The true point of departure of this history and the first of the facts which show themselves there, is the co-existence of man and the universe, spectator and spectacle, the one confronting the other, the "moi" and the "non moi," the subject and the object, in the language of philosophy. I hasten to say that I repudiate absolutely the different systems,—Pantheism, whether materialistic or idealistic,—Scepticism, whether idealistic or absolute,—which refuse to admit this primary fact, deny the reality of the external world, or the legitimacy of the knowledge of it which the understanding acquires, see only illusions in the relations of man to the universe, or absorb man and the universe together, in the confusion and the obscure darkness of a pretended identity. I do not dream of here discussing these different systems; if I engaged in such discussion, I should have to deal with something very different from the question to which I am applying myself at this moment.Here I have only to do with Rationalistic Spiritualism. This form of Spiritualism has so much in common with Christianity, that it admits the reality and the distinction of the "moi" and of the "non moi" of the subject and the object, of the spectator and the spectacle, of spirit and matter, of man and the universe. For Rationalistic Spiritualists as well as for Christians, this is the great fact in the midst of which, and under the empire of which, man's intelligence is developed, man's life passed. Man is there passive, active, and witness, all simultaneously. As spectator he receives impressions from the spectacle, which both prompt him to act, and which stir his being from within; he is witness both to what is passing within himself and to what is passing without himself. Notwithstanding the diversity and the mobility of the impressions which he receives from without, and of the acts which he originates himself, he has a consciousness of his own personal and permanent existence, and also the consciousness of existences other than his own; he knows not, by the way of reasoning or hypothesis, but by instinctive and immediate intuition, that which, although it is not himself, yet acts upon himself as something coming from himself.Man discovers the external world as he becomes aware of himself, by the intercommunication which takes place between them, and which, nevertheless, shows him how distinct from himself is that external world. He observes and notes both what takes place without him and within him. The results of this observation he terms facts, nor are they for him vain appearances, creations merely of his thought or volition; they are manifestations to him of realities independent of himself, and yet to which he stands in relation; they are bonds of union in which he feels that he is highly interested, not merely as any curious spectator might be, but as a real being; interested, not merely for the sake of science, but interested as one whose very destiny is therein involved.
Amongst these facts, in their nature so numerous and so diverse, I only select those which concern the religious instincts of man, or the questions which they suggest. I admit two kinds of these; first, the spontaneous and common religious beliefs, which mankind professes, although under very different forms and in very different degrees; secondly, the theories and systems of philosophy, emanating from and promulgated by philosophers in order to bring under discussion the popular religious opinions, and to resolve the questions which they involve. On the one side is the natural and instinctive religion of humanity; on the other is human science, which, when it addresses itself to the task of disengaging natural religion from every system of mythology, is called religious philosophy.
Are there in the nature and in the religious history of men no other great facts besides these instincts of humanity, and these systems of human science? Natural Religion with its mythologies, and religious philosophy with its systems, are these all the religious aid accorded to man to enlighten him upon subjects of religion?
To the question thus formalised, Rationalistic Spiritualism says, Yes; whereas Christian Faith replies, No.
In addition to the facts to which I have just referred, viz., the instinctive beliefs of mankind, and the systemised doctrines of human science concerning religion, the Christian faith admits and proclaims another great religious fact, the real and active presence of God in the life of man and in the history of humanity. What the Christian faith affirms is, that the real and active presence of God, in man's life, amidst the mysteries of Providence, of prayer, and of grace, and the real and active presence of God in the history of the human race, amidst the mysteries of Revelation, of Inspiration, of the Incarnation, and of the Redemption, do not constitute simply a poetical mythology, are not merely hypotheses of philosophy, but are psychological and historic facts which human science cannot explain, but which it nevertheless can, nay, is bound to recognise.
