REESE LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. https://archive.org/details/christofhistoryaOOjohnrich THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. THE AN ARGUMENT GROUNDED IN THE FACTS OF HIS LIFE ON EARTH. BY JOHN YOUNG, LL.D. EDINBURGH. “And The Word was made Flea' Glory, the Glory as of Troth.”— John i. 14. .d dwelt among us (and we beheld His Father), full of Grace and & or the r \ UNIVERSITY^ gXlFOR^ NEW YORK: ROBERT CARTER & BROTHERS, No. 530 BROADWAY. 185 9 STEREOTYPED BY THOMAS B. SMITH, 32 & 84 Beekman Street *. O. JENKINS, PRINTER, 22 & 24 Frankfort St ADVERTISEMENT TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. The following able analysis of this work is from a review of it in the columns of “The London Morning Advertiser,” of June 1, 1855 : — “ This work belongs to the highest class of the productions of modern disciplined genius. The author modestly intimates only the simple truth when, in the preface, he states that the construction , if not the idea, of his high argument, is new to the world. Its materials are obtained by a wise and severe application of the inductive method of discovering truth, to those general portions of the evangelic nar- ratives, which are readily acknowledged to be undoubtedly historical by the most profound and frank skeptics. “ The author consents, for the sake of argument, to leave out of view all that is miraculous. He gathers together some of the facts, with their teachings, which present to men the manhood of Jesus, and endeavors to prove that such a manhood, under the particular outer conditions, can only be possible by the presence and union of Godhead. “We can not, in our very limited space, do more than give a brief, though not unpremeditated, description of the work. We take up the book as seekers after truth, and our author speedily introduces us to ‘ the outer conditions of the Life of Christ.’ Without perplex- ing us with too minute details, or with innumerable theories, Mr. Young leads us into the immediate presence of great historical facts. We pause in their presence only long enough to see and understand clearly the great realities themselves : and we are hurried onward to the next step in his argument — ‘The Work of Christ among Men.’ This is handled somewhat more fully, as was becoming so high and regal a theme ; but even here he will not allow us to delay too long. As illustrations can at best only shadow forth the writer’s own con- ceptions of his subject, the author indulges in but few. The spirit VI ADVERTISEMENT. of lespectful modesty will always be that of the worthy guide and philosopher among such high and great sights. Mr. Young is under its influence, and our eye is ever fixed on the primary distinctive features of the separate objects before us. At length we enter upon what every reader must feel to bo ‘ holy ground.’ We are invited to behold what our author terms ‘ The Spiritual Individuality of Christ,’ and we fain hope that, among our readers, none will be found un- willing to bow and worship this mysterious, wonderful Personality. “ In all the three parts of the work it is demonstrated that the only philosophy that can satisfy the facts of the case lies in the doctrine of the Incarnation of Divinity. The Incarnation is ‘ the enlightening fact' The argument cumulates in force as we are brought nearer and nearer to this mysterious Being, until it finally becomes so ir- resistible that we anticipate the inquiring look of our guide, by the confession, that only the doctrine of the Incarnation of Divinity can harmonize the phenomena which history affirms were actually har- monized in the life of Jesus. A joyous smile instantly lights up the countenance of our guide when he adds : ‘ Grant the fact of the In- carnation of Divinity, and you grant that which demands the mir- aculous and divine as its necessary and natural companions. In the person and life of Jesus, the miraculous becomes natural and inevit- able. The evangelical narratives are justified, and raised above suspicion. The world has a Saviour.’ “We would express our own obligations to Mr. Young for the help given us in perceiving the consistency and unity of the life of Jesus. We heartily recommend this book to all earnest thinkers, for such alone know the worth of a helpful book. Mr. Young has suc- ceeded admirably in condensing his great argument into the small compass of 260 pages — no insignificant achievement in this age of ours. There are many minor matters we wish corrected ; but theso sink into nothingness by the side of the feeling, of which we are conscious while studying this volume : that this method, by its severe simplicity and directness, excites within us feelings of devo- tion and adoration. We may describe the book as one of the best works,- in modem English, for introducing us to the knowledge and life of Jesus.” PREFACE. This book appeals to those who are prepared to treat, if with severe, yet also with dispassion- ate criticism, one of the gravest subjects of hu- man inquiry. It is not formally controversial, but it is virtually so, and is offered as a humble contribution in aid of other more elaborate ef- forts to correct and repel an indiscriminating in- fidelity. The argument, in its idea, certainly in its con- struction, differs materially from those by which the truth it would establish has usually been supported. It is also purposely cumulative, and — if the conception be just and the execution answer at all to the conception — it must increase in force with the successive steps, and will be the weightiest at the close. A profound mystery is here commended to vni PREF ACjsj. the judgment and conscience of honest and thoughtful men, but a mystery which is full of glory and light and life. There is One Won- derful Personality, only One, of all that ever dwelt on this earth, who had more immediate, constant and perfect access to the Infinite Fount- ain of Being, than was possible to the constitution of a mere creature. London, 27th March, 1856, ANALYSIS. INTRODUCTION. TAG 15 Usua* Form of the Argument. — Another Species of Proof. — Earthly Life of Jesus, not sufficiently investigated. — His Hu- manity alone, assumed here. — Inspiration, not essential in this Argument. — General historical Validity of the Gospels as- sumed. — The Life they record, not mythical, but real. — “ Be- hold the Man” ' 19 BOOK FIRST. THE OUTER CONDITIONS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST. PART I. HIS SOCIAL POSITION. His Mother, her views respecting Him, and their Origin. — The Influence of these on Him. — Nothing else in the early Life of Jesus, favorable to his subsequent Elevation. — His Pover- ty, Hindrances in this to His Ministry. — “ The Carpenter.” — His want of Formal Education, and of Patronage . . .27 PART n. THE SHORTNESS OF HIS EARTHLY COURSE. Duration of His Ministry.— His Death. — Earthly Causes of it. — Intolerance of the World, and His own unconquerable Will. — X ANALYSIS. PAaa Shortness of His Life in Relation to the Form of His Work. — In Relation to His Influence on succeeding Ages . . .41 PART in. THE AGE AND PLACE IN WHICH HE APPEARED. Moral Condition of the Age. — Gentile World. — Judea. — Gali- lee. — Nazareth. Mythical Theory. — Irreconcilable with the outer Conditions of Christ’s Life. — These, undoubted Facts. — Not Myths. — Not founded on Messianic ideas, 50 BOOK SECOND. THE WORK OF CHRIST AMONG MEN. PART I. HIS OWN IDEA OP HIS PUBLIC LIFE. His Public Position, an Act of His own Will. — His Claim to Mes- siahship. — His Idea of Messiahship. — Not Temporal but Spir- ' itual. — Not National but Universal. — Jesus, in this Respect, alone in His Age, His Country, the World . . . .67 PART n. THE COMMENCEMENT OP HIS MINISTRY. Dealt with the Age and the Country, collectively . — Their charac- ter. — Christ the Incarnate Conscience of both. — He, not con- scious of personal Guilt —Began by rebuking, in order to re- fiarm tfhe Nation ... 67 ANALYSIS. XI PART III. THE MARKED CHARACTER OF HIS PUBLIC APPEARANCES. PAQ» I. Severity. — Moral Condition of Palestine. — Scenes of His early Ministry. — Scribes and Pharisees. — Formalism, Hypocrisy. II. Tenderness. — Instances and Source. III. Simplicity. — General character of His Life. — Relation of His Teaching to Times, Places, Persons. — His Words and Illustrations. IV. Authority. — Testimony of His Hearers. — Claim to Con- nection with God 77 PART IV. HIS TEACHING. CHAPTER I. PRELIMINARY, GENERAL VIEWS. Record of Christ’s Teaching. — No formal Account of it pre- pared. — Mind of Christ, sole Fountain of the Truths an- nounced in the Gospels. — Summary of His Teaching. — A universal spiritual reign of God on Earth. — “Kingdom of Heaven,” etc., etc., etc 91 CHAPTER II. THE SOUL. SECTION I. — REALITY AND GREATNESS OF THE SOUL. Ignorance of Matter and Spirit. — Idea of the Soul Intuitional. — Universal Indifference to the Soul. — Jesus reveals it. — No for- mal proof of it. — His Teaching based on it. — Origin of the Soul. — Attributes. — Gospels teach its unutterable Worth. — Deter- mines Man’s Place in the Scale of Being 104 SECTION n. — THE SOUL’S ACCOUNTABILITY AND IMMORTALITY. Accountability belongs to the Rational and Moral Nature. — Ac- tivity, Unconscious, Instinctive, Intelligent, and Voluntary. — xn ANALYSIS. PAGE Grou : d ot Responsibility. — The Doctrine in Christ’s Teach- ing.— Last Judgment. — Immateriality and Immortality. — Mor- al Conditions of Life. — Perdition of the Soul-. — Sin and Death. — Element of Eternal Life. — “ Life and Immortality brought to light by the Gospel.” 112 CHAPTER III. GOD. SECTION I. — GOD’S SPIRITUALITY, UNITY, AND MORAL PERFECTION. Foundation of all Religion. — Being of God assumed in the Gos- pels. — An original Intuition. — Proof in our Nature of Divine Spirituality. — Angelic Souls. — Spirituality includes Life and Intelligence. — Vegetable, Animal, Intellectual, Moral Life. — The original parental Life. — Infinite Intelligence. — Christ at Jacob’s Well. — One Infinite, accounts for existing Phenome- na. — More than One, contradictory. — Dualism. — Polytheism. — A Supreme among the Gods. — Christ proclaiming Unity. — Heathen Sentiments and Presentiments. — Gods of Paganism, their Character. — Jewish Misrepresentations. — The God of Christ, perfect Excellence 121 SECTION II. — GOD’S PATERNITY. Type in Men, Reality in God. — Childship of all Souls. — In Soul alone, a Likeness to God. — Authority in God. — Love. — Great Family of God. — Introduction of Moral Evil. — Fatherhood of God in the Teaching of Jesus.— Parental Love, the moving Power of the Universe, 135 CHAPTER IV. THE RECONCILIATION OP THE SOUL AND GOD. Departure from God, Root and Essence of Evil. — Ever-widen- ing.— Retributive Character.— Ruin of Spiritual Nature. — Union and Separation of Minds. — End of Christ’s Mediation, of His Death, and of His Life in Reconciliation, . . 14 4 ANALYSIS. Xlll PART V. * THE ARGUMENT FROM HIS WORK TO HIS DI'INITY. PAGB Human Systems of Religious Truth. — Mohammedanism. — Hin- dooism and Buddhism. — Talmudism. — Ancient Jewish Scrip- tures. — Stoicism, earlier and later. — Errors and Excellences. — Socraticism or Platonism. — Philo- Judaeas. — Life of Socrates. — His Death. — His Faith and Hopes. — Christian Views of them and him. — Christianity contrasted with Teaching of Socrates. — Solution, Christ’s true Divinity 158 BOOK THIRD. THE SPIRITUAL INDIVIDUALITY OF CHRIST. PART I. HIS ONENESS WITH GOD. Communion between the created and the uncreated Mind. — Hu- man Side of the Doctrine. — Effort to conceive of God. — Faith in His Nearness to us. — In His Love. — Sense of Dependence. — Veneration. — Trust. — God listening and responding to the Soul. — To Christ, God the greatest Reality. — Christ alone with God. — Habitual, original Union. — Walked with God . . 191 PART II. THE FORMS OF HIS CONSCIOUSNESS. Nature of Consciousness. — Its Universality. — Value of its Testi- mony. — Christ’s Consciousness. — Its Highest Development.— Expressed to the Last.— Interpretation of it.— Proof of Valid- ity of his Claims 208 XIV ANAYLSIS. PART III. i THE TOTALITY OF HIS MANIFESTATION BEFORE THE WORLD. PAGE True Man. — Peculiar Susceptibility. — Sufferings and Provoca- tions. — Unconquerable Patience. — Absolute spiritual Perfec- tion. — Simplicity and Freshness. — Uniform Perfection. — Jesus a Manifestation, not an effort -A pure Original, not an Imi- tation. — Alone in History 216 PART IV. THE MOTIVE OF HIS LIFE. Absence of Selfishness. — Presence of pure and lofty Motives. — His active Goodness. — Views of the Soul. — Love of Man as Man. — Gave His Life, a Sacrifice 235 PART V. HIS FAITH IN GOD, TRUTH AND THE REDEMPTION OF MAN. Foreknowledge of His death. — His Solitariness. — Never disap- pointed. — Truth a Provision fo the Wants, Cure for the Evils of the World. — Attributes of God. — Expressions and Proofs of Christ’s Assurance. — Institution of the Supper. — Interpre- tation of these Facts 242 PART VI. THE ARGUMENT FROM HIS SPIRITUAL CHARACTER TO HIS DIVINITY. Moral Aspects and outward Facts of Christ’s History. — A Char- acter such as His, not once realized. — Interests of Truth and Virtue. — Moral Condition of Mankind, charged upon God. — Humanity in Christ peculiarly conditioned. — Idea of Incarna- tion universal.— A Primitive Revelation.— A universal Want.— ANALYSIS XV PAGB Provision for this W ant made once for all — Higher nature in Christ, not higher office merely. — His absolute Divinity. — This secured Aids and Influences, incommunicable to others . . 243 CONCLUSION. Incarnation of Jesus sheds Light on all the Wonders of His His- tory. — Supernatural Birth. — Resurrection and Ascension. — Miracles of His Life. — Spiritual Meaning. — Typical Charac- ter. — Sophistry of Strauss. — Extraordinary Tokens of Divinity Demanded. — Voice of God. — The World summoned to hear and believe • ... 253 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY, ETC. IN THREE BOOKS. Book I. The outer Conditions op the Life of Christ. II. The Work of Christ among Men. III. The Spiritual Individuality of Christ. S V OF fuHIVEUSITY INTRODUCTION Usual form of the argument. — Another species of proof. — Earthly life of Jesus not sufficiently investigated. — His humanity alone as- sumed here. — Inspiration not essential in this argument. — General historical validity of the Gospels assumed. — The lifo they record not mythical, but real. — “Behold the Man.” A change in the form of the argument for the proper deity of Jesus Christ seems to be demanded in our day. Accepted and familiar proofs may not have lost their strength, but they have lost their freshness, and they are wanting in adaptation to the peculiar intellectual culture and structure of the present age. Sacred criticism, directed to the historical, prophetical, and devotional books of the Old Testament, and to the Gospels and Epistles of the New Testament, has long submitted its methods and their results to the judgment of the world. Dogmatic theology, also, connecting itself closely with the reigning logic and metaphysics, has long announced its expositions of sacred truth. Argu ments on this subject have been accumulated in as tonishing number, and have long maintained an acknowledged prescriptive authority. But it is 20 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. conceivable that an excess of resources may prove, in certain cases, hardly less fatal than a palpable deficiency. Men are provoked to resist that which, instead of asking favor, commands and compels submission. It is sometimes wise to take not the very highest ground which it is possible to maintain, but the lowest ; and if, on this lowest ground, we can succeed in producing an unlooked-for amount of materials, the feeling of surprise conciliates the heart, and assists, instead of obstructing, the men- tal process which issues in conviction. Perhaps the earthly life of J esus, apart from subtle criticism and from systematic, metaphysical theology, may be found to offer original and extraordinary evidences of His divinity ; evidences which, by their number, their harmony, and their force, shall amount to positive proof of this great mystery. This region, owing to the productiveness of others better known, has never been cultivated with the pains which it deserves. But the peculiar kind of proof, never- theless, which it yields, we presume to think is at once the most intelligible and the most convincing which on such a subject can be offered to reason and conscience. A temperate and conciliatory spirit is demanded toward those to whom we present the claims of religion ; and the exhibition of such a spirit can not injure or endanger Christianity. With perfect safety we may forego, for the time, the inheritance FORM OF THE ARGUMENT. 21 of evidence and of argument bequeathed from the past, by the researches and the erudition of enlight- ened men. Demanding nothing more than the simple humanity of Jesis of Nazareth, we shall venture from this platform to assert and expound his true divinity. Dismissing all preconceptions, however fondly cherished, and however long adopted into the faith of the churches, assuming nothing which is not virtually and even formally admitted by enemies as well as friends we hope to show that the manhood of Christ, as it appealed to the senses and the minds of the men of his own times, supplies and sustains the proof of his god- hood * A still larger sacrifice, in the same spirit of con- ciliation, will be found compatible with safety and honor. The inspiration of the Christian records is not to be demanded here. No collection of writ- ings has passed through a fiercer ordeal than the books of the New Testament. The severity of criticism, it may be safely said, the venomous ma- lignity with which they have been assailed, has no parallel in the history of literature, or of the re- * The pro-supposition (voraussetzung) with which Neander commences his Life of Christ is certainly fatal to it as an argument, although its value as an exposition of the Gospels, and a critical defense of their authenticity, is in no degree affected by this cir- cumstance. What he calls “the Christian consciousness” ( das Christliche Bewustseyn ) is not innate but acquired, the result of education, and therefore of no authority . — Das Leben Jesu Christi, Hamburg, 1855, Einleitemg s. 4. 4 22 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. v „ * 4 * 1 - i ligions of' the world. The facts, the ohronology, the references to contemporaneous history, to politi- cal and social interests, to science and philosophy, the doctrines and the ethical principles of the New Testament, the honesty, intelligence, and capacity of the writers, and the character of their produc- tion as a whole, have been subjected to the scru- tiny, often intensely prejudiced, of all nations and of all orders of intellect for eighteen centuries. It is at least grateful to think, that, owing to this very cause, an astonishing amount of power, otherwise unrevealed, has been evoked and effectively put forth in defense of these holy writings. But the inspiration of the New Testament, as that is popu- larly understood, shall not be insisted on in the present argument ; and it shall suffice for us, if this book be allowed to stand only not lower than other equally ancient productions. Whatever abatement from its historical validity can be plausibly de- manded on account of the remoteness of the period, the character of the age, or the position of the writers, it shall be conceded. For the sake of ar- gument, though only for this, it shall be granted that the Evangelists were not secured against mis- take, and that therefore the justice of all their sentiments, and the accuracy of all their details, are not unquestionable. We go farther ; let all in these sacred records which belongs to the sphere of the miraculous be aserbed, for the present, to the VALIDITY OF GOSPELS ASSUMED. 23 habit of the Jewish mind, to the influence of their national history, or to the common tendency to ex- aggeration. We assume nothing more than this, that the Gospels, in a broad and general sense, are historical and veritable ; and this, in point of fact, is virtually granted by all. By far the ablest of the modern adversaries of the validity of the New Testament, who has sub- jected it to the most severe analysis, and has brought to his task the largest amount of learning and of philosophic power, has admitted at least a basis, even a broad basis, of historical truth in the Gos pels. He concedes that Jesus of Nazareth lived on earth, and that his character, saving the miraculous element so largely blended with the delineation of it, substantially was what it is represented to be by the Evangelists.* This admission indeed can not be withheld, without encountering even graver difficulties than are created by conceding it. The antiquity of the records being granted — and it is granted at this day by all who have seriously inves- tigated the subject, and who, on the ground of scholarship and of intellectual and moral compe- * “ Das Leben Jesu.” Even Germany now consents that this attempt to place the Christian Gospels in the same category with heathen mythologies is only an ingenious fallacy, an elaborate de- feat. One thing we must be permitted to mark : Strauss begins his criticism by aiming to create a prejudice, at all events a pre- judgment. Surely th s cannot be too severely reprobated ; it is unscientific, it is unphilosophical, it is morally wrong. 24 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. tency, are entitled to consideration — one or other of two hypotheses is unavoidable. Either such a man as Jesus of Nazareth really appeared on earth about the time which the Christian records fix, or the writers of the G-ospels gave form and life to a mere idea which never had an outward realization, and existed no where but in their minds. No third supposition is conceivable on any rational ground ; one or other of these two must be accepted ; and in truth there is no choice between them, for the diffi- culties involved in the latter are wholly insur- mountable. On the supposition that Jesus of Nazareth never actually existed, it is not within the range of rational belief that the idea of such a being was formed in that country , that age, and in the minds of such men as the Evangelists are held to have been, and as in point of mental endow- ment and culture and social rank they certainly were. When it shall have been fully ascertained what that being who is presented to us in the Gos- pels really was, the evidence will be irresistible that this is not within the range of rational belief, but is so unlikely and unnatural as to be morally im- possible. It would contradict all experience and all legitimate induction from experience, and be as utterly out of the course of human things as any miracle ever recorded. It is abundantly demon- strable, and the evidence will accumulate as the present investigation advances, that the Evangel THE LIFE NOT IDEAL. 25 ists, instead of embodying a conception of their own minds, must have witnessed the life which they describe, never could have conceived it unless they had first witnessed it, and were able to represent it in the manner they have done, only because it had actually passed under their immediate and frequent observation. The Gospels, then, contain the history of a life once actually spent on this earth. The writers relate on the whole what they saw and heard, and on the whole convey the impression which was left on their minds by a real, living being. It is enough. This lowest stand-point is enough. Take only the earthly life of Christ, suppose only that in a broad general sense it is faithfully represented — behold only the Man — He shall indicate and demonstrate union with absolute Godhead. Such a Humanity as his is utterly inexplicable, except on the ground of true Divinity, BOOK FIRST THE OUTER CONDITIONS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST. IN THREE PARTS. Part I. His social Position. II. The Shortness of His earthly Course. in. The Age and Place in which He appeared, That life on which it is proposed to found an argument for Divinity was singular in the materials and the mode of its formation. The outward and the inward aspects of every earthly course are mysteriously related to each other. The age, the country, the physical organization, education, society, and the like, exert an acknowledged influ- ence in the intellectual and moral development of a human being. Native force of character may rise above the accidents of birth and early position and all the external conditions by which the soul is limited, so that it can never be predicted with certainty, from any given circumstances, what a man’s future life shall be, because we can never foresee how the action of these circumstances may be modified, and what minute and delicate influen- ces may either neutralize or assist their effect in the progress of years. But the fact of dependence and of moral causation, nevertheless, has almost the constancy and sovereignty of aijuniyersal law. 30 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. The seeds of that definite form which each indivi- dual life eventually assumes will be found to lie within its early history. The future is never ac- cidental and capricious, a void filled up with ma- terials, gathered according to no principle and disposed without order or law. It is rather the natural product of elements which existed and acted in the earlier period of life. The present and the future stand almost in the relation of cause and effect. Events, influences, incidents in the one largely contribute to make the other what it ulti- mately becomes. Usually a man’s early life and position will be found to contain the germ and to furnish the true interpretation of his future charac- ter in history. PART I. Christ’s social position. His Mother. — Her views respecting Him and their origin. — The influence of these on Him. — Nothing else, in the early life of Jesus, favorable to his subsequent elevation. — His Poverty, hin- derances in this to his Ministry. — “ The Carpenter.” — His want of formal education and of patronage. It will be proved that tbe common formative principles which have just been referred to utterly fail to explain the life of Jesus. His life , we shall find, stands out a mysterious exception to all the ordinary laws that govern the destiny of men. What He ultimately became, so far from harmoniz- ing with his early course and his outward con- dition, was reached not because but in spite of all the influences descending upon him from both of these regions. It was not a natural result of the circumstances amid which he grew up, but one which, unless to some hidden antagonist force, these circumstances must have rendered absolutely impossible. We can recognize one specific agency, indeed, though only one, which undeniably had an effect 32 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. in preparing Jesus in his early life for the position to which he eventually rose. There was one per- son, nearer to him and dearer than any other, who must have exerted an influence in the formation of his character favorable to the peculiar development which it was destined to reach. That person was his mother. The Virgin Mary entertained from the first very exalted notions respecting her Son. The origin of these notions can not be unfolded here, because we have consented to surrender for the time all that is supernatural in the New Testa- ment records. The mystery of Christ’s birth, the vision of the shepherds of Bethlehem, the visit of the Chaldean sages, the prophetic words of Simeon and Anna in the Temple, must therefore be left out of the discussion. Perhaps it will be found by and by, that facts of this nature beautifully harmonize with the calmest and soundest views which can be taken of the Christian writings. But no use must be made of them here, and they must not be suffered to influence either the narrative or the argumentative part of this investigation. Twelve years after the birth of Christ, an in- cident occurred, which is the more remarkable, be- cause it forms the solitary piece of intelligence which is communicated to us respecting a period of his life, extending over nearly thirty years. On the occasion of the Passover, the child Jesus re- mained behind in Jerusalem after Mary and her YOUTH OF CHRIST. 