III. You admit that the doctrine of Christ’s Godhead illumi-

nates the force'of other doctrines in the Christian creed, and that it explains the importance attributed to her sacramental ordinances by the Christian Church. But you have the interests of morality at heart; and you are concerned lest this doctrine should not merely fail to stimulate the moral life of men, but should even deprive mankind of a powerful incentive to moral
energy. The Humanitarian Christ is, you contend, the most —
precious treasure in the moral capital of the world. He is the Perfect Man; and men can really copy a life which a brother man has lived. But if Christ’s Godhead be insisted on, you contend that His Human Life ceases to be of value as an ethical model for humanity. An example must be in some sense upon a level with those who essay to imitate it. A model being, the conditions of whose existence are absolutely distinct from the conditions which surround his imitators, will be deemed to be beyond the reach of any serious imitation. If then the dogma of Christ’s Godhead does illuminate and sup- port other doctrines, this result is,in your judgment, purchased at the cost of practical interests. A merely human saviour would at least be imitable; and he would thus better respond to the immediate moral necessities of man. For man is, after all, the child of common sense; and before he embarks upon a serious enterprise, he desires to be reasonably satisfied that he is not aiming at the impracticable.
1. Now this objection is of an essentially ἃ priori character. It contends that, if Christ is God, His Manhood must be out of the reach of human imitation. It does not deny the fact that He has been most closely imitated by those who have believed most entirely in His true Divinity. In fact it seems to leave out of sight two very pertinent considerations. .
(2) The objector appears to forget, on the one hand, that according to the terms of the Catholic doctrine, our Lord is truly and literally Man, and that it is His Human Nature which is proposed to our imitation. His Divinity does not destroy the reality of His Manhood, by overshadowing or absorbing it. Certainly the Divine attributes of Jesus are beyond our imita- tion; we can but adore a boundless Intelligence or a resistless Will. But the province of the imitable in the Life of Jesus is not indistinctly traced. As the Friend of publicans and eer
LECT.
Vena
Chrtst’s Manhood tmitable, but through Grace. 495
as the Consoler of those who suffer, and as the Helper of those who want, Jesus Christ is at home among us. We can copy Him, not merely in the outward activities of charity, but in its inward temper ; we can copy the tenderness, the meekness, the patience, the courage, which shine forth from His Perfect Manhood. His Human Perfections constitute indeed a fault- less Ideal of Beauty, which, as moral artists, we are bound to keep in view. What the true and highest model of a human life is, has been decided for us Christians by the appearance of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Others may endeavour to reopen that question. For us it is settled, and settled irrevocably. Nor are Christ’s Human Perfections other than human; they are not, after the manner of Divine attributes, out of our reach ; they are not designed only to remind us of what human nature should, but cannot, be. We can approximate to them, even indefinitely. That in our present state of imperfection we should reproduce them in their fulness is indeed impossible ; but it is certain that a close imitation of Jesus of Nazareth is at once our duty and our privilege. For God has ‘ predestinated us to be conformed’ by that which we do, not less than by that which we endure, to the Human Image of His Blessed Son, ‘that He might be the Firstborn among many brethren P.’
(8) Nor, on the other hand, may it be forgotten that if we can thus copy our Lord, it is not in the strength of our fallen nature. Vain indeed would be the effort, if in a spirit of Pelagian self-re- liance, we should endeavour to reproduce in our own lives the like- ness of Christ. Our nature left to itself, enfeebled and depraved, cannot realize the ideal of which it is a wreck, until a higher power has entered into it, and made it what of itself it cannot be. Therefore the power of imitating Jesus comes from Jesus through His Spirit, His Grace, is Presence. Now, as in St. Paul’s day, ‘ Jesus Christ is in us’ Christians, ‘except we be reprobates 4.’ The ‘ power that worketh in us’ is no mere memory of a distant past. Itis not natural force of feeling, nor the strength with which self-discipline may brace the will. It is a living, ener- gizing, transforming influence, inseparable from the presence of a ‘quickening Spirit?’ such as is in very deed our glorified Lord. If Christ bids us follow Him, it is because He Himself is the enabling principle of our obedience. If He would have us be like unto Himself, this is because He is willing by His indwelling Presence to reproduce His likeness within us. If it is His Will
P Rom. viii. 29. @ 2 Cor. xiii. 5. ¥ 1 Cor, xv. 45. vu |
496 Moral fruitfulness of faith in Christ's Godhead,
that we should grow up unto Him in all things Who is the Head, even Christ 5 ; this is because His life-giving and life-sustaining power is really distributed throughout the body of His members ὕ, Of ourselves we are ‘miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked ¥,’ But we take counsel of Him, and buy of ‘ His gold tried in the fire;’ and forthwith we ‘can do all things through Him That strengtheneth’ us’. It is the Spiritual Presence of Christ in the Church and in Christian souls which makes the systematic imi- tation of Christ something else than a waste of energy¥. But if the Christ Whom we imitate be truly human, the Christ Who thus creates and fertilizes moral power within us must be Divine. His Divinity does not disturb the outline of that model which is supplied by His Manhood; while it does furnish us with a stock of inward force, in the absence of which an imitation of the Perfect moral Being would be a fruitless enterprise.
2. Indeed, it is precisely this belief in the Divinity of our Lord which has enriched human life with moral virtues such as civilized paganism could scarcely have appreciated, and which it certainly could not have created. The fruitfulness of this great doctrine in the sphere of morals will be moré immediately appa- rent, if we consider one or two samples of its productiveness.
