Three Essays
Rev. Dr. SCHAFF and M. NAPOLEON ROUSSEL.
The title of the second essay of this volume has been placed first, to prevent the work from being confounded with “The Christ of the Gospels” by Tulloch, published by our Western Book Concern.
THIS work is reprinted from the London Religious Tract Society’s
edition. The same reasons which made its publication desirable in England apply
to American society. For, though M. Renan’s work may not be very generally read
among us, yet its thought and spirit are being largely reproduced by the Rationalistic
pulpit and press,—the latter especially. Hence it is necessary to provide a popular
antidote for what may be regarded as popular poison. This little volume is such
an antidote. Professor Schaff’s
D. W.
THE Vie de Jesus, by M. Renan, having passed through many
editions, and been translated into several languages on the continent of Europe,
has now appeared in an English form. The Committee of the Religious Tract Society
have therefore deemed it incumbent upon them to provide some antidote to the errors
of a volume which is being so widely circulated. At the same time they do not think
that M. Renan’s treatise either needs or deserves a formal reply. It adduces no
new facts and urges no new arguments against the Christian faith. It is not remarkable
either for depth of research or vigor of logic. It owes its sudden and wonderful
popularity, not to its intrinsic merit, but to the beauty of its style and the position
of its author. All the reasonings
It has been thought sufficient, therefore, to place in the hands of English readers the following essays.
I. A treatise, by the Rev. Professor Schaff, Reprinted, with
revision and additions, from the “British and Foreign Evangelical Review.”
2. Two essays, by M. Napoleon Roussel, one of the ablest of the French Protestant pastors, in which the insidious and latent principles of the Vie de Jesus are stripped of their disguise, and laid bare in their naked deformity. Many who might be deluded and seduced by the rhetorical romance of M. Renan would start back with horror from an unvailed statement of his teachings.
These essays are published with the earnest prayer that they may be made instrumental in leading many not only to reject the evil, but to choose the good. It is not enough to detect the sophisms and repudiate the conclusions of infidelity, unless, at the same time, “being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
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The Christ of the Gospels. By Rev. Professor Schaff. |
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The Romance of M. Renan. By Napoleon Roussel. |
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The Christ of M. Renan and the Christ of the Gospels. By Napoleon Roussel |
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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, in
the fullness of time, appeared 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 Desire of all nations;” the ages
after him proclaim his glory, and ever extend his dominion. The noblest and best
of men under every clime hold him not only in the purest affection and the profoundest
gratitude, but in divine adoration and worship. His name is above every name that
can be named in heaven or on earth,
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 revealed the Father. Faith, with its justifying,
sanctifying, and saving power, is independent of science and learning, and may be
kindled even in the
This fact, however, does not supersede the necessity of thought
and argument. Revelation, although above nature and above reason, is by no means
against nature and against reason. On the contrary, nature and the supernatural,
as has been well said by a distinguished New England divine, (Bushnell,) “constitute
together the one system of God.” 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
are not antagonistic, but complementary forces; not enemies, but inseparable twin
sisters. Faith, indeed, precedes knowledge, but it just as necessarily
As living faith in Christ is the soul and center of all sound
practical Christianity and piety, so the true doctrine of Christ is the soul and
center of all sound Christian theology. St. John makes the denial of the incarnation
of the Son of God the criterion of Antichrist, and consequently the belief in this
central truth the test of Christianity. The incarnation, and the Divine glory shining
through the vail of Christ’s humanity, is the grand theme of his Gospel, which he
wrote, as with the pen of an angel, from the very heart of Christ, as his favorite
disciple and bosom friend. The Apostles’ Creed, starting as it does from the confession
by Peter, makes the article on Christ most prominent, and assigns to it the central
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 dispensation, 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 up through the successive stages of his earthly life, his discourses and miracles, to his assumption into that Divine glory which he had before the foundation of the world. The result reached in both cases is the same, that Christ unites in his person the whole fullness of the Godhead and the whole fullness of sinless manhood.
The older theologians, both Catholic and Evangelical, proved the
divinity of the Saviour in a direct way from the miracles performed by him, and
the prophecies fulfilled in him, from the Divine names which he bears, from the
Divine attributes which are predicted of him,
But it may also be proved by the opposite process—the contemplation of the singular perfection of his humanity, which rises, by the 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 deeply we penetrate through the vail of his flesh, the more clearly we behold the glory of the Only Begotten of the Father shining through it full of grace and of truth.
Modern evangelical theology owes this new homage to the Saviour.
The powerful attacks of the latest phase of infidelity upon the credibility of the
Gospel history call for it, and have already led, by way of reaction, to new
It is from this point of view that we will endeavor, in as popular
and concise a manner as the difficulty of the subject permits, 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 all Christendom; and we shall find him
in all the stages of his life, both as a private individual and as a public character,
so far elevated above
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.
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. But the weakness, decline, and decrepitude
of old age would be incompatible with his
Let us first glance at the infancy and boyhood of the Saviour.
The history of the race commences with the beauty of innocent youth in the garden
of Eden, “when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted
for joy,” in beholding Adam and Eve created in the image of their Maker, the crowning
glory of all his wonderful works. So the second Adam, the Redeemer of the fallen
race, the Restorer and Perfecter of man, comes first before us in the accounts of
the Gospels as a child born, not in paradise, it is true, but among the dreary ruins
of sin and death, from a humble virgin, in a lowly manger, yet pure and innocent,
the subject of the praise of angels and the object of the adoration of men. Heaven
and earth, the shepherds of Bethlehem, in the name of Israel, longing after salvation,
and the wise men from the East, as the representatives of heathenism
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. When twelve years old we find him in the temple, in the midst of
the Jewish doctors, not teaching and offending them, as in the Apocryphal Gospels,
by any immodesty or forwardness, but hearing and asking questions, thus actually
learning from them, and yet filling them with astonishment at his understanding
and answers. There is nothing premature, forced, or unbecoming his
With an almost incredible untruthfulness,
M. Renan quotes the narrative of Luke as a “legend which delights to show Jesus,
even from his infancy, in revolt against parental authority, and departing from
the common way to fulfill his vocation. It is certain, at least, that he cared little
for the relations of kinship. His family do not seem to have loved him, and at times
he seems to have been hard toward them.” This is not to write history, but to contradict
it.—Ed. R. T. S.
The 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 Apocryphal Gospels, which are related to the Canonical
Gospels as the counterfeit to the genuine coin, or as a revolting caricature to
the inimitable original, but which by the very contrast tend, negatively, to corroborate
the truth of the evangelical history. While the Evangelists expressly reserve the
performance of miracles to the age of maturity and public life, and observe a significant
silence concerning the parents of Jesus, the Pseudo-evangelists fill the infancy
and early years of the Saviour and his mother with the strangest prodigies, and
make the active intercession of Mary very prominent throughout. According to their
representation, even dumb idols, irrational beasts, and senseless
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 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 little country town of proverbial insignificance; in poverty
and manual labor; in the obscurity of a carpenter’s shop; far away from universities,
academies, libraries, and literary or polished society; without any help, as far
as we know, except the parental care, the book of nature, the Old Testament Scriptures,
and the secret intercourse of his soul with the heavenly Father. Hence the question
of Nathaniel, “Can any good thing 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, can be pointed out as auxiliary
aids in the development
Luther, for instance, was indeed the son of poor peasants, and had a very hard youth; but yet he went to the schools of Mansfield, Magdeburg, and Eisenach, to the University of Erfurt, passed through the ascetic discipline of convent life, lived in a university surrounded by professors, students, and libraries, and was innocently, as it were, made a reformer by extraordinary events, and the irresistible current of his age.
In the case of Christ, no such natural explanation can be given.
All the attempts to bring him into some contact with Egyptian wisdom, or with the
Essenic theosophy, or other sources of learning, are without a shadow of proof,
and explain nothing after all. For, unlike all other great men, even the Prophets
and the Apostles, he was absolutely original and independent. He taught the world
as one
We now approach the public life of Jesus. In his thirtieth year,
after the Messianic inauguration through the baptism by John, Few passages
in the “Vie de Jésus” will be read with more surprise than those in which M. Renan
treats on the baptism of our Lord. He maintains that Jesus “was already a somewhat
renowned teacher when he came to John.” Almost with the air of a discovery he announces
that it is by an error that “we imagine John to be an old man; he was, on the contrary,
of the same age as Jesus;” and he dismisses “all the details of the narrative, especially
those which refer to the relationship of John to Jesus, as legendary.” For this
we have no other authority alleged than M. Renan’s ipse dixit.—Ed.
R. T. S.
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 of early manhood,
without tasting the infirmities of declining years, which would inevitably mar the
picture of the Regenerator of the race, and the Prince of life. And yet, unlike
all other men of his years, he 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
How remarkable, how wonderful this contrast between the short duration and the immeasurable significance of Christ’s ministry! The Saviour of the world a youth!
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 rare exceptions,
we admit.. Alexander the Great, the last and most brilliant efflorescence of the
ancient Greek nationality,
There is another striking distinction, of a general character,
between Christ and the heroes of history, which we must mention here. We should
naturally suppose that such an uncommon
And yet this Jesus of Nazareth, without money and arms, conquered
more millions than Alexander, Cæsar, Mohammed, and Napoleon; without science and
learning, he shed more light on things human and divine than all philosophers and
scholars combined; without the eloquence of schools, he spoke words of life such
as never were spoken before or since, and produced effects which lie beyond the
reach of orator or poet; without writing a single line, he has set more pens in
motion, and furnished themes for more sermons, orations, discussions, learned volumes,
works of art, and sweet songs of praise, than the whole army of great men of ancient
and modern times. Born in a manger, and crucified as a malefactor, he now controls
the destinies of the civilized world, and rules a spiritual empire which embraces
one third of the inhabitants of the globe. There never was in this world a life
so unpretending, modest, and lowly in its outward form and condition,
We will now attempt to describe his personal, or moral and religious character, as it appears on 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 its 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
He was, indeed, tempted as we are, but he never yielded to temptation. His sinlessness was at first only the relative sinlessness of Adam before the fall, which implies the necessity of trial and temptation. But here is the fundamental difference between the first and the second Adam: the first Adam lost his innocence by the abuse of his freedom, and fell by his own act of disobedience into the dire evils of sin; while the second Adam was innocent in the midst of sinners, and maintained his innocence against all and every temptation.
