken history
of eighteen hundred
But the secret spring of this hypercriticism is the pantheistic
or atheistic denial of a personal, living God, which consistently and professedly
ends with the denial of personal immortality; for the relative personality of man
This alternative is still more clearly forced upon us by the latest phase in the progress of infidelity,—the book of the Strauss of France.
Renan has eclipsed all former infidel
biographers of Christ, so far as popularity and
He essentially agrees, as already remarked, with Strauss, to whom
he expressly refers as his main authority for critical research in detail; but he
correctly remarks that the term myths is better applicable to India and primitive
Greece than to the ancient traditions of the Hebrews and the Semitic nations in
general; and prefers the words legends and legendary narratives, “which,
while they concede a large influence to the working of opinions, allow the action
and the personal character of Jesus to stand out in their completeness.”88
This brings the gospel history down to a level with the history of Francis of Assissi,
and other marvelous saints of the Romish Church; although Renan, inconsistently
But while Renan, aided by clear common sense, a lively French
imagination, and a fresh contemplation of the Holy Land, which he calls the “fifth
Gospel,” surpasses Strauss in the estimate of the historical character of the gospel-record,
he is equally hostile to all miracles, which, in his oracular opinion, “always imply
imposture or fraud;” and falls far below him on the score of scholarship, consistency,
and even morality. We mean, of course, the morality of his theory, and have nothing
to do with the morality of his life or private character. Compared with this critical
master, Renan is a mere dilettante and a charlatan. He nowhere makes a serious attempt
to prove any of his novel and arbitrary positions; refers for detail, once for all,
to Strauss and
According to Renan, Jesus was born at Nazareth (not at Bethlehem),
but assumed the title of Son of David as a necessary condition of success. TIe grew
up amidst the charming scenery of Galilee, an ignorant peasant of extraordinary
genius and spotless virtue. He was a delicious Rabbi (Rabbi delicieux),
of ravishing beauty, a preacher of the purest code of morals, and a healer of many
diseases of body and mind. But finding at last that he had either to satisfy the
foolish Messianic expectations of his people, or to renounce his mission, he yielded
to his friends, and entered on a course of mild and beneficent
And what a God!—such a God as only a heathen idolater, or a polluted
fancy, or a crazy intellect, could worship; a Jesus who is idolized on the one hand
as the perfect man, “whose legend will call forth tears without end, whose worship
will grow young without ceasing;” and who almost in the same breath is charged with
vanity, self-delusion, erotic sentimentalism, fanaticism, and complicity with fraud!
We can hardly trust our eyes when we see this great Orientalist digging from the
grave of disgrace and contempt the exploded hypothesis of vulgar imposture, as if
it were the last conclusion of science; and read the suggestion that the resurrection
of Lazarus was a pious fraud, contrived by himself and his two sisters, and weakly
connived at by Jesus, in the hope of producing an impression among the unbelieving
Jews. But this wretched opinion is,
Renan’s Jesus is the most contradictory and impossible character
ever conceived. There are many happy and unhappy inconsistencies in the world, and
even great and good men sometimes combine conflicting
NEBICULA est; transibit,”—“It is
a little cloud; it will pass away.” This was said first, I believe, by Athanasius,
of Julian the Apostate who, after a short reign of intense hostility to Christianity,
perished with his work, “leaving no wreck behind.”97 The same may be applied
to all the recent attempts to undermine the faith of humanity in the person of its
divine Lord and Saviour. The clouds, great and small, pass away; the sun continues
to shine: darkness has its hour; the light is eternal. No argument against the existence
or attack upon the character of the sun will drive the king of day from the sky,
or prevent him from blessing the earth. And the eye of man, with its sun-like nature,
will ever
With its last and ablest efforts, infidelity seems to have exhausted its scientific resources. It could only repeat itself hereafter. Its different theories have all been tried, and found wanting. One has in turn refuted and superseded the other, even during the lifetime of their champions. They explain nothing in the end: on the contrary, they only substitute an unnatural prodigy for a supernatural miracle, an inextricable enigma for a revealed mystery. They equally tend to undermine all faith in God’s providence, in history, and ultimately in every principle of truth and virtue; and they deprive a poor and fallen humanity, in a world of sin, temptation, and sorrow, of its only hope and comfort in life and in death.
Dr. Strauss, by far the clearest and strongest of all the infidel
biographers of Jesus, seems to have had a passing feeling of the disastrous tendency
of his work of destruction, and the awful responsibility he assumed. “The results
of our inquiry,” he says in the closing chapter of his large “Life of Jesus,” “have
apparently annihilated the greatest and most important part of that which the Christian
has been wont to believe concerning his Jesus; have uprooted all the encouragements
which he has derived from his faith, and deprived him of all his consolations. The
boundless stores of truth and life which for eighteen hundred years have been the
aliment of humanity seem irretrievably devastated, the most sublime leveled with
the dust, God divested of his grace, man of his dignity, and the tie between heaven
and earth broken. Piety turns away with horror from so fearful an act of desecration,
and, strong in the impregnable self-evidence of its faith, boldly pronounces that—let
an audacious
Humanity scorns such a miserable substitute, which has yet to give the first proof of any power for good, and which is not likely ever to convert or improve a single individual. Humanity must have a living Head, a real Lord, and Saviour from sin and death. With renewed faith and stronger confidence, it will return from the dreary desolations of a heartless infidelity, and the vain conceits of a philosophy falsely so called, to the historical Christ, the promised Messiah, the God incarnate, and exclaim with Peter: “Lord, where shall we go but to thee? Thou alone hast the words of eternal life, and we believe and are sure that thou art the Son of God!”
Yes! He still lives, the divine Man and incarnate God, on the
ever-fresh and self-authenticating records of the Gospels, in the unbroken history
of eighteen centuries, and in the hearts and lives of the wisest and best
Jesus Christ is the most certain, the most sacred, and the most
glorious, of all facts; arrayed in a beauty and majesty which throws the “starry
heavens above us and the moral law within us” into obscurity, and fills us truly
with ever-growing reverence and awe. He shines forth with the self-evidencing light
of the noonday sun. He is too great, too pure, too perfect, to have been invented
by any sinful and erring man. His character and claims are confirmed by the sublimest
doctrine, the purest ethics, the mightiest miracles, the grandest spiritual kingdom,
and are daily and hourly exhibited in the virtues and graces of all who yield to
the regenerating and sanctifying power of his spirit and example. The historical
Not for all the wealth and wisdom of this world would I weaken the faith of the humblest Christian in his divine Lord and Saviour; but if, by the grace of God, I could convert a single skeptic to a child-like faith in Him who lived and died for me and for all, I would feel that I had not lived in vain.
NOTE 1, page 9. The painter-monk Fra Beato Angelico da Fiesole (born in Fiesole, near Florence, in 1387, died in Rome in 1455), one of the purest characters in the whole history of art, who from the seraphic beauty of his angels and glorified saints was called “the blessed” and “the angelic,” painted the head of Christ and of the holy Virgin always in a praying frame of mind and on his knees. “ It would be well for criticism,” says E. Renan (in his “Studies of Religious History and Criticism,” transl. by O. B. Frothingham, New York, 1864, p. 168), “to imitate his example, and, only after having adored them, to face the radiance of certain figures before which the ages have bent low.” Unfortunately, the French philosopher understands this in the sense of pantheistic hero-worship. We regard only one man as worthy of divine honor and worship,—the God-Man, Jesus of Nazareth.
NOTE 2, page 12. See Dr.
Horace Bushnell’s able work on “Nature and the Supernatural.” The
same idea is expressed by Dr. John W. Nevin, in his book
on “The Mystical Presence,” Phil., 1846, p. 199,
NOTE 3, page 13.
NOTE 4, page 13. Fides præcedit intellectum. Or more fully, in the language of Anselm of Canterbury, adopted by Schleiermacher as the motto of his Dogmatics: “Neque enim quæro intelligere ut credam sed credo ut intelligam. Nam qui non crediderit, non experietur, et qui expertus non fuerit, non intelliget.”
NOTE 5, page 13. Intellectus præcedit fidem. This was Abelard’s maxim, which, without the restriction of the opposite maxim, must lead to rationalism and skepticism.
NOTE 6, page 17. Dr. Ullmann, “Die Sündlosigkeit Jesu,” 6th ed. p. 215: “So führt schon das Vollendet-Menschliche in Jesu, wenn wir es mit allem Uebrigen, was die Menschheit darbietet, vergleichen, zur Anerkennung des Göttlichen in ihm.” Dorner, “Entwicklungsgeschichte der Lehre von der Person Christi,” 2d ed. vol. ii. p. 1211: “Jesu Heiligkeit und Weisheit, durch die er unter den sündigen, viel-irrenden Menschen einzig dasteht, weiset . . . . auf einen übernatürlichen Ursprung seiner Person. Diese muss, um inmitten der Sünderwelt begreiflich zu sein, aus einer eigenthümlichen und wunderbar schöpferischen That Gottes abgeleitet, ja es muss in Christus . . . . von Gott aus betrachtet, eine Incarnation göttlicher Liebe, also göttlichen Wesens gesehen werden, was ihn als den Punkt erscheinen lässt, wo Gott und die Menschheit einzig und innigst geeinigt sind.” Compare also Ebrard, “Christliche Dogmatik,” 1852, vol. ii. pp. 24-31; and W. Nast, “Commentary on Matthew and Mark,” Cincinnati, 1864, Gener. Introd., pp. 120.
NOTE 7, page 23. This idea is almost as
old as the Christian Church, and was already pretty clearly taught by
Irenæus, who, through the single link of his teacher Polycarp,
stood connected with the age of St. John the apostle. He says (“Adv. Hæreses.”
lib. ii. cap. 22, § 4): “Omnes enim venit [Christus]
per semetipsum salvare, omnes, inquam, qui per eum renascuntur in Deum, infantes
et parvulos et pueros
NOTE 8, page 25. See
NOTE 9, page 26. Bethlehem was indeed the
ancestral seat of the house of David (
NOTE 10, page 27. Compare the rich remarks
of Dr. Lange in his commentary on the second chapter of
Matthew,
NOTE 11, page 27.
NOTE 12, page 28. Dr. J. P. Lange, in his “Leben Jesu nach den Evangelien,” Heidelberg, 1844 ff. vol. ii. p. 127, says: “The history of Jesus in his twelfth year represents his whole development. It is the characteristic deed of his youth, the revelation of his youthful life, a reflection of his birth, a sign and anticipation of his future heroic career. It represents the childhood of his ideality, therefore also the ideality of childhood in general.” Compare also the suggestive remarks of Olshausen on that passage, “Commentar” (3d Germ. ed. vol. i. p. 145 ff.); and of Van Oosterzee, in Lange’s “Bibelwerk.”
NOTE 13, page 29.
NOTE 14, page 30. By Dr. Horace Bushnell, in his genial work, already quoted, on “Nature and the Supernatural,” page 280 (“The Character of Jesus,” page 19 ff.)
NOTE 15, page 33. See the particulars, with ample quotations from the sources, in Rud. Hoffmaann’s “Leben Jesu nach den Apokryphen im Zusammenhang aus den Quellen erzaehlt und wissenschaftlich untersucht.” Leipzig, 1851, p. 140-263.
NOTE 16, page 34. Renan,
in his Life, or Romance rather, of Jesus, chap. ii., gives
a graphic description of
NOTE 17, page 36.
NOTE 18, page 39. Comp. G. G. Gervinus: “Shakspeare,” Leipzig, 1850, vol. i. pp. 38-41. This masterly critic and expounder of the British poet pronounces him one of the best and most extensively informed men of his age: “Es ist heute kein Wagniss mehr, zu sagen, dass Shakspeare in jener Zeit an Umfang vielfachen Wissens sehr wenige seines Gleichen gehabt habe.”
NOTE 19, page 41. John Young: “The Christ of History,” p. 35.
NOTE 20, page 44. Heinrich Steffens, a
follower of Schelling, and a Christian philosopher, speaks thus of man, and bases
upon this thought his “System of Anthropology.” But it may be applied in its fullest
and absolute sense to Christ, as the ideal man, in whom
NOTE 21, page 51. Comp. with the history
of the temptation in the wilderness,
NOTE 22, page 52. In scholastic terminology, the posse non peccare, or the impeccabilitas minor. To this corresponds the posse non mori, or the immortalitas minor, i. e. the relative or conditional immortality of Adam in Paradise, which depended on his probation, and was lost by the fall.
NOTE 23, page 53. The non posse peccare, or the impeccabilitas major. With this is closely connected the non posse mori, or the immortalitas major, the absolute immortality of the resurrection-state, which can never be lost.
NOTE 24, page 53. The Rev. Dr. Jos. Berg,
professor in the Theological Seminary at New Brunswick, in a friendly notice of
the first edition of this essay (in his
NOTE 25, page 54. Peter Bayne: “The Testimony of Christ to Christianity.” Boston, 1862, pp. 105.
NOTE 26, page 55. Comp.
NOTE 27, page 56.
NOTE 28, page 58.
NOTE 29, page 59. Quoted from Dr.
