There is nothing in the New Testament, so far as we know, that touches on the duties of nation to nation, or of nation to its citizens; nothing of human liberty; not one word about education; not the faintest hint that there is such a thing as science; nothing calculated to stimulate industry, commerce, or invention; not one word in favor of art, of music or anything calculated to feed or clothe the body, nothing to develop the brain of man.
When it is assumed that the life of Christ, as described in the New Testament, is perfect, we at least take upon ourselves the burden of deciding what perfection is. People who asserted that Christ was divine, that he was actually God, reached the conclusion, without any laborious course of reasoning, that all he said and did was absolute perfection. They said this because they had first been convinced that he was divine. The moment his divinity is given up and the assertion is made that he was perfect, we are not permitted to reason in that way. They said he was God, therefore perfect. Now, if it is admitted that he was human, the conclusion that he was perfect does not follow. We then take the burden upon ourselves of deciding what perfection is. To decide what is perfect is beyond the powers of the human mind.
Renan, in spite of his education, regarded Christ as a man, and did the best he could to account for the miracles that had been attributed to him, for the legends that had gathered about his name, and the impossibilities connected with his career, and also tried to account for the origin or birth of these miracles, of these legends, of these myths, including the resurrection and ascension. I am not satisfied with all the conclusions he reached or with all the paths he traveled. The refraction of light caused by passing through a woman's tears is hardly a sufficient foundation for a belief in so miraculous a miracle as the bodily ascension of Jesus Christ.
There is another thing attributed to Christ that seems to me conclusive evidence against the claim of perfection. Christ is reported to have said that all sins could be forgiven except the sin against the Holy Ghost. This sin, however, is not defined. Although Christ died for the whole world, that through him all might be saved, there is this one terrible exception: There is no salvation for those who have sinned, or who may hereafter sin, against the Holy Ghost. Thousands of persons are now in asylums, having lost their reason because of their fear that they had committed this unknown, this undefined, this unpardonable sin.
It is said that a Roman Emperor went through a form of publishing his laws or proclamations, posting them so high on pillars that they could not be read, and then took the lives of those who ignorantly violated these unknown laws. He was regarded as a tyrant, as a murderer. And yet, what shall we say of one who declared that the sin against the Holy Ghost was the only one that could not be forgiven, and then left an ignorant world to guess what that sin is? Undoubtedly this horror is an interpolation.
There is something like it in the Old Testament. It is asserted by Christians that the Ten Commandments are the foundation of all law and of all civilization, and you will find lawyers insisting that the Mosaic Code was the first information that man received on the subject of law; that before that time the world was without any knowledge of justice or mercy. If this be true the Jews had no divine laws, no real instruction on any legal subject until the Ten Commandments were given. Consequently, before that time there had been proclaimed or published no law against the worship of other gods or of idols. Moses had been on Mount Sinai talking with Jehovah. At the end of the dialogue he received the Tables of Stone and started down the mountain for the purpose of imparting this information to his followers. When he reached the camp he heard music. He saw people dancing, and he found that in his absence Aaron and the rest of the people had cast a molten calf which they were then worshiping. This so enraged Moses that he broke the Tables of Stone and made preparations for the punishment of the Jews. Remember that they knew nothing about this law, and, according to the modern Christian claims, could not have known that it was wrong to melt gold and silver and mould it in the form of a calf. And yet Moses killed about thirty thousand of these people for having violated a law of which they had never heard; a law known only to one man and one God. Nothing could be more unjust, more ferocious, than this; and yet it can hardly be said to exceed in cruelty the announcement that a certain sin was unpardonable and then fail to define the sin. Possibly, to inquire what the sin is, is the sin.
Renan regards Jesus as a man, and his work gets its value from the fact that it is written from a human standpoint. At the same time he, consciously or unconsciously, or may be for the purpose of sprinkling a little holy water on the heat of religious indignation, now and then seems to speak of him as more than human, or as having accomplished something that man could not.
He asserts that "the Gospels are in part legendary; that they contain many things not true; that they are full of miracles and of the supernatural." At the same time he insists that these legends, these miracles, these supernatural things do not affect the truth of the probable things contained in these writings. He sees, and sees clearly, that there is no evidence that Matthew or Mark or Luke or John wrote the books attributed to them; that, as a matter of fact, the mere title of "according to Matthew," "according to Mark," shows that they were written by others who claimed them to be in accordance with the stories that had been told by Matthew or by Mark. So Renan takes the ground that the Gospel of Luke is founded on anterior documents and "is the work of a man who selected, pruned and combined, and that the same man wrote the Acts of the Apostles and in the same way."
The gospels were certainly written long after the events described, and Renan finds the reason for this in the fact that the Christians believed that the world was about to end; that, consequently, there was no need of composing books; it was only necessary for them to preserve in their hearts during the little margin of time that remained a lively image of Him whom they soon expected to meet in the clouds. For this reason the gospels themselves had but little authority for 150 years, the Christians relying on oral traditions. Renan shows that there was not the slightest scruple about inserting additions in the gospels, variously combining them, and in completing some by taking parts from others; that the books passed from hand to hand, and that each one transcribed in the margin of his copy the words and parables he had found elsewhere which touched him; that it was not until human tradition became weakened that the text bearing the names of the apostles became authoritative.
Renan has criticised the gospels somewhat in the same spirit that he would criticise a modern work. He saw clearly that the metaphysics filling the discourses of John were deformities and distortions, full of mysticism, having nothing to do really with the character of Jesus. He shows too "that the simple idea of the Kingdom of God, at the time the Gospel according to St. John was written, had faded away; that the hope of the advent of Christ was growing dim, and that from belief the disciples passed into discussion, from discussion to dogma, from dogma to ceremony," and, finding that the new Heaven and the new Earth were not coming as expected, they turned their attention to governing the old Heaven and the old Earth. The disciples were willing to be humble for a few days, with the expectation of wearing crowns forever. They were satisfied with poverty, believing that the wealth of the world was to be theirs. The coming of Christ, however, being for some unaccountable reason delayed, poverty and humility grew irksome, and human nature began to assert itself.