Not philosophers only, but the whole human race, believers and disbelievers, are placed in the same permanent position in which all originally stood; that is to say, Man stands always confronting the Universe, Man always at once spectator and actor, greedy to know and comprehend the spectacle on which he is looking, and of which he himself forms part. The spectacle is immense, infinite; the spectator petty, imperfect, ephemeral, diverse, and with limited powers of vision. Accordingly as he is situated, accordingly as he is disposed and his intelligence reaches, he sees to a greater or less distance, and with a vision more or less accurate, all that the spectacle presents. He observes more or less completely, more or less exactly, the facts which are occurring there. Hence the differences of opinion amongst mankind. Who are they amongst them who succeed best in appreciating and in describing these facts without altering their character or omitting any? This is the fundamental question, the question antecedent to and which governs all the others.
The contest, then, between Christians and non-Christians, is not a contest between Faith and Reason. Reason occupies a place, and a large place, in the Faith of Christians; they attain to faith as well by reason as by sentiment or authority; nor is there, at the same time, in the negations or the doubts of non-Christians, as much reflection and as much accurate observation as they themselves suppose. Are Christians right in affirming not only the existence of God, but his real and active presence in the life of man and in the history of the human race? Are these psychological and historic facts which reason and science are bound to admit? Or are the Deists who are not Christians justified in denying these facts and in limiting God to existence alone, and in treating him as subject to the general and permanent laws assigned to all other existences?
As far as Christianity and Rationalistic Spiritualism are concerned, this is the real question at issue.
Having pointed out the source of the differences of opinion which we find amongst men, I will now indicate their consequences.
Rationalistic Spiritualism affirms the existence of God, and those who follow this system evince the strongest desire to demonstrate his existence. They are right; for the existence of God, and the rational consequences of his existence, form all their natural religion, all their religious philosophy. In these days, men of minds, as eminent as sincere, M. Émile Saisset, M. Jules Simon, M. Ernest Bersot, M. de Rémusat, have made earnest—I would willingly say pious—efforts to elucidate the proposition of God's existence, and to derive from it all the aid that reason can furnish to explain the instincts and satisfy the religious exigencies of humanity. But these Spiritualists deceive themselves. They do not attain to God himself, they only attain to the idea of God; what they establish is the admissibility of the intellectual idea, not the presence of a real being.In rejecting the psychological and historical facts upon which Christianity is founded, that is to say, the relations free and unintermitted of God with Man, whether in the individual life of each man or in the history of the mankind, Rationalistic Spiritualism deprives itself of direct and positive evidence to prove God's existence; it places a human argument in the place of the divine manifestation, and a scientific work of man in the place of the real action of God.
In an excellent book, justly entitled by him "Idea of God," another contemporary philosopher, M. Caro, has valiantly, and with brilliant success, defended this idea against the different systems which reject or distort it. And not limiting himself to polemics, he has concluded his work by a forcible and clear enunciation of his own thought."It is the living God, the intelligent God, whom we defend against the God of Naturalism, who would not be more than a law of geometry or a blind force; against the God of Hegel, who would not be more than an indeterminate Being, an origin and a commencement of things, or an absolute mind, result at once and product of the world; against the God of the new Idealists, who, to save his divinity, strip him of his reality. We affirm, in opposition to all these subtle and hazardous conceptions, that a supposed perfect being, unless he had an existence, would not be perfect; that a mere ideal of the mind is not a God; that if he is not a substance he is but a conception, a pure category of spirit, a creation and dependence upon man's thought which, in ceasing to exist, annihilates its God; that, if he is not cause, he is the most useless of beings; and if he is cause, he is mind supreme, for were he not so he would be nothing but an unconscious and necessary agent, a blind spring of the world, inferior to what he produces, since in the organic matter that emanates from him, an intelligence displays itself, of which he would possess nothing, and since too in man is manifested a divine Reason.
Another remark, and we have done with our definition. This living God, this God intelligent, is also a God that loves … A God that loved not would not be worthy of being adored … We do not adore a law, however simple it may be, however fruitful in consequence; we do not adore a force if it be blind, however potent, however universal it may be; nor an ideal, however pure it may be, if it be only an abstraction. We only adore a being who is living perfection, the perfection of reality in its highest forms of mind and love. Every other adoration implies a contradiction if the object is a pure abstraction, idolatry if the object be the substance of the universe or humanity.
