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   Title: The Life of Jesus Christ in Its Historical Connexion and
   Historical Developement.
   Creator(s): Neander, Augustus (1789-1850)
   Print Basis: New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers (1870)
   Rights: Public Domain
   CCEL Subjects: All;
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    THE

                              LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST

    IN ITS

  HISTORICAL CONNEXION AND HISTORICAL
  DEVELOPEMENT.

    BY

AUGUSTUS NEANDER.

    TRANSLATED FROM THE

    Fourth German Edition.

    BY

  JOHN M'CLINTOCK AND CHARLES E. BLUMENTHAL,

    PROFESSORS IN DICKINSON COLLEGE.

  NEW YORK:

  HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,

    329 & 331 PEARL STREET,

    FRANKLIN SQUARE.

  1870.

   Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand
   eight hundred and forty-eight, by
   HARPER & BROTHERS,
   in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District
   of New York.
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TO MY CHRISTIAN BRETHREN
IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

   THE present age may be considered an epoch of transition in the
   developement of the kingdom of God; and, as such, it is full of signs.
   Among the most striking of them is a greater zeal for the spread of the
   Gospel and the Bible through all nations, combining many and various
   agencies for that work; as well as a closer union among all earnest
   Christians, seekers of salvation and truth, of all lands, however
   widely separated--a new Catholic Church, which, amid all the diversity
   of outward ecclesiastical forms, is preparing that unity of the spirit
   which has Christ for its foundation. Especially is it matter of
   rejoicing to see a growing spirit of fraternal union between the
   Christians of the Old World and those of the New; a land in which
   Christianity (the destined leaven for all the elements of humanity, how
   various soever) developes its activities under secular relations so
   entirely novel.

   It was, therefore, very gratifying to me to learn that Professors
   M'CLINTOCK and BLUMENTHAL had determined to put this volume, the fruit
   of my earnest inquiries, before the transatlantic Christian public in
   an English dress. To see a wider sphere of influence opened for views
   which we ourselves (amid manifold struggles, yet guided, we trust, by
   the Divine Spirit) have recognized as true, and which, in our opinion,
   are fitted to make a way right on through the warring contradictions of
   error, cannot be otherwise than grateful to us. For truth is designed
   for all men: he who serves the truth works and strives for all men. The
   Lord has given to each his own charisma, and with it each must work for
   all. What is true and good, then, is no man's own; it comes from the
   Father of Lights, the Giver of every good gift, who lends it to us to
   be used for all. And what is true, must prove itself such by bearing
   the test of the general Christian consciousness.

   But the pleasure with which I write these words is not unmingled with
   anxiety. To write a history of the greatest Life that has been
   manifested upon earth--that Life in which the Divine glory irradiated
   earthly existence--is indeed the greatest of human tasks. Yet the
   attempt is not presumptuous (as I have said in the preface to the
   German edition), if it be made upon the Gospel basis: every age
   witnesses new attempts of the kind. It is part of the means by which we
   are to appropriate to ourselves this highest life; to become more and
   more intimate with it; to bring it nearer and nearer to ourselves.
   Every peculiar age will feel itself compelled anew to take this Divine
   Life to itself through its own study of it, by means of science,
   animated by the Holy Spirit; to gain a closer living intimacy with it,
   by copying it. To eat His flesh and drink His blood (in the spiritual
   sense) is indeed the way to this intimacy; but science also has its
   part to do, and this work is its highest dignity. But yet, in view of
   the grandeur and importance of this greatest of tasks, in view of the
   difficulties that environ it, and our own incapacity to execute it
   adequately, we cannot see our work diffused into wider and more distant
   circles, without fear and trembling. We are fully conscious of the
   dimness that surrounds us, growing out of the errors and defects of an
   age just freeing itself from a distracting infidelity. May we soon
   receive a new outpouring of the Holy Ghost, again bestowing tongues of
   fire, so that the Lord's great works may be more worthily praised!

   I have another, and a peculiar source of anxiety. This book has arisen
   (and it bears the marks of its origin) amid the intellectual struggles
   which yet agitate Germany, and constitute a preparatory crisis for the
   future. Those who are unacquainted with those struggles may, perhaps,
   take offence at finding not only many things in the book hard to
   understand, but also views at variance with old opinions in other
   countries yet undisturbed. The English churches (even those of the
   United States, where every thing moves more freely) have perhaps, on
   the whole, been but slightly disturbed by conflicting opinions of
   precisely the kind that find place among us. Had they to deal with the
   life-questions with which we have to do, they would be otherwise
   engaged than in vehement controversies about church order and other
   unessential points. It would be easier, then, for them to forget their
   minor differences, and rally under the one banner of the Cross against
   the common foe. Perhaps a nearer acquaintance with the religious
   condition of other lands may contribute to this end.

   I am, notwithstanding, still afraid that some readers unacquainted with
   the progress of the German mind, which has developed new intellectual
   necessities even for those who seek the truth believingly, may take
   offence at some of the sentiments of this book. Especially will this be
   likely to happen with those who have not been accustomed to distinguish
   what is Divine from what is human in the Gospel record; to discriminate
   its immutable essence from the changeful forms in which men have
   apprehended it; in a word, with those who exchange the Divine reality
   for the frail support of traditional beliefs and ancient harmonies. I
   would lead no man into a trial which he could not endure; I would
   willingly give offence to none, unless, indeed, it were to be a
   transitory offence, tending afterward to enlarge his Christian
   knowledge and confirm his faith. How far this may be the case, I am not
   sufficiently acquainted with the transatlantic Church to be a competent
   judge. Nor would I, on my own sole responsibility, have introduced this
   work (which arose, as I have said, among the struggles of our own
   country) to a foreign public: this I leave to the esteemed translators,
   hoping that their judgment of the condition of things there may be well
   founded.

   But of this I am certain, that the fall of the old form of the doctrine
   of Inspiration, and, indeed, of many other doctrinal prejudices, will
   not only not involve the fall of the essence of the Gospel, but will
   cause it no detriment whatever. Nay, I believe that it will be more
   clearly and accurately understood; that men will be better prepared to
   fight with and to conquer that inrushing infidelity against which the
   weapons of the old dogmatism must be powerless in any land; and that
   from such a struggle a new theology, purified and renovated in the
   spirit of the Gospel, must arise. Everywhere we see the signs of a new
   creation; the Lord will build himself, in science as well as in life, a
   new tabernacle in which to dwell; and neither a stubborn adherence to
   antiquity, nor a profane appetite for novelty, can hinder this work of
   the Lord which is now preparing. May we never forget the words of the
   great apostle, "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is Liberty."
   Whatever in this book rests upon that one foundation than which none
   other can be laid, will bear all the fires of the time; let the wood,
   hay, and stubble which find place in all works of men, be burned up.

   Perhaps the impulse [1] which the American mind has received from the
   profound COLERIDGE, who (like SCHLEIERMACHER among ourselves) has
   testified that Christianity is not so much a definite system of
   conceptions as a power of life, may have contributed, and may still
   further contribute, to prepare the way for a new tendency of scientific
   theology in your beloved country.

   A. NEANDER.

   Berlin, November 4 1847.
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   [1] Not, it is to be hoped, a one-sided, partisan tendency, as is
   justly remarked by Professor PORTER, whose article on "Coleridge and
   his American Disciples," in the Bibliotheca Sacra for February, 1847, I
   have read with great interest.
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TRANSLATORS' PREFACE.

   THE work, of which an English version is presented in this volume,
   appeared originally in 1837. It has already passed through four
   editions, from the last of which [2] this translation has been made.

   It is well known that Dr. NEANDER has been engaged for many years in
   writing a "General History of the Christian Religion and Church," and
   that he has published separately an account of the "Planting and
   Training of the Early Christian Church by the Apostles." He would
   doubtless have felt himself constrained, at some period, to give a
   history of the life and ministry of the Divine Founder of the Church;
   and, indeed, he states as much in the preface to this work (page xxi.).
   The execution of this part of his task, however, would perhaps have
   been deferred until the completion of his General History, had not the
   "signs of the times" urged him to undertake it at once. Its immediate
   occasion was the publication, in 1835, of STRAUS'S "Life of Christ,"
   [3] a work which, as every one knows, created a great sensation, not
   merely in the theological circles of Germany, but also throughout
   Europe. A brief sketch of the state and progress of parties in Germany
   may be useful to readers not familiar with the literature of that
   country; and we here attempt it, only regretting our incapacity to give
   it fully and accurately.

   Notwithstanding the dread with which German theology is regarded by
   many English and some American divines, it was not in German soil that
   the first seeds of infidelity in modern times took root. It was by the
   deistical writers of England, in the early part of the last century,
   that the authenticity of the sacred records was first openly assailed.
   The attacks of Toland, Chubb, Morgan, &c., were directed mainly against
   the credibility and sincerity of the sacred writers; and their blows
   were aimed, avowedly, against the whole fabric of Christianity. It is
   needless to say that they failed, not merely in accomplishing their
   object, but in making any very strong or permanent impression on the
   English mind. Nor has an infidelity of exactly the same type ever
   obtained firm footing in Germany. The English Deism, first promulgated
   in the Wolfenbuettel fragments, set the German theologians at work upon
   the canon of Scripture, and upon Biblical literature in general, with a
   zeal and industry un known before; and many of them pushed their
   inquiries with a freedom amounting to recklessness; but a direct and
   absolute denial of the authority of the word of God is a thing almost
   unknown among them. Still, professed theologians, of great talents and
   learning, and holding high official positions, adopted a theory (the
   so-called Rationalism) more dangerous than avowed infidelity, and
   succeeded, for a time, in diffusing its poison to a painful extent.

   The declared aim of the Rationalists was to interpret the Bible on
   rational principles; that is to say, to find nothing in it beyond the
   scope of human reason. Not supposing its writers to be impostors, nor
   denying the record to be a legitimate source, in a certain sense, of
   religious instruction, they sought to free it of every thing
   supernatural; deeming it to be, not a direct Divine revelation, but a
   product of the human mind, aided, indeed, by Divine Providence, but in
   no extraordinary or miraculous way. The miracles, therefore, had to be
   explained away; and this was done in any mode that the ingenuity or
   philosophy of the expositor might suggest. Sometimes, for instance,
   they were no miracles, at all, but simple natural facts; and all the
   old interpreters had misunderstood the writers. Sometimes, again, the
   writers of the sacred history misunderstood the facts, deeming them to
   be miraculous when they were not; e. g., when Christ "healed the sick,"
   he merely prescribed for them, as a kind physician, with skill and
   success; when he "raised the dead," he only restored men from a swoon
   or trance; when he "subdued the storm," there was simply a happy
   "coincidence," making a strong impression upon the minds of the
   disciples; when he fed the "five thousand," he only set an example of
   kindness and benevolence which the rich by-standers eagerly followed by
   opening their stores to feed the hungry multitude, &c., &c. But even
   this elastic exegesis, when stretched to its utmost capacity, would not
   explain every case: some parts of the narratives were stubbornly
   unyielding, and new methods were demanded. For men who had gone so far,
   it was easy to go farther; the text itself was not spared; this passage
   was doubtful, that was corrupt, a third was spurious. In short,
   "criticism," as this desperate kind of Interpretation was called, was
   at last able to make any thing, and in a fair way to make nothing, out
   of the sacred records. But still the rationalist agreed with the
   orthodox supernaturalist in admitting that there was, at bottom, a
   basis of substantial truth in the records; and asserted that his
   efforts only tended to free the substantive verity from the
   envelopements of fable or perversion with which tradition had invested
   it. The admission was a fatal one. The absurdities to which the theory
   led could not long remain undetected. It was soon shown, and shown
   effectually, that this vaunted criticism was no criticism at all; that
   the objections which it offered to the Gospel history were as old as
   Porphyry, or, at least, as the English Deists, and had been refuted
   again and again; that the errors of interpretation into which the older
   expositors had fallen might be avoided without touching the truth and
   inspiration of the Evangelists; and, in a word, that there could be no
   medium between open infidelity and the admission of a supernatural
   revelation. During the first quarter of the present century the
   conflict was waged with ardour on both sides, but with increasing
   energy on the side of truth; and every year weakened the forces of
   rationalism. Still, the theological mind of Germany was to a
   considerable extent unsettled: its Tholucks and Hengstenbergs stood
   strong for orthodoxy; its Twesten and Nitszch applied the clearest
   logic to systematic theology; its Marheineche and Daub philosophized
   religiously; its Bretschneider and Hase upheld reason as the judge of
   revelation; while not a few maintained the old rationalism, though with
   less and less of conviction, or at least of boldness.

   It was at this point that Strauss conceived the audacious idea of
   applying the mythical theory to the whole structure of the Evangelical
   history. All Germany has been more or less infected with the
   mytho-mania, since the new school of archaeologers have gone so deeply
   into the heathen mythology. A mythis omnis priscorum hominum cum
   historia tum philosophia procedit, says Heyne: and Bauer asks,
   logically enough, "if the early history of every people is mythical why
   not the Hebrew?" [4] The mere application of this theory to the sacred
   records was by no means original with Strauss: he himself points out a
   number of instances in which Eichhorn, Gabler, Vater, &c., had made use
   of it. His claim is to have given a completeness to the theory, or
   rather to its application, which former interpreters had not dreamed
   of; and, to tell the truth, he has made no halting work of it. That
   Jesus lived; that he taught in Judea; that he gathered disciples, and
   so impressed them with his life and teaching as that they believed him
   to be the Messiah; this is nearly the sum of historical truth contained
   in the Evangelists, according to Strauss. Yet he ascribes no fraudulent
   designs to the writers; his problem is, therefore, to account for the
   form in which the narratives appear; and this is the place for his
   theory to work. A Messiah was expected; certain notions were attached
   to the Messianic character and office; and with these Christ was
   invested by his followers. "Such and such a thing must happen to
   Messiah; Jesus was the Messiah; therefore such and such a thing must
   have happened to him." "The expectation of a Messiah had flourished in
   Israel long before the time of Christ; and at the time of his
   appearance it had ripened into full bloom; not an indefinite longing
   either, but an expectation defined by many prominent characteristics.
   Moses had promised (Deut., xviii., 15) `a prophet like unto himself,' a
   passage applied, in Christ's time, to Messiah (Acts, iii., 22; vii.,
   37). The Messiah was to spring of David's line, and ascend his throne
   as a second David (Matt., xxii., 42; Luke, i., 32); and therefore he
   was looked for, in Christ's time, to be born in the little town of
   Bethlehem (John, vii., 42; Matt., ii., 5). In the old legends the most
   wonderful acts and destinies had been attributed to the prophets: could
   less be expected of the Messiah? Must not his life be illustrated by
   the most splendid and significant incidents from the lives of the
   prophets? Finally, the Messianic era, as a whole, was expected to be a
   period of signs and wonders. The eyes of the blind were to be opened;
   the deaf ears to be unstopped; the lame were to leap, &c. (Isa., xxxv.,
   &c.). These expressions, part of which, at least, were purely
   figurative, came to be literally understood (Matt., xi., 5; Luke, vii.,
   21, sqq.); and thus, even before Christ's appearance, the image of
   Messiah was continually filling out with new features. And thus many of
   the legends respecting Jesus had not to be newly invented; they existed
   ready-made in the Messianic hopes of the people, derived chiefly from
   the Old Testament, and only needed to be transferred to Christ and
   adapted to his character and teachings." [5]

   These extracts contain the substance of Strauss's theory; his book is
   little more than an application of it to the individual parts of the
   history of Christ as given in the Evangelists. A few instances of his
   procedure will suffice. He finds the key to the miraculous conception
   in Matt., i., 22: " All this was done that it might be fulfilled which
   was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying," [6] &c. "The birth of
   Jesus, it was said, must correspond to this passage; and what was to
   be, they concluded, really did occur, and so arose the myth." The
   account of the star of the Magians, and of their visit from the East,
   arose from a similar application of Numbers, xxiv., 17; Psa. lxxii.,
   10; Isa., lx., 1-6, [7] &c The temptation of Christ was suggested by
   the trials of Job; its separate features helped out by Exod., xxxiv.,
   28; Lev., xvi., 8, 10; Deut., ix., 9, [8] &c. The Transfiguration finds
   a starting-point in Exod., xxxiv., 29-35. [9] So we might go through
   the book.

   The appearance of the work, as we have said, produced a wonderful
   sensation in Germany; greater, by far, than its merits would seem to
   have authorized. It was the heaviest blow that unbelief had ever struck
   against Christianity; and the question was, what should be done? The
   Prussian government was disposed to utter its ban against the book; and
   many evangelical theologians deemed this the proper course to pursue in
   regard to it. But Dr. Neander deprecated such a procedure as calculated
   to give the work a spurious celebrity, and as wearing, at least, the
   aspect of a confession that it was unanswerable. He advised that it
   should be met, not by authority, but by argument, believing that the
   truth had nothing to fear in such a conflict. His counsel prevailed;
   and the event has shown that he was right. Replies to Strauss poured
   forth in a torrent; the Gospel histories were subjected to a closer
   criticism than ever; and to-day the public mind of Germany is nearer to
   an orthodox and evangelical view of their contents than it has been for
   almost a century.

   Besides the general impulse given by Strauss to the study of the Four
   Gospels, he has done theology another good service. His book has given
   a deadly blow to rationalism properly so called. Its paltry criticism
   and beggarly interpretations of Scripture are nowhere more effectually
   dissected than in his investigations of the different parts of the
   history and of the expositions that have been given of it. In a word,
   he has driven rationalism out of the field to make way for his myths;
   and Neander, Ebrard, and others have exploded the myths; so that
   nothing re. mains but a return to the simple, truthful interpretations
   which, in the main, are given by the evangelical commentators.

   But, it may be asked, why trouble ourselves with controversies of this
   kind here? We cannot help it. Strauss's book, at first, could not find
   a respectable publisher in England; and a garbled translation,
   containing its very worst features, was put out in a cheap form for the
   million. The same, or a similar abridgment, has been circulated to a
   considerable extent in this country. And within the last year a
   translation of the whole work, from the last German edition, has been
   published in London in three handsome volumes. That the soil of many
   minds is ready to receive its pestilent doctrines, both in that country
   and in our own, is too sadly true to be denied. The Westminster Review
   for April, 1847, contains an article on Strauss and Parker which talks
   about the Evangelists in the coolest strain of infidelity imaginable,
   and refers, with obvious complacency, to the signs of "unbelief or
   illumination" (it cares not which) that are at present so abundant in
   England.

   To a certain extent, as we have remarked, Neander's Life of Christ has
   a polemic aim against Strauss. But this is a small part of its merits;
   indeed, but for the notes, an ordinary reader would not detect any such
   specific tendency. It unfolds the life of the Saviour from the record
   with great clearness and skill; it invests the outline, thus obtained,
   with the fresh colours of life, without resorting to forced
   constructions and vain imaginings; and, above all, it seeks, with
   child-like humility and reverence, to learn and exhibit the mind of the
   Spirit. The characteristic of spirituality, so strongly stamped upon
   all the works of this great writer, is especially prominent here. None,
   we think, can read the book without becoming not merely better
   acquainted with the facts of the life of Christ, but more anxious than
   ever to drink into its spirit.

   At the same time, it is not to be concealed that Neander differs in his
   views on some points of doctrine, as well as of interpretation, from
   most Evangelical theologians. We wish to state distinctly that we do
   not hold ourselves responsible for these peculiarities of opinion. It
   was at one time our purpose to append notes to such passages as we
   deemed most objectionable; but after mature deliberation this intention
   was laid aside. It is hardly fair to criticise a man in his own pages,
   even if one is able to do it. The general spirit and tendency of the
   work cannot, we are sure, be otherwise than beneficial, or we should
   never have attempted to translate it. Its specific errors can be met
   and refuted elsewhere.

   The noble candour of Neander in the letter which precedes this preface
   must disarm all severity. Let us remember, in our judgment of what may
   appear to us even grave errors of opinion in the book, that its author
   has fought for every step of ground that has been gained of late years
   by spiritual religion in Germany; and, while we lament the "dimness"
   which this great man confesses with such Christian-like humility, let
   us acknowledge the grandeur of his idea of the kingdom of God, and the
   earnestness of his devotion to it. His starting-point, and many of his
   paths, are different from ours; it must, therefore, gladden our hearts,
   and may, perhaps, confirm our faith, to see that he reaches, after all,
   the general results of Evangelical theology.

   One word for the translation. We have tried to do our best; but we feel
   that we have not done very well. It is hard to translate German; and of
   all German that we have tried to put into intelligible English,
   Neander's is the hardest. We have not attempted a literal version (for
   we want the book to be read); nor on the other hand, have we willingly
   gone into mere paraphrase. We have sought to seize the sense of the
   author, and to express it in our own tongue; but none can be better
   assured than ourselves that we have very often failed. Readers of the
   original work will see that we have taken some liberties with it which
   demand explanation. The division of the text into books, chapters, and
   sections will, we hope, make the work more intelligible and acceptable
   to English readers. In many of the author's paraphrases of Scripture
   passages we have substituted the words of the English version, where it
   could be done without affecting the sense; and many passages, also, to
   which he had merely alluded, are quoted at length. A few sentences have
   been transferred from the text to the notes; and a few passages of the
   notes, of purely polemical interest, which would have needed
   explanation to put them fairly before the American public, have been
   omitted. In all that we have done, we have endeavoured to comply with
   the spirit of Dr. Neander's wishes, as kindly communicated to us by
   himself.

   January 5, 1848.

   LIST OF DR. NEANDER'S WORKS.

   Das Leben Jesu Christi, in seinem geschichtlichen Zusammenhange und
   seiner geschichtlichen Entwickelung: 1^te Aufl., 1837; 4^te Aufl., 1845
   (The Life of Jesus Christ, in its Historical Connexion and Historical
   Developement: 1st ed., 1837; 4th ed., 1845).

   Geschichte der Pflanzung und Leitung der Christlichen Kirche durch die
   Apostel: 1^te Aufl., 1832; 4^te Aufl., 1847 (History of the Planting
   and Training of the Christian Church by the Apostles: 1st ed., 1832;
   4th ed., 1847).

   Allgemeine Geschichte der Christlichen Religion und Kirche (General
   History of the Christian Religion and Church).

   (a) Die drei ersten Jahrhunderte: 1^te Aufl. in 3 Baenden; 2^te Aufl.
   in 2 Bd., 1842-43. (The three first centuries: 1st edition in 3
   volumes, 1825; 2d edition in 2vols., 1842-43.)

   (b) Das 4^te-6^te Jahrhundert: 1^te Aufl. in drei Baenden, 1828; 2^te
   Auf. in 2 Bd., 1846-47. (Fourth to sixth century: 1st ed. in 3 vols.,
   1828; 2d in 2 vols., 1846-47.)

   (c) 6^te-8^te, in 1 Bd. (Sixth to eighth, 1 vol.), 1834.

   (d) 8^te-11^te, in 1 Bd. (Eighth to eleventh, 1 vol.), 1836.

   (e) 11^te-13^te, in 2 Baenden. (Eleventh to thirteenth, 2 vols.), 1841
   and 1845.

   Ueber den Kaiser Julianus und sein Zeitalter (The Emperor Julian and
   his Times), 1812.

   Genetische Entwickelung der vornehmsten Gnostischen Systeme (Genetical
   Developement of the principal Gnostic Systems), 1818.

   Anti-Gnosticus. Geist des Tertullianus und Einleitung in dessen
   Schriften (Anti-Gnosticus. Genius of Tertullian and Introduction to his
   Writings), 1825.

   Der heilige Chrysostomus und die Kirche in dessen Zeitalter, 2 Bd.,
   1820; 2^te Aufl. l^te Bd., 1832 (Chrysostom and the Church in his
   Times, 2 vols., 1820; 2d ed. of 1st. vol., 1832).

   Der heilige Bernhard und sein Zeitalter (Bernard and his Times), 1813.

   Denkwuerdigkeiten aus der Geschichte des Christenthums und des
   Christlichen Lebens: l^te Aufl. in 3 Bd., 1822; 3^te Aufl. in 2 Bd.,
   1845-46 (Memorabilia from the History of Christianity and the Christian
   Life: 1st ed. 3 vols., 1822; 3d ed. 2 vols.. 1845-46).

   Kleine Gelegenheitschriften praktisch-Christlichen, vornehmlich
   exegetischen und historischen Inhalts, 3^te Aufl., 1829 (Smaller
   Treatises, chiefly exegetical and historical, 3d ed., 1829).

   Das Eine und das Mannichfaeltige des Christlichen Lebens; Eine Reihe
   kleiner Gelegenheitschriften, groessertentheils biographischen Inhalts
   (Series of smaller Treatises, chiefly biographical), 1840.

   Das Princip der Reformation, oder Staupitz und Luther (The Principle of
   the Reformation; or Staupitz and Luther), 1840.
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   [2] Das Leben Jesu Christi, in seinem geschichtlichen Zusammenhange und
   seiner geschichtlichen Entwickelung dargestellt von Dr. AUGUST NEANDER,
   vierte und verbesserte Auflage, Hamburg, bei Friedrich Perthes, 1845.

   [3] Das Leben Jesu, Kritisch bearbeitet von Dr. DAVID FRIEDRICH
   STRAUSS. 8 Bde Tubingen, 1835, 4te Aufl., 1840.

   [4] Strauss, i., S: 8.

   [5] Strause, i., S: 14.

   [6] Strauss, i., S: 29.

   [7] Ibid., S: 36.

   [8] Ibid., S: 56.

   [9] Ibid., S: 107.
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PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.

   IN the Preface to my Representation of the Christian Religion and
   Church in the Apostolic Age, I assigned my reasons for the separate
   publication of that work, and stated its relations to my General
   History of the Church. It remained for me to treat of that which formed
   the ground of the manifestation and existence of the Apostolical Church
   itself, viz., the Life and Ministry of the Divine Founder of the
   Church; and I have, moreover, been urged from many quarters to execute
   this necessary portion of my work. I was made to pause in the former
   undertaking by the lofty sacredness of the subject and its many
   difficulties; how much more, then, in the latter! But the signs of the
   times (to which, as a historian of the Church, I could not but take
   heed), the uncertainty of human affairs, and the opportunity afforded
   by a pause in my General History, have overcome my scruples, and led
   me, trusting in God, to go on with this work.

   Yet well may he hesitate who undertakes to write the life of CHRIST!
   "Who, indeed (as HERDER finely answered Lavater), could venture, after
   John, to write the life of Christ?" [10] Who will not agree with ANNA
   MARIA VON SCHURMANN, that such an attempt is "to paint the sun with
   charcoal: the life of a Christian is the best picture of the life of
   Christ?" [11]

   Yet why should not history (though assured that its description must be
   far behind the reality) occupy itself with the highest manifestation
   that has appeared in humanity--a manifestation which sanctifies, but
   does not spurn, the labours of men? The artist, inspired by devotion,
   paints a picture of Christ without any aid from history, merely from
   intuition of the idea of Christ. But we have the lineaments of the
   historical Christ, in fragments at least; and there is wanting only
   insight into their connexion to frame them into a harmonious whole. We
   feel the necessity of calling up vividly before our minds, in our own
   stage of life and scientific progress, this realized Ideal, which
   belongs to all ages; and at particular epochs in the mutations of time
   this necessity is always felt anew. The image of Christ, not of
   yesterday nor to-day, ever renews its youth among men, and, as the
   world grows old, penetrates it with a heaven-tending youthful vigour.
   What PHOTIUS says of the various ideas of Christ among different
   nations may be applied to different periods of time, viz., "that each,
   by a new representation, must make itself familiar with the image of
   Christ." Obviously, however, the peculiarities of different periods
   must be distinguished. Some periods mark a new creation in the
   Christian Church and in humanity, as already appeared; others, by
   dissolution and crisis, prepare the way for it. Our age belongs to the
   latter class: we stand between the old world and a new one to be called
   into being by the ever old and ever new Gospel. For the fourth time
   Christianity is preparing a new epoch in the life of humanity. Our
   labors can only be preparatory to that new creation, when, after the
   regeneration of life and science, the great acts of God shall be
   proclaimed with new tongues of fire! [12]

   But it may be questioned, also, whether it is possible, from the
   authorities in our hands, to exhibit a connected description of the
   life of CHRIST? Christian consciousness will be satisfied with nothing
   less than an intuition of Christ's life as a whole; and, therefore,
   science must undertake to free it from all alloy, and to found it on a
   substantial basis. It is by means of the Christian consciousness that
   we feel ourselves allied to all Christianity since the outpouring of
   the Holy Ghost--Christian consciousness, the living source from which
   every thing in life and science, which has really enriched the Church,
   has proceeded and must proceed; a far different thing from the
   changeful culture of the day, which, without it, must ever be ephemeral
   and transitory. To serve this last is the most wretched of servitudes.
   It is, indeed, time for a new beginning of Biblical criticism, of New
   Testament exegesis, of inquiries into the formation of the canon. There
   are great difficulties, indeed, especially in the chronology, [13] in
   the work which we have to do. But this, instead of deterring, must only
   stimulate us to greater efforts. We must only guard against
   relinquishing our hopes too hastily, and keep aloof from all prejudices
   either of antiquity or novelty; and then this undertaking may be one of
   the preparations, however trifling, for a new epoch in this part of
   history.

   As for those who deny that our field is properly historical, and place
   it in a pre-historical and mythical region, I need say nothing here, as
   I have sought to refute them in the course of the work itself.

   In regard to my relations to the various theological parties of the
   age, I must refer to the Preface to the first volume of my "Apostolic
   Age;" and to my letter to DEWAR, chaplain to the British Embassy in
   Hamburg. Whatever appears to me to be true, or most probable, after
   candid and earnest inquiry, with all reverence for the sacredness of
   the subject, I utter, without looking at consequences. Whoever has a
   good work to do must, as Luther says, let the devil's tongue run as it
   pleases. There are two opposite parties whom I cannot hope to please,
   viz., those who will forcibly make all things new, and fancy, in their
   folly, that they can shake the rock which ages could not undermine; and
   those who would retain, and forcibly reintroduce, even at the expense
   of all genuine love of truth, every thing that is old; nay, even the
   worn-out and the obsolete. I shall not please those hypercritics who
   subject the sacred writings to an arbitrary subtilty, at once
   superrational and sophistical; nor those, on the other hand, who
   believe that here all criticism--or at least all criticism on internal
   grounds--cometh of evil. Both these tendencies are alike at variance
   with a healthful sense for truth and conscientious devotion to it; both
   are alike inimical to genuine culture. There is need of criticism where
   any thing is communicated to us in the form of a historical tradition
   in written records; and I am sure that an impartial criticism, applied
   to the Scriptures, is not only consistent with that child-like faith
   without which there can be no Christianity or Christian theology, [14]
   but is necessary to a just acuteness [15] and profoundness of thought,
   as well as to that true consecration of mind which is so essential to
   theology. The childlike faith of the theologian who cannot violently
   rid himself of the critical element of his times or of human nature, is
   thus proved, as it were, in the fire of temptation; this is the
   tentatio (particularly in this age of scientific struggle) which must
   go along with oratio and meditatio, in the depths of the earnest and
   humble spirit. Without this priestly consecration, there can be no
   theology. It thrives best in the calmness of a soul consecrated to God.
   What grows amid the noisy bustle of the world and the empty babble of
   the age is not theology.

   God reveals himself in his word as he does in his works. In both we see
   a self-revealing, self-concealing God, who makes himself known only to
   those who earnestly seek him; [16] in both we find stimulants to faith
   and occasions for unbelief; in both we find contradictions whose higher
   harmony is hidden except from him who gives up his whole mind in
   reverence; in both, in a word, it is the law of revelation that the
   heart of man should be tested in receiving it; and that, in the
   spiritual life as well as in the bodily, man must eat his bread in the
   sweat of his brow.

   Berlin, July 18, 1837.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [10] "I write the life of Christ--I? Never. The Evangelists have
   written it as it can and ought to be written. Let us, however, not
   write it, but become it?" (Beitraege zur naeheren Kenntniss Lavater's,
   von Ulrich Hegener: Leips., 1836.) May the good Zurichers, who have
   lately shown themselves so worthy of their sires in their resistance to
   revolutionary violence and their enthusiasm for the faith (dogma
   Christianum dogma populare, Augustin. opus imperf. c. Julian, ii., 2),
   erect a Christian national memorial by an edition, as complete as
   possible, of Lavater's correspondence.

   [11] Cf. Reinhard, Plan Jesu, 1; Heubner's Anm.

   [12] Most keenly does the author feel (as did his late friend, B.
   Jacobi, who has left behind him a blessed and honoured memory) that his
   work bears the marks of its production in an age of crisis, of
   isolation, of pain, and of throes.

   [13] Wherever I have not sure grounds for decision, I say "perhaps:"
   nor am I ashamed of it, unfashionable as "perhaps" is, nowadays, in
   matters of science. Would that our young votaries of science would lay
   to heart the excellent words of NIEBUHR, on the degrees of confidence,
   in the "Lebensnachrichten," ii., 208.

   [14] But the theologian must have more than a merely critical mind and
   critical aims: he needs a spiritual mind, a deep acquaintance with
   divine things; and he must study the Scriptures with his heart as well
   as head, unless he wishes his theology to be robbed of its salt by his
   criticism.

   [15] Not too sharp, so as to be notched.

   [16] This is the pervading thought of Pascal (the sage for all
   centuries) in his Pensees, though blended with many errors of
   Catholicism and absolute Predestination. Great thanks ate due to
   Faugere for the edition of this work (1844) in its original form.
     __________________________________________________________________

PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION.

   THE reception of this work among the opposing theological parties of
   the age has been such as I anticipated in the Preface to the first
   edition. It is, therefore, the less necessary for me to vindicate
   myself against special accusations on any side. I am satisfied that the
   principles of my theological procedure are in the main correct, and
   that their claims will finally be justified. To answer the revilings or
   false inferences of fanatical prejudice on either hand, or to enter
   into purely personal controversy, forms no part of my purpose. Yet, in
   order to leave no room for doubt as to my own theological stand-point,
   it appears necessary that I should notice a few of the opinions that
   have been passed upon the work.

   A review from the pen of Consistorial Counsellor SCHULZ has appeared in
   the Allgemeine Darmstaedtische Kirchenzeitung, which opposes me merely
   by dictatorial decisions; and, by isolating various passages [17] of my
   work from their connexion, ascribes to me opinions which are foreign to
   my whole theological system What I say will not be disputed by any one
   who candidly examines that review and compares it with my work. I have
   called the attention of my readers in this edition to these perversions
   of my words; perversions in which SCHULZ shakes hands with men of a
   school directly opposite to his own. Were I not satisfied of his
   integrity, I should be under the necessity of calling them dishonest
   perversions; as the case is, I see in them only the prejudice of that
   enthusiasm of reason so admirably characterized by JACOBI in his
   remarks upon "Reason which is not Reason" (ii., 492). Of those who are
   enslaved by this enthusiasm, he says: "Their belief is always reason,
   nor can they recognize another's reason except in his belief. They
   inquire not how he feels, perceives, observes, or infers, but only what
   his opinions are--whether they agree with their canon or not; and that
   decides the matter." This stand-point as surely generates a prejudice
   which precludes all just judgment of the opinions of others, and leads
   (though unconsciously) to falsehood, as does the enthusiasm for an
   absolute system of doctrines which lays down, as a standard, a definite
   number of articles of faith, or principles therewith connected, and
   makes this standard a criterion of every one's claim to Christianity.
   In the judgments formed of my work, as well as in many other matters of
   our time, these two sets of prejudices have led to similar results.

   "What," inquires SCHULZ several times, "will the believers in creeds
   say to this?" Now, as to the opinion of this or that set of men, I am
   indifferent; it concerns me only to know how far m statements accord
   with truth, especially Christian truth. It is proper that I should say,
   however, that I go along with those who oppose "creed-believers" (to
   use SCHULZ's term) so far as this viz., that I could not subscribe to
   any of the existing symbols (except the Apostles' creed, which
   testifies to those fundamental facts of Christianity that are essential
   to the existence of the Christian Church) as an unconditional
   expression of my religious convictions.

   I believe that our path lies, through the strifes and storms of the
   present time, to a new creation in the Church, when the same Holy
   Spirit [18] that works in the life of the Church, and produces all
   truly Christian creeds as expressions (defective, indeed, as all human
   representations of the Divine must be, and stamped with the varying
   culture of the time) of Christian truth, will produce a symbol adapted
   to the new stage of the Church's developement, if it become necessary
   that such an expression of the animating faith of the Church be given
   in a new literal form. But I go along with the theologians (so called
   creed-believers) in what I believe to be the fundamental principle of
   the Reformation and of the Evangelical Church; the doctrines, viz., of
   the corruption of human nature (not, however, excluding, but
   presupposing, an element of affinity for God [Gottverwandte] in human
   nature); and of justification by faith in Jesus as the Redeemer. The
   essential part of the Evangelical Confession (the Augsburg Confession
   and its Apology), so far as it is an exposition of this doctrine,
   together with the unchangeable verities to which the Apostles' Creed
   bears witness, seem to me the irrefragable basis of the Evangelical
   Church; which, on this basis, protests against all popery whether the
   Roman or any other impure spirit of the age; against human statutes, no
   matter of what kind. Dr. SCHULZ reproaches me for speaking of the
   sinfulness of human nature. On the other hand, I cannot but be
   astonished that this truth, so clearly revealed in the Scriptures, nay,
   lying at their basis, and so plainly written upon every human heart,
   should be denied by any man. He wishes, moreover, that the terms
   "natural reason" and "self-righteousness" may hereafter not appear in
   my writings. In this respect I cannot possibly gratify him. These terms
   have a well-established right in the Evangelical Church; the
   conceptions which they express are closely connected with its
   fundamental principle; they are, moreover, firmly founded in Biblical
   Anthropology. [19] They are not the offshoot of a "new Evangelical"
   Theology, but of an old Evangelical faith. It is a mere pretended
   "enlightenment" (which, notwithstanding it may, by destroying, prepare
   the way for better things, is yet in its positive elements a source of
   darkness) that can object to those conceptions.

   I have to thank Dr. HASE for the kindness with which he has spoken of
   my work in the Jahrbuecher fuer wissenschaftliche Kritik; but it would
   take more space than a preface will allow to come to an understanding
   with him upon the points in Apologetics and Dogmatics on which he
   touches in his review. I can only remark, that a description of the
   life of Christ (although it must proceed from the Christian
   consciousness, which alone can afford a living intuition of it) does
   not necessarily demand for its foundation a complete and well-defined
   theory of the person of Christ. On the contrary, it would be one of the
   excellences of such a work, that various doctrinal tendencies (if
   supranaturalistic) could be satisfied with it. It must deal with facts,
   which are more weighty than men's conceptions, changeful as they are.
   All dogmatical theories except those which are willing to do violence
   to history must agree in acknowledging certain facts. What I have said
   of the human developement of the life of Christ harmonizes well with
   the consequent doctrine of a status exinanitionis; without this, in
   fact, the human life of Christ can have no reality. As to my views of
   the Ascension, I must adhere to them, until I can be convinced that
   without them the full import of Christ's resurrection can be asserted.
   Nor is it simply strength of faith that leads me to these results; from
   the beginning my religious life has been too much affected by the
   culture of this age to allow me to glory in such a faith--to compare
   myself with those men of child-like simplicity, those heroes whose
   Divine confidence is exalted above all doubt. [20] I have adopted them
   from consecutive reasoning upon the principles of the Christian faith.
   There is no middle ground here; unless, indeed, in order to avoid
   admitting a limit to all explanation, without, at the same time,
   affirming the opposite, we cover up the difficulty in phrases and
   formulas.

   To all those who consider the Socratic ignorance as folly, and who have
   settled beforehand the highest questions--questions whose right answers
   the great MELANCTHON placed among the beatitudes of the intuition of a
   better life--my dogmatical system must appear weak and unsatisfactory.

   In the reviewer of my work in the Halle Literaturzeitung
   (Church-counsellor SCHWARZ of Jena), I am happy to recognize a worthy
   man, who can acknowledge with congenial spirit, even amid differences
   of opinion, the work of an earnest mind and of serious study--a
   phenomenon every day becoming rarer in this age of selfish and excited
   party spirit. I am gratified, though not surprised, to find, from the
   beautiful notice of my book by Dr. LUeCKE, that that old and worthy
   friend agrees with me in all essential points.

   To find ourselves at one in the recognition of certain truths with men
   whom we must admire and honour on many accounts, ever. though our
   convictions, on important subjects, may be op. posed to each other,
   cannot be otherwise than gratifying. I have no sympathy with that
   narrowness of mind which refuses to do justice to the advocate, however
   able, of opinions which we ourselves must reject. That is an unworthy
   arrogance which, in its zealous defence of a holy cause (a cause which,
   above all others breathes humility, and teaches us more and more that
   all our knowledge is but fragmentary), deems itself authorized to look
   down haughtily upon its opponent, however superior in scientific
   ability; or even seeks to cover the weakness of its own arguments by
   what is intended, according to the sickly taste of the age, to pass for
   wit and humour.

   I cannot, therefore, but rejoice to find that my treatment of the
   subject, with that of others engaged in the same controversy, has
   induced Dr. Strauss to soften down his mythical theory of the life of
   Christ in various points, and to acknowledge the truth of several
   results arrived at by my historical inquiries. In his public
   acknowledgment of this I recognize a candour and love of truth which is
   far more honourable than mere intellectual greatness. At the same time,
   I am grateful to him for the kindness with which he has spoken of me
   personally. A certain degree of harmony, then, may be attained by the
   application of those fundamental principles of historical criticism
   which all sound thinkers must acknowledge to be correct. Yet it is only
   a certain degree; it is easy to be understood how the harmony thus
   reached is interrupted by the wider differences which lie at the
   foundation of the subject.

   The chief points of controversy turn upon essential differences of
   religious thought and feeling. These fundamental differences are
   clearly set forth by Dr. Strauss in the closing dissertation of his
   third edition, and in his essay on the Permanent and the Transitory
   (das Bleibende und Vergaengliche) in Christianity. They are to be found
   chiefly in opposing views of the relation of God to the world, of the
   personality of spirit, of the relation between the here and the
   hereafter, and of the nature of sin. The controversy, to our mind, does
   not lie between an old and a new view of Christianity, but between
   Christianity and a human invention directly opposed to it. It is
   nothing less than a struggle between Christian Theism and a system of
   world- and self-deification. This system (by a relative historical
   necessity) had to unfold itself in theological and philosophical
   rationalism, in order to be overthrown by the power of Christian truth
   in the natural progress of life and thought. Symptoms of it can be
   detected in the sects of the Middle Ages, and in many of the
   manifestations that preceded the Reformation; and it would have broken
   forth at an earlier period, had not the Evangelical enthusiasm of the
   Reformation suppressed it for a time. We may apply here the words of
   MELANCTHON, uttered, with his deep historical insight, in a connexion
   akin to this: Dogmatum semina, quae longe graviora tumultus aliquando
   excitatura fuerant, nisi Lutherus exortus esset ac studia hominum alio
   traxisset (Corpus Reformator., tom. i., f. 1083). Far be it from me to
   judge the heart of any man; in this regard each must be his own
   accuser. A man that knows he serves a truth above the range of the
   human mind knows, at the same time, how far below it he himself stands,
   and how high, on the other hand, others, whose individual culture
   modified by the spirit of the age may have laid them open to error, may
   in heart be raised above their error. Whoever has entered into the
   struggles of his age will be willing, at the same time that he judges
   himself, to be mild in his judgments of others, who, although they may
   have been further carried away by those same struggles, have preserved
   a seemly and becoming moderation. It is the principle alone that is in
   question, and that cannot be judged too strictly.

   I conclude with the golden words of one of the greatest men of modern
   times in testimony of the truth, and in opposition, not only to the
   vain attempt to amalgamate Christianity with the principle of modern
   mis-culture, but also to the spirit which seeks to reduce all minds to
   one mode of doctrinal conception--to the stand-point which strives to
   make the piece-work of human knowledge absolute. "The man who does not
   hold Christ's earthly life, with all its miracles, to be as properly
   and really historical as any event in the sphere of history, and who
   does not receive all points of the Apostolic Creed with the fullest
   conviction, I do not conceive to be a Protestant Christian. And as for
   that Christianity which is such according to the fashion of the modern
   philosophers and Pantheists, without a personal God, without
   immortality, without an individuality of man, without historical
   faith--it may be a very ingenious and subtle philosophy, but it is no
   Christianity at all. Again and again have I said that I know not what
   to do with a metaphysical God; and that I will have no other but the
   God of the Bible, who is heart to heart. Whoever can reconcile the
   metaphysical God with the God of the Bible, may try it, and write
   symbolical books to suit all ages; but he who admits the absolute
   inexplicability of the main point, which can only be approached by
   asymptotes, will never grieve at the impossibility of possessing any
   system of religion." [21] May the man who, with rare world-historical
   insight, was able to explain the signs of the times, be heard of many!

   Berlin, May 6, 1839.
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   [17] The reviewer has been able to point out but one
   oversight--certainly no proof of careless haste in a work on such a
   subject. The mistake was one which might have happened to any one in an
   unlucky moment, which could not fail to be noticed by any one, and
   which, in fact, was noticed by myself as soon as I glanced again at the
   passage.