H. Bushnell, 1. c. p. 325. The sinlessness of Jesus is denied
by D. F. Strauss, in his two destructive works, “The
Life of Jesus,” and “The Dogmatics in Conflict with Modern Science;”
and this mainly from the à-priori philosophical argument
of the impossibility of sinlessness, or the pantheistic notion of the inseparableness
of sin from all finite existence. The only exegetical proof he urges (“Dogmat.,”
ii. 192) is Christ’s word,
NOTE 30, page 59. So Schleiermacher,
the greatest theological genius since Calvin, in his work, “Der christliche Glaube,”
3d edition (1836), vol. ii. p. 78: “Christus war von allen andern
Menschen unterschieden
NOTE 31, page 67. Cicero,
Quæst. Tuscul., ii. 22: “Quem [in quo erit perfecta
sapientia] adhuc nos quidem vidimus neninem, sed philosophorum sententiis,
qualis futurus sit, si modo aliquando fuerit, exponitur.” The same writer,
in the same work, ii. 4, speaks in the strongest terms of the gross contrast between
the doctrine and the life of the philosophers; and Quintilian
accuses them of concealing the worst vices under the name of the ancient philosophy
(Instit. i. Proœm.). The virtue of chastity, in our Christian sense,
was almost unknown among the heathen. Woman was essentially a slave of man’s lower
passions. It is notorious that disreputable women, called
ἑταῖραι, or amicæ,
were attached in Corinth to the Temple of Aphrodite, ant) enjoyed the sanction of
religion for the practice of vice These dissolute characters were esteemed above
housewives, and became the proper representatives of fe male culture and social
elegance. Remember Aspasia Phryne, Laïs, Theodora, who attracted the admiration
NOTE 32, page 68. Theodore Parker: “Discourses of Religion,” p. 294.
NOTE 33, page 69. Renan
makes some striking admissions on this point, though not unmixed with error. “Morality,”
he says in the fifth chapter of his “Vie de Jésus,” “is not composed of principles
more or less well expressed. The poetry of the precept which makes it lovely is
more than the precept itself, taken as an abstract verity. Now, it can not be denied
that the maxims borrowed by Jesus from his predecessors” [Christ borrowed nothing
from anybody] “produce in the gospel an effect totally different from that in the
ancient Law, in the Pirke Aboth, or in the Talmud. It is not the ancient
Law, it is not the Talmud, which has conquered and changed the world. Little original
in itself [?], if by that is meant that it can be recomposed
NOTE 34, page 69. The relation of husband and father must be excepted, on account of his elevation above all equal partnership, and the universalness of his character and mission, which requires the entire community of the redeemed as his bride instead of any individual daughter of Eve.
NOTE 35, page 71.
NOTE 36, page 74.
NOTE 37, page 79.
NOTE 38, page 80.
NOTE 39, page 81.
NOTE 40, page 81.
NOTE 41, page 81. See the dialogue with
the woman of Samaria,
NOTE 42, page 84. Comp.
Ullmann, “Sündlosigkeit,” p. 67;
J. P. Lange, “Leben Jesu,” i. 27-34; Ebrard,
“Dogmatik,” vol. ii. 23, 24. Also Hase, in his “Leben
Jesu,” p. 63 (4th ed.), places the ideal beauty of Christ’s character in “das
schöne Ebenmaass aller Kräfte,” and in “vollendete
Gottesliebe dargestellt in reinster Humanität” (“The beautiful symmetry
of all powers, and perfect love to God, exhibited in purest humanity”). Bishop
D. Wilson, in his “Evidences of Christianity,” vol.
ii. 116 (Boston ed. of 1830), remarks: “The opposite, and to us apparently contradictory,
graces were found in Christ in equal proportion.” Dr. W. E. Channing,
the Unitarian, in his able and remarkable sermon on the “Character of Christ”
(Works, vol. iv. p. 23), says: “This combination of the spirit of humanity, in its
lowliest, tenderest form, with the consciousness of unrivaled and divine glories,
is the most wonderful distinction of this wonderful character.”
Guizot, Méditations sur 1’essence de la relig. chrétienne, 1864, p.
274: “Rien ne me frappe
NOTE 43, page 91. “Politia,” p.
74 sq. ed. Ast. (“Plat. Opera,” vol. iv. p. 360, E. ed. Bip.) Compare, the
author’s “History of the Apostolic Church,” English edition, § 109, page
433 f. Even Jean Jacques Rousseau was struck with this remarkable heathen prophecy
of the suffering Saviour, who died the death
NOTE 44, page 94.
NOTE 45, page 102. Rousseau, “Émil,” iv. p. 111: “Oui, si la vie et la mort de Socrate sont d’un sage; la vie et la mort de Jésus sont d’un dieu!”
NOTE 46, page 108. “Der
Reinste unter den Mächtigen, der Mächtigste unter den Reinen, der mit seiner durchstochenen
Hand Reiche aus der Angel, den Strom der Jahrhunderte aus dem Bette hob und noch
fortgebietet den Zeiten.” Jean Paul: “Ueber
den Gott in
NOTE 47, page 109. “Vie de Jésus,” 7th ed. Paris, 1864, p. 325: “Quels que puissent être les phénomènes inattendues de l’avenir, Jésus ne sera pas surpassé. Son culte se rajeunira sans cesse; sa légende provoquera des larmes sans fin; ses souffrances attendiront les meilleurs cœurs; tous les siècles proclameront qu’entre les fils des hommes, il n’en est pas né de plus grand que Jésus.” Renan, however, spoils all his concessions, which are quite frequent and enthusiastic, by his pantheistic man-worship, and by placing such a comparatively obscure individual as Cakya-Mouni, or Saint Sakya, the founder of Buddhism, on a par with Christ. Compare the last chapter of his “Vie de Jésus,” and also the conclusion of his essay on the “Critical Historians of Jesus,” where he says of Christ: “The wonder-worker and the prophet will die; the man and the sage will endure; or, rather, the eternal beauty will live for ever in this sublime name, as in all those whom humanity has chosen to keep it in mind of its own nature, and to transport it by the view of its own image. Behold there the living God! This is the adorable One!”
NOTE 48, page 109. Dr.
Baur: “Das Christenthum und die christliche Kirche der drei ersten Jahrhunderte,”
second revised edition, which appeared shortly before
NOTE 49, page 113. For a very full exposition of this testimony, we refer to the instructive and able work of W. Fr. Gess: “Die Lehre von der Person Christs entwickelt aus dem Sebstbewusstsein Christi und aus dem Zeugnisse der Apostel.” Basel. 1856. Dr. Bushnell’s admirable essay on the character of Jesus is defective here. He does not establish the proper divinity of Christ, but seems content with the proof that he was more than man, and can not be classified with men. Having carried the reader over the great difficulty, and beyond the boundary of Humanitarianism, he leaves him to his own conclusion concerning the merits of the orthodox view of Christ.
NOTE 50, page 113. Compare the dictionaries, and especially Schmid’s and Bruder’s Greek, or Bagster’s English Concordance of the New Testament (the latter republished by the Harpers, New York, 1855), sub verbo υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου.
NOTE 51, page 114. So many modern German
commentators, and also Dr. Trench, who remarks: “He was
‘Son of man,’ as alone realizing all which in the
NOTE 52, page 114.
NOTE 53, page 115.
NOTE 54, page 117.
NOTE 55, page 117.
NOTE 56, page 117.
NOTE 57, page 119.
NOTE 58, page 119.
NOTE 59, page 119.
NOTE 60, page 119.
NOTE 61, page 120.
NOTE 62, page 120.
NOTE 63, page 120.
NOTE 64, page 122. “Mundus non factus est in tempore, sed cum tempore.”
NOTE 65, page 123.
NOTE 66, page 123.
NOTE 67, page 123.
NOTE 68, page 124.
NOTE 69, page 125. Dr.
Hengstenberg, in his “Commentary on the Gospel of St. John,” 1863,
vol. iii. p. 361 f., justly remarks: “Menschen, die sich selbst
zu Gott machen, sind immer entweder Verrückte oder Bösewichter. Wer anders als wer
selbst ein Frevler ist, wird es wagen Jesum in die eine oder die andere
NOTE 70, page 125. “Of all the readers of the gospel,” says Bushnell, p. 290, “it probably never even occurs to one in a hundred thousand to blame his conceit, or the egregious vanity of his pretensions.” Even the better class of Unitarians instinctively bow before these claims. See the remarkable passage of Dr. Channing quoted below.
NOTE 71, page 133. Discourse on the “Character of Christ,” in Channing’s Works, vol. iv. p. 20.
NOTE 72, page 134. The explanation which some Unitarian divines give of these words of Thomas, by resolving them into a mere exclamation of surprise at the fact of the resurrection, “O my God!” is simply absurd, and only worthy of notice as revealing the inextricable difficulty which it presents to the Unitarian Christology.
NOTE 73, page 136. Is was first suggested
by the heathen assailants of Christianity, Celsus and
Julian the Apostate, then insinuated by French deists of
the school of Voltaire, but never raised to the dignity
of scientific argument. The only attempt to carry it out, and that a mere fragmentary
one, was made by the anonymous “Wolfenbüttel Fragmentist,” since known
NOTE 74, page 143. “Discourse on the Character of Christ.”—Channing’s Works, vol. iv. 17, 18.
NOTE 75, page 144. The so-called
rationalismus communis, or vulgaris,
or the rationalism of common sense, as distinct from the transcendental rationalism
of uncommon sense or speculative reason. The sense of both systems, however, ends
in nonsense. Dr. Marheineke defined a Rationalist, or, as Paulus (not of Tarsus,
but of Heidelberg) called him, a Denkgläubige,
NOTE 76, page 144. Comp. Diodorus Siculus, Bibli. Fragm., i. 7; Cicero, De natura deor., i. 42; Sextus Empir., Adv. math. ix. 17.
NOTE 77, page 144. Dr. Paulus was born in the kingdom of Württemberg, 1761; then successively professor in different universities; at last in Heidelberg, where he died in 1847, after having long outlived himself. His rationalistic exegesis is laid down in his “Commentary on the Gospels,” published since 1800; and in his “Life of Jesus,” 1828.
NOTE 78, page 145. The rationalistic interpretation
of περιπατῶν ἐπὶ τῆς θαλύσσης (according to
the reading of the received text), or ἐπὶ τῆν θάλασσαν
(according to the better authenticated reading of the modern critical editions),
in
NOTE 79, page 149. Renan: “Studies of Religious history and Criticism,” translated by O. B. Frothingham. New York, 1864. pp. 176, 177.
NOTE 80, page 151. David
Friederich Strauss, Doctor of Philosophy (not of Theology), was born at Ludwigsburg,
near Stuttgart, in Württemberg, a little kingdom which has produced an unusual number
of distinguished men,—poets like Schiller and Uhland, philosophers like Schelling
and Hegel, astronomers like Kepler, and some of the most orthodox and pious divines,
as Bengel and Storr; but also the very leaders of both the common and the transcendental
rationalism, viz. Paulus, Baur, and Strauss. The late Dr. Baur,
Professor of Church History in Tübingen (died 1860), is the founder of the so-called
Tübingen School of negative historical criticism, which aimed at a radical reconstruction
of the history of primitive Christianity, on the basis of a pantheistic (Hegelian)
intellectualism; and is, upon the whole, the ablest and most respectable of all
the opponents of Christianity. It was mainly under his instruction that Strauss
was educated. and unfitted for the Christian ministry, at the University of Tübingen.
Strauss is a good classical and general scholar, and a master
in the art of composition. He has a remarkably clear, methodical, logical, and acute
mind, a rare power of critical analysis, but no constructive power whatever. He
has talent of high order, but no genius;
The first and larger “Leben Jesu” of Strauss appeared at
Tübingen in 1835 and ’36, in two volumes; the
NOTE 81, page 151. Theodore Parker, born in Massachusetts, 1810; died in Florence, 1860. “Discourse of Matters pertaining to Religion,” 1849. Comp. his review of Strauss in the “Christian Examiner” for April, 1840. Mr. Weiss makes out a distinction between the theories of Strauss and Parker, but on a partial misapprehension of the former. The difference lies more in the practical turn of the American agitator and the speculative turn of the German student. See “Life and Correspondence of Theodore Parker,” by John Weiss, New York, 1864, 2 vols.; and an able review of this work by Prof. Noah Porter in the “New-Englander” for 1864, page 359 ff.
NOTE 82, page 163. In his new “Leben Jesu,” page 79, Strauss says, with reference to the Gospel of John: “Hier hat sogar die Einmischung philosophischer Construction und bewusster Dichtung alle Wahrscheinlichkeit.” Comp. page 98. For a clear digest of the recent gospel controversy, we refer the English reader to two articles of Prof. G. B. Fisher in the “Bibliotheca Sacra” for April, 1864, on the genuineness of John; and another article in the “New Englander” for October, 1864, on the Synoptists.
