Part 5

The Christ's bearing before his Roman judge is of the same strain; the proud silence of the arraigned prince; the bold assertion of kingliness, when challenged; the stately defiance of the pagan's wrath; the appeal to supernatural support; the prediction of angelic succor in the hour of need, in strict accordance with the apocalyptic expressions thrown out at the last supper, and reverberated in tremendous rhetoric on the Mount of Olives and in the palace of the high priest, expressions in full and literal harmony with the Jewish conceptions of the Christ's relations with the angelic world, wholly in the spirit of Daniel, Enoch, and other apocryphal writings, leave no doubt on the mind that this personage moved within the limits of the common Messianic conception. Pilate condemns him reluctantly, feeling that he is a harmless visionary, but is obliged to condemn him as one who persistently claimed to be the "King of the Jews," an enemy of Caesar, an insurgent against the empire, a pretender to the throne, a bold inciter to rebellion. The death he undergoes is the death of the traitor and mutineer, the death that would have been decreed to Judas the Gaulonite, had he been captured instead of slain in battle, and that was inflicted on thousands of his deluded followers. The bitter cry of the crucified as he hung on the cross, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" disclosed the hope of deliverance that till the last moment sustained his heart, and betrayed the anguish felt when the hope was blighted; the sneers and hootings of the rabble expressed their conviction that he had pretended to be what he was not.

The miracles ascribed to the Christ, so far from being inconsistent with the ordinary conception of the Messianic office, were necessary to complete that conception. It was expected that the Messiah would work miracles. This was one of his prerogatives; a certificate of his commission from Jehovah, and an instrument of great service in carrying out his designs. To the Jew of that, as of preceding periods, to the crude theist of all periods, the belief in miracles was and is easy. In such judgment, the will of God is absolute, and when should that will be exerted if not at providential crises of need, or in furtherance of his servants' work? The special miracles attributed to the Christ of the earliest New Testament literature are, as Strauss conclusively shows, patterned after performances which met satisfactorily the demands of the Jewish imagination; being either repetitions of ancient marvels, or concrete expressions of ideal faith. The miracles of this Christ are precisely adjusted to the exigencies of his calling, in no respect transcending or falling short of that standard.

The moral precepts put into the Messiah's mouth are also what he might be expected to utter. The teachings of the sermon on the Mount are echoes, and not altogether awakening or inspiring echoes, of ancient ethical law. The beatitudes do not exceed in beauty of sentiment or felicity of phrase, lovely passages that gem the pages of prophet, psalmist and sage. Portions of the morality are harsh, ungracious, intemperate, almost inhuman as compared with the mellow grandeur of the older law. Several of the parables, if taken in an ethical sense, contain moral injunctions or insinuations that are quite unjustifiable; the parable, for example, of the laborers in the vineyard, the last of whom, though they have worked but one hour, receive the same compensation as the early comers, who had borne the burden and heat of the day;--the parable of the steward, which, literally construed, palliates abuse of trusts;--the parable of Dives and Lazarus, which teaches the evil lesson that felicity or infelicity hereafter is consequent on fortune or misfortune here. These and other parables are deprived of their dangerous moral tendency by being removed from the ethical category, and made to convey lessons of a different kind. Read the story of the laborers in the vineyard as intended to justify Jehovah in granting the same spiritual favors to the newly called Gentiles as to the descendants of Abraham who, from the first, answered to the call addressed to them:--read the story of the steward as conveying an explanation of the Pauline policy in making capital with the Gentiles by offering to them on easy terms the promises that the Jews showed themselves unworthy of, and rejected:--read the story of Dives and Lazarus as containing the idea that the "poor in spirit," the outcast, to whom the mansions of the Lord's house, the patrimony of Abraham had never been opened, the people who had nothing but faith,--whom even pagan dogs commiserated,--should enjoy the blessedness of the Messiah's kingdom rather than those who claimed a prescriptive right to it on the ground of descent or privilege,--and the difficulty of reconciling them with moral principle is avoided. These parables and others of like tenor, do not belong to the first layer of Messianic tradition, but to the second deposit made by the Apostle Paul.

