Part 23

The heavens declare the glory of God, the firmament showeth his handy-work. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge—and that God is one, is proclaimed in this speech, and manifested in this knowledge. It gleams in the light, it breathes in the air, it moves in the life of all created nature; it is the harmony of creation, and the spirit of providence, the inspiration of reason, and the consistency of wisdom. The existence of one Supreme Intelligence is the Testimony of Nature, and to the same import are the testimonies of Scripture. We are told, and told it in every variety of tone, that to believe one God in three persons is absolutely needful to Salvation, yet we may read from Genesis to Revelations without finding such a doctrine either as a statement of truth, or a means of sanctity: but the simple and unqualified declaration that God is one, without any of these dogmatical distinctions which men of later ages have invented, I need not tell a Bible-reading audience, are interwoven with the whole texture of revelation. It was that for which Abraham left his home, and went forth a wanderer from his family and his nation; it was that for which Moses refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, and for which he chose rather to suffer affliction with the people of God; it was that over which he had long thought in his shepherd-life in an Arabian wilderness; it was that with which he was more deeply inspired in the solemn retirements of Mount Horeb; it was that to which all his laws and institutions pointed. Our Saviour took the doctrine as a known maxim—and in this his disciples followed him. We have then the truth brought down to us through Scripture, in patriarchal tradition, in Mosaic legislation, in the poetry of prophets, in the words of Christ, in the preaching of apostles,—and we have it brought down to us without one of those distinctions with which it has been since surrounded by theological ingenuity. We are zealous in the assertion of it, not for its mere metaphysical correctness, but for its moral power and its moral consistency. It does not divide our hearts, and it does not confuse our heads. It leads our minds up to one spirit, infinite in power, infinite in wisdom, and infinite in goodness. Without confusion or perplexity we can trace God in all and all in God: in the atom that trembles in a sunbeam, as in the planet that moves in boundless light, from the blush of a flower to the glory of the heavens—from the throb of an insect to the life of an immortal. The Unitarian faith in the universal father is clear, simple, and defined; inflicting no violence on our understandings, and raising no conflicts in our affections. One, and one in the strictest sense, is our parent, one is our sovereign, one is our highest benefactor, one is our protector and our guide, one is our deliverer and sanctifier; one has bestowed all we possess, one alone can give all we hope for; one is holy who demands our obedience; one is merciful who pities our repentance; one is eternal in whose presence we are to live, and therefore whether we present our adorations in dependence, or bow down in submission, or send forth our praises in gratitude, there is one, and but one, to whom our aspirations can ascend, and to whom our hearts can be devoted. Thus impressed, we must feel united to one Father in filial obedience, and to all men in a common and fraternal relationship; we cannot look upon some as selected, and upon others as outcasts; we cannot look upon some as purchased, and upon others as reprobate; we cannot look upon some as sealed with the spirit of grace for ever unto glory everlasting, and upon others as abandoned, unpitied, and unprotected, the victims of an everlasting malediction. We regard men as bound in a community of good, consequently as bound in a community of praise; we regard them as struggling in like trials, and therefore indebted to each other for mutual sympathy; we regard them as heirs of the same glory, and on the level of their heavenly hopes, standing on a basis of sacred and eternal equality. If these sentiments are false, they are at least generous, and it is not often that generosity is found in company with falsehood. Alas, how many heart-burning enmities, how many deadly persecutions have been caused by different apprehension of God’s nature or God’s worship; how often have these differences broken all the fraternal bonds of humanity, made man the greatest enemy to man,—more savage and cruel than the beast, yea, and cruel in proportion to the zeal he pretended for his God. But never could this have been, had men believed in God, had men believed in Christ—had they believed in God as an impartial and universal Father, had they believed in Christ as an equal and universal brother.—Then we could have all sent our mingled prayers to the skies, and with a Christianity as broad as our earth, and as ample as our race, and generous as the soul of Jesus, we could have taken all mankind to our heart. We maintain it not in mere abstract speculation, but because we consider it a positive and a vital truth. Were the point metaphysical and not moral, we conceive it would be little worthy of dispute—and in that sense I for one would have small anxiety, whether God existed in three persons or in three thousand. In like manner we hold the simple and absolute unity of Christ; a unity of nature, a unity of person, and a unity of character. But as this topic is to occupy so large a space in the present lecture, I shall here forbear from further comments.

