Phases of Faith Part 9

How quickly might I have come to my conclusion,--how much weary thought and useless labour might I have spared,--if at an earlier time this simple truth had been pressed upon me, that since the religious faculties of the poor and half-educated cannot investigate Historical and Literary questions, _therefore_ these questions cannot const.i.tute an essential part of Religion.--But perhaps I could not have gained this result by any abstract act of thought, from want of freedom to think: and there are advantages also in expanding slowly under great pressure, if one _can_ expand, and is not crushed by it.

I felt no convulsion of mind, no emptiness of soul, no inward practical change: but I knew that it would be said, this was only because the force of the old influence was as yet unspent, and that a gradual declension in the vitality of my religion must ensue. More than eight years have since past, and I feel I have now a right to contradict that statement. To any "Evangelical" I have a right to say, that while he has a _single_, I have a _double_ experience; and I know, that the spiritual fruits which he values, have no connection whatever with the complicated and elaborate creed, which his school imagines, and I once imagined, to be the roots out of which they are fed. That they depend directly on _the heart's belief in the sympathy of G.o.d with individual man_,[7] I am well a.s.sured: but that doctrine does not rest upon the Bible or upon Christianity; for it is a postulate, from which every Christian advocate is forced to start. If it be denied, he cannot take a step forward in his argument. He talks to men about Sin and Judgment to come, and the need of Salvation, and so proceeds to the Saviour. But his very first step,--the idea of Sin,--_a.s.sumes_ that G.o.d concerns himself with our actions, words, thoughts; _a.s.sumes_ therefore that sympathy of G.o.d with every man, which (it seems) can only be known by an infallible Bible.

I know that many Evangelicals will reply, that I never can have had "the true" faith; else I could never have lost it: and as for my not being conscious of spiritual change, they will accept this as confirming their a.s.sertion. Undoubtedly I cannot prove that I ever felt as they now feel: perhaps they love their present opinions _more than_ truth, and are careless to examine and verify them; with that I claim no fellows.h.i.+p. But there are Christians, and Evangelical Christians, of another stamp, who love their creed, _only_ because they believe it to be true, but love truth, as such, and truthfulness, more than any creed: with these I claim fellows.h.i.+p. Their love to G.o.d and man, their allegiance to righteousness and true holiness, will not be in suspense and liable to be overturned by new discoveries in geology and in ancient inscriptions, or by improved criticism of texts and of history, nor have they any imaginable interest in thwarting the advance of scholars.h.i.+p. It is strange indeed to undervalue _that_ Faith, which alone is purely moral and spiritual, alone rests on a basis that cannot be shaken, alone lifts the possessor above the conflicts of erudition, and makes it impossible for him to fear the increase of knowledge.

I fully expected that reviewers and opponents from the evangelical school would laboriously insinuate or a.s.sert, that I _never was_ a Christian and do not understand anything about Christianity spiritually. My expectations have been more than fulfilled; and the course which my a.s.sailants have taken leads me to add some topics to the last paragraph. I say then, that if I had been slain at the age of twenty-seven, when I was chased[8] by a mob of infuriated Mussulmans for selling New Testaments, they would have trumpeted me as an eminent saint and martyr. I add, that many circ.u.mstances within easy possibility might have led to my being engaged as an official teacher of a congregation at the usual age, which would in all probability have arrested my intellectual development, and have stereotyped my creed for many a long year; and then also they would have acknowledged me as a Christian. A little more stupidity, a little more worldliness, a little more mental dishonesty in me, or perhaps a little more kindness and management in others, would have kept me in my old state, which was acknowledged and would still be acknowledged as Christian.

To try to disown me now, is an impotent superciliousness.

At the same time, I confess to several moral changes, as the result of this change in my creed, the princ.i.p.al of which are the following.

