"No anonymous book," says he, "since the 'Vestiges of Creation' (now more than twenty years old), indeed, it might almost be said, no theological book, whether anonymous, or of certified authorship—that has appeared within the same interval, has attracted anything like the amount of notice and of criticism which have been bestowed upon the remarkable volume, entitled 'Ecce Homo.'"
The anonymous author has expressed in a very short preface his intention in writing this volume, as well as its fundamental ideas. "Those who feel," says he, "dissatisfied with the current conceptions of Christ, if they cannot rest content without a definite opinion, may find it necessary to do what, to persons not so dissatisfied, it seems audacious and perilous to do. They may be obliged to reconsider the whole subject from the beginning, and placing themselves, in imagination, at the time when he whom we call Christ bore no such name, but was simply, as St. Luke describes him, a young man of promise, popular with those who knew him, and appearing to enjoy the Divine favour, to trace his biography from point to point, and accept those conclusions about him, not which Church doctors, or even apostles have sealed with their authority, but which the facts themselves, critically weighed, appear to warrant.
"This is what the present writer undertook to do for the satisfaction of his own mind, and because, after reading a good many books on Christ, he felt still constrained to confess that there was no historical character whose motives, objects and feelings remained so incomprehensible to him. The inquiry which proved serviceable to himself may chance to be useful to others.
"What is now published is a fragment. No theological questions whatever are here discussed. Christ as the Creator of modern Theology and Religion will make the subject of another volume; which, however, the author does not hope to publish for some time to come. In the meanwhile, he has endeavoured to furnish an answer to the question, 'What was Christ's object in founding the Society which is called by his name, and how is it adapted to attain that object?'"
On merely considering, even after a first perusal, the brief words which I have here extracted, it is, I think, impossible not to perceive how much there is that is artificial and embarrassed, I had almost said how much there is that is false, not only in the position in which the Author has placed himself at the very outset, but in the special intentions which he avows. To study the life and the aim of the life of Christ without considering him "as the Creator of Modern Theology and Religion," to defer all examination and conclusion upon this last subject; to aspire to know the person and the mind of Christ after thus separating him from his work; to inquire what he meant to accomplish when living, without considering what he in effect accomplished in the ages which followed his passage through the world; to treat him, in short, and to examine him as we should treat and examine a person unknown to us—a fossil man, so to say, of which the features might be traceable in some contemporary document, showing that he once existed, but who has left no other trace to supply us with argument or proof of what he intended, or what he performed;—this, undoubtedly, is a strange manner of proceeding, one which holds out very little chance of an accurate and true comprehension of the immense fact called Christianity, thus mutilated in its very cradle, Christianity of which the writer limits himself to a bare search after the germ in the nascent thought of its owner, whereas it might have been observed, and its nature verified in its positive and vast development.
This is a species of decomposition, of which the great facts of history and morality do not admit. We are not here, like anatomists, describing the autopsy of a corpse. To know and comprehend such facts really, we must study them in their different elements and in all the development of their life. They form a drama in which we are actors, not a manuscript which we are deciphering.
I can easily understand how the anonymous writer of the "Ecce Homo" came to conceive the idea of his book, and to confine it within the limits which he has himself assigned: I can also understand his motives. Like all his contemporaries, he is placed and lives in presence of the grave questions agitated in these days respecting Christianity and its author. What was Christ?—a man or very God, or God and man at once? How did the divine nature and the human nature manifest themselves in him? Did he really effect the miracles assigned to him? Can there be such things as miracles? What are we to understand by the supernatural? Is God a real being personal and free, existing and accomplishing his works in a region beyond that which we style Nature? Christianity and the life of its founder inevitably suggest all these questions, which in our days occupy and violently agitate men's minds. The anonymous author of the "Ecce Homo" did not wish to enter upon them; nay, it was his aim to study and comprehend Christ without touching them at all. Is it because upon these grave problems he entertains himself no positive and decided opinions? Or, because he wished, to a certain extent, to accommodate himself to the state of opinion of some of his contemporaries, and to treat Christ as those speak of him who only see in him a man, who regard Christianity as a fact not supernatural, owing its origin, like other natural facts, to the sole and proper force of mankind?