VOL. XXVI., No. 154.—JANUARY, 1878.
BETWEEN THE YEARS.
1877–1878.
Rogate, quæ ad pacem sunt, Jerusalem: et abundantia diligentibus te.—Ps. cxxi.
I.
Old with its sorrow, weary with the load
Of angry strife and murderous thought of wrong
It hath with such sad patience borne so long,
The year draws near the judgment-seat of God.
Signed at its birth with Heaven’s holiest name,
Blessed with the chrism of self-sacrifice,
It brought men gifts of more than royal price;
Asked in return a pure and generous fame;
Life’s book it opened at a clean white page—
Whereon fell not the shadow of a stain—
Set in man’s hand a consecrated pen
Whose script should be the future’s heritage.
Lo! we have written; shall we dare to see
The closed book opened in eternity?
II.
Jesu, Redemptor! at thy feet we kneel,
Who burn the tapers round the dying year;
Rest we beseech for him that lieth here,
And on the blotted page thy mercy’s seal.
Through this dark night we wait with hope the day,
Ready the handmaid of thy grace to greet
Who hear the rhythm of her strong, young feet—
The fair New Year, advancing swift this way.
Jesus, most patient, does thy morning break?
Shall she we wait for, with thy Spirit’s breath
Stir to new life a world that slumbereth?
Shall last year’s thorns to fleecy blossom wake?
Cometh thy kingdom? Shall thy will be done,
And Calvary’s shade be lost in Thabor’s sun?
III.
To thee we look, O Jesus, our true light!
With eyes, tear-dimmed, that, straining, gaze along
The future’s ways the past o’ershades with wrong;
That dread the glitter of this earthly night,
Where every star is rivet of a cross.
Still in the light of Child-blessed Bethlehem
We feel the portent of Jerusalem,
We hear the echoes of sad Rama’s loss.
In thee we trust, and in her, crucified,
Our holy mother Rome, thy spouse divine,
In whose dear face eternal light doth shine,
In whose maimed hands thy perfect gifts abide.
In thee we rest, who know the future thine;
Shape thou our deeds unto thy will divine.
Copyright: Rev. I. T. Hecker. 1878.
CHRISTIANITY AS AN HISTORICAL RELIGION.[[90]]
The doctrine of natural development or evolution may be apprehended and presented in theoretical form under two diverse phases or aspects. One of these resembles the old scholastic theory of the eduction of forms from the potentiality of matter. The indeterminate something which is almost nothing takes on all kinds of specific determinations, which chase away and supplant one another, each one vanishing into nothingness like a melody when the harp-strings cease to vibrate. The animal soul, the highest of these determining principles, is only one of the evanescent forms, depending for existence on the body it animates, becoming extinct, like a sound or the trace of a bird in the air, as soon as death takes place. So, in the theory of pure natural evolution, history, polity, ethics, theology, science, educe themselves from the potential, determinable substratum of humanity, without efficient or final causes, in evanescent forms; and their animating spirit is no more than an anima belluina.
The other theory may be likewise illustrated from the same philosophy, comparing it with the doctrine of the rational soul, immediately created, self-subsisting, entering into composition with body but not immersed in it; like a swimmer in water, with head and shoulders above the surface; animating matter, but dominating over it and subordinating it to serve by its development and life the higher end of the spirit, which reaches beyond the temporal and sensible toward infinity and eternity. Thus all human development—though it is nature which is developed, though natural processes subserve its evolution, and its history is the history of human events, acts, thoughts, polities, religions—is informed and dominated by a superhuman, a divine spirit, power, action, for a supra-mundane end.
The true philosophy of history is constructed on this theory—meaning by theory what Aristotle and the Greeks meant, not a visionary conjecture, but an intellectual speculation by which the mind has true vision of intelligible realities, as it has of sensible objects by ocular vision. This true philosophy of history is partly identified with theology, or the science of God and all that which is divine; not only in so far as theology is the highest part of rational philosophy, but also inasmuch as it transcends reason. The knowledge of God and that which is divine transcending natural intelligence and reason, is the revelation of God in and through the Word, who “enlighteneth every man coming into this world,” and consequently casts light on everything pertaining to humanity. The creation, destination, fall, redemption and glorification of humanity in and through the Word, “who was made flesh and dwelt among us,” is the object of Christian theology, to which the immediate object of history is subordinate. The Incarnate Son of God is the central figure in human history, its circumference is drawn around this centre, and all its diameters pass through it.
