PREFACE.
ON THE ATONEMENT.
ON THE MEDIATION AND SALVATION OF ECCLESIASTICAL CHRISTIANITY.
ON ETERNAL TORTURE.
ON THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHILDREN.
NATURAL RELIGION VERSUS REVEALED RELIGION.
ON THE NATURE AND THE EXISTENCE OF GOD.
EUTHANASIA.
ON PRAYER.
CONSTRUCTIVE RATIONALISM.
MORNING PRAYER.
EVENING PRAYER.
THE LITANY.
PRAYERS AND THANKSGIVINGS UPON SEVERAL OCCASIONS.
THE COMMUNION SERVICE.
THE BAPTISMAL OFFICES.
THE ORDER OF CONFIRMATION.
THE FORM OF THE SOLEMNIZATION OF MATRIMONY.
THE ORDER FOR THE VISITATION OF THE SICK.
THE ORDER FOR THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD.
FORMS OF PRAYER TO BE USED AT SEA.
THE ARTICLES.
TOTHOMAS
SCOTT,WHOSE NAME IS HONORED AND REVERED WHEREVERFREETHOUGHT
HAS—WHOSE WIDE HEART AND GENEROUS KINDNESS WELCOMEALL
FORMS OF THOUGHT, PROVIDED THE THOUGHTBE EARNEST AND
HONEST;WHO KNOWS NO ORTHODOXY SAVE THAT OF HONESTY, ANDNO
RELIGION SAVE THAT OF GOODNESS;TO WHOM I OWE MOST GRATEFUL
THANKS,AS ONE OF THE EARLIEST OF MY FREETHOUGHT FRIENDS,AND
AS THE FIRST WHO AIDED ME IN MY NEED;—TO HIMI
DEDICATE THESE PAGES,KNOWING THAT, ALTHOUGH WE OFTEN DIFFER
IN OURTHOUGHT,WE ARE ONEIN OUR DESIRE FOR
TRUTH.ANNIE BESANT.
PREFACE.
The
Essays which form the present book have been written at intervals
during the last five years, and are now issued in a single volume
without alterations of any kind. I have thought it more useful—as
marking the gradual growth of thought—to reprint them as they were
originally published, so as not to allow the later development to
mould the earlier forms. The essay on "Inspiration" is, in
part, the oldest of all; it was partially composed some seven years
ago, and re-written later as it now stands.The
first essay on the "Deity of Jesus of Nazareth" was written
just before I left the Church of England, and marks the point where I
broke finally with Christianity. I thought then, and think still,
that to cling to the name of Christian after one has ceased to be the
thing is neither bold nor straightforward, and surely the name ought,
in all fairness, to belong to those historical bodies who have made
it their own during many hundred years. A Christianity without a
Divine Christ appears to me to resemble a republican army marching
under a royal banner—it misleads both friends and foes. Believing
that in giving up the deity of Christ I renounced Christianity, I
place this essay as the starting-point of my travels outside the
Christian pale. The essays that follow it deal with some of the
leading Christian dogmas, and are printed in the order in which they
were written. But in the gradual thought-development they really
precede the essay on the "Deity of Christ". Most inquirers
who begin to study by themselves, before they have read any heretical
works, or heard any heretical controversies, will have been awakened
to thought by the discrepancies and inconsistencies of the Bible
itself. A thorough knowledge of the Bible is the groundwork of
heresy. Many who think they read their Bibles never read them at all.
They go through a chapter every day as a matter of duty, and forget
what is said in Matthew before they read what is said in John; hence
they never mark the contradictions and never see the discrepancies.
