Part 34

It may be quite true that the essential power of Christianity resides in the image, ever present to the heart of Christendom, of a God resembling Christ, and loving those who aspire to approach him through the same resemblance. But we cannot find any traces of such a conception in the writings of Paul. The "faith" on which he exclusively insisted would be very incorrectly defined, we conceive, as a reverence of Christ's character as morally like God. If we may judge from the negative evidence of his letters, he appears to have had no insight into the interior of his Master's earthly life, and no great concern about it. There is an entire absence of any _moral_ picture of Jesus, who is presented in the Apostolic writings as an object, not of retrospective veneration, but of expectant reliance; not of admiring trust for personal qualities realized in a past career, but of hope grounded on his official destiny in the future. _One_ beauty of his character is, indeed, appealed to in the Pauline writings, viz. his humility and self-renunciation;[54] but even this is recognized, not on historical, but on theocratic grounds; it is illustrated, not by anything in his life, but by the fact of his death, conceived as a voluntary postponement of his theocratic prerogatives, and an abrogation of his exclusive nationality. He was a "spiritual" object to the Apostle of the Gentiles, not from perception of the inner marks and graces of his spirit, but from his being invisible and immortal, reserved in heaven under external escape from the conditions of earthly life. Mr. Thom's doctrine is a happy development of modern truth from ancient error; but regarded as a mere interpretation, it perhaps sets down to the Apostle's account a just moral appreciation of the past, instead of an erroneous conception of the Providence of the future. The religion of Christ has assuredly turned out a very different phenomenon from anything that was anticipated at its origin. It was announced as a Kingdom; as the king did not come, it became a Republic. It was conceived as a State; it grew up into a Faith. It was proclaimed as the world's end; it proved to be a fresh beginning. It was to consummate the Law and the Prophets; and it confounded both. It was to cover Pagan nations with shame and destruction; it embalmed their literature, and was transformed by their philosophy. It was to deliver over the earth to the pure and severe Monotheism of the Hebrews; which, however, it so relaxed as to provoke Islam into existence to proclaim again the monarchy of God. Its subjects were to be gathered from the Jews and half-castes of the Eastern Synagogue; and its most signal glories have been among the Teutonic nations, and the then unsuspected continents of the West. In every element of its internal power, in every direction of its external action, it has burst all the proportions, left behind all the expectations, with which it was born; and how can we continue to try it by the standard of its origin? Are we to say, that, having promised one thing and become another, it is not of God? That might be well, if it had _fallen short_ of its own professions,--disappointed us of dreams it had awakened of glory and delight. But if it has been _far better than its word_; if, instead of winding up the world's affairs, it has given them a new career; if for Messiah's tame millennium we have the grand and struggling life of Christendom, and for his closed books of judgment the yet open page of human history; if for the earthly throne and sceptre of Christ, sweeping away the treasures of past civilization, we have his heavenly image and spirit, presiding over the re-birth of art, the awakening of thought, the direction of law, and the organism of nations; if from the dignity of outward sovereignty he has been raised to that of Lord of the living conscience, not superseding the soul, but exercising it with sorrow and aspiration; then, surely, in so outstripping itself, the religion should win a more exceeding measure of trust and affection. Had it only realized its first assurances, we should have thought it divine; since it has so much surpassed them, we must esteem it diviner. There is no reason for the common assumption that a religion must be purest in its infancy. It is no less surrounded then, than at each subsequent time, with human conditions, and transmitted through human faculties; and when delivered to the world, embodied in action or in speech, necessarily presents itself as a mixed product of divine insight and of human thought,--of the living present and the decaying past; a flash of heavenly fire on the outspread fuel upon the altar of tradition. So it is with the Scriptures of the New Testament; which are not the heavenly source, but the first earthly result and expression of Christianity, and which present the perishable conditions as well as the indestructible life of the religion. Only by the course of time and Providence can these be disengaged from one another, and the accidents of place and nation fall away. If there dwell in the midst a divine productive element, the further it passes from the moment of its nativity, the clearer and more august will it appear. It is like the seed dropped at first on an unprepared and unexpectant ground; which in its earliest development yields but a struggling and scanty growth, but each season, as another generation of leaves falls from the boughs, becomes the source, through richer nutriment, of fuller forms; till at length, when it has spread the foliage of ages, making its own soil, and deepening the luxuriance of its own roots, a forest in all its glory covers the land, and waves in magnificence over continents once bare of life and beauty. So is it with the germ of divine truth cast upon the inhospitable conditions of history; it is small and feeble in its earlier day; but when it has provided the aliment of its own growth, and shed its reproductive treasures on the congenial mind of generations and races, it starts into the proportions of a Christendom, and becomes the shade and shelter of a world.