The statement of our subject in a text, was alluded to by the Christ Church Lecturer, in a tone that at least approached to censure. But we consider it amongst our privileges, that we can express our main principles in the simple and obvious language of Scripture; and if in this case deep scholarship and acute criticism be needed to give it to common minds a meaning different from that in which we understand it, the fault certainly is not ours.—Neither, indeed, is ours the blame, if a similar phraseology pervades the whole Christian Scriptures; that in every page we read of God and Christ, and never of God in three persons, or of Christ in two natures. To find out such distinctions, we leave to Scholastic ingenuity; to give them definition and perpetuity, we consign to the framers of creeds and articles—and to receive and reverence them we turn over to the admirers of Athanasian perspicuity. We take the New Testament as the best formulary; we are satisfied with a religion direct and simple in its principles, and we long not for a religion of deducibles. We have been accused of tortuous criticism; and although we desire not to retort the accusation on our opponents, so far I mean, as it implies moral delinquency, we cannot forbear observing that the intellectual sinuosities by which some of these deductions have been drawn from the New Testament is to us, certainly, a subject of not a little admiration. Our motive in selecting this text was the best of all which governs men in the use of language, simply that with greatest brevity and greatest perspicuity, it enunciates our opinions. Our opponents, however, have no right to complain; the advantage of being first in the field was on their side, and the struggle was not provoked on our part but on theirs: they of course selected their own subjects, and they suggested ours. They could, therefore, have had no uncertainty either as to our views or interpretation of the text. I would not allude to a matter so small, were it not for the contradictory delinquencies with which Unitarians are accused—one time they are charged with dreading an appeal to Scripture, and when by the very title of their subject, they tacitly appeal to Scripture, there is wanting still no occasion to blame.

What, in Unitarian views, is Christ the Man, and what is Christ the Mediator, shall make the subject of the present Lecture.

I.—First, I beg your attention to the enquiry as to what we believe of Christ as man. To this we answer, that in his nature we think him simply and undividedly human; that in his character we regard him morally perfect. We cannot recognize in Christ a mixture of natures, and we wonder that any who read the gospel’s records can. That he was simply and merely human, is a conclusion which meditation on these Records but fixes more profoundly on our understandings, and makes more precious to our faith. We derive the conclusion from Christ’s own language—“Ye seek to kill me,” he says, “a _man_—which hath told you the truth, which I heard of God.”—Again, when a worldly and ambitious individual, mistaking the true nature of this kingdom, desired to become his disciple: “The foxes, said Jesus, have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man hath not whereon to lay his head.” Instances, too many to repeat, might be enumerated; but the only other I shall adduce is that in which Christ’s human nature speaks from its deepest sorrows, and its strongest love: when Jesus, as he hung upon the Cross, saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing by, he saith unto his mother, “Woman, behold thy son.” It is vain to tell us of an infinite God veiled behind this suffering and sweetness, the mind repels it, despite of all the efforts of theology.[151]

The impression of a simple humanity was that which he left on the mind of his countrymen. What other impression could they have of one whom they daily saw amongst them as of themselves? who came weary to rest in their habitations; who came hungry to sit at their boards; whom they met in their streets sinking with fatigue; whom they might see upon their wayside asking drink from a well; one whom they saw weep over their troubles and rejoice in their gladness. Nay, the very intenseness of his humanity became a matter of accusation. To many it seemed subversive of religion. That spirit which sympathized with human beings, in their joys and woes, which not only loved the best, but would not cast out the worst, was what those of strait and narrow hearts could not understand. He came eating and drinking, and they called him a man gluttonous and a wine-bibber. Had he said long prayers at the corners of their streets, and been zealous for the traditions of the fathers, they would have revered him as a saint. Those who were panoplied in their own spiritual sufficiency knew not how he could be the friend of sinners; how he could associate with the deserted and the excommunicated; how he could take to his compassion the weary and the heavy-laden. The pharisee who proudly asked him to his house, but gave him no salute, no oil for his stiffened joints, and no water for his parched feet, had nothing within him whereby to interpret the feeling of Jesus towards her who anointed his head with ointment, washed his feet with her tears, and wiped them with the hairs of her head. Yes, it was this truth and fulness of humanity which made Jesus hateful to the pharisees, but loved and blessed by the poor; it was this that made the common people hear him gladly, and gave his voice a power which they never felt in the teachings of the scribes; which drew crowds around him, in wilderness and mountain, that hung raptured on the glad tidings which he preached. The flatterers of Herod on a particular occasion cried out, “It is the voice of a god and not of a man;” but no one ever thought of insulting Jesus with such an exclamation.

