Part 23

And here we might be content to leave the case, confident that we have not overstrained it, and confident in its own intrinsic soundness and inherent strength, for the more the character, the history, and the writings of St. Paul are fairly studied, the more disciples they will win to Christ; but it may, perhaps, be expedient to notice briefly one or two points in their bearing on this position. It will, of course, be said that no amount of belief in a fact will prove it to have been a fact, which is obviously true. The resurrection, if a fact, is a miraculous fact, so far removed from the limits of ordinary experience and natural law as to be well-nigh sufficient to cover almost any contradiction of the one, or any violation of the other. It is no part of my present business to discuss the question to what extent a belief in miracles is defensible; that has already been done in a previous lecture of this course; but I may make this observation, that, granting the actual occurrence of a miracle like the resurrection, there are those to whom it would be impossible to prove it by any testimony whatever. Nay, there are those who would not believe it on the evidence of their own senses, or, at least, who say so. Any demonstration, therefore, of a miracle, even if it could be demonstrated, would be clearly useless for them. It would, of course, on this hypothesis, fail to reach them. Now, we may concede at once that Christianity is wholly unable to offer any such demonstration; nay, we may go further, and say that if it could, it would be no nearer to the overcoming of such opposition. But let it be observed that the existence of such opposition by no means proves the evidences of Christianity to be unsatisfactory or unsound. The person who declares that he would not believe a miracle like the resurrection even though he were himself the witness of it, is not likely to believe it on the testimony of a second person, be he never so trustworthy, even if it had actually occurred. And this is a fact that deserves to be borne in mind, because so far from showing that the evidences of the great Christian miracle are inadequate, it rather shows the absolute impossibility of their being adequate to meet successfully the case in point. It rather concedes the strength of those evidences, from mere eagerness to affirm that nothing could make them strong enough.

But, besides this, it must be remembered that, granting the reality of a miracle like the resurrection, it is obvious that, having been witnessed by a limited number of witnesses, it must necessarily be dependent afterwards for its acceptance upon testimony. On the supposition of its actual occurrence, a few only could receive it upon ocular demonstration, and the vast majority of mankind, if they received it, could only do so upon the testimony of others. It is therefore clearly conceivable on the hypothesis that many who rejected it might do so in direct contravention of the truth. Indeed, all who rejected it must do so.

Because, then, there are found those who reject the evidence of the resurrection of Christ, it by no means follows they have not done so in contravention of the fact. The question really is not whether there is still left any possible room for doubt--for that we have seen there always must be--but whether the existing testimony is sufficiently unbroken, and sufficiently uniform, and sufficiently valid, to be reasonably conclusive. And on this point the known Epistles of St. Paul are singularly clear. They witness to the fact of five hundred persons having seen the risen Jesus at one time, of the universal acceptance of belief in the resurrection, so that neither in the Churches of Rome, Corinth, or Galatia, does there seem to have been a single Christian who doubted it. They witness to the fact that St. Paul himself had lived in familiar intercourse with Peter, James, and others, who had known the Lord, and that he had originally joined the Christian body at the most six or seven years after the resurrection, when he must have had abundant opportunities of testing the validity of its evidence, and when it would have been impossible for him to have given in his allegiance to an event so contrary to his experience, except upon conclusive proof.

Bearing in mind that under any circumstances some must content themselves with belief on testimony, it is difficult to conceive of any testimony which could be more convincing or more satisfactory than that of this Apostle; especially seeing that he was at the first a violent persecutor of the faith he preached; that he must have had ample means of sifting the evidence on which it rested; and, because, living at the time he did, so near to the death of Christ, that which his testimony loses in the matter of personal eye-witness it more than gains, all things considered, in the matter of deliberate conviction and devoted lifelong service.

That is to say, the conversion of the persecutor Saul of Tarsus is itself a wondrous evidence of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The letters of the Apostle are the expression of his mature belief; but at the time when that belief was formed he must have had ample means of knowing how far he had followed a cunningly devised fable, and how far that which he believed was truth and was no lie.

