Part 12

Once seated on a throne of power, a crown on his head, a sceptre in his hand, clothed with authority, protected by armies, girded with law, instigator of policies, chief of ceremonies, the Christ in heaven rapidly completed the structure whereof Constantine had placed the corner-stone. The materials he gathered right and left, wherever they were to be found. Right of supremacy made them his. Judaism gave temple, and synagogue, the organization of its priesthood, the distinction between priest and layman, its worship, music, scripture, litany, sentiment and usage of prayer, its ascetic spirit, its doctrines of resurrection and judgment, its code of righteousness, its altar forms, its history, and its prophecy. Paganism was laid under contribution for its military spirit. The "stations" of the Passion, were copied from army usage, so were its practical temper, its regard for precedent law and policy, its rules of obedience, its distrust of speculation, its horror of schism, its passion for unity, its skill in diplomacy, its solid respect for authority. Quietly, without leave asked, or apology offered, the insignia of the old faiths were transferred to the new. The title of Sovereign Pontifex, or bridgemaker--given originally to the chief of the guild of mechanics, passed along from the period of the earliest kings through persons of consular dignity, and finally bestowed on the Roman emperors; a title given at first, in commemoration of the _pons Janicularis_, which joined the city to the highest of the surrounding hills--was conferred on the bishops or popes whose office it was to bridge over the gulf between the earth and the celestial mountains. The statues of Jupiter, Apollo, Mercury, Orpheus, did duty for the Christ. The Thames river god officiates at the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan. Peter holds the keys of Janus. Moses wears the horns of Jove. Ceres, Cybele, Demeter, assume new names as "Queen of Heaven," "Star of the Sea," "Maria Illuminatrix;" Dionysius is St. Denis; Cosmos is St. Cosmo; Pluto and Proserpine resign their seats in the hall of final judgment, to the Christ and his mother. The Parcae depute one of their number, Lachesis, the disposer of lots, to set the stamp of destiny upon the deaths of Christian believers. The _aura placida_ of the poets, the gentle breeze, is personified as Aura and Placida. The _perpetua felicitas_ of the devotee becomes a lovely presence in the forms of St. Perpetua and St. Felicitas, guardian angels of the pious soul. No relic of Paganism was permitted to remain in its casket. The depositories were all ransacked. The shadowy hands of Egyptian priests placed the urn of holy water at the porch of the basilica, which stood ready to be converted into a temple. Priests of the most ancient faiths of Palestine, Assyria, Babylon, Thebes, Persia, were permitted to erect the altar at the point where the transverse beam of the cross meets the main stem. The hands that constructed the temple in cruciform shape had long become too attenuated to cast the faintest shadow. There Devaki with the infant Crishna, Maya with the babe Boodha, Juno with the child Mars, represent Mary with Jesus in her arms. Coarse emblems are not rejected; the Assyrian dove is a tender symbol of the Holy Ghost. The rag bags and toy boxes were explored. A bauble which the Roman school-boy had thrown away was picked up and called an "agnus dei." The musty wardrobes of forgotten hierarchies furnished costumes for the officers of the new prince. Alb and chasuble recalled the fashions of Numa's day. The cast off purple habits and shoes of pagan emperors beautified the august persons of christian Popes. The cardinal must be contented with the robes once worn by senators. Zoroaster bound about the monks the girdle he invented as a protection against evil spirits, and clothed them in the frocks he had found convenient for his ritual. The Pope thrust out his foot to be kissed, as Caligula, Heliogabalus, and Julius Caesar had thrust out theirs. Nothing came amiss to the faith that was to discharge henceforth the offices of spiritual impression. Stoles, veils, croziers, were all in requisition without too close scrutiny of their antecedents. A complete investigation of this subject will probably reveal the fact that Christianity owes its entire wardrobe, ecclesiastical, symbolical, dogmatical, to the religions that preceded it. The point of difficulty to decide is in what respect Christianity differs from the elder faiths. This is the next task its apologists have to perform.

But this question does not concern us here. Having indicated the source whence the religion proceeded, and the process by which the successive stages in its development were reached, we have done all that was purposed. We have tried to make it clear that the Messianic conception from which it started, and from which its life was derived at each period of its growth, presided over its destiny in the western world, and introduced it to the place of honor it was afterwards called to fill.

