III. I have been asserting, that he who believes Jesus to be mere man, ought at once to believe his moral excellence finite and comparable to that of other men; and, that our judgment to this effect cannot be reasonably overborne by the "universal consent" of Christendom.—Thus far we are dealing a priori, which here fully satisfies me: in such an argument I need no a posteriori evidence to arrive at my own conclusion. Nevertheless, I am met by taunts and clamour, which are not meant to be indecent, but which to my feeling are such. My critics point triumphantly to the four gospels, and demand that I will make a personal attack on a character which they revere, even when they know that I cannot do so without giving great offence. Now if any one were to call my old schoolmaster, or my old parish priest, a perfect and universal Model, and were to claim that I would entitle him Lord, and think of him as the only true revelation of God; should I not be at liberty to say, without disrespect, that "I most emphatically deprecate such extravagant claims for him"? Would this justify an outcry, that I will publicly avow what I judge to be his defects of character, and will prove to all his admirers that he was a sinner like other men? Such a demand would be thought, I believe, highly unbecoming and extremely unreasonable. May not my modesty, or my regard for his memory, or my unwillingness to pain his family, be accepted as sufficient reasons for silence? or would any one scoffingly attribute my reluctance to attack him, to my conscious inability to make good my case against his being "God manifest in the flesh"? Now what, if one of his admirers had written panegyrical memorials of him; and his character, therein described, was so faultless, that a stranger to him was not able to descry any moral defeat whatever in it? Is such a stranger bound to believe him to be the Divine Standard of morals, unless he can put his finger on certain passages of the book which imply weaknesses and faults? And is it insulting a man, to refuse to worship him? I utterly protest against every such pretence. As I have an infinitely stronger conviction that Shakespeare was not in intellect Divinely and Unapproachably perfect, than that I can certainly point out in him some definite intellectual defect; as, moreover, I am vastly more sure that Socrates was morally imperfect, than that I am able to censure him rightly; so also, a disputant who concedes to me that Jesus is a mere man, has no right to claim that I will point out some moral flaw in him, or else acknowledge him to be a Unique Unparalleled Divine Soul. It is true, I do see defects, and very serious ones, in the character of Jesus, as drawn by his disciples; but I cannot admit that my right to disown the pretensions made for him turns on my ability to define his frailties. As long as (in common with my friend) I regard Jesus as a man, so long I hold with dogmatic and intense conviction the inference that he was morally imperfect, and ought not to be held up as unapproachable in goodness; but I have, in comparison, only a modest belief that I am able to show his points of weakness.

While therefore in obedience to this call, which has risen from many quarters, I think it right not to refuse the odious task pressed upon me,—I yet protest that my conclusion does not depend upon it. I might censure Socrates unjustly, or at least without convincing my readers, if I attempted that task; but my failure would not throw a feather's weight into the argument that Socrates was a Divine Unique and universal Model. If I write note what is painful to readers, I beg them to remember that I write with much reluctance, and that it is their own fault if they read.

In approaching this subject, the first difficulty is, to know how much of the four gospels to accept as fact. If we could believe the whole, it would be easier to argue; but my friend Martineau (with me) rejects belief of many parts: for instance, he has but a very feeble conviction that Jesus ever spoke the discourses attributed to him in John's gospel. If therefore I were to found upon these some imputation of moral weakness, he would reply, that we are agreed in setting these aside, as untrustworthy. Yet he perseveres in asserting that it is beyond all reasonable question what Jesus was; as though proven inaccuracies in all the narratives did not make the results uncertain. He says that even the poor and uneducated are fully impressed with "the majesty and sanctity" of Christ's mind; as if this were what I am fundamentally denying; and not, only so far as would transcend the known limits of human nature: surely "majesty and sanctity" are not inconsistent with many weaknesses. But our judgment concerning a man's motives, his temper, and his full conquest over self, vanity and impulsive passion, depends on the accurate knowledge of a vast variety of minor points; even the curl of the lip, or the discord of eye and mouth, may change our moral judgment of a man; while, alike to my friend and me it is certain that much of what is stated is untrue. Much moreover of what he holds to be untrue does not seem so to any but to the highly educated. In spite therefore of his able reply, I abide in my opinion that he is unreasonably endeavouring to erect what is essentially a piece of doubtful biography and difficult literary criticism into first-rate religious importance.

I shall however try to pick up a few details which seem, as much as any, to deserve credit, concerning the pretensions, doctrine and conduct of Jesus.

First, I believe that he habitually spoke of himself by the title "Son of Man"—a fact which pervades all the accounts, and was likely to rivet itself on his hearers. Nobody but he himself ever calls him Son of Man.

Secondly I believe that in assuming this title he tacitly alluded to the viith chapter of Daniel, and claimed for himself the throne of judgment over all mankind.—I know no reason to doubt that he actually delivered (in substance) the discourse in Matth. xxv. "When the Son of Man shall come in his glory,... before him shall be gathered all nations,... and he shall separate them, &c. &c.": and I believe that by the Son of Man and the King he meant himself. Compare Luke xii. 40, ix. 56.

Thirdly, I believe that he habitually assumed the authoritative dogmatic tone of one who was a universal Teacher in moral and spiritual matters, and enunciated as a primary duty of men to learn submissively of his wisdom and acknowledge his supremacy. This element in his character, the preaching of himself is enormously expanded in the fourth gospel, but it distinctly exists in Matthew. Thus in Matth. xxiii 8: "Be not ye called Rabbi [teacher], for one is your Teacher, even Christ; and all ye are brethren"... Matth. x. 32: "Whosoever shall confess ME before men, him will I confess before my Father which is in heaven... He that loveth father or mother more than ME is not worthy of ME, &c."... Matth. xi. 27: "All things are delivered unto ME of my Father; and no man knoweth the Son but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son; and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him. Come unto ME, all ye that labour,... and I will give you rest. Take MY yoke upon you, &c."

My friend, I find, rejects Jesus as an authoritative teacher, distinctly denies that the acceptance of Jesus in this character is any condition of salvation and of the divine favour, and treats of my "demand of an oracular Christ," as inconsistent with my own principles. But this is mere misconception of what I have said. I find Jesus himself to set up oracular claims. I find an assumption of pre-eminence and unapproachable moral wisdom to pervade every discourse from end to end of the gospels. If I may not believe that Jesus assumed an oracular manner, I do not know what moral peculiarity in him I am permitted to believe. I do not demand (as my friend seems to think) that he shall be oracular, but in common with all Christendom, I open my eyes and see that he is; and until I had read my friend's review of my book, I never understood (I suppose through my own prepossessions) that he holds Jesus not to have assumed the oracular style.

If I cut out from the four gospels this peculiarity, I must cut out, not only the claim of Messiahship, which my friend admits to have been made, but nearly every moral discourse and every controversy: and why? except in order to make good a predetermined belief that Jesus was morally perfect. What reason can be given me for not believing that Jesus declared: "If any one deny ME before men, him will I deny before my Father and his angels?" or any of the other texts which couple the favour of God with a submission to such pretensions of Jesus? I can find no reason whatever for doubting that he preached HIMSELF to his disciples, though in the three first gospels he is rather timid of doing this to the Pharisees and to the nation at large. I find him uniformly to claim, sometimes in tone, sometimes in distinct words, that we will sit at his feet as little children and learn of him. I find him ready to answer off-hand, all difficult questions, critical and lawyer-like, as well as moral. True, it is no tenet of mine that intellectual and literary attainment is essential in an individual person to high spiritual eminence. True, in another book I have elaborately maintained the contrary. Yet in that book I have described men's spiritual progress as often arrested at a certain stage by a want of intellectual development; which surely would indicate that I believed even intellectual blunders and an infinitely perfect exhaustive morality to be incompatible. But our question here (or at least my question) is not, whether Jesus might misinterpret prophecy, and yet be morally perfect; but whether, after assuming to be an oracular teacher, he can teach some fanatical precepts, and advance dogmatically weak and foolish arguments, without impairing our sense of his absolute moral perfection.

I do not think it useless here to repeat (though not for my friend) concise reasons which I gave in my first edition against admitting dictatorial claims for Jesus. First, it is an unplausible opinion that God would deviate from his ordinary course, in order to give us anything so undesirable as an authoritative Oracle would be;—which would paralyze our moral powers, exactly as an infallible church does, in the very proportion in which we succeeded in eliciting responses from it. It is not needful here to repeat what has been said to that effect in p. 138. Secondly, there is no imaginable criterion, by which we can establish that the wisdom of a teacher is absolute and illimitable. All that we can possibly discover, is the relative fact, that another is wiser than we: and even this is liable to be overturned on special points, as soon as differences of judgment arise. Thirdly, while it is by no means clear what are the new truths, for which we are to lean upon the decisions of Jesus, it is certain that we have no genuine and trustworthy account of his teaching. If God had intended us to receive the authoritative dicta of Jesus, he would have furnished us with an unblemished record of those dicta. To allow that we have not this, and that we must disentangle for ourselves (by a most difficult and uncertain process) the "true" sayings of Jesus, is surely self-refuting. Fourthly, if I must sit in judgment on the claims of Jesus to be the true Messiah and Son of God, how can I concentrate all my free thought into that one act, and thenceforth abandon free thought? This appears a moral suicide, whether Messiah or the Pope is the object whom we first criticize, in order to instal him over us, and then, for ever after, refuse to criticize. In short, we cannot build up a system of Oracles on a basis of Free Criticism. If we are to submit our judgment to the dictation of some other,—whether a church or an individual,—we must be first subjected to that other by some event from without, as by birth; and not by a process of that very judgment which is henceforth to be sacrificed. But from this I proceed to consider more in detail, some points in the teaching and conduct of Jesus, which do not appear to me consistent with absolute perfection.

