1^.1 ,^z Mxixm ti|p ICtbrarg nf If que attirh by ijtm to Itjp Htbrary of Prtttrpton Sltfologtral g'^mtnary ,5.36+5 THE HISTORIC JESUS THE HISTORIC JESUS BEING THE ELLIOTT LECTURES DELIVERED IN THE WESTERN THEO- LOGICAL SEMINARY, PITTSBURG, PA.i /BY YhE rev. DAVID ^MITH, M.A., D.D. Professor ok Theology in the McCrea Magee College, Londonderry HODDER AND STOUGHTON NEW YORK AND LONDON TO THE PROFESSORS AND STUDENTS OF THE WESTERN THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, PITTSBURG, AND ALL THE FRIENDS AVHO MADE MY FIRST VISIT TO AMERICA A PLEASANT EXPERIENCE AND A FRAGRANT MEMORY PREFACE THE question of the historicity of the evangelic narratives is more than aca- demic ; and so I have endeavoured to eschew technicaUties and make my argument intelligible to those who, unversed in the science of criti- cism, are yet troubled by its pronouncements. In truth it is less an argument than a personal confession. It indicates the path by which my own mind has travelled, and my hope is that it may help others to a braver faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. D. s. 4, The College, Londonderry. CONTENTS FAQE THE CRITICAL CONTENTION . . . .1 II APOCRYPHAL IDEALISATIONS . . . .23 III RIVALS OF THE EVANGELIC JESUS . . .43 IV THE SELF-EVIDENCE OF THE EVANGELIC PORTRAITURE . 61 V THE EVIDENCE OF EXPERIENCE . . . .95 A LATIN HYMN ...... 119 INDEXES ....... 121 THE CRITICAL CONTENTION ' They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him ' St. Mary Magdai-ene. THE CRITICAL CONTENTION AT the outset of his work on The Agreement of the Evangelists, ere addressing himself to his proper task of discussing the jesus known discrepancies of the fourfold narra- °^Jo^o^^ tive, St. Augustine deals with a pre- believers. liminary and more vital problem. ' It is needful,' he says, ' first to discuss that question which is wont to disturb not a few : why the Lord wrote nothing Himself, so that it is necessary to believe the writings of others regarding Him. This is said by those, mostly pagans, who dare not impeach or blaspheme the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and attribute to Him a most excellent wisdom — only, however, as a man ; but His disciples, they say, attributed to their Master more than He was ; insomuch that they said He was the Son of God, and the Word of God by which all things were made, and He and The Historic Jesus 3 4 THE CRITICAL CONTENTION God the Father were one, and all else of Hke sort m the apostolic literature whereby we have learned that He should be worshipped as God one with the Father. For they deem that He should be honoured as a most wise man ; but that He should be worshipped as God they deny.' And their contention was by no means irra- tional. What they conceived to have happened ggj.Q_ in the case of our Lord has frequently worship. happened in the evolution of religion. ' How the man Odin,' says Carlyle,* ' came to be considered a god, the chief god ? — that surely is a question which nobody would wish to dogmatise upon. I have said, his people knew no limits to their admiration of him ; they had as yet no scale to measure admiration by. Fancy your own generous heart 's-love of some greatest man expanding till it transcended all bounds, till it filled and overflowed the whole field of your thought ! . . . And then consider what mere Time will do in such cases ; how if a man was great while living, he becomes tenfold greater when dead. What an enormous earner a- obscura magnifier is Tradition ! How a thing * On Heroes : The Hero as Divinity. THE CRITICAL CONTENTION 5 grows in the human Memory, in the human Imagination, when love, worship and all that lies in the human Heart, is there to encourage it. And in the darkness, in the entire ignorance ; without date or document, no book, no Arundel- marble ; only here and there some dumb monu- mental cairn. Why, in thirty or forty years, were there no books, any great man would grow mythic^ the contemporaries who had seen him being once all dead.' And so it happened in the case of Jesus according to those early critics, ' mostly pagans,' who were no wanton blasphemers but *- , ^ The evangelic earnest men, willing to do all justice picture not . portraiture to Christianity yet refusing to recog- but ^ idealisation. nise a miracle where a natural expla- nation would suffice. It was a reasonable con- tention, and its reasonableness is proved by this — that it has held its ground and is maintained in our own day with stronger cogency and greater persuasiveness. The Jesus of the Gospels, it is alleged, is not the Jesus of history. The picture which the Evangelists have painted is not portraiture but idealisation. It depicts our Lord, not as He actually was in the days of His flesh, but as He appeared to 6 THE CRITICAL CONTENTION a later generation, glorified by reverence and magnified by superstition. The transformation was effected mainly by the operation of two causes. One was the Two trans Mcssianic expectation of the Jewish forming people. 'The Messianic time,' says influences: ^ ^ ... "J Strauss, anticipating much that has (l)the . . Messianic siucc been Written,"^ ' was expected expectation; generally as a time of signs and wonders. The eyes of the blind should be opened, the ears of the deaf should be un- stopped, the lame should leap, and the tongue of the dumb extol God.f This, in the first instance quite figuratively intended, was soon understood literally,| and hereby the figure of the Messiah, ere ever Jesus appeared, was always sketched more in detail. Thus many of the tales regarding Jesus had not to be newly invented, but had only to be transferred to Jesus from the figure of the INIessiah living in the people's hope, into which, with manifold trans- formations, they had come from the Old Testa- ment, and to be harmonised with his personality * Leb. Jes., Einleit., p. 92 f. t Isa. XXXV. 5 f., xlii. 7 ; cf. xxxii. 3, 4. X Matt. xi. 5 ; Luke vii. 21 f. THE CRITICAL CONTENTION 7 and teaching. And so it could never have been easier for the man who introduced such a trait into the description of Jesus, to beheve himself that it actually belonged to him, in accordance with the following syllogism : So and so must have happened to the Messiah ; Jesus was the Messiah ; therefore that will have happened to him.' Given the belief that Jesus was the Messiah, then it was inevitable that the JNIessianic programme should be assigned to Him. Whatever the JMessiah was to be or do, that Jesus must have been and done. And thus prophecy became history. But even apart from the Messianic Hope the transformation was inevitable. The Evangelists wrote at least a generation after the (2) tue view- events which they record, and they ^Ser^ beheld and interpreted the past in the generation, light of the present. And what followed ? It has been stated thus : ' To realise that the central materials of the gospels were mainly drawn up and collected during the three or four decades which followed the death of Jesus, and that the gospels themselves were not composed until the period 65-105 ; to realise these facts will show — (i.) that the gospels are not purely 8 THE CRITICAL CONTENTION objective records, no mere chronicles of pure crude 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 by the experience and for the circumstances of the church; (iv.) that their conceptions 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 that of Paul.'* Thus the task of criticism is to work back from the evangelic idealisation to the historic The task of reality, and discover the actual Jesus criticism. ^y divesting Him of those alien wrap- pings, unearthing Him from those legendary accumulations, and clearing away the mist which has gathered round Him and hidden Him from view. And the question is : What remains after the work has been accom- plished ? * Moffatt, Hist. N. T., p. 45, n. 2. THE CRITICAL CONTENTION 9 It has been answered with frank precision by Professor Schmiedel of Zurich in his cataclysmic article on the Gospels in the Encyclo- .^^^ ^^^^ ^^ pcedia Bihlica. There the test of his- ^historicity. toricity is first of all defined on this wise : ' When a profane historian finds before him a historical document which testifies to the worship of a hero unknown to other sources, he attaches first and foremost importance to those features which cannot be deduced from the fact of this worship, and he does so on the simple and sufficient ground that they would not be found in this source unless the author had met with them as fixed data of tradition.' And what is the residuum of historic material after ^j^g j^igtoric the application of this test to the residuum. evangelic narratives ? Only nine fragments, a series of negations, emphatic repudiations of supernatural attributes and miraculous powers : 1. Our Lord's answer to the Young Ruler : ' Why callest thou Me good ? None is good save one, even God.' * 2. His saying to the Pharisees that 'blas- phemy against the Son of Man can be for- given.' t * Mark x. 17 f. t Matt. xii. 31 f. The Historic Jems 3 10 THE CRITICAL CONTENTION 3. The supposition of His relations that He was * beside Himself.'^ 4. His saying : ' Of that day or that hour knoweth no one, not even the angels in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.' t 5. His cry on the Cross : ' My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me ? ' | 6. His refusal of a sign to that generation. § 7. The statement that He ' was able to do no mighty work (save heaUng a few sick folk) in Nazareth, and marvelled at the unbelief of its people.' II 8. His warning to the disciples after the miracles of the loaves and fishes,1I which proves, it is alleged, that the feeding of the multitudes was not a historical occurrence, but a parable having this as its point, that the bread with which one man in the wilderness was able to feed a vast multitude signifies the teaching with which he satisfied their souls. 