A number of great historians have perceived this truth, and made universal history render up its testimony, which is sometimes latent and sometimes patent, to Christ and to his divine work of human regeneration. Leo, for instance, having first convinced himself of the truth of divine revelation by the study of history, made his entire work on the universal history of mankind a splendid and irrefutable demonstration of Christianity. The course of time and events before Christ is a preparation for his coming. The one great event in human history is the divine Epiphany, the visible manifestation of God in the Person of the Word through his assumed human nature, in which he was conceived and born of the Virgin, lived among men, died, and rose again to an immortal and glorious life, for the fulfilment of the divine purpose in creation and the consummation of the destiny of mankind. The course of time and events after Christ is the successive fulfilment of this divine purpose, to be completed in the final consummation at the end of the present order of the world.
In the six centuries immediately preceding Christ the preparation and convergence of events become more distinct and manifest; the features of human evolution are more marked; the progress and tendency of the universal movement are apparently accelerated in the direction of the common point of convergence; all human affairs, the objects of history, seem to rise out of its dim horizon, looming up in increasing magnitude, like the great ships of a squadron hastening from all points of the compass over a broad sea to their rendezvous. Before this period the expanse of time is to our eye almost like the waste solitudes of ocean. Confucius collected some remnants of Chinese historical documents going back to the ninth century b.c. Some imperfect records of Hindoo antiquity have been brought to light in modern researches. Hieroglyphic and cuneiform inscriptions, like traces of a caravan on the sand, present to the curious modern eye vestiges of a remote past. Berosus wrote in the reign of Seleucus Nicator, Manetho in that of Ptolemy Philadelphus, Herodotus four centuries and a half before Christ. Varro, the most learned of the Romans, dates the beginning of authentic Roman history from the first Olympiad, B.C. 776. Authentic written history does not go back as far as Solomon, except as we find it in the sacred writings of the Old Testament. These priceless documents are the family records of the house of Nazareth, the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the history of his predecessors and precursors; of inchoate Christianity, of the prophecy and providence, the promises and laws, the typical rites and preliminary covenants, the elementary revelations and the other preludes, by which, in divers places, times, and manners, the Word of God prepared the way for his coming upon earth to fulfil all prophecy and accomplish the expectation of all nations.
About five centuries and a half before Christ the prophet Daniel made his celebrated prediction of the great period of seventy weeks—i.e., four hundred and ninety years—from the rebuilding of the temple and city of Jerusalem to the Messias. This period is marked as the one of immediate expectation and preparation. As the time of the great Prophet drew near the succession of the minor prophets in Judea ceased. The Jewish people became less exclusively isolated, and came into relations with other nations which were quite new and marked with a transitional tendency. The Greek Scriptures of the second canon, like the writings of St. Paul in the New Testament, are more like the classic works of other nations than those of the first canon, which are marked with the peculiar Hebrew characteristics. A diffusion of the Jews, of their books and ideas; a general dissemination of the Greek language and literature, a world-wide unification of civilized, and in part of barbarous peoples under the Roman polity; a remarkable advancement of the human mind in the great works of philosophy, poetry, literature, art, and every species of civilization; are the principal second and concurrent causes directed by divine Providence to fulfil a purpose, analogous to the mission of St. John the Baptist, among the nations predestined to a Christian vocation.
There is nothing in this view which favors rationalism. Grace supposes nature, and God is the author of both. Natural and supernatural providence are distinct but not separate. Rational science and revealed doctrine are portions of the universal truth which has its measure in the divine intelligence and its primal origin in the divine essence. It is, moreover, characteristic of the divine operation to act on the rule of parsimony in the use of means. Where second causes are sufficient the first cause does not immediately intervene and supersede their action; where natural forces are sufficient they are not supplanted by those which are supernatural. What a long period elapsed before the earliest of the inspired books was written! How few have been the prophets, how comparatively few and rare miracles of the first order! In the beginning, religion, the church, the whole spiritual order, was identified with the common social and civil order. The special intervention of God in the calling of Abraham, the legation of Moses, the entire Jewish system, was a renovation of the more ancient and universal dispensation, confined within the limits of one nation, protected by special legislation, sanctioned by miracles, manifested in revelations through inspired men and prophets. As the time draws near when the church and religion were to become once more and finally Catholic, the supernatural providence of God over the Jewish people becomes less extraordinary, and his natural providence over the other nations more conspicuous. The great Prophet himself, the Messias, the Son of God in human form, performs miracles and appeals to them, as it were, with reserve and reluctance, hides his wisdom and power from men, refuses to exert his dominion over men and nature in