Chapter XXXII: Lord Blachford (5)

In making our own venture we will begin with what seems to us incontestable. In the first place, but that it has been questioned, we should say that there could be no question of the surpassing ability which the book displays. It is far beyond the power of the average clever and practised writer of our days. It is the work of a man in whom thought, sympathy, and imagination are equally powerful and wealthy, and who exercises a perfect and easy command over his own conceptions, and over the apt and vivid language which is their expression. Few men have entered so deeply into the ideas and feelings of the time, or have looked at the world, its history and its conditions, with so large and piercing an insight. But it is idle to dwell on what must strike, at first sight, any one who but opens the book. We go on to observe, what is equally beyond dispute, the deep tone of religious seriousness which pervades the work. The writer's way of speaking is very different from that of the ascetic or the devotee; but no ascetic or devotee could be more profoundly penetrated with the great contrast between holiness and evil, and show more clearly in his whole manner of thinking the ineffaceable impression of the powers of the world to come. Whatever else the book may be, this much is plain on the face of it--it is the work of a mind of extreme originality, depth, refinement, and power; and it is also the work of a very religious man: Thomas à Kempis had not a more solemn sense of things unseen and of what is meant by the Imitation of Christ.

What the writer wishes his book to be understood to be we must gather from his Preface:--

Those who feel 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?

Thus the book comes before us as a serious facing of difficulties. And that the writer lays stress on its being so viewed appears further from a letter which he wrote to the _Spectator_, repeating emphatically that the book is not one "written after the investigation was completed, but the _investigation_ itself." The letter may be taken to complete the statement of the Preface:--

I endeavoured in my Preface to describe the state of mind in which
I undertook my book. I said that the character and objects of
Christ were at that time altogether incomprehensible to me, and
that I wished to try whether an independent investigation would
relieve my perplexity. Perhaps I did not distinctly enough state
that _Ecce Homo_ is not a book written after the investigation was
completed, but the _investigation_ itself.

The Life of Christ is partly easy to understand and partly
difficult. This being so, what would a man do who wished to study
it methodically? Naturally he would take the easy part first. He
would collect, arrange, and carefully consider all the facts which
are simple, and until he has done this, he would carefully avoid
all those parts of his subject which are obscure, and which cannot
be explained without making bold hypotheses. By this course he
would limit the problem, and in the meanwhile arrive at a probable
opinion concerning the veracity of the documents, and concerning
the characteristics, both intellectual and moral, of the person
whose high pretensions he wished to investigate.

This is what I have done. I have postponed altogether the hardest
questions connected with Christ, as questions which cannot
properly be discussed until a considerable quantity of evidence
has been gathered about his character and views. If this evidence,
when collected, had appeared to be altogether conflicting and
inconsistent, I should have been saved the trouble of proceeding
any further; I should have said that Christ is a myth. If it had
been consistent, and had disclosed to me a person of mean and
ambitious aims, I should have said, Christ is a deceiver. Again,
if it had exhibited a person of weak understanding and strong
impulsive sensibility, I should have said Christ is a bewildered
enthusiast.

In all these cases you perceive my method would have saved me a
good deal of trouble. As it is, I certainly feel bound to go on,
though, as I say in my Preface, my progress will necessarily be
slow. But I am much engaged and have little time for theological
study. But pray do not suppose that postponing questions is only
another name for evading them. I think I have gained much by this
postponement. I have now a very definite notion of Christ's
character and that of his followers. I shall be able to judge how
far he was likely to deceive himself or them. It is possible I may
have put others, who can command more time than I, in a condition
to take up the subject where for the present I leave it.

You say my picture suffers by my method. But _Ecce Homo_ is not a
picture: it is the very opposite of a picture; it is an analysis.
It may be, you will answer, that the title suggests a picture.
This may perhaps be true, and if so, it is no doubt a fault, but a
fault in the title, not in the book. For titles are put to books,
not books to titles.

