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           Title: The Romance of M. Renan, and the Christ of the Gospels. Three
                  Essays by Rev. Dr. Schaff and M. Napoleon Roussel.
      Creator(s): Schaff, Philip (1819-1893)
     Print Basis: New York: Carlton & Lanahan. (1868)
          Rights: Public Domain
   CCEL Subjects: All;
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    THE

                              ROMANCE OF M. RENAN,

    AND THE

CHRIST OF THE GOSPELS.

   Three Essays

    BY

   Rev. Dr. SCHAFF and M. NAPOLEON ROUSSEL.

  NEW YORK:

CARLTON & LANAHAN.

  CINCINNATI: HITCHCOCK & WALDEN.

    TRACT SOCIETY OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH.

  1868.
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NOTE BY THE AMERICAN EDITOR. [1]

   THIS work is reprinted from the London Religious Tract Society's
   edition. The same reasons which made its publication desirable in
   England apply to American society. For, though M. Renan's work may not
   be very generally read among us, yet its thought and spirit are being
   largely reproduced by the Rationalistic pulpit and press,--the latter
   especially. Hence it is necessary to provide a popular antidote for
   what may be regarded as popular poison. This little volume is such an
   antidote. Professor Schaff's Essay brings out the true character of the
   Christ of the Gospels in such bold relief, and with such convincing
   evidence, as to arm its reader's mind against the insidious weapons of
   Strauss and Renan. M. Roussel's two Essays grapple boldly and strongly
   with the false principles on which the work of Renan is constructed.
   Any man, after carefully considering them, would find it difficult to
   yield his assent to the plausible positions of that adversary of the
   Lord Jesus. I particularly commend these pages to young preachers and
   to young men, whether they have read Renan's work or not; assured, that
   if they have read it, and have even had their faith shaken, the
   argument and views herein contained will be likely to restore their
   faith in the real Christ; while, if they have not read it, they will
   here see enough of its character to convince them that its aim is evil,
   and that, like all other weapons heretofore forged by the skill of
   skepticism against the Holy Child Jesus, it is sure to be soon buried
   in everlasting contempt.

   D. W.
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   [1] The title of the second essay of this volume has been placed first,
   to prevent the work from being confounded with "The Christ of the
   Gospels" by Tulloch, published by our Western Book Concern.
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PREFACE.

   THE Vie de Jesus, by M. Renan, having passed through many editions, and
   been translated into several languages on the continent of Europe, has
   now appeared in an English form. The Committee of the Religious Tract
   Society have therefore deemed it incumbent upon them to provide some
   antidote to the errors of a volume which is being so widely circulated.
   At the same time they do not think that M. Renan's treatise either
   needs or deserves a formal reply. It adduces no new facts and urges no
   new arguments against the Christian faith. It is not remarkable either
   for depth of research or vigor of logic. It owes its sudden and
   wonderful popularity, not to its intrinsic merit, but to the beauty of
   its style and the position of its author. All the reasonings which have
   been so successfully urged against other skeptical treatises may be
   adduced with equal force against this; and it lies open to many
   objections peculiar to itself. The admissions which M. Renan has felt
   himself compelled to make in favor of Christianity are fatal to his
   arguments against it. He admits the early origin, the authenticity, and
   the general veracity of the Gospels; yet he rejects all the miracles
   which they record, and reduces their narratives to fabulous and
   mythical legends as often as it suits his purpose. He admits that Jesus
   was the wisest, holiest, and best of the sons of men; yet he pities him
   as the victim of delusion, and apologizes for him as the accessory to,
   or the accomplice in, acts of imposture and fraud. He admits that
   Christianity has been the great means of the world's progress in the
   past, and that it holds out the only hope for the world's progress in
   the future; yet he maintains that it was founded in fanaticism, and
   that it is strong only by its faith in a delusion. These absurdities,
   indeed, do not appear on the surface of the book. They are ingeniously
   vailed by glowing descriptions and paraphrastic statements.

   It has been thought sufficient, therefore, to place in the hands of
   English readers the following essays.

   I. A treatise, by the Rev. Professor Schaff, [2] on the Christ of the
   Gospels, in which the perfection of our Lord's character, as portrayed
   by the Evangelists, is set forth as an argument for the Divinity of his
   person and mission. A character so spotless and perfect, yet so simple
   and natural, could not be the product of imposture, or the dream of
   fanaticism. In the words of Rousseau, "It is more inconceivable that a
   number of persons should agree to write such a history, than that one
   only should furnish the subject of it. The Jewish authors were
   incapable of the diction, and strangers to the morality contained in
   the Gospels, the marks of whose truth are so striking and inimitable
   that the inventor would be even a more astonishing character than the
   hero." As this essay was written before the appearance of the Vie de
   Jesus, it has been thought desirable to add a few notes pointing out
   its bearing upon the work of M. Renan.

   2. Two essays, by M. Napoleon Roussel, one of the ablest of the French
   Protestant pastors, in which the insidious and latent principles of the
   Vie de Jesus are stripped of their disguise, and laid bare in their
   naked deformity. Many who might be deluded and seduced by the
   rhetorical romance of M. Renan would start back with horror from an
   unvailed statement of his teachings.

   These essays are published with the earnest prayer that they may be
   made instrumental in leading many not only to reject the evil, but to
   choose the good. It is not enough to detect the sophisms and repudiate
   the conclusions of infidelity, unless, at the same time, "being
   justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus
   Christ."
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   [2] Reprinted, with revision and additions, from the "British and
   Foreign Evangelical Review."
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CONTENTS.

   page

   The Christ of the Gospels. By Rev. Professor Schaff.
                                                                    13

   The Romance of M. Renan. By Napoleon Roussel.
                                                                    109

   The Christ of M. Renan and the Christ of the Gospels. By Napoleon
   Roussel
                                                                    183
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THE

CHRIST OF THE GOSPELS.

By Rev. Professor Schaff.

  THE

CHRIST OF THE GOSPELS.

   THE life and character of Jesus Christ is truly the Holy of Holies in
   the history of the world. Eighteen hundred years have passed away since
   he, in the fullness of time, appeared on this earth to redeem a fallen
   race from sin and death, and to open a never-ceasing fountain of
   righteousness and life. The ages before him anxiously awaited his
   coming as "the Desire of all nations;" the ages after him proclaim his
   glory, and ever extend his dominion. The noblest and best of men under
   every clime hold him not only in the purest affection and the
   profoundest gratitude, but in divine adoration and worship. His name is
   above every name that can be named in heaven or on earth, The Christ of
   the Gospels. and the only one whereby the sinner can be saved. He is
   Immanuel, God with us; the eternal Word become flesh, very God and very
   man in one undivided person; the Author of the new creation; the Way,
   the Truth, and the Life; the Prophet, Priest, and King of regenerate
   humanity; the Saviour of the world. Thus he stands out to the faith of
   the entire Christian Church, Greek, Latin, and Evangelical, in every
   civilized country on the globe. His power is now greater, his kingdom
   larger, than ever, and will continue to spread until all nations shall
   bow before him, and kiss his scepter of righteousness and peace.

   Blessed is he who, from the heart, can believe that Jesus is the Son of
   God and the fountain of salvation. True faith is, indeed, no work of
   nature, but an act of God wrought in the soul by the Holy Ghost, who
   reveals Christ to us in his true character, as Christ revealed the
   Father. Faith, with its justifying, sanctifying, and saving power, is
   independent of science and learning, and may be kindled even in the
   heart of a little child or an illiterate slave. It is the peculiar
   glory of the Redeemer and his religion to be coextensive with humanity
   itself, without distinction of sex, age, condition, nation, and race.
   His saving grace flows and overflows to all, and for all, on the simple
   condition of repentance and faith.

   This fact, however, does not supersede the necessity of thought and
   argument. Revelation, although above nature and above reason, is by no
   means against nature and against reason. On the contrary, nature and
   the supernatural, as has been well said by a distinguished New England
   divine, (Bushnell,) "constitute together the one system of God."
   Christianity satisfies the deepest intellectual as well as moral and
   religious wants of man, who is created in the image, and for the glory
   of God. It is the revelation of truth as well as of life. Faith and
   knowledge are not antagonistic, but complementary forces; not enemies,
   but inseparable twin sisters. Faith, indeed, precedes knowledge, but it
   just as necessarily leads to knowledge; while true knowledge, on the
   other hand, is always rooted and grounded in faith, and tends to
   confirm and strengthen it. Thus we find the two combined in the famous
   confession of Peter, when he says in the name of all the other
   apostles, "We believe and are sure that thou art that Christ."

   As living faith in Christ is the soul and center of all sound practical
   Christianity and piety, so the true doctrine of Christ is the soul and
   center of all sound Christian theology. St. John makes the denial of
   the incarnation of the Son of God the criterion of Antichrist, and
   consequently the belief in this central truth the test of Christianity.
   The incarnation, and the Divine glory shining through the vail of
   Christ's humanity, is the grand theme of his Gospel, which he wrote, as
   with the pen of an angel, from the very heart of Christ, as his
   favorite disciple and bosom friend. The Apostles' Creed, starting as it
   does from the confession by Peter, makes the article on Christ most
   prominent, and assigns to it the central position between the preceding
   article of God the Father and the succeeding article on the Holy Ghost.
   The development of ancient catholic theology commenced and culminated
   with the triumphant defense of the true Divinity and true humanity of
   Christ against the opposite heresies of Judaizing Ebionism which denied
   the former, and paganizing Gnosticism which resolved the latter into a
   shadowy phantom. The evangelical Protestant theology is essentially
   Christological, or controlled throughout by the proper idea of Christ
   as the God-man and Saviour. This is emphatically "the article of the
   standing or falling Church." In this, the two most prominent ideas of
   the Reformation, the doctrine of the supremacy of the Scriptures, and
   the doctrine of justification by grace through faith, meet and are
   vitally united. Christ's word, the only unerring and sufficient guide
   of truth; Christ's work, the only unfailing and sufficient source of
   peace; Christ all in all--this is the principle of genuine
   Protestantism.

   In the construction of the true doctrine of Christ's person, we may,
   with St. John in the prologue to his Gospel, begin from above with his
   eternal Godhead, and proceed through the creation and the preparatory
   revelation of the Old Testament dispensation, till we reach the
   incarnation and his truly human life for the redemption of the race.
   Or, with the other Evangelists, we may begin from below, with his birth
   from the Virgin Mary, and rise up through the successive stages of his
   earthly life, his discourses and miracles, to his assumption into that
   Divine glory which he had before the foundation of the world. The
   result reached in both cases is the same, that Christ unites in his
   person the whole fullness of the Godhead and the whole fullness of
   sinless manhood.

   The older theologians, both Catholic and Evangelical, proved the
   divinity of the Saviour in a direct way from the miracles performed by
   him, and the prophecies fulfilled in him, from the Divine names which
   he bears, from the Divine attributes which are predicted of him, from
   the Divine works which he performed, and from the Divine honors which
   he claimed, and which were freely accorded to him by his Apostles and
   the whole Christian Church to this day.

   But it may also be proved by the opposite process--the contemplation of
   the singular perfection of his humanity, which rises, by the almost
   universal consent even of unbelievers, so far above every human
   greatness known before or since, that it can only be rationally
   explained on the ground of such an essential union with the Godhead as
   he claimed himself, and as his inspired Apostles ascribed to him. The
   more deeply we penetrate through the vail of his flesh, the more
   clearly we behold the glory of the Only Begotten of the Father shining
   through it full of grace and of truth.

   Modern evangelical theology owes this new homage to the Saviour. The
   powerful attacks of the latest phase of infidelity upon the credibility
   of the Gospel history call for it, and have already led, by way of
   reaction, to new triumphs of the old faith of the Church in her Divine
   Head. Our humanitarian, philanthropic, and yet skeptical age, is more
   susceptible of this argument than of the old dogmatic method of
   demonstration. With Thomas, the representative of honest and earnest
   skepticism among the Apostles, it refuses to believe in the divinity of
   the Lord unless supported by the testimony of its senses; it desires to
   put the finger into the print of the nails, and to thrust the hand into
   his side, before it exclaims in humble adoration, "' My Lord and my
   God."

   It is from this point of view that we will endeavor, in as popular and
   concise a manner as the difficulty of the subject permits, to analyze
   and exhibit the human character of Christ. We propose to take up the
   man Jesus of Nazareth as he appears on the simple, unsophisticated
   record of the plain and honest fishermen of Galilee, and as he lives in
   the faith of all Christendom; and we shall find him in all the stages
   of his life, both as a private individual and as a public character, so
   far elevated above the reach of successful rivalry, and so singularly
   perfect, that this very perfection in the midst of an imperfect and
   sinful world constitutes an irresistible proof of his Divinity.

   A full discussion of the subject would require us to consider Christ in
   his official as well as personal character, and to describe him as a
   teacher, a reformer, a worker of miracles, and the founder of a
   spiritual kingdom, universal in extent and perpetual in time. From
   every point of view we should be irresistibly driven to the same
   result. But our present purpose confines us to the consideration of his
   personal character; and this alone, we think, is sufficient for the
   conclusion.

   Christ passed through all the stages of human life, from infancy to
   manhood, and represented each in its ideal form, that he might redeem
   and sanctify them all, and be a perpetual model for imitation. He was
   the model infant, the model boy, the model youth, and the model man.
   But the weakness, decline, and decrepitude of old age would be
   incompatible with his character and mission. He died and rose in the
   full bloom of early manhood, and lives in the hearts of his people in
   unfading freshness and unbroken vigor for ever.

   Let us first glance at the infancy and boyhood of the Saviour. The
   history of the race commences with the beauty of innocent youth in the
   garden of Eden, "when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons
   of God shouted for joy," in beholding Adam and Eve created in the image
   of their Maker, the crowning glory of all his wonderful works. So the
   second Adam, the Redeemer of the fallen race, the Restorer and
   Perfecter of man, comes first before us in the accounts of the Gospels
   as a child born, not in paradise, it is true, but among the dreary
   ruins of sin and death, from a humble virgin, in a lowly manger, yet
   pure and innocent, the subject of the praise of angels and the object
   of the adoration of men. Heaven and earth, the shepherds of Bethlehem,
   in the name of Israel, longing after salvation, and the wise men from
   the East, as the representatives of heathenism in its dark groping
   after the "unknown God," unite in the worship of the new-born King and
   Saviour. Here we meet, at the very threshold of the earthly history of
   Christ, that singular combination of humility and grandeur, of
   simplicity and sublimity, of the human and Divine, which characterizes
   it throughout, and distinguishes it from every other history. He is not
   represented as an unnatural prodigy, anticipating the maturity of a
   later age, but as a truly human child, silently lying and smiling on
   the bosom of his virgin mother, "growing" in body and "waxing strong in
   spirit," and therefore subject to the law of regular development, yet
   differing from all other children by his supernatural conception and
   perfect freedom from hereditary sin and guilt. He appears in the
   celestial beauty of unspotted innocence, a veritable flower of
   paradise. He was "that holy thing," according to the announcement of
   the angel Gabriel, admired and loved by all who approached him in
   child-like spirit, but exciting the dark suspicion of the tyrant king,
   who represented his future enemies and persecutors. Who can measure the
   ennobling, purifying, and cheering influence which proceeds from the
   contemplation of the Christ-child at each returning Christmas season
   upon the hearts of young and old in every land and nation! The loss of
   the first estate is richly compensated by the undying innocence of
   paradise regained.

   Of the boyhood of Jesus we know only one fact, recorded by Luke, but it
   is in perfect keeping with the peculiar charm of his childhood, and
   foreshadows at the same time the glory of his public life, as one
   uninterrupted service of his heavenly Father. When twelve years old we
   find him in the temple, in the midst of the Jewish doctors, not
   teaching and offending them, as in the Apocryphal Gospels, by any
   immodesty or forwardness, but hearing and asking questions, thus
   actually learning from them, and yet filling them with astonishment at
   his understanding and answers. There is nothing premature, forced, or
   unbecoming his age, and yet a degree of wisdom and an intensity of
   interest in religion which rises far above a purely human youth. "He
   increased," we are told, "in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God
   and man." He was subject to his parents, and practiced all the virtues
   of an obedient son; [3] and yet he filled them with a sacred awe as
   they saw him absorbed "in the things of his Father," and heard him
   utter words which they were unable to understand at the time, but which
   Mary treasured up in her heart as a holy secret, convinced that they
   must have some deep meaning answering to the mystery of his
   supernatural conception and birth. Such an idea of a harmless and
   faultless heavenly childhood, of a growing, learning, and yet
   surprisingly wise boyhood, as meets us in living reality at the portal
   of the Gospel history, never entered the imagination of biographer,
   poet, or philosopher before.

   The unnatural exaggeration into which the mythical fancy of man, in its
   endeavor to produce a superhuman childhood and boyhood, will inevitably
   fall, is strikingly exhibited in the Apocryphal Gospels, which are
   related to the Canonical Gospels as the counterfeit to the genuine
   coin, or as a revolting caricature to the inimitable original, but
   which by the very contrast tend, negatively, to corroborate the truth
   of the evangelical history. While the Evangelists expressly reserve the
   performance of miracles to the age of maturity and public life, and
   observe a significant silence concerning the parents of Jesus, the
   Pseudo-evangelists fill the infancy and early years of the Saviour and
   his mother with the strangest prodigies, and make the active
   intercession of Mary very prominent throughout. According to their
   representation, even dumb idols, irrational beasts, and senseless
   trees, bow in adoration before the infant Jesus on his journey to
   Egypt; and after his return, when yet a boy of five or seven years, he
   changes balls of clay into flying birds for the amusement of his
   playmates, strikes terror round about him, dries up a stream of water
   by a mere word, transforms his companions into goats, raises the dead
   to life, and performs all sorts of miraculous cures, through a magical
   influence which proceeds from the very water in which he was washed,
   the towels which he used, and the bed on which he slept. Here we have
   the falsehood and absurdity of unnatural fiction, while the New
   Testament presents to us the truth and beauty of a supernatural, yet
   most real history, which shines out only in brighter colors by the
   contrast of the mythical shadow.

   With the exception of these few but significant hints, the youth of
   Jesus, and the preparation for his public ministry, are enshrined in
   mysterious silence. But we know the outward condition and circumstances
   under which he grew up; and these must be admitted to furnish no
   explanation for the astounding results, without the admission of the
   supernatural and Divine element in his life.

   He grew up among a people seldom, and only contemptuously, named by the
   ancient classics, and subjected at the time to the yoke of a foreign
   oppressor; in a remote and conquered province of the Roman empire; in
   the darkest district of Palestine; in a little country town of
   proverbial insignificance; in poverty and manual labor; in the
   obscurity of a carpenter's shop; far away from universities, academies,
   libraries, and literary or polished society; without any help, as far
   as we know, except the parental care, the book of nature, the Old
   Testament Scriptures, and the secret intercourse of his soul with the
   heavenly Father. Hence the question of Nathaniel, "Can any good thing
   come out of Nazareth?" Hence the natural surprise of the Jews, who knew
   all his human relations and antecedents. "How knoweth this man
   letters," they asked, when they heard Jesus teach in the synagogue,
   "having never learned?" And on another occasion: "Whence hath this man
   this wisdom, and these mighty works? Is not this the carpenter's son?
   is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James, and Joses, and
   Simon, and Judas? And his sisters, are they not all with us? Whence
   then hath this man all these things?" These questions are unavoidable
   and unanswerable, if Christ be regarded as a mere man. For each effect
   presupposes a corresponding cause.

   The difficulty here presented can by no means be solved by a reference
   to the fact that many, perhaps the majority of great men, especially in
   the Church, have risen by their own industry and perseverance from the
   lower walks of life, and from a severe contest with poverty and
   obstacles of every kind. The fact itself is readily conceded; -but in
   every one of these cases, schools, or books, or patrons and friends, or
   peculiar events and influences, can be pointed out as auxiliary aids in
   the development of intellectual or moral greatness. There is always
   some human or natural cause, or combination of causes, which accounts
   for the final result.

   Luther, for instance, was indeed the son of poor peasants, and had a
   very hard youth; but yet he went to the schools of Mansfield,
   Magdeburg, and Eisenach, to the University of Erfurt, passed through
   the ascetic discipline of convent life, lived in a university
   surrounded by professors, students, and libraries, and was innocently,
   as it were, made a reformer by extraordinary events, and the
   irresistible current of his age.

   In the case of Christ, no such natural explanation can be given. All
   the attempts to bring him into some contact with Egyptian wisdom, or
   with the Essenic theosophy, or other sources of learning, are without a
   shadow of proof, and explain nothing after all. For, unlike all other
   great men, even the Prophets and the Apostles, he was absolutely
   original and independent. He taught the world as one who had learned
   from it, and was under no obligation to it. "His character and life
   were originated and sustained in spite of circumstances with which no
   earthly force could have contended, and therefore must have had their
   real foundation in a force which was preternatural and divine." At the
   same time, it is easy to see, from the admission of Christ's Divinity,
   that by this condescension he has raised humble origin, poverty, manual
   labor, and the lower orders of society, to a dignity and sacredness
   never known before, and has revolutionized the false standard of
   judging the value of men and things from their outward appearance, and
   of associating moral worth with social elevation, and moral degradation
   with low rank.

   We now approach the public life of Jesus. In his thirtieth year, after
   the Messianic inauguration through the baptism by John, [4] as his
   immediate forerunner and personal representative of the Old Testament,
   both in its legal and prophetic, or evangelical aspect, and after the
   Messianic probation by the temptation in the wilderness--the
   counterpart of the temptation of the first Adam in paradise--he entered
   upon his great work.

   His public life lasted only three years, and before he had reached the
   age of ordinary maturity he died in the full beauty and vigor of early
   manhood, without tasting the infirmities of declining years, which
   would inevitably mar the picture of the Regenerator of the race, and
   the Prince of life. And yet, unlike all other men of his years, he
   combined with the freshness, energy, and originating power of youth
   that wisdom, moderation, and experience which belong only to mature
   age. The short triennium of his public ministry contains more, even
   from a purely historical point of observation, than the longest life of
   the greatest and best of men. It is pregnant with the deepest meaning
   respecting the counsel of God and the destiny of the race. It is the
   ripe fruit of all preceding ages, the fulfillment of the hopes and
   desires of the Jewish and heathen mind, and the fruitful germ of
   succeeding generations, containing the impulse to the purest thoughts
   and noblest actions down to the end of time. It is "the end of a
   boundless past, the center of a boundless present, and the beginning of
   a boundless future."

   How remarkable, how wonderful this contrast between the short duration
   and the immeasurable significance of Christ's ministry! The Saviour of
   the world a youth!

   Other men require a long succession of years to mature their mind and
   character, and to make a lasting impression upon the world. There are
   rare exceptions, we admit.. Alexander the Great, the last and most
   brilliant efflorescence of the ancient Greek nationality, died a young
   man of thirty-three, after having conquered the East to the borders of
   the Indus. But who would think of comparing an ambitious warrior,
   conquered by his own lust and dying a victim of his passion, with the
   spotless Friend of sinners; a few bloody victories of the one with the
   peaceful triumphs of the other; and a huge military empire of force,
   which crumbled to pieces as soon as it was erected, with the spiritual
   kingdom of truth and love which stands to this day, and will last
   forever? Nor should it be forgotten, that the true significance and
   only value of Alexander's conquests lay beyond the horizon of his
   ambition and intention, and that, by carrying the language and
   civilization of Greece to Asia, and bringing together the oriental and
   occidental world, it prepared the way for the introduction of the
   universal religion of Christ.

   There is another striking distinction, of a general character, between
   Christ and the heroes of history, which we must mention here. We should
   naturally suppose that such an uncommon personage, setting up the most
   astounding claims and proposing the most extraordinary work, would
   surround himself with extraordinary circumstances, and maintain a
   position far above the vulgar and degraded multitude around him. We
   should expect something uncommon and striking in his look, his dress,
   his manner, his mode of speech, his outward life, and the train of his
   attendants. But the very reverse is the case. His greatness is
   singularly unostentatious, modest, and quiet; and far from repelling
   the beholder, it attracts and invites him to familiar approach. His
   public life never moved on the imposing arena of secular heroism, but
   within the humble circle of every-day life, and the simple relations of
   a son, a brother, a citizen, a teacher, and a friend. He had no army to
   command, no kingdom to rule, no prominent station to fill, no worldly
   favors and rewards to dispense. He was a humble individual, without
   friends and patrons in the Sanhedrim or at the court of Herod. He never
   mingled in familiar intercourse with the religious or social leaders of
   the nation, whom he had startled, in his twelfth year, by his questions
   and answers. He selected his disciples from among the illiterate
   fishermen of Galilee, and promised them no reward in this world but a
   part in the bitter cup of his suffering. He dined with publicans and
   sinners, and mingled with the common people, without ever condescending
   to their low manners and habits. He was so poor that he had no place on
   which to rest his head. He depended for the supply of his modest wants
   on the voluntary contributions of a few pious followers, and the purse
   was in the hands of a thief and a traitor. Nor had he learning, art, or
   eloquence, in the usual sense of the term, nor any other kind of power
   by which great men arrest the attention and secure the admiration of
   the world. The writers of Greece and Rome were ignorant even of his
   existence until, several years after the crucifixion, the effects of
   his mission in the steady growth of the sect of his followers forced
   from them some contemptuous notice, and then roused them to opposition.

