1
10
32
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/37332d4af46d573bbdaeb3a054045b90.pdf?Expires=1779321600&Signature=MYpDFF1nVy%7EOlgbUqy3iRWnaigUdI3vnZcSo1XY8SAHz5VCGe1c8TBs%7EnjvVS3KG63EJkm54BnIZ%7EHDjxX%7EXegojdJ-EIrkkCufAWyMTb2LHjeI8dWomdzx4VnblrvL4oPl-ozlG0EY8xencRhg9%7EwVjk0ih1XuXwYxbcTHGugptqLo5OnatQP9BQj9WXBXbmdj8mobG9ih1vb-RiWvJAIKXhCpTZTJjemV4%7EQwpsKAtwMil4PKKZC465Ae5jw6qavXC88ZCeVjKeuOPxu2fjzSNcmvCYUBc8rnK90LMrCS8KEBAkjHUQuqGEnaEV%7EJnNF6K7jNSOZpD13FpKhfprg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
373389a135cd68176ea445ef9473a9a0
PDF Text
Text
VERS US
CHRISTIANITY.
BY
A CANTAB.
PUBLISHED
BY
THOMAS
SCOTT,
NO. 11 THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD, UPPER NORWOOD,
LONDON, S.E.
1873.
Pi ice Sixpence.
�LONDON!
rr.INTED BY C. W. REYNELL, 16 LITTLE 1TLTENEY STREET
HAYMARKET, IV.
�JESUS versus CHRISTIANITY.
---------♦---------
HE most notable feature in the present condition
of theology is, indubitably, the rapid multipli
cation of writings designed to point the contrast
between the character, real or supposed, of Jesus,
and the religion which bears his name and of which
he is commonly regarded as the founder. The revolt,
which every day but serves to intensify, is not against
Jesus as par excellence il the genius of righteousness,”
but against the dogmatic system which theologians
have substituted for him. The church, it is alleged,
has outdone Iscariot, in that it has committed a
twofold treachery : it has accepted the murder of its
founder as a sacrifice well-pleasing to the Deity, and
it has repudiated his simple heart-religion for meta
physical subtleties of its own invention. Thus, not
content with making itself a participator in the
murder of his body, the church has dealt a fatal
outrage upon his spirit.
Among the writings to which we have referred as
advocating the displacement of the regime of dogma
and belief by the substitution of one involving
character and conduct, we propose to note especially
‘ The True History of Joshua Davidson,’ reputed to
be the work of a lady well known for the vigour of
her thought and style ; ‘ Literature and Dogma,’ by
Matthew Arnold; ‘ The Eair Haven,’ by W. B.
Owen ; ‘ By and By,’ by Edward Maitland ; ‘ A Note
of Interrogation,’ by Miss Nightingale ; and ‘ Modern
Christianity a Civilised Heathenism.’ All these writ
ings, with the exception of the last, agree in rejecting
A 2
T
�4
'Jesus versus Christianity.
as unproved, unprovable, mistaken, or pernicious, at
least much of what has always been insisted upon by
the church, and in accepting the general character
and teaching of Jesus as the most valuable moral
possession of humanity.
We except the last one for this reason, though
using it to point our argument : It gives up the
state of society which has grown up under the sway
of dogma as utterly un-Christian in character and
conduct, but it does not give up the dogma. The
work of the clergyman who gained an undesirable
notoriety during the Franco-German war by his mis
chievous brochure entitled ‘ Dame Europa’s School,’
it manifests all the confusion of thought which dis
tinguished that production. It was scarcely to be
expected that the writer who could represent England
as placed at the head of the school of Europe to keep
the other nations from quarrelling, and declare that
“ neutral is another name for coward,” would
escape committing absurd inconsistencies when he
took to writing about modern Christianity. In a
dialogue with a Hindoo resident in London, he makes
the heathen discourse in this fashion :
“ How can you soberly believe and eloquently
preach that an overwhelming majority of your fellow
creatures will be burnt alive throughout all eternity
in the flames of hell, and yet can find time or inclina
tion at any moment of your life for any other work
than the work of rescuing the souls around you from
their appalling doom ? How contemplate even so
much as the distant possibility of being yourself
tortured with agonies insupportable, for ages and.
ages and millions of ages more, and all the while
laugh and joke, and talk of politics and business and
pleasure, as if you were the happiest fellow on
earth ? You parsons do actually stand in imminent
peril of being burnt alive for ever, or else you do
not. The souls committed to your teaching, or a
�Jesus versus Christianity.
5
certain proportion of them, are destined to spend a
whole eternity in torment, or else they are destined to
nothing of the kind. If they are so destined, and if
you, unless by precept and example you have done
all in your power to save them, shall have your part
in their unutterable woe, what can you do from morn
ing to night but pray for them, and weep for them,
and implore them earnestly to escape at any cost
from the horrors of an unquenchable flame ? Yet, in
the face of your alleged persuasions that you yourself
and all your flock are standing, for all you know,
upon the very brink of an everlasting hell, you have
deliberately chosen and cheerfully maintain a course
of occupations and a position in society which no
man could possibly endure for half a day who really
believed himself and those dear to him to be placed
in any such peril. What I say is that, if you are not
leading a downright ascetic life—the life of Christ
and nothing less—you waste words upon the air when
you preach the punishment of eternal flames. Would
you believe that my dearest friend upon earth was on
trial for his life, and would very probably be hanged,
if you met me somewhere at five o’clock tea, talking
nonsense to some young lady ? Whereas the average
minister delivers his most awful message, tells his
people plainly that they will be damned, knows for a
certainty that they will go on sinning all the same, and,
under a strong impression that several of his cherished
acquaintances and kindly neighbours will be devoured
by flames unquenchable, walks home to his vicarage,
jokes with his wife, romps with his children, chaffs
his friend, sits down comfortably to his luncheon, and
thoroughly enjoys his slice of cold roast beef and his
glass of bitter beer. Will any man, in his senses,
believe that he means what he has just been saying in
his sermon ? Of course he will believe nothing of the
sort; and therefore it has come to pass that England
is full of intelligent laymen who doubt and disbelieve.
�6
Jesus versus Christianity.
No; lei me see Christians imitating, not a Christ
whom I could fashion for myself out of heathen
materials, not the pattern philosopher, not the ideal
man—but a Christ who at every point is making him
self an intolerable offence to the un-Christ-like, a
thorn and scourge to every man who does not lie
stretched at the foot of his cross ! I know for certain
how Christ would be treated if he were here; I can
see the press deriding him, the fine lady picking her
way past him in the street, the poor flocking round
him as a friend, the magistrate committing him to
prison. Let me see his witnesses treated thus, and
I shall believe that he has sent them. But while I
see them claiming the right to live as other men,
glorying in the fact that they have no peculiarities,
smiling politely on sin, and caressed by those who
would have spat upon their Lord—so long as I see
them thus, they shall teach me if they please the
principles of Christ’s philosophy, but they shall not
dare to tell me that they are priests of a crucified
Christ.”
The conclusion shows that the heathen, having
found such a witness as he requires, accepts the life
—though whether for the sake of the life or through
fear of the hell, does not appear—while the parson
retains the dogma described as above, impervious
to any sense of its hideous immorality, “ and walks
slowly and sadly home, feeling more and more dis
satisfied with his own position.”
In ‘ Joshua Davidson ’ we have an attempt to
transfer the Jesus of the gospels, poor and untaught,
but enthusiast of noble ideas, to our own day, for the
purpose of showing from the inevitable failure of his
life and work, either that modern society is not
Christian, or that Christianity as a system will not
work. The hero of the tale, a carpenter by trade,
early gives up Christianity as a dogma or collection
of dogmas, and falls back upon the character and
�Jesus versus Christianity.
7
social teaching of Jesus as the essence of the gospel,
and alone possessing any real value for us. What
would Jesus be and do were he to live now ? This is
the question essayed to be answered in ‘ Joshua David
son,’ by representing him as a plain working-man,
attacking alike banker and bishop, advocating indis
criminate almsgiving, fraternising with the poor and
discontented, unorthodox in faith, an ultra-radical in
politics, exciting the bitter hostility of the whole
respectable press, denouncing shams, clutching
eagerly at any Utopian extravagance that had a
heart of good in it, a red republican in Trance, an
itinerant lecturer on the rights of man in England,
and finally trampled to death by conservative roughs,
hounded on by dignitaries of the Established Church.
Confident that such would be the career of
Jesus among us, the author is justified in asking of
us, why, if we should thus regard him, do we persist
in calling ourselves by his name and pretending to
be his followers. Surely a question not to be left
unanswered. “We ought,” says the preface to the
third edition, “to be brave enough in this day to dare
ask ourselves how much is practicable and how much
is impracticable in the creed we profess; and to
renounce that which is even the most imperatively
enjoined if we find that it is not wise or possible.
If our religion leads us to political chimeras, let us
abjure it: if it teaches us truth, let us obey it, no
matter what social growths we tear up by the roots.
There is no mean way for men. To slaves only
should the symbols of a myth be sacred, and our very
children are forbidden the weakness of knowing the
right and doing the wrong. If such a man as Joshua
Davidson was a mistake, then acted Christianity is to
blame. In which case, what becomes of the dogma ?
and how can we worship a life as divine, the practical
imitation of which is a moral blunder and an economic
crime ? ”
�8
"Jesus versus Christianity.
It is thus that the author makes the very humanity
of Jesus the proof of his divinity. He is extrahuman, not in any metaphysico-theological sense,
but in the intensity of the sympathy which impels
him to attempt to benefit his fellows. His very
failures are more divine than the successes of other
men. It is thus, too, that having at the start repu
diated the dogmatic system attached to his name, we
are called on to re-examine his ethical and social
teaching, and to avow honestly our rejection of such
parts of it as do not coincide with our notions of the
practicable and right. In short, the appeal is to be
neither to authority nor tradition, but to our own
intelligence and moral sense.
This, too, is the import of Miss Nightingale's
recent utterance (in Fraser's Magazine for May).
Rebuking the tendency of modern reformers to ignore
the character of God, as necessarily underlying the
phenomena which form the subject of their investi
gations, this ‘ Note of Interrogation ’ calls upon us to
regard the moral laws which govern men’s motives as
the real exponents of the divine nature. While thus
adopting the inductive method of Positivism, she
blames the Positivists “ for leaving out of considera
tion all the inspiring part of life,” and stopping short
at phenomena, instead of seeking to learn that of
which phenomena are but the manifestation, and.
to which, therefore, they must be the index. In
this view, she rejects the main points of the creeds
of Roman, Protestant, and Greek alike, and utterly
ignores what is called “ revelation ” as a guide
to the nature of God, and points to the character and
teaching of Christ as among the best indications to
that which ought to be the prime object of search.
In all this it appears clearly that by the term GW
Miss Nightingale really means a human ideal of
perfection, and that she would have us perfect our
ideal for the sake of the reflex influence it would
�Jesus -versus Christianity.
9
exercise upon ourselves. It is by the adoption of the
Christ-ideal of character, and rejection of Christian
dogma, and those on the question of their intrinsic
merits as estimated by her own mind and con
science, apart from tradition or authority, that Miss
Nightingale justifies us in ranking her among the
supporters of Jesus in the great cause of Jesus versus
Christianity.
‘ The Fair Haven ’ is an ironical defence of ortho
doxy at the expense of the whole mass of church
tenet and dogma, the character of Christ only
excepted. Such, at least, is our reading of it, though
critics of the Rock, and Record order have accepted
the book as a serious defence of Christianity, and
proclaimed it as a most valuable contribution in aid
of the faith. Affecting an orthodox standpoint, it
bitterly reproaches all previous apologists for the
lack of candour with which they have ignored or
explained away insuperable difficulties, and attached
undue value to coincidences real or imagined. One
and all they have, the author declares, been at best
but zealous “liars for God,” or what to them
was more than God, their own religious system.
This must go on no longer. We, as Christians,
having a sound cause, need not feai’ to let the truth be
known. He proceeds accordingly to set forth that
truth as he finds it in the New Testament; and, in
a masterly analysis of the accounts of the resurrection,
which he selects as the principal and crucial miracle,
involving all Other miracles, he shows how slender
is the foundation on which the whole fabric of super
natural theology has been reared. Rejecting the
hypothesis of hallucination by which Strauss attempts
to account for the belief of the disciples in the
resurrection, he shows that they had no real evidence
that Jesus had died upon the cross at all. It is true
that the disciples believed him dead ; so that we
need not charge them with fraud. That charge he
�io
Jesus versus Christianity.
reserves for the Paleys and Alfords, whose disingenuousness he scathingly exposes, using the
arguments of the latter to show the absence of anv
proof that Jesus died either of the cross or of the
spear-wound. All that the evangelists knew was
that the body was deposited in the tomb apparently
dead, and that at the end of some thirty hours it had
disappeared. Rejecting the statement in Matthew
as palpably untenable, he makes that in John the
basis of the true story, this being the simplest and
manifest source of the rest.
As told by our author, the whole affords an exquisite
example of the natural growth of a legend. First,
we have Mary Magdalene, who, finding the stone
removed, investigates no further, but runs back and
declares that the body has been taken away (not that
it has come to life). Then we have John and Peter
ascertaining for themselves, by looking in, that Jesus
was no longer there, but only the linen clothes lying
in two separate parts of the tomb. Then, these
having taken their departure, we have the warm,
impulsive Magdalene remaining behind to weep. At
length, mustering courage to look into the sepul
chre for herself, she sees, as she thinks, sitting at
opposite ends, two angels in white, who merely
ask her why she weeps. She makes no answer,
but turns to the outside, where she sees Jesus
himself, but so changed that she does not at first
recognise him.
How from this simple and natural story of the
white grave clothes, in the dark sepulchre, looking
like angels to the tear-blinded eyes of a woman who
was so liable to hysteria or insanity as to have had
“ seven devils ” cast out of her, grew, step by step, the
myth so freely amplified in the gospels, the reader
must find in the book itself.
If he can once fully grasp the intention of the
style and its affectation of the tone of indignant
�Jesus versus Christianity.
11
orthodoxy, and perceive also how utterly destructive
are its “ candid admissions ” to the whole fabric of
supernaturalism, he will enjoy a rare treat. It is not,
however, for the purpose of recommending what we,
at least, regard as a piece of exquisite humour that
we call attention to ‘ The Fair Haven,’ but in order
to show how, while rejecting popular Christianity, we
may still accept the “ Christ-ideal,” to use our author’s
phrase, and this with an enhanced sense of its beauty
and use to the world.
One of the most characteristic parts of the book is
that in which he argues in favour of the providential
character of the gospel narratives, notwithstanding
their inaccuracies. After stating that no ill effects
need follow from a rejection of the immaculate con
ception, the miracles, the resurrection, or the
ascension, because “ the Christ-ideal, which, after all,
is the soul and spirit of Christianity, would remain
precisely where it is, while its recognition would be
far more general, owing to the departure on the part
of the Apologists from certain lines of defence which
are irreconcilable with the ideal itself,” he says :
“ The old theory that God desired to test our faith,
and that there would be no merit in believing if the
evidence were such as to commend itself at once to
our understanding, is one which need only be stated
to be set aside. It is blasphemy against the goodness
of God to suppose that he has thus laid, as it were, an
ambuscade for man, and will only let him escape on
condition of his consenting to violate one of the very
most precious of God’s own gifts. There is an inge
nious cruelty about such conduct which it is revolting
even to imagine. Indeed, the whole theory reduces
our heavenly Father to a level of wisdom and goodness
far below our own, and this is sufficient answer to it.”
There is, however, a reason why we should be
■required to believe in the divinity of the Christ-ideal,
and regard it as exalted beyond all human comparison;
�I2
"Jesus versus Christianity.
namely, in order to exalt our sense of the paramount
importance of following and obeying the life and
commands of Christ. And this being so, “ it is
natural, also, to suppose that whatever may have
happened to the records of that life should have been
ordained with a view to the enhancing the precious
ness of the ideal.” Thus the very obscurity and
fragmentariness of the gospel narratives have added
to the value of the ideas they present, just as the
mutilations of ancient sculptures serve to enhance
their beauty to the imagination. Or, as “the gloom
and gleam of Rembrandt, or the golden twilight of
the Venetians, the losing and finding, and the infinite
liberty of shadow,” produce an effect infinitely beyond
that which would be gained by any hardness of
definition and tightness of outline. The suggestion
of the beautiful lineaments to the imagination is far
more effective than would be any minutely detailed
portrait. “ Those who relish definition, and definition
only, are indeed kept away from Christianity by the
present condition of the records ; but even if the life
of our Lord had been so definitely rendered as to
find a place in their system, would it have greatly
served their souls ? And would it not repel hun
dreds and thousands of others, who find in the
suggestiveness of the sketch a completeness of satis
faction which no photographic reproduction could
have given ?”
The fact is “ people misunderstand the aim and
scope of religion. Religion is only intended to guide
men in those matters upon which science is silent:
God illumines us by science as by a mechanical
draughtsman’s plan; he illumines us in the gospels
as by the drawing of a great artist. We cannot build
a ‘ Great Eastern ’ from the drawings of the artist,
but what poetical feeling, what true spiritual emotion
was ever kindled by a mechanical drawing ? How
cold and dead were science, unless supplemented by
�"Jesus versus Christianity.
13
art and religion! Not joined with them, for the
merest touch of these things impairs scientific value,
which depends essentially upon accuracy, and not upon
any feeling for the beautiful and loveable. In like
manner the merest touch of science chills the warmth
of sentiment—the spiritual life. The mechanical
drawing is spoilt by being made artistic, and the work
of the artist by becoming mechanical. The aim of
the one is to teach men how to construct; of the other,
how to feel. We ought not, therefore, to have ex
pected scientific accuracy from the gospel records.
Much less should we be required to believe that such
accuracy exists.” The finest picture, approached close
enough, becomes but blotches and daubs of paint, each
one of which, taken by itself, is absolutely untrue,
yet, at proper distance, forms an impression which is
quite truthful. “No combination of minute truths
in a picture will give so faithful a representation
of nature as a wisely-arranged tissue of untruths.”
Again, “ all ideals gain by vagueness and lose by defi
nition, inasmuch as more scope is left for the imagi
nation of the beholder, who can thus fill in the missing
detail according to his own spiritual needs. This is
how it comes that nothing which is recent, whether
animate or inanimate, can serve as an ideal unless it
is adorned by more than common mystery and uncer
tainty. A new cathedral is necessarily very ugly.
There is too much found and too little lost. Much
less would an absolutely perfect Being be of the
highest value as an ideal as long as he could be clearly
seen, for it is impossible that he could be known as
perfect by imperfect men, and his very perfections
must perforce appear as blemishes to any but perfect
critics. To give, therefore, an impression of perfec
tion, to create an absolutely unsurpassable ideal, it
became essential that the actual image of the original
should become blurred and lost, whereon the beholder
now supplies from his own imagination that which is,
�14
"Jesus versus Christianity.
to him, more perfect than the original, though objec
tively it must be infinitely less so.
“ It is probably to this cause that the incredulity of
the Apostles during our Lord’s lifetime must be
assigned. The ideal was too near them, and too far
above their comprehension; for it must always be
remembered that the convincing power of miracles in
the days of the Apostles must have been greatly
weakened by the current belief in their being events
of no very unusual occurrence, and in the existence
both of good and evil spirits who could take
possession of men and compel them to do their
bidding.
“ A beneficent and truly marvellous provision for
the greater complexity of man’s spiritual needs was
thus provided by a gradual loss of detail and gain of
breadth. Enough evidence was given in the first
instance to secure authoritative sanction for the ideal.
During the first thirty or forty years after the death
of our Lord, no one could be in want of evidence,
and the guilt of unbelief is, therefore, brought promi
nently forward. Then came the loss of detail which
was necessary in order to secure the universal accept
ability of the ideal. . . But there would, of course,
be limits to the gain caused by decay. Time came
when there would be danger of too much vagueness
in the ideal, and too little distinctness in the evidences.
It became necessary, therefore, to provide against this
danger.
“ Precisely at that epoch the gospels made their appear
ance.” Not simultaneously, and not in perfect harmony
with each other, but with such divergence of aim and
difference of authorship as would secure the necessary
breadth of effect when the accounts were viewed
together. “ As the roundness of the stereoscopic
image can only be attained by the combination of two
distinct pictures, neither of them in perfect harmony
with the other, so the highest possible conception of
�Jesus versus Christianity.
15
Christ cannot otherwise be produced than through the
discrepancies of the gospels.”
Now, however, “when there is a numerous and
increasing class of persons whose habits of mind unfit
them for appreciating the value of vagueness, but
who have each of them a soul which may be lost or
saved, the evidences should be restored to something
like their former sharpness.” To do this it demands
only “the recognition of the fact that time has made
incrustations upon some parts of the evidences, and
has destroyed others.” Nevertheless, as “ it is not belief
in the facts which constitutes the essence of Clvristianity,
but rather the being so impregnated with love at the
contemplation of Christ that imitation becomes almost
instinctive,” we may probably suppose “that certain
kinds of unbelief have become less hateful in the
sight of God, inasmuch as they are less dangerous to
the universal acceptance of our Lord as the one model
for the imitation of all men.”
To advocate conduct instead of belief, experience
instead of tradition, and intuition instead of conven
tionality, and to exhibit a model for the imitation of
all men, married as well as single, is at least one pur
pose manifest in the series of novels of which ‘ By
and By ’ is announced to be the completion :—novels
differing from the ordinary kind in that, while others
treat of man only in relation to man, and are, there
fore, merely moral, these bear reference to man in
relation to the Infinite, and are, therefore, essentially
religious.
It does not come within our design to treat of the
surface aspect of Mr Edward Maitland’s ‘ Historical
Romance of the Future,’ which represents the world
as it may be when a few more centuries have passed
over it, and the problems, social, political, and
religious, which now trouble it, shall have found
their solution, and people may, without detriment or
reproach, regulate their lives in accordance with their
�16
"Jesus versus Christianity.
own preferences. It is with the deeper design of the
book that we have now to do, the design which
reveals itself in the entire series to which, with ‘ The
Pilgrim and the Shrine ’ and 1 Higher Law,’ it belongs.
This design is the rehabilitation of nature, by showing
its capacity for producing of itself, if only its best be
allowed fail* play, the highest results in religion and
morals. Seeing that to rehabilitate nature is in
effect to rehabilitate the author of nature, and replace
both worker and work in the high place from which
they have been deposed by theologians, such a design
can be no other than an eminently religious one.
In the first of the series, ‘ The Pilgrim and the
Shrine,’ the wanderer in search of a faith that will
stand the test and fulfil the requirements of a
developed mind and conscience emerges from the
wilderness of doubt, through which he has been pain
fully toiling, to find that the best that we can com
prehend must ever be the Divine for us, and this by
the very constitution of our nature, inasmuch as we
can only interpret that which is without by that
which is within. And he bears testimony to the
value of the Bible as an agent in the development of
the religious faculty by noting the subjective character
of all that really appertains to religion in both the
Old and New Testaments. “ Constantly,” he says,
“ is the inner ideal dwelt upon without any reference
to corresponding external objects. Think you it was
the law as written in the books of Moses that was a
delight to the mind and a guide to the feet of the
Psalmist ? No, it was something that appealed much
more nearly to his inmost soul, even ‘ the law of God
in his heart.’ And what else was meant by ‘ Christ
in you the hope of glory?’ The idea of a perfect
standard is all that can be in us. The question
wbethei’ it has any external personal existence in
history does not affect the efficacy of the idea in
raising us up towards itself. God, the Absolute, is
�Jesus versus Christianity.
17
altogether past finding out. Wherefore we elevate
the best we can imagine into the Divine, and worship
that:—the perfect man or perfect woman. Surely
it is no matter which, since it is the character and not
the person that is adored. . . Christianity is a
worship of the divinest character, as exemplified in a
human form. . . The very ascription to Jesus of
supernatural attributes shows the incapacity of his
disciples to appreciate the grandeur and simplicity of
his character. . . . Here, then, is my answer to
the question, 1 What was the exact work of Christ ? ’
It was to give men a law for their government, tran
scending any previously generally recognised. Ignor
ing the military ruler, the priest, and the civil
magistrate, he virtually denounced physical force,
spiritual terror, and legal penalties as the compelling
motive for virtue. The system whereby he would
make men perfect, even as their Father in heaven is
perfect, was by developing the higher moral lawimplanted in every man’s breast, and so cultivating
the idea of God in the soul. The ‘ law of God in
the heart ’ was no original conception of his. It had
been recognised by many long before, and had raised
them to the dignity of prophets, saints, and martyrs.
Its sway, though incapable of gaining in intensity, is
wider now than ever, till the poet of our day must be
one who is deeply imbued with it; no mere surface
painter like his predecessors, however renowned, but
having a spiritual insight which makes him at once
poet and prophet. The founding of an organised
society, having various grades of ecclesiastical rank,
and definite rules of faith, does not seem to me to
have formed any part of Christ’s idea. His plan was
rather to scatter broadcast the beauty of his thought,
and let it take root and spring up where it could.
Recognising intensely, as he did, the all-winning
loveliness of his idea, he felt that it would never lack
ardent disciples to propagate it, and he left it to each
B
�Jesus versus Christianity.
age to devise such means as the varying character of
the times might suggest. The ‘ Christian Church,*
therefore, for me, consists of all who follow a Christian
ideal of character, no matter whether, or in whom,
they believe that ideal to have been personified.”
Such is the teaching of a book that is, to the Pall
Mall Gazette, foolishness, and to Mudie’s a stumblingblock and an abomination; yet which, in spite of
clerical denunciation and the expurgatorial indexes
of Protestant Nonconformist circulating-librarians,
has in a short space travelled to all lands where the
English tongue is spoken, and perceptibly influenced
the course that religious thought must henceforth
take. We shall have a proof of this when we come
to the last book on our list. In the meantime it
seemed to us well to digress for a moment in order
to denounce the obstacles which still are thrown in
the way of genuine religious thought by ecclesiastic
and layman, Churchman and Dissenter, alike in this
“ Christian ” land of ours.
As the ‘ Pilgrim and the Shrine ’ exhibited the
process of thinking and feeling out a religion, so its
successor, ‘ Higher Law,’ represented the natural
growth of a morality. Repudiating all conventional
methods, as the other repudiated theological and
traditional ones, the design here is to represent the
action of persons under the sole guidance of their
own perceptions and feelings under circumstances of
supreme temptation and difficulty.
It is by the steadfast adherence to the simple rule
of unselfishness, which forbids the commission of
aught that can injure or pain those whom we are
bound to respect, that the sufficiency of the intuitions
to constitute the higher, or rather highest, law of
morality is demonstrated.
It is not necessary to the perfection of nature that
all germs should reach the highest stages of growth,
whether in the vegetable or in the spiritual kingdom.
�"Jesus versus Christianity.
T9
The capacity to produce a single perfect result is
sufficient to redeem nature from the old reproach
cast upon it by theologians, “just as one magnificent
blossom suffices to redeem the plant, that lives a
hundred years and flowers but once, from the charge
of having wasted its existence.” Nay, more. “Even
if the experience of all past ages of apparent aim
lessness and sterility affords no plea in justification of
existence, the one fact that there is room for hope in
the future may well suffice to avert the sentence men
are too apt to pronounce,—that all is vanity and
vexation, and that the tree of humanity is fit only to
be cut down, that it cumber the ground no longer.”
Erom this point of view it is evident that at least
one object of the creation of the leading character in
1 By and By ’ is to show how an ideally perfect dis
position may be produced from purely natural cir
cumstances, and if in the present or future, why not
in the past ? The “ Christmas Carol ” of ‘ By and
By’ thus becomes for us a parallel to the “Joshua
Davidson” of the book already noticed; for it is an
attempt to transfer the Jesus of the gospels from
Judaea to our own country, only a Jesus wealthy in
stead of poor, educated instead of untaught, married
instead of single, having all the advantages of a
civilisation more advanced than any yet attained,
and with his intense religious enthusiasm kept from
surpassing the limits of the practical, by science,
wedlock, and work. In his liability to personify the
products of his own vivid and spiritual imagination,
and out of his idealisations of things terrestrial to
people the skies with “angels,” we see but a repro
duction of one of the characteristics by which all
the enthusiasts of old, to which the world owes its
religions, have been distinguished. By placing such
a character in his picture of the future, we under. stand the author to indicate his conviction that man
will always, no matter how rigidly scientific his
b 2
�20
Jesus ’versus Christianity.
training, have a religious side to his nature, a side
whereby he can rise on the wings of emotion far
beyond the regions of mere Sense. Of course such
an one must at some moment of his life feel himself
impelled to use his wealth and freedom for his own
selfish gratification (he would not otherwise be
human), but resisting such promptings of his own
lower nature, will fix himself upon some great
and useful work. It is almost as much of course that
he will in his earliest love be attracted by the
character that most nearly resembles pure unso
phisticated nature. But the love that is of the sexes
will not contain half his nature. He will be the
friend and servant of all men, and so provoke to
jealousy the small, intense disposition of her to whom
he has allied himself. Striving to inoculate her with
a sense of the ideal, their relations will aptly typify
the world-old conflict of Soul and Sense. He may
suffer greatly, but if she be true and genuine, and
loves him her best, so far as is in her, he will _ be
tender and kind and endure to the end. Losing
her, and after long interval wedding again, more for
his child’s sake than his own, he will naturally be
tempted to make trial of one less unsophisticated and
untrained. But mere conventionality will disgust
him. Its hollow artifices and insincerity will be
odious, and the ideal man will find a moral jar y
fitting plea for repudiation. Should his child—his
daughter—err, he will be tender and forgiving, pro
vided her fault be prompted by love. It will ever
be in his conduct that we shall find his faith.
Recognising himself as an individualised portion of
the divine whole, his intuitions are to him as the
voice of God in his soul, and to fail to live up to his
best would be to fall short of the duty due to his
divine ancestry.
So confident is he of the divinity of his own
intuitions, and so inexorable in his requirements of
�Jesus versus Christianity.
21
perfection in conduct up to the highest point of
individual ability, that he fails to be at ease until he
has established the character of God himself for perfect
righteousness in his dealings, even with the meanest
thing in his creation. We do not know whether or
not the argument is new. It certainly has not been
Suggested by any of the theologians who have busied
themselves in seeking solutions for the problem of
tile origin of evil. It is that all things are the pro
duct of their conditions, and that all conditions have
a right to exist, so that the products have a right
to exist also; and the maker of the conditions can
not in justice refuse to be satisfied with the products
©f conditions which he has permitted. “ The poor
Soil and the arid sky are as much a part of the
universal order as the rich garden, soft rain, and
Warm sunshine. It is just that one should yield a
©rop which the other would despise. It would be
unjust were both to yield alike.” Man’s highest
ftmction is to amend the conditions of his own
■Existence. Finding himself launched into the uni
verse, he must till it and keep it and fit it to produce
better and better men and women. It is by labouring
an this direction that he works out his own salva
tion. They are poor teachers who inculcate but
the patience of resignation, or look to another life to
compensate the evils of this. The ideal man of the
future appeals to the intuitive perceptions as the
divine guides of conduct while here, and to the physical
laws of nature for the means of subduing the world
to man’s highest needs. To his intensely sympathetic
nature “ good ” is necessarily that which assimilates
and harmonises to the greatest extent its surrounding
Conditions—not the immediately surrounding merely
s-«4hat which works in truest sympathy with the
fest, While that is evil which by its very selfishness
arraigns the rest against it, good needs no power
working from without to make it triumphant. It
�22
Jesus versus Christianity.
triumphs by winning the sympathies of all to work
with it.
What Mr Maitland has done in the form of fiction
Mr Matthew Arnold has done in the form of a
treatise. We look upon his ‘Literature and Dogma ’
as clinching the blow struck at the whole fabric of
dogmatic theology, and crowning the effort to restore
the intuitions as the sole court of appeal, not only
between man and man, but between man and God.
In his view the glory of the Bible consists in its
exhibition of Israel as a people with a special
faculty for righteousness, at least in conception. As
other races have their special faculties, the Greek for
sculpture, the Italian for painting, the German for
abstract thought, the French for sensuous art, &c.,
so the genius of Israel was for the righteousness
which consists in morality touched by emotion towards
something that is not ourselves, but . which makes for
righteousness. And it was in Christ that the national
genius of his race culminated, as genius for painting
in Raphael, for science in Newton, for the drama in
Shakespeare.
It was to God, not as “ an intelligent First Cause
and Moral Governor of the Universe,” but as the
influence from whence proceed the intuitions which
constitute the basis of conscience, that the higher
writers of the Old Testament appealed. And it was
in Jesus, not as the “ Eternal Son” of a personal
father, but as the restorer of the intuitions that the
disciples believed. No doubt they had extra beliefs,
and what we should term not so much superstition as
the poetry of religion, and it is very difficult to
separate the husks of this from the grain of the
other; but it is always the appeal to the intuitive
perceptions of right that excites their enthusiasm,
and thus they preach as the sole efficient cause of
man’s regeneration.
Entitling his work ‘ An Essay towards a Better
�Jesus versus Christianity.
23
Apprehension of the Bible,’ Mr Arnold maintains
that it is through the lack of literary culture that the
Bible has been utterly misunderstood, and that it is
through such misunderstanding that difficulties and
dogmas have arisen, and that conduct has come to
be ranked below belief as the effective agent of all
good. Of the Bible itself he says that, while it can
not possibly die, and its religion is all-important,
nevertheless to restore religion as the clergy under
stand it, and re-in throne the Bible as explained by
our current theology, whether learned or popular, is
absolutely and for ever impossible. Whatever is to
stand must rest upon something which is verifiable,
not unverifiable ; and the assumption with which all
churches and sects set out, that there is “ a great
Personal First Cause, the moral and intelligent Gover
nor of the Universe, and that from him the Bible
derives its authority, can never be verified.”
There is, however, something that can be verified ;
something that, after the deposition of the magnified
and non-natural man ordinarily set up by people as
their God, will for ever remain as the basis and object
of religious thought. This something is to be found
in the Bible, not there alone, but there in a greater
degree than in any other literature. It is the influence
wholly divine which is not ourselves, and makes for
righteousness. The instant we get beyond this in our
definitions of Deity we fall into anthropomorphism
and its attendant train of dogmas, Apostolic, Nicene,
or Athanasian, all of which are but - human meta
physics, and the product of minds untrained to dis
tinguish between things and ideas. “ Learned reli
gion ” is the pseudo-science of dogmatic theology; a
separable accretion which never had any business to
be attached to Christianity, never did it any good, and
now does it great harm. In the Apostles’ Creed we
have the popular science of that day. In the Nicene
Creed, the learned science. In the Athanasian Creed,
�24
"Jesus versus Christianity.
the learned science, with a strong dash of violent and
vindictive temper. And these three creeds, and with
them the whole of our so-called orthodox theology,
are founded upon words which Jesus, in all proba
bility, never uttered, inasmuch as they are inconsis
tent with the essential spirit of his teaching, and are
ascribed to him as spoken after his death.
Of the capacity of people at that time to compose
a form of belief for us, we may judge by their ideas
on cosmogony, geography, history, and physiology.
We know what those ideas were, and their faculty for
Bible criticism was on a par with their pther faculties.
To be worth anything, literary and scientific criticism
require the finest heads and the most sure tact. They
require, besides, that the world and the world’s experi
ence shall have come some considerable way. There
must be great and wide acquaintance with the history
of the human mind, knowledge of the manner in
which men have thought, their way of using words
and what they mean by them, delicacy of perception
and quick tact, and besides all these, an appreciation
of the spirit of the time. What is called orthodox
theology is, then, no other than an immense misunder
standing of the Bible, due to the junction of a talent
for abstruse reasoning with much literary inexperi
ence. The Athanasian Creed is a notion-work based
on a chimaera. It is the application of forms of Greek
logic to a chimaera, its own notion of the Trinity, a
notion un-established, not resting on observation and
experience, but assumed to be given in Scripture, yet
not really given there. Indeed, the very expression,
the Trinity, jars with the whole idea and character of
Bible-religion, just as does the Socinian expression, a>
great personal first cause.
What, then, is Christian faith and religion, and how
are we to get at them ? Jesus was above the heads
of his reporters, and to distinguish what Jesus said
and meant, it is necessary to investigate the spirit
�Jesus versus Christianity.
25
which prompted and is involved in the words attri
buted to him. This spirit is identical with that which
made Israel (as expressing himself through his most
highly spiritual writers) the most religious of peoples.
The utterance of Malachi, Righteousness tendeth to life,
life being salvation from moral death, was identical
with the assertion of Jesus that he was the way, the
truth, and the life, inasmuch as the Messiah’s function
was to Srwiy in everlasting righteousness, by exhibiting
it in perfection in his own conduct. Thus, the religion
he taught was personal religion, which consists in
the inward feeling and disposition of the individual
himself, rather than in the performance of outward
acts towards religion or society. The great means
whereby he renewed righteousness and religion were
self-examination, self-renouncement, and mildness.
He succeeded in his mission by virtue of the sweet
reasonableness which every one could recognise, par
ticularly those unsophisticated by the metaphysics of
dogmatic theology. He was thus in advance of the
Old Testament, for while that and its Law said, attend
to conduct, he said, attend to the feelings and dispositions
whence conduct proceeds. It was thus that man came
under a new dispensation, and made a new covenant
with God, or the something not ourselves which makes
for righteousness.
Thus the idea of God, as it is given in the Bible,
rests, not on a metaphysical conception of the
necessity of certain deductions from our ideas of
cause, existence, identity, and the like ; but on a moral
perception of a rule of conduct, not of our own
making, into which we are born, and which exists,
whether we will or no ; of awe at its grandeur and
necessity, and of gratitude at its beneficence. This
is the great original revelation made to Israel, this is
his “ Eternal.” The whole mistake comes from
■ regarding the language of the Bible as scientific
instead of literary, that is, the language of poetry and
�26
Jesus versus Christianity.
emotion, approximative language thrown out at
certain great objects of consciousness which it does
not pretend to define fully.
As the Old Testament speaks about the Eternal
and bears an invaluable witness to him, without ever
yet adequately in w’ords defining and expressing him,
so, and even yet more, do the New Testament writers
speak about Jesus and give a priceless record of him,
without adequately and accurately comprehending
him. They are altogether on another plane, and
their mistakes are not his. It is not Jesus himself
who relates his own miracles to us; who tells us of
his own apparitions after death; who alleges his
crucifixion and sufferings as a fulfilment of prophecy.
It is that his reporters were intellectually men of
their nation and time, and of its current beliefs ; and
the more they were so, the more certain they were to
impute miracles to a wonderful and half-understood
person. As is remarked in ‘The Pilgrim and the
Shrine,’ the real miracle would have been if there
were no miracles in the New Testament. The book
contains all we know of a wonderful spirit, far above
the heads of his reporters, still farther above the
head of our popular theology, which has added its
own misunderstandings of the reporters to their
misunderstanding of Jesus.
The word spirit, made so mechanical by popular
religion that it has come to mean a person without a
hody, is used by Jesus to signify influence. “ Except
a man be born of a new influence he cannot see the
kingdom of God.” Instead of proclaiming what
ecclesiastics of a metaphysical turn call “ the blessed
truth that the God of the universe is a Person,”
Jesus uttered a warning for all time against this un
profitable jargon, by saying: “ God is an influence,
and those who would serve him must serve him not
by any form of words or rites, but by inward motive
and in reality.”
�J
‘ esus versus Christianity.
27
The whole centre of gravity of the Christian
religion, in the popular as well as in the so-callecl
orthodox notion of it, is placed in Christ’s having,
by his death in satisfaction for man’s sins, performed
the contract originally passed in the council of the
Trinity, and having thus enabled the magnified and
non-natural man in heaven, who is the God of
theology and of the multitude alike, to consider his
justice satisfied, and to allow his mercy to go forth on
all who heartily believe that Christ has paid their
debt for them. But the whole structure of material
ising theology, in which this conception of the Atone
ment holds the central place, drops away and dis
appears as the Bible comes to be better known. The
true centre of gravity of the Christian religion is in
the method, and secret of Jesus, approximating, in
their application, even closer to the “ sweet reason
ableness” and unerring sureness of Jesus himself.
And as the method of Jesus led up to his secret, and
his secret was dying to “ the life in this world,” and
living to “ the eternal life,” both his method and his
secret, therefore, culminated in his “ perfecting on
the cross.”
A century has passed since it was said by Lessing,
“ Christianity has failed. Let us try Christ; ” and
the interval has not proved the utterance a fallacy.
Though there never was so much so-called Christian
teaching and preaching in school and church as now,
the progress of civilisation has been little else than
another name for progress in immorality, whether in
the form of trade dishonesty, social selfishness, or
any other. The reason is plain. It is not God as
righteousness and Jesus as the way thereto that is
inculcated, but systems of impossible metaphysics and
rituals that profit nothing. The spread of intelligence
is leading the masses daily more and more to reject
what is good in religion, because their intelligence
does not go far enough, and because their teachers
�e8
Jesus versus Christianity.
insist on substituting human inventions for eternal
truth. Alike within the Established Church and
without, it is the teaching vain and foolish. Even
politics are degraded by its influence. For, as Mr
Arnold asks, “ What is to be said for men, aspiring to
deal with the cause of religion, who either cannot see
that what the people now require is a religion of the
Bible quite different from that which any of the
churches or sects supply; or who, seeing this, spend
their energies in fiercely battling as to whether the
church shall be connected with the nation in its collec
tive and corporate character, or no ? The thing is to
recast religion. If this is done, the new religion will
be the national one. If it is not done, separating the
nation in its collective and corporate character from
religion will not do it. It is as if men’s minds were
much unsettled about mineralogy, and the teachers
of it were at variance, and no teacher was convincing,
and many people, therefore, were disposed to throw
the study of mineralogy overboard altogether. What
would naturally be the first business for every friend
of the study ? Surely to establish on sure grounds
the value of the study, and to put its claims in a new
light, where they could no longer be denied. But if
he acted as our Dissenters act in religion, what would
he do ? Give himself heart and soul to a furious
crusade against keeping the Government School of
Mines ! ”
This brings us to another aspect of the allegorical
romance already referred to. Mr Maitland repre
sents the church of the ‘ By and By ’ as a church at
once national and undogmatic. That is, it is not
only the crowning division of the educational depart
ment of the State; but it is untrammelled by any
dog ma that can exclude any citizen from a share in
its conduct and advantages. For none can own him
self a dissenter in regard to a church whose teaching
is restricted to the inculcation of righteousness, and
�Jesus versus Christianity.
29
follows Christ in the work of restoring the intuitions
to their proper supremacy over convention and tra
dition, and maintaining them there.
Archdeacon Denison has already uttered a lament
over even the remote prospect of such a “creedless
and sacramentless church ” finding a footing in this
country. But what may not the man who can
reconcile the pursuit of righteousness with reason,
say of the prospect afforded now? We take the
answer from ‘ The Fair Haven.’
“ Let a man travel over England, north, south,
east, and west, and in his whole journey he will
hardly find a single spot from which he cannot see
one or several churches. There is hardly a hamlet
which is not also the centre for the celebration of our
Redemption by the death and resurrection of Christ.
Not one of these churches, not one of the clergy who
minister therein, not one single village school in all
England, but must be regarded as a fountain of error,
if not of deliberate falsehood. Look where they may,
they cannot escape from the signs of a vital belief in
the resurrection. All these signs are signs of super
stition only; it is superstition which they celebrate
and would confirm; they are founded upon sheer
fanaticism, or at the best upon sheer delusion ; they
poison the fountain-heads of moral and intellectual
well-being, by teaching men to set human experience
on the one side, and to refer their conduct to the sup
posed will of a personal anthropomorphic God who
was actually once a baby—who was born of one of his
own creatures—and who is now locally and corporeally
in heaven, “of reasonable soul and human flesh sub
sisting.” Such an one as we are supposing cannot
even see a clergyman without saying to himself,
“ There goes one whose whole trade is the promotion
of error ; whose whole life is devoted to the upholding
of the untrue.”
How different it will be when the teaching in church
�"Jesus versus Christianity.
and school alike are built upon the axiom ascribed to
them in ‘ By and By,’ that “ As in the region of
Morals, the Divine Will can never conflict with
the Moral law; so, in the region of Physics, the
Divine Will can never conflict with the Natural
law.”
It must be so some day. “ It is not for man to live
for ever in the nursery. As in the history of an indi
vidual, so in that of a people, there is a period when
larger views must prevail and greater freedom of
action be accorded; when life will have many sides,
and hold relations with a vast range of facts and
interests, of which none can be left out of the account
without detriment to all concerned. Formerly, it
may be, men were able, or content, to recognise their
relations with the infinite on but a single side of their
nature. When a strongly marked line divided the
object of their religious emotions from all other ob
jects, when that alone was deemed divine, and all
else constituted the profane or secular, there may
have been excuse for their accordance of supremacy
to the one class of emotions, and of inferior respect,
or even contempt, to the other. But we have passed
out of that stage; we know no such distinction in
kind between the various classes of our emotions.
They all are human, and therefore all divine. They
all serve to connect us with the universe of which
we are a portion, the whole of which universe must
be equally divine for us, though we may rank some
of its uses above others in reference to our own
nature. Thus, if there is nothing that is specially
sacred for us, it is because there is nothing that is
really profane; but all is sacred, from the least to
the greatest. And this is the lesson that the churches
have yet to learn. Let us complete the Reformation
by freeing our own church from its ancient limita
tions, which are of the nursery. Let us release our
teachers from the corner in which they have so long
�Jesus versus Christianity.
31
been cramped, and they will soon learn to take greater
delight in exploring the many mansions which com
pose the whole glorious house of the universe, and
unfolding in turn to their hearers whatever they can
best tell, whether of science, philosophy, religion, art,
or morality, not necessarily neglecting those spiritual
metaphysics to which they have in great measure
hitherto been restricted, and the consequence of
which restriction has been but to distort them and
all else from their due proportion. In the church
thus reformed, all subjects that tend to edification
will be fitting ones for the preacher. But whatever
the subject, the method will have to be but one,
always the scientific, never the dogmatic method.
The appeal will be to the intellects, the hearts, and
the consciences of the living, never to mere authority,
living or dead. There will be no heresy, because no
orthodoxy; or rather, the question of heresy as against
orthodoxy will be a question of method, not of con
clusions. From the pulpits of such a church no genu
ine student or thinker will be excluded, but will find
welcome everywhere from congregations composed,
not of the women only and the weaker brethren, but
of men, men with brains and culture ! Who knows
what edifices of knowledge may be reared, what
reaches of spiritual perception may be attained, upon
a basis from which all the rubbish of ages has been
cleared away, and where all that is useful and true
in the past is built into the foundations of the future !
Who can tell how nearly we may attain to the per
fections of the blessed when, no longer strait
ened in heart and mind and spirit by a narrow
sectarianism, but with the scientific and the verifiable
everywhere substituted for the dogmatic and the
incomprehensible, the veil which has so long shrouded
the universe as with a thick mist shall be altogether
withdrawn, when the All is revealed without stint to
our gaze in such degree as each is able to bear, and
�32
Jesus versus Christianity.
Theology no longer serves but to paint and darken
the windows through which man gazes out into the
infinite!
Thus reformed, amended, and enlarged, the esta
blished churches of Great Britain will be no exclu
sive corporations, watched with jealous eyes of less
favoured sects. Nonconformity will disappear, for
there will be nothing to nonconform to : Fanaticism,
for there will be no Dogma; Intolerance and Bigotry,
for there will be no Infallibility. Comprehensive, as
all that claims to be national and human ought to be,
no conditions of membership, will be imposed to
entitle any to a share of its benefits: but every
variety of opinion will find expression and a home
precisely in the degree to which it may commend
itself to the general intelligence.
The bitterness of sectarian animosity thus extin
guished, and no place found for dogmatic assertion
or theological hatred, it will seem as if the first heaven
and the first earth had passed away, and a new heaven
and new earth had come, in which there was no more
sea of troubles or aught to set men against each other
and keep them from uniting in aid of their common
welfare. Lit by the clear light of the cultivated
intellect, and watered by the pure river of the deve
loped moral sense, the State will be free to grow
into a veritable city of God, where there shall be no
more curse of poverty or crime, no night of intole
rant stupidity, but all shall know that which is good
for all, from the least to the greatest.”*
“ What, then, becomes of the Revelation ? ” asks
one of the hero in ‘ By and By.’ “ My friend,” is
the reply, “ so long as there exist God and a Soul,
there will be a revelation ; but the sold must be a free
one.”
* ‘How to Complete the Reformation.’ By Edward Mait
land. Thomas Scott.
�
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
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
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
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
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.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
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
A name given to the resource
Jesus versus Christianity
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 32 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: "By A Cantab," Includes bibliographical references. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Printed by C.W. Reynell, London.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Thomas Scott
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1873
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
CT119
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
[Unknown]
Subject
The topic of the resource
Jesus Christ
Christianity
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<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 (Jesus versus Christianity), 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>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Christianity-Controversial Literature
Conway Tracts
Jesus Christ
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/464c09afd8158c52ea4ef7b7626b4636.pdf?Expires=1779321600&Signature=MPsZBMoHIGRtuPuU%7EVdldDfxg7XMp9GxsRVMlKBbXNOVcFND6WDgwbyEiRco6IsuvvpGXWi0wMqlQURLJXCaUx2J66zAGk-QDie64u6CsEhmhxMfDxQW5UWAL4GAq9j%7EAznUlYOMG7vkl6yb-Vx84vsDvgclBC2E62ar2bzuB19hYF3GlhO7to8-yaoRCwKB5ksSU3Pn2BaFvzWiiYMXR6c7U-KKaZJg0a3oHDSqKFQQc0R3R5Hy48qqf8GCtJ8tP5arhwDv9Sd16kkDyf4VksaxN0LoXNTwAs90ZX6iCMInzrlShwqs3Ww8bKfmOpQWwbqcIMXnbqme-12mqiA5Jg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
77238b2ecb8f530384e96db4842e08b2
PDF Text
Text
THE VIRGIN BIRTH
AND THE GOSPEL OF THE INFANCY
By C. C. Martindale, S.J.
That Jesus Christ was born of a Virgin is part of
the Catholic faith.1 All admit that the Gospels, in
their present form, assert it (M i16,18'25 and L I34-35 3 23).
The Church has again and again formally declared it,
explaining her assertion as implying not only t1
negative doctrine that Jesus Christ had no h’
father, but that His Mother remained virginHis birth as before it, throughout the
life. No further commentary upon, nor
deductions from, her doctrine does sh£ ' ‘
That the doctrine is untrue was, however
' aa&d
both in ancient and modern times ; and of t/U-i attack
we shall first give an outline.
I
i. Cerinthus (c. ioo), herald of the Judaizing
Gnostics, declared that Jesus was not virgin-born
because (Irenaeus says with simplicity2) “ it seemed to
1 The formula Born of the Virgin Mary recurs in the creeds. Pope
Siricius in 392 approves the condemnation of Bonosus’ assertion that
Mary, virgin at Christ’s birth, bore other children ; Leo I. in 449
dwells, against Eutyches, upon the miracle of a virginity inviolate by
child-bearing; in 539 John II. repeats this, using as normal the title
ever-virgin ; the Lateran Council of 649 proclaims Mary ever-virgin
and immaculate, her virginity persisting indissoluble even after her Son’s
birth, and Toledo XI. (675) expands its stately paradoxes. Paul IV. in
1544 reaffirms against the Socinians that Mary “ever persevered in
integrity of virginity, that is, before the Birth, in it, and after it.” This
tradition is undisputed. Bannwart-Denzinger, Enchiridion, ed. IO,
1908, 2 etc., 86, 91, 144, 202, 256, 282, 993.
2 Adu. Heer., I. xxvi. 2, P.G., 7689 [we shall thus refer to the volume
and column of the Patrologia Grceca (P.L. = Pair. Latina} of Migne].
�2
History and Dogma
him impossible.” Deity could not be sullied by human
contact: the Christ, therefore, or the Spirit, descended
at the Baptism on the son of Joseph and Mary.
So too Carpocrates (y. 125).1 Justin (y. 150) shows
that the modern arguments were, in all essentials,
anticipated.
In Justin’s Dialogue the Jew Trypho attacks the Virgin Birth :
Isaiah’s famous prophecy,2 he argues, is mistranslated: the
Hebrew ’•almah means “young woman” (so Theod., Aq.), not
“virgin” (LXX.). The promise was fulfilled in Hezekiah(7VW.,67).
A pre-existent Christ, born in time, is “ disconcerting prap^o^ :
contrary to (general) expectation ?] and indeed nonsense ” (48).
In short, “do not dare,” he says, “to tell fairy tales, lest
you be proved as frivolous as the Greeks’’—referring to the
hero-births to which Justin, as an argumentum adhominem, had
compared (in 1 Apol., 54: 6409) Christ’s.3
Origen puts into the mouth of Celsus (r. 180)
language which many a modern rationalist would not
disavow.
The Isaian prophecy is denied (r. Cels., i. 34); hero
births (e.g. Plato’s) alleged (c. 37); and especially the
blasphemy, already current, that Jesus was born of
Mary and Panthera—a legend which in some shape
or other survived for centuries.4 To refer to this, says
Origen, is mere ribaldry (c. 32, 37 : 1 1719,733).
But Jerome’s controversy with Helvidius (who
denied Mary’s perpetual virginity, c. 383) is even
more striking. Helvidius argues as follows :—
Mary is Joseph’s “espoused wife”; destined, therefore, to
full wedlock. Mi18 implies that in time the marriage was con1 For the Ebionites, infr., p. 5, n. 2.
2 714: Ecce uirgo concipiet Vulgate ; lSoi> yirapOevos LXX. ;. . . veavis
Theodotion, Aquila.
3 P.G., 6629- 58°. Cf. Irenaeus’ opponents, 7943, etc. A few Gentile
converts believed Christ of human parentage. Ir., 6381; cf. Orig. in
Mt. xvi. 12 : I3141S. They were formally disapproved.
4 Panthera (or Pandera): the name is genuine and not an anagram
(Deissmann, Noldeke): usually represented as a centurion. The story is
highly involved, and may be connected with pre-Christian legend. It
is taken up in the Talmud, reappears in the thirteenth-century pamphlet
Toledoth fesu, and in modern literature of a scurrilous description.
See Herford, Christianity in Talmud and Midrash, pp. 35, 348;
Lagrange, Messianisme chez les fuifs, p. 288, 1909,
�The Virgin Birth
3
summated (c. 3). Joseph knew her not until she brought forth
her first-born ; he did so, therefore, afterwards (c. 5), and she
had later sons (c. 9). Indeed, the Gospels speak of Jesus’
brethren (c. 11). Finally, virginity is no holier than wedlock
(c. 18): P.L., 23185- 189, 1921 202. The arguments adduced in the
controversy with Jovinianus, c. 385, and by Ambrose against
Bonosus, c. 390 (De institutions uirginum, c. 5 : 16314) add
nothing new.
2. The modern attack 1 begins with Voltaire, and
takes definite form first in the system which deals
with the Gospels as with historical or poetical “ myths,”
according as it conceives the objective, historical facts
to have been distorted by the author’s tendency to
account supernaturally for natural events, or at least
to idealize them.2 Genuine “ myth ”—the dressingup of a doctrine in historical guise, though no, or
barely any, objective fact corresponding to the
tale exist at all—is the system of D. F. Strauss’ Life
(1838).3 Popular feeling, individual writers, moulded
the myth round the memory of a man who may not
even have existed. Gradually the legend grew—and
here the system profited by Chr. Baur’s new theory,
that the Gospels were but second-century productions.
Not only had an O.T. “ Messiah-myth ” long been in
existence, and needed but to be applied to a popular
name; but a century and more was to elapse, during
which it might grow into the full, familiar Gospel.
Thus, it was foretold Messiah should be born at
Bethlehem, and work miracles. Jesus, therefore, must
have been born there, and shall be credited with miracles.
The Shepherds, the Magi, are complementary stories
picturing the universality of His influence.
He
dies, but this influence survives, indestructible ; His
1 Cf Durand, D Enfance de Jesus-Christ, Paris, 1908 (Engl, tr.,
Philadelphia, 1910), c. 3, p. 35. We warmly recommend this little
book, to which we are throughout deeply indebted.
2 Cf, e.g., Gottlob Paulus, Leben Jesu, 1828. The application of his
method is often clumsy—angelic apparitions he explains as dreams;
Gabriel, as a flesh-and-blood adventurer.
3 Thus, “Jesus denounces the spiritually barren synagogue. This may
be fact. He describes it as a barren, withered fig-tree. This is parable.
Soon the myth grows up that He cursed and shrivelled a real fig-tree.”
�4
History and Dogma
name is exalted—that is, He is risen and ascended.
Historically, a virgin birth, a resurrection, are false;
“ religiously,” they are eternally true.—Now that Baur’s
theory is universally abandoned, literary criticism
dissects the Gospel texts, assigning to “ editors,”
or interpolation, the passages teaching the Virgin
Birth. Thus, the “ original ” genealogy in Matthew
made Joseph the father of Jesus;1 in the “ earliest ”
form of Luke I, verses 34-35 were missing;2 and the
theories are many and complicated—too much so for
M. Loisy, who allows the Gospels to be no patchwork :
the Evangelists wrote what we read and meant what
we believe, but only because the “ faith ” of even that
early date dictated this.3
To this “faith” Prof. O. Pfleiderer assigned 4 three stages : first,
men felt that Jesus was the Saviour-Messiah—was made God’s
“ Son ” by adoption, at the Resurrection or else at the Baptism.
So Mark ; so the earlier parts of Acts and of Paul. But afterwards
Paul remembered the Rabbinic notion of the ideal Man, the pre
existent Image and “ Son ” of God—he it was who revealed
himself in flesh ; while John, under the spell of Alexandrian
theosophy, acknowledges a genuine “incarnation” of the Word.
But though Jesus was thus morally and metaphysically “ Son of
God,” neither Synoptists, nor Paul, nor John felt this to conflict
with His purely human descent. A virgin birth is not yet above
the horizon. Quite late, in the second century, it was asked,
If He be Son of God, why give Him a human father? Heroes,
born of gods and women, abounded in mythology. A synthesis
was made : physically, too, Jesus should be God’s Son, and His
mother, a virgin. The Gospels were then “emended” at the
bidding of this now completed “ faith.”5
We propose succinctly to consider the authenticity
of the Gospel “ Infancy ” record, especially in view of
1 Schmiedel, Biblical Encycl., iii, 2962 ; infr., p. 13.
2 Cf. Harnack, Hist, of Dogma, vol. i. p. 100, n. 1, Engl, tr., 1897 ;
infr., p. 6.
3 A. Loisy, L' fa-vangile et Ffaglise, ed. 2, 1903, p. 31.
4 Das Christusbild des urchristlichen Glaubens, 1903.
5 See Cheyne’s Biblical Encyl., art. Mary, Nativity, etc.; and
F. C. Conybeare, the Standard, nth May 1905, for examples of popular
sentiment. The Declaration on Biblical Criticism by 1725 Anglican
Clergymen, ed. H. Handley, 1906, asks that the historicity of the
narrative of Christ’s conception be kept an open question.
�The Virgin Birth
5
early Christian belief, and in relation to the rest of
the New Testament, with, which it is considered to
conflict: we shall examine a few particular points on
which Matthew and Luke are said to contradict them
selves, or one another, or to be intrinsically at fault;
finally, we shall discuss the sources given as those of
the Infancy narrative by those who do not believe it
reposes upon fact.
II
It is said, first, that the Gospels, as they stand, give
us no true presentment of the facts. The text has
been tampered with.1 We hear :—
(i.) (a) The Ebionites’2 copy of Matthew began
only at c. 3, the Mission of the Baptist.—But we
know this only from Epiphanius ;3 if then we accept
it, we must also accept his statement (ibi) that they
had struck off cc. 1 and 2 in the interests of their
heresy. He also says (zb.) that the Nazarene Ebionites
used the full text, as did the early heretics Cerinthus
and Carpocrates.4 So there is no extrinsic evidence
that Matthew began, originally, with the Mission of
John.
(b) The unity of M’s “ Childhood Gospel ” is only
1 We must here disregard the argument that the Gospels must be
untruthful because they relate miracles, and miracles cannot happen.
Eliminate the miracles, it is suggested, and you will find the historical
substratum of fact. Be that as it may, all we assert, here, is that there
is no evidence of an “original ” Gospel of which ours is a later edition
modified in the interests of the Virgin Birth.
2 A vague name attached to very early heretics of Judaizing tendencies
or (Duchesne, Hist, anc.de VEglise, i. 124) a survival of Judseo-Christians,
in a state of “arrested” development, or retrogression, as to dogma.
Some admitted, some rejected, the Virgin Birth. Origen, c. Cels., v. 6l :
n1277 ; Eus., H.E., iii. 27: 20273. Those rejected it who believed
Jesus to have become Messiah at His baptism. Epiph., Adu. Heer.
I. xxx. 16: 41432.
3 TA, 14.
4 Tatian’s Harmony of the Gospels omits M’s genealogy (as it does
L’s), not because it did not exist, but because Tatian aimed at giving,
not a complete but a continuous account of the contents of the Gospels
(though infr,, p. 13); anyhow, he keeps i18-25, which contain the
Virgin Birth. Though in some MSS. M I18 begins in capital letters,
that may be merely because the genealogy was omitted in public readings.
�6
History and Dogma
artificial. The genealogy originally made Jesus the
son of Joseph, and was clumsily altered by an editor
to fit the Infancy stories, which in their turn were
affixed to the pristine record. This centres wholly
round i16, on which cf. infr., p. 15, n. 3.
(ii.) The internal unity of Luke’s “ Infancy ” seemed,
till recently, obvious to all, and its homogeneity with
the rest of his Gospel to most; though the heretic
Marcion, unable to believe, not, like the Ebionites,
that Jesus had God for His Father, but that He had
a woman for mother, struck out of his text the
whole Infancy record ;1 while Schmiedel2 would, on
the a priori assumption that the earliest Gospel must
have been Ebionite, assign 221'52, where Christ seems
but an ordinary Jewish child, to an ancient document,
while the “supernatural” 1-220 is a later addition.—
But 221 clearly supposes i31—the flow of the chapters
is quite continuous. To put this down to “ editorial
touching up” which conceals original divergences,
and then to tell us what those divergences were, is
perverse.
Prof. Harnack is, however, contented if L i34*35 be suppressed
as interpolated. («) L is consistent in his use of particles. But
here appear 8tJ> (wherefore}, else only in f (which H. considers
doubtful), and «rel (seeing that}, found perhaps nowhere else in
the Third Gospel. But all critical editions keep 8d> in 77; and H.
(who argued thus in 1901) has since (1906) proved Acts to be by
the same author as that Gospel, namely, Luke. But in Acts, Sto
occurs frequently 1—(b} Verses 34-35 are said to break the flow of
the chapter, adding a new and discrepant explanation of the
Child’s origin to that in 31-32. They add to it, granted : they do
not contradict it. Mary’s question, “ How shall this be ?” etc., is
natural enough, when all the circumstances, so far, had been so
strange ; doubly natural if she had resolved to remain a virgin,
as Catholics piously believe.3
1 Iren., Adti. Heer., I. xxvi. 2 : 7s88, III. xii. 12 : zA906 ; Tert., Adv.
Marc., i. 1: 2247, ix. 2 : zA363 ; cf. Plummer, who (Gosp. acc. to St. Luke,
1900, p. lxix.) shows Marcion’s text was mutilated, not ours added to.
2 Encycl. Bibl., iii. 2960.
3 We are told, too, that if Jesus is to be virginally conceived,
Gabriel accredits that greater miracle by quoting a lesser one (the con
ception of John by the aged Elizabeth). —There is here no difficulty.
�The Virgin Bzrth
1
But the Childhood narratives have positive claims
to belief. Luke’s preface (iw) is a revelation of the
writer’s industry, common sense, and real feeling of
a historian’s duty and responsibility.
He seeks
“ eye-witnesses from the beginning ”; he claims to
surpass, in order and accuracy, contemporary ac
counts ; his object is the historical grounding of the
doctrine preached. What were his authorities? Many
have thought, Mary herself.* The whole of this part
1
of Luke is written from her point of view (Matthew,
from Joseph’s). Delicacy of touch, intimacy of detail,
are felt everywhere. Women (to whom Luke, the
physician, will have had easier access) figure much in
his pages, especially those holy persons who were much
in Mary’s company.2 Then the events he records,
though lost sight of in the “ hidden ” thirty years, must
have had some publicity, at any rate. From these and
other sources he may have gained his oral tradition.
Moreover, it is acknowledged that, so markedly Hebraic in
their structure (as contrasted with the rest of his Gospel and the
Acts) are the first three chapters of Luke, both linguistically and in
local colour, so minutely accurate and prolific in details of place,
person, cult,3 that it is practically clear he is here using an
older Hebrew (or Aramaic) document.4 This brings us very close
to the beginnings! Anyhow, that “faith working on history”
In the O.T., Yahweh constantly gives a marvellous sign to guarantee
His future performance of a yet greater thing. And to this the Angel’s
concluding words look forward.—But, Zachary is punished for his
“ How shall I know?” Mary praised for her “How shall this be?”
Surely contradictory ?—No : Mary believes, accepts, asks the “how ” of
what is to be. Zachary hesitates : is he to believe ? How feel sure ?—One thing is clear : Mary never supposes that the promised child will be
Joseph’s {cf. Plummer, adloc.').—Harnack’s contention that this “con
versation” (I34, 35) takes Mary out of her role of “silence” may be
neglected. Of course, it forces him to assign the Magnificat to Elizabeth.
On this, see C.T. S. The Magnificat: Its Author and Meaning, by M. N.