Thus it appears that the writer found it his duty to investigate those awful questions which every thinking man feels to be full of the "incomprehensible" and unfathomable, but which many thinking men, for various reasons both good and bad, shrink from attempting to investigate, accepting on practical and very sufficient grounds the religious conclusions which are recommended and sanctioned by the agreement of Christendom. And finding it his duty to investigate them at all, he saw that he was bound to investigate in earnest. But under what circumstances this happened, from what particular pressure of need, and after what previous belief or state of opinion, we are not told. Whether from being originally on the doubting side--on the irreligious side we cannot suppose he ever could have been--he has risen through his investigation into belief; or whether, originally on the believing side, he found the aspect so formidable, to himself or to the world, of the difficulties and perplexities which beset belief, that he turned to bay upon the foes that dogged him--must be left to conjecture. It is impossible to question that he has been deeply impressed with the difficulties of believing; it is impossible to question that doubt has been overborne and trampled under foot. But here we have the record, it would not be accurate to say of the struggle, but of that resolute and unflinching contemplation of the realities of the case which decided it. Such plunging into such a question must seem, as he says, to those who do not need it, "audacious and perilous"; for if you plunge into a question in earnest, and do not under a thin disguise take a side, you must, whatever your bias and expectation, take your chance of the alternative answers which may come out. It is a simple fact that there are many people who feel "dissatisfied with the current conceptions" of our Lord--whether reasonably and justly dissatisfied is another question; but whatever we think of it they remain dissatisfied. In such emergencies it is conceivable that a man who believes, yet keenly realises and feels what disturbs or destroys the belief of others, should dare to put himself in their place; should enter the hospital and suffer the disease which makes such ravages; should descend into the shades and face the spectres. No one can deny the risk of dwelling on such thoughts as he must dwell on; but if he feels warmly with his kind, he may think it even a duty to face the risk. To any one accustomed to live on his belief it cannot but be a hard necessity, full of pain and difficulty, first to think and then to speak of what he believes, as if it _might not_ be, or _could be_ otherwise; but the changes of time bring up ever new hard necessities; and one thing is plain, that if ever such an investigation is undertaken, it ought to be a real one, in good earnest and not in play. If a man investigates at all, both for his own sake and for the sake of the effect of his investigation on others, he must accept the fair conditions of investigation. We may not ourselves be able to conceive the possibility of taking, even provisionally, a neutral position; but looking at what is going on all round us, we ought to be able to enlarge our thoughts sufficiently to take in the idea that a believing mind may feel it a duty to surrender itself boldly to the intellectual chances and issues of the inquiry, and to "let its thoughts take their course in the confidence that they will come home at last." It may be we ourselves who "have not faith enough to be patient of doubt"; there may be others who feel that if what they believe is real, they need not be afraid of the severest revisal and testing of the convictions on which they rest; who feel that, in the circumstances of the time, it is not left to their choice whether these convictions shall be sifted unsparingly and to the uttermost; and who think it a venture not unworthy of a Christian, to descend even to the depths to go through the thoughts of doubters, if so be that he may find the spell that shall calm them. We do not say that this book is the production of such a state of mind; we only think that it may be. One thing is clear, wherever the writer's present lot is cast, he has that in him which not only enables him, but forces him, to sympathise with what he sees in the opposite camp. If he is what is called a Liberal, his whole heart is yet pouring itself forth towards the great truths of Christianity. If he is what is called orthodox, his whole intellect is alive to the right and duty of freedom of thought. He will therefore attract and repel on both sides. And he appears to feel that the position of double sympathy gives him a special advantage, to attract to each side what is true in its opposite, and to correct in each what is false or inadequate.

What, then, is this investigation, and what course does it follow? At the first aspect, we might take it for one of those numerous attempts on the Liberal side, partly impatient, partly careless of Christianity, to put a fresh look on the Christian history, and to see it with new eyes. The writer's language is at starting neutral; he speaks of our Lord in the language indeed of the New Testament, but not in the usual language of later Christian writers. All through, the colour and tone is absolutely modern; and what would naturally be expressed in familiar theological terms is for the most part studiously put in other words. Persons acquainted with the writings of the late Mr. Robertson might be often reminded of his favourite modes of teaching; of his maxim that truth is made up of two opposites which seem contradictories; of the distinction which he was so fond of insisting upon between principles and rules; above all, of his doctrine that the true way to rise to the faith in our Lord's Divine Nature was by first realising His Human Life. But the resemblance is partial, if not superficial, and gives way on closer examination before broad and characteristic features of an entirely different significance. That one which at first arrests attention, and distinguishes this writer's line of thought from the common Liberal way of dealing with the subject, is that from the first page of the book to its last line the work of Christ is viewed, not simply as the foundation of a religious system, the introduction of certain great principles, the elevation of religious ideas, the delivery of Divine truths, the exhibition of a life and example, but as the call and creation of a definite, concrete, organised society of men. The subject, of investigation is not merely the character and history of the Person, but the Person as connected with His work. Christ is regarded not simply in Himself or in His teaching, as the Founder of a philosophy, a morality, a theology in the abstract, but as the Author of a Divine Society, the Body which is called by His Name, the Christian Church Universal, a real and visible company of men, which, however we may understand it, exists at this moment as it has existed since His time, marked by His badges, governed by His laws, and working out His purpose. The writer finds the two joined in fact, and he finds them also joined in the recorded history of Christ's plan. The book might almost be described as the beginning of a new _De Civitate Dei_, written with the further experience of fourteen centuries and from the point of view of our own generation. This is one remarkable peculiarity of this investigation; another is the prominence given to the severe side of the Person and character of whom he writes, and what is even more observable, the way in which both the severity and the gentleness are apprehended and harmonised.