NOTE 83, page 167. Dr. Baur, in the second revised edition of his last important work on “Christianity and the Christian Church in the First Three Centuries,” which appeared shortly before his death (a. 1860), makes the remarkable concession that the conversion of St. Paul remained at all times an enigma to him, which cannot be satisfactorily solved by any psychological or dialectical analysis. “Keine weder psychologische noch dialektische Analyse kann das innere Geheimniss des Actes erforschen, in welchem Gott seinen Sohn in ihm enthüllte” (p. 45). In this connection, he allows himself to speak of the miracle of the resurrection, “which alone could disperse the doubts of the older apostles, which seemed to doom faith itself to the eternal night of death” (“das Wunder der Auferstehung, das allein die Zweifel der älteren Apostel zerstreuen konnte, welche den Glauben selbst in die ewige Nacht des Todes verstossen zu müssen schienen” (p. 39); and of the miracle of Paul’s conversion, which appears the greater, since he, “in the sudden change from the most violent enemy to the most determined herald of Christianity, broke through the barriers of Jewish particularism, and dissolved it in the universal idea of Christianity” (p. 45). We honor the honesty of this greatest of modern skeptics, and cherish the hope that he was saved at last from the eternal night of despair which is the legitimate end of skepticism.
NOTE 84, page 172. The same objection against the theory of fiction was already raised by the infidel Rousseau, in his “Émile,” L. iv. p. 111: “Jamais des auteurs juifs n’eussent trouvé ni ce ton, ni cette morale; et l’évangile a des caractères de vérité si grands, si frappans, si parfaitement inimitable, que l’inventeur en serait plus étonnant que le héros.” Theodore Parker, in arguing against the total denial of the existence of Jesus, which no sane man ever ventured upon, supplies an argument against the partial denial: “Measure Jesus by the shadow he has cast into the world; no, by the light he has shed upon it. Shall we be told such a man never lived? the whole story is a lie? Suppose that Plato and Newton never lived. But who did their works, and thought their thought? It takes a Newton to forge a Newton. What man could have fabricated a Jesus? None but a Jesus.” Even Renan himself, unmindful of his theory, says, “Life of Jesus,” ch. xxviii. p. 367: “Far from having been created by his disciples, Jesus appears in all things superior to his disciples. They, St. Paul and St. John excepted, were men without talent or genius. . . . Upon the whole, the character of Jesus, far from having been embellished by his biographers, has been belittled by them.” What a pity that the world had to wait eighteen hundred years for a restoration of thd true picture of Jesus from the imperfect and distorted fragments of his ignorant disciples!
NOTE 85, page 174. Goethe, in his “Conversations with Eckermann” (vol. iii. 371), fully acknowledges the genuineness, credibility, and incomparable majesty of the Gospels, and says: “Ich halte die Evangelien für durchaus ächt; denn est is in ihnen der Abglanz einer Hoheit wirksam, die von der Person Christi ausging und die so göttlicher Art, wie nur je auf Erden das Göttliche erschienen ist.” Guizot, in his “Méditations,” première série, p. 252, makes the following striking and truthful remarks on the Gospels: “The mighty power of these books and their accounts has been tested and proved. They have overcome paganism; they have conquered Greece, Rome, and barbarous Europe; they are on the way of conquering the world. And the sincerity of the authors is no less certain than the power of the books. We may contest the learning and critical sagacity of the first historians of Jesus Christ; but it is impossible to contest their good faith; it shines from their words: they believed what they said; they sealed their assertions with their blood.”
NOTE 86, page 175. This has been done with
good effect, with reference to Hume, by Archbishop Whately,
in his “Historic Doubts relative to Napoleon Bonaparte,” Oxford, 1821; and
against Strauss (which means Ostrich) by Dr. Wurm (under
the name of Casuar, i.e. Cassowary, a cousin to the ostrich, not
Caspar, as Prof. Fisher, in the “New-Englander,”
NOTE 87, page 177. Joseph
Ernest Renan was born Feb. 27, 1823, at Treguier in Brittany, of humble (some
say of Jewish) parents, and educated for the Romish priesthood in the Theological
Seminary of St. Sulpice, at Paris. But, before taking orders, he was compelled to
leave this institution on account of some religious difficulties which his superiors
were unable or unwilling to solve. He then devoted himself to the comparative study
of the Semitic languages, for which he endeavored to do what Prof. Bopp of Berlin
had so successfully accomplished for the Indo-Germanic or Aryan family of languages.
In 1847, he gained the
Renan’s “Vie de Jésus” was prepared, as to its outline,
during his journey in the East, at the side of his since departed sister, in fresh
view of the holy places, and published at Paris in 1863, as the first part of a
work (to be finished in four volumes) on the “Origins of Christianity.” It
marks an epoch in the religious literature of France, and found an unparalleled
circulation on the continent of Europe, and even i! England and America. I have
before me the seventh edition, Paris, 1864. An English translation, by Ch. E.
Wilbour, appeared in New York, 1864. The book of Renan has all the charm of
a religious novel, and may have benefited many Frenchmen, who never knew that Jesus
NOTE 88, page 177. See Renan’s essay on the “Critical Historians of Jesus,” in his “Studies of Religious History and Criticism,” translated by O. B. Frothinghan, New York, 1864, p. 189.
NOTE 89, page 178. In the essay just quoted,
p. 197, Renan says: “The legend of the Buddha Cakya-Mouni is the one which, in its
mode of formation, most resembles that of Christ; as Buddhism is the religion
NOTE 90, page 178. “Vie de Jésus” (ch. xv. p. 172): “La légende était ainsi le fruit d’une grande conspiration toute spontanée et s’élaborait autour de lui de son vivant. Aucun grand événement de l’histoire ne s’est passé sans donner lieu à un cycle de fables, et Jésus n’eût pu, quand il l’eût voulu, couper court à ces créations populaires.”
NOTE 91, page 179. “Studies of Religious History and Criticism,” &c., p. 192.
NOTE 92, page 181. All competent judges
seem to agree in a very low estimate of the scientific and critical value of Renan’s
book. Dr. H. B. Smith of New York, in his excellent review
of Renan’s “Life of Jesus,” in the “American Presbyterian and Theological
Review” for January, 1864, p. 145, justly remarks: “In point of learning, intellect,
and consistency, the Teutonic work of Strauss is immeasurably superior to the light
and airy French romance.” Prof. Fisher expresses the same
opinion in the article already quoted, “New Englander” for 1854, p. 264:
“There is nothing formidable
NOTE 93, page 182. “Jesus was a thaumaturgist
only at a late period, and against his will.” “He was a miracle-worker and an exorcist
only in spite of himself. Miracles are ordinarily the work of the public even more
than of him to whom they are attributed. . . . The
NOTE 94, page 183. At the close of chap. xxvi. (page 308 of the French original): “Son corps avait-il été enlevé, ou bien l’enthusiasme, toujours crédule fit-il éclore après coup l’ensemble de récits par lesquels on chercha à établir la foi à la resurrection? C’est ce que, faute de documents contradictories—[which the American translation, page 357, has softened into, ‘for want of peremptory evidence’]—nous ignorerons à jamais. Disons cependant que la forte imagination de Marie de Magdala joua dans cette circonstance un rôle capital. Pouvoir divin de l’amour! moments sacrés où la passion d’une hallucinée donne au monde un Dieu resuscité!”
NOTE 95, page 184. The reader will hardly
believe it, until he reads the passage in “Vie de Jésus,” chap. xxiii., which
we reluctantly copy: “Did he [Christ in Gethsemane] recall the clear fountains of
Galilee where he might have refreshed himself; the vineyard and fig-tree under which
he might have been seated; les jeunes filles qui auraient peut-être
consenti à l’aimer? Maudit-il son âpre destinée, qui lui avait interdit les joies
concédées à tous les autres? Regrettat-il sa trop haute nature, et, victime de sa
grandeur, pleura-t-il de n’être pas resté un simple artisan de
NOTE 96, page 186. Dr.
H. B. Smith, in the article alluded to, pages 157 and 169, thus severely
but justly condemns the book of Renan: “In passing judgment on such a representation,
there is no need of circumlocution or euphonisms. It is utterly disgraceful and
disingenuous. It assails the very honesty and credibility of Jesus. It makes success
the standard. It is the essence of Jesuitism. The apology is as superficial as it
is ignominious. The worst ethics of the French stage cannot surpass it. Nobody but
a Frenchman could, after this, still idolize his hero as the perfection of humanity.
And, in the midst of such profligate representations, to interject phrases about
‘our profound seriousness,’ ‘rigid conscience,’ and ‘absolute sincerity,’
in contrast with the delusions and falsity attributed to Jesus, is to carry to its
hight a base invention, from which every right-minded man will instinctively recoil,
NOTE 97, page 187. The dying exclamation
of Julian the Apostate—“Galilæan, thou hast conquered!”—rests on too late authorities
to claim credibility, especially in view of the full account of the impartial Ammianus
Marcellinus on the last hours of the emperor. But it contains the philosophy of
his reign,
NOTE 98, page 190. See his large “Leben Jesu,” Schlussabhandlung, vol. ii. page 663 (4th ed., 1840). Compare a similar conclusion in his popular “Leben Jesu,” page 627.
NOTE 99, page 191. “In an individual,”
says Strauss, “Leben Jesu,” vol. ii. page 710, “in
one God-man, the properties and functions which the church doctrine ascribes to
Christ contradict themselves; in the idea of the race, they agree. Humanity
is the union of the two natures,—the incarnate God, the Infinite externalizing itself
in the finite, and the finite spirit remembering its infinitude. It is the child
of the visible mother and the invisible father, Nature and Spirit; it is the worker
of miracles, in so far as in the course of human history the spirit more and more
completely subjugates nature both within and around man, until it lies before him
as an inert matter of his activity; it is the sinless existence, for the course
of its development is a blameless one: pollution cleaves to the individual only,
and does not touch the race or its history. It is humanity that dies, rises, and
ascends to heaven: for from the negation of its natural life there ever proceeds
a higher spiritual life;’ from the suppression of its limitation as a personal,
rational, and terrestrial spirit, arises its union with the infinite Spirit of the
heavens. By faith
In his latest book,—The Christ of Faith and the Jesus of History,
Berlin, 1865,—which may be regarded as an Appendix to his second Life of Jesus,
Strauss repeats, without proof, the same objection to the universal faith of the
Christian Church: viz., that
We present here, by way of an Appendix to our argument for the Divinity of Christ, a collection of the more remarkable testimonies of unbelievers to the character of Christ, arranged in chronological order, and accompanied with explanatory notes.
Dr. Nathaniel Lardner (born in 1684, died in 1768), although a
Socinian, or Unitarian, in his views on Christ’s person, did excellent service to
the cause of revealed religion against the Deism of his day by his truly learned
and valuable work on the “Credibility of the Gospel History” (in seventeen books,
published from 1727 to 1757), in which he collected with untiring industry, and
examined with critical judgment, the heathen, Jewish, and Christian testimonies
of antiquity in favor of the historical truthfulness of the apostolic writings.
A similar service might be done to the true doctrine of the person of Christ, by
bringing together, in proper order, the testimonies to his Divinity, as embodied
in the creeds, the worship, and the institutions of all
Our present task is limited to the testimonies of opponents of
the old faith of the Church in her divine-human Head and Saviour. The concession
of an enemy sometimes carries more weight in an argument than the assertion of a
friend. Honey may be extracted even from a dead lion. “Out of the eater came forth
meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness” (
The testimonies we are going to produce are important and interesting
in various ways. They prove, especially those of more recent times, that there is
in the inmost heart of man an instinctive and growing reverence and admiration for
the spotless purity and perfection of Christ as the holy of holies in the history
of the race. Infidels may deny his miracles; but they cannot deny his power, or
assail his character, without doing violence to the noblest feelings and aspirations
of their own nature, and forfeiting all claim to the moral respect of their fellow-men.
It seems to be felt more and more, that he is, without controversy, the very best
being that ever walked on this earth, and that an attack on his character is an
insult to the honor and dignity of humanity itself. And this feeling and conviction
becomes
These testimonies; on the other hand, expose also the glaring inconsistency of unbelief, in admitting the absolute purity and truthfulness of Christ, and yet refusing his own testimony concerning himself; in praising his perfection as a man, and yet denying his Divinity on which it rests, and which alone Call satisfactorily explain it in a universally imperfect world.
This inconsistency, which has been repeatedly noticed in the preceding
Essay, is clearly brought out, with special reference to Renan, by the distinguished
statesman and historian, M. Guizot, who consecrates the closing years of his retreat
to the defence of revealed religion. I beg leave to conclude these introductory
remarks with an appropriate quotation from his recent “Meditations on the Essence
of the Christian Religion:” “Méditations sur l’Essence de la Religion chrétienne”
(Paris and Leipzig, 1864, pp. 324-327). The English translation, which has just
appeared in New York, 1865 (comp. p. 335 ff.), omits the Scripture quotations of
Guizot from the Latin Vulgate (which are intended for Roman-Catholic readers), but
contains, instead, a valuable note from the distinguished biblical scholar, Prof.