1. I have found that my old belief narrowed my affections. It taught me to bestow peculiar love on "the people of G.o.d," and it a.s.signed an intellectual creed as one essential mark of this people. That creed may be made more or less stringent; but when driven to its minimum, it includes a recognition of the historical proposition, that "the Jewish teacher Jesus fulfilled the conditions requisite to const.i.tute him the Messiah of the ancient Hebrew prophets." This proposition has been rejected by very many thoughtful and sincere men in England, and by tens of thousands in France, Germany, Italy, Spain. To judge rightly about it, is necessarily a problem of literary criticism; which has both to interpret the Old Scriptures and to establish how much of the biography of Jesus in the New is credible. To judge wrongly about it, may prove one to be a bad critic but not a less good and less pious man. Yet my old creed enacted an affirmative result of this historical inquiry, as a test of one's spiritual state, and ordered me to think harshly of men like Marcus Aurelius and Lessing, because they did not adopt the conclusion which the professedly uncritical have established. It possessed me with a general gloom concerning Mohammedans and Pagans, and involved the whole course of history and prospects of futurity in a painful darkness from which I am relieved.

2. Its theory was one of selfishness. That is, it inculcated that my first business must be, to save my soul from future punishment, and to attain future happiness; and it bade me to chide myself, when I thought of nothing but about doing present duty and blessing G.o.d for present enjoyment.

In point of fact, I never did look much to futurity, nor even in prospect of death could attain to any vivid antic.i.p.ations or desires, much less was troubled with fears. The evil which I suffered from my theory, was not (I believe) that it really made me selfish--other influences of it were too powerful:--but it taught me to blame myself for unbelief, because I was not sufficiently absorbed in the contemplation of my vast personal expectations. I certainly here feel myself delivered from the danger of fact.i.tious sin.

The selfish and self-righteous texts come princ.i.p.ally from the three first gospels, and are greatly counteracted by the deeper spirituality of the apostolic epistles. I therefore by no means charge this tendency indiscriminately on the New Testament.

3. It laid down that "the time is short; THE LORD IS AT HAND: the things of this world pa.s.s away, and deserve not our affections: the only thing worth spending one's energies on, is, the forwarding of men's salvation." It bade me "watch perpetually, not knowing whether my Lord would return at c.o.c.kcrowing or at midday."

While I believed this, (which, however disagreeable to modern Christians, is the clear doctrine of the New Testament,) I acted an eccentric and unprofitable part. From it I was saved against my will, and forced into a course in which the doctrine, having been laid to sleep, awoke only now and then to reproach and hara.s.s me for my unfaithfulness to it. This doctrine it is, which makes so many spiritual persons lend active or pa.s.sive aid to uphold abuses and perpetuate mischief in every department of human life. Those who stick closest to the Scripture do not shrink from saying, that "it is not worth while trying to mend the world," and stigmatize as "political and worldly" such as pursue an opposite course. Undoubtedly, if we are to expect our Master at c.o.c.kcrowing, we shall not study the permanent improvement of this transitory scene. To teach the certain speedy destruction of earthly things, _as the New Testament does_, is to cut the sinews of all earthly progress; to declare war against Intellect and Imagination, against Industrial and Social advancement.

There was a time when I was distressed at being unable to avoid exultation in the worldly greatness of England. My heart would, in spite, of me, swell with something of pride, when a Turk or Arab asked what was my country: I then used to confess to G.o.d this pride as a sin. I still see that that was a legitimate deduction from the Scripture. "The glory of this world pa.s.seth away," and I had professed to be "dead with Christ" to it. The difference is this. I am now as "dead" as then to all of it which my conscience discerns to be sinful, but I have not to torment myself in a (fundamentally ascetic) struggle against innocent and healthy impulses. I now, with deliberate approval, "love the world and the things of the world." I can feel patriotism, and take the deepest interest in the future prospects of nations, and no longer reproach myself. Yet this is quite consistent with feeling the spiritual interests of men to be of all incomparably the highest.

Modern religionists profess to be disciples of Christ, and talk high of the perfect morality of the New Testament, when they certainly do not submit their understanding to it, and are no more like to the first disciples than bishops are like the pennyless apostles. One critic tells me that _I know_ that the above is _not_ the true interpretation of the apostolic doctrine. a.s.suredly I am aware that we may rebuke "the world" and "worldliness," in a legitimate and modified sense, as being the system of _selfishness_: true,--and I have avowed this in another work; but it does not follow that Jesus and the apostles did not go farther: and manifestly they did. The true disciple, who would be perfect as his Master, was indeed ordered to sell all, give to the poor and follow him; and when that severity was relaxed by good sense, it was still taught that things which lasted to the other side of the grave alone deserved our affection or our exertion. If any person thinks me ignorant of the Scriptures for being of this judgment, let him so think; but to deny that I am sincere in my avowal, is a very needless insolence.