33 husband Joseph had left to return home, and at the end of three days he was found by them in the Temple, sitting at the feet of the teachers of the Law, listening to them and asking them questions. The circumstance, of Jesus being so long separated from his earthly guardians without their knowledge, is easily accounted for by the usages of the Passo- ver-time. Even his being found with the teachers of the Law is not out of harmony with the history and manners of the period. The Jewish historian relates something of this kind, which happened to himself when he was about fourteen years of age.* All which this incident can reasonably be supposed to convey is granted freely. It is granted also that the words of the child to his mother, when she rebuked him for tarrying behind, “Wist ye not that I must be on my Father’s business ?” indicated a maturity of mind, a thirst for knowledge, a love of truth, a faith in the being, presence, and favor of God, very extraordinary. It is granted that these words must have sunk into the heart of Mary, must have renewed the impression created by the occurrences of his infancy and childhood, perhaps recalled her first views in their mysterious power, and revived all her early hopes. But after this in- * ' Etc d’dpa, 7r alg uv rrepl TecoapeoKaidenaTov £toc, did rd ^ikoypdpparov vrrb navruv in qrovpevoc, ovviovtov del ruv dpxiepcuv nal t&v rfje rroXeuc rcpuTctv vrclp tov nap’ tpov rrepl tuv vop.ip.uv dupifieoTepov ti yvtivai. Vita Josephi, sec. 2, in Oper. Geneva, 1683. 2 * 34 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. cident other twelve years passed by, and half that number more, and all the while not a sign of any kind appeared. In the long and dreary interval must not impressions and hopes so utterly unsup- ported as hers have gradually faded, and at last altogether perished? We can only conjecture what opinions Mary for herself entertained, whe- ther at an earlier or at a later period, respecting the rank and office of the Messiah ; but in all probabil- ity, they partook of the ignorance, and prejudice, and error of those of the Jews in general in that age. It is willingly conceded that, at the least, she must have believed that her Son was destined by God to a position of great saoredness and dignity, and this faith, no one can doubt, must have influ- enced her behavior toward him and her method of treating and training him. Certainly she would strive to impart her own views to his mind, and fix within him the idea of his destiny, as she her- self understood it. But this, be its value what it may, was the sol- itary agency in the early life of Jesus helpful to his subsequent elevation ; and except this, not a single friendly element can be discovered throughout the history. All else is not only not auxiliary, but thoroughly obstructive. When the whole of the conditions under which the destined development of his character and his life was effected shall have been carefully examined, it will then appear, we EARLY CONDITION UNFAVORABLE. 35 presume, that that character and life were not a natural growth for which his circumstances, accord- ing to the ordinary laws of providence and of the human mind, sufficiently account, but, on the con- trary, were originated and sustained in spite of circumstances with which no earthly force could have contended, and therefore must have had their real foundation in a force which was preternatural and Divine. The New Testament makes no secret of the place which Jesus occupied in the social scale. The family from which he sprang belonged to the lower ranks of life ; Joseph, the husband of Mary, being a working carpenter. His birth-place, the wander- ings of his infancy, his home in such a village as Nazareth, his humble occupation for many years, his dependence afterward on the labor of his dis- ciples and the charity of other friends, are affecting evidences of the poverty of his condition through life. The fact is noticeable in itself, but it is pro- foundly interesting to those who find in his later manifestations a Being who irresistibly draws to- ward himself their veneration, their trust, and their hope. They believe him to be the Kedeemer of the world, and they are astonished that, when T on earth, he was ranked with the ignoble and the poor. But the fact, as they dwell upon it, becomes suggestive and quickening ; they see that it is fitted to shed marvellous peace into the bosom of 36 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. the humblest sons of men, and to reveal a tender and holy bond of sympathy between Jesus of Na- zareth and them. He endured the humiliations, the burdens, and the straits of poverty, and is he not, therefore, in a touching sense the brother of the sorrowing and the poor ? It gives to poverty a singular sacredness and dignity. The principle, not new in itself, acquires new impressiveness that social rank is not the standard of social worth, or of personal excellence and power. The great les- son is pronounced with unexampled solemnity in the hearing of the world , that men and things are not always in reality what they are in appearance. It is taught that justice, truth, love, and moral and spiritual worth, must be reverenced in whatsoever associations they are found. The accidents of out- ward condition do not alter the essential character of good or of evil. Poverty and ignorance, and still more poverty and vice, are not inseparable either in fact, or in the judgment of right-thinking men. They do often co-exist, and there are very obvious causes which at once explain why they should of- ten co-exist. But the connection is not uniform, and it is not inevitable. On the other hand, great wealth is seldom found associated with the highest forms of spiritual excellence. Certainly the love and the high estimation of wealth, rarely separated from the possession of it, are utterly incompatible THE HINDERANCES OF POVERTY. 37 with elevation, expansion, and deep spirituality of character. But the prevailing sentiment of mankind is not to be mistaken. Even if this sentiment were not hostile, it is plain, on other grounds, that a poor man must necessarily, just because he is poor, en- counter peculiar and numerous hinderances in form- ing and executing any purpose, however modest, for the good of his race. His knowledge of the world, for example, his acquaintance with books, and his intercourse with able and cultivated men, must in the generality of cases be exceedingly limited. By the necessity of his condition, he is shut out from much that is quickening and liberal- izing, and fitted to impart comprehension, self-re- liance, and freedom. But in addition to real hin- derances of this nature, he has to struggle against a deep and almost universal prejudice. It is not sup- posed that any thing great or good can originate with persons like him. Such is the evil effect of social distinctions, that it is almost felt that nothing great or good ought to originate with persons like him ; and that, if it did, this would almost amount to a crime against the usual course of the world. The contrast between his condition and his aims is painfully present even to himself, but still more to others ; and the more aspiring these aims are, this contrast operates the more oppressively and inju- riously. The instances are rare indeed, in which a 38 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. poor and unknown man has risen above neglect and prejudice and the pressure of his condition, and alone has worked out a great idea which his mind had conceived. An unknown amount of ob- struction to his work and his triumph was thus in- volved in the mere fact that Jesus belonged through life to the lower ranks of society. In addition to the fact of poverty, it must be taken into account that almost the entire of Christ’s life was spent in manual labor. Dwelling, till he was thirty years of age, in the house of Joseph the carpenter, we are left to imagine that he, too, was engaged in the same handicraft. But this matter is set at rest by the question of the people, no doubt put contemptuously, which is distinctly men- tioned by one of the evangelists, “ Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary?”* Honest labor, honest hand-labor is dignified and dignifying. The discipline of bodily toil and struggle, wisely regarded, may exert a wholesome influence on the higher nature, may serve noble purposes, and is fitted, under certain conditions, to form vigorous, high-toned, resolute souls. Even the acquisition of superior knowledge and of the power which, knowledge creates, though difficult, is not im- possible to a working man; and the workshop and the farm have nourished for the world some of its ablest benefactors. At the same time, a life * Mark vi., 3. HIS WANT OF PATRONAGE. 39 taken up with the labors of the hands is certainly not favorable to high mental development. Such a life can not afford the necessary amount of leisure for study and research, and where the energies of the body are continually taxed and strained, it is not possible that at the same time the powers of the mind can be vigorously put forth, and that ex- tensive intellectual acquisitions can be made. J esus of Nazareth was a common working carpenter till he was thirty years of age. What direct and formal education he received, can only be conjectured, but the high probability is, that it must have been of a most limited charac- ter. Some of his countrymen, when they first heard his discourses, exclaimed, “ How knoweth this man letters, having never learned ?”* It must have been commonly known that he had never learned , that he had received little regular instruction; perhaps none. Even in the absence of this positive evidence, the state of the Jewish nation at the time, the rude condition of the village in which his life was passed, the humble position of his family and his own destination to the trade of a carpenter, would have led us to conclude that he was unlearn- ed and uneducated. High patronage has sometimes made up for the absence of other advantages. But the poor were the associates of Jesus — his only associates from * John vii., 15. iO THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. first to last — and of men of wealth and influence lie knew little. Few thus distinguished, ever deigned to notice him. He received no countenance from the civil government of the country ; yet less was he sanctioned by the priesthood of the nation. They were his enemies from the first, and were the secret cause of all his sufferings and of his cruel death. With the learned or the rich — with the ecclesiasti- cal or the civil authorities — with the influential classes of society, or even with single individuals of name and weight — he never had the most dis- tant association. Jesus Christ was alone, a poor artisan, uneducated and unpatronized. His entire social circumstances pronounce the impossibility, in human judgment, of his elevation to power and glory. i PART II. THE SHORTNESS OF HIS EARTHLY COURSE. Duration of His Ministry. — His Death. — Earthly Causes of it.— Intolerance of the 'World and His own unconquerable Will. — Shortness of His Life in relation to the Form of His Work — in relation to His Influence on succeeding Ages. The disciples of Christianhy suggest that, had the Redeemer of the World lived to old age, the im- pression, at least on their minds, of feebleness, imperfection, and decrepitude must have been deep- ly injurious. They suggest, besides, that Jesus lived long enough to gain a full experience of the world — a knowledge of the duties, trials, and hazards of life — and long enough for the full pro- bation of his personal character and for the comple- tion of his great work for the world. Whatever force there be in these suggestions, let the simple fact of the case be here briefly stated : Jesus passed away from the earth when he was only thirty -three years of age. Thirty years he spent in Nazareth ; for three years he ministered before the world, and then he suffered death by crucifixion. 42 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. The early death of Christ is one of those peculiar conditions which, it is believed, give extraordinary significance to his character and to the actual results of his course. This fact, viewed in con- nection with its consequents, is so strange, that it is imperative to attempt a brief investigation of the causes which led to it. In this discussion, the fact is regarded simply in its historical significance, not at all in its doctrinal and spiritual relations. The nature and design of Christ’s death, or its bearing on the redemption of the world, or the high and holy purposes which God might contemplate in it, are not to be considered here. The human causes only, which fixed so early a period to the life of Jesus — not those which lay in the Eternal Mind, but only those which sprung up on this earth — come within the scope of the present argument. Among these causes, the first place must be as- signed to the intolerance of the world ; the second to that force of will in the soul of Christ, which no amount of intolerance could conquer. With respect to the first, the simple historical fact is, that men could bear Jesus Christ no longer, and were in haste to put him to death. Spiritual truth and its advocates are offensive to the world. The one and the other, indeed, may commend themselves to the human conscience, and be secretly reverenced even where they are publicly disowned. All that is of God shall finally triumph as surely as God lives; INTOLERANCE OF MEN. 43 but struggles, prostrations, defeats, may, must, pre- cede triumph. Truth comes into collision with men’s immediate interests — with their sins, exposing and denouncing them — with established opinions and usages — with what is held sacred and what has grown venerable by age — and the conflict can not but be prolonged and fierce. Men can not lightly bear to be detected in their sins — the interested and the privileged can not brook to be dispossessed — and, above all, the principle of unlimited intel- lectual and religious toleration is about the last which individuals or communities are disposed to adopt. Hence, that which is divinely true and pure must long appeal in vain to the judgments and hearts of men, and long suffer opposition and scorn and evil treatment at their hands ; and when, in its contact with any age or nation, it directly strikes at ancient beliefs and at cherished privil- eges, interests, or vices, we can not wonder that the hatred awakened against it should become enven- omed and implacable, should trample on humanity and justice, and should even clamor for the des- truction of its apostles. The world, conscious of evil, but proud, impatient, and incensed, can bear no longer, and crucifies the advocate of truth. But there is always a significant resurrection after such a death. The world demanded that Jesus Christ should die. There was nothing in his spirit, doctrine, or 4A THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. life to justify the demand. It will be shown here- after that he was no ambitious Aspirant to power and fame, no Enemy to Judaea or to Kome, to the Sanhedrim, the temple, or the God of his country, nor were corrupt and cruel men able to substantiate any such charges against him. But he had incurred the violent hatred of the leaders of all the religious sects in his day. His free and spiritual views, his deep faith and glowing piety, his open sanction of the innocent usages and institutions of society, his appeals, not to tradition or prescription, but to the common sense of mankind, and his use of common incidents and common words, not to name his re- proofs, as severe as they were notoriously well de- served, rendered him obnoxious alike to Pharisees, Sadducees, Ascetics, and Mystics. They all disliked his teaching, were provoked by his calm and patient spirit, were jealous of his growing influence, and saw, in his entire life, their own public con- demnation. These sects, while contending with one another, united in common hostility to him; and their leaders never rested till at their instiga- tion the people, too ready to obey interested and wicked counsel, demanded his crucifixion. J esus heard the cry of the excited multitude, and with awful serenity and force of will he signified his consent. He would die if he must die, but he would not deny himself. Individuals not of com- mon mold and not dishonest have quailed before HIS UNCONQUERABLE WILL. 45 the alternative, Truth or Life. It is a tremendous power within a man which can brave the fiercest assaults of intolerance ; a power which must have sent its roots deep into the soul and must have taken hold of the entire spiritual nature. A human will unconquered by frowns, by curses, and by all the terrors of death, is clothed with surpassing grandeur, with the truest moral sublimity. The force of character is immense which, when hostility is gathering and deepening and maddening for its last brutal outburst, preserves a man undaunted, prepared to perish, but determined not to cower. Jesus of Nazareth was able to die, if he must die. He was prepared to offer himself up; a precious and noble sacrifice, a nature just expanded before the eye of the world, a life in its freshness, vigor, and promise, and fitted for high service to God and man. In uncomplaining silence, in all the dignity of perfect meekness, in the gentlest spirit of love that the world ever beheld, he laid down his life. His soul, calm, humble, meek, and loving, was im- movable as a rock. The intolerance of men met in him a force of will not to be overborne. If he must die he could die, and he did die at the age of thirty -three. The fact which remains, apart from the earthly causes which brought it about, is this, that Christ acted directly and publicly on the world only for three years, and that he died in comparative youth. 46 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. Usefulness and power are not measured by length of life. Many old men have never truly lived, and there are early deaths which yet can tell of the richest fruits of living long, and point back to deeds of spiritual prowess and to the origination for others of good that will never die. Perhaps it is to the period of youth, as distinguished from maturer age, that the greatest amount of spiritual power, the strongest impulses, the highest activity and energy belong. Grave counsels, wholesome restraints, sagacious suggestions and modifications issue from the experience of age. But youth has originated all the great movements of the world, and has most largely contributed to the agency by which they have been rendered effective. He whom Christians recognize as the Redeemer of the world was only a youth. Whether his re- ligion be regarded as a system of doctrines, or as a body of laws, or as a source of extraordinary in- fluence, it is passing strange that lie should have died in early life. His brief period of existence afforded no opportunity for maturing any thing. In point of fact, while he lived he did very little, in the common sense of doing. He originated no series of well-concerted plans, he neither contrived nor put in motion any extended machinery, he en- tered into no correspondence with parties in his own country and in other regions of the world, in order to spread his influence and obtain co-opera- HIS INFLUENCE ON THE AGES. 47 tiou. Even the few who were his constant com- panions, and were warmly attached to his person, were not, in his lifetime, imbued with his senti- ments, and were not prepared to take up his work in his spirit after he was gone. He constituted no society with its name, design, and laws all de- finitely fixed and formally established. He had no time to construct and to organize, his life was too short ; and almost all that he did was to speak. He spoke in familiar conversation with his Mends, or at the wayside to passers-by, or to those who chose to consult him, or to large assemblies, as opportu- nity offered. He left behind him a few spoken truths — not a line or word of writing — and a cer- tain spirit incarnated in his principles, and breathed out from his life, and then he died. We are not yet entitled, to place the youth of Christ and the other outer conditions of his life, by the side of his public ministry and his personal character. But even here, an amazing contrast rises up, which we must suggest for an instant. In the ordinary course of events, the memory of a mere youth, however distinguished, would soon have utterly perished from among men. But Jesus lives in the world at this moment, and has influen- ced the world from his death till now. It is no fiction, no mere conjecture, but a fact ; an unques- tioned, unquestionable fact. There have been multitudes in all the ages since his death, and at 48 THE CHRIST OP HISTORY. this moment, after nearly two thousand years, there are multitudes to whom He is dearer than life. History tells of warriors who reached the summit of their fame in comparative youth ; it tells of men of science also, and of scholars, and of statesmen, who in youth rose to great and envied distinction. But the difference is obvious and it is wide, be- tween the conquest of territory and the conquest of minds; between scientific, literary, or political renown, and moral and spiritual influence and ex- cellence. Is there an instance, not of a man acquir- ing fame in youth and preserving it in old age, but of a man who died in youth, gaining vast influence of a purely spiritual kind, not by force of arms and not by secular aid in any form, but simply and only by his principles and his life — of such a man transmitting that influence through successive generations, and after two thousand years retain- ing it in all its freshness, and continuing, at that distance of time, to establish himself, and to reign almightily in the minds and hearts of myriads of human beings ? If there be, or any thing approach- ing to it, where is it? There is not such an exam- ple in the whole history of the world, except Jesus Christ. It is time to remember that we are now only laying the foundation, not constructing the edifice. But this is the foundation on which it is proposed to rest the argument for the Divinity of Christ. HIS PERSONAL PRE-EMINENCE. 49 These , with one short addition to be mentioned im- mediately, were the outer conditions of the life of Christ, under which his public ministry and his personal character reached their destined develop- ment. It is not in that development alone , but in that development under these wnditions , that the evidence will be found of his True Origin and of his personal Pre-eminence. PART III. THE AGE AND PLACE IN WHICH HE APPEARED. Moral condition of the ago. — Gentile world. — Judea. — Galilee.— Nazareth. Mythical theory. — Irreconcilable with the outer conditions of Christ’s life. — These, facts not myths. — Not founded on Mes- sianic ideas. The circumstances to be introduced here do not need extended notice, but they are too important to be omitted entirely. The age in which Jesus appeared, the nation to which he belonged, and the place where he dwelt while among men, formed an obvious limitation around his earthly life. If there shall be found any thing free, and catholic, and world-wide in the affections and purposes of his soul, it must be remembered that he was born a Jew, one of a people who had been long accus- tomed to over-value themselves and to under- value all the rest of the world — a people who had become notoriously proud, narrow, and intolerant. He ap- peared, besides, at a peculiar crisis in the history of that people, and indeed of the world. The tes- timony of many independent witnesses proves be- CONDITION OF THE AGE. 51 yond question the awful corruption of manners into which the nations of antiquity had then sunk. It is represented that the age betrayed a secret con- sciousness of its own moral condition, and a secret apprehension that some terrible change was ap- proaching. It would be mere pedantry to quote in proof of this, from Lucian on the one hand and from Juvenal and Persius on the other, passages with which even a moderate scholarship is familiar. And with respect to Judea, the Jewish historian of the times* speaks with unfeigned horror of the moral abominations which then darkened his coun- try as well as the Roman world. But Galilee was disreputable even in Judea, wicked as it was; and even in Galilee, Nazareth was notorious for the ig- norance and profligacy of its inhabitants. It is a recorded fact that Christ’s connection with this place, merely as a dweller in it, created a prejudice against him, and attached a stigma to his name. The question was put, as if it contained its own answer, “ Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth ?”f Jesus spent his life, till he was thirty years of age, amid the degradation and pol- lution of this village, constantly familiar with scenes which were calculated to destroy the seeds of all virtue in his opening soul. It was here, also, * Joseph. Antiq. Jud. See the detail commencing, Kai n porepoi tuv ’ lmaKfiv , k. t. ?i. lib. 18. cap. 3., Geneva, 1663. \ John, i. 46 52 THE C II II I S T OF HISTORY. in the view of those who had known him from his infancy, that he stood forth, at the end of thirty years, to unfold that character, and to assume and execute that mission which are now to form the subject of aii extended, and we hope also an im partial investigation. Thus far our task is accomplished; however briefly and hastily, the outer conditions of the life of Christ have been spread before us. But it would be an unpardonable omission, if even here, special attention were not invited to the fact that these are utterly irreconcilable with the vaunted mythical theory. The ablest expositor of this theory, while admitting a certain basis of historical truth in the Christian Gospels, denies altogether their authen- ticity as histories, and maintains that the Life which they delineate, like the ancient mythologies of Greece and Rome, is fabulous rather than historical. What seem to be facts he pronounces myths, shad- owing forth certain spiritual truths, and these he labors to show were the very truths most firmly believed by the nation in connection with the ex- pected Messiah. His avowed purpose is to prove that by the aid of their imagination the writers of the Gospels wrought up the scanty materials which they possessed into a series of fables, each contain- ing a spiritual meaning, and that meaning always FACTS, NOT MYTHS. 