The Religious Situation

by Goldwin Smith

About the authorship of the Fourth Gospel, and, consequently, about its title to belief, there has been endless controversy among the learned. But there are pretty plain indications, in the shape of the omission of demoniac miracles and some lack of local knowledge, that it is not the work of a Palestinian Jew. Opening with a reference to the Logos, it strikes the key of Alexandrian philosophy. It is, indeed, rather theological than historical, so that it has been not inaptly compared to the Platonic, in contrast to the Xenophontic, account of Socrates, the theology seems like that of a post-evangelical era. Martineau's conclusion is that "the only Gospel which is composed and not merely compiled and edited, and for which, therefore, a single writer is responsible, has its birthday in the middle of the second century, and is not the work of a witness at all." Historically, this Gospel is at variance with the others in its narrative of the Last Supper. "The incidents," says the highly orthodox Speaker's Commentary, "are parallel with sections of the Synoptic Gospels; but there are very few points of actual correspondence in detail between the narratives of the Synoptists and of St. John." There appears to have been much disputation among critics and commentators, but no room for disputation surely would have been left concerning narratives, equally authentic and inspired, of a momentous crisis in the life of the Saviour.

"At this point, that is to say the beginning of the Galilean ministry, we are again met by difficulties in the chronology, which are not only various, but to the certain solution of which there appears to be no clue. If we follow exclusively the order given by one Evangelist we appear to run counter to the scattered indications which may be found in another. That it should be so will cause no difficulty to the candid mind. The Evangelists do not profess to be guided by chronological sequences." So writes Dean Farrar in despair. Is it likely that such confusion would be found in a Divine revelation? Would not the narratives have been as well arranged and clear as, by the admission of orthodoxy, they are the reverse? Would the names of the authors of the Gospels, their warrants and the sources of their information, have been withheld? Providence surely was not there.

If there was a miraculous revelation on which salvation depended, why was it not universal? Why has it all this time been withheld from nations even more in need of it than those to whom it was given? Are we to suppose that the salvation of these myriads was a matter of indifference to their Creator, or that Heaven preferred the slow and precarious working of the missionary to the instantaneous action of its own fiat? This is the question which scepticism asks, and which the great author of the "Analogy of Religion" fails to answer.

What did Jesus think of himself and his mission, and of his relation to Deity? This it seems impossible without more authentic records clearly to decide. The Gospel of St. John, which is the most theological, would appear to be the least trustworthy of the four. Its author, apparently, sees its subject through a theosophic medium of his own. The idea of the teacher in the mind of the disciples would naturally rise with his ascendancy; so, perhaps, would his own idea. If Jesus is rightly reported he believed himself to be the Son of God, exalted to union and participation in spiritual dominion with the Father, and destined together with the Father to judge the world. But, in his mortal hour of anguish in Gethsemane, he prays to the Father to let the cup pass from him; an act hardly consistent with the doctrines of the Athanasian Creed. In the immortality of the soul and judgment after death he plainly believes. But he does not substantiate the belief by any explanation of the mode of survival; nor, in separating the two flocks of sheep and goats, does he say how mixed characters are to be treated. Tribalism seems slightly to cling to his conception of the just gathered in Abraham's bosom. Of his apologue of Dives and Lazarus, the last part appears to show that the world beyond the grave was to him a realm of the imagination.

The Sermon on the Mount would appear, by the strong impress of character it bears, to have special claims to authenticity. So may the Parables habitually employed as instruments of teaching and wearing apparently the stamp of a single imagination.

That with Jesus of Nazareth there came into the world, and by his example and teaching was introduced and propagated a moral ideal which, embodied in Christendom, and surviving through all these centuries the action of hostile forces the most powerful, not only from without, but from within, has uplifted, purified, and blessed humanity is a historical fact. With the civilization of Christendom no other civilization can compare. But we have been accustomed to believe that there was a miraculous revelation of the Deity. A revelation of the Deity, though not miraculous, Christianity may be believed to have been.

Revelation, direct and assured, of the nature, will, designs, or relation to us of the Deity through the Bible or in any other way we cannot be truly said to have. All that we apparently can be said to have, besides the religious instinct in ourselves, is the evidence of beneficent design in the universe; balanced, we must sadly admit, by much that with our present imperfect knowledge appears to us at variance with beneficence; by plagues, earthquakes, famines, torturing diseases, infant deaths; by the sufferings of animals preyed on by other animals or breeding beyond the means of subsistence; by inevitable accidents of all kinds; by the Tower of Siloam everywhere falling on the just as well as on the sinner. There may be a key, there may be a plan, disciplinary or of some other kind, and in the end the mystery may be solved. At present there seems to be no key other than that which may be suggested by the connection of effort with virtue and the progress of a collective humanity.

At the same time, we may apparently dismiss belief in a great personal power of evil and in his realm of everlasting torture. The independent origin of such a power of evil is unthinkable; so is the struggle between the two powers and its end. There is no absolutely distinct line between good and evil. The shades of character are numberless.

Another great change, rather of impression than of conviction, has been creeping over the religious scene. We have hitherto, largely, perhaps, under the influence of the Bible, been fancying rather than thinking that this little earth of ours was the centre of all things, the special object of interest to the Creator; and that the grand drama of existence was that enacted on this terrestrial stage and culminating in Redemption. Astronomical science is now making us distinctly feel that this world is only one, and, if magnitude is to be the measure, very far from the most important, of myriads of worlds governed by the same physical laws as ours, forming a system of which ours is a member, while the destiny of the whole system is to us utterly inscrutable; proofs of the most sublime and glorious order presenting themselves on the one hand, while on the other we see signs of disorder and destruction, errant bodies such as comets and aerolites, a moon without an atmosphere, the conflagration of a star. Whether the whole is moving towards any end and, if it is, what that end is to be, we cannot hope to divine. When with Infinity we take into our thought Eternity, past and future, if in Eternity there can be said to be past or future, our minds are completely overwhelmed.

Is belief in a future life generally holding its ground? My friend, the late Mr. Chamberlain, was by no means alone in resigning it. But if this life is all, how can we continue to hold our faith in divine justice? Mr. Chamberlain, as I said before, was evidently happy as well as good. His life, though short and regarded by him as ending in the grave, was to him so much gain, and proved beneficence on the part of the Author of his being. But if Mr. Chamberlain's theory is true, what is to be said in the case of the myriads to whom life has been wretchedness, ending perhaps in agony, often without the slightest responsibility on their part? For these unhappy ones would it be well, as Mr. Chamberlain holds it was for him, that there should be no hereafter? Is their being brought into existence only to suffer compatible with our faith in supreme benevolence? Is confidence in supreme justice compatible with the conviction that the tyrant and the tortured victims of his tyranny, alike, repose forever in the grave? Such, it is true, was the belief of the Hebrew; indication of any other belief, at all events, he has left us none, unless it be a faint glimpse of Sheol. The philosophy of Job halts accordingly. The Hebrew believed that he would be rewarded or punished in his posterity.