The guilt of the Jews in crucifying Christ has been alluded to in the present controversy. But this is only an additional proof that Jesus left no other conviction on the minds of his countrymen than that he was simply a man. That our views diminish this guilt has been urged as a powerful objection against us; but, with reverence I say it, the objection turns more against Christ himself. Either then he was simply man, or being Deity, he suppressed the evidence which would prove it, and allowed this people to contract the awful guilt of killing a God-man. If the first be true, the guilt asserted has no existence; if the second, I leave you to judge in what light it places the sincerity and veracity of an incarnate Deity. There is neither declaration nor evidence afforded by Christ by which the Jews could think him more than man. On the contrary he disclaims expressly the far lower honour at which they thought his presumption aimed, by a quotation from their own Scriptures: “It is written in your law” he observes, “I said ye are Gods. If he called them Gods, unto whom the word of God came (and the Scripture cannot be broken), say ye of him whom the Father hath sanctified and sent into the world, thou blasphemest, because I said I am the Son of God.”[152] There is then no declaration, nor yet is there evidence. Miracles were not such: for the Jewish mind and memory were filled with instances of these, and to the performers of which they never thought of attributing a nature above humanity. If Christ was more, the fact should have been plainly manifested, for the idea of a God in a clothing of flesh was one not only foreign but repugnant to every Jewish imagination. The difference between the Jews and pagans in this particular is not a little striking. Jesus raised the dead before their eyes, and yet they thought him but a man having great power from the Creator. Paul, in company with Barnabas, healed a cripple at Lystra, and the populace cried out, “The Gods are come down to us in the likeness of men.” When Paul in Melita shook without harm the viper from his hand, the spectators who at first considered him a murderer, changed their minds, and said that he was a God. In proportion then to the natural and religious repugnance which the Jews had to humanize the divinity, should there have been clearness in the proof of it on the part of Jesus. No such proof was given.

The greatest miracles of Jesus disturbed not the conviction of the Jews in his simple human nature. The woman of Samaria, wondering at once at his charity and his knowledge, called her neighbours to see a _man_ who told her all things whatsoever she did. She asked them, then is not this the Christ? The blind man awakened by his touch from thick darkness into the marvellous light of God’s creation describes him but as a _man_ who anointed his eyes. The Jewish officers struck dumb before his wisdom, declare that never _man_ spake like this _man_. The Jews who stood around him and saw Lazarus, whose body had been already dissolving, come forth quickened from the grave, beheld in him but the powerful and the loving friend. The multitudes of Judea, who in desert and city were amazed at his wonderful works, simply “glorified God who had given such power unto men.”

Similar was the impression which he left upon his intimate friends. What would have been their emotions had they a belief that continually they were in the bodily presence of the incarnate God? How would they not have bowed themselves in the dust, and stopped the familiar word as it trembled on their lips? Instead of approaching with unfearing hearts, how would they not have stood afar off and apart, and gazed with awe upon a being who was pacing a fragment of the world he created, instead of clinging to him as one of themselves? Whenever they saw his mysterious appearance, would they not call on the mountains to fall upon them, and the hills to cover them? But not so was it. The lowly, the humble, and the poor rejoiced to see him, and were glad when he entered their habitations. They were consoled by the benediction of peace with which he sanctified his approach and his departure. For him was the gratulations of loving friends, and for him were the smiles of little children. In Bethany, Martha, when he came, was busy in much serving, and the meek and gentle Mary sat at his feet to drink in his heavenly wisdom. At the last supper John leaned upon his bosom. At the cross, when the head of Jesus bent heavily in anguish, and solitary torture was wearing away his life, there again we meet the same disciple, there also we meet the mother of Jesus and the grateful Magdalene, all three oppressed with darkest affliction and despair. Some of them we again behold at the sepulchre in utmost alarm. Now this grief at the cross and this perplexity at the tomb is consistent with no other supposition than that they regarded him simply as a man. Why else should they have been afflicted? What though his enemies were strong, if knowing him to be God, they must also have known that his power was boundless and his triumph certain. This sorrow and uncertainty, I repeat, can have no other foundation than a belief in his simple humanity. And surely if his mother had only such impression, it is hard to expect that the Jews at the time, and many Christians since, could have had any other.

