Upon this I can form no opinion; I neither know the anonymous author of the "Ecce Homo," nor the motives which actuate him: what is certain is, that he is quite right in entitling his book "Ecce Homo," for it is only the Man Christ that he has proposed to study, and it is by studying the Man Christ that he has proposed to explain Christianity.
I do not know if, after having written his book, he was aware of the result to which it leads, but the result is in effect a strange one,—it is condemnatory and destructive of the fundamental idea of the book, it demonstrates by a sincere and honest, although an incomplete and superficial study of the facts, the impossibility of explaining either Christ by the human nature alone, or the Christian Religion by any merely natural operations of humanity.
The work is divided into two parts, and contains altogether twenty-four chapters. The first part is devoted to the study of Christ personally, his peculiar character, his manner of dealing with men, the mission which he proposed to himself to accomplish, the nature of the society which he sought to found, and the authority which he counted upon exercising. In the second part, the Christian society itself, its points of resemblance to the systems of philosophy and its points of difference therefrom, its fundamental principles and positive laws, and the habits and sentiments which are developed by those laws, all become in turn the objects of the author's observations and descriptions. Observations often profound, descriptions often exact and striking, although somewhat minute and lengthy; everywhere, however, there breathes forth a sentiment unquestionably moral, and full of the gentlest sympathy for humanity.
All this gives to the work a real attractiveness, in spite of the vagueness of the ideas which reign there, and in spite of the perceptible incertitude of the author's conclusions upon the solemn questions which he approaches, but upon which he does not enter.
I have no intention of saying more; I have not to render an account in detail of this book or to discuss any of the author's opinions or assertions upon which I may not agree with him; my aim is only to determine the character of his work, and to show plainly, first its tendency and then its insufficiency. There precisely is his originality; in setting out, and dealing with the subject of the purely human nature both of Christ and of Christianity, he seems not far from participating the opinions of Rationalistic criticism; but the more he advances, the farther he departs from the goal at which the Rationalists arrive: he appears predisposed in their favour; the process of his thought seems often to conform to theirs; his conclusions are not clearly contrary, but in effect, under the empire either of his instincts or under the influence of his historical and moral studies, he is more Christian than he appears, perhaps even more so than he believes himself to be; and if the firm doctrines of Christianity find in him no sure and declared defender, neither do they encounter in him the consistent hostility of a severe logician or the indifferentism of a mere sceptic.
There are several passages of this remarkable work which are particularly distinguished by these characteristics. To these I feel pleasure in referring the reader. They are in both parts of the book; that is to say, in the first part, chapter fifth, entitled Christ's Credentials, and chapter ninth, [Footnote 51] entitled Reflections on the Nature of Christ's Society; in the second part, chapter tenth, entitled Christ's Legislation compared with Philosophic systems, and chapter the eleventh, The Christian Republic [Footnote 52] A perusal of these passages will, if I do not deceive myself, fully justify the impression which the work has made upon me, and satisfy the reader that I am right in what I have said of the author's inconsistency with respect to religion.
[Footnote 51: Ecce Homo, ed. 1866, pp. 41-51, 81—102.]
[Footnote 52: Ibid, pp. 108—119, 120—126.]