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ON THE
DEITY OF JESUS OF NAZARETH.
AN ENQUIRY
INTO THE NATURE OF JESUS
BY AN EXAMINATION OF THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS.
BY
THE WIFE OF A BENEFICED CLERGYMAN.
EDITED AND PREFACED BY
REV. CHARLES VOrSEY, R.A.
PUBLISHED
BY THOMAS
SCOTT,
NO. 11 THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD, UPPER NORWOOD,
LONDON, S.E.
1873.
�LO N DO N :
PRINTED BY C.
W. REYNELL, LITTLE PULTENEY
HAYMARKET,
W.
STREET,
�EDITOR’S PREFACE.
HE following pages were put into my hands
—
beneficed clergyman.
T by a ladyto the wife of a her husband, she has
Not wishing
compromise
withheld hei' name from publication, and deserves
all honour for the concession. But the fact led me
to write a few words as a Preface, in which I
would remind the Bishops and dignitaries of our
Church that this is no uncommon case. Ortho
doxy is riddled through and through with heresy.
Every family has its heretic. And although but
few clergymen or their wives could be found to
write such an Essay as the following with equally
felicitous logic and simplicity, there are many
quite capable of relishing arguments so lucidly
stated and so ably drawn. If most of Mr Scott’s
regular readers are familiar with the line of argu
ment, there are many outside the circle whom this
pamphlet may reach to whom it will be new,
and whom it may powerfully affect.
The position which the person of Jesus occu
pies in modern Christendom is the very citadel
of Christianity, and on the settlement of his
claims will turn the future of the Churches.
We, who have been all our lives sceptics, are
growing weary of the very name ; but we must
not forget that we have a great duty to perform
towards those who are yet orthodox, or are
clinging, like some Unitarians, to the skirts of a
fading system.
�iv
Editor's Preface.
When I first knew this lady, she had given up
all points of disputed orthodoxy except this one
of the nature of Jesus, whom she still regarded
as perfect and divine. Careful and independent
study of the whole question, however, led her at
length to see the facts clearly—to own them to
herself in spite of strong predilections the other
way—and to write them down here for the
benefit of others.
In the course of this change I was appealed to
for an authoritative opinion. I absolutely refused
to give one. I refused to be made the means of
shovelling second-hand opinions into any one’s
mind. All I said was— “ If you believe Christ to
be God, stick to it: you are not obliged to
believe as I do. Only make up your mind for
yourself.” This was no case of converting or
proselytising. It was one of independent growth
and natural conviction.
There are hundreds of clergymen, and clergy
men’s wives too, who are fast treading the same
road, if they have not yet reached the same goal.
The alarmists are quite right. Christianity is in
terrible danger. We wish we could add—in ex
tremis ; but when the break up of a faith has
begun with its teachers, with those most in
terested in its being maintained, the days of that
faith are numbered.
Such little works as this Essay, if well placed
and well digested, will do more to open people’s
eyes than many a more pretentious and elaborate
treatise.
CHARLES VOYSEY.
Camden House, Dulwich, S.E., March, 1873.
�ON THE
DEITY OF JESUS OF NAZARETH.
----- *----64
think ye of Christ, whose son is
he ? ” Human child of human parents, or
divine Son of the Almighty God ? When we con
sider his purity, his faith in the Father, his forgiving
patience, his devoted work among the offscourings of
society, his brotherly love to sinners and outcasts—
when our minds dwell on these alone, we all feel the
marvellous fascination which has drawn millions to
the feet of this “ son of man,” and the needle of our
faith begins to tremble towards the Christian pole.
If we would keep unsullied the purity of our faith in
God alone, we are obliged to turn our eyes some
times—however unwillingly—towards the other side
of the picture and to mark the human weaknesses
which remind us that he is but one of our race. His
harshness to his mother, his bitterness towards some
of his opponents, the marked failure of one or two of
his rare prophecies, the palpable limitation of his
knowledge—little enough, indeed, when all are told,
—are more than enough to show us that, however
great as man, he is not the A11-righteous, the Allseeing, the All-knowing, God.