   And yet this Jesus of Nazareth, without money and arms, conquered more
   millions than Alexander, Cæsar, Mohammed, and Napoleon; without science
   and learning, he shed more light on things human and divine than all
   philosophers and scholars combined; without the eloquence of schools,
   he spoke words of life such as never were spoken before or since, and
   produced effects which lie beyond the reach of orator or poet; without
   writing a single line, he has set more pens in motion, and furnished
   themes for more sermons, orations, discussions, learned volumes, works
   of art, and sweet songs of praise, than the whole army of great men of
   ancient and modern times. Born in a manger, and crucified as a
   malefactor, he now controls the destinies of the civilized world, and
   rules a spiritual empire which embraces one third of the inhabitants of
   the globe. There never was in this world a life so unpretending,
   modest, and lowly in its outward form and condition, and yet producing
   such extraordinary effects upon all ages, nations, and classes of men.
   The annals of history produce no other example of such complete and
   astounding success in spite of the absence of those material, social,
   literary, and artistic powers and influences which are indispensable to
   success for a mere man. Christ stands also, in this respect, solitary
   and alone among all the heroes of history, and presents to us an
   insolvable problem, unless we admit him to be the eternal Son of God.

   We will now attempt to describe his personal, or moral and religious
   character, as it appears on the record of his public life, and then
   examine his own testimony of himself as giving us the only rational
   solution of this mighty problem.

   The first impression which we receive from the life of Jesus is, that
   of its perfect innocency and sinlessness in the midst of a sinful
   world. He, and he alone, carried the spotless purity of childhood
   untarnished through his youth and manhood. Hence the lamb and the dove
   are his appropriate symbols.

   He was, indeed, tempted as we are, but he never yielded to temptation.
   His sinlessness was at first only the relative sinlessness of Adam
   before the fall, which implies the necessity of trial and temptation.
   But here is the fundamental difference between the first and the second
   Adam: the first Adam lost his innocence by the abuse of his freedom,
   and fell by his own act of disobedience into the dire evils of sin;
   while the second Adam was innocent in the midst of sinners, and
   maintained his innocence against all and every temptation.

   In vain we look through the entire biography of Christ for a single
   stain, or the slightest shadow, on his moral character. There never
   lived a more harmless being on earth. He injured no one, he took
   advantage of no one. He never spoke a wrong word, he never committed a
   wrong action. He never repented, never asked God for pardon and
   forgiveness. [5] He stood in no need of regeneration and conversion,
   nor even of reform, but simply of the regular harmonious unfolding of
   his moral power. He exhibited a uniform elevation above the objects,
   opinions, pleasures, and passions of this world, and disregard to
   riches, display, fame, and favor of men. The apparent outbreak of
   passion in the expulsion of the profane traffickers from the temple, is
   the only instance in the record of his history which might be quoted
   against his freedom from the faults of humanity. But the very effect
   which it produced shows that, far from being the outburst of passion,
   the expulsion was a judicial act of a religious reformer, vindicating,
   in just and holy zeal, the honor of the Lord of the temple, and that
   with a dignity and majesty which at once silenced the offenders, though
   superior in number and physical strength, and made them submit to their
   well-deserved punishment without a murmur, and in awe of the presence
   of a superhuman power. The cursing of the unfruitful fig-tree can still
   less be urged, as it evidently was a significant symbolical act
   foreshadowing the fearful doom of the impenitent Jews in the
   destruction of Jerusalem.

   The perfect innocence of Jesus, however, is based, not only negatively
   on the absence of any recorded word or act to the contrary, and his
   absolute exemption from every trace of selfishness and worldliness, but
   positively also on the unanimous testimony of John the Baptist and the
   Apostles, who bowed before the majesty of his character in unbounded
   veneration, and declared him "just," "holy," and "without sin." It is
   admitted, moreover, by his enemies, the heathen judge Pilate and his
   wife, representing as it were the Roman law and justice, when they
   shuddered with apprehension and washed their hands to be clear of
   innocent blood; by the rude Roman centurion confessing under the cross,
   in the name of the executioners, that "truly this was the Son of God;"
   and by Judas himself, the immediate witness of his whole public and
   private life, exclaiming in despair, "I have betrayed the innocent
   blood." Even dumb nature responded in mysterious sympathy, and the
   beclouded heavens above, and the shaking earth beneath, united in
   paying their unconscious tribute to the divine purity of their dying
   Lord. It is finally placed beyond all possibility of doubt by his own
   freedom from any sense of guilt or unworthiness, and by his open and
   fearless challenge to his bitter enemies, "Which of you convinceth me
   of sin?" In this question he clearly exempts himself from the common
   fault and guilt of the race. In the mouth of any other man this
   question would at once betray either the height of hypocrisy, or a
   degree of self-deception bordering on madness itself, and would
   overthrow the very foundation of all human goodness; while from the
   mouth of Jesus we instinctively receive it as the triumphant
   self-vindication of one who stood far above the possibility of
   successful impeachment or founded suspicion. "If Jesus," says Bushnell,
   "was a sinner, he was conscious of sin, as all sinners are, and
   therefore was a hypocrite in the whole fabric of his character;
   realizing so much of divine beauty in it, maintaining the show of such
   unfaltering harmony and celestial grace, and doing all this with a mind
   confused and fouled by the affectations acted for true virtues! Such an
   example of successful hypocrisy would be itself the greatest miracle
   ever heard of in this world."

   Admit once this fact of the perfect sinlessness of Christ, as is done
   even by divines who are by no means regarded as orthodox, [6] and you
   admit that Christ differed from all other men, not in degree only, but
   in kind. For although we must repudiate the Pantheistic notion of the
   necessity of sin, and must maintain that human nature in itself
   considered is capable of sinlessness; that it was sinless, in fact,
   before the fall, and that it will ultimately become sinless again by
   the redemption of Christ--yet it is equally certain that human nature
   in its present condition is not, and never was, sinless since the fall,
   except in the single case of Christ; and that for this very reason
   Christ's sinlessness can only be explained on the ground of such an
   extraordinary indwelling of God in him as never took place in any other
   human being before or after. The entire Christian world, Greek, Latin,
   and Protestant, agree in the scriptural doctrine of the universal
   depravity of human nature since the apostasy of the first Adam. Even
   the modern and unscriptural Romish dogma of the freedom of the Virgin
   Mary from hereditary as well as actual sin, can hardly be quoted as an
   exception; for this exception is explained in the Papal decision by the
   assumption of a miraculous interposition of Divine favor, and the
   reflex influence of the merit of her Son. There is not a single mortal
   who must not charge himself with some defect or folly, and man's
   consciousness of sin and unworthiness deepens just in proportion to his
   self-knowledge and progress in virtue and goodness. There is not a
   single saint who has not experienced a new birth from above, and an
   actual conversion from sin to holiness, and who does not feel daily the
   need of repentance and Divine forgiveness. The very greatest and best
   of them, as St. Paul and Augustine, have passed through a violent
   struggle and a radical revolution, and their whole theological system
   and religious experience rested on the felt antithesis of sin and
   grace.

   But in Christ we have the one solitary and absolute exception to this
   universal rule--an individual thinking as a man, feeling as a man,
   speaking, acting, suffering, and dying as a man, surrounded by sinners
   in every direction, with the keenest sense of sin, and the deepest
   sympathy with sinners, commencing his public ministry with the call,
   "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand;" yet never touched in
   the least by the contamination of the world, never putting himself in
   the attitude of a sinner before God, never shedding a tear of
   repentance, never regretting a single thought, word, or deed, never
   needing nor asking Divine pardon, and boldly facing all his present and
   future enemies in the absolute certainty of his spotless purity before
   God and man.

   A sinless Saviour in the midst of a sinful world is an astounding fact
   indeed, and a miracle in history. But this freedom from the common sin
   and guilt of the race is after all only the negative side of his
   character, which rises in magnitude as we contemplate the positive
   side, namely, his absolute moral and religious perfection.

   It is universally admitted, even by Deists and Rationalists, that
   Christ taught the purest and sublimest system of ethics, which thrown
   all the moral precepts and maxims of the wisest men of antiquity far
   into the shade. The sermon on the mount alone is worth intimately more
   than all that Confucius, Socrates, and Seneca ever said or wrote on
   duty and virtue. But the difference is still greater if we come to the
   more difficult task of practice. While the wisest and best of men never
   live up even to their own imperfect standard of excellency, Christ
   fully carried out his perfect doctrine in his life and conduct. He is
   the living incarnation of the ideal standard of virtue and holiness,
   and universally acknowledged to be the highest model for all that is
   pure, and good, and noble in the sight of God and man.

   We find Christ moving in all the ordinary and essential relations of
   life, [7] as a son, a friend, a citizen, a teacher, at home and in
   public; we find him among all classes of society, with sinners and
   saints, with the poor and the wealthy, with the sick and the healthy,
   with little children, grown men and women, with plain fishermen and
   learned scribes, with despised publicans and honored members of the
   Sanhedrim, with friends and foes, with admiring disciples and bitter
   persecutors, now with an individual as Nicodemus or the woman of
   Samaria, now in the familiar circle of the twelve, now in the crowds of
   the people; we find him in all situations, in the synagogue and the
   temple, at home and on journeys, in villages and the city of Jerusalem,
   in the desert and on the mountain, along the banks of Jordan and the
   shores of the Galilean Sea, at the wedding feast and the grave, in
   Gethsemane, in the judgment-hall, and on Calvary. In all these various
   relations, conditions, and situations, as they are crowded within the
   few years of his public ministry, he sustains the same consistent
   character throughout, without ever exposing himself to censure. He
   fulfills every duty to God, to man, and to himself, without a single
   violation of duty, and exhibits an entire conformity to the law, in the
   spirit as well as the letter. His life is one unbroken service of God
   in active anc passive obedience to his holy will; one grand act of
   absolute love to God and love to man, of personal self-consecration to
   the glory of his heavenly Father and the salvation of a fallen race. In
   the language of the people, who were "beyond measure astonished" at his
   works, we must say, the more we study his life, "He did all things
   well." [8] In a solemn appeal to his heavenly Father in the parting
   hour, he could proclaim to the world that he had glorified him on the
   earth, and finished the work he gave him to do.

   The first feature in this singular perfection of Christ's character
   which strikes our attention, is the perfect harmony of virtue and
   piety, of morality and religion, or of love to God and love to man.
   Every action in him proceeded from supreme love to God, and looked to
   the temporal and eternal welfare of man. The groundwork of his
   character was the most intimate and uninterrupted union and communion
   with his heavenly Father, from whom he derived, to whom he referred,
   every thing. Already in his twelfth year he found his life-element and
   delight in the things of his Father. It was his daily food to do the
   will of him that sent him, and to finish his work. To him he looked in
   prayer before every important act, and taught his disciples that model
   prayer, which for simplicity, brevity, comprehensiveness, and
   suitableness, can never be surpassed. He often retired to a mountain or
   solitary place for prayer, and spent days and nights in this blessed
   privilege. But so constant and uniform was his habit of communion with
   the great Jehovah, that he kept it up amid the multitude, and converted
   the crowded city into a religious retreat. Even when he exclaimed in
   indescribable anguish of body and soul, and in vicarious sympathy with
   the misery of the whole race, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken
   me?" the bond of union was not broken, or even loosened, but simply
   obscured for a moment, as the sun by a passing cloud, and the
   enjoyment, not the possession of it, was withdrawn from his feelings;
   for immediately afterward he commended his soul into the hands of his
   Father, and triumphantly exclaimed, "It is finished!" So strong and
   complete was this union of Christ with God at every moment of his life,
   that he fully realized, for the first time, the ideal of religion,
   whose object is to bring about such a union, and that he is the
   personal representative and living embodiment of Christianity as the
   true and absolute religion. But the piety of Christ was no inactive
   contemplation, or retiring mysticism and selfish enjoyment, but
   thoroughly practical, ever active in works of charity, and tending to
   regenerate and transform the world into the kingdom of God. "He went
   about doing good." His life is an unbroken series of good works and
   virtues in active exercise, all proceeding from the same union with
   God, animated by the same love, and tending to the same end, the glory
   of God and the happiness of man.

   The next feature we would notice, is the completeness and fullness of
   the moral and religious character of Christ. While all other men
   represent at best but broken fragments of the idea of goodness and
   holiness, he exhausts the list of virtues and graces which can be
   named.

   History exhibits to us many examples of commanding and comprehensive
   geniuses, who stand at the head of their age and nation, and furnish
   material for the intellectual activity of generations and periods,
   until they are succeeded by other heroes at a new epoch of development.
   As rivers generally spring from high mountains, so knowledge and moral
   power rises, and is continually nourished, from the heights of
   humanity. Abraham, the father of the faithful; Moses, the lawgiver of
   the Jewish theocracy; Elijah among the prophets; Peter, Paul, and John
   among the apostles; Athanasius and Chrysostom among the Greeks;
   Augustine and Jerome among the Latin fathers; Thomas Aquinas and Duns
   Scotus among the schoolmen; Leo and Gregory among the popes; Luther and
   Calvin in the line of Protestant reformers and divines; Socrates, the
   patriarch of the ancient schools of philosophy; Homer, Dante,
   Shakspeare and Milton, Goethe and Schiller, in the history of poetry
   among the respective nations to which they belong; Raphael among
   painters; Charlemagne, the first and greatest in the long succession of
   German emperors; Napoleon, towering high above all the generals of his
   training--may be mentioned as examples of such representative heroes in
   history. But they who anticipate and concentrate the powers of whole
   generations never represent universal, but only sectional, humanity;
   they are identified with a particular people or age, and partake of its
   errors, superstitions, and failings, almost in the same proportion in
   which they exhibit their virtues. Moses, though revered by the
   followers of three religions, was a Jew in views, feelings, habits, and
   position, as well as by parentage; Socrates never rose above the Greek
   type of character; Luther was a German to the back-bone, and can only
   be properly understood as a German; Calvin, though an exile from his
   native land, remained a Frenchman; and Washington can be to no nation
   on earth what he is to the American. Their influence may, and does,
   extend far beyond their respective national horizons, yet they can
   never furnish a universal model for imitation. We regard them as
   extraordinary, but fallible and imperfect men, whom it would be very
   unsafe to follow in every view and line of conduct. Very frequently the
   failings and vices of great men are in proportion to their virtues and
   powers, as the tallest bodies cast the longest shadow. Even the
   Apostles are models of piety and virtue only as far as they reflect the
   image of their heavenly Master; and it is only with this qualification
   that Paul exhorts his spiritual children, "Be ye followers of me, even
   as I also am of Christ."

   What these representative men are to particular ages, or nations, or
   sects, or particular schools of science or art, Christ was to the human
   family at large in its relation to God. He, and he alone, is the
   universal type for universal imitation. Hence he could, without the
   least impropriety or suspicion of vanity, call upon all men to forsake
   all things and to follow him. He stands above the limitations of age,
   school, sect, nation, and race. Although a Jew according to the flesh,
   there is nothing Jewish about him which is not at the same time of
   general significance. The particular and national in him is always duly
   subordinate to the general and human. Still less was he ever identified
   with a party or sect. He was equally removed from the stiff formalism
   of the Pharisees, the loose liberalism of the Sadducees, and the
   inactive mysticism of the Essenes. He rose above all the prejudices,
   bigotries, and superstitions of his age and people, which exert their
   power even upon the strongest and otherwise most liberal minds. Witness
   his freedom in the observance of the Sabbath, by which he offended the
   scrupulous literalists, while he fulfilled, as the Lord of the Sabbath,
   the true spirit of the law in its universal and abiding significance;
   his reply to the disciples when they traced the misfortune of the blind
   man to a particular sin of the sufferer or his parents; his liberal
   conduct toward the Samaritans, as contrasted with the inveterate hatred
   and prejudice of the Jews, including his own disciples; and his
   charitable judgment of the slaughtered Galileans, whose blood Pilate
   had mingled with their sacrifices, and the eighteen upon whom the tower
   in Siloam fell and slew them. "Think ye," he addressed the children of
   superstition, "that these men were sinners above all the Galileans, and
   above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem, because they suffered such
   things? I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise
   perish." All the words and all the actions of Christ, while they were
   fully adapted to the occasions which called them forth, retain their
   force and applicability, undiminished, to all ages and nations. He is
   the same unsurpassed and unsurpassable model of every virtue to the
   Christians of every generation, every clime, every sect, every nation,
   and every race.

   It must not be supposed, however, that a complete catalogue of virtues
   would do justice to the character under consideration. It is not only
   the completeness, but still more the even proportion and perfect
   harmony of virtues and graces, apparently opposite and contradictory,
   which distinguishes him specifically from all other men. This feature
   has struck with singular force all the more eminent writers on the
   subject. It gives the finish to that beauty of holiness which is the
   sublimest picture presented to our contemplation.

   He was free from all one-sidedness, which constitutes the weakness as
   well as the strength of the most eminent men. He was not a man of one
   idea, nor of one virtue, towering above all the rest. The moral forces
   were so well tempered and moderated by each other that none was unduly
   prominent, none carried to excess, none alloyed by the kindred failing.
   Each was checked and completed by the opposite grace. His character
   never lost its even balance and happy equilibrium, never needed
   modification or readjustment. It was thoroughly sound, and uniformly
   consistent from the beginning to the end. We cannot properly attribute
   to him any one temperament. He combined the vivacity without the levity
   of the sanguine, the vigor without the violence of the choleric, the
   seriousness without the austerity of the melancholic, the calmness
   without the apathy of the phlegmatic, temperaments. He was equally far
   removed from the excesses of the legalist, the pietist, the ascetic,
   and the enthusiast. With the strictest obedience to the law, he moved
   in the element of freedom; with all the fervor of the enthusiast, he
   was always calm, sober, and self-possessed. Notwithstanding his
   complete and uniform elevation above the affairs of this world, he
   freely mingled with society, male and female, dined with publicans and
   sinners, sat at the wedding feast, shed tears at the sepulcher,
   delighted in God's nature, admired the beauties of the lilies, and used
   the occupations of the husbandman for the illustration of the sublimest
   truths of the kingdom of heaven. His zeal never degenerated into
   passion or rashness, nor his constancy into obstinacy, nor his
   benevolence into weakness, nor his tenderness into sentimentality. His
   unworldliness was free from indifference and unsociability, his dignity
   from pride and presumption, his affability from undue familiarity, his
   self-denial from moroseness, his temperance from austerity. He combined
   childlike innocence with manly strength, all-absorbing devotion to God
   with untiring interest in the welfare of man, tender love to the sinner
   with uncompromising severity against sin, commanding dignity with
   winning humility, fearless courage with wise caution, unyielding
   firmness with sweet gentleness. He is justly compared with the lion in
   strength, and with the lamb in meekness. He equally possessed the
   wisdom of the serpent and the simplicity of the dove.

   He brought the sword against every form of wickedness, and the peace
   which the world cannot give. He was the most effective and yet the
   least noisy, the most radical and yet the most conservative, calm, and
   patient, of all reformers. He came to fulfill every letter of the old
   law, yet he made all things new. The same hand which drove the profane
   traffickers from the temple was laid in blessing on little children,
   healed the lepers, and rescued the sinking disciple; the same ear which
   heard the voice of approbation from heaven, was open to the cries of
   the women in trouble; the same mouth which pronounced the terrible woe
   on the hypocrites, and condemned the impure desire and unkind feeling,
   as well as the open crime, blessed the poor in spirit, announced pardon
   to the adulteress, and prayed for his murderers; the same eye which
   beheld the mysteries of God, and penetrated the heart of man, shed
   tears of compassion over ungrateful Jerusalem, and tears of friendship
   at the grave of Lazarus. These are, indeed, opposite, yet not
   contradictory traits of character, as similar to the different
   manifestations of God's power and goodness in the tempest and the
   sunshine, in the towering Alps and the lily of the valley, in the
   boundless ocean and the dew-drop of the morning. They are separated in
   imperfect men, indeed, but united in Christ, the universal model for
   all.

   Finally, he unites with the active or heroic virtues the passive and
   gentle, and thus his life and death furnish the highest standard of all
   true martyrdom.

   No character can become complete without trial and suffering, and a
   noble death is the crowning act of a noble life. Edmund Burke said to
   Fox in the English Parliament, "Obloquy is a necessary ingredient of
   all true glory. Calumny and abuse are essential parts of triumph." The
   ancient Greeks and Romans admired a good man struggling with
   misfortune, as a sight worthy of the gods. Plato describes the
   righteous man as one who, without doing any injustice, yet has the
   appearance of the greatest injustice, and proves his own justice by
   perseverance against all calumny unto death; yea, he predicts, that if
   such a righteous man should ever appear, he would be "scourged,
   tortured, bound, deprived of his sight, and, after having suffered all
   possible injury, nailed on a post." No wonder that the ancient fathers
   saw in this remarkable passage an unconscious prophecy of Christ. But
   how far is this ideal description of the great philosopher from the
   actual reality as it appeared three hundred years afterward! The great
   men of this world, who rise even above themselves on inspiring
   occasions, and boldly face a superior army, are often thrown off their
   equilibrium in ordinary life, and grow impatient at trifling obstacles.
   The highest form of passive virtue attained by ancient heathenism, or
   modern secular heroism, is that stoicism which meets the trials and
   misfortunes of life in the spirit of haughty contempt and unfeeling
   indifference, which destroys the sensibilities, and is but another
   exhibition of selfishness and pride.

   Christ has set up a far higher standard by his teaching and example,
   never known before or since, except in imperfect imitation of him. He
   has revolutionized moral philosophy, and convinced the world that
   forgiving love to an enemy, lowliness and humility, gentle patience in
   suffering, and cheerful submission to the holy will of God, is the
   crowning excellency of moral greatness. "If thy brother," he says,
   "trespass against thee seven times in a day, and seven times in a day
   turn again to thee, saying, I repent; thou shalt forgive him." "Love
   your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you,
   and pray for them who despitefully use you and persecute you." This is
   a sublime maxim truly, but still more sublime is its actual exhibition
   in his life.

   Christ's passive virtue is not confined to the closing scenes of his
   ministry. As human life is beset at every step by trials, vexations,
   and hinderances, which should serve the educational purpose of
   developing its resources and proving its strength, so was Christ's.
   During the whole state of his humiliation he was "a man of sorrows and
   acquainted with grief," and had to endure "the contradiction of
   sinners." He was poor, and suffered hunger and fatigue. He was tempted
   by the devil. His path was obstructed with apparently insurmountable
   difficulties from the outset. His words and miracles called forth the
   bitter hatred of the world, which resulted at last in the bloody
   counsel of death. The Pharisees and Sadducees forgot their jealousies
   and quarrels in opposing him. They rejected and perverted his
   testimony; they laid snares for him by insidious questions; they called
   him a glutton and a wine-bibber for eating and drinking like other men;
   a friend of publicans and sinners for his condescending love and mercy;
   a Sabbath-breaker for doing good on the Sabbath-day: they charged him
   with madness and blasphemy for asserting his unity with the Father, and
   derived his miracles from Beelzebub, the prince of devils. The common
   people, though astonished at his wisdom and mighty works, pointed
   sneeringly to his low origin; his own country and native town refused
   him the honor of a prophet. Even his brothers, we are told, did not
   believe in him, and in their impatient zeal for a temporal kingdom,
   they found fault with his unostentatious mode of proceeding. His
   apostles and disciples, with all their profound reverence for his
   character, and faith in his divine origin and mission; as the Messiah
   of God, yet by their ignorance, their carnal Jewish notions, and their
   almost habitual misunderstanding of his spiritual discourses, would
   have constituted a severe trial of patience to a teacher of far less
   superiority to his pupils.

   But how shall we describe his "passion," more properly so called, with
   which no other suffering can be compared for a moment? Never did any
   man suffer more innocently, more unjustly, more intensely, than Jesus
   of Nazareth. Within the narrow limits of a few hours, we have here a
   tragedy of universal significance, exhibiting every form of human
   weakness and infernal wickedness, of ingratitude, desertion, injury,
   and insult, of bodily and mental pain and anguish, culminating in the
   most ignominious death then known among Jews and Gentiles. The
   government and the people combined against him who came to save them.
   His own disciples forsook him; Peter denied him; Judas, under the
   inspiration of the devil, betrayed him; the rulers of the nation
   condemned him; the furious mob cried, "Crucify him;" rude soldiers
   mocked him. He was seized in the night, hurried from tribunal to
   tribunal, arrayed in a crown of thorns, insulted, smitten, scourged,
   spit upon, and hung like a criminal and a slave between two robbers and
   murderers!