In vain we look through the entire biography of Christ for a single
stain, or the slightest shadow, on his moral character. There never lived a more
harmless being on earth. He injured no one, he took advantage of no one. He never
spoke a wrong word, he never committed a wrong action. He never repented, never
asked God for pardon and forgiveness. The petition for forgiveness in the Lord’s
Prayer,
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 declared him “just,” “holy,” and “without
sin.” It is admitted, moreover, by his enemies, the heathen judge Pilate and his
wife, representing as it were the Roman law and justice, when they shuddered with
apprehension and washed their hands to be clear of innocent blood; by the rude Roman
Admit once this fact of the perfect sinlessness of Christ, as
is done even by divines who are by no means regarded as orthodox, As, for instance,
Priestley and Channing among the Unitarians, Hase and Schleiermacher among the Neologians,
Tlheodore Parker and Rousseau among the Deists. Renan, indeed, dogmatically denies
the sinlessness of Jesus, but he scarcely even attempts to prove his position. When
he does so it is by an imputation of motives which are utterly inconsistent with
the recorded facts, or by a version of them so distorted as flatly to contradict
the narrative given by those whom he admits to have been eve-witnesses. For instance,
he declares the resurrection of Lazarus to have been a fraud played off upon the
by-standers, in which our Lord was an accessory, if not an accomplice. He offers
no proof in support of this extraordinary assertion beyond his own statement that
so it was. Arguments (?) such as these neither need nor deserve serious refutation.
They stand self-convicted.—Ed. R. T. S.
But in Christ we have the one solitary and absolute exception to this universal rule—an individual thinking as a man, feeling as a man, speaking, acting, suffering, and dying as a man, surrounded by sinners in every direction, with the keenest sense of sin, and the deepest sympathy with sinners, commencing his public ministry with the call, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand;” yet never touched in the least by the contamination of the world, never putting himself in the attitude of a sinner before God, never shedding a tear of repentance, never regretting a single thought, word, or deed, never needing nor asking Divine pardon, and boldly facing all his present and future enemies in the absolute certainty of his spotless purity before God and man.
A sinless Saviour in the midst of a sinful world is an astounding
fact indeed, and a miracle in history. But this freedom from the common sin and
guilt of the race is after all only the
It is universally admitted, even by Deists and Rationalists, that Christ taught the purest and sublimest system of ethics, which thrown all the moral precepts and maxims of the wisest men of antiquity far into the shade. The sermon on the mount alone is worth intimately more than all that Confucius, Socrates, and Seneca ever said or wrote on duty and virtue. But the difference is still greater if we come to the more difficult task of practice. While the wisest and best of men never live up even to their own imperfect standard of excellency, Christ fully carried out his perfect doctrine in his life and conduct. He is the living incarnation of the ideal standard of virtue and holiness, and universally acknowledged to be the highest model for all that is pure, and good, and noble in the sight of God and man.
We find Christ moving in all the ordinary
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.
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. Every action in him proceeded from
supreme love to God, and looked to the temporal and eternal welfare of man. The
groundwork of his character was the most intimate and uninterrupted union and communion
with his heavenly Father, from whom he derived, to whom he referred, every thing.
Already in his twelfth year he found his life-element and delight in the things
of his Father. It was his daily food to do the will of him that sent him, and to
finish his work. To him he looked in prayer before every important act, and taught
his disciples that model prayer, which for simplicity, brevity, comprehensiveness,
and suitableness, can never be surpassed. He often retired to a mountain or solitary
place for prayer, and spent days and nights in this
The next feature we would notice, is the completeness and 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 can be named.
History exhibits to us many examples of commanding and comprehensive
geniuses, who stand at the head of their age and nation, and furnish material for
the intellectual activity of generations and periods, until they are succeeded by
other heroes at a new epoch of development. As rivers generally spring from
What these representative men are to particular ages, or nations,
or sects, or particular schools of science or art, Christ was to the human family
at large in its relation to God. He, and he alone, is the universal type for universal
imitation. Hence he could, without the least impropriety or suspicion of vanity,
call upon all men to forsake all things and to follow him. He stands above the limitations
of age, school, sect, nation, and race. Although a Jew according to the flesh, there
is nothing Jewish about him which is not at the same time of general significance.
The particular and national in him is always duly subordinate to the general and
human. Still less was he ever identified with a party or sect. He was equally removed
from the stiff formalism of the Pharisees,
It must not be supposed, however, 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 has struck with singular force all the more eminent writers on the subject. It gives the finish to that beauty of holiness which is the sublimest picture presented to our contemplation.
He was free from all one-sidedness, which constitutes the weakness
as well as the strength of the most eminent men. He was not a man of one idea, nor
of one virtue, towering above all the rest. The moral forces were so well tempered
and moderated by each other that none was unduly prominent, none carried to excess,
none alloyed by the kindred failing. Each was checked and completed by the opposite
grace. His character never lost its even balance and happy equilibrium, never needed
modification or readjustment. It was thoroughly sound, and uniformly consistent
from the beginning to the end. We cannot properly attribute to him any one temperament.
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, temperaments. He was equally
far removed from the excesses of the legalist, the pietist, the ascetic, and the
enthusiast. With the strictest obedience
He brought the sword against every form of wickedness, and the
peace which the world cannot give. He was the most effective and yet the least noisy,
the most radical and yet the most conservative, calm, and patient, of all reformers.
He came to fulfill every letter of the old law, yet he made all things new. The
same hand which drove the profane traffickers from the temple was laid in blessing
on little children, healed the lepers, and rescued the sinking disciple; the same
ear which heard the voice of approbation from heaven, was open to the cries of the
women in trouble; the same mouth which pronounced the terrible woe on the hypocrites,
and condemned the impure desire
Finally, he unites with the active or heroic virtues the passive and gentle, and thus his life and death furnish 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
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 an enemy, lowliness
and humility, gentle patience in suffering, and cheerful submission to the holy
will of God, is 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.” “Love your enemies, bless
them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them who despitefully
use you and persecute
Christ’s passive virtue is not confined to the closing scenes
of his ministry. As human life is beset at every step by trials, vexations, and
hinderances, which should serve the educational purpose 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,” and had to endure “the contradiction
of sinners.” He was poor, and suffered hunger and fatigue. He was tempted by the
devil. His path was obstructed with apparently insurmountable difficulties from
the outset. His words and miracles called forth the bitter hatred of the world,
which resulted at last in the bloody counsel of death. The Pharisees and Sadducees
forgot their jealousies and quarrels in opposing him. They rejected and perverted
his testimony; they laid snares for him by insidious questions; they called him
a glutton and a wine-bibber for eating and drinking like
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 Jews and Gentiles. The government and the people combined against him who came to save them. His own disciples forsook him; Peter denied him; Judas, under the inspiration of the devil, betrayed him; the rulers of the nation condemned him; the furious mob cried, “Crucify him;” rude soldiers mocked him. He was seized in the night, hurried from tribunal to tribunal, arrayed in a crown of thorns, insulted, smitten, scourged, spit upon, and hung like a criminal and a slave between two robbers and murderers!
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, which 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 truly human tenderness and delicacy of feeling
he ever combined an unutterable dignity and majesty, a sublime self-control and
imperturbable calmness of mind. There is a grandeur in his deepest sufferings, which
forbids a feeling of pity and compassion on our side, as incompatible with admiration
and reverence for his character. We feel the force of his word to the women of Jerusalem
when they bewailed him on the way to Calvary, “Weep not for me, but weep for yourselves
and for your children.” We never hear him break out in angry passions and violence,
although he was at war with the whole ungodly world. He
The accuracy of this
description will be evident to all who candidly read the Gospel narrative. Yet M.
Renan speaks of our Lord in the last of his earthly life as “carried away by excitement”
and “oppressed by terror and doubt.” He even ventures to say, “Did he curse the
hard destiny which had denied him the joys conceded to others? Did he regret his
too lofty nature? And, victim of his greatness, did he mourn that he had not remained
a simple artisan of Nazareth? We know not.”—Ed. R. T. S.
Such, then, was Jesus of Nazareth: a true
The whole range of history and fiction furnishes no parallel to
such a character. There never was any thing even approaching to it before or since,
except in faint imitation of his example. It cannot be explained on purely human
principles, nor derived from any
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. 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
Christ strongly asserts his humanity, and calls himself, in innumerable
passages, the Son of man. This expression, while it places him in one view on a
common ground with us as flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone, already indicates,
at the same time, that he is more than an ordinary individual, not merely a son
of man, like all other descendants of Adam, but the Son of man—the man in
the highest sense, the ideal, the universal, the absolute man, the second Adam descended
from heaven, the head of a new and superior order of the race, the King of Israel,
the Messiah. The most superficial reader of the New Testament must have observed
that the phrase “Son of man” is used in a special and peculiar sense. What that
sense is, has been fully discussed by many of the most eminent Biblical and Oriental
scholars. It marks out Jesus as the model representative man, and, as adopted from
the words of Daniel, (
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 redeemed men, but the Son of God as no other being ever was, is, or can be, all others being sons or children of God only by derivation or adoption, after a new spiritual birth, and in dependence of his absolute and eternal Sonship. He is, as his favorite disciple calls him, the “only begotten” Son, or as the old Catholic theology expresses it, “eternally begotten of the substance of the Father.” In this high sense the title is freely given to him by his disciples, without a remonstrance on his part, and by God the Father himself at his baptism and at his transfiguration.
Christ represents himself, moreover, as being not of the world,
but sent from God, as having come from God, and as being in heaven while living
on earth. He not only announces and proclaims the truth as other messengers of God,
but declares himself to be the “Light of the world,” “the Way, the Truth, and the
Life,” “the Resurrection and the Life.” “All things,” he says, “are delivered unto
me of my Father: and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any
man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him.” He
invites the weary and heavy laden to come to him for rest and peace. He promises
life in the highest and deepest sense, even eternal life, to every one who believes
in him. He claims and admits himself to be the Christ, or the Messiah of whom Moses
and the Prophets of old testify, and the King of Israel. He is the Lawgiver of the
new and last dispensation, the Founder of a spiritual kingdom coextensive with the
race, and everlasting as eternity itself, the appointed Judge of the quick
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 saves the Divinity of Christ and of the Holy Spirit, without affecting the fundamental truths of the unity of the Godhead, and keeps the proper medium between an abstract and lifeless monotheism and a polytheistic tritheism.