No one, however, whom Christian exaggeration has
not goaded into unfair detraction, or who is not
blinded by theological hostility, can fail to revere
portions of the character sketched out in the three
synoptic gospels. I shall not dwell here on the Christ
of the fourth Evangelist: we can scarcely trace in
that figure the lineaments of the Jesus of Nazareth
whom we have learnt to love.
VV
�6
On the Deity of
I propose, in this essay, to examine the claims of
Jesus to be more than the man he appeared to be
during his life-time : claims—be it noted—which are
put forward on his behalf by others rather than by
himself. His own assertions of his divinity are to be
found only in the unreliable fourth gospel, and in it
they are destroyed by the sentence there put into his
mouth with strange inconsistency : “ If I bear witness
of myself, my witness is not true.”
It is evident that by his contemporaries Jesus was
not regarded as God incarnate. The people in general
appear to have looked upon him as a great prophet,
and to have often debated among themselves whether
he were their expected Messiah or not. The band of
men who accepted him as their teacher were as far
from worshipping him as God as were their fellowcountrymen : their prompt desertion of him when
attacked by his enemies, their complete hopelessness
when they saw him overcome and put to death, are
sufficient proofs that though they regarded him—to
quote their own words—as “ a prophet mighty in
word and deed,” they never guessed that the teacher
they followed, and the friend they lived with in the inti
macy of social life, was Almighty God Himself. As
has been well pointed out, if they believed their Master
to be God, surely when they were attacked they would
have fled to him for protection, instead of endeavour
ing to save themselves by deserting him : we may
add that this would have been their natural instinct,
since they could never have imagined beforehand that
the Creator Himself could really be taken captive by
His creatures and suffer death at their hands. The
third class of his contemporaries, the learned Pha
risees and Scribes, were as far from regarding him as
divine as were the people or his disciples. They seem
to have viewed the new teacher somewhat con
temptuously at first, as one who unwisely persisted in
expounding the highest doctrines to the many, instead
�Jesus of Nazareth.
7
of—a second Hillel—adding to the stores of their own
learned circle. As his influence spread and appeared
to be undermining their own,—still more, when he
placed himself in direct opposition, warning the
people against them,—they were roused to a course of
active hostility, and at length determined to save
themselves by destroying him. But all through their
passive contempt and direct antagonism, there, is
never a trace of their dreaming him to be anything
more than a religious enthusiast who finally became
dangerous : we never for a moment see them assuming
the manifestly absurd position, of men knowingly
measuring their strength against God, and endea
vouring to silence and destroy their Maker. So much
for the opinions of those who had the best oppor
tunities of observing his ordinary life. A “ good man,
a “deceiver,” a “mighty prophet,” such are the
recorded opinions of his contemporaries: not one is
found to step forward and proclaim him to be
Jehovah, the God of Israel.
One of the most trusted strongholds of Christians,
in defending their Lord’s Divinity, is the evidence of
prophecy. They gather’ from the sacred books of
the Jewish nation the predictions of the longed-for
Messiah, and claim them as prophecies fulfilled in
Jesus of Nazareth. But there is one stubborn fact
which destroys the force of this argument: the Jews,
to whom these writings belong, and who from tradi
tion and national peculiarities, may reasonably be
supposed to be the best exponents of their own
prophets, emphatically deny that these prophecies are
fulfilled in Jesus at all. Indeed, one main reason for
their rejection of Jesus is precisely this, that he does
not resemble in any way the predicted Messiah. There
is no doubt that the Jewish nation were eagerly
looking for their Deliverer when Jesus was born;
these very longings produced several pseudo-Messiahs,
who each gained in turn a considerable following,
�8
On the Deity of
because each bore some resemblance to the expected
Prince. Much of the popular rage which swept
Jesus to bis death was the re-action of disappoint
ment after the hopes raised by the position of autho
rity he assumed. The sudden burst of anger against
one so benevolent and inoffensive can only be ex
plained by the intense hopes excited by his regal
entry into Jerusalem, and the utter destruction of
those hopes by his failing to ascend the throne of
David. Proclaimed as David’s son, he came riding
on an ass as king of Zion, and allowed himself to be
welcomed as the king of Israel : there his short
fulfilling of the prophecies ended, and the people,
furious at his failing them, rose and clamoured for his
death. Because he did not fulfil the ancient Jewish
oracles, he died: he was too noble for the role laid
down in them for the Messiah, his ideal was far other
than that of a conqueror, with “ garments rolled in
blood.” But even if, against all evidence, Jesus was
one with the Messiah of the prophets, this would
destroy, instead of implying, his Divine claims. For
the Jews were pure monotheists; their Messiah was
a prince of David’s line, the favoured servant, the
anointed of Jehovah, the king who should rule in
His name : a Jew would shrink with horror from the
blasphemy of seating Messiah on Jehovah’s throne,
remembering how their prophets had taught them
that their God “ would not give His honour to
another.” So that, as to prophecy, the case stands
thus : If Jesus be the Messiah prophesied of in the
old Jewish books, then he is not God: if he be not
the Messiah, Jewish prophecy is silent as regards
him altogether, and an appeal to prophecy is abso
lutely useless.
