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The
CHURCH'S ONE
FOUNDATION

CHRIST and . . , .
RECENT CRITICISM

The Chnr;h's One
FoLindarion. Christ
and Recent Criticism
By the Rev. W. Robertson

NiCOLL, M.A., LL.D., Editor of
" The ExposJtor," " The Expositor's Bible "
"The Expositor's Greek Testament," etc.

" There is in the Bible above all tue personal Christ,
a Personality which men could not have imagined,
a Personality which must be historical, and which
rai St be Divine. ■— Professor Robertson Smith

TORONTO

M l:\iiv., I ! ; , I ,11. ^\^

RICHMOND STREET

..ondon: hodder and STOUGHTOV

1901

li«JnOc»

TO MY FAITHFUL FRIEND
IAN MACLAREN

PREFATORY NOTE

This little book is made up out of articles
which have already been p;j'.''shed in the
British Weekly. They have been carefully
revised, and some .lotes and references have
been added. But I have endeavoured 'o
make the book intelligible to the plain rr i.
The questions discussed cannot be left to
experts. They conc-rn not merely the
health, but the existence of the Church.

I have to acknowledge gratefully the kind
help given by the Rev. David Smith, M.A.,
of Tulliallan, and also the helpful sugges-
tions of the Bishop of Durham, and
Mr. George Augustus Simcox, Fellow of
Queen's College, Oxford.

Hampstead,

Novemier, 1901.

CONTENTS

I. — CHRIST AND THE NEWER CRITICISM

II.— THE MODES OF ACCESS TO CHRIST

III.— THE HISTORICAL CHRIST : PRELIMINARY
ASSUMPTIONS ....

IV.— THE HISTORICAL CHRIST : ECCE HOMO
ECCE DEUS ....

V. — THE SINLESSNESS OF JESUS .

VI. — THE RESURRECTION OF OUR LORD
FROM THE DEAD

VII. — CHRIST'S TRIUMPHANT CAPTIVES .

VIII.— THE ARGUMENT FROM THE AUREOLE

IX.— THE CHRIST OF DREAM .

X. — "keep"

PAUS
19

130
151
"73
192
210

Introduction

The controversy about Christ is essentially
a controversy about facts. Christianity is
not a sentiment, not a philosophy, not even
a theological system, but a historical re-
ligion. As Westcott says in his last book,
"Christ the Word, the Son of God, is
Himself the Gospel. The Incarnation, the
Nativity, the Transfiguration, the Passion,
the Resurrection, the Ascension, are the'
final and absolute revelation to man of
God's nature and will. These facts con-
tain, implicitly under the conditions of
earth, all that we can know of self, the
world, and God, so far as the knowledge
affects our religious life." Or, as Church

Introduction

puts it : " The Christian Church is the
most potent fact in the most important
ages of the world's progress. It is an
institution like the world itself, which has
grown up by its own strength and according
to its own principle of life, full of good
and evil, having as the law of its fate
to be knocked about in the stern develop-
ment of events, exposed, like human society,
to all kinds of vicissitudes and alternations,
giving occasion to many a scandal, and
shaking the faith and loyalty of many a
son, showing in ample measure the wear
and tear of its existence, battered, injured,
sometimes degenerate, sometimes improved
in one way or another, since those dim
and long-distant days when its course
began ; but showing in all these ways
what a real thing it is, never in the
extremity of storms and lum, never in the

Introduction

deepest degradation of its unfaithfulness
losing hold of its own central unchanging
faith, and never in its worst days of decay
and corruption losing hold of the power of
self-correction and hope of recovery.
And the Christian Church is founded on
a definite historic fact— that Jesus Christ
Who was crucified, rose from the dead ;
and coming from such an author, it comes
to us, bringing with it the Bible. ... A
so-called Christianity, ignoring or playing
with Christ's Resurrection, and using the
Bible as a sort of Homer, may satisfy a
class of clever and cultivated persons. .
But it is well in so serious a matter not
to confuse things. This new religion may
borrow from Christianity as it may borrow
from Plato, or from Buddhism, or Con-
fucianism: or even Islam. But it is not
Christianity. ... A Christianity which tells

ff-

Introduction

us to think of Christ doing good, but to
forget and put out of sight Christ risen
from the dead, is not true to life. It is
as delusive to the conscience and the soul
as it is illogical to reason."

When dealing with criticism, old and new,
this is never to be forgotten. The Church
cannot without disloyalty and cowardice
quarrel with criticism as such. It is not
held absolutely to any theory of any book.
It asks, and it is entitled to ask, the critic :
Do you believe in the Incarnation and the
Resurrection of Christ? If his reply is in
the affirmative, his process and results are
to be examined earnestly and calmly. If
he replies ii the negative, he has missed
the way, and has put himself outside the
Church of Christ. If he refuses to answer,
his silence has to be interpreted. Certain
conclusions about the Gospel have been

Introduction

judged by all who maintain them to be
fatal to the historic creed. Some one some
day may accept them, and be able to show
that his predecessors and their antagonists
were illogical, that certain critical views
may be held in perfect consistency with a
loyal faith in the great revealing acts of
God. But he must be prepared to show
how this is so, especially at a time when
many critics frankly declt i that the In-
carnation and Resurrection of the Son of
God are no longer credible. Every part of
the Church Catholic must define its position
and defend it.

The issue is old, and must constantly
recur. The Protestant Synod of France
discussed it most ably at their memorable
meeting in 1872. It was the first meeting
of the Synod for more than two hundred
years. The Court had been silenced by

Sii

Infoduction

the power of the State. A desire for
unshackled freedom had grown up, especially
after the fall of the Empire and the rise
of the Republic. M. Guizot obtained the
permission of M. Thiers to convene a
meeting where the limits of Church mem-
bership should be decided. In the Temple
du Saint Esprit the Synod had to face
the question: What is and what is not
the Christian religion? Who are and
wl.o are not entitled to call themselves
members of the Christian Church? The
problem was faced with the highest ability,
and with perfect honesty. M. Guizot said:
"As for me, 1 am a Christian. I know
What my symbol is. There are men sitting
by my side who do not accept the Christian
religion. They have a sincere belief in
God. I have been careful not to deny
that these men have a religion. Let them

Introduction

form a Deistical Church : I shall be glad
of it ; but assuredly the difference is great
between them and Christians." The ques-
tion then was : Is Deism Christianity ?
Should all men who have a belief in God,
and a pious feeling towards Him, be re-
garded as Christians, and be included in
one common organisation? The Liberals
neither disguised nor evaded the issue.
Their champion said : "In my eyes a man
is a Christian who, though a sinner, has a
joyou > confidence in God." He denied that
any specifically Christian belief was neces-
sary to the Christian religion, and laid
down the limits of Church association
which would make room for every religiously
minded Deist. M. Bois, of Montauban, the
leader of the Orthodox party, met him
squarely by moving that the Synod adopt
as its Confession "salvation by faith in

Introduction

Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God,
who died for our offences, and rose again
for our justification. It preserves and
maintains as the basis of its teaching, its
worship, and its discipline the great Christian
facts that are expressed in its reli^aous
solemnities and its liturgies." The differ-
ence between his t.pponents' creed and his
own, he described as a difference between
two religions.

Some attempt was made on the part of
the Liberal-; to show that they interpreted
spiritually the Christian facts. The answer
was given by M. Dhombres : " Spiritualiser
ce n'est pas vaporiser. When a fact is
ex-plained in such a manner as to make it
disappear, that process is no longer called
the taking a spiritual view of it." Finally
M. Bois summed up the issue before the
v.^e: "The question which divides us is

Introduction

this: Is there or is there not— Yes or "^'o
—a supernatural revelation of God? Has
God created, loved, ,ind saved us by His
Son? If so, is ;his compatible with its
contradictory? If Christianity is a super-
natural revelation of God, it is not the
supreme effort of the human reason. Tliere
are no shades or deirrecs ht're ; the pro-
position is either iv holly true or uholly
false." On the whole discussion, M. Guizot,
who had been present for more than sixty
years at many parliamentary struggles in
which the first orators of France were
engaged, said he had never seen any
argument which had a more elevated or
a more dignified character, or which was
more remarkable for form and substance.
The Synod adopted the motion of M. Bois
by a majority of sixty-one against forty-
five. No one argues against the right of

;3:

r II

Introduction

philosophers to affirm that goodness is
everything, that mir<-iclcs arc impossible,
-.nd that nothing in Jesus Christ has any
importance except His moral teaching.
But Christian believers in revelation arc
compelled to say that these philosophers
are not Christiins. If they refuse to do
so, they are declaring that in their opinion
these beliefs have no supreme importance.
To say this is to incur the penalty of
extinction. For Christianity dies when it
pases altogether into the philosophic
region. To believe in the Incarnation and
the Resurrection is to put these f-":ts into
the foreground. Either they are ;rst or
they are nowhere. The man who thinks
he can hold them and keep them in the
background deceives himself They are,
and they ever must be, first o'' all. So,
then, the battle turns on their truth or

Introduction

falsehood. It does not turn on the in-
errancy of the Gospel narrative. It does
not turn even on the authorship of the
Gospels. Faith is not a belief in a book,
but a belief in a living Christ. If there
is no living Christ to trust to, Christianity
passes into mist and goes down the wind.

The Christian Church is entitled and
bound to take part in the critical and
' storical study of the New Testament. It
las the right, indeed, to disregard flippancy
nd frivolity. Such criticism as Huxley
bestowed on what he was pleased to call
"the Gadarcne pig affair" may well be
ignored. John Morley, in his piece on
Voltaire, put the reason as well as it can
be put. He .says: "The best natures are
most violently irritated and outraged by
mocking and satiric attack upon the minor
details, the accidents, the outside of the

Introduction

objects of faith, when they would have
been affected in a very different way by a
contrast between the loftiest parts cf their
own belief and the loftiest parts of some
other belief Many persons who would
listen to a grave attack on the con-
sistencj', reasonableness, and elevation of
the currently ascribed attributes of the
Godhead with something of the respect
due to the profound solemnity of the
subject, would turn with deaf and im-
placable resentment upon one who would
make merry over the swine of Gadara."
When Christians are asked to furnish a
reply to every fresh assault on the Gospel
history, they are entitled to say that if
they can establish the great faiths of the
historic creed, the critic who denies these,
and justifies the denial on the grounds of
criticism, must be in error. To establish

— I

Introduction

the sinlessness of Christ and His Resur-
rection is virtually to refute many critical
arguments. Further, in dealing with analysis
as applied to the Gospels, we are entitled
to ask for the principles on which the so-
called historical and literary criticism is
carried on. For our part, we have the
deepest conviction that until the principles
of criticism are established by an induc-
tion based on the phenomena of literature
generally, little that is solid or certain can be
established. It is past dispute that English
criticism is unable, as a rule, to assign,
authorship to an anonymous contemporary
book. It is unable, as a rule, to distinguish
between the work of two collaborators. It
is unable, in short, to perform any of these
achievements which are believed possible
when the Scriptures are handled. We are
convinced, further, that the whole history of

Introduction

English literature will show that English
criticism was always just as powerless as it
is now. There may be probabilities ; but,
as a rule, the likely explanation is not
the true explanation. In other words, the
answer to much sceptical criticism is to be
found in showing, by a catena of instances,
that criticism is attempting a task of which
it is fundamentally incapable. Christians
are also entitled to ask for more agreement
between critics of the Gospel history than
has yet been reached. In the face of the
differences that divide the extreme critics,
one may well doubt whether the problem
of the composition of the Gospels is soluble.
One m?y be perfectly certain that it has
not been solved.

Again, Christians are entitled to insist
upon knowing the presuppositions of their
adversaries. To begin the study of the

Introduction

origins of Christianity with a theory about
the world and its management which from
the first settles arbitrarily the most im-
portant questions involved, vitiates the whole
process of reasoning. Like the mummers
of old, sceptic i critics send one before
them with a broom to sweep the stage
clea .f everything for their drama. If we
assume at the threshold of Gospel study
that everything in the nature of miracle
is impossible, then the specific questions
are decided before the criticism begins to
operate in earnest. The naturalistic critics
approach the Christian records with an a
priori theory, and impose it upon them,
twisting the history into agreement with
it, and cutting out what cannot be twisted.
For example, the earlier naturalistic critics,
Paulus, Eichhorn, and the rest, insisted
on giving a non-miraculous interpretation,

[ill

x-.

Introduction

Strauss perceived the unscientific character
of this method, and set out with the
mythical hypothesis. Baur set to work
with a bch-ef in the all-sufficiency of the
Hegelian theory of development through
antagonism. He saw tendency everywhere.
As Bruce said of his method : « Anything
additional, putting ,nore contents into the
person and teaching of Jesus than suits
the initial .stage of development, must be
reckoned spurious. If we find Jesus in any
of the Gospels claiming to be a super-
human being, such texts may with the
utmost confidence be set aside as spurious.
Such a thought could not possibly belong
to the initial stage, but only to the final,
when the human Messiah had developed
into a deity, through the love and reverence
of his followers." Abbott .sets out with
the foregone conclusion of the impossibility

Introduction

of miracles. Matthew Arnold says : " Our
popular religion at present conceives the
birth, ministry, and death of Christ as
altogether steeped in prodigy, brimful of
miracle, and miracles do not happen."
Schmiedel starts with the hypothesis of
ten . ncies, and discovers them. He sees
Paulinism and Ebionitism in Luke, and
opposing tendencies in Matthew (universal-
ism and particular isn:). Moffatt, who does
not clearly define his attitude towards
the Incarnation and Resurrection, regards
Matthew xxviii. 16-20 as a later appendix
on the a priori ground that the following
cannot be primitive: (i) Universal mission,
(2) The baptismal formula, (3) The Trini-
tarian formula. The subject might be
illustrated indefinitely. In these cases the
difference is upon first principles. Those who
take the ground that miracles cannot happen.

•m :

Introduction

need not examine the Gospels in order to reject
Christianity, for certainly it is the supernatural
character of Christianity that constitutes its
differentia, its true and necessary essence.

These men start the study of the Gospel
history with the assumption that God can-
not visit and redeem His people. His
arm is chained that it cannot save. It
is not uncharitable or untrue to say that
behind this there is often the belief that
man n^eds no redemption, but can save
himself Sin docs not need an atonement,
remorse is an impure and morbid passion ;
a divine intervention for man's recovery
is as unnecessary as it is inconceivable.
The sense of sin and guilt is absent. The
argument for historical Christianity is based
upon the fact- a fact attested by the whole
history of humanity— that there was need
that Christ should come.

Christ and the Newer Criticism '

In his address from the Chair of the
Congregational Union, delivered more than
thirty years ago, Dr. Dale declared that the
controversies on theology had narrowed to
one vital question. " If only a theory of

hy?K'cZ"^''''^^ii" ^''""'' ^°'- "•■ <=di.ed
ll . ?^^"^' ^•"- ^"d J- S. Black LLD
(A. and C Black); (.) TAe HisioricLH^

Th- XT f """'■• ^P"'- '901, Art. II., "Few
Things Needful," by T. K. Cheyne, D.D. (HoddeT
and Stoughton); (5) n. Z>J„/c,rJlft
four Gospels, by R. W. Dalp I T n /h a a ,

[ii

20 Christ and the

inspiration were breaking down, if men were
discussing nothing more serious than the
precise and minute accuracy of the four
Gospels, if we were threatened with nothing
more formidable than the demonstration of
the historical untrustworthiness of a few
chapters here and there in the Old Testa-
ment, we mi^.it look on calmly and wait for
the issue of the conflict with indifference.
But it becomes plainer every year that the
real questions in debate are far different from
these. The storm has moved round the
whole horizon, but it is rapidly concentrating
its strength and fury above one Sacred Head.

This then is the real issue of the fight Is

Christendom to believe in Christ any longer
or no? It is a battle in which everything
is to be lost or won. It is not a theory of
ecclesiastical policy which is in danger, it is
not a theological system, it is not a creed,

Newer Criticism

it is not the Old Testament or the New,
but the claim of Christ himself to be the
Son of God and the Saviour of mankind,"
Dr. Dale's words might be used without the
change of a letter to describe the situation
which is now created. For many years
the Church of Christ in this country, and
particularly in Scotland, has been agitated
by disputes over the Old Testament. They
are not over, but the end is in sight. Now
the New Testament is once more thrown
into the furnace, and with it the Christian
religion itself It was inevitable. We never
f' -'d the belief of some amongst our
friends in the weight to be attached to the
conclusions of Harnack. It seemed toler-
ably plain that Harnack's vvords meant less
than they «ere made to mean, and also
that his position was unstable. Now we
have in the new volume of the Encyclopedia

Christ and the

Piblica, a thorough-going criticism applied
to the New Testament, and in The
Historical New Testament of Mr. Moffatt
there issues from the bosom of an orthodox
Church a new claim oa tl.e part of advanced
criticism for room and verge. It is of no
avail to lift up hands in horror. The critics
have to be met. If they are not frankly
encountered the door of faith will be closed
on multitudes. In one sense we take up the
discussion with great satisfaction. Now, at
last, the very life of the faith has to be fought
for. and, as Dr. Dale says : " This is surely
enough to stir the Church to vehement
enthusiasm and to inspire it with its ..d
heroic energy. It is a controversy not
for theologians merely, but for every man
who has seen the face of Christ and can
bear personal testimony to His power and
glory." As Jesus is the Lord and Head

^^^^^

Newer Criticism

of the Church, so He is its Impregnable
Rock. But we confess that for personal
reasons we have been reluctant to take the
field. With two of the writers concerned
—Or. Cheyne and Dr. Bruce— we have had
in past days somewhat intimate association,
and both the living and the dead have laid
the Church of Christ under heavy obliga-
tions by their patient toil, their noble, truth-
loving spirit, and the light they have cast
on Tiany parts of Holy Scripture. We
are glad to think that the personal side of
the question does not bulk largely, and that
it will be unnecessary to burden the dis-
cussion with many references to individual
writers. Very little that is really new has
been said. The old assumptions have been
made, and the old results have been reached.
Those who have studiL Strauss and Baur
and Renan, and the literature gathering

...i.

Christ anJ the

round these names, will find themselves
surprised at very few points. Further we
emphatically desire to disclaim attributing
what seem the logical inferences from their
statements to scholars who have not
accepted these inferences, and who may
think that the said inferences are not
mevitable. I„ one point, however, we
venture to blame them. They know the
h.story of their criticism, what has be-,
■ts result in the case of their forerunners.
They ought, as we humbly think, to have
shown how they could conserve the faith
after surrendering what they have sur-
rendered. Instances might be multiplied
but we content ourselves with the case
of Strauss, who, though not the most
ag.le nor the most learned of the anti-
supernaturalists, was by far the ablest, the
strongest, the most masterly. When Strauss

Newer Criticism

wrote his first Life of Jesus, he argued
that the Gospels were mythical, but seriously
and honestly tried to save their ethical spirit,
and believed he had succeeded. He was
in orders, a preacher of the Gospel, who
fully meant to continue in that work. So
far from thinking that he had undermined
the Christian faith, he believed that he had
strengthened it by putting it in a form
in which Hegel could approve of it.' He
was cut to the quick when theologians
cast him out, and regarded him as an
arch-enemy of the Christian name. The
theologians were right in .sa>ing that his
was not the Christianity of Christ, nor of
Paul, nor of the Catholic Church. So it

' Strauss studied under Baur at Blaubeuren
and Tubingen, and Baur was an ardent Hegelian.
His criticism was simply a thorough-going apphca-
tion of Hcgclianism to New Testaiiient history.

Christ and the

-- froo, the first, and what Straussfsm
"me to we know, and shall have occasion
>n these articles to describe. Further, we
beh-eve that Straussism, in its latest dc-

veIop„,ent, would be the inevitable successor
to Christianity, if Christianity could bedis-
P'-d. It is a large if. But to say that
Strauss, when he wrote his first book
-w all that was to co„,e of it, would be
unjust in the highest degree. The history
of theological controversy ought to have
^-Sht us by this tin,e that opponents

mu.st be treated not only justly, but mildly,
and that their adherence to Christianity'
-en if illogical, should be viewed with
gladness and with hope. We ,nust refrain

from minute points of criticism and content
ourselves with giving our readers as best
we may an understanding of the points on
which the battle must turn.