He always distinguishes himself from God the Father, who sent
him, whose work 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 he 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 the Spirit of
truth and holiness, with the whole fullness of the accomplished salvation. But he
never makes a similar distinction between himself and the Son of God; on the contrary,
he identifies himself with the Son of God, and uses this term, as already remarked,
in a sense which implies much more than the Jewish conception of the Messiah, and
nothing short of the equality of essence or substance. 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. “Before
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 as self-evident truths, which need only be stated to challenge the belief and submission of mankind.
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 father, schoolman, or reformer—to say, “I am the Light of
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. They seem perfectly
natural and well sustained by a most extraordinary life, and the most extraordinary
works. There is no room here for the least suspicion of vanity, pride, or self-deception.
For eighteen hundred years these claims have been acknowledged by millions of people
of all nations and tongues, of all classes and conditions, of the most learned and
mighty as well as the most ignorant and humble, with
Let us briefly review, in conclusion, the various attempts of Unitarians and unbelievers to account for the character of Christ without admitting his Divinity.
The semi-infidelity of Socinians and Unitarians is singularly
inconsistent. Admitting the faultless perfection of Christ’s character, and the
truthfulness of the Gospel history, and yet denying his Divinity, they must either
charge him with such egregious exaggeration and conceit as would overthrow at once
the 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.
Channing, the
But this is not all. We have seen that Christ goes much further
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
divine honors and attributes, and calls himself equal with the great Jehovah. How
can a being so
The infidelity of the enemies of Christianity is logically more consistent, though absolutely untenable in the premises. It assumes either imposture, or enthusiasm, or poetical fiction.
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. It was first suggested by the heathen assailants of
Christianity, Celsus and Julian the Apostate, then insinuated by French Deists of
the Voltairean school, 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 as Hermann Samuel Reimarus, Professor of
Oriental Literature in the College at Hamburg, who died in 1786. His “Fragments”
were never intended for publication, but only for a few friends. Lessing found them
in the library at Wolfenbüttel, and commenced to publish them, without the author’s
knowledge, in 1774; not, as he said, because he agreed with them, but because he
wished to arouse the spirit of investigation. This mode of procedure Semler, the
father of German neology, wittily compared to the act of setting a city on fire
for the purpose of trying the engines.
The hypothesis of enthusiasm, or self-deception, though
less disreputable, is equally unreasonable in view of the uniform clearness, calmness,
and self-possession, humility, dignity, and patience of Christ—qualities the very
opposite to 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 Barcocheba of a later date, have headed a rebellion against the hated
tyranny of the Romans, and endeavored
But the champions of this theory may admit all this, and yet fasten
delusion upon the disciples of Christ, who were so dazzled by his character,
words, and works, that they mistook an extraordinary man for a divine being, and
The “Vie
de Jesus” has appeared since this essay was written. It is strange that the defunct
and obsolete theories of the German Naturalistic Rationalists should be revived
by M. Renan, and treated as novelties. The absurd attempts of Paulus and his companions
to explain away the miracles by natural causes have been standing jokes in Germany
for the last fifty years, even among the infidels themselves. These attempts, however,
are reproduced, and even carried to a more extravagant length. by M. Renan.—Ed.
R. T. S.
The last hypothesis, of a poetical fiction, was
With this last and ablest effort, 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 transplanted and refuted the other, even during the life-time of their champions. They explain nothing in the end; on the contrary, they only substitute an unnatural 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 deprive 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 assailants
of the Gospel history, 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 “Life of Jesus,” “have apparently
annihilated the greatest and most important part
Humanity scorns such a miserable substitute, which has yet to
give the first proof of any power for good, and which will never convert or improve
a single individual. It must have a living head, a real Lord and Saviour from sin
and death. With renewed faith and confidence, it returns from the dreary desolations
of a heartless infidelity and the vain conceits of a philosophy falsely so called,
to the historical Christ, and exclaims with Peter: “Lord, to whom shall
Yes! there he lives, the Divine man and incarnate God, on the
ever fresh and self-authenticating record of the Gospels, in the unbroken history
of eighteen centuries, and in the hearts and lives of the wisest and best of our
race. 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 like 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
WE have, once more and again, read “The Life of Jesus,” by M.
Renan. The book is a masterpiece of skill. We say this without any reference either
to its style or to its scientific character; but with respect to the marvelous cleverness
with which its author colors events and fashions men, in order to bring them before
the reader under such an aspect as will conceal their true character. Up to the
present time the adversaries of revelation had assailed it with coarse invectives:
Christianity was “infamous;” Jesus, “an astronomical symbol;” the Gospel, “a collection
of myths.” The atrocity of these accusations produced the
As for ourselves, we confess we do not possess this skill. At the outset we shall let it be seen where we desire to lead those who may read these pages. We do not aim either at a magical style or a refined criticism, but at simple uprightness, relying upon the force of truth itself.
It is in the Gospels that M. Renan obtains
The references throughout are to the original French
edition.
After reading these lines are you not reassured? Has not the author
already won your confidence by showing so much impartiality toward the Gospels?
Yes, but wait: he will not long delay in limiting, in the most singular manner,
the effect of his concessions. He believes in the evangelical narrative, except
in its miraculous portions. He has beforehand
Having entered upon this course
of investigation, we think M. Renan has given proof of much moderation. He might,
logically, have gone much further, and have said, All this being accomplished, still
nothing is proved; for one might yet suspect the good faith of the witnesses, and
the knowledge of the experimenters, and suppose the thaumaturgus to be a mere clever
inventor! If. a century ago, such a one had professed his ability to relate what
was taking place at a distance of a thousand leagues, and to amputate the arms and
the legs of the spectators without their knowledge, the scientific men of the age
might have proclaimed a prodigy; and yet the thaumaturgus had been no more than
the inventor of the electric telegraph and the use of chloroform. Why should we
not discover the art of raising the dead? Go a step further; suppose (a case in
point) that really God gives to day to the disciples of Jesus Christ the power to
work miracles; what would this prove to certain minds? Nothing! The miracles would
no longer be miracles, that is all. You cannot prevent my doubting. Thus the miracles
of the Gospel are not designed to convert the [willfully] unbelieving, but to strengthen
the faith of believers. Jesus Christ himself said so in affirming of the brothers
of the rich man, “Neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.”
(
Do not take the trouble, then, to point out to M. Renan another
method of attesting a miracle: he declares to you that he wants none. So be it;
but then it must be confessed that it is a strange mode of consulting a book in
order to extract a history from it, to lay down the à priori
principle, that the assertions with which the book is filled are either errors or
falsehoods; and, placing one’s self before the hero one wishes to portray, to say
to him, I consent to see in you every thing except what you pretend
No matter, let us see whether the being who is to emerge from these “inductions” (p. 1) will possess the life-likeness, the naturalness, the truth, which will make us say, Such a man has lived.
In endeavoring to ascertain what constitutes the strength of our
author we have arrived at this principle, (just in its proper limits, but erroneous
in the extremes to which M. Renan has pushed it): man is inconsistent; we
may find in him both good and evil, both the false and the true. Expressed in these
vague terms, the assertion is not unfounded. But has he who uses the assertion the
right to conclude from it that man is in such contradiction with himself that we
may expect to find in the same person both crime and virtue, both uprightness and
hypocrisy, both wisdom and folly, both candor and cunning? Are there no limits to
this medley in the same individual? Then let him
In attributing to his hero this mixed character, has M. Renan confined himself within the limits of probability, even in the estimation of those who see in Jesus no more than a man? or has he exaggerated, and has the portrait he has drawn been thrust beyond the truth? This is what the reader will be able to decide after his perusal of the following exposition:
M. Renan’s First Proposition: Jesus was Moral.
Let us for a moment accept M. Renan’s conclusion as established, “All the ages will proclaim that among the sons of men there never was a greater than Jesus.” (P. 459.)
Granted. See now to what height this Jesus raised his humanity,
even according to M. Renan himself: “It is allowable to call Divine this sublime
person who, each day, still presides
What Jesus appears to M. Renan to be, from the documents which,
with their goodness and defects, retrace his beautiful life, is still not all that
he was in reality. Jesus was greater than his biographers have been able to make
him. M. Renan says, “The Evangelists who have bequeathed to us the image of Jesus
are so
. . . “If religion be the essential element of humanity, through it he [Jesus] has deserved the Divine rank which has been allotted to him. An absolutely new idea—that, namely, of a worship founded upon purity of heart and human brotherhood—effected its entrance into the world through him; an idea so exalted that the Christian Church could not but fail completely in its intentions on this point, so that even in our days only a few souls are capable of realizing it.” (P. 90.)
“Finally, let Jesus be judged by his work: the evangelical system
of morals remains as the
It would be superfluous to multiply these quotations; what precedes will suffice to show that, according to M. Renan, Jesus was not a religion-maker, but a being whose moral elevation had inspired him with the grandeur of his conceptions. Jesus was not God, but he was as divine as man can be, having even far surpassed the most just, the most moral, the most perfect of men. We, too, believe this; we believe these praises to be sincere; and we are only the more astonished at finding the panegyrist attributing to a being endowed with these divine perfections the human defects we are about to enumerate.
M. Renan’s Second Proposition: Jesus was Deluded.
How could it be that this morally perfect being, Jesus, though without a divine mission, yet came to believe himself sent from God? M. Renan will explain it.
In the first place, Jesus believes himself to be in communication with God. (P. 75.) Nothing can be more simple than this. His moral condition authorized the belief. There is not an impassable gulf between this spiritual union with God, and the assertion that one is his child, his son. In a certain sense, then, Jesus was able to believe himself a son of God. (Ibid.) From thence, by a gradation of thought which we will not undertake to explain, Jesus arrived at the identification of himself with his Father. This is the first transformation.
Again, Jesus had styled himself “Son of man.” This was perfectly
legitimate, for, as M. Renan tells us, the phrase son of man is, in the Semitic
languages, the simple synonym for
Jesus, having assumed the mission of advancing the kingdom of
God on the earth, soon persuaded
If Jesus, without being almighty, nevertheless believes himself to be so, we cannot be surprised that he thought he could heal the diseased. “Healing was considered to be a sort of moral influence; Jesus, therefore, being conscious of his moral strength, would necessarily believe himself to be specially endowed with the gift of healing. Convinced that the touch of his garment, or the imposition of his hands, did good to the sick, it would have been hard if he had refused to the sufferers a relief which he had it in his power to grant. . . . One species of healing that Jesus oftenest performed was the exorcism, or expulsion, of devils.” (P. 261.)