   [18] The Holy Spirit going out from faith in Christ, who was crucified
   for the sins of men, who truly rose from the dead and ascended to
   heaven; the Holy Spirit, which has proved itself the same since the
   first Christian Pentecost, at all times, among all people, learned or
   unlearned; not the changeful spirit of the times, which corresponds
   more nearly to what is called in the New Testament the spirit of the
   world, and whose manifestations stand opposed to those of the Holy
   Spirit.

   [19] It is a trick of Jesuitism (which is by no means confined to one
   form, but often assumes the shape of the fanaticism of reason or
   understanding) to protest (in form) against the tendencies of the
   journal called the Evangelische Kirchenzeitung, while, in fact, the
   protest is not meant to bear against those tendencies--not against
   antiquated dogmas--but against the unchangeable fundamental truths of
   the Church of Christ; truths which can appear to be antiquated dogmas
   only to the shallow and superficial spirit of the times; a spirit as
   contracted as it is conceited. At the same time, it cannot be denied
   that the one-sidedness, the exaggerations and multiform sickliness of
   the tendencies referred to may have contributed to produce a reaction.
   We say this sine ira et studio, with a full sense of the sincere and
   earnest zeal, and the true Christian endeavours and results (if those
   tendencies which find an organ in the Kirchenzeitung.

   [20] Truth before all things. I would not seem to be what I am not.
   This book, which could only have arisen in this age of strife and
   discord, is itself a mirror of the progress of my mind.

   [21] Leben Niebuhr's, Thl. ii., 344. We cannot be too grateful to the
   publishers for putting forth this treasure of sound feeling and
   profound truth.
     __________________________________________________________________

PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION.

   I HAVE sought, in this fourth edition, to improve as far as 1 could,
   both the matter and form of the work; but do not deem it necessary to
   add any thing to what has been said in former prefaces upon my mode of
   treating the subject. I have thought it best, in spite of a desire to
   economize space, to republish those prefaces; adding here and there a
   remark called for by the relations of the times, which I should have
   otherwise put into a separate preface. Although I would willingly have
   buried in oblivion the unpleasant personal allusions (contained in the
   second preface) to a man whom I honour and esteem, I have considered it
   necessary to republish it, in view of the truths which it contains, and
   their bearing upon the times.

   And now let my book, with the blessing of God, enter anew among the
   strifes of the age; standing in the midst of which, I shall not suffer
   myself to be shaken or perplexed by the "ta en meso amphoterothen
   kteinetai."

   A. NEANDER

   Berlin, 3d August, 1845.
     __________________________________________________________________

CONTENTS

   INTRODUCTION.
   CHAPTER I.
   THE IDEA OF THE HISTORY OF CHRIST IN GENERAL.
   S: 1. The Indifference of Criticism rejected. 1
   S: 2. The Truth, that Christ is God-man, presupposed. 2
   S: 3. This Presupposition and the historical Accounts mutually confirm
   and illustrate each other. 3
   CHAPTER II.
   SOURCES OF THE HISTORY OF CHRIST.
   S: 4. Traditional Origin of the Synoptical Gospels. 6
   S: 5. Genuineness of John's Gospel. 6
   S: 6. Results of Criticism. 7
   BOOK I.
   BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD OF JESUS.
   CHAPTER I.
   INTRODUCTION.
   S: 7. Scantiness of our Information in regard to this Period of
   Christ's Life; nothing further essential to the Interests of Religion.
   11
   S: 8. Fundamentally opposite Modes of apprehending the Accounts.
   CHAPTER II.
   THE MIRACULOUS CONCEPTION.
   S: 9. The miraculous Conception demanded `a priori, and confirmed `a
   posteriori 13
   S: 10. No trace of a Mythus in the Narrative. Such a Myth could not
   have originated among the Jewish People. 13
   S: 11. Objections to the Credibility of the Narrative from the
   subsequent Dispositions of Christ's Relations answered, (1) from the
   Nature of the Case; (2) from the Name Jesus. 16
   S: 12. Analogical Ideas among the Heathen. 17
   CHAPTER III.
   THE BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD OF CHRIST.
   S: 13. The Birth of Christ in its Relations to the Jewish Theocracy. 18
   S: 14. The miraculous Events that accompanied it. 19
   S: 15. Tile Taxing; Jesus born at Bethlehem. 20
   S: 16. The Announcement of the Shepherds. 21
   S: 17. The Sacrifice of "Purification," and the "Ransom of the
   First-born." Their Weight as Proof against the Mythical Theory. 23
   S: 18. Simeon's prophetic Discourse. 24
   S: 19. The longing of the Heathen for a Saviour. The Star of the Wise
   Men. 25
   S: 20. The Massacre of the Innocents, and the Flight into Egypt. 27
   S: 21. The Return to Nazareth. 28
   S: 22. Brothers and Sisters of Jesus; the mention of them in the Gospel
   Narrative a Proof of Credibility. 29
   S: 23. Consciousness of Messiahship in the Mind of Jesus. Christ among
   the Doctors. 30
   BOOK II.
   THE MENTAL CULTURE OF JESUS: HIS LIFE TO THE TIME OF HIS PUBLIC
   MINISTRY.
   CHAPTER I.
   JESUS NOT EDUCATED IN THE THEOLOGICAL SCHOOLS OF THE JEWS.
   S: 24. The Pharisees. 35
   S: 25. The Sadducees. 35
   S: 26. The Essenes. 37
   S: 27. The Alexandrian Jews. 39
   S: 28. Affinity of Christianity, as absolute Truth, for the various
   opposing Systems. 39
   S: 29. Christ's Doctrine revealed from Within, not received from
   Without. 39
   S: 30. The popular Sentiment in regard to his Connexion with the
   Schools. 40
   CHAPTER II.
   THE LIFE OF JESUS TO THE OPENING OF HIS PUBLIC MINISTRY.
   S: 31. Consciousness of Messiahship in Christ.. l41
   BOOK III.
   PREPARATIVES TO THE PUBLIC MINISTRY OF CHRIST
   PART I.
   OBJECTIVE PREPARATION: MINISTRY OF JOHN THE BAPTIST
   CHAPTER I.
   RELATION OF THE BAPTIST TO THE JEWS.
   S: 32. How far the Baptist revived the Expectation of a Messiah. 45
   S: 33. Causes of Obscurity in the Accounts left us of the Baptist.
   Sources, viz., the Evangelists, Josephus. 46
   S: 34. The Baptist's mode of Life and Teaching in the Desert. 48
   S: 35. John as Baptist and Preacher of Repentance. 49
   S: 36. Relations of the Pharisees and Sadducees to the Baptist. 50
   S: 37. Relations of the Baptist to the People, and to the narrower
   Circle of his own Disciples. 52
   S: 38. John's Demands upon the People compared with those of Christ.
   His humble Opinion of his own Calling. 52
   CHAPTER II.
   THE RELATION OF THE BAPTIST TO THE MESSIAH.
   S: 39. The Baptist's Explanation of his Relation to Messiah. The
   Baptism by Water and by Fire. 53
   S: 40. The Baptist's Conception of Messiah's Kingdom. 54
   S: 41. The Baptist's Recognition of Jesus as Messiah. 55
     (1) Import of his Baptism of Jesus. 57
     (2) The Continuance of his Ministry. 57
     (3) Possible Wavering in his Convictions. 58
     (4) His Message from Prison. 60
     (5) Conduct of his Disciples towards Jesus. 60
   S: 42. The Phenomena at the Baptism, and their Import. 61
     (1) No ecstatic Vision. 61
     (2) The Ebionitish View, and its Opposite. 62
     (3) Developement of the Notion of Baptism in New Testament. 63
     (4) The Baptism of Christ not a Rite of Purification. 64
     (5) But of Consecration to his Theocratic Reign. 65
     (6) John's previous Acquaintance with Christ. 65
     (7) Explanation of John, i., 31. 66
     (8) The Vision and the Voice: intended exclusively for the Baptist.
   67
   PART II.
   SUBJECTIVE PREPARATION: THE TEMPTATION OF CHRIST.
   CHAPTER I.
   IMPORT OF THE INDIVIDUAL TEMPTATIONS.
   S: 43. The Hunger. 70
   S: 44. The Pinnacle of the Temple. 71
   S: 45. The World-Dominion. 72
   CHAPTER II.
   IMPORT OF THE TEMPTATION AS A WHOLE.
   S: 46. Fundamental Idea. 73
   S: 47. The Temptation not an inward one, but the Work of Satan. 73
   BOOK IV.
   THE PUBLIC MINISTRY OF CHRIST ACCORDING TO ITS REAL CONNEXION.
   PART I.
   THE PLAN OF CHRIST
   CHAPTER I.
   THE PLAN OF CHRIST IN GENERAL.
   S: 48. Had Christ a conscious Plan? 79
   S: 49. Connexion with the Old Testament Theocracy. 81
   S: 50. Christ's steadfast Consciousness of Messiahship. 81
   S: 51. His Plan underwent no Alterations. 82
   S: 52. Two-fold Bearing of the Kingdom of God. (1) An inward, spiritual
   Power: (2) A world-renewing Power. 86
   CHAPTER II.
   THE PLAN OF CHRIST IN ITS RELATION TO THE OLD TESTAMENT IDEA OF THE
   KINGDOM OF God.
   S: 53. Christ's Observance of the Jewish Worship and Law. 88
   S: 54. His Manifestation greater than the Temple..... 89
   S: 55. The Conversation with the Samaritan Woman. 90
   S: 56. The "Destroying" and "Fulfilling" of the Law. 91
   S: 57. The Interpolation in Luke, vi., 4. (Cod. Cant.). 92
   CHAPTER III.
   NEW FORM OF THE IDEA OF THE PERSON OF THE THEOCRATIC KING.
   S: 58. The Names "Son of God" and "Son of Man" 94
   S: 59. Import of the Title "Son of Man," as used by Christ himself.
   Rejection of Alexandrian and other Analogies. 95
   S: 60. Import of the Title " Son of God" 96
     (1) John's Sense of the Title accordant with that of the other
   Evangelists. 96
     (2) And confirmed by Paul's. 97
   PART II.
   THE MEANS AND INSTRUMENTS OF CHRIST.
   CHAPTER I.
   THE MEANS OF CHRIST IN GENERAL.
   S: 61. Christ a Spiritual Teacher. 9S
   S: 62. Different Theatres of his Work as Teacher. 99
   S: 63. Choice and Training of the Apostles to be subordinate Teachers.
   100
   CHAPTER II.
   CHRIST'S MODE OF TEACHING IN REGARD TO ITS METHOD AND FORM.
   A. ITS GENERAL PRINCIPLES.
   S: 64. His Mode of Teaching adapted to the Stand-point of his Hearers.
   101
   S: 65. His Truth presented in Germ to be developed: Seeds of Thought.
   102
   S: 66. Its Results dependent upon the Susceptibility of the Hearers.
   103
   S: 67. This corresponds to the general Law of Developement of the
   Kingdom of God. 106
   B. CHRIST'S USE OF PARABLES.
   S: 68. Idea of the Parable. Distinction between Parable, Fable, and
   Mythus. 107
   S: 69. Order in which the Parables were delivered. Their Perfection.
   Mode of interpreting them. 108
   S: 70. Christ's Teaching not confined to Parables, but conveyed also in
   longer Discourses. 109
   S: 71. John's Gospel contains chiefly connected and profound
   Discourses, and why? 110
   S: 72. The Parable of the Shepherd, in John, compared with the Parables
   in the other Gospels. 111
   C. CHRIST'S USE OF ACCOMMODATION.
   S: 73. Necessity of Accommodation. 113
   S: 74. Distinction between Material and Formal Accommodation. 114
   S: 75. Christ's Application of Passages from Old Testament. 115
   CHAPTER III.
   CHOICE AND TRAINING OF THE APOSTLES AS TEACHERS.
   S: 76. Christ's Relation to the Twelve. Significance of the Number. The
   Name Apostle. 116
   S: 77. Choice of the Apostles. Of Judas Iscariot. 117
   S: 78. The Apostles uneducated Men. 119
   S: 79. Two Stages in their Dependence upon Christ. 120
   S: 80. Christ's peculiar Method of Training the Apostles. 121
   CHAPTER IV.
   THE CHURCH AND BAPTISM.
   S: 81. Founding of the Church. Its Objects. 122
   S: 82. Name of the Church. Its Form traced back to Christ. 123
   S: 83. Later Institution of Baptism as an initiatory Rite. 126
   CHAPTER V.
   THE MIRACLES OF CHRIST: THEIR CHARACTER AND OBJECTS.
   A. THE OBJECTIVE CHARACTER OF MIRACLES.
   S: 84. Connexion of Christ's Miracles with his Mode of Teaching. 127
   S: 85. Negative Element. 127
   S: 86. Positive Element. Teleological Object. 129
   S: 87. Relation of Miracles to the Course of Nature. 130
   S: 88. Relation of the individual Miracles to the highest Miracle,
   viz., the Manifestation of Christ. 131
   S: 89. Relation of Miracles to History. 132
   B. THE MIRACLES OF CHRIST AS VIEWED BY HIS CONTEMPORARIES.
   S: 90. Miracles deemed an essential Sign of Messiahship. 132
   C. CHRIST'S OWN ESTIMATE OF HIS MIRACLES.
   S: 91. Apparent Discrepancies: Mode of removing them. 134
     (1) Two-fold Object of the Miracles. 134
     (2) A Susceptibility for Impression presupposed. 135
   S: 92. His Explanation of the "Sign of the Prophet Jonah" 136
   S: 93. His Declaration, "Destroy this Temple," &c. 137
   S: 94. His Distinction between the Material and Formal in the Miracles.
   137
   S: 95. His Appeals to Miracles as Testimony. Three different Stages of
   Faith. 138
   S: 96. The Communication of the Divine Life the highest Miracle. 140
   CHAPTER VI.
   THE MIRACLES OF CHRIST CONSIDERED IN REGARD TO SUPERNATURAL AGENCY.
   S: 97. Transition from the Natural to the Supernatural in the Miracles.
   140
   A. MIRACLES WROUGHT UPON HUMAN NATURE.
   I. The Healing of Diseases.
   S: 98. Use of Spiritual Agencies. Faith demanded for the Cure. 141
   S: 99. Use of Physical Agencies. 142
   S: 100. Relation between Sin and Physical Evil. Jewish Idea of Punitive
   Justice. Christ's Doctrine on the Subject. 143
   II. Demoniacal Possession.
   S: 101. Two extreme Theories Analogous Phenomena. 145
   S: 102. Connexion of the Phenomena with the State of the Times. 146
   S: 103. Accommodation of the two extreme Theories. 147
   S: 104. Christ's Explanations of Demonism purely Spiritual. His
   Accommodation to the Conceptions of the Demoniacs. 149
   S: 105. Differences between Christ's Cures of Demoniacs and the
   Operations of the Jewish Exorcists. 150
   III. The Raising of the Dead.
   S: 106. Different Views on these Miracles. 151
   B. MIRACLES WROUGHT UPON MATERIAL NATURE.
   S: 107. Most obvious Manifestations of Supernatural Power. 152
   BOOK V.
   THE PUBLIC MINISTRY OF CHRIST ACCORDING TO ITS CHRONOLOGICAL CONNEXION.
   INTRODUCTION.
   ON THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE SYNOPTICAL GOSPELS AND JOHN.
   S: 108. Differences in Chronology. 155
   S: 109. Differences as to the Theatre of Christ's Labours. 155
   S: 110. Proof that Christ frequently exercised his Ministry in Judea
   and Jerusalem. 156
   PART I.
   FROM THE COMMENCEMENT OF CHRIST'S PUBLIC MINISTRY TO THE TRIUMPHAL
   ENTRY.
   CHAPTER I.
   JESUS AND JOHN THE BAPTIST. THE FIRST DISCIPLES.
   S: 111. Message of the Sanhedrim to John at Bethabara. 159
   S: 112. John points to Jesus as the Suffering Messiah, and testifies to
   his Higher Dignity. 160
   S: 113. John and Andrew, Disciples of the Baptist, attach themselves to
   Jesus. Gradual Attraction of others. 162
   CHAPTER II.
   FIRST PUBLIC TEACHING OF CHRIST. CAPERNAUM.
   S: 114. Miraculous Draught of Fishes. Effect on Peter, Andrew, James,
   and John. 162
   S: 115. The Calling of Nathanael. 164
   CHAPTER III.
   CHRIST AT CANA.
   S: 116. The Water changed into Wine. Character and Import of the
   Miracle. 166
   CHAPTER IV.
   FIRST JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM TO ATTEND THE FEAST OF PASSOVER.
   S: 117. The Cleansing of the Temple. 168
   S: 118. The Saying of Christ, "Destroy this Temple," &c. 170
   S: 119. Christ and Nicodemus. 173
     (1) Dispositions of the Pharisees and People: of Nicodemus. 173
     (2) The New Birth. 174
     (3) The Birth of "Water and the Spirit" 175
     (4) Christ intimates his own Sufferings. 177
   CHAPTER V.
   JESUS AT AENON, NEAR SALIM.
   S: 120. Jealousy of John's Disciples. Final Testimony of the Baptist.
   His Imprisonment. 178
   CHAPTER VI.
   RETURN THROUGH SAMARIA TO GALILEE: THE SAMARITAN WOMAN.
   S: 121. First Impressions of the Samaritan Woman. 180
   S: 122. Christ's Decision between the Worship of the Jews and that of
   the Samaritans. 181
   S: 123. The Worship of God in "Spirit and in Truth" 182
   S: 124. Bearing of the Spiritual Worship upon Practical Life. 183
   S: 125. Christ Glances at the future Progress of his Kingdom, and at
   his own Death. 184
   S: 126. Subsequent State of the Samaritans. 185
   CHAPTER VII.
   CHRIST'S FIRST GENERAL MINISTRY IN GALILEE.
   S: 127. Christ heals the Nobleman's Son. Chooses Capernaum as his
   Abode. 185
   S: 128. Christ appears in the Synagogue at Nazareth. His Life is
   Endangered 186
   S: 129. Parable of the Sower. Christ's Explanation of it. 188
   S: 130. Parable of the Draw-net: of the Wheat and Tares. 190
   S: 131. Christ subdues the Storm. Character of the Miracle. Its moral
   Import. 191
   S: 132. The Gadarene Demoniac. 192
   S: 133. Return to the west Side of the Sea. Healing of the Issue of
   Blood. 195
   S: 134. Raising of Jairus's Daughter, and of the Widow's Son at Nain.
   196
   S: 135. Doubts of John Baptist in Prison. His Message. Christ's
   Testimony concerning Him. Relation of Old and New Dispensations. 198
   S: 136. Relation of the People to the Baptist and to Christ. The Easy
   Yoke and the Light Burden. Jewish Legalism contrasted with Christian
   Liberty. 201
   S: 137. Christ's Conversation with the Pharisees in regard to his
   Disciples' Mode of Life. The Morals of Fasting. 203
   S: 138. Parable of the New Patch on the Old Garment: of the New Wine in
   Old Bottles. 205
   S: 139. Forms of Prayer. The Lord's Prayer. 208
   S: 140. Christ and the Magdalen at Simon's House. Reciprocal Action of
   Love and Faith in the Forgiveness of Sins. 211
   S: 141. Call of Matthew the Publican. The Feast. 213
   S: 142. Christ's different Modes of Reply to those who questioned his
   Conduct in consorting with Sinners. Parable of the Prodigal Son: of the
   Pharisee and Publican. 214
   CHAPTER VIII.
   CHRIST'S SECOND JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM.
   S: 143. The Miracle of the Pool of Bethesda. The Words of Christ in the
   Temple to the Man healed. 217
   S: 144. Christ accused of Sabbath-breaking and Blasphemy. His Discourse
   in Vindication. 218
   S: 145. The Discourse continued: Christ intimates his greater Works.
   His Judgment, and the Resurrection. 219
   S: 146. The Discourse continued: Christ Appeals to the Testimony of his
   Works. 220
   S: 147. The Discourse continued: Incapacity of the Jews to Understand
   the Testimony of God in the Scriptures. 221
   CHAPTER IX.
   CHRIST'S SECOND COURSE OF EXTENDED LABOUR IN GALILEE.
   The Sermon on the Mount.
   Introduction.
   S: 148. (1) Place and Circumstances. 223
     (2) Subject-matter of the Sermon; viz., the Kingdom of God as the Aim
   of the Old Dispensation. 223
     (3) Two Editions of the Sermon: Matthew's and Luke's. 224
     (4) Its Pervading Rebuke of Carnal Conceptions of the Messiahship.
   224
   I. The Beatitudes.
   S: 149. Moral Requisites for Entering the Kingdom of God. 224
     (1) Poverty of Spirit. 224
     (2) Meekness. 225
     (3) Hungering and Thirsting after Righteousness. 226
   S: 150. Moral Result of Entering the Kingdom. "The Pure in Heart see
   God" 226
   S: 151. Moral Relations of the Members of the Kingdom to their
   Fellow-men; viz., they are "Peace-makers," and "Persecuted" 227
   II. Influence of the Members of the Kingdom of God in Renewing the
   World.
   S: 152. The Disciples of Christ the "Light" and "Salt" of the Earth.
   228
   III. The Law of Christian Life the Fufilment of the Old Law.
   S: 153. Fulfilling the Law and the Prophets. 229
   S: 154. Fulfilling the Law in the Higher Sense. General Contrast
   between the Juridical and Moral Stand-points. 231
   S: 155. Fulfilling the Law in the Higher Sense. Special Examples, viz.,
   (1.) Murder; (2.) Adultery; (3.) Divorce; (4.) Perjury; (5.) Revenge;
   (6.) National Exclusiveness. 232
   IV. True Religion contrasted with the Mock Piety of the Pharisees.
   S: 156. (1.) Alms, Prayer, and Fasting; (2.) Rigid Judgment of Self,
   Mild Judgment of others; (3.) Test of Sincerity. 235
   V. Warning to the Children of the Kingdom.
   S: 157. Exhortation to Self-denial. Warning against Seducers. 236
   VI. True and False Disciples Contrasted.
   S: 158. Test of Discipleship. 237
   S: 159. Healing of the Leper on the Way to Capernaum. 237
   S: 160. Healing of the Centurion's Slave at Capernaum. 238
   S: 161. Healing of the Deaf and Dumb Demoniac. Charge of a League with
   Beelzebub refuted. 239
   S: 162. Conjurations of the Jewish Exorcists. 241
   S: 163. Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, and against the Son of Man.
   243
   S: 164. Purpose of Christ's Relatives to confine him as a Lunatic. 244
   S: 165. Demand for a Sign answered by "the Sign of the Prophet Jonah"
   245
   S: 166. Discourse at a Feast against the Pharisees and Lawyers. 246
   S: 167. The Disciples Warned against the Pharisees. Power of Truth. 248
   S: 168. Christ Heals a Paralytic at Capernaum. Charge of Blasphemy
   Repelled. 250
   S: 169. Withered Hand healed on the Sabbath. Objections anticipated.
   252
   S: 170. Infirm Woman healed on the Sabbath. Pharisees disconcerted. 253
   S: 171. Precedence at Feasts. Parable of the Great Supper. 254
   S: 172. The Pharisees attack the Disciples for plucking Corn on the
   Sabbath. Christ defends them. 255
   S: 173. Discourse against the merely outward Cleanliness of the
   Pharisees. 256
   S: 174. Trial Mission of the Apostles in Galilee. 257
     (1) Objects of the Mission. Powers of the Missionaries. 257
     (2) Instructions to the Missionaries. Reasons for the Exclusion of
   Samaritans and Heathen. 258
     (3) Instructions continued: the Apostles to rely on Providence. 260
   S: 175. Various Opinions entertained of Jesus. 260
   S: 176. Return of the Apostles. Feeding of the Five Thousand. 261
   S: 177. Christ Walks upon the Waters. 264
   S: 178. Christ in the Synagogue at Capernaum. 265
     (1) Carnal Mind of the Multitude rebuked. 265
     (2) Christ is the "Bread of Life" 266
     (3) Eating, Christ's Flesh and Drinking his Blood. 267
     (4) Sifting of the Apostles. Confession of Peter. 269
   CHAPTER X.
   JESUS IN NORTH GALILEE, AND ON THE WAY TO CESAREA PHILIPPI.
   S: 179. Reasons of the Journey. 270
   S: 180. Blind Man cured at Bethsaida. Peter's Second Confession. Power
   of the Keys. 270
   S: 181. The Disciples forbidden to reveal Christ's Messianic Dignity.
   Peter's Weakness rebuked. 272
   S: 182. Monitions to the Apostles. 273
     (1) Wisdom of Serpents and Harmlessness of Doves. 273
     (2) Parable of the Unjust Steward. 274
     (3) "Friends of the Mammon of Unrighteousness" 275
   S: 183. Caution against imprudent Zeal. 277
   S: 184. The Syro-Phoenician Woman. (1.) Her Prayer; (2.) Her Repulse;
   (3.) Her persevering Faith; (4.) The Result. 279
   S: 185. The Transfiguration. 281
   S: 186. Elias a Forerunner of Messiah. 283
   S: 187. Cure of a Demoniac, after vain Attempts of the Disciples. 283
   S: 188. The Disciples' Failure explained. The Power of Faith. Prayer
   and Fasting. 285
   S: 189. Return to Capernaum. Dispute for Precedence. The Child a
   Pattern. Acting in the Name of Christ. 286
   S: 190. Christ's two Sayings, "He that is not against you is for you;"
   and, "He that is not for me is against me" 288
   S: 191. The Stater in the Fish 290
   CHAPTER XI.
   CHRIST'S JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM TO ATTEND THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES.
   S: 192. His Precautions against the Sanhedrim. 291
   S: 193. Christ Explains the Nature of his Teaching as Divine
   Revelation. 292
   S: 194. The Pharisees attempt to arrest Him. 293
   S: 195. Christ a "Spring of Living Water," and the "Light of the
   World." Validity of his Testimony of Himself. 294
   S: 196. Connexion between Steadfastness, Truth, and Freedom. 296
   S: 197. Vain Attempts of the Sanhedrim. First Decision against Christ.
   297
   S: 198. Man born Blind healed on the Sabbath. Individual Sufferings not
   to be judged a Punishment for Sin. 298
   S: 199. Attempts of the Sanhedrim to corrupt the restored Man. "The
   Sight of the Blind, and the Blindness of the Seeing." 300
   S: 200. Parable of the Good Shepherd. The Parable extended. 301
   S: 201. Divisions among the People. Christ returns to Galilee. 302
   CHAPTER XII.
   RETURN FROM CAPERNAUM TO JERUSALEM THROUGH SAMARIA.
   S: 202. Reasons for the Journey through Samaria. 303
   S: 203. Mission of the Seventy. Significance of the Number. 304
   S: 204. Instructions to the Seventy. The Wo to the Unbelieving Cities.
   305
   S: 205. Exultation of the Disciples. Christ warns them against Vanity.
   306
   S: 206. The Kingdom revealed to Babes. Blessedness of the Disciples in
   beholding it. 307
   S: 207. Requisites of Discipleship. Self-Denial, Submission, taking up
   the Cross. 309
   S: 208. Self-Denial further illustrated: Parables of the building of
   the Tower, of the Warring King, of the Sacrificial Salt, of the
   Treasure hid in a Field, of the Pearl of Great Price. 311
   S: 209. Christ refuses to interfere in Civil Disputes. His Decision in
   the Case of the Adulteress. 312
   S: 210. Christ Intimates the Future. 314
   S: 211. Parables of the Mustard Seed and the Leaven. 314
   S: 212. The Fire to be Kindled. The Baptism of Sufferings. Christianity
   not Peace, but a Sword. 315
   S: 213. The Kingdom of God cometh not with Observation. 317
   S: 214. Christ's personal Return and the Day of Judgment. 317
   S: 215. Exhortation to Watch for Christ's Coming. The importunate Widow
   318
   S: 216. Call to entire Devotion. The Straight Gate. 319
   S: 217. The Signs of the Times. 320
   S: 218. The contracted Jewish Theocracy Rejected. 321
   S: 219. Parable of Dives and Lazarus. 321
   S: 220. Persecutions of Herod Antipas. 323
   S: 221. Christ Speaks of his Death. 323
   S: 222. Healing of the Ten Lepers. Ingratitude of the Nine. Gratitude
   of tie one Samaritan. 324
   CHAPTER XIII.
   CHRIST'S STAY AT JERUSALEM DURING THE FEAST OF DEDICATION.
   S: 223. His Statement of the Proofs of his Messiahship. His Oneness
   with the Father. He defends his Words from the Old Testament. 326
   CHAPTER XIV.
   CHRIST IN PERAEA (BETHABARA).
   S: 224. His Decision on the Question of Divorce. Celibacy. 328
   S: 225. The Blessing of Little Children. 331
   S: 226. Conversation with the rich Ruler of the Synagogue. 332
   S: 227. The Dangers of Wealth. 334
   S: 228. The Reign of Believers with Christ. 335
   CHAPTER XV.
   CHRIST IN BETHANY.
   S: 229. Family of Lazarus. Martha and Mary. Their different Tendencies.
   336
   S: 230. Sickness of Lazarus. Christ's Reply, to the Messengers. 337
   S: 231. Death of Lazarus. Christ's Conversation with the Disciples in
   regard to it. 338
   S: 232. Death of Lazarus. Christ's Conversation with Martha; with Mary.
   340
   S: 233. Resurrection of Lazarus. Christ's Prayer. 342
   S: 234. Measures of the Sanhedrim. 343
   CHAPTER XVI.
   CHRIST IN EPHRAIM.
   S: 235. The Necessity for his Death. 344
   CHAPTER XVII.
   CHRIST'S LAST PASSOVER JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM.
   S: 236. Journey to Jericho. Blind Bartimeus. 345
   S: 237. Christ Lodges with Zaccheus. 346
   S: 238. The Request of Salome. Ambition of the Disciples rebuked. 347
   S: 239. Parable of the Pounds. 348
   S: 240. Parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard. 349
   S: 241. Passion for Rewards rebuked. 350
   S: 242. Christ Anointed by Mary in Bethany. 351
   PART II.
   FROM THE TRIUMPHAL ENTRY TO THE ASCENSION.
   CHAPTER I.
   FROM THE TRIUMPHAL ENTRY TO THE LAST SUPPER
   S: 243. The Entry into Jerusalem. 354
   S: 244. Sadness of Christ at Sight of the City. 356
   S: 245. The Fig-tree Cursed. Parable of the Fig-tree. 357
   S: 246. Machinations of the Pharisees. 359
   S: 247. Union of the Pharisees and Herodians. Tribute to Caesar. 360
   S: 248. Christ's Reply to the Pharisees about the Resurrection. 361
   S: 249. His Exposition of the First and Great Commandment. 362
   S: 250. Parable of the Good Samaritan. 363
   S: 251. Christ's Interpretation of Psalm cx., 1. 364
   S: 252. The Widow's Mite. 366
   S: 253. Christ predicts the Divine Judgments upon Jerusalem. 366
   S: 254. He predicts the Coming of the Kingdom, and the Second Advent.
   367
   S: 255. Parable of the Marriage Feast of the King's Son. 369
   S: 256. Parable of the wicked Vine-dressers. 371
   S: 257. Parable of the Talents compared with that of the Pounds. 372
   S: 258. Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins. 373
   S: 259. Christ teaches that Faith must prove itself by Works. 373
   S: 260. The Heathens with Christ. 375
   S: 261. Christ's Struggles of Soul. The Voice from Heaven. 376
   S: 262. Christ closes his Public Ministry. 378
   S: 263. Machinations of his Enemies. 378
   S: 264. Motives of Judas in Betraying Christ. 379
     (1) Avarice? 380
     (2) False Views of Christ's Messiahship? 381
     (3) Gradually developed Hostility? 383
   CHAPTER II.
   THE LAST SUPPER.
   S: 265. Object of Christ in the Last Supper. 384
   S: 266. Christ's washing of the Disciples' Feet. 386
   S: 267. His Words with, and concerning, his Betrayer. 387
   S: 268. Institution of the Eucharist. 388
   CHAPTER III.
   CHRIST'S LAST DISCOURSES AT TABLE WITH THE DISCIPLES.
   S: 269. The New Commandment. 391
   S: 270. The Request of Peter: Christ predicts his Denial. 392
   S: 271. He predicts Danger to his Disciples. 392
   S: 272. He consoles the Disciples. 394
   S: 273. Conversation with Philip and Thomas. 395
   S: 274. Of Prayer in the Name of Christ. He promises the Comforter. 397
   S: 275. Christ's Salutation of "Peace." Its Import. 398
   CHAPTER IV.
   DISCOURSES OF CHRIST AFTER RISING FROM TABLE.
   S: 276. Similitude of the Vine and Branches. The Law of Love. 399
   S: 277. Final Promise of the Holy Ghost. 400
   S: 278. Christ's Prayer as High-priest. 402
   CHAPTER V.
   GETHSEMANE.
   S: 279. Comparison of John's Gospel with the Synoptical Gospels. 404
   S: 280. The Agony in the Garden. 407
   S: 281. The Arrest. Peter's Haste rebuked. 408
   CHAPTER VI.
   THE TRIAL AND CONDEMNATION.
   S: 282. Night. Examination before Annas 410
   S: 283. Morning. Examination before Caiaphas. 411
   S: 284. Double-dealing of the Sanhedrim. 412
   S: 285. Christ before Pilate. His Kingdom not of this World. 413
   S: 286. Christ sent to Herod. 415
   S: 287. Pilate's Fruitless Efforts to save Christ. Dream of Pilate's
   Wife. 415
   S: 288. Last Conversation with Pilate. The Sentence. 416
   S: 289. Christ led to Calvary. Simon of Cyrene. 417
   CHAPTER VII.
   THE CRUCIFIXION.
   S: 290. Details of the Crucifixion. 418
   S: 291. Christ prays for his Enemies. The two Thieves. 419
   S: 292. Christ's Exclamation, Psalm xxii. His last Words. 420
   S: 293. Phenomena accompanying the Death of Christ. 421
   CHAPTER VIII.
   THE RESURRECTION.
   S: 294. Did Christ predict his Resurrection? 422
   S: 295. Sudden Transition of the Apostles from Dejection to Joy.
   Argument from this. 423
   S: 296. Was the Reappearance of Christ a Vision? 424
   S: 297. Was Christ's a real Death? 425
   S: 298. The Resurrection intended only for Believers. 428
   S: 299. The Women, Peter, and John at the Grave. 428
   S: 300. Christ appears to the Women to Mary; to the two Disciples on
   the Way to Emmaus. 429
   S: 301. Christ appears to Peter; to all the Apostles except Thomas. 431
   S: 302. Christ appears to five hundred Believers; to James; to all the
   Apostles. Conversation with Thomas. 432
   S: 303. Christ appears in Galilee to the Seven on Genesareth. 434
   S: 304. Christ appears in Galilee for the last Time. 435
   S: 305. Christ appears for the last Time near Jerusalem. 435
   CHAPTER IX.
   THE ASCENSION.
   S: 306. Connexion of the Ascension with the Resurrection. 436
   S: 307. The Ascension necessary for the Conviction of the Apostles. 437
   S: 308. Connexion of all the supernatural Facts in Christ's
   Manifestation. 438
     __________________________________________________________________
     __________________________________________________________________

                                 INTRODUCTION.
     __________________________________________________________________
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER I.

  THE IDEA OF THE HISTORY OF CHRIST IN GENERAL.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 1. The Indifference of Criticism rejected.

   IT has been often said that, in order to true inquiry, we must take
   nothing for granted. [22] Of late this statement has been reiterated
   anew, with special reference to the exposition of the Life of Christ.
   At the outset of our work we refuse to meet such a demand. To comply
   with it is impracticable; the very attempt contradicts the sacred laws
   of our being. We cannot entirely free ourselves from presuppositions,
   which are born with our nature, and which attach to the fixed course of
   progress in which we ourselves are involved. They control our
   consciousness, whether we will or no; and the supposed freedom from
   them is, in fact, nothing else but the exchange of one set for another.
   Some of these prepossessions, springing from a higher necessity,
   founded in the normal order of the universe, and derived from the
   eternal laws [23] of the Creator, constitute the very ground and
   support of our nature. From such we must not free ourselves.

   But we are ever in peril of exchanging these legitimate sovereigns of
   our spiritual being, against which nothing but arbitrary will can
   rebel, for the prepossessions of a self-created or traditional
   prejudice, which have no other than an arbitrary origin, and which rule
   by no better title than usurpation. But for this peril, the way of the
   science of life would be as safe as the way of life itself. Life moves
   on in the midst of such diversified and ever-commingling
   prepossessions, especially in our own time, which, torn by
   contrarieties (contrarieties, however, which subserve a higher wisdom
   by balancing each other), forms the period of transition to a new and
   better creation. On the one hand we behold efforts to bring the human
   mind again into bondage to the host of arbitrary prejudices which had
   long enough enslaved it; and on the other, we see a justifiable protest
   against these prejudices running into the extreme of rejecting even
   those holy prepossessions which ought to rule our spiritual being, and
   which alone can offer it true freedom.

   What, then, is the duty of Science? Must she dismiss all
   prepossessions, and work out her task by unassisted thought? Far from
   it. From nothing nothing comes; the Father of spirits alone is a
   Creator. Empty indeed is that enthusiasm which seeks only the mere
   sound of truth--abstract, formal truth. [24] This absolute abnegation
   of all prepossessions would free the soul from those holy ties by which
   alone it can connect itself with its source--the source of all
   truth--and comprehend it by means of its revelations in humanity. The
   created spirit cannot deny its dependence upon God, the only creative
   Spirit; and it is its obvious destination to apprehend the revelation
   of God in creation, in nature, and in history. So, the work of science
   can only be to distinguish the prepossessions which an inward necessity
   constrains us to recognize, from such as are purely voluntary. Indeed,
   the healthfulness of our spiritual life depends upon our ridding
   ourselves of the latter, and, at the same time, yielding in lowliness
   and singleness of heart to the former, as the law of the Creator, as
   the means by which light from heaven may be conveyed to our minds. All
   that the intellect has to do in regard to these last is to demonstrate
   their necessity, and to show that our being contradicts itself in
   rebelling against them.
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   [22] [Voraussetzungslosigkeit: "freedom from presuppositions."]

   [23] Of which, says Sophocles, beautifully,

   hon olumpos
   pater monos, oude nin thnata
   phuois aneron etikten, oude`
   ma'n pote la'tha katakoima'sei
   me'gas en tou'tois theo`s
   ou`de` gera'skei.

   [24] It is one of Pascal's best thoughts, that "On se fait une idole de
   la verite meme; car la verite hors de la charite n'est pas Dieu; c'est
   son image, et une idole, qu'il ne faut point aimer, ni adorer, et
   encore moins faut-il aimer ou adorer son contraire, qui est le men
   songe."
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 2. The Truth, that Christ is God-MAN, presupposed.

   What, then, is the special presupposition with which we must approach
   the contemplation of the Life of Christ? It is one on which hangs the
   very being of the Christian as such; the existence of the Christian
   Church, and the nature of Christian consciousness. [25] It is one at
   whose touch of power the dry bones of the old world sprung up in all
   the vigour of a new creation. It gave birth to all that culture (the
   modern as distinguished from the ancient) from which the Germanic
   nations received their peculiar intellectual life, and from which the
   emancipation of the mind, grown too strong for its bonds, was developed
   in the Reformation. It is the very root and ground of our modern
   civilization; and the latter, even in its attempts to separate from
   this root, must rest upon it: indeed, should such attempts succeed, it
   must dissolve into its original elements, and assume an entirely new
   form. It is, in a word, the belief that Jesus Christ is the Son of God
   in a sense which cannot be predicated of any human being,--the perfect
   image of the personal God in the form of that humanity that was
   estranged from him; that in him the source of the Divine life itself in
   humanity appeared; that by him the idea of humanity was realized
     __________________________________________________________________

   [25] It was one of the epoch-making indications of SCHLEIERMACHER'S
   influence upon theology that he succeeded in stamping this phrase
   (Christian consciousness) as current, with the meaning that he assigned
   to it, in an age which (although some men, blind to the lessons of
   history, look back upon it longingly as the golden age of our nation)
   was guided only by the naked understanding, and destitute at once of
   faith and of true historical insight. He used it to denote Christianity
   as an undeniable. self-revealing power, entering into the life of
   humanity; an immediate, internal power in the spiritual world, from
   which went forth, and is ever going forth, the regeneration of the life
   of man, and which produces phenomena which can be explained in no other
   way. This phrase, and the thought which it expresses, are able to
   maintain their ground against that formalism of thought which is so
   hostile to every thing immediate, and wishes to substitute empty
   abstractions for the living powers that move the human race, as well as
   against that low and mean view of the world (impertinently obtrusive as
   it has been of late) which owns no power above those which build
   rail-ways and set steam-engines agoing. As the intuitive consciousness
   of God indicates to the human mind the existence, the omnipresent power
   and the self-revelation of a personal Deity, so does this "Christian
   consciousness" testify that Christ lived, and that he continues, by his
   Spirit, to operate upon mankind. The works of creation only reveal God
   to him who already has a consciousness of the Divine existence; for he
   who has not God within can find him nowhere. So it is only he who has a
   "Christian consciousness" that can recognize CHRIST in the fragments of
   tradition and the manifestations of history, or that can comprehend the
   history of CHRIST and his Church.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 3. This presupposed Truth and the Historical Accounts mutually
   confirm and illustrate each other.

   But as man's higher nature can only reach its true destiny in Christian
   consciousness, from which the great First Truth just mentioned is
   inseparable, it is necessary that this first truth should be shown to
   be essential also to the general consciousness of man. That it is so
   can be proved from its harmony with the universal and essential
   prepossessions of human nature; but the exhibition of this proof
   belongs more properly to the department of Apologetics. It is shown to
   be a necessary and not a voluntary prepossession; first, because it
   satisfies a fundamental want of human nature, a want created by
   history, and foreshadowing its own fulfilment; and, secondly, because
   this view of Christ's person arose from the direct impression which his
   appearance among men made upon the eye-witnesses, and, through them,
   upon the whole human race. This image of Christ, which has always
   propagated itself in the consciousness of the Christian Church,
   originated in, and ever points back to, the revelation of Christ
   himself, without which, indeed, it could never have arisen. As man's
   limited intellect could never, without the aid of revelation, have
   originated the idea of God, so the image of CHRIST, of which we have
   spoken, could never have sprung from the consciousness of sinful
   humanity, but must be regarded as the reflection of the actual life of
   such a CHRIST. It is Christ's self-revelation, made, through all
   generations, in the fragments of his history that remain, and in the
   workings of his Spirit which inspires these fragments, and enables us
   to recognize in them one complete whole. [26] It is a stream of the
   Divine Life which has spread abroad through all ages since the
   establishment of the Christian Church. And the peculiar mark of this
   Divine Life is precisely this, that it is grounded in a consciousness
   of absolute dependence upon Christ; that it is nothing else but a
   constant renewing after the image of Christ. But as we often find this
   stream darkened and troubled, we are necessarily led back to HIM, the
   well-spring from whom the full-flowing fountain of Divine Life gushes
   forth in all its purity; the Son of God, and the Redeemer of men. He
   who could with Divine confidence present himself as such to mankind,
   and call all men to come unto him to satisfy the cravings of their
   higher nature, must have had within himself the authority of an
   infallible consciousness.

   Now if we can show that the Life of Christ, without the aid of the
   First Truth which forms the ground of our conception of it, must be
   unintelligible, while, on the contrary, with its assistance, we can
   frame the Life into a harmonious whole, then its claims will be
   established even in the exposition of the Life itself. [27] Nay, the
   idea of Christ which has come down to us through Christian
   consciousness (the chief element of which is the impress which He
   himself left upon the souls of the Apostles) will, by comparison with
   the living manifestation (i. e., of Christ in his life), be more and
   more distinctly defined and developed in its separate features, and
   more and more freed from foreign elements.

   So it is in considering the life of any man who has materially and
   beneficially affected the progress of the race, especially if the
   results of his labours have touched upon our own interests. We form in
   advance some idea of such a man, and are not disposed, from any
   doubtful acts of his that may be laid before us, to change our
   preconceived notion for an opposite one.

   But while this preconceived idea may be our guide in studying the life
   of such a man, the study itself will contribute to enlarge and rectify
   the individual lineaments of the picture. But we must not lose sight of
   one important difference. In all other men there is a contrast between
   the ideal and the phenomenal. While in many of their traits we may
   discern the Divine principle which forms their individuality, the
   archetype of their manifestation in time, in others we see opposing
   elements, which go to make a mere caricature of that principle. We can
   obtain no clear view of the aim of the life of such men, unless we can
   seize upon the higher element which forms the individual character;
   just as an artist might depict accurately a man's organic features,
   and, for want of the peculiar intellectual expression, fail completely
   in giving the entire living physiognomy. But without a conception of
   the living whole we could not detect the separate features which mar
   the harmony of the picture. On the other side, again, if we contemplate
   the whole apart from the individual features, we shall only form an
   arbitrary ideal, not at all corresponding to the reality.