9. His answer to the messengers of John the * Mark iii. 21. Keim {Jes. von Naz., iii. p. 181, E,T.), on the contrary, discredits this passage, and suggests that it may be derived from 2 Cor. v. 13 ; Acts xxv. 24-. t Mark xiii. 32. J Mark xv. 34. § Mark viii. 12. || Mark vi. 5 f. H Mark viii. 14-21. THE CRITICAL CONTENTION 11 Baptist : ^ ' The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have the Gospel preached to them ' — the last clause counteracting the preceding enumeration and proving that Jesus was speak- ing not of the physically but of the spiritually blind, lame, leprous, deaf, dead. These fragments Schmiedel pronounces 'abso- lutely credible,' 'the foundation-pillars for a truly scientific life of Jesus.' And this is all that is left — this shattered remnant of that precious heritage, the Evangelic Tradition, ' the fairest memorial,' as Weizsacker terms it,t ' which the primitive Church has raised in its own honour.' It is hardly possible to exaggerate the seriousness of the issue. The foundation of the Church's faith and hope is her The seriouB- Lord Jesus Christ, according to the nessofthe issue. ancient definition,^ ' God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God ; be- gotten, not made ; of one essence with the * Matt. xi. 5 ; Luke vii. 22. t Urchristenthu7n, p. 696. X Creed of Constantinople. 12 THE CRITICAL CONTENTION Father ; through whom all things were made ; who for us men and for our salvation descended from heaven, and was made flesh of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and became man ; was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, and suffered, and was buried, and rose again on the third day, according to the Scriptures ; and ascended into heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of the Father; and cometh again with glory to judge quick and dead : of whose Kingdom there shall be no end.' All this she believes on the testimony of the Evangelists ; and if it be proved that their testimony is a dream, then her faith is whistled down the wind. ' Christ, it is true,' says Bishop Mar- tensen,* ' is not present in the Scriptures alone ; it is true, the image of Christ lives in a manner relatively independent of Scripture, in the heart of the Church, and in the heart of each indi- vidual believer ; but the inward Christ of tlie heart presupposes the Christ manifested in history, and without the latter soon fades into a mystic cloud. The manifold representations of Christ which exist in the Christian Church as a whole, in the various confessions and sects, * Christian Dogmatics, pp. 239 f. THE CRITICAL CONTENTION 13 in the various forms of Christian art and science, all spring from the one grand fundamental form which is sketched in the Gospels ; and they must all be judged and tested thereby. If we had not such a representation, no really essential feature of which is absent or incorrect ; if Christ were simply the half-apocryphal person to which one-sided critics love to reduce Him, by en- veloping Him in an impenetrable mist ; we must give up speaking of a Christian revela- tion in the sense that Christ Himself is its fundamental feature.' It has, however, been maintained that the disaster is not inevitable. A way of escape has been sought along the line of Green-sway the Hegelian philosophy ; and by no °^ escape one has it been more persuasively commended than by that brilliant teacher, the late Mr. T. H. Green of Oxford, the prototype of Langham in Mrs. Humphry AVard's Robert Elsmere. His argument is that it matters not at all whether the evangelic portraiture of Jesus be historical. In point of fact it is not g^^iencyof historical. It is a beautiful ideal, the *^® ^^^^'^' creation partly of St. Paul, but still more of 14 THE CRITICAL CONTENTION one even greater — ' the writer whom the church calls St. John.' ' More, probably, than two generations after St. Paul had gone to his rest, there arose a disciple, whose very name we know not (for he sought not his own glory and preferred to hide it under the repute of another), who gave that final spiritual inter- pretation to the person of Clirist, 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.' * Wherefore inquire after the historic Jesus ? It is sufficient that this perfect ideal of the relation between God and man has dawned on the world, and it matters neither whence it came nor how it arose. The thought which Green would immateriality . of historic here enforce is expressed by Brown- evideuce. . . .,. . ing m these familiar lines : t ' Ye know there needs no second proof with good Gained for our flesh from any eartlily som-ce : We might go freezing, ages, — give us fire, Thereafter we judge fire at its full worth, And guard it safe through every chance, ye know ! * Green's Works, iii. p. 242. t A Death m the Desert. THE CRITICAL CONTENTION 15 That fable of Prometheus and his theft, How mortals gained Jove's fiery flower, grows old (I have been used to hear the pagans own) And out of mind ; bvit fire, howe'er its birth. Here is it, precious to the sophist now Who laughs the myth of ^schylus to scorn. As precious to those satyrs of his play, Who touched it in gay wonder at the thing.' It is sufficient that the idea is hei:e ; and indeed it is an impure sort of faith which concerns itself about historic evidence. ' It is not on any estimate of evidence, correct or incorrect, that our true hoUness can depend. Neither if we beheve certain documents to be genuine and authentic, can we be the better, nor if we beheve not, the worse. There is thus an inner contradiction in that conception of faith which makes it a state of mind involving peace with God and love towards all men, and at the same time makes its object that historical work of Christ, of which our knowledge depends on evidence of uncertain origin and value.' * According to this argument it is in the idea alone that all the value lies. The Objections : history which enshrines it is mere scaffolding, a needless encumbrance once the * Green's Works, iii. p. 260. / 16 THE CRITICAL CONTENTION structure is complete. It may seem an easy and effective solution, facilitating our disem- barrassment and lifting our faith to a secure and serene vantage-ground ; yet it is beset by insurmountable difficulties. One is that it imputes to the Apostles an \/ alien attitude, and an attitude, more- (1) the Apostles over, which they expressly repudiate. built upon a historic Christianity was for them no mere idea. It rested on a historic basis. It is true that St. Paul says to the Corin- thians that, ' though he had known Christ after the flesh, yet now he knew Him so no more';"^ but this means that Christ was for him more than a historic personage. He was the Living Lord — ' No dead fact stranded on the shore Of the oblivious years ; — ' But warm, sweet, tender, even yet A present help is he ; And faith has still its Olivet, And love its Galilee.' He was far from rejecting the historic basis or regarding it as unimportant. What does he * 2 Cor. V. 16. THE CRITICAL CONTENTION 17 say when he recapitulates to the Corinthians the Gospel which he had preached unto them, which also they had received ; wherein also they stood, by which also they were saved ? ' I delivered unto you first of all that which also I received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures ; and that He was buried ; and that He hath been raised on the third day according to the Scriptures ; and that He appeared to Cephas ; then to the Twelve ; then He appeared to above five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain until now, but some are fallen asleep ; then He appeared to James ; then to all the Apostles ; and last of all, as unto one born out of due time. He appeared to me also.' * The Death and the Resurrection of Jesus were the theme of St. Paul's preaching, and these were historic facts attested by the evidence of eye- / witnesses. It is simply flying in the face of ^ his explicit testimony to assert that 'there is no reason to think that he knew anything of the details of the life of Jesus of Nazareth.' And as for St. John, his theme is not a subjective idea of the immanence of God in * 1 Cor. XV. 3-8. The Historic Jesua 4 y 18 THE CRITICAL CONTENTION man, but an objective revelation enacted on the stage of history. 'The Word,' he says in his Prologue, ' was made flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld His glory, glory as of the Only Begotten from the Father), full of grace and truth.' And he begins his first Epistle, which is, in Lightfoot's phrase, a 'commendatory postscript' to his Gospel, with an elaborate assurance that the Incarna- tion was an actual and historic fact. ' That which was from the beginning, that which we have heard, that which we have seen with our eyes, and our hands handled concerning the Word of life (and the life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare unto you the life, the eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us) ; that which we have seen and heard declare we unto you also, that ye also may have fellowship "with us.' Thus, while faith was indeed for St. Paul and St. John ' a state of mind involving peace with God and love towards all men,' it rested for them both on 'the historical work of Christ.' Moreover, in his attempt to save Christianity THE CRITICAL CONTENTION 19 Green sacrifices it. He resolves it into a meta- physical idea, 'the worship, through love and knowledge, of God as a spiritual (2) a chris- being immanent in the moral life of Seafwithout man.'^ This, however, is not Ciiris- g^^pei^'^ta tianity, nor is it even religion. 