WW\

&.^.3^>

Newer Criticisir

Dr. Cheyne's career has beei. j.ic jC t'le
most remarkable on record, but few of his
students in the Old Testament could have
imagined that he would have attacked with
such vigour in his later period the prob-
lems of the New Testament. A mind so
eager, so acute, so versatile, and so laborious
as his must perhaps have felt it a positive
necessity to apply to the New Testament the
methods he followed in the Old. In this
country there has been no Encyclopaedia
like the Encydopiedia Biblica. No editor
of an Encyclopaedia in this country has
taken quite the same view of his duties as
has Dr. Cheyne. Even Robertson Smith,
who could be masterly enough, left much
of the Encydopadia Britannica to be done
by contributors who were left to their
own discretion. But in the Encydopadia
Biblica the editor's hand is seen every-

r::

Christ and the

where except in the extraordinary articles
of Dr. Armitage Robinson, which remain
an unsolved mystery. Dr. Cheyne acts
as he thinks the editors of the Old
Testament acted, and has a hand in many
contributions which he did not write He
has what to our mind is a most objectionable
way of mixing up the work of one author
with another. For example, he takes
Robertson Smiths f5ne art.cle on Hebrews
'" *'^" Encyclopedia Britannica and cuts
't up with pieces from von Soden. But
■f Dr. Cheyne will tell us what reason
he has to believe that Robertson Smith
changed his views on the subject, we
W.11 tell him why we believe he did not
change them. Any way, the practice is
-defensible. ,f Robertson Smith was not
good enough, let von Sodcn be substituted
but the mingling of the two serves no

ML w%:^^^^mmB^

Newer Criticism

purpose save to irritate and to confuse.
Dr. Cheyne's method compels us to attach
the most serious importance to the treat-
ment of Jesus in this new volume, and
he will no doubt accept the full responsi-
bility of the most negative conclusions
given in his book. Dr. Schmiedel, who
writes upon " Gospels," confesses that his
criticism " may have sometimes seemed to
raise a doubt whether any cr '■■ '' elements
were to be found in '.he Gospei all." To
make out that Jesus existed, he resorts to
a few statements, such as the fact that the
relations of Jesus thought Him mad. But
in Dr. Schmiedel's view the main fabric
of the Gospels is utterly incredible.' The

' §§ 139-140]. Only nine "absolute credible
passages": (i) Mark x. 17 f. : "Why callest
thou me good ? none is good save God only."
(2) Matt. xii. 31 f: that blasphemy against the
son of man can be forgiven. (3) Mark iii. 21 :

3°

Christ and the

■'tories of n^iracle are contemptuously re-
jected and of course for the Resurrection
nd the Ascension there is no room at a.,.

In fact. ,t would not be too much to say that
there ,s a deliberate attempt in this book

Ihal his retations held him fn 1,= t -.

l«<»eih „„ „„t „, ';!"'"'"'' •"■' ■>' *a. ho«,

sees, and of Herod "-.„ T "^ ""^ P*^"'-
Sch.,ede.. th. ?4e ^reS^JT-"^ '°
the 4000 was not an h,ct„ • ■ -^°°° ^nd

^p-b.c." (9; 4tt\fr=irr "■''"'

answer to the Banfkf k ^"- ^^ ■■ the

'hat the tina, ci'^I^-, ;;^^-'^e, argues

enumeration," and proves that 'T Preceding

not of the physicallv h,l f u ^"" ''■"' speaking
>ame, leprous.'dea^de.d. °' "' ^^'''^^''^ '''"«^'

Newer Criticism

. to obliterate Christ. The cxirtencc of Christ
as a man is admitted rather than affirmed,
but that he was God is distinctly denied.'
In the article on Faith ' there is no rcfer-
ince that wc can trace to the meaning
of faith as the Church understands it, faith
in the risen Lord. Dr. Cheyne, writing on
John the Baptist, calls him Johanan, and
quaintly informs us that " primitive tradition
rightly accentuates the inferiority of Johanan
to Jesus " ! Judas is another of Dr. Chcyne's
subjects, and he argues that the story is
unhistorical. Of Dr. Abbott's contribution
we say nothing, for his arguments and his
attempts at construction are alike familiar,

' § 139]- "In the person of Jesus we have
to do with a completely human being, and the
divine is to be sought in him only in the form
m which it -s capable of being found in a man."

- By Dr. Cheyne. No notice is taken in the
article of the Pauline idea of Faith.

vi)

-'"'i

h9'

Christ and the

ti: ■'

"' °; ^^- «-«'^ a.ic,e we sha,. speak

^o- the fact that they are pubWshed and

:;'r '' ' "■^"'^'^ °^ ^-^^ Church
ol d V^'" ha. the co-operatfon of

orthodox .scholars .n a.i the Churches.
Dr Cheyne .ust hi„,self fee, his positfon
° '•= ^"-^ '^"«-'^- D- Colenso, who.

P"b..shed a hy.n.hook in ,866 which
''. "7 ™"*^'" *he na.e Jesus or
Chnst fro,n one end to the other. When

^epi.ed. no douhfn perfect ,ood fait, ^:
^h. was quite unintentional on his part.

He had rejected hy„,n after hy„„ .hich
conta,ned prayers to Christ which h^
objected to on Scriptural and apostoiicai
grounds. And yet Dr. Colenso used the

Newer Criticism

English liturgy, which is full of prayers
to Christ: "O Lamb of God, that takest
away the sins of the world, grant us Thy
peace," "Christ have mercy upon us"
"God the Son, Redeemer of the world,
have mercy upon us miserable sinners"'
The question of subscription is very difficult
and we are far fro.n wishing to press it.
but to use in Christian worship for the
purposes of the common devotional life
prayers which employ a doctrine which
the offerer of the pra>cr disclaims else-
"here as unsound, is to turn worship into
a mockery. We are glad to point out
that in the interesting apologia which
Dr. Cheyne published in the ExM'ior,
he says that Jesus knew Himself to be
the Saviour of men. "The centre of
gravity in theology can never be shifted
from the person of Christ. The Jesus

i::::

i,<j

t-t-

Christ and the

Whom we call. Master is at once the
historical Jesus of Nazareth, and that
ideal form which becomes more and more
glorious as man's mortal capacity increases
-the Jesus whom we can imagine moving
about our streets comforting those who
mourn, healing the morally sick, stirring
the consciences of the sluggish, and
g-v.ng to all who see and hear, fresh
disclosures of truth, fresh glimpses of the
ideal. Without the historical Christ the
■deal Christ could never have beamed
upon us."

It is with the utmost hesitation that we
speak of the article on Jesus by the late
Dr. A. B. Bruce. The distinguished author
's no longer with us. If he had been
I'vmg one might have spoken freely, for
he was always ready to meet any criticism.
It may be that he was precluded from

Newer Criticism

elsewhere,
life and

referring to subjects dealt \
and restricted to write on
teaching of Jesus. It is ope
to say that a believer in the Deity and
Resurrection of the Son of God should
not have consented to write under restric-
tions which virtually involved a suppres-
sion of his faith. But on this point we
pass no judgment. It may be that he
wrote his article in one of the times when
he suffered from a temporary eclipse, for
certainly he had experience of the ups'and
downs in the fight of faith. But if the
article had been unsigned ther^ would have
been little difficulty in concluding that
the author had abandoned the supernatural
element in the hfe of Jesus. Canon Cheyne
himself writes that the historical student
must confess "that the name of the father
of Jesus is, to say the least, extremely

Christ and the

uncertain -._,hati, there is no doubt that
J""s was born of an earthly fathc, but
■t -^ very questionable whether that f.ther'.
n-e was Joseph. Dr. Bruce says of the
-'•y of the Passion, that, "even in its

most liistoric version it is nnf

""• 't IS not pure truth,

but truth mixed with doubtful i.gend -

,^! " '"^ ^-—". l^-hinks that the
followers of Jesus believed that He rose
again, but he evidently i,np,,es his own
^-belief.^ As to miracles. Christ „,ay have
worked some remarkable cures, but "the
m.raculousness of the healing ministry is
"ot the point in question.- Those who

marked with deep regret his gradual descenv

to naturalism. As Ion, ..

^s long ago as 1863, he

* ^^^■M<:J>/i- [in N.TX S 7

*3'- ^§19.

Newer Criticism

7,7

edited a translation of Ebrard's Gospel
History, a book uhich, as many of our
readers know, is strenuously orthodox and
interesting to this day for its boldness and
ing-^nuity, though somewhat marred by a
spirit of scorn and defiance. In his Tmin-
ing of th. Twelve and his Hinniliation of
Christ he made noble contributions to
Christology, but he moved gradually away
from the early standpoint. Even in 1886,
when he published n.s work on the Miracu-
lous Element in the Gospds, he showed him-
self curiously uncertain and inconsistent.
He staked everything on the sinlessness
of Christ. There was, according to him,
but one miracle vitally important to faith,
and that was the moral miracle of the sin-
lessness of the Redeemer. And yet he
faltered in the assertion of that great fact.
When vindicating Christ from charges

V'..

Christ and the

i #

against His character, he said:' "The most
outstanding, charge brought against Christ
was excessive severity in exposing Phari-
«aism, but tha, u.as a fault n<hich very
decdedly leant to virtue's side." He went
on.' "// not a perject sun, He [Christ] was
the best sun yet vouchsafed to mortals." (The
italics, of course, are ours.) That is, every-
thing is made to turn on the sinlcssncs of
Jesus, and in the end that sinlessness is left
doubtful. Further, in the catechism for
children which he appended to his book
With Open Face, the one reference that
c-curs to the Resurrection and the after life
is in the last question: "Where is Jesus
now?" to which the answer is: " He is in
the House of His Father in heaven, where
He IS preparing a place for all wh ) bear
His name and walk in His footsteps." Not

' P- 3"- ' P. J,2Z.

Newer Criticism

one word is said about the Resurrection of
our Lord from the dead ; in fact, so far as
words go, Dr. Bruce's position is identical
with that of Mr. Robinson in his book, The
Saviour in the Newer Light, when he says
that Jesus " went like all other human spirits
that have for this present world died, into
regions yet hidden from us, which He in
His prophetic insight had looked forward
to as other mansions of the Father. That
in those mansions His Spirit rose again
into active lif. ^ the fact on which we
must lay hold. How this happened we
cannot tell." Yet it would be gravely unjust
to assume that Dr. Bruce, who occupied his
position as a professor in the Free Church
to the last, fully states his belief either in
the Encyclopadia Biblica or in the other
books to which we have made reference.
And it ought to be recalled that he criticised

a
r::

. .CJ

;-'

* .■

2- ^^'e-s book on the Z/.V «..,.«,,
the Four Gospels, n^aintainfng that Dr. Dale

C.M M,,,tfs hook we have not. .H

vh ch he has shown, a. very remarkable

-n, Ne. Testament scholars. Lt h

hat the pos.t,ons taken .og.ea,,, p„.„,
' -'"-"-• Mr. Moffatfs cntical con-
t^\ -' —^^-'-e o„„ because he
- a m,n,ster of the United Free Church
On many points he expresses himself with

::tr- -- - - p^s o;::

" ""^' ^°'"'= >-- ^go to deal with

•l

Newer Criticism

Mr. Robinson, the author of The Saviour
in the Newer Light, a frank, winning, and
courageous book, though much below Mr.
Moffatt's in the matter of scholarship.
The Free Church had to face the long and
hard battle of Old Testament criticism;
and now at last in Dr. George Adam
Smith's Modern Criticism and the Preaching
of the Old Testament, has received an
honest attempt at construction, at making
the new views of the Old Testament not
only compatible with preaching, but con-
tributory to the power of preaching. This
may be said without accepting some of
Dr. Smith's conclusions. We trust that
there will be a spirit of wise forbearance
in facing the New Testament problem as
presented to a credal Church by Mr.
Moffatt, whose great gifts and accomplish-
ments are not to be lightly esteemed.

r::

-:»

J2;

42 Christ and the Newer Criticism

We shall now attempt to state as
clearly as possible the issues involved for
faith in the new criticism thus imperfectly
sketched.

The Modes of Access to Christ

The Church has thought itself able to
approach the Lord Jesus Christ in two ways,
(i) Believers have imagined that they
had through the Gospels direct access to
the historical Christ. In these histories
they have read with love and hope and
awe of His sayings, of His mighty works,
of His dying, of His rising again the Con-
queror of Death, of His ascending to the
right hand of God. They have put together
the accounts of His doing and dying, His
Action and His Passion, and their hearts
have burned within them. Does the newer

:;:

■p
-if'

9'-

cm.c,.sm close for us this door of access P
0( course the franker crfticfsm of recent
generatfons Coses it al.ost complete.,,
^-olves .t into .n,th and ,e,end, leave'
- -th a fe. uncertain fragments. And
h.s .3 the method, so far as we can under,
t "• °' ''^'""■■«^^' -d Cheyne. All
that ,e„ains as historical fact about the life
of Jesus, all that we can be sure of in His
words, is a very small residuum, while the
Gospels as a whole are so untrustworthy
hat read without guidance they can do

subtler ,n his methods, but we doubt if
''' -^"'t is so very different. The
question his discussion raises is whether
we are at any given point in .he Gospel
h'story in true communication with Jesus.>

--Si^.-,----^

«l

Access to Christ

Others have given us the story as it
stands, and they have transfigured it and
expanded it, and even transformed it, till
no one knows what belonged to the ..riginal
Christ. They have put into the lips of Christ
what their experience of Him had put into

"lainly drawn up and ..ollected during the three
or few decades wl,ich fello«-ed the deafh of Jesus
and t at the gospels then,selves werenot eo^oseci
um>l the period 65-ios; to realise these facts will
how-(,.) that the gospels are not purely objective
records, no mere chronicles of pure crudl fact
or of speeches preserved verbatim ; (ii.) that they
were compiled in and for an age when the church
required Christ not as a memory so much as a
religious standard, and when it reverenced him as
an authority for its ideas and usages ; (iii ) that
they reflect current interests and feelings, and are
shaped y the experience and for tt circum

of Christ and Christianity are also moulded to
some extent by the activity and expansion of the
church between 30 and 60, by its tradition, oral
and written, and by its teaching, especially tlLt of

igi

^:!
,..4:

."■:;

.^■

The Modes of

their hearts, so that at best we have in-
direct reflections of the mind of Christ

A "Church" character is ascribed to what
have been supposed the most precious
words of Jesus. I„ this way Chr-'st is
-erged in the Church. The Church
's merged in Christianity, and Christianity
'" '""' '^'^aPPears in the higher hfe of
humanity. It is obvious that if this is ad-
mitted the conception of a personal relation
and a personal debt to the Lord Jesus
Christ, in which the essence of Christianity
has been supposed to lie, becomes practically
.mpossible. We do not know enough of
Christ historically. Our ignorance of His
hfe IS too complete for any possible relation
to H.m, or a profound and passionate
sense of gratitude and devotion. It is our
personal debt to Christ dying in our stead
the Just for the unjust, the Substitute

Access to Christ 47

for His guilty people, that is mainly
emphasised in the Epistles. But in the
heavy haze that hangs over the Gospels
the uncertainty as to their original content.'
this feeling must die of starvation. Among
writers of the rationalistic school in general
we find a deep uncertainty as to the
Resurrection of Jesus. And yet it is very
much on this point that the discussion
turns. Some will tell us that Christ lives
and reigns, but when they are closely
questioned it turns out that they mean only
that He is with the spirits of the blessed
and takes i.ie highest place among them'
So. though His personality is not extinct
" '^«l°ngs to history. It does not belong
to life i„ any other sense than another
historical personality. Jf this is so, Chris-
t«anity is annihilated at a stroke, for Jesus
disappears from it. Indeed, on these

■';i

The Modes of

principles our Lord has no place in the
Gospel at all. Even Harnack-we translate
from Das Wtsen des ChruUntkums-\n his
chapter on Christology, says: "It is no
parade::, and neither is it rationalism, but
the simple expression of the actual position
as it lies before us in tlie Gospels: not the
Son but tlie Father alone, has a place in
the Gospel as Jesus proclaimed it'.' We
print this very significant passage in italics,
for it cannot be too earnestly p .ndered.'
Harnack asserts that Jesus has no place
in the Gospel, and what he gives us is
not the Christianity of Christ, of which we
have heard so nrtich wearisome nonsense
lately, but Christianity without Christ.
On the naturalistic constructions of the
Gospel the figure of Christ more and more
tends to disappear, and He is allowed to
pass as one whose historical function has

•«« fulfilled. Dr R,. ^

^hat he called - "^'"^ '° ^V of
that is IT ""'""^"'^' naturalise,,".

jected miracle and the «,r<

that according to Ewald "the r.

did nr>f ,. "^esurrection

"'a not, could not taWe r.i

take place, but the

PI?

The Modes of

beautiful dream must be dealt with tenderly,
and its reality denied with as much senti-
ment as if you meant to affirm it." Strauss
was very clear on this subject, as on most
others which he took up. He said in
reference to Ewald's chapter that " his long,
inflated rhetoric contained literally no frag-
ment of an idea beyond what had been said
by himself in the first Life of Jesus much
more clearly, ' though assuredly with far
less unction.' " ' Baur did not discuss the
problem at all, but regarded it, as we shall
see later on, as insoluble. Strauss himself
was in no doubt of its vital importance.
He said : " The precepts of Jesus would
have been blown away and scattered like
leaves by the wind nad those leaves not
been fastened as with a stong, tangible
binding, by a belief in His Resurrection."
' Humiliation of Christ, p. 211.

Access to Christ

Of course Strauss did not believe in the
mirac'e of the Resurrection, but he had
the eyes to see that without it Christianity
was maimed beyond hope of survival.
When we deal with the problem of Christ,
and especially in dealing with Christian
teachers, it seems to us that we are entitled
to expect perfect candour on this question,
no quibbling with phrases, no talk about
the resurrection of the spirit, as if the spirit
were ever buried, but a plain declaration
as to whether or not the writer holds the
ancient faith of the Church. Naturalism
has much to say against the reality of
the crowning miracle: faith has much to
say for her Author and Finisher. But
there is nothing to be said for those who
attempt to evade the problem, to shirk the
issue, to confuse their readers as to their
own position.

The Modes of

(i) Another door has been thought open
to the faithful.' It has ever i c':n believed
in the Church of the Redeemer that there
is direct access to Christ for every Christian
through the , jwer of the Holy Spirit, that
they knov, Him as those could not know
Him '\hose knowledge was after the flesh.
The Church, though it is based on a history,
is not content with any history, however
sacred and pathetic and inspiring. The
Church is not content even with the story
of our Lord's earthly life and ministry.
Rather it begins anew where this ended.
St. Paul delivered first of all that Christ
died for our sins according to the Scrip-
tures, and that He rose again the third day
and began that life the present energies
of which are the life of the world to-day.
Though we have known Christ after the
1 John xiv. 26, XV. 26, xvi. 13-14.

Access to Chrisf

flesh, yet now henceforth know we Him so
no more.' This does not mean that the
New Testament history is antiquated.' It
does not mean that the record of the days
of the Redeemer's flesh has lost its power.
Rather it means that the story retains its
power because it is the beginning of a story
which shall have no end, because we have
now for the old miracles of power and
mercy the new miracles of grace that the
Holy Ghost is working round us wherever
Christ is lifted up. Christ, by virtue of His
Death and Resurrection and Ascension to
the right hand of God, is accessible to His
people whenever they call upon His name.

' 3 Cor. V. 1 6.

•Bruce, St. PauPs Cone, of Chriuianity, p. ^56 •

To cast a slight on the words and acts spoken

«nd done in that ministry, ajid on the revelation

of a character made thereby, was not, I imagine

in all his thoughts." '

.J.

The Modes of

The anguish of bereavement, the profound
stirring of the emotions when we think of
the life into which has already passed so
much that was very part of our own being,
lies in the fact that we are parted, though
it is but for a time. " Oh for the touch of
a vanished hand, and the sound of a voice
that is still ! " It is when men say this in
their solitary musings that they wash the
gates of death with their tears, and from
its silence passionately implore a sign. " So
passionately and so unavailingly t For there
are times when faith is weak and the heart
yearns for knowledge, when it seems to us
as if all hopes and fears were bound up
around the insupportable longing for one
gleam, however brief, of certainty to shine
through the darkness." The compensation
is that we see and hear Jesus, that we can
speak to Him and receive his reply, that

Access to Christ

He will fill our weak and restless hearts, if
we ask Him, with His own strength and
peace. And so when we know Him in the
new order. His earthly history is trans-
figured and shines before us in a new and
glorious certainty. The witnesses are with
us. It was at a time when learned men
regarded the testimony of the Gospel as
wholly discredited that the evangelical re-
vival broke forth, and new witnesses to the
Gospel story rose up and declared it to the
world.i They knew Christ for themselves,

' In the advertisement prefixed to the ist edition
of the Analogy, May, 1736, Butler wrote: "It is
come, I know not how, to be taken for granted,
by many persons, that Christianity is not so much
as a subject of inquiry; but that it is now, at
length, discovered to be fictitious. And ac-
cordingly they treat it, as if, in the present age,
this were an agreed point among all people of
discernment; and nothing remained, but to set
it up as a principal subject of mirth and ridicule,

i
r"

The Modes of

they preached Him in the power of the
Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, and
as they went forth in soul-seeking love,
filled with a passion for Christ, the signs of
His presence and activity in the spiritual
order put to silence the ignorance of foolish
men. "I knew," said Tholuck, speaking
of his youth, "an old man strong in the
grace that is in Christ Jesus. From that
time I knew what the true Being and
Becoming for man was, and also that
whosoever knew it would have the power
of efficacious action."

