Part 40

No one who appreciates the real sources of a healthy national life, and knows what to expect from the dissolution of ancient faiths, can look without anxiety at a prospect like this; especially in a country whose religious institutions, rigid with usage, overloaded with interests, charged with the bequests of the past, are manifestly unequal to the crisis, and, in their attempt to train the affections of the Future, wield every power but the right one, and are indeed already regarded, like the Court of Chancery with its wards, as a dry nursery for grown babies. A people that reverences nothing--nothing at least that stretches a common heaven over all--has lost its natural unity. Incipient decay is spreading through the secret cement of its civilization, which, far from bearing the weight of further growth, precariously holds its existing mass together. So far we are entirely at one with those who see something to deplore in the "Eclipse of Faith," and something to desire in the "Restoration of Belief." They do not overrate the evils of a state of society in which, if you think with the wise, you must cease to believe with the vulgar. We would join with them, heart and hand, in the effort to terminate this fatal discrepancy, and find some language of devotion and aspiration, veracious alike from the lips of the richest knowledge and the most primitive simplicity. But when, like the author whose publication is before us, they would abolish the discrepancy by simply reinstating the taught in the creed of the untaught; when they insist on the surrender without terms of modern philosophy and criticism to the "unabated" authority of the Bible; when they pretend to wipe out from calculation all the theological researches of the last half-century, as if they were mere ciphers made in sport on the tablet of history, and had no effect on our computed place at all,--we separate sorrowfully from them, largely sympathizing with their wish, but wholly despairing of their method. The received theory of the origin of Christianity from agencies exclusively divine, and of the infallible character of the canonical books, can no more be "restored," than Roman history can be put back to its state before Niebuhr's time, or Greek mythology be treated as if Heyne and Ottfried Müller had never lived. The present age is not more distinguished by its advance in the material arts, than by its astonishing progress in the interpretation and true painting of the past; a Boeckh or a Grote carries in his mind a picture of Athenian life in the days of Pericles more perfect, it is probable, than could be formed by Plutarch or Longinus; and it would be strange if the Christian era--certainly the object of the most elaborated study--were the only one to escape the work of reconstruction, or to undergo it without considerable change. The limits of that change are at present definable by no consentient estimate; but that they are such as to remove the old lines of Christian defence, and require the choice of more open ground, can no longer be denied, except by the astute consistency of a Romanist hierarchy, and the innocent unconsciousness of English sects. When the time shall come for a dispassionate history of the first two centuries,--a history which, resolving the canon back into the general mass of early Christian literature, shall find an original clew for tradition, instead of accepting one from its posthumous hand,--which shall detect opinions before they were heretic or orthodox, and trace the several streams of tributary thought to their confluence in a determinate Christianity,--the narrowness of our present polemic will be apparent of itself; its fears and triumphs be regarded with a smile; and many, both of its positive and negative results, will vanish from the interests of religion, and be absorbed in a higher view of the relation between the Divine and Human in this world.