   How did Christ bear all these little and great trials of life, and the
   death on the cross? Let us remember, first, that unlike the icy Stoics
   in their unnatural and repulsive pseudo-virtue, he had the keenest
   sensibilities and the deepest sympathies with all human grief, which
   made him even shed tears at the grave of a friend and in the agony of
   the garden, and provide a refuge for his mother in the last dying hour.
   But with this truly human tenderness and delicacy of feeling he ever
   combined an unutterable dignity and majesty, a sublime self-control and
   imperturbable calmness of mind. There is a grandeur in his deepest
   sufferings, which forbids a feeling of pity and compassion on our side,
   as incompatible with admiration and reverence for his character. We
   feel the force of his word to the women of Jerusalem when they bewailed
   him on the way to Calvary, "Weep not for me, but weep for yourselves
   and for your children." We never hear him break out in angry passions
   and violence, although he was at war with the whole ungodly world. He
   never murmured, never uttered discontent, displeasure, or resentment.
   He was never disheartened, discouraged, ruffled, or fretted, but full
   of unbounded confidence that all was well ordered in the providence of
   his heavenly Father. Like the sun, he moved serenely above the clouds
   as they sailed under him. He was ever surrounded by the element of
   peace, and said in his parting hour, "Peace I leave with you, my peace
   I give unto you: not as the world giveth give I unto you. Let not your
   heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid." [9] He was never what we
   call unhappy, but full of inward joy, which he bequeathed to his
   disciples in that sublimest of all prayers, "that they might have my
   joy fulfilled in themselves." With all his severe rebuke to the
   Pharisees, he never indulged in personalities. He ever returned good
   for evil. He forgave Peter for his denial, and would have forgiven
   Judas, if in the exercise of sincere repentance he had sought his
   pardon. Even while hanging on the cross, he had only the language of
   pity for the wretches who were driving the nails into his hands and
   feet, and prayed in their behalf, "Father, forgive them; for they know
   not what they do." He did not seek or hasten his martyrdom, like many
   of the early martyrs of the Ignatian type, in their morbid enthusiasm
   and ambitious humility, but quietly and patiently waited for the hour
   appointed by the will of his Father. But when it came, with what
   self-possession and calmness, with what strength and meekness, with
   what majesty and gentleness, did he pass through its dark and trying
   scenes! Here every word and act is unutterably significant, from the
   agony in Gethsemane, when, overwhelmed with the sympathetic sense of
   the entire guilt of mankind, and in full view of the terrible scenes
   before him, he prayed that the cup might pass from him, but immediately
   added, "Not my will, but thine, be done," to the triumphant exclamation
   on the cross, "It is finished!" Even his dignified silence before the
   tribunal of his enemies and the furious mob, when "as a lamb dumb
   before his shearers he opened not his mouth," is more eloquent than any
   apology, and made Pilate tremble. Who will venture to bring a parallel
   from the annals of ancient or modern sages, when even a Rousseau
   confessed, "If Socrates suffered and died like a philosopher, Christ
   suffered and died like a god?" The passion and crucifixion of Jesus,
   like his whole character, stands without parallel, solitary and alone
   in its glory, and will ever continue to be what it has been for these
   eighteen hundred years, the most sacred theme of meditation, the
   highest example of suffering virtue, the strongest weapon against sin
   and Satan, the deepest source of comfort to the noblest and best of
   men.

   Such, then, was Jesus of Nazareth: a true man in body, soul, and
   spirit, yet differing from all men; a character absolutely unique and
   original from tender childhood to ripe manhood, moving in unbroken
   union with God, overflowing with the purest love to man, free from
   every sin and error, innocent and holy, teaching and practicing all
   virtues in perfect harmony, devoted solely and uniformly to the noblest
   ends, sealing the purest life with the sublimest death, and ever
   acknowledged since as the one and only perfect model of goodness and
   holiness. All human greatness loses on closer inspection; but Christ's
   character grows more and more pure, sacred, and lovely, the better we
   know him. No biographer, novelist, or artist can be satisfied with any
   attempt of his to set it forth. It is felt to be infinitely greater
   than any conception or representation of it by the mind, the tongue,
   and the pencil of man or angel. We might as well attempt to empty the
   waters of the boundless sea into a narrow well, or to portray the
   splendor of the risen sun and the starry heavens with ink. No picture
   of the Saviour, though drawn by the master hand of a Raphael, or Dürer,
   or Rubens; no epic, though conceived by the genius of a Dante, or
   Milton, or Klopstock, can improve on the artless narrative of the
   Gospel, whose only but all-powerful charm is truth. In this case,
   certainly, truth is stranger and stronger than fiction, and speaks best
   for itself without comment, explanation, or eulogy. Here, and here
   alone, the highest perfection of art falls far short of the historical
   fact, and fancy finds no room for idealizing the real. For here we have
   the absolute ideal itself in living reality. It seems to me that this
   consideration alone should satisfy the reflecting mind that Christ's
   character, though truly natural and human, must be at the same time
   supernatural and Divine.

   The whole range of history and fiction furnishes no parallel to such a
   character. There never was any thing even approaching to it before or
   since, except in faint imitation of his example. It cannot be explained
   on purely human principles, nor derived from any intellectual and moral
   forces of the age in which he lived. On the contrary, it stands in
   marked contrast to the whole surrounding world of Judaism and
   heathenism, which present to us the dreary picture of internal decay,
   and which actually crumbled into ruin before the new moral creation of
   the crucified Jesus of Nazareth. He is the one absolute and
   unaccountable exception to the universal experience of mankind. He is
   the great central miracle of the whole Gospel history, and all his
   miracles are but the natural and necessary manifestations of his
   miraculous person, performed with the same ease with which we perform
   our ordinary daily works.

   There is but one rational explanation of this sublime mystery, and this
   is found in Christ's own testimony concerning his superhuman and divine
   origin. This testimony challenges at once our highest regard and
   belief, from the absolute veracity which no one ever denied him, or
   could deny, without destroying at once the very foundation of his
   universally-conceded moral purity and greatness.

   Christ strongly asserts his humanity, and calls himself, in innumerable
   passages, the Son of man. This expression, while it places him in one
   view on a common ground with us as flesh of our flesh and bone of our
   bone, already indicates, at the same time, that he is more than an
   ordinary individual, not merely a son of man, like all other
   descendants of Adam, but the Son of man--the man in the highest sense,
   the ideal, the universal, the absolute man, the second Adam descended
   from heaven, the head of a new and superior order of the race, the King
   of Israel, the Messiah. [10] The same is the case with the cognate
   term, "The Son of David," which is frequently given to Christ, as by
   the blind men, the Syrophenician woman, and the people at large. The
   appellation does not express, as many suppose, the humiliation and
   condescension of Christ simply, but rather his elevation above the
   ordinary level, and the actualization in him and through him of the
   ideal standard of human nature under its moral and religious aspect, or
   in its relation to God. This interpretation is suggested grammatically
   by the use of the definitive article, and historically by the origin of
   the term in Daniel vii, 13, where it signifies the Messiah as the head
   of a universal and eternal kingdom. It commends itself, moreover, at
   once as most natural and significant in such passages as, "Ye shall see
   heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the
   Son of man." "He that came down from heaven, even the Son of man, which
   is in heaven." "The Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins."
   "The Son of man is Lord also of the Sabbath." "Except ye eat the flesh
   of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you." "The
   Son of man cometh in the glory of his Father." "The Son of man is come
   to save." "The Father hath given him authority to execute judgment
   also, because he is the Son of man." Even those passages which are
   quoted for the opposite view, receive in our interpretation a greater
   force and beauty from the sublime contrast which places the voluntary
   condescension and humiliation of Christ in the most striking light, as
   when he says, "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but
   the Son of man hath not where to lay his head;" or, "Whosoever will be
   chief among you, let him be your servant: even as the Son of man came
   not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a
   ransom for many." Thus the manhood of Christ, rising far above all
   ordinary manhood, though freely coming down to its lowest ranks, with
   the view to their elevation and redemption, is already the portal of
   his Godhead.

   But he calls himself at the same time, as he is most frequently called
   by his disciples, the Son of God in an equally emphatic sense. He is
   not merely a son of God among others, angels, archangels, princes, and
   judges, and redeemed men, but the Son of God as no other being ever
   was, is, or can be, all others being sons or children of God only by
   derivation or adoption, after a new spiritual birth, and in dependence
   of his absolute and eternal Sonship. He is, as his favorite disciple
   calls him, the "only begotten" Son, or as the old Catholic theology
   expresses it, "eternally begotten of the substance of the Father." In
   this high sense the title is freely given to him by his disciples,
   without a remonstrance on his part, and by God the Father himself at
   his baptism and at his transfiguration.

   Christ represents himself, moreover, as being not of the world, but
   sent from God, as having come from God, and as being in heaven while
   living on earth. He not only announces and proclaims the truth as other
   messengers of God, but declares himself to be the "Light of the world,"
   "the Way, the Truth, and the Life," "the Resurrection and the Life."
   "All things," he says, "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 whomsoever the Son will reveal him." He invites
   the weary and heavy laden to come to him for rest and peace. He
   promises life in the highest and deepest sense, even eternal life, to
   every one who believes in him. He claims and admits himself to be the
   Christ, or the Messiah of whom Moses and the Prophets of old testify,
   and the King of Israel. He is the Lawgiver of the new and last
   dispensation, the Founder of a spiritual kingdom coextensive with the
   race, and everlasting as eternity itself, the appointed Judge of the
   quick and the dead, the only Mediator between God and man, the Saviour
   of the world. He parts from his disciples with those sublime words
   which alone testify his Divinity: "All power is given unto me in heaven
   and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in
   the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: teaching
   them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I
   am with you alway, even unto the end of the world."

   Finally, he claims such a relation to the Father as implies both the
   equality of substance and the distinction of person, and which, in
   connection with his declarations concerning the Holy Spirit, leads with
   logical necessity, as it were, to the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. For
   this doctrine saves the Divinity of Christ and of the Holy Spirit,
   without affecting the fundamental truths of the unity of the Godhead,
   and keeps the proper medium between an abstract and lifeless monotheism
   and a polytheistic tritheism.

   He always distinguishes himself from God the Father, who sent him,
   whose work he came to fulfill, whose will he obeys, by whose power he
   performs his miracles, to whom he prays, and with whom he communes as a
   self-conscious personal being. And so he distinguishes himself with
   equal clearness from the Holy Spirit, whom he received at his baptism,
   whom he breathed into his disciples, and whom he promised to send, and
   did send on them as the other Paraclete, as the Spirit of truth and
   holiness, with the whole fullness of the accomplished salvation. But he
   never makes a similar distinction between himself and the Son of God;
   on the contrary, he identifies himself with the Son of God, and uses
   this term, as already remarked, in a sense which implies much more than
   the Jewish conception of the Messiah, and nothing short of the equality
   of essence or substance. For he claims as the Son a real self-conscious
   pre-existence before man, and even before the world, consequently also
   before time, for time was created with the world. "Before Abraham was,"
   he says, "I am;" significantly using the past in the one, and the
   present in the other case, to mark the difference between man's
   temporal and his own eternal mode of existence; and in his intercessory
   prayer he asks to be clothed again with the glory which he had with the
   Father before the foundation of the world. He assumes divine names and
   attributes. As far as consistent with his state of humiliation, he
   demands and receives Divine honors. He freely and repeatedly exercises
   the prerogative of pardoning sin in his own name, which the unbelieving
   scribes and Pharisees, with a logic whose force is irresistible on
   their premises, looked upon as blasphemous presumption. He familiarly
   classes himself with the infinite majesty of Jehovah in one common
   plural, and boldly declares, "He that hath seen me hath seen the
   Father;" "I and my Father are one." He co-ordinates himself, in the
   baptismal formula, with the Divine Father and Divine Spirit, and allows
   himself to be called by Thomas, in the name of all the Apostles, "My
   Lord and my God."

   These are the most astounding and transcendent pretensions ever set up
   by any being. He, the humblest and lowliest of men, makes them
   repeatedly and uniformly to the last, in the face of the whole world,
   even in the darkest hour of suffering. He makes them not in swelling,
   pompous, ostentatious language, which almost necessarily springs from
   false pretensions; but in a natural, spontaneous style, with perfect
   ease, freedom, and composure, as a native prince would speak of the
   attributes and scenes of royalty at his father's court. He never
   falters or doubts, never apologizes for them, never enters into an
   explanation. He sets them forth as self-evident truths, which need only
   be stated to challenge the belief and submission of mankind.

   Now, suppose for a moment a purely human teacher, however great and
   good--suppose a Moses or Elijah, a John the Baptist, an Apostle Paul or
   John, not to speak of any father, schoolman, or reformer--to say, "I am
   the Light of the world;" "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life;" "I
   and my Father are one;" and to call upon all men, "Come unto me,"
   "Follow me," that you may find "life" and "peace," which you cannot
   find anywhere else; would it not create a universal feeling of pity or
   indignation? No human being on earth could set up the least of these
   pretensions without being set down at once as a madman or a blasphemer.

   But from the mouth of Christ these colossal pretensions excite neither
   pity nor indignation, nor even the least feeling of incongruity or
   impropriety. We read and hear them over and over again without
   surprise. They seem perfectly natural and well sustained by a most
   extraordinary life, and the most extraordinary works. There is no room
   here for the least suspicion of vanity, pride, or self-deception. For
   eighteen hundred years these claims have been acknowledged by millions
   of people of all nations and tongues, of all classes and conditions, of
   the most learned and mighty as well as the most ignorant and humble,
   with an instinctive sense of the perfect agreement of what Christ
   claimed to be with what he really was. Is not this fact most
   remarkable? Is it not a triumphant vindication of Christ's character,
   and an irresistible proof of the truth of his pretensions? There is no
   other solution of the mighty problem within the reach of human learning
   and ingenuity.

   Let us briefly review, in conclusion, the various attempts of
   Unitarians and unbelievers to account for the character of Christ
   without admitting his Divinity.

   The semi-infidelity of Socinians and Unitarians is singularly
   inconsistent. Admitting the faultless perfection of Christ's character,
   and the truthfulness of the Gospel history, and yet denying his
   Divinity, they must either charge him with such egregious exaggeration
   and conceit as would overthrow at once the concession of his moral
   perfection, or they must so weaken and pervert his testimony concerning
   his relation to God as to violate all the laws of grammar and sound
   interpretation. Channing, the ablest and noblest representative of
   American Unitarianism, prefers to avoid the difficulty which he was
   unable to solve. In his discourse on the Character of Christ, he goes
   almost as far as any orthodox divine in assigning to him the highest
   possible purity and excellency as a man; but he stops half way, and
   passes by in silence those extraordinary claims which are inexplicable
   on merely human principles. He approaches, however, the very threshold
   of the true faith in the following remarkable passage, which we have a
   right to quote against his own system: "I confess," he says, "when I
   can escape the deadening power of habit, and can receive the full
   import of such passages as the following, 'Come unto me, all ye that
   labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest;' 'I am come to
   seek and to save that which was lost;' 'He that confesseth me before
   men, him will I confess before my Father in heaven;' 'Whosoever shall
   be ashamed of me before men, of him shall the Son of man be ashamed
   when he cometh in the glory of the Father, with the holy angels;' 'In
   my Father's house are many mansions: I go to prepare a place for you;'
   I say, when I can succeed in realizing the import of such passages, I
   feel myself listening to a being such as never before and never since
   spoke in human language. I am awed by the seriousness of greatness
   which these simple words express; and when I connect this greatness
   with the proofs of Christ's miracles, which I gave you in a former
   discourse, I am compelled to exclaim with the Centurion, 'Truly this
   was the Son of God.'"

   But this is not all. We have seen that Christ goes much further than in
   the passages here quoted; that he forgives sins in his own name, that
   he asserts pre-existence before Abraham and before the world--not only
   ideally in the mind of God, for this would not distinguish him from
   Abraham or any other creature, but in the real sense of self-conscious
   personal existence--that he claims and receives divine honors and
   attributes, and calls himself equal with the great Jehovah. How can a
   being so pure and holy, and withal so humble and lowly, so perfectly
   free from every trace of enthusiasm and conceit, as Dr. Channing freely
   and emphatically asserts Christ to have been, lay claim to any thing
   which he was not in fact? Why then not also go beyond the exclamation
   of the heathen Centurion, and unite with the confession of Peter and
   the adoration of the skeptical Thomas, "My Lord and my God?"
   Unitarianism admits too much for its own conclusions, and is,
   therefore, driven to the logical alternative of falling back upon an
   infidel, or of advancing to the orthodox, Christology. Such a man as
   Channing, who was certainly under the influence of the holy example of
   Christ, would not hesitate for the choice, as we may infer from his
   general spirit, and from his last address, delivered at Lenox, Mass.,
   1842, shortly before his death, where he said: "The doctrine of the
   Word made flesh shows us God uniting himself intimately with our
   nature, manifesting himself in a human form, for the very end of making
   us partakers of his own perfection."

   The infidelity of the enemies of Christianity is logically more
   consistent, though absolutely untenable in the premises. It assumes
   either imposture, or enthusiasm, or poetical fiction.

   The hypothesis of imposture is so revolting to moral, as well as common
   sense, that its mere statement is its condemnation. It has never been
   seriously carried out, and no scholar of any decency and self-respect
   would now dare to profess it. [11] How, in the name of logic and
   experience, could an impostor, that is, a deceitful, selfish, depraved
   man, have invented and consistently maintained, from beginning to end,
   the purest and noblest character known in history, with the most
   perfect air of truth and reality? How could he have conceived, and
   successfully carried through, in the face of the strongest prejudices
   of his people and age, a plan of unparalleled beneficence, moral
   magnitude, and sublimity, and sacrificed his own life for it? The
   difficulty is not lessened by shifting the charge of fraud from Christ
   upon the Apostles and Evangelists, who were any thing but designing
   hypocrites and deceivers, and who leave upon every unsophisticated
   reader the impression of an artless simplicity and honesty rarely
   equaled, and never surpassed, by any writer, learned or unlearned, of
   ancient or modern times. What imaginable motive could have induced them
   to engage in such a wicked scheme, when they knew that the whole world
   would persecute them even to death? How could they have formed, and
   successfully sustained, a conspiracy for such a purpose, without ever
   falling out, or betraying themselves by some inconsistent word or act?
   And who can believe that the Christian Church, now embracing nearly the
   whole civilized world, should, for these eighteen hundred years, have
   been duped and fooled by a Galilean carpenter, or a dozen illiterate
   fishermen? Verily this lowest form of Rationalism is the grossest
   insult to reason and sense, and to the dignity of human nature.

   The hypothesis of enthusiasm, or self-deception, though less
   disreputable, is equally unreasonable in view of the uniform clearness,
   calmness, and self-possession, humility, dignity, and patience of
   Christ--qualities the very opposite to those which characterize an
   enthusiast. We might imagine a Jew of that age to have fancied himself
   the Messiah and the Son of God, but instead of opposing all the popular
   notions, and discouraging all the temporal hopes of his countrymen, he
   would, like Barcocheba of a later date, have headed a rebellion against
   the hated tyranny of the Romans, and endeavored to establish a temporal
   kingdom. Enthusiasm, which in this case must have bordered on madness
   itself, instead of calmly and patiently bearing the malignant
   opposition of the leaders of the nation, would have broken out in
   violent passion and precipitate action. "The charge," says Dr.
   Channing, "of an extravagant, self-deluding enthusiasm, is the last to
   be fastened on Jesus. Where can we find the traces of it in his
   history? Do we detect them in the calm authority of his precepts; in
   the mild, practical, and beneficent spirit of his religion; in the
   unlabored simplicity of the language with which he unfolds his high
   powers, and the sublime truths of religion; or in the good sense, the
   knowledge of human nature, which he always discovers in his estimate
   and treatment of the different classes of men with whom he acted? Do we
   discover this enthusiasm in the singular fact, that while he claimed
   power in the future world, and always turned men's minds to heaven, he
   never indulged his own imagination, or stimulated that of his
   disciples, by giving vivid pictures, or any minute description, of that
   unseen state? The truth is, that, remarkable as was the character of
   Jesus, it was distinguished by nothing more than by calmness and
   self-possession. This trait pervades his other excellences. How calm
   was his piety! Point me, if you can, to one vehement, passionate
   expression of his religious feelings. Does the Lord's Prayer breathe a
   feverish enthusiasm? . . . His benevolence, too, though singularly
   earnest and deep, was composed and serene. He never lost the possession
   of himself in his sympathy with others; was never hurried into the
   impatient and rash enterprises of an enthusiastic philanthropy; but did
   good with the tranquillity and constancy which mark the providence of
   God."

   But the champions of this theory may admit all this, and yet fasten
   delusion upon the disciples of Christ, who were so dazzled by his
   character, words, and works, that they mistook an extraordinary man for
   a divine being, and extraordinary cures for supernatural miracles. This
   is the view of the older German Rationalism, and forms a parallel to
   the heathen rationalism of Euhemerus, of the Cyrenaic school, who
   explained the gods of the Greek mythology as human sages, heroes,
   kings, and tyrants, whose superior knowledge or great deeds secured
   them divine honors, or the hero-worship of posterity. It was fully
   developed, with a considerable degree of patient learning and argument,
   by the late Professor H. E. G. Paulus. He takes the Gospel history as
   actual history; but by a critical separation of what he calls fact from
   what he calls the judgment of the actor or narrator, he explains it
   exclusively from natural causes, and thus brings it down to the level
   of every-day events. This "natural" interpretation, however, turns out
   to be most unnatural, and commits innumerable sins against the laws of
   hermeneutics, and against common sense itself. To prove this, it is
   only necessary to give some specimens from the exegeses of Paulus and
   his school. The glory of the Lord which, in the night of his birth,
   shone around the shepherds of Jerusalem, was simply an ignis fatuus, or
   a meteor; the miracle at Christ's baptism may be easily reduced to
   thunder and lightning, and a sudden disappearance of the clouds; the
   tempter in the wilderness was a cunning Pharisee, and only mistaken by
   the Evangelists for the devil, who does not exist except in the
   imagination of the superstitious; the supposed miraculous cures of the
   Saviour turn out on closer examination to be simply deeds either of
   philanthropy, or medical skill, or good luck; the changing of water
   into wine was an innocent and benevolent wedding joke, and the delusion
   of the company must be charged on the twilight, not upon Christ; the
   daughter of Jairus, the youth of Nain, Lazarus, and Jesus himself, were
   raised not from real death, but simply from a trance or swoon; and the
   ascension of the Lord is nothing more than his sudden disappearance
   behind a cloud, that accidentally intervened between him and his
   disciples! And yet these very Evangelists, who must have been destitute
   of the most ordinary talent of observation, and even of common sense,
   have contrived to paint a character, and to write a story, which in
   sublimity, grandeur, and interest, throws the productions of the
   proudest historians into the shade, and has exerted an irresistible
   charm upon Christendom for these eighteen hundred years! No wonder that
   those absurdities of a misguided learning and ingenuity hardly survived
   their authors. [12] It is a decided merit of Strauss, that he has
   thoroughly refuted the work of his predecessor, and given it the
   deathblow. But his own theory has shared no better fate.

   The last hypothesis, of a poetical fiction, was matured and carried
   out, with a high degree of ability and ingenuity, by the speculative or
   pantheistic rationalism of Strauss. This writer sinks the Gospel
   history, as to its origin and reality, substantially to a par with the
   ancient mythologies of Greece and Rome. Without denying altogether the
   historical existence of Jesus, and admitting him to have been a
   religious genius of the first magnitude, he yet, from pantheistic
   premises, and by a cold process of hypercritical dissection of the
   apparently contradictory accounts of the witnesses, resolves all the
   supernatural and miraculous elements of his person and history into
   myths, or imaginary representations of religious ideas in the form of
   facts, which were honestly believed by the authors to have actually
   occurred. The ideas symbolized in these facts are declared to be true
   in the abstract, or as applied to humanity as a whole, but denied as
   false in the concrete, or in their application to an individual. The
   authorship of the evangelical myths is ascribed to the primitive
   Christian society, pregnant with Jewish Messianic hopes, and kindled to
   hero-worship by the appearance of the extraordinary person of Jesus of
   Nazareth, whom they took to be the promised Messiah. But this theory is
   likewise surrounded by insurmountable difficulties. Who ever heard of a
   poem unconsciously produced by a mixed multitude, and honestly mistaken
   by them all for actual history? How could the five hundred persons to
   whom the risen Saviour is said to have appeared, dream the same dreams
   at the same time, and then believe it as a veritable fact, at the risk
   of their lives? How could a man like St. Paul submit his strong and
   clear mind, and devote all the energies of his noble life, to a
   poetical fiction of the very sect whom he once persecuted unto death?
   How could such an illusion stand the combined hostility of the Jewish
   and heathen world, and the searching criticism of an age of high
   civilization, and even of incredulity and skepticism? How strange that
   unlettered and unskilled fishermen, and not the philosophers and poets
   of classic Greece and Rome, should have composed such a grand poem, and
   painted a character to whom Strauss himself is forced to assign the
   very first rank among all the religious geniuses and founders of
   religion! The poets must, in this case, have been superior to the hero;
   and yet the hero is admitted to be the purest and greatest man that
   ever lived! Where are the traces of a fervid imagination and poetic art
   in the Gospel history? Is it not, on the contrary, remarkably free from
   all rhetorical and poetical ornament, from every admixture of
   subjective notions and feelings, even from the expression of sympathy,
   admiration, and praise? The writers evidently felt that the story
   speaks best for itself, and would not be improved by the art and skill
   of man. Their discrepancies, which at best do not in the least affect
   the picture of Christ's character, but only the subordinate details of
   his history, prove the absence of conspiracy, attest the honesty of
   their intention, and confirm the general credibility of their account.
   Verily the Gospel history, related with such unmistakable honesty and
   simplicity, by immediate witnesses and their pupils, proclaimed in open
   daylight from Jerusalem to Rome, believed by thousands of Jews, Greeks,
   and Romans, sealed with the blood of Apostles, Evangelists, and saints
   of every grade of society and culture, is better attested by external
   and internal evidence than any other history. The same negative
   criticism which Strauss applied to the Gospels would with equal
   plausibility destroy the strongest chain of evidence before a court of
   justice, and resolve the life of Socrates, or Charlemagne, or Luther,
   or Napoleon, into a mythical dream. The secret of the mythical
   hypothesis is the pantheistic denial of a personal living God, and the
   à priori assumption of the impossibility of a miracle. In its details
   it is so complicated and artificial that it cannot be made generally
   intelligible; and in proportion as it is popularized it reverts to the
   vulgar hypothesis of intentional fraud, from which it professed at
   starting to shrink back in horror and contempt.

