Part 13 (1/2)
I am sad. I have lived too long.
GRANDFATHER.
(From Bernal Linford to the Reverend Allan Delcher.)
_Grandad:_ It's all so plain, you must see it. I told you I had crossed to the farther bank. Here is what one finds there: Taking him as G.o.d, Jesus is ineffectual. Only as an obviously fallible human man does he become beautiful; only as a man is he dignified, worthy, great--or even plausible.
The instinct of the Jews did not mislead them. Jesus was too fine, too good, to have come from their tribal G.o.d; yet too humanly limited to have come from G.o.d, save as we all come from Him.
Since you insist that he be considered as G.o.d, I shall point out those things which make him small--as a G.o.d. I would rather consider him as a man and point out those things which make him great to me--things which I cannot read without wet eyes--but you will not consider him as man, so let him be a G.o.d, and let us see what we see. It is customary to speak of his ”sacrifice.” What was it? Our catechism says, ”Christ's humiliation consisted in his being born, and that in a low condition, made under the law, undergoing the miseries of this life, the wrath of G.o.d and the cursed death of the cross; in being buried and continuing under the power of death for a time.”
As I write the words I wonder that the thing should ever have seemed to any one to be more than a wretched piece of G.o.d-jugglery, devoid of integrity. Are we to conceive G.o.d then as a being of carnal appet.i.tes, humiliated by being born into the family of an honest carpenter, instead of into the family of a King? This is the somewhat sn.o.bbish imputation.
Let us be done with G.o.ds playing at being human, or at being half G.o.d and half human. The time has come when, to prolong its usefulness, the Church must concede--nay, proclaim--the manhood of Jesus; must separate him from that atrocious scheme of human sacrifice, the logical extension of a primitive Hebrew mythology--and take him in the only way that he commands attention: As a man, one of the world's great spiritual teachers.
Insisting upon his G.o.ds.h.i.+p can only make him preposterous to the modern mind. Jesus, born to a carpenter's wife of Nazareth, declares himself, one day about his thirtieth year, to be the Christ, the second person in the universe, who will come in a cloud of glory to judge the world. He will save into everlasting life those who believe him to be of divine origin.
Yet he has been called meek! Surely never was a more arrogant character in history--never one less meek than this carpenter's son who ranks himself second only to G.o.d, with power to send into everlasting h.e.l.l those who disbelieve him! He went abroad in fine arrogance, railing at lawyers and the rich, rebuking, reproving, hurling angry epithets, attacking what we to-day call ”the decent element.” He called the people constantly ”Fools,”
”Blind Leaders of the Blind,” ”faithless and perverse,” ”a generation of vipers,” ”sinful,” ”evil and adulterous,” ”wicked,” ”hypocrites,” ”whited sepulchres.”
As the G.o.d he wors.h.i.+pped was a tribal G.o.d, so he at first believed himself to be a tribal saviour. He directed his disciples thus: ”Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not. But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel”--(who emphatically rejected and slew him for his pretensions). To the woman of Canaan whose daughter was vexed with a devil, he said: ”It is not meet to take the children's bread to cast it to dogs.” Imagine a G.o.d calling a woman a dog _because she was not of his own tribe!_
And the vital test of G.o.dhood he failed to meet: It is his own test, whereby he disproves his G.o.ds.h.i.+p out of his own mouth. Compare these sayings of Jesus, each typical of him:
”Resist not evil; but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.” Yet he said to his Twelve:
”And whosoever shall not receive you nor hear you, when you depart thence shake off the dust of your feet for a testimony against them.”
Is that the consistency of a G.o.d or a man?
Again: ”Blessed are the merciful,” _but_ ”Verily I say unto you it shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city.” Is this the mercy which he tells us is blessed?
Again: ”And as ye would that men should do to you do ye also to them likewise.” Another: ”Woe unto thee, Chorazin, woe unto thee, Bethsaida ...
and thou, Capernaum, which are exalted unto heaven, shall be brought down to h.e.l.l.” Is not this preaching the golden rule and practicing something else, as a man might?
Again: ”Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you.
”For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? Do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren, what do ye more than others? Do not even the publicans so?” That, sir, is a sentiment that proves the claim of Jesus to be a teacher of morals. Here is one which, placed beside it, proves him to have been a man.
”_Whosoever shall confess me before men, him shall the son of man also confess before the angels of G.o.d_;
”_but whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my father, which is in heaven._”
Is it G.o.d speaking--or man? ”_Do not even the publicans so?_”
Beside this very human contradiction, it is hardly worth while to hear him say ”Resist not evil,” yet make a scourge of cords to drive the money-changers from the temple in a fit of rage, human--but how unG.o.dlike!