← catalogue

The Cradle of the Christ: A Study in Primitive Christianity

by Octavius Brooks Frothingham · English · Gutenberg #36767 · 363,865 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Cradle of the Christ: A Study in Primitive Christianity
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: The Cradle of the Christ: A Study in Primitive Christianity

Author: Octavius Brooks Frothingham


        
Release date: July 17, 2011 [eBook #36767]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/36767

Credits: Produced by Charlene Taylor, Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe,
        Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
        at http://www.pgdp.net


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CRADLE OF THE CHRIST: A STUDY IN PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY ***




Produced by Charlene Taylor, Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe,
Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
at http://www.pgdp.net











                   THE CRADLE OF THE CHRIST.

               A STUDY IN PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY.

                BY OCTAVIUS BROOKS FROTHINGHAM.


    NEW YORK:
    G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS.
    182 FIFTH AVENUE.
    1877.

    COPYRIGHT,
    G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS.
    1877.




PREFACE.


The literary intention of this volume is sufficiently declared in the
opening paragraph, and need not be foreshadowed in a preface; but as the
author's deeper motive may be called in question, he takes the liberty
to say a word or two in more particular explanation. The thought has
occurred to him on reading over what he has written, as a casual reader
might, that, in his solicitude to make his positions perfectly clear,
and to state his points concisely, he may have laid himself open to the
charge of carrying on a controversy under the pretence of explaining a
literature. Such a reproach, his heart tells him, would be undeserved.
He disclaims all purpose and desire to weaken the moral supports of any
form of religion; as little purpose or desire to undermine Christianity,
as to revive Judaism. It is his honest belief that no genuine interests
of religion are compromised by scientific or literary studies; that
religion is independent of history, that Christianity is independent of
the New Testament. He is cordially persuaded that the admission of
every one of his conclusions would leave the institutions of the church
precisely, in every spiritual respect, as they are; and in thus
declaring he has no mental reserve, no misty philosophical meaning that
preserves expressions while destroying ideas; he uses candid,
intelligible speech. The lily's perfect charm suffers no abatement from
the chemist's analysis of the slime into which it strikes its slender
root; the grape of the Johannisberg vineyards is no less luscious from
the fact that the soil has been subjected to the microscope; the fine
qualities of the human being, man or woman, are the same on any theory,
the bible theory of the perfect Adam, or Darwin's of the anthropoid ape.
The hero is hero still, and the saint saint, whatever his ancestry. We
reject the inference of writers like Godfrey Higgins, Thomas Inman, and
Jules Soury, who would persuade us that Christianity must be a form of
nature-worship, because nature-worship was a large constituent element
in the faiths from which it sprung; why should we not reject the
inference of those who would persuade us that Christianity is doomed
because the four gospels are pronounced ungenuine? Christianity is a
historical fact; an institution; it stands upon its merits, and must
justify its merits by its performances; first demonstrating its power,
afterward pressing its claim; vindicating its title to exist by its
capacity to meet the actual conditions of existence, and then asking
respect the ground of good service. The church that arrogates for itself
the right to control the spiritual concerns of the modern world must not
plead in justification of its pretension that it satisfied the
requirements of devout people of another hemisphere, two thousand years
ago. The religion that fails to represent the religious sentiments of
living men will not support itself by demonstrating the genuineness of
the New Testament, the supernatural birth of Jesus, or the inspiration
of Paul. Other questions than these are asked now. When a serious man
wishes to know what Christianity has to say in regard to the position of
woman in modern society, a quotation from a letter to the christians in
the Greek city of Corinth, is not a satisfactory reply. Christianity
must prove its adaptation to the hour that now is; its adaptation to
days gone by, is not to the purpose.

The church of Rome had a glimpse of this, and revealed it when it took
the ground that the New Testament did not contain the whole revelation;
that the source of inspiration lay behind that, used that as one of its
manifestations, and constantly supplied new suggestions as they were
needed. Cardinal Wiseman did not hesitate to admit that the doctrine of
trinity was not stated in the New Testament, though undoubtedly a belief
of the church. It would have been but a step further in the same
direction, if Dr. Newman should declare that the critics might have
their way with the early records of the religion, which, however curious
as literary remains, were not essential to the constitution or the work
of the church. Strauss and Renan may speculate and welcome; the mission
of the church being to bless mankind, their labors are innocent. A
church that does not bless mankind cannot be saved by Auguste Nicolas; a
church that does bless mankind cannot be injured by Ernest Renan.

Leading protestant minds, without making so much concession as the
church of Rome, have practically accepted the position here maintained.
It is becoming less common, every day, to base the claims of
Christianity on the New Testament. The most learned, earnest, and
intelligent commend their faith on its reasonableness, confronting
modern problems in a modern way. St. George Mivart quotes no scripture
against the doctrine of evolution. No one reading Dr. McCosh on the
development hypothesis, would suppose him to be a believer in the
inspiration of the bible. He reasons like a reasonable man, meeting
argument with argument, feeling disposed to confront facts with
something harder than texts. The well instructed christian, if he enters
the arena of scientific discussion at all, uses scientific weapons, and
follows the rules of scientific warfare. The problems laid before the
modern world are new; scarcely one of them was propounded during the
first two centuries of our era; not one was propounded in modern terms.
The most universal of them, like poverty, vice, the relations of the
strong and the weak, present an aspect which neither church, Father, nor
Apostle would recognize. Whatever bearing Christianity has on these
questions must be timely if it is to be efficacious.

The doctrine of christian development, as it is held now by
distinguished teachers of the christian church, implying as it does
incompleteness and therefore defect in the antecedent stages of progress
points clearly to the apostolic and post apostolic times as ages of
rudimental experience, tentative and crude. Why should not the
entertainers of this doctrine calmly surrender the records and remains
of the preparatory generations to antiquarian scholars who are willing
to investigate their character? No discovery they can make will alter
the results which the centuries have matured. They will simply more
clearly exhibit the process whereby the results have been reached.

We may go further than this, and maintain that the unreserved
abandonment to criticism of the literature and men of the early epochs
would be a positive advantage to Christianity, for thereby the religion
would be relieved from a serious embarrassment. The duty, assumed by
christians, of vindicating the truth of whatever is found in the New
Testament imposes grave difficulties. It is safe to say that a very
large part of the disbelief in Christianity proceeds from doubts raised
by Strauss, Renan, and others who have cast discredit on some portions
of this literature. Christians have their faith shaken by those authors;
and doubtless some who are not christians are prejudiced against the
religion by books of rational criticism. The romanist, failing to
establish by the New Testament, or by the history of the first two
centuries, the primacy of Peter, the supremacy of Rome, the validity of
the sacraments, the divine sanction of the episcopacy, loses the convert
whom the majestic order of the papacy might attract. The protestant,
failing to prove by apostolic texts his cardinal dogmas,
pre-destination, atonement, election, must see depart unsatisfied, the
inquirer whom a philosophical exposition might have won. The necessity
of justifying the account of the miraculous birth of Jesus repels the
doubter whom a purely intellectual conception of incarnation might have
fascinated; and the obligation to believe the story of a physical
resurrection is an added obstacle to the reception of a spiritual faith
in immortality. Scholarship has so effectually shown the impossibility
of bringing apostolical guarantee for the creed of christendom, that the
creed cannot get even common justice done it while it compromises itself
with the beliefs of the primitive church. The inspiration of the New
Testament is an article that unsettles. Naturally it is the first point
of attack, and its extreme vulnerability raises a suspicion of weakness
in the whole system. The protestant theology, as held by the more
enlightened minds, is capable of philosophical statement and defence;
but it cannot be stated in New Testament language, or defended on
apostolical authority. The creed really has not a fair chance to be
appreciated. Its power to uphold spiritual ideas, and develop spiritual
truths; its speculative resources as an antagonist of scientific
materialism, animal fatalism, and sensualism, are rendered all but
useless. Powerful minds are fettered, and good scholarship is wasted in
the attempt to identify beginnings with results, roots with fruits.

This is a consideration of much weight. When we remember how much time
and concern are given to the study of the New Testament for
controversial or apologetic purposes, to establish its genuineness,
maintain its authority, justify its miracles, explain away its
difficulties, reconcile its contradictions, harmonize its differences,
read into its texts the thoughts of later generations, and then reflect
on the lack of mind bestowed on the important task of recommending
religious ideas to a world that is spending enormous sums of
intellectual force on the problems of physical science and the arts of
material civilization, the close association of the latest with the
earliest faith seems a deplorable misfortune. If there ever was a time
when the purely spiritual elements in the religion of the foremost races
of mankind should be developed and pressed, the time is now; and to miss
the opportunity by misplacing the energy that would redeem it is
anything but consoling to earnest minds.

Thus might reason a full believer in the creed of christendom, a devoted
member of the church; Greek, Roman, German, English. The man of letters
viewing the situation from his own point, will, of course, feel less
intensely the mischiefs entailed by the error; but the error will be to
him no less evident. It is sometimes, in war, an advantage to lose
outworks that cannot be defended without fatally weakening the line,
drawing the strength of the garrison away from vulnerable points, and
exposing the centre to formidable assault. The present writer, though no
friend to the christian system, believes himself to be a friend of
spiritual beliefs, and would gladly feel that he is, by his essay,
rather strengthening than weakening the cause of faith, by whatever
class of men maintained.




CONTENTS.


I. FALSE POSITION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.

II. THE MESSIAH.

III. THE SECTS.

IV. THE MESSIAH IN THE NEW TESTAMENT.

V. THE FIRST CHRISTIANS.

VI. PAUL'S NEW DEPARTURE.

VII. THE LAST GOSPEL.

VIII. THE WESTERN CHURCH.

IX. JESUS.

AUTHORITIES.




I.

FALSE POSITION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.


The original purpose of this little volume was to indicate the place of
the New Testament in the literature of the Hebrew people, to show in
fact how it is comprehended in the scope of that literature. The plan
has been widened to satisfy the demands of a larger class of readers,
and to record more fully the work of its leading idea. Still the
consideration of the New Testament literature is of primary importance.
The writer submits that the New Testament is to be received as a natural
product of the Hebrew genius, its contents attesting the creative power
of the Jewish mind. He hopes to make it seem probable to unprejudiced
people, that its different books merely carry to the last point of
attenuation, and finally exhaust the capacity of ideas that exerted a
controlling influence on the development of that branch of the human
family. To profundity of research, or originality of conclusion, he
makes no claim. He simply records in compact and summary form, the
results of reading and reflection, gathered in the course of many years,
kept in note books, revised year by year, tested by use in oral
instruction, and reduced to system by often repeated manipulation. The
resemblance of his views, in certain particulars, to those set forth by
German critics of the school of Strauss or of Baur, he is at no pains to
conceal. His deep indebtedness to them, he delights to confess. At the
same time he can honestly say that he is a disciple of no special
school, writes in the interest of no theory or group of theories, but
simply desires to establish a point of literary consequence. All polemic
or dogmatical intention he disavows, all disposition to lower the
dignity, impair the validity, or weaken the spiritual supports of
Christianity. His aim, truly and soberly speaking, is to set certain
literary facts in their just relation to one another.

It has not been customary, nor is it now customary to assign to the New
Testament a place among the literary productions of the human mind. The
collection of books bearing that name has been, and still is regarded by
advocates of one or another theory of inspiration, as of exceptional
origin, in that they express the divine, not the human mind; being
writings super-human in substance if not in form, containing thoughts
that could not have occurred to the unaided intelligence of man, neither
are amenable to the judgment of uninspired reason. To read this volume
as other volumes are read is forbidden; to apply to it ordinary
critical methods is held to be an impertinence; to detect errors or
flaws in it, as in Homer, Plato, Thucydides, is pronounced an
unpardonable arrogance. A book that contains revelations of the supreme
wisdom and will must be accepted and revered, must not be arraigned.

Criticism has therefore, among believers chiefly we may almost say
solely, been occupied with the task of establishing the genuineness and
authenticity of the writings, harmonizing their teachings, arranging
their contents, explaining texts in accordance with the preconceived
theory of a divine origin, vindicating doubtful passages against the
objections of skeptics, and extracting from chapter and verse the sense
required by the creed. Literature has been permitted to illustrate or
confirm points, but has not been called in to correct, for that would be
to judge the infinite by the finite mind.

In accordance with this accepted view of the New Testament as a
miraculous book, students of it have fallen into the way of surveying it
as a detached field, unconnected by organic elements with the
surrounding territory of mind; have examined it as if it made no part of
an extensive geological formation, as men formerly took up an aerolite
or measured a boulder. The materials of knowledge respecting the book
have been sought within the volume itself, neither Greek, Roman, German
nor Englishman presuming to think that a beam from the outside world
could illumine a book

    Which gives a light to every age,
    Which gives, but borrows none.

The rationalists it is needless to say, avoided this error, but they
betrayed a sense of the peril arising from it, in the polemical spirit
that characterized much of their writing. In Germany, the tone of
rationalism was more sober and scientific than elsewhere, because
biblical questions were there discussed in the scholastic seclusion of
the University, in lectures delivered by learned professors to students
engaged in pursuits purely intellectual. The lectures were not addressed
to an excitable multitude, as such discourses are, to a certain extent,
in France or England, and particularly in America, and consequently
stirred no religious passions. The books published were read by a small
class of specialists who studied them as they would treatises in any
other department of ancient literature. Nearly half a century ago the
disbelief in miracles, portents, and supernatural interventions, was
entertained and published by German university professors; stories of
prodigies were discredited on the general ground of their incredibility,
and the books that reported them were set down as untrustworthy,
whatever might be the evidence of their genuineness. A miraculous
narrative was on the face of it unauthentic. Efforts were accordingly
made to bring the New Testament writings within the categories of
literature. Criticism began the task by applying rules of "natural"
interpretation to the legendary portions, thus abolishing the
supernatural peculiarity and leaving the merely human parts to justify
themselves. The method was the best that offered, but it was
unscientific; "unnaturally natural;" confused from the necessity of
supplementing knowledge by conjecture, and faulty through the amount of
arbitrary supposition that had to be introduced. Attention was directed
to the historical or biographical aspect of the books, and only
incidentally to their literary character, as productions of their age.

The method pursued by Strauss was strictly scientific and literary,
though on the surface it seemed to be concerned with biographical
details. By treating the narratives of miracles as mythical rather than
as legendary, as intellectual and dogmatic rather than as fanciful or
imaginary creations, and by tracing their origin to the traditionary
beliefs of the Old Testament, he ran both literatures together as one,
showing the new to be a continuation or reproduction of the old. The
construction, otherwise, of the New Testament literature concerned him
but incidentally. The first "Life of Jesus," published in part in 1835,
was devoted to the discussion of the gospels as books of history. The
second--a revision--was published in 1864, contained a much larger
proportion of literary matter in the form of documentary discussion,
made frequent references to Baur, and other writers of the Tuebingen
School, and attached great weight to their conclusions. In the "Old and
the New Faith," published nearly ten years later, the main conclusions
of Baur are adopted as the legitimate issue of literary criticism,
though without attempt at formal reconciliation with his own original
view.

Baur's method was original with himself. He finds the key to the secret
of the composition of the first three Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles
and portions of other books, in the quarrel between Paul and Peter
feelingly described in the second chapter of the letter to the
Galatians. The "synoptical" Gospels, he contends, and with singular
ingenuity argues, are the results of that controversy between the broad
and the narrow churches; are not, therefore, writings of historical
value or biographical moment, but books of a doctrinal character, not
controversial or polemical,--mediatorial and conciliatory rather than
aggressive,--but written in a controversial interest, and intelligible
only when read by a controversial light. Baur called his the
"historical" method, as distinguished from the dogmatical, the textual,
the negative; because his starting point was a historical fact, namely,
the actual dispute recorded, in language of passionate earnestness, by
one of the parties to it, and distinctly confessed in the attitude of
the other. But Baur's method has a still better title to be called
literary, for it is concerned with the literary composition of the New
Testament writings, and with the dispute as accounting for their
existence and form. His studies on the fourth Gospel, and on the life
and writings of the Apostle Paul, are admirable examples of the
unprejudiced literary method; by far the most intelligent, comprehensive
and consistent ever made; simply invaluable in their kind. They contain
all that is necessary for a complete _rationale_ of the New Testament
literature. These, taken in connection with his "History of the
First Three Centuries," his "Origin of the Episcopate," his
"Dogmengeschichte," put the patient and attentive student in possession
of the full case. But Baur lacked constructive talent of a high order,
and has been less successful than inferior men in embracing details in a
wide generalization.

Renan adopts the method of the early rationalists, but applies it with a
freedom and facility of which they were incapable. He takes up the
Gospels as history, and sifts the literature in order to get at the
history. He claims to possess the historical sense, by virtue of which
he is able to separate the genuine from the ungenuine portions of the
Gospels. It is a point with him to show how the character of Jesus was
moulded by the spirit of his age, and by the literature on which he was
nurtured; but his treatment of the evangelical narratives as a mass of
biographical notes reflecting, with more or less correctness, the
personality of Jesus, is not quite compatible with a rational or even a
literary treatment of them as a continuation of the traditions of the
Hebrew people. The constructive force being centred in Jesus himself,
the full recognition of the creative genius of the Hebrew mind, which
was illustrated in Jesus and his age, was precluded. Renan is in a
measure compelled to make Jesus a prodigy--an exceptional person, who
baffles ordinary standards of judgment; and in so doing distorts the
connection between him, the generations that went before, and the
generations that came after. Strauss does more justice to the New
Testament literature, in attempting only its partial explanation. Baur
does more justice to it in seeking a literary explanation of the
writings as they are. Renan picks and chooses according to our arbitrary
criterion, which capriciously disports itself over a field covered with
promiscuous treasures.