(3) It is not possible to separate the two
modes of access. The roads to Christ run
parallel, and sometimes they seem to be,
as it were, one way. Dr. Dale, in his

as it were by way of reprisals, for its having so long
interrupted the pleasures of the world." Then
came Whitefield and the Wesleys.

Access to Christ

remarkable book, The Living Christ and
tlie Four Gospels, perhaps used some in-
cautious expressions as to our independence
of the ".ospel history, but his argument
was essentially sound. What he said was
briefly this : The vast mass of Christians
are unable to follow the argument of scholars
about early Christian history. They can-
not search th'ough Justin Martyr and
Irenaeus and the rest. Nevertheless, their
faith is not shaken by the varied assaults
on the Christ of history because they know
Christ by faith. They know that they
have been delivered from this present evil
world and translated into the Kingdom
of God's dear Son. Knowing this, they
do not become independent of the Gospel
history. They do not set it aside. They
do not say that inquiry as to its source
and meaning is impiety. At the same

* '■

j.*

■■»'

The Modes of

time they feel themselves under no call
to take part in the battle, for they know
past all doubting what is enough for them.
They know the actual presence and activity
of Christ in their own lives, rnd knowing this,
they know that when criticism has said its
last word it will be found that the Gospels
have preserved the substance of the earthly
history of Christ, and that they have given
a true account of it.

(4) Those who believe that the historical
access to Christ is largely closed, and that
the spiritual access is a mere dream, are
not by any means always willing to discard
Christ, and to say that He is nothing in
their lives. Nor have we the slightest dis-
position to drive them into utter unbelief.
We had rather take their admissions and
seek to lead them forward, to show them
that if they believe as much as they do.

Access to Christ

they must believe more. Those who thinx
that we know very little that we can be
sure of about the earthly life of Christ,
who reject the story of His miraculous
work, who believe that His body crumbled
into dust beneath the Syrian skies, who
even hesitate to say that He was altogether
free from sin, are often eager to believe
that He is a glorified spirit, whose pure
image shines with an undying lustre upon
the world. Thty grant, indeed, that this
image is largely the creation of the human
mind and heart, that it cannot be verified,
that it is not even real, and yet they enter-
tain for it a true affection and reverence.
They think that the same lessons can be
learned from it whether it is real or whether
it is ideal. Even though they think not
that Christ created the Church, but that
the Church created Christ, they are loth to

t
1

The Modes of

believe that they have lost Christ. Why,
they ask, should not Christ be the centre
for the religious emotions of mankind,
though He be merely a creation of the
thought and conscience of the race? The
strongest expression of this feeling that we
can call to mind occurs in the late Mr.
Sime's life of Lessing. "Admit," he says,
"that the real was very different from the
mythical Jesus, that when the last stroke
came He fell like other men into a sleep
from which there is no awakening, the
legend of his love does not on that account
lose its charm or its power to win men
from a degrading materialism. It is ideally
true, whether historically true or not, and
is the best witness to the essential good-
ness of the race that has evolved it." ' We

' Of. T. H. Green's position : " More, probably
than two generations after St. Paul had gone to

Access to Christ

are far from treating such expressions with
impatience or contempt, but such writers
are as much bound to answer men like
Strauss and Renan as we arc. They have
to show, as we have to show against both,
that Christ was essentially a noble character.
Strauss became frank enough when he told
us that Jesus, as the religious leader, must
come to be daily more and more estranged
from mankind, as the latter has developed
under the influence of the civilising powers
of modern times.' And again he said that

his rest, there arose a disciple . . . who gave
that final spiritual interpretation to the person
of Christ, which has for ever taken it out of
the region of history and of the doubts that
surround all past events, to fix it in the purified
conscience as the immanent God" (Works, III.,
p. 242).

' Das. Leb. Jes., § ^49 (II. S. 701) : " Ja, wenn
wir es uns gestehen wollen, so ist dem gebildeten
Theil der Zeitgenossen dasjenige, was den
altglaubigen Christen heilige Geschichte war, nur

r-'

■j;

1*1.

The Modes of

if men would open their eyes and were
honest enough to avow what they saw,
they would have to acknowledge that the
entire activity and aspiration of the higher
modern life was based upon views which
run directly counter to the mind of Christ
And what are we to say of Kenan's picture
of Christ's ' later life as a misery and a lie
and of his request that we should bow
before this sinner and His superior Sakya-

noch Fabel." S. 703: " Doch nicht allein der
Glaube, sondern auch die Wissenschaft in ihrer
neuesten Entwicklung hat diesen Standpunkt
unzureichend befunden."

1 Vit de Jisus, V. ad fin. ; " To conceive the
good is not sufficient ; it must be made to succeed.
To accomplish this, less pure paths must be
followed, etc." XXII. : " Not by any fault of his
own his conscience lost somewhat of its original
purity. His mission overv helmed him." XXIII. :
" Did he regret his too lofty nature, and, victim
of his greatness, mourn that he had not re-
mained a simple artisan ? "

Access to Christ

Mouni as demi-gods? We hope to deal
in succession with the various modes of
access to Christ thus described, and to
show that the faith of the Church is still
built upon a rock, that we know the true
Christ — in history and in heaven.

!:>'

^ (I
H

Ill

The Historical Christ:

PRELIMINARY ASSUMPTIONS

We propose to deal in succession with (i)
the Historical Christ; (2) the Risen and
Exalted Christ ; (3) the Ideal Christ. Then
to sum up the result of the discussions.
Before taking up the problem of history
it is absolutely necessary to state the
preliminary assumptions upon which the
ultimate results of thought and research
must in the last issue depend.

(l) There comes first the question of
miracle. If it be assumed in advance that
miracles are incredible, then it follows at
64

Pre liminary Assumptions 65

once that the Gospel history is, as a whole,
incredible. Hacckel, among recent writers.
<s absolute in his judgment on this point.
He does not need to study historical
evidence. As a philosopher, he knows that
Jesus could not have been born except
in the natural way, and the testimony of
the Gospels is accordingly to be rejected.
The New Testament, at least in all of its
parts that cannot be explained on a purely
naturalistic basis, is discarded as useless
for real history. This is simple enough.
It was practically the view of the author
of Supernatural Religion, a book which
five-and-twenty year, ago was thought by
many to have destroyed Christianity. The
author affirmed that all miracles were
incredible, and therefore tlut no testimony
could prove them. Somewhat inronsistently
he devoted a considerable part of his book

,1!

liii.

66 The Historical Christ:

to an attempt to prove that the historical
evidence was baseless, putting the com-
position of the Gospels somewhere about
1 80 A.D. The world has not forgotten
the terrible answer which these arguments
met with from Bishop Lightfoot. Lightfoot
expressed his surprise that the author should
have thought it worth his while to go in
for a kind of reasoning for which he had
so small qualification, when he had already
said plainly that even if the earliest asserted
origin of the four Gospels could be estab-
lished upon the most irrefragable grounds,
the testimony of their writers would be
utterly incompetent to prove the reality
of the miraculous. John Morley burst
into a very premature song of triumph
over the discrediting of Christianity, and
in doing so he used words which are still
very much worth quoting. He said : " Is

i;i;

Preliminary Assumptions dj

Christianity a divine revelation super-
naturally made, or is it not? We cannot
evade the issue, as so many persons \v the
present rehgious anarchy attempt tr- do,
by minimising the amount of supcrn^tu.-a:
element which we may choose to accept If
the preacher of the Sermon on the Mount
was more than man, if He was in any sense
whatever the bearer of a direct and special
mission from the Supreme Being, if the
ineffable attraction of His character had its
secret in qualities conferred on Him by the
Creator for the purposes of impressing men
and leading them to loftier moral concep-
tions, then we are dealing with a supernatural
transaction. Many of those who have ceased
to accept the inspiration of the Scriptures,
or the miracles contained m them, or the'
dogmas into which the Churches have
hardened the words of Christ, still cling to

^^'

The Historical Christ:

V It

what is, after all, the great central miracle
of the entire system, after which all others
become easily credible— the mystery of the
Incarnation of the Supreme. So, whatever
reductions may be made in the amount, the
quality of the whole belief seems to all
intents and purposes credible." We are not
sure that when these words were written
Mr. Morley was aware of John Stuart Mill's
statement, in his posthumous essay on
"Theism," where he touches on the subjcc
of the Christian revelation. Mill confessed
that Christ was a historical person, and such
an unique figure in history that " even now
it would not be easy even for an unbeliever
to find a better translation of the rule of
virtue from the abstract into the concrete
than to endeavour so to live that Christ
would approve our life." Nay more, that
" it remains a possibility to the conception of

■.•T»S^<il»i

Preliminary Assumptions 69

the rational sceptic that Christ actually was
what He supposed Himself to be," not
God, which, according to Mill, Christ never
claimed to be, but "a man charged with a
special, express, and unique commission fro^n
God to lead mankind to truth and virtue."
We put the last clause into italics. If our
readers will carefully compare it with Mr.
Morley's words they will be apt to think
that the disciple in this case is explicitly
refusing to follow his master. Miracle in
any form to some is incredible, and with
such persons it is useless to argue about the
historicity of the Gospels.

But there are many who will not go so
far as to reject in advance all conceivable
witness and evidence of miracL-. Still
they approach every story of the kind
with an intense suspicion, with an incre-
dulity so strong that hardly any evidence

ffi

7o The Historical Christ:

can overcome it. We have already re-
ferred to such writers as Ewald, who disliite
mira<-,le, but who, from \cxy admiratkjn of
the character of Christ, are driven into
language which men lilce Mr. Morley, the
author of Supernatural Religion, Renan, and
Strauss would say implies a miraculous
element, or presses or expands the region
of mystery and wonder into the r«alm
of miracle. They do this because they
perceive that the only alternative is the
alternative adopted by Renan and Strauss,
who declare that since the Gospel is not
the life of God it was written by deliberate
deceivers who have duped the Christian
Church.

In his early book. The Old Ttslament
in the Jewish Church, Robertson Smith, in
answer to the objection that the supposed
results of historical study were based on

Preliminary Assumptions 71

the rationalistic assumption that the super-
natural is impossible, and that everything
in tlie Bible which asserts the existence of
a real personal communication with God
and man is unnecessarily untrue, replied very
simply. He said that if in the application
of his method his hearers found him calling
in a rationalistic principle, if they could show
that in any step of his argument he assumed
the impossibility of the supernatural or
rejected plain facts in the interests of ration-
alistic theories, he would frankly confess he
was in the wrong.' He further declared
that he was sure that the Bible did speak
to the heart of man in words that could
only come from God— that no historical
research could deprive him of this con-
viction, or make less precious the Divine
utterances that spoke straight to the heart,
' O.T.inJew. C/t., pp. 27 sq.

r";

72 The Historical Christ:

for the language of these words was so
clear that no readjustment of their historical
setting could conceivably change the sub-
stance of them. In his book on the
Prophets of Israel he again took up the
question of the supernatural, finding it
historical first in the intrinsic character of
the scheme of revelation as a whole. He
went on: "If the religion of Israel and
Christ answers these tests, the miraculous
circumstances of its promulgation need not
be used as the first proof of its truth, but
must rather be regarded as the inseparable
accompaniment of a revelation which bears
the historical stamp of reality." ' The posi-
tion expressed in the .sentence last quoted
is that from which we approach the Gospel
history.' So far from believing that miracles
' P. 16 (new edition).
» "That Christ should have worked miracles

jw.aiira--*;.!*?:

Preliminary Assumptions

cannot be proved from any testimony, so
far from believing that in ^Mt^ry case tliey
are to be regarded with suspicion, we main-
tain that in the case of a Divine revelation
miracles are appropriate and fitting. This
has been the general feeling of the Church,
and has been expressed by her best apolo-
gists.' They have taken miracle as the fit
accompaniment of a religion that moves and

does not surprise me. It would have surprised

me If He had not" (Dale, Lmng Christ and

Uospels, p. 102).

■ Bushnell, Nat. and the Supern., p 176-

" When we discover the world, or human race'
groaning under the penal disorders and bondage
of sm, the deliverance of those disorders by a
supernatural power involves no overturning of the
causes at work, or the laws by which they work
but only that these causes are, by tlieir laws'
submitted to the will and supernatural action of
Ood, so that He can arrange new conjunctions
and accomplish, in that manner, results of
deliverance."

*■»*

74 Tfie Historical Christ:

satisfies the souls of men, and that asserts
itself to be derived directly from God. It
is the assurance to its first teachers that
they have not been led by their own dreams,
but have been taught by the Lord of Nature.
That is. miracle is part of the accompani-
ment as well as part of the content of a
true revelation, its appropriate countersign.
Of course those who take this ground do
not deny, but rather firmly assert, the stead-
fast and glorious order of nature. It is
against that august and austere order that
miracles stand out. But they hold with
equal firmness that God has made man
for Himself, and that if He has sent His
Son to die for them the physical order can-
not set the rule for the way of grace. If
God has relented, nature may relent. They
believe that if there is a personal God
miracles are possible, and revelation, which

Preliminary Assumptions 75

is miracle, is also possible. They hold
that if we can know God we may be able
to know His revelation as that which could
never have risen in the human mind and
heart, though both rise up to meet it, and
hold it, and never let it go. "Thou hast
the words of eternal life." They are not
dismayed when they are told that the Gospel
age was the age when legendary stories
and superstitions and miraculous pretensions
of the most fanciful and grotesque kind
abounded. Nay, rather their faith is firmer,
for they take these stories and compare
them with the Gospel miracles, and they
say, How is it that the stories of the New
Testament are lofty and tender and beauti-
ful and significant, while the rest are mon-
strosities? As one able writer has said,
the Jewish tales about the casting out of
devils are in themselves a most marvellous

•''IF
J

76 The Historical Christ:

contrast to the Gospel miracles.' They re-
cognise that belief cannot be forced. It is
always possible to douhi historical evidence.
It is always possible , t say that there may
be some way out if we only knew it. But
to those who believe in Christ aiui ponder
His character, His teaching, the way of His
coming to us and going from us, there is a
setting for the stories in which they will
live safely enough. Further, a revelation
can never be anything to sinful dying men
if it is not the record of Divine actions
as well as Divine thoughts. So we cordially
agree with Mr. Morley that, granting the
entrance of the Son of God into human
history, granting the miracle of the In-

' a. stor) in Bk. of Tobit (vi.-viii.) of expulsion
of demon by smoke from the burning heart and
hver of fish caught in the Tigris. Cf. Apocryphal
story of expulsion of Satan in the form of a mad
dog from Judas by the Child Jesus (/. Infancy)

Preliminary Assumptions jj

carnation of the Supreme, there is little to
cause any difficulty. Without the Incarna-
tion, without the Resurrection, we have no
form of religion left to us that will control
or serve or comfort mankind. It is the fact
of our Lord's deity that gives its meaning
to His every action and His every deed.

(2) In a book like this we cannot go very
particularly into minute criticisms. All that
can be attempted is to set forth the broad
arguments clearly. No one who takes up
Schmiedel or Mr. Moffatt will read very
far without asking himself. But how does
the critic know this ? Upon what principle
are certain passages rejected, certain narra-
tives denied, certain conclusions drawn as
to authorship? If he finds it laid down
that those reported words of Jesus are
accurate which could not have proceeded
from the unaided imagination of His

78 The Historical Christ:

disciples, he may be inclined to ask, Who
is to say what could or could not have pro-
ceeded from the imagination of the writers
of the Gospels? He will, in fact, soon
come to the conclus-on that there are very
few real principles in criticism, principles
that can be depended upon. Mr. Moffatt,
to do him justice, is haunted by a con-
sciousness of this, and the part of his book
which has most interested us is the notes
in which every now and then he recognises
the necessity of some principles to be
followed in fixing dates, and settling ques-
tions of authorship, and in dealing with
the historical foundations of narrative. We
have no space to follow him into details,
but we are tolerably sure that Mr. Moffatt,
on consideration, will sec that Canon Gore '

> Lux Mundi, pp. xvii. sq., xxix. sq., 240 sq
»S8 sq.

Preliminary Assumptions 79

and Dr. Driver' were right when they said

that the Old Testament was produced under

very different historical conditions from the

New, and that the two cannot be dealt

with in the same way. Mr. Moffatt has

not been able, through the limits of space,

to let us know exactly how much he will

allow us still to believe of the x\ew

Testament. About the Book of Acts he

is sufficiently frank. He says,' "As a

historical document not merely for the

period 75-100, but even for some points in

the age of which it treats. Acts is a most

serviceable and invaluable writing. For

many parts of the apostolic age the author

apparently possessed no resources and had

access to few traditions. The result is that

these parts are omitted, while in elaborating

1 Intro, to Lit. of O.T., pp. xvii. sq.
' Hist. JV.T., p. 4ig.

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8o The Historical Christ:

others he seems again to present a record
at variance with the traits preserved in
St. Paul's epistles. Yet even with the
gaps, deviations, and contradictions of this
history, it serves often as a useful outline
for historical research, providing materials
for the reconstruction of events and ideas
which otherwise would remain even more
dim than they now are." This is the
function assigned to the book. The Gospel
story is not completely gone over, but the
miraculous birth of Jesus is definitely set
aside, and we have found nothing to in-
dicate a belief in the Resurrection and the
Ascension. But Mr. Moffatt is often at
variance not only with orthodox but even
with rationalistic critics. He has no doubts
and no fears as to his own capacity to
instruct them, although he seems to have
done his best to restrain the evident

Preliminary Assumptions 8r

contempt in which he holds all conserva-
tive critics. The point is, however, that the
difference of opinion between free critics
themselves shows the want of sound prin-
ciples for literary and historical criticism.
Till these are discovered-and they cannot
be discovered from one literature-much
is in the air. No doubt there is a certain
unity of opinion amongst the rationalists,
but this is largely due to the fact that
from their dislike of miracle they are driven
to find explanations, and that in the end
one explanation approves itself as more
probable or less desperate than the others.
Mr. Moffatt speaks contemptuously of
"amateur critics" who find great diflficulty
in following the conclusions of him and
his school. We venture, however, to say
with great respect that those who have
studied the problems in English literature

82 The Historical Christ:

will be the first to hesitate as to the
legitimacy and validity of the methods
adopted by many Biblical critics.

We do not say hv any means that these
methods are always uncertain. In the case,
for txample, of the analysis of the Hexa-
teuch, no one who studies the question can
be blind to the manner in which different
lines of evidence converge. In English
literature, we have the striking example of
the analysis of the Two Noble Kinsmen
and Henry VIII. In his early years,
Tennyson dissected these plays, and his
view of Henry VIII. was worked out
in the Gentleman's Magazine, August, 1850,
by James Spedding. The results were
confirmed by that excellent Shakespearian
scholar, Samuel Hickson ; and they have
been confirmed later in the publications
of the New Shakespeare Society, although

Preliminary Assumptions 83

we are not certain that the latest editors
accept them. But Tennyson was of
those who disputed the composite natur.
of the I had, and on such a question his
opinion is of the greatest value. Students
of English literature are familiar with
the admirable labours of Professor G. C.
Macaulay on Beaumont and Fletcher. His
results, however, wait confirmation. One
of the most controverted questions of
English literary history is the authorship of
letters published after the death of Lady
Mary Wortley Montagu, and professing to
be written by her. They were issued by the
infamous Cleland, and there are apparently
very strong proofs that they are forgeries.
In fact, there is a diary in which Lady Mary
chronicles all the letters she wrote during
her travels, with the initials of those to
whom they were addressed, and the

§4 The Historical Christ;

published letters contradict this diary in every
particular. There are many other points
against them to which we cannot refer.
Nevertheless, it is now, we believe, the
unanimous opinion of those best qualified
to judge that they are genuine. The
case was argued as well as it could be
argued, and for New Testament critics is
most instructive. In the forged Shelley
letters it would have been very difficult to
prove their spuriousness if it had not been
that a passage was copied from an article
by Sir Francis Palgrave in the Quarterly
Review. After examining carefully the
Logan-Bruce controversy, we have formed
a decided opinion on the side of Logan,
but very competent .scholars still take the
other view. In cases of contemoorary
authorship, it has been found that internal
evidence is almost always indecisive. When

Preliminary Assumptions 85

Charlotte Bronte published Jane Eyn, the
general view was that the book was written
by a man. Some thought it was written
by a woman, and it was also suggested
that a man and a woman had written it
together. This last idea made Charlotte
Bronte very merry. Similarly, when George
Eliofs early books were published there
was a like difference of opinion. The most
extraordinary fact we know in connection
with this subject is that when Ecce Homo
was published, Dean Church thought it was
written by Cardinal Newman. He wrote
his magnificent essay on the book under
this conviction. Perhaps no one understood
Newman and all the secrets of his style
and thought so well as Church ; and yet
he fell into this strange blunder. V\'-hat
has criticism been able to do in settling
the authorship of An Englishwoman's Love

t,>:

The Historical Christ :

Letters, or in separating the work of Besant
and Rice ? It is only through narrow
limits that the methods which critics have
applied so confidently to the charter of
the Christian Church can be scientifically
used. In fact, there has been no formula-
tion of scientific principles on this subject.
The nearest approach we have seen is in
the brilliant introduction which Profes'-or
Jebb contributes to his edition of Tluo-
phrastus. Yet even in this essay there
is much that might be questioned by an
appeal to the facts of literary history. It
is scarcely too much to say that in such
matters it is usually the unexpected that
happens to be true.

