literature. All historians agree, that the enlightenment of mind hence arising was a prime mover of religious Reformation; and learned Protestants of Germany have even believed, that the overthrow of Popish error and establishment of purer truth would have been brought about more equably and profoundly, if Luther had never lived, and the passions of the vulgar had never been stimulated against the externals of Romanism.
At any rate, it gradually opened upon me, that the free cultivation of the _understanding_, which Latin and Greek literature had imparted to Europe and our freer public life, were chief causes of our religious superiority to Greek, Armenian, and Syrian Christians. As the Greeks in Constantinople under a centralized despotism retained no free intellect, and therefore the works of their fathers did their souls no good; so in Europe, just in proportion to the freedom of learning, has been the force of the result. In Spain and Italy the study of miscellaneous science and independent thought were nearly extinguished; in France and Austria they were crippled; in Protestant countries they have been freest. And then we impute all their effects to the Bible![9]
I at length saw how untenable is the argument drawn from the inward history of Christianity in favour of its superhuman origin. In fact: this religion cannot pretend to _self-sustaining power._ Hardly was it started on its course, when it began to be polluted by the heathenism and false philosophy around it. With the decline of national genius and civil culture it became more and more debased. So far from being able to uphold the existing morality of the best Pagan teachers, it became barbarized itself, and sank into deep superstition and manifold moral corruption. From ferocious men it learnt ferocity. When civil society began to coalesce into order, Christianity also turned for the better, and presently learned to use the wisdom, first of Romans, then of Greeks: such studies opened men’s eyes to new apprehensions of the Scripture and of its doctrine. By gradual and human means, Europe, like ancient Greece, grew up towards better political institutions; and Christianity improved with them,–the Christianity of the more educated. Beyond Europe, where there have been no such institutions, there has been no Protestant Reformation:–that is in the Greek, Armenian, Syrian, Coptic churches. Not unreasonably then do Franks in Turkey disown the title Nazarene, as denoting _that_ Christianity which has not been purified by European laws and European learning. Christianity rises and sinks with political and literary influences: in so far,[10] it does not differ from other religions.
The same applied to the origin and advance of Judaism. It began in polytheistic and idolatrous barbarism: it cleared into a hard monotheism, with much superstition adhering to it. This was farther improved by successive psalmists and prophets, until Judaism culminated. The Jewish faith was eminently grand and pure; but there is nothing[11] in this history which we can adduce in proof of preternatural and miraculous agency.
II. The facts concerning the outward spread of Christianity have also been disguised by the party spirit of Christians, as though there were something essentially _different in kind_ as to the mode in which it began and continued its conquests, from the corresponding history of other religions. But no such distinction can be made out. It is general to all religions to begin by moral means, and proceed farther by more worldly instruments.
Christianity had a great moral superiority over Roman paganism, in its humane doctrine of universal brotherhood, its unselfishness, its holiness; and thereby it attracted to itself (among other and baser materials) all the purest natures and most enthusiastic temperaments. Its first conquests were noble and admirable. But there is nothing _superhuman_ or unusual in this. Mohammedism in the same way conquers those Pagan creeds which are morally inferior to it. The Seljuk and the Ottoman Turks were Pagans, but adopted the religion of Tartars and Persians whom they subjugated, because it was superior and was blended with a superior civilization; exactly as the German conquerors of the Western Empire of Rome adopted some form of Christianity.
But if it is true that _the sword_ of Mohammed was the influence which subjected Arabia, Egypt, Syria and Persia to the religion of Islam, it is no less true that the Roman empire was finally conquered to Christianity by the sword. Before Constantine, Christians were but a small fraction of the empire. In the preceding century they had gone on deteriorating in good sense and most probably therefore in moral worth, and had made no such rapid progress in numbers as to imply that by the mere process of conversion they would ever Christianize the empire. That the conversion of Constantine, such as it was, (for he was baptized only just before death,) was dictated by mere worldly considerations, few modern Christians will deny. Yet a great fact is here implied; viz., that Christianity was adopted as a state-religion, because of the great _political_ power accruing from the organization of the churches and the devotion of Christians to their ecclesiastical citizenship. Roman statesmen well knew that a hundred thousand Roman citizens devoted to the interests of Rome, could keep in subjection a population of ten millions who were destitute of any intense patriotism and had no central objects of attachment. The Christian church had shown its immense resisting power and its tenacious union, in the persecution by Galerius; and Constantine was discerning enough to see the vast political importance of winning over such a body; which, though but a small fraction of the whole empire, was the only party which could give coherence to that empire, the only one which had enthusiastic adherents in every province, the only one on whose resolute devotion it was possible for a partizan to rely securely. The bravery and faithful attachment of Christian regiments was a lesson not lost upon Constantine; and we may say, in some sense, that the Christian soldiers in his armies conquered the empire (that is, the imperial appointments) for Christianity. But Paganism subsisted, even in spite of imperial allurements, until at length the sword of Theodosius violently suppressed heathen worship. So also, it was the spear of Charlemagne which drove the Saxons to baptism, and decided the extirpation of Paganism from Teutonic Europe. There is nothing in all this to distinguish the outward history of Christianity from that of Mohammedism. Barbarous tribes, now and then, venerating the superiority of our knowledge, adopt our religion: so have Pagan nations in Africa voluntarily become Mussulmans. But neither we nor they can appeal to any case, where an old State-religion has yielded without warlike compulsion to the force of heavenly truth,–“charm we never so wisely.” The whole influence which Christianity exerts over the world at large depends on the political history of modern Europe. The Christianity of Asia and Abyssinia is perhaps as pure and as respectable in this nineteenth century as it was in the fourth and fifth, yet no good or great deeds come forth out of it, of such a kind that Christian disputants dare to appeal to them with triumph. The politico-religious and very peculiar history of _European_ Christendom has alone elevated the modern world; and as Gibbon remarks, this whole history has directly depended on the fate of the great battles of Tours between the Moors and the Franks. The defeat of Mohammedism by Christendom certainly has not been effected by spiritual weapons. The soldier and the statesman have done to the full as much as the priest to secure Europe for Christianity, and win a Christendom of which Christians can be proud. As for the Christendom of Asia, the apologists of Christianity simply ignore it. With these facts, how can it be pretended that the external history of Christianity points to an exclusively divine origin?
The author of the “Eclipse of Faith” has derided me for despatching in two paragraphs what occupied Gibbon’s whole fifteenth chapter; but this author, here as always, misrepresents me. Gibbon is exhibiting and developing the deep-seated causes of the spread of Christianity before Constantine, and he by no means exhausts the subject. I am comparing the ostensible and notorious facts concerning the outward conquest of Christianity with those of other religions. To _account_ for the early growth of any religion, Christian, Mussulman, or Mormonite, is always difficult.
III. The moral advantages which we owe to Christianity have been exaggerated by the same party spirit, as if there were in them anything miraculous.
1. We are told that Christianity is the decisive influence which has raised _womankind_: this does not appear to be true. The old Roman matron was, relatively to her husband,[12] morally as high as in modern Italy: nor is there any ground for supposing that modern women have advantage over the ancient in Spain and Portugal, where Germanic have been counteracted by Moorish influences. The relative position of the sexes in Homeric Greece exhibits nothing materially different from the present day. In Armenia and Syria perhaps Christianity has done the service of extinguishing polygamy: this is creditable, though nowise miraculous. Judaism also unlearnt polygamy, and made an unbidden improvement upon Moses. In short, only in countries where Germanic sentiment has taken root, do we see marks of any elevation of the female sex superior to that of Pagan antiquity; and as this elevation of the German woman in her deepest Paganism was already striking to Tacitus and his contemporaries, it is highly unreasonable to claim it as an achievement of Christianity.
In point of fact, Christian doctrine, as propounded by Paul, is not at all so honourable to woman as that which German soundness of heart has established. With Paul[13] the _sole_ reason for marriage is, that a man may gratify instinct without sin. He teaches, that _but_ for this object it would be better not to marry. He wishes that all were in this respect as free as himself, and calls it a special gift of God. He does not encourage a man to desire a mutual soul intimately to share griefs and joys; one in whom the confiding heart can repose, whose smile shall reward and soften toil, whose voice shall beguile sorrow. He does not seem aware that the fascinations of woman refine and chasten society; that virtuous attachment has in it an element of respect, which abashes and purifies, and which shields the soul, even when marriage is deferred; nor yet, that the union of two persons who have no previous affection can seldom yield the highest fruits of matrimony, but often leads to the severest temptations. How _should_ he have known all this? Courtship before marriage did not exist in the society open to him: hence he treats the propriety of giving away a maiden, as one in which _her_ conscience, _her_ likes and dislikes, are not concerned: 1 Cor. vii. 37, 38. If the law leaves the parent “power over his own will” and imposes no “necessity” to give her away, Paul decidedly advises to keep her unmarried.
The author of the Apocalypse, a writer of the first century, who was received in the second as John the apostle, holds up a yet more degrading view of the matrimonial relation. In one of his visions he exhibits 144,000 chosen saints, perpetual attendants of “the Lamb,” and places the cardinal point of their sanctity in the fact, that “they were not defiled with women, but were virgins.” Marriage, therefore, is defilement! Protestant writers struggle in vain against this obvious meaning of the passage. Against all analogy of Scriptural metaphor, they gratuitously pretend that _women_ mean _idolatrous religions_: namely, because in the Old Testament the Jewish Church is personified as a virgin betrothed to God, and an idol is spoken of as her paramour.
As a result of the apostolic doctrines, in the second, third, and following centuries, very gross views concerning the relation of the sexes prevailed, and have been everywhere transmitted where men’s morality is exclusively[14] formed from the New Testament. The marriage service of the Church of England, which incorporates the Pauline doctrine is felt by English brides and bridegrooms to contain what is so offensive and degrading, that many clergymen mercifully make unlawful omissions. Paul had indeed expressly denounced _prohibitions_ of marriage. In merely _dissuading_ it, he gave advice, which, from his limited horizon and under his expectation of the speedy return of Christ, was sensible and good; but when this advice, with all its reasons, was made on oracle of eternal wisdom, it generated the monkish notions concerning womanhood. If the desire of a wife is a weakness, which the apostle would gladly have forbidden, only that he feared worse consequences, an enthusiastic youth cannot but infer that it is a higher state of perfection _not_ to desire a wife, and therefore aspires to “the crown of virginity.” Here at once is full-grown monkery. Hence that debasement of the imagination, which is directed perpetually to the lowest, instead of the highest side of the female nature. Hence the disgusting admiration and invocation of Mary’s perpetual virginity. Hence the transcendental doctrine of her immaculate conception from Anne, the “grandmother of God.”
In the above my critics have represented me to say that Christianity has done _nothing_ for women. I have not said so, but that what it has done has been exaggerated. I say: If the _theory_ of Christianity is to take credit from the _history_ of Christendom, it must also receive discredit. Taking in the whole system of nuns and celibates, and the doctrine which sustains it, the root of which is apostolic, I doubt whether any balance of credit remains over from this side of Christian history. I am well aware that the democratic doctrine of “the equality of souls” has a _tendency_ to elevate women,–and the poorer orders too; but this is not the whole of actual Christianity, which is a very heterogeneous mass.