   With this last and ablest effort, infidelity seems to have exhausted
   its scientific resources. It could only repeat itself hereafter. Its
   different theories have all been tried and found wanting. One has in
   turn transplanted and refuted the other, even during the life-time of
   their champions. They explain nothing in the end; on the contrary, they
   only substitute an unnatural for a supernatural miracle, an
   inextricable enigma for a revealed mystery. They equally tend to
   undermine all faith in God's providence in history, and deprive poor
   and fallen humanity, in a world of sin, temptation, and sorrow, of its
   only hope and comfort in life and in death.

   Dr. Strauss, by far the clearest and strongest of all assailants of the
   Gospel history, seems to have had a passing feeling of the disastrous
   tendency of his work of destruction and the awful responsibility he
   assumed. "The results of our inquiry," he says in the closing chapter
   of his "Life of Jesus," "have apparently annihilated the greatest and
   most important part of that which the Christian has been wont to
   believe concerning his Jesus, have uprooted all the encouragements
   which he has derived from his faith, and deprived him of all his
   consolations. The boundless store of truth and life which for eighteen
   hundred years have been the aliment of humanity, seems irretrievably
   devastated; the most sublime leveled with the dust, God divested of his
   grace, man of his dignity, and the tie between heaven and earth broken.
   Piety turns away with horror from so fearful an act of desecration, and
   strong in the impregnable self-evidence of its faith, boldly pronounces
   that, let an audacious criticism attempt what it will, all which the
   Scriptures declare and the Church believes of Christ will still subsist
   as eternal truth, nor needs one iota of it to be renounced." Strauss
   makes, then, an attempt, it is true, at a philosophical reconstruction
   of what he vainly imagines himself to have annihilated as an historical
   fact by his sophistical criticism. He professes to admit the abstract
   truth of the orthodox Christology, or the union of the Divine and
   human, but perverts it into a purely intellectual and pantheistic
   meaning. He refuses divine attributes and honors to the glorious Head
   of the race, but applies them to a decapitated humanity. He thus
   substitutes, from pantheistic prejudice, a metaphysical abstraction for
   a living reality, a mere notion for an historical fact, a progress in
   philosophy and mechanical arts for the moral victory over sin and
   death, a pantheistic hero-worship or self-adoration of a fallen race
   for the worship of the only true and living God, the gift of a stone
   for the bread of eternal life!

   Humanity scorns such a miserable substitute, which has yet to give the
   first proof of any power for good, and which will never convert or
   improve a single individual. It must have a living head, a real Lord
   and Saviour from sin and death. With renewed faith and confidence, it
   returns from the dreary desolations of a heartless infidelity and the
   vain conceits of a philosophy falsely so called, to the historical
   Christ, and exclaims with Peter: "Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast
   the words of eternal life: and we believe and are sure that thou art
   that Christ, the Son of the living God."

   Yes! there he lives, the Divine man and incarnate God, on the ever
   fresh and self-authenticating record of the Gospels, in the unbroken
   history of eighteen centuries, and in the hearts and lives of the
   wisest and best of our race. Jesus Christ is the most certain, the most
   sacred, and the most glorious of all facts, arrayed in a beauty and
   majesty which throws the "starry heavens above us, and the moral law
   within us," into obscurity, and fills us truly with ever-growing
   reverence and awe. He shines forth like the self-evidencing light of
   the noonday sun. He is too great, too pure, too perfect to have been
   invented by any sinful and erring man. His character and claims are
   confirmed by the sublimest doctrine, the purest ethics, the mightiest
   miracles, the grandest spiritual kingdom, and are daily and hourly
   exhibited in the virtues and graces of all who yield to the
   regenerating and sanctifying power of his Spirit and example. The
   historical Christ meets and satisfies our deepest intellectual and
   moral wants. Our souls, if left to their noblest impulses and
   aspirations, instinctively turn to him as the needle to the magnet, as
   the flower to the sun, as the panting hart to the fresh fountain. We
   are made for him, and "our heart is without rest until it rests in
   him." He commands our assent, he wins our admiration, he overwhelms us
   to humble adoration and worship. We cannot look upon him without
   spiritual benefit. We cannot think of him without being elevated above
   all that is low and mean, and encouraged to all that is good and noble.
   The very hem of his garment is healing to the touch; one hour spent in
   his communion outweighs all the pleasures of sin. He is the most
   precious and indispensable gift of a merciful God to a fallen world. In
   him are the treasures of true wisdom, in him the fountain of pardon and
   peace, in him the only substantial hope and comfort in this world and
   that which is to come. Without him, history is a dreary waste, an
   inextricable enigma; with him, it is the unfolding of a plan of
   infinite wisdom and love. He is the glory of the past, the life of the
   present, the hope of the future. Mankind could better afford to lose
   the whole literature of Greece and Rome, of Germany and France, of
   England and America, than the story of Jesus of Nazareth. Not for all
   the wealth and wisdom of this world would I weaken the faith of the
   humblest Christian in his Divine Lord and Saviour; but if, by the grace
   of God, I could convert a single skeptic to a child-like faith in Him
   who lived and died for me and for all, I should feel that I had not
   lived in vain.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [3] With an almost incredible untruthfulness, M. Renan quotes the
   narrative of Luke as a "legend which delights to show Jesus, even from
   his infancy, in revolt against parental authority, and departing from
   the common way to fulfill his vocation. It is certain, at least, that
   he cared little for the relations of kinship. His family do not seem to
   have loved him, and at times he seems to have been hard toward them."
   This is not to write history, but to contradict it.--Ed. R. T. S.

   [4] Few passages in the "Vie de Jésus" will be read with more surprise
   than those in which M. Renan treats on the baptism of our Lord. He
   maintains that Jesus "was already a somewhat renowned teacher when he
   came to John." Almost with the air of a discovery he announces that it
   is by an error that "we imagine John to be an old man; he was, on the
   contrary, of the same age as Jesus;" and he dismisses "all the details
   of the narrative, especially those which refer to the relationship of
   John to Jesus, as legendary." For this we have no other authority
   alleged than M. Renan's ipse dixit.--Ed. R. T. S.

   [5] The petition for forgiveness in the Lord's Prayer, Matt. vi, 12, is
   no exception, as it was no expression of' his individual need in this
   part, but intended as a model for his disciples.

   [6] As, for instance, Priestley and Channing among the Unitarians, Hase
   and Schleiermacher among the Neologians, Tlheodore Parker and Rousseau
   among the Deists. Renan, indeed, dogmatically denies the sinlessness of
   Jesus, but he scarcely even attempts to prove his position. When he
   does so it is by an imputation of motives which are utterly
   inconsistent with the recorded facts, or by a version of them so
   distorted as flatly to contradict the narrative given by those whom he
   admits to have been eve-witnesses. For instance, he declares the
   resurrection of Lazarus to have been a fraud played off upon the
   by-standers, in which our Lord was an accessory, if not an accomplice.
   He offers no proof in support of this extraordinary assertion beyond
   his own statement that so it was. Arguments (?) such as these neither
   need nor deserve serious refutation. They stand self-convicted.--Ed. R.
   T. S.

   [7] The relation of husband and father must be excepted, on account of
   his elevation above all equal partnership, and the universalness of his
   character and mission, which requires the entire community of the
   redeemed as His bride, instead of any individual daughter of Eve.

   [8] Mark vii, 37, is to be taken as a general judgment, inferred not
   only from the concrete case just related, but from all they had heard
   and seen of Christ.

   [9] The accuracy of this description will be evident to all who
   candidly read the Gospel narrative. Yet M. Renan speaks of our Lord in
   the last of his earthly life as "carried away by excitement" and
   "oppressed by terror and doubt." He even ventures to say, "Did he curse
   the hard destiny which had denied him the joys conceded to others? Did
   he regret his too lofty nature? And, victim of his greatness, did he
   mourn that he had not remained a simple artisan of Nazareth? We know
   not."--Ed. R. T. S.

   [10] The most superficial reader of the New Testament must have
   observed that the phrase "Son of man" is used in a special and peculiar
   sense. What that sense is, has been fully discussed by many of the most
   eminent Biblical and Oriental scholars. It marks out Jesus as the model
   representative man, and, as adopted from the words of Daniel, (Daniel
   vii, 13, 14, etc.,) is employed as a title of the Messiah. M. Renan
   without venturing absolutely to deny this sense of the word, endeavors
   to weaken its force by telling us that in the Semitic languages it is a
   simple synonym of man. Overlooking its obvious meaning in innumerable
   other passages, he argues, from John vii, 34, that the Jews did not
   understand it in any Messianic sense, and insinuates that our Lord used
   it in an equivocal manner, either as a humble epithet, or as a claim to
   the Messiahship, as the interests of the moment required.--Ed. R. T. S.

   [11] It was first suggested by the heathen assailants of Christianity,
   Celsus and Julian the Apostate, then insinuated by French Deists of the
   Voltairean school, but never raised to the dignity of scientific
   argument. The only attempt to carry it out, and that a mere fragmentary
   one, was made by the anonymous "Wolfenbüttel Fragmentist," since known
   as Hermann Samuel Reimarus, Professor of Oriental Literature in the
   College at Hamburg, who died in 1786. His "Fragments" were never
   intended for publication, but only for a few friends. Lessing found
   them in the library at Wolfenbüttel, and commenced to publish them,
   without the author's knowledge, in 1774; not, as he said, because he
   agreed with them, but because he wished to arouse the spirit of
   investigation. This mode of procedure Semler, the father of German
   neology, wittily compared to the act of setting a city on fire for the
   purpose of trying the engines.

   [12] The "Vie de Jesus" has appeared since this essay was written. It
   is strange that the defunct and obsolete theories of the German
   Naturalistic Rationalists should be revived by M. Renan, and treated as
   novelties. The absurd attempts of Paulus and his companions to explain
   away the miracles by natural causes have been standing jokes in Germany
   for the last fifty years, even among the infidels themselves. These
   attempts, however, are reproduced, and even carried to a more
   extravagant length. by M. Renan.--Ed. R. T. S.
     __________________________________________________________________

THE

ROMANCE OF M. RENAN.

By Napoléon Roussel.

  THE

ROMANCE OF M. RENAN.

   WE have, once more and again, read "The Life of Jesus," by M. Renan.
   The book is a masterpiece of skill. We say this without any reference
   either to its style or to its scientific character; but with respect to
   the marvelous cleverness with which its author colors events and
   fashions men, in order to bring them before the reader under such an
   aspect as will conceal their true character. Up to the present time the
   adversaries of revelation had assailed it with coarse invectives:
   Christianity was "infamous;" Jesus, "an astronomical symbol;" the
   Gospel, "a collection of myths." The atrocity of these accusations
   produced the conviction of their falseness. This has been well
   understood by M. Renan, and he has protected himself from that danger.
   He has dropped the character of an accuser in order to affect that of
   the historian, and it must be admitted that the imitation is
   successful. The position assumed is cleverly masked: blame is tempered
   with praise; the hand that strikes falls with so much discretion that
   one might mistake a blow for a caress. M. Renan has so well drawn up
   his suit that he seems to have a real interest in the accused, whose
   condemnation he demands. He knows that in order to gain the jury he
   must take care not to seem to dictate its verdict.

   As for ourselves, we confess we do not possess this skill. At the
   outset we shall let it be seen where we desire to lead those who may
   read these pages. We do not aim either at a magical style or a refined
   criticism, but at simple uprightness, relying upon the force of truth
   itself.

   It is in the Gospels that M. Renan obtains the documents out of which
   he composes the life of Jesus, and to this source of information he
   gives the following testimony: "In conclusion, I admit as authentic the
   four canonical Gospels. All of them, I think, go as far back as the
   first century, and belong pretty clearly to the authors to whom they
   are assigned; but their historical value is very diverse. Matthew
   evidently deserves by far the highest confidence with respect to the
   discourses he reports; in these we have the logia, the notes taken from
   the living and clear recollections of the teaching of Jesus." (Page
   xxxvii.) [13]

   After reading these lines are you not reassured? Has not the author
   already won your confidence by showing so much impartiality toward the
   Gospels? Yes, but wait: he will not long delay in limiting, in the most
   singular manner, the effect of his concessions. He believes in the
   evangelical narrative, except in its miraculous portions. He has
   beforehand thoroughly made up his mind to reject as false every thing
   which may be found to surpass the limits of ordinary history; that is,
   he is resolved to see in Jesus nothing more than a mere man. Had M.
   Renan reached this result after examination we could have understood
   it; but so far from that, he makes this conclusion his starting-point.
   Before he opens the Gospels he lays down the axiom that all their
   miracles must be false. He writes, "We do not say a miracle is
   impossible: we do say, that hitherto no miracle has been clearly
   proved. Suppose that to-morrow a worker of miracles should present
   himself with credentials sufficiently serious to admit of discussion;
   let him announce himself, for instance, as able to raise a dead man to
   life; what course would be pursued? A commission would be named,
   composed of physiologists, physicians, chemists, and adepts in
   historical criticism. This commission would choose the corpse, assure
   itself that death was real, fix upon the place in which the experiment
   should be made, and establish a whole system of necessary precautions,
   so that there should be no room for doubt. If, under such conditions, a
   resurrection was performed, a probability almost amounting to certainty
   would be obtained. Yet, as it must be possible always to repeat an
   experiment, and as in the region of the miraculous there can be no
   question of ease or of difficulty, the thaumaturgus would be invited to
   reproduce his marvelous achievement under different circumstances, on
   other corpses, and in another scene of action. Should the miracle be
   always successful, two things would be proved: the first, that
   supernatural facts take place in the world; the second, that the power
   to produce them belongs, or is delegated to, certain persons. But who
   does not see that a miracle was never performed under those conditions?
   [14] (Page lii.)

   Do not take the trouble, then, to point out to M. Renan another method
   of attesting a miracle: he declares to you that he wants none. So be
   it; but then it must be confessed that it is a strange mode of
   consulting a book in order to extract a history from it, to lay down
   the à priori principle, that the assertions with which the book is
   filled are either errors or falsehoods; and, placing one's self before
   the hero one wishes to portray, to say to him, I consent to see in you
   every thing except what you pretend to be. I will record your words and
   your deeds, but these words and deeds as inspired by the thought which
   I will attribute to you.

   No matter, let us see whether the being who is to emerge from these
   "inductions" (p. 1) will possess the life-likeness, the naturalness,
   the truth, which will make us say, Such a man has lived.

   In endeavoring to ascertain what constitutes the strength of our author
   we have arrived at this principle, (just in its proper limits, but
   erroneous in the extremes to which M. Renan has pushed it): man is
   inconsistent; we may find in him both good and evil, both the false and
   the true. Expressed in these vague terms, the assertion is not
   unfounded. But has he who uses the assertion the right to conclude from
   it that man is in such contradiction with himself that we may expect to
   find in the same person both crime and virtue, both uprightness and
   hypocrisy, both wisdom and folly, both candor and cunning? Are there no
   limits to this medley in the same individual? Then let him refuse to
   affirm any thing in history, and let him renounce those "inductions"
   which he has made the basis of his judgments in "The Life of Jesus."

   In attributing to his hero this mixed character, has M. Renan confined
   himself within the limits of probability, even in the estimation of
   those who see in Jesus no more than a man? or has he exaggerated, and
   has the portrait he has drawn been thrust beyond the truth? This is
   what the reader will be able to decide after his perusal of the
   following exposition:

   M. Renan's First Proposition: Jesus was Moral.

   Let us for a moment accept M. Renan's conclusion as established, "All
   the ages will proclaim that among the sons of men there never was a
   greater than Jesus." (P. 459.)

   Granted. See now to what height this Jesus raised his humanity, even
   according to M. Renan himself: "It is allowable to call Divine this
   sublime person who, each day, still presides over the destinies of the
   world: Divine, that is, not in the sense that Jesus had absorbed all
   the Divine, or had been equal to it, (to employ a scholastic
   expression,) but in the sense that Jesus is the being who has helped
   his species to make the greatest step toward the Divine. Humanity in
   its aggregate presents an assemblage of beings, low, selfish, and
   superior to the animals in this only, that their selfishness is more
   rational. But from the midst of this uniform vulgarity, some columns
   rise toward heaven, attesting a nobler destiny. Jesus is the highest of
   these columns, which show man whence he came and whither he must tend.
   In him is condensed all that is good and exalted in our nature." (P.
   458.)

   What Jesus appears to M. Renan to be, from the documents which, with
   their goodness and defects, retrace his beautiful life, is still not
   all that he was in reality. Jesus was greater than his biographers have
   been able to make him. M. Renan says, "The Evangelists who have
   bequeathed to us the image of Jesus are so much below him of whom they
   speak, that they constantly disfigure him, through their not attaining
   to his altitude. . . . One feels, at every line, that a
   divinely-beautiful discourse is given to us by reporters who do not
   understand it, and who substitute their own ideas for those which they
   but partially apprehend. In a word, the character of Jesus, so far from
   having been embellished, has been diminished, by his biographers." (P.
   450.)

   . . . "If religion be the essential element of humanity, through it he
   [Jesus] has deserved the Divine rank which has been allotted to him. An
   absolutely new idea--that, namely, of a worship founded upon purity of
   heart and human brotherhood--effected its entrance into the world
   through him; an idea so exalted that the Christian Church could not but
   fail completely in its intentions on this point, so that even in our
   days only a few souls are capable of realizing it." (P. 90.)

   "Finally, let Jesus be judged by his work: the evangelical system of
   morals remains as the highest creation of human conscience, the fairest
   code of a human life, that any moralist ever drew up." (P. 84.) "Jesus
   was more than the reformer of an antiquated religion: he was the
   creator of the eternal religion of humanity." (P. 332.)

   It would be superfluous to multiply these quotations; what precedes
   will suffice to show that, according to M. Renan, Jesus was not a
   religion-maker, but a being whose moral elevation had inspired him with
   the grandeur of his conceptions. Jesus was not God, but he was as
   divine as man can be, having even far surpassed the most just, the most
   moral, the most perfect of men. We, too, believe this; we believe these
   praises to be sincere; and we are only the more astonished at finding
   the panegyrist attributing to a being endowed with these divine
   perfections the human defects we are about to enumerate.

   M. Renan's Second Proposition: Jesus was Deluded.

   How could it be that this morally perfect being, Jesus, though without
   a divine mission, yet came to believe himself sent from God? M. Renan
   will explain it.

   In the first place, Jesus believes himself to be in communication with
   God. (P. 75.) Nothing can be more simple than this. His moral condition
   authorized the belief. There is not an impassable gulf between this
   spiritual union with God, and the assertion that one is his child, his
   son. In a certain sense, then, Jesus was able to believe himself a son
   of God. (Ibid.) From thence, by a gradation of thought which we will
   not undertake to explain, Jesus arrived at the identification of
   himself with his Father. This is the first transformation.

   Again, Jesus had styled himself "Son of man." This was perfectly
   legitimate, for, as M. Renan tells us, the phrase son of man is, in the
   Semitic languages, the simple synonym for man. But as, according to the
   interpretation of certain schools, this expression was applied by the
   Prophet Daniel to the Messiah, it followed that the title "Son of man,"
   which in the thought of Jesus meant no more than merely man, was used,
   though seemingly without his connivance at first, to designate him as
   the Messiah. Hence, a second transformation no less strange than the
   first: "Jesus found pleasure in the application of this title to
   himself." Thus already, through the effect of a simple metaphor, a
   child of God, like you and me, is transformed into a son in a special
   sense, into the only Son, of God. This usurpation, which would have
   seemed blasphemy to an ordinary Jew, was accepted without conscientious
   scruples by this excellent being. Jesus, who believed himself a man;
   Jesus, veracious, humble, and moral--simply allowed himself to be
   styled God! But we have not yet done with these transformations.

   Jesus, having assumed the mission of advancing the kingdom of God on
   the earth, soon persuaded himself that "heaven, earth, the whole of
   nature, madness, sickness, and death, were but instruments for his use.
   In the paroxysm of his heroic determination he believed himself
   almighty." (P. 118.)

   If Jesus, without being almighty, nevertheless believes himself to be
   so, we cannot be surprised that he thought he could heal the diseased.
   "Healing was considered to be a sort of moral influence; Jesus,
   therefore, being conscious of his moral strength, would necessarily
   believe himself to be specially endowed with the gift of healing.
   Convinced that the touch of his garment, or the imposition of his
   hands, did good to the sick, it would have been hard if he had refused
   to the sufferers a relief which he had it in his power to grant. . . .
   One species of healing that Jesus oftenest performed was the exorcism,
   or expulsion, of devils." (P. 261.)

   That Jesus, in a sort of pious fever, should have persuaded himself
   that God would give him a superhuman power, we might possibly
   understand. But that in his first attempt to exercise this miraculous
   power he should not have discovered that he was self-deceived--that the
   paralytic did not walk, that the blind man did not see, that the dead
   did not leave the tomb; in a word, that his delusive hope, disappointed
   at every step, should not have disabused him as to his imaginary
   endowment--surpasses our conceptions. We must remind ourselves of what
   M. Renan elsewhere tells us: "The madman walks side by side with the
   inspired man." (P. 77.) "Socrates and Pascal were not exempt from
   hallucinations." (P. 267.) "The finest things in the world have been
   performed under feverish excitement. Every great creation entails a
   disturbance of equilibrium, a state of turmoil, for the being who
   evolves it from himself." (P. 453.) It is true that this explanation
   annihilates the Gospel miracles, and makes Jesus mad and infatuated.
   Such a state of mind badly harmonizes with the moral excellence
   ascribed to Jesus Christ by our author. And yet there is another which,
   if possible, agrees with it still less. This we shall now examine.

   M. Renan's Third Proposition: Jesus was an Impostor.

   M. Renan does not charge Jesus with imposture any more openly than he
   charges him with hallucination: he is scrupulous as to the terms he
   uses. He covers over with the gloss of necessity even that which in the
   conduct of Jesus is ambiguous. In order to excuse Jesus, he attributes
   to him the old principle of all religion-makers, that we may
   conscientiously do evil that good may come.

   "Merely to conceive what is good," says M. Renan, "is not sufficient:
   you must insure its success among men. To this end means not absolutely
   pure are necessary." (P. 92.) "You must demand of humanity the greater,
   in order to obtain from it the less. The extraordinary moral progress
   due to the Gospel comes from its exaggerations." (P. 316.) After such a
   profession of principles on the part of our critic, we must not be
   surprised that he should apply them to his hero; but, at the risk of
   appearing ridiculously severe, we shall continue to regard as
   impossible the entrance of the least duplicity in the acknowledged
   moral character of Jesus Christ.

   We have seen Jesus persuading himself that he possessed a miraculous
   power which he really had not: it seems that he had not always that
   persuasion, and that, when necessary, a little skill took its place.
   Thus, "sometimes," says M. Renan, "Jesus made use of an innocent
   artifice. [Innocent artifice!] He professed to have some secret
   knowledge respecting a person he wished to gain. Dissembling the true
   secret of his power, I mean his superiority over that by which he was
   surrounded, he allowed the belief to satisfy the ideas of the time,
   that secrets were revealed and hearts opened to him by a revelation
   from on high." (P. 162.) "Thanks to some fertile mistakes, Jesus, by
   adopting the Utopias of his age, transformed them into exalted truths."
   (P. 284.) "Even during the life-time of Jesus, many charlatans, without
   being his disciples, cast out devils in his name. . . . Jesus, who saw
   in this a homage paid to his renown, was not very severe toward them."
   (P. 295.)