The argument of Jesus concerning the tribute to Caesar is so dramatic, as to strike the imagination and rest on the memory; and I know no reason for doubting that it has been correctly reported. The book of Deuteronomy (xvii. 15) distinctly forbids Israel to set over himself as king any who is not a native Israelite; which appeared to be a religious condemnation of submission to Caesar. Accordingly, since Jesus assumed the tone of unlimited wisdom, some of Herod's party asked him, whether it was lawful to pay tribute to Caesar. Jesus replied: "Why tempt ye me, hypocrites? Show me the tribute money." When one of the coins was handed to him, he asked: "Whose image and superscription is this?" When they replied: "Caesar's," he gave his authoritative decision: "Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's."

In this reply not only the poor and uneducated, but many likewise of the rich and educated, recognize "majesty and sanctity:" yet I find it hard to think that my strong-minded friend will defend the justness, wisdom and honesty of it. To imagine that because a coin bears Caesar's head, therefore it is Caesar's property, and that he may demand to have as many of such coins as he chooses paid over to him, is puerile, and notoriously false. The circulation of foreign coin of every kind was as common in the Mediterranean then as now; and everybody knew that the coin was the property of the holder, not of him whose head it bore. Thus the reply of Jesus, which pretended to be a moral decision, was unsound and absurd: yet it is uttered in a tone of dictatorial wisdom, and ushered in by a grave rebuke, "Why tempt ye me, hypocrites?" He is generally understood to mean, "Why do you try to implicate me in a political charge?" and it is supposed that he prudently evaded the question. I have indeed heard this interpretation from high Trinitarians; which indicates to me how dead is their moral sense in everything which concerns the conduct of Jesus. No reason appears why he should not have replied, that Moses forbade Israel voluntarily to place himself under a foreign king, but did not inculcate fanatical and useless rebellion against overwhelming power. But such a reply, which would have satisfied a more commonplace mind, has in it nothing brilliant and striking. I cannot but think that Jesus shows a vain conceit in the cleverness of his answer: I do not think it so likely to have been a conscious evasion. But neither does his rebuke of the questioners at all commend itself to me. How can any man assume to be an authoritative teacher, and then claim that men shall not put his wisdom to the proof? Was it not their duty to do so? And when, in result, the trial has proved the defect of his wisdom, did they not perform a useful public service? In truth, I cannot see the Model Man in his rebuke.—Let not my friend say that the error was merely intellectual: blundering self-sufficiency is a moral weakness.

I might go into detail concerning other discourses, where error and arrogance appear to me combined. But, not to be tedious,—in general I must complain that Jesus purposely adopted an enigmatical and pretentious style of teaching, unintelligible to his hearers, and needing explanation in private. That this was his systematic procedure, I believe, because, in spite of the great contrast of the fourth gospel to the others, it has this peculiarity in common with them. Christian divines are used to tell us that this mode was peculiarly instructive to the vulgar of Judaea; and they insist on the great wisdom displayed in his choice of the lucid parabolical style. But in Matth. xiii. 10-15, Jesus is made confidentially to avow precisely the opposite reason, viz. that he desires the vulgar not to understand him, but only the select few to whom he gives private explanations. I confess I believe the Evangelist rather than the modern Divine. I cannot conceive how so strange a notion could ever have possessed the companions of Jesus, if it had not been true. If really this parabolical method had been peculiarly intelligible, what could make them imagine the contrary? Unless they found it very obscure themselves, whence came the idea that it was obscure to the multitude? As a fact, it is very obscure, to this day. There is much that I most imperfectly understand, owing to unexplained metaphor: as: "Agree with thine adversary quickly, &c. &c.:" "Whoso calls his brother[2] a fool, is in danger of hell fire:" "Every one must be salted with fire, and every sacrifice salted with salt. Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another." Now every man of original and singular genius has his own forms of thought; in so far as they are natural, we must not complain, if to us they are obscure. But the moment affectation comes in, they no longer are reconcilable with the perfect character: they indicate vanity, and incipient sacerdotalism. The distinct notice that Jesus avoided to expound his parables to the multitude, and made this a boon to the privileged few; and that without a parable he spake not to the multitude; and the pious explanation, that this was a fulfilment of Prophecy, "I will open my mouth in parables, I will utter dark sayings on the harp," persuade me that the impression of the disciples was a deep reality. And it is in entire keeping with the general narrative, which shows in him so much of mystical assumption. Strip the parables of the imagery, and you find that sometimes one thought has been dished up four or five times, and generally, that an idea is dressed into sacred grandeur. This mystical method made a little wisdom go a great way with the multitude; and to such a mode of economizing resources the instinct of the uneducated man betakes itself, when he is claiming to act a part for which he is imperfectly prepared.

It is common with orthodox Christians to take for granted, that unbelief of Jesus was a sin, and belief a merit, at a time when no rational grounds of belief were as yet public. Certainly, whoever asks questions with a view to prove Jesus, is spoken of vituperatingly in the gospels; and it does appear to me that the prevalent Christian belief is a true echo of Jesus's own feeling. He disliked being put to the proof. Instead of rejoicing in it, as a true and upright man ought,—instead of blaming those who accept his pretensions on too slight grounds,—instead of encouraging full inquiry and giving frank explanations, he resents doubt, shuns everything that will test him, is very obscure as to his own pretensions, (so as to need probing and positive questions, whether he does or does not profess to be Messiah,) and yet is delighted at all easy belief. When asked for miracles, he sighs and groans at the unreasonableness of it; yet does not honestly and plainly renounce pretension to miracle, as Mr. Martineau would, but leaves room for credit to himself for as many miracles as the credulous are willing to impute to him. It is possible that here the narrative is unjust to his memory. So far from being the picture of perfection, it sometimes seems to me the picture of a conscious and wilful impostor. His general character is too high for this; and I therefore make deductions from the account. Still, I do not see how the present narrative could have grown up, if he had been really simple and straight-forward, and not perverted by his essentially false position. Enigma and mist seem to be his element; and when I find his high satisfaction at all personal recognition and bowing before his individuality, I almost doubt whether, if one wished to draw the character of a vain and vacillating pretender, it would be possible to draw anything more to the purpose than this. His general rule (before a certain date) is, to be cautious in public, but bold in private to the favoured few. I cannot think that such a character, appearing now, would seem to my friend a perfect model of a man.

No precept bears on its face clearer marks of coming from the genuine Jesus, than that of selling all and following him. This was his original call to his disciples. It was enunciated authoritatively on various occasions. It is incorporated with precepts of perpetual obligation, in such a way, that we cannot without the greatest violence pretend that he did not intend it as a precept[3] to all his disciples. In Luke xii. 22-40, he addresses the disciples collectively against Avarice; and a part of the discourse is: "Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell that ye have, and give alms: provide yourselves bags that wax not old; a treasure in the heavens that faileth not, &c.... Let your loins be girded about, and your lights burning," &c. To say that he was not intending to teach a universal morality,[4] is to admit that his precepts are a trap; for they then mix up and confound mere contingent duties with universal sacred obligations, enunciating all in the same breath, and with the same solemnity. I cannot think that Jesus intended any separation. In fact, when a rich young man asked of him what he should do, that he might inherit eternal life, and pleaded that he had kept the ten commandments, but felt that to be insufficient, Jesus said unto him: "If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven:" so that the duty was not contingent upon the peculiarity of a man possessing apostolic gifts, but was with Jesus the normal path for all who desired perfection. When the young man went away sorrowing, Jesus moralized on it, saying: "How hardly shall a rich man enter into the kingdom of heaven:" which again shows, that an abrupt renunciation of wealth was to be the general and ordinary method of entering the kingdom. Hereupon, when the disciples asked: "Lo! we have forsaken all, and followed thee: what shall we have therefore?" Jesus, instead of rebuking their self-righteousness, promised them as a reward, that they should sit upon twelve[5] thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. A precept thus systematically enforced, is illustrated by the practice, not only of the twelve, but apparently of the seventy, and what is stronger still, by the practice of the five thousand disciples after the celebrated days of the first Pentecost. There was no longer a Jesus on earth to itinerate with, yet the disciples in the fervour of first love obeyed his precept: the rich sold their possessions, and laid the price at the apostles' feet.