We are familiar with the attempts to resolve the Christianity of the New Testament into philanthropy; and, on the other hand, writers like Mr. Carlyle will not let us forget that the world is as dark and evil as the Bible draws it. This writer feels both in one. No one can show more sympathy with enlarged and varied ideas of human happiness, no one has connected them more fearlessly with Christian principles, or claimed from those principles more unlimited developments, even for the physical well-being of men. No one has extended wider the limits of Christian generosity, forbearance, and tolerance. But, on the other hand, what is striking is, that all this is compatible, and is made to appear so, with the most profound and terrible sense of evil, with indignation and scorn which is scathing where it kindles and strikes, with a capacity and energy of deliberate religious hatred against what is impure and false and ungodly, which mark one who has dared to realise and to sympathise with the wrath of Jesus Christ.

The world has been called in these later days, and from opposite directions, to revise its judgments about Jesus Christ. Christians, on the one hand, have been called to do it by writers of whom M. Ernest Renan is the most remarkable and the most unflinching. But the sceptical and the unbelieving have likewise been obliged to change their ground and their tone, and no one with any self-respect or care for his credit even as a thinker and a man would like to repeat the superficial and shallow flippancy and irreligion of the last century. Two things have been specially insisted on. We have been told that if we are to see the truth of things as it is, we must disengage our minds from the deeply rooted associations and conceptions of a later theology, and try to form our impressions first-hand and unprompted from the earliest documents which we can reach. It has been further urged on us, in a more believing spirit, that we should follow the order by which in fact truth was unfolded, and rise from the full appreciation of our Lord's human nature to the acknowledgment of His Divine nature. It seems to us that the writer of this book has felt the force of both these appeals, and that his book is his answer to them. Here is the way in which he responds to both--to the latter indirectly, but with a significance which no one can mistake; to the former directly and avowedly. He undertakes, isolating himself from current beliefs, and restricting himself to the documents from which, if from any source at all, the original facts about Christ are to be learned, to examine what the genuine impression is which an attempt to realise the statements about him leaves on the mind. This has been done by others, with results supposed to be unfavourable to Christianity. He has been plainly moved by these results, though not a hint is given of the existence of Renan or Strauss. But the effect on his own mind has been to drive him back on a closer survey of the history in its first fountains, and to bring him from it filled more than ever with wonder at its astonishing phenomena, to protest against the poverty and shallowness of the most ambitious and confident of these attempts. They leave the historical Character which they pourtray still unsounded, its motives, objects, and feelings absolutely incomprehensible. He accepts the method to reverse the product. "Look at Christ historically," people say; "see Him as He really was." The answer here is, "Well, I will look at Him with whatever aid a trained historical imagination can look at Him. I accept your challenge; I admit your difficulties. I will dare to do what you do. I will try and look at the very facts themselves, with singleness and 'innocence of the eye,' trying to see nothing more than I really see, and trying to see all that my eye falls on. I will try to realise indeed what is recorded of Him. And _this_ is what I see. This is the irresistible impression from the plainest and most elementary part of the history, if we are to accept any history at all. A miracle could not be more unlike the order of our experience than the Character set before us is unique and unapproachable in all known history. Further, all that makes the superiority of the modern world to the ancient, and is most permanent and pregnant with improvement in it, may be traced to the appearance of that Character, and to the work which He planned and did. You ask for a true picture of Him, drawn with freedom, drawn with courage; here, if you dare look at it, is what those who wrote of Him showed Him to be. Renan has tried to draw this picture. Take the Gospels as they stand; treat them simply as biographies; look, and see, and think of what they tell, and then ask yourself about Renan's picture, and what it looks like when placed side by side with the truth."