defence of his own life, discloses himself after his resurrection to a few only, and departs, so to speak, incognito from the earth to return to his heavenly abode with the Father. The gift of inspiration, by virtue of which the written documents of revelation are completed, is imparted to a small number only; their writings fill but a small compass; within fifty years from the opening of the New Testament canon by the first Gospel it is closed by the last book of the last of the apostles, St. John. No new David, or Isaias, or Daniel, or Paul, or John is henceforth to appear in the church. All this shows the purpose of God not to oppress the human by the divine in the deification of humanity, not to supersede the natural by the supernatural, or to supplant the activity of the human intelligence and will by an overbearing divine power. The Spirit of God brooded over the face of chaos in the beginning, gradually bringing it into form and order, and the same Spirit has been waving his wings[[91]] over the waters of human history during the entire period of the explication of God’s creative act in time and space through human actions and events. Where creative power is required—i.e., where it is the will of God to give being to a term educed from non-existence and from no pre-existing subject—God acts alone and immediately as first cause with no concurrent cause. He has created and continues to create all simple substances. Where supernatural power is required to bring from created substances certain results which presuppose a new form of being in them above their intrinsic substantial actuality, or some other augmentation of their natural force by an immediate divine act, God intervenes directly as the efficient cause of the effect produced. He is the author of second causes and principles, of the first germs of evolution, of generative powers, of all origin, and of all that is called in the German language Urwesen. He preserves everything, concurs with everything, directs everything toward proximate, remote, and final ends, bringing the creation which proceeded from him as first cause back to himself as final cause. And therefore, whenever there is a sufficient reason, he intervenes directly to overrule the order of second causes and the natural laws he has himself established. The especial reason for this is to prevent the thwarting of the legitimate action of beings endowed with con-creative power, through the illegitimate interference of other beings endowed with the same power. All spiritual beings have this con-creative power by virtue of intelligence and free-will. They may fail to exercise it when they should; they may be hindered from exercising it by equal or superior force. The order of moral probation requires that great freedom of movement should be allowed to these forces in voluntary efforts and in conflicts. But the final cause of this probation also exacts that the predetermined plans of God shall be infallibly executed, and that he shall overrule the wills both of men and angels for the fulfilment of his own sovereign will.
The natural and the supernatural are, therefore, not separate, much less disconnected, least of all hostile, in the order of divine providence, although they are distinct and placed in logical opposition to one another. Sacred and secular history, religion and civilization, theology and science, the eternal and temporal interests of mankind, cannot be separated from each other and relegated to mutually distant or hostile kingdoms, like the kingdoms of light and darkness in the system of the Manicheans. Any view which considers mankind as separated into two divisions of the elect and the reprobate by an antecedent decree, is false. The doctrine that the nature of man has become totally depraved, and that his entire rational and physical activity develops only sin which tends fatally to perdition, is utterly unchristian as well as unphilosophical. It is only from this doctrine that we could deduce a theory by which the society of the elect would be considered as a separated, isolated tribe, a small invisible church, without any real relation through a spiritual bond with the mass of mankind. The Catholic doctrine is expressed by the author of the Book of Wisdom in these beautiful words: “God created all things that they might be: and he made the nations of the earth for health: and there is no poison of destruction in them, nor kingdom of hell upon the earth. For justice is perpetual and immortal.”[[92]]
The true philosophy of Christianity must, therefore, take into view the providence of God over the Gentiles, their history, philosophy, polity, and civilization, in order to appreciate the period of preparation for the Messias who was the expected of the nations. The philosophy of history, also, must take into view the whole cycle of special acts of divine providence recorded in the books of the Old Testament, and fulfilled between the epochs of the calling of Abraham and the appearance of the Messias in the history of the peculiar people of God. Mr. Formby, with his peculiar originality and vigor of thought, has brought out into more striking relief than any other author we know of the idea common to several excellent modern writers respecting the position of the two cities, Jerusalem and Rome, in the historical order of divine Providence. They are, as it were, the two great citadels of God, the two great capitals of the universal kingdom of Christ. During the thousand years immediately before the Incarnation the city of David, the seat of the royal ancestors of Jesus Christ our Lord, was the citadel of all the highest interests of humanity. All the hopes, the whole future destiny, of mankind were in David’s royal line, the sweet psalmist, the prophet, the king of Israel. For seven centuries God was preparing Rome, first the ally, then the arbiter, and finally the conqueror of Judea, to take the place of Jerusalem, and by its world-wide polity to serve as a medium for the promulgation and extension of the divine religion throughout the whole earth.
