If the law of the growth of religions is a very gradual one, that of our moral ideas is far more so. Improvements in the great moral principles which regulate the life of man are most painfully slow. All the great races of mankind have presented the same general outlines of character, with only slight improvements, from age to age. I quote only two examples, the modern French and Germans. How strikingly like are certain portions of the character of the former, to the picture of the Gauls given in the pages of Cæsar; or to the descriptions of the same race inhabiting a distant region which the great apostle has drawn in the Epistle to the Galatians. We may still read the general outline of the character of the German race in the pages of Tacitus. Developments there have been, and the slowness is sadly disappointing to the philanthropist. To be able even to recognize progress, we must survey long intervals of time. The optimist has indeed need of patience; and the most enthusiastic may be certain that long ages before any considerable advance is made, according to the mere laws of natural development, he will be slumbering in the grave.
But it must not be forgotten that the developments which our opponents postulate are always in the way of progressive improvements. Stern historical fact compels us to assert that developments are frequently retrogressive.
No less gradual is the moral progress of the individual. It is also a painful but undeniable fact that retrogressive ones are much more rapid than progressive ones. The moral ideas in the midst of which we are educated cling to us with the firmest grasp. The best men exhibit only a slight advance above the general morality of their age.
I now draw your attention to the fact that the inventive powers of the composer of fiction are limited by the same laws. He too, in the strict sense of that term, is unable to create the new. The materials with which he can work are the idealization of the times in which he lives. Whether he be poet or novel writer, he can neither invent a new religion or a new morality. Mythical inventions of every kind embody the state of thought, feeling, and general idealization of the times which produced them. The entire mass of existing mythology testifies to this fact.
Such, then, are the instruments and materials with which my opponents have to work in the elaboration of Christianity out of Judaism, and in metamorphosing a human Jesus into a divine Christ. Let us examine the possibility of the attempt.
We must place ourselves in the position of the followers of Jesus on the evening of the crucifixion. His individual influence had gathered around Him a number of enthusiastic and credulous followers who mistook Him for the Messiah of popular expectation. The crucifixion certainly dashed their hopes. But according to the theory of my opponents, in the height of their enthusiasm they determined to believe in Him as the Messiah still. To carry out this resolution, it is obvious that new ground had to be taken. A development of some kind was absolutely necessary. No amount of credulity could mistake a dead body mouldering in the grave for the Messiah of Jewish expectation.
It was absolutely necessary, therefore, if His Messiahship could become a possibility, that the crucified Jesus should be rescued from the tomb. If a resurrection could not be effected in reality, it was indispensable that one should be in imagination. Until His followers could be brought in considerable numbers to believe that this had happened, no developments in the direction of the Gospels were possible.
The most obvious expedient to have accomplished this would have been for some of the disciples to have done that which, according to one of the Evangelists, the Jews accused them of, viz., to have stolen the body, and report that Jesus was risen from the dead. But those against whom I am reasoning do not venture to accuse them of conscious fraud. This assumption all educated unbelievers have long abandoned as hopelessly untenable. Such a basis will certainly not bear the weight of the Christianity of the New Testament. In place of this, they assume that the credulity, idealism, and enthusiasm of the followers of Jesus was bottomless. With this machinery they think that He can be rescued from the grave.
Two theories have been propounded for this purpose. One is that some enthusiastic woman—Mary Magdalene, for example—thought that she saw Jesus with the mind's eye, or mistook the gardener for Him, and converted this appearance into a bodily reality. She communicated her enthusiasm to the rest. Others may have imagined that they saw Him in a similar manner, and committed a similar mistake. The other theory is that He was buried in a swoon, that He managed to creep out of His grave, that He partially recovered, and died shortly after in retirement. On such a foundation my opponents propose to erect the whole weight of the historic Church, and from such a chimera to develop the portraiture of the divine Christ.
The second theory I should not have mentioned if it had not been dignified by the name of Bunsen. It is obvious that it will not support the weight of the Christian Church. What! a man who died from weakness shortly after creeping out of his grave, metamorphised by his followers into a divine Messiah, and seated on the right hand of God! If He lived in retirement, and died in Phœnicia shortly afterwards,—according to an assumption for which there is not even the ghost of historical testimony,—His followers had access to Him or they had not. If we adopt the former part of the alternative, no amount of credulity could have mistaken Him for a glorious Messiah rescued from the tomb. The very sight of Him must have acted as a complete extinguisher on the powers of the imagination. If we adopt the latter, it falls under the general head that the belief in the resurrection was merely due to an excited imagination. All the assistance which it renders is to dispose of the dead body.