Christianity and Modern Thought

But, it is said, this language would naturally create misunderstanding, and that it is too bold to be taken in a figurative sense. In regard to the misunderstanding of it, let it be said, if we suppose a mind inspired by God to see far deeper and further than its contemporaries, it must be liable to be misunderstood in proportion to the poverty of the vernacular language. Jesus' inspiration and insight gave his speech a character such as the highest poetic endowment always gives, and made it bold. It is not to be forgotten that he belonged to the east and to the people who have given us the Old Testament prophecies. The boldest tropes were natural to him. In moments of strong moral excitement, they fly from him as sparks from the flint or lightning from the charged cloud. It exposes him to the charge of mysticism. We forget that he was not a lecturer, a systematic teacher; but a prophet, a converser in the streets, a popular teacher, a poet sent from God to re-create humanity. Necessity concurred with inspiration to make his speech tropical and often liable to be misapprehended. He was obliged to use images and terms which the people and the schools applied to the Messiah in order to claim, as he meant to claim, a predetermined, providential connection with Hebrew history and hope. When he said to Pilate, "I am a king," it was a truth; but it was a trope. "I am the bread of life," – a truth, but a trope. "I am come to send a sword on the earth, not peace;" "This cup of wine is my blood sealing the new covenant," – truths, but compact with the boldest tropes. When he said, "I am the Messiah," it was a truth, but a trope. It was liable to be misunderstood; but, without it, it was impossible that he should be understood. He saw Satan, after the seventy returned from their mission and related their success, "falling like lightning from heaven." If he foresaw political revolutions which would occur within a generation, and believed they would be employed by Providence to further the establishment of his principles or kingdom, which would then reach a point from which it would be evident, to a sympathizing mind quick to catch the glimpses of a new day, that they would become dominant in humanity, would it be too bold a figure for him to say, "The coming of the Son of Man will be as the lightning which shoots from horizon to horizon," or too bold a figure to describe those precursive overturns and downfalls of the old in language borrowed from Isaiah and Joel, the prophets whom he loved and knew by heart? Might he not believe, identifying his religion and the Divine spirit which would spread it, that at the time of these changes, conspiring providentially with the labors of apostles and evangelists, his voice would call the chosen, those prepared by mental and moral affinity, to the new life-work, to the new order of things; that his call to his own would be like the supposed call of the last trumpet summoning them to come into a spiritual communion of blessed work, and blessed hope? These figures were naturally, almost inevitably, formed in these circumstances.

He used the language given him in the speech of his time in a figurative sense, partly because of the want of proper terms suited to his purpose, and partly because as a popular teacher, desirous to impress the common mind, he could not sacrifice all the associations connected with that. But we often find in proximity with it words of his own, or something in the occasion, which he might expect to constrain the listeners to reflect that he was speaking figuratively; as John vi., "My words, they are spirit and they are life," and the reply Luke xxii. 38, to the information, here are two swords, "It is enough." Were the accounts more full, it is fair to suppose we might have more such expressions. They would not be so likely to be remembered as the striking, figurative words.

There are words of Christ at the Last Supper which seem to me to have occasioned quite unnecessary perplexity. "I say unto you I will not henceforth drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom." They were the spontaneous outflow of mingled sadness, affection, and hope. He might expect them to be interpreted to his disciples by his situation, by all he had said of leaving them, and by his habit of conveying spiritual thought under the sensuous images suggested by the moment. They referred to the kingdom he died to establish. They were as natural as to say, "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." But they have been a stumbling-block to students whom we should have expected to be able better to orient themselves in the Master's genius and style.

Colani has spent a page to ridicule it, and show that it is not fit for its place.41 Yet a similar figure is used by occidental preachers, who would not expect to be reproached for coarseness. A young minister on an occasion not unlike that on which Jesus sat with his disciples – occurring as did that passover in the midst of sacrifice and revolution, the Thanksgiving day celebrated after the close of our great war, in our land at once so afflicted and so blessed – addressed his hearers, some of whom had lost sons or brothers in camp or field, in figurative but very appropriate and touching language, in which we may suppose he felt the inspiration of his Master's words at the last meal. It was to the effect that, although those who had fallen in the strife could no more partake with us in the bounty with which the Thanksgiving table would be spread, they would in all future festivals be with us in spirit, and rejoice in the blessings ever more and more to be realized which had been purchased by their sacrifices for our disinthralled country.

