CHAPTER IV: THE RECONCILIATION OF THE SOUL AND GOD.

GOD.

SECTION I.--GOD'S SPIRITUALITY, UNITY, AND MORAL PERFECTION.

Foundation of all Religion.--Being of God assumed in the Gospels.--An original Intuitions--Proof in our Nature of Divine Spirituality.--Angelic Souls.--Spirituality includes Life and Intelligence.--Vegetable, Animal, Intellectual, Moral Life.--The original parental Life.--Infinite Intelligence.--Christ at Jacob's Well.--One Infinite, accounts for existing Phenomena.--More than One, contradictory.--Dualism.--Polytheism.--A Supreme among the Gods.--Christ proclaiming Unity.--Heathen Sentiments and Presentiments.--Gods of Paganism, their Character.--Jewish Misrepresentations.--The God of Christ, perfect Excellence 121

SECTION II.-GOD'S PATERNITY.

Type in Men, Reality in God.--Childship of all Souls.--In Soul alone, a Likeness to God.--Authority in God.--Love.--Great Family of God.--Introduction of Moral Evil.--Fatherhood of God in the Teaching of jesus.--Parental Love, the moving Power of the Universe 135

THE RECONCILIATION OF THE SOUL AND GOD.

Departure from God, Root and Essence of Evil.--Ever-widening.--Retributive Character.--Ruin of Spiritual Nature.--Union and Separation of Minds.--End of Christ's Mediation, of His Death, and of His Life in Reconciliation 144

PART V.
THE ARGUMENT FROM HIS WORK TO HIS DIVINITY.

Human Systems of Religions Truth.--Mohammedanism.--Hindooism and Buddhism.--Talmudism.--Ancient Jewish Scriptures.--Stoicism, earlier and later.--Errors and Excellences.--Socraticism or Platonism.--Philo-Judæas.--Life of Socrates.--His Death.--His Faith and Hopes.--Christian Views of them and him.--Christianity contrasted with Teaching of Socrates.--Solution, Christ's true Divinity 153

BOOK THIRD.
THE SPIRITUAL INDIVIDUALITY OF CHRIST.
PART I.
HIS ONENESS WITH GOD.

Communion between the created and the untreated Mind.--Human Side of the Doctrine.--Effort to conceive of God.--Faith in His Nearness to us.--In His Love.--Sense of Dependence.--Veneration.--Trust.--God listening and responding to the Soul.--To Christ, God the greatest Reality.--Christ alone with God.--Habitual, original Union.--Walked with God. 191

PART II.
THE FORMS OF HIS CONSCIOUSNESS.

Nature of Consciousness.--Its Universality.--Value of its Testimony.--Christ's Consciousness.--Its Highest Development.--Expressed to the Last.--Interpretation of it.--Proof of Validity of his Claims. 208

PART III.

THE TOTALITY OF HIS MANIFESTATION BEFORE THE WORLD.

True Man.--Peculiar Susceptibility.--Sufferings and Provocations.--Unconquerable Patience.--Absolute spiritual Perfection.--Simplicity and Freshness.--Uniform Perfection.--Jesus a Manifestation, not an effort.--A pure Original, not an Imitation.--Alone in History. 216

PART IV.
THE MOTIVE OF HIS LIFE.

Absence of Selfishness.--Presence of pure and lofty Motives.--His active Goodness.--Views of the Soul.--Love of Man as Man.--Gave His Life, a Sacrifice. 285

PART V.

HIS FAITH IN GOD, TRUTH AND THE REDEMPTION OF MAN.

Foreknowledge of His death.--His Solitariness.--Never disappointed.--Truth a Provision for the Wants, Cure for the Evils of the World.--Attributes of God.--Expressions and Proofs of Christ's Assurance.--Institution of the Supper.--Interpretation of these Facts. 242

PART VI.

THE ARGUMENT FROM HIS SPIRITUAL CHARACTER TO HIS DIVINITY.

Moral Aspects and outward Facts of Christ's History.--A Character such as His, not once realized.--Interests of Truth and Virtue.--Moral Condition of Mankind, charged upon God.--Humanity in Christ peculiarly conditioned.--Idea of Incarnation universal.--A Primitive Revelation.--A universal Want.--Provision for this Want made once for all--Higher nature in Christ, not higher office merely.--His absolute Divinity.--This secured Aids and Influences, incommunicable to others 248

CONCLUSION.

Incarnation of Jesus sheds Light on all the Wonders of His History.--Supernatural Birth.--Resurrection and Ascension.--Miracles of His Life.--Spiritual Meaning.--Typical Character.--Sophistry of Strauss.--Extraordinary Tokens of Divinity Demanded.--Voice of God.--The World summoned to hear and believe 258 __________________________________________________________________

THE
CHRIST OF HISTORY,

ETC. __________________________________________________________________

IN THREE BOOKS. __________________________________________________________________

BOOK I. THE OUTER CONDITIONS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST. II. THE WORK OF CHRIST AMONG MEN. III. THE SPIRITUAL INDIVIDUALITY OF CHRIST. __________________________________________________________________

INTRODUCTION

Usual form of the argument.--Another species of proof--Earthly life of Jesus not sufficiently investigated.--His humanity alone assumed here.--Inspiration not essential in this argument.--General historical validity of the Gospels assumed.--The life they record not mythical, but real.--"Behold the Man."

A CHANGE in the form of the argument for the proper deity of Jesus Christ seems to be demanded in our day. Accepted and familiar proofs may not have lost their strength, but they have lost their freshness, and they are wanting in adaptation to the peculiar intellectual culture and structure of the present age. Sacred criticism, directed to the historical, prophetical, and devotional books of the Old Testament, and to the Gospels and Epistles of the New Testament, has long submitted its methods and their results to the judgment of the world. Dogmatic theology, also, connecting itself closely with the reigning logic and metaphysics, has long announced its expositions of sacred truth. Arguments on this subject have been accumulated in astonishing number, and have long maintained an acknowledged prescriptive authority. But it is conceivable that an excess of resources may prove, in certain cases, hardly less fatal than a palpable deficiency. Men are provoked to resist that which, instead of asking favor, commands and compels submission. It is sometimes wise to take not the very highest ground which it is possible to maintain, but the lowest and if; on this lowest ground, we can succeed in producing an unlooked-for amount of materials, the feeling of surprise conciliates the heart, and assists, instead of obstructing, the mental process which issues in conviction. Perhaps the earthly life of Jesus, apart from subtle criticism and from systematic, metaphysical theology, may be found to offer original and extraordinary evidences of His divinity evidences which, by their number, their harmony, and their force, shall amount to positive proof of this great mystery. This region, owing to the productiveness of others better known, has never been cultivated with the pains which it deserves. But the peculiar kind of proof; nevertheless, which it yields, we presume to think is at once the most intelligible and the most convincing which on such a subject can be offered to reason and conscience.

A temperate and conciliatory spirit is demanded toward those to whom we present the claims of religion and the exhibition of such a spirit can not injure or endanger Christianity. With perfect safety we may forego, for the time, the inheritance of evidence and of argument bequeathed from the past, by the researches and the erudition of enlightened men. Demanding nothing more than the simple humanity of Jesus of Nazareth, we shall venture from this platform to assert and expound his true divinity. Dismissing all preconceptions, however fondly cherished, and however long adopted into the faith of the churches, assuming nothing which is not virtually and even formally admitted by enemies as well as friends we hope to show that the manhood of Christ, as it appealed to the senses and the minds of the men of his own times, supplies and sustains the proof of his godhood. [1]

A still larger sacrifice, in the same spirit of conciliation, will be found compatible with safety and honor. The inspiration of the Christian records is not to be demanded here. No collection of writings has passed through a fiercer ordeal than the books of the New Testament. The severity of criticism, it may be safely said, the venomous malignity with which they have been assailed, has no parallel in the history of literature, or of the religions of the world. The facts, the chronology, the references to contemporaneous history, to political and social interests, to science and philosophy, the doctrines and the ethical principles of the New Testament, the honesty, intelligence, and capacity of the writers, and the character of their production as a whole, have been subjected to the scrutiny, often intensely prejudiced, of all nations and of all orders of intellect for eighteen centuries. It is at least grateful to think, that, owing to this very cause, an astonishing amount of power, otherwise unrevealed, has been evoked and effectively put forth in defense of these holy writings. But the inspiration of the New Testament, as that is popularly understood, shall not be insisted on in the present argument; and it shall suffice for us, if this book be allowed to stand only not lower than other equally ancient productions. Whatever abatement from its historical validity can be plausibly demanded on account of the remoteness of the period, the character of the age, or the position of the writers, it shall be conceded. For the sake of argument, though only for this, it shall be granted that the Evangelists were not secured against mistake, and that therefore the justice of all their sentiments, and the accuracy of all their details, are not unquestionable. We go farther; let all in these sacred records which belongs to the sphere of the miraculous be ascribed, for the present, to the habit of the Jewish mind, to the influence of their national history, or to the common tendency to exaggeration. We assume nothing more than this, that the Gospels, in a broad and general sense, are historical and veritable; and this, in point of fact, is virtually granted by all.