But those who
study
the Bible are in a fair way to become heretics. It was the careful
compilation of a harmony of the last chapters of the four Gospels—a
harmony intended for devotional use—that gave the first blow to my
own faith; although I put the doubt away and refused even to look at
the question again, yet the effect remained—the tiny seed, which
was slowly to germinate and to grow up, later, into the full-blown
flower of Atheism.The
trial of Mr. Charles Voysey for heresy made me remember my own
puzzle, and I gradually grew very uneasy, though trying not to think,
until the almost fatal illness of my little daughter brought a
sharper questioning as to the reason of suffering and the reality of
the love of God. From that time I began to study the doctrines of
Christianity from a critical point of view; hitherto I had confined
my theological reading to devotional and historical treatises, and
the only controversies with which I was familiar were the
controversies which had divided Christians; the writings of the
Fathers of the Church and of the modern school which is founded on
them had been carefully studied, and I had weighed the points of
difference between the Greek, Roman, Anglican, and Lutheran
communions, as well as the views of orthodox dissenting schools of
thought; only from Pusey's "Daniel", and Liddon's "Bampton
Lectures", had I gathered anything of wider controversies and
issues of more vital interest. But now all was changed, and it was to
the leaders of the Broad Church school that I first turned in the new
path. The shock of pain had been so! rude when real doubts assailed
and shook me, that I had steadily made up my mind to investigate, one
by one, every Christian dogma, and never again to say "I
believe" until I had tested the object of faith; the dogmas
which revolted me most were those of the Atonement and of Eternal
Punishment, while the doctrine of Inspiration of Scripture underlay
everything, and was the very foundation of Christianity; these, then,
were the first that I dropped into the crucible of investigation.
Maurice, Robertson, Stopford Brooke, McLeod, Campbell, and others,
were studied; and while I recognised the charm of their writings, I
failed to find any firm ground whereon they could rest: it was a
many-colored beautiful mist—a cloud landscape, very fair, but very
unsubstantial. Still they served as stepping stones away from the old
hard dogmas, and month by month I grew more sceptical as to the
possibility of finding certainty in religion. Mansel's Bampton
lectures on "The Limits of Religious Thought" did much to
increase the feeling; the works of F. Newman, Arnold, and Greg
carried on the same work; some efforts to understand the creeds of
other nations, to investigate Mahommedanism, Buddhism, and Hinduism,
all led in the same direction, until I concluded that inspiration
belonged to all people alike, and there could be no necessity of
atonement, and no eternal hell prepared for the unbeliever in
Christianity. Thus, step by step, I renounced the dogmas of
Christianity until there remained only, as distinctively Christian,
the Deity of Jesus which had not yet been analysed. The whole
tendency of the Broad Church stream of thought was to increase the
manhood at the expense of the deity of Christ; and with hell and
atonement gone, and inspiration everywhere, there appeared no
raison d'etre
for the Incarnation. Besides, there were so many incarnations, and
the Buddhist absorption seemed a grander idea. I now first met with
Charles Voysey's works, and those of Theodore Parker and Channing,
and the belief in the Deity of Jesus followed the other dead creeds.
Renan I had read much earlier, but did not care for him; Strauss I
did not meet with until afterwards; Scott's "English Life of
Jesus", which I read at this period, is as useful a book on this
subject as could be put into the hands of an inquirer. From
Christianity into simple Theism I had found my way; step by step the
Theism melted into Atheism; prayer was gradually discontinued, as
utterly at variance with any dignified idea of God, and as in
contradiction to all the results of scientific investigation. I had
taken a keen interest in the later scientific discoveries, and Darwin
had done much towards freeing me from my old bonds. Of John Stuart
Mill I had read much, and I now took him up again; I studied Spinoza,
and re-read Mansel, together with many other writers on the Deity,
until the result came which is found in the essay entitled "The
Nature and Existence of God ". It was just before this was
written that I read Charles Bradlaugh's "Plea for Atheism"
and his "Is there a God?". The essay on "Constructive
Rationalism" shows how we replace the old faith and build our
house anew with stronger materials.The
path from Christianity to Atheism is a long one, and its first steps
are very rough and very painful; the feet tread on the ruins of the
broken faith, and the sharp edges cut into the bleeding flesh; but
further on the path grows smoother, and presently at its side begins
to peep forth the humble daisy of hope that heralds the spring tide,
and further on the roadside is fragrant with all the flowers of
summer, sweet and brilliant and gorgeous, and in the distance we see
the promise of the autumn, the harvest that shall be reaped for the
feeding of man.Annie
Besant. 1878.