Bishop Lightfoot, who is practically
ignored by the new critics, but who sur-
pas.sed them as much in knowledge as
he did in judgment, expressed in memor-

Preliminary Assumptions 87

able words his opinion of many German
critics. He compared their work to that
of the Rabbis of Jewish exegesis. The
Rabbis were quite as able, quite as learned,
but their work came to nought, even as the
work of the many German critics, though
minute and searching, failed because it was
conceived in a false vein. It may be, said
Lightfoot, that " the historical sense of
seventeen or eighteen centuries is larger
and truer than the critical insight of a
section of men in our late half century."

11
^11

IV
The Historical Christ:

ECCE HOMO ; ECCE DEUS

For the fountain heads of Christianity the
Church has supposed that we arc to go
direct to the four G lels.i Before thc
historic Jesus Christ can be thoroughly
realised His portrait is to be studied
in these. Echoes deep and t'ear come
to us from other sources, but we fail in
justice to Him and to ourselves unless we
turn to these. For it must be remembered
that the argument concerning Jesus Christ

» 'Ev oU iyKoOiiirai 6 Xpio-ros (Iren. V»
Ifar., III. ii. 8).

Ecce Homo; Ecce Deus

cannot and must not be left to experts.
Every one is called upon to judge: the
materials arc accessible to all. What the
experts possess in addition to what the
people possess is comparatively of small
account. Experts may wait foi the latest
papt-r-covered book from Germany, the
book of the future which so impressed the
authoress of /ioi.ri Ehmere, which is going
to make a complete end of historical Chris-
tianity. Nothing that the post or rewspapc.
can ever bring us will touch the convictions
which the earnest mind may arrivt at from
the study of the Lod's life in the Gospels.
The trouble is that many will not look
straight at Jesus Christ. They turn their
heads away. Stopford Brooke very rightly
points out that Burns, like so many other
literary men, deliberately refused to look
face to iace at the Son of God. The active

-I
■ I'

.'!
■i

9°

The Historical Christ :

11' '

scepticism of our day has lar^'cly gone
along with a profound ignorance of the
life and teaching of Jesus Christ. We have
been told that a company of working men,
aliens from the Church, and in the majority
of cases from faith, broke out into rapturous
cheers after hearing a vivid presentation of
the Christ Who wrought out in human life
the creed of creeds. What is needed is that
we should find out for ourselves in patient
sf d' the Christ of the Gospels, not the
Christ of the Instilutes, or of the Christ of
the Imitation, or of the Christ of modern
biographies. It should be understood that
the utmost wealth of rhetoric employed
even by believers to describe Christ serves
only but to blanch the glowing colour
of the original story. In order to pene-
trate the thoughts of men with the spirit
of the life of Christ, we need the pre-

Ecce Homo; Ecce Deus 91

sent .tion of the matchless chr . . ccr so
human in its sympathy and so d. '' . in its
purity."

(i) First of all we appeal to the unbiassed
readers of the Gospel to consider the wonder-
fulness and originality of the character of
Chris For testimony we shall appeal to
men who, whether Christian or not, stood
outside the Christian Church. Rousseau
says: "The Gosj ■ has marks of truth so
great, so striking, so perfectly inimitable, that
the inventor of it would be more astonishing
than the hero." He adds, "If the life and
death of Socrates are those of a sage, the
life and death of Jesus are those of a God."
John Stuart Mill, whose testimony on such

6p\€ia o oravpos avrov koX 6 Gdvaros koX ^ avd<rTa<Tii
avTov fcal 17 'Triorts 17 Bi avrov (Ignat., £!fi. ad
Phliaddpk., VIII. § 2).

92 The Historical Christ :

4iii

a matter carries the greatest weight, employs
the argument from the originality of Christ's
character to its historical truth. "Who
among the disciples of Jesus, or among their
proselytes, was capable of inventing these
sayings ascribed to Jesus, or of imagining
the life and character revealed in the
Gospels ? Certainly not the fishermen of
Galilee; as certainly not St. Paul." He
adds, it is "the God Incarnate, more than
the God of the Jews or of nature, who,
being idealised, has taken so great and
salutary a hold on the modern mind." We
shall not speak of the preparation in history
for Christ's appearing— of how long the
sky had whitened before His morning rose.
We shall not speak of the long, silent
magnificence of His beginning from the
day when it first dawned on Him that He
must be about the things of His Father

Ecce Homo; Ecce Deus

to His thirtieth year. We need not
emphasise what will impress every reader
—the marvellousness of the character de-
scribed, its patience and its zeal, its sweetness
and its strength, its tenderness and its stern-
ness, its profound humility and its un-
paralleled self-assertion, its imperious demand
for reverence and for trust.' There are two
points, however, worth bearing in mind.
Let it be observed that the evangelists
have taken this wonderful character into the
business of life. They have shown us how
He demeaned Himself under all circum-
stances, whether blasphemed or adored,

' Matthew Arnold says; "Jesus himself, as he
appears in the Gospels, and for the very reason
that he is so manifestly above the heads of his
reporters there, is, in the jargon of modern
philosophy, an absolute; we cannot explain him,
cannot get behind him and above him, cannot
command him " (Pref. to Pop. Ed. of Lit. and
Dog.).

111
1

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94 "T/ie Historical Christ :

whether triumphant or suffering, whether
appealing or warning, whether working
miracles or receiving cups of cold water.
And they have not failed in rendering a
true and verifiable image.' Further, they
have given us the picture of a living
personality. Now, as has been pointed out,
these are two of the most difficult achieve-
ments of literature, which it may safely be
said have never been compassed. Idealised
characters as described in literature are very

1 Cf. Bunyan, Grace Abounding, § 120: "Me-
thought I saw with great evidence, from the four
Evangelists, the wonderful works of God, in giving
Jesus Christ to save us, from his conception and
birth, even to his second coming to judgment :
methought I was as if I had seen him grow
up; as from the cradle to the cross; to which
also, when he came, I saw how gently he gave
himself to be hanged, and nailed on it, for my
sins and wicked doing. Also, as I was musing on
this his progress, that dropped on my spirit, He
was ordained for the slaughter."

Ecce Hor,w; Ecce Deus 95

vague. The words of Guinevere may be
repeated :

"But, friend, to me
He is all fault who hath no fault at all ;
For who loves me must have a touch of earth :
The low sun makes the colour."

George Eliot in her last novel, Daniel
Deronda, suggests a parallel between her
hero and the Redeemer approaching Israel,
and tries to make him an ideal character,
but, as has been said, he is as feeble and
colourless a character as can be, and was
well enough described by Mr. Hutton as
a "moral mist." Nothing credible, nothing
memorable, nothing clear is recorded of him.
It is true, also, that the lives of the saints
are hard to write, for they also are histori-
cally ineffective. The divine communion
often weakens the pergonal and positive
element in them, and the self is drowned,

96 The Historical Christ:

1 1! ;
I'll I

and the personality whose assertion is re-
quired ere a man can be a force in history
disappears. The exceptions to these are
the books in which saints have written their
own Hves and experience. It is almost a
law of literature that any portraits of the
ideal in the least degree satisfactory are
closely transcribed from life, as was, for
example, Dinah Morris in Adam Bede.
This confirms what has been said. The
wonderfulness, the originality of the character
described in the Gospels, the minuteness,
the freshness, the realisation, the detail of
the whole portrait prove that it is drawn
from life.

(2) Next we must note in a word the
strange harmony of the history. Modern
critics have largely rejected the Fourth
Gospel, and its historical value is lightly
esteemed by such critics as we have recently

Ecce Homo; Ecce Deus

been referring to. But no sense of incon-
gruity has disturbed believers, and in this
matter the saints shall judge the critics.
Or rather we ought to say the critics, who
are men of letters, who know what literature
is, and what life is, shall judge the narrow
scholars. Of St. John's Gospel it may be
said that it gives us not indeed the true
Christ merely, for all the Gospels give us
the true Christ, but that it gives us the
fuller Christ. In that Gospel we find the
same infinite mercy, love, and comprehension,
the feminine element also in its finest strain
—Godhead, manhood, Aromanhood united
in the Redeemer and Reconcil- Now,
when we are told by critics that these
Gospels are composed of fragments that have
floated together hitherto, nobody exactly
knows how, that they are more legendary
than historical, that they reflect the con-

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TAe Historical Christ:

sciousness of the time in which they were
written, and not the aLiual truth about
Jesus, we can only say that if this be
so we are in presence of a stupendous
miracle, a miracle which violates every law
of literature as students of literature have
understood it. On this point Principal
Rainy's words cannot be too often quoted :
"The man who hides from himself what
Christianity and the Christian revelation
are takes the parts of it to pieces, and
persuades himself that without divine inter-
position he can account for all the pieces.
Here is something from the Jews and
something from the Greeks. Here are
miracles that may be partly odd natural
events, partly nervous impressions, and
partly gradually growing legends. Here
are books, of which we may say that this
element was contributed by this party, and

liT

Ecce Homo; Ecce Deus

the other by that, and the general colour-
ing by people who held partly of both.
In such ways as these Christianity is taken
down and spread over several centuries.
But when your operation is done, the
living whole draws itself together again,
looks you in the face, refuses to be conceived
in that manner, reclaims its scattered
members from the other centuries to the
first, and reasserts itself to be a great
burst of coherent life and light, centring
in Christ. Just so you might take to pieces
a living tissue, and say thcrr s here only
so much nitrogen, carbon, lime, and so
forth; but the energetic peculiarities of
life going on before your eyes would refute
you by the palpable presence of a mystery
unaccounted for."

We will give two illustrations from
literature sufficient to illustrate the argu-

I oo The Historical Christ ;

ment. One apologist, who is not only a
Christian, but an eminent man of letters,
takes the story of the Easter walk to
Emmaus and points o it how the writer
rises to the level of perfect equality with
the majestic conception of a risen God.
He is so much at home with it that
he fearlessly follows the minute actions of
this exalted Being, and endows Him with
sentence after sentence lOt unworthy of
those Divine lips. He goes on to say that
Shakespeare himself could not have moved
on those lofty ranges of imaginative fiction
without an occasional breakdown, and refers
to the comparative failure of the language
of the ghost in Hamlet. It falls, he says,
on the whole, far short of the lofty and
awful conception conveyed by the words
of others who impart to us the impression
which the dramatist wishes us to form.

Ecce Homo; Ecce Deus loi

Every one knows how in his introduction
to the Monastery Sir Walter Scott dwells
upon the almost certain breakdown of super-
natural machinery in works of fiction.
Another eminent writer mentions the fine
Easter passage in Fau t, where the disciples
grieve that their Master is raised to heaven,
and th?t they are left lo suffer below. But
in the Gospel the disciples suffer only from
the news of Christ's death ; and the appre-
hension that the story of His rising is too
good to be true. When they know it to
be true they are full of joy and triumph.
And was it so that these lowly hands wove
unaided a story whose unity and magnifi-
cence have dazzled the world? How came
it on the theory of unbelieving critics that
these scraps and tatters somehow came to-
gether, and gave us this great result? To
change the figure. What stones the building

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102 The Historical Christ :

iti ill
m

I "I i:t

is made of we can never tell. One thing
is certain. Not only does it contain a rue
history, but it is a house not made with
hands.

(3) Another point is the blending of the
Divine and the human that runs through
all the story. For Christ, as pictured in
the Gospels, !:i not described as a Shake-
speare, or a Newton, or a Mozart of the
spiritual world, but as God. And yet He
is most human, most humble, and the
Divinity and humanity, the exaltation and
the humiliation, go constantly together. It
was He Who washed the feet that were
stabbed by the thorns of life and soiled by
its dust, but He did it knowing that He
came from God and went to God. He
said : " Come unto Me, all ye that labour
and are heavy laden, and I will give you
rest," and stretched out His arms to receive

Ecce Homo; Ecce Deus 103

the worn world. But He, being weary with
His journey, sat by the well-side, and was
content to be served. When we realise
this His miracles appear inevitable, for He
came not to disturb order but to remove
the disorder which moral evil had intro-
duced into the life of humanity. So the
world, as it gazes on Him Who has re-
newed the face of the earth, understands
that it is the gentleness of the Divine will
that draws nearer and nearer to the empty
sanctuary of the heart in the humanity of
the Son of God. The passionate love which
this Gospel story kindles when it is fully
comprehended is a love that never could be
given to any heart that did n^t come into
the closest fellowship with our own.

(4) In so brief a discussion we can only
touch the main points, but the earnest
reader of the Gospels cannot fail to observe

.11

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104 7he Historical Christ:

almost from the beginning of the story
the deliiserate movement of the Lord's life
towards death. In most of the great stories
of the world the enduring passages are
those which show how the ceaseless call
of the eternal world is heard at last and
obeyed, heard sometimes hen the noise oi
life is loudest. Our Lord's short life from
its earliest momi ,vas touched with the
shadow of death, 'd yet for Him death
was not w.jat it v>as for His brethren.
The life was not idyllic, as Renan has
i:-'.fnted it. To think of it so is to miss
its meaning from the start. Its colour all
through is the sacrificial colour, for Christ
came not to be the mere Example, but
also the Uplifter and the Redeemer of the
world. We mark how as He drew near
"he clos"; there were outbursts from a pro-
found deep of sorrow. It was not that He

Ecce Homo ; Ecce Deus 1 05

•M

had any secret remorse .. 'aging His heart.
There had been no moment of madness in
His holy years, no moment that He longed
and prayed tu pluck from out the past.'
There had been no moral tragedy, though
He had His conflict with the enemy. No,
His grief wa-, not for Himself; it was for
us. It was a burden of .sympathy. He
had come to deal not with our sorrows
only, not with our darkness only. He had
come to save u from our sins, and all
the forces of His nature were strained that
He might deliver u.s. And the load of our
guilt, the chastisement of our peace, was
upon Him all His years. Towards the
end His burden-bearing is made more
manifest. The secrets of His heart are
more fully disclosed, but all the story is
of one piece.

' Renan, Vie de Jesus, xix. ad fin.

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io6 The Historical Christ:

m il

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m %

(5) This leads us naturally to say a
word of the testimony the Gospel bears
to His sinlessness. Unless the story was a
true story, how could it have been written ?
How could the Sinless have been imagined ?
Even to paint the ideal, or what we are
content to call the ideal, as we have seen,
taxed the greatest minds. But to picture
the Sinless needs something more than
truth. It needs inspiration, for Christ's
disciples who had been with Him in the
narrow chamber, in the little boat, who
had sat with Him partaking of the same
rough fare, who had walked by His side,
would not only have detected Him if He
had once been selfish or hasty or false,
but they would have been sure to misunder-
stand Him when He was most wise and
pure and true. But they had no doubt
that His glory was the glory of the Only

Ecce Homo; Ecce Deus 107

Begotten, and they succeeded in giving us
the figure of the Sinless. The pencil does
not swerve ; and yet how inevitable it was
that it should swerve had another Hand
not held it ! One false note would have
destroyed all, but that false note never
comes. Christ preached the Sermon on the
Mount and He lived it. More important
even than the testimony of the disciples
is the testimony of Christ Himself. He
was born with the Jewish conscience, which
had been taught the knowledge of sin
which comes from the law, and yet He
had no consciousness of sin. He was keenly
aware of sin in others, and fiercely scourged
the Pharisees for their lack of moral dis-
cernment.' The Pharisee ought to say,
"God be merciful to me a sinner," but our

' Renan, when asked once what he made of
sin, answered airily, " I suppress it."

^g:

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io8 The Historical Christ:

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Lord never said that, never could have
said that. He prayed on the Cross, " Father,
forgive /A«« " ; but He never said, "Father,
forgive Me." In a word. He had no con-
sciousness of sin. His foes and his friends
attested His innocence ind His own attes-
tation is greater. He looked round and
said calmly, " Which of you convicteth Me
of sin ? " If He was sinless, then we have
entered historically the region of miracle,
for the moral miracle is as great as any
physical miracle can be.' Admit moral
miracle, and you break in pieces what is
called the modern view of the world, and
make it easy to accept the story of Christ
in its natural meaning. As Dr. Bruce him-
self has said, " with oelief in the virgin

^ " A sinless Christ is as great a miracle as a
Christ who can walk on the water " (Bruce, Hum.

of Chr., p. 208, n. i).

Ecce Homo; Ecce Deus 109

birth is apt to go belief in the virgin life,
as not less than the other a part of the
veil that must be taken away that the
true Jesus may be seen as He was— a
morally defective man, better than most,
but not perfectly good."' This subject,
however, demands fuller discussion, and in
our next chapter we shall take up the
Sinlessness of Jesus.

The earnest bewildered inquirer should lay
aside every book until he has in some degree
mastered the foM. Gospels. If he is sincere
and patient he will, we believe, see in the
end that the history is a true history, and
that Christ is the only Saviour. It must be
remembered, however, that in every realm
the vision is the measure of the man.
" For my part," said one to a great critic,
" I never could admire Shakespeare." " I
' Apologet., p. 410.

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no The Historical Christ

admired hivi" was the critic's laconic com-
ment. In this sphere of reh'gion, humility,
and pain, and need, and soul travail, and a
pure intent are the indispensable conditions
of insight. Even the dimmest realisation of
the Christ is the opening of the everlasting
doors. " I seem to see a man who walks in
uncertainty, a napkin over his eyes. Tt is
loosened little by little, and the instf.nt the
handkerchief falls he finds himself in the
face of the Sun." There is

fi:, "ife:

" A deep beneath the deep.

And a height above the height;
Our hearing is not hearing,
And our seeing is not sight."

The Sinlessness of Jesus

In his article on the book. Supernatural
Religion, Mr. John Morley intimates that
he could say something in disparagement
of the lofty character of Jesus, but that
he does not wish to say it. Why should
he shrink? In writing about Mr. Glad-
stone. Mr. Morley, we may be sure, will
not hesitate to point out certain imperfec-
tions in his nature and career. Mr. Morley
did not shrink because he was then
particularly careful of sensitive religious
susceptibilities. How much care for them
did he show when he descended into the

lt<)>

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The Sinlessness

If!! i!'

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dreary ineptitude — not to use stronger

words— of spelling the name of God with

a small "g"? Renan claimed for himself

the absolute coldness which proposed as its

only object to take note of the most delicate

and the most severe shades of truth. Yet

when he wrote his Life of Christ for the

people, he expunged the frank passages in

his famous book, passages such as that in

which he argued that Christ countenanced

a fictitious resurrection of Lazarus arranged

by the sisters. He omitted also what he

had said about Christ's devouring fanaticism.

These were fit for his scientific readers ; but

he was willing to make concession to the

preference of the vulgar for a popular hero.

So, without in the least changing his real

opinion, he indulged the general appetite

for a stainless figure, and erased all the traces

of fanaticism and finesse. To do that was

of Jesus

II'

to forge: that, after all, truth is sacredness,
and sacredness is truth, and that deception
in any and every form can in the end
work nothing but evil. Yet we will not
bear too hardly on Morleyand Renan. What
we are convinced lay at the back of their
reticence was the feeling that if Christ were
once proved to be frail and stained like
the rest of us, the glory of the world would
be quenched.