By far the ablest of the modern adversaries of the validity of the New Testament, who has subjected it to the most severe analysis, and has brought to his task the largest amount of learning and of philosophic power, has admitted at least a basis, even a broad basis, of historical truth in the Gospels. He concedes that Jesus of Nazareth lived on earth, and that his character, saving the miraculous element so largely blended with the delineation of it, substantially was what it is represented to be by the Evangelists. [2] This admission indeed can not be withheld, without encountering even graver difficulties than are created by conceding it. The antiquity of the records being granted--and it is granted at this day by all who have seriously investigated the subject, and who, on the ground of scholarship and of intellectual and moral competency, are entitled to consideration--one or other of two hypotheses is unavoidable. Either such a man as Jesus of Nazareth really appeared on earth about the time which the Christian records fix, or the writers of the Gospels gave form and life to a mere idea which never had an outward realization, and existed no where but in their minds. No third supposition is conceivable on any rational ground; one or other of these two must be accepted; and in truth there is no choice between them, for the difficulties involved in the latter are wholly insurmountable. On the supposition that Jesus of Nazareth never actually existed, it is not within the range of rational belief that the idea of such a being was formed in that country, that age, and in the minds of such men as the Evangelists are held to have been, and as in point of mental endowment and culture and social rank they certainly were. When it shall have been fully ascertained what that being who is presented to us in the Gospels really was, the evidence will be irresistible that this is not within the range of rational belief, but is so unlikely and unnatural as to be morally impossible. It would contradict all experience and all legitimate induction from experience, and be as utterly out of the course of human things as any miracle ever recorded. It is abundantly demonstrable, and the evidence will accumulate as the present investigation advances, that the Evangelists, instead of embodying a conception of their own minds, must have witnessed the life which they describe, never could have conceived it unless they had first witnessed it, and were able to represent it in the manner they have done, only because it had actually passed under their immediate and frequent observation.

The Gospels, then, contain the history of a life once actually spent on this earth. The writers relate on the whole what they saw and heard, and on the whole convey the impression which was left on their minds by a real, living being. It is enough. This lowest stand-point is enough. Take only the earthly life of Christ, suppose only that in a broad general sense it is faithfully represented--behold only the Man--He shall indicate and demonstrate union with absolute Godhead. Such a Humanity as his is utterly inexplicable, except on the ground of true Divinity. __________________________________________________________________

[1] The pre-supposition (voraussetzung) with which Neander commences his Life of Christ is certainly fatal to it as an argument, although its value as an exposition of the Gospels, and a critical defense of their authenticity, is in no degree affected by this circumstance. What he calls "the Christian consciousness" (das Christliche Bewustseyn) is not innate but acquired, the result of education, and therefore of no authority.--Das Leben Jesu Christi, Hamburg, 1855, Einleitung, s. 4.

[2] "Das Leben Jesu." Even Germany now consents that this attempt to place the Christian Gospels in the same category with heathen mythologies is only an ingenious fallacy, an elaborate defeat. One thing we must be permitted to mark: Strauss begins his criticism by aiming to create a prejudice, at all events a prejudgment Surely this cannot be too severely reprobated; it is unscientific, it is unphilosophical, it is morally wrong. __________________________________________________________________

BOOK FIRST.

THE OUTER CONDITIONS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST. __________________________________________________________________

IN THREE PARTS.

PART I. His social Position. II. The Shortness of His earthly Course. III. The Age and Place in which He appeared. __________________________________________________________________

THAT life on which it is proposed to found an argument for Divinity was singular in the materials and the mode of its formation. The outward and the inward aspects of every earthly course are mysteriously related to each other. The age, the country, the physical organization, education, society, and the like, exert an acknowledged influence in the intellectual and moral development of a human being. Native force of character may rise above the accidents of birth and early position and all the external conditions by which the soul is limited, so that it can never be predicted with certainty, from any given circumstances, what a man's future life shall be, because we can never foresee how the action of these circumstances may be modified, and what minute and delicate influences may either neutralize or assist their effect in the progress of years. But the fact of dependence and of moral causation, nevertheless, has almost the constancy and sovereignty of a universal law. The seeds of that definite form which each individual life eventually assumes will be found to lie within its early history. The future is never accidental and capricious, a void filled up with materials, gathered according to no principle and disposed without order or law. It is rather the natural product of elements which existed and acted in the earlier period of life. The present and the future stand almost in the relation of cause and effect. Events, influences, incidents in the one largely contribute to make the other what it ultimately becomes. Usually a man's early life and position will be found to contain the germ and to furnish the true interpretation Of his future character in history. __________________________________________________________________

PART I.
CHRIST'S SOCIAL POSITION.

His Mother.--Her views respecting Him and their origin.--The influence of these on Him.--Nothing else, in the early life of Jesus, favorable to his subsequent elevation.--His Poverty, hinderances in this to his Ministry.--"The Carpenter."--His want of formal education and of patronage.

IT will be proved that the common formative principles which have just been referred to utterly fail to explain the life of Jesus. His life, we shall find, stands out a mysterious exception to all the ordinary laws that govern the destiny of men. What He ultimately became, so far from harmonizing with his early course and his outward condition, was reached not because hut in spite of all the influences descending upon him from both of these regions. It was not a natural result of the circumstances amid which he grew up, but one which, unless to some hidden antagonist force, these circumstances must have rendered absolutely impossible.

We can recognize one specific agency, indeed, though only one, which undeniably had an effect in preparing Jesus in his early life for the position to which he eventually rose. There was one person, nearer to him and dearer than any other, who must have exerted an influence in the formation of his character favorable to the peculiar development which it was destined to reach. That person was his mother. The Virgin Mary entertained from the first very exalted notions respecting her Son. The origin of these notions can not be unfolded here, because we have consented to surrender for the time all that is supernatural in the New Testament records. The mystery of Christ's birth, the vision of the shepherds of Bethlehem, the visit of the Chaldean sages, the prophetic words of Simeon and Anna in the Temple, must therefore be left out of the discussion. Perhaps it will be found by and by, that facts of this nature beautifully harmonize with the calmest and soundest views which can be taken of the Christian writings. But no use must be made of them here, and they must not be suffered to influence either the narrative or the argumentative part of this investigation.

Twelve years after the birth of Christ, an incident occurred, which is the more remarkable, because it forms the solitary piece of intelligence which is communicated to us respecting a period of his life, extending over nearly thirty years. On the occasion of the Passover, the child Jesus remained behind in Jerusalem after Mary and her husband Joseph had left to return home, and at the end of three days he was found by them in the Temple, sitting at the feet of the teachers of the Law, listening to them and asking them questions. The circumstance, of Jesus being so long separated from his earthly guardians without their knowledge, is easily accounted for by the usages of the Passover-time. Even his being found with the teachers of the Law is not out of harmony with the history and manners of the period. The Jewish historian relates something of this kind, which happened to himself when he was about fourteen years of age. [3] All which this incident can reasonably be supposed to convey is granted freely. It is granted also that the words of the child to his mother, when she rebuked him for tarrying behind, "Wist ye not that I must be on my Father's business?" indicated a maturity of mind, a thirst for knowledge, a love of truth, a faith in the being, presence, and favor of God, very extraordinary. It is granted that these words must have sunk into the heart of Mary, must have renewed the impression created by the occurrences of his infancy and childhood, perhaps recalled her first views in their mysterious power, and revived all her early hopes. But after this incident other twelve years passed by, and half that number more, and all the while not a sign of any kind appeared. In the long and dreary interval must not impressions and hopes so utterly unsupported as hers have gradually faded, and at last altogether perished? We can only conjecture what opinions Mary for herself entertained, whether at an earlier or at a later period, respecting the rank and office of the Messiah; but in all probability, they partook of the ignorance, and prejudice, and error of those of the Jews in general in that age. It is willingly conceded that, at the least, she must have believed that her Son was destined by God to a position of great sacredness and dignity, and this faith, no one can doubt, must have influenced her behavior toward him and her method of treating and training him. Certainly she would strive to impart her own views to his mind, and fix within him the idea of his destiny, as she herself understood it.

But this, be its value what it may, was the solitary agency in the early life of Jesus helpful to his subsequent elevation; and except this, not a single friendly element can be discovered throughout the history. All else is not only not auxiliary, but thoroughly obstructive. When the whole of the conditions under which the destined development of his character and his life was effected shall have been carefully examined, it will then appear, we presume, that that character and life were not a natural growth for which his circumstances, according to the ordinary laws of providence and of the human mind, sufficiently account, but, on the contrary, were originated and sustained in spite of circumstances with which no earthly force could have contended, and therefore must have had their real foundation in a force which was preternatural and Divine.