2. Again: the modern doctrine, by aid of which West Indian slavery has been exterminated, is often put forward as Christian; but I had always discerned that it was not Biblical, and that, in respect to this great triumph, undue credit has been claimed for the fixed Biblical and authoritative doctrine. As I have been greatly misunderstood in my first edition, I am induced to expand this topic. Sir George Stephen,[15] after describing the long struggle in England against the West Indian interest and other obstacles, says, that, for some time, “worst of all, we found the people, not actually against us, but apathetic, lethargic, incredulous, indifferent. It was then, and _not till then_, that we sounded the right note, and touched a chord that never ceased to vibrate. _To uphold slavery was a crime against God!_ It was a NOVEL DOCTRINE, but it was a cry that was heard, for it would be heard. The national conscience was awakened to inquiry, and inquiry soon produced conviction.” Sir George justly calls the doctrine novel. As developed in the controversy, it laid down the general proposition, that _men and women are not, and cannot be chattels_; and that all human enactments which decree this are _morally null and void_, as sinning against the higher law of nature and of God. And the reason of this lies in the essential contrast of a moral personality and chattel. Criminals may deserve to be bound and scourged, but they do not cease to be persons, nor indeed do even the insane. Since every man is a person, he cannot be a piece of property, nor has an “owner” any just and moral claim to his services. Usage, so far from conferring this claim, increases the total amount of injustice; the longer an innocent man is _forcibly_ kept in slavery, the greater the reparation to which he is entitled for the oppressive immorality. This doctrine I now believe to be irrefutable truth, but I disbelieved it while I thought the Scripture authoritative; because I found a very different doctrine there–a doctrine which is the argumentative stronghold of the American slaveholder. Paul sent back the fugitive Onesimus to his master Philemon, with kind recommendations and apologies for the slave, and a tender charge to Philemon, that he would receive Onesimus as a brother in the Lord, since he had been converted by Paul in the interval; but this very recommendation, full of affection as it is, virtually recognizes the moral rights of Philemon to the services of his slave; and hinting that if Onesimus stole anything, Philemon should now forgive him, Paul shows perfect insensibility to the fact that the master who detains a slave in captivity against his will, is guilty himself of a continual theft. What says Mrs. Beecher Stowe’s Cassy to this? “Stealing!–They who steal body and soul need not talk to us. Every one of these bills is stolen–stolen from poor starving, sweating creatures.” Now Onesimus, in the very act of taking to flight, showed that he had been submitting to servitude against his will, and that the house of his owner had previously been a prison to him. To suppose that Philemon has a pecuniary interest in the return of Onesimus to work without wages, implies that the master habitually steals the slave’s earnings; but if he loses nothing by the flight, he has not been wronged by it. Such is the modern doctrine, developed out of the fundamental fact that persons are not chattels; but it is to me wonderful that it should be needful to prove to any one, that this is _not_ the doctrine of the New Testament. Paul and Peter deliver excellent charges to masters in regard to the treatment of their slaves, but without any hint to them that there is an injustice in claiming them as slaves at all. That slavery, _as a system_, is essentially immoral, no Christian of those days seems to have suspected. Yet it existed in its worst forms under Rome. Whole gangs of slaves were mere tools of capitalists, and were numbered like cattle, with no moral relationship to the owner; young women of beautiful person were sold as articles of voluptuousness. Of course every such fact was looked upon by Christians as hateful and dreadful; yet, I say, it did not lead them to that moral condemnation of slavery, _as such_, which has won the most signal victory in modern times, and is destined, I trust, to win one far greater.
A friendly reviewer replies to this, that the apathy of the early Christians to the intrinsic iniquity of the slave system rose out of “their expectation of an immediate close of this world’s affairs. The only reason why Paul sanctioned contentment with his condition in the converted slave, was, that for so short a time it was not worth while for any man to change his state.” I agree to this; but it does not alter my fact: on the contrary, it confirms what I say,–that the Biblical morality is not final truth. To account for an error surely is not to deny it.
Another writer has said on the above: “Let me suppose you animated to go as missionary to the East to preach this (Mr. Newman’s) spiritual system: would you, in addition to all this, publicly denounce the social and political evils under which the nations groan? If so, your spiritual projects would soon be perfectly understood, and _summarily dealt with_.–It is vain to say, that, if commissioned by Heaven, and endowed with power of working miracles, you would do so; for you cannot tell under what limitations your commission would be given: it is pretty certain, that _it would leave you to work a moral and spiritual system by moral and spiritual means_, and not allow you to turn the world upside down, and _mendaciously_ tell it that you came only to preach peace, while every syllable you uttered would be an incentive to sedition.”–_Eclipse of Faith_, p. 419.
This writer supposes that he is attacking _me_, when every line is an attack on Christ and Christianity. Have _I_ pretended power of working miracles? Have I imagined or desired that miracle would shield me from persecution? Did Jesus _not_ “publicly denounce the social and political evils” of Judaea? was he not “summarily dealt with”? Did he not know that his doctrine would send on earth “not peace, but a sword”? and was he _mendacious_ in saying, “Peace I leave unto you?” or were the angels mendacious in proclaiming, “Peace on earth, goodwill among men”? Was not “every syllable that Jesus uttered” in the discourse of Matth. xxiii., “an incentive to sedition?” and does this writer judge it to be _mendacity_, that Jesus opened by advising to OBEY the very men, whom he proceeds to vilify at large as immoral, oppressive, hypocritical, blind, and destined to the damnation of hell? Or have I anywhere blamed the apostles because they did _not_ exasperate wicked men by direct attacks? It is impossible to answer such a writer as this; for he elaborately misses to touch what I have said. On the other hand, it is rather too much to require me to defend Jesus from his assault.
Christian preachers did not escape the imputation of turning the world upside down, and at length, in some sense, effected what was imputed. It is matter of conjecture, whether any greater convulsion would have happened, if the apostles had done as the Quakers in America. No Quaker holds slaves: why not? Because the Quakers teach their members that it is an essential immorality. The slave-holding states are infinitely more alive and jealous to keep up their “peculiar institution,” than was the Roman government; yet the Quakers have caused no political convulsion. I confess, to me it seems, that if Paul, and John, and Peter, and James, had done as these Quakers, the imperial administration would have looked on it as a harmless eccentricity of the sect, and not as an incentive[16] to sedition. But be this as it may, I did not say what else the apostles might have succeeded to enforce; I merely pointed out what it was that they actually taught, and that, _as a fact_, they did _not_ declare slavery to be an immorality and the basest of thefts. If any one thinks their course was more wise, he may be right or wrong, but his opinion is in itself a concession of my fact.
As to the historical progress of Christian practice and doctrine on this subject, it is, as usual, mixed of good and evil. The humanity of good Pagan emperors softened the harshness of the laws of bondage, and manumission had always been extremely common amongst the Romans. Of course, the more humane religion of Christ acted still more powerfully in the same direction, especially in inculcating the propriety of freeing _Christian_ slaves. This was creditable, but not peculiar, and is not a fact of such a nature as to add to the exclusive claims of Christianity. To every _proselyting_ religion the sentiment is so natural, that no divine spirit is needed to originate and establish it. Mohammedans also have a conscience against enslaving Mohammedans, and generally bestow freedom on a slave as soon as he adopts their religion. But no zeal for _human_ freedom has ever grown out of the purely biblical and ecclesiastical system, any more than out of the Mohammedan. In the middle ages, zeal for the liberation of serfs first rose in the breasts of the clergy, after the whole population had become nominally Christian. It was not men, but Christians, whom the clergy desired to make free: it is hard to say, that they thought Pagans to have any human rights at all, even to life. Nor is it correct to represent ecclesiastical influences as the sole agency which overthrew slavery and serfdom. The desire of the kings to raise up the chartered cities as a bridle to the barons, was that which chiefly made rustic slavery untenable in its coarsest form; for a “villain” who escaped into the free cities could not be recovered. In later times, the first public act against slavery came from republican France, in the madness of atheistic enthusiasm; when she declared black and white men to be equally free, and liberated the negroes of St. Domingo. In Britain, the battle of social freedom has been fought chiefly by that religious sect which rests least on the letter of Scripture. The bishops, and the more learned clergy, have consistently been apathetic to the duty of overthrowing the slave system.–I was thus led to see, that here also the New Testament precepts must not be received by me as any final and authoritative law of morality. But I meet opposition in a quarter from which I had least expected it;–from one who admits the imperfection of the morality actually attained by the apostles, but avows that Christianity, as a divine system, is not to be identified with apostolic doctrine, but with the doctrine _ultimately developed_ in the Christian Church; moreover, the ecclesiastical doctrine concerning slavery he alleges to be truer than mine,–I mean, truer than that which I have expounded as held by modern abolitionists. He approves of the principle of claiming freedom, not for _men_, but for _Christians_. He says: “That Christianity opened its arms at all to the servile class was enough; for in its embrace was the sure promise of emancipation…. Is it imputed as a disgrace, that Christianity put conversion before manumission, and _brought them to God, ere it trusted them with themselves_?… It created the simultaneous obligation to make the Pagan a convert, and the convert free.” … “If our author had made his attack from the opposite side, and contended that its doctrines ‘proved too much’ against servitude, and _assumed with too little qualification the capacity of each man for self-rule_, we should have felt more hesitation in expressing our dissent.”
I feel unfeigned surprize at these sentiments from one whom I so highly esteem and admire; and considering that they were written at first anonymously, and perhaps under pressure of time, for a review, I hope it is not presumptuous in me to think it possible that they are hasty, and do not wholly express a deliberate and final judgment. I must think there is some misunderstanding; for I have made no high claims about capacity for _self-rule_, as if laws and penalties were to be done away. But the question is, shall human beings, who (as all of us) are imperfect, be controlled by public law, or by individual caprice? Was not my reviewer intending to advocate some form of _serfdom_ which is compatible with legal rights, and recognizes the serf as a man; not _slavery_ which pronounces him a chattel? Serfdom and apprenticeship we may perhaps leave to be reasoned down by economists and administrators; slavery proper is what I attacked as essentially immoral.
Returning then to the arguments, I reason against them as if I did not know their author.–I have distinctly avowed, that the effort to liberate Christian slaves was creditable: I merely add, that in this respect Christianity is no better than Mohammedism. But is it really no moral fault,–is it not a moral enormity,–to deny that Pagans have human rights? “That Christianity opened its arms _at all_ to the servile class, _was enough_.” Indeed! Then either unconverted men have no natural right to freedom, or Christians may withhold a natural right from them. Under the plea of “bringing them to God,” Christians are to deny by law, to every slave who refuses to be converted, the rights of husband and father, rights of persons, rights of property, rights over his own body. Thus manumission is a bribe to make hypocritical converts, and Christian superiority a plea for depriving men of their dearest rights. Is not freedom older than Christianity? Does the Christian recommend his religion to a Pagan by stealing his manhood and all that belongs to it? Truly, if only Christians have a right to personal freedom, what harm is there in hunting and catching Pagans to make slaves of them? And this was exactly the “development” of thought and doctrine in the Christian church. The same priests who taught that _Christians_ have moral rights to their sinews and skin, to their wives and children, and to the fruit of their labour, which _Pagans_ have not, consistently developed the same fundamental idea of Christian superiority into the lawfulness of making war upon the heathen, and reducing them to the state of domestic animals. If Christianity is to have credit from the former, it must also take the credit of the latter. If cumulative evidence of its divine origin is found in the fact, that Christendom has liberated Christian slaves, must we forget the cumulative evidence afforded by the assumed right of the Popes to carve out the countries of the heathen, and bestow them with their inhabitants on Christian powers? Both results flow logically out of the same assumption, and were developed by the same school.
But, I am told, a man must not be freed, until we have ascertained his capacity for self-rule! This is indeed a tyrannical assumption: _vindicioe secundum servitutem_. Men are not to have their human rights, until we think they will not abuse them! Prevention is to be used against the hitherto innocent and injured! The principle involves all that is arrogant, violent, and intrusive, in military tyranny and civil espionage. Self-rule? But abolitionists have no thought of exempting men from the penalties of common law, if they transgress the law; we only desire that all men shall be equally subjected to the law, and equally protected by it. It is truly a strange inference, that because a man is possibly deficient in virtue, therefore he shall not be subject to public law, but to private caprice: as if this were a school of virtue, and not eminently an occasion of vice. Truer far is Homer’s morality, who says, that a man loses half his virtue on the day he is made a slave. As to the pretence that slaves are not fit for freedom, those Englishmen who are old enough to remember the awful predictions which West Indian planters used to pour forth about the bloodshed and confusion which would ensue, if they were hindered by law from scourging black men and violating black women, might, I think, afford to despise the danger of _enacting_ that men and women shall be treated as men and women, and not made tools of vice end victims of cruelty. If ever sudden emancipation ought to have produced violences and wrong from the emancipated, it was in Jamaica, where the oppression and ill-will was so great; yet the freed blacks have not in fifteen years inflicted on the whites as much lawless violence as they suffered themselves in six months of apprenticeship. It is the _masters_ of slaves, not the slaves, who are deficient in self-rule; and slavery is doubly detestable, because it depraves the masters.