We had hoped at first that the author of "The Restoration of Belief" was about to take up the problem of Christianity with a real appreciation of its altered conditions, and with unaffected justice towards those who cannot solve it like himself. His present essay is but the commencement of a series, designed to arrest the progress of educated scepticism, to expose the sophistries of modern criticism, and re-establish the plenary authority, as oracles of faith, of the Hebrew and the Christian Scriptures. It would perhaps be unreasonable to complain that his argument does not march very far in this first movement; and engages us rather by the stateliness of its step, than by the clearness of its direction. Nevertheless, we do think that the discursive license of introductory exposition is carried by him to an extreme which promises ill for the exactitude of his method. At the outset he declares that the difficulties which embarrass modern faith go down to the very depths of philosophy, and can be resolved only by reaching the ultimate roots of thought. Yet he remains on the upper surface of history, and, without once hinting how this is to lead him to the pith of the controversy, dwells only on facts which are undisputed, and his conception of which might be as readily gathered from Gibbon as from Neander. Like many writers whose eye is caught by grandeur of effect, and whose imagination is sensitive to wonder, he is fascinated by the moment in human affairs when the Roman Empire was exactly poised between the forces of external unity and of internal decay, and the political organism of the Past, so august in its mass and its proportions, held no soul but the young spirit of the Future. Of this crisis, assigned to the reign of Alexander Severus, our author presents an impressive and, we believe, a faithful sketch. Amid the splendor, the misery, the decay of belief and hope, the universal incertitude of that period, there emerges into notice the beautiful and beneficent phenomenon of a real Faith,--a Faith that can live, a Faith that can die. The inevitable conflict between this new power and the Pagan prerogatives of the Cæsars is well brought out by the essayist; and the victory of Christianity is justly ascribed to the peculiar character of the religion, as a feeling directed to a PERSON rather than the simple assent to an IDEA. It was the force of this personal feeling which first awakened in men the sentiment of obligation in regard to religious truth, and substituted faithful veracity for indifferentism and laxity of profession. The author thus sums up the positions which he regards the present essay as establishing:--

"That the Christian communities did, during the period that we have had in view, make and maintain a protest against the idol-worship of the times, which protest, severe as it was in its conditions, at length won a place in the world for a purer theology, and set the civilized races free from the degrading superstitions of the Greek Mythology.

"That in the course of this arduous struggle, and as an unobserved yet inevitable consequence of it, a New Principle came to be recognized, and a New Feeling came to govern the minds of men, which principle and feeling conferred upon the individual man, however low his rank, socially or intellectually, a dignity unknown to classical antiquity; and which yet must be the basis of every moral advancement we can desire, or think of as possible.

"That the struggle whence resulted these two momentous consequences, affecting the welfare of men for ever, was entered upon and maintained on the ground of a definite persuasion, or Belief, of which a PERSON was the object.

"That this belief toward a person embraced attributes, not only of superhuman excellence and wisdom, but also of superhuman POWER and AUTHORITY. If we take the materials before us as our guide, it will not be possible to disengage the history from these ideas of superhuman dignity."--p. 106.

These positions we certainly conceive to be unassailable. But they lie so completely out of the field of modern doubt and controversy, that we are at a loss to imagine what possible use the author can make of them. The general features of the Christian faith, and the character of the Church, had assumed in the third century a determinate form, about which there is no important question between believer and unbeliever. Who would deny that the disciples for whom Clement of Alexandria and Origen wrote, whom Tertullian and Minucius Felix defended, and to whose institutes Cyprian was a convert, believed in Jesus Christ as a person at once historical and divine, and were strengthened by that belief to the endurance of martyrdom? The real and only difficulties lie higher up, in the attempt to trace the sources and earlier varieties of this belief; and if our author can show that, in winding its way through two centuries, and traversing several distinct regions of thought, it dropped or rounded off no primitive facts, and became mingled with no foreign ideas,--if he can establish the essential constancy and uniformity, from the first, of the tradition and doctrine which obtained ascendency at last,--he will indeed reduce legitimate scepticism within very narrow limits, and deserve a niche in the Valhalla of critical renown. But if he contemplates clearing these centuries by an argumentative leap; if, from the martyr faith of an age later than the Antonines, he means to conclude the certainty of the Incarnation two hundred years before,--then we must say, he attempts a logical feat which puts to shame the cautious steps of such reasoners as Paley, Marsh, and Whately. The catena of well-linked testimonies, with its bridge of safe footing, which they have endeavored to sling across the chasm of the post-apostolic age, is but a paltry cowardice of ecclesiastic engineering to one who can pass the gulf upon the wing of inference. An advocate is intelligible, and proceeds upon admitted rules of evidence, who says with these earlier divines: "Here are the writings of Paul, of John, of Matthew, and of other men who were present at the events they relate or assume; whose lives were turned into a new channel by their influence; and who went to prison and to death rather than deny them. They positively declare that they witnessed the most stupendous miracles, and, after their Master had been visibly taken up through the clouds, themselves habitually exercised the same supernatural power. You must admit that the guaranties of testimony can go no further: surrender yourself therefore to the Gospel." This is an argument which accomplishes all that is possible with historical evidence in such a case; and were its allegations of fact sustainable, it would still be the best form into which the reasoning could be thrown. Unfortunately, we can no longer feel assured that any first-hand testimony exists, as a distinguishable element, in the narrative books of the New Testament; so that we can regard them only as monuments of the state of Christian tradition during a secondary period. Still, this flaw is not repaired by striking into the course of belief three or four generations lower down, and substituting the "Martyr literature" of the third century for the Evangelist memorials of the second or the first. And when our author transfers to Clement and Origen the praise of unaffected simplicity usually awarded to the Apostolic writers, and actually presents it as sufficient proof of divine attributes in Christ, we can only suppose that, in his opinion, some truths are too good to have any bad way to them. What else can be said of the following mode of inference?