ON THE DEITY OF JESUS OF NAZARETH
"WHAT
think ye of Christ, whose son is he?" Humane child of human
parents, or divine Son of the Almighty God? When we consider his
purity, his faith in the Father, his forgiving patience, his devoted
work among the offscourings of society, his brotherly love to sinners
and outcasts—when our minds dwell on these alone,—we all feel the
marvellous fascination which has drawn millions to the feet of this
"son of man," and the needle of our faith begins to tremble
towards the Christian pole. If we would keep unsullied the purity of
our faith in God alone, we are obliged to turn our eyes some
times—however unwillingly—towards the other side of the picture
and to mark the human weaknesses which remind us that he is but one
of our race. His harshness to his mother, his bitterness towards some
of his opponents, the marked failure of one or two of his rare
prophecies, the palpable limitation of his knowledge—little enough,
indeed, when all are told,—are more than enough to show us that,
however great as man, he is not the All-righteous, the All-seeing,
the All-knowing, God.No
one, however, whom Christian exaggeration has not goaded into unfair
detraction, or who is not blinded by theological hostility, can fail
to revere portions of the character sketched out in the three
synoptic gospels. I shall not dwell here on the Christ of the fourth
Evangelist; we can scarcely trace in that figure the lineaments of
the Jesus of Nazareth whom we have learnt to love.I
propose, in this essay, to examine the claims of Jesus to be more
than the man he appeared to be during his lifetime: claims—be it
noted—which are put forward on his behalf by others rather than by
himself. His own assertions of his divinity are to be found only in
the unreliable fourth gospel, and in it they are destroyed by the
sentence there put into his mouth with strange inconsistency: "If
I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true."It
is evident that by his contemporaries Jesus was not regarded as God
incarnate. The people in general appear to have looked upon him as a
great prophet, and to have often debated among themselves whether he
were their expected Messiah or not. The band of men who accepted him
as their teacher were as far from worshipping him as God as were
their fellow-countrymen: their prompt desertion of him when attacked
by his enemies, their complete hopelessness when they saw him
overcome and put to death, are sufficient proofs that though they
regarded him—to quote their own words—as a "prophet mighty
in word and deed," they never guessed that the teacher they
followed, and the friend they lived with in the intimacy of social
life was Almighty God Himself. As has been well pointed out, if they
believed their Master to be God, surely when they were attacked they
would have fled to him for protection, instead of endeavouring to
save themselves by deserting him: we may add that this would have
been their natural instinct, since they could never have imagined
beforehand that the Creator Himself could really be taken captive by
His creatures and suffer death at their hands. The third class of his
contemporaries, the learned Pharisees and Scribes, were as far from
regarding him as divine as were the people or his disciples. They
seem to have viewed the new teacher somewhat contemptuously at first,
as one who unwisely persisted in expounding the highest doctrines to
the many, instead of—a second Hillel—adding to the stores of
their own learned circle. As his influence spread and appeared to be
undermining their own,—still more, when he placed himself in direct
opposition, warning the people against them,—they were roused to a
course of active hostility, and at length determined to save
themselves by destroying him. But all through their passive contempt
and direct antagonism, there is never a trace of their deeming him to
be anything more than a religious enthusiast who finally became
dangerous: we never for a moment see them assuming the manifestly
absurd position of men knowingly measuring their strength against
God, and endeavouring to silence and destroy their Maker. So much for
the opinions of those who had the best opportunities of observing his
ordinary life. A "good man," a "deceiver," a
"mighty prophet," such are the recorded opinions of his
contemporaries: not one is found to step forward and proclaim him to
be Jehovah, the God of Israel.One
of the most trusted strongholds of Christians, in defending their
Lord's Divinity, is the evidence of prophecy. They gather from the
sacred books of the Jewish nation the predictions of the longed-for
Messiah, and claim them as prophecies fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth.
