Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 / Devoted to Literature and National Policy

by Various

They may differ in their explanations of the facts. That is the only ground of difference. There is the point of separation. It is perfectly logical too. Prima facie, we have no complaint to make that they do differ. And here lies the improvement in the modern type of 'unbeliever.' He does not take the line of his older brethren, and rudely assail Christianity as a mere imposture with Voltaire and Paine. That sort of work has had its day. He, on the other hand, freely admits its beneficent achievements. He has grown reasonable. He accepts Christianity, as the believer does, as a fruitful, beneficent, and conquering fact. He only holds that its existence and its achievements may be accounted for in a far more satisfactory way than we 'believers' have discovered.

Now all this is comprehensible, and it is really, now, the ground of difference between those who believe in Christianity as divine, and those who hold it to be merely human. It is a clear and simple issue. Christianity accounts for itself and its work on a certain plain, straightforward, and consistent theory. It holds that theory to be reasonable, complete, ample, for all the facts. A number of people join issue just here with Christianity. They admit its facts, but they deny its manner of explaining them. They claim to put forward other methods of explanation, which shall be more reasonable, more natural, and, at the same time, just as ample for the facts. We have had a number of these philosophers, with their theories, and they have had various fortunes. On the whole, the Christian world has gone on about as usual, accepting the old explanation, adopting the old theory, a hundred to one, and has dropped the new theories one after another, after more or less investigation, into profound oblivion.

Now we are free to admit the old theory has its difficulties. There are 'things in it hard to be understood.' There are mysteries and wonders which it does not attempt to explain. There are 'hard sayings' which it leaves hard. And the new theories always claim to have no difficulties. They blame the old one bitterly because it tolerates them. They themselves claim to be 'reasonable,' they 'explain' everything.

They therefore challenge the trial. If they fail to be 'reasonable,' or if they can only be reasonable at the expense of some of the facts—that is to say, if they find no place for some of the authentic facts, and so have to explain them away; or if, on the whole, they make too large drafts on our credulity, and demand too great a power of faith—we have the logical right to dismiss them out of our presence with scant courtesy, and are bound to hold by the old explanation still.

The last man who has come forward with his theory of Christanity is Monsieur Ernest Renan, a Frenchman, a member of the Institute, and a Semitic scholar of some considerable pretensions. He broaches his theory in a book, which he calls 'The Life of Jesus.' He offers it to the world, through that book, as an improvement on the accepted one. We propose here to look at M. Renan's theory, and see whether it has any advantages to offer over that usually taught in churches in America, and which the present writer learned, some lustra ago, while catechized at the chancel veil, and which his children are learning now.

It makes the examination easier that M. Renan freely and fully admits the achievements of Christianity. Indeed he glories over them. The beneficence of Christianity, its hallowing and elevating power in the history of the world, its wondrous blessedness among men, the glory it has cast over human life and human aims, the nobleness it has conferred on human character, all these he takes a pride in confessing and appreciating. He will not be a whit behind the stanchest believer in acknowledging the power of these, or in the capacity of prizing these.

But he cannot accept the explanation Christianity gives of itself. He proposes another of his own. We may take his theory as the fruit and flower of all 'liberal' thought. Here, at last, is what unbelieving learning and philosophy have to offer in lieu of the divine origin of Christianity. After a good deal of loud boasting, after a large amount of supercilious sneering, we have here the result of that 'profound criticism' and that 'careful scholarship' which have been laboring for years, in Europe, to destroy the supernatural bases of faith. We are justified, from M. Renan's position and character, in taking it for granted, that his book is the best that modern unbelief has to offer, his theory the most satisfactory that the deniers of the divine origin of Christianity can frame.

In examining that theory, at the first, a suspicious thing strikes a calm observer. It is the reckless way in which M. Renan deals with his authorities. For, be it remarked that, with only one or two outside hints in Josephus and Tacitus, the Four Gospels contain all that we know of the 'Life of Jesus.' They are formally and professedly His biographies. They were expressly written to present the outlines of His life and teaching in connected form. All that we know of Him, His birth, life, and death, is contained in these four narrations. The utmost learning and the utmost simplicity here stand side by side. The most unlearned reader of The Continental is just as well informed, with the Four Gospels in his hand, as any 'member' of any 'Academy' under the sun. Out of these Four Gospels, M. Renan has to construct his 'Life of Jesus.' But he has a theory, and that theory does not seem to be the one set forth in the Four Gospels; so he just rejects whatever goes against his theory, garbles, clips, denies, assents, and colors, with an assurance, amusing for its impudence, if it were not so criminal for its recklessness.

On the very threshold he asserts, in the teeth of his sole authorities, that Jesus was born in Nazareth! He refers his startled reader to a footnote. That footnote informs him that the 'assessment under Quirinus, by which He is sought to be connected with Bethlehem,' took place ten years after. We are to take this on M. Renan's sole authority. We are to fling the Gospels over on the strength of a footnote! Now it is simply impossible that M. Renan can be ignorant that there are very satisfactory ways of explaining this difficulty, otherwise than by charging a forgery. Josephus, whom he cites to prove the assessment to be ten years after, would have informed him that the preliminary enrolment took place at the time mentioned, and that it did extend over Herod's dominions. Moreover, the authorities for this last fact are not Christian only, as he says. They are Josephus, a Jew, and Suetonius, a pagan.

This is only an instance, on the threshold, of what occurs, a hundred times, in the book. Any statement which stands in the way of the writer's hypothesis, is swept out of existence at one pen-stroke. Calm historical relations, evidently most essential portions of the writings, are treated as forgeries, or deceptions, without a condescending why or wherefore, if they embarrass the writer.