Lord Amberley's more recent attempt reveals the weakness of the common
procedure. Without the learning of Strauss, the perspicacity of Baur, or
the brilliant audacity of Renan, he strays over the field, making
suggestions neither profound nor original, and rather obliterating the
distinct impressions his predecessors have made than making new ones of
his own. His chapter on Jesus will illustrate the confusion that must
issue from a false method, which does not deserve to be called a method
at all.

Books have been written about the New Testament by the
thousand--libraries of books; but they merely supplant and refute one
another. Each is entitled to as much consideration as the rest, and to
no more. The old materials are turned over and over; the texts are
subjected to new cross-examinations; the chapters and incidents are
shuffled about with fresh ingenuity; new suppositions are started; new
combinations are made; but all with no satisfactory result. Whether it
be Auguste Nicolas, who reconstructs the Gospels to justify the
predispositions of Romanism; or Edmond de Pressense, who does the same
service for liberal Protestantism; or Henry Ward Beecher, who constructs
a Christ out of the elements of an exuberant fancy; or William Henry
Furness, who is certain that "naturalness" furnishes the touchstone of
historical truth; the conclusion is about equally inconclusive.

The literary method avoids the dogmatical embarrassments incident to the
supernatural theory; offers easy solutions of difficult problems;
connects incidents with their antecedents; interprets dark sayings by
the light of association; and places fragments in the places where they
belong. An exhaustive application of this treatment would probably
explain every passage in the New Testament writings. A partial
application of it like the present will indicate at least some of the
capacities of the method.

The literary treatment differs from the dogmatical represented by the
older theologians who used the New Testament as a text book of doctrine;
from the purely exegetical or critical, which consisted in the impartial
examination of its separate parts; from the destructive or decomposing
treatment pursued by the so-called "rationalism;" and from the
"historical," as employed by Baur and the "Tuebingen school." It is in
some respects more comprehensive and positive than either of these,
while in special points it adopts all but the first. Every other method
presents a controversial face, and is something less than scientific, by
being to a certain degree inhospitable. This consults only the laws
which preside over the literary expression given to human thoughts.

It has been customary with christians to widen as much as possible the
gulf between the Old and the New Testaments, in order that Christianity
might appear in the light of a fresh and transcendent revelation,
supplementing the ancient, but supplanting it. The most favorable view
of the Old Testament regards it as a porch to the new edifice, a
collection of types and foregleams of a grandeur about to follow. The
Old Testament has been and still is held to be preparatory to the New;
Moses is the schoolmaster to bring men to Christ. The contrast of Law
with Gospel, Commandment with Beatitude, Justice with Love, has been
presented in every form. Christian teachers have delighted to exhibit
the essential superiority of Christianity to Judaism, have quoted with
triumph the maxims that fell from the lips of Jesus, and which, they
surmised, could not be paralleled in the elder Scriptures, and have put
the least favorable construction on such passages in the ancient books
as seemed to contain the thoughts of evangelists and apostles. A more
ingenuous study of the Hebrew Law, according to the oldest traditions,
as well as its later interpretations by the prophets, reduces these
differences materially by bringing into relief sentiments and precepts
whereof the New Testament morality is but an echo. There are passages in
Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, even tenderer in their humanity than
anything in the gospels. The preacher from the Mount, the prophet of the
Beatitudes, does but repeat with persuasive lips what the law-givers of
his race proclaimed in mighty tones of command. Such an acquaintance
with the later literature of the Jews as is readily obtained now from
popular sources, will convince the ordinarily fair mind that the
originality of the New Testament has been greatly over-estimated. Even a
hasty reading of easily accessible books, makes it clear that Jesus and
his disciples were Jews in mind and character as well as by country and
race; and will render it at least doubtful whether they ever outgrew
the traditions of their birth. Paul's claim to be a Hebrew of the
Hebrews, a Pharisee of the Pharisees, "circumcised the eighth day, of
the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin," is found to be more than
justified by his writings; and even John's exalted spirituality proves
to be an aroma from a literature which Christianity disavows. The
phrases "Redemption," "Grace," "Faith," "Baptism," "Salvation,"
"Regeneration," "Son of Man," "Son of God," "Kingdom of Heaven," are
native to this literature, and as familiar there as in gospel or
epistle. The symbolism of the Apocalypse, Jewish throughout, with its
New Jerusalem, its consecration of the number twelve,--twelve
foundations, twelve gates, twelve stars, twelve angels,--points to
deeper correspondences that do not meet the eye, but occur to
reflection. We remember that the New Testament constantly refers to the
Old; that great stress is laid on the fulfilment of ancient prophecies;
that Jesus explicitly declares, at the opening of his ministry, that he
came not to destroy the law or the prophets, but to reaffirm and
complete them, saying with earnest force "till heaven and earth pass,
not one jot or tittle shall in any wise pass from the law until all be
fulfilled." We discover that his criticisms bore hard on the casuists
who corrupted the law by their glosses, but were made in the interest of
the original commandment, which had been caricatured. In a word, so
completely is the space between the old dispensation and the new bridged
over, that the most delicate and fragile fancies, the lightest imagery,
the daintiest fabrics of the intellectual world are transported without
rent or fracture, across the gulf opened by the captivity, and the
deserts caused by the desolating quarrels that attended the new attempts
at reconstruction, while the massive ideas that lie at the foundation of
Hebraic thought, wherever found, are landed without risk or confusion in
the new territory. Between the Jewish and the Christian scriptures there
is not so much as a blank leaf.

If this can be made apparent without over-stating the facts, everything
in the New Testament, from the character of Jesus, and the constitution
of the primitive church, to the later development by Paul, and the
latest by John, must be subjected to a revision, which though fatal to
Christianity's claim to be a special revelation, will restore dignity to
the Semitic character, and consistency to the development of historic
truth. Better still, it will heal the breach between two great
religions, and will contribute to that disarmament of faiths from which
good hearts anticipate most important results. Of all this hints only
can be given in a short essay like this; but if the hints are suggestive
in themselves or from their arrangement, a service will be rendered to
the cause of truth that may deserve recognition.




II.

THE MESSIAH.


The period of the captivity in Babylon, which is commonly regarded as a
period of sadness and desolation, a blank space of interruption in the
nation's life, was, in reality, a period of intense mental activity;
probably the highest spiritual moment in the history of the people.
Dispossessed of their own territory, relieved of the burden and freed
from the distraction of politics, their disintegrating tribal feuds
terminated by foreign conquest, living, as unoppressed exiles, in one of
the world's greatest cities, with opportunities for observation and
reflection never enjoyed before, having unbroken leisure in the midst of
material and intellectual opulence, the true children of Israel devoted
themselves to the task of rebuilding spiritually the state that had been
politically overthrown. The writings that reflect this period,
particularly the later portions of Isaiah, exhibit the soul of the
nation in proud resistance against the unbelief, the disloyalty, the
worldliness, that were demoralizing the less noble part of their
countrymen. The duty was laid on them to support the national
character, revive the national faith, restore the national courage, and
rebuild the national purpose. To this end they collected the traditions
of past glory, gathered up the fragments of legend and song, reanimated
the souls of their heroes and saints, developed ideas that existed only
in germ, arranged narratives and legislation, and constructed an ideal
state. There is reason to believe that the real genius of the people was
first called into full exercise, and put on its career of development at
this time; that Babylon was a forcing nursery, not a prison cell;
creating instead of stifling a nation. The astonishing outburst of
intellectual and moral energy that accompanied the return from the
Babylonish captivity attests the spiritual activity of that "mysterious
and momentous" time. When the hour of deliverance struck, the company of
defeated, disheartened, crushed, to all seeming, "reckless, lawless,
godless" exiles came forth "transformed into a band of puritans." The
books that remain from those generations, Daniel, the Maccabees, Esdras,
are charged with an impetuous eloquence and a frenzied zeal.

The Talmud, that vast treasury of speculation on divine things, had its
origin about this period. Recent researches into that wilderness of
thought reveal wonders and beauties that were never till recently
divulged. The deepest insights, the most bewildering fancies, exist
there side by side. The intellectual powers of a race exhausted
themselves in efforts to penetrate the mysteries of faith. The fragments
of national literature that had been rescued from oblivion, were
pondered over, scrutinized, arranged, classified, with a superstitious
veneration that would not be satisfied till all the possibilities of
interpretation had been tried. The command to "search the scriptures"
for in them were the words of eternal life, was accepted and faithfully
obeyed. "The Talmud" says Emanuel Deutsch, "is more than a book of laws,
it is a microcosm, embracing, even as does the Bible, heaven and earth.
It is as if all the prose and poetry, the science, the faith and
speculation of the old world were, though only in faint reflections,
bound up in it _in nuce_." The theme of discussion, conjecture,
speculation, allegory was, from first to last, the same,--the relation
between Jehovah and his people, the nature and conditions of salvation,
the purport of the law, the bearing of the promises. The entire field of
investigation was open, reaching all the way from the number of words in
the Bible to the secret of infinite being. No passage was left unexposed
with all the keenness that faith aided by culture could supply; and when
reason reached the end of its tether, fancy took up the work and
threaded with unwearied industry the mazes of allegory.

Among the problems that challenged solution was the one touching the
Messiah, his attributes and offices, his nature and his kingdom. This
theme had inexhaustible capacities and infinite attraction, for it was
but another form of the theme of national deliverance which was
uppermost in the Hebrew mind.

The history of the Messianic idea is involved in the obscurity that
clouds the early history of Israel; and this again is embarrassed with
the extreme difficulty of deciding the antiquity of the Hebrew
scriptures. At what moment was Israel fully persuaded of its
providential destiny? That is the question. For the germs of the
Messianic idea were contained in the bosom of that persuasion. That the
idea was slow in forming must be conceded under any estimate of its
antiquity; for its development depended on the experiences of the
nation, and these experiences underwent in history numerous and violent
fluctuations. The hope of a deliverer came with the felt need of
deliverance, and the consciousness of this need grew with the soreness
of the calamity under which the nation groaned, as the character of it
was determined by the character of the calamity. The national
expectation was necessarily vague at first. It rested originally on the
tradition of a general promise given to Abraham that his descendants
should be a great and happy nation, blessing and redeeming the nations
of the earth; that their power should be world-wide, their wealth
inexhaustible, their peace undisturbed, their moral supremacy gladly
acknowledged. "The Lord shall cause thine enemies that rise up against
thee to be smitten before thy face; they shall come out against thee one
way, and flee before thee seven ways. The Lord shall command the
blessing upon thee in thy storehouses, and in all that thou settest thy
hand unto; and he shall bless thee in the land which the Lord thy God
giveth thee. The Lord shall establish thee an holy people unto himself,
as he hath sworn unto thee, if thou shalt keep the commandments of the
Lord, and walk in his ways; and all people of the earth shall see that
thou art called by the name of the Lord."

As a promise made by Jehovah must be kept, the anticipation of its
fulfilment became strong as the prospect of it grew dim. The days of
disaster were the days of expectation. The prophets laid stress on the
condition, charged the delay upon lukewarmness, and urged the necessity
of stricter conformity with the divine will; but the people, oblivious
of duty, held to the pledge and cherished the anticipation. When the
national hope assumed the concrete form of faith in the advent of an
individual, when the conception of the individual became clothed in
supernatural attributes, is uncertain. Probably the looked-for deliverer
was from the first regarded as more than human. It could hardly be
otherwise, as he was to be the representative and agent of Jehovah, an
incarnation of his truth and righteousness. The Hebrews easily
confounding the human with the super-human, were always tempted to
ascribe supernatural qualities to their political and spiritual leaders,
believing that they were divinely commissioned, attested and furthered;
and the person who was to accomplish what none of them had so much as
hopefully undertaken, would naturally be clothed by an enthusiastic
imagination, with attributes more than mortal. The poets depicted the
stories of the future restoration in language of extraordinary splendor.
Joel, some say eight hundred years before Jesus, two hundred years
before the first captivity, foreshadows the restoration, but without any
portraiture of the victorious Prince. A century and a half later we will
suppose, the first Isaiah speaks of the providential child of the
nation, on whose shoulder the government shall rest, whose name shall be
called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty Potentate, Everlasting Father,
Prince of Peace; whose dominion shall be great, who shall fix and
establish the throne and kingdom of David, through justice and equity
for ever, and in peace without end; a lineal descendant from David, a
sprout from his root.

    "The spirit of Jehovah shall rest upon him,
    "The spirit of wisdom and understanding,
    "The spirit of counsel and might,
    "The spirit of knowledge and fear of Jehovah.
    "Righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins,
    "And faithfulness the girdle of his reins;
    "To him shall the nation repair,
    "And his dwelling place shall be glorious."

The second Isaiah, supposed to have written during the exile and not
long before its termination, associates the hope of restoration and
return with king Cyrus, on whose clemency the Jews built great
expectations, intimating even that he might be the promised deliverer.
"He saith of Cyrus: 'He is my shepherd; he shall perform all my
pleasure.' He saith of Jerusalem: 'She shall be built;' and of the
temple: 'Her foundation shall be laid.'"

In the book of Daniel, by some supposed to have been written during the
captivity, by others as late as Antiochus Epiphanes (B. C., 175), the
restoration is described in tremendous language, and the Messiah is
portrayed as a supernatural personage, in close relation with Jehovah
himself. He is spoken of as a man, yet with such epithets as only a
Jewish imagination could use in describing a human being. Heinrich
Ewald, in the fifth volume of his history of the people of Israel,
devotes twenty-three pages to an account of the development of the
national expectation of a Messiah, which he calls "the second
preparatory condition of the consummation in Jesus." After alluding to
Joel's fervent anticipation, and Isaiah's description of the glory that
was to come through the King, in whom the spirit of pure divinity
penetrated, animated and glorified everything, so that his human nature
was exalted to the God-like power, whose actions, speech, breath even
attested deity, he says: "It is not to be questioned that this most
exalted form of the conception of the anticipated Messiah appeared in
the midst of the latter period of this history, when before the great
victory of the Maccabees, the eternal hopes of Israel were disturbed in
their foundations along with its political prospects, and the advent of
a King of David's line seemed wholly impossible. At this time the
deathless hope became more interior and imperishable in this new,
glorious, celestial idea, and the Messiah presented himself before
prophetic vision as existing from all eternity, along with the
indestructible prerogatives of Israel, which were thought of as existing
in an ideal realm, ready to manifest themselves visibly when the hour of
destiny should come. And we are able, on historical grounds, to assume
that the deep-souled author of the book of Daniel, was the man who first
sketched the splendid shape of the Messiah, and the superb outline of
his kingdom, in his far-reaching, keen, suggestive, luminous phrases;
while immediately after him the first composer of our book of Enoch
developed the traits furnished him, with an equal warmth of language and
a spiritual insight, not deeper perhaps, but quieter and more
comprehensive." Ewald supposes the book of Enoch to have been written at
various intervals between 144 and 120 (B. C.) and to have been
completed in its present form in the first half of the century that
preceeded the coming of Christ. The book was regarded as of authority by
Tertullian, though Origen and Augustine classed it with apocryphal
writings. In it the figure of the Messiah is invested with super-human
attributes. He is called "The Son of God," "whose name was spoken before
the sun was made;" "who existed from the beginning in the presence of
God," that is, was pre-existent. At the same time his human
characteristics are insisted on. He is called "Son of Man," even "Son of
Woman," "The Anointed," "The Elect," "The Righteous One," after the
style of earlier Hebrew anticipation. The doctrines of angelic orders
and administrations, of Satan and his legions, of resurrection and the
final judgment, though definitely shaped, perhaps by association with
Persian mythologies, lay concealed in possibility within the original
thought of ultimate supremacy which worked so long and so actively,
though so obscurely, in the mind of the Jewish race.

The books of Maccabees, belonging, according to Ewald, to the last half
century before Christ, contain significant hints of the future beliefs
of Israel. In the second chapter of II. Maccabees, verses 4-9, we read:
"It is also found in the records that Jeremy the prophet, being warned
of God, commanded the tabernacle and the ark to go with him, as he went
forth into the mountain where Moses climbed up and saw the heritage of
God. And when Jeremy came thither he found a hollow cave wherein he laid
the tabernacle and the ark and the altar of incense, and then stopped
the door. And some of those that followed him came to mark the way, but
they could not find it; which, when Jeremy perceived, he blamed them,
saying: As for that place it shall be unknown until the time that God
gather his people again together, and receive them unto mercy. Then
shall the Lord show them these things, and the glory of the Lord shall
appear, and the cloud also, as it was showed unto Moses." Is it a
stretch of conjecture on the tenuous thread of fancy to find this
reappearance described in Revelations XI., 19, in these words: "And the
temple of God was opened in heaven, and there was seen in the temple the
ark of his covenant; and there were lightnings, and voices, and
thunderings, and an earthquake, and great hail?" In the twenty-first
chapter the seer describes himself as "carried away in the spirit to a
great and high mountain" and shown "that great city the Holy Jerusalem,
descending out of heaven, from God." And he heard a great voice out of
heaven, saying: "Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men; He will
dwell with them, and they shall be His people, and God himself shall be
with them, their God." The heavenly Jerusalem that came from the clouds
is the heavenly city, the germ whereof was carried up and hidden in the
cloud by Jeremy, the prophet. The apocryphal books of the Old Testament
lodge the ancient Hebraic idea in the very heart of the New.