What that place was and how the Church filled it has been told in a multitude of historical books. The history of Christianity is not the story of a developing idea, but a record of the achievements of an idea developed, organized, instituted. From the date of the established religion, the writings of the New Testament became the literature of the earliest period. In the western world the mind of Christendom expanded to deeper and wider thoughts, a new literature was originated of great richness, affluence and beauty, and gave expression to ideas which, in the primitive period could not have been formed. The Greek and Latin Fathers, the schoolmen, the catholic theologians, Italian, Spanish, French, the German mystical writers, the Protestant divines and preachers, have produced writings unsurpassed in intellectual strength and spiritual discernment. The possibilities of speculation have been exhausted; the abysses of reflection have been sounded; the heights of meditation have been scaled. The christian idea of salvation has been applied to every phase of human experience, and to every problem of social life. The rudimental conceptions have been distanced; the original limitations have been overpassed. Rites have been charged with new significance, symbols loaded with new meanings, doctrines interpreted in new senses. Christianity as the modern world knows it, is a new creation. The name of Messiah is spoken, but with feelings unknown to the Jews of the first and second century. The New Testament is regarded as a store house of germs, a magazine of texts to be interpreted by the light of the full orbed spirit, and unfolded to meet the needs of an older world. The cord which connected the religion with the mother faith of Israel was broken and the faith entered on an independent existence. To the cradle succeeds the cathedral.

IX.

JESUS.

It will be remarked that in the foregoing chapters no account is given of Jesus, and no account made of him. His name has not been written except where the common usage of speech made it necessary. The writer has carefully avoided occasion for expressing an opinion in regard to his character, his performance, or his claim; has carefully avoided so doing; the omission has been intentional. The purpose of his essay is to give the history of an idea, not the history of a person, to trace the development of a thought, not the influence of a life, letting it be inferred whether the life were necessary, and if necessary, wherein and how far necessary to the shaping of the thought. But this task will not be judged to have been fairly discharged unless he declares the nature of the inference he himself draws. The question "What think ye of the Christ?" meaning "What think ye of Jesus?" may be fairly put to him, and should be frankly answered. That there are two distinct questions here proposed, need not at the close of this essay be said. Jesus is the name of a man; Christ, or rather The Christ, is the name of an idea. The history of Jesus is the history of an individual; the history of the Christ is the history of a doctrine. An essay on the Christ-idea touches the person of Jesus, only as he is associated with the Christ-idea or is made a representative of it. Had he not been associated with that idea, either through his own design or in the belief of his countrymen, the omission of all mention of his name would provoke no criticism. The common opinion that he was in some sense the Christ; that but for him the Christ-idea would not have been made conspicuous in the way and at the time it was; that the existence of the Christian Church, the conversion of Paul, the composition of the New Testament, the course of religious thought in the eastern and western world was directed by his mind; that the social life,--the morals and manners, the heart, conscience, feeling, soul--of mankind, in the earlier and later centuries of his era was determined by his character, renders necessary a word of comment on the validity of his individual claim.

If either of the four gospels is to be accepted as biography it must be the first, as being the earliest in date, and as containing less than either of the others of speculative admixture. The first gospel rests, according to an ancient tradition, on memoranda or notes taken by a companion of Jesus and afterwards written out, in the popular language of the country, for the use of the disciples and others in Judaea and Galilee. The disappearance of all save a few fragments of this book, and of any writing answering in description to it, the impossibility of identifying it with the present Gospel of Matthew, or of proving that the existing Gospel of Matthew rests upon it;[10] the comparatively late date to which our Greek Matthew must be assigned--thirty years at least, probably fifty or sixty after Jesus' death, and the absolute failure of all attempts to trace its records to an eye witness of any sort, (say nothing of a competent eye witness, clear of head, tenacious of memory, veracious in speech,) all conspire to stamp with imprudence the conjecture that the Christ of Matthew and the Jesus of history were one and the same. This would be the case were the picture harmoniously proportioned, as it is not.

[Footnote 10: The character and influence of the "Gospel of the Hebrews" and of other books of the same kind is considered in full by Mr. S. Baring-Gould in "The Lost and Hostile Gospels." Mr. Baring-Gould argues that while neither of our present Gospels is entitled to be called genuine in the ordinary sense, they contain authentic biographical materials. It is his opinion that "at the close of the first century almost every Church had its own Gospel, with which alone it was acquainted. But it does not follow that these Gospels were not as trustworthy as the four which we now alone recognize." (p. 23.) Mr. Baring-Gould's argument is not strong. The first mention of the "Gospel of the Hebrews" is no earlier than the middle of the second century; the remaining fragments of it are too few and too undecisive to be of weight; and it was, by all confession, written in the interest of the Nazarene or Judaizing Christians. Mr. Baring-Gould himself classes it with the Clementine writings and calls them "The Lost Petrine Gospels."]

