Part 39 (1/2)
The tie was, moreover, far distant
The new sect had no part whatever in the catastrophe which Judaisue did not understand tilllaws of intolerance The e that its future destroyer was born During nearly three hundred years it pursued its path without suspecting that at its side principles were growing destined to subject the world to a complete transformation At once theocratic and deether with the invasion of the Germans, the most active cause of the dissolution of the eht of all doion was henceforth separated in principle frohts of conscience, withdrawn from political law, resulted in the constitution of a neer--the ”spiritual power” This power has es the bishops have been princes, and the Pope has been a king The pretended ehtful tyranny, e the rack and the stake in order to maintain itself But the day will come when the separation will bear its fruits, when the dos spiritual will cease to be called a ”power,” that itfrom the conscience of a man of the people, formed in the presence of the people, beloved and admired first by the people, Christianity was iinal character which will never be effaced It was the first triumph of revolution, the victory of the popular idea, the advent of the siuration of the beautiful as understood by the people Jesus thus, in the aristocratic societies of antiquity, opened the breach through which all will pass
The civil power, in fact, although innocent of the death of Jesus (it only countersigned the sentence, and even in spite of itself), ought to bear a great share of the responsibility In presiding at the scene of Calvary, the state gave itself a serious blow A legend full of all kinds of disrespect prevailed, and becaend in which the constituted authorities played a hateful part, in which it was the accused that was right, and in which the judges and the guards were leagued against the truth Seditious in the highest degree, the history of the Passion, spread by a thousand popular i theit, and a prefect co it
What a blow for all established powers! They have never entirely recovered from it How can they assume infallibility in respect to poor reat mistake of Gethsemane?[1]
[Footnote 1: This popular sentiendararded, like the Jew elsewhere, with a kind of pious aversion, for it was he who arrested Jesus!]
CHAPTER XXVIII
ESSENTIAL CHARACTER OF THE WORK OF JESUS
Jesus, it will be seen, lih his syans into the kingdoan country, and once or te surprise him in kindly relations with unbelievers[1]--it may be said that his life was passed entirely in the very restricted world in which he was born He was never heard of in Greek or Roman countries; his name appears only in profane authors of a hundred years later, and then in an indirect manner, in connection with seditious movements provoked by his doctrine, or persecutions of which his disciples were the object[2]
Even on Judaism, Jesus made no very durable ihtest knowledge of hi in the last years of the century, mentions his execution in a few lines,[3] as an event of secondary importance, and in the enumeration of the sects of his tiether[4] In the _Mishnah_, also, there is no trace of the new school; the passages in the two Geo further back than the fourth or fifth century[5] The essential work of Jesus was to create around him a circle of disciples, whost whoerree that after his death they ceased not to love hireat work of Jesus, and that which most struck his conte it to be written Men did not beco, but in being attached to his person and in loving him A few sentences collected from memory, and especially the type of character he set forth, and the impression it had left, hat remas, or a maker of creeds; he infused into the world a new spirit The least Christian men were, on the one hand, the doctors of the Greek Church, who, beginning froled Christianity in a path of puerile metaphysical discussions, and, on the other, the scholastics of the Latin Middle Ages, ished to draw from the Gospel the thousands of articles of a colossal systedo Christian
[Footnote 1: Matt viii 5, and following; Luke vii 1, and following; John xii 20, and following Comp Jos, _Ant_, XVIII iii 3]
[Footnote 2: Tacitus, _Ann_, xv 45; Suetonius, _Claudius_, 25]
[Footnote 3: _Ant_, XVIII iii 3 This passage has been altered by a Christian hand]
[Footnote 4: _Ant_, XVIII i; _BJ_, II viii; _Vita_, 2]
[Footnote 5: Talm of Jerusalem, _Sanhedrim_, xiv 16; _Aboda zara_, ii 2; _Shabbath_, xiv 4; Talm of Babylon, _Sanhedriigah_, 4 _b_; _Gittin_, 57 _a_, 90 _a_ The two Ge Jesus froend, invented by the adversaries of Christianity, and of no historical value]
[Footnote 6: Jos, _Ant_, XVIII iii 3]
It will thus be understood how, by an exceptional destiny, pure Christianity still preserves, after eighteen centuries, the character of a universal and eternal religion It is, in fact, because the religion of Jesus is in soion Produced by a perfectly spontaneous led three hundred years for liberty of conscience, Christianity, in spite of its failures, still reaps the results of its glorious origin To renew itself, it has but to return to the Gospel The kingdom of God, as we conceive it, differs notably from the supernatural apparition which the first Christians hoped to see appear in the clouds But the sentiment introduced by Jesus into the world is indeed ours His perfect idealishest rule of the unblemished and virtuous life He has created the heaven of pure souls, where is found e ask for in vain on earth, the perfect nobility of the children of God, absolute purity, the total removal of the stains of the world; in fine, liberty, which society excludes as an impossibility, and which exists in all its areat Master of those who take refuge in this ideal kingdom of God is still Jesus He was the first to proclaim the royalty of the doion is indeed his work: after him, all that remains is to develop it and render it fruitful