Tayler Lewis of Union College, N. Y. (a layman, like Guizot), in answer to the superficial
strictures of M. Munk, and G. Guizot, jun., on the grammatical purity of the biblical
Hebrew and Greek.
“Those who do not; believe in Jesus, nor admit the supernatural
character of his person, of his life, and of his work, are free of this difficulty
[of giving adequate expression in human language to the intimate and continual intermixture
of the divine and human in Christ]. Having beforehand suppressed the divinity and
the miracles, they see in the history of Jesus Christ nothing more than an ordinary
history, which they narrate and explain like any other biography of man. But they
fall into a far different difficulty, and wreck themselves on a far different rock.
The supernatural being and power of Jesus Christ may be disputed; but the perfection,
the sublimity of his actions and of his precepts, of his life and of his moral law,
are incontestable: and, in effect, not only are they not contested, but they are
admired and celebrated enthusiastically and complacently. It would seem as if it
were desired to restore to Jesus Christ as a mere man the superiority of which they
deprive him in refusing to see in him the Godhead. But then, what incoherence, what
contradictions, what falsehood, what moral impossibility, in his history, such as
they make it! What a series of suppositions, irreconcilable with the facts which
they admit! This man they make so perfect and sublime becomes by turns a dreamer
or a charlatan; at once dupe and deceiver,—dupe of his
“What a contradictory and insolvable problem they present to us
instead of the one they labor so hard to suppress! “ History reposes upon two foundations,—the
positive evidence or documents concerning the facts and persons, and presumptive
evidence or moral probabilities resulting from the connection of facts and the action
of persons. These two foundations are entirely wanting in the history of Jesus Christ,
such as it is related, or rather constructed, in these days. It is, on the one hand,
in evident and shocking contradiction with the testimony of the men who saw Jesus
Christ,
“C’est
un Jesus-Christ faux et impossible, fait de main d’homme, qui prétend à détrôner
le Jesus-Christ réel et vivant, fils de Dieu.” This applies especially
to the legendary Jesus of Renan, even more than to the mythical Jesus of Strauss.
“The choice lies between the system and the mystery; between the romance of man and the design of God.”
WHEN he [Pilate] was set down on the judgment-seat, his wife sent unto him, saying: Have thou nothing to do with that just man; for I have suffered many things this day in a dream because of him.
“When Pilate saw that he could prevail [avail] nothing, but that rather a tumult was made, he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying: I am innocent of the blood of this just person; see ye to it.”
Note.—It is a remarkable fact, that a
heathen woman had the courage to plead the cause of our Saviour when his own disciples
forsook him, and when the Jewish people and authorities thirsted for his innocent
blood. It is equally remarkable, that she and her weak husband, clothed with the
authority of the Roman law and justice, should characterize the condemned Jesus
as that just man (δίκαιος ἐκεῖνος).
The student of the unconscious prophecies of heathenism will naturally connect this
expression with the famous passage in Plato’s “Republic,” where the great
sage of Greece describes the ideal of a just man (δίκαιος),
as one who, “without doing any wrong, may assume the appearance of the grossest
injustice (μηδὲν γὰρ ἀδικῶν δόξαν ἐχέτω τῆς μεγίστης
ἀδικίας);” yea, who “shall be scourged, tortured, fettered, deprived of his
eyes, and, after having endured all possible sufferings, fastened to a post, and
must restore again the beginning and prototype of righteousness “ (Plato’s Works,
vol. iv., p. 74, sqq. ed. Ast., p. 360, E. ed. Bip.). Aristotle also says of the
perfectly just man, “that he stands far above the political order and constitution
as it exists; that he must break it wherever he appears.” The prophecies of Greek
wisdom, and the majesty of the Roman law, here unite in a Roman lady, the wife of
the imperial representative in Jerusalem, to testify to the innocence and righteousness
of Christ in the darkest hour of his trial before wicked men. She was probably a
proselyte of the gate, or one of those God-fearing heathen, who, without embracing
the Jewish religion, were longing and groping in the dark after “the unknown God.”
As to Pilate, he washed his hands, but not his heart; and in delivering
up Christ, whom he pronounced innocent
“Now, when the centurion, and they that were with him watching Jesus, saw the earthquake, and those things that were done, they feared greatly, saying: Truly this was the [a] Son of God.”
“Now, when the centurion saw what was done, he glorified God, saying: Certainly this was a righteous man.”
Note.—The centurion here spoken of is
the one who, according to Roman custom, presided over the execution (hence called
by Seneca centurio supplicio præpositus; or by Tacitus,
exactor mortis). This centurion, the captain in Capernaum
(
“Then Judas, which had betrayed him, when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself, and brought again [brought back] the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying: I have sinned, in that I have betrayed the innocent blood.”
Note.—The confession of the despairing
traitor—Ἥμαρτον παραδοὺς αἷμα ἀθῶον—may be
more concisely and pointedly translated, “I sinned in betraying innocent blood.”
In connection with the testimony of Pilate, and that of the Sanhedrin, which could
prefer no other
“About this time lived Jesus, a wise man, if it be proper to call
him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, παραδόξων
ἔργων π9οιητής. ὁ
Χριστὸς οὖτος ἦν. ἐφάνη γὰρ αὐτοῖς τρίτην ἔχων ἡμέραν ζῶν.
Note.—This remarkable testimony of the celebrated Jewish priest and historian, who flourished in the latter part of the first century, is found in all the known copies of his works, both printed and manuscript; is twice quoted at large by Eusebius, without suspicion of an interpolation; and is therefore received as genuine by many learned divines. It may also be urged in favor of the passage, that Josephus, in a complete history of the Jews, reaching down to A.D. 66, and written about A.D. 93, could not easily pass by Christ, especially as he made honorable mention of John the Baptist and James the Just in other parts of the same work. In speaking of the martyr-death of James (Arch., book xx. chap. 9, sect. 1), he refers to our passage; and there are no good reasons to reject the passage on James, together with that on Christ.
But the majority of recent critics since Lardner reject the testimony in its present form, either in whole or at least in part, as an early interpolation by some Christian hand, for the following reasons:—
1. This paragraph is not noticed by any Christian writer before
Eusebius, who died A.D. 340. Justin Martyr,
2. The paragraph is not necessary for the connection, but rather interrupts the course of the preceding narrative about a sedition and consequent calamity of the Jews, which occurred under Pilate; and the following narrative about “another sad calamity,”—namely, the banishment of the Jews from Rome by order of Tiberius. Josephus might, however, have reckoned the crucifixion of Jesus among the calamities of the Jews.
3. The disputed passage is inconsistent with the whole character and position of Josephus. He could not have thus written of Christ, without being, at least in theory or in conviction, a Christian, and belying his profession as a Jewish priest and Pharisee. But Josephus, it is urged against this argument, may have been inconsistent in this as he was in other things. Though learned and eminent, he was contemptibly weak in character; and showed in all his positions, as a Jewish priest and magistrate, and as a Roman general and courtier, a worldly mind, and an easy disposition to accommodate himself to different stations and employments, even at the sacrifice of principle.
In view, then, of the great improbability of an absolute silence
of Josephus on the history of Christ, and the still greater improbability of such
a Christian testimony from his pen, the hypothesis becomes quite plausible, that
Josephus, like the Pharisees and scribes in the Gospels and the compilers of the
Jewish Talmud, represented Jesus as a pseudo-prophet and magician, who performed
Renan, in his “Life of Jesus,” goes farther, and considers the passage authentic, with the exception of a few changes, as Χριστὸς οὖτος ἦν (he was the Christ), for the supposed original non-cocnmittal sentence, Χριστὸς οὖτος ἐλέγετο (he was called the Christ). “Je crois,” he says (Vie de Jésus, Introduction, p. xii.), “le passage sur Jésus authentique. II est parfaitement dans le goût de Josèphe, et si cet historien a fait mention de Jésus, c’est bien comme cela qu’il a dû enparler. On sent seulement qu’une main chrétienne a retouché le morceau, y a ajouté quelques mots sans lesquels il eût été presque blasphématoire, a peut-être retranché ou modifié quelques expressions.”
The literature on this much-disputed passage, see in Haverkamp’s edition of “Josephus,” vol. ii. Appendix; in Hase’s “Life of Jesus,” sect. 10, p. 12 (fourth ed.); in Winer’s “Bibl. Realwörterbuch,” vol. i. p. 558 (third ed.). Comp. also Ewald, “Geschichte Christus,” pp. 104-107; and Paret, art. “Josephus,” in Herzog’s Theol. Encyclop., vol. vii. p. 27 ff.
In many respects, the writings of Josephus contain, indirectly,
much valuable testimony to the truth of the gospel history. His history of the Jewish
war is undesignedly a striking commentary on the predictions of our Saviour concerning
the destruction of the city and the temple of Jerusalem; the great distress and
affliction of the Jewish people at that time; the famine, pestilence, and earthquake;
the rise of false prophets and impostors,
The Talmud (תַּלְמוּד, i.e. Doctrine, Book of Doctrines, Corpus Doctrinæ), that immense depository of Jewish theology and jurisprudence, of Rabbinical wisdom and folly, embracing twelve large folio volumes, for good reasons, no doubt, has very little to say about Christ and his religion, which is the fulfillment of the law and the prophets, and without which the Old Testament is a sealed book.
The first part, called the Mishna (i.e.
Repetition, viz. of the law), which comprehends the oral traditions and Rabbinical
expositions of the law from about 400 before to about 200 after Christ’s birth,
says not a word about Christianity, although it includes
The second part of the Talmud, called the Gemara
(i.e. Conclusion, viz. of Rabbinical wisdom), or the Talmud proper, is a
vast collection of the Rabbinical expositions of the Mishna, which again became
a subject of investigation and interpretation. There are two Gemaras,—that of Jerusalem,
compiled in Palestine about A.D. 390; and that of Babylon, compiled about A.D. 500,
under the supervision of the Patriarch of Babylon. Both these Gemaras—the Palestinian
and the Babylonian—allude to Jesus and the apostles, but very briefly, in a few
passages, in a bitter and malignant spirit, yet admitting the miracles of Jesus,
although they derive them from evil spirits, like the Pharisees in the Gospels. The
passages of the Talmud relating to Christ are collected in Larduer’s work already
quoted; and in Scheidii “Loca talmudica,
in quibus Jesu et discipulorum ejus fit mentio;” also in
Meelfuhrer, “Jesus in Tulmude.” Altdorf, 1699, 2
vols. This Pandira, who figures also in the book of Celsus, and in
Toldoth Jeschu (where he is called Joseph Pandira), is no doubt a name of
hatred and contempt invented by the Jews, and means either scourge; or, like
the Greek πάνθηρ, and the Latin
lupa, it is synonymous with ravenous
lust, and hence used as a symbolical name for
μοιχεία.
At a later period, the Jewish hatred of Christianity produced
an infamous book, entitled
There are two
very different versions of this book: the one published by Wagenseil, under the
title, “Tela ignea Satanæ; hoc est arcani et horribiles Judæorum
adversus Christurn Deum et christianam religionem anecdoti,” Altdorf,
1681; the other, edited by Huldreich, Leyden, 1705.
The Greek and Roman writers of the first five centuries take, upon the whole, very little notice of Christ and Christianity, and were mostly quite ignorant of their character and history. Tacitus, Suetonius, the younger Pliny, Epictetus, Lucian, Aristides, Galenus, Lampridius, Dio Cassius, Himerius, Libanius, Ammianus Marcellinus, Eunapius, and Zosimus, mention them incidentally, and generally with contempt or hatred. The only heathen authors who wrote special works against the Christian religion are Lucian (who assailed it at least indirectly), Celsus, Porphyry, Hierocles, and Julian the Apostate.
But even the incidental allusions of the former and the assaults
of the latter contain much that tends to confirm the credibility of the gospel history
and the miracles of Christ. Let us briefly sum up the chief inferences. For a
fuller discussion of the heathen attacks on Christianity, the reader is
referred to the author's “History of the Christian Church of the First Three
Centuries,” New York, p. 185 ff.
Tacitus (who lived in the second half
of the first and the first quarter of the second century), in giving an account
of the Neronian persecution of the Christians at Rome, which
occurred A.D. 64, Annales, lib. xv. c. 44.
Pliny the Younger, a cotemporary and friend of Tacitus and the Emperor Trajan, in his famous letter to Trajan, about 107, bears testimony to the rapid spread of Christianity in Asia Minor at that time among all ranks of society; the general moral purity and steadfastness of its professors amid cruel persecution; their mode and time of worship; their adoration of Christ as God; their observance of a “stated day,” which is undoubtedly Sunday; and other facts of importance in the early history of the Church. Trajan’s rescript, in reply to Pliny’s inquiry, furnishes evidence of the innocence of the Christians. He notices no charge against them except their disregard of the worship of the gods, and forbids them to be sought after.
Celsus, a Grecian eclectic philosopher of the second century, is the first heathen author who wrote an express work against Christianity. It bears the title, “A True Discourse.” Origen, in his able and effective refutation, has faithfully preserved the principal portions of it in the author’s own language. Celsus employs all the aids which the culture of his age afforded—the weapons of learning, philosophy, common sense, wit, sarcasm, and dramatic animation of style—to disprove and ridicule Christianity and its followers. He combines the hatred of Judaism and the contempt of heathenism, and anticipates most of the arguments and sophisms of the Deists and Naturalists of later times.
