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THE

CHRISTIAN EXAMINER.

MARCH, 1867.

ART. I.—CHRISTIANITY AND PSEUDO-CHRISTIANITY.

In his volume entitled "Reason in Religion," Dr. Hedge opens his discussion of the position of Christ in the Christian Church with the following significant passage:

"In the various attempts which, during the last half-century, have been made to construe the veritable image of Jesus from the illdigested and often conflicting accounts of the four evangelists, no result is so conspicuous as the impossibility of any valid and final solution of that problem. The historical and legendary are so confused in these narratives, the genuine sayings of Jesus are often so undistinguishably blended with the comments and interpolations of his reporters, that criticism, incompetent to the work of elimination, can do no more than furnish an approximate and conjectural reconstruction. . . . It comes to this at last, that every reader must construct his own Christ from the fourfold record, according to his own impression of the verisimilitudes of the case. And, on the whole, the impression derived immediately from the record by a thoughtful reader, with no theory to support and no case to make out, is quite as likely to be correct as any obtained through a foreign medium.

"Were it possible to reproduce, with exactitude beyond dispute, the portrait of the true historical Jesus, the image, I suppose, would be found to differ widely from the Christ of the Church, or the Christ received by the great majority of Christians."- Reason in Religion, pp. 227, 228.

VOL. LXXXII. -NEW SERIES, VOL. III. NO. II.

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The interpretation of Christ and Christianity, which we are about to present, became matter of distinct and earnest conviction with us before we had been permitted to see any of the results of modern criticism, and when, as yet, our study of facts had not gone beyond the pages of the New Testament. The original traditional aspect of the matter with us had inspired us with implicit faith in Jesus as the ATONING GOD AND SAVIOUR of a sinful world. This faith was not at first disturbed by any direct results of study or of thought. Criticism had not yet touched for us the "fourfold record." Inquiry had not disturbed, in the least particular, our evangelical interpretation of that record. With the single exception of a consciousness of God, newly re-awakened and enlarged, every thing in us and around us conspired to persuade us of the truth of Orthodoxy.

We did not fall into unbelief at all. Our denials were not born of scepticism; and yet we did entirely throw off the yoke of tradition. Our attitude towards the Christian Church was completely changed.

This change, however, was no change of the inward life, save as growth is change. The supreme principle of our Christian faith, direct faith in God, was carried up to a degree which left far behind the subordinate parts of our faith. An indestructible conviction, that for all things God will provide, became our supreme rule of faith, replacing as such the old rule of Christ's words and of the Biblical catechism. It was a great overturning as to the outward setting forth of truth, and as to our outward relation to the Christian Church; but, as to the inward life of faith and the soul's relation to God, it was no more than a natural unfolding of pure belief. Belief in God, so much enlarged as to exclude every form of partial faith, was the law of faith under which we entered upon, and earnestly prosecuted, a diligent examination of the true significance, under God, of Christ and Christianity. This was our bias, our prepossession, our guiding principle. thoughtful reader, with no theory to support and no to make out," says Dr. Hedge, is most likely to obtain a correct impression of what Christ in truth was. Does he mean

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just this? Is not a supreme prepossession of faith in God the best possible preparation for the study of God's word and work in Christ and Christianity?

From the first, we fixed our thought on the trial in the gar den, as affording a key to the life and character of Jesus. It seemed to us necessary to penetrate the human experience of that thrice-repeated prayer, that "my will" need not be set aside by "thy will," and to divine the full significance of the fact that it was finally set aside. How was it that there was such agonizing effort at giving up this "my will"? and what was it which "my will" contemplated? Answer these questions, and it will be possible to have a well-grounded general opinion in regard to the life and character of the Christ of history, and from that to proceed to a distinct view of historical Christianity. If Jesus cherished a purpose which was not sanctioned in the will of God, and came in consequence into conflict with the purpose of his Lord and Master, we want to know what that purpose of Jesus was, and where it comes out in his life and teaching, and just how the subjection of this purpose to the will of God modifies for us the revelation of God in Christ and in historical Christianity. Our own conclusion-after ten years, during which we have distinctly contemplated and earnestly studied this question, while ast yet few Christian scholars have been moved to raise it-is, that the mind of Jesus was divided between God's thought revealed to him by the Spirit, and a thought of his own suggested in his outward life; and that in general, while pure Christianity, as God designed and designs it, should be built on the pure thought of God, accredited Christianity during these eighteen centuries has been built, as to its form and history in the world, on just that in the mind of Jesus which was not true to the will of God. To the argument of this conclusion, or rather to a brief outline of the argument, we now invite attention. It need not be said, that the support, in our view impregnable, afforded to our position by the best. results of modern criticism, cannot be shown in a short essay. We content ourselves with a mere sketch of the position itself, and to this invoke the Christian attention of our readers.

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It must have been a matter, not of the few years during which Jesus lived in the little world of Galilee and Judea, nor even of a few primitive generations of Christian disciples, but of an extended course of history, to introduce Christian revelation to the human mind. Even if we assume that Jesus was, in his own character and life, and in his individual conception of the divine word and will, a perfect master of grace and truth, how could he utter the revelation which possessed his soul, surrounded as he was by Jewish doubt of the spiritual, and Jewish hunger for the material, manifestation of the divine presence? A glance at the circumstances under which the young carpenter of Nazareth* became to his little circle of disciples the lord of a Messianic dominion, whereof the glory was soon to break upon the world, more than suffices to make evident, that Jesus, if he truly had a perfect thought of the kingdom of God in the soul of man, was not suffered to possess that thought in peace.

It is very instructive to see the lineaments of common humanity in the pictures of Jesus most recently drawn by eminent representatives of the advance of evangelical Orthodoxy. Through the veil of glory which Dr. Bushnell intends for the head of "very God" appear these lines of a human face: "He is simply the child of two very humble people, in a very mean provincial town."— "He goes into his work, therefore, as a merely common man, a Nazarene carpenter, respected for nothing, save as he compels respect by his works and his words.""It does not appear that Christ grew at all on the public sentiment by means of his discourses. He only mystified a little the public feeling, and made himself a character about as much more suspicious and dangerous.". "His death takes away all confidence; . . . the poor disciples are obliged to confess to themselves, if not to others, that their much-loved Messiah is now stamped as another exploded pretender; . . . now that he is dead, every expectation is blasted. Even their profound respect, unwilling as they are to shake it off, and tenderly as they would cling to it still, is yet a really blasted confidence, now that he is dead under such ignominy."-The Vicarious Sacrifice, part ii. chap. iv.

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Dr. Döllinger, “the great Catholic divine of the Continent," has, in a recent sketch of the ministry of Jesus, the following: "This young man, Jesus, was the son of a poor woman who lived in the little Galilean town of Nazareth. . . . He had lived, as the carpenter' at Nazareth, quiet and unobserved. . . . His immediate neighborhood had perceived nothing remarkable in him; so far from it, that, when he afterwards began to teach in public, his relations thought him mad, and wished to lay hands on his person.”—The First Age of the Church, vol. i. chap. 1.

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