   In CHRIST, however, the ideal and the phenomenal never contradict each
   other. Al1 depends upon our viewing rightly together the separate
   features in their connexion with the higher unity of the whole. We
   presuppose this view of the whole, in order to a just conception of the
   parts, and to avoid regarding any necessary feature in the light of a
   caricature. This can the more easily be done, as the phenomena which we
   are here to contemplate stand alone, and can be compared with no other.
   And as, even in studying the life of an eminent man, we must commune
   with his spirit in order to obtain a complete view of his being, so we
   must yield ourselves up to the Spirit of Christ whom we acknowledge and
   adore as exalted above us, that He him self may show us his Divine
   image in the mirror of his Life, and teach us how to distinguish all
   prejudices of our own creating from the necessary laws of our being.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [26] Strauss, in his "Leben Jesu" (part ii., p. 719), has drawn a just
   distinction between the abstract idea of human perfection which is
   involved in our consciousness of sinfulness, and seems inseparable from
   our natural tendency to the idea of God, and the "actual (concrete)
   working out of the picture, with the traits of individual reality." In
   relation to this last he says, "Such a faultless picture could not be
   exhibited by a sinful man in a sinful age; but," adds he, "such an age,
   itself not free from these defects, would not be conscious of them; and
   if the picture is only sketched, and stands in need of much
   illustration, it may, even in a later and more clear-sighted age,
   willing to afford favorable illustrations, be regarded as faultless."
   In opposition to this, we have to say that the picture of the Life of
   Christ which has been handed down to us does not exhibit the spirit of
   that age, but a far higher Spirit, which, manifesting itself in the
   lineaments of the picture, exerted a regenerating influence not only in
   that age, but on all succeeding generations. The image of human
   perfection, concretely presented in the Life of Christ, stands in
   manifold contradiction to the tendencies of humanity in that period; no
   one of them, no combination of them, dead, as they were, could account
   for it. Whence, then, in that impure age, came such a picture (a
   picture which the age itself could not completely understand, of which
   the age could only now and then seize a congenial trait to make a
   caricature of), the contemplating of which raised the human race of
   that and following ages to a new developement of spiritual life? The
   study of this picture has given a new view of the destiny of humanity;
   a new conception of what the ideal of human virtue should be, and a new
   theory of morals: all which vanish, however, when we withdraw our gaze
   from its lineaments. The spirit of ethics, which had taken to itself
   only certain features of the picture broken from their connexion with
   the whole, and was corrupted by foreign elements that had bound
   themselves up with the Christian consciousness, was purified again in
   contemplating the unmutilated historical Prototype in the days of the
   Reformation. And whenever the spirit of the age cuts itself loose,
   either in the popular turn of thought or in the schools of philosophy,
   from this historical relation, it estranges itself also from the ethics
   of Christianity, and sets up a new and different ideal of perfection
   from that which the revelation of Christ has grounded in the
   consciousness of man. So much for what Strauss, l. c., and Baur
   (Gnosis, p. 655), have said against Schleiermacher.

   [27] Ta`s upothe'seis poiou'menos ouk archa`s, alla to onti upotheseis,
   hoion epitha'seis te kai horma's, as Plato says, in a different
   connexion, at the end of the sixth book of the Republic.
     __________________________________________________________________
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER II.

  SOURCES FOR THE HISTORY OF CHRIST.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 4. Traditional Origin of the Synoptical Gospels.

   IN using the authorities, I shall follow the general rules of
   historical criticism, and seek the truth by comparing the individual
   accounts with themselves and with each other. A correct judgment of the
   nature of the authorities may be derived from thus examining them in
   detail.

   The settled result of my investigations on this subject may be stated
   as follows: The historical remains, as well as the nature of the case,
   show that the writing of the Gospel history did not originate in any
   design to give a connected account of the life and public ministry of
   Christ as a whole, but rather grew out of a series of traditional
   accounts of separate scenes in his history. These accounts were partly
   transmitted by word of mouth, and partly laid down in written memoirs.
   The commission of the whole to writing naturally soon followed the
   spread of Christianity among the Greeks, a people much accustomed to
   writing. There can be no doubt that Paul made use of written memoirs of
   the life of Christ. [28] The objections of Weisse against this view are
   of no importance. Our first three Gospels resulted from the compilation
   of such separate materials, as Luke himself states in his introduction.
   [29] Matthew's Gospel, in its present form, was not the production of
   the apostle whose name it bears, but was founded on an account written
   by him in the Hebrew language, chiefly (but not wholly) for the purpose
   of presenting the discourses of Christ in a collective form.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [28] See my Apostol. Geschichte, 3d edit., p. 131.

   [29] Luke, i.. 1, 2.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 5. Genuineness of John's Gospel.

   John's Gospel, which contains the only consecutive account of the
   labours of Christ, arose in a very different way. It could have
   emanated from none other than that "beloved disciple" upon whose soul
   the image of the Saviour had left its deepest impress. So far from this
   Gospel's having been written by a man of the second century (as some
   assert), we can. not even imagine a man existing in that century so
   little affected by the contrarieties of his times and so far exalted
   above them. Could an age involved in perpetual contradictions, an age
   of religious materialism, anthropomorphism, and one-sided
   intellectualism, have given birth to a production like this, which
   bears the stamp of none of these deformities? How mighty must the man
   have been who, in that age, could produce from his own mind such an
   image of Christ as this? And this man, too, in a period almost
   destitute of eminent minds, remained in total obscurity! Was it
   necessary for the master-spirit, who felt in himself the capacity and
   the calling to accomplish the greatest achievement of his day, to
   resort to a pitiful trick to smuggle his ideas into circulation?

   And then, too, while it is thought sufficient to say of the three other
   Gospels that they were compiled from undesigned fables, we are told
   that such a Gospel as this of John was the work of sheer invention, as
   lately Dr. Baur has confessed, with praiseworthy candour. Strange that
   a man, anxious for the credit of his inventions, should, in the
   chronology and topography of his Life of Christ, give the lie to the
   Church traditions of his time, instead of chiming in with them;
   stranger still, that, in spite of his bold contradiction of the
   opinions of his age in regard to the history, his fraud should be
   successful! In short, the more openly this criticism declares itself
   against the Gospel of John, the more palpably does it manifest its own
   wilful disregard of history.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 6. Results of Criticism.

   A comparison of the representation of Christ derived from the
   traditions of the Apostolic Church, with that which the direct and
   personal knowledge of the beloved disciple affords to us, will not only
   aid our general conception of his image as a whole, but will also prove
   the identity of these two representations with each other, from their
   agreement as well in the separate features as in the general picture.

   It must be regarded as one of the greatest boons which the purifying
   process of Protestant theology in Germany has conferred upon faith as
   well as science, that tie old, mechanical view of Inspiration has been
   so generally abandoned. That doctrine, and the forced harmonies to
   which it led, demanded a clerk-like accuracy in the evangelical
   accounts, and could not admit even the slightest contradictions in
   them; but we are now no more compelled to have recourse to subtilties
   against which our sense of truth rebels. In studying the historical
   connexion of our Saviour's life and actions by the application of an
   unfettered criticism, we reach a deeper sense in many of his sayings
   than the bonds of the old dogmatism would have allowed. The inquiring
   reason need no longer find its free sense of truth opposed to faith;
   nor is reason bound to subjugate herself, not to faith, but to
   arbitrary dogmas and artificial hypotheses. The chasms in the Gospel
   history were unavoidable in the transmission of Divine truth through
   such lowly human means. The precious treasure has come to us in earthen
   vessels. But this only affords room for the exercise of our faith--a
   faith whose root is to be found, not in science, not in demonstration,
   but in the humble and self-denying submission of our spirits. Our
   scientific views may be defective in many points; our knowledge itself
   may be but fragmentary; but our religious interests will find all that
   is necessary to attach them to CHRIST as the ground of salvation and
   the archetype of holiness.
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     __________________________________________________________________
     __________________________________________________________________
     __________________________________________________________________

BOOK I.
     __________________________________________________________________

BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD

OF

JESUS.

                                    BOOK I.

                     THE BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD OF JESUS. [30]
     __________________________________________________________________
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER I.

  PRELIMINARY REMARKS.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 7. Scantiness of our Information in regard to this Period of
   Christ's Life.--Nothing further really essential to the Interests of
   Religion.

   IN writing the life of any eminent man, we should not be likely to
   begin with a period when his character was fully developed and his
   world-historical importance recognized. On the contrary, we should
   study the growth of his being--seek for the bud which concealed the
   seed, and the powers that conspired to unfold it.

   We cannot fail to have the same desire in studying that Life which far
   transcends every other, both in its own intrinsic excellence and in its
   bearing upon the history of the human race; but we are kept within very
   narrow limits on this point by the paucity of our materials,
   consisting, as they do, of fragmentary accounts, whose literal accuracy
   we have no right to presuppose. To exhibit these features in the life
   of Christ did not belong to the Apostolic mission, which was designed
   to meet religious rather than scientific wants; to relate the mighty
   acts of Christ, from the beginning of his ministry to the time of his
   ascension, rather than to show how, and under what conditions, his
   inner nature gradually manifested itself. It belongs to science to give
   a pragmatico-genetical developement of the history; religious faith
   occupies itself only with the immediate facts themselves. We cannot
   expect this part of the history to give so accurate a detail as that
   which treats of Christ's public ministry and his redemptive acts; nor
   do the wants of faith require it.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 8. Fundamentally opposite Modes of apprehending the Accounts.

   The problems offered to scientific inquiry at this point are, first, to
   distinguish the objective reality of the events from the subjective
   form in which they are apprehended in the accounts; and, secondly, to
   fill up, as far as may be, the chasms which necessarily arise in the
   history from its being composed of detached narratives. These problems
   nearly involve each other; for we must obtain a clear view of the
   events themselves, before we can solve the difficulties that arise in
   connecting them together. Of these, various views may be taken,
   different in themselves, yet each in harmony with the interests of
   religion.

   But this cannot be said of all the different views which may be taken
   of the subject. The attempt might be made, for instance, to explain the
   life of Christ just as that of any eminent man, on the natural
   principles of human developement; rejecting, of course, the first truth
   of Christian belief in Christ as the Son of God and our Saviour. This
   theory, denying the supernatural element of Christianity, necessarily
   leads its advocates to consider every thing in the Gospel accounts
   which contradicts it as simply mythical. Thus, even in what may be
   called the ante-historical part of our work, we find arrayed against us
   those views which always reject the supernatural in the events of the
   life of Christ; although this is a dispute which cannot be settled
   empirically by inquiries into the separate accounts; for this very
   distinction of historical and non-historical presupposes a final
   decision between these opposing views made elsewhere. Thus, the Deistic
   and Pantheistic theories, which, although they arise from directly
   opposite modes of thought, agree perfectly in opposing supernaturalism,
   must deny, in the outset, what the supernatural-theistic views hold to
   be essential to the idea of a genuine world-redeeming Christ.

   We must, then, in order to bring the individual features into harmony
   with our portraiture of Christ, form the latter definitely from a view
   of his whole life, and of the organism of that Christian consciousness
   which grows out of his impress left upon humanity, and manifests his
   perpetual revelation. In relation to the individual features of the
   history, it only remains to prove, by naked historical inquiry, that
   there is no sufficient ground, apart from the general prejudices of
   rationalism, to deny their historical basis; and to show that the
   origin of the accounts themselves cannot be explained without the
   actual occurrence of the events which they describe on the very ground
   where they arose.
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER II.

  THE MIRACULOUS CONCEPTION.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 9. The Miraculous Conception demanded `a priori, and confirmed `a
   posteriori.

   IF, then, we conceive the manifestation of Christ to have been a super
   natural communication of the. Divine nature for the moral renewal of
   man, a new beginning in the chain of human progress; in one word, if we
   conceive it as a miracle, this conception itself, apart from any
   historical accounts, would lead us to form some notion of the beginning
   of his human life that would harmonize with it.

   It is true, this human life of Christ took its appointed place in the
   course of historical events--nay, all history was arranged with
   reference to its incorporation; yet it entered into history; not as
   part of its offspring, but as a higher element. Whatever has its origin
   in the natural course of humanity must bear the stamp of humanity; must
   share in the sinfulness which stains it, and take part in the strifes
   which distract it. It was impossible, therefore, that the second Adam,
   the Divine progenitor of a new and heavenly race, could derive his
   origin from the first Adam in the ordinary course of nature, or could
   represent the type of the species, the people, or the family from which
   he sprung, as do the common children of men. We must conceive him, not
   as an individual representative of the type which descended from our
   first parents, but as the creative origin of a new type. And so our own
   idea of Christ compels us to admit that two factors, the one natural,
   the other supernatural, were coefficient in his entrance into human
   life; and this, too, although we may be unable, `a priori, to state how
   that entrance was accomplished.

   But at this point the historical accounts come to our aid, by
   testifying that what our theory of the case requires did, in fact,
   occur. The essential part of the history is found precisely in those
   features in which the idea and the reality harmonize; and we must not
   only hold fast these essential facts which are so important to the
   interests of religion, but carefully distinguish them from unimportant
   and accidental parts, which might, perhaps, be involved in obscurity or
   contradiction.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 10. Mythical View of the Miraculous Conception.--No trace of it in
   the Narrative.--No such Mythus could have originated among the Jews.

   The accounts of Matthew and Luke agree in stating that the birth of
   Christ was the result of a direct creative act of God, and not of the
   ordinary laws of human generation. They who deny this must make one of
   two assumptions; either that all the accounts are absolute fables, or
   that some actual fact was the ground-work of the fabulous conception.

   Those who adopt the former view tell us that, after Christ had made
   himself conspicuous by his great acts, men, struck with his
   extraordinary character, formed a theory of his birth to correspond
   with it. But this assumption is utterly irreconcilable with the simple
   and prosaic style in which Matthew tells the story of Joseph's
   perplexity at finding Mary pregnant before her time; [31] and the
   supposition that this prosaic narrative was the offspring of some
   previous mythical description, is out of all harmony with the character
   of the primitive Christian times. As for the second assumption, those
   who adopt it can assign no possible fact to explain the origin of the
   account, but one of so base a nature as utterly to shock every
   religious feeling, and every just notion of the overruling Providence
   of God. Had such an occurrence ever been deemed possible, the fanatical
   enemies of Christ would very soon have made use of it. [32] Both these
   assumptions failing, nothing remains but to admit that the birth of
   Christ was a phenomenon out of the ordinary course of nature. [33]

   Nor would such a mythus have been consistent with Jewish modes of
   thought. The Hindoo mind might have originated a fable of this
   character, though in a different form from that in which the account of
   the Evangelists is given; but the Jewish had totally different
   tendencies. Such a fable as the birth of the Messiah from a virgin
   could have arisen any where else easier than among the Jews; their
   doctrine of the Divine Unity, which placed an impassable gulf between
   God and the world; their high regard for the marriage relation, which
   led them to abhor unwedded life; and, above all, their full persuasion
   that the Messiah was to be an ordinary man, undistinguished by any
   thing supernatural, and not to be endowed with Divine power before the
   time of his solemn consecration to the Messiahship, all conspired to
   render such an invention impossible among them. The accounts of Isaac,
   Samson, and Samuel cannot be quoted as in point; these case[ rather
   illustrate the Hebrew notion of the blessing of fruitfulness; and in
   them all the Divine power was shown, not in excluding the male, but in
   rendering the long-barren female fruitful, contrary to all human
   expectation. The conception of Christ would have been analogous to
   these, had Mary, after long barrenness, borne a son, or had Joseph been
   too old to expect offspring at the time. [34]

   It was on this very account, viz., because the miraculous conception
   was foreign to the prevailing Jewish modes of thought, [35] that one
   sect of the Ebionites, who could not free themselves from their old
   prejudices, refused to admit the doctrine; and the section which
   contains the account is excluded from the Ebionitish recension of the
   Gospel to the Hebrews, which arose from the same source as our Matthew.
   As for the single obscure passage in Isa., vii., it could hardly have
   given rise to such a tradition among the people of Palestine, where,
   unquestionably, Matthew's Gospel originated.
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   [31] We cannot believe, notwithstanding what Strauss says on this point
   in his 3d edition, that a fable could originally be presented in so
   prosaic a garb as that of Matthew. Cases are not wanting, however, in
   which the substance of a mythus, after it had come to be received as
   history, has been given out in a prosaic form.

   [32] They would have done so before Jewish malevolence employed the
   history of the miraculous conception to invent the fable which Celsus
   first made use of.--Orig., i., 32. Had any such legends been in
   circulation before, we should find some trace of them in the
   Evangelists, who do not conceal the accusations that were made against
   Christ.

   [33] Schleiermacher, whose reverence for sacred things forbade him to
   adopt the latter of these two suppositions, while his conscientious
   love of truth compelled him to admit the reality of the history, says,
   in comparing the statements of Matthew and Luke (Critical Inquiries, p.
   47), "We may well leave the statement of Matthew in the judicious
   indefiniteness in which it is expressed; while the traditional basis of
   the poetical announcement in Luke rebukes those impious explanations
   which soil the veil they cannot lift." But, in sober truth, no one can
   admit the veracity of the history, and, at the same time, deny the
   miraculous conception, without falling into the very conclusion which
   Schleiermacher rejects with such pious indignation.

   [34] E. g., in the apocryphal Gospel of James, ch. ix., it is stated,
   that when the priest was about to give Mary as a wife to the aged
   Joseph, the latter said, "I have sons and am old, while she is yet
   young; shall I not then become a mockery for the sons of Israel?"

   [35] Professor Weisse, in his work, "Die Evangelische Geschichte" (The
   Gospel History, critically and philosophically treated, Leips., 1838),
   admits that the Jews could not have invented this mythus, but ascribes
   to it a heathen origin. How, in view of the relations that subsisted
   between early Christianity and heathenism, the pagan mythus of the sons
   of the gods could so soon have been transformed into a Christian one;
   and how the latter could have found its way into St. Matthew's Gospel,
   which unquestionably had a Jewish-Christian origin, are among the
   incomprehensibilities which abound in Prof. W.'s very intelligible
   work. He says, p. 178, that "as Paul found himself involuntarily
   compelled, in addressing the Athenians, to quote Greek poetry (For we
   are also his offspring, Acts, xvii., 28), so it is possible that the
   apostles to the heathen were led to adopt the pagan mythus of the sons
   of the gods, in order to make known to them the truth, that Christ is
   the Son of God, in a form suited to their way of thinking, and that
   their figurative language, literally understood, formed the
   starting-point for such a mythus ." Things very heterogeneous are
   thrown together in this passage. What religious scruples need have
   hindered Paul from alluding to the consciousness of the Divine origin
   of the human race, which the Athenians themselves had expressed, and to
   the vague idea which they entertained of an unknown God? Not was such
   an allusion likely to be misunderstood. How could a man, imbued with
   Jewish feelings in regard to the heathen mythology (feelings which his
   conversion to Christianity would by no means weaken), compare the birth
   of the Holy One--of the Messiah--with those pagan fables, whose
   impurity could inspire him with nothing but disgust? Weisse has
   transferred his own mode of contemplating the heathen myths to a people
   that would have revolted from it. It is quite another thing when Weisse
   adduces the comparisons in which the early Christian apologists
   indulged. These men, themselves of heathen origin, were accustomed to
   the allegorical interpretations of the mythology, and it was natural
   for them to seek and occupy a position intermediate between their
   earlier and later views. But, so far from these comparisons having
   given rise to the accounts of the supernatural conception, it was the
   latter which caused the former. They wished to show to the heathen that
   this miraculous event was not altogether foreign to their own religious
   ideas, while they carefully guarded against the sensuous forms of
   thought involved in the myths; and, as they could presuppose this
   event, they had a right to employ the myths as they did, inasmuch as
   these poetical effusions of natural religion anticipated (though in
   sadly-distorted caricatures) the great truth of Christianity, that the
   union of the Divine with the human nature was brought about by a
   creative act of Omnipotence. The early apologists expressed this in
   their own way "Satan invented these fables by imitating the truth."
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 11. Objections to the Narrative drawn from the subsequent
   Dispositions of Christ's Relatives, answered (1) from the nature of the
   case; (2) from the name Jesus.

   An objection to the credibility of the narrative has been raised on the
   ground that if such events had really preceded the birth of Christ, his
   own relatives would have been better disposed to recognize him as the
   Messiah. It is possible that the circumstances of his birth did raise
   their expectations to a lofty pitch; but as for thirty years no
   indications corresponding with ordinary views of the Messiah manifested
   themselves, their first impressions gradually wore away, only to be
   revived, however, by the great acts which Jesus performed after the
   opening of his public career. And as for Mary (in whom a doubt of this
   sort would appear still more strange, as she was directly cognizant of
   the miraculous features of the history), there is no proof whatever
   that she ever lost the memory of her visions, or relinquished the hopes
   they were so well calculated to raise. Her conduct at the marriage of
   Cana proves directly the reverse. She obviously expected a miracle from
   Christ immediately after the proclamation of his Messiahship by John
   the Baptist. The confirmation which John's Gospel, by its recital of
   this miracle, affords to the other evangelists is the more striking, as
   John himself gives no account of the events accompanying the birth of
   Christ. [36]

   The name Jesus itself affords additional proof that his parents were
   led by some extraordinary circumstances to expect that he would be the
   Messiah. Such names as Theodorus, Theodoret, Dorotheus, among the
   Greeks, were usually bestowed because the parents had obtained a son
   after long desire and expectation. As names were also given among the
   Jews with reference to their significancy, and as the name Jesus
   betokens "Him through whom Jehovah bestows salvation;" and, moreover,
   as the Messiah, the bearer of this salvation, was generally expected at
   the time, it must certainly appear probable to us that the name was
   given with reference to that expectation. Not that this conclusion
   necessarily follows, because the name Jesus, Joshua, was common among
   the Jews; but yet, compared with the accounts, it certainly affords
   confirmatory evidence.
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   [36] (a) John's silence in regard to the miraculous conception is no
   proof that he was either ignorant of the accounts of that event or
   disbelieved them. His object was to testify to what he had himself seen
   and heard, and to declare how the glory of the Only begotten had been
   unveiled to him in contemplating Christ's manifestation on earth. But
   that he recognized the miraculous conception is evident from his
   emphatic declarations (in opposition to the ordinary Jewish idea of the
   Messiah), that the Divine and the human were originally united in the
   person of Christ, and that the Logos itself became flesh in him; while
   at the same time he avers that "that which is born of the flesh is
   flesh." No man could hold these two ideas together without believing in
   the immediate agency of God in the generation of Christ (b) The
   objection that Jesus was known among the Jews as the son of Joseph and
   Mary, and that this fact was adduced against his claims, has been
   sufficiently met in the text; but it has been urged further that Christ
   himself, when this objection was brought against him (Matt., xiii.,
   55), did not allude to the miraculous conception. As to this, we need
   only say that it was far more likely and natural that Jesus should call
   men's attention to the proofs of his Divinity which were before their
   eyes in his daily acts, showing, at the same time, that the causes of
   their disbelief lay in themselves, rather than that he should dwell
   upon the circumstances which preceded his birth, the proof of which had
   to rest upon the testimony of Mary alone. (c) Nor is Paul's silence on
   this point proof of his not acknowledging it. It only shows that, for
   his religious sense, the sufferings Ad resurrection of Christ, the
   centre and support of the Christian system, stood out more prominently
   than the miraculous conception.' In the passages in which he speaks of
   Christ's origin, he had a different object in view than to treat of
   this subject; e. g., in Rom., ix., 5, "Whose are the fathers, and of
   whom, as concerning the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, God
   blessed forever," and in Rom., i., 4, where he brings out prominently
   the two-fold manifestation of Christ, as the Son of David and as the
   Son of God, raised above all human and national relationships, as he
   revealed himself after the resurrection. If we could infer from such
   passages Paul's disbelief in the miracle, we can draw precisely the
   opposite conclusion from Gal., iv., 4; although, as the case is, we do
   not lay much stress upon the expression, "born of a woman." And if Paul
   could represent Jesus as the Son of God from heaven, as being without
   sin in the flesh (sarx), in which sin before had reigned, while at the
   same time he taught the propagation of sinfulness, from Adam down, it
   is likely that the supernatural generation of Jesus was so firmly
   established in the connexion of his own thoughts, that he felt the less
   necessity to give it individual prominence. We shall have occasion to
   make a similar remark hereafter in regard to the omission of the ac
   count of Christ's ascension as an individual event.
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   S: 12. Analogical Ideas among the Heathen.

   Moreover, inferences in favour of the accounts of the miraculous
   conception, as well as against them, may be obtained by comparing them
   with the ancient myths of other religions. The spirit of the pagan
   mythology could not have penetrated among the Jews, and therefore
   cannot be assigned to explain the similarity between the Christian and
   pagan views. We must seek that explanation rather in the relations that
   subsist between mythical natural religion and historical revealed
   religion; between the idea, forming, from the enslaved consciousness
   which it sways, an untrue actualization; and the idea, grounded in
   truth, and developing itself therefrom into clear and free
   consciousness.

   The truth which the religious sense can recognize at the bottom of
   these myths, is the earnest desire, inseparable from man's spirit, for
   communion with God, for participation in the Divine nature as its true
   life--its anxious longing to pass the gulf which separates the
   God-derived soul from its original--its wish, even though unconscious,
   to secure that union with God which alone can renew human nature, and
   which Christianity shows us as a living reality. Nor can we be
   astonished to find the facts of Christianity thus anticipated in poetic
   forms (imbodying in imaginative creations the innate yet indistinct
   cravings of the spirit) in the mythical elements of the old religions,
   when we remember that human nature itself, and all the forms of its
   developement, as well as the whole course of human history, were
   intended by God to find their full accomplishment in Christ. But the
   genius of Christianity is mistaken by those who despise the simplicity
   of the Gospel history, and contrast it with the poetry of religion. The
   opposition, apparently essential to the mere natural man, between
   poetry, transcending the limits of the actual, and the prose of common
   reality, is taken away by the manifestation of Christ, and will be done
   away wherever Christianity passes into flesh and blood. The peculiarity
   of Christian ethics is indeed founded upon this.

   The characteristic difference between the religion of Theism and that
   of the old mythology lies in this one point: that in the evangelical
   histories the Divine power is represented as operating immediately, and
   not by the interposition of natural causes; while, in the mythical
   conceptions, the Divine causality is made coefficient with natural
   agencies; the Divine is brought down to the sphere of the natural, and
   its manifestation is thus physically explained. [37] Thus the Gospel
   histories, precisely as a just idea of Christ would lead us to
   presuppose, attribute to the creative agency of God alone the
   introduction of that new member of humanity through which the
   regeneration of the race is to be accomplished.
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   [37] Baumgarten-Crusius has noticed this distinction in his Biblical
   Theology, p. 397; but Strauss denies it, and asserts that the
   expression huios Theou in Luke i., 35, is to be taken entirely in a
   physical sense. There is no such meaning in the passage; it predicates
   the terms "the holy one," "the Son of God," of Christ, on the ground of
   the special agency of the Holy Spirit in his birth. He who was
   conceived under such an agency must stand in a special relation to God.
   Not merely the Jewish mode of thinking on the subject, bus also the
   fact that Jesus is designated both as the Son of David and the Son of
   God, exclude the physical interpretation.
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     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER III.

  THE BIRTH OF CHRIST.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 13. The Birth of Christ in its Relations to the Jewish Theocracy.

   AS the entrance of Christ into the course of humanity was brought about
   by the co-working of supernatural with natural elements, so both these
   agencies conspired in preparing the way for that great event, the
   centre of all things, and the aim of all preceding history. So we
   interpret the relations of the Jews and heathens to the appearance of
   Christ. The natural developement of the heathen was destined, under the
   Divine guidance, to prepare them for receiving the new light which
   emanated from Jesus; and the history of the Jewish people was all
   preparatory to the appearance and ministry of Christ, who was to come
   forth out of their midst. This preparation was accomplished by means of
   a chain of separate, but organically connected revelations, all tending
   toward the full revelation in Him, whose whole life was itself to be
   the highest manifestation of God to man.

   There was peculiar fitness in Christ's being born among the Jewish
   people. His life revealed the kingdom of God, which was to be set up
   over all men, and it properly commenced in a nation whose political
   life, always developed in a theocratic form, was a continual type of
   that kingdom. He was the culminating point of this developement; in Him
   the kingdom of God, no longer limited to this single people, was to
   show its true design, and, unfettered by physical or national
   restraints, to assert its authority over the whole human race. The
   particular typifies the universal; the earthly, the celestial; so
   David, the monarch who had raised the political theocracy of the Jews
   to the pinnacle of glory, typified that greater monarch in whom the
   kingdom of God was to display its glory. Not without reason, therefore,
   was it that Christ, the summit of the theocracy, sprang from the fallen
   line of royal David. [38]
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   [38] However the discrepancies in the two genealogies of Christ may be
   explained, his descent from the race of David was admitted from the
   beginning, and the evangelists took it for granted as indisputable. How
   Weisse should deny this, as he does (p. 169), is unaccountable. His
   arguments can convince no one endowed with the slightest powers of
   observation, and need no answer. The only one which is at all plausible
   is that founded on Mark, xii., 35; and that depends upon the question
   whether Mark uses these words in their original application; a question
   which we shall hereafter have occasion to examine. Certainly, if they
   admit of more than one interpretation, we shall adopt any other sooner
   than that which comes into conflict with Paul, who assumed Christ's
   descent from David as certain. Could the apostles have embraced a
   notion which the Saviour himself had denounced as an invention of the
   scribes? There was nothing in Paul's turn of feeling or thought to
   incline him towards it, had it not been established on other grounds;
   on the contrary, the doctrine that Christ was not the Son of David, but
   the Son of God and the Lord of David, would have afforded him an
   excellent point of attack against Judaism. Although Luke's genealogy is
   not directly stated as following the line of Mary, yet it may have done
   so, and have only been improperly placed where it is. Justin Martyr
   (Dial. c. Tryph., f. 327) was acquainted with such a genealogy
   referring to Mary. Luke, i., 32-35, seems to show that Mary was of
   David's race. Her relationship to Elizabeth, the mother of John
   Baptist, does not prove the contrary; for members of the tribe of Levi
   were not restrained from intermarriage with other tribes; and
   Elizabeth, although of that tribe on the father's side, and herself the
   wife of a priest, might very well have sprung from the tribe of Judah
   on the mother's side.
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   S: 14. The Miraculous Events that accompanied the Birth of Christ.

   The Divine purpose in the supernatural conception of Jesus could not
   have been accomplished without some providential forewarnings to his
   parents; nor could these intimations of the certainty of the
   approaching birth of the theocratic King have been given by ordinary,
   natural means. In the sphere of the greatest miracle of human history,
   the miracle which was to raise mankind to communion with Heaven, we do
   not wonder to see rays of light streaming from the invisible world, at
   other times so dark.

   From the very nature of the case, we can expect no full account of
   those extraordinary manifestations of which, naturally enough, Mary
   alone could testify. [39] But a mere mythus, destitute of historical
   truth, and only serving as the veil of an ideal truth, is a very
   different thing from what we are here stating, viz., that a lofty
   history may be imparted in a form which must have more than its mere
   literal force and that events of a lofty character necessarily impart
   their higher tone to the language in which they are conveyed. In this
   latter case, we may harmlessly differ in our modes of arranging the
   materials, and of filling up the chasms of the history, so that we only
   hold fast the substantial facts which form its basis. The course of the
   events described in Matt., i., 18-25, may be arranged as follows: When
   Mary informed Joseph of the remarkable communication that had been made
   to her, he could not at once bring himself to believe it; which was not
   at all strange, considering its extraordinary character, and how little
   he was prepared for it. A struggle ensued in his feelings, and then
   occurred the night vision which brought his mind to a final decision.
   [40]
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   [39] Mary could only have been taught to expect the Saviour in a way
   harmonizing with her views at the time, and with the prevailing Jewish
   ideas of the Messiah, viz., that the Messiah should come of the line of
   David, to establish an everlasting kingdom among the Jews. But this was
   only a covering for the higher idea of the Redeemer, the founder of the
   eternal kingdom of God.

   [40] We need be the less afraid of a free, unliteral interpretation
   when we find a difference in the subjective conception of these events
   by even the evangelists themselves, Matthew speaking only of dreams and
   visions, and Luke of objective phenomena, viz., the appearance of
   angels.
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   S: 15. The Taxing.--Birth of Christ at Bethlehem.

   By a remarkable interposition of Providence, interwoven, however, with
   the course of events in the world, was it brought about that the
   promised King should be born in Bethlehem (as Micah the prophet had
   foretold), the very place where the house of David had its origin;
   while, at the same time, the lowly circumstances of his birth were in
   striking contrast with the inherent dignity and glory that were veiled
   in the new-born child.

   The Emperor Augustus had ordered a general census of the Roman Empire,
   partly to obtain correct statistics of its resources, [41] and partly
   for purposes of taxation. [42] As Judea was then a dependency of the
   empire, and Augustus probably intended to reduce it entirely to the
   state of a Roman province, he wished to secure similar statistics of
   that country, and ordered King Herod to take the census. In performing
   this duty, Herod followed the Jewish usage, viz., a division by tribes.
   [43] Joseph and Mary belonged to the tribe of David, and therefore had
   to repair to Bethlehem, the seat of that tribe. On account of the
   throng, they could find no shelter but a stable, and the new-born
   infant had to he laid in a manger. [44]
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   [41] This was not confined to the Roman provinces, but extended also to
   the Socii.--Tacit., Ann., i., xi.

   [42] Cassiodor., i., iii., ep. 52: Augusti temporibus orbis Romanus
   agris divisus censuque descriptus, ut possessio sui nulli haberetur
   incerta, quam pro tributorum susciperet quantitatibus solvendam. (Conf.
   Savigny's dissertation in the "Zeitschrift fuer die geschichtl
   Rechtswissenschaft, Bd. vi., H. 3.) This language of the learned
   statesman shows that he followed older accounts rather than a Christian
   report drawn from Luke; and the expression of Tacitus confirms this
   conclusion. There is no ground, therefore, for the doubts started by
   Strauss, 3d ed., p. 257.

   [43] Luke's account of the matter is so prosaic and straightforward,
   that none but a prejudiced mind can find a trace of the mythical in it.
   Examine the Apocryphal Gospels, and you will see the difference between
   history and fable. And even if it could be shown that the census was
   incorrect, and that the gathering at Bethlehem was due to some other
   cause, no suspicion would thereby be cast upon the entire narration;
   the only reasonable conclusion would be, that Luke, or the writer from
   whom he copied, had fallen into an anachronism, or an erroneous
   combination of facts, in assigning the census as the cause of the
   gathering. Such an error could not affect in any way the interests of
   religion. Moreover, what right have we to demand of Luke so exact a
   knowledge of the history of his times, in things that did not
   materially concern his purpose? Such anachronisms, in things
   indifferent, are common to writers of all ages. But the account itself
   contains no marks of improbability. The emperor would naturally order
   Herod, whom he still recognized as king, to take the census, and Herod
   as naturally followed the Jewish usage in doing it. It was the policy
   of the emperor, at that time, to treat the Jews with kindness, and
   therefore he would naturally make the first attempt at a census as
   delicately as possible. How repugnant such a measure was to them is
   shown by Josephus's account of the tumults that arose on account of the
   census under Quirinus, twelve years afterward. Luke may have gone too
   far in extending (as his language seems to imply) the census over the
   whole empire; or, perhaps, in stating the gradual census of the whole
   empire as a simultaneous one. Perhaps he mistook this assessment for
   the census which occurred twelve years later, and on that account
   erroneously mentioned Quirinus. Nevertheless, Quirinus may have been
   actually present at this assessment, not, indeed, as governor of the
   province, but as imperial commissioner; for Josephus expressly says
   that he had held many other offices before he was Governor of Syria, at
   the time of the second census. I do not agree with any of the
   explanations, either ancient or modern, which attempt to make Luke's
   statement agree exactly with history; they all seem to me to be forced
   and unphilological, while the want of exactness in Luke is easily
   explained, and is of no manner of importance for the object which he
   had in view.

   [44] The tradition in Justin Martyr (Dial. c. Tryph., 304, a), that
   they found shelter in a cave near the town, which had before been used
   for a cattle stall (en spelaio sunengus tes komes, may be true,
   although we should not like to vouch for it. It is more likely that the
   prophecy in Isai., xxxiii., 16 (which Justin refers to in the
   Alexandrian version), was applied to this tradition after it arose,
   than that the tradition arose from the prophecy. At that time men were
   accustomed to find every where in the Old Testament predictions and
   types of Christ, whether warranted by the connexion or not. The
   tradition does not specify such a cave as the passage in Isaiah would
   lead one to expect, nor, indeed, does the passage seem distinctly to
   refer to the Messiah.
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   S: 16. The Announcement to the Shepherds.

   It is in accordance with the analogy of history that great
   manifestations and epochs, designed to satisfy the spiritual wants of
   ages, should be anticipated by the prophetic yearnings of pure and
   susceptible hearts, inspired by a secret Divine consciousness. All
   great events that have introduced a new developement of human history
   have been preceded by unconscious or conscious prophecy. This may seem
   strange to such as ascribe to God the apathy of the Stoics, or who
   believe only in the cold, iron necessity of an immanent spirit of
   nature; but to none who believe in a personal, self-conscious Deity, a
   God of eternal love, who is nigh unto every man, and listens willingly
   to the secret sighs of longing souls, can it appear unworthy of such a
   Being to foreshadow great world-historical epochs by responding to such
   longings in special revelations.

   Far more probable, then, would such manifestations be, in reference to
   the highest object of human longings, the greatest of all world
   historical phenomena; and so, at the time of Christ's coming, the
   people of Judea, guided by the prophecies of the Old Testament, yearned
   for the appearance of the Messiah with an anxiety only rendered more
   intense by the oppressions under which they groaned. This feeling would
   naturally be kept alive in Bethlehem, associated as the place was with
   recollections of the family of David, from which the Messiah was to
   come. So, even among the shepherds, who kept nightly watch over the
   flocks, were some who anxiously awaited the appearance of the Messiah.
   It is true, the account does not say that the shepherds thus longed for
   the Messiah. But we are justified by what followed in presupposing it
   as the ground for such a communication's being especially made to them;
   and it is not unlikely that these simple souls, untaught in the
   traditions of the scribes, and nourished by communion with God, amid
   the freedom of nature, in a solitude congenial to meditation and
   prayer, had formed a purer idea of the Messiah, from the necessities of
   their own hearts, than prevailed at that time among the Jews. A vision
   from Heaven conducted them on that night, so big with interest to man's
   salvation, to the place where the object of their desire was to be
   born. [45]
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   [45] Justly and beautifully says Schleiermacher, "There is something
   remarkable, something divine, in the satisfaction not seldom afforded
   in extraordinary times even to individual longings." We agree with this
   great teacher in thinking that this account came indirectly from the
   shepherds themselves, as it recites so particularly what occurred to
   themselves personally, and makes so little mention of what happened to
   the child after their arrival. The facts may be supposed to have been
   as follows: The faithful were anxious to preserve the minute features
   of the life of Jesus. (We cannot be persuaded by the assertions of
   modern Idealism that this feeling had no existence. We see every day
   how anxiously men look for individual traits in the childhood of great
   men.) Especially would any one who had the opportunity prosecute such
   researches in the remarkable place where Christ was born. Perhaps one
   of these inquirers there found one of the shepherds who had witnessed
   these events, and whose memory of them was vividly recalled after his
   conversion to Christianity. We cannot be sure that such a man would
   give with literal accuracy the words that he had heard; but, taking
   them as they stand, it is astonishing how free they are from the
   materialism which always tinged Jewish expression, and in how purely
   spiritual a way they describe the sublime transaction of which they
   treat. Whether we follow the received version or that of the Cod.
   Alex., we find the same thought expressed in the statement of the
   shepherds, viz., that "God is glorified in the Messiah, who brings
   peace and joy to the earth, and restores man again to the Divine
   favour."
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 17. The Sacrifice of Purification, and the Ransom of the First-born;
   their Weight as Proof against the Mythical Theory.

   The mass of the Jewish people, whose minds were darkened by their
   material and political views, entertained a totally false idea of the
   Messiah; but there were many at Jerusalem who longed for a purer
   salvation, and these, also, were to receive a sign that the object of
   their hopes had at last appeared.

   Forty days after the birth of the infant Jesus his parents carried him
   to the temple at Jerusalem, in order to offer, according to their
   means, the prescribed sacrifice for the purification of Mary, and to
   pay the usual ransom for their first-born. [46] This appears strange,
   in view of the extraordinary circumstances that preceded and followed
   the birth of the child, which, one might suppose, would make it an
   exception to ordinary rules. The points which the Levitical law had in
   view seem not to have existed here: so remarkable a birth might have
   pre eluded the necessity of the Levitical purification. The ransom
   which had to be paid for other first-born sons, in view of their
   original obligation to the priesthood, could hardly be necessary in the
   case of an infant who was one day to occupy the summit of the
   Theocracy. It would be natural to suppose that Mary must have
   hesitated, and laid her scruples before the priests for decision before
   she could make up her mind to perform these ceremonies. But we cannot
   judge of such extraordinary events by common standards. Mary did not
   venture to speak freely in public of these wonderful things, or to
   anticipate the Divine purposes in any way; she left it to God to
   educate the child, which had been announced to her as the Messiah, so
   as to fit him for his calling, and, at the proper time, to authenticate
   his mission publicly and conspicuously.

   Now a mythus generally endeavors to ennoble its subject, and to adapt
   the story to the idea. [47] If, then, the Gospel narrative were
   mythical, would it have invented, or even suffered to remain, a
   circumstance so foreign to the idea of the myth, all so little
   calculated to dignify it as the above? A mythus would have introduced
   an angel, or, at least, a vision, to hinder Mary from submitting the
   child to a ceremony so unworthy of its dignity; or the priests would
   have received an intimation from heaven to bow before the infant, and
   prevent its being thus reduced to the level of ordinary children.
   Nothing of all this took place; but, instead of it, simply and
   unostentatiously, the high dignity and destiny of the child were
   revealed to two faithful souls.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [46] Exod., xiii., 2, 12; Num., iii., 45; xviii., 15; Levit., xii., 2.

   [47] The remarks of Strauss, 1. c., p. 326, do not at all weaken what
   is here said. He adduces, also, the fact that Luke (iii., 21) states
   the baptism without mentioning John's previous refusal (Matt., iii.,
   14); but all the force of this lies in his presupposition that Luke's
   narrative is also mythical, which I deny. As to Gal., iv., 4, we of
   course believe that Christ strictly fulfilled the Mosaic law; but this
   fact, on Jewish principles, is no parallel to the other, viz., that
   Mary, under the circumstances of the miraculous birth, needed
   purification, and that the Messiah, who was destined for the highest
   station in the Theocracy needed a ransom from the obligation to the
   priesthood.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 18. Simeon's Prophetic Discourse.

   The aged and devout Simeon, [48] who had longed and prayed for the
   coming of Messiah's kingdom, had received the Divine assurance that he
   should not die without seeing the desire of his heart. Under a
   peculiarly vivid impulse of this presentiment, he entered the Temple
   just as the infant Jesus was brought in. The Divine glory irradiating
   the child's features harmonized with the longing of his inspired soul;
   he recognized the manifested Messiah, took the infant in his arms, and
   exclaimed, in a burst of inspired gratitude, "Lord, now let thy servant
   depart in peace according to thy promise, for mine eyes have seen thy
   salvation which thou hast prepared before the face of all people, a
   light to enlighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel."
   [49] Then, turning to Mary, he exclaimed, "Behold, this child is set
   for the fall and rising again of many in Israel, and for a sign which
   shall be spoken against; [50] and a sword shall pierce through thine
   own soul also, that the thoughts of many hearts may he revealed."

   Notice, now, the remarkable idea of the Messiah which these words
   convey; precisely such a one as we should expect from a longing Jew, of
   deep, spiritual piety. Although it cannot be said to contain really
   Christian elements, it is far above the ordinary conceptions of the
   times; and this not only confirms the truth of the narrative, but
   stamps the discourse as Simeon's own, and not a speech composed in his
   name. [51] It is true, Simeon conceives the kingdom of Messiah as
   tending to glorify the Jewish people, but yet extends its blessings
   also over the heathen, and believes that the light of the knowledge of
   God will illumine them also. Nor does he conceive Messiah's kingdom as
   triumphing at once by displays of miraculous power, but rather as
   developing itself after struggles with prevailing corruptions, and
   after a gradual purifying of the theocratic nation. The conflict with
   the corrupt part of the nation was to be severe before the Messiah
   could lead his faithful ones to victory. The foreboding of suffering to
   Mary, so indefinitely expressed, bears no mark of post factum
   invention. But the inspired idea of Messiah in the pious old man
   obviously connected the sufferings which he was to endure in his strife
   against the corrupt people with those which were foretold of him in
   Isaiah, liii.

   The other devout one, to whom the destiny of the infant Jesus was
   revealed, was the aged Anna, who heard Simeon's words, shared in his
   joyful anticipations, and united in his song of thanksgiving. [52]
     __________________________________________________________________

   [48] We have no reason to suppose him to be the Rabbi Simeon, the
   father of Gamaliel, as no distinguishing mark of eminence is assigned
   to him.

   [49] It is said in Luke, ii., 33, that "Joseph and Mary marvelled" at
   the words of Simeon. Now it is strange that what he said should appear
   marvellous to the parents, who were already cognizant of so many
   wonderful events in the history of the child. But we are to remember
   that the first three Gospels do not contain connected histories, but
   compilations of separate memoirs; and, again, the writer of the
   narrative may have been so imbued with wonder at the extraordinary
   whole, as to transfer this feeling to his expression in detailing the.
   separate parts, again and again. The narrative would have worn a very
   different aspect had Luke designed to compose a systematic work, with
   the parts accurately adjusted, instead of writing, as he did, with
   simple and straightforward candour.

