Let us be done with gods playing at being human, or at being half god and half human. The time has come when, to prolong its usefulness, the Church must concede—nay, proclaim—the manhood of Jesus; must separate him from that atrocious scheme of human sacrifice, the logical extension of a primitive Hebrew mythology—and take him in the only way that he commands attention: As a man, one of the world's great spiritual teachers. Insisting upon his godship can only make him preposterous to the modern mind. Jesus, born to a carpenter's wife of Nazareth, declares himself, one day about his thirtieth year, to be the Christ, the second person in the universe, who will come in a cloud of glory to judge the world. He will save into everlasting life those who believe him to be of divine origin. Yet he has been called meek! Surely never was a more arrogant character in history—never one less meek than this carpenter's son who ranks himself second only to God, with power to send into everlasting hell those who disbelieve him! He went abroad in fine arrogance, railing at lawyers and the rich, rebuking, reproving, hurling angry epithets, attacking what we to-day call "the decent element." He called the people constantly "Fools," "Blind Leaders of the Blind," "faithless and perverse," "a generation of vipers," "sinful," "evil and adulterous," "wicked," "hypocrites," "whited sepulchres."
As the god he worshipped was a tribal god, so he at first believed himself to be a tribal saviour. He directed his disciples thus: "Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not. But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel"—(who emphatically rejected and slew him for his pretensions). To the woman of Canaan whose daughter was vexed with a devil, he said: "It is not meet to take the children's bread to cast it to dogs." Imagine a God calling a woman a dog because she was not of his own tribe!
And the vital test of godhood he failed to meet: It is his own test, whereby he disproves his godship out of his own mouth. Compare these sayings of Jesus, each typical of him:
"Resist not evil; but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also." Yet he said to his Twelve:
"And whosoever shall not receive you nor hear you, when you depart thence shake off the dust of your feet for a testimony against them."
Is that the consistency of a God or a man?
Again: "Blessed are the merciful," but "Verily I say unto you it shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city." Is this the mercy which he tells us is blessed?
Again: "And as ye would that men should do to you do ye also to them likewise." Another: "Woe unto thee, Chorazin, woe unto thee, Bethsaida... and thou, Capernaum, which are exalted unto heaven, shall be brought down to hell." Is not this preaching the golden rule and practicing something else, as a man might?
Again: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you.
"For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? Do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren, what do ye more than others? Do not even the publicans so?" That, sir, is a sentiment that proves the claim of Jesus to be a teacher of morals. Here is one which, placed beside it, proves him to have been a man.