Lastly, it may be said, If the evidence for Christ's resurrection was so satisfactory when it was first proclaimed, why was it not universally believed? To this we may answer, Why was Paul the Apostle at any period of his history Saul the persecutor? or Why were there any that believed if there were some who doubted? It is gratuitous to affirm that the want of universality on the one side is more remarkable than on the other. We can only say that faith is the great touchstone of man's moral nature. To the end of time it will be true that some will believe the things that are spoken, and some believe them not.[141] Why are there now any intelligent and able men who believe in Christ's resurrection if it is absolute folly to believe in it? That it is not folly to believe in it we can show to demonstration, while if, as a matter of fact, it did occur, as for the moment we may assume it did, it is obvious that the actual effects are what we see them now to be. There are those who believe, but there are those also who disbelieve. It is from the nature of the case impossible that a fact like the resurrection should appeal to man's acceptance like any ordinary fact of history, a battle or an earthquake. It cannot do so. If it did, there were no place for the question, "Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you that God should raise the dead?"[142] In accepting the resurrection of Christ, we accept also the inference that it was God who raised Him from the dead, and that He did so for a special purpose--the purpose, namely, of testifying to His life, His character, His mission, His teaching, and His claims, which are inseparable from His teaching. In accepting the resurrection, we accept not only a bare fact, but a fact that influences our relation to God and our thoughts of God--a fact involving antecedently many important principles, and resulting in momentous consequences.

But be it remembered that if the resurrection is established as a fact at all, it is established as a fact for all time; no progress of mind, no advancement of science, no change of circumstances, no distance of time, no lapse of ages can affect its truth. That which has happened once has happened for ever. The undisputed Epistles of St. Paul furnish what may be regarded virtually as evidence of a contemporary character to the truth of Christ's resurrection. Had it not truly happened, they could not have been written; for the pulse of resurrection life beats strong in every page. Had it not truly happened, those exigencies of the early Church would never have occurred which were the occasion of their being written, for without the death and resurrection of the Redeemer the Church of the redeemed is an impossibility. Had it not truly happened, the Christian Church would have had no existence now, and the commentary of eighteen centuries on the advice and judgment of Gamaliel, when confronted with the first preaching of the resurrection, would have been quite other than it is: "And now I say unto you, Refrain from these men and let them alone; for if this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to nought; but if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it, lest haply ye be found even to fight against God."

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_For further treatment of this subject the reader is referred to the Boyle Lectures for 1869--"The Witness of St. Paul to Christ."_

CHRIST'S TEACHING AND INFLUENCE ON THE WORLD.

BY THE RIGHT REVEREND

THE LORD BISHOP OF ELY.

CHRIST'S TEACHING AND INFLUENCE ON THE WORLD.

My subject is a large one, and my time is short; therefore, I will say but very few words of preface. I propose to assume nothing but the patent facts of history, admitted even by the most advanced sceptics of the day. Heartily as I myself believe in all the canonical scriptures, and in all that they teach us, I do not ask you to admit the truth of miracles, or the inspiration of the Apostles, or the genuineness of the fourth Gospel, or anything which any moderately reasonable man can doubt of. All I would assume is this, that we have in history a general outline of the life and teaching of Jesus Christ, that that outline corresponds with what we read in the three Synoptical Gospels. There is really no discordant account or contradictory tradition either among the early Christians or the early heretics, or the contemporary heathens. It is everywhere one and the same. It may be more filled up, more coloured, more draped in one picture than another; but the features and the lineaments belong unmistakably to one Man. In all the biographies, all the letters, all the traditions, and they are many and most unusually numerous and diversified though not diverse, there is in reality nothing like the discrepancy which we observe in the character of Socrates as portrayed by his disciple Xenophon, and the character of the same Socrates as drawn by his other and more famous disciple Plato. The account in the first three Gospels is uncontradicted by that in the fourth, by what we read in the Acts, by the letters of the early disciples, by the traditions carefully gathered up by men like Papias, some seventy years after the events, by the general belief of after ages, or by the few notices to be found in the writings of enemies and unbelievers.

I shall ask, then, that you admit the general truth of the history of Jesus as handed down to us by St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. Luke, just as you would generally admit the evidence of common men, even if some choose to think that they were credulous men.