But there is one stubborn fact which destroys the force of this
argument: the Jews, to whom these writings belong, and who from
tradition and national peculiarities may reasonably be supposed to be
the best exponents of their own prophets, emphatically deny that
these prophecies are fulfilled in Jesus at all. Indeed, one main
reason for their rejection of Jesus is precisely this, that he does
not resemble in any way the predicted Messiah. There is no doubt that
the Jewish nation were eagerly looking for their Deliverer when Jesus
was born: these very longings produced several pseudo-Messiahs, who
each gained in turn a considerable following, because each bore some
resemblance to the expected Prince. Much of the popular rage which
swept Jesus to his death was the re-action of disappointment after
the hopes raised by the position of authority he assumed. The sudden
burst of anger against one so benevolent and inoffensive can only be
explained by the intense hopes excited by his regal entry into
Jerusalem, and the utter destruction of those hopes by his failing to
ascend the throne of David. Proclaimed as David's son, he came riding
on an ass as king of Zion, and allowed himself to be welcomed as the
king of Israel: there his short fulfilling of the prophecies ended,
and the people, furious at his failing them, rose and clamoured for
his death. Because he did
not
fulfil the ancient Jewish oracles, he died: he was too noble for the
rôle
laid down in them for the Messiah, his ideal was far other than that
of a conqueror, with "garments rolled in blood." But even
if, against all evidence, Jesus was one with the Messiah of the
prophets, this would destroy, instead of implying, his Divine claims.
For the Jews were pure monotheists; their Messiah was a prince of
David's line, the favoured servant, the anointed Jehovah, the king
who should rule in His name: a Jew would shrink with horror from the
blasphemy of seating Messiah on Jehovah's throne remembering how
their prophets had taught them that their God "would not give
His honour to another." So that, as to prophecy, the case stands
thus: If Jesus be the Messiah prophesied of in the old Jewish books,
then he is not God: if he be not the Messiah, Jewish prophecy is
silent as regards him altogether, and an appeal to prophecy is
absolutely useless.After
the evidence of prophecy Christians generally rely on that furnished
by miracles. It is remarkable that Jesus himself laid but little
stress on his miracles; in fact, he refused to appeal to them as
credentials of his authority, and either could not or would not work
them when met with determined unbelief. We must notice also that the
people, while "glorifying God, who had given such power unto
men,"
were not inclined to admit his miracles as proofs of his right to
claim absolute obedience: his miracles did not even invest him with
such sacredness as to protect him from arrest and death. Herod, on
his trial, was simply anxious to see him work a miracle, as a matter
of curiosity. This stolid indifference to marvels as attestations of
authority is natural enough, when we remember that Jewish history was
crowded with miracles, wrought for and against the favoured people,
and also that they had been specially warned against being misled by
signs and wonders. Without entering into the question whether
miracles are possible, let us, for argument's sake, take them for
granted, and see what they are worth as proofs of Divinity. If Jesus
fed a multitude with a few loaves, so did Elisha: if he raised the
dead, so did Elijah and Elisha; if he healed lepers, so did Moses and
Elisha; if he opened the eyes of the blind, Elisha smote a whole army
with blindness and afterwards restored their sight: if he cast out
devils, his contemporaries, by his own testimony, did the same. If
miracles prove Deity, what miracle of Jesus can stand comparison with
the divided Red Sea of Moses, the stoppage of the earth's motion by
Joshua, the check of the rushing waters of the Jordan by Elijah's
cloak? If we are told that these men worked by
conferred
power and Jesus by
inherent,
we can only answer that this is a gratuitous assumption, and begs the
whole question. The Bible records the miracles in equivalent terms:
no difference is drawn between the manner of working of Elisha or
Jesus; of each it is sometimes said they prayed; of each it is
sometimes said they spake. Miracles indeed must not be relied on as
proofs of divinity, unless believers in them are prepared to pay
divine honours not to Jesus only, but also to a crowd of others, and
to build a Christian Pantheon to the new found gods.So
far we have only seen the insufficiency of the usual Christian
arguments to establish a doctrine so stupendous and so
prima facie
improbable as the incarnation of the Divine Being: this kind of
negative testimony, this insufficient evidence, is not however the
principle reason which compels Theists to protest against the central
