Modern Skepticism / A Course of Lectures Delivered at the Request of the Christian Evidence Society

by Unknown

Every reader at once recognizes that the character who is there depicted is a superhuman one; or rather, to speak more accurately, it is exhibited as uniting the human and the divine. This is a plain matter of fact, and is quite independent of the question whether the Evangelists were right in so representing it. Nor is my argument at all affected by any supposed difficulty in defining, in the terms of an abstract creed, the precise measure of the divine which they have ascribed to it. All that I contend for is that the Jesus of the Evangelists is dramatized as uniting a divine and human consciousness, and that it is exhibited with a faultless propriety.

Now the moment the mythologists made a movement in this direction, a hundred problems of a most difficult character must have demanded their solution before they could advance a single step. I can only adduce one or two examples. How was the human to be represented as acting in union with the divine, and the divine with the human? In what proportions were they to be combined? How was the one to be prevented from swallowing up the other? Let it be observed that there was no model to guide them. The attempt to exhibit the divine and human in a single personality had never been attempted before.

The difficulty will be at once seen from a reference to the Old Testament. The nearest approach which it exhibits to uniting the human and the divine is in the act of prophetic inspiration. But in this the two factors are invariably distinct. The Old Testament prophet, when under the influence of the prophetical illapse, invariably prefaces his utterances with "Thus saith the Lord." These words are never once placed in the mouth of Jesus throughout the entire Gospels. Instead of them, His most solemn utterances are introduced with the words, "I say unto you." The prophet is generally vehemently excited. The Jesus of the Evangelists is invariably calm.

You must never forget that the position of those against whose theories I am reasoning compels them to assume that the contents of the Gospels have been elaborated by the action of a multitude of minds. Be it so. It follows that these problems must have received as many different solutions as there were minds engaged in the attempt. Instead of the character which resulted therefrom presenting a unity of aspect, it would have been a mass of hopeless confusion.

My limits will only allow me to draw your attention to one or two of these difficulties out of the vast multitude. The historical Jesus was unquestionably crucified. How was a crucified man to be represented as divine? He died in agony. How was an artist to dramatize the divine in suffering? If my hearers are not aware of the difficulties which would have attended the solution of these and kindred questions, I advise them to study the creation of the great Grecian dramatist, the Prometheus Vinctus of Æschylus, and compare it with the Jesus of the Gospels. I am sure that correct taste will pronounce that the creation of the fishermen of Galilee utterly transcends that of the genius of the great tragedian.

Nothing is more difficult, even in works of fiction, than to combine the attributes of holiness and benevolence as harmoniously acting in the same person. In living men they almost invariably jar. They possess them imperfectly, and one generally counteracts the action of the other. The difficulty of combining them is greatly increased if the being uniting them is to be represented as both human and divine. Holiness and benevolence are in fact opposite sides of character, and no more difficult problem can be presented to the imagination than to exhibit them as acting harmoniously in the same character. No question in theology is more embarrassing than the mode in which they coexist in God.

It follows that if the contents of the Gospels were due to a multitude of minds, they must have exhibited as many aspects of the character of a Christ as there were fabulists engaged in its creation. But the character of the Jesus of the Gospels, in its combination of holiness with benevolence, presents us with a complete unity. Not only is the unity complete, but the perfection of the picture is inimitable. Where can we find, either in fact or fiction, anything like the perfection of the holiness and benevolence of the Jesus of the Evangelists? Yet we are asked to believe that it has been a gradual growth created by successions of credulous mythologists.

The moral and religious teaching of the Gospels forms a subject by itself of large dimensions, and it is impossible for me within the limits of a lecture to do more than glance at it.[110] It consists of two perfectly distinct portions: first, the subject of morality and religion as it is exhibited in the person of Jesus Christ; secondly, as He taught them for the use of ordinary men. Most unbelievers will admit that the portraiture of Jesus Christ, as it is exhibited in the Gospels, is one of the most spotless moral beauty, and the greatest elevation. I am quite aware that a few exceptions have been made to it; but some of them are obviously founded on misapprehension, and others are evidently incorrect. At any rate it cannot be denied that the entire moral aspect of the person of Christ is unique in human literature.

No less remarkable is His moral teaching for the use of ordinary men. It is pure, elevated, beneficent, grand. It bears the unquestionable marks of having been the elaboration of a single mind. The parts are adapted to each other and to the whole.

But our Lord's moral character, and His moral teaching as they are exhibited in the Gospels, consist of a number of detached portions, which together make up a complicated whole. Their solution involves such a multiplicity of questions, as to render it difficult to count them. They are questions which the profoundest thinkers have solved in the most varied manner. Yet in the Gospels the mode of their solution is a complete unity. They coalesce with an inimitable beauty. Let unbelievers cavil as they may, an overwhelming majority of the holiest and the best of men have bowed before the character of the Jesus of the Evangelists in humble adoration, and felt that it was immeasurably above them. Numbers of these subjects were inquired into by ancient philosophers with the keenest interest, but they found no adequate solution. My opponents assert that this great character, around which the entire morality of Christianity centres, is not an historical one. How did it then originate? The answer is, that it is founded on the traditional reminiscences of the teaching of a Jewish peasant who died in early manhood; and that the numerous parts of which the character and His teaching consist were unconsciously elaborated in the course of many years by a multitude of credulous, enthusiastic mythologists.