This, as we have ventured to express it in our own words, seems to be the writer's position. It is at any rate the effect of his book, to our minds. The inquiry, it must always be remembered, is a preliminary one, dealing, as he says, with the easiest and obvious elements of the problem; and much that seems inadequate and unsatisfactory may be developed hereafter. He starts from what, to those who already have the full belief, must appear a low level. He takes, as it will be seen, the documents as they stand. He takes little more than the first three Gospels, and these as a whole, without asking minute questions about them. The mythical theory he dismisses as false to nature, in dealing with such a Character and such results. He talks in his preface of "critically weighing" the facts; but the expression is misleading. It is true that we may talk of criticism of character; but the words naturally suggest that close cross-questioning of documents and details which has produced such remarkable results in modern investigations; and of this there is none. It is a work in no sense of criticism; it is a work of what he calls the "trained historical imagination"; a work of broad and deep knowledge of human nature and the world it works in and creates about it; a work of steady and large insight into character, and practical judgment on moral likelihoods. He answers Strauss as he answers Renan, by producing the interpretation of a character, so living, so in accordance with all before and after, that it overpowers and sweeps away objections; a picture, an analysis or outline, if he pleases, which justifies itself and is its own evidence, by its originality and internal consistency. Criticism in detail does not affect him. He assumes nothing of the Gospels, except that they are records; neither their inspiration in any theological sense, nor their authorship, nor their immunity from mistake, nor the absolute purity of their texts. But taking them as a whole he discerns in them a Character which, if you accept them at all and on any terms, you cannot mistake. Even if the copy is ever so imperfect, ever so unskilful, ever so blurred and defaced, there is no missing the features any more than a man need miss the principle of a pattern because it is rudely or confusedly traced. He looks at these "biographies" as a geologist might do at a disturbed series of strata; and he feeds his eye upon them till he gets such a view of the coherent whole as will stand independent of the right or wrong disposition of the particular fragments. To the mind which discerns the whole, the regulating principle, the general curves and proportions of the strata may be just as visible after the disturbance as before it. The Gospels bring before us the visible and distinct outlines of a life which, after all efforts to alter the idea of it, remains still the same; they present certain clusters of leading ideas and facts so embedded in their substance that no criticism of detail can possibly get rid of them, without absolutely obliterating the whole record. It is this leading idea, or cluster of ideas, to be gained by intent gazing, which the writer disengages from all questions of criticism in the narrow sense of the word, and sets before us as explaining the history of Christianity, and as proving themselves by that explanation. That the world has been moved we know. "Give me," he seems to say, "the Character which is set forth in the Gospels, and I can show how He moved it":--

It is in the object of the present treatise to exhibit Christ's
career in outline. No other career ever had so much unity; no
other biography is so simple or can so well afford to dispense
with details. Men in general take up scheme after scheme, as
circumstances suggest one or another, and therefore most
biographies are compelled to pass from one subject to another, and
to enter into a multitude of minute questions, to divide the life
carefully into periods by chronological landmarks accurately
determined, to trace the gradual development of character and
ripening or change of opinions. But Christ formed one plan and
executed it; no important change took place in his mode of
thinking, speaking, or acting; at least the evidence before us
does not enable us to trace any such change. It is possible,
indeed, for students of his life to find details which they may
occupy themselves with discussing; they may map out the chronology
of it, and devise methods of harmonising the different accounts;
but such details are of little importance compared with the one
grand question, what was Christ's plan, and throw scarcely any
light upon that question. What was Christ's plan is the main
question which will be investigated in the present treatise, and
that vision of universal monarchy which we have just been
considering affords an appropriate introduction to it....

We conclude then, that Christ in describing himself as a king, and
at the same time as king of the Kingdom of God--in other words as
a king representing the Majesty of the Invisible King of a
theocracy--claimed the character first of Founder, next of
Legislator; thirdly, in a certain high and peculiar sense, of
Judge, of a new divine society.

In defining as above the position which Christ assumed, we have
not entered into controvertible matter. We have not rested upon
single passages, nor drawn upon the fourth Gospel. To deny that
Christ did undertake to found and to legislate for a new
theocratic society, and that he did claim the office of Judge of
mankind, is indeed possible, but only to those who altogether deny
the credibility of the extant biographies of Christ. If those
biographies be admitted to be generally trustworthy, then Christ
undertook to be what we have described; if not, then of course
this, but also every other account of him falls to the ground.

We have said that he starts from a low level; and he restricts himself so entirely at the opening to facts which do not involve dispute, that his views of them are necessarily incomplete, and, so to say, provisional and deliberate understatements. He begins no higher than the beginning of the public ministry, the Baptism, and the Temptation; and his account of these leaves much to say, though it suggests much of what is left unsaid. But he soon gets to the proper subject of his book--the absolute uniqueness of Him whose equally unique work has been the Christian Church. And this uniqueness he finds in the combination of "unbounded personal pretensions," and the possession, claimed and believed, of boundless power, with an absolutely unearthly use of His pretensions and His power, and with a goodness which has proved to be, and still is, the permanent and ever-flowing source of moral elevation and improvement in the world. He early comes across the question of miracles, and, as he says, it is impossible to separate the claim to them and the belief in them from the story. We find Christ, he says, "describing himself as a king, and at the same time as king of the Kingdom of God"; calling forth and founding a new and divine society, and claiming to be, both now and hereafter, the Judge without appeal of all mankind; "he considered, in short, heaven and hell to be in his hands." And we find, on the other hand, that as such He has been received. To such an astonishing chain of phenomena miracles naturally belong:--

When we contemplate this scheme as a whole, and glance at the
execution and results of it, three things strike us with
astonishment. First, its prodigious originality, if the expression
may be used. What other man has had the courage or elevation of
mind to say, "I will build up a state by the mere force of my
will, without help from the kings of the world, without taking
advantage of any of the secondary causes which unite men
together--unity of interest or speech, or blood-relationship. I
will make laws for my state which shall never be repealed, and I
will defy all the powers of destruction that are at work in the
world to destroy what I build"?