(a) When Greek thought was keenest, and Greek art most triumphantly creative, and Greek political life so organized as to favour in a degree elsewhere unknown among men the play of man’s highest natural energies, Greek society was penetrated through and through by an invisible enemy, more fatal in its ravages to thought, to art, to freedom, than the sword of any Persian or Macedonian foe x. And already in the age of the early Cesars, Rome carried in her bosom the secret of her impending decline and fall in the coming centuries. Christian moralists detected and exposed it in terms ¥ which are fully borne out by writers devoted to the old pagan society. The life-blood of a race may be drained away less nobly than on the battle-field. Every capacity for high and generous exertion, or for the cheer- ful endurance of suffering at the bidding of duty, all the stock of moral force on which a country can rely in its hour of trial, may be sapped, destroyed, annihilated by a domestic traitor. So it fared with imperial Rome. The fate of the great empire was not really decided on the Rhine or on the Danube. Before the bar-
8 Eph. iv. 15. © Ibid: 15 235 iv. 10] « Rev. iii. 17. ¥ Phils iv. 13: Ww Eph. iv. 15-24. x Déllinger, Heidenthum und Judenthum, bk. 9. i. 2. p. 684, ete. ¥ Rom. i. 24-32. Cf. Lect. III, p. 142. [ LECT.
Its relation to the grace of Purity. 497
barians had as yet begun to muster their savage hordes along the frontiers of ancient civilization, their work had wellnigh been completed, their victory had been won, in the cities, the palaces, nay, in the very temples of the empire. And upon what resources could the old Pagan Society fall back, in its alarm at, and strug- gle with this formidable foe? It could not depend upon the State. The Emperor was the State by impersonation; and not unfre- quently it happened that the Emperor was the public friend and patron of the State’s worst enemy. Nor could any reliance be placed upon philosophy. Doubtless philosophy meant well in some of its phases, in some of its representatives. But philosophy is much too feeble a thing to enter the lists successfully with animal passion ; and, as a matter of fact, philosophy has more than once been compelled or cajoled into placing her intellectual weapons at the disposal of the sensualist. Nor did religion herself, in her pagan guise, supply the needed element of resistance and cure. Her mysteries were the sanction, her temples the scene, her priests the ministers of the grossest debaucheries: and the misery of a degraded society might have seemed to be complete, when the institutions which were designed to shed some rays of light and love from a higher sphere upon the woes and brutalities of this lower world, did but consecrate and augment the thick moral darkness which made of earth a very hell 2.
Now, that Jesus Christ has breasted this evil, is a matter of historical fact. His victory is chronicled, if not in the actual practice, yet in the conventional standard of modern society. Certainly the evil in question has not been fairly driven beyond the frontiers of Christendom ; the tone of our social intercourse, the sympathies of our literature, the proceedings of our law-courts, would remind us from time to time ‘that the Canaanite is yet in the land.” But if he is not yet expelled from our borders, at least-he is forced to skulk away from the face of a society which still names the Name of Jesus Christ. The most advanced scepticism among us at the present day does not venture with impunity to advocate habits which were treated as matters of course by the friends of Plato: even the licence of our sensuous poetry does not screen such advocacy from earnest and general indignation. This is because, far beyond the circle of His true worshippers, Jesus Christ has created in modern society a pub- lic opinion, sternly determined to discountenance and condemn moral mischief, which yet it may be unable wholly to prevent.
* Dollinger, Heidenthum und Judenthum, bk. 9. ii. 4 p. 718 sqq. vit | Kk
498 Purity created by faith in a Divine Christ.
This public opinion is sometimes tempted to disown its real parentage and its undoubted obligations. Instead of rejoicing to confess itself the pupil of Christ, it imagines schemes of independent morality framed altogether by human thinkers, which may relieve it of its sense of indebtedness to our Lord. But asa matter of fact, all that is thus true and wholesome in the national mind is an intellectual radiation from that actual mass of living purity, wherewith the Healer of men has beautified the lives of millions of Christians. And how has Jesus made men pure? Did He insist upon prudential and hygienic considerations? Did He prove that the laws of the physical world cannot be strained or broken with physical impunity? No. For, at least, He knew human nature well; and experience does not justify the anticipation that scientific demonstrations of the physical conse- quences of sensual indulgence will be equal to the task of check- ing the surging impetuosity of passion. Did Christ, then, call men to purity only by the beauty of His Own example? Did He only confront them with a living ideal of purity, so bright and beautiful as to shame them into hatred of animal degradation ἢ Again I say, Jesus Christ knew human nature well. If He had only offered an example of perfect purity, He would but have repeated the work of the ancient Law; He would have given us an ideal, without the capacity of realizing it; He would have at best created a torturing sense of shortcoming and pollution, stimulated by the vision of an unattainable standard of perfection. Therefore He did not merely afford us in a Human form a fault- less example of chaste humanity. He did more. He did that which He could only do as being in truth the Almighty God. He made Himself one with our human nature, that He might heal and bless it through its contact with His Divinity. He folded it around His Eternal Person; He made it His own; He made it a power which could quicken and restore us. And then, by the gift of His Spirit, and by sacramental joints and bands, He bound us to it®; He bound us through it to Himself; nay, He robed us in it; by it He entered into us, and made our members His own. Henceforth, then, the tabernacle of God is with men»; and ‘corpus regenerati fit caro Crucifixi.’ Hence- forth Christian humanity is to be conscious of a Presence within 10 9, before which the unclean spirit cannot choose but shrink away discomfited and shamed4, The Apostle’s argument to the
* Col. ii. 19. b. Rey. xxi. 3, © Ook 1,:27;-9 Cor, xiii, Ἐς 4 St. Luke iv. iz LECT,
The grace of Humility. 499
Corinthian Christians expresses the language of the Christian conscience in presence of impure temptations, to the end of time. ‘Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ ? shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them the members of an harlot? God forbide” From that day to this, the recoil from an ingratitude which a Christian only can exhibit, the dread of an act of sacrilege which a Christian only can commit, the loving recognition of an inward Presence which a Christian only can possess—these have been the controlling, sustaining, hallow- ing motives which by God’s grace have won the victory. But these motives are rooted in a doctrine of Christ’s sacramental union with His people, which is the veriest fable unless the indwelling Christ be truly God. The power of these motives to sustain us in purity varies with our hold on the master-truth which they so entirely presuppose. Such motives are strong and effective when our faith in a Divine Christ is strong; they are weak when our faith in His Divinity is weak ; they vanish from our moral life, and leave us a prey to our enemy, when the Godhead of Jesus is explicitly denied, and when the language which asserts the true incorporation of an Almighty Saviour with our frail humanity is resolved into the fantastic drapery of an empty metaphor.