What degree of “worldly moderation and economical forethought” is needed by a practical statesman in effecting the liberation of slaves, it is no business of mine to discuss. I however feel assured, that no constitutional statesman, having to contend against the political votes of numerous and powerful slave-owners, who believe their fortunes to be at stake, will ever be found to undertake the task _at all_, against the enormous resistance of avarice and habit, unless religious teachers pierce the conscience of the nation by denouncing slavery as an essential wickedness. Even the petty West Indian interests–a mere fraction of the English empire–were too powerful, until this doctrine was taught. Mr. Canning in parliament spoke emphatically against slavery, but did not dare to bring in a bill against it. When such is English experience, I cannot but expect the same will prove true in America.
In replying to objectors, I have been carried beyond my narrative, and have written from my _present_ point of view; I may therefore here complete this part of the argument, though by anticipation.
The New Testament has beautifully laid down Truth and Love as the culminating virtues of man; but it has imperfectly discerned that Love is impossible where Justice does not go first. Regarding this world as destined to be soon burnt up, it despaired of improving the foundations of society, and laid down the principle of Non-resistance, even to Injurious force, in terms so unlimited, as practically to throw its entire weight into the scale of tyranny. It recognises individuals who call themselves kings or magistrates (however tyrannical and usurping), as Powers ordained of God: it does _not_ recognize nations as Communities ordained of God, or as having any power and authority whatsoever, as against pretentious individuals. To obey a king, is strenuously enforced; to resist a usurping king, in a patriotic cause, is not contemplated in the New Testament as under any circumstances an imaginable duty. Patriotism has no recognised existence in the Christian records. I am well aware of the _cause_ of this; I do not say that it reflects any dishonour on the Christian apostles: I merely remark on it as a calamitous fact, and deduce that their precepts cannot and must not be made the sufficient rule of life, or they will still be (as they always have hitherto been) a mainstay of tyranny. The rights of Men and of Nations are wholly ignored[17] in the New Testament, but the authority of Slave-owners and of Kings is very distinctly recorded for solemn religious sanction. If it had been wholly silent, no one could have appealed to its decision: but by consecrating mere Force, it has promoted Injustice, and in so far has made that Love impossible, which it desired to establish.
It is but one part of this great subject, that the apostles absolutely command a slave to give obedience to his master in nil things, “as to the Lord.” It is in vain to deny, that _the most grasping of slave-owners asks nothing more of abolitionists than that they would all adopt Paul’s creed_; viz., acknowledge the full authority of owners of slaves, tell them that they are responsible to God alone, and charge them to use their power righteously and mercifully.
3. LASTLY: it is a lamentable fact, that not only do superstitions about Witches, Ghosts, Devils, and Diabolical Miracles derive a strong support from the Bible, (and in fact have been exploded by nothing but the advance of physical philosophy,)–but what is far worse, the Bible alone has nowhere sufficed to establish an enlightened religious toleration. This is at first seemingly unintelligible: for the apostles certainly would have been intensely shocked at the thought of punishing men, in body, purse, or station, for not being Christians or not being orthodox. Nevertheless, not only does the Old Testament justify bloody persecution, but the New teaches[18] that God will visit men with fiery vengeance _for holding an erroneous creed_;–that vengeance indeed is his, not ours; but that still the punishment is deserved. It would appear, that wherever this doctrine is held, possession of power for two or three generations inevitably converts men into persecutors; and in so far, we must lay the horrible desolations which Europe has suffered from bigotry, at the doors, not indeed of the Christian apostles themselves, but of that Bibliolatry which has converted their earliest records into a perfect and eternal law.
IV. “Prophecy” is generally regarded as a leading evidence of the divine origin of Christianity. But this also had proved itself to me a more and more mouldering prop, whether I leant on those which concerned Messiah, those of the New Testament, or the miscellaneous predictions of the Old Testament.
1. As to the Messianic prophecies, I began to be pressed with the difficulty of proving against the Jews that “Messiah was to suffer.” The Psalms generally adduced for this purpose can in no way be fixed on Messiah. The prophecy in the 9th chapter of Daniel looks specious in the authorized English version, but has evaporated in the Greek translation and is not acknowledged in the best German renderings. I still rested on the 53rd chapter of Isaiah, as alone fortifying me against the Rabbis: yet with an unpleasantly increasing perception that the system of “double interpretation” in which Christians indulge, is a playing fast and loose with prophecy, and is essentially dishonest _No one dreams of a “second” sense until the primary sense proves false_: all false prophecy may be thus screened. The three prophecies quoted (Acts xiii. 33–35) in proof of the resurrection of Jesus, are simply puerile, and deserve no reply.–I felt there was something unsound in all this.
2. The prophecies of the New Testament are not many. First, we have that of Jesus in Matt xxiv. concerning the destruction of Jerusalem. It is marvellously exact, down to the capture of the city and miserable enslavement of the population; but at this point it becomes clearly and hopelessly false: namely, it declares, that “_immediately after_ that tribulation, the sun shall be darkened, &c. &c., and then shall appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven, and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect,” &c. This is a manifest description of the Great Day of Judgment: and the prophecy goes on to add: “Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.” When we thus find a prediction to break down suddenly in the middle, we have the well-known mark of its earlier part being written after the event: and it becomes unreasonable to doubt that the detailed annunciations of this 24th chapter of Matthew, were first composed _very soon after_ the war of Titus, and never came from the lips of Jesus at all. Next: we have the prophecies of the Apocalypse. Not one of these can be interpreted certainly of any human affairs, except one in the 17th chapter, which the writer himself has explained to apply to the emperors of Rome: and that is proved false by the event.–Farther, we have Paul’s prophecies concerning the apostacy of the Christian Church. These are very striking, as they indicate his deep insight into the moral tendencies of the community in which he moved. They are high testimonies to the prophetic soul of Paul; and as such, I cannot have any desire to weaken their force. But there is nothing in them that can establish the theory of supernaturalism, in the face of his great mistake as to the speedy return of Christ from heaven.
3. As for the Old Testament, if all its prophecies about Babylon and Tyre and Edom and Ishmael and the four Monarchies were both true and supernatural, what would this prove? That God had been pleased to reveal something of coming history to certain eminent men of Hebrew antiquity. That is all. We should receive this conclusion with an otiose faith. It could not order or authorize us to submit our souls and consciences to the obviously defective morality of the Mosaic system in which these prophets lived; and with Christianity it has nothing to do.
At the same time I had reached the conclusion that large deductions must be made from the credit of these old prophecies.
First, as to the Book of Daniel: the 11th chapter is closely historical down to Antiochus Epiphanes, after which it suddenly becomes false; and according to different modern expositors, leaps away to Mark Antony, or to Napoleon Buonaparte, or to the Papacy. Hence we have a _prima facie_ presumption that the book was composed in the reign of that Antiochus; nor can it be proved to have existed earlier: nor is there in it one word of prophecy which can be shown to have been fulfilled in regard to any later era. Nay, the 7th chapter also is confuted by the event; for the great Day of Judgment has not followed upon the fourth[19] Monarchy.
Next, as to the prophecies of the Pentateuch. They abound, as to the times which precede the century of Hezekiah; higher than which we cannot trace the Pentateuch.[20] No prophecy of the Pentateuch can be proved to have been fulfilled, which had not been already fulfilled before Hezekiah’s day.
Thirdly, as to the prophecies which concern various nations,–some of them are remarkably verified, as that against Babylon; others failed, as those of Ezekiel concerning Nebuchadnezzar’s wars against Tyre and Egypt. The fate predicted against Babylon was delayed for five centuries, so as to lose all moral meaning as a divine infliction on the haughty city.–On the whole, it was clear to me, that it is a vain attempt to forge polemical weapons out of these old prophets, for the service of modern creeds.[21]
V. My study of John’s gospel had not enabled me to sustain Dr. Arnold’s view, that it was an impregnable fortress of Christianity.
In discussing the Apocalypse, I had long before felt a doubt whether we ought not rather to assign that book to John the apostle in preference to the Gospel and Epistles: but this remained only as a doubt. The monotony also of the Gospel had often excited my _wonder_. But I was for the first time _offended_, on considering with a fresh mind an old fact,–the great similarity of the style and phraseology in the third chapter, in the testimony of the Baptist, as well as in Christ’s address to Nicodemus, that of John’s own epistle. As the three first gospels have their family likeness, which enables us on hearing a text to know that it comes out of one of the three, though we perhaps know not which; so is it with the Gospel and Epistles of John. When a verse is read, we know that it is either from an epistle of John, or else from the Jesus of John; but often we cannot tell which. On contemplating the marked character of this phenomenon, I saw it infallibly[22] to indicate that John has made both the Baptist and Jesus speak, as John himself would have spoken; and that we cannot trust the historical reality of the discourses in the fourth gospel.
That narrative introduces an entirely new phraseology, with a perpetual discoursing about the Father and the Son; of which there is barely the germ in Matthew:–and herewith a new doctrine concerning the heaven-descended personality of Jesus. That the divinity of Christ cannot be proved from the three first gospels, was confessed by the early Church, and is proved by the labouring arguments of the modern Trinitarians. What then can be dearer, than that John has put into the mouth of Jesus the doctrines of half a century later, which he desired to recommend?
When this conclusion pressed itself first on my mind, the name of Strauss was only beginning to be known in England, and I did not read his great work until years after I had come to a final opinion on this whole subject. The contemptuous reprobation of Strauss in which it is fashionable for English writers to indulge, makes it a duty to express my high sense of the lucid force with which he unanswerably shows that the fourth gospel (whoever the author was) is no faithful exhibition of the discourses of Jesus. Before I had discerned this so vividly in all its parts, it had become quite certain to me that the secret colloquy with Nicodemus, and the splendid testimony of the Baptist to the Father and the Son, were wholly modelled out of John’s own imagination. And no sooner had I felt how severe was the shock to John’s general veracity, than a new and even graver difficulty rose upon me.
The stupendous and public event of Lazarus’s resurrection,–the circumstantial cross-examination of the man born blind and healed by Jesus,–made those two miracles, in Dr. Arnold’s view, grand and unassailable bulwarks of Christianity. The more I considered them, the mightier their superiority seemed to those of the other gospels. They were wrought at Jerusalem, under the eyes of the rulers, who did their utmost to detect them, and could not; but in frenzied despair, plotted to kill Lazarus. How different from the frequently vague and wholesale statements of the other gospels concerning events which happened where no enemy was watching to expose delusion! many of them in distant and uncertain localities.
But it became the more needful to ask; How was it that the other writers omitted to tell of such decisive exhibitions? Were they so dull in logic, as not to discern the superiority of these? Can they possibly have known of such miracles, wrought under the eyes of the Pharisees, and defying all their malice, and yet have told in preference other less convincing marvels? The question could not be long dwelt on, without eliciting the reply: “It is necessary to believe, at least until the contrary shall be proved, that the three first writers either had never heard of these two miracles, or disbelieved them.” Thus the account rests on the unsupported evidence of John, with a weighty presumption against its truth.
When, where, and in what circumstances did John write? It is agreed, that he wrote half a century after the events; when the other disciples were all dead; when Jerusalem was destroyed, her priests and learned men dispersed, her nationality dissolved, her coherence annihilated;–he wrote in a tongue foreign to the Jews of Palestine, and for a foreign people, in a distant country, and in the bosom of an admiring and confiding church, which was likely to venerate him the more, the greater marvels he asserted concerning their Master. He told them miracles of firstrate magnitude, which no one before had recorded. Is it possible for me to receive them _on his word_, under circumstances so conducive to delusion, and without a single check to ensure his accuracy? Quite impossible; when I have already seen how little to be trusted is his report of the discourses and doctrine of Jesus.