That Jesus, in a sort of pious fever, should have persuaded himself
that God would give him a superhuman power, we might possibly
M. Renan’s Third Proposition: Jesus was an Impostor.
M. Renan does not charge Jesus with imposture any more openly than he charges him with hallucination: he is scrupulous as to the terms he uses. He covers over with the gloss of necessity even that which in the conduct of Jesus is ambiguous. In order to excuse Jesus, he attributes to him the old principle of all religion-makers, that we may conscientiously do evil that good may come.
“Merely to conceive what is good,” says M. Renan, “is not sufficient:
you must insure its success among men. To this end means not absolutely pure are
necessary.” (P. 92.) “You must demand of humanity the greater, in order to obtain
from it the less. The extraordinary moral progress due to the Gospel comes from
its exaggerations.” (P. 316.) After such a profession of principles on the part
of our critic,
We have seen Jesus persuading himself that he possessed a miraculous
power which he really had not: it seems that he had not always that persuasion,
and that, when necessary, a little skill took its place. Thus, “sometimes,” says
M. Renan, “Jesus made use of an innocent artifice. [Innocent artifice!] He
professed to have some secret knowledge respecting a person he wished to gain. Dissembling
the true secret of his power, I mean his superiority over that by which he was surrounded,
he allowed the belief to satisfy the ideas of the time, that secrets were revealed
and hearts opened to him by a revelation from on high.” (P. 162.) “Thanks to some
fertile mistakes, Jesus, by adopting the Utopias of his age, transformed them into
exalted truths.” (P. 284.)
To recapitulate: “Not being severe toward charlatans who were
well disposed toward him;” “out of a Utopia to make a truth, thanks to fertile mistakes;”
“to allow the belief in a revelation from on high, which revealed secrets to him;”
“to dissemble and to use guile”—such are the means used by the sincere Jesus to
proclaim the truth and to commend his morality; such are the resources which explain
his triumphs, and on which we are to congratulate the Divine founder of the religion
of the human race! Further developments would be useless; we shall, therefore, bring
this subject to a close by putting before the conscience of the reader this simple
question: Does such a being seem to you to rise to the height of the task ascribed
to him? Do these opposite traits in his character appear to make
No, this is not the Jesus of our Gospels: it is Jesus put a second
time into the hands of Herod and Pilate, of the soldiers and the servants; that
is, Jesus humiliated, spat upon, and smitten, a Jesus invented. I can understand
that the old portrait of our Jesus should not please M. Renan: he must repaint
it, cover it with his own colors, and disfigure it, that we might learn to despise
it. Thus, as he advances, our author treats Jesus with less respect; blames him
more freely, and without regret tarnishes his virtues. His morality ceases to be
sublime, and becomes “frenzied.” (P. 314.) He praises
Our author has such a strong wish to accuse Jesus, that he is
“inclined to believe he deliberately designed to be put to death.” His forebodings—but
too true—of the sufferings of his disciples, are changed into a “taste for persecutions
and punishments.” (P. 316.) He is led through false interpretations to such a fearful
But the most striking proof of the determination to slander Jesus,
is the way in which the story of his death is told. We take no notice of the fact
that, blended with the recital of the crucifixion, simple and touching as this is
in the Gospels, we have details given us here on the various kinds of this punishment,
on the drink of the Roman soldiers, and on “the singular coincidence that Barabbas,
the murderer, was also called Jesus,” etc. No; though these things tend to lessen
both Jesus himself and his glorious conduct during his last hours, we prefer not
At the same time that Jesus and his friends are lowered, his adversaries
are cautiously vindicated. Thus, however the Evangelist may explain it, Jesus truly
pronounced the fatal word, “I will destroy the temple of God, and rebuild it in
three days.” “From the standpoint of an orthodox Judaism, Jesus was truly a blasphemer,
a destroyer of the established worship: thus his crimes were legally punished. (Pp.
396, 397.) One sees that, if the judges did no more than administer the law, their
sin was much less serious. As to Iscariot the betrayer,
After having nearly justified Judas, M. Renan also nearly justifies
Pilate. He traces the first wrong through a labyrinth of religious intolerance,
Every attentive reader of “The Life of Jesus” will perceive that
its author has taken great pains to appear as a simple historian, and not as an
adversary. We admit that, so far as art could reach this end, M. Renan has well
succeeded; all his words are weighed and balanced; yet it was impossible not to
reveal his ideas, and we have seen how this has been done. We do not, in this short
review, pretend to discuss historical facts; but we wish simply to signalize the
intention which directs the ready and clever pen of the writer, and to prove that
In order to reduce Jesus to the stature of an ordinary man it is not sufficient to lessen him, but it is also necessary, by a concurrence of natural circumstances, to explain how he, simple mortal as he was, could raise himself to that work which, even to this day, astonishes the unbelievers themselves. We shall see how M. Renan, in order to reach this result, lays under tribute the times, the country, and the men in whose midst Jesus lived. For the sake both of fidelity and conciseness we shall, with some abbreviations, quote our author:
. . . “No historical scene was so fit as that in which Jesus grew to develop those hidden forces which humanity keeps, as it were, in reserve, and which it does not bring forward except in days of excitement and peril.”
. . . “A gigantic dream had, for ages, pursued the Jewish people, perpetually renewing its youth in its decrepitude. . . . Judea had concentrated the whole strength of its love and desire upon the future of its national existence. It had faith in divine promises of a boundless destiny. . . . At the period of the captivity a gifted poet saw the splendor of a future Jerusalem, to which the nations and the distant isles would be tributary, under colors so fair that one might suppose a ray from the looks of Jesus had reached him across a distance of six centuries.”
“The victory of Cyrus seemed for some time to realize all that
had been hoped from it, . . . but the triumphant and frequently brutal entrance
into Asia of the Greek and Roman civilization threw him back upon his dreams. More
. . . “If Israel had held the spiritualistic doctrine, so called, which divides man into two parts, the body and the soul, and thinks it quite natural that while the body decays the soul should survive, this paroxysm of rage and energetic protestation would not have occurred. . . . The Pharisees had recourse to the dogma of the resurrection. The just will live again to participate in the Messianic reign. They will return in the body, and to a world of which they will be the kings and judges. . . . The idea of the resurrection, totally different as it is from that of the immortality of the soul, springs very naturally both from the earlier beliefs and the position of the people. Combining with the belief in the Messiah, and with the doctrine of the future restoration of all things, that idea formed the basis of those apocalyptic theories which were hatching in every man’s imagination, and which caused an extreme fermentation throughout the Jewish world.”
. . . “Jesus, as soon as he began to think, entered into the burning atmosphere created in Palestine by the ideas we have described. Freed from egotism, he had no thought but for his work, his race, and humanity. These mountains, this sea, this azure sky, those lofty plains in the distant horizon, were to him, not the melancholy vision of a soul which interrogates nature on its fate, but the unmistakable symbol, the transparent shadow, of an invisible world and a new heaven.”
“He never attached much importance to political events. . . . Perpetual seditions, excited by the zealots of Mosaism, did not cease to disturb Jerusalem. The death of the seditious was certain; but death for the sake of the integrity of the law was sought with avidity. At no time had the law a larger number of impassioned partisans than when he began to live who, by the full authority of his mission and of his genius, was about to abrogate it.”
. . . “An undertaking which exercised a great influence on Jesus
was that of Judas the
. . . “Galilee was a verdant, well-shaded, smiling country, the
true land of the Song of Songs, and of the hymns of the well-beloved. During the
two months of March and April the country is a thick mass of flowers of an incomparable
richness and variety of colors. The animals here are small, but extremely gentle.
Turtle-doves, delicate and lively; blue-birds, so light that they scarce bend the
grass on which
. . . “The country was certainly charming: it abounded with cool
waters and fruits; the large farms were shaded with vines and fig-trees; the gardens
were masses of lemon, pomegranate, and orange trees. The wine was delicious. . .
. So quiet and easily satisfied a life . . . spiritualized itself into ethereal
dreams,
“The whole history of the rise of Christianity has thus become a sweet pastoral. A Messiah at a marriage-feast; the courtesan and the honest Zaccheus invited to its festivals; the founders of the kingdom of heaven like a bridal-train—this is what Galilee has dared, and what she has made the world accept. . . . Galilee has placed within the region of the popular imagination the most sublime ideal; for behind its idyl moves the fate of humanity, and the light which illuminates the picture is the sun of the kingdom of God.”
“Jesus lived and grew in this intoxicating scene.” (Chap. iv, passim.)
Here, then, we have what lay at the basis of the projects of Jesus:
“a gigantic dream”
Let us take up again these three data.
(1.) “This gigantic dream,” of a Messiah who should deliver Israel,
like all dreams, probably has its origin in reality. And, indeed, M. Renan tells
us that, six centuries prior to the attempt of Jesus to realize this dream, a poet
(read prophet) had announced it in such terms that one might suppose him
to have been “penetrated by a look from Jesus.” Elsewhere M. Renan himself translates
a passage from this same Isaiah, respecting the future servant of God, thus: “The
servant of God grew up as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry
On another page of the chapter we are
This specimen gives us an idea of the admirable art of our writer.
A general expectation, the result of Jewish prophecies, is spread throughout the
world at the very time when Jesus comes and responds to it. To this day this very
fact has been accepted as a proof in favor of Christianity. This, M. Renan tells
us, is an error, and proves nothing. The Messiah does not respond to a providential
expectation, but a chance expectation creates the Messiah, anf from the moment that
he is credited his
(2.) Suppose this granted: we will not dispute this point, but
we shall transfer the discussion to the adversary’s own ground. If Jesus were so
anxious to realize the Jewish expectation, why did he so grossly deceive it by pretending
to fulfill the Messianic prophecies in a sense quite other than that anticipated
by the Jews? The children of Abraham expect a temporal kingdom, flattering to their
pride: the son of Mary offers them a spiritual one, which frustrates their hopes,
humbles them by putting them on a level with the other nations, and restrains their
passions by demanding holiness. Such a kingdom of God must have been, as indeed
it was, supremely distasteful to the Jews; yet, among these very Jews, Jesus preached
it and obtained its acceptance. Now, would we know how Jesus was led so to transform
the kingdom of heaven as dreamed by Israel? It was by his witnessing the failure
Is not such a use of words an abuse of them? Is it not putting
an image in place of an idea? We can easily understand that an ambitious man, finding
that course to be dangerous which at first he had thought easy, should turn aside
from it to enter upon a new one on the same ground, and thus satisfy his restless
ambition. But can we conceive that, finding the earth occupied, he should turn toward
an imaginary heaven? that, no longer able to do his own work, he should devote himself
to the work of a God, and specially of a God of whom he falsely alleges that he
had intrusted him with a mission? What possible agreement of thought can there be
between a Gaulonite who incites insurrections, and a Jesus who forbids the use of
the sword, and declares that “his kingdom
According to our author, Jesus also modified his ideas of the
kingdom of God to suit times and circumstances. (P. 271.) Thus, at one time, he
saw nothing in it but “the accession of the poor.” “The kingdom of God,” says M.