The New Testament makes no secret of the place which Jesus occupied in the social scale. The family from which he sprang belonged to the lower ranks of life; Joseph, the husband of Mary, being a working carpenter. His birth-place, the wanderings of his infancy, his home in such a village as Nazareth, his humble occupation for many years, his dependence afterward on the labor of his disciples and the charity of other friends, are affecting evidences of the poverty of his condition through. life. The fact is noticeable in itself; but it is profoundly interesting to those who find in his later manifestations a Being who irresistibly draws toward himself their veneration, their trust, and their hope. They believe him to be the Redeemer of the world, and they are astonished that, when on earth, he was ranked with the ignoble and the poor. But the fact, as they dwell upon it, becomes suggestive and quickening; they see that it is fitted to shed marvellous peace into the bosom of the humblest sons of men, and to reveal a tender and holy bond of sympathy between Jesus of Nazareth and them. He endured the humiliations, the burdens, and the straits of poverty, and is he not, therefore, in a touching sense the brother of the sorrowing and the poor? It gives to poverty a singular sacredness and dignity. The principle, not new in itself, acquires new impressiveness that social rank is not the standard of social worth, or of personal excellence and power. The great lesson is pronounced with unexampled solemnity in the hearing of the world, that men and things are not always in reality what they are in appearance. It is taught that justice, truth, love, and moral and spiritual worth, must be reverenced in whatsoever associations they are found. The accidents of outward condition do not alter the essential character of good or of evil. Poverty and ignorance, and still more poverty and vice, are not inseparable either in fact, or in the judgment of right-thinking men. They do often co-exist, and there are very obvious causes which at once explain why they should often co-exist. But the connection is not uniform, and it is not inevitable. On the other hand, great wealth is seldom found associated with the highest forms of spiritual excellence. Certainly the love and the high estimation of wealth, rarely separated from the possession of it, are utterly incompatible with elevation, expansion, and deep spirituality of character.

But the prevailing sentiment of mankind is not to be mistaken. Even if this sentiment were not hostile, it is plain, on other grounds, that a poor man must necessarily, just because he is poor, en counter peculiar and numerous hinderances in forming and executing any purpose, however modest, for the good of his race. His knowledge of the world, for example, his acquaintance with books, and his intercourse with able and cultivated men, must in the generality of cases be exceedingly limited. By the necessity of his condition, he is shut out from much that is quickening and liberalizing, and fitted to impart comprehension, self-reliance, and freedom. But in addition to real hinderances of this nature, he has to struggle against a deep and almost universal prejudice. It is not supposed that any thing great or good can originate with persons like him. Such is the evil effect of social distinctions, that it is almost felt that nothing great or good ought to originate with persons like him; and that, if it did, this would almost amount to a crime against the usual course of the world. The contrast between his condition and his aims is painfully present even to himself, but still more to others; and the more aspiring these aims are, this contrast operates the more oppressively and injuriously. The instances are rare indeed, in which a poor and unknown man has risen above neglect and prejudice and the pressure of his condition, and alone has worked out a great idea which his mind had conceived. An unknown amount of obstruction to his work and his triumph was thus involved in the mere fact that Jesus belonged through life to the lower ranks of society.

In addition to the fact of poverty, it must be taken into account that almost the entire of Christ's life was spent in manual labor. Dwelling, till he was thirty years of age, in the house of Joseph the carpenter, we are left to imagine that he, too, was engaged in the same handicraft. But this matter is set at rest by the question of the people, no doubt put contemptuously, which is distinctly mentioned by one of the evangelists, "Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary?"
[4] Honest labor, honest hand-labor is dignified and dignifying. The discipline of bodily toil and struggle, wisely regarded, may exert a wholesome influence on the higher nature, may serve noble purposes, and is fitted, under certain conditions, to form vigorous, high-toned, resolute souls. Even the acquisition of superior knowledge and of the power which knowledge creates, though difficult, is not impossible to a working man and the workshop and the farm have nourished for the world some of its ablest benefactors. At the same time, a life taken up with the labors of the hands is certainly not favorable to high mental development. Such a life can not afford the necessary amount of leisure for study and research, and where the energies of the body are continually taxed and strained, it is not possible that at the same time the powers of the mind can be vigorously put forth, and that extensive intellectual acquisitions can be made. Jesus of Nazareth was a common working carpenter till he was thirty years of age.

What direct and formal education he received, can only be conjectured, but the high probability is, that it must have been of a most limited character. Some of his countrymen, when they first heard his discourses, exclaimed, "How knoweth this man letters, having never learned?" [5] It must have been commonly known that he had never learned, that he had received little regular instruction; perhaps none. Even in the absence of this positive evidence, the state of the Jewish nation at the time, the rude condition of the village in which his life was passed, the humble position of his family and his own destination to the trade of a carpenter, would have led us to conclude that he was unlearned and uneducated.

High patronage has sometimes made up for the absence of other advantages. But the poor were the associates of Jesus--his only associates from first to last--and of men of wealth and influence he knew little. Few thus distinguished., ever deigned to notice him. He received no countenance from the civil government of the country; yet less was he sanctioned by the priesthood of the nation. They were his enemies from the first, and were the secret cause of all his sufferings and of his cruel death. With the learned or the rich--with the ecclesiastical or the civil authorities with the influential classes of society, or even with single individuals of name and weight--he never had the most distant association. Jesus Christ was alone, a poor artisan, uneducated and unpatronized. His entire social circumstances pronounce the impossibility, in human judgment, of his elevation to power and glory. __________________________________________________________________

[3] Eti d'ara, pais on peri tessareskaidekaton etos, dia to philogrammaton hupo panton epetoumenos, sunionton aei ton archiereon kai ton tes poleos proton huper tou par' hemou peri ton nomimon akribesteron ti gnonai. Vita Josephi, sec. 2, in Oper. Geneva, 1688.

[4] Mark vi., 3.

[5] John vii., 16. __________________________________________________________________

PART II.
THE SHORTNESS OF HIS EARTHLY COURSE.

Duration of His Ministry.--His Death.--Earthly Causes of it.--Intolerance of the World and His own unconquerable Will.--Shortness of His Life in relation to the Form of His Work--in relation to His Influence on succeeding Ages.

THE disciples of Christianity suggest that, had the Redeemer of the World lived to old age, the impression, at least on their minds, of feebleness, imperfection, and decrepitude must have been deeply injurious. They suggest, besides, that Jesus lived long enough to gain a full experience of the world--a knowledge of the duties, trials, and hazards of life--and long enough for the full probation of his personal character and for the completion of his great work for the world. Whatever force there be in these suggestions, let the simple fact of the case be here briefly stated: Jesus passed away from the earth when he was only thirty-three years of age. Thirty years he spent in Nazareth; for three years he ministered before the world, and then he suffered death by crucifixion.

The early death of Christ is one of those peculiar conditions which, it is believed, give extraordinary significance to his character and to the actual results of his course. This fact, viewed in connection with its consequents, is so strange, that it is imperative to attempt a brief investigation of the causes which led to it. In this discussion, the fact is regarded simply in its historical significance, not at all in its doctrinal and spiritual relations. The nature and design of Christ's death, or its bearing on the redemption of the world, or the high and holy purposes which God might contemplate in it, are not to be considered here. The human causes only, which fixed so early a period to the life of Jesus--not those which lay in the Eternal Mind, but only those which sprung up on this earth--come within the scope of the present argument.

Among these causes, the first place must be assigned to the intolerance of the world; the second to that force of will in the soul of Christ, which no amount of intolerance could conquer. With respect to the first, the simple historical fact is, that men could bear Jesus Christ no longer, and Were in haste to put him to death. Spiritual truth and its advocates are offensive to the world. The one and the other, indeed, may commend themselves to the human conscience, and be secretly reverenced even where they are publicly disowned. All that is of God shall finally triumph as surely as God lives; but struggles, prostrations, defeats, may, must, precede triumph. Truth comes into collision with men's immediate interests--with their sins, exposing and denouncing them--with established opinions and usages--with what is held sacred and what has grown venerable by age--and the conflict can not but be prolonged and fierce. Men can not lightly bear to be detected in their sins--the interested and the privileged can not brook to be dispossessed--and, above all, the principle of unlimited intellectual and religious toleration is about the last which individuals or communities are disposed to adopt. Hence, that which is divinely true and pure must long appeal in vain to the judgments and hearts of men, and long suffer opposition and scorn and evil treatment at their hands; and when, in its contact with any age or nation, it directly, strikes at ancient beliefs and at cherished privileges, interests, or vices, we can not wonder that the hatred awakened against it should become envenomed and implacable, should trample on humanity and justice, and should even clamor for the destruction of its apostles. The world, conscious of evil, but proud, impatient, and incensed, can bear no longer, and crucifies the advocate of truth. But there is always a significant resurrection after such a death.