1 So W. Ramsay (ITas Christ born at Bethlehem? 1898, p. 74: we
cordially recommend this excellent book) and others.
2 Sanday, Hastings’ Diet. Bibl., ii. 644.
3 Especially those connected with Zachary (L alone in the N.T. uses
the technical word “course,” I8 : he knows the angel stood “at the
right ” of the incense-altar), Anna, etc.
4 Plummer, op. c., p. 45 ; Dalman, Die Worte Jesu, 1898, p. 31.
�8
History and Dogma
should have created this sober, profoundly “ Palestinian ” narra
tive 1 and the canticles in particular,2 is a gratuitous hypothesis.
What pious imagination did create, was a library of “ apocryphal
gospels.” A single page of their insipid anecdotes, gross realisms,
and vulgar wonder-lust convinces us that between them and our
Gospels is the gulf between human and Divine.
As for the story in Matthew, its homogeneity is
generally admitted — each part presupposes what
precedes—and above all, its Palestinian colouring,
its insistence on the fulfilment and applicability of
prophecy, proclaim a Palestinian origin and audience.
Certain details we shall examine below.3*
We have therefore the right to conclude that
Matthew and Luke are homogeneous, authentic docu
ments, intrinsically intact. There is no evidence from
tradition or even legend that they were added to or
interpolated. On the contrary, we know that those
who tampered with them did so to excise, not to
expand, in favour of their own theories. And we
urge that those who, by internal, literary criticism,
1 Lepin, Jdsus Messie, etc., 1906, p. 62; Rose, 5. Luc, 1904, P2 On their “ essentially Hebraic and pre-Christian character,” to
gether with their exclusive appropriateness to the occasion to which L
assigns their utterance, see Durand, pp. 158-165, and the references
in note 1 there. L may have cast the traditional sentiments into shape :
scarcely, have adapted older Jewish, or even Christian, liturgical
hymns. For the special question of the Enrolment, and of the reputed
pagan origins of this story, cf. infr., p. 17.
3 P. 19. It is said, we saw, that the phrase, “he knew her not until
shehad brought forth her [first-born: omitted by excellent MSS.; probably
a gloss from L 27] son,” implies that Mary lived afterwards with Joseph.
—It need not do so (in Hebrew idiom, what is denied until an event is
not thereby asserted as happening after it; cf. M 2820, 1 Co 1528, Ps 1223,
already quoted by Jerome, 23189); and must not be so interpreted, if it
clash thus with other evidence. — “ Her first-born son,” L 27, is taken
as implying that Mary had other children.—Again, it need not, and in
these circumstances must not, be so taken. “ First-born,” to a Jew,
connoted, not later births, but the privileges legally due to one who
“ opened the womb.” L looks only to the typical value of the word as
applied to the Eldest-born, the heir of Yahweh’s promises. So Israel
is constantly called, in O.T., Yahweh’s first-born, without implying in
the least that the other nations were His later born. That M and
L freely speak of the “brethren” of Jesus, and L of Joseph as His
father, e.g. 2®, is psychologically true and no contradiction. So do the
apocryphal Gospels, which insist violently on Mary’s virginity.
�The Virgin Birth
9
affirm that they detect joints and rivets in the text,
have no right to do so: only a conviction that the
doctrine of the Virgin Birth must be a late develop
ment, while it is agreed that the Gospels are fairly
early, can account for the discovery of reasons for
the excision of those passages in which that doctrine
is mentioned.
Ill
But Mark (whose Gospel is now considered by
nearly all to be the earliest of the Synoptists, and
indeed was probably treated by Matthew as the
nucleus of his own work), Mark, we are told, knows
nothing of the Virgin Birth, though he must have
known it had it been believed in his day, and must
have mentioned it had he known it. Paul ignores
this dogma, and indeed virtually denies it, holding
Jesus to be God’s “ Son ” because adopted by the
Father. John ignores it no less, explaining Christ’s
relation to the Father in terms of Alexandrian Logosdoctrine. Do not Matthew, then, and Luke clash
with Mark, Paul, and John ? Do we not see the
legend, with our own eyes, springing up, late, and on
Palestinian soil ?
(i.) The Gospels reflect what was currently preached,
not necessarily everything that was actually believed;
for all will grant that the articles of the faith were
not at first preached with equal emphasis or publicity.
Mark reflects this earlier preaching with accuracy.
The claim of Jesus to be Messiah, Teacher and Saviour
of men ; His ransoming death and victorious resurrec
tion ; His foundation of a Church, and the minimum
of discipline conditioning membership—this is preached
in the Acts, and Mark’s Gospel supplies a more than
sufficient historical background thereto. But none of
this presupposes, or flows from, the Virgin Birth.1
1 It cannot too emphatically be recalled that Jesus is not Son of God
because He is virgin-born ; nor does pre-existence necessitate virgin
birth. This misconception pervades and stultifies most of the theological
argument of Lobstein’s Virgin Birth of Christ (Eng. tr.), 1903, e.g.
I
2
�IO
History and Dogma
Jesus Himself but gradually unfolded His doctrine,
starting from Jewish beliefs which He was to tran
scend and transform. There was much His hearers
“ could not bear ” at first. And sheer consideration for
Mary’s feelings will have precluded too public a preach
ing of this exquisitely delicate event in her lifetime.1
(ii.) As for the “silence of John,” and indeed his
“substitution” of the Incarnation of the Logos for
the Virgin Birth as explanation of the Divine Sonship
of Jesus, we briefly say: (a) His doctrine does not
exclude that of the Virgin Birth ; indeed, (£) it in a
sense involves it, for apparently the Churches of Asia,
at anyrate, linked the Divinity and Virgin Birth more
closely together than modern theology would.2 And
{c) John, who certainly knew Matthew and Luke,
and wrote his Gospel almost entirely to assert the true
doctrine of the Divinity of Christ, would surely have
contradicted them had he thought them wrong.3
p. 88. A necessary connection between the Divinity and the Virgin
Birth, he says (p. 89), “is the official theology in all Christian confes
sions.” That is not so.
1 Mk’s phrase “son of Mary,” 63, when M, L, and J freely speak
of Joseph as “father” of Jesus, and his insistence on the title “Son
of God,” may hint that he (not having related the Birth) took special
care to use unambiguous language (V. M'Nabb, O.P., “ Mk’s Witness
to the V. Birth, ” Journal Theol. Studies, April 1907, p. 448). Anyhow,
the incident in 321-31 does not prove that his Mary is ignorant of the
nature and destiny of her Son. It is argued that 321’31 go closely
together: Mary joins with the relatives (? friends? neighbours?) who
kept saying (or was it the crowd!} that Jesus was mad (? “ beside him
self,” i.e. an enthusiast?). This interpretation is violent and against
tradition. Mary’s anxiety, and wonder, and gradual realization of the
future {cf. L 250, “and they understood not”) are no stumbling-block to
us. “ Christ’s Mother, supernaturally informed in detail of all that was
to happen in her Son’s life, and assisting unmoved at its accomplishment,
would be a character worthy only of the apocryphal gospels ” (Durand,
op. c., 105). Cf. Vasssall Phillips, Mr Conybeare on Mk. 321, Lk. 11 ,
Oxford, 1910.
2 Gore, Dissertations on the Incarnation, 1896, p. 8.
3 A. Carr, Expositor, April 1907, p. 311 ; Expos. Times, 1907, xviii.
521. If. B, the very probable reading, I13, “who not of blood, nor of
the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God was born”
(eyewf)9-n : natus est), which excludes a human parentage for Christ.
Authorities in Durand, op. c., p. 107, n. I ; Tertull., De Came Chr.,
19, 24 : 2784-791, is explicit.
�The Virgin Birth
II
(iii.) But does not Paul ignore, if not exclude, our
dogma ? He has been held to leave the human life of
Christ so much in the shade, that it has been argued
he knew nothing of it—even that no human life existed,
and Christ was a “mythical person”! Yet his allu
sions to it are frequent, and he always presupposes it.
And he too is absorbed in his message—faith, forgive
ness, glorification in and through Christ, for Gentile
as for Jew. This is “his” gospel, and it neither rests
upon, nor leads to, the Virgin Birth.1 Doubtless he
maintains strongly2 that Christ is Son of David
“according to the flesh.” But he is son of David
whom Jewish law recognises as such; and Jesus, born
of the legal wife of Joseph, and not by adultery, is
Joseph's legal son, and heir of Joseph’s ancestor. Legal
sonship satisfies the prophecies without excluding
superior, Divine filiation. To this Jesus looks when
He deprecates insistence on the Davidic descent
(M 2241, Mk 1235, L 2041; cf Ro i4): that is not His
only, nor chief, prerogative.3 Nor can the two texts,
Ac 1333, Ro i2-4, prove for a moment that Paul thought
Jesus became God only at the Resurrection. The
Son pre-exists the human life from eternity. The
Divine filiation is of nature, not the result of baptism,
miracles, transfiguration, resurrection, virginal con1 We do not rely upon the expression “made of a woman,” Ga 44,
vividly though it recall I Co it13 and Gen 2s3. It does perhaps imply
birth from a mother (not merely human birth), while paternal generation
would have suited P’s argument perhaps better could he have adduced
it.—Nor will we argue that he conceives transmitted guilt as a taint in
the flesh, to be got rid of only by a break in the paternal line. The
wrong idea that Catholic doctrine (at any rate) so regards original
sin, vitiates the rest of Lobstein’s argument (<?/>. c., p. 79) that miracul
ous birth was “anecessary condition of the Saviour’s sinlessness.”
The substantial union of the Word with the humanity at once made the
Person, Jesus, true God and Son of God, and made sin (and its con
sequent subtraction of supernatural grace, which is original sin)
impossible in Him, quite independently of virgin birth.
2 Ro i3, 413, Ga 316, 2 Ti 28, etc. ; cf. Ac 230 (these are especially
strongLobstein, op. c., pp. 52, 53, thinks they necessitate human
generation. But they are conventional formulas).
3 On His so-called “rejection” of Davidic filiation, cf. Durand, pp.
118-122 ; Dalman, op. c., p. 234.
�12
History and Dogma
ception.1 Because of the filiation, these glories are
His. Because at certain crises (baptism, etc.) the
Sonship asserts itself and is recognized by God, “ this
day have I begotten thee ” is quoted ; and “ it was
impossible',' St Peter had long ago preached (Ac 224),
“ that hell should hold Him who was Captain of Life "
(315 ; cf. He 210).
All these writers were men who had known each
other intimately—Luke, at any rate, the “ beloved
physician,” the most “scientific” of the Evangelist
historians, was the close companion, and in part
biographer, of Paul. Each and all of them regarded
it as his life’s work to preach the true doctrine about
Jesus Christ. The bonds of personal devotion which
bound them to Him, bound them also to one another.
Deep divergences of doctrine in such men are un
believable. But so profoundly “individual” were their
characters and outlooks—above all, so inexhaustibly
rich, so many-sided, so infinitely communicative was
their subject—that it must not be wondered at if their
accounts are highly personal, and enlarge, illuminate,
complete, though never contradict, each other.
That any of these documents should have ignored or denied
the Virgin Birth is unthinkable, given the tradition of the
Christian Church. They did not create this : they arose within
it, according to and because of it. It is a vicious circle to say :
Christian faith created the Childhood Gospels ; and then : The
first- and second-century tradition rests merely on “ a few texts ”
in Matthew and Luke. The very earliest sub-Apostolic docu
ments2 are amazingly explicit. Ignatius, when he cried that
Our Lord is “made truly of a virgin,” is “born of Mary and
God,” knew surely that his doctrine was not at variance with his
beloved master, John’s ! Once more, the Gospels assume the
Christian faith in their readers.3
1 Phil 25-12, Col i15-21, 1 Co io4, 1545, Ga 4?, 2 Co 521, etc. And
C.T.S. Relig. of Gk. Test., C. C. Martindale, pp. 19, 20.
2 Ignatius (c. Iio), Ephes. 19, and 5; Smyrn. 1: ^ 652. 660,708. Aristides
(c. 125); Justin, 1 Ap., 31: 6377, Dial., c. 84, 100, ib. 673-709 (a magnifi
cent parallel between the virgin Eve and the incorrupt, obedient virgin
Mary, Eve’s advocate); Irenaeus, Adu. Har., i. 10. 1 ; iii. 19. 1:
7s49. 937, especially c. 21, /A 945.
3 Ramsay, op. c., p. 98, etc.
�The Virgin Birth
13
IV
We shall now consider a few points connected with
the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, which, it is urged,
make against the virginity of Mary (the Genealogies,
the Brethren of the Lord), or at least throw doubt
upon the value of Matthew (the Magi, the Flight) or
of Luke (the “ Census ”) as historians at all.
(<2) The Genealogies showing Christ’s descent from
David (M i2-17, L 323"28) agree in three names only :
Joseph, Zorobabel, Salathiel.1 Else, the discrepancy
is complete. This perhaps is why Tatian omitted both
lists in his Diatessaron (supr., p. 5, n. 4). Origen
(c. Cels., ii. 32: 11852) recognises it as a frequent
stumbling-block. How explain it?
Julianus Africanus (ap. Eus., H.E., i. 7 : 2097) suggested (he
owned he had no evidence) that Joseph was born of levirate
marriage,2 Jacob and Heli being brothers, one his legal, one his
real father. But even so, we must assume that they had different
fathers ; and would not this uterine-levirate marriage (in itself of
doubtful possibility) have to be conjectured anew to explain
Salathiel, son of Jechonias (M) and of Neri (L), and yet again, if
indeed Matthan (s. of Eleazer, M) is Matthat (s. of Levi, L) ?
Though Matthew’s deliberate omission of steps in the descent
might account for these differences.—Annius of Viterbo (c. 1490)
suggested that L’s genealogy was that of Mary.3 But this is
against universal ancient belief: Jewish law disregarded maternal
ancestry: when it was felt Mary should be of David’s house,
her pedigree was linked artificially with that of Joseph (Eus., ib. ;
cf. 4881); while the Proteuangelium Iacobi makes her daughter
of Joachim. Moreover, we should have to construe L323, “ being
the son (as was supposed, of Joseph, [but really]) of Heli” [using
1 M’s Matthan »z«y = L’s Matthat.—If Rhesa, L 3s7 ( = “prince,”
and absent from the lists in M and 1 Paralip. 3), were really a title of
Zorobabel, but treated by some earlier copyist whom L reproduces as a
separate proper name, L would here fit with M and also with 1 Par. ;
for L’s Ionas is the Hananiah of 1 Par 319 (omitted by M), and his
Iuda is M’s Ab-iud — 1 Par 3s34 Hodaviah {cf. Ezra 39, 240 ; Neh. 119;
I Par 97. u, where the names interchange).
’
2 One in which a childless widow marries her deceased husband’s
brother, his and her children being legally accounted to the first
husband (Dt 25s).
3 Victorinus {c. 300) says M gives Mary’s genealogy : 5s24.
�14
History and Dogma
whs =son in regard of Joseph,=grandson in regard of Heli] ; or
else, “ son of Joseph the son-in-law of Heli.”
not tolerate this violence.
But the text will
What matters to the Evangelists, is the claim of
Jesus to Davidic rights. That He was “descended
from David ” was tacitly assumed by contemporaries
(M 2241"46) and explicitly recognized by early
preaching;1 while the “Desposyni” (kindred of
Christ—Symeon, son of Clopas His uncle, and two
grandsons of Judas His brother) were in danger
under Domitian as claiming royal, because Davidic,
descent.2 Our genealogies commend, but do not
prove, this claim. It was currently discussed (Eus.,
Ad Steph., iii. 2: P.G., 22896) whether Messiah was to
descend from David through Solomon (dead in
idolatry; his house, in the person of Jechonias,
rejected by God, Jer 2230) or Nathan. Matthew and
Luke satisfy, respectively, the two opinions ; for while
it is through Solomon that the Davidic rights descend
to Joseph and his (legal) Son Jesus; through Nathan
Christ’s true Davidic ancestry may be traced.
Matthew shows Jesus as legal heir of David; Luke,
that He is his Son by physical descent.3 Matthew’s
genealogy is indeed highly conventional. It claims to
consist of three groups of fourteen names.4 To obtain
this, many names had to be omitted ; thus Matthew’s
“ begat ” need never mean “ was father of.” Contrary
to Jewish custom, he inserts women—Rahab, Tamar,
Ruth, Bathsheba—perhaps to suggest that God
1 Ro I3, 2 Ti 28, Ac 2s8, 1323, etc. —M 1522, 2030, <p; 219 show that
in popular opinion (1) Messiah descends from David, (2) Jesus is
Messiah.
2 See this charming story in Africanus, ap. Eus., z'A, and Hegesippus,
ib., iii, 19-32.
3 Durand, p. 201: Comely, Introd. N.T., p. 201, n. 6; F. C.
Burkitt, Evangelion da Mepharrashe, Cambridge, I9°4> & PP- 258-266.
This theory is increasingly accepted. Clearly we have no space to
discuss minor difficulties.
4 In the third, thirteen only occur, making it additionally likely
that M used an existing, already slightly disfigured document. His
symbolism may well allude to the numerical value {fourteen) of the {three')
letters (th) of the name David.
�The Virgin Birth
i5
excludes neither sinner nor stranger from His plan
of mercy. Doctrine, then, dictates his scheme: Luke
keeps closer to “history” in our sense. For while
we may never become sure on what precise system
these lists were drawn up, it is certain that, if the
Evangelists composed them, they did so according
to contemporary ideals as to the construction of
genealogies;1 and if they are quoting official docu
ments, we may assume they do so “ without attribut
ing to them other authority than that of tradition
or of the public registers which provided them.”2
Eusebius actually applies the “ as was supposed ” of
L 323 to the whole list; Luke offers it simply as the
popular opinion as to Jesus’ ancestry !3
1 On various O.T. systems for editing genealogies, cf. Prat, Etudes,
1901, lxxxvi. pp. 488-494; 1902, xciii. pp. 617-620.
2 Cf. Durand, p. 207 ; Brucker, Eludes, 1903, xciv. p. 229 ; 1906, cix.
p. 801.
3 m x 16 reads. “Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom
was born Jesus,” etc. [tV.B. in Latin and Greek the same word stands for
to bear and to beget (gignere, yevvav}]. One group of MSS. accentuates
the virgin-motherhood. “. . . Joseph, to whom being betrothed, the
Virgin Mary bare,” etc. “. . . Joseph, to whom was betrothed the
Virgin Mary ; but the Virgin Mary bare,” etc. The Sinai-Syriac MS.
(admirably edited 1894 by Lewis) astonishingly reads: “Jacob begat
Joseph ; Joseph, to whom was betrothed the Virgin Mary, begat Jesus, ”
etc.—a heterodox text, yet containing, interpolated, the “virgin”
additions. Finally, the Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila (F. C.
Conybeare, Oxford, 1898), a work of c. 430 discovered in 1898, is said
to quote the heterodox phrase; thus: “. . . Joseph, the husband of
Mary, of whom was born Jesus who is called Christ. And Joseph
begat fesus who is called Christ.”—But it is clear that the Jew Aquila’s
quotation stops at the first Christ. He resumes, sophistically : “ And
so (koI often bears this meaning; and indeed in this very dialogue)
Joseph,” etc. The Christian Timothy immediately rebukes him:
“ Quote,” he says, “ correctly and in the right order”; he then him
self quotes M i16, substituting “to whom was betrothed the Virgin
Mary” for “the husband of Mary,” and finally, the ordinary text,
save that ‘ ‘ who was betrothed to Mary, ” and ‘‘ the Christ the Son of
God,” replace “the husband of M.,” and “who is called Christ.” The
dialogue, then, does not support the Sinai-Syriac, whose erratic reading
may be due to (i.) an Ebionite ‘ ‘ correction ” ; (ii.) a copyist’s error, due
to a mechanical continuation of the formula, And X begat Y ; (iii.) the
form in which the original document genuinely stood. No doubt an
official record would put Joseph as father of Jesus. Notice that Sin. Syr. leaves, e.g., verse 18 (which clearly asserts the Virgin Birth) intact,
�16
History and Dogma
(If) The relationship of the “ brethren ” of the Lord1
cannot be defined with certainty. We summarize
possible interpretations as briefly as possible, premising
that the answer to this question can, of course, only
affect the dogma of the perpetual virginity of Mary.
(i.) The “ brethren ” are children of Mary.2
(ii.) They were children of Joseph by a former
marriage. So the Gospel ofJames, and that of Peter
(end of second century); cf. Jerome, Comm, in Mt.,
xii. 4984, and perhaps Clement of Alexandria (9731);
Epiphanius, Cyril of Alexandria, Gregory of Nyssa,
and, hesitatingly, Origen and Hilary, and others per
haps, follow these. Jerome (zA) says that they who
so conjecture are following the dreams of the Apo
cry phas : he proclaims, too, the “virginity” of Joseph
(Adu. Helu., 19: 23203). It is unnecessary to follow
the history of his opinion, which is dear to Catholic
conviction.
(iii.) The “ brethren” were cousins of Jesus.
There is no doubt that
rater, and (what is
of most importance), HS' (ah) in Hebrew and Aramaic
can quite easily mean “ relative,” not strictly brother
and that no one would dream of using this MS. to correct the rest of
the Gospel text; why then insist that its unique reading must alone be
right here ? Read Durand, 74-82; Burkitt, op. c., ii. 265 ; Academy,
17th Nov. 1894-24^ June 1895.
1 James, Jude, Joseph, Simeon. M 1246, 1365, Mk 331, 6s, L 820,
J 212, 75, Ac I14, 2C095: M and Mk speak too of His “sisters.” Cf.
Lightfoot, Ep. to Gal., Dissert. II. ; C. Harris, Diet, of Christ and the
Gospels, 1906, i. 232 ; Corluy, Etudes religieuses, 1878, i. 22; Durand,
221-276 (excellent account). Fl. Josephus, Ant. Iud., xx. 9. 1,
Hegesippus and Julianus in Euseb., H.E., ii. 23, i 7, also refer to the
kinsfolk of the .Lord {supr., p. 14). Their testimony relates to the
years c. 62, 160, 210.
2 Tertullian, already half-heretic, may have taught this {De Carn.
Christi, 7, 23 : 7766.79°.
Jerome believed he did {cf. Contr. Helu.,
17: 23201; d’Ales, TI1A0I. de Tert., 1905, p. 196). Lightfoot (p. 278)
is against it. Origen (ap. Jer., Hom. 7 in Luc., P.L., 7233) seems to refer
to Tertullian, and possibly Hilary {Comm, in Mt., i. 3-4: 9921). But
about 350, in Syria and Arabia, the denial of Mary’s perpetual virginity
became explicit : in 380 Helvidius, and a little later Jovinianus. both at
Rome, provoked Jerome’s vigorous attacks. Condemned at Milan, they
were excommunicated by Siricius in 390. Bonosus of Myria was
condemned a little later {supr., pp. 2, 3).
�The Virgin Birth
17
(Gen 3716, 1 Par 2321, Lev io4: Cicero, Tacitus:
Euripides: it is quite common). Hegesippus, who
calls James “the Lord’s brother,” calls Simeon
“ another cousin ” of the Lord. The words are then
convertible. Of Jude he says that “ he was called the
brother of the Lord according to the flesh.” Probably
(Durand, p. 229), at this very early period, that phrase
was not so much honorific, as meant to distinguish
between the several prominent disciples of the same
name. Jerome (c. Helu., 12-17) insists on this solution,
alleging that (#) Mary had vowfed virginity;1 (fi) that
Mary was confided from the Cross to none of the
“ brethren,” but to John. The brethren were not,
then, her sons.2 (c) Jesus is often called “ Son of
Mary ”: the brethren never; nor she their mother.
Moreover, had Mary been mother, afterwards, of six or
seven children (of whom several will have held high
rank in the Church), and lived long as widow, the
most perverse tradition could scarcely have succeeded
in fixing on her, as uniquely distinctive title, that of
Virgin. (So even Renan.) Finally, the “brethren”
seem definitely older than Jesus.
(c) The “ Census.”—Luke says, 21-3, that an enrolment,
imposed by the Emperor on the whole Empire,3 was
carried out in Palestine by tribal and household enumer
ation. Thus Joseph and Mary came to Bethlehem, and
Jesus was born there. “This happened [I translate
literally] as a first enrolment when Quirinius was in
office in Syria.” But we are told :—
The Roman census was based on property, not persons ; and
when Christ was born (B.C. 6-4: for His birth preceded
1 So too Aug., Gregory of Nyssa, Ambrose ; cf. Harris, l.c. i. 235.,
2 So Jerome, Epiphanius, Chrysostom, Hilary, Ambrose, Siricius.
To Lightfoot this argument seems conclusive : l.c., p. 272.
3 “ In the whole world ” means this. The plan was quite in keeping
with Augustus’ ideals. He wished to assess the poll-tax fairly and
accurately. That contemporary records do not mention it is unim
portant : they are silent, too, about local enrolments known to us
from inscriptions and papyri. Roman historians scorned the recurrent
details of provincial administration.
�18
History and Dogma
Herod's death, 4 B.C.), there was no census.in Palestine, nor was
Publius Sulpicius Quirinius then in office. Sentius Saturninus
governed Syria 9-6 B.C. ; Quinctilius Varus, 6-4 ; 1 B.C.-4 A.D.,
Gaius, the Emperor’s grandson, was legate, the intervening
years being unaccounted for. But Quirinius was legate 6 A.D.,
and did indeed effect what Ac 537 calls “ the enrolment.” If
Christ, then, was born 6-4 B.C., and Quirinius held office, and
had the enrolment in 6 A.D., Luke is clearly wrong.
Even were he wrong in this detail of chronology,
that scarcely should impair his general value as a
historian. Still, mistake on this point were odd in
one who so accurately had sought out the “ origins ”
(i2; sup?.., p. 7). But (i.) it is acknowledged (from
inscriptions) that Quirinius twice held office in Syria.
But when ?
May not Augustus, who associated
Volumnius with Saturninus, have similarly added the
notoriously energetic (so Tacitus) Quirinius to the
indolent Varus in some semi-official (probably military)
office?1 Thus he may well have been “in office”
in Syria 6-4 B.C., and (possibly) even have succeeded
Varus in 4. (ii.) Recent discoveries2 make it certain
that family enrolments besides the land-assessments
were held in Egypt every fourteen years. Enrolment
papyri for A.D. 90, 104, etc. till 230 were unearthed ;
then for 76 ; then, 62 ; then, 20! Now Luke says the
enrolment was general; and we know that Syria was
enrolled in 34 A.D., also in 6 : Clement of Alexandria,
too (Strom., i. 21, 147: 8885), implies that it had
its periodical enrolments like those he knew in
Egypt. Tertullian actually says (Adv. Marc., iv. 19,
P.L., 2405) one happened under Saturninus (9-6),3 and
that Christ was born during it. This is quite possible
1 L says ^ye^ovevovros, “holding office,” an untechnical word
applied to various positions, and by Josephus, Ant., XVI. ix. I, to
Volumnius. Justin, 1 Apol., 34, calls Q. neither legate nor proconsul,
but eirirpoiros, procurator.
2 Read the romantic account of this triple simultaneous independent
discovery by Kenyon {Class. Rev., 1893, P- IIO)> Wilcken {Hermes,
1893, p. 203), Viereck {Philologus, 1893, p. 563), in Ramsay, op. c.,
preface.
3 In fact, 8 B.C. is fourteen years before 6 a.d., as 34 a.d. is twenty
eight years after it.
�The Virgin Birth
19
if a clumsy household numbering in 8 B.C. was dragged
out till 7-6 B.C.—as was practically inevitable owing to
the chaotic political situation.1 11 is thus, independently
of Luke, almost certain that there was such an en
rolment in 6 B.C. in Palestine, the first of its sort,2
Quirinius being in office.
The displacement of so many families is no difficulty. Only
Palestinian Jews would be bound : the whole land could be
crossed in three or four days : all devout Jews went thrice a
year to Jerusalem.—Why does Mary accompany Joseph ? We
are not sure. Perhaps Joseph feared to leave her at such a
crisis. Anyhow, in Syria, women, too, paid the poll-tax.
How idle, then, is the theory that this story is forged to get the
Holy Family from Nazareth (where L knew they lived) to
Bethlehem (where the prophets said Messiah must be born):
and alas for Mr Robertson, who says 3 of household enumeration,
“ There was no such practice in the Roman world” 1
(d) Of the story of the Magi we are told that its
details are vague; its incidents improbable; that
it clashes with Luke.
It was invented to satisfy
Messianic prophecies, or is the echo of pagan myth.
Indeed, the date of its insertion into the Gospel is
given. We deal with this first.
A Syriac document entitled “ Concerning the Star : showing
how and through what the Magi recognised the star,” etc., says
that Balaam’s prophecy (Nu 2417) was written by Balak to
Assyria, and there kept till the star appeared, and King Pir
Shabur sent the Magi to do homage to the Messiah. “ And in
the year 430 (118-119 A.D.) . . . this concern arose in [the minds
of] men acquainted with the Holy Books, and through the pains
of great men in various places this history was sought for and
found, and written in the tongue of those who took this care ”
(W. Wright, Journ. of Sacr. Lit., ix., x., 1866). Hence M 21-12,
1 Ramsay, p. 174.
2 The fourteen-years cycle being reckoned, Romanwise, from 23 B. c.,
the year of Augustus’ reception of the Tribunician Power. In that year
no enrolment will have occurred. 8 B.c. will therefore be the first.
A. d. 6 is called “ the enrolment,” because Judea having just become
a province, an enrolment consequently on purely Roman lines (local—
not familial and tribal) made the Jews realize their subjection, and
accordingly revolt. In 20 a.d. (end of the next cycle) Tiberius forbids
interference with local customs.
3 Christianity and Mythology, 19CO, p. 194.
�20
History and Dogma
based on this legend, was added to the Gospel in 119 a.d.—But:
certainly before that time Ignatius of Antioch assumes the story
to be universally popular (he rhetorically expands it ad Eph.
xix., P.G., 5652). So it is clear that the “ Holy Books ” are not the
O.T. with its story of Balaam, but the Gospels with that of the
Magi; while what was first written in 118 a.d. is not the latter
story, but the legend of Balaam’s message to Assyria.1
Of the Magi (probably priests ; perhaps astrologers;
certainly heathen), as to number, nationality, rank,
and later history, nothing is known. The star which
they saw “ at its rising ”2 has been identified (first by
Kepler, 1605) with astronomical phenomena, eg. the
conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, B.C. 7. To pursue
such investigations leads nowhere.3
No merely
natural phenomenon could have seemed “ to travel,”
to “ stand over ” a house, etc., though the Magi may
(conceivably) have heard from Jews of the Dispersion
of the expected birth of a Deliverer, and have (inde
pendently) interpreted what they saw as a sign that
this had happened. But their information will not
have been based on Nu 2417: still less was the
whole story invented to satisfy that prediction ! The
star in Numbers, as in Isaiah 60,4 uniformly
means the Messiah himself: it was not his herald.
The pseudo-Messiah Simeon actually called himself
Bar-Kokeba, Son of the Star. And that Matthew,
eager to quote O.T. prophecy whenever he can, should
not here have cited Nu, Is, and Ps 7210, 6829, had he
seen their fulfilment in his story, is unthinkable.
V
We must now notice those writers who try to
find the origin of the Gospel history in mythology,
and shall, owing to the great popularity of this
system, give it far more space than its intrinsic value
merits. I am anxious to emphasize this. It is popular
1 Cf. Allen, Commentary on St. Matthew, p. 22, 1907 ; Plummer,
idem., 1909, ad loc.
2 “In the east" would probably need the plural ava-roKdis.
3 Though see Ramsay, op. c., pp. 215-218.
4 Cf., later, Test. XII. Pair., Judah 24 (Gk.), etc.
�The Virgin Birth
21
polemic, not serious scholarship, that attaches real
weight to these pagan “parallels.” With the Magi,
however, mythologists have no easy task. Cheyne 1
and others quote the stars which constantly herald
the birth of great men.
Thus the Magi, on seeing Alexander’s, declared that the
destroyer of Asia was born; the star of the Julian family was
famous (Verg., Aen.). The Pushya, on the horizon when the
Buddha was born, was, however, a regular annual phenomenon
(an asterism consisting of 7, 8, 0 of the constellation Cancer) and
served to mark a date, not to glorify the infant.2 The Magi
may indeed have deduced a new birth from what they considered
adequate evidence {N.B. “ his star”) ; but Matthew draws no con
clusion as to Christ’s preternatural character from it; it merely
guided the Magi to Bethlehem.3
But we hear: In 66 a.d. Tiridates, king of Parthia (Pliny,
H.N., xxx. 6, calls him a magus') came with magi (Dio. Cass., lxiii.
1-7) to do homage to Nero, and went home “another way”
(Suet., Nero, 13). Nero is anti-Christ: even as incidents of
Christ’s life attached themselves to Nero’s {e.g. His expected
return), so incidents of Nero’s life accrued to Christ’s.4
We prefer to admit a score of miracles rather than
so grotesque an explanation. How, and why, were
the stories so utterly transformed in detail ? so
Judaized in tone? so raised in religious value? why
inserted in this peculiarly un-Hellenic part of the
Gospel?5 And how dissociate the Magi from the
1 Bible Problems, 1904.
2 C. F. Aiken, Dhamma of Gotama the Buddha, Boston, 1900, p. 240.
3 Prof. R. Seydel {Evangel v. Jesu, 1882, p. 139) quotes a (postChrfstian) tale that the god Brahman gave the unborn Buddha a
dewdrop containing all power; the babe Buddha received perfumes
from nymphs and palaces from princes; Mr Lillie adds {Buddhism in
Christendom, 1887, p. 30; cf. Aiken, p. 243) that the young hero was
escorted to a garden, eclipsing with his bodily brilliance the jewels
that smothered him. Hence the tale of Magi with gifts !
J. M. Robertson, in Christianity and Mythology, p. 199, however,
has to misinterpret the famous representation of the Magi (Northcote
and Brownlow, Roma Sotteranea, 1879, ii. 258), universally recognized
as Christian, as “surely Mithraic,” “since there is really no other way
of explaining the entrance of the Magi into the Christian legend.”
4 Cf. Soltau, Geburtsgesch. J.C., 1902, p. 73 ; Usener, Encyl. Bibl.,
iii. 3351.
5 These considerations are in place whenever pagan myth is offered
as origin for the Gospels.
�I
22
History and Dogma
organically connected Massacre and Flight, for which
these pagan “sources” cannot be used? But other
sources ain? suggested! Persecution of infant-heroes by
jealous kings is a mere ‘ myth-TzztfZz/’; Josephus should
have mentioned the Massacre, had it occurred ; hence
no doubt the murdered Innocents but picture ‘the
disappearance of the stars at morning before the sun.’1
Finally, Jesus is said to fly to Egypt because thither
the giant Typhon drove the Olympian gods (Usener,
Encycl. Brit., l.ci).
But in the same place Usener agrees that Egypt, with its
large Jewish colonies, its numerous synagogues, its vicinity, etc.,
was exactly the natural place for a Palestinian Jew to fly to :
Josephus, who has to relate Herod’s murder of wife, mother-inlaw, three sons, brother-in-law, uncle, and numbers of Pharisees,
may be forgiven for omitting the obscure murder of a score
(at most) of babies in a tiny town : the quaint solar parallel would
be more perfect did the stars flee before an eclipse (for such,
rather than sunrise, is the Child’s flight)! Finally, because
Herod’s action is so natural, and naturally has its parallels in
legend and popular tales, it need not therefore be mythical, or
else we should have to accept for true only the unnatural events
narrated in history.2 As for the Loss and Finding in the Temple,
one set of critics 3*
8
assigns the tale of the Buddha and the ploughing
match as “pattern” (the baby hero, left under a tree by his
nurses absorbed by the spectacle of a ploughing match, lapsed
into meditation, and was found there, hours after, still sheltered
by the stationary shadow of the Jamba ; other versions put the
incident quite late in the Buddha’s life) ; while another (J. M.
Robertson, Chr. and Myth., p. 334, quoting Strabo, xvi. 2. 38,
and Plutarch, Isis and Osiris, 14), says that the story of parents
{who had exposed their children} going to Delphi to inquire of
the oracle if the child yet lived, and there being met by
the child himself (who had gone to inquire about the parent)
1 J. M. Robertson (momentarily all for solar myth), op. c., p. 333.
2 Observe the Buddhist “prototype” (dating, moreover, from the
sixth century A.D.), adduced by Seydel, op. c., p. 142 ; Lillie, Infhience
of Buddhism on Christianity, 1893, p. 28 ; cf. Aiken, p. 244. King
Bimbiskara is advised to send an army to crush the increasing power
of his neighbour the Buddha, now a young man. He refuses, and is
converted to Buddhism !
8 E. v. Bunsen, The Angel Messiah of Buddhists, Essenes, and
Christians, 1880, p. 30; Seydel, p. 48; Lillie, B. in Chr., p. 25 ; cf.
Aiken, p. 245.
�The Virgin Birth
23
“ supplies the source of the first part ” of our story ; while
Plutarch mentions that in Egypt the cries of children at play in
temple-courts were held for prophetic ; and this accounts for
the second part 1—We prefer Luke’s history to modern myth.
Yet Matthew contradicts Luke ?—Not at all. Grant
that the Magi’s visit followed the Purification (not
necessarily soon), and we need only assume that
Luke did not mix his sources. For if the Magi-tale
was current as in Matthew, Luke did not insert it
into what he had learnt (probably) from Mary
(supr., p. 7), nor repeat it in a new form when the
old was satisfactory. The Magi are no “ doublet ” of
the Shepherds. The spirit of Matthew’s tale which
shows the universality of Christ’s saving power is
quite different from that which relates the homely
incident so suited to the “ Gospel of the Poor.”
We are constantly told, quite generally, that Jesus
is but one among many virgin-born gods, and that
His myth is discredited by theirs. Especially to the
BUDDHA Sakyamuni are we pointed as origin of the
Christian dogma.1 Doubtless the tangled question
of the dates of the Buddhist “ scriptures ” makes it
difficult to criticize this briefly, but our references will
supply details of evidence. We may say : The tradi
tions of the Buddha’s birth are contradictory, and, es
pecially the earlier, assign no “virginity” to his mother
1 Bunsen, op. c. : “Zoroastrian magi invented an angel-messiah ; the
Buddha imported this into India, the Essenes into Palestine ; Christ
was an Essene ; thus Buddhist legends reached and fastened on Him.”
Sharply criticized by Kuenen, Natural Religion, etc., 1882.—R. Seydel,
op. c., maintains : A pre-Synoptic Jewish apocalyptic gospel existed
(highly “Buddhized” by traditions journeying westwards by traderoutes opened up by Alexander), utilized by the Synoptists. —All
imagination work, supposing an impossibly late date for the Gospels.
Criticized by Oldenberg, Hardy, and even J. E. Carpenter (who
patronizes the theory that Christianity borrowed from Buddhism),
XIXth Century, viii. 971. A. Lillie, opp. citt. These three books
well discussed by C. F. Aiken, op. c. A. J. Edmunds, Buddhist and
Christian Gospels, etc., London, 1904, is admirably considered by
L. de la V. Poussin, Revue Biblique, 1906, iii. pp. 355-381. See, too,
the latter’s Bouddhisme, Paris, 1909, p. 239 sqq., and C.T.S. Buddhism,
by the same.
�24
History ana, Dogma
Maya. Later speculation held her to be virgin.1 But
note: for Buddhists, all birth is rebirth.
A pre
existing being, a ghandarva, escaped from a previous
life, is reincarnated.
Ordinary mortals are born
where necessity dictates : superior beings—e.g. future
Buddhas—can choose their moment, and their parents.
This is why Maya dreams that the future Buddha
enters her side, of his own accord, as a six-tusked white
elephant. She had lived some thirty-three years with
her husband, and only after the conception of the
Buddha resolves to abandon earthly love. The Buddha
chose Maya, because she was doomed to die ten months
seven days afterwards: now’, all mothers of Buddhas
must die seven days after their child’s birth, lest another
child should occupy what had been a Buddha’s shrine.
There is in all this no hint of virgin birth. Indeed,
feminine virginity was of little interest to Hindus or
earlier Buddhists.2* When the Mahavastu does at
last insist on Maya’s virginity, it is at the cost of
the birth, for the Buddha is now represented as
remaining in heaven, sending only a phantom self
to be seemingly born of Maya. Thus the birth is, at
the first, marvellous, but not virgin.
Once Maya is
virgin, the birth has ceased to be real.
The sage Asita, on the Buddha’s birthday, sees “ the gods of
shining vesture forming the band of the thirty-two (gods),” [not
“angels white-stoled” : Edmunds] rejoicing. Ascending into the
sky, he asks the reason. They answer : “ The Buddha-to-be, the
excellent jewel, the incomparable, is born in the world of men
[leaving, that is, that of gods] to save [creatures] and to make them
happy, in the village of the Sakyas,” etc. Asita magically flies
thither, and “ because he knew the [32] signs ” [set. the webbed
fingers, etc., which marked the child a superior being] exclaimed
“ with faith,” “ This is the unsurpassed, the excellent among men.”
He weeps, indignant that he will be dead before the child begins
1 Jerome, Adu. Iou., i. 42 : 23s73, on doubtful evidence calls the
Buddha virgin-born. The extremely late writings of the Mongol
Buddhists, and one other very late document, are our only sources here. 4
2 Even the Lalitavistara {-possibly as early as the Christian era) only
asks how the Buddha could live without being defiled by (physical) «
contact with Maya’s womb. The answer is, that tents of jewels and
perfumes enveloped him therein.
�The Virgin Birth
25
its work of salvation.—Graceful as are many incidents of this tale,
not even in the words of the devas is a source found for Luke’s
narrative, though “ peace on earth to men [objects] of [God’s]
goodwill ” is not unlike the “ utility and pleasantness ” for which
the Buddha is born.—The pre-existence of the Son is not like
that of the Buddha in the Tusita heaven, which many odd in
carnations (as king, pigeon, god, jackal, etc.) had preceded.
Nor is Maya’s visit to a royal garden, surrounded with un
imagined luxuries, like Mary’s to Bethlehem, that we should
say “both children were born when their mothers were on a
journey.” Such suggestions destroy the real charm of the
Buddhist legends.1
The god Krishna2 is declared3 to have been born of
a virgin Devakl. Now, not only is there a well-defined
modern Indian movement to assimilate the legend
of Krishna “ the Black ” to the life of Christ, while of
the books which contain it “the earliest are at the
very least several hundreds of years later than the
composition of the Gospels,” 4 but even in the Hindi
version of that part of the documents which relates
it we read that Devaki had already, before Krishna's
conception, borne seven children to her husband
Vasudeva. Considering too that Krishna had “ eight
specially beautiful wives of his own, besides over
16,000 others, and by them he had a family of
180,000 sons, all of whom finally killed one another,
or were murdered by their father,”5 virginity would
seem low enough in the esteem of the Black God’s
evangelists; and that Mr Vivian should include him
among those “ suffering Saviours ” whose stories had
been “ for ages past similar in all essentials to the
Gospel narratives” (p. 161) is amazing.
Of Adonis, Attis, Dionysus, Osiris, Mithra,
CHRIST, Mr Robertson says 6 “ all six deities were born
of a virgin.” “ In Persia, Zoroaster was miraculously
1 Seydel, pp. 295, 136 ; Bunsen, p. 34; Lillie, Influence, etc., p. 26 ;
W. St. C. Tisdall, Mythic Christs and the True, 1909, p. 36.
2 C.T.S. Hinduism, E. Hull, pp. 12, 14, 27.
3 P. Vivian, The Churches and Modern Thought, Watts, 1910,
p. 121, etc.
4 Tisdall, Mythic Christs, p. 27.
6 Tisdall, p. 28.
6 Short History of Christianity, 1902, p. 63.
�26
History and Dogma
conceived.”1 “ In Parsi mythology, Saoshyant is
virgin-born.”2 We need but glance at these assertions.
Dionysus3 was the son of Zeus and a woman, Semele. While
pregnant, she was shrivelled to death by the sight of her lover’s
glory. The unborn infant was snatched from her womb, stitched
into Zeus’s thigh, and ultimately “born” in circumstances which
the poets easily made absurd.—Zoroaster4 is said in the Avesta
(much of which is extremely late) to be the son of Pourushaspa,
a man whose genealogy was traced back for ten generations.
His mother’s name is not even mentioned. Even in the latest
mythologizing documents {cf. Zaratusht-Namah, c. A.D. 1278),
the most we hear is that Pourushaspa had drunk some haoma
uice in which Zoroaster’s fravashi (genius) had been placed. The
conception was normal; the child was the third of five brothers.—
Saoshyant and his two brothers, prophets to appear before the
end of the world, are (literally) to be conceived of Zoroaster’s
seed—Saoshyant by a woman bathing in a lake.5 Here I cannot
transcribe the details ; still less, in the case of Attis and Adonis.
Adonis was the son of Cinyras in one myth, of Phoenix in
another, but (in the commonest version) of King Theias by his
own daughter, Myrrha. The whole of this story, like Adonis’
career and worship, is one of sexual abnormalities. Even more
so is that of Attis, son of Nana and the androgynous monster
Agdestis, itself offspring of Zeus and Earth.6 The cults of
Adonis and Attis became bywords even among pagans for
unbridled licence and hysterical perversities. In them, as in
Krishna’s, vice became of the essence of worship.
That Mithra7 was virgin-born is argued by Mr
J. M. Robertson as follows:8 Mithra is often coupled
with the goddess Anahita. But an inscription men
tions “the tree of Zeus-Sabazios and Artemis-Anahita.”
Therefore Mithra = Sabazios.
But Strabo says
Sabazios “is in a sense the son of the Mother” (set.
the Eastern goddess, Cybele, etc.). Therefore Mithra
was son of a mother. But this mother must be
1 P. Vivian, op. c., p. 128.
2 Robertson, Pagan Christs, p. 339.
3 C.T.S. Relig. of Anc. Greece, J. Huby, pp. 4, 21, etc.
4 C.T.S. Relig. of Avesta, A. Carnoy,passim.
5 Tisdall, p. 86.
6 Pausan., vii. 17. 5 > Arnob., Adu. Gent., v. 9. 4, P.L., 51100; Minuc.
Felix, 21 ; on Adonis and Attis, C.T S. Relig. of Syria, G. S. Hitch
cock, pp. 10, 23 ; of Imper. Rome, C. C. Martindale, pp. 12, 14.
7 C.T.S. Mithra, C. C. Martindale.
8 Pagan Christs, 1903, p. 337 sqq. Every step of the argument
might be disputed.
�The Virgin Birth
27
Anahita, for not only is she goddess of fertilizing
waters, and hence " must necessarily figure in her cultus
as a mother,” but Mithra, “ who never appears ... as
a father,” “ would [therefore] perforce rank as her son?
Astounding logic! But all this apparatus to get
Mithra born of a mother at all, has not yet shown
she was virgin.—Simplicity itself! "It was further
practically a matter of course that his divine mother
should be styled Virgin, the precedents being uni
form” (p. 337). Precedents? He quotes Agdestis,
Attis, and Saoshyant (supr., p. 26), and unexpectedly
concludes: "Asa result ... we find Mithra figuring in
the Christian Empire of the fourth and fifth centuries
as supernaturally born of a Virgin Mother and of the
Most High God ” (p. 340). We find nothing of the
sort. Mithra was invariably regarded as “ rock-born,”
that is, sprung from the Petra Genetrix, “mother
rock,” imaged by a conical stone (representing the
sky-vault in which, or the mountains over which, the
light-god first appears). Mithra had no human mother
at all, virgin or otherwise.1
It is idle to urge : Mithra was worshipped in crypts; but
Mithra=Adonis, who was “born and worshipped in a cave”
[surely not, and anyhow these identifications are ludicrously
inexact]; Adonis = Tammuz, who was adored (Jerome says) in
the unreclaimed Cave of Bethlehem; therefore Mithra was
born in a cave.—He was not virgin-bctrn, nor yet cave-born. If
anywhere, the rock-birth occurred (as bas-reliefs suggest) under
a tree by a river.2
1 Mr Robertson oddly appeals to two savage myths, known to us
third or fourth hand, in which Mithra is found born of a god and a woman,
or (incestuously) of that god’s own mother. Of these, M. Cumont (the
leading authority on Mithraism) says: “Their character is radically
different from the dogmas accepted by the Western believers in the
Persian god.” Reff. in The Month, Dec. 1908, p. 582 sq.
2 Much has been made of a group of “adoring shepherds” some
times sculptured near the rock-birth. . They appear but rarely, and in no
obvious connection with the birth. They are not clearly shepherds,
and certainly do not adore. C.T. S. Mithra, p. 12. It is (with probabil
ity) conjectured that Mithra’s birthday was kept on Dec. 25. Pie was
indeed closely identified with the Sun, whose birthday was then kept.
For Dec. 25, cf. C.T.S. Ret. Imper. Rome, p. 29; Cath. Encycl.,
Christmas, Martindale, iii. 726.
�28
History and Dogma
OSIRIS1 comes to us, like his pictures, enswathed in
mummy-clothes of myth—in this case of contra
dictory, irreconcilable myths. A turn, first of gods, but
also Primeval Man, engenders from the substance of his
own heart the Heliopolis Ennead of gods, one of whom
was Osiris. Elsewhere, Osiris is son of Seb (Earth)
and Nuit (Sky), and rules as frankly human Pharaoh,
married to his sister Isis. He certainly is not virginborn. Isis herself, though in some very late syncre
tistic myths of great beauty she is virgin, is not so
in relation with Osiris; indeed, one legend shows
her losing that quality in her mother’s womb by
union with her twin-brother.
As for her son
Horus, he was conceived by the murdered Osiris
(triumphantly “surviving himself”), but normally.2
Nor were the Pharaohs “virgin-born.” True, they
first have gods for ancestors; then, God for father;
then, are gods. But notice: the god is explicitly
said to be incarnate in the Pharaoh’s human father.
Each reigning Pharaoh is the god’s physical instru
ment in the conception of the next.3 In conscious
imitation of this, Alexander the Great and others—
often deliberately, to gain influence in an Egypt
accustomed to have gods’ sons for governors—claimed
as ancestor or sire Zeus or Apollo. Popular romance
and court flattery elaborated the legend, which few if
any took seriously. Nor did anyone believe the
3 C.T.S. Relig. Anc. Egypt, A. Mallon, pp. 15, 30.
2 La relig. de Fane. Egypte, Virey, Beauchesne, 1910, p. 96;
Budge, Book of the Dead, Introd., pp. cxxxiv. and lxxx. All the
Osiris myths focus in the idea of life victorious over death : new wheat
springs from the rotting grain ; dawn from the dead day. But Isis, as
Earth fertilized by the flooding Nile, affords no hint of virginity.
Except (perhaps) in art, her worship has not affected ours, though
Prof. Petrie—talia talis?—asserts “that it became the popular
devotion of Italy ; and after a change of name due to the growth of
Christianity, she has continued to receive the adoration of a large part
of Europe down to the present day as the Madonna” {Relig. Anc.
Egypt, 1906, p. 44, cf. 91).
3 Inscriptions at Deir-el-Bahari and Luqsor make this certain.
Virey, pp. 95-98 ; Moret, Caractere relig. de la royauti pharaoniqtie,
pp. 50-52, there quoted.
�The Virgin Birth
29
stories about Apollo, father of Plato, or Proteus, of
Apollonius. They were literary imitations of the
old myths which made Zeus visit Alcmene in the
shape of her husband, or Europa, Leda, Danae as
bull, swan, or golden shower, thereby glorifying
(and explaining) their heroic offspring, Herakles,
Perseus, etc. There is no question here of virginity.1
From this point of view it is a pity that some
Fathers (Origen, Jerome, Justin) use these tales
as an argumentum ad hominem against pagan critics
of the miraculous conception of Christ. “You,”
they argue, “ account for heroes by saying: A God
was their sire. Why then cavil if we teach that a
greater far than heroes was Son of God ? ” But that
Justin, e.g., had no faith in the pagan virgin births is
clear from the words he puts in the mouth of Trypho
{supr., p. 2). Even he saw that the difference between
the stories was profound. We may add that the
title Diui Filius, Yto? 0eov, “ Son of God,” taken by
emperors, in no sense denies human parentage, still
less claims virgin birth (C.T.S. Imper. Rome, p. 4;
King-Worship, C. C. Lattey, p. 31).
Indeed, the stories which approach nearest to a suggestion of
the Virgin Birth—where maid becomes mother by treading in a
giant’s footsteps, eating a fruit, by the action of sunbeams, or (as
did Chimalma, mother of Quetzalcoatl) by the god’s breath—
nearly all belong to levels of civilization where no one will look
for the origin (at any rate) of the Gospel story. They are folk
lore so inferior even to myth, that interaction, causal influence,
is unthinkable. They have been used2 as basis of a theory that
primitive savages were ignorant of the “ true cause of offspring,”
an ignorance which resulted in tales of virgin birth, some still
surviving in a purified form. But (i.) it is quite unlikely that the
Australian savages (who alone can be quoted) are really so
ignorant of the cause of birth as the authors suppose—the exist1 Farnell, Cults of Gk. States, ii. 447, and others make it clear that
the name Parthenos itself need not imply virginity. It often means
just “ unmarried,” and is compatible with great licence.
2 Cases accumulated in E. S. Hartland, Legend of Perseus, 1894
(a chaos simplified by “ P. Saintyves,” Vierges mires et naissances
miraculeuses, 1908), and argued from by Dr. Frazer, Adonis, Attis, and
Osiris, 1907, ii. 169.
�History and Dogma
ence among savages of complicated marriage tabus and legisla
tion, and of widespread sex-worships, is quite against such
(antecedently unlikely) ignorance—but (ii.) there is no sort of
reason for supposing such ignorance to have been universal,
especially as “ primitive ” savages are often probably “ degener
ates,” not just embarking on a career of improvement.1
To sum up. In nearly all these cases (and there are
scores of others) the birth may be preternatural, but
is not virgin. In important examples, it remains
obscure when the traditions embodying the analogies
are to be dated (Buddha) ; or borrowing from Chris
tianity is actually certain (Krishna). As a rule the
legend is attached to a mythical, not historic, person
(Herakles, Perseus), or was never taken seriously
(Plato, Alexander, Augustus). The whole setting is
usually frivolous, often obscene. The Gospels are
profoundly Judaic, and uncoloured by pagan, especi
ally Hellenic, tradition.
Conscious adaptation of
myth by their writers is a grotesque supposition,
neglected by reputable scholarship; there was no
time for an unconscious deformation of historical
events in view of the early date now generally
admitted for the composition of the Gospels.2
Dr. Abbott (Encycl. Bibl., ii. 1778) seeks the origin of our
tradition in Philo’s allegorical treatment of certain O.T. stories
—thus : Yahweh is the true father, e.g. of Isaac, because Isaac
= “laughter,” and “God sows and begets happiness in souls.”
(The reff. to Philo are i. 131, 147, 215, 273, 598, ed. Mangey.)
But even if Philo sometimes “allegorized” the Patriarchs, he
never implies their historical virgin birth, still less could he
foster an opinion that the Messiah (whose role he almost
1 A. H. Sayce, Relig. oj Anc. Egypt and Babylon, 1902, p. 17.
Instances of “degeneration,” C.T.S. Lectures on Hist. Relig., vols. i.
and ii., Relig. of Hindus, Early Rome, Buddha, etc., etc.
2 Harnack vigorously says: “ The conjecture of Usener, that the idea
of the birth from a virgin is a heathen myth which was received by the
Christians, contradicts the entire earliest development of Christian
tradition, which is free from heathen myths so far [he adds] as these
had not already been received by wide circles of Jews, . . . which in the
case of that idea is not demonstrable.'” [Usener himself says (Encycl.
Bibl., ii. 3350): “The idea is quite foreign to Judaism.”] Hist, of
Dogma, Engl, tr., i., 1897, p. 100, I; cf. Chase, Cambridge Theol.
Essays, ed. H. B. Swete, 1905, p. 412: “ The solution of Prof. Usener
is directly at variance with the primary conditions of the problem.”
�The Virgin Birth
3i
obliterates) was to be virgin-bom;1 and anyhow Alexandrian
(Philonic) Judaism was very different from the purely Palestinian
religion of the Gospels.2
Finally, Harnack himself (cf. note 2,p. 30) argues that
the source of our belief was but a misinterpretation of
Is. 714 (Ecce uirgo concipiet, etc., Vulgate). It is impos
sible here to discuss the true interpretation of the
text. The Fathers with practical unanimity saw in
it from the first a prophecy of the actual event, but it
could only support, not generate, a belief or story.
For, once more, virgin birth was not an idea to which
the Jewish mind was accustomed. Whatever floating
myths or confused- traditions or indistinct expecta
tions may have at times occupied it, we cannot
suppose that a sudden, mysterious misinterpretation
of a single and not well-known text should have been
so general and potent as to impose, as true, a belief
such as the virgin birth of Jesus upon His almost
immediate disciples.
The Gospels, then, as we have them teach that Jesus
was born of a Virgin. So too the early Church believed.
Either, then, the belief was founded upon the Gospels,
or the Gospels were the literary expression of the
belief. The dogma must be assailed, if the former be
the case, by an attack upon the value of the Gospel
narrative; if the latter, by discrediting the value of
the belief. We saw (i.) that there is no external or
1 Whether a virgin-mother ever, or still, appeared on a purely
Jewish, horizon remains doubtful. Trypho, we saw (p. 2), practically
denies it. That Enoch, 62®, 6929,fcalls the Messiah son of the woman
does not help. Could we be sure that the LXX. meant their itapQl-vos
(virgin) (later modified by Theodotion and Aquila to veavis, “young
woman ”) in Is. 714 to be taken in its complete sense, and that the
virgin as virgin was to bear, the argument for a Jewish virgin-mother
tradition would be stronger ; but cf. Condamin, Isaie, p. 67 ; Lagrange,
Messianisme, p. 222 sqq.
f Lobstein, op. c., p. 68, maintains the gradual adornment of Christ’s
child-life, like that of Moses, Samuel, etc. This is far more plausible ;
but is yet (i.) unprovable, (ii.) improbable: even had the Childhood
been “embroidered,” virgin birth would not have been chosen as a
motif. Except among the Esaenes, the unmarried state was not esteemed
by the Jews,
�32
History and Dogma
internal evidence that the Gospels are late, or patch
work, or interpolated as regards the Childhood-story.
Their mutilation can only be attempted in obedience
to a priori conviction that miracle is impossible.
Incriminated episodes, like that of the Magi, have no
evidence against them ; or even, like that of the enrol
ment, are amazingly accredited by modern research,
and reflect honourably upon the Evangelist as
historian. Finally, neither is Matthew in conflict with
Luke, nor yet with the “ silence ” of Mark, nor the
doctrine of Paul or John: (ii.) while one group of
critics, rejecting as absurd the hypothesis that the
Gospels are indebted to pagan sources for their
narratives, seeks their origins in Jewish prophecy
or myth or allegory, another group, insisting that a
virgin birth was wholly alien to Jewish expecta
tion or ambition, assigns Indian, Persian, Greek, nay
“ savage ” cult and fancy as the fountain-head of the
Christian dogma.
We, while acknowledging that the serene and
universal faith of the early Church makes the back
ground of the Gospels, and that they must be inter
preted according to it, and could not have denied it
without being detected and flung aside, yet realise
that those Gospels were written, or at least reproduce
a doctrine existing long before alien influences of what
ever sort could enter to violate the primitive traditions,
and even memories, of the early disciples. Not the
conflicting, apocryphal forecasts of the Messiah, not
perverse misreadings of the sacred books, not the
unclean or grotesque or (at best) romantic and graceful
legends of pagandom could create the simple, pure,
and fragrant Gospel of the Childhood, so purely
Jewish and of its own time, yet so potent to reach the
love of the children of our distant day ; nor need the
older and more learned readers of that record hesitate
still to refresh their eyes with the gentle mysteries of
Bethlehem, or fear for the honour of the Virgin whom
all generations shall name blessed.
�
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
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
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
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
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.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
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
A name given to the resource
The virgin birth and the gospel of the infancy
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Martindale, C. C. (Cyril Charlie)
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 32 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references. Publication details from KVK (OCLC WorldCat). Some of the text on the first page has been torn away and rewritten by hand.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Catholic Truth Society
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[1911]
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RA1549
Subject
The topic of the resource
Jesus Christ
Bible
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (The virgin birth and the gospel of the infancy), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Bible. N.T. Gospels
Jesus Christ
Virgin Birth
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/d161a8434ce52b7bfc3077828b6e4b46.pdf?Expires=1779321600&Signature=m7b71hjBxcAAZl6BV6lozhBlTVAZmCX4kEqxoysOvR4iZ2A51jFb46zvALGCk4uIT-J0UDiX87p8Mto6PM2WYUIMBT6%7EyRKMBEPzkrdjiDweVLFgZPdBltrz9dh4q4OLSXQdbVqn6u8XiX4DvKrJgNwh4o0L7iF3oeBde2UQzlkdoAw7MI67CZr3vpNzRlsDzNwdydqU6qZn7Fa4ronv6gDo1HPGdUGBcoX8GJvR7I-ilWNbLo2zaO6SbB6W8IPXdFUApULOqsxXMEo1wddBugy9QTOi1vAiOAkeeaolqQu6yYIAkINLIHR4csuZkpqLqwrfL9%7ErszI7h9gu4Ru%7EEA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
04901e957aca8fec1424c79e0ecb8c2b
PDF Text
Text
THE LAST WORD ABOUT JESUS.
BY JOHN
FISKE.
THE JESUS OF HISTORY*
StW Jill the great founders of religions, Jesus is at once the best
.1 1 known and the least known to the modern scholar. From
/ the dogmatic point of view he is the best known, from the
historic point of view he is the least known. The Jesus of
dogma is in every lineament familiar to us from early childhood ; but
concerning the Jesus of history we possess but few facts resting upon
trustworthy evidence ; and in order to form a picture of him at once
consistent, probable, and distinct in its outlines, it is necessary to enter
upon a long and difficult investigation, in the course of which some of
the most delicate apparatus of modern criticism will not fail to be re
quired. This circumstance is sufficiently singular to require especial
*
explanation. The case of Sakyamuni, the founder of Buddhism, which
may perhaps be cited as parallel, is in reality wholly different. Not
only did Sakyamuni live five centuries earlier than Jesus, among a
people that have at no time possessed the art of insuring authenticity
in their records of events, and at an era which is at best but dimly dis
cerned through the mists of fable and legend, but the work which be
achieved lies wholly out of the course of European history, and it is
only in recent times that his career has presented itself to us as a
problem needing to be solved. Jesus, on the other hand, appeared in
an age which is familiarly and in many respects minutely known to us,
and among a people whose fortunes we can trace with historic certainty
for at least seven1 centuries previous to his birth ; while his life and
achievements have probably had a larger share in directing the entire
subsequent intellectual and moral development of Europe than those
of any other man who has ever lived. Nevertheless, the details of his
personal career are shrouded in an obscurity almost as dense as that
which envelops the life of the remote founder of Buddhism.
* The Jesus of History (Anonymous). 8vo, pp. 426. London : Williams &
Norgate, 1869. New York : Scribner, Welford & Co.
Vie De Jesus, par Ernest Renan. Paris, 1867. (Thirteenth edition, revised and
partly rewritten.)
�10
THE
J ES US
OF
HISTORY.
This phenomenon, however, appears less strange and paradoxical
when we come to examine it more closely. A little reflection will dis
close to us several good reasons why the historical records of the life of
Jesus should be so scanty as they are. In the first place, the activity
of Jesus was private rather than public. Confined within exceedingly
narrow limits, both of space and of duration, it made no impression
whatever upon the politics or the literature of the time. His name
does not occur in the pages of any contemporary writer, Roman. Greek,
or Jewish. Doubtless the case would have been wholly different, had
he, like Mohammed, lived to a ripe age, and had the exigencies of his
peculiar position as the Messiah of the Jewish people brought him into
relations with the empire; though whether, in such case, the success
of his grand undertaking would have been as complete as it has
actually been, may well be doubted.
Secondly, Jesus did not, like Mohammed and Paul, leave behind
him authentic writings which might serve to throw light upon his
mental development as well as upon the external facts of his career.
Without the Koran and the four genuine Epistles of Paul, we should
be nearly as much in the dark concerning these great men as we now
are concerning the historical Jesus. We should be compelled to rely,
in the one case, upon the untrustworthy gossip of Mussulman chron
iclers, and in the other case upon the garbled statements.of the “ Acts
of the Apostles,” a book written with a distinct dogmatic pui
p
*ose,
sixty or seventy years after the occurrence of the events which it pro
fesses to record.
It is true, many of the words of Jesus, preserved by hearsay tradi
tion through the generation immediately succeeding his death, have
come down to us, probably with little alteration, in the pages of the
three earlier evangelists. These are priceless data, since, as we shall
see, they are almost the only materials at our command for forming
even a partial conception of the character of Jesus’ work. .Neverthe
less, even here the cautious inquirer has only too often to pause in face
of the difficulty of distinguishing the authentic utterances ’of the great
teacher from the later interpolations suggested by the dogmatic neces
sities of the narrators. Bitterly must the historian regret that Jesus
had no philosophic disciple, like Xenophon, to record his Memorabilia.
Of the various writings included in the New Testament, the Apocalypse
alone (and possibly the Epistle of Jude), is from the pen of a personal
acquaintance of Jesus; and besides this, the four epistles of Paul, to
the Galatians, Corinthians, and Romans, make up the sum of the
writings from which we may demand contemporary testimony. Yet
from these we obtain absolutely nothing of that for which we are
seeking. The brief writings of Paul are occupied exclusively with the
internal significance of Jesus’ work. The epistle of Jude—if it be
really written by Jesus’ brother of that name, which is doubtful—is
solely a polemic directed against the innovations of Paul. And the
�THE
JESUS
OF
HISTORY.