53 in harmony with their traditionary ideas, and even suggested by them. With the utmost confidence we can defy contra- diction when we assert that these principles are incapable of being applied to that series of iacts which has formed the subject of the short reyiew we have just finished. With whatever plausibility they may be brought to bear upon other parts of the evangelical narrative, it will baffle the most dexterous criticism to adjust them to this portion of it: 11 The corrupt and debasing influences amid which Jesus grew up in the village of Nazareth ” — “ The shortness of his earthly course, and its igno- minious close ” — “ His poverty, his humble trade as a carpenter, and his want of education and of world ly patronage” — these are the things which we have put forward as the outer conditions of Christ’s life. These were not only not in harmony with the Mes- sianic ideas of the Jews at that time, or indeed at any time, but they were diametrically opposed to them . W e make bold to maintain that they were the very last things which a Jew would ever have dreamed of connecting with the life of his Messiah. They are not Messianic; the most unscrupulous ingenuity can never construe them into myths, or make them harmonize with national and tradition- ary fancies. Whatever be fable, these are certainly facts, and would have been eagerly concealed, if they had not been received and undeniable facts 54 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. and these facts are all that are now demanded, as the basis on which to found an argument for the true divinity of Christ. “Jesus was a resident in the village of Nazareth till he was thirty years of age. He died in compa- rative youth, when he was only thirty-three years old. He was a working carpenter ; poor, unknown, untaught, inexperienced, and unbefriended.” We shall go to some obscure hamlet of our land, known chiefly for the extreme profligacy of its inhabitants — we shall go to the workshop of a carpenter there, to a young man at the bench, earning his bread by the labor of his hands, remarkable only because amid the surrounding vice, he has preserved him- self uncontaminated — we shall go to this youthful artisan, not yet thirty years of age, born of humble parents, brought up in a condition of poverty, associating only with the poor, in no way connected with the rich, the learned, the influential, or receiv- ing assistance, or even countenance, from them — we shall go to this poor young man, who has had no intercourse with cultivated society, no access to books, no time for reading and study, no education but the commonest, and no outward advantages of any kind above others in his humble station, from his birth till that time. Such, in simple historical truth, such exactly was Jesus of Nazareth ; and these were the very conditions under which he developed bk future character, and rose to his future position. BOOK SECOND. THE WORK OF CHRIST AMONG MEN. IN FIVE PARTS. Part I. His own Idea of His public Life. II. The Commencement of His Ministry. JII. The marked Character of His public Appearance*. IY. His Teaching. Y. The Argument from His Work to His Divinity. PART I. HIS OWN IDEA OF HIS PUBLIC LIFE. His public position, the act of his own will. — His claim to Mes siahship. — His idea of Messiahship. — Not temporal but spirit- ual. — Not national but universal. — Jesus alone in his age, his country, the world It is a fact that Jesus of Nazareth rose to a posi- tion of unrivaled prominence in the eyes of his country. Whether this may appear to have re- sulted, according to the natural succession of events, from causes which are at once obvious, or whether it shall be found inexplicable on ordinary principles, the fact itself remains; and no natural- istic, rationalistic, or mythic theory, can expunge it from the record. Perhaps the broad and startling peculiarities of the age in which Jesus appeared, on the one hand, influenced his mind, and on the other hand, pre- pared his countrymen to recognize his assumed prominence. The great epochs in the history of the world, when it is laboring under some intolerable burden, or heaving with some new and urgent mission just ripe for development, find for them- 3 * 58 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. selves the men equal to their wants. Unwonted re- sults are always exhibited at such times — powers which had never before revealed their existence are drawn forth, and latent attributes of character start into sudden energy at the bidding of extraordinary emergencies. Individuals, in spite of themselves, are then elevated to celebrity, or the necessities of the times appeal to some mind so resistless^, that although uninvited, yet secretly conscious of reso- lution and energy, equal to the crisis, the man feels himself compelled to step forth at once into publicity. It is certain, that no demand from any quarter was made upon Jesus to attempt the emancipation of his country and his age. The eyes of the nation were not turned to him ; and no party in the nation, perhaps not an individual, was prepared to find a Redeemer in him. The transition from private to public life was spontaneous on his part. The first thought, the matured purpose, and the decisive act, were all entirely his own. He came forth of his own accord — he assumed a public position, and was not compelled, or even invited, or even encouraged, to accept it. This was marvellous. We can not but ask, did it not abash a man in his condition to become, and above all, to make himself, an object of universal attention ? Did not his want of prepa- ration, and his conscious incapacity for a great public enterprise overwhelm him? Did he not HIS PUBLIC POSITION HIS OWN ACT. 59 tremble to encounter the caprice of the multitude — the learning, bigotry, and jealousy, of the priest- hood, and the tyranny, and cruelty of the civil rulers? He did not, so far as can be discovered. Without fear, but with no ostentation of courage, J esus placed himself on an unusual elevation. His entrance into public life, whatever it might mean, and whatever it might involve, was not a foreign suggestion, but a native impulse — a deliberate pur- pose of his own ; and his own purpose also regula- ted all his movements throughout. Neither the popular feeling, nor even the wishes of his disciples, nor the current of events, were suffered to govern him, for he repeatedly acted in the face of them all. His ; own idea from the first was supreme, and his life was a determined realization of that idea, in spite of every opposing force. The highest end of Christ’s mission, whether in his mind, or in the evangelic record, is not now the subject of investigation. His entire life, his per- sonal character, and his public labors would require to be spread out ; and not only his life, but his death, with all its mysterious meaning ; and not only his life and his death, but the subsequent his- tory of himself and his cause would require to be examined, before we could reach even the ma- terials for forming a correct judgment of his mis- sion, in its wide and holy significance. It is enough at present to know, that he claimed to be Tha 00 THE CHRIST OP HISTORY. Messiah of the Jews. He repeatedly avowed this claim in plain terms ; and it is obvious, on the face of the gospels, that from first to last, the convic- tion in his mind, one of the formative and govern- ing pi-inciples of his public life, was this, that he was The Messiah. It is historically certain that at this period the advent of a deliverer was widely expected, and ex- pected with intense enthusiasm. The Gentile world, groaning beneath its burden of darkness and crime, awaited a supernatural redemption ; and Judea was tremulous with a hope well defined, and established by the authority of many a sacred text. It was not wonderful that, in a time of univer- sal and high excitement many unfounded claims should be put forward, and especially that among the Jews pretenders should start up, moved by personal ambition or patriotism, or religious enthu- siasm. Besides, it must not be overlooked that the appearance of John the Baptist, a genuine claimant of religious distinction, whose success at this period was unbounded, was calculated not to repress, but to deepen the aspirations of other susceptible souls. Perhaps in this way, humble as Jesus was, the latent spark of ambition, patriotism, or piety, was kindled up in his breast, and at last in that obscure village, he came to hope and believe that he was 4i the elect of God.” But a critical and vital ques^ tion demands solution here, before we can consent NOT TEMPORAL BUT SPIRITUAL. 61 to this interpretation of the origin of his move- ments. It is this : were the received views of the character and the mission of the Messiah, Christ’s views? Had he only caught the spirit of his times ? Was he only an embodiment of the popular faith? Was he only a creation, naturally springing up oul of sentiments and feelings which had long rooted themselves in the heart of the nation? He was not ; but he was diametrically the opposite of all this. His idea had nothing in common with the views and the spirit which were then universal, but was peculiar to himself and perfectly original. The Jewish Messiah,* in the belief of the Jewish people, was to be a monarch and a conqueror ; his kingdom was to be an earthly kingdom, and his glory, gathered first from the conquest, and then from the sovereignty of the whole world, was to be earthly glory. Such a creed to a youthful heart, must have been powerfully seductive. A throne, a crown, and the empire of a world, might well have kindled ambition in the dullest soul. But Jesus of Nazareth never aspired to sovereignty, 01 wealth, or earthly glory of any kind. He collected no armies and no instruments and resources of war; he invaded no territory and assumed no state such as became a warrior or a prince. The idea that the love of conquest, or of the splendors * Charming’s Sermon on the Character of Christ, Glasgow odition of works, p. 425. 62 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. and pomp of royalty, the love of fame or of world- ly power, ever had a place in his mind, is utterly destitute of support. It is even in the face of all the evidence. No part of his conduct, none of his proceedings, and none of his sayings, awaken such a suspicion. “ My kingdom is not of this world,” he declared to Pontius Pilate ; “ If my kingdom were of this world, then would my serv- ants fight, that I should not be delivered unto the Jews ; but now is my kingdom not from hence.” 1 If he had it in his heart to be a king, and he cer- tainly had, it was to be a king not of bodies , but of souls ; if he aspired to reign, it was to reign not over men, but in them, in their judgments, affec- tions, and consciences. “I am come,” he said, “a light into the world.” 3 “To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth.” 3 The only weapon of which he made use was spiritual truth ; he did nothing but teach. His life, his words, all the mani- festations of his character, are consistent only with the design to achieve, not a material, but a moral conquest, and to effect not a political, but a spirit- ual revolution in the world. He had risen to the conception of a purely spiritual reign, the concep- tion of a palace and a throne for God in the soul of man, the conception of the regeneration of man’s inward nature, and the free and glad restoration of 1 John, xviii. 36. 2 lb. xii. 46. 3 lb. xviii. St. NOT NATIONAL, BUT UNIVERSAL. 63 that nature to the unseen, but living and ever-pres- ent Father of souls. We have looked only at one side of the popular faith. Viewed from an opposite side, the original- ity and individuality of Christ’s idea will be still more apparent. The Messiah, in the belief of tbe Jewish nation, was to be not only a monarch, but emphatically a Jewish monarch ; reigning, indeed, over all the kingdoms of the world, but acknowl- edging a peculiar relation to the ancient people ; his throne being in Jerusalem, and his ministers and distinguished servants, Jews. This belief, at a time when they were laboring under a foreign yoke, had become tenfold more dear ; every feeling of patriotism was enlisted on its side, in .circumstances when, if ever, patriotism is genuine and fervid; not to say that, in this case, patriotism was invested with the sanctity of religion. Last of all, the popular faith harmonized with the deep hereditary contempt of the Jews for the rest of mankind, with their settled persuasion of the . distinction which God had made between them and all other nations, and with their long-cherished anticipa- tions of permanent and undisputed pre-eminence. Nothing can be more clear than that, to oppose a belief so deep-seated, to crush hopes so sacred, to disown the distinction between Jews and Gentiles, and to look with equal favor on both, was to invite unmeasured and relentless hatred, and certain dis- 64 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. grace and defeat. If Jesus had meant to ingratiate himself with his countrymen, his course would have been to sympathize with their creed and their hopes . 1 But, independently of any personal or public object which he might have in view, how could he have failed to adopt as his own, the faith of his country in this matter ? He had been brought up, like others, in all the common views; he must have heard them often from his mother’s lips, from grave and pious men also, and especially in the synagogue of Nazareth on the Sabbath days. There is no reason to think that he can have heard any thing but the common views, from his infancy up- ward. But he had risen, nevertheless, to a purer and loftier faith, and somehow had formed for himself quite a novel and original idea of the char- acter of the Messiah. “ The hour cometh,” he said to the woman of Samaria, u when neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, ye shall worship the Father; . . . when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth .” 2 Re- ligion to him, and the bonds of religious fellow- ship, w’ere not national, but spiritual; connected, not with place or people, but with the state of the soul. He believed in something more dear than country, more dear than even the closest of earthly 1 See Whately’s Introductory Lessons on the Christian Evi- dences. 2 John iv. 21-23. NOT NATIONAL, BUT UNIVERSAL. 65 relationships. “ Whosoever shall do the will of mj Father who is in heaven, the same is my brother and sister and mother.” 1 2 “ They shall come from the east and from the west, and from the north and from the south, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the king- dom of heaven.” 3 God’s kingdom and his own mission, as he understood it, embraced the world, and was designed, not to confer peculiar dis- tinctions on a single nation, but to originate and diffuse blessings to which all nations alike should be welcome. His idea was catholic, as it was purely spiritual. Born and educated a Jew, asso- ciating only with Jews, never beyond the limits of Judea in his life, whence had he derived this idea, whence caught this spirit ? how gained this expan sion and nobility of soul, how reached this large, and lofty, and Godlike faith ? That poor young man whose external history we have looked upon, was alone in his country, in his age, in the world. His great soul rose above religious prejudices and errors, and above all na- tional, educational, and social influences. He stood forth not a Jew, but a man to fulfill a high and purely spiritual mission ; embracing not Judea only, but the world ; not a nation only, but universal 1 Matthew xii. 50. 2 Matthew viii. 11. and Luke xiii. 29. — See Channing’s Ser- mon as above. 66 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. humanity. And was Ae, then, essentially, nothing more than he seemed to be ? Was all this possi* ble, in the circumstances, to a mere man ? Above all, was it possible to such a man as we have found Jesus outwardly was? ;V PART II. THE COMMENCEMENT OF HIS MINISTRY. He dealt with the Age and Country collectively . — Their Character. — Christ, the Incarnate Conscience of both. — He not conscious of Personal Guilt. — Began by rebuking, in order to reform, the Nation. The marked difference between the views which are now held of the office of teaching, and those which were prevalent in the ancient world, must not be overlooked. Very extended freedom of in- vestigation and communication was enjoyed in heathen nations by all classes, without distinction. The priesthood were not considered to possess higher rights and powers in this respect than others, and any individual, without violating any law or any established usage, might found a school and promulgate his faith or his skepticism. No restrictive policy, at least as to persons, was sanc- tioned even in Judea, and even the office of religious teaching was not reserved for the clerical or any other privileged order. There were rabbis, the heads of schools for sacred learning, and there were also scribes and lawyers whose business it was to 68 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. write out copies of the sacred text and to expound its meaning ; but they were not necessarily priests nor of the Levitical tribe. There was nothing in the laws or customs of Judea, to hinder any in- dividual from assuming the office of religious teacher. It may therefore have excited little sur- prise, when Jesus began to teach, that he was no priest or rabbi, or scribe or lawyer. But it must have struck the men of that generation that he was young, and poor, and unlearned ; all the outer conditions of his life were such as to make it won- derful that he should aspire to any public office, and to insure that, if he hazarded the attempt, his presumption would be punished with certain and signal failure. But the voice of Christ was lifted up, and the world heard, as, indeed, the world hears to this day. In some of the villages of Galilee, he first be- gan to speak, to individuals or to small or large assemblages of persons, as the circumstances might be. He journeyed throughout Galilee, then throughout the other parts of Judea, and was fre- quently in Jerusalem preaching and teaching. It is the first tones of his voice which we now seek to catch, the commencement of his ministry which we now seek to observe and interpret. He began to deal with facts rather than with doctrines — with this fact especially, that one great era in the world’s history was then closing, and another of higher DEALS WITH THE AGE AND COUNTRY. 69 meaning and of brighter promise was then opening upon men. He began by characterizing the masses rather than individual; by depicting the country and the age collectively, and in their broad and prominent qualities. He foretold the speedy doom of things as they then were, and declared that evil, wide-spread and deep-seated, could no longer be endured; and that a radical spiritual revolution was at hand — a kingdom of God in place of a reign of hypocrisy and formalism. And he taught at the same time that the duty of the age was ex- pressed in one word, repentance; not in the re- stricted meaning to which custom has reconciled us, but in the sense of an entire and universal change of mind. u Repent,” he cried as he commenced his public course; u change your minds , for the reign of heaven is at hand.” 1 He thus made it known through the length and breadth of the land, that in his judgment, at least, nothing would avail but a thorough and entire reformation of principles and of manners. It must have been at once evi- dent that Jesus was no panderer to the prejudices and vices of the times in which he lived, or of any favored class of individuals. He pointed with a faithful hand to the opinions, the habits, the moral- ity, the religion, the worship, the entire spirit of the age, and pronounced that the condition of things was utterly corrupt and must be revolution- 1 Matt. iv. 17. 70 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. ized. The voice of his opening ministry to all classes in the nation was this, “ Repent ; change your minds, for the reign of heaven is at hand.” It does not rest on his statements only, but on ample historical evidence, that that particular period bore the character of deep hypocrisy and ungodliness. Rigid observance of religious cere- monies was combined with ignorance of religion itself and with an utter destitution of its spirit. Gross wickedness was hidden beneath the forms and the name of sanctity. Spiritual worship, the veneration and love of a God of righteousness, purity, truth, and all moral excellence, w*as almost unknown. There was a magnificent temple, an established worship, an ordained priesthood, a vast and gorgeous ritual, and sacrifices, and offerings, and feasts and fasts. There were also synagogues open every day and recognized forms of prayer which were repeated, not only in private, but in the market-places, and at the corners of the streets. It was even sought to invest the food, the dress, the looks, the postures of the body with the sacredness of religion ; and if such things as these had con- stituted piety, that age must have been pre-emi- nently pious. But Jesus declared that true worship is perfectly separable from these things, and is not essentially connected with any of them, though it may consist along with them all. God looks to the soul alone, to its genuine and uncon- THEIR CHARACTER. 71 strained actings, its reverence, trust, and love. Worship in God’s sight is wholly spiritual — always, altogether, only within the soul. Human virtue was as little understood in that age, as Divine worship. A selfish spirit had con- sumed the heart of all true goodness, not only as between man and his God, but as between man and man. Morality hav* become an organized hypoc- risy, truth and inward excellence empty names, and ritual observances, which contained no homage of the understanding or of the heart, were the vail thrown over unrighteous and impure lives. Jesus proclaimed the sacredness, dignity, and beauty of moral excellence, and that, without this, there could be no greatness and no worth. He conveyed to the ears of his countrymen, some things altogether new, and others he announced with greater clear- ness and with new authority. The greatness of humility and the dignity of love as taught by him, were new, and they were too palpably unwelcome, as well as new, to Gentiles and Jews. The pride, ambition, and covetousness of the human heart, the doctrine of retaliation, and the warlike spirit of the times, were utterly opposed to this teaching. Jesus blessed and honored the poor in spirit. He taught that virtue consisted in the patient endurance and the sincere forgiveness of wrongs, and in kindness to the wrong-doer ; consisted not in revenge, but in love, in genuine good-will — good-will even to 72 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. enemies. It was then believed — it is still very widely believed — that high self-estimation is essen- tial to dig nity of character. Jesus put his hand on the head of a little child, and said, “Whosoever shall humble himself as this little child, the same is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” 1 Low- liness is greatness, genuine goodness is greatness, child-like obedience to God is greatness. True dig- nity is a lowly and guileless state of soul. Hum- bleness of mind, together with rectitude, purity, truth, love of God and good-will to man, these are the elements of moral grandeur and of the highest spiritual dignity. Whether or not the ministry of Christ realized at the last what it promised at the commencement, it certainly began with a faithful revelation to that age of its own moral condition. The truest bene- factor of any age, is he who exposes and expresses it to itself. Self-knowledge is wealth and well-be ing, the basis of moral reformation and of moral progress, whether to the individual or to the mul- titude. In this case, conscience, stronger than the pride and the blindness of the soul, brings up from the depths within an image which the man or the multitude fails not to recognize ; and the look of which, though it alarms, corrects and heals. He who shall touch and quicken another’s conscience, who shall present truth to it, and rouse it to fidel* 1 Matthew xviii. 4. TRUEST BENEFACTOR OF THE AGE. 73 ity, performs an invaluable, but also a difficult and a hazardous service. And the difficulty and the hazard are incalculably augmented when we pass from an individual to a nation ; for the blindness, the pride, and the perversity of will in this case are beyond measure more inacessible and invincible. The age, like the man, flatters itself, becomes rec- onciled by habit to any evil — so reconciled, that at length evil is invested with a kind of sacredness. False shame makes it reluctant to confess and to yield: it is eager to find out excellences, and as eager not to see or to forget faults, until there is at last no eye, no ear, no soul to distinguish that which is wrong. A conscience is needed for the age, as for the individual — a power that shall reveal it to itself, and arouse and convict it. Jesus acted in the outset of his career to the men of his generation — not in promise only, but in fact — the part of the truest friend, and traced out before them in broad and faithful lines their moral likeness, in order that they might recognize themselves. The age in its express lineaments at that time, in its igno- rance, formalism, pride, hypocrisy, and impurity, he held up to itself. For the time, he was an in- carnate conscience to the nation, performing that office which each man owed to himself, but would not discharge ; and crying to all in a voice fitted to pierce to the depths of their spiritual nature, u Re- 4 74 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. pent ; change your minds, for the reign of heaven is at hand.” Boldness and honesty are not always associated with becoming modesty, and a keen perception of what is wrong in others, is very separable from a quick sensibility to the faults of one’s own charac- ter. Had this Jesus, we are entitled to ask, no share in the guilt of his country ? Admitting that his powers were extraordinary — that he was, as he seemed to be, able to descend below events and manifestations, down to their hidden causes, and to bring up these causes discovered and interpreted — admitting that in his recorded statements no want of comprehensiveness of observation, sobriety of judgment, or impartiality of spirit, can be detected, are we to forget, that he himself belonged to the country, to the age which he so unqualifiedly con- demned ; and have we not a right to ask whether he, therefore, was not necessarily involved in their guilt ? It will be shown hereafter, and it is scarcely denied by any intelligent and candid rejector of the higher claims of Christianity, that the personal char- acter of Jesus was unimpeachable ; at all events was in point of fact unimpeached. Proclaiming the sins of others, he , so far as the evidence goes, was above suspicion, above charge ; and in all his utterances, there is nothing to indicate a sense either of person- al guilt or personal danger. It often appears, in what he says and does, that the spiritual condition NOT CONSCIOUS OF PERSONAL GUILT. 75 ol others affected his soul with genuine compassion for them, and with deep solicitude for the great cause of God and man; but there is no token either of fear or of shame, on his own account. He seems rather to stand apart, and only to look dow upon the facts of a condition in which he had no personal share. The question imperatively demands an answer — Who was this, whose mode of looking on human affairs and whose feelings were so original, so supe- rior, and who professed to be gifted with such un- common insight into the moral state of the world, and with such fore-knowledge, withal, of its coming destinies ? What right had he, to pronounce on the spiritual condition and the pressing duty of his country? It is said, in reply to these questions, that the convictions of his conscience were imper- ative ? There is indeed no higher authority than conscience, and no higher virtue than to bow im- plicitly to that authority. But how did it happen that Christ’s conscience alone was thus clamorous, and that he alone was compelled to speak out? A man distinguished in the church or the state, ven- erable by years of sainted character, and of large and ripened experience, may be allowed to do what would be presumptuous in any other. But this was no gifted, experienced, or distinguished char- acter ; no statesman, priest, or venerable sage ; but to all mortal seeming, an inexperienced, uneducated 76 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY, mechanic. The fact is simply this, an obscure youth took it upon himself to be the teacher, reprover, re- former, of his country and his age. Was this pos- sible, in the circumstances, to a mere man — above all, was it possible to such a man as we have found Jesus outwardly was? PART TIL THE MARKED CHARACTER OF HIS PUBLIC APPEARANCES. f. Severity. — Moral Condition of Palestine. — Scenes of His early Ministry. — Scribes and Pharisees. — Formalism and Hypocrisy. — II. Tenderness. — Instances and Source. — III. Simplicity. — General Character of His Life. — Relation of His Teaching to Times, Places, Persons. — His Words and Illustrations. — IV. Authority. — Testimony of Hearers. — Claim to Connection with God. The individuality of Jesus strongly impressed itself on bis whole public life. It gave a unique form, as has just been shown, to the beginning of his ministry, and the same impress, but drawn with deeper lines, was left on his entire subsequent course. One of the most marked features of Christ’s spirit and manner in public was I. The terrible severity with which, although sel- dom, he exposed and denounced evil. Friendless and powerless as he seemed to be — as in his earthly relations he certainly was — he did not repress on necessary occasions a burning indignation : and if a voice of thunder was required to awaken and alarm that generation, such a voice was lifted up and re 78 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. sounded through the length and breadth of the land. Supposing the aim of Jesus to have been, as we shall hereafter prove that it was, to plant a spirit- ual system among men — the mightiest obstruction then existing to such a system was the condition of Judea. The minds of the Jews were so proud, so blinded, and so hardened by sin, that until they were thoroughly aroused and convicted, there could be no opening for the entrance of new light and life. It was not of choice, but from necessity, that the preaching of Jesus took that form which was yet an exception to its pervading tone, and that with stern severity he rebuked the age in which he appeared. “This is an evil generation” — “an evil and adulterous generation” — “ a sinful generation” — “a wicked generation” — “ a perverse generation” — “that the blood of all the prophets which has been shed from the foundation of the world may be required of this generation.” 