'A P^^iosopny, religion,' says Coleridge,t 'that is a true re- ligion, must consist of ideas and facts both ; not of ideas alone without facts, for then it would be mere Philosophy ; — nor of facts alone without ideas of which these facts are the symbols, or out of which they arise, or upon which they are grounded, for then it would be mere History.' The truth is that the Christianity of Green is a mere phantom, and whatever be its specu- lative validity, it has nothing of the , . , . inefiacacious efficacy of a Gospel. ' Logicians, it with tue , , • 1 X 1 multitude. has been said, | 'may reason about abstractions. But the great mass of men must have images. . . . The history of the Jews is the record of a continued struggle between pure Theism, supported by the most terrible sanc- * Green's Works, p. 215. t Table Talk, December 3, 1831. X Macaulay, Essay on Milton, 20 THE CRITICAL CONTENTION tions, and the strangely fascinating desire of having some visible and tangible object of adoration. Perhaps none of the secondary causes which Gibbon has assigned for the rapidity with which Christianity spread over the world, while Judaism scarcely ever acquired a proselyte, operated more powerfully than this feeling. God, the uncreated, the incomprehen- sible, the invisible, attracted few worshippers. A philosopher might admire so noble a con- ception : but the crowd turned away in disgust from words which presented no image to their minds. It was before Deity embodied in a human form, walking among men, partaking of their infirmities, leaning on their bosoms, weeping over their graves, slumbering in the manger, bleeding on the cross, that the pre- judices of the Synagogue, and the doubts of the Academy, and the pride of the Portico, and the fasces of the Lictor, and the swords of thirty legions, were humbled in the dust.' ' And so the Word had breath, and wrought With human hands the creed of creeds In loveUness of perfect deeds, More strong than all poetic thought : THE CRITICAL CONTENTION 21 'Which he may read that binds the sheaf, Or builds the house, or digs the grave. Or those Avild eyes that watch the wave In roarings round the coral reef.' APOCRYPHAL IDEALISATIONS Look here, upon this picture, and on this.' Shakspeare. II APOCRYPHAL IDEALISATIONS THE critical contention with which we have to do is that the evangehc por- traiture of Jesus is unhistorical. It Recapituia- depicts Him, not as He actually was *^°^- in the days of His flesh, but as He appeared to the faith of the Church in the succeeding generation ; and all His worshipful attributes are merely so much Aherglaube. And we have seen how ruinous is the issue. If that conten- tion be allowed, then the Church has been bereft of her Lord. Jesus, so far as He can be known — if indeed He can be known at all — was no Di\dne Saviour ; and all down the centuries the Church has been lavishing her faith and adoration on a creation of her own fancy. And there is no evasion of the issue. The sole foundation of the Faith is the Historic Jesus, and the Gospels are the only sources of The Historic Jesus 5 25 J 26 APOCRYPHAL IDEALISATIONS our knowledge of Him. If they fail us, He is irrecoverably lost. Our need, then, is to reassure ourselves of the trustworthiness of the evangelic records, that we Our line of ^1^7 ^ujoy the Certainty that their comlmrSon testimony is true, exhibiting our Lord ?iSi°Stuai ^^ H^ appeared to the eyes of His Idealisations, contemporaries ; and to this end my purpose is, not to deal with the intricate and fascinating problems of New Testament Criti- cism, but to pursue a line of argument which, it seems to me, is at once simple and effective, instituting a comparison between the evangelic portraiture as it stands and the pictures which the devout imagination of the second century produced. And when we have seen what idealisation has actually accomplished, it will then appear whether it be conceivable that the evangelic portraiture is a product of the same process. For this purpose there lies to hand a suf- ficiency of material. Our Evangelists are not, occasion of '^ ^hc proper sense, biographers of idealisation. Jesus, forasmucli as they do not narrate the fuU story of His earthly life. St. Mark and St. John begin with His manifes- APOCRYPHAL IDEALISATIONS 27 tation as the Messiah, and narrate His brief ministry of only three years' duration ; and as for St. INIatthew and St. Luke, they begin indeed with the story of His Birth, but there- after, save for that soUtary incident which the dihgence of the latter has rescued from oblivion — the Holy Child's visit to Jerusalem during the season of the Passover* — there is a long hiatus of thirty years in their narratives, and they resume where St. Mark and St. Jolin begin. It was inevitable that the mystery of the Silent Years should excite curiosity, and in the complete absence of information the itspreva- myth-forming genius of the primitive prStive^^ Church found its opportunity. It set °^^'^^- to work very early. St. Luke has told us that, v ere he composed his Gospel, many others had essayed the task ; and it was their lack of discrimination that moved him to investigate the Evangelic Tradition and publish an accu- rate version of it. t And from the Pastoral Epistles to Timothy it appears how seriously the Tradition was imperilled in those days. It was in danger, on the one hand, of being * Luke ii. 41-51. t Luke i. 1-4. 28 APOCRYPHAL IDEALISATIONS mutilated by heretical teachers, ' consenting not to sound words, even those of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which is according to godliness, puffed up, knowing nothing, but doting about questionings and logomachies ' ; * and, on the other hand, of being corrupted by an admixture of ' profane and oldvvifish myths.' t And it was this twofold danger that necessitated the committal of the precious Tradition, ' the genuine deposit,' J to a permanent and authori- tative record. § Of this profuse literature, innocent in its ^^Q intention yet subversive of the very specimens: foundations of the Faith, two inte- resting specimens have survived. One is the apocryphal Gospel known as the Protevangelium Jacobi. It is the story of Mary, the IMother of our Lord, and it pro- evangeiium fesscs to be the work of His brother ' James. Of course the latter claim is groundless, nevertheless the book is demon- strably very ancient. In his commentary on St. Matthew (c. a.d. 246) Origen refers to it in conjunction with the Gospel according to * 1 Tim. vi. 3, 4. f 1 Tim. iv. 7. J 2 Tim. i. 14. § Cf. The Days of His Flesh, Introd., pp. xv f. APOCRYPHAL IDEALISATIONS 29 Pete?', plainly ranking them together in notoriety and authority.* And the Gospel accoi^ding to Peter is of high antiquity. In his letter to the Church of Rhossos, Serapion, Bishop of Antioch (a.d. 190-203), defends the sanction whickJie had given to the reading of it in the Church, inasmuch as, notwithstanding Doketic additions, most of it belonged to the right doctrine of the Saviour, f Since time was required for its cir- culation and recognition, this testimony carries the Gospel accordirig to Peter, and with it our Protevangeliiim, well into the second century. Further, the Protevaiigelium is thrice quoted, as though possessed of full authority, by St. Justin Martyr — twice in his Dialogue with Trypho (c. a.d. 136), J and again in his first * X. 17 : TOVQ ^k ade\(povQ 'Irjcrov (parrl rivec eivai, ek Trapa^otreojQ opfxojfievoi rov tTriyeypafinivov Kara Herpoy evay- yeXiov r) rije (3il3\ov 'luKcjfiov, v'lovg 'Iw(t//0 t/c irpoTepag yvvaiKoe (rvy(OKT]KviaQ avru irpo rrJQ MapiaQ. t Euseb., H. E., vi. 12. \ Dial. 78 (Jesus born in a cave near Bethlehem) : en-ei^ ^loj(T))(p ovK £i-)^£v ev Tt] KWfXT] tKeivT] TTOv naTaXvcTai, iy (TTTijXaiu) TLvl (TVPeyyvQ tFjq KU)fir]Q KariXvcre' ical rore avrwy uyrojv £K£i etetokel j/ M.apia rov Xpifrroy. Cf. Protev. xviii. Dial. 100 : x^P^^ Xajjovcra M.apia // irapQivoQ evayyeXi^ofxiyov Tal3pirjX ayyeXov. Cf. Protev. xii. 2 : Xf^p^v Ik Xafiovtra Mapiajx cnriei Trpog 'EXiira/Ser. 30 APOCRYPHAL IDEALISATIONS Apology, addressed to Antoninus Pius (c. a.d. 146).* It could hardly have acquired such recognition in less than a generation, and this carries it back to the beginning of the second century, f The other book which claims our attention is the Evanp-elium Thomce, and its (2) Evan- ^' -^ 1 u 'i gfiiium antiquity can scarcely be less, since it is quoted, though in terms of repro- bation, by St. Irenseus in his great work on Heresies (a.d. 182-188). | Whatever be the precise date of these two apocrypha, they originated in the period which, it is contended, produced the evangelic por- traiture of Jesus ; and it is thus legitimate to compare their representation with it, and judge whether they belong to the same order in respect of historicity. * Apol, i. 33 : l^ov (TvXXt]\pei kv yatrrpl it: Hyev/j-aroQ 'Ayiov, Kai rehEi vioj', kuI 'Yiog 'Yxpicrrov K\r]Qii(TeTai' koI KoXicreiQ to ovofjia 'It}(tovi'' avrog yap awtrei tov Xaoy avrov cnro riov ujiapTtiJv avTwv, Similarly Protev. xi. (l) substitutes Ylog 'YxpiiTTOv for Yioe Qeov (Luke i. 35), and (2) includes in the Annunciation to Mary the angel's words to Joseph (Matt. i. 21). It is evident that St. Justin had the Protevangelium before him. t Cf. Tischendorf, Ev. Apocr., pp. xii &., xxxviii f. ; Zahn, N. T. Kan., i. 914 f., ii. 774 ff. X I. xiii. 1. Cf. Ev. Thorn, vi. APOCRYPHAL IDEALISATIONS 31 The Protevangelium is a Tendeiizschrift, and it is dominated by a twofold apologetic pur- pose, being directed, in the first place, Twofold against the Doketic heresy which was p^^fe^X?-^ maintained by Cerinthus, the contem- ^^'""" •' porary of the Apostle John at Ephesus, ^ that Jesus was the son of Joseph and Mary by ordi- nary generation, and, moreover, against the Jewish calumny that He was the illegitimate offspring of Mary and the soldier Panthera. f It meets the former by representing Joseph as a widower of great age when he was en- trusted with the guardianship of JVIary. against From infancy she had been a ward of JenSof the Temple, and she was not married virgin Birth ; to Joseph but committed to his care when she attained the age of twelve years, ' lest she should defile the Sanctuary of the Lord.' He was reluctant to undertake the charge. ' I have sons,' he remonstrated, ' and I am an old man, and she is a girl. I shall become a laughing- stock to the children of Israel.' However, he was overborne by the insistence of the priests and their threat of judgment should he disobey ; and so he conveyed her to his house, and went * Iren. I. xxi. t Oiig., C. Cels. i. 28, 32. / 32 APOCRYPHAL IDEALISATIONS abroad in prosecution of his calling, and saw her no more for six months. ' Behold,' he said to her at his departure, ' I received thee from the Temple of the Lord ; and now I leave thee in my house and go away to work at my build- ings, and I shall come back to thee. The Lord will keep thee safe.' And as for the Jewish calumny, this is met by attesting the perpetual virginity of Mary. against It is related, with somewhat un- caiumniation savoury elaboration, how she brought of Mary. forth the Holy Child salva virginitate, and Salome's hand was blasted when she would not credit the midwife's story without such tangible evidence as Thomas craved of the reality of the Resurrection.