The true philosophy of history sets aside all theories which are exclusive on the one side or on the other—those which exclude the ordinary providence of God over all mankind under the natural law, and those which exclude his extraordinary providence over the church under the supernatural law—and includes both under one synthesis. The one exclusive view proceeds from an à priori theological principle resulting in a conclusion with which a logical induction from facts cannot be reconciled, and therefore denies or misrepresents the facts. The other proceeds from an à priori metaphysical principle with a similar result. The one is a pseudo-supernaturalism, the other a pseudo-naturalism. The first pretends to be the genuine spiritual religion, or pure Christianity; the second professes to be the genuine rational philosophy, or pure science. Both are counterfeits of the truth. The best corrective of these theoretical tendencies is to be found in the correct knowledge and exposition of history. Lacordaire has well said: “On ne brûle pas les faits.” Facts are incombustible; they cannot be made to evaporate in the gaseous elements of transcendental metaphysics, or vanish in clouds of smoke from the pipes of German neologists. Each of these make their gas or blow their clouds from products of their own imagination adroitly substituted for facts. Facts resist with an invincible inertia every combination with false theories of supernatural religion. In all branches of science pure reasoning and the investigation of facts must go together in harmony and mutually complete each other. Even in divine revelation God is careful to present facts with their evidence in connection with doctrine, and a large portion of the Bible is made up of historical records. The divine legation of Moses and the divine mission of Jesus Christ are great historical facts, and they are in synthetical connection with all the great events and epochs of human universal history. In this concurrence and harmony we find the most evident and tangible proof and corroboration in the order of natural reason of the truth revealed by God in Jesus Christ, which is the object of divine faith, and the soul of the complete substance of Christianity.
Jesus Christ came on the earth at the very juncture of the ages, at the moment for crystallization, at the epoch of crisis in human affairs, when Judaism, Grecian culture, and Roman jurisprudence combined with Roman valor, were ready to blend in a new combination; when the three strands spun by no blind fate, but by all-seeing Providence, were ready to be intertwined: the pure tradition of the patriarchs, the philosophy of the heathen sages, the organic polity of the imperial legislators—an electric cable to bind the earth and transmit the new movement of divine impulse. The Jews preserved and handed down the pure doctrine of monotheism, the promise of redemption, and the moral law—the germ of revealed doctrine and ethics, which, in the state of development, is the faith and law of Christianity. The Greeks furnished the intellectual human culture in philosophy, poetry, and art, of which the Christian religion availed itself, as of a precious vase in which to detain its subtle and sublime essence—an ideal atmosphere for the communication of its influence to the minds and imaginations of men in all ages and countries. Rome opened the way for diffusion and unification. Immobility in tradition, mobility in intelligence, motive power in organization, are the characters of Jewish, Greek, and Roman civilization, which were united in Christianity under a higher and controlling vital force.
They were each and all temporary and insufficient, subject to a law of internal decay, evanescent in their nature, and about vanishing when Jesus Christ came on the earth. That he came just in time to supersede them and to begin the universal regeneration of mankind; that he really did so without any purely human and natural means which were sufficient causes of the effects produced; is a proof that the God whose providence rules the world sent him to fulfil this mission, and that his work was a divine operation. God’s hand alone could spin and twine the threads of human destiny and make Time’s noiseless, incessant shuttle weave the woof and web into the successive figures of historical embroidery.
The miracles and resurrection of Jesus Christ, historically proved as certain, indubitable facts, authenticate his divine mission; they stamp a divine seal on his credentials as the Messias promised from the beginning of the world. This divine legation gives divine authority to his word and precepts. Whatever he teaches in the name of God is a divine revelation, and whatever he commands is a divine law. The authentic record of these miracles, the record of what Jesus said and did; the authentic account of his teaching respecting his own person, plan, doctrine, and law—that is, of the principles and the foundation of the Christian religion—is historical; it is an authentic testimony respecting facts. The authentic record of the actual founding of Christianity on the principles and plan of the Master, by the disciples to whom he entrusted the work of carrying his design into effect, is historical. This divine design necessarily embracing all that is contained in the idea of a continuity and development of divine providence over human affairs and destinies from the beginning to the end of the world, its actual carrying out through successive ages becomes matter of history for the time present in respect to times past. Its principles of continuity and development, in connection with the order of providence anterior to Christ, and with the progress of its movement from the apostolic age through the ages following, are to be sought for in its history, not to the exclusion of reasoning from abstract principles, but in connection with it. The historical documents of the New Testament, considered merely as credible testimony and apart from their inspiration, are of paramount importance in respect to the inquiry into the nature of the genuine, authentic Christianity promulgated and established as a world-religion by its Founder and his apostles. After these come all other documents containing historical record or indirect evidence respecting the earliest age of the Christian religion. In this aspect the study of dogmas of faith, of laws and rites, of the spirit and the organization of Christianity, is directed toward an historical term. The object of the inquiry is to ascertain what is Christianity, what was its legitimate development, where is to be found through all ages the real continuation, uninterrupted succession, perpetual life, and progressive expansion which connote the identity of its essence and its specific unity in all its distinct moments, as it proceeds from its beginning towards its end. Although its intrinsic truth and authority are established simultaneously with the exposition of its historical character, the argument is nevertheless distinct, in respect to its conclusive force in this direction, from the pure manifestation of the real essence and nature of the religion. The question as to its essential constituents and their logical connection is logically distinct from the question as to its material truth, although they are metaphysically one by an inseparable composition. Christ, manifesting himself in history, is a revelation of the infinite wisdom, power, and goodness of God in his divine works, which transcend the reach of all created and dependent forces. It is the Eternal Word speaking efficiently, as when he said: “Let there be light: and there was light.” If we can only see all objects by this light, through a pure medium, we cannot fail to be enlightened by the knowledge of the truth.