Renan, in altering the Master’s thoughts, “was: 1st, for children and those who
were like them; 2d, for the world’s outcasts, victims of the social scorn, which
rejects the good but humble man;
Put in these terms, we see, as M. Renan truly says, “an appeal to the masses.” “It is the doctrine that the poor alone will be saved, and that the kingdom of the poor is at hand.” (P. 179.) Let us go further, and say, it is the court paid to the populace in order to bring it over to the side of him who allures it with false promises, that he may make use of it when the proper time shall have come.
Did such a thought enter the mind of Jesus? Still less, even putting
out of sight the selfish aims attributed to him, did Jesus ever promise the kingdom
of heaven to the poor, simply because they were poor? Never. To suppose it would
be to falsify his thought, and what his true thought was, M. Renan himself will
help us to discover. Rightly does our critic say, “The prophets had, without ceasing,
thundered against the great, and had established an intimate relation, on the one
side, between the
Here, then, is the knot of the difficulty: in the language of the Bible “poor” often means “humble,” and hence the doctrine of Jesus. The poverty contemplated by the Messiah is not the poverty of silver or of gold; it is the poverty of virtue and of righteousness. Hence the humility of which he speaks is not the sense of material indigence, but the sentiment of the want of moral qualities. The saved man is not he who has felt and confesses his physical misery, but he who has wept over his spiritual wretchedness: in a word, the man who is forgiven is the penitent, not the mendicant.
This interpretation is so simple as to be self-evident. We shall
see that it is that of Jesus himself. To this end let us take the examples quoted
by M. Renan. We shall begin with the best-known, the parable of the Prodigal Son,
in which our author tells us, “the faulty one is presented to us as having a sort
of privleged
Take the example of Zaccheus the publican, who runs to meet Jesus,
receives him in his
“He avowedly preferred,” our author goes on to say, “people whose lives were doubtful, and who stood low in the esteem of the orthodox notabilities.” Yes, Jesus preferred these persons, not because “their lives were bad,” but because they repented of having led such lives; and if he had not the same regard for the “orthodox notabilities,” it was because they, in their pride, did not feel the need of conversion. Let us not, then, oppose the sinful life of the one party to the respectability of the other, but rather the faith and trust of the former to the impenitence of the latter.
We are not anxious here to give our readers a lesson in exegesis;
we ask to be allowed, therefore, to cut short this subject by the decided affirmation,
that Jesus never flattered the poor, never courted the mob; but that he always forgave
the repentant, and always stigmatized the vices alike of the small and of the great. Here are some examples of misrepresented evangelical sayings:
Jesus, in his teachings, subordinates the interests of this fleeting
life to those of eternity. It is not a question of abandoning earth for heaven,
but of making the possession and the use of earthly blessings contribute to the
increase of spiritual and moral treasures. What can be wiser or more simple than
this? Yet M. Renan boldly affirms that Jesus “often proclaimed that whosoever would
find the kingdom of God must purchase it at the cost of all his goods, and that
even at that price he is a gainer.” How is that to be bought which Jesus gives freely. And how could
the Master who said, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all these things shall
be added unto you,” demand that we shall sell our earthly goods? Is not this a forcing
of words one is anxious not to understand? And does not the paradoxical form of
the precepts of Jesus explain the whole? For instance, would we contend that Jesus
did actually wish his disciples, when smitten on the right cheek to turn the other
also, when he himself, being smitten on the cheek, calmly said, “If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil; but if’ well,
why smitest thou me?” As another specimen, M. Renan tells us that during the first Christian
age “property was interdicted,” and in a note he justifies his assertion by quoting
the following passage: “And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart
and of one soul: neither said any of them that aught of the things which he possessed
was his own; but they had all things common.” ( How, again, can M. Renan take literally the precept regarding
those “which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake?” (P.
300.) Are not the words which immediately follow, “He that is able to receive it
let him receive it,” a sufficiently clear intimation that the literal sense must
be put aside? Surely it is neither critical acumen nor intellect that is wanting
to M. Renan. Again, when M. Renan affirms that “the cessation of intercourse
between the sexes was often considered as a sign and condition of the kingdom of
God,” would he seriously have us believe that the kingdom of God on earth is meant,
when we are distinctly told that “in the resurrection, they neither marry
nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven?” ( Lastly, on the eve of his death, Jesus gives expression to his
agony in the expectation of martyrdom, and to his wish that the hour might come,
for it must come, to be passed throulgh. This was the shrinking of human nature,
which, in the distant prospect of a terrible trial, was anxious to shorten the suspense,
since trial could not be avoided.
Finally, among the number of causes which contributed to the success
of Jesus, M. Renan
We can very easily understand how our author, on his return from
the East, should wish to describe to us the famous places he had visited, and even
to invite us to share in the impressions he had there received: his great talents
are sufficient to make us desire this for ourselves. But when in serious reflection
he
But, of all the helps furnished to Jesus in the foundation of
his religion by his age and his country, the most important was the belief of his
countrymen in the possibility and even the frequency of miracles. Not only did the
people believe in miracles, but they loved them, and would have them. Hear M. Renan:
“A miracle is, ordinarily, much more the work of the public, than of him to whom
it is ascribed. Had Jesus persistently refused to work miracles, the crowd would
have worked them for him.
Starting from this supposition, M. Renan strives to reach two
results apparently opposed to each other, but in reality both helping to support
his theory. We have seen that, according to our author, Jesus was both a virtuous
being and an impostor; and it is by means of this hypothesis of the blending of
good and evil in the same being that he hopes to gain the approbation of his readers.
In attributing to Jesus this inconsistent character, one has the advantage of seeming
to be impartial. And besides, is not the want of strict moral consistency at the
basis of human nature? The biographer is therefore likely to obtain a favorable
hearing when he tells us that “Jesus came out as a worker of miracles only late
and unwillingly; that it was with a sort of ill-temper that he performed his miracles,
and only after having been pressed to it; and that he performed them in
We may say in passing, that the line of conduct Jesus pursued
when asked to perform a miracle was this: lie granted the request of faith, but
he refused that of unbelief. A little reflection will show us the excellence of
this rule. In fact, Christian faith is not an act of credulity, but of confidence;
that is, it springs from a moral disposition. To believe in a God who is good and
powerful, and in a Saviour who forgives and bestows eternal life, is already to
love that God and that Saviour; and so to request a, miracle is really to seek a
favor which will augment faith and love, and thus lead to greater obedience. Hence
in the Gospel narratives we find that the believers whose requests Jesus grants
generally follow and serve him. On the contrary, the unbelievers, in asking for
a miracle, reveal their perverseness: all they seek is to perplex him whom they
affect to solicit. They have beforehand resolved not to believe. If the favor be
granted, they will ascribe it to the devil rather than to God, for the sake of resisting
the appeals of him who grants it. This explains why Jesus, in his own neighborhood,
could perform no miracles. (
Further still, it is the friends and the disciples of Jesus who, in their imprudent zeal, and without his connivance, prepare miracles for him. His hand is constrained; innocently enough he comes to weep at the tomb of a friend; all at once he is to be made believe that he has raised his friend; and if he cannot believe it, he is at least to consent to allow it to be believed. . . . But this illustration is worth quoting: we shall be careful in abridging it:
“The friends of Jesus were anxious to have
In thus daring to parody the character of Jesus and of his friends,
M. Renan must reckon largely on the ignorance of the evangelical text in his readers.
He must be very confident of the sympathies of his admirers, to offer them, as probable,
the most absurd and the most revolting of suppositions. Here is a
We agree with M. Renan in thinking that in all ages the masses
of the people, and especially the Jewish people in the days of Jesus, have been
very credulous. If necessary, we might even allow that the number of miracles attributed
to Jesus has been exaggerated by tradition; and, moreover, to complete our hypothetical
concession, we may suppose that even the importance of each of these miracles has
been magnified; but, after all this, do miracles disappear from the life of Jesus?
Can it be forgotten that his life is completely interwoven with them, and that,
if we strike out one from every page, ten will still remain on each sheet? that
if the two multiplications of the loaves be reduced to one, and the five thousand
persons fed to five hundred, there will be enough of miracle left to prove the intervention
Among all the natural explanations of the success of Jesus in his day, which M. Renan might have given us, there is one which, we think, would have been the best. We shall indicate it.
Of all the pretensions put forth by Jesus, the highest was that
of forgiving and saving sinners. We abstain here from claiming for him this divine
power. We simply affirm that he professed it; that he once said to a man who came
to him in faith, “Thy sins are forgiven;” and that to the Pharisees who blamed him
for receiving the visits of disreputable persons he said, “I am not come to call
the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” “I am come to seek and to save the lost.”
On the cross he promised Paradise to a thief who confessed his crimes and prayed
to him. In the
After having removed miracles from the Gospel, to take salvation
away from it also would, indeed, be a sure means of obliterating every trace of
Christianity in the world. Vain attempt! There exists in the depths of upright and
humble souls so true a need of mercy, that
This reply, excellent as it is, is nevertheless not the one we
wish to make: to some readers it may appear inconclusive. We shall attempt, therefore,
to give a more explicit account of our own faith. In our
We say with M. Renan, that in order to the satisfaction of our
reason, we must have presented to us “a doctrine which shall be unique and
adopted by the whole of humanity.” “Études historiques et religieuses,” vii.
It will be seen that our revelation is ancient enough, since it
comes from “far beyond the confines of history;” and also that in that remote region
it was well protected, since, “intrusted to the care of a Bedouin, it remained superior,
on the points of social equality and morality, to any thing in Chaldea and in Egypt.”