This is God as he appears to reason, and as the religious conscience of humanity will have him. This is your God." [Footnote 43]
[Footnote 43: L'Idée de Dieu et ses Nouveaux Critiques. By E. Caro. p. 498. 8vo. Paris, 1864.]
It is to be regretted M. Caro has not carried his conclusions still higher, and completed his work by proceeding on from philosophical spiritualism to Christian Spiritualism.
Rationalistic Deism is merely an idea of God, given as the philosophical solution of the grand problem, which the spectacle of the Universe and of Man in the Universe causes to weigh upon the soul of man.
Christianity is faith in God, Being real, Sovereign real, continually present, and active in the government of the Universe, as he is in the soul of man and in the history of the human race.
Rationalistic Deism arrives at the idea of God, and stops short there, because it ignores the psychological and historical facts which go beyond this idea. It is by holding account of these facts, and by doing to them the homage which is their due, that Christianity forwards and justifies her faith.
Every doctrine, religious, moral, or political, has yet to submit to a test—the great test—the practical application. The idea has to be transformed into reality, the thought to be made life.
Philosophers pride themselves upon searching only for the truth, upon busying themselves only with the theoretical truth of their ideas, to the neglect of every other consideration. They are right in one sense: for the knowledge of truth, of truth as it is in itself, is that which the human mind proposes to itself as its object, and is the only thing which can satisfy it; if man pretends to it, it is his right and his honour to do so: whatever the object of his study, the mind does not halt or rest until it believes that it has attained to the truth.
This is no privilege of philosophers; neither are they the only ones for whom truth is a law: all men have a right to live under its empire, whether as to facts or ideas. No one, not even those who affect most disdain for theory, would venture to lay down the principle that we should be indifferent whether we are essentially in the right, and that practically there is no difference between truth and error.
But by what signs is truth recognisable? Are there no other than the affirmations of that inquisitive spectator, named the human mind? Is it only by language, by reasoning, and by discussion, that the truth of an idea and of a doctrine manifests and proves itself?
To such a pretension, if advanced, I hesitate not to reply with a denial, and in doing so, to repeat what I have just said: every doctrine, religious, moral, or political, has to submit to a test,—the practical application.The idea transformed into reality, the thought made the life; these are the most certain signs of an idea being intrinsically true, these, too, are proofs of its reasonable legitimacy, which it is bound to give.
There is a radical difference between the material world and the intellectual world. The laws which regulate and maintain order in the material world, are independent of man, of both his thought and his volition. It matters not that he knows these laws, or is ignorant of them; they do not the less exist and govern; man has no power to change, arrest, or suspend their operation; he cannot influence them. Galileo was right to say of the earth, in spite of his judges, "Still it moves;" it would have moved even if Galileo, as well as his judges, had been ignorant of the fact, and the contest between the whirlpool of Descartes and Newton's principle of attraction, was a matter perfectly indifferent to the general system of the world.Thereman's error is absolutely without effect or influence.
In the intellectual and moral world it is otherwise; here man is not only spectator, he is an actor, an actor free or not to act— to act with effect. He thinks and he wills, and so contributes to the facts which take place in the world; he knows, or is ignorant of, the laws, he respects or violates the laws which preside here, but which do not preside here as laws external to and independent of himself. Man's errors, man's faults, are not here without real and serious consequences; they have the power of sowing evil and of carrying perturbation into the intellectual and moral world, thus delivered up, as the Bible proclaims, to the disputes of men.