4. I am sensible how heavy a clog on the exercise of my judgment has been taken off from me, since I unlearned that Bibliolatry, which I am disposed to call the greatest religious evil of England.

Authority has a place in religious teaching, as in education, but it is provisional and transitory. Its chief use is to guide _action_, and a.s.sist the formation of habits, before the judgment is ripe. As applied to mere _opinion_, its sole function is to guide inquiry. So long as an opinion is received on authority only, it works no inward process upon us: yet the promulgation of it by authority, is not therefore always useless, since the prominence thus given to it may be a most important stimulus to thought. While the mind is inactive or weak, it will not wish to throw off the yoke of authority: but as soon as it begins to discern error in the standard proposed to it, we have the mark of incipient original thought, which is the thing so valuable and so difficult to elicit; and which authority is apt to crush. An intelligent pupil seldom or never gives _too little_ weight to the opinion of his teacher: a wise teacher will never repress the free action of his pupils' minds, even when they begin to question his results. "Forbidding to think" is a still more fatal tyranny than "forbidding to marry:" it paralyzes all the moral powers.

In former days, if any moral question came before me, I was always apt to turn it into the mere lawyerlike exercise of searching and interpreting my written code. Thus, in reading how Henry the Eighth treated his first queen, I thought over Scripture texts in order to judge whether he was right, and if I could so get a solution, I left my own moral powers unexercised. All Protestants see, how mischievous it is to a Romanist lady to have a directing priest, whom she every day consults about everything; so as to lay her own judgment to sleep. We readily understand, that in the extreme case such women may gradually lose all perception of right and wrong, and become a mere machine in the hands of her director. But the Protestant principle of accepting the Bible as the absolute law, acts towards the same end; and only fails of doing the same amount of mischief, because a book can never so completely answer all the questions asked of it, as a living priest can. The Protestantism which pities those as "without chart and compa.s.s" who acknowledge no infallible written code, can mean nothing else, than that "the less occasion we have to trust our moral powers, the better;" that is, it represents it as of all things most desirable to be able to benumb conscience by disuse, under the guidance of a mind from without. Those who teach this need not marvel to see their pupils become Romanists.

But Bibliolatry not only paralyzes the moral sense; it also corrupts the intellect, and introduces a crooked logic, by setting men to the duty of extracting absolute harmony out of discordant materials. All are familiar with the subtlety of lawyers, whose task it is to elicit a single sense out of a heap of contradictory statutes. In their case such subtlety may indeed excite in us impatience or contempt; but we forbear to condemn them, when it is pleaded that practical convenience, not truth, is their avowed end. In the case of theological ingenuity, where truth is the professed and sacred object, a graver judgment is called for. When the Biblical interpreter struggles to reconcile contradictions, or to prove that wrong is right, merely because he is bound to maintain the perfection of the Bible; when to this end he condescends to sophistry and pettifogging evasions; it is difficult to avoid feeling disgust as well as grief.

Some good people are secretly conscious that the Bible is not an infallible book; but they dread the consequences of proclaiming this "to the vulgar." Alas! and have they measured the evils which the fostering of this lie is producing in the minds, not of the educated only, but emphatically of the ministers of religion?

Many who call themselves Christian preachers busily undermine moral sentiment, by telling their hearers, that if they do not believe the Bible (or the Church), they can have no firm religion or morality, and will have no reason to give against following brutal appet.i.te.

This doctrine it is, that so often makes men atheists in Spain, and profligates in England, as soon as they unlearn the national creed: and the school which have done the mischief, moralize over the wickedness of human nature when it comes to pa.s.s instead of blaming the falsehood which they have themselves inculcated.

[Footnote 1: A critic presses me with the question, how I can doubt that doctrine so holy _comes from G.o.d_. He professes to review my book on the Soul; yet, apparently became he himself _dis_believes the doctrine of the Holy Spirit taught alike in the Psalms and Prophets and in the New Testament,--he cannot help forgetting that I profess to believe it. He is not singular in his dulness. That the sentiment above is necessarily independent of Biblical _authority_, see p. 133.]

[Footnote 2: I do not here enlarge on this, as it is discussed in my treatise on The Soul 2nd edition, p. 76, or 3rd edition, p. 52.]