The world demanded that Jesus Christ should die. There was nothing in his spirit, doctrine, or life to justify the demand. It will be shown hereafter that he was no ambitious Aspirant to power and fame, no Enemy to Judaea or to Rome, to the Sanhedrim, the temple, or the God of his country, nor were corrupt and cruel men able to substantiate any such charges against him. But he had incurred the violent hatred of the leaders of all the religious sects in his day. His free and spiritual views, his deep faith and glowing piety, his open sanction of the innocent usages and institutions of society, his appeals, not to tradition or prescription, but to the common sense of mankind, and his use of common incidents and common words, not to name his reproofs, as severe as they were notoriously well deserved, rendered him obnoxious alike to Pharisees, Sadducees, Ascetics, and Mystics. They all disliked his teaching, were provoked by his calm and patient spirit, were jealous of his growing influence, and saw, in his entire life, their own public condemnation. These sects, while contending with one another, united in common hostility to him; and their leaders never rested till at their instigation the people, too ready to obey interested and wicked counsel, demanded his crucifixion.

Jesus heard the cry of the excited multitude, and with awful serenity and force of will he signified his consent. He would die if he must die, but he would not deny himself. Individuals not of common mold and not dishonest have quailed before the alternative, Truth or Life. It is a tremendous power within a man which can brave the fiercest assaults of intolerance; a power which must have sent its roots deep into the soul and must have taken hold of the entire spiritual nature. A human will unconquered by frowns, by curses, and by all the terrors of death, is clothed with surpassing grandeur, with the truest moral sublimity. The force of character is immense which, when hostility is gathering and deepening and maddening for its last brutal outburst, preserves a man undaunted, prepared to perish, but determined not to cower.

Jesus of Nazareth was able to die, if he must die. He was prepared to offer himself up; a precious and noble sacrifice, a nature just expanded before the eye of the world, a life in its freshness, vigor, and promise, and fitted for high service to God and man. In uncomplaining silence, in all the dignity of perfect meekness, in the gentlest spirit of love that the world ever beheld, he laid down his life. His soul, calm, humble, meek, and loving, was immovable as a rock. The intolerance of men met in him a force of will not to be overborne. If he must die he could die, and he did die at the age of thirty-three.

The fact which remains, apart from the earthly causes which brought it about, is this, that Christ acted directly and publicly on the world only for three years, and that he died in comparative youth. Usefulness and power are not measured by length of life. Many old men have never truly lived, and there are early deaths which yet can tell of the richest fruits of living long, and point back to deeds of spiritual prowess and to the origination for others of good that will never die. Perhaps it is to the period of youth, as distinguished from maturer age, that the greatest amount of spiritual power, the strongest impulses, the highest activity and energy belong. Grave counsels, wholesome restraints, sagacious suggestions and modifications issue from the experience of age. But youth has originated all the great movements of the world, and has most largely contributed to the agency by which they have been rendered effective.

He whom Christians recognize as the Redeemer of the world was only a youth. Whether his religion be regarded as a system of doctrines, or as a body of laws, or as a source of extraordinary influence, it is passing strange that he should have died in early life. His brief period of existence afforded no opportunity for maturing any thing. In point of .fact, while he lived he did very little, in the common sense of doing. He originated no series of well-concerted plans, he neither contrived nor put in motion any extended machinery, he entered into no correspondence with parties in his own country and in other regions of the world, in order to spread his influence and obtain co-operation. Even the few who were his constant companions, and were warmly attached to his person, were not, in his lifetime, imbued with his sentiments, and were not prepared to take up his work in his spirit after he .was gone. He constituted no society with its name, design, and laws all definitely fixed and formally established. He had no time to construct And to organize, his life was too short; and almost all that he did was to speak. He spoke in familiar conversation with his friends, or at the wayside to passers-by, or to those who chose to consult him, or to large assemblies, as opportunity offered. He left behind him a few spoken truths--not a line or word of writing--and a certain spirit incarnated in his principles, and breathed out from his life, and then he died.

We are not yet entitled, to place the youth of Christ and the other outer conditions of his life, by the side of his public ministry and his personal character. But even here, an amazing contrast rises up, which we must suggest for an instant. In the ordinary course of events, the memory of a mere youth, however distinguished, would soon have utterly perished from among men. But Jesus lives in the world at this moment, and has influenced the world from his death till now. It is no fiction, no mere conjecture, but a fact; an unquestioned, unquestionable fact. There have been multitudes in all the ages since his death, and at this moment, after nearly two thousand years, there are multitudes to whom He is dearer than life. History tells of warriors who reached the summit of their fame in comparative youth; it tells of men of science also, and of scholars, and of statesmen, who in youth rose to great and envied distinction. But the difference is obvious and it is wide, between the conquest of territory and the conquest of minds; between scientific, literary, or political renown, and moral and spiritual influence and excellence. Is there an instance, not of a man acquiring fame in youth and preserving it in old age, but of a man who died in youth, gaining vast influence of a purely spiritual kind, not by force of arms and not by secular aid in any form, but simply and .only by his principles and his life--of such a man transmitting that influence through successive generations, and after two thousand years retaining it in all its freshness, and continuing, at that. distance of time, to establish himself, and to reign almightily in the minds and hearts of myriads of human beings If there be, or any thing approaching to it, where is it? There is not such an example in the whole history of the world, except Jesus Christ.

It is time to remember that we are now only laying the foundation, not constructing the edifice. But this is the foundation on which it is proposed to rest the argument for the Divinity of Christ. These, with one short addition to be mentioned immediately, were the outer conditions of the life of Christ, under which his public ministry and his personal character reached their destined development. It is not in that development alone, but in that development under these conditions, that the evidence will be found of his True Origin and of his personal Pre-eminence. __________________________________________________________________

PART III.
THE AGE AND PLACE IN WHICH HE APPEARED.

Moral condition of the age.--Gentile world.--Judea.--Galilee.--Nazareth

Mythical theory.--Irreconcilable with the outer conditions of Christ's life.--These, facts not myths.--Not founded on Messianic ideas.

THE circumstances to be introduced here do not need extended notice, but they are too important to be omitted entirely. The age in which Jesus appeared, the nation to which he belonged, and the place where he dwelt while among men, formed an obvious limitation around his earthly life. If there shall be found any thing free, and catholic, and world-wide in the affections and purposes of his soul, it must be remembered that he was born a Jew, one of a people who had been long accustomed to over-value themselves and to under-value all the rest of the world--a people who had become notoriously proud, narrow, and intolerant. He appeared, besides, at a peculiar crisis in the history of that people, and indeed of the world. The testimony of many independent witnesses proves beyond question the awful corruption of manners into which the nations of antiquity had then sunk. It is represented that the age betrayed a secret consciousness of its own moral condition, and a secret apprehension that some terrible change was approaching. It would be mere pedantry to quote in proof of this, from Lucian on the one hand and from Juvenal and Persius on the other, passages with which even a moderate scholarship is familiar. And with respect to Judea, the Jewish historian of the times [6] speaks with unfeigned horror of the moral abominations which then darkened his country as well as the Roman world. Bat Galilee was disreputable even in Judea, wicked as it was and even in Galilee, Nazareth was notorious for the ignorance and profligacy of its inhabitants. It is a recorded fact that Christ's connection with this place, merely as a dweller in it, created a prejudice against him, and attached a stigma to his name. The question was put, as if it contained its own answer, "Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?" [7] Jesus spent his life, till he was thirty years of age, amid the degradation and pollution of this village, constantly familiar with scenes which were calculated to destroy the seeds of all virtue in his opening soul. It was here, also, in the view of those who had known him from his infancy, that he stood forth, at the end of thirty years, to unfold that character, and to assume and execute that mission which are now to form the subject of an extended, and we hope also an impartial investigation.

Thus far our task is accomplished; however briefly and hastily, the outer conditions of the life of Christ have been spread before us. But it would be an unpardonable omission, if even here, special attention were not invited to the fact that these are utterly irreconcilable with the vaunted mythical theory. The ablest expositor of this theory, while admitting a certain basis of historical truth in the Christian Gospels, denies altogether their authenticity as histories, and maintains that the Life which they delineate, like the ancient mythologies of Greece and Rome, is fabulous rather than historical. What seem to be facts he pronounces myths, shadowing forth certain spiritual truths, and these he labors to show were the very truths most firmly believed by the nation in connection with the expected Messiah. His avowed purpose is to prove that by the aid of their imagination the writers of the Gospels wrought up the scanty materials which they possessed into a series of fables, each containing a spiritual meaning, and that meaning always in harmony with their traditionary ideas, and even suggested by them.

With the utmost confidence we can defy contradiction when we assert that these principles are incapable of being applied to that series of facts which has formed the subject of the short review we have just finished. With whatever plausibility they may be brought to bear upon other parts of the evangelical narrative, it will baffle the most dexterous criticism to adjust them to this portion of it: "The corrupt and debasing influences amid which Jesus grew up in the village of Nazareth"--"The shortness of his earthly course, and its ignominious close"--"His poverty, his humble trade as a carpenter, and his want of education and of worldly patronage"--these are the things which we have put forward as the outer conditions of Christ's life. These were not only not in harmony with the Messianic ideas of the Jews at that time, or indeed at any time, but they were diametrically opposed to them. We make bold to maintain that they were the very last things which a Jew would ever have dreamed of connecting with the life of his Messiah. They are not Messianic; the most unscrupulous ingenuity can never construe them into myths, or make them harmonize with national and traditionary fancies. Whatever be fable, these are certainly facts, and would have been eagerly concealed, if they had not been received and undeniable facts; and these facts are all that are now demanded, as the basis on which to found an argument for the true divinity of Christ.