Nor do I see any better cause of the offence which is taken at the language ascribed to Jesus in Matt. xix. 28, in the offer of thrones: "In the regeneration, when the Son of Man shall sit on the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel." Let us think how Jesus must have longed to communicate his thought and his hope to those chosen ones; how he would not be willing to drive them away by his very greatness as he sometimes drove away the careless and cavilling; how his mind, if he were a human being and not an automaton, would alternate between the sternest truth-speaking and the necessity of coming closer to them, and giving them hope, and lifting them a little nearer to himself; how like the mother bird, enticing her brood to their first flight, and finding he had at one moment gone beyond them, he would come back, and alight on a point nearer to their apprehension, that he might tempt them to use the untried pinions of their thought, – and we need have no difficulty in seeing that he meant thrones of moral power. I do not know how those men received it; but I do not believe they thought then of political power. If, after Jesus left them, they recalled this and every other such expression as a means of nourishing the hope of an Apocalyptic return and kingdom, the great Teacher and Comforter was not accountable for that perversion.

Jesus' language, then, can be explained without supposing him to have expected visibly to return after death to erect a kingdom of God of which he should be the visible head.

The result of our inquiries is, that Jesus did not aim at any political sovereignty, that he rose by the force of the special endowment of his nature above the Apocalyptic superstition of his age, and that he looked and labored immediately for the moral and spiritual renovation of humanity on this earth. He claimed to be a Messiah; not a Messiah after the Jewish conceptions, but a man anointed and endowed of God, to perfect by the manifestation of the Divine in the human, the means of this moral renovation of humanity. He regarded the spiritual Messiahship as a divinely appointed means to this end. He aspired to spiritual rule for no end but this, and his aspiration was disinterested, godlike. It has been said that he was ambitious, though it is allowed that his ambition was the most elevated. And he has been compared with disadvantage to Socrates, whose ambition, it is said, was "to serve without reigning," while that of Jesus was "to reign by serving," and the former is justly thought to be the nobler purpose. It is no time to institute a comparison between Jesus and Socrates. I have no wish to disparage the great Pagan. I will allow Grote's estimate, that the Apology as given by Plato is the speech of one who deliberately foregoes the immediate purpose of a defence, the persuasion of his judges; who speaks for posterity without regard to his own life. The aim of Socrates was disinterested, but not so elevated as that of Jesus. The aim of Socrates belonged to the realm of the understanding; the aim of Jesus, to the realm of the Spirit. They both took delight in the exercise of their gift: this is innocent, when not an exclusive motive; but Socrates more consciously sought this delight than Jesus. No self-abnegation can be conceived more entire than that of the Christ as represented by the evangelists with every mark of truth. He sought to reign only as all seek to reign who put forth their powers to assist the development of other minds. He would reign only so, and so far, as this might be to serve his race. He had no ambition. His purpose was not to reign by serving, but to reign that he might serve. He respected the freedom of the mind. He appealed to reason and conscience. He claimed authority in the name of reason and conscience, and believed that he thus claimed it in the name of God. And if his reign has been more extensive, more durable, and more beneficent than that of others, it is because he has acted by the highest kind and with the largest measure of truth and life, on the highest powers and tendencies of man.

1

Phil. iii. 13.

2

1 Cor. xiii. 9, 10.

3

1 Cor. xiv. 20.

4

2 Cor. iii. 6.

5

2 Tim. i. 7.

6

The proof of this may be amply found in the famous Encyclical and Syllabus of Pius IX., Dec. 8th, 1864. In the Syllabus he denounces as errors such propositions as the following: —

That "every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which guided by the light of reason, he holds to be true." § 15.

That "one may well hope, at least, for the eternal salvation of those who are in no wise in the true Church of Christ." § 17.

That "the Church has no power to employ force." § 24.