   [50] The results of Messiah's appearance among men depend upon their
   own spiritual dispositions: salvation for the believer, destruction for
   the unbeliever. Around his banner the hosts of the faithful gather; but
   infidels reject and fight against it. Salvation and doom are
   correlative ideas; all world-historical epochs are epochs of
   condemnation.

   [51] The accurate report of this discourse is accounted for by the
   supposition that the account came indirectly from Anna: not only the
   discourse, but the whole occurrence, must have made a deep impression
   upon her mind.

   [52] We agree with Schleiermacher in thinking it probable that the
   narrative came indirectly from Anna. She is far more minutely described
   in it than Simeon, although the latter and his discourse constitute the
   most important part of the account, while her words are not reported at
   all.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 19. The Longing of the Heathen for a Saviour.--The Star of the Wise
   Men.

   Not only dwellers about Bethlehem, but also men from a far-distant
   land, imbued with the longing desires of which we have spoken, were led
   to the place where Christ was born by a sign suited to their peculiar
   mode of life, a fact which foreshadowed that the hopes of heathen as
   well as Jews, unconscious as well as conscious longings for a Saviour,
   were afterward to be gratified. [53] We have before remarked, that the
   natural developement of the heathen mind worked in the same direction
   as the movement of revealed religion among the Jews to prepare the way
   for Christ's appearance, which was the aim and end of all previous
   human history. There is something analogous to the law and the prophets
   (which, under revealed religion, led directly, and by an organically
   arranged connexion, to Christ), in the sporadic and detached
   revelations, which, here and there among the heathen, arose from the
   Divine consciousness implanted in humanity. As, under the Law, man's
   sense of its insufficiency to work out his justification was
   accompanied by the promise of One who should accomplish what the Law
   could never do, so, in the progress of the pagan mind under the law of
   nature, there arose a sense of the necessity of a new revelation from
   heaven, and a longing desire for a higher order of things. The notion
   of a Messiah, carried about by the Jews in then intercourse with
   different rations, every where found a point of contact with the
   religious sense of men; and thus natural and revealed religion worked
   into each other, as well as separately, in preparing the way for the
   appearance of Christ. [54]

   Thus it happened that a few sages in Arabia (or in some part of the
   Parthian kingdom), who inquired for the course of human events in that
   of the stars, became convinced that a certain constellation or star
   [55] which they beheld was a token [56] of the birth of the great King
   who was expected to arise in the East. It is not necessary to suppose
   that an actual miracle was wrought in this case; the course of natural
   events, under Divine guidance, was made to lead to Christ, just as the
   general moral culture of the heathen, though under natural forms, was
   made to lead to the knowledge of the Saviour.

   The Magi studied astrology, and in their study found a sign of Christ.
   If it offends us to find that God has used the errors of man to lead
   him to a knowledge of the great truths of salvation, as if thereby He
   had lent himself to sustain the False, then must we break in pieces the
   chain of human events, in which the True and the False, the Good and
   the Evil, are s inseparably linked, that the latter often serves for
   the point of transition to the former. Especially do we see this in the
   history of the spread of Christianity, where superstition often paves
   the way for faith. God condescends to the platforms of men in training
   them for belief in the Redeemer, and meets the aspirations of the
   truth-seeking soul even in its error! [57] In the case of the wise men,
   a real truth, perhaps, lay at the bottom of the error; the truth,
   namely, that the greatest of all events, which was to produce the
   greatest revolution in humanity, is actually connected with the epochs
   of the material universe, although the links of the chain may be hidden
   from our view.

   In the narrative before us, we need not attach the same indisputable
   certainty to the details as to the general substance. That the Magians
   should be led, by their astrological researches, to a presentiment of
   the birth of the Saviour in Judea--that their own longings should impel
   them to journey to Jerusalem and do homage to the infant in whom lay
   veiled the mighty King--this is the lofty, the Divine element in the
   transaction, which no one who believes in a guiding, eternal love--no
   one who is conscious of the real import of a Redeemer--can fail to
   recognize.

   We cannot vouch with equal positiveness for the accuracy of Matthew's
   statement of the means by which the sages learned, after their arrival
   in Jerusalem, that the chosen child was to be born in Bethlehem; but it
   matters little whether they were directed thither by Herod, or in some
   other way. At any rate, in so small a place as Bethlehem, they might
   easily have been guided to the exact place by providential means not
   out of the common way; for instance, by meeting with some of the
   shepherds, or other devout persons, who had taken part in the great
   event; and they, perhaps, described the whole as it appeared to them
   subjectively, when, after reaching the abode, they looked up at the
   starry heavens.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [53] If this narrative is to be considered as mythical, we must yet
   ascribe its origin to the same source which produced the Hebrew Gospel,
   viz., the Jewish-Christian congregations in Palestine--a likely origin,
   indeed, for a myth ascribing so great interest and importance to
   uncircumcised heathen! An extravagant exaggeration of the real
   occurrence was subsequently made, probably from a fragment of one of
   the recensions of the Hebrew Gospel (Ignat., Epist. ad Ephes., S: 19):
   "The star sparkled brilliantly beyond all other stars; it was a strange
   and wonderful sight. The other stars, with the sun and moon, formed a
   choir around it, but its blaze outshone them all."

   [54] We do not insist upon Tacit., Hist., 5, 13, and Sueton.,
   Vespasian, 4, who speak of a rumour spread over the whole East, of the
   approaching appearance of the great King, as it is yet doubtful whether
   these passages are not imitated from Josephus.

   [55] It is necessary to distinguish what is objectively real in the
   narrative from what arises from the subjective stand-point of the
   author of our Matthew's Gospel, who certainly did not receive the
   account from an eye-witness. Not merely philological exegesis, but also
   historical criticism, are required for this; and if the result of such
   an inquiry be pronounced arbitrary, because it does not either affirm
   or reject the objective reality of every thing in the account, then
   must all historical criticism be pronounced arbitrary also, for it has
   no other mode of procedure in testing the accuracy of a narrative.

   [56] Conf. Bishop Munter's treatise on the "Star of the Wise Men," and
   Ideler's Chronology, ii., 399. It is immaterial whether the sages were
   led to seek for the sign by a theory of their own, or by a traditional
   one.

   [57] Hamann strikingly says, "How often has God condescended, not
   merely to the feelings and thoughts of men, but even to their failings
   and their prejudices! But this very condescension (one of the highest
   marks of his love to man), which is exhibited every where in the Bible,
   affords subjects of derision to those weaklings who look into the word
   of God for displays of human wisdom, for the gratification of their
   pert and idle curiosity, or for the spirit of their own times or their
   own sect." --Works, i., 58.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 20. The Massacre of the Innocents and the Flight into Egypt.

   The account of the massacre of the infants at Bethlehem cannot appear
   incredible when we consider the character of the man to whom this act
   of blind and senseless cruelty, worthy of an insane tyrant, is
   ascribed.

   It was that Herod, whose crimes, committed in violation of every
   natural feeling, ever urged him on to new deeds of cruelty; whose path
   to the throne, and whose throne itself, were stained with human blood;
   whose vengeance against conspirators, not satiated with their own
   destruction, demanded that of their whole families; [58] whose rage was
   hot, up to the very hour of his death, against his nearest kindred;
   whose wife, Mariamne, and three sons, Alexander, Aristobulus, and
   Antipater, fell victims to his suspicions, the last just before his
   death; who, in a word, certainly deserved that the Emperor Augustus
   should have said of him, "Herodis mallem porcus esse, quam filius."
   [59] It was that Herod, who, at the close of a blood-stained life of
   seventy years goaded by the furies of an evil conscience, racked by a
   painful and incurable disease, waiting for death, but desiring life,
   raging against God and man, and maddened by the thought that the Jews,
   instead of bewailing his death, would rejoice over it as the greatest
   of blessings, commanded the worthies of the nation to be assembled in
   the circus, and issued a secret order [60] that, after his death, they
   should all be slain together, so that their kindred, at least, might
   have cause to weep for his death! [61] Can we deem the crime of
   sacrificing a few children to his rage and blind suspicion too
   atrocious for such a monster?

   As we have no reason to question the narrative of the tyrants attempts
   upon the life of the wonderful child whose birth had come to his ears,
   we can readily connect therewith the flight into Egypt. On the
   supposition that this flight actually took place, it was natural
   enough, especially with a view to obviate any objections which the
   issuing of the Messiah from a profane land might suggest to Jewish
   minds, for men to seek analogies between this occurrence and the
   history of Moses and the theocratic people; while, on the other hand,
   it would be absurd to suppose that a legend of the flight, without any
   historical basis, should have had its origin solely in the desire to
   find such analogies.

   Thus, in the very beginning of the life of Him who was to save the
   world, we see a foreshadowing of what it was afterward to be. The
   believing souls, to whom the lofty import of that life was shown by
   Divine signs, saw in it the fulfilment of their longings; the power of
   the world, ever subservient to evil, raged against it, but, amid all
   dangers, the hand of God guided and brought it forth victorious. [62]
     __________________________________________________________________

   [58] Joseph., Archaeol., xv., viii., S: 4.

   [59] These words were applied, in the fifth century, by an anachronism
   of the pagan write Macrobius, to the massacre of the infants at
   Bethlehem.--Saturnal., ii., 4.

   [60] It Was never executed.

   [61] Josephus (Archaeol., xvii., 6, 5) says of him: "Melaina chole
   auton herei epi pasin exagria inousa." Even Schlosser admits (View of
   Ancient History and Civilization, iii., 1, p. 261 that the account of
   the massacre of the infants, viewed in this connexion, offers no
   improbability.

   [62] Instead of seeing the expression of the idea in the facts, we
   might, with the idealistic ghost-seers, invert the order of things, and
   say that "the idea wrought itself into history in the popular
   traditions" (whose origin, by-the-way, it would be hard to explain
   after what has been said) "of the Christians." In that case we must
   consider every thing remarkable, every scintillation of Divinity in the
   lives of individual men, as absolutely fabulous. This were, indeed, to
   degrade and atheize all history and all life; and such is the necessary
   tendency of that criticism which rejects all immediate Divine
   influence.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 21. The Return to Nazareth.

   Joseph and Mary remained but a short time with the child in Egypt. The
   death of Herod soon recalled them to Palestine, and they returned to
   their old place of abode, the little town of Nazareth, [63] in Galilee.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [63] It was formerly thought that Matthew and Luke contradicted each
   other here. Luke states that Nazareth was the home of Joseph and Mary,
   and that, laving gone to Bethlehem for a special purpose (the taxing),
   they remained long enough to perform the necessary ceremonies after the
   birth of the child, and then returned home. According to Matthew,
   Bethlehem appears to have been their settled place of abode, and they
   were only induced, by special considerations, to betake themselves to
   Nazareth after their return from Egypt. The apparent contradiction
   vanishes when we consider that the memoirs were collected and written
   independently of each other. Luke may have received the account of the
   journey of Christ's parents to Bethlehem, without learning either their
   intention to remain there with the child, or the cause that led them to
   change that intention; while the author of the Greek text of Matthew
   may have adhered to the separate statements that were given to him, in
   ignorance of the special cause of the journey to Bethlehem. Both
   accounts may be equally true, and harmonize well with each other,
   although those who put them imperfectly together may not perceive the
   argument. Moreover, even in Matthew (xiii., 54) we find Nazareth named
   as Christ's "own country." There is no improbability in supposing that
   Joseph and Mary were induced, by the remarkable events which marked the
   birth of the child at Bethlehem, and by the revelation of his destiny
   that was vouchsafed to them, to fix their residence at the seat of the
   tribe of David, in the vicinity of the Holy City; but that fear of
   Archelaus, who emulated his father's cruelty and contempt of holy
   things, led them to change this purpose. This much is certain, that
   Matthew's statement of the apprehension which grew out of Archelaus's
   accession to the government agrees precisely with the testimony of
   history in regard to that prince, who, in the tenth year of his reign,
   was accused before Augustus of various crimes, and exiled to
   Vienna.--Joseph., xvii., xiii., 2.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 22. Brothers and Sisters of Jesus; the Mention of them in the Gospel
   Narrative, Proof of its historical Character.

   Various scattered statements in the Evangelists lead us to conclude
   that Christ had younger brothers and sisters. [64] The religious
   principles of Joseph and Mary offered no hindrance to this; it
   harmonizes well with the Christian view of the sanctity of wedlock; nor
   is there any thing at variance with it in the authentic traditions of
   the apostolic age.

   But had the miraculous conception been mythical, the idea of later-born
   children would have been abhorrent to the spirit which originated such
   a myth. In later times, indeed, this idea did appear abhorrent to some
   minds; but it still remains a mystery why the mythical spirit did not
   exercise its power in remodelling the historical elements.

   It is worthy of note that Mark and John agree in stating that these
   brothers of the Saviour remained unbelievers during his stay on earth,
   a fact which illustrates the truthfulness of the history, since it by
   no means tended to glorify either Christ or his brothers, one of whom,
   at least (James), was in high repute among the Jewish Christians. It is
   not to be wondered at that the prophet was without honour among those
   who dwelt under the same roof, and saw him grow up under the same laws
   of ordinary human nature with themselves. True, this daily contact
   afforded them many opportunities of beholding the Divinity that
   streamed through the veil of his flesh, yet it required a spiritual
   mind and a lively faith to recognize the revealed Son of God in the
   lowly garb of humanity. The impression of humanity made upon their
   senses day after day, and thus grown into a habit, could not be made to
   yield to the Divine manifestations, unless in longer time than was
   required for others; but when it did yield, and, after such
   long-continued opposition, they acknowledged their brother as the Son
   of God and the Messiah, they only became thereby the more trustworthy
   witnesses.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [64] The word heos, in Matt., i., 25, in connexion with the statement
   that Jesus was Mary's first-born, leads us to infer Matthew's knowledge
   of children subsequently born to her (conf. De Wette on the passage),
   which we the more certainly conclude, as the same Evangelist mentions
   brothers and sisters of Jesus especially, together with his
   mother.--See Matt., xiii., 55. This view is the most natural in such
   passages as name them together, e. g., Luke, viii., 21; Mark, iii., 31;
   John, ii., 12; vii., 3. It would be forced work indeed to suppose that
   in all these passages adelphoi is placed for anepsioi.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 23. Consciousness of Messiahship in the Mind of Jesus.--Jesus among
   the Doctors.

   The extraordinary circumstances of the birth of Christ not only served
   as portents of the greatest event in the world's history, but also,
   perhaps, furnished external occasions for the developement, in the mind
   of Jesus, of the consciousness of his Messiahship. True, this
   developement, far from admitting of mechanical illustrations, required,
   above all, an inward light in the depths of the higher
   self-consciousness, the internal testimony of the Spirit; but such a
   testimony by no means precludes the agency of external impressions,
   acting as suggestive occasions. The inward Divine light and the
   revelation from outward events touch upon each other; and this
   connexion between the internal and the external belongs to the essence
   of purely human developement. [65]

   Of the early history of Jesus we have only a singe incident; but that
   incident strikingly illustrates the manner in which the consciousness
   of his Divine nature developed itself in the mind of the child. Jesus
   had attained his twelfth year, a period which was regarded among the
   Jews as the dividing line between childhood and youth, and at which
   regular religious instruction and the study of the Law were generally
   entered upon. For that reason, his parents, who were accustomed [66] to
   visit Jerusalem together [67] annually at the time of the Passover,
   took him with them then for the first time. When the feast was over,
   and they were setting out on their return, they missed their son; this,
   however, does not seem to have alarmed them, and perhaps he was
   accustomed to remain with certain kindred families or friends; indeed,
   we are told (Luke, ii., 44) that they expected to find him "in the
   company," at the evening halt of the caravan. Disappointed in this
   expectation, they returned the next morning to Jerusalem, and on the
   following day found him in the synagogue of the Temple among the
   priests, who had been led by his questions into a conversation on
   points of faith. [68] His parents reproached him for the. uneasiness he
   had caused them, and he replied, "Why did you seek me? Did you not know
   that I must be about my Father's business?" Now these words of Jesus
   contain no explanation, beyond his tender years, [69] of the relations
   which he sustained to the Father; they manifest simply the
   consciousness of a child, a depth, to be sure, but yet only a depth of
   presentiment.

   We can draw various important inferences from this incident in the
   early life of Christ. At a tender age he studied the Old Testament, and
   obtained a better knowledge of its religious value by the light that
   was within him than any human instruction could have imparted. Nor was
   this beaming forth of an immediate consciousness of Divine things in
   the mind of the child, in advance of the developement of his powers of
   discursive reason, at all alien to the character and progress of human
   nature, but entirely in harmony with it. Nor need we wonder that the
   infinite riches of the hidden spiritual life of the child first
   manifested themselves to his consciousness, as if suggested by his
   conversation with the doctors, and that his direct intuitions of Divine
   truth, the flashes of spiritual light that emanated from him, amazed
   the masters in Israel. It not unfrequently happens, in our human life,
   that the questions of others are thus suggestive to great minds, and,
   like steel upon the flint, draw forth their inner light, at the same
   time revealing to their own souls the unknown treasures that lay in
   their hidden depths. But they give more than they receive; the outward
   suggestion only excites to action their creative energy; and men of
   reflective and receptive, rather than creative minds, by inciting the
   latter to know and develop their vast resources, may not only learn
   much from their utterance, but also diffuse the streams which gush with
   overflowing fulness from these abundant well-springs. And these remarks
   applying--in a sense in which they apply to no other--to that mind,
   lofty beyond all human comparison, whose creative thoughts are to
   fertilize the spiritual life of man through all ages, and whose
   creative power sprang from its mysterious union with that Divine Word,
   which gave birth to all things, show us that His consciousness
   developed itself gradually, and in perfect accordance with the laws of
   human life, from that mysterious union which formed its ground.

   And further--without in the least attempting to do away with the
   peculiar form of the child's spiritual life--we can recognize in this
   incident a dawning sense of his Divine mission in the mind of Jesus: a
   sense, however, not yet unfolded in the form in which the corruption of
   the world, objectively presented, alone could occasion its
   developement. The child found congenial occupation in the things of
   God: in the Temple he was at home. And, on the other hand, we see an
   opening consciousness of the peculiar relation in which he stood to the
   Father as the Son of God. We delight to find in the early lives of
   eminent men some glimpses of the future, some indications of their
   after greatness; so we gladly recognize, in the pregnant words of the
   child, a foreshadowing of what is afterward so fully revealed to us in
   the discourses of the completely manifested Christ, especially as they
   are given to us in John's Gospel.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [65] Weisse maintains (I cannot see on what grounds) that this view
   degrades the Divine element in the inner calling of Christ to a
   mechanical result of circumstances, p. 264.

   [66] Luke (ii., 42) says, "that they went to Jerusalem every year at
   the feast of the Passover." This may mean either that Joseph attended
   yearly no other feast but this, which would imply that it was not the
   general custom in Galilee to attend the three chief feasts at
   Jerusalem, or that Mary used to accompany him to this feast only. In
   either case, it proves the peculiar eminence of the Passover.

   [67] Mary accompanied her husband, although the Jewish law did not
   demand it.

   [68] How little of the mythical there is in this may be seen from the
   case of Josephus, who states of himself, that when he was fourteen
   years old the priests of the city met with him to put questions to him
   about the law.

   [69] The addition of extravagant and fabulous colourings to historical
   elements may be seen in such instances as the following from Irenaeus,
   on the childhood of Jesus, taken out of an apocryphal Gospel
   originating in Palestine: "When the teacher told the boy to pronounce
   Aleph, he did so. But when he told him to say Beth, the child replied,
   `Tell me the meaning of Aleph, and then I will tell you what Beth is"
   (an allusion to the mystical import of the letters, according to the
   Kabbala). There was any number of such apocryphal Gospels, as Irenaeus
   says.
     __________________________________________________________________
     __________________________________________________________________
     __________________________________________________________________

   [30] I do not enter into the minute researches which are necessary to
   fix the exact date of Christ's birth.
     __________________________________________________________________

BOOK II.
     __________________________________________________________________

THE MENTAL CULTURE OF JESUS. HIS LIFE TO THE TIME OF HIS PUBLIC MINISTRY.

                                    BOOK II.

THE MENTAL CULTURE OF JESUS. HIS LIFE TO THE TIME OF HIS PUBLIC MINISTRY.
     __________________________________________________________________
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER I.

  JESUS NOT EDUCATED IN THE THEOLOGICAL SCHOOLS OF THE JEWS.

   WE have already seen that in the early progress of the mind of Christ
   every thing was original and direct, and that external occasions were
   needed only to bring out his inward self-activity. As we must suppose
   that his developement was subsequently continued in the same way, we
   come at once to the conclusion that His education for a teacher was not
   due to any of the theological schools then existing in Judea. But we
   can reach this conclusion also by comparing the peculiar tendencies of
   those schools with the aims of Christ, with his mode of life and
   instruction, and with the spirit which he diffused around him.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 24. The Pharisees.

   In the outset, how unlike Christ was the legal spirit of Pharisaism,
   with its soul-crushing statutes, its dead theology of the letter, and
   its barren subtilties! Some few of the sect, endowed with a more
   earnest religious sense, and a more sincere love of truth than their
   fellows, could not resist the impression of Christ's Divine
   manifestation; but they came to him with a full knowledge of the
   difference between his mode of teaching and theirs, and not as to a
   teacher sprung from among themselves. They had first to overcome their
   surprise at his strange and extraordinary language, before they could
   enter into closer connexion with him. They had to renounce the wisdom
   of their schools, to disclaim their legal righteousness, and to attach
   themselves to Christ with the same sense of deficiency in themselves,
   and the same desire for what he alone could impart, as all other men.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 25. The Sadducees.

   The spirit of the Sadducees presents a still more rugged contrast to
   the spirit of Christ. Their schools agreed in nothing but denying;
   their only bond of union was opposition to the Pharisees, against whom
   they strove to re-establish the original Hebraism, freed from the
   foreign elements which the Pharisaic statutes had mixed up with it. But
   an agreement in negation can be only an apparent one, if the negation
   rests upon an opposite positive principle. Thus certain negative
   doctrines, that agree with Protestantism in rejecting the authority and
   traditions of the Romish Church, separate themselves further from
   Protestantism than the Romish doctrine itself, by the affirmative
   principle on which they rest their denial, and by carrying that denial
   too far. The single positive principle of Sadduceeism was the one-sided
   prominence given by them to morality, which they separated from its
   necessary inward union with religion. But Christ's combat with the
   Pharisees arose out of the fullest interpenetration of the moral and
   religious elements. The Sadducees wished to cut off the progressive
   developement of Hebraism at an arbitrary point. They refused to
   recognize the growing consciousness of God, which, derived from the
   Mosaic institute, formed a substantial feature of Judaism, and hence
   could not comprehend the higher religious element from which, as a
   germ, under successive Divine revelations, the spiritual life of
   Judaism was to be gradually developed. [70] Rejecting all such growth
   as foreign and false, they held a subordinate and isolated point to be
   absolute and perpetual; adhering to the letter rather than the spirit.
   To the forced allegorizing of the Pharisees in interpreting the
   Scripture, they opposed a slavishly literal and narrow exegesis. But
   Christ, on the other hand, while he rejected the Pharisaic traditions,
   received into his doctrine all the riches of Divine knowledge which the
   progressive growth of Theism, up to the time of John the Baptist, had
   brought forth. His agreement, then, with the Sadducees, consisting, as
   it did, solely in opposition to Pharisaism, was merely negative and
   apparent.

   Some have detected an affinity between the moral teaching of Christ and
   the Anti-Eudaemonism of the Sadducees, the principle, namely, that man
   must do good for its own sake, without the hope of future recompense.
   [71] But here, again, Christianity agrees with Sadduceeisnm only in
   what it denies, not in what it affirms. The divine life of Christianity
   has no more affinity for that selfish Eudaemonism which seeks the good
   as means to an end, than for the spirit of Sadduceeism which denies the
   higher aims of moral action, and makes it altogether "of the earth,
   earthly." These opposite errors sprang from one common source, namely,
   the debasement of the spiritual life into worldliness, and therefore
   Christianity is alike antagonistic to them both, whether seen in the
   worldly admission of a future life by the Pharisees, or in its worldly
   rejection by the Sadducees. Yet in the doctrine of the former, it must
   be admitted, lay a germ of truth which only needed to be freed from
   selfish and sensual tendencies to show itself in its full spiritual
   import. [72]
     __________________________________________________________________

   [70] See below for the way in which Christ illustrated this to the
   Sadducees. As to the Canon, it cannot be actually proved that the
   Sadducees held it differently from other Jews. It is true, Josephus
   says (Archaeol., xiii., x., 6) that they rejected every thing but the
   Mosaic law--haper ouk anagegraptai en tois Mouseos nomois. But the
   Mosaic law is not here opposed to the rest of the Canon, but to oral
   traditions; and the only question was whether the Mosaic law alone, or
   in connexion with oral tradition, was to be held as authority for
   religious usages. The remaining books of the Old Testament were not in
   dispute, as no religious usages at all were derived from them. Still,
   it is not unlikely that the Sadducees went so far, in their opposition
   to Pharisaism, as to reject all doctrines that could not be shown to
   have a Mosaic origin, and to consider the Pentateuch as the sole, or,
   at least, the chief, source of religious truth. As we find such views
   of the Canon among the Jewish-Christian sects (Cf. the Clementines), we
   may infer that they previously existed among the Jews. They would
   hardly have denied Immortality and the Resurrection, if they had held
   the Prophets to be law in the same sense as the Pentateuch; although it
   is possible that they interpreted such passages of the Prophets in
   another way. The general terms in which Josephus speaks of the
   recognition of the Canon among the Jews (i., c. Apion, S: 8) do not
   suffice to prove that there were no differences in this respect in the
   different sects.

   [71] No reliance is to be placed in the Talmudic tradition in Pirke
   Aboth, i., 3, according to which the principle thus perverted to the
   denial of a future life came from Antigonus Ish Socho, or Simeon the
   Just. The prevalent orthodoxy was always inclined to ascribe error to
   the perversion of some orthodox doctrine.

   [72] Dr. von Coelln arrives at the conclusion that "the moral
   philosophy of the Sadducees was better than that of the Pharisees,
   because the New Testament does not attack their moral principles, but
   only their denial of the Resurrection."--(Bibl. Theol., i., 450.) We do
   not admit the inference. This silence of the New Testament can be
   readily accounted for on the ground that Sadduceeism had few points in
   common with Christianity; and while it was necessary to guard men
   frequently against Pharisaic abuses of great truths (e. g., of the
   truth that morality and religion are inseparable), the open contrast of
   Sadduceeism made such special controversy with its teachers
   unnecessary.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 26. The Essenes.

   The secrecy which the sect of the Essenes affected has given rise to
   many subtle and arbitrary hypotheses. Some have found in its ardent
   religious spirit ground for believing in a connexion between it and
   Christianity. [73] This argument, by proving too much, proves nothing;
   on the same principle we might show a connexion between Christianity
   and every form under which mysticism has appeared and reappeared in the
   history of religion. But there were other points of similarity between
   Essenism and Christianity, besides this mystic element which has its
   source in man's native religious tendencies. Essenism grew out of
   Judaism, and was pervaded by a moral belief in God, a spirit which was
   nourished and strengthened by habits of seclusion from the stir of
   life, of religious communion, and of quiet prayer and meditation. Other
   resemblances may be discovered between Essenism and the doctrine of
   Christ, or the forms of the first Christian communities; but they may
   be traced, like those just mentioned, to sources common to both, and
   therefore afford no proof of a real connexion between them. A closer
   examination will demonstrate that the similarities were only apparent,
   while the differences were essential.

   For instance, the Essenes prohibited oaths, and so did Christ. Here is
   a resemblance. But the former, confounding the spirit with the letter,
   made the prohibition--which grew out of their rule of absolute veracity
   and mutual confidence in each other--a positive law, unconditionally
   binding, not only within their own community, but in the general
   intercourse of life. Christ prohibited oaths, on the other hand. not by
   an enactment binding only from without, but by a law developing itself
   outwardly from the new spiritual life which he himself implanted in his
   followers. Paul knew that an asseveration, made for right ends, and in
   the spirit of Christ's command, was no violation of that command.

   Again, the law of the Essenes prohibited slavery, and so was Christ's
   intended to subvert it. The sect agreed with the Saviour in seeing that
   all men alike bear the image of God, and that none can have the right,
   by holding their fellows as property, to degrade that image into a
   brute or a chattel. So far Essenism and Christianity agree; but see
   wherein they differ. The one was a formula for a small circle of
   devotees; the other was a system for the regeneration of mankind: the
   one made positive enactments, acting by pressure from without; the
   other implanted new moral principles, to work from within: the one put
   its law in force at once, and declared that no slave could be held in
   its communion; the other gave no direct command upon the subject. Yet
   the whole spirit of Christ's teaching tended to create in men's minds a
   moral sense of the evil of a relation so utterly subversive of all that
   is good in humanity, and thus to effect its entire abolition.

   Let us take another apparent resemblance. The Essenes devoted
   themselves much to healing the sick, and so did Christ (and the gift of
   healing was imparted to the first congregations); but the agencies
   which they employed were essentially different. They made use of
   natural remedies, drawn from the vegetable and mineral kingdoms, and
   handed down the knowledge thereof in their books; [74] but the Saviour
   and his apostles wrought their cures by no intermediate agents, but by
   the direct operation of power from on high. [75] Even when Christ did
   make use of physical means, the results were always out of proportion
   to them.

   Finally, let us compare the scope of Essenism, as a whole, with the
   aims of Christ's mission. Essenism, probably originating in a
   commingling of Judaism with the old Oriental [76] theosophy, manifested
   a spirit at once monkish and schismatic. [77] How strong a contrast
   does such a system present to the active spirit of the Gospel, aiming
   only to implant holy feelings, and so to secure holy lives, seeking
   every where for needy souls, and, wherever the need appears, pouring
   forth its exhaustless treasures without stint! Such a spirit broke away
   at once the wall of separation between man and man, which the
   aristocratic and exclusive spiritual life of Essenism was ever striving
   to build up.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [73] First alluded to in an unpublished treatise of J. G. Wachter, De
   Primordiis Christianae Religionis, libri duo. See, especially,
   Reinhard's Versuch ueber den Plan Jesu [Reinhard's Plan of the Founder
   of Christianity, translated by A. Kaufman, Andover].

   [74] Joseph., B. J., ii., viii., enthen (i. e., from old writings)
   autois pros therapeian pathon rhizai te alexeterioi kai lithon
   idiotetes anereunontai.

   [75] Cf. what is said further on, under the head of "The Miracles of
   Christ."

   [76] Some modem writers prefer to derive Essenism from Alexandrian
   Platonism transplanted into Palestine, but I can find no proof that
   their view explains the general character or the individual features of
   Essenism as well as that in the text. Moreover, I remain of the opinion
   that the doctrines of the Therapeutae and the Essenes were allied, but
   independent religious tendencies.

   [77] I can give no other translation than the following to the passage
   in Josephus (Archaeol., xviii., 1, 5) which speaks of the Essenes. It
   will be seen that I take the word eirgomenoi, not in the passive, but
   in the middle sense. "They send, it is true, their offerings to the
   temple, but they bring no sacrifices, because they so greatly prefer
   their own way of purifying and sanctifying themselves; and, for fear of
   defilement by taking part with the rest of the people, they keep away
   from the common sanctuary, and make their sacrifices apart surrounded
   only by the initiated."
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 27. Supposed Influence of the Alexandrian--Jewish Doctrines.

   A few words in regard to the supposed influence of the doctrines of the
   Alexandrian Jews upon Christ's culture. Even admitting that these
   doctrines penetrated into Palestine, it can by no means be presupposed
   that they entered into Galilee, and especially into the narrow circle
   of the common people within which he was educated. The grounds on which
   some profess to find traces of such an influence in the discourses of
   Christ would serve as well to prove that Christianity derived its
   origin from Brama or Buddhu. [78]
     __________________________________________________________________

   [78] Cf. my Kirchengeschichte, 2d edit., Part I., for the relation
   between the Alexandrian theology and Christianity.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 28. Affinity of Christianity, as absolute Truth, for the various
   opposing Religious Systems.

   On the dissolution of Judaism, its elements, originally joined together
   in a living unity, necessarily produced various religious tendencies,
   which mutually opposed and excluded each other. In all these we can
   find something akin to the new creation of Christianity. And wherever
   Christianity appears for the first time, or reveals itself anew in its
   own glory, it must offer some points of affinity for the different
   opposing systems. The living, perfect truth has points of tangency for
   the one-sided forms of error; though we may not be thereby enabled to
   put together the perfect whole from the scattered and repellent
   fragments.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 29. Christ's Teaching revealed from within, not received from
   without.

   Had the source of Christ's mighty power been merely a doctrine, it
   might have been received, or at least suggested, from abroad. But his
   power lay in the impression which his manifestation and life as the
   Incarnate God produced; and this could never have been derived from
   without. [79] The peculiar import of his doctrine, as such, consists in
   its relation to himself as a part of his self-revelation, an image of
   his unoriginated and inherent life; and this alone suffices to defy all
   attempts at external explanation.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [79] We recall here the profound sentiment of a prophetic German mind:
   "The pearl of Christianity is a life hidden in God, a truth in Christ
   the Mediator, a power which consists neither in words and forms, nor in
   dogmas and outward acts; it cannot, therefore, be valued by the common
   standards of logic or ethics."--Hamann, iv., 285.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 30. The popular Sentiment in regard to Christ's Connexion with the
   Schools.

   Had Jesus been trained in the Jewish seminaries, [80] his opponents
   would, doubtless, have reproached him with the arrogance of setting up
   for master where he himself had been a pupil. But, on the contrary, we
   find that they censured him for attempting to explain the Scriptures
   without having enjoyed the advantages of the schools (John, vii., 15).
   His first appearance as a teacher in the synagogue at Nazareth caused
   even greater surprise, as he was known there, not as one learned in the
   Law, but rather as a carpenter's son, who had, perhaps, himself worked
   at his father's trade. [81] The general impression of his discourses
   every where was, that they contained totally different materials from
   those furnished by the theological schools (Matt., vii., 29).
     __________________________________________________________________

   [80] Dr. Paulus supposes that Christ, because he was called Rabbi, not
   only by his disciples, but by the distinguished Rabbi Nicodemus, and
   even by his enemies (John, vi., 25), obtained that title in the way
   usual among the Jews; and he intimates that Christ studied with the
   rabbis of the Essenes, and perhaps obtained the degree from them (Life
   of Christ, i., 1, 122). But when we remember that he stood at the head
   of a party which recognized his prophetic character, we can see why
   others, who did not recognize it, would yet call him their master, e.
   g., Matt., xvii., 24; ho didaskalos humon. Nicodemus, however, did
   really acknowledge him as a Divine teacher; nor were those who
   addressed him as Rabbi, in John, vi., 25, by any means his enemies.
   This style of address, therefore, does not imply his possession of a
   title from a Jewish tribunal, but rather arose in the circle of
   followers that he gathered around him. As to the Essenes, it cannot be
   proved that they created rabbis, as did the Jewish synagogues; and if
   they did, such titles would hardly be recognized by the prevailing
   party, the Pharisees.

   [81] It cannot be decided certainly that this was the case. There was a
   tradition in primitive Christian times to that effect; so Justin Martyr
   (Dialog., c. Tryph., 316) says: tauta ta tektonika erga eirgaxeto en
   anthropois o'n, kai zuga dia touton kai ta tes dikaiosu'nes sombola
   didaskon kai energe bion. It may be that this, and the tradition, also,
   that Christ was destitute of personal beauty, were rather ideal than
   historical conceptions, framed to conform with his humble condition "in
   the form of a servant." Christ was not to come forth from a high
   position, but from a lowly workshop; as, according to the reproach of
   Celsus, his first followers were mechanics. But the report may have
   been true, and was, if the ordinary reading of Mark, vi., 3, be
   correct. Against this has been adduced the following passage in Orig.,
   cont. Cels., vi., 36, viz.: hoti oudamou ton en tais ekklesi'ais
   pherome'non euangeli'on te'kton auto` o Iesous anagegraptai. The
   reading in Mark, vi., 3, may have been altered before the time of
   Origen, from a false pride that took offence at Christ's working as a
   common mechanic and a foolish desire to conciliate the pagans, who
   reproached Christians with this feature in the life of their founder.
   Fritzsche founds an ineffectual argument on the following internal
   ground, viz.: "Christ's working at a trade would not have interfered
   with his appearing as a public teacher. The Jews had no contempt for
   artisans, and even the scribes sometimes supported themselves by
   mechanical toils." True, the scribes might occasionally work at trades
   without reproach, but to be merely a mechanic (and no scribe) was quite
   a different thing; so that the ensuing objection, "How comes this
   carpenter to set up as our teacher?" was quite in character, even among
   Jews. It does not follow because, afterward, only designations of
   family are given in the passage, that therefore the first designation
   was fixed upon him only as "the son of the carpenter;" for, certainly,
   the two ideas, "he himself is only a carpenter," and "his relations
   live among us as ordinary people," hang well together. They could
   utter, first, the most cutting contrast, "he is a carpenter, like the
   others, and he now will be a prophet," and then mention only his
   relations who were yet living, but not Joseph, who was already dead. It
   is perfectly in accordance with the genius of Christianity (although
   not necessarily flowing from it), that the Highest should thus spring
   from an humble walk of life, and that the Divine glory should manifest
   itself at first to men in so lowly a form. The Redeemer thus ennobled
   human labour and the forms of common life; there was thenceforth to be
   no banauson in the relations of human society. Thus began the influence
   of Christianity upon the civil and social relations of men--an
   influence which has gone on increasing from that day to this.
     __________________________________________________________________
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER II.

  COURSE OF CHRIST'S LIFE UP TO THE OPENING OF HIS PUBLIC M1NISTRY.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 31. Growing Consciousness of His Messiahship in Christ.

   ALTHOUGH so many years of our Saviour's life are veiled in obscurity,
   we cannot believe that the full consciousness of a Divine call which he
   displayed in his later years was of sudden growth, If a great man
   accomplishes, within a very brief period, labours of paramount
   importance to the world, and which he himself regards as the task of
   his life, we must presume that the strength and energies of his
   previous years were concentrated into that limited period, and that the
   former only constituted a time of preparation for the latter.

   Most of all must this be true of the labours of Christ, the greatest
   and most important that the world has known. We have the right to
   presume that He who assumed as his task the salvation of the human race
   made his whole previous existence to bear upon this mighty labour. The
   idea of the Messiah, as Redeemer and King, streamed forth in Divine
   light, from the course of the theocracy and the scattered intimations
   of the Old Testament, in full extent and clearness, and in Divine light
   he recognized this Messiahship as his own; and this consciousness of
   God within him harmonized with the extraordinary phenomena that
   occurred at his birth.

   But the negative side of the Messiahship, namely, its relation to sin.
   he could not learn from self-contemplation. He could not learn
   depravity by experience; yet, without this knowledge, although the idea
   of the Messiah as theocratic king might have been fully developed in
   his mind, an essential element of his relations to humanity would have
   remained foreign to him. But although his personal experience could not
   unfold this peculiar modification of the Messianic consciousness, many
   of its essential features were continually suggested by his intercourse
   with the outer world. There, in all the relations of life, he saw human
   depravity and its attendant wretchedness. The sight, and the
   sympathizing love which it awoke, made a profound impression upon his
   soul, and formed, at least, a basis for the consciousness of his own
   relation to it as Messiah.

   We may assume, then, that when he reached his thirtieth year, [82]
   fully assured of his call to the Messiahship, he waited only for a sign
   from God to emerge from his obscurity and enter upon his work. This
   sign was to be given him by means of the last of God's witnesses under
   the old dispensation, whose calling it was to prepare the way for the
   new developement of the kingdom of God--by John the Baptist, the last
   representative of the prophetic spirit of the Old Testament, whose
   relation to Christ and his office we shall now more particularly
   examine. [83]
     __________________________________________________________________

   [82] The age at which the Levites entered on their office.--Numb., iv.

   [83] A promising young theologian of Luebeck, L. von Rohden, has lately
   put forth an excellent treatise on this subject, well adapted for
   general circulation, entitled "Johannes der Taeufer, in seinem Leben
   und Wirken dargestellt."
     __________________________________________________________________
     __________________________________________________________________
     __________________________________________________________________
     __________________________________________________________________

BOOK III.
     __________________________________________________________________

PREPARATIVES TO THE PUBLIC MINISTRY OF CHRIST
     __________________________________________________________________

PART I. OBJECTIVE PREPARATION.--JOHN THE BAPTIST.

PART I1. SUBJECTIVE PREPARATION.--THE TEMPTATION.

                                   BOOK III.

PREPARATIVES TO THE PUBLIC MINISTRY OF CHRIST.
     __________________________________________________________________

PART I.

OBJECTIVE PREPARATION. THE MINISTRY OF JOHN THE BAPTIST.
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER I.

  THE CALLING OF THE BAPTIST, AND HIS RELATIONS TO THE JEWS.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 32. How far the Baptist revived the Expectation of a Messiah.

   PROCLAMATION of the approaching kingdom of God, involving the
   restoration of the sunken glory of the Theocracy, and the dawning of a
   brighter day upon God's oppressed ones, was essentially necessary as a
   preparation for Christ's public ministry.

   But this was not all; it was equally necessary to announce Him who was
   called to the accomplishment of this great work. The expectation of the
   kingdom and the king should always have gone together; but we find that
   they did not actually do so. The prophecies of the general renewal were
   often distinct from those which foretold the agent chosen by God to
   accomplish it; and the hope of the former often existed in minds which
   had lost sight of the latter. A Philo proves this. The Greek and
   Alexandrian culture, and perhaps the combination of the two in the
   religious Realism of Palestine, may have tended to bring about this
   result. Be that as it may, it is essential for our purpose to keep the
   two ideas--the announcement of the kingdom and the proclamation of the
   Messiah--separate from each other.

   Some suppose that John the Baptist was the first [84] to suggest the
   idea of a Messiah to the Jewish mind of that day. But certainly this
   idea, so thoroughly interwoven with the theocratic consciousness, could
   not have fallen into oblivion; nay, the sufferings of the people, their
   shame at being slaves to those whom they believed themselves destined
   to rule, and their desire for deliverance from this degrading bondage,
   must have constantly tended to bring it more and more vividly before
   them. It would be going too far, then, to say that this idea had been
   lost out of the mind of that age, and that its revival was due to the
   efforts of a single individual. Much rather should we conceive that the
   spirit of the individual was stirred by an impulse from the spirit of
   the age. But while the general tendency of the popular mind prepared
   the way for John, his labours reacted mightily upon the spirit of the
   age, and formed, indeed, a new epoch in the hopes of men for the
   appearance of the Kingdom and of the Messiah. Christ himself makes this
   epoch the transition-period between the old and the new dispensations.
   [85]

   It was essential, also, to this preparation for the Messiah, that the
   minds of the people should obtain a clear conception of the object to
   which their hopes were directed, and the means by which it was to be
   obtained, involving a more correct notion of the work and kingdom of
   Messiah, and of the moral requisites for participation therein. All
   this belonged to the calling of the Old-Testament order of prophets, of
   which John constituted the apex. We must look for the peculiar features
   of his position in the fact that he himself not only formed the point
   of transition to the new era, but was allowed to recognize and point
   out the Messiah, and to give the signal for the beginning of his public
   ministry.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [84] So Schleiermacher (Christliche Sittenlehre, p. 19) states that
   John's work was "to revive the forgotten idea of the Messiah."

   [85] Matt., xi., 12. We shall have occasion to say more on this passage
   hereafter.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 33. Causes of Obscurity in the Accounts left us of the
   Baptist.--Sources: The Evangelists. Josephus.

   The difficulties and obscurities that remain in the accounts of this
   remarkable man seem to have arisen necessarily from the peculiar
   stand-point which he occupied. In a prophet or a forerunner, we must
   always distinguish between what he utters with clear
   self-consciousness, and what lies beyond the utterance, concealed even
   from himself, until a later period; between the fundamental idea, and
   the form, perhaps not wholly fitting, in which it veils itself.
   Opposite elements always meet each other in an epoch which constitutes
   the transition-point from one stage of developement to another; and we
   cannot look for a logical and connected mode of thinking in the
   representative of such an epoch. In some of his utterances we may find
   traces of the old period; in others, longings for the new; and in
   bringing them together, we may find different views which cannot always
   be made perfectly to harmonize.

   The nature of the authorities to which we are confined makes it
   peculiarly difficult to come at the objective truth in regard to John
   the Baptist. On the one side we have the accounts of the Evangelists,
   given from the Christian stand-point, and for religious ends; and on
   the other that of Josephus, [86] which is purely historical in its
   character and aims..

   As to the first, it is very probable that John could be better
   understood in the light of Christianity than he understood himself and
   his mission. The aims of a preparatory and transition-period are always
   better comprehended after their accomplishment than before; so, truths
   which were veiled from John's apprehension stood clearly forth before
   the minds of the Evangelists. But this very fact may have caused the
   obscurity which we find in their accounts of the Baptist. We are very
   apt, in describing a lower point of view from a higher, to attribute to
   the former what belongs only to the latter. Any one who has passed
   through a subordinate and preparatory stage of thought to a higher one,
   will find it hard to keep the distinction between the two clearly
   before his consciousness: they blend themselves together in spite of
   him. So, perhaps, it may have happened that the distinctive differences
   between the stand-point of John and that of Christianity were lost
   sight of when the evangelical accounts were prepared, and that the
   Baptist was represented as nearer to Christianity than he really was.
   The likelihood of this result would be all the greater if the Christian
   writer had been himself a disciple of John; such a one, even though
   endowed with the sincerest love of truth, would naturally see more in
   the words of his old master than the latter himself, under his peculiar
   circumstances, could possibly have intended. After a prophecy has
   reached its fulfilment, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to
   reproduce the precise consciousness under which the prediction was
   uttered.