The earliest phases of the Messianic hope were the most exalted in
spirituality. As the fortunes of the people became entangled with those
of other states, and the heavy hand of foreign oppression was laid upon
them, the anticipation lost its religious and assumed a political
character. The Messiah assumed the aspect of a temporal prince, no other
conception of him meeting the requirements of the time. The dark days
had come again, and were more threatening than ever. Sixty-three years
before the birth of Jesus, Pompey the Great, returning from the East,
flushed with victory, approached Jerusalem. The city shut its gates
against him, but the resistance, though stubborn, was overcome at last,
and Judaea was, with the rest of the world, swept into the mass of the
Roman empire. The conqueror, proud but magnanimous, spared the people
the last humiliation. He respected no national scruples, perhaps made a
point of disregarding them; he even penetrated into the Holy of Holies,
a piece of sacrilegious audacity that no Gentile had ventured on before
him; but he was considerate of the national spirit in other respects,
and left the State, in semblance at least, existing. He quelled the
factions that distracted the country, repaired the ruin caused in the
city by the siege, restored the injured temple, and departed leaving the
country in the hands of native rulers, the Empire being thrown into the
background. In the background, however, it lurked, a vast power, holding
Judaea dependent and tributary. The Jewish state was closely bounded and
sharply defined; a portion of its wealth was absorbed in taxes. An iron
arm repressed the insurgent fanaticism that ever and anon broke out in
zeal for Jehovah. The loyalty that was kept alive by religious
traditions and was only another name for religious enthusiasm, was not
allowed expression. Still the even pressure of imperial power was not
cruelly felt, and by the better portion of the people was preferred to
ceaseless discord and anarchy. The lower orders, easily roused to
fanaticism, provoked the Roman rule to more evident and stringent
dominion. Julius Caesar, passing by on his way to Egypt, paused, saw the
situation, and increased the authority of Antipater, his representative,
whom he raised to the dignity of Procurator of Judaea. The rule of
Antipater was, in the main, just, and commended itself to the rational
friends of the Jewish State. He rebuilt the wall which the assaults of
war had thrown down, pacified the country, and earned by his general
moderation the praise of the patriotic. But Antipater, besides being the
representative of a Gentile despotism, was of foreign race, an Idumaean,
of the abhorred stock of Edom. Spiritual acquiescence in the rule of
such a prince was not to be expected.

Antipater was the founder of the Herodian dynasty. Whatever may have
been the ulterior designs which the princes of this dynasty had at
heart, whether they meditated an Eastern Empire centering in Palestine,
Jerusalem being the great metropolis, a purpose kept secret in their
breasts till such time as events might justify them in throwing off the
dominion of Rome which they had used as an assistance in their period of
weakness; or whether they hoped to combine Church and State in Judaea in
such a way that each might support the other; or whether, in their
passion for splendor, they plotted the subversion of religion by the
pomp of pagan civilization; the practical result of their dominion was
the exasperation of the Hebrew spirit.

Herod, the son of Antipater, deserved, on several accounts, the title of
Great that history has bestowed on him. He was great as a soldier, great
as a diplomatist, great as an administrator. Made king in his youth;
established in his power by the Roman senate; confirmed in his state by
Augustus; entrusted with all but unlimited powers; absolved from the
duty to pay tribute to the empire; his long reign of more than forty
years was of great moment to the Jewish state. Internally he corrupted
it, but externally he beautified it. The superb temple, one of the
wonders and ornaments of the Eastern world, was of his building, and so
delicately as well as munificently was it done, that the shock of
removing the old edifice to make room for the new was quite avoided. He
adorned the city besides, with sumptuous monuments and structures. His
palaces, theatres, tombs were of unexampled magnificence. Nor was his
attention confined to the city of Jerusalem; Caesarea was enriched with
marble docks and palaces; Joppa was made handsome; Antonia was
fortified. Games and feasts relieved the monotony of Eastern life, and
gratified the Greek taste for splendid gaiety. But this was all in the
interest of paganism. If he rebuilt the temple at Jerusalem, he rebuilt
also the temple at Samaria. If he made superb the worship of Jehovah in
the holy city, he encouraged heathen worship in the new city of Caesarea.
This introduction of Roman customs deeply offended the religious sense
of the nation. Outside the city walls he had an amphitheatre for
barbarous games. Inside, he had a theatre for Greek plays and dances.
The castle, Antonia, well garrisoned, a castle and a palace combined,
commanded the temple square. The Roman eagle, fixed upon the front of
the temple, was an affront that no magnificence or munificence could
atone for. His private life was not calculated to win the favor of a
severely puritanical people, or persuade them of the advantage of being
under imperial dominion. The Greek legends on his coins, his
ostentatious encouragement of foreign usages and people, his rude
treatment of Hebrew prejudices, and his haughty bearing towards the
"first families" added bitterness to the misery of foreign sway.

Yet the situation became worse at his death. For his successors had his
audacity without his prudence, and were disposed, as he was, to be
oppressive, without being, as he was, magnificent. He did keep the
nation at peace by his tyranny, if by his cruelty he undermined security
and provoked the disaffection that made peace impossible after him. The
last acts ascribed to him, the order that the most eminent men of the
nation should be put to death at his decease, and that the infants of
Bethlehem, the city of David, should be massacred, attest more than the
vulgar belief in his cruelty; they bear witness to a conviction that the
spirit of the people was not dead, that the despotism of Rome had failed
to crush the hope of Israel. The death of Herod, which occurred when
Jesus was a little child, was followed by frightful social and political
convulsions. For two or three years all the elements of disorder were
afoot. Between pretenders to the vacant throne of Herod, and aspirants
to the Messianic throne of David, Judaea was torn and devastated. Revolt
assumed the wildest form, the higher enthusiasm of faith yielded to the
lower fury of fanaticism; the celestial visions of a kingdom of heaven
were completely banished by the smoke and flame of political hate.
Claimant after claimant of the dangerous supremacy of the Messiah
appeared, pitched a camp in the wilderness, raised the banner, gathered
a force, was attacked, defeated, banished or crucified; but the frenzy
did not abate. Conservative Jews, in their despair, sent an embassy to
Rome, praying for tranquility under the equitable reign of law. They
wanted no king like Herod, or of Herod's line; they prayed to be
delivered from all kings who were not themselves subject to imperial
responsibility. The governor of Syria they would acknowledge. The
petition was not granted. Herod's three sons, Archelaus, Antipas and
Philip divided their father's dominion between them; Judaea was made a
Roman province, subject to taxation like any other.

The best of the three kings was Philip, who received as his portion the
North Eastern division, the most remote from the centre of disturbance.
He was a quiet, well-disposed man, who staid at home, attended to his
own business, developed the resources of his dominion, and showed
himself a father to his people. Caesarea Philippi was built by him;
Bethsaida was rebuilt. Antipas, called also Herod, was appointed ruler
over Galilee and Peraea; a cunning, unprincipled man, nicknamed "the
fox;" despotic and wilful, like his father, and like his father, fond of
display. He built Dio Caesarea, as it was afterwards called, and
Tiberias, on the sea of Galilee. He too was a good deal of a pagan, and
deeply outraged the Hebrew conscience by repudiating his wife, the
daughter of Aretas, an Arabian king, and marrying the wife of his
half-brother, Philip. He was an oriental despot, superstitious,
luxurious, sensual, wilful and weak; quite destitute of the
statesmanship required in the ruler of a turbulent province, where
special care and skill were necessary to reconcile the order of civil
government with the aspiration after theocratic supremacy. The spiritual
fear, which compelled him to stand in awe of religious enthusiasm, put
him on more than half earnest quest of prophetic messengers, made him
curious about miracles and signs, and anxious not to offend needlessly
the higher powers, was incessantly at war with the self-regarding policy
which resented the smallest encroachment on his own authority. To
maintain his ducal state, and meet the cost of his public and private
extravagance, he imposed heavy taxes, and collected them in an
unscrupulous fashion, which made him and the empire he represented
extremely unpopular. Jealous of his prerogative, and ambitious of regal
rank, he brought himself into disagreeable collision with the
aspirations of the people he governed. His immediate neighborhood to the
centres of Jewish enthusiasm,--he lived in the very heart of it, for
Galilee was the seat and head-quarters of Hebrew radicalism--made his
every movement felt. In him the spirit of the Roman empire was, in the
belief of the people, incarnate.

The oldest brother, Archelaus, held the chief position, bore the highest
title, received the largest tribute, more than a million of dollars, and
resided in Judaea, nearer the political centre of the country. His reign
was short. His cruelty and lawlessness, his disregard of private and
public decencies raised his subjects against him. Augustus, on an appeal
to Rome for redress, summoned him to his presence, listened to the
charges and the defence, and banished him to Gaul. This was in the year
6 of our era, only three years after the death of Herod. The reign of
his brothers, Philip and Antipas, covered the period of the life of
Jesus.

The "taxing" which excited the wildest uproar against the Roman power,
took place at this period,--A. D. 7,--under Cyrenius or Quirinus,
governor of Syria; it was the first general tax laid directly by the
imperial government, and it raised a furious storm of opposition. The
Hebrew spirit was stung into exasperation; the puritans of the nation,
the enthusiasts, fanatics, the zealots of the law, the literal
constructionists of prophecy, appealed to the national temper, revived
the national faith, and fanned into flame the combustible elements that
smouldered in the bosom of the race. A native Hebrew party was formed,
on the idea that Judaea was for the Jews; that the rule of the Gentile
was ungodly; that all support given to it was disloyalty to Jehovah. The
popular feeling broke out in open rebellion; the fanaticism of the
"zealots" affected the whole nation. Whoever had the courage to draw the
sword in the name of the Messiah was sure of a following, though there
was no chance that the uprising would end in anything but blood and
worse oppression. The most extravagant expectations were cherished of
miraculous furtherance and super-human aid. The popular imagination,
inflamed by rhetoric taken from Daniel, Enoch, and other apocryphal
books, went beyond all sober limits. The primary conditions of divine
assistance, sanctity, fidelity, patience, meekness of trust, reverence
for the Lord's will, were neglected and forgotten; the promise alone was
kept in view; the word of Jehovah was alone remembered; his command was
disregarded. But the Lord's promise was not kept. Every new uprising was
followed by fresh impositions; the detestable dominion was fastened upon
the people more hopelessly than ever. The temper of the domination
became bitter and contemptuous, as it had not been before. The name of
Jew was synonymous to Roman ears with vulgar fanaticism.

In place of Archelaus, Augustus sent procurators, as they were called,
Coponius, Marcus Ambivius, Annius Rufus. The country was generally
tranquil under their short administrations; but the internal feuds were
not pacified. The enthusiasm of the Jews provoked the malignity of the
Samaritans, who, having been longer wonted to foreign rule, less
resented it, and were not unwilling to put themselves in league with the
despot to crush an ancient foe. It is related that during the
administration of Coponius, some evil-minded Samaritans, stole into the
open temple of Jerusalem, on the passover night, and threw human bones
into the holy place. The building was desecrated for the season and must
be purified by special sacrifices before it could be used again. The
dastardly act was associated, in the minds of the people, with the
insulting degradations of the Gentile power, and the spirit of rebellion
was exasperated.

Augustus died A. D. 14, and was succeeded by Tiberius, whose policy
towards Judaea, was not oppressive so much as contemptuous. He was too
merciful to the "sick man" to drive away the carrion flies that were
already surfeited, and let in a fresh swarm of blood-suckers. His
viceroys enjoyed a long term of office and plundered at leisure. Pontius
Pilate was appointed to this position in the year 26, about four years
before the public appearance of Jesus, and was kept there till the year
37. He was, in many respects, a good administrator: overbearing, of
course, for he was a Roman; his subjects were by nature, irritating,
and by reputation, factious. He was greedy of gain, though not rapacious
or extortionate; not a man of high principle; not a sympathetic or
sentimental man, cold, indifferent, apathetic rather; still, moderate,
and, on the whole, just; liable to mistakes through stubbornness and
imprudence, but neither cruel, jealous, nor vindictive. The reputation
of being all these was easily earned by a man in his position; for the
Jews were sensitive, not easily satisfied, and disposed to construe
unfavorably any acts of a foreign ruler. As viceroys went, Pilate was
not a bad man, nor was he a bad specimen of his class. The smallest
imprudence might precipitate riot in Jerusalem. On one occasion, the
troops from Samaria, coming to winter at Jerusalem, were allowed to
carry, emblazoned on their banner, the image of the emperor, to which
the Roman soldiers attached a sacred character. The sight of the
idolatrous standard on the morning of its first exhibition created great
excitement. A riot broke forth at once; a deputation waited on the
governor at Caesarea, to protest against the outrage and demand the
removal of the sacrilege. Pilate firmly withstood the supplicants,
thinking the honor of the emperor at stake. Five days and five nights
the petitioners stayed, pressing their demand. On the sixth day, the
governor, wearied by their importunity and resolved to put an end to the
annoyance, had his judgment-seat placed on the race-course, ordered
troops to lie concealed in the near neighborhood, and awaited the visit
of the Jews. The deputation came as usual with their complaint; at a
signal, the soldiers appeared and surrounded the suppliants, while the
procurator threatened them with instant death, if they did not at once
retire to their homes. The stern puritans, nothing daunted, threw
themselves at his feet, stretched out their necks, and cried: 'It were
better to die than to submit to insult to our holy laws.' The astonished
governor yielded, and the insignia were removed.

On another occasion Pilate was made sensible of the inflammable
character of the people with whom he had to deal. He had allowed the
construction, perhaps only the restoration, of a costly aqueduct to
supply the city, but more especially the temple buildings, with pure
water. It was built at the instance of the Sanhedrim and the priests, to
whom an abundance of water was a prime necessity. In consideration of
this fact, as well as of the circumstance that the benefit of the
improvement accrued wholly to the Jewish people, it seemed to Pilate no
more than just that the expense should be defrayed from moneys in the
temple treasury that were set apart for such purposes. There is no
evidence that his action was unreasonable or his method of pursuing it
offensive; but clamors at once arose against his project, and on
occasion of his coming to Jerusalem a tumultuous crowd pressed on him,
and insulting epithets were flung at him from the rabble. To still and
scatter them soldiers were sent, in ordinary dress, with clubs in their
hands, their weapons being concealed, to overawe the malcontents. This
failing, and the tumult increasing, the signal of attack was given; the
soldiers fell to with a will; blood was shed; innocent and guilty
suffered alike. As this occurred on a feast day, near the Praetorium, and
not far from the temple itself, it is quite possible that the sacred
precincts were disturbed by the uproar, and that the stain of blood
touched consecrated pavement. The popular mind, excited and maddened,
seized on the occurrence, represented it as a deliberate affront on the
part of the governor, and charged him with mingling the blood of
innocent people with the sacrifices they were offering to Jehovah. It is
not unlikely that the "tower of Siloam" which fell, crushing eighteen
citizens, was a part of this very aqueduct wall, and its fall may have
been and probably was, regarded as a judgment on the work and on all who
countenanced it. That it made a profound impression on the popular
imagination appears in the gospel narratives written many years
afterwards. Ewald supposes that this accident happened at an early stage
of the work, and was a leading cause of the fanatical outbreak that
expressed the popular discontent.

Philo tells a story of Pilate's administration, so characteristic that
it deserves repeating, although, as Ewald remarks, it may be another
version of the incident of the standards. Ewald, however, is inclined to
think it a distinct occurrence. According to this narrative, Pilate, in
honor of the emperor, and in accordance with a custom prevalent
throughout the empire, especially in the East, caused to be set up in a
conspicuous place in Jerusalem, two votive shields of gold, one bearing
the name of Tiberius, the other his own. The shields had nothing on them
but the names; no image, no inscription, no idolatrous emblem, simply
the two names. But even this was resented by the fiery populace who
could not endure the lightest intimation of their subjection to a
Gentile power. The indignation reached the aristocracy; at least, the
force of the movement did; and the sons of Herod, all four of them,
accompanied by members of the first families and city officials,
formally waited on Pilate to demand the removal of the tablets, and on
his refusal went to Rome to lay the matter before Tiberius, who granted,
on his part, the request. Be the incident as recorded true or not, the
record of it by so near a contemporary and so clear a judge as Philo,
throws a strong light on the situation, brings the two parties into bold
relief, as they confront one another, and affords a glimpse into the
secret workings of Hebrew political motives.

The pressure of the Roman authority was incessant and severe, though the
apparatus of it was kept in the background. The governor held his court
and head-quarters at Caesarea, a seaport town on the Mediterranean, about
mid-way between Joppa on the south, and the promontory of Carmel on the
north, admirably situated with regard to Rome, on the one side, and
Palestine on the other. For strategic purposes the place was well
chosen. The military force in the country was not large--about a
thousand men--but it was effectively disposed. The castle of Antonia, in
the city of Jerusalem, contained a garrison judiciously small, but
sufficient for an exigency. The viceroy was present in the Holy City on
public days when great assemblages of people, gathered together under
circumstances provocative of insurrection, required closer watch than
usual. He had a residence there, and a judgment-seat on a marble balcony
in front of the palace; he exercised regal powers, held the issues of
life and death, could depose priests of any order; in short, ruled the
subject people with as much consideration as the peculiar circumstances
of the case demanded, but no more. The people were never permitted to
forget their subject condition. The hated tax-gatherer went his rounds,
exacting tribute to the empire. The evolutions of soldiers gave an
aspect of omnipresence to the foreign dominion. The hope of deliverance
lost its spiritual character, and took on decidedly a political shape.
The anticipation of the Messiah became less ideal, but more intense. The
armed figure of king David haunted the dreams of fanatics; even the
angels that hovered before the imagination of gentler enthusiasts wore
breast-plates and had swords in their hands. The kingdom looked for was
no reign of truth, mercy, and kindness, but a reign of force, for force
alone could meet force.




III.

THE SECTS.