In dealing with the later criticism of Christ
and the Gospels, we are compelled to say
much about Strauss and Renan, simply
because they sincerely endeavour to solve
the problems which sceptical criticism is so
loth to face. To the apparatus of criticism
there is practically no addition since their
time, none at least of cardinal importance.
It would be the merest affectation to say
that the new critics are in any way com-

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114

T'he Sinlessncss

parable in intellectual strength either to
Strauss or Renan. They attempt to dissolve
the history by analysis. They take away
from us the foundations of faith. When we
ask, "What do you give us in room of
what you have removed ? " they are silent.
They hint at the kind of life of Christ that
might be written from the few torn fragments
left to them, but they shrink from the task
of building again what they think they have
shattered, of clothing what they think they
have disrobed. But we are entitled to say
that, if they deprive humanity of the great
and solemn object of - trust, they are bound
to tell what they have to place in its stead.
Not that we believe they can make any
other answer than the answers of Strauss
and Renan. There is no rest for them, as
we shall see, save what may be found at
the bottom of the abyss.

of Jesus ,,^

Was our Lord without sin, as He claimed
as His apostles testified, as His Church
has beh-eved? The record is before us
Where are the traces of sinfulness? The
attempt to impugn His character from
the record has so completely broken down
that the endeavour is now to show that
He Himself acknowledged His sinfulness
One alleged instance, brought forward by
Dr. Schmiedel. is Christ's saying to the

young ruler: "Why callest thou Me good?
There is none good but One-that is God "
Dr. Bruce himself has dealt so admirably
with this passage that we cannot do better
than reproduce his exegesis.' "To the
seeker after eternal life, who accosted Him
as -Gooa Master,- He addressed the sharp

>nterrogation,'Whycallest thou Me good?'

as if to say, 'Make not goodness a matter

' -ipologet., p. 340.

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116

the Sinlcssncss

of compliment ; call no man good till you
know what goodness is, and whether the
person to whom you apply the epithet
deserves it.' Yet, while virtually advising
this inquirer to suspend his judgment as
to the applicability of the epithet 'good'
to Himself, Jesus, we note, invited him to
immediate discipleship : ' Go, sell that thou
hast, and come, follow Me." Had he com-
plied with the invitation, he would gradually
have learned the nature of true goodness,
and that the Master he had chosen as
his guide was indeed good." Another of
Dr. Schmiedel's few pillars for a scientific
Life c Christ is the great saying of Christ,
"Whosoever speaketh a word against the
Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him."
This he wishes us to take as a case in
which Christ suggested that He was not
without sin! We shall again call in bi.

of Jesus

117

Bruce to make an effective reply. He says
that this so-called exposure of the faults of
Jesus is but a sorry, pitiful business after
all, and that those who practise it are sorely
in need of the compassionate regard of
Him they criticise, and Who benignantly
said, " Whosoever speaketh a word against
the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven
him."

(i) Amongst those who refuse to accept
the full catholic doctrine of the person and
work of Christ there are few-their number
is diminishing— who take up the position
that Christ was sinless. Schleiermacher
taught that in Christ the ideal of humanity
was for the first time realised, although
he did not recognise fully the Incarnation
of God. Dr. Bruce ranks Martineau after
Channing as holding the same view,' though
' Cf. Seat of Authority, p. 651.

•t\'

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The Sinlessness

we very much doubt whether Martineau,
in his later period at least, would have
made any such admission. In fact, he has
written passages which apparently affirm
the imperfection of Christ. We ought to
rejoice, however, when such a view is held,
however little it may hang together with
other parts of the thinker's system. When
the sinlessness of Christ is acknowledged,
we are no longer disputing about miracle.
The region ^'- the miraculous has been
entered. There is the possibility at least,
and the beginning of a true Christian faith.
But no one, we may confidently say, will
hold long to the belief in the sinless-
ness of Christ without being compelled to
recognise the rest of our Lord's claims.
The sinlessness of Christ will not at once
prove Divinity. But it will prove credi-
bility, and those who hear the beloved Son

of Jesus

119

cannc t misunderstand the meaning and the
immensity of His claims.

(2) There is another school of critics,
who admit that Christ was much better
than most people, but deny that He was
sinless. They know that to affirm sin-
lessness is to pass from naturalism . •>
supernaturalism. Thus Weizsacker, who
has had a very great influence on recent
criticism in this country, says that Christ's
perfection was similar to that of Paul
or of another devoted man. Keim is of
the same mind, and probably Ewald and
Matthew Arnold and Dr. Abbott, though
they are so reluctant to attribute fault to
Christ that it is difficult to be quite sure of
their position. It has to be said, however,
that to admit sinfulness, even in homeo-
pathic measures, is to destroy the Christian
redemption. One thing at !i ast is certain,

t20

T/ie Sinlessness

that a sinner cannot save sinners. The
Gospel for mankind is not merely a recovery
of man from his moral weakness, but a
deliverance of man from his guilt. Till the
consciousness of sin and guilt is present in
the heart, much in the revelation of Christ
will remain inexplicable. One of Baur's
friends and admirers wrote after his death,
in words which were meant to be laudatory :
" His was a completely objective nature.
No trace of personal needs or struggles is
discoverable in connection with his investi-
gations of Christianity. The positive beliefs
which he had carried with him from the
period of youth, he suffered to remain as
they were until scientific inquiry had shown
them to be untenable." The key to this lock
is the sense of sin ; but Baur was a stranger
to the requirements of his own soul, and his
need of a Saviour. Once admit a tincture

of Jesus

121

ci moral failure in Christ, and Christianity
as a religion of redemption is in ruins.'

(3) Nevertheless, it is true that many
people in these days find it easy to accept
the beh'ef that Christ was a good man, not
a perfect man, but far above the ordinary
level of humanity, and admirable in much
of His teaching. This we take to be the
position of Tolstoy. This school of thinkers
holds that what the human race needs
principally is teaching, and that by teaching
the world may be redeemed, so far as it

' The sense of sin a characteristic of the saints.
"Quum a socio audisset [Franciscus Assisiensis,
vir ille Seraphicus] fur, sacrilegus, homicida, in-
cestus, ebriosus, ct quidquid criminum in scelero-
sissimum quemvis congeri potest, confractus egit
gratias, confessus ilium nihil esse mentitum.
Miranti socio cur ita loqueretur : Hate, inquit,
omnia et his sceleratiora patraram, nisi me
numinis favor servasset " (Erasm. Exeq. Seraph.
apud CoUoq.).

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122

The Sinlcssness

can be redeemed, perhaps so far as it needs
to be redeemed. Is this position tenable?
Is it possible to allow that Jesus was a
good man if His awful claims are denied?
We believe it is not possible, and this
is the belief of the more consistent and
thoroughly naturalistic critics of Christ.
They are compelled, in reading the
Gospels, to admit that if Christ is not
worthy of the worship of men. He is
not worthy of their respect.

(a) We ask our readers to take, not all
the four Gospels, the Synoptics will answer
the purpose as well as the fourth Gospel,
and apply this argument for themselves.
Dr. Knight has done it very practically
in a letter to Dr. Martineau, published
in his book, Inter Amicos, and we are
satisfied to reproduce his argument. It is
an argument which the simplest Christian

of Jesus

can follow and understand, and, as has been
said before, the Christian Church cannot
suffer this business to be left to the so-called
experts. The claim of Christ is lifelong,
unfaltering, calm, and repeated. When it
is set aside, the character of the claimant
is lost. For example, when Christ read
from the roll of Isaiah in the Synagogue of
Nazareth, and added: "This day is the
Scripture fulfilled in your ears," can we honour
Him if .:ie was merely an ordinary Jew?
When, at the close of the Sermon on the
Mount, He said that men would call Him
Lord, Lord, and that they would say they
had done wonders in His name, and He
would reply, "I never knew you: depart
from Me, ye that work iniquity," was He
not claiming to be the Master and the Judge
of souls? When He cut into the sacred
ties that bind humanity, and said, "If a

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124

The Sinlcssness

man come unto Me and hate not his father
and mother and wife and children, he cannot
be My disciple," can we respect Him if
He is speaking as a mere man, as a sinful
human being? Must He not transcend
humanity if this word is other than imbecile,
arrogant? When Peter said, "Thou art
the Christ, the Son of the Living God," did
not Jesus bless the witness-bearer, and tell
him that flesh and blood had not revealed
the secret? When He said that if any one
should offend one of the little ones who
believed in Him, it were better he were
drowned in the sea, who was speaking?
When He arrogated to Himself the position
of Judge of the sinful, entitled to say to the
impenitent, "Depart from Me, ye cursed,
into the eternal fire," is He speaking as a
sinful man, is He speakinc as a mere man ?
If He is, it is impossible not to say that

of Jesus

125

He is uttering great swelling words of vanity,
and by reason of that vanity is lower than
the meek and humble sain of God. No,
He claimed to be a King, and said that He
would give a Kingdom ; and by what right
did He claim not only the Throne, but the
power to ordain the Throne to His faithful
followers ? VVe need not labour this point.
It is so plain that we defy any reader
of the Gospels to go through one of them
seriously without seeing that even to admit
sinfulness in Christ is not to admit a mere
tincture of fault, but to admit a character so
egregiously vain and self-deluded as to fall
much below the average standard.

{ti) But there is more to say. If we deny
that Christ was sinless, if we deny that He
was the Redeemer of the world, is it possible
to evade the ultimate conclusions of Renan
and Strauss ? Renan pictures Christ as a

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126

'the Sinlessness

serene and simple country prophet in His
youth, with a profound apprehension of
the Fatherhood of God, nourished on the
Messianic dreams of the New Testament
and on the wisdom of Hillel. He describes
for us the beauty of His early ministry, and
His degeneration when He came to insist
on His own claim. " Oh," says the French-
man, "if He had but died after preaching
the only absolute religion by the Well of
Samaria ! " But He went on, and had at
last to play a part which became so intoler-
able that He had to die, almost to commit
religious suicide, that He might deliver
Himself from its fatal necessities ! Weiz-
sacker published in a German review, some
twenty years ago, a curiously pathetic paper
written b' Strauss after the appearance of
the first volume of his Life of Jesus. In
this he pleaded that he might continue in

of Jesus

127

the service of the church of Wurtemberg.
His mythical theory, he admits, cannot be
preached before a congregation ; but he
can find in some parts of the Gospel the
embodiment of ideas in the form of history.
Strauss, as we know, lived to condemn
Christianity as an utter delusion, to denounce
Christ as a deceiver, to deny the existence
of a personal God and the immortality of
the soul.

No, Christ was sinless, or He was the
grand deceiver of the world. "He is a
good man," say some who do not allow
His sinlessncss ; but they can never hold
out against the charge, « Nay, but He de-
ceiveth the people." ^ Admit His sinlessness,
and all the rest goes with it. We hear

:;•

Iff t

The author of Supernatural Religion in the
early editions of his book paid a high tribute to
the character of Jesus, but afterwards withdrew it

128

the Sinlesstiess

Him, and obey Him, and believe Him, and
know Him to be our Redeemer and our
Lord. The imperious and awful confidence
with which He speaks fills our hearts with
peace. It has been miserably objected that,
even if He was sinless, He did nothing for
the intellectual or artistic progress of the
world. Well, He did not come to be the
drawing-master or the scientific tutor of
mankind. His name was called Jesus be-
cause He was to save His people from
their sins, and He has been and is to-day
mighty to save — able to save to the utter-
most all that come unto God by Him.
Yet art and science and philosophy have
received a new life from Him. With
the risen Saviour all things rise. Read
the Gospels in their natural meaning, and the
historical reality of Christ is proved. The
Church did not create Him, for it had no

of Jesus

129

colours to paint the picture. No meaner
hand than truth could have drawn it.
Therefore, in the Gospels we have the story
of a true descent of God in the midst of us,
and Christ created the Church. There was
One other than the rest; One Who was
strong among the weak, erect among the
fallen, believing among the faithless, clean
among the defiled, and 1-ving among the
dead; One Who, being whole, gave His
life for the sick.

We have next to discuss the Resurrec-
tion of our Lord.

If!

«•!

The Resurrection of our Lord
from the Dead

When Strauss' first Life of Christ was pub-
lished, an eminent critic said that his theories
would be shattered against such facts as
the Resurrection of our Lord and the con-
version of St. Paul. So it has turned out.
In dealing with the Resurrectiji. . Christ
we shall first cf all state the meaning of
the fact, next adduce its evidences, and in
conclusion examine the explanations of its
deniers. Students will see that, in criti-
cising the explanations, we make much use
of Strauss' first Life of Jesus. We do so
partly because no one can say that Strauss
130

Our Lord from the Dead

'3'

was prejudiced on the side of orthodoxy,
but also because he of all those who have
measured swords with Christ was the
strongest, the ablest, the most candid, the
most loyal to the facts as he conceived
them. No other sceptical critic can lay
claim to a more piercing genius, to a genius
which, like a flash, often lightens up in an
instant the tangled underwood of thought,
and attains its goal at once.

I.— When Jesus died, the Tit which He
had commended to the holy hands of the
Father was received. The crucified body
was laid in the grave. On the third day
the grave was left empty, the Redeemer
had risen to a new life.

" One pUce alone had ceased to hold its prey,

A form had pressed it ; and was there no more ;
The garments of the grave beside it lay,
Where once thjy wrapped Him, on the rocky Hoor.

[32 The Resurrection of

" He only with returning footsteps broke

The eternal calm whercv.ith the tomb was bound ,
Among the sleeping dead alone He woke,
And blessed with outstretched hands the hosts
around.'

He was not called back to the life of
mortality. His body was transfigured into
fresh lustre and beauty. It was the glorified
body of the Resurrection. It was the same
body that had been committed to the tomb
and yet it was not the same, for it was
revivified and transformed, and past the
dominion of death for ever. In this body
Hi manifested Himself to His i'sciples,
and as His body could not live to die, He
took leave of the world in the quiet triumph
of the Ascension. The Resurrection and
the Ascension go together. Christ's body,
if it had remained on earth, would have
been with us still; but it was expedient

Our Lord /rem the Dead 133

for us that He should go away, and a cloud
received 1 1 in from the sight of the faith-
ful. The two points on which faith must
fasten are the empty grave and the ascen-
sion of the glorified body inio the heavens.
To all these there is the unbroken testimony
of the New Testament. There is a strange
and not quite honest effort on the part
of some in these days to accept the Resur-
rection of Christ in words while actually
denying it. But to talk of the resurrection
of the spirit is preposterous. The spirit
does not die, and therefore cannot rise.
What is meant by those who hold such
opinions is that the life of Jesus is, like
any other life, persistent beyond death!
But that has nothing to do with the resur-
rection of the New Testament, and nothing
to do with resurrection of any kind. The
one resurrection of which the New Testa-

134 71*^ Resurrection of

ment knows, the one resurrection that
allows to language any meaning, is the
resurrection of the body, the resurrection
which leaves the grave empty.

II.—The Resurrection of our Lord from
the dead is in a sense the greatest of
miracles, and needs to be proved by clear
evidence. What happened when Jesus died
on the Tree? Those who slew Him
had no doubt. He had been defeated,
stricken into powerless silence. What did
His disciples think ? Did they understand
that His death did not end all, that it was
in itself a triumph to be followed by the
triumphs of His Resurrection, His Ascen-
sion, His Session on the Eternal Throne?
On the contrary, they were weighed down,
discomforted, overborne by thoughts of gloom,
defeat, and death. They were stupefied
and silent mourners, whilst He— the Sword

Our hor A from the Dead 135

of the Spirit — was quiet in the holy grave.
Nothing is more certain than the hopeless-
ness of the disciples, and it is that which
gives such extraordinary weight to their
witness. The stories of the Gospel cannot
here be examined in detail, but no reader
can fail to see the moods of the disciples —
the bewilderment, the despair, the dawning
bliss, the half-believing rapture ending at
last in an undying joy, and coming from
the sober certainty that the Lord was risen
indeed, and that the whole face of life and
death had been changed. Now the question
is what took place between the deep
depression at the death of Jesus and the
triumph that followed? What was it that
made the sheep, so panic-stricken when the
Shepherd was smitten on Good Friday,
bold as lions on the day of Pentecost ?
The answer of the Gospels is that the

136

The Resurrection of

Resurrection had happened. How can we
account for the wave of strength and hope
that suddenly swept over the deeply despon-
dent disciples, and made them the con-
querors of the world ? Between the blank
despair and the exultant gladness are we
to place a delusion, ^ a lie ? ' No, between
thera we place the risen Lord, and nothing
but the fact of His triumph will explain
how those who had been trying in vain to
deaden the agony of disappointment were
suddenly filled with life and might and

1 " To read the history of the Christian Church
without the belief that Christ has been in vital and
organic relation with it, seems to me to read it
under the impression that a profound illusion can,
for centuries, exercise more power for good than
the truth. ... I cannot understand the history
of the Christian Church at all, if all the fervent
trust which has been stirred by faith in the actual
inspirations of a nature at once eternal and human,
has been lavished on a dream."— Hutton, Theol.
Ess., VII.

Our Lord from the Dead 1 37

courage, realising that when their Master
made the step from old things to new,
He made it for all His brethen.

Again, we have the uncontradicted testi-
mony of St. Paul, a testimony which
appears the more weighty the longer it
is studied. We find the witness in the
first extant New Testament writing, the
first Epistle to the Thessaloiiians : " Ye
turned to God from idols to serve the
living and true God, and to wait for His
Son from heaven Whom He raised from
the dead, even Jesus." " If we believe
that Jesus died and rose again, even so
them also that are fallen asleep in Jesus
will God bring with Him." They are
right who say that the Apostle is appealing
to the unquestioned and universal belief
of Christians. In i Corinthians xv. 5-7
St. Paul with calm precision enumerates

138 The Resurrection of

five appearances of the Lord after His
Resurrection. He also reminds the Corin-
thians of what he had delivered to them
first of all^ throwing back the date of
his evidence some years, probably fom
the year 55 to 51. It is to be noted
that, though sonie in the apostolic age
had doubts about the resurrection of
Christians, there were apparently none as
to the Resurrection of Christ.'' Paul made
his appeal 10 r. fact which admitted of no
denial. He was speaking in the presence
of contemporaries who might still be cross-
questioned, with whom he had come into
the closest relationship, who had the

' I.e., taking Iv irpmroi's as = ii opx?' (S°
Chrysostom ; cf. Euth. Zig., TovTia-n vportpov, ii
apX^S, ore c'Si'Sofa v/ias). Otherwise " chiefly " ;
" Quae maximi momenti sunt, m primis doceri
debent " (Baug.). So Meyer, Findlay.

^ I Cor. xv. 12-19.

Our Lord from the Dead i

means, and in some cases the will, to
criticise him if they saw cause. Further,
the Apostle claims to have seen the
Lord himself. "Have not I seen Jesus
Christ our Lord ? " " Last of all He was
seen of me also as of one born out of
due time." He has been talking of the
other Apostles as having seen the risen
Lord, and ranks his sight with theirs.
In other words St. Paul's was not a
subjective vision ; it was an actual behold-
ing with the bodily eyes. There was no
doubt a mystic element in St. Paul, a
perpetual side-door for him into the un-
seen, a power of detaching himself from
all sensible surroundings. But his claim
to be an Apostle was not based on these
inner secrets of his history, but on the
fact that he had .seen the Lord, and his
whole life had been revolutionised. This

-y

140 the Resurrection of

is not the place in which to dwell on
St. Paul's rich expositions and applications
of the fact of the Resurrection. They
all start from his recognition of Christ
as one who had broken through the
'mmemorial law and rule of death. Apart
from the Resurrection, St. Paul knew of
no Christianity. Baur says the Apostle
regards the Resurrection of Jesus as the
principal doctrine of the Christian faith.
" If Christ be not risen," said the Apostle,
"then is our preaching vain, and your
faith is also vain." We a.e dealing, it will
be noticed, with an universal conviction,
what Strauss himself calls "a world-wide
deception."

III. — Is it possible to explain these facts
away? Baur' declined the attempt He
assumed the faith in the Resurrection as

' Kirchengesch. dtr Drei Erst. Jahrh., p. 40.

Our Lord from the Dead 141

indisputable, and declined to attempt the
tracing of its origins. It is fair to say, with
Dr. Bruce,' that his " reserve may have been
due in part to prudential considerations, but
it was due also doubtless to a vivid sense of
the unsatisfactoriness of all past attempts to
account for the belief in Christ's rising from
the dead on naturalistic principles." We
need not waste time on the hypothesis that
the whole matter was a fraudulent conspiracy
on the part of Jesus or His disciples, or
both combined.' Christianity is not founded
upon rottenness. What explanation does
such a supposition give of the bounding
and thrilling joy which was the mood of
the Church? "Men of all schools in

' Apolog., p. 384.

' The Jewish chief-priests (Matt, xxviii. 11-15) ;
Reimarus, Wolfenb. Fragm. (das ste Frag, in
Lessing's 4tem Beitr.) ; the English Deist Wcolston
(Discourses on the Miracles of our Saviour).

142 The Resurrection of

modern times would be ashamed to iden-
tify themselves with so base a suggestion." '
There are, however, three hypotheses which
may be briefly stated and examined.