[Footnote 3: 1 Cor. xv. 3. Compare Acts xii. 33, 34, 35 also Acts ii.

27, 34.]

[Footnote 4: I need not except the _potter_ and the thirty pieces of silver (Zech. xi. 13), for the _potter_ is a mere absurd error of text or translation. The Septuagint has the _foundry_, De Wette has the _treasury_, with whom Hitzig and Ewald agree. So Winer (Simoni's Lexicon).]

[Footnote 5: Some of my critics are very angry with me for saying this; but Matthew himself (xxi. 4) almost says it:--"_All this was done, that it might be fulfilled_," &c. Do my critics mean to tell me that Jesus _was not aware_ of the prophecy? or if Jesus did know of the prophecy, will they tell me _that he was not designing_ to fulfil it? I feel such carping to be little short of hypocrisy.]

[Footnote 6: Apparently on these words of mine, a reviewer builds up the inference that I regard "the Evangelical narrative as a mythical fancy-piece imitated from David and Isaiah." I feel this to be a great caricature. My words are carefully limited to a few petty details of one part of the narrative.] [Footnote 7: I did not calculate that any a.s.sailant would be so absurd as to lecture me on the topic, that G.o.d has no sympathy _with our sins and follies_. Of course what I mean is, that he has complacency in our moral perfection. See p. 125 above.]

[Footnote 8: This was at Aintab, in the north of Syria. One of my companions was caught by the mob and beaten (as they probably thought) to death. But he recovered very similarly to Paul, in Acts xiv. 20, after long lying senseless.]

CHAPTER VII.

ON THE MORAL PERFECTION OF JESUS.

Let no reader peruse this chapter, who is not willing to enter into a discussion, as free and unshrinking, concerning the personal excellencies and conduct of Jesus, as that of Mr. Grote concerning Socrates. I have hitherto met with most absurd rebuffs for my scrupulosity. One critic names me as a princ.i.p.al leader in a school which extols and glorifies the character of Jesus; after which he proceeds to reproach me with inconsistency, and to insinuate dishonesty. Another expresses himself as deeply wounded that, in renouncing the belief that Jesus is more than man, I suggest to compare him to a clergyman whom I mentioned as eminently holy and perfect in the picture of a partial biographer; such a comparison is resented with vivid indignation, as a blurting out of something "unspeakably painful." Many have murmured that I do _not_ come forward to extol the excellencies of Jesus, but appear to prefer Paul. More than one taunt me with an inability to justify my insinuations that Jesus, after all, was not really perfect; one is "extremely disappointed" that I have not attacked him; in short, it is manifest that many would much rather have me say out my whole heart, than withhold anything. I therefore give fair warning to all, not to read any farther, or else to blame themselves if I inflict on them "unspeakable pain," by differing from their judgment of a historical or unhistorical character. As for those who confound my tenderness with hypocrisy and conscious weakness, if they trust themselves to read to the end, I think they will abandon that fancy.

But how am I brought into this topic? It is because, after my mind had reached the stage narrated in the last chapter, I fell in with a new doctrine among the Unitarians,--that the evidence of Christianity is essentially popular and spiritual, consisting in _the Life of Christ_, who is a perfect man and the absolute moral image of G.o.d,--therefore fitly called "G.o.d manifest in the flesh," and, as such, Moral Head of the human race. Since this view was held in conjunction with those at which I had arrived myself concerning miracles, prophecy, the untrustworthiness of Scripture as to details, and the essential unreasonableness of imposing dogmatic propositions as a creed, I had to consider why I could not adopt such a modification, or (as it appeared to me) reconstruction, of Christianity; and I gave reasons in the first edition of this book, which, avoiding direct treatment of the character of Jesus, seemed to me adequate on the opposite side.

My argument was reviewed by a friend, who presently published the review with his name, replying to my remarks on this scheme. I thus find myself in public and avowed controversy with one who is endowed with talents, accomplishments, and genius, to which I have no pretensions. The challenge has certainly come from myself. Trusting to the goodness of my cause, I have ventured it into an unequal combat; and from a consciousness of my admired friend's high superiority, I do feel a little abashed at being brought face to face against him. But possibly the less said to the public on these personal matters, the better.