The popular aspect of the Messianic hope was political, not religious or
moral. The name "Messiah," was synonymous with "King of the Jews;" it
suggested political designs and aspirations. The assumption of that
character by any individual drew on him the vigilance of the police. In
this condition of affairs the public sentiment was divided between the
Conservatives and the Radicals. The first party comprised the wealthy,
settled, permanent, cautious people whose patriotism was tinged with
prudent reflection. They saw the hopelessness of revolt, its inevitable
failure, and the worse tyranny that would follow its bloody suppression;
they put generous interpretations on the acts and intentions of the
imperial power, did justice and a little more than literal justice to
acts of clemency or forbearance, appreciated the value of the Roman
supremacy in preserving internal quiet and keeping other plunderers at a
distance; and had confidence that patience and diplomacy would
accomplish what force could not undertake. They were careful,
therefore, to maintain a good understanding with the powers that were,
and frowned on all attempts to revive the national spirit.

The conservatives were of all shades of opinion, and of all parties; the
radicals were, as is usually the case, confined mostly to those who had
little to lose, either of wealth, reputation, or social position. The
supremacy of Israel, the restoration of the Jewish Commonwealth, the
overthrow of the wealthy and powerful, the reinstatement of the poor,
the unlettered, the weak, the suffering, the downtrodden "children of
Abraham," composed the group of ideas which made up the sum of their
intellectual life. The Roman dominion was abhorred not because it was
cruel, but because it was sacrilegious. Diplomacy, with these, was
another word for time-serving; policy another phrase for cowardice; they
detested prudence as ignoble; they distrusted conciliation as apostacy;
they put the worst construction on the fairest seeming deeds, dreading
nothing so much as agreement between the chief men of Israel and the
minions of the empire.

The educated and responsible classes were chiefly conservative. No sect
was so entirely, for no sect comprised all of these classes; but some
sects were naturally more conservative than others. The Sadducees were,
on the whole, the most so; not by reason of their creed particularly,
but through the influence of their historical antecedents. After the
capture of Jerusalem by Ptolemy, 320 B. C., some hundred thousand Jews
went to Egypt and attained consequence there; had their own religious
rites and temple. Contact with Greek thought and life there enlarged
their minds. Their old-fashioned Hebraism seemed strait and prim by the
side of the splendid exuberance of Gentile life in Alexandria. Jerusalem
looked, in the distance, like a provincial town; the wealth of pagan
literature dwarfed their Scriptures to the dimensions of a single deep
but narrow tradition. They were Jews still, but bigoted Jews no longer.
How unreasonable seemed now the prejudices of exclusive race! how unwise
the attempts to maintain peculiarities of custom! how fanatical the
efforts to impose them upon others! The world was large and various: the
order of the world followed the track of no one law-giver, prophet or
saint.

The sect of Sadducees is supposed to have risen from this pagan soil. It
was a sect of rationalists, free-thinkers, skeptics, eclectics; Jews,
but not dogmatists of any school. They believed in culture and general
progress, and had the characteristic traits of men so believing. They
were cool, unimpassioned, scientific; sentimentalism they abjured;
enthusiasm to them was folly. They were glad to graft Greek culture on
Hebrew thought, and would not have been sorry to see the small Hebrew
state absorbed by some world-wide civilization. Moses they revered, and
his law; but the aftergrowth, priestly and prophetic, they discarded. No
doubt they thought the priests superstitious, the prophets mad, the
restorationists a set of fools, the vision of Israel's future supremacy
the mischievous nightmare of distempered minds. As a literary class the
Sadducees were few and select; aristocratic in taste, supercilious in
manners. They were in favor with the governors placed over the people by
Roman authority, on account of their cultured moderation; and in return
for social and political support, received offices in the State, and
even in the Church. Caiaphas, the high priest in the time of Jesus, was
a Sadducee, and was raised to that dignity by Valerius Gratus, Pilate's
predecessor in office.

The Sadducee was a man of the world; not in the bad sense, but in the
strict sense of the term. Disbelieving in immortality, he confined his
view to the possibilities of the time; disbelieving in angels and
special providences, he put confidence in temporal powers; disbelieving
the doctrine of divine decrees and manifest destiny, he pursued the
calculations of policy and held himself within the reasonable compass of
human motives. Compromisers on principle, the Sadducees were unpopular
in a community of earnest Jews. They bore bad names, were called
epicureans, sensualists, materialists, cold-blooded aristocrats, allies
of despotism; but they deserved these abusive appellations no more than
men of the same description in modern states deserve them. The abusive
epithet was one of the penalties they had to pay for the intellectual
and social consequence they enjoyed.

The Pharisees were more numerous, more commonplace and more popular.
They were, in fact, the great popular sect. They were of more recent
origin than the Sadducees, their history going back only about a century
and a half before the time of Jesus. Their name, which means "exclusive"
or "elect," "set apart," sufficiently indicates their character. They
were the "strait" sect; Hebrews of the Hebrews; Puritans of the
Puritans; the quintessence of theocratic fervor and patriotic faith; the
true Israel. Strict constructionists they were; friends to the law and
the testimony; worshippers of the letter and the form; painstaking
preservers of every iota of the written word; firm believers in the
destiny of Israel, in the special providence that could accomplish it,
in the angelic powers whose agency might be needed to fulfil it, in the
future life when it was to be fulfilled. They held to the law, and they
held to the prophets, major and minor; they could divide the word of the
Lord to a hair.

The Pharisees have usually been called a sect; they were not so much a
sect as a party. Church and State being one in the conception of a
theocracy, or government of God, the devotee and the politician were the
same person; the dogmatist was the democrat; the man of narrowest creed
was the man of widest sympathies; the most exclusive theologian was the
most popular partisan. To keep Israel true to the faith, and, in
consequence of that to save it from political decline, was, from the
first, the Pharisee's mission. He never lost it from his view. His eye
was steadily fixed on the issues of the day, as they involved the
destinies of the future. In order that he might be a patriot, he was
anxious to preserve unimpaired his puritanism; and in order that he
might preserve his puritanism unimpaired, he attended diligently to the
duties of patriotism.

The Pharisee cherished the Messianic hope. It was part of his faith in
the destiny of Israel, and the great practical justification of his
belief in the resurrection of the dead; he believed in personal
immortality, because he believed in the Christ who would come to bestow
it. It was an article of the patriot's creed; the joy of the Messianic
felicity being the reward for fidelity to Israel. The hope presented to
him its political aspect, that being the aspect really fascinating to
patriotic contemplation. The moral and spiritual aspects were incidental
to this. In fact the moral and spiritual aspects were scarcely thought
of. It was reserved for Christianity to develop these when the literal
doctrine had lost its interest, and the heavenly kingdom had been
transported from the earth to the skies. A thousand and a half of years
have not spiritualized the belief with the multitude. Still the
Pharisaic doctrine is the accepted faith; a purely rational human faith
in immortality is entertained by the philosophical few. The Pharisees
constituted a sort of Young Men's Hebrew Association, loosely organized
for the maintenance of the faith and the fulfilment of the destiny of
Israel.

But while all Pharisees shared the same general beliefs, all were not of
the same mind on questions of immediate policy. They were divided into
conservative and radical wings. The conservatives, whether from
temperament, position, conviction, or selfish interest, deprecated
sudden or violent measures which would defeat their own ends and make a
bad state of things worse. They counselled moderation, patience,
acquiescence in the actual and inevitable. They discountenanced the open
expressions of discontent, advised submission to law, and preached the
duty of strict religious observance as the proper preparation, on their
part, for the providential advent of the Son of Man. No doubt this
policy was prompted in many cases by timidity, and in many cases by
time-serving craft; but no doubt it was in many cases suggested by sober
statesmanship. The conservative Pharisee was even less popular than the
Sadducee; for the Sadducee pretended to no belief in Israel's
providential destiny, and to no sympathy with Israel's Messianic hope;
while the Pharisee made conspicuous protestation of orthodox zeal.
Evidence of the popular dislike of the conservative Pharisee abounds. He
was looked upon as a renegade. He was called pretender and hypocrite,
wolf in sheep's clothing, a whited sepulchre. He was ridiculed and
lampooned. All manner of heartlessness was charged against him, as being
a monster of inhumanity. "The Talmud," says Deutsch, "inveighs even more
bitterly and caustically than the New Testament, against what it calls
'the plague of Pharisaism;' 'the dyed ones,' 'who do evil deeds, like
Zimri, and require a goodly reward, like Phinehas;' 'who preach
beautifully, but behave unbeautifully.'" Their artificial
interpretations, their divisions and sub-divisions, their attitudes and
posturings were parodied and caricatured. The conventional Pharisee was
classed under one of six categories: he did the will of God, but from
interested motives; he was forever doing the will of God, but never
accomplishing it; he performed absurd penances to avoid imaginary sins;
he accepted office in the character of saint; he sanctimoniously begged
his neighbor to mention some duty he had inadvertently omitted, his
design being to seem faithful in all things when he was faithful in
nothing; or, if sincerely devout, he was devout from fear. He had no
credit given him for his virtues, and more than due discredit for his
vices. In time of peril the conservatives out-numbered the radicals, for
radicalism was dangerous; and the feeling between the two classes was
the bitterer on this account; the conservatives hating the radicals whom
they could not disown, the radicals despising the conservatives who were
their brothers in faith. Each party compromised the other precisely
where misapprehension was most exasperating.

For the radicalism of the time was exclusively, we may say, pharisaic.
There was no other of any considerable account. None but believers in
the restoration of Israel, in the triumphant vindication of her faith in
a new and complete social order and in absolute political independence;
none but believers in divine interposition, and a personal resurrection
of the faithful for the enjoyment of felicity in the Messianic kingdom;
none but devout students of the scripture, recipients of the whole
tradition, visionaries of the literal or spiritual order, could
entertain so audacious a hope; and all these were Pharisees.

The Essenes, a mystical and secluded sect, dwelt apart, took no interest
in public affairs, and exerted no influence on public opinion. Peculiar
in their usages, secret in their proceedings, contemplative in their
habits, quietists and dreamers, they so transfigured and sublimated the
views which they shared with their compatriots, that no point of
practical contact was visible. From them no prophet or reformer came.
The soul of the Hebrew faith was all they recognized; the body of it
they were indifferent to. That in many respects their doctrines,
precepts, social usages and religious practices corresponded with those
held by conscientious Jews, need not be questioned. It does not follow
that they originated or communicated them. Such opinions were simply
adopted as a common inheritance. The Essenes rather withdrew than
imparted their belief. All the ingenuity of DeQuincey is unavailing to
establish a practical relation between the Essenes and any popular
movement in Judaea. These movements were led by the more enthusiastic of
the Pharisees, and followed by the multitude that shared their ideas.

The "lawyers" and "scribes," Pharisees for the most part by profession,
were in consequence of their profession, conservative. Men of learning,
well balanced in mind, carefully educated, good linguists, masters often
in theology, philosophy, moral science, familiar as any were with
natural history, the mathematics, botany, engaged in the study and
exposition of the sacred books, they were from the scholastic nature of
their pursuits, disinclined to take part in popular reforms. There were
no zealots among them; they were men of moderate opinions and calm
tempers, capable of stubborn resistance to the elements of agitation,
but incapable of vehement sympathies with enthusiasm.

The "Herodians," were a limited and never a popular party, who hoped
that, in some way, the deliverance of Israel might come through the
family of Herod, as being Jews but not bigots, of foreign extraction but
of oriental genius, whose dynasty had been, and might again be,
independent of Rome. These men were interested in public affairs,
watched narrowly the signs of the times in politics, but were as jealous
on the one side, of popular outbreaks, as they were on the other, of
imperial domination. Deliverance, in their judgment, was to come by
diplomacy, not by enthusiasm. They had no religious creed that
distinguished them as a party. Some may have been Sadducees; more,
probably were Pharisees; but whether Pharisees or Sadducees, they were
in no danger of being demagogues or the dupes of demagogues. The party
was in existence at the period of Jesus; but it could not have been
strong. Its influence, if it ever had any, was declining with the
decreasing significance of the Herodian line. We hear little of them in
the literature of the time; with the final and absolute supremacy of
Rome, they disappeared. The casual mention of them, once in Matthew and
once in Mark, on the same occasion, and in connection with the
Pharisees, is evidence that they were still in existence late in the
first century. That is their last appearance.




IV.

THE MESSIAH IN THE NEW TESTAMENT.


The earliest writings of the New Testament, the genuine letters of Paul,
written not far from the year 60, thirty years more or less after the
received date of the crucifixion of Jesus, take up and continue the line
of Jewish tradition. No traces exist of literature produced between the
opening of the century and the epistolary activity of the apostle of the
Gentiles. The times were unfavorable to the production and the
preservation of literary work. The earliest gospels, even granting their
genuineness and authenticity, cannot be assigned to so early a period,
cannot be crowded back beyond the year 70, and must probably be placed
later by ten, fifteen, twenty years. They bear evidently on their pages
the impress of ideas which Paul made current. Their authors, when not
disciples of his school, respected it and had regard to its claim. The
gospel of Luke betrays, in its whole structure the shaping hand of a
Pauline adherent. Its catholicity, its anti-Judaic spirit, its frequent
and approving mention of Samaritans, its doctrine of demons and powers
of the infernal world, its constant recognition in precept and parable
of the claims of the heathen on the salvation of the Christ, are a few
of the plain marks of a genius foreign to that of Palestine. The gospel
of Mark is similarly though not so eminently or so minutely
characterized. Even the gospel of Matthew contains deposits from this
formation. The language of one verse in the eleventh chapter,--"All
things are delivered unto me of My Father; and no man knoweth the Son,
but the Father, neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he
to whom the Son will reveal him," confesses in every word, its Pauline
origin. The passage lies like a boulder on a common.

Though concerned with a period anterior to the apostle's conversion,
with events whereof he had no knowledge, and with a life from which he
professed to derive only his impulse, the gospels are written, not in
the style of chronicles or memoirs, but in the style of disquisitions
rather. Far from being the artless, guileless, unstudied compositions
they have passed for, they are imbued with an atmosphere of reflection,
are ingeniously elaborate and, in parts painfully studied. They are
meditated biographies, in which the biographical material is selected
and qualified by speculative motives. Nevertheless, these are the only
fragments presumably of historical character that we possess. The
period that Paul's ministry supposes must be searched for in these
after-minded books. Hence arise grave literary difficulties. Several
points must be borne in mind; the absence of any contemporaneous account
of the ministry of Jesus; the utter dearth of early memoranda; the
advanced age of the evangelists at the time they wrote, even on the
common reckoning, and the effect of age in weakening recollection,
suggesting fancies, raising queries, inflaming imaginations, making the
mind receptive of theories and marvels; the influence on the disciples
and on the intellectual world of a man so powerful as Paul, and the
altered speculative climate of the later apostolic age. The literary
laws forbid under these circumstances our reading the gospel narratives
as authentic histories--constrain us in fact to read them, in some sort,
as disquisitions, making allowance as we go along, for the infusion of
doctrinal elements.

The actual Jesus is, thus understood, inaccessible to scientific
research. His image cannot be recovered. He left no memorial in writing
of himself; his followers were illiterate; the mind of his age was
confused. Paul received only traditions of him, how definite we have no
means of knowing, apparently not significant enough to be treasured, nor
consistent enough to oppose a barrier to his own speculations. The
character of Jesus is a fair subject for discussion and conjecture; but
at this stage in a literary study such discussion and conjecture would
be out of place. We have at present simply to inquire into the character
of the Messianic hope as it was illustrated in the ante-Pauline period.
This task is less difficult, and may be accomplished without detriment
to moral or spiritual qualities which Jesus may have possessed.

The earliest phase of the Messianic hope in the New Testament must have
corresponded with prevalent expectations of Israel in the early period
of our first century. What that was has been described. The "Son of Man"
of Matthew, Mark and Luke, their Pauline elements being eliminated,
meets the requirements in every respect, and in no particular transcends
them. He is a radical Pharisee who has at heart the enfranchisement of
his people. He is represented as being a native of Galilee, the
insurgent district of the country; nurtured, if not born in Nazareth,
one of its chief cities; reared as a youth amid traditions of patriotic
devotion, and amid scenes associated with heroic dreams and endeavors.
The Galileans were restless, excitable people, beyond the reach of
conventionalities, remote from the centre of power ecclesiastical and
secular, simple in their lives, bold of speech, independent in thought,
thorough-going in the sort of radicalism that is common among people who
live "out of the world," who have leisure to discuss the exciting topics
of the day, but too little knowledge, culture, or sense of social
responsibility to discuss them soundly. Their mental discontent and
moral intractability were proverbial. They were belligerents. The Romans
had more trouble with them than with the natives of any other province.
The Messiahs all started out from Galilee, and never failed to collect
followers round their standard. The Galileans more than others, lived in
the anticipation of the Deliverer. The reference of the Messiah to
Galilee is therefore already an indication of the character he is to
assume.

Another indication, equally pointed, is the brief association with
Bethlehem, the city of David, and the pains taken to connect the Messiah
with the royal line. The early traditions go out of their way to prove
this. A labored genealogy is invented to show the path of his descent.
Prophecy and song are called in to ratify his lineage. Inspired lips
repeat ancient psalms announcing the glory that is to come to the House
of David. An angel promises Mary that her son shall have given unto him
"the throne of his father, David, and shall reign over the house of
Jacob for ever." The Messiah is called the "Son of David;" an
appellation that carried the idea of temporal dominion and no other. The
legends respecting the massacre of the children in Bethlehem and the
flight into Egypt, belong to the same circle of prediction.

