We regard him * * as the perfection of the spiritual character, as surpassing all men of all times in the closeness and depth of his communion with the Father. In reading his sayings, we feel that we are holding converse with the wisest, purest, noblest being that ever clothed thought in the poor language of humanity. In studying his life we feel that we are following the footsteps of the highest ideal yet presented to us upon earth.
By the very next sentence Gregg's eulogy upon Christ becomes an eulogy upon the Old Testament. He says the Old Testament contained his teaching; it was reserved for him to elicit, publish and enforce it.—Creed of Christendom, pp. 300, 310.
"But it must not be forgotten that though many of the Christian precepts were extant before the time of Jesus, yet it is to him that we owe them; to the energy, the beauty, the power of his teaching, and still more to the sublime life he led, which was a daily and hourly exposition and enforcement of his teaching."—Gregg, C.C.
Strauss allows that it was not possible that the early Christians should have looked upon Christ as their Redeemer and Mediator between God and men, if the apostles had not proclaimed this very doctrine; and the apostles could not have preached it if Jesus himself had not designated himself as the Redeemer from sin, guilt and death, and demanded faith in himself as a religious act. He asserts that the distinguishing features of the Christian church must be traced to Christ, his ministry and teachings about himself; that Christ claimed the power to secure peace to his followers. He also claims that the moral and religious character of Christ is above every suspicion, and unequaled in its kind. He says, "The purely spiritual and ethical conceptions of God as the 'only one,' he owed to his Jewish education, and, also the purity of his being. But the Greecian element in Jesus was his cheerfulness, arising from his unsullied mind." Again he says, Jesus, by cultivating a frame of mind that was cheerful, in union with God, and embracing all men as brethren, had realized the prophetic ideal of a New Covenant with the heart inscribed law; he had to speak with the poet, received God into his will; so that for him the Godhead had descended from its throne, the abyss was filled up, all fear was vanished. His beautifully organized nature had but to develop itself to be more fully and clearly confirmed in its consciousness of itself, but needed not to return to begin a new life.
Gregg, the Deist, after presenting Jesus as the "one towering, perpetual miracle of history," says, "Next in perfection come the views which Christianity unfolds to us of God in his relation to man, which were probably as near the truth as the minds of men could in that age receive. God is represented as our Father in heaven, to be whose especial children is the best reward of the peace-makers, to see whose face is the highest hope of the pure in heart, who is ever at hand to strengthen his true worshipers, to whom is due our heartiest love, our humblest submission, whose most acceptable worship is righteous conduct and a holy heart, in whose constant presence our life is passed, to whose merciful disposal we are resigned by death. His relation to us is alone insisted on. All that is needed for our consolation, our strength, our guidance, is assured to us. The purely speculative is passed over and ignored." It may be that the prospect of an "exceeding, even an eternal weight of glory" may be needed to support our frail purposes under the crushing afflictions of our mortal lot. It may be that, by the perfect arrangements of Omnipotence, the sufferings of all may be made to work out the ultimate and supreme good of each. He next makes this grand concession: To the orthodox Christian, who fully believes all he professes, cheerful resignation to the divine will is comparatively a natural, an easy, a simple thing. To the religious philosopher (meaning such as himself) it is the highest exercise of intellect and virtue. The man who has realized the faith that his own lot is so regulated by God as unerringly to work for his highest good—with such a man, resignation, patience, nay cheerful acquiescence in all suffering and sorrow, appear to be in fact only the simple and practical expression of his belief. If, believing all this, he still murmers and rebels at the trials and contrarieties of his lot, he is of the childishness of the infant which quarrels with the medicine that is to lead it back to health and ease.
Huxley says: "The belief that the divine commands are identical with the laws of social morality has left infinite strength to the latter in all ages. The lover of moral beauty, struggling through a world full of sorrow and sin, is surely as much the stronger for believing that sooner or later a vision of perfect peace and goodness will burst upon him, as the toiler up a mountain for the belief that beyond crag and snow lie home and rest."—Modern Symposium, page 250, 1.