And yet even this able infidel assailant, who lived almost within hailing distance
of the apostolic age, bears witness, as St. Chrysostom already remarked, to the
antiquity of the apostolic writings and the main facts of
For a fuller account of Celsus’ argument,
see the author’s “Church History,” vol. i. p. 187 ff. Lardner, Doddridge, and Leland
made good use of Celsus against the Deists of their day. He may, with still greater
effect, be turned against Strauss and Renan.
Lucian, a brilliant but frivolous
rhetorician of Syria, who died in Egypt or Greece about A.D. 200, wrote at least
indirectly against Christianity in his “Life of Peregrinus,” and treated it under
disguise, as one of the many follies of the age, with the light weapons of wit and
ridicule. Yet he never calls Christ an impostor,
Comp. on Lucian the author’s “Church History,” vol. i. p. 189 f.
Porphyry, a Phœnician by birth, was a heathen philosopher
of the new Platonist school toward the end of the third century, and taught and
died at Rome A.D. 304. Comp. the author’s
“Church History from Christ to Constantine,” p. 190 ff. Κατὰ Χριστιανῶν λόγοι.
Comp. Eusebius, “Hist. Eccles.” lib. vi. cap. 19; Socrates, “Hist. Eccl.,” i. 9
(in a letter of Constantine, who boasts of having caused the destruction of the
infamous writings of Porphyry), iii. 23; Euseb., “Præpar. Evang.,” &c. Περὶ τῆς ἐκ λογίων φιλοσοφίας. Extracts
from it are contained in Eusebius’ “Præparatio Evangelica and Demonstratio Evangelica;”
in Augustine’s “De Civitate Dei;” and in Theodoret’s “Twelve Apologetic Discourses.”
Lardner denies the genuineness of this work, on insufficient grounds; but Fabricius,
Mosheim, Neander, and others, treat it as a production of Porphyry. Ep. ad. Marcellam
(ed. by Card. Angelo Mai, Milan, 1816), cap. xxiv.:
Τέσσαρα στοιχεῖα μάλιστα κακρατύνθω
περὶ θεοῦ, πίστις, αλήθεια, ἔρως
[a Platonic substitute for the Christian ἀγάπη], ἐλπίς. Angelo Mai inferred, without good reason, that Marcella was a Christian.
“The oracle declared Christ to be a most pious man, and his soul, like the soul of other pious men after death, favored with immortality; and that the mistaken Christians worship him. And when we asked, Why, then, was he condemned? the goddess (Hecate) answered in the oracle: The body indeed is ever liable to debilitating torments; but the soul of the pious dwells in the heavenly mansion. But that soul has fatally been the occasion to many other souls to be involved in error, to whom it has not been given to acknowledge the immortal Jove. But himself is pious, and gone to heaven as other pious men do. Him, therefore, thou shalt not blaspheme; but pity the folly of men, because of the danger they are in.”
Julian the Apostate, Roman emperor from 361
to 363, the most gifted and most bitter of all the ancient assailants of Christianity,
endeavored, with the whole combined influence of his station, talent, and example,
to restore idolatry throughout the Roman Empire, but in vain. His reign passed away
like the “baseless fabric of a vision, leaving no wreck behind,” save the important lesson that
ancient paganism was hopelessly extinct, and that no human power can arrest the
triumphant march of Christianity. For a fuller account of Julian and his reign,
see the author’s “Church History,” vol. ii. (now in course of publication), p.
39 ff., and p. 75 ff.
In his work against the Christian religion, where he combined all former attacks, and infused into them his own sarcastic spirit, he says of Christ, as quoted by his opponent Cyril, Bishop of Alexandria, “Contr. Jul.” vi. p. 191:—
“Jesus, having persuaded a few among you [Galileans,
as he contemptously called the Christians], and those of the worst of men, has
now been celebrated about three hundred
οὐδὲν ἀκοῆς ἄξιον. τοὺς κύλλους καὶ τοὺς τυφλοὺς
ἰάσασθαι, κ9αὶ δαιμονῶντας ἐφορκίζειν.
Note.—This is sufficiently bitter and contemptuous; and yet it concedes to Christ the
power of working miracles; and these miracles, having all the highest moral and
benevolent character, are an argument for the purity and divine mission of Christ’s
person. The learned and critical Dr. Lardner, in his “Credibility of the Gospel
History,” makes the following judicious remarks on this passage: Lardner’s Works, ed. by Dr. Kippis, London, 1838, vol. vii. p. 628.
“(1) This is
plainly acknowledging the truth of the evangelical history, though he [Julian] does
not refer to the whole of it, nor specify all the great works that Jesus did, nor
all the places in which they were performed. (2) He acknowledgeth that, for three
hundred years or more, Jesus had been celebrated; which regard for him was founded
upon the works done by him in his lifetime; which works had been recorded by his
disciples, eye-witnesses of those works; and the tradition had been handed down
from the beginning to the time in which Julian lived. (3) Why should not ‘healing
lame and
The same writer, after
a careful examination of all the arguments of Julian against the religion of the
Bible and the character of Christ and his apostles, thus ably and truthfully sums
up their value as an undesigned and involuntary indirect testimony for the truth
and credibility of the gospel history: Lardner’s Works, vii. pp. 638, 639.
“Julian has borne a valuable testimony
to the history and to the books of the New Testament, as all must acknowledge who
have read the extracts just made from his works. He allows that Jesus was born in
the reign of Augustus, at the time of the taxing made in Judæa by Cyrenius; that
the Christian religion had its rise, and began to be propagated, in the times of
the emperors Tiberius and Claudius. He bears witness to the genuineness and authenticity
of the four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and the Acts of the Apostles;
and he so quotes them as to intimate that they were the only historical books received
by Christians as of authority, and the only authentic memoirs of Jesus Christ
and his apostles, and the doctrines preached by them. He allows their early date,
and even argues for it. He also quotes, or plainly refers to, the Acts of the
Apostles, to St. Paul’s Epistles to the Romans, the Corinthians, and the
Galatians. He does
not deny the miracles of Jesus Christ, but allows him to have ‘healed the blind,
and the lame, and demonaics;’ and ‘to have rebuked the winds, and walked upon the
waves of the sea.’ He endeavors, indeed, to diminish these works, but in vain. The
consequence is undeniable,—such works are good proofs of a divine mission. IIe endeavors
also to lessen the number of the early believers in Jesus; and yet he acknowledgeth
that there were ‘multitudes of such men in Greece and Italy’ before St. John wrote
his Gospel. He likewise affects to diminish the quality of the early believers;
and yet acknowledgeth, that, beside ‘men-servants and maid-servants,’ Cornelius, a
Roman centurion at Cæsarea, and Sergius Paulus, Proconsul of Cyprus, were converted
to the faith of Jesus before the end
“In
Christ we have an example of a quiet and peaceable spirit; of a becoming modesty
and sobriety; just, honest, upright, sincere; and, above all, of a most gracious and
benevolent temper and behavior. One who did no wrong, no injury to any man; in
whose mouth
This French philosopher, who was born in Langres, 1713, and died in Paris, 1784, founded and edited, with other free-thinkers, the famous “Encyclopédie” (since 1751), which, with the professed aim of presenting a summary of all the branches of human learning and art, became the chief repository of the revolutionary and infidel ideas of the eighteenth century, and was several times suspended by the government, but completed at last. He was all his life considered a confirmed atheist; but during his later years, to the astonishment of his friends, he made the Bible a part of the education of his only daughter, who subsequently wrote his “Mémoires,” and frequently received visits from a clergyman.
The late venerable Antistes Hess of Zurich, the author of a “Life of Jesus “ and other good works, relates from the mouth of a personal witness the following interesting anecdote, which we will give (from Stier’s “Reden Jesu,” part vi. p. 496) in the original French, and in an English translation—
“Dans une de ces soirées du Baron d’Holbach où se reunissaient les plus célèbres incredules du siècle, on venait de se donner pleine carrière pour rélever le plus plaisamment du monde les prétendues absurdités, les bêtises, les inepties de tout genre dont fourmillent nos livres sacrés. Le philosophe Diderot, qui n’avait pas pris lui-même une mince part à la conversation, finit par l’arrêter tout à coup en disant:
“A merveilles, messieurs, à merveilles, je ne connais personne
en France ni ailleurs, qui sache écrire et parler avec plus d’art et de talent.
Cependant malgré tout le mal que nous avons dis, et sans doute avec beaucoup de
raison, de ce diable de livre, j’ose vous défier, tout sant que vous êtes, de faire
un
“Cette apostrophe imprévue étonna tous les auditeurs, et fut suivie même d’un assez long silence.”
“In one of those evening parties of Baron d’Holbach, where the most celebrated infidels of the century used to assemble, the conversation turned fieely, and in thie most amusing manner, on the supposed absurdities, stupidities, and all kind of inconsistencies, of the Sacred Scriptures. The philosopher Diderot, who had taken no small part in the conversation, brought it suddenly to a close by the following remark:—
“For a wonder, gentlemen, for a wonder, I know nobody, either in France
or anywhere
This unexpected speech astonished all the hearers, and was followed by a pretty long silence.”
From his “Émile ou de L’Education,” livre iv. (Profession de Foi du Vicaire Savoyard), Œuvres complètes. Paris, 1839, tome iii. pp. 365-367.
This
famous French philosopher and rhetorician was born in Geneva, the city of Calvin,
in 1712; and died,
“Je vous
avoue aussi que la majesté des Écritures m’étonne, la sainteté de l’Évangile parle
à mon cœur. Var. Je vous avoue aussi que la
sainteté de l’Evangile est un argument qui parle à mon cœur, et auquel j'aurais
même regret de trouver quelque bonne réponse. Voyez les livres. . . . De Rep. lib. i. Cette ressemblance est le resultat général des deux premiers
livres on dialogues du traité de Platon, intitulé De la République. Le passage le
plus remarquable à ce sujet est celui qu’il met dans la bouche de son adversaires
(tome ii. p. 361, E. édition de H. Etienne, ou tome vi. pp. 215 et 216, édition
de Deux-Ponts). Quant aux Pères de l’Église dont il est question ici, voyez entre
autres Saint Justin (Apologia prima, No. 5), et Saint Clément d’Alexandrie (Stromata,
lib. iv.). Var. . . Quel aveuglemnent ou quelle mourvaise foi ne. . . . Voyez, dans
le discours sur la montagne, le parallèle qu’il fait lui-même de la morale de Moïse
à la sienne
“Oui,
si la vie et la mort de Socrate sont d’un sage, la vie et la mort de Jesus sont
d’un Dieu. Dirons-nous que l’histoire de l’Évangile est inventée
à plaisir? Mon
ami, ce n’est pas ainsi qu’on invente; et les faits de Socrate dont personne ne
doute, sont moins attestés que ceux de Jésus-Christ. Au fond, c’est reculer la difliculté
sans la détruire; il seroit plus inconcevable que plusieurs hommes d’accord Var. . . .
. que quatre hommes d’accord. . . . A la suite de ces mots est une note ainsi conçue:
Je veux bien n’en pas compter davantage, parceque leurs quatre livres sont les seules
vies de Jésus-Christ qui nous sont restées du grand nombre qui avoient été écrites. Dans une lettre à M. de . . ., datée de 1769, Rousseau revient encore sur
ce parallèle établi par lui entre Jésus et Socrate; et ne supposant aucun caractère
divin ni mission surnaturelle au sage hébreu, qu’il oppose de nouveau au sage grec,
il présente sur les vue et la conduite du premier des considérations toutes nouvelles.
Voyez la Correspondance.
“I will confess to you, that the majesty
of the Scriptures strikes me with admiration, as the purity of the gospel has its
influence on my heart. Peruse the works of our philosophers, with all their pomp
of diction, how mean, how contemptible, are they, compared with the Scriptures!
Is it possible that a book, at once so simple and so sublime, should be merely the
work of man? Is it possible that the sacred personage whose history it contains
should be himself a mere man? Do we find that he assumed the tone of an enthusiast
or ambitious sectary? What sweetness, what purity, in his manner! What an affecting
gracefulness in his instructions! What sublimity in his maxims! What profound wisdom
in his discourses! What presence of mind, what subtlety, what fitness, in his replies!
How great the command over his passions! Where is the man, where the philosopher,
who could so live and so die, without weakness, and without ostentation? When Plato
describes his imaginary righteous man,
“Yes, if the life and death of Socrates were
those of a sage, the life and death of Jesus are those of a God. Shall we suppose
the evangelical history a mere fiction? Indeed, my
Napoleon the First grew up in the infidel atmosphere of the eighteenth century, and was all his life so much absorbed with schemes of military conquest and political dominion that he had no time, even if he had the inclination, to reflect seriously on the subject of religion. Ambition was the idol monster to which he sacrificed millions of human beings, and even his devoted wife, whom he ardently loved and admired. But he had too profound an intellect ever to be an atheist. He was constitutionally inclined to fatalism; and like his nephew, the present Emperor of France, he believed in his star. He knew that religion was an essential element in human nature, and the strongest pillar of public morals and social order. In his Egyptian campaign, it is said, he carried with him a New Testament along with the Koran, under the characteristic title, “Politics.” It was from this political point of view that he restored the Roman-Catholic Church in France, which the folly of the Revolution had swept away, but kept it always in subordination to the secular power, and secured to the Protestants the liberty of conscience and of public worship.