* And Mary's vir- ginity remained, for the brethren of Jesus were not her children but the fruit of Joseph's former marriage. All this stands in striking contrast to the stories of the Birth of Jesus in the Gospels contrast with according to St. Matthew and St. the Gospels. L^kc. The distinction of the latter lies in their fearlessness, their freedom from apologetic solicitude. The Evangelists must * John XX. 25. APOCRYPHAL IDEALISATIONS 33 have been aware what would be said, what actually had been and was being said, of the V^irgin Birth ; yet they evince no con- cern to safeguard the story and obviate mis- construction. They report it simply as they had it from the lips of their informants, who would seem from internal evidence to have been no other than Joseph and JNIary ; and they never attempt to buttress it by legendary accretions. There is not a touch of the gro- tesque in their narratives. The explanation is certainly not that they were superior to their apocryphal rival in literary instinct and aesthetic discrimi- Reason of the nation, and disdained the 'profane and ^^^®^^'^°®- oldwifish myths ' in which he revelled, superiority of For in truth he was no mean artist, tiie Gospels, There is hardly anything in early literature more impressive than the passage where he describes how at the moment of the Saviour's birth a hush fell upon creation, and all things, animate and inanimate, paused as in amazement and adoration. JNIary had found a shelter, and Joseph had gone forth in quest of succour, when suddenly the wonder befell. ' I walked,' he says, 'and I walked not. And I looked up The Historic Jesus 6 J 34 APOCRYPHAL IDEALISATIONS to the air, and I saw the air astonied. And I looked up to the vault of heaven, and I saw it standing still and the fowls of heaven keeping quiet. And I looked upon the earth, and I saw a dish set and labourers at their meat, and their hands were in the dish ; and they that were chewing chewed not, and they that were lifting their morsel brought it not up, and they that were putting it to their mouth put it not, but all their faces were looking up. And I saw sheep being driven, and the sheep stood still ; and the shepherd lifted his hand to smite them, and his hand stopped up. And I looked upon the stream of the river, and I saw the mouths of the kids laid unto it and not drink- ing. And all things for the moment were driven from their course.' This is a fine imagination, worthy of Dante or Raphael, and comparable with that other legend that, when the Saviour died but their , ^ i • • historic on the Cross, every green thmg m faithfulness. . i i • i it. ■ f> the world withered. It was not lor lack of art that the writer failed, but rather for this — that he attempted the impossible task of dealing imaginatively with the supernatural. The fiction of that ethereal personage, the APOCRYPHAL IDEALISATIONS 35 White Lady of Avenel, is a fatal blot upon the tale of The Monastery, and Sir Walter acknowledged the justice of the disfavour with which it was received, and pleaded only the extreme difficulty of managing the machinery of the supernatural.* It is indeed an impossible achievement, and as Sir Walter failed, so did the author of the Protevangelium before him. And how did it come to pass that, where others with every resource of genius and art have dis- astrously failed, our Evangelists have so con- spicuously succeeded ? The reason is simply this — that they were not creators but historians ; they were not dealing imaginatively with the supernatural but reporting an actual manifesta- tion, 17 Tov "SiOJTripog rifx(l)v 'Irjcou Xpiarov ivaapKOg oiKOvofiia. Turn now to the Evangelium Thomce. It is a tissue of Doketic legends of the . . Doketism of Child Jesus, and it depicts Him as Evangelium a veritable Wu7iderkind. * Cf. Horace's counsel concerning the Deus ex machina U' P- 191 f-) : 'Nee deus intersit nisi dignus vindice nodus Incident.' 36 APOCRYPHAL IDEALISATIONS (1) Even in those early days He was en- (1) miracu- dowed with miraculous power, and I)?«ie°^^'^ the miracles which He wrought were Holy chUd ; ^f ^}^g most Startling sort. One Sabbath Day, when He was five years of age. He was playing by a stream, and He gathered the running water into pools and cleared them of mud by a word of command. Then He made clay and moulded twelve sparrows. His playmates went and told Joseph how He was profaning the Sabbath, and Joseph came and remonstrated with Him ; whereupon the Child clapped His hands and shouted to the sparrows ' Away ! ' and off they flew twitter- ing. The son of Annas the Scribe was standing by, and he took a branch and broke down the pools. ' Villain ! ' cried Jesus, ' impious and foolish ! wherein did the pools and the water harm thee ? Behold, now, thou also shalt be withered like a tree, and never bear leaves nor root nor fruit.' And immediately the child was all withered. V Again, as He was passing through a village. He was jostled by a boy. This angered Him, and He said : ' Thou shalt not go thy way ' ; and the boy fell down and died. APOCRYPHAL IDEALISATIONS 37 Such, according to this apocryphal legend- monger, was the Boy Jesus — not the sweet child of whom we catch a glimpse in St. Luke's narrative, ' subject unto His parents ' and ' advancing in favour with God and men,' * but lawless, passionate, and vindictive, a terror to the neighbours. 'With such a child,' they said to Joseph, ' thou canst not dwell with us in the village ; or else teach Him to bless and not to curse ; for He kills our children.' But He scorned Joseph's admonition ; ' and no one durst anger Him, lest He should curse him, and he should be maimed.' 'And Joseph was grieved, and charged His mother : " Let Him not go out of doors, because those that anger Him die." ' Of course this representation stands in glaring contrast to the evangelic narratives. It is in protest against such contemporary legends that St. John observes so pointedly that the miracle at Cana was the first which our Lord ever wrought.! And there is a wide dif- ference between these legendary miracles and the wonderful works which, according to our Evan- gelists, He wrought during the years of His * Luke ii. 51, 52. + John ii. 11. 38 APOCRYPHAL IDEALISATIONS ministry, when He went about continually- doing good, 7 ' the shadow of Him Love, The speech of Him soft Music, and His step A Benediction.' The evangelic miracles were always works of mercy and compassion ; and whatever we may think of their theoretical possibility, our hearts approve them. We would like them to be true, and they 'have our vote to be so if they can.' (2) As He appears in the Evangelium Thomce, the Holy Child was endowed with superhuman wisdom. He was omniscient in His (2) Hi3 superhuman very cradlc. At the age of five years He was sent to school, and His teacher, Zacchasus, repeated the Alphabet to Him from Alpha to Omega. ' Thou hypo- crite I ' cried the Child, ' when thou knowest not the Alpha according to its nature, how dost thou teach others the Beta?' And then He began to catechise the teacher, and ex- pounded to him the mystical significance of Alpha, after the manner of the Jewish sect of the Cabbalists and the Gnostic sect of the APOCRYPHAL IDEALISATIONS 39 Marcosians as they appear on the pages of St. Irenseus. Zacchseus was confounded. ' Take Him away, I beseech thee, brother Joseph. I cannot bear the austerity of His look. This Child is not earth-born. Belike He hath been born ere the creation of the world.' At the age of six years another teacher took Him in hand, and proposed to instruct Him first in Greek and then in Hebrew. Jesus, however, would answer none of his questions. ' If thou art really a teacher,' He said, ' and if thou knowest the letters well, tell Me the force of the Alpha, and I will tell thee that of the Beta.' The exasperated teacher struck Him on the head, and Jesus cursed him and laid him dead on the ground. Another teacher, a friend of Joseph's, under took the perilous task of His tuition. ' Bring Him to me,' he said ; ' perhaps I may be able by dint of flattery to teach Him the letters.' Jesus went to the school, and, finding a book on the desk, took it and would not read its letters, but He opened His mouth and spake by the Holy Spirit and taught the Law to the bystanders. ' I received the Child,' exclaimed the astonished teacher, *as a disciple, but He J 40 APOCRYPHAL IDEALISATIONS is full of much grace and wisdom ! ' The flattery succeeded. The Child laughed. ' For thy sake,' said He, 'the other teacher who was stricken shall be healed.' Of course all this is rank Doketisni, and it is a denial of the Incarnation. Our Lord in the days of His flesh was not God walking the earth in the semblance of a man ; He was the Eternal Son of God become man, and 'in all things made like unto His brethren.'