Chapter I
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Christ a Reality
Whatever view may be taken of Jesus Christ, he cannot be excluded from history; He is not a legend, or a superstition or a theory that may be brushed lightly aside. He is one of those “stubborn things” that men call facts. You may ignore him, but you cannot expunge him. You may neglect him or misinterpret him; but you cannot get rid of the fact, and whatever may grow out of the fact, that he has appeared and enacted a part among men which has left an indelible impress on their condition in all civilized lands.
To the most casual observer, he towers the most conspicuous figure in the backward sweep of the eye. To the acutest mind of philosophy, he is the most palpable and indubitable problem of history. His historical verity is now conceded on every hand. An ingenious learning has abandoned the vain attempt to make him out a myth. Whatever he be, he is no myth. Every church and chapel is in some way a memento of him. Every organised Christian State in Europe is a monument to his historical memory. Hoary ecclesiastical Rome filling the centuries, though with but the merest travesty of his doctrine, and for ages manacling the human intellect in a name that was never intended to import anything but life and liberty to the human race, is at least a guarantee to all the world that that name had a personal reality for its foundation.
We are indebted for our knowledge of him to a piece of writing which is quite extraordinary, and which may be said to be his most stupendous monument on earth, namely, the four gospels, bearing the names of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The antiquity and literary quality of these productions combine to impart to them a value and a significance that cannot be overstated, though familiarity interferes with perception a little. By all the ordinary rules of literary transmission, they are the indisputable productions of Christ’s friends and companions, they having been in the hands of the Christian community with that reputation ever since the beginning of Christianity. But it is their character that gives them their chief weight. They are unlike all biographical performances in this, that they make no effort to commend their subject to the reader. There is no attempt at panegyric; there is no extolling of Christ’s virtues; there is no pointing out of heroic qualities; there is none of the customary praise or commendation of his hero that is natural to a biographical writer. There is nothing even in the nature of a complimentary allusion. All we have is a plain ungarnished recital of what Christ said and of what he did—and this in the simplest language. This is wonderful when we consider the scope there was for hero worship, and the temptation to indulge in it on the part of enthusiastic disciples. But how much more wonderful it is that this bald recital of facts conveys to the mind the impression of a personality unapproached in the whole range of human thought or writing—a character such as is never seen among men for godlike dignity, purity, beneficence and power, a figure as far above men as the heaven is above the earth. What is the explanation of this unique literary phenomenon? If we accept the view exhibited by the apostles, there is a complete explanation: that the whole case was a divine manifestation, and that the Spirit of God employed the gospel narrators in its literary exhibition. If we reject this view, we are in the presence of a fact that defies explanation, on any known principle. The New Testament is a fact: the figure it exhibits of Jesus Christ is as much a fact as any superb picture in a gallery. That the human authors were with one exception illiterate men, is a fact. If a superhuman agency were not at work, how are we to account for this superhuman performance, that without human praise or human paint of any kind, these illiterate writers have produced in the simplest language such an ideal character in Christ as transcends even the most gifted of human imaginations?
There are two ways of dealing with the subject. It can be discussed from what might be called the newspaper standpoint, as a doubtful problem on which, as judge and jury, we bring to bear what information we may possess. Or it may be stated and illustrated and argued from the New Testament writers’ point of view, with the ardour that naturally springs from appreciation and faith. If the latter course is chosen in the present case, it is because, while it surrenders none of the critical advantages that may belong to the former, it admits of a fuller statement and a more satisfactory result. The cold impartiality of the critic, however correctly applied, only leaves you at the door of the subject when you have done. When you have conciliated unbelief to the utmost; when you have gone the utmost length in your deferences to critical acumen or unfriendly bias, you have failed to do more than establish a probability, which has little influence on human motives. The better plan is to assume the historical verity of the subject in all particulars, and harmonise this view of the subject with all objections as you go along. The logic and polemics of earnest conviction take you inside the house, and set you down before the cheerful fire in the pleased society of hospitable inmates.
The wisdom of this line of treatment is forced on the mind when the nature of the subject is fully apprehended. It is not like ordinary subjects, which you may attend to or leave alone without compromising your well-being in any way. If Christ is what he is represented in the apostolic writings, it is at our hazard if we neglect him. Other subjects may be interesting, but this is of solemn and urgent moment. We may or may not attend to other things: the claims of this are imperative. The subject of Christ alone deals with personal futurity and eternity.
Astronomy appeals overpoweringly to our sense of the stupendous, the exact, the infinite: the face of the earth stirs our love of the fair and the beautiful; her rocky depths excite our curiosity as to past conditions of the globe. Agriculture supplies us with the useful: chemistry with the theoretical; history, with the actual working of things among men in their present situation. Christ alone deals with the ever-pressing problem of the meaning of existence and the destiny of human life. All other subjects are here as dumb as the stars; dark as the night; or incoherent as the roar of the storm-tossed waters on the desolate strand.
If we are to accept Christ as apostolically exhibited, there is no extravagance in the words which declare him “worthy to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honour and glory and blessing.” It is not only as Pilate was made to record, that “there is no fault in him;” but as Paul declared, that “in him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge;” that “in him dwelleth all the fulness of the godhead bodily.”
Men glory in men. They see and praise greatness in the successful leading of soldiers, as in Napoleon; they admire the ability that can tell a graphic story, like a Dickens; or that can clearly delineate quickeyed discernments and impressions of men and things, as a Shakespeare; they extol the capacity that can hold the political helm in stormy weather, like a Gladstone; or that can jingle composition in measured cadences, like a Scott or a Tennyson. But what is all this excellence but the exhibition of perishing mortal faculty in picturesque relations— impressing human mentalities, tickling human fancies, flattering human vanities, but futile in the eternal issues of things? At the best, it is the exercise of creature gift—like the strength of a horse, the constructiveness of a bee, the scent of a bloodhound, the instinct of a beaver. If we are commanded not to glory in man, it is reasonable we should not. Man is but a creature—a transient blossom of eternal power—no more to be adored for his qualities than a rose for its fragrance, a peach for its bloom.
But with Christ, it is otherwise. We are not only not forbidden, we are commanded to glory in him. The very angels were ordered to do obeisance: “Let all the angels of God worship him.” And the reason which tells us it is out of place to glory in men, tells us it is fitting we should glory in the Lord. If we are to accept the New Testament exhibition of him, the Father has planted in him intrinsic excellence, life, authority, and power; and where these are, the recognition of them in praise and deference is reasonable.[1]
[1] Roberts, R. Nazareth Revisited. Birmingham, UK: The
Christadelphian