Another indication to the same purpose is the patient effort to
represent the Messiah as fulfilling Old Testament anticipations. "That
the scripture might be fulfilled" is the reiterated explanation of his
ordinary actions. The earliest records miss no occasion for declaring
the Messiah's fidelity to the law of Moses. Among the first words put
into his mouth is the earnest protestation: "Think not that I am come to
destroy the law and the prophets; I am not come to destroy but to
establish;" and this statement is followed by a detailed contrast
between the literal and the spiritual interpretation of the law,
precisely in the vein of the prophets who held themselves to be the true
friends of the code which the priests and formalists perverted. There is
nothing in this criticism disrespectful to the commandments, or beyond
the mark of orthodox scripture.

The visit to the Baptist, who, entertaining the popular notion of the
Messiah, and believing in his speedy advent, welcomed Jesus to the
vacant position; Jesus' response to the call, and acceptance of the
_role_, are in the same vein. Let it not be forgotten that the later
misgivings of the Baptist were raised by the apparent failure of the
Messiah to justify expectation; that John, from his prison, sends a
sharp message, and that the Messiah, instead of correcting the
precursor's crude idea, simply bids him be patient and construe the
signs in faith.

The story of the Temptation in the Wilderness, closely patterned after
incidents in the career of Moses, is calculated to join the two closely
by similarity of experience. That the Messiah should be tempted is quite
within the circle of later Jewish conceptions, as the literature of the
Talmud proves.

The story of the Transfiguration derives its point from the circumstance
that the spirits with whom the chosen one held communion were Moses and
Elias, the law-giver and the prophet of the old dispensation.

The phrase "Kingdom of Heaven," so frequent on the Messiah's lips, had
but one meaning, which was universally understood. It described a
temporal rule, the reign of a prince of David's line. No class of people
accepted the phrase in any different sense. The Christ nowhere corrects
the vulgar opinion, or places his own in opposition to it. The
evangelist intends to convey the idea that he is in full accord with the
general feeling.

The questions put to the Messiah and the answers given to them are
additional evidence of this assent; the question, for example,
concerning the obligation to pay tribute to the Roman government, a test
question touching the very heart of Jewish patriotism, and the cautious
reply, calculated to evade the peril of a categorical declaration which
was felt to be called for, and to be due. The rejoinder of the Christ is
designed to satisfy the popular expectation without raising popular
uproar. It is the answer of a patriot, but not of a zealot. Had the
Messiah not corresponded to the image in the Jewish imagination, the
inquiry might have been summarily dismissed. Its evasion proves not that
the Christ transcended the average expectation, but that he shared it.
The version of the incident given in Matthew XVII, confirms this
judgment; for according to that account the Messiah privately admits the
exemption from tribute, and then provides miraculously for its payment,
"lest we should give offence."

The nature of the excitement caused by the Messiah is another evidence
of the spirit in which he wrought. Everywhere he is greeted as the
Messiah, the son of David; everywhere the multitudes flock to him, as to
the expected king. His intimate friends are never disabused of the
notion that they, if they continue firm in their allegiance, will hold
places of honor at his right hand. He reminds them of the stringency of
the conditions, but does not condemn the idea. An ambitious mother
presents her two sons as candidates for preferment, asking for them
seats at his right and left hand, on his coming to glory. He rebukes the
selfishness of the ambition, says that seats of honor are for those that
earn them, not for those that desire them, adding that he has no
authority to assign places even to the worthiest; but he does not
discountenance the notion that he shall sit in glory, that there will
be places of honor on either side of him, or that the faithful servants
will occupy them. Indeed, his reply confirms that anticipation.

The multitude, impressed by his claim, desire to make him a king. He
removes himself; not because he repudiates all right to the office, he
nowhere hints that, and in places he more than hints the contrary,--but
because he is not prepared to avow his pretension. The time is not ripe
for a manifesto.

The writers about this period take especial pains to limit the
conception of the Messiah within the boundaries of the average patriotic
ideal. They make him declare to the twelve disciples, as he sends them
forth, that before they shall have carried their message to the cities
of Israel the Son of Man would announce himself. On a later occasion he
is made to say: "There are some here who will not taste of death till
they see the Son of Man coming in his glory." Declarations like these
are pointedly inconsistent with an intellectual or moral idea of the
kingdom. The notion of progress, instruction, regenerating influence,
gradual elevation through the power of character, is precluded. The
kingdom is to come in time, suddenly, unexpectedly, by a shock of
supernatural agency, at the instant the Lord wills; the Son of Man
himself knows not when, for it is not dependent on his activity as a
reformer, his success as a teacher, or his influence as a person, but on
the decree of Jehovah.

The attempt on the popular feeling in Jerusalem, strangely called the
triumphal entrance of the Messiah into the holy city, is unintelligible
except as a political demonstration; whether projected by the Christ or
by his followers, or by the Christ urged by the importunate expectations
of his followers, whether undertaken hopefully or in desperation, it
nowhere appears that it was made in any moral or spiritual interest. All
the incidents of the narrative point to a political end, the public
assertion of the Christ's Messianic claim. The ass, used instead of the
chariot or the horse by royalty on state occasions, and especially
alluded to by the prophet Zechariah in connexion with the coming of
Zion's King; the palm branches and hosannahs, emblems of sacred majesty;
the cries of the attendant throng loudly proclaiming the Messiah; the
Galileaan composition of the crowd, marking the revolutionary temper of
it; the blank reception of the pageant by the citizens who were too wary
to commit themselves to the chances of collision with the Roman
authorities; the complete failure of the demonstration in the heart of
conservative Judaea; the bearing of the Christ himself as of one
conscious of a sublime but perilous mission; all these things find ready
explanation by the popular conception of the Messiah, as a national
deliverer, but are unintelligible on any other theory.

The unspiritual character of the Messiah's attitude is made yet more
apparent as the history draws to a close. The violent purging of the
temple can only by great vigor of interpretation be made to bear any
save a national complexion. It was the assertion of Jehovah's right to
his own domain; an indignant, passionate assertion; the declaration of a
zealot whose zeal overrode considerations of wisdom.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




V.

THE FIRST CHRISTIANS.


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In all this the Christians were strictly within the circle of Jewish
thought. The belief in the resurrection wore different aspects in
different minds; the vision of the hereafter floated many-hued before
the imaginations of men. The fiery zealots who "took the kingdom of
heaven by violence," dreamed of the resurrection of the body, and of
tangible privileges of dominion in the terrestrial millennium. The
milder enthusiasts, who could not believe that flesh and blood could
inherit the kingdom of God, were constrained to invent a "spiritual
world" for the accommodation of spiritual bodies. Some conjectured that
the etherial forms would mount to their native seat, only at the
termination of the thousand years reign; the spiritual world being
brought in at the end, as a device of eschatology to dispose finally of
the saints who could neither die nor remain longer on earth. Others
surmised that the spiritual world would claim its own at once, there
being no place on earth where the risen could live and no occupations in
which they could engage. The cruder faith was the earlier.

The fanatics, as described in the second Book of Maccabees, an
apocryphal writing of the second century before Christ, hoped for a
corporeal resurrection and a visible supremacy. Of seven sons, who, with
their mother, were barbarously executed because they refused to deny
their religion by eating swines' flesh, one declares: "The King of the
world shall raise us up who have died for his laws, into everlasting
life;" another, holding forth his hands (to be cut off), said
courageously, "These I had from heaven, and for his laws I despise them,
and from him I hope to receive them again." The next shouts: "It is good
being put to death by men, to look for hope from God, to be raised up
again by him; as for thee, thou shalt have no resurrection to life."
Finally, when all the seven have died heroically, with words of similar
import on their lips, the mother is put to death, having exhorted her
youngest born to faithfulness with the exhortation: "Doubtless the
Creator of the world who formed the generation of man, and found out the
beginning of all things, will also, of his own mercy, give you breath
and life again, as ye now regard not your own selves for his laws'
sake." The same book records the suicide of Razis: "One of the elders of
Jerusalem, a lover of his countrymen, and a man of very good report, who
for his kindness was called a Father of the Jews, for in former times he
had been accused of Judaism, and did boldly jeopard his body and life
with all vehemency for the religion of the Jews;" "choosing rather to
die manfully than to come into the hands of the wicked, to be abused
otherwise than beseemed his noble birth, he fell on his sword.
Nevertheless, while there was yet breath within him, being inflamed with
anger, he rose up, and though his blood gushed out like spouts of water,
and his wounds were grievous, yet he ran through the midst of the
throng, and, standing upon a steep rock, when as his blood was now
quite gone, he plucked out his bowels, and taking them in both his
hands, he cast them upon the throng, and calling upon the Lord of life
and spirit to restore him those again, he thus died."

The angel of the book of Daniel calls up a fairer vision: "Many of them
that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting
life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. And they that be wise
shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many
to righteousness, as the stars for ever and ever."

Something like this, perhaps, was the anticipation of the Christ
sketched in the last chapter. The personal conception is shadowy. There
is nothing to indicate positively that he departed from the usual
opinion of a physical resurrection and a kingdom of heaven on earth, a
period of terrestrial happiness under the rule of Jehovah. The
declaration to the thief on the cross: "This day thou shalt be with me
in Paradise," belongs to a later tradition, corresponding to the ideas
of Paul. The parable of Dives and Lazarus must be assigned to the same
circle of doctrine. The saying respecting children, "Their angels always
behold the face of my father in heaven," conveys no more than the belief
in guardian spirits. The "angels" are not departed children, but the
watchers over the lives of living ones. The reply given to the
Sadducees, in Matt. XXII., "In the resurrection they neither marry, nor
are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven," implies
that the temporal condition of the Messiah's subjects will differ in
important respects from their present social estate, but does not
suggest a celestial locality for its organization; and the declaration
that follows: "God is not the God of the dead, but of the living,"
affirms merely that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are not annihilated, that
they are, or will be, alive; but how, where, or when, is left undecided.
The expression, "Thy kingdom come," in the paternoster, so different
from the latter petition: "May we come into thy kingdom," looks towards
an earthly paradise. The succeeding phrase, "Thy will be done on earth
as it is in heaven," points in the same direction. It is probable that
the Christ, living and expecting to live, contemplated the establishment
of his Messianic dominion in Palestine. After his death and
disappearance, the thoughts of his friends turned elsewhither, and with
an increasing steadiness, as his return was delayed, and the
probabilities of their going to him outweighed the probabilities of his
coming to them. The change of expectation was, it is likely, a gradual,
silent, and unperceived one, effected slowly, and not completed till a
new conception of the Christ supplanted the old one, and transformed
every feature of the Messianic belief. In less than twenty-five years
after the death of Jesus, this change was so far effected that it was
capable of full literary expression. The writings that publish it, are
the genuine letters of Paul, and other scriptures produced under the
inspiration of his idea.




VI.

PAUL'S NEW DEPARTURE.


There is reason to think, as we have said, that the first Messianic
impulse would have spent itself ineffectually in a few years, had not a
fresh impulse been given by a new conception of the Messiah. The Christ
outlined in the earliest literature of the New Testament would hardly
have founded a permanent church, or given his name to a distinct
religion. A new conception came, in due time, from an unexpected
quarter, through a man who was both Jew and Greek; Jew by parentage,
nurture, training and genius; Greek by birth-place, residence and
association; a man well versed in scripture, a pupil of approved rabbis,
familiar with the talmud, and deeply interested in talmudical
speculation; a Pharisee of the straitest sect; an enthusiast--yes, a
fanatic by temperament; on the other hand, a mind somewhat expanded by
intercourse with the people and the literature of other nations. Paul's
feeling on the "Christ question" was always intense. He made it a
personal matter, even in his comparative youth; distinguishing himself
by his zeal in behalf of correct opinion on the subject. He appears,
first, a young man, as a persecutor of the Jews who believed that the
Christ had actually come, and who were waiting for his return in clouds.
That idea seemed to him visionary and dangerous; he made it his business
to exterminate it by violence, if necessary. But the fury of his
demonstration proved his interest in the general idea. He was at heart a
Messianic believer, though not in that style. A Messianic believer he
continued to be, but to the end as little as at first, in that style. To
the ordinary belief he never was "converted;" his repudiation of it was
perhaps at no time less vehement than it was at the beginning; as his
own thought matured, his rejection of the faith he persecuted in his
youth, became it seems more deliberate, if less violent.

As he pursued one phase of the Messianic expectation, another aspect of
it burst upon him with the splendor of a revelation, and determined his
career. The man who had breathed fury against one type, became the
apostle of another. The same fiery zeal that blasted the one, warmed the
other into life. In the book of the "Acts of the Apostles," the first
martyr at whose stoning Paul assisted, bore the Greek name "Stephen,"
whence, as well as from other indications, it has been surmised by Baur
and others that he was a precursor of the future "Gentile party,"
pursued and slain by the "orthodox" on account of his infidelity to the
cause of Hebrew national exclusiveness. If this conjecture be admitted,
the deed Paul had abetted, may have been the immediate cause of his own
moral revulsion of feeling. The slain over-came the slayer. The dying
hand committed to the fierce bystander the torch it could carry no
further. The murdered Greek raised up the apostle to the Greeks, thus
avenging himself by sending his adversary to martyrdom in the same cause
for which he himself bled. In religious fervors such reactions have been
frequent.

For Paul was, from first to last, the same person, in no natural feature
of mind or character changed. His religious belief remained essentially,
even incidentally unaltered. A Pharisee he was born, and a Pharisee he
continued. The pharisaic doctrine of the resurrection was the corner
stone of his system, the beginning, middle and end of his faith, the
starting point of his creed. His conception of God was the ordinary
conception, unqualified, unmitigated, uncompromised. The divine
sovereignty never suffered weakening at his hands. One can hardly open
the epistle to the Jewish Christians in Rome, without coming across some
tremendous assertion of the absolute supremacy of God. Read the passage
in the first chapter, 20-26 verses; in the second chapter, 6-12 verses;
in the ninth chapter, 14-23 verses; in the eleventh chapter, first
verse and onward. Read 1 Corin., fifteenth chapter, 24-29 verses. The
old fashioned Jewish conception is expressed in language simply
revolting in its bald inhumanity. The views of Divine Providence set
forth in some of these sentences are anthropomorphitic to a degree that
is amazing in an intellectual man of his age and race. His discussions
of fate and free-will betoken the sternness of a dogmatic, rather than
the discernment of a philosophic, mind. His notion of history has the
narrowness of the national character. His ethics are taken from the law
of Moses, and not from the more benignant versions of it. The grandest
ethical chapter he ever wrote, the twelfth chapter of Romans, contains
no less than three instances of grave infidelity to the highest standard
of morality in his own scriptures. Rabbi Hillel said: "Love peace, and
pursue peace; love mankind, and bring them near the law. The moral
condition of the world depends on three things,--Truth, Justice, and
Peace." Paul says: "If it be possible, _so much as lyeth in you_, live
peaceably with all men," implying clearly that it might not always be
possible, and in such cases was not to be expected. The tacit proviso in
the phrase "so much as lyeth in you," discharges the obligation of its
imperative character; as if conscious that the duty might prove too much
for the moral power, he will not impose it. It is written in the
Talmud: "Thou shalt love thy neighbor; even if he be a criminal, and
has forfeited his life, practise charity towards him in the last
moments." Paul drops far below this when he bids his disciples, "Avenge
not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath" (make room for wrath
that is wrath indeed.) "For it is written, 'vengeance is mine; I will
repay, saith the Lord.'" Therefore (because the Lord's vengeance will be
more terrible than yours), "if thine enemy hunger, feed him: if he
thirst, give him drink; for in so doing, thou shalt heap coals of fire
on his head." That is, by showing kindness you will inflict on him
tenfold agony!

Such a disciple would not adorn the membership of a modern Peace
Society. The language ascribed to him in Ephesians bristles with
military metaphor; "Fight the good fight of faith," "The helmet of
salvation," "The sword of the Spirit," "Armor of light."

In the days of our own anti-slavery conflict, his dictum, "Slaves obey
your masters, in fear and trembling, in singleness of heart," was a
tower of strength and a fountain of refreshment to many an upholder of
the patriarchal system. The later Christians in the West could safely
justify their quiet toleration of the system of slavery in the Roman
Empire by the precepts of the foremost apostle. If the genuineness of
the epistle to Philemon could be maintained, the case would wear a
different look. But it is much more than doubtful whether even that
qualified humanity proceeded from his pen.

In our own generation the apostle is a serious stumbling block in the
way of "evangelical" women who are friendly to the aspirations of their
sex. He showed the most stubborn Hebrew principles on this subject.
"Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands"; "Let your women keep
silence in the churches; if they wish to learn anything, let them ask
their husbands at home; for it is a shame for women to speak in the
church." "It is permitted them to be under obedience." The Hindoo
scripture spoke better: "Where women are honored, there the deities are
pleased. Where they are dishonored there all religious acts become
fruitless."

How can the most conservative Republicans accept as teacher a man who
counsels religious men, in _proportion as they are religious_, to
surrender their full, unqualified, sincere allegiance to established
authorities because they are established, however despotic, ferocious
nay vile they may be; even to such despotisms as that of
Nero;--maintaining that resistance to such is equivalent to resisting
the ordinance of God?--giving this not as the counsel of prudence, but
as the dictate of conscience, thus proclaiming exemption from criticism
or assault, for inhuman tyrannies? Nothing short of this is inculcated
by the sweeping declaration: "Let every soul be subject to the higher
powers: for there is no power but of God; the established powers are
ordained of God." No doubt the bidding was given in view of a turbulent
or insurrectionary spirit among the Israelites in Rome, but it is given
without explanation or limit. It ratifies the divine right of kings:
sanctions the principle that might makes right. Paul was an enthusiast
for ideas; not a theologian, not a social reformer, but one whose zeal
was spent on doctrines. Prevailingly intellectual, his whole nature was
fused by the electric touch of a new thought.