"Jesus was a resident in the village of Nazareth till he was thirty years of age. He died in comparative youth, when he was only thirty-three years old. He was a working carpenter; poor, unknown, untaught, inexperienced, and unbefriended." We shall go to some obscure hamlet of our land, known chiefly for the extreme profligacy of its inhabitants--we shall go to the workshop of a carpenter there, to a young man at the bench, earning his bread by the labor of his hands, remarkable only because amid the surrounding vice, he has preserved himself uncontaminated--we shall go to this youthful artisan, not yet thirty years of age, born of humble parents, brought up in a condition of poverty, associating only with the poor, in no way connected with the rich, the learned, the influential, or receiving assistance, or even countenance, from them--we shall go to this poor young man, who has had no intercourse with cultivated society, no access to books, no time for reading and study, no education but the commonest, and no outward advantages of any kind above others in his humble station, from his birth till that time. Such, in simple historical truth, such exactly was Jesus of Nazareth; and these were the very conditions under which he developed his future character, and rose to his future position. __________________________________________________________________

[6] Joseph. Antiq. Jud. See the detail commencing, Kai proteron tou ton Isiakon, k. t. l. lib. 18. cap. 3., Geneva, 1663.

[7] John, i. 46. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________

BOOK SECOND.

THE WORK OF CHRIST AMONG MEN. __________________________________________________________________

IN FIVE PARTS.

PART I. His own Idea of His public Life. II. The Commencement of His Ministry. III. The marked Character of His public Appearances. IV. His Teaching.
V. The Argument from His Work to His Divinity. __________________________________________________________________

PART I.
HIS OWN IDEA OF HIS PUBLIC LIFE.

His public position, the act of his own will.--His claim to Messiahship.--His idea of Messiahship.--Not temporal but spiritual.--Not national but universal.--Jesus alone in his age, his country, the world

IT is a fact that Jesus of Nazareth rose to a position of unrivaled prominence in the eyes of his country. Whether this may appear to have resulted, according to the natural succession of events, from causes which are at once obvious, or whether it shall be found inexplicable on ordinary principles, the fact itself remains; and no naturalistic, rationalistic, or mythic theory, can expunge it from the record.

Perhaps the broad and startling peculiarities of the age in which Jesus appeared, on the one hand, influenced his mind, and on the other hand, prepared his countrymen to recognize his assumed prominence. The great epochs in the history of the world, when it is laboring under some intolerable burden, or heaving with some new and urgent mission just ripe for development, find for themselves the men equal to their wants. Unwonted results are always exhibited at such times--powers which had never before revealed their existence are drawn forth, and latent attributes of character start into sudden energy at the bidding of extraordinary emergencies. Individuals; in spite of themselves, are then elevated to celebrity, or the necessities of the times appeal to some mind so resistlessly, that although uninvited, yet secretly conscious of resolution and energy, equal to the crisis, the man feels himself compelled to step forth at once into publicity.

It is certain, that no demand from any quarter was made upon Jesus to attempt the emancipation of his country and his age. The eyes of the nation were not turned to him and no party in the nation, perhaps not an individual, was prepared to find a Redeemer in him. The transition from private to public life was spontaneous on his part. The first thought, the matured purpose, and the decisive act, were all entirely his own. He came forth of his own accord--he assumed a public position, and was not compelled, or even invited, or even encouraged, to accept it. This was marvellous. We can not but ask, did it not abash a man in his condition to become, and above all, to make himself, an object of universal attention? Did not his want of preparation, and his conscious incapacity for a great public enterprise overwhelm him? Did he not tremble to encounter the caprice of the multitude--the learning, bigotry, and jealousy, of the priesthood, and the tyranny, and cruelty of the civil rulers? He did not, so far as can be discovered. Without fear, but with no ostentation of courage, Jesus placed himself on an unusual elevation. His entrance into public life, whatever it might mean, and whatever it might involve, was not a foreign suggestion, but a native impulse--a deliberate purpose of his own; and his own purpose also regulated all his movements throughout. Neither the popular feeling, nor even the wishes of his disciples, nor the current of events, were suffered to govern him, for he repeatedly acted in the face of them all. His own idea from the first was supreme, and his life was a determined realization of that idea, in spite of every opposing force.

The highest end of Christ's mission, whether in his mind, or in the evangelic record, is not now the subject of investigation. His entire life, his personal character, and his public labors would require to be spread out; and not only his life, but his death, with all its mysterious meaning; and not only his life and his death, but the subsequent history of himself and his cause would require to be examined, before we could reach even the materials for forming a correct judgment of his mission, in its wide and holy significance. It is enough at present to know, that he claimed to be The Messiah of the Jews. He repeatedly avowed this claim in plain terms; and it is obvious, on the face of the gospels, that from first to last, the conviction in his mind, one of the formative and governing principles of his public life, was this, that he was The Messiah.

It is historically certain that at this period the advent of a deliverer was widely expected, and expected with intense enthusiasm. The Gentile world, groaning beneath its burden of darkness and crime, awaited a supernatural redemption; and Judea was tremulous with a hope well defined, and established by the authority of many a sacred text. It was not wonderful that, in a time of universal and high excitement many unfounded claims should be put forward, and especially that among the Jews pretenders should start up, moved by personal ambition or patriotism, or religious enthusiasm. Besides, it must not be overlooked that the appearance of John the Baptist, a genuine claimant of religious distinction, whose success at this period was unbounded, was calculated not to repress, but to deepen the aspirations of other susceptible souls. Perhaps in this way, humble as Jesus was, the latent spark of ambition, patriotism, or piety, was kindled up in his breast, and at last in that obscure village, he came to hope and believe that he was "the elect of God." But a critical and vital question demands solution here, before we can consent to this interpretation of the origin of his movements. It is this: were the received views of the character and the mission of the Messiah, Christ's views? Had he only caught the spirit of his times? Was he only an embodiment of the popular faith? Was he only a creation, naturally springing up out of sentiments and feelings which had long rooted themselves in the heart of the nation? He was not; but he was diametrically the opposite of all this. His idea had nothing in common with the views and the spirit which were then universal, but was peculiar to himself and perfectly original.

The Jewish Messiah, [8] in the belief of the Jewish people, was to be a monarch and a conqueror; his kingdom was to be an earthly kingdom, and his glory, gathered first from the conquest, and then from the sovereignty of the whole world, was to be earthly glory. Such a creed to a youthful heart, must have been powerfully seductive. A throne, a crown, and the empire of a world, might well have kindled ambition in the dullest soul. But Jesus of Nazareth never aspired to sovereignty, of wealth, or earthly glory of any kind. He collected no armies and no instruments and resources of war; he invaded no territory and assumed no state such as became a warrior or a prince. The idea that the love of conquest, or of the splendors and pomp of royalty, the love of fame or of worldly power, ever had a place in his mind, is utterly destitute of support. It is even in the face of all the evidence. No part of his conduct, none of his proceedings, and none of his sayings, awaken such a suspicion. "My kingdom is not of this world," he declared to Pontius Pilate; "If my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered unto the Jews; but now is my kingdom not from hence." [9] If he had it in his heart to be a king, and he certainly had, it was to be a king not of bodies, but of souls; if he aspired to reign, it was to reign not over men, but in them, in their judgments, affections, and consciences. "I am come," he said, "light into the world." [10] "To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth." [11] The only weapon of which he made use was spiritual truth; he did nothing but teach. His life, his words, all the manifestations of his character, are consistent only with the design to achieve, not a material, but a moral conquest, and to effect not a political, but a spiritual revolution in the world. He had risen to the conception of a purely spiritual reign, the conception of a palace and a throne for God in the soul of man, the conception of the regeneration of man's inward nature, and the free and glad restoration of that nature to the unseen, but living and ever-present Father of souls.