(0 It is suggested that Christ was not
dead when He was taken from the Cross.
He was merely in a swoon caused by pain
and exhaustion. From this swoon He
wakened, in His grave, and came out and
showed Himself to His disciples.^ This
notion, current before Strauss, has had no
reputable advocate we know of in recent
times except Huxley, who, however great
as a man of science, was a child in Biblical
criticism.' Yet it was elaborately worked

' Bruce, Apolog., p. 385.

' Paulus, exeg. Handb., 3, b, S. 785 sqq. ; Leb.
Jes., I. b, S. 281 sqq.: Schuster, in Eichhorn's
allg. Bibl., 9, S. 1053.

' It is elaborately expounded, though not de-
liberately adopted, by S. Butler in The Fair Haven.

Our LorA from the Dead 143

out before Strauss ' gave it its death-blow,
and in ways that suggest much to the
imagination. It was said,' for example, that
Christ, on first coming out of the tomb,
weait and sicjj, was obliged to remain by
the grave, that His wounded body was so
sensitive that He could not bear that Mary
Magdalene should touch Him (!), that He
borrowed clothes from the gardener who
dwelt near the grave, that as He recovered
His strength He ventured upon walks, and
that, after long intervals of retirement. He
was able to let Thomas touch His wound:,.
It was imagined that the white-robed mes-
sengers of the Resurrection were Essenes,
that Christ retired with them to an Essene
lodge, and there at last died quietly, with

1 lei./es., III., IV., § 140.
» yide Strauss, Led./es., III., IV., § 139, S. 6i»
sq., 618,

144 ^'^^ Resurrection of

none beside Him that knew His strange and
terrible secret.' Another writer ' imagined
that Christ went on for 'ong silently work-
ing for the welfare of mankind, but in
ways of which we know nothing save in
connection with the story of the conver-
sion of St. Paul. Did He perish unknown,
perhaps in some journey among the hills,
leaving His body to be unburied or buried
by strangers ? The answer to this is simple
and conclusi' \ Such a Christ, with un-
healed wov .s, spectral, feverish, marred,
could only nave weakened by His resusci-

> Strauss, Leb. Jes., III., IV., § 137, S. 87 : "es
werden dieselben gewesen sein, welche bei der
sogenannten Verklarungsgeschichte mit ihm zusam-
menkamen, vielleicht Essener, welche sich weiss zu
kleiden pflegten, und was dergleichen aus der Mode
gekommcne Vermutbungen eines Bahrdtisch-
Venturini'schen Pragmatismus mehr sind."

' J. A. Brennecke, see Keim, Jesu von Nazara
VI. 328 (English translation).

Our Lord from the Dead 145

tation the impression He made upon men
in life and in death. Such a Jesus could
not be the ri.«;»n Conqueror and the Son of
God. Such a Jesus could not be the author
of the Resurrection joy and triumph. As
Strauss says,' He "could by no possibility
have changed their sorrow into enthusiasm
or have lifted their reverence into wo'siiip."
(2) There is the suggestion of visions.
It is argued that the believing company
were in a fit state of mind for seeing the
dead Christ alive again.' Mary Magdalene,
susceptible, hysterical, excited, expecting,
thought she heard a slight noise, and that
He called her " Maiy." Or it is suggested
that, by brooding on the Scriptures in
Galilee, and visiting the old haunts, the

' New Life, I. 412.

» Renan, Les Apdtres, p. 2 sq. ; Strauss, Leb.
Jesu, III , IV., S. 633 .sqq,

146 The Resurrection of

disciples gradually got into the state of
niKid out of which visions spring. The
objections arc numerous and insuperable.
If the repetition of the same delusion in
many different minds is possible, it is pos-
sible only in an atmosphere of heated and
fanatical expectation of a certain event.
But we know there was no expectation.
We know that in the upper chamber the
doors of which were closed for fear of the
Jews, there was nought but sorrow and
sighing. Let it be remembered that the
disciples thought not only that they saw
Christ, but that they conversed with Him,
that the interviews were held in various
circumstances, and that there were many
witnesses. It is admitted by Strauss him-
self that such a state of mind could only
have been developed in a considerable time.
1 Strauss, ut supra, S. 639.

Our Lord /*•"'<; the Dead 1 47

But the Gospel narrative begins tiiem in
three days, and ends them in little more
than a month Dr. Abbott holds that these
visions continued nearly a year. Keim
says that time is essential ; but time cannot
be given, and he rejects the hypothesis as
without any reason. Nor would such sub-
jective and morbid fancies, even if they
could be conceived, account for the work
and testimony and witness of the disciples
on behalf of the risen Lord. Such feverish
dreams would have ended in gloom,
paralysis, and impotence. As the Christian
Church is not built upon rottenness, so it
is not built on mist.

(3) The last theory is that of Keim, and
it is instructive as showing the desperate
nature of the problem Keim ' says that

' Jesu von Naiara, B.ind III., S. 605 [Eng.
trans., VI., p. 364].

148 The Resurrection of

the living- spirit of Jesus sent telegrams
to the disciples, telegrams which gave them
a vision bearing the likeness of the body
laid in the grave, and still lying there.
Well, but if this be so we are back in
the world of miracle. This is practically
admitted by Keim ; and Pfleiderer, the
latest commentator on Strauss, complains
that Keim " abandons the basis of strict
history in the case of the story of the
Resurrection of Jesus, and made concessions
to supernaturalistic dogma ; as the sequel
of which the old doctrine of miracles may
be readmitted into Lives of Jesus, as is
really the case in the works of Beyschlag
and Weiss." It has further been pointed
out' that this hypothesis really means that
Christ deceives His people. He induces
the disciples, and therefore the whole
1 Bruce, Apolog., p. 393.

Our LotA from the Dead 149

Christian Church, to beh'eve a lie. It may
well be said that this is a poor foundation,
to build Christianity upon a bastard super-
naturalism, as difficult for unbelievers as the
true supernaturalism of the New Testament,
and by believers to be rejected. We are
not quite sure that Dr. Bruce is right in
saying that Strauss could not have con-
ceived of such a hypothesis.' Strauss took
the view that Spinoza also postulated a
miracle to explain the belief in the
Resurrection. Further, he had before him
the supposition of VVeisse that the departed
spirit of Jesus really acted on the disciples
whom He had left behind.'

The more the evidence is examined, the
more clearly is the crowning miracle of

) I

I''

' III. IV. § 140, S. 629. ; Spinoza, Ep. XXIII.
ad Henr. Oldenburg, p. 558 sq., ed. Gfrorer.
' Hie evang. Gtsc/i., 2, § 426 sq.

I50

The Resurrection

Christianity established; and nowadays the
tendency on the part of deniers is to
attempt no explanation at all, but take
refuge in the general assertion of the im-
possibility of the supernat'iral. But, as
has well been said, it is better to believe
in the supernatural than to believe in the
ridiculous, and that is what it comes to.
The Resurrection gives us the risen Lord,
and His past and present contact with
the souls of men. Meanwhile the words
of Pressens6 deserve to be pondered : " The
empty tomb of Christ has been the cradle
of the Church, and if in this foundation of
her faith the Church has been mistaken,
she must needs lay herself down by the
side of the mortal remains, I say, not of
a man, but of a religion."

VII

Christ's Triumphant Captives

We come now to discuss the Christ of
experience. The experience of Christ's
delivering power in the soul is more than
sufficient for all who know it. It makes
them reasonably impatient of apologetics.
What need have we of any further witness?
They ask that the case should be stopped.
But we are writing for shaken and doubt-
ing believers, and for those who are not
believers at all, for those whose inward
experience is insufficient as evidence, and
for those who have no experience. Ex-
perience, it is often urged, is no argument

15?.

Christ's

for the outsider, but if the transforming
power of Christ manifests itself in outward
action, the outward result can be stated
as a proof The phenomena of Christianity
are not hidden from the world. What
passes within the sanctuary of the soul is
not wholly concealed. In stating the argu-
ment from experience we shall speak of
what is manifested first in the conversion
of souls and next in their sanctification.

In one of his raptures St. Paul said :
" Thanks be to God, Who always leadeth
us in triumph in Christ."' That is, he
conceived of himself as led about by Christ

' 2 Cor. ii. 14. dpiajLt/3os : em'Sniis nxi^, voiim],
TOi TO atiurvwOai (Suidas). " Latinis triumphari
dicuntur, qui victi ducuntur in triumpho. Sic
miles quoque qui navavit bonam operam in hello,
ducitur in triumpho honoris causa, ut particeps
sit suo duci " (Erasm.). Is not this St. Paul's
idea? He was led in triumph as a victor.

Triumphant Captives 153

as a great captive overcome, imprisoned,
made powerless. The words are translated
in the Authorised Version, " Thanks be unto
God, Who always causeth us to triumph
in Christ," and though this is an error in
rendering, it is a truth of fact. St. Paul
was indeed Christ's captive, but he was more
than that. He was Christ's triumphant
captive. In the old days of triumphing
conquerors the captives were led about with
savage, tortured, vengeful hearts. In the
Christian captivity it is far otherwise.' The
triumph of Christ is their triumph, and He
would not glory in having captured them if
He had not captured hear; and soul and
will. St. Paul is a captive, a prisoner, a
slave of Jesus Christ, but he exults in his

1 Francis of Sales : " In the royal galley of
Divine Love there is no force — the rowers are
all volunteers."

154

Christ's

bonds, vaunts himself of his fetters, and
wears them as proudly and lightly as a
girl wears the bracelet which her lover has
clasped round her happy arm. St. Paul
takes the outstanding place in a long line
of triumphant captives stretching on and on
to the Coming And the Throne of Christ.
It is of these captives and their captivity
that we are now to write.

It is owned that the conversion of St. Paul
is one of the principal evidences of the
Resurrection and the kingdom of the Lord
Jesus Christ. Exceptional as were its cir-
cumstances, he himself claimed, and claimed
rightly, that his conversion was a pattern,
in other words, that all conversions are
essentially of the same type. We do not
wish to overstate any argument, and will
therefore be content with the words of
Dr. Edwin Hatch, who was certainly no

Triumphant Captives 155

traditionalist. Dr. Hatch admits, or perhaps
we should say contends, that while there
are differences in the accounts of St. Paul's
conversion, these do not constitute a valid
argument against the general truth of the
narrative. " Against all the difficulties and
apparent incredibilities of the narratives there
stand out the clear and indisputable facts
that the persecutor was suddenly transformed
into a believer, and that to his dying day
he never ceased to believe and to preach
that he had seen Jesus Christ. Nor was it
only that he had seen Him ; the Gospel
which he preached, as well as the call to
preach it, was due to this revelation."
Scholars now generally admit that until the
moment when God revealed His Son in
Paul the persecutor had no suspicion that
Christ and His followers were in the right.
He knew of the Crucifixion, but to him the

156

Christ's

Resurrection was utterly incredible. He
always maintained, even in the very passion
of his humility, that when he was a blas-
phemer, a persecutor, an injurer of his Lord,
he was not sinning against the light so far
as he saw it' His heart, indeed, was tor-
tured by the conviction that neither he nor
his people could perfectly fulfil that legal
righteousness without which it was impossible
to attain salvation. But that Christ should
deliver him from the curse of the law was the
last thought of his mind. It was the actual
appearance of Jesus Christ which convinced
him that Jesus was risen, and was risen
as the Messias and the Son of God. The
conviction came to him as with the roar of
a cataract, and m that moment all his
life was changed. The persecutor became

AaAo ijXti^&rfv, oTi iyvow iironjaa iy iirurria
(i Tim. 1. 13).

Triumphant Captives 157

Christ's servant and lover,' and died as
His martyr.

Now when we read the long roll of
Christ's captives, we shall see that every
conversion has in it the element of change,
that life becomes nobly new, that it turns
in another direction, that it seeks other
ends.' We shall also find that in each
conversion there is the consciousness of
a vision of the Lord Jesus Christ and a

' Cf. Ignat. ad Rom. vii. §2:0 ifun lp<ot
itrravponai.

' "This experience has been repeated and
testified to by countless millions of civilised men
and women in all nations and all degrees of
culture. It signifies not whether the conversion
be sudden or gradual, though, as a psychological
phenomenon, it is more remarkable when sudden
and there is no symptom of mental aberration
otherwise. ... In all cases it is not a mere change
of belief or opinion : this is by no means the
point; the point is that it is a modification of
character, more or less profound " (G. J. Romanes,
Thoughts on Religion, pp. 162 sq.).

'58

Christ's

revelation of His love, of a love that
warms, and draws, and welcomes. We are
speaking of conversion as admitted by all
Christians, and not raisinjj any question
about Christian nurture or the efficacy of
sacraments. Take every conver.sion from
Augustine's to Bunyan's, from Bunyan's to
Thomas Scott's, from Scott's to the con-
version of this morning, and the type is
not altered. All are sudden, though not
all are felt to be sudden. Many, indeed,
appear to be gentle and gradual, nor is it
possible to point to one hour or one place
in the history and say : " There and then
I was changed." But every Christian recog-
nises that a change did come to pass, that
before that change there was alienation from
God and Christ, that after that change a new
relationship was constituted, and another
element entered into the life. Nor is the

Triumphant Captives 159

world so blind that it altogether fails to see.'
It can never realise the truth in the way
that the subjects of saving grace realise
it, never know what conversion means to
those whose souls have suddenly opened,
who have seen the lijjht above the bright-
ness of the sun shine upon their way, for
whom a new lustre has fallen on river
and meadow, on man and woman and child
and God.' It can never know all that con-
version means to those who have turned

' Cf. the influence on Bunyan of the "three
or four poor women sitting at a door, in the
sun, talking about the things of God " (Gr. Ai.,
§J7).

* " I was now so taken with the love and mercy
of God that I remember I t ould not tell how to
contain till I got home : thought I could have
spoken of his love, and liave told of his mercy
to me, even to the very crows that sat upon
the ploughed lands before me, had they been
capable to have understood me " (Bunyan, Gr.
Ab., § 92.

i6o

Christ's

their trust and enthusiasm to Christ in
heaven, who have fallen in love with im-
mortal goodness, who have risen above the
region of ineffectual strife, who have known
the emancipating power of their great faith
and affection, an^ to whom the living Christ,
the risen Lord, is the great reality. But we
may quote one testimony. Mark Ruther-
ford says : " I can assure my incredulous
literary friends that years ago it was not
uncommon for men and women suddenly to
wake to the fact that they had been sinners,
and to affirm that henceforth they would
keep God's commandments by the help of
Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. What
is more extraordinary is that they did keep
God's commandments for the rest of their
lives."

Every conversion is like St. Paul's con-
version, not an act of violence, but a

Tiumphant Captives i6i

miracle. We have always felt that Chris-
tian apologists have not sufficiently met
Hume's argument against miracles. The
Resurrection of Christ is as well attested as
ai))' mira';:.; t:m be. And yet if miracles
ceasec* to be wrought, it might by lapse
of ^i, e cease to be believed. Men
might say the;' could not expl.i.- i. ; but
it happened long ago, an<l u t.ie facts
were known there wou'i ci;fid;;i;i be
an explanation of som-- .<■;,■ a < a
matter of fact where the H.s^ir!.;: ■ :{
Christ is not believed in, • . ; u.k,,,
is not believed in.' When the Church
becomes weak and low, when converts
are very rare, when the greater experience
of the spiritual life apparently ceases,

' "The Old World knew nothing of Conversion •
instead of an Em Homo, they had only some
Choice of Hercules" (Carlyle, Sart. Resart.. II.).

1 1

1 62

Christ's

negative criticism thrives abundantly. It
cannot live in a living Church. The
venerated Franz Delitzsch has left an un-
forgettable testimony under this head. lie
affirms that the decree of grace which
attains in the Resurrection of Christ the
centre and surtimit of its realisation fulfils
itself in miracles. " In most cases indeed
is the go\ernment of God like the waters
oi Siloah, that go softly ; the visible miracles
of history are only those flashes from the
supernatural activit)' of God which .serve
rare and exceptional ends. But the whole
work of grace, whether in the experience
of individuals or in the history of mankind,
even where it is hidden, is supernatural
and therefore miraculous ; because in the
midst of this world, lying under the law
of sin and death, it aims at establishing
a world of righteousness and glory." He

Triumphant Captives 163

goes on to give a significant personal
testimony: "The subjectivity of science
finds a wholesome check in the office of
preacher and guardian of souls. Only those
of little faith can fancy that such science
as this, which, with its fruitless knowledge
and washed-out credo, must be dumb beside
the bed of death, menaces the existence of
the Church, In the Muldenthal I was as
a young man a witness of soul struggles
and spiritual victories, which rendered dis-
tasteful to me for ever the over-estimation
of science. Still does my spiritual life find
Its root in the miraculous soil of that first
love which I experienced with Lehmann,
Zopffel, Ferdinand Walther, and Burger;
still to me is the reality of miracles sealed
by the miracles of grace which I saw with
my own eyes in the congregations of thi.f
blessed valley. And the faith which 1

164

Christ's

professed in my first sermons, which I could
maintain in Mederfrohna and Lunzcnau,
remains mine to-day, undiminished in
strength and immeasurably higher than all
earthly knowledge. Even if in many Biblical
questions I have to oppose the traditional
opinion, certainly my opposition remains on
this side 0I the gulf, on the side of the
theology of the Cross, of grace, of miracles."
The historical miracles live in the company
o{ the spiritual miracles, and the super-
natural is the native air of Christianity.
Our Lord Himself spoke of greater works
that were to follow ffis miracles, of victories
in the moral and spiritual order within the
soul of man. " We do not want," says
one, " the miracles which saints have
worked, but the miracle through which
the saint himself is made." The belief in
the Christ of history and the Christ of

Triumphant Captives 165

eternity will cease in the Christian Church
when the work of conversion ceases, anri
since the spates of hell shall not prevail
against the Church that can never be.

Christianity is primarily a converting and
sanctifying power. Secondarily, and only
secondarily, a moral and social lever, an
agent in the elevation of society. What
Christianity has done for the world has been
mediated through Christians from Christ, and
therefore comes little within the scope of this
argument. To tell what Christianity has
done for the world is indeed almost un-
necessary. We sympathise <leeply with that
apologist,' weary of apologetics, who said

' 'O /in- Xiarip Kal Kupios i/fiCf 'I^o-oC; Xpurrm
*€v8oiiaprvpovii. /liv tViuW./, KarriyopmiitviK Si
otSJf irtKpivaro 7r«eo/t«vos Trawa tov ^iov iavTov
Koi Ta5 iv 'lovSaioi-; irpa((K Kptirrovt ytYoymcu
^1^5 iKfyXUWT)s rijv il/tvSofmpTvp!av «a! \i(tuv
ilroXoyovfi.h'ul' irpos Ta^ mTTfyopia'! . . . toK/x^ fuv

1 66

Christ's

that Christianity could afford to stand speech-
less in the world's judgment hall, knowing
that its works bear witness to it that it
is of God. Grant that its progress is slow,
but remember in the facr of what diffi-
culties that progress is made. Fn the dark
face of heathendom missionaries some-
times have lost heart and faith. It was
said by one that if Christianity could be
combined with polygamy, it would soon
be the religion of South Africa. As if
Christianity could combine with polygamy
and remain Christianity ! There have
been cases where missionaries laboured
long and effectually in the presence of
vast and ordered and ancient systems of
thought. They dreamed that there could

ovi' KOLf f^TJIJit. Srt r/v a^iots TrtHrjtratr^at fffia^ ivoXoyCai'
I'TTiKkveL rijv iv Tois TrpdyiJiaaiy atrokoyiav kcu ttj}'
irrL(fea.v^ Toii ovk draio-^/Jrots SwofJilv rov 'Irjrroi
(Orig., C. Cf/s., PrKfat. i, 3).

Triumphant Captives 167

be a blending of Christianity and other
religions, a relinquishment of its main
principles, and a consequent progress. But
Christianity will not blend, Christianity
will not lower its terms, will not abate
its claims, and its claims leave nothing
out. Christianity begins with the regenera-
tion of the individual, and has iio belief
in any regeneration of society apart from
that. It recognises the deep and fatal
wound of humanity. It first

" Stnick its dart
At the head ot a lie — Uugbt original sin,
The corruptiun of man's heart.'

Christianity is either a religi)ii of redemp-
tion or a dead and powcrles.s nothing.

En this connection it is instructive to
read the new books of Zola and Tolstoy.
Both ar« men of world-wide influence.