During his exile at St. Helena,
Napoleon had the best opportunity of reflecting on his unrivaled career of brilliant
victory and crushing defeat, and the vanity of
These are indisputable facts. They do not by any means
justify the inference that Napoleon was a true Christian, as his American biographer
seems to think, who
But I have no doubt that his intellect bowed before the majesty of Christ. Reasoning from the overpowering authority and dignity of Christ as a teacher, from the amazing result of his peaceful mission, and the imperishable nature of his kingdom as contrasted with the vanity of all human conquests and secular empires, he justly inferred that Christ was more than man; that he was truly divine, and that his Divinity is the key which unlocks the mysteries of Christianity. In this respect, he went farther than any of the witnesses in this collection, who stop with the concession of the unparalleled human greatness of Christ. The logical conclusion of the marvelous intellect of Napoleon, and his profound knowledge of men, may be fairly set over against the illogical denial of Christ’s Divinity by inferior minds.
It is with these restrictions that
we insert here the famous testimony of the greatest military genius of all times,
which has been published by Religious Tract Societies in Europe and America, extensively
circulated, and is embodied, among other books, in John S. C. Abbott’s “Life of
Napoleon” (vol. ii. chap. xxxii. p. 612 ff.), as also in Abbott’s “Confidential
Correspondence of the Emperor Napoleon with the Empress Josephine” (New York, 1855,
pp. 353-363), without, however, being traced to a reliable source. A letter to Mr.
Abbott, respectfully asking him for his authority, remained unanswered. General
Bertrand, an avowed unbeliever, and General Montholon, who, after his return to
Europe, became a believer, or at least seriously inclined, would be the proper vouchers,
since they heard, and must have reported, these utterances at St. Helena; but I
can not find it in their writings, so far as they came to my knowledge. I was informed
by Dr. Stowe, that General Bertrand, when on a visit to this country, was asked
by a company of ministers at Pittsburg, whether Napoleon really uttered those sentiments
in conversations with him, and that he gave an affirmative answer. But, on further
inquiry, I could get no satisfactory reply from Pittsburg. I also looked in vain
for such strong and explicit confessions in the Memoirs of Las Cases, Antommarchi,
and O’Meara, and other authentic sources on the life of Napoleon at St. Helena,
although
We give the testimony as we find it, first in the original form, a French tract, marked No. 51, but without date; and then in an enlarged translation from Tract No. 477 of the American Tract Society (New York); and from Abbott’s works on Napoleon, alluded to above.
NAPOLÉON. Les documents que je publie, contiennent
la pensée intime de Napoléon sur le Christianisme, et spécialement sur la divinité
de l’Homme-Dieu.
Il est vrai que le Christ propose à notre foi une série de mystères. Il commande avec autorité d’y croire, sans donner d’autres raisons que cette parole épouvantable: Je suis Dieu.
Sans doute il faut la foi pour cet article-là, qui est celui duquel dérive tous les autres articles. Mais le caractère de la divinité du Christ une fois admis, la doctrine chrétienne se présente avec la précision et la clarté de l’algèbre: il faut y admirer l’enchaînement et l’unité d’une science.
Appuyée sur la Bible, cette doctrine explique le mieux
les traditions du monde; elle les éclaircit, et les autres dogmes s’y rapportent
étroitement comme les anneaux scellés d’une même chaîne. L’existence du
Christ d’un bout à l’autre est un tissu tout mystérieux,
Le christianisme a un avantage sur tous les philosophes et sur toutes les religions: les chrétiens ne se font pas illusion sur la nature des choses. On ne peut leur reprocher ni la subtilité ni le charlatanisme des idéologues, qui ont cru résoudre la grande énigme des questions théologiques, avec des vaines dissertations sur ces grands objets. Insensés, dont la folie ressemble à celle d’un petit enfant qui veut toucher le ciel avec sa main, ou qui demande la lune pour son jouet ou sa curiosité. Le christianisme dit avec simplicité: “Nul homme n’a vu Dieu, si ce n’est Dieu. Dieu a révelé ce qu’il était: sa révélation est un mystère que la raison ni l’esprit ne peuvent concevoir. Mais puisque Dieu a parlé, il faut y croire.” Cela est d’un grand bon sens.
L’Evangile possède une vertu secrète, je ne
Le Christ ne varie pas, il n’hésite jamais dans son enseignement, et la moindre affirmation de lui est marquée d’un cachet de simplicité et de profondeur qui captive l’ignorant et le savant, pour peu qu’ils y prêtent leur attention.
Nulle part on ne trouve cette série de belles idées, de belles maximes morales, qui défilent comme les bataillons de la milice céleste, et qui produisent dans notre âme le même sentiment que l’on éprouve à considérer l’étendue infinie du ciel resplendissant, par une belle nuit d’été, de tout l’éclat des astres.
Non seulement notre esprit est préoccupé, mais il est dominé par cette lecture, et jamais l’âme ne court risque de s’égarer avec ce livre.
Une fois maître de notre esprit, l’Evangile fidèle nous aime. Dieu même est notre ami, notre père et vraiment notre Dieu. Une mère n’a pas plus de soin de l’enfant qu’elle allaite. L’âme séduite par la beauté de l’Evangile, no s’appartient plus. Dieu s’en empare tout-à-fait; il en dirige les pensées et toutes les facultés, elle est à lui.
Quelle preuve de la divinité du Christ! avec un empire aussi absolu, il n’a qu’un seul but, l’amélioration spirituelle des individus, la pureté de la conscience, l’union à ce qui est vrai, la sainteté de l’âme.
Enfin,
et c’est mon dernier argument, il n’y a pas de Dieu dans le ciel, si un homme a
pu concevoir et exécuter, avec un plein succès, le dessein gigantesque de dérober
pour lui le culte suprême, en usurpant le nom de Dieu. Jésus est le seul qui l’ait
osé, il est le seul qui
Comment donc un juif, dont l’existence historique est plus avéré que toutes celles des temps où il a vécu, lui seul, fils d’un charpentier, se donne-t-il tout d’abord pour Dieu même, pour l’être par excellence, pour le Créateur de tous les êtres. Il s’arroge toutes les sortes d’adorations. Il bâtit son culte de ses mains, non avec des pierres, mais avec des hommes. On s’extasie sur les conquêtes d’Alexandre! Eh bien! voici un conquérant qui confisque à son profit, qui unit, qui incorpore à lui-même, non pas une nation, mais l’espèce humaine. Quel miracle! l’âme humaine, avec toutes ses facultés, devient une annexe avec l’existence du Christ.
Et comment? par un prodige qui surpasse tout prodige. Il veut
l’amour des hommes, c’est-à-dire, ce qu’il est le plus difficile au monde
d’obtenir: ce qu’un sage demande vainement à quelques amis, un père à ses enfants,
une épouse à son époux, un frère à son frère, en un mot, le cœur: c’est la ce
qu’il
vent pour lui, il l’exige absolument, et il y
Le Christ parle, et désormais le générations lui appartiennent par des liens plus étroits, plus intimes que ceux du sang; par une union plus sacrée, plus impérieuse que quelque union que ce soit. Il allume la flamme d’un amour qui fait mourir l’amour de soi, qui prévaut sur tout autre amour.
A ce miracle de sa volonté, comment ne pas reconnaître le Verbe créateur du monde.
Les fondateurs de religion n’ont pas même eu l’idée de cet amour mystique, qui est l’essence du christianisme, sous le beau nom de charité.
C’est qu’il n’avaient garde de se lancer contre un ecueil. C’est que dans un opération semblable, se faire aimer, l’homme porte en lui-même le sentiment profond de son impuissance.
Aussi le plus grand miracle du Christ, sans contredit, c’est la règne de la charité.
Lui seul, il est parvenu à élever le cœur des hommnes jusqu'à l’invisible, jusqu’au sacrifice du temps: lui seul, en créant cette immolation, a crée un lien entre le ciel et la terre.
Tous ceux qui croient sincèrement en lui ressentent cet amour admirable, surnaturel, supérieur; phenomène inexplicable, impossible à la raison, et aux forces de l’homme; feu sacré donné à la terre par ce nouveau Prométhée, dont le temps, ce grand destructeur, ne peut ni user la force ni limiter la durée. Moi, Napoléon, c’est ce que j’admire davantage, parce que j’y ai pensé souvent. Et c’est ce qui me prouve absolument la divinité du Chlrist!
J’ai passionne des multitudes qui mouraient pour moi. A Dieu ne plaise que je forme aucune comparaison entre l’enthousiasme des soldats et la charité chrétienne, qui sont aussi différents que leur cause.
Mais enfin, il fallait ma presence, l’électricité
Maintenant que je suis à Sainte-Hélène—maintenant que je suis seul et cloué sur ce roc, qui bataille et conquiert des empires pour moi? Où sont les courtisans de mon infortune? Pense-t-on à moi? Qui se remue pour moi en Europe? Qui m’est demeure fidèle, où sont mes amis? Oui, deux ou trois, que votre fidélité immortalise, vous partagez, vous consolez mon exil.
Ici la voix de
l’Empereur prit un accent particulier d’ironique mélancolie et de profonde tristesse.
“Oui, notre existence a brillé de tout l’éclat du diadême et de la souveraineté;
“Telle est la destinée des grands hommes! Telle de César et d’Alexandre, et l’on nous oublie! et le nom d’un conquérant, comme celui d’un empereur, n’est plus qu’un thème de collége! Nos exploits tombent sous la férule d’un pédant qui nous insulte ou nous loue.
“Que de jugements divers on se permet sur le grand Louis XIV.! A
peine mort, le grand roi lui-même fut laissé seul, dans l’isolement de sa chambre
à coucher de Versailles—négligé par ses courtisans et peut-être l’objet de la risée.
Ce n’était plus leur maître! C’était
“Encore un moment:—voilà mon sort et ce qui va m’arriver a moi-même—assassiné par l’oligarchie anglaise, je meurs avant le temps, et mon cadavre aussi va être rendu à la terre pour y devenir la pâture des vers.
“Voila la destinée très prochaine du grand Napoléon—Quel abîme entre ma misère profonde, et le règne éternel du Christ prêché, encensé, aimé, adoré, vivant dans tout l’univers—Est-ce là mourir? n’est-ce pas plutôt vivre? voilà la mort du Christ? voilà celle de Dieu.”
L’empereur se tut, et comme le général Bertrand gardait également le silence: “Vous ne comprenez pas, reprit l’empereur, que Jésus-Christ est Dieu; eh bien! j’ai eu tort de vous faire général!”
NAPOLEON.
One day, Napoleon was speaking of the Divinity of Christ; when General Bertrand said:—
“I can not conceive, sire, how
a great man like you can believe that the Supreme Being ever exhibited himself to
men under a human form, with a body, a face, mouth, and eyes. Let Jesus be whatever
you please,—the highest intelligence, the purest heart, themost profound legislator,
and, in all respects, the most singular being who has ever existed: I grant it.
Still, he was simply a man, who taught his disciples, and deluded credulous people,
as did Orpheus, Confucius, Brahma. Jesus caused himself to be adored, because his
predecessors, Isis and Osiris, Jupiter and Juno, had proudly made themselves objects
of worship. The ascendency of Jesus over his time was like the ascendency of the
gods and the heroes of fable. If Jesus has
Napoleon replied:—
“I know men; and I tell you that Jesus Christ is not a man. Superficial minds see a resemblance between Christ and the founders of empires, and the gods of other religions. That resemblance does not exist. There is between Christianity and whatever other religions the distance of infinity.
“We can say
to the authors of every other religion, ‘You are neither gods, nor the agents of
the Deity. You are but missionaries of falsehood, moulded from the same clay with
the rest of mortals. You are made with all the passions and vices inseparable from
them. Your temples and your priests proclaim your origin.’ Such will be the judgment,
the cry
“Paganism was never accepted as truth by the wise men of Greece; neither by Socrates, Pythagoras, Plato, Anaxagoras, or Pericles. On the other side, the loftiest intellects, since the advent of Christianity, have had faith, a living faith, a practical faith, in the mysteries and the doctrines of the gospel; not only Bossuet and Fenelon, who were preachers, but Descartes and Newton, Leibnitz and Pascal, Corneille and Racine, Charlemagne and Louis XIV.
