Part 14 (1/2)

We require no display of spiritual pyrotechnics. Enough for us that there is truth, and that we have the intellect to perceive it-that there is right, and we have the will to obey it. Neither a human G.o.d nor a divine man can enlighten us further than this. There are freedom and impulse for us to attain the highest degree of illumination of which we are capable. The human aspiration soars beyond the path of the lightning. In every n.o.ble idea, every worthy desire, we have a mediator with G.o.d. The more silent the work, the more certain that the principle of all life is performing it. In this is our eternity, and there is nothing beyond.

CHAPTER XI. THE IDEAL CHRIST

_”What think ye of Christ? Whose son was he?”-Matt. 22: 42._

NEARLY a quarter of a century ago (1868) a very remarkable pamphlet was published by request of the Free Religious a.s.sociation, written by that remarkable man, the Rev. Samuel Johnson, a Unitarian minister and an author of no little repute. The subject was _The Wors.h.i.+p of Jesus._ It had a very limited circulation, and the stereotype plates were destroyed in the great Boston fire, and it is now very difficult to find a copy.

Mr. Johnson takes the ground that ”Christianity is a temporary step in the divine growth of man through the wors.h.i.+p of the ideal; and this hope lies, not in pausing on this step as final, nor in proving the names and personalities a.s.sociated with it to be as valid for ever as they have been in the past, but in that which underlies and governs the whole process-_the law of religious idealization._

”This is no speculation; it is the positive law of progress, as history presents it. To wors.h.i.+p ideals is the condition of spiritual life. To lose belief that there is somewhere a better than ourselves is to gravitate downward to what is worse than ourselves. We grow better by definite homage to a best. And this wors.h.i.+p of ideals is a process of idealization.... Man's power of growth, therefore, resides in the ability to s.h.i.+ft his veneration....

”Ideals prove themselves to be idealizations, that they may point him on to higher levels. This is religious progress....

”So a time comes when every religion that centres in an individual's prerogative of divinity falls under criticism, and is, so far, referred to temporary causes. Christianity cannot escape this law. As a distinct religion it is but Christism, and pa.s.ses away, like Jehovism, before a broader faith. Whether what succeeds it be called Theism or Pantheism, this terminology of systems fails to express its scope. It is free wors.h.i.+p of the one infinite and eternal life of the spiritual, moral, and physical universe....

”How, then, did the concentration of the religious sentiment upon Jesus originate? Not, as the Church insists, in the undeniable rights of a perfect Being to the everlasting allegiance of mankind, for there is no evidence of his perfection, intellectual or spiritual, but in the fact that the religious sentiment, at a certain stage of its historical progress, demanded a single human centre, and knew how to satisfy its own demand by its own process of idealization.

”The ideal itself was sent in the soul of the age. It was bound to do what it would with its materials by its own divine gift. It was the creative force of the time. It is not the whole truth to say with Merivale, then, that( the religion of Christ seized and developed, with a divine energy, the latent yearnings of mankind for social combination, having for its essence, in a human point of view, the doctrine of the equality of man/ Rather did that religion catch a spirit of universality already abroad in the age-not latent, but mighty to transform society, to inspire both Hebrew Messiah and Gentile philosopher, _to make its G.o.d in its own image_, and to transform the little Jewish sect at last into a Church of civilization....

”And this, at least, is sure; always there is a man for the hour.

Somehow or other, a great demand will find satisfaction. But the man is not what the hour reports him when it has crowned him with all that faith and fancy can bestow, and set up, through him, its own special demand as valid for all time. Future ages will revise, from a freer standpoint, the image it transmits for their adoration....

”The earliest types and emblems of Christ-wors.h.i.+p betray this powerful element in its origination. Jesus is represented in the form of the old deities and in conjunction with them. Between the images of Mercury Criophorus and Apollo Nomius, and that of the 'Good Shepherd/ the transition is so gradual that it is hard to decide whether the picture is pagan or Christian. In the Catacombs Jesus sits as Pluto on the judgment-seat, with Mary as Proserpine, while Mercury leads in souls.

Still earlier emblems of Jesus, the Lamb, the Fish, the s.h.i.+p, the Cross, the Dove, are all a.s.sociated with older heathen mysteries or mythological beliefs, as are also the Christian festivals and rites.

”And so the idealization of Jesus went on steadily and consistently till it reached deification. The early Christian 'apologists' ridiculed the human G.o.ds of the old polytheism, yet they did but concentrate the same principle more perfectly in the form of their Christ. Hebrew monotheism was indeed too strong in Paul to allow of his finding in Jesus more than a man in whom the fulness of the G.o.dhead dwelt. But this hovers very close upon the larger desire of the nations. And later, in the Gospel of John, the Gentile current has absorbed the Hebrew and the call for a G.o.d-man is boldly met. A life of Jesus is here dramatically constructed, not out of historical facts, nor even traditions, but out of that preconceived ideal of an incarnate word attaching itself, in its longing for actual and living substance, to the growing prestige of his name....