And this religion was so marvelously preserved in the midst of the idolatrous nations,
that the same writer could find no better way of describing its influence than by
saying, “The desert is monotheistical.” “Étndes historiques et religieuses,”
p. 67.
Our religion, tending toward universality, as is needful in order
that we might believe in its divinity, having commenced under the tent of a patriarchal
family, extended over a whole tribe, and then over a whole people. M. Renan himself
tells us this: “The depositaries of the spirit of the nation seem to write under
the action of an intense fever. . . . Never had man undertaken the problem of the
future and of his
Lest we should be deceived by our own wishes, we shall take, among
all these prophets, only him who is praised by the adversary of Christ’s Divinity;
and further, in order not to multiply erroneously these predictions, we shall confine
ourselves to the only one M. Renan has quoted and translated. The predicted servant
“was overwhelmed with disgrace, abandoned by men, covered with shame. He took upon
himself our sufferings and our pains; he was wounded for our transgressions; the
chastisement of our peace was upon him, and Jehovah laid on him the iniquity of
us all. He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened not
Still careful not to go astray, we adhere to our wise critic,
and we find that subsequently to these predictions the expectation of a Messiah
is spread among both Jews and pagans, reaching even to the very center of Roman
civilization, where we meet with “a cycle of prophetic poems.” (P. 48.) When this
expectation has become general, a man appears who styles himself the Son of God.
According to our author, this man performs no miracle, but at least he is the first
who proclaims “the God of humanity. . . . Rising boldly above the prejudices of
his nation, he establishes God’s universal Fatherhood, . . . he founds that true
kingdom of God which each man bears in his
Two great facts may be brought forward in opposition to us. The one is, that other religions have enjoyed results no less considerable. The worshipers of Buddha are not less numerous than those of Jesus Christ. We grant this, but we say that the force of our argument lies in the nature of the work accomplished. The work of Christ upon earth is totally different from that of all other founders of religion. It is not more moral; it alone is moral, it alone leads to true civilization.
The other is, that the Church is full of faults. To this all we
have to say is, that Jesus never said that in order to become his it would be sufficient
to call one’s self a Christian. On the contrary, he foresaw that there would
be both hypocrites
Thus, all the efforts made to lessen the origin of Christianity
do but succeed in better establishing its divinity. Prove, if possible, that the
Gospels are not authentic; that the Scriptures are not inspired; that no miracle
ever took place; that Jesus and his Apostles were no more than poor Jews, simple
country folk; that they were ignorant of history and of all science, and that they
had not the least literary knowledge: let all this be very clearly proved, the triumph
of Jesus is thus secured, and our answer will be: This man of the people, though
without miracles, has nevertheless changed the world’s aspect; he has done so after
having predicted it. The transformation is such, that no science and no skill can
imitate it, neither can they undo it. Observe that the case is not that he has succeeded
better than any other founder of religion; it is, that he alone has succeeded.
His system of morals, compared with others, is not simply superior to them; it
M.
Renan finds pleasure in repeating that Hillel preceded Jesus. True; but Hillel’s
inspiration came from the prophets, and thus we must always be sent back to the
first source, the Bible.
WHICH was Jesus Christ: Man or God?
We cannot ask this question
in the present day without at once calling to mind a famous work, “The Life of
Jesus,” by M. Renan. It is useless, we are told, to attempt to enlighten one’s audience
by simply reading the Gospels, since, in estimating their worth, we are compelled
to remember a book, the novelty of which, if not its value, is attested by a circulation
in France of fifteen thousand copies. We, therefore, hold it for the present to
be
Our personal knowledge of a writer
is not always necessary to enable us to judge of his work. Thus, for example, it
is perfectly needless that we should be acquainted with either the morals or the
creed of a mathematician in order to appreciate his treatises on algebra and geometry.
Such, however, is not the case as regards a philosopher, or even an historian. Here
it is evident that the writer’s doctrines must influence his decisions. Even unconsciously
the author will magnify the men and the systems which are in agreement with himself,
while he will very heartily despise the persons who differ from him. To know, then,
whether M. Renan is in danger either of abasing or exalting Jesus Christ, it is
necessary that we should become acquainted with his philosophical or religious principles.
We shall not seek our information, either in the author’s life or in his
And, first, does M. Renan believe in God, or not? If he does, what is his God—spirit or matter? a person or a thing? To use familiar terms, is M. Renan a Deist or a Pantheist? He is neither.
What, then, is his God? He tells us elsewhere that the name of his God is, “Our Father, the Abyss.” This truly happy term is in itself an exposition of doctrine concerning the Deity; it is a declaration that he who adopts the name sees no more clearly into the idea of a God than one can see into an abyss. M. Renan does not affirm that there is no God, but simply that he does not know him. Is it possible to believe in a God of whom we have no distinct notion? No. The theory of “Our Father, the Abyss,” will be powerless in our life: this is all we can say for it.
In the next place, what is M. Renan’s idea of man? A single sentence from his book will tell us. At page 2 he says: “Man, as soon as he rose above the animal, became religious.” If there was a time when man rose above the animal, there must have been a previous stage in which he was not distinct from it, and at this stage man was simply the first of the animals. Whether he was a monkey or an elephant we do not know, but at least he was a member of the family. Whether we like it or not, we are no more than perfected beasts.
Now, between this Father-Abyss and this man the child of the brute, what religious relationship has been established? It could not have been very clear, since it emanated from a God of darkness; nor very close, since it applied to the descendants of humanized brutes. In fact, we shall see, that in spite of all the clearness and the strength which this principle has acquired during the progress of ages, it is still, according to M. Renan, very obscure and very weak.
This supposed relation between man
and God varies strangely according as you consult various philosophers and theologians.
Some resolve it into love, others into obedience; some demand from us an entire
consecration, others speak of ten commandments, and others again only of two. According
to Christians, man must be just, pure, faithful; he must honor God, love his brethren,
and have respect for their lives, their goods, and their homes. Were we to admit
duties so numerous and so imperative, it would be but too easy to convict M. Renan’s
morality of great incompleteness; we do not, therefore, propose to examine it on
all these points. We shall test it only on one point—a point very simple, very elementary,
and absolutely indisputable. This one unassailable point is veracity. Ought man
to be sincere and truthful, or is he at liberty to weaken the rich wine of truth
by mixing it, more or less, with the water of falsehood? Let us listen to M. Renan
in a series of confessions which cannot but be truly sincere,
M. Renan, with the air of a legislating moralist, says, “To enable it to bear its burden, humanity has need of the belief that it. does not receive its full reward in this life. The greatest service we can render it is frequently to repeat that it does not live by bread alone.” (P. 184.)
Humanity, then, believes in another life. But why? Is it because this belief is true? No; but it is in order that humanity might be enabled to bear its burden. In order, then, to do it service and to encourage it, it would be desirable, not to teach, but to proclaim to it, and “frequently to repeat, that it does not live by bread alone.”
This language is clever, and the thought is well concealed:
but let us tear away the vail and then we shall read as follows: Without faith in
the future, man would not patiently bear his burden; for prudential reasons, therefore,
Our readers, then, need not be surprised if M. Renan, adversary of Jesus as he is, should nevertheless think it wise to preserve a certain faith in a future world, for he teaches us (p. 237) that there are such things as “innocent deceptions.” Besides, he distinctly says, (p. 316,) that “in order to obtain from humanity the less, you must claim from it the greater.” He is so firm a believer in the efficacy, and, if we may say so, in the lawfulness of falsehood, that he adds, “the immense moral progress due to the Gospel comes from its exaggerations.”
Laying aside the Gospel for the present, let us bear
in mind the above profession of faith—an immense moral progress is to be obtained
by means of exaggerations. If, therefore, M.
The above quotations are not the only ones of the kind to be found in his work. Here, for instance, is another: “It is because of its double meaning that his thought [that of Jesus] has become fruitful.” (P. 282.) When, therefore, you are anxious to succeed in morals, use duplicity; M. Renan will insure you success. But possibly we may have wrongly interpreted this “thought” with the “double meaning;” perhaps it is meant that the thought was true in both its aspects. No, for the author adds, “his chimera has not shared the fate of so many besides; . . . it concealed a germ of life, which, introduced into the bosom of humanity, (thanks to its fabulous surroundings,) has borne there some everlasting fruits.” (P. 282.)
This double-faced thought, then, was a chimera, and this chimera, thanks to its fabulous surroundings, has borne some everlasting fruits!
Moralists, philosophers, legislators, do you
It is not meant, indeed, that all falsehoods are equally efficacious. No; one must know how to choose between them; and the best are those which have their foundation in the prejudices of the age or the nation in which we live. With this caution it is possible to transform a folly into a great truth! Thus, listen: “Jesus, by accepting the Utopias of his time and of his race, could, thanks to some fertile misconceptions, transform them into exalted truths.” (P. 284.)
We do not
complain that M. Renan should profess to believe that Jesus relied on the Utopias
of his age, and that he had recourse to
We have no wish unduly to prolong the study of his principles in this matter of veracity; nor are we anxious to comment upon them, since our readers may do it for themselves: we, therefore, in concluding on this point, confine ourselves to the quotation of a final passage. Our own thoughts upon it will be indicated by simply italicising.
“In the East,” says our author, “there are a thousand evasions and subterfuges between good faith and imposture. . . . Real truth is of very little value to the Easterns: they look at every thing through the media of their ideas, their interests, and their passions.
“History would be impossible if one did not openly
admit that sincerity has many degrees.
It will thus be seen that, in our author’s estimation, the success which is achieved justifies the means used. Whosoever accomplishes great things by means of falsehood may claim the indulgence of those who have only done little things by means of truth.
Well,
M. Renan—No! At the risk of being
We are not concerned with ourselves, however, but with M. Renan and the principles he extols. From all that has preceded we think ourselves warranted in concluding that, according to our author, sincerity and truthfulness are elastic, that we may have more or less of them, and that in the event of success no one has the right to be severe toward the impostor who brings his falsehood to a successful issue.
Who now needs be surprised that M. Renan should ascribe to Jesus the doctrines
he himself judges to be good? He is anxious to justify those who have learned in
this way to secure their triumphs: to ask for more would be too severe. Besides,
Jesus lived in the East. M. Renan does not require of him on behalf of truth a platonic
love which he, the author, does not himself profess. Hence we
II.