To the same period belong other parables that contain larger ideas than the Jewish Messiah of the first generation could entertain. Such are the story of the net cast into the sea and gathering in of every kind, that is, "Greeks and Romans, barbarians, Scythians, bond and free," not Hebrews only,--the miscellaneous haul being impartially examined--sweetness of quality, not forms of scale being made the condition of acceptance;--the story of the good Samaritan, designed to place people reckoned idolators and miscreants on a higher spiritual level than anointed priests of whatever order, who postponed mercy to sacrifice. Could the Jewish Messiah attribute to Samaritans a grace that was the highest adornment of faithful Jews? The story of the prodigal son belongs to the same category. The elder brother, who has always been at home, dutiful but ungracious niggardly and covetous, is the Jew who has never left the homestead of faith, but has stayed there, confidently expecting the Messianic inheritance as the reward of his conventional orthodoxy. The younger brother is the Gentile, the infidel, the pagan apostate, who throws off the parental authority and reduces himself to spiritual beggary. He spends all; he contents himself with refuse; is more heathenish than the heathen themselves; swinish in his habits. Yet this spiritual reprobate, by his unseemly behavior, forfeits no privilege. The "mansion" of the Father's house is still open to him when he shall choose to return. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob waits and watches for the penitent; sees him a great way off; runs to meet him; throws his arms about his neck; reinstates him in his place; celebrates his arrival by feasting, and puts him above the elder brother who had been working in the field while the prodigal had been rioting in the city. Such a lesson from the lips of the Jewish Messiah would have been astonishing indeed. It would have gone far towards overturning his claim. We know that some years later the lesson was inculcated as a cardinal doctrine by Paul and regarded as a heresy by the Christ's personal disciples, and it is in accordance with literary laws to refer to this later period the ideas that were native to it.

The religious beliefs imputed to the Messiah we are sketching, are the ordinary beliefs of his age and people. His faith is the faith of the Pharisees. His idea of God is the national idea softened, as it always had been, by a gentle mind. It thinks as his countrymen thought about Providence, fate and freedom, good and evil, destiny, the past and the future of his race. He believes in the resurrection and the judgment, the blessedness that is in store for the faithful Israelite, the misery that awaits the unworthy children of Abraham. His moral classifications are the technical classifications of the enthusiastic patriot, who confounded national with rational principles of judgment. He believes in good and bad angels, in guardian spirits and demoniacal possession. A Pharisee of the narrow literal school he is not. His allegiance to the Mosaic law is spiritual, not slavish; his faith in the perpetuity of the temple worship is unencumbered with formalism; he discriminates between the priestly office and the priestly character, between the form and the essence of sacrifice; yet is he capable of lurid feelings and bitter thoughts towards the Pharisees of another school; he cannot enter into the mind of the Sadducee; and the scribe is a person he cannot respect. On this side his intolerance occasionally breaks forth with inconsiderate heat. He calls his opponents "blind guides," "hypocrites," "whited sepulchres," and threatens them with the wrath of the Eternal.

The Messiah's essential conception of his office does not differ materially from that of his countrymen. He is no military leader; he puts no confidence in the sword; he incites to no revolt. But he does not trust to intellectual methods for his success; the success that he anticipates is not such as follows the promulgation of ideas, or the establishment of moral convictions. He looks for demonstrations of power, not human but super-human. The hosts that surround him, and are reckoned on to sustain him, are the hosts of heaven, marshalled under the Lord and prepared to sweep down upon the Lord's foes when the hour of conflict shall strike. He will not draw the sword himself, or allow his followers to gird on weapons of war; but he is more than willing to avail himself of legions irresistible in might. James Martineau has touched this point with a master hand: "The non-resistant principle meant no more in the early church than that the disciples were not to anticipate the hour fast approaching of the Messiah's descent to claim his throne. But when that hour struck there was to be no want of 'physical force' no shrinking from retribution as either unjust or undivine. The 'flaming fire,' the 'sudden destruction,' the 'mighty angels,' the 'tribulation and anguish,' were to form the retinue of Christ, and the pioneers of the kingdom of God. The new reign was to come _with force_, and on nothing else in the last resort was there any reliance; only the army was to arrive from heaven before the earthly recruits were taken up. 'My kingdom,' said Jesus, 'is not of this world, else would my servants fight;' an expression which implies that no kingdom of this world can dispense with arms, and that he himself, were he the head of a human polity, would not forbid the sword: but while 'legions of angels' stood ready for his word, and only waited till the Scripture was fulfilled, and the hour of darkness was passed, to obey the signal of heavenly invasion, the weapon of earthly temper might remain in its sheath."