Paul's acquaintance with the Talmud is evidenced by his writings. His
use of allegory, his fanciful analogies, his mystical interpretations,
his play on words, his passion for types and symbols, his ingenious
speculations on history and eschatology, betray his familiarity with
that curious literature. He found a mine of precious material in the
mythical Adam Caedmon, the progenitor, the prototype, the "federal head"
of the race, the man who was not a man but a microcosm, created by
special act from sifted clay; a creature whose erected head touched the
firmament, whose extended body reached across the earth; a being to whom
all save Satan did obeisance; who, but for his transgression, would have
enjoyed an immortality on earth; whose sin entailed on the human race
all the evils, material and moral, that have cursed the world; the
primordial man, who contained in himself the germs of all mankind;
whose corruption tainted the nature of generations of descendants. The
Talmud exhausts speculation on this prodigious personality. The doctrine
of the christian church for fifteen hundred years was not so much
colored as shaped by the rabbis who exercised their subtlety on this
tempting theme. Philo, a contemporary of Paul, is in no respect behind
the most imaginative in his conjectures on this sublime legend. That
Paul, a student of the Talmud, fell in with them, should excite no
surprise. That he added nothing is due probably to the fact that there
was nothing to add.

From the Talmud, also, and from other rabbinical writings, Paul derived
a complete angelology, a department of speculation in which the Jewish
literature after the captivity was exceedingly prolific--Metathron,
Sandalphon, Akathriel, Suriel, were familiar to his mind. It is a bold
suggestion made by Dr. Isaac M. Wise, the Hebrew rabbi fresh from the
Talmud,[1] that Metathron,--[Greek: meta thronon], near the throne,
called by eminent titles, "king of the angels," "prince of the
countenance," impressed Paul's imagination and was the original of his
Christ. Between this supreme angel, co-ordinate with deity and
spiritually akin to him, and the Christ of Paul's conception, the
correspondence seems to be too close to be accidental; so close,
indeed, that some, unable to deny or to confute it, are driven to
surmise that the first conception originated with the apostle. It is
more probable however, though not provable, that the rabbinical idea was
the earlier, and that the apostle took that as well as the Adam Caedmon
from the rabbis. The "prince of angels" precisely met his requirement as
a counter-vailing power to Adam, and supplied a ground for his theory of
the second Adam, the "living spirit," the "Lord from Heaven," the primal
man of a new creation, the first born of a new progeny, the originator
of a "law of life" which should check and counteract the "law of sin and
death." The second Man was the counterpart of the first.

[Footnote 1: Origin of Christianity, p. 335-341.]

He is a man, yet is he no man; his flesh is only "the likeness of sinful
flesh," liable to death, but not implicating the personality in dying.
He is the spiritual, heavenly, ideal man; celestial, glorious, image of
God, translucent, sinless, impeccable; pre-existent, of course; without
father or mother; an expression of divinity; a creator of new worlds for
the habitation of the "Sons of God." His birth is an entrance into
humanity from an abode of light. The mission of this transcendent being
is, in a word, to break the force of transmitted sin, and reverse the
destiny of the race. He imparts the principle of life, which is to
restore all things. A multitude of incidental points are involved in
this fundamental one, points of theology, anthropology, history,
ethics, metaphysics, that present no difficulty to one who has this key.
The long disquisitions on the Mosaic law, the discussions on the
privileges of the Hebrew race and the rights of other races were
necessary. The familiar doctrine of the resurrection derived fresh
interest from association with the general theory, inasmuch as it
supplied a ground-work for the expectation that the glorified One would
reappear; and the hypothesis of a "spiritual" body, ventured and fully
developed by the rabbis, even illustrated by analogies of the "corn of
wheat" which the apostle makes so much of in the fifteenth chapter of I.
Corinthians, supplied all else that was wanting to complete the scheme.
The Christ, being sinless, was held to be incorruptible; death had no
dominion over him, was in fact in his case, an "excarnation," the
preparation for an ascent to the realm of light he came from, and to his
seat at the right hand of his Father, instead of being a descent into
the region of darkness to which mortals are doomed. The doctrine of last
things follows from the doctrine of first things. They who are one with
Christ through faith share his deathlessness. If they die, it is merely
a temporary retirement, in which they await the coming of their Lord,
who will in his own time call them out of their prison house. The larger
number, however, were not, in the apostle's belief, destined to die at
all; but might look as he did, to be transfigured, by the putting off
of their vile bodies, and the putting on of glorious bodies like that
of the great forerunner. In his amplifications on this theme, Paul shows
little originality, and adds nothing important to the material lying
ready to his hand.

The advantage his scheme gave him as a preacher to the Gentiles is too
obvious to be dwelt on. As a Greek by birth and culture, he was
interested in the fate of other nations besides the Jews. A system of
religion adapted to the traditions and satisfactory to the hopes of a
peculiar people,--a national, exclusive religion in the benefits whereof
none but Jews might share, and from whose grace no lineal descendant of
Abraham could be excluded, did not commend itself to this man, half Jew,
half Greek. The faith that obtained his allegiance, and awoke his zeal
must possess a _human_ character by virtue of which its message could be
carried to all mankind. Such a faith his new theory of the Christ gave
him. He could say to his Greek friends: "This religion that I bring you
is no Hebrew peculiarity. Its Christ is no son of David, but a son of
God; its heaven is no Messianic kingdom in Judaea, but a region of light
above the skies; its principle is faith, not obedience to a ceremonial
or legal code; it dispenses entirely with the requirements of the law of
Moses; makes no account of sacrifices or priests; presumes on no
acquaintance with Hebrew scriptures, or reverence for Hebrew men;
questions of circumcision and uncircumcision are trivial and
impertinent. The religion of Christ addresses you as men, not as Jewish
men; it appeals to the universal sense of moral and spiritual infirmity,
and offers a moral and spiritual, not a technical deliverance; instead
of limiting, it will enlarge you; instead of binding, it will emancipate
you; its genius is liberty, through which you are set free from
ceremonialism, ritualism, dogmatism, moralism, and are made partakers of
a new intellectual life."

Not all at once did this scheme unfold itself before the apostle's
vision. Gradually it came to him as he meditated alone, or experimented
with it on listeners in remote places. Naturally, he avoided the
associations of the people he had persecuted, and the teachers they
looked up to. He had nothing to learn from them; he understood their
system and was dissatisfied with it, in short, rejected it. Their Jewish
Messiah, literal, national, hebraic, was not an attractive personage to
his mind. The promise of felicity in a Jewish kingdom of heaven was not
enchanting. The daily life of the believers in Jerusalem was formal,
unnatural, repulsive to one who had "walked large" in foreign cities and
realms of thought. The apostles, Peter, James, John, had nothing
important to tell him that he did not know already. The earthly details
of the life of Jesus might have interested him, but the interior
character and the human significance of the Christ were the main thing,
and these he may have thought himself more in the way of appreciating by
a temporary retirement to the depths of his own consciousness. Having
matured his thoughts, he did put himself in communication with the
original disciples, with what result is frankly stated in his letter to
the Galatians: "To those who seemed to be somewhat (what they were is no
concern of mine, God accepteth no man's person), but who in conference
added nothing to me, I did not give way, in subjection, no, not for an
hour." So heated he becomes, as he remembers this interview, that he can
scarcely write coherently about it. The two conceptions of the Christ
and his office were so far apart, that he did not, to his dying day,
form intimate relations with the teachers of the primitive gospel. They
taught an uncongenial scheme.

From the first, Paul's sphere of action was the Gentile world to which
his message was adapted. If his first appeal was addressed to Jews, it
was simply because Christianity, as he understood it, being an outgrowth
from Jewish thought, a development of Jewish tradition, should naturally
be more intelligible and more welcome to them than to people who had no
historical or literary preparation for it. But he took the broad ground
with them, and addressed his word to outsiders the moment stubbornly
dogmatical Jews declined to receive it on his terms. The attempt made
by the author of the "Acts of the Apostles," to show that Paul modified
or qualified his scheme to bring it into harmony with the older scheme
that he supplanted, fails from the circumstance that the writer discerns
no peculiarity in his theory of the Christ, and consequently misses
completely the ground of any antagonism.

This is written in the persuasion that the "Acts of the Apostles" is not
trustworthy as history; has in fact no historical intent, but belongs to
the class of writings that may be called conciliatory, or mediatorial,
designed to bring opposing views together, to heal divisions, and smooth
over rough places. By pulling hard at both ends of the string, dragging
Peter towards Paul, and Paul towards Peter, ascribing to both the same
opinions, imputing to both the same designs, and passing both through
the same experiences, the author would make his readers believe that
they stood on the same foundation. The grounds of the opinion above
stated cannot be given here; but there are grounds for it, and solid
ones, as any one may discover who will take the pains to look at Edward
Zeller's essay on the "Acts," or any other argument from an unprejudiced
point of view. The conclusion may be arrived at, however, by a shorter
process, namely, by taking Paul's Christology as given by himself in his
own letters, and then considering how completely it is excluded from the
book. It seems to the present writer nothing less than certain, as
plain as any point of literary criticism can be, that the "Acts of the
Apostles" is not to be relied on for information respecting the life and
opinions of the apostle Paul. In this opinion writers belonging to very
different schools of religious philosophy, Mackay, for example, and
Martineau, are cordially agreed. This must henceforth be regarded as one
of the points established. The firmer the apprehension of Paul's
peculiarity, the stronger is the conviction that the description of his
conduct in the book of "Acts" must be fanciful. If he tells the truth,
as there is no reason to doubt, the unknown author of the "Acts"
romances.

The necessity that Paul was under of commending his christology to the
Jews, a self-imposed necessity in part, inasmuch as his own genius being
Jewish, imposed it on him, embarrassed the movement of his mind to such
a degree that he was never able to do perfect justice to his own theory.
Much time was spent in explaining his conduct to orthodox Jews, or in
answering questions raised by hebrew casuistry. The epistle to the
Romans, the most labored of his compositions, is a long argument
addressed to his countrymen in Rome, with the design of persuading them
that Jehovah was quite justified in accepting Gentiles who conformed to
his requirements, and in rejecting children of Abraham who did not. This
is the burden of the letter. The argument is lighted up by splendid
bursts of eloquence, and diversified by keen remarks on points of
psychology. But, omitting two or three of the chapters and scattered
passages in others, the remainder is intellectually arid and devoid of
human interest. The same may be said of the letter to the Galatians. The
epistles to the Thessalonians, and those to the Corinthians, are
occupied chiefly with matters of local and incidental concern. It is
probable that Paul's genius was disastrously circumscribed within hebrew
limits after all; that he never completely emancipated himself even from
the old time traditions of his people; that the Jewish half of the man
was not the weaker half. A philosopher he was not; a theologian, in the
great sense, he was not; a metaphysician he was not; a psychologist he
was not. He was an apostle, a preacher. The problems he discussed were
formal rather than vital, and the spirit in which he discussed them was
the temper of the dogmatist rather than that of the seer. However this
may be, it may be affirmed that his system contained no strictly
original ideas; that his leading thoughts, and even the phases of his
thought, were borrowed from the literature of his nation, or, at least,
may be found there.

It is a frequent remark that, but for St. Paul, Christianity might have
had no life out of Judaea; which is tantamount to saying that it might
have had no prolonged or extended life at all, but would have perished
as an incidental phase of Judaism. The remark is essentially just; at
the same time it must be remembered that the Christianity which Paul
devised and planted was a system quite unlike that of his predecessors,
though still another phase of Judaism, a divergent and cosmopolitan
phase.

Other pieces of literature, Ephesians, Colossians, Philippians, Hebrews,
which, whether the compositions of Paul or not, contain developments of
his thought, and may be called "Pauline," carry further his central
speculation and apply his principle to the new problems that presented
themselves in the social life of the religion; yet these do not go
beyond the lines of Jewish thought. The significant passage in
Philippians, "Who, although he was in the form of God, thought not that
an equality with God, was a thing he ought greedily to grasp at,"
suggests the Greek mythus of Lucifer, who fell because, being already
the brightest of beings, he was discontented with a formal inferiority
of rank. His crime consisted in rapaciously grasping at a power which
was, in all but the name, his own. The Christ, in contrast, was
satisfied with the substance; he willingly resigned pretension to the
position. But the Greek mythus was the reflection of a legend from the
farther East, and came to this author more naturally through Judaism
than through Paganism. According to Neander's classification the
Gnostics, from whom this theosophic conception came, were Judaistic.
Gieseler's classification leads to the same inference, for the
Alexandrian Gnosis was the product of Greek thought, blended with
Jewish. The classification of Gieseler has regard to the source whence
the speculation came; that of Neander to the tendency of the
speculation. In whichever aspect we view the myth, its Jewish character
is apparent. The writer has pushed his speculations into new fields that
yet lay within the ancestral domain. He describes the Christ as being
but the semblance of a man, in "fashion" a man, not in substance. The
thought is a further development, yet a strictly logical one, of Paul's
idea that the Christ was made "in the likeness of sinful flesh." The two
expressions are parallel, in fact identical; "body," in Pauline phrase
being, from the nature of the case, "sinful body." The writer speaks of
the dominion of the Christ as extended over the three spheres, heaven,
earth, and the under-world; scarcely thereby enlarging the scope of a
previous thought, for as much as these spheres were comprehended in the
dominion of the Christ who "created the worlds," the new worlds that
constituted the new creation, whereof he was Lord.

The letter to the Hebrews, an exceedingly elaborate exposition of the
close relation between the new faith and the old, an argument and a plea
for the new faith as containing in substance all that the old contained
in form, is Jewish in coloring throughout, an exaggeration of Jewish
ideas. The argument is that Christianity excels Judaism in its own
excellencies. The Christ is called "high priest," "perpetual priest,"
possessing the power to confer endless life. By the sacrifice of himself
he has entered at once into the holy of holies. He has tasted death for
every man--another way of saying that he has deprived death for every
man of its bitterness. He has destroyed the devil who held the kingdom
of death. He has reconciled man with God by abolishing death, and with
death sin, which is the strength of death. The Christ is represented as
the author of salvation to all that obey him; he lives forever to make
intercession; his blood purges men's consciences from reliance on dead
works; he, once for all, has devoted himself to bear the sins of many;
he will come again, and bring salvation to such as wait for him; all
these are merely completed expressions of the idea enunciated by Paul.

The Christ himself is described in this epistle as "the appointed heir
of all things;" "the brightness of God's glory and the express image of
His person;" "upholding all things by the word of His power;" "the First
Begotten;" "the object of adoration by the angels." To support this
view, the Old Testament is ingeniously quoted and misapplied. The
influence of Jewish thought appears also in the passages that describe
the Christ as an agent, appointed to his office; an official, "sitting
at the right hand of the Majesty on High;" as fulfilling His mission
and obtaining His glory through suffering; as subjected to human
experiences of temptation; as strictly sub-ordinate to God.

The scriptures entitled "Colossians" and "Ephesians" betray still
greater familiarity with Alexandro-Jewish conceptions, and a yet deeper
sympathy with them. The Christ is here "the image of God, the first-born
of every creature." It is declared that "by Him were all things created
that are in heaven and on earth; things visible and invisible; thrones,
dominions, principalities, powers; by Him and for Him they were
created." "He is far above all principality, and power, and might, and
dominion, and every name that is named, whether in this world or the
world to come." He is "all in all." He is the pleroma, the fulness, the
abyss of possibility. "The fulness of the Godhead dwells in Him
visibly." He exhausts the divine capacity of expression. He is the
reality of God. Towards mankind he is the reconciler. In him "all things
are gathered together in one." By the blood of his cross he has made
peace and reconciled all things to himself; things on earth and things
in heaven. In a striking passage, the writer of "Ephesians" describes
the Christ as first descending into the under world to release the
captives bound in the chains of Satan, and thence ascending up on high
and sending down gifts to men.

Both of these compositions abound in Gnostic phraesology. The abstruse
terms "Mystery," "Wisdom," "AEon," "Prince of the Powers" recur again and
again, and always with the cabalistic meaning. The writers are caught in
the meshes of Oriental speculation, and apparently make no effort to
extricate themselves. On the contrary, they welcome their enthralment,
taking the binding cords to be guiding strings towards the truth. So
far, again, instead of escaping from the Jewish tradition we are
tethered to it more securely than before. The literature of the New
Testament is seen to be still a continuation and completion of the
literature of the Old. The earliest form of the Messianic doctrine is
completely distanced. Scarcely a trace of it remains. Of the throne of
David not a word. Not a word of Moses and the Prophets, of the
historical fulfilment of ancient prediction, of the temple worship, of
the chosen people. Pharisees and Sadducees are alike omitted. The very
word "kingdom," as denoting a visible Messianic reign, is dropped. But
the territory of Judaism has not been abandoned. Galilee is deserted;
Jerusalem is overthrown; but the schools of the rabbins are open.