But was it necessary to impute to John conscious and wilful deception? By no means absolutely necessary;–as appeared by the following train[23] of thought. John tells us that Jesus promised the Comforter, _to bring to their memory_ things that concerned him; oh that one could have the satisfaction of cross-examining John on this subject! Let me suppose him put into the witness-box; and I will speak to him thus: “O aged Sir, we understand that you have two memories, a natural and a miraculous one: with the former you retain events as other men; with the latter you recall what had been totally forgotten. Be pleased to tell us now. Is it from your natural or from your supernatural memory that you derive your knowledge of the miracle wrought on Lazarus and the long discourses which you narrate?” If to this question John were frankly to reply, “It is solely from my supernatural memory,–from the special action of the Comforter on my mind:” then should I discern that he was perfectly truehearted. Yet I should also see, that he was liable to mistake a reverie, a meditation, a day-dream, for a resuscitation of his memory by the Spirit. In short, a writer who believes such a doctrine, and does not think it requisite to warn us how much of his tale comes from his natural, and how much from his supernatural memory, forfeits all claim to be received as an historian, witnessing by the common senses to external fact. His work may have religious value, but it is that of a novel or romance, not of a history. It is therefore superfluous to name the many other difficulties in detail which it contains.
Thus was I flung back to the three first gospels, as, with all their defects,–their genealogies, dreams, visions, devil-miracles, and prophecies written after the event,–yet on the whole, more faithful as a picture of the true Jesus, than that which is exhibited in John.
And now my small root of supernaturalism clung the tighter to Paul, whose conversion still appeared to me a guarantee, that there was at least some nucleus of miracle in Christianity, although it had not pleased God to give us any very definite and trustworthy account. Clearly it was an error, to make miracles our _foundation_; but might we not hold them as a result? Doctrine must be our foundation; but perhaps we might believe the miracles for the sake of it.–And in the epistles of Paul I thought I saw various indications that he took this view. The practical soundness of his eminently sober understanding had appeared to me the more signal, the more I discerned the atmosphere of erroneous philosophy which he necessarily breathed. But he also proved a broken reed, when I tried really to lean upon him as a main support.
1. The first thing that broke on me concerning Paul, was, that his moral sobriety of mind was no guarantee against his mistaking extravagances for miracle. This was manifest to me in his treatment of _the gift of tongues_.
So long ago as in 1830, when the Irving “miracles” commenced in Scotland, my particular attention had been turned to this subject, and the Irvingite exposition of the Pauline phenomena appeared to me so correct, that I was vehemently predisposed to believe the miraculous tongues. But my friend “the Irish clergyman” wrote me a full account of what he heard with his own ears; which was to the effect–that none of the sounds, vowels or consonants, were foreign;–that the strange words were moulded after the Latin grammar, ending in -abus, -obus, -ebat, -avi, &c., so as to denote poverty of invention rather than spiritual agency;–and _that there was no interpretation_. The last point decided me, that any belief which I had in it must be for the present unpractical. Soon after, a friend of mine applied by letter for information as to the facts to a very acute and pious Scotchman, who had become a believer in these miracles. The first reply gave us no facts whatever, but was a declamatory exhortation to believe. The second was nothing but a lamentation over my friend’s unbelief, because he asked again for the facts. This showed me, that there was excitement and delusion: yet the general phenomena appeared so similar to those of the church of Corinth, that I supposed the persons must unawares have copied the exterior manifestations, if, after all, there was no reality at bottom.
Three years sufficed to explode these tongues; and from time to time I had an uneasy sense, how much discredit they cast on the Corinthian miracles. Meander’s discussion on the 2nd Chapter of the Acts first opened to me the certainty, that Luke (or the authority whom he followed) has exaggerated into a gift of languages what cannot have been essentially different from the Corinthian, and in short from the Irvingite, tongues. Thus Luke’s narrative has transformed into a splendid miracle, what in Paul is no miracle at all. It is true that Paul speaks of _interpretation of tongues_ as possible, but without a hint that any verification was to be used. Besides, why should a Greek not speak Greek in an assembly of his own countrymen? Is it credible, that the Spirit should inspire one man to utter unintelligible sounds, and a second to interpret these, and then give the assembly endless trouble to find out whether the interpretation was pretence or reality, when the whole difficulty was gratuitous? We grant that there _may_ be good reasons for what is paradoxical, but we need the stronger proof that it is a reality. Yet what in fact is there? and why should the gift of tongues in Corinth, as described by Paul, be treated with more respect than in Newman Street, London? I could find no other reply, than that Paul was too sober-minded: yet his own description of the tongues is that of a barbaric jargon, which makes the church appear as if it “were mad,” and which is only redeemed from contempt by miraculous interpretation. In the Acts we see that this phenomenon pervaded all the Churches; from the day of Pentecost onward it was looked on as the standard mark of “the descent of the Holy Spirit;” and in the conversion of Cornelius it was the justification of Peter for admitting uncircumcised Gentiles: yet not once is “interpretation” alluded to, except in Paul’s epistle. Paul could not go against the whole Church. He held a logic too much in common with the rest, to denounce the tongues as _mere_ carnal excitement; but he does anxiously degrade them as of lowest spiritual value, and wholly prohibits them where there is “no interpreter.” To carry out this rule, would perhaps have suppressed them entirely.
This however showed me, that I could not rest on Paul’s practical wisdom, as securing him against speculative hallucinations in the matter of miracles; for indeed he says: “I thank my God, that I speak with tongues _more than ye all_.”
2. To another broad fact I had been astonishingly blind, though the truth of it flashed upon me as soon as I heard it named;–that Paul shows total unconcern to the human history and earthly teaching of Jesus, never quoting his doctrine or any detail of his actions. The Christ with whom Paul held communion was a risen, ascended, exalted Lord, a heavenly being, who reigned over arch-angels, and was about to appear as Judge of the world: but of Jesus in the flesh Paul seems to know nothing beyond the bare fact that he _did_[24] “humble himself” to become man, and “pleased not himself.” Even in the very critical controversy about meat and drink, Paul omits to quote Christ’s doctrine, “Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth the man,” &c. He surely, therefore, must have been wholly and contentedly ignorant of the oral teachings of Jesus.
3. This threw a new light on the _independent_ position of Paul. That he anxiously refused to learn from the other apostles, and “conferred not with flesh and blood,”–not having received his gospel of many but by the revelation of Jesus Christ–had seemed to me quite suitable to his high pretensions. Any novelties which might be in his doctrine, I had regarded as mere developments, growing out of the common stem, and guaranteed by the same Spirit. But I now saw that this independence invalidated his testimony. He may be to us a supernatural, but he certainly is not a natural, witness to the truth of Christ’s miracles and personality. It avails not to talk of the _opportunities_ which he had of searching into the truth of the resurrection of Christ, for we see that he did not choose to avail himself of the common methods of investigation. He learned his gospel _by an internal revelation_.[25] He even recounts the appearance of Christ to him, years after his ascension, as evidence co-ordinate to his appearance to Peter and to James, and to 500 brethren at once. 1 Cor. xv. Again the thought is forced on us,–how different was his logic from ours!
To see the full force of the last remark, we ought to conceive how many questions a Paley would have wished to ask of Paul; and how many details Paley himself, if _he_ had had the sight, would have felt it his duty to impart to his readers. Had Paul ever seen Jesus when alive? How did he recognize the miraculous apparition to be the person whom Pilate had crucified? Did he see him as a man in a fleshly body, or as a glorified heavenly form? Was it in waking, or sleeping, and if the latter, how did he distinguish his divine vision from a common dream? Did he see only, or did he also handle? If it was a palpable man of flesh, how did he assure himself that it was a person risen from the dead, and not an ordinary living man?
Now as Paul _is writing specially[26] to convince the incredulous or to confirm the wavering_, it is certain that he would have dwelt on these details, if he had thought them of value to the argument. As he wholly suppresses them, we must infer that he held them to be immaterial; and therefore that the evidence with which he was satisfied, in proof that a man was risen from the dead, was either totally different in kind from that which we should now exact, or exceedingly inferior in rigour. It appears, that he believed in the resurrection of Christ, first, on the ground of prophecy:[27] secondly, (I feel it is not harsh or bold to add,) on very loose and wholly unsifted testimony. For since he does not afford to us the means of sifting and analyzing his testimony, he cannot have judged it our duty so to do; and therefore is not likely himself to have sifted very narrowly the testimony of others.
Conceive farther how a Paley would have dealt with so astounding a fact, so crushing an argument as the appearance of the risen Jesus _to 500 brethren at once_. How would he have extravagated and revelled in proof! How would he have worked the topic, that “this could have been no dream, no internal impression, no vain fancy, but a solid indubitable fact!” How he would have quoted his authorities, detailed their testimonies, and given their names and characters! Yet Paul dispatches the affair in one line, gives no details and no special declarations, and seems to see no greater weight in this decisive appearance, than in the vision to his single self. He expects us to take his very vague announcement of the 500 brethren as enough, and it does not seem to occur to him that his readers (if they need to be convinced) are entitled to expect fuller information. Thus if Paul does not intentionally supersede human testimony, he reduces it to its minimum of importance.
How can I believe _at second hand_, from the word of one whom I discern to hold so lax notions of evidence? Yet _who_ of the Christian teachers was superior to Paul? He is regarded as almost the only educated man of the leaders. Of his activity of mind, his moral sobriety, his practical talents, his profound sincerity, his enthusiastic self-devotion, his spiritual insight, there is no question: but when his notions of evidence are infected with the errors of his age, what else can we expect of the eleven, and of the multitude?
4. Paul’s neglect of the earthly teaching of Jesus might in part be imputed to the nonexistence of written documents and the great difficulty of learning with certainty what he really had taught.–This agreed perfectly well with what I already saw of the untrustworthiness of our gospels; but it opened a chasm between the doctrine of Jesus and that of Paul, and showed that Paulinism, however good in itself, is not assuredly to be identified with primitive Christianity. Moreover, it became clear, why James and Paul are so contrasted. James retains with little change the traditionary doctrine of the Jerusalem Christians; Paul has superadded or substituted a gospel of his own. This was, I believe, pointedly maintained 25 years ago by the author of “Not Paul, but Jesus;” a book which I have never read.
VII. I had now to ask,–Where are _the twelve men_ of whom Paley talks, as testifying to the resurrection of Christ? Paul cannot be quoted as a witness, but only as a believer. Of the twelve we do not even know the names, much less have we their testimony. Of James and Jude there are two epistles, but it is doubtful whether either of these is of the twelve apostles; and neither of them declare themselves eyewitnesses to Christ’s resurrection. In short, Peter and John are the only two. Of these however, Peter does not attest the _bodily_, but only the _spiritual_, resurrection of Jesus; for he says that Christ was[28] “put to death in flesh, but made alive in spirit,” 1 Pet iii. 18: yet if this verse had been lost, his opening address (i. 3) would have seduced me into the belief that Peter taught the bodily resurrection of Jesus. So dangerous is it to believe miracles, on the authority of words quoted from a man whom we cannot cross-examine! Thus, once more, John is left alone in his testimony; and how insufficient that is, has been said.
The question also arose, whether Peter’s testimony to the transfiguration (2 Pet. i. 18), was an important support. A first objection might be drawn from the sleep ascribed to the three disciples in the gospels; if the narrative were at all trustworthy. But a second and greater difficulty arises in the doubtful authenticity of the second Epistle of Peter.
Neander positively decides against that epistle. Among many reasons, the similarity of its second chapter to the Epistle of Jude is a cardinal fact. Jude is supposed to be original; yet his allusions show him to be post-apostolic. If so, the second Epistle of Peter is clearly spurious.–Whether this was certain, I could not make up my mind: but it was manifest that where such doubts may be honestly entertained, no basis exists to found a belief of a great and significant miracle.
On the other hand, both the Transfiguration itself, and the fiery destruction of Heaven and Earth prophesied in the third chapter of this epistle, are open to objections so serious, as mythical imaginations, that the name of Peter will hardly guarantee them to those with whom the general evidence for the miracles in the gospels has thoroughly broken down.
On the whole, one thing only was clear concerning Peter’s faith;–that he, like Paul, was satisfied with a kind of evidence for the resurrection of Jesus which fell exceedingly short of the demands of modern logic: and that it is absurd in us to believe, barely _because_ they believed.