“Paganism
is the work of man. One can here read but our imbecility. What do these gods, so
boastful, know more than other mortals; these legislators, Greek or Roman; this Numa; this Lycurgus; these priests of India or of Memphis; this Confucius; this
Mohammed’?-absolutely nothing. They have made a perfect chaos of mortals. There
is not one among them all who has said any thing new in reference to our future
destiny, to the soul,
“As for
me, I say, No. I summon entire Olympus to my tribunal. I judge the gods, but am
far from prostrating myself before their vain images. The gods, the legislators
of India and of China, of Rome and of Athens, have nothing which can overawe me.
Not that I am unjust to them. No: I appreciate them, because I know their value. Undeniably, princes, whose existence is fixed in the
“I see, in Lycurgus, Numa, and Mohammed, only legislators, who have the first rank in the State; have sought the best solution of the social problem: but I see nothing there which reveals Divinity. They themselves have never raised their pretensions so high. As for me, I recognize the gods, and these great men, as beings like myself. They have performed a lofty part in their times, as I have done. Nothing announces them divine. On the contrary, there are numerous resemblances between them and myself,—foibles and errors which ally them to me and to humanity.
“It is not so with Christ. Every thing in him astonishes me.
His spirit overawes me, and his will confounds me. Between him and whoever else
in the world there is no possible term of comparison. He is truly a being by
himself. His ideas and his sentiments, the truths which he announces, his manner
“His birth, and the history of his life; the profundity of his doctrine, which grapples the mightiest difficulties, and which is of those difficulties the most admirable solution; his gospel, his apparition, his empire, his march across the ages and the realms,—every thing is for me a prodigy, a mystery insoluble, which plunges me into reveries which I can not escape; a mystery which is there before my eyes; a mystery which I can neither deny nor explain. Here I see nothing human.
“The nearer I approach, the more carefully
I examine, every thing is above me; every thing remains grand,—of a grandeur which
overpowers. His religion is a revelation from an intelligence which certainly is
not that of man. There is there a profound originality which has created a series
of words and of maxims before unknown. Jesus borrowed nothing from our science.
One can absolutely find nowhere, but in him alone, the imitation
“In fact, the sciences and philosophy avail nothing for salvation; and Jesus came into the world to reveal the mysteries of heaven and the laws of the spirit. Also he has nothing to do but with the soul; and to that alone he brings his gospel. The soul is sufficient for him, as he is sufficient for the soul. Before him, the soul was nothing. Matter and time were the masters of the world. At his voice, every thing returns to order. Science and philosophy become secondary. The soul has reconquered its sovereignty. All the scholastic scaffolding falls, as an edifice ruined, before one single word,—faith.
“What a master, and what a word, which can effect such a revolution! With what authority does he teach men to pray! He imposes his belief; and no one, thus far, has been able to contradict him: first, because the gospel contains the purest morality; and also because the doctrine which it contains of obscurity is only the proclamation and the truth of that which exists where no eye can see, and no reason can penetrate. Who is the insensate who will say ‘No’ to the intrepid voyager who recounts the marvels of the icy peaks which he alone has had the boldness to visit? Christ is that bold voyager. One can, doubtless, remain incredulous; but no one can venture to say, ‘It is not so.’
“Moreover, consult
the philosophers upon those mysterious questions which relate to the essence of
man and the essence of religion. What is their response? Where is the man of good
sense who has never learned any thing from the system of metaphysics; ancient or
modern, which is not truly a vain and
“All the words there are
embedded, and joined one upon another, like the stones of an edifice. The spirit
which binds these words together is a divine cement, which now reveals the sense,
and again vails it from the mind. Each phrase has a sense complete, which traces
the perfection of unity, and the profundity of the whole. Book unique! where the
mind finds a moral beauty before unknown; and an idea of the Supreme, superior
“Christ, having but a few weak disciples, was condemned to death. He died the object of the wrath of the Jewish priests, and of the contempt of the nation, and abandoned and denied by his own disciples.
“‘They are about to take me, and
to crucify me,’ said he. ‘I shall be abandoned of all the world. My chief disciples
will deny me at the commencement of my punishment. I shall be left to the wicked.
But then, divine justice being satisfied, original sin being expiated by my sufferings,
the bond of man to God will be renewed, and my death will be the life of my disciples.
Then they will be more strong without me than with me; for they shall see me rise
again. I shall ascend to the skies, and I shall send to them from heaven a Spirit
who will instruct them. The Spirit of the Cross will enable them to understand my
gospel. In fine, they will believe it;
“And this strange promise, so aptly called by Paul 'the foolishness of the cross,’ this prediction of one miserably crucified, is literally accomplished; and the mode of the accomplishment is perhaps more prodigious than the promise.
“It is not a day, nor a battle, which has decided it. Is it the lifetime of a man? No: it is a war, a long combat, of three hundred years, commenced by the apostles, and continued by their successors and by succeeding generations of Christians. In this conflict, all the kings and all the forces of the earth were arrayed on one side. Upon the other, I see no army but a mysterious energy, individuals scattered here and there, in all parts of the globe, having no other rallying sign than a common faith in the mysteries of the cross.
“What a mysterious symbol, the instrument
of the punishment of the Man-God! His disciples
“You speak of Cæsar, of Alexander, of their conquests,
and of the enthusiasm which they enkindled in the hearts of their soldiers; but
can you conceive of a dead man making conquests, with an army faithful, and entirely
devoted to his memory. My armies have
“Can you conceive of Cæsar as the eternal emperor of the Roman senate, and, from the depth of his mausoleum, governing the empire, watching over the destinies of Rome? Such is the history of the invasion and conquest of the world by Christianity; such is the power of the God of the Christians; and such is the perpetual miracle of the progress of the faith, and of the government of his Church. Nations pass away, thrones crumble; but the Church remains. What is, then, the power which has protected this Church, thus assailed by the furious billows of rage and the hostility of ages? Whose is the arm, which, for eighteen hundred years, has protected the Church from so many storms which have threatened to ingulf it?
“Alexander, Cæsar, Charlemagne, and myself founded empires. But on
what did we
“In every other existence but that of Christ, how many imperfections! Where is the character which has not yielded, vanquished by obstacles? Where is the individual who has never been governed by circumstances or places; who has never succumbed to the influences of the times; who has never compounded with any customs or passions? From the first day to the last, he is the same, always the same; majestic and simple; infinitely firm, and infinitely gentle.
“Truth should embrace the universe.
Such is Christianity,—the only religion which destroys sectional prejudices; the
only one which proclaims the unity and the absolute brotherhood of the whole human
family; the only one which is purely spiritual; in fine, the only one which assigns
to all, without distinction, for a true country, the bosom of the
“It is true that Christ proposes to our faith a series of mysteries. He commands with authority, that we should believe them,—giving no other reason than those tremendous words, ‘I am God.’ He declares it. What an abyss he creates by that declaration between himself’ and all the fabricators of religion! What audacity, what sacrilege, what blasphemy, if it were not true! I say more: The universal triumph of an affirmation of that kind, if the triumph were not really that of God himself, would be a plausible excuse, and the proof of atheism.
“Moreover, in propounding mysteries, Christ is harmonious with Nature,
which is profoundly mysterious. From whence do I come? whither do I go? who am I?
Human life is a mystery in its origin, its organization, and its end. In man and
out of man, in Nature,
“The gospel possesses a secret virtue, a mysterious efficacy, a warmth which penetrates and soothes the heart. One finds, in meditating upon it, that which one experiences in contemplating the heavens. The gospel is not a book: it is a living being, with an action, a power, which invades every thing that opposes its extension. Behold! it is upon this table: this book, surpassing all others [here the emperor deferentially placed his hand upon it], I never omit to read it, and every day with the same pleasure.
“Nowhere is to be found such a series of beautiful ideas; admirable moral maxims,
“What a proof of the Divinity of Christ! With an empire so absolute, he has but one single end,—the spiritual melioration of individuals, the purity of the conscience, the union to that which is true, the holiness of the soul.
“Christ speaks, and at once
generations become his by stricter, closer ties than those of blood,—by the most
sacred, the most indissoluble, of unions. He lights up the flames
“I have so inspired multitudes, that they would die for me. God forbid that I should form any comparison between the enthusiasm of the soldier and Christian charity, which are as unlike as their cause!
“But, after all, my presence was necessary: the lightning of my eye, my voice, a word from me, then the sacred fire was kindled in their hearts. I do, indeed, possess the secret of this magical power which lifts the soul; but I could never impart it to any one. None of my generals ever learned it from me. Nor have I the means of perpetuating my name and love for me in the hearts of men, and to effect these things without physical means.
“Now that I am at St. Helena, now that I am alone, chained upon this rock, who fights and wins empires for me? who are the courtiers of my misfortune? who thinks of me? who makes effort for me in Europe? Where are my friends? Yes: two or three, whom your fidelity immortalizes, you share, you console, my exile.”
Here the emperor’s voice trembled with emotion, and for a moment he was silent. He then continued:—
“Yes: our life once shone with all the brilliance of the diadem and the throne; and yours, Bertrand, reflected that splendor, as the dome of the Invalides, gilt by us, reflects the rays of the sun. But disaster came: the gold gradually became dim. The rain of misfortune and outrage, with which I am daily deluged, has effaced all the brightness. We are mere lead now, General Bertrand; and soon I shall be in my grave.
“Such is the fate
of great men! So it was with Cæsar and Alexander. And I, too, am
For a moment the emperor was silent. As General Bertrand made no reply, he solemnly added, “If you do not perceive that Jesus Christ is God, very well: then I did wrong to make you a general.”
We are far from placing Dr. Channing, the great leader of American Unitarianism, and one of the brightest ornaments of American literature (born 1780, at Newport, Rhode Island; died 1842, at Bennington, Vermont), in the company of unbelievers. Although heretical on the fundamental articles of the Holy Trinity, the Divinity of Christ, and the Atonement, he was, in his way, a worshiper of Jesus, and exhibited the power of his holy example in his lovely character and written works. He was deeply penetrated by the ethical spirit of Christianity, and certainly “not far from the kingdom of heaven.” We select two passages from his admirable Sermons, which bear strong testimony to the perfection of Christ’s character. The italics are our own. Compare the remarks on his inconsistency on p. 131 ff.
From the Sermon on the “Character
of Christ” (on
“This Jesus lived with men: with the consciousness of unutterable majesty,
he joined a lowliness, gentleness, humanity, and sympathy which have no example
in human history.
“Here I pause; and indeed I know not what can be added
to highten the wonder, reverence, and love which are due to Jesus. When I consider
him, not only as possessed with the consciousness of an unexampled and unbounded
majesty, but as recognizing a kindred nature in human beings, and living and dying
to raise them to a participation of his divine glories; and when I see him, under
these views, allying himself to men by the
From Dr. Channing's Discourse on “The Imitableness of Christ” (Works, vol. iv. p. 140):—
“I believe Jesus Christ to be more than a human being.
In truth, all Christians so believe him. Those who suppose him not to have existed
before his birth do not regard him as a mere man, though so reproached. They always
separate him by broad distinctions from other men. They consider him as enjoying
a communion with God, and as having received gifts, endowments, aid, lights, from
him, granted to no other; and as having exhibited a spotless purity, which is the
highest
From his Essay, “Vergängliches und Bleibendes im Christenthum,” 1838 (Freihafen, 3tes Heft, p. 47). On Strauss, and his Leben Jesu, compare p. 151 ff. “
“If in Jesus the union
of the self-consciousness with the consciousness of God has been real, and expressed
not only in words, but actually revealed in all the conditions of his life, he represents
within the religious sphere the highest point, beyond whom posterity can not go;
yea, whom it can not even equal, inasmuch as every one who hereafter should climb
the same bight, could only do it with the help of Jesus, who first attained it.
As little as humanity will ever be without religion, as little will it be without
Christ; for
Born in Lexington, Mass., 1810; died in Florence, 1860.
From “A Discourse of Matters pertaining to Religion.” Third ed. Boston, 1847, p. 275 ff.
Theodore Parker adopted, with trifling exceptions, the mythical theory of Dr.
Strauss on the gospel history. He speaks of “limitations of Jesus;” says that Jesus
“shared the erroneous notions of the times respecting devils, possessions, and demonology
in general;” that he
“In estimating the character of
Jesus, it must be remembered that lie died at an age when man has not reached his
fullest vigor. The great works of creative intellect, the maturest products of man,
all the deep and settled plans of reforming the world, come from a period when experience
gives a wider field as the basis of hope. Socrates was but an embryo sage till long
after the age of Jesus:
“That mightiest heart that ever beat, stirred by the Spirit of God, how it wrought in his bosom! What words of rebuke, of comfort, counsel, admonition, promise, hope, did he pour out! words that stir the soul as summer dews call up the faint and sickly grass. What profound instruction in his proverbs and discourses! what wisdom in his homely sayings, so rich with Jewish life! what deep divinity of soul in his prayers, his action, sympathy, resignation!” (p. 281.)
“Try him as we try other teachers. They
This modern French author,
in a work entitled “Le Christ et la Conscience,” Paris, 1859 (which I know only
from reviews and extracts), assails the doctrine of the sinlessness of Christ, and
tries to show that his answers to his mother (
“To what hight does the character of Jesus
Christ rise above the most sublime and and yet ever imperfect types of antiquity!