”The records of Jesus' life have had to be idealized also; and these are not, like his person, so dim and veiled as to leave the religions imagination a certain margin of freedom, however inadequate, but a definite statement of doctrines, doings, and claims; so that science, philosophy, art, and morality have been taught to bow in his name to the limitations of half-developed times and men.

”It is not denied that by leaving out what we dislike we can find in the New-Testament Jesus as n.o.ble an ideal as we will, though it can be only of a purely interior individualism, unrelated to practical and political functions. But we cannot ignore the many sources, apart from the real life of Jesus, from which this feast of good things has been derived.

The New Testament is, in fact, not so much the record of a life as the fruit of two ancient civilizations, the Oriental and Greek, of whose confluence Christianity itself was the product....

”It is urged that we destroy the basis of religious unity when we take away this historical and personal centre of faith. Men absolutely need, it is said, that concrete form, that individuality, under which the divine is represented to them in the Christ. There would be more cause for this anxiety if it could be shown that they have ever possessed such a centre. But what have they had, after all, but a common name for ever-changing ideals? The belief that all eyes were turned to a common authoritative centre was an illusion, which had its uses, indeed, but becomes a breeder of strife in proportion as men learn the rights of free inquiry. 'Wors.h.i.+p the Christ! follow Jesus!' cry the ages. But who is Jesus? and what is the Christ? The Jesus of Matthew is one, the Christ of John is another, the 'second Adam' of Paul is a third. The moral as well as the theological contents of the name vary with the ages and the sects that appeal to it. As the Christ of Luther was not the Christ of Augustine, nor his the Christ of James, so the Christ of the Unitarian is one, of the Calvinist another. Whom the one will save, the other will destroy; what to the one is moral wrong, to the other is divine right; what love would require in the one, justice would foreclose in the other. What common centre can the liberal Bible scholars and the panic-stricken, text-ridden Revivalists find in the name of Christ? All the warring sects have been 'standing up for Jesus;'

and which of them knows what Jesus was? The farther you get back toward the original, the less sure do you feel of your own knowledge, and the less right should you feel from what you know in part to a.s.sume that you have found the appointed centre of religious thought. It would be easy to show that unity is impossible so long as it is sought to found it on the claims of a person to that position, since the mysterious irrationality of such an office must keep the speculative faculties of mankind in ceaseless self-contradiction and strife. It would be easy to show that this claim of Jesus has been the perpetual root of dogmatic warfare-that all barbarism of the Christian Church in past ages has come of jealousy about the honor due the person of the Christ.” We offer no apology for these long extracts from Mr. Johnson's inimitable little book of ninety pages. ”He being dead yet speaketh,” and his words give no uncertain sound. He was in advance of the times, and if his brethren in the Unitarian ministry would regard Jesus, whom they almost deify, as an _ideal_ (quite imperfect) that has come down to us from pagan peoples, and cease to court the favor of the orthodox, they would have more self-respect and more real regard from the thinking men of the age.

We might as well now come directly to the question whether the Jesus of the Gospels was an _ideal_ rather than a historical individual-an _impersonation_ rather than a person. And here we take the broad ground that whether there was a real man or not makes no difference whatever, because the writings themselves are largely _ideal_, and so make the man what he was not. No two persons wors.h.i.+p the same G.o.d, the ”personified Infinite.” The conception of G.o.d must itself be limited and incomplete, and therefore inadequate and largely ideal. No two persons believe in the same Jesus, so there must be as many ideals as there are believers.

The habit of exaggerating, of deifying those whom we have been taught to regard as the greatest and best, is a well-known disposition of the human mind. Indeed, ”the function of the Church is the cultivation of the ideal.” This is so palpable that the legends of all religions recognize this principle to such an extent that most of them represent their ”saviors” as having been born of virgin mothers. Catholics flock to their temples and in parrot-like utterances wors.h.i.+p an ideal Jesus and an equally ideal Virgin, and thus cultivate only the ideal side of their nature. It is very much easier to excite the imagination than to convince the understanding; and this is the real secret of the strength of Catholicism and of the weakness of Protestantism. Catholic wors.h.i.+p is mainly spectacular, an appeal to the senses, and is therefore attractive alike to the uneducated and the educated. They believe the Gospels _literally_, because they have had the princ.i.p.al incidents recorded in them set forth before their eyes from their very birth, and they cannot be reasoned out of what they have never been reasoned into.