   To recapitulate: "Not being severe toward charlatans who were well
   disposed toward him;" "out of a Utopia to make a truth, thanks to
   fertile mistakes;" "to allow the belief in a revelation from on high,
   which revealed secrets to him;" "to dissemble and to use guile"--such
   are the means used by the sincere Jesus to proclaim the truth and to
   commend his morality; such are the resources which explain his
   triumphs, and on which we are to congratulate the Divine founder of the
   religion of the human race! Further developments would be useless; we
   shall, therefore, bring this subject to a close by putting before the
   conscience of the reader this simple question: Does such a being seem
   to you to rise to the height of the task ascribed to him? Do these
   opposite traits in his character appear to make a harmonious whole?
   Have we here such a naturalness of type, that, after having
   contemplated it, we are forced to say, It has existed? If to-day a
   fifth Gospel should be discovered, presenting Jesus to us as M. Renan
   depicts him, should we be compelled to say, "Here is the impress of
   reality?" And, if it were necessary to attribute this Gospel to a
   writer of the first centuries, should we fix upon Paul or Porphyry?

   No, this is not the Jesus of our Gospels: it is Jesus put a second time
   into the hands of Herod and Pilate, of the soldiers and the servants;
   that is, Jesus humiliated, spat upon, and smitten, a Jesus invented. I
   can understand that the old portrait of our Jesus should not please M.
   Renan: he must repaint it, cover it with his own colors, and disfigure
   it, that we might learn to despise it. Thus, as he advances, our author
   treats Jesus with less respect; blames him more freely, and without
   regret tarnishes his virtues. His morality ceases to be sublime, and
   becomes "frenzied." (P. 314.) He praises his disciples "for being
   unworthy sons and bad patriots, provided it be for Christ's sake that
   they resist their parents and rebel against their country." (P. 314.)
   Henceforth "this morality, made for a moment of crisis," is blamed "for
   having become a Utopia which few care to realize. . . . The man,
   according to the evangelical type, is a dangerous being." (P. 315.) The
   point is reached at last, when it is fearlessly declared that Jesus
   "was, if we may so speak, altogether unnaturalized: family ties, love,
   country, had no longer any meaning for him." (P. 316.) And, lest his
   touching conduct toward his mother and his disciples, in his last
   moments, should be put in opposition to this idea, the fact itself is
   questioned. (P. 422.)

   Our author has such a strong wish to accuse Jesus, that he is "inclined
   to believe he deliberately designed to be put to death." His
   forebodings--but too true--of the sufferings of his disciples, are
   changed into a "taste for persecutions and punishments." (P. 316.) He
   is led through false interpretations to such a fearful degree of
   enthusiasm that "sometimes one might have said he was mad." (P. 318.)
   Of this, M. Renan takes as witnesses "his disciples" (p. 318) when he
   should have said his parents, who did not believe in him. (Pp. 323,
   327.) Finally, "his ill-temper at all opposition led him to
   unaccountable and apparently absurd acts." (P. 319.) "Passion, which
   was at the basis of his character, drew forth from him the strongest
   invectives." (P. 325.) And "many of his recommendations to his
   disciples contain the germ of true fanaticism." (P. 326.) To this day
   the whole world has agreed with Jesus in his admiration for the widow
   who put into the treasury the feeble gift of her poverty, rather than
   for the rich who cast in of their abundance; but now M. Renan discovers
   here "a carping spirit, which takes pleasure in exalting the poor who
   give little, and in humbling the rich who give much." As to the idea of
   proportion, which completely overturns this view, and which gives to
   the story its real point, it does not even suggest itself to our
   author. To this day all have agreed in recognizing the profound
   humility of Jesus. M. Renan changes all this, and discovers that Jesus
   "is fond of honors," (p. 374;) in proof of which he adduces the
   vindication of Mary's act in anointing him for his burial! And while
   writing these words he does not remember that Jesus washed his
   disciples' feet; that he styled himself the servant of all; that he
   refused the crown, repudiated the appellation "good," and was "lowly of
   heart!"

   But the most striking proof of the determination to slander Jesus, is
   the way in which the story of his death is told. We take no notice of
   the fact that, blended with the recital of the crucifixion, simple and
   touching as this is in the Gospels, we have details given us here on
   the various kinds of this punishment, on the drink of the Roman
   soldiers, and on "the singular coincidence that Barabbas, the murderer,
   was also called Jesus," etc. No; though these things tend to lessen
   both Jesus himself and his glorious conduct during his last hours, we
   prefer not to see a wrong intention in them. But who can fail to
   discover hostility in what follows? If we find it said that Jesus
   uttered the noble words, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what
   they do," it is "according to a tradition;" "and if they were not on
   his lips, they were in his heart." "John declares that he was present,
   standing the whole time at the foot of the cross. We may, with more
   certainty, affirm that.". . . (P. 422.) How, then, with more certainty?
   Surely the aim of this is clear.

   At the same time that Jesus and his friends are lowered, his
   adversaries are cautiously vindicated. Thus, however the Evangelist may
   explain it, Jesus truly pronounced the fatal word, "I will destroy the
   temple of God, and rebuild it in three days." "From the standpoint of
   an orthodox Judaism, Jesus was truly a blasphemer, a destroyer of the
   established worship: thus his crimes were legally punished. (Pp. 396,
   397.) One sees that, if the judges did no more than administer the law,
   their sin was much less serious. As to Iscariot the betrayer, while
   without denying that "he aided in the arrest of his Master," M. Renan,
   nevertheless, thinks that "the curses heaped upon him are somewhat
   unjust. . . . There probably was in the deed he perpetrated more
   awkwardness than wickedness. . . . But if the foolish covetousness of a
   few pieces of silver turned the head of poor Judas, he does not seem to
   have completely lost all moral sense, since, when he saw the
   consequences of his fault, he repented, [such repentance!] and, it is
   said, committed suicide." (P. 382.) The indulgent biographer even tries
   to free "poor" Judas from the charge of suicide by insinuating that his
   death might have been the work of some Christians. "Possibly," he says,
   "the fierce hate which raged against him led to acts of violence in
   which people saw the finger of God." To transform the suicide of Judas
   into a crime of the Christians--does this reveal nothing?

   After having nearly justified Judas, M. Renan also nearly justifies
   Pilate. He traces the first wrong through a labyrinth of religious
   intolerance, Spanish kings, and Romish clergy, up to the law of Moses,
   and he excuses the criminal weakness of the Governor by recalling the
   clerical cruelty which, later on, did what was just as bad! This
   forensic ability to put out of sight the crime of one's client by
   recalling the future wrong doings of the pretended disciples of the
   victim, deserves attention: it discloses both the wish and the
   inability of the author to tarnish the image of one so held in
   universal respect that he must not be openly attacked. But we will not
   be the judges; we will be content with quoting M. Renan's words:
   "Seeing the attitude the Romans had taken in Judea, Pilate could
   scarcely help doing what he did. How many sentences of death prompted
   by religious intolerance, have constrained the hand of the civil power!
   The king of Spain, who, in order to please a fanatical clergy, gave up
   to the flames hundreds of his subjects, was more blameworthy than
   Pilate, since he was the representative of a power more absolute than
   that of the Romans at Jerusalem. It is a proof of weakness when, at the
   instigation of priests, the civil power persecutes and annoys. Let the
   government without fault in this respect cast the first stone at
   Pilate. The secular arm, behind which clerical cruelty shelters itself,
   is not the guilty party. No one is permitted to say that he dreads
   blood-shedding, when he performs it by the hands of his servants."
   "Neither Tiberius, then, nor Pilate, condemned Jesus. This was done by
   the old Jewish party, by the Mosaic law." (Pp. 410, 411.)

   Every attentive reader of "The Life of Jesus" will perceive that its
   author has taken great pains to appear as a simple historian, and not
   as an adversary. We admit that, so far as art could reach this end, M.
   Renan has well succeeded; all his words are weighed and balanced; yet
   it was impossible not to reveal his ideas, and we have seen how this
   has been done. We do not, in this short review, pretend to discuss
   historical facts; but we wish simply to signalize the intention which
   directs the ready and clever pen of the writer, and to prove that it is
   not so impartial as it is declared to be. We do not complain that M.
   Renan, or any one else, should say that he does not believe in Jesus
   Christ; but we could wish for more openness and candor. Possibly we may
   be judged rather uncouth. At any rate we shall not be accused of having
   wished to give currency to our thought under the shelter of an apparent
   indifference. We think it possible to be impartial, while confessing at
   the same time our confidence in revelation.

   In order to reduce Jesus to the stature of an ordinary man it is not
   sufficient to lessen him, but it is also necessary, by a concurrence of
   natural circumstances, to explain how he, simple mortal as he was,
   could raise himself to that work which, even to this day, astonishes
   the unbelievers themselves. We shall see how M. Renan, in order to
   reach this result, lays under tribute the times, the country, and the
   men in whose midst Jesus lived. For the sake both of fidelity and
   conciseness we shall, with some abbreviations, quote our author:

   . . . "No historical scene was so fit as that in which Jesus grew to
   develop those hidden forces which humanity keeps, as it were, in
   reserve, and which it does not bring forward except in days of
   excitement and peril."

   . . . "A gigantic dream had, for ages, pursued the Jewish people,
   perpetually renewing its youth in its decrepitude. . . . Judea had
   concentrated the whole strength of its love and desire upon the future
   of its national existence. It had faith in divine promises of a
   boundless destiny. . . . At the period of the captivity a gifted poet
   saw the splendor of a future Jerusalem, to which the nations and the
   distant isles would be tributary, under colors so fair that one might
   suppose a ray from the looks of Jesus had reached him across a distance
   of six centuries."

   "The victory of Cyrus seemed for some time to realize all that had been
   hoped from it, . . . but the triumphant and frequently brutal entrance
   into Asia of the Greek and Roman civilization threw him back upon his
   dreams. More than ever did he invoke the Messiah as the judge and
   avenger of the nations."

   . . . "If Israel had held the spiritualistic doctrine, so called, which
   divides man into two parts, the body and the soul, and thinks it quite
   natural that while the body decays the soul should survive, this
   paroxysm of rage and energetic protestation would not have
   occurred. . . . The Pharisees had recourse to the dogma of the
   resurrection. The just will live again to participate in the Messianic
   reign. They will return in the body, and to a world of which they will
   be the kings and judges. . . . The idea of the resurrection, totally
   different as it is from that of the immortality of the soul, springs
   very naturally both from the earlier beliefs and the position of the
   people. Combining with the belief in the Messiah, and with the doctrine
   of the future restoration of all things, that idea formed the basis of
   those apocalyptic theories which were hatching in every man's
   imagination, and which caused an extreme fermentation throughout the
   Jewish world."

   . . . "Jesus, as soon as he began to think, entered into the burning
   atmosphere created in Palestine by the ideas we have described. Freed
   from egotism, he had no thought but for his work, his race, and
   humanity. These mountains, this sea, this azure sky, those lofty plains
   in the distant horizon, were to him, not the melancholy vision of a
   soul which interrogates nature on its fate, but the unmistakable
   symbol, the transparent shadow, of an invisible world and a new
   heaven."

   "He never attached much importance to political events. . . . Perpetual
   seditions, excited by the zealots of Mosaism, did not cease to disturb
   Jerusalem. The death of the seditious was certain; but death for the
   sake of the integrity of the law was sought with avidity. At no time
   had the law a larger number of impassioned partisans than when he began
   to live who, by the full authority of his mission and of his genius,
   was about to abrogate it."

   . . . "An undertaking which exercised a great influence on Jesus was
   that of Judas the Gaulonite, or the Galilean. Judas was, evidently, the
   chief of a Galilean sect, preoccupied with Messianic aspirations, but
   attempting at last a political revolution. The Procurator Coponius
   crushed the sedition of the Gaulonite, but the school survived, and
   preserved its chiefs. . . . Jesus may have seen this Judas; . . . at
   any rate he was acquainted with his school, and probably it was in
   opposition to his error that he pronounced the axiom respecting Cesar's
   penny. The wise Jesus, far enough from all thought of sedition,
   profited by the mistake of his predecessor, and dreamed of another
   kingdom and another deliverance."

   . . . "Galilee was a verdant, well-shaded, smiling country, the true
   land of the Song of Songs, and of the hymns of the well-beloved. During
   the two months of March and April the country is a thick mass of
   flowers of an incomparable richness and variety of colors. The animals
   here are small, but extremely gentle. Turtle-doves, delicate and
   lively; blue-birds, so light that they scarce bend the grass on which
   they perch; tufted larks, which place themselves almost under one's
   feet; small river turtles, with quick, mild eyes; grave and
   modest-looking storks--all, free from timidity, allow the very near
   approach of man, and seem to call him to them. In no country of the
   world do the mountains stretch themselves out with more harmony, or
   inspire loftier thoughts. Jesus seems to have specially loved them.
   [15] The most important scenes of his divine career were on the
   mountains: it was there he was most inspired; it was there he held
   secret interviews with the ancient prophets, and that he seemed to the
   eyes of his disciples as already transfigured."

   . . . "The country was certainly charming: it abounded with cool waters
   and fruits; the large farms were shaded with vines and fig-trees; the
   gardens were masses of lemon, pomegranate, and orange trees. The wine
   was delicious. . . . So quiet and easily satisfied a life . . .
   spiritualized itself into ethereal dreams, into a sort of poetic
   mysticism, blending together both heaven and earth. . . . Why should
   the friends of the bridegroom fast while the bridegroom was with them?
   Shall not joy be a part of the kingdom of God? Is she not the (laughter
   of the humble-hearted, and of the men of good-will?"

   "The whole history of the rise of Christianity has thus become a sweet
   pastoral. A Messiah at a marriage-feast; the courtesan and the honest
   Zaccheus invited to its festivals; the founders of the kingdom of
   heaven like a bridal-train--this is what Galilee has dared, and what
   she has made the world accept. . . . Galilee has placed within the
   region of the popular imagination the most sublime ideal; for behind
   its idyl moves the fate of humanity, and the light which illuminates
   the picture is the sun of the kingdom of God."

   "Jesus lived and grew in this intoxicating scene." (Chap. iv, passim.)

   Here, then, we have what lay at the basis of the projects of Jesus: "a
   gigantic dream" of his nation, falsely believing itself called by God
   to rule and govern the world. What gives to the doctrine of the sublime
   reformer its heavenly direction, is the fact that, before his very
   eyes, a political aspirer fails through taking a different course. And,
   lastly, that which paves the way for the success of his moral teaching,
   is the harmony between the fauna and flora of Galilee and the sweet
   pastoral of a growing Christianity!

   Let us take up again these three data.

   (1.) "This gigantic dream," of a Messiah who should deliver Israel,
   like all dreams, probably has its origin in reality. And, indeed, M.
   Renan tells us that, six centuries prior to the attempt of Jesus to
   realize this dream, a poet (read prophet) had announced it in such
   terms that one might suppose him to have been "penetrated by a look
   from Jesus." Elsewhere M. Renan himself translates a passage from this
   same Isaiah, respecting the future servant of God, thus: "The servant
   of God grew up as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he
   had no form nor comeliness; he was overwhelmed with disgrace, abandoned
   by men; all turned away their faces from him: covered with shame, he
   was set at naught. It was because he had taken upon himself our
   sufferings and our pains. You might have supposed him smitten of God,
   touched by his hand. He was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for
   our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with
   his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep had gone astray, and
   Jehovah laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and he was
   afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he was led like a lamb to the
   slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb; so he opened not
   his mouth. Men looked upon his grave as that of a sinner, and on his
   death as that of an ungodly man. But, from the moment of his death, he
   was to see the birth of a numerous posterity, and the interests of
   Jehovah would prosper in his hand." (Pp. 8, 9.)

   On another page of the chapter we are analyzing (chap. iv) we learn
   that the Jew, "thanks to a sort of prophetic insight which sometimes
   made the Semitic marvelously apt at seeing the broad outlines of the
   future, made history enter into religion;" and the author teaches us
   that "these ideas ran through the world and reached even Rome, where
   they inspired a cycle of prophetic poems." In a word, the idea of a
   Messiah, conceived in the midst of the Jewish people, had spread itself
   through the world, and M. Renan sees nothing wonderful in this. . . .
   Jesus lays hold of this opinion, and transforms it into a great fact
   which, two thousand years later, according to his own prediction,
   covers the world. This harmony between Isaiah's time and that of Jesus,
   and between this latter and the long history of the Church, realizing
   the prophecies both of Isaiah and Jesus, proves nothing: the prediction
   is realized, but this realization is vain, since all miracles are
   impossible. Be it so; but let it be admitted that the miracle
   introduced to us by our author is the greatest of all. A people, in
   virtue of its "Semitic" origin, is apt to foresee the future! A poet,
   six hundred years in advance, portrays the Messiah in such a way that
   at all points the life of Jesus verifies the prediction! During
   nineteen centuries after the death of this Jesus his word fulfills
   itself, and that because this extemporized Messiah was fortunate enough
   to attribute to himself a mission which existed only in a dream! All
   these things make up a greater miracle than all the prophecies of
   Isaiah with their Christian explanations.

   This specimen gives us an idea of the admirable art of our writer. A
   general expectation, the result of Jewish prophecies, is spread
   throughout the world at the very time when Jesus comes and responds to
   it. To this day this very fact has been accepted as a proof in favor of
   Christianity. This, M. Renan tells us, is an error, and proves nothing.
   The Messiah does not respond to a providential expectation, but a
   chance expectation creates the Messiah, anf from the moment that he is
   credited his success is no longer astonishing! We do not attribute
   these words to M. Renan, but they contain his thoughts.

   (2.) Suppose this granted: we will not dispute this point, but we shall
   transfer the discussion to the adversary's own ground. If Jesus were so
   anxious to realize the Jewish expectation, why did he so grossly
   deceive it by pretending to fulfill the Messianic prophecies in a sense
   quite other than that anticipated by the Jews? The children of Abraham
   expect a temporal kingdom, flattering to their pride: the son of Mary
   offers them a spiritual one, which frustrates their hopes, humbles them
   by putting them on a level with the other nations, and restrains their
   passions by demanding holiness. Such a kingdom of God must have been,
   as indeed it was, supremely distasteful to the Jews; yet, among these
   very Jews, Jesus preached it and obtained its acceptance. Now, would we
   know how Jesus was led so to transform the kingdom of heaven as dreamed
   by Israel? It was by his witnessing the failure of Judas in his
   ambitious designs. "It was probably as a reaction against his error
   that he pronounced the axiom about Cesar's penny." Jesus "profited by
   the fault of his predecessor, and dreamed of another kingdom and
   another deliverance." (P. 61.)

   Is not such a use of words an abuse of them? Is it not putting an image
   in place of an idea? We can easily understand that an ambitious man,
   finding that course to be dangerous which at first he had thought easy,
   should turn aside from it to enter upon a new one on the same ground,
   and thus satisfy his restless ambition. But can we conceive that,
   finding the earth occupied, he should turn toward an imaginary heaven?
   that, no longer able to do his own work, he should devote himself to
   the work of a God, and specially of a God of whom he falsely alleges
   that he had intrusted him with a mission? What possible agreement of
   thought can there be between a Gaulonite who incites insurrections, and
   a Jesus who forbids the use of the sword, and declares that "his
   kingdom is not of this world?" No; he who both preached and practiced
   devotedness even to the giving up of his life; he who had such a love
   for truth, and such a horror for every exaggeration of language that he
   put upon the same level the most solemn oath and the simple yea and
   nay, must have had more unity of character: we cannot listen to one of
   his words without being filled with confidence in his perfect
   sincerity. The thought that the conspirator Judas the Gaulonite could
   react upon the conduct of the author of the Sermon on the Mount, is so
   loathsome to us that we have not the courage to discuss it.

   According to our author, Jesus also modified his ideas of the kingdom
   of God to suit times and circumstances. (P. 271.) Thus, at one time, he
   saw nothing in it but "the accession of the poor." "The kingdom of
   God," says M. Renan, in altering the Master's thoughts, "was: 1st, for
   children and those who were like them; 2d, for the world's outcasts,
   victims of the social scorn, which rejects the good but humble man; 3d,
   for heretics and schismatics, publicans, Samaritans, and Pagans of Tyre
   and Sidon." (P. 179.)

   Put in these terms, we see, as M. Renan truly says, "an appeal to the
   masses." "It is the doctrine that the poor alone will be saved, and
   that the kingdom of the poor is at hand." (P. 179.) Let us go further,
   and say, it is the court paid to the populace in order to bring it over
   to the side of him who allures it with false promises, that he may make
   use of it when the proper time shall have come.

   Did such a thought enter the mind of Jesus? Still less, even putting
   out of sight the selfish aims attributed to him, did Jesus ever promise
   the kingdom of heaven to the poor, simply because they were poor?
   Never. To suppose it would be to falsify his thought, and what his true
   thought was, M. Renan himself will help us to discover. Rightly does
   our critic say, "The prophets had, without ceasing, thundered against
   the great, and had established an intimate relation, on the one side,
   between the words rich, impious, violent, wicked; and, on the other,
   between the words poor, humble, meek, pious." (P. 181.)

   Here, then, is the knot of the difficulty: in the language of the Bible
   "poor" often means "humble," and hence the doctrine of Jesus. The
   poverty contemplated by the Messiah is not the poverty of silver or of
   gold; it is the poverty of virtue and of righteousness. Hence the
   humility of which he speaks is not the sense of material indigence, but
   the sentiment of the want of moral qualities. The saved man is not he
   who has felt and confesses his physical misery, but he who has wept
   over his spiritual wretchedness: in a word, the man who is forgiven is
   the penitent, not the mendicant.

   This interpretation is so simple as to be self-evident. We shall see
   that it is that of Jesus himself. To this end let us take the examples
   quoted by M. Renan. We shall begin with the best-known, the parable of
   the Prodigal Son, in which our author tells us, "the faulty one is
   presented to us as having a sort of privleged love above him who has
   always been upright." (P. 186.) We have here two mere assertions, and
   both of them mistakes. For, first, the parable concerns, not "the
   faulty one," but him who returns, saying, "Father, I have sinned
   against heaven and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy
   son: make me as one of thy hired servants." That is, the parable brings
   into prominence repentance as the ground of pardon. And secondly, it is
   a mistake to imagine here a privilege in favor of the guilty and to the
   exclusion of the innocent; since the father, speaking to the latter,
   says to him, "Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is
   thine." (Luke xv, 31.) And observe further, that this "innocent one,"
   as M. Renan will have it, reproaches his father for the feast he has
   made, accuses his brother of vices of which the story tells us nothing,
   and complains of never having had a kid that he might make merry with
   his friends!

   Take the example of Zaccheus the publican, who runs to meet Jesus,
   receives him in his house, gives half his fortune to the poor, and
   offers a fourfold restitution to any one he may have wronged. According
   to M. Renan, Jesus forgives the wealthy Zaccheus because, "on account
   of some prejudice, he was unfavorably received by society." (P. 189.)
   No; Jesus forgives him because he is in such a state of mind as that he
   is willing both to confess his wrongs and to repair them; because he
   humbles himself and repents.

   "He avowedly preferred," our author goes on to say, "people whose lives
   were doubtful, and who stood low in the esteem of the orthodox
   notabilities." Yes, Jesus preferred these persons, not because "their
   lives were bad," but because they repented of having led such lives;
   and if he had not the same regard for the "orthodox notabilities," it
   was because they, in their pride, did not feel the need of conversion.
   Let us not, then, oppose the sinful life of the one party to the
   respectability of the other, but rather the faith and trust of the
   former to the impenitence of the latter.

   We are not anxious here to give our readers a lesson in exegesis; we
   ask to be allowed, therefore, to cut short this subject by the decided
   affirmation, that Jesus never flattered the poor, never courted the
   mob; but that he always forgave the repentant, and always stigmatized
   the vices alike of the small and of the great. [16]

   Finally, among the number of causes which contributed to the success of
   Jesus, M. Renan places--what? The climate, the vegetation, the valleys
   and the mountains of Galilee!

   We can very easily understand how our author, on his return from the
   East, should wish to describe to us the famous places he had visited,
   and even to invite us to share in the impressions he had there
   received: his great talents are sufficient to make us desire this for
   ourselves. But when in serious reflection he said to himself, I will
   show the world the causes which inspired in Jesus the doctrines which
   have renewed the moral universe, how could he summon courage enough to
   put among the number of these causes the configuration of the country,
   its wells, its leafy shades, its lake, and its birds? When the question
   presented itself to him as to what were the affinities by which Jesus
   could gain acceptance for his precepts among the inhabitants of
   Galilee, how could he discover them in "an enchanting nature, which
   helps in the formation of a spirit less austere, less harshly
   monotheistic, and which impresses upon all the dreams of Galilee an
   idyllic and charming tone?" How could he characterize the history of
   infant Christianity as a "sweet pastoral," in order to bring it into
   harmony with a Galilee which "obtains credit for a Messiah at a wedding
   feast, the courtesan and the honest Zaccheus invited to his festivals,
   and the founders of the kingdom of heaven as a bridal train?" Are we to
   suppose that Jesus frequented worldly feasts? that he invited a harlot
   to his table? that his Apostles formed the procession of a bridegroom
   at a wedding? Do not these two or three traits, awkwardly brought
   together and misrepresented, unvail the writer's wish to lessen his
   hero? Was it Jesus who invited the courtesan, or was it his host? Are
   we not told, on the contrary, that she came unbidden, and not as
   guilty, but repentant? Is this bridal train of Apostles any thing more
   than a metaphor? Did Jesus often go to marriage feasts? Do not all
   these efforts to exaggerate and distort the facts betray a hostile
   intention? And these "mountains which inspired lofty thoughts," and
   where "Jesus was most inspired;" "this wine, which is so delicious and
   so much drunk;" "this quiet life, which spiritualized itself into a
   sort of poetic mysticism, blending earth and heaven"--does not all this
   disclose the wish to lower the lofty work of Jesus to the level of
   earthly joys, and to humanize what others have thought Divine? We admit
   that there is something new and striking in the attempt. With a few of
   the litterati it will succeed; but its very novelty proves how far it
   is from being natural and true. Its author, who, for the sake of his
   design, finds Jesus at first so easy and so joyful, will later, for the
   same sake, discover in him a "harsh and sad feeling of disgust of the
   world, of extreme abnegation-the characteristic of Christian
   perfection," and will reproach him because "in his moments of hostility
   against the most lawful wants of the heart" "he forgot the pleasure
   there is in living, loving, seeing, and feeling." (P. 313.)

