CHAPTER I.

PRELIMINARY GENERAL VIEWS.

THE medium through which the teaching of Christ is presented to the world, is very singular in its character. His disciples can not appeal to any work from the hands of their Master, constructed for the purpose of giving a full and systematic exposition of his doctrines. Nor did the Master, in default of such a work from his own hand, select for this high task one of the most gifted of those who were attached to his person, and prepare him, by a special course of instruction for accomplishing the task with success. The Arabian prophet committed, to writings dictated by himself, those views which he wished should be connected with his name. The writings of Epictetus, Seneca, and the later Stoics, yet extant, contain a full exhibition of the ethical and divine philosophy of that remarkable school. Socrates has found historians 92and expositors of his peculiar teaching in two of the most accomplished and able of his disciples, Plato and Xenophon. Even the Chinese patriarch, Confucius, who lived long prior to the captivity of the Jews in Babylon, left in his own writings—if the opinion of competent scholars may be relied on—an authentic account of the principles and laws which he sought to establish among his countrymen. But there is no book by Christ himself, or by any of his disciples, devoted to a formal and extended exposition of his personal teaching. Our knowledge of this must be gathered from a few set discourses and a few parables, from private conversations, and from incidental remarks, which discourses, and parables, and conversations, and remarks are scattered, manifestly without any rigid regard to order, over the narrative of a life, itself full of intense interest. This narrative, again, is presented in four different parts, by four different hands, at different periods. Each of these parts, as might be expected, contains much which is also found in the others; and if all the repetitions were expunged, the entire record of Christ’s life would be reduced to a few pages. Within this small compass, and forming only a little part of it, lie the whole of the materials which make up the only account which has come down to us of the substance of Christ’s personal teaching.

It is not to be expected, under all these disadvantages, 93that a ministry extending over no more than three years, can have sent down to the world a legacy of spiritual truth at all to be compared with what the world has received from other quarters. Such an expectation is the very last which could enter the mind of one who should look into the Gospels for the first time, without prepossession and without previous information. What can a mere youth, a poor, uneducated, inexperienced and friendless Gallilean mechanic, have said to the world which deserved the world’s attention? Let us hear! if with caution, also with impartiality.

It must be distinctly understood in the outset that whatever spiritual truths are taught in the Gospels, their authorship shall here be attributed without scruple to Jesus of Nazareth. It was intimated at the earlier stage of this investigation that there was incomparably greater difficulty in supposing that the Christ of the Gospels was an ideal creation, existing nowhere but in the minds of such men as the Evangelists, than in supposing that they had only represented a real living being, and were able to represent him in the manner they have done, because they had actually seen him. The argument is the same in kind, which we now apply to a particular department in the life of Christ. It is every way more natural and less difficult to conceive that such men as the Evangelists were, merely record what they had actually heard 94from the lips of Jesus, than to imagine that the ideas which they express were the growth of their own minds. It may be assumed, as beyond any reasonable doubt, that the fountain of all the spiritual truths contained in the Gospels was the mind of Jesus Christ

What, then, are the spiritual truths which are clearly and undeniably taught in the Gospels? Without attaching importance to every word and every occasional expression, without straining and forcing the language, and contending for all which it might be possible to prove lies in it, we seek now to give prominence only to so much as, it can not be doubted by any dispassionate reader, it contains.

We enter on this investigation with a feeling of deep solemnity and with conscious singleness of purpose, seeking not to exaggerate in any thing, but rather to understate the results of impartial inquiry, and desirous that whatever is here asserted, respecting the substance of Christ’s teaching, should be severely tested by an appeal to the Gospels themselves.

It could serve no good purpose to notice all the subjects of secondary importance on which the mind of Christ may have been incidentally express.: ed. His views of civil society, of the relative duties of rulers and subjects, of poverty and wealth, and of the two conditions of human beings represented 95by these opposite names his counsels, marked by deep sagacity and unbending principle, uttered in many various circumstances, addressed to his disciples, to single individuals, or to classes of persons his inculcation of duties religious, civil, social, personal his faithful warnings to the unthinking, the insincere, the vicious his words of sympathy and consolation to the afflicted and desponding—all these may be passed by without injury to our argument. Leaving them, therefore, we shall attempt to produce, as faithfully and succinctly as we can,

A SUMMARY OF CHRIST’S TEACHING.