”Christianity” has thus becoion” All that is done outside of this great and good Christian tradition is barren Jesus gave religion to huave it philosophy, and Aristotle science There was philosophy before Socrates and science before Aristotle Since Socrates and since Aristotle, philosophy and science have ress; but all has been built upon the foundation which they laid In the sah reat conquests: but no one has improved, and no one will improve upon the essential principle Jesus has created; he has fixed forever the idea of pure worshi+p The religion of Jesus in this sense is not limited The Church has had its epochs and its phases; it has shut itself up in creeds which are, or will be but teion, excluding nothing, and deter unless it be the spirit His creeds are not fixed doges susceptible of indefinite interpretations We should seek in vain for a theological proposition in the Gospel All confessions of faith are travesties of the idea of Jesus, just as the scholasticis Aristotle the sole ht of Aristotle Aristotle, if he had been present in the debates of the schools, would have repudiated this narrow doctrine; he would have been of the party of progressive science against the routine which shi+elded itself under his authority; he would have applauded his opponents In the sanize as disciples, not those who pretend to enclose him entirely in a few catechismal phrases, but those who labor to carry on his work The eternal glory, in all great things, is to have laid the first stone It y”
of modern times, we may not discover a word of the treatises of Aristotle which bear these titles; but Aristotle remains no less the founder of natural science Whatever ion; the Sermon on the Mount will never be surpassed Whatever revolution takes place will not prevent us attaching ourselves in religion to the grand intellectual and moral line at the head of which shi+nes the name of Jesus In this sense we are Christians, even e separate ourselves on almost all points from the Christian tradition which has preceded us
And this great foundation was indeed the personal work of Jesus In order to ree, he must have been adorable Love is not enkindled except by an object worthy of it, and we should know nothing of Jesus, if it were not for the passion he inspired in those about hireat and pure The faith, the enthusiaseneration is not explicable, except by supposing at the origin of the whole ht of the es of faith, two iood historical criticism arise in the mind On the one hand we are led to think these creations too impersonal; we attribute to a collective action, that which has often been the work of one powerful will, and of one superior mind On the other hand, we refuse to see men like ourselves in the authors of those extraordinary movements which have decided the fate of huer idea of the pohich Nature conceals in her bosooverned by ive us any idea of the power of inality of each one had a freer field wherein to develop itself Let us i in theout from time to tins, co the sentinels to stand aside, and, with an is the approach of revolutions of which he had been the promoter The very idea provokes a smile Such, however, was Elias; but Elias the Tishbite, in our days, would not be able to pass the gate of the Tuileries The preaching of Jesus, and his free activity in Galilee, do not deviate less completely from the social conditions to which we are accustomed Free from our polished conventionalities, exempt froreatly dwarfs our individuality, these y into action They appear to us like the giants of an heroic age, which could not have been real Profound error! Those men were our brothers; they were of our stature, felt and thought as we do But the breath of God was free in them; with us, it is restrained by the iron bonds of a mean society, and condemned to an irremediable mediocrity
Let us place, then, the person of Jesus at the highest suerated doubts in the presence of a legend which keeps us always in a superhuman world The life of Francis d'assisi is also but a tissue of miracles Has any one, however, doubted of the existence of Francis d'assisi, and of the part played by hilory of the foundation of Christianity belongs to the end has deified The inequality of men is much more marked in the East than with us It is not rare to see arise there, in the eneral atreatness astonishes us So far fro been created by his disciples, he appeared in everything as superior to his disciples The latter, with the exception of St Paul and St John, were enius St Paul himself bears no comparison with Jesus, and as to St John, I shall show hereafter, that the part he played, though very elevated in one sense, was far fro in all respects irreproachable Hence the is of the New Testa froelists thee of Jesus, are so much beneath hiure his are full of errors and misconceptions We feel in each line a discourse of divine beauty, transcribed by narrators who do not understand it, and who substitute their own ideas for those which they have only half understood On the whole, the character of Jesus, far froraphers, has been lowered by them Criticism, in order to find what he was, needs to discard a series offrom the inferiority of the disciples These painted hi to raise him, they have in reality lowered him