1 Upon the scenes of his earlier ministrations, he poured forth his indignant, yet pathetic warnings — “Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Beth- saidal for if the mighty works, which have been done in you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and in ashes. But I say unto you, it shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of judgment 'than for you. And thou, Capernaum, which art 1 Matthew, Mark, and Luke, passim. SCKIBES AND PHA exalted unto heaven, shall be hell.” 1 But the objects of deepest aversion and abhor- rence to Jesus were the Pharisees, Lawyers, and Scribes, the leaders of the chief sect in that day, the transcribers and interpreters of the Bible. He was strikingly more patient with the Sadducees, the latitudinarians and freethinkers of Judea, al- though he decisively condemned their principles. Even to the convicted and gross violator of the laws of morality, he spoke with wondrous gentle- ness. But his severity was consuming, when he turned to the high religious professors — the men of stern orthodoxy and of saintly rigor — the admired but unworthy champions of Judaism. Hypocrisy, pretense, hollow semblance, were of old, and they are still, unutterably abhorrent to Christ; and nothing was, or now is, so dear to him as simpli- city and sincerity. If there be still, as there were of old, men “ who tithe mint and anise and cum- min, but neglect the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith,” in whom, however fair their exterior, are found not the living princi- ples of religion, but only dead dogmas and sub- mission to outward forms. Christianity disowns them as Christ disowned these. The kingdom of God on earth which he announced and founded, is the reign of living principles in the soul, not the 1 Matthew, xi. 21, 22, 23. OF THE r IVER& T down to * 80 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. adoption with the lips, or even by the judgment, of a sj^stem of dogmas, however true, and not out- ward homage to any set of rites, however signifi- cant. The Being with whom we have to do is a spirit ; and his worship is a spiritual and real serv- ice. Nothing but truth, pure truth, a living reality in the soul, will answer to the principles and the spirit of the Christian books. Simple reality is every thing in this religion — pretense is infamy and crime. Against hypocrisy, formalism, pretense, Jesus lifted up his voice in the severest tones. “ Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.” “ Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites.” “ Ye shut the kingdom of heaven against men, and neither go in yourselves nor suffer them that are entering to go in.” “ Ye love greetings in the market-places, and the uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues.” “Ye bind heavy burdens on men’s shoulders, but ye your- selves will not touch them with one of your fingers.” “ Ye devour widows’ houses, and for a pretense make long prayers.” “ Ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, he is tenfold more the child of hell than before.” “Ye cleanse the outside, but within ye are full of extortion and excess.” “Ye strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.” “Ye blind guides.” “ Oh. fools, and blind.” “ Whited sepulchers, out- TENDERNESS. 81 wardly ye appear righteous, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.” “Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how shall ye escape the damnation of hell ?” 1 How withering, how blast- ing, must such words have been from such lips ! But imagine a young man outwardly conditioned as Jesus had always hitherto been and at this very moment actually was, equal to such thinking and such daring, and still more imagine him tolerated even for an instant in uttering such words — and all the while to be no other and no more than he seemed to be ! It is impossible. But severity in Christ was exceptional and occa- sional, as it was terrible. It was awakened only toward certain aspects of the age, and only to- ward certain classes of character. Another and quite opposite attribute pervaded and distinguished his official life — the attribute of II. Tenderness. The great lights of the world, brilliant but cold, have not often reflected much of this gentle virtue. Philosophers and sages have deemed susceptibility of heart unbecoming their character and vocation. A gifted and God-sent man, it is thought, must be superior to all the tenderer and softer impulses of ordinary human nature; and it is found in fact, that when men imagine they are appointed to act in God’s name, they at once assume a sort of holy isolation and crucify the 1 Matthew, xxiil 13-33. 4 * 82 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. common feelings and sympathies which bind them to their fellow-creatures. They speak down to humanity, instead of standing on its level and mingling in its sorrows and its joys. The life of Jesus Christ is full of incidents, that reveal surpassing tenderness of heart. As he jour- neyed to Jerusalem, when he drew near to the city, he wept over it, and said, “ 0 Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her chickens under her wings, but ye would not!” “ If thou liadst known, even thou, at least in this, thy day, the things that belong to thy peace ; but now they are hid from thine eyes I” 1 At the last, this city was distinguished by a singular act of his* grace ; and when be commanded his disci- ples to “ preach repentance and remission of sins among all nations,” he added, “ beginning at Jeru- salem” 3 Of the same character was the merciful notice of that disciple, who, in the hour of trial, had disowned and deserted him. The first words which Jesus spoke when he again met this fallen man were admonitory but gracious : a Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me?” 3 Among the multi- tudes who followed him to Calvary, were certain women, to whom he turned and said, “ Daughters 1 Luke, xiii. 34, and xix. 42. 2 Luke, xxiv, 47. 3 John, xxi. 15. INSTANCES OF TENDERNESS. 83 of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but for yourselves and for your children .” 1 Bethany recalls the image of a friendship, as genial and as touching, as ever grew on this earth. Jesus loved Martha, and Mary, and Lazarus. Lazarus fell sick and died. Jesus came to the house of mourning, and amid the desolation and anguish of the loving hearts there, he “ groaned in spirit, and was troub- led :” he followed the sisters to the grave, and, when he saw them weeping, and their friends also weeping, “ Jesus wept .” 2 Once, as he sat at table in a Pharisee’s house, a woman, who was a sinner, prostrated herself in his presence, and bathed his feet with her tears, and wiped them with her hair. She was spurned by the Pharisee ; but Jesus said, a Her sins, which are many, are forgiven her ; for she hath loved much .” 3 Once, when he happened to be in the temple, the Pharisees brought to him a woman convicted of a mortal crime. He addressed an indirect rebuke to them , which compelled them to retire with shame ; and then, turning to the guilty woman, he said, “ Where are those thine ac- cusers? Doth no man condemn thee? Neither do I condemn thee ; go, and sin no more .” 4 Sin- gularly gracious, forgiving, and loving was that voice which once was heard in the temple and the streets of Jerusalem, and which woke up the 1 Luke, xxiii 28. 3 Luke, vii. 4 L 2 John, xi. 35. 4 John, viii. 11. 84 . THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. echoes on the shore of the Lake of Galilee. It has long since died away, but not the living force of love which inspired it. That yet lingers in the ancient words which survive to this day. III. Simplicity very strikingly marked the public appearances of Christ. He was perfectly unaffected and inartificial. It will be difficult to find in the Gospels, even a seeming indication of disingenuous- ness on his part. No latent wish was in his heart to conceal any circumstance connected with his ori- gin, his past history, or his present position, from the fear that it might be unfavorable to his reputa- tion and success. There was nothing in him like maneuvering, desire to create impression, gain in- fluence and produce effect. If men who are really great, or who would be thought great, contract eccentric habits, adopt a peculiar mode of living, select some wild and strange abode, affect a singular dress, or manner, or look, or tone of voice, we shall search in vain for such extravagances in him. He affected no singular^, he assumed no consequence ; his dress, his mode of living, and his speech contin- ued to be to the last those of the common people. He appeared before his countrymen simply as he was and had always been, not at all solicitous to adapt either his history or his modes to his altered position. Christ had no particular building, like the Jew- ish doctors, or the heathen philosophers, where he SIMPLICITY". 85 delivered his instructions — no lyceum, grove, por- tico, or hall ; and he had no fixed days and hours, for unfolding the different branches of his system. The ancient sages were accustomed to distinguish their public from their private prelections. Some things they uttered freely to all who applied to them ; but there were others which they reserved for the initiated — doctrines peculiarly profound, or peculiarly sacred, and which required a long pre- paratory course before they could be appreciated and adopted. Perhaps this was a legitimate method of awakening interest and securing power ; perhaps it was even necessary; certainly its effect was to create a vast amount of influence, and to maintain in the public mind a high idea of the resources and the wisdom of these sages. Jesus spoke the same things to his disciples and to the people generally — to the few and the many. Whatever the character of his instructions might be, they were indifferently addressed to any sort of persons, any where, at any time. The most striking thoughts might be dis- closed to a single individual — a member of the sanhedrim, or a poor woman of Samaria, — or to many thousands in one assembly, or in a private house as he sat at table, or when he was walking, or when he was sitting wearied by Jacob’s well, or on a mountain, or in the plain, or on the shore of a lake, or from a fishing-boat, or in a synagogue, or in one of the cloisters of the temple ; but always, 86 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. simply as the occasion offered, without contrivance, without maneuver, or underhand motive. Christ composed no formal discourses, delivered no carefully constructed orations, but always spoke perfectly natural, making use of the commonest objects and incidents for illustration, just because they were near, and easily understood, and free to all. The lily, the corn seed, the grain of mustard, the birds of the air, the falling of a tower, the rain, the appearances of the sky, these, and the like, gave occasion for the utterance of high and imper- ishable ideas. And the language in which these ideas were uttered was the language of the common people. No severe philosophical style did he adopt, no scientific formulae, did he introduce, no new terminology did he create, no rigid dialectic method did he pursue, no high and hard abstractions, and no close and elaborate argumentation did he affect. He conveyed his instructions in the' most unpre- tending and informal manner, and in the common- est and simplest words. He owed literally nothing to phraseology, to modes, to circumstances. What- ever influence he acquired, and whatever power he exerted, it was owing to simple reality ; in no de- gree to management, pretense, tact, or show. He did nothing — nor even seemed to wish — to suggest an idea for which there was not an actual basis, or to make the idea seem any other than the actual basis sustained. In his manner, his words, and his AUTHORITY. 87 acts, he was simply real, not more, not less, no other than he showed himself to be, so far, that is to say, as respected his earthly relations, for with them only we have to do here. He was pure, un- affected, inartificial reality — his disciples maintain, the only perfectly simple reality that ever alighted on this earth. Simplicity is true greatness, it is moral nobility, and reveals a nature too pure and too genuine to endure deception or pretense. But was this likely to have been the taste, or if the taste, the attain- ment, of one in the circumstances of Jesus of Naz- areth, had he been no more and no other than his external life disclosed ? Blending with the attribute of simplicity there was a mysterious IY. Authority , which marked the public appear- ances of Christ. Those who listened to him often testified that “ his word was with power.” 1 “ The people were astonished at his teaching, for he taught as one that had authority , and not as the scribes.” 2 They questioned one another, saying, “ Whence hath this man this wisdom?” 3 On one occasion, certain officers sent by the Pharisees to apprehend him were arrested by his voice as he taught, were unable to execute the order, and re- turned, saying, “ Never man spake like this man.” 2 Matthew, vii. 29. 4 John, vii. 46. 1 Luke, iv. 32. 3 Matthew, xiii. 64. 88 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. Whether it was an air of majesty about his whole appearance, or his calm and earnest voice, or the depth and force of what he said, there was left on the minds of all who listened to him an impression of powder more than human, which they found it impossible to resist. Perhaps the origin of this impression, at least in part, admits of some further explanation. In addition to any singularity in his ideas, or in his mode of conveying them, there were certain forms of expression which he was in the habit of using, and which were most startling and mysterious. This young man, from a remote and disreputable village, who had spent his life in manual labor, and had only lately appeared in pub- lic, not only claimed to possess an intimate ac- quaintance with spiritual truth, but he spoke in a way in which even the prophets of Israel had never dared to speak. His frequent style of address to his countrymen was this: “Verily, verily, I say unto you,” “Ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old time but I say unto you .” 1 “ Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do unto you .” 2 “ I appoint unto you a kingdom .” 3 “ Come unto me , all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me, and ye shall find rest to your souls .” 4 We offer no interpretation of 1 Mattliew, v. 41 2 John, xiv. 13. 3 Luke xxii. 29 4 Matthew, xi. 28, 28. TESTIMONY OF HEARERS. 89 these expressions at present, and we found no argu- ment on what may be conceived to be their natural import. It is enough that they were uttered, and that they must have contributed to that impression which we have seen was felt so strongly by all who listened to Christ. With, or without such passages, it is certain that an extraordinary authority and power accompanied his words ; and unless we add this element, we shall fail to reach a true concep- tion of what his appearances in public actually were. Aided, then, by the general views at which we have now arrived, let us thoughtfully follow Jesus in his wanderings through Galilee and Judaea, and look upon him in the village and the city, on the mountain side and the lake, surrounded by a small and select company, or by a vast mixed multitude. Recalling all the facts of his early history and his outward condition up to the moment when he entered on his public course, our interest, almost anxiety, can not but be profound. What is there — we try to satisfy ourselves as we ask — what is there about his general spirit and manner as a public man, to distinguish him from others? Without regarding at present either the subjects which he selects, or his method of treating them, we ask, what is the general impression left on the mind of his qualities as a teacher? Are there manifest signs of his origin and previous condition, marks 90 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. of servility and timidity, traces even of coarseness and vulgarity, evident proofs of inexperience and youth? There are not. On the contrary, while Jesus always speaks with transparent honesty, we find among the qualities which especially marked him, now a terrible severity, and again, more fre- quently, a surpassing tenderness, as if his soul was a deep fountain of compassion for man; now an unaffected simplicity, in appearance, in language, and in manner, and again, a power more than human, irresistible by those that listened to him. And was this verily a young man just taken from the carpmter’s workshop, uneducated, inex- perienced, and friendless ? It was. But if so, was he only this and no more ? A more decisive reply to this question, and from a higher region of thought than we have yet ascended, may perhaps be found. Christ’s teach- ing itself may convert into certainty the conjecture which even his marked qualities as a teacher sug- gest. The words that fell from him, the spiritual doctrines which he revealed, may throw fresh light on his origin, and irresistibly lift our faith above the mere outward history which belonged to him. The inquiry, at all events, is worth whatever pains can be bestowed upon it, and it must be conducted witv> nar>rW qn d w ith patience. PART 17. HIS TEACHING. CHAPTER I. PRELIMINARY GENERAL VIEWS. The medium through which the teaching of Christ is presented to the world, is very singular in its character. His disciples can not appeal to any work from the hands of their Master, con- structed for the purpose of giving a full and sys- tematic exposition of his doctrines. Nor did the Master, in default of such a work from his own hand, select for this high task one of the most gift- ed of those who were attached to his person, and prepare him, by a special course of instruction for accomplishing the task with success. The Arabian prophet committed, to writings dictated by himself, those views which he wished should be connected with his name. The writings of Epictetus, Seneca, and the later Stoics, yet extant, contain a full ex- hibition of the ethical and divine philosophy of that remarkable school. Socrates has found histo- 92 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY rians and expositors of his peculiar teaching in two of the most accomplished and able of his disciples, Plato and Xenophon. Even the Chinese patri- arch, Confucius, who lived long prior to the cap- tivity of the Jews in Babylon, left in his own writings — if the opinion of competent scholars may be relied on — an authentic account of the principles and laws which he sought to establish among his countrymen. But there is no book by Christ him- self, or by any of his disciples, devoted to a formal and extended exposition of his personal teaching. Our knowledge of this must be gathered from a a few set discourses and a few parables, from pri- vate conversations, and from incidental remarks, which discourses, and parables, and conversations, and remarks are scattered, manifestly without any rigid regard to order, over the narrative of a life, itself full of intense interest. This narrative, again, is presented in four different parts, by four different hands, at different periods. Each of these parts, as might be expected, contains much which is also found in the others ; and if all the repetitions were expunged, the entire record of Christ’s life would be reduced to a few pages. Within this small com- pass, and forming only a little part of it, lie the whole of the materials which make up the only ac- count which has come down to us of the substance of Christ’s personal teaching. It is not to be expected, under all these disaa* RECORD OF CHRIST’S TEACHING. 93 vantages, that a ministry extending over no more than three years, can have sent down to the world a legacy of spiritual truth at all to be compared with what the world has received from other quar- ters. Such an expectation is the very last which could enter the mind of one who should look into the Gospels for the first time, without prepossession and without previous information. What can a mere youth, a poor, uneducated, inexperienced and friendless Gallilean mechanic, have said to the world which deserved the world’s attention ? Let us hear ! if with caution, also with impartiality. It must be distinctly understood in the outset that whatever spiritual truths are taught in the Gospels, their authorship shall here be attributed without scruple to Jesus of Nazareth. It was inti- mated at the earlier stage of this investigation that there was incomparably greater difficulty in sup- posing that the Christ of the Gospels was an ideal creation, existing nowhere but in the minds of such men as the Evangelists, than in supposing that they had only represented a real living being, and were able to represent him in the manner they have done, because they had actually seen him. The argument is the same in kind, which we now apply to a particular department in the life of Christ. It is every way more natural and less diffi- cult to conceive that such men as the Evangelists were, merely record what they had actually heard 94 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. from the lips of Jesus, than to imagine that the ideas which they express were the growth of their own minds. It may be assumed, as beyond any reasonable doubt, that the fountain of all the spirit- ual truths contained in the Gospels was the mind of Jesus Christ. What, then, are the spiritual truths which are clearly and undeniably taught in the Gospels? Without attaching importance to every word and every occasional expression, without straining and forcing the language, and contending for all which it might be possible to prove lies in it, we seek now to give prominence only to so much as, it can not be doubted by any dispassionate reader, it con- tains. We enter on this investigation with a feeling of deep solemnity and with conscious singleness of purpose, seeking not to exaggerate in any thing, but rather to understate the results of impartial inquiry, and desirous that whatever is here asserted, respecting the substance of Christ’s teaching, should be severely tested by an appeal to the Gospels themselves. It could serve no good purpose to notice all the subjects of secondary importance on which the mind of Christ may have been incidentally express- ed. His views of civil society, of the relative du- ties of rulers and subjects, of poverty and wealth, and of the two conditions of human beings repre- SUMMARY OF IIIS TEACHING. 95 sented by these opposite names ; bis counsels, marked by deep sagacity and unbending principle, uttered in many various circumstances, addressed to bis disciples, to single individuals, or to classes of persons ; bis inculcation of duties religious, civil, social, personal ; bis faithful warnings to the un- thinking, the insincere, the vicious ; bis words of sympathy and consolation to the afflicted and de- sponding — all these maybe passed by without inju- ry to our argument. Leaving them, therefore, we shall attempt to produce, as faithfully and succinct- ly as we can, A SUMMARY OF CHRIST’S TEACHING. One who for the first time should intelligently examine the Christian Gospels, could not fail to be struck with the idea manifestly underlying their whole extent, and often lifted up into singular prom- inence, of a Universal Spiritual Reign, by the name of “the kingdom (or reign) of God” — “the kingdom (pr reign) of heaven.” Such a man would certainly reach the conviction that Jesus taught in a very unpretending, but at the same time a very intelligible manner ; that the human race, without distinction of Gentile and Jew, were destined to the highest spiritual elevation, of which their na- ture and their condition on earth admitted. The noticeable fact is, that the youthful Galilean carpen- 96 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. ter was abne in this teaching, and that no other mind before had risen to such views of the destiny of man on earth. Eighteen hundred years ago this divine thought first became a living word among men, and it has never perished since, and the world at this day is only laboring to work out the old idea of the Gospels. Conflicting theories of human pro- gress — of the emancipation of man’s intellect and heart — of his deliverance from ignorance, error, vice, and suffering — and of the advancement of knowledge and freedom, and individual and social happiness — find their root here. The first concep- tion is due to the mind of Jesus Christ, and in his teaching, the conception is presented, not vaguely and confusedly, but with luminous precision. It is the reign of God in men, when the Father of minds shall be known, loved, and revered by his children. It is the reign of righteousness, purity, truth, love, and peace, the universal reception and dominion among men of all true, just, holy, generous and di- vine principles. It is the highest stage of religious, moral, intellectual, social, and individual cultivation. It is the noblest development possible on this earth of all the attributes and .capabilities of humanity. It is spiritual victory after the battle of thousands of ages. It is the triumph of good and of God over moral and physical evil ! The idea originated with Christ, was matured in his mind, and was freely imparted in his teaching. His soul, during its so- SUMMARY OF HIS TEACHING. 