It must be understood
that Jesus, whether we pronounce him to be a God or an impostor, could not fail
to be convinced of his own great superiority over his contemporaries. Thus M. Renan
supposes that he treated them with a “transcendent scorn,” and that he indulged
in “subtle railing” at them. For example, when the disciples, carried away by a
spirit of revenge, ask their Master to punish those who refuse them hospitality,
by calling down upon them fire from heaven, Jesus, grieved at heart, says to them,
“Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of.” M. Renan sees in this holy
Here is a noble superiority
of Jesus over Molière! Molière merely grazes the skin, but Jesus kills! Such is
the admiration accorded
If the Jesus invented by M. Renan was a mocker and a railer, one need not be surprised at the discovery that he was vain: wit and vanity are so nearly allied. Thus, according to Renan, he willingly allowed men to give him a qualification which did not belong to him; he even acted a part! His historian informs us that when the title of Messiah, or of Son of David, was given to him, he accepted it with pleasure. (Pp. 238, 132.) If a miracle-monger sought to make capital for himself out of the popular credulity, “Jesus saw in this a homage paid to his own renown, and was not, therefore, too severe.” (P. 295.) One day his friends went even so far as to get up the farce of a resurrection, and Jesus consented to play his part in it. (P. 363.)
In order,
however, that this assumed character
Better still, with somewhat
of irony, M. Renan makes us feel that if we resolve on being more sincere than Jesus
we shall miss the end which he attained. “Let us continue,” says he, with the subtlety
he ascribes to another, “let us continue to admire the morality of the Gospel; let
us suppress from our religious instructions the delusion which was the soul of it;
but let us not suppose that the world is to be moved by the simple ideas of individual
happiness or morality. The idea of Jesus must be taken as
But may not M. Renan, who approves the use
of these flexible laws of truth, and ascribes it to Jesus, have used them himself?
May he not have done in his book what Jesus is said to have practiced in his work?
May he not himself also have employed this irony, this subtlety, this railing, and
this transcendent scorn? We are all the more authorized to believe so, not only
because in principle he approves of this supple truth, but also because he avows
his determination to make use of it. In his Preface, speaking of the historical
documents which may prove not to be in perfect agreement with each other, M. Renan
tells us that “they must be gently enticed, so as to bring them together.”
By this method
we undertake to make oui (yes) mean non (no). Do our readers doubt it? Listen. First
of all, it is a simple fact that oui and non are nearly related:
oui is a monosyllable,
non is a monosyllable; oui has three letters, non has also three letters:
oui contains
an o, non also contains an o. Do not be surprised that oui should have a
u, and
non an n. Do you not see that u is only n upside down? If there are two
n’s in non
(no) it is simply the same letter doubled; and if there is an i in
oui (yes,) the
Greeks will tell you that it must be an iota subscribed. You see then, by “gently
enticing” it, no (non) means yes (oui.)
III.
We all know the story of
that poor widow who, lacking the very necessaries of life, nevertheless
Again, we all know the parable of the rich man
who, clothed in purple, and living sumptuously every day, leaves Lazarus at his
gate to die of sickness and hunger. We have all felt that the lesson to be learned
is in the contrast between selfish opulence and resigned poverty. Our able critic
has seen neither this selfishness nor this resignation: by “gently enticing” the
text he makes it portray, not a bad rich man, but simply a rich man without the
badness. In order to a complete analysis too many details are necessary.
Our author has the art of sheltering himself behind the
letter: his real purpose is discovered
only in the spirit of his book. Thus, in his exposition of this parable, he says,
“He [the rich man] is in hell because he is rich; because he does not give his property
to the poor; because he dines well, while others at his gate dine poorly.” And,
indeed, what great harm is there in dining well, while others starve? Ah! if we
were poor we might understand it better. Specially so, if the hard contrast between
such luxury and misery, good living and sores, lasted our whole life-time, and if,
every day, we were refused the crumbs given in preference to the dogs!
The design of this is, that Jesus may be suspected of loving the poor better than the rich, and therefore suspected of communism by readers who are more or less wealthy.
The Gospels acquaint us with
two facts concerning John the Baptist which, if made to be contemporaneous, would
be contradictory, but which, if placed under their several dates, harmonize with
each other. At the commencement of his ministry the Precursor places himself below
Jesus; but toward the close of his life John sends two of his disciples with the
question, “Art thou he that should come?” What does M. Renan? He treats them as
contemporaneous, and charges the first statement
Elsewhere M. Renan is anxious to eliminate from the Gospel the central idea on which the Christian doctrine rests; namely, redemption. For this purpose he examines the texts which bear upon the Lord’s Supper, the emblem of his expiatory death. Our author, in the first place, gratuitously supposes that “Jesus was fond of the opportunity afforded at meal-times for taking the lead in light and pleasant conversation. Sharing the same loaf in common was considered as a sort of fellowship. In giving expression to his thought Jesus said to his disciples, I am your food; that is, my flesh is your bread, my blood is your wine. . . . Then he would further say, This is my body; this is my blood.” (Pp. 303, 304.)
Is not this an admirable
use of texts? First, ordinary meals are supposed; then the bread which is common
to all becomes the type of communion; then, as the third supposition,
A passage is here omitted in which Renan
is shown to make insinuations against the character of our Lord so offensive and revolting that they cannot be reproduced in
English without shocking the feelings of our readers beyond endurance. Well may
M. Roussel say: “Let us draw the vail before these horrible insinuations, whose
very timidity discloses a dread of wounding the public sentiment, and is a better
proof of the hero’s holiness than of the historian’s moderation.”
*****
When there can be no question as to
the nature of the love felt for Jesus—as, for instance, when it is the love of the
disciples in general, and not that of a few women in particular—the means are still
found of falsifying the truth by a clever trick. It is well known that Jesus offered
salvation to the repenting sinner. M. Renan alters this, and says, “This charming
doctor forgave every one who loved him.” (P. 219.) After having thus parodied a
doctrine which leads through repentance to holiness, into a feeling which much resembles
egotism, M. Renan reduces the model disciples of Jesus to very nearly the standard
of children. “Jesus,” he says, “almost confounds the idea of the disciple with that
of the child. . . . He who is humble as this little one, is greatest in the kingdom
of heaven.” (P. 192.) According
After all these
insinuations, Jesus is represented as “making progress in his fanaticism.” We, on
the contrary, see M. Renan progressing in his recklessness. Gathering strength from
the past achievements of his pen, he advances more boldly in his accusations, and
he does not hesitate to say, “By detaching man from the earth, his life was shattered.
The Christian henceforth is to receive praise for being a bad son and a bad citizen,
provided it be for Christ’s sake that he resists his parents and opposes his country.”
(P. 314.) Surely if a mere man, especially if a wicked man, were to demand obedience
to his commands to the neglect of the righteous laws of a father or of a monarch,
we should refuse it. Does M. Renan forget that Jesus claims to be the only Son of
a God who cannot command that which is wrong? or does he maintain that a son or
a subject must,
M. Renan rejects no means of assault upon the work
of Jesus. Anxious to set aside the prediction of the ruin of Jerusalem, he is content
to say that Jesus guessed it, forgetting that in his Introduction (p. xvii) he had
declared the Gospel of Luke to be posterior to the siege of that city, for the sole
reason that the details of the catastrophe are too minute. Thus, at one time the
prophecy is correct, but then it is only a guess; while
At page 343 we find another contradiction. Jesus seeks misunderstandings, and designedly prolongs them; then, in a note, the author questions the authenticity of the passage. If the passage be not authentic, this search after misunderstandings never took place, and the wiser course in this state of doubtfulness would have been to set aside both the note and the explanation. The able critic, on the contrary, extracts from the whole two accusations: he quotes the passage from the sacred text in order to accuse Jesus of a want of straightforwardness; then he questions the authenticity of the quotation in order to discredit the book from which it is made. Thus a word which may not have been spoken becomes a two-edged sword, striking in turn both Jesus and the Gospels!
We proceed to another piece of skill. Jesus, describing
those who in his day had the courage to brave persecution by declaring themselves
his disciples, and the strength to conquer
M. Renan, who is on the alert to catch every expression that may bear a double meaning, pauses at this one. In this moral violence done to one’s self he sees a physical violence done to an adversary; and the following are the terms in which he falsifies the meaning of Jesus: “The kingdom of God cannot be conquered without violence; it is by means of crises and upheavings that it must be established.” (P. 237.)
Truly; but with this difference, that Jesus speaks of a moral violence done by Christians to themselves, while what is substituted for this is a brutal violence done by the same Christians to their adversaries. It is not one and the same thing to slay one's passions and to kill one's brother!
After having dethroned Jesus, our author is busy with overturning his friends, and, in particular, the Apostle whom Jesus loved. M. Renan thinks that St. John was jealous of Peter, and hated Judas. (P. 381, etc.)
On the other hand, he almost justifies the judges who condemned the Saviour;
“for,” says he, “the proceedings which the priests resolved to take against Jesus
were quite conformable to the established law,” (p. 393,) “and from the Jewish point
of view Jesus was certainly a blasphemer.” (P. 397.) Elsewhere M. Renan excuses
Pilate, who, says he, “could hardly help doing what he did.” (P. 410.) Finally,
O gentleness of criticism! we find pity, even almost to tears, for Judas! He is
called “poor Judas!” He is found guilty only of “having had his head turned by the
foolish coveting of a few pieces of silver,” and the attempt is made to absolve
him on the ground of his repentance: “Judas,” we are told, “does not seem quite
to have lost all moral sense, since . . . he repented.” M.
It must be borne in
mind that our aim has not been to analyze M. Renan’s book, but simply to judge of
what amount of confidence we are warranted to repose in him as our guide in the
study of the life of Jesus. At first sight we recognize the author as hostile to
his hero, weakening the authority of the Gospels, denying a priori Christ’s miracles,
falsifying texts in order to tarnish his character, praising his adversaries, and
at the same time paying him equivocal compliments of little moment, but
Every one may now judge for himself whether this guide suits him or not. For ourselves, what we have seen of him is enough, and we prefer to walk alone rather than to give our hand to him who wishes to lead us astray.
IN beginning the study of the life of Jesus we asked ourselves if we should take M. Renan for our guide: we have seen what amount of confidence his work is entitled to receive.
Whom, then, shall we
follow, if we forsake so learned a guide? No one. We will go at once to the source,
to the Gospels themselves, for it is there that all commentators are finally constrained
to return.’ We will consult the books written by the immediate disciples of the
Lord; first, to ascertain what were their Master’s moral principles, and how he
practiced them; and then we will proceed with the
What, then, are the moral principles
of Jesus Christ? And first, what are his principles on the subject of veracity?