dogma of Christianity. The stronger proofs of the simple manhood of
Jesus remain, and we now proceed to positive evidence of his not
being God. I propose to draw attention to the traces of human
infirmity in his noble character, to his absolute mistakes in
prophecy, and to his evidently limited knowledge. In accepting as
substantially true the account of Jesus given by the evangelists, we
are taking his character as it appeared to his devoted followers. We
have not to do with slight blemishes, inserted by envious detractors
of his greatness; the history of Jesus was written when his disciples
worshipped him as God, and his manhood, in their eyes, reached ideal
perfection. We are not forced to believe that, in the gospels, the
life of Jesus is given at its highest, and that he was, at least, not
more spotless than he appears in these records of his friends. But
here again, in order not to do a gross injustice, we must put aside
the fourth gospel; to study his character "according to S. John"
would need a separate essay, so different is it from that drawn by
the three; and by all rules of history we should judge him by the
earlier records, more especially as they corroborate each other in
the main.The
first thing which jars upon an attentive reader of the gospels is the
want of affection and respect shown by Jesus to his mother. When only
a child of twelve he lets his parents leave Jerusalem to return home,
while he repairs alone to the temple. The fascination of the ancient
city and the gorgeous temple services was doubtless almost
overpowering to a thoughtful Jewish boy, more especially on his first
visit: but the careless forgetfulness of his parents' anxiety must be
considered as a grave childish fault, the more so as its character is
darkened by the indifference shown by his answer to his mother's
grieved reproof. That no high, though mistaken, sense of duty kept
him in Jerusalem is evident from his return home with his parents;
for had he felt that "his Father's business" detained him
in Jerusalem at all, it is evident that this sense of duty would not
have been satisfied by a three days' delay. But the Christian
advocate would bar criticism by an appeal to the Deity of Jesus: he
asks us therefore to believe that Jesus, being God, saw with
indifference his parents' anguish at discovering his absence; knew
all about that three days' agonised search (for they, ignorant of his
divinity, felt the terrible anxiety as to his safety, natural to
country people losing a child in a crowded city); did not, in spite
of the tremendous powers at his command, take any steps to re-assure
them; and finally, met them again with no words of sympathy, only
with a mysterious allusion, incomprehensible to them, to some higher
claim than theirs, which, however, he promptly set aside to obey
them. If God was incarnate in a boy, we may trust that example as a
model of childhood: yet, are Christians prepared to set this early
piety and desire for religious instruction before their young
children as an example they are to follow? Are boys and girls of
twelve to be free to absent themselves for days from their parents'
guardianship under the plea that a higher business claims their
attention? This episode of the childhood of Jesus should be relegated
to those "gospels of the infancy" full of most unchildlike
acts, which the wise discretion of Christendom has stamped with
disapproval. The same want of filial reverence appears later in his
life: on one occasion he was teaching, and his mother sent in,
desiring to speak to him: the sole reply recorded to the message is
the harsh remark: "Who is my mother?" The most practical
proof that Christian morality has, on this head, outstripped the
example of Jesus, is the prompt disapproval which similar conduct
would meet with in the present day. By the strange warping of
morality often caused by controversial exigencies, this want of
filial reverence has been triumphantly pointed out by Christian
divines; the indifference shown by Jesus to family ties is accepted
as a proof that he was more than man! Thus, conduct which they
implicitly acknowledge to be unseemly in a son to his mother, they
claim as natural and right in the Son of God, to His! In the present
day, if a person is driven by conscience to a course painful to those
who have claims on his respect, his recognised duty, as well as his
natural instinct, is to try and make up by added affection and more
courteous deference for the pain he is forced to inflict: above all,
he would not wantonly add to that pain by public and uncalled-for
disrespect.The
attitude of Jesus towards his opponents in high places was marked
with unwarrantable bitterness. Here also the lofty and gentle spirit
of his whole life has moulded Christian opinion in favour of a course
different on this head to his own, so that abuse of an opponent is
now commonly called
un-Christian.