The mischiefs inherent in such a precept rapidly showed themselves, and good sense corrected the error. But this very fact proves most emphatically that the precept was pre-apostolic, and came from the genuine Jesus; otherwise it could never have found its way into the gospels. It is undeniable, that the first disciples, by whose tradition alone we have any record of what Jesus taught, understood him to deliver this precept to all who desired to enter into the kingdom of heaven,—all who desired to be perfect: why then are we to refuse belief, and remould the precepts of Jesus till they please our own morality? This is not the way to learn historical fact.

That to inculcate religious beggary as the only form and mode of spiritual perfection, is fanatical and mischievous, even the church of Rome will admit. Protestants universally reject it as a deplorable absurdity;—not merely wealthy bishops, squires and merchants, but the poorest curate also. A man could not preach such doctrine in a Protestant pulpit without incurring deep reprobation and contempt; but when preached by Jesus, it is extolled as divine wisdom,—and disobeyed.

Now I cannot look on this as a pure intellectual error, consistent with moral perfection. A deep mistake as to the nature of such perfection seems to me inherent in the precept itself; a mistake which indicates a moral unsoundness. The conduct of Jesus to the rich young man appears to me a melancholy exhibition of perverse doctrine, under an ostentation of superior wisdom. The young man asked for bread and Jesus gave him a stone. Justly he went away sorrowful, at receiving a reply which his conscience rejected as false and foolish. But this is not all Jesus was necessarily on trial, when any one, however sincere, came to ask questions so deeply probing the quality of his wisdom as this: "How may I be perfect?" and to be on trial was always disagreeable to him. He first gave the reply, "Keep the commandments;" and if the young man had been satisfied, and had gone away, it appears that Jesus would have been glad to be rid of him: for his tone is magisterial, decisive and final. This, I confess, suggests to me, that the aim of Jesus was not so much to enlighten the young man, as to stop his mouth, and keep up his own ostentation of omniscience. Had he desired to enlighten him, surely no mere dry dogmatic command was needed, but an intelligent guidance of a willing and trusting soul. I do not pretend to certain knowledge in these matters. Even when we hear the tones of voice and watch the features, we often mistake. We have no such means here of checking the narrative. But the best general result which I can draw from the imperfect materials, is what I have said.

After the merit of "selling all and following Jesus," a second merit, not small, was, to receive those whom he sent. In Matt. x., we read that he sends out his twelve disciples, (also seventy in Luke,) men at that time in a very low state of religions development,—men who did not themselves know what the Kingdom of Heaven meant,—to deliver in every village and town a mere formula of words: "Repent ye: for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." They were ordered to go without money, scrip or cloak, but to live on religious alms; and it is added,—that if any house or city does not receive them, it shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgment than for it. He adds, v. 40: "He that receiveth you, receiveth me, and he that receiveth me, receiveth HIM that sent me."—I quite admit, that in all probability it was (on the whole) the more pious part of Israel which was likely to receive these ignorant missionaries; but inasmuch as they had no claims whatever, intrinsic or extrinsic, to reverence, it appears to me a very extravagant and fanatical sentiment thus emphatically to couple the favour or wrath of God with their reception or rejection.

A third, yet greater merit in the eyes of Jesus, was, to acknowledge him as the Messiah predicted by the prophets, which he was not, according to my friend. According to Matthew (xvi. 13), Jesus put leading questions to the disciples in order to elicit a confession of his Messiahship, and emphatically blessed Simon for making the avowal which he desired; but instantly forbade them to tell the great secret to any one. Unless this is to be discarded as fiction, Jesus, although to his disciples in secret he confidently assumed Messianic pretensions, had a just inward misgiving, which accounts both for his elation at Simon's avowal, and for his prohibition to publish it.

In admitting that Jesus was not the Messiah of the prophets, my friend says, that if Jesus were less than Messiah, we can reverence him no longer; but that he was more than Messiah. This is to me unintelligible. The Messiah whom he claimed to be, was not only the son of David, celebrated in the prophets, but emphatically the Son of Man of Daniel vii., who shall come in the clouds of heaven, to take dominion, glory and kingdom, that all people, nations and languages shall serve him,—an everlasting kingdom which shall not pass away. How Jesus himself interprets his supremacy, as Son of Man, in Matt. x., xi., xxiii., xxv., and elsewhere, I have already observed. To claim such a character, seems to me like plunging from a pinnacle of the temple. If miraculous power holds him up and makes good his daring, he is more than man; but if otherwise, to have failed will break all his bones. I can no longer give the same human reverence as before to one who has been seduced into vanity so egregious; and I feel assured a priori that such presumption must have entangled him into evasions and insincerities, which naturally end in crookedness of conscience and real imposture, however noble a man's commencement, and however unshrinking his sacrifices of goods and ease and life.

The time arrived at last, when Jesus felt that he must publicly assert Messiahship; and this was certain to bring things to an issue. I suppose him to have hoped that he was Messiah, until hope and the encouragement given him by Peter and others grew into a persuasion strong enough to act upon, but not always strong enough to still misgivings. I say, I suppose this; but I build nothing on my supposition. I however see, that when he had resolved to claim Messiahship publicly, one of two results was inevitable, if that claim was ill-founded:—viz., either he must have become an impostor, in order to screen his weakness; or, he must have retracted his pretensions amid much humiliation, and have retired into privacy to learn sober wisdom. From these alternatives there was escape only by death, and upon death Jesus purposely rushed.

All Christendom has always believed that the death of Jesus was voluntarily incurred; and unless no man ever became a wilful martyr, I cannot conceive why we are to doubt the fact concerning Jesus. When he resolved to go up to Jerusalem, he was warned by his disciples of the danger; but so far was he from being blind to it, that he distinctly announced to them that he knew he should suffer in Jerusalem the shameful death of a malefactor. On his arrival in the suburbs, his first act was, ostentatiously to ride into the city on an ass's colt in the midst of the acclamations of the multitude, in order to exhibit himself as having a just right to the throne of David. Thus he gave a handle to imputations of intended treason.—He next entered the temple courts, where doves and lambs were sold for sacrifice, and—(I must say it to my friend's amusement, and in defiance of his kind but keen ridicule,) committed a breach of the peace by flogging with a whip those who trafficked in the area. By such conduct he undoubtedly made himself liable to legal punishment, and probably might have been publicly scourged for it, had the rulers chosen to moderate their vengeance. But he "meant to be prosecuted for treason, not for felony," to use the words of a modern offender. He therefore commenced the most exasperating attacks on all the powerful, calling them hypocrites and whited sepulchres and vipers' brood; and denouncing upon them the "condemnation of hell." He was successful. He had both enraged the rulers up to the point of thirsting for his life, and given colour to the charge of political rebellion. He resolved to die; and he died. Had his enemies contemptuously let him live, he would have been forced to act the part of Jewish Messiah, or renounce Messiahship.

If any one holds Jesus to be not amenable to the laws of human morality, I am not now reasoning with such a one. But if any one claims for him a human perfection, then I say that his conduct on this occasion was neither laudable nor justifiable; far otherwise. There are cases in which life may be thrown away for a great cause; as when a leader in battle rushes upon certain death, in order to animate his own men; but the case before us has no similarity to that. If our accounts are not wholly false, Jesus knowingly and purposely exasperated the rulers into a great crime,—the crime of taking his life from personal resentment. His inflammatory addresses to the multitude have been defended as follows:

"The prophetic Spirit is sometimes oblivious of the rules of the drawing-room; and inspired Conscience, like the inspiring God, seeing a hypocrite, will take the liberty to say so, and act accordingly. Are the superficial amenities, the soothing fictions, the smotherings of the burning heart,... really paramount in this world, and never to give way? and when a soul of power, unable to refrain, rubs off, though it be with rasping words, all the varnish from rottenness and lies, is he to be tried in our courts of compliment for a misdemeanor? Is there never a higher duty than that of either pitying or converting guilty men,—the duty of publicly exposing them? of awakening the popular conscience, and sweeping away the conventional timidities, for a severe return to truth and reality? No rule of morals can be recognized as just, which prohibits conformity of human speech to fact; and insists on terms of civility being kept with all manner of iniquity."