After the evidence of prophecy Christians generally
rely on that furnished by miracles. It is remarkable
that Jesus himself laid but little stress on his mira
cles; in fact, he refused to appeal to them as credentials
�Jesus of Nazareth.
9
of his authority, and either could not or would not
work them when met with determined unbelief. We
must notice also that the people, while “ glorifying
God, who had given such power unto men,” were not
inclined to admit his miracles as proofs of his right to
claim absolute obedience: his miracles did not even
invest him with such sacredness as to protect him
from arrest and death. Herod, on his trial, was
simply anxious to see him work a miracle, as a matter
of curiosity. This stolid indifference to marvels as
attestations of authority, is natural enough, when we
remember that Jewish history was crowded with
miracles, wrought for and against the favoured people,
and also that they had been specially warned against
being misled by signs and wonders. Without entering
into the question whether miracles are possible, let us,
for argument’s sake, take them for granted, and see
what they are worth as proofs of Divinity. If Jesus
fed a multitude with a few loaves, so did Elisha:
if he raised the dead, so did Elijah and Elisha; if
he healed lepers, so did Moses and Elisha; if he
opened the eyes of the blind, Elisha smote a whole
army with blindness and afterward restored their
sight: if he cast out devils, his contemporaries, by
his own testimony, did the same. If miracles prove
Deity, what miracle of Jesus can stand comparison
with the divided Red Sea of Moses, the stoppage of
the earth’s motion by Joshua, the check of the rushing
waters of the Jordan by Elijah’s cloak ? If we are
told that these men worked by conferred power and
Jesus by inherent, we can only answer that this is a
gratuitous assumption and begs the whole question.
The Bible records the miracles in equivalent terms :
no difference is drawn between the manner of working
of Elisha or Jesus ; of each it is sometimes said they
prayed; of each it is sometimes said they spake.
Miracles indeed must not be relied on as proofs of
divinity, unless believers in them are prepared to pay
�IO
On the Deity of
divine honours not to Jesus only, but also to a crowd
of others, and to build a Christian Pantheon to the
new found gods.
So far we. have only seen the insufficiency of the
usual Christian arguments to establish a doctrine so
stupendous and so prima facie improbable, as the in
carnation of the Divine Being: this kind of negative
testimony, this insufficient evidence, is not however
the principal reason which compels Theists to protest
against the central dogma of Christianity. The
stronger proofs of the simple manhood of Jesus re
main, and we now proceed to positive evidence of his
not being God. I propose to draw attention to the
traces of human infirmity in his noble character, to
his absolute mistakes in prophecy, and to his evidently
limited knowledge. In accepting as substantially true
the account of Jesus given by the evangelists, we are
taking his character as it appeared to his devoted
followers. We have not to do with slight blemishes,
inserted by envious detractors of his greatness ; the
history of Jesus was written when his disciples wor
shipped him as God, and his manhood, in their eyes,
reached ideal perfection. We are then forced to
believe that, in the Gospels, the life of Jesus is given
at its highest, and that he was, at least, not more
spotless than he appears in these records of his friends.
But here again, in order not to do a gross injustice,
we must put aside the fourth Gospel: to study his
character “ according to S. John ” would need a
separate essay, so different is it from that drawn by
the three ; and by all rules of history we should judge
him by the earlier records, more especially as they
corroborate each other in the main.