One who for the first time should intelligently examine the Christian Gospels, could not fail to be struck with the idea manifestly underlying their whole extent, and often lifted up into singular prominence, of a Universal Spiritual Reign, by the name of “the kingdom (or reign) of God”—“the kingdom (or reign) of heaven.” Such a man would certainly reach the conviction that Jesus taught in a very unpretending, but at the same time a very intelligible manner that the human race, without distinction of Gentile and Jew, were destined to the highest spiritual elevation, of which their nature and their condition on earth admitted. The noticeable fact is, that the youthful Galilean carpenter 96was alone in this teaching, and that no other mind before had risen to such views of the destiny of man on earth. Eighteen hundred years ago this divine thought first became a living word among men, and it has never perished since, and the world at this day is only laboring to work out the old idea of the Gospels. Conflicting theories of human progress—of the emancipation of man’s intellect and heart—of his deliverance from ignorance, error, vice, and suffering—and of the advancement of knowledge and freedom, and individual and social happiness—find their root here. The first conception is due to the mind of Jesus Christ, and in his teaching, the conception is presented, not vaguely and confusedly, but with luminous precision. It is the reign of God in men, when the Father of minds shall be known, loved, and revered by his children. It is the reign of righteousness, purity, truth, love, and peace, the universal reception and dominion among men of all true, just, holy, generous and divine principles. It is the highest stage of religious, moral, intellectual, social, and individual cultivation. It is the noblest development possible on this earth of all the attributes and capabilities of humanity. It is spiritual victory after the battle of thousands of ages. It is the triumph of good and of God over moral and physical evil! The idea originated with Christ, was matured in his mind, and was freely imparted in his teaching. His soul, during its sojourn 97below, bestowed this imperishable thought and kindled this inextinguishable hope. He first cast this immortal germ, “the seed of the kingdom,” into the bosom of the earth: what produce it shall yield, the world is yet waiting to behold.

The doctrine of an universal spiritual reign opens to us another with which it stands closely connected. It is this, that the great battle of the world and of all time is with sin; not with suffering so much, as with that which is the cause of all suffering—with moral evil, the root and source of physical evil. The Christian Gospels are distinguished by the frequent and vivid representation of sin as a deep and deadly evil in the heart, as voluntary departure from rectitude, from purity, from truth, from love—in one word, from God, separation from Him in thought, affection, and will. Particular crimes—falsehood, impurity, revenge, avarice, ambition, and the like—are sometimes singled out for special reprehension; but, more frequently, the parent source of crime in all its forms is declared and exposed. The greatness of the evil stands out with appalling distinctness; its debasing and polluting nature also, and its plague-like power of self-propagation and perpetuation. In the teaching of Christ, sin is an undoubted and awful reality, the bitter cause of all that afflicts and crushes the world, the death of the human body, the perdition of the human soul.

The forgiveness of sin is as real in the Gospels, as its existence and its atrocity. The doctrine appears in a more expanded form in thee Apostolic Letters; and there its nature, its basis, and its limitations are stated with greater variety of language, and its different aspects are set forth by a multitude of figures borrowed from the ancient Jewish worship. But its importance and truth are clearly taught in the words of Christ. The nature of God, the perfections of his Being, and his relation to his earthly creatures, are so exhibited as to render forgiveness sure, and clear as sunlight. He who is true, and just, and holy, is also ineffably gracious: the burdened soul, crying for emancipation from evil, and trusting in God, has perfect assurance of pardon. The foundations of this fact yet wanted a flood of light which the Cross was to pour down upon them, and it was to be made yet more manifest how necessary and how glorious a thing God deemed it to be to forgive sin, and how intensely, how infinitely interested he was in this issue. Bat the certainty of forgiveness from God—unlimited and free forgiveness—was lifted up on high, one of the divinest lights in the public life of Jesus.

Pardon of sin—not as a doctrine merely, or even as an object of hope, but as an experience, a fact realized in the soul—supposes the reunion of man with God, and is the living germ of all spiritual excellence. The first necessity of man is the recognition 99of the highest of all his relations, his relation to God, the parent virtue is faith—faith in the being of God, in his character, and his government.