   If, therefore, we find, on close inquiry, that the historical
   statements are somewhat obscured by subjective influences, our estimate
   of their veracity need be in no wise affected thereby. Such a result
   would not conflict in the least with the only tenable idea of
   Inspiration. The organs which the Holy Ghost illuminated and inspired
   to convey his truth to men retained their individual peculiarities, and
   remained within the sphere of the psychological laws of our being.
   Besides Inspiration, both in its nature and its object, refers only to
   man's religious interests and to points connected with it. But
   practical religion requires only a knowledge of the truth itself; it
   needs not to understand the gradual genetic developement of the truth
   in the intellect, or to distinguish the various stages of its advance
   to distinct and perfect consciousness. On the other hand, these latter
   are precisely the aims towards which scientific history directs itself.
   It follows, therefore, that the interest of practical religion and that
   of scientific history may not always run in the same channel; and the
   latter must give place to the former, especially in points so vital as
   the direct impression which Christ made upon mankind. Frequent
   illustrations of this distinction are afforded by the interpretations
   of passages from the Old Testament given by the apostles.

   In all our inquiries into the evangelical histories, we must keep in
   view the fact that they were written not to satisfy scientific, but
   religious wants; not to afford materials for systematic history, but to
   set forth the ground of human salvation in Christ and his kingdom.
   There was, indeed, one who could distinguish the different stages in
   the developement of revelation at a single piercing glance; but this
   one was He in whom God and man were united. He himself told his
   Apostles that ho had this power, and his words in regard to the
   stand-point of John the Baptist illustrate it. These words alone must
   form our guiding light.

   It might be inferred, if what we have said be true, that the account of
   Josephus, which proceeds from a purely historical interest, should be
   preferred to that of the Evangelists. But it must not be forgotten that
   historical events can only be correctly understood when viewed from the
   stand-point of the province to which they belong; and so events that
   fall within the sphere of religion are only intelligible from a
   religious stand-point. And as John's import to the history of the world
   consists in the fact that he formed the dividing line between the two
   stages of developement in the kingdom of God, it cannot be fully
   understood except by an intuitive religious sense, capable of
   appreciating religious phenomena. Of such a religious sense Josephus
   was destitute. Now the religious sense can get along without the
   scientific; but the latter cannot do without the former, where the
   understanding of religious events is concerned; and hence the living
   peculiarities of John the Baptist vanished under the hands of Josephus,
   although he was able to apprehend John's character and appearance in
   their general features. To his religious deficiency must be added his
   habit of adapting himself to the taste and culture of the Greeks, a
   habit which could not but wear away his Jewish modes of thought and
   feeling. He saw in John only a man of moral ardour, who taught the
   truth to the Jews, rebuked their corruptions, and offered them, instead
   of their lustrations and outward righteousness, a symbol of inward
   spiritual purification in his water-baptism. With such a narrow view as
   this we could neither understand John's use of baptism, nor explain his
   public labours among such a people as the Jews. It is but a beggarly
   abstraction from the living individual elements which the Gospel
   accounts afford.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [86] Archaeol. xix. 1.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 34. The Baptist's Mode of Life and Teaching in the Desert.

   We learn from Josephus [87] that many pious and earnest men among the
   Jews, disgusted with the corruptions of the times, retired, like the
   monks and hermits of Christianity at a later day, into wilderness
   spots, and there, becoming teachers of Divine wisdom, collected
   disciples around them. Such a one was John. Consecrated from his birth,
   by a sign from heaven, to his Divine calling, he led a rigid and
   ascetic life from his very childhood. Had we nothing but Josephus's
   [88] account to guide us, we might suppose that John only differed from
   the other teachers of the desert in the fact that the spirit of his
   teaching was more practical, and tended to carry him out into a wider
   field of action. While they only revealed the truths of a higher life
   to such as sought them in their solitude, he felt constrained to go
   forth and raise his reproving voice aloud among the multitude, to
   condemn the Jews for their vices and their hypocrisy, and to call them,
   abandoning their false security and their debasing trust in outward
   works, to seek the genuine piety which comes from the heart. This part
   of John's ministry, viz., his work as a reformer, Josephus has brought
   out prominently; while he has entirely failed to notice the indelible
   stamp of the Baptist's labours left upon the history of the Theocracy.

   John had retired to the desert region west of the Dead Sea, and there
   lived a life of abstinence and austerity, harmonizing well with his
   inward grief, for the corruptions of his people. Like his type, Elias,
   he wore coarse garments, and satisfied his wants with a nourishment
   which nature offered in a species of locusts, sometimes used as food,
   and wild honey. [89]
     __________________________________________________________________

   [87] An example is afforded in the case of Banus, of whom Josephus, who
   was his disciple, gives an account in his autobiography, S: 2: "estheti
   men apo dendron chromenon, trophen de ten automatos phuomenen
   prospheromenon, psuchro de hudati ten hemeran kai ten nukta pollakis
   louomenos pros agneian."

   [88] Archaeol., xviii., v. 2.

   [89] In the Ebionitish recension of Matthew, we find the food of John
   described as meli agrion, hou he geusis en tou manna, hos enkris en
   elaio ("it had the taste of manna, as a cake baked in oil."--Num., xi.,
   8). The simple statement of Matthew is here misrepresented, and even
   falsified. The akrides (locusts) seemed to this writer food unworthy
   for John, and he makes enkrides (cakes) out of them, and thus gets a
   chance of comparing John's food with manna.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 35. John as Baptist and Preacher of Repentance.

   While John was thus sighing in solitude over the sins of a degenerate
   people, and praying that God would soon send the promised Deliverer,
   the assurance was vouchsafed to him from above that the Messiah should
   soon be revealed to him. He felt himself called to declare this
   assurance to the people, and to exhort them to prepare their souls for
   the approaching epoch. He abandoned the solitude of the desert for the
   banks of the Jordan, [90] gathered the people in hosts about him, and
   announced to them the coming appearance of both the Messiah and his
   kingdom, which ideas he never separated. He proclaimed to them that God
   would sift his people, and that the unworthy should be condemned and
   excluded from the Theocracy. He denounced as false and treacherous the
   prevailing idea that theocratic descent and the observance of outward
   ceremonies were the only requisites for admittance into Messiah's
   kingdom, and exhorted all to true repentance as the one essential
   preparation. He made use of baptism as a symbol of preparatory
   consecration to the Messiah's kingdom, a course to which he might have
   been led by the lustrations common among the Jews, and by the
   intimations of prophecy, such as Mal., iii.; Zach., xiii.; Ezek.,
   xxxvi., 25, even if the baptism of proselytes was not then extant among
   the Jews. Doubtless the Baptist stood in a special relation to those
   that flocked about him as followers; although, as preacher of
   repentance, as the voice of one crying in the wilderness (Isai., xl.,
   3), whose duty it was to prepare the way for the Messiah amid a people
   estranged from God, he held a general and common relation to all.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [90] We follow the statement of Luke (iii., 2), which has the advantage
   in distinguishing from each other the periods in John's manifestation.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 36. Relations of the Pharisees and Sadducees to the Baptist.

   We are naturally led here to inquire into the relations which John
   sustained to the different classes of the Jewish people. Was he, as
   preacher of repentance, only a man of the people, and did the
   Pharisees, the hierarchical party, manifest their jealous opposition
   from the very first, or did it arise by degrees at a later period? Of
   one thing we may be sure, from Matt., iii., 7, viz., that many
   Pharisees were to be found among the number that crowded about John and
   submitted to his baptism. Yet Christ, in one of his last discourses at
   Jerusalem (Matt., xxi., 32), drew a striking contrast between the
   publicans who believed in John's prophetic calling, and were led by him
   to repentance, and the Pharisees, who persevered in their
   self-sufficiency and unbelief. The words of Matt., xi., 16, seem also
   to indicate that the general spirit of the people was as hostile to
   John as it subsequently showed itself to Christ, and that only a few,
   open to the lessons of heavenly wisdom, admitted the Divine mission of
   the Baptist. So, also, in Luke, vii., 29, 30, the course of the people
   and the publicans, in following John and submitting to his baptism, is
   contrasted with the very opposite conduct of the Pharisees and lawyers,
   who "rejected the counsel of God against themselves."

   Still, Matthew (iii., 7) states expressly, that "many Pharisees and
   Sadducees came to John's baptism," and the form of the statement
   distinguishes these from the ordinary throng. It seems somewhat
   unhistorical that these sects, so opposite to each other, should be
   named together here, as well as in some other places in the Gospels;
   but an explanation is perhaps to be found in the fact that it was
   customary to name them together on the ground of their common hatred to
   Christianity. It appears improbable that men of the peculiar religious
   opinions of the Sadducees should have been attracted by the preacher of
   repentance, the forerunner of the Messiah; nor does John, in his severe
   sermon, make any special reference to that sect, an omission which
   could hardly have occurred had any of the sect so far departed from
   their ordinary habits as to listen to his preaching. [91] It does not
   follow, however, that the mention of the Pharisees is in the same
   predicament; on the contrary, the historical citation of the latter may
   have given rise to the unhistorical mention of the Sadducees. Nor does
   the fact that the Pharisees, at a later period, maintained an attitude
   of hostility towards John prove that they had opposed him from the
   beginning. His rigid asceticism and zeal for the Messiah were in entire
   harmony with the spirit of their sect; and they could listen with
   approval to his energetic reproofs and calls to repentance, so long as
   they were aimed only at the people and the publicans. So, in the
   Christian Church, ardent reformers and witnesses to the truth have been
   favoured even by the heads of the hierarchy, so long as they attacked
   only the common faults and vices of men. But the first assault upon the
   hierarchy itself roused all its hatred and its vengeance.

   In the earlier period of John's preaching, then, there may have been
   nothing to excite the jealousy of the Pharisees. Moreover, it is not
   likely that all who bore the name of Pharisees were fully imbued with
   the spirit of the sect. Although the majority of them, intent only upon
   selfish and party aims, may have regarded John's ministry with an eye
   of suspicion, there were probably among them some earnest, upright men,
   upon whom his preaching could not fail to make an impression. These two
   thoughts may serve to reconcile Matt., iii., 7, with the other passages
   quoted, in which the hostility of the Pharisees is mentioned. Again,
   the expression of Christ in John, v., 35, seems to imply that the
   Pharisees received and approved John's prophecy of the coming Messiah,
   but did not allow his words to sink deep into their hearts or to
   operate upon their thoughts and inclinations. The severe sermon [92]
   reported by the Evangelists was certainly not adapted to such as came
   to John, penitent and broken-hearted, to obtain consolation and
   guidance; but rather to the haughty and arrogant Pharisee, who felt
   sure of his share in the Messiah's kingdom, appear when it might,
   without either repentance or forgiveness. It was these that he
   stigmatized as a "brood of vipers," and no sons of Abraham. It was
   these to whom he said, in tones of warning and reproof, "Who has told
   you that by simple baptism you shall escape God's coming judgment?
   Would you really escape it? Then repent, and do works meet for
   repentance. Trust not to your saying `Abraham is our father;' for I
   tell you that the developement of the kingdom is not confined to the
   race of Abraham; nay, from these very stones that lie upon the river
   bank, God can raise up his children."

   In these last words he meant to tell them that if the Jews disgraced
   their Theocratic descent, God would remove his kingdom from them and
   impart it unto strangers. He ends by proclaiming that the Messiah would
   sift his people thoroughly, and exclude' all that should be found
   unworthy. Such preaching must have been enough to imbitter and alienate
   the Pharisees, even if they had been before disposed to approve and
   favour the preacher.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [91] We cannot support the expression of Matthew by the statement of
   Josephus (xviii., I., 4), that the Sadducees were accustomed to
   accommodate their own convictions to the principles of the Pharisees,
   on account of the strong hold which the latter had upon the people. In
   this case, at least, no such accommodation was required, from the
   repute in which John was held among the Pharisees.

   [92] Luke, iii., 7; Matt., iii., 7. Luke reports it as addressed to the
   people; Matthew to the Pharisees and Sadducees.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 37. Relations of John to the People, and to the narrower circle of
   his own Disciples.

   True penitents who came to the Baptist inquiring the way of life found
   in the severe ascetic a kind and condescending teacher. He gave them no
   vague and high-sounding words, but adapted his instructions with minute
   care to their special condition and circumstances. John resembled the
   austere preachers of repentance who sprung up in the Middle Ages in
   more than one respect; but especially in the two fold relation which he
   sustained, to the people generally, and to his disciples in particular.
   While the latter imitated his own ascetic piety in order to fit
   themselves for preachers of repentance, he did not demand of the former
   to abandon their ordinary line of life, even when it was one obnoxious
   to the prejudices of the Jews; the soldier was not required to leave
   the ranks, nor the tax-gatherer his office, but only to fulfil their
   respective duties with honesty and fidelity. All alike were commanded
   to do good; but only those whose occupations were sinful had to abandon
   them, and at his command many did so [93]
     __________________________________________________________________

   [93] Matt., xxi., 32.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 38. John's Demands upon the People compared with those of Christ.
   --His humble Opinion of his own Calling.

   But how very moderate do John's requirements appear in comparison with
   those of Christ, who demanded at the very outset an absolute sacrifice
   of the will and the affections! This difference arose naturally,
   however, from the different positions which they occupied. John was
   fully conscious that the moral regeneration which was indispensable to
   admittance into the Messiah's kingdom could only be accomplished by a
   Divine principle of life; and, knowing that to impart this was beyond
   his power, he confined himself to a preparatory purification of the
   morals of the people. The great, the God-like feature of his character
   was his thorough understanding of himself and his calling. Filled as he
   was with enthusiasm, he yet felt that he was but the humble instrument
   of the Divine Spirit, called, not to found the new creation, but only
   to proclaim it; nor did the thronging of eager thousands to hang upon
   his lips, nor the enthusiastic love of his own immediate followers,
   ever ready to glorify their master, in the least degree blind his
   perceptions of duty, or raise him above his calling. Convinced that he
   was inspired of God to prepare, and not to create, he never pretended
   to work miracles, nor did his disciples, strongly as he impressed them,
   ever attribute miraculous powers to him.
     __________________________________________________________________
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER II.

  RELATION OF THE BAPTIST TO MESSIAH.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 39. John's Explanation of his Relation to the Messiah. The Baptism
   by Water and by Fire.

   CAREFULLY, however, as John avoided exciting false expectations, they
   could hardly fail to arise at a period so full of foreboding and hope
   for the coming of Messiah, after time enough had elapsed for him to
   make a powerful impression upon the public mind as a preacher of
   repentance and proclaimer of a better future. [94] Many of those whom
   his preaching had so deeply moved became uneasy to ascertain his true
   relation to the Messiah; and as his language on the subject was always
   concise, and rather suggestive than explanatory, they were inclined to
   think that his real character was only kept in the back ground for the
   time, and would afterward be gradually unfolded. But when the Baptist
   saw that men mused in their hearts whether he were the Christ or no,
   [95] he resolved to define his relation to the Messiah explicitly and
   unmistakeably. His mission, he told them, was to baptize by water, as a
   symbol of the preparatory repentance which had to open the way for that
   renewal and purification of the nation by Divine power which was to be
   expected in the Messiah; the lofty one that was to follow, raised so
   far above himself, that he should be dignified by performing for him
   the most menial services. He it was that should baptize them with the
   Holy Ghost and with fire; that is to say, that as his (John's)
   followers were entirely immersed in the water, so the Messiah would
   immerse the souls of believers in the Holy Ghost, imparted by himself;
   so that it should thoroughly penetrate their being, and form within
   them a new principle of life. And this Spirit-baptism was to be
   accompanied by a baptism of fire. [96] Those who refused to be
   penetrated by the Spirit of the Divine life should be destroyed by the
   fire of the Divine judgments. The "sifting" by fire ever goes along
   with the advance of the Spirit, and consumes all who will not
   appropriate the latter. So John represents the Messiah as appearing
   with his "fan" in his hands, to purify the "threshing-floor" of his
   kingdom, to gather the worthy into the glorified congregation of God,
   and to cast out the unworthy and deliver them over to the Divine
   judgments.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [94] Paul's words (Acts, xiii., 25) lead us to infer that this took
   place first towards the end of John's career.

   [95] Luke, iii., 15.

   [96] Some think the "fire" is used as a symbol of the Holy Ghost,
   inasmuch as it is employed in other places in Scripture to denote
   Divine influences. In this view of the passage, as the baptism by water
   symbolizes preparatory repentance, so that by fire symbolizes the
   transfiguring and purifying power of the Holy Spirit. Our own opinion
   is, however, that as judgment by fire is spoken of but a few verses
   after (Luke, iii., 17), it must be taken in the same sense here; and
   the baptism by fire referred to the sifting process immediately
   mentioned. Thus the fire is the symbol of the power which consumes
   every thing impure, in the same sense in which God is said to be "a
   consuming fire."
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 40. John's Conception of Messiah's Kingdom.

   Let us inquire now upon what view of the calling and work of the
   Messiah, and of the nature of his kingdom, these expressions of the
   Baptist were founded. He contradicts the notion, so prevalent among the
   Jews, that all the descendants of Abraham who outwardly observed the
   religion of their fathers would be taken into the Messiah's kingdom,
   while his heavy judgments would fall upon the pagans alone. On the
   contrary, he maintains the necessity, for all who would enter that
   kingdom, of a moral new birth, which he sets forth to them by the
   Spirit-baptism; and proclaims, as a necessary preparation for this new
   birth, a consciousness of sin and longing to be free from it; all which
   is implied in the word metanoia, when stated as the necessary condition
   of obtaining the promised baptism of the Spirit, He expects this
   kingdom to be visible; but yet conceives it as purely spiritual, as a
   community filled and inspired by the Spirit of God, and existing, in
   communion of the Divine life, with the Messiah as its visible King; so
   that, what had not been the case before, the idea of the Theocracy and
   its manifestation should precisely correspond to each other. He has
   already a presentiment that the willing among the pagans will be
   incorporated into the kingdom in place of the unworthy Jews who shall
   be excluded. The appearance of Messiah will cause a sifting of the
   Theocratic people. This presupposes that he will not overturn all
   enemies and set up his kingdom at once by the miraculous power of God,
   but will manifest himself in such a form that those whose hearts are
   prepared for his coming will recognize him as Messiah, while those of
   ungodly minds will deny and oppose him. On the one hand, a community of
   the righteous will gather around him of their own accord; and, on the
   other, the enmity of the corrupt multitude will be called forth and
   organized. The Messiah must do battle with the universal corruption;
   and, after the strife has separated the wicked members of the
   Theocratic nation from the good, will come forth victorious, and
   glorify the purified people of God under his own reign.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 41. John's Recognition of Jesus as the Messiah.

   (1.) Import of his Baptism of Jesus.--(2.) The Continuance of his
   Ministry.--(3.) Possible Wavering in his Conviction of Christ's
   Messiahship.--(4.) His Message from Prison.--(5.) Conduct of his
   Disciples towards Jesus.

   As John's conception of the Messiah included his office in freeing the
   people of God from the power of evil, and imparting to them a new life
   in the life of God, it appears that he presupposed also the fulness of
   the Holy Ghost dwelling in him in such a way as that he could best w it
   upon others. From the first germ of the idea of Messiah in the Prophets
   down to the time of Christianity itself, we find ever that a just and
   profound conception of his office involves in it a higher idea of his
   person. So, perhaps, John, although his expectation of a visible
   realization of the Theocracy shows him as yet upon Old Testament
   ground, may have at least touched upon the stand-point of Christianity.
   His position was very like that held by Simeon, and indeed, in general,
   by all those Jews who, in advance of the sentiments of the times, were
   inspired with earnest longings for the appearance of the Messiah, and
   thus stood upon the border-land between the two stages of the kingdom
   of God. And in John's representation of his own inferiority to him
   "that should come," and in his clear apprehension of the limits of his
   mission and his power--an apprehension that distinguished him from all
   other founders of preparatory epochs--we have an assurance that he will
   never imagine his preparatory stand-point to be a permanent one; and
   that, as he feels himself unworthy "to unloose the shoestrings" of the
   lofty One that is to appear, so he will bow himself in the same humble
   reverence when He, whom his spiritual sense shall recognize as the
   expected one, shall appear in person before him.

   We are fully aware of the objections that may be raised against these
   conclusions. It may be said, and truly, that one may do homage to an
   idea, whose general outlines are present to his intuition, but may be
   unfit to recognize the realization of the idea when presented before
   his eyes in all its features. The prejudices of his time and
   circumstances are sure to start up and hinder him from the recognition.
   But surely, in the case of John, the lowliness of mind and sobriety of
   judgment to which we have just referred give us ground to expect that
   he, at least, would so far surmount his peculiar prejudices as to
   recognize the admission of a higher element into the course of
   events--to recognize a stand-point even essentially different from his
   own; especially as he had himself pointed out beforehand the
   characteristics of such a difference. Yet we do not wish to deny that
   doubts may arise, in regard to the fact of John's recognition of Jesus
   as Messiah, in the minds of those who do not presuppose the
   unconditional credibility of the Gospels. Perhaps the remark above
   made, in reference to a possible commingling of the subjective and the
   objective in the Gospel accounts, may be applicable here. But before we
   proceed with our connected historical recital, we must seek sure
   historical footing, by inquiring into the grounds of the doubts
   referred to.

   The following questions, perhaps, express these grounds: If John was
   really convinced of Christ's Messiahship, why did he continue his
   independent ministry, and not rather submit himself and all his
   followers as disciples to Christ 1 Why did he wait until after his
   imprisonment before sending to inquire of Jesus whether he were tile
   Messiah, or men should look for another? Why, even after the Baptist's
   death, did his disciples preserve their separate existence as a sect?
   How happened it that, in a public proclamation of the Gospel (Acts, x.,
   37; xiii., 25), no stress is laid upon John's divinely inspired
   testimony concerning Christ--nay, it is not even quoted--while his
   exhortations to repentance and his announcement of the coming Messiah
   are dwelt upon as the preparation for Christ's public ministry? Do not
   these difficulties make it doubtful whether John really did, before the
   time of his imprisonment, recognize Christ's Messiahship? Or, is it not
   probable that the Christian view, which sees in Christ the erchomenos
   announced by John, was involuntarily attributed to the Baptist, and so
   the tradition grew up that he had personally recognized the Messiahship
   of Jesus, and introduced him into his public labours? In this case we
   should have to admit that he was first induced, while in prison, by
   what he heard of Christ, to recognize his calling--and that not only
   had this fact been transferred to an earlier period in his history, but
   too much made of it altogether.

   Now it would be easy to overthrow this whole structure at once, by
   assuming the genuineness and authority of John's Gospel. [97] It is
   true, as has been before said, the disciple, after going beyond his
   Master, might have seen more in the previously uttered words of the
   latter than he himself had intended; but, at any rate, those words must
   at least have afforded some ground for the disciple's representation.
   If the above-mentioned doubts are well grounded, John's
   misrepresentation of what occurred between the Baptist and Christ is
   nothing short of wilful falsehood. The later Christian traditions,
   indeed, might have admitted such a transposition without the intent to
   deceive; but John was an eye-witness. We do not intend, however, to
   appeal to John's authority, but shall examine the matter on internal
   evidence, grounded on the nature of the case.

   (1.) Import of the Baptism of Jesus by John.

   We first consider the baptism of Jesus by John. Those who carry their
   doubts of John's testimony farthest, dispute even the fact of this
   baptism. But this is absolutely groundless skepticism; for all the New
   Testament accounts, however else they may differ, presuppose the event
   as a fact. It would be impossible to account even for the origin of
   such a tradition, if the event itself did not originate it; the very
   application of John's baptism to the sinless Jesus must have caused
   difficulties to the Christian mind, which a peculiar line of thought
   alone could remove. But, admitting the fact, it cannot be supposed that
   Christ submitted to the baptism in the same sense, and for the same
   purpose, as others did; for we can find no possible connecting link
   between the sense of sin and the desire for purification and redemption
   felt by all ordinary applicants for the ordinance, and the
   consciousness of the sinless Redeemer. It was with this latter,
   unoriginated consciousness, however, that Jesus presented himself for
   baptism. But we cannot suppose that he did it in silence; such a course
   might have led the Baptist, if not otherwise enlightened, to suppose
   that he came forward in the same relation to the ordinance as other
   men. Its probability is diminished, too, in proportion to our idea of
   John's susceptibility for the disclosures which Christ might have made
   to him. We are led, therefore, by the internal necessity of the case,
   to suppose that, in administering the baptism, he received a higher
   light in regard to the relation which he himself sustained to Christ.

   (2.) The Baptist's continuance in his Ministry of Preparation.

   We must conclude, however, that if John did recognize Jesus as Messiah,
   he applied to him all his Old-Testament ideas of Messiah as the founder
   of a visible kingdom. With these views he would expect that Christ
   would bring about the public recognition of his office by his own
   Messianic labours, without the aid of his testimony. This expectation
   would naturally cause him to forbear any public testimony to Christ,
   and to content himself with directing only a few of the most
   susceptible of his disciples to the Saviour; but this would have been a
   merely private affair, forming no part of his open mission to the
   world. That mission remained always the same, viz., to prepare the way
   for the Messiah's kingdom, and to point to Him who was soon to reveal
   himself; not to anticipate his self-revelation, and to declare him to
   the people by name as the Messiah. This preparatory position of John
   had to continue until the time when the entrance of Jesus as Theocratic
   King, upon the establishment of his kingdom, gave the signal for all to
   range themselves under his banners. The Baptist, true to the position
   that had been assigned to him in the Theocratic developement, had to
   continue his labours until their termination, a termination which
   external circumstances were soon to bring about. [98] As, therefore,
   John's testimony was merely private, and never openly laid before the
   people; and, moreover, as its value depended entirely upon the
   recognition of John's own prophetic calling (a recognition by no means
   universal among the Jews), there is no difficulty in accounting for the
   fact that so little use was made of his testimony in the citation of
   proofs for Jesus's Messiahship by Peter and Paul, in the passages above
   referred to. [99]

   (3.) Possible Wavering in John's Conviction of the Messiahship of
   Jesus.

   Supposes now, that John's faith did waver in his prison--that, in an
   unhappy hour, he was seized with doubts of Christ's Messiahship--would
   it follow that he had not before enjoyed and expressed with Divine
   confidence his conviction of the truth? Would the later doubt suffice
   to do away with the earlier and out-spoken certainty? Can the man who
   makes such an assertion have any idea of the nature and developement of
   religious conviction and knowledge--of the relation between the Divine,
   the supernatural, and the natural? It is true that scientific knowledge
   and conviction, logically obtained, can never be lost so long as the
   intellect remains unimpaired; but it is quite another thing with
   religious truths. These do not grow out of logic; but, presupposing
   certain spiritual tendencies and affections, they arise from an
   immediate contact of the soul with God, from a beam of God's light,
   penetrating the mind that is allied to him. The knowledge and the
   convictions which are drawn neither from natural reason nor from the
   knowledge of the world, but are always rebelled against by the latter
   until the whole spirit is penetrated by the Divine, can retain their
   vitality only by the same going forth of the higher life which gave
   them birth; only so far as the soul can maintain itself in the same
   atmosphere, and in the same tendency to the supernatural and the
   Divine. So one may, when in the full enjoyment of the higher life, when
   no vapours of earth dim his spiritual vision, have clear conception and
   conviction of religious truths, which may perplex him with obscurities
   at times when the earthly tendencies prevail. And thus we may explain
   the fluctuations and transitions in the developement of religious life,
   convictions and knowledge, of which the experience of Christians in all
   ages affords instances. It may be said that, although this explanation
   holds good of religious life in general, it cannot apply to an inspired
   prophet like John, or to the truths which he obtained from the light of
   a supernatural revelation. This objection would imply that a single
   objective revelation is the only source of Christian truth, which is
   not the case. The apprehension of such truths in every individual mind
   rests not merely upon this single objective ground, but also upon a
   repetition of the Divine manifestation to the mind itself. The
   difference between the inspired prophet and the ordinary Christian
   believer, in regard to the reception of God's truth, is not a
   difference in kind, but in degree. Christ declared that the least of
   Christians was greater than John; words that ill entitle us to draw
   such a line of distinction between the Baptist and living Christians of
   all ages as to apply another standard and another law to his religious
   life. It is true, there is a lifeless supernaturalism which views all
   Divine communications rather as overlying the mind than incorporating
   themselves with its natural psychological developement; and the
   opponents of revealed religion caricature this view to serve their
   purpose of subverting the doctrines they so bitterly hate. But
   notwithstanding, the doctrine of such Divine communication is perfectly
   in accordance with the facts of the Divine life as they are stated in
   the Scriptures; and we are compelled thereby to connect these
   manifestations with the natural growth of the mind in its receptive
   powers and spontaneous activity; to apply the general laws of the mind
   to the developement of whatever is communicated to it by a higher
   light.

   As we have before remarked, John stood between two different stages of
   the developement of the Theocracy. It is, therefore, not unlikely that
   in times of the fullest religious inspiration, caused in his soul by
   Christ's revelations to him, he obtained views of the coming kingdom
   which he could not always hold fast, and his old ideas sometimes
   revived and even gained the ascendency. Although he had just
   conceptions of Messiah's kingdom in regard to its moral and religious
   ends, he was always inclined to connect worldly ideas with it. But the
   object of his hopes was not realized. He heard, indeed, a great deal
   about the miracles of Jesus, but saw him not at the head of his visible
   kingdom. The signal so long waited for was never given. Is it,
   therefore, matter of wonder if, in some hour of despondency, the
   worldly element in the Baptist's views became too strong, and
   perplexity and doubt arose within him?

   (4.) The Message from Prison.

   The inquiry which John sent to the Saviour from prison [100] shows that
   his doubts did not refer at all to the superiority of Christ, but to
   the question whether the mission of the latter was the Messiahship
   itself, or only a preparation for it. So great was his respect for the
   authority of Christ, that he expected the decisive answer to the
   question from his own lips. Neither the form of the question nor the
   Saviour's reply favour the supposition that John was led, simply by the
   reports of Christ's labours which had reached him in prison, to the
   thought that he might be the erchomenos. Had this been the case, Christ
   would have answered him as he did others in similar circumstances; he
   would not have warned him not to be perplexed or offended because his
   groundless expectations in regard to the Messiah were not fully
   realized in Christ's ministry, but, on the contrary, would have
   cherished a faith which could grow up in one who was languishing in
   prison, and unable to see with his own eyes the mighty works that were
   done, and would have encouraged him to yield himself fully up to the
   dawning conviction. The warning against skandalizesthai was precisely
   applicable to one who had once believed, but whose faith had wavered
   because his hopes were not fully fulfilled. The answer of Jesus,
   moreover, shows plainly in what expectations John was disappointed:
   they were, as we shall have occasion to show hereafter, such as grew
   out of his Old Testament stand-point, and attributed an outward
   character to the kingdom of God.

   (5.) Conduct of John's Disciples towards Jesus.

   It does not militate at all against our position, in regard to the
   Baptist's recognition of Christ, that many of his disciples did not
   join the Saviour at a later period; and even that a sect was formed
   from them hostile to Christianity. We have already seen that it was
   necessary for John to maintain his independent sphere of labour, and
   that his position naturally led him to direct only the more susceptible
   of his disciples to Jesus, and that too by degrees. These latter were
   probably such as had imbibed more of John's longing desire for "him
   that was to come," than of the austere and ascetic spirit of the sect.
   As to the rest, we have only to say that we have no right to judge the
   master by his scholars, or the scholars by their master. Men who hold a
   position preparatory and conducive to a higher one, often retain the
   peculiar and one-sided views of their old ground, and are even driven
   into an attitude of opposition to the new and the better. This seems to
   have been the case with John's disciples in relation to Christianity.

   From this full investigation of the question, we cannot but conclude
   that there is no reason to doubt the historical veracity of the
   narrative. It is matter of fact, that John openly recognized Jesus as
   the Messiah when he baptized him. Having secured this firm historical
   basis, we proceed now, with the greater confidence, to inquire into the
   peculiar import of the baptism itself.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [97] John, i., 7, 15; iii., 32; v., 33.

   [98] I am gratified to find that Winer, one of the most eminent
   investigators of Biblical literature, has given an intimation of the
   view which I have here fully carried out. See his "Biblisches
   Realwoerterbuch," i., 692, 2d ed.

   [99] Acts, x., 37; xiii., 25. Paul had much more occasion to quote
   John's testimony when preaching to his disciples at Ephesus (Acts,
   xix., 1-5). There is no ground for asserting positively that he did not
   quote it, although the passage does not state expressly that he did;
   for it remains doubtful whether the words tout' estin, of verse 4, are
   applied by Paul to the erchomenos announced by John, or were intended
   by him to be attributed to the Baptist. What is said of Apollos (Acts,
   xviii., 25: he was instructed in the way of the Lord, knowing only the
   baptism of John) cannot be understood nakedly of the pure, spiritual
   Messiahship. This could only be the case if ho'dos tou kuriou (v. 25)
   were equivalent to Theou o'dou (v. 26), and signified merely the way
   revealed by God, the right way of worshipping God. But this cannot be.
   The word kurios must be taken in its specific, Christian sense, as
   applicable to Christ; an interpretation confirmed by what follows,
   viz.: he taught diligently the things of the Lord, which cannot refer
   to the doctrine of God, but to the proclamation of Jesus as Messiah.
   But if it could be fully proved that all these disciples of John knew
   as yet nothing of Jesus as the erchomenos announced by the Baptist, it
   would not affect our assertion at all; for we have already admitted
   that the latter only partially directed his followers to Christ as
   Messiah.

   [100] Matt., xi, 2, 3.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 42. The Phenomena at the Baptism, and their Import.

   (1.) No Ecstatic Vision.--(2.) The Ebionitish View and its
   Opposite.--(3.) Developement of the Notion of Baptism in New
   Testament.--(4.) The Baptism of Christ not a Rite of
   Purification.--(5.) But of Consecration to his Theocratic Reign.--(6.)
   John's previous Acquaintance with Christ.--(7.) Explanation of John,
   i., 31.--(8.) The Vision and the Voice; intended exclusively for the
   Baptist.

   Two questions present themselves here: the bearing of the baptism upon
   John, and its bearing upon Christ. The first can easily be gathered
   from what has been said already, and from the concurrent accounts of
   the Evangelists. It is clear that John was to be enlightened, by a sign
   from heaven, in regard to the person who was to be the erchomenos whom
   he himself had unconsciously foretold. The second, however, is not so
   easy to answer. The accounts do not harmonize so well with each other
   on this point, nor are all men agreed in their opinions of the person
   of Christ; and these causes have given rise to several different
   solutions of the question.

   The point to be settled is this: Was the Divine revelation made on this
   occasion intended, though in different relations, for both John and
   Christ; not merely to give the former certainty as to the person of
   Messiah, but to impart a firm consciousness of Messiahship to the
   latter? And did Jesus, thus for the first time obtaining this full
   consciousness, at the same moment receive the powers essential to his
   Messianic mission? Did what John's eyes beheld take place really and
   objectively, and the fulness of the Holy Ghost descend upon Jesus to
   fit him for his mighty work?

   (1.) No Ecstatic Vision to be supposed in the case of Christ.

   If we adopt this latter view, we must look at all the phenomena
   connected with the baptism, not as merely subjective conceptions, but
   as objective supernatural facts. It is true, we may imagine a
   symbolical vision to have been the medium of a Divine revelation common
   to Christ and John; but we must certainly be permitted to doubt the
   application of such a mode of revelation to Christ. It may be granted
   that the Prophets were sometimes, in ecstatic vision, carried beyond
   themselves and overwhelmed by a higher power: but in these instances
   there is an abrupt suddenness, an opposition of the human and the
   Divine; a leap, so to speak, in the developement of consciousness,
   which we could hardly imagine in connexion with the specific and
   distinctive nature of the person of Christ. Nor, in fact, is there a
   hint at such a possibility in the Gospel narratives.

   (2.) Ebionitish Views of the Miracle at the Baptism, and its Opposite.

   There are two opposite stand-points which agree in ascribing to the
   events of the baptism the greatest importance in reference to Christ's
   Messiahship. The first is that of the Ebionites, who deny Christ's
   specific Divinity. It is, that he not only received from without, at a
   definite period of his life, the consciousness of his Divine mission,
   but also the powers necessary to its accomplishment. The other view
   (proceeding, however, from firm believers in the divinity of Christ)
   supposes that the Divine Logos, in assuming the form of humanity,
   submitted, by this act of self-renunciation, to all the laws of human
   developement; and further, that when Christ passed from the sphere of
   private life to that of his public ministry, he was set apart and
   prepared for it as the prophets were; with this single element of
   superiority, viz., that he was endowed with the fulness of the Holy
   Ghost.

   As for the first view, it is not only at variance with the whole
   character of Christ's manifestation, but also with all his own
   testimonies of himself. In all these there is manifested the
   consciousness of his own greatness, not as something acquired, but as
   unoriginated, and inseparable from his being. He does not speak like
   one who has be come what he is by some sudden revolution. In short,
   this whole mode of thinking springs from an outward supernaturalism,
   which represents the Divine as antagonist to the human, and imposes it
   upon Christ from without; instead of considering his entire
   manifestation from the beginning as Divine and supernatural, of
   deriving every thing from this fundamental ground, and recognizing in
   it the aim of all the special revelations of the old dispensation. This
   is a continuation of the old Jewish view of the progress of the
   Theocracy: all is formed from without, instead of developing itself
   organically from within; the Divine is an abrupt exhibition of the
   supernatural. How opposite to this is the view which sees in the human,
   the form of manifestation under which the Divine nature has revealed
   itself from the beginning, and perceives, in this original and thorough
   interpenetration of the Divine and the human, the aim and the
   culmination of all miracles.

   The second view above mentioned will appear the most simple and
   natural, if, instead of considering a Divine communication from without
   to have been made necessary by the self-renunciation of the Logos in
   assuming human form, we admit a gradual revelation (in accordance with
   the laws of human developement) of the Divine nature, potentially
   present, as the ground of the incarnate being, from the very first, and
   trace all that appears in the outward manifestation to the process of
   developement from within. In the lives of all other reformers, or
   founders of religions, whose call seems to have dated from a certain
   period of life, the birth-time, as it were, of their activity, it is
   impossible not to trace, in their later labours and in their own
   personal statements, some references to the earlier period when their
   call was unfelt. [101] In the discourses of Christ, however there is
   not the most distant approach to such an allusion.

   (3.) Different Steps in the New Testament Notion of the Baptism, up to
   that of John the Evangelist.

   In the revelations of the New Testament, and in the process of the
   developement of Christianity which those revelations unfold, we can
   distinguish various steps, or stages, of progress from the Old
   Testament ideas to the New. Especially is this the case in regard to
   the person of Christ. The conception of Christ, as anointed with the
   fullness of the Holy Spirit, and superior to all other prophets, is
   akin to Old Testament ideas, and forms the point of transition to the
   New, which rest upon the manifestation of Christ. But it required a
   completely developed Christian consciousness to recognize, in his
   appearance on earth, the Divine glory as inherent in him from the
   beginning, and progressive only so far as its outward manifestation was
   concerned. These two views, however, by no means exclude each other;
   the one is rather the complement of the other, while both, at a
   different stage of developement, tend to one and the same definite aim.
   And the latter, or highest stage of Christian consciousness, we are
   naturally to look for in that beloved apostle who enjoyed the closest
   degree of intimacy with Christ, and was, on that account, best of all
   able to understand profoundly both his manifestation and his
   discourses. From John, too; we must expect the highest Christian view
   of the person of Christ. [The account of the principal event of the
   baptism is thus given in John's Gospel: "And John bare record, saying,
   I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon
   him. And I knew him not; but he that sent me to baptize with water, the
   same said unto me, Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and
   remaining on him, the same is he which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost.
   And I saw and bare record that this is the Son of God." [102] ] Now the
   fact thus stated, if interpreted in an outward and material sense, and
   combined with the view of Christ which we mentioned a while ago as akin
   to the Jewish ideas, might easily give rise to the doctrine that Christ
   obtained at the baptism something which he had not possessed before.

   Our conclusion is, that Christ was already sure of his Divine call to
   the Messiahship, and submitted himself, in the course of the Theocratic
   developement, to baptism, as a preparative and inaugural rite, from the
   hands of the man who was destined to conduct prophecy to its
   fulfilment, and to be the first to recognize, by light from heaven, the
   manifested Messiah.

   (4.) The Baptism not a Rite of Purification.

   The idea that Christ was baptized with a view to purification is
   absolutely untenable, no matter how the notion of purification may be
   modified. Akin to this idea, certainly, is the view held by some, [103]
   that he submitted to this act of self-humiliation in the same sense in
   which he humbled himself before God, as the One alone to be called
   good. [104] This view would suppose him conscious, not of actual sin,
   but of a dormant possibility of sin, inherent in his finite nature and
   his human organism, always restrained, however, by the steadfast
   firmness of his will, from passing into action. But if we suppose in
   Christ the abstract possibility to sin [105] which is inseparable from
   a created will, pure but not yet immutable--such a capability as we
   attribute to the first man before the fall--even this would not
   necessarily connect with itself a dormant, hidden sinfulness, involving
   in him a conscious need of purification in any sense whatever. Such a
   consciousness can grow only out of a sense of inherent moral
   defilement, by no means originally belonging to the conception of a
   created being, or of human nature. We cannot admit a dormant principle
   of sin as an essential element of the moral developement of man's
   original being. Sin is an act of free will, and cannot be derived from
   any other source, or explained in any other way. [106] There is, then,
   in Christ's humbling himself, in his human capacity, before God, the
   only Good, no trace of that sense of need and want with which the
   sinner, conscious of guilt, bows himself before the Holy One. The act
   manifested only a sense, deeply grounded in his holy, sinless nature,
   of absolute dependence upon the Source of all good.

   (5.) The Baptism of Christ a Rite of Consecration to his Theocratic
   Reign.

   All difficulties are cleared away by considering John's baptism as a
   rite of preparation and consecration, first in its application to the
   members of the Theocratic kingdom, and secondly to its Founder and
   Sovereign. The repentance and the sense of sin which were essential
   preliminaries to the baptism of the former, could in no way belong to
   Him who, at the very moment when the rite was administered, revealed
   himself to the Baptist as the Messiah, the deliverer from sin. But
   while the import of the rite thus varied with the subjects to whom it
   was administered, there was, at bottom, a substantial element which
   they shared in common. In both it marked the commencement of a new
   course of life; but, in the members, this new life was to be received
   from without through communications from on high: while in Christ it
   was to consist of a gradual unfolding from within; in the former it was
   to be receptive; in the latter productive. In a word, the baptism of
   the members prepared them to receive pardon and salvation; that of
   Christ was his consecration to the work of bestowing those precious
   gifts.

   (6.) Had John a previous Acquaintance with Christ?

   If the Baptist had an earlier acquaintance with Jesus, he could not
   have failed, with his susceptible feelings, to receive a deeper
   impression of his divinity than other men. We cannot but infer, from
   Luke's [107] statement (chap. i.) of the relationship [108] between the
   two families, that he had heard of the extraordinary circumstances
   attending the birth of Jesus. The Saviour "prayed" at the baptism
   (Luke, iii., 21). If we figure to ourselves his countenance, full of
   holy devotion and heavenly repose, as he stood in prayer, and its
   sudden association, in the mind of the Baptist, with all his
   recollections of the early history of Jesus, we, cannot wonder that the
   humble man of God--all aware as he was that the Messiah was to be
   consecrated by his baptism--should have been overwhelmed, in that hour
   so pregnant with mighty interests, with a sense of his own comparative
   unworthiness, and cried, "I have need to be baptized of thee, and
   comest thou to me?"

   (7.) Explanation of John, i., 31.

   One of two things must be true: either John baptized Christ with sole
   and special reference to his Messianic mission, or with the same end in
   view as in his ordinary administration of the rite, involving in its
   subjects a consciousness of sin and need of repentance. Now it is clear
   that he did not take upon himself to decide to what individual the
   Messianic baptism was to be administered, nor was he willing to rest it
   upon any human testimony, but waited for the promised sign from heaven;
   and as for Jesus' receiving the rite in the second sense at his hands,
   his own religious sense must have rebelled against it. Nor is this
   contradicted by his words recorded in John, i., 31, "And I knew him
   not; but that he should be made manifest to Israel, therefore am I come
   baptizing with water." John's refusal to baptize Christ did not
   necessarily involve (as we have already said) a knowledge of his
   Messianic. dignity; and the words just quoted refer only to that
   dignity. He means to say with emphasis that his conviction of Christ's
   Messiahship is not of human, but of Divine origin. His previous
   expectations, founded upon his knowledge of the circumstances of
   Christ's birth, were held as nothing in comparison with the Divine
   testimony immediately vouchsafed to him. [109]

   (8.) The Vision at the Baptism, and the Voice, intended exclusively for
   the Baptist.