Learned men, in the study and appreciation of the material world, separate sciences absolutely, and, considering each apart from its practical application, occupy themselves in their scientific investigations only with the pure theory. This I understand and admit; for such a course does not endanger the security of society or the results of their own labours.Their ignorance and their errors have no doubt grave inconveniences; the facts and the forces of the material world are either misconceived or not turned sufficiently to account; man and human society do not reap all the advantages which the profound and exact knowledge of the truth might, in this respect, procure them. Such ill, although real, is of a negative description, a good, it may be, missed or postponed; but no general disturbance results in that material world upon which naturalists or chemists concentrate their labours; the world will not have to undergo the effect, nor to pay the penalty, of their ignorance or of their errors. The intellectual and moral world, on the contrary, runs a greater risk, and imposes upon its teachers severer duties; no doubt these study it as freely, and make truth, too, their object; but science does not here escape the weight of its own conclusions; it is a power as formidable in its abuse as it is in itself sublime; it may carry into the world to which it addresses itself trouble instead of order, incendiarism instead of light. If practical application is not here the object of science, it is still its necessary and appropriate proof; in facts as in a mirror are reflected the truth or the error, the good or the ill, of human opinions.
Christianity has now been subjected to this test for nineteen centuries: it is subject to it at this moment, it will continue ever to be so. I need not say that I do not propose to retrace here the narrative of the manner in which it has supported and surmounted that test; that would be to write the History of Christianity. I confine myself, on the contrary, to a single small part of this history, the most modest part, the least pretending: and shall endeavour to bare a little to the view what Christianity, when it has been put into practice, what Christian Faith, after it has become Christian Life, has in the different situations of man's life accomplished, and is every day accomplishing, for the ennoblement of his nature, and the furtherance of his ultimate destiny.
Three words, "Rights of Man" inscribed upon the banners of the French Revolution, constituted its force; the rights of man as man, rights by this title alone, by virtue alone of his humanity. Three other words,Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, have served as a commentary upon the three former. It is in the name of these two maxims that the French Revolution is making the tour of the world; they are the sources of the good and the evil, the movements in advance as well as the ruinous calamities of our time and of an unknown future.
Whilst all of true and good that these two maxims contain is Christian and was proclaimed by Christianity, all that they have of false and fatal is condemned and expressly repudiated by Christianity. Not only in this terrible confusion does Christianity proclaim in principle the part that is good, and condemn in principle the part that is evil; but Christianity alone, in point of fact, has the necessary authority and moral force to suppress the evil without at the same time causing the good also to perish.
It is a subject to us, in these days, of pride, and of a pride that is just, that we have at last begun to consider man himself, the individual man, his existence, and his personal liberty, his rights, and the guarantees of his rights, as the essential objects of social institutions. We have at last emerged from the rut of pagan antiquity, glorious at once and rude, where the individual, made wholly subordinate, was sacrificed to the state, where man was regarded simply as citizen, and thousands of human creatures were degraded and treated as cyphers in favour of a single class. Men are no longer numbered as Jews and Gentiles, Romans and Barbarians, freemen and slaves. Christianity first not only proclaimed but put into practice this important truth. The right of every man, as man, the worth of the human soul, and of the human person, irrespectively of his situation in life, constitute the starting-point, the fundamental idea, the dominant precept of the Christian religion.It was, in effect, in religious society, in the rising Christian Church, that this principle was first proclaimed, and first put into practice; Christianity treated the relation of man to God as the chief concern of man's life, and religious liberty as the chief of human liberties; it was in the presence of God that Christians admitted the equal importance of every soul; as it was amongst Christians themselves that they greeted each other as brethren, and that fraternity engendered charity. But although sprung from a source so elevated, and applied at first upon a stage so small, the Christian idea was not on that account less potent, or less fruitful; in spite of obstacles and reverses it maintained itself, and diffused itself through centuries and over distant countries; it made constant efforts to penetrate civil society. At the epochs of the history of Christendom which are most to be deplored, in the midst of the oppressions and the iniquities which have brought desolation upon it, daring voices have never been wanting: at one time it was the voice of the Christian Church itself directed against the masters of the earth; at another a voice issuing from the bosom of the Church itself, full of generous protestations against the disorders and acts of violence which were taking place in its own bosom.Jesus, God and man, having raised man before God, man never afterwards entirely humiliated and degraded himself before any human tyranny. In the presence of the greatest inequalities of earthly power, the appellation,brethren, never ceased to be echoed in Christian Society; and even at this day, after all the progress which equality has made in civil society, it is only in religious societies and in Christian Churches that men hear themselves greeted asbrethren.