Is man, in this matter, entitled to the use of different weights and measures, according
as he. lives in the East or in the West? Is he at liberty to regulate himself by
the rule of honesty adopted by his race and the age in which he lives? Does Jesus
know any thing of the theory of Oriental sincerity? Does he admit that the end justifies
the means? Will he say, with M. Renan, “There exists no broad foundation which is
not laid in legends. The only guilty party is the humanity which desires to be deceived?”
Will he allow the concealments and the mental reservations which are sanctioned
by that too notorious society which bears too beautiful a name? The Jesuits.
But did Jesus obey this precept
of perfect integrity? Yes; always and every-where. Follow him from Jerusalem to
Gethsemane, and from Gethsemane to the Sanhedrim, you will find him perfectly calm
and truthful. Whether it be necessary to assert his divine mission or to brave a
danger, he does both with the same simplicity. “Who is the Son of God, that I might
believe on him?” asks the man born blind. “It is he that talketh with thee,” answers
Jesus. The soldiers search for him in the garden, that they may take him before
the tribunal: he comes to meet them, and says, “I am he.” “Art thou the Son of God?”
ask the priests who seek to crucify him. “You
What conclusion are we to draw from this? Not that
Jesus was the Son of God, but that he believed himself to be so. Whatever else may
be questioned, his sincerity must not be doubted: he said often, and in many ways,
I am the Son of God. Let it be confessed that he believed he spoke the truth. Jesus,
then,
Already we may say, Jesus made it a rule to be absolutely
truthful; Jesus was faithful to his precept, as M. Renan is to his: and judging
them both on this common basis, we may rightfully
We are not, however, anxious to conclude. We wish, before we do so, to exhibit the moral doctrines of Jesus on some important points, and then to compare his life with the principles he himself laid down. We shall then be better able to judge whether the word of Christ deserves our belief or not.
Among the rules of conduct taught by Jesus upon
earth, we seek those which are peculiarly his own. We say nothing, therefore, about
honesty in our social relationships, or purity of morals, or almsgiving, or hospitality.
These principles, if not practiced, at least were known before Jesus came into the
world. That which we shall point out as an essentially Christian virtue is humility.
Surely there is no one else who claims to be the inventor of this! Neither in ancient
nor in modern times has humility been held to be worthy of much attention, much
less worthy of praise. In our natural pride, or,
This is the first moral principle of Jesus. Did he practice it? In proof
that he did, although from the Christian point of view it would be allowable, yet
we will not instance his obscure birth, the manger at Bethlehem, the workshop at
Nazareth, his death on the cross. No: we might be told in reply that Jesus, a mere
man, had no choice either with respect to his cradle or his grave. The proof we
give we find in the positions he himself chose. He sits at table with the poorest
and the most despised of the people; he washes his disciples’ feet; he
We insist no longer
upon this point, for we do not suppose that any one will refuse to Jesus the glory
of a virtue so little coveted! We are, therefore, content to leave this part of
the subject by affirming, that he who first established humility in principle admirably
illustrated it in practice. We would, nevertheless, say one thing more. Is not this
humility, which no one covets for himself, yet desired in children and servants?
Who would not be glad if his neighbors, his friends, his fellow-citizens, were humble
The last proof of humility afforded by the life of Jesus,
namely, his voluntary death, leads us to the second moral principle which distinguishes
his teaching—devotedness. He demands of his disciples that they should forsake
What was the conduct of Jesus
in this respect? Did he act consistently? We do not now say that he gave his life
that our sins might be blotted out, and that he left heaven to come and teach us;
no, we might be told that we must first prove that he really did come from heaven.
No one, though looking upon Jesus as no more than a superior man, will deny his
devotedness. If we may credit M. Renan, Jesus was a transcendent genius, and therefore
able to win his way to the highest ranks of society, as so many others have done.
On the contrary, he devoted himself entirely to the moral education of the people.
In order to
We now point out two other moral principles, which, though of less frequent application, are yet not the less striking. Jesus, in his sermon on the mount, had taught the forgiveness of injuries; and when Simon Peter asked him, “Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? until seven times?” the reply Jesus gave him was, “I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven.” He also said, “Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.”
Such is the precept. Did Jesus follow it? Yes;
and we venture to add that he went beyond the letter of the precept, and admirably
fulfilled it in its spirit. A servant struck him on one cheek: did he turn the other?
He did better: without retaliation or complaint, he instructed
On another occasion, Jesus and his Apostles
came to a certain village, where they were refused admission by the inhabitants.
The Apostles, angry at this insult, asked Jesus to call down fire from heaven upon
the guilty place. With his characteristic gentleness the Master replied, “Ye know
not what manner of
Lastly, Jesus proclaimed a principle which
is as universally approved as it is rarely practiced; that, namely, of love for
our enemies—“Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, and pray for them which
persecute you.” The precept is explicit. Did Jesus follow it? We shall judge for
ourselves. At Gethsemane he rebukes his disciple who is anxious to avenge him. “Put
up again,” says he, “thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword
shall perish by the sword.” At the gate of Jerusalem, he weeps over the fickle people
who would not listen to them: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the Prophets,
and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children
together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!”
Though at liberty to defend himself, Jesus remains silent before his
An arrest, however, is not an execution; mockings do not torture like bearing
the cross; this does not lacerate like the nails. What will Jesus do when the soldiers,
the priests, and the mob unite to abuse him, to laugh him to scorn, to pierce his
hands, and to make him drink the cup of bitterness? What will he reply to the taunt
of the infatuated crowd, the thieves, and the priests: “If thou be the son of God,
come down from the cross. He saved others; himself he cannot save. He trusted in
God; let him deliver him now, if he will have him?” Alas! we confess that had we
been in his place we should have made a last great effort to come down; and, in
our
Such is the saint
whom a critic thinks he honors by transforming into his own image! such is the hero
to whom are attributed a “transcendent scorn” and “subtle raillery,”
How deeply we feel that neither
our own pen, nor that of any uninspired man, can ever worthily reproduce the character
of Jesus Christ. After having so many times vainly
The Evangelists alone have made us conceive an ideal which
no man, whether in his life or by his pen, has ever reproduced; and if, as we may
well suppose, their picture is as
It would be interesting
to compare the style of the Evangelists with that of M. Renan. In the former we
find simplicity and the complete absence of pretense. We have no epithets, no oratorical
displays. We forget the writers. It is their hero we have before us, and, what is
remarkable, the historian does not eulogize him, but allows us to form our own estimate
from the facts themselves. If we except one or two words of St. John’s, the four
Evangelists have not written a line which reveals any purpose besides that of writing
a history. There is no attempt to make the readers proselytes to a cause or a doctrine.
In M. Renan’s work all this is reversed. One perceives that the principal thing
kept in view is the literary character of the book. The style takes precedence of
the facts; elegance is the author’s highest ambition. He seems to have imposed
upon himself the rule not to write like any other man. All the turns of phrase,
all the expressions, aim at the picturesque and the novel. Wit, cleverness, mental
reservation, the art of forcing a secret conclusion upon the conclusion which is
expressed, and of discrediting the cause which in appearance is defended—such is
M. Renan’s task. But clever persons sometimes do a work which disappoints them.
“The Life of Jesus” has cost its author more moral discredit than all his previous
works have obtained for him of literary renown. After eighteen centuries the Gospel
is being diffused still; after three months M. Renan’s book has materially lost
in public opinion. M. Scherer, who on the appearance of the work predicted on its
behalf a success so great that it would be felt even by those who never heard of it, three months
later is obliged to recognize that it has attracted only the curious, and summarizes
the well-founded objections made to it thus: 1. M. Renan has judged a moral work
in the spirit of a mere artist. 2. He has virtually denied the integrity and the
purity of Jesus Christ. 3. He has falsified his character by making of an admirable
teacher an unnatural colossus.—Vide Le Temps, September 29, 1863.
Jesus resembles no other man; he speaks
and acts as none of our kind ever spoke and acted. At first he surprises us, but
as we contemplate him, our surprise changes into admiration. The more we examine,
the more we discover in his words profound thoughts and lofty sentiments which,
till then, had never entered our minds or our hearts. In the midst of his superior
world and his superhuman atmosphere, Jesus lives and breathes as in his own element.
There he moves freely, he speaks without effort; all is familiar to him—he is at
home. Heaven is his country, holiness is his nature, eternity is his life. He does
not demonstrate, as we mere men are obliged to do, who have no right to be believed
on our simple assertions; he speaks like a God, whose word
If now we pass from the words to the
actions of Jesus, we are filled with the same admiration. It has been asserted that
Jesus patronizes the poor and threatens the rich: it would be more truthful to say,
that he takes no account of either poverty or riches; gold and stubble are of equal
value to him. It is the spiritual condition of those who approach him which claims
his attention. What he demands is not lofty thoughts or noble sentiments, but a
moral condition which is possible to all. He asks for a heart which, though broken
and contrite, yet expects every thing at his hands-healing grace, salvation, and
eternal life. When Jesus performs miracles they do not astonish him: he is engaged
in his own proper work, We may, indeed, reject them without examination; but when
we honestly study them, we find it to be quite natural that the Son of God should
work such miracles; specially since these miracles have nothing in common with the
prodigies of a thaumaturgus, whose aim is to fascinate the eye and
We know
that all we have said reposes on the authenticity of the Gospels and on the historic
fidelity of their narratives. We also know that M. Renan, who admits in general
this authenticity and this fidelity, nevertheless contradicts them in their details.
We would observe that the authenticity of the Gospels is not at the mercy of any
critic, whatever may be his ability. Christianity proves the purity
Thus,
whatever may be affirmed or denied, actual facts cannot be overturned. The work
of Christianity is before us, and the grandeur
It must be understood that we have not pretended, in this short sketch, to trace the entire life of Jesus Christ. To know that life we must read and study the New Testament. Our aim has been to show that the Jesus of the Gospels is not that of M. Renan. His Jesus is a compound of cunning and fanaticism; an imaginary being created for the amusement of novel-readers. The historic Jesus is quite another being; pre-eminently sincere, always calm, profound in his teaching, holy in his conduct, devoted both in life and death, and so much above the greatest men of every age, that we may well believe him when he says, and says again, “I am the Son of God.”
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