   When the Baptist thus drew back in reverence and awe, Christ encouraged
   him, saying, "For the present, [110] suffer it; for thus it becomes us
   (each from his own stand-point) to fulfil all that belongs to the order
   of God's kingdom." While Jesus prayed and was baptized, the reverence
   with which John gazed upon him was heightened into prophetic
   inspiration; and in this state he received the revelation of the Divine
   Spirit in the form of a symbolical vision; the heavens opened, and he
   saw a dove descend and hover over the head of Christ. In this he saw a
   sign of the permanent abode of the Holy Spirit in Jesus; not merely as
   a distinction from the inspired seers of the old dispensation, but also
   as the necessary condition to his bestowing the Divine life upon
   others. It indicated that the power of the Spirit in him was not a
   sudden and abrupt manifestation, as it was in the prophets, who felt
   its inspiration at certain times and by transitory impulses; but a
   continuous and unbroken operation of the Holy Ghost, the infinite
   fulness of the Divine life in human form. The quiet flight and the
   resting dove betokened no rushing torrent of inspiration, no sudden
   seizure of the Spirit, but a uniform unfolding of the life of God, the
   loftiness, yet the calm repose of a nature itself Divine, the
   indwelling of the Spirit so that he could impart it to others and fill
   them completely with it, not as a prophet, but as a Creator.

   The higher and essential unity of the Divine and human, [111] as
   original and permanent in Christ, which formed the substance symbolized
   by the vision, was further and more distinctly indicated to John by the
   voice from heaven, [112] saying, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am
   well pleased." Words that cannot possibly be applicable, in their full
   meaning, to any mere man, but to Him alone in whom the perfect union of
   God and man was exhibited, and the idea of humanity completely
   realized. It was this union that made it possible for a holy God to be
   well pleased in man. John's Gospel, it is true, makes no mention of
   this voice; but it will be recollected that this evangelist does not
   relate the baptism (John, i., 29, 33), but cites John Baptist as
   referring to it at some later period. The subsequent testimony of the
   Baptist, thus recorded ("I saw and bare record that this is the Son of
   God," v. 34), presupposes the heavenly voice which pointed out that
   Sonship. At all events, the voice expressed nothing different from the
   import of the vision; it was the expression of the idea which the
   vision itself involved.

   We consider, then, that the vision and the voice contained a subjective
   revelation of the Holy Spirit, intended exclusively for the Baptist,
   [113] to convince him thoroughly that He whose coming he had
   proclaimed, and whose way he had prepared, had really appeared. He was
   alone with Jesus; the latter needed no such revelation. What was
   granted to John was enough; he recognized, infallibly, the voice from
   heaven, and the revelation of the Spirit, by his inward sense; no
   outward sensible impression could give him more. For others the vision
   was not intended; it could benefit them only mediately through him, and
   in case they regarded him as a prophet.

   After Jesus had thus, alone with John, submitted to his baptism, and
   received in it the sign for the commencement of his public Messianic
   ministry, he withdrew into solitude in order to prepare himself. by
   prayer and meditation, [114] for the work on which he was about to
   enter. This brings us to inquire more closely into Christ's subjective
   preparation for his public labours.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [101] As in Luther we see frequent references to the light which first
   broke upon his mind during his monastic life at Erfurth, an epoch of
   the utmost moment to his after-career as a reformer.

   [102] John, i., 32-34.

   [103] De Wette, on Matt., iii., 16. Conf. his Sittenlehre, S: 49, 50;
   and Strauss, too, after he had seen that the view formerly expressed by
   him was untenable (1. c., 432, 433).

   [104] Matt., xix., 17.

   [105] This is not the place to examine the old controversy whether
   Christ's sinlessness is to be regarded as a posse non peccare or a non
   posse peccare.

   [106] We cannot enter further into this subject here, but take pleasure
   in referring our readers to the late excellent work of J. Mueller,
   viz., "Die Lehre von der Suende," in which the subject is treated with
   remarkable depth and clearness. The new elucidations in the 2d edition,
   especially, evince a soundness of mind that is not more rare than
   excellent.

   [107] The Apocryphal Gospels contain many fables in regard to Mary's
   descent from a priestly lineage, arising, perhaps, from the fact that
   the Messiah was to be both high-priest and king. (So in the second
   Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, the Testament of Simeon, S: 7:
   anastesei kurios ek ton Leui archiere'a kai ek ton Iouda bosile'a, both
   in the person of the Messiah.) There is nothing akin to these in Luke's
   account of the relationship between Mary and Elizabeth, the latter
   being of priestly lineage, which is only given en passant; the stress
   is laid upon the descent from David's line.

   [108] Matthew's omission to mention this relationship and to give any
   reason for John's reluctance to baptize Christ, only proves his
   narrative to be more artless, and therefore more credible. The
   Ebionitish Gospel to the Hebrews shows far greater marks of design,
   and, indeed, of an alteration for a set purpose. It represents the
   miraculous appearances as preceding and causing John's conduct.--When
   John hears the voice from heaven, and sees the miraculous light, he
   inquires, Who art thou? A second voice is heard to reply, This is my
   beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. John is thereby led to fall at
   his feet and cry, Baptize thou me. Christ, refusing him, says, Suffer
   it.--Here not only are the phenomena exaggerated, but the facts are
   remodelled to suit Ebionitish views, which denied the miraculous events
   at Christ's birth, and demanded that the sudden change by which he was
   called and fitted for the Messiahship at the moment of baptism should
   be made prominent by contrast with all that had gone before. They
   conceived, accordingly, that he first received the Holy Ghost when it
   descended upon him in the form of a dove, and that at that period he
   was endowed with a new dignity, and must offer new manifestations. His
   divine character was thus obtained in a sudden, magical way; and the
   two periods of his life, before and after that event, were brought into
   clear and sharp contrast: every thing that occurred at the baptism was
   deemed miraculous, while all the wonders of his previous life were
   rejected; in short, his Divine and human nature were rudely torn
   asunder. We see in all this the effect of a one-sided theory in
   obscuring history, and detect in it also the germ of a tendency which
   led the way from Judaism to Gnosticism. So it was with the doctrines of
   Cerinthus and Basilides on the person of Christ, according to which
   Christ possessed, as man, the hamartetikon of human nature (although it
   never became actual sin in him); and the Redeemer was not Christ, but
   the heavenly Spirit that descended upon him. Another instance of the
   way in which the general object of John's baptism (viz., purification
   and forgiveness) was brought to bear upon the doctrine of the person of
   Christ may be seen in the Gospel of the Nazarenes, translated by
   Jerome, in which the account runs, that when Christ was asked by his
   mother and brothers to go with them to John, in order to be baptized
   for the remission of sins, he replied, quid peccavi, ut vadam et
   baptizer ab eo, nisi forte hoc ipsum quod dixi ignorantia est ("unless
   I, who have not sinned, carry the germ of sin unconsciously within
   me"). (Hieron., b. iii., Dialog. adv. Pelag., ad init.). It is seen
   more strongly still in the kerugma Petrou, according to which Christ
   made his confession of sin before the baptism, but was glorified after
   it. Thus we see two opposite tendencies conspiring to falsify history
   in the life of Christ. The one sought falsely to glorify his early
   life, and embellished his childhood with tales of marvel; the other
   sought to degrade his prior life as much as possible, in order to
   derive all that he afterward became from his Messianic inauguration.
   The relation of our Gospels to both these false and one-sided
   tendencies is a proof of their originality. I cannot suppose, with Dr.
   Schneckenburger (Studien der Evang. Geistlichkeit Wuertemburgs, Bd.
   iv., s. 122), that Matthew's simple account of Christ's baptism was
   abridged from the Ebionitish narrative, which, as we have seen, gives
   evidence of a designedly false colouring. Nor can I agree with Usteri
   and Bleek (Stud. u. Krit., Bd. ii., s. 446, and 1833, s. 436), that the
   dialogue between John and Christ, which, according to the Ebionitish
   version, took place during the baptism, is inaccurately placed by
   Matthew before it.

   [109] It was the main object of John the Evangelist to bring out
   prominently the Divine testimony given to John the Baptist (as the
   latter pointed the former originally to Christ); the knowledge which
   the latter had derived from human sources was comparatively
   unimportant. In fact, he seems not to have thought any thing about it,
   and hence his words may imply that the Baptist had no previous
   acquaintance at all with Christ; but such an interpretation of them is
   not necessary, considering the definite end which he had in view. Let
   an event be described by different eye-witnesses, and their accounts
   will present varieties and even contrasts, simply because each of them
   seizes strongly upon some one point, and leaves the rest comparatively
   in the back-ground. True, there are degrees in historical accuracy, and
   we must distinguish them. In this case, the one certain fact, involved
   in all the narratives, however they may differ in other respects, is,
   that the Baptist was led, by, revelation made to him at the time, to
   consecrate Jesus to the Messiahship by baptism. This fact must remain,
   even if the other discrepancies were irreconcilable. We always consider
   a thing stated in common by several variant historical narratives, to
   be more probably historically true.

   [110] Showing that this relation between him and the Baptist was to be
   but momentary, and soon to be followed by a very different one. De
   Wette's remarks (Comm., 2d ed.) seem to me not very cogent. "Christ
   describes his baptism as prepon, and hence this view cannot be
   correct." But what made it prepon was the fact that it was but
   transitory and preparatory to the revelation of Christ in all his
   glory. The remark of Christ applied to the now and only to the now. The
   arti implies the contrast, which is not expressed.

   [111] We do not intend to say, by any means, that John comprehended
   this in the full sense which we, from the Christian stand-point, are
   able to give to it.

   [112] Although the words of the voice, as given in our Gospels, contain
   at most only an allusion to Psalm ii., 7, we find that passage fully
   quoted in the Ebionitish Evang. ad Hebraeos. The words are still better
   put together in the Nazarean Gospel of the Hebrews, used by Jerome:
   Factum est autem quum ascendisset Dominus de aqua, descendit fons omnis
   Spiritus Sancti et requievit super eum, et dixit illi; Fili mi, in
   omnibus prophetis expectabam te, ut venires et requiescerem in te. Tu
   es enim requies mea, tu es filius meus primogenitus, qui regnas in
   sempiternum (Hieron., 1. iv., in Esaiam, c. xi., ed. Vallarsi, t. iv.,
   p. 1, f. 156). Here a profound Christian sense is expressed: Christ is
   the aim of the whole Theocratic developement, and the partial
   revelations of the Old Testament were directed to him as the
   concentration of all Divinity; in him the Holy Ghost finds a permanent
   abode in humanity, a resting-place for which it strove in all its
   wanderings through these isolated, fragmentary revelations; he is the
   Son of the Holy Ghost, in so far as the fulness of the Holy Ghost is
   concentrated in him. But although a Christian sense is given, the
   historical facts are obviously coloured.

   [113] We follow here especially the account of John, according to whom
   the Baptist testified only of what he had seen and heard. If this
   statement be presupposed as the original one, the rest could easily be
   derived from it. What the Baptist stated as a real fact for himself
   would readily assume an objective form when related by others. This
   original apprehension of the matter seems to appear also in Matthew
   (iii., 16), both from the heavenly voice being mentioned in indirect
   narration, and from the relation of eide to auton; although the
   expression is not perfectly clear (conf. Bleek, Stud. u. Krit., 1833,
   s. 433, and De Wette, in loc.). A confirmation of the originality of
   Matthew's account may be obtained by comparing it with that in the
   Ebionitish Gospel. In this, first, the words are directly addressed to
   Christ, and Psalm ii., 7, fully quoted; then a sudden light illuminates
   the place, and the voice repeats anew, in an altogether objective way,
   the words that had been directed to Christ. In comparing our
   Evangelists with each other, and with the Ebionitish Gospel we see how
   the simple historical statement passed, by various interpolations, into
   the Ebionitish form; and how a material alteration of the facts arose
   from a change of form, through the addition of an imaginary and foreign
   dogmatic element. These accounts form the basis, also, of the view held
   by the sect called Mandaeans (Zabii, disciples of John), who combined
   the elements of a sect of John's disciples opposed to Christianity,
   with Gnostic elements. But as their object was to glorify the Baptist
   rather than Christ, they further distorted and disfigured the original
   with new inventions. "The Spirit, called the Messenger of Life, in
   whose name John baptized, appears from a higher region, manifests still
   more extraordinary phenomena, submits to be baptized by John, and then
   transfigures him with celestial radiance. Jesus afterward comes
   hypocritically to be baptized by John, in order to draw away the people
   and corrupt his doctrine and baptism." (See Norberg's Religionsbuch of
   this sect.)

   [114] The chronology of the Gospels by no means excludes such a time of
   preparation, although we cannot decide whether the "forty days" are to
   be taken literally, or only as a round number. John's Gospel, as we
   have said, does not relate the baptism in its chronological connexion
   (John, i., 19, presupposes the occurrence of the baptism); so that
   there is no difficulty in supposing a lapse of several weeks between
   the baptism and the first public appearance of Christ. The words in
   John, i., 29, may have been the greeting of the Baptist on first
   meeting Christ upon his reappearance. Nor does the retirement of Christ
   throw a shade upon the credibility of the narrative as matter of fact.
   It is entirely opposed to the mythical theory; for we do not see in it
   (as we should were it a mythus) any of the ideas of the people among
   whom Christianity originated; on the contrary, it displays a wisdom and
   circumspection in direct antagonism to the prevailing tendencies of the
   time. As St John's object was only to state those facts in Christ's
   life of which he had himself been an eye-witness, his silence on the
   subject is easily accounted for.
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PART II.

SUBJECTIVE PREPARATION. THE TEMPTATION
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  CHAPTER I.

  IMPORT OF THE INDIVIDUAL TEMPTATIONS.

   WHILE, on the one hand, we do not conceive that the individual features
   of the account of the Temptation are to be literally taken, the
   principles which triumph so gloriously in its course bear the evident
   stamp of that wisdom which every where shines forth from the life of
   Christ. Its veracity is undeniably confirmed by the period which it
   occupies between the baptism of Christ and his entrance on his public
   ministry; the silent, solitary preparation was a natural transition
   from the one to the other. We conclude, from both these considerations
   together, that the account contains not only an ideal, but also a
   historical truth, conveyed, however, under a symbolical form. [115]

   The easiest part of our task is to ascertain the import of the several
   parts of the Temptation, and to this we now address ourselves. We shall
   find in them the principles which guided Jesus through his whole
   Messianic calling--principles directly opposed to the notions prevalent
   among the Jews in regard to the Messiah.
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   S: 43. The Hunger.

   The first temptation was as follows: [116] After Jesus had fasted for a
   long time, he suffered the pangs of hunger. As no food was to be had in
   the desert, the suggestion was made to him, "If thou art really the
   Messiah, the Son of God, this need cannot embarrass thee. Thou canst
   help thyself readily by a miracle; thou canst change the stones of the
   desert into bread." Jesus rejected this challenge with the words, "Man
   shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of
   the mouth of God" (what is produced by God's creative word) To
   apprehend these words rightly, we must recall their original connexion
   in Deuteronomy (viii., 3), viz., that the Jews were fed in the
   wilderness with manna, in order to learn that the power of God could
   sustain human life by other means than ordinary food. They longed for
   the bread and flesh of Egypt, but were to be taught submission to the
   will of God, who was pleased to supply their wants with a different
   food. Applying this thought to Christ's circumstances, we interpret his
   reply to the tempter as follows: "Far be it from me to prescribe to God
   the mode in which he shall provide me sustenance. Rather will I trust
   his omnipotent creative power, which can find means to satisfy my
   hunger, even in the desert, though it may not be with man's usual
   food."

   The principle involved in the reply was, that he had no wish to free
   himself from the sense of human weakness and dependence; that he would
   work no miracle for that purpose. He would work no miracle to satisfy
   his own will; no miracle where the momentary want might be supplied,
   though by natural means such as might offend the sensual appetite. In
   self-denial he would follow God, submitting to His will, and trusting
   that His mighty power would help in the time of need, in the way that
   His wisdom might see fit. On this same principle Christ acted when he
   suffered his apostles to satisfy their hunger with the corn which they
   had plucked, rather than do a miracle to provide them better food. On
   this same principle he acted when he gave himself to the Jewish
   officers sent to apprehend him, [117] rather than seek deliverance by a
   Divine interposition. Of the same kind, too, was his trial when he hung
   upon the cross, and they that passed by said, "If he be the King of
   Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him."
   [118]
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   [116] Matt., iv., 2-4.

   [117] Matt., xxvi., 53.

   [118] Ib., xxvii., 42.
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   S: 44. The Pinnacle of the Temple.

   He was then taken to the pinnacle of the Temple, and the tempter said
   to him, "If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down; thou art sure of
   aid by a miracle from God;" and quoted, literally, in application, the
   words of Psa. xci., 11, 12, ";The angels shall bear thee up in their
   hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone." But Christ arrays
   against him another passage, which defines the right application of the
   former: "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God." (Deut., vi., 16.) As
   if he had said, "Thou must undertake nothing with a view to test God's
   omnipotence, as if to try whether he will work a miracle to save thee
   from a peril that might be avoided by natural means" (i. e., by coming
   down from the battlement in the usual way).

   These words of Christ imply that the pious man can look for Divine aid
   at all times, provided he uses rightly the means which God affords him,
   and walks in the way which has been Divinely marked out for him by his
   calling and his circumstances: the Messiah was not, in gratuitous
   confidence of Divine assistance, to cast himself into a danger which
   common prudence might avoid. They involve the principle, that a miracle
   may not be wrought except for wise ends and with adequate motives;
   never, with no other aim than to display the power of working wonders,
   and to make a momentary, sensible impression, which, however powerful,
   could leave no religious effect, and, not penetrating be. yond the
   region of the senses, must be but transient there. And on this
   principle Christ acted always, in not voluntarily exposing himself to
   peril; in employing wise and prudent means to escape the snares of his
   enemies; and going forth, with trust in God and submission to his will,
   to meat such dangers only as his Divine mission made necessary, and as
   he could not avoid without unfaithfulness to his calling. On this
   principle he acted when the Pharisees and the fleshly-minded multitude
   came to him and asked a miracle, and he refused them with, ["there
   shall no sign be given to this wicked and adulterous generation but the
   sign of the Prophet Jonah."] [119]
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   [119] Matt.. ii. 39..
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   S: 45. Dominion.

   We do not take the third temptation as implying literally that Satan
   proposed to Christ to fall down and do him homage, as the price of a
   transfer of dominion over all the kingdoms of the world: no
   extraordinary degree of piety would have been necessary to rebuke such
   a proposal as this. We consider it as involving the two following
   points, which must be taken together, viz., (1) the establishment of
   Messiah's dominion as an outward kingdom, with worldly splendours; and
   (2) the worship of Satan in connexion with it, which, though not fully
   expressed, is implied in the act which he demands, and which Christ
   treats as equivalent to worshipping him. Herein was the temptation,
   that the Messiah should not develope his kingdom gradually, and in its
   pure spirituality from within, but should establish it at once, as an
   outward dominion; and that, although this could not be accomplished
   without the use of an evil agency, the end would sanctify the means.

   We find here the principle, that to try to establish Messiah's kingdom
   as an outward, worldly dominion, is to wish to turn the kingdom of God
   into the kingdom of the devil; and to employ that fallen Intelligence
   which pervades all human sovereignties, only in a different form, to
   found the reign of Christ. And in rejecting the temptation, Christ
   condemned every mode of secularizing his kingdom, as well as all the
   devil-worship which must result from attempting that kingdom in a
   worldly form. We find here the principle, that God's work is to be
   accomplished purely as His work and by His power, without foreign aid;
   so that it shall all be only a share of the worship rendered to HIM
   alone.

   And Christ's whole life illustrates this principle. How often was he
   urged, by the impatient longings and the worldly spirit of the people,
   to gratify their intense, long-cherished hopes, and establish his
   kingdom in a worldly form, before the last demand of the kind was made
   upon him, as he entered, in the midst of an enthusiastic host, the
   capital city of God's earthly reign; before his last refusal, expressed
   in his submission to those sufferings which resulted in the triumph of
   God's pure spiritual kingdom!
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   [115] If we assign a symbolical character to the Temptation, it may be
   asked whether the fasting, which formed a ground-work for it, was not
   symbolical also. But the fasting is immediately connected with the
   obviously historical fact of Christ's retirement. We conceive it thus:
   Christ, musing upon the great work of his life, forgot the wants of the
   body. (Cf. John, iv., 34.) The mastery (and this we must presuppose)
   which his spirit had over the body prevented those wants from asserting
   their power for a long time; but when they did, it was only the more
   powerfully. It formed part of the trial and self-denial of Christ
   through his whole life, that, together with the consciousness that he
   was the Son of God, he combined the weakness and dependence of
   humanity. These affected the lesser powers of his soul, although they
   could never move his unchangingly holy will, and turn hill to any
   selfish strivings.
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  CHAPTER II.

  IMPORT OF THE TEMPTATION AS A WHOLE.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 46. Fundamental Idea.

   THE whole temptation taken together presents us one idea; a contrast,
   namely, between the founding of God's kingdom as pure, spiritual, and
   tried by many forms of self-denial in the slow developement ordained
   for it by its head; and the sudden establishment of that kingdom before
   men, as visible and earthly. This contrast forms the central point of
   the whole. All the temptations have regard to the created will as such;
   the victory presupposes that self-sacrifice of a will given up to God
   which determines the whole life. And as this self-sacrifice of the
   created will in Christ had to be tested in his lifelong struggles with
   the Spirit of the world, which ever strove to obscure the idea of the
   kingdom of God and bring it down to its own level; so the free and
   conscious decision manifested in these three temptations, fully
   contrasting, as they did, the true and the false Messiahship, the
   unworldly and the secularized Theocracy, was made before his public
   ministry, which itself was but a continuation of the strife and the
   triumph.
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   S: 47. The Temptation rot an inward one, but the Work of Satan.

   We find, then, in the facts of the temptation the expression of that
   period that intervened between Christ's private life and his public
   ministry. These inward spiritual exercises bring out the
   self-determination which stamps itself upon all his subsequent outward
   actions. Yet we dare not suppose in him a choice, which, presupposing
   within him a point of tangency for evil, would involve the necessity of
   his comparing the evil with the good, and deciding between them. In the
   steadfast tendency of his inner life, rooted in submission to God, lay
   a decision which admitted of no such struggle. He had in common with
   humanity that natural weakness which may exist without selfishness, and
   the created will, mutable in its own nature; and only on this side was
   the struggle possible--such a struggle as man may have been liable to,
   before he gave seduction the power of temptation by his own actual sin.
   In all other respects, the outward seductions remained outward; they
   found no selfishness in him, as in other men, on which to seize, and
   thus become internal temptations, but, on the contrary, only aided in
   revealing the complete unity of the Divine and human, which formed the
   essence of his inner life.

   Nor is it possible for us to imagine that these temptations originated
   within; to imagine that Christ, in contemplating the course of his
   future ministry, had an internal struggle to decide whether he should
   act according to his own will, or in self-denial and submission to the
   will of God. We have seen from the third temptation that, from the very
   beginning, he regarded the establishment of a worldly kingdom as
   inseparable from the worship of the devil; he could, therefore, have
   had no struggle to choose between such a kingdom, outward and worldly,
   and the true Messiah-kingdom, spiritual, and developed from within.

   Even the purest man who has a great work to do for any age, must be
   affected more or less by the prevailing ideas and tendencies of that
   age. Unless he struggle against it, the spirit of the age will
   penetrate his own; his spiritual life and its products will be
   corrupted by the base admixture. Now the whole spirit of the age of
   Christ held that Messiah's kingdom was to be of this world, and even
   John Baptist could not free himself from this conception. There was
   nothing within Christ on which the sinful spirit of the age could
   seize; the Divine life within him had brought every thing temporal into
   harmony with itself; and, therefore, this tendency of the times to
   secularize the Theocratic idea could take no hold of him. But it was to
   press upon him from without; from the beginning this tendency
   threatened to corrupt the idea and the developement of the kingdom of
   God, and Christ's work had to be kept free from it; moreover, the
   nature of his own Messianic ministry could only be fully illustrated by
   contrast with this possible objective mode of action; to which, foreign
   as it was to his own spiritual tendencies, he was so frequently to be
   urged afterward by the prevailing spirit of the times.

   But if, according to the doctrine of Christ, [120] the rebellion of a
   higher intelligence against God preceded the whole present history of
   the universe, in which Evil is one of the co-operating factors, and of
   which man's history is only a part; if that doctrine makes Satan the
   representative of the Evil which he first brought into reality; if,
   further, it lays down a connexion, concealed from the eye of man,
   between him and all evil; then, from this point of view, Christ's
   contest with the spirit of the world must appear to us a contest with
   Satan--the temptation, a temptation from Satan--continued afterward
   through his whole life, and renewed in every form of assault, until the
   final triumph was announced, "It is finished." As the temptation could
   not have originated in Christ, he could only attribute it to that
   Spirit to which all opposition to God's kingdom, and every attempt to
   corrupt its pure developement, can finally be traced back. On the
   working out of Christ's plan depended the issue of the battle between
   the kingdom of God and the kingdom of the Evil One; and we cannot
   wonder, therefore, that this Spirit, ever so restlessly plotting
   against the Divine order, should have been active and alert at a time
   when, as in the case of the first man, an opening for temptation to the
   mutable created will was afforded to him.

   Christ left to his disciples and the Church only a partial and
   symbolical account [121] of the facts of his inner life in this
   preparatory epoch; an account, however, adapted to their practical
   necessities, and serving to guard them against those seductions of the
   spirit of the world to which even the productions of the Divine spirit
   must yield, if they are ever allowed to become worldly.
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   [120] We must hereafter inquire whether this is Christ's doctrine, and
   only make here a preliminary remark or two. The arguments of the
   rationalists against the doctrine which teaches the existence of Satan
   are either directed against a false and arbitrary conception of that
   doctrine, or else go upon the presupposition that evil could only have
   originated under conditions such as those under which human existence
   has developed itself; that it has its ground in the organism of human
   nature, e. g., in the opposition between reason and the propensities;
   that human developement must necessarily pass through it; but that we
   can not conceive of a steadfast tendency to evil in an intelligence
   endowed with the higher spiritual powers. Now it is precisely this view
   of evil which we most emphatically oppose, as directly contradictory to
   the essence of the Gospel and of a theistico-ethical view of the world;
   and, on the contrary, we hold fast, as the only doctrine which meets
   man's moral and religious interests, that doctrine which is the ground
   of the conception of Satan, and according to which evil is represented
   as the rebellion of a created will against the Divine law, as an act of
   free-will not otherwise to be explained, and the intelligence as
   determined by the will. I am pleased to find my convictions expressed
   in few words by an eminent divine of our own time, Dr. Nitzsch, in his
   excellent System der Christlichen Lehre, 9d ed., p. 152. They are
   further developed by Twesten, in his Dogmatik. The same fundamental
   idea is given in the work of Julius Muller, already mentioned (Lehre
   von der Sunde).

   [121] We can apply here Dr. Nitzsch's remark in reference to the
   Biblical account of the Fall (Christl. Lehre, S: 106, s. 144, anm. 1,
   2^te. Aufl.): "The history of the temptation, in this form, is not a
   real, but a true history."
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BOOK IV.
     __________________________________________________________________

THE PUBLIC MINISTRY OF CHRIST

IN ITS

REAL CONNEXION.
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   PART I. THE PLAN OF CHRIST.

   PART II. THE MEANS AND INSTRUMENTS OF CHRIST

                                    BOOK IV.

           THE PUBLIC MINISTRY OF CHRIST IN ITS REAL CONNEXION. [122]
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PART I.

THE PLAN OF CHRIST.
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  CHAPTER 1.

  A. THE PLAN OF CHRIST'S MINISTRY IN GENERAL.
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   S: 48. Had Christ a conscious Plan?

   IT is most natural for us, in treating of Christ's public ministry, to
   speak first of the plan which lay at the foundation of it. First of
   all, however, the question comes up, whether he had any such plan at
   all. [123]

   The greatest achievements of great men in behalf of humanity have not
   been accomplished by plans previously arranged and digested; on the
   contrary, such men have generally been unconscious instruments. working
   out God's purposes, at least in the beginning, before the fruits of
   their labours have become obvious to their own eyes. They served the
   plan of God's providence for the progress of his kingdom among men, by
   giving themselves up enthusiastically to the ideas which the Spirit of
   God had imparted to them. Not unfrequently has a false historical view
   ascribed to such labours, after their results became known, a plan
   which had nothing to do with their developement. Nay, these mighty men
   were able to do their great deeds precisely because a higher than human
   wisdom formed the plan of their labours and prepared the way for them.
   The work was greater than the workmen; they had no presentiments of the
   results that were to follow from the toils to which they felt
   themselves impelled. So was it with LUTHER, when he kindled the spark
   which set half Europe in a blaze, and commenced the sacred flame which
   refined the Christian Church.

   Were we at liberty to compare the work of CHRIST with these creations
   wrought through human agencies, we should need to guard ourselves
   against determining the plan of his ministry from its results. We might
   then suppose that he was inspired with enthusiasm for an idea, whose
   compass and consequences the limits of his circumstances and his times
   prevented him from fully apprehending. We might also distinguish
   between the idea, as made the guide and the aim of his actions by
   himself, and the more comprehensive Divine plan, to which, by his
   voluntary and thorough devotion to God, he served as the organ. And it
   would rather glorify than disparage him to show, by thus comparing him
   with other men who had wrought as God's instruments to accomplish His
   vast designs, that God had accomplished through him even greater things
   than he had himself intended.

   But we are allowed to make no such comparison. The life of CHRIST
   presented a realized ideal of human culture such as man's nature can
   never attain unto, let his developement reach what point it may. He
   described the future effects of the truth which he revealed in a way
   that no man could comprehend at the time, and which centuries of
   history have only been contributing to illustrate. Nor was the progress
   of the future more clear to his vision than the steps in the history of
   the past, as is shown by his own statements of the relation which he
   sustained to the old dispensation. Facts, which it required the course
   of ages to make clear, lay open to his eye; and history has both
   explained and verified the laws which he pointed out for the progress
   of his kingdom. He could not, therefore, have held the same relation to
   the plan for whose accomplishment his labours were directed, as men who
   were mere instruments of God, however great. He resembled them, it is
   true, in the fact that his labours were ordered according to no plan of
   human contrivance, but to one laid down by God for the developement of
   humanity; but he differed from them in this, that He understood the
   full compass of God's plan, and had freely made it his own; that it was
   the plan of his own mind, clearly standing forth in his consciousness
   when he commenced his labours. The account of his temptation, rightly
   understood, shows all this.

   With this, also, are rebutted those views which consider Christ as
   having recognized the idea of his ministry only through the cloudy
   atmosphere of Judaism; and those which represent his plan as having
   been essentially altered from time to time, as circumstances
   contradicted his first expectations and gave him clearer notions. They
   are further refuted by the entire harmony which subsists between
   Christ's own expressions in regard to his plan, as uttered in the two
   different epochs of his history.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [123] We use the phrase "plan of Jesus," inasmuch as we compare his
   mode of action with that of other world-historical men, in order to
   bring out the characteristic features which distinguish him. The
   exposition which follows will show that I agree with the apt remarks of
   my worthy friend, Dr. Ullmann, made in his beautiful treatise on the
   "Suendenlosigkeit Jesu" (Sinlessness of Jesus), p. 71, and that his
   censures there of those who use the above-mentioned phrase do not apply
   to me. [See Ullmann's Treatise, translated by Edwards and Park, in the
   "Selections from German Literature."]
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 49. Connexion with the Old Testament Theocracy.

   The object of Christ was, as he himself often describes it, to
   establish the kingdom of God among men; not, as we have shown, after a
   plan of man's devising, but after one laid down by God; not only in the
   general developement of the human race, but also, and specially, in the
   developement of the Jewish nation, and in the revelations of the old
   dispensation. We must, therefore, look back upon the Old Testament
   foundations of the kingdom of God, before we can correctly understand
   the plan of Christ as set forth in his. acts and words. The one
   prepared the way for the other. In the former it was outward and
   confined to the narrow community of the Jewish people, in the form of a
   state founded and governed by Divine authority; in the latter it was to
   be universal, all-embracing, a communion, springing out of the
   consciousness of God, intended to be the principle of life and union
   for all mankind. In the former, the Divine law, ordering from without
   all the relations of state and people, governed the nation through
   organs appointed by God and inspired by his Spirit, viz., priests,
   kings, and prophets. But this idea could not be realized; the kingdom
   of God could not be founded from without. It needed first a proper
   material; and this could not be found in human nature, estranged from
   God by sin. The history of the Jewish nation was designed to bring this
   contradiction out into clear consciousness; and to awaken a more and
   more vivid anxiety for its removal, and for the re-establishment and
   glorification of the Theocracy. So the revelations of God pointed more
   and more directly to HIM, the Messiah, under whose dominion the Divine
   kingdom was to be exalted, and the worship of Jehovah to be
   acknowledged and to triumph even among the nations so long estranged
   from him.
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   S: 50. Christ's Steadfast Consciousness of his Messiahship.

   And Jesus knew and testified to his Messiahship from the beginning,
   from his first public appearance until his last declaration, made
   before the high-priests in the very face of death; although he did not
   always proclaim it with equal openness, especially when there was risk
   of popular commotions from false and temporal conceptions of the
   Messiah on the part of the people; but rather gradually led them, from
   the acknowledgment of his prophetic character (by which, indeed, they
   were bound to believe in his words), to recognize him as the Messiah, a
   Prophet also, but in the highest sense.

   In this respect there is no contradiction whatever between the
   Synoptical Gospels [124] and John. They all agree in stating that Jesus
   spoke and acted from the beginning in consciousness of his Messiahship;
   and also that, as circumstances demanded, he was sometimes more and
   sometimes less explicit [125] in regard to it. Nor is John silent [126]
   about the fluctuations and divisions of opinion (easily explained on
   psychological grounds), even among the more favourably disposed
   portions of the multitude: nay, he tells us that some of the Apostles
   were slow to believe, and wavered in their faith. All this, however,
   does nothing to prove similar fluctuations in Christ's conviction of
   his Messiahship. According to Matthew, Jesus commenced his ministry,
   like John the Baptist, by summoning men to repentance, as a preparation
   for the coming kingdom of God. But this by no means implies that his
   intention and his announcement, at the beginning, were the same as
   those of the Baptist. It was necessary for him to take this
   starting-point, as he joined his ministry upon John's proclamation, and
   upon the desire for the manifestation of the kingdom of God which it
   had awakened, in order to purify this desire and direct it to its
   object, the real founder of the kingdom. It was essential to awaken and
   preserve in the minds of the people a sense of the necessity of
   repentance as a condition of participation in the kingdom, and the
   first starting-point for a clear idea of its nature. After this general
   summons had gone before, Jesus could prove, by the impression of his
   own works, that the kingdom had really been manifested through him
   (Matt., xii., 28; Luke, xvii., 21). The proclamation of the approaching
   kingdom and the announcement of Jesus as its founder and central-point,
   were closely connected together; but sometimes the one was announced
   more prominently, and sometimes the other, as circumstances might
   demand. Compare the Sermon on the Mount with the discourses of Christ
   as recorded in John's Gospel.
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   [124] Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

   [125] John, viii., 25; x., 24.

   [126] John, vii., 40; Matt., xvi., 14; John, vii., 12. The less hostile
   portion of the people agreed, at first, only in believing that Christ
   had good intentions and was no seducer of the people.
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   S: 51. No alterations of Christ's Plan.

   It may be imagined, however, that although Christ was conscious, from
   the beginning, of his calling to realize the idea of the kingdom of
   God, the plan of his work may have been modified from time to time
   according to the varying results which depended upon the vacillating
   temper of the public mind; that at first, perhaps, he hoped to find the
   greater part of the Jewish nation ready to receive him; and designed,
   under this supposition, to separate the incorrigible from the better
   part, and collect the latter into a Theocratic community under his
   government; and that he expected that the kingdom of God, once seated
   firmly in this way, would, by the might of its prevailing spirit of
   Divine life, by degrees transform all other nations into the same
   kingdom. In fact, what an incalculable influence might a nation,
   thoroughly imbued with the spirit of Christianity and illustrating
   Christianity in all its relations, exert toward the moral regeneration
   of the rest of mankind! A light indeed would it be, not hid under a
   bushel, but throwing its beams on all sides into the surrounding
   darkness: the salt and the leaven, truly, of all mankind. And some,
   [127] in fact, assert that Christ cherished these hopes when he first
   appeared in public. Hence, say they, the joyous feeling with which he
   announced the "acceptable year" in the synagogue at Nazareth; [128]
   hence his purpose, manifested in the Sermon on the Mount, to give to
   the people new Theocratic statutes in accordance with his higher
   stand-point; hence his promise to the apostles that they should govern,
   under him, the new Theocratic community; [129] hence, too, his last
   lamentation over Jerusalem, that he had so often tried to save the
   nation which ought to have submitted to his guidance. All which, they
   say, presupposes a belief on his part that the results might have been
   different had the people listened to his voice, and that he expected
   more of them to listen to him; that the aim of his ministry was altered
   when he found the resistance more stubborn and general than he had
   supposed; and that, from the course of events themselves, he learned,
   in the light of the Divine Spirit, that the plan for the establishment
   of the kingdom of God which the Divine counsels had formed, was such,
   that he himself must submit to the power of his enemies, and rise
   victorious from his sufferings; while the kingdom itself was only to
   advance by slow degrees, and after many combats, to its final triumph.

   Yet, after all, these reasonings are only specious, not solid. Even the
   most important of them rather opposes than sustains the theory they are
   adduced to support. It is true, there is such a thing as a holy
   enthusiasm for a Divine idea, which is blind to all difficulties, or
   deems that it can gain an easy victory. Such, however, was not the
   enthusiasm of Christ for his Divine work; on the contrary, he combined
   with it a discretion which fully comprehended the opposition he must
   encounter from the prevailing opinions and feelings of the times. He
   was far from trusting to the momentary impulses under which the people,
   excited by his words and actions, sought to join themselves to him. He
   readily distinguished, with that searching glance that pierced the
   depths of men's hearts, the few who came to him, drawn of the Father
   and following an inward consciousness of God, from those who sought him
   with carnal feelings, to obtain that which he came not to bestow. How
   did he check the ardour of his disciples, when he rebuked the false
   self-confidence inspired by a transient enthusiasm, and reminded them
   of their weakness! There was no extravagance in his demands upon men;
   nothing exaggerated in his hopes of the future. Every where we see not
   only a conscious possession of the Divine power to overcome the world,
   which he was to impart to humanity, but also of the obstacles it should
   meet with from the old nature in which the principle of sin was yet
   active. This was the spirit which passed over from him to the Apostles,
   and which constituted the peculiar essence of Christian ethics. CHRIST,
   while as yet surrounded only by a handful of faithful followers,
   describes the renewing power which the seed that he had sown would
   exert on the life of humanity; yet, brilliant as the prospect is, his
   eyes are not dazzled by it; he sees, at the same time, how impurity
   will mix itself with the work of God, and how clouds will obscure it.
   Could He whose quick glance thus saw the depths of men's hearts, and
   took in at once the present and the future, who knew so well the
   corrupt carnality of the Jewish nation before he entered on his public
   ministry, so far deceive himself as to suppose that he could suddenly
   transform the larger part of such a nation into a true people of God?
   He that searched men's hearts and knew what was in man could not be
   ignorant that his severest battles were to be fought with the prevalent
   depravity of men; and in connexion with these struggles, how natural
   was it for him to look forward to the death which he should suffer in
   the faithful performance of his calling! Even at an early date he
   intimated the violent death by which he was to be torn from the happy
   fellowship of his disciples, leaving them behind him in tears and
   sorrow. [130]

   His temptation, the historical truth and import of which we have shown,
   makes it clear that he had decided, before he commenced his public
   labours, not to establish the kingdom of God in a mere outward way by
   miraculous power. And this is further shown by his assigning, in the
   first epoch of his ministry, to John the Baptist, whom he called the
   first among the prophets, a subordinate place in relation to the new
   era of religion; for this could only have been done in view of John's
   in ability fully to comprehend the essential feature of this new era,
   viz.; the spiritual developement of the kingdom of God from within. And
   again, in reference to John he said, "Blessed is he, whosoever shall
   not be offended in me;" evidently presupposing that John's Old
   Testament views would be offended at the new era; a presupposition
   which refers to the new spiritual growth of the Divine kingdom. It is,
   therefore, undeniable that from the beginning Christ aimed at this new
   developement of that kingdom.

   We find further proof of this in all the parables which treat of the
   progress of his kingdom, and the effects of his truth upon human
   nature, viz., the parables of the mustard seed, of the leaven, of the
   fire which he had come to kindle upon earth, all which were designed to
   illustrate the distinction between the Old Testament form of the
   Theocracy and that of Christ; to illustrate a developement which was
   not at once to exhibit an external stately fabric; but to commence with
   apparently small beginnings, and yet ever to propagate itself by a
   mighty power working outwardly from within; and to regenerate all
   things, and thus appropriate them to itself. All these parables
   presuppose the renewal of human nature by a new and pervading principle
   of spiritual life; and imply that the kingdom of God. cannot be visibly
   realized among men until they become subjects of this renewal. To the
   same effect was Christ's saying (which we shall further examine
   hereafter), "neither do men put new wine into old skins, else the skins
   break and the wine runneth out." He who uttered such truths, involving
   a steadfast and connected system of thought, could not have set out
   with the purpose of establishing an outward kingdom, and have afterward
   been induced by circumstances to change his plan in so short a time.
   What an immense revolution in his mental habits and course of thinking
   must a few months have produced, on such a supposition! It would be,
   indeed, a gross misapprehension of the precepts given in the Sermon on
   the Mount to interpret them literally as laws laid down for an outward
   Theocratic kingdom. Such an interpretation would involve the
   possibility of a struggle between Good and Evil in the kingdom of God;
   such as can never take place in Messiahs reign, if it be realized
   according to its idea. The form of a state cannot be thought of in
   connexion with this kingdom; a state presupposes a relation to
   transgression; an outward law, the forms of judicature, the
   administration of justice are essential to its organization. But all
   these can have no place in the perfect kingdom of Christ; a community
   whose whole principle of life is love. Laws intended for the free mind
   lose their import when their observance is compelled by external
   penalties of any kind whatever. More of this view hereafter, when we
   come to treat especially of the Sermon on the Mount.

   Nor is a change in Christ's feelings to be in any wise admitted. The
   year of joy [the acceptable year, Luke, iv., 19] did not refer to the
   happy results which he hoped to attain, but to the blessed contents of
   the announcement with which he commenced his labours; the substance of
   the message itself was joyful, whether the dispositions of the people
   would make it a source of joy to them, or not. And even on his first
   proclamation at Nazareth, the hostility of the carnally-minded
   multitude could have enabled him to prognosticate the general temper
   with which the whole people would receive him. It follows by no means,
   from the wo which he uttered over his loved Jerusalem (Luke, xiii., 34,
   35), that he had hoped at first to find acceptance with the entire
   nation, and to make Jerusalem the real seat of his Theocratic
   government. Yet, although he could not save the nation as a whole, he
   offered his warnings to the whole, leaving it to the issue to decide
   who were willing to hear his voice.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [127] De Wette and Hase. Paulus also, with some modifications.

   [128] Luke, iv., 17, seq.

   [129] Matt., xix., 28.

   [130] Matt., ix., 15. Hase says, indeed, that these words do not imply
   necessarily an approaching violent death, but might be uttered in view
   of the common lot of mortals. But, in the first place, Jesus, if he
   applied to himself the Old Testament idea of the Messiah, could not
   believe that he would be torn by natural death from the Theocratic
   community which he should found among the Jews, and thus leave it to
   the direction of others; but must expect (if he hoped to found an
   external Theocracy) always to remain present as Theocratic king. (This
   applies, also, to what Hase says (2d edit. of his Leben Jesu, p. 89),
   in opposition to his previously expressed views.) Again, it would be
   strange indeed for a man of thirty to express himself to older men, in
   reference to the common end of mortals, in such language as the
   following: "Now is your time for festal joy; for when your friend shall
   be removed, it will be time for fasting and sorrow." The whole
   connexion of the passage shows that Jesus did not expect to part from
   them under happy circumstances, but amid many conflicts and sufferings.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 52. Two-fold bearing of the Kingdom of God--an inward, spiritual
   Power, and a world-renewing Power.

   There are two sides to the conception of the kingdom of God, as Christ
   viewed it; in reference to its ideal and its real elements, which must
   be contemplated in their connexion with each other. The discourses of
   Christ will be found every where to contradict a one-sided view of
   either of these elements.

   The kingdom of God was indeed first to be exhibited as a communion of
   men bound together by the same spirit, inspired by the same
   consciousness of God; and this communion was to find its central point
   in CHRIST, its Redeemer and King. As he himself ordered and directed
   all things in the first congregation of his disciples, so he was
   subsequently to inspire, rule, and cultivate this community of men by
   his law and by his Spirit. The revelation of the Spirit, shared by all
   its members, was all that was to distinguish it from the world, so
   called in the New Testament, that is, the common mass of mankind, as
   alienated from God.