(8) If the civilized pagan was impure, he was also proud and self-asserting. He might perhaps deem overt acts of pride an imprudence, on the ground that they were likely to provoke a Nemesis from some spiteful deity. The fates were against con- tinued prosperity; and it was unwise to boast of that which they waited to destroy,—
‘Invida fatorum series, summisque negatum
Stare dit, nimioque graves sub pondere lapsus‘,’ But when this prudential consideration did not weigh with him, the pagan gave full scope to the assertion of self in thought, word, and act. The sentiment of pride was not in conflict with his higher conscience, as would be the case with Christians. He indulged it without scruple, nay rather upon principle,— .
‘Secundas fortunas decent superbie&,’
He was utterly unable to see intrinsic evil in it; and it pene- trated in a subtle but intense form into the heart of those better ethical systems which, like the later Stoicism, appeared most nearly to rival the moral glories of the Gospel. Pride indeed might seem to have been the misery of paganism rather than its
© 1 Cor, vi, 15, € Lucan i, 70. ® Plaut. Stich. ii. 1. 27. vi | Kka2
500 The grace of Humility how far a product
fault. For man cannot detach himself from himself. Man is to himself, under all circumstances, an ever-present subject of thought; but whether this thought is humbly to correspond to the real conditions of his existence, or is to assume the propor- tions of a turgid and miserable exaggeration, will depend on the question whether man does or does not see constantly and truly That One Being Who alone can reveal to him his true place in the moral and intellectual universe. Paganism was not humble, because to paganism the true God was but a name. The whole life and thought of the pagan world was therefore very naturally based on pride. Its literature, its governments, its religious institutions, its social organization and hierarchy, its doctrines about human life and human duty—all alike were based on the principle of a boundless self-assertion. They were based, on that cruel and brutal principle which in the end hands over to the keenest wit and to the strongest arm the sceptre of a tyranny, that knows no bounds, save those of its strongest lust, checked and controlled by the most lively apprehensions of its selfish foresight. Now how did Jesus Christ confront this power of pride thus dominant in the old pagan world? By precept? Un- doubtedly. ‘The kings of the Gentiles,’ He said to His followers, ‘exercise lordship over them; and they that exercise authority upon them are called benefactors. But ye shall not be so}, ‘ Whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased ; and he that hum- bleth himself shall be exaltedi” By example? Let us listen to Him. ‘Learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls,’ ‘If I your Lord and Master have washed your feet, ye ought to wash one another’s feet 1.’ But why was His example so cogent? What was it in Jesus Christ which revealed to man the moral beauty and the moral power of the humiliation of self? Was it that being a Man, Who had within His grasp the prizes which are at the command of genius, or the state and luxuries which may be bought by wealth, He put these things from Him? If He was only Man, did He really forego wealth and station? Were they ever—at least on a great scale—within His reach? Even if it be thought that they were, was His renunciation of them a measure of ‘that mind which is in Christ Jesus ™, to which St. Paul directs the gaze of the practical Christian? St. Paul, as we have seen, meant something far higher than the refusal of any earthly
» St. Luke xxii. 25. 1 Tbid. xiv. 11. K St. Matt. xi. 29. 1 St. John xiii. 14. m Phil. ii. 5. [ LECT.
of faith in the Divinity of Christ. 501
greatness when he drew attention to the self-renunciation of his Lord and Master. ‘Being in the form of God,... He emptied Himself of His glory, and took on Him the form of a slave Ὁ. Historically speaking, it is not Christ’s renunciation of earthly advantages which has really availed to make Christians humble. The strongest motives to Christian humility are, first, the nearer sight of God’s Purity and Blessedness which we attain through communion with His Blessed Son, and next, or rather especially, as the Apostle points out, the real scope and force of Christ’s own example. Christ left the glory which He had with the Father before the world was, to become Man. He ‘took upon Him our flesh, and suffered death upon the Cross, that all man- kind might follow the example of His great humility®.’ There- fore the manifestations of humility in Christendom have varied, on the whole, correspondingly with earnestness of belief in that pre-existent glory from which the Redeemer bent so humbly to the Cross of shame. Certainly, in Jesus this deepest of hu- miliations was the fruit of His charity for souls; whereas, in us, humble thoughts and deeds are the necessary because the just expression of a true self-knowledge. Yet, nevertheless, the doctrine of Christ’s true Godhead, discerned through the voluntary lowliness and sufferings of His Manhood, braces humility, and rebukes pride at the bar of the Christian con- science. Can men really see God put such honour on humility, and be as though they saw it not? Can a creature, who has nothing good in him that he has not received, and whose moral evil is entirely his own, behold the Highest One thus teaching him the truthful attitude of a created life, without emotion, with- out shame, without practical self-abasement ? What place is there for great assertions of self in a man who sincerely believes that he has been saved by the Death of the Incarnate Son of God? Who has the heart to vaunt his own opinion, or to parade his accomplishments, or to take secret pleasure in income or station or intellectual power, when he reflects upon the astonishing grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who, when He was rich, for our sakes became poor P? It is the Incarnation which has confronted human pride, by revealing God clearly to the conscience of men, but also, and especially, by practically setting the highest possible honour upon extreme self-humiliation. It is the Incarnation which has led men to veil high gifts, and to resign places of
= Phil. ii. 6, 7. ° Collect for Sunday before Easter. » 2 Cor, viii. g. vir |
502 Lhe grace of charity how far a product
influence, and to forego the advantages of wealth and birth, that they might have some part, however fractionally small, in the moral glories of Bethlehem and Calvary. It is the Incarnation
which has thus saved society again and again from the revo-
lutionary or despotic violence of unbridled ambitions, by bringing into the field of political activity the corrective, compensating force of active self-denial. An enthusiasm for withdrawal from the general struggle to aggrandise self has fascinated those wor- shippers of an Incarnate God, who have learnt from Him the true glory of taking the lowest place at the feast of human life. But the motive for such repression of self is powerful only so far as faith in Christ’s Godhead is clear and strong. The culture of humility does not enter into the ordinary schemes of natural ethics; and Humanitarian doctrines are found, as a rule, to accompany intellectual and social self-assertion. It has been true from the first, it is true at this hour, that a sincere faith which recognises in the Son of Mary, laid in His manger and nailed to His Cross, none other than the Only-begotten Son of God, is the strongest incentive to conquer the natural pride of the human heart, and to learn the bearing of a little child i— that true note of predestined nobility—in the Kingdom of Heaven.