Much, therefore, as we value all attempts to illustrate the first records of Christianity, and to detach what was purely human and transient in its original form, we think that the religion itself cannot acknowledge the competency of such investigations to decide upon its claims. From a verdict on its _first_ works, it has a right to appeal for judgment upon _the whole_. It is the religion, not of John and Paul alone, but of Christendom; without a comparative estimate of whose moral and social genius, it can by no means be appreciated. The weakness and inadequacy of all narrower methods of defence will in the end drive the clergy to occupy this larger basis of operations. And the change will be not more favorable to the logic of their cause than to the charity of their disposition. So long as the Scriptures alone are taken as the standard, no more than one creed, at most, can be regarded as concurrent with the Christian faith. But when the entire existence of the religion through eighteen centuries is adopted as the measure, the very interests of advocacy themselves require that the best construction rather than the worst be put upon the errors and eccentricities of all churches within the compass of Christendom. The evidences would, in that case, be destroyed by exclusiveness, and widened in their foundations by comprehensiveness of temper; and the firmness of every disciple's faith and the energy of his zeal would become assurances, not of his limitation of mind, but of his largeness of heart. Instead of endless divisions, multiplied in the search after unity, we might hope to see the lines of separation become ever fainter; and every test of Christianity withdrawn except that of moral sympathy with the spirit of Christ; a test which, as God alone can apply it, man cannot abuse; and according to which many that, in the ecclesiastic roll, have been first, shall be last, and the last first.

FOOTNOTE:

[54] See Philippians ii. 5-11.

THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM.

_The Temporal Benefits of Christianity exemplified in its Influence on the Social, Intellectual, Civil, and Political Condition of Mankind, from its first Promulgation to the present Day._ By ROBERT BLAKEY. London. 1849.

_Small Books on Great Subjects._ Edited by a few Well-Wishers to Knowledge. No. 19. _On the State of Man subsequent to the Promulgation of Christianity._ London. 1851.

_The Connection of Morality with Religion; a Sermon, preached in the Cathedral of St. Patrick, at an Ordination held by the Lord Archbishop of Dublin, Sunday, September 21, 1851._ By WILLIAM FITZGERALD, A.M., Vicar of St. Ann's, and Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Dublin. London. 1851.