I certainly have not appealed to any conventional morality of drawing-room compliment, but to the highest and purest principles which I know; and I lament to find my judgment so extremely in opposition. To me it seems that inability to refrain shows weakness, not power, of soul, and that nothing is easier than to give vent to violent invective against bad rulers. The last sentence quoted, seems to say, that the speaking of Truth is never to be condemned: but I cannot agree to this. When Truth will only exasperate, and cannot do good, silence is imperative. A man who reproaches an armed tyrant in words too plain, does but excite him to murder; and the shocking thing is, that this seems to have been the express object of Jesus. No good result could be reasonably expected. Publicly to call men in authority by names of intense insult, the writer of the above distinctly sees will never convert them; but he thinks it was adapted to awaken the popular conscience. Alas! it needs no divine prophet to inflame a multitude against the avarice, hypocrisy, and oppression of rulers, nor any deep inspiration of conscience in the multitude to be wide awake on that point themselves A Publius Clodius or a Cleon will do that work as efficiently as a Jesus; nor does it appear that the poor are made better by hearing invectives against the rich and powerful. If Jesus had been aiming, in a good cause, to excite rebellion, the mode of address which he assumed seems highly appropriate; and in such a calamitous necessity, to risk exciting murderous enmity would be the act of a hero: but as the account stands, it seems to me the deed of a fanatic. And it is to me manifest that he overdid his attack, and failed to commend it to the conscience of his hearers. For up to this point the multitude was in his favour. He was notoriously so acceptable to the many, as to alarm the rulers; indeed the belief of his popularity had shielded him from prosecution. But after this fierce address he has no more popular support. At his public trial the vast majority judge him to deserve punishment, and prefer to ask free forgiveness for Barabbas, a bandit who was in prison for murder. We moderns, nursed in an arbitrary belief concerning these events, drink in with our first milk the assumption that Jesus alone was guiltless, and all the other actors in this sad affair inexcusably guilty. Let no one imagine that I defend for a moment the cruel punishment which raw resentment inflicted on him. But though the rulers felt the rage of Vengeance, the people, who had suffered no personal wrong, were moved only by ill-measured Indignation. The multitude love to hear the powerful exposed and reproached up to a certain limit; but if reproach go clearly beyond all that they feel to be deserved, a violent sentiment reacts on the head of the reviler: and though popular indignation (even when free from the element of selfishness) ill fixes the due measure of Punishment, I have a strong belief that it is righteous, when it pronounces the verdict Guilty.

Does my friend deny that the death of Jesus was wilfully incurred? The "orthodox" not merely admit, but maintain it. Their creed justifies it by the doctrine, that his death was a "sacrifice" so pleasing to God, as to expiate the sins of the world. This honestly meets the objections to self-destruction; for how better could life be used, than by laying it down for such a prize? But besides all other difficulties in the very idea of atonement, the orthodox creed startles us by the incredible conception, that a voluntary sacrifice of life should be unacceptable to God, unless offered by ferocious and impious hands. If Jesus had "authority from the Father to lay down his life," was he unable to stab himself in the desert, or on the sacred altar of the Temple, without involving guilt to any human being? Did He, who is at once "High Priest" and Victim, when "offering up himself" and "presenting his own blood unto God," need any justification for using the sacrificial knife? The orthodox view more clearly and unshrinkingly avows, that Jesus deliberately goaded the wicked rulers into the deeper wickedness of murdering him; but on my friend's view, that Jesus was no sacrifice, but only a Model man, his death is an unrelieved calamity. Nothing but a long and complete life could possibly test the fact of his perfection; and the longer he lived, the better for the world.

In entire consistency with his previous determination to die, Jesus, when arraigned, refused to rebut accusation, and behaved as one pleading Guilty. He was accused of saying that if they destroyed the temple, he would rebuild it in three days; but how this was to the purpose, the evangelists who name it do not make clear. The fourth however (without intending so to do) explains it; and I therefore am disposed to believe his statement, though I put no faith in his long discourses. It appears (John ii. 18-20) that Jesus after scourging the people out of the temple-court, was asked for a sign to justify his assuming so very unusual authority: on which he replied: "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." Such a reply was regarded as a manifest evasion; since he was sure that they would not pull the temple down in order to try whether he could raise it up miraculously. Now if Jesus really meant what the fourth gospel says he meant;—if he "spoke of the temple of his body;"—how was any one to guess that? It cannot be denied, that such a reply, prima facie, suggested, that he was a wilful impostor: was it not then his obvious duty, when this accusation was brought against him, to explain that his words had been mystical and had been misunderstood? The form of the imputation in Mark xiv. 58, would make it possible to imagine,—if the three days were left out, and if his words were not said in reply to the demand of a sign,—that Jesus had merely avowed that though the outward Jewish temple were to be destroyed, he would erect a church of worshippers as a spiritual temple. If so, "John" has grossly misrepresented him, and then obtruded a very far-fetched explanation. But whatever was the meaning of Jesus, if it was honest, I think he was bound to explain it; and not leave a suspicion of imposture to rankle in men's minds.[6] Finally, if the whole were fiction, and he never uttered such words, then it was his duty to deny them, and not remain dumb like a sheep before its shearers.

After he had confirmed by his silence the belief that he had used a dishonest evasion indicative of consciousness that he was no real Messiah, he suddenly burst out with a full reply to the High Priest's question; and avowed that he was the Messiah, the Son of God; and that they should hereafter see him sitting on the right-hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven,—of course to enter into judgment on them all. I am the less surprized that this precipitated his condemnation, since he himself seems to have designed precisely that result. The exasperation which he had succeeded in kindling led to his cruel death; and when men's minds had cooled, natural horror possessed them for such a retribution on such a man. His words had been met with deeds: the provocation he had given was unfelt to those beyond the limits of Jerusalem; and to the Jews who assembled from distant parts at the feast of Pentecost he was nothing but the image of a sainted martyr.

I have given more than enough indications of points in which the conduct of Jesus does not seem to me to have been that of a perfect man: how any one can think him a Universal Model, is to me still less intelligible. I might say much more on this subject. But I will merely add, that when my friend gives the weight of his noble testimony to the Perfection of Jesus, I think it is due to himself and to us that he should make clear what he means by this word "Jesus." He ought to publish—(I say it in deep seriousness, not sarcastically)—an expurgated gospel; for in truth I do not know how much of what I have now adduced from the gospel as fact, he will admit to be fact. I neglect, he tells me, "a higher moral criticism," which, if I rightly understand, would explode, as evidently unworthy of Jesus, many of the representations pervading the gospels: as, that Jesus claimed to be an oracular teacher, and attached spiritual life or death to belief or disbelief in this claim. My friend says, it is beyond all serious question what Jesus was: but his disbelief of the narrative seems to be so much wider than mine, as to leave me more uncertain than ever about it. If he will strike out of the gospels all that he disbelieves, and so enable me to understand what is the Jesus whom he reveres, I have so deep a sense of his moral and critical powers, that I am fully prepared to expect that he may remove many of my prejudices and relieve my objections: but I cannot honestly say that I see the least probability of his altering my conviction, that in consistency of goodness Jesus fell far below vast numbers of his unhonoured disciples.

[Footnote 1: I have by accident just taken up the "British Quarterly," and alighted upon the following sentence concerning Madame Roland:—"To say that she was without fault, would be to say that she was not human." This so entirely expresses and concludes all that I have to say, that I feel surprise at my needing at all to write such a chapter as the present.]

[Footnote 2: I am acquainted with the interpretation, that the word More is not here Greek, i.e., fool, but is Hebrew, and means rebel, which is stronger than Raca, silly fellow. This gives partial, but only partial relief.]

[Footnote 3: Indeed we have in Luke vi. 20-24, a version of the Beatitudes so much in harmony with this lower doctrine, as to make it an open question, whether the version in Matth. v. is not an improvement upon Jesus, introduced by the purer sense of the collective church. In Luke, he does not bless the poor in spirit, and those who hunger after righteousness, but absolutely the "poor" and the "hungry," and all who honour Him; and in contrast, curses the rich and those who are full.]

[Footnote 4: At the close, is the parable about the absent master of a house; and Peter asks, "Lord? (Sir?) speakest thou this parable unto us, or also unto all?" Who would not have hoped an ingenuous reply, "To you only," or, "To everybody"? Instead of which, so inveterate is his tendency to muffle up the simplest things in mystery, he replies, "Who then is that faithful and wise steward," &c., &c., and entirely evades reply to the very natural question.]

[Footnote 5: This implied that Judas, as one of the twelve, had earned the heavenly throne by the price of earthly goods.]

[Footnote 6: If the account in John is not wholly false, I think the reply in every case discreditable. If literal, it all but indicates wilful imposture. If mystical, it is disingenuously evasive; and it tended, not to instruct, but to irritate, and to move suspicion and contempt. Is this the course for a religious teacher?—to speak darkly, so as to mislead and prejudice; and this, when he represents it as a matter of spiritual life and death to accept his teaching and his supremacy?]



CHAPTER VIII.

ON BIGOTRY AND PROGRESS.

If any Christian reader has been patient enough to follow me thus far, I now claim that he will judge my argument and me, as before the bar of God, and not by the conventional standards of the Christian churches.

Morality and Truth are principles in human nature both older and more widespread than Christianity or the Bible: and neither Jesus nor James nor John nor Paul could have addressed or did address men in any other tone, than that of claiming to be themselves judged by some pre-existing standard of moral truth, and by the inward powers of the hearer. Does the reader deny this? or, admitting it, does he think it impious to accept their challenge? Does he say that we are to love and embrace Christianity, without trying to ascertain whether it be true or false? If he say, Yes,—such a man has no love or care for Truth, and is but by accident a Christian. He would have remained a faithful heathen, had he been born in heathenism, though Moses, Elijah and Christ preached a higher truth to him. Such a man is condemned by his own confession, and I here address him no longer.