I have to give reasons why I cannot adopt that modified scheme of Christianity which is defended and adorned by James Martineau; according to which it is maintained that though the Gospel Narratives are not to be trusted in detail, there can yet be no reasonable doubt _what_ Jesus _was_; for this is elicited by a "higher moral criticism," which (it is remarked) I neglect. In this theory, Jesus is avowed to be a man born like other men; to be liable to error, and (at least in some important respects) mistaken. Perhaps no general proposition is to be accepted _merely_ on the word of Jesus; in particular, he misinterpreted the Hebrew prophecies. "He was not _less_ than the Hebrew Messiah, but _more_." No moral charge is established against him, until it is shown, that in applying the old prophecies to himself, he was _conscious_ that they did not fit.

His error was one of mere fallibility in matters of intellectual and literary estimate. On the other hand, Jesus had an infallible moral perception, which reveals itself to the true-hearted reader, and is testified by the common consciousness of Christendom. It has pleased the Creator to give us one sun in the heavens, and one Divine soul in history, in order to correct the aberrations of our individuality, and unite all mankind into one family of G.o.d. Jesus is to be presumed to be perfect until he is shown to be imperfect. Faith in Jesus, is not reception of propositions, but reverence for a person; yet this is _not_ the condition of salvation or essential to the Divine favour.

Such is the scheme, abridged from the ample discussion of my eloquent friend. In reasoning against it, my arguments will, to a certain extent, be those of an orthodox Trinitarian;[1] since we might both maintain that the belief in the absolute divine morality of Jesus is not tenable, when the belief in _every other_ divine and superhuman quality is denied. Should I have any "orthodox" reader, my arguments may shock his feelings less, if he keeps this in view. In fact, the same action or word in Jesus may be consistent or inconsistent with moral perfection, according to the previous a.s.sumptions concerning his person.

I. My friend has attributed to me a "prosaic and embittered view of human nature," apparently because I have a very intense belief of Man's essential imperfection. To me, I confess, it is almost a first principle of thought, that as all sorts of perfection coexist in G.o.d, so is no sort of perfection possible to man. I do not know how for a moment to imagine an Omniscient Being who is not Almighty, or an Almighty who is not All-Righteous. So neither do I know how to conceive of Perfect Holiness anywhere but in the Blessed and only Potentate.

Man is finite and crippled on all sides; and frailty in one kind causes frailty in another. Deficient power causes deficient knowledge, deficient knowledge betrays him into false opinion, and entangles him into false positions. It may be a defect of my imagination, but I do not feel that it implies any bitterness, that even in the case of one who abides in primitive lowliness, to attain even negatively an absolutely pure goodness seems to me impossible; and much more, to exhaust all goodness, and become a single Model-Man, unparalleled, incomparable, a standard for all other moral excellence. Especially I cannot conceive of any human person rising out of obscurity, and influencing the history of the world, unless there be in him forces of great intensity, the harmonizing of which is a vast and painful problem. Every man has to subdue himself first, before he preaches to his fellows; and he encounters many a fall and many a wound in winning his own victory. And as talents are various, so do moral natures vary, each having its own weak and strong side; and that one man should grasp into his single self the highest perfection of every moral kind, is to me at least as incredible as that one should preoccupy and exhaust all intellectual greatness. I feel the prodigy to be so peculiar, that I must necessarily wait until it is overwhelmingly proved, before I admit it. No one can without unreason urge me to believe, on any but the most irrefutable arguments, that a man, finite in every other respect, is infinite in moral perfection.

My friend is "at a loss to conceive in what way a superhuman physical nature could tend in the least degree to render moral perfection more credible." But I think he will see, that it would entirely obviate the argument just stated, which, from the known frailty of human nature in general, deduced the indubitable imperfection of an individual. The reply is then obvious and decisive: "This individual is _not_ a mere man; his origin is wholly exceptional; therefore his moral perfection may be exceptional; your experience of _man's_ weakness goes for nothing in his case." If I were already convinced that this person was a great Unique, separated from all other men by an impa.s.sable chasm in regard to his physical origin, I (for one) should be much readier to believe that he was Unique and Unapproachable in other respects: for all G.o.d's works have an internal harmony. It could not be for nothing that this exceptional personage was sent into the world. That he was intended as head of the human race, in one or more senses, would be a plausible opinion; nor should I feel any incredulous repugnance against believing his morality to be if not divinely perfect, yet separated from that of common men so far, that he might be a G.o.d to us, just as every parent is to a young child.