Baldwin Brown, of the Liberal School, speaking of a very singular effort of Mr. Harrison, says: "I rejoice in the passionate earnestness with which he lifts the hearts of his readers to ideals which it seems to me—that Christianity which as a living force in the Apostles' days turned the world upside down, that is right side up, with its face toward heaven and God—alone can realize for man. I recall a noble passage written by Mr. Harrison some years ago: 'A religion of action, a religion of social duty, devotion to an intelligible and sensible head, a real sense of incorporation with a living and controlling force, the deliberate effort to serve an immortal humanity—this, and this alone can absorb the musings and the cravings of the spiritual man.' A.J. Davis speaking of the first century, says: 'Jesus Christ and his apostles were at this time establishing the only true religion.'"
Now, I wish to say a few things in view of all that I have given from the opposite side. And first, as it is the part of science to find a cause for every effect, we will look after the causes as given by those men who reject the essential divinity of the religion of Christ, and also look after the strength or weakness of their cause, as the case may be:
1. What is the cause of the character they ascribe to the Christ? We will begin with the Deist Gregg. He claims that God has endowed men differently—has endowed some with brains so much larger and finer than those of ordinary men as to enable them to see and originate truths which are hidden from the mass; and that when it is his will that mankind should make some great step forward, should achieve some pregnant discovery, that is, discovery loaded with benefits to our race, he calls into being some cerebral organization of more than ordinary magnitude and power, as that of David, Isaiah, Plato, Shakespeare, Bacon, Newton, Luther, Pascal. Here we discover the cause of the superior character of Christ as a teacher, which is assigned by all the leading spirits in modern unbelief, viz: a finely endowed cerebral organization, and a Jewish education; these are constantly presented as sufficient to meet the scientific demand for the cause of his life and teachings, or the cause of Christianity. But there is a scientific demand lying behind all this, viz: what is the cause of this fine cerebral organization, which was so wonderful as to produce the most wonderful character of all ages? The answer, given in the clear-cut words of all except Atheists, who say there is no God, is this, "The all-wise disposer of all things sends just such men into our race, when any great step forward is necessary to be made—that he endows them with direct reference to the discoveries and achievements to be made." So the great cause, after all, is, upon their own showing, the will and power of God; for if he endowed him, as they claim, with direct reference to his teachings and achievements, it follows of necessity, that he willed that those very teachings and achievements should not only be made, but be made just when they were, and just as they were; so Christianity finds its origin in God, and is a manifestation from God, according to the showing of Gregg and Strauss. For Strauss will have it that the finite must not be separated from God. But you must remember that Strauss is a Pantheist, and that he, as such, claims that the infinite, or God, who with him is not a person, but all-pervading life, receives the finite into itself, and so it becomes a part of the idea of the Godhead; in such a manner, however, that it is not peculiar to Jesus alone, but to humanity as such. So Strauss reaches the same thought that Gregg expresses—so far as the relation of Christ to Godhead is concerned. While he and Strauss differ upon the subject of the Godhead, one being a Deist and the other a Pantheist, they find their agreement in naturalism, that is to say, they account for the Christ character upon the score of his being more finely organized and endowed by relation to the Godhead; Gregg claims that this is attributable to an all-wise Godhead, and Strauss claims that it is attributable to the all-pervading life, or Pantheistic Godhead, and both include as a second cause of his character his education.
We then systematize as follows: first, the Deist who accepts the character of Christ as exhibiting a superior life. His first cause for the existence of Christianity is the fine organization of Christ. His second cause is his education. The pantheist has it as follows: first cause for the existence of Christianity, the fine organization of Christ. Second cause, his education; both, however, must find a cause behind that fine organization, and that cause, they claim, is the Godhead, however much they may differ about that Godhead.