The Christian faith has not only exercised a political influence in the state by changing the relations in which individuals stand to the political authorities, or in which the different classes stand to one another: it has also introduced a change in the constitution of the primary natural and imperishable association, called family.There, also, it has caused to disappear, at one time, the despotism of husband and father; at another, the degradation of wife, and the brutal or licentious independence of children. If we give ourselves the trouble to compare the Christian family as religion, laws, and morals have made it, with the family of antiquity which was most strongly constituted, namely, the Roman family,—we shall not need to examine long before we discern clearly on which side order really is, on which side the just appreciation of natural sentiments, the respect for right and liberty.
I have said that at the same time that Christianity proclaims and puts in practice all that is true and healthy in the popular maxims of our times, man's rights and liberty, his equality and fraternity, it condemns and rejects all that they contain of false and deplorable. There is one very striking fact in the history of the foundation of Christianity, a fact traceable not merely in the records of a few years, but through three centuries.Christianity began with resisting absolute power, and with laying claim to liberty of conscience. It owed its establishment to the same cause. In the Roman world no one any longer made even a show of resistance; every kind of oppression was in force, every claim to freedom abandoned: the Christians again raised high the banner of right, and of resistance in the name of right; but never did they raise their banner to encourage revolt or attacks upon authority; they undertook the defence of liberty against tyranny, and never made appeals to insurrection against authority. Martyrdom, not murder; such is the sum of the history of Christianity from the day of its birth in the manger of Jesus, to the day when it mounted the throne of Constantine. The reason of this is, that from the time when Christianity was yet in its cradle, and even afterwards when it was struggling to conquer its liberty, liberty was not an exclusive idea for Christians either in their doctrines or their lives: they recognised, respected, and proclaimed with equal solicitude both principles upon which the moral order of the world reposes, authority and liberty.They never, in any respect, sacrificed the one to the other, nor humiliated the one in the presence of the other; masters and disciples, all referred power to its true source, and did homage to its right at the same time that they maintained their own right against power. When Jesus spoke, the people were astonished at his doctrine, "for he taught as one having authority, and not as the Scribes." [Footnote 44]
[Footnote 44: Matthew vii. 29.]
Jesus declared formally to his disciples his authority over them, and the mission which it imposed upon them: "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain." [Footnote 45]
[Footnote 45: John xv. 16.]
And when St. Paul, although exposed to all kinds of perils and struggles, spread abroad throughout the Roman Empire the doctrines of Jesus, he said to the new Christians, "Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. … Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience' sake." [Footnote 46]
[Footnote 46: Romans xiii. 1, 5. ]
Nor can I here omit again to cite the words which Jesus himself addressed to the Pharisees: "Render under Cæsar the things which are Cæsar's, and unto God the things that are God's." [Footnote 47]
[Footnote 47: Matthew xxii. 21.]
The respect for authority as much as for liberty, the right of power as well as the right of conscience, the separation of religious life from civil life,—all these were not, for the primitive Christians, simple necessities arising out of their situation, nor simple counsels of prudence; they were principles of doctrine and precepts of life, recognised and practised in the name of justice and of truth.