(y) Let us take one more illustration of the moral fruitfulness of a faith in the Divinity of our Saviour. There is a grace, to which the world itself does homage, and which those who bend neither heart nor knee before the world’s Redeemer admit to be the consequence of His appearance among men.
Heathenism, as being impure and proud, was consistently unloving. For as the one vice eats out the delicacy and heart of all true tenderness, so the other systematically enthrones self upon the ruins of the unselfish affections. Despite the Utopian sketches which have been drawn by the philosophers of the last century, the sentiment of ‘humanity’ is too feeble a thing to create in us a true love of man as man. Man does not, in his natural state, love his brother man, except it be from motives of interest or blood-relationship. Nay, man regards all who are not thus related to him as forming the great company of his natural rivals and enemies, from whom he has nothing to expect save that which the might or the prudence of self-interest may dictate,
a St. Matt. xviii. 3.
[ LEOT.
ΧΟ
Rie
of farth in the Divinity of Christ. 503
\ A > a , τὸ γὰρ οἰκεῖον πιέζει
‘ > coa > ‘ > > , , πάνθ᾽ ὁμῶς" εὐθὺς δ᾽ ἀπήμων κραδία κᾶδος ἀμφ᾽ ἀλλότριον Τ,
Such is the voice of unchristianized nature: man’s highest love is the love of self, varied by those subordinate affections which minister to self-love: and society is an agglomeration of self- loving’ beings, whose ruling instincts are shaped by force or by prudence into a political whole, but who are ever ready, as op- portunity may arise, to break forth into the excesses of an unchecked barbarism. Contempt for and cruelty towards the slave, hatred of the political or literary rival, suspicious aversion for the foreigner, disbelief in the reality of human virtue and of human disinterestedness, were recognized ingredients in the temper of pagan times. The science of life consisted in solving a practical equation between the measure of evil which it was desirable to inflict upon others, and the amount of suffering which it might be necessary to endure at their hands. Love of mankind would have seemed folly to a society, the recognised law of whose life was selfishness, and whose vices culminated in a mutual hatred between man and man, class and class, race and race, thinly veiled by the hollow conventionalisms which distinguish Pagan civilization from pure barbarism §,
How did Jesus Christ reform this social corruption? He gave the New Commandment. ‘This is My commandment, that ye love one another, as I have loved yout.’ But was His love merely the love of a holy man for those whose hearts were too dull and earthly to love Him in return? Could such a human love as this have availed to compass a moral revolution, and to change ‘the deepest instincts of mankind? Is it not a fact that Christians have measured the love of Jesus Christ as man measures all love, by observing the degree in which it involves the gift of self? Love is ever the gift of self. It gives that which costs us some- thing, or it is not love. Its spirit may vary in the degree of intensity, but it is ever the same. It is always and everywhere the sacrifice of self. It is the gift of time, or of labour, or of income, or of affection; it is the surrender of reputation and of honour ; it is the acceptance of sorrow and of pain for others.
¥ Pind. Nem. i. 82.
5 Tit. iii. 3: ἦμεν γάρ ποτε καὶ ἡμεῖς ἀνάητοι, ἀπειθεῖς, πλανώμενοι, Sov- λεύοντες ἐπιθυμίαις καὶ ἡδοναῖς ποικίλαις, ἐν κακίᾳ καὶ φθόνῳ διάγοντες, στυγητοὶ, μισοῦντες ἀλλήλους
* St. John xv. 12. vin |
504 Charity, a product of faith in Christ's Divinity.
The warmth of the spirit of love varies with the felt greatness of the sacrifice which expresses it and which is its life. There- fore the love of the Divine Christ is infinite. ‘He loved me,’ says an apostle, ‘and gave Himself forme, The ‘Self’ which He gave for man was none other than the Infinite God: the _ reality of Christ's Godhead is the truth which can alone measure the greatness of His love. The charities of His earthly life are but so many sparks from the central column of flame, which | burns in the Self-devotion of the Eternal Son of God. The agonies of His Passion are illuminated each and all with a moral no less than a doctrinal meaning, by the momentous truth that He Who is crucified between two thieves is nevertheless the Lord of Glory. From this faith in the voluntary Self-immolation of the Most Holy, a new power of love has streamed forth into the soul of man’, Of this love, before the Incarnation, man not only had no experience; his moral education would not have trained him even to admire it. But the Infinite Being bowing down to Self-chosen humiliation and agony, that, without violat- ing His essential attributes, He might win to Himself the heart of His erring creatures, has provoked an answer of grateful love, first towards Himself, and then for His sake towards His crea- tures. Thus ‘with His Own right Hand, and with His holy Arm, He hath gotten Himself the victory x’ over the selfishness as over the sins of man. ‘We love Him because He first loved 55. If human life has been brightened by the thousand courtesies of our Christian civilization; if human pain has been alleviated by the unnumbered activities of Christian charity; if the face of Christendom is beautified by institutions which cheer the earthly existence of millions; these results are due to Christian faith in the Charity of the Redeemer, which is infinite because the Redeemer is Divine. And thus the temples of Christendom, visibly perpetuating the worship of Christ from age to age, are not the only visible witnesses among us to His Divine prerogatives. The hospital, in which the bed of anguish is soothed by the hand of science under the guidance of love ; the penitentiary, where the victims of a selfish passion are raised to a new moral life by the care and delicacy of an unmerceuary tenderness ; the school, which gathers the ragged outcasts of our great cities, rescuing them from the ignorance and vice of which
5 Gal. ii, 20. Y Phil. i. 8, where note ἐν σπλάγχνοις Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ, and compare St. Luke i. 78.