11
Apocalypse, the work of the fiery and imaginative disciple John, is con
fined to a prophetic description of the Messiah’s anticipated return, and
tells us nothing concerning the deeds of that Messiah while on the earth.
Here we touch upon our third consideration,—the consideration
which best enables us to see why the historic notices of Jesus are so
meagre. Rightly considered, the statement with which we opened this
article is its own explanation. The Jesus of history is so little known,
just because the Jesus of dogma is so well known. Other teachers—
Paul, Mohammed, Sakyamuni—have come merely as preachers of
righteousness, speaking in the name of general principles with which
their own personalities were not directly implicated. But Jesus, as we
shall see, before, the close of his life, proclaimed himself to be some
thing more than a preacher of righteousness. He announced himself—
and justly, from his own point of view—as the long-expected Messiah
sent by Jehovah to liberate the Jewish race. Thus the success of his
religious teachings became at once implicated with the question of his
personal nature and character. After the sudden and violent termina
tion of his career, it immediately became all-important with his fol
lowers to prove that he was really the Messiah, and to insist upon the
certainty of his speedy return to the earth. Thus the first generation
of disciples dogmatized about him, instead of narrating his life—a task
which to them would have seemed of little profit. For them the allabsorbing object of contemplation was the immediate future rather than
the immediate past. As all the earlier Christian literature informs us,
for nearly a century after the death of Jesus, his followers lived in daily
anticipation of his triumphant return to the earth. The end of all
things being so near-at hand, no attempt was made to ensure accurate
and complete memoirs for the use of a posterity which was destined, in
Christian imagination, never to arrive. The first Christians wrote but
little ; even Papias, at the end of a century, preferring second-hand or
third-hand oral tradition to the written gospels which were then be
ginning to come into circulation. Memoirs of the life and teachings
of Jesus were called forth by the necessity of having a written stan
dard of doctrine to which to appeal amid the growing differences of
opinion which disturbed the Church. Thus the earlier gospels exhibit,
though in different degrees, the indications of a modifying, sometimes
of an overruling dogmatic purpose. There is, indeed, no conscious
violation of historic truth, but from the varied mass of material sup
plied by tradition, such incidents are selected as are fit to support the
views of the writers concerning the personality of Jesus. Accordingly,
while the early gospels throw a strong light upon the state of Christian
opinion at the dates when they were successively composed, the infor
mation which they give concerning Jesus himself is, for that very
reason, often vague, uncritical, and contradictory. Still more is this
true of the fourth gospel, written late in the second century, in which
historic tradition is moulded in the interests of dogma until it becomes
�12
THE
JESUS
OF HISTORY.
no longer recognizable, and in the place of the human Messiah of the
earlier accounts, we have a semi-divine Logos or zEon, detached from
God and incarnate for a brief season in the likeness of man.
Not only was history subordinated to dogma by the writers of the
gospel-narratives, but in the minds of the Fathers of the Church who
assisted in determining what writings should be considered canonical,
dogmatic prepossession went very much further than critical acumen.
Nor is this strange when we reflect that critical discrimination in
questions of literary authenticity is one of the latest acquisitions of the
cultivated human mind. In the early ages of the Church, the evidence
of the genuineness of any literary production was never weighed critic
ally ; writings containing doctrines acceptable to the majority of Chris
tians, were quoted as authoritative, while writings which supplied no
dogmatic want were overlooked, or perhaps condemned as apocryphal.
A striking instance of this is furnished by the fortunes of the Apoca
lypse. Although perhaps the best authenticated work in the New
Testament collection, its millenarian doctrines caused it to become
unpopular as the Church gradually ceased to look for the speedy return
of the Messiah, and, accordingly, as the canon assumed a definite
shape, it was placed among the “ Antilegomena,” or doubtful books,
and continued to hold a precarious position until after the time of the
Protestant Reformation. On the other hand, the fourth gospel, which
was quite unknown and probably did not exist at the time of the
Quartodeciman controversy (A. D. 168), was accepted with little hesi
tation, and at the beginning of the third century is mentioned by
Irenapus, Clement, and Tertullian, as the work of the Apostle John.
To this uncritical spirit, leading to the neglect of such books as failed
to answer the dogmatic requirements of the Church, may probably be
attributed the loss of so many of the earlier gospels. It is doubtless
for this reason that we do not possess the Aramaean original of the
“Logia” of Matthew, or the “Memorabilia” of Mark, the companion
of Peter,—two works to which Papias (A. D. 120) alludes as containing
authentic reports of the utterances of Jesus.
These considerations will, we believe, sufficiently explain the curious
circumstance that, while we know the Jesus of dogma so intimately,
we know the Jesus of history so slightly. The literature of early
Christianity enables us to trace with tolerable completeness the
progress of opinion concerning the nature of Jesus, from the time of
Paul’s early missions to the time of the Nicene Council; but upon the
actual words and deeds of Jesus it throws a very unsteady light. The
dogmatic purpose everywhere obscures the historic basis.
This same dogmatic prepossession which has rendered the data for
a biography of Jesus so scanty and untrustworthy, has also until com
paratively recent times prevented any unbiased critical examination of
such data as we actually possess. Previous to the eighteenth century
any attempt to deal with the life of Jesus upon purely historical
�TSE JESUS
OE BISTORT.
13
methods would have been not only contemned as irrational, but stig
matized as impious. And even in the eighteenth century, those
writers who had become wholly emancipated from ecclesiastic tradition
were so destitute of all historic sympathy and so unskilled in scientific
methods of criticism, that they utterly failed to comprehend the re
quirements of the problem. Their aims were in the main polemic, not
historical. They thought more of overthrowing current dogmas than
of impartially examining the earliest Christian literature with a view of
eliciting its historic contents; and, accordingly, they accomplished but
little. Two brilliant exceptions must, however, be noticed. Spinoza,
in the seventeenth century, and Lessing, in the eighteenth, were men
far in advance of their age. They are the fathers of modern historical
criticism; and to Lessing in particular, with his enormous erudition
and incomparable sagacity, belongs the honor of initiating that method
of inquiry which, in the hands of the so-called Tübingen School, has
led to such striking and valuable conclusions concerning the age and
character of all the New Testament Literature. But it was long
before any one could be found fit to bend the bow which Lessing and
Spinoza had wielded. A succession of able scholars—Semler, Eich
horn, Paulus, Schleiermacher, Bretschneider, and De Wette,—were re
quired to examine, with German patience and accuracy, the details of
the subject, and to propound various untenable hypotheses, before such
a work could be performed as that of Strauss. The “ Life of Jesus,”
published by Strauss when only twenty-six years of age, is one of the
monumental works of the nineteenth century, worthy to rank, as a
historical effort, along with Niebuhr’s “ History of Rome,” Wolf’s
“ Prolegomena,” or Bentley’s “ Dissertations on Phalaris.” It instantly
superseded and rendered antiquated everything which had preceded it;
nor has any work on early Christianity been written in Germany for
the past thirty years which has not been dominated by the recollection
of that marvelous book. Nevertheless, the labors of another genera
tion of scholars have carried our knowledge of the New Testament
literature far beyond the point which it had reached when Strauss first
wrote. At that time the dates of but few of the New Testament
writings had been fixed with any approach to certainty; the age and
character of the fourth gospel, the genuineness of the Pauline epistles,
even the mutual relations of the three Synoptics, were still undeter
mined ; and, as a natural result of this uncertainty, the progress of
dogma during the first century was ill understood. At the present day
it is impossible to read the early work of Strauss without being im
pressed with the necessity of obtaining positive data as to the origin
and dogmatic character of the New Testament writings, before at
tempting to reach any conclusions as to the probable career of Jesus.
These positive data we owe to the genius and diligence of the Tübingen
School, and, above all, to its founder, Ferdinand Christian Baur. Be
ginning with the epistles of Paul, of which he distinguished four as
�14
THE JESUS
OE HISTORY.
genuine, Baur gradually worked his way through the entire New
Testament collection, detecting—with that inspired insight which only
unflinching diligence can impart to original genius—the age at which
each book was written, and the circumstances which called it forth.
To give any account of Baur’s detailed conclusions, or of the method
by which he reached them, would require a volume. They are very
scantily presented in Mr. Mackay’s work on the “ Tübingen School and
its Antecedents,” to which we may refer the reader desirous of further
information. We can here merely say that twenty years of energetic
controversy have only served to establish nearly all Baur’s leading
conclusions more firmly than ever. The priority of the so-called
gospel of Matthew, the Pauline purpose of “ Luke,” the second in date
of our gospels, the derivative and second-hand character of “ Mark,”
and the unapostolic origin of the fourth gospel, are points which may
for the future be regarded as completely established by circumstantial
evidence. So with respect to the pseudo-Pauline epistles, Baur’s work
was done so thoroughly that the only question still left open for much
discussion is that concerning the date and authorship of the first
and second “ Thessalonians,”—a point of quite inferior importance, so
far as our present subject is concerned. Seldom have such vast results
been achieved by the labor of a single scholar. Seldom has any
historical critic possessed such a combination of analytic and of co
ordinating powers as Baur. His keen criticism and his wonderful
flashes of insight, exercise upon the reader a truly poetic effect like
that which is felt in contemplating the marvels of physical discovery.
The comprehensive labors of Baur were followed up by Zeller’s able
work on the “ Acts of the Apostles,” in which that book was shown
to have been partly founded upon documents written by Luke, or
some other companion of Paul, and expanded and modified by a
much later writer with the purpose of covering up the traces of the
early schism between the Pauline and the Petrine sections of the
Church. Along with this, Schwegler’s work on the “ Post-Apostolic
Times ” deserves mention as clearing up many obscure points relating
to the early development of dogma. Finally,- the “New Life of Jesus,”
by Strauss, adopting and utilizing the principal discoveries of Baur
and his followers, and combining all into one grand historical pic
ture, worthily completes the task which the earlier work of the same
author had inaugurated.
The reader will have noticed that, with the exception of Spinoza,
every one of the names- above cited in connection with the literary
analysis and criticism of the New Testament is the name of a German.
Until xvithin the last decade, Germany has indeed possessed almost an
absolute monopoly of the science of Biblical criticism ; other countries
having remained not only unfamiliar with its methods, but even grossly
ignorant of its conspicuous results, save when some German treatise of
more than ordinary popularity has now and then been translated.
�THE
JESTS
<iE HISTORY.
15
But during the past ten years France has entered the lists ; and the
writings of Reville, Reuss, Nicolas, D’Eichthal, Scherer, and Colarie
testify to the rapidity with which the German seed has fructified upon
her soil.
None of these books, however, have achieved such wide-spread
celebrity, or done so much toward interesting the general public in this
class of historical inquiries, as the “ Life of Jesus,” by Renan. This
pre-eminence of fame is partly, but not wholly, deserved. From a
•purely literary point of view, Renan’s work doubtless merits all the
celebrity it has gained. Its author writes a style such as is perhaps
equaled by that of no other living Frenchman. It is by far the most
readable book which has ever been written concerning the life of Jesus.
And no doubt some of its popularity is due to its very faults, which,
from a critical point of view, are neither few nor small. • For Renan is
certainly very faulty, as a historical critic, when he practically ignores
the extreme meagreness of our positive knowledge of the career of
Jesus, and describes scene after scene in his life as minutely and with
as much confidence as if he had himself been present to witness it all.
Again and again the critical reader feels prompted to ask, How do you
know all this ? or why, out of two or three conflicting accounts, do you
quietly adopt some particular one, as if its superior authority were
self-evident ? But in the eye of the uncritical reader, these defects are
excellences ; for it is unpleasant to be kept in ignorance when we are
seeking after definite knowledge, and it is disheartening to read page
after page of an elaborate discussion which ends in convincing us that
.definite knowledge cannot be gained.
In the thirteenth edition of the “Vie de Jesus,” Renan has cor
rected some of the most striking errors of the original work, and in
particular has, with praiseworthy candor, abandoned, his untenable
position with regard to the age and character of the fourth gospel. As
is well known, Renan, in his earlier editions, ascribed to this gospel a
historical value superior to that of the synoptics, believing it to have
been written by an eye-witness of the events which it relates; and
from this source, accordingly, he drew the larger share of his mate
rials. Now, if there is any one conclusion concerning the New Testa
ment literature which must be regarded as incontrovertibly established
by the labors of a whole generation of scholars, it is this, that the
fourth gospel was utterly unknown until about A. D. 170, that it was
written by some one who possessed very little direct knowledge of
Palestine, that its purpose was rather to expound a dogma than to give
an accurate record of events, and that as a guide to the comprehension
of the career of Jesus it is of far less value than the three synoptic
gospels. It is impossible, in a brief review like the present, to epito
mize the evidence upon which this conclusion rests, which may more
profitably be sought in the Rev. J. J. Tayleris work on “ The Fourth
Gospel,” or in Davidson s “ Introduction to the New Testament.” It
�16
THE
JESUS
OF HISTORY.
must suffice to mention that this gospel is not cited by Papias; that
Justin, Marcion, and Valentinus make no allusion to it, though, since
it furnishes so much that is germane to their views, they would gladly
have appealed to it, had it been in existence, when those view's were as
yet questionable ; and that, finally, in the great quartodeciman contro
versy, A. D. 168, the gospel is not only not mentioned, but the authority
of John is cited by Polycarp in flat contradiction of the view after
wards taken by this evangelist. Still more, the assumption of Renan
led at once into complicated difficulties with reference to the Apoca
lypse. The fourth gospel, if it does not unmistakably announce itself
as the work of John, at least professes to be Johannine; and it cannot
for a moment be supposed that such a book, making such claims, could
have gained currency during John’s lifetime without calling forth his
indignant protest. For, in reality, no book in the New Testament col
lection would so completely have shocked the prejudices of the Johan
nine party. John’s own views are well known to us from the Apoca
lypse. John was the most enthusiastic of millenarians and the most
narrow and rigid of Judaizers. In his antagonism to the Pauline
innovations he went farther than Peter himself. Intense hatred of
Paul and his followers appears in several passages of the Apocalypse,
where they are stigmatized as “ Nicolai tans,” “ deceivers of the people,”
“ those who say they are apostles and and are not,” “ eaters of meat
offered to idols,” “ fornicators,” “pretended Jews,” “ liars,” “ synagogue
of Satan,” etc. (Chap. II.) On the other hand, the fourth gospel con
tains nothing millenarian or Judaical; it carries Pauline universalism
to a far greater extent than Paul himself ventured to carry it, even
condemning the Jews as children of darkness, and by implication con
trasting them unfavorably with the Gentiles ; and it contains a theory
of the nature of Jesus which the Ebionitish Christians, to whom John
belonged, rejected to the last.
In his present edition Renan admits the insuperable force of these
objections, and abandons his theory of the apostolic origin of the fourth
gospel. And as this has necessitated the omission or alteration of all
such passages as rested upon the authority of that gospel, the book is
to a considerable extent rewritten, and the changes are such as greatly
to increase its value as a history of Jesus. Nevertheless, the author
has so long been in the habit of shaping his conceptions of the career
of Jesus by the aid of the fourth gospel, that it has become very diffi
cult for him to pass freely to another point of view. He still clings to
the hypothesis that there is an element of historic tradition contained
in the book, drawn from memorial writings which had perhaps been
handed down from John, and which were inaccessible to the synoptists.
In a very interesting appendix, he collects the evidence in favor of this
hypothesis, which indeed is not without plausibility, since there is
*
every reason for supposing that the gospel was written at Ephesus,
which a century before had been John’s place of residence. But even
�THE JESUS
OF HISTORY.
17
granting most of Renan’s assumptions, it must still follow that the
authority of this gospel is far inferior to that of the synoptics, and can
in no case be very confidently appealed to.“ The question is one of the
first importance to the historian of early Christianity. In inquiring
into the life of Jesus, the very first thing to do is to establish firmly in
the mind the true relations of the fourth gospel to the first three.
Until this has been done, no one is competent to write on the subject ;
and it is because he has done this so imperfectly that Renan’s work is,
from a critical point of view, so imperfectly successful.
The anonymous work entitled “ The Jesus of History,” which we
have placed at the head of this article, is in every respect noteworthy
as the first systematic attempt made in England to follow in the foot
steps of German criticism in writing a life of Jesus. We know of no
good reason why the book should be published anonymously ; for as a
historical essay it possesses extraordinary merit, and does great credit
not only to its author, but to English scholarship and acumen. It is
not, indeed, a book calculated to captivate the imagination of the read
ing public. Though written in a clear, forcible, and often elegant style,
it possesses no such wonderful rhetorical charm as the work of Renan ;
and it will probably never find half-a-dozen readers where the “ Vie de
Jésus ” has found a hundred. But the success of a book of this sort
is not to be measured by its rhetorical excellence, or by its adaptation
to the literary tastes of an uncritical and uninstructed public, but
rather by the amount of critical sagacity which it brings to bear upon
the elucidation of the many difficult and disputed points in the subject
of which it treats. Measured by this standard, the “ Jesus of History”
must rank very high indeed. To say that it throws more light upon
the career of Jesus than any work which has ever before been written
in English would be very inadequate praise, since the English language
has been singularly deficient in this branch of historical literature.We shall convey a more just idea of its merits if we say that it will
bear comparison with anything which even Germany has produced,
save only the works of Strauss, Baur, and Zeller.
The fitness of our author for the task which he has undertaken is
shown at the outset by his choice of materials. In basing his con
clusions almost exclusively upon the statements contained in the first
gospel, he is upheld by every sound principle of criticism. The times
and places at which our three synoptic gospels were written have been,
through the labors of the Tiibingen critics, determined almost to a
certainty. Of the three, “ Mark ” is unquestionably the latest ; with
the exception of about twenty verses, it is entirely made up from
“ Matthew ” and “ Luke,” the diverse Petrine and Pauline tendencies
of which it strives to neutralize in conformity to the conciliatory dis
position of the Church at Rome, at the epoch at which this gospel
was written, about A. D. 130. Thé third gospel was âlsp written at
Rome, some fifteen years earlier. In the preface, its author describes
�18
THE
JEEUE
OE HIE To RY.
it as a compilation from previously existing written materials. Among
these materials was certainly the first gospel, several passages of which
are adopted word for word by the author of “ Luke.” Yet the narra
tive varies materially from that of the first gospel in many essential
points. The arrangement of events is less natural, and, as in the
“ Acts of the Apostles ” by the same author, there is apparent through
out the design of suppressing the old discord between Paul and the
Judaizing disciples, and of representing Christianity as essentially
Pauline from the outset. How far Paul was correct in his interpreta
tion of the teachings of Jesus, it is difficult to decide. It is, no doubt,
possible that the first gospel may have lent to the words of Jesus an
Ebionite coloring in some instances,' and that now and then the third
gospel may present us with a truer account. To this supremely im
portant point we shall by and by return. For the present it must
suffice to observe that the evidences of an overruling dogmatic pur
pose are generally much more conspicuous in the third synoptist than
in the first; and that the very loose manner in which this writer has
handled his materials in the “Acts” is not calculated to inspire us
with confidence in the historical accuracy of his gospel. The writer
who, in spite of the direct testimony of Paul himself, could represent
the apostle to the Gentiles as acting under the direction of the dis
ciples at Jerusalem, and who puts Pauline sentiments into the mouth
of Peter, would certainly have been capable of unwarrantably giving
a Pauline turn to the teachings of Jesus himself. We are therefore,
as a last resort, brought back to the first gospel, which we find to
possess, as a historical narrative, far stronger claims upon our attention
than the second and third. In all probability it had assumed nearly
its present shape before A. I). 100; its origin is unmistakably Pales
tinian ; it betrays comparatively few indications of dogmatic purpose;
and there are strong reasons for believing that the speeches of Jesus
recorded in it are in substance taken from the genuine “ Logia ” of
Matthew mentioned by Papias, which must have been written as early
as A. D. 60-70, before the destruction of Jerusalem. Indeed, we are
inclined to agree with our author that the gospel, even in its present
shape (save only a few interpolated passages), may have existed as
early as A. D. 80, since it places the time of Jesus’ second coming
immediately after the destruction of Jerusalem; whereas the third
evangelist, who wrote forty-five years after that event, is careful to tell
us, “ The end is not immediately.” Moreover, it must have been
written while the Paulo-Petrine controversy was still raging, as is
shown by the parable of the “ enemy who sowed the tares,” which
manifestly refers to Paul, and also by the allusions to “ false prophets,”
(vii. 15,) to those who say, “ Lord, Lord,” and who “ cast out demons
in the name of the Lord,” (vii. 21-23,) teaching men to break the
commandinents, (v. 17-20.) There is, therefore, good reason for be
lieving that we have here a narrative written not much more than fifty
�THE JESUS
OF HISTORY.
19
years after the death of Jesus, based partly upon the written memorials
of an apostle, and in the main trustworthy, save where it relates oc
currences of a marvelous and legendary character. Such is our
author’s conclusion, and in describing the career of the Jesus of his
tory, he relies almost exclusively upon the statements contained in the
first gospel. Let us now, after this long but inadequate introduction,
give a brief sketch of the life of Jesus, as it is to be found in our
author.
II.
Concerning the time and place of the birth of Jesus, we know next
to nothing. According to uniform tradition, based upon a statement
of the third gospel, he was about thirty years of age at the time when
he began teaching. The same gospel states, with elaborate precision,
that the public career of John the Baptist began in the fifteenth year
of Tiberius, or A. D. 28. In the winter of A. D. 35-36, Pontius Pilate
was recalled from Judaea, so that the crucifixion could not have taken
place later than in the spring of 35. Thus we have a period of about
six years during which the ministry of Jesus must have begun and
ended; and if the tradition with respect to his age be trustworthy, we
shall not be far out of the way in supposing him to have been born
somewhere between B. C. 5 and A. D. 5. He is everywhere alluded to
in the gospels as Jesus of Nazareth in Galilee, where lived also his
father, mother, brothers and sisters, and where very likely he was born.
His parents’ names are said to have been Joseph and Mary. His own
name is a Hellenized form of Joshua, a name very common among the
Jews. According to the first gospel (xiii. 55), he had four brothers,—
Joseph and Simon; James, who was afterward^
one
**
of the heads of
the church at Jerusalem, and the most formidable enemy of Paul; and
Judas or Jude, who is perhaps the author of the anti-Pauline epistle
commonly ascribed to him.
Of the early youth of Jesus, and of the circumstances which guided
his intellectual development, we know absolutely nothing, nor have we
the data requisite for forming any plausible hypothesis. He first
appears in history about A. D. 29 or 30, in connection with a very
remarkable person whom the third evangelist describes as his cousin,
and who seems, from his mode of life, to have been in some way con
nected with or influenced by the Hellenizing sect of Essenes. Here
we obtain our first clue to guide us in forming a consecutive theory of
the development of Jesus’ opinions. The sect of Essenes took its rise
in the times of the Maccabees, about B. C. 170. Upon the funda
mental doctrines of Judaism it had engrafted many Pythagorean
notions, and was doubtless in the time of Jesus instrumental in
spreading Greek ideas among the people of Galilee, whei^ Judaism
was far from being so narrow and rigid as at Jerusalem. The Essenes
�20
THE
JESUS
OF HISTORY.
•attached but little importance to the Messianic expectations of the
Pharisees, and mingled scarcely at all in national politics. They lived
for the most part a strictly ascetic life, being indeed the legitimate pre
decessors of the early Christian hermits and monks. But while pre
eminent for sanctity of life, they heaped ridicule upon the entire
sacrificial service of the Temple, despised the Pharisees as hypocrites,
and insisted upon charity toward all men instead of the old. Jewish
exclusiveness.
It was once a favorite theory that both John the Baptist and Jesus
were members of the Essenian brotherhood; but that theory is now
generally abandoned. Whatever may have been the case with John,
who is said to have lived like an anchorite in the desert, there seems to
have been but little practical Essenism in Jesus, who is almost uni
formly represented as cheerful and social in demeanor, and against
whom it was expressly urged that he came eating and drinking, making
no pretence of puritanical holiness. He was neither a puritan, like the
Essence, nor a ritualist, like the Pharisees. Besides-which, both John
and Jesus seem to have begun their careers by preaching the un-Essene
doctrine of the speedy advent of the “ kingdom of heaven,” by which is
meant the reign of the Messiah upon the earth. Nevertheless, though
we cannot regard Jesus as actually a member of the Essenian commu
nity or sect, we can hardly avoid the conclusion that he, as well as
John the Baptist, had been at some time strongly influenced by Es
senian doctrines. The spiritualized conception of the “kingdom of
heaven” proclaimed by him was just what would naturally and logi
cally arise from a remodeling of the Messianic theories of the Phar
isees in conformity to advanced Essenian notions. It seems highly
probable that some such refined conception of the functions of the
Messiah was reached by John, who, stigmatizing the Pharisees and
Sadducees as a “generation of vipers,” called aloud to the people to re
pent of their sins, in view of the speedy advent of the Messiah, and to
testify to their repentance by submitting to the Essenian rite of bap
tism. There is no positive evidence that Jesus was ever a disciple of
John; yet the account of the baptism, in spite of the legendary char
acter of its details, seems to rest upon a historical basis; and perhaps
the most plausible hypothesis which can be framed is, that Jesus re
ceived baptism at John’s hands, became for awhile his disciple, and
acquired from him a knowledge of Essenian doctrines.
The career of John seems to have been very brief. His stern puritanism brought him soon into disgrace with the government of Galilee.
He was seized by Herod, thrown into prison, and beheaded. After the
brief hints given as to the intercourse between Jesus and John, we next
hear of Jesus alone in the desert, where, like Sakyamuni and Moham
med, he may have brooded in solitude over his great project. Yet we
do not find that he had as yet formed any distinct conception of his
own Messiahship. The total neglect of chronology by our authorities
�THE JESUS
OF HISTORY.
21
renders it impossible to trace the development of his thoughts step by
step; but for some time after John’s catastrophe we find him calling
upon the people to repent, in view of the speedy approach of the Mes
siah, speaking with great and commanding personal authority, but
using no language which would indicate that he was striving to do
more than worthily fill the place and add to the good work of his late
master. The Sermon on the Mount, which the first gospel inserts in
this place, was probably never spoken as a continuous discourse; but it
no doubt for the most part contains the very words of Jesus, and repre
sents the general spirit of his teaching during this earlier portion of
his career. In this is contained nearly all that has made Christianity
so powerful in the domain of ethics. If all the rest of the gospel were
taken away, or destroyed in the night of some future barbarian inva
sion, we should still here possess the secret of the wonderful impression
which Jesus made upon those who heard him speak. Added to the
Essenian scorn of Pharisaic formalism, and the spiritualized conception
of the Messianic kingdom, which Jesus may probably have shared with
John the Baptist, we have here for the first time the distinctively
Christian conception of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of
men, which ultimately insured the success of the new religion. The
special point of originality in Jesus was his conception of Deity. As
Strauss well says, “ he conceived of God, in a moral point of view, as
being identical in character with himself in the most exalted moments
of his religious life, and strengthened in turn his own religious life by
this ideal. But the most exalted religious tendency in his own con
sciousness was exactly that comprehensive love, overpowering the evil
only by the good, and which he therefore transferred to God as the
fundamental tendency of His nature.” From this conception of God,
observes Zeller, flowed naturally all the moral teaching of Jesus; the
insistance upon spiritual righteousness instead of the mere mechanical
observance of Mosaic precepts; the call to be perfect even as the Father
is perfect; the principle of the spiritual equality of men before God and
the equal duties of all men toward each other.
How far, in addition to these vitally important lessons, Jesus may
have taught doctrines of an ephemeral or visionary character, it is very
difficult to decide. We are inclined to regard the third gospel as of
some importance in settling this point. The author of that gospel rep
resents Jesus as decidedly hostile to the rich. Where Matthew has
“ Blessed are the. poor in spirit,” Luke has “ Blessed are ye poor.” In
the first gospel we read, “ Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after
righteousness, for they will be filled; ” but in the third gospel we find,
“ Blessed are ye that hunger now, for ye will be filled; ” and this assur
ance is immediately followed by the denunciation, “ Woe to you that
are rich, for ye have received your consolation! Woe to you that are
full now, for ye will hunger.” The parable of Dives and Lazarus illus
trates concretely this view of the case, which is still further corroborated
�22
THE JESUS
OF HISTORY.
by the account, given in both the first and the third gospels, of the
young man who came to seek everlasting life. Jesus here maintains
that righteousness is insufficient unless voluntary poverty be super
added. Though the young man has strictly fulfilled the greatest of the
commandments—»to love his neighbor as himself—he is required, as a
needful proof of his sincerity, to distribute all his vast possessions
among the poor. And when he naturally manifests a reluctance to
perform so superfluous a sacrifice, Jesus observes that it will be easier
for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to
share in the glories of the anticipated Messianic kingdom. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that we have here a very primitive and
probably authentic, tradition; and when we remember the importance
which, according to the “ Acts,” the earliest disciples attached to the
principle of communism, as illustrated in the legend of Ananias and
Sapphira,.we must admit strong reasons for believing that Jesus him
self held views which tended toward the abolition of private property.
On this point, the testimony of the third evangelist singly is of consid
erable weight; since at the time when he wrote, the communistic the
ories of the first generation of Christians had been generally abandoned,
and in the absence of any dogmatic motives, he could only have inserted
these particular traditions because he believed them to possess histori
cal value. But we- are not dependent on the third gospel alone. The
story just cited is attested by both our authorities, and is in perfect
keeping with the general views of Jesus as reported by the first evan
gelist. Thus his disciples are enjoined to leave all, and follow him; to
take no thought for the morrow; to think no more of laying up treas
ures on the earth, for in the Messianic kingdom they shall have treas
ures in abundance, which can neither be wasted nor stolen. On
making their journeys, they are to provide neither money, nor clothes,
nor food, but are to live at the expense of those whom they visit; and
if any town refuse to harbor them, the Messiah, on his arrival, will deal
with that town more severely than Jehovah dealt with the cities of the
plain. Indeed, since the end of the world was to come before the end
of the generation then living (Matt. xxiv. 34; 1 Cor. xv. 51-56; vii, 29),
there could be no need for acquiring property or making arrangements
for the future; even marriage became unnecessary. These teachings
of Jesus have a marked Essenian character, as well as his declaration
that in the Messianic kingdom there was to be no more marriage, per
haps no distinction of sex (Matt. xxii. 30). The sect of Ebionites, who
represented the earliest doctrine and practice of Christianity before it
had been modified by Paul, differed from the Essenes in no essential
respect save in the acknowledgment of Jesus as the Messiah, and the
expectation of his speedy return to the earth.
How long, or with what success, Jesus continued to preach the
coming of the Messiah in Galilee, it is impossible to conjecture. His
fellow-townsmen of Nazareth appear to have ridiculed him in his pro
�THE JESUS
OF HISTORY.
23
phetical capacity; or, if we may trust the third evangelist, to have
arisen against him with indignation, and made an attempt upon his
life. To them he was but a carpenter, the son of a carpenter (Matt,
xiii. 55 ; Mark vi. 3), who told them disagreeable truths. Our author
represents his teaching in Galilee to have produced but little result,
but the gospel narratives afford no definite data for deciding this point.
We believe the most probable conclusion to be that Jesus did attract
many followers, and became famous throughout Galilee ; for Herod is
said to have regarded him as John the Baptist risen from the grave.
To escape the malice of Herod, Jesus then retired to Syro-Phoenicia,
and during this eventful journey, the consciousness of his own Messiahship seems for the first time to have distinctly dawned upon him
(Matt. xiv. 1, 13 ; xv. 21; xvi. 13-20). Already, it appears, specula
tions were rife as to the character of this wonderful preacher. Some
thought he was John the Baptist, or perhaps one of the prophets of the
Assyrian period returned to the earth. Some, in accordance with a
generally-received tradition, supposed him to be Elijah, who had never
seen death, and had now at last returned from the regions above the
firmament to announce the coming of the Messiah in the clouds. It
was generally admitted, among enthusiastic hearers, that he who spake
as never man spake before must have some divine commission to exe
cute. These speculations, coming to the ears of Jesus during his
preaching in Galilee, could not fail to excite in him a train of self-con
scious reflections. To him also must have been presented the query as
to his own proper character and functions ; and, as our author acutely
demonstrates, his only choice lay between a profitless life of exile in
Syro-Phoenicia, and a bold return to Jewish territory in some pro
nounced character. The problem being thus propounded, there could
hardly be a doubt as to what that character should be. Jesus knew
well that he was not John the Baptist; nor, however completely he
may have been dominated by his sublime enthusiasm, was it likely that
he could mistake himself for an ancient prophet arisen from the lower
world of shades, or for Elijah descended from the sky. But the Mes
siah himself he might well be. Such indeed was the almost inevitable
corollary from his own conception of Messiahship. We have seen that
he had, probably from the very outset, discarded the traditional notion
Qf a political Messiah, and recognized the truth that the happiness of a
people lies not so much in political autonomy as in the love of God and
the sincere practice of righteousness. The people were to be freed
from the bondage of sin, of meaningless formalism, of consecrated
hypocrisy,—a bondage more degrading than the payment of tribute to
the emperor. The true business of the Messiah, then, was to deliver
his people from the former bondage; it might be left to Jehovah, in
his own good time, to deliver them from the latter. Holding these
views, it was hardly possible that it should not sooner or later occur to
Jesus that he himself was the person destined to discharge this glorious
�34
THE JESUS
OF HISTORY.
function, to liberate his countrymen from the thraldom of Pharisaic
ritualism, and to inaugurate the real Messianic kingdom of spiritual
righteousness. Had he not already preached the advent of this spiritual
kingdom, and been instrumental in raising many to loftier conceptions
of duty, and to a higher and purer life ? And might he not now, by a
grand attack upon Pharisaism in its central stronghold, destroy its
prestige in the eyes of the people, and cause Israel to adopt a nobler
religious and ethical doctrine ? The temerity of such a purpose
detracts nothing from its sublimity. And if that purpose should be
accomplished, Jesus would really have performed the legitimate work
of the Messiah. Thus, from his own point of view, Jesus was thor
oughly consistent and rational in announcing himself as the expected
Deliverer; and in the eyes of the impartial historian his course is fully
justified.
From that time,” says the first evangelist, “ Jesus began to show
to his disciples, that he must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things
from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be put to death, and
rise again on the third day.” Here we have, obviously, the knowledge
of the writer, after the event, reflected back and attributed to Jesus.
It is of course impossible that Jesus should have predicted with such
definiteness his approaching death ; nor is it very likely that he enter
tained any hope of being raised from the grave “ on the third day.”
To a man in that age and country, the conception of a return from the
lower world of shades was not a difficult one to frame; and it may well
be that Jesus’ sense of his own exalted position was sufficiently great
to inspire him with the confidence that, even in case of temporary fail
ure, Jehovah would rescue him from the grave and send him back with
larger powers to carry out the purpose of his mission. But the diffi
culty of distinguishing between his own words and the interpretation
put upon them by his disciples becomes here insuperable; and there
will always be room for the hypothesis that Jesus had in view no
posthumous career of his own, but only expressed his unshaken confi
dence in the success of his enterprise, even after and in spite of his
death.
At all events, the possibility of his death must now have been often
in his mind. He was undertaking a well-nigh desperate task,—to
overthrow the Pharisees in Jerusalem itself. No other alternative was
left him.' And here we believe Mr. F. W. Newman to be singularly at
fault in pronouncing this attempt of Jesus upon Jerusalem a “fool
hardy ” attempt. According to Mr. Newman, no man has any busi
ness to rush upon certain death, and it is only a crazy fanatic who will
do so. But such “ glittering generalizations ” will here help us but
little. The historic data show that to go to Jerusalem, even at the
risk of death, was absolutely necessary to the realization of Jesus’ Mes
sianic project. Mr. Newman certainly would not have had him drag
out an inglorious and baffled existence in Syro-Phoenicia. If the
�THE JESUS
OF HISTORY.
25
Messianic kingdom was to be fairly inaugurated, there was work to be
done in Jerusalem, and Jesus must go there as one in authority,, cost
what it might- We believe him to have gone there in a spirit of grand
and careless braverv. vet seriously and soberly and under the influence
of no fanatical delusion. He knew the risks, but deliberately chose to
incur them, that the will of Jehovah might be accomplished.
We next hear of Jesus traveling down to Jerusalem by way of
Jericho,, and entering the sacred city in his character of Messiah, at
tended by a great multitude. It was near the time of the Passover,
when people from all parts of Galilee and Judaea were sure to be at
x
Jerusalem, and the nature of his reception seems to indicate that he
had already secured a considerable number of followers upon whose
assistance hc^might hope to rely, though it nowhere appears that he
intended to use other than purely moral weapons to insure a favorable
reception. We must remember that for half a century many of the
Jewish people had been constantly looking for the arrival of the Mes
siah, and there can be little doubt that the entry of Jesus riding upon
an ass in literal fulfilment of prophecy must have wrought powerfully
upon the imagination of the multitude. That the believers in him
were verv numerous must be inferred from the cautious, not to say
timid, behavior of the rulers at Jerusalem, who are represented as
Hearing to arrest him, but as deterred from taking active steps
through fear of the people. We are led to the same conclusion by his
driving the monev-changers out of the temple; an act upon which he
could hardly have ventured, had not the popular enthusiasm in his
favor been for the moment overwhelming. But the enthusiasm of a
mob is short-lived, and needs to be fed upon the excitement of brilliant
and dramatically arranged events. The calm preacher of righteousness,
or even the fierv denouncer of the scribes and Pharisees, could not
_ hope to retain nndiminished authority save by the display of extraor
dinary powers to which, so far as we know, Jesus (like Mohammed)
made no pretence. (Matt. xvi. 1—L) The ignorant and materialistic
populace could not understand the exalted conception of Messiahship
which had been formed by Jesus, and as day after day elapsed without
the appearance of any marvelous sign from Jehovah, their enthusiasm
must naturally have cooled down. Then the Pharisees appear cau
tiously endeavoring to entrap him into admissions which might render
him obnoxious to the Boman governor. He saw through their design,
however, and foiled them by the magnificent repartee, “ Render unto
Caesar the things that are Caesars, and unto God the things that are
God’s.” Nothing could more forcibly illustrate the completely non
political character of his Messianic doctrines. Nevertheless, we are
told that, failing in this attempt, the chief priests suborned false wit
nesses to testify against him: this sabbath-breaker, this derider of
Mosaic formalism, who with his Messianic pretensions excited the
people against their hereditary teachers, must at all events be put out
�26
THE JESUS
OF HIS T O R U.
of the way. Jesus must suffer the fate which society has too often had
in store for the reformer; the fate which Socrates and Savonarola,
Vanini and Bruno have suffered for being wiser than their own genera
tion. Messianic adventurers had already given much trouble to the
Roman authorities, who were not likely to scrutinize critically the
peculiar claims of Jesus. And when the chief priests accused him.
before Pilate of professing to be “ King of the Jews,” this claim could
in Roman apprehension bear but one interpretation. The offence was
treason, punishable, save in the case of Roman citizens, by crucifixion.
Such in its main outlines is the historic career of Jesus, as con
structed by our author from data furnished chiefly by the first gospel.
Connected .with the narrative there are many interesting topics of dis
cussion, of which our rapidly diminishing space will allow us to select
only one for comment. That one is perhaps the most important of all,
namely, the question as to how far Jesus anticipated the views of Paul
in admitting Gentiles to share in the privileges of the Messianic king
dom. Our author argues, writh much force, that the designs of Jesus
were entirely confined to the Jewish people, and that it was Paul
who first, by admitting Gentiles to the Christian fold without requiring
them to live like Jews, gave to Christianity the character of a universal
religion. Our author reminds us that the third gospel is not to be
depended upon in determining this point, since it manifestly puts
Pauline sentiments into the mouth of Jesus, and in particular attrib
utes to Jesus an acquaintance with heretical Samaria which the first
gospel disclaims. He argues that the apostles were in every respect
Jews, save in their belief that Jesus was the Messiah ; and he perti
nently asks, if James, who was the brother of Jesus, and Peter and
John, who were his nearest friends, unanimously opposed Paul and
stigmatized him as a liar and heretic, is it at all likely that Jesus had
ever distinctly sanctioned such views as Paul maintained ?
In the course of many years’ reflection upon this point, we have
several times been inclined to accept the narrow interpretation of
Jesus’ teaching here indicated; yet, on the whole, we do not believe it
can ever be conclusively established. In the first place it must be re
membered that if the third gospel throws a Pauline coloring .over the
events which it describes, the first gospel also shows a decidedly anti
Pauline bias, and the one party was as likely as the other to attribute
its own views to Jesus himself. One striking instance of this tendency
has been pointed out by Strauss, who has shown that the verses Matt,
v. 17-20, are an interpolation. The person who teaches men to break
the commandments is undoubtedly Paul, and in order to furnish a text
against Paul’s followers, the “ Nicolaitans,” Jesus is made to declare
that he came not to destroy one tittle of the law, but to fulfil the
whole in every particular. Such an utterance is in manifest contradic
tion to the spirit of Jesus’ teaching, as shown in the very same chapter,
and throughout a great part of the same gospel. He who taught in
�THE JESUS
OF HISTORY.
2Ÿ
his own name and not as the scribes, who proclaimed himself Lord
over the Sabbath, and who manifested from first to last a more than
Essenian contempt for rites and ceremonies, did not come to fulfil the
law of Mosaism, but to supersede it. Nor can any inference ad
verse to this conclusion be drawn from the injunction to the disciples,
(Matt. x. 5-7,) not to preach to Gentiles and Samaritans, but only “to
the lost sheep of the house of Israelfor this remark is placed before
the beginning of Jesus’ Messianic career, and the reason assigned for
the restriction is merely that the disciples will not have time even to
preach to all the Jews before the coming of the Messiah, whose ap
proach Jesus was announcing. (Matt. x. 23.)
These examples show that we must use caution in weighing the
testimony even of the first gospel, and must not too hastily cite it as
proof that Jesus supposed his mission to be restricted to the Jews.
When we come to consider what happened a few years after the death
of Jesus, we shall be still less ready to insist upon the view defended
by our anonymous author. Paul, according to his own confession, per
secuted the Christians unto death. Now what, in the theories or in
the practice of the Jewish disciples of Jesus, could have moved Paul
to such fanatic behavior ? Certainly not their spiritual interpretation
of Mosaism, for Paul himself belonged to the liberal school of Gama
liel, to the views of which the teachings and practices of Peter, James
and John might easily be accommodated. Probably not their belief in
Jesus as the Messiah, for at the riot in which Stephen was murdered
and all the Hellenist disciples driven from Jerusalem, the Jewish disci
ples were allowed to remain in the city unmolested. (See Acts viii.
1, 14.) This marked difference of treatment indicates that Paul re
garded Stephen and his friends as decidedly more heretical and obnox
ious than Peter, James and John, whom, indeed, Paul’s own master
Gamaliel had recently (Acts v. 34) defended before the council. And
this influence is fully confirmed by the account of Stephen’s death,
where his murderers charge him with maintaining that Jesus had
founded a new religion which was destined entirely to supersede and
replace Judaism. (Acts vi. 14.) The Petrine disciples never held
this view of the mission of Jesus; and to this difference it is undoubt
edly owing that Paul and his companions forbore to disturb them. It
would thus appear that even previous to Paul's conversion, within five
or six years after the death of Jesus, there was a prominent party
among the disciples which held that the new religion was not a modi
fication but an abrogation of Judaism ; and their name “ Hellenists ”
sufficiently shows either that there were Gentiles among them or that
they held fellowship with Gentiles. It was this which aroused Paul to
persecution, and upon his sudden conversion it was with these Hellen
istic doctrines that he fraternized, taking little heed of the Petrine
disciples (Galatians i. 15), who were hardly more than a Jewish
sect.
�Now the existence of these Hellenists at Jerusalem so soon after
the death of Jesus is clear proof that he had never distinctly and irrev
ocably pronounced against the admission of Gentiles to the Messianic
kingdom, and it makes it very probable that the downfall of Mosaism
as a result of his preaching was by no means unpremeditated. While,
on the other hand, the obstinacy of the Petrine party in adhering to
Jewish customs shows equally that Jesus could not have unequivocally
committed himself in favor of a new gospel for the Gentiles. Probably
Jesus was seldom brought into direct contact with others than Jews,
so that the questions concerning the admission of Gentile converts did
not come up during his lifetime; and thus the way was left open for
the controversy which soon broke out between the Petrine party and
Paul. Nevertheless, though Jesus may never have definitely pro
nounced. upon this point, it will hardly be denied that his teaching,
even as reported in the first gospel, is in its utter condemnation of for
malism far more closely allied to the Pauline than to the Petrine doc
trines. In his hands Mosaism became spiritualized until it really lost
its identity, and was transformed into a code fit for the whole Roman
world. And we do not doubt that if any one had asked Jesus whether
circumcision were an essential prerequisite for admission to the Mes
sianic kingdom, he would have given the same answer which Paul after
wards gave. We agree with Zeller and Strauss that, “as Luther was a
more liberal spirit than the Lutheran divines of the succeeding genera
tion, and Socrates a more profound thinker than Xenophon or Antisthenes, so also Jesus must be credited with having raised himself far
higher above the narrow prejudices of his nation than those of his dis
ciples who could scarcely understand the spread of Christianity among
the heathen when it had become an accomplished fact.”
THE JESUS OF DOGMA
*
HE meagerness of our information concerning the historic
career of Jesus stands in striking contrast to the mass of
information which lies within our reach concerning the
primitive character of Christologie speculation. First we
have the epistles of Paul, written from twenty to thirty years after
the crucifixion, which, although they tell us next to nothing about
T
* Saint-Paul. par Ernest Renan. Paris, 1869. (English translation. New
York : Carleton, 1869.)
Histoire du Dogme de la Divinité de Jesus-Christ, par Albert Réville.
Paris, 1869.
The End of the.World and the Day of Judgment. Two Discourses by
the Rev. W. R. Alger. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1870.
�THE JESUS
OF DOGMA.
29
what Jesus did. nevertheless give us very plain information as to
the impression which he made. Then we have the Apocalypse,
written by John, AD. 68, which exhibits the Messianic theory en
tertained by the earliest disciples. Next we have the epistles to the
Hebrews, Philippians. Colossians, and Ephesians, besides the four gos
pels, constituting altogether a connected chain of testimony to the
progress of Christian doctrine from the destruction of Jerusalem to the
time of the quartodeciman controversy (A. D. 70-170). Finallv, there
is the vast collection of apocryphal, heretical, and patristic literature,
from the writings of Justin Martin, the pseudo-Clement, and the
pseudo-Ignatius, down to the time of the Council of Nikaia. when the
official theories of Christ's person assumed very nearly the shape which
they have retained, within the orthodox churches of Christendom,
down to the present day. As we pointed out in “ The Jesus of His
tory,” while all this voluminous literature throws but an uncertain
light upon the life and teachings of the founder of Christianity, it
nevertheless furnishes nearly all the data which we could desire for
knowing what the early Christians thought of the master of their
faith. Having given a brief account of the historic career of Jesus, so
far as it can now be determined, we propose here to sketch the rise and
progress of Christologic doctrine, in its most striking features, during
the first three centuries. Beginning with the apostolic view of the
human Messiah sent to deliver Judaism from its spiritual torpor, and
prepare it for the millennial kingdom, we shall briefly trace the pro
gressive metamorphosis of this conception until it completely loses its
identity in the Athanasian theory, according to which Jesus was God
himself, the creator of the universe, incarnate in human flesh.
The earliest dogma held by the apostles concerning Jesus was that
of his resurrection from the grave after death. It was not only the
earliest, but the most essential to the success of the new religion.
Christianity might have overspread the Roman Empire, and main
tained its hold upon men’s faith until to-day, without the dogmas of
the incarnation and the Trinity; but without the dogma of the resur
rection it would probably have failed at the very outset. Its lofty
morality would not alone have sufficed to insure its success. For what
men needed then, as indeed they still need, and will always need, was
not merely a rule of life and a mirror to the heart, but also a compre
hensive and satisfactory theory of things, a philosophy or theosophy.
The times demanded intellectual as well as moral consolation; and the
disintegration of ancient theologies needed to be repaired, that the new
ethical impulse imparted by Christianity might rest upon a plausible
speculative basis. The doctrine of the resurrection was but the begin
ning of a series of speculative innovations which prepared the way for
the new religion to emancipate itself from Judaism, and achieve the
conquest of the Empire. Even the faith of the apostles in the speedy
return of their master the Messiah must have somewhat lost ground,
�30
THE JESUS
OE DOGMA.
had it not been supported by their belief in his resurrection from the
grave and his consequent transfer from Sheol, the gloomy land of
shadows, to the regions above the sky.
The origin of the dogma of the resurrection cannot be determined
with certainty. The question has, during the past century, been the
subject of much discussion, upon which it is not necessary for us
here to comment. Such apparent evidence as there is in favor of the
old theory of Jesus’ natural recovery from the effects of the cruci
fixion, may be found in Salvador’s “ Jesus-Christ et sa Doctrine
but, as Zeller has shown, the theory is utterly unsatisfactory. The
natural return of Jesus to his disciples never could have given rise to
the notion of his resurrection, since the natural explanation would
have been the more obvious one; besides which, if we were to adopt
this hypothesis, we should be obliged to account for the fact that the
historic career of Jesus ends with the crucifixion. The most probable
explanation, on the whole, is the one suggested by the accounts in the
gospels, that the dogma of the resurrection is due originally to the
excited imagination of Mary of Magdala. The testimony of Paul may
also be cited in favor of this view, since he always alludes to earlier
Christophanies in just the same language which he uses in describing
his own vision on the road to Damascus.
But the question as to how the belief in the resurrection of Jesus
originated is of less importance than the question as to how it should
have produced the effect that it did. The dogma of the resurrection
has, until recent times, been so rarely treated from the historical point
of view, that the student of history at firsts finds some difficulty in
thoroughly realizing its import to the minds of those who first pro
claimed it. We cannot hope to understand it without bearing in mind
the theories of the Jews and early Christians concerning the structure
of the world and the cosmic location of departed souls. Since the time
of Copernicus modern Christians no longer attempt to locate heaven
and hell; they are conceived merely as mysterious places remote from
the earth. The theological universe no longer corresponds to that
which physical science presents for our contemplation. It was quite
different with the Jew. His conception of the abode of Jehovah
and the angels, and of departed souls, was exceedingly simple and
definite. In the Jewish theory the universe is like a sort of threestory house. The flat earth rests upon the waters, and under the
earth’s surface is the land of graves, called Sheol, where after death the
souls of all men go, the righteous as well as the wicked, for the Jew
had not arrived at the doctrine of heaven and hell. The Hebrew Sheol
corresponds strictly to the Greek Hades, before the notions of Elysium
and Tartarus were added to it,—a land peopled with flitting shadows,
suffering no torment, but experiencing no pleasure, like those whom
Dante met in one of the upper circles of his Inferno. Sheol is the first
story of the cosmic house ; the earth is the second. Above the earth is
�TH R
JESUS
Of
DOGMA.
31
the firmament or sky, which, according to the book of Genesis (chap. i.
v. 6, Hebrew text), is a vast plate hammered out by the gods, and sup
ports a great ocean like that upon which the earth rests. Rain is
caused by the opening of little windows or trap-doors in the firmament,
through which pours the water of this upper ocean. Upon this water
rests the land of heaven, where Jehovah reigns, surrounded by hosts
of angels. To this blessed land two only of the human race had ever
been admitted,—Enoch and Elijah, the latter of whom had ascended in
a chariot of fire, and was destined to return .to earth as the herald and
forerunner of the Messiah. Heaven forms the third story of the cosmic
house. Between the firmament and the earth is the air, which is the
habitation of evil demons ruled by Satan, the “prince of the powers of
the air.”
Such was the cosmology of the ancient Jew ; and his theology was
equally simple. Sheol was the destined abode of all men after death,
and no theory of moral retribution was attached to the conception.
The rewards and punishments known to the authors of the Pentateuch
and the early Psalms are all earthly rewards and punishments. But in
course of time the prosperity of the wicked and the misfortunes of the
good man furnished a troublesome problem for the Jewish thinker;
and after the Babylonish Captivity, we find the doctrine of a resurrec
tion from Sheol devised in order to meet this case. According to this
doctrine—which was borrowed from the Zarathustrian theology of
Persia—the Messiah on his arrival was to free from Sheol all the souls
of the righteous, causing them to ascend reinvested in their bodies to a
renewed and beautiful earth, while on the other hand the wicked were
to be punished with, tortures like those of the valley of Hinnom, or
were to be immersed in liquid brimstone, like that which had rained
upon Sodom and Gomorrah. Here we get the first announcement of
a future state of retribution. The doctrine was peculiarly Pharisaic,
and the Sadducees, who were strict adherents to the letter of Mosaism,
rejected it to the last. By degrees this doctrine became coupled with
the Messianic theories of the Pharisees. The loss of Jewish independ
ence under the dominion of Persians, Macedonians and Romans, caused
the people to look over more earnestly toward the expected time when
the Messiah should appear in Jerusalem to deliver them from their
oppressors. The moral doctrines of the Psalms and earlier prophets
assumed an increasingly political aspect. The Jews were the righteous
“ under a cloud,” whose sufferings were symbolically depicted by the
younger Isaiah as the afflictions of the “ servant of Jehovah;” while on
the other hand, the “ wicked ” were the Gentile oppressors of the holy
people. Accordingly the Messiah, on his arrival, was to sit in judg
ment in the valley of Jehoshaphat, rectifying the. wrongs of his chosen
ones, condemning the Gentile tyrants to the torments of Gehenna, and
raising from Sheol all those Jews who had lived and died during the
evil times before his coming. These were to find in the Messianic
�32
THE JESUS
OF DOGMA.
kingdom the compensation for the ills which they had suffered in their
first earthly existence. Such are the main outlines of the theory found
in the Book of Enoch, written about B. C. 100, and it is adopted in the
Johannine Apocalypse, with little variation, save in the recognition of
Jesus as the Messiah, and in the transference to his second coming of
all these wonderful proceedings. The manner of the Messiah's coming
had been variously imagined. According to an earlier view, he was to
enter Jerusalem as a King of the house of David, and therefore of
human lineage. According to a later view, presented in the Book of
Daniel, he was to descend from the sky, and appear among the clouds.
Both these views were adopted by the disciples of Jesus, who harmo
nized them by referring the one to his first and the other to his second
appearance.
Now to the imaginations of these earliest disciples the belief in the
resurrection of Jesus presented itself as a needful guarantee of his
Messiahship. Their faith, which must have been shaken by his execu
tion and descent into Sheol, received welcome confirmation by the
springing up of the belief that he had been again seen upon the face
of the earth. Applying the imagery of Daniel, it became a logical
conclusion that he must have ascended into the sky, whence he might
shortly be expected to make his appearance, to enact the scenes foretold
in prophecy. That such was the actual process of inference is shown
by the legend of the Ascension in the first chapter of the “Acts,” and
especially by the words, “This Jesus who hath been taken up from you
into heaven, will come in the same manner in which ye beheld him
going into heaven.” In the Apocalvpse, written A. T). G8, just after
the death of Nero, this second coming is described as something im
mediately to happen, and the colors in which it is depicted show how
closely allied were the Johannine notions to those of the Pharisees.
The glories of the New Jerusalem are to be reserved for Jews, while
for the Roman tyrants of Judaea is reserved a fearful retribution.
They are to be trodden under-foot by the Messiah, like grapes in a
wine-press, until the gushing blood shall rise to the height of the
horse’s bridle.
In the writings of Paul, the dogma of the resurrection assumes a
very different aspect. Though Paul, like the older apostles, held that
Jesus, as the Messiah, was to return to the earth within a few years, yet
to his catholic mind this anticipated event had become divested of its
narrow Jewish significance. In the eyes of Paul, the religion preached
by Jesus was an abrogation of Mosaism, and the truths contained in it
were a free gift to the Gentile as well as to the Jewish world. Accord
ing to Paul, death came into the world as a punishment for the sin of
Adam. By this he meant that, had it not been for the original trans
gression, all men escaping death would either have remained upon
earth or have been conveyed to heaven, like Enoch and Elijah, in in
corruptible bodies. But in reality as a penance for disobedience, all
�THE
JESUS
OF
DOGMA.
33
men, with these two exceptions, had suffered death, and been exiled
to the gloomy caverns of Sheol. The Mosaic ritual was powerless to
free men from this repulsive doom, but it had nevertheless served a
good purpose in keeping men’s minds directed toward holiness, pre
paring them, as a schoolmaster would prepare his pupils, to receive the
vitalizing truths of Christ. Now, at last, the Messiah or Christ had
come as a second Adam, and being without sin had been raised by Je
hovah out of Sheol and taken up into heaven, as testimony to men
that the power of sin and death was at last defeated. The wav hence
forth to avoid death and escape the exile to Sheol was to live spiritually
like Jesus, and with him to be dead to sensual requirements. Faith,
in Paul’s apprehension, was not an intellectual assent to definitely pre
scribed dogmas, but, as Matthew Arnold has well pointed out, it was
an emotional striving after righteousness, a developing consciousness
of God in the soul, such as Jesus had possessed, or in Paul’s phrase
ology, a subjugation of the flesh by the spirit. All those who should
thus seek spiritual perfection should escape the original curse. The
Messiah was destined to return to the earth to establish the reign of
spiritual holiness, probably during Paul’s own lifetime. (1 Cor. xv.
51.) Then the true followers of Jesus should be clothed in ethereal
bodies, free from the imperfections of “ the flesh,” and should ascend
to heaven without suffering death, while the righteous dead should at
the same time be released from Sheol, even as Jesus himself had been
released.
To the doctrine of the resurrection, in which ethical and speculative
elements are thus happily blended by Paul, the new religion doubtless
owed in great part its rapid success. Into an account of the causes
which favored the spreading of Christianity, it is not our purpose to
enter at present. * ut we may note that the local religions of the ancient
B
pagan world had partly destroyed each other by mutual intermingling,
and had lost their hold upon people from the circumstance that their
ethical teaching no longer corresponded to the advanced ethical feeling,
of the age. Polytheism, in short, was outgrown. It was outgrown
both intellectually and morally. People were ceasing to believe in its
doctrines, and were ceasing to respect its precepts. The learned were
taking refuge in philosophy, the ignorant in mystical superstitions im
ported Trom Asia. The commanding ethical motive of ancient repub
lican times had been patriotism—devotion to the interests of the com
munity. But Roman dominion had destroyed patriotism as a guiding
principle of life, and thus in every way the minds of men were left in
a sceptical, unsatisfied state,—craving after a new theory of life, and
craving after a new stimulus to right action. Obviously the only
theology which could now be satisfactory to philosophy or to common
sense was some form of monotheism;—some system of doctrines which
should represent all men as spiritually subjected to the will of a single
God, just as they were subjected to the temporal authority of the Em
�34
THE JESUS
Of DOGMA.
peror. And similarly the only system of ethics which could have a
chance of prevailing must be some system which should clearly pre
scribe the mutual duties of all men without distinction of race or
locality. Thus the spiritual morality of Jesus, and his conception of
God as a father and of all men as brothers, appeared at once to meet
the ethical and speculative demands of the time.
Yet whatever effect these teachings might have produced, if un
aided by further doctrinal elaboration, was enhanced myriadfold by the
elaboration which they received at the hands of Paul. Philosophic
Stoics and Epicureans had arrived at the conception of the brotherhood
of men, and the Greek hymn of Kleanthes had exhibited a deep spirit
ual sense of the fatherhood of God. The originality of Christianity lay
not so much in its enunciation of new ethical precepts as in the fact
that it furnished a new ethical sanction—a commanding incentive to
holiness of living. That it might accomplish this result, it was abso
lutely necessary that it should begin by discarding both the ritualism
and the narrow theories of Judaism. The mere desire for a mono
theistic creed had led many pagans, in Paul’s time, to embrace Juda
ism, in spite of its requirements, which to Romans and Greeks were
meaningless, and often, disgusting; but such conversions could never
have been numerous. Judaism could never have conquered the Roman
world; nor is it likely that the Judaical Christianity of Peter, James,
and John would have been any more successful. The doctrine of the
resurrection, in particular, was not likely to prove attractive wheu ac
companied by the picture of the Messiah treading the Gentiles in the
wine-press of his righteous indignation. But here Paul showed his
profound originality. The condemnation of Jewish formalism which
*
Jesus had pronounced, Paul turned against the older apostles, who in
sisted upon circumcision. With marvelous flexibility of mind, Paul
placed circumcision and the Mosaic injunctions about meats upon a
level with the ritual observances of pagan nations, allowing each feeble
brother to perform such works as might tickle his fancy, but bidding
all take heed that salvation was not to be obtained after any such me
chanical method, but only by devoting the whole soul to righteousness,
after the example of Jesus.
This was the negative part of Paul’s work. This was the knocking
down of the barriers which had kept men, and would always have kept
them, from entering into the kingdom of heaven. But the positive
part of Paul’s work is contained in his theory of the salvation of men
from death through the second Adam, whom Jehovah rescued from
Sheol for his sinlessness. The resurrection of Jesus was the visible
token of the escape from death which might be achieved by all men
who, with God’s aid, should succeed in freeing themselves from thè
burden of sin which had encumbered all the children of Adam. The
end of the world was at hand, and they who would live with Christ
must figuratively die with Christ—must become dead to sin. Thus to
�THE
JESUS
OF DOGMA.
35
the pure and spiritual ethics contained in the teachings of Jesus, Paul
added an incalculably’powerful incentive to right action, and a theory
of life calculated to satisfy the speculative necessities of the pagan or
v Gentile world. To the educated and sceptical Athenian, as to the criti
cal scholar of modern times, the physical resurrection of Jesus from the
grave, and his ascent through the vaulted floor of heaven, might seem
foolishness or naïveté. But to the average. Greek or Roman the con
ception presented no serious difficulty. The cosmical theories upon
. which the conception was founded were essentially the same among
Jews and Gentiles, and indeed were but little modified until the estab
lishment of the Copernican astronomy. The doctrine of the Messiah’s
second coming was also received without opposition, and for about a
century men lived in continual anticipation of that event, until hope
long deferred produced its usual results ; the writings in which that
event was predicted were gradually explained away, ignored, or stigma
tized as uncanonical ; and the Church ended by condemning as a
heresy the very doctrine which Paul and the Judaizing apostles, who
agreed in little else, had alike made the basis of their spéculative
teachings. Nevertheless, by the dint of allegorical interpretation, the
belief has maintained an obscure existence even down to the present
time ; the Antiochus of the Book of Daniel and the Nero of the Apoc
alypse having given place to the Roman Pontiff or to the Emperor of
the French.
But as the millenarism of the primitive Church gradually died out
during the second century, the essential principles involved in it lost
none of their hold on men’s minds. As the generation contemporary
with Paul died away and was gathered into Sheol, it became apparent
that the original theory must be somewhat modified, and to this ques
tion the author of the second epistle to the Thessalonians addresses
himself. Instead of literal preservation from death, the doctrine of a
resurrection from the grave was gradually extended to the case of the
new believers, who were to share in the same glorious revival with the
righteous of ancient times. And thus by slow degrees the victory over
death, of which the resurrection of Jesus was a symbol and a witness,
became metamorphosed into the comparatively modern doctrine of the
rest of the saints in heaven, while the banishment of the unrighteous
to Sheol was -made still more dreadful by coupling with the vague con
ception of a gloomy subterranean cavern the horrible imagery of the
lake of tire and brimstone borrowed from the apocalyptic descriptions
of Gehenna. But in this modification of the original theory, the fun
damental idea of a future state of retribution was only the more dis
tinctly emphasized; although, in course of time, the original incentive
to righteousness supplied by Paul was more and more subordinated to
the comparatively degrading incentive involved in the fear of damna
tion. There can hardly be a doubt that the definiteness and vividness
• of the Pauline theory of a future life contributed very largely to the
�36
THE JESUS
OF DOGMA.
rapid spread of the Christian religion; nor can it be doubted that to
the desire to be holy like Jesus, in order to escape death and live with
Jesus, is due the elevating ethical influence which, even in the worst
times of ecclesiastic degeneracy, Christianity has never failed to exert.
Doubtless, as Lessing long ago observed, the notion of future reward
and punishment needs to be eliminated in order that the incentive to
holiness may be a perfectly pure one. The highest virtue is that which
takes no thought of reward or punishment; but for a conception of
this sort the mind of antiquity was not ready, nor is the average mind
of to-day yet ready; and the sudden or premature dissolution of the
Christian theory—which is fortunately impossible—would no doubt
entail a moral retrogradation.
The above is by no means intended as a complete account of the
religious philosophy of Paul. We have aimed only at a clear definition
of the character and scope of the doctrine of the resurrection of Jesus,
at the time when it was first elaborated. We have now to notice the
influence of that doctrine upon the development of Christo logic specu
lation.