It is not affirmed here that the actual Jesus corresponded to this Messianic representation; that he filled it and no more; that it correctly and adequately reported him. It may possibly present only so much of him as the average of his contemporaries could appreciate. They may be right who are of opinion that the fourth evangelist comes nearer to the historical truth than the first. That the earliest New Testament conception of the Messiah has been correctly portrayed in the preceding sketch may be granted without prejudice to the historical Jesus. They only who assume the identity of this Hebrew Messiah with the man of Nazareth, need place him in the niche that is here made for the Messiah. There are others more noble. Let each decide for himself, on the evidence, to which he belongs. Some will decide that the first account of a wonderful person must, from the nature of the case, be the falsest; others will decide that in the nature of things it must be the truest. Whichever be the decision the literary image remains unimpaired. Whether time should be judged requisite to emancipate the living character from the associations of its environment, and bring it into full view; or whether on the other hand time should be regarded as darkening and confusing the image, for the reason that it allows the growth of legends and distorting theory, is a question that will be touched by-and-by. For the present it suffices to show what the earliest representation was, and to trace its descent from the traditions of the race. The materials are adequate for this, whether for more or not. The form of Jesus may be lost, but the form of the Messiah is distinct.

V.

THE FIRST CHRISTIANS.

The death of the Messiah did not discourage his followers, as it might have done had he presented the coarser type of the anticipation illustrated by Judas of Galilee whose insurrection had been extinguished in blood some years before, yet the movement of Judas did not cease at his death, but troubled the state for sixty years. His two sons, James and John, raised the Messianic standard fifteen years or thereabouts after the crucifixion of Jesus, and were themselves crucified. Their younger brother, Menahem, renewed the attempt twenty years later, and so far succeeded that he cut his way to the throne, assumed the part of a king, went in royal state to the temple, and but for the fury of his fanaticism might have re-erected temporarily the throne of David. But this kind of Messiah, besides being savage, was monotonous. His appeal was to the lower passions; the thoughtful, imaginative, contemplative, poetic, were not drawn to him. His followers, adherents not disciples,--might, at the best, have founded a dynasty, they could not have planted a church. The pure enthusiasm of the Christ, his entire singleness of heart, the absence in him of private ambition or self-seeking, his confidence in the heavenly character of his mission, his reliance on super-human aid, his sincere persuasion that the purpose of his calling would not be thwarted by death, insured his hold on those who had trusted him. They did not lose their conviction that he was the Messiah; they anticipated his return, in glory, to complete his work; in that anticipation they waited, watched and prayed. The name "Christians" was, we are told, given, in derision, to the believers in Antioch. But if they had chosen a name for themselves, they could not have hit on a more precisely descriptive one. "Christians" they were; believers that the Christ had come, that the crucified was the Christ, that he would reappear and vindicate his claim. This was their single controlling thought, the only thought that distinguished them from their countrymen who rejected the Messiahship of their friend. They were Jews, in every respect; Jews of Jews, enthusiastic, devout, pharisaic Jews, the firmest of adherents to the Law of Moses, unqualified receivers of tradition, diligent students of the scriptures, constant attendants at the temple worship, urgent in supplication, literal in creed, and punctual in observance; acquiescent in the claims of the priesthood, scrupulous in all Hebrew etiquette. They were determined that the Master, at his coming, should find them ready.

James, "the Lord's brother," set an example of sanctity worthy of a high-priest. In fact, he assumed the position of a priest, and filled it with such austerity that he was called "the righteous." He tasted, says Hegesippus, neither wine nor strong drink; he ate nothing that had life; his hair was never shorn; his body was never anointed with oil, or bathed in water; his garments were of linen, never of wool; so perfect was he in all righteousness that, though no consecrated priest, he was permitted to enter the holy place behind the veil of the temple, and there he spent hours in intercession for the people, his knees becoming as hard as a camel's from contact with the stone pavement. To those who asked him the way to life, he replied: "Believe that Jesus is the Christ." When some dissenters protested against this declaration and asked him to retract it, he repeated it with stronger emphasis; when the malcontents who revered him, but would have none of his Messiah, raised a tumult and tried to intimidate him, he reiterated the statement, adding: "He sits in heaven, at the right hand of the Supreme power, and will come in clouds." For this testimony, says tradition, he laid down his life.

The fellow-believers of James imitated him as closely as they could. They were proud of their descent from Abraham; they were tenacious of the privileges granted to the twelve tribes; they kept up their relation with the synagogue; they had faith in forms of observance; they revered the Sabbath; their trust in the literal efficacy of prayer was implicit; they were excessively jealous of intellectual activity outside of their narrow communion; their anticipations were confined to the restoration of Israel, and never wandered into the region of social improvement or moral progress; in general ethical and social culture they were not interested.

They had no ecclesiastical establishment apart from the Jewish Church; no separate priesthood, no sacraments, no cultus, no rubric, no calendar, no liturgy. The validity of sacrifice they maintained, the doctrine of sacrifice possessing a deeper significance for them from the growing faith that their Lord was himself the paschal lamb, the shedding of whose blood purchased the remission of sins. Hence a special encouragement of the sacerdotal spirit, an exaggerated sense of the efficacy of blood, a theory of atonement more searching and absolute than had prevailed in the ancient church. The later doctrine of atonement in the christian church may have grown from this small but vital germ.