This view seems to my friend a weakness; be it so. I need not press it. What I do press, is,--whatever _might_ or might _not_ be conceded concerning one in human form, but of superhuman origin,--at any rate, one who is conceded to be, out and out, of the same nature as ourselves, is to be judged of by our experience of that nature, and is therefore to be _a.s.sumed_ to be variously imperfect, however eminent and admirable in some respects. And no one is to be called an imaginer of deformity, because he takes for granted that one who is Man has imperfections which were not known to those who compiled memorials of him. To impute to a person, without specific evidence, some definite frailty or fault, barely because he is human, would be a want of good sense; but not so, to have a firm belief that every human being is finite in moral as well as in intellectual greatness.

We have a very imperfect history of the apostle James; and I do not know that I could adduce any fact specifically recorded concerning him in disproof of his absolute moral perfection, if any of his Jerusalem disciples had chosen to set up this as a dogma of religion. Yet no one would blame me, as morose, or indisposed to acknowledge genius and greatness, if I insisted on believing James to be frail and imperfect, while admitting that I knew almost nothing about him. And why?--Singly and surely, because we know him to be _a man_: that suffices. To set up James or John or Daniel as my Model, and my Lord; to be swallowed up in him and press him upon others for a Universal Standard, would be despised as a self-degrading idolatry and resented as an obtrusive favouritism. Now why does not the same equally apply, if the name Jesus is subst.i.tuted for these? Why, in defect of all other knowledge than the bare fact of his manhood, are we not unhesitatingly to take for granted that he does _not_ exhaust all perfection, and is at best only one among many brethren and equals?

II. My friend, I gather, will reply, "because so many thousands of minds in all Christendom attest the infinite and unapproachable goodness of Jesus." It therefore follows to consider, what is the weight of this attestation. Manifestly it depends, first of all, on the independence of the witnesses: secondly, on the grounds of their belief. If all those, who confess the moral perfection of Jesus, confess it as the result of unbia.s.sed examination of his character; and if of those acquainted with the narrative, none espouse the opposite side; this would be a striking testimony, not to be despised.

But in fact, few indeed of the "witnesses" add any weight at all to the argument. No Trinitarian can doubt that Jesus is morally perfect, without doubting fundamentally every part of his religion. He believes it, _because_ the entire system demands it, and _because_ various texts of Scripture avow it: and this very fact makes it morally impossible for him to enter upon an unbia.s.sed inquiry, whether that character which is drawn for Jesus in the four gospels, is, or is not, one of absolute perfection, deserving to be made an exclusive model for all times and countries. My friend never was a Trinitarian, and seems not to know how this operates; but I can testify, that when I believed in the immaculateness of Christ's character, it was not from an unbia.s.sed criticism, but from the pressure of authority, (the authority of _texts_,) and from the necessity of the doctrine to the scheme of Redemption. Not merely strict Trinitarians, but all who believe in the Atonement, however modified,--all who believe that Jesus will be the future Judge,--_must_ believe in his absolute perfection: hence the fact of their belief is no indication whatever that they believe on the ground which my friend a.s.sumes,--viz. an intelligent and unbia.s.sed study of the character itself, as exhibited in the four narratives.

I think we may go farther. We have no reason for thinking that _this_ was the sort of evidence which convinced the apostles themselves, and first teachers of the gospel;--if indeed in the very first years the doctrine was at all conceived of. It cannot be shown that any one believed in the moral perfection of Jesus, who had not already adopted the belief that he was Messiah, and _therefore_ Judge of the human race. My friend makes the pure immaculateness of Jesus (discernible by him in the gospels) his foundation, and deduces _from_ this the quasi-Messiahs.h.i.+p: but the opposite order of deduction appears to have been the only one possible in the first age. Take Paul as a specimen.

He believed the doctrine in question; but not from reading the four gospels,--for they did not exist. Did he then believe it by hearing Ananias (Acts ix. 17) enter into details concerning the deeds and words of Jesus? I cannot imagine that any wise or thoughtful person would so judge, which after all would be a gratuitous invention. The Acts of the Apostles give us many speeches which set forth the grounds of accepting Jesus as Messiah; but they never press his absolute moral perfection as a fact and a fundamental fact. "He went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil," is the utmost that is advanced on this side: prophecy is urged, and his resurrection is a.s.serted, and the inference is drawn that "Jesus is the Christ."