We have looked only at one side of the popular faith. Viewed from an opposite side, the originality and individuality of Christ's idea will be still more apparent. The Messiah, in the belief of the Jewish nation, was to be not only a monarch, but emphatically a Jewish monarch; reigning, indeed, over all the kingdoms of the world, but acknowledging a peculiar relation to the ancient people; his throne being in Jerusalem, and his ministers and distinguished servants, Jews. This belied at a time when they were laboring under a foreign yoke, had become tenfold more dear; every feeling of patriotism was enlisted on its side, in circumstances when, if ever, patriotism is genuine and fervid; not to say that, in this case, patriotism was invested with the sanctity of religion. Last of all, the popular faith harmonized with the deep hereditary contempt of the Jews for the rest of mankind, with their settled persuasion of the distinction which God had made between them and all other nations, and with their long-cherished anticipations of permanent and undisputed pre-eminence. Nothing can be more clear than that, to oppose a belief so deep-seated, to crush hopes so sacred, to disown the distinction between Jews and Gentiles, and to look with equal favor on both, was to invite unmeasured and relentless hatred, and certain disgrace and defeat. If Jesus had meant to ingratiate himself with his countrymen, his course would have been to sympathize with their creed and their hopes. [12]

But, independently of any personal or public object which he might have in view, how could he have failed to adopt as his own, the faith of his country in this matter? He had been brought up, like others, in all the common views; he must have heard them often from his mother's lips, from. grave and pious men also, and especially in the synagogue of Nazareth on the Sabbath days. There is no reason to think that he can have heard any thing but the common views, from his infancy upward. But he had risen, nevertheless, to a purer and loftier faith, and somehow had formed for himself quite a novel and original idea of the character of the Messiah. "The hour cometh," he said to the woman of Samaria, "when neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, ye shall worship the Father; . . . when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth." [13] Religion to him, and the bonds of religious fellowship, were not national, but spiritual; connected, not with place or people, but with the state of the soul. He believed in something more dear than country, more dear than even the closest of earthly relationships. "Whosoever shall do the will of my Father who is in heaven, the same is ray brother and sister and mother." [14] "They shall come from the east and from the west, and from the north and from the south, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven." [15] God's kingdom and his own mission, as he understood it, embraced the world, and was designed, not to confer peculiar distinctions on a single nation, but to originate and diffuse blessings to which all nations alike should be welcome. His idea was catholic, as it was purely spiritual. Born and educated a Jew, associating only with Jews, never beyond the limits of Judea in his life, whence had he derived this idea, whence caught this spirit? how gained this expansion and nobility of soul, how reached this large, and lofty, and Godlike faith?

That poor young man whose external history we have looked upon, was alone in his country, in his age, in the world. His great soul rose above religious prejudices and errors, and above all national, educational, and social influences. He stood forth not a Jew, but a man to fulfill a high and purely spiritual mission; embracing not Judea only, but the world; not a nation only, but universal humanity. And was he, then, essentially, nothing more than he seemed to be? Was all this possible, in the circumstances, to a mere man? Above all, was it possible to such a man as we have found Jesus outwardly was? __________________________________________________________________

[8] Channing's Sermon on the Character of Christ, Glasgow edition of works. p. 425.

[9] John, xviii. 36.
[10] Ib. iii. 46.
[11] Ib. xviii. 37.

[12] See Whately's Introductory Lessons on the Christian Evidences.

[13] John iv. 21-23.
[14] Matthew xii. 50.

[15] Matthew viii. 11. and Luke xiii. 29.--See Channing's Sermon as above. __________________________________________________________________

PART II.
THE COMMENCEMENT OF HIS MINISTRY.

He dealt with the Age and Country collectively.--Their Character.--Christ, the Incarnate Conscience of both.--He not conscious of Personal Guilt.--Began by rebuking, in order to reform, the Nation.

THE marked difference between the views which are now held of the office of teaching, and those which were prevalent in the ancient world, must not be overlooked. Very extended freedom of investigation and communication was enjoyed in heathen nations by all classes, without distinction. The priesthood were not considered to possess higher rights and powers in this respect than others, and any individual, without violating any law or any established usage, might found a school and promulgate his faith or his skepticism. No restrictive policy, at least as to persons, was sanctioned even in Judea, and even the office of religious teaching was not reserved for the clerical or any other privileged order. There were rabbis, the heads of schools for sacred learning, and there were also scribes and lawyers whose business it was to write out copies of the sacred text and to expound its meaning; but they were not necessarily priests nor of the Levitical tribe. There was nothing in the laws or customs of Judea, to hinder any individual from assuming the office of religious teacher. It may therefore have excited little surprise, when Jesus began to teach, that he was no priest or rabbi, or scribe or lawyer. But it must have struck the men of that generation that he was young, and poor, and unlearned; all the outer conditions of his life were such as to make it wonderful that he should aspire to any public office, and to insure that, if he hazarded the attempt, his presumption would be punished with certain. and signal failure.

But the voice of Christ was lifted up, and the world heard, as, indeed, the world hears to this day. In some of the villages of Galilee, he first began to speak, to individuals or to small or large assemblages of persons, as the circumstances might be. He journeyed throughout Galilee, then throughout the other parts of Judea, and was frequently in Jerusalem preaching and teaching. It is the first tones of his voice which we now seek to catch, the commencement of his ministry which we now seek to observe and interpret. He began to deal with facts rather than with doctrines--with this fact especially, that one great era in the world's history was then closing, and another of higher meaning and of brighter promise was then opening upon men. He began by characterizing the masses rather than individuals by depicting the country and the age collectively, and in their broad and prominent qualities. He foretold the speedy doom of things as they then were, and declared that evil, wide-spread and deep-seated, could no longer be endured and that a radical spiritual revolution was at hand--a kingdom of God in place of a reign of hypocrisy and formalism. And he taught at the same time that the duty of the age was expressed in one word, repentance not in the restricted meaning to which custom has reconciled us, but in the sense of an entire and universal change of mind. "Repent," he cried as he commenced his public course; "change your minds, for the reign of heaven is at hand." [16] He thus made it known through the length and breadth of the land, that in his judgment, at least, nothing would avail but a thorough and entire reformation of principles and of manners. It must have been at once evident that Jesus was no panderer to the prejudices and vices of the times in which he lived, or of any favored class of individuals. He pointed with a faithful hand to the opinions, the habits, the morality, the religion, the worship, the entire spirit of the age, and pronounced that the condition of things was utterly corrupt and must be revolutionized. The voice of his opening ministry to all classes in the nation was this, "Repent; change your minds, for the reign of heaven is at hand."

It does not rest on his statements only, but on ample historical evidence, that that particular period bore the character of deep hypocrisy and ungodliness. Rigid observance of religious ceremonies was combined with ignorance of religion itself and with an utter destitution of its spirit. Gross wickedness was hidden beneath the forms and the name of sanctity. Spiritual worship, the veneration and love of a God of righteousness, purity, truth, and all moral excellence, was almost unknown. There was a magnificent temple, an established worship, an ordained priesthood, a vast and gorgeous ritual, and sacrifices, and offerings, and feasts and fasts. There were also synagogues open every day and recognized forms of prayer which were repeated, not only in private, but in the market-places, and at the corners of the streets. It was even sought to invest the food, the dress, the looks, the postures of the body with the sacredness of religion; and if such things as these had constituted piety, that age must have been pre-eminently pious. But Jesus declared that true worship is perfectly separable from these things, and is not essentially connected with any of them, though it may consist along with them all. God looks to the soul alone, to its genuine and unconstrained actings, its reverence, trust, and love. Worship in God's sight is wholly spiritual--always, altogether, only within the soul.

Human virtue was as little understood in that age, as Divine worship. A selfish spirit had consumed the heart of all true goodness, not only as between man and his God, but as between man and man. Morality had become an organized hypocrisy, truth and inward excellence empty names, and ritual observances, which contained no homage of the understanding or of the heart, were the nail thrown over unrighteous and impure lives. Jesus proclaimed the sacredness, dignity, and beauty of moral excellence, and that, without this, there could be no greatness and no worth. He conveyed to the ears of his countrymen, some things altogether new, and others he announced with greater clearness and with new authority. The greatness of humility and the dignity of love as taught by him, were new, and they were too palpably unwelcome, as well as new, to Gentiles and Jews. The pride, ambition, and covetousness of the human heart, the doctrine of retaliation, and the warlike spirit of the times, were utterly opposed to this teaching. Jesus blessed and honored the poor in spirit. He taught that virtue consisted in the patient endurance and the sincere forgiveness of wrongs, and in kindness to the wrong-doer; consisted not in revenge, but in love, in genuine good-will--good-will even to enemies. It was then believed--it is still very widely believed--that high self-estimation is essential to dignity of character. Jesus put his hand on the head of a little child, and said, "Whosoever shall humble himself as this little child, the same is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven." [17] Lowliness is greatness, genuine goodness is greatness, child-like obedience to God is greatness. True dignity is a lowly and guileless state of soul. Humbleness of mind, together with rectitude, purity, truth, love of God and good-will to man, these are the elements of moral grandeur and of the highest spiritual dignity.

Whether or not the ministry of Christ realized at the last what it promised at the commencement, it certainly began with a faithful revelation to that age of its own moral condition. The truest benefactor of any age, is he who exposes and expresses it to itself. Self-knowledge is wealth and well-being, the basis of moral reformation and of moral progress, whether to the individual or to the multitude. In this case, conscience, stronger than the pride and the blindness of the soul, brings up from the depths within an image which the man or the multitude fails not to recognize; and the look of which, though it alarms, corrects and heals. He who shall touch and quicken another's conscience, who shall present truth to it, and rouse it to fidelity, performs an invaluable, but also a difficult and a hazardous service. And the difficulty and the hazard are incalculably augmented when we pass from an individual to a nation for the blindness, the pride, and the perversity of will in this case are beyond measure more inacessible and invincible. The age, like the man, flatters itself, becomes reconciled by habit to any evil--so reconciled, that at length evil is invested with a kind of sacredness. False shame makes it reluctant to confess and to yield: it is eager to find out excellences, and as eager not to see or to forget faults, until there is at last no eye, no ear, no soul to distinguish that which is wrong. A conscience is needed for the age, as for the individual--a power that shall reveal it to itself, and arouse and convict it. Jesus acted in the outset of his career to the men of his generation--not in promise only, but in fact--the part of the truest friend, and traced out before them in broad and faithful lines their moral likeness, in order that they might recognize themselves. The age in its express lineaments at that time, in its ignorance, formalism, pride, hypocrisy, and impurity, he held up to itself. For the time, he was an incarnate conscience to the nation, performing that office which each man owed to himself, but would not discharge; and crying to all in a voice fitted to pierce to the depths of their spiritual nature, "Repent; change your minds, for the reign of heaven is at hand."