But if Faith is a spiritual and personal thing, if Belief given at random to mere high pretensions is an immorality, if Truth is not to be quite trampled down, nor Conscience to be wholly palsied in us,—then what, I ask, was I to do, when I saw that the genealogy in the first chapter of Matthew is an erroneous copy of that in the Old Testament? and that the writer has not only copied wrong, but also counted wrong, so, as to mistake eighteen for fourteen? Can any man, who glories in the name of Christian, lay his hand on his heart, and say, it was my duty to blind my eyes to the fact, and think of it no further? Many, alas, I know, would have whispered this to me; but if any one were to proclaim it, the universal conscience of mankind would call him impudent.

If however this first step was right, was a second step wrong? When I further discerned that the two genealogies in Matthew and Luke were at variance, utterly irreconcilable,—and both moreover nugatory, because they are genealogies of Joseph, who is denied to be the father of Jesus,—on what ground of righteousness, which I could approve to God and my conscience, could I shut my eyes to this second fact?

When forced, against all my prepossessions, to admit that the two first chapters of Matthew and the two first chapters of Luke are mutually destructive,[1] would it have been faithfulness to the God of Truth, or a self-willed love of my own prejudices, if I had said, "I will not inquire further, for fear it should unsettle my faith?" The reader's conscience will witness to me, that, on the contrary, I was bound to say, what I did say: "I must inquire further in order that I may plant the foundations of my faith more deeply on the rock of Truth."'

Having discovered, that not all that is within the canon of the Scripture is infallibly correct, and that the human understanding is competent to arraign and convict at least some kinds of error therein contained;—where was I to stop? and if I am guilty, where did my guilt begin? The further I inquired, the more errors crowded upon me, in History, in Chronology, in Geography, in Physiology, in Geology.[2] Did it then at last become a duty to close my eyes to the painful light? and if I had done so, ought I to have flattered myself that I was one of those, who being of the truth, come to the lights that their deeds may be reproved?

Moreover, when I had clearly perceived, that since all evidence for Christianity must involve moral considerations, to undervalue the moral faculties of mankind is to make Christian evidence an impossibility and to propagate universal scepticism;—was I then so to distrust the common conscience, as to believe that the Spirit of God pronounced Jael blessed, for perfidiously murdering her husband's trusting friend? Does any Protestant reader feel disgust and horror, at the sophistical defences set up for the massacre of St. Bartholomew and other atrocities of the wicked Church of Rome? Let him stop his mouth, and hide his face, if he dares to justify the foul crime of Jael.

Or when I was thus forced to admit, that the Old Testament praised immorality, as well as enunciated error; and found nevertheless in the writers of the New Testament no indication that they were aware of either; but that, on the contrary, "the Scripture" (as the book was vaguely called) is habitually identified with the infallible "word of God;"—was it wrong in me to suspect that the writers of the New Testament were themselves open to mistake?

When I farther found, that Luke not only claims no infallibility and no inspiration, but distinctly assigns human sources as his means of knowledge;—when the same Luke had already been discovered to be in irreconcilable variance with Matthew concerning the infancy of Jesus;—was I sinful in feeling that I had no longer any guarantee against other possible error in these writers? or ought I to have persisted in obtruding on the two evangelists on infallibility of which Luke shows himself unconscious, which Matthew nowhere claims, and which I had demonstrative proof that they did not both possess? A thorough-going Bibliolater will have to impeach me as a sinner on this count.

After Luke and Matthew stood before me as human writers, liable to and convicted of human error, was there any reason why I should look on Mark as more sacred? And having perceived all three to participate in the common superstition, derived from Babylon and the East, traceable in history to its human source, existing still in Turkey and Abyssinia,—the superstition which mistakes mania, epilepsy, and other forms of disease, for possession by devils;—should I have shown love of truth, or obstinacy in error, had I refused to judge freely of these three writers, as of any others who tell similar marvels? or was it my duty to resolve, at any rate and against evidence, to acquit them of the charge of superstition and misrepresentation?

I will not trouble the reader with any further queries. If he has justified me in his conscience thus far, he will justify my proceeding to abandon myself to the results of inquiry. He will feel, that the Will cannot, may not, dare not dictate, whereto the inquiries of the Understanding shall lead; and that to allege that it ought, is to plant the root of Insincerity, Falsehood, Bigotry, Cruelty, and universal Rottenness of Soul.

The vice of Bigotry has been so indiscriminately imputed to the religious, that they seem apt to forget that it is a real sin;—a sin which in Christendom has been and is of all sins most fruitful, most poisonous: nay, grief of griefs! it infects many of the purest and most lovely hearts, which want strength of understanding, or are entangled by a sham theology, with its false facts and fraudulent canons. But upon all who mourn for the miseries which Bigotry has perpetrated from the day when Christians first learned to curse; upon all who groan over the persecutions and wars stirred up by Romanism; upon all who blush at the overbearing conduct of Protestants in their successive moments of brief authority,—a sacred duty rests in this nineteenth century of protesting against Bigotry, not from a love of ease, but from a spirit of earnest justice.

Like the first Christians, they must become confessors of the Truth; not obtrusively, boastfully, dogmatically, or harshly; but, "speaking the truth in love," not be ashamed to avow, if they do not believe all that others profess, and that they abhor the unrighteous principle of judging men by an authoritative creed. The evil of Bigotry which has been most observed, is its untameable injustice, which converted the law of love into licensed murder or gratuitous hatred. But I believe a worse evil still has been, the intense reaction of the human mind against Religion for Bigotry's sake. To the millions of Europe, bigotry has been a confutation of all pious feeling. So unlovely has religion been made by it,

Horribili super aspectu mortalibus instans,

that now, as 2000 years ago, men are lapsing into Atheism or Pantheism; and a totally new "dispensation" is wanted to retrieve the lost reputation of Piety.

Two opposite errors are committed by those who discern that the pretensions of the national religious systems are overstrained and unjustifiable. One class of persons inveighs warmly, bitterly, rudely against the bigotry of Christians; and know not how deep and holy affections and principles, in spite of narrowness, are cherished in the bosom of the Christian society. Hence their invective is harsh and unsympathizing; and appears so essentially unjust and so ignorant, as to exasperate and increase the very bigotry which it attacks. An opposite class know well, and value highly, the moral influences of Christianity, and from an intense dread of harming or losing these, do not dare plainly and publicly to avow their own convictions. Great numbers of English laymen are entirely assured, that the Old Testament abounds with error, and that the New is not always unimpeachable: yet they only whisper this; and in the hearing of a clergyman, who is bound by Articles and whom it is indecent to refute, keep a respectful silence. As for ministers of religion, these, being called perpetually into a practical application of the received doctrine of their church, are of all men least able to inquire into any fundamental errors in that doctrine. Eminent persons among them will nevertheless aim after and attain a purer truth than that which they find established: but such a case must always be rare and exceptive. Only by disusing ministerial service can any one give fair play to doubts concerning the wisdom and truth of that which he is solemnly ministering: hence that friend of Arnold's was wise in this world, who advised him to take a curacy in order to settle his doubts concerning the Trinity.—Nowhere from any body of priests, clergy, or ministers, as an Order, is religious progress to be anticipated, until intellectual creeds are destroyed. A greater responsibility therefore is laid upon laymen, to be faithful and bold in avowing their convictions.

Yet it is not from the practical ministers of religion, that the great opposition to religious reform proceeds. The "secular clergy" (as the Romanists oddly call them) were seldom so bigoted as the "regulars." So with us, those who minister to men in their moral trials have for the most part a deeper moral spirit, and are less apt to place religion in systems of propositions. The robur legionum of bigotry, I believe, is found,—first, in non-parochial clergy, and next in the anonymous writers for religious journals and "conservative" newspapers; who too generally[3] adopt a style of which they would be ashamed, if the names of the writers were attached; who often seem desirous to make it clear that it is their trade to carp, insult, or slander; who assume a tone of omniscience, at the very moment when they show narrowness of heart and judgment. To such writing those who desire to promote earnest Thought and tranquil Progress ought anxiously to testify their deep repugnance. A large part of this slander and insult is prompted by a base pandering to the (real or imagined) taste of the public, and will abate when it visibly ceases to be gainful.