The able work of Dr. Fisher, the title of which is prefixed to this article, and which was briefly noticed in our last number, is based on the idea we have set forth in these preliminary remarks, although we do not profess to have given an exposition of the learned author’s precise thesis, or ascribe to him a view identical in all particulars with the one we have presented. We will employ his own language for this purpose, of showing his own individual conception of the historical environment of Christianity, and the conclusions to which investigation and reflection on the great facts and events connected with its beginnings have led him.
“Christianity is an historical religion. It is made up of events, or, to say the least, springs out of events which, however peculiar in their origin, form a part of the history of mankind.... The Apostle Paul refers to the birth of Christ as having occurred ‘when the fulness of time was come’ (Gal. iv. 4).
“His thought evidently is not only that a certain measure of time must run out, but that a train of historical events and changes must occur which have the coming of Christ for their proper sequence. Of the nature of these antecedents in the previous course of history he speaks when he has occasion to discuss the relation of the Mosaic dispensation to the Christian, and to point out the aims of Providence in regard to the Gentile nations. It was formerly a mistake of both orthodox and rationalist to look upon Christianity too exclusively as a system of doctrine addressed to the understanding. Revelation has been thought of as a communication written on high and let down from the skies—delivered to men as the Sibylline books were said to have been conveyed to Tarquin. Or it has been considered, like the philosophical system of Plato, a creation of the human intellect, busying itself with the problems of human life and destiny; the tacit assumption in either case being that Christianity is merely a body of doctrine. The truth is that revelation is at the core historical. It is embraced in a series of transactions in which men act and participate, but which are referable manifestly to an extraordinary agency of God, who thus discloses or reveals himself. The supernatural element does not exclude the natural; miracle is not magic. Over and above teaching there are laws, institutions, providential guidance, deliverance, and judgment. Here is the groundwork of revelation. For the interpretation of this extraordinary and exceptional line of historical phenomena prophets and apostles are raised up—men inspired to lift the veil and explain the dealings of Heaven with men. Here is the doctrinal or theoretical side of revelation. These individuals behold with an open eye the significance of the events of which they are witnesses or participants. The facts of secular history require to be illuminated by philosophy. Analogous to this office is the authoritative exposition and comment which we find in the Scripture along with the historical record. The doctrinal element is not a thing independent, purely theoretic, disconnected from the realities of life and history. These lie at the foundation; on them everything of a didactic nature is based. This fact will be impressively obvious to one who will compare the Bible, as to plan and structure, with the Koran.
“The character of revelation is less likely to be misconceived when the design of revelation is kept in view. The end is not to satisfy the curiosity of those who ‘seek after wisdom,’ by the solution of metaphysical problems. The good offered is not science, but salvation. The final cause of revelation is the recovery of men to communion with God—that is, to true religion. Whatever knowledge is communicated is tributary to this end.
“Hence the grand aim, under the Old Dispensation and the New, was not the production of a book, but the training of a people. To raise up and train up a nation that should become a fit instrument for the moral regeneration of mankind was the aim of the old system.... Under the new or Christian system the object was not less the training of a people; not, however, with any limitations of race. The fount of the system was to be a community of men who should be ‘the light of the world,’ and ‘the salt of the earth....’
“The grand idea of the kingdom of God is the connecting thread that runs through the entire course of divine revelation. We behold a kingdom planted in the remote past, and carried forward to its ripe development, by a series of transactions in which the agency of God mingles in an altogether peculiar way in the current of human affairs. There is a manifestation of God in act and deed. Verbal teaching is the commentary attached to the historic fact, ensuring to the latter its true meaning.”