Out of this flowed the farther inferences that he was Supreme Judge,--and moreover, was Paschal Lamb, and Sacrifice, and High Priest, and Mediator; and since every one of these characters demanded a belief in his moral perfections, that doctrine also necessarily followed, and was received before our present gospels existed. My friend therefore cannot abash me by the _argumentum ad verecundiam_; (which to me seems highly out of place in this connexion;) for the opinion, which is, as to this single point, held by him in common with the first Christians, was held by them on transcendental reasons which he totally discards; and all after generations have been confirmed in the doctrine by Authority, _i.e._ by the weight of texts or church decisions: both of which he also discards. If I could receive the doctrine, merely because I dared not to differ from the whole Christian world, I might aid to swell odium against rejectors, but I should not strengthen the cause at the bar of reason. I feel therefore that my friend must not claim Catholicity as on his side. Trinitarians and Arians are alike useless to his argument: nay, nor can he claim more than a small fraction of Unitarians; for as many of the them believe that Jesus is to be the Judge of living and dead (as the late Dr. Lant Carpenter did) must as _necessarily_ believe his immaculate perfection as if they were Trinitarians.

The New Testament does not distinctly explain on what grounds this doctrine was believed; but we may observe that in 1 Peter i. 19 and 2 Cor. v. 21, it is coupled with the Atonement, and in 1 Peter ii. 21, Romans xv. 3, it seems to be inferred from prophecy. But let us turn to the original Eleven, who were eye and ear witnesses of Jesus, and consider on what grounds they can have believed (if we a.s.sume that they did all believe) the absolute moral perfection of Jesus. It is too ridiculous to imagine then studying the writings of Matthew in order to obtain conviction,--if any of that school, whom alone I now address, could admit that written doc.u.ments were thought of before the Church outstept the limits of Judea. If the Eleven believed the doctrine for some transcendental reason,--as by a Supernatural Revelation, or on account of Prophecy, and to complete the Messiah's character,--then their attestation is useless to my friend's argument: will it then gain anything, if we suppose that they _believed_ Jesus to be perfect, because they _saw_ him to be perfect? To me this would seem no attestation worth having, but rather a piece of impertinent ignorance. If I attest that a person whom I have known was an eminently good man, I command a certain amount of respect to my opinion, and I do him honour. If I celebrate his good deeds and report his wise words, I extend his honour still farther. But if I proceed to a.s.sure people, _on the evidence of my personal observation of him_, that he was immaculate and absolutely perfect, was the pure Moral Image of G.o.d, that he deserves to be made the Exclusive Model of imitation, and is the standard by which every other man's morality is to be corrected,--I make myself ridiculous; my panegyrics lose all weight, and I produce far less conviction than when I praised within human limitations. I do not know how my friend will look on this point, (for his judgment on the whole question perplexes me, and the views which I call _sober_ he names _prosaic_,) but I cannot resist the conviction that universal common-sense would have rejected the teaching of the Eleven with contempt, if they had presented, as the basis of the gospel their _personal testimony_ to the G.o.dlike and unapproachable moral absolutism of Jesus. But even if such a basis was possible to the Eleven, it was impossible to Paul and Silva.n.u.s and Timothy and Barnabas and Apollos, and the other successful preachers to the Gentiles. High moral goodness, within human limitations, was undoubtedly announced as a fact of the life of Jesus; but upon this followed the supernatural claims, and the argument of prophecy; _without_ which my friend desires to build up his view,--I have thus developed why I think he has no right to claim Catholicity for his judgment. I have risked to be tedious, because I find that when I speak concisely, I am enormously misapprehended. I close this topic by observing, that, the great animosity with which my very mild intimations against the popular view have been met from numerous quarters, show me that Christians do not allow this subject to be calmly debated, end have not come to their own conclusion as the result of a calm debate. And this is amply corroborated by my own consciousness of the past I never dared, nor could have dared, to criticize coolly and simply the pretensions of Jesus to be an absolute model of morality, until I had been delivered from the weight of authority and miracle, oppressing my critical powers.