* * * * *

The law of God's moral universe, as known to us, is that of Progress. We trace it from old barbarism to the methodized Egyptian idolatry; to the more flexible Polytheism of Syria and Greece; the poetical Pantheism of philosophers, and the moral monotheism of a few sages. So in Palestine and in the Bible itself we see, first of all, the image-worship of Jacob's family, then the incipient elevation of Jehovah above all other Gods by Moses, the practical establishment of the worship of Jehovah alone by Samuel, the rise of spiritual sentiment under David and the Psalmists, the more magnificent views of Hezekiah's prophets, finally in the Babylonish captivity the new tenderness assumed by that second Isaiah and the later Psalmists. But ceremonialism more and more encrusted the restored nation; and Jesus was needed to spur and stab the conscience of his contemporaries, and recal them to more spiritual perceptions; to proclaim a coming "kingdom of heaven," in which should be gathered all the children of God that were scattered abroad; where the law of love should reign, and no one should dictate to another. Alas! that this great movement had its admixture of human imperfection. After this, Steven the protomartyr, and Paul once him persecutor, had to expose the emptiness of all external santifications, and free the world from the law of Moses. Up to this point all Christians approve of progress; but at this point they want to arrest it.

The arguments of those who resist Progress are always the same, whether it be Pagans against Hebrews, Jews against Christians, Romanists against Protestants, or modern Christians against the advocates of a higher spiritualism. Each established system assures its votaries, that now at length they have attained a final perfection: that their foundations are irremovable: progress up to that position was a duty, beyond it is a sin. Each displaces its predecessor by superior goodness, but then each fights against his successor by odium, contempt, exclusions and (when possible) by violences. Each advances mankind one step, and forbids them to take a second. Yet if it be admitted that in the earlier movement the party of progress was always right, confidence that the case is now reversed is not easy to justify.

Every persecuting church has numbered among its members thousands of pious people, so grateful for its services, or so attached to its truth, as to think those impious who desire something purer and more perfect. Herein we may discern, that every nation and class is liable to the peculiar illusion of overesteeming the sanctity of its ancestral creed. It is as much our duty to beware of this illusion, as of any other. All know how easily our patriotism may degenerate into an unjust repugnance to foreigners, and that the more intense it is, the greater the need of antagonistic principles. So also, the real excellencies of our religion may only so much the more rivet us in a wrong aversion to those who do not acknowledge its authority or perfection.

It is probable that Jesus desired a state of things in which all who worship God spiritually should have an acknowledged and conscious union. It is clear that Paul longed above all things to overthrow the "wall of partition" which separated two families of sincere worshippers. Yet we now see stronger and higher walls of partition than ever, between the children of the same God,—with a new law of the letter, more entangling to the conscience, and more depressing to the mental energies, than any outward service of the Levitical law. The cause of all this is to be found in the claim of Messiahship for Jesus. This gave a premium to crooked logic, in order to prove that the prophecies meant what they did not mean and could not mean. This perverted men's notions of right and wrong, by imparting factitious value to a literary and historical proposition, "Jesus is the Messiah," as though that were or could be religion. This gave merit to credulity, and led pious men to extol it as a brave and noble deed, when any one overpowered the scruples of good sense, and scolded them down as the wisdom of this world, which is hostile to God. This put the Christian church into an essentially false position, by excluding from it in the first century all the men of most powerful and cultivated understanding among the Greeks and Romans. This taught Christians to boast of the hostility of the wise and prudent, and in every controversy ensured that the party which had the merit of mortifying reason most signally should be victorious. Hence, the downward career of the Church into base superstition was determined and inevitable from her very birth; nor was any improvement possible, until a reconciliation should be effected between Christianity and the cultivated reason which it had slighted and insulted.

Such reconciliation commenced, I believe, from the tenth century, when the Latin moralists began to be studied as a part of a theological course. It was continued with still greater results when Greek literature became accessible to churchmen. Afterwards, the physics of Galileo and of Newton began not only to undermine numerous superstitions, but to give to men a confidence in the reality of abstract truth, and in our power to attain it in other domains than that of geometrical demonstration. This, together with the philosophy of Locke, was taken up into Christian thought, and Political Toleration was the first fruit. Beyond that point, English religion has hardly gone. For in spite of all that has since been done in Germany for the true and accurate exposition of the Bible, and for the scientific establishment of the history of its component books, we still remain deplorably ignorant here of these subjects. In consequence, English Christians do not know that they are unjust and utterly unreasonable, in expecting thoughtful men to abide by the creed of their ancestors. Nor, indeed, is there any more stereotyped and approved calumny, than the declaration so often emphatically enunciated from the pulpit, that unbelief in the Christian miracles is the fruit of a wicked heart and of a soul enslaved to sin. Thus do estimable and well-meaning men, deceived and deceiving one another, utter base slander in open church, where it is indecorous to reply to them,—and think that they are bravely delivering a religions testimony.

No difficulty is encountered, so long as the inward and the outward rule of religion agree,—by whatever names men call them,—the Spirit and the Word—or Reason and the Church,—or Conscience and Authority. None need settle which of the two rules is the greater, so long as the results coincide: in fact, there is no controversy, no struggle, and also probably no progress. A child cannot guess whether father or mother has the higher authority, until discordant commands are given; but then commences the painful necessity of disobeying one in order to obey the other. So, also, the great and fundamental controversies of religion arise, only when a discrepancy is detected between the inward and the outward rule: and then, there are only two possible solutions. If the Spirit within us and the Bible (or Church) without us are at variance, we must either follow the inward and disregard the outward law; else we must renounce the inward law and obey the outward. The Romanist bids us to obey the Church and crush our inward judgment: the Spiritualist, on the contrary, follows his inward law, and, when necessary, defies Church, Bible, or any other authority. The orthodox Protestant is better and truer than the Romanist, because the Protestant is not like the latter, consistent in error, but often goes right: still he is inconsistent as to this point. Against the Spiritualist he uses Romanist principles, telling him that he ought to submit his "proud reason" and accept the "Word of God" as infallible, even though it appear to him to contain errors. But against the Romanist the same disputant avows Spiritualist principles, declaring that since "the Church" appears to him to be erroneous, he dares not to accept it as infallible. What with the Romanist he before called "proud reason," he now designates as Conscience, Understanding, and perhaps the Holy Spirit. He refused to allow the right of the Spiritualist to urge, that the Bible contains contradictions and immoralities, and therefore cannot be received; but he claims a full right to urge that the Church has justified contradictions and immoralities, and therefore is not to be submitted to. The perception that this position is inconsistent, and, to him who discerns the inconsistency, dishonest, is every year driving Protestants to Rome. And in principle there are only two possible religions: the Personal and the Corporate; the Spiritual and the External. I do not mean to say that in Romanism there is nothing but what is Corporate and External; for that is impossible to human nature: but that this is what the theory of their argument demands; and their doctrine of Implicit[4] (or Virtual) Faith entirely supersedes intellectual perception as well as intellectual conviction. The theory of each church is the force which determines to what centre the whole shall gravitate. However men may talk of spirituality, yet let them once enact that the freedom of individuals shall be absorbed in a corporate conscience, and you find that the narrowest heart and meanest intellect sets the rule of conduct for the whole body.

It has been often observed how the controversies of the Trinity and Incarnation depended on the niceties of the Greek tongue. I do not know whether it has ever been inquired, what confusion of thought was shed over Gentile Christianity, from its very origin, by the imperfection of the New Testament Greek. The single Greek[5] word [Greek: pistis] needs probably three translations into our far more accurate tongue,—viz., Belief, Trust, Faith; but especially Belief and Faith have important contrasts. Belief is purely intellectual; Faith is properly spiritual. Hence the endless controversy about Justification by [Greek: pistis], which has so vexed Christians; hence the slander cast on unbelievers or misbelievers (when they can no longer be burned or exiled), as though they were faithless and infidels.

But nothing of this ought to be allowed to blind us to the truly spiritual and holy developments of historical Christianity,—much less, make us revert to the old Paganism or Pantheism which it supplanted.—The great doctrine on which all practical religion depends,—the doctrine which nursed the infancy and youth of human nature,—is, "the sympathy of God with the perfection of individual man." Among Pagans this was so marred by the imperfect characters ascribed to the Gods, and the dishonourable fables told concerning them, that the philosophers who undertook to prune religion too generally cut away the root, by alleging[6] that God was mere Intellect and wholly destitute of Affections. But happily among the Hebrews the purity of God's character was vindicated; and with the growth of conscience in the highest minds of the nation the ideal image of God shone brighter and brighter. The doctrine of his Sympathy was never lost, and from the Jews it passed into the Christian church. This doctrine, applied to that part of man which is divine, is the wellspring of Repentance and Humility, of Thankfulness, Love, and Joy. It reproves and it comforts; it stimulates and animates. This it is which led the Psalmist to cry, "Whom have I in heaven but Thee? there is none upon earth that I desire beside Thee." This has satisfied prophets, apostles, and martyrs with God as their Portion. This has been passed from heart to heart for full three thousand years, and has produced bands of countless saints. Let us not cut off our sympathies from those, who have learnt to sympathize with God; nor be blind to that spiritual good which they have; even if it be, more or less sensibly, tinged with intellectual error. In fact, none but God knows, how many Christian hearts are really pure from bigotry. I cannot refuse to add my testimony, such as it is, to the effect, that the majority is always truehearted. As one tyrant, with a small band of unscrupulous tools, manages to use the energies of a whole nation of kind and well-meaning people for cruel purposes, so the bigoted few, who work out an evil theory with consistency, often succeed in using the masses of simpleminded Christians as their tools for oppression. Let us not think more harshly than is necessary of the anathematizing churches. Those who curse us with their lips, often love us in their hearts. A very deep fountain of tenderness can mingle with their bigotry itself: and with tens of thousands, the evil belief is a dead form, the spiritual love is a living reality. Whether Christians like it or not, we must needs look to Historians, to Linguists, to Physiologists, to Philosophers, and generally, to men of cultivated understanding, to gain help in all those subjects which are preposterously called Theology: but for devotional aids, for pious meditations, for inspiring hymns, for purifying and glowing thoughts, we have still to wait upon that succession of kindling souls, among whom may be named with special honour David and Isaiah, Jesus and Paul, Augustine, A Kempis, Fenelon, Leighton, Baxter, Doddridge, Watts, the two Wesleys, and Channing.