= Ps. Xcvill. 2. ¥ 1 St. John iv. 19. LECT.
Recapitulation. 505
else they must be the prey;—what is the fountain-head of these blessed and practical results, but the truth of His Divinity, Who has kindled man into charity by giving Himself for man? The moral results of Calvary are what they are, because Christ is God. He Who stooped from heaven to the humiliations of the Cross has opened in the heart of redeemed man a fountain of love and compassion. No distinctions within the vast circle of the human family can narrow or pervert its course; nor can it cease to flow while Christians believe, that Christ crucified for ~ men is the Only-begotten Son of God.
It is therefore an error to suppose that the doctrine of our Lord’s Divinity has impoverished the moral life of Christendom ‘by removing Christ from the category of imitable beings.’ For on the one hand, the doctrine leaves His Humanity altogether intact ; on the other, it enhances the force of His example as a model of the graces of humility and love. Thus from age to age ~ this doctrine has in truth fertilized the moral soul of human life, not less than it has guarded and illuminated intellectual truth. How indeed could it be otherwise? ‘If God spared not His Own Son, but freely gave Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?’ Who shall wonder if wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption are given with the gift of the Eternal Son? Who shall wonder if by this gift, a keen, strong sense of the Personality and Life of God, and withal a true estimate of man’s true dignity, of his capacity, through grace, for the highest forms of life, are guarded in the sanctuary of human thought? Who shall gainsay it, if along with this gift we inherit a body of revealed and certain truth, reposing on the word of an Infallible Teacher; if we are washed in a stream of cleansing Blood, which flows from an atoning fountain opened on Calvary for the sin and uncleanness of a guilty world; if we are sustained by sacraments which make us really partakers of the Nature of our God; if we are capable of virtues which embellish and elevate humanity, yet which, but for the strength and example of our Lord, might have seemed too plainly unattainable 1
For the Divinity of God’s Own Son, freely given for us sinners to suffer and to die, is the very heart of our Christian faith. It cannot be denied without tearing out the vitals of a living Christianity. Its roots are struck far back into the pro- phecy, the typology, the ethics, of the Old Testament. It alone supplies a satisfactory explanation of the moral attitude of Jesus a towards His contemporaries. It is the true key to His vi
506 Christ’s Divinity the strength of His Church,
teaching, to His miracles, to the leading mysteries of His life, to His power of controlling the issues of history. As such, it is put forward by apostles who, differing in much besides, were made one by this faith in His Divinity and in the truths which are bound up with it. It enters into the world of speculative discussion ; it is analysed, criticised, denounced, proscribed, be- trayed; yet it emerges from the crucible wherein it has been exposed to the action of every intellectual solvent that hostile ingenuity could devise; it has lost nothing from, it has added nothing to, its original significance ; it has only been clothed in a symbol which interprets it to new generations, and which lives in the confessions of the grateful Church. Its later history is explained when we remember the basis on which it really rests. The question of Christ’s Divinity is the question of the truth or falsehood of Christianity. ‘If Christ be not God,’ it has been truly said, ‘He is not so great as Mohammed.’ But Christ’s moral relation to Mohammed may safely be left to every un- sophisticated conscience ; and if the conscience owns in Him the Moral Chief of humanity, it must take Him at His word when He unveils before it His superhuman glory.
But the doctrine of Christ’s Divinity does not merely bind us to the historic past, and above all to the first records of Chris- tianity; it is at this hour the strength of the Christian Church. There are forces abroad in the world of thought which, if they could be viewed apart from all that counteracts them, might well make a Christian fear for the future of humanity. It is not merely that the Church is threatened with the loss of possessions secured to her by the reverence of centuries, and of a place of honour which may perhaps have guarded civilization more effec- tively than it can be shewn to have strengthened religion. The Faith has once triumphed without these gifts of Providence ; and, if God wills, she can again dispense with them. But never since the first ages of the Gospel was fundamental Christian truth denied and denounced so largely, and with such passionate animosity, as is the case at this moment in each of the most civilized nations of Europe. It may be that God has in store for His Church greater trials to her faith than she has yet experienced ; it may be that along with the revived scorn of the old pagan spirit, the persecuting sword of pagan hatred will yet be unsheathed. Be it so, if so He wills it. The holy city is strong in knowing ‘that God is in the midst of her, therefore shall she not be removed; God shall help her, and that right early. The heathen make much ado, and the make are
LECT.
ἀνδρὶ patsy
and a rallying-point for desunited Christendom. 507
moved; but God hath shewed His Voice, and the earth shall melt away.’ When the waters of human opinion rage and swell, and the mountains shake at the tempest of the same, our Divine Lord is not unequal to the defence of His Name and His Honour. If the sky seem dark and the winds contrary; if ever and anon the strongest intellectual and social currents of our civilization mass themselves threateningly, as if to overwhelm the holy bark as she rides upon the waves; we know Who is with her, unwearied and vigilant, though He should seem to sleep. His presence forbids despondency; His presence assures us that a cause which has consistently conquered in its day of apparent failure, cannot but calmly abide the issue. ‘ Although the fig-tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines ; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flocks shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls: yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy
in the God of my salvation.’