"Much do we meet with in these writers that indicates infirmity of judgment or a false taste; yet does there pervade them a marked simplicity, a grave sincerity, a quietness of tone, when HE is spoken of whom they acknowledge as LORD. If there be one characteristic of these ancient writings that is _uniform_, it is the calm, affectionate, and reverential tone in which the Martyr Church speaks of THE SAVIOUR CHRIST!

"I am perfectly sure that, if you could absolutely banish from your mind all thought of the inferences and the consequences resulting from your admissions, you would not, after perusing this body of Martyr literature, fall into the enormity of attributing the notions entertained of CHRIST, as invested with Divine attributes, to any such source as 'exaggeration,' or 'extravagance,' or to 'Orientalism,' or 'enlarged Platonism.' Exaggeration and inflation have their own style: it is not difficult to recognize it. No characteristic of thought or language is more obvious. You will fail in your endeavor to show that this characteristic _does_ attach to the writings in question; and why should you make such an attempt? There can be no inducement to do so, unless it appears to be the only means of escaping from some consequence which we dislike."--p. 107.

Our author professedly opposes "Ancient Christianity" to modern scepticism, because "History," as he observes, "is solid ground," and no region of atmospheric phantasms, births from the refracted rays of metaphysic light. History, however, is solid ground only so far as it is really explored; and the trending of the land and curving of the shore in one latitude of time no more enables us to lay down the map of another, than an anchorage at the Ganges' mouth would enable us to paint the gorges of the Himalayas, and distinguish the real from the fabulous sources of the sacred stream. To take us into the basilicas and show us how Christians worshipped in the days of Alexander Severus, to introduce us to the Proconsul's court and bid us witness their refusal of divine homage to Cæsar's image, and then ask us whether a faith like this _could have had_ any origin but ONE,--this is not _history_, but the mere _evasion_ of history. We want to know, not what _must have been_ the source, but what _was_ the source, of the great moral power that rose upon the world as Rome declined. Whoever wishes to shut out human ideas and natural agencies from participation in the matter, must go patiently through the entire remains of the early Christian literature; must trace the conflict between the Hebrew and the Pauline Gospel; find a place for the peculiar version of the religion given by the Evangelist John; fix the limits of Ebionitism, of Chiliasm, of Docetism; and show that these modes and varieties of doctrine stop short of the substance of the early faith, and do not enter the canonical Scriptures with any disturbance of their historic certainty. Nothing of this kind do we expect from our author. For he entertains a conception, respecting the logic of Christian evidence, which, however prevalent among English divines, betrays in our judgment a mind not at all at home with the present conditions of the problem. He seems to think that we can _first_ prove the historic truth of the Scriptures _in general_; and then get rid of the _difficulties in particular_; and requires us, in obedience to this pedantic law of logical etiquette, to carry into our investigation of every successive perplexity the rigid assumption that the writings with which we deal are "inspired," and their contents of "Divine authority."