I. Let us first look at the character of Christ as so depicted. I venture to say, in the first place, that it exhibits the most perfect picture of sublime simplicity ever drawn. The Gospels seem very much like notes taken from memory by men who were anxious not to lose some record of One whom they had known and loved. It is impossible to imagine anything more simple or more simply graphic than their style--it is still more impossible to imagine anything more removed from the vulgarity of rhetoric or display or effort at effect, than the character of Jesus Christ. People have spoken as though He had been merely a first-rate political reformer, a demagogue belonging to a type of unusual disinterestedness. Surely His retired, unseen youth, His gentle, quiet manhood, His calm, dignified, unimpassioned words are the very opposite in tone and character to those of the noblest demagogue or the purest political leader that was ever heard of. "He went about doing good," seems almost to record His history. "He was meek and lowly of heart," seems almost to sum up His character. The most untiring energy, the most patient endurance, the most tender and affectionate benevolence strike us in every act and every word of Christ. And yet there was nothing feeble, nothing effeminate, nothing sentimental about Him. Simple as the gentlest child, He was brave as the hardest warrior. Weeping with the tenderness of a woman for the sad and the suffering, He rebuked with inflexible sternness the base, the cruel, and the hypocritical. With the most unsullied purity of thought and life, He had yet a heart of such large and gentle sympathy that the very outcasts of mankind could come to Him for help and counsel, and He never rejected them. He did not shrink from touching the leper, and the leprous sinner went away from Him a new man, with a new heart and a new life. But the covetous, the proud, the treacherous, the actor in religion, were rebuked by Him in words which have made a new language in Christendom; Scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites, sounding to us no longer as writers of the law, members of a religious body in Palestine, and actors in dramatic performances, but as synonyms for all that is untrue in religion and in life. And there is one thing which signally separates Him as a teacher from all other teachers of religion and morality, viz., that the great lesson was Himself. I must speak further of this presently. What I mean here is, that the biographies, though they give many of His discourses, set before us most of all, not what He said, but what He did; and His actions are to us, and have been in all time, the most impressive lessons ever given to man. Probably all men--even those who do not believe in Him--would confess, that if they could see anyone living just the life which is related to have been the life of Jesus, the man so living would be perfect in all parts, the very ideal of humble-hearted, active-spirited, pure-minded, high-souled humanity. He taught Himself, by simply living Himself; and His life is the great lesson to every age of man.

And the originality of His character is almost as observable as its excellence. He was not simply the Great Teacher, like the philosophers of old, to whom crowds of disciples were gathered to listen. He was not the contemplative thinker, living retired from human society. He was no ascetic, frowning coldly on the innocent happiness of man. On the other hand, with all His marvellous activity, there is not the smallest appearance of restlessness, excitement, impetuosity. He was, if He be rightly described by His biographers, what no other man ever was--perfectly unselfish, living, acting, thinking, speaking, always with reference either to the service of God or the good of man.

Of course, as I do not assume the truth of miracles, I am unable to ask you to give unlimited credence to all that His followers have recorded concerning Him. But this is evidently the impression that He left upon their minds, viz., that He possessed amazing power, but that it was united with infinite condescension, and that it was constantly engaged in doing good, and never exerting itself to do mischief. They believed that He had power to do all things, but that he restrained it from doing evil even to His greatest enemies; that He never used it to gratify Himself, nor to save Himself from trouble, or even from suffering; that it was always exercised for the benefit of others; that in fact the _Self_ which was unspeakably grand was incessantly restrained and denied.

II. Now let us turn for a few moments to His teaching. It was as remarkable as Himself. Other moral philosophers, or teachers of the art of living, argued with their followers, setting forth moral systems or propounding theological theories. He used no arguments, propounded no theories, weaved no elaborate systems. All He said was with an authority which astonished His hearers, and all the more, because of the humility of His life and the self-denial of His character. His whole system of casuistry would be contained in four or five pages of common printing; and though much of it was new, and all of it of the severest stringency, it yet commended itself at once to the consciences of them that heard Him; it has commended itself in the main to the consciences of all subsequent ages, and in principle at least it yet rules the morality of all Christendom, and in great measure even the morality of the followers of Mohammed.[143]

It is easy to sketch out a few of the great principles which He thus set forth. At the root of all lay truth. The Easterns, among whom He taught, have always been accounted as too ready to practise deceit. There was nothing Jesus Christ condemned so much as dishonesty or hypocrisy--the very word hypocrisy, as I have said already, and all our instinctive hatred and contempt of it, being due to His denunciations of it to His disciples. Closely connected with this was the stress which He laid on purity of thought. To impose a weight and put a strain on outward conduct was all too little: it would very likely lead to superficial character, to the dreaded and denounced hypocrisy. From the heart come evil thoughts, and evil words, and evil actions. And the axe must be laid to the root of the tree. Make the tree good, and its fruit will be good. To give way to the desire of evil is to do evil.