Would that these anxieties might in God’s good providence work out a remedy for the wounds of His Church! Would that, in presence of the common foe, and yet more by clinging to the common faith, Christians could learn to understand each other! Surely it might seem that agreement in so stupendous a belief as the Divinity of our Crucified Lord might avail to overshadow, or rather to force on a reconciliation of the differ- ences which divide those who share it. Is it but the indulgence of a fond dream to hope that a heartier, more meditative, more practical grasp of the Divinity of Jesus will one day again unite His children in the bonds of a restored unity? Is it altogether chimerical to expect that Christians who believe Christ to be truly God, will see more clearly what is involved in that faith, and what is inconsistent with it; that they will supply what is wanting or will abandon what is untenable in their creed and practice, so that before men and angels they may openly unite in the adoring confession of their Divine Head? The pulse quickens, and the eyes fill with tears, at the bare thought of this vision of peace, at this distant but blessed prospect of a reunited Christendom. What dark doubts would it not dispel! What deep consolations would it not shed forth on millions of souls! What fascination would not the spectacle of concordant prayer and harmonious action among the servants of Christ exert over the hearts of sinners! With what majestic energy would the reinvigorated Church, ‘terrible as an army with ie vid address herself forthwith to the heartier promotion of yi
508 Conclusion.
man’s best interests, to the richer development of the Christian life, to more energetic labours for the conversion of the world! But we may not dwell, except in hope and prayer, upon the secrets of Divine Providence. It may be our Lord’s purpose to shew to His servants of this generation only His work, and to reserve for their children the vision of His glory. It must be our duty, in view of His revealed Will, and with a simple faith in His Wisdom and His Power, to pray our Lord ‘that all they that do confess God’s Holy Name, may agree in the truth of His Holy Word, and live in unity and godly love.’
But here we must close this attempt to reassert, against some misapprehensions of modern thought, the great truth which guards the honour of Christ, and which is the most precious feature in the intellectual heritage of Christians. And for you, dear brethren, who by your generous interest or by your warm sympathies have so accompanied and sustained him, what can the preacher more fittingly or more sincerely desire, than that any clearer sight of the Divine Person of our glorious and living Lord which may have been granted you, may be, by Him, blessed to your present sanctification and to your endless peace? If you are intellectually persuaded that in confessing the true Godhead of Jesus you have not followed a cunningly-devised fable, or the crude imagination of a semi-barbarous and distant age, then do not allow yourselves to rest content with this intel- lectual persuasion. A truth so sublime, so imperious, has other work to do in you besides shaping into theoretic compactness a certain district of your thought about the goodness of God and the wants of man. The Divine Christ of the Gospel and the Church is no mere actor, though He were the greatest, in the great tragedy of human history; He belongs not exclusively or especially to the past; He is ‘the Same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. He is at this moment all that He was eighteen centuries ago, all that He has been to our fathers, all that He will be to our children. He is the Divine and Infallible Teacher, the Healer and Pardoner of sin, the Source of all graces, the Conqueror of Satan and of death—now, as of old, and as in years to come. Now as heretofore, He is ‘able to save unto the uttermost them that come unto God by Him;’ now, as on the day of His triumph over death, ‘He opens the Kingdom of Heaven to all believers;’ now, as in the first age of the Church, He it is ‘that hath the key of David, that openeth, and no man shutteth; and shutteth,
[ LECT.
Suni Sk ag
_ Conclusion, 509
and no man openeth2’ He is ever the Same; but, as the children of time, whether for good or evil, we move onwards in perpetual change. The hours of life pass, they do not return ; they pass, yet they are not forgotten; ‘ pereunt et imputantur.’ But the present is our own; we may resolve, if we will, to live as men who live for the glory of an Incarnate God. Brethren, you shall not repent it, if, when life’s burdens press heavily, and especially at that solemn hour when human help must fail, you are able to lean with strong confidence on the arm of an Almighty Saviour. May He in deed and truth be with you, alike in your pilgrimage through this world, and when that brief journey is drawing to its close! May you, sustained by His Presence and aid, so pass through the valley of the shadow of death as to fear no evil, and to find, at the gate of the eternal world, that all the yearnings of faith and hope are to be more than satisfied by the vision of the Divine ‘King in His
Beauty !’
® Rev. iii. 7.
vit]
NOTES.
NOTE A, on Lecture 1.
Tue works upon the Life of our Lord alluded to in the text are the following.
1. Das Leben Jesu, von Dr. F. 10. Strauss, 1835. This work passed through several editions, and in 1864 was followed up by Das Leben Jesu, fiir das Deutsche Volk bearbeitet. Leipsig, Brockhaus.
Strauss’ argument is chiefly concerned with the differences between the Evangelists, and with the miraculous features of their narratives. He regards the miracles as ‘myths,’ that is to say, as pure fictions. His position is, that the speculative ideas about Jesus which were circulating in the first century were dressed up in a traditional form, the substance of which was derived from the Messianic figures of the Old Testament. This violent supposition was really dictated by Strauss’ philosophy. Denying the possible existence of miracle, of the supernatural, of the invisible world, and even the existence of a personal living God, Strauss undertakes to explain the Gospel-history as the natural development of germs previously latent in the world of human life and thought. Upon the ground that nothing is absolute, that all is relative, Strauss will not allow that any one man can absolutely have realized the ‘idea’ of humanity. The sanctity of Jesus was only relative; and, speaking historically, Jesus fell far below the absolute Idea to which the thought of the Apostolical age endeavoured to elevate Him by the ‘ mythical’ additions to His ‘ Life.’ Thus Strauss’ criticism is in reality the application of Hegel’s doctrine of ‘absolute idealism’ to the Gospel narratives. ‘It is,’ observes Dr. Mill, ‘far more from a
512. Note A. On ‘Lives’ of Our Lord.
desire of working out on a historical ground the philosophical
principles of his master, than from any attachment to mythical theories on their own account, that we are clearly to deduce the destructive process which Strauss has applied to the Life of Jesus. (Myth. Interpr. p. 11.)
Strauss’ later work is addressed not to the learned, but to the German people, with a view to destroying the influence of the Lutheran pastors. He observes in his Preface: ‘ Wer die Pfaffen aus der Kirche schaffen will, der muss erst das Wunder aus der Religion schaffen.’ (Vorrede, p. xix.) With this practical object he sets to work; and although the results at which he arrives are perhaps more succinctly stated than in his earlier book, the real difference between them is not considerable. He makes little use of the critical speculations on the Gospels which have been produced in Protestant and Rationalistic Germany during the last thirty years. Thus he is broadly at issue with the later Tiibingen writers on the subject of St. Mark’s Gospel; he altogether disputes their favourite theory of its ‘ originality,’ and views it as only a colourless réswmé of the narratives of St. Mat- thew and St. Luke. His philosophical theory still, however, controls his religious speculations: Jesus did for religion what Socrates did for philosophy, and Aristotle for science. Although the appearance of Jesus in the world constituted an epoch, He belonged altogether to humanity: He did not rise above it; He might even be surpassed. The second book, like the first, is an elaboration of the thesis that ‘the idea cannot attain its full development in a single individual of the species ;’ and to this elaboration there are added some fierce attacks upon the social and religious institutions of Europe, designed more particularly tc promote an anti-Christian social revolution in northern Germany.