"When a collection of historic materials, bearing upon a particular series of events, is brought forward, it will follow, upon the supposition that those events have, on the whole, been truly reported, that any hypothesis, the object of which is to make it seem probable that no such events did take place, must involve absurdities which will be more or less glaring. But then, _after_ the truth of the history has been established, and when the trustworthiness of the materials has been admitted, as we proceed to apply a rigid criticism to ambiguous passages, we shall undoubtedly encounter a crowd of perplexing disagreements; and we shall find employment enough for all our acumen, and trial enough of our patience, in clearing our path. And yet no amount of discouragements, such as these, will warrant our falling back upon a supposition which we have already discarded as incoherent and absurd."--p. 110.

We cannot call this a vicious canon of historical criticism; for it simply excludes historical criticism altogether. The critic's work is not a process which can go on generically, without addressing itself to any particular matters at all, and vindicate comprehensive conclusions in blindness towards the cases they comprise. The judgment that, on the whole, a certain book contains a true report of events, can only be a provisional assumption, founded on natural and childlike trust, and can claim no scientific character, till it comes out as a collective inference from an investigation in detail of the narrative's contents. No doubt, the bare fact of the existence of Christianity as a great social phenomenon in the age of the Antonines, may afford evidence enough that Jesus of Nazareth was no imaginary being; the genius of the religion, and the traditional picture of its author, may indicate the cast of his mind and the intensity of his influence; the institutions of the Church may betray its origin in Palestine, and the approximate date of its birth. But these conclusions, founded entirely on reasonings from human causation, can never carry us into the superhuman; or enable us to say more respecting the memorials of the life of Jesus, than that they _may be_ true, and do not forfeit, _ab initio_, their title to examination by fundamental anachronism, misplacement, and moral incongruity. How far the existence of this _primâ facie_ case falls short of "establishing the truth of the history," and "the trustworthiness of the materials," we need not point out to any one accustomed to deal with questions of evidence. And as for the great proposition, that "the Gospel of Christ is a supernaturally authenticated gift," we cannot imagine how it is to be proved _in general_, without research into a single miracle. Is it indifferent to the fact of the Incarnation, that the only two accounts of the birth and infancy of Jesus are hopelessly at variance with each other? Is the evidence of the Resurrection unaffected by the discrepancies on which harmonists have spent a fruitless ingenuity? Are we as sure that, in reading the Apostles' works, we have to do with "inspired writers," as if they had _not_ made any false announcements about the end of the world? What does our author mean by admitting these things as "difficulties," yet denying them any just influence in abatement of our confidence? He may form one estimate of their weight, and his opponent another; but in neither case can they be postponed for treatment in a mere appendix to the discussion of Christian evidence: they are of the very pith of the whole question, and, so long as they lie in reserve as quantities of unknown magnitude and direction of influence, render historical belief and unbelief alike irrational.

Nor can we for a moment allow that the failure of ever so many "German theories" to give a satisfactory account of the origin of Christianity, is any good reason for contented acquiescence in the received doctrine. Our author insists, that we must make our definitive choice between some modern hypothesis and the Evangelical tradition; and either take the facts as they are handed down to us, or else replace them by some better representation. By what right does he impose on us such an alternative necessity? Is the critic disqualified for detecting false history, because he cannot, at his distance, write the true? Is it a thing unknown, as a product of scholarship, that fabulous elements disclose themselves amid the memorials of fact? and is it not an acknowledged gain to part with an error, though only in favor of an ignorance? If a modern hypothesis as to the mode in which the religion arose may "break down" by mere internal incoherence and improbability, why may not the ancient account, if it should be chargeable with similar imperfections, be liable to the same fate? It is surely conceivable that _all_ the finished representations we possess,--Hebrew and Alexandrine, as well as German,--furnish, more or less, an ideal and conjectural history of the infancy of Christendom; and that the reproduction of that time may not only be _now_ impossible, but have already become so ere a hundred years were gone. The baffling of one solution implies therefore no triumph of another; and if the tradition on which we stand be insecure, our position is not improved by clipping the wings of every adventurous hypothesis on which we had thought to escape the common ground.