   But, of all the helps furnished to Jesus in the foundation of his
   religion by his age and his country, the most important was the belief
   of his countrymen in the possibility and even the frequency of
   miracles. Not only did the people believe in miracles, but they loved
   them, and would have them. Hear M. Renan: "A miracle is, ordinarily,
   much more the work of the public, than of him to whom it is ascribed.
   Had Jesus persistently refused to work miracles, the crowd would have
   worked them for him. . . . The miracles of Jesus were a constraint put
   upon him by his age, a concession forced from him by the necessity of
   the moment." (P. 268.)

   Starting from this supposition, M. Renan strives to reach two results
   apparently opposed to each other, but in reality both helping to
   support his theory. We have seen that, according to our author, Jesus
   was both a virtuous being and an impostor; and it is by means of this
   hypothesis of the blending of good and evil in the same being that he
   hopes to gain the approbation of his readers. In attributing to Jesus
   this inconsistent character, one has the advantage of seeming to be
   impartial. And besides, is not the want of strict moral consistency at
   the basis of human nature? The biographer is therefore likely to obtain
   a favorable hearing when he tells us that "Jesus came out as a worker
   of miracles only late and unwillingly; that it was with a sort of
   ill-temper that he performed his miracles, and only after having been
   pressed to it; and that he performed them in secret, and with a
   recommendation to keep silence respecting them." [17]

   Further still, it is the friends and the disciples of Jesus who, in
   their imprudent zeal, and without his connivance, prepare miracles for
   him. His hand is constrained; innocently enough he comes to weep at the
   tomb of a friend; all at once he is to be made believe that he has
   raised his friend; and if he cannot believe it, he is at least to
   consent to allow it to be believed. . . . But this illustration is
   worth quoting: we shall be careful in abridging it:

   "The friends of Jesus were anxious to have a great miracle. . . .
   Jesus, in despair, and pushed to an extremity, was no longer
   self-possessed. . . . It seems that Lazarus was sick; and probably
   Lazarus, still pale with sickness, had himself attired like a dead man,
   and laid in the family tomb. Martha and Mary came to meet Jesus, . . .
   and led him to the cave. The emotion Jesus felt at the grave of his
   friend whom he believed to be dead may have been taken by the
   attendants for the agitation, the trembling, which accompanied
   miracles. . . . Jesus . . . wished to see once more him whom he had
   loved, and on the removal of the stone Lazarus came forth bound with
   grave-clothes, and his face bound about with a napkin." . . . (Pp.
   360-362.)

   In thus daring to parody the character of Jesus and of his friends, M.
   Renan must reckon largely on the ignorance of the evangelical text in
   his readers. He must be very confident of the sympathies of his
   admirers, to offer them, as probable, the most absurd and the most
   revolting of suppositions. Here is a man, (I do not say a God, not even
   a prophet, but simply a man,) endowed, as M. Renan thinks, with the
   loftiest soul of which history has preserved the remembrance; so pure,
   so noble, so holy, that his friends at Bethany loved him even to
   adoration. And then his friends, who adore him for his holiness,
   combine together to play a comedy which goes to the extent of profaning
   the grave, and of feigning a dead man, in order to simulate a
   resurrection! How becoming all this is for a friend who is serious and
   ill, and of Jesus, the creator of a moral world! How simple, how
   natural! How ridiculous, if it were not so sad. To say nothing of the
   fact that a joke will be made to pass for a miracle, and that the
   Master will receive the honor of a resurrection, can we conceive a
   convalescent, still pale with sickness, shrouding himself in
   grave-clothes, and putting himself in a tomb, there to wait for the
   divine physician sent to cure him, and who will be very agreeably
   surprised at seeing Lazarus, whom he believes to be dead, come forth
   from the sepulcher living? If the best friends of Jesus, if even Jesus
   himself, had been able to lend themselves to such an infamous
   masquerade, they would not be worth the trouble of even a refutation.

   We agree with M. Renan in thinking that in all ages the masses of the
   people, and especially the Jewish people in the days of Jesus, have
   been very credulous. If necessary, we might even allow that the number
   of miracles attributed to Jesus has been exaggerated by tradition; and,
   moreover, to complete our hypothetical concession, we may suppose that
   even the importance of each of these miracles has been magnified; but,
   after all this, do miracles disappear from the life of Jesus? Can it be
   forgotten that his life is completely interwoven with them, and that,
   if we strike out one from every page, ten will still remain on each
   sheet? that if the two multiplications of the loaves be reduced to one,
   and the five thousand persons fed to five hundred, there will be enough
   of miracle left to prove the intervention of God? If it be demanded
   that all the miraculous should be subtracted from the life of Jesus, we
   must be prepared to maintain that in a reputation and a success
   acquired solely by miracles, all is without foundation; that the people
   who followed Jesus through town and country; that the rulers who
   opposed him even to death; that his Apostles, stubborn even to the
   point of giving up their lives in attestation of his wonders; that this
   whole generation of witnesses, people, rulers, and apostles, acted
   without motive and without reason. . . . In order to keep within the
   strict boundaries of fact, we shall have to maintain that all disturbed
   themselves, disputed, and fought, during their whole life-time, simply
   because a popular man once spoke a few words on a mountain or at the
   corner of a street! For, at least, we must agree that this man had
   neither arms, nor money, nor influence at his service. Friends and foes
   alike ascribe but two things to him--words and miracles. If the
   miracles be false, the words only remain; and to these few words are
   owing the overturning of all Judea! If so, the miracle comes back to us
   in another form, and one might with truth exclaim," It is the voice of
   God, and not of a man!"

   Among all the natural explanations of the success of Jesus in his day,
   which M. Renan might have given us, there is one which, we think, would
   have been the best. We shall indicate it.

   Of all the pretensions put forth by Jesus, the highest was that of
   forgiving and saving sinners. We abstain here from claiming for him
   this divine power. We simply affirm that he professed it; that he once
   said to a man who came to him in faith, "Thy sins are forgiven;" and
   that to the Pharisees who blamed him for receiving the visits of
   disreputable persons he said, "I am not come to call the righteous, but
   sinners to repentance." "I am come to seek and to save the lost." On
   the cross he promised Paradise to a thief who confessed his crimes and
   prayed to him. In the temple court he absolved an accused woman, who,
   far from justifying herself, was humbly waiting the execution of her
   sentence. At the institution of the Supper, he declared to his Apostles
   that his blood was shed for the remission of the sins of many. Many
   times, while speaking of his sufferings and death, he said that it was
   for this very purpose he had come. Zaccheus, the prodigal son, the
   publican, the courtesan in Simon's house, all are great sinners who had
   been saved, that is to say, forgiven, and entitled to heaven, without
   any merit or claim: in a word, every-where, and under a thousand forms,
   we find the remission of sins. Suppose this pardon to have been an
   illusion, still the offer of it had a powerful influence upon the
   hearts of those who believed they had it from the lips of a God. This
   persuasion was sure to result in obedience to precepts, the practice of
   worship, and the endurance of persecutions; and an eternity granted by
   Jesus and accepted by his disciples could not but have an influence on
   the life and the conduct of the faithful. How could M. Renan not
   perceive this? And, if he saw it, why did he not mention it? Without
   being obliged to believe in the pardon of sins in virtue of the
   expiatory death of Christ, the mention of the historic fact would have.
   secured an explanation to the enthusiasm of a whole people for a man
   who, indeed, wrought no miracles, but promised heaven to the repentant.
   Must we suppose that M. Renan has been silent respecting every idea of
   salvation, because he knew it was dear to those whose faith he combats
   with an apparent indifference? Did he, perhaps, imagine that the most
   efficacious expedient to ruin this doctrine would be not even to seem
   to have perceived it in the Gospels?

   After having removed miracles from the Gospel, to take salvation away
   from it also would, indeed, be a sure means of obliterating every trace
   of Christianity in the world. Vain attempt! There exists in the depths
   of upright and humble souls so true a need of mercy, that no "Life of
   Jesus," by M. Renan, Strauss, or any other writer of their school, will
   succeed in turning away these souls from that source of living waters
   in the Gospel of salvation at which, to this day, they have quenched
   their thirst. You may tell them they are mistaken, that miracles are
   impossible, and that salvation is a Jewish deception; these souls will
   nevertheless remain firmly attached to Jesus Christ their Saviour.
   Discuss as much as you will, their reply will be, "We do not know
   whether or not a transcendental criticism has revealed to you secrets
   hidden from common mortals; but what we do know is, that whereas once
   we were blind, now we see; whereas once we were athirst, now we thirst
   no more; whereas once we were full of unrest and misery, now we are
   calm and happy."

   This reply, excellent as it is, is nevertheless not the one we wish to
   make: to some readers it may appear inconclusive. We shall attempt,
   therefore, to give a more explicit account of our own faith. In our own
   way we shall trace the life of Jesus Christ.

   We say with M. Renan, that in order to the satisfaction of our reason,
   we must have presented to us "a doctrine which shall be unique and
   adopted by the whole of humanity." [18] But one cannot exact of this
   universality that it shall be complete from all eternity, especially
   when the doctrine admitted is supposed to be subject to a perpetual
   process of development. All that can be reasonably demanded is, that
   this religion shall reveal itself from the very origin of its history.
   Now this demand is met. From M. Renan's own avowal, "The Semitic race
   has the honor of having made the religion of humanity. Far beyond the
   confines of history, under his tent, uncontaminated by the disorder of
   a world already corrupt, the Bedouin patriarch (not to say Abraham)
   prepared the faith of the world. The superiority of this faith
   consisted in a strong antipathy to the licentious worship of Syria,
   great ritual simplicity, the complete absence of all temples, and the
   reduction of idols to mere insignificant teraphim. Among all the tribes
   of the nomadic Semites, that of the 'Beni-Israel' was already marked
   out for great destinies. A very ancient law, written on metallic tables
   and attributed to their great liberator Moses, was even then the code
   of monotheism, and, compared with the institutions of Egypt and
   Chaldea, contained powerful germs of social equality and morality." (P.
   6.)

   It will be seen that our revelation is ancient enough, since it comes
   from "far beyond the confines of history;" and also that in that remote
   region it was well protected, since, "intrusted to the care of a
   Bedouin, it remained superior, on the points of social equality and
   morality, to any thing in Chaldea and in Egypt." And this religion was
   so marvelously preserved in the midst of the idolatrous nations, that
   the same writer could find no better way of describing its influence
   than by saying, "The desert is monotheistical." [19] If this phrase
   explains nothing, at least it declares a fact--the surprising existence
   of a monotheistic race in the midst of a circle of idolatrous nations;
   and, in spite of daily contact, the strict preservation of this
   monotheism. Our reason, therefore, for believing that this monotheism
   is a revelation is, that we find it among the Bedouins from the very
   commencement of history, and that down to our own days the élite of the
   philosophers have never got beyond it. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,
   without toil, started from the point at which--aided by the
   Bible--Cousin, Jules Simon, and perhaps Ernest Renan, have at length
   arrived.

   Our religion, tending toward universality, as is needful in order that
   we might believe in its divinity, having commenced under the tent of a
   patriarchal family, extended over a whole tribe, and then over a whole
   people. M. Renan himself tells us this: "The depositaries of the spirit
   of the nation seem to write under the action of an intense fever. . . .
   Never had man undertaken the problem of the future and of his destiny
   with a more desperate courage. . . . Never separating the fate of
   humanity from that of their inconsiderable race, the Jewish thinkers
   [say prophets] were the first who occupied themselves with a general
   theory of the progress of the species. The Jew possesses a sort of
   prophetic instinct, by which the Semite is sometimes endowed with a
   marvelous aptness to see the broad outlines of the future." (P. 47.)

   Lest we should be deceived by our own wishes, we shall take, among all
   these prophets, only him who is praised by the adversary of Christ's
   Divinity; and further, in order not to multiply erroneously these
   predictions, we shall confine ourselves to the only one M. Renan has
   quoted and translated. The predicted servant "was overwhelmed with
   disgrace, abandoned by men, covered with shame. He took upon himself
   our sufferings and our pains; he was wounded for our transgressions;
   the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and Jehovah laid on him the
   iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he
   opened not his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a
   sheep before her shearers, so he was dumb. Men looked upon his grave as
   that of a sinner, and on his death as that of an ungodly man. But from
   the moment of his death he should see the birth of a numerous
   posterity, and the interests of Jehovah would prosper in his hand."

   Still careful not to go astray, we adhere to our wise critic, and we
   find that subsequently to these predictions the expectation of a
   Messiah is spread among both Jews and pagans, reaching even to the very
   center of Roman civilization, where we meet with "a cycle of prophetic
   poems." (P. 48.) When this expectation has become general, a man
   appears who styles himself the Son of God. According to our author,
   this man performs no miracle, but at least he is the first who
   proclaims "the God of humanity. . . . Rising boldly above the
   prejudices of his nation, he establishes God's universal Fatherhood,
   . . . he founds that true kingdom of God which each man bears in his
   heart." . . . (P. 78.) "His system of morals is the highest creation of
   the human conscience, the fairest code of a perfect life that ever
   moralist drew." (P. 84.) . . . "An absolutely new idea, that of a
   worship founded upon purity of heart and human brotherhood, effected
   its entrance into the world through him; an idea so exalted that the
   Christian Church could not but fail completely in its intentions on
   this point, so that, even in our days, only a few souls are capable of
   realizing it." (P. 90.) "Jesus was more than the reformer of an
   antiquated religion: he was the creator of the eternal religion of
   humanity." (P. 332.) This Jesus, still without the aid of miracles,
   casts into the world a few words which become so many fertile germs,
   such as, "Render unto Cesar the things which are Cesar's; and unto God
   the things which are God's." This, M. Renan says, is an axiom "of the
   most perfect spirituality and the most wonderful justice, one which has
   established the separation between the spiritual and the temporal, and
   has laid the real basis of true liberalism and true civilization." (P.
   348.) . . . This Jesus, without performing miracles in Judea during his
   life-time, after his death achieves the most astonishing of marvels: he
   regenerates the soul of humanity; just as God created a physical world,
   so he creates a spiritual world, by his word alone. Understand, not by
   wonderful cures, not by unheard-of resurrections, but without miracles,
   without wonders. The fact is admitted, that, by simply articulating a
   few syllables, Jesus transforms the moral universe; and yet we are not
   permitted to see in this transformation the proof of his divine
   mission! He has done what no other founder of religion could do, and in
   such an admirable way as to put him, beyond comparison, above every
   other; and yet we are not to deem him truthful! Is it more rational to
   suppose that he has established morality and civilization by means of a
   falsehood rather than by sincerity? Let us be allowed to oppose to all
   this a saying we ourselves have heard from the lips of a man who is
   held by M. Renan himself to be one of our modern lights. The learned
   Bunsen, speaking one day upon miracles, said, "There are for me two
   undeniable miracles: the creation of the universe by God, and the
   salvation of the world by Jesus Christ." Bunsen's premises are
   sufficient for me, and I conclude from them, "Like Father, like Son."

   Two great facts may be brought forward in opposition to us. The one is,
   that other religions have enjoyed results no less considerable. The
   worshipers of Buddha are not less numerous than those of Jesus Christ.
   We grant this, but we say that the force of our argument lies in the
   nature of the work accomplished. The work of Christ upon earth is
   totally different from that of all other founders of religion. It is
   not more moral; it alone is moral, it alone leads to true civilization.

   The other is, that the Church is full of faults. To this all we have to
   say is, that Jesus never said that in order to become his it would be
   sufficient to call one's self a Christian. On the contrary, he foresaw
   that there would be both hypocrites and cowards, and he has left every
   man free to resist conversion.

   Thus, all the efforts made to lessen the origin of Christianity do but
   succeed in better establishing its divinity. Prove, if possible, that
   the Gospels are not authentic; that the Scriptures are not inspired;
   that no miracle ever took place; that Jesus and his Apostles were no
   more than poor Jews, simple country folk; that they were ignorant of
   history and of all science, and that they had not the least literary
   knowledge: let all this be very clearly proved, the triumph of Jesus is
   thus secured, and our answer will be: This man of the people, though
   without miracles, has nevertheless changed the world's aspect; he has
   done so after having predicted it. The transformation is such, that no
   science and no skill can imitate it, neither can they undo it. Observe
   that the case is not that he has succeeded better than any other
   founder of religion; it is, that he alone has succeeded. His system of
   morals, compared with others, is not simply superior to them; it is
   totally different from them. By the side of the Gospel such precepts as
   those of Socrates are even immoral; and if we would find something
   analogous to the New Testament, we must go back to the Old, from
   whence, after all, it came. [20] Jesus did not simply compose and
   preach this morality: he has inoculated the world with it, he has put
   it into human hearts and into the lives of millions of men during a
   long succession of ages; and all this without miracle, ancient or
   modern! If the world becomes civilized, it is in the countries where
   Jesus is known. If there exist some true sciences and some real
   virtues, it is among the nations where the Gospel is read. If any
   people seek to instruct and to civilize the barbarians, that people is
   Christian. No good is done here below except in those spots where the
   faith of Jesus has been. We therefore repeat, the better it is proved
   that miracles had no place in the commencement of Christianity, the
   more will the immense, magnificent, unique results obtained without
   them appear to be Divine. According to a principle laid down by M.
   Renan, "Facts must be explained by proportionate causes." We say, these
   results are above man; their causes therefore go back to God.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [13] The references throughout are to the original French edition.

   [14] Having entered upon this course of investigation, we think M.
   Renan has given proof of much moderation. He might, logically, have
   gone much further, and have said, All this being accomplished, still
   nothing is proved; for one might yet suspect the good faith of the
   witnesses, and the knowledge of the experimenters, and suppose the
   thaumaturgus to be a mere clever inventor! If. a century ago, such a
   one had professed his ability to relate what was taking place at a
   distance of a thousand leagues, and to amputate the arms and the legs
   of the spectators without their knowledge, the scientific men of the
   age might have proclaimed a prodigy; and yet the thaumaturgus had been
   no more than the inventor of the electric telegraph and the use of
   chloroform. Why should we not discover the art of raising the dead? Go
   a step further; suppose (a case in point) that really God gives to day
   to the disciples of Jesus Christ the power to work miracles; what would
   this prove to certain minds? Nothing! The miracles would no longer be
   miracles, that is all. You cannot prevent my doubting. Thus the
   miracles of the Gospel are not designed to convert the [willfully]
   unbelieving, but to strengthen the faith of believers. Jesus Christ
   himself said so in affirming of the brothers of the rich man, "Neither
   will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead." (Luke xvi, 31.)

   [15] Matt. v, i; xiv, 23; Luke vi, 12.

   [16] Here are some examples of misrepresented evangelical sayings:
   Jesus, in his teachings, subordinates the interests of this fleeting
   life to those of eternity. It is not a question of abandoning earth for
   heaven, but of making the possession and the use of earthly blessings
   contribute to the increase of spiritual and moral treasures. What can
   be wiser or more simple than this? Yet M. Renan boldly affirms that
   Jesus "often proclaimed that whosoever would find the kingdom of God
   must purchase it at the cost of all his goods, and that even at that
   price he is a gainer." How is that to be bought which Jesus gives
   freely. And how could the Master who said, "Seek ye first the kingdom
   of God, and all these things shall be added unto you," demand that we
   shall sell our earthly goods? Is not this a forcing of words one is
   anxious not to understand? And does not the paradoxical form of the
   precepts of Jesus explain the whole? For instance, would we contend
   that Jesus did actually wish his disciples, when smitten on the right
   cheek to turn the other also, when he himself, being smitten on the
   cheek, calmly said, "If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil;
   but if' well, why smitest thou me?" As another specimen, M. Renan tells
   us that during the first Christian age "property was interdicted," and
   in a note he justifies his assertion by quoting the following passage:
   "And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one
   soul: neither said any of them that aught of the things which he
   possessed was his own; but they had all things common." (Acts iv, 32.)
   We ask, Is this an interdiction or a law? Is it not the simple
   declaration of a fact? Was this fact general and absolute? If common
   sense did not already reply, we should observe that immediately after,
   when Ananias and Sapphira put into the hands of the community part of
   the price of the land they had sold, affirming that it was the entire
   sum, Peter tells them that they might have kept the land; that even
   after having sold it they had a right to keep the proceeds, and that
   their crime was, not that they had kept back part of the money, but
   that, by saying they had brought the whole, they had "lied unto God."
   How, again, can M. Renan take literally the precept regarding those
   "which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake?"
   (P. 300.) Are not the words which immediately follow, "He that is able
   to receive it let him receive it," a sufficiently clear intimation that
   the literal sense must be put aside? Surely it is neither critical
   acumen nor intellect that is wanting to M. Renan. Again, when M. Renan
   affirms that "the cessation of intercourse between the sexes was often
   considered as a sign and condition of the kingdom of God," would he
   seriously have us believe that the kingdom of God on earth is meant,
   when we are distinctly told that "in the resurrection, they neither
   marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in
   heaven?" (Matthew xxii, 30.) Lastly, on the eve of his death, Jesus
   gives expression to his agony in the expectation of martyrdom, and to
   his wish that the hour might come, for it must come, to be passed
   throulgh. This was the shrinking of human nature, which, in the distant
   prospect of a terrible trial, was anxious to shorten the suspense,
   since trial could not be avoided. Luke xii, 49 and 50, read without
   break, will be sufficient to make us understand this. M. Renan prefers
   to divide the context, and to put into the former part a meaning quite
   contrary to that of the whole. "His blood," says he, "appears to him as
   the water of a second baptism wherewith he was to be baptized, and he
   seemed to be urged by a strange haste to meet that baptism which alone
   could quench his thirst." (Pp. 316, 317.)

   [17] We may say in passing, that the line of conduct Jesus pursued when
   asked to perform a miracle was this: lie granted the request of faith,
   but he refused that of unbelief. A little reflection will show us the
   excellence of this rule. In fact, Christian faith is not an act of
   credulity, but of confidence; that is, it springs from a moral
   disposition. To believe in a God who is good and powerful, and in a
   Saviour who forgives and bestows eternal life, is already to love that
   God and that Saviour; and so to request a, miracle is really to seek a
   favor which will augment faith and love, and thus lead to greater
   obedience. Hence in the Gospel narratives we find that the believers
   whose requests Jesus grants generally follow and serve him. On the
   contrary, the unbelievers, in asking for a miracle, reveal their
   perverseness: all they seek is to perplex him whom they affect to
   solicit. They have beforehand resolved not to believe. If the favor be
   granted, they will ascribe it to the devil rather than to God, for the
   sake of resisting the appeals of him who grants it. This explains why
   Jesus, in his own neighborhood, could perform no miracles. (Mark vi,
   5.) Matthew adds. "Because of their unbelief;" (Matt. xiii, 58;) an
   explanation with which M. Renan was acquainted, and which lie mioht
   have given us. This is why Jesus, besought by the Syrophenician woman,
   at first is silent, then refuses; and when by his delay the great faith
   of the woman is brought to light, liberally grants what she asks.
   (Matt. xii, 16.) This, too, explains the command Jesus gives to the
   sick whom he has healed, to keep silence, while they go directly to the
   high priest who was to verify the cure. (Matt. vii, 4, etc.) Sometimes
   this prohibition is explained in the text itself, by the application of
   a prophecy to the Messiah, who does good without seeking publicity.
   (Matt. xii, 16-20.) At other times we learn from the context that
   Jesus, in enjoining silence, wished to avoid the premature persecutions
   which would have hindered the accomplishment of his task. (Mark viii,
   30; Luke ix, 21.) M. Renan may either have ignored or despised these
   explanations; but how could he, to make his accusation more acceptable,
   affirm that Jesus refused or delayed his miracles because "of the
   grossness of' their minds," (p. 264,) whereas it was because of the
   perverseness of "an adulterous, unbelieving, and wicked generation?"
   (Matt. xii, 39; xvii, 20.) This alteration mlay be without intention,
   but certainly it is not without influence on the argument.

   [18] "Études historiques et religieuses," vii.

   [19] "Étndes historiques et religieuses," p. 67.