1 68

Christ's

both are men of great gifts, both are often
visibly moved by noble impulses, both
have set their hearts with passion on the
amelioration of the human lot. Zola in
his last book, Travail, sets forth his
views of the glorious possible future. He
founds everything on the infallibility and
sufficiency of the human reason. When
science has advanced further, work is to
be a festival ; neither envy nor hatred is
to be left. Every man's happiness is to
rest in the happiness of others. There
are to be no more armies, no more courts
of law, no more prisons. But before the
consummation can be reached, the Church
of Christ in every form must be destroyed.
Deluding dreams of a future life must be
banished. Boys and girls are to be edu-
cated together, and love alone is to guide
them. Marriage must go, and alliances

Triumphant Captives 169

between men and women are to be broken
when there is weariness on cither side.
As this ideal community progresses, the
old priest becomes more wretched, and his
church still emptier. A very few dull-
witted people support it for a time, but
they are old and they die out one by
one, and the priest contemplates the <iay
when he will see the steeple of hi.s chorch
burning through the roof of the nave,
and crushing the altar of the Divinity.
Like the temples of ancient idolatry, the
churches must disappear. So it came to
pass. One day the old priest was killed
at the altar by the falling in of his roof
At this there was the greatest delight
in the happy community. "Yet another
religion was dead. ... In that delightful
garden where slept the dust of a religion
of wretchedness and death, one now

I70

Christ's

beMd the growth of human joy, the over-
•lowing florescence of h'ght." There is
something very awful in the intense
malignity with which Zola regards C! fis
tianity in every form, something no less
awful in his perfect confidence that if men
and women have only to work two hours
a day at pleasant labour, if they have
plenty to eat and drink, if they are allowed
unlimited liberty in their associations, there
will come universal love and peace to this
old world. Tolstoy goes much deeper
than that, but ha is entirely with Zola in
teaching that the Church is the enemy,
and that before it can be well with man-
kind every temple raised for worship by
human hands in the name of Christ must
be destroyed. He no more that Zola be-
lieves in a personal God or in a personal
immortality, but unlike Zola he is troubled

Triumphant Captives 171

by doubts as to the perfectibility of society,
and unwilling entirely to part with Christ.
In the living Christ or in the historical
Christ he does not believe, but that some
fragments survive from Christ's teaching,
fragments especially breathing compassion
for the poor and denouncing the rule of
force in every shape, he still maintains.
And these, he thinks, define the Christian
attitude towards life. Tolstoy's views have
more influence in this country at present
than many mar be disposed to imagine.
Thus Tolstoy, far rather than Jesus Chrbt,
inspires some of our publicists. I?,:! Chri';
tians are not specially called upon to relut
the dreams of Tolstoy and Zola. Kcion-
able men of every creed and no creed are
well aware that if Zola's ideas were carried
out, the world would be turned into a sty.
Neither will they be deluded by the notion

17a Christ's Triumphant Captives

iii:

that maxims, however good, will regenerate.
It is Christ Who makes all things new.
It is in the miracle of conversion that He
meets the need of a wounded and weakened
humanity which cannot be saved without
a supernatui-al work of renewal. That
work of renewal means that the heart i.s
united to Him, knows Him as He was,
as He is, as He will be. Christ is not
merely the world's most glorious memory.
He is also its soul and its salvation. We,
too, believe in a Utopia, but it is eternal
in the heavens.

VIII

The Argument from the Aureole

There are man> people, far more than is
usually supposed, xvho have gone through
the storms of debate and questioning about
Christianity without ever hesitating in their
sure belief that Christianity is true. They
may not be Christians, but they have known
those who are Christians indeed. They
have seen the aureole round their heads,
and known it as an attestation of Christ.
There is in this world the silent and humble
apostolate which is in itself a living legible
creed, an incessant and persuasive preaching.
I'hey picture the saints, said one, with a

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^B (716) 288 - 5989 - Fox

'74

the Argument

halo round their heads, but indeed the>-
hud no such thing, lor their brows were
furrowed with care even as ouis arc, and
their hair grew grey with grief. In the
literal sense this is true, but in numberless
instances the aureole is visible even to
unfaithful eyes, and is the argument of all
arguments for a living Saviour.'

The impression made by Christian sanctity
on believers is perhaps best illustrated in
the instance of the late Mr. Cotter Morisun.
Mr. Morison was one of the most able and
convinced rejectors of Christianity. He
published shortly before his death a book

' Cf. Orig., C. Cels., Prsefat. 2 ; "Ii^croiis ovv iu
i/^cvdo/AoprvpciTai, Kat ovk €<ttlv oTiy KOKtas ov<rrji cv
avOpii/TTOi';, ov KaTTjyopilraL' Kat auros' fifv Kat vvv
(Tiunr^ irpo^ ravra Ktu ovk aTOKpiVcrai fxkv Sia <p<iivrj^f
avoKoyttrai 8< iv Tui fiiw Tutv yi'rjtrujJV cavroO fiaOrfTtjiv
KtKpayoTL TO. hiatjiipovTa kox ndtrrjs i/^cuSo/xapruptas ovtl
KpCiTTOvi, (\iy\ii}v KoX avaTp€rti}i' riii ipevOufxapTvpta^
fcat Karrfyopia^.

11 I

from the Aureole

'75

called Tlu Seroice of Man, which was
described at the time as •• the most pouer-
ful attack on Christianity that has been
produced in England during this generation."
But from the beginning he was impressed
by the phenomena of sanctity, and his first
and best work was a Life of St. Bernard.
V\e shall explain brieflj- his admissions and
his attempts to counteract the force of these.
For brevity's sake we must condense, en-
deavouring, as far as possible, to keep close
to Mr. Morison's words. Mr. Morison says
that it is in the action of Christian doctrine
on the human spirit that wo see its power
in the highest and most characteristic form.
Its influence on the spiritual side of characters
naturally su.sccptible to its action, has been
transcendent, overpowering, and unparalleled.
It will be observed that Mr. Morison limits
the influence to character • naturally sus-

!P5

":i§

176

The Argument

ceptible " He maintains that the great mass
of men have at all times been feebly sensitive
to the higher spiritual influences of Chris-
tianity, and that the true Christian saint is
the rarest product in every Christian Church.
Still, the Christian saint exists, one of the
marvels of the mortal world, so lofty, so
pure, so attractive that he ravishes men's
souls into oblivion of the patent and general
fact that he is an exception among thousands
or millions of professing Christians. The
saints have saved the Churches from neg-
lect and disdain. They have kept alive the
hope that all men could be like them. But
to say this, according to Mr. Morison, would
be to say that the highest achievements of
the intellect and the imagination were pos-
sible to all men, that the schoolboy might
become a Newton or a Tennyson. The
genuine saint is a moral genius of a peculiar

from the Aureole

177

kind ; he is born, not made ; though, like
all men of genius, he is sure sooner or later
to acquire the best education and that most
adapted to his poHcrs. Mr. Morison admits
that though there are saints in other religions,
the Christian doctrine has a power of culti-
vating and developing saintlincss which has
had no equal in any other creed or philosophy.
Still, the blessed saints are artists who work
with unearthly colours in the liquid and
transparent tints of a loftier sky than any
-ccssible or visible to common mortals.
He adduces among other examples that of
St. Louis, King of France, insisting on his
justice, temperance, ajid entire self-abnega-
tion, but especially on his meekness. " Once
in the highest tribunal in France a woman
exclaimed to the King, ' Fie, fie ! a fine king
of France you are ; much better were it if
another were king. Vou are only tiie kin^

.78

The Argument

of the monks and friars, and the wonder is
you are not turned out of the kingdom.'
The ushers wanted to strike the woman,
and expel her from the court. But Louis
would not allow it, and said, ' What you
say is very true, and I am not worthy to
be King. It would have been much better
had it pleased God that another had been
put in my place, who knew better how to
govern the kingdom.' His spirituality was
so intensified by his creed that he seems
more like one of the angels who bowed
before the Great White Throne than a
denizen of common earth." Mr. Morison
thinks that the notion that the world can
ever be a place of peace and virtuous
happiness is never countenanced in th';
New Testament, and that the true sainls
are in the midst of a hostile and evil society,
from which they must keep apart ; and if

m
III .1 1

from the Aureole

'79

only they are prepared the soor.er they can
Icuve it the better. Here he is mistaken,
but he shows a real discernment when he
assigns to the saints a power of detachment
and recollection, of absolute self-forgetfulness,
of profound sincerity, and utter devotion to
the Cross, and when he affirms that saints
who are the equals of any of the saints of
old are still rising in the Christian Church.
He mentions among the flowers of exquisite
perfume and beauty grow n in the garden of
the soul, still arresting the attention of an
unbelieving world, such women as Sister
Agnes Jones, Mother Margaret Hallahan,
and Sister Dora Pattison. But he contends
that they were simply uomen of extra-
ordinary genius, the choice products of
maligned human nature. He asks, If the
saintliness of these holy women depended
upon their creed, why do not the thousands

i8o

The Argument

and millions who hold the same creed
exhibit a like sainiliness ? We might ask :
" Why is it that in the soil of other religions
and irreligion no such products are to be
found?" and Mr. Morison makes no attempt
to answer the question. All he does is to
say that these glorified beings are .so lofty
that they discourage and repel the ordinary
person, who knows that he can never reach
their altitude of detachment, spirituality, and
perfect faith.

So far as he goes, Mr. Morison has done
the Christian cause good service ; and, in
fact, his treatment of Christian s.inctity is
the only part of his book wliich can now
bf read. .VIr. John Morley is another un-
believer who has made similar admissions.
Neither of the i has explained how such
lives can be accounted for if we reject the
explanation of those who lived thein. But

from the Aureole

i8i

it must be admitted that among Protestants
the argument from the aureole has often
been behttled. Those who urge it arc re-
minded that in the New lestanient the
word saint is applied to all Christians, that
no distinction is made between various
classes of Christians, that to all the same
ideal is the rule and law. Yes, there is
nothing more wonderful and gracious than
the manner in which St. Paul speaks to his
imperfect converts. We are overpowered
every time we read the great words, "Ami
such were some 0/ you." The apostle has
been describing th-se guilty of the basest
crimes, and he goes on : " And such were
some of you, but ye are washed, but ye
are sanctified, but ye arc justified m the
name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit
of our God." The terrible past was gone
—gone so completely that they might near

1'^

182

The Argument

of it, and speak of it, without shame or
tremor. They were loosed from it in the
RIood of the Lamb. They had received
thr true absolution ard release, and had
been delivered from this present evil world.
But if wc carefully read the Epistles we
shall see that the ideal is never lowered.
These dim, infirm, half-blinded natures
were to be conformed to the image of the
Son. What has been may be again.
There is no miracle of Goa ~ grace — and
every saint is a miracle of God's grace —
that may not be repeated. No saint attains
the perfection of Christ, and thercfort' no
saint is the ideal, i'lo saint has tisen
beyond what is [Xjssible for redeemed
humanity inhabited by Christ, and there-
fore no example is for discouragement.
On the contrary, every example is fo
encouragement. The saints are not beings

from the Aureole

183

"f another clay Tor us to er.vy. No, they
are our brothers and sisters, and our own
flesh and blood, to whom we may, through
God's grace, come nearer and nearer in
the Kingdom of Christ. We are named
and reckoned as though we had already
attained the prize, so that we may hope
for great things and strive earnestly to
reach the height of our character. Surely,
in every scheme of education to beat down
the ideal is to stunt and discourage growth.
No great thing was ever dene in the world
by overprecise calculation. If the six
hundred at Balaclava had thought very
much of i.ieir chances we should have
missed a page of history. With the saint
.'ho has the power of the Spirit of Christ
to sustain him no height of moral and
spiritual perfection is impossible.

We Protestants know what Roman

1 84

The Argument

«'"»«

1*1"

Catholics meant by sainthood, though we
might be puzzled to give a general de-
finition. It was one of the most evangelical
of men who uttered the pungent truth,
'■ If we had more high saints we should
have fewer low sinners," Every Christian
preache-- is always insisting on the necessity
of a lofty Christian character. There is
a point at which the Christian character
manifests itself to the world. Below that
point it do-s ot. It would be very hard
to construct an apology for Christianity out
of the conduct of average Christians. There
are multitudes who nre good and lovable,
but spiritually commonplace. There are
many who are good in a hard, dry way,
but not lovable. There are many who are
effusive in spiritual things, but who have
a poor standard of life. Sometimes they
are avaricious and mean, sometinic.s they

from he Aureole

■85

arc narro« ind uncharitable. Somclimes
they seem 10 be without that high scr -.c
of honour which often characterises trie
n; ral man. What can be said about
them is that the etTiial life is within them
in germ. It has much tu fight with, but
it will not yi Id. God has revealed Him-
self in these II dark and struggling souls.
Their faces are set towards Him, and the
spark will one day be a -^reat light. To
the apostles this distinctif seems to have
been far more important than the distinc-
tion between Christians who had visiblj-
risen into a higher Christian life, and those
whose Christianity had largely to be taken
on trust. So we are inclined to think it
is with the saints themselves, and here
we are using the word in its modern
meaning. For to them pride is the chief
of the deadly sins. They have stripped

1 86

The Argument

themselves of their self-righteousness. They
are clothed with humility. They count not
themselves to have attained, and if they
have climbed to the summit of the mountain
they see the star above it and arc filled
with the thought that the saintliest saint
on earth was never such a saint as they are
yonder who are before the throne.

But for the world there is a real distinction
Many, alas ! have never known a saint, save
through books. Mr. Morison thinks that
the saint is an exception among thousands
or millions of professing Christians. But in
truth the saints are still to be found, and
found often in the lowest spheres. The man
is to be deeply pitied who has never known
a great saint. Tnc .saints do not know their
sainthood. They are the humblest of the
humble. Often, indeed, they doubt, not
Christ indeed, but their own interest in

from the Aureole

.87

Christ. They shrink from self-display, and
oft-times their earthly opportunities seem
to be very few. If they were to look at
the things which are seen they might be
discouraged. They might feel alone, they
might say, We have nothing better than this
poor little house in this poor little village,
and the chance of wiping some tears from
some eyes. They might fee! discouraged
at the thought of what others have, and of
what others can do. The sweet odours of
their life may lie quiet and still till, on
some day of storm, the flower bells in God's
garden are shaken and their fragrance flows
forth. Then is known the faith that can
live through any trial and be brave through
any death. Sometimes in a little hamlet,
sometimes in a great city, some dear head
is laid in the dust, and all the people gather
round weeping. Sometimes there are only

1 88

The Argument

!l:

'i i i.
It"

I-' 1'-

one or two to mourn, but these know that
the aspect of life and death have been
changed for them, and that the personal
presence of Christ with a soul is no
delusion, no dream.

For the history of the saints is written
in the words, Ye died, and your life is hid
■with Christ in God. They die to self.
They live the unselfish, even the selfless
life. They care as little for their own
interests as Christ did when in the glory
of God He went up to Jerusalem and the
Cross. But they lived after death, and their
life was hidden. Its unearthly sweetness
could not be hidden, and sometimes when
the strain came the strength of the life was
revealed. Many who were first shall be
last and the last first. Every crisis of the
Church is a day of the Son of man, for He
makes this saying good. The Church is

from the Aureole

189

better loved than it knows. It has secret
reserves of strength in the fidelity of souls
which the world does not perceive. When
the battle is fairly set, the enemy will marvel
at the power of the unsubduable Church of
Christ. Still, the high spiritual life is for
the most part hidden, and even those who
live closest to i'; know that there is a Holy
of Holies they may not enter. When the
saints sjieak they always say that the hiding-
place of their life is Christ. They will tell
you that the)' knew Christ on the Cro.ss as
their .sacrifice, that they knew Him next
as their loving Friend, that, la.st of all,
they knew the mystery of union with Him.
It is on converse with the risen Lord that
their life dcpend.s. They cannot bear a
broken communion. All is dark as the
dead of night if Christ is silent or absent.
The heart loses its happiness and craves

190

The Argument

for the lost Presence. Speaking of his own
hero St Bernard, Mr. Morison refers to his
unwearied activity of mind, to his marvellous
brain, which had grasped and influenced
more or less every question and event in
Europe for a whole generation, to the
tenderness which moved the multitude of
hi-^ friends when they lost him to a delirium
of grief, to the beautiful faith of his
deathbed, when he raised up his " dove-like
eyes," and said that he wished that God's
will might be done. In examining St.
Bernard's tomb in the present century the
explorers came upon a few poor bones and
a little dust wrapped in yellow silk, with
the still uneffaced letters which spelt out,
"A V idle of myrrh is my Well-beloved
unto mc."

" Oh ! faces of the saints ; sweet and firm
lips accustomed to name the name of God,

from the Aureole

191

ilear eyes which discern a brother in the
poorest creature, hairs blanched by medita-
tions on eternity, sacred cojours of the soul
shining in age and death-blessed are they
who have seen you ; more blessed they who
have understood and who have received
from your transfigured features lessons of
wisdom and immortality."

The Christ of Dream

I m

It is told that a sculptor created a marble
image and fell in love with it. So potent
was his passion that it mastered the cold
repose of the stone itself and won a response
from its locked lips. A modern commen-
tator has .shrewdly remarked that it was a
pity the sculptor had not given his heart
to a statue from another hand. The love
that fell in love with its own creation was
not likely to end happily. The significance
of the criticism for our present purpose
will be seen further on.

We confess frankly that :t is very

192

The Christ of Dream 193

difficult to discuss seriously and patiently
the substitutes that are supplied for the
historical Jesus Christ. The same im-
patience comes over one as he felt in
criticising Lucas Malet's story, Tin Gate-
Uss Barrier, which describes in great detail
the vehement love of a man for a ghost.
All one can say is that such inven-
tions are unconvincing, ridiculous, and
supremely tiresome. Nevertheless, we must
fr.ce our task. No one has laboured more
earnestly to provide for men a nnn-
miraculous Christ who will do the work A
the supernatural and Divine Christ than
Dr. Abbott. We have carefully read over
again several of his books : Through Nature
to Christ, The Kernel and the Husk, and
others. Dr Abbott says that it is possible
to reject the miracles and retain one's faith
in the honesty of th(.- whole narrative of

»3

1 94 The Christ of Dream

; \

the New Testament, and in the historical
accuracy (liable, of course, like the accuracy
of other histories, to the deductions of
criticism) of that part of it wf ch docs not
deal with iTiiraclc. Let any reader try ; let
him take the Gospels, the Acts, and the
Epist'cs, and erase from them as incredible
everything that djes not affirm miracle.
He will find that the narrative of miracle
is so welded with facts and words and
inferences, that to cut it out is to reduce
the whole to a rag-heap. Or, to put it
differently, the whole structure falls to
pieces, and much of what Dr. Abbott
would retain becomes absolutely meaning-
less. There are few things more baffling
than to understand Dr. Abbott's treatment
of the Resurrection of our Lord. He tells
us that it is quite possible to believe in
the objective reality of the spiritual resur-

The Christ of Dream 195

rection while rejecting the truth of every
narrative of a substantial and visionary
resurrection. What is meant by a spiritual
resurrection? Dr. Abbott tells us that a
spiritual body rises, anc! then le tells us
that this spiritual body is no body. How
does he account for the great faith in the
Resurrection, for the mighty results of that
faith ? He knows that he has to account
for them, and he has to suggest that some
outward and visible sign of the Resurrection
was really given. " Without such spiritual
manifestation the spiritual resurrection and
subsequent conversion of the world is almost
too great a miracle." Dr. Abbott holds
that Jesus appeared to His disciples, and
that they saw His form ascending as an
unsubstantial apparition. But these events,
we suppose, are not miracles. He does

his best to expla

away St. Paul, but

196 The Christ of Dream

breaks down before the Apostle's luminous
belief in the Resurrection of Christ. " To
speik honestly I must add that even if
I found St. Paul had committ;d himself
repeatedly to any theory of material or
non-material resurrection consonant with the
feelings of his time, 1 should not have felt
bound to place a belief in a matcrialistir
detail of this kind upon the same high
and authoritative level as the belief in the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, or
any other general and spiritual articles of
faith." This is a word of despair. When
reason and evidence fail Dr. Abbott he
casts them away. In no point are the
sceptical critics so completely baffled as
when they try to get \\<\ of the Resurrection
of our Lord. Baur was the wisest ; he left
it alone. Frederick Myers in his later days
was b>- no means distinctively Christian,

The Chribt of Dream 1 97

but as a man who I'new literature and life
he could not but laugh at Renan's absurdi-
ties in dealing with this subject. He even
doubted whether Renan believed his own
theories. " Pa ley's Evidencts is not a
subtle book nor a spiritual book, but one
wishes that robust Paley with his 'twelve
men of known probity' were alive again
to deal with hypotheses like this. The
Apostles were not so much like a British
jury as Paley imagined them, but they
were more like a British jury than like
a parcel of hysterical monomaniacs." It
would be wiser for Dr. Abbott and his
like to admit that the marvels of the New
Testament have neither been explained nor
explained away. It is not unkind to say
that the memories and influences of the
fervent Methodism of Dr. Abbott's early
years, of the time -hen, as he tells us, he

1 98 Thr Christ of Dream

"!
lH

I I:

took i\ most lively interest in tho salva-
tion of his soul, and was familiar with
Adam Clarke's commentary and books of
evangelical devotion, have kept him in
a position impossible to logic, a position
thoroughly subjective and arbitrary. For
in the end of the day there are but iwo
alternatives — cither accept Christ and the
miraculou.., or reject "'■ !st and the
miraculous.