It will be remarked that the moral teaching is more vague and mystical
than it was in the early time. The theological spirit prevails over the
human; the ecclesiastical supersedes the ethical. Practical principle
is postponed to theoretical doctrine. The virtues prescribed are
ghostly, technical; the graces of a church, not the qualities of a
brotherhood. The intellectual air is thinner and more difficult to
inhale. The spiritual atmosphere is not inspiring. Intelligence can make
nothing of writing like this: "The husband is the head of the wife, even
as Christ is the head of the Church; and He is the Saviour of the body.
Therefore, as the Church is subject to Christ, so let wives be subject
in all things to their husbands. Husbands love your wives, even as
Christ also loved the Church, and gave Himself for it, that He might
sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the Word; that He
might present it to Himself a glorious Church, not having spot or
wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without
blemish." The absence of rational ground for duty in the most familiar
relations of life could not be more explicitly declared than in a
passage like this. That such an age should have had a scientific system
of morality cannot be expected; but that the traditional system should
have been lost, and a fantastical one set up in its place, is a
testimony to the influence of the mystical spirit. The fanciful morality
of a small and enthusiastic body may be interesting to the members of
the body and influential on their conduct; but it is no evidence of
health in the moral constitution of the generation. The representation
of the Christian warfare as a conflict "not against flesh and
blood,"--that is, against organized evil in society and the State,--"but
against principalities, against powers, against the princes of darkness,
against wicked spirits that dwell in the air," is another evidence that
conscience had become visionary. Such reasoning is of a piece with the
argument for there being four gospels and no more, namely, that there
were four quarters of the heaven, and four winds; or with the argument
for perpetual virginity, that it supplied the Church with vestals. Such
theologising shows how far speculation may be separated from reality and
yet be entertained by human minds.




VII.

THE LAST GOSPEL.


The author of the fourth Gospel is unknown, but it is incredible that
this wonderful book, wonderful for finish of literary execution as well
as for vigor of intellectual conception, was written by a Galilean
fisherman; a man of brooding and morbid disposition, whose intemperate
zeal earned for him the title "son of thunder;" who, according to Luke,
proposed to call down fire from heaven to consume certain Samaritans
that declined to receive the master; who, according to the same
authority, rebuked certain others that conjured by the Christ's name,
but did not join his company; who, through his mother, asked for one of
the best seats in the "kingdom;" a man who was most intimately
associated with the James described in a former chapter; a man who late
in life, had a reputation for intolerance which started a tradition of
him to the effect that being in the public bath, and seeing enter the
heretic Cerinthus, he rushed out, calling on all others to follow, if
they would not be overwhelmed by the ruin such a blasphemer would pull
down on their heads. All the traditions respecting John are to the same
purport; his constant association with James and Peter, both disciples
of the narrowest creed; his advocacy of chiliasm, the doctrine of the
millennial reign of a thousand years, as testified to by Ephesian
presbyters on the authority of Irenaeus; the description of him, reported
by Eusebius, as a "high priest wearing the mitre," standing in the order
of succession therefore as a hierarch of the ancient dispensation, a
churchman maintaining the ancient symbolical rites.

That such a composition as the fourth Gospel was written by such a man,
in his old age too, the laws of literary criticism cannot admit. To the
present writer the ungenuineness of the fourth Gospel has for several
years seemed as distinctly proved as any point in literary criticism can
be. To maintain the Johannean origin of the book, it must be assumed
that the apostle lived to an extreme old age, nearly double the full
three score years and ten allotted to mankind; that his entire nature
changed in the interval between his youth and his senility; that,
without studying in the schools, he became a profound adept in
speculative philosophy; and that by the same miraculous bestowment, he
acquired a skill in letters surpassing that of any in his generation,
far surpassing that of Paul, who was an educated man, and completely
casting into the shade Philo, the best scholar of a former era. All
this, too, must be assumed, for there is not a fragment of the evidence
to support the bold presumption of authorship.

The book belongs nearer to the middle than the beginning of the second
century, and is the result of an attempt to present the Christ as the
incarnate Word of God. The author is not obliged to go far to find his
materials; they lie ready shaped to his hand in the writings of Philo
and the Gnostics of his century. The thread of Hebrew tradition, has, by
this time, become exceedingly thin; vestiges of the popular Jewish
conception appear, but faintly, here and there. Nicodemus recognizes the
divine character of the Christ by his power to work miracles. The Christ
respects the tradition which accorded special privileges to the genuine
"children of Abraham;" he declares to the woman of Samaria that
"salvation is of the Jews;" he announces that eternal life consists in
the knowledge of God, and the acceptance of his Son. Moses is said to
have written of the Christ. Father Abraham rejoiced to see his day.
Isaiah sang his glory, and spake of him. The brazen serpent is a type of
his mission to deliver.

For the rest, the conceptions of deity, of providence, of salvation, of
the eternal world, are quite different from the recognized Hebrew
conceptions--the title given to God sixty times in the gospel, while
the word "God," occurs less than twenty, is "Father," and this term is
used, not in the sense of Matthew's "Our Father in Heaven," which
describes the Old Testament Jehovah under his more amiable aspect, but
rather as designating the _abyss of potential being_, as the term is
employed in the trinitarian formula, in which the Godhead is broken up
into three distinctions; the declaration "God is Spirit," or, as the
language equally well permits, "Spirit is God," intimates that the
individuality of God has disappeared, that the idea of deity has become
intellectual. The one hundred and thirty-ninth psalm expresses perhaps
as mystical an apprehension of God as the old Hebrew thought admits of,
but that psalm retains the divine individuality; the limits are nowhere
transgressed; it is a sympathetic, regardful eye that searches the
secret place, and an attentive mind that notes the unarticulated
thought. The intelligence loses no point of clearness in becoming
penetrative. But in the fourth Gospel, the individuality is gone
altogether. The Father "loveth," but with an abstract, impersonal
sympathy; the Father "draweth," but with an organic, elemental
attraction; the Father "hath life in himself," and hath given the Son to
"have life in himself;" but neither the possession nor the communication
of this power implies the bestowal of a concrete gift. The Father
"judgeth no man, but hath given all judgment to the Son"--a phrase
intimating that he had gone into retirement, had withdrawn from active
interest in human concerns, had sunk into the depths of the Absolute.
The expression "God is Spirit," taken alone, conveys no idea that is not
contained in the Hebrew conception of the formless Jehovah; but when
taken in connection with other expressions, it is seen to convey
something more, and something different. The formless God may be
strictly local; the "Spirit" is diffused.

In this book, the Christ takes the place of God, as the revealed or
manifest God; he is the Logos, the incarnate word. "He was with God in
the beginning." "All things were made by him." "In him was life, and the
life was the light of men." "He hath life in himself." He is the only
begotten son, who came down from heaven; he is in heaven. All judgment
is committed to him; in him the divine glory is manifest; apart from him
is no spiritual life; he is the vine, the door; he is the intercessor
through whom prayer must be transmitted in order to be made availing.

The divine presence is taken out of nature, and transferred to the
spiritual world; God is made ecclesiastical and dogmatic. Men are saved,
not by natural piety and excellence, but by faith in the Christ as the
Logos. The whole sum of Christianity is conveyed in this one position:
_the manifestation of the Divine Glory in the Only Begotten Son_. This
manifestation is of itself, the coming of salvation, the gift of God's
life to mankind. By this, the Christ overcomes the powers of darkness
and evil. He has come a light into the world; by him come grace and
truth; to believe in him is a sign of God's working. He that cometh to
him shall never hunger; he that believeth on him shall never thirst. It
is enough that blind men believe; to die, believing in him, is to live;
to live, believing in him, is to be saved from the power of death, and
made immortal. To believe in him is the same thing as to believe in the
Father. Not to believe in him, is to be consigned to spiritual death
with sinners; to believe on the Son is to have everlasting life. This
idea recurs with monotonous perseverance, some sixty times.

That this conception of the Christ is not original with our author has
already been said many times. It had been in the world two hundred years
before his day, and had worked its way into the substance of the later
Jewish thought. The personification of the divine reason early occurred
to the Jews who had been touched with the passion for speculation in the
city of Alexandria. Long ago attention was called by Andrews Norton,
among ourselves, to bold personifications of wisdom and the divine
reason, in the Apocrypha of the Old Testament. "She is the breath of
the power of God, a pure influence proceeding from the glory of the
Almighty. She is the brightness of the everlasting light, the unspotted
mirror of the power of God, and the image of his goodness." Chapters
seven and eight of the Book of Wisdom contain an apotheosis of wisdom as
the creative power. In the eighteenth chapter the imagery grows much
stronger. "Thine almighty word leaped down from heaven out of thy royal
throne, as a fierce man-of-war into the midst of a land of destruction."
The twenty-fourth chapter of Ecclesiasticus is devoted to the same
theme. The Word is described as a being: the first born of God; the
active agent in creation; having its dwelling-place in Israel, its seat
in the Law of Moses.

Philo pushes the speculation much further. The Logos is with him a most
interesting subject of discourse, tempting him to wonderful feats of
imagination. There is scarcely a personifying or exalting epithet that
he does not bestow on the divine Reason. He describes it as a distinct
being; calls it "A Rock," "The Summit of the Universe," "Before All
Things," "First-begotten Son of God," "Eternal Bread from Heaven,"
"Fountain of Wisdom," "Guide to God," "Substitute for God," "Image of
God," "Priest," "Creator of the Worlds," "Second God," "Interpreter of
God," "Ambassador of God," "Power of God," "King," "Angel," "Man,"
"Mediator," "Light," "The Beginning," "The East," "The Name of God,"
"Intercessor." The curious on this subject may consult Luecke's
Introduction to the Fourth Gospel, or Gfroerer's Philo, and he will be
more than satisfied that the Logos of the fourth Gospel is the same as
Philo's, and has the same origin.

Christian scholars who admit this have been anxious to break the force
of the inference, by allowing the similarity of the conception and then
supposing the evangelist to have stated the doctrine that he might stamp
it as heresy. But he nowhere does stamp it as heresy. He puts it boldly
on the front of his exposition and constructs his whole work in
conformity with it. Instead of refuting it or denouncing it, he carries
the idea out in all its applications, supplementing it with a
completeness that Philo never thought of.

The Logos becomes a man; "is made flesh;" appears as an incarnation; in
order that the God whom "no man has seen at any time," may be
manifested. He has no parentage; is not born, even supernaturally; he
passes through no childish passages; receives no nurture in a home; has
no experience of growth or development. The incident of his baptism by
John in the sacred river is carefully excluded, that whole episode, so
important in the earliest narratives, being dismissed in the phrase,
"Upon whom thou shalt see the spirit descending, and remaining on him,
the same is he that baptizeth with the Holy Ghost." John says of him:
"This is he that, coming after me, is preferred before me, for he
existed before me." "I saw the spirit descending from heaven like a
dove, and it abode upon him." "I knew him not, but came, baptizing with
water, that he might be made manifest to Israel." "I am a voice crying
in the desert." Every word negatives the notion that the Logos received
consecration at the hands of a prophet of the old dispensation. He is
pre-existent; he comes from heaven; he is full of grace and truth; of
his fulness all have received, grace upon grace.

The temptation is omitted for the same reason. The divine word cannot,
even in form, undergo the experience of moral discipline. The bare
suggestion of evil taint is foreign to him. He must not come near enough
to evil to repel it. A dramatic scene in Matthew represents the conflict
between the Messiah and the Prince of the World; a conflict
inconceivable in the case of a divine being who is, by nature, Lord of
the entire spiritual universe,--whose mere appearance dispels the night.

Even the story of the transfiguration, which in some respects would seem
admirably illustrative of the logos theory, is omitted, probably for the
reason that Moses and Elias are the prominent personages in it.

As a thing of course, the agony in the garden of Gethsemane is
unmentioned. A suggestion of it occurs in a previous chapter, (XII. 27),
but in another connection, and for an opposite purpose, namely, to
extort a tribute to the glory of the Logos.

The cross on which the Word is suspended, is transfigured into an
elevation of honor. On it the Son of God endures no mortal agony; by it
he is "lifted up" that he may "draw all men" unto him. His crucifixion
is a consummation, a triumph. He mounts, shows himself, and vanishes
away. The suffering is an appearance of suffering. The shame is turned
to glory. The tormentors are agents in accomplishing a transformation.
The god passes, without a groan or an expression of weakness; clear as
ever in his perceptions, seeing his mother and the beloved disciple
standing together, he says: "woman, behold thy son; son, behold thy
mother." Knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the
scripture might be fulfilled, he said "I thirst;" having received the
vinegar, he remarked "it is finished," bowed his head, and gave up the
ghost. From his dead form issue streams of water and blood, a last sign,
as the conversion of water into wine was the first, that the
dispensation of Law, symbolized by John's water baptism, and the
dispensation of the spirit symbolized by wine and by blood, were both
completed in him.

The resurrection of the Christ is not described as the resurrection of
a body, but as the apparition of a spiritual form. It is not recognized
by Mary through any external resemblance to a former self, but through a
spiritual impression; it stands suddenly before her, forbids her touch,
is not palpable, and as suddenly disappears; the Logos ascends "to the
Father;" returns, bringing the spirit that he had promised; enters the
chamber where the disciples are gathered, the door being carefully
closed from fear of the Jews, enters without opening the door, is
visible for an instant, and is no more seen; re-enters for the purpose
of giving palpable demonstration of his reality to the doubting Thomas,
who, however does not accept it, receives the skeptic's homage and again
disappears.

These apparitions and occultations are frequent in the gospel, the
Christ's outward form being only a facade, removable at pleasure. The
numerous comings and goings, hidings, disclosures, presences, absences,
are accounted for on this supposition, better than on any other. He goes
up to the feast at Jerusalem, not openly, but "as it were in secret,"
veiled, disguised. He comes before the crowd many of whom must have been
familiar with his person, but is unrecognized; he discloses himself for
a moment, speaks exciting words that raise a tumult, and then, at the
height of the turmoil, becomes invisible. "They sought to take him; but
no man laid hands on him, _for his hour was not yet come_." On a
subsequent occasion his hearers, intensely aroused by his language,
took up stones to cast at him; but he "_hid himself_, and went out of
the temple, _going through the midst of them_, and so passed by." His
enemies sought to take him, but "he escaped out of their hands." Having
spoken, he departs, and hides himself; but again, without apparently
changing his locality or absenting himself for any period, he is again
heard proclaiming his mission.

There is no history in this book. The incarnate Word can have no
history. His career being theological, the events in it cannot be other
than spectral. He is not in the world of cause and effect. His actions
are phenomenal; the passages of his life do not open into one another,
do not lead anywhere; nothing follows anything else, nothing moves;
there is no progress towards development. The biography is a succession
of scenes, a diorama. There are no sequences or consequences. Stones are
taken up, but never thrown; hands are uplifted to strike, but no blow is
delivered. The movement to arrest is never carried out. The miracles are
not deeds of power or mercy, they are signs, thrown out to attract
popular attention, demonstrations of the divine presence; sometimes
merely symbolical foreshadowings or interpretations of speculative
ideas, as in the case of the turning of water into wine at the "marriage
feast;" the opening of the blind man's eyes, signifying that he was
come a light into the world; the resurrection of Lazarus, a scenic
commentary on the text, "I am the resurrection and the life." These are
pictures not performances. None of them are mentioned in the earlier
traditions, for the probable reason that they never occurred, never were
rumored to have occurred. They were designed by the artist of the fourth
Gospel, for his private gallery of illustrations. The artist was a Greek
Jew who took Hebrew ideals for his models, but he was sometimes obliged
to go far to find them. The hint for the conversion of the water into
wine, may have come from the legends of Israelite sojourn in Egypt,
where Moses, the first deliverer, turned water into blood, the mystical
synonym of wine; Elisha may have furnished a study for the elaborate
picture of the blind man's cure, and Isaiah may have supplied the motive
for it, in his famous prophecy that the eyes of the blind shall be
opened. The studies for the grand cartoon of Lazarus were made possibly
while the artist mused over the stories of Elijah raising the son of the
widow, or of Elisha reviving one already dead by mere contact with his
bones.

In the veins of the Logos flows no passionate blood. His language is
vehement, but suggests no corresponding emotion; the words are not
vascular. Certain superficial peculiarities of these discourses are
noticeable at once, their length, their stateliness, their absoluteness,
their loud-voiced, declamatory character, their oracular tone. But
little scrutiny is required to discover that they are monotones; that
their theme is always the same, namely, the claims of the Christ; that
they unfold no system of moral or spiritual teaching, proceed in no
rational order, arrive at no conclusions; that they contain no
arguments, answer no questions, meet no inquiring states of mind; that
they resemble orations more than discourses of any other kind, but are
unlike orations, in having neither beginning middle nor end, in quite
lacking point and application, in proceeding no whither, in simply
standing still and reiterating the same sublime abstractions, without
regard to logical or rhetorical proprieties.

This being discovered, the conclusion follows swiftly, that the divine
Logos could not discourse otherwise. His addresses, like his deeds, are
designed to be revelations of himself; expressions, not of his thoughts,
but of his being, not of his character, but of his nature. They are the
Word made articulate, as his wonders are the Word made mighty, as his
form is the Word made visible. A human being, seeking to convince,
persuade, instruct mankind, will from necessity pursue a different
course from the divine Reason presenting itself to "the world." Its very
audiences are impersonal, consisting not of individuals or of parties,
but of abstractions labelled "Jews," who come like shadows, so depart.

So unhuman is the Christ, so entirely without near relations with
mankind, that when he has left the world, a substitute may be provided
for him, in the shape of the Holy Spirit, another personality proceeding
from him and his Father, and appointed to complete his work; to reprove
the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment; to guide the
disciples into all truth; to bring to their remembrance all that had
been said to them; to comfort them, and abide with them for ever. The
idea loses itself in vagueness at times, now being identified with the
Christ, now appearing as a Spirit of Truth, now being an indwelling
presence, now an effluence from the Logos. But all the while something
like an individual consciousness is preserved; the spirit is as palpable
as the Logos himself was. Here is already the germ of a trinity maturing
within the bosom of the Hebrew monotheism. The process has been simple;
the consecutive steps have been inevitable. But in the process the solid
ground of Judaism has been left; the massive substance of the ancient
faith has been melted into cloud.