I anticipate the objection that the glories of his deity were concealed, and that this concealment was necessary to his mediatorial work. I answer then, that when he had departed, and when such a secresy was no longer needful, his apostles on some of the most solemn occasions merely asserted his humanity, on occasions, too, when, if he were God as well as man, the whole truth were to be expected. Paul,[153] in announcing him as the great and final judge of the world, calls him no more than man. Nor does his language assume a higher import when he speaks of him as the pattern and pledge of immortality.[154] No other conclusion is to be drawn from the address of Peter to Cornelius; and if a belief of Christ’s deity be necessary to salvation, the centurion might, for anything Peter asserted, have gone direct to perdition.[155] Still more remarkable is it, that in this apostle’s first public address after the departure of his master to the skies, we have nothing more than the same declaration. The occasion and the circumstances not only justified, but demanded the highest announcement that could be made respecting Christ. The disciples had just seen him taken up into heaven, and the awe of the ascension was yet upon their hearts. He who had trod this weary earth in many sorrows was taken from their sight. They who had recently seen his blood streaming warmly on Calvary, had come fresh from the glory of Olivet. He who had been their suffering companion and instructor was now their blessed and triumphant master. Alone in the midst of a gainsaying and persecuting world, with gladness solemnized by reverence, and victory tempered by grief, they had assembled to await the promised Comforter. After that event they were to be separated, and each was to take his own path in the moral wilderness that stretched far and desolately before him. The Spirit of Promise came. The cloven tongues of fire fell upon them: that beautiful emblem of the eloquent spirit of the gospel that was to carry light and heat to the hearts of all generations, and through every language of earth; that beautiful emblem of a Christianity which might exist in many forms, but be at the same time enlightened and enflamed by the soul of a common charity. Multitudes from all nations were collected in the Holy City;—under the influence of recent and solemn events Peter rises to address them. The tragedy of Calvary was yet fresh in the general imagination, the stain of a slave and malefactor’s death was still dark on the forehead of Christianity. This surely was the time to cover the ignominy that lay on the humanity of Jesus by proclaiming the resplendent glory of his godhead. This was especially to be expected from Peter. He had on a preceding occasion spurned the idea of such a shameful death, though coming from Christ’s own lips; now was the time to pour the glory of the God over the humiliation of the man; he too, who in an hour of weakness denied his master, was the one who in the time of his strength and repentance would be most ready to vindicate and assert his highest honour. It is said that the apostles were not thoroughly inspired, and did not fully know Christ before the day of Pentecost. But this was the day of Pentecost. If, besides, it was the speaker’s object—as indeed it must have been—that Christ should be rightly and widely known, now was the opportunity to send forth his name and nature through every kingdom and in every tongue. If, according to the doctrine some time since propounded in Christ Church, the sin of the Jews was dark in proportion to the grade of being in which we place the Saviour, now was the time, while the event was recent, to strike their hearts with terror and compunction. Contrast, then, these natural, these fair and unexaggerated expectations, with the actual speech of Peter, and without a word of comment the contrast is itself the strongest argument. “Ye men of Israel hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles, and wonders, and signs which God did by him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves know: him being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain: whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that he should be holden of it.” (Acts ii. 22, 24.) Had you been listeners to this address, I ask your candour, I ask your intellect, could you conceive that the apostle was speaking, not of a glorified man, but of an incarnate Deity? No, certainly.

The testimony of Peter thus clearly given, is more and more confirmed as we look upon the life of Jesus. In every stage of that life we see him human, and though in all moral purity and moral grandeur, yet _simply_ human. We are not ashamed of our belief. No, we glory in it, and we rejoice in it. We glory in it, for it is the proof that the elements of our nature can be moulded into such beauty; and we rejoice in it, for it is the proof that he who left a religion for the immortal heart of man was himself purely and simply of the nature he would sanctify. We see him as the infant cradled in Bethlehem, the nurseling hanging on a mother’s care, and we escape the moral and intellectual confusion of joining the omnipotence of a God with the feebleness of a babe. We see him in maturer years in his social relations and social intercourse casting a holy light around him, and spreading the influence of all that is most blessed in human affections. We destroy not the virtue of the man by absorbing it in the glory of the God. Human, and _only_ human, we see him in goodness, in duty, and in suffering. Even in his most marvellous works of mercy, so harmonious is his power with our common nature, that we feel as if they were merely ordinary acts of kindness. When he compassionated the widow’s anguish and restored her son; when pitying the blind, he opened their eyes to the joy and beauty of light; when to the ears of the deaf he gave an inlet to the music of nature and the voice of friendship; when he cast out the dumb spirit and unclosed sealed lips in hymns of gratitude and praise; when he fed multitudes on the mountain’s brow; when lepers went clean from his presence to their fellows and their homes; when parents clung to their restored children, and friends who had separated in despair met again in hope,—wonderful as are all these events, we connect them with the _man_ Christ Jesus, the real, simple, holy, and perfect man.

The lecturer in Christ Church stated three peculiarities which distinguished the Unitarian from the orthodox belief in Christ’s humanity. The third of these was his pre-existence. The Lecturer defined with admirable accuracy the essentials of humanity, one of which, as would be universally admitted, was _to be born_. I was therefore not prepared to hear the proper humanity of Christ before he was born most zealously defended. I look upon it, however, as a mere oversight, and no doubt it will be corrected in the printed lecture.