In neither of the four genuine epistles of Paul is Jesus described
as superhuman, or as differing in nature from other men, save in his
freedom from sin. As Baur has shown, “the proper nature of the
Pauline Christ is human. He is a man, but a spiritual man, one in
whom spirit or pneumo, was the essential principle, so that he was
spirit as well as man. The principle of an ideal humanity existed
before Christ in the bright form of a typical man, but was manifested
to mankind in the person of Christ.” Such, according to Baur, is
Paul’s interpretation of the Messianic idea. Paul knows nothing of
the miracles, of the supernatural conception, of the incarnation, or of
the Logos. The Christ whom he preaches is the man Jesus, the
founder of a new and spiritual order of humanity, as Adam was the
father of humanity after the flesh. The resurrection is uniformly
described by him as a manifestation of the power of Jehovah, not of
Jesus himself. The later conception of Christ bursting the barred
gates of Sheol, and arising by his own might to heaven, finds no
warrant in the expressions of Paul. Indeed it was essential to Paul’s
theory of the Messiah as a new Adam, that he should be human and
not divine ; for the escape of a divine being from Sheol could afford no
precedent and furnish no assurance of the future escape of human
beings. It was expressly because the man Jesus had been rescued from
the grave because of his spirituality, that other men might hope, by
becoming spiritual like him, to be rescued also. Accordingly Paul is
careful to state that “ since through man came death, through man
came also the resurrection of the dead” (1 Cor. xv. 21); a passage
which would look like an express denial of Christ’s superhuman
character, were it probable that any of Paul’s contemporaries had ever
conceived of Jesus as other than essentially human.
�THE JESES
OE DOGMA.
But though Paul’s Christology remained in this primitive stage, it
contained the germs of a more advanced theory. For even Paul con
ceived of Jesus as a man wholly exceptional in spiritual character ; or,
in the phraseology of the time, as consisting to a larger extent of
pneuma than any man who had lived before him. The question was
sure to arise, whence came thisyuie^ma or spiritual quality? Whether
the question ever distinctly presented itself to Paul’s mind cannot be
determined. Probably it did not. In those writings of his which
have come down to us, he shows himself careless of metaphysical con
siderations. He is mainly concerned with exhibiting the unsatisfactory
character of Jewish Christianity, and with inculcating a spiritual
morality, to which the doctrine of Christ’s resurrection is made to
supply a surpassingly powerful sanction. But attempts to solve the
problem were not long in coming. According to a very early tradition,
of which the obscured traces remain in the ^noptic gospels, Jesus
received theyme/wn« at the time of his baptism, when the Holy Spirit,
or visible manifestation of the essence of Jehovah, descended upon him
and became incarnate in him. This theory, however, was exposed to
the objection that it implied a sudden and entire transformation of an
ordinary man into a person inspired or possessed by the Deity.
Though long maintained by the Ebionites or primitive Christians, it
was very soon rejected by the great body of the Church, which asserted
instead that Jesus had been inspired by the Holy Spirit from the
moment of his conception. From this it was but a step to the theory
that Jesus was actually begotten by or of the Holy Spirit; a notion
which the Hellenic mind, accustomed to the myths of Leda, Anchises,
and others, found no difficulty in entertaining. According to the
Gospel of the Hebrews, as cited by Origen, the Holy Spirit was the
mother of Jesus, and Joseph was his father. But according to the
prevailing opinion, as represented in the first and third synoptists, the
relationship was just the other way. With greater apparent plausibil
ity, the divine vEon was substituted for the human father, and a myth
sprang up, of which the materialistic details furnished to the oppo
nents of the new religion an opportunity for making the most gross
and exasperating insinuations. • The dominance of this theory marks
the era at which our first and third synoptic gospels were composed,—
from sixty to ninety years after the death of Jesus. In the luxuriant
mythologic growth there exhibited, we may yet trace the various suc
cessive phases of Christologic speculation but imperfectly blended. In
“Matthew” and “Luke” we find the original Messianic theory ex
emplified in the genealogies of Jesus, in which, contrary to historic
probability, (cf. Matt. xxii. 41-46,) but in accordance with a tihiehonored tradition, his pedigree is traced back to David ; “ Matthew ”
referring him to the royal line of Judah, while “ Luke ” more cautiously
has recourse to an assumed younger branch. Superposed upon this
primitive mythologic stratum, we find, in the same narratives, the ac-
�38
>
b
I
i
THE JESUS
OF DOGMA.
count of the descent of the pneumo, at the time of the baptism ; and
crowning the whole, there are the two accounts of the nativity which,
though conflicting in nearly all their details, agree in representing the
divine pneuma as the father of Jesus. Of these three stages of
Christology, the last becomes entirely irreconcilable with the first; and
nothing can better illustrate the uncritical character of the synoptists
than the fact that the assumed descent of Jesus from David through
his father Joseph is allowed to stand side by side with the account of
the miraculous conception which completely negatives it. Of this
difficulty “Matthew” is quite unconscious, and “Luke,” while vaguely
noticing it, (iii. 23,) proposes no solution, and appears .undisturbed by
the contradiction.
Thus far the Christology with which we have been dealing is pre
dominantly Jewish, though to some extent influenced by Hellenic
conceptions. None of the successive doctrines presented in Paul,
“ Matthew,” and “ Luke,” assert or imply the pre-existence of Jesus.
At this early period he was regarded as a human being raised to parti
cipation in certain attributes of divinity; and this was as far as the
dogma could be carried by the Jewish metaphysics. But soon after
the date of our third gospel, a Hellenic system of Christology arose
into prominence, in which the problem was reversed, and Jesus was
regarded as a semi-divine being temporarily lowered to participation in
certain attributes of humanity. For such a doctrine Jewish mythol
ogy supplied no precedents; but the Indo-European mind was familiar
with the conception of deity incarnate in human form, as in the
avatars of Vishnu, or even suffering in the interests of humanity, as in
the noble myth of Prometheus. The elements of Christology pre-ex
isting in the religious conceptions of Greece, India, and Persia, are too
rich and numerous to be discussed here. A very full account of them
is given in Mr. R. W. Mackay’s treatise on the “ Religious Development
of the Greeks and Hebrews,”—one of the most acute and erudite theo
logical works which this century has produced.
It was in Alexandria, where Jewish theology first came into contact
with Hellenic and Oriental ideas, that the way was prepared for the
dogma of Christ’s pre-existence. The attempt to rationalize the con
ception of deity as embodied in the Jehovah of the Old Testament,
gave rise to the class of opinions described as Gnosis, or Gnosticism.
The signification of Gnosis is simply “rationalism,”—the endeavor to
harmonize the materialistic statements of an old mythology with the
more advanced spiritualistic philosophy of the time. The Gnostics
rejected the conception of an anthropomorphic deity who had appeared
visibly and audibly to th^ patriarchs ; and they were the authors of the
doctrine, very widely spread during the second and third centuries,
that God could not in person have been the creator of the world. Ac
cording to them, God, as pure spirit, could not act directly upon vile
and gross matter. The difficulty which troubled them was curiously
�THE ,J E 8 US
OF
D () C M J
39
analogous to that which disturbed the Cartesians and followers of Leib
nitz in the seventeenth century : how was spirit to act upon matter,
without ceasing, pro tanto, to be spirit ? To meet this difficulty, the
Gnostics postulated a series of emanations from God, becoming success
ively less and less spiritual and more and more material, until at the
lowest end of the scale was reached the Demiurgus or Jehovah of the
Old Testament, who created the world and appeared, clothed in mate
rial form, to the patriarchs. According to some of the Gnostics, this
lowest mon or emanation was identical with the Jewish Satan, or Ahri
man of the Persians, who is called “ the prince of this world,” and the
creation of the world was an essentially evil act. But all did not share
in these extreme opinions. In the prevailing theory, this last of the
divine emanations was identified with the “ Sophia,” or personified
“Wisdom,” of the Book of Proverbs, (viii. 22-30,) who is described as
present with God before the foundation of the world. The totality of
these icons constituted the ptleroma, or “ fullness of God,” (Coloss. i. 20;
Ephes, i. 23,) and in a corollary which bears unmistakable marks of
Buddhist influence, it was argued that, in the final consummation of
things, matter should be eliminated and all spirit reunited with God,
from whom it had primarily flowed.
It was impossible that such .views as these should not soon be taken
up and applied to the fluctuating Christology of the time. According
to the “ Shepherd of Hermas,” an apocalyptic writing nearly contem
porary with the gospel of “ Mark,” the ¿eon or son of God who existed
previous to the creation was not the Christ, or the Sophia, but the
Pneuma or Holy Spirit, represented in the Old Testament as the
“angel of Jehovah.” Jesus, in reward for his perfect goodness, was
admitted to a share in the privileges of this Pneuma. (Reville, p. 39.)
Here, as M. Reville observes, though a Gnostic idea is adopted, Jesus is
nevertheless viewed as ascending humanity, and not as descending
divinity. The author of the “Clementine Homilies” advances a step
farther, and clearly assumes the pre-existence of Jesus, who, in his
opinion, was the pure, primitive man, successively incarnate in Adam,
Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and finally in the Messiah
or Christ. The author protests, in vehement language, against those
Hellenists who, misled by their polytheistic associations, would elevate
Jesus into a god. Nevertheless his own hypothesis of pre-existence
supplied at once the requisite fulcrum for those Gnostics who wished
to reconcile a strict monotheism with the ascription of divine attri
butes to Jesus. Combining With this notion of pre-existence the pneu
matic or spiritual quality attributed to Jesus in the writings of Paul,
the gnosticising Christians maintained that Christ was an mon or em
anation from God, redeeming men from the consequences entailed by
their imprisonment in matter. At this stage of Christologic specu
lation appeared the anonymous epistle to the “Hebrews,” and the
pseudo-Pauline euistles to the “Colossians,” “Ephesians,”and “Philip-
�40
THE
JESUS
OF DOGMA.
pians.” (A. D. 130.) In these epistles, which originated among the
Pauline Christians, the Gnostic theosophy is skillfully applied to the
Pauline conception of the scope and purposes of Christianity. Jesus
is described as the creator of the world, (Coloss. i. 16,) the visible image
J •
of the invisible God, the chief and ruler of the “thrones, dominions,
¡principalities and powers,” into which, in Gnostic phraseology, the em
anations of God were classified. Or, according to “ Colossians ” and
t1|
“ Ph ilippians,” all the ieons are summed up in him, in whom dwells
the pleroma, or “fullness of God.” Thus Jesus is elevated quite above
ordinary humanity, and a close approach is made to ditheism, although
he is still emphatically subordinated to God by being made the creator
of the world,—an office then regarded as incompatible with absolute
divine perfection. In the celebrated passage, “ Philippians” ii. 6-11,
the aeon Jesus is described as being the form or visible manifestation
of God, yet as humbling himself by taking on the form or semblance
of humanity, and suffering death, in return for which he is to be exalt•
ed even above the archangels. A similar view is taken in “ Hebrews ; ”
and it is probable that to the growing favor with which these doctrines
were received, we owe the omission of the miraculous conception from
the gospel of “Mark,”—a circumstance which has misled some critics
into assigning to that gospel an earlier date than to “ Matthew” and
“ Luke.” Yet the fact that in this gospel Jesus is implicitly ranked
above the angels, (Mark xiii, 32, 33,) reveals a later stage of Christologic doctrine than that reached-by the first and third synoptists; and
if is altogether probable that, in accordance with the noticeable con
ciliatory disposition of this evangelist, the supernatural conception is
omitted out of deference to the gnosticising theories of “ Colossians ”
and “Philippians,” in which this materialistic doctrine seems to have
had no assignable place. In “ Philippians ” especially, many expres
sions seem to verge upon Docefism, the extreme form of Gnosticism,
according to which the human body of Jesus was only a phan tom.
Valentinus, who was contemporary with the Pauline writers of the
second century, maintained that Jesus was not born of Mary by any
process of conception, but merely passed through her, as light traverses
a translucent substance. And finally Marcion (A. D. 140) carried the
theory to its extreme limits by declaring that Jesus was the pure Pneuma or Spirit, who contained nothing in common with carnal humanity.
The pseudo-Pauline writers steered clear of this extravagant doc
trine, which erred by breaking entirely with historic tradition, and was
consequently soon condemned as heretical. Their language, though
unmistakably Gnostic, was sufficiently neutral and indefinite to allow
of their combination with earlier and later expositions of dogma,
and they were therefore eventually received into the canon, where they
exhibit a stage of opinion midway between that of Paul and that of
the fourth gospel.
For the construction of a durable system of Christology, still
i
t
�THE JESUS
OF DOGMA.
41
further elaboration was necessary. The pre-existence of Jesus, as an
emanation from God, in whom were summed up the attributes of the
pleroma or full scale of Gnostic a?ons, was now generally conceded.
Blit the relation of this pleroma to the Godhead of which it was the
visible manifestation, needed to be more-accurately defined. And here
recourse was had to the conception of the “Logos,”—a notion which
Philo had borrowed from Plato, lending to it a theosophic significance.
In the Platonic metaphysics, objective existence was attributed to
general terms, the signs of general notions. Besides each particular
man, horse, or tree, and besides all men, horses, and trees, in the
aggregate, there was supposed to exist an ideal Man, Horse, and Tree.
Each particular man, hors#, or tree consisted of abstract existence plus
a portion of the ideal man, horse, or tree. Socrates, for instance, con
sisted of Existence, plus Animality, plus Humanity, plus Socraticity.
The visible world of particulars thus existed only by virtue of its par
ticipation in the attributes of the ideal world of universals. God
created the world by encumbering each idea with an envelopment or
clothing of visible matter; and since matter is vile or imperfect, all
things are more or less perfect as they partake more or less fully of the
idea. The pure unencumbered idea, the “ Idea of ideas,” is the Logos,
or divine Reason, which represents the sum-total of the activities
which sustain the world, and serves as a mediator between the abso
lutely ideal God and the absolutely non-ideal matter. Here we arrive
at a Gnostic conception, which the Philonists of Alexandria were not
slow to appropriate. The Logos, or divine Reason, was identified with
the Sophia, or divine Wisdom of the Jewish Gnostics, which had dwelt
with God before the creation of the world. By a subtle play upon the
double meaning of the Greek term {logos = “ reason ” or “ word,”) a
distinction was drawn between the divine Reason and the divine Word.
The former was the archetypal idea or thought of God, existing from
all eternity; the latter was the external manifestation or realization of
that idea which occurred at the moment of creation, when, according
to Genesis, God spoke, and the world was.
In the middle of the second century, this Philonian theory was the
one thing needful to add metaphysical precision to the Gnostic and
Pauline speculations concerning the nature of Jesus. In the writings
of Justin Martyr, (A. D. 150-1G6,) Jesus is for the first time identified
with the Philonian logos or “Word of God.” According to Justin, an
impassable abyss exists between the Infinite Deity and the Finite
World; the one cannot act upon the other; pure spirit cannot con
taminate itself by contact with impure matter. To meet this difficulty,
God evolves from himself a secondary God, the Logos,—yet without
diminishing himself any more than a flame is diminished when it
gives birth to a second flame. Thus generated, like light begotten of
light, {lumen de lumine,) the Logos creates the world, inspires the
ancient prophets with their divine revelations, and finally reveals him
�42
THE
JESUS
OE DOGMA.
self to mankind in the person of Christ. Yet Justin sedulously guards
himself against ditheism, insisting frequently and emphatically upon
the immeasurable inferiority of the Logos as compared with the actual
God (7zo ontos theos.)
We have here reached very nearly the ultimate phase of New Tes
tament speculation concerning Jesus. The doctrines enunciated by
Justin became eventually, with slight modification, the official doc
trines of the Church : yet before they could thus be received, some
further elaboration was needed. The pre-existing Logos-Christ of
Justin was no longer the human Messiah of the firstand third gos
pels, born of a woman, inspired by the divine Pneuma, and tempted
by the Devil. There was danger that Christologie speculation might
break quite loose from historic tradition, and pass into the metaphysical
extreme of Docetism. Had this come to pass, there might perhaps
have been a fatal schism in the Church. Tradition still remained
Ebionitish ; dogma had become decidedly Gnostic ; how were the two
to be moulded into harmony with each other ? Such was the prob
lem which presented itself to the author of the fourth gospel (A. D.
170-180). As M. Réville observes, “if the doctrine of the Logos
were really to be applied to the person of Jesus, it was necessary to re
model the evangelical history.” Tradition must be moulded so as to
fit the dogma, but the dogma must be restrained by tradition from
running into Docetic extravagance. It must 'be shown historically
how “ the Word became flesh ” and dwelt on earth, (John i. 14,) how
the deeds of Jesus of Nazareth were the deeds of the incarnate Logos,
in whom was exhibited the pleroma or fullness of the divine attri
butes. The author of the fourth gospel is, like Justin, a Philonian
Gnostic; but he differs from Justin in his bold and skilful treatment
of the traditional materials supplied by the earlier gospels. The prooess of development in the theories and purposes of Jesus, which can
be traced throughout the Messianic descriptions of the first gospel,
is entirely obliterated in the fourth. Here Jesus appears at the out
set as the creator of the world, descended from his glory, but des
tined soon to be reinstated. The title “ Son of Man ” has lost its
original significance, and become synonymous with “ Son of God.”
The temptation, the transfiguration, the scene in Gethsemane, are
omitted, and for the latter is substituted a Philonian prayer. Never
theless, the author carefully avoids the extremes of Docetism or di
theism. Not only does he represent the human life of Jesus as real,
and his death as a truly physical death, but he distinctly asserts the
inferiority of the Son to the Father (John xiv. 28.) Indeed, as M. Ré
ville well observes, it is part of the very notion of the Logos that it
should be imperfect relatively to the absolute God ; since it is only its
relative imperfection which allows it to sustain relations to the world
and to men which are incompatible with absolute perfection, from the
Philonian point of view. The Athanasian doctrine of the Trinity
�THE JESUS
OF DOGMA.
43
finds no support in the fourth gospel, any more than in the earlier
books collected in the New Testament.
The fourth gospel completes the speculative revolution by which
the conception of a divine being lowered to humanity was substituted
for that of a human being raised to divinity. We have here traveled a
long distance from the risen Messiah of the genuine Pauline epistles,
or the preacher of righteousness in the first gospel. Yet it does not
seem probable tliat the Church of the third century was thoroughly
aware of the discrepancy. The authors of the later Christology did not
regard themselves as adding new truths to Christianity, but merely as
giving a fuller and more consistent interpretation to what must have
been known from the outset. They were so completely destitute of the
historic sense, and so strictly confined to the dogmatic point of view,
that they projected their own theories back into the past, and vituper
ated as heretics those who adhered to tradition in its earlier and sim
pler form. Examples from more recent times are not wanting, which
show that we are dealing here with an inveterate tendency of the
human mind. New facts and new theories are at first condemned as
heretical or ridiculous; but when once firmly established, it is imme
diately maintained that every one knew them before. After the Coper
nican astronomy had won the day, it was tacitly assumed that the
ancient Hebrew astronomy was Copernican, and the Biblical concep
tion of the universe as a kind of three-story house was ignored, and has
been, except by scholars, quite forgotten. When the geologic evidence
of the earth’s immense antiquity could no longer be gainsaid, it was
suddenly ascertained that the Bible had from the outset asserted that
antiquity; and in our own day we have seen an elegant popular writer
perverting the testimony of the rocks and distorting the Elohistic cos
mogony of the Pentateuch, until the twain have been made to furnish
what Bacon long ago described as “ a heretical religion and a false
philosophy.” Now just as in the popular thought of the present day
the ancient Elohist is accredited with a knowledge of modern geology
and astronomy, so in the opinion of the fourth evangelist and his con
temporaries the doctrine of the Logos-Christ was implicitly contained
in the Old Testament and in the early traditions concerning Jesus, and
needed only to be brought into prominence by a fresh interpretation.
Hence arose the fourth gospel, which was no more a conscious violation
of historic data than Hugh Miller’s imaginative description of the
“ Mosaic Vision of Creation.” Its metaphysical discourses were readily
accepted as equally authentic with the Sermon on the Mount. Its
Philonian doctrines were imputed to Paul and the apostles, the pseudo
Pauline epistles furnishing the needful texts. The Ebionites—who
were simply Judaizing Christians, holding in nearly its original form
the doctrine of Peter, Janies, and John—were ejected from the Church
as the most pernicious of heretics ; and so completely was their historic
position misunderstood and forgotten, that, in order to account for
�44
THE JESUS
OF DOGMA.
their existence, it became necessary to invent an epoifymous heresiarch,
Ebion, who was supposed to have led them astray from the true faith I
The Christology of the fourth gospel is substantially the same as
that which was held in the next two centuries by Tertullian, Clement
of Alexandria, Origen, and Arius. When the doctrine of the Trinity
was first announced by Sabellius (A. D. 250-260), it was formally con
demned as heretical, the Church being not yet quite prepared to receive
it. In 269 the Council of Antioch solemnly declared that the Son was
not consubstantial with the Father—a declaration which, within sixty
years, the Council of Nikaia was destined as solemnly to contradict
The trinitarian Christology struggled long for acceptance, and did not
finally win the victory until the end of the fourth century. Yet from
the outset its ultimate victory was hardly doubtful. The peculiar doc
trines of the fourth gospel could retain their
integrity
*
only so long as
Gnostic ideas were prevalent. When Gnosticism declined in importtance, and its theories faded out of recollection, its peculiar phraseology
received of necessity a new interpretation. The doctrine that God
could not act directly upon the world sank gradually into oblivion as
the Church grew more and more hostile to the Neo-Platonic philoso
phy. And when this theory was once forgotten, it was inevitable that
the Logos, as the creator of the world, should be raised to an equality
or identity with God himself. In the view of the fourth evangelist, the
Creator was necessarily inferior to God; in the view of later ages, the
Creator could be none other than God. And so the very phrases which
had most emphatically asserted the subordination' of the Son were
afterward interpreted as asserting his absolute divinity. To the Gnos
tic formula, “ lumen de lumine,” was added the Athanasian scholium,
“Deum verum de Deo vero ; ” and the trinitarian dogma of the union of
persons in a single Godhead became thus the only available logical
device for preserving the purity of monotheism.
The modern theory, however, at which we seem to be slowly arriv
ing is, that light, heat, electricity, life itself, are only forms of motion,
and that death is merely the cessation of this motion; that the deity
is, throughout the universe, the embodiment (sinee that is the only
word I can think of to express myself) of motion itself; and that all
which dies, or, in other words, ceases to move, falls back into the uni
verse, and is absorbed into the deity. This was the belief of the Bud
dhist—the framer or acceptor of a pure and beautiful religion ; and to
this belief modern science and the enlargement of knowledge slowly
tend.—Macmillan’s Magazine.
�
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
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
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
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
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.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
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
A name given to the resource
The last word about Jesus
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Fiske, John
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [New York]
Collation: [9]-48 p. ; 26 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Extracted from Modern Thinker, no. 1, 1870. Includes bibliographical references. Printed on grey paper. Marks from adhesive tape on first page.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
[American News Company]
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[1870]
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
G5413
Subject
The topic of the resource
Jesus Christ
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<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 (The last word about Jesus), 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>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Conway Tracts
Jesus Christ
Jesus Christ-Historicity
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/57f49941a65ed15642e34ca7b1b25bc3.pdf?Expires=1779321600&Signature=u5CNsi6bdrzIvPbeQpmP2HJbHLAa1HX2wK3cFeFv3UYdrlM0Jhlxl9T3iIPibHrJhlcZdGPbnsWN7Qr8PM6XYIWQrmUUM147co8fEYocEd%7EFw7EzoKTxB9kXi%7EpRCyIOf5bufmqyFHGqRnBx3FjtJQBl0BokM4ODKsmQsrWCLSJBryYtvMoiYKLGhBxZLq2wX8uuh-2GcIhUlL0ETt1LfiRZ%7EVTG9XULsr%7EoUO5mFk35qhmjvlQlce9Xsd50vTvjvWTIr0tXC%7E12jlTPSpNsyYGKpt7grLyp%7EGCX0YmmPGgBQcaUgU7ELSlEsK5B6T-fLW7PbXfrHGpGp07gXTs6nw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
1409a1d8d2736db34afd11b16ed78bcf
PDF Text
Text
THE COLLAPSE OF THE FAITH:
OB,
THE DEITY OF CHRIST AS NOW TAUGHT
BY THE ORTHODOX.
EDITED BY
REV. W. G. CARROL, A.M.,
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT, RAMSGATE,
AND
R. D. WEBB & SON, DUBLIN.
Price Sixpence.
�“Et ex Evangelistis solus Joannes appellai eum aperte'
Deum............ Jam si Petrus initio promiscua multitudini
prsedicavit Jesum absque mentione divina; naturae ; si Paulus
similiter apud Athenienses nihil aliud quam Virum appellai ;
si p^iusquam leguntur Apostoli apud populum verba facientes
expressisse divinam in Christo naturam.............. quid ego
pecco si idem admoneo ?”—Erasmus, Apoi. Ad. Mon. Hisk.
“ The assertion of Christ’s ignorance is utterly at variance
with any pretension honestly to believe in His Divinity.”
Liddon, B/ampton Lectures, 1866, p. 683.
“ What was once rejected as a heresy has since crept in
among us and beenail bnt recognised as a dogma.”—Plumptrer
Boyle Lectures, 1866, p. 87.
“ The Scriptures are not to be considered true because it
would be dangerous to reject them. Let everything be
sacrificed to truth.”—Moorhouse, Hulsean Lectures, 1865 ,
p. 3.
�PREFACE.
------ +-----PRINT these extracts as a supplement to the ser
mons which I lately published concerning some
*
modern interpretations of our Lord’s Deity. I cannot
doubt that these phases of Christian thought now
■struggling for existence will startle many, as they, or
■some of them, have for some years been startling
myself; for the simplest understanding will readily
and intuitively perceive that the aspects here presented
of Christ’s divine nature, certainly do not coincide
with our current belief in that mystery, and moreover
that they are wholly irreconcilable with the positive
dogmatic statements of our articles and creeds.
Looking at the widely distant centres of protestant
life whence these writings are gathered, and comparing
their one-minded virtual surrender of Christ’s equal
Godhood; it is not too much to say that they indicate
a giving way along the whole line of the evangelical
ranks, and that they send up from all the signal posts
of thought and intelligence in Europe, one common
wail of despair and distress.
If any of the Theophanies here presented be true—
if Christ’s Godhood were either suspended, or depo
tentiated, or reserved, or conditioned, or postponed—
it is simply childish to maintain that He was equal
to God the Father. And if none of these Theophanies
be true, then what becomes of the Scriptures, and of
the honest and learned searchings of Scriptures on
which they rest ?
I
* Sermons in St. Bride’s Church, Dublin, 1871. Webb &
■Son, Abbey Street, Dublin.
�V
*
Preface.
In sad and solemn truth, this dilemma seems to say
that either our Formularies or the New Testament
must be wrong; and indeed that most remarkable
Examination of Canon Liddon’s Bampton Lectures has
*
made it well-nigh proven that the doctrine of an
“irreducible duality” (p. ) assuredly rests on some
basis other than that of Jesus and His apostles.
The same sort of remark applies to the two extracts
in the Appendix on the Atonement—if they be just,
what are we to say about our prayer book, and the
substitution which in effect it teaches ?
Our Irish Church Synod which sat so long this
year and troubled itself about so many things, seemed
to care for neither of these two essential verities;
but it is vain for them to think that they can hush
up the matter by a conspiracy of silence, for there
is abroad among us a calm and earnest questioning
which must be answered, and at our door there is one
knocking, who will knock on until it be opened unto
him.
I desire to guard myself against being understood
to mean or to insinuate that any of the writers I have
quoted designs to write against the Deity of Christ;
I intend nothing of the sort. If the writers had any
such design, that would have prevented my quoting
them—I select them because they are prominent and
earnest in the other direction, and because, however
they may differ from each other on other points of
doctrine, on this one they are “Wahabees of the
Wahabees. ”
W.G.C.
St. Bride’s, Dublin,
August, 1871.
* Triibner & Co., London, 1871.
�CONTENTS.
PREFACE, BY THE EDITOR, ......
Hi
BISHOP O‘BRIEN, (OF OSSORY,)—CHARGE 1864, .
.
9
PROFESSOR PLUMPTRE—BOYLE LECTURES, 1866, .
.
24
REV. MR. MOORHOUSE—HULSEAN LECTURES, 1865,
.
26
RIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE—ECCE HOMO,
.
27
.
REV. STOPFORD BROOKE, LONDON, CHAPLAIN TO THE
QUEEN,—SERMONS,.......................................................................29
DORNER, PROFESSOR, THEOLOGY, GOTTINGEN—“ PERSON
OF CHRIST,”.................................................................................. 31
E. DR. PRESSENSE, “JESUS CHRIST ”—ANSWER TO DORNER,
31
F. GODET, PROFESSOR THEOL., BALE—EVANG. DE. S. LUC,
35
APPENDIX.
•ON THE ATONEMENT.
REV.
DR.
JELLETT,
FELLOW
TRINITY
COLLEGE
DUBLIN,—UNIVERSITY SERMONS, 1864,
.
40
REV. STOPPFORD BROOKE, LONDON, CHAPLAIN TO
THE QUEEN,
......
41
��THE COLLAPSE OF THE FAITH.
RIGHT REV. DR. O'BRIEN,•
LORD BISHOP OP OSSORY, PERNS, AND LOUCHLIN, IRELAND.
P. 38-42.—He (Bishop <Colenso) asks, when did He
(Jesus) obtain this larger measure of knowledge ? ‘at
what period, then, of His life upon earth, is it to be
supposed that He had granted to Him, supernatural!/;/,
full and accurate information on these points, so that
He should be expected to speak about the Pentateuch
in other terms than any other devout Jew of that day
would have employed ? Why should it be thought
that He would speak with certain Divine, knowledge
on this matter more than upon other matters of
ordinary science and history 1 ’
In answer to this question, I have no difficulty in
acknowledging, that I cannot pretend to fix accurately
the time of the Lord’s life at which He acquired such
information as would enable Him to speak with fuller
and more perfect knowledge upon all the subjects
on which He taught, than any of His countrymen
however pious or learned; and with a perfect freedom
from the errors into which all other Jews might have
fallen, had they spoken of them. But though I
cannot fix the point at which He became possessed of
this knowledge, I can with great confidence fix the
point beyond which He could not have been without
it. Whenever and however He obtained it, I can be
* Charge 1863-64.
�IO
The Collapse of the Faith.
very sure that when He entered upon the office of a .
teacher, He actually possessed it. To suppose that
He entered upon His office as a teacher sent from God,
deficient in any knowledge which was necessary to
secure Him from error upon any of the subjects upon
which He was to teach, would he opposed to all that
Scripture sets forth with respect to His absolute
authority as a Divine Teacher, and irreconcilable
with the assumption of absolute and independent
authority as a teacher, which was the characteristic
of His public teaching from the first, and which we
are told attracted the special attention of His country
men, and filled them with wonder, as altogether
different from the manner of teaching to which they
had been accustomed in the public teachers of their
nation.
And this applies also to all that is urged, in
addition, in another part of the (Colenso’s) work,
concerning the limits of His knowledge, with a view
to confirm or defend the positions which I haye been
examining. This consists chiefly, of the remarks of
ancient and modern commentators upon Mark xiii. 32.
(See note A at the end). The text is a very remark
able and a very important one, and I hope that I
have no disposition to detract from its full force. It
contains a very explicit statement made by the Blessed
Lord concerning Himself, of its natural and proper
meaning there can be no doubt. And I should feel,
that there was just as much presumption and presump
tion of the same kind too, in doing violence to the
Lord’s words for the purpose of softening or narrowing
their proper meaning, as if the violence were com
mitted for the purpose of extending it. I therefore
say without doubt or hesitation—what I certainly
should not venture to say or think, if I did not find
it in Holy Scripture—that there was one thing of
which, in the full maturity of His powers, and the full
exercise of them, as a Divine Teacher, the Blessed
�The Collapse of the Faith.
II
Lord in the flesh was ignorant. ... I am sure that
what He says is true. And while it makes it certain
that there was one thing which He did not know, it
makes it possible that there were other things also
which He did not know. But it gives no direct
warrant to assert that this was actually the case; and
without such a warrant I will not venture to assert
that it was. I feel that it is a case—if there be
any—which calls for the modest resolution of the
wise and good Bishop Ridley with reference to
another great mystery—not to dare, to speak further,
yea, almost none other, than the text itself doth as it were
lead us by the hand—This is my decision as regards
myself. But there are many to whom this may seem
unreasonable timidity.”
P. 103.—Note A. page 41—on Mark xiii. 32.—
**From an early period great reluctance has been
shown to receive the obvious and natural sense of the
Blessed Lord’s words; and various devices have been
resorted to from time to time to soften it or to explain
it away. But however natural this timidity is, I
cannot think it justifiable. What it would be unpar
donable presumption to assert upon any lower author
ity, it seems to be no less presumptuous to shrink from
asserting, when it comes to us upon. Divine authority.
And the fact that the Blessed Lord, in the flesh knew
got the day and hour in which He is to come to judge
the world, seems to come to us as clearly upon His
own authority, as anything else that we believe
because He has declared it. It cannot be doubted
not only that this is the plain meaning of His words,
but that it is very hard to draw any other meaning
from them.
“■ The interpretation which has obtained most favour
among those who are unwilling to receive the decla
ration in this sense is, that while the day and the
hour of the coming of the Son of Man were, of course,
known to Him in His Divine nature, they were
�12
The Collapse of the Faith.
unknown to Him in His human nature. This does
not mean, that though He knew this as He knew all
things when He was in the form of God, He was
ignorant of it when He came in the likeness of man.
This is the very sense which it is intended to get rid of.
What is meant, is, that when He was in the likeness
of man—at the very moment that He 'was speaking—
He knew the time in question in His divine nature,
hut was ignorant of it in His human nature. But
this seems to be open to insurmountable objections.
Were we at liberty to suppose that there were two
Persons—a Divine and a Human Person—united in
the Lord, it would be easy to conceive—or indeed
rather, one could not but hold—that they differed
infinitely in knowledge—that while the latter was
ignorant of many things, the former knew all things.
No one, however, ventures to solve the difficulty in
this way, at least in words, because every one knows
that the unity of person in the Lord is as much an
article of faith as the duality of natures. But when
it is said that at one and the same time, He knew the
day of judgment as the Word, but was ignorant of it
as Man; or that while He knew it, as regarded His
Divine Nature, He was ignorant of it, as regarded
His Human Nature; or that His Divine Nature knew
it, but His Human Nature was ignorant; we are in
reality though not in words, supposing Him to be
made up of two Persons.”
N.B.—The Bishop here accuses the prevalent orthodox
interpretation of the heresy of Nestorianism—just as we
shall presently see Professor Plumptre and Mr. Moorhouse
accuse the same orthodox interpretation of the heresy of
Apollinarianism. There seems to be a confusion in the
Bishop's mind as to Natures and Persons 2 for surely two
Natures do not require two Persons. His Lordship may
have been misled by the pleadings and finding in the
Colenso trial 2
“ But some think that, whatever the objection may
�The Collapse of the Faith,
• 13
be against, these interpretations, it cannot be so insur
mountable as that to which the more natural inter
pretation is exposed—that we cannot adopt any
interpretation of the Lord’s words which would
represent Him as having undergone anything beyond
an outward or relative change in taking our nature.
From the impossibility of conceiving any change in
the Infinite, they seem to have inferred, if they did
not confound the two things, that any such change is
impossible. But however safely we may hold that it
is impossible that any such change can take place
through any other agency, it would seem very rash
and presumptuous to deny the possibility of its being
effected by the will of the Infinite Being Himself. I
should say this, supposing that we had no way of ar
riving at any conclusion on the question by the high
priori road. But we have a much safer though
humbler way. To believers in Revelation the Incar
nation of the Second Person of the Trinity, or rather
the history of His life in the flesh, furnishes ample
means of coming to a certain conclusion upon this
point—a conclusion that is not affected by the uncer
tainties which confessedly attach to all our reasonings
when Infinity is an element in the subject-matter of
them. In this wonderful history we are allowed to
see the infinite and the finite, the divine and the
human, in personal union in ‘the man Christ Jesus.’
To our apprehensions this union would appear abso
lutely impossible, if the infinite remained unchanged.
But, as I have already said, when the infinite is
concerned, we can rely but little upon any collection
of our own reason unless it be confirmed by revela
tion. Here, however, there is no want of such con
firmation, nor can we, I think, read the Holy Scrip
tures fairly without finding it.
“ The Divine Word seems to be clearly exhibited
to us there, as greatly changed in His union with
frail humanity. Not only was all His heavenly glory
�laid by when He tabernacled in the flesh, but all
His infinite attributes and powers seem, for the same
time, to have been in abeyance, so to apeak. And
by this, something, more is meant than that the
manifestation and exercise of them were suspendedThat is undoubtedly true, but it seems to fall far
short of the whole truth. It appears that there was
not merely a voluntary suspension of the exercise of
them, but a voluntary renunciation of the capacity of
exercising them, for the time. This involves no
change of His essence or nature ; and no destruction
of His Divine powers, as if they had ceased to exist,
or loss of them, so that they could not be resumed.
Finite beings often undergo such a suspension in
voluntarily, without its leading to any such conse
quences. (Here the Bishop gives in a note a quota
tion from Butler’s Analogy, part i. chap, i., about the
suspension of ‘ our living powers.’) And it can make
no difference in this respect, that in the Infinite
Being it is undergone by an act of His own will.
Nor are the wonderful works which were then
wrought by Him at all at variance with this view of
the state of the Incarnate Word. Infinitely as they
transcended the natural powers of man, they did not
go beyond the powers which may be supernaturally
bestowed upon man. For He Himself declares that
the apostles should not only do such works as He
had done, but greater works. There is nothing, there
fore, in their nature or their degree, to determine
whether they were wrought by the proper power of
the Divine Word, or by power bestowed upon the
Incarnate Word. But we are not without ample
means of deciding this question.
“ It is not surprising that it should be generally
¿bought that the miraculous power which was dis
played by the Redeemer was possessed and exercised
by Him as an essential property of the Divine ele
ment in His constitution. This, indeed, would be
�^The Collapse of the Faith,
15
the conclusion to which probably every one would
come who ventured to speculate on this great mystery
apart from Scripture. But Scripture gives a very
different view of the nature and effects of the Incar
nation. It seems distinctly to teach us that when the
Everlasting Son condescended to take our nature
upon Him, He came, not outwardly only, but in
truth, into a new relation to the Father, in which He
was really His Messenger and His Servant—dependent
upon the Father for everything, and deriving from
Him directly everything that He needed for His
work. All this indeed seems to be most distinctly
declared by Himself. He says, ‘ The Son can do
nothing of Himself, but what He seeth the Father
do,’ (John v. 19). And again, ‘I can of mine own
self do nothing/ (Ibid. 30). Again, ‘ My doctrine is
not mine but His that sent me/ (vii. 16). Again,
‘ He that sent me is true ; and I speak to the world
those things which I have heard of Him, (viii. 26).
‘ When ye have lifted up the Son of Man, then shall
ye know that I am He, and that I do nothing of My
self ; but as my Father hath taught me, I speak these
things,’ (lb. 28.) And again, ‘The words that I
speak unto you I speak not of Myself, but the Father
that dwelleth in Me, He doeth the works,” (xiv. 10);
‘And the Word which ye hear is not Mine, but the
Father’s which sent Me,’ (lb. 24).
“ These texts must be familiar to every reader of
the Bible, though their true meaning seems to be
very strange to many. But they are very plain and
very express, and they entirely agree together. They
testify directly to the fact that the state of the Son
in the flesh was one of absolute and entire depend
ence upon the Father, both for Divine knowledge
and Divine power. And upon this fact, they are so
full and so express, that it is unnecessary to look for
any other evidence of it of the same kind. But I
am tempted to add one or two striking passages
C
�‘16
The Collapse of the Faith.
which seem to bear the same testimony, less directly
indeed, but not less impressively or less conclusively.
Nothing, for example, can bespeak more absolute
authority over death and the grave than His call to
the dead Lazarus to arise : “ He cried,” we are told,
11 with a loud voice, Lazarus come forth,”—(John xi.
23). And the confidence of absolute authority in
which the command is uttered is most fully justified
by the promptitude with which it is obeyed ; “ and
he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot
with grave clothes; and his face was bound about with
a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, Loose him and let
him.go.”—II). 44.
Neither in the tone nor in the substance of His
command to the dead, is there any reference dis
coverable to any power but His own.
There is no cure performed by Him, nor indeed
any miracle of any other kind recorded of Him in
His whole history, which wears less the appearance
of being wrought by derived or dependent power.
And yet there is something which goes before, that
seems to suggest irresistibly that the power exercised
by Him on this memorable occasion was bestowed
upon Him by the Father, in answer to prayer offered
at the time. For just before He called to Lazarus,
we read, “ and Jesus lifted up His eyes, and said,
Father, I thank thee that Thou hast heard me. And
I knew that Thou hearest me always : but because of
the people which stand by I said it, that they may
' believe that Thou hast sent me.”—Tb. 41-42.
No one ever doubts, I suppose, that this thanks
giving to the Father for having heard Him, has
reference to a prayer offered to the Father and
accepted by Him. The prayer was offered in silence,
and the intimation that it was heard was silently
given, (Compare Presensé p. .) But I should
think that there is no more doubt that both really
' took place than there is when both were audible, and
�The Collapse of the Faith.
17
we are actually told the words in which they were
expressed, as in the next chapter, where, at' the end
<of the mental conflict, which we are allowed to see,
we read His prayer and the answer to it; Father,
glorify Thy name. Then came there a voice from
heaven, saying, I both have glorified it and will
glorify it again.” And though a prayer were really
■secretly offered and answered at the grave of Lazarus,
it seems hardly possible to doubt that it had refer
ence to the wonderful work which He was about to
perform; and that it was in fact a prayer for power
to preform it, and that it was in the power bestowed
in answer to His prayer that this great miracle was
wrought. The whole story supplies abundant matter
for reflection, but I cannot dwell upon it further
here.’
I must'however give one more passage which I
think discloses to us at least as much as any that
have gone before of the extent of the change which
the Blessed Lord had undergone, when He was in
the likeness of sinful flesh. When St Feter rashly
attempts to deliver Him by force from the hands of
His enemies, He rebukes him and tells him that if He
desired to be delivered, He had no need of human
aid. ‘ Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to My
* Every one is likely to be reminded here of the remark
able passage in the life of Elijah, which is related in the
1st Book of Kings xvii. 1. ‘ And Elijah the Tishbite who
was of the inhabitants of Gilead, said unto Ahab, as the Lord
God of Israel liveth before whom I stand, there shall not be
dew nor rain these years but according to my word. ’ There
is so little here to suggest any dependence of this act of the
prophet upon prayer, that most readers I should suppose are
surprised when they find the miraculous visitation upon the
land of Israel which followed, referred to by St James as an
example of the power of the effectual fervent, prayer of a
righteous man. ‘ Elias was a man subject to like passions .as
we are, and he prayed that it might not rain ; and it rained
not upon the earth by the space of three years, and six
months,’ James v, 17,”
�18
The Collapse of the Faith.
Father, and He shall presently give me more than
twelve legions of angels.” This passage suggests a
great deal which is eminently interesting, but with
which we are not immediately concerned. But it
has also a most important bearing on the point which
we are at present upon. We know that by Him
were all things created; that all worlds, visible and
invisible, and all the forms of existence material and
immaterial, by which they are inhabited, were made
by Him ; that when He was in the form of God all
angels worshipped Him ; and that in the presence of
His glory the Seraphim veiled their faces while they
adored Him. And when we see Him in the hands
of men, mocked and reviled, buffeted and scourged
and spit upon, we see a marvellous manifestation
indeed of His great humility. But we feel, all the
while, that all this was done only because it was His
good pleasure, for the accomplishment of His work, to
submit Himself to shame and to pain; and that, at
any moment that He pleased, it would come to an
end. And so it was. The text that I have just
quoted proves that so it was; but it at the same
time seems to disclose to us more of the depth to
which He had humbled Himself than any extremity
of indignity and suffering to which He was subjected
could reveal. Because it shows that, if He would be
delivered from this pain and shame by the angels
whom He had created, He was to procure their aid,
not by commanding them to come to His deliverance,
but by praying to His heavenly Father to send them
to set Him free. The object would be effected with
certainty. But the mode in which it was to be
effected discloses, to my mind more strikingly than
any other passage in Scripture, the great and wonder
ful change which for the time had taken place in His
relation to the unseen world.
All these passages bear witness, directly and
indirectly, to the reality and depth of the humilia-
�The Collapse of the Faith.
i9
tiott of the Blessed Lord when actually in the fonn
of man. But there is another, (Phil, ii. 6, 7), which
.¡seems to unveil to us what was done in the unseen
world to prepare Him for the state to which He
•was about to descend. In it He seems to be shown
t© us when in the form of God, divesting Himself
of all that was incompatible with the state of
humiliation to which He was about to descend,
not holding tenaciously the equality with God which
He enjoyed, but letting it go, and Emptying Himself.
It is the results of this wonderful process which
the text that I have been reviewing present to us.
And wonderful as the process is, and not forgetting
even the intense energy of the expression sauro?
¿xsvaffi, do not the results accord with it ? Do not
the passages to which I have before referred exhibit
Him as actually emptied—emptied of His Divine
glory, of His Divine power, and of His Divine
omniscience, and receiving back from His heavenly
Father what he had laid down, in sueh measure
as was needful for His work while it was going
on—only doing what Ire was commanded and enabled
to do, and only teaching what He was taught and
commanded to teach. And when it came to an end,
when He had finished the work which had been
given Him to do, and His humiliation was over,
He could pray to the Father, “ And now, 0 Father,
glorify Thou Me with Thine own Self, with the
glory which I had with Thee before the world was.”
And His prayer was answered. All power He Him
self declares, was given to Him in heaven and in earth.
The Apostle testifies that God hath highly exalted
Him and given Him a name which is above every name;
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of
things in heaven and things in earth, and things under
the earth; and that every tongue should confess that
Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
[Query.—Is there not a very monotheistic look
�The Collapse of the- Faith.
in the closing words of this text, Christ is Lard
The Father is God.]
11 Some say that they can in some measure under
stand and believe every part of the preparatory
process referred to, except that in which the Lord’s
omniscience is concerned; but that that, is so essential,
to His nature, that they cannot conceive or admit
that it could have been laid aside, even, temporarily.
I must myself, on the contrary, confess that though
I believe every part of the process that. I find in
the Bible, I do not, properly speaking, understand any
part of it. I am disposed, however, to believe that if
the whole were perfectly understood by us, we should
see that there is just the same difficulty in every
part of the change which the Lord is represented as
having undergone—neither more nor less in any one
than in any other.
“ But however that may be, it is to me not a.
question of reason.but of fact; and of the actual facts
of the case the true and only evidence is to be found
in God’s word. One who looks at the subject in this
way, and who examines the Holy Scriptures as the
only source of His knowledge upon it, ready to
believe all that he finds there, will not, I think, be
startled by the statement in St Mark, wonderful as
it is—if he comes to it after having read and con
sidered the passages which we have been reviewing ;
at least I am sure that he will not be startled by it,
as he would be if he came upon that text without
such preparation.
“ I do not mean that what we learn from these
passages, concerning the state of the Incarnate Word
and His relation to the Father, would warrant us in
inferring that He was actually ignorant of anything
knowable. But when they teach us that all His
superhuman knowledge was supplied by the Father,
we are led to look upon that as possible which,
without such information, we should regard as im-
�.Follapse of the Faith.
2
possible. All things that the omniscient Father
knows—that is, all things—doubtless were known to
the Son when he. was in the form of God. But it
appears that when He became man and dwelt among
us, of this infinite knowledge He only possessed as
much as was imparted to Him. And this being the
case we must see that if anything which could not be
known naturally was not made known to Him by
the Father, it would not be known by Him. Though
We see this however, we have no right, as I said,
to conclude that there really was anything unknown
to Him, because we have right to conclude that
there is any knowledge which the Father would
withhold from Him. And accordingly, even when
we see it elsewhere declared expressly and emphati
cally by Him concerning the time of the coming of the
Son of Man, 1 of that day and hour knoweth no man,
no not the angels in heaven, but my Father only,
“ we do not regard the well-beloved Son as intended
to be included, when angels and men are said to be
ignorant of that time; or excluded, when it is
declared that it is known to the Father only. It
is not until He Himself declares expressly, as we
learn from St Mark that He did, that this is so ; that
is, it is not until we learn that He Himself said, ‘ of
that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the
angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the
Father,’ that we believe that He too was ignorant
of the time when He is to come again to judge the
world.
“ The declaration is so plain and express, that
even if it stood alone, I do not think it would be
reasonable to entertain any doubt about its real
meaning. But I can hardly think such a doubt
possible, when the natural interpretation of the text
is sustained by the concurrent testimony of such a
number and such a variety of texts as we have been
looking at. And when once we are satisfied that
�22
The Collapse of the Faith,
the Lord has really declared this fact concerning
Himself, we seem to be no more warranted in dis
believing or doubting it, than we should be in
disbelieving or doubting anything else that we are
sure He has said.”
OBSERVATIONS.
1. When the Bishop says, that there “ can be no
doubt ” about the meaning of certain passages, what
does he intend towards Athenasius, Bull, Waterland,
Elliott and all the orthodox, who differ from him
in these passages ?
2. When he says that the “Scriptures are the
only source of knowledge” on this dogma, what
place does he assign to his own articles and creeds ?
3. What conceivable right has he to say that
the capacity for Divine Attributes was “incompatible
with the state of humiliation ?”
4. When he “ cannot fix the time ” at which Jesus
attained this knowledge, such as it was, does not
this plainly imply the man acquiring the supplies of
Godhead, whereas we are taught, that it was “ the
word that became flesh ” and took our nature ?
5. One would be curious to know in what the
Bishop considers our Lord’s personality to have
consisted.
6. When Divinity lecturer in Trinity College,
the Bishop published two sermons in connection
with Mr Irving, and in the appendix, p. 73, he says,
“ Mr Irving holds himself to be very grievously
caluminated when charged with socinianism; and if
the charge were meant to imply that he holds
socinian views, &c. &c., no doubt he would be
greatly misrepresented; but if, by the charge, were
meant that like them he stumbles, &c. &c., it
is undoubtedly well grounded,”—no doubt the Bishop
would “ hold himself to be grievously caluminated,”
if the same charge were brought against him, but
�The Collapse of the Faith.
23
surely it would be as “ well grounded ” as it was in
the case of Irving. The Bishop seems (for the passage
is not as distinct as his Lordship’s later compositions
are), at the time when these two sermons were
published, (1833,) to have held the view concerning
our Lord’s two natures and two kinds of knowledge
which he now calls Nestorianism; he says, (page 70,)
that in the Temptation Christ’s “ zeal and love,
acted in combination with this limitation of views
which belonged to the Lord’s human nature, and
not with that fulness of knowledge of Divine Counsels
which belonged to His Divine nature,”—(what mean
ing would there be in this antithesis, if Jesus did
not then possess the “ Divine Nature and the fulness of
knowledge of Divine Counsels which belonged %o it?)
7. Spinoza defines “Attribute” to be “what we
apprehend as constituting the essence ” of anything
—therefore to say, e.g., that an Infinite being is
without infinite attributes, is to speak of a thing’s
being without its own essence, or in other words it is
speaking in a way that has no meaning. Waterland
devotes one of his greatest sermons (vol. 2. sermon
vii. p. 141), to prove Christ’s Deity from his attri
butes, viz., eternity, immutability, omniscience, and
omnipotence.
N.JB.—Bishop O’Brien denies to our Lord all
divine attributes; does he mean to include the denial of
eternity ?
8. Waterland takes most of the texts selected by
Bishop O’Brien, and strives to defend them from
the Arian interpretation adopted by the Bishop,
and he also (p. 163) explains the passage of St
Mark in the way the Bishop calls the heresy of
Nestorianism.
9. Bishop Bull, (works vi. 351), terms the inter
pretation of Phil. ii. 6. adopted by the Bishop,
Socinian, and that ££ Socinistas frustra omnino, aleogue
in causes suce ruinam hunc locum Apostoli appelasse.”
�24
The Collapse of the Faith.
10. Can any conceivable ingenuity, in any honest
way, reconcile this “ Depotentiation ” (or) “ xsvu<r/$”
teaching of Bishop. O’Brien, with the 1st Article,
{Three Persons of one power substance and eternity), or
with the so-called' Athanasian creed {equal to the
Father as touching His Godhead) ?
REV. E, H. PLUMPTRE,
Professor of Divinity, King’s College, London.
CHAPLAIN TO THE BISHOP OP BRISTOL.
P. 87—“What was once rejected as a heresy has
since crept in among us and been all but recognised
as a dogma. We think of the Divine eternal word
as simply tenanting a human body; or if of human
“reasonable soul,” then of that as possessing .all
Divine attributes, conscious from the very first of that
mysterious union, possessing and manifesting from
the very first all treasures of wisdom and knowledge
We are slow to apprehend the truth that that soul
passed in its growth of intellect and feeling through the
same stages as. our own; that knowledge came to it
as it comes to us, through sacred books or human
teaching or the influences of surrounding circum
stances—widening more and more with advancing
years—led on in the fulness of time into all truth by
the Spirit which was given to him, ‘not with measure,’
and ‘ abode upon him.” . . . Assuming the energy
in Him of all Divine attributes we pass over the con
flict'of human emotions, without which there could
be no experience, no discipline, no temptation,
no sympathy. We cannot bring ourselves, in spite
of the plainest statements of the Gospel record, to
think of him as gaining knowledge of any kipd from
those around him, (Mark ix. 21); wondering with
the surprise of those whose hopes are bitterly
* Boyle Lectures, I860,
�The
¡lapse of the Faith.
i5
disappointed (Mark vi. 6.); looking into the future
with a partial insight as knowing not the day or hour
of the full completion of his work (Mark xiii. 32) ;
praying, ‘ if it be possible, &c. &c.’
And yet the whole beauty' and significance of his
life as sinless, perfect, archetypal, melts away, in
proportion as we substitute this- the error of
Apollinarius for the Church’s faith.
Instead of a true son of man perfected by suffering,
(Heb. ii. 10.) passing i.e. through experience, to his
full maturity, learning by that suffering the full
meaning of obedience—we fashion for ourselves the
thought of a simulated Humanity, a childhood
almighty and all knowing, with the appearance but
not the reality of growth in power and wisdom. ’
P. 89—“ It may seem to some that these thoughts
lead us on to a mere humantarianism, and destroy
the truth of the Incarnation on its Divine side more
fatally even than the conception of which I have
spoken destroys the reality of the human. ... In
that word ‘ emptied Himself,’ we may find what at
least serves to interpret with the language and the
facts of the gospel history. . . That form of God,
*
that glory of the Father can be conceived of only as
the possession, energy, activity, of the Divine
attributes. To empty Himself ‘ of these was to sub
mit to the conditions not of an infinite but a finite
life ; to become ‘ lower than the angels,’ even as the
sons of men are lower that He might rise through
successive stages to a height far above all princi
palities and powers, to the name which is above-,
every name, the glory which He had with the Father
before the world was.’—Such at least is the teaching
N.B.—When Mr Plumptre quotes Bishop Ellicott and
Waterland on Philip, ii. 6. it is right to remark that they
Tolerate only the other interpretation of ‘ ‘ thought it not
robbery,”-—they both are against Mr Plumptre’s idea, that
Christ was ‘ emptied of His divine attribute. ’
�i6
The Collapse of the Faith.
of the epistle to the Hebrews. The eternal Son
learnt obedience. . Because He has been tempted He
is able to sympathise. We trust in the Incarnate Son
more than in the Divine omniscience as an attribute,
because the Incarnation has made us surer than we
could have been without it, that 1 He knows and
pities our infirmities.’
MOORHOUSE.
P. 56.— “Apollinaris (a man equally distinguished
for wisdom and piety, devoted to the church, and a
personal friend of Athanasius), in his zeal against the
Arians, and his desire to give distinctness and com
prehensibility to the orthodox faith, was led to assert
that the Eternal Word at His incarnation took nothing
but the flesh of humanity—its body and animal soul
—while His Divine Nature supplied the place of a
rational spirit. . . . . Bodily weakness, indeed, was
left and bodily suffering, but every one of our Lord’s
spiritual and intellectual acts was attributed not to
His human spirit, (for human spirit He had none,)
but directly to the Immanent Deity.” . . . And is
it useless to call attention to this mistake of a good
man, when so many are shrinking back from the
thought of our Saviour’s real limitation in knowledge,
and His real growth in wisdom, because they find it
difficult to entertain these thoughts by the side of
His omniscience?
P. 60.— “We must believe in our Lord’s real
humanity, that as concerning the flesh He came of the
tribe of Judah, for if the omniscience and omnipotence
of His Divine Nature exclude the ignorance and
weakness of His human nature, then this latter was
never really limited, was never a reality at all, but
only, as the Docete held, a mere shadow or apparition;
then too the Scriptural representations of His growth
* Hulsean Lectures, 1865.
�The Collapse of the Faith.
27
in wisdom, and of His being made perfect through
suffering are merely delusive suggestions, fraudulently
invented to bring the Redeemer nearer to our heart,
and to persuade us, contrary to the fact, that we have
an High Priest who can be really touched with the
feeling of our infirmities.”
GLADSTONE’S “ECCE HOMO.”
P. 51.—“It is enough for us to perceive that
the communication of our Lord’s life, discourses,
and actions to believers, by means of the four
Gospels, was so arranged in the order of God’s
providence, that they should be first supplied with
biographies of Him which have for their staple, His
miracles and His ethical teaching, while the mere
doctrinal and abstract portion of His instructions was
a later addition to the patrimony of the Christian
Church. So far as it goes, such a fact may serve to
raise presumptions in favour of the author of “ Ecce
Homo,” inasmuch as he is principally charged with
this, that he has not put into his foreground the full
splendour and majesty of the Redeemer about whom
he writes. If this be true of him, it is true also thus
far of the Gospels.”
P. 58.—“ Those portions of the narrative in the
Synoptical Gospels which principally bear upon the
Divinity of our Lord, refer to matter which formed,
it will be found, no part of His public ministry.”
P. 62.—“ If we pass on from the great events of
our Lord’s personal history, to His teachings as
recorded in His discourses and sayings by the Synop
tic writers, we shall find that they too are remark
able for the general absence of direct reference to
His Divinity, and indeed to the dignity of his person
altogether.”
P. 63.—“He asserted His title to be heard, but
He asserted nothing more”—“In a word, for the
�28
The Collapse of the Faith.
time, He Himself, as apart from His sayings, is no
where.”
P. 66.—“This (Luke iv. 18-21.) is a clear and
undeniable claim to be a teacher sent from God, and
of certain strongly marked moral results, &c., &c.
Yet here we find not alone that He keeps silence on
the subject of His Deity, but that even for His claim
to Divine sanction and inspiration He appeals to
results.”
P. 86, 87.—“During the brief course of His own
ministry, our Saviour gave a commission to His twelve
apostles and likewise one to His seventy' disciples.
Each went forth with a separate set of full and clear
instructions. ... In conformity with what we have
already seen, both are silent in respect to the Person
of our Lord.”
P. 103.—It appears then on the whole as respects
the person of our Lord, that its ordinary exhibition
to ordinary hearers and spectators was that of a
man engaged in the best and holiest, and tenderest
ministries; . . . Claiming a paramount authority
for what He said and did; but beyond /this, asserting
respecting Himself nothing and leaving Himself to be
judged by the character of His words and deeds'.”
P. 112.-—“But if He did not despise the Virgin’s
womb, if He lay in the cradle a wailing or a'feeble
infant, if He exhausted the years of childhood and of
youth in submission to His Mother and to Joseph, if
all that time He grew in wisdom as well as in stature,
and was even travelling the long stages of the road' to
a perfection by us inconceivable; if even when the
burden of His great ministry was upon Him, He has
Himself told us, that as His divine power was placed
in abeyance, so likewise a bound was mysteriously set
upon His knowledge—what follows from this? That
there was accession to His mind and soul from time
to time of what had not been there before : and that
He was content to hold in measure and to hold
�The Collapse of the Faith.
29
/as a thing received, what, but for His humiliation in
the flesh, was His without limit and His as springing
from within.”
REV. S. A. BROOKE,
*
HON. CHAPLAIN TO THE QUEEN.
P. 32-4, “It was then a man who spoke these
words (on the Cross) ? but we are told that He was
also Divine, that the Word is incarnate in Jesus.
This is the doctrine of the Church of England, and I
have often stated my belief in it. But the question
at present is, how far, at the time these words were
spoken, had the Divine nature become at one with
the human nature of Christ. I would suggest that if
God had in all His fulness, at this time, united Him
self to Christ, so that the Divine and human natures
"were entirely blended then into one human-divine
Person, Christ could neither have suffered nor
struggled with evil, nor died, and the whole story
becomes fictitious; and it is in avoiding this dreadful
conclusion which seems to rob us of all comfort, that
men have been driven into believing in Christ as
being nothing more than a sinless man. I suggest
another view—I can conceive that though His union
with God was from the moment of His birth poten
tially His, as the whole growth of the oak is in the
acorn, yet that the communication of the Divine
Word to the Man Christ Jesus was a gradual com' munication, that it went on step by step with the
'gradual perfecting of His humanity, that, for example,
in the temptation in the wilderness the human1 will
of Christ met all the temptations to sin which could
be offered to Him on the side of the spirit of the
world, struggled with them in a real struggle, and
* Sermon on the Voysey judgment.
�20
The Collapse of the Faith.
conquered them, and that then His human nature,
having made itself so far forth victorious and perfect,
received such a communication of the Divine nature
as raised Him above all possibility from that time of
being tempted by the evil spirit of the world.............
This (next) crisis came in the garden of Gethsemane.
According to the view suggested, He would conquer
that temptation with the weapons of humanity, not
of divinity, and when that was over, then His human
nature having made another step towards its perfec
tion, would be adequate to receive a farther com
munication of the Divine Word, which would raise
Him beyond the power of ever being tempted by any
spiritual evil—the spiritual union between God and
man ever, as I have said, potentially His, would have
now reached, through a growth unbroken by any
reception of evil, its perfect development. . . . The
view we suggest would allow us to say—and the
history tends to confirm it—that Christ was not at
this time a partaker of the absolute attributes of God.
He was not omniscient, omnipotent, unlimited by
time or space, or impassible—with regard to know
ledge, to suffering, to the desires of the body, He
would then be as we are, except so far as absolutely
holy humanity modifies these things. According
then, to this idea, we need not be troubled with the
thought that theology imposes on us a fiction in ask
ing us to believe in the reality of the sufferings upon
the Cross. They were borne by a man, but by a man
who was, through the spiritual union of His human
nature with the spiritual nature of the Divine Word,
essential and perfect humanity, a man and yet the
Man.”
�The Collapse &f the Faith.
31
*
DÖRNER
PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GOTTINGEN.
Division 2, vol. 3, p. -249-50. “In relation also tothe earthly God-manhood of Christ, as we have ob
served, not merely is the principle that He must have
undergone a true growth universally recognised ; but
theologians also are pretty generally agreed in the
opinion, that if the unity of the Divine-huihan life
during the period of Christ’s earthly existence is to be
maintained, the Ksy&xng must be much more com
pletely carried out............ We have no alternative
but to assume, that in some way or other the Logos
limited Himself for His being and activity in this
Mm, so dong as the same was still undergoing growth.
. . , .' Important differences, however, are still ob
servable here. The one maintain that this limitation
of the Logos in Jesus is to be conceived as a rooted
self-depotentiation in love, as consisting in a reduction
of His Being to the point of adequacy to the embry
onic life of a child of man, &c. . . . On the only other
possible view we can merely speak of a limitation of
the self-communication of the Logos to humanity, not
of a lessening or reduction of the Logos Himself.”
E. DE PRESSENSE, Parish
P. 254.—“ According to John’s prologue, the un
created light of the Word emitted some rays in the
night of a world separated from God—‘The light
shineth in darkness.’ But when the issue is to
redeem the world and save it, and to raise man up to
God, then ‘the Word becomes flesh;’ an expression
* “ Doctrine of the Person of Christ.”—(Clark's Edinburgh
Edition.')
f Jesus, Christ, son temps, sa vie, son seuvre.
�22
The Collapse of the Faith.
which does not mean merely that He clothed Himself
with a human body, but that He became really man,
and subjected Himself to all the conditions of our
existence. Jesus Christ is not at all the Son of God
hidden in the son of man and retaining in a latent
condition all the attributes of Divinity ; that would
require an irreducible duality which would destroy
the Unity of His Person, and remove it from the
normal conditions of a human life; His obedience
would become a mockery, and His example would be
inapplicable to our race. No, when the "Word be
came flesh, He annihilated Himself—He stripped
Himself of His glory—‘ being rich He became poor ’
—He became as one of us, sin excepted, in order
to encounter the moral conflict, with all the perils
arising out of His being free. We have a Son of
God voluntarily lowered, and that very lowering is
the beginning as well as the condition of His Sacri
fice. He retained of Deity that which constitutes in
some sort its moral essence; He is not the less man
because the man only fulfils Himself in God. If we
wish to avoid falling into a Docetism which would
make Christ a phantom and the Gospel an illusion,
we must acknowledge this lowering of the Word in the
full sense of its meaning and with all its mysterious
ness—all the more, because it has been too much lost
sight of by the Church theology of the fourth century.
Up to that time, even whilst the Formula was halting
and unsettled, the belief in a Christ who was very
man never failed; they never fell back on a dogma
of the two natures, and they continued steadfast in
the Apostles’ beliefs, which were too vital and too
deep to be lost in these metaphysial subtleties.—
Homo factus est, says Irenaeus, ut nos assuefaceret fieri
det. Accordingly, Christ is not that outlandish
Messiah who, as God, possessed omniscience and
and omnipotence, at the same time when, as man,
His knowledge and powers were limited. We be-
�The Collapse of the Faith
33
lieve in a Christ who became really like ourselves,
who was subjected to the conditions of progress and
gradual life-development, and who was obedient even
unto the death on the cross. On no other terms
shall we have a living and human Gospel, and prevent
its being, like a Byzantine painting, stiff and motionless
in a gilded frame, with all its individuality of ex
pression merged in a hue of conventionalism.”