The fourth Gospel is usually accepted as the work of a disciple, the "loved disciple," the bosom friend, whose apprehension of the spiritual character of Jesus was much keener and truer than that of any business man, any mere follower, any commonplace, inconspicuous person like Matthew. But the fourth Gospel, allowing that it was written by John the disciple, must, to insist on a former remark, have been written in his extreme old age, and after a mental and spiritual transformation so complete as to leave no trace of the Galilean youth whom Jesus took to his heart. The zealot has become a mystic; the Palestinian Jew has become an Asiatic Greek: the "son of thunder" is a philosopher; the fisherman is a cultivated writer, acquainted with the subtlest forms of speculation. Is it conceivable that such a man should have retained his impressions of biographical incidents and personal traits, or that retaining them he should have allowed them their due prominence in his record? can his picture be accepted as a portrait?

Certainly, some are impatient to say, and for this very reason; as the perfect, the only portrait; the picture of the very man, the biography of his soul; we accept it as we accept Plato's portrait of Socrates. But do we accept Plato's portrait of Socrates, as a piece done to the life? Plato was a great artist, as all the world knows from his authentic works. But even in his case, we do not know whether he, in depicting Socrates, meant to paint the man as he really was, or an ideal head, conceived according to the Socratic type. To compare John's portrait of Jesus with Plato's portrait of Socrates, is besides, a proceeding quite illogical; for we must assume, in the first place, that John painted this portrait of Jesus, and in the next place that the portrait must be a good one because he painted it,--this being the only piece of his ever on exhibition.

To say with Renan and others that the idealized likeness must from the nature of the case be the correct one, because such a person as Jesus was, is best seen at a distance and by poetic gaze, is again to beg the question. How do we know that Jesus was such a person? How do we know that the most spiritual apprehension of him, was the truest; that they judged him most justly, who judged him from the highest point; that the glorifying imaginations alone presented his full stature and proportions, that the ordinary minds immediately about him necessarily misconstrued and misrepresented him? In the order of experience, historical and biographical truth is discovered by stripping off layer after layer of exaggeration and going back to the statements of contemporaries. As a rule, figures are reduced, not enlarged, by criticism. The influence of admiration is recognized as distorting and falsifying, while exalting. The process of legend-making begins immediately, goes on rapidly and with accelerating speed, and must be liberally allowed for by the seeker after truth. In scores of instances the historical individual turns out to be very much smaller than he was painted by his terrified or loving worshippers. In no single case has it been established that he was greater, or as great. It is no doubt, conceivable that such a case should occur, but it never has occurred, in known instances, and cannot be presumed to have occurred in any particular instance. The presumptions are against the correctness of the glorified image. The disposition to exaggerate is so much stronger than the disposition to underrate, that even really great men are placed higher than they belong oftener than lower. The historical method works backwards. Knowledge shrinks the man. Eminent examples that jump to recollection instantly confirm this view.

The case of Mahomet is in point. Here, the critical procedure was twofold; first to rescue a figure from the depths of infamy and then to recover the same figure from the cloudland of fancy. Under the pressure of christian hate the fame of Mahomet sank to the lowest point. He was impostor, liar, cheat, name for all shamefulness. From this muck heap he has been plucked by valiant hands, and placed on the list of heroes. Now another process is beginning, to find precisely what kind of hero he was; and it is safe to say that under this process the dimensions of the hero shrink. The arabian estimate of the prophet will not bear close examination. The glamor of pious enthusiasm being dispelled, the traits of nationality show themselves; the ecstasy is seen to be complicated with epilepsy; the revelations partake of the general oriental character; the truths are the cardinal truths of the semitic religions; the personal qualities are of the same cast that distinguishes the arabian mind. The detestation and the homage are both unjustifiable.

Another example in point is Buddha; a name covered by ages of fable, and so thickly that his historical existence was long doubted. It was questioned whether he was anything more substantial than a vision. The mist of legend has already been so far dispersed that a grand form is discerned moving up and down in India. Presently it will be measured and outlined. It is safe to predict intellectual and moral shrinkage of the person under the operation of this scrutiny. Just now the impression of his greatness is somewhat overpowering. He looks morally gigantic as compared with teachers who are better known. We quote his sayings with unbounded admiration; we commend his life as an illustration of whatever most exalts humanity. But if the time ever comes when his lineaments are fully revealed to sight, he will be found neither much greater nor much better than his generation justified.

