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Renan Vie de Jésus.

Renan. No one of two.

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Either a being who calmly claims the honour that is his due, because he is indeed the eternal Son of the Father; or one whose words are inexcusable blasphemy. That alternative the Jews saw clearly, and decided it more than once against Jesus. That alternative apostles accepted, and preached Jesus the Son of God. One of the apostles in particular had been a persecutor of Christians; had not shared the lot of Jesus when on earth, so that the personal character of the Master could be supposed to have biassed his judgment to believe an untruth. Paul, with his strong mind, with his Jewish education, which had made him jealous for the one true God, fell at the feet of Jesus, and confessed him the Son of God; and for years of trouble preached him and his resurrection. Every congregation must have seen the same alternative, when belief in Jesus and the resurrection was put before them. Yet God blessed this preaching with abundant success. M. Renan, hardened against all physical miracles, accepts the marvel that the great tree of the Gospel, which overshadowed as it grew nation after nation, had its root in delusion, was preached by a false Messiah, and supported with false wonders. Great is the credulity of unbelief!

These are the difficulties. The poor untaught carpenter, with no preternatural help, gathered into himself by some process of education to which we know no parallel, such knowledge as enabled him to teach; and he taught no lesson but---himself. He found thirteen other men to preach the same thing. And these thirteen found a world to believe it; and God blessed it. Joy and peace, and the conviction of reconcilement with God, were shed abroad in many hearts thereafter. And yet, we are told, this teaching was fundamentally wrong, was the first stage in the aberration of a "delightful rabbi," who ought to have preached morality, and did indeed begin so to preach, but fell away to preaching his own personal claims, from a mistaken fancy that he was the Messiah of Jewish expectation. When we look at the character of Jesus, the difficulties are even increased. Since the Gospel, as preached by Jesus and his apostles, is an account of the great doings of Christ for the reconciliation of men with God, all is risked upon the character of the Redeemer. Every eye is directed towards him. The slightest shade upon his conduct or his wisdom is fatal to the whole scheme of doctrine, because the man and the doctrine are one. It is not so with the mere thinker. The controversies about the public conduct of Bacon have no effect on an estimate of his Advancement of Learning. Milton's opinions about divorce. may lower him in our eyes, but they do not affect a line of Paradise Lost. But one who comes as Lawgiver and Deliverer

from sin, must stand or fall with his character for purity and holiness. Now, from the first there has gone along with the preaching of the Gospel of Jesus an assertion of his sinlessness; and there is no other character in history of whom this can be said. Our Lord himself does not strongly assert this dogma, and this is in accordance with the humility of his whole character; but he does what is better; he presents the pattern and picture of a sinless man in his own life, and all who saw him drew the same inference from it. But his silence upon this point is full of meaning. He so truly humble, so sensible of the evil of sin, so keenly anxious to deliver his people from it, never once accuses himself, or expresses the need of a deliverer for himself. The question, "Which of you convinceth me of sin?" is not decisive evidence of sinlessness in itself; it might have been put by one who was guilty before God, yet who felt that men could not accuse him. But coming where it does, amongst strong assertions of holiness in particular points and of authority, the very asking of such a question is a significant fact. "If God were your Father, ye would love me. He that is of God heareth God's words" (ie., the words of Christ). "I honour my Father.

My Father honoureth me. . . . I seek not my own glory. Before Abraham was, I am;" these are all parts of the same conversation. Then, if ever, was the time to admit any limitations, if there were any, to his power and holiness. Prophets did not scruple to admit that they were men of unclean lips, unworthy of the weight of that authority they were sent to bear. Jesus makes no such admission; he challenges comment upon any contradiction that could be alleged between his claims and his character; and such a question at such an opportunity seems to imply a strong assertion. But he showed himself sinless; and apostles, drawing their influence from his life, made for him the singular claim which had not been made for or by even the prophets, that he was absolutely free from sin. In him, they said, was no sin; he knew no sin; he did no sin;-of all claims the most hazardous, of all challenges the most easy to meet. For it was put forward in the course of a strong endeavour to make every act and word of Jesus known; the apostles, as we have seen, preached him and his miracles and discourses, before all things. For us that criticise from a greater distance, four Gospels, offering many points of comparison and of discussion, are filled with the life of the Lord. What is the honest impression on our minds? M. Renan admits that his mind was of the highest moral temper, even though he expressly denies his sinlessness:

"The human race offers an assemblage of low beings, selfish, and 1 1 John iii. 5; 1 Pet. ii. 22; 2 Cor. v. 21.

Renan--Vie de Jésus.

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superior to the animals only in that its selfishness is more reflective. From the midst of this vulgar uniformity, there are columns that rise towards the sky, and bear witness to a nobler destiny. Jesus is the highest of these columns, which show to man whence he comes and whither he ought to tend. In him was condensed all that is good and elevated in our nature. He was not sinless; he has conquered the same passions that we combat; no angel of God comforted him, except his good conscience; no Satan tempted him, except that which each one bears in his heart. In the same way that many of his great qualities are lost to us, through the fault of his disciples, it is also probable that many of his faults have been concealed. But never has any one so much as he made the interests of humanity predominate in his life over the littlenesses of self-love. Unreservedly devoted to his mission (idée), he subordinated everything to it to such a degree that, towards the end of his life, the universe no longer existed to him. It was by this access of heroic will that he conquered heaven. There never was a man, Çakya-Mouni perhaps excepted, who has to this degree trampled under foot the claims of family, the joys of this world, and all temporal care. Jesus only lived for his Father, and the divine mission which he believed himself destined to fulfil.