But we are told that Jesus must have been a real person or he never could have exerted the influence that he has for the last eighteen hundred years upon so many millions of people. Let us see: If Jesus ever dwelt upon this earth, it must have been several hundred years ago. Not one of the many millions who have wors.h.i.+pped him since his few years of sojourn here but have done so in view of what they have heard of him or read of him. They never saw him and never heard his voice. He wrote nothing, and never authorized any one else to write anything. After the lapse of nearly two centuries the four Gospels appeared. Very little is told of him there. If you take out what is repeated concerning him therein, you would not have, in length, what would make a modern sermon; and that would be found full of contradictions, absurdities, and impossibilities. Those who have believed on him have believed on what they called _testimony_ concerning him; and that testimony would have produced the same effect whether true or false if they really _believed_ it. The real existence of an alleged person is not essential to excite admiration if it is really _believed_ that he existed. The Swiss loved and honored William Tell just as much as if he had not in these latter years been proved a myth. The world's history teems with the heroic deeds of many n.o.ble persons (impersonations) who never had an existence, and the literature of the race would greatly suffer by striking out all that is fict.i.tious. The reason that the ideal Christ has exerted so much greater influence than any other impersonation is because so many skilful artists have bestowed their best labor upon it, and because the figure is so ancient and contains so many features that commend themselves to the human mind and heart.

We find in _Natural Genesis_, by the English poet Gerald Ma.s.sey, a pa.s.sage which so beautifully portrays our own view of this subject that we cannot forbear copying it:

”It has often been said that if there were no historic Christ then the writers who represented such a conception of the divine man must have included amongst them one who was equal to the Christ. But the mythical Christ was not the outcome of any such conception. It was not a work of the individual mind at all, but of the human race-a crowning result of evolution _versus_ any private conception of a hero. This was the hero of all men, who never was and was never meant to be human, but from the beginning was divine; a mythical hero without mortal model, and equally without fault or flaw. This was the star-G.o.d who dawned through the outermost darkness; this was the moon-G.o.d who brought the message of renewal and immortality; this was the sun-G.o.d who came with the morning to all men; this in the Kronian stage was the announcer of new life and endless continuity at the opening of every cycle, and in the psychotheistic phase the typical son of the Eternal as manifester and representative in time.

”As a mental model the Christ was elaborated by whole races of men, and worked at continually, like the Apollo of Greek sculpture. Various nations wrought at this ideal, which long-continued repet.i.tion evoked from the human mind at last as it did the Greek G.o.d from the marble.

”Egypt labored at the portrait for thousands of years before the Greeks added their finis.h.i.+ng touches to the type of the ever-youthful solar G.o.d. It was Egypt that first made the statue live with her own life, and humanized her ideal of the divine. Hers was the legend of supreme pity and self-sacrifice so often told of the canonical Christ. She related how the very G.o.d did leave the courts of heaven and come down as a little child, the infant Horus born of the Virgin, through whom he took flesh or descended into matter, < crossed=”” the=”” earth=”” as=”” a=”” subst.i.tute/=”” descended=”” into=”” hades=”” as=”” the=”” vivifier=”” of=”” the=”” dead,=”” their=”” vicarious=”” justifier=”” and=”” redeemer,=”” the=”” first-fruits=”” and=”” leader=”” of=”” the=”” resurrection=”” into=”” eternal=”” life.=”” the=”” christian=”” legends=”” were=”” first=”” related=”” of=”” horus,=”” or=”” osiris,=”” who=”” was=”” the=”” embodiment=”” of=”” divine=”” goodness,=”” wisdom,=”” truth,=”” and=”” purity-who=”” personated=”” ideal=”” perfection=”” in=”” each=”” sphere=”” of=”” manifestation=”” and=”” every=”” phase=”” of=”” power.=”” this=”” was=”” the=”” greatest=”” hero=”” that=”” ever=”” lived=”” in=”” the=”” mind=”” of=”” man-not=”” in=”” the=”” flesh-to=”” influence=”” with=”” transforming=”” force;=”” the=”” only=”” hero=”” to=”” whom=”” the=”” miracles=”” were=”” natural=”” because=”” he=”” was=”” not=”” human.=”” the=”” canonical=”” christ=”” only=”” needed=”” a=”” translator,=”” not=”” a=”” creator,=”” a=”” transcriber=”” of=”” the=”” 'sayings'=”” and=”” a=”” collector=”” of=”” the=”” 'doings'=”” already=”” ascribed=”” to=”” the=”” mythical=””>

”The humanized history is but the mythical drama made mundane. The sayings and marvellous doings of Christ being pre-extant, the 'spirit of Christ,' the 'secret of Christ,' the 'sweet reasonableness of Christ'

were all pre-Christian, and consequently could not be derived from any 'personal founder' of Christianity. They were extant before the great delusion had turned the minds of men and the figure-head of Peter's bark had been mistaken for a portrait of the builder.