We regret to say that there are as many assumptions in the above sentence as there are lines in it. Of course, if we are for emotionalism and not for exact and accurate conclusions, Adler's estimate of Jesus is as rhetorical as that of Jones or Boyle, but if we have any love for historical truth, there is not even the shadow of evidence, for instance, that the disciples could not believe "that such a man as Jesus could die." On the contrary, the disciples left him at the cross and fled, and believed him dead, until it was reported to them that he had been seen alive, and even then "some doubted," and one wished to feel the flesh with his fingers before he would credit his eyes. Jesus had to eat and drink with them, he had to "open their eyes," and perform various miracles before they would believe that he was not dead. The text which says that the apostles hesitated to believe in the resurrection because "as yet they knew not the scripture, that he would rise from the dead," shows conclusively how imaginary is the idea that there was a "precedent conviction" in the minds of the disciples that such a man as Jesus could not die. Apparently it was all a matter of prophecy, not of moral character at all. Yet in the face of all the evidence to the contrary, Prof. Adler tells his Carnegie Hall audience, who unfortunately are even less informed in Christian doctrine than their leader, that "there was a precedent conviction in the minds of the disciples that such a man as Jesus could not die." And what gave the disciples this supposed "precedent conviction?"
"That a personality of such superlative excellence, so radiant, so incomparably lofty in mien and port and speech and intercourse with others, could not pass away like a forgotten wind, that such a star could not be quenched." We are simply astonished, and grieved as well, to see the use which so enlightened a man as Prof. Adler makes of his gifts. Will this Jewish admirer of the god of Christendom kindly tell us wherein Jesus was superlatively excellent, or incomparably lofty in mien and port and speech and intercourse with others? Was there a weakness found in men like Buddha, Confucius, Socrates, etc., from which Jesus was free? That Jesus created no such ideal impression upon his disciples, is shown by the fact that they represented him as a sectarian and an egotist who denounced all who had preceded him as unworthy of respect and to be despised. And how could a man whose public life did not cover more than two or three years of time, and who lived as a celibate and a monk, returning every night to his cave in the Mount of Olives, taking no active part in the business life—supporting no family or parents, assuming no civil or social duties—how can such a man, we ask, be held up as a model for the men and women of today? Jesus, according to his biographers, believed he could raise the dead, and announced himself the equal of God. "I and my father are one," he is reported to have said; and one of his apostles writes: "He (Jesus) thought it no robbery to be equal to God." Either this report is true, or it is not. If it is, what shall we think of a man who thought he was a god and could raise the dead? If the report is not true, what reliance can we place in his biographers when the things which they affirm with the greatest confidence are to be rejected?
Yet Prof. Adler, swept off his feet by the popular and conventional enthusiasm about Jesus, describes him as "a personality of such superlative excellence, so radiant, so incomparably lofty in mien and port and speech and intercourse with others," that his followers could not believe he was a mere mortal. But where is the Jesus to correspond to this rhetorical language? He is not in the anonymous gospels. There we find only a fragmentary character patched or pieced together, as it were, by various contributors—a character made up of the most contradictory elements, as we have tried to show in the preceding pages. The Jesus of Adler is not in history, he is not even in mythology. There is no one of that name and answering that description in the four gospels.
That a loose way of speaking grows upon one if one is not careful, and that sounding phrases and honest historical criticism are not the same thing, will be seen by Prof. Adler's lavish praise of John Calvin. He speaks of him in terms almost as glowing as he does of Jesus. He calls Calvin "that mighty and noble man."
That Calvin ruled Geneva like a Russian autocrat; that he was "mighty" in a community in which Jacques Gruet was beheaded because he had "danced," and also because he had committed the grave offense of saying that "Moses was only a man and no one knows what God said to him," and in which Michael Servetus was burned alive for holding opinions contrary to those which the Genevan pope was interested in,—is readily conceded. But was Calvin "mighty" in a beneficent sense? Did his power save people from the Protestant inquisition? Was not the Geneva of his day called the Protestant Rome? And if he did not use his powerful influence to further religious tolerance and intellectual honesty; if he did not use his position to save men from the grip of superstition and the fear of hell, how can Prof. Adler refer to him as "that mighty and noble man—John Calvin?"
It is not our purpose to grudge Calvin any compliments which Felix Adler wishes to pay him. What we grieve to see is, that he should, indirectly at least, recommend to the admiration of his readers a man who, if he existed today and acted as he did in the Geneva of the sixteenth century, would be regarded by every morally and intellectually awakened man, as a criminal. Has not Felix Adler examined the evidence which incriminates Calvin and proves him beyond doubt as the murderer of Servetus? "If he (Servetus) comes to Geneva, I shall see that he does not escape alive," wrote John Calvin to Theodore Beza. And he carried out his fearful menace; Servetus was put to death by the most horrible punishment ever invented—he was burned alive in a smoking fire. What did this mighty and noble man do to save a stranger and a scholar from so atrocious a fate? Let his eulogist, Prof. Adler, answer. It will not do to say that those were different times. A thousand voices were raised against the wanton and cruel murder of Servetus, but Calvin's was not among them. In fact, when Calvin himself was a fugitive and a wanderer, he had written in favor of religious tolerance, but no sooner did he become the Protestant pope of Geneva, than he developed into an exterminator of heresy by fire. Such is the "mighty and noble man" held up for our admiration. "Mighty" he was, but we ask again, was he mighty in a noble sense?
Had Calvin been considered a "mighty and noble man" by the reformers who preceded Prof. Adler, there would have been no Ethical Culture societies in America today. Prof. Adler is indebted for the liberties which he enjoys in New York to the Voltaires and the Condorcets, who regarded Calvin and his "isms" as pernicious to the intellectual life of Europe, and did all they could to lead the people away from them. Think of the leader of the Ethical Societies exalting a persecutor, to say nothing of his abominable theology, or of his five aliases, as "that mighty and noble man;—John Calvin!" We feel grateful to Prof. Adler for organizing the Ethical Societies in American, but we would be pleased to have him explain in what sense a man of Calvin's small sympathies and terrible deeds could be called both "noble and mighty." *
* See "The Kingdom of God in Geneva Under Calvin."—M. M. Mangasarian.
It was predicted some years ago that the founder of the Ethical Societies will before long return to the Jewish faith of his fathers. However this may be, we have seen, in his estimate of Jesus and John Calvin, evidences of his estrangement from rationalism, of which in his younger days he was so able a champion. In his criticism of the Russian scientist, Metchnikoff, of the Pasteur Institute in Paris, Prof. Adler, endorsing the popular estimate of Jesus, accepts also the popular attitude toward science. He appears to prefer the doctrine of special creation to the theory of evolution. We would not have believed this of Felix Adler if we did not have the evidence before us. We speak of this to show the relation between an exaggerated praise of a popular idol, and a denial of the conclusions of modern science. It is the popular view which Prof. Adler champions in both instances. In his criticism of Metchnikoff's able book, The Nature of Man, Prof. Adler writes:
And to account for the reason in man, this divine spark that has been set ablaze in him, it is not sufficient to point to an ape as our ancestor. If we are descended from an anthropoid ape on the physical side, we are not descended from him in any strict sense of the word on our rational side; for as life is born of life, so reason is born of reason, and if the anthropoid ape does not possess reason as we possess it, it cannot be said that on our rational side we are his progeny.