97 journ below, bestowed this imperishable thought and kindled this inextinguishable hope. He first cast this immortal germ, u the seed of the king- dom,” into the bosom of the earth : what produce it shall yield, the world is yet waiting to behold. The doctrine of an universal spiritual reign opens to us another with which it stands closely connected. It is this, that the great battle of the world and of all time is with sin ; not with suffer- ing so much, as with that which is the cause of all suffering — with moral evil, the root and source of physical evil. The Christian Gospels are distin- guished by the frequent and vivid representation of sin as a deep and deadly evil in the heart, as vol- untary departure from rectitude, from purity, from truth, from love — in one word, from God, separa- tion from Him in thought, affection, and will. Particular crimes — falsehood, impurity, revenge, avarice, ambition, and the like — are sometimes sin- gled out for special reprehension; but, more fre- quently, the parent source of erime in all its forms is declared and exposed. The greatness of the evil stands out with appalling distinctness ; its de- basing and polluting nature also, and its plague-like power of self-propagation and perpetuation. In the teaching of Christ, sin is an undoubted and awful reality, the bitter cause of all that afflicts and crushes the world, the death of the human body, the perdition of the human soul. 5 98 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. The forgiveness of sin is as real in the Gospels, as its existence and its atrocity. The doctrine ap- pears in a more expanded form in the Apostolic Letters ; and there its nature, its basis, and its limi- tations are stated with greater variety of language, and its different aspects are set forth by a multitude of figures borrowed from the ancient Jewish wor- ship. But its importance and truth are clearly taught in the words of Christ. The nature of God, the perfections of his Being, and his relation to his earthly creatures, are so exhibited as to render for- giveness sure, and clear as sunlight. He who is true, and just, and holy, is also ineffably gracious: the burdened soul, crying for emancipation from evil, and trusting in God, has perfect assurance of pardon. The foundations of this fact yet wanted a flood of light which the Cross was to pour down upon them, and it was to be made yet more mani- fest how necessary and how glorious a thing God deemed it to be to forgive sin, and how intensely, how infinitely interested he was in this issue. But the certainty of forgiveness from God — unlimited and free forgiveness — was lifted up on high, one of the divinest lights in the public life of Jesus. Pardon of sin — not as a doctrine merely, or even as an object of hope, but as an experience, a fact realized in the soul' — supposes the reunion of man with God, and is the living germ of all spiritual excellence. The first necessity of man is the recog* SUMMARY OF HIS TEACHING. 99 nition of the highest of all his relations, his relation to God, the parent virtue is faith — faith in the be- ing of God, in his character, and his government. There arises the doctrine of Providence, connect- ing every moment of our earthly life, and every event with the Supreme Power, and with an invis- ible world. It is seen that there are vast spiritual laws which overspread and enwrap the universe ; sin is death , holiness is salvation. These laws are in harmony with the will of God, but they are eternal and immutable in themselves; not arbitrary ap- pointments, not originated by God, but founded in the unchangeable nature of things. These laws are what they are, by necessity , and never were, and never can be other than they are. Amid the sway of these eternal laws, guiding their administration and reigning supremely over all, is the great God. Spiritual providence is his government of the world, by these laws, and in the exercise of all his infinite attributes. It is universal, minute, unslum- bering : it is wise, it is holy, it is merciful : it is for, not against, the good ; always for the good, putting down evil, protecting, nourishing, helping every thing that is good; bringing forth the largest amount of good with the smallest admixture of evil. It is terrible only to evil, it invites to reli- ance and hope. The doctrine of Prayer harmonizes with that of Providence. It rests on the fact of our dependence 100 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. on God, on the belief of our intimate connection with the invisible world, and. on the deep longing for spiritual communion which springs from the conviction, that God is to us the most real and the most near of all beings. Prayer is not an instru- ment for altering the purposes or moving the heart of God, or for procuring the suspension of the ordi- nary course of nature ; but it is one of the natural modes in which piety utters itself — in which it wants, for its own sake, to utter itself. It is a part of worship, one of the proper forthgoings of the created to the uncreated mind. True worship is within the soul. Whatever be its separate acts and its outward manifestations, its essence and its place are wholly spiritual. It is knowledge, ven- eration, trust, love. Piety toward God is the basis of all moral ex- cellence ; and it is a noble pile of virtues which is erected on this basis, in the teaching of Jesus. Common and acknowledged excellences — integri- ty, truthfulness, purity, temperance, justice — find their due place here ; but, in addition to these, there are elements either altogether or almost unknown elsewhere — humility, meekness, forgive- ness, self-denial, love to enemies. It is not only taught here that we should love others as we love ourselves, and do to them as we would have them do to us, but it is inculcated that the reigning prin- ciple in the soul must be a universal and genuine SPIRITUAL REIGN ON EARTH. 101 good-will, a deep desire to produce happiness, to put down evil, and to do only good to every living being. Our enjoyments, possessions, and imme- diate interests — every thing except our piety and virtue — must yield to this spirit of love. No evil conduct in any being, no personal wrongs we may have suffered at his hands, must be allowed to ex- tinguish the desire to bless even him. We are commanded to requite evil with good, and to love our enemies. Virtue is the burning and deep de- sire, cherished, in spite of every thing, to do only good ; it is sacrifice and service for others. The life of Christ, his disciples assert — with what truth we may be better able hereafter to judge — was a perfect realization of his teaching, an extended act of sacrifice and service, the living image on earth of the invisible God. The Divine nature is love ; eternal, infinite desire to spread blessedness. Jesus proclaims that human virtue in its foundation and its essence is represented by one word — love ; love to God and to man ; not a mere emotion, effeminate and enervating, a sign and a cause of weakness, but an enlightened, masculine, resolute and su- preme regard to the rights of God, and to the true interests of our fellow-beings. He proclaims that this is the end of rational existence, the dignity, strength, and joy of the rational nature. This end reached, man is Godlike, a partaker of Divine na- ture, recreated in the image of his Father. 102 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. Genuine, glowing, profound regard to God and to man is described as a Divine life in the human soul, an undying spark from the eternal fire, which, once enkindled, is never extinguished. The origin of the Divine life — its supports, conflicts, and va- rying manifestations — are. all set forth with sim- plicity and power. Spiritual truth is shown to be the aliment of the spiritual nature, “ living bread,” of which if a man eat he shall hunger no more ; “ living water,” of which if a man drink he shall thirst no more. Spiritual truth, understood, chosen, adopted into the soul, is the priceless good ; it is blessedness, freedom, power, and wealth ; it is pure, exalted, imperishable treasure. It can not be overlooked, that we have here, in a new form, the idea which at first we found to be the most prominent in the Gospel— the idea of a reign of God in the soul of man. The working out of this idea, in one or other of its forms, occupied the entire personal ministry of Christ. He lived for this, and for this he died, not to promulgate only, or to predict, but actually to found, a reign of righteousness, purity, truth, love, and peace, a spiritual kingdom of God among men. The rapid and condensed view of the teaching of Christ which has been presented, may be suffi- cient to help us to form a general conception of its character, but much more extended and particular acquaintance with it is required for the purpose THREE GREAT DOCTRINES. 103 which we contemplate here. It is necessary to enter largely into detail, and to examine separately and fully at least the leading subjects of Christ’s public ministrations. With this view, we now turn to the three great doctrines which are an- nounced in the Gospels ; — the doctrine of the Soul, the doctrine of God, and the doctrine of the Recon- ciliation of the Soul and God. CHAPTER II. OF THE SOUL. § I. THE SOUL’S REALITY AND GREATNESS. On the very threshold of this subject we are arrested by the humiliating necessity of confessing ignorance. That which formed one of the high themes of Christ’s teaching — the soul — is absolute- ly unknown, so far as respects its distinctive essence and nature. At the same time the ignorance thus confessed is not peculiar to this region of thought, for that which we call matter, and which is imme- diately and constantly before our senses, is as little understood as that which lies beyond the reach of sense, and which we call soul or spirit. Is there then any real distinction between the two ? is there in the nature of man an actual element answering to the word spiritual, something distinct from and higher than the material organization? This is the question which has burdened and troubled the ages ; and up to this day the only reply to it which at all satisfies the reason, and furnishes ground for an enlightened faith, is that which finds in the soul THE SOUL’S REALITY. 105 itself its own proper evidence. The spirituality of man we hold to be a primitive truth, an original intuition, which the same mighty hand that formed our nature at the first, planted within it and made an integral part of it. Whether the appeal be made by each individual to his own consciousness, or whether he take the wider range of his personal observation, or whether he search into the history of nations, whether he limit investigation to his own times, or extend it back into the past ages, we hold that the conclusion we have named is the only one which finally commends itself, as legiti- mate and consistent. One thing is certain, that the reasonings of the past ages, apart from intuition, have not conducted men to a clear, uniform, and decisive result. The region has proved too pro- found and too dark for feeble and limited beings to explore, and the human intellect has returned from the search after evidence, bewildered and op- pressed. At the same time, justice demands the confession that the intuitional proof is by no means in all respects unexceptionable. It is often ex- tremely difficult to reach the true voice of human nature as it is constituted by Grod, and to read the native, spontaneous verdict of the soul in reference to itself. There are most painful discrepancies and confusions, and the testimony admits of being woe- fully corrupted and even altogether suppressed. The fact is not to be denied, that the nations and 5 * 106 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. the ages have not agreed, and do not now perfectly agree, in one energetic response to the question of the soul’s reality, as distinct from the material or- ganization. On the one hand, we can not shut our eyes to reckless skepticism in some, and to sensual- ism and moral debasement in many more ; and on the other hand, there are tokens without number of laborious yet fruitless speculations of deep and unsatisfied longings, of dark conjectures and of torturing fears. The light kindled by God in the soul has had to struggle for its preservation and its purity. The voice of man’s nature has always come up amid the clamor of other and hostile sounds. That voice has not been listened to ; sometimes it has been so long unheeded, that at length it has ceased to make itself heard at all. Even where it has been distinctly recognized, men have shrunk back from the difficulties and the mys- teries to which it seemed to conduct. The idea of a spirit inhabiting the body is hard to be under- stood ; the origin of the spirit, the nature of its connection with the body, its laws and its destinies — all are mysterious and abstruse. It is much more easy to believe that man is what the senses teach concerning him, and no more; it is even more agreeable , on some accounts, to believe only this, and it becomes even more agreeable as the mental and especially the moral condition deteriorates. Faith in any thing beyond the senses becomes more and INDIFFERENCE TO SOUL. 107 more unwelcome and unlikely, and at last is mor- ally impossible Without consulting the history of remote ages and of distant lands, our own times will supply evidence sufficiently extended on this subject, and our own country will furnish instances the coun- terpart of which, we need not doubt, can be found in all other regions of the earth. Among our- selves, there are human beings that scarcely know that they have a soul. A faint echo of the divine voice may still linger in these sunken natures, and it may never be absolutely impossible to awaken them and to make them catch the dying sound, but virtually they live on as if that voice had never been uttered, and as if no echo of it lingered within them. These beings, from their birth up- ward, have put forth no powers but those of their bodies, and have conversed only with the objects of sense. The external world alone — the labors, interests, attractions, duties, and wants which be- long to it — has successfully appealed to them. There has been every thing to deaden the sense of a higher nature, little to awaken and stimulate it. The struggle to provide for daily necessities, and still more the indulgence of low sensual appe- tites and confirmed habits of vice, have rendered every thing connected with a spiritual world un- congenial and alarming. In this way, multitudes among us are scarcely ever disturbed by the 108 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. thought, that they have a soul. They think only of the body and of the outward world, and are ut- ter, strangers to their rational and responsible na- ture and to their solemn destiny. They have lost all sense of the dignity, the duties, the power, and the worth which belongs to them. For human beings in this condition, the very first necessity is to know themselves, and the very highest boon which it is possible to bestow on them is a knowl- edge of themselves. Jesus came to the world with this boon in his hand, at a time when the soul was awfully un- known. An age of marvelous intellectual activity, of high cultivation, and of abundant produce, of its kind, scarcely believed in the soul. A few of the more privileged and gifted minds, a few wise and earnest men, longed for inward light, and they found it in measure; but to the world generally the soul was almost unknown. Even in Judea, gross materialism had darkened and enervated re- ligion. It seemed to be imagined that the service of God needed no intellect, no conscience, no heart, no spiritual nature, but only eyes, hands, lips, fea- tures of the countenance, movements of the body. To Jews and Gentiles, the soul in its real greatness, in its noble attributes, in its vast capacities, and in its high destinies, was practically unknown. There was needed, if not a revealer of what was new, a JESUS REVEALS IT. 109 restorer of what had long been all but lost, a quick- ener of what lay dead and buried. Who shall stand forth to tell to man that he has a soul? Who shall redeem the birthright so vilely cast away, and lift up in the sight of all nations the forgotten, forsaken, dishonored mind? Who shall read aloud the handwriting of God on the nature of man, restore the text once so fairly in- scribed, clear it from all false glosses, all various readings, all mistakes and blots ? Who shall give back to the world the Divine original, after the in- terpolations and corruptions of a thousand ages? Jesus of Nazareth has done nothing less than this. In his teaching may be found the reality (and not less the greatness, the accountability, and the end- less life) of the soul, revealed with a luminousness and a fullness, for which we look in vain elsewhere. There is no formal exposition in the recorded sayings of Christ of the doctrine of the soul, its origin, its nature, its union with the body, its powers, its laws, and its fate. None of these form the subject of elaborate argumentation, or of bril- liant discussion. There is no array of evidences on the one hand, and no enumeration and refuta- tion of errors on the other hand. Nothing like proof is ever attempted. Jesus spoke to men, as if he knew that they did not need proof, and that they already had within them the highest proof, oi which the subject admitted. He spoke of the soul, 110 THE CHRIST OF HIST0R7. as of a truth already ascertained and indisputable, which, however, men had wickedly excluded from their minds. He spoke like one whose office was to announce that of which they ought not to have been ignorant, and to remind them of that which they never ought to have forgotten. His method was direct appeal to the nature of man — clear sol- emn appeal, in a matter of which he left themselves to be the judges. His ministry was a proclamation of all places, circumstances, and connections, of the doctrine of the soul. Underneath all his teachings this doctrine lies ; closely interwoven with them, directly suggested by them, often conspicuously standing out from them. He would have the world know and believe that there is a spiritual nature in man, an invisible, precious part of his being, and that the forgotten soul is a profound, a universal reality. All times, all nations, all condi- tions, rich and poor, bond and free, alike are distin- guished in this respect ; it is the birthright of all, the common inheritance of man. The reality of the soul was involved in His doctrine of a reign of God ; in that of sin and that of pardon: in that of re- ligion, since its place and its essence alike are spiritual ; in that of prayer and that of worship ; in that of piety toward God, and in that of human virtue. His entire teaching rests on the basis of man’s spiritual nature, and without this would be utterly unmeaning. His ministry was a voice to ORIGIN OF SOUL. Ill the world, on behalf of the soul, familiarizing the lost idea, and pleading for its restoration. The mechanism of the body is curious and mys- terious, the earth around and the skies above are full of wonders, the present life has its interests, attractions, and noble uses ; but there is that within man to which, not in the frame of the body, nor in the structure of the visible creation, nor in the machinery of the present life, any resemblance can be found. Christ’s voice proclaimed the soul ; and amid the degradation, the profound torpor, and the guilty self-abandonment of the world, the sound was renewed and prolonged, The soul! the soul! And that whose being was thus heralded, was in it- self truly great. Its origin exalts it marvelously. The offspring of God, and bearing on it the image of the Father, the soul is great. Its attributes, in- comparably higher than any which reside in mat- ter, make it great. Its vast capacities, also, and, most of all, its immortal destiny, make it great. In the Gospels, the soul is often contrasted with earthly things, and lifted up above them all. The words of .Jesus are framed to convey to the bosom of a man a solemn assurance, and to create a deep con- viction of his unutterable worth. As a matter of fact, they have done this in the most unpromising circumstances, and have effected what all other agency fails to effect. The ignorant, the unculti- vated. and the vicious, have been taught by them 112 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. to reverence themselves, and to recognize the sa- credness of their own being. In the teaching of Christ, the soul is the man, and determines his posi- tion in the scale of existence ; not the body, not outward possessions, not social rank, not any thing visible, not any thing connected only with the pres- ent world; but the spiritual nature, its powers, principles, and moral condition. The soul is the man ; in it are ail his real distinctions, all his worth, his dignity, and his happiness ; there lies his char- acter in the universe, there his whole being for good or for evil — there and nowhere else. The Grospels do not assist us in defining and comprehending the essence of spirit, or in solving the hard questions of metaphysics respecting the connection between matter and mind, how the latter acts upon and through the former, and is in turn constantly affect- ed by it. But they have filled the world with a most blessed sound ; there is a soul in man, and the soul is , beyond expression , great and precious . § II. — THE SOUL’S ACCOUNTABILITY AND IMMOR- TALITY. Accountability belongs only to the rational and moral nature, and it belongs to this, of neces- sity. A river flows on in its course ; but whether rapidly or slowly, in a wide or narrow stream, and with clear or troubled waters, it flows unconscious* GROUNDS OF RESPONSIBILITY". 113 ly and without meriting either praise or blame. The tree strikes its roots and spreads its branches; but we attribute to it no virtue ; and when it with- ers and perishes, we charge it with no crime. The animal frame is sound and healthy, or it is attacked by disease, or is struck down by sudden accident, or seems to sink of itself; but no judgment is passed upon it, as if it deserved either commenda- tion or condemnation. The irrational creature walks, flies, creeps, or swims; it seeks its food in the herb of the field, or it preys upon some other form of life in order to sustain its own ; but neither good nor evil is asserted of it on these accounts. The river, the tree, the bodily frame, do not act, but are acted upon. Consciousness, intelligence, volition, are wanting to them. They are only what they are made, and as they are affected by circumstances, over which they can exert no con- trol. Even the living creature, though a voluntary agent in certain respects, is under the irresistible law of instinct, and has no sense of God and of right and wrong to govern its choice. The spiritual nature of man belongs to quite another order of existence. It is not passive mere- ly, but active; and its activity is not instinctive merely, but intelligent and voluntary. Here is Eeason, here Conscience, here Will, the royal power in the soul, the presiding judge in the in- ward tribunal, who hears what the understanding, 114 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. the affections, the inclinations; and appetites, and, above all, the conscience, have to say, and there- after chooses and resolves. Here is the soul’s power of self-determination. It is not compelled, not placed under irresistible laws like those of in- stinct; it is constituted to choose and refuse for itself. The entire doctrine of responsibility is in- volved in this fact. If the acts of the soul were at any time involuntary, or compulsory, and not the effect of its determination and free choice, it would be thus far blameless and meritless ; but they can not be so. What the soul is, and does, it chooses to be, and do ; and it is, therefore, and to this ex- tent, responsible. The waters of the river, the leaves and fruit of the tree, the condition of the human body, and the movements of the irrational creature, have in them neither moral goodness nor moral evil; but the thoughts, affections, tastes, principles, purposes, and choices of the soul origi- nate with itself, spring out of its will, and render it the proper object of commendation, or of repre- hension. Oftener, perhaps, than under ' any other aspect, Jesus represents the human soul as exposed to that Eye which unerringly perceives all its evil and its good, and he teaches that therefore there is unutterable solemnity in every act of the spiritual nature, and that what a man thinks, feels, resolves, or does, is the gravest of all questions. The lesson IMMATERIALITY AND IMMORTALITY. 115 is forever true ; we need to feel that we can never for a moment escape the immutable law, “ Sin is death; holiness is salvation.” The God of the spiritual universe is forever looking upon us, and his sentence is pronounced for us, or against us. The doctrine of the last judgment is one of the many forms of the doctrine of responsibility. The parable of the ten virgins, of the laborers in the vineyard, of the steward, of the talents, of the hus- bandmen, of the wheat and the tares, of the barren fig-tree, are so many varied representations of this overwhelming truth. The scrutiny of God is lik- ened to the process of fanning and sifting wheat, or to that of dissolving and testing metals. The perfect rectitude of the Judge, and his perfect knowledge of the innumerable peculiarities of each case are declared. The universality and the mi- nuteness of the reckoning which will be taken, are foreshown. Every secret thought, it is affirmed, and every idle word will be brought into judgment. This spiritual nature of man makes even his short residence on earth awfully solemn, and invests every moment with everlasting interest. Self-in- spection, watchfulness, and prayer, become the first duty of beings constituted as we are, endowed with conscience, reason, and will — beings, besides, who are destined to an existence, of which the present earthly life is only the commencement and the promise. 116 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. It is often assumed that immateriality involves immortality. It does involve indivisibility — the immaterial is the indivisible ; but whether indivis- ibility and immortality are synonymous may admit of some doubt. Matter is made up of parts ; it is capable from its nature of being decompounded and dissolved. But are we quite sure that decom- position and dissolution are destruction — are we not rather sure that they are not? Does not all the evidence on this subject which we possess sus- tain the conclusion that matter is not destroyed — that, though its parts are separated and its form changed, it is not destroyed, not annihilated ? If, then, we can not argue destructibility from divisi- bility in the case of matter, it is palpably fallacious to rest the proof of indestructibility in the case of mind, on indivisibility, that is immateriality. The soul is imperishable, but the certainty of this must not be grounded on the fact that it is imma- terial and indivisible. The self-action and self- government of mind exalt it immeasurably above unconscious matter, and above all animal instincts and faculties. Its intellectual, and especially its moral powers, its unlimited capacities, and its lofty aspirations, create a strong presumption that it is formed for a higher destiny than they. But a strong presumption is not positive proof. The absolute certainty of the soul’s eternal exist- ence is distinctlv affirmed by Christ ; but the ground PERDITION OF SOUL. 117 of this certainty is shown to be not so much its immaterial nature as its moral condition. In Christ’s teaching, holiness and holy being are immortal ; godliness is immortal ; rectitude, purity, truth, love, are immortal ; and the soul in which these virtues dwell is an heir of eternal life : but that which has surrendered itself to ignorance, impurity, and en- mity to good and to Grod, is an heir of eternal per- dition. Even on this earth, incipient spiritual per- dition may be awfully evident. There are instances even here of what may literally be called the soul’s death, the death of intellect, heart, and conscience ; appalling examples of the effect of moral evil in darkening, enfeebling, imbruting the inward nature, so that it seems bereft of all its rational and moral powers. And it must not be forgotten that on earth there exist causes to draw forth the energies of the guilty soul, which can not operate hereafter. All good beings and all good shall hereafter be for- ever separated from evil beings. Evil shall here- after be alone, and alone shall develop its own rank and deadly nature, and exhibit its unmiti- gated effects. If this be true, and if evil beings shall be left absolutely alone in the midst only of evil, it is not hard to imagine that, in the progress of ages, they must become a terrible wreck, unut- terably worse than any thing which earth has ever witnessed, and shall furnish a tremendous and ever- lasting vindication of the language “lost souls,” 118 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. “ perished minds,” “ fires quenched,” “ lights gone out forever in the blackness of darkness.” Jesus Christ teaches that sin is perdition ; not that at some future day it shall produce death, but that it is death. From first to last, throughout all its course, at every moment, moral evil is only death. Unless it be extirpated, the soul can only die ; it may exist in the sense of simply being, but it is really dying rather than living ; and forever, its existence is a death, a process of perdition, whose final issue lies behind an impenetrable vail. But life is the destiny of that nature which has been emancipated from moral evil. There is a holier and mightier vitality than that of the ani- mal frame, or even than the physical life of the mind ; that is, its power to think, feel, and resolve. There is a life of life to man. God is the spring of pure being. Separated from him by ignorance or false views, by conscious guilt, distrust, and en- mity, the soul carries in it the seeds of death, and in order to live, it must be restored to God, and God must be restored to it, to its knowledge, con- fidence, and love. It is this life of God in man which Christ’s gospel teaches is eternal ; which not only shall never be extinguished, but is essentially and necessarily immortal. On earth, in heaven, any where, every where, throughout the universe, this is the eternal life ; the only eternal life known to Christianity — union or reunion of the created LIFE BROUGHT TO LIGHT. 