Christian doctrine and Christian practice have been, I know, greatly altered, lost sight of, violated, in the course of the history of the Christian world. Human nature succumbs readily to the temptations of victory and pleasure; when Christianity once became powerful it was too often invaded and disfigured by earthly interests and passions; ambition, cupidity, pride, the arrogance of power, and the lies of cunning; every evil inclination, every vice which the Christian faith rebukes and combats, displayed themselves in this world which Christianity had not conquered merely to hand it over to them, but from which, nevertheless, it had not expelled them. The grand and salutary doctrines of Christianity have been often themselves perverted and profaned to the service of an egotism assuming every shape and carried to every pitch. Still they never were lost, they never perished in this impure mixture and this unworthy use; they survived, they combated, sometimes in obscurity, sometimes in the broad light of day; everywhere, at every epoch, Christian voices, Christian lives, and Christian Reforms protested and struggled against the passions and the corruptions of mankind. And in spite of all these centuries, so sombre, so full of agitation, of violence, and of oppression, so full of moral and material ill, the decline of man and of human society did not ensue.Greece and Rome, in their state of youthful growth, were glorious and vigorous; and glorious, too, was the development in them of human intelligence and dignity; but their career was short, and these two brilliant forms of society did not find in their ideas, traditions, or models, a sufficiency of moral force to enable them to escape from, or even survive, the seductive and corrupting influence of material grandeur and of human success. Amidst all the sufferings, all the darkness, all the crimes which agitate her long career, Christianity has proved infinitely healthier and more sound; she has made herself an incessant subject of study; she has shifted her place upon her couch of sorrow; she has raised herself up, she has renewed, regenerated herself; she has grown and prospered at the same time that she has suffered; and in spite of the ills, vices, and perils against which Christianity has had to defend herself, and against which she will ever have to defend herself, she has before her, over the whole face of the world, a future immense and full of promise. This she owes to her origin—she was born in the manger of Jesus.
There is at present a disposition amongst earnest and enlightened men to recognise, it is true, the services which Christianity has rendered to the world; but to attribute them only to the morality of Christianity. They laud to the sky the moral character of Jesus, and his moral precepts; but they repudiate, nay, deplore, the dogmas with which, in the Christian faith, Christian morality is combined and incorporated; they demand that the morality be separated from it, and be presented to man without anything but its intellectual beauty and practical excellence. Although not disputing that there is somewhat of human in the origin and empire of morality, I have established in this volume of Meditations that it is necessarily allied to religious belief, and that when separated from its divine source, and viewed apart from that which gives it sanction, it is incomplete, illogical, and powerless—a branch without root and without fruit.I go farther now, and express my meaning fully. Not only is Christian morality intimately connected with Christian faith, as the Christian faith is itself connected with Christian dogmas, but Christian morals, Christian faith, and Christian dogmas have taken their origin, and derived their force, at a source still higher, and in an authority still more decisive. Christianity did not begin, it did not rise upon the world, as one body of doctrines or code of precepts; from its first step it was a truth, strange to the ordinary course of human affairs, and superior to them; a fact divine, and an act divine; it was as such, and by its character as such, that, sometimes all at once, and sometimes gradually, it struck men as by a blow and vanquished them, at first the rude and simple, then the great and learned, publicans and emperors, the disciples of Plato, and the fishermen of the sea of Gennesareth.At different moments, and for different motives, all of them saw in the cradle, and the rapid extent of infant Christianity, a sublime and superhuman fact, a God present and acting in and by Jesus. Some recognised and adored him at the very moment of his appearing; others observed him with troubled and angry feelings; but, in proportion as the truth developed itself, even those who detested him doubted if they were right in doubting. The council and all the senate of the children of Israel had caused Peter and the other apostles to be placed in prison, and took counsel to have them put to death. "Then stood there up one in the council, a Pharisee, named Gamaliel, a doctor of the law, had in reputation among all the people, and commanded to put the apostles forth a little space; and said unto them: Ye men of Israel, take heed to yourselves what ye intend to do as touching these men. For before these days rose up Theudas boasting himself to be somebody, to whom a number of men, about four hundred, joined themselves: who was slain, and all, as many as obeyed him, were scattered and brought to nought.After this man rose up Judas of Galilee in the days of the taxing, and drew away much people after him: he also perished; and all, even as many as obeyed him, were dispersed. And now I say unto you, Refrain from these men, and let them alone: for if this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to nought: But if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it; lest haply ye be found even to fight against God." [Footnote 48]
[Footnote 48: Acts v. 21, 33—39.]