Boldness and honesty are not always associated with becoming modesty, and a keen perception of what is wrong in others, is very separable from a quick sensibility to the faults of one's own character. Had this Jesus, we are entitled to ask, no share in the guilt of his country? Admitting that his powers were extraordinary--that he was, as he seemed to be, able to descend below events and manifestations, down to their hidden causes, and to bring up these causes discovered and interpreted--admitting that in his recorded statements no want of comprehensiveness of observation, sobriety of judgment, or impartiality of spirit, can be detected, are we to forget, that he himself belonged to the country, to the age which he so unqualifiedly condemned; and have we not a right to ask whether he, therefore, was not necessarily involved in their guilt? It will be shown hereafter, and it is scarcely denied by any intelligent and candid rejector of the higher claims of Christianity, that the personal character of Jesus was unimpeachable; at all events was in point of fact unimpeached. Proclaiming the sins of others, he, so far as the evidence goes, was above suspicion, above charge; and in all his utterances, there is nothing to indicate a sense either of personal guilt or personal danger. It often appears, in what he says and does, that the spiritual condition of others affected his soul with genuine compassion for them, and with deep solicitude for the great cause of God and man; but there is no token either of fear or of shame, on his own account. He seems rather to stand apart, and only to look down upon the facts of a condition in which he had no personal share.

The question imperatively demands an answer--Who was this, whose mode of looking on human affairs and whose feelings were so original, so superior, and who professed to be gifted with such uncommon insight into the moral state of the world, and with such fore-knowledge, withal, of its coming destinies? What right had he, to pronounce on the spiritual condition and the pressing duty of his country? It is said, in reply to these questions, that the convictions of his conscience were imperative? There is indeed no higher authority than conscience, and no higher virtue than to bow implicitly to that authority. But how did it happen that Christ's conscience alone was thus clamorous, and that he alone was compelled to speak out? A. man distinguished in the church or the state, venerable by years of sainted character, and of large and ripened experience, may be allowed to do what would be presumptuous in any other. But this was no gifted, experienced, or distinguished character; no statesman, priest, or venerable sage; but to all mortal seeming, an inexperienced, uneducated mechanic. The fact is simply this, an obscure youth took it upon himself to be the teacher, reprove; reformer, of his country and his age. Was this possible, in the circumstances, to a mere man--above all, was it possible to such a man as we have found Jesus outwardly was? __________________________________________________________________

[16] Matt. iv. 17.

[17] Matthew xviii. 4. __________________________________________________________________

PART III.
THE MARKED CHARACTER OF HIS PUBLIC APPEARANCES.

I. Severity.--Moral Condition of Palestine.--Scenes of His early Ministry.--Scribes and Pharisees.--Formalism and Hypocrisy.--II. Tenderness.--Instances and Source.--III. Simplicity.--General Character of His Life.--Relation of His Teaching to Times, Places, Persons.--His Words and Illustrations.--IV. Authority.--Testimony of Hearers.--Claim to Connection with God.

THE individuality of Jesus strongly impressed itself on his whole public life. It gave a unique form, as has just been shown, to the beginning of his ministry, and the same impress, but drawn with deeper lines, was left on his. entire subsequent course. One of the most marked features of Christ's spirit and manner in public was

I. The terrible severity with which, although seldom, he exposed and denounced evil. Friendless and powerless as he seemed to be--as in his earthly relations he certainly was--he did not repress on necessary occasions a burning indignation and if a voice of thunder was required to awaken and alarm that generation, such a voice was lifted up and resounded through the length and breadth of the land. Supposing the aim of Jesus to have been, as we shall hereafter prove that it was, to plant a spiritual system among men--the mightiest obstruction then existing to such a system was the condition of Judea. The minds of the Jews were so proud, so blinded, and so hardened by sin, that until they were thoroughly aroused and convicted, there could be no opening for the entrance of new light and life. It was not of choice, but from necessity, that the preaching of Jesus took that form which was yet an exception to its pervading tone, and that with stern severity he rebuked the age in which he appeared. "This is an evil generation"--"an evil and adulterous generation"--"a sinful generation"--"a wicked generation"--"a perverse generation"--"that the blood of all the prophets which has been shed from the foundation of the world may be required of this generation." [18]

Upon the scenes of his earlier ministrations, he poured forth his indignant, yet pathetic warnings--"Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works, which have been done in you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and in ashes. But I say unto you, it shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of judgment than for you. And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shall be brought down to hell." [19]

But the objects of deepest aversion and abhorrence to Jesus were the Pharisees, Lawyers, and Scribes, the leaders of the chief sect in that day, the transcribers and interpreters of the Bible. He was strikingly more patient with the Sadducees, the latitudinarians and freethinkers of Judea, although he decisively condemned their principles. Even to the convicted and gross violator of the laws of morality, he spoke with wondrous gentleness. But his severity was consuming, when he turned to the high religious professors--the men of stern orthodoxy and of saintly rigor--the admired but unworthy champions of Judaism. Hypocrisy, pretense, hollow semblance, were of old, and they are still, unutterably abhorrent to Christ; and nothing was, or now is, so dear to him as simplicity and sincerity. If there be still, as there were of old, men "who tithe mint and anise and cummin, but neglect the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith," in whom, however fair their exterior, are found not the living principles of religion, but only dead dogmas and submission to outward forms, Christianity disowns them as Christ disowned these. The kingdom of God on earth which he announced and founded, is the reign of living principles in the soul, not the adoption with the lips, or even by the judgment, of a system of dogmas, however true, and not outward homage to any set of rites, however significant. The Being with whom we have to do is a spirit; and his worship is a spiritual and real service. Nothing but truth, pure truth, a living reality in the soul, will answer to the principles and the spirit of the Christian books. Simple reality is every thing in this religion--pretense is infamy and crime.

Against hypocrisy, formalism, pretense, Jesus lifted up his voice in the severest tones. "Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy." "Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites." "Ye shut the kingdom of heaven against men, and neither go in yourselves nor suffer them that are entering to go in." "Ye love greetings in the market-places, and the uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues." "Ye bind heavy burdens on men's shoulders, but ye yourselves will not touch them with one of your fingers." "Ye devour widows' houses, and for a pretense make long prayers." "Ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, he is tenfold more the child of hell than before." "Ye cleanse the outside, but within ye are full of extortion and excess." "Ye strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel." "Ye blind guides." "Oh, fools, and blind." "Whited sepulchers, outwardly ye appear righteous, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity." "Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how shall ye escape the damnation of hell?" [20] How withering, how blasting, must such words have been from such lips! But imagine a young man outwardly conditioned as Jesus had always hitherto been and at this very moment actually was, equal to such thinking and such daring, and still more imagine him tolerated even for an instant in uttering such words--and all the while to be no other and no more than he seemed to be! It is impossible.

But severity in Christ was exceptional and occasional, as it was terrible. It was awakened only toward certain aspects of the age, and only toward certain classes of character. Another and quite opposite attribute pervaded and distinguished his official life--the attribute of

II. Tenderness. The great lights of the world, brilliant but cold, have not often reflected, much of this gentle virtue. Philosophers and sages have deemed susceptibility of heart unbecoming their character and vocation. A gifted and God-sent man, it is thought, must be superior to all the tenderer and softer impulses of ordinary human nature; and it is found in fact, that when men imagine they are appointed to act in God's name, they at once assume a sort of holy isolation and crucify the common feelings and sympathies which bind them to their fellow-creatures. They speak down to humanity, instead of standing on its level and mingling in its sorrows and its joys.