Wearied with three years' calumny and contempt, sore at the little
apparent success which rewarded his labour, full of a sad foreboding
that his enemies would shortly crush him, Jesus was goaded into
passionate denunciations: "Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites... ye fools and blind... ye make a proselyte twofold more
the child of hell than yourselves... ye serpents, ye generation of
vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell!" Surely this is
not the spirit which breathed in, "If ye love them which love
you, what thanks have ye?... Love your enemies, bless them that curse
you, pray for them that persecute you." Had he not even
specially forbidden the very expression, "Thou fool!" Was
not this rendering evil for evil, railing for railing?It
is painful to point out these blemishes: reverence for the great
leaders of humanity is a duty dear to all human hearts; but when
homage turns into idolatry, then men must rise up to point out faults
which otherwise they would pass over in respectful silence, mindful
only of the work so nobly done.I
turn then, with a sense of glad relief, to the evidence of the
limited knowledge of Jesus, for here no blame attaches to him,
although
one
proved mistake is fatal to belief in his Godhead. First as to
prophecy: "The Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father
with his angels: and then shall he reward every man according to his
works. Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here which shall
not taste of death till they see the Son of man coming in his
kingdom." Later, he amplifies the same idea: he speaks of a
coming tribulation, succeeded by his own return, and then adds the
emphatic declaration: "Verily I say unto you, This generation
shall not pass till all these things be done." The
non-fulfilment of these prophecies is simply a question of fact: let
men explain away the words now as they may, yet, if the record is
true, Jesus did believe in his own speedy return, and impressed the
same belief on his followers. It is plain, indeed, that he succeeded
in impressing it on them, from the references to his return scattered
through the epistles. The latest writings show an anxiety to remove
the doubts which were disturbing the converts consequent on the
non-appearance of Jesus, and the fourth gospel omits any reference to
his coming. It is worth remarking, in the latter, the spiritual sense
which is hinted at—either purposely or unintentionally—in the
words, "The hour...
now
is when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they
that hear shall live." These words may be the popular feeling on
the advent of the resurrection, forced on the Christians by the
failure of their Lord's prophecies in any literal sense. He could not
be mistaken,
ergo
they must spiritualise his words. The limited knowledge of Jesus is
further evident from his confusing Zacharias the son of Jehoiada with
Zacharias the son of Barachias: the former, a priest, was slain in
the temple court, as Jesus states; but the son of Barachias was
Zacharias, or Zachariah, the prophet.* He himself owned a limitation
of his knowledge, when he confessed his ignorance of the day of his
own return, and said it was known to the "Father only." Of
the same class of sayings is his answer to the mother of James and
John, that the high seats of the coming kingdom "are not mine to
give." That Jesus believed in the fearful doctrine of eternal
punishment is evident, in spite of the ingenious attempts to prove
that the doctrine is not scriptural: that he, in common with his
countrymen, ascribed many diseases to the immediate power of Satan,
which we should now probably refer to natural causes, as epilepsy,
mania, and the like, is also self-evident. But on such points as
these it is useless to dwell, for the Christian believes them on the
authority of Jesus, and the subjects, from their nature, cannot be
brought to the test of ascertained facts. Of the same character are
some of his sayings: his discouraging "Strive to enter in at the
strait gate,
for
many," etc.; his using in defence of partiality Isaiah's awful
prophecy, "that seeing they may see and not perceive,"
etc.; his using Scripture at one time as binding, while he, at
another, depreciates it; his fondness for silencing an opponent by an
ingenious retort: all these things are blameworthy to those who
regard him as man, while they are shielded from criticism by his
divinity to those who worship him as God. There morality is a
question of opinion, and it is wasted time to dwell on them when
arguing with Christians, whose moral sense is for the time held in
check by their mental prostration at his feet. But the truth of the
quoted prophecies, and the historical fact of the parentage of
Zachariah, can be tested, and on these Jesus made palpable mistakes.