Secondly, we are astonished at the calm confidence with which the
scheme was carried out. The reason why statesmen can seldom work
on this vast scale is that it commonly requires a whole lifetime
to gain that ascendency over their fellow-men which such schemes
presuppose. Some of the leading organisers of the world have said,
"I will work my way to supreme power, and then I will execute
great plans." But Christ overleaped the first stage altogether. He
did not work his way to royalty, but simply said to all men, "I am
your king." He did not struggle forward to a position in which he
could found a new state, but simply founded it.

Thirdly, we are astonished at the prodigious success of the
scheme. It is not more certain that Christ presented himself to
men as the founder, legislator, and judge of a divine society than
it is certain that men have accepted him in these characters, that
the divine society has been founded, that it has lasted nearly two
thousand years, that it has extended over a large and the most
highly-civilised portion of the earth's surface, and that it
continues full of vigour at the present day.

Between the astonishing design and its astonishing success there
intervenes an astonishing instrumentality--that of miracles. It
will be thought by some that in asserting miracles to have been
actually wrought by Christ we go beyond what the evidence, perhaps
beyond what any possible evidence, is able to sustain. Waiving,
then, for the present, the question whether miracles were actually
wrought, we may state a fact which is fully capable of being
established by ordinary evidence, and which is actually
established by evidence as ample as any historical fact
whatever--the fact, namely, that Christ _professed_ to work
miracles. We may go further, and assert with confidence that
Christ was believed by his followers really to work miracles, and
that it was mainly on this account that they conceded to Him the
pre-eminent dignity and authority which he claimed. The accounts
which we have of these miracles may be exaggerated; it is possible
that in some special cases stories have been related which have no
foundation whatever; but on the whole, miracles play so important
a part in Christ's scheme, that any theory which would represent
them as due entirely to the imagination of his followers or of a
later age destroys the credibility of the documents not partially
but wholly, and leaves Christ a personage as mythical as Hercules.
Now, the present treatise aims to show that the Christ of the
Gospels is not mythical, by showing that the character those
biographies portray is in all its large features strikingly
consistent, and at the same time so peculiar as to be altogether
beyond the reach of invention both by individual genius and still
more by what is called the "consciousness of an age." Now, if the
character depicted in the Gospels is in the main real and
historical, they must be generally trustworthy, and if so, the
responsibility of miracles is fixed on Christ. In this case the
reality of the miracles themselves depends in a great degree on
the opinion we form of Christ's veracity, and this opinion must
arise gradually from the careful examination of his whole life.
For our present purpose, which is to investigate the plan which
Christ formed and the way in which he executed it, it matters
nothing whether the miracles were real or imaginary; in either
case, being believed to be real, they had the same effect.
Provisionally, therefore, we may speak of them as real.

Without the belief in miracles, as he says, it is impossible to conceive the history of the Church:--

If we suppose that Christ really performed no miracles, and that
those which are attributed to him were the product of
self-deception mixed in some proportion or other with imposture,
then no doubt the faith of St. Paul and St. John was an empty
chimera, a mere misconception; but it is none the less true that
those apparent miracles were essential to Christ's success, and
that had he not pretended to perform them the Christian Church
would never have been founded, and the name of Jesus of Nazareth
would be known at this day only to the curious in Jewish
antiquities.

But he goes on to point out what was the use which Christ made of miracles, and how it was that they did not, as they might have done, even impede His purpose of founding His kingdom on men's consciences and not on their terrors. In one of the most remarkable passages perhaps ever written on the Gospel miracles as they are seen when simply looked at as they are described, the writer says:--

He imposed upon himself a strict restraint in the dse of his
supernatural powers. He adopted the principle that he was not sent
to destroy men's lives but to save them, and rigidly abstained in
practice from inflicting any kind of damage or harm. In this course
he persevered so steadily that it became generally understood.
Every one knew that this _king_, whose royal pretensions were so
prominent, had an absolutely unlimited patience, and that he would
endure the keenest criticism, the bitterest and most malignant
personal attacks. Men's mouths were open to discuss his claims and
character with perfect freedom; so far from regarding him with that
excessive fear which might have prevented them from receiving his
doctrine intelligently, they learnt gradually to treat him, even
while they acknowledged his extraordinary power, with a reckless
animosity which they would have been afraid to show towards an
ordinary enemy. With curious inconsistency they openly charged him
with being leagued with the devil; in other words, they acknowledged
that he was capable of boundless mischief, and yet they were so
little afraid of him that they were ready to provoke him to use his
whole power against themselves. The truth was that they believed
him to be disarmed by his own deliberate resolution, and they
judged rightly. He punished their malice only by verbal reproofs,
and they gradually gathered courage to attack the life of one whose
miraculous powers they did not question.