The first thing which jars upon an attentive reader
of the Gospels is the want of affection and respect
shown by Jesus to his mother. When only a child
of twelve he lets his parents leave Jerusalem to return
home, while he repairs alone to the temple. The
�Jesus of Nazareth.
11
fascination of the ancient city and the gorgeous temple
services was doubtless almost overpowering to a
thoughtful Jewish boy, more especially on his first
visit: but the careless forgetfulness of his parents’
anxiety must be considered as a grave childish fault,
the more so as its character is darkened by the in
difference shown by his answer to his mother’s
grieved reproof. That no high, though mistaken,
sense of duty kept him in Jerusalem is evident from
his return home with his parents ; for had he felt that
“his Father’s business ” detained him in Jerusalem
at all, it is evident that this sense of duty would
not have been satisfied by a three days’ delay. But
the Christian advocate would bar criticism by an
appeal to the Deity of Jesus: he asks us therefore
to believe, that Jesus, being God, saw with indiffer
ence his parents’ anguish at discovering his absence ;
knew all about that three-days’ agonised search (for
they, ignorant of his divinity, felt the terrible anxiety
as to his safety, natural to country people losing a
child in a crowded city) ; did not, in spite of the
tremendous powers at his command, take any steps
to re-assure them ; and, finally, met them again with
no words of sympathy, only with a mysterious allu
sion, incomprehensible to them, to some higher claim
than theirs, which, however, he promptly set aside to
obey them. If God was incarnate in a boy, we may
trust that example as a model of childhood: yet, are
Christians prepared to set this “ early piety and desire
for religious instruction ” before their young children
as an example they are to follow ? Are boys and
girls of twelve to be free to absent themselves for
days from their parents’ guardianship under the plea
that a higher business claims their attention ? This
episode of the childhood of Jesus should be relegated
to those “gospels of the infancy ” full of most un
childlike acts, which the wise discretion of Christendom
has stamped with disapproval. The same want of
�I2
On the Deity of
filial reverence appears later in his life : on one occa
sion he was teaching, and his mother sent in, desiring
to speak to him : the sole reply recorded to the
message is the harsh remark : “Who is my mother?”
The most practical proof that Christian morality has,
on this head, outstripped the example of Jesus, is
the prompt disapproval which similar conduct would
meet with in the present day. By the strange warping
of morality often caused by controversial exigencies,
this want of filial reverence has been triumphantly
pointed out by Christian divines; the indifference shown
by Jesus to family ties is accepted as a proof that he was
more than man! Thus, conduct which they implicitly
acknowledge to be unseemly in a son to his mother,
they claim as natural and right in the Son of God, to
His! In the present day if a person is driven by
conscience to a course painful to those who have
claims on his respect, his recognised duty, as well as
his natural instinct, is to try and make up by added
affection and more courteous deference for the pain he
is forced to inflict: above all, he would not wantonly
add to that pain by public and uncalled-for disrespect.
The attitude of Jesus towards his opponents in
high places was marked with unwarrantable bitterness.
Here also the lofty and gentle spirit of his whole life
has moulded Christian opinion in favour of a course
different on this head to his own, so that abuse of an
opponent is now commonly called m- Christian.
Wearied with three years’ calumny and contempt,
sore at the little apparent success which rewarded his
labour, full of a sad foreboding that his enemies would
shortly crush him, Jesus was goaded into passionate
denunciations: “Woe unto you, Scribes and Pha
risees, hypocrites ... ye fools and blind ... ye make
a proselyte twofold more the child of hell than your
selves ... ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how
can ye escape the damnation of hell! ” Surely this is
not the spirit which breathed in, “If ye love them
�Jesus of Nazareth.
13
which love you, what thanks have ye ? . . . Love your
enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for them
that persecute you.” Had he not even specially for
bidden the very expression, “Thou fool!” Was not
this rendering “ evil for evil, railing for railing ? ”
It is painful to point out these blemishes : reverence
for the great leaders of humanity is a duty deal’ to all
human hearts ; but when homage turns into idolatry,
then men must rise up to point out faults which
otherwise they would pass over in respectful silence,
mindful only of the work so nobly done.