   But as this community was gradually to prevail even over the mass of
   mankind through the power of the indwelling Spirit, it was not always
   to remain entirely inward and hidden, but to send forth, continually
   more and more, a renewing influence; to be the salt, the leaven of
   humanity, the city set upon a hill, the candle which, once lighted,
   should never be extinguished. And Christ was gradually, through this
   community, his organ and his royal dwelling-place, to establish his
   kingdom as a real one, more and more widely among men, and subdue the
   world to his dominion. In this sense were those who shared in his
   communion to obtain and exercise, even upon earth, a real
   world-dominion. It is the aim and end of history, that Christianity
   shall more and more become the world-governing principle. In fine, the
   end of this developement appears to be (though not, indeed, simply as
   its natural result) a complete realization of the Divine kingdom which
   Christ established in its outward manifestation, fully answering to its
   idea; a perfect world-dominion of Christ and of his organs; a world
   purified and transformed, to become the seat of His universal empire.

   So did Christ intend, in a true sense, and in various relations, to
   describe himself as King, and his organs as partakers in his dominion
   of the world. It was, indeed, in a real sense that he spoke of his
   KINGDOM, to be manifested on earth. And as he was to build up this
   kingdom on the foundations laid down in the Old Testament, and to
   realize the plan of God therein prefigured, he could rightfully apply
   to himself the figures of the Old Testament in regard to the progress
   of the Theocracy, in order to bring the truths which they veiled
   clearly out before the consciousness of men. [131] Although his
   disciples at first took these figures in the letter, still, under the
   influence of Christ's intercourse and teaching, they could not long
   stop there. And not only his direct instructions, but the manner in
   which he opposed the idea of his spiritual and inward kingdom to the
   carnal notions of the Jews, contributed to give his followers the key
   to the right interpretation of these types and shadows.

   In thus comparing Christ's discourses with each other, and in the unity
   of purpose which a contemplation of his whole life makes manifest, we
   find a guard for all after ages, against carnal misconceptions of his
   individual discourses, or of separate features of his life. [132] In
   general, when we find in the accounts of any world-historical man such
   a unity of the creative minds we are willing, if individual features
   come up in apparent contradiction to the general tenor, to believe that
   he was misunderstood by incapable contemporaries; or, if this cannot be
   safely asserted, because the contradictory features are inseparable
   from others that bear his unmistakable impress, we endeavour, by
   comparing his manifestations, to find that higher unity in which even
   the unmanageable points may find their rightful place. Utterly
   unhistorical, indeed, is that perverted principle of historical
   exegesis which teaches that an original, creative mind, a spirit far
   above his times, is to be comprehended from the prevailing opinions of
   his age and nation; and which presupposes, in fact, that all these
   opinions are his own. [133]
     __________________________________________________________________

   [131] Some suppose that every thing in Christ's discourses, as reported
   by Matthew and Luke, in reference to this real Theocratic element, is
   to be ascribed to the Jewish views that obscured the truth as uttered
   by Christ, and caused it to be reported incorrectly That this is not
   the case is obvious from Paul's plain references to such expressions of
   Christ's, e.g., 1 Cor., vi., 2.

   [132] We shall speak more particularly of this when we come to treat of
   the mode in which Christ trained his apostles.

   [133] Conf. what Schleiermacher says (Hermeneutik, s. 20) of
   "historical interpretation," and also (s. 82) of the "Analogy of
   Faith."
     __________________________________________________________________
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER II.

  THE PLAN OF CHRIST IN ITS RELATION TO THE OLD TESTAMENT IDEA OF THE KINGDOM OF
  GOD.

   The question now arises, in what relation the new form of the kingdom
   of God, according to Christ's plan, stood to the Old Testament form
   thereof; a question which we shall have to answer from the intimations
   afforded by Christ himself. Indeed, it has already been answered by our
   remarks upon his idea of the kingdom as developing itself from within;
   but as the subject has its difficulties, and especially as some have
   tried to prove that Christ spoke and acted at different times from
   opposite points of view, we must examine it more closely.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 53. Christ's Observance of the Jewish Worship and Law.

   No question can arise as to Christ's intention to extend his kingdom
   abroad among the pagan nations; the Messianic predictions of the Old
   Testament had already intimated the general diffusion of the worship of
   Jehovah; and John the Baptist had hinted at the possible transfer of
   the kingdom of God from the Jews to the heathen, in case the former
   should prove to be unworthy of it. And what was afterward novel to the
   apostles was, not that the pagans should be converted and received into
   the fellowship of the Messiah, but that they should be received without
   accepting the Mosaic law. It was against the latter view, and not the
   former, that even the strictest Judaizers objected. It was to refute
   this that the Ebionites appealed to Christ's strict observance of the
   law, and to his saying, in the Sermon on the Mount, that he "came not
   to destroy, but to fufil the law," and that "not one jot or tittle of
   the law should pass away."

   We must not oppose this doctrine by quoting Christ's declarations that
   the essence of religion must be found in the soul, and that outward
   things could neither cleanse nor sanctify mankind; [134] for even in
   the light of the Old Testament it was known that piety of heart was
   indispensable to a true fulfilment of the law. Christ himself appealed
   to a passage in the Old Testament (Hos., vi., 6) in proof of this; and
   even the well-disposed scribe (Mark, xii., 33) admitted it. Still, the
   necessity of an outward observance of the law might be maintained by
   those who deemed inward purity essential to its value. [135]

   Viewing the relation of Christ's doctrine to the legal stand-point only
   on this side, we might conceive it to have stood as follows: Directing
   his attention only to the necessity of proper dispositions in order to
   piety, he held, as of fundamental importance, that nothing in religion
   not springing from genuinely pious feelings could be of any avail; and,
   holding fast to this, did not investigate further the question of the
   continued authority of the ceremonial law. Satisfied with saving what
   was most essential, he permitted the other to stand as inviolable in
   its Divine authority. Such a course would have been eminently proper in
   Christ, if we regard him as nothing more than a genuine reformer Every
   attempt at true reformation must have, not a negative, but a positive
   point of departure; must start with some truth which it fully and
   necessarily recognizes.

   The view which we have just set forth is not invalidated by Christ's
   denunciations of the Pharisees for their arbitrary statutes and
   burdensome additions to the law.Matt., xxiii. In all these he
   contrasted the law, rightly and spiritually understood, with their
   false traditions and interpretations. As for actual violation of the
   law, he could never be justly accused of it; even Paul, who so
   strenuously resisted the continued obligation of the law, declares that
   Christ submitted to it. [136]
     __________________________________________________________________

   [134] Such as Matt., xv., 11; Mark, vii., 15.

   [135] Even Philo, from the stand-point of his religious idealism, held
   the necessity of a strict observance of the ritual law, believing that
   it facilitated the understanding of the spiritual sense of the law. He
   asserted this against the idealists, who adhered absolutely to the
   letter, in his treatise "De Migratione Abraami."

   [136] Gal., iv., 4.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 54. His Manifestation greater than the "Temple."

   But a comparison of Matt., xii., 6-8, with Mark, ii., 28, will suggest
   to us something more than a mere assault upon the statutes of the
   Pharisees. In the first passage he begins with his opponents upon their
   own ground. "You yourselves admit that the priests who serve the Temple
   on the Sabbath must break the literal Sabbatical law in view of the
   higher duties of the Temple service." Then he continues, "But I say
   unto you, there is something here greater than the Temple." [137] In
   these, as in many of Christ's words, there is more than meets the ear.
   [138] When we remember the sanctity of the Temple in Jewish eyes, as
   the seat of the Shekinah, as the only place where God could ever be
   worshipped, we can conceive the weight of Christ's declaration that his
   manifestation was something greater than the Temple, and was to
   introduce a revelation of the glory of God, and a mode of Divine
   worship to which the Temple-service was entirely subordinate. We may
   infer Christ's conclusion to have been, "If the priests have been freed
   from the literal observance of the Sabbath law because of their
   relation to the Temple, heretofore the highest seat of worship, how
   much more must my disciples be freed from the letter of that law by
   their relation to that which is greater than the Temple! (Their
   intercourse with Him was something greater than Temple-worship.) They
   have plucked the corn on the Sabbath, it is true, but they have done it
   that they might not be disturbed in their communion with the Son of
   Man, and in reliance upon his authority. They are free from guilt,
   then, for the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath." He thus laid the
   foundation for that true, spiritual worship to which the Temple-service
   was to give way.

   Of the same character were those words of Jesus which taught a Stephen
   that Christ would destroy the Temple and remove its ritual-worship.
   (Acts, vi., 14.) Whether he learned this from the words recorded in
   John, ii., 19, or from some others, we leave for the present undecided.
   The doctrine of Paul in regard to the relation between the Law and the
   Gospel was only an extension of the truth first uttered by Stephen.
   This doctrine could not have originated in Paul, without a point of
   departure for it in the instructions of Christ himself; still less, if
   those instructions had been in direct contradiction to it.

   Christ's declaration, "My yoke is easy and my burden light" (Matt.,
   xi., 30), was designed, indeed, primarily, to contrast his manner of
   teaching and leading men with that of the Pharisees; but it certainly
   meant far more. It contrasted his plan of salvation with legalism
   generally, of which Pharisaism was only the apex. Paul's doctrine on
   the subject is nothing but a developement of the intimation contained
   in these words. [139]
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   [137] I prefer Lachmann's reading (meizon) both on internal and
   external grounds. I cannot, however, believe, with De Wette, that the
   passage refers to Christ's Messianic calling alone; but rather to his
   whole manifestation, of which his ministry as Messiah formed part.
   Similar expressions of Christ refer to his whole appearance, e. g.,
   Matt., xii., 8, speaks of his person. Conf. Luke, xi., 30.

   [138] Justly says Dr. von Coelln (Ideen ueb. d. inneren Zusammenhang
   der Glaubenseinigung und Glaubensreinigung in der evangel. Kirche,
   Leips., 1824, s. 10): "Every religious student of the Scriptures,
   however he may be satisfied with the sense that he has obtained from
   them by the aids of philosophy and history, must be constrained to
   acknowledge that the simplest words of the Saviour contain a depth and
   fulness of meaning which he can never boast of having mastered." These
   holy words, containing the germ of an unending developement, could only
   be understood in the Spirit (as by the Apostles); and they who had not
   received this Spirit, like the Judaizers, who adhered to the letter
   could not but misunderstand them.

   [139] Schleiermacher (in his Hermeneutik, s. 82) very aptly applies the
   oft-abused comparison between Christ and Socrates to illustrate the
   relation between the apostolic doctrines, especially those of Paul, and
   the immediate teachings of Christ. He justly remarks, that while there
   was a similarity in the fact that the teachings of Socrates were not
   written down by himself, but transmitted through his disciples, who
   marked them with their own individuality without at all obliterating
   the Socratic ground-colours, the substantial difference lay in this,
   that the affinity of the Apostles was closer than that of the followers
   of Socrates, "because the power of unity which emanated from Christ was
   in itself greater, and acted so powerfully upon those Apostles who,
   like Paul, had marked individual peculiarities, that they appealed, in
   their teachings, exclusively to Christ. Although Paul first brought out
   the idea of the conversion of the heathen into perfect clearness before
   the Apostles, yet he advocated it in no other power than that of
   Christ. Had not the idea been contained in Christ's teaching, the other
   Apostles would not have recognized Paul as a Christian, much less an
   Apostle." The same remark may be applied to many other important
   doctrines.
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   S: 55. The Conversation with the Samaritan Woman.

   We have thus far confined ourselves to Christ's declarations as given
   by Matthew, Mark, and Luke, avoiding John, because the credibility of
   his reports of Christ's discourses has been more disputed. But, having
   shown the tendency of Christ's doctrine of the Law from the first
   Gospels alone, we are surely now entitled to appeal to his conversation
   with the woman of Samaria (John, iv., 7-30), in which he set forth the
   Christian view, that religion was no more to be confined to any one
   place. In fact, the discourse involves no doctrine which cannot be
   found in Christ's declarations elsewhere recorded. Perfectly accordant
   with his declaration to the hostile Pharisees who clamoured so loudly
   for the ritual law--"the manifestation of the Son of Man is greater
   than the Temple; and he is Lord of the Sabbath"--was his answer to a
   woman (ignorant, to be sure, and destitute of a spiritual sense of the
   Divine, but yet free from prejudice, and susceptible of receiving
   instruction from him, because she believed him to be a prophet), when
   she inquired as to the right place to worship God: "The time is coming
   when the worship of God will be confined to no visible temple for the
   hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the
   Father in spirit and in truth." This declaration could only have been
   founded on the fact that something greater than the Temple had appeared
   among men.
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   S: 56. The "Destroying" and "Fulfilling" of the Law.

   But although we infer that Paul's doctrine of the disjunction of
   Christianity from the Mosaic law was derived, mediately at least, from
   Christ's own words, we must admit that the Judaizing Christians, unfit
   as they were, from their Jewish stand-point, fully to apprehend his
   teaching, might have found some support for their peculiar opinions
   both in his words and in his actions. Take, for instance, the passage,
   "Think not that I am come to destroy the Law and the Prophets; I am not
   come to destroy, but to fulfil." [140] Their Jewish views might
   interpret this to mean that he did not intend to abrogate the
   ceremonial part of the law, but to bring about a strict observance of
   it. Nor shall we apply here the distinction between the moral and the
   ritual law; neither the connexion of the passage nor the stand-point of
   the Old Testament would justify this. Certainly, as he used the terms
   Law and Prophets to denote the two great divisions of the Old
   Testament, and declared he would not destroy either, he must have had
   in view the entire law; it was the law, as a whole, that he came not to
   destroy, but to fulfil.

   We need only to understand correctly what kind of "destroying" it is
   which Christ disclaims. It is a "destroying" which excludes
   "fulfilling;" a destroying which is not at the same time a fulfilling.
   The general positive clause, "I am come to fulfil," is used as proof of
   the special and negative clause, "I am not come to destroy the Law and
   the Prophets;" nor are we to make the former a special one, by seeking
   an object for it in the preceding words. On the contrary, the general
   proposition, "I am come to fulfil," which holds good of Christ's entire
   labours, is, in this case, specially applied to his relation to the Old
   Testament. Christ's activity is in no sense a destroying and negative,
   but in every respect a fulfilling and creative agency. For instance, by
   that agency human nature is to lose none of its essential features; but
   only to be freed from the bonds and defects which sin has imposed upon
   it, so that its ideal, as originally designed by the Creator, may
   become the real. This is fulfilling; but yet it must be accompanied by
   the destroying of whatever opposes it. We apply the same principle to
   Christ's relation to the Mosaic law. The Mosaic Institute, as the
   fundamental law of the special Theocracy exhibited in the Jewish
   nation, was a veil, a limited form, in which the will of God, the
   eternal law of the Theocracy, was appropriately impressed upon the men
   of that time. But the general and eternal Theocratic law could not find
   its free developement and fulfilment in the form of an outward State
   law. The law (in its whole extent I mean, including what is called in a
   narrower sense the moral, as well as the ritual law) aimed to realize
   the will of God, to present the true dikaiosune under the relations
   above defined. But what the law, in its whole extent, aimed at, is
   accomplished through Christ; the veil is rent, the bonds are loosed by
   the liberating Spirit, and the law reaches its before unattainable
   fulfilment. This fulfilment, indeed, involves the removal of all
   obstructions; but this destroying process cannot be called destroying,
   as it is an essential condition, and a negative element, of the
   fulfilment itself. So the fulfilment of prophecy in the manifestation
   and labours of Christ necessarily involved the destruction of the
   prophetic veil and covering of the Messianic idea. [141]

   The Ebionites, adhering only to the letter, misunderstood Christ's
   declarations on this subject; but Paul, viewing them in their true
   spirit and universal bearing, obtained those views on the relation of
   the Law and the Gospel which he presents in such passages as Rom.,
   iii., 31: viii., 3, 4.
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   [140] Matt. v. 17.

   [141] We shall see hereafter how this interpretation of Christ's words
   is verified in the whole train of thought in the Sermon on the Mount.
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   S: 57. The Interpolation in Luke, vi., 4. (Cod. Cant.)

   There is a traditional account of another remarkable saying of Christ
   in regard to the observance of the Sabbath, [142] viz., that on a
   certain occasion, seeing a man at work on the Sabbath, he said to him,
   "Happy art thou if thou knowest what thou art doing; but if thou dost
   not know, thou art accursed, and a transgressor of the law." We must
   not leave this unnoticed, for as other words of Christ which did not
   find place in the canonical Gospels were handed down by tradition,
   [143] so it is possible that an event of the character here related may
   have been preserved in some collection of evangelical traditions (e.g.,
   an apocryphal Gospel or some other), and may have been afterward
   transferred to Luke, vi., 4, as having an affinity with the context
   there. There is nothing in the words themselves which Christ might not
   have uttered under certain circumstances; for their import is a
   sentiment which he always made prominent; viz., that all depends upon
   the spirit in which one acts. The force of the passage is, "Happy is he
   who has arrived at the conviction that God must be worshipped, not at
   special times and places, but in spirit and in truth; and who feels
   himself free from the Old Testament Sabbatical law. But he who, while
   acknowledging that law, allows himself to be induced by outward motives
   to labour on the Sabbath, is a guilty man; the law is in force for him,
   and, by violating his conscience for the sake of an external good, he
   pronounces his own condemnation."

   It is quite a different question, however, whether this narrative does
   not bear internal marks of improbability; whether, under the specified
   circumstances, Christ would have spoken as he is reported to have done.
   First, it is hardly possible to imagine that any one, at that day,
   among the Jews of Palestine, would have ventured to labour on the
   Sabbath. Again, it is hard to believe that Christ would have pronounced
   such labour in any wise good, unless it were performed in the discharge
   of a special duty. Such a procedure, more than any other, would have
   laid him open to the reproach of contemning the law. He looked upon the
   law as having been a divinely ordained part of the developement of
   God's kingdom, and as, therefore, necessary, until the period when the
   new form of that kingdom should go into operation. Only in the progress
   of this new form was the abrogation of the law to follow from the
   consciousness of redemption through Christ; and then, indeed, its
   destruction would be one with its fulfilment; and until that point of
   progress arrived, Christ himself set the example of a conscientious
   observance of the law. He opposed the Pharisaic statutes, indeed, but
   it was because they took the law in its letter, not in its spirit, and
   surrounded its observance with difficulties. He made it a fundamental
   point, that all true obedience must spring from piety and love; but
   still it was obedience to the law. He gave therefore, as we have seen,
   intimations only of that higher period in which the law was to be done
   away; intimations, moreover, which could only be understood through his
   own Spirit, after his work upon earth was done. Hence he certainly
   could have pronounced no action good in which man's will allowed itself
   to anticipate God's order, especially an action, grounded on motives
   understood by nobody, which might have injuriously affected the
   religious convictions of others. Paul lays down quite a contrary rule
   in 1 Cor., viii. Nor did Christ himself act in such a way in other
   cases.

   There is, then, very poor authority for this passage, either internal
   or external. Its invention was probably suggested by the words of Paul
   in Rom., xiv., 22, 23, and affords a very good illustration of the
   difference between mere individual inventions and the genuine
   historical traditions of the Evangelists.
     __________________________________________________________________

   We close our survey of Christ's sayings in regard to his relations to
   the Old Testament with a remark directly suggested by it, from which
   the weightiest consequences may be deduced.

   The manner in which he contrasted the Old Testament with its
   fulfilment, the New, and elevated the least of Christians above all the
   prophets, shows how clearly he distinguished the kernel from its
   perishable shell, the Divine idea from its temporary veil, the truth
   which lay in germ in the Old Testament, from the contracted form in
   which it presented itself to Old Testament minds. Applying this general
   principle to individual cases as they arise, we may learn how to
   interpret, in Christ's own sense, the figures which he employed to
   illustrate his Messianic world-dominion. In this way some of the
   results at which we have already arrived may find further confirmation.
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   [142] In the Cod. Cant. (Cod. Bezae), this passage immediately follows
   Luke, vi., 4: "te haute eme'ra theasamenos tina ergazomenon to sabbato
   eipen hauto; a'nthrope, ei men oidas ti poieis, makarios ei; ei de me
   oidas, epikataratos kai parabates ei tou nomon."

   [143] Acts, xx., 35.
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     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER III.

  NEW FORM OF THE IDEA OF THE PERSON OF THE THEOCRATIC KING.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 58. The Names Son of God and Son of Man.

   OUR conception of the person of the Messiah, as Theocratic King, is
   closely connected with that which we may entertain of the kingdom of
   God itself, and of its process of developement. In reference to both,
   Jesus joined himself indeed to the existing Jewish conceptions, but, at
   the same time, infused into them a new spirit and a higher regenerating
   element.

   Both of the names which he applied to himself--Son of God and Son of
   Man--are to be found among the designations of the Messiah in the Old
   Testament; but he used them in a far higher sense than was current
   among the Jews. He obviously employed them antithetically: they contain
   correlative ideas, and cannot be thoroughly understood apart from their
   reciprocal relation. It is clear from Matt., xvi., 16; xxvi., 63; John,
   i., 50, and from all that is known of the current theological language
   of the Jews at that time, that the name "Son of God" was the most
   common designation of Messiah, as the best adapted to denote his
   highest dignity, that of Theocratic King. The name "Son of Man"
   involves, indeed, an allusion to the description of the Messiah in
   Dan., vii. (further illustrated in Christ's last words before the
   high-priests, Matt., xxvi., 64); but it is certain that this name was
   not among the more usual or best known titles of Messiah. This may
   explain why, [144] when Jesus on a certain occasion had stated a fact
   in regard to himself as Son of Man [viz., his approaching death] which
   did not accord with prevailing ideas, that his hearers began to doubt
   whether he did not mean to designate by that title some other person
   than the Messiah. It is used by none of the apostles for that purpose;
   and, indeed, nowhere in the New Testament, except in the discourses of
   Christ and in that of Stephen (Acts, vii., 56); and in this last case
   it is probable, as Olshausen justly remarks, that Stephen had an
   immediate and vivid intuition of Jesus, as he had seen him in his human
   form.
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   [144] John, xii., 34.
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   S: 59. Import of the Title Son of Man, as used by Christ
   himself--Rejection of Alexandrian and other Analogies.

   Christ must, therefore, have had special reasons for adopting, with an
   obvious predilection, the less known Messianic title. Even if we were
   to grant that lie used it more frequently because of its less obvious
   application, in order, at first, to lead the Jews gradually to
   recognize him as Messiah; still we should not have a sufficient
   explanation of his employing it so generally and so emphatically. [145]
   We find a better reason for it in Christ's conscious relation to the
   human race; a relation which stirred the very depths of his heart. He
   called himself the "Son of Man" because he had appeared as a man;
   because he belonged to mankind; because he had done such great things
   even for human nature (Matt., ix., 8); because he was to glorify that
   nature; be cause he was himself the realized ideal of humanity. [146]

   We certainly cannot find in Christ's use of the title any trace of the
   Alexandrian Theologoumenon of the archetype of humanity in the Logos,
   of Philo's distinction between the idea of humanity and its
   manifestation (or the Cabbalistic Adam Cadmon); notwithstanding it was
   not by accident that so many ideal elements, formed from a commingling
   of Judaism and Hellenism, were given as points of departure to the
   realism of Christianity; although this last was grounded on the highest
   fact in history.

   So, too, the fundamental idea of the title "Son of Man" is, perhaps,
   allied to that involved in the Jewish designation of Messiah as the
   "second Adam;" but it is clear that Christ was not led by the latter
   fact to employ it. Much rather do we suppose that the name, although
   used by the prophets, received its loftier and more profound
   significance from Christ's own Divine and human consciousness,
   independent of all other sources. It would have been the height of
   arrogance in any man to assume such a relation to humanity, to style
   himself absolutely Man. But He, to whom it was natural thus to style
   himself, indicated thereby his elevation above all other sons of
   men--the Son of God in the Son of Man.

   The two titles, "Son of God" and "Son of Man," therefore, bear
   evidently a reciprocal relation to each other. And we conclude that as
   Christ used the one to designate his human personality, so he employed
   the other to point out his Divine; and that as he attached a sense far
   more profound than was common to the former title, so he ascribed a
   deeper meaning than was usual to the latter.
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   [145] I must differ here from Scholten, Luecke, Von Coeln (Bibl. Dogm.,
   ii., 16), and Strauss (Leben Jesu); and agree with Schleiermacher,
   Tholuck, Olshausen, and Kling (Stud. u. Krit, 1836, i., 137). Justly
   says Schleiermacher of the title "Son of Man," "Christ would not have
   adopted it had he not been conscious of a complete participation in
   human nature. Its application would have been pointless, however, had
   he not used it in a sense inapplicable to other men; and it was
   pregnant with reference to the distinctive differences between him and
   them" (Dogmatik, ii., 91, 3d. ed). Certainly there is manifest, in the
   often-repeated expressions, sayings, and proverbs uttered by Christ,
   more the impression of an original and creative mind than a mere
   appropriation of what might have been given to his hand by his age and
   nation. It is one of the merits of the great man whose words we have
   just quoted, that he vindicated this truth in many ways in opposition
   to a shallow theology. The unclean spirit which he banished is now
   endeavouring, with seven others worse than himself, to take possession
   of this age, in which endeavour, please God, he will not succeed.

   [146] Conf. Matt., xii., 8; John i., 52; iii., 13; v., 27; vi. 53. The
   force of the first passage in John (i., 52) is, that Christ would
   glorify humanity by restoring its fellowship with celestial powers. The
   second (iii., 13) imports that he reveals his Divine being in human
   nature, and lives in heaven as man. The third (v., 27), that as man he
   will judge the human race. The fourth (vi., 53), that we must
   thoroughly take to ourselves and be penetrated by the flesh and blood
   (i. e., the pure humanity, the form of which he assumed to reveal the
   Divine) of him who can be called man in a sense that can be predicated
   of no other, and who himself has incarnated the Divinity. (On the
   passage from Matt., see p. 89.) In Matt., ix., 8, there is in the
   statement that the entire human nature is glorified in Christ, an
   intimation of what is expressed in the title "Son of Man" in Christ's
   sense of it. It is remarkable, that while this emphatic title of the
   Son of Man appears in the discourses of Christ both in the synoptical
   Gospels and John, that its deeper sense, although not to be mistaken in
   some of the passages in the former, is far more vividly expressed in
   John. Yet if it were the case (as has been said) that John, following
   the prevalent opinion, designed to represent Jesus as the Logos
   appearing in humanity, and, leaving the human nature in the
   back-ground, to present the Divine conspicuously, he could not have
   used this title so frequently. There is no trace of Alexandrianism in
   John, nor can his preference for the expression be attributed to his
   individual peculiarities, for there is nothing of the kind in his
   Epistles. The only individual peculiarity that we can detect in John,
   in this respect, is his susceptibility to impression from certain
   emphatic expressions especially such as relate to the person of Christ.
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   S: 60. Import of the Title Son of God.

   (1.) John's Sense of the Title accordant with that of the other
   Evangelists.

   We are indebted to John's Gospel, more than to either of the others,
   for those expressions of Christ which relate especially to the
   indwelling within him of the Divine essence. It does not, however (as
   some suppose), follow from this that John, consciously or
   unconsciously, remodelled the discourses of Christ according to the
   Alexandrian theology. The fact may be explained on entirely other
   grounds, e. g., his more intimate connexion with Christ, and the
   peculiar profoundness of his mind; moreover, the discourses recorded by
   him are longer and more consecutively didactic and controversial than
   those given by the other Evangelists. The impartiality, too, with which
   he sets forth the pure humanity of Christ is sufficient to prove the
   groundlessness of such a reproach.

   If we can only find individual expressions in the other Evangelists
   which involve the idea of the "Son of God" in John's sense, we shall
   have proved satisfactorily that the latter was derived immediately from
   Christ himself. Now Matt., xi., 27, "No man knoweth the Son but the
   Father, neither knoweth any man the Father save the Son," is just such
   a passage. It intimates precisely such a mysterious relation between
   the Father and the Son as John more fully sets forth as imparted to him
   by the revelation of Christ. So, also, the question propounded by
   Christ to the Pharisees, "What think ye of the Christ? whose Son is
   he?" could have had no other object than to lead them to conceive
   Messiah as the Son of God in a higher sense than they were accustomed
   to. Again, the heathen centurion (Matt., viii., 5), who deemed his roof
   unworthy of Christ, and begged him, without approaching his abode, to
   heal the sick servant by a word, certainly considered him as a superior
   being who had ministering spirits at command. He evidently did not form
   his idea of Christ from the common Jewish conceptions of the Messiah;
   on the contrary, his explanation (verse 9) of the impression which he
   had received (either from the accounts of others, or from personal
   observation of Christ's person and labours) is perfectly in keeping
   with his character and notions while as yet a pagan. [147] But Christ
   (who always rejected any honours that were ascribed to him from
   erroneous views [148] ) not only did not correct the centurion, but
   held his faith up as a model.

   In a word, the whole image of Christ presented in the synoptical
   Gospels exhibits a majesty far transcending human nature, and utterly
   irreconcilable with Ebionitish conceptions. A manifestation so
   extraordinary presupposes an inward essence such as that which John's
   Gospel fully unfolds to us.

   (2.) And confirmed by Paul's.

   Nor could the origin of Paul's doctrine of the person of Christ be
   explained, unless Christ himself had given statements corresponding to
   those recorded in John's Gospel. So, too, the various theological
   tendencies that developed themselves after the apostolic age presuppose
   a turn of thought intermediate between that especially exhibited in
   Matthew and that of Paul. Precisely such an intermediate point was
   occupied by John. [149]
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   [147] The whole account bears the inimitable stamp of historical truth.

   [148] Luke, xi., 21; xviii., 19.

   [149] Luecke has justly remarked upon the difference between the
   classic, creative tendencies of the apostolic times, and the later
   imitations of them. The dividing line between the former and the latter
   is distinctly marked. The later developement of Christian doctrine
   presupposes the different apostolic types of doctrine, and among them
   that of John. It is, therefore, utterly unhistorical to seek the origin
   of such a Gospel as John's in later Church developements (as some
   attempt to do). The latter are utterly destitute of the harmonious
   unity of Christian spiritual elements that distinguishes the former.
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     __________________________________________________________________
     __________________________________________________________________

PART II.

THE MEANS AND INSTRUMENTS OF CHRIST.
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  CHAPTER I

  A. THE MEANS OF CHRIST IN GENERAL.
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   S: 61. Christ a Spiritual Teacher.

   AS the kingdom which Christ came to establish was a spiritual one,
   intended to develope itself outwardly from within, so the means which
   he employed in its foundation were entirely of a spiritual nature. In
   his declaration before Pilate, [150] after he had (1) disclaimed any
   purpose of setting up an earthly kingdom, affirming at the same time
   (2) that he was King in a certain sense, he added (3) that he came into
   the world to testify of the truth. These three propositions, taken
   together, set forth his purpose to found his kingdom, not by worldly
   means, but by the testimony of the truth. But he testified of the truth
   by his whole life, by his words and works, comprising the entire
   self-revelation of Him who could say, "I am the Truth."

   Inasmuch, therefore, as he himself designates the testimony of the
   truth as his means of founding his kingdom; inasmuch, also, as he
   appeared first as Prophet, in order to lead those who recognized him as
   such to recognize him also as Messiah and Theocratic King, we must
   treat of his work as Prophet, or of his exercise of the office of
   Divine Teacher, as the instrument by which he laid the ground-work of
   his reign among men.
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   [150] John, xviii. 33-38.
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   S: 62. Different Theatres of Christ's Labours as Teacher.

   Christ exercised his office as teacher in two distinct theatres,
   Galilee and Jerusalem; and his mode of teaching varied accordingly.
   That carnal mania for miracles (directly contrasted by Paul [151] with
   the Greek pride of reason) which infected the Jews every where, whether
   in Galilee or Jerusalem, and added presumption to their
   narrow-mindedness, proved, indeed, in both places, the greatest
   hindrance to their reception of the words of Christ. This common Jewish
   feature of opposition to the spirit of Christ justified the Apostle
   John, when he was reviewing the past in its great outlines, in
   embracing not only the dominant Pharisaic party at Jerusalem, but also
   the hosts of Galilee, under the general conception of Ioudaioi. [152]

   Yet as the people of Galilee were of a more simple turn of mind, and
   were less subject to the influence of Pharisaism than those of
   Jerusalem, they must naturally have been more susceptible to his
   instructions. But a prophet is not wont to be held in honour in his own
   country; nor was the narrow-minded, carnal supranaturalism of the
   Galileans likely to recognize in the son of the carpenter of Nazareth
   the man sent of God. It was not until the displays of his power in the
   metropolis of the Theocracy had revealed him in a higher light, that he
   found a better reception on his return to the villages of Galilee.John,
   iv., 44, 45.

   It was partly, then, in Jerusalem, where the Jews gathered together
   from all the world at the Passover, and partly in Galilee, where he
   spoke to the people, clustered in more or less numerous groups about
   him. especially as he walked along the shores of Genesareth, that the
   scone of his labours as a public teacher lay.
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   [151] 1 Cor., i., 22.

   [152] See John's Gospel, passim.
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   S: 63. Choice and Training of the Apostles to be subordinate Teachers.

   Those who had no ear to hear the teachings of Christ fell off one by
   one, and left around him a narrow and abiding circle of susceptible
   souls, who were gradually more and more attracted by him, and more and
   more deeply imbued with his spirit. A closer [the closest] circle still
   was formed of his constant companions, the Apostles. As the seed which
   he sowed was received and developed so differently in the soils of
   different minds, and as the import of his teaching could not be
   thoroughly comprehended until his work upon earth was finished, there
   was danger that the confused traditions of the multitude would hand
   down to posterity a very imperfect image of himself and his doctrines,
   and that the necessary instrument for the foundation of the kingdom of
   God, viz., the propagation of the truth, would be wanting.

   It might be supposed that Christ could have best guarded against this
   result by transmitting his doctrine to all after ages in a form written
   by himself. And had He, in whom the Divine and the human were combined
   in unbroken harmony, intended to do this, he could not but have given
   to the Church the perfect contents of his doctrine in a perfect form.
   Well was it, however, for the course of developement which God intended
   for his kingdom, that what could be done was not done. The truth of God
   was not to be presented in a fixed and absolute form, but in manifold
   and peculiar representations, designed to complete each other, and
   which, bearing the stamp at once of God's inspiration and man's
   imperfection, were to be developed by the activity of free minds, in
   free and lively appropriation of what God had given by his Spirit. This
   will appear yet more plainly hereafter, from the principles of Christ's
   mode of instruction, as set forth by himself. At present we content
   ourselves with one single remark. Christ's declaration, "It is the
   Spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing," [153] and his
   emphatic rejection of an act of worship that, without thought of the
   Spirit, deified only his outward form, [154] may serve to guard all
   after ages against that tendency to deify the form which is so fatal a
   bar against all recognition of the essence. What could have contributed
   more to produce such a tendency than a written document from Christ's
   own hand?

   Since, therefore, Christ intended to leave no such fixed rule of
   doctrine for all ages, written by himself, it was the more necessary
   for him to select organs capable of transmitting to posterity a correct
   image of himself and his teaching, Such organs were the apostles, and
   their training constituted no unimportant part of his work as a
   teacher.
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   [153] John, vi., 63.

   [154] Luke, xi., 27.
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     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER II.

  CHRIST'S MODE OF TEACHING IN REGARD TO ITS METHOD AND FORM.

   A. GENERAL PRINCIPLES.
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   S: 64. His mode of Teaching adapted to the Stand-point of his Hearers.

   WE shall first seek, in the intimations of Christ himself, for the
   principles of his mode of teaching, and the grounds on which he adopted
   it.

   Such an intimation may be found in Matt., xiii., 52. After he had
   uttered and expounded several parables in regard to the kingdom of God,
   and had been assured by the apostles that they understood him, he
   continued: "From the example I have given you, in thus making hidden
   truths clear by means of parables, ye may learn that every scribe who
   is instructed into the kingdom of Heaven is like a householder, who
   bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old." As a
   householder shows his visitors his jewels; exhibits, in pleasing
   alternation, the modern and the antique, and leads them from the common
   to the rare, so must the teacher of Divine truth, in the new
   manifestation of the kingdom of God, bring out of his treasures of
   knowledge truths old and new, and gradually lead his hearers from the
   old and usual to the new and unaccustomed. Utterly unlike the rabbins,
   with their obstinate and slavish adherence to the letter, the teachers
   of the new epoch were to adapt themselves freely to the circumstances
   of their hearers, and, in consequence, to present the truth under
   manifold varieties of form. In a word, Christ himself, as a teacher,
   was the model for his disciples.

   As the passage above quoted referred primarily to the parabolic mode of
   teaching which Christ had just employed, we find in it an important
   reason for the frequent use which he made of figures and similitudes.
   It was, namely, in order to bring new and higher truths vividly before
   the minds of his hearers, by means of illustrations drawn from objects
   familiar to them in common life and nature.

   But the passage can be applied also to many other features of his mode
   of teaching; for instance, to his habit of leading his hearers, step by
   step, from the stand-point of the Old Testament to that of the New
   adapting himself to the old representations and the Jewish modes of
   thought and speech derived from them (especially those which referred
   to Messiah's kingdom), and thus imparting the new spirit under the
   ancient and accustomed forms. All his accommodation to forms finds its
   explanation here.
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   S: 65. His Teaching presented Seeds and Stimulants of Thought.

   Again, he told his disciples (John, xvi., 25) that up to that time he
   had veiled the truth in parables, but that the time was approaching
   when he should declare plainly and openly all that he had to tell them
   of his Father. He thus taught them that they would be enabled, at a
   later period, by the aid of the illuminating Spirit, to develope from
   his discourses the hidden truths which they enfolded. It must,
   therefore, by no means surprise us to find that the full import of most
   of his words was not comprehended by his contemporaries: such a result,
   indeed, was just what we might expect. He would not have been "Son of
   God" and "Son of Man," had not his words, like his works, with all
   their adaptation to the circumstances of the times, contained some
   things that were inexplicable; had they not borne concealed within them
   the germ of an infinite developement, reserved for future ages to
   unfold. It is this feature (and all the Evangelists concur in their
   representations of it) which distinguishes Christ from all other
   teachers of men. Advance as they may, they can never reach him; their
   only task need be, by taking Him more and more into their life and
   thought, to learn better how to bring forth the treasures that lie
   concealed in him. [155]

   The form of his expressions, whether he uttered parables, proverbs,
   maxims, or apparent paradoxes, was intended to spur men's minds to
   profounder thought, to awaken the Divine consciousness within, and so
   teach them to understand that which at first served only as a mental
   stimulus. It was designed to impress indelibly upon the memory of his
   hearers truths perhaps as yet not fully intelligible, but which would
   grow clear as the Divine life was formed within them, and become an
   ever-increasing source of spiritual light. His doctrine was not to be
   propagated as a lifeless stock of tradition, but to be received as a
   living Spirit by willing minds, and brought out into full
   consciousness, according to its import, by free spiritual activity. Its
   individual parts, too, were only to be apprehended in their first
   proportions, in the complete connexion of that higher consciousness
   which He was to call forth in man. The form of teaching which repelled
   the stupid, and passed unheeded and misunderstood by the unholy, roused
   susceptible minds to deeper thought, and rewarded their inquiries by
   the discovery of ever-increasing treasures.
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   [155] Schleiermacher says beautifully (Christliche Sittenlehre, p. 72),
   that all our progress [in Divine knowledge] must consist solely in more
   correctly understanding and more completely appropriating to ourselves
   that which is in Christ.
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   S: 66. Its Results dependent upon the Spirit of the Hearers.

   But the attainment of this end depended upon the susceptibility of the
   hearers. So far as they hungered for true spiritual food, so far as the
   parable stimulated them to deeper thought, and so far only, it revealed
   new riches. Those with whom this was really the case were accustomed to
   wait until the throng had left their Master, or, gathering round him in
   a narrow circle, in some retired spot, to seek clearer light on points
   which the parable had left obscure. The scene described in Mark, iv.,
   10, shows us that others besides the twelve apostles were named among
   those who remained behind to ask him questions after the crowd had
   dispersed. Not only did such questions afford the Saviour an
   opportunity of imparting more thorough instruction, but those who felt
   constrained to offer them were thereby drawn into closer fellowship
   with him. He became better acquainted with the souls that were longing
   for salvation.

   The greater number, however, in their stupidity, did not trouble
   themselves to penetrate the shell in order to reach the kernel. Yet
   they must at least have perceived that they had understood nothing;
   they could not learn separate phrases from Christ (as they might from
   other religious teachers) and think they comprehended them, while they
   did not. And so, in proportion to the susceptibility of his hearers,
   the parables of Christ revealed sacred things to some and veiled them
   from others, who were destined, through their own fault, to remain in
   darkness. The pearls, as he himself said, were not to be cast before
   swine. Thus, like those "hard sayings" [156] which were to some the
   "words of Life," and to others an insupportable "offence," the parables
   served to sift and purge the throng of Christ's hearers.

   A single example will bring this vividly before us. On a certain
   occasion, when Christ had pronounced a parable, and the multitude had
   departed, the earnest seekers after truth gathered about him to ask its
   interpretation. [157] He expressed his gratification at their eagerness
   to learn the true sense of his words, and said: "Unto you it is given
   [158] to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God, but to others in
   parables [without the explanations that are given to susceptible
   minds], that they may see with their eyes, and yet not see; that they
   may hear with their ears, and yet not hear." There is here expressed a
   moral necessity, a judgment of God, that those who were destitute of
   the right will (on which all depends, and without which the Divine
   "drawing" is in vain), could understand nothing of the things of the
   Lord which they saw and heard. So long as they remained as they were,
   the whole life of Christ, according to the same general law, remained
   to them an inexplicable parable. [159] It is worthy of remark, that
   "the others," with whom Luke contrasts the inquiring disciples, are
   styled by Mark (iv., 11) "those that are without." The simplest way to
   interpret this phrase is to apply it to those who did not enter to ask
   a solution of what they had not understood; it may mean those who were
   outside of the narrower fellowship around Christ; but in either sense
   the result is the same. [160]

   "The mystery," in the passage above quoted, is something hidden from
   men of worldly minds; incomprehensible to them, and to all who are
   excluded, by their spirit and disposition, from the kingdom of God. And
   this is the case with all truths that relate to that kingdom, however
   simple and clear they may seem to those whose inner life has made them
   at home in it.

   After Christ had explained the parable to his disciples, he took
   occasion, from this particular case, to impress upon them the general
   lesson that every thing depended on the spirit in which they received
   his words. He came not (he told them) to hide his light, but to
   enlighten the darkness of men. It was his calling to be the Light of
   the world (Mark, iv., 21). (He spoke in order to reveal the truth, not
   to hide it.) The truth which he had obscurely intimated was to unfold
   itself for the instruction of all mankind (v. 22; cf. John, xvi., 25).
   Yet the organs who were destined to unfold it must have "hearing ears"
   (v. 23). And he proceeds (v. 24), "Take heed, therefore, what ye hear
   (be not like the stupid multitude, who perceive only the outward word);
   and unto you that hear shall more be given (my revelations to you will
   increase in proportion to the susceptibility with which you appropriate
   the truths which I have intimated)." And he concludes with the general
   law, [161] "Whosoever has--in reality has--whosoever has made to
   himself a living possession of the truths which he has heard, to him
   shall more be ever given. But he that has received it only as something
   dead and outward, shall lose even that which he seems to have, but
   really has not." [162] His knowledge, unspiritual and dead, will turn
   out to be worthless--the shell without the kernel.

   Some have supposed that these words (v. 25) were merely a proverb of
   common life, of which Christ made a higher application. But the proofs
   that have been offered [163] in favour of the existence of such a
   proverb are by no means to the point; and, in fact, it would be hardly
   true applied to temporal possessions, for the poor man can increase his
   small store by industry and prudence; and the rich, without those
   qualities, may soon lose his heaped-up treasures. The saying is fully
   true only in an ethical sense; it speaks of moral, and not material
   possessions. Applied, however, as a proverb, it must refer, not to mere
   possession, but to property held as such, and can only mean that he who
   holds property, as his own, will not keep it as dead capital, but gain
   more with it; while he, on the other hand, who does not know how to use
   what he has, will lose it. Thus understood, the words are not only
   fully applicable to the special case before us, but also to manifold
   relations in the sphere of moral life.

   The apostles had as yet, in their intercourse with their Master,
   received but little; but that little was imprinted on their hearts.
   They did not, like the multitude, receive the word only by the hearing
   of the ear, but made it thoroughly and spiritually their own. And thus
   was laid within them the foundation of Christian progress.
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   [156] John, vi., 60.

   [157] Luke, viii., 10; Mark, iv., 11.

   [158] I. e., they followed the inward " drawing of God (John, vi., 44,
   45), and thence became susceptible of Divine impressions.

   [159] According to Mark and Luke, the disciples asked of Christ the
   meaning of the parable; according to Matthew (xiii., 10), they inquired
   why he spoke to the multitude in parables. In Luke there is only an
   allusion to Isai., vi., 9; in Matthew the passage is cited in full. In
   both respects the statement in Mark and Luke seems to be the more
   simple and original. The apostles had more reason to ask the meaning of
   the parables than to find out Christ's motive for uttering them; yet as
   Christ, in reply, did state that motive, it was perhaps implied in the
   question. The full quotation of the passage in Isaiah was a natural
   change, and accorded with Matthew's habit. The connexion is well
   preserved in Matthew, and the difference between his statement and the
   others is merely formal; nor is there the slightest ground to suppose
   that the author of Matthew simply worked out Mark's account or some
   other which lay before him. It goes on naturally thus: in answer to the
   question why he spoke to the multitude in parables, Christ replied (v.
   11), that it was not given to them, as to the disciples, to know the
   mysteries of the kingdom of God; the reason, founded in their moral
   dispositions, is stated in v. 12; and then, in v. 13, the Divine
   sentence, that "on account of their stupidity he spoke to them only in
   parables." There is nothing inconsistent here, nor is any arbitrary
   procedure attributed to Christ; for, in fact, the parables served to
   veil as well as to reveal; and they did the one or the other, according
   to the moral disposition of those that heard them.