[Footnote 1: Matt. xii. 39, xvi. 4.]
[Footnote 2: John xx. 29.]
[Footnote 3: John xiv, 11. In x. 37, 38, the same idea seems to be intended. So xv. 24.]
[Footnote 4: A reviewer erroneously treats this as inculcating a denial of the possibility of inward revelation. It merely says, that _some answer_ in needed to these questions; and _none in given_. We can make out (in my opinion) that dreams and inward impressions were the form of suggestion trusted to; but we do not learn what precautions were used against foolish credulity.]
[Footnote 5: If miracles were vouchsafed on the scale of a _new sense_, it is of course conceivable that they would reveal new masses of fact, tending to modify our moral judgments of particular actions: but nothing of this can be made out in Judaism or Christianity.]
[Footnote 6: A friendly reviewer derides this passage as a very feeble objection to the doctrine of the Absolute Moral perfections of Jesus. It in here rather feebly _stated_, because at that period I had not fully worked out the thought. He seems to have forgotten that I am narrating.]
[Footnote 7: An ingenious gentleman, well versed in history, has put forth a volume called “The Restoration of Faith,” in which he teaches that _I have no right to a conscience or to a God_, until I adopt his historical conclusions. I leave his co-religionists to confute his portentous heresy; but in fact it is already done more than enough in a splendid article of the “Westminster Review,” July, 1852.]
[Footnote 8: I seem to have been understood now to say that a knowledge of the Bible was not a pre-requisite of the Protestant Reformation. What I say is, that at this period I learned the study of the Classics to have caused and determined that it should then take place; moreover, I say that a free study of _other books than sacred ones_ is essential, and always was, to conquer superstition.]
[Footnote 9: I am asked why _Italy_ witnessed no improvement of spiritual doctrine. The reply is, that _she did_. The Evangelical movement there was quelled only by the Imperial arms and the Inquisition. I am also asked why Pagan Literature did not save the ancient church from superstition. I have always understood that the vast majority of Christian teachers during the decline were unacquainted with Pagan literature, and that the Church at an early period _forbade_ it.]
[Footnote 10: My friend James Martineau, who insists that “a self-sustaining power” in a religion is a thing _intrinsically inconceivable_, need not have censured me for coming to the conclusion that it does not exist in Christianity. In fact, I entirely agree with him; but at the time of which I here write, I had only taken the first step in his direction; and I barely drew a negative conclusion, to which he perfectly assents. To my dear friend’s capacious and kindling mind, all the thought here expounded are prosaic and common; being to him quite obvious, so far as they are true. He is right in looking down upon them; and, I trust, by his aid, I have added to my wisdom since the time of which I write. Yet they were to me discoveries once, and he must not be displeased at my making much of them in this connexion.]
[Footnote 11: It is the fault of my critics that I am forced to tell the reader this is exhibited in my “Hebrew Monarchy.”]
[Footnote 12: It in not to the purpose to urge the _political_ minority of the Roman wife. This was a mere inference from the high power of the bond of the husband. The father had right of death over his son, and (as the lawyers stated the case), the wife was on the level of one of the children.]
[Footnote 13: 1 Cor. vii. 2-9]
[Footnote 14: Namely, in the Armenian, Syrian, and Greek churches, and in the Romish church in exact proportion as Germanic and poetical influences have been repressed; that is, in proportion as the hereditary Christian doctrine has been kept pure from modern innovations.]
[Footnote 15: In a tract republished from the _Northampton Mercury_ Longman, 1853.]
[Footnote 16: The Romans practised fornication at pleasure, and held it ridiculous to blame them. If Paul had claimed authority to hinder them, they might have been greatly exasperated; but they had not the least objection to his denouncing fornication as immoral to Christians. Why not slavery also?]
[Footnote 17: I fear it cannot be denied that the zeal for Christianity which began to arise in our upper classes sixty years ago, was largely prompted by a feeling that its precepts repress all speculations concerning the rights of man. A similar cause now influences despots all over Europe. The _Old_ Testament contains the elements which they dread, and those gave a political creed to our Puritans.]
[Footnote 18: More than one critic flatly denies the fact. It is sufficient for me here to say, that such is the obvious interpretation, and such _historically has been_ the interpretation of various texts,–for instance, 2 Thess. i. 7: “The Lord Jesus shall be revealed… in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them _that know not God, and that obey not the Gospel_; who shall be punished with everlasting destruction,” &c. Such again is the sense which all popular minds receive and must receive from Heb, x. 25-31.–I am willing to change _teaches_ into _has always been understood to teach_, if my critics think anything is gained by it.]
[Footnote 19: The four monarchies in chapters ii. and vii, are, probably, the Babylonian, the Median, the Persian, the Macedonian. Interpreters however blend the Medes and Persians into one, and then pretend that the Roman empire is _still in existence_.]
[Footnote 20: The first apparent reference is by Micah (vi. 5) a contemporary of Hezekiah; which proves that an account contained in our Book of Numbers was already familiar.]
[Footnote 21: I have had occasion to discuss most of the leading prophecies of the Old Testament in my “Hebrew Monarchy.”]
[Footnote 22: A critic is pleased to call this a mere _suspicion_ of my own; in so writing, people simply evade my argument. I do not ask them to adopt my conviction; I merely communicate it as mine, and wish them to admit that it is _my duty_ to follow my own conviction. It is with me no mere “suspicion,” but a certainty. When they cannot possibly give, or pretend, any _proof_ that the long discourses of the fourth gospel have been accurately reported, they ought to be less supercilious in their claims of unlimited belief. If it is right for them to follow their judgment on a purely literary question, let them not carp at me for following mine.]
[Footnote 23: I am told that this defence of John is fanciful. It satisfies me provisionally; but I do not hold myself bound to satisfy others, or to explain John’s delusiveness.]
[Footnote 24: Phil. ii. 5-8; Rom. xv. 3. The last suggests it was from the Psalms (viz from Ps. lxix. 9) that Paul learned the _fact_ that Christ pleased not himself.]
[Footnote 25: Here, again, I have been erroneously understood to say that there cannot be _any_ internal revelation of _anything_. Internal truth may be internally communicated, though even so it does not become authoritative, or justify the receiver in saying to other men, “Believe, _for_ I guarantee it.” But a man who, on the strength of an _internal_ revelation believes an _external event_, (past, present, or future,) is not a valid witness of it. Not Paley only, nor Priestley, but James Martineau also, would disown his pretence to authority; and the more so, the more imperious his claim that we believe on his word.]
[Footnote 26: This appears in v. 2, “by which ye are saved,–_unless ye have believed in vain_” &c. So v. 17-19.]
[Footnote 27: 1 Cor. xv. “He rose again the third day _according to the Scriptures_.” This must apparently be a reference to Hosea vi. 2, to which the margin of the Bible refers. There is no other place in the existing Old Testament from which we can imagine him to have elicited the rising _on the third day_. Some refer to the type of Jonah. Either of the two suggests how marvellously weak a proof satiated him.]
[Footnote 28: Such is the most legitimate translation. That in the received version is barely a possible meaning. There is no such distinction of prepositions as _in_ and _by_ in this passage.]
CHAPTER VI.
HISTORY DISCOVERED TO BE NO PART OF RELIGION.
After renouncing any “Canon of Scripture” or Sacred Letter at the end of my fourth period, I had been forced to abandon all “Second-hand Faith” by the end of my fifth. If asked _why_ I believed this or that, I could no longer say, “_Because_ Peter, or Paul, or John believed, and I may thoroughly trust that they cannot mistake.” The question now pressed hard, whether this was equivalent to renouncing Christianity.
Undoubtedly, my positive belief in its miracles had evaporated; but I had not arrived at a positive _dis_belief. I still felt the actual benefits and comparative excellencies of this religion too remarkable a phenomenon to be scored for defect of proof. In Morals likewise it happens, that the ablest practical expounders of truth may make strange blunders as to the foundations and ground of belief: why was this impossible as to the apostles? Meanwhile, it did begin to appear to myself remarkable, that I continued to love and have pleasure in so much that I certainly disbelieved. I perused a chapter of Paul or of Luke, or some verses of a hymn, and although they appeared to me to abound with error, I found satisfaction and profit in them. Why was this? was it all fond prejudice,–an absurd clinging to old associations?
A little self-examination enabled me to reply, that it was no ill-grounded feeling or ghost of past opinions; but that my religion always had been, and still was, a _state of sentiment_ toward God, far less dependent on articles of a creed, than once I had unhesitatingly believed. The Bible is pervaded by a sentiment,[1] which is implied everywhere,–viz. _the intimate sympathy of the Pure and Perfect God with the heart of each faithful worshipper_. This is that which is wanting in Greek philosophers, English Deists, German Pantheists, and all formalists. This is that which so often edifies me in Christian writers and speakers, when I ever so much disbelieve the letter of their sentences. Accordingly, though I saw more and more of moral and spiritual imperfection in the Bible, I by no means ceased to regard it as a quarry whence I might dig precious metal, though the ore needed a refining analysis: and I regarded this as the truest essence and most vital point in Christianity,–to sympathize with the great souls from whom its spiritual eminence has flowed;–to love, to hope, to rejoice, to trust with them;–and _not_, to form the same interpretations of an ancient book and to take the same views of critical argument.
My historical conception of Jesus had so gradually melted into dimness, that he had receded out of my practical religion, I knew not exactly when I believe that I must have disused any distinct prayers to him, from a growing opinion that he ought not to be the _object_ of worship, but only the _way_ by whom we approach to the Father; and as in fact we need no such “way” at all, this was (in the result) a change from practical Ditheism to pure Theism. His “mediation” was to me always a mere name, and, as I believe, would otherwise have been mischievous.[2]–Simultaneously a great uncertainty had grown on me, how much of the discourses put into the mouth of Jesus was really uttered by him; so that I had in no small measure to form him anew to my imagination.
But if religion is addressed to, and must be judged by, our moral faculties, how could I believe in that painful and gratuitous personality,–The Devil?–He also had become a waning phantom to me, perhaps from the time that I saw the demoniacal miracles to be fictions, and still more when proofs of manifold mistake in the New Testament rose on me. This however took a solid form of positive _dis_belief, when I investigated the history of the doctrine,–I forget exactly in what stage. For it is manifest, that the old Hebrews believed only in evil spirits sent _by God_ to do _his bidding_, and had no idea of a rebellious Spirit that rivalled God. That idea was first imbibed in the Babylonish captivity, and apparently therefore must have been adopted from the Persian Ahriman, or from the “Melek Taous,” the “Sheitan” still honoured by the Yezidi with mysterious fear. That _the serpent_ in the early part of Genesis denoted the same Satan, is probable enough; but this only goes to show, that that narrative is a legend imported from farther East; since it is certain that the subsequent Hebrew literature has no trace of such an Ahriman. The Book of Tobit and its demon show how wise in these matters the exiles in Nineveh were beginning to be. The Book of Daniel manifests, that by the time of Antiochus Epiphanes the Jews had learned each nation to have its guardian spirit, good or evil; and that the fates of nations depend on the invisible conflict of these tutelary powers. In Paul the same idea is strongly brought out. Satan is the prince of the power of the air; with principalities and powers beneath him; over all of whom Christ won the victory on his cross. In the Apocalypse we read the Oriental doctrine of the “_seven angels_ who stand before God.” As the Christian tenet thus rose among the Jews from their contact with Eastern superstition, and was propagated and expanded while prophecy was mute, it cannot be ascribed to “divine supernatural revelation” as the source. The ground of it is dearly seen in infant speculations on the cause of moral evil and of national calamities.