The question which Gamaliel thus put with respect to Christianity at its birth was not new; the high priest of Israel had already made the same demand of Jesus himself: "I adjure thee by the living God, that thou tell us whether thou be the Christ, the Son of God? Jesus saith unto him, Thou hast said." [Footnote 49]
[Footnote 49: Matthew xxvi. 63, 64.]
The Jews replied to the affirmation of Jesus by crucifying him. A short time afterwards, when they sought to treat the apostles as their Master had been treated, Gamaliel counselled them to abide the test of time, and in the meanwhile to leave "these people in repose." They did not leave these people in repose, and the proof was only on that account the more decisive: after three centuries of persecutions and martyrdoms, the grand facts of Christianity,—the Revelation, the Incarnation, the Redemption, the Inspiration of the Scriptures,—became the grand dogmas of Christianity, the basis of Christian faith, which faith in its turn is the basis of Christian Life. Sixteen centuries elapsed from this trial of Christianity in its cradle, and it was made to undergo fresh and still ruder trials; in these trials earthly interests and human errors and passions had a great part; Christ's precepts were sometimes forgotten, and sometimes converted into human instruments; no doctrine or idea was ever so constantly in contact with, and at issue with, facts; never was theory more rigorously reviewed, more subjected to the test of practical application in every form and every shape.The design which emanated from God traversed and surmounted all these perils; it braved the faults of its adherents and the blows of its enemies. It is engaged in our days in a new contest, and is subjected to fresh trials; it has entered upon it with the same arms, which, nineteen centuries ago, secured its triumph, with the grand facts which form the basis of Christian faith, and the great examples which furnish the rule of Christian living. The History of Christianity is the strongest proof of its Divinity, and the surest guarantee for its future. The authenticity and authority of this history will be the subject of the next and last series of my "Meditations."
Ecce Homo: such is the title of a work published anonymously, at London and at Cambridge in 1866, which produced on its appearance a great sensation in London, a sensation which still continues: all the papers and reviews, whether religious, philosophical, or simply literary, busied themselves with it, either to praise or attack it; the distinguished chief of the Liberal Party himself, perhaps soon to be the Prime Minister of England, Mr. Gladstone, has just made it the subject of three articles, which are remarkable alike for acuteness, elegance, and eloquence. They appeared in one of the most widely circulated periodicals in his country. [Footnote 50]
[Footnote 50: "Good Words," a Monthly Review, edited by Norman Macleod, one of the Chaplains of her Majesty Queen Victoria. The articles referred to appeared in the numbers of January, February, and March, 1868.]
"No anonymous book," says he, "since the 'Vestiges of Creation' (now more than twenty years old), indeed, it might almost be said, no theological book, whether anonymous, or of certified authorship—that has appeared within the same interval, has attracted anything like the amount of notice and of criticism which have been bestowed upon the remarkable volume, entitled 'Ecce Homo.'"
The anonymous author has expressed in a very short preface his intention in writing this volume, as well as its fundamental ideas. "Those who feel," says he, "dissatisfied with the current conceptions of Christ, if they cannot rest content without a definite opinion, may find it necessary to do what, to persons not so dissatisfied, it seems audacious and perilous to do. They may be obliged to reconsider the whole subject from the beginning, and placing themselves, in imagination, at the time when he whom we call Christ bore no such name, but was simply, as St. Luke describes him, a young man of promise, popular with those who knew him, and appearing to enjoy the Divine favour, to trace his biography from point to point, and accept those conclusions about him, not which Church doctors, or even apostles have sealed with their authority, but which the facts themselves, critically weighed, appear to warrant.
"This is what the present writer undertook to do for the satisfaction of his own mind, and because, after reading a good many books on Christ, he felt still constrained to confess that there was no historical character whose motives, objects and feelings remained so incomprehensible to him. The inquiry which proved serviceable to himself may chance to be useful to others.
"What is now published is a fragment. No theological questions whatever are here discussed. Christ as the Creator of modern Theology and Religion will make the subject of another volume; which, however, the author does not hope to publish for some time to come. In the meanwhile, he has endeavoured to furnish an answer to the question, 'What was Christ's object in founding the Society which is called by his name, and how is it adapted to attain that object?'"