I turn then, with a sense of glad relief, to the
evidence of the limited knowledge of Jesus, for
here no blame attaches to him, although one proved
mistake is fatal to belief in his Godhead. First
as to prophecy: “ The Son of man shall come
in the glory of his Father with his angels : and then
shall he reward every man according to his works.
Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here
which shall not taste of death till they see the Son of
man coming in his kingdom.” Later, he amplifies
the same idea: he speaks of a coming tribulation,
succeeded by his own return, and then adds the
emphatic declaration : “ Verily I say unto you, This
generation shall not pass till all these things be done.”
The non-fulfilment of these prophecies is simply a
question of fact: let men explain away the words
now as they may, yet, if the record is true, Jesus did
believe in his own speedy return, and impressed the
same belief on his followers. It is plain, indeed, that
he succeeded in impressing it on them, from the
references to his return scattered through the epistles.
The latest writings show an anxiety to remove the
doubts which were disturbing the converts consequent
on the non-appearance of Jesus, and the fourth
Gospel omits any reference to his coming. It is
worth remarking in the latter, the spiritual sense
which is hinted at—either purposely or unintention
�14-
0# the Deity of
ally—in the words, “ The hour . . . now is when the
dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, they
that hear shall live.” These words may be the popular
feeling on the advent and resurrection, forced on the
Christians by the failure of their Lord’s prophecies
in any literal sense. He could not be mistaken, ergo
they must spiritualise his words. The limited know
ledge of Jesus is further evident from his confusing
Zacharias the son of Jehoiada with Zacharias the
son of Barachias : the former, a priest, was slain in
the temple court, as Jesus states; but the son of
Barachias was Zacharias, or Zechariah, the prophet.*
He himself owned a limitation of his knowledge, when
he confessed his ignorance of the day of his own
return, and said it was known to the “ Father only.”
Of the same class of sayings is his answer to the
mother of James and John, that the high seats of the
coming kingdom “are not mine to give.” That Jesus
believed in the fearful doctrine of eternal punishment
is evident, in spite of the ingenious attempts to prove
that the doctrine is not scriptural: that he, in common
with his countrymen, ascribed many diseases to the
immediate power of Satan, which we should now
probably refer to natural causes, as epilepsy, mania,
and the like, is also self-evident. But on such points
as these it is useless to dwell, for the Christian believes
them on the authority of Jesus, and the subjects,
from their nature, cannot be brought to the test of
ascertained facts. Of the same character are some
of his sayings : his discouraging “ Strive to enter in
at the strait gate,/or many,” etc.; his using in defence
of partiality Isaiah’s awful prophecy, “ that seeing
theymaysee and not perceive,” etc.; his using Scripture
at one time as binding, while he, at another, depre
ciates it; his fondness for silencing an opponent by
an ingenious retort: all these things are blameworthy
to those who regard him as man, while they are
* See Appendix, page 20.
�Jesus of Nazareth.
i5
shielded from criticism by his divinity to those who
worship him as God. Their morality is a question of
opinion, and it is wasted time to dwell on them when
arguing with Christians, whose moral sense is for the
time held in check by their mental prostration at his
feet. But the truth of the quoted prophecies, and
the historical fact of the parentage of Zachariah, can
be tested, and on these Jesus made palpable mistakes.
The obvious corollary is, that being mistaken—as he
was—his knowledge was limited, and was therefore
human, not divine.
In turning to the teaching of Jesus (I still confine
myself to the three Gospels), we find no support of
the Christian theory. If we take his didactic teaching,
we can discover no trace of his offering himself as an
object of either faith or worship. His life’s work, as
teacher, was to speak of the Father. In the sermon
on the Mount he is always striking the keynote,
“your heavenly Father; ” in teaching his disciples
to pray, it is to “ Our Father,” and the Christian idea
of ending a prayer “through Jesus Christ” is quite
foreign to the simple filial spirit of their master.