There arises the doctrine of Providence, connecting every moment of our earthly life, and every event with the Supreme Power, and with an invisible world. It is seen that there are vast spiritual laws which overspread and enwrap the universe; sin is death, holiness is salvation. These laws are in harmony with the will of God, but they are eternal and immutable in themselves; not arbitrary appointments, not originated by God, but founded in the unchangeable nature of things. These laws are what they are, by necessity, and never were, and never can be other than they are. Amid the sway of these eternal laws, guiding their administration and reigning supremely over all, is the great God. Spiritual providence is his government of the world, by these laws, and in the exercise of all his infinite attributes. It is universal, minute, unslumbering: it is wise, it is holy, it is merciful: it is for, not against, the good; always for the good, putting down evil, protecting, nourishing, helping every thing that is good; bringing forth the largest amount of good with the smallest admixture of evil. It is terrible only to evil, it invites to reliance and hope.

The doctrine of Prayer harmonizes with that of Providence. It rests on the fact of our dependence 100on God, on the belief of our intimate connection with the invisible world; and on the deep longing for spiritual communion which springs from the conviction, that God is to us the most real and the most near of all beings. Prayer is not an instrument for altering the purposes or moving the heart of God, or for procuring the suspension of the ordinary course of nature; but it is one of the natural modes in which piety utters itself—in which it wants, for its own sake, to utter itself It is a part of worship, one of the proper forthgoings of the created to the uncreated mind. True worship is within the soul. Whatever be its separate acts and its outward manifestations, its essence and its place are wholly spiritual. It is knowledge, veneration, trust, love.

Piety toward God is the basis of all moral excellence; and it is a noble pile of virtues which is erected on this basis, in the teaching of Jesus. Common and acknowledged excellences—integrity, truthfulness, purity, temperance, justice—find their due place here; but, in addition to these, there are elements either altogether or almost unknown elsewhere—humility, meekness, forgiveness, self-denial, love to enemies. It is not only taught here that we should love others as we love ourselves, and do to them as we would have them do to us, but it is inculcated that the reigning principle in the soul must be a universal and genuine 101good-will, a deep desire to produce happiness, to put down evil, and to do only good to every living being. Our enjoyments, possessions, and immediate interests—every thing except our piety and virtue—must yield to this spirit of love. No evil conduct in any being, no personal wrongs we may have suffered at his hands, must be allowed to extinguish the desire to bless even him. We are commanded to requite evil with good, and to love our enemies. Virtue is the burning and deep desire, cherished, in spite of every thing, to do only good; it is sacrifice and service for others. The life of Christ, his disciples assert—with what truth we may be better able hereafter to judge—was a perfect realization of his teaching, au extended act of sacrifice and service, the living image on earth of the invisible God. The Divine nature is love; eternal, infinite desire to spread blessedness. Jesus proclaims that human virtue in its foundation and its essence is represented by one word—love; love to God and to man; not a mere emotion, effeminate and enervating, a sign and a cause of weakness, but an enlightened, masculine, resolute and supreme regard to the rights of God, and to the true interests of our fellow beings. He proclaims that this is the end of rational existence, the dignity, strength, and joy of the rational nature. This end reached, man is Godlike, a partaker of Divine nature, recreated in the image of his Father.

Genuine, glowing, profound regard to God and to man is described as a Divine life in the human soul, an undying spark from the eternal fire, which, once enkindled, is never extinguished. The origin of the Divine life—its supports, conflicts, and varying manifestations—are all set forth with simplicity and power. Spiritual truth is shown to be the aliment of the spiritual nature, “living bread,” of which if a man eat he shall hunger no more; “living water,” of which if a man drink he shall thirst no more. Spiritual truth, understood, chosen, adopted into the soul, is the priceless good; it is blessedness, freedom, power, and wealth; it is pure, exalted, imperishable treasure.

It can not be overlooked, that we have here, in a new form, the idea which at first we found to be the most prominent in the Gospel—the idea of a reign of God in the soul of man. The working out of this idea, in one or other of its forms, occupied the entire personal ministry of Christ. He lived for this, and for this he died, not to promulgate only, or to predict, but actually to found, a reign of righteousness, purity, truth, love, and peace, a spiritual kingdom of God among men.

The rapid and condensed view of the teaching of Christ which has been presented, may be sufficient to help us to form a general conception of its character, but much more extended and particular acquaintance with it is required for the purpose 103which we contemplate here. It is necessary to enter largely into detail, and to examine separately and fully at least the leading subjects of Christ’s public ministrations. With this view, we now turn to the three great doctrines which are announced in the Gospels;—the doctrine of the Soul, the doctrine of God, and the doctrine of the Reconciliation of the Soul and God.