2. Das Charakterbild Jesu, ein biblischer Versuch, von Dr. Daniel Schenkel. 2te Auflage. Wiesbaden, 1864.
Dr. Schenkel begins by insisting upon the ‘irrational’ cha- racter of the Church’s doctrine of the Union of two Natures in our Lord’s Person. Nothing, he thinks, short of the oppression with which the medieval Church treated all attempts at free thought can account for the perpetuation of such a dogma. The Reformers, although they proclaimed the principle of free enquiry, yet did not venture honestly to apply it to the traditional doc-
-trine of Christ's Person; primitive Protestantism was afraid of
; 4 a
Note A. On‘Lives’ of Our Lord. 513
the consequences of its fundamental principle. The orthodox doctrine accordingly outlived the Reformation; but the older Rationalism has established a real claim upon our gratitude by in- sisting upon the pure Humanity of Christ, although, Dr. Schenkel thinks, it has too entirely stripped Him of His ‘ Divinity,’ that is to say, of the moral beauty to which we may still apply that designation. As for the Christ of Schleiermacher, he is a pro- duct of the yearnings and aspirations of that earnest and gifted teacher, but he is not, according to Schenkel, the Jesus of history. Strauss does in the main represent Jesus such as He was in the reality of His historical life; but Strauss’ repre- sentation is too much tinged with modern colourings; nor are his desolating negations sufficiently counterbalanced by those positive results of this thoroughgoing ‘criticism’ upon which Dr. Schenkel proposes to dwell. For the future, faith in Christ is to rest on more solid bases than ‘auf denen des Aberglaubens, der Priesterherrschaft, und einer mit heiteren oder schreckenden Bildern angefiillten Phantasie.’ (p. 11.)
Dr. Schenkel makes the most of the late Tiibingen theory of the ‘originality,’ as it is called, of St. Mark, and of the non- historical character, as he maintains, of the Gospel of St. John; although he deals very ‘freely’ with the materials, which he re- serves as still entitled to historical consideration. Dr. Schenkel does not hold that the Evangelistic account of Christ’s miracles is altogether mythical; it has, he thinks, a certain basis of fact. He admits that our Lord may have possessed what may be termed a miraculous gift, even if this should be rightly explained to be only a rare natural endowment. He had a power of calm- ing persons of deranged mind; His assurances of the pardon of their sins, acting beneficially on their nervous system, produced these restorative effects. Dr. Schenkel holds it to be utterly impossible that Jesus could have worked any of the ‘ miracles of nature ;’ since this would have proved Him to be truly God. All such narratives as His calming the storm in the lake are there- fore part of that ‘torrent of legend’ with which the historical germ of His real Life has been overlaid by later enthusiasms. The Resurrection, accordingly, is not a fact of history; it is a creation of the imaginative devotion of the first disciples. (See p- 314.) Dr. Schenkel considers the appearances of our Risen Lord to have been only so many glorifications of His character in the hearts of those who believed in Him. To them He was “ manifested as One who lives eternally, in that He has founded His kingdom on earth by His word and His Spirit.
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514 Note A. On ‘Lives’ of Our Lord.
The main idea of Dr. Schenkel’s book is to make the Life of Jesus the text of an attack upon those who are Conservatives in politics and orthodox Lutherans in religion. It is not so much a biography, or even a sketch of character, as a polemical pamphlet. The treatment of our Lord’s words and actions, and still more the highly-coloured representation of the Pharisees, are throughout intended to express the writer’s view of schools and parties in Lutheran Germany. The Pharisees of course are the orthodox Lutherans; while Jesus Christ is the political demagogue and liberal sceptic. With some few exceptions, the etiquette of history is scrupulously observed ; and yet the really historical interest is as small, as the polemical references are continuous and piquant. The woes which Jesus pronounces against the Pharisees are not directed simply against hypocrisy and formalism; ‘the curse of Christ,’ we are told, ‘like the trumpet of the last Judgment, lights for ever upon every church that is based upon tradition and upon the ascendancy of a privileged clergy.’ ‘ Der Weheruf Jesu ist noch nicht verklungen. Er trifft noch heute, wie eine Posaune des Gerichts, jedes auf die Satzungen der Ueberlieferung und auf die Herrschaft eines mit Vorzugsrechten ausgestatteten Klerus gegriindete Kirchenthum.’ (p. 254.) Perhaps the most singular illustration of profane reck- lessness in exegesis that can easily be found in modern literature is Dr. Schenkel’s explanation of the sin against the Holy Ghost. This sin, he tells us, does not consist, as we may have mistakenly supposed, in a deliberate relapse from grace into impenitence; it is not the sin of worldly or unbelieving persons. It is the sin of orthodoxy; it is a ‘ Theologisch-hierarchischer Verhirtung und Verstockung ;’ and those who defend and propagate the ancient faith of Christians, in spite of rationalistic warnings against doing so, are really guilty of it. (Charakt. p. 106.)
Dr. Schenkel has explained himself more elaborately on some points in his pamphlet ‘Die Protestantische Freiheit, in ihrem gegenwirtigen Kampfe mit der kirchlichen Reaktion’ (Wies- baden, 1862). He fiercely demands a Humanitarian Christology (p. 153). He laments that even Zwingli’s thought was still fettered by the formule of Nicwa and Chalcedon (p. 152), nay, he remarks that St. Paul himself has assigned to Christ a rank which led on naturally to the Church-belief in the Divinity of His Person (p. 148). That belief Dr. Schenkel considers to be a shred of heathen superstition which had found its way into the circle of Christian ideas (ibid.); while he sorrowfully protests that the adoration of Jesus, both in the public Services of the
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Note A. On ‘Lives’ of Our Lord. 515
Church and in the Christian consciousness, has superseded that of God the Father. ‘ Vom fiinften Jahrhundert bis zur Reforma- tion (he might have begun four centuries earlier and gone on for three centuries later) wird Jesus Christ durchgangig als der Herrgott verehit’ (p. 149). Indeed, throughout this brochure Dr. Schenkel’s positions are simply those of the old Socinianism, resting however upon a Rationalistic method of treatment, which in its more logical phases regards much of what Socinianism itself retains, as the yoke of an intolerable orthodoxy.