Thus Christ and the Devil, the two poles of Christendom, had faded away out of my spiritual vision; there were left the more vividly, God and Man. Yet I had not finally renounced the _possibility_, that Jesus might have had a divine mission to stimulate all our spiritual faculties, and to guarantee to us a future state of existence. The abstract arguments for the immortality of the soul had always appeared to me vain trifling; and I was deeply convinced that nothing could _assure_ us of a future state but a divine communication. In what mode this might be made, I could not say _a priori_: might not this really be the great purport of Messiahship? was not this, if any, a worthy ground for a divine interference? On the contrary, to heal the sick did not seem at all an adequate motive for a miracle; else, why not the sick of our own day? Credulity had exaggerated, and had represented Jesus to have wrought miracles: but that did not wholly _dis_prove the miracle of resurrection (whether bodily or of whatever kind), said to have been wrought by God _upon_ him, and of which so very intense a belief so remarkably propagated itself. Paul indeed believed it[3] from prophecy; and, as we see this to be a delusion, resting on Rabbinical interpretations, we may perhaps _account_ thus for the belief of the early church, without in any way admitting the fact.–Here, however, I found I had the clue to my only remaining discussion, the primitive Jewish controversy. Let us step back to an earlier stage than John’s or Paul’s or Peter’s doctrine. We cannot doubt that Jesus claimed to be Messiah: what then was Messiah to be? and, did Jesus (though misrepresented by his disciples) truly fulfil his own claims?
The really Messianic prophecies appeared to me to be far fewer than is commonly supposed. I found such in the 9th and 11th of Isaiah, the 5th of Micah, the 9th of Zechariah, in the 72nd Psalm, in the 37th of Ezekiel, and, as I supposed, in the 50th and 53rd of Isaiah. To these nothing of moment could be certainly added; for the passage in Dan. ix. is ill-translated in the English version, and I had already concluded that the Book of Daniel is a spurious fabrication. From Micah and Ezekiel it appeared, that Messiah was to come from Bethlehem and either be David himself, or a spiritual David: from Isaiah it is shown that he is a rod out of the stem of Jesse.–It is true, I found no proof that Jesus did come from Bethlehem or from the stock of David; for the tales in Matthew and Luke refute one another, and have clearly been generated by a desire to verify the prophecy. But genealogies for or against Messiahship seemed to me a mean argument; and the fact of the prophets demanding a carnal descent in Messiah struck me as a worse objection than that Jesus had not got it,–if this could be ever proved. The Messiah of Micah, however, was not Jesus; for he was to deliver Israel from _the Assyrians_, and his whole description is literally warlike. Micah, writing when the name of Sennacherib was terrible, conceived of a powerful monarch on the throne of David who was to subdue him: but as this prophecy was not verified, the imaginary object of it was looked for as “Messiah,” even after the disappearance of the formidable Assyrian power. This undeniable vanity of Micah’s prophecy extends itself also to that in the 9th chapter of his contemporary Isaiah,–if indeed that splendid passage did not really point at the child Hezekiah. Waiving this doubt, it is at any rate clear that the marvellous child on the throne of David was to break the yoke of the oppressive Assyrian; and none of the circumstantials are at all appropriate to the historical Jesus.
In the 37th of Ezekiel the (new) David is to gather Judah and Israel “from the heathen whither they be gone” and to “make them one nation _in the land, on the mountains of Israel_:” and Jehovah adds, that they shall “dwell in the land _which I gave unto Jacob my servant, wherein your fathers dwelt_: and they shall dwell therein, they and their children and their children’s children for ever: and my servant David shall be their prince for ever.” It is trifling to pretend that _the land promised to Jacob, and in which the old Jews dwelt_, was a spiritual, and not the literal Palestine; and therefore it is impossible to make out that Jesus has fulfilled any part of this representation. The description however that follows (Ezekiel xl. &c.) of the new city and temple, with the sacrifices offered by “the priests the Levites, of the seed of Zadok,” and the gate of the sanctuary for the prince (xliv. 3), and his elaborate account of the borders of the land (xlviii. 13-23), place the earnestness of Ezekiel’s literalism in still clearer light.
The 72nd Psalm, by the splendour of its predictions concerning the grandeur of some future king of Judah, earns the title of Messianic, _because_ it was never fulfilled by any historical king. But it is equally certain, that it has had no appreciable fulfilment in Jesus.
But what of the 11th of Isaiah? Its portraiture is not so much that of a king, as of a prophet endowed with superhuman power. “He shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall slay the wicked.” A Paradisiacal state is to follow.–This general description _may_ be verified by Jesus _hereafter_; but we have no manifestation, which enables us to call the fulfilment a fact. Indeed, the latter part of the prophecy is out of place for a time so late as the reign of Augustus; which forcibly denotes that Isaiah was predicting only that which was his immediate political aspiration: for in this great day of Messiah, Jehovah is to gather back his dispersed people from Assyria, Egypt, and other parts; he is _to reconcile Judah and Ephraim_, (who had been perfectly reconciled centuries before Jesus was born,) and as a result of this Messianic glory, the people of Israel “shall fly upon the shoulders of the _Philistines_ towards the west; they shall spoil them of the east together: they shall lay their hand on _Edom_ and _Moab_, and the children of _Ammon_ shall obey them.” But Philistines, Moab and Ammon, were distinctions entirely lost before the Christian era.–Finally, the Red Sea is to be once more passed miraculously by the Israelites, returning (as would seem) to their fathers’ soil. Take all these particulars together, and the prophecy is neither fulfilled in the past nor possible to be fulfilled in the future.
The prophecy which we know as Zechariah ix.-xi. is believed to be really from a prophet of uncertain name, contemporaneous with Isaiah. It was written while Ephraim was still a people, i.e. before the capture of Samaria by Shalmanezer; and xi. 1-3 appears to howl over the recent devastations of Tiglathpilezer. The prophecy is throughout full of the politics of that day. No part of it has the most remote or imaginable[4] similarity to the historical life of Jesus, except that he once rode into Jerusalem on an ass; a deed which cannot have been peculiar to him, and which Jesus moreover appears to have planned with the express[5] purpose of assimilating himself to the lowly king here described. Yet such an isolated act is surely a carnal and beggarly fulfilment. To ride on an ass is no mark of humility in those who must ordinarily go on foot. The prophet clearly means that the righteous king is not to ride on a warhorse and trust in cavalry, as Solomon and the Egyptians, (see Ps. xx. 7. Is. xxxi. 1-3, xxx. 16,) but is to imitate the lowliness of David and the old judges, who rode on young asses; and is to be a lover of peace.
Chapters 50 and 53 of the pseudo-Isaiah remained; which contain many phrases so aptly descriptive of the sufferings of Christ, and so closely knit up with our earliest devotional associations, that they were the very last link of my chain that snapt. Still, I could not conceal from myself, that no exactness in this prophecy, however singular, could avail to make out that Jesus was the Messiah of Hezekiah’s prophets. There must be _some_ explanation; and if I did not see it, that must probably arise from prejudice and habit.–In order therefore to gain freshness, I resolved to peruse the entire prophecy of the pseudo-Isaiah in Lowth’s version, from ch. xl. onward, at a single sitting.
This prophet writes from Babylon, and has his vision full of the approaching restoration of his people by Cyrus, whom he addresses by name. In ch. xliii. he introduces to us an eminent and “chosen servant of God,” whom he invests with all the evangelical virtues, and declares that he is to be a light to the Gentiles. In ch. xliv. (v. 1–also v. 21) he is named as “_Jacob_ my servant, and _Israel_ whom I have chosen.” The appellations recur in xlv. 4: and in a far more striking passage, xlix. 1-12, which is eminently Messianic to the Christian ear, _except_ that in v. 3, the speaker distinctly declares himself to be (not Messiah, but) Israel. The same speaker continues in ch. l., which is equally Messianic in sound. In ch. lii. the prophet speaks _of_ him, (vv. 13-15) but the subject of the chapter is _restoration from Babylon_; and from this he runs on into the celebrated ch. liii.
It is essential to understand the _same_ “elect servant” all along. He is many times called Israel, and is often addressed in a tone quite inapplicable to Messiah, viz. as one needing salvation himself; so in ch. xliii. Yet in ch. xlix. this elect Israel is distinguished from Jacob and Israel at large: thus there is an entanglement. Who can be called on to risk his eternal hopes on his skilful unknotting of it? It appeared however to me most probable, that as our high Churchmen distinguish “mother Church” from the individuals who compose the Church, so the “Israel” of this prophecy is the idealizing of the Jewish Church; which I understood to be a current Jewish interpretation. The figure perhaps embarrasses us, only because of the male sex attributed to the ideal servant of God; for when “Zion” is spoken of by the same prophet in the same way, no one finds difficulty, or imagines that a female person of superhuman birth and qualities must be intended.
It still remained strange that in Isaiah liii. and Pss. xxii. and lxix. there should be _coincidences_ so close with the sufferings of Jesus: but I reflected, that I had no proof that the narrative had not been strained by credulity,[6] to bring it into artificial agreement with these imagined predictions of his death. And herewith my last argument in favour of views for which I once would have laid down my life, seemed to be spent.
Nor only so: but I now reflected that the falsity of the prophecy in Dan. vii. (where the coming of “a Son of Man” to sit in universal judgment follows immediately upon the break-up of the Syrian monarchy,)–to say nothing of the general proof of the spuriousness of the whole Book of Daniel,–ought perhaps long ago to have been seen by me as of more cardinal importance. For if we believe anything at all about the discourses of Christ, we cannot doubt that he selected “_Son of Man_” as his favourite title; which admits no interpretation so satisfactory, as, that he tacitly refers to the seventh chapter of Daniel, and virtually bases his pretensions upon it. On the whole, it was no longer defect of proof Which presented itself, but positive disproof of the primitive and fundamental claim.
I could not for a moment allow weight to the topic, that “it is dangerous to _dis_believe wrongly;” for I felt, and had always felt, that it gave a premium to the most boastful and tyrannizing superstition:–as if it were not equally dangerous to _believe_ wrongly! Nevertheless, I tried to plead for farther delay, by asking: Is not the subject too vast for me to decide upon?–Think how many wise and good men have fully examined, and have come to a contrary conclusion. What a grasp of knowledge and experience of the human mind it requires! Perhaps too I have unawares been carried away by a love of novelty, which I have mistaken for a love of truth.
But the argument recoiled upon me. Have I not been 25 years a reader of the Bible? have I not full 18 years been a student of Theology? have I not employed 7 of the best years of my life, with ample leisure, in this very investigation;–without any intelligible earthly bribe to carry me to my present conclusion, against all my interests, all my prejudices and all my education? There are many far more learned men than I,–many men of greater power of mind; but there are also a hundred times as many who are my inferiors; and if I have been seven years labouring in vain to solve this vast literary problem, it is an extreme absurdity to imagine that the solving of it is imposed by God on the whole human race. Let me renounce my little learning; let me be as the poor and simple: what then follows? Why, then, _still the same thing follows_, that difficult literary problems concerning distant history cannot afford any essential part of my religion.
It is with hundreds or thousands a favourite idea, that “they have an inward witness of the truth of (_the historical and outward facts of_) Christianity.” Perhaps the statement would bring its own refutation to them, if they would express it clearly. Suppose a biographer of Sir Isaac Newton, after narrating his sublime discoveries and ably stating some of his most remarkable doctrines, to add, that Sir Isaac was a great magician, and had been used to raise spirits by his arts, and finally was himself carried up to heaven one night, while he was gazing at the moon; and that this event had been foretold by Merlin:–it would surely be the height of absurdity to dilate on the truth of the Newtonian theory as “the moral evidence” of the truth of the miracles and prophecy. Yet this is what those do, who adduce the excellence of the precepts and spirituality of the general doctrine of the New Testament, as the “moral evidence” of its miracles and of its fulfilling the Messianic prophecies. But for the ambiguity of the word _doctrine_, probably such confusion of thought would have been impossible. “Doctrines” are either spiritual truths, or are statements of external history. Of the former we may have an inward witness;–that is their proper evidence;–but the latter must depend upon adequate testimony and various kinds of criticism.
How quickly might I have come to my conclusion,–how much weary thought and useless labour might I have spared,–if at an earlier time this simple truth had been pressed upon me, that since the religious faculties of the poor and half-educated cannot investigate Historical and Literary questions, _therefore_ these questions cannot constitute an essential part of Religion.–But perhaps I could not have gained this result by any abstract act of thought, from want of freedom to think: and there are advantages also in expanding slowly under great pressure, if one _can_ expand, and is not crushed by it.