Meantime, while this magnanimous self-restraint saved him from
false friends and mercenary or servile flatterers, and saved the
kingdom which he founded from the corruption of self-interest and
worldliness, it gave him a power over the good such as nothing
else could have given. For the noblest and most amiable thing that
can be seen is power mixed with gentleness, the reposing,
self-restraining attitude of strength. These are the "fine strains
of honour," these are "the graces of the gods"--

To tear with thunder the wide cheeks o' the air.
And yet to charge the sulphur with a bolt
That shall but rive an oak.

And while he did no mischief under any provocation, his power
flowed in acts of beneficence on every side. Men could approach
near to him, could eat and drink with him, could listen to his
talk and ask him questions, and they found him not accessible
only, but warmhearted, and not occupied so much with his own plans
that he could not attend to a case of distress or mental
perplexity. They found him full of sympathy and appreciation,
dropping words of praise, ejaculations of admiration, tears. He
surrounded himself with those who had tasted of his bounty, sick
people whom he had cured, lepers whose death-in-life, demoniacs
whose hell-in-life, he had terminated with a single powerful word.
Among these came loving hearts who thanked him for friends and
relatives rescued for them out of the jaws of premature death, and
others whom he had saved, by a power which did not seem different,
from vice and degradation.

This temperance in the use of supernatural power is the
masterpiece of Christ. It is a moral miracle superinduced upon a
physical one. This repose in greatness makes him surely the most
sublime image ever offered to the human imagination. And it is
precisely this trait which gave him his immense and immediate
ascendency over men. If the question be put--Why was Christ so
successful?--Why did men gather round him at his call, form
themselves into a new society according to his wish, and accept
him with unbounded devotion as their legislator and judge? some
will answer, Because of the miracles which attested his divine
character; others, Because of the intrinsic beauty and divinity of
the great law of love which he propounded. But miracles, as we
have seen, have not by themselves this persuasive power. That a
man possesses a strange power which I cannot understand is no
reason why I should receive his words as divine oracles of truth.
The powerful man is not of necessity also wise; his power may
terrify and yet not convince. On the other hand, the law of love,
however divine, was but a precept. Undoubtedly it deserved that
men should accept it for its intrinsic worth, but men are not
commonly so eager to receive the words of wise men nor so
unbounded in their gratitude to them. It was neither for his
miracles nor for the beauty of his doctrine that Christ was
worshipped. Nor was it for his winning personal character, nor for
the persecutions he endured, nor for his martyrdom. It was for the
inimitable unity which all these things made when taken together.
In other words, it was for this that he whose power and greatness
as shown in his miracles were overwhelming denied himself the use
of his power, treated it as a slight thing, walked among men as
though he were one of them, relieved them in distress, taught them
to love each other, bore with undisturbed patience a perpetual
hailstorm of calumny; and when his enemies grew fiercer, continued
still to endure their attacks in silence, until, petrified and
bewildered with astonishment, men saw him arrested and put to
death with torture, refusing steadfastly to use in his own behalf
the power he conceived he held for the benefit of others. It was
the combination of greatness and self-sacrifice which won their
hearts, the mighty powers held under a mighty control, the
unspeakable condescension, the _Cross_ of _Christ_.

And he goes on to describe the effect upon the world; and what it was that "drew all men unto Him":--