What man ever knew to offer a more manly resistance to evil? Who endured vexation
and contradiction better than he? Where is such a development of moral power united
with
From the “Vie de Jésus, par E. Renan, membre de l’Institut.” Septième édition. Paris, 1864. English translation by Charles Edwin Wilbour, translator of “Les Miserables.” New York, 1864. (On Renan and his book, compare the preceding Essay, p. 176 ff.)
“Jesus can not belong exclusively
to those who call themselves his disciples. He is the common honor of all who bear
a human heart. His glory consists not in being banished from history: we render
him a truer worship by
Page 50. (French ed. p. xlviii. close of the Introduction.)
“The capital event in the history of the
world is the revolution by which the noblest portions of humanity passed from the
ancient religions, comprised under the vague name of paganism, to a religion founded
upon the divine unity, the trinity, the incarnation of the Son of God. This conversion
required nearly a thousand years for its accomplishment. The new religion occupied
at least three hundred years in its formation alone. But the origin of the revolution
with which we have to do is an event which occurred during the reigns of Augustus
and Tiberius. Then lived a superior person, who, by his bold initiative, and by
the love which he inspired, created the object, and fixed the starting-point, of
the future fate of humanity. (Alors vécut une personne supérieure qui, par son initiative
hardie, et par l’amour qu’elle sut intspirer, créa l’objet
Page 51. (French ed. p. 1, beginning of chap. i.)
“This confused medley of [Messianic Jewish] visions and dreams, this alternation of hopes and deceptions, these aspirations incessantly trampled down by a hateful reality, at length found their interpreter in the incomparable man to whom the universal conscience has decreed the title of Son of God, and that with justice; since he caused religion to take a step in advance, incomparably greater thllan any other in the past, and, probably, than any yet to come. (L’homme incomparable auquel la conscience universelle a décerné le titre de Fils de Dieu, et cela avec justice, puisqu’il a fait faire à la religion un pas auquel nul autre ne peut et probablement ne pourra jamais être comparé.”)
Page 64. (French ed. p. 13, close of chap. i.)
“Were the men who have most loftily comprehended God,—Cakya-Mouni, Plato, St.
Page 104. (French ed. p. 51, chap. iv.)
“It is probable
that, from the very first, he looked to God in the relation of a son to a father.
This is his great act of originality: in this he is in no wise of his race. (En cela il n’est nullement de sa race.) Neither the Jew nor the Moslem has learned
this delightful theology of love. The God of Jesus is not the hateful master who
kills us when he pleases, damns us when he pleases, saves us when he pleases. The
God of Jesus is our Father. We hear him when we listen to a low whisper within us,
which says, ‘Father.’ The God of Jesus is not the partial despot,
Page 106. (56, chap. v.)
“It can not be denied, that the maxims borrowed [?] by Jesus
from his predecessors produce, in the gospel, an effect totally different from that
in the ancient law, in the Pirke Aboth, A collection of sentences and maxims
of ancient Jewish rabbis.
Page 110. (p. 61, chap. v.)
“The gospel has been the supreme remedy for the sorrows of common life; a perpetual sursum corda; a mighty distraction from the wretched cares of earth; a sweet appeal, like that of Jesus to the ear of Martha: ‘Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things; but one thing is needful.’ Thanks to Jesus, the most spiritless existence, that most absorbed in sad or humiliating duties, has had its glimpse of heaven! In our bustling civilization, the memory of the free life of Galilee has been like the perfume of another world; like a ‘dew of Hermon,’ which has prevented sterility and vulgarity from completely usurping the field of God.”
Page 175. (p. 127, chap. x.)
“Christ, for the first time, gave utterance to the idea upon which shall rest
the edifice of the everlasting religion. He founded the pure worship—of no age,
of no clime—which shall be that of all lofty souls to the end of time. . . . If other
planets have inhabitants endowed with reason and morality, their religion
Page 215. (p. 168, chap. xiv.)
“Repose now in thy glory, noble founder! Thy work is finished; thy divinity
is established. Fear no more to see the edifice of thy labors fall by any fault.
Henceforth, beyond the reach of frailty, thou shalt witness, from the hights of
divine peace, the infinite results
Page 351. (p. 303, close of chap. xxv.)
“Whatever may be the surprises of the future, Jesus will never be surpassed.
His worship will grow young without ceasing;
Page 376. (p. 325, end of the xxviii. and last chap.)
From “Broken Lights: An Inquiry into the present Condition and future Prospects of Religious Faith.” Boston, 1864. P. 150 ff.
This is a spirited and interesting book, on the present aspect of
religious controversy in England, by an English lady, admirer and follower of Theodore
Parker. Miss Cobbe is disposed to attribute the supernatural portions
“The four Gospels have given
us so living, if not so correct, an image, and that image has shone out so long
in golden radiance before the dazzled eyes of Christendom, that to admit it may
be partially erroneous is the utmost stretch of our philosophy. We still persist
in arguing and debating as if it were absolutely perfect. Small marvel, truly, is
it so, when even the confessed creations of the poet’s genius—a Hamlet or a Lear—become
“Of that noblest countenance which once smiled upon the plains of Palestine, we possess not, nor will mankind ever recover, any perfect and infallible picture, any sun-drawn photograph which might tell us, with unerring certainty, he was or lie was not as our hearts may conceive of him. Rather do we only look sorrowfully over the waves of time to behold reflected therein some such faint and wavering image as his face may have cast on the Lake of Galilee, as he leaned at eventide from the ship of his disciples over the waters, stirred and rippling before the breeze. Some features too often recur to leave us altogether mistaken concerning them, and the impression of the whole countenance is one 'full of grace and truth.’ But of the details we can decide nothing, nor pretend to speak of them as clear or assured.
“One thing, however, we may hold with approximate certainty; and that is, that all the highest doctrines, the purest moral precepts, the most profound spiritual revelations, recorded in the Gospels, were actually those of Christ himself. The originator of the Christian movement must have been the greatest soul of his time, as of all time. If he did not speak those words of wisdom, who could have recorded them for him? ‘It would have taken a Jesus to forge a Jesus.’ (Theodore Parker.) . . .
“That in him who assuredly possessed
the deepest spiritual experience, and reached the highest spiritual eminence of
all the sons of men, his disciples should have embodied the spiritual history
of all humanity, is not a matter of surprise. It may be that his life did pass through
all the phases of the inner world. It may be that there was a day when the first
sense of independent religion awoke in his yet childish heart, and he asked his
parent, ‘Wist ye not that I must be about
“It may be that
all these things were absolutely true; that, in the life of Jesus, the great
Allegory of Humanity was a real fact taking place under the sun. We can believe that so it
was; or, if not, then that it had another and more spiritual reality in the souls
of those millions who have ever since recognized it as
“But, whether these or any other passages in the life of Jesus be or be not historically true, we yet possess a means of forming an estimate of his character independently of them. We may ‘measure him by his shadow: nay, rather say by the light he has cast on the world.’ We may judge what great results he effected by his words and his life. What was the world before his time? what has it been since? In these inquiries, we can not go very far wrong. The broad and general facts of the results of the Christian movement are clear enough, and do not depend on questions of authenticity or veracity of special books. Let us obtain the measure of the change introduced into the world by Christianity, and we shall, at the same time, obtain the best measure of the greatness of Christ. . . .
“The greatness
of the sovereign, the statesman, the economist, the commander, the metaphysician,
the man of learning, the scientific
“If we admit
the truth of all this, then it
“Now, it would appear, that,
if we actually estimate Christ by the influence he has had in the life of humanity,
we shall find that it is precisely here that we come on the largest traces of his
work. Taking the whole ancient world in comparison with the modern, of the heathen
with the Christian, the general character of the two is absolutely analogous to
that which in individuals we call unregenerate
“The old world grew from without, and was outwardly symmetric. The new one grows from within, and is not symmetric, nor ever will be; bearing in its heart the germ of an everlasting, unresting progress. The old world built its temples, hewed its statues, framed its philosophies, and wrote its glorious epics and dramas, so that nothing might evermore be added to them. The new world makes its art, its philosophy, its poetry, all imperfect, yet instinct with a living spirit beyond the old. To the Parthenon not a stone could be added from the hour of its completion. To Milan and Cologne, altar and chapel, statue and spire, will be added through the ages.
“This great phenomenon of history surely points to some corresponding
great event,
“Here we have really ground to go upon. There is no need to establish the authenticity or veracity of special books, or harmonize discordant narratives, to obtain an answer to our question. The whole voice of human history, unconsciously and without premeditation, bears its unmistakable testimony. The turning-point between the old world and the new was the beginning of the Christian movement. The action upon human nature, which started it on its new course, was the teaching and example of Christ. Christ was he who opened the age of endless progress.
“The view, therefore, which seems to
be
“When the fullness of time had come, and the creeds of the world’s childhood were worn out, and the restless question was on every lip, ‘Who will show us any good?' when the whole heart of humanity was sick of its sin, and weary of its wickedness,—then God gave to one man, for mankind at large, that same blessed task he gives to many for a few. Christ, the elder brother of the human family, was the helper and (in the highest philosophic sense) the Saviour of humanity. . . .
“The manner in which Christ achieved
the regeneration of the world, who shall now decide? Was it only by his great, holy
words; telling men that God was the Father of all,—of the just as of the unjust,—the
forgiving Parent of the prodigal; the Shepherd who would follow the wanderer even
unto the utmost verge of the wilderness of his wickedness, and bring him home at
last with rejoicing? Was it thus, and by telling man that to love God and his neighbor
fulfilled all the law and the prophets,—was it thus that Christ touched the heart
of the world? Or was it by his life, so pure and holy, that men saw, as in a visible
parable, what it meant to be God’s beloved Son,—to be one with the Father, even
as all men should be one with him? Was it thus that Christ awoke in human nature
the unutterable yearning after such sonship and such unity with God? Or was it that
words and life all found their crown and end in his martyr death,—that death which
transformed for ever the world’s ideal of
“We know not: it concerns us not to know. One thing we must believe,—that he to whom was committed such a work, he to whom such a part was assigned in the drama of history by its great Author, must have been spiritually of transcendent excellence. Of ordinary genius, or powers of any kind, he may have had less or more; but of those hidden faculties by which the highest religious truths are reached, and of that fervent loyalty by which the soul is fitted to receive divine instruction,—of these Christ must have had a superabundant share. Strictly to define his spiritual rank, he must surely have been the man who best fulfilled all the conditions under which God grants his inspiration.
“Such are
the views of Christ and his work
Judges
Ruth
2 Chronicles
Nehemiah
Psalms
Isaiah
Jeremiah
Daniel
Micah
Matthew
2:1-11 3:17 4 4 4:17 4:19 5:21 5:22-24 5:27-28 5:44 8:5-13 8:22 9:6 9:6 9:9 9:27 11:27 11:27 11:28 12:1-8 12:8 12:23 13:54-56 14:25 14:25 14:29 14:33 15:22 16:16 16:16 16:17 16:19 17:5 17:5 18:11 18:11 19:4-9 19:17 19:28 20:27-28 21:9 21:37 22:41 22:42 24:30 25:31 25:31 26:63 26:63 26:63-65 26:64 26:64 27:3-4 27:4 27:11 27:19 27:19 27:19 27:24 27:24 27:24-54 27:43 27:46 27:54 28:18-20 28:19 28:19-20
Mark
2:10 2:14 2:23-28 2:28 3:11 6:3 7:37 8:84 10:21 12:6 13:32 14:62 15:39
Luke
1:33 1:35 1:35 1:41-45 1:46-55 1:47 1:67-70 1:80 2:11 2:40 2:40 2:42 2:49 2:49 2:49 2:52 2:52 2:52 3:22 4 4:16 5:1-9 5:20-24 5:27 7:37 7:47-48 9:23 9:35 9:56 9:58 9:59 10:22 10:30-37 13:1-4 17:4 18:22 19:10 19:10 21:27 21:36 22:28 22:30 22:43 23:22-47 23:47
John
1:1 1:1-14 1:6 1:18 1:34 1:43 1:48 1:49 1:51 2:4 3:13 3:13 3:17 3:36 4:5 4:7 4:23 4:26 4:34 4:42 5:16-18 5:19-26 5:22 5:23 5:24 5:25-27 5:27 5:30 5:34 5:36 5:39 6:40 6:47 6:50-58 6:53 6:69 7:3-10 7:15 8:3 8:12 8:24 8:46 8:57 8:58 8:58 9:3 9:35-38 10:9 10:27 10:30 10:30 10:36 10:38 10:38 11:4 11:25 11:25 11:27 12:26 12:47 14:6 14:9 14:11 14:13 14:27 16:33 17:1 17:3 17:5 17:13 17:22 18:36 18:37 19:7 20:21 20:28 20:31
Acts
Romans
1 Corinthians
2 Corinthians
Colossians
1 Thessalonians
Hebrews
1:2-3 2:10-18 4:15 4:15 4:15 5:7-9 5:8 5:8 5:8-9 7:26 12:3
1 Peter
1 John
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 360 361 362 363 364 365 366 367 368 369 370 371 372 373 374 375