I felt no convulsion of mind, no emptiness of soul, no inward practical change: but I knew that it would be said, this was only because the force of the old influence was as yet unspent, and that a gradual declension in the vitality of my religion must ensue. More than eight years have since past, and I feel I have now a right to contradict that statement. To any “Evangelical” I have a right to say, that while he has a _single_, I have a _double_ experience; and I know, that the spiritual fruits which he values, have no connection whatever with the complicated and elaborate creed, which his school imagines, and I once imagined, to be the roots out of which they are fed. That they depend directly on _the heart’s belief in the sympathy of God with individual man_,[7] I am well assured: but that doctrine does not rest upon the Bible or upon Christianity; for it is a postulate, from which every Christian advocate is forced to start. If it be denied, he cannot take a step forward in his argument. He talks to men about Sin and Judgment to come, and the need of Salvation, and so proceeds to the Saviour. But his very first step,–the idea of Sin,–_assumes_ that God concerns himself with our actions, words, thoughts; _assumes_ therefore that sympathy of God with every man, which (it seems) can only be known by an infallible Bible.
I know that many Evangelicals will reply, that I never can have had “the true” faith; else I could never have lost it: and as for my not being conscious of spiritual change, they will accept this as confirming their assertion. Undoubtedly I cannot prove that I ever felt as they now feel: perhaps they love their present opinions _more than_ truth, and are careless to examine and verify them; with that I claim no fellowship. But there are Christians, and Evangelical Christians, of another stamp, who love their creed, _only_ because they believe it to be true, but love truth, as such, and truthfulness, more than any creed: with these I claim fellowship. Their love to God and man, their allegiance to righteousness and true holiness, will not be in suspense and liable to be overturned by new discoveries in geology and in ancient inscriptions, or by improved criticism of texts and of history, nor have they any imaginable interest in thwarting the advance of scholarship. It is strange indeed to undervalue _that_ Faith, which alone is purely moral and spiritual, alone rests on a basis that cannot be shaken, alone lifts the possessor above the conflicts of erudition, and makes it impossible for him to fear the increase of knowledge.
I fully expected that reviewers and opponents from the evangelical school would laboriously insinuate or assert, that I _never was_ a Christian and do not understand anything about Christianity spiritually. My expectations have been more than fulfilled; and the course which my assailants have taken leads me to add some topics to the last paragraph. I say then, that if I had been slain at the age of twenty-seven, when I was chased[8] by a mob of infuriated Mussulmans for selling New Testaments, they would have trumpeted me as an eminent saint and martyr. I add, that many circumstances within easy possibility might have led to my being engaged as an official teacher of a congregation at the usual age, which would in all probability have arrested my intellectual development, and have stereotyped my creed for many a long year; and then also they would have acknowledged me as a Christian. A little more stupidity, a little more worldliness, a little more mental dishonesty in me, or perhaps a little more kindness and management in others, would have kept me in my old state, which was acknowledged and would still be acknowledged as Christian. To try to disown me now, is an impotent superciliousness.
At the same time, I confess to several moral changes, as the result of this change in my creed, the principal of which are the following.
1. I have found that my old belief narrowed my affections. It taught me to bestow peculiar love on “the people of God,” and it assigned an intellectual creed as one essential mark of this people. That creed may be made more or less stringent; but when driven to its minimum, it includes a recognition of the historical proposition, that “the Jewish teacher Jesus fulfilled the conditions requisite to constitute him the Messiah of the ancient Hebrew prophets.” This proposition has been rejected by very many thoughtful and sincere men in England, and by tens of thousands in France, Germany, Italy, Spain. To judge rightly about it, is necessarily a problem of literary criticism; which has both to interpret the Old Scriptures and to establish how much of the biography of Jesus in the New is credible. To judge wrongly about it, may prove one to be a bad critic but not a less good and less pious man. Yet my old creed enacted an affirmative result of this historical inquiry, as a test of one’s spiritual state, and ordered me to think harshly of men like Marcus Aurelius and Lessing, because they did not adopt the conclusion which the professedly uncritical have established. It possessed me with a general gloom concerning Mohammedans and Pagans, and involved the whole course of history and prospects of futurity in a painful darkness from which I am relieved.
2. Its theory was one of selfishness. That is, it inculcated that my first business must be, to save my soul from future punishment, and to attain future happiness; and it bade me to chide myself, when I thought of nothing but about doing present duty and blessing God for present enjoyment.
In point of fact, I never did look much to futurity, nor even in prospect of death could attain to any vivid anticipations or desires, much less was troubled with fears. The evil which I suffered from my theory, was not (I believe) that it really made me selfish–other influences of it were too powerful:–but it taught me to blame myself for unbelief, because I was not sufficiently absorbed in the contemplation of my vast personal expectations. I certainly here feel myself delivered from the danger of factitious sin.
The selfish and self-righteous texts come principally from the three first gospels, and are greatly counteracted by the deeper spirituality of the apostolic epistles. I therefore by no means charge this tendency indiscriminately on the New Testament.
3. It laid down that “the time is short; THE LORD IS AT HAND: the things of this world pass away, and deserve not our affections: the only thing worth spending one’s energies on, is, the forwarding of men’s salvation.” It bade me “watch perpetually, not knowing whether my Lord would return at cockcrowing or at midday.”
While I believed this, (which, however disagreeable to modern Christians, is the clear doctrine of the New Testament,) I acted an eccentric and unprofitable part. From it I was saved against my will, and forced into a course in which the doctrine, having been laid to sleep, awoke only now and then to reproach and harass me for my unfaithfulness to it. This doctrine it is, which makes so many spiritual persons lend active or passive aid to uphold abuses and perpetuate mischief in every department of human life. Those who stick closest to the Scripture do not shrink from saying, that “it is not worth while trying to mend the world,” and stigmatize as “political and worldly” such as pursue an opposite course. Undoubtedly, if we are to expect our Master at cockcrowing, we shall not study the permanent improvement of this transitory scene. To teach the certain speedy destruction of earthly things, _as the New Testament does_, is to cut the sinews of all earthly progress; to declare war against Intellect and Imagination, against Industrial and Social advancement.
There was a time when I was distressed at being unable to avoid exultation in the worldly greatness of England. My heart would, in spite, of me, swell with something of pride, when a Turk or Arab asked what was my country: I then used to confess to God this pride as a sin. I still see that that was a legitimate deduction from the Scripture. “The glory of this world passeth away,” and I had professed to be “dead with Christ” to it. The difference is this. I am now as “dead” as then to all of it which my conscience discerns to be sinful, but I have not to torment myself in a (fundamentally ascetic) struggle against innocent and healthy impulses. I now, with deliberate approval, “love the world and the things of the world.” I can feel patriotism, and take the deepest interest in the future prospects of nations, and no longer reproach myself. Yet this is quite consistent with feeling the spiritual interests of men to be of all incomparably the highest.
Modern religionists profess to be disciples of Christ, and talk high of the perfect morality of the New Testament, when they certainly do not submit their understanding to it, and are no more like to the first disciples than bishops are like the pennyless apostles. One critic tells me that _I know_ that the above is _not_ the true interpretation of the apostolic doctrine. Assuredly I am aware that we may rebuke “the world” and “worldliness,” in a legitimate and modified sense, as being the system of _selfishness_: true,–and I have avowed this in another work; but it does not follow that Jesus and the apostles did not go farther: and manifestly they did. The true disciple, who would be perfect as his Master, was indeed ordered to sell all, give to the poor and follow him; and when that severity was relaxed by good sense, it was still taught that things which lasted to the other side of the grave alone deserved our affection or our exertion. If any person thinks me ignorant of the Scriptures for being of this judgment, let him so think; but to deny that I am sincere in my avowal, is a very needless insolence.
4. I am sensible how heavy a clog on the exercise of my judgment has been taken off from me, since I unlearned that Bibliolatry, which I am disposed to call the greatest religious evil of England.
Authority has a place in religious teaching, as in education, but it is provisional and transitory. Its chief use is to guide _action_, and assist the formation of habits, before the judgment is ripe. As applied to mere _opinion_, its sole function is to guide inquiry. So long as an opinion is received on authority only, it works no inward process upon us: yet the promulgation of it by authority, is not therefore always useless, since the prominence thus given to it may be a most important stimulus to thought. While the mind is inactive or weak, it will not wish to throw off the yoke of authority: but as soon as it begins to discern error in the standard proposed to it, we have the mark of incipient original thought, which is the thing so valuable and so difficult to elicit; and which authority is apt to crush. An intelligent pupil seldom or never gives _too little_ weight to the opinion of his teacher: a wise teacher will never repress the free action of his pupils’ minds, even when they begin to question his results. “Forbidding to think” is a still more fatal tyranny than “forbidding to marry:” it paralyzes all the moral powers.
In former days, if any moral question came before me, I was always apt to turn it into the mere lawyerlike exercise of searching and interpreting my written code. Thus, in reading how Henry the Eighth treated his first queen, I thought over Scripture texts in order to judge whether he was right, and if I could so get a solution, I left my own moral powers unexercised. All Protestants see, how mischievous it is to a Romanist lady to have a directing priest, whom she every day consults about everything; so as to lay her own judgment to sleep. We readily understand, that in the extreme case such women may gradually lose all perception of right and wrong, and become a mere machine in the hands of her director. But the Protestant principle of accepting the Bible as the absolute law, acts towards the same end; and only fails of doing the same amount of mischief, because a book can never so completely answer all the questions asked of it, as a living priest can. The Protestantism which pities those as “without chart and compass” who acknowledge no infallible written code, can mean nothing else, than that “the less occasion we have to trust our moral powers, the better;” that is, it represents it as of all things most desirable to be able to benumb conscience by disuse, under the guidance of a mind from without. Those who teach this need not marvel to see their pupils become Romanists.
But Bibliolatry not only paralyzes the moral sense; it also corrupts the intellect, and introduces a crooked logic, by setting men to the duty of extracting absolute harmony out of discordant materials. All are familiar with the subtlety of lawyers, whose task it is to elicit a single sense out of a heap of contradictory statutes. In their case such subtlety may indeed excite in us impatience or contempt; but we forbear to condemn them, when it is pleaded that practical convenience, not truth, is their avowed end. In the case of theological ingenuity, where truth is the professed and sacred object, a graver judgment is called for. When the Biblical interpreter struggles to reconcile contradictions, or to prove that wrong is right, merely because he is bound to maintain the perfection of the Bible; when to this end he condescends to sophistry and pettifogging evasions; it is difficult to avoid feeling disgust as well as grief. Some good people are secretly conscious that the Bible is not an infallible book; but they dread the consequences of proclaiming this “to the vulgar.” Alas! and have they measured the evils which the fostering of this lie is producing in the minds, not of the educated only, but emphatically of the ministers of religion?
Many who call themselves Christian preachers busily undermine moral sentiment, by telling their hearers, that if they do not believe the Bible (or the Church), they can have no firm religion or morality, and will have no reason to give against following brutal appetite. This doctrine it is, that so often makes men atheists in Spain, and profligates in England, as soon as they unlearn the national creed: and the school which have done the mischief, moralize over the wickedness of human nature when it comes to pass instead of blaming the falsehood which they have themselves inculcated.
[Footnote 1: A critic presses me with the question, how I can doubt that doctrine so holy _comes from God_. He professes to review my book on the Soul; yet, apparently became he himself _dis_believes the doctrine of the Holy Spirit taught alike in the Psalms and Prophets and in the New Testament,–he cannot help forgetting that I profess to believe it. He is not singular in his dulness. That the sentiment above is necessarily independent of Biblical _authority_, see p. 133.]
[Footnote 2: I do not here enlarge on this, as it is discussed in my treatise on The Soul 2nd edition, p. 76, or 3rd edition, p. 52.]
[Footnote 3: 1 Cor. xv. 3. Compare Acts xii. 33, 34, 35 also Acts ii. 27, 34.]
[Footnote 4: I need not except the _potter_ and the thirty pieces of silver (Zech. xi. 13), for the _potter_ is a mere absurd error of text or translation. The Septuagint has the _foundry_, De Wette has the _treasury_, with whom Hitzig and Ewald agree. So Winer (Simoni’s Lexicon).]