III. I have been a.s.serting, that he who believes Jesus to be mere man, ought at once to believe his moral excellence finite and comparable to that of other men; and, that our judgment to this effect cannot be reasonably overborne by the "universal consent" of Christendom.--Thus far we are dealing _a priori_, which here fully satisfies me: in such an argument I need no _a posteriori_ evidence to arrive at my own conclusion. Nevertheless, I am met by taunts and clamour, which are not meant to be indecent, but which to my feeling are such. My critics point triumphantly to the four gospels, and demand that I will make a personal attack on a character which they revere, even when they know that I cannot do so without giving great offence. Now if any one were to call my old schoolmaster, or my old parish priest, a perfect and universal Model, and were to claim that I would ent.i.tle him Lord, and think of him as the only true revelation of G.o.d; should I not be at liberty to say, without disrespect, that "I most emphatically deprecate such extravagant claims for him"? Would this justify an outcry, that I will publicly avow _what_ I judge to be his defects of character, and will _prove_ to all his admirers that he was a sinner like other men? Such a demand would be thought, I believe, highly unbecoming and extremely unreasonable. May not my modesty, or my regard for his memory, or my unwillingness to pain his family, be accepted as sufficient reasons for silence? or would any one scoffingly attribute my reluctance to attack him, to my conscious inability to make good my case against his being "G.o.d manifest in the flesh"? Now what, if one of his admirers had written panegyrical memorials of him; and his character, therein described, was so faultless, that a stranger to him was not able to descry any moral defeat whatever in it? Is such a stranger bound to believe him to be the Divine Standard of morals, unless he can put his finger on certain pa.s.sages of the book which imply weaknesses and faults? And is it insulting a man, to refuse to wors.h.i.+p him? I utterly protest against every such pretence. As I have an infinitely stronger conviction that Shakespeare was not in _intellect_ Divinely and Unapproachably perfect, than that I can certainly point out in him some definite intellectual defect; as, moreover, I am vastly more sure that Socrates was _morally_ imperfect, than that I am able to censure him rightly; so also, a disputant who concedes to me that Jesus is a mere man, has no right to claim that I will point out some moral flaw in him, or else acknowledge him to be a Unique Unparalleled Divine Soul. It is true, I do see defects, and very serious ones, in the character of Jesus, as drawn by his disciples; but I cannot admit that my right to disown the pretensions made for him turns on my ability to define his frailties. As long as (in common with my friend) I regard Jesus as a man, so long I hold with _dogmatic_ and _intense conviction_ the inference that he was morally imperfect, and ought not to be held up as unapproachable in goodness; but I have, in comparison, only _a modest_ belief that I am able to show his points of weakness.

While therefore in obedience to this call, which has risen from many quarters, I think it right not to refuse the odious task pressed upon me,--I yet protest that my conclusion does not depend upon it. I might censure Socrates unjustly, or at least without convincing my readers, if I attempted that task; but my failure would not throw a feather's weight into the argument that Socrates was a Divine Unique and universal Model. If I write note what is painful to readers, I beg them to remember that I write with much reluctance, and that it is their own fault if they read.

In approaching this subject, the first difficulty is, to know how much of the four gospels to accept as _fact_. If we could believe the whole, it would be easier to argue; but my friend Martineau (with me) rejects belief of many parts: for instance, he has but a very feeble conviction that Jesus ever spoke the discourses attributed to him in John's gospel. If therefore I were to found upon these some imputation of moral weakness, he would reply, that we are agreed in setting these aside, as untrustworthy. Yet he perseveres in a.s.serting that it is beyond all reasonable question _what_ Jesus _was_; as though proven inaccuracies in all the narratives did not make the results uncertain.

He says that even the poor and uneducated are fully impressed with "the majesty and sanct.i.ty" of Christ's mind; as if _this_ were what I am fundamentally denying; and not, only so far as would transcend the known limits of human nature: surely "majesty and sanct.i.ty" are not inconsistent with many weaknesses. But our judgment concerning a man's motives, his temper, and his full conquest over self, vanity and impulsive pa.s.sion, depends on the accurate knowledge of a vast variety of minor points; even the curl of the lip, or the discord of eye and mouth, may change our moral judgment of a man; while, alike to my friend and me it is certain that much of what is stated is untrue.