Another way of "illing i c place of the
historical Christ is to put a picture of one's
own painting into a frame with the name
of Jesus I pon it, and say. That is Jesus.
This is the method of Tolstoy. In the
great Russian's hands criticism of the Gospel
history becomes amazingly simple. What-
ever h' does not like there cannot have
been said or done by Christ, and therefore
it must go out. It is easy to add things

The Christ of Dream 1 99

that Christ ought u, have said and done,
and the result is a portrait beari,.b' perhaps
a striking resemblance to its author. Then
the proper thing to do is to say that the
Church. has rejected Jesus and to excom-
municate the Church ! This kind of busi-
ness is becoming quite common, the portraits
varying as the painters vary. Harnack in
his book, W/iat is Christianity? a volume
of extempore lectures reported by a student,
has some useful criticisms of Tolstoy, show-
ing that Christ was not ai, ascetic, and that
Christ did not condemn magistrates for
inflicting punishment, or forbid nations to
fight for house or home when they were
wantonly attacked. But the criticism, if
Tolstoy ever reads it, will not impress him.
He will sec that Harnack's Christ is con-
structed essentially on the same principles.
Harnack is willing to accept more of

200 T/ie Christ of Dream

Christ's teaching than Tolstoy is, and he
does accept more. Whenever the Gospel
story begins to conflict with Harnack's
theories he takes the knife to it.

We have spoken already of such critics
as Schmiedcl, who do not conceal their
conviction that Christ was sinful. If He
was sinful then certainly He was no Saviour.
What we have to ask is whether He was
a saint, whether He stood morally high
or low among His fellow sinners ? The
answer cannot be evaded. No criticism,
however reckless, can get rid of the facts
of His enormous personal claims. If He
made these claims as He did, and if the
claims were not true, then He cannot rank
among those to whom humanity pays its
tribute of gratitude and reverence. That
question has been settled for ever by
Renan, who gives Christ pitying compli-

'ir,m

The Christ of Dream

20I

ments which arc worse than the deadliest
insult. Somehow Schmiedel and others of
his school apparently think there can be
two Christs— an ideal Christ for the im-
agination, and a real Christ to be found
when the Gospels are reduced to a natural
residuum. There can be nothing in com-
mon between these two Christs but the
name, and all that need Ijc said is that
to prevent confusion the ideal should have
a name of its own.

But supposing that all the world dreamed
one dream, that all minds fashioned one
face fairer than the children of men, that
that face were hung up in every home for
every one to gaze at, what then ? Would
not the race be elevated by its contempla-
tion ? It may be sufficient to reply that
no two minds would form the same ideal,
that the thought and conscience of the

Nil

202 T/ie Christ of Dream

race would not unite in one centre for their
reverence. But even if they did, even if
it could be shown that the Church created
Christ, it can easily be shown that this
creation is no substitute for the Creator.

(l) Will a man be controlled by his own
creation ? Religion is a thing ^at binds
holds, commands. Jesus was the consum-
mate Flower of humanity. He transcended
all conceptions of goodness, but He was
besides the Master and the Judge of souls.
He brought a sword ; He spoke of cutting
off the right hand, of plucking out the
right eye, of giving up a// for His sake.
Will a creation of humanity, however beau-
tiful and artistic, enforce these laws ? Dr.
Martineau says :

" When I am awed and subdued before
the grace and grandeur of a moral superior,
it is not because he suggests, but because

The Christ of Dream 203

he realises, a higher conception of excel-
lence ; it is as a living agent, as a personal
embodiment, of righteousness that he wields
authority over my conscience. Take away
this element, tear the picture out of the
volume of true history, and cast it to the
transient winds of imagination, and all is
immediately changed. The image remain-
ing the same I may still admire; but
no longer in grave silence-rather with
outspoken praise: of my compunction I
am relieved : the stren^-rt of resolution is
relaxed: the 'lifting power' of a devout
imagination is gone ; and if I have gained
any new variety of thought, it is simply
added to my culture, but does not transform
my life. A conception which reports itself
as empty of reality, even if it startles us
into a momentary awe, can no more receive
our reverent embrace than the shade of

204 ^^^ Christ of Dream

a departed ancestor or jjuidc. There is
nothing to sustain the worshipful influence
of its presence ; \vc cannot venerate our
own idea."

(2) Christianity would be nothing to us
if it did not give us direct coi.uiunion with
Christ, A true intercourse between the soul
and God. Arc we to be told that

■' Dextrae jungere dextram,
Non datur, 11c veras audire et reddere voces' '

Is it enough to keep, like Alexander
Severus, a bust of Christ, in a private
chapel, " along with Virgil, Orpheus,
Abraham, and other persons of the same
kind " ? ' When we think about Christ is

' Alex. Sever. Impei. (222-35 a.d.). " In his
domestic chapel he placed the statues of .Abraham,
of Orpheus, of ApoUonius, and of Christ, as an
honour justly due to those respectable sages who
had instructed mankind in the various modes of

The Christ of Dream 205

it enough merely to evoke a great memory,
as when we think of Plato or Kpictetus
or Marcus Aurehus ? If that were so, the
Christian Church would never have existed.
The Gospels, if Christ were in His grave,
would be ranked to-day with the Memor-
abilia and with the Dialogues of Plato,
and they might not be ranked so high,
for they would be the story of the most
tragic of moral delusions. But Christ did
not come .so much to give a theory of
life as to give life itself. He came to be
Himself the new Centre for the affections
of humanity, the new Foundation for its
faith, the Conqueror of its mortality, the
Opener of the eternal gates. He was

addressing their homage to the supreme and
universal Deity" (Gibbon, Dedim and Pall,
Chap. XVI.). Vid. Lamprid., Vit. Sever. F. W. H.
Myers in his essay en Renan makes - ciirimis
mistake on this point.

!' •-■(}

II
J

206 T/ie Christ of Dream

the Resurrection and the Life, not the
mere teacher. He came not to develo])
the race but to recreate it. It is hardly
correct to .say that He put a fresh force
at its centre unless it is understood that
He Himself is the force. And the result
has been that to-day multitudes have a
more exulting faith in His personality, in
His presence, in His power, than ever
Napoleon's legions had in his. For the
whole Church for nineteen hundred year.«
bears witness that through Him we have
access in one Spirit to the Father. By
His incarnation, by the triumph of His
perfect righteousness over the power of
evil, by His Resurrection and His
Ascension, He created a new order into
which we may enter, an order which
exists independent of our will. Entering
into that order we have an immediate.

l!l

The Christ of Dream

207

personal, and direct knowledge of the
Divine object of faith; entering that
order we receive the beginnings of that
communion which will endure through the
eternal ages of the life of Christ i„
God. We obtain a direct vision of the
glory of Christ, v.e know the exceeding
greatness of the Divine power which
raised up Christ from the dead. We find
Christ directly in the pages of the Gospel
as the Church will find him to the end
of time, for the Church receives the
things of the Spirit of God while out-
siders count them foolishness. To deny
this is to call the long story of God's
grace a dream, and to contest the incon-
testable sign.

It has been a great refreshment and
reinvigoration of faith to spend so ,nuch

2o8 The Christ of Dream

time as wc have done with the great
champions of unbelief. Christianity has
never appeared more wonderful than in the
light cast upon it by those who cannot
receive it because they cannot receive the
supernatural, and therefore begin with an
assumption Which makes faith impossible.
The recent attacks are in no way formid-
able, but wc have thought it right to notice
them simply because the writers, or those
who father the writers, are ministers in
the Chri-stian Church. The Christian Church
which finds room for such teaching will soon
discover that her lights u.,u fires are low.
But after all, the faith is in the hands of
the saints. To them it was delivered, and
they will keep it. They have entered into
the eternal and Divine order, they have
obtained redemption, they are justified by
faith, they have peace with God through

The Christ of Dream

209

our Lord Jesus Christ. They stand in
Srace. they abide in Christ, and He abides
in them. It is they who can read the New
Testament from the inside: it is they alone
who can understand it. It is they who
«•■•" turn the battle at the gate, who will
keep the last sanctuary inviolate, and who
t^eeping that, will surrender nothing that
ministers to the Divine life, neither the old
means of grace nor the old hope of glory.

" Keep "

" That good thing which was committed
unto thee, keep by the Holy Ghost which
dwelleth in us." Then there is something
that Christians must keep. In a great deal
of the so-called religious and critical literature
of our time, this fact is never recognised.
The writers seem to think it is the whole
duty of a «. ristian to give up his beliefs
one by one. They promise, indeed, that
he shall retain something, but what the
something is on which they are to take
their stand in the face of all conceivable
opposition, they never define. They waken

" Keep "

21 I

each morning with a creed of fewer articles,
and the articles that remain they are rea '.y
to surrender to a process of argument that
convinces them. It is the duty of every
believer to be ope;, to light and truth, out
it is clearly his duty to hold to the end
against all anta-onism the trust u-hich he
received at the beginning. Some truths
with the Christian are not matter of argu-
ment. They were not reached by learning,
they were not the prize of the intellect.
They were the gift of Eternal Love. \o
one is a Christian who does not possess
these truths-truths that are in reality im-
pregnable to all assault that does not weaken
the moral nature. Said St. John to a com-
pany of believers, none of whom, perhaps,
could handle any weapons of argument:
"Ye have an unction from the Holy One
and YE ALL know"

■ 1^

212

" Keep "

Christian teacicrs have seen an imai;c
nf the Christian walk through life in the
journe>- of Ezra's men throut;h the desert
to the Temple. He ^'ave to their care a
treasure of gold and silver and sacrificial
\essels, and he charjjcd them, Watch and
keep them till ye wci^h them at Jerusalem
in the chambers of the House of the Lord.
The precious treasure entrusted to them
may be compared to the Fair Deposit, whicii
is the faith once for all delivered to the
saints, embodied and incarnated in Christ,
tho solemn message of love and peace
which is entrusted to the care of every one
of Chirst's disciples. As a rule, the soul
starts on its journej- eager, joyful, solicitous,
resolute in its purpose to keep watch and
ward till the desert is crossed, and the doors
of the Temple-home open for the pilgrims.
Hut in these days and perhaps in all d:iys,

" Keep "

2'3

it is no easy thins,' to guard the Fair Deposit.
Something is yielded, and no doubt some-
thing in the forms which our cInldhooH
received may have t„ be yiekled. In many
cases the F,,ir Deposit is encumbered with
other things which were the thoughts of
men and not the thoughts of God. We
are stronger for parting «iih the first,
weaker for parting with the last, even
though it seem little that we -ive away.
We rarely find ,1 possible, after having once
parted with a Divine truth, to keep the
rest intact. There may be an earnest pur-
pose to do so, a real desire to replace with
something of a spiritual character what has
been lost ; but the downward path is easy,
and too often that hope to ui„ a purer
creed and a higher ideal of life finds itself
in the midst of the dissolving vf vs and
breaking-up scenery of the ancient heaven.

214

Keep "

It is a happy thing in some ways that the
human heart is so illogical. It will entrench
itself in positions all the defences of which
it has surrendered, and it is a poor business
to try to hunt it out of them. And yet
it is necessary sometimes to do so, for
though one may be illogical, the most arc
not, and unless a certain purity of feeling,
a certain tender reverence for the dead safe-
guards fragments of the Deposit, the day
will come when it is all abandoned, and the
soul finds itself in the desert stripped and
naked. Nor would we deny, but rather
earnestly proclaim, that even when all faith
is lost, morality often survives it. When
the old faith goes there remain often
pure character, natural piety, an attempt
to replace Christianity with something
better, the hope to purify the temple,
the frank acknowl dgment that certain

Keep ■'

215

inborn cravings in the human heart,
constant, profound and inextinguishable,
can only be satisfied with religion. We
acknowledge all these, but we do not
believe that if ever the Fair Deposit is
lost the world will be able to keep the
ethical gains which Christianity has won
for it. It ought never to be forgotten that
the movement against the Christian faith
which had most success and lasted longest
was Voltairism, and that was by the con-
fession of every one the most unspiritual,
immoral, and irreligious movement of them
all. Mr. Morley himself, who has never
concealed the fact that he has struck the
tents under which he once found shelter
in the land of belief, is as candid as pos-
.sible on this point. He tells us that the
Infamous against which the main assault
of French unbelief in the middle of the

2l6

' Keep "

1 i

eighteenth century was directed was simply
continence or chastity. Chastity was the
mystic key to tiie Christian holiness.
Voltaire and his foUov rs contended that
it was no virtue at all, but generally
an impediment to free human happiness.
" What austerity was to other forward
movements license was to this." All
honour to those who vehemently reject
its creed, its vile surrender to the flesh,
who can enter into the loftiest things of
faith, who yearn for, even when they
abandon, the spiritual treasures of religion.
But let us not close our eyes to facts-
facts of the past, facts of the present. The
abandonment of faith is in many instances
a sheer misery. Mr. Lecky, in a fine and
memorable passage, has spoken of the
period when every landmark is lost to
sight and every star is veiled, and the soul

Keep

217

stems drifting, heliiless and rudderless,
before the destroyins,' blast. He speaks of
the thrilling pang when cherished dreams
are scattered and old creeds abandoned.
He does not wonder that men should close
their eyes to the unuclcome light and seek
a charm in the repose of prejudice. We
recognise the truth of the picture in many
instances, but ."lerc arc at least as many
vhen one belief after the other is thrown
away with relief and gladness that the old
and stern precepts are no longer binding.

The word "keep" means guard against
foes. The antagonists of faith are innumer-
able. They are always laying siege to the
.soul. To keep the Fair Deposit, to bring
the precious treasure to Jerusalem means
hard fighting, constant watcliing. The
power of evil is always eminent in the
midst of u.s. Against it rcli-ion finds that

2l8

" Keep "

all her efforts have lo be kept in perpetual
st'din. There is the tyranny of the visible,
and there is the slowness of our hearts to
believe in the unseen. There are the great
and lending trials, the long desolations of
the spirit that seen tj make the love of
God impossible, and the Cross of Christ a
dream. Above all there arc the fleshly
lusts that war against . the soul. For all
tl'.at is in the world, the lust of the flesh,
and the lu.st of the eyes, and the pride of
life, is not of the Father, but is of the
world. And though it is true that the
world passeth away and the lust thereof,
while they that do the will of God abide
fo' ever, yet it is the world that seems
often real ut^d stable, and the saints before
the Throne invisible or dim. Our foes
attack us from ambushes when we least
expect them. The great resistance to

" Keep "

219

Christianity of the wisdom of this world
goes on, and we are often una','.- to meet
argument by argument, and in faithless
moments fancy that it will overcome at last
the mighty Antagonist whom it has so
often undertaken to slay. Are the gates
of hell, we ask, to prevail against the
Church? Men mock realities when they
imagine that the difficul les of guarding
the Deposit arc light, when they represent
the arguments against supernatural Chris-
tianity as intellectually contemptible, when
they ignore the fact that all round them
nre perplexed and distressed souls who are
nevertheless pure in intent, who are crying
in the darkness, " Help Thou mine unbelief! "
All this the Apostle knew. But he does
not recognise the keeping of the supernatural
faith as possible to Nature. We are to keep
the Fair Deposit through the Holy Ghost.

220

" Keep "

It is only through Him that vvc can receive
it. There is no wavcriii;.; al all in the
New Testament on this essential point.
The Apostles would nut have despised
the apologists, but they never for a
moment dreamed that the preservation of
the Christian faith in this world was to be
left to apologists, or indeed to argument
of any kind. In their view the keeping
of the Christian faith was once for all
delivered to the saints, and it was the
saints who were to keep it. They would
keep it just in proportion as they were
saints. Wliatever tarnished the sanctity of
character weakened the hold of faith. The
greatest saint was simply the greatest
believer, and sanctification is the work of
the Holy Spirit in the soul. So in the end
it was the Holy Spirit who was to guard
the treasure committed to the holy heart. It

Keep "

221

is impossible to exaggerate the significance
of this fact. Something, no doubt, may be
(lone in theology by those who have not
received the supernatural life. Dr Dale
concedes that men without the Diviner
resources may write histories, contribute to
our lamiliarity with languages, to the for-
mation of texts, although even in these
departments the absence of a direct know-
ledge of the great objects of faith will
show itself in conspicuous defects and
failures. When it comes to the interpre-
tation of Holy Scripture it must be said
that the Word of God cannot be understood
by those who have no spiritual fellowship
with its writers. "To take the New
Testament alone, it dcal.s with that Divine
order which is revealed only to those who
are with Christ and with sorrows, fierce
conflicts, hopes, joys, and triumphs which are

222

" Keep '

unknown except to those who have received
the life of God. Its great and characteristic
words are found elsewhere, but with an
inferior meaning. In the New Testament
they are charged with new powers, filled
with a new wealth, they are transfigured
by their new uses. A new life is in them,
and they are growing under the very hands
of the writers. To know what they stand
for we must look at them from within, not
from without ; we must see for ourselves
what the writers saw, or we shall impose
upon them an inadequate sense." We shall
penetrate to the wonder and depth and
triumph of their meaning in proportion as
we are filled with the Holy Ghost. So that
in order to guard the treasure and bring it
to Jerusalem, our supreme business is to
live in communion with God. We hope
we arc wrong, but it seems to us that in

' Keep "

223

these latter days Christian ministers have
tal<en to believing that it is by the
use of the grammar and commentary that
tlic)- can understand the New Testament.
Nothing is understood in the New Testa-
ment without direct spiritual illumination.
We hope we are wrong, but it seems
to us that many Christians imagine that
they can keep the faith of the childhood
while neglecting those opportunities of con-
verse with God that must be used if the
spiritual life is not to wither away. We
enter into direct communion with God when
the Holy Ghost interprets to us the things
of Christ. We enter into direct communion
with God when we continue instant in prayer.
No really great theologian, no really great
believer has ever lived to whom prayer was
not infinitely more important than any mere
exercise of the intellect.

224

" Keep ••

The poverty of modern Christian life
will never be cured until a far jircater
portion of time, until a far tjrcater earnest-
ness is put into the hard and happy
work of praying. It is instructive to read
in the Life of Frederick Maurice how he
v'ould often be engaged in prayer all the
night through ; ani.'. if everything were
known, it would be found that all Christians
who have made a deep mark have sought
and found the Lord in a like mannr To
live in the atmosphere of prayer is to live
in the atmosphere of miracle, in the atmo-
sphere of the New Testament, and it is in
this way, a U in this way only, that faith
in thf Divine manifestation is kept alive
and burning. When the strength, the joy,
the peace, and the power of the Cliristian
Church are unimpaired, it is because her
ministers and her people are proving that

' Keep "

225

through Christ we have access in one Spirit
to the Father, and confessing that Jesus is
Lord in the Holy Ghost. Then there is
no complaint of failures to attend Christian
worship. Tlicre is a longing even on the
part of those outside to touch the hands
of those who have walked with the Most
High. The brethren arc able to speak to
one another of what the Lord has livercd
unto them, of their comprehension of the
supernatural revelation. They shine with
the Divine splcndou- which fills each star,
one star differing from ancthcr in glory.'
The Holy Ghost comes u m them, and
the power of the Highest overshadows them.
So confessing with their mouths the Lord
Jesus, and believing in their hearts that
God had raised Him from the dead, they
are saved.

In many of us faith is very dim, though

226

« Keep '

I I

not quite quenched. Something has been
kept, but is very little, enough for bare
existence, not enough for happiness or for
power. It may be nearly lost or altogether
lost in the study of grammars and dictionaries
and books of criticism, in the bitter discussion
of ecclesiastical affairs, even in much serving
and skilful organising. What right have we
to think we can keep it if we do not live
in communion with God, His Word, and
His saints? What right have we to think
that we can keep it if the heart is suffered to
become a high road, trampled by the cares
of this life, by the ambitions of time, by the
passion for intellectual distinction? The
saddest thing in all the world is to see
the young men, who once were aflame for
Cod, faint and grow weary, perchance
utterly fall. Of how many it has to be
said in these days that they once burned and

Keep "

227

shone, and in the enii ^^rcw cold ! But
through the Holy Ghost it is possible to
keep the faith, to end in more than the
passion of youth, to die testifying, and not,
as Voltaire reports of Cavalier, " much failed
of his first enthusiasm." It is the duty of
spiritual guides to know the difficulties of
their time, that they may help others, but
for themselves they should seek to die as
deaf to the reviling and the mocking
around them as Christ was when He sank
to His last sleep on the Cross.

f*iiM », .V.««, Wusm S- »'■„„, u., UiukH a„d AjUsbur,. B„tla„i.