The life of Jesus Christ is full of incidents, that reveal surpassing tenderness of heart. As he journeyed to Jerusalem, when he drew near to the city, he wept over it, and said, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen cloth gather her chickens under her wings, but ye would not!" "If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this, thy day, the things that belong to thy peace; but now they are hid from thine eyes!" [21] At the last, this city was distinguished by a singular act of his grace; and when he commanded his disciples to "preach repentance and remission of sins among all nations," he added, "beginning at Jerusalem." [22] Of the same character was the merciful notice of that disciple, who, in the hour of trial, had disowned and deserted him. The first words which Jesus spoke when he again met this fallen man were admonitory but gracious: "Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me?" [23] Among the multitudes who followed him to Calvary, were certain women, to whom he turned and said, "Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but for yourselves and for your children." [24] Bethany recalls the image of a friendship, as genial and as touching, as ever grew on this earth. Jesus loved Martha, and Mary, and Lazarus. Lazarus fell sick and died. Jesus came to the house of mourning, and amid the desolation and anguish of the loving hearts there, he "groaned in spirit, and was troubled;" he followed the sisters to the grave, and, when he saw them weeping, and their friends also weeping, "Jesus wept." [25] Once, as he sat at table in a Pharisee's house, a woman, who was a sinner, prostrated herself in his presence, and bathed his feet with her tears, and wiped them with her hair. She was spurned by the Pharisee; but Jesus said, "Her sins, which are many, are forgiven her; for she path loved much." [26] Once, when he happened to be in the temple, the Pharisees brought to him a woman convicted of a mortal crime. He addressed an indirect rebuke to them, which compelled them to retire with shame; and then, turning to the guilty woman, he said, "Where are those thine accusers? Doth no man condemn thee? Neither do I condemn thee; go, and sin no more." [27] Singularly gracious, forgiving, and loving was that voice which once was heard in the temple and the streets of Jerusalem, and which woke up the echoes on the shore of the Lake of Galilee. It has long since died away, but not the living force of love which inspired it. That yet lingers in the ancient words which survive to this day.

III. Simplicity very strikingly marked the public appearances of Christ. He was perfectly unaffected and inartificial. It will be difficult to find in the Gospels, even a seeming indication of disingenuousness on his part. No latent wish was in his heart to conceal any circumstance connected with his origin, his past history, or his present position, from the fear that it might be unfavorable to his reputation and success. There was nothing in him like maneuvering, desire to create impression, gain influence and produce effect. If men who are really great, or who would be thought great, contract eccentric habits, adopt a peculiar mode of living, select some wild and strange abode, affect a singular dress, or manner, or look, or tone of voice, we shall search in vain for such extravagances in him. He affected no singularity, he assumed no consequence; his dress, his mode of living, and his speech continued to be to the last those of the common people. He appeared before his countrymen simply as he was and had always been, not at all solicitous to adapt either his history or his modes to his altered position.

Christ had no particular building, like the Jewish doctors, or the heathen philosophers, where he delivered his instructions--no lyceum, grove, portico, or hall; and he had no fixed days and hours, for unfolding the different branches of his system. The ancient sages were accustomed to distinguish their public from their private prelections. Some things they uttered freely to all who applied to them; but there were others which they reserved for the initiated--doctrines peculiarly profound, or peculiarly sacred, and which required a long preparatory course before they could be appreciated and adopted. Perhaps this was a legitimate method of awakening interest and securing power; perhaps it was even necessary; certainly its effect was to create a vast amount of influence, and to maintain in the public mind a high idea of the resources and the wisdom of these sages. Jesus spoke the same things to his disciples and to the people generally--to the few and the many. Whatever the character of his instructions might be, they were indifferently addressed to any sort of persons, any where, at any time. The most striking thoughts might be disclosed to a single individual--a member of the sanhedrim, or a poor woman of Samaria,--or to many thousands in one assembly, or in a private house as he sat at table, or when he was walking, or when he was sitting wearied by Jacob's well, or on a mountain, or in the plain, or on the shore of a lake, or from a fishing-boat, or in a synagogue, or in one of the cloisters of the temple; but always, simply as the occasion offered, without contrivance, without maneuver, or underhand motive.

Christ composed no formal discourses, delivered no carefully constructed orations, but always spoke perfectly natural, making use of the commonest objects and incidents for illustration, just because they were near, and easily understood, and free to all. The lily, the corn-seed, the grain of mustard, the birds of the air, the falling of a tower, the rain, the appearances of the sky, these, and the like, gave occasion for the utterance of high and imperishable ideas. And the language in which these ideas were uttered was the language of the common people. No severe philosophical style did he adopt, no scientific formulæ, did he introduce, no new terminology did he create, no rigid dialectic method did he pursue, no high and hard abstractions, and no close and elaborate argumentation did he affect. He conveyed his instructions in the most unpretending and informal manner, and in the common est and simplest words. He owed literally nothing to phraseology, to modes, to circumstances. Whatever influence he acquired, and whatever power he exerted, it was owing to simple reality; in no degree to management, pretense, tact, or show. He did nothing--nor even seemed to wish--to suggest an idea for which there was not an actual basis, or to make the idea seem any other than the actual basis sustained. In his manner, his words, and his acts, he was simply real, not more, not less, no other than he showed himself to be, so far, that is to say, as respected his earthly relations, for with them only we have to do here. He was pure, unaffected, inartificial reality--his disciples maintain, the only perfectly simple reality that ever alighted on this earth.

Simplicity is true greatness, it is moral nobility, and reveals a nature too pure and too genuine to endure deception or pretense. But was this likely to have been the taste, or if the taste, the attainment, of one in the circumstances of Jesus of Nazareth, had he been no more and no other than his external life disclosed?

Blending with the attribute of simplicity there was a mysterious

IV. Authority, which marked the public appearances of Christ. Those who listened to him often testified that "his word was with power." [28] "The people were astonished at his teaching, for he taught as one that had authority, and not as the scribes." [29] They questioned one another, saying, "Whence path this man this wisdom?" [30] On one occasion, certain officers sent by the Pharisees to apprehend him were arrested by his voice as he taught, were unable to execute the order, and returned, saying, "Never man spake like this man." [31] Whether it was an air of majesty about his whole appearance, or his calm and earnest voice, or the depth and force of what he said, there was left on the minds of all who listened to him an impression of power more than human, which they found it impossible to resist. Perhaps the origin of this impression, at least in part, admits of some further explanation. In addition to any singularity in his ideas, or in his mode of conveying them, there were certain forms of expression which he was in the habit of using, and which were most startling and mysterious. This young man, from a remote and disreputable village, who had spent his life in manual labor, and had only lately appeared in public, not only claimed to possess an intimate acquaintance with spiritual truth, but he spoke in a way in which even the prophets of Israel had never dared to speak. His frequent style of address to his countrymen was this: "Verily, verily, I say unto you," "Ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old time. . . . . but I say unto you." [32] "Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do unto you." [33] "I appoint unto you a kingdom." [34] "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me, and ye shall find rest to your souls." [35] We offer no interpretation of these expressions at present, and we found no argument on what may be conceived to be their natural import. It is enough that they were uttered, and that they must have contributed to that impression which we have seen was felt so strongly by all who listened to Christ. With, or without such passages, it is certain that an extraordinary authority and power accompanied his words; and unless we add this element, we shall fail to reach a true conception of what his appearances in public actually were.

Aided, then, by the general views at which we have now arrived, let us thoughtfully follow Jesus in his wanderings through Galilee and Judaea, and look upon him in the village and the city, on the mountain side and the lake, surrounded by a small and select company, or by a vast mixed multitude. Recalling all the facts of his early history and his outward condition up to the moment when he entered on his public course, our interest, almost anxiety, can not but be profound. What is there--we try to satisfy ourselves as we ask--what is there about his general spirit and manner as a public man, to distinguish him from others? Without regarding at present either the subjects which he selects, or his method of treating them, we ask, what is the general impression left on the mind of his qualities as a teacher? Are there manifest signs of his origin and previous condition, marks of servility and timidity, traces even of coarseness and vulgarity, evident proofs of inexperience and youth? There are not. On the contrary, while Jesus always speaks with transparent honesty, we find among the qualities which especially marked him, now a terrible severity, and again, more frequently, a surpassing tenderness, as if his soul was a deep fountain of compassion for man; now an unaffected simplicity, in appearance, in language, and in manner, and again, a power more than human, irresistible by those that listened to him.

And was this verily a young man just taken from the carpenter's workshop, uneducated, inexperienced, and friendless? It was. But if so, was he only this and no more?

A more decisive reply to this question, and from a higher region of thought than we have yet ascended, may perhaps be found. Christ's teaching itself may convert into certainty the conjecture which even his marked qualities as a teacher suggest. The words that fell from him, the spiritual doctrines which he revealed, may throw fresh light on his origin, and irresistibly lift our faith above the mere outward history which belonged to him. The inquiry, at all events, is worth whatever pain can be bestowed upon it, and it must be conducted with candor and with patience. __________________________________________________________________

[18] Matthew, Mark, and Luke, passim.
[19] Matthew, xi. 21, 22, 23.
[20] Matthew, xxiii. 13-33.
[21] Luke, xiii. 34, and xix. 42.
[22] Luke, xxiv, 47.
[23] John, xxi. 15.
[24] Luke, xxiii. 28.
[25] John, xi. 35.
[26] Luke, vii. 47.
[27] John, viii. 11.
[28] Luke, iv. 32.
[29] Matthew, vii. 29.
[30] Matthew, xiii. 54.
[31] John, vii. 46.
[32] Matthew, v. 41.
[33] John, xiv. 13.
[34] Luke, xxii. 29.

[35] Matthew, xi. 28, 28. __________________________________________________________________

PART IV.

HIS TEACHING. __________________________________________________________________