"As to us, children evermore, condemned to feebleness, we who labour without reaping, and who will never see the fruit of that which we have sown, let us bow before these demi-gods. They knew that which we do not: how to create, to affirm, to act. Will great originality be born again, or will the world content itself henceforth by following the ways opened by the bold creators of the ancient ages? We know not. But whatever may be the unexpected phenomena of the future, Jesus will not be surpassed. His worship will constantly renew its youth, the tale of his life will cause ceaseless tears, his sufferings will soften the best hearts; all the ages will proclaim that, among the sons of men, there is none born greater than Jesus."

From one who rejects so much, this is high testimony. We assert that the records of the life of the Lord, taken together, make upon us the impression of a perfect human character; that they effect this, not by obtrusive assertions that he is sinless, not by forcing into prominence this or that virtue; not by descanting upon facts, and pointing out therein the elements of holiness; but by a simple unadorned record of the facts themselves. We assert that these facts, taken together, present a character such as has never had its equal for harmony and completeness. It is not that of a thinker who to round off a system or a book renounces practical life, and forgets the claims of today and of his own smaller circle in favour of posterity and of the whole race. It is not that of a busy philanthropist cheated out of thought and meditation by the daily claims of practical duty. It is the unique combination of a lofty intelligence, utterly untinged by the colours of the unfavourable atmosphere

in which it moved, joined to a lowly and most sympathetic heart, to which no tale of present trouble ever was addressed in vain. It is the combination of the highest self-reliance with the most patient humility; a self-reliance which took up the task of reforming all the world, without seeking to propitiate the political powers, without the aid of armed force, without the resources of science, a humility which withdrew itself from outward praise and honour, which never chafed under poverty, or contempt, or even, under the worst indignities. Scattered through that mixed society lay all the materials of political conflagration; fanatics brooding over the desperate prospects of an ancient nationality; a Roman yoke which the nation hated in the name of God; bands of zealots ready to gather sword in hand on every mountain side, in every desert retreat, upon the call of some self-elected leader; and, behold, here is a young and ardent mind, accepted as a worker of miracles, acceptable as King of the Jews, if so he will have it; here he stands with the torch ready to his hand, and a touch will kindle the loose flax and straw into a flame. And the tempter comes to him with scowl of a double treason on his face, and, faithless to Cæsar and Messiah both, asks if it is lawful to pay Cæsar tribute; there is an infinite self-reliance and selfdenial in the calm reply: "Render unto Cæsar the things that be Cæsar's, and unto God the things that be God's." Again the combination is not less singular, of claims unspeakably high, joined to the most perfect self-abnegation. Ever there spoke in his mind the consciousness that the powers of nature, that sin itself, that the powers of hell, were subject to him, and yet his life was one continued act of self-sacrifice, of self-abasement. The King of kings walking about Galilee as the servant of servants, with a court around him of fishers from the Sea of Tiberias, often with the starry vault of a Galilean sky for a palace, common to him and the leper and the beggar. This is what a reader of the Gospels finds. M. Renan thinks we shall never see the like, and we are glad to agree with him. It is this balance of qualities which is the true evidence of the Lord's perfection. History records for us many strong characters, many sweet ones. human heroes pay the price of their good qualities in the shape of a certain one-sidedness. Great independence and self-reliance have been shown by many a reformer. But opposition hardens these qualities into something like ferocity. Many a Christian has so well learned his Master's lesson as to give himself wholly to works of love, and to resign all worldly pleasures in this behalf. But to blend the reformer's public mission with the private labours of charity, and to do this without the slight

But

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est trace of self-consciousness, was reserved for one alone. We might re-write the pages of Ullmann, Dorner, and De Pressensé1 without exhausting this subject. But we commend it to the reflections of any honest reader of the Bible. It is the picture of a perfect man, of one adorned with the highest virtues, yet rich in sympathy for every human creature, for every incident of human life. And the sacred writers do not present any evidence of plan and contrivance, they do not even assert that they are describing the perfect. They overstrain nothing. They leave all the facts to our own interpretation; and a very few of them, as the "What have I to do with thee?" addressed to Mary at Cana, have been explained wrongly. The world has since confessed that the Gospels do describe a faultless moral character. M. Renan speaks of him as a "demi-god." The centurion who saw the close of his life said, "Truly this was the Son of God." We hold with the centurion. Jesus Christ himself is the great miracle of the gospel.

One argument that has been glanced at would require explanation. The claims of Jesus and his apostles are not a question of more or less. They are either true, or false beyond all pardon. Jesus was either a deliverer of men, a revealer of the Father, a worker of wonders in the power of God, a pure and spotless spirit free from the universal taint of human nature; or else. We will not fill up the sentence with those terms that seem to belong to one that had usurped the awful prerogative of God. Now, no one questions that the Gospel has been a successful system, whether as to the extent of its conquests, the civilisation that has gone along with it, the literature that it has amassed, the power over human character to soften, raise, elevate, and control, which it has exerted all along. In point of results no system can compete with it. Now, are we to ascribe these results to the truth or to the falsehood of the message that has produced them? Do not glance over kingdoms and count the millions that delight to call themselves by Christ's name. But think only upon one single soul reclaimed from vice, re-fashioned for God in the image of Christ, ruled as from afar by the will of Christ, as the trained horse obeys the touch of a finger upon a rein; is this real work (how real any pastor knows) to be traced to the fact that one falsely called himself the Sent of God, put forth false claims to miraculous power, made fantastic promises of intercession with the Father, and was held up as sinless only by a fond delusion of his fol

1 Ullmann, Sündlosigkeit Jesu; Gotha, 1863. Dorner, on the same subject, in Jährbücher für Deutsche Theologie, vol. vii. E. De Pressensé, Rédempteur. Second Edit. Let us mention here an excellent work on the whole subject: Dr. Young's Christ of History.

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