Having noticed (p. 262) “ the inextricable contra
diction” of the two genealogies, he says, p. 314, &c.,
of The Temptation, “If impeccability be demanded
for Christ, then He is removed from the real condi
tions of earthly life; His humanity is only an
illusion, a thin veil, behind which appears His
impassible Divinity. Being no longer like us, He
no longer belongs to us.
A nondescript meta
physical phantasmagoria replaces the thrilling drama
of a moral struggle. We must no longer speak of
temptation, nor of the trial of Him who was the sub
ject of it. Let us fetch Christ down from that chilly
empyræum of Theology where He is nothing but a
dogma, and let us say with Irenæus, / Erat homo
certans pro patribus.’ .... It is as Messiah that He
is tempted ; and it is as concerning the miraculous
power which He possessed, or at least, which He is
invested with by God from day to day.”
The Infallibility
of Jesus.
P. 352 (see extract from page 254.)—“ According
to our idea of the Incarnation and the voluntary
self-lowering implied in it, we do not at all claim
omniscience for Jesus. He made Himself subject to
the law of development, and consequently He could
not have possessed spiritual omniscience all at once.
He attained it by degrees. But whilst we admit His
improvement and advance, we must be'on our guard
�34
The Collapse of the Faith.
against/ confounding His relatively imperfect spiritual
knowledge with error. In this domain, infallibility is
a result of perfect holiness, for religious error belongs
to some moral imperfection. Truth, says Schleiermacher, is man’s natural condition.................. If, then,
this is the case with man in his normal state, with
much more reason must we attribute this infallibility
to Jesus, who presents to-us -the most lofty ideal of
humanity............ This infallibility, however, reaches
no; farther than to spiritual truth. It is taking away
from Jesus the reality of His humanity to suppose
that He possessed an innate knowledge of all terres
trial phenomena, and that He entirely escaped the
common notions of this age on physical matters. It
would be childish to believe that when; He spoke of
the setting sun, He reserved in His own mind the
theory of Galileo or of Newton. No, as regards every
thing which was not a part of His mission, He was
truly the man of His age and of His country. Yea,
more than that, even in the spiritual sphere, He did
not possess omniscience. He declared Himself, that
the knowledge of the times and seasons belonged
exclusively to His Father.”
.
■ ■
The Raising of Lazarus.
532.—“ Lazarus was lying on a bed of suffering—
his sickness was getting worse, and Jesus was in
Pereea—it was a journey of several hours to reach
Him—a messenger was sent off in all haste by the
two sisters. Instead of coming He only replied in
these prophetic words, ‘this sickness is not unto
death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God
may be glorified thereby/ Evidently, Jesus spoke
under the influence of a special revelation, and the
issue which was about to be effected could not but.
have an influence on His own personal destiny, which
was so important that He was aware of it beforehand.
�The Collapse of the Faith.
35
536.—“With eyes raised up to heaven. He gives
thanks to the Father even before the miracle was
wrought, so assured is He that what He asks is
agreeable to His will. Had He not then received an
express revelation as to what was going to take place,
even before the death of Lazarus ? ”
Such is this drama, as affecting and as simple
as human life is in its noblest passages, for which
some have dared to substitute, a low stage farce.
F. GODET,
*
DOCTEUR PROF. THEOL. BALE.
[Dr Godet’s commentary takes very high rank
amongst the most orthodox and conservative pro
ductions of continental evangelicalism, and is. de
signed to be an answer to and preservative against
the rationalising and destructive exegesis of Ger
many. Dr Godet (g.y.) asserts the mnaculous birth
of our Lord, the objective reality of the supernatural
phenomena at His baptism, the reality of the facts of
the Temptation, the personality of Satan, demoniacal
possession, the certainty of the miracles, the vicarious
punishment of Christ, &c., &c. He claims and
vindicates the Messianic Psalms and Prophecies,
reconciles the genealogies, calls the. free thought
school “ the Saturnalia of Criticism,” and is
thoroughly evangelical on the Eucharist.]
He says, vol. i. p. 54. (St Luke ch. i. 35.) “ The
power of the highest shall overshadow thee.
I
think rather that these expressions recall the cloud
which in the desert covered the camp of the Israelites
and sheltered it with its shade. Here, as in ch.
ix. 34, the Evangelist indicates the approach of
* Com. Evang. de. S. Luc. 1871.
�36
The Collapse of the *ith.
a
that mysterious cloud by the word emgxid^eiv. Here
the Holy Spirit indicates the divine power, the
vitalising breath which called the germ of a human
individuality slumbering in Mary’s womb, to the
development of its existence. This germ is the band
which connects Jesus with human nature and makes
Him a member of the race which He came to save.
In this second creation the miracle of the first crea
tion is thus re-enacted with a higher power. There
the two elements were present, a body taken from
the earth, and the breath of God. Here the germ
borrowed from Mary’s womb and the Holy Spirit
fertilising it, correspond to those two elements.”
Therefore also that Holy thing which shall be born
of thee shall be called the Son of God. “ Here then
we have, from the mouth of the angel himself, the
authentic explanation of the expression Son of God in
the earlier part of his message. According to this ex
planation Mary could not understand the title in any
sense but this, a human being who had God Himself
as the immediate author of his existence. This is
not at all the idea of pre-existence, but it is more
than the notion of Messiah which relates only to
the office, of His mission; (vol ii. p. 301. On the trial
scene Dr Godet says, ‘ They were condemning Him
as a blasphemer, and that for calling Himself the
Son of God.’)”
“. . . . What is the connection between this
miraculous birth of Jesus and His perfect holiness 1
The latter is not a necessary result of the former, for
holiness is a matter of choice, not of nature. How
can we give any serious meaning to the moral
struggles in the history of Jesus, e.g. to the temp
tation, if absolute holiness were the natural conse
quence of His miraculous birth 1 But it is not so.
The miraculous birth was only the negative condition
of His immaculate holiness. By the method of
His entrance into human life, He was re-established
�The^ollafse of the ^aith.
^7
in what was man’s formal condition before the fall,
and put in a position of fulfilling the course originally
set before mankind which would have led it on
from innocence to holiness. He was simply released
from the impediment which, by virtue of our mode
of birth, fatally prevents us from performing this
task. But in order to turn this potentiality into
an actuality Jesus was bound every instant to make
an active use of His liberty, and to occupy Himself
unreservedly with carrying out the law. of ‘ the
good ’ and of the task which he had received, ‘ to
keep the commandment of His Father.’
The reality of the struggle then was. not in any
sense excluded by this miraculous birth, which
involved nothing else in Him except the freedom of
not sinning, but did not exclude at all the freedom of
sinning.
P. 127. ch. ii. 49. “My Father’s business, this
expression formulates the ideal of an entirely filial
life, of an existence absolutely consecrated, to God
and to Divine things., which perhaps had just that
moment burst forth in Jesus’ mind, and which we
could no more comprehend than did Mary and
Joseph, ‘ if the life of Jesus had not passed before
our viewv. 52. ‘ Increased in wisdom, &c.’ The
word ‘ stature ’ embraces the complete physical and
psychical development, all the external graces j
‘ wisdom ’ belongs to the internal development;
the third term, ‘favour wi#h God and man’ com
pletes the other two. There was shed around the
person of this young man a charm at once moral and
external, which won to him the favour of God and
men............ There is no other conception for the
omission or denial of which theology has to pay a
heavier penalty, than this one of a development in the
very pure. This is the conception which the Chris
tianity of the Bible owes for ever to this verse. By
means of it the humanity of Jesus can be accepted,
as it is here by St Luke, in all its reality.”
�38
The ^ollapse of the _j2itb.
P. 172. The Baptism, ch. iii. 21. “ Jesus also
being baptised and praying,—Luke adds here a
detail which is peculiar to him, and which serves
to put in their true light the miraculous phenomena
which are to follow. At the instant when Jesus
afthr His baptism was about to go up out of the
water, He was in prayer. This detail shows that
the divine manifestations were the reply from above
to the prayer of Jesus.”
11 The divine manifestation consisted of three
sensible phenomena, to which three internal facts
corresponded. The first phenomenon is the opening
of heaven, and the (corresponding) spiritual fact, of
which the phenomenon is as it were the percept
ible covering, is the complete understanding granted
to Jesus of the divine plan and of the work of salva
tion. This first phenomenon then represents the,
perfect revelation....... (Second phenomenon),
Jesus sees descending a luminous apparition; to
this manifestation the interval fact of the effusion of
the Holy Spirit into His soul corresponds. The
Holy Spirit is about to make burst forth all the
germs of a new world which up to this were shut up
in the soul of Jesus. . . . This luminous apparition
then is thè emblem of an inspiration which is neither
intermittent like that of the prophets, nor partial
like that of believers—of perfect Inspiration. The
third phenomenon, that of the divine voice accom
panies a communication yet more intimate and
personal. There is no more direct emanation of
personal life than speech and voice. The voice of
God Himself sounds at once in the ear and in the
heart of Jesus and initiates Him as to His relation
to God—the most tenderly beloved being, beloved as
an only Son is of a father ; and as to his relation, as
such to the world—the medium of the divine love
towards men, his brothers, to raise whom also to the
dignity of sons is his mission.’—. . . ‘My Son.’
�The ^ollapse of the ™aith.
39
What is the force of the possessive pronoun here ? . .
The unutterable blessedness of being the perfect
object of the love of the infinite God, diffused itself,
at this word, in the heart of Jesus.
“ By the perfect revelation, Jesus is now initiated
as to the plan and work of salvation ; by the perfect
inspiration He possesses the power of accomplishing
it; by the consciousness of His dignity of sonship,
He feels himself to be the supreme messenger of God
here below, the Messiah, the chosen one of God,
summoned alone to finish that work.” (Note, p. 179.)
—“ Jesus actually received, not indeed (as Cerinthus,
going beyond the truth, used to teach) the visit of a
Christ from heaven who was to be joined to Him for
a time (note this) but the Holy Spirit, in the full
meaning of the word, whereby Jesus became the
anointed of the Lord, the Christ, the perfect man, the
second Adam, capable of begetting a new spiritual
humanity.”
P. 221.—“ But could Jesus have been really tempted,
if He were holy; Sin if He were the Son of God ;
fail in His work, if He were the Redeemer chosen of
God ? The Holy one might be tempted. . . . the Son
could sin, because He had renounced the mode of
divine existence—the form of God (Philip, ii. 6.)—to
enter into a human estate precisely like our own.
The Redeemer might fail, if we regard the question
from the stand point of His personal liberty, &c., &c.
“ These supreme laws of his Messianic activ ty
He • had learned in the bitter school of the
instructor to whom God had committed Him in the ■
wilderness.”
P. 421.—(ch. viii. 45.) ‘who touched me 1 ’
“ The receptivity of the woman rises to such a
degree of energy that she as it were draws the cure
out of Jesus. The action of Jesus here is limited to
that constant willingness which impels Him, in all
�40
The ^ollapse of the ^aith.
His relation with men, to bless and save them. He
.however is not unconscious of that virtue which He
has just discharged ; but He knows that there is an
¡alloy of superstition in the faith of the person who is
^showing it .towards Him ; and, as Riggenbrch clearly
¿expounds, His object in what follows as to purify
.that incipient faith. But to do so, He must discover
the doer of the deed—we have no reason not to
impute to Jesus the ignorance expressed by his
'question, ‘ who touched me 1 ’ the candour of his
/character does not admit of any pretence.”
APPENDIX.
ON THE ATONEMENT.
Rev. Dr. Jellett, Fellow Trin. Coll., Dublin.
*
(Sufferings of the righteous,, p. 8, 9.)—“That the guilt
of one man should be transferred to another is not
only false, but absolutely inconceivable.” “When
under the name of imputed sin, or any other misty
term which we choose to employ, we speak of God as
punishing one man for the sin of another, we really
attribute to Him an action which I should find it
difficult to describe with reverence.”
Pp. 21, 22.—“Vicarious punishment implies vic
arious suffering certainly; but it implies something
more; and it is that ‘ something more ’ which is
involved in the theory now under consideration, and
.which seems to me at variance with the fundamental
laws of morality.” ...
“The theory under consideration, (viz., that our
* Sermons preached in the College Chapel, 1864
�The ^ollapse of tbe^aitfr.
4K
blessed Lord was the object of the Divine wrath), is
incredible, simply because it makes the Judge of all
the earth do wrong.”
Brookes’ Sermons, p. 492.
Nevertheless it is astonishing how strongly this
superstitious view of God s anger clings to the minds
of men. It has vitiated the whole view taken of the
Atonement by large numbers of the Church of Christ.
They are unconsciously influenced by the thought that
where there is suffering, there must be sin. The cross
is suffering; therefore, somewhere about the sufferer
there must be sin, and God must be angry. But
Christ had no sin j then what does the suffering
mean ? . . .
.
At last light comes to them . . . and the thing is
clear. Man sins, and sin against an Infinite Being
is infinite and deserving of infinite punishment. A
debate takes place in the nature of God. Justice says,
‘I must punish,’ Mercy replies, ‘have pity,’ Love
steps in, . . . the Son of God is infinite, let Him bear
as man the infinite punishment—and this was done,
&c., &c. The intuitions are all against it. It outrages
the moral sense 5 if I murdered a man to-morrow,
would justice be satisfied if my brother came forward
and offered to be put to death in my stead ? It
outrages the heart ... it outrages our idea of God,
it makes Him satisfied with a fiction.
If none of these opinions of reputed pillars of the
truth here quoted, be true, surely the Christian
evidence company ought to disprove them all, without
respect of persons ; and they ought to do it in a very
different fashion from that of our Father-in-God the
Bishop of Peterborough, who in his recent Issean
orations in Norwich repeated in LARGE CAPITALS, that
�42
The ^ollapse of the ^aith.
■Christianity has no demonstration to give ; and that
if it had, it would do us no more good than the
demonstration that two and two are four !!
[Qu. Why then does the Bishop complain of people
who won’t believe him; or of those who would believe
if they could
But if any one of these opinions be true, then the
natural meaning of our creeds and articles is not true,
and orthodoxy with us must set about providing
itself with what the Americans call, “ a New Depar
ture doctrine.”
TURNBULL AND SPEARS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
�
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
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
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
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
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.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
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
A name given to the resource
The collapse of the faith: or, the deity of Christ as now taught by the orthodox
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Carrol, William George [1821-1885] (ed)
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: Ramsgate; Dublin
Collation: v, [1], 10-42 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Extracts from sermons by Right Rev. Dr. O'Brien, Rev. E.H. Plumptree, Rev. Moorhouse, Right Hon. W.E. Gladstone, Rev. Stopford Brooke. Professor Dorner, E. Dr. Pressense, Professor F. Godet. Name of author incorrectly spelt on title page as W.G. Carrol. Appendix: Rev. Dr. Jellett and Rev. Stopford Bridge on the atonement. Printed by Turnbull and Spears, Edinburgh. Pencilled inscription on title page: 'Rough proof. Very good indeed but the change noted (?) will not tell on popular opinion for a long time.'
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Thomas Scott; R.D. Webb
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[1871]
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
G5462
Subject
The topic of the resource
Jesus Christ
Faith
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<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 (The collapse of the faith: or, the deity of Christ as now taught by the orthodox), 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>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Atonement
Belief and Doubt
Conway Tracts
Jesus Christ
Sermons
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/3dcb87723bdaa726998283b78bf385a2.pdf?Expires=1779321600&Signature=qwE94ytqCQJ98x1m3wPDwKGhiLBqh97vkSbJRrPDNHmhHtTMO-Lv2mo0Ic1xGmD5aC%7Ekn5Sss4HpMY2RsqA%7EYYZGnzyJWNOp1kf7%7Extllj6qaxXi2ew48nTMKPeiwhYhAk%7EdmpbrTyxa%7E%7EagrDU3vg3aW%7E238AfF08cGbGjznu6M6BncPUKb6vMU-tbsOLEpTF5Ojod2sruEmkj1d62ByDqCDRPvCho02AV7MIsohPxxQ2CysO3a6mdAiYKlc8rSXEreSWIiHgTcltARKEmTq6Kq1RE1a2F8OkUrBOM5RvyB3V7BAqVa-OeCZaSzVlH4B7AdlqJXt0iP7fxNhLPBsQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
9684bb77406655d5b32ac646d269b18a
PDF Text
Text
DEAN OF RIPON
ON THE
PHYSICAL RESURRECTION OF JESUS,
IN ITS BEARING ON THE.
TRUTH OF CHRISTIANITY.
BY
THOMAS SCOTT.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS
SCOTT,
No. 11 The Terrace, Farquhar Road, Upper Norwood,
London, S.E.
Price Sixpence.
�LONDON:
PRINTED BY C. W. REYNELL, LITTLE PULTENEY STREET
HAYMARKET, W.
�THE REV. DR HUGH M’NEILE
ON THE
RESURRECTION.
To the Editor of the “Times.”
Sir,—There is one passage in the “ Bennett Judg
ment ” on which I desire, with your permission, to
publish a few observations. It is this—After dis
cussing the terms “ corporal,” “ natural,” “ true,” as
applied to the body of Christ, their Lordships say :
“The matters to which they relate are confessedly not
comprehensible, or very imperfectly comprehensible by the
human understanding; the province of reason as applied to
them is, therefore, very limited, and the terms employed
have not, and cannot have, that precision of meaning which
the character of the argument demands.”
The subject-matter referred to is the risen body
of Christ, and I wish to call attention to the nature
of the proof we have of the resurrection of His
body. It is needless to comment on its importance.
Without the historical fact of the resurrection of
Christ’s body, Christianity crumbles into a myth.
We learn from St Luke that Christ showed him
self alive after his Passion by many infallible proofs
(rrA.-p^/nts). These are recorded by the Evangelists.
�6
The Rev. Dr Hugh M’Helle
He said, “Behold my hands and my feet that it is I
myself. Handle me and see, for a spirit hath not
flesh and bones as ye see me have.” “Sic hse
actiones, loqui, ambulare, edere, bibere rex^pia
sunt.”—Beza. All such proofs were addressed to
the senses of the Apostles, and the result was a
process of clear and conclusive reasoning. The
human mind is not capable of clearer proof on
any practical subject than that which is derived
from the testimony of the senses, and the conse
quent deductions of the reason. Such was the proof,
satisfactory, and, as far as human consciousness is
concerned, infallible, which was given of the Resur
rection of Christ. Before his death, his flesh was
similar to ours. “Forasmuch as the children are
partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself
likewise took part of the same ” (atros irapait\ri<jl<Ds
perea^e twp avrwv'). His flesh, then, was an object of
sense, concerning which men might fairly reason—
concerning which reasonable men could not but
reason.
If, after his resurrection, his flesh had been some
thing altogether different—if it had been something
not comprehensible, or very imperfectly comprehen
sible by the human understanding—if the province
of reasoning as applied to it had been, therefore,
very limited—if the terms employed to describe it
had not, and could not have, that precision of
meaning which a proof of his resurrection demanded
—had this been so, how could his resurrection have
been proved, and if his resurrection be not proved,
reasonably and conclusively proved, where is Chris
tianity itself ?
But his flesh after his resurrection was appealed
to as matter of sense and argument and proof, and,
�on the Resurrection.
7
therefore, it was quite comprehensible by the human
understanding, and, therefore, the province of
reason as applied to it was perfect, and therefore
the terms employed to describe it had, and could
not but have, the precision of meaning indispensable
for establishing the fact that he was indeed risen
from the dead.
Deny the clear and conclusive province of reason
as applied to the risen flesh of Christ, and you
cannot prove the resurrection of his body.
Admit the clear and conclusive province of reason
as applied to the risen flesh of Christ, and you cannot
prove any presence whatever of his flesh in the Lord’s
Supper.. Nay, you can prove its absence, for human
reason is altogether competent to the conclusion
that what cannot be seen, or felt, or tasted cannot
be flesh, whatever else it may be, and the question
here is not about something else but about flesh.
All this is made clearer still by contrast. Let the
subject under consideration be “ The Trinity.” Here
we can have no infallible proofs. We may have,
indeed, and we have, clear revelation, reasonably
attested to be revelation, and therefore entitled to
acceptance on authority, as little children accept on
authority ; but the subject-matter is confessedly not
comprehensible, or very imperfectly comprehensible,
by the human understanding. The province of
reasoning as applied to it is, therefore, very limited,
and the terms employed in revealing it have not
and cannot have that precision of meaning which
an argument between man and man demands.
Acute controversialists of the Church of Rome
have propagated much deception by treating as
analogous the mystery of the Trinity, and what
they call the mystery of the Sacrament. Under
�8
‘The Rev. Dr M’Neile on the Resurrection.
cover of this assumed analogy, strange bewildering
phrases have been introduced and applied to flesh
and blood — “ spiritual,” “ supernatural,” “ sacra
mental,” “ mystical,” “ ineffable,” “ supralocal.”
But there is no ground for this. The mode of
the Divine existence is, indeed, a mystery, far
beyond the province of human reason; but flesh
and blood are not so, and bread and wine are not
so; and there is not the slightest intimation in
Holy Scripture of any mystery connected with the
Lord’s Supper. But ecclesiastical tradition? I
willingly leave to others the task of exploring that
troubled sea, which does indeed “ cast up mire and
dirt,” but I may cordially and devoutly embrace
the definition of mysteries as applied to the Lord’s
Supper in our Book of Common Prayer—“ pledges
of His love and for a continual remembrance of His
death, to our great and endless comfort.”
I am, Sir,
x
Your obliged and obedient servant,
HUGH M’NEILE.
The Deanery, Ripon, June 25.
�DR M’NEILE ON THE RESURRECTION.
N the number of the Times for Thursday, June
27, of the present year (1872), there appeared
the preceding letter on the Bennett Judgment,
addressed to the Editor by Dr Hugh M’Neile, Dean
of Ripon. To this letter I desire to call the special
attention of those who may wish that our religion,
whatever it may be, shall rest on the basis of solid
fact or ascertained truth. It would be scarcely pos
sible to exaggerate the importance of the issue which
the Dean of Ripon has most pertinently raised, or to
lay too much stress on the propositions by which he
believes, or appears to believe, that he has solved the
problem satisfactorily. Like many other clergymen
of the Church of England, and more especially
like many others of the party to which Dr M’Neile
is supposed to belong, he has been disturbed by
that Judgment of the Judicial Committee of Privy
Council which, acquitting Mr Bennett of formal
heresy, seems in his opinion to undermine the
very foundations of the faith of a large majority of
English churchmen. It is well to know what these
foundations are, and Dr M’Neile has exhibited them
in the clearest possible light. For the Judgment
itself, it is enough to say that it regards the whole
subject which furnished the ground of prose
cution for Mr Bennett’s assailants, as wrapped in
dense, if not in impenetrable, mists. Mr Bennett,
I
�io
The Rev. Dr Hugh M’Nelle
believing with them that Jesus Christ has ascended
into heaven (seemingly a local heaven above Mount
Olivet,) with that body which was nailed to the
cross and laid in the grave, believes also that he is
sensibly present in the Sacrament of the Altar, and
that being thus present, he is there to be adored
under the symbols of the bread and wine which have
been converted into his flesh and blood by the con
secration of the priest. Christ, therefore, who is
sensibly in heaven (for in the words of the Fourth
Article he has ascended into heaven with flesh,
bones, and all things appertaining to the perfection
of man’s nature) is also present sensibly at the same
time upon a thousand altars. The proposition, if
not actually heretical, looks much like a contradic
tion in terms : but as it does not formally controvert
or contradict any positive statement of the Thirtynine Articles, the defendant is entitled to an ac
quittal. Had this sentence of acquittal been pro
nounced without further comment, Dr M’Neile and
they who go with him would have suffered much less
distress, or perhaps would not have been distressed
at all. But the Judicial Committee was probably
not sorry to avail itself of the opportunity of en
larging the basis for the clergy by admitting as
much vagueness as possible in their engagements ;
and the means which it adopted for this purpose
was the assertion that the subject was one which
can never be really comprehended by anybody, and
that, therefore, a precise definition of the terms em
ployed in the treatment of it is an impossibility.
“ The matters to which they relate,” the Judicial
Committee insists, are confessedly not comprehen
sible, or very imperfectly comprehensible, by the
human understanding. The province of reason as
�on the Resurrection.
11
applied to them is, therefore, very limited, and
the terms employed have not, and cannot
have, that precision of meaning which the charac
ter of the argument demands.”
The plain inference of all indifferent persons must
be that the Judicial Committee of Privy Council
regards the subject as one which it is better not to
speak about, and therefore also not to think about,
or, at the least, as one on which no churchman
should censure or tease another. To argue upon
it requires that the terms used should carry with
them a precise meaning: but, as the Judicial
Committee holds, from the nature of the subject
they cannot be thus accurately used, and con
sequently the time spent in thinking or speaking
about it must be time wasted. It is, of course,
significant that the highest tribunal of the Church
of England should thus mark as useless or unpro
fitable the doctrine of the nature of the presence
of Christ in the Eucharist. But the declaration
of this tribunal is of greater importance in its
bearings on the traditional theology of the Chris
tian Church and of particular sects or parties in it.
It is not to be supposed that the large and powerful
section in the English Establishment, known popu
larly as Evangelicals or Low Churchmen, should fail
to see the danger into which some of the most im
portant articles of their creed are drawn; and we
can understand the eagerness with which Dr M’Neile
comes forward to repel this assault on what he
regards as the very foundations of the Christian
Faith.
For myself, and for the cause I strive to serve, I
am rejoiced that the Dean of Bipon has, in such
clear and unequivocal language, summoned his
�12
The Rev. Dr Hugh M'Neile
brethren, and, indeed, all Christendom to the light.
There is now some prospect that ages of talking
and disputing may be followed by a grave and
calm discussion of the point at issue, and, as that
point is alleged to be an historical fact, by a final
determination whether it be indeed a fact or not. To
those who are simply anxious to ascertain the truth
of facts, it is a matter of supreme indifference how
the issue comes to be raised. The Apostle of the
Gentiles was thoroughly aware that some preached
Christ from motives which were anything but
creditable; but, so long as Christ was preached, he
was content and glad ;*and I confess a satisfaction
not less complete on learning that the Judicial
Committee of Privy Council have been enabled by
a few passing remarks to accomplish that which
the most outspoken of liberal thinkers thus far,
it would seem, have failed, with all their efforts,
to achieve. Whether the trepidation excited by
these remarks is due in any measure to the position
occupied by the highest ecclesiastical tribunal of
the land, I do not care to ascertain. It is enough
that, by some means or other, the great question
between the traditionalists and their opponents
should be put in a fair way towards final settle
ment. I readily avail myself, therefore, of the
opportunity furnished by the letter of Dr M’Neile
to the Times, and, as it is of paramount importance
that his general argument should not be misrepre
sented, I shall take his statements seriatim, so that
my readers may at once see all that is involved in
them.
But at starting it may be said, without any fear
of wronging the Dean of Ripon, that all his state
ments resolve themselves into the one proposition
�on the Resurrection.
ij
that the foundation of his religion is a certain fact
on which the human reason can be fully exercised,
I and which must be ascertained and accepted on
similar grounds to those on which we accept any
r historical facts whatsoever. With this proposition
there can be no tampering; its value is gone if it
has to undergo any modification. We are not to
take the fact as meaning at one time one thing and
at another time another thing; if a term which we
employ denotes a thing which, so far as all history
tells us, is subject to certain conditions, we are not
to take it as denoting something which exhibits
very different conditions. If we do, our conclusions
xcannot possibly rest on evidence, and, if they do not
rest on evidence, they are worthless. Now Mr Ben
nett, following a large, indeed by far the largest, por
tion of that which is called Christendom, asserts that
the risen body of Christ (his flesh and his blood) is
present m the sacrifice of'the Eucharist; and the
Bean of Ripon maintains that this proposition
spikes at the very root of Christianity as he under
stands the term If it may be maintained that the
actual body of Christ, that body with which he was
crucified and was laid in the grave, and with which
he rose again, is present in a hundred or a thousand
places at the same time, what proofs, he asks, have
we that he was ever raised at all ? It must here be
remarked that Dr M’Neile summarily casts aside
all those more or less ingenious methods by which
some interpreters and commentators have endea
voured to accommodate their positions to the
character of the evidence which they have at their
command He will have nothing to do with the
theories which tell us that we do not really know
what flesh and blood are, and which imply or
�"The Rev. Dr Hugh M’Neile
affirm that our knowledge cannot possibly deter
mine whether or not a body of flesh and blood
may become visible and invisible at will, may
pass through rocks or closed doors, may be free
of the law of gravitation, and may or may not be
present in many places at the same time. Thus
much certainly may be said for the commentators
who frame such theories, that, if they are justified
in forging the first links of their chain, there is no
reason why they should not add the last. If a body
of flesh and blood can live without food or drink,
a,nd without the discharge of any of those bodily
functions which we are disposed to regard as essen
tial to life, there seems to be no sufficient warrant
for denving that it may be present at the same
time in "more places than one, or even that it may
be ubiquitous. But, if this be so, it also follows
that we know nothing whatever of flesh and. blood
and body, and that we are using terms with an
elastic meaning, which may be stretched and
modified at our will. But . the nature of the
argument, if it is ever to satisfy the human mind,
requires that the terms should be used with pre
cision; and, if this cannot be done, then it is
obvious that no reasonable belief can possibly issue
from it. |
Against the methods of such commentators JJr
M’Neile enters, therefore, an emphatic protest. With
him terms are not to be modified and altered to suit
the needs of theological arguments. We know what
flesh is and what blood is, and we know what is
meant by a body of flesh and blood; and when we
speak of any of these bodies, we are not to predi
cate of them conditions of which human experience
can furnish no example, for it is obvious that the
�on the Resurrection.
human mind cannot possibly have proof of these
conditions except from experience. If there may
be a hundred or a thousand conditions of bodily ex
istence of which human experience gives us no in
formation, it is self-evident that the whole subiect
is removed beyond the province of human reason.
JLhus far experience seems to show that a human
body cannot be m more places than one, cannot pass
trough solid matter, cannot live without food, and
without the waste which is implied in the need and
the assimilation of food; but if, nevertheless, such a
body can be ubiquitous, or live without food or
walk on the sea or float in the air, there is abso
lutely no warrant of reason why it should not be
present at the same moment on all the altars of
C ristendom If this is what is meant by terms
v which seem to speak of the risen body of Christ it
is clear that we have and can have no evidence of
rJ-+ire
may receive the assertion on
faith but it will be to us an assertion with regard
to which human reason can have no function, and
with inference to which there can therefore be no
Such an assertion Dr M’Neile rejects
with abhorrence. His mind, his human reason, iust
thoroughly satisfied. He is certain that the
Being never meant that it should not be
satisfied. That which God needed was the free
assent of the human mind, and this assent cannot
uXe to tost “ Whi0“ “
is ob™us]y
Pr M+NeJlej 1S sPeakin& of course, of historical
facts, not of dogmas which may possibly refer to
sibkal RUthS’ WhfC1l are confessedly incomprehen« t 1S ,areful to contrast the one with the
other.
Let the subject under consideration,” he
B 2
�16
The Rev. Dr Hugh M'Neile
says, “ be ‘ The Trinity.’ Here we can have no in
fallible proofs. We may have, indeed, and we have
clear revelation, reasonably attested to be revelation,
and therefore entitled to acceptance on authority;
but the subject-matter is confessedly not comprehen
sible, or very imperfectly comprehensible, by the
human understanding. The province of reasoning
as applied to it is therefore very limited, and the
terms employed in revealing it have not and cannot
have that precision of meaning which an argument
between man and man demands.
If I were criticising the Dean of Ripon’s letter as
a whole, I might point to the strange conclusions
involved in these words. His own opinion is clear
enough, but it is scarcely in accordance with some
facts which are certainly historical. .One of these
facts is that a large majority of Christendom has
for an indefinite length of time held that the subject
of the Trinity in Unity may undergo the most minute
dissection and be mapped out in terms employed
with a scientific accuracy of meaning. Each of the
three Divine Persons may in himself be incompre
hensible : but it is nowhere said that the doctrine
propounded concerning them is incomprehensible
also. On the contrary, no document can be pointed
out which is in form more severely technical than
the Athanasian Creed. There is no sort of intima
tion that the terms employed in it have not and
cannot have that precision of meaning which an
argument between man and man demands. It
may not be easy to see what attestation there can
possibly be for this revelation beyond the authority
of those who drew up and imposed this symbol on
Christendom; but it is something to know that in
spite of this rigid outlining of the whole of this
�on the Resurrection.
17
subject, which can come only from the most perfect
familiarity, the Dean of Ripon confesses that, while
in some way or other he believes the dogma, he
cannot comprehend it at all, or that at best he com
prehends it very imperfectly; and, moreover, that in
spite of the seeming precision of the several terms
used in the Athanasian Creed he cannot ascribe to
them any such character. In short, he admits that
his own notions on the subject are altogether misty,
and that from the nature of the subject it is im
possible that they can be anything else but misty.
It follows that the dogmas of the Incarnation, of
Atonement, Mediation, and Justification must all be
placed in the same class. For none of these can we
have any infallible proofs. The very gist of the
arguments urged by Dr M’Neile and the theologians
of his school or party generally is that the unaided
human reason could never have worked its way to
those doctrines : that their subject-matter is not
comprehensible, or very imperfectly comprehensible,
by the human understanding; and, therefore, of
those dogmas also our notions must remain misty.
In other words, the whole system of doctrines which
are popularly regarded as the essential character
istics of Christianity, relates to subjects on which it
is impossible to use terms with any such precision
of meaning as is absolutely demanded by arguments
between man and man, and about which, therefore,
by the confession of the Dean of Ripon there is not
much use in thinking or in speaking.
But clearly it would never do to admit that the
doctrines of Christianity are inaccurate or incomplete
statements of matters in themselves unintelligible,
and to leave it at the same time to be supposed that
Christianity is represented by a misty fabric resting
�18
Rhe Rev. Dr Hugh M'Nelle
on no solid foundations. It is the special complaint
of Dr M’Neile against the theologians of the Roman
-Church that they really cut away such founda
tions “by treating as analogous the mystery of
the Trinity and what they call the mystery of the
Sacrament.” In the latter he holds that there is
really no mystery at all. In the Eucharist • there
is no presence of any flesh or any blood, and he pro
tests therefore against the process by which “ under
cover of this assumed analogy, strange bewildering
phrases have been introduced and applied to flesh
and blood, ‘ spiritual,’ ‘ supernatural/ 1 sacramental/
‘mystical/ 1 ineffable,’ ‘ supralocal.’ ” We come, there
fore, very near to the point of supreme importance
in these words of Dr M’Neile. The mode of the
Divine existence may be a mystery far beyond the
province of human reason: but he insists empha
tically that flesh and blood are not so, and that
bread and wine are not so. In other words, flesh
and blood, bread and wine, are things about which
we can use terms with a precision of meaning which
leaves no room for the fancy that flesh is bread,
and blood wine, or vice versa. When we speak of flesh
and blood, we speak of things whose nature has been
ascertained by the whole experience of mankind,
and about which that experience has never varied;
for if it has varied, then unless the extent of that
variation has been ascertained, precision of meaning
is gone. If, in spite of our supposed experience
to the contrary, water may sometimes assume the
qualities of fire or wine, it is clear that we cannot
apply with any scientific accuracy the terms used in
defining water. Hence with regard to flesh and
blood, bread and wine, we can trust to no assertions
except such as are attested by human experience;
�on the Resurrection.
19
and hence, finally, the general experience of man
kind that flesh cannot be ubiquitous, and must,
in fact, be strictly local, furnishes an insuperable
objection to the dogma which represents the flesh
of Christ as present on a thousand altars at once.
On this point Dr M'Neile has not the faintest
shadow of a doubt. He stakes everything on the
issue with the most unhesitating confidence. The
flesh of Christ after as before his resurrection was
and is flesh, subject to precisely the same definitions
as those which we apply to all other flesh; and he
insists that if this be not so, “ Christianity crumbles
into a myth,” for, apart from this, we can have no
evidence whatever of the fact of the physical or
material resurrection of his body from the grave.
But I am concerned for the present not so much
with the results of his arguments as with the argu
ments themselves ; and I certainly have no tempta
tion to weaken the stress which Dr M’Neile in
his intense earnestness lays upon them.
Far
from attempting to disguise the fact that, unless the
physical or material or bodily resurrection of
Jesus is as well attested as the battle of Hastings
or the surrender of Paris to the German armies, he
is left without any real foundation for his faith, he
asserts again and again that this must be so, not
only for himself, but for all who call themselves
Christians, and that the statement is, in fact, a selfevident proposition. He holds it as incontrovert
ible that a rational demonstration of the bodily
resurrection of Jesus is essential to a reasonable
faith in Christianity.
It is impossible that a
more momentous issue can be raised for the tradi
tional theology of Christendom ; and it is happily a
tangible one. Unless we have adequate historical
�20
The Rev. Dr Hugh M'Nelle
evidence for the resurrection of Christ’s body, Chris
tianity, Dr M’Neile insists, crumbles into a myth.
No room, I must here remark, is left for any misun
derstanding. In that significant, yet, for the tradi
tionalists not very satisfactory, book by which But
ler sought to establish the analogy between re
vealed religion and nature, no stress whatever is
laid on the physical reanimation of the body of
Christ; and the whole argument for human immor
tality with which the work begins seems altogether
to exclude the idea of any such reanimation. Butler’s
one point is that no living power is liable to
destruction; his argument (strange as it may
appear,) is that the body is a living power, and
therefore that it cannot be destroyed. Butler
is careful to distinguish most clearly this living
power from the material particles which we are in
the habit of speaking of as the body. The man who
has lost his arm or his leg makes use of a wooden or
a metal substitute; these limbs, therefore, have no
indispensable connexion with the living power; but
not only this,—the material particles which make up
the outward and tangible form are in a state of per
petual flux, and no particle remains in this sensible
frame for more than six or seven years. Hence the
particles which compose a man’s brain or stomach
have been assimilated by the living power, and been
rejected by it many times over in the space of sixty
or seventy years. That event which we call death
is, therefore, in one main feature, only a sudden
accomplishment of that which is being done by
slow process during that which is called life ; and
as -the living power which assimilated these
material particles was in no way affected by the
gradual loss of them, so there is no reason to sup-
�on the Resurrection,
11
pose that it is affected by the sudden deposition of
the whole. The living power by the very necessity
of the case lives on; and as it has made use of an
infinite series of particles, and as the resumption
of all these particles is a manifest absurdity and
impossibility, it follows that the particles which
are thrown off from or by the body are thrown
off once and for all. It follows further, and as a
self-evident inference, that if the human entity be
a living power, and if no living po"wer can be de
stroyed, then there is no such thing as the death of
the body, and therefore that there is no such thing
as a resurrection of the body in the sense of a re
animation of that which has been for a time inani
mate. Butler’s argument is, therefore, absolutely
opposed to the notion of a resurrection of the flesh,
except in a sense which they who believe in the re
surrection of the flesh would regard, and justly
regard, as explaining it away. Before it can be
brought within Butler’s system, flesh must be made
synonymous with body, and body must be defined
as the living power which can make use of mate
rial particles for a special purpose, but which
is quite independent of them, being itself alto
gether impalpable, invisible, inapprehensible by
the senses. It has been absolutely necessary for
me to bring out this clearly in order to show
that Dr M’Neile is not maintaining the same system.
In truth, he could not do so, for, although Butler
nowhere denies in terms the physical resurrection or
reanimation of the body of Jesus, all that his argument
can do is to prove that the reanimation of the flesh
was and is confined to the one instance of the resur
rection of Jesus, and that therefore his resurrection
is wholly unlike the resurrection which alone can
�22
The Rev. Dr Hugh M’Neile
be predicated of ordinary men whose material forms,
not being speedily revivified, decay. Butler has,
indeed, an Anastasis; but it is a rising up, not a
rising again; and, as his argument gains nothing by
proving historically that in one instance a dead body
was, after a short time, reanimated, so he makes no
attempt to prove it. It must, however, be remarked
that, scientifically, his argument does tend to prove
* .
that the so-called resurrection of Jesus, if it occurred,
Swas the revival of a man who has been in a swoon.
According to Butler, a material particle which has
,
been rejected by or has passed from the body, has
been rejected or has passed from it for ever. At
the moment which we call death, it deposits all
material particles, and does this for ever; it follows
then that, as this may not be said of the body of
Jesus, the event called death had not, in this
instance, taken place, and that it was, therefore,
simply a case of suspended animation in the form
of coma or swoon. I am not concerned here with
the truth or the falsehood of Butler’s argument,
which philosophically acquires great strength from
the fact that it makes body, mind, soul, and spirit
to be one and the same thing, and thus, exhibiting
in the fullest light the absolute indivisibility of
man, makes his immortality depend on this indi
visibility, inasmuch as living power cannot be
destroyed. This may be true or not true; but it is
of the utmost consequence, in dealing with the
letter of the Dean of Ripon, to show that not all
Christians can be regarded as upholding his position
that, “ without the historical fact of the resurrec
tion of Christ’s body, Christianity crumbles into a
myth.” As a matter of fact, a book which is
approved and taken up for university and ordina-
�on the Resurrection.
23
tion examinations is found to uphold the thesis that
the reanimation of the body of Christ is not in the
least necessary for the existence of Christianity,
and to imply further, that such a reanimation
cannot throw the least light on the nature of
human life and so-called human death, or on the
rising upwards to a higher and better state of that
living power which, for a time, has been content to
manifest its existence by means of an assemblage of
material particles, which, by a constant process, it
assimilated and has thrown off.
This process manifestly cannot be stated as an
historical fact occurring at a definite moment; and
Dr M’Neile would doubtless regard this mode of
looking at the resurrection of Jesus as not less
abominable than a blank denial of it. His termi
nology and the terminology of Bishop Butler have
both alike the same merit of being perfectly clear ;
and the latter excludes the idea of a physical reani
mation of so-called dead bodies as much as the
formei' asserts the reanimation of the body of Christ
to be the sole and indispensable foundation of
Christianity. If I may seem to state the same
proposition more than once, it is because Dr M’Neile
himself exhibits his own convictions from as many
points of view as he can, in order to shut out all
possible misconceptions. Hence he fastens with
especial earnestness on the phrase used in the
Acts in speaking of the several Christoph anies
after the resurrection. “ We learn from St Luke,”
he says, “ that Christ showed himself alive after his
Passion by many infallible proofs (reK/zi/ptots),”
It is well known that the word TeKpp foiov denotes
absolute demonstrative evidence, or at least the very
strongest kind of proof of which any given thing is
�24
I' '
I
,
The Rev. Dr Hugh M.'Nelle
susceptible; and it is precisely such evidence as
this which he thinks that the Evangelists have left
to us of the Resurrection., Hence without the least
misgiving that a link or links in the chain of rea
soning. may be wanting, he cites the words which
Jesus is said to have uttered, “ Behold my hands
and my feet that it is I myself. Handle me and see,
for a spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see me
have,” and with these he quotes the words of Beza :
“ Sic hae actiones, loqui, ambulare, edere, bibere
reKp^pta sunt,” winding up with some sentences of
such extreme importance that I give them here in
full.
“ All such proofs were addressed to the senses of
the Apostles, and the result was a process of clear
and conclusive reasoning. The human mind is not
capable of clearer proof on any practical subject
than that which is derived from the testimony of
the senses and the consequent deductions of the
reason. Such was the proof, satisfactory, and, as far
as human consciousness is concerned, infallible, which
was given of the resurrection of Christ. Before his
death his flesh was similar to ours. “For as much
as the children are partakers of flesh and blood,
he also himself likewise took part of the same,
avros Trapa7r\7]fflws perea^e rwv avra>v. His flesh, then,
was an object of sense, concerning which men
might fairly reason, concerning which reasonable
men could not but reason.”
If these words mean anything, they mean that
we may predicate of the risen or reanimated body
of Jesus everything that may be predicated of human
bodies generally, or, in other words, of all flesh and
blood, and by parity of reasoning that we may not
predicate of it anything which cannot be predicated
�on the Resurrection.
15
of flesh and blood generally; for, if this be allowed,
the matter is at once removed beyond the province
of reason and the senses, within which the Dean of
Ripon insists that it is to be retained. Now, there
are certain things which must be predicated of the
bodies of all men. If we speak of them as eating
and drinking, we presuppose the processes and phe
nomena of digestion and excretion ; if we speak of
them as walking or moving, we presuppose not merely
exertion and consequent weariness, but exertion
and motion under certain definite and. invariable
conditions. If any one comes and tells us that
a man, like the cow in the nursery rhyme, jumped
over the moon, or that he walked through a six-feet
thick wall, or that he could show himself and vanish
at will, we should say at once that his statements
might possibly be true so far as his report of what
he thought he had seen was concerned, but that if
it was true, then the creature who did these things
was not made of flesh and blood, but had an organi
sation so entirely different from man, that no points
of likeness could be traced between the one and the
other. If we were told that Mr Disraeli had on
a given day spent many hours in walking round
and round Landseer’s lions in Trafalgar-square, we
might think it strange ; if we were told that he had
done this without hat, coat or boots, we might think
it still more strange, but we need not resort to any
further supposition by way of explaining the occur
rence than that he had lost his senses. But if we
were told that he had leaped up from the back of
one of these lions to the top of the Nelson column
and had repeated this exploit ad libitum, we should
have no hesitation in either dismissing the story as
an impudent lie or saying that the person who did
�26
The Rev. Dr Hugh M’Nelle
this was neither Mr Disraeli nor any human being;
and that, as no such being had ever yet come within
the range of human experience, we must not only
disbelieve the tale, but even, disbelieve our own
senses if we fancied that we saw any such thing as
this. . It is altogether more likely that we should
be mistaken or that by some means or other we
should be made the victims of an optical delusion,
than that a creature who had a man’s body could
perform acts which all the results of human ex
perience would forbid us to predicate of any man.
In short, if we speak of a man, we speak of a being
who eats and drinks in order to renew the waste of
the bodily tissues and whose eating and drinking is
invariably followed by the process of digestion and
by its results; who cannot go through solid sub
stances or walk on water or float in the air; who
cannot make himself invisible or visible by any
apt of the will, but who must come and go, and in
either case must remain visible until he passes
beyond the range of vision or unless some object
cuts him off from the view of the spectator.
So long as our predication follows these laws or
results of human experience, we can treat it as
a strictly reasoning process which appeals directly
and absolutely to our senses. But, according to Dr
M Neile, there can be no reasoning process, and con
sequently no reasonable conviction, where these
laws or conditions are not observed; and thus he
adds with emphatic earnestness :
“ If, after Christ’s resurrection, his flesh had been
something altogether different,—if it had been
something not comprehensible, or very imperfectly
comprehensible by the human understanding,—if
the province of reasoning as applied to it had been,
�on the Resurrection.
27
therefore, very limited,—if the terms employed to
describe it had not, and could not have, that pre
cision of meaning which a proof of his resurrection
demanded,—had this been so, how could his resur
rection have been proved, and, if his resurrection
be not proved, reasonably and conclusively proved,
where is Christianity itself?”
I am not here concerned with the answer to this
question; but the extreme importance of the argu
ment compels me to repeat that, in Dr M’Neile’s
judgment, the province of reasoning with regard to
the risen body of Jesus is not very limited, that the
subject is not imperfectly comprehensible by the
human mind, and that we may, therefore, demand
.such reasonable and conclusive proof of the fact as
is in harmony with the whole course and character
of experience,—nay, that, in the absence of such
proofs, we are mere fools if we give credit to it.
To avoid all possibility of misconception or
injustice, I give the rest of Dr M’Neile’s argument
in his own words, and without breaking in upon
them with any comments :
“ But his flesh after his resurrection was appealed
to as matter of sense and argument and proof, and,
therefore, it was quite comprehensible by the human
understanding, and, therefore, the province of reason
as applied to it was perfect, and therefore the terms
employed to describe it had, and could not but
have, the precison of meaning indispensable for
establishing the fact that he was indeed risen from
the dead.
II Deny the clear and conclusive province of reason
as applied to the risen flesh of Christ, and you
cannot prove the resurrection of his body.
�28
The Rev. Dr Hugh NT* Nelle
“Admit the clear and conclusive province of
reason as applied to the risen flesh of Christ, and
you cannot prove any presence whatever of his
flesh in the Lord’s Supper. Nay, you can prove
its absence, for human reason is altogether com
petent to the conclusion that what cannot be seen,
or felt, or tasted, cannot be flesh, whatever else it
may be, and the question here is not about some
thing else, but about flesh.”
With this theological issue as between Dr M’Neile
and the Sacerdotalists I have nothing to do. My
business is with the propositions involved in his
words; and among these are (1) that the risen flesh
of Christ is quite comprehensible by the human
mind; (2) that the province of reason as applied to
it is perfect; (3) that unless we can predicate of
that risen flesh all that we can predicate of any
other flesh, and nothing more, the human reason
cannot be exercised upon it at all, and therefore
that on this subject there can be no clear and rea
sonable proof, and therefore no solid and reasonable
conviction, inasmuch as by the change of definition
we have substituted something else (whatever that
may be) for the thing defined,—and thus we should
find ourselves in the present instance professing to
speak about flesh while in reality we are speaking
about that which (whatever it may be) is not flesh
at all.
.Now nothing can be clearer, and to the human
mind and reason more satisfactory and conclusive,
than this. Certainly, if it be necessary to the defi
nition of flesh that it should be capable of being
seen, felt, and tasted, then the Sacerdotalists cannot
without absurdity and falsehood maintain that the
flesh of Christ is present whenever the sacrifice of
�on the Resurrection.
29
the Eucharist is offered, that is, in hundreds or in
thousands of places at once. But here we make one
more step in advance. Dr M’Neile’s argument is
here the same as that of the notification given to
weak brothers at the end of the Communion Office
in the Book of Common Prayer, that although the
elements are to be received by communicants kneel
ing, yet no adoration is thereby intended to be done
to them oh the score of any corporeal presence of
Christ in the Sacrament, inasmuch as it is against
the truth of his natural body that it should be pre
sent in more places than one, and his body, being in
heaven, cannot also be upon the earth. Hence
we are to conclude that the compilers of the Prayer
Book shared the conviction of Dr M’Neile, that the
risen body of Christ is subject to the laws and con
ditions to which other fleshly bodies are subject, and
that if we predicate of it that which may not be
predicated of other fleshly bodies, we either deny
its existence or convert it into something else, and
thus put it beyond the province of reason,—which is
not to be done without cutting away at the same
time the very foundations of Christianity.
Without entering into the question of historical
fact, we may here ask whether this position, emi
nently satisfactory though it be to the human rea
son, is altogether in accordance with the statements
in the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. Nei
ther from Dr M’Neile nor from the compilers of the
Prayer Book have we received any technical defini
tion of flesh and body; but we have already seen
that there are sundry things which cannot be predi
cated of human bodies, or of any flesh and blood
with which we are acquainted. Thus, for instance,
so far as human experience has gone, it is as much
c
�30
¥he Rev. Dr Hugh M'Nelle
a contradiction of fact to say that they can fly, or
go through a solid mountain, as it is to say that
they can be in more than one place at a time. So,
again, we should be bound to say that a being who
could subsist without food, or who could receive
food without being further subject to the processes
of digestion, could not possibly be a man, and that
the substance of which his body or form was com
posed, whatever else it might be, could not possibly
be flesh. But without going further than the Prayer
Book, we have not merely the statement already
cited that it is contrary to the truth of Christ’s natu
ral body that it should be present in more than one
place, but the assertion in the fourth Article that
he ascended into heaven with the same body which
was crucified and raised again from the grave,
and that this body consisted of flesh, bones, and all
things appertaining to the perfection of man’s
nature.* We cannot even conceive of living flesh
apart from blood; indeed, to use Dr M’Neile’s
formula, living flesh without blood, whatever it
may be, is certainly not that which we understand
by the term, and is a something or other utterly
incomprehensible by the human mind, and therefore
altogether removed beyond the province of reason.
Further, if any physiologist were asked to name
the various things appertaining to the perfec
tion of man’s nature, he would give to blood a
place quite aS prominent as that of flesh and bones,
* It has been urged by some, that the word blood has been
omitted in this article by a somewhat disingenuous evasion, in
order to avoid a formal contradiction of the expression of Paul,
that “ flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.” All
that I have to do is to insist that blood is necessarily included
under the phrase “ all things appertaining to the perfection of
man’s nature.”
�on the Resurrection.
31
and, as of equal importance ^wi th these, he would
reckon perfect action of all the organs,—a perfect
action of the brain for the exercise of the highest
thought, and a perfect condition of the digestive
functions for the conversion of food into blood.
Other things may be not less necessary; but with
out these he would say that human nature cannot
exist, and that together with these there must be
certain conditions within which man must by his
very organisation be fettered. Thus he is formed for
walking or running on his feet, not for flying; he
may swim in the water, but he cannot walk upon
- it; he may leap for a few feet in the air, but he
cannot, rise through it except in a balloon. Now
when in the fourth Gospel we are told that after
Mary and two of the disciples had taken up their
position at the door of the sepulchre, she saw two
angels in white whom she had not seen on entering,
it may be imagined that the angels had come through
the solid rock.or earth; for no one has contended
that the bodies of angels consist of flesh, bones,
and other things appertaining to the perfection of
man s nature. But the body of Jesus after his re
surrection can appear and vanish at will. This is
so far common to all the Christophanies, that it is
unnecessary to specify instances. It can also go
closed doors, for it is an evasion, from which
Dr M Noile would doubtless shrink with horror^ to
say that anything else can be meant when in the
Johannine narrative we read that “when the doors
were shut, where the disciples were assembled, Jesus
came and stood in the midst.” It is ridiculous, if
not profane, to suppose that one who had just burst
the barriers of the grave should have to knock at
the door to ask for admission, and if the doors were
c 2
E
/
�32
The Rev. Dr Hugh M'Neile
open, it cannot be said that they were shut. Again,
his risen body, which moves by mere volition,
maybe seen and handled; but human experience
certainly knows nothing of any. man capable of
walking about while through his. hands and his
feet might be seen the perforations caused by
the nails used in crucifixion, and with a .wound
in his side so large that a human hand might be?
thrust through it. Further, unless he ascended into
heaven with these perforations and this wound, it
must be supposed either (1) that he had the power
of putting on the appearances of these wounas at
will so that they would thus be pretences rather
than realities; or (2) that these wounds were
gradually healed in the interval between the.
resurrection and the ascension, if according to
the Acts we are to assume that forty days passed
between the two events. Yet more, the body of
J esus can eat and drink; but the narratives
which speak of his doing so manifestly asciibe
the acts- not to any need of the sustenance,, but
simply to the desire of showing to the disciples
that he can eat and drink,—to prove, in short, that
he is not a ghost (whatever this may be), a fact
which at other times he bids them to test by handling
him. Here already we have a number of acts
predicated of the risen Jesus which could not
possibly be predicated, according to all human
experience, of any man whatsoever. Anj one
of them would be held universally to interfere
with the very definition of man, of flesh and o
blood. Lastly, the body of which these acts, utterly
impossible according to human experience and the
conclusions of reason, are predicated, and which
before the crucifixion has walked on the water,
*
�on the Resurrection.
33
leaves the earth from the top of a hill, and rises
into the air, until at last a cloud veils him from the
sight of his disciples, who are told by the two
men in white apparel who then appear, that he
has gone away into heaven.
Thus, far from having in the risen body of Jesus
a subject perfectly comprehensible by the human
mind and reason, the province of reason as applied
to it being perfect, we have something which utterly
baffles the human mind, and with regard to which
the province of reasoning is so limited as to pre
clude altogether that precision in the use of terms
which an argument between man and man demands.
I perfectly agree with Dr M’Neile that the question
is about flesh and not about something else ; nor have
I the slightest doubt that, “the human reason is altogether competent to the conclusion that what cannot
be seen, or felt, or tasted cannot be flesh, whatever
else it may be.” But, if I am to trust my reason at
all, I am equally sure that a being who can live
without food, or who can receive food without
digesting it, who can come and vanish and go
through closed doors at will, who can so modify his
form and features that those who have known him
best fail to recognise him, who can walk on water
and float through the air to a local heaven, is cer
tainly not a man with a body of flesh organised
with everything appertaining to the perfection of
man’s nature, whatever else he may be. He is
thus a person with regard to whom the province of
reason is very limited, and, indeed, cannot be said
to exist at all; and as, where the reason cannot be
exercised there cannot be reasonable proof and
reasonable conviction of a bodily resurrection, it
follows, according to the Dean of Bipon, that Chris
tianity has crumbled into a myth.
�34
¥he Dev. Dr Hugh M'Neile
Thus, without entering on the question whether
the Gospels or the Acts are historically trustworthy,
my task is accomplished. The Dean of Ripon insists
that all arguments between man and man require
complete precision of meaning in the terms em
ployed ; and we have seen that every one of the
terms employed in speaking of the risen body of
Christ is used in the Gospels and the Acts
with as little precision of meaning as any of
those which, when used by Sacerdotalists who
maintain the doctrine of transubstantiation or
any kindred dogma, Dr M’Neile rejects as inaccu
rate and worthless.
We have also seen that
there is no ground or warrant in the New Testa
ment for the assertion of Beza that the actions
of speaking, walking, eating, and drinking are
physical and sensible proofs that the risen body
of Christ was the body of a man, a body of flesh and
blood. Were we, I repeat, to see before us now a
being who could eat and drink, but who needed not
to do either and in whom these acts would not, or
need not, be followed by any process of digestion,
who could walk as men walk, but who could do so
on water and in the air as well as on land, and who
could pass through solid substances, we should say
that, whatever else he might be, he could not be a
man, and that his body could not possibly be com
posed of flesh, blood, and bones like our own. We
should say this, even if we saw such a being with
our own eyes ; but how much time would it take
before we could convince ourselves that we were
not under a delusion, or cheated, or duped, and how
much longer would it be before we accepted any such
descriptions and gave credit to them as facts on the
testimony of others ? If we heard any persons bear
�on the Resurrection.
35
witness to the existence of such a being, how would
this differ from the evidence of those Homeric persons
who saw Venus and Mars mingling in the battles of
men, and saw not the blood but the ichor stream
ing from their wounds ? We have no need, there
fore to examine the testimony, if any such there be,
unless we abandon the position which Dr M JNeile
Insists that we are bound to maintain. We. are
dealing, he says, with things which come strictly
within the province of reason.; and we have seen
that the various actions attributed in the Gospels
to Jesus after the resurrection, and indeed before
it, show that, whatever his body may have beenit was a body which was essentially not that of a
human being.
But Dr M’Neile pleads that his flesh after his re
surrection was appealed to as matter of sense and
argument and proof.''. We have seen that if it was
appealed to, the appeal was made to something not
more really identical with human .flesh than the
“ corpus Christi ” after the bread has in the Eucharist
undergone consecration. But what knowledge have
we that any such appeal was made ? It is singularly
significant that, although in the apostolic discourses
in the Acts the fact of the resurrection of Jesus is
asserted, no reference is made to any of the incidents
which in the Gospels and in the first chapter of the
Acts are said to have accompanied the crucifixion,
the resurrection, and the subsequent Christophanies.
Of only one man have we at first hand the state
ment that he had “ seen the Lord.
That man
Paul, the Apostle of the Gentiles; but we know that
the instance to which he refers was a. vision, and
we might be justified therefore in inferring that the
other Christophanies of which he speaks belong to
�36
’The Rev. Dr Hugh M'Nelle
events of the same class. But of what use in any
case is his testimony to Dr M’Neile, seeing that Paul
is the one who emphatically asserts that flesh and
blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, and that
theiefore, we shall all be changed, in other words,
that we shall pass into conditions with regard to
k-k ^1G ^erms empl°yed cannot have the precision
which arguments between man and man demand ?
But how will it be, if for a moment we suppose that
Paul meant to refer to historical events ? The narra
tive of the .Acts states tha,t at some period soon after
the ascension the whole number of disciples was
120; it also says that the Apostles as they gazed
upwards from Mount Olivet learnt from the two men
m white apparel that the Jesus whom they had seen
ascending should descend again in like manner for the
final judgment, the inference indubitably being that
m the interval no earthly eye should ever see him,
except possibly in trance or vision. In fact, the
coming of the Comforter, which was declared indis
pensable to their spiritual life and growth, was made
dependent on his absence. But Paul, while men
tioning certain Christophanies, some of which may
possibly be among the instances mentioned in the
Gospels, says that in one case he was seen by above
500 brethren at once, thus implying that the whole
number of the disciples considerably exceeded 500,
and adds that he was after this seen of James, then
of all the Apostles. In other words, these mani
festations took place after the ascension, i. e., after
subsequent to which the Apostles were
old that there would be none until the final
manifestation for judgment; or else they were
mere visions.
Hence, as I have been obliged
to maintain in my ‘ English Life of Jesus,’
�on the Resurrection.
37
« either Paul’s statement in an undoubtedly genuine
epistle is delusive, or the narrative in Acts 1 is a
credulous imagination, and from this dilemma there
is no escape.” (P. 334.)
But the book of the Acts is the only one from
which we obtain any information about the so-called
witnesses to the resurrection.* I need not here go
over the proof, which I have fully given in the
‘English Life of Jesus,’ that we have not the evidence
of any of them. All that we have is a number of
traditions or narratives, written by whom we know
not, and the composition of which even Dr Tischendorf cannot carry back nearer than fifty or sixty
years to the period of the crucifixion. But, as I have
been compelled to show, it would make no difference
if he could take them further. The narratives
are themselves inconsistent, contradictory, and
in many instances (and these the most important of
all) mutually exclusive, and therefore unhistorical.
We are therefore, by the canons laid down by Dr
* Of one sentence in Dr M’Neile’s letter to the Times I have,
thus far, taken no notice. It is that in which he says, that we
learn from St Luke that Christ shewed himself alive after his
Passion,” &c. The meaning of this phrase is, that the book of the
Acts was written by the author of the third gospel. On any show
ing, however, Luke, if he wrote the third gospel, was not one _ ot
the Twelve, and there is nothing but a mere popular tradition
which speaks of him as one of the seventy. The statement seeks
to arrogate for the third gospel and for the Acts an authority
which they do not possess. There is no evidence that Luke wrote
either: nor is it necessary for me to do more than to cite the pas
sage relating to this alleged fact in my ‘ English Life of Jesus :
“ To assume identity of authorship from the similarity of two pre
faces in an age when pseudonymous writings were as numerous as
falling leaves in autumn, is an excess of credulity. The gospel
of Luke bears no resemblance, in point of style, to the preface to
that gospel, and the preface to the Acts is not much in harmony
with the language of the book which follows it. A conclusion
�38
^he Rev, Dr Hugh M'Nelle
M’Neile, driven to the conclusion that for the nhvsical resurrection of Jesus we have absolutely no
evidence whatever.
J
That this conclusion is the death-blow of Chris
tianity, I am really not at all concerned by the argu
ment to say. It may be fatal to Christianity as
conceived by Dr M’Neile ; but the term is ulforunately, or fortunately, an elastic one, and, as in the
dSn V
bl°°d’
we need an accurate
°£ the ternL Tt 1S P°ssible that in a sense
which to others, and perhaps hereafter to himself
may be very real, Christianity may continue to
exist apart from a foundation which “is seen to be
one of imagination, not of fact. Certain it is that the
Christianity of Butler’s Analogy does not need it •
and by the side of the English Bishop of Durham
just as plausible (if not more reasonable) would be that some
writer quite distinct from the author of Luke and Acts has p™
fixed some verses of his own before two books which up to That
time exhibited no signs of identity of authorship However this
may be, when two alleged histories are proved to be not histories
two amhoX”pgnW32e8h329hTy
10 Comefrom one or from
two autnors. —lJp. 328, 329. I can but repeat here that the line nf
SoToTthe1^ Dr M’Neiie has chosen to follow, in his letter to the
enter ?nto the'T’?^ Tde Xt alt°gether unnecessary for me to
the tr>
^istorj.calinvestigation of the authorship and
department HX°f thV°spel narratives. But i/ that
denee AnS T conclusions are refuted, and the evierroneoX t
X7
is sbown t0 be inconclusive or
pushed°
eJy Iegard my task as alreadX accomwitb th a ?1S eJldence an<i these conclusions I have set forth
Remains for
“ “y ?Dglish Life of Jesus’’ and only
all Who in anTZ challenge the attention of Dr M’Neile, and of
of matters whi<-h
bls c°nvictions, to a work treating
indispensablv no r ^ede regards, or professes to regard, as
AbXe> all olher
7 -0?he fxistence of Christianity itself. .
the Times toXeXX?6 18 b°™d by tbe terms of his letter to
serious considXt-° h? pag6S 7 that work the most PatieQt and
to him as to the CV r
at 1 may not bave cause to ascribe •
cowaXevaMonCbrflan.E^ence Society, a disingenuous and
cuwaraiy evasion of a plain and an imperious duty.
XX
�on the Resurrection.
39
I may place the Swedish Bishop Tegner, who puts
into the mouth of the priest of Balder in his poem
of ‘Frithiof’ the following words :
A Balder dwelt once in the South, a virgin’s son,
Sent by Allfather to expound the mystic runes
. Writ on the Nornas’ sable shields, unknown before.
Peace was his war-cry, love to men his shining
sword,
And Innocence sat dove-like on his silver helm.
Pious he lived and taught, until at last he died,
And ’neath far-distant palms his grave in glory
shines.
The heathen priest goes on to say that his doc
trine may one day come to Norway; but the
Christian bishop clearly thinks that a man may
have a fair and true idea of Christianity, even
though he regards Jesus as one who never rose
physically from the grave, and who, moreover, died
a natural death.
Such a conception of Christianity certainly in
volves none of the difficulties with which Dr
M’Neile struggles in vain, and which the so-called
Christian Evidence Society deliberately and per
sistently ignores.