Religion was created by the inward instincts of the soul: it had afterwards to be pruned and chastened by the sceptical understanding. For its perfection, the co-operation of these two parts of man is essential. While religious persons dread critical and searching thought, and critics despise instinctive religion, each side remains imperfect and curtailed.

It is a complaint often made by religious historians, that no church can sustain its spirituality unimpaired through two generations, and that in the third a total irreligion is apt to supervene. Sometimes indeed the transitions are abrupt, from an age of piety to an age of dissoluteness. The liability to such lamentable revulsions is plainly due to some insufficiency in the religion to meet all the wants of human nature. To scold at that nature is puerile, and implies an ignorance of the task which religion undertakes. To lay the fault on the sovereign will of God, who has "withheld his grace" from the grandchildren of the pious, might be called blasphemy, if we were disposed to speak harshly. The fault lies undoubtedly in the fact, that Practical Devoutness and Free Thought stand apart in unnatural schism. But surely the age is ripe for something better;—for a religion which stall combine the tenderness, humility, and disinterestedness, that are the glory of the purest Christianity, with that activity of intellect, untiring pursuit of truth, and strict adherence to impartial principle, which the schools of modern science embody. When a spiritual church has its senses exercised to discern good and evil, judges of right and wrong by an inward power, proves all things and holds fast that which is good, fears no truth, but rejoices in being corrected, intellectually as well as morally,—it will not be liable to be "carried to and fro" by shifting winds of doctrine. It will indeed have movement, namely, a steady onward one, as the schools of science have had, since they left off to dogmatize, and approached God's world as learners; but it will lay aside disputes of words, eternal vacillations, mutual illwill and dread of new light, and will be able without hypocrisy to proclaim "peace on earth and goodwill towards men," even towards those who reject its beliefs and sentiments concerning "God and his glory."

NOTE ON PAGE 168.

The author of the "Eclipse of Faith," in his Defence (p. 168), referring to my reply in p. 101 above, says:—"In this very paragraph Mr. Newman shows that I have not misrepresented him, nor is it true that I overlooked his novel hypothesis. He says that 'Gibbon is exhibiting and developing the deep-seated causes of the spread of Christianity before Constantine,'—which Mr. Newman says had not spread. On the contrary; he assumes that the Christians were 'a small fraction,' and thus does dismiss in two sentences, I might have said three words, what Gibbon had strained every nerve in his celebrated chapter to account for."

Observe his phrase, "On the contrary." It is impossible to say more plainly, that Gibbon represents the spread of Christianity before Constantine to have been very great, and then laboured in vain to account for that spread; and that I, arbitrarily setting aside Gibbon's fact as to the magnitude of the "spread," cut the knot which he could not untie.

But the fact, as between Gibbon and me, is flatly the reverse. I advance nothing novel as to the numbers of the Christians, no hypothesis of my own, no assumption. I have merely adopted Gibbon's own historical estimate, that (judging, as he does judge, by the examples of Rome and Antioch), the Christians before the rise of Constantine were but a small fraction of the population. Indeed, he says, not above one-twentieth part; on which I laid no stress.

It may be that Gibbon is here in error. I shall willingly withdraw any historical argument, if shown that I have unawares rested on a false basis. In balancing counter statements and reasons from diverse sources, different minds come to different statistical conclusions. Dean Milman ("Hist. of Christianity," vol. ii. p. 341) when deliberately weighing opposite opinions, says cautiously, that "Gibbon is perhaps inclined to underrate" the number of the Christians. He adds: "M. Beugnot agrees much with Gibbon, and I should conceive, with regard to the West, is clearly right."

I beg the reader to observe, that I have not represented the numerical strength of the Christians in Constantine's army to be great. Why my opponent should ridicule my use of the phrase Christian regiments, I am too dull to understand. ("Who would not think," says he, "that it was one of Constantine's aide-de-camps that was speaking?") It may be that I am wrong in using the plural noun, and that there was only one such regiment,—that which carried the Labarum, or standard of the cross (Gibbon, ch. 20), to which so much efficacy was attributed in the war against Licinius. I have no time at present, nor any need for further inquiries on such matters. It is to the devotion and organization of the Christians, not to their proportionate numbers, that I attributed weight. If (as Milman says) Gibbon and Beugnot are "clearly right" as regards the West—i.e., as regards all that vast district which became the area of modern European Christendom, I see nothing in my argument which requires modification.

But why did Christianity, while opposed by the ruling powers, spread "in the East?" In the very chapter from which I have quoted, Dean Milman justifies me in saying, that to this question I may simply reply, "I do not know," without impairing my present argument. (I myself find no difficulty in it whatever; but I protest against the assumption, that I am bound to believe a religion preternatural, unless I con account for its origin and diffusion to the satisfaction of its adherents.) Dean Milman, vol. ii. pp. 322-340, gives a full account of the Manichaean religion, and its rapid and great spread in spate of violent persecution. MANI, the founder, represented himself as "a man invested with a divine mission." His doctrines are described by Milman as wild and mystical metaphysics, combining elements of thought from Magianism, Judaism, Christianity, and Buddhism. "His worship was simple, without altar, temple, images, or any imposing ceremonial. Pure and simple prayer was their only form of adoration." They talked much of "Christ" as a heavenly principle, but "did not believe in his birth or death. Prayers and Hymns addressed to the source of light, exhortations to subdue the dark and sensuous element within, and the study of the marvellous book of Mani, constituted their devotion. Their manners were austere and ascetic; they tolerated, but only tolerated, marriage, and that only among the inferior orders. The theatre, the banquet, and even the bath, they severely proscribed. Their diet was of fruits and herbs; they shrank with abhorrence from animal food." Mani met with fierce hostility from West and East alike; and at last was entrapped by the Persian king Baharam, and "was flayed alive. His skin, stuffed with straw, was placed over the gate of the city of Shahpoor."

Such a death was as cruel and as ignominious as that of crucifixion; yet his doctrines "expired not with their author. In the East and in the West they spread with the utmost rapidity.... The extent of its success may be calculated by the implacable hostility of other religions to the doctrines of Mani; the causes of that success are more difficult to conjecture."

Every reason, which, as far as I know, has ever been given, why it should be hard for early Christianity to spread, avail equally as reasons against the spread of Manichaeism. The state of the East, which admitted the latter without miracle, admitted the former also. It nevertheless is pertinent to add, that the recent history of Mormonism, compared with that of Christianity and of Manichaeism, may suggest that the martyr-death of the founder of a religion is a positive aid to its after-success.

[Footnote 1: See Strauss on the Infancy of Jesus.]

[Footnote 2: My "Eclectic" reviewer (who is among the least orthodox and the least uncandid) hence deduces, that I have confounded the two questions, "Does the Bible contain errors in human science?" and, "Is its purely spiritual teaching true?" It is quite wonderful to me, how educated men can so totally overlook what I have so plainly and so often written. This very passage might show the contrary, if he had but quoted the whole paragraph, instead of the middle sentence only. See also pp. 67, 74, 75, 86, 87, 125.]

[Footnote 3: Any orthodox periodical which dares to write charitably, is at once subjected to fierce attack us unorthodox.]

[Footnote 4: Explicit Faith in a doctrine, means, that we understand what the propositions are, and accept them. But if through blunder we accept a wrong set of propositions, so as to believe a false doctrine, we nevertheless have Implicit (or Virtual) Faith in the true one, if only we say from the heart: "Whatever the Church believes, I believe." Thus a person, who, through blundering, believes in Sabellianism or Arianism, which the Church has condemned, is regarded to have virtual faith in Trinitarianism, and all the "merit" of that faith, because of his good will to submit to the Church; which is the really saving virtue.]

[Footnote 5: [Greek: Dikaiosune] (righteousness), [Greek: Diatheke] (covenant, testament), [Greek: Charis] (grace), are all terms pregnant with fallacy.]

[Footnote 6: Horace and Cicero speak the mind of their educated contemporaries in saying that "we ought to pray to God only for external blessings, but trust to our own efforts for a pure and tranquil soul,"—a singular reversing of spiritual religion]



CHAPTER IX.