119 mind with God. It is this which shall survive un- injured the separation of soul and body. That separation shall not harm the nobler being, but the spiritual faculties shall be improved instead of being enfeebled by the crisis through which they have passed ; and the life of life within, unscathed, un touched, shall find itself in a new and genial sphere, with eternity for its irreversible inheritance. The soul’s endless being is intelligence, rectitude, purity, love, and all goodness. This is brought to light by the Gospel, but no- where else. “ The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord.” 1 God so loved the world that he gave his only -begotten Son, that whosoever believed on him should not perish, but have ever- lasting life.” 2 “ God’s commandment is life ever- lasting.” 3 “To whom shall we go,” said the disci- ples to Jesus, “thou hast the words of eternal life ?” 4 “ This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God,” etc. 6 “ He that receiveth my words hath everlasting life.” 6 The words of Christ are likened to a “ well of water springing up to everlasting life.” 7 “ Thy brother shall rise again,” Jesus said to Martha, when her brother Lazarus lay in the tomb. She replied, “I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection, at the last day. Jesus answered, He that believeth on 1 Romans, vi. 23. 2 John, iii. 16. 3 lb. xii. 60. 4 lb. vi. 68. * lb. xvii. 3. ® lb. v. 24. 7 lb. iv. 14. 120 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. me, though he were dead, yet shall he live ; and he that liveth and believeth on me shall never die.” 1 Thus impressively and majestically did Christ announce the Divine life in the soul of man, a life unhurt by the death of the body, and of im- mortal duration. If the miracle of the raising of Lazarus be counted for nothing, at least on some occasion of bereavement, words of this import, words of unexampled simplicity, dignity, and strength fell from Christ’s lips. Beside the graves of men, and at their festive boards, on all occasions Christ proclaimed the Soul I It is real ! it is great 1 it is accountable ! it is immortal ! The body shall die. The earth and these heavens shall pass away ; but the Soul endures forever, in Life or in Per- dition ! 1 John, xi, 25. CHAPTER III. OP GOD. § I. THE SPIRITUALITY, UNITY, AND MORAL PERFECTION OF GOD. The age in which Christ appeared, fearfully dark as it was, was yet not content to abide in darkness. Even then there were burdened hearts that did earnestly seek after God, and a piercing cry was lifted up from the depths of paganism for the true light of Heaven. Jesus came to respond to that cry, to quiet the troubled bosom of man, and to bring to his knowledge the only object of worship and of love. To reveal God, is a still higher office than to make known the souL The doctrine of God is the foundation of all religion. Every sys- tem of religion must have a god, and the character of the religion corresponds necessarily with the character of the god — is, indeed, wholly determined by this, and will be material or spiritual, feeble or powerful, pure or corrupt, degrading or elevating, cruel or benignant, just as the Being for whom it claims the veneration of men recedes from absolute excellence, or approaches it. 122 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY It formed no part of the work of Jesus to demon « strate the being of God to the world. The a a pri- ori” and “ a posteriori” proofs on this subject, as well as the historical proof grounded in the alleged consent of all past ages and of all nations, find no place in the Gospels. No trace of the argument from the work to the worker, from the contrivance to the contriver, from the marks of intelligence and^design in the visible universe to an all-design- ing mind, is discoverable here. The old hypoth- esis of the eternity of the universe is not combated, nor that of the everlasting concourse of atoms in immensity, and their fortuitous combinations, pro- ducing all the manifold results which we now wit- ness in the creation around ns. The existence of a Supreme Eternal Cause is assumed in the New Testament, as a first principle ; and, as in the case of the soul, a direct and fearless appeal is made here, also, to the intuitions and to the consciousness of the human mind. It is in these, at last, that we reach the most satisfactory ground of faith in the being of God; and it may be fairly questioned whether, apart from these, the “a priori” and “a posteriori” arguments have ever by themselves overcome the settled unbelief of a single human being. There seems to be a primitive faith on this subject, which can only be traced to the same ori- gin with the mind itself. It is congenial and na- tive to the soul to believe in God. Men may work BEING OF GOD ASSUMED. 123 themselves into an opposite belief; they may at last resign themselves to Atheism, either in conse- quence of the extreme difficulty and darkness of tlie subject, or owing to moral causes ; but none begin with this. The first faith is invariably the- istic not atheistic. With interminable and wide differences in other respects, there is a marvelous concurrence of sentiment up to a certain point, among all nations and ages. That there is Divinity somewhere in this great universe, that there is some object of worship and of obedience, is an orig- inal belief, dating from the constitution of the soul itself. In passing from the Being to the Nature of God, we are compelled to reason from ourselves; for from ourselves alone, from our own higher nature, a pathway is found up to the Highest Nature of all. The common argument from effect to cause is un- answerable, so far as it goes ; the material universe proves the being of a God, for the simple reason that every effect must have a cause. But the ma- terial universe does not and can not prove the spiritual nature of its cause. The only proof, the only hint, of this is given in our own spirituality, and nowhere else. The New Testament affirms the existence of angels, a race of pure spirits, interme- diate between man and God. The fact rests en- tirely on the authority of revelation, but it seems to involve no peculiar difficulty. The idea of un- 124 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. embodied spirits is quite as conceivable as that of spirits embodied, and perhaps there are even some difficulties in the latter mode of being which do not apply to the former. The fact also appears to be quite in harmony with the analogies of the crea- tion. Among material things and beings there are gradations without number, all very beautiful, and suggestive of the opulence and power of the Crea- tor. It is not hard to believe that in the same way, and with the same effect, important grada- tions may exist among spiritual creatures also. The New Testament affirms that man does not constitute the solitary order of this form of exist- ence, but is allied to an elder brotherhood of an- gels ; the elder and the younger alike tracing their descent immediately from the great “Father of spirits.” But whether with or without the aid of this intermediate step, it is from our own souls that we ascend to the conception of the Infinite Soul — from the spiritual nature within us, to the spiritual nature above us, and over all. The spirituality of God suggests two leading ideas, Life and Intelligence. God is a Life. The word brings us to the verge of an impenetrable mystery, before which we stand in helpless wonder. The first step in the ascent from unorganized matter perplexes and confounds us. We may be able to watch the vegetative process in its successive stages, and to distinguish the phenomena which mark each ANGELIC SOULS. 125 stage. The seed and the soil in which it is planted we may be able to subject to analysis, and thus to ascertain the peculiar properties of both ; and the action also of the sun and the rain may be well understood. Science shall explain the entire course of vegetation ; but if we ask what that vital prin- ciple is in which vegetation originates, science to this day leaves the question unanswered. Next above vegetable life is animal life — a deeper and darker secret still. The distance is immeasurable between unconscious matter, organized or unorgan- ized, and even the lowest form of animal existence. Here is not merely organization, not merely un- conscious changes, but self-motion, voluntary, con- scious motion, and capacity of enjoyment and suf- fering, an awful and inscrutable power of willing, feeling, and doing. It has never been penetrated ; perhaps it is impenetrable by mortals. Science can not explain it, can not assist us to imagine it. Next above animal life is intellectual, by which even the lower animals are distinguished in differ- ent degrees, indicating, as they often do very plain- ly, that they too have their thoughts, their affec- tions, their calculations, their reasonings, and their plans. Here is life within life, mystery within mystery ; but it is in man that both are revealed in their true greatness. Reason in man surpasses im- measurably the highest forms of intelligence as it exists in the inferior tribes, and at all events at this 126 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. limit their progress terminates. There is a mystery more awful still of which man alone on this earth is the sanctuary. They have no moral nature, no conscience, no sense of God, of right and wrong, of immortality, of responsibility, of judgment to come. But man is thus endowed and exalted. Here, therefore, is life yet higher still, mystery still more profound. Fro n vegetable, animal, intellect- ual moral, human, angelic life — -from created life in all its wondrous modes — we ascend to him who is called “ The Life.” It is a noble image of the Di- vine nature. We think of God before the creation of the universe, alone in immensity, “ The Life,” indestructible, perfect, pure, needing nothing from without, inexhaustibly rich in himself. We think of him sending forth life and peopling space with countless forms of material and spiritual glory. All, wherever it is and whatever its form, is from him — He alone is the underived, independent, original, everlasting life. But the God of the Hew Testament is not a quality, not an idea, or a process, or a law, not a thing, but a Being, an Agent. He is truly a Life ; but as truly he is a Mind, The Presiding Mind of the universe. If created spirits are endowed with high capacities, and enriched with varied and vast knowledge, what must be the resources and the powers of the All-creating Spirit ? “ He that planted the ear, shall he not hear ? he that formed CHRIST AT JACOB’S WELL. 127 the eye, shall he not’ see? he that teacheth man knowledge, shall not he know ?” The universe in all its kingdoms, in all the manifold departments of each of these kingdoms, in all the countless facts with their hidden principles which belong to each of these departments — the vast universe in the past, the present, and the future, must stand revealed in the clear light of the divine knowledge. All truth must dwell in the Infinite understanding, as in its native home. We bow down before the measure- less heights, the unfathomable depths, the illimit- able possessions of the uncreated Mind. Worship becomes not merely reasonable but necessary, a trib- ute which can not be withheld from snch a Being. The nature of worship is understood and felt at once and as deeply the wickedness of substituting any material acts for the free aspirations of the soul. Such a doctrine of God as we have imperfectly sketched surely demanded, for its announcement to the world, a great occasion and an extraordinary herald. But it was a Jew, a young man, a working carpenter, who published the doctrine eighteen hundred years ago, and to a poor woman. After a long journey, Jesus was sitting by the side of a well, in a retired place, when a woman of Samaria came to draw water. She belonged to a people with whom any other Jew would have scorned to hold intercourse ; but he began to talk to her on tha 128 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. subject of religion, and then and there proceeded to open to her mind, simply and familiary, some of the divinest ideas which have ever been put into the language of men. The Samaritans and the Jews were both wrong in their prevailing notions of worship and of God. To the one, God was in Samaria; to the other, in Jerusalem. But he taught her that the true God was not a local or na- tional divinity, but a universal presence, and that true worship was always only spiritual, for the sim- ple reason that the object of worship was a spirit. “Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, when nei- ther in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem ye shall worship the Father . . . The hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth ; for the Father seek- eth such to worship him. God is a spirit; and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.” 1 This is a specimen of Christ’s teaching, not an exception to it. Thus uniformly he turned the thoughts of mankind to the Infinite, Ever-living Intelligence, and summoned the world to believe and adore. The idea of more than one Infinite Being is con- tradictory and impossible. On the supposition that there are two or more, they must be either in har- mony or in conflict. But if they are in perfect 1 John, iv. 22-24. ONE INFINITE BEING. 129 and everlasting harmony, this is in effect to say that they are identical, and nothing is gained by the notion of plurality. On the other hand, if they are in opposition one to another, such a con- flict could produce nothing but universal anarchy and destruction — a state of things which finds no realization in the actual world. The existence of one Infinite Being harmonizes with the facts of the universe, and sufficiently accounts for them ; and the reasoning is now perfectly familiar, as it is en- tirely satisfactory, by which it is made out, that the creation in all its regions indicates the hand and the mind of only one supreme Author and Ruler. The atom and the world, the insect and the man, the single globe and the countless spheres that people space ; all, so far as our knowledge of them extends, are governed by the same great laws. The separate departments and kingdoms of nature, whether great or small, whether near or remote, whether inanimate, or animated, or rational, do not point to diverse origins, and do not exhibit subjection to diverse authorities ; but, on the con- trary, form a harmonious whole which must have originated with one mind, and must be governed by one supreme authority. All this is accepted, in our day, by many who do not bow to Christi- anity. But the world as a whole, nevertheless, groans still beneath a pantheon as monstrous and as vast, as any past age ever reared. J udaism, 6 * 130 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. Christianity, and Mohammedanism are the only existing systems of religion which recognize only one God ; and it will not be questioned that the last owes this faith to the one or the other of the two former. The suffrages of mankind are against the doctrine of God’s unity, by an overwhelming majority. But we have to do with the ancient, not the present, state of opinion and of faith among man- kind. The mildest form of departure from Divine unity in the ancient world was that which was found among the Chaldeans and Persians, nations certainly not the lowest at that time in the scale of advancement and civilization. Their creed com- prehended two objects of supreme worship, one the author only of good, and another the author of all evil, and nothing but evil ; of course, the first a purely benevolent, and the second a purely mal- evolent being, answering to the light and the dark- ness found alike in the natural and in the moral world. At this day, we possess far higher means of unraveling the dark phenomena of providence than were accessible to antiquity. W e have learned to resolve physical into moral evil as its necessary cause, direct or indirect ; and for moral evil itself, we have been taught to regard it as the voluntary abuse of the freedom of the created will. We may be able to perceive that in the very existence of a created will, there was involved the possibility of DUALISM. 131 its choosing to separate from the Divine will, a thing which, except by destroying the very essence of will, the physical omnipotence of God could not prevent, with which indeed physical omnipotence could have nothing to do. It may be clear to us, that all moral evil is the act of responsible because free creatures, the possibility of which was in- volved in their creation, and which no mere power could have prevented. We may therefore behold the one God doing only good, retrieving the effects of the sin of his creatures, putting down the evil which they originate, and bringing good out of that evil, so far as such a thing is possible. But in the absense of the aids and the light which we now possess, and in the view of the unnatural and con- founding mixture of evil with good which moral providence exhibits, ancient dualism must be con- sidered the most pardonable and plausible form of polytheistic error. By the side of dualism, the enormous polytheism of the ancient world reared its head. The deifica- tion of spirits evil and good, of the elements of nature, of the signs of the sky, of human beings, of beasts, birds, reptiles, insects, inanimate wood, stone, clay, was widely, almost universally sanc- tioned. Sky, and earth, and sea, and mountains, and valleys, and forests, and rivers were peopled with gods and goddesses. It may be true, at the same time, that every ancient religion contained 132 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. the idea of some one god who was supreme among the many ; bui then this being was not, therefore, more worshiped than the others, but rather less. He might be really greater, but he was less import- ant, less conversant with ordinary human affairs ; and him, therefore, it was less necessary to invoke. It is not denied also, that there might be in the an- cient world select individuals, who had ascended above the crowd of inferior divinities to the con- ception of one Almighty Being. But the earth, notwithstanding, was filled with gods and covered with temples. The whole ancient world had a scarcely exaggerated type of its theistic condition, in the capital of Greece — u It was easier to find a god than a man in Athens.” From Egypt and Persia, from Greece and Rome, from idols and temples, from priests, poets, and sages, we turn to the lowly Teacher of Nazareth. He proclaimed that God is One, and that the uni- verse is one in its origin and its end, and is under the dominion of one Supreme Ruler, the King eternal, immortal, and invisible, the only wise God. From the beginning to the close of his ministry, he proclaimed one true God. Every where always he proclaimed the One God. No hint of any other doctrine than that of absolute divine unity is ever given ; none other is named or noticed. “ There is none good but one ; that is God,” ' “ That they L Matthew, xix. 17. CHRIST PROCLAIMING UNITY. 133 might know thee, the onlv true God.” 1 “ There is one God, and none other but he.” 3 The proclama- tion of God’s unity by the voice of Christ was first heard throughout the land of Judea ; but the sound was, by and by, wafted far beyond it. It echoed among the hoary idolatries of the world, and shook them to their foundations. The echo has not died away — it is heard now — it shall yet be heard above the clamor and hubbub of all rival faiths, and shall drown every other voice. One God, one supreme object of reverence and love, of worship and obe- dience — only One ! The occasion will arise, at a more advanced stage of our inquiries, for noticing with special interest the sentiments of certain heathen philosophers and moralists concerning God. It is here cheerfully admitted, that these sentiments are often very just, very noble, very strengthening, and very sanctify- ing, and are, in truth, the early promise of a diviner age. Light shone in the darkness, and these men almost saw the daybreak, and almost descried the first streaks of the dawn of a hallowed morning. Some of their ideas respecting God, his majesty and his purity, his wisdom, and even his mercifulness, astonish us by their profoundness and their grand- eur. But they were entertained by few — oh, how few, out of the vast multitudes ! They also partook more of the character of sudden and transient inspir* 1 John xvii. 3. 8 Mark, xii. 32. 134 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. ations than of settled convictions ; and they formed but a dim and shadowy prefiguration of the brighter revelations of a future age. We have already noticed the belief, in the ancient world, of one Be- ing supreme among the gods, which was also other- wise modified, and took the form of faith in one supreme nature embodied in many separate divini- ties ; and it can not be doubted that even this was fitted to correct, in some measure, the spirit of polytheism during “ the times of ignorance.” But this “Deus Maximus” was felt to be a cold myth- ical abstraction, rather than a loving father, and a fountain of living excellence. A God of perfect rectitude, purity, truth, and love, was virtually un- known to ancient paganism. Many of its deities were monsters of vice — impersonations of all that was impure, cruel, and vile. Their history was a tissue of superhuman abominations ; and many of the very rites of their worship were revolting and unclean. Turning to the Jewish nation, from whom so much might have been expected, we find that they had shockingly misrepresented the character, the attributes, the doings, the very nature of the True God. In the prevailing conceptions of the people, his justice was little else than revenge- — his love partiality — his providence special and arbitrary in- terposition — his revelation a cabalistic secret — and THE PATERNITY OF GOD. 135 his infinite nature a huge extension of the caprices and passions of man. Jesus of Nazareth revealed a Being necessarily opposed to all evil, and essentially righteous, true, pure, and good. All conceivable and all possible perfections dwell in his nature, and shine there in unclouded light. This God is Excellence, only Excellence, Excellence Infinite and Everlasting. The very idea of such a Being is Divine. Were there defect in God, even to the smallest amount, he could no more be the resting-place of the created mind ; a dark shadow would fall upon his whole character, and a torturing and insupportable sense of insecurity would afflict the whole universe. But Jesus of Nazareth summons us to worship a Being in whom the intellect, affections, and conscience of man may safely repose — an object worthy of the eternal admiration, confidence, and love of all ra- tional creatures — rthe Only Holy One, the God of Glory. § n. — THE PATERNITY OF GOD. The relation which God sustains to man is only less important, than his Being and the properties of his Nature. “ How is God connected with me? How is he affected toward me ?” are questions of infinite interest to a rational being. The answer of the Teacner of Nazareth to these questions is 136 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. simple and explicit, and is conveyed in a single word, a word of profound significance and of sur- passing tenderness — the word Father. To man this term belongs emphatically, and it is one of the wealthiest in human language, and men at least can have no difficulty in comprehending all its meaning. The relation which it indicates has no such inter- pretation, among other intelligent creatures, as it finds in this world. There is no fatherhood or childhood among angels, no derivation of being from one to the other. But men on earth are con- nected together in this extraordinary sense; and from the imperfect type existing among themselves, they at least are able to rise to the supreme reality in God. The human spirit is the offspring, the im- mediate and direct offspring, of the Everliving Spirit. It is capable of bearing and does bear, and it is the only thing that bears or is capable of bear- ing, a resemblance to God. When we have said that God created the heavens, the earth and all ma- terial things, we have exhausted all of which the subject admits. But it is not simply true, that he created minds also, He is the Father of minds and of nothing else. The peculiar representation which is thus given of God’s relation to man is beautifully suggestive, among other things, of authority, the very highest form of which known in this world is the parental. The power of a sovereign, however extensive it be, GOD LIKENED TO A KING. 187 is, after all, only conventional ; it admits of being circumscribed or suspended; and there are many quarters of the world where no such thing is recog- nized or known. All earthly forms of authority, whether belonging to the political, civil, or social relations of men, are accidental and official, created by men themselves for their own purposes, and may be modified or entirely abolished by the power that created them. But the authority of a father over his child is founded in nature, and es- tablished by the Great God himself. This is not, like the others, a voluntary arrangement among men themselves, which they are at liberty to con- tinue or to terminate as they please ; but, on the contrary, it is a Divine constitution. Such author- ity as a father possesses over his child, so natural, so divine, so real, no human being besides can pos- sess over another. This , accordingly, is the selected type of the supreme rights of God, and of that es- sential sovereignty which belongs to the Father of minds. No other explains, as this does, the found- ation and the nature of Divine authority. There are, indeed, other terms which indicate the mere fact of sovereignty in God, and do so more point- edly and directedly than this. For example : He is compared to a king ; a name which belongs to the highest secular office and the highest secular authority on earth. “The Lord is King forever and ever.” His creatures are his subjects ; he has 188 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. given them righteous and wise laws, and they must answer to him for obedience and disobedience. The comparison is obviously just up to a certain limit ; but it is as obvious that, in many essential respects, it entirely fails. The king and his people are con- nected together only by one bond, that of author- ity and corresponding subjection. But the intimacy and tenderness of the association between God and his rational creatures are not expressed, or in any way suggested, by this phraseology. All that is conveyed by the word king — authority, rectitude, wisdom, power — is really contained in the word father; but there is very much conveyed by the word father which is not capable of being expressed by the word king. God is a King, but he is a Father-King ; his subjects are his own children, and his government of them, in its very origin, and consequently in its essential spirit, in all its laws, and in all its acts, is strictly and only parental. God’s Kinghood is a figure , his Fatherhood is the profoundest reality. He may justly, and in certain respects, be compared to a king; but he is a Father. The relation in which God stands to them sheds amazing glory on intelligent beings of all orders. All souls wherever they are in the wide universe, are brothers; all have one Father, even God. The immense brotherhood, the vast family, it is hardly possible to embrace by any effort of imagination, GOD IS OUR FATHER. 