Indeed, when we think of the position Jesus holds in
Christian theology, it seems strange to notice the
utter absence of any suggestion of duty to himself
throughout this whole code of so-called Christian
morality. In strict accordance with his more formal
teaching is his treatment of inquirers : when a young
man comes kneeling, and, addressing him as “ Good
Master,” asks what he shall do to inherit eternal life,
the loyal heart of Jesus first rejects the homage,
before he proceeds to answer the all-important ques
tion : “ Why callest thou me good : there is none good
but one, that is, God.” He then directs the youth on
the way to eternal life, and he sends that young
man home without one word of the doctrine on which,
according to Christians, his salvation rested. If the
“ Gospel ” came to that man later, he would
�16
On the Deity of
reject it on the authority of Jesus who had told
him a different “ way of salvation
and if Chris
tianity is true, the perdition of that young man’s
soul is owing to the defective teaching of Jesus him
self. Another time, he tells a Scribe that the first
commandment is that God is one, and that all a man’s
love is due to Him; then adding the duty of neigh
bourly love, he says; “ There is none other command
ment greater than these:” so that belief in Jesus,
if incumbent at all, must come after love to God and
man, and is not necessary, by his own testimony, to
“ entering into life.” On Jesus himself then rests the
primary responsibility of affirming that belief in him
is a matter of secondary importance, at most, letting
alone the fact that he never inculcated belief in his
Deity as an article of faith at all. In the same spirit
of frank loyalty to God, are his words on the unpar
donable sin : in answer to a gross personal affront, he
tells his insuiters that they shall be forgiven for
speaking against him, a simple son of man, but warns
them of the danger of confounding the work of God’s
Spirit with that of Satan, “because they said” that
works done by God, using Jesus as His instrument,
were done by Beelzebub.
There remains yet one argument of tremendous
force, which can only be appreciated by personal
meditation. We find Jesus praying to God, relying
on God, in his greatest need crying in agony to God
for deliverance, in his last struggle, deserted by his
friends, asking why God, his God, had also forsaken
him. We feel how natural, how true to life, this
whole account is : in our heart’s reverence for that
noble life, that “ faithfulness unto death,” we can
scarcely bear to think of the insult offered to it by
Christian lips : they take every beauty out of it by
telling us that through all that struggle Jesus was the
Eternal, the Almighty, God: it is all apparent, not
real: in his temptation he could not fall: in his
�Jesus of Nazareth.
\"j
prayers lie needed no support: in his cry that the cup
might pass away he foresaw it was inevitable : in his
agony of desertion and loneliness he was present
everywhere with God. In all that life, then, there is
no hope for man, no pledge of man’s victory, no
promise for humanity. This is no man's life at all, it
is only a wonderful drama enacted on earth. What
God could do is no measure of man’s powers : what
have we in common with this “ God-man ?” This
Jesus, whom we had thought our brother, is, after all,
removed from us by the immeasurable distance which
separates the feebleness of man from the omnipotence
of God. Nothing can compensate us for such a loss
as this. We had rejoiced in that many-sided noble
ness, and its very blemishes were dear, because they
assured us of his brotherhood to ourselves : we are
given an ideal picture where we had studied a history,
another Deity where we had hoped to emulate a life.
Instead of the encouragement we had found, what
does Christianity offer us ?—a perfect life ? But we
knew before that God was perfect: an example ? it
starts from a different level: a Saviour ? we cannot
be safer than we are with God: an Advocate ? we
need none with our Father: a Substitute to endure
God’s wrath for us ? we had rather trust God’s
justice to punish us as we deserve, and His wisdom to
do what is best for us. As God, Jesus can give us
nothing that we have not already in his Father and
ours : as man, he gives us all the encouragement and
support which we derive from every noble soul which
God sends into this world, “ a burning and a shining
light ” :
“ Through such souls alone
God stooping shows sufficient of His light
For us in the dark to rise by.”