The obvious corollary is, that being mistaken—as he was—his
knowledge was limited, and was therefore human, not divine.*
See Appendix, page 12.In
turning to the teaching of Jesus (I still confine myself to the three
gospels), we find no support of the Christian theory. If we take his
didactic teaching, we can discover no trace of his offering himself
as an object of either faith or worship. His life's work, as teacher,
was to speak of the Father. In the sermon on the Mount he is always
striking the keynote, "your heavenly Father;" in teaching
his disciples to pray, it is to "Our Father," and the
Christian idea of ending a prayer "through Jesus Christ" is
quite foreign to the simple filial spirit of their master. Indeed,
when we think of the position Jesus holds in Christian theology, it
seems strange to notice the utter absence of any suggestion of duty
to himself throughout this whole code of so-called Christian
morality. In strict accordance with his more formal teaching is his
treatment of inquirers: when a young man comes kneeling, and,
addressing him as "Good Master," asks what he shall do to
inherit eternal life, the loyal heart of Jesus first rejects the
homage, before he proceeds to answer the all-important question: "Why
callest thou
me
good: there is none good but one, that is, God." He then directs
the youth on the way to eternal life, and
he sends that young man home without one word of the doctrine on
which, according to Christians, his salvation rested.
If the "Gospel" came to that man later, he would reject it
on the authority of Jesus, who had told him a different "way of
salvation;" and if Christianity is true, the perdition of that
young man's soul is owing to the defective teaching of Jesus himself.
Another time, he tells a Scribe that the first commandment is that
God is one, and that all a man's love is due to Him; then adding the
duty of neighbourly love, he says: "There is
none other
commandment greater than these:" so that "belief in Jesus,"
if incumbent at all, must come after love to God and man, and is not
necessary, by his own testimony, to "entering into life."
On Jesus himself then rests the primary responsibility of affirming
that belief in him is a matter of secondary importance, at most,
letting alone the fact that he never inculcated belief in his Deity
as an article of faith at all. In the same spirit of frank loyalty to
God are his words on the unpardonable sin: in answer to a gross
personal affront, he tells his insulters that they shall be forgiven
for speaking against him, a simple son of man, but warns them of the
danger of confounding the work of God's. Spirit with that of Satan,
"because they said" that works; done by God, using Jesus as
His instrument, were done by Beelzebub.There
remains yet one argument of tremendous force, which can only be
appreciated by personal meditation. We find Jesus praying to God,
relying on God, in his greatest need crying in agony to God for
deliverance, in his last: struggle, deserted by his friends, asking
why God, his God, had also forsaken him. We feel how natural, how
true to life, this whole account is: in our heart's reverence for
that noble life, that "faithfulness unto death," we can
scarcely bear to think of the insult offered to it by Christian lips:
they take every beauty out of it by telling us that through all that
struggle Jesus was the Eternal, the Almighty, God: it is all
apparent, not real: in his temptation he could not fall: in his
prayers he needed no support: in his cry that the cup might pass away
he foresaw it was inevitable: in his agony of desertion and
loneliness he was present everywhere with God. In all that life,
then, there is no hope for man, no pledge of man's victory, no
promise for humanity. This is no
man's
life at all, it is only a wonderful drama enacted on earth. What God
could do is no measure of man's powers: what have we in common with
this "God-man?" This Jesus, whom we had thought our
brother, is after all, removed from us by the immeasurable distance
which separates the feebleness of man from the omnipotence of God.