   [20] M. Renan finds pleasure in repeating that Hillel preceded Jesus.
   True; but Hillel's inspiration came from the prophets, and thus we must
   always be sent back to the first source, the Bible.
     __________________________________________________________________

THE

CHRIST OF M. RENAN

AND THE

CHRIST OF THE GOSPELS.

By Napoleon Roussel.
     __________________________________________________________________

  THE

CHRIST OF M. RENAN.

   WHICH was Jesus Christ: Man or God?

   We cannot ask this question in the present day without at once calling
   to mind a famous work, "The Life of Jesus," by M. Renan. It is useless,
   we are told, to attempt to enlighten one's audience by simply reading
   the Gospels, since, in estimating their worth, we are compelled to
   remember a book, the novelty of which, if not its value, is attested by
   a circulation in France of fifteen thousand copies. We, therefore, hold
   it for the present to be impossible to enter upon the study of the life
   of Jesus Christ without in some way encountering the work of his most
   modern historian. This is the task before us now.

   Our personal knowledge of a writer is not always necessary to enable us
   to judge of his work. Thus, for example, it is perfectly needless that
   we should be acquainted with either the morals or the creed of a
   mathematician in order to appreciate his treatises on algebra and
   geometry. Such, however, is not the case as regards a philosopher, or
   even an historian. Here it is evident that the writer's doctrines must
   influence his decisions. Even unconsciously the author will magnify the
   men and the systems which are in agreement with himself, while he will
   very heartily despise the persons who differ from him. To know, then,
   whether M. Renan is in danger either of abasing or exalting Jesus
   Christ, it is necessary that we should become acquainted with his
   philosophical or religious principles. We shall not seek our
   information, either in the author's life or in his previous works, but
   exclusively (with the exception of one single reference) in the volume
   we are studying. Judging only, then, from "The Life of Jesus," what are
   M. Renan's beliefs?

   And, first, does M. Renan believe in God, or not? If he does, what is
   his God--spirit or matter? a person or a thing? To use familiar terms,
   is M. Renan a Deist or a Pantheist? He is neither.

   What, then, is his God? He tells us elsewhere that the name of his God
   is, "Our Father, the Abyss." This truly happy term is in itself an
   exposition of doctrine concerning the Deity; it is a declaration that
   he who adopts the name sees no more clearly into the idea of a God than
   one can see into an abyss. M. Renan does not affirm that there is no
   God, but simply that he does not know him. Is it possible to believe in
   a God of whom we have no distinct notion? No. The theory of "Our
   Father, the Abyss," will be powerless in our life: this is all we can
   say for it.

   In the next place, what is M. Renan's idea of man? A single sentence
   from his book will tell us. At page 2 he says: "Man, as soon as he rose
   above the animal, became religious." If there was a time when man rose
   above the animal, there must have been a previous stage in which he was
   not distinct from it, and at this stage man was simply the first of the
   animals. Whether he was a monkey or an elephant we do not know, but at
   least he was a member of the family. Whether we like it or not, we are
   no more than perfected beasts.

   Now, between this Father-Abyss and this man the child of the brute,
   what religious relationship has been established? It could not have
   been very clear, since it emanated from a God of darkness; nor very
   close, since it applied to the descendants of humanized brutes. In
   fact, we shall see, that in spite of all the clearness and the strength
   which this principle has acquired during the progress of ages, it is
   still, according to M. Renan, very obscure and very weak.

   This supposed relation between man and God varies strangely according
   as you consult various philosophers and theologians. Some resolve it
   into love, others into obedience; some demand from us an entire
   consecration, others speak of ten commandments, and others again only
   of two. According to Christians, man must be just, pure, faithful; he
   must honor God, love his brethren, and have respect for their lives,
   their goods, and their homes. Were we to admit duties so numerous and
   so imperative, it would be but too easy to convict M. Renan's morality
   of great incompleteness; we do not, therefore, propose to examine it on
   all these points. We shall test it only on one point--a point very
   simple, very elementary, and absolutely indisputable. This one
   unassailable point is veracity. Ought man to be sincere and truthful,
   or is he at liberty to weaken the rich wine of truth by mixing it, more
   or less, with the water of falsehood? Let us listen to M. Renan in a
   series of confessions which cannot but be truly sincere, and since they
   are made for the benefit of readers whom he believes to be in sympathy
   with himself.

   M. Renan, with the air of a legislating moralist, says, "To enable it
   to bear its burden, humanity has need of the belief that it. does not
   receive its full reward in this life. The greatest service we can
   render it is frequently to repeat that it does not live by bread
   alone." (P. 184.)

   Humanity, then, believes in another life. But why? Is it because this
   belief is true? No; but it is in order that humanity might be enabled
   to bear its burden. In order, then, to do it service and to encourage
   it, it would be desirable, not to teach, but to proclaim to it, and
   "frequently to repeat, that it does not live by bread alone."

   This language is clever, and the thought is well concealed: but let us
   tear away the vail and then we shall read as follows: Without faith in
   the future, man would not patiently bear his burden; for prudential
   reasons, therefore, let us persuade him that after the day of this
   short life there comes a long and blessed morrow. We must convince man
   of this, not because it is true, but because faith in this dogma will
   insure the welfare of those whom this life dissatisfies.

   Our readers, then, need not be surprised if M. Renan, adversary of
   Jesus as he is, should nevertheless think it wise to preserve a certain
   faith in a future world, for he teaches us (p. 237) that there are such
   things as "innocent deceptions." Besides, he distinctly says, (p. 316,)
   that "in order to obtain from humanity the less, you must claim from it
   the greater." He is so firm a believer in the efficacy, and, if we may
   say so, in the lawfulness of falsehood, that he adds, "the immense
   moral progress due to the Gospel comes from its exaggerations."

   Laying aside the Gospel for the present, let us bear in mind the above
   profession of faith--an immense moral progress is to be obtained by
   means of exaggerations. If, therefore, M. Renan should ever teach
   morality, he will recommend exaggeration.

   The above quotations are not the only ones of the kind to be found in
   his work. Here, for instance, is another: "It is because of its double
   meaning that his thought [that of Jesus] has become fruitful." (P.
   282.) When, therefore, you are anxious to succeed in morals, use
   duplicity; M. Renan will insure you success. But possibly we may have
   wrongly interpreted this "thought" with the "double meaning;" perhaps
   it is meant that the thought was true in both its aspects. No, for the
   author adds, "his chimera has not shared the fate of so many besides;
   . . . it concealed a germ of life, which, introduced into the bosom of
   humanity, (thanks to its fabulous surroundings,) has borne there some
   everlasting fruits." (P. 282.)

   This double-faced thought, then, was a chimera, and this chimera,
   thanks to its fabulous surroundings, has borne some everlasting fruits!

   Moralists, philosophers, legislators, do you wish for a people who
   shall be perpetually moral, wise, and peaceful? Teach it a chimera
   enveloped in fable, and M. Renan guarantees your success. In any case,
   whether you reckon upon this success or not, bear in mind that M. Renan
   thinks that there are innocent frauds, fertile thoughts with double
   meanings, and that in order to obtain a little from humanity it is
   necessary to exact much.

   It is not meant, indeed, that all falsehoods are equally efficacious.
   No; one must know how to choose between them; and the best are those
   which have their foundation in the prejudices of the age or the nation
   in which we live. With this caution it is possible to transform a folly
   into a great truth! Thus, listen: "Jesus, by accepting the Utopias of
   his time and of his race, could, thanks to some fertile misconceptions,
   transform them into exalted truths." (P. 284.)

   We do not complain that M. Renan should profess to believe that Jesus
   relied on the Utopias of his age, and that he had recourse to
   misconceptions. What we wish to point out is, the principle accepted by
   M. Renan, namely, that great truths were the offspring of these Utopias
   and misconceptions, and that good was the result of error and
   falsehood. It is not with Jesus, but with his historian, that, for the
   moment, we have to do.

   We have no wish unduly to prolong the study of his principles in this
   matter of veracity; nor are we anxious to comment upon them, since our
   readers may do it for themselves: we, therefore, in concluding on this
   point, confine ourselves to the quotation of a final passage. Our own
   thoughts upon it will be indicated by simply italicising.

   "In the East," says our author, "there are a thousand evasions and
   subterfuges between good faith and imposture. . . . Real truth is of
   very little value to the Easterns: they look at every thing through the
   media of their ideas, their interests, and their passions.

   "History would be impossible if one did not openly admit that sincerity
   has many degrees. All great things are achieved by the masses. Now we
   do not lead them except by lending ourselves to their ideas. The
   philosopher who, knowing this, nevertheless isolates himself, and
   retreats within his own nobleness, is highly praiseworthy; but he who
   takes humanity with its illusions, and seeks to act both upon and with
   it, must not be blamed. . . . It is easy for us, impotent as we are, to
   call this, falsehood; and, proud of our timid honesty, to treat with
   scorn the heroes who have accepted the battle of life on other terms.
   When by our scruples we shall have achieved as much as they did with
   their falsehoods, we shall have the right to be more severe toward
   them." (Pp. 252, 253.)

   It will thus be seen that, in our author's estimation, the success
   which is achieved justifies the means used. Whosoever accomplishes
   great things by means of falsehood may claim the indulgence of those
   who have only done little things by means of truth.

   Well, M. Renan--No! At the risk of being called "rustics," we again
   say, No! We prefer to be truthful, though without worldly success, than
   to be triumphant impostors. Our conscience protests against your
   immoral principles, and we must say so in passing.

   We are not concerned with ourselves, however, but with M. Renan and the
   principles he extols. From all that has preceded we think ourselves
   warranted in concluding that, according to our author, sincerity and
   truthfulness are elastic, that we may have more or less of them, and
   that in the event of success no one has the right to be severe toward
   the impostor who brings his falsehood to a successful issue.

   Who now needs be surprised that M. Renan should ascribe to Jesus the
   doctrines he himself judges to be good? He is anxious to justify those
   who have learned in this way to secure their triumphs: to ask for more
   would be too severe. Besides, Jesus lived in the East. M. Renan does
   not require of him on behalf of truth a platonic love which he, the
   author, does not himself profess. Hence we now see in the Life of
   Jesus, as it is imagined and interpreted by M. Renan, the hero
   contenting himself with the same measure of truth which is to be found
   in the writer. But let us remember that in this estimate it is M.
   Renan's picture that we have in that of Jesus. Put in his place, we now
   see what M. Renan would have said and done.

   II.

   It must be understood that Jesus, whether we pronounce him to be a God
   or an impostor, could not fail to be convinced of his own great
   superiority over his contemporaries. Thus M. Renan supposes that he
   treated them with a "transcendent scorn," and that he indulged in
   "subtle railing" at them. For example, when the disciples, carried away
   by a spirit of revenge, ask their Master to punish those who refuse
   them hospitality, by calling down upon them fire from heaven, Jesus,
   grieved at heart, says to them, "Ye know not what manner of spirit ye
   are of." M. Renan sees in this holy answer nothing but a "refined
   irony!" Thus a "transcendent scorn," a "subtle raillery," and a
   "refined sarcasm," mark the tone of this "master of irony" discovered
   by M. Renan. Can we find in the sacred text, or even in the profane
   writings of the period, a single word to authorize this estimate? Not a
   single one! But this "refined irony and railing," and this
   "transcendent scorn," are fashionable in our day; and the writer, who
   has taken his degree in these arts, attributes them to his hero. Thus
   M. Renan says of Jesus, "His exquisite derisions, his mischievous
   provocations, always pierced to the heart. Masterpieces of fine
   raillery, his strokes are inscribed in lines of fire on the flesh of
   the hypocrite. . . . Incomparable strokes, and worthy of a Son of God!
   A God alone can kill after this fashion. Socrates and Molière only
   graze the skin: this man sends fire and fury to the very bones." (P.
   334.)

   Here is a noble superiority of Jesus over Molière! Molière merely
   grazes the skin, but Jesus kills! Such is the admiration accorded to
   the Saviour! Such are the praises M. Renan gives his hero! Ah! we may
   now understand why Jesus, though silent when he was scourged, yet
   sighed when he received a certain kiss.

   If the Jesus invented by M. Renan was a mocker and a railer, one need
   not be surprised at the discovery that he was vain: wit and vanity are
   so nearly allied. Thus, according to Renan, he willingly allowed men to
   give him a qualification which did not belong to him; he even acted a
   part! His historian informs us that when the title of Messiah, or of
   Son of David, was given to him, he accepted it with pleasure. (Pp. 238,
   132.) If a miracle-monger sought to make capital for himself out of the
   popular credulity, "Jesus saw in this a homage paid to his own renown,
   and was not, therefore, too severe." (P. 295.) One day his friends went
   even so far as to get up the farce of a resurrection, and Jesus
   consented to play his part in it. (P. 363.)

   In order, however, that this assumed character of miracle-worker may be
   invested with more likelihood, we are told that Jesus took it
   unwillingly, (p. 264,) and even in spite of himself. (P. 268.)
   "Sometimes Jesus made use of innocent artifices. . . . He pretended to
   know some secret respecting the person he wished to gain over to his
   side. . . . Concealing the real source of his power, he allowed it to
   be thought. . . . that a revelation from above revealed secrets to
   him." (P. 162.) "It was by a contradiction that the success of his work
   was insured." (P. 126.)

   Better still, with somewhat of irony, M. Renan makes us feel that if we
   resolve on being more sincere than Jesus we shall miss the end which he
   attained. "Let us continue," says he, with the subtlety he ascribes to
   another, "let us continue to admire the morality of the Gospel; let us
   suppress from our religious instructions the delusion which was the
   soul of it; but let us not suppose that the world is to be moved by the
   simple ideas of individual happiness or morality. The idea of Jesus
   must be taken as a whole, without those timid suppressions which take
   away from it precisely that which make it efficacious in the
   regeneration of humanity." (P. 125.) And so, a delusion regenerated
   humanity! Let us pass on, however: the above is our author's opinion,
   and it is perfectly natural that he should have attributed it to his
   hero.

   But may not M. Renan, who approves the use of these flexible laws of
   truth, and ascribes it to Jesus, have used them himself? May he not
   have done in his book what Jesus is said to have practiced in his work?
   May he not himself also have employed this irony, this subtlety, this
   railing, and this transcendent scorn? We are all the more authorized to
   believe so, not only because in principle he approves of this supple
   truth, but also because he avows his determination to make use of it.
   In his Preface, speaking of the historical documents which may prove
   not to be in perfect agreement with each other, M. Renan tells us that
   "they must be gently enticed, so as to bring them together." (P. lvi.)
   Here is indeed our critic's great secret: an enticing of texts, so that
   they may be brought to say what he desires. [21] We shall soon see him
   at this subterranean work. Will he entice the texts in favor of Jesus,
   or to his disadvantage? What has preceded may have aroused our
   suspicions: these suspicions will be confirmed by facts. It is simply
   natural that a writer who extols Oriental insincerity, and even
   ascribes it to genius, should make use of it himself against his
   adversary Jesus Christ.

   III.

   We all know the story of that poor widow who, lacking the very
   necessaries of life, nevertheless casts into the treasury the two mites
   which are all that remain to her; and we all think, with Jesus, that
   inasmuch as this woman has given all "her living," she has done more
   than the rich, who, in spite of their large gifts, have only given of
   their abundance. Well, we are all mistaken; and M. Renan, by his
   process of "enticement," learns from the narrative that the intention
   of Jesus was "to extol the poor who gave little, and to humble the rich
   who gave much." (P. 339.)

   Again, we all know the parable of the rich man who, clothed in purple,
   and living sumptuously every day, leaves Lazarus at his gate to die of
   sickness and hunger. We have all felt that the lesson to be learned is
   in the contrast between selfish opulence and resigned poverty. Our able
   critic has seen neither this selfishness nor this resignation: by
   "gently enticing" the text he makes it portray, not a bad rich man, but
   simply a rich man without the badness. [22]

   The design of this is, that Jesus may be suspected of loving the poor
   better than the rich, and therefore suspected of communism by readers
   who are more or less wealthy.

   The Gospels acquaint us with two facts concerning John the Baptist
   which, if made to be contemporaneous, would be contradictory, but
   which, if placed under their several dates, harmonize with each other.
   At the commencement of his ministry the Precursor places himself below
   Jesus; but toward the close of his life John sends two of his disciples
   with the question, "Art thou he that should come?" What does M. Renan?
   He treats them as contemporaneous, and charges the first statement with
   exaggeration, in order to give the more weight to the second, in which
   John expresses his doubts respecting Jesus. (P. 202.)

   Elsewhere M. Renan is anxious to eliminate from the Gospel the central
   idea on which the Christian doctrine rests; namely, redemption. For
   this purpose he examines the texts which bear upon the Lord's Supper,
   the emblem of his expiatory death. Our author, in the first place,
   gratuitously supposes that "Jesus was fond of the opportunity afforded
   at meal-times for taking the lead in light and pleasant conversation.
   Sharing the same loaf in common was considered as a sort of fellowship.
   In giving expression to his thought Jesus said to his disciples, I am
   your food; that is, my flesh is your bread, my blood is your
   wine. . . . Then he would further say, This is my body; this is my
   blood." (Pp. 303, 304.)

   Is not this an admirable use of texts? First, ordinary meals are
   supposed; then the bread which is common to all becomes the type of
   communion; then, as the third supposition, Jesus is led from this to
   represent himself as the food of his disciples. Then the word "food,"
   which is introduced in the supper by M. Renan, gives place to the
   phrases, "This is my body," "This is my blood;" and so, thanks to a
   series of "enticements," a unique fact--the great fact of the Last
   Supper--is transformed into a common habit Jesus had acquired. It is no
   more than one of the pleasant dinner parties of which Jesus was so
   fond! Hence, to make this "enticement" all the more easy, great care is
   taken to suppress the words, "With desire I have desired to eat this
   passover with you before I suffer;" and, "My blood, which is shed for
   you." Is there, then, so much pleasantness in conversing about one's
   sufferings, and the announcement of one's own death? Yet it is in these
   very words, "I have desired," that M. Renan sees the proof that "Jesus
   was fond of these dinner parties!" [23]

   *****

   When there can be no question as to the nature of the love felt for
   Jesus--as, for instance, when it is the love of the disciples in
   general, and not that of a few women in particular--the means are still
   found of falsifying the truth by a clever trick. It is well known that
   Jesus offered salvation to the repenting sinner. M. Renan alters this,
   and says, "This charming doctor forgave every one who loved him." (P.
   219.) After having thus parodied a doctrine which leads through
   repentance to holiness, into a feeling which much resembles egotism, M.
   Renan reduces the model disciples of Jesus to very nearly the standard
   of children. "Jesus," he says, "almost confounds the idea of the
   disciple with that of the child. . . . He who is humble as this little
   one, is greatest in the kingdom of heaven." (P. 192.) According to the
   words of Jesus, it is not the child as such, but his humility, which is
   held up as an example. Has our clever critic found out that humility is
   almost the whole of childhood?

   After all these insinuations, Jesus is represented as "making progress
   in his fanaticism." We, on the contrary, see M. Renan progressing in
   his recklessness. Gathering strength from the past achievements of his
   pen, he advances more boldly in his accusations, and he does not
   hesitate to say, "By detaching man from the earth, his life was
   shattered. The Christian henceforth is to receive praise for being a
   bad son and a bad citizen, provided it be for Christ's sake that he
   resists his parents and opposes his country." (P. 314.) Surely if a
   mere man, especially if a wicked man, were to demand obedience to his
   commands to the neglect of the righteous laws of a father or of a
   monarch, we should refuse it. Does M. Renan forget that Jesus claims to
   be the only Son of a God who cannot command that which is wrong? or
   does he maintain that a son or a subject must, under any circumstances,
   obey his father or his king? Was Salome right, then, when in obedience
   to her mother she asked for the head of John the Baptist? Was Nero's
   slave right when, by the emperor's orders, he stabbed Agrippina? Is not
   the moral law within us above that of a father and of a monarch? Is it
   necessary to violate conscience in order to be a good son or a good
   citizen? M. Renan dares not say so; but here, as elsewhere, in order to
   justify his opposition to Jesus, he begins by assuming, without proof,
   that this Jesus is not the Christ, the Son of God.

   M. Renan rejects no means of assault upon the work of Jesus. Anxious to
   set aside the prediction of the ruin of Jerusalem, he is content to say
   that Jesus guessed it, forgetting that in his Introduction (p. xvii) he
   had declared the Gospel of Luke to be posterior to the siege of that
   city, for the sole reason that the details of the catastrophe are too
   minute. Thus, at one time the prophecy is correct, but then it is only
   a guess; while at another time it is a fraud written after the event.

   At page 343 we find another contradiction. Jesus seeks
   misunderstandings, and designedly prolongs them; then, in a note, the
   author questions the authenticity of the passage. If the passage be not
   authentic, this search after misunderstandings never took place, and
   the wiser course in this state of doubtfulness would have been to set
   aside both the note and the explanation. The able critic, on the
   contrary, extracts from the whole two accusations: he quotes the
   passage from the sacred text in order to accuse Jesus of a want of
   straightforwardness; then he questions the authenticity of the
   quotation in order to discredit the book from which it is made. Thus a
   word which may not have been spoken becomes a two-edged sword, striking
   in turn both Jesus and the Gospels!

   We proceed to another piece of skill. Jesus, describing those who in
   his day had the courage to brave persecution by declaring themselves
   his disciples, and the strength to conquer their lusts by remaining
   pure in the midst of the general corruption, calls them violent men;
   that is, characterized by a spiritual violence used against themselves,
   thereby conquering the fear of a persecuting world and the passions of
   a sinful nature.

   M. Renan, who is on the alert to catch every expression that may bear a
   double meaning, pauses at this one. In this moral violence done to
   one's self he sees a physical violence done to an adversary; and the
   following are the terms in which he falsifies the meaning of Jesus:
   "The kingdom of God cannot be conquered without violence; it is by
   means of crises and upheavings that it must be established." (P. 237.)

   Truly; but with this difference, that Jesus speaks of a moral violence
   done by Christians to themselves, while what is substituted for this is
   a brutal violence done by the same Christians to their adversaries. It
   is not one and the same thing to slay one's passions and to kill one's
   brother!

   After having dethroned Jesus, our author is busy with overturning his
   friends, and, in particular, the Apostle whom Jesus loved. M. Renan
   thinks that St. John was jealous of Peter, and hated Judas. (P. 381,
   etc.)

   On the other hand, he almost justifies the judges who condemned the
   Saviour; "for," says he, "the proceedings which the priests resolved to
   take against Jesus were quite conformable to the established law," (p.
   393,) "and from the Jewish point of view Jesus was certainly a
   blasphemer." (P. 397.) Elsewhere M. Renan excuses Pilate, who, says he,
   "could hardly help doing what he did." (P. 410.) Finally, O gentleness
   of criticism! we find pity, even almost to tears, for Judas! He is
   called "poor Judas!" He is found guilty only of "having had his head
   turned by the foolish coveting of a few pieces of silver," and the
   attempt is made to absolve him on the ground of his repentance:
   "Judas," we are told, "does not seem quite to have lost all moral
   sense, since . . . he repented." M. Renan's proof of this is that the
   guilty man committed suicide! (P. 382.) "Perhaps, too," he adds, "the
   fearful hatred with which he was looked upon may have led to acts of
   violence in which the hand of God was seen." (P. 438.) The meaning of
   this is, that probably Judas was murdered by the Christians! Let it be
   admitted, then, that a suicide which was not committed cannot prove his
   repentance. But enough. The multiplication of examples would be
   irksome: those we have given are sufficient for our purpose.

   It must be borne in mind that our aim has not been to analyze M.
   Renan's book, but simply to judge of what amount of confidence we are
   warranted to repose in him as our guide in the study of the life of
   Jesus. At first sight we recognize the author as hostile to his hero,
   weakening the authority of the Gospels, denying a priori Christ's
   miracles, falsifying texts in order to tarnish his character, praising
   his adversaries, and at the same time paying him equivocal compliments
   of little moment, but serving to weaken the blows struck, and to
   prevent the martyr's friends from crying out.

   Every one may now judge for himself whether this guide suits him or
   not. For ourselves, what we have seen of him is enough, and we prefer
   to walk alone rather than to give our hand to him who wishes to lead us
   astray.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [21] By this method we undertake to make oui (yes) mean non (no). Do
   our readers doubt it? Listen. First of all, it is a simple fact that
   oui and non are nearly related: oui is a monosyllable, non is a
   monosyllable; oui has three letters, non has also three letters: oui
   contains an o, non also contains an o. Do not be surprised that oui
   should have a u, and non an n. Do you not see that u is only n upside
   down? If there are two n's in non (no) it is simply the same letter
   doubled; and if there is an i in oui (yes,) the Greeks will tell you
   that it must be an iota subscribed. You see then, by "gently enticing"
   it, no (non) means yes (oui.)

   [22] In order to a complete analysis too many details are necessary.
   Our author has the art of sheltering himself behind the letter: his
   real purpose is discovered only in the spirit of his book. Thus, in his
   exposition of this parable, he says, "He [the rich man] is in hell
   because he is rich; because he does not give his property to the poor;
   because he dines well, while others at his gate dine poorly." And,
   indeed, what great harm is there in dining well, while others starve?
   Ah! if we were poor we might understand it better. Specially so, if the
   hard contrast between such luxury and misery, good living and sores,
   lasted our whole life-time, and if, every day, we were refused the
   crumbs given in preference to the dogs!