* He was like them in weakness and weariness, and in nescience too ; and in His human childhood He 'advanced in wisdom and stature' — a normal growth at once physical and intel- lectual. And now consider the bearing of this on the problem of the historicity of the Evangelic Jesus. The point is that the apocry- historicity of phal picture is precisely the sort of idealisation which the imagination of those days must have produced. And this for two reasons. The first is that it was a doctrine of Jewish theology that the Messiah would be a miracle-worker, and would thus attest His * Heb. ii. 17. APOCRYPHAL IDEALISATIONS 41 Messiahship. It was on this account that the Pharisees were continually challenging our Lord to show them a sign, that they might believe. And thus it was inevitable that the legend- creators, partly with a deliberate apologetic purpose, partly by the unconscious instinct of faith, should crowd His life with miracles, the more stupendous the better. And then there was the prevailing conception of God, Jewish and Pagan alike, as jealous and vindictive. You remember the Greek motive for humility ? ' The Deity,' said Solon, * ' is all envious and troublous,' grudging that mortals should be too happy, and, when they recklessly exulted, smiting and crushing them. Therefore wisdom lay in walking softly, lest one should provoke the divine envy. And similar was the Jewish conception. It was perilous to have to do with Jehovah. Think how the people were warned off from Sinai and bounds were set about the mount, ' lest the Lord should break forth upon them.' t And there is the grim story of Uzzah who, when the Ark was being fetched home from Kirjath-jearim, put forth his hand to steady it on the cart, 'for the oxen shook it. * Herod, i. 32. t Exod. xix. 21-24. The Historic Jesus 7 42 APOCRYPHAL IDEALISATIONS And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Uzzah ; and God smote him there for his error ; and there he died by the Ark of God.' * And you remember the Rabbinical phrase for canonicity? The canonical books were said to ' defile the hands,' the idea being that they were sacred, and handling them lightly was an impiety involving ceremonial uncleanness and demanding ceremonial ablution, f It was in accordance with this principle that the Pharisees inferred from our Lord's miracles of mercy that He was in league with the Devil. Had they been wrought by the power of God, they must needs have been terrible. Such was the prevailing conception of God, and the evangelic conception was novel, un- dreamed of, incredible. And this is the argu- ment : If the evangelic portraiture of Jesus were a second-century idealisation, it would be in no wise what it is but precisely the reverse. The Incarnate Son of God would have been conceived, not as a gentle, gracious Friend of Sinners, but as a terrible and wrathful Avenger. And it is even so that He actually appears in those indubitable idealisations. * 2 Sam. vi. 6-11. t Cf. Robertson Smith, 0. T. in Jew. Ch., p. 173. RIVALS OF THE EVANGELIC JESUS TTOv vvv T)]Q 'EXXacoc o TV(pog ', TTOv Tu>v 'Adr{va)v TO orofia ', irov Tb)v (piXoaoipMV 6 Xijpog ', o utto TaXiXalciQ, 6 cnro Hrfdaai^a, o ciypoiKog, ■Kai'Twr EKtirtjJv TTEpityivETO. St. Chbysostom, In Act. Apost. Horn. IV. Ill RIVALS OF THE EVANGELIC JESUS FIIOJM those two apocrypha, the Protevan- gelium Jacobi and the Evangelium Thomce, we hav^e learned what the faith of the Recapituia- primitive Church did in the way of *^°°' ideahsing the historic Jesus ; and it seems an inevitable inference that the evangelic por- traiture cannot possibly be a product of the same process : it is so unlike what the myth- forming genius of those days actually created and, in view of its presuppositions, could not help creating. And now let us pursue the argument along another line. At the outset of its career Christianity was laughed to scorn by the intellectual world. In the phrase of the Apostle, * it was ' unto the * 1 Cor. i. 23. Cf. the sneer of the philosopher Celsus (Orig., C. Cels. iii. 44) at the terms of admission to the Church : ' Let no educated person approach, no wise, no d5 46 RIVALS OF THE EVANGELIC JESUS Greeks foolishness.' Presently, however, this attitude was abandoned. Ere the middle of Two pagan the second century Christianity had toeariy^ proved itself no mere folly to be Christianity: j^ughed at, but a force to be reckoned with; and it was then dealt with after two methods. One was argument, and (1) argument, . i i • the protagonist was the philosopher Celsus, whose clever attack, The True Word, reinforced the Faith by evoking Origen's bril- liant apology. The other method was more subtle and elusive. It was the method (2) rivalry. to which St. Augustine alludes in that passage which engaged us at the outset. It did not openly assail Christianity, but sought rather to undermine it by proving that whatever was true and beautiful in it was found also no less but even more in Paganism. By a just instinct those champions of the ancient order recognised that there is no Christianity apart from Christ, and they sought to compass its destruction by robbing Him of His unique distinction. Un- able and, perhaps, unwilling to deny His excel- lence, they set themselves not to depreciate prudent ; but if any be illiterate, if any be foolish, if any be uneducated, if any be a babe, let him boldly come.' RIVALS OF THE EVANGELIC JESUS 47 but to match it. They painted ideal pictures of prophets of their own, and exhibited those rivals of Jesus, making no mention of Him but allowing the obvious comparison to present itself and suggest the intended inference. They said nothing, but their meaning was : ' See I here is something nobler and wiser than your Galilean.' Of this method there are extant Twospeci- mens of the two conspicuous examples — Luciau's latter. Li^ of Demonax and Philostratus' Life of Apolloiiius of Tyana. Lucian, that brilliant man of letters, the last of the great Greek writers, was born at Samo- sata on the Euphrates during the Lucian's reign of Trajan (a.d. 98-117) ; and, Oewonax. according to the Byzantine lexicographer, Suidas, he followed the legal profession for a time at Syrian Antioch, but, failing in it, he abandoned it for literature. Suidas says that he was designated ' the Blas- . Lucian's phemer,' and that he was torn in attitude to pieces by dogs for his madness against the Truth. This notion of him is traditional and still prevails, but it is far from just. In 48 RIVALS OF THE EVANGELIC JESUS those days the ancient rehgions were at a sorry- pass. ' The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world,' says Gibbon in one of his pregnant epigrams, * ' were all regarded by the people as equally true ; by the philosopher, as equally false ; and by the magis- trate, as equally useful.' Religion was a mass of ridiculous and too often immoral supersti- tions, the jest and scorn of reasonable men ; and it is to the credit of Lucian that he would fain have rid humanity of the baleful incubus. It was a blunder, but it was no crime, that, imperfectly acquainted with Christianity, he regarded it as merely the latest phase of the ever-shifting phantasmagoria and pelted it with the artillery of his satire. His ideal wise man is the eclectic philosopher Demonax, who was born of good parentage in The Greek ^^^ island of Cyprus, and taught at spirit. Athens towards the close of the first century and well into the second ; and in every feature of his portraiture one recognises a tacit comparison with ' that gibbeted sophist,' as Lucian elsewhere terms our Lord, f What * Decline and Fall, chap. ii. t De Mort. Peregr. 13, RIVALS OF THE EVANGELIC JESUS 49 was it in Jesus that chiefly offended the Greek spirit ? It was His gravity, His constancy of purpose and His strenuous devotion thereto, so aUen from the evrpairsXia* of the jocund Greeks, so contrary to their maxim jurjStv ayav, ne quid nimis, which Socrates called 'a young man's virtue.' t He took life so seriously, always, as the Greek proverb puts it, ' carrying things to the sweating-point,' | and never dis- arming opposition by a timely jest. It was this temper that involved Him in so many embarrassments, and finally brought Him to the Cross. To Lucian this seemed the extremity of folly, and he set in contrast the sanity of his Demonax, an eclectic philosopher who ^^ ^^^^^ addicted himself to neither of the ^seman: dominant and antagonistic schools of his day — the Stoic and the Epicurean — but appro- priated the good of both, and regarded the follies of men with an easy and amused tolerance. ' He did not,' says his biographer, ' indulge in the irony of Socrates, but hiis con- * The word translated ' jesting ' in Eph. v. 4. + Diog. Laert. ii. 32. X Marc. Antonin. i. 16 : ewe ilpojTOQ. The Historic Jesus 8 50 RIVALS OF THE EVANGELIC JESUS versations were full of Attic grace, insomuch that, when those who had held intercourse with him went away, they neither despised him as vulgar nor fled from the churlishness of his rebukes, but were transported by merri- ment, and were far more orderly and cheerful, and had good hope for the future. Never was he seen crying aloud or straining unduly or irritated, even when censure was needed ; but, while he was down upon the sins, he had indul- gence for the sinners, and thought it meet to take example from the physicians, who, while they heal the sicknesses, show no anger against the sick ; for he deemed it the part of a god or a godlike man to correct the error. . . . And such aid had he from the Graces and Aphrodite herself in doing and saying all this that, as the comedy has it, " Persuasion sate ever on his lips." ' In illustration of this quality in his hero Lucian produces a collection of his bons mots — caustic criticisms, like his remark his sanity, on a futile disputation between two philosophers, that 'one of them was milking a he-goat, and the other holding the pail ' ; or shrewd precepts, like his answer to a newly- RIVALS OF THE EVANGELIC JESUS 51 appointed provincial governor who asked him how he would govern best : ' Never lose your temper ; talk little ; and hear much.' These things make excellent reading, but it is not for their own sake that Lucian quotes them. Their use is to point the underlying contrast between Jesus and His rival. They exemplify the wise man's sanity. He was no ascetic, glorifying poverty, privation, persecution. He appreciated the good things of life, and held that if a man were wise, he had the better right to enjoy them. ' Do you eat sweet cakes ? ' he was once asked. ' Yes,' he replied ; ' do you sup- pose it is for the fools that the bees store their honeycombs ? ' He had no fancy to play the martyr needlessly. Once, when he was stepping into the bath, he shrank back because the water was too hot, and, being twitted with cowardice, he retorted : ' Tell me, was it for my country that I was going to suffer it ? ' And he made no preposterous claims to superiority over the great men of the past. ' Behold,' said Jesus, 'a greater than Solomon is here.'* But once, when Demonax visited Olympia and the magistrates proposed to erect a statue in his * Matt. xii. 42. 52 RIVALS OF THE EVANGELIC JESUS V honour, ' On no account, gentlemen,' said he. *Do not reproach your ancestors for not erecting a statue either of Socrates or of Diogenes.' ' Such was the manner of his philosophy — meek, gentle, and blithe ' ; and the book closes with a description of the peace of his felicity. , . , , , , . . , his latter days and his passing hence — a charming picture in striking contrast to ^, the tragic close of the Gospel story. ' He lived for nigh a hundred years without sick- ness, without pain, never troublesome to any nor beholden to any, serviceable to his friends, never having made a single enemy. . . . Un- bidden, he would sup and sleep in any house he passed, the inhabitants accounting that it was a visitation of God and a good divinity had entered into their house.' And what did Jesus say ? ' The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests ; but the Son of Man hath not where to lay His head.'