To sum up the results of this chapter. We began by remarking that
an astonishing plan met with an astonishing success, and we raised
the question to what instrumentality that success was due. Christ
announced himself as the Founder and Legislator of a new Society,
and as the Supreme Judge of men. Now by what means did he procure
that these immense pretensions should be allowed? He might have
done it by sheer power, he might have adopted persuasion, and
pointed out the merits of the scheme and of the legislation he
proposed to introduce. But he adopted a third plan, which had the
effect not merely of securing obedience, but of exciting
enthusiasm and devotion. He laid men under an immense
_obligation_. He convinced them that he was a person of altogether
transcendent greatness, one who needed nothing at their hands, one
whom it was impossible to benefit by conferring riches, or fame,
or dominion upon him, and that, being so great, he had devoted
himself of mere benevolence to their good. He showed them that for
their sakes he lived a hard and laborious life, and exposed
himself to the utmost malice of powerful men. They saw him hungry,
though they believed him able to turn the stones into bread; they
saw his royal pretensions spurned, though they believed that he
could in a moment take into his hand all the kingdoms of the world
and the glory of them; they saw his life in danger; they saw him
at last expire in agonies, though they believed that, had he so
willed it, no danger could harm him, and that had he thrown
himself from the topmost pinnacle of the temple he would have been
softly received in the arms of ministering angels. Witnessing his
sufferings, and convinced by the miracles they saw him work that
they were voluntarily endured, men's hearts were touched, and pity
for weakness blending strangely with wondering admiration of
unlimited power, an agitation of gratitude, sympathy, and
astonishment, such as nothing else could ever excite, sprang up in
them; and when, turning from his deeds to his words, they found
this very self-denial which had guided his own life prescribed as
the principle which should guide theirs, gratitude broke forth in
joyful obedience, self-denial produced self-denial, and the Law
and Lawgiver together were enshrined in their inmost hearts for
inseparable veneration.

It is plain that whatever there is novel in such a line of argument must depend upon the way in which it is handled; and it is the extraordinary and sustained power with which this is done which gives its character to the book. The writer's method consists in realising with a depth of feeling and thought which it would not be easy to match, what our Lord was in His human ministry, as that ministry is set before us by those who witnessed it; and next, in showing in detail the connection of that ministry, which wrought so much by teaching, but still more by the Divine example, "not sparing words but resting most on deeds," with all that is highest, purest, and best in the morality of Christendom, and with what is most fruitful and most hopeful in the differences between the old world and our own. We cannot think we are wrong when we say that no one could speak of our Lord as this writer speaks, with the enthusiasm, the overwhelming sense of His inexpressible authority, of His unapproachable perfection, with the profound faith which lays everything at His feet, and not also believe all that the Divine Society which Christ founded has believed about Him. And though for the present his subject is history, and human morality as it appears to have been revolutionised and finally fixed by that history, and not the theology which subsequent in date is yet the foundation of both, it is difficult to imagine any reader going along with him and not breaking out at length into the burst, "My Lord and my God." If it is not so, then the phenomenon is strange indeed; for a belief below the highest and truest has produced an appreciation, a reverence, an adoration which the highest belief has only produced in the choicest examples of those who have had it, and by the side of which the ordinary exhibitions of the divine history are pale and feeble. To few, indeed, as it seems to us, has it been given to feel, and to make others feel, what in all the marvellous complexity of high and low, and in all the Divine singleness of His goodness and power, the Son of Man appeared in the days of His flesh. It is not more vivid or more wonderful than what the Gospels with so much detail tell us of that awful ministry in real flesh and blood, with a human soul and with all the reality of man's nature; but most of us, after all, read the Gospels with sealed and unwondering eyes. But, dwelling on the Manhood, so as almost to overpower us with the contrast between the distinct and living truth and the dead and dull familiarity of our thoughts of routine and custom, he does so in such a way that it is impossible to doubt, though the word Incarnation never occurs in the volume, that all the while he has before his thoughts the "taking of the manhood into God." What is the Gospel picture?

And let us pause once more to consider that which remains
throughout a subject of ever-recurring astonishment, the unbounded
personal pretensions which Christ advances. It is common in human
history to meet with those who claim some superiority over their
fellows. Men assert a pre-eminence over their fellow-citizens or
fellow-countrymen and become rulers of those who at first were
their equals, but they dream of nothing greater than some partial
control over the actions of others for the short space of a
lifetime. Few indeed are those to whom it is given to influence
future ages. Yet some men have appeared who have been "as levers
to uplift the earth and roll it in another course." Homer by
creating literature, Socrates by creating science, Caesar by
carrying civilisation inland from the shores of the Mediterranean,
Newton by starting science upon a career of steady progress, may
be said to have attained this eminence. But these men gave a
single impact like that which is conceived to have first set the
planets in motion; Christ claims to be a perpetual attractive
power like the sun which determines their orbit. They contributed
to men some discovery and passed away; Christ's discovery is
himself. To humanity struggling with its passions and its destiny
he says, Cling to me, cling ever closer to me. If we believe St.
John, he represented himself as the Light of the world, as the
Shepherd of the souls of men, as the Way to immortality, as the
Vine or Life-tree of humanity. And if we refuse to believe that he
used those words, we cannot deny, without rejecting all the
evidence before us, that he used words which have substantially
the same meaning. We cannot deny that he commanded men to leave
everything and attach themselves to him; that he declared himself
king, master, and judge of men; that he promised to give rest to
all the weary and heavy-laden; that he instructed his followers to
hope for life from feeding on his body and blood.