On merely considering, even after a first perusal, the brief words which I have here extracted, it is, I think, impossible not to perceive how much there is that is artificial and embarrassed, I had almost said how much there is that is false, not only in the position in which the Author has placed himself at the very outset, but in the special intentions which he avows. To study the life and the aim of the life of Christ without considering him "as the Creator of Modern Theology and Religion," to defer all examination and conclusion upon this last subject; to aspire to know the person and the mind of Christ after thus separating him from his work; to inquire what he meant to accomplish when living, without considering what he in effect accomplished in the ages which followed his passage through the world; to treat him, in short, and to examine him as we should treat and examine a person unknown to us—a fossil man, so to say, of which the features might be traceable in some contemporary document, showing that he once existed, but who has left no other trace to supply us with argument or proof of what he intended, or what he performed;—this, undoubtedly, is a strange manner of proceeding, one which holds out very little chance of an accurate and true comprehension of the immense fact called Christianity, thus mutilated in its very cradle, Christianity of which the writer limits himself to a bare search after the germ in the nascent thought of its owner, whereas it might have been observed, and its nature verified in its positive and vast development.
This is a species of decomposition, of which the great facts of history and morality do not admit. We are not here, like anatomists, describing the autopsy of a corpse. To know and comprehend such facts really, we must study them in their different elements and in all the development of their life. They form a drama in which we are actors, not a manuscript which we are deciphering.
I can easily understand how the anonymous writer of the "Ecce Homo" came to conceive the idea of his book, and to confine it within the limits which he has himself assigned: I can also understand his motives. Like all his contemporaries, he is placed and lives in presence of the grave questions agitated in these days respecting Christianity and its author. What was Christ?—a man or very God, or God and man at once? How did the divine nature and the human nature manifest themselves in him? Did he really effect the miracles assigned to him? Can there be such things as miracles? What are we to understand by the supernatural? Is God a real being personal and free, existing and accomplishing his works in a region beyond that which we style Nature? Christianity and the life of its founder inevitably suggest all these questions, which in our days occupy and violently agitate men's minds. The anonymous author of the "Ecce Homo" did not wish to enter upon them; nay, it was his aim to study and comprehend Christ without touching them at all. Is it because upon these grave problems he entertains himself no positive and decided opinions? Or, because he wished, to a certain extent, to accommodate himself to the state of opinion of some of his contemporaries, and to treat Christ as those speak of him who only see in him a man, who regard Christianity as a fact not supernatural, owing its origin, like other natural facts, to the sole and proper force of mankind?
Upon this I can form no opinion; I neither know the anonymous author of the "Ecce Homo," nor the motives which actuate him: what is certain is, that he is quite right in entitling his book "Ecce Homo," for it is only the Man Christ that he has proposed to study, and it is by studying the Man Christ that he has proposed to explain Christianity.
I do not know if, after having written his book, he was aware of the result to which it leads, but the result is in effect a strange one,—it is condemnatory and destructive of the fundamental idea of the book, it demonstrates by a sincere and honest, although an incomplete and superficial study of the facts, the impossibility of explaining either Christ by the human nature alone, or the Christian Religion by any merely natural operations of humanity.
The work is divided into two parts, and contains altogether twenty-four chapters. The first part is devoted to the study of Christ personally, his peculiar character, his manner of dealing with men, the mission which he proposed to himself to accomplish, the nature of the society which he sought to found, and the authority which he counted upon exercising. In the second part, the Christian society itself, its points of resemblance to the systems of philosophy and its points of difference therefrom, its fundamental principles and positive laws, and the habits and sentiments which are developed by those laws, all become in turn the objects of the author's observations and descriptions. Observations often profound, descriptions often exact and striking, although somewhat minute and lengthy; everywhere, however, there breathes forth a sentiment unquestionably moral, and full of the gentlest sympathy for humanity.