This is sound and Christian philosophy, admirably expressed and containing many fruitful germs of thought. What we have quoted may suffice to show that the historical nature of Christianity is the fundamental idea of Dr. Fisher’s argument in the work under review.
He recognizes also a law of historical and continuous development through all time in Christianity as resulting from its vital force, which differs from the previous historical stage in this: that “in the giving of revelation, at each successive stage, and especially at the consummation, there was an increment of its contents,” whereas “this is not true of Christianity since the apostolic age.” The touchstone and test of normal development, in the sense to which the signification of the term is restricted when it is used of the post-apostolic age, is that “it springs out of the primitive seed”—namely, the deposit of revealed truth contained in the teaching of Christ and the apostles in its state of ultimate completeness.
The historical method of determining the real origin and nature of Christianity is contrasted with the method which is purely à priori and exclusively metaphysical in the following passage:
“The historical basis of Christianity marks the distinction between Christian theology and metaphysical philosophy. The starting-point of the philosopher is the intuitions of the mind; on them as a foundation, with the aid of logic, he builds up his system. His only postulates are the data of consciousness. In Christian theology, on the contrary, we begin with facts recorded in history, and explore, with the aid of inspired authors, their rationale. To reverse this course, and seek to evolve the Christian religion out of consciousness, to transmute its contents into a speculative system, after the manner of the pantheistic thinkers in Germany, is not less futile than would be the pretence to construct American history with no reference to the Puritan emigration, the Revolutionary war, or the Southern Rebellion. The distinctive essence of Christianity evaporates in an effort, like that undertaken by Schelling in his earlier system, and by Hegel, to identify it with a process of thought.”[[93]]
Farther on in his argument Dr. Fisher shows how this perverse employment of the à priori method has produced the sceptical theories of the Tübingen school of criticism:
“As regards the credibility of the Gospel history, it ought to be clearly understood that the modern attack by Baur, Strauss, Zeller, and others is founded upon an à priori assumption. It is taken for granted beforehand that whatever is supernatural is unhistorical. The testimony into which a miracle enters is stamped at once as incredible. Christianity, it was assumed, was an evolution of thought upon the natural plane. At a later day Strauss fell into a materialistic way of thinking, which rendered him, if possible, more deaf to all the evidence which, if admitted, implies the supernatural. From the point of view taken in the sceptical school, therefore, the New Testament histories, so far as they relate to the wonderful works of Christ, and his resurrection and manifestation to his disciples after his death, must be discredited. But their principle, or prejudice, carries the negative critics farther. It must affect their judgment as to the authorship of the narratives which record the miracles. It is rendered difficult to believe, if not quite improbable, that these histories emanate from apostles, eye-witnesses of the life of Jesus. The myths, or the consciously-invented stories, the product of a theological ‘tendency’ in the primitive church, cannot well be ascribed to the immediate followers of Christ. The fact that the New Testament histories contain accounts of miracles also tends to weaken and vitiate their general authority, in the estimation of the sceptical school. That is to say, the credulity of the Gospel writers, or their willingness to deceive, as evinced in the supernatural elements embraced in their books, makes them less entitled to trust in their record of ordinary events into which the miracle does not enter....
“Connected with the unscientific assumption first noticed, other assumptions were adopted by the Tübingen school which are equally unsound. It was assumed that Christianity is an evolution of thought according to the scheme of the Hegelian logic, where it is held as a law that a doctrine in an undeveloped form must divaricate into two opposites, to be recombined afterwards in a higher unity. Thus, it was assumed that Paulinism, and the sharply-defined Judaizing system attributed to Peter, were the antagonistic types of opinion which sprang out of the seed of doctrine planted by Christ, and which were reunited in the old Catholic theology, the evangelical legalism of the fathers of the second century.”[[94]]
This statement is supplemented by another succinct and pregnant passage containing the elements of an argument of great comprehension and irrefragable conclusiveness. After affirming that “the mythical theory is wrecked upon a variety of difficulties which it cannot evade or surmount”—a statement which has much more force, taken in connection with the entire context of thorough critical reasoning, than it can show as a mere isolated quotation—the learned professor proceeds:
“What is the rationalistic theory of the origin of the Christian religion? It is that Jesus, a carpenter of Nazareth, with no prestige derived from birth or social standing, taught in Galilee for about a year—for to this period the class of whom we speak would limit his public work. From these brief labors, made up wholly of verbal instruction, came that profound impression of his superhuman dignity which was made indelibly upon his disciples, and which his crucifixion as a criminal did not weaken, and that transforming power which went forth upon them, and, in ever-increasing measure, upon all subsequent generations. The Apostolic Church, the conversion of Paul, and his Epistles, the narratives of the four Gospels, with all that they contain, and Christianity, as it appears in the history of mankind, all spring from that one year of mere teaching! The effect is utterly disproportionate to the cause assigned.”[[95]]
We must take notice that the author, with a competent knowledge of the theories and arguments of the German Biblical critics, has carefully refuted them, and presented solid proofs of the genuineness and authenticity of the historical books of the New Testament, before arriving at this part of his argument. He is summing up his plea after an examination and discussion of evidence. His reasoning is not, therefore, based on mere hypothesis, but is the conclusion of a well-sustained thesis, with all the weight derived from his precedent proofs. And he is therefore logically entitled to make the demand that Christianity shall be estimated by the historical measure, according to the full value of its miraculous facts and supernatural qualities, to the exclusion of any hypothesis which pretends to be rational but is really only fantastic, and therefore unphilosophical as well as unchristian.