Am I to conclude that this conception is at once
the doctrine of the Church of England, and the
belief of English Churchmen in general ?
THOS. SCOTT,
11 The Terrace, Farquhar Road, Upper Norwood,,
London, S.E.
�The following Pamphlets and Papers may be had on addressing
a letter enclosing the price in postage stamps to Mr Thomas
Scott, 11 The Terrace, Farquhar Road, TJpper .Norwood.,
London, S.E.
ETEChurch
^Examination of the Doctrines held by the Clergy of the
Cnurcn oi Knglana. By Presbyter Anglicanus.
Price 6d,
LETTER. AND SPIRIT. By *a CLERGYMAN OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.
SCI Australia.1 HPrice4d
Price 6d.
By Richaed Dav1es Hanson, Esq., Chief Justice of South
Questions to which the Orthodox are Earnestly Requested to Give Answers.
Ihoughts ON Religion and the Bible. By a Layman and M. A. of Trin. Coll., Dublin. 6d.
The Opinions of Professor David F. Strauss. Price 6d.
A Hew Self-Contradictions of the Bible. Price Is., free by post
Against Hero-Making in Religion By Prof. F. W. Newman. Price 6d.
ls THE Church of England. By “ Presbyter Anglicanus. ” Price 6d.
Ihe Religious Weakness of Protestantism. By Prof. F. W. Newman. 7d., post free.
1 n„ibFJCR^fS^D^ISC0UKAGEMENTS which Attend the Study of the Scriptures]
K1ght Rev. Francis Hare, D.D., formerly Lord Bishop of Chichester. 6d.
aHE Chronological Weakness of Prophetic Interpretation.
By a Beneficsd
Clergyman of the Church of England. Price Is. Id., post free.
Ihe Church and its Reform.” A Reprint. Price Is.
^^rice'ls03 °F Pngland Catechism Examined.” By Jeremy Bentham, Esq. A Reprint
Original Sin. Price 6d.
Redemption Imputation, Substitution, Forgiveness of Sins, and Grace. Price 6d.
Basis of a New Reformation. Price 9d.
Miracles and Prophecies. Price 6d.
The Church : the Pillar and Ground of the Truth. Price 6d
Modern Orthodoxy and Modern Liberalism. Price 6d.
<< 1J.°.SPEL °o THE tCiNGDOM. By a Beneficed Clergyman of the Church of England. 6d.
James and Paul. A Iract by Emer. Prof. F. W. Newman. Price 6d
Law and the Creeds. Price 6d.
Genesis Critically Analysed, and continuously arranged; with Introductory Remarks.
By Ed. Vansittart Neale, M. A. and M.R.I. Price Is
A Confutation of the Diabolarchy. By Rev. John Oxlee. Price 6d.
JLhe bigot and the Sceptic. By Emer. Professor F. W. Newman. Price 6d.
G
^x^TH-EISf• By the Rev. Thomas P. Kirkman, M.A., F.R.S., &C.I
Rector of Croft, Warrington. Price Is.
I
1RA+?,'fiInn^I;J<E^>ARKP 0N ‘‘IHE Lord’s Prayer.” By a Layman. With Annol
Yr, J a
by a D1Smtary of the Church of England. Price 6d.
J
0F Natuee and Religion-Good and Evil. By a Clergyman
,n °F THE Church of England. Price 6d.
commentators and Hierophants; or, The Honesty of Christian Commentators.
FpJr
Parts- Pnce 6d- each Bart.
RiX^CrSATION-°3 Religious Topics. By Samuel Hinds, D.D., late Lord
THF
Norwioh- Bart I., price Is. Part II., price Is. 6d.
of England1 Priced P>IVINE' By a Beneficed Clergyman of the Churc#
r^A™™^E»AETICI,ESr,ANI> THE Creeds,—Their Sense and their Non-Sense
By a Country Parson. Parts I., II., III. Price 6d. each Part.
�
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
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
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
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
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.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
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
A name given to the resource
The Dean of Ripon on the physical resurrection of Jesus in its bearing on the truth of Christianity
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Scott, Thomas
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 39, [1], p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway and part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 4. Critique of a letter from Hugh M'Neile, Dean of Ripon to The Times, 24 June 1872, on the Bennett judgement [i.e. W.J.E. Bennett.]. Printed by C.W. Reynell, Little Pulteney Street, London. Publisher's list on unnumbered page at the end.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Thomas Scott
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[1872]
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
G5485
Subject
The topic of the resource
Jesus Christ
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<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 (The Dean of Ripon on the physical resurrection of Jesus in its bearing on the truth of Christianity), 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>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Conway Tracts
Jesus Christ- Resurrection
Morris Tracts
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/bc2efe2287d0130759daf90a4ff0fe2e.pdf?Expires=1779321600&Signature=rTDs-a3wBw2TJFPWCriBOPfBhVAa2BThkFp4jtH-WZCwVk9iinDA3CPm10ZcHQtCwQ3i0xpV4PtVlbCqDgNUg6o3hZ0%7EvrNLAW1Am0%7ErHfCkYSm9fG2cYWNqk6Agn74wHH-o9EBD0OL%7Ef1ID2RhMvyqoFEXgwPC6CYhgawuPpWzgqTvV-X5t802bArrIzcCRkKD9mDtzFZV72JVS-ttW%7Efyu5R%7EvOJbtAi8AaZf789-DW3lKoAU6BIrBc-%7EmwwK6dn4l3AWT7FAkPvYLYq1PdFz2SRg2vYTRlHR8er2%7E-OzrrE2v99vFcKWTW2G1hFXfyLzxCzaGgSeb6h%7EW%7EwQdww__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
1690f656b46782d2e9f61b51bd61d58f
PDF Text
Text
THE TRUE CHURCH OF
JESUS CHRIST
By P. M. Northcote
It would be useless to speak about the Church of
Jesus Christ to those who do not believe in Him.
To such as these I do not address myself. I will,
however, place before them a few considerations
worthy of their careful attention. They will, I pre
sume, scarcely doubt His existence as an historical
personage, for, apart from the records we have of Him,
surely as weighty and worthy of credence as those
which testify to the life character and doings of any
one else in history, it is, moreover, an unquestionable
fact that He has exercised and still exercises upon
the world an influence absolutely without parallel. It
is quite impossible that such a gigantic superstructure
should be based upon a myth. Let it be granted,
then, that close upon two thousand years ago there
was born in Judea a man of Hebrew race' who lived
a short life, exhibiting characteristics quite unique,
characteristics so imposingly grand and beautiful
that He has extorted the admiration even of those
most hostile to His claims. He spent His life for
others, and for their sakes finally suffered a most
agonizing and shameful death. What brought Him
to death was His unfaltering assertion that He was
'God Incarnate. Moreover, it is to be noted that the
long series of the prophets of His nation had foretold
that God should come upon earth in human guise,
�2
The True Church of Jesus Christ
and these prophecies, types, and figures tally most
minutely with all that is related of this wonderful
being: the time of His arrival upon earth, His birth
of a Virgin, the poverty and obscurity of His early
years, His life of beneficent toil, the manner of His
painful death, His Resurrection and Ascension into
heaven—all are foreshown with an astonishing ex
actness. Furthermore, He wrought mighty miracles,
and pointed to them as evidences of the truth of
what He taught about Himself and His mission upon
earth. There are those who in the name of science
airily assert that miracles are impossible. Now, no
fact is impossible, and miracles are facts as well
attested as any other facts of history. It is the
province of the inductive sciences to interpret facts:
nothing is more silly and unscientific than to brush
aside facts which stand in the way of a cherished
preconception. In addition to His miracles we have
His own foreknowledge of future events, whether
concerning Himself or whether concerning the society
instituted by Him, and the course of the world’s
history until the end of time. His predictions of
what would happen to Himself were all fulfilled as
recorded in the Gospel narration. His predictions
of events affecting posterity have been verified one by
one: the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple,
the spread of His religion, the persecutions His
followers should suffer, all these things have come to
pass, and we are thereby justified in believing that all
His other prophecies will be realized in process of
time.
There are these and many other such proofs which
fully bear out the reasonableness of our faith that the
Son of Mary is also the Son of God.
If, then, Christ be the Son of God, it follows that
all He said must be incontestably true, and that all
His commands must be willingly obeyed. To secure
the salvation which He has wrought out for us, He
imposes the obligation that we should believe all that
�The True Church of Jesus Christ
o
He taught and observe all that He commanded
(Mark xvi. 16, Matt, xxviii. 20). This involves two
things, right faith and right conduct, than which two
things nothing could be more important, for upon
them depends our eternal salvation. Once we realize
this we infer that He could not have made issues of
such tremendous import to ourselves depend upon
right faith and right conduct unless He had also
given to us a means whereby we may know with an
infallible certainty what we are to believe and what
we are to do. We are not disappointed in this
inference, for we find it recorded that He has founded
a society to which He promises Divine assistance that
it may never lose that precious treasure of heaven
sent knowledge, nor ever err in its interpretation of
the teaching He imparted to it.
Which, then, is this society founded by Jesus Christ ?
Certainly not all the Christian bodies taken collec
tively, for nothing is more evident than their complete
discord as to what Christ really taught. We must
search, therefore, amongst them and find out one
society which corresponds with the society which He
speaks of as His Kingdom and His Church. In fine,
there is laid upon us the obligation under most awful
responsibility of searching for and entering into the
True Church of Jesus Christ.
I will, therefore, endeavour as briefly and plainly as
possible to point out certain indications whereby we
may know which of all the Christian denominations
is the Church founded by the Saviour of mankind.
In so doing I shall appeal to no authority except
the words of our Lord Himself and of His duly
accredited spokesmen, the Apostles.
(A) The True Church of Jesus Christ must be
a proselytizing Church.
Matt. xxiv. 14: “ And this Gospel of the kingdom
shall be preached in the whole world, for a testimony
�4
The True Church of Jesus Christ
to all nations.” Mark xvi. 15-16: “Go ye into the
whole world, and preach the Gospel to every creature.
He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved ; but
he that believeth not shall be condemned.” Luke
x. 16: “He that heareth you heareth Me; and he
that despiseth you despiseth Me ; and he that
despiseth Me despiseth Him that sent Me.”
There is a strong tendency nowadays to deprecate
anything like proselytizing, not only amongst the
Christian bodies themselves, but even as regards
Christianity in relation to other religions. Very
many people are disposed to say, let us live and let
live. One hears it spoken of as matter for com
mendation that such and such a Christian body is
non-proselytizing. This may suit the fashion of the
modern mind very well. If, however, we consult
such texts as those just quoted, one thing is quite
certain, namely, that a form of Christianity which is
non-proselytizing is not the Church founded by Jesus
Christ.
(B) The True Church of Jesus Christ must
be intolerant.
Matt. x. 14-15 : “ And whosoever shall not receive
you, nor hear your words .... going forth out of that
house or city shake off the dust from your feet.
Amen, I say to you, it shall be more tolerable for
the land of Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of
judgement, than for that city.”
Matt, xviii. 17-18: “And if he will not hear the
Church, let him be to thee as the heathen and the
publican. Amen, I say to you, whatsoever you shall
bind upon earth shall be bound also in heaven ; and
whatsoever you shall loose upon earth shall be loosed
also in heaven.”
Gal. i. 8-9: “ But though we, or an angel from
heaven, preach a gospel to you besides that which we
have preached to you, let him be anathema. As we
said before, so now I say again : if anyone preach to
�The True Church of Jesus Christ
5
you a gospel, besides that which you have received,
let him be anathema.”
Titus iii. io-i I : “ A man that is a heretic, after the
first and second admonition, avoid : knowing that he
that is such an one, is subverted, and sinneth, being
condemned by his own judgement.”
2 Peter ii. i : “ But there were also false prophets
among the people, even as there shall be among you
lying teachers, who shall bring in sects of perdition,
and deny the Lord who bought them ; bringing upon
themselves swift destruction.”
2 John io: “If any man come to you, and bring
not this doctrine, receive him not into the house, nor
say to him, God speed you.”
Ap. ii. 6 : “ But this thou hast, that thou hatest the
deeds of the Nicolaites, which I also hate.”
In speaking here of intolerance, it must be under
stood that I mean spiritual intolerance; I am not in
any way referring to the use of physical force for the
propagation or maintenance of religion. We are
beings compounded of soul and body, consequently
there is in us a rather natural tendency to translate
intellectual antagonisms to the physical plane, just
as we see that political opponents will sometimes
go from words to blows. As regards religion, it is
certainly quite contrary to the teaching of Jesus
Christ and the spirit of His religion to propagate
Christianity by force. How far it may be lawful
as an act of self-protection in order to maintain true
religion once firmly planted in a nation by the use
of the secular arm is a very difficult question to
settle. It is very often thrown in the teeth of
Catholics that in times past their Church endeavoured
to crush out nascent heresies by coercive measures.
But it is notorious that those Christian bodies the
members of which are most ready to upbraid the
Catholic Church on this head, themselves achieved
ascendancy by an unsparing use of the sword, the
gibbet, and the rack. Every Christian body in its-
�6
The Trite Church of Jesus Christ
day of power has to a greater or less degree used
force to maintain its position, but we have only got
to look at the history of our country to be aware that
some forms of Christianity not only maintained
themselves when once established by a resort to
coercive measures, but actually ascended to power
by methods of propaganda which savour rather of
Mahomet than of Christ.
But to speak of spiritual intolerance, it is evident
that this is a necessary feature of the true Church
of Jesus Christ. He said that His word should
not pass away (Matt. xxiv. 35); it is a revelation
from God, and by consequence cannot tolerate any
contradiction. The society to which He committed
its conservation must be jealous of it as it must be
jealous of God’s honour. We must look, then, for
a Church which claims that she is the sole depository
of revealed truth, the only way of salvation ; which
will not associate in worship with any other religious
body; which holds itself exclusive and aloof; which
endeavours as far as possible to withdraw its members
from association with persons belonging to other
sects and religions; which deprecates mixed marri
ages ; which forbids the perusal of tainted literature;
in a word, we must look for a Church which is rigidly
intolerant. A Christianity which is undenominational,
a Church which is comprehensive, cannot possibly be
the Church founded by our Lord Jesus Christ.
(C) The True Church ofJesus Christ must be hated.
Matt. x. 25 : “ If they have called the goodman of
the house Beelzebub, how much more them of his
household.”
Matt. xxiv. 9: “You shall be hated by all nations
for my name’s sake.”
John xvii. 14: “I have given them Thy word, and
the world hath hated them, because they are not
of the world; as I also am not of the world.”
�The Trite Church of Jesus Christ
7
2 Tim. iii. 12: “And all that will live godly in
Christ Jesus, shall suffer persecution.”
2 Pet. ii. 2 : “ And many shall follow their riotous
nesses, through whom the way of truth shall be
evil spoken of.”
We must look for a Church which is hated and
persecuted, not only by the irreligious world, but
which all other Christian bodies conspire to decry;
a Church which the nations endeavour to drive
out from their midst; which is held up to. obloquy
as the very acme of clericalism, obscurantism, and
soul-slavery ; which is set down as the foe of civiliza
tion ; a clog on the wheels of human progress ; a
kingdom within a kingdom; an enemy to the state;
the oppressor of freedom ; a blot upon the fair creation.
Such as this must be represented the True Church of
the persecuted Jesus Christ.
(D) The True Church of Jesus Christ must claim
to be infallible.
Matt. xvi. 18: “And I say to thee: that thou
art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my
Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail
against it.”
John xiv. 16: “And I will ask the Father, and
He shall give you another Paraclete, that He may
abide with you for ever. The spirit of truth.”
John xviii. 37: “ For this was I born, and for
this came I into the world, that I should give testi
mony to the truth.”
1 Tim. iii. 15: “The Church of the living God,
the pillar and ground of the truth.”
1 Tim. iv. 1: “ Now the Spirit manifestly saith
that in the last times some shall depart from the
faith.”
Putting these tests together, we gather that Christ
came to impart revealed truth to men, that He
committed the faith He had taught to the Church
�8
The True Church of Jesus Christ
established by Him, to it He promised the ever
abiding presence of the Spirit of Truth, and though
the gates of Hell shall war upon the Church and some
shall fall from the faith, yet the Church shall not
be overcome but will preserve inviolate the precious
treasure to the end of time. Many other texts which
will suggest themselves to the mind of the reader
might have been added to strengthen the argument,
but these are sufficient to prove that the Church is
an infallible custodian of the faith. Indeed, as I
have already indicated, it must be so, for the faith
is a revelation of God to men through Christ; He
offers it to the world by the mouth of His Church,
saying accept it if you would be saved, reject it and
you will be damned. Such an utterance would be
impossible unless the Church were an infallible
exponent of His teaching. It follows that a Christian
body that does not lay claim to infallibility cannot
possibly be the True Church of Jesus Christ.
(E) The True Church ofJesus Christ must be One.
John x. 16: “And other sheep I have that are not
of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall
hear my voice, and there shall be one fold and one
shepherd.”
John xi. 51—52 : “ He prophesied that Jesus should
die for the nation. And not only for the nation, but,
to gather together in one the children of God, that
were dispersed.”
John xvii. 20-22: “And not for them only do I
pray, but for them also who through their word shall
believe in Me; that they all may be one. . . . And
the glory which Thou hast given to Me, I have given
to them; that they may be one.” •
1 Cor. xii. 13: “For in one Spirit were we all
baptized into one body.”
Eph. iv. 5 : “ One Lord, one Faith, one Baptism.”
It is evident that our Lord founded one fold into
�The True Church of Jesus Christ
9
which all men of good will should eventually be
gathered. Indeed it seems scarcely necessary to
point out that the Church must be one, for since she
is commissioned to teach truth with a consistent
voice, and truth is by its nature one while error is
manifold, it follows that there can be only one True
Church of Jesus Christ. Any theory, therefore, which
divides the Church into several Christian bodies
teaching discordant doctrines, manifestly gives the
lie to our Lord’s express promises, and outrages
the very dictates of reason.
(F) The True Church of Jesus Christ must be the
Church of all places.
Matt, xxviii. 19: “ Going therefore, teach ye all
nations.”
Col. iii. 11: “ Where there is neither Gentile nor
Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian nor
Scythian, bound nor free. But Christ is all, and in all;”
The Church may be crushed out of one place by
persecution, she may not yet have succeeded in
extending her sway over another place. But she
must be Catholic in aspiration and endeavour, pro
selytizing, militant, indomitable, aggressive. Any
body of Christians, therefore, that was founded as a
national or local institution, which the world at large
does not recognise as Catholic, cannot be the True
Church founded by Jesus Christ.
(G) The True Church ofJesus Christ must be the
Church of all times.
Matt, xxviii. 20: “ Behold I am with you all days
even to the consummation of the world.”
Mark xiii. 31 : “ My word shall not pass away.”
Eph. iii. 21: “ To Him be glory in the Church, and
in Jesus Christ unto all generations, world without
end, Amen.”
�io
The True Church of Jesus Christ
1 Peter i. 24-25 : “ For all flesh is as grass ; and all
the glory thereof as the flower of grass. The grass
is withered, and the flower thereof is fallen away.
But the word of the Lord endureth for ever. And
this is the word which by the Gospel hath been
preached to you.”
2 John ii.: “The truth which dwelleth in us and
shall be with us for ever.”
Ap. xiv. 6 : “ The eternal Gospel.”
Ap. xiv. 12: “Here is the patience of the Saints,
who keep the Commandments of God, and the faith
of Jesus.”
See also our Lord’s promise to St. Peter and the
different parables wherein He represents Himself as
one going into a far country and returning after
many days to see how His servants have fulfilled
their charge.
The True Church of Jesus Christ is therefore that
Church which has been from the beginning of its
foundation on the Day of Pentecost, has endured
through every age since up to the present, and
will continue till the end of time. It follows that
every body of Christians which has come into being as
a distinct and organized entity subsequent to the Day
of Pentecost cannot be the one founded by our Lord.
We must look for a Church which can trace her origin
without a break back to the Day of Pentecost if we
would find the True Church of Jesus Christ.
(H) The True Church ofJesus Christ must be a
Visible Church.
Matt. v. 14-15: “You are the light of the world.
A city seated on a mountain cannot be hid. Neither
do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but
upon a candlestick, that it may shine to all that are
in the house.”
John xvii. 21 : “That they all may be one . . . .
that the world may believe that Thou has sent Me.”
�The True Church of Jesus Christ
11
We have seen that the mission of Christ’s Church
upon earth is to offer to men the truth revealed by
Him : the rejection of which is a disobedience to God
so serious as to be punished by eternal damnation.
Obviously she could not fulfil this mission if she were
not visible. As such our Lord presents her to us,
“ a city seated on a mountain.” He even makes the
standing marvel of her visible oneness a proof to the
world of His own Divinity. And surely as we look
at the unity of the only .world-wide Church to-day, we
are constrained to confess that none but God could
have cemented in oneness of faith men of all nations
and tongues. The “ obedience to the faith, in all
nations” (Rom. i. 5). as we witness it at the present
day, after nearly two thousand years since it was first
preached, ought to be enough to convince the veriest
sceptic of the Divinity of Jesus Christ who has wrought
so great a wonder. Isaias the prophet, speaking of
the Church, likens her to “a straight way, so that
fools shall not err therein ” (xxxv. 8). She must,
then, be plainly visible, easy to find by those who
will look. Consequently any theory of an invisible
Church composed of all good men of every denomina
tion of Christians whose hearts are patent to none
but God, does not agree with the Church represented
to us in the language of our Lord, nor could such a
Church by any means fulfil the mission which was
committed by Him to His own True Church.
(I) The Trite Church ofJesus Christ must be
a Kingdom.
Matt. xiii. 41 : “ The Son of Man shall send His
angels, and they shall gather out of His Kingdom all
scandals, and them that work iniquity.”
Matt. xvi. 19: “And I will give to thee the keys
of the Kingdom of Heaven.”
Matt. xix. 23 : “ Amen, I say to you, that a rich
man shall hardly enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.”
�12
The True Church of Jesus Christ
John iii. 5 : “ Amen, amen, I say to thee, unless a
man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he
cannot enter into the Kingdom of God.”
See also the numerous other passages which speak
of the Kingdom of God with evident reference to the
Church militant, and consult the many prophecies
of the Old Testament which predict the founding by
God upon earth of a Kingdom greater and more
lasting than all the mighty empires that ever have
been or shall be.
Since, then, the Church of Jesus Christ is, as we
have seen, one visible Kingdom, and since the
Supreme Ruler is no longer visibly with us, it behoves
us to look for a society monarchical in constitution,
having a vicegerent duly appointed by Him. A
Christian society, therefore, the constitution whereof
is democratic, stands self-condemned, it is not the
True Church of Jesus Christ. There are, however,
many Christian bodies with at least, to outward
seeming, a monarchical form of government: in their
cases we must inquire into how the ruler holds his
title.
There are some churches which own the
temporal sovereign of the realm for their head;
he then must show that he has received his title
and authority from our Lord. This will be a difficult
matter, since in all Christendom there is no dynasty,
no throne coeval with Christianity. We must ex
clude, therefore, the Erastian churches, which, like
the Jews of old, have chosen Caesar instead of Christ.
The same with the churches that own a spiritual
head; on them also it is incumbent that they should
prove that their title has come down to them by
legitimate succession : the mandate of their authority
having been given to the first of their line by our
Lord Himself. Applying this test, we perceive that
it can only reside in some episcopal see founded by
one of the Apostles; any see which came into exist
ence after the life-time of the Apostles is ipso facto
excluded from competing. Which of the Apostles
�The True Church of Jesus Christ
13
received any such mandate of authority from our
Lord ? There is only one.
(K) The True Church ofJesus Christ must be
founded on Peter.
Matt. xvi. 18-19 : “ And I say to thee, that thou art
Peter; and upon this rock I will build my Church,
and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
And I will give to. thee the keys of the Kingdom of
Heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth,
it shall be bound also in heaven ; and whatsoever
thou shalt loose on earth, it shall be loosed also in
heaven.”
Luke xxii. 31-32: “And the Lord said, Simon,
Simon, behold Satan hath desired to have you that
he may sift you as wheat; but I have prayed for
thee, that thy faith fail not; and thou, being once
converted, confirm thy brethren.”
John xxi. 15-17: “Feed my lambs. . . . Feed my
lambs. . . . Feed my sheep.”
These three principal Petrine texts are so well
known as to need no comment. They are so clear
that the marvel is that any comment should be
necessary. The first implies Papal infallibility, show
ing that the Church derives her own infallibility from
the rock of Peter upon which our Lord founded her.
The second shows to what questions Papal infallibility
extends, namely the whole of our Lord’s teaching as
to right belief and right conduct, which is the subject
matter of Christian faith. The third shows that the
personal backsliding of Peter or any of his successors
-does not deprive them of their official prerogative.
Any Christian body, therefore, which does not claim,
or fails to establish its claim, to be in some way
founded by our Lord upon the rock of Peter, cannot
be the True Church of Jesus Christ. We know of
only one that even makes such a claim : the Church
whose centre is at Rome, the ancient bishopric of
�14
The True Church of Jesus Christ
St. Peter. Other sees have at times risen up against
the authority of Peter’s see, but the touch-stone of
time has always justified our Lord’s prophetic words.
Take the example of the most illustrious rebel, the
Patriarch of Constantinople : compare his past power
with his present impotence. Already nation after
nation has thrown off his usurped sway. What is
likely to happen now that the last traces of the Moslem
power, which for its own ends has upheld him, is
being swept away? Let me quote the words of a
really first-rate authority on Eastern ecclesiastical
questions (A. F., The Tablet, Nov. 16th 1912.) “Only
the CEcumenical Patriarch will suffer badly. He
will have no Patriarchate in Europe left. He will
keep Asia Minor and his honorary precedence. But
for centuries it has been coming to that. He got his
high place solely by the grace of the old Emperors:
he has always stood solely by the power of his
temporal sovereign at Constantinople. As the Turks
conquered new territory he quashed the churches of
Achrida and Ipek and joined them to his own
Patriarchate. So it is but just that, as the Turk
retires, the power of the Patriarch should retire too.
Long enough has this upstart Patriarch lorded it over
his more venerable brothers at Alexandria and
Antioch.” Compare this with the world-wide sway
of the Sovereign Pontiff, a ruler who is not a figure
head : we perceive resident in him the royalty of Jesus
Christ. Is the unparalleled power of the Papacy
founded on an illusion ? Is it the most gigantic fraud
the world has ever witnessed ? Or is it the throne
of Christ’s monarchy ? One of these three things it
must be. I think the conscientious inquirer, who
really sets his mind to the question, cannot remain
long in doubt as to his answer.
I might, dear reader, have extended yet further
our consideration of the characteristics which desig'
nate the True Church of Jesus Christ: on those
points which I have chosen I might have multiplied
�The True Church of Jesus Christ
15
the texts and illustrations. But the space of a short
pamphlet would not permit this. I will ask you,
however, to consider these characteristics as 1 have
presented them to you, not taking them only one
by one, but also collectively, and you will perceive
that they are all interrelated and focussed to a
single point, which indicates most clearly that the
One True Church of Jesus Christ is that world-wide
Church which acknowledges the authority of the
successor of St. Peter, Pope of Rome. Into this,
the fold of Christ, you are under strictest obligation
to enter, and the penalty of your refusal is eternal
damnation. Only one excuse will avail you at the
day of your judgement, namely that you did not
know ; nor will this always avail, for if it is found
that your ignorance is the result of reluctance to
inquire or sheer carelessness amounting to great
fault, your excuse will not be admitted, you will be
irrevocably damned. Whosoever can contemplate
the prospect of eternal damnation unmoved must
surely be wanting in imagination and intelligence.
Hasten, therefore, and let nothing deter you, neither
fear of ridicule, nor estrangement of friends, nor
loss of fortune, nor that which is hardest of all, your
own innate repugnance to bow the neck. Serve we
must; it is the necessary lot of human existence, be
the man Pope, or Emperor, or simple husbandman.
Do not be deceived by those “ promising liberty,
whereas they themselves are the slaves of corruption ”
(2 Pet. ii. 19): service is essential to man, and we
must choose between Christ and Satan. The evi
dence is clear which constrains you to acknowledge
the truth of Christ’s Church: so clear that were it
applied to any other matter, no one would doubt
for a moment. But this is a question where human
reason is insufficient unaided by the light of faith.
Nor will that light break in upon a soul which
wilfully excludes it: our Lord has told us so—“if
thy eye be single, thy whole body shall be lightsome.
�16
The True Church of Jesus Christ
But if thy eye be evil, thy whole body shall be
darksome” (Matt. vi. 22-23). This divine utterance
has been pushed almost to the point of exaggeration
by such deep thinkers as Pascal and Newman: it
is not want of evidence which makes it difficult for
us to perceive revealed truth, it is because the right
dispositions of soul are lacking. Pride, prejudice,
self-interest, the glamour of passion, spiritual sloth—
these, and suchlike things, are they that impede the
divine light from entering. Sweep them away, then,
if you would save your soul. But there is a motive
which urges you higher even and more noble than
the quest of your soul’s salvation. It is a spirit of
loving loyalty to the God who “ was seen upon
earth and conversed with men ” (Bar. iii. 38). Surely
it is a joy and an honour to fight under the banner
of Jesus Christ the Incarnate Creator. Dire, in
truth, is the conflict, but short; unending is the
reward, bright the everlasting crown. Enter, there
fore, the True Church of Jesus Christ, for He has
shown to us no other vestibule on earth of the
heavenly city to which we aspire “ having the glory
of God, and the light thereof was like to a precious
stone, as to a jasper stone, even as crystal. . . . And
the city hath no need of the sun, nor of the moon
to shine in it. For the glory of God hath enlightened
it and the Lamb is the lamp thereof. And the
nations shall walk in the light of it: and the kings
of the earth shall bring their glory and honour into
it. And the gates thereof shall not be shut by day :
for there shall be no night there. And they shall
bring the glory and honour of the nations into it.
There shall not enter into it any thing defiled, or
that worketh abomination, or maketh a lie, but they
that are written in the book of life of the Lamb”
(Ap. xxi.).
PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY THE CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY, LONDON.
n.—Mar. 1913.
�
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
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
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
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
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.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
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
A name given to the resource
The true church of Jesus Christ
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Northcote, Philip M.
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 16 p. ; 19 cm.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Catholic Truth Society
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[1913]
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RA1535
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br />This work (The true church of Jesus Christ), identified by <span><a href="www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Language
A language of the resource
English
Subject
The topic of the resource
Catholic Church
Jesus Christ
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Catholic Church-Apologetic Works
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/76d07319c50b94fdb1eeefa65fd4193d.pdf?Expires=1779321600&Signature=Qs-%7Eierw5rvUrCna57ihFBuSItXTRIOGz-68PvjSGM2lskHaYqO2qs2tgB-lCUnISeE-DFVRybxztJlzyM8RjSuDR%7ESCMYwNQvm9k7A1gU2H29i07jGRSEw%7EIIn4ooGKC0JasxO9bbCpbkS0UZWVen14r33N1SceepGZ6%7ElBL5fSVgPsTQiRd6RwTGTZHLIAemqVD4BnG2NxTI-a9WwX50o%7EJYBypD3IfLSXSbQHqKA6Zx5jbLzhBBzD%7Eru95zBDBtq7OVo1MUmFGT-DNPEHrgGTKrwrN6LVMr2iFomgn0yYghTq8Jr0hI56sg7eHmeP2156Q555UZ8gtYnfV9gnJQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
5a09cf6832cf6349b0d74cfaf2f32980
PDF Text
Text
STRAUSS’S NEW WORK ON THE LIFE OF JESUS.
Das Leben Jesu, fur das deutsche Volk bearbeitet. (The
Life of Jesus, adapted to the German People.) von
David Friedrich Strauss. Leipzig : F. A. Brockhaus.
1864.
Nearly thirty years have now elapsed since a “ Life of
Jesus” by David Frederic Strauss made its first appearance.
We were at that time in Germany, and remember well the
startling effect that it produced. There were not indeed
wanting men who at once perceived, that the views which
it set forth with such uncompromising fearlessness, were a
natural consequence of principles of criticism which had
been for a long time partially and perhaps unsuspectingly
applied. But even those who were familiar with such prin
ciples and ’freely recognized them in relation to insulated
points of the gospel history, had never fully realized to
themselves the results with which they were pregnant, and
were filled with a sort of terror when they saw all their
possible applications gathered to a focus and urged home
with remorseless consequentiality to their legitimate issue.
Of replies to this alarming book there was no lack; but
none of them, not even that of Neander, were felt to have
effectually repelled the serious blow which it aimed at the
old traditional trust in the strictly historical character of the
evangelical narratives. Every ensuing contribution to the
. criticism of the New Testament which bore on it the stamp
of solid learning and thorough honesty, though it might
approach the subject from another point of view, moved in
the same direction, and tended rather to confirm than to
weaken the scepticism raised by Strauss. This was espe
cially true of the Tubingen school of theology. The imme
diate effect' was a general unsettling of opinion and a
pervading sense of uneasiness. It was impossible for things
to remain as they were. The old rationalism, which, assu
ming the impossibility of miracle, had attempted to unite
with this negative theory a literal acceptance of the facts
recorded in the Gospels, had exhausted'its resources, and
was shewn by the unanswerable logic of Strauss to be more
untenable and absurd than the simple, childlike faith which
it had undertaken to replace. Only one of two courses now
A
�2
Strauss's New Work on the Life of Jesus.
remained: either to fall hack into broad, self-consistent
orthodoxy, which took things as they were written with
unquestioning credulity; or else to go boldly forward in the
path opened by Strauss and Baur, and develop the results
which they had established, with courageous honesty into
all their consequences. A perfect trust in truth and fearless
ness of the world, such as few men possess, was indispensable
to the adoption of the latter alternative. It was a trial of
the spirits, and not many were equal to it.
From the storm of reproach and execration which assailed
him on all sides, Strauss took shelter in studious privacy ;
and for many years, finding little encouragement to the
prosecution of theological research, busied himself with pur
suits of another though still kindred character, which bore
valuable fruit in his biographies of Ulrich von Hutten and
Reimarus. Meantime the world moved on, however theolo
gians might wish to be stationary. The events of 1848 and
1849 had powerfully roused the popular mind of Germany;
and the outbreak of the almost contemporary movements
of the German Catholics on one hand, and of the Protestant
Friends of Light on the other, shewed what a craving there
was in all quarters for release from ecclesiastical bondage
and freer religious development. Strauss from his retreat
marked these ominous phenomena with thoughtful and not
irreverent eye. Cautious and temperate in his political
views, he felt with growing conviction, what he has so
strongly expressed in the preface to his present work—that
the country of the Reformation can only become politically
free, to the extent that it has wrought out for itself a
spiritual, religious and moral freedom.
*
He discerned the
risk to which many minds were exposed from their inability
to draw a clear line of separation between the permanent
and the perishable in Christianity—of renouncing the spi
ritual substance with the historical form—or at least of
oscillating continually between a wild unbelief and a spas
modic piety.-f- The result was a firm persuasion that it
was a duty to come to the relief of this morbid condition of
the popular mind. He had convinced himself that, owing
* “Wir Deutsche konnen politisch nur in dem Masse frei werden, als wir
uns geistig, religios und sittlich frei gemacht haben.”—Vorrede, xx.
+ Ibid, xviii.
�Strauss's New Work on the Life of Jesus.
3
to the wide diffusion of education, the people of Germany
were prepared for the profitable entertainment of many
questions, which might have been justly thought to be
prematurely agitated a quarter of a century before. He had
gained the experience, which has been constantly that of
other teachers of religion,—that on spiritual topics where
the premisses lie within every human consciousness, there
is often a readier perception of deep, fundamental truth in
simple and earnest men of the lowest class, than is to be
found among their superiors in social position, whose minds
are clouded by conventional prejudices, and not seldom dark
ened by the interposition of an useless mass of artificial
book-learning between their inner vision and the eternal
realities of the universe. In this purpose of bringing his
views before the general public, he was encouraged by the
warm sympathy of his brother, who, though himself a manu
facturer, took a strong and intelligent interest in the theolo
gical controversies of the time, and was regarded by Strauss
as no unfitting type of the middle-class intellect of Germany,
fully competent to decide on the main points at issue be
tween the conservative and the progressive schools. Before
the publication of the present work, Renan's Vie de Jesus
appeared in France. The reception it met with furnished
additional proof, that the time had come when the ancient
limits of learned insulation might be broken through, and
an appeal be safely made to the popular mind and heart.
Beyond this general appeal from the verdict of a craft to
the judgment of the world, the works of Renan and Strauss
have little in common.
*
Strauss’s first-work was intended immediately for theolo
gians. Some wished at the time that, like Bretschneider’s
Probabilia, it had veiled its heresies in Latin. From the
task that it proposed to itself, it was essentially analytic
and destructive, and it seemed to leave behind it a very
negative result. It took the whole mass of gospel narra
tives as it found them, and subjecting them to the severest
* In one point they touchingly agree—in the dedications prefixed to each ;
one to the memory of a beloved sister, the other to that of a brother. In both
we painfully miss the distinct recognition of a hope, which to us seems the only
availing consolation in such cases. Yet both are affectionate in tone, and, we
do not doubt, are genuine utterances of the heart—each strongly marked by
the idiosyncrasy of character and race—that of Strauss, grave and earnest; that
of Renan, airy and sentimental.
A 2
�4
Strauss's New Work on the Life of Jesus.
critical test, it affirmed that it had succeeded in dissolving
much that had been received as history, into legend and
even into myth, of which the source could often be traced,
and of which the aim was obvious. Like the lines of ap
proach drawn round a beleaguered city, the hostile move
ment was from the circumference towards the centre—
constantly advancing further and further, and breaking
down one defence after another, till at last it seemed doubt
ful whether the inmost citadel itself would not be. stormed
and reduced to a ruin. There was something almost ap
palling in the imperturbable coolness and apparent reck
lessness of consequences with which Strauss pursued his
work. But it was a work which had to be done. It was
desirable to test the utmost force of criticism on the histo
rical frame-work of Christianity. Dissent as we may from
the author’s conclusion, and even in cases where he leaves
no way to any definite conclusion at all, it is impossible
not to admire, in many sections of the book, the remarkable
acuteness and skill with which a number of widely dis
persed and scarcely appreciable, indications are combined to
throw light on the possible origin of a particular narrative.
Though the general theory of Strauss, in the unqualified
largeness of its earliest enunciation, must doubtless undergo
important limitations, yet his first work will ever retain a
high value, as opening the source from which many ele
ments have been supplied to the present texture of the
gospel history, and furnishing the student with a model of
thorough critical investigation.
His new work has been written with quite another view. It
is in no sense a revised edition of the first. If the object of
the former was to decompose a multifarious whole into its
constituent parts, the main design of the present volume is to
reconstruct, by gathering up the residuary facts into a solid
nucleus, and then attempting to explain how a mythic atmo
sphere has formed around it. It reverses the order of the
foregoing process. It advances from the centre towards the
circumference, making good its ground as it proceeds—striv
ing to convey as distinct an impression of the origin and
founder of Christianity as facts now ascertainable permit,
and maintaining with calm earnestness throughout, that no
results of historical criticism can affect the certainty of those
eternal truths, or impair the influence of that beautiful life,
�Strauss's New Work on the Life of Jesus.
5
which make the gospel what it is—a possession for ever to
mankind. This is evidently the aim of the hook. No
candid reader can dispute it. There are occasions on which
we think he has overstrained his theory. We cannot accept
all his assumptions without material qualification; and his
own premisses appear to us to yield more positive and con
solatory conclusions than he has himself drawn from them.
But the volume before us, with all its deficiencies, is the
clear expression of an honest, an earnest, and, we will add,
a noble mind—a mind which has sought truth for its own
sake, though on some vital points we feel strongly that it
has missed it, and which has at least proved its own since
rity by cheerfully paying the penalty which truth’s loyal
service too constantly incurs. Strauss, in his preface, does
not conceal his anxiety that his two works, as having dif
ferent objects, should be kept perfectly distinct; and he
has even left directions in his will, that in case a new edi
tion of his former work should be called for, it should be
faithfully reprinted, without any reference to the present
volume, from the first edition, with only a few corrections
from the fourth.
*
The limits to which we are restricted, will prevent us
from giving more than a summary outline of the plan and
contents of this learned and suggestive work. After a rapid
survey of successive attempts to write a “ Life of Jesus”—
beginning with Hess near a century ago, and terminating
with Renan and Keimf—Strauss proceeds to determine the
criteria of authenticity, and to inquire how far they are
satisfied by any extant testimony to the Gospels. He de
cides, that in their present form they furnish no evidence
at first hand. They are the embodiment of a cumulative
tradition, carrying down with it some written memorials of
particular discourses and transactions from a very early
date. He shews how credulous and uncritical were the
earliest witnesses to the books that form our actual canon
* Vorrede, xiii.
+ Die Meftschliche Entwickelung Jesu Christi (The Human Development of
Jesus Christ), a very interesting inaugural address on accepting the chair of
Theology at .Zurich, December 17, 1860 ; much commended by Strauss, and
furnishing, in the warm devotional sentiment with which it envelopes the
person of Christ, a not unwelcome relief from the somewhat chilling influence
of his own more negative views.
•
�6
Strauss's New Work on the Life of Jesus.
—Irenaeus and Tertullian, and even the more learned and
philosophical Origen and Eusebius. Fidelity to simple fact,
even after the desire to harmonize the four evangelists had
awakened something like a critical spirit, was constantly
overpowered in their minds by dogmatic or practical consi
derations—by the wish to extract a moral or establish a con
clusion. This was the spirit of their age.' They were conscious
of no wrong in yielding to it. The examination of Papias’s
account of the origin of Matthew’s and Mark’s Gospels,
proves that the works referred to by him could not have been
identical with those which we now possess under the same
names. Indeed, the preposition rara—according to—hardly
allows direct authorship. In like manner the indication in
Luke’s preface of many contemporary records of Christ’s
ministry, and the evident desire which both the Gospel and
the Acts betray, of reconciling the opposite tendencies of
the Jewish and the Pauline schools, presuppose a later
period for the composition of both those books than is re
concilable with their having proceeded in their present form
from a companion of the apostle Paul. Contrary to the
opinion which he once held, Strauss has yielded to the
arguments of Baur, and is now convinced that the apostle
John cannot have been the author of the fourth GospeL
He ascribes the tenacity with which Schleiermacher and
some other eminent men have clung to the opposite view,
rather to sentiment than to critical proof, and thinks it had
its source in strong reaction against the old rationalism
■which was supposed to find its chief support in the Synop
tical Gospels. Only in the Epistles of Paul, and in the
Apocalypse which he regards as the work of the apostle
John, does Strauss recognize any works of direct apostolic
origin in our present canon. Having upset the earlier dates
which the old apologists had attempted to fix, he does not
pretend to find any more definite lower down. We gather
from the general tenor of his criticism, that he supposes our
four Gospels to have assumed their present form some time
in the earlier part of the second century. With the notions
now prevalent in the Christian world, this may appear dis
tressingly vague. But can those who complain, satisfacto
rily establish anything more certain? We want evidence,
not declamation. When we consider how these narratives
have been composed, of what materials they consist, through
�Strauss's New Work on the Life of Jesus.
7
what changes of form they have passed, how gradually they
have in all probability been accumulated, and how little
anything like formal publication, in our sense of the word,
can be predicated of them, till their authoritative recogni
tion by the Catholic Church towards the close of the second
century—it is obvious that the assignment of a precise date
to the authorship of any one of them, is altogether out of
the question. By taking this broad though vague ground,
from which there is as yet no final verdict of criticism to
warn him off, Strauss gains time and space for that free
development of tradition and its consequences, in which he
finds a natural solution of many perplexing enigmas in the
gospel history. Possibly he may carry his theory too far
in this direction, as he certainly on some points overstrains
its application ; but he is at least more self-consistent than
Ewald, who agreeing to the full with Strauss in an absolute
renunciation of the miraculous, cuts off by his limitation of
the date of the Gospels, especially the Gospel of John, all
possibility of accounting without violence for its introduction
into the narrative of the New Testament
*
Notwithstand
ing this free treatment of the written documents of Chris
tianity, Strauss distinctly admits that a full and living
stream of tradition poured itself into them, which bore along
with it the new spirit of Christ,—vivid impressions of the
most salient features of his personality, and authentic records
of his most remarkable words and acts—and with such a
penetrating and diffusive power, wherever it spread, that it
“ created a soul,” to use a fine expression of Milton’s, “ under
the ribs of death,” and deposited far and wide over the ex
hausted soil of heathenism the elements of a higher faith
and a nobler life. We have often thought we could trace
a wonderful providence in the apparently defective medium
through which Christ has been revealed to us;—not set
* Most unnecessarily, on more occasions than one, Strauss seems to us to
have explained away a very probable fact into the exposition of a mere idea.
Can anything be more fanciful than his interpretation of Luke’s statement, that
Jesus, in consequence of the unbelief of his own kindred, transferred his resi
dence from Nazareth to Capernaum, where he met with a more cordial reception
—as a symbolical announcement of the rejection of Christianity by the Jews,,
and its acceptance by the heathen ? (p. 121). There is to us also something
equally unreal in his comparison of the Sermon on the Mount with the Sinaitic
legislation (p. 124), though this may have been suggested to him by his strong
persuasion that, according to the Messianic conceptions of that age, the Christ
was to be a second Moses.
�8
Strauss's New Work on the Life of Jesus.
forth in clear and definite outline, with every feature exactly
delineated, and every light and shade filled up—a present
ment which would have exhausted by at once satisfying
the imagination,—but disclosed to us in transient glimpses
of ineffable sweetness and surpassing majesty, which require
the co-operation of our own highest thought to interpret
and complete them, and make the Christ in whom is our
deepest trust, the creation in part of God’s own spirit within
us. What Christ planted in the world, was not a dogma
nor a form, but a living word, which had its root in his own
life, and carried with it his own spirit. It propagated itself
under God’s blessing, but through human agencies, over all
the earth, imbibing a flavour from the various soils which
nourished it, and taking a new colour from changing skies.
We mark its earliest growth in the Galilean records of
Matthew. We observe how its vital juices sprout into lux
uriant tendrils and put forth leaves and blossoms in Paul
and Luke.. We see it bending with purple clusters in
John. There is a sense in which the fourth Gospel, while
deeply tinged with the ideas of the time, may still be said
to present us with the most genuine expression of the spirit
of Christ, because it exhibits the highest point of organic
development within the New Testament; though it may
not have been written by the apostle whose name it bears,
and though many of its contents may not correspond to
historical fact.
“The Johannean Gospel,” writes Strauss (p. 143), “with its
image of Christ, attracts more sympathy from the present gene
ration than the Synoptical with theirs. These, written out from
the quiet heart of undoubting faith in the primitive society (for,
in their conception of the person and being of Christ, there is
comparatively little difference between the liberal Judaism of the
first, and the tempered Paulinism of the third Gospel), found a
natural response in the equally sure and quiet trust of the cen
turies of faith. The former, with its restless striving to recon
cile a, new idea with the existing tradition—to represent as an
objective faith, what it grasped subjectively as certain truth—
must be better suited to the temper of a time, whose faith is no
longer a tranquil possession, but an incessant struggle, and that
would fain believe more than it yet properly can. In reference
to the impression which this side of its influence makes on our
present Christianity, we might call the Gospel of John, the
romantic Gospel, though in itself, it is anything but a romantic
�Strauss’s New Work on the Life of Jesus.
9
*
production. The unrest, the intense sensitiveness, which in the
believer of to-day result from his effort, amid the new views
which irresistibly force themselves on him, still to keep firm hold
of his ancient faith—proceeded, on the contrary, in the evangel
ist, from his endeavouring to raise the old tradition to the height
of his new ideas, and mould it into accordance with them; but
the restlessness and the effort, the flickering before the eye, the
wavering in the outline of the image so produced, is on both
sides the very same ; and hence it is precisely towards this Gospel
that the modern Christian feels himself especially drawn. The
Johannean Christ, who in his self-delineations continually, as it
were, overdoes himself, is the counterpart of the modern believer,
who to be a believer must be ever in like manner overdoing him
self. The Johannean miracles, which are resolved into spiritual
signs, and yet at the same time exhibit the extreme form of out
ward miracle, which are reported and attested in every way, and
yet are not to be regarded as the true ground of faith—are mira
cles and yet no miracles ; people ought to believe them, and yet
believe without them : just as this half-hearted age seeks to do,
which wears itself out in contradictions, and is too worn and
spiritless to attain to clear insight and decisive speech in reli
gious things.”
There is much truth' in these words, but not the whole
truth. They do not do full justice to the very case which
they so forcibly put. No doubt we have in the fourth Gospel
a vivid expression of the endeavour to reconcile the simple,
popular trusts which are transmitted to us in the three
first, with a philosophic conception of God’s relation to the
universe which at that time pervaded with its subtle influ
ence the whole upper region of thought throughout the
Greco-Roman world. But it was not all unrest; it was not
interminable struggle. In those wonderful chapters, from
the 13th to the 17th, which are the highest utterance of
the Johannean Gospel, the problem has its solution. In
love and trust, in oneness of affection and endeavour with
the omnipresent God, in self-surrender to the Parent Mind
through the heart’s deep sympathy with the holiest human
manifestation of filial obedience—the troubled spirit finds
at last the rest and peace for which it has yearned. And so
it will be in the final issue of this agitated and questioning
* The allusion is to the distinction between the classical and the romantic
schools, familiar to all who are acquainted with the history of German litera
ture in the early part of the present century.
�10
Strauss's New Work on the Life of Jesus.
age of ours. When the battle between science and faith,
between historical traditions and the religion of the in Tier
consciousness, has been fought out, and their mutual rela
tionship has been adjusted ; the spirit of Christ will survive
these controversies of the intellect, and disengaged at length
from artificial obstructions and gratuitous difficulties, will
descend with all its power into the human soul, and fill it
with a profounder faith and a holier love.
*
The somewhat tentative character of Strauss’s first book
and its large application of the mythic principle, that on
the image of Christ, as presented to us in the Gospels, some
of the most striking features had been impressed by the
Messianic assumptions of the primitive Church,—left on the
reader’s mind a painful doubt whether the author recognized
any historical Christ at all, and whether what we had been
accustomed to accept as such, was not to a large extent a
product of the imaginative enthusiasm of the first believers ;
or, to put it in the briefest form, whether, instead of Christ’s
having created the Church, the Church had not rather created
Christ. The supposition, conceived in this broad, unquali
fied way, is so preposterous that it furnished those who
were eager to find in the work not what it might contain
of truth, but where it could be most effectively assailed, a
ready and obvious point of attack. It is only justice to
Strauss to say, that his mature thoughts embodied in the
present volume, afford no ground for imputing to him so
wild an extravagance. He affirms most distinctly not only
the historical existence of Jesus of Nazareth, but the won
derful effect of his personality in introducing the greatest
spiritual revolution in the history of the human race. What
he contends for is simply this : that the image of that per
sonality has not been conveyed to us through perfectly
transparent media ; and that though the features are suffi
ciently distinct to enable us to verify the individual, they
have been blended in their transmission with the deep sub
jective influence of the recording mind. Before we condemn
this view, we must first shew that with a thoroughly honest
criticism we are able to escape it. That Jesus was born
* How searching are these words of the great Augustine! “Vae animae
audaci, quae speravit si a te recessisset, se aliquid melius habituram. Versa et
reversa in tergum et in latera et in ventrem, et dura sunt omnia. Tu Solus
requies.”—Confess. Lib. vi. c. 16.
�Strauss's New Work on the Life of Jesus.
11
and bred of humble parentage in Nazareth of Galilee ; that
he was a hearer of John, and received baptism at his hands ;
that he commenced the career of an independent religious
reformer in Galilee, sharing in the general Messianic ex
pectations of his time ; that he penetrated to the spiritual
substance of the law, and believed that in the coming age
its outward form would be abolished for ever; that he
attached followers to himself from his own rank in life,
and preached to multitudes repentance and faith, awaken
ing into consciousness the higher life that was slumbering
in them ; that he waged an unsparing war with the formal
ism and hypocrisy of the professed guides and instructors
of the people, and gave his interest and sympathy in pre
ference to publicans and sinners; that the essence of his
teachings is condensed in the Sermon on the Mount, in
innumerable parables, and in occasional words that escaped
from the fulness of his inmost spiritual being in varied inter
course with the world,—all summed up in the two great com
mandments of love to God and love to man, of which his
whole life was a living impersonation ; that, though he
foresaw the fate which awaited him from direct encounter
with an irritated and malignant priesthood at Jerusalem,
this did not deter him from resolutely pursuing his pro
phetic career till its close ; that, betrayed by one of his own
followers, he fell into the hands of his enemies, and was
executed ignominiously by the Boman authorities on the
cross ; that notwithstanding the dismay and the dispersion
which this event immediately produced among his disciples,
they nevertheless after a season recovered their confidence
and hope, and firmly believed in his resurrection from the
dead and his continued presence and visitation from the
heavenly world;—these are facts which Strauss clearly
recognizes as the historic frame-work of the evangelical
narrative, and as the basis of his further speculations re
specting their accompaniments. He thinks that in conse
quence of being so far above the ideas of his age and coun
try, Jesus has been often misunderstood by those who heard
him ; and that we are therefore justified in interpreting the
general tenor of his instructions by the highest and most
spiritual utterances recorded of him ; that, for instance, we
have probably a truer reflection of his spirit in some of the
parables peculiar to the Pauline Gospel of Luke than in
�12
Strauss's New Work on the Life of Jesus.
others which occur in Matthew’s, and hear evident marks
of the Judaic narrowness of its original materials. He
believes that we can trace a spiritual growth in the mind
of Jesus, and that the consciousness of his Messianic mission did not take possession of him all at once,—that it first
becomes distinctly conspicuous about the time of the trans
figuration. Having once acquired the conviction that he
had been chosen by God to fulfil the Messianic work, it
was only a natural consequence that Jesus should apply to
himself, and expect to find realized in himself as God’s
instrument for a great purpose, the several predicates that
were attached by universal belief to his office. In this part
of his life, however, it is especially difficult to disentangle
what he may actually have said about himself, from the
stronger and ampler language respecting the Messiah then
current among the Jews, which later faith assumed that he
must have used, and therefore unhesitatingly applied to him.
Enough—he was profoundly sincere in his conviction, cou
rageous and ready for self-sacrifice in carrying it out; and
if the admission implies that there was a certain tinge of
enthusiasm in his character, he possessed this quality in
common with some of the purest and noblest spirits that
have adorned the human race; nor is it in any wise incom
patible with a providential vocation and a divine life. Such
we gather to be Strauss’s impression of the historical Jesus.
But in this history there are two elements—one which we
have just described, probable in itself and consistent with
the known laws of matter and mind ; another, intermingled
with it, which transcends those laws and stands out as an
exceptional case in the history of the world. Strauss’s
theory of the universe (of which we shall have to say a
word or two by and by) precludes him from admitting the
possibility under any imaginable circumstances of such
occurrences as would constitute the latter element. The
problem, therefore, which he has to solve, is to account for
the copious infusion of this element into every part of a
history which contains so much of the highest truth and
has left so profound an impression on the subsequent course
of human affairs. His explanation is the following: that
assuming the traditional facts of Christ’s actual life as their
basis, it was the object, first of the preachers of the gospel,
and afterwards of those who reduced our earliest records t(
�Strauss's New Work on the Life of Jesus.
13
writing, to establish on that basis a conclusive argument
that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ or expected Messiah,
the Son of David, the second Moses, the Son of God; and
that the working of this strong purpose, blended with intense
conviction, on the traditional materials subjected to it in a
mental atmosphere already deeply charged with foregone
conclusions, evolved more and more, as the actual facts re
ceded into further distance, the mythical halo which has
invested the whole narrative with a supernatural character.
If Jesus were the Messiah, then all the passages of the Old
Testament which had a Messianic import, and all the ex
pectations to which the current interpretations of them had
given rise, must have had their fulfilment in his person
and his life; and this assumption, ever present to the mind
of the evangelists, moulded unconsciously the loose and
fluctuating mass of oral tradition into the form in which
we now possess it, and mingled with it elements that had
their source in the fervid faith of the believing mind. This
is what has been called the mythic theory of Strauss. The
old rationalistic school, including Eichhorn and Paulus and
not wholly excluding Schleiermacher himself, disbelieved
equally with Strauss the possibility of the strictly miracu
lous ; but they attempted by various expedients to explain
it away from a narrative which they accepted in the main
as historical. Strauss saw the futility of this method, and
the violence which it did to the plainest rules of exegesis;
but he attained the same object of accounting for the intro
duction of the miraculous, by carrying down the Gospels
to a later date, and ascribing it to the imperceptible growth
of tradition.
It becomes necessary here, for the sake of the English
reader, to define a little more exactly the idea conveyed by
the word myth, when used in this sense. Heyne was one
of the first who shewed that the myth was a necessary form
of thought in the earlier stages of human development.
While language is yet imperfectly furnished with abstract
terms, and the imaginative are ascendant over the reasoning
faculties, ideas struggling for utterance clothe themselves
in an objective shape and find expression in narrative and
personification. Heyne made a distinction between conscious
and unconscious fiction; and regarded the latter alone as
properly a myth. In this sense a myth has been called the
�i4
Strauss's New Work on the Life of Jesus.
spontaneous expression in a historical form of the indwelling
idea of a community. Since Heyne’s time the subject has
been more scientifically developed by George in his essay
on “ Myth and Legend.”* In legend, according to him, there
is always at bottom some fact, however much it may have
been subsequently overgrown by the wild offshoots of the
imagination. A myth, on the contrary, fills up with its own
creations from the first—imagining what must have been—
the absolute vacancy of the past. But in the proper myth,
as in the proper legend, according to this interpretation of
them, whatever fiction they may involve is unconscious, is
unintentional. With the progress of the intellect, however,
and a clearer perception of the distinction between a fact
and an idea, this primeval unconsciousness becomes no
longer possible. Fiction is still practised, but it now justi
fies itself by its intention, that of ineulcating a moral or
enforcing a truth. The literary conscience of antiquity was
much laxer in this respect than our own. The line between
fiction and history was far less distinctly recognized. If a
good end could be served, no hesitation was felt in assum
ing a false name to recommend a work, and in arbitrarily
combining and interpolating the actual facts of history to 1
bring out more effectually the impression intended to be
produced. The centuries preceding and following the birth
of Christ, abounded in works of this description. It was
almost a characteristic of the age. The late F. C. Baur was
the first theologian of standing and authority who ventured
boldly to assert the occurrence of this practice within the
limits of the New Testament, as an element towards the
solution of the complicated question of the relative credi
bility of the evangelists. It was with him an unavoidable
consequence of the conclusions at which he had arrived
respecting the origin and composition of the fourth Gospel.
Indeed his clear and forcible reasonings reduce us to this
dilemma ; we must either admit the authenticity and trust
worthiness of John, in which case the Synoptics fall at once
in value, as shewn to be constantly in error; or else, assum
ing the three first Gospels to exhibit the primitive Pales* Mythus und Saga: Ver such einer wissenschaftlichen Entwickelung dieser
Begriffe und ihrer Verhaltnisses zurn christlichen Glauben. Berlin, 1837..
Legend is an inadequate, and in reference to its etymology, an inaccurate ren
dering of Saga, for which there is no exact equivalent in English.
�Strauss's New Work on the Life of Jesus.
15
tinian tradition and John to have used their materials, we
must allow that he has handled them, in many instances
at least, with a freedom that deprives them of all proper
historical character. No third course seems possible. Strauss
has embraced apparently in their whole extent the views of
Baur on this subject. He describes the Johannean Gospel
as another Apocalypse, projecting its images not, like that
of the apostle whose name it has assumed, on the thunder
clouds of the future, but on the quiet wall of the past
(p. 156). He has been compelled, too, under the same in
fluence, to use the word myth in a much wider sense than
that to which it had been restricted by Heyne and George,
including conscious as well as unconscious fiction. In its
application to the evangelical narratives, he considers the
only distinction of importance to lie between the historical
and the ideal, from whatever source the latter may proceed.
“In this new form of the Life of Jesus, I have,” he says,
“ chiefly in pursuance of the indications of Baur, allowed more
scope than formerly to the supposition of conscious and inten
tional fiction; but I have not on that account thought it neces
sary to employ another term. Rather in reply to the question,
whether even the conscious fictions of an individual can properly
be called myths, I must, even after all that has been written on
the subject, still say : by all means, so far as they have found
credence, and passed into the tradition of a people or a religious
party; for this is at the same time a proof that they were fash
ioned by their author not simply at the instance of his particular
fancy, but in harmony with the consciousness of numbers. Every
unhistorical narrative, however it may have arisen, in which a
religious community finds an essential portion of the holy foun
dation on which it rests, inasmuch as it is an absolute expression
of the feelings and conceptions which constitute it what it is, is
a myth ; and if Greek mythology is concerned in separating from
this wider definition of myth, a narrower one which excludes
the idea of conscious fiction, critical, on the other hand, as
contrasted with orthodox theology, has an interest in embracing
under the general conception of myth, all those evangelical nar
ratives to which it assigns a purely ideal significance.”—P. 159.
The mythic principle so understood Strauss applies to
the explanation of the second of the two elements which
we have described as entering into the composition of the
Gospels. The earliest, evangelists preached and wrote to
shew that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ; and the course
�16
Strauss's New Worh on the Life of Jesus.
of their argument, with the kind of proofs on which they
chiefly insisted to sustain it, was powerfully influenced by
the conception through which they habitually realized to
themselves the Messianic character and office—whether as
the Son of David, the Son of God or the Incarnate Word.
The devout Jew of that age firmly believed that the Messi
anic era was at hand. His exalted faith threw its own
glowing imagery on the sacred pages of the law and the
prophets; so that wherever he opened them, whether he
lighted on history or poetry or precept, the mystic interpre
tation in which he had been trained, enabled him to discern
some foreshadowing of him that was to come. The Chris
tian had convinced himself that he was already come in
Jesus ; and consequently all those passages of the ancient
Scripture, in which "he had been accustomed to find the
clearest indications of the future deliverer of Israel and
mankind, he assumed without doubting, as God was true,
must have their fulfilment in his person and life. What
men are persuaded they must see, we know as a rule that
they will see, even when present appearances are against
them; but when this enthusiastic conviction operates not
on contemporary facts, but on a continually receding tradi
tion, it inevitably overpowers the objective by the subjec
tive, and envelopes the history of the past in a hazy atmo
sphere of imaginative feeling. Without adopting Strauss’s
theory in all its details, and strongly questioning some of
his assumptions, truth nevertheless compels us to admit,
that of many statements in the Gospels, after thoroughly
analyzing and comparing them, the origin and character are
best explained on the supposition that this mythic principle
was largely concerned in producing them.
This side of the history of Jesus, Strauss has brought out
in a series of mythic groups, in each of which he endeavours
to discover the formative idea which gave birth to it; in
other words, what Messianic assumption has invested the
simple historical nucleus with a character of its own. In
the first of these mythic groups relating to the birth of
Jesus and the communication of his supernatural powers,
three views are clearly traceable which must have origi
nated in different conceptions, and are incapable of perfect
reconcilement with each other, though they are blended to
some extent in our existing Gospels. We have first the
�Strauss's New Work on the Life of Jesus.
17
account of the. descent of the Spirit at his baptism, which
is probably the oldest view ; then two narratives, in Mat
thew and in Luke, of his conception by a virgin under
divine influence, which are inconsistent with each other;
and lastly, the doctrine of the word made flesh in John,
who omits the genealogies, and has no allusion to Christ’s
having come into the world in any other than the ordinary
way. His birth at Bethlehem, with the miraculous accom
paniments of the star and the heavenly host, and the adora
tion of the magi and the shepherds,—the murderous jealousy
of Herod, the flight into Egypt, and the presentation in the
Temple,—incidents which it is utterly impossible to weave
together into a self-consistent narrative, and which, strange
and startling as they were, do not appear to have exercised
the slightest effect on thirty ensuing years of tranquil ob
scurity,—we can hardly doubt were assumed to have
occurred, because certain passages referring to the Messi
anic advent in the Old Testament were believed to require
them, and because they were such as antiquity, Jewish and
heathen, constantly associated with the entrance of great
men into the world. Strauss has instituted a parallelism
between the life of Moses and that of Jesus which is to us
novel, and which we think he has somewhat overstrained.
Both, however, were deliverers; both effected the emanci
pation of their people through sore trials and temptations ;
and both, according to the popular belief, ran a risk of
perishing in infancy. This last incident often occurs in
the legendary memorials of the heroes of the world. It is
told of Augustus by his freedman Julius Marathus, in the
broad daylight of Roman civilization, and in an age contem
porary with Christ.
*
The relations of Jesus with the Bap* Suetonius, Octavianus c. 94. It had been announced a few months before
the birth of Augustus, that a citizen of Velitraa (to which his family belonged)
should become the ruler of the world ; whereupon the Senate being alarmed,
issued a decree that no child bom in that year should be reared. We had
marked this passage some time ago as forming a parallel to the story of the
murder of the innocents, and noticed, what Strauss has omitted to mention—
that the language used is identical with that in which Suetonius in another
part of his book, and Tacitus in his History, describe the Messianic expecta
tion of the Jews. The following is the prophecy about Augustus: “ Velitris,
antiquitus tactfl, de coelo parte muri, responsum est, ejus oppidi civern quundoque rerum potiturum.'’ Of the Jewish belief Suetonius thus writes : “Esse
in fatis, ut eo tempore, Judced profecti rerum potirentur” (Vespas. c. 4); and
Tacitus in the very same words: “Profectique Judaa rerum potirentur”
(Hist. v. 13).