Of these works, the third treats theoretically, the others practically, of the relation of Christianity to human nature. The preacher seeks in the natural conscience for the moral ground and receptacle of revelation; while the historians trace its moral operation in society and life. Were both tasks perfectly performed, we should be furnished with a complete image of the religion at once in its idea and its expression; should be able definitely to compare its promise with its achievements and to submit it, as a whole, to philosophical appreciation. But the two halves of the subject are exhibited with very unequal success. It is much easier to show the intended than the actual influence of the Christian faith upon the character of its disciples,--to determine by _a priori_ methods what it _must be_, than by an _a posteriori_ induction to estimate what it _has been_, and is. Mr. Fitzgerald, as becomes a professor of ethical science, has well contended that the religion which he recommends from the pulpit is neither indifferent nor supercilious towards the morals which he teaches from the University chair,--but assumes their obligation, appeals to their authority, and, in its mode of reconciling the human will with the Divine, raises them into eternal sanctities. It addresses itself to man as a being already conscious of responsibility; and simply proposes to restore reason and conscience to that supremacy _in fact_ which _of right_ they can never lose. How far has this aim been visibly realized? Are the traces of a Divine renovation clear upon the face of Christendom? Is there the difference between ancient Greece and modern England, or between the empire and the papacy of Rome, which might be expected between an unregenerate world and a regenerate? The historical answer to these questions is attempted by Mr. Blakey, with perhaps adequate resources of knowledge, but with so imperfect an apprehension of the requisites of his argument, that his book, though often instructive in detail, is altogether ineffective as a whole. He is content to select and enumerate the most salient and favorable points in the transition from ancient to modern civilization, and to set them down to the credit of Christianity; without care to disengage the action of concurrent causes, or to balance the account by reference to more questionable effects. A much finer analysis is needed, in order to draw from history its real testimony on this great matter; and nothing can well be more arbitrary, than to stroll through some fifteen centuries, and, gathering up none but the most picturesque and beneficent phenomena, weave them into a glory to crown the faith with which they co-exist. In Christendom, all the great and good things that are done at all will of course be done by Christians, and will contain such share of the religious element as may belong to the character of the actor or the age; but before you can avail yourself of them in Christian Apologetics, it must be shown that, under any other faith, no social causes would have remained adequate either to produce them or to provide any worthy equivalent. Because Charlemagne, after baptizing the Saxons in their own blood, displayed a better zeal by establishing cathedral and conventual schools, _therefore_ to put the horn-book of the liberal arts into the hand of his religion, while leaving the wet sword to stain his own; because chivalry blended in its vow "_fear of God_" with "love of the ladies," _therefore_ to trace all loyalty and courtesy to the doctrine of the Church; because the mediæval schoolmen imported into every science the canons of Divinity, and decided between Realism and Nominalism on eucharistic principles, _therefore_ to give the priesthood all the honors of modern philosophy and intellectual liberty,--is, to say the least, very vulnerable logic and very superficial history. Of a far superior order is the little book "On the State of Man subsequent to the Promulgation of Christianity." In a previous treatise, "On the State of Man _before_ the Promulgation of Christianity," the author had passed under rapid review the ancient systems of civilization,--stationary, progressive, aggressive; and having seized on their characteristic features, he now brings with him determinate points of comparison into his survey of the post-Apostolic times. The view which he spreads beneath your eye of the world, as it lay ready to afford a channel for the Christian faith, is remarkable for breadth and truth. Conducting you, with the wide picture in your mind, to the pure head-spring in Galilee, and keeping close to the stream as it descends and opens from these sequestered heights, he enables you to see, reach by reach, where it fertilizes and where it destroys; the new fields of life it enters, the old landmarks of habit it overwhelms. The author is not more familiar with the Christian Apologists and Fathers, than with the later Latin and revived Greek literature from Trajan to Aurelian; and by skilfully noting the moments when Pagan and Christian life not only stood in silent co-presence, but came into active contact, he brings out into clear relief the new type of character which formed itself within the communities of disciples. That type is so strikingly original, its features so conspicuously express an order of passions and ideas strange alike to the Hellenic and the Italian races, as to betray the creative action of some vast moral power unborrowed from the established civilization. When the free Roman breaks the bread of communion with slaves,--when the slippery Syrian forswears lying and theft,--when the heedless Greek changes his eagerness of the moment into a living for eternity,--when a people ignorant of Stoic maxims display a contempt of torture and death sublimer than the ideal of the Porch,--an influence is plainly at work which has penetrated to hitherto unawakened depths of the human soul. The phenomenon is the more impressive, when regard is had to the materials from which the early Christian communities were gathered. It cannot be imagined that they were composed of elements particularly choice; and, indeed, amid the universal corruption of morals and exhaustion of wholesome life, it is difficult to conceive how, if the Christian doctrine had enforced a rigorous selection, instead of indiscriminately inviting innocence and guilt, any decent elements could have been collected. Without adopting Gibbon's contemptuous estimate of the body of primitive believers, we cannot doubt that it comprised very mixed ingredients; we know that it contained great numbers of the servile class, and very few whose station and culture gave them access to the higher ideas familiar to the schools of philosophy: yet from these unpromising sources arose a society, which, in severity of morals, in intensity of affection, in heroism of endurance, reversed the habits of the world to which they belonged. It seems to us an idle question for sceptical criticism to raise, whether the religion of Christ comprised in its teachings any ethical element absolutely new. If genius had conceived it all before, life had not produced it till now; and the more you affirm the philosophers' competency to think it, the more do you convict them of inability to realize it. But in morals scarcely _can_ there be clear intellectual conception of principles not yet embodied in living character. As in the highest works of art, the thing seen is far other than the thing imagined and described; not doctrines, but persons, are here the only expression of the truth; and till they appear, ethical forms are but as the human clay without the vital fire. In the _statement_ of thought, the early Christians, not excepting the Scripture writers, are rude and unskilled; and a taste formed from the study of Plato and Seneca may be offended by the rusticity of Mark, and the abruptness of Paul. But whoever can rise above the level of a merely intellectual critique, and embrace, with our anonymous author, the _whole_ phenomenon of the first centuries of our era, will see a glow of self-denying faith, and a deep movement of conscience, affording manifest announcement of a new edition of human nature.