REPLY TO THE DEFENCE OF THE "ECLIPSE OF FAITH."

This small treatise was reviewed, unfavourably of course, in most of the religious periodicals, and among them in the "Prospective Review," by my friend James Martineau. I had been about the same time attacked in a book called the "Eclipse of Faith," written (chiefly against my treatise on the Soul) in the form of a Platonic Dialogue; in which a sceptic, a certain Harrington, is made to indulge in a great deal of loose and bantering argumentation, with the view of ridiculing my religion, and doing so by ways of which some specimen will be given.

I made an indignant protest in a new edition of this book, and added also various matter in reply to Mr. Martineau, which will still be found here. He in consequence in a second article[1] of the "Prospective" reviewed me afresh; but, in the opening, he first pronounced his sentence in words of deep disapproval against the "Eclipse of Faith."

"The method of the work," says he, "its plan of appealing from what seems shocking in the Bible to something more shocking in the world, simply doubles every difficulty without relieving any; and tends to enthrone a devil everywhere, and leave a God nowhere.... The whole force of the writer's thought,—his power of exposition, of argument, of sarcasm, is thrown, in spite of himself, into the irreligious scale.... If the work be really written[2] in good faith, and be not rather a covert attack on all religion, it curiously shows how the temple of the author's worship stands on the same foundation with the officina of Atheism, and in such close vicinity that the passer-by cannot tell from which of the two the voices stray into the street."

The author of the "Eclipse," buoyed up by a large sale of his work to a credulous public, put forth a "Defence," in which he naturally declined to submit to the judgment of this reviewer. But my readers will remark, that Mr. Martineau, writing against me, and seeking to rebut my replies to him—(nay, I fear I must say my attack on him; for I have confessed, almost with compunction, that it was I who first stirred the controversy)—was very favourably situated for maintaining a calmly judicial impartiality. He thought us both wrong, and he administered to us each the medicine which seemed to him needed. He passed his strictures on what he judged to be my errors, and he rebuked my assailant for profane recklessness.

I had complained, not of this merely, but of monstrous indefensible garbling and misrepresentation, pervading the whole work. The dialogue is so managed, as often to suggest what is false concerning me, yet without asserting it; so as to enable him to disown the slander, while producing its full effect against me. Of the directly false statements and garblings I gave several striking exhibitions. His reply to all this in the first edition of his "Defence" was reviewed in a third article of the "Prospective Review," Its ability and reach of thought are attested by the fact that it has been mistaken for the writing of Mr. Martineau; but (as clearly as reviews ever speak on such subjects) it is intimated in the opening that this new article is from a new hand, "at the risk of revealing division of persons and opinions within the limits of the mystic critical We." Who is the author, I do not know; nor can I make a likely guess at any one who was in more than distant intercourse with me.

This third reviewer did not bestow one page, as Mr. Martineau had done, on the "Eclipse;" did not summarily pronounce a broad sentence without details, but dedicated thirty-four pages to the examination and proof. He opens with noticing the parallel which the author of the "Eclipse" has instituted between his use of ridicule and that of Pascal; and replies that he signally violates Pascal's two rules, first, to speak with truth against one's opponents and not with calumny; secondly, not to wound them needlessly. "Neglect of the first rule (says he) has given to these books [the "Eclipse" and its "Defence"] their apparent controversial success; disregard of the second their literary point." He adds, "We shall show that their author misstates and misrepresents doctrines; garbles quotations, interpolating words which give the passage he cites reference to subjects quite foreign from those to which in the original they apply, while retaining the inverted commas, which are the proper sign of faithful transcription; that similarly, he allows himself the licence of omission of the very words on which the controversy hangs, while in appearance citing verbatim;... and that he habitually employs a sophistry too artful (we fear) to be undesigned. May he not himself have been deceived, some indulgent render perhaps asks, by the fallacies which have been so successful with others? It would be as reasonable to suppose that the grapes which deluded the birds must have deluded Zeuxis who painted them."

So grave an accusation against my assailant's truthfulness, coming not from me, but from a third party, and that, evidently a man who knew well what he was saying and why,—could not be passed over unnoticed, although that religious world, which reads one side only, continued to buy the "Eclipse" and its "Defence" greedily, and not one in a thousand of them was likely to see the "Prospective Review," In the second edition of the "Defence" the writer undertakes to defend himself against my advocate, in on Appendix of 19 closely printed pages, the "Defence" itself being 218. The "Eclipse," in its 9th edition of small print, is 393 pages. And how does he set about his reply? By trying to identify the third writer with the second (who was notoriously Mr. Martineau), and to impute to him ill temper, chagrin, irritation, and wounded self-love, as the explanation of this third article: He says (p. 221):—

"The third writer—if, as I have said, he be not the second—sets out on a new voyage of discovery ... and still humbly following in the wake of Mr. Newman's great critical discoveries,[3] repeats that gentleman's charges of falsifying passages, garbling and misrepresentation. In doing so, he employs language, and manifests a temper, which I should have thought that respect for himself, if not for his opponent, would have induced him to suppress. It is enough to say, that he quite rivals Mr. Newman in sagacity, and if possible, has more successfully denuded himself of charity.... If he be the same as the second writer, I am afraid that the little Section XV." [i.e. the reply to Mr. Martineau in 1st edition of the "Defence"] "must have offended the amour propre more deeply than it ought to have done, considering the wanton and outrageous assault to which it was a very lenient reply, and that the critic affords another illustration of the old maxim, that there are none so implacable as those who have done a wrong.

"As the spectacle of the reeling Helot taught the Spartans sobriety, so his bitterness shall teach me moderation. I know enough of human nature to understand that it is very possible for an angry man—and chagrin and irritation are too legibly written on every page of this article—to be betrayed into gross injustice."

The reader will see from this the difficulty of my position in this controversy. Mr. Martineau, while defending himself, deprecated the profanity of my other opponent, and the atheistic nature of his arguments. He spoke as a bystander, and with the advantage of a judicial position, and it is called "wanton and outrageous." A second writer goes into detail, and exposes some of the garbling arts which have been used against me; it is imputed[4] to ill temper, and is insinuated to be from a spirit of personal revenge. How much less can I defend myself, and that, against untruthfulness, without incurring such imputation! My opponent speaks to a public who will not read my replies. He picks out what he pleases of my words, and takes care to divest them of their justification. I have (as was to be expected) met with much treatment from the religious press which I know cannot be justified; but all is slight, compared to that of which I complain from this writer. I will presently give a few detailed instances to illustrate this. While my charge against my assailant is essentially moral, and I cannot make any parade of charity, he can speak patronizingly of me now and then, and makes his main attacks on my logic and metaphysics. He says, that in writing his first book, he knew no characteristics of me, except that I was "a gentleman, a scholar, and a very indifferent metaphysician" At the risk of encountering yet more of banter and insult, I shall here quote what the third "Prospective Reviewer" says on this topic. (Vol. x. p. 208):—

"Our readers will be able to judge how well qualified the author is to sneer at Mr. Newman's metaphysics, which are far more accurate than his own, or to ridicule his logic. The tone of contempt which he habitually assumes preposterously reverses the relative intellectual status, so far as sound systematic thought is concerned, of the two men."

I do not quote this as testimony to myself but as testimony that others, as well as I, feel the contemptuous tone assumed by my adversary in precisely that subject on which modesty is called for. On metaphysics there is hitherto an unreconciled diversity among men who have spent their lives in the study; and a large part of the endless religious disputes turns on this very fact. However, the being told, in a multitude of ingenious forms, that I am a wretched logician, is not likely to raffle my tranquillity. What does necessarily wound me, is his misrepresenting my thoughts to the thoughtful, whose respect I honour; and poisoning the atmosphere between me and a thousand religious hearts. That these do not despise me, however much contempt he may vent, I know only too well through their cruel fears of me.

I have just now learned incidentally, that in the last number (a supplementary number) of the "Prospective Review," there was a short reply to the second edition of Mr. Rogers's "Defence," in which the Editors officially deny that the third writer against Mr. Rogers is the same as the second; which, I gather from their statement, the "British Quarterly" had taken on itself to affirm.

I proceed to show what liberties my critic takes with my arguments, and what he justifies.

I. In the closing chapter of my third edition of the "Phases," I had complained of his bad faith in regard to my arguments concerning the Authoritative imposition of moral truth from without. I showed that, after telling his reader that I offered no proof of my assertions, he dislocated my sentences, altered their order, omitted an adverb of inference, and isolated three sentences out of a paragraph of forty-six lines: that his omission of the inferential adverb showed his deliberate intention to destroy the reader's clue to the fact, that I had given proof where he suppresses it and says that I have given none; that the sentences quoted as 1,2,3, by him, with me have the order 3, 2,1; while what he places first, is with me an immediate and necessary deduction from what has preceded. Now how does he reply? He does not deny my facts; but he justifies his process. I must set his words before the reader. _(Defence, 2nd ed., p. 85.)