3. Geschichte Christus’ und Seiner Zeit, von Heinrich Ewald. Gottingen, 1857. 2te Ausgabe.
This work is on no account to be placed on the level of those of Strauss or Schenkel, to which in some most vital particulars it is opposed. Indeed, Ewald’s defence of St. John’s Gospel, and - his deeper spirituality of tone, must command a religious in- terest, which would be of a high order, if only this writer believed in our Lord’s Godhead. That this, unhappily, is not the case, will be apparent upon a careful study of the concluding chapter of this volume on ‘ Die Ewige Verherrlichung,’ pp. 496-- 504,—beautiful as are some of the passages which it contains. His explanation of the titles ‘Son of God’ and ‘ Word of God,’ Ῥ. 502, is altogether inadequate ; and his statement that ‘nie hat Jesu als der Sohn und das Wort Gottes sich mit der Vater und Gotte Selbst (from whom Ewald accordingly distinguishes our Lord) verwechselt oder vermessen sich selbst diesem gleich- gestellt,’ is simply contradicted by St. John v. and x.
4. Die Menschliche Entwickelung Jesu Christi, von Th. Keim. Ziirich, 1861. 1216 geschichtliche Wiirde Jesu, von Th. Keim, Ziirich, 1864. Der geschichtliche Christus, Line Rethe von Vortrdgen mit Quellenbeweis und Cha onologie des Lebens Jesu, von Th. Keim. Ziirich, 1866.
Dr. Keim, although rejecting the fourth Gospel, retains too much of the mind of Schleiermacher to be justly associated with Drs. Strauss or Schenkel. Dr. Keim, indeed, sees in our Lord only a Man, but still an eminently mysterious Man of incom~- parable grandeur of character. He recognises, although in- adequately, the startling self-assertion of our Lord; and he differs most emphatically from Strauss, Schenkel, and Renan in recognising the real sinlessness of Jesus. He admits, too, the historical value of our Lord’s eschatological discourses ; he does
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516 Note A. On‘Lives’ of Our Lord.
not regard His miracles ‘of nature’ as absolutely impossible ; and he heartily believes in the reality of Christ’s own Resurrec- tion from the dead. He cannot account for the phenomenon of the Church, if the Resurrection be denied. Altogether he seems to consider that the Life of Jesus as a spiritual, moral, and, in some respects, supernatural fact, is unique; but an intellectual spectre, the assumed invariability of historical-laws, as we con- ceive them, seems to interpose so as to prevent him from drawing the otherwise inevitable inference. Yet for such as he is, let us hope much.
5. La Vie de Jésus, par HE. Renan, Paris, 1863.
Of this well-known book it may suffice here to say a very few words. Its one and only excellence is its incomparable style. From every other point of view it is deplorable. Historically, it deals most arbitrarily with the data upon which it professes to be based. Thus in the different pictures of Christ’s aim and action, during what are termed the second and the third periods of His Ministry, a purely artificial contrast is presented. Theo- logically, this work proceeds throughout on a really atheistic assumption, disguised beneath the thin veil of a pantheistic phraseology. It assumes that no such being as a personal God exists at all, The ‘god’ with whom, according to M. Renan, Jesus had such uninterrupted communion, but from whom he is so entirely distinct, is only the ‘category of the ideal.’ It is, however, when we look at the ‘ Vie de Jésus’ from a moral point of view, that its shortcomings are most apparent in their length and breadth. Its hero is a fanatical impostor, who pretends to be and to do that which he knows to be beyond him, but who nevertheless is held up to our admiration as the ideal of hu- manity. In place of the Divine and Human Christ of the Gospels, M. Renan presents us with a character devoid of any real majesty, of any tolerable consistency, and even of the con- stituent elements of moral goodness. If M. Renan himself does not perceive that the object of his enthusiasm is simply an offence to any healthy conscience, this is only an additional proof, if one were needed, of the fatal influence of pantheistic thought upon the most gifted natures. It destroys the sensitive- ness of the moral nerve. Enough to say that M. Renan presents us with a Christ who in his Gethsemane was possibly thinking of ‘les jeunes filles qui auraient peut-étre consenti ἃ l’aimer.’
(p- 379.)
Note A. On ‘Lives’ of Our Lord. 517
It ought perhaps here to be added that M. de Pressensé’s work, ‘Jésus-Christ, son Temps, sa Vie, son Giuvre,’ Paris, 1865, although failing (as might be expected) to do justice to the sacramental side of our Lord’s Incarnation and Teaching, is yet on the whole a most noble contribution to the cause of Truth, for which the deep gratitude of all sincere Christians cannot but be due to its accomplished author.
6. Ecce Homo; a Survey of the Life and Work of Jesus Christ. London and Cambridge, Macmillan, 1866.
Every one who reads ‘Ecce Homo’ must heartily admire the generous passion for human improvement which glows through- out the whole volume. And especial acknowledgment is due tv the author from Christian believers, for the emphasis with which he has insisted on the following truths :—
Christ’s moral sublimity. Christ’s claim of supremacy. Christ’s success in His work.
Incidentally, moreover, he has brought out into their true prominence some portions of the truth, which are lost sight of by popular religionists in England. As an example of this, his earnest recognition of the visibility of the Society founded by Christ may be instanced. But, on the other hand, this writer has carefully avoided all reference to the cardinal question of Christ’s Person; and he tells us that he has done this deliber- ately. (Pref. to 5th Ed. p.xx.) The result however is, that his