Nothing can compensate us for such a loss as this. We had rejoiced in
that many-sided nobleness, and its very blemishes were dear, because
they assured us of his brotherhood to ourselves: we are given an
ideal picture where we had studied a history, another Deity where we
had hoped to emulate a life. Instead of the encouragement we had
found, what does Christianity offer us?—a perfect life? But we knew
before that God was perfect: an example? it starts from a different
level: a Saviour? we cannot be safer than we are with God: an
Advocate? we need none with our Father: a Substitute to endure God's
wrath for us? we had rather trust God's justice to punish us as we
deserve, and his wisdom to do what is best for us. As God, Jesus can
give us nothing that we have not already in his Father and ours: as
man, he gives us all the encouragement and support which we derive
from every noble soul which God sends into this world, "a
burning and a shining light":"Through
such souls alone God stooping shows
sufficient of His light For us in the
dark to rise by."As
God, he confuses our perceptions of God's unity, bewilders our reason
with endless contradictions, and turns away from the Supreme all
those emotions of love and adoration which can only flow towards a
single object, and which are the due of our Creator alone: as man, he
gives us an example to strive after, a beacon to steer by; he is one
more leader for humanity, one more star in our darkness. As God, all
his words would be truth, and but few would enter into heaven, while
hell would overflow with victims: as man, we may refuse to believe
such a slander on our Father, and take all the comfort pledged to us
by that name. Thank God, then, that Jesus is only man, "human
child of human parents;" that we need not dwarf our conceptions
of God to fit human faculties, or envelope the illimitable spirit in
a baby's feeble frame. But though only man, he has reached a standard
of human greatness which no other man, so far as we know, has
touched: the very height of his character is almost a pledge of the
truthfulness of the records in the main: his life had to be lived
before its conception became possible, at that period and among such
a people. They could recognise his greatness when it was before their
eyes: they would scarcely have imagined it for themselves, more
especially that, as we have seen, he was so different from the Jewish
ideal. His code of morality stands unrivalled, and he was the first
who taught the universal Fatherhood of God publicly and to the common
people. Many of his loftiest precepts may be found in the books of
the Rabbis, but it is the glorious prerogative of Jesus that he
spread abroad among the many the wise and holy maxims that had
hitherto been the sacred treasures of the few. With him none were too
degraded to be called the children of the Father: none too simple to
be worthy of the highest teaching. By example, as well as by precept,
he taught that all men were brothers, and all the good he had he
showered at their feet. "Pure in heart," he saw God, and
what he saw he called all to see: he longed that all might share in
his own joyous trust in the Father, and seemed to be always seeking
for fresh images to describe the freedom and fulness of the universal
love of God. In his unwavering love of truth, but his patience with
doubters—in his personal purity, but his tenderness to the
fallen—in his hatred of evil, but his friendliness to the sinner—we
see splendid virtues rarely met in combination. His brotherliness,
his yearning to raise the degraded, his lofty piety, his unswerving
morality, his perfect self-sacrifice, are his indefeasible titles to
human love and reverence. Of the world's benefactors he is the chief,
not only by his own life, but by the enthusiasm he has known to
inspire in others: "Our plummet has not sounded his depth:"
words fail to tell what humanity owes to the Prophet of Nazareth. On
his example the great Christian heroes have based their lives: from
the foundation laid by his teaching the world is slowly rising to a
purer faith in God. We need now such a leader as he was—one who
would dare to follow the Father's will as he did, casting a
long-prized revelation aside when it conflicts with the higher voice
of conscience. It is the teaching of Jesus that Theism gladly makes
its own, purifying it from the inconsistencies which mar its
perfection. It is the example of Jesus which Theists are following,
though they correct that example in some points by his loftiest
sayings. It is the work of Jesus which Theists are carrying on, by
worshipping, as he did, the Father, and the Father alone, and by
endeavouring to turn all men's love, all men's hopes, and all men's
adoration, to that "God and Father of all, who is above all, and
through all, and," not in Jesus only, but "in
us all."