As God, he confuses our perceptions of God’s unity,
bewilders our reason with endless contradictions, and
turns away from the Supreme all those emotions of
�i8
On the Deity of
love and adoration which can only flow towards a
single object, and which are the due of our Creator
alone : as man, he gives us an example to strive after,
a beacon to steer by; he is one more leader for
humanity, one more star in our darkness. As God,
all his words would be truth, and but few would enter
into heaven, while hell would overflow with victims:
as man, we may refuse to believe such a slander on
our Father, and take all the comfort pledged to us by
that name. Thank God, then, that Jesus is only man,
human child of human parents : that we need not
dwarf our conceptions of God to fit human faculties,
or envelope the illimitable spirit in a baby’s feeble
frame. But though only man, he has reached a
standard of human greatness which no other man, so
far as we know, has touched: the very height of his
character is almost a pledge of the truthfulness of
the records in the main: his life had to be lived
before its conception became possible, at that period
and among such a people. They could recognise his
greatness when it was before their eyes : they would
scarcely have imagined it for themselves, more espe
cially that, as we have seen, he was so different from
the Jewish ideal. His code of morality stands un
rivalled, and he was the first who taught the universal
Fatherhood of God publicly and to the common
people. Many of his loftiest precepts may be found
in the books of the Rabbis, but it is the glorious
prerogative of Jesus that he spread abroad among
the many the wise and holy maxims that had hitherto
been the sacred treasures of the few. With him none
were too degraded to be called the children of the
Father: none too simple to be worthy of the highest
teaching. By example, as well as by precept, he
taught that all men were brothers, and all the good
he had he showered at their feet. “ Pure in heart,”
he saw God, and what he saw he called all to see : he
longed that all might share in his own joyous trust in
�Jesus of Nazareth.
19
the Father, and seemed to be always seeking for
fresh images to describe the freedom and fulness of
the universal love of God. In his unwavering love of
truth, but his patience with doubters—in his personal
purity, but his tenderness to the fallen—in his hatred
of evil, but his friendliness to the sinner—we see
splendid virtues rarely met in combination. His
brotherliness, his yearning to raise the degraded, his
lofty piety, his unswerving morality, his perfect self
sacrifice, are his indefeasible titles to human love and
reverence. Of the world’s benefactors he is the chief,
not only by his own life, but by the enthusiasm he
has known to inspire in others : “ Our plummet has
not sounded his depth
words fail to tell what
humanity owes to the Prophet of Nazareth. On his
example the great Christian heroes have based their
lives: from the foundation laid by his teaching the
world is slowly rising to a purer faith in God. We
need now such a leader as he was, one who would
dare to follow the Father’s will as he did, casting a
long-prized revelation aside when it conflicts with the
higher voice of conscience. It is the teaching of
Jesus that Theism gladly makes its own, purifying
it from the inconsistencies which mar its perfection.
It is the example of Jesus which Theists are following,
though they correct that example in some points by
his loftiest sayings. It is the work of Jesus which
Theists are carrying on, by worshipping, as he did,
the Father, and the Father alone, and by endeavour
ing to turn all men’s love, all men’s hopes, and all
men’s adoration, to that “ God and Father of all,
who is above all, and through all, and,” not in Jesus
only, but “ in us all.”
�20
On the Deity of Jesus of Nazareth.
APPENDIX.
“Josephus mentions a Zacharias, son of Baruch
(‘Wars of the Jews,’ Book iv., sec. 4), who was
slain under the circumstances described by Jesus.
His name would be more suitable at the close of the
long list of Jewish crimes, as it occurred just before
the destruction of Jerusalem. But, as it took place
about thirty-four years after the death of Jesus, it is
clear that he could not have referred to it; therefore,
if we admit that he made no mistake, we strike
a serious blow at the credibility of his historian, who
then puts into his mouth a remark he never uttered.”
�
Dublin Core
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Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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On the deity of Jesus of Nazareth: an enquiry into the nature of Jesus by an examination of the synoptic gospels
Creator
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Besant, Annie Wood
Voysey, Charles [1828-1912] (ed)
Description
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 20 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Appendix on the last page. "by the Wife of a Beneficed Clergyman edited and prefaced by Rev. Charles Voysey". [Title page]. The author is Annie Besant, an attribution from Dr Williams Library Catalogue and Besant's biographer G.M. Williams. Williams believes this to be her 'literary debut'. Printed by C.W. Reynell, London. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
Publisher
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Thomas Scott
Date
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1873
Identifier
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CT121
Subject
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Bible
Jesus Christ
Rights
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (On the deity of Jesus of Nazareth: an enquiry into the nature of Jesus by an examination of the synoptic gospels), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Bible-Criticism
Conway Tracts
Jesus Christ