That "men emigrating to Catholic countries should be permitted the public exercise of their own several forms of worship." § 78.

That "the Roman Pontiff can and ought to reconcile and harmonize himself with progress, with liberalism, and with modern civilization." § 80.

7

Browning: A Soul's Tragedy, p. 250.

8

Niederschlag.

9

Tanta fuit primis seculis fingendi licentia, tam prona in credendo facilitas, ut rerum gestarum fides graviter exinde laboraverit, nec orbis tantum terrarum sed et Dei ecclesia de temporibus suis mythicis merito queratur.

10

Mill's Examination of Hamilton, 3d ed. p. 172.

11

Ibid.

12

Ibid., p. 160.

13

Viz., the fall of 772 lbs. through a foot. See Mr. Joule's Experiments in Grove's Correlation of Physical Forces, p. 34, 5th ed.

14

See Grove's Correlation, p. 255, 5th ed.

15

Lotze's Mikrokosmus, B. iv. Kap. 2, Band ii. 33, seqq.

16

The verse so often quoted from Terence, "Homo sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto," will probably occur to many as inconsistent with my statement. The sentiment of this verse is, indeed, as it stands by itself, truly Christian; but in the Comedy from which it is quoted, so far from having a philanthropic significance, it is merely a busy-body's apology for impertinent interference with the concerns of his neighbor.

17

Between Archbishop Thomson, in Aids to Faith, and some of the writers of Tracts for Priests and People; also between several eminent Independent Ministers, in the English Independent newspaper (August, 1871).

18

Comp. Matt. xvi. 14-16; Acts ix. 22, xvi. 31; Rom. iii. 22, viii. 6, 9.

19

John vi. 68; 1 Cor. iii. 11; Rom. viii. 9; John xiv. 6.

20

The term Teacher is constantly used of Christ in the Gospels, though usually disguised in our English version under the rendering "Master." Comp. e.g. Mark ix. 17, 38; Luke x. 25.

21

Matt. xvi. 22, xx. 20, xxiv. 24-36; Mark viii. 31-33, x. 35-45, xiii. 24-30; Luke xviii. 31-34.

22

That is to say, "anointed," or King, – in other words, Leader, Teacher, Saviour from sin, as the Gospels also expressly term him.

23

1 Pet. ii. 21, seq.; iv. 1-5, 13-16; James ii. 1, seq.; Gal. vi. 22-24; Eph. iv. 13-15 and passim; Phil. i. 27, seq.; ii. 1-11; Rom. xiii. 14; 2 Cor. iv.

24

In illustration of this remark, it is scarcely necessary to mention the "miracles" of the Roman Catholic Church in all ages.

25

Matt. iv. 1, seq.

26

2 Cor. viii. 9; Eph. i. 20-23; Phil. ii. 5-11; Heb. ii. 9, 10, 18; 1 Pet. ii. 21.

27

E.g., in Dean Stanley's History of the Eastern Church.

28

A good authority has recently observed, "Catholicism, substituted for Christ, has turned the thought of Southern Europe to simple Infidelity, if not to Atheism; let us take heed that Protestantism does not bring about the same thing in another way in the North." – Bishop Ewing, in a Letter to the Spectator newspaper, April 8, 1870. The remark here quoted is of much wider application than the Bishop himself would probably admit!

29

See, e.g., the Essay on the Death of Christ, in Aids to Faith.

30

Mark xiii. 32.

31

Philip. iv. 8.

32

Reuss, History of the Christian Theology of the Apostolic Age.

33

See "The Index," Toledo, Jan. 1 and Jan. 8, 1870.

34

See Noyes's Introduction to his Translation of the Prophets.

35

Life of Jesus, Part II. § 66. The charge of enthusiasm is retained, but not discussed, in his Life of Christ for the German people.

36

Book of Enoch, Dillman, ch. 100.

37

Rev. xix. 11; comp. Christian Examiner, May, 1860, p. 382.

38

Hase's Life of Jesus.

39

See Renan's Life of Jesus, first edition.

40

Réville, Review of Renan's Life of Jesus.

41

Jesus Christ and the Messianic Beliefs of his Time.