The critics of Strauss' "Life of Jesus" insisted on the necessity of a historical foundation for his character. Such a person they declared must have lived; he could not have been invented. Strange position to take, in view of the fact that idealization is one of the commonest feats of mankind; that the human imagination is continually constructing heroes out of poltroons, and transmuting lead into gold! Some idealization there is, by the general confession of unprejudiced men. The whole cannot be received as literal fact. There is here and there a bit of color put on to heighten the effect. Who shall decide how much? If the figure is glorified a little, why not a great deal? If a great deal, why not altogether? The materials for constructing the person being given, as they are, in the hebrew genius, and the plastic power being provided as it is, by the hebrew enthusiasm, the result might have been predicted, a good way in advance of history. The argument against Strauss' method proves too much.

The critics of Baur urged with ceaseless iteration the absurdity of accounting for the New Testament, and explaining the developments of the first century, by means of bodiless ideas, substituting phantoms of thought for persons, intellectual issues for the interactions of living men. Life, it was said, presupposes life; life alone generates life. To create a New Testament out of rabbinical fancies is preposterous. True enough. History is not spectral; but neither are ideas spectral. Ideas imply living minds, and living minds are persons. But the persons are not of necessity single individuals. They may be multitudes; they may be generations; they probably are a nation. The individuals that loom up conspicuously represent multitudes, an epoch, of which they are mouth pieces and agents. Do no individuals whatever loom up? None the less creative is the epoch; none the less vital are the ideas. The great events of the world depend not on individuals, but on the cumulative force and providential meeting of wide social tendencies that have been gathering head for ages and pointing in certain directions. Mahomet, a sensitive, receptive, responsive spirit, gave a name to the arabian movement; he neither originated it, nor finally shaped it. Luther, brave, self-poised, independent soul, was not the author of the Reformation, though he gave character to it. Others had gone before him, and broken a way. The time for reformation had come, thousands were watching for the light which Luther descried, and eagerly aided in its diffusion. Innumerable sparks burst into flame. He was child, not father of the movement; so it may have been with Jesus, with Peter, with Paul. They presupposed the ideas of their age, and the agency of living men. The literature of the New Testament, which is all that Baur concerned himself with, stands for what it is, a literature; a product of intellectual activity in the age that created it. The popular notion that Scripture was penned by men whose minds were full of thoughts not their own, but God's, contains a rational truth. All great literature, all literature that is not occasional, incidental, ephemeral, is inspired in this sense. The writers held the pen while the spirit of their age, of many ages, of all ages at length, rolled through them. It is true of all representative, of all national books. It is true of the "Iliad" of Homer, of Dante's Divina Commedia, of the Book of Job, the Koran, the "Three Kings," the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the Dhammapada, the elder Edda. Such books as express the mind of an epoch are productions of an era, not of a man. The productive force is in the time. The man is of moment but incidentally. In discussing such works, all consideration of the man may be dispensed with. Strauss and Baur were Hegelians, who regarded the world-movements described in literatures and events, as moments in the experience of God. Nothing to them, therefore, was spectral. In tracing the pedigree of ideas, they felt themselves to be tracing the footprints of Deity.

The difficulty of constructing one harmonious character from the four gospels of the New Testament need not be expatiated on here. It is a difficulty that never has been overcome, and that increases in dimensions with our knowledge of the book. It is, of course possible, not easy, but possible, for one standing at either extreme to drag the opposite extreme into apparent accord. The believer in the divinity of the Christ planting himself on the doctrine of the Logos, reads his theory into the earlier gospels, loads the language with meaning it was never meant to bear, stretches the homely incidents on the rack of his hypothesis, and painfully excavates the figure he has already laid there. The believer in the humanity of the Christ, pursuing the opposite method, belittles the Johannean conception till it comes within the compass of his argument, dilutes the statements, expurgates and attenuates the thought, till nothing remains but sentimentalism. Each vindicates one view by sacrificing the other. To one who would preserve both representations, the task of combination is desperate. They are the centres of two opposite systems. One is a human being, a man; the other is a demi-god. One is a teacher of moral and religious truth; the other is an incarnation of the truth. One indicates the way; the other _is_ the way. One invites to life; the other _is_ the life. One talks about God and immortality; the other manifests God, and _is_ immortality. One points to heaven; the other "is in heaven." One is a helpful human friend; the other is a divine Saviour. One claims allegiance on the ground of his providential calling; the other demands spiritual surrender on the ground of his transcendent nature. One collects a body of disciples; the other forms and consecrates a church, and puts it in charge of a Holy Spirit, that shall save it from error and evil. After what has been said in previous chapters it is unnecessary to enlarge. Let whoever will take Furness' portrait of Jesus on one hand, and Pressense's on the other; let him place them side by side; let him subject them to close scrutiny, comparing each with the original sketches; and he will rise from the contemplation satisfied that the two pictures cannot represent the same person.