But it is doubly surprising to observe that these enormous
pretensions were advanced by one whose special peculiarity, not
only among his contemporaries but among the remarkable men that
have appeared before and since, was an almost feminine tenderness
and humility. This characteristic was remarked, as we have seen,
by the Baptist, and Christ himself was fully conscious of it. Yet
so clear to him was his own dignity and infinite importance to the
human race as an objective fact with which his own opinion of
himself had nothing to do, that in the same breath in which he
asserts it in the most unmeasured language, he alludes, apparently
with entire unconsciousness, to his _humility_. "Take my yoke upon
you, and learn of me; _for I am meek and lowly of heart_." And
again, when speaking to his followers of the arrogance of the
Pharisees, he says, "They love to be called Rabbi; but be not you
called Rabbi: _for one is your master, even Christ_."

Who is the humble man? It is he who resists with special
watchfulness and success the temptations which the conditions of
his life may offer to exaggerate his own importance.... If he
judged himself correctly, and if the Baptist described him well
when he compared him to a lamb, and, we may add, if his
biographers have delineated his character faithfully, Christ was
one naturally contented with obscurity, wanting the restless
desire for distinction and eminence which is common in great men,
hating to put forward personal claims, disliking competition and
"disputes who should be greatest," finding something bombastic in
the titles of royalty, fond of what is simple and homely, of
children, of poor people, occupying himself so much with the
concerns of others, with the relief of sickness and want, that the
temptation to exaggerate the importance of his own thoughts and
plans was not likely to master him; lastly, entertaining for the
human race a feeling so singularly fraternal that he was likely to
reject as a sort of treason the impulse to set himself in any
manner above them. Christ, it appears, was this humble man. When
we have fully pondered the fact we may be in a condition to
estimate the force of the evidence which, submitted to his mind,
could induce him, in direct opposition to all his tastes and
instincts, to lay claim, persistently, with the calmness of entire
conviction, in opposition to the whole religious world, in spite
of the offence which his own followers conceived, to a dominion
more transcendent, more universal, more complete, than the most
delirious votary of glory ever aspired to in his dreams.

And what is it that our Lord has done for man by being so truly man?

This then it is which is wanted to raise the feeling of humanity
into an enthusiasm; when the precept of love has been given, an
image must be set before the eyes of those who are called upon to
obey it, an ideal or type of man which may be noble and amiable
enough to raise the whole race and make the meanest member of it
sacred with reflected glory.

Did not Christ do this? Did the command to love go forth to those
who had never seen a human being they could revere? Could his
followers turn upon him and say, How can we love a creature so
degraded, full of vile wants and contemptible passions, whose
little life is most harmlessly spent when it is an empty round of
eating and sleeping; a creature destined for the grave and for
oblivion when his allotted term of fretfulness and folly has
expired? Of this race Christ himself was a member, and to this day
is it not the best answer to all blasphemers of the species, the
best consolation when our sense of its degradation is keenest,
that a human brain was behind his forehead, and a human heart
beating in his breast, and that within the whole creation of God
nothing more elevated or more attractive has yet been found than
he? And if it be answered that there was in his nature something
exceptional and peculiar, that humanity must not be measured by
the stature of Christ, let us remember that it was precisely thus
that he wished it to be measured, delighting to call himself the
Son of Man, delighting to call the meanest of mankind his
brothers. If some human beings are abject and contemptible, if it
be incredible to us that they can have any high dignity or
destiny, do we regard them from so great a height as Christ? Are
we likely to be more pained by their faults and deficiencies than
he was? Is our standard higher than his? And yet he associated by
preference with the meanest of the race; no contempt for them did
he ever express, no suspicion that they might be less dear than
the best and wisest to the common Father, no doubt that they were
naturally capable of rising to a moral elevation like his own.
There is nothing of which a man may be prouder than of this; it is
the most hopeful and redeeming fact in history; it is precisely
what was wanting to raise the love of man as man to enthusiasm. An
eternal glory has been shed upon the human race by the love Christ
bore to it And it was because the Edict of Universal Love went
forth to men whose hearts were in no cynical mood, but possessed
with a spirit of devotion to a man, that words which at any other
time, however grandly they might sound, would have been but words,
penetrated so deeply, and along with the law of love the power of
love was given. Therefore also the first Christians were enabled
to dispense with philosophical phrases, and instead of saying that
they loved the ideal of man in man, could simply say and feel that
they loved Christ in every man.

We have here the very kernel of the Christian moral scheme. We
have distinctly before us the end Christ proposed to himself, and
the means he considered adequate to the attainment of it....