* 'He was despised and rejected of men ; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and as one from whom men hide their face He was despised, and we esteemed Him not.' t When * Matt. viii. 20. t Isa. liii. 3. RIVALS OF THE EVANGELIC JESUS 53 Demonax died the Athenians gave him a pubUc funeral and mourned him long ; and the stone seat where he had been wont to rest, they wor- shipped and wreathed with garlands ; and philo- sophers carried him to his burial. But what of Jesus ? * They plaited a crown of thorns, and put it on His head, and a reed in His right hand ; and they kneeled down before Him, and mocked Him, saying, Hail, King of the Jews ! And they spat upon Him, and took the reed and smote Him on the head. And when they had mocked Him, they took off from Him the robe, and put on Him His garments, and led Him away to crucify Him.' * There are the rival pictures, and the heart of humanity has judged between Lucian and the Evangelists. It has chosen the Man of Sorrows, and has found in Him all its salva- tion and all its desire. 'Is it not strange, the darkest hour That ever dawn'd on sinful earth Should touch the heart with softer power For comfort, than an angel's mirth ? ' * Matt, xxvii. 29-31. 54 RIVALS OF THE EVANGELIC JESUS At the first, however, the Man of Sorrows was an offence both to the Jew and to the Greek ; and here once more it appears how ahen was the evangeHc portraiture from the ideal of that generation, how remote from its imagination. We pass into a different and less wholesome atmosphere when we turn to the consideration of that other rival of the Evangelic Philostratus' . Apoiionius Jesus — Apollomus of Tyana. Side by side with the literary movement which had Lucian for its most distinguished representative and which aimed at the suppres- sion of superstition, another movement was in progress during the second century. Its most Neo-pytha- remarkable phase was the Neo-Pytha- goreanism. gorcauism which arose in the reign of Augustus, and which essayed to revive the philosophy of Pythagoras by infusing into it the new Hfe of Oriental theosophy. It is interesting to recall how St. Justin Martyr resorted to a teacher of this school in the course of his long and fruitless search after truth and happiness.* * Dial. c. Tryph. 2. RIVALS OF THE EVANGELIC JESUS 55 Apollonius, the hero of the somewhat pon- derous romance which the elder Philostratus compiled from the memoranda of -VT- • Apollonius, Damis of Nineveh at the mstance of Juha Domna, the Syrian empress of Sep- timius Severus, was a Neo-Pythagorean. The story runs that he was born in the same year as our Lord of an ancient and wealthy family in the Cappadocian town of Tyana ; and his birth, like our Lord's, was supernatural, since he was an incarnation of the Egyptian deity, the changeful Proteus. He studied a while at Tarsus, contemporary with Saul the future Apostle, and then betook himself to the neigh- bouring town of Mgse, where he acquired a knowledge of medicine in the school of the temple of Asklepios, and embraced Pytha- goreanism. On the death of his father he divided his inheritance among his poorer rela- tives and set out on his travels. He visited India, and there conversed with the Brahmans and was initiated into their magical lore. Then he journeyed westward again, and visited Greece, Egypt, Rome, and Spain, attended everywhere by a band of disciples. Wherever he went he wrought wonders and was revered / 56 RIVALS OF THE EVANGELIC JESUS as a god. He settled eventually at Ephesus, where St. John ministered contemporaneously, and vanished from the earth at the age of nigh a hundred years, still hale and fresh as a youth. Philostratus no more than Lucian announces his purpose of setting up a rival to Jesus, but „ ^^«i «f it was unmistakable and was at once a nval of Jesus. perceived. About the year 305 there appeared an anti- Christian work entitled the Philalethes, now lost and known chiefly by the replies which it elicited from Eusebius and Lactantius. Its author was Hierocles, who as a judge at Nicomedia distinguished himself by his activity in Diocletian's persecution, and in recognition of his zeal was promoted to the governorship of Alexandria. The Philalethes was an elaborate comparison of Jesus and ApoUonius and a demonstration of the latter's superiority. And the extravagance was re- peated by the English Deist, Charles Blount, who in the year 1680 published a translation of the first two books of the Life of ApoUonius with significant annotations. Here is an instance of the method of this covert attack upon our Lord. It is related that during his sojourn at Rome ApoUonius RIVALS OF THE EVANGELIC JESUS 57 encountered a funeral procession. A young lady of rank had died, and her bridegroom was attending her remains to the . Examples of tomb with a numerous retinue of tne method : mourners. Apollonius bade them set (i) a resurrec- , . 1 1 • 1 • • • 1 tion at Borne, down the bier and, inquiring the lady's name, took her hand, spoke into her ear, and awoke her from the seeming death. She uttered a cry and returned to her father's house, like Alkestis restored to life by Herakles. It is Damis, the Boswell of Apollonius, who narrates the incident, and he adds : ' Whether it was that he had found a spark of the soul in her which had escaped the notice of the physicians — for it is said that drops of rain fell and she exhaled a vapour from her face — or that he had warmed the extinct soul and re- covered it, is beyond the decision alike of me and of the bystanders.' * There is here plainly a reference to St. Luke's story of the Raising of the Widow's Son at Nain,t and the purpose is to suggest the un- reality of our Lord's miracle, after the manner of the rationalistic explanation of the 'raisings from the dead ' as merely ' deUverances from premature burial.' * iv. 45. t Luke vii. 11-17. The Historic Jesus 9 58 RIVALS OF THE EVANGELIC JESUS There is indeed much in the story of Apol- lonius that is admirable and profitable. He was a powerful preacher, and discoursed excel- lently to the thronging multitude on mutual service and pubUc spirit,"^ wisdom, courage, temperance,! and other goodly virtues. And his accustomed formula of prayer is worth remembering : ' O ye gods, give me the things that are due.' J But there is much also in the story that is dark and horrible. It is told how a pestilence had visited Ephesus, and the de- spairing citizens summoned Apol- demoniac louius from Smyrna to succour them. He assembled them, young and old, in the theatre, and among them was an aged beggar, ragged and foul, with blinking eyes, carrying a wallet with a crust of bread in it. ApoUonius set him in the midst, and bade the crowd gather stones and pelt the enemy of the gods. They hesitated, thinking it a cruel thing to kill a stranger in so miserable a plight, and pitying the wretch's entreaties. ApoUonius, however, urged them on, and as the first stones smote him, fire flashed from the * iv. 3, 8. t iv. 31. J i. 11 : w deol, ^oir/Te fxoi to. SfsiXoueva. Cf. iv. 40. RIVALS OF THE EVANGELIC JESUS 59 victim's eyes and the demon was revealed. He was promptly despatched and covered by a hillock of stones. * Take away the stones,' said Apollonius, ' and discover the wild beast you have killed.' They obeyed, and, behold, the old beggar had vanished, and in his place lay the battered carcase of a hound, huge as the hugest lion, its mouth a-foam like a mad dog's.* Now we have seen what manner of ideals sprang up and flourished in the ... , Argriiment for imagination of that generation ; and historicity of . , . . . ., , the Gospels. — here is the question — is it possible to believe that the Evangelic Jesus is a growth of the same rank soil ? It is told that after the death of the Danish sculptor Thorwaldsen his handiworks were con- veyed from his studio at Rome to the museum at Copenhagen, and soon after their arrival there sprang up and bloomed in the courtyard of the museum sweet plants unknown in that northern clime. They were plainly no native products. Whence had they come ? The creations of the master had been swathed in * iv. 10. Cf. Ev. Infant. Arab, xxxv, where Satan leaves the child Judas in the form of a mad dog. 60 RIVALS OF THE EVANGELIC JESUS straw and grass which had grown on the Roman Campagna, and when the packing-cases were opened the seeds had been scattered and had taken root. Presently the flowers appeared, and there was no mistaking their ahen origin. And it is even so with the evangehc por- traiture. It stands unique, unrivalled, sui gene7iSi amid the rank growths, the religious, literary, and philosophic imaginations of the second century, proclaiming itself no earth- born dream but a heaven-sent revelation. This is the evidence of its historicity — the impossi- bility of its imagination by the mind of that generation. THE SELF-EVIDENCE OF THE EVANGELIC PORTRAITURE ' They dried up all my Jacob's wells ; They broke the faithful shepherd's rod ; They blurred the gracious miracles Which are the signature of God. ' In trouble, then, and fear I sought The Man who taught in Galilee, And peace unto my soul was brought, And all my faith came back to me. ' Oh times of weak and wavering faith That labour pleas in His defence. Ye only dim Him with your breath : He is His own best evidence.' Walter C. Smith. IV THE SELF-EVIDENCE OF THE EVANGELIC PORTRAITURE IN the opening chapter of the Fourth Gospel, which tells the story of the Messiah's manifes- tation unto Israel at Bethany beyond . , . *' The sight of Jordan, it is written how Philip, in the Jesus con- vincmg in wonder and joy of his great discovery, the days of sought out Nathanael and told him the glad tidings. 