“It is much more consistent with a sound philosophy, instead of taking refuge in an unreasonable denial of facts historically established, to seek to comprehend them. At the outset the notion should be banished that miracles are repugnant to nature; that the supernatural is anti-natural. There is one system; and supernatural agency, however it may modify the course of nature, does no violence to the universal order. For there is no such unbending rigidity in the course of nature that it cannot be modified by the interposition of voluntary agency. A steamship, cutting its way through the billows in the teeth of wind and tide, moves by the force of machinery which is contrived and directed by the human will.[[96]] The volitions of man produce an effect which nature, independently of this spiritual force, could never occasion. Now, of the limits of the possible control of matter by the power of spirit, any more than of the essence and origin of matter itself, we cannot speak. It is a presumptuous affirmation that there is no being in the universe who can infinitely outdo the power of man, vast as it is, in this direction.”[[97]]
In this brief and sententious manner, with a few heavy and well-directed strokes of sound reason, the author effectually demolishes all the brittle ware of transcendental nonsense which calls itself rationalism. We are reminded of a sentence we once heard uttered by that singular genius, Henry Giles, in a railway carriage, respecting a matter quite different: “Such theories are shattered like rotten glass by a single thump of common sense.”
We find no reason for quoting anything from Dr. Fisher’s exposition of the historical preparation for Christianity in the propædeutic system of Judaism. For the present we will only refer to the notice which he takes of the dispersion of the Hebrews over the world at the epoch of the birth of Christ, adopting the language of Mommsen, which designates Judaism as “an effective leaven of cosmopolitanism” working in the same direction with the imperial Roman polity toward a blending of nationalities in the more general solidarity “the nationality of which was really nothing but humanity.” Of the providential office of Greece and Rome in connection with that of Judea he thus speaks:
“These were three nations of antiquity, each of which was entrusted with a grand providential office in reference to Christianity. The Greeks, whatever they may have learned from Babylon, Egypt, and Tyre, excelled all other races in a self-expanding power of intellect—in ‘the power of lighting their own fire.’ They are the masters in science, literature, and art. Plato, speaking of his own countrymen, made ‘the love of knowledge’ the special characteristic of ‘our part of the world,’ as the love of money was attributed with equal truth to the Phœnicians and Egyptians. The robust character of the Romans, and their sense of right, qualified them to rule, and to originate and transmit their great system of law and their method of political organization. Virgil lets Anchises define the function of the Roman people in his address to Æneas, a visitor to the abodes of the dead:
“‘Others, I know, more tenderly may beat the breathing brass,
And better from the marble block bring living looks to pass;
Others may better plead the cause, may compass heaven’s face,
And mark it out, and tell the stars their rising and their place;
But thou, O Roman! look to it the folks of earth to sway;
For this shall be thine handicraft: peace on the world to lay,
To spare the weak, to mar the proud by constant weight of war.’