   [23] A passage is here omitted in which Renan is shown to make
   insinuations against the character of our Lord so offensive and
   revolting that they cannot be reproduced in English without shocking
   the feelings of our readers beyond endurance. Well may M. Roussel say:
   "Let us draw the vail before these horrible insinuations, whose very
   timidity discloses a dread of wounding the public sentiment, and is a
   better proof of the hero's holiness than of the historian's
   moderation."
     __________________________________________________________________

  THE

CHRIST OF THE GOSPELS.

   IN beginning the study of the life of Jesus we asked ourselves if we
   should take M. Renan for our guide: we have seen what amount of
   confidence his work is entitled to receive.

   Whom, then, shall we follow, if we forsake so learned a guide? No one.
   We will go at once to the source, to the Gospels themselves, for it is
   there that all commentators are finally constrained to return.' We will
   consult the books written by the immediate disciples of the Lord;
   first, to ascertain what were their Master's moral principles, and how
   he practiced them; and then we will proceed with the examination both
   of the precepts and the conduct of Jesus in the matter of truthfulness.

   What, then, are the moral principles of Jesus Christ? And first, what
   are his principles on the subject of veracity? Is man, in this matter,
   entitled to the use of different weights and measures, according as he.
   lives in the East or in the West? Is he at liberty to regulate himself
   by the rule of honesty adopted by his race and the age in which he
   lives? Does Jesus know any thing of the theory of Oriental sincerity?
   Does he admit that the end justifies the means? Will he say, with M.
   Renan, "There exists no broad foundation which is not laid in legends.
   The only guilty party is the humanity which desires to be deceived?"
   Will he allow the concealments and the mental reservations which are
   sanctioned by that too notorious society which bears too beautiful a
   name? [24] In a word, will Jesus authorize divers sorts of
   truthfulness, divers kinds of convenient affirmations? No. Jesus has
   but one word for all. His rule is admirably simple; it is a golden
   rule, a divine rule, a rule we may challenge all the philosophers to
   surpass or even to equal: "Let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay,
   nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil." Noble and
   impressive maxim, which bears in itself the seal of its divinity!

   But did Jesus obey this precept of perfect integrity? Yes; always and
   every-where. Follow him from Jerusalem to Gethsemane, and from
   Gethsemane to the Sanhedrim, you will find him perfectly calm and
   truthful. Whether it be necessary to assert his divine mission or to
   brave a danger, he does both with the same simplicity. "Who is the Son
   of God, that I might believe on him?" asks the man born blind. "It is
   he that talketh with thee," answers Jesus. The soldiers search for him
   in the garden, that they may take him before the tribunal: he comes to
   meet them, and says, "I am he." "Art thou the Son of God?" ask the
   priests who seek to crucify him. "You have said," he replies, "I am."
   "Art thou a king, then?" asks Pilate. Again Jesus replies, "I am."
   Neither hope nor fear, neither honor nor shame, can alter his word: it
   is ever his own, "Yea, yea." If there be one conviction stronger than
   any other forced upon the reader of the Gospels, it is this: when Jesus
   speaks he has no after-thought; he speaks the truth, the whole truth.
   Unbelievers may accuse him of prejudice, of ignorance, of
   provincialism, but never of falsehood; and when an adversary does so.
   he rouses against himself a public opinion which is otherwise very
   indulgent: a striking proof, this, that there exists in the world the
   firm conviction that Jesus was incapable of knowingly altering truth.

   What conclusion are we to draw from this? Not that Jesus was the Son of
   God, but that he believed himself to be so. Whatever else may be
   questioned, his sincerity must not be doubted: he said often, and in
   many ways, I am the Son of God. Let it be confessed that he believed he
   spoke the truth. Jesus, then, either was the Son of God or else he was
   a madman! There is no other alternative. But how are we to reconcile
   this madness with these calm words, these profound thoughts, these
   humble sentiments, this pure and holy life? A madman may believe
   himself to be a god, but can a madman transform a world? Was it
   possible for a madman to conceive the soundest of moral systems, and
   specially to live consistently with the principles of this morality? Is
   it likely that a madman could be so wise as to surpass all mankind in
   virtue, and that his insanity should only be seen in the name he
   assumes? No; M. Renan himself has said it: "If the madman walks side by
   side with the inspired man, it is with this difference, that the madman
   never succeeds." If, therefore, the success of a moral enterprise be
   the test of wisdom, who was ever wise as Jesus Christ?

   Already we may say, Jesus made it a rule to be absolutely truthful;
   Jesus was faithful to his precept, as M. Renan is to his: and judging
   them both on this common basis, we may rightfully add, Jesus, in
   declaring that he was God's only begotten Son, proclaimed a pure and
   simple truth.

   We are not, however, anxious to conclude. We wish, before we do so, to
   exhibit the moral doctrines of Jesus on some important points, and then
   to compare his life with the principles he himself laid down. We shall
   then be better able to judge whether the word of Christ deserves our
   belief or not.

   Among the rules of conduct taught by Jesus upon earth, we seek those
   which are peculiarly his own. We say nothing, therefore, about honesty
   in our social relationships, or purity of morals, or almsgiving, or
   hospitality. These principles, if not practiced, at least were known
   before Jesus came into the world. That which we shall point out as an
   essentially Christian virtue is humility. Surely there is no one else
   who claims to be the inventor of this! Neither in ancient nor in modern
   times has humility been held to be worthy of much attention, much less
   worthy of praise. In our natural pride, or, should a less distasteful
   phrase be preferred, in our human dignity, we have never much
   appreciated the bliss of self-abasement. Our common tendency is rather
   to exaggerate our own worth, and to seek our own honor. And we think no
   one will claim the discovery of humility for any besides Jesus Christ.
   He alone said to his disciples, "Be humble as this little child.
   Whosoever will be greatest among you, let him be your servant. God
   exalts the humble, and abases the proud."

   This is the first moral principle of Jesus. Did he practice it? In
   proof that he did, although from the Christian point of view it would
   be allowable, yet we will not instance his obscure birth, the manger at
   Bethlehem, the workshop at Nazareth, his death on the cross. No: we
   might be told in reply that Jesus, a mere man, had no choice either
   with respect to his cradle or his grave. The proof we give we find in
   the positions he himself chose. He sits at table with the poorest and
   the most despised of the people; he washes his disciples' feet; he
   declares himself meek and lowly in heart; he spends his nights in the
   mountains without troubling himself to procure a place where he may lay
   his head; he refuses a crown offered to him by the people; and after
   having refused a throne, he accepts that cross so ignominious for him,
   but so blessed for the world. When did Jesus cease to be humble--he who
   always called himself Son of man, who called his followers little ones,
   and who pronounced "blessed" the mourners, the peace-makers, the
   merciful, and the persecuted?

   We insist no longer upon this point, for we do not suppose that any one
   will refuse to Jesus the glory of a virtue so little coveted! We are,
   therefore, content to leave this part of the subject by affirming, that
   he who first established humility in principle admirably illustrated it
   in practice. We would, nevertheless, say one thing more. Is not this
   humility, which no one covets for himself, yet desired in children and
   servants? Who would not be glad if his neighbors, his friends, his
   fellow-citizens, were humble in their relations to himself? What is the
   greatest obstacle to peace and order in the world? Is it not that
   pride, which is more insatiable than hunger and thirst? And should we
   not esteem it a great blessing if this pride could be extirpated from
   the bosom of humanity, without doing damage to our individual claims?
   Yea, doubtless. We approve of humility in a treatise on morals; we
   desire it in the family and in society; we may even, while talking
   about it, profess it for one's self; but in active life it is quite
   another thing: in a word, we desire humility for all save in ourselves;
   fresh proof, therefore, that Jesus, who not only proclaimed it, but
   lived it, was superior to our race, puffed up as it is with pride and
   vanity. We measure the true greatness of Jesus by his voluntary
   humility.

   The last proof of humility afforded by the life of Jesus, namely, his
   voluntary death, leads us to the second moral principle which
   distinguishes his teaching--devotedness. He demands of his disciples
   that they should forsake all in order to follow him; that they should
   take up their cross, accept persecutions, and devote themselves, their
   goods, and their families, to the service of God and of their
   fellow-creatures. Doubtless this is an admirable principle, and one
   which all men accept in theory. In practice, however, it is very
   different. We admire the precept, Serve your brethren; but we practice
   the proverb, Every one for himself.

   What was the conduct of Jesus in this respect? Did he act consistently?
   We do not now say that he gave his life that our sins might be blotted
   out, and that he left heaven to come and teach us; no, we might be told
   that we must first prove that he really did come from heaven. No one,
   though looking upon Jesus as no more than a superior man, will deny his
   devotedness. If we may credit M. Renan, Jesus was a transcendent
   genius, and therefore able to win his way to the highest ranks of
   society, as so many others have done. On the contrary, he devoted
   himself entirely to the moral education of the people. In order to
   accomplish this task he accepted the conflict with the great, whom he
   unmasked; he incurred their hatred; he voluntarily submitted to the
   wrongs they did him, to their attacks and their calumnies. When, by a
   simple recantation, he might have avoided death, he was the first to
   say, I cannot do it! I am the Son of God. Under the lash and nailed to
   the cross, he never shrunk from the trial of suffering. It is
   unnecessary to describe his martyrdom, it is sufficiently well known;
   but this martyrdom was the most sublime devotedness! Thus, by choosing
   an obscure life, mostly spent in the streets, while he might have
   obtained a brilliant career, and have sat in the chair of Moses; by
   accepting death upon the scaffold when he could have placed himself
   under the protection of Pilate; by living on alms, teaching the people,
   exposing himself to scorn, having no prospect of worldly compensation
   either in the present or in the future, leaving behind him the memory
   of his name only in the recollections of a few poor men, many of whom
   probably could scarcely read or write; surely, in the presence of all
   these facts, it will not be credited that even the most discerning eye
   has discovered, in such a life, the secret and selfish motive which
   tarnishes this sublime self-denial!

   We now point out two other moral principles, which, though of less
   frequent application, are yet not the less striking. Jesus, in his
   sermon on the mount, had taught the forgiveness of injuries; and when
   Simon Peter asked him, "Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me,
   and I forgive him? until seven times?" the reply Jesus gave him was, "I
   say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven."
   He also said, "Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to
   him the other also."

   Such is the precept. Did Jesus follow it? Yes; and we venture to add
   that he went beyond the letter of the precept, and admirably fulfilled
   it in its spirit. A servant struck him on one cheek: did he turn the
   other? He did better: without retaliation or complaint, he instructed
   the man who thus insulted him by calmly answering, "If I have spoken
   evil, bear witness of the evil: but if well, why smitest thou me?" What
   dignity and sweetness is here! What a noble lesson! If ever in the
   course of our life-time we have been, like him, the victims of an
   undeserved and brutal assault, which flushed our cheeks and clenched
   our fists in resentment, did it occur to us to say, "If I have spoken
   evil, bear witness of the evil: but if well, why smitest thou me?"
   Alas! these are not the words which proceed from our poor humanity
   under its provocations. In this reply we have the loving spirit, not
   the dead letter, It is better than forgiveness; it is love, seeking to
   bring the guilty one to repentance.

   On another occasion, Jesus and his Apostles came to a certain village,
   where they were refused admission by the inhabitants. The Apostles,
   angry at this insult, asked Jesus to call down fire from heaven upon
   the guilty place. With his characteristic gentleness the Master
   replied, "Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. For the Son of
   man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them." Here we have
   the forgiveness of injuries, without pomp or ostentation.

   Lastly, Jesus proclaimed a principle which is as universally approved
   as it is rarely practiced; that, namely, of love for our enemies--"Love
   your enemies, bless them that curse you, and pray for them which
   persecute you." The precept is explicit. Did Jesus follow it? We shall
   judge for ourselves. At Gethsemane he rebukes his disciple who is
   anxious to avenge him. "Put up again," says he, "thy sword into his
   place: for all they that take the sword shall perish by the sword." At
   the gate of Jerusalem, he weeps over the fickle people who would not
   listen to them: "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the
   Prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I
   have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her
   chickens under her wings, and ye would not!" Though at liberty to
   defend himself, Jesus remains silent before his enraged foes, Caiaphas,
   Pilate, and Herod, who seek to entrap him, who insult and strike him.
   He might have retaliated, and the more so because he was prepared to
   die. A mere man would have afforded himself the satisfaction of
   confounding his unjust judges. No, Jesus keeps silence, and this
   silence reveals as much the calmness of his spirit as the gentleness of
   his heart.

   An arrest, however, is not an execution; mockings do not torture like
   bearing the cross; this does not lacerate like the nails. What will
   Jesus do when the soldiers, the priests, and the mob unite to abuse
   him, to laugh him to scorn, to pierce his hands, and to make him drink
   the cup of bitterness? What will he reply to the taunt of the
   infatuated crowd, the thieves, and the priests: "If thou be the son of
   God, come down from the cross. He saved others; himself he cannot save.
   He trusted in God; let him deliver him now, if he will have him?" Alas!
   we confess that had we been in his place we should have made a last
   great effort to come down; and, in our impotence, we should at least
   have given vent to our fury by throwing back their insults: "Cowards,
   who mock a condemned man to whose words you but lately listened with
   admiration! hypocrites, who should at this very hour be purifying
   yourselves, in the Temple, for the Passover, but who prefer to make
   yourselves impure by witnessing an execution! worthy sons are ye of
   your fathers, who in all ages have been executioners and murderers?"
   Was it thus Jesus spoke to his enemies? No; but addressing God and
   forgetting himself, he exclaims, "Father, forgive them, for they know
   not what they do!" To pray for those who tear your flesh, insult your
   agony, and rail at your devotedness; to excuse them even because of
   their ignorance--is not this to love your enemies, to bless them that
   curse you, and to pray for them that persecute you?

   Such is the saint whom a critic thinks he honors by transforming into
   his own image! such is the hero to whom are attributed a "transcendent
   scorn" and "subtle raillery," and who is styled "a master of irony!" Is
   it scorn that sparkles in this appeal: "Come unto me, all ye that labor
   and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest; learn of me, for I am
   meek and lowly in heart?" Is it derision that we find in these words to
   the Apostles: "I call you no more servants, but friends: love one
   another, as I have loved you?" Is there any subtle railing in the
   prayer: "Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name; Thy
   kingdom come: Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven?" Ah, if
   scorn, mockery, and irony are to be found any where, it is not in the
   Gospel of Jesus Christ, but in a book which lacks honesty, and
   dissembles its scorn and its railing under the appearances of respect
   and admiration; a book whose false praises sweeten the edges of a cup
   which is full of bitterness and poison.

   How deeply we feel that neither our own pen, nor that of any uninspired
   man, can ever worthily reproduce the character of Jesus Christ. After
   having so many times vainly attempted it, we despair of success. Have
   our readers, for instance, ever met with a head of Christ which has
   satisfied them? We never have. Artists and writers only give us
   magnified men. Nature furnishes no model which resembles Jesus. The
   most perfect of these are still essentially men. Alexander, Cesar,
   Napoleon, all have our passions, though we have not their genius. In
   Socrates and Plato we discover the germs of our weakness, though they
   are wiser than we. A St. Paul, an Augustine, and a Pascal, leave us far
   behind on the road to holiness; yet we recognize them, by means of
   their defects, as members of our poor human family; and even were we
   disposed to be too indulgent toward them, their own confessions are
   there to correct us. Thus, always and every-where, man remains
   essentially man.

   The Evangelists alone have made us conceive an ideal which no man,
   whether in his life or by his pen, has ever reproduced; and if, as we
   may well suppose, their picture is as far from the reality, as we are
   from their copy, what must not the living Christ have been? [25]

   Jesus resembles no other man; he speaks and acts as none of our kind
   ever spoke and acted. At first he surprises us, but as we contemplate
   him, our surprise changes into admiration. The more we examine, the
   more we discover in his words profound thoughts and lofty sentiments
   which, till then, had never entered our minds or our hearts. In the
   midst of his superior world and his superhuman atmosphere, Jesus lives
   and breathes as in his own element. There he moves freely, he speaks
   without effort; all is familiar to him--he is at home. Heaven is his
   country, holiness is his nature, eternity is his life. He does not
   demonstrate, as we mere men are obliged to do, who have no right to be
   believed on our simple assertions; he speaks like a God, whose word is
   law. Nothing embarrasses him; he speaks of heaven and hell, life and
   death, the judgment and eternity, as of things he has seen, and which
   belong to his domain. His constant thought is about the kingdom of God,
   and he is solely occupied with the will of his Father, and the
   sanctification of humanity. His feet scarcely touch the earth, his
   heart is ever in heaven. We feel that he is a stranger to the petty
   affairs of this world; even the functions of a secular judge are
   beneath him; possibly his hand was never soiled by contact with money.
   He is simple and humble, but grave. He never utters a jesting word, not
   even a useless one; nor does he ever speak in order to display his
   intellectual superiority. And as a last noteworthy feature, Jesus
   certainly wept; but we do not learn that he ever laughed. Yet he never
   forgot his disciples, nor ever lost sight of the most remote
   generations of sinners that were to come after him. His thoughts, like
   his love, embrace the universe. Surely, this is the Son of God!

   If now we pass from the words to the actions of Jesus, we are filled
   with the same admiration. It has been asserted that Jesus patronizes
   the poor and threatens the rich: it would be more truthful to say, that
   he takes no account of either poverty or riches; gold and stubble are
   of equal value to him. It is the spiritual condition of those who
   approach him which claims his attention. What he demands is not lofty
   thoughts or noble sentiments, but a moral condition which is possible
   to all. He asks for a heart which, though broken and contrite, yet
   expects every thing at his hands-healing grace, salvation, and eternal
   life. When Jesus performs miracles they do not astonish him: he is
   engaged in his own proper work, We may, indeed, reject them without
   examination; but when we honestly study them, we find it to be quite
   natural that the Son of God should work such miracles; specially since
   these miracles have nothing in common with the prodigies of a
   thaumaturgus, whose aim is to fascinate the eye and to mislead the
   imagination. The mighty works of Jesus are just what we might expect
   from a God who created and now sustains us: he gives food, health,
   life, forgiveness, to all who, in faith, lay their wants before him.
   Unbeliever, you are surprised, and you do not know what conclusion to
   draw from these miracles, but you dare not deny them. Be sincere, and
   confess that there is something in them beyond your apprehension.
   Believer, you are delighted. These miracles seem to you the natural
   operations of the Son of God. You learn from them that he gives
   comfort, healing, and forgiveness. He were not God did he act
   otherwise. Let but Jesus speak, and your attention is redoubled. His
   maxims, by penetrating into your spirit, give you light: the more you
   study them, the more you find them beautiful and brilliant with the
   light of truth. They are like the starry heavens, which reveal to your
   earnest gaze new depths, filled with new lights, of which even the most
   dim are clear. Moreover, that which removes from you the fear of
   delusion, is the fact that all these marvels have, as their end and
   aim, not the satisfaction of your curiosity, but the purification of
   your heart, the raising of your mind, and the kindling of your
   devotion. Yes; this is the test by which we prove the pure gold of the
   character of Jesus Christ. It is not possible to contemplate him
   without moral gain. The glow of life is communicated from him to us: it
   pervades our being, it blesses and sanctifies us. Jesus is the
   spiritual Sun that warms and vivifies our souls. No one but a God can
   make us thus at once better and happier.

   We know that all we have said reposes on the authenticity of the
   Gospels and on the historic fidelity of their narratives. We also know
   that M. Renan, who admits in general this authenticity and this
   fidelity, nevertheless contradicts them in their details. We would
   observe that the authenticity of the Gospels is not at the mercy of any
   critic, whatever may be his ability. Christianity proves the purity of
   its root by the excellence of its fruits. If necessary, we might accept
   the invalidation of the Gospels and of the miracles of Jesus; further
   still, we might grant that there is no proof of his resurrection, his
   ascension, and the inspiration of his Apostles: let every thing else be
   denied, yet we cannot deny what we see to-day. Three hundred millions
   of men acknowledge Jesus Christ, and the civilization of Christendom
   exceeds all others both in its extent and its depth. Pure morals; a
   mild legislation; the raising of woman to her true standard; the
   freedom of slaves; the relief of the sick, the helpless, and the poor;
   the brotherhood of nations--these are things before our very eyes, but
   only to be found in the Christian world. What we ask, therefore, is
   this: Do all these things exist without cause? Do they date from
   yesterday? If, in searching for their origin, we must go back to the
   first century of our era, shall we find them to have been spontaneous
   growths? Is this transformation without parentage? Did it spring from
   the previous moral rottenness? Let the divine mission of Jesus Christ,
   the gift of the Holy Spirit, and the existence of the miracles, be
   denied; will the void thus made better explain the immense results of
   which we are witnesses than do the evangelical histories? Is
   Christianity the offspring of a dream? Did it grow in a night? Did
   humanity wake up one morning and find it already established in the
   earth? Men are anxious to lessen the causes; but the smaller these are,
   the more astounding do the results become. By substituting feeble
   beginnings for great ones we do not destroy the miracle; on the
   contrary, we make it all the greater. To be rational, then, we must
   admit a Divine intervention; and this intervention restores to us again
   the existence of Jesus, his veracity, his miracles, and the whole train
   of proofs which had been before rejected.

   Thus, whatever may be affirmed or denied, actual facts cannot be
   overturned. The work of Christianity is before us, and the grandeur of
   its origin is proved both by its nature and its extent. Its sources may
   be many, but they must be Divine; for man, in his inability to change
   his own heart, never could have the power to transform the hearts and
   lives of twenty generations.

   It must be understood that we have not pretended, in this short sketch,
   to trace the entire life of Jesus Christ. To know that life we must
   read and study the New Testament. Our aim has been to show that the
   Jesus of the Gospels is not that of M. Renan. His Jesus is a compound
   of cunning and fanaticism; an imaginary being created for the amusement
   of novel-readers. The historic Jesus is quite another being;
   pre-eminently sincere, always calm, profound in his teaching, holy in
   his conduct, devoted both in life and death, and so much above the
   greatest men of every age, that we may well believe him when he says,
   and says again, "I am the Son of God."

THE END.
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   [24] The Jesuits.

   [25] It would be interesting to compare the style of the Evangelists
   with that of M. Renan. In the former we find simplicity and the
   complete absence of pretense. We have no epithets, no oratorical
   displays. We forget the writers. It is their hero we have before us,
   and, what is remarkable, the historian does not eulogize him, but
   allows us to form our own estimate from the facts themselves. If we
   except one or two words of St. John's, the four Evangelists have not
   written a line which reveals any purpose besides that of writing a
   history. There is no attempt to make the readers proselytes to a cause
   or a doctrine. In M. Renan's work all this is reversed. One perceives
   that the principal thing kept in view is the literary character of the
   book. The style takes precedence of the facts; elegance is the author's
   highest ambition. He seems to have imposed upon himself the rule not to
   write like any other man. All the turns of phrase, all the expressions,
   aim at the picturesque and the novel. Wit, cleverness, mental
   reservation, the art of forcing a secret conclusion upon the conclusion
   which is expressed, and of discrediting the cause which in appearance
   is defended--such is M. Renan's task. But clever persons sometimes do a
   work which disappoints them. "The Life of Jesus" has cost its author
   more moral discredit than all his previous works have obtained for him
   of literary renown. After eighteen centuries the Gospel is being
   diffused still; after three months M. Renan's book has materially lost
   in public opinion. M. Scherer, who on the appearance of the work
   predicted on its behalf a success so great that it would be felt even
   by those who never heard of it, three months later is obliged to
   recognize that it has attracted only the curious, and summarizes the
   well-founded objections made to it thus: 1. M. Renan has judged a moral
   work in the spirit of a mere artist. 2. He has virtually denied the
   integrity and the purity of Jesus Christ. 3. He has falsified his
   character by making of an admirable teacher an unnatural
   colossus.--Vide Le Temps, September 29, 1863.
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                                    Indexes
     __________________________________________________________________

Index of Scripture References

   Daniel

   [1]7:13   [2]7:13   [3]7:14

   Matthew

   [4]5:1   [5]6:12   [6]7:4   [7]12:16   [8]12:16-20   [9]12:39
   [10]13:58   [11]14:23   [12]17:20   [13]22:30

   Mark

   [14]6:5   [15]7:37   [16]8:30

   Luke

   [17]6:12   [18]9:21   [19]12:49   [20]12:50   [21]15:31   [22]16:31

   John

   [23]7:34

   Acts

   [24]4:32
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Index of Latin Words and Phrases

     * à priori: [25]1 [26]2
     * a priori: [27]1
     * ignis fatuus: [28]1
     * ipse dixit: [29]1
     * litterati: [30]1
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Index of Pages of the Print Edition

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     __________________________________________________________________

            This document is from the Christian Classics Ethereal
               Library at Calvin College, http://www.ccel.org,
                   generated on demand from ThML source.

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