[Footnote 5: Some of my critics are very angry with me for saying this; but Matthew himself (xxi. 4) almost says it:–“_All this was done, that it might be fulfilled_,” &c. Do my critics mean to tell me that Jesus _was not aware_ of the prophecy? or if Jesus did know of the prophecy, will they tell me _that he was not designing_ to fulfil it? I feel such carping to be little short of hypocrisy.]
[Footnote 6: Apparently on these words of mine, a reviewer builds up the inference that I regard “the Evangelical narrative as a mythical fancy-piece imitated from David and Isaiah.” I feel this to be a great caricature. My words are carefully limited to a few petty details of one part of the narrative.] [Footnote 7: I did not calculate that any assailant would be so absurd as to lecture me on the topic, that God has no sympathy _with our sins and follies_. Of course what I mean is, that he has complacency in our moral perfection. See p. 125 above.]
[Footnote 8: This was at Aintab, in the north of Syria. One of my companions was caught by the mob and beaten (as they probably thought) to death. But he recovered very similarly to Paul, in Acts xiv. 20, after long lying senseless.]
CHAPTER VII.
ON THE MORAL PERFECTION OF JESUS.
Let no reader peruse this chapter, who is not willing to enter into a discussion, as free and unshrinking, concerning the personal excellencies and conduct of Jesus, as that of Mr. Grote concerning Socrates. I have hitherto met with most absurd rebuffs for my scrupulosity. One critic names me as a principal leader in a school which extols and glorifies the character of Jesus; after which he proceeds to reproach me with inconsistency, and to insinuate dishonesty. Another expresses himself as deeply wounded that, in renouncing the belief that Jesus is more than man, I suggest to compare him to a clergyman whom I mentioned as eminently holy and perfect in the picture of a partial biographer; such a comparison is resented with vivid indignation, as a blurting out of something “unspeakably painful.” Many have murmured that I do _not_ come forward to extol the excellencies of Jesus, but appear to prefer Paul. More than one taunt me with an inability to justify my insinuations that Jesus, after all, was not really perfect; one is “extremely disappointed” that I have not attacked him; in short, it is manifest that many would much rather have me say out my whole heart, than withhold anything. I therefore give fair warning to all, not to read any farther, or else to blame themselves if I inflict on them “unspeakable pain,” by differing from their judgment of a historical or unhistorical character. As for those who confound my tenderness with hypocrisy and conscious weakness, if they trust themselves to read to the end, I think they will abandon that fancy.
But how am I brought into this topic? It is because, after my mind had reached the stage narrated in the last chapter, I fell in with a new doctrine among the Unitarians,–that the evidence of Christianity is essentially popular and spiritual, consisting in _the Life of Christ_, who is a perfect man and the absolute moral image of God,–therefore fitly called “God manifest in the flesh,” and, as such, Moral Head of the human race. Since this view was held in conjunction with those at which I had arrived myself concerning miracles, prophecy, the untrustworthiness of Scripture as to details, and the essential unreasonableness of imposing dogmatic propositions as a creed, I had to consider why I could not adopt such a modification, or (as it appeared to me) reconstruction, of Christianity; and I gave reasons in the first edition of this book, which, avoiding direct treatment of the character of Jesus, seemed to me adequate on the opposite side.
My argument was reviewed by a friend, who presently published the review with his name, replying to my remarks on this scheme. I thus find myself in public and avowed controversy with one who is endowed with talents, accomplishments, and genius, to which I have no pretensions. The challenge has certainly come from myself. Trusting to the goodness of my cause, I have ventured it into an unequal combat; and from a consciousness of my admired friend’s high superiority, I do feel a little abashed at being brought face to face against him. But possibly the less said to the public on these personal matters, the better.
I have to give reasons why I cannot adopt that modified scheme of Christianity which is defended and adorned by James Martineau; according to which it is maintained that though the Gospel Narratives are not to be trusted in detail, there can yet be no reasonable doubt _what_ Jesus _was_; for this is elicited by a “higher moral criticism,” which (it is remarked) I neglect. In this theory, Jesus is avowed to be a man born like other men; to be liable to error, and (at least in some important respects) mistaken. Perhaps no general proposition is to be accepted _merely_ on the word of Jesus; in particular, he misinterpreted the Hebrew prophecies. “He was not _less_ than the Hebrew Messiah, but _more_.” No moral charge is established against him, until it is shown, that in applying the old prophecies to himself, he was _conscious_ that they did not fit. His error was one of mere fallibility in matters of intellectual and literary estimate. On the other hand, Jesus had an infallible moral perception, which reveals itself to the true-hearted reader, and is testified by the common consciousness of Christendom. It has pleased the Creator to give us one sun in the heavens, and one Divine soul in history, in order to correct the aberrations of our individuality, and unite all mankind into one family of God. Jesus is to be presumed to be perfect until he is shown to be imperfect. Faith in Jesus, is not reception of propositions, but reverence for a person; yet this is _not_ the condition of salvation or essential to the Divine favour.
Such is the scheme, abridged from the ample discussion of my eloquent friend. In reasoning against it, my arguments will, to a certain extent, be those of an orthodox Trinitarian;[1] since we might both maintain that the belief in the absolute divine morality of Jesus is not tenable, when the belief in _every other_ divine and superhuman quality is denied. Should I have any “orthodox” reader, my arguments may shock his feelings less, if he keeps this in view. In fact, the same action or word in Jesus may be consistent or inconsistent with moral perfection, according to the previous assumptions concerning his person.
I. My friend has attributed to me a “prosaic and embittered view of human nature,” apparently because I have a very intense belief of Man’s essential imperfection. To me, I confess, it is almost a first principle of thought, that as all sorts of perfection coexist in God, so is no sort of perfection possible to man. I do not know how for a moment to imagine an Omniscient Being who is not Almighty, or an Almighty who is not All-Righteous. So neither do I know how to conceive of Perfect Holiness anywhere but in the Blessed and only Potentate.
Man is finite and crippled on all sides; and frailty in one kind causes frailty in another. Deficient power causes deficient knowledge, deficient knowledge betrays him into false opinion, and entangles him into false positions. It may be a defect of my imagination, but I do not feel that it implies any bitterness, that even in the case of one who abides in primitive lowliness, to attain even negatively an absolutely pure goodness seems to me impossible; and much more, to exhaust all goodness, and become a single Model-Man, unparalleled, incomparable, a standard for all other moral excellence. Especially I cannot conceive of any human person rising out of obscurity, and influencing the history of the world, unless there be in him forces of great intensity, the harmonizing of which is a vast and painful problem. Every man has to subdue himself first, before he preaches to his fellows; and he encounters many a fall and many a wound in winning his own victory. And as talents are various, so do moral natures vary, each having its own weak and strong side; and that one man should grasp into his single self the highest perfection of every moral kind, is to me at least as incredible as that one should preoccupy and exhaust all intellectual greatness. I feel the prodigy to be so peculiar, that I must necessarily wait until it is overwhelmingly proved, before I admit it. No one can without unreason urge me to believe, on any but the most irrefutable arguments, that a man, finite in every other respect, is infinite in moral perfection.
My friend is “at a loss to conceive in what way a superhuman physical nature could tend in the least degree to render moral perfection more credible.” But I think he will see, that it would entirely obviate the argument just stated, which, from the known frailty of human nature in general, deduced the indubitable imperfection of an individual. The reply is then obvious and decisive: “This individual is _not_ a mere man; his origin is wholly exceptional; therefore his moral perfection may be exceptional; your experience of _man’s_ weakness goes for nothing in his case.” If I were already convinced that this person was a great Unique, separated from all other men by an impassable chasm in regard to his physical origin, I (for one) should be much readier to believe that he was Unique and Unapproachable in other respects: for all God’s works have an internal harmony. It could not be for nothing that this exceptional personage was sent into the world. That he was intended as head of the human race, in one or more senses, would be a plausible opinion; nor should I feel any incredulous repugnance against believing his morality to be if not divinely perfect, yet separated from that of common men so far, that he might be a God to us, just as every parent is to a young child.
This view seems to my friend a weakness; be it so. I need not press it. What I do press, is,–whatever _might_ or might _not_ be conceded concerning one in human form, but of superhuman origin,–at any rate, one who is conceded to be, out and out, of the same nature as ourselves, is to be judged of by our experience of that nature, and is therefore to be _assumed_ to be variously imperfect, however eminent and admirable in some respects. And no one is to be called an imaginer of deformity, because he takes for granted that one who is Man has imperfections which were not known to those who compiled memorials of him. To impute to a person, without specific evidence, some definite frailty or fault, barely because he is human, would be a want of good sense; but not so, to have a firm belief that every human being is finite in moral as well as in intellectual greatness.
We have a very imperfect history of the apostle James; and I do not know that I could adduce any fact specifically recorded concerning him in disproof of his absolute moral perfection, if any of his Jerusalem disciples had chosen to set up this as a dogma of religion. Yet no one would blame me, as morose, or indisposed to acknowledge genius and greatness, if I insisted on believing James to be frail and imperfect, while admitting that I knew almost nothing about him. And why?–Singly and surely, because we know him to be _a man_: that suffices. To set up James or John or Daniel as my Model, and my Lord; to be swallowed up in him and press him upon others for a Universal Standard, would be despised as a self-degrading idolatry and resented as an obtrusive favouritism. Now why does not the same equally apply, if the name Jesus is substituted for these? Why, in defect of all other knowledge than the bare fact of his manhood, are we not unhesitatingly to take for granted that he does _not_ exhaust all perfection, and is at best only one among many brethren and equals?
II. My friend, I gather, will reply, “because so many thousands of minds in all Christendom attest the infinite and unapproachable goodness of Jesus.” It therefore follows to consider, what is the weight of this attestation. Manifestly it depends, first of all, on the independence of the witnesses: secondly, on the grounds of their belief. If all those, who confess the moral perfection of Jesus, confess it as the result of unbiassed examination of his character; and if of those acquainted with the narrative, none espouse the opposite side; this would be a striking testimony, not to be despised. But in fact, few indeed of the “witnesses” add any weight at all to the argument. No Trinitarian can doubt that Jesus is morally perfect, without doubting fundamentally every part of his religion. He believes it, _because_ the entire system demands it, and _because_ various texts of Scripture avow it: and this very fact makes it morally impossible for him to enter upon an unbiassed inquiry, whether that character which is drawn for Jesus in the four gospels, is, or is not, one of absolute perfection, deserving to be made an exclusive model for all times and countries. My friend never was a Trinitarian, and seems not to know how this operates; but I can testify, that when I believed in the immaculateness of Christ’s character, it was not from an unbiassed criticism, but from the pressure of authority, (the authority of _texts_,) and from the necessity of the doctrine to the scheme of Redemption. Not merely strict Trinitarians, but all who believe in the Atonement, however modified,–all who believe that Jesus will be the future Judge,–_must_ believe in his absolute perfection: hence the fact of their belief is no indication whatever that they believe on the ground which my friend assumes,–viz. an intelligent and unbiassed study of the character itself, as exhibited in the four narratives.
I think we may go farther. We have no reason for thinking that _this_ was the sort of evidence which convinced the apostles themselves, and first teachers of the gospel;–if indeed in the very first years the doctrine was at all conceived of. It cannot be shown that any one believed in the moral perfection of Jesus, who had not already adopted the belief that he was Messiah, and _therefore_ Judge of the human race. My friend makes the pure immaculateness of Jesus (discernible by him in the gospels) his foundation, and deduces _from_ this the quasi-Messiahship: but the opposite order of deduction appears to have been the only one possible in the first age. Take Paul as a specimen. He believed the doctrine in question; but not from reading the four gospels,–for they did not exist. Did he then believe it by hearing Ananias (Acts ix. 17) enter into details concerning the deeds and words of Jesus? I cannot imagine that any wise or thoughtful person would so judge, which after all would be a gratuitous invention. The Acts of the Apostles give us many speeches which set forth the grounds of accepting Jesus as Messiah; but they never press his absolute moral perfection as a fact and a fundamental fact. “He went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil,” is the utmost