“Greece and Rome had each its own place to fill; but true religion—the spirit in which man should live—comes from the Hebrews.”[[98]]
Dr. Fisher places the relation of sympathy or affinity between the mythological religion and Christianity in three things: first, in the stimulus and scope given to subjective religious sentiments; second, in the impulse towards “a goal hidden from sight,” the object of “an unfulfilled demand in the religious nature” of men seeking after God, whom they, in the language of St. Paul on Mars’ Hill, at Athens, “ignorantly worshipped”; third, in a growing “monotheistic tendency.”[[99]]
The topic of the relation of Greek philosophy to Christianity is handled by the learned author in a very judicious and discriminating manner, although we are disposed to take a considerably different view of the philosophy of Aristotle as compared with Platonism. We are pleased to observe his high estimate of the writings of Cicero. The chapter on this topic is thus introduced:
“The Greek philosophy was a preparation for Christianity in three ways: it dissipated, or tended to dissipate, the superstitions of polytheism; it awakened a sense of need which philosophy of itself failed to meet; and it so educated the intellect and conscience as to render the Gospel apprehensible and, in many cases, congenial to the mind. It did more than remove obstacles out of the way; its work was positive as well as negative: it originated ideas and habits of thought which had more or less direct affinity with the religion of the Gospel, and which found in this religion their proper counterpart. The prophetic element of the Greek philosophy lay in the glimpses of truth which it could not fully discern, and in the obscure and unconscious pursuit of a good which it could not definitely grasp.”[[100]]
In treating of “the close relation of the Roman Empire to Christianity” Prof. Fisher notices the extension of Roman citizenship, the cosmopolitan polity of Cæsar, the unifying influence of Roman jurisprudence, the assimilation of mankind in language and culture by the spread of the Romano-Hellenic civilization and the Greek and Latin languages, travel and intercourse, commerce and a general mingling of mankind from various causes, the mingling of religions, and the resuscitation of the idea of a common humanity. Without overlooking the external agency of Rome in paving the way for Christianity, the author more distinctly accentuates another kind of influence:
“The effect of the consolidation of so large a part of mankind in one political body, in breaking up local and tribal narrowness, and in awakening what may be termed a cosmopolitan feeling, is in the highest degree interesting. The Roman dominion was the means of a mental and moral preparation for the Gospel; and this incidental effect is worthy of special note. The kingdom of Christ proposed the unification of mankind through a spiritual bond. Whatever tended to melt down the prejudices of nation, and clan, and creed, and instil in the room of them more liberal sentiments, opened a path for the Gospel. Now, we find that under the political system established by Rome a variety of agencies co-operated to effect such a result. Powerful forces were at work whose effect was not limited to the creation of outward advantages for the dissemination of the religion of Christ, but tended to produce a more or less genial soil for its reception. We have, then, to embrace in one view the influence of the Roman Empire in both of these relations, in shaping outward circumstances, and in favoring a mental habit, which were propitious to the introduction of the new faith.”[[101]]
What the author proposes in the last clause of this quotation he fulfils in a very satisfactory manner in one of the most splendid chapters of his work.
The outline of the historical basis of Christianity having been drawn, and the principles of the sound historical construction of a true and logical theory or philosophy of the Christian religion established, the outline of the actual foundations, and the first course of the great structure itself, determining its plan of architecture, next demands our consideration. In plainer language, the actual “beginnings of Christianity” in the apostolic age, the earliest history of the religion of Christ, in respect to all its constitutive principles, presents itself for examination. What is Christianity in its essence, nature, integrity of organic constitution, its proper attributes; with a due distinction of its substance from its accidents, of its genuine and normal germs of future development from everything of a parasitic nature or in any way abnormal? This is the great question to be studied in the authentic records of the antiquities of Christianity, with all the light and aid which can be obtained from every source accessible to research.
The long-continued, widely-extended preparations of divine Providence for the great event of the coming of the Messias of the Jews and Gentiles, the immensity of the ground prepared to be the theatre of the future Christian history, the vast and mighty instrumentalities made ready to serve the fulfilment of the plan of Jesus and of the apostolic mission, all point toward something proportionate in grandeur to the grandeur of the inchoate order which preceded. The anticipation of Christ in history demands a corresponding realization of his actual presence and operation in the “fulness of time,” the age of the completion and consummation of human destinies on the earth. Moreover, the stupendous miracles, especially the crowning one of the Resurrection, which are among the first facts and events of historical Christianity, logically and rationally require that an ideal of Christianity shall be presented which justifies such an outlay of supernatural power, and the position of causes containing such infinite potential force. The end of all previous human history being found in the beginning of Christianity, the new beginning of all human history must be likewise found there. If the normal, legitimate development in later ages is tested by its origination from the primitive seed planted in the apostolic age, the nature and qualities of that seed must be correctly ascertained. If we would recognize the true genius of Christianity in its real manifestations from the days of the apostles to our own, and discriminate it from simulated apparitions, we must know what this genius really is, or the original error will falsify all subsequent processes of judgment and reasoning, like an ambiguous middle in a syllogism.
But we have proceeded as far as our limits will permit in the present article, and must postpone the consideration of what was actual Christianity in the apostolic age, and of the learned author’s theory on the subject, to a future opportunity.