I know that our end, conceived by another race, under another sky, and in the midst of other social wants There are virtues which, in some respects, are entle Marcus Aurelius, the hu believed in miracles, have been free from some errors that Jesus shared Spinoza, in his profound obscurity, had an advantage which Jesus did not seek
By our extreme delicacy in the use of means of conviction, by our absolute sincerity and our disinterested love of the pure idea, we have founded--all ho have devoted our lives to science--a new ideal of ht not to be restricted to considerations of personal merit Marcus Aurelius and his noble teachers have had no permanent influence on the world
Marcus Aurelius left behind hi nation Jesus reeneration for humanity Philosophy does not suffice for the multitude They must have sanctity An Apollonius of Tyana, with his end, is necessarily more successful than a Socrates with his cold reason ”Socrates,” it was said, ”leaves men on the earth, Apollonius transports thee, Apollonius is a God”[1] Religion, so far, has not existed without a share of asceticism, of piety, and of the marvellous When it ished, after the Antonines, to ion of philosophy, it was requisite to transfor Life” of Pythagoras or Plotinus, to attribute to theend, virtues of abstinence, contemplation, and supernatural powers, without which neither credence nor authority were found in that age
[Footnote 1: Philostratus, _Life of Apollonius_, i 2, vii 11, viii
7; Unapius, _Lives of the Sophists_, pages 454, 500 (edition Didot)]
Preserve us, then, fro history in order to satisfy our petty susceptibilities! Which of us, pigant Francis d'assisi, or the hysterical saint Theresa, has done? Let rand errors of huenius is a disease of the brain; let it see, in a certain delicacy of morality, the commencement of consumption; let it class enthusiasm and love as nervous accidents--it matters little The terms healthy and diseased are entirely relative Who would not prefer to be diseased like Pascal, rather than healthy like the common herd? The narrow ideas which are spread in our timents in the most serious manner, in questions of this kind A state in which a ht is produced without the su confined as a lunatic Formerly this was called prophecy and inspiration The s in the world are done in a state of fever; every great creation involves a breach of equilibriu which draws it forth
We acknowledge, indeed, that Christianity is too cole man In one sense, entire humanity has co-operated therein There is no one so shut in, as not to receive some influence froe coincidences, which cause very remote portions of the human species, without any communication with each other, to arrive at the sainations In the thirteenth century, the Latins, the Greeks, the Syrians, the Jews, and the Mussulmans, adopted scholasticism, and very nearly the same scholasticism from York to Samarcand; in the fourteenth century every one in Italy, Persia, and India, yielded to the taste for ory; in the sixteenth, art was developed in a very similar manner in Italy, at Mount Athos, and at the court of the Great Moguls, without St Thomas, Barhebraeus, the Rabbis of Narbonne, or the _Motecalle known each other, without Dante and Petrarch having seen any _sofi_, without any pupil of the schools of Perouse or of Florence having been at Delhi We should say there are great h the world like epidemics, without distinction of frontier and of race The interchange of ideas in the human species does not take place only by books or by direct instruction Jesus was ignorant of the very name of Buddha, of Zoroaster, and of Plato; he had read no Greek book, no Buddhist Sudra; nevertheless, there was in hi it, came from Buddhism, Parseeish secret channels and by that kind of sy the various portions of hu froe To show that the religion founded by Jesus was the natural consequence of that which had gone before, does not diminish its excellence; but only proves that it had a reason for its existence that it was legitimate, that is to say, confore
Is it more just to say that Jesus owes all to Judaisreatness is only that of the Jewish people? No one is h this unique people, whose particular gift seeood and evil No doubt, Jesus proceeded from Judaism; but he proceeded from it as Socrates proceeded from the schools of the Sophists, as Luther proceeded froes, as Lahteenth century A ainst his age and his race Far fro continued Judaiseneral direction of Christianity after him does not permit the supposition that his idea in this respect could lead to any eneral march of Christianity has been to remove itself more andto Jesus, but certainly not in returning to Judaisinality of the founder reitimate sharer