That edition has now been extant for many centuries; and is variously legible in the literature, the institutions, the private manners of Christendom. The Christian ideal of human life lies as an open book before us; yet as a book so various in its versions, and so overlaid with comments, that the fresh flavor of its language, and even the finer essence of its thought, are in danger of being lost. The actual Christianity of each successive age, and each contemporary nation, is the express result, not only in its dogma, but in its life, of two component terms,--a given _matter_, and a given _faculty_ of faith. However full and constant the former may be in itself, the latter is perpetually variable with the knowledge and passions of the time, and the special genius of individual leaders; nor can this variation of insight in the mind fail to neutralize some portion of truth, and to give disproportionate magnitude to others. The data supplied by inspiration itself form no exception to this rule. Delivered into the charge of the human soul, they fall into the moulds of its recipient nature, take their immediate form from the laws of its life, and are reacted on from its independent activity. The _immutable_ custody of anything by a finite thinking subject, involves the most evident contradiction; the very contact with human intelligence reduces universal truth to partial, the permanent to the variable, the secure to the contingent. It is only in the essential Unity of Reason and Conscience in every age, that we find the means of correcting the aberrations and verifying the insight of all particular men. Not that we are to conceive of the human race collectively as one large person, of which individual minds are vital organs, and which has a necessary growth and development, entitling each century to boast of advance beyond its predecessors. We know of no spiritual units, of no personalities, except each single and separate will; nor do we find anything in their mutual relation which necessarily determines them to uninterrupted improvement, and excludes the encroachment of degeneracy and falsehood. Indeed, no sorrier product is there of human conceit and ignorance than the cant of "progress," which assumes that every newest phase of thought is wisest. But if all men are endowed with radically the same faculties, however various in their intensities and proportions, there is a court of appeal in permanent sitting, where the normal laws of intellectual and moral apprehension are administered against all provincial prejudices and transient verdicts of error. In the long run, the healthy perceptions of good eyes will outvote the discoloring effects of all ophthalmic epidemics, how obstinate and wide soever they may be. And the moral vision of mankind will no less vindicate its natural rights, by returning again and again into clear discernments, and settled admirations, and discharging the illusory forms and false tints of each separate age. To deny the ethical competency of the mind for this office,--to say that there is no power given for deciding what, among the claimants on reverence, is really noble, true, and good,--is, with all its pietistic pretences, an act of the profoundest scepticism, washing away, as a quicksand, the only rock on which any faith can be built. It is to treat the durable source of truth as evanescent and uncertain, and shut out the possibility of all religion. On the other hand, to set up and idolize the life and thought of any one time as an unquestionable rule for all times, and stereotype it for unmodified reproduction, is to treat the evanescent as the durable, and build on whatever stands above the water, heedless whether it be the quicksand or the rock. Yet, strange to say, this particular superstition, and that general unbelief,--an apparent antithesis of error,--usually meet in the same mind, and constitute together the chief theology of most visible churches. Having deposed and insulted the eternal sanctities, they coax and flatter the letter of Scripture to accept the vacant throne, and exchange the holy modesty of its administration for a universal empire of pretence. They drain off the springs of inspiration at their fountain-head, and turn all history into a plain of sand, that they may magnify their Hebrew reservoir as the world's sole supply; forgetting that, when cut off from the running waters, the choicest store loses its fresh virtues, and the fairest lake, shut up without exit, turns into a Dead Sea. In contradiction of both errors, we shall assume that transitory elements cannot fail to mix themselves with the expression of the purest inspiration,--the horizon of human relations and expressible things around even the divinest soul being limited; and that, as the inspiration tries itself upon age after age, bringing into distinct consciousness now one side of truth and now another, it becomes more and more possible to find its essence and eliminate its accidents, to save its catholic beauties apart from its sectional distortions. The Christian ideal of life is not to be looked for in what is special to the Crusader or the Quaker,--to Puritan or Cavalier,--to Platonists of the second century or Aristotelians of the twelfth,--to Aquinas or Luther,--to John or Paul; but in such sentiment as was common to them all, and attached to them as citizens of Christendom. When this element is disengaged from all that encumbers it, it will be found pervading and animating still whatever is noblest in our modern life; while all that is narrow, and weak, and unworthy in the moral doctrine of our age, springs from a forced attempt to perpetuate the accidental modes of the Apostolic period.