139 and some of its aspects are so appalling that we are even deterred from making the attempt. The first-born of God, the elder sons of creation, unfallen angels, are associated in the invisible state with multitudes of disembodied, perfected human spirits. Another division of the great family is found on this earth, and it includes a vast majority of the earth’s inhabitants. They are children, but they have wandered from their Father, have ceased to think of him, almost to know him, and with them God is patiently striving by his spirit in their minds and by his outward providence. A third division includes the reclaimed children of God in this world ; those who have been arrested in their wanderings, have heard the voice of their Father, and have been subdued and won back to him. Between such reclaimed souls on earth and their God there must exist a singular tenderness of affec- tion. They are his sons twice born, by generation and regeneration, his offspring at first, but also created anew and restored to him by trust and love. Of every one of them the Great Father proclaims, “ This my son was lost and is found, was dead, and is alive again.” But a terrible darkness overshadows the remain- ing portion of the family of God, unreclaimed minds, human and angelic, in the invisible world* The entrance of sin and death among rational crea- tures is a tremendous and unfathomable mystery. 140 THE CUEIST OF HISTOEY. On earth, in the history of many a home, it is seen that some of the circle abide in affection and in duty, while others prove undutiful and lawless ; and the counterpart of this, it is found, exists in a higher region. The family of God has been the scene of dark revolt. The one mystery of the universe, into which all else that troubles and confounds the re- flecting may be resolved, is no other than this : — “The created will separating from the uncreated, struggling against it, and ruining itself by the mad effort.” Multitudes of rebellious wills have thus doomed themselves to irretrievable perdition. But all the while, whatever God has done, he has done to avert, not to produce, spiritual ruin. How or why it has happened that the children have rebelled against their Father, and perished in their rebel- lion, is a secret which we can not unvail. But the act was their own, wholly and only their own, and as wholly and only in defiance and despite of Him who deserved nothing but obedience and love. Yerily this is dark, impenetrably dark; but the reality of the fatherhood of God is luminous not- withstanding. It is a first principle, as stable and as sure as God’s being ; and all that it involves of tenderness and love is as indubitable as ever. The simple truth of our parentage abides, amid what- ever mystery, God is our Father, the Father of minds. This great fact was announced marvelously often THE FATHER OF ALL SOULS. 141 in the teaching of Jesus. Sometimes, when refer- ring to God, he makes use of the more personal and intimate designation, my Father. “My Father’s kingdom.” 1 * * “My Father hath appointed me.” a “ My Father worketh hitherto.” 8 “ It is my Father that honoreth me.” 4 But much oftener, generally indeed, he adopts the more comprehensive word, and speaks of God as the Father. “ The Father hath life in himself.” 5 “ Neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, ye shall worship the Father.” 8 “ He that hath learned of the Father.” 7 “ Not that any man hath seen the Father.” 8 “I will pray the Father.” 9 “Whatsoever ye shall ask of the Fa- ther.” 10 “I came forth from the Father and go to the Father.” 11 “The promise of the Father.” 12 “ The times and the seasons the Father hath put in his own hand.” 13 “ I shall show you plainly of the Father.” 14 Addressing not any select class, but all those indiscriminately who listened to his teaching, he represented God as the Father. This is the more significant, when it is recollected that the very work of Jesus on earth, at least an essential part of his work, was to make known God. The root of human sin was false views of God, miscon- ception as to his character, imagining that what he 1 Matt. xxvi. 29. 4 John, viii. 14. 7 John, vi. 45. 10 John, xv. 16. 13 Acts, i. 7. 2 Luke, xxii. 29. 5 John, v. 26. 8 John, vi. 46. 11 John, xvi. 28. 14 Jchn, xvi. 25. 3 John, v. 17. 6 John, iv. 21. 9 John, xiv. 16. 12 Acts, i. 4. 142 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. had declared might nevertheless not be true. This constituted the first sin ever perpetrated in our world, and was the sole cause of death, the death of the soul. On the other hand, it is declared that this is life, eternal life, “to know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.” 1 Ig- norance was death ; hence the life opposed to this death is knowledge, the knowledge of God ; and to convey this knowledge was one of the highest pur- poses of Christ’s mission. In all the labors of his life, in his teaching and in his cross, one grand de- sign was to reveal to men what God really was, that they might be constrained to return to him. The question, therefore, is inexpressibly moment- ous, what does Jesus say concerning God, how does he represent the relation in which he stands to in- telligent beings ? Only one reply can be given to this question, Jesus reveals God as the Father of souls. And if there be significance in the word, if there- be truth in the relation, this is of all things most sure, God loves infinitely his own offspring. He is a true Father, he is a perfect Father, without any of the blemishes or faults, and with all the ex- cellences that are possible to the relation. Take from the word father all of error, weakness, ca- price, with which it may ever be associated ; heighten to infinity all in it that is tender, endear- ing, excellent — that is God. He is wise, he is 1 Jjohn, xvii. 3. CHRIST PROCLAIMS THE FATHER. 143 righteous, he is mighty, his holy purpose shall stand, he must and will do all that is necessary for the gobd of the entire universe. But, besides pow- er, besides wisdom, besides rectitude, besides im- mutability, there is an infinite tenderness in his nature. The heart of God is the heart of a father for all his rational offspring. Paternal love is the element in which God lives and reigns. Paternal love is the moving force in the spiritual universe, unbounded, unchanging, everlasting love ; infinite desire to produce happiness, to fill creation with the largest possible amount of enduring joy. Jesus of Nazareth reveals for the worship and love of man, a Spirit; One Spirit, the dwelling- place and Fountain of infinite moral excellence ; a Being standing in the nearest possible relation to intelligent creatures — the Father of souls ! L The world was ignorant of its high descent, of its Divine parentage. The mind of man, God’s own child, had all but lost the sense of its origin. Jesus came near to tell men that they had still a Father, and that their Father pitied and loved them. He came to wake up in the bosom of God’s fallen sons a cry after their Father, and to bring back the guilty wanderers to their home 1 CHAPTER IV. RECONCILIATION OF THE SOUL AND GOD. To investigate the doctrine of reconciliation, in the sense of the theological schools, would require a much broader basis than the materials which be- long to our proper subject afford. That subject deals only with the personal teaching of Jesus Christ, and with the bearings of his teachings as he himself exhibited them , , on the wants of human na- ture and on the state of the world. It does not reach the later expositions of the Christian faith by the Apostles; and still less, that classification of its articles, which was not accomplished till long after their times ; and least of all that elaborated system, the boast of modern theology, so minute in its details and marked by such rigorous regard to logical order. Two subjects were prominent in the personal teaching of Christ — the soul and God. But there was an obvious design in the selection of these subjects, besides their intrinsic importance. In interpreting the soul and in revealing God, Jesus aimed at more than simply communicating new MORAL RETRIBUTION. 145 and ennobling knowledge to the world. What humanity needed was not merely to understand the soul and to understand God, it needed still more to learn how the soul might be restored to God, and how God might again dwell in the soul. The world knew and felt to its core that its spiritual relations were awfully deranged, but the source and cause of the evil it knew not. Jesus declared that the grand and sole cause was to be found in willful departure from God, departure in conscience, in affection, in thought. The two beings most nearly related to each other in the universe, man and God, the son and the Father, had become estranged and almost unknown to one another. On the part of God, indeed, there had been nothing but anxious love, agencies, messages, influences of love, from age to age, in order to overcome and subdue his children. He had never but seen and known them well in their wanderings and darkness ; but they had al- most ceased to know or think of him. The first deliberate act of separation from God proved not only itself an evil thing ; it was a spreading evil, a self-perpetuating, self-propagating disease in the soul. Divergence, onee commenced, increased rapidly, and separated man from God by an ever- widening gulf. The process of alienation was ex- tensive as it was swift, just as when an inconsider- able speck spreads and deepens into a thick, black cloud, and at last clothes the whole heavens with 7 146 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY darkness. The true God was driven oul from the spirit he had created, and man gradually lost almost all knowledge and all faith. The evidence of his- tory, secular and sacred, as to the condition of the ancient world, is uniform and decisive. The un- certainty that hung around even the being of God, the profound ignorance of his nature and character, the multiplication of objects of worship, the con- version of the glorious One into an ‘‘ image made like to corruptible man and to four-footed beasts and creeping things” — these all utter a language not to be misunderstood. The son of God had almost ceased to know that he had a Father, or who was his Father. This ever-widening separation, again, between man and God, contained within itself manifold spiritual calamities. God is the Fountain of infinite rectitude, purity, wisdom, truth, and love ; and the entire system of things created by him in all its parts, and especially the moral nature of his chil- dren, as lie formed them , was an expression and em- bodiment of these principles. It belonged to the moral nature of man as constituted by God, it was its positive destiny to move in harmony with the Eternal Eeason, and the Eternal Will, and thus moving, to be as surely blessed in its degree as God himself is. The act of willful departure from God, therefore, was not simply a violation of filial duty on the part of God’s children ; it was direct MORAL RETRIBUTION. 147 separation from rectitude and wisdom and all mor- al excellence, and, in another form, as certainly, from happiness, from peace, from life as God had constituted life to man. Thenceforward there were two wills and two courses — the will of God and his infinitely wise, right and good system ; the hu- man will, and its course of folly, of moral evil, of necessary suffering. But the secondary and remoter consequences of departure from God were not less lamentable, than its primary effects. The laws of spiritual provi- dence possess an almighty, retributive energy. Never a wrong can be done to God without its re- coiling on the wrong-doer, with direful violence. Men were faithless to God, and ere long they were false to themselves ; they abandoned God, and ere long they became strangers to themselves ; first they dishonored God, and then they degraded their own nature. In a world from which the true God had been banished the human soul was trodden in the dust, and its holier powers and its immortal desti- nies were shrouded in thick darkness. The first and highest relation, the relation to God, being vio- lated, all other relations were in their turn over- thrown, and the spiritual nature itself became a disorder and a ruin. Separation from God is not a partial, but a universal and unmitigated evil, it is death. The stream cut off from the fountain must be dried up, the branch severed from the tree must 148 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. wither, the plant torn np from the soil must die. The root, not only of our animal, but of our intel lectual and moral life, is in God. We are branch- es of the mighty Tree of universal spiritual ex- istence, we are streams from that Fountain, which alone supplies the water of life in whatsoever chan- nels it flows. To be in God — that is, to think, feel and choose in harmony with rectitude, purity, wis- dom, truth and love — is the original constitution, the life of the soul ; it is its destiny, its freedom also, its glory, its very being. To depart from God, on the other hand, is to unite with folly, with wrong, with suffering. This is intellectual and moral ruin ; it is truly death, such death as is possible to a ra- tional and moral nature. The union of minds, whether of the created with each other or of the created with the uncreated, can consist only in knowledge, love, confidence, and sympathy. For the real union of any two souls it is essential, first, that they understand, and then that they appreciate and esteem one another ; that they cherish a mutual confidence and a sym- pathy in each others’ pursuits, tastes, and aims. Ignorance, dislike, distrust, and want of sympathy, it is seen in a moment, must be death to their union ; and, on the other hand, that union is obviously more living and more real as their knowledge and esteem of each other are increased, and as their mutual confidence, sympathy, and love are deep- END OF CHRIST’S DEATH, 149 ened. The death of the human soul, in relation to God, is ignorance or false views of his character, indifference, or dislike, distrust, and want of sym- pathy. The life opposed to this death is right views of God. The source of peace, of holiness, of all that constitutes in the truest sense being to the soul in its relation to God, is right views of him, of his purity and his goodness, and of his merciful inten- tions toward his fallen children. It is a new and loving recognition of the character of God, it is recovered childlike trust in him, it is intelligent sympathy with his gracious procedure and plans. By knowledge, love, confidence and sympathy the uncreated and the created mind are reunited, and no other union than this is possible to them. This is the righting again of the first and highest of all our relations, our relation to God ; the only right- ing again which is needed or is possible ; and this is grounded in the free surrender of the understand- ing, conscience, and heart to that Eternal Will which is rectitude, purity, wisdom, truth and love. This is life, re-newed life. The stream is connected again with the living Fountain, the branch is grafted in again into the Tree, the plant is rooted again in the parent Soil. The prodigal son returns again to his Father’s house and his Father’s heart. The two beings the most nearly related to each other in the whole universe — God and man — who 150 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. were so awfully estranged are brought together, reconciled. The reconciliation of the soul and God was the highest end of the personal ministry of Jesus. He often spoke of this as connected with his life, and as still more mysteriously related to his death. “ God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.” 1 “ The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.” 3 “I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.” 3 “ I lay down my life for the sheep.” 4 “ Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life that I may take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father.” ‘ “ Behold, we go up to Jerusalem ; and the Son of Man shall be betrayed unto the chief priests and unto the Scribes, and they shall condemn him to death.” 6 “ All ye shall be offended because of me this night ; for it is written, I will smite the shep- herd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad.” 7 In the reconciliation of men to God, 1 John, iii. 16. 2 Matt., xx. 28. 3 John, x. 11. 4 John, x. 15. 5 John, x. 17. 6 Matthew, xx. 18. 7 Matthew, xxvi. 31. AND OF HIS LIFE. 151 Jesus expected and was prepared to sacrifice his life ; and in point of fact he did sacrifice his life for this end. No devout examiner of the Chris- tian books can doubt that the wonderful passages which have been quoted most distinctly teach that the death of Christ not only marks an era of the most solemn interest in the development of his re- ligion, but fills an extraordinary place, and exerts an extraordinary power among the active forces of Christianity. Whatever other connections it may have, its relation to Jesus himself, as the highest expression of his love, and the strongest evidence of his invincible moral courage, and its relation to men as a mighty spiritual power acting upon the heart of the world, are beyond debate. But the whole of the ministry of Christ, and not the tragi- cal close of it only, was a ministry of reconcilia- tion. His life as well as his death was sacrificial and atoning. The soul and God at once, no longer divided by sin, by ignorance, enmity, distrust, but re-united and reconciled ; for this Jesus both lived and died. The soul and God, as doctrines, consti- tuted the chief theme of his teaching ; but the doctrines were proclaimed because they contained the seed of life, of everlasting life to a dying world, and were fitted to originate a deep and vital change in men’s consciences and hearts. In dealing with these doctrines, Christ’s methods were various, but his aim was uniform * it was that men might recog- 152 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. nize God and be reconciled to Him. Sometimcr he revealed the soul to itself, its greatness and re- sponsibility, its condition and its danger, and thus prompted it to rise to its own lofty sphere of thought and of action. Again, he revealed God to the soul as its Father, from whom it ought never to have been separated, and in reconciliation with whom only it could have peace and life. On the one hand, a deep and living faith in the destiny, the wants, and the claims of their own spiritual nature ; on the other hand, a deep and living faith in the Father of their souls — these constituted the grand, the pressing necessity of human beings in that age ; they do so not less at this moment. Jesus sought, therefore, first to place vrithin men a perpetual spiritual presence, and then to surround men with a perpetual Divine presence. By his life and by his death, he sought to restore God to man, and man to God. The spiritual restoration and re- generation of the world, in other words, the estab- lishment of a reign of God in the human soul, forms the true idea of the personal ministry of Christ, the true idea of his life, the true idea of his death. PART V THE ARGUMENT FROM HIS WORE TO HIS DIVINITY, Human systems of religious truth. — Mohammedanism. — Hindoo- ism and Buddhism. — Talmudism. — Ancient Jewish Scriptures. — Stoicism, earlier and later. — Errors and Excellences. — Socraticism or Platonism. — Philo-Judseus. — Life of Socrates. — His Death. — His Faith and Hopes. — Christian views of them and him. — Christianity contrasted with Teaching of Socrates. — Solution, Christ’s true Divinity. If the representation of the teaching of Christ which has been offered be faulty, it is by defect, not by excess. For our purpose it may have been sufficient ; but it is only by the critical and minute study of the discourses and sayings of Jesus that we learn to do full justice to his character as a Teacher, and that we gain an impression at all adequate of his spiritual opulence and power. The words of this Being, even on common occasions, discover a breadth and universality without example; they are always very simple, but profoundly suggestive, sometimes of inexhaustible force. Jesus not only announces separate ideas of the highest value, but his sayings may be likened to rich seeds or roots of truth, from which spring up manifold living growths 1 * 154 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. Again, in dealing with a profound, hard, dense sub- ject, a single utterance of his shall discover it to its depths, and leave it luminous forever. The free and earnest soul deeply pondering the sentences which fell from his lips, feels itself in a lofty and holy region, where new expanses of light and glory in all directions break upon the sight ; where forms of truth, long familiar, open freshly, and disclose unimagined wonders ; and where an overpowering sense of reality, of living energy, and of Divinity is created. But this experience can not be gained with- out devout, profound and close study of the Gos- pels ; and, as the study in the becoming temper of mind is prolonged, the experience, instead of fading, deepens marvelously. The teaching of Jesus of Nazareth, as we have attempted to describe it in the last chapter, must now be compared with whatever portions of pro- fessed truth the world has received from other hands, in other places and ages. A spirit of strict impartiality must guide the comparison. I. The latest noticeable antagonist of Christianity is the system which owes its birth to the genius, perhaps the piety, of Mohammed ; and to which, on several obvious grounds, no inconsiderable impor- tance belongs. It has spread itself over a large part of the globe ; it is accepted by a hundred and fifty millions of the human race ; and is, in itself, HUMAN SYSTEMS OF TRUTH. 155 immensely superior to all the forms of polytheism* The doctrine of One Supreme God, and of his all- ruling providence, is invaluable, and must have ex- erted a mighty influence for good wherever it has been received. But an examination of this system is unnecessary here, and chiefly on two accounts : — First, not to notice the extravagances and follies which it contains, it is at variance in many parts with the established facts of science, and in many other parts with just moral sentiments. Second, in all its really important aspects, it is a copy from Judaism, or from Christianity, or from both. None acquainted with the Jewish and Christian Scriptures — the latter and especially the former, much more ancient than the Koran — can doubt this fact for a moment. Altogether, in spite of its redeeming features, as a communication of spiritual truth to the world, a message respecting God, or respecting man, respecting the divine government, or respecting hu- man destinies, it does not admit of being compared with Christianity. II. At the opposite extreme in point of time from the religion of Arabia, and not less opposite in point of character, stand the Hindoo or Brahminical and the Buddhist systems. Our notice of them shall be very short, ana it is on this account that we have ventured to depart in this instance from the chrono- logical order. The great antiquity of these systems 156 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. invests them with interest and importance. Budd- hism belongs to a period at least several hundred years before the age of Christ, and Brahminism is certainly many centuries earlier, and may have been even much earlier than this, indeed is probably the most ancient form of religion now existing in the world. The one holds possession at this day of nearly the entire population of Hindostan, the other is adopted by the three hundred millions of the Chinese empire. The Hindoo or Brahminical reli- gion is in form and even in essence an enormous polytheism, if indeed it be not rather a true pan- theism. The Buddhist system is virtually a philo- sophical atheism. In the one, whatever underlying unity it may be possible to discover, all the powers and parts of the universe are held to be proper objects of worship, are indeed truly divine, inasmuch as they are all alike emanations of the divinity. In the other there is no God but intellect. The Budd- hist, though he may exalt the idea of an abstract intellectual unity, though he may recognize the con- centration of the idea in saint or sage, or may fancy it diffused and distributed in innumerable forms, in reality worships nothing higher than his own soul, or the conception of that soul, developed under more propitious circumstances than his individual life has supplied. Eastern scholars, who have ex- amined the Hindoo Yedas, inform us that, along with much of a very opposite character, they con* HINDOOISM AND BUDDHISM. 157 tain passages of great sublimity on the holiest and grandest subject of thought, the Infinite Intelligence, the Fountain of Light and Life ; and also many les- sons of benevolence, purity, wisdom and justice Christians receive the information with thankful- ness, and are glad to believe that any such rays of light, however feeble and few, have fallen upon the darkness of the world. But they can not on this account conceal from themselves or the less deplore the idolatry, the pantheism, the moral abominations, the monstrous system of worship, and the monstrous forms of human society which have grown up be- neath the shelter of Brahminism and Buddhism. III. We return to the order of time ; and, begin- ning with the age of Mohammed, and passing back from it toward the Christian era, we meet with certain Jewish writings, to which it is maintained the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth was largely in- debted. The modern Jew asserts with much assur- ance, that all which is really valuable in the say- ings of Christ, was borrowed, more or less directly, from the Talmud. That collection of traditions, and of expositions of the ancient Scriptures, known by this title, consisting of the Mishna or text, and two commentaries* the one the Gemara of Jerusa- lem, and the other the Gemara of Babylon, has long been regarded by the Jewish people, and is still regarded, with the highest veneration. We 158 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. do not profess to be able to discuss the still de- bated question of its antiquity and authority, nor is such discussion at all necessary for our purpose. It is admitted freely, that much of what the Tal- mudical books contain was current among the Jews in the time of Christ, and probably long be- fore it, and therefore it is possible that he may have borrowed from this source. It is admitted, also, that these books present some important religious and moral truths ; but it is at the same time just as undoubted, that the mass of their contents is friv- olous, and even false. At all events, the Jews themselves do not deny that these writings are far inferior to the ancient inspired Scriptures. They may interpret, expand, or impress the revelations of the Old Testament, but they themselves offer no new revelation, and add nothing to the divine light before shed down from heaven. It will, therefore, be satisfactory and direct, at once to compare the teaching of Jesus with the system of truth in the ancient Scriptures. IY. The peculiar poetical imagery, and the mag- nificent and gorgeous diction, which distinguish many passages of the Old Testament, are palpably wanting in the Christian Gospels. The lawgiver, the reformer, the poets, and the prophetic sages of ancient Israel speak in the name of Jehovah, in grand and solemn tones ; but in the New Testa* ANCIENT JEWISH SCRIPTURES. 