B
�18
Strauss's New Work on the Life of Jesus.
tist and with his earliest followers have probably, according
to Strauss, been tinged in the later conceptions of them
with something of a mythic hue. The acknowledgment of
his superiority by the former, could not have been so clear
and decided from the first as is represented ; otherwise the
disciples of the Baptist would not have continued to form
a separate sect, nor would Christ’s own ministry have first
taken independent ground when the Baptist had been
silenced by being cast into prison. With regard to his dis
ciples, Christ is described as summoning them at once, and
the call (to give a greater air of authority to his words) as
having been immediately obeyed. In both cases, probably,
the effect was gradual. The result only is given. What
had preceded it is passed over. The development of these
two relationships—the first with his forerunner, the second
with his followers—forms the subject of two separate mythic
groups in this part of Strauss’s exposition of the life of
Jesus. Less difficulty will generally be felt in accepting
the accounts of the temptation and the transfiguration as
mythical; for few thoughtful theologians of any school can
now for a long time past have seriously treated them as
historical. A conflict with the Evil One is the fundamental
idea pervading the whole ministry of Christ; and a sym
bolical representation of it would form a natural introduc
tion to the history of his public life. So, again, Moses and
Elias had prepared the way for the gospel; and besides the
current belief that the old prophets would reappear in the
days of the Messiah, it was a fitting consecration of the last
and most trying period of his ministry, when death was
awaiting him and all worldly hopes were about to be extin
guished in the blood of the cross, that his great predecessors
should be seen to be associated with him in glory, and that
the voice from heaven should once more be heard pronounc
ing him the Beloved Son. In these transactions we have
two other mythic groups. It is unnecessary to go through
the entire series. We would simply remark, that in those
passages of the life of Jesus which record the exertion of
miraculous power, the theory of the author assumes its
strongest expression and most uncompromising application.
Strauss’s philosophical system precludes his recognizing
the strictly miraculous in any sense. Its utter impossibility
is an assumption which he carries with him ab initio to the
�Strauss's New Work on the Life of Jesus.
19
criticism of the evangelical narrative; and it is an assump
tion so deeply rooted in his first principles of belief, that no
accumulation of outward testimony could overcome it, any
more than it could make him accept a logical contradiction.
His theory, therefore, leaves him no alternative but to eli
minate the miraculous from the history as something neces
sarily untrue. He starts from this premiss; and all his
reasonings are in harmony with it. His book is self-con
sistent throughout. With him the phenomenal universe is
an ultimate fact, carrying its cause and principle within
itself. There is nothing, and we can know nothing, beyond
it. He would not, of course, deny that there may hereafter
be an evolution of new and unexpected results from laws
and agencies already in operation; but those laws and
agencies, once clearly ascertained, themselves furnish, in his
view, the limit to any further development of phenomena
that can be conceived. Any power not already contained
in the phenomenal, that could control its course and infuse
a new element of life into the growth of the universe, he
would disown as a gratuitous assumption. His belief, if
we understand him correctly, is limited to the phenomenal
alone, and does not extend to any power extraneous and
antecedent to the phenomenal.
Every theory of the universe must start from some
assumption : the question is, whether the assumption which
admits or that which excludes benevolent intelligence and
righteous will as the root and sustaining principle of the
universe, is most in accordance with the only analogies that
can guide us in a matter so entirely beyond our experience,
and best satisfies the instinctive belief, the spontaneous trust,
the devout yearning which, if the voice of our collective
humanity be not the utterance of a falsehood, must indicate
some corresponding object in reality. It is not our intention
to argue this question with Strauss. It is one too vast and
deep to be discussed within the limits of the present paper,
and belongs in fact rather to philosophy than to theology.
We notice it here only to mark with distinctness the point
where our own views diverge widely from those of the
author, which, though not essential to his historical criticism,
nevertheless underlie it throughout, and give to his conclu
sions the cold and negative character that need not of
necessity belong to them. The religious philosophy implied
B 2
�20
Strauss's Neiv Work on the Life of Jesus.
in this book, which, we again say, should be considered
something apart from its historical criticism, seems to us
essentially pantheistic, and at war with the deepest heart of
the religion of whose history it is the exposition. Take away
the belief in a Living God who can be approached in prayer
and has communion through his omnipresent Spirit with the
human soul; take away the sense of our personal relation to
a Personal God—the child’s sense of kindred with an Ever
lasting Father, which gives the hope of an undying life in
Him ; take away the trust, that the love and the worth and
the beauty which shew themselves in things perishing and
phenomenal, are an influx from an exhaustless Source which
is at once within and beyond them; and what remains that
deserves the name of religion—to carry home the words of
Jesus to the inmost recesses of the heart, or to explain the
power and sanctity of his own life? We feel, therefore, a
much stronger objection to the philosophic theory which pre
vents our author’s admission of the miraculous—that is, of
the intrusion of any power from without into the phenomenal
—than to the historical criticism which shews that in any
particular case the report of the miracle has probably had a
mythic origin. We will even add, that were criticism to suc
ceed in demonstrating that not one miracle recorded in the
New Testament was historically true, with a better religious
philosophy put under that criticism and tempering its re
sults, our faith would receive no shock, and our trust in the
great truths of Christianity would be as strong as ever.
The difficulty that we experience in wholly giving up the
miraculous, is not a religious, but a critical one. Not a few
of the miracles of the New Testament, it is true, may, we
think, not unreasonably be considered as the product of
tradition, interpreting literally the poetic imagery of Isaiah,
*
and assuming that the wonderful works of Elijah and Elisha
must have been repeated by Messiah himself. But allow
ing the utmost for this source of the miraculous, there still
remains so large an amount of extraordinary curative influ
ence, .explicable by no laws at present accessible to us,
interwrought with the inmost substance of the history of
Jesus, that if we attempt to separate it, the very texture of
* “ Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall
be unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap as a hart, and the tongue of the
dumb sing.” (Isaiah xxxv. 5, 6.)
�Strauss' s New Work on the Life of Jesus.
21
the narrative is destroyed; and if we suppose it altogether
the creation of a pious fancy, so sharp a blow would be
inflicted on the credibility of even the great fundamental
outlines of the history, that we could hardly tell whether
we were dealing with any reality at all. Our faith in
Christ’s word and work does not depend, we are free to
confess, on any alleged miraculous attestation in their favour,
but on our inward experience of their truth and power ; we
should believe in them just as firmly, if it could be proved
that not a single miracle had ever been wrought: but we
wish to save the character of the narrative through which
they are conveyed to us ; and taking our stand on the ear
liest and most authentic Palestinian traditions, which have
probably been preserved to us in Matthew, and partly, per
haps, in Mark,—we have never yet met with any critical
process which could entirely extrude what has at least the
semblance of miracle, and leave eveji the ground-work of a
credible history behind. What the consistent anti-supernaturalist has to shew is this—how he can divest the
person of Jesus of all miraculous influence attaching to it,
and yet leave as large a residuum of positive history as
Strauss himself accepts as the basis of his theory. John the
Baptist was in the first instance as much the object of Mes
sianic expectation as Jesus, and for some time their two
ministries appear to have occupied independent spheres;
yet no traditions of supernatural power have gathered round
the person of the former. We find it difficult, therefore, to
believe that gifts of some extraordinary kind, displayed
chiefly in curative effects, and involving al.^o deep spiri
tual insight, were not possessed by Jesus—a result of the
peculiar organization with which he was originally endowed;
and that these formed, as it were, the punctum saliens of
primitive fact out of which the whole mass of mythic and
legendary amplification naturally grew, as they may at first
have been the providential means of exciting and securing
the attention of some whom more spiritual influences would
not so readily have reached. Obscurity is cast over this sub
ject by the vague meaning attached to the word miraculous.
Scarcely two persons use it in the same sense. No one of
any philosophical culture, whatever his religious theory,
ever supposes God to act without law. Law springs out of
the very nature of mind. The more perfect mind is, the more
�22
Strauss's New Work on the Life of Jesus.
surely it is obedient to law, as the condition of harmonious
and self-consistent action,—involving in its effects all the
difference between a kosmos and a chaos. But it does not,
therefore, follow that the deepest laws of the infinite working
can be seized by a finite intelligence, or are even contained
as yet within the limits of the phenomenal. The idea of
progress and development which the past history of our
planet irresistibly forces on us, implies the continual acces
sion of something new, which, as it transcends the actual,
the actual is not of itself competent to originate. Out of
the vast, unexplored possibilities of the spiritual, which
enfold and pervade and underlie the phenomenal, influences
at times may, and (if the world is to advance) must issue,
which contradict the results of experience, and limit the
universality of laws which a premature generalization had
accepted as final. It is this occasional intrusion of the spi
ritual into the phenomenal, which we suppose people mean
in general to express when they speak of the miraculous.
No doubt the disposition to believe in such intrusion (which
is in itself significant, as forming a part of the natural faith
of the human soul) has led constantly to its gratuitous sup
position, and, in ages when there was no science, assumed
its presence in cases which further inquiry shewed were
resolvable into laws uniformly in operation around us. The
number of such cases, it must be confessed, has been regu
larly on the decrease with the progress of science. Never
theless, after every deduction on this account, phenomena
are still on record, supported by unexceptionable testimony
(testimony, the rejection of which would subvert the foun
dations of all history), and inexplicable by any laws which
science can define, for the solution of which we must go to
something beyond the phenomenal as yet known to us.
Every one at all acquainted with the history of religion, or,
if the reader so pleases, of superstition (for the two histories
are closely interwoven with each other), is well aware how
constantly every fresh outbreak of the religious life, espe
cially after a long suppression in formality and indifference,
has been accompanied by some mysterious and unaccount
able phenomena. Our own generation has witnessed them.
The miracles ascribed to St. Bernard are reported on more
direct testimony than can be alleged for those of the Gos
pels. All such cases we would have subjected to the seve-
�Strauss’s New Work on the Life of Jesus.
23
rest scrutiny, and left to rest each on its appropriate evidence,
apart from any theory. They will probably be found to
contain a large mixture of delusion and self-deception with
some unaccountable reality at bottom—linking our human
nature, here and there, amid the tangled web of the actual,
with dim, mysterious agencies which are slumbering as yet
in the bosom of the Infinite, and of which only at the rarest
intervals we catch a passing glimpse. This is a subject on
which no man will venture to dogmatize. It is the truest
philosophy to hold the mind in candid and reverent sus
pense. The extreme devotion of the present age to the
physical sciences confines its interest and belief to the
ascertainable and phenomenal, and indisposes it to any
recognition of the vaguer realities of the spiritual. We only
desire to enter our protest against the narrow and one-sided
philosophy which would shut up all possibility within the
limits of law reducible to scientific formulas, and exclude
the great Parent Mind from all direct action on the condi
tion of his human family.
*
The logical rigour with which Strauss carries out the
consequences of his system, and his determination to ex
plain every word and every act which appear to him not
to come within the range of the strictly historical, in ac
cordance with its pervading principle, have blinded him
in some cases to the moral beauty and significance of the
narrative, and the deep spiritual intuitions which, amidst
errors of scriptural interpretation, have filled Christ’s words
with enduring light. His theory binds his faculties as with
a spell, and keeps him intent on exploring the dim traces
of rabbinical refinement and mysticism, when with a mind
* There is a superficial philosophy cun-ent in some quarters, that will probably
treat with derision the conceded possibilities of the foregoing paragraph ; that
accepts without difficulty, by the aid of certain traditional formulas, all the
miracles of the Old and New Testament, as exceptional cases (peculiar and
limited to them) in the order of the world, and yet scouts as weak and irrational
credulity every attempt to reduce such cases to deeper but constant laws, and
bring them into harmony with the facts of universal history. To the consider
ation of such persons, who, to be consistent, should believe more or believe less,
we commend the following wise and seasonable words, ascribed (we have reason
to know, on the best authority) to one of the first mathematicians of the age :
“What I reprobate is, not the wariness which widens and lengthens inquiry,
but the assumption which prevents or narrows it; the imposture theory, which
frequently infers imposture from the assumed impossibility of the phenomena
asserted, and then alleges imposture against the examination of the evidence.”
Preface to a book entitled, “ From Matter to Spirit,” p. xxix.
�24
Strauss's New Work on the Life of Jesus.
more open and erect he could not have failed to bring more
prominently into view that remarkable feature of the gos
pel history—the sympathy, if we may so express it, of its
miraculous elements with the moral life of Christ himself,
glowing with the same warm hues of human tenderness
and love, breathing the same deep tone of devout trust and
aspiration, as if the common and the miraculous of the re
cord grew out of the same spiritual root. This may be no
sufficient proof of the strictly historical character of these
narratives, but it attests at least the intensity of the im
pression under which they were conceived, and shews how
the spirit of Christ had entered into and moulded anew
the minds that consorted with him, and handed down the
living tradition of his personal presence which has taken
shape and consistency in our present Gospels. The pre
dominance of this moral and religious element is the great
distinction of the canonical from the apocryphal Gospels,
and a proof of the fine spiritual tact of the primitive Church
which so clearly separated them.
We shall notice only two instances of what appears to
us a certain logical narrowness in Strauss. In commenting
on the beautiful words about the resurrection, Matt. xxii.
51, 52; Mark xii. 26, 27; and Luke xx. 37, 38 (pp. 259, 260),
he sees no force, as De Wette does, and as we do, in the
inference drawn by Christ from the pregnant expression,
“the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob,” clenched by
the sublime universalism peculiar to Luke—iravrse yap avrw
Z&<nv—“ for all live unto him.” We may admit that the exe
gesis adopted by Christ in this passage was a rabbinical one,
and that the words taken by themselves furnish no direct
proof of the doctrine associated with them. But Strauss
himself discerns an evidence of Christ’s greatness in the new
spirit with which he read the old scripture, shewing him
to be a prophet, though no interpreter; and it is surprising
to us that one who can see and acknowledge all this, should
not also feel the depth and force of the spiritual intuition
which perceived at once there could be no death for the
soul in God, and, truer than the ancient words in which it
*
found utterance, was the revelation of an eternal reality to
the world. - The other passage is the story of the raising of
Lazarus. We are constrained by internal and external evi
dence to believe with Strauss that this narrative cannot be
�Strauses New Work on the Life of Jesus.
25
historical We cannot else understand how an event of
such importance, affecting the most intimate friends of
Jesus, could have been so entirely passed over without the
remotest allusion by the Synoptical Gospels. We think
there is great force in Strauss’s reasons for regarding it as
an embodiment in this concrete form of the doctrine, that
the Word is in himself, h avaoraaic, koI f) fah—“the resur
rection and the life.” But in his rigid development of this
idea, and in his anxiety to shew how it has influenced
every part of the narrative, he loses all sense of that ex
quisite tenderness and pathos which would seem to have
so entirely possessed the mind of the evangelist, that in
the glow of composition he forgets the divinity of his sub
ject, and is completely carried away by his human sympa
thies, and in individual expressions falls into dissonance
with his general theme. Strauss, like some other critics,
more logical than his author, is driven to harsh interpre
tations to bring him into harmony with himself. The be
trayal of deep emotion at the grave, conveyed by the words,
ive[ipip.T]ffaTo, trapafcv, f.p.[3pipLpEV0Q (John xi. 34, 38), he un
derstands of the indignation of Jesus at the insensibility of
the bystanders to the greatness and power of the present
Logos. The whole context, however, shews that the writer
meant something very different, and permitting his human
traditions of Christ to overpower for the moment the hypo
thesis of his divinity, has described with uncommon beauty
the struggle in the mind of Jesus with the strength of his na
tural affections. That this is the true rendering of the pas
sage is evident from the subjoined rip Trvsvpan and er lavra,
which qualify the original force of the verb Ipflpipaopat, and
from the single word ISaKpvaEv which furnishes a key to
the whole.
As John has added some things not contained in the
Synoptics, so he has strangely omitted others which are
pre-eminently characteristic of them. There is no curative
effect more constantly recorded in the three first Gospels
than the expulsion of evil spirits, while no instance of it
occurs in the fourth. Strauss’s explanation of this pecu
liarity is at least plausible and entitled to consideration.
Reported cases of this kind were common in that age all
over the world. Josephus and the sophists make frequent
mention of them. And something analogous is said to be
�26
Strauss’s New Work on the Life of Jesus.
met with to this day in the East. Strauss thinks that the
great moral power of Jesus, and the reverence which his
presence inspired, might exercise a healing influence on 1
persons liable to the affections that were popularly ascribed
to demoniacal possession. This was in perfect harmony
with the popular persuasion respecting him. We know
there were then regular exorcists by profession both among
the Jews and the heathens. But this class of persons had
already fallen into disrepute at the commencement of the
second century; and Strauss finds an indication of the later
origin of John’s Gospel in the exclusion from its pages of
all cures of this kind, which it would have been no longer
regarded as consistent with the dignity of the incarnate
Word to ascribe to him.
After the foregoing exposition of his theory, it is hardly
necessary to add that Strauss does not believe in the histo
rical fact of the resurrection of the body on the third day,
nor, we fear we must add, in individual immortality. Indi
viduals, like all other phenomena, according to his view of
things, are transient and perishable. Only the primal idea
which evolves and develops itself in and through them, is
eternal. He exposes with great acuteness the complexities
and inconsistencies of the several evangelical narratives, and
shews that they exhibit traces of two perfectly distinct tra
ditions of the appearances of the risen Jesus—one dreamy
and phantom-like, the other, and probably the later, hard
ened into the distincter outlines of corporeal manifestation.
He thinks that the apostles and their associates fled on the
event of the crucifixion into Galilee ; and that hence arose
the tradition that Christ first manifested himself to them
amid the scenes of his early ministry, in fulfilment of his
promise to meet them there. It took more time, in his
opinion, than is allowed by our present Gospels, for the full
growth of the conviction that he had risen from the dead,
had appeared to his first disciples, and was still spiritually
present with his church. The minuter specifications of time
and place and particular appearance—three, eight and forty
days, the Galilean mountain, the walk to Emmaus, the
closed chamber at Jerusalem, the shore of the Sea of Tibe
rias—he considers to be altogether the product of a later
tradition. All idea of resuscitation after an apparent death,
which was a favourite resource of the old rationalists, and
�Strauss’s New Work on the Life of Jesus.
27
which appears from his posthumous papers to have been
entertained by Schleiermacher himself, is rejected by Strauss
unconditionally, as inconsistent with the best attested facts
of the case. What became of the mortal remains of Jesus
there are no means, he thinks, of our ever knowing. The
belief in the resurrection of Christ he regards with Ewald
as a result of the intense hopes and longings of the disciples,
tradition magnifying dim and uncertain rumours, and the
words of Messianic promise working with a foregone con
clusion on fervid and enthusiastic minds. But this expla
nation does not appear to us, any more than that of Ewald,
sufficient to explain the extraordinary fact in the origin of
the new religion which five words of Tacitus have impressed
in indelible characters on the page of universal history—
repressaque in prcesens—rursus erumpebat. What was the
cause of that wonderful change in the mind of Paul which
made the spiritual world a reality to him ? His own words
imply (1 Cor. xv. 5—8) that the same appearances which
convinced him that Jesus was risen from the dead, had con
vinced others before him. And what was the effect of that
conviction ? It transformed their whole mind and life. The
disciples before and the disciples after the death of Jesus
(an event which might have been expected wholly to crush
the nascent faith, and in the first instance seemed actually
to do so) were completely different men; before, doubting,
timid and carnal; after, bold, confident and spiritual. Nor
was the effect limited to them. Through them, a new light
entered the world, a new hope brightened the horizon of
our planet. Immortality, which had been the floating dream
of a speculative^ few, became the steadfast trust of multi
tudes. The earliest literature and art of the Christians,
their simple hymns and the rude frescoes which adorned
their tombs, touchingly shew how the future beyond the
grave, to which friends and kindred had already passed,
was to them a nearer and more vivid reality than the
troubled and persecuted present in which they lived on
earth. And this has been the animating principle of Chris
tianity throughout its subsequent diffusion over the earth,
marking a new era in the spiritual development of our race,—•
the assurance of a wider and more glorious future for the
immortal soul. The origin of this new conviction we can
trace back to a definite period in past history associated
�28
Strauss’s JVew Work on the Life of Jesus.
with the traditions of Christ. And can we account for it
without the supposition of some fresh infusion from the
spiritual into the phenomenal ? Can that which renovated
the world have grown out of the world? Could death
develop life ? We may never be able to give an objective
precision to our conception of the cause. It is involved in
deepest mystery. But we think Baur was nearer to the
truth than either Ewald or Strauss with all their elaborate
explanations, when of the impression—which transformed
the mind of Paul and of all who with him were engaged in
evangelizing the world,—which linked invisible by a living
bond with visible things, and constituted the firm, immove
able basis of the whole superstructure of the future church
—he declared, as the result of a long life of profound and
fearless inquiry, he did not believe that we should ever by
any psychological analysis be able to give a satisfactory
account. And the deep conviction produced in our mind
by the contemplation of these historical phenomena is this—
that as in relation to the present world the welcome recep
tion of Christ’s spirit and the experience of its happy effects
are an evidence of the eternal truth which flowed in it,—so,
by whatever means it may have been first infused into the
tide of human thought, the firm hold which the doctrine of
immortality has had on the mind of civilized men ever
since the days of the apostles, the response that it has met
with, the uneffaceable mark which it has left on literature,
philosophy and art, and the way in which it has contributed
to harmonize and round, off into a consistent whole, our
conceptions of God and providence and human life,—are
proof conclusive that a doctrine which possesses such en
during vitality and draws its nourishment from the deepest
sources of humanity, can be no other than the voice of God,
and must have its certain counterpart in some invisible
reality.
One satisfaction at least we can derive from this work of
Strauss. It shews us the utmost that we have to fear from
hostile criticism. We now know the worst. Never were the
earliest records of our faith subjected to a more rigorous and
searching scrutiny. Never were the possible elements of
truth and falsehood sifted with a more suspicious and un
sparing hand. The author has done his work with a cold
blooded courage and determination. No lingering affectior
�Strauss's New Work on the Life of Jesus.
29
has blinded the clearness of his intellectual vision. No pre
judice of the heart has hindered him from seeing the bare,
simple fact involved in any dubious narrative. And now—
bating his religious philosophy, which is something quite
extraneous to his historical criticism—what, after all, is the
result ? What great principle of conduct, what consolatory
trust of humanity, is weakened—that would have stood on
a firmer basis and been surrounded with clearer evidence,
had we still continued to take the whole mass of the gospel
history as historical truth, and had no one ever thought of
separating myth and fact? We have still authentic indica
tion of the earliest workings of the greatest moral revolution
that has taken place in the world; and we have glimpses,
so original that they must be true, of the wonderful perso
nality which introduced it, and the more stimulating, the
more spiritually creative, for the very reason that they are
glimpses. We can still trace the first swelling and shooting
forth of the prolific seed which has impregnated the world
with a new life. We feel to this day that we are possessors
of the same deep consciousness and the same aspiring trust
which originated those great changes, and unites us with
them in one unbroken continuity of spiritual life. Now, as
then, it is through the heart and conscience of believing
man that God speaks to our world. As we trace back the
great stream of human thought through the ages to its
source, we observe how it is enriched at a particular point
by a sudden accession of moral and spiritual strength ; and
that alone would prove the intervention of some great in
spiring mind, were the result of modern criticism on ancient
books more destructive than it really is—and would still
have proved it, had those books never existed at all, or been
entirely swept away in the persecution of Diocletian. We
are thankful indeed for their preservation as they are ; but
their chief value to us is the witness which they bear to
the regenerating influence of a spirit which could only
have issued from some great and holy mind, and through
that mind from God himself. Dor the grandest of human
trusts is the presence of a Living God in history, suggesting
the highest thoughts and noblest impulses that animate it,
and guiding them to distant issues, which the very souls
through which they worked, did not anticipate and could
not conceive.
%
�30
Strauss's New Work on the Life of Jesus.
We have remarked in an earlier part of this paper, that
Strauss does not do justice to the resources of his own theory.
It is more conservative than he allows it to be. His philo
sophy has marred the applications of his criticism. He
remarks (p. 624), with a cold desolateness of tone which
sometimes chills the reader in his pages, that the dispersion
of the mythic from a narrative does not restore the historical;
and that we know less of the actual Jesus of Nazareth than
of any great man of antiquity—less, for example, than we
know of Socrates. Even if we confine ourselves to the intel
lectual and objective life, which is all that the criticism of
Strauss here contemplates, this statement is certainly over
done. It is not more difficult to trace the characteristic fea
tures of the man Jesus through the different media by which
it is transmitted to us in the three first Gospels and the
fourth, than it is to form an idea of the peculiar idiosyncrasy
of Socrates from the widely different representations of Xeno
phon and Plato. But if we descend into the deeper life of
the soul, into the region of affection and sympathy, where
the truest evidence of personality is to be found,—then we
say the advantage is altogether on the side of Christ, and
we have proofs of love and reverence and the transforming
influence of a great and genial soul in the diversified con
ceptions of the apostolic tradition, such as the records of
the Socratic school are unable to supply. Even the mythic
may here be said to cumulate the evidence; for it could
only spring from a depth of impression and an intensity of
feeling, going down to the very sources of the moral life,
which the cold admiration of Athenian intellect was impo
tent to produce.
Strauss remarks, that only one side of our humanity is
fully exemplified in the person of Christ—that which con
nects us with God and the religious life; while the indus
trial, the political, the scientific and the artistic elements,
which are so indispensable to the progress of our race, are all
wanting. This is true, no doubt; but he should have added,
that the spiritual element which is so perfectly revealed in
Christ, is essential to the growth of all the rest, and in every
human being of every class and in every age is the source
of inward peace and the principle of a real sanctification of
the life. When, the soul is once placed, as it is by the
spirit of Christ, in a right relation towards God, the great
�Strauss's New Work on the Life of Jesus.
31
conversion of humanity is effected; it is put in the path of
Bhealthful self-development; and the qualities which may
yet be needed to complete the full proportions of our nature,
may be left to arrange themselves organically around this
central germ, through the free working of our collective
faculties guided by the results of experience. In a fine
passage (p. 625), which we have not left ourselves space to
quote, Strauss does ample justice to Christianity, and places
Jesus in the first rank of those who have contributed to
develop the ideal of humanity.
We cannot close this volume, strongly as on some points
we have expressed our dissent, and notwithstanding our pain
ful sense of the serious deficiencies of its religious philosophy,
without a strong feeling of respect for the author, not only
for his learning and ability, which none will dispute, but
also for his courage and truthfulness, his moral earnestness,
and his general candour towards those who are opposed to
him. With all its faults and extravagances, for no theory
finds its true limits all at once, his book will leave its per
manent mark on the theology of the future. It has fixed
one or two points in advance, from which it will henceforth
be impossible to go back. What we have most to complain
of is a certain one-sidedness, which the author no doubt
identifies with completeness and consequentiality. On all
points he makes it too much an absolute question of Yes
or No. He therefore shews on all occasions far more tole
ration for the old thorough-going orthodox than for those
who, cautiously feeling their way towards a wider truth,
stop short of the sweeping results at which he has himself
arrived. Our own modification of his theory would doubt
less bring us under the censure which he pronounces on all
who seek their rest in a juste milieu. We can only say we
have striven to imitate him, where he is most worthy of
imitation—in his love of truth—by giving utterance simply
and without reserve to the conviction that has been produced
in us by the perusal of his book, and by some previous
years of thought and study on the same subject. For the
rest, we regard with no slight suspicion all violent disruption
from the faith and hope which have guided and consoled
the best and wisest of our race through long thousands of
years; and we have yet to learn that truth must always
be sought in one of two contradictory extremes.
��
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
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
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
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
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.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
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
A name given to the resource
Strauss's new work on the life of Jesus
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Taylor, John James
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [s.l.]
Collation: 31 p. ; 22 cm.
Notes: A review in English by John James Taylor of David Friedrich Strauss's work 'Das Leben Jesu, fur das deutsche Volk bearbeitet; Leipzig: F.A. Brockhaus, 1864. Inscription in ink on front page: With the respect of J.J.T. Includes bibliographical references. Reprinted from Theological Review 1:335-365, July 1864. Author not named in the review. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Title of the book translated: 'The Life of Jesus, adapted to the German People'.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
[s.n.]
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[1864?]
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
G5252
Subject
The topic of the resource
Jesus Christ
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<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 (Strauss's new work on the life of Jesus), 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>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
German
Conway Tracts
David Friedrich Strauss
Jesus Christ-Historicity
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/11e01181078899406b1767cef824b451.pdf?Expires=1779321600&Signature=tVWCyA4AVirgOkNCElEThlqSiMlYCVH4t7ZKWodHgqHHNyMJmWBWB0eDzzhBty12KrZuEyQ4RAHx1wcL-oJSfd%7ELou355N2lQyxuDvX50WVHxc-DY%7E9goJpRBYe8taQ42Q2WCfJM7FrqF6n7J1ZDkm9gzZWK1OgswkVER2s4ubMhp1Y1pzUIDzsBGx1etbU0FJR5X9Yc1Fkzdd1Y1foaypwfrNiKVa5aEKozwTU8zyymNwI995PcXSvE5pNgVjIdnZDhXpJ3G9swGwjuqW8MEn4V37VrFtoEHLtk9cF5ey2KBzrqWo6P7CN2ct6olRDMHFo9wo06Paxe3Q1bEQNKlw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
6cab05a77843f9fe791c69930a5887f5
PDF Text
Text
NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
SOCRATES,
BUDDHA,
AND
JESUS.
• . . JSt
•>
-
BY
ARTHUR
B.
MOSS.
LONDON:
WATTS & Co., S4, FLEET STREET, E.C.
ONE PENNY.
��s, 2.507
msoa
SOCRATES, BUDDHA, AND JESUS.
Three more imposing and memorable figures of antiquity
than Socrates, Buddha, and Jesus it would be impossible
to name. Each of them religious reformers in his day;
each working with an unselfish patriotism to improve the
condition of his fellows ; each proclaiming high moral
principles, and leaving to posterity an example worthy
of ardent imitation; while, in addition, two of them—
Socrates and Jesus—were persecuted by bigots, and
unjustly condemned to death for having the manliness
and courage to advocate unpopular opinions.
These
great reformers are types of the men to whom the world
is indebted for its social, moral, and religious advance
ment ; and, though by some they are elevated to a posi
tion beyond their merits, and worshipped as veritable
gods, their lives afford interesting study to Freethinkers,
who, in estimating the value of their work for humanity,
are free to accept all that is good in their teaching, while
wisely casting aside all that is false and harmful.
Our first character,
SOCRATES,
probably one of the greatest philosophers the world
has ever known, was born at Athens in the year 469 b.c.,
and, after a life of great activity, both intellectually
and physically, died the death of a martyr, at the ripe
age of seventy, in the year 399 b.c. His father, Sophroniscus, was a sculptor, who had performed some good
work in his noble profession ; and, being desirous that
his son should follow the same calling, had him specially
trained for that purpose.
Although Socrates early
achieved considerable success as a sculptor, he was not
destined to work at the noble art for long. A wealthy
�4
SOCRATES, BUDDHA, AND JESUS.
Athenian, named Crito, was so struck by his charming
manner, so impressed by his intellectual strength, that
he determined to have him thoroughly educated, with a
view of giving him a better opportunity of shining in the
world.
His academical studies completed, Socrates
abandoned the art of sculpture for philosophy, and,
among his most ardent disciples, succeeded in winning
Crito, his worthy benefactor.
The personal appearance of Socrates was certainly
far from favourable to the philosopher, who is described
as a “ brawny, squab, ugly man
but sensible persons
do not judge by outward form alone. “ Handsome is
who handsome does ” is an old maxim, the truth of
which most of us acknowledge ; and assuredly, in the
case of Socrates, no nobler soul could have been set in
more uncomely frame. His extreme ugliness was matter
for daily comment. Like all wise men, however, Socrates
despised those who merely judged him by his appear
ance, and not by speech and conduct In his habits
he was consistently temperate, esteeming this as one of
the highest virtues that belong to man. By temperance
Socrates did not understand merely moderation in the
use of drink; he meant by it much more than this : to
him the term included temperateness in eating, drinking,
attire, and, above and before all, in speaking—in fact,
moderation in all things.. Some malignant opponents
calumniate him by declaring that, on one occasion, at a
public banquet, Socrates indulged so excessively that,
while regular “old topers ” had succumbed to the large
quantity of drink they had consumed, and dropped help
lessly drunk under the table, he sat complacently in
his seat and drank on. These petty traducers of the
reputations of great men do not boldly declare that this
philosopher, like many other estimable men, from bishops
downwards, on one occasion got drunk, though they in
sinuate as much.
Socrates married ; but, unfortunately for him, his
choice was anything but a happy one, for in Xanthippe,
his “ partner for life,” he found nothing but a perverse,
scolding woman, who did her best to render his life as
miserable as possible. No doubt Xanthippe could find
many defenders among modern representatives of female
superiority. But, in plain truth, Xanthippe was a shrew.
�SOCRATES, BUDDHA, AND JESUS.
5
Though naturally of an irascible temperament, Socrates
bore his wife’s scoldings with remarkable coolness and
forbearance. It is recorded that on one occasion the
coolness of his bearing, during one of her severest
torrents of abuse, so exasperated Xanthippe that she
emptied a vessel of water over him, upon which he re
marked : “ Did I not say that Xanthippe was thunder
ing, and would soon rain ?” On another occasion, on
being asked by a friend what induced him to marry such
a shrewish woman as his wife, he wittily replied : “ Those
who wish to become skilled in horsemanship generally
select the most spirited horses : after being able to bridle
those, they believe they can bridle all others. Now,, as
it is my wish to live and converse with men, I married
this woman, being firmly convinced that, in case I should
be enabled to endure her, I should be enabled to endure
all others.” But, though Socrates himself thus playfully
condemned his wife’s temper, he was exceedingly careful
that her children should show her proper respect, and
promptly rebuked her son, Lamprocles, for deviating
from his duty in this respect.
The ordinary conversation of Socrates was rather
peculiar. He mixed with the workers in tan-pit and
brass-foundry, and seemed to take a strange interest in
their employment. So that Plato remarks : “ If any one
will listen to the talk of Socrates, it will appear to him
extremely ridiculous ; the phrases and expressions which
he employs fold around his exterior the skin, as it were,
of a rude and wanton satyr. He is always talking about
brass-founders and leather-cutters and skin-dressers ; and
this is his perpetual custom, so that any dull and un
observant person might easily laugh at his discourse. But
if any one should see it opened, as it were, and get within
the sense of his words, he would then find that they, alone
of all that enters into the mind of man to utter, had a
profound and persuasive meaning, and that they were
most divine ; and that they presented to the mind in
numerable images of every excellence, and that they
tended towards objects of the highest moment, or rather
towards all that he who seeks the possession of what is
supremely beautiful and good need regard as essential
to the accomplishment of his ambition.”
Nothing seemed to give this philosopher greater plea
�6
SOCRATES, BUDDHA, AND JESUS.
sure than to mingle with the people, and glean as much
information from them as possible. He never pretended
'to be a teacher; and when, in the Market Place, he
encountered the learned sophists in debate, he modestly
disclaimed all pretensions to knowledge, saying that he
came to learn and not to teach. Upon subjects that
most people thought themselves competent to speak
upon Socrates showed how little even the most learned
knew respecting them. He would ask his opponents
what they meant by “justice,” “piety,” “law,” ’‘demo
cracy;” and he invariably found that those who pretended
to know most respecting these things knew positively
nothing Socrates was called wise; but, said the philo
sopher : “ I am not wise; yet in one thing I am wiser
than my fellows : I know how ignorant I am, whereas
they are ignorant how ignorant they are.”
Though the Athenian philosopher devoted a great
deal of time to the discussion of important problems,
he did not neglect his manifold duties as a citizen. Not
only did he perform every duty devolving upon him in
relation to his family and the State, but, as Plato has
declared, he comported himself with great bravery in
three battles, and won for himself the admiration of
all who beheld his incomparable heroism under trying
circumstances. Yet this was the man who, when ripe
. with years, old in the service of mankind as teacher,
philosopher, and guide, was brought before the tribunal to
answer the charge of “impiety and corruption”! Socrates
treated the charge with contempt. It is true he had
denied the Athenian gods, and that, perhaps, might be
construed into impiety ; but he believed in the great
unseen God of the universe, who directed him in all his
actions. As to the charge of “corrupting the minds of
youth,” there was really nothing in it; and Socrates
steadfastly refused from the first either to make any
defence himself, or to allow any of his friends to engage
an orator to make one for him. And so he was con
demned to suffer death ! After his sentence had been
pronounced the philosopher opened his mouth, and
delivered, perhaps, the most eloquent and touching
address on record, which speech the reader will find in
Plato’s immortal “Apology.” One thing all can admire
in this address. Socrates told his judges that he would
�SOCRATES, BUDDHA, AND JESUS.
7
“ sooner die having spoken after his manner than speak
in their manner and live.” Thirty days after the con
demnation Socrates drank of the hemlock, and died as
quietly as one who—
“ Wraps the drapery of his couch about him,
And lies down to pleasant dreams.”
Socrates was undoubtedly a Theist, though the deity
in whom he believed Svas of a very ethereal kind. The
philosopher frequently admonished men to talk less
about the gods, and to concern themselves more about
things of which they had positive knowledge, rather than
proclaim their wisdom in matters celestial, while in
terrestrial matters they were superlatively ignorant.
Socrates regarded ignorance as the true source of all
misery and crime, and knowledge as the only means of
attaining virtue. To him virtue meant the highest happi
ness of which man was capable. To use Grote’s words:
“ Socrates resolved all virtue into knowledge, all vice
into ignorance and folly. To do right was the only way
to impart happiness, or the least degree of unhappiness
compatible with a given situation. Now, this was pre
cisely what every one wished for, only that many persons
from ignorance took the wrong road, and no man was
wise enough always to take the right. But as no man
was willingly his own enemy, so no man ever did wrong
wilfully: it’was not because he was not fully or correctly
informed of the consequences of his actions, so that the
proper remedy to apply was enlarged teaching of conse
quences and improved judgment.”
In this, then, we see the groundwork of Socrates’s
theory of ethics. But the philosopher saw that it was
not enough to teach men that they must do right; they
must be taught further that every action carries with it
consequences which, whether good or evil, fall inevitably
upon the actor as well as those by whom he is sur
rounded.
The life of Socrates supplies us with an illustration of
the power of knowledge to direct man aright in all his
actions towards his fellow men: in him Freethinker
and religionist alike will find much to admire, much that
is worthy of emulation. Faults he possessed, no doubt;
but no man is free from them. When we reflect, however,
�SOCRATES, BUDDHA, AND JESUS.
upon his unselfish career, his high moral principles,
his great wisdom and invincible heroism; when we re
member that it was he who said : “ A man who is good
for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living
or dying; he ought only to consider whether in doing
anything he is doing right or wrong, acting the part of a
good man or a bad. For wherever a man’s place is,
whether the place which he has chosen or that in which
he has been placed by a commander, there ought he to
remain in the hour of danger ; he should not think of
death, or of anything but disgrace ”—when we remember
all this, we cannot refrain from paying him the “homage
of our admiration and love.”
Come we now to our second character, Gautama,
called
BUDDHA.
More than five hundred years before the birth of
Christ, at Kapitavatthu was born the great Indian philo
sopher and reformer. Of Gautama’s early career little
or nothing is known, except that in connection with it
there are various legends, bearing a remarkable resem
blance to those which surround the lives of other religious
teachers and reformers—examples of which will be given
hereafter.
It is pretty clear, however, that Gautama
came of good parentage, and that he received an excel
lent intellectual and moral training, though the common
Buddhist view of his descent from a long succession of
Buddhas may be doubted. India, six centuries before
the Christian era, had already attained a high degree of
civilisation.
Learned Hindoos concerned themselves with the study
of philosophy aud religion. Schools of philosophy were
established, in which considerable freedom obtained in
regard to the discussion of theological and religious
questions.
Brahmanism, the prevailing religion, had
millions of adherents; but it was ultimately superseded
by Buddhism, of which Gautama was the founder.
As a young man, Gautama was so profoundly im
pressed by the great suffering and misery with which
human beings were afflicted that he left his home,
and for some time lived in seclusion, firmly resolved, if
possible, to find out the cause of this great evil, with a
�SOCRATES, BUDDHA, AND JESUS.
9
view of alleviating the sufferings of his fellows. He had
not studied for many years before he was convinced that
nature, at bottom, was radically wrong ; that for sentient
beings life was an inevitable struggle, with which pain
and misery were indissolubly connected.
Like many other religious reformers, Gautama was a
pessimist.
To him, nature did not appear to be the
work of a deity, fb^.he was not mentally blind to the
manifold evils in the universe, which it seemed incon
sistent to ascribe to a being combining the attributes of
infinite wisdom and goodness with that of infinite power.
Buddhism, as a philosophy, is based upon the indis
putable principle that concerning the existence of God
and the reality of a future existence nothing whatever is
known.
The first sermon of Gautama is, perhaps, one of the
most remarkable discourses ever delivered by man. It
embraces, in truth, the true principles of a Secular philo
sophy, and is the one great theme upon which Buddha
constantly spoke. Dr. Rhys Davids, who has done
more than any other man in England to disseminate a
knowledge of the teachings of Buddha among the people,
thus translates Gautama’s Sermon on the Mount:—
“There are two extremes,” said the Buddha, “which
the man who devotes himself to the higher life ought
not to follow—the habitual practice, on the one hand,
of those things whose attraction depends upon the
passions, and especially of sensuality (a low and Pagan
way of seeking gratification unworthy, unprofitable,
and fit only for the worldly-minded); and the habitual
practice, on the other hand, of asceticism (or self
mortification), which is not only painful, but as un
worthy and unprofitable as the other. But the Buddha
(or Tathagata) has discovered a middle path, which
avoids these two extremes—a path which opens the
eyes and bestows understanding, which leads to peace
of mind, to the higher wisdom, to full enlightenment—
in a word, to Nirvana.
And this path is the noble
eight-fold path—that is to say, right views, high aims,
kindly speech, upright conduct, a harmless livelihood,
perseverance in well-doing, intellectual activity, and
earnest thought.”
“Birth,” continued Buddha, “is attended with pain;
�IO
SOCRATES, BUDDHA, AND JESUS.
and so are decay and disease and death. Union with the
unpleasant is painful and separation from the pleasant;
and any craving that is unsatisfied is a condition of
sorrow. Now, all this amounts, in short, to this : that
wherever there are the conditions of individuality there
are the conditions of sorrow. This is the first truth—
the truth about sorrow. The cause of sorrow' is the
thirst or craving which causes the rental of individual
existence—is accompanied by evil, and K ever seeking
satisfaction—now here, now there—that is to say, the
craving evil for sensual gratifications, or for continued
existence, or for the cessation of existence. This is the
noble truth concerning the origin of sorrow. Deliver
ance from sorrow is the complete destruction, the laying
aside, the getting rid of, the being free from, the har
bouring no longer of this passionate craving. This is
the noble truth concerning the destruction of sorrow.
The path which leads to the destruction of sorrow is
this noble eight-fold path alone—that is to say, right
views, high aims, kindly speech, upright conduct, a
harmless livelihood, perseverance in well-doing, intellec
tual activity, and earnest thought. This is the noble
truth concerning the path which,deads to the destruction
of sorrow.”
This sermon, short as it is, contains for man the whole
philosophy of life. Socrates might talk of the “great
spirit ” which guided him in all his actions ; Jesus might
preach of man’s duty to his “heavenly father;” but
Gautama assuredly was the first great teacher to proclaim
the true mission of man to be to understand and reform
himself. For some years Gautama journeyed from place
to place, preaching his noble doctrine, that man was to be
judged only according to the quality of his deeds ; and
the great teacher was gladly welcomed by the common
people, among whom he made many converts. Not
only did Gautama teach his disciples what they must do
to attain to true happiness ; he also told them how to
avoid present misery.
They were to refrain from
drinking intoxicants, from lying, stealing, all impurity,
and from self-destruction. Among their chief virtues
were to be purity of conduct, forbearance and fortitude
in the time of trouble. Thus Gautama proclaimed a
great Secular faith—a salvation for man on earth without
�SOCRATES, BUDDHA, AND JESUS.
II
belief in God or desire for a future life. What consti
tuted Buddha’s view of true divinity has been well ex
pressed in the following stanza :—
“ Pure men and modest, kind and upright men,
These are the so-called divine beings in the world.”
When Gautama came to die he called together his
disciples and inquired of them if they had any doubts or
misgivings concerning his teachings, for he was anxious
that it should not be afterwards said that “ our teacher
was face to face with us, and we could not bring ourselves
to inquire of the Blessed One when we were face to
face with him.” But his disciples were silent. Then,
turning to them, Gautama said: “Behold, now, brethren,
I exhort you, saying, ‘ Decay is inherent 'in all compo
nent things—work out your salvation with diligence !’ ”
And so he died. His life’s work, however, lives : his
teachings to-day are being brought more and more under
the notice of earnest and intelligent men and women,
who recognise in them the foundation upon which a
grand Secular “ Religion of the Future ” may be erected
—a religion broad enough to embrace all men, of what
ever nationality or colour, within its all-expansive grasp:
a religion that has its deepest roots in humanity’s great
heart, and for its sole end the peace, prosperity, and
happiness of the human race.
In respect to our third character,
JESUS,
three theories are advanced :—
First. That he was the “ very God.” This is the
theory of the Church. Some Churchmen, however, say
that he was partly God and partly man ; but these are
unable to distinguish the Divine from the human ele
ment in him.
Secondly. A second school contend that the Jesus of
the Gospels never existed; that he was only a myth.
Thirdly. All the Jews, and most Rationalists, hold
that Jesus was a man, and only a man.
Was Jesus God ? Can an infinite Deity transform
himself into a finite man ? Can infinite attributes be
compressed into a finite compass ? Can an eternal God
�12
SOCRATES, BUDDHA, AND JESUS.
be born, or die, or raise himself from the dead ? Can
the immutable change, or the all-knowing increase his
knowledge? If Jesus were God, it is strange he did not
say so in language of unmistakable clearness. Strange
that he spoke of a God who was in heaven, and who was
other than himself. Strange that he was afraid to die,
and prayed that his “heavenly father” should let the
bitter cup pass from him, when he must have known
either that he could not die, or, if he could, he could
easily raise himself to life again.
The theory of the Divinity of Jesus rests entirely
upon faith, for no amount of evidence would be suffi
cient to demonstrate a finite being to be an infinite god
in any sense of the word. Those who maintain that
the Jesus of the Gospels is not an historical character at
all stand on much more reasonable and solid ground
than the Christians. They contend that the miracle
stories that form the groundwork of the life of the
Nazarene carpenter, and without which Jesus would
stand on the same common level with all great religious
reformers, have been taken from certain traditions
relating to other great men, who lived hundreds of years
before. For instance, it is stated in the Gospels that
Jesus was born of a virgin, whose name was Mary.
Gautama is said to have been born of a virgin, too, and
her name was Maya. Jesus wras announced by angels
—so was Gautama; endowed with prophetic vision—so
was Gautama; baptised with water and afterwards with
fire—so was Gautama.
At the time of the birth of
Jesus a number of children were slaughtered in order
that he might be among them; the same is said of
Gautama. Jesus had long arguments with learned
doctors, and amazed them with his wisdom—so did
Gautama; was tempted by a devil—so was Gautama;
fasted for many days—so did Gautama; began to
preach at the age of thirty—so did Gautama; delivered
a sermon on the mount—so did Gautama; was hung
on a cross—so was not Gautama, but so it is alleged
was Chrishna. In further support of the theory that
Jesus was not an historical character, they contend that
there is no evidence of the existence of the “four
Gospels ” until the middle of the second century; that
it cannot be shown that the authors whose names they
�SOCRATES, BUDDHA, AND JESUS.
13
bear really wrote them, and that nobody knows when or
where they were written.
The third school say that there is naturally great
difficulty in proving that Jesus was an historical per
sonage ; that he lived so many years ago that we are
bound to rely, in a large measure, upon tradition : that
the accuracy of history much more modern might be
just as successfully impugned, because, before the printing
press came into use, the people had to depend upon
manuscripts, which were passed from one to another,
and altered in a variety of ways, and were only valuable
to the learned few, who used them for their own purposes.
Moreover, they contend that it is much more reasonable
to suppose that the man Jesus really lived ; that he went
about doing good ; that he preached unpopular opinions,
and that he was finally condemned as a blasphemer and
put to death—than to believe that some Christian
divine had genius enough to imagine the character, or
goodness enough to formulate the doctrines which it is
alleged Jesus proclaimed. It is, they further maintain,
a singular thing that great thinkers and philosophers,
like Voltaire, Paine, Strauss, Renan, John Stuart Mill,
and others, should acknowledge the historical character
of Jesus, if there be really so little evidence to support
it as some imagine.
For the sake of argument, then, let it be acknowledged
that Jesus really lived ; that he was a good man, and did
the best he could to enhance the well-being of his fellows.
In what respect was he better than Socrates ? Was he
wiser or more virtuous?
Did he fulfil his manifold
duties better, or even as well ? Was he a better citizen?
Was he as diligent a student, or as wise a teacher ? Or
was he a better, a more truly divine man, than Gautama?
Was he wiser, more virtuous, or more benevolent ? In
what respect was the goodness of Jesus superior to that
of Gautama ? Wherein were his doctrines better ? In
all sincerity, let the Christians answer these questions ;
and let not superstitious Freethinkers, who still cling to
the notion that Jesus was the “ divinest ” man that ever
lived, evade the difficulty.
Let the philosophy of Socrates be compared with
that of Jesus ; let the doctrines of Gautama be read
side by side with those of the Nazarene; let the lives of
�14
SOCRATES, BUDDHA, AND JESUS.
the three great reformers be fairly compared and con
trasted, and it will be found that, in some respects,
Socrates and Buddha are superior to Jesus. Space will
not admit of a lengthy comparison of the doctrines of
these men; but it may be said that, while there is much
that is good and true in the teachings of Jesus, there is
also much that is exceedingly harmful and misleading.
Socrates taught that all error and all misery sprang from
ignorance, and sought to remove the evil. Jesus, appa
rently, did not mind how ignorant his followers were,
providing their ignorance was allied with faith.
He
would rather that they should not be wise if their wisdom
brought with it grave doubts and misgivings. Jesus said :
“ Love your enemies,” which no man can do; Gautama
said: “ Be just even to your foes ”—
“ Have good will
To all that lives, letting unkindness die,
And greed and wrath.”
Jesus said : “If any man come unto me, and hate not
his father and mother and wife and children and brethren
and sisters—yea, and his whole life, he cannot be my
disciple.” It should be remembered, too, that it was
Jesus who taught the frightful doctrine of belief and salva
tion, and disbelief and damnation—a blot sufficiently
large to obliterate the good influence of his general
teaching. Nothing that Socrates or Gautama ever said was
half as bad as this. To the Secularist, however, it seems
the highest wisdom to select the good teachings of each
of these great men. We admire and love them for their
wisdom, purity, and heroism; but we are not blind to
their shortcomings, and we should not be honest if we
failed to recognise and acknowledge them. No man is
perfect—perfection belongeth not to humanity. Socrates
had his faults, and no man would more readily own
them; so, too, had Gautama and Jesus; but, whatever
their failings—and, when everything is considered, they
were not numerous—they at least endeavoured, to the best
of their ability, to raise their fellows above the common
level, and to point to that higher life to which every
noble soul aspires, and for the realisation of which every
good man and every pure woman are arduously working.
I agree with Pascal that “ a man’s virtue is not to be
�SOCRATES, BUDDHA, AND JESUS.
15
measured by his great attempts, but by his common
actions.” Every action in our lives is important, and
we shall be strengthened by our study of the great
characters of the past only in proportion as we grasp this
undeniable truth. Let us never flinch from performing
our duty—the small task with the same enthusiastic
fidelity as the large one. Allured on by the grand
achievements of the world’s heroes; sustained and en
couraged by the knowledge that truth and justice must
ultimately prevail; guided and directed in all things by
the imperishable light of reason ; sharing with mankind
the joys and sorrows of life ; diffusing knowledge here,
helping a fallen one there ; being gentle to the suffering,
kind to the poor, and just to all—this indeed constitutes
real greatness, of which Longfellow sings :—
“ Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time—
Footprints that perhaps another,
Sailing on life’s solemn main
A forlorn and shipwreck’d brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.”
WATTS & CO., PRINTERS, 17, JOHNSON’S C3URT, FLEET STREET, LONDON.
�THE
SECULAR
REVIEW.
A JOURNAL OF DAILY LIFE.
Edited by
...
Charles Watts & Saladin.
The Secular Review is strictly a Freethought Journal,
representing all phases of Advanced Thought. It also con
tains authentic information as to the progress of liberal
views in America and on the Continent;
To order, of Newsagents, or direct from 84, Fleet Street, London.
Published every Thursday, price Twopence.
ALSO BY THE , SAME AUTHOR.
THE MIRROR OF FREETHOUGHT..............................
..
THE BIBLE GOD AND HIS FAVOURITES..............................
FICTITIOUS GODS
........................................................................
CHRISTIANITY UNWORTHY
OF GOD
THE SECULAR FAITH........................................................................
IS RELIGION NECESSARY OR USEFUL?..............................
HEALTH, WEALTH, AND HAPPINESS
.............................
THE OLD FAITH AND THE NEW............................................
r
to
or
01
01
01
e 2
01
01
London : Watts & Co., 84, Fleet Street; or (to order) of all
Booksellers.
J9®" For Mr. Moss’s List of Objects of Freethought, Political, and
Social Lectures apply—89, Catlin^Street, Rotherhitlie Neat). Road, S,£,
a ■’’•k
�
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
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
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
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
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.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
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
A name given to the resource
Socrates, Buddha, and Jesus
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Moss, Arthur B.
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 15 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: List of works by the same author available from Watts & Co. on back page. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Watts & Co.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[1885]
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
N504
G5127
Subject
The topic of the resource
Jesus Christ
Buddha
Socrates
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<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 (Socrates, Buddha, and Jesus), 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>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Gautama Buddha
Jesus Christ
NSS
Socrates
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/6159c0289d5cfec1aaa42ee72e04f892.pdf?Expires=1779321600&Signature=I9LCBULNCx1l3s8g%7EBAMWFCdwSE0buzCHTSzohdRzm1eO23MD4T0SO4vJpJOmzZZwrxvbt3665PG4nYBv0w4HwKFXwkJPvqO6aCsEoUSRMPz%7Es4gDuoPZc86QHcPY0b6ll1aacvECoM9d12V7ovgg4-QahUrzu5U21tr2uEWdn4WwQBa0XbjwqepYgiZ42RIZA38-thjO%7ECslkcBE6dGlAF%7EdpnAKIj%7ExgiReNz07tqQOvhQnjiPCelCaXWrK5iARG0diZc%7EVB7c8vvEPfegyyv5UL1-ufq24gE89Z0lJnjS64hcBaqEclF4nn333wUFmC3BVgTxFaX04it%7Eb2DQ3A__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
9bf4d3a448962ee8e698fe8de44078f3
PDF Text
Text
THE APOSTLES OF CHRIST:
A FARCE IN SEVERAL ACTS.
“Did it ever occur to you to read the Acts of the Apostles?”—Bishop
of Peterborough.
BY AUSTIN HOLYOAKE.
The Bishop of Peterborough, preaching on March 3Qth, 1871, in the
Cathedral of Norwich to a very large congregation on “ Christianity and
Faith,” incidentally and with delightful simplicity asked his audience,
“ Did it ever occur to you to read the Acts of the Apostles ?” as one might
ask, “ Did you ever happen to look into the Koran ?” The Bishop evi
dently thinks that it is only by a rare chance that any lay Christians ever
open the Bible, in every word and letter of which they nevertheless most
fervently believe. I am not a Christian, either lay or clerical, and this
may account for the fact that it has occurred to me to read the Acts of the
Apostles; and I now lay before the Right Rev. Bishop, and the public
generally, the result of my reading. If the impression produced on my
mind by these remarkable stories is not what an orthodox Christian would
expect, this may be because I opened the book unprejudiced by religious
notions, and with the same desire for information as I should have in com
mencing to peruse any ordinary biographical or other narrative.
Who wrote the book called the Acts of the Apostles? It is unlikely
that it was the production of any of the four Evangelists, as in style it is
different from them all. It is in the shape of a letter addressed to one Theo
philus, but it seems doubtful whether this was the proper name of a real
personage, or was used only in the general sense of a “ lover or friend of
God,” according to the original meaning of the word. The first verse says
—-■“ The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus
began both to do and teach.” The present treatise is but a clumsy and
ungrammatical one, and is a feeble copy, in many places, of the records of
the doings of Jesus. There is no originality about it. Its author, who
ever he was, had evidently read some of the manuscripts, or more likely
was acquainted with the traditions, which afterwards became incorporated
in the collection called the New Testament. He appears to have been
tolerably familiar with one or other of the synoptical Gospels; or, at any
rate, with the materials used in them. He makes Peter and Paul accom
plish some feats very like those of Jesus; hence one is lead to believe that
there were two or three favourite tricks common to all the thaumaturgi, or
miracle-workers of those days; just as we see certain tricks performed alike
by all the conjurors who appear before the public in these times—such as
Frikell, Robin, Houdin, and Anderson.
These Acts of the Apostles are represented as commencing in the year
A.D. 33, that in which Christ was crucified; but when the book was really
written cannot be determined by the most erudite scholars—it may have
been one or two centuries after the occurrences narrated are said to have
happened. If we were judging of an ordinary book produced under such
�'2
The Apostles of Chriit.
circumstances, an allowance would naturally be made for any discrepancies
in the record; but when we have to deal with “ inspired penmen ” and
“ God’s holy word,” the case is very different. We are at once removed
from the sphere of human things, and called upon to receive all that is set
down without questioning, as infallible truth, the penalty of doubting
which is the destruction of our immortal souls. If the writer of the Acts
was inspired from heaven, it is to be regretted that he was not inspired to
write the truth. He commences with a blunder, if judged by the Four
Gospels which his book immediately succeeds. He says:—“The former
treatise have I made, 0 Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and
teach, until the day in which he was taken up.” And after mentioning
things which Christ said, he continues— “ And while the apostles looked
■tedfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in
white apparel; which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing
up into heaven? this same Jesus, Which is taken up from yoH into heaven,
shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.” Now,
nothing of the kind ever happened, and nothing of the kind was ever said;
it is a pure fabrication. And if a book, which purports to be a true his
tory, divinely inspired, of the doings of certain men who were the inheri
tors of the supernatural powers of the Saviour of the world, actually com
mences with a palpable untruth, how shall we be able to trust those state
ments which do not admit of corroboration by, or comparison with, other
parts of the Bible? Not that this kind of verification is of much value,
as the Bible itself can never be taken as the proof of its Own statements;
we must look elsewhere for independent testimony, and where is it to be
found? How can we obtain proof of the supernatural?
There were eleven apostles at the beginning of this book, who all “abode
in an upper room,” which, though a sign of high life, bespeaks great
poverty of means. Their names were: Peter, James, John, Andrew, Philip,
Thomas, Bartholomew, Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus, Simon Zelotes,
and Judas, the brother of James; to whom was afterwards added (by lot
or by ballot, the text as usual being exceedingly vague) one Matthias, to
fill the place of Judas the betrayer, the man to whom the world owes its
salvation, as without his so-called treachery, there would have been no
crucifixion and no atonement. The first actor who enters upon the stage is
Peter, who is by no means “well-graced,” as he is not remarkable for his
veracity. It will be remembered that he once declared to Jesus that though
he should die with him, he would not deny him; yet immediately after,
when asked if he had not been with Jesus, who had just been arrested, he
cursed and swore that he knew not the man. In his first statement here,
speaking of Judas, he says: “Now this man purchased a field with the
reward of iniquity; and, falling headlong, he burst asunder in the
midst, and all his bowels gushed out. And it was known unto all the
dwellers at Jerusalem; insomuch as that field is calledintheir proper
tongue, Aceldama, that is to say, The field of blood.” This is not
true. Judas was not so loose a man as to crack his sides, for he went
and tied himself up with a rope, and hanged himself. One of the two
accounts must be incorrect, and from what we read of Peter, we feel pretty
sure that his should not be preferred. Judas could not well have died
both ways; if he did, it is difficult to decide which he could take first.
Neither did Judas purchase the field “ with the reward of iniquity,” but a
field was purchased with it by the high priests, for a cemetery in which to
bury strangers.
Chapter ii. opens with a strange story in language as strange. The
�The Apostles of Christ.
3
eleven apostles were all together in one place, but whether in Jerusalem is
uncertain. It is supposed to have been somewhere in the East; so that
if there happens to be any sceptic who wants definite information, it is to
be hoped be will be quite satisfied. “ And suddenly there came a sound
trom heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where
they were sitting.” Seeing that the winds generally come from heaven,
and sometimes make a rushing sound, there is nothing novel so far. But
as it is an ill wind that blows no one any good, the apostles soon found
that this breeze bore some good to them. “ And there appeared unto them
cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they
were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other
tongues, as the spirit gave them utterance.’* What was it that sat upon the
apostles ? The cloven tongues or the fire ? It is impossible to determine
by the construction of the sentence. However, the apostles began to talk
in all sorts of strange languages, which very much puzzled the devout
Jews from every nation under heaven. But their discourses failed to have
any very striking effect, and certainly the gift of the Holy Ghost did not
count much in their favour, for after listening to them, some of their
auditors said, “ These men are full of new wine!” Peter rebutted this
accusation in a singular manner. He said, “ For these are not drunken,
as ye suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day.” He did not
venture to say that these holy men of God, who were specially commis
sioned to preach the glad tidings of great joy to all the world, never got
intoxicated, but that it was absurd to suppose they were drunk so early
in the day! After this Peter makes a speech, very obscure and very
incoherent, about “ wonders in heaven above, and signs in the earth
beneath; blood, and fire, and vapour of strike.” And in the midst of
this vapouring, he said to his listeners, “ Repent, and be baptised every
one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye
shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.” But what benefit is there in
receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, if its manifestation is to make us
appear to be “ full of new wine ?” Surely this is no recommendation, or
advantage. But who or what is the Holy Ghost ? and how do persons
feel when possessed of or by that mysterious power, or person, or influence ?
Are they better in health, happier, or more moral ? Are they able to
themselves discover their new state, or do they require to be assured of it
by others? It is necessary to know what advantage this gift is to any
one before we can be attracted by Peter’s promise.
In this same address to the men of Israel,Peter speaks of his former friend,
Jesus of Nazareth, as a man “ being delivered by the determinate counsel
and fore-knowledge of God,” and in the same breath charges his hearers
with having “by wicked hands crucified and slain him.” But where is
the wickedness if it was (all done by the determinate counsel and fore
knowledge of God ? The wickedness, if possible, would have consisted in
refusing to carry out the determinate counsel and foreknowledge, thus
rebelling against the good God and baulking his whole scheme of redemption.
After Peter’s speech, about three thousand souls were added to his fol
lowers that same day. "With the slight drawback that “ fear came upon
every soul,” or, in other words, that every soul became superstitious, one
grand result was achieved for the time, which, if it was designed by
God, and ordained to be preached by his chosen messenger to the people,
should have endured and become the established order of society throughout
the Christian world. It is said, “ And all that believed were together,
and bad all things common; and sold their possessions and goods, and
�4
The Apostles of Christ,
parted them to all men, as every man bad need.
And they, continuing
daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to
house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart.” If no
other result than this had followed the preaching of the apostles, mankind
would have had reason to bless their names. But who are farther away
from this perfect mode of life than Christians themselves ? Who have
been more virulent opponents of everything in the shape of Communism,
than the successors of the apostles ? Who was it that preached a doc
trine akin to this, and who laboured through a long and useful and
honourable life to realise it in practice, but the late Robert Owen ? And
who were more abused, traduced, and persecuted than he and his fol
lowers, by the very men who profess to regard this book of Acts as a Divine
revelation, sent as a guide to the world! What are the atoning blood of
the Lamb for the sins of Adam; the hope of a resurrection from the calm
sleep of death, to a life beyond the grave amid the blood, and thunder, and
“ all the menagerie of the book of Revelationcompared with the life of
bliss here., free from poverty and the crimes that inevitably follow in its
track, the life of true fraternity and equality, which we are told these
earliest Christians enjoyed; where competition and avarice, luxury and
beggary, arrogance and envy, were unknown ;
“ Where the many ceased their slavery to the few?”
But where do we now find more cheating, lying, knavery, greed, misery,
and starvation, than in this Christian land, where the hired priesthood, the
paid exponents of this Bible, which is thrust upon us by the State, set the
example of selfish clutching and hoarding of wealth 1 ('ur bishops receive
princely incomes, whilst the peasants around their palaces drag out a
wretched existence, which is not so much a life as a death-in-life.
Peter of course could work miracles like his late master, but they lack
originality, and are indeed so like others previously performed that we
cannot help suspecting that they are the same old wonders in a new dress.
One day as Peter and-John were going to the temple, they saw a man who
had been lame from his birth. Peter, fastening his eyes upon him, took
him by the hand and lifted him up, and the man was enabled to walk. The
people were astonished, but Peter told them not to wonder, as it was the
name of the Prince of life through faith in his name which had made this
man strong ; an explanation which must satisfy the most critical reader.
But this “ name through faith in his name” did not prevent both Peter
and John being seized for performing the miracle, and they were locked up
till next day.