'Him,' he cried, jerking it out in disjointed eagerness, 'whom Moses in the Law wrote of, and the Prophets, we have found — Jesus — the son of Joseph — the man from Nazareth ! ' Nathanael would not beUeve it. Himself a Galilean, he knew the ignorance of the northern province and the evil reputation of that rude town. ' Out of Nazareth,' said he disdainfully, ' can there be anything good ? ' Philip eschewed argument, preferring a surer 63 64 THE SELF-EVIDENCE OF way. He answered simply : ' Come and see. They went to Jesus, and presently Nathanael's incredulity was conquered, and his heart leaped up in adoring recognition. ' Rabbi,' he cried, ' Thou art the Son of God, Thou art the King of Israel I ' And it was ever thus with those who ap- proached Jesus in the days of His flesh. He seldom asserted His claims ; He never argued them. He simply manifested Himself, and such as had eyes to see and hearts to understand hailed Him as their Lord. He was ' His own best evidence.' Now if the evangelic portraiture be indeed a faithful delineation of Jesus as He appeared to His contemporaries, it should still His por- - , traiture, if cast a spcii upou thosc who ap- autbentic, i • . • . i i should be proach it With open eyes and un- sonow. prejudiced minds. It should silence their doubt and compel their faith. The trouble is that it is difficult in these days to approach it thus. It is so obscured by traditional interpre- tations that we can hardly see it in its simple reality, its native beauty. Suppose that the Gospels had been lost in early times, and were discovered among those papyri which are being THE EVANGELIC PORTRAITURE 65 unearthed from the Egyptian sand ; or suppose that, hke the old shoemaker in Tolstoy's story, Whei^e Love is, t/iere God is also, we had never seen them, and chanced upon a copy of them and read them for the first time: imagine the surprise, the wonderment, the fascination which would take possession of our minds. This ex- perience is denied us ; yet it is possible to attain it in some measure by resolutely dismissing the preoccupations alike of faith and of unbelief and contemplating without prejudice the picture which the Evangelists have painted, and allow- ing it to produce its inevitable impression upon our minds. And this is the experiment which we shall now essay. Let us survey the evan- gelic portraiture of Jesus as it stands before us, and consider what meets our eyes. It is a singular picture, and the first peculiarity which arrests our attention is this — that it por- trays a sinless man. The Evangelic survey of tue Jesus is completely human, sharing portSture- all our common infirmities and restric- ^ ^ sinless tions. He suffers weariness, hunger °^*^- and thirst, and pain. His knowledge is limited, and He confesses its limitations. Once He ap- The Historic Jesus 10 ^j 66 THE SELF-EVIDENCE OF proaches a barren fig-tree, expecting to find fruit on it ; * and again He says : ' Of that day or that hour knoweth no one, not even the angels in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.' t And He is subject to temptation, being ' in all points tempted like as we are.'| Yet He is never worsted in the moral conflict. He is ' in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.' He passes through the daily ordeal stain- less and blameless. He is among sinners, yet He is not of them. The marvel of this representation is twofold. On the one hand, Jesus claimed to be sinless. He claims to Searched by a multitude of curious be sinless. ^^^ critical cycs. He issued His confident challenge : ' Which of you convicteth me of sin ? ' § He often felt the pang of hunger, but never the sting of remorse ; He was often weary, but He was never burdened by guilt ; He abounded in prayer, but in His prayers there was no contrition, no confession, no cry for pardon. Not only before the world but before God He maintained His rectitude unfalteringly to the last. With the shadow of death closing * Mark xi. 13. t Mark xiii. 32. J Heb. iv. 15. § John viii. 46. THE EVANGELIC PORTRAITURE 67 round Him, He could lift up His eyes to heaven and say : ' I have glorified Thee on the earth : I have finished the work v^^hich Thou gavest Me to do. . . . And now come I to Thee.' * This is a unique representation. A lively and keen sense of sin is a constant characteristic of the saints. It is related of Juan de Avila (a.d. 1500-69) that, as he lay dying, the rector of his college approached him and said : ' What joy it must be to you to think of meeting the Saviour ! ' ' Ah ! ' said the saint, ' rather do I tremble at the thought of my sins.' Such has ever been the judgment of the saints upon themselves ; but as for Jesus, no word of self- condemnation ever passed His lips, no lamenta- tion over indwelling corruption, no sigh for a closer walk with God. It was not that He closed His eyes to the presence of sin or made light of its guilt. Renan, being asked what he made of sin, answered airily : ' I suppress it ! ' but that was not the manner of Jesus. His assertion of the equal heinousness of the sinful thought and the sinful deed f has immeasurably extended the sweep of the moral law and infinitely elevated the standard of holiness. No * John xvii. 4, 13. f Matt. v. 21-30. 68 THE SELF-EVIDENCE OF soul has ever been so sensitive as His to the taint of impurity ; no heart has ever been so oppressed by the burden of the world's guilt. His presence was a rebuke and an inspiration ; and to this hour the very thought of Him has the value of an external conscience. His spot- less life is a revelation at once of the beauty of holiness and of the hideousness of sin. And not only does the Evangelic Jesus claim to be sinless, but His claim was universally His claim allowed. It appears that the first to allowed. challenge it was the philosopher Celsus, who puts an indefinite charge in the mouth of his imaginary Jew — that Jesus 'did not show Himself clear of all evils.'* His enemies in the days of His flesh would fain have found some fault in Him, and they searched Him as with a lighted candle ; yet they dis- covered only one offence which they might lay to His charge ; and they did not perceive that it was in truth a striking testimony to His perfect holiness. They saw Him mingling freely with social outcasts, conversing with them and going * Orio"., C. Cels. ii. 41 : tn 2' ty^raXet rw 'Ir/ffou o KfXffoe 3ta Tov 'lovlaiKov irpoffiJ-KOV we /J.)) ^et'saJTt eavrov ttuvt^v dt) Kai^ait Kadapevovra, THE EVANGELIC PORTRAITURE 69 to their houses and their tables ; and they ex- claimed : ' This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them ! ' * It would have been no surprise to those Scribes and Pharisees had He associated with sinners, being Himself a sinner.;^ Their astonishment was that He should do this, being Himself, apparently, so pure ; and their outcry was a covert suggestion that, for all His seeming holiness. He must be a sinner at heart. The fault, however, lay not with Him but with themselves. ' In judging the Lord for receiving sinners,' says St. Gregory, ' it was because their heart was dry that they censured Him, the Fountain of Mercy.' They did not understand that true holiness is nothing else than a great compassion. Such was the holiness of Jesus, and it was a new thing on the earth, an ideal which the human heart had never conceived. The Pharisee was the Jewish ideal of a holy man, and it is an evidence of the historicity of the Evangelic Jesus that He is so widely diverse from that ideal. It is very significant that our Lord's claim to sinlessness should have been thus allowed and unwittingly attested by those who were bent * Luke XV. 2. 70 THE SELF-EVIDENCE OF upon disproving it. Bronson Alcott once said to Carlyle that he could honestly use the words of Jesus, ' I and the Father are one.' * Yes,' was the crushing rejoinder, ' but Jesus got the world to believe Him.' Another arresting feature of the evangelic portraiture is the claim which Jesus constantly 2. His unique ^T^^^c and persisted in to the last — relation ^^^^ jj^ stood in a uiiique relation alike toward God and toxvard man. He identified Himself with God. ' Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill Him, because He said God was His peculiar (tStov) toward God, ^^ , , . Father, makmg Himself equal to God.'* 'He that receiveth you,' He says in His charge to the Twelve, t 'receiveth Me, and he that receiveth Me receiveth Him that sent Me.' He sets Himself forth as greater than the Prophets. They were ' slaves ' ; He is ' the Son,' 'the Heir.' J They had spoken of Him, and seen His day afar off, and longed to see Him- self ; and He announces Himself as the fulfil- ment of their prophecies and the satisfaction of * John V. 18. + Matt. x. 40. J Matt. xxi. 34-38. Cf. Heb. i. 2. THE EVANGELIC PORTRAITURE 71 their desire.* ' Beginning from JNIoses and all the Prophets, He interpreted unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Him- self.' t INIoreover, He claimed to be at once the Saviour and the Judge of men. He had ' come to ffive His life a ransom for many ' ; t toward men. He bade the weary and heavy laden come unto Him and find rest for their souls ; § and He spoke of a day when ' the Son of Man shall come in His glory and all the angels with Him, and shall sit upon His throne of Glory, and before Him shall be gathered all the nations.' || How tremendous His demands on His followers ! He points to the dearest, tenderest, and most sacred of human relation- ships, and claims for Himself a prior devotion. ' He that loveth father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me, and He that loveth son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me.'H 'If any man cometh unto Me and hateth not his own father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, * Matt. xiii. 16, 17. f Luke xxiv. 27. I Matt. XX. 28. § Matt. xi. 28, 29. II Matt. XXV. 31, 32. U Matt. x. 37, 72 THE SELF-EVIDENCE OF yea and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple.' * It is not merely for God, nor yet merely for the Kingdom of Heaven, that He makes these stupendous claims : it is for Himself Conceive such language on the lips of a Galilean peasant I On the lips of Socrates or Julius Caesar it would have seemed the language of insanity, and would have been greeted with ridicule and reprobation. ' If Christ,' says S. T. Coleridge,t ' had been a mere man, it would have been ridiculous in him to call himself " the Son of man " ; but being God and man, it then became, in his own assumption of it, a pecuhar and mysterious title. So, if Christ had been a mere man, his saying, " My Father is greater than I " (John xv. 28), would have been as unmeaning. It would be laughable enough, for example, to hear me say, " My ' Remorse ' succeeded, indeed ; but Shakspeare is a greater dramatist than I." But how immeasurably more foolish, more mon- strous, would it be for a man, however honest, good, or wise, to say, " But Jehovah is greater than I " I ' Yet this was the language, the habitual language, of Jesus, and to those who * Luke xiv. 26. f Table Talk, May 1, 1823. THE EVANGELIC PORTRAITURE 73 knew Him best and could judge most truly of the justice of His claims, it seemed natural and fitting on His lips. It was the blinded Jews who pronounced Him mad and sought to slay Him.