How entirely nebulous it has become under the action of speculative mind
is strikingly apparent on examination of the ethical characteristics of
the fourth gospel. The concrete virtues of the ancient race, the honest
human righteousness and charity have disappeared, and in their place are
certain spectral "graces" which have quality of a technical, but little
of a human sort. That, according to the Logos doctrine men are saved,
not by natural goodness or piety but by faith in the Christ, is written
all over the book. But this is not the point. It is not enough that
character has no saving power, it is dispensed with; and instead of it,
something is set up which possesses none of the elements of character.
The compact principles of human duty which hold so large a place in the
Old Testament scriptures, and are so essential in the earliest Messianic
conception, are not found here, at all. The sermon on the mount is
omitted. The beatitudes are unmentioned. The parables are not
remembered. There is no chapter in the book that bears comparison in
point of moral vigor or nobleness with the twelfth chapter of Romans, or
the thirteenth chapter of Corinthians. Humanity has shrunk to the
dimensions of an incipient Christendom. The men and women whom the Jesus
of Matthew addresses, to whom Paul makes appeal, are men and women no
more; not even Jews by race, not even a knot of radical Jews; they are
"disciples," "believers," "brethren." Christians, not fellow men, are to
love one another. "So shall ye be my disciples, if ye have love one for
another." "By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples." Of the
broad human love, the recognition of brotherhood on the human ground,
duty to love those who are _not_ disciples, there is not a word. The
common _faith_, not the common _nature_, is the bond. The promises in
the fourteenth chapter, the warnings in the fifteenth, the counsel in
the sixteenth, the consecration in the seventeenth are all for the
believers, not for the doers; for the doers only so far as they are
believers, and within the limits of the believing community. The tender
word "love" shrinks to ecclesiastical proportions. "If a man love me he
will keep my words; and my Father will love him, and we will come to
him, and make our abode with him;" but the words are not words of
exhortation to practical righteousness, they are words of admonition
against unbelief. "If ye love me, keep my commandments;" but the
commandments are not the wholesome enactments of the Hebrew decalogue,
but a bidding to "walk by the light while ye have the light," "to do the
will of Him that sent me," which is "to believe on him whom He hath
sent." "He that believeth not is condemned already in his not believing
in the only begotten Son of God." There is no sweeter word than "love;"
there is no more comprehensive law than the law of love; but when love
is changed from a virtue to a sentiment, and when the duty of practising
it is limited to members of a doctrinal communion, the practical issue
is more likely to be sectarian narrowness than human fellowship.

As the speculation rises the spectral character of the morality becomes
more startling. The so-called epistles of John carry the Logos idea
considerably further than the gospel does. The mission of the Logos is
more sharply discriminated. He is described as a sin offering. "He is
the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the
sins of the whole world." "The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from
all sin." "He was manifested to take away our sins, and in Him is no
sin." The word "manifested" is the key to the doctrine. "The Son of God
was _manifested_ that He might destroy the works of the devil." It is
the same conception as in the gospel; the Prince of Light confronting
the Prince of Darkness, shaming him and _attracting_ away his subjects.
The anti-Christ now comes into view; the sin unto death is named; the
second advent is announced, though not according to the millennial
anticipations of a former day. "He that denieth that Jesus is the Christ
is a liar." "Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ is come in
the flesh is of God." "Every spirit which confesseth not that Jesus
Christ is come in the flesh is not of God." Belief or unbelief in the
incarnation of the Logos is made the test of one's spiritual
relationship, marking him as a candidate for eternal felicity in the
realm of the blessed, or as a victim of endless misery in the realm of
Satan. Thus the very heart of natural goodness is eaten out. Of virtue
there remains small trace. A great deal of very strong language is used
about sin, but _sins_ are not particularized. Sin, as an abstraction, a
principle, a power, a force, a deep seated taint in the nature,
ineradicable except by the infusion of a new spirit of life, is
represented as the dreadful thing; and Love, another abstraction, is
raised to honor as a spiritual grace, equally unconnected with the human
will. "Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of God, and every
one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not
knoweth not God, for God is Love." The words have a deep and tender
sound. But the consideration that "the beloved" are those only who
confess that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, that all others are the
reverse of "beloved," causes that neither the depth nor the sweetness
remains. The love does not mean compassion, or pity, or good-will, or
helpfulness; it has no reference to the poor, the needy, the sick,
sorrowful, wicked; it has no downward look, is destitute of humility, is
as far as can well be from the love described by Paul in his perfect
lyric. It is, we may say, the opposite of that, being a quality that
distinguishes the elect from the non-elect, and makes their special
election the more sure.

The literary character of the fourth gospel must be remarked on as a
peculiar indication of the mental exhaustion that accompanies the last
stages of an intellectual movement. The literature of the century
preceding Jesus fairly throbs with personal vitality. It is scarcely
more than an expression of individual energies. The earliest writings of
the New Testament, the genuine letters of Paul, are animated in every
line by his own vehement personality; the speculative portions of them
stir the blood, so real are the issues presented, so vital are the
interests at stake. Shapeless, and sometimes incoherent, the thoughts
tumble out of the writer's overcharged heart. The Christ is an ideal
personage, but his mission is tremendously real; we are moved by a
battle cry as the apostle's ideas burst upon us.

The literature of the succeeding period, though more elaborate and
self-conscious, bearing traces of reflection, and even artifice in
composition, is yet warm with the presence of a real purpose. But the
fourth gospel is a purely literary work; a composition, the production
of an artist in language. Its author, perhaps because he was simply an
artist in language, is unknown. Trace of an historical Jesus in it there
is none. No breath from the world of living men blows through it; no
stir of social existence, no movement of human affairs ruffles its calm
surface. The people are not real people, the issues are not real issues,
the conflict is not a real conflict. We have a book, not a gospel.

The writer formally announces the subject of his spiritual drama, and
then proceeds to develop it, according to approved rules of literary
art. First comes the prologue, setting forth in a few sententious
passages the cardinal idea of the piece. This occupies eighteen verses
of the first chapter, and is followed by the introduction of John the
Baptist and his testimony. This occupies eighteen verses more. The
manifestation of the Logos to the first company of disciples is
described with due circumstance in the remainder of the chapter. The
symbolical opening of the public ministry, at Cana, the first open
"manifestation of the glory" in the miracle of turning water into wine,
by which is signified the calling to substitute a spiritual for a
natural order, occupies the first ten verses of the second chapter. Then
the ministry of revelation begins, with signs and demonstrations. The
city of Jerusalem is chosen as the scene of it; and the scene never
changes for longer than a moment, and then it changes without
historical, or biographical motive. The cleansing of the temple is
placed at the beginning, with undisguised purpose to announce his claim,
and the dialectical contest is opened. Nicodemus, "a ruler of the Jews,"
seeks a nocturnal interview, betrays the ignorance of the kingdom which
characterizes all save the regenerate, even the wisest, and gives
occasion to the Christ to declare the intrinsic superiority of the Son
of God, and the conditions of salvation through him; Nicodemus
furnishing the starting point for a lofty declamation which soars beyond
him into the region of transcendental ideas. The Baptist, instead of
doubting, as in Matthew, and sending an embassy to the Christ to
ascertain the reasons of his not disclosing himself, is himself
questioned by skeptical disciples, and re-assures them by words that are
an echo of the Christ's own.

The interview with the woman of Samaria is introduced for the purpose of
extracting another confession of the Christ's supremacy from a different
order of mind. Nicodemus represented Judaism in its pride of authority
and learning. The woman of Samaria represents the ignorant,
superstitious, yet stubborn idolatry reckoned by the Jews as no better
than heathenism; her "five husbands" are the five sects into which
Judaism was divided. She too is pictured to us as sitting by a well and
_drawing water_. The conversation begins with the Christ's declaration
of his power to create perennial springs of water in the heart, and
leads immediately up to the great disclosure of himself. Superstition,
like superciliousness, listens and is persuaded. The mention of Galilee
is necessary to account for the episode in Samaria, but nothing occurs
there. The next scene is laid again in Jerusalem. The _water_ of
Bethesda is brought into competition with the quickening spirit of the
Christ; the cure of the sick man introduces a mystical discourse on the
spiritual sufficiency of the Son of God.

Another scene is presented, and once more in Jerusalem. Another series
of tableaux is arranged. This time the Christ is pictured as breaking
bread and _walking on water_, whence occasion is taken to descant on the
bread of life. For the purpose of making a fresh appearance in
Jerusalem, and presenting his claim under a new aspect, Galilee is
called into requisition again, but as usual, the drama is enacted in
Jerusalem, which is the centre of the opposition. This time, the Christ,
having declined to go up in his own character to meet his critics, goes
up in disguise, incognito, and amazes the congregated multitude by his
superb assumptions of authority, and his overwhelming denunciations of
all who do not receive him; denunciations so uncompromising, that
dissensions are created. "Some would have taken him, but none laid hands
on him." As always, the demonstration results in bringing out his
friends and enemies, in showing who were and who were not his own, which
is the aim and end of every manifestation. The Logos presents himself,
makes his statement, asserts his prerogative, offers the alternative of
spiritual life or death, and retires, leaving the result to the
spiritual laws.

The story of the woman taken in adultery which immediately follows this
passage, probably made no part of the original gospel, as it appears out
of all connection. It is pronounced by some of the best critics to be
ungenuine. The obvious improbability of its incidents, the locality of
it,--the Mount of Olives,--the Christ's mysterious proceeding of writing
on the ground, and his unaccountable verdict, deprive the tale of all
but literary interest. It is interesting in a literary point of view, or
would be if it were set in literary relations; for it illustrates the
Christ's supremacy, his supernatural power of rebuke and insight, his
authority to grant absolution on purely theological grounds. The
doctrine that none but the guiltless are entitled to pronounce sentence
on guilt would put an end to censorship of every kind, but is quite in
accordance with the ethical tone of the book. The author however, turns
the incident to no account, but proceeds with new scenes in his
speculative drama. "I am the light of the world; he that followeth me
shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life;" the
Christ enters once more into the old debate, once more the claim is
challenged, once more the angry discussion flows on, becoming, at this
juncture more violent than ever; terrible denunciations leap from the
divine lips; the adversaries are called a devil's brood, liars,
murderers at heart. At the close of the final outburst, the unseen hands
raise the visionary stones, but "Jesus hid himself, went out of the
temple, going through the midst of them, and so passed by."

The speech however is continued; the main doctrine of it, namely that
the Christ is the Light of the World, being illustrated by the miracle
of giving sight to a man "blind from his birth,"--the story being told
at great length and with exceedingly minute detail, so as to cover every
point of circumstance. This seems to be a critical moment in the
development of the idea. The vehemence subsides for a time, and the
light of the world shines gently as a shepherd's lantern showing
wandering sheep the way to the true fold. But the softest word stirs up
anger; the "Jews" take up stones, not to throw them, but to exhibit
temper, and the act closes tranquilly like those that preceded it.

The resurrection of Lazarus prepares the way for the closing scenes.
That such a story, so artificially constructed, so evidently introduced
for effect, told by one writer and not as much as alluded to by the
others, told with so much circumstance and with so little regard for
biographical probability, told for a dogmatical purpose, and fitted into
the narrative at the precise juncture where a turning point was wanted,
should be accepted as history by any unfettered mind; that a critic like
Renan, professing a profound reverence for the character of Jesus,
should have admitted it as in some sense true, and should have been
driven in explanation of it to a theory utterly fatal to the moral
character of the "colossal" man he celebrates, thus sacrificing the
moral greatness of Jesus to a perverse sense of historical truth, proves
the obstinacy of traditional prejudice. The narrative is too evidently
a literary device, one would think, to deceive anybody of awakened
discernment. Its manifest artifice is such that it alone would be enough
to cast suspicion on all the miraculous narrations of the book.

"From that day forth the Jews took counsel together to put him to
death." The crisis has come, and events hasten on towards the
catastrophe, which, as has been said, was no catastrophe, but a
consummation. Mary, instead of sitting at his feet as a disciple,
anoints them with spikenard and wipes them with the hair of her head;
the holy woman performing the act elsewhere ascribed to a sinner, the
act itself being a ceremony of consecration, instead of a mark of
penitence. The triumphal entry into Jerusalem, elsewhere described as
the Messiah's own project, is converted into a spontaneous demonstration
in his honor, rendered by "much people," who had heard that Jesus was
coming to Jerusalem. "Certain Greeks" present themselves and ask an
introduction, as to a royal personage. They are the first fruits of the
Gentile world; their coming is welcomed as a sign of final victory. "The
hour is come," says Jesus, on receiving them, "that the Son of Man
should be glorified." The heavens echo his exclamation; an audible voice,
interpreted as the voice of an angel, pronouncing the glorification
certain and eternal. The Son of God adds his own interpretation,
confirming that of his friends; prophesies the speedy judgment of the
world and his own elevation to glory by means of the cross, makes his
last statement, and the dialectical war is at an end.

The rest of the life is given to the disciples. The last supper, its
agony and distress of mind omitted, is an occasion for impressing on
"his own" the lesson of mutual love. The departure of Judas on his
errand is the signal for a burst of rapture. Words of consolation,
mingled with promises of the "Spirit of Truth," "The Comforter," words
of blessing too follow, intended to beget in his friends the feeling
that, though absent, he will still be present with them. They are bidden
to remember him as the source of their life; are admonished to keep
unbroken the spiritual bond that unites them to him in vital sympathy;
are assured that the mission he came to earth to discharge will be
fulfilled by the Holy Ghost; and finally are solemnly consecrated by
priestly supplication as the rescued children of God.

The story of the arrest is told in a strain equally suited to the idea
on which the book is constructed. In full consciousness of his position,
Jesus steps forth out of the shadow of mystery to meet Judas and his
troop, who have come, expecting to find him in his garden retreat. The
soldiers, over-awed by the apparition, start backward and fall to the
ground, prostrate before the Son of God. The trial goes on before Annas
and Caiaphas, priests, and Pilate, Roman viceroy. The powers of Church
and State pronounce on him; before the powers of Church and State he
announces himself and makes his royal claim. In the presence of the High
Priest, who is scarcely more than a name in this proceeding, introduced
in order that Judaism might have one more opportunity of rejecting the
majesty of heaven, Jesus suffers an indignity at the hands of one of the
prelate's officers; but Pilate, the pagan, shudders before the awful
personage who tells him that he could have no power at all except it
were given him from above; that he was but a tool of providence. The
guilt of the execution is thus transferred from his shoulders to
destiny; for the Jews, no less than the governor, are fated. The hour of
glorification has come, and the Son of Man moves with stately step
towards his ascension.

The process of withdrawal from the visible sphere has already been
described. It is not effected at once. As a lantern in the hand of one
walking in a wood flashes out and again hides itself, becoming dimmer
and dimmer until finally it quite disappears, so the Son of God is many
times visible and invisible before he vanishes altogether from sight. No
bodily ascension is necessary to bear away one whose coming and going
are not conditioned by space or time. His form has always been a
translucent veil, which could at pleasure be removed. His mission ended,
there is no more occasion for his self-revelation, and he is unseen. The
unreality of a representation like this must be too apparent to be
argued.

From this exposition it appears that the New Testament literature is, in
some sort, to the end, a continuation of the literature of the Old
Testament. As the earliest phase of Christianity was Judaism, with a
belief in the Messiah's advent superadded, so the first literature of
Christianity is the literature of Judaism, written on the supposition
that the Christ has come. Judaism is Christianity still expectant of a
Christ to come, or, as with the radical Jews, unexpectant of a personal
Messiah; Christianity is Judaism with the expectation fulfilled. The
Judaic element was not limited to the little knot of Jerusalemites who
hung about the holy city and waited there for the Christ's coming; it
was conspicuous in the system of Paul, and so far from being absent from
the later form, known by the name of John, determines the cardinal idea
of that, and shapes its bent. Whatever additions are made, grow out of
this cardinal idea, as branches from its stem. The strict monotheism of
the Hebrew faith is sacrificed to the Messianic conception. The Christ
in time becomes a twin Deity, a Holy Ghost being required to fill up the
gulf between godhead and humanity.

But for the fury of the discord that arose and deepened between the
Jews who accepted the Christ and the Jews who preferred still to wait
for him, the later, as well as the earlier form of Christianity, might
possibly have been merged in Judaism. The believers in the Messianic
advent were radical to the point of fanaticism. They were the restless
advocates of change, agitators, revolutionists. Their passionate zeal
could not brook indifference or coolness. Nothing short of a fervid
allegiance satisfied them. The recusants had to bear hard names, as the
gospels attest. The ill-fortune of the Messiah, the bitter opposition he
encountered, his untimely death, were charged upon the faithlessness of
the nation who would not confess him. These, and not the Roman
Government that actually put him to death, were held answerable for his
crucifixion; thus a discord was planted, which all the generations of
Christendom have failed to eradicate. There has, from that time to this,
been implacable hatred between Christian and Jew.

The separation, which might have been healed or obliterated, had this
been the sole cause of it, was widened by the subsequent breach between
the christians themselves, which drew attention off from the previous
issue. The position taken by Paul, that the mission of the Christ was
extended to the Gentiles and comprehended them on precisely the same
conditions with the Jews, was exceedingly disagreeable and even
shocking to the conservatives, who held that the Christ was sent to
Israel only, and especially to that portion of Israel that clung
tenaciously to the traditions of the law. The necessary criticism of the
Law which Paul's position required, the apparent disrespect shown to
Moses and the prophets, the disregard of the ancestral claim set up by
the "children of Abraham," the substitution of an interior
principle--faith--which any heathen might adopt, for the old fashioned
legal requirements to which none but orthodox Jews could conform, was
hardly less than blasphemous in their regard; and a feud was begun,
which in violence and rancor, excelled the quarrel between the orthodox
christians and t

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/36767