Peter was a desperate man, as well as a miracle-worker. His anger
was sufficient to frighten some persons to death, as poor Ananias and
Sapphira proved. When the Christian converts were wont to sell all their
lands and possessions, and give the proceeds for distribution among the
brethren, one Ananias, like many modern believers, wished to be thought
generous at a small outlay; so instead of giving up all his wealth, he gave
only a portion, probably thinking that if the promised millennium should
not speedily arrive, it would be as well to have something to fall back
upon. At least we are told that he did keep back part, but how it became
known is not stated. Nobody appears to have informed Peter, yet he
knew all about it, for he at once said to Ananias, “ Why hast thou con
ceived this thing in thine heart ? Thou hast not lied unto men, but unto
God. And Ananias hearing these words fell down, and gave up the
ghost.” “ And the young men arose, wound him up, and carried him
�The Apostles of Christ.
6
out and bnried him.'* Now this was a terrible rebuke, but we may attri
bute the mortal terror of Ananias to the weakness of his nerves. The
case however was very different with his wife Sapphira, who, ignorant of
the fate of her husband, on entering the place about three hours later,
was suddenly and fiercely assailed by the Apostle. He said— “ Tell me
whether ye sold the land for so much? And she said, Yea, for so much.
Then Peter said unto her, How is it that ye have agreed together to tempt
the Spirit of the Lord? behold, the feet of them which have buried thy
husband are at the door, and shall carry thee out. Then fell she down
straightway at his feet, and yielded up the ghost: and the young men
came in, and found her dead, and carrying her forth, buried her by her
husband.”
While not for a moment wishing to palliate deception in any shape, one
cannot help remarking the severity of the punishment for the reticence of
Ananias and the falsehood of Sapphira. All deceivers are not equally
punished in the Bible. Take the lives of some of its favourite characters
to witness—Abraham deceived Pharaoh, saying that Sarah his wife was
only his sister, and God plagued not the deceiver, but the dupe. Abraham
deceived Abimelech, saying that Sarah his wife was only his sister, and
God threatened not the deceiver, but the deceived. Jacob cheated his
father and lied unto him, and thus obtained the blessing which waB meant
for his elder brother, and God ratified the blessing, and was always pleased
to call himself and to be called the God of Jacob. Even Sarah who lied
to the face of God was not punished; and Peter, who thus condemned
Ananias and Sapphira, had lied three times, denying that he knew his own
dear Lord and master ; yet that same Lord and master afterwards trusted
him to feed his lambs and his sheep. It is true that the crime involved in
the deception of Ananias and Sapphira was of the most deadly nature—
they did not give enough money to the church; and this crime is punished
with pains and penalties even now I A few years ago a widow’s two sons
were shot down at Kathcormack in Ireland for refusing to pay tithes. Can
it be wondered at, that such deeds should make some doubt of the
humanising tendency of the glad tidings of the blessed Gospel ?
These things becoming noised abroad, the authorities put Peter and
John in the common prison. “ But the angel of the Lord by night opened
the prison doors, and brought them forth, and said, Go, stand and speak
in the temple to the people all the words of this lifeand they did so.
This was an act of rebellion on the part of these escaped prisoners, which
ought to have met with the severest condemnation, but it did not; on the
contrary, it was approved of. Are we not told that the powers that be are
ordained of God ? yet here is the Lord himself breaking the peace, opening
prison doors, defying the authority of the very rulers he had ordained. But
one soon learns not to be astonished at anything in the Bible. The
priests were much incensed, and took counsel together to slay the apostles.
But one Gamaliel, a doctor of the law, exhorted them to let the delinquents
go vnvtouGlted. This they agreed to, but in the drollest way imaginable.
Listen to the passage. “ And to him they agreed: and when they had
called the apostles, and beaten them, they commanded that they should
not speak in the name of J esus, and let them go.” This striking proof of
their acquiescence was feelingly acknowledged by Peter and his friend,
and they went away rejoicing. This mode of treating Peter and John
may be likened unto a judge who should say, “ Prisoners at the bar, you
are acquitted, therefore I sentence you to twelvemonths’ hard labour?”
One Stephen, a man full of faith and the Holy Ghost, was appointed by
�6
The Apostles of Christ.
the twelve apostles a deacon, but his career was short and painful. He
was able to do ‘‘great wonders and miracles among the people,” and
being clever at disputation, he naturally raised up enemies to his preach
ing. The same thing happens in these days. There is no Freethought
advocate now who defeats his opponents in fair argument, but is denied by
large numbers of Christians the possession of honour and honesty, and not
a few clamour to have him silenced by means more material than reason
and rhetoric. Stephen is accused of blasphemy, for he spoke against the
fashionable religion of his time, and the admirers of Stephen in these days
raise the same cry against all who disbelieve what he taught.
Stephen
delivered a long defence, and ended by calling his accusers uncircumcised
murderers. “ When they heard these things, they were cut to the heart,
and they gnashed on him with their teeth. But be, being full of the Holy
Ghost, looked up stedfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and
Jesus standing on the right hand of God.” If Stephen did see so far, he
must have been blessed with wonderful powers of vision. When he an
nounced what he saw, his hearers could restrain themselves no longer, but
at once fell upon him, and stoned him to death. His assailants, probably
to be more free in their actions, “ laid down their clothes at a young man’s
feet, whose name was Saul,” and he was a consenting party to the brutal
and fanatical murder. This man was afterwards known as the apostle
Paul, who to some extent realised the saying, “ The greater the rascal,
the greater the saint,” and his first appearance on the Christian stage, it
must be admitted, was in a most unpromising character.
Peter went to Joppa, and there raised up from the dead Tabitha, who
was called Dorcas for her good deeds.
She appears to have been really
dead, but on Peter taking her by the hand and calling her, she rose
up. Jesus, when he raised Jairus’ daughter, declared that she was not
dead, but only slept; so that Peter’s feat far excelled that of his master.
This proves that a man need not have a miraculous birth to be able to
raise people from the dead, and throws a doubt upon the value of divinity.
Peter, a saint with as few virtues and as many vices as any mortal was
ever blessed with, was altogether an extraordinary man; very valiant and
yet a coward; an ardent disciple yet a renegade. He cut off a soldier’s
ear when they arrested Jesus, yet was afraid of being himself arrested;
by his frown and rebuke he frightened poor Ananias and Sapphira to death;
and his shadow only, as it alighted on the sick, straightway healed them.
Cornelius the centurion, who had been fasting four days, had a vision,
as most hungry men will have, for an empty stomach maketh a light head;
and in this vision an angel of God appeared to him, and told him to send
for Peter to Caesarea. This he did, and his three messengers reached
Peter’s house about the sixth hour on the following day, just as Peter had
gone on to the house top to pray. Zfe there became so hungry that he
fell into a trance (or fainted), and like St. John he saw heaven opened,
when a most curious sight presented itself. He saw “ a certain vessel
descending unto him, as it had been a great sheet knit at the four corners,
and letdown to the earth: wherein were all manner of four-footed beasts
of the earth, and wild beasts, and creeping things, and fowls of the air.
And there came a voice to him saying, Rise, Peter; kill and eat.” Now
Peter was a dainty man, and this dish was not dainty enough to tempt
him, hungry as he was. He said, “Not so, lord; for I have never eaten
anything that is common or unclean.” So the vessel was drawn up into
heaven again, with all its strange inhabitants. It was a cruel thing to do,
*9 mock a poor, weak, hungry man so. He had just fainted fromexhaua-
�The Apostles of Christ.
7
tion, and he was invited to kill and eat a tiger, it might be, or a grisly
bear; bat he could not bear the idea, so he refused. On being aroused
from his trance, and told by the Spirit to go down and receive the three
messengers from Cornelius, he did so, and went with them to the house of
the centurion, though Cornelius was not a Jew. Peter interpreted the
vision to be an intimation that he was to preach the Gospel to the Gen
tiles, who were typified by the unclean beasts in the vessel—a doubtful
compliment, truly, to all not of the Jewish race; that is to say, to all
mankind except a most insignificant minority.
About this time Herod began to persecute the faithful, and he killed
James with the sword, and had Peter arrested. But whilst Peter was
lying in prison between two soldiers, bound with two chains, the angel of
the Lord came and released him as easily as the spirits release the Daven
port brothers. Peter thought he must still be in a dream, although he
had already been delivered from gaol in much the same manner ; but on
finding himself in the street alone, he no longer doubted the reality of his
release. He made good his escape to another place, much to the annoy
ance of Herod, who was shortly afterwards eaten of worms, and gave up
the ghost. Thenceforward we hear but once more of Peter in the Acts of
the Apostles. He perhaps was soon promoted to that situation, which he
has held so long, of gate-keeper in heaven.
Philip goes down to Samaria to preach, and he too works miracles,
which attract the attention of the people. “ For unclean spirits, crying
with loud voice, came out of many that were possessed with them: and
many taken with palsies, and that were lame, were healed.” Philip is
not original, for Christ did the same thing, and sent his evil spirits into
the swine, much to the dismay of the poor pigs. One Simon a sorcerer
fell before th6 prowess of Philip, and was afterwards baptised and believed
in Jesus Christ, and beheld with astonishment the miracles and signs
which were done, they far outstripping any witchery he had been capable
of in his humble way.
An angel of the Lord spake unto Philip, and told him to go to Gaza,
and he went. He there met with an Ethiopian, a man in high authority
under Queen Candace. The Ethiopian was sitting in bis chariot, and
reading Esaias the prophet. Philip’s companion, the spirit, told him to go
near and join himself to the chariot. He then ran after it, and asked the
Ethiopian whether he understood what he was reading. He answered, how
can I, unless some man should guide me ? And he desired Philip to come
up and sit with him. The passage he was reading was this—“He was
led as a sheep to the slaughter; and like a lamb dumb before his shearer,
so opened be not his mouth: in his humiliation his judgment was taken
away; and who shall declare bis generation ? for his life is taken from the
earth.” Something like this is to be found in Isaiah liii., 7 and 8, and
is said to have been written 1746 years before; and though more than
1800 years bare elapsed since, we are still in Ethiopian darkness as to its
meaning. Philip evidently did not know, for he began topreach Jesus to him.
Neither did the spirit seem to know, for he said nothing. But the preach
ing had wonderful effect. As they went on their way, they came to some
water, when the Ethiopian said, “ See, here is. water ; what doth hinder
me to be baptised? And Philip said, If thou believest with all thine
heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ
is the Son of God.” Here is an instance of conversion almost with tebw
graphic speed. This man, who had never before heard of Jesus, and the
mysteries of the incarnation, the crucifixion, and resurrection, at once de
�8
The Apostles of Christ.
dares his belief, and is baptised. No other question is asked than “ Do
you believe ?” and straightway he is received among the elect. He is not
told to take time to ponder over these things, and to show by his conduct
that he is sincere in his new belief; he is received at once, without any
more hesitation than is shown in regard to any criminal who is about to be
sent on the unknown journey from Newgate, and who, no matter what
his life has been, and the crime that has caused its forfeiture, if he only
call upon the name of the Lord Jesus, is assured of a blissful resurrection
to eternal life. This is indeed cheap salvation—so cheap that it is not
•worth having. After they came out of the water, Philip’s companion,
the spirit, flew away with him, and the Ethiopian saw him no more, but
went on his way rejoicing; whether at Philip's disappearance, or at the
pleasurable sensations of the bath he had just taken, is not specified.
Though the spirit flew away with Philip, it did not take him up to heaven.
He “ was found at Azotus, and passing through he preached in all the
cities till he came to Caesarea.” Here we lose sight of him altogether, so
far as this book of the Acts of the Apostles is concerned.
We now come to Saul, alias Paul, the tentmaker ofTarsus, who, though
brought up to a trade, is supposed by some writers to have been a man of
education and social position. He commenced by being an unrelenting
persecutor of the new sect, breathing out threatenings and slaughter against
the disciples of the Lord, and ended by being a devout believer. His
conversion, like most of the events related in this book, was miraculous.
While on his way to Damascus, seeking victims to persecute, he was sud
denly surrounded by a light from heaven, which was not very extraordi
nary, as it happened to be in the daytime. ** He fell to the earth, and
heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? And
he said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou
persecutest.” Let us analyse the incidents of this event. Saul was a
wicked man, and yet he no sooner heard a voice, than he knew it to be
the voice of the Lord; from which we may infer that he was on very
familiar terms with him. And then, he not only knew the Lord, but
asked the Lord who he was; and the Lord answered that he was somebody
else. It can only be likened to a conversation between two friends on
their suddenly meeting, to this effect—“ John, who are you?” And John
answers, “ I am Joseph.” Saul trembled very much and was astonished.
He asked what he was to do; and he was requested to go into the city and
there he would be told. This conversation bad been carried on while Saul
was on the ground with his face downwards, which was a most undignified
way of talking to any one; but it was a habit indulged in by one Daniel nearly
600 years before. He was then led into Damascus totally blind, where he
remained three days without food or sight. It is difficult to understand
why a man should be made blind to enable him to see the truth of the
divinity of Christ, and why he should be starved tor three days to enable
him to digest the mysteries of the incamatioo. After Paul had taken
something really substantial, he was strengthened, and became a great
preacher. The Jews were not pleased with this apostacy, so they lay in
wait to kill him as he passed out of the gates. The disciples hearing of
this, took Paul by night and let him down by the wall in a basket, and so
he made bis escape to Jerusalem. Why there was not a miraculous deliver
ance here is inexplicable. The spirit of the Lord caught away Philip,
wbo was a much less important man than Paul; and Peter, who was any
thing but an amiable creature, was twice delivered from prison by an angel.
Sehamyl, the late hero of Circassia, who was called a prophet by his people,
�The Apostles of Christ.
9
on one occasion made his escape from a fortress in precisely the same
way as Paul from Damascus, and showed his sense in trusting to the good
offices of the basket, instead of praying for deliverance, for mere prayer
would have been sure to leave him in the hands of the Russians.
Paul in the company of Barnabas, works miracles, and the first recorded
of him is exactly the same as one wrought by Peter. He saw a man who
had been lame from his birth; gazed stedfastly at him, and the man rose
and leaped and walked. After this Paul was stoned and dragged out of
the city, and left for dead; but he naturally rose up, and went again into
the city, and left the next day as sound as ever. Soon a quarrel broke out
between Paul and Barnabas, which was so sharp that they had to separate.
Then Paul and Silas went together, and one day they were met by a young
damsel, who was a sorceress, and who earned much money for her
employers. She seems to have jeered at Paul, and vexed his Christian
temper; so he turned and said to the spirit—“ I command thee in the name
of Jesus Christ to come out of her. And he came out the same hour.” Of
course the damsel lost her bewitching power, and her employers lost the
income derived through her, which made them so angry that they procured
the arrest of Paul and Silas, who, after being stripped and scourged, were
cast into prison and their feet put into the stocks. “ And at midnight Paul
and Silas prayed, and sang praises unto God: and the prisoners heard them.
And suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the
prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened, and every
one’s bands were loosed.” Now all this noise and manifestation of heavenly
power was for nothing, for not a prisoner escaped. It is true that the
keeper was alarmed when he saw that the doors were opened, though it
was dark. He called for a light, and sprang into the inner prison, and came
trembling, and fell down before Paul and Silas. He then brought them
out, and said—‘ ‘ Sirs, what must I do to be saved ?” The two prisoners
were not at all surprised at the abruptness of the question, but told him
“ Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy
house.” Then followed another conversion swift as lightning. “And
he took them the same hour of the night, and washed their stripes: and
was baptised, he and all his, straightway.” What can be the good of
baptism under such circumstances ? or of what value is a profession of
faith wrung from a man in fear and trembling ? Nearly all the instances
of conversion given in the Bible, are brought about after the persons have
had their judgments humiliated, and their nerves shocked. A faith that
wins its way by such means is not a manly or reasonable faith; is unworthy
the acceptance of the vigorous intellect and the self-reliant judgment.
Paul preached on Mar’s Hill at Athens, and said to the Athenians—
“Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too supersti
tious. For as 1 passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar
with this inscription, To the Unknown God. Whom therefore ye
ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.” Now, in what respect does
Paul’s Deity differ from that of the Athenians ? Is God known more now
than he was in days of old ? Is he not still the unknown God ? Has
any man penetrated the secret? Can any man give an intelligent,
a coherent description of the being he pretends to worship ? The Chris
tian superstition differs from the heathen, but it is a superstition. As
mankind advance in knowledge, and still farther penetrate the mysteries
of nature, and learn the laws around them, their ideas become expanded,
and occurrences which, in their ignorance, they attributed to supernatural
agency, and to the workings of good and evil spirits, they now find pro
�10
The Apostles of Christ.
ceed from purely natural causes. In the dark ages of ignorance and
superstition, God or the Devil was ever present at a man’s side; but now,
with increased mental light, both God and Devil are fading farther and
farther away, and they will ultimately vanish from the human mind, and
man will be left face to face with the nature which he knows, which
ministers to his every want, and at last like a loving mother folds him to,
her gentle bosom as he falls into his everlasting sleep.
Paul went to Ephesus, and finding certain disciples, “he said unto them,
Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed ? And they said unto
him, We have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost.”
This surprised him much, so he rebaptised them all, and laid his hands
upon them, and' the Holy Ghost descended at once, and they spake
with tongues, and prophesied. We are to suppose that these disciples
understood what the Holy Ghost meant after that; and if so, it is a pity
they did not leave some information behind them, which would have en
lightened all succeeding generations. The mystery of the Holy Ghost
is still as profound as ever. W hat it is no mortal can tell, whether a
spirit or an influence, or both. After this act of animal magnetism per
formed on twelve disciples, Paul “ went into the synagogue, and spake
boldly for the space of three months, disputing and persuading the things
concerning the kingdom of God.” This may with confidence be pronounced
the longest speech on record. What a valuable party man Paul would
have made in our House of Commons. He would have been without a
rival as a “ talker against time ” when some obnoxious measure had to be
got rid of. If later on a discourse of Paul’s, of only a few hours’ duration,
brought one person to an untimely end, what must have been the fate of
the listeners in this synagogue ? Probably not a man was left alive at
the conclusion of the sermon 1
Any one attempting to infringe Paul’s patent for working miracles
speedily came to grief. “ Certain of the vagabond Jews, exorcists, took
upon them to call over them which had evil spirits the name of the Lord
Jesus, saying, We adjure you by Jesus whom Paul preacheth. And there
were seven sons of one Sceva, a Jew, and chief of the priests, which did so.
And the evil spirit answered and said, Jesus I know, and Paul I know;
but who are ye ? And the man in whom the evil spirit was leaped on
them, and overcame them, and prevailed against them, so that they fled
out of that house naked and wounded.” What the evil spirit said must
be taken as a great compliment to the exorcists, for while be declared his
perfect knowledge of Jesus and Paul, he was totally ignorant of the vaga
bond Jews. If we are to judge of a man by the company he keeps, what
are we to think after this declaration ? And the intimacy between the
Devil and the Christians has been maintained from that day to this.
They first introduced him into the world, he still remains the special pet
and property of the followers of the carpenter of Nazareth, and they alone
are entitled to any credit accruing from the acquaintanceship.
When Paul reached Troas he preached to his disciples an uncomfortably
long sermon, lasting to midnight,
One young man, named Eutychus,
could not for the life of him keep his eyes open any longer ; so like many
a modern churchgoer, he fell asleep. But the unlucky wight forgot that
he was sitting in a window, so “as Paul was long preaching, he sunk
down with sleep, and fell down from the third loft, and was taken up
dead.” But as the preacher had caused the mischief, so he repaired it. “ He
fell upon the young man, and restored him to life again,” which was a
very clever feat indeed, seeing that he was not dead at all.
�The Apostles of Christ.
11
Paul went to Jerusalem, and preached there more boldly than ever, and
all the city was moved, and the people ran together and sought to kill
him ; but the chief captain with soldiers and centurions saved him from
the tumult, and took him in chains to the castle. Panl, when before the
Council, got struck in the mouth for saying what was unpleasant to the
high priest, but when he learnt that the Council itself was composed
of men of different religious beliefs, he threw a burning brand into their
midst, which set them almost tearing one another, like our good church
men at their meetings. The Pharisees strove with the Sadducees, and
there arose snch a fierce dissension that the chief captain feared that Paul
would be pulled to pieces among them, and sent soldiers to take him away
by force and lodge him in the castle again. And the night following
the Lord stood by him, and said, “ Be of good cheer, Paul: for as thou
hast testified of me in Jerusalem, so must thou bear witness also at Borne.”
In all previous instances of heavenly interference, it has been accom
plished by the agency of the spirit of the Lord, or an angel of the Lord ;
but here Paul is comforted by the Lord himself. If the Lord, the very
God of very God, were only to come down in these days, and prompt and
empower some specially chosen servants to do certain much-needed work,
what mighty things might be accomplished!
Enthusiasts do assert
occasionally that they are chosen vessels, but they can never convince
the Commissioners in Lunacy of the truth of their assertions.. Is there
not as much need now as there ever was for miraculous interferences, if
such can take place ? We are daily performing miracles of science^ but
they have their limits as well as their difficulties. The world would
receive with gratitude the power of raising from the dead some of the
great and good men who are prematurely stricken down.
We are
constantly losing men and women of great intellect and virtue, the
prolongation of whose lives would be of service to humanity; but there
is no one gifted with the power to restore them, to animation, and the
scene of their uncompleted labours.
Paul was a brave and candid man, very earnest in all things he took
in hand, from the slaughter of the Christians up to the defence of the n.
When brought before Felix, the only charge against him was that of
preaching the resurrection of the dead; and he said, “But this I confess
unto thee, that after the way which they call heresy, so worship I the God
of my fathers.” Paul commenced as a persecutor, and ended in being
persecuted.
He attacked the heretics, and afterwards gloried in being
one. It was in the days of Paul, as it is in these days, an offence to
differ from the established religion. But though heresy may be shunned,
and the heretic be persecuted, and lose his social position, and suffer all
the annoyance of having to live on the shady side of society ; still all this
does not prove that the Established Religion is right, that it is the only
true guide to salvation. The only way to salvation and the highest hap
piness is the path of progress, which leads to truth and right, and these are
not bound up with any particular creed or dogma, but are attainable by
every member of the human family, if he but diligently prosecute the
inquiry.
Paul was handed over by Felix to Festus, his successor, who was sur
prised to find that his accusers had nothing against him of the nature of
sedition: “ But had certain questions against him of their own supersti
tion., and of one Jesus, which was dead, whom Paul affirmed to be alive.”
And here we find ourselves disputing about the same thing eighteen hun
dred years after. It is true that there are now more persons who believe,
�12
The Apostles of Christ.
ot fancy they believe, in the dogma, but this is no proof of its truth; it
is at most belief, and nothing more. But why is there more dispute
about the existence of Jesus, than about that of Socrates, or Plato, or
Julius Cffisar, all of whom lived before him? Simply from the fact that
Jesus, the man, is taken out of the sphere of humanity, and placed where
no man can comprehend him; and where his sayings and doings, instead
of confirming the idea of his Godhead, only serve to make him look ridi
culous. It really does not concern humanity who said this, or who did
that; all that we care to know is, was the saying true, was the deed useful ?
Paul was brought by Festus before King Agrippa, and their meeting
was altogether a very pleasant one, notwithstanding that Paul was bound.
He gave a third version of how he came to be converted by the vision of
Jesus on his way to Damascus. Judas died two different deaths, and Paul
was converted in three different ways. And while he was describing how
Christ should suffer, and be the first that should be raised from the dead,
Festus, regarding this as the veriest raving, “ said with a lond voice,
Paul, thou art beside thyself; much learning doth make thee mad.”
Paul answered boldly and without hesitation, “I am not mad, most
noble Festus, but speak forth the words of truth and soberness. For
the king knoweth of these things, before whom also I speak freely:
for I am persuaded that none of these things are hidden from him; for
this thing was not done in a corner. King Agrippa, believest thou the
prophets? I know that thou believest.” Agrippa answered, with a smile
on his face, we can imagine, at Paul’s earnest effrontery, and said:
Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian.” Paul, in the same vein,
answered, “ I would to God, that not only thou, but also all that hear me
this day, were both almost, and altogether such as I am—except these
bonds I" The king was so pleased with this answer, that he agreed with
Festus, “ This man doeth nothing worthy of death or of bonds,” and said,
“ This man might have been set at liberty, if he had not appealed unto
Casar.” Paul, with other prisoners, was then shipped off to Italy, to
take his trial at Borne; and while the ship was on its way, he endeavoured
to persuade the captain not to put out to sea from a port they had called
at, owing to the lateness of the season, and the state of the weather, for if
he did they would get wrecked. This showed Paul’s knowledge, but not
his miraculous power; for the late Admiral Fitzroy was as highly favoured
as the Apostle, and daily kept the sailors on our coasts fully informed as
to whether it was safe for them to venture out in their little barks in pur
suit of miraculous draughts of fish. Well, as Paul had foretold, the
wreck came ; and while it was imminent, the sailors despaired, and fasted,
and took nothing for fourteen days, and got very low spirited; but Paul,
like a brave-hearted and sensible man, seeing the ship driving on to the
shore, told the men to be of good cheer, that they would all be saved, and
he persuaded them to eat that they might have strength to save themselves
by swimming. In the night, when they cast anchor, to keep the ship off
the rocks, Paul saw the sailors in the boat, about to make their escape,
and leave the others to save themselves as best they could. Paul said to
the centurion and the soldiers, “ Unless these men remain, yon cannot be
saved.” Of course, he saw that it was necessary to have sailors in order
to work the ship. To see this needed no miraculous gift of sight, and it
only showed his good sense in taking every secular precaution to avoid a
watery grave. However, as many a ship has done since, in spite of every
effort, their vessel went to pieces on the rocks, but all were saved by the
most natural means possible. “ The centurion commanded that they which
�The Apostles of Christ.
13
cenld swim should cast themselves first into the sea, and get to land: and
the rest, some on boards, and some on broken pieces of the ship. And so
it came to pass, that they escaped all safe to land.” Now if it was part
of the divine plan that Paul should be saved at all costs, that he might
preach the Gospel in Rome, how simple it would have been for the angel
of the Lord to have whisked him off, as the spirit did Philip, and have
set him down in the capital of the seven hills, without all this long and
tedious process of a sea-voyage and a shipwreck. It makes Paul’s life a
little more picturesque, but it does not in the slightest degree enhance our
estimation of his spiritual powers, or prove the truth of one tittle of his
new creed. W hen they got to land they found themselves on the island
of Melita, and were received with great kindness by the inhabitants, whom
the narrator terms barbarians. A fire was kindled, and Paul gathered a
bundle of sticks and laid them on it, when out of the heat a viper crawled
and fastened on his hand. The people when they saw this, said among
themseWes, “ No doubt this man is a murderer, whom, though he hath
escaped the sea, yet vengeance suffereth not to live.” This was no great
compliment to the heaven-sent messenger of the Gospel. But it only shows
how people may be deceived by appearances; for have we not had amongst
us men who have appeared as angels of light till they were found out;
whose conduct proved that they were more fitted for the hulks than the
pulpit ? However, the viper did not sting Paul sufficiently to cause him
to swell, or suddenly fall down dead; whereat the people changed their
minds, and said that he was a God. Which showed that they were again
mistaken. After this Paul, to show his power, healed the father of
Publius, the chief man of the island, of precisely the same disease that
Christ healed in a woman. The people of Melita appear to have been
peculiar in their bodily conformation, for the text goes on to say, “ So
when this was done, others also, which had diseases in the island,
came, and were healed.” This is a part of the human frame that must be
unknown to modern physiologists, as it is never mentioned in books on
anatomy. Perhaps, like the modes of cure adopted by Jesus and his
apostles, it has become obsolete. Paul then went to Rome, but was never
brought to trial. “ He dwelt two whole years in his own hired house,
preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching those things which concern
the Lord Jesus Christ, with all confidence, no man forbidding him.” But
Paul was not quite free from the usual overbearing and uncharitable
nature of the Christian.
When he called the Jews, his brethren,
together in Rome, he preached as usual to them from morning until
evening, when some believed, and some, did not, which is a very com
mon case in the propagation of new views. But “when they agreed
not among themselves, they departed, after that Paul had spoken one word,
Well spake the Holy Ghost by Esaias the prophet unto our fathers,
saying, Go unto this people, and say, Hearing ye shall hear, and shall not
understand ; and seeing ye shall see, and not perceive: for the heart of this
people is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes
have they closed ; lest they should see with their eyes, and hear with their
ears, and understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I
should heal them.” He was evidently disappointed, like all enthusiasts,
that he could not make all people see as he saw, at the first time of asking.
Here closes the book of Acts, but what became of Peter, and Philip, and
Paul, is not recorded. How long they lived, and where they died, or if
they died at all, we know not. They were not ordinary men, and there
fore we must not expect an ordinary biography of them. Hew few of the
�14
The Apostles of Christ.
doings of the twelve Apostles have been deemed worthy of record! Only
three out of twelve did anything of note according to this book, and* the
greatest of the three was not added to their number till years after the
death of the master. All they did was of a miraculous nature, intended to
astonish and overawe the judgment of their listeners; at least so it is
represented. But of what value is all this in these days? Who that
makes reason his guide and nature his standard, is influenced by such
exhibitions? A moral truth that cannot be enforced without the aid of
startling effects, is not likely to be universally or even generally received^
Truth wins its way silently and surely, and makes the greatest progress
when taught in the most simple manner. If men want the marvellous
now, they can have it in abundance without the aid of supernatural power.
Nature furnishes marvels enough, far transcending any of the reputed
miracles of the Bible.
The foregoing remarks by no means exhaust all the points worthy of
comment in this most extraordinary narrative—or rather series <4 narra
tives, for it is improbable that one relator could have been an eye-witness
of all the acts said to have been performed by the apostles on so many
different stages, I contend that the said remarks are not unnecessarily
severe, or characterised by a levity calculated to wantonly outrage the
feelings of believers. Whatever partakes of the ludicrous in these pages
is provoked solely by the wording of the text. And why should an ab
surdity, in whatever form it may present itself, escape the shafts of the
satirist ? Folly is folly the world over; and quite as many abuses have
been “ put down ” by the wholesome application of ridicule as were ever
preached out of existence by the sententious utterances of the pulpit. The
word “ farce,” employed in the beading to this paper, may seem to some
readers harsh, and therefore need a justification. I would not knowingly
use any word that I could not reconcile to my own mind; I therefore pro
ceed, by giving a summary of the argument, to endeavour to justify the
use of a phrase which may never have struck the ordinary reader as
applicable to any Book of the New Testament. The Bible is so continu
ously read through the green spectacles of faith, that the orthodox
believer is astounded and alarmed when assured that the book is simply
black and white, and not of the tint his coloured medium imparts to it.
It must never be forgotten that we are dealing with a volume that
claims to have supernatural advantages over every other book in the
world; that its writers were specially inspired; that every word, letter,
and point is in its right place; and that implicit belief in its contents is
absolutely necessary to salvation. A book endowed with all these advan
tages should not only be easily understood, but it should be so worded
that it can by no possibility be misunderstood. Its contents should
appeal to every judgment alike. But does it? If so, how is it that
there are hundreds and hundreds of differing sects in the Christian world ?
I read the Bible as I would any other book, and I cannot, spite of the
most strenuous efforts on my part., see in it, as a whole, the sublimity the
orthodox sects pretend they see there. In the reputed sayings and doings
of Jesus I perceive the most ludicrous elements; and these Acts of the
Apostles, which are so largely made up of the miraculous, and which are
intended to overawe the judgment of mankind, if viewed in the light of
modem intelligence, are farcical from beginning to end.
The book commences with the statement of an alleged fact totally
different from any of the previous accounts, though the reader is led to
suppose that it is penned by the writer of one of the Gospels. This at
�'Hie Apostles of Christ.
15
once destroys its claim to infallibility, and reduces it to the level of an
ordinary human production, and justifies any criticism which may be
brought to bear upon it. Peter, “ an unlearned and ignorant man,”
makes a blundering statement about the death of Judas, as might be ex
pected of him; and he relates several other matters during his career
which may be equally erroneous. We have it upon this man’s authority
that “ God had sworn with an oath ” to David, “ that of the fruit of his
loins, according to the flesh, he would raise up Christ to sit on his throne.”
Christ never sat upon the throne of David, and Peter’s word is utterly
untrustworthy.
The very first display made by the apostles, after the cloven tongues, or
fire, or something, had “sat upon them,” was so impressive, that their
listeners mistook the outpourings of the Holy Ghost for a manifestation of
drunkenness! An anti-climax, truly, not worthy of the highest order of
poetry.
The one bright spot in all this book is the description of the comma*
nistic life led by the apostles at a certain period, but this is marred by the
brutal incident relating to the treatment of Ananias and Sapphira, though
one cannot help smiling at the matter-of-fact way in which the young
men wind up the bodies, and bury them side by side. Peter and John, as
ringleaders in the murder, were put in prison; but locks, bolts, and bars,
though they did not fly asunder, were unable to hold them in durance vile,
for the angel of the Lord at night set them free. Notwithstanding this
display of heavenly power on their behalf, both Peter and John are again
taken, and get well beaten before they are allowed to go. If it was neces
sary to release them from prison to show that God approved of the murder
of Ananias and Sapphira, why were the apostles beaten? This is as
amusing as the way in which the authorities acquiesced in the suggestion
of Gamaliel.
Peter’s raising of Tabitha from the dead raises one or two pertinent
questions. Do persons raised from the dead ever die again ? One wonders
how they can have the conscience to depart this life a second time. Peter,
an ignorant, unlettered fisherman, is represented as possessing the power
of recalling the spirit from its flight to the judgment seat, of keeping the
court of Heaven waiting, and of causing a person to go through the agony of
two deaths and two resurrections. Does any Christian ever reflect upon the
disarrangement of the Divine economy which must ensue from the per
formance of such a miracle as this ?
The kind of vision that appeared to Peter in his hungry trance, if told
of Mahomet, or of Joseph Smith the Mormon, would be made the laughing
stock of the Christi',n world. Here we have a foreshadowing of the
heaven of St. John, as depicted in the Book of Revelation, where all sorts
of beasts and strange animals are kept, and which are put into a vessel
made of a sheet, and let down from above as a meal for a man of delicate
appetite. The ropes that held the vessel at the four corners, must have
been of enormous length and very tough, like the “yarn ” itself. Peter
is the most extraordinary man of all the apostles, for though the voice of
God entreated him three times to partake of the not dainty dish set before
him, he flatly refused, and yet was allowed to live. After this who can
say that disobedience to the will of God is a deadly sin?
Herod is represented as being smitten by the Lord and brought to a
speedy end, not for any fault of his own, but because “ the people gave a
shout, saying, It is the voice of a god, and not of a man.” We fail to see
the retributive justice here. But we have net much sympathy for a king
�16
The Apostles of Christ.
who could keep a chamberlain with the ominous name of Blastns! He
could not expect to flourish long with such an individual as chief of his
household.
Philip’s proceedings are very similar to those of his fellow apostles; they
are all miraculous. He is on the most intimate terms with the angel of
the Lord, who prompts him what to do, and who is so obliging as to carry
him from one place to another free of charge, and in a carriage not made
with hands. This is the cheapest mode of locomotion yet invented. Do
Christians wish us to believe that angels and devils wandered about the
land of Judea as freely as sheep and goats do now? And if the Lord and
his Angels and Spirits were then on the earth interfering with and in
fluencing the actions of true believers, why are they not doing so now,
and in countries where the faithful most do congregate ? God’s chosen
ones need guidance quite as much in the nineteenth century as in the
first. And the most friendly earthquakes are always at hand to shake the
masonry of houses and prisons and frighten the inmates, that speedy con
versions may ensue. The assertion that such events happened in order
that one particular dogmatic religion might be promoted over all others, is
sufficient to shake the faith of any rational man in the truth of the whole
narrative. If Christianity were to be now propagated by means of
earthquakes, it would speedily be put down as a shocking nuisance. But
why is it not so propagated ? We are told, because “ the age of miracles
is past ”—yes, past all comprehension 1
St. Paul has done more for the spread of Christianity than Christ
himself, yet he is first introduced with very doubtfal credentials. Several
persons are mentioned in this book of Acts who meet with shameful treat
ment, who did not a tithe of the harm wrought by Paul. But that is
strictly in accordance with divine justice! Paul himself was deceived by
a false promise in a very glaring instance. In chapter xviii. 10, the Lord,
after urging him to keep on with his preaching, distinctly says, “For I am
with thee, and no man shall set on thee to hurt thee: for I have much
people in this city.” But Paul must have been very much astonished at
the way in which this promise was fulfilled, for after this he is beaten by
a rabble, he runs great risk of being torn to pieces, he is struck in the
mouth, he is put in prison, he is sent in chains on a dangerous sea voyage,
he is shipwrecked, haying been consigned to the tender mercies of sailors
who took nothing to eat for jov/rteen days, he is bitten by a viper, and
he ends his career in this book of Acts in anything but an amiable temper,
his mission to the Jews having completely broken down. This protection
may have been intended to apply only to the city of Corinth in which
Paul was at the time it was promised, and that the Lord did not intend to
depend upon his own power, but on that of his friends who were numerous
there; but if so, it is a mystery why the Lord should not have wished to
protect so valuable a servant as Paul was against all trouble and suffering
everywhere. But the ways of the Lord are past finding out.
If the Acts of the Apostles is not a farce, it certainly lacks the gran
deur of a tragedy; perhaps it may be designated a Comedy of Errors.
PBICE TWOPENCE.
Printed and Published by Austin & Co., 17, Johnson’s Court, Fleet
Street, London, E.C.
�
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
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
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
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
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.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
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
A name given to the resource
The apostles of Christ: a farce in several acts
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Holyoake, Austin
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 16 p. ; 18 cm.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
[Austin & Co.]
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[n.d.]
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
G4953
Subject
The topic of the resource
Bible
Jesus Christ
Atheism
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<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 (The apostles of Christ: a farce in several acts), 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>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Atheism
Bible (N.T.)-Acts of the Apostles
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/7d5ad1da3deeb453371f87a808d689bc.pdf?Expires=1779321600&Signature=NjDUiXku9-%7EmMrrOsx-cCQFBq4P9ktkfisMM33UMC%7EHHw-e3OsSBDJR3NnTOrIKdX7TuJbUDGc05PQlhuX2-OheWigMlfqZ6cJd4TZZe8FB1wO-%7EkYSSylc7FXe54TT%7E5rEu1dVuFFN67B2uF5eWjG%7EYws3LrfeuA3rUjb6ajPiLsLh-FZQvxhuXgVWPj-vNWlQxcA5jbMtXnOqgHNDSVP7A4JsrdczxQ4mpON9jMsD58khDqX7llV51l5KJdbN1b4Oj0-CB2J4c%7EKGaVWrM653ZRhR%7ErskzcvH7jKkpHjr2r16yHEDAvfkyi5MVP6bXCJ%7E4-SQCqdPkbtPdDnCQwg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
d0cd0ef6f3a68d561f563863443114ff
PDF Text
Text
CHRIST AND OSIRIS
BY
J. S.
STUART-GLENNIE,
M. A.
Reprinted by permission from,
‘IN THE MORNINGLAND.’
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
II THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD, UPPER NORWOOD,
LONDON, S.E.
1876.
Price Threepence.
�LONDON:
PRINTED BY C. W. REYNELL, LITTLE PULTENEY STREET,
HAYMARKET.
�CHRIST
AND
OSIRIS.
“ Thou hast conquered, 0 pale Galilean; the world has grown
grey from thy breath ;
We have drunken of things Lethean, and fed on the fulness
of death.
0 lips that the live blood faints in, the leavings of racks and
rods!
O ghastly glories of saints, dead limbs of gibbeted gods !
Though all men abase them before you in spirit, and all knees
bend,
I kneel not, neither adore you, but standing, look to the end.
*****
Though before thee the throned Cytherean be fallen, and
hidden her head,
Yet thy kingdom shall pass, Galilean, thy dead shall go down
to the dead.” *
eflecting- here, on the Temple-roof at
Karnak, on the general results of our
Egyptian studies, we are first of all struck
with what I may call the Christian character of
Osirianism. But before proceeding to point this
out, and to state the hypothesis which this Christian
character of Osirianism suggests, it may be desir
able to offer a few remarks on the outward, and
hence more vulgarly appreciated characteristics of
the Egyptian religion. For, in amazement at any
likening of Osirianism to Christianism, or of Christianism to Osirianism, many readers may, as if in
R
* Swinburne, Poems and Ballads, Hymn to Proserpine, pp. 79-80.
�6
Christ and Osiris.
settlement of any suggestion even of a causal relation
between Osirianism and Christianism, ask, ‘ Were not
the Egyptians, as a matter of fact, idolaters, and
worshippers, indeed, of the most grotesque and
monstrous idols ? ’ But let us understand what
idolatry means. Possibly, you who put this question
may be more of an idolater than were the ancient
Egyptians when they first created their Gods.
Idolatry is ceremonial worship when the meaning of
the ceremonies and symbols is lost. We are helped
to the understanding of this by the study of language,
in its first formations. Names, as a class of signs,
*
are themselves but a kind of symbols. In the
formation of a language, they are at first uttered
certainly not without a meaning ; they certainly are
the attempt to denote some thing, or express some
want, hitherto nameless, unutterable. Yet these
names, at first so meaningful, may in time so com
pletely lose their original meaning, as to become the
terminations of a declension, f So symbols, animal
headed deities, and others. What if the symbol, in
later times, so lost its meaning as to be itself wor
shipped ? Originally it had carried the mind from
itself to that which it signified. And as, in Lan
guage, ‘ the formation of substantive nouns is the
first stage of personifying God
so, in Religion,
the creation of symbols is the first stage of idolatry.
We shall hereafter have occasion to consider idol
creation more fully, and from other points of view.
Here I will only remark, that a reference to the
idolatry of the Egyptians is unfortunate, if it is
intended thereby to disprove the likeness of Osirian* ‘ A name is a word taken at pleasure to serve for a mark which may
raise in our mind a thought like to some thought we had before,
and which, being pronounced to others, may be to them a sign of what
thought the speaker had, or had not, before in his mind.’—Hobbes,
Computation or Logic, ch. it., cited by Mill, System of Logic, vol. II. p. 23.
t See Miiller, Lectures on the Science of Language.
t Bunsen, Egypt's Place, vol. iv. p. 566.
�Christ and Osiris.
7
ism to Christianism. For we shall find that it is
just in comparing these two Creeds in this matter of
idolatry, that — when we set Yahvehism between
them—their likeness comes out most strongly—the
religion of Abraham, whether as Judaism, or as
Mohammedanism, acting as a foil, and bringing out
with startling clearness, at once, the Osirian cha
racter of Christianism, and the Christian character of
Osirianism.
2. But is the Animal-worship of the Egyptians next
objected against any comparison of Osirianism with
Christianism, or any hypothesis with respect to the
origination of the latter in a transformation of the
former ? Well, it is admitted that that exaggerated
care for animals which becomes a superstitious wor
ship of them is not a feature of Christian religious
emotion. But in the Animal-worship which—pro
bably derived from an aboriginal African element in
the population — was, soon after the time of
*
Menes, incorporated with Osirianism throughout the
Empire, there should seem to have been an idea
which modern Science tends more and more clearly
to establish—the identity, namely, of the principle of
life in all its manifestations.f ‘ And what is this,’
asks Bunsen, £ but a specific adaptation of that con
sciousness of the divinity of Nature, which is implied
in all the religious consciousness of the Old World ?’J
The doctrine of transmigration thus became a sacred
link between animal and human life. And ‘ the
community between the human and anima,! soul
being once admitted, we can understand how the
Egyptians a^ last arrived at the idea of worshipping
in animals a living manifestation of Divinity.’§ But
if a similar doctrine is not found in Christianism,*
§
* Bunsen, Egypt's Place, vol. iv. p. 637
t See Spencer, Principles of Biology, and Principles of Psychology
t Bunsen, Egypt's Place, vol. iv. p. 640.
§ Ibid. vol. iv. p. 641.
�Christ and Osiris.
one is tempted to say that the want of it is much to
be regretted. For there have been, and even still
are, few worse features in Christian Civilization
than its apathy to animal suffering. And it is very
*
noteworthy that it was the great Apostle of the
Utilitarian School of Moralists who, in that very
year from which dates a new period of the Modern
Revolution, 1789, introduced into European Ethics
the consideration of1 the interests of other animals.’!"
So. likewise, a new care for, and new appreciation of
animals is one of the characteristic features of
Comte s conception of the New Religion of Hu
manity.J And if, at length, men are beginning
again to become sympathetically aware that other
animals also besides themselves feel pain, and that it
is shameful and dastardly to inflict pain unnecessarily
upon them ; if there is now some hope that
Christian f sports ’ may, at length, be done away
with, and animal-barbarities generally ; and if,
in realising that fact of physical kinship with our
Elder Brethren, which Science affirms, and Chris
tianity scouts, there is being devoloped some nobler
sympathy also with them—this, at least, it must be
admitted, is certainly not owing to any doctrine in
Christianism that can be paralleled in Osirianism.
3. The considerations thus suggested on the c Idola
try and on the ‘ Animal-worship ’ of the Egyptians
may, I trust, prepare us candidly now to consider the
more essential doctrines of Osirianism—those doc
fnri^^E1\ristiU1.Crkelty ffenera!ly’we must not recall the gladia
torial comhats of the Roman amphitheatre, without recalling also the
heretic burnings of every chief town in Christendom. Noris Classic
ChrkH^o-1®^6 t]udg(?d
th,e days of lts decline: but rather, as also
aIps;1tYdlza!10n» by the days of its prime. And that the Middle
♦Ur ,!16
f-,lristian civilization is proved by the fact, that
” Ament Fhlch ha?l SCce then> modified Christianity has tended
more and more to sweep it, both as a doctrinal and as a social system,
I
Morals and Legislation, ch.
+ bee Mill, Comte and Positivism,
xvii.
�Christ and Osiris.
9
trines which are so remarkably similar to the great
dogmas of Christianism. And with respect to what
the great religious doctrines of the Egyptians really
were, we are not now in any doubt. Eor one of the
grandest achievements of Modern Science has been
*
the translation of their Funeral Ritual, the ‘ Todtenbuch,’ or ‘ Book of the Dead,’ as Lepsius called it, or
as it calls itself, the ‘ Departure into Light.’f It
belongs to Bunsen’s fourth class of those Sacred
Books which would form collectively the Bible of the
ancient Egyptians, and is scarcely posterior to 3,000
years before our era.J For, as Bunsen points out,
we have a very remarkable proof that the origin of
the prayers and hymns of this Ritual belongs pro
bably to the Pre-Menite Dynasty of Abydos, between
3100 and 4500 B.C., in the fact that we find one of
these hymns, § not in its original simplicity, but
already mixed up with glosses and commentaries,
inscribed on the coffin of Queen Mentuhept of the
eleventh dynasty. This monumental text agrees
with the printed text of the Turin papyrus. And
though the first year of the eleventh dynasty, which
lasted forty-three years, cannot be placed earlier
than 2782 B.c. yet, if we consider the many stages*
§
* ‘ The interpretation of the extinct languages of Egypt and Central
Asia will ever rank as one of the distinguishing features of the nine
teenth century.’—Birch, in Bunsen’s Egypt's Place, vol. v. p. ix.
t Or ‘ Manifestation to Light,’ according to Champollion and Dr.
Birch. The complete translation by the latter was only published with
the fifth volume of Bunsen's Egypt in 1867. But I had with me at
Thebes the previous volumes, besides Wilkinson’s Ancient Egyptians
and other works ; and I had the advantage of perusing and making
copious extracts from the translation of an American Egyptologer who
was residing at Luxor. Even Dr. Birch’s translation, however, must
be considered as representing the state of hieroglyphical knowledge
rather twenty years ago than now—so long was its publication, owing
to various causes, delayed. The translation of the ‘ Tod.tenbuch,’ to
which students must now refer, is that by Brugsch, now in course of
publication. My references, however, here, will be to Dr. Birch’s Trans
lation, as probably more accessible to the majority of readers.
t Bunsen, Egypt's Place, vol. iv. p. 646.
§ It forms chapter xvii. of the Ritual. See Birch’s translation in
Egypt's Place, vol. v. pp. 172-80.
IT Compare Egypt's Place, vol. V. pp. 29, 88, and 94.
�io
Christ and Osiris.
that must have been passed through, before the
original hymn, learned by heart, and recited from
memory, became mixed-up with scholia in an nndivided sacred text, we cannot but date its composi
tion and primitive use many centuries anterior to
that dynasty in which we find it thus embedded in
explanations. This hymn implies not only the wor
ship of Osiris, but the whole system of doctrines
connected with his redeeming life on Earth, and
judicial office in Heaven. Yet an antiquity, even
greater than is thus witnessed-to, we are obliged to
assign to Osirianism, by the fact that the Osirismyth itself mentions ‘ Byblus (Gebal in Phoenicia) as
the place where Isis brought up the young Osiris.’*
And this derivation from Asia is further confirmed
by the universally admitted identity of ‘ the funda
mental ideas of the worship, and sacred ceremonials
of Adonis and Osiris.’f To the very earliest period,
then, of the history of Humanity, as the history of
Thought, we must carry back the ideas of the Osirian
Faith. And yet, we may possibly find in the sequel,
that it is but a transformed Osirianism that, to this
day, dominates Christendom.
4. Considered as a whole, the 1 Departure into Light ’
is a revelation in something of an epic, and even
occasionally dramatic form of the departure of the
Soul into the Other-world, of its judgment, and of
what is required of it, in order to its final beatific
reception by its Father Osiris. Its formularies may,
perhaps, best be arranged under such heads as the
following:—I. General Address. II. Address to each
of the Forty-two Assessors. III. Announcement of
Justification. IV. Telling the names of different
parts of the Temple. V. Blessings, &c.J According
to Egyptian notions, it was ‘ essentially an inspired
* Egypt's Place, vol. iv. p. 347.
f Ibid.
J Compare Birch’s introduction to his translation, Egypt's Place,
vol. v.
�Christ and Osiris.
ii
work; and the term Hermetic, so often applied by
profane writers to these books, in reality means
inspired. It is Thoth himself who speaks, and
reveals the will of the Gods, and the mysterious
nature of divine things to man.’* Portions of them
are expressly stated to have been written by the very
finger of Thoth himself, and to have been the com
position of a great God.f And in this, it may be
noted by the way, that we see an illustration of what,
in the Introduction, was pointed out as one of the
general characteristics of the First Age of Humanity,
namely, the authorlessness, for the most part, of
its Literature, and its attribution, to supernatural
sources. But sacred this Ritual was also esteemed
as ‘ assuring to the soul a passage from the Earth; a
transit through the purgatory and other regions of
the Dead; the entrance into the Empyreal Gate, by
which the souls arrived at the presence of God,
typified by the Sun ; the admission into the Bark, or
Orb of the Sun, ever traversing in brilliant light the
' liquid ether; and protection from the various Liersin-wait, or Adversaries, who sought to accuse,
destroy, or detain it in its passage, or destiny.’J
In this most ancient book of the Osirian Scriptures
there is, no doubt, not only a vast mass of unin
telligible ritualistic allusions, but evidence of gross
superstition. Not, however, without evidence of
this, are also the Christian Scriptures. And it must
be borne in mind that the Osirian Bible had not the
good fortune to be, in the formation of its canon,
purged, as was the Christian, of impurer, apocryphal
elements. Yet, notwithstanding this misfortune, the
religious tone of the Osirian Ritual is such as the
following brief extracts may serve, though inade
quately, to illustrate.
* Ibid. p. 133.
+ See chapter lxiv., Rubric.
j Birch in Egypt's Place, vol. V. p. 134.
�12
Christ and Osiris.
5. Very touching are some of the expressions in
which the Departed calls on Osiris to save him from
his Accusers, from the Lake of Fire, and from the
Tormentors. Addressing these with the noble bold
ness of great faith, ‘ says Osiris Anfanch . . . while
you strive against me, your acts against me are
against Osiris............... To strive against me, is
as against Osiris.’ Again: 1 Let me come, having
seen and passed, having passed the Gate to see my
Father Osiris. I have made way through the dark
ness to my Father Osiris. I am his beloved. I stab
the heart of Sut. I do the things of my Father
Osiris. I have opened every door in heaven and
earth. I am his beloved son. I have come from the
mummy, an instructed spirit.’ And again : ‘ says
Osiris Anfanch, save me, as thou savest what
belongs to thy word ; catch me up ; the Lord is God,
there is but one God for me (or, before the Lord of
Mankind, there is but one Lord for me).’ A passage,
this, which is but one of many proving the mono
*
theism of the better instructed, or more deeply
thinking, of those whom the narrow ignorance
of that Creed propagated by the Galilean Fishermen
sets down as 1 idolatrous heathens.’ He who is thus
represented as speaking in a certain stage of his
progress to the region of ‘ Sacred Repose, ’ is more
particularly described in the beginning of some
papyri as ‘ Osiris Anfanch of the true faith, born of
the lady Souhenchem of fair fame.’ The prefix to
the man’s name of that of God himself is the ‘ new
name ’ which every true believer receives after death.
In other passages the good man is even spoken of as an
Osiris. ‘ The Osiris lives, after he dies, like the sun
daily; for as the sun dies, and is born in the
morning, so the Osiris dies.’ And finally, as to that
immortality which is so ignorantly imagined to have
* See chap. tv. sect. iii.
�Christ and Osiris.
13
been 1 brought to light by the Gospel, ’ the Osiris
exclaims in another passage : 1 I do not die again in
the Region of Sacred Repose.’ And again. ‘ Who
soever does what belongs to him, visibly (individu
ally ?) his soul participates in Life Eternal.’ And
again. ‘ Plait for thyself a garland . . . thy life is
everlasting.’
6. But it is the central doctrine of Osirianism that
more particularly claims our attention.
‘ The
peculiar character of Osiris,’ says Sir Gardner
Wilkinson, ‘ his coming upon Earth for the benefit of
mankind, with the title of “Manifester of Good”
and “ Revealer of Truth his being put to death by
the Malice of the Evil One; his burial and Resurrec
tion, and his becoming the Judge of the Dead, are
the most interesting features of the Egyptian Reli
gion. This was the great mystery; and this myth
and his worship were of the earliest times and
universal in Egypt.’* And, with this central doc
trine of Osirianism, so perfectly similar to that of
Christianism, doctrines are associated precisely analo
gous to those associated in Christianism with its
central doctrine. In ancient Osirianism, as in
modern Christianism, the Godhead is conceived as a
Trinity, yet are the three Gods declared to be only one
God. In ancient Osirianism, as in modern Chris
tianism, we find the worship of a Divine Mother and
Child. In ancient Osirianism, as in modern Chris
tianism, there is a doctrine of Atonement. In ancient
Osirianism, as in modern Christianism, we find the
vision of a Last Judgment, and Resurrection of the
Body. And finally, in ancient Osirianism, as in
modern Christianism, the sanctions of morality are a
Lake of Eire and tormenting Demons, on the one
hand, and on the other, Eternal Life in the presence
* Ancient Egyptians (Popular Edition), vol. i. p. 331.
second Series of the larger work, vol. 1. p. 320.
Compare
�14
Christ and Osiris.
of God. Is it possible, then, that such similarities of
doctrines should not raise the most serious questions
as to the relation of the beliefs about Christ to those
about Osiris ; as to the cause of this wonderful simi
larity of the doctrines of Christianism to those of
Osirianism; nay, as to the possibility of the whole
doctrinal system of Modern Orthodoxy being but a
transformation of the Osiris-myth ? But if so—you
logically argue with amazed incredulity—all the most
sacred dogmas of the Christian faith would be
proved to have originated but in the influence of a
4 heathen ’ religion—a religion over the scenes of
which we Christians ordinarily pass with the most
complacent contempt ? Nay, if so ; if the doctrines
cf Christianism had but such an origin; must not.
the Christian ‘ Revelation ’ be acknowledged utterly
worthless to prove the reality of any one of the
supernatural facts which its doctrines affirm—even a
Personal Immortality, for instance, or a Personal
God ?
7. Well, be the consequences what they may, we
must find out what is the fact. And there is certainly
no escape in the desperate hypothesis to which the
manifestly Christian character of Osirianism has
driven some to have recourse—the hypothesis that
these doctrines of Osirianism were, somehow or
other, themselves a ‘ supernatural revelation.’ For
the discovery of Osirianism is the discovery of the
missing link between Christianism and Heathenism
generally, the religions of the First Age of Hu
manity, or what I have termed Naturianism. It has
hitherto appeared not only a crime but a blunder,
not merely a blasphemy but a frivolity, to compare
the Christian doctrines of the Trinity, of the Incar
nation, and of the Death and Resurrection of Christ
with the similar doctrines of Naturian Religions.
But the doctrines of a Trinity, of an Incarnation,
and of the Death and Resurrection of a God-man are
�Christ and Osiris.
15
developed in Osirianism with such gravity, such
moral purity, and such splendour, that we cannot
hesitate to honour them by a comparison with these
doctrines as developed in Christianism. Yet, from
Osirianism the gradation is so gentle through the
whole series of Nature-worships down to the lowest,
that, having compared the story and worship of
Christ with the worship and myth of Osiris, we find
ourselves necessarily comparing the Christian story
and worship with the worship and myth of Dionysus,
nay, of Adonis, and of Thammuz,—of Thammuz,
Whose annual wound in Lebanon allured
The Syrian damsels to lament his fate,
In amorous ditties all a summer’s day.
*
And hence if, to support the common belief in the
supernatural origin of Christianism, it is concluded
that the manifestly similar and unquestionably earlier
doctrines of Osiria'nism had a supernatural origin;
then, as we thus find it impossible to draw a line
separating the highest of the Heathen religions from
the lowest, a supernatural origin must also be
supposed for all those Heathen religions in
which we find—and where do we not find ?—the
story of a divine man dying, and—though but to rise
again—‘ in amorous ditties ’ annually lamented.t
But so great are the interests at stake, that even an
hypothesis so wild as this, it may be attempted to
defend. For, as has just been suggested, if these
Heathen beliefs in the incarnation of a God-man, and
in Heaven and Hell, have no sort of supernatural
authority; and if Osirianism is, indeed, the missing
link that connects Christianism with every one of
* Milton, Paradise Lost.
f Arjve 7oa>r, Krflepeia,
cfipepov ’tcrxeo nopp-Giv.
Aet ere 7raAi^ /cAavom, 7raAtr eh %ros &Wo Saxpvtrai.
Bion, Epitaph, Adon,
�i6
Christ and Osiris.
these religions ; what authority is there for the
objective reality of any one of those supernatural
existences, belief in which is thus found to be common
to Christianism, and Heathenism generally ? An
attempt, therefore, will doubtless be made to prove
the supernatural and divine origin of Heathenism.
And truly, when we recall Christian denunciations of,
and missions to the ‘ Heathenwhen we find that
the essential doctrines of ‘ Heathenism ’ are, just as
in Christianism, a Trinity, an Incarnation, and a
Future State of Reward and Punishment; hence
that—as such doctrines can have no guarantee of
objective reality, except they have had a super
natural origin—all must have had such an origin, or
none; and hence that, to guarantee the validity of
their own beliefs, Christians must maintain the
divine origin of those of Heathenism; there is seen
such a profound and tragic irony in the situation that
we become more than ever attached to the study of
that sublime drama—the history of Man.
8. Any hope, however, of establishing a theory of
the supernatural origin of the doctrines of Osirianism,
how ‘ Christian ’ soever they may be, has had, I trust
the ground cut from under it, by the facts, in the
foregoing chapter brought together, in explanation of
these doctrines as myths. For, before any theory of
the supernatural origin of these doctrines can be
maintained, the facts must be met which were in the
foregoing chapter summarised as explanatory of the
origin of the myths of Naturianism. These facts
were, as will be remembered, first, those which define
the character of the spontaneity of Mind; secondly,
the facts of the conditions under which that spon
taneity worked in primaeval societies; and thirdly,
those explanations of modern spiritist conceptions
which confirm the theory by which we explain the
origin of primitive spiritist conceptions. Before any
rational attempt, therefore, any attempt worthy of
�Christ and Osiris.
17
scientific notice, can be made to account for the
Christian character of the doctrines of Osirianism,
and of the other ‘ Heathen ’ religions, by attributing
to them some sort of supernatural origin in a ‘ primi
tive revelationthose three great classes of facts,
psychological, economical, and physio-psychological,
in the foregoing chapter summarised, must be shown
to be, not only severally, but jointly inadequate to
explain, as not only of a natural, but as of a very low
natural origin, the formation of such doctrines as
those which give to Osirianism its Christian cha
racter. Nor are these the only facts which must be
met before a scientific hearing even can be
gained for any hypothesis that would give to the
doctrines, whether Christian or Osirian, of a Trinity,
a life, death, and resurrection of a God-man, and an
Other-world of Reward and Punishment, any sort of
supernatural origin, and hence any degree of authori
tative sanction. For besides the great classes of
facts just specified, those also must be met which, in
proving the conception of Mutual Determination to
be the true and ultimate conception of Causation,
show such hypotheses, as this of a supernatural
origin of these doctrines, to belong properly only to,
or to be derived from, the earlier, and more ignorant
stages of men’s knowledge of the relations of things.
But these facts have not as yet been met by any of
the arguers for the supernatural origin, and there
fore authoritative truth of theological doctrines. We
must conclude, therefore, that if, similar though the
doctrines of Christianism are to the myths of Osi
rianism, and of Naturianism generally, a special and
independent origin cannot be proved for them; they
were but derived from, or but transformations of
these myths. And if so, then, belief in them has, at
bottom, no diviner sanction than the labour-driven
ignorance, and priest-ridden servility which—result
ing from the economical conditions under which
�18
Christ and Osiris.
mental spontaneities originally worked—led to what
were but the mere subjective fictions of the myth
creating imagination being taken for objective realities.
Our hypothesis, as it first presented itself, was simply,
that the similarity of the doctrines of Osirianism to
those of Christianism was such as to be naturally
explained only by showing that the earlier import
antly influenced the development of the later Creed.
We now, however, see that, if it is to such an origin
that the doctrines of Christianism are to be traced, we
cannot stop here. If the Christian doctrines of the
Trinity, Incarnation, and Other-world, are in any
way to be derived from the myths of Osirianism, or
generally, of Naturianism; they had in these myths
but their proximate origin. Their ultimate origin
must, therefore, have been identical with the origin
of these myths ; and, like that, to be found but in
those base conditions, in the foregoing chapter set
forth, of primitive spiritist conceptions.
9. Unquestionably, the verification of an hypo
thesis which, to such an origin as this, would trace the
myths of Christianity, is of the very gravest import.
For it is almost incredibly tragical, that the sorrow
of a Milton, for instance, in meditating on the death
of Christ, had—so far as that sorrow was occasioned
by the thought of a divine person, an incarnate Grod,
who had come voluntarily on earth for the good of
mankind—no more ground of actual objective fact
than had the lamentations of the Syrian damsels, whom
the great Christian poet, all unconscious of being
himself the victim of a similar bitter-sweet delusion,
scornfully represents as, ‘ in amorous ditties, ’ bewail
ing such a fiction of their own imaginations as a
Thammuz or Adonis. And yet, if we consider the
hypothesis here suggested, on the Temple-roof at
Karnak, in relation to our Ultimate Law of History,
we shall see that such an origin as we have here been
led to suppose for the doctrines of Christianism—we
�Christ and Osiris.
shall see that a transformation of the myths of Naturianism in such doctrines as those of Christianism—is
but a deduction from our Ultimate Law, and a deduc
tion, the verification of which will be one of the most
important verifications of that Law. For, of that
Law the great central affirmation is, that the passage
from the earlier to the later mode of conceiving
Causation is through a transitional age marked by
the differentiation of Subjective and Objective; a
differentiation implying a great development of in
dividuality, of subjectivity, of morality; but not a
differentiation implying anything more than greater
abstractness merely in the primitive spiritist concep
tion of Causation. But if so, then it will evidently
follow that the spiritist beliefs which have dominated
the First Age of Humanity, will not be destroyed, but
only undergo a moral transformation. And what is
it that we find in the doctrines of Christianism but
jiist this—all the old myths of Osirianism revived in
such an identical fashion intellectually, that,—put but
Christ for Osiris,—and the general description of the
one creed is an accurate description of the other ?
Only in the moral spirit of Christianism is there a
change. But this is just what, from our Ultimate Law
of History, we should expect to find ; and the fact,
therefore, which can be for it but a most important
verification. This changed moral spirit, however, in
no way affects the objective validity of the myths in
which it is expressed. These continue to be but a
language ; a language in which other sentiments were
expressed before Christianity ; and a language which,
after Christianity, will still survive for the ex
pression of ideal emotion. And shocking though to
some may be the thought of the utter unreality of the
supernatural beings affirmed by Christianism, as by
Osirianism; such is the spectacle here, at Karnak,
presented, of the sublime tragedy of Human Exist
ence; that, if it is in any degree duly felt, it will be
�20
Christ and Osiris.
impossible for one to shrink from clearly stating to
oneself the truth, however destructive it may be.
As other Ideals have perished, so,—it would be pre
sumptuous to deny,—may ours. Very far are we from
being the first who have experienced the agony of
discovered delusion.
PRINTED BY C. W. REYNELL, LITTLE PULTENEY STREET, HAYMARKET.
�
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
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
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
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
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.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
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
A name given to the resource
Christ and Osiris
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Stuart-Glennie, John S.
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 20 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Reprinted by permission from "In the Morningland". Includes bibliographical references. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Printed by C.W. Reynell, Little Pulteney Street, London. Osiris is the ancient Egyptian god whose annual death and resurrection personified the self-renewing vitality and fertility of nature.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Thomas Scott
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1876
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
CT185
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (Christ and Osiris), 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>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Subject
The topic of the resource
Egypt
Jesus Christ
Conway Tracts
Egypt-Religion
Jesus Christ