* Afifain, we observe the vcoi^ds widch the Evan- gelists ascribe to Jesses. There are no words in the Scriptures or elsewhere com- ^ 1 1 ^- "^^^ words parable to them. They have a of jesus: peculiar fragrance. They sparkle on their , ,., . ... p distinction, the page like gems in a setting or base metal. We recognise instinctively where Jesus ceases and the Evangelist begins. My old teacher and friend, the late Professor A. B. Bruce, once told me how in the early days of his ministry it chanced that he was studying the miracle of the Healing of the Lunatic Boy, and he stumbled over the verse : ' Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.' f The mention of ' fasting ' struck him as so alien from the spirit of Jesus. He referred to his Tischendorf, and what did he find ? The verse is absent from the authentic text of St. Mat- thew, being an importation from the parallel narrative of St. Mark ; \ and in the latter, * John X. 20. t Matt. xvii. 21. | Mark ix. 29. Tlie Historic Jesus 11 74 THE SELF-EVIDENCE OF furthermore, ' and fasting ' is a gloss. Thus was his instinct justified. And the incident is an instance of a principle. The genuine sayings of Jesus are always self-attesting. They are distinguishable from counterfeits by simple inspection.* And their vitality is perennial. They still throb, still kindle, still make our hearts burn within us, reminding us how He said : their reality. ' The words that I have spoken unto you are spirit, and are life.' f ' The impression the Jesus of the Gospels produces on us,' says Hermann Kutter, J 'is one of unapproachable reality. As we listen to His striking words, we have no desire to study their grammatical con- struction or philosophical content — we are so amazed at their reality. Whether we under- stand them or not, we find ourselves asking if * So Luke viii. 46 ascribes to Jesus the crude idea that the woman's touch drew power out of Him, as though His person were magnetic ; Mark v. 30 shows that it is no saying of Jesus but a comment of the Evangelic Tradition. Similarly Matt. xii. 40 is not only savourless but irrelevant, since the ' sign ' to the Ninevites was the preaching of Jonah, not his adventure with the whale, of which they knew nothing ; and its absence from Luke xi. 29, 30 proves it a homiletic gloss. Cf. The Days of His Flesh, Introd., pp. xxx f. t John vi. 63. | Soc. Devioo\, pp. 54 f. THE EVANGELIC PORTRAITURE 75 they are not the keys of life's mysteries, and whether through them we shall not know the truth — the whole truth. . . . AVhether spoken to the crowd or in the presence of the ques- tioning Scribes, His words displayed the same judgment — there was nothing to retract, no mistake to correct.' Another characteristic of the Evangelic Jesus is His superiority to the distinctions ^ ^.g of the world He lived in— the distinc- s;ipe"ority to '■> contemporary tions of class, sect, and nation. limitations: Class distinctions were strongly marked in Jewish society. At one extreme stood the ' Sinners,' the social outcasts ; and at (1) class : the other, condemning these and shunning the pollution of contact with them, the Pharisees, the holy men of Israel. With the former Jesus had much to do. They were the special objects of His solicitude, inso- much that He was nicknamed the ' Friend of Sinners ' ;* and when the Pharisees blamed Him and accused Him of secret sympathy with sin, His defence was that He was the Physician of Souls, and therefore it was fitting that He should * Matt. xi. 19. 76 THE SELF-EVIDENCE OF take to do with the morally diseased : ' They that are whole have no need of a physician, but they that are sick.' ^ He was the Friend of Sinners, but the singular fact is that He was the Friend of Pharisees too. Those ' holy men ' Pharisees, were not all His enemies. Many of them, despite their prejudices, were earnest seekers after God, and they were well disposed to the Prophet of Galilee, t They would invite Him to their houses and their tables, and He gladly went and talked with them of the things of His Kingdom.^ Another despised class was womankind. § ft * Matt. ix. 12. Cf. Diog. Laert., Antisth. vi. 6 : oreidi- ^6/J.eroQ TTore £7rt rw Trovripolg (rvyyei'eaOai, Kal ol larpol, (prjerl, fiera Tuip vodovvTMv elfflv aX\' oh Trvpirrovaiy. Bunyan, JerusaleTn- Sinner : ' Christ Jesus, as you may perceive, has put himself under the term of a Physician, a Doctor for curing of diseases : and you know that applause, and a fame, is a thing that physicians much desire. That is it that helps them to patients, and that also that will help their patients to commit themselves to their skill for cure, with more con- fidence and repose of spirit. And the best way for a doctor or physician to get themselves a name, is in the first place to take in hand, and cure some such as all others have given off for lost and dead.' t Of. Acts XV. 5. X Cf. Luke vii. 36 ff,, xi. 37 ff., riv. 1 ff. § See The Days of His Flesh, p. 77, THE EVANGELIC PORTRAITURE 77 was accounted unseemly for a Jew to salute a woman, or to converse with her openly, even if she were his wife or his daughter . Women; or his sister. Hence the surprise of the disciples at the beginning of His ministry when, unfamiliar as yet with the Master's manner, they returned from Sychar and found Him sitting on Jacob's Well and ' talking with a woman.'* And in the JNlorning Prayer the men bless God for not making them Gentiles, slaves, women. t In Jesus womankind found a friend. Women were numbered among His disciples, and they proved nobly worthy of His grace, ministering to the necessities of His homeless condition | and continuing faithful unto death. § He was exempt also from the distinctions of sect. Think what it means that 'the Apostle * John iv. 27, R.V. t A similar sentiment is ascribed to Plato. Lact. III. xix. 17 : ' Aiebat se gratias agere naturae, primum quod homo natus esset potius quam mutum animal, deinde quod mas potius quam femina, quod Graecus quam barbarus, postremo quod Atheniensis et quod temporibus Socratis.' Cf. Plut., Mar. xlvi. 1. The sentiment was ascribed also to Thales (Diog. Laert. i. 33). X Luke viii. 2. § Matt, xxvii. 55, 56 ; Mark xv. 40, 41 ; Lvike xxiii. 48, 49, 78 THE SELF-EVIDENCE OF choir' included Matthew the Taxgatherer and Simon the Zealot. The taxgatherers were hated as agents of the Roman op- pressor, and a Jewish taxgatherer was and Tax- peculiarly odious. He was a hireling e-atherers • . traitor to his country and his God. There was a wide gulf between the taxgatherers and the Zealots, those desperate patriots who had sworn relentless enmity against the imperial domination, and were ever kindling the flame of insurrection. Yet a taxgatherer and a Zealot met in brotherhood at the feet of Jesus. His heart had room for both. Furthermore, He exhibited no national characteristics. And this is the more remark- able inasmuch as He belonged to a (3) nation- . p •. • . aiity: nation notorious lor its intense, ex- jewish elusive, almost ferocious patriotism, exc usiveness, ^^^^ Jews wcrc designated, not with- out justice, 'enemies of the rest of mankind,' and, according to the Roman satirist, they would not show the road to a wanderer unless he were a fellow- worshipper and would not guide thirsty travellers to a well unless they were circum- cised.* A Jew was always recognisable. Could *■ 1 Thess. ii. 15. Tac, Hist. v. 5 : ' Apud ipsos fides THE EVANGELIC PORTRAITURE 79 St. Paul ever have been mistaken for a Greek or a Roman ? Whatever sympathetic disguises he might assume, becoming ' all things to all men, that he might by all means save some,' he never ceased to be a Jew, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, proud of his nationality,* and overflowing with love for his people even while he pronounced their condemnation, t It was otherwise with Jesus. He was purely human, and to this the Evangelists have borne a testimony all the more impressive that national it is undesigned. There were four '^^^"^^^ distinct types of nationality at that Evangelists, period — the Jewish type, the Roman, the Greek, and the Alexandrian ; and to these the four Gospels correspond. St. Matthew's is the Jewish Gospel, St. Mark's the Roman, St. Luke's the Greek, and St. John's the Alex- andrian. Each has interpreted Jesus for a race, and shown how He satisfied its peculiar need ; but in so far each has belittledHim. ' Moses obstinata, naisericordia in promptu, sed adversus omnes alios hostile odium.' Juv. xiv. 103 f. : ' Non monstrare vias eadem nisi sacra colenti, Quaesituna ad fonteni solos deducere verpos.' * Phil. iii. 4-7. t Eom. ix. 1-8. 80 THE SELF-EVIDENCE OF for a people,' says Blaise Pascal ; ' Jesus Christ for all men.' And this is the reason why there was need of four Gospels, that each nation might see Him as its own Saviour, and that liumanity might recognise its unity in Him. He was for all mankind. He bore no racial mark, insomuch that Renan, arguing from the universality ^amc of the proviucc, Gelil haggoijim, of Jesus. )e XeovTsg T] ypa\paL •^^eipetrcn Kai epya TEXelf airep avhpsQ, 'iTTTToi fiev 0' 'Ittttokti, /3dfe ^£ TE ftovtrly onoiag, Kai KE Oeuip Iciag Eypacpov Kal o-wjuar' iwoiovv TOiavO OlOV TTEp KaVTOl CE^ag Ef)^01' OflOlOV . . . . rovg fXEV yap Aldlowag niXavag Kal (rifiovg ypaEiv kfrjcre Tovg olKEiovg dEOvg, biroloi Be Kal avrol iTEipvKaaiy' rovg ^e yt Op^Kag yXavKovg te Kal kpvQpovg, Kal fiivToi Kal Wrfcovg Kal JliptTag (T