Again: there was plenty of partial goodness. The heathens and even the Jews had learned an ardent patriotism, but it was linked, as to its _alter ego_, with a burning hatred of their country's enemies, never stronger in Palestine than when Jesus taught there. And this principle of love to country and hostility to aliens came home, too, into private life. It was an axiom that men should "love their neighbours and hate their enemies." Never before were those words clearly uttered upon earth, "I say unto you, love your enemies." Imperfectly, miserably ill indeed, as they have been acted on, they have revolutionized human thought. It was not only "Spare your enemies," not only "Forgive your enemies," but "Love your enemies." Like everything that He taught, it was to have its seat deep down in the heart. It was essential to every Christian that he should from his _heart_ forgive everyone his brother their trespasses. It has been objected to His teaching that it undermined the principle of heroic virtue, absorbing active patriotism in a dreamy philanthropy. But the objection is false. His teaching was at the farthest possible distance from dreaminess or sickliness. The benevolence He taught was, like His own, active and energetic, busying itself, as everything practical must, first on those most easily and most naturally within its reach, but then extending to every created being, made by the same God, and loved by the common Father. There did, indeed, arise a new kind of patriotism, to which I may, perhaps, allude hereafter; but can anyone read our Lord's lamentations over Jerusalem, or St. Paul's utterances of his heart's desire for Israel, his almost wish that he himself might be lost if he could save them, and yet maintain that patriotism in its truest essence was quenched either in the heart of Jesus or in the feelings of His most devoted followers?

But whatever else may have been peculiar and exceptional in the teaching of Christ, that which chiefly distinguishes Him from all other teachers is this. Moral philosophers like Socrates, ever kept themselves in the background. It was philosophy that was everything, Socrates was but the humble tyro, feebly feeling after truth. Prophets of every religion,--Moses, Zoroaster, Mohammed, all spoke the word which God put into their mouths. He was all; and they were at the best His honoured subjects and servants. But Jesus Christ, the meek, the gentle, the humble, the unselfish, the self-denied, the self-devoted, not only showed Himself as the Pattern of life, but even propounded Himself as the Object of faith, hope, love, obedience, loyalty, devotion, adoration, worship. It is impossible to deny this without rending to pieces every Christian record. It is argued, I know, that this was no part of Christ's original teaching, that it grew up after His death among His devoted followers, who looked back upon Him as a loved and lost friend and teacher, and who by degrees invested Him with Divine attributes and paid Him Divine honours; and especially it is thought that the writings of St. John, or rather writings in the second century falsely ascribed to St. John, and the later epistles attributed to St. Paul, fostered this exaggerated belief. I may well leave the genuineness of these later writings to those who have so ably and so amply dealt with them before me. All I wish to say now is, that if St. John's Gospel and St. Paul's Epistles had never come down to us, we should still be just where we are. This special teaching of Christ by Himself is fully developed in every portion of the three synoptical Gospels. They are interpenetrated by it from end to end. If it never came from Christ, the writers of those Gospels have misconceived Him altogether, and their record is mere fiction and falsehood. And so it is of every document which we possess--history, letters, traditions, anecdotes, apocalypses--they all turn the same way, they all speak the same tongue. Nay; I have often thought that if we had only the three synoptical Gospels left, though we should suffer terribly indeed by losing the deep theology of St. John the Divine, we should still have the clearest possible statements--though of the character sometimes called undesigned, or more properly indirect and incidental--as to the Godhead, Kingship, Priesthood of Christ; and that we should have none, or at most but one or two of those passages which have been thought by many to be inconsistent with the highest belief in our Lord's supreme, co-equal, co-eternal Deity. It is in fact in St. John and in St. Paul that we find the most developed form of the New Testament theology, but on that very account the appearance, for appearance it is only, of inconsistency and difficulty.[144]