159 ment an apparently humble individual, using only the most familiar and simple language, claims to instruct the world ; so that if there be sublimity here, it must lie in the thoughts themselves, not at all in the form in which they are presented. Chris- tians have n '‘t been reluctant to honor the inspired seers of Israel ; on the contrary, they entirely be- lieve that the Old Testament and the New are not hostile, but harmonious revelations. They find in the ancient devotional poetry of the Jews a pro- found analysis of religious experience, and a fresh- ness and fervor of pious feeling altogether unsur- passed, and they rejoice to acknowledge that there is a large amount of imperishable truth which is common to both Scriptures. But that the later is borrowed from the earlier , and is only an imitation, a repetition of it, is not only denied, but it is main- tained that this is both more lucid and more complete than that , and also contains discoveries which are entirely unknown to the more ancient book. We look in vain in the Old Testament for the radiant and overflowing benignity of the New — in vain for the universality, simplicity, and freedom that dis- tinguish the New. The doctrine of a reign of God in the minds and hearts of all men is not found there, nor the uniform assertion of the pure spirit- uality of worship, and of the purely spiritual nature of the Great Object of worship, nor the luminous revelation of the soul in its reality, greatness, ac- 160 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. countability, and endless life, or of that attribute of the divine nature which most of all endears God to man — Paternity. The soul and the Father of the soul, the return of the soul to its Father, and the reign of the Father in the soul, these, in their highest form, belong peculiarly to the teaching of Jesus, and they exalt it, immeasurably above not only all Talmudical and Kabbinical writings, but even the divine oracles of an earlier age. V. About three hundred years before Christ, Athens, rich in great men and in systems and sects, listened to the claim of a new teacher, Zeno, the founder of a new school. The system of the Stoics merits attention in this place, not so much in its early as in its later form. It became at last a the- ology and an ethical code more than either a phys- ical or metaphysical philosophy, and at the com- mencement of the Christian era, and for two cen- turies later, it exerted no inconsiderable influence on the world. The names of Zeno, of Cleanthes, of Epictetus, and of Marcus Antoninus, are not for- gotten at this day, by those who are interested in the genuine efforts of the human soul, and who watch the strugglings of the light of God with the darkness of the world. At the same time, it must not be forgotten, that the stoicism which is repre- sented to us by this name was the product, not of a single mind, but of the combined efforts of many STOICISM. 161 noble minds for a succession of ages. They, wise- ly profiting by the defects and errors of other sys- tems, extracting however the best portions of them and making important additions to them, succeeded at last in forming a new whole, which reflected great glory on the intellectual and moral powers which were capable of producing it. It was this finished and final form of the stoical system which was extensively embraced before the age of Jesus, and for two centuries later. And it is this, the work of many minds and many ages, which is to be compared with the labors of a single person during a course of only three years, the probability, amount- ing nearly to certainty, being that the work was indebted to this very person for some of its later and most valuable peculiarities. It would be easy, without any injustice, to pro- duce a humiliating account of the errors of stoicism. We can not wonder that, on subjects which to this day defy speculation, such as the essential nature of things, the reasonings of the Stoics should be puerile and contradictory. The idea of infinity or incorporeity, they were able to attach to nothing, except the vacuum which encompasses the universe. An infinite, even an incorporeal God in the proper sense of the term, they knew not. Philosophers of this school speak of the incorporeal reason, but they can mean only the unembodied reason. Be- tween God and mattei they recognized no essential 162 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. distinction, and their highest conception of the dif- ference was expressed when they said that God was the informing principle of matter. Hence many of them identified God with the ether, which spreads itself over the exterior surface of the heavens ; and this ethereal substance they imagined contained the vital principles from which all forms of existence are produced, but not by the will of a creator, but by necessity of nature. If to them Reason or God was underived, so also was the matter of the universe. By no sect was the doctrine of absolute fate more thoroughly adopted than by the Stoics. As they invariably represent it, a necessary chain of causes and effects encircles the whole universe, the divine reason and material things alike. “ What- ever that be,” says Seneca, “ which has determined our lives and our deaths, it binds the gods also by the same necessity. Human and divine things alike are carried along in an irrevocable course.” 1 Large and just exception must be taken to the doctrine of this school on the subject of moral ex- cellence, its foundation, its nature, and its laws. Piety toward God, as they described it, is little else than a callous surrender to irresistible fate ; self- government is crucifixion of the best affections of the heart; the highest crime against God and 1 Quidquid est quod nos siv vivere jussit sic mori, eadem ne- cessitate et Deos alligat. Irrevocabilis hum ana pariter ac divi- na cursus vehit. — Seneca, Op. Parisiis, 1761, p. 78. STOICISM. 163 against nature, self-destruction, is vindicated, and, in certain circumstances, even commanded as a duty ; and benevolence, instead of being generous love, is devotion to an abstract idea, a cold calculation, an act of homage to reason. The human race is a unity, of which no part can be injured without evil to all the rest ; and such injury, therefore, they argued, it is the part of wisdom to prevent or rem- edy. The obvious tendency of some parts of the stoical system was to nourish pride, to create heart- lessness, and even hypocrisy, and to make men un- natural and artificial. The virtuous Stoic was proudly and coldly strong, was superior to pleasure and pain, would relieve the afflicted, and protect himself against personal injury, but would at the same time, repress all pity for others, and all sor- row on his own account. But, in spite of numerous and serious errors, the ethical system of the Stoics was wonderfully grand, and wonderfully pure. When we think of princi- ples like the following — “ that the highest end of fife is to contemplate truth, and to obey the Eter- nal Beason and the immutable law of the universe ; that God is to be revered above all beings, to be acknowledged in all events, and to be universally submitted to ; that the noblest office of wisdom is to subject the passions, dispositions, and conduct to reason and virtue ; that virtue is the supreme good, and is to be pursued for its own sake, and not from 164 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. fear or from hope ; that it is sufficient for happiness, and is seated only in the mind, and being so, ren- ders men independent of all external events, and happy in every condition ; that the consciousness of well-doing is reward enough without the ap- plause or approbation of others, without even their knowledge of our good deeds, and that no prospect of self-indulgence, and no fear of loss, or pain, or death must be suffered to turn us aside from truth and virtue — when we hear such principles as these distinctly maintained by the sages of this school, it is impossible to withhold from them our admiration, and to repress a profound feeling of thankfulness to the Great God. These are some of the redeeming fea- tures of the stoical morality, which rendered it in- comparably superior to all the ancient systems, with one wonderful exception, the system of which Socrates was the founder and Plato the chief ex- positor . 1 VI. Upward of a hundred years earlier than 1 In the Enchiridion of Epictetus, and in his lectures (both compiled by his disciple Arrian), and in the writings of Seneca, especially his De Providentia, He Sapientis Constants, De Bre- vitate Vitae, and De Vita Beata, the errors and the excellences of Stoicism are fully discovered. Very touchingly also, are wo brought into contact with the system, as a personal experience, in the Meditations of Aurelius. “ Marci Antonini Imperatoris, eorum quae ad seipsum, libri XII.” Oxon. 1704. Especially lib. iv. cap. 10, 24, 29, 33, 34, 41, 44, 45; also in some parts of the Noctes Atticae of Aulus Gellius. SOCRATICISM OR PLATONISM. 165 the time of Zeno, Socrates questioned, perplexed, stimulated, and instructed the people of Athens. His name, and that of his disciple Plato, are asso- ciated with what is justly regarded as the most luminous and refreshing passage of ancient profane history, whether as it respects philosophy or as it respects religion. The philosophy of Plato differs in form, still more in its details, and especially in its completeness and refinement, from that of Soc- rates ; but in ethics and religion the master and the disciple are entirely identified ; and it would be idle to attempt to distinguish between them. About the time of Christ, or shortly afterward, a profound interest in the doctrines of Socrates and Plato w r as awakened throughout the Jewish world, by the waitings of Philo of Alexandria. These writings are a compound of Judaism, Orientalism, and Platonism ; but the Platonic element very de- cidedly predominates. It may be safely pronounced impossible that Jesus of Nazareth can have been acquainted with the works of the Alexandrian Jew. It is quite incapable of proof, and is most improbable, that any of these works were even in existence, in the lifetime of Christ. If they were, it can have been only a short while , and nothing is more unlikely than that Jesus, in an obscure vil- lage, and in the position of a working man, had even heard of them, far less examined them. The fact, however, is interesting, and it directly bears 166 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. on our investigation, that not only the Gentile, but even the Jewish world, during the primitive age of Christianity, was familiar with the system of Soc- rates and Plato. It is not necessary here to point out the defects and errors of that system. They are confessedly important and numerous. For example, Socrates distinctly maintained the pre-existence of human souls, before their entrance into the bodies of the present race of men. lie taught also the transmi- gration of souls — at least their possible occupation of other bodies after the death of those they now inhabit — and, as the punishment of their vice, their occupation of the bodies of irrational animals. It must be admitted further, that his reasonings on the immortality of the soul are not seldom as unsatis- factory as they are subtle and refined. And then, the last words which he uttered, desiring that an offering he had vowed to Esculapius might be paid by his friends, are a melancholy testimony against him. It was clearly his conviction, that a wise and good man ought to worship the gods recog- nized by the country to which he belonged. 1 His faith in a plurality of objects of worship was un- disguised and sincere ; but it is at the same time as 1 Hence Xenophon expresses his amazement that Socrates was charged with denying the gods of Athens, as if nothing could be more utterly groundless : tig ovk tvofu^ev ovg i] 7r okig vo/il^ei &eoi)g 7coi(f) ttot’ ixPV aavT0 reK/itjpiu. . — Comment, lib. i. cap. 1, 2. Berol. 1845. LIFE OF SOCRA certain that he recognized and ad<5fc^t& Supreme God, the Almighty Creator and Ruler ; and he speaks of this Being in language which may well excite astonishment. “ He, who arranges and up- holds the universe, who is the fountain of all that is beautiful and good, and who, for the use of his creatures, maintains the creation always uninjured, entire, and undecaying ; . . . this Being, conduct- ing these affairs, is invisible to us, yet is made manifest by the grandeur of his operations.” 1 Soc- rates maintained that the first principles of moral- ity, which are common to all mankind, are laws of the Supreme ; and the distinction between them and mere human laws he finds in the fact, that they can never be transgressed with impunity. “ They who violate the laws established by the gods suffer a penalty which it is not possible to escape in any such way, as some who violate the laws established by men are able to escape the consequences of transgression.” 3 The life of Socrates must not be overlooked, when attempting, in however brief a manner, to 1 6 rdv oXov noofiov owraTTov re nal ovvexuv, h

vyelv, uoTrep rode VTrd avOpuiruv tceipevovg vofiovg Ivioi t apaSaivovref Statyevyovai rd 6ikt)v didovcu. — Idem. cap. 4. 21. 168 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. understand and estimate his system. The testimo- ny of those who knew him best is unshaken by all the efforts that have been made to overthrow it ; and there is no sufficient reason to doubt that he was a sincere, upright, disinterested man, and, withal, singularly pious, according to the light he had received. His disciple and intimate friend, Xenophon, declares that he never undertook any work without first asking counsel of the gods. A sense of God, a strong faith in the influence of God, and a deep desire to be governed by it, were habit- ual to his soul ; and, in all probability, this is the amount of what he intended to convey, when he constantly and openly referred to a demon — a pre- siding spirit within him — whose voice he had heard and obeyed from his childhood. The idea on which the public life of this man was founded, is unusually impressive. The youth of Athens had long been corrupted, as he thought, by a class of instructors who set little value on what they taught or others believed, but great value on dialectic power and rhetorical art, by means of which even falsehood might be commended to the minds of men. Socrates resolved to lift up goodness and truth, in themselves, as the noblest end of living ; and to show that the office of philosophy was to deliver mankind from the dominion of prejudice, ignorance, and vice, to inspire them with the love of virtue, and, through a careful intellectual and DEFENSE OF SOCRATES. 169 moral disciplme, to guide them to happiness. His position, from the first, was that of a philosophic moralist; and, choosing Athens as his sphere, he devoted his life to the diffusion of what he believed to be the highest truth. His entire time was spent in this work ; he sought for scholars, not only among men of rank, but also among laborers and mechan- ics ; and, contrary to the general practice in that day, he exacted no remuneration from those who attached themselves to his school. “ It does not accord with what is usual among men,” he says, in his memorable defense, “ that I have neglected all that belongs to myself, and have tolerated for so many years this neglect of my private affairs. Your concerns, on the other hand, I have constantly at- tended to, appealing to you individually, like a father, or an elder brother, and urging you to the cultivation of virtue. If, indeed, I had gained any thing by this means, and had accepted payment for my exhortations, there might have been some rea- son for my conduct ; it appears to me that I offer proof sufficient that I am speaking truly, when I name my poverty .” 1 The man who thus spoke 1 ov ydp dv6puTriv(f ) eolke rb ipb ruv pev epavrov dnavTuv rjpe- krjKevai, /cat avexeoOcu tuv oIkeiuv dpekovpevuv Toaavra fjdr] err), rb di vpeTEpov TcpaTTELv del, Idtp knaarip npoatovra fioirep tt aripa rj ddehQbv tt peabvrepov, ttelQovto. iiripekeTadat aperfjg. /cat el pevroi tl di rd tovtuv direkavov, nal pioOov ?*ap6dvov, ravra Trapetcekevo- pijv j etyev av Ttva koyov Uavbv yap olpai, lyd napexopat rbv pdprvpa ug dkrjOrj keyu, tt)v rrevcav. — Apol. Soc. in Plat. oper. Lipsiae, 1829, tom. i. p. 63. 8 170 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. was often persecuted by the vicious and the false in the course of his life. “You, my fellow citizens,” he said, appealing to themselves for the truth of his statements, “ have been unable to tolerate my man- ners and my words ; they have grown ever more and more oppressive and hateful to you, so that you now long to be relieved from them.” 1 At last he was condemned to death ; and for this reason, chiefly, whatever the ostensible grounds might be, that his fellow-citizens could no longer endure his merited rebukes. The defense of Socrates, followed as it was by his death, is perhaps the most remarkable, all cir- cumstances considered, of human productions. He describes the aim of his life: — *“I pass my time doing nothing but persuade you, both young and old, to care so earnestly neither for the body, nor for treasures, nor for any other thing, as for the soul, by what means it may be ennobled in the highest degree.” 2 He announces his settled reso- lution, whatever it may cost : — “ Oh, Athenians, I esteem and love you, but I shall obey Grod rather than you ; and while I live, and as far as lies in 1 vpelg fJ.lv ovrag -KoXirai pov , ovx oloi r’ tyevEoOe Ivey/celv rdg ipug dia,Tpi6ug Kal roi)g Tioyovg, uXX vlpv fSapvrepat yeyovaai Kal tTTKpdovuTepcu &ote £ rjTEiTE airtiv vvvl u'KaXkcvrivcu. — Idem. p. 7 2. 2 Ovdlv yd.p uTCXo 7 r purruv syd nEpiEpxopai if tcslO&v ipuv Kal veorepovg Kal tt p£o6vTepovg prfTE cupdruv EmpeXeladai, pr/re xpw- udruv npoTEpov prfTE uXkov rivog ovto oQoSpa tig rrjg il>vxvc Snug ug upLOTTf Eorai . — Aval. p. 61. DEFENSE OF SOCRATES. 171 me, I shall never cease philosophizing, or urging and remonstrating with whomsoever I may meet, in the very same terms I have been wont to use.” 1 He presents a confession of his faith on a most im- portant subject : — “ I declare that the highest good to man is this, to spend every day in forming opin- ions respecting virtue and other subjects, such as you have heard me discussing, scrutinizing both myself and others ; and that a life without inquiry is no life for man.” 2 After the sentence of death had been pronounced, he tells his judges that he might have escaped had he employed another method of defense. But he adds : “ It is no matter of regret to me now, that I have defended myself in this manner, but I should much prefer death from taking this course, to life on that ground (that is, having followed any other course) .... This truly is hard, oh Athenians, to escape death ; but it is far more difficult to avoid wickedness.” 3 “ You, therefore, oh my judges, 1 ’Eyu ifiu g, o uvSpeg ’ kOrjvaioi , daizd^opat plv Kal lko, ireioo- pat db to Oeo pukkov rj vptv, Kal tocnep uv ipirvea Kal olog re d), ov pi) •navaopat & ^vdpeg dmaorai , EVE'Smdag elvai npdg rdv Zavarov, nal ev n tovto diavoeiodai uXydeg, on ovk ecsnv dvdpl dyadfi aanov ovdbv ovte £Qvtl ovte TE^Evryoavn, ovdl dpeleirai i>Tzb i 9e£)v rd tovtov it pay par a . — Idem, p. 79. 2 V E yuys roTg KararpyijnoapEvoig pov nal role Karyyopoig ov ttuvv XOAETzaivu. — Idem , p. 79. 3 E lyup rig dityinopevog slg adov, drcaTdkayeig rovruvl rdv a- okovtov ducaortiv Elvai Evpyasi roi)g dg dXrjOtig dinaorug, upa tyavTu] dv ely y dreodypia iyd plv ydp irol’kaKU tdelu reOvuvai, el ravra ianv dXydy. — Idem , pp. 77, 78. CHRISTIAN VIEW OF SOCRATES. 175 serves this name nowhere except in Hades (shall such a man) instead of rejoicing to depart, be af- flicted at dying ?” 1 * 3 “Does not the soul thus con- ditioned (the wise and good soul) depart to that which is congenial to its nature, to the unseen, the divine, the undying, the wise ? Arriving there (in Hades), its lot is to be blessed, to be emancipated from error and ignorance, and fears, and wild ap petites, and all other earthly evils ; and, as is said in reference to the initiated, truly does it spend the remainder of existence with the gods.” * These were the words of a heathen, nearly five hundred years before the advent of Jesus Christ, of a man who had never seen a line of revelation, so called, and could have had no knowledge of the existence of such a things a man who lived in the very center of polytheism, who was himself & child and an avowed disciple of polytheism, and who to the last religiously observed the worship of 1 YeaoIov dv ew?, dvdpa 7rapaoKevd£ovd’ kavrbv h r

o6uv Kal uyptuv epthTum Kal tuv dX'kuv kokuv tuv dvdpuiTEiuv dKJjlXayftevT)' uorreo di 'hiyETat KaTu tuv fj.EpvTjfx.evuv, ug uXrjdug rbv horn }v x°° vov t ieT ^ &euv didyovoa . — Idem, p. 13S. 174 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. inferior divinities. His name and that of Plato, and the names also of Zeno, and Epictetus, and Antoninus, have come down to our times associated with the sentiments which have been quoted. The hope is not vain that, in that dark day, and be- neath all the polluting shadows of paganism, there may have been many, like to these sages, of whom no record has descended. Above all, we can be- lieve that there may have been multitudes of the obscurer classes on whom the influence of Socrates, Plato, and others came down as a healing and puri- fying power. The hope is inexpressibly refreshing to the Christian soul. God, who, for the sake of the world, and in order to preserve to it the truth which it had well-nigh lost, conferred singular dis- tinction on Judea, had not abandoned the rest of mankind, but drew near to them also, in his secret illuminations and in his sanctifying agencies. The Holy Ghost that touched the soul of Hebrew proph- ets and teachers, also brooded over the spiritual chaos of the old pagan world, so that gleams of divine light flashed many times across the deep of ignorance and moral evil. It enhances the value of ancient Holy Scripture, it even adds a new sig- nificance to it, when we come to know that, far away from its sphere, the erring soul of man was always struggling toward the source of light, and that from the uncreated sun there fell upon it many a sanctifying and guiding ray. The direct and CHRISTIANITY AND SOCRATICISM. 175 special provision for the coming of the promised Saviour of men, which was made in the Jewish in- stitutions and worship, becomes not less, but more precious, when we understand that, at the same time, over all the world, in the efforts of the human reason, the agitations of the human conscience, and the ceaseless tumult of human affairs, God was conducting, by the merciful influence of his Spirit, a more general preparation for the same grand event. To the Spirit of the living God, striving with man every where and always, must be traced whatever moral goodness and holy truth sprung up in the ungenial soil of ancient paganism. The fact of such divine striving recognized, our first feeling is unfeigned thankfulness to God; the second is deep sympathy with human souls in the day of the world’s darkness, with wise, earnest, virtuous souls in the agony of their search after truth, and in the burden of uncertainty, disappointment, and fear by which they were often crushed. In the number of these ancient spiritual heroes, none wiser or nobler shall we find than Socrates and his illus- trious disciple. In their case, we recognize with joy a merciful agency of God. Instead of seeking to depreciate the recorded sayings of the Athenian sage, we acknowledge with wonder that, in some of the highest regions of moral inquiry, they em- body an amount of truth which, in justice to hu- manity, to spiritual providence, and to the very 176 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. office of Christ, Christians above all men are bound to understand and extol. But, bj the side of the best of all the ancient systems of morality and religion, we are now pre- pared to place the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth, and, with this view, we shall first recall, in the briefest form, the chief subjects of that teaching. “ A universal spiritual reign, the reign of recti- tude, purity, wisdom, truth, love, and peace, the reign of God in the understanding, conscience, heart, and will of men.” “Human sin, Divine pardon.” “Prayer.” “Providence.” “Worship.” “ Human virtue grounded in piety toward God.” “ Among the essential elements of virtue, humility, meekness, forgiveness, pure love, self-sacrifice.” “ Piety and virtue, a true life of God in the soul.” “ Spiritual truth received into the soul, the seed of this Divine life, and the germ of the reign of God in man.” Yet more specially : “ The doctrine of the human soul, its reality, greatness, accountability, and end- less life.” “ The doctrine of God, his Spirituality, Unity, Moral Perfection, and Paternity.” “ The doctrine of the reconciliation of the soul and God ; Grod in bis holy mercy looking upon the soul ; and the soul, in penitence, faith, and filial obedience, yielding itself to God.” This enumeration is almost enough ; there are loctrines here of inexpressible importance, perfect- CHRISTIANITY AND SOCRATICISM. 177 ly original. To name no others, those of sin and pardon, of virtue, as summed up in pure love, in sacrifice and service for others, of an ever brighten- ing and holy immortality, and of God’s fatherhood, have no place in the sayings of the Athenian phi- losopher. Altogether we behold here an original- ity, a consistency, a living energy, a grandeur, and a depth which can be found nowhere else. Socrates and Plato astonish us by the utterance of imperish- able and grand ideas ; but they are not only few in number, but are unconnected. Christ offers to the world an extended and harmonious multitude of spiritual doctrines. He, too, is the only teacher who always speaks with certainty and precision. The disciples of Socrates were often left in deep perplexity by their master. One occasion may be instanced: when he was conducting a discussion with two of their number respecting the immortal- ity of the soul. “ They (that is Socrates, and Cebes, and Simmias) seemed to disturb us afresh, though we had been fully convinced by the previous argu- ments, and to plunge us again into unbelief .” 1 This was the frequent experience of the best men in the ancient world, in reference to the most vital questions, on which, at other times we find them ex- pressing the utmost certainty. Even Socrates often 1 'Y7rd tov IfinpoaOer 2.6yov otyoipa neireiofievovc fjfias 7rd2.LV tdoKOW uva,Tapd!;ai nal elf union xv KaTa6a?»etv . — Phcedo in Plat oper. tom. i. p. 150. 8 178 THE CHRIST OF HISTORY. employed such ambiguous language as the following : “If death be a removal hence to another place, and if what is said of the dead be true,” — “those who live there (that is in Hades) are thenceforth immor- tal — if Sit least what is said be true.” The conclud- ing words of his apology were these : — “ But the hour of separation has now come ; I go to die, you to live ; but which of us is destined to an improved being is concealed from every one except God.” 1 On the great subjects of futurity, the soul, and God, Socrates often utters profound and imperishable truth ; but even on these, as well as less moment- ous questions, he sometimes exhibits lamentable hesitation and doubt. The teaching of Jesus Christ, on the other hand, is a region of unclouded and serene light. From the first, a deep conviction is awakened that here is perfect knowledge and faith which can not be shaken. Christ reveals many truths unheard before ; but both on these and on such as may be found elsewhere, he exhibits un- wavering certainty. On all the great subjects of his ministry, his utterances are determinate and uniform. Hot a shadow even of hesitation rests for a moment on his language. The conflict of other minds be- tween faith and doubt he knew not ; but however high the subject, and environed with difficulties, 1 ’A TikvL ydp f/dij u>pa uruevai, epol piv u'KoOavovpev