They had no dogma peculiar to themselves, the doctrines of the old Church being all they needed; they had no trinity or beginning of trinity; no christology; no doctrine of Fall; no theory of first and second Adam; no metaphysic; no philosophy of sin and salvation; no interior mystery of experience. Whatever newness of creed they avowed, was owing to their acknowledgment of the Christ, and consisted in a few very simple inferences from this tenet. Of course even slow-minded, literal, external men could not entertain a belief like that, and not be pushed by it to certain practical conclusions. The expectation of the Christ's coming would necessarily raise questions respecting the conditions of acceptance with him, the character of his dominion, the duration of it, the social changes incidental to it; but it does not appear that speculation on these subjects was carried far. A crude millenarianism developed itself early; a cloudy theory of atonement found favor; for the rest, conjecture, it was little more, dwelt contentedly within the confines of rabbinical lore.

There was nothing peculiar in their moral precepts or usages, nothing that should effect a change in the received ethics of the nation. Their essential creed involved no practical innovation on private or social moralities. The mosaic code was familiar to them from childhood. The popular commentaries on it were promulgated from week to week in the synagogues, and their validity was no more questioned by the Christians than by the most orthodox of Jews.

The daily existence of these people was retired and simple. They had frequent meetings for talk, song, mutual cheer and confirmation; full of expectation and excitement they must have been; wild with memories and hopes. For the believers lived out of themselves, in an ideal, a supernatural sphere; their hearts were in heaven with their Master, whose form filled their vision, whose voice they seemed to hear, from whom came, as they fancied, impressions, intimations, influences, unspoken but breathed messages interpreted by the soul. They were visionaries. Their life was illusion. They were transported beyond themselves at times, by the prospect of the Lord's nearness. Their minds were dazed; their feelings raised to ecstasy; in vision they saw the heavens open and fiery tongues descend. Their small upper chamber seemed to tremble and dilate in sympathy with their feelings; the ceiling appeared to lift; they were moved by an impulse which they could not account for, and regarded themselves as inspired.

In these circumstances, it is not to be wondered at that they lived in communities by themselves, preferring the society of their fellows; that they had a common purse, a common table; that they were ascetic and celibate; that they withdrew from public affairs and from private business, and approached nearly to the Essenes, with whom they had much in common, perpetuating the habit of monasticism, which became afterwards so prominent a feature in the Eastern church.

Nor is it surprising that they regarded the intimate friends of their Christ with a peculiar veneration, and ascribed to them extraordinary gifts. The basis of the future hierarchy was laid in the honor paid to these few men. They were credited with supernatural insight, and with the possession of miraculous power. Their touch was healing; their mere shadow comforted; their approval was blessing; their displeasure cursed. What they ratified was fixed; what they permitted was decreed. Their word was law; it was for them to admit and to exclude. The penalty of excommunication was in their hands, to be inflicted at their discretion. Superstition went so far as to concede to them the alternatives of life and death. The legend of Ananias and Sapphira is evidence of a credulity that set not reason only, but conscience at defiance. In their infatuation they believed that the Christ above communicated a saving spiritual grace to such as the apostles touched with their fingers.

Very singular, but very consistent and logical were the views of death entertained by the brotherhood in Christ. As their Lord delayed his coming, the elders grew old and fell asleep. There was a brotherhood of the dead as well as of the living; the living became few; the dead many. Questions arose respecting the destination of those departed. That they had perished was not to be thought of; as little to be thought of was the possibility of their forfeiting their privilege of sharing the believers' triumph. The resurrection the disciples had always believed in. That, at the coming of the Messiah there would be a general resurrection of the faithful Israelites from their graves, in field or rock, was part of their ancestral faith. But now, the matter was brought home to them with painful reality. The Christ might come at any moment; the dead were their own immediate kindred, their parents and brethren. The problem presented no difficulties to their minds however agitating it might be to their hearts. The Lord would come; of that there could be no doubt; the dead would rise, that was certain; but in what form? In what order? Would the living have precedence of them? Where would the meeting take place? How would the dead know that the time of resurrection had arrived? The answer came promptly as the question. The trumpet of the angels would proclaim the event to all creatures, visible and invisible. The elect would respond to the summons; the gates of Hades would burst asunder. In etherial forms, lighter than air, more radiant than the morning, the faithful who had died "in the Lord," would ascend; the living would exchange their terrestrial bodies for bodies celestial, and thus "changed," "in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye," would mount upward to join them, and all together would "meet the Lord in the air." For the believers the grave had no victory and death no sting.