   [160] Whatever may have been the original expression of Christ in this
   passage, the fact that Luke speaks of "mysteries" in the plural, and
   Mark of "mystery" in the singular, contributes, at any rate, to its
   elucidation. We have here another proof that the germs of Paul's
   teaching are to be found in the discourses of Christ: this passage
   contains Paul's whole doctrine of tire relation of the natural mind to
   the knowledge of Divine things; e. g., 1 Cor.. ii. 14.

   [161] Mark, iv., 25; Luke, viii., 18; Matt., xiii., 12.

   [162] I must hold ho dokei echein to be the true reading of Luke,
   viii., 18, in spite of what De Wette says to the contrary.

   [163] Conf. Wetstein on Matt., xiii., 12.
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   S: 67. His Mode of Teaching corresponds to the General Law of
   Developement of the Kingdom of God.

   It was, then, according to Christ's own words, a peculiar aim and law
   of his teaching, to awaken a sense for Divine things in the human mind,
   and to make further communications in proportion to the degree of
   living appropriation that might be made of what was given. And this
   corresponds with the general laws established by Christ for the
   developement of the kingdom of God. It is his law that choice must be
   made, by the free determination of the will, between God and the world,
   before the susceptibility for Divine things (which may exist even in
   the as yet fettered soul, if it incline towards God), and the emotions
   of love [164] for the Divine which springs from that susceptibility,
   can arise in the human heart. The heart tends to the point from whence
   it seeks its treasure (its highest good). [165] The sense for the
   Divine, the inward light, must shine. If worldly tendencies extinguish
   it, the darkness must be total. Christ's words, Christ's manifestation,
   can find no entrance. The Divine light streams forth in vain if the
   light-perceiving eye of the soul is darkened. [166] The parable of the
   sower vividly sets forth the necessity of a susceptible soil, before
   the seed of the Word can germinate and bring forth fruit. And so he
   constantly assured the carnal Jews that they could not understand him
   in their existing state of mind. He who will not follow the Divine
   "drawing" (revealed in his dawning consciousness of God) can never
   attain to faith in Christ, and must feel himself repelled from his
   words. The carnal mind can find nothing in him. [167] The form of his
   language (so he told those who took offence at it [168] ) appeared
   incomprehensible, because its import, the truth of God, could not be
   apprehended by souls estranged from Him. The form and the substance
   were alike paradoxical to them. The uncongenial soul found his mode of
   speaking strange and foreign; it is foreign no more when the spirit,
   through its newly-roused sense for the Divine, yields itself up to the
   higher Spirit. The words can be understood only by those who have a
   sympathy for the spirit and the substance.

   Thus, then, the other Evangelists agree with John in regard to the
   fundamental principles of Christ's mode of teaching.
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   [164] Pascal (Art de Persuader), "qu'il faut aimer les choses divines,
   pour les connaitre." Beautifully said.

   [165] Matt., vi., 21.

   [166] Luke, xii., 34; Matt., vi., 22.

   [167] John, vi., 44.

   [168] John, viii., 33, 44. In v. 43, lalia expresses the mode of
   speaking. The substance is expressed by logos. See Luecke's excellent
   remarks on the passage.
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   S: 68 Idea of the Parable.--Distinction between Parable, Fable, and
   Mythus.

   Without doubt the form of Christ's communications was in some degree
   determined by the mental peculiarities of the people among whom he
   laboured, viz., the Jews and Orientals. We may find in this one reason
   for his use of parables; and we must esteem it as a mark of his freedom
   of mind and creative originality, that he so adapted to his own
   purposes a form of instruction that was especially current among the
   Jews. But yet his whole method of teaching, as we have already set it
   forth, would have led him, independently of his relations to the people
   around him, to adopt this mode of communicating truth. Not inaptly has
   one of the old writers compared the parables of Christ's discourses to
   the parabolic character of his whole manifestation, representing, as it
   did, the supernatural in a natural form. [169]

   We may define the parables as representations through which the truths
   pertaining to the kingdom of God are vividly exhibited by means of
   special relations of common life, taken either from nature or the world
   of mankind. A general truth is set forth under the likeness of a
   particular fact, or a continuous narrative, commonly derived from the
   lower sphere of life; the operations of nature, and the qualities of
   inferior animals, or the acts of men in their mutual relations with
   each other, being assumed as the basis of the representation. Those
   parables which are derived entirely from the sphere of nature are
   grounded on the typical relations that exist [170] between Nature and
   Spirit. So, in the vine and its branches, Christ finds a type of the
   relation between himself and those who are members of his body. He is
   the true Vine The law whose reality finds place in the spiritual life
   is only imaged and typified in nature.

   Even though the fable be so defined as to be included in the parable,
   as the species is comprehended in the genus, still the latter,
   especially as Christ employs it, has always its own distinctive
   characteristics. The parable is allied to the fable, as used by AEsop,
   so far forth as both differ from the Mythus (an unconscious invention),
   by employing statements of fact, not pretended to be historical, merely
   as coverings for the exhibition of a general truth; the latter only
   being presented to the mind of the hearer or reader as real. But the
   parable is distinguished from the fable by this, that in the latter,
   qualities or acts of a higher class of beings may be attributed to a
   lower (e.g., those of men to brutes); while in the former, the lower
   sphere is kept perfectly distinct from the higher one which it serves
   to illustrate. The beings and powers thus introduced always follow the
   law of their nature, but their acts, according to this law, are used to
   figure those of a higher race. The fable cannot be true according to
   its form, e. g., when brutes are introduced thinking, speaking, and
   acting like men; but the representations of the parable always
   correspond to the facts of nature, or the occurrences of civil and
   domestic life, and remind the hearer of events and phenomena within his
   own experience. The mere introduction of brutes, as personal agents, in
   the fable, is not sufficient to distinguish it from the parable, which
   may make use of the same contrivance; as, for instance, indeed, Christ
   employs the sheep in one of his parables. The great distinction here,
   also, lies in what has already been remarked; brutes introduced in the
   parable act according to the law of their nature, and the two spheres
   of nature and the kingdom of God are carefully separated from each
   other. Hence the reciprocal relations of brutes to each other are not
   made use of, as these could furnish no appropriate image of the
   relation between man and the kingdom of God. And as the lower animals
   are, by an impulse of their nature, attached to man as a being of a
   higher order, Divine, as it were, in comparison to themselves, and
   destined to rule over them, the relations between man and this inferior
   race may serve very well to illustrate the still higher relations of
   the former to the kingdom of God and the Saviour. Thus, for instance,
   Christ employs the connexion of sheep and the shepherd to give a vivid
   image of the relations of human souls to their Divine guide.

   There is ground for this distinction between parable and fable, both in
   the form and in the substance. In the form, because the parable in
   tends that the objects of nature and the occurrences of every-day life
   shall be associated with higher truths, and thus not only illustrate
   them, but preserve them constantly in the memory. In the substance,
   because, although single acts of domestic or social virtue might find
   points of likeness in the qualities of the lower animals (not morality
   in general, for this, like religion, is too lofty to be thus
   illustrated), the dignity of the sphere of Divine life would be
   essentially lowered by transferring it to a class of beings entirely
   destitute of corresponding qualities.
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   [169] Diote kai o kurios ouk o`n kosmko`s, os kosmikos heis
   anthro';pous elthen. Strom., vi., 677.

   [170] "It can readily be shown that the parables, as used by Christ,
   had the significance of their types. Nature, as she has disclosed
   herself to the mind of man, must in them bear witness of Spirit."
   Steffens (Religionsphilosophie, i., 146). And so Schelling, on the
   relation between Nature and History, "They are to each other parable
   and interpretation." Philos. Schriften, 1809, 457.)
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   S: 69. Order in which the Parables were Delivered.--Their
   Perfection.--Mode of Interpreting them.

   We find many parables placed together in Matthew, xiii.; and the
   question naturally arises whether it is probable that Christ uttered so
   many at one and the same time. We can readily conceive that he should
   use various parables in succession in order to present the same truth
   or several closely related truths, in different forms; this variety
   would tend to excite attention, to present the one truth more clearly
   by such various illustration, to put the one subject before the
   beholder's eye more steadily, in many points of view, and thus to
   imprint it indelibly upon his memory. But it is not to be supposed that
   Christ delivered a succession of parables different both in form and
   matter, or, if somewhat alike in form, different in scope and design;
   for this could only have confused the minds of his hearers, and thus
   frustrated the very purpose of this mode of instruction.

   It will be easy to gather what is necessary to the perfection of the
   parable, from what we have said of its nature. In the first place, the
   fact selected from the lower sphere of life should be perfectly
   adapted, in its own nature, to give a vivid representation of the
   higher truth; and, secondly, the individual traits of the lower fact
   itself should be clearly exhibited according to nature. Hence, in order
   to understand the parables correctly, we must endeavour to seize upon
   the single truth which the parabolic dress is designed to illustrate,
   and refer all the rest to this. The separate features, which serve to
   give roundness and distinctness to the picture of the lower fact, may
   aid us in obtaining a more many-sided view of the one truth, the higher
   sphere corresponding to the lower in more respects than one (e. g., the
   parables of the shepherd and the sower); but we must never seek the
   perfection of the parables of Christ in giving significancy, apart from
   the propel point of comparison, to the parts of the narrative which
   were merely intended to complete it; for this, by diverting the mind
   from the one truth to a variety of particulars, can only embarrass
   instead of assisting it, and must thus frustrate the very aim of the
   parable itself. Such a procedure would open a wide field for arbitrary
   interpretation, and could not fail to lead the hearer astray.

   The separate parables will be treated in their proper connexions in the
   course of the narrative.
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   S: 70. Christ's Teaching not confined to Parables, but conveyed also in
   longer Discourses.

   It followed, not only from Christ's chosen mode of teaching, but also
   from his relations to the new spiritual creation whose seeds he
   implanted in the hearts of his disciples, that he used pithy and
   sententious sayings and aphorisms instead of lengthened exhibitions of
   doctrine. They were intended to be retained in ever vivid recollection,
   and, notwithstanding their separation, to contain the germs of an
   organically connected system of moral and religious truth. The
   interpreter and the historian find the difficulty of placing these in
   their proper relations and occasions increased by the fact that the
   accounts of the first three Evangelists arrange and present them in
   different connexions of thought. The Church, however, has lost nothing
   by this; it only establishes the doctrine that the truths uttered by
   Christ admit of manifold apprehension and application. Yet there is no
   ground for the assumption that Christ taught only by means of parables
   and aphorisms. The supposition, in itself, is sufficiently improbable,
   that he never employed longer and more connected forms of discourse for
   the instruction of the circles of disciples who had received
   impressions from him and gathered themselves about his person; and,
   besides, an example of this kind (recorded by the first three
   Evangelists) is to be found in the Sermon on the Mount. We shall
   hereafter inquire more closely into the system of Christian truth
   contained in that discourse.
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   S: 71. John's Gospel contains chiefly connected and profound
   Discourses; and Why?

   We must here consider the difference between the form of Christ's
   expositions as given by the first three Evangelists, and as recorded by
   John. Some recent writers have found an irreconcilable opposition
   between them both of form and substance; and have concluded therefrom
   either that John, in reproducing the discourses of Christ from memory,
   involuntarily blended his own subjective views with them, and thus
   presented doctrines which a real disciple could not at the time have
   apprehended; or that some one else at a later period, and not John, was
   the author of this Gospel. They contrast the thoroughly practical
   bearing of the Sermon on the Mount with (what they call) the mystical
   character of the discourses recorded by John. They find every thing in
   the former simple and intelligible, while the latter abounds in
   paradoxes, and seems to study obscurity. Moreover, the latter is almost
   destitute of parables; a form of eloquence not only national, but also
   characteristic of Christ, judging from his discourses as given in the
   other Gospels.

   But let any one only yield himself to the impression of the Sermon on
   the Mount, and then ask himself whether it be probable that a mind of
   the loftiness, depth, and power which that discourse evinces, could
   have employed only one mode of teaching? A mind which swayed not only
   simple and practical souls, but also so profoundly speculative an
   intellect as that of Paul, could not but have scattered the elements of
   such a tendency from the very first. We cannot but infer, from the
   irresistible power which Christianity exerted upon minds so diversely
   constituted and cultivated, that the sources of that power lay combined
   [171] in Him whose self-revelation was the origin of Christianity
   itself. Moreover, the other Gospels are not wanting in apparently
   paradoxical expressions akin to the peculiar tone of John's Gospel, e.
   g., "Let the dead bury their dead." [172] Nor will an attentive
   observer find in John alone expressions of Christ intended to increase,
   instead of to remove the offence which carnal minds took at his
   doctrine. We repeat, again. that the words and acts of the true Christ
   could not have been free from paradoxes; and from this, indeed, it may
   have been that the Pharisees were led to report that he had lost his
   senses.

   Still, it is true, that such passages are given by John much more
   abundantly than the other Evangelists. But there is nothing in his
   Gospel purely metaphysical or unpractical; none of the spirit of the
   Alexandrian-Jewish theology; but every where a direct bearing upon the
   inner life, the Divine communion which Christ came to establish. Its
   form would have been altogether different had it been composed, as some
   suppose, in the second century, to support the Alexandrian doctrine of
   the Logos, as will be plain to any one who takes the trouble to compare
   it with the writings of that age that have come down to us The
   discourses given in the first three Gospels, mostly composed of
   separate maxims, precepts, and parables, all in the popular forms of
   speech, were better fitted to be handed down by tradition than the more
   profound discussions which have been recorded by the beloved disciple
   who hung with fond affection upon the lips of Jesus, treasured his
   revelations in a congenial mind, and poured them forth to fill up the
   gaps of the popular narrative. And although it is true that the image
   of Christ given to us in this Gospel is the reflection of Christ's
   impression upon John's peculiar mind and feelings, it is to be
   remembered that these very peculiarities were obtained by his
   intercourse with, and vivid apprehension of, Christ himself. His
   susceptible nature appropriated Christ's life, and incorporated it with
   his own.
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   [171] We should believe this even if we were to admit Weisse's view,
   viz., that the basis of this Gospel was a collection of the logia to
   kuriou made by John, and afterward wrought by another hand into the
   form of a historical narrative. But Weisse's critical processes seem to
   me to be entirely arbitrary. John's Gospel is altogether (with the
   exception of a few passages which are suspicious both on external and
   internal grounds) a work of one texture, not admitting of critical
   decomposition. In Matthew, not only internal signs, but also historical
   traditions, when considered without prejudice, seem to distinguish the
   original and fundamental composition from the later revision of the
   work. On the other hand, the author in whom we first find the tradition
   referred to (Papias, Euseb., iii., 39) makes mention of no such thing
   in regard to John's Gospel. He must have known the fact, had it been
   so, living as he did in Asia Minor. Some adduce Papias's silence about
   John's Gospel as a testimony against its genuineness; but his object,
   most likely, was to give in formation in regard to those parts of the
   narrative whose origin was not so well known in that part of the
   country; whereas John's Gospel was fresh in every one's memory there.

   [172] Had this expression occurred in John, it might have been cited as
   a specimen of "Alexandrian mysticism."
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   S: 72. The Parable of the Shepherd, in John, compared with the Parables
   in the other Gospels.

   Parables, as we have said, are peculiarly fitted for oral tradition. We
   need not wonder, therefore, that they are more abundant in the first
   three Gospels, which were composed of such traditions, than in John;
   and, moreover, the latter, presupposing them to be known, may have had,
   in his peculiar turn of mind, and in the object for which he wrote his
   Gospel, sufficient reasons for omitting them. Yet the discourses of
   Christ, as given by him, are marked by the very peculiarity that gives
   rise to the use of parables, viz., the illustration of the Spiritual
   and the Divine, by images taken from common life.

   But real parables are not entirely wanting in John's Gospel. The
   illustration of the shepherd and the sheep (ch. 10) has all the
   essential features of the parable, and John himself applies that name
   to it (ver. 6). Here, as in other parables, we find a religious truth
   vividly represented by a similitude taken from the sphere of nature.
   As, for instance, in the parable of the sower, Christ is likened to the
   husbandman, the Divine word to the seed, and the various degrees of
   susceptibility for the word in men's souls to the variously productive
   soils in which the seed is planted; so, in this similitude, the
   relation of souls to Christ is compared with that of sheep to the
   shepherd; and the self-seeking teacher, who offers himself, on his own
   authority and for a bad purpose, as a guide of men, is likened to a
   thief who does not enter the sheep-fold by the door, but climbs over
   the wall. Strauss has remarked that this parable differs from those of
   the Synoptical Gospels in this, that it does not give a historical
   narrative, with beginning, middle, and end, of a fact actually once
   taking place, but makes use simply of what is commonly seen to happen.
   But even this feature cannot be said to be essential to all the
   synoptical parables, but only to those in which a specific occurrence
   in human intercourse is assumed to illustrate a spiritual truth; [173]
   for in those, on the other hand, which are not taken from social and
   civil life, but from the sphere of man's intercourse with nature, the
   one especial fact given is nothing but a specimen of what commonly
   takes place; and the form of the statement could be entirely changed in
   this respect, without at all affecting its substance. Of this the
   parable of the sower is an example, and, indeed, those of the leaven
   and the mustard seed also. So, too, John's parable of the shepherd and
   the sheep might be stated in the form of a fact once occurring, without
   losing a particle of its individuality.

   C. CHRIST'S USE OF ACCOMMODATION.
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   [173] Even were the name parables (as a distinct form of similitudes)
   restricted to representations of this class, such a distinction would
   not destroy the analogy between Christ's discourses in John and those
   in the other Gospels, founded on their use, in common, of the same mode
   of vividly exhibiting spiritual truths.
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   S: 73. Necessity of Accommodation.

   We must mention Christ's adaptation of his instruction to the capacity
   of his hearers, as one of the peculiar features of his mode of
   teaching. Without such accommodation, indeed, there can be no such
   thing as instruction. The teacher must begin upon a ground common to
   his pupils, with principles presupposed as known to them, in order to
   extend the sphere of their knowledge to further truths. He must lower
   himself to them, in order to raise them to himself. As the true and the
   false are commingled in their conceptions, he must seize upon the true
   as his point of departure, in order to disengage it from the
   encumbering false. So to the child the man becomes a child, and
   explains the truth in a form adapted to its age, by making use of its
   childish conceptions as a veil for it.

   In accordance with this principle, every revelation of God, having for
   its object the training of mankind for the Divine life (and we must
   never forget that this was the sole aim of Christianity, as well as of
   the preparatory institutions which preceded it), has made use of this
   law of accommodation, in order to present the Divine to the
   consciousness of men in forms adapted to their respective stand-points.
   And as Christ by no means intended, as we have before remarked, to
   impart a complete system of doctrine as a mere dead tradition; but
   rather to stimulate men's minds to a living appropriation and
   developement of the truth which he revealed, by means of the powers
   with which God had endowed them; it was the more necessary for him to
   adapt his instruction to the capacities of those who heard him. His
   teaching by parables, in which the familiar affairs of every-day life
   were made the veil and vehicle of unknown and higher truths, was an
   instance of accommodation. The pedagogic principle of joining the old
   with the new, of making the old new and the new old, and of deriving
   the new from the old, is fully illustrated in the saying of Christ
   before referred to, viz., that the teacher, instructed in the kingdom
   of Heaven, is like "a householder, who bringeth forth out of his
   treasure things new and old." To this principle, constantly employed by
   Christ in his teaching, we must ascribe the extraordinary influence of
   Christianity upon human culture from the very beginning. But, just as
   the "form of a servant" hindered many eyes from seeing the Son of God
   in the Son of Man, so the Divine, which adapted itself to human
   infirmities by veiling its heavenly grandeur, was often concealed by
   the very veil which it had assumed.
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   S: 74. Distinction between Positive (Material) and Negative (Formal)
   Accommodation; the latter necessary, the former inadmissible.

   We must carefully separate false from true accommodation; there is a
   broad distinction between a negative accommodation of the form and a
   positive one of the substance. The teacher who adopts the latter will
   confirm his hearers in an error, in order to gain their confidence, and
   to infuse into their minds, even by means of error, some important
   truth. But the laws of morality do not admit that "the end sanctifies
   the means;" nor can the establishment of error ever be a just means of
   propagating truth. And it is as impolitic as it is immoral; for error,
   as well as truth, contains within itself a fructifying germ, and no one
   can predict what fruit it will produce. He who makes use of it
   renounces at once the character of a teacher of truth; no man will
   trust him, and he can therefore exert a spiritual influence upon none.
   There is no criterion for distinguishing the truth of his aims from the
   falsehood of his means. Such an accommodation as this was utterly
   repugnant to the holy nature of Him who called himself The Truth; and
   there is no trace of it to be found in his teachings.

   It is quite a different thing with the negative and formal
   accommodation. As Christ's sole calling as a teacher was to implant the
   fundamental truths of the kingdom of God in the human consciousness, he
   could not stop by the way to battle with errors utterly unconnected
   with his object, and remote from the interests of religion and
   morality. Thus he made use of common terms and expressions without
   entering into an examination of all the false notions that might be
   attached to them. He called diseases, for instance, by the names in
   common use; but we should not be justified in concluding that he
   thereby stamped with his Divine authority the ordinary notions of their
   origin, as implied in the names. Nor does his citation of the books of
   the Old Testament by the accustomed titles imply any sanction on his
   part of the prevalent opinions in regard to their authors. We must
   never forget that his words, as he himself has told us, are Spirit and
   Life; and that no scribe of the old Rabbinical school, no slave to the
   letter, can rightly comprehend and apply them.

   Nor did he make use of positive accommodation in seizing, as he did,
   upon those religious conceptions of the times which concealed the germ
   of truth under material forms. It was not his aim to preserve the mere
   shell, the outward form, but to disengage the inner truth from its
   covering, and bring it out into free and pure developement. This he
   could only effect by causing men to change their whole carnal mode of
   thinking, of which the material form of representation, just referred
   to, was only one of the results. These remarks apply especially to the
   use which he made of the common outward images of the Messianic
   world-dominion; which he certainly would not have employed, if they had
   not contained a substantive truth in regard to the developement of the
   kingdom of God from the Old Testament standpoint. [174] To attack these
   material ideas directly, and present the pure, spiritual truth as a
   ready-made system, would have been fruitless; it was only from the
   deeper ground in which the erroneous tendencies were imbedded that they
   could be successfully overthrown. And Christ, taking the truth that lay
   in the outward form as his point of departure, attacked the root of all
   the separate errors; the selfish, carnal mind, the longing for worldly
   rank and rewards; and implanted, on the other hand, the purely
   spiritual ideas of the Divine kingdom, as seeds from which, in due
   time, a free reaction against the material tendency would spontaneously
   arise.

   Of the same character was the use which Christ made of figurative
   analogies like that in Matt., xii., 43, [175] et seq. In such cases the
   figurative representation was employed, like the parable, to exhibit an
   idea vividly to the minds of his hearers, while, at the same time, its
   connexion was such that he could not possibly be misunderstood.
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   [174] See p. 86 and 87.

   [175] We shall have occasion to speak of this passage more fully in
   another connexion.
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   S: 75. Christ's Application of Passages from the Old Testament.

   What we have said in regard to Christ's habit of taking up a concealed
   truth is especially applicable to his use of quotations from the Old
   Testament, which enveloped, as it were, and contained the germ of
   truths which he was fully to unfold and develope. In this point of
   view, he derived, from the Old Testament, truths which, though not
   contained in the letter of its words, were involved in its spirit and
   fundamental import. The higher spirit, which appeared in its unlimited
   fulness in Christ, was predominant in the Old Testament; all the
   preparatory revelations of that spirit had Christ for their aim; the
   Theocratic idea, which formed the central-point both of the Scriptures
   and the Jewish nation, had found no fulfilment, but looked to the
   future for its realization. Christ was perfectly justified, therefore,
   in so interpreting the Old Testament as to bring out clearly its hidden
   intimations and germs of truth, and to unfold from the covering of the
   letter the profounder sense of the Spirit. We shall have occasion to
   illustrate this more fully in our exposition of Christ's didactic and
   polemic use of the Old Testament. Paul's interpretation of the Old
   Testament was of precisely the same character; with this difference
   only, that Christ was better able to distinguish the different stages
   of the Theocratic developement, pointing, as they all did, to his
   manifestation.
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  CHAPTER III.

  CHRIST'S CHOICE AND TRAINING OF THE APOSTLES.
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   S: 76 Christ's Relation to the Twelve.--Significance of the Number
   Twelve.--The Name Apostle.

   WE have before remarked, that among the most important means employed
   by Christ in founding the kingdom of God was the training of certain
   organs; not only to replace his personal labours as a teacher (which
   were limited to so very brief a period), but also to propagate a true
   image of his person, his manifestation, his Spirit, and his truth. Here
   arises the question, whether Christ intentionally selected twelve men
   for this purpose, and took the individuals thus chosen into closer
   communion with himself, or whether this intimate relationship arose out
   of a gradual separation of the more susceptible disciples from the
   mass, who formed by degrees a narrower and more permanent circle about
   his person; whether, in a word, the choice of the twelve was made once
   for all, by a definite purpose, or arose simply from the nature of the
   case. [176] Some adopt the latter notion, with a view to answer
   objections against the wisdom of Christ's selection; such, for
   instance, as that he chose several insignificant men, who accomplished
   nothing of importance, and omitted others who were afterward signally
   eminent and useful; that he must either have been deceived in admitting
   Judas into the number, [177] or else (what is entirely out of keeping
   with his character) must have made him an Apostle with a full
   consciousness of his inevitable destiny, in order to lead him on to his
   destruction. It is urged, moreover, against the probability of Christ
   himself having conferred the name of Apostles upon these men
   especially, that others, (e.g., Paul), who laboured in proclaiming the
   Gospel at a later period, received that designation.

   This question would be at once decided, if we could consider the Sermon
   on the Mount as an ordination discourse for the Apostles; but this
   view, as we shall hereafter show, is untenable. But there are passages
   [178] which speak expressly of the choosing of the twelve; and, even
   without attaching undue weight to these, there are other and sufficient
   grounds for believing that such a choice was actually made. Christ
   himself tells the Apostles (John, xv., 16) that they had not chosen
   him, but that he had chosen them, as his own peculiar organs, which
   would not have been true if they had first separated, of their own
   accord, from the rest of the multitude, and chosen him for their Master
   and guide, in a narrower sense than others.

   Nor is the number twelve destitute of significance. Without seeking any
   sacred, mystical meaning in the number, we can well see in it a
   reference to the number of the tribes of Israel. The particular, Jewish
   Theocracy was a type of the universal and eternal kingdom of God; and
   Christ first designated himself as head of that kingdom in the Jewish
   national form. The twelve were to lead the kingdom as his organs. [179]
   Their superiority to all others, who should also act as organs of the
   Holy Spirit testifying within them of the Redeemer (the common calling
   of all believers), consisted in this, that they received a direct and
   personal impression of the words and works of Christ, and could thus
   testify of what they had seen and heard. This personal testimony of
   eye-witnesses is expressly distinguished by Christ (John, xv., 27) from
   the objective testimony of the Holy Spirit; which, indeed, animated
   them, but could also bear witness through other organs. Hence, when one
   of the twelve was lost, the Apostles deemed it necessary to replace
   him, and thus fill up the number originally instituted by Christ. [180]

   The more general application of the name Apostle in the Apostolic age
   is no proof that Christ did not originally use it in the narrower
   sense. The Apostolic mind was under no such painful subserviency to the
   letter as to avoid the use of a name in a sense suggested by the name
   itself, simply because Christ had used it in a more contracted
   signification. The term apostoloi (ShL+iJ+T+iJ+N%) denoted persons sent
   out by Christ to proclaim the kingdom of God; and it was quite natural,
   as all who preached the Gospel were considered as sent out by him, that
   all who laboured in proclaiming it in a wide sphere should receive the
   same designation. [181] Although Paul used the term in its wider
   meaning, he yet considered the narrower sense to be the original one,
   [182] and justified his application of the latter to himself only on
   the ground of the direct and immediate call which he had received from
   Christ. [183]
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   [176] See the arguments for this view in Schleiermacher on Luke, p. 88.

   [177] Celsus thought to disparage Christ by telling that he was
   betrayed by one of his disciples. (Orig., c. Cels., ii., S: 12.)

   [178] Luke, vi., 13; Mark, iii., 13, 14.

   [179] Matt., xix., 28; Luke, xxii., 30. Ye also shall sit upon twelve
   thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.

   [180] Acts, i., 21.

   [181] The questions whether Christ chose twelve men as his special
   organs, and whether he himself gave them the name Apostles, are
   entirely distinct. There is no good reason to doubt the latter.

   [182] 1 Cor., xv., 7.

   [183] 1 Cor., ix. 1; xv., 9.
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   S: 77. Choice of the Apostles.--Of Judas Iscariot.

   There are a few examples on record of Christ's drawing and attaching to
   himself disciples who exhibited to his piercing eye the qualities
   necessary for his service. Probably this procedure was the same in the
   cases not recorded. The wisdom of Christ, moreover, leads us to
   conclude that the cultivation of these agents, on whose fitness so much
   depended, was an object of his special care and attention. Although we
   have not sufficient information to decide, in the case of each Apostle,
   why he especially was admitted into the number of the twelve, yet such
   examples as Peter and John, men of most striking character, who show us
   how the most marked features of human nature receive and tinge
   Christianity, illustrate the profound wisdom of Christ, and the
   penetrating glance with which he could detect the concealed plant in
   the insignificant germ. Yet we are not bound, in order to vindicate
   Christ's wisdom, to conclude that all the Apostles were alike men of
   mark, alike capable of great achievements. It was enough for the
   fulfilment of their calling that they loved him truly, that they
   followed him with child-like confidence, and gave themselves wholly up
   to the guidance of his Spirit; for thus they would be enabled to
   testify of him, and to exhibit his image in truth and purity. It was
   enough that among the number there were a few men of pre-eminently
   powerful character, on whom the rest might lean for support. It
   sufficed, nay, it was even advantageous, for the developement of the
   Church, that the Apostles, as a whole, left their accounts of the
   history of Christ without the peculiar stamp of individual character,
   since there was only one John among them capable of giving a vivid
   image of the life of the Saviour in harmonious unity. And it is,
   therefore, not at all wonderful that men appeared in the later period
   of the Apostolic Church who accomplished greater things than even some
   of the Apostles.

   As for Judas Iscariot, it by no means follows from the passages which
   say that Christ knew him from the beginning, that he knew him as an
   enemy and a traitor; nor does the awful contrast between his Apostolic
   calling and his final fate show that Christ was wholly deceived in him.
   Judas may have at first embraced the proclamation of the kingdom of God
   with ardent feelings, although with expectations of a selfish and
   worldly stamp; which, indeed, was the case with others of the Apostles.
   He may have loved Christ sincerely so long as he hoped to find in him
   the fulfilment of his carnal desires. Christ may have seen in him
   capacities which, animated by pure intentions, might have made him a
   particularly useful instrument in spreading the kingdom of God. At the
   same time, he doubtless perceived in him, as in the rest of the
   Apostles, the impure influence of the worldly and selfish element, yet
   he may have hoped (to do for him what he certainly did for the others,
   viz.) to remove it by the enlightening and purifying effects of his
   personal intercourse; a result, however, which, we freely admit,
   depended upon the free self-determination of Judas, and could,
   therefore, be unerringly known to none but the Omniscient. And even
   when Judas, deceived in his carnal and selfish hopes, felt his
   affection for Christ passing into hatred, the love of the Saviour,
   hoping all things, though he saw the rising root of evil, may have
   induced him to strive the more earnestly to attract the wanderer to
   himself, in order to save him from impending ruin. [184]
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   [184] See, hereafter, more on the character and fate of Judas.
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   S: 78. The Apostles Uneducated Men.

   It may appear strange that Christ should have selected, as his chosen
   organs, men so untaught and unsusceptible in Divine things, and should
   have laboured, in opposition to their worldly tendencies, to fit them
   for their office; especially when men of learned cultivation in Jewish
   theology were at hand, more than one of whom had attached themselves
   sincerely to him. But we are justified in presupposing that he acted
   thus according to a special decision of his own wisdom, as he himself
   testifies (Matt., xi., 25): "I thank thee, O Father, because thou hast
   hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto
   babes." Precisely because these men, destitute of all higher learning,
   attached themselves to him like children, and obeyed even his slightest
   hints, were they best fitted to receive his Spirit with child-like
   devotion and confidence, and to propagate the revelations which he made
   to them. Every thing in them was to be the growth of the new creation
   through Christ's Spirit; and men who had received a complete culture
   elsewhere would have been ill adapted for this. They were trammelled,
   it is true, by their carnal conceptions of Divine things; but this was
   counterbalanced by their anxiety to learn, and their child-like
   submission to Christ as Master and guide; while, on the other hand, in
   surmountable obstacles would have been presented in the want of such
   submission--in the stubborn adherence to preconceived views of men who
   had been trained and cultivated before. Moreover, this reverential
   submission to Christ on the part of the disciples, in their daily
   intercourse with him, tended surely and constantly to refine and
   spiritualize their mode of thinking. His image, received into their
   inner life, exerted a steady and overruling influence. In the mode in
   which the new revelations were embraced and developed, we recognize the
   general law, according to which truths beyond the scope of human reason
   are imparted to it from higher sources, to be afterward appropriated
   and elaborated as its own. They were first received and unfolded by men
   who had no previous education to enable them to work out independently
   that which was given them; and only at a later period was a Paul added
   to the Apostles--a man capable, from his systematic mental cultivation,
   of elaborating and unfolding, by his own power of thought, yet under
   the guidance of the same Spirit of Christ the material of Divine
   revelation that was bestowed upon him. The fact, too, that a people
   like the Jews, and not the Greeks, were first the chosen organ for the
   propagation of revealed religion, is an illustration of the same law,
   Here we find the source of the ever-renewed struggle between
   Revelation, which demands a humble reception of its gifts, and Reason,
   which will recognize nothing that is not wrought out, or, at least,
   remodelled, in its own laboratory.

   Still Christ could not have deemed the period of two or three years
   sufficient to prepare these untrained disciples, according to his mind,
   for teachers of men. Nor could he have foretold, with such confidence,
   the success of such men in propagating his truth for the salvation and
   training of men, for the victorious founding of the kingdom of God in
   all ages, had he not been conscious of powers higher than had been
   granted to any other teacher among men, which justified him in making
   such predictions.
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   S: 79. Two Stages in the Dependence of the Apostles upon Christ.

   From the very beginning the Apostles stood to Christ in a relation of
   complete dependence and submission, but we must distinguish in this two
   different forms and periods. In the first, their dependence was more
   outward and unconscious; in the last, it was more inward, and
   thoroughly understood by themselves. From the beginning, they gave
   themselves up, with reverent confidence, to the will of Christ as their
   supreme law, inspired by the conviction that what he commanded was
   right; yet without a clear apprehension either of his will or word, and
   without the ability to harmonize their will with his by free
   consciousness and self-determination. But, during this stage of outward
   dependence, they were to be trained to apprehend his will (or, what is
   the same thing, the will of God revealed and fulfilled by him); to
   incorporate it with their own spiritual tendencies; in a word, to make
   it their own. Christ himself pointed out this two-fold relation, when
   he said to them, in view of his approaching death, in reference to
   their dawning consciousness of the necessity of his suffering in order
   to establish the Divine kingdom: "Henceforth I call you not servants;
   for the servant knoweth not what his Lord doeth: but I have called you
   friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made
   known unto you. Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and
   ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your
   fruit should remain; that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my
   name, he may give it you." [185] The servant follows the will of his
   master not as his own, but another's, without understanding its aim;
   but friendship is a harmony of souls and sympathy of intentions. The
   ultimate aim of all Christ's training of the Apostles was to raise them
   from the first stand-point to the second.
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   [185] John, xv., 15, 16. So, v. 14, "Ye are my friends, if ye do
   whatsoever I command you." Their efforts to perform his will perfectly
   proved that they had made it their own.
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   S: 80. Christ's peculiar Method of training the Apostles.

   The words of Christ recorded in Luke, v., 33; Matt.. ix., 14, [186]
   throw a distinct light upon his peculiar method of training the
   Apostles. When reproached because he imposed no strict spiritual
   discipline, no fasting or outward exercises upon his disciples, but
   suffered them to mingle in society freely, like other men, he justified
   his course by stating (in effect) that "fasting, then imposed upon
   them, would have been an unnatural and foreign disturbance of the
   festal joy of their intercourse with him, the object of all their
   longings. But when the sorrow of separation should follow the hours of
   joy, fasting would be in harmony both with their inward feelings and
   their outward life. As no good could come of patching old garments with
   new cloth, or putting new wine into old skins, so it was not his
   purpose to impose the exercises of spiritual life, fasting, and the
   like, by an outward law, upon his yet untrained disciples, but rather,
   by a gradual change of their whole inward nature, to make them vessels
   fit for the indwelling of the higher life. When they had become such,
   all the essential manifestations of that indwelling life would
   spontaneously reveal themselves; no outward command would then be
   needed."

   Here we see the principle on which Christ acted in the intellectual, as
   well as in the moral and religious training of the Apostles. As he
   would not lay external restraints, by the letter of outward laws, upon
   natures as yet undisciplined, so it was not his purpose to impart the
   dead letter of a ready-made and fragmentary knowledge to minds whose
   worldly modes of thought disabled them from apprehending it. He aimed
   rather to implant the germ, to give the initial impulse of a total
   intellectual renovation, by which men might be enabled to grasp, with a
   new spirit, the new truths of the kingdom of God. In every relation he
   determined not to "patch the old garment, or put new wine into old
   bottles." And this principle, thus fully illustrated by Christ's
   training of his Apostles, is, in fact, the universal law of growth in
   the genuine Christian life.
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   [186] More on these passages hereafter, in their proper connexion in
   the narrative.
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  CHAPTER IV.

  THE CHURCH AND BAPTISM.
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   S: 81. Founding of the Church.--Its Objects.

   CLOSELY connected with the questions just discussed is that of the
   founding of the Church; for the Apostles were the organs through whom
   the religious community which originated in Christ was to be handed
   down to after ages, the connecting links that were to unite it with its
   Founder. A clear conception of the idea of the Church, in comparison
   with what we have said of the plan of Christ, will make it obvious that
   he intended to establish the Church, and himself laid its foundation.

   By the Church we understand a union of men arising from the fellowship
   (communion) of religious life; a union essentially independent of, and
   different from, all other forms of human association. It was a
   fundamental element of the formation of this union, that religion was
   no longer to be inseparably bound up, either as principal or
   subordinate, with the political and national relations of men, but that
   it should develope itself, by its own inherent energy, as a principle
   of culture and union; superior, in its very essence, to all human
   powers. This involved both the power and the duty to create an
   independent community, and that community is the Church.

   And Christianity is proved to be the aim and object of all human
   progress, not only by the craving for redemption, which no man can
   deny, in human nature, but also by the very idea of such a community as
   the Church, which overthrows all natural barriers, and binds man. kind
   together by a union founded on the common alliance of their nature to
   God. The spirit of humanity, feeling itself confined by the limits
   which the opposing interests of nations impose upon it, demands a
   communion that shall overleap these barriers, and lay its foundations
   only in the consciousness, common to all men, of their relation to the
   Highest--a relation transcending the world and nature. Apart from
   Christianity, indeed, we could not conceive the idea of such a
   communion; but now that Christianity has freed Reason from the
   old-world bonds that hindered its developement, and unfolded for it a
   higher self-consciousness, there can be no science of human nature that
   does not reckon this communion as the aim of human progress, that does
   not assign to the Church its proper place in the universal moral
   organism of humanity. Schleiermacher has done this in his
   "Philosophical Ethics," and has thus found, in the Church, the point of
   departure for Christian morals. And so every system of ethics must do
   which is not willing to fall in the rear of human progress, and to be
   guilty of cruelly mutilating the nature of man. Nay, the minds of the
   sages who sought to break through the limits of the ancient world
   yearned for this idea long before its realization in Christianity.
   Zeno, [187] the founder of the Stoa, proclaimed it as the highest of
   human aims, that "men should not be separated by cities, states, and
   laws, but that all should be considered fellow-citizens, and partakers
   of one life, and that the whole world, like a united flock, should be
   governed by one common law." [188] Plutarch, who quotes these words,
   was probably right in saying that "Zeno had some phantom of a dream
   before him when he wrote;" [189] for how could an idea, so far
   transcending the spirit of antiquity, be realized in its sphere? Such a
   communion could only be brought about, at that time, by the destruction
   of the separate organization of nations, to the detriment of their
   natural and individual progress; and the very event in which Plutarch
   thought he saw its fulfilment, viz., the commingling of the nations by
   Alexander's [190] conquests, carried the germ of self-destruction
   within it. A total revolution of the ancient world necessarily had to
   precede the realizing of this idea. Mankind had to be freed from the
   power of sin, and the disjunctive and repulsive agency of sin, before
   there could be any place for this Divine communion of life, which
   overleaps, without destroying, the natural divisions of nations. And
   this is the realization of the idea of the Church.

   Now as this revolution could only be brought about by Him who was at
   once Son of God and Son of Man, so He, when he recognized himself as
   the Saviour and King bestowed upon mankind, was fully conscious, also,
   of his power to realize this idea. It is clear, from what we have said
   of the Plan of Christ, that the results which were to flow in after
   ages from the indwelling power of the Word proclaimed and sent forth by
   him to regenerate and unite mankind, lay fully revealed before his
   all-surveying glance. He knew that it contained the elements of a
   spiritual community that would burst asunder the confining forms of the
   Jewish Theocracy, and take all mankind into its wide embrace.
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   [187] In his work, peri politeias.

   [188] Hina me kata po'leis, mede` kata` de'mous oikomen, idio'is
   e'kastoi diorisme'noi dikai'ois, alla` pa'ntas anthro'pous ego'metha
   demo'tas kai` poli'tas, eis de` bi'os e kai` ko'smos o'sper age'les
   sunno'mou nomo koino suntrephome'nes. Plut. in Alex., i., c. vi.

   [189] Touto Zenon men egrapsen hoster o'nar e` ei`dolon eunomi'as
   philoso'phou kai politeias anatuposa'menos

   [190] To whom he applies what can only be said of Christ: koinos e'kein
   theo'then armoste`s kai` diallaktes ton holon nomi'zon.
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   S: 82. Name of the Church.--Its Form traced back to Christ himself.

   But even if it be admitted that Christ intended to found a Church, the
   further (but less important) question arises, whether the name,
   ekklesia, which has been stamped upon it, had its origin with himself.
   There is no ground for doubting even this (as some have done), and
   thereby casting suspicion upon passages like Matt., xvi., 18, in which
   he is reported to have used the term. The name corresponds to the
   Hebrew Q+oH+oL+, in connexion with H+o#L+H+iJ+M% ,J+H+W+oH+
   ,J+iSh:R+o#L+, which expressed the old Theocratic national community;
   and so was transferred to the new congregation of God, which was to
   emerge from the ancient covering. This communion in itself, indeed, is
   nothing but the form in which Christ has established the kingdom of God
   upon earth, and in which he intends it shall develope itself until its
   full consummation.

   But it must not, therefore, be concluded that this community was ever
   to realize itself in the form of a State. [191] The name, borrowed from
   an earthly kingdom, is, on one side, entirely symbolical, and was
   immediately taken from the form in which the idea of the Divine
   community was represented by the Jewish nation. But the essential
   difference between the Jewish and the Christian stand-point consists in
   this, that in the latter the political element is wholly discarded.
   Excluding all other relations that belong to the essence of a state,
   the only real feature expressed by the symbolical name is the
   monarchical principle; and that, too, in a sense that cannot be applied
   to any temporal state, without subverting its organism, and making it a
   horde of slaves under the arbitrary will of a despot. The fundamental
   principle of the Christian community is, that there shall be no other
   subordination than that of its members to God and Christ, and that this
   shall be absolute; while, in regard to each other, they are to be upon
   the footing of complete equality. Christ himself drew a striking
   contrast between his own community and all political organizations in
   this respect. [192]

   But even though it be admitted that Christ intended to found a visible
   Church, and gave the first impulse to a movement that was afterward to
   propagate itself, it does not necessarily follow that he himself
   directly established such a separate community, and made the
   arrangements and preparations that naturally belonged to it.

   It may be said that the outward fabric of the visible Church could not
   be erected until that which constituted its true essence, viz., the
   life of the invisible Church, which as yet lay only in the germ, should
   be more fully unfolded--until the higher life had obtained in the
   disciples a more substantial and self-dependent form, a state of things
   presupposed in a community whose manifold members were reciprocally to
   affect each other. So, too, it may be said [193] that one of the
   specific differences between Christ and other founders of religions
   was, that, as he did not impart a complete and sharply-defined system
   of doctrines to his Apostles, but left it to their human activity,
   under the guidance of the Divine Spirit, to form such a system from the
   elements which he bestowed, [194] so, also, he founded no outwardly
   complete and accurately defined religious community, with a fixed form
   of government, usages, and rules of worship; but, after implanting the
   Divine germ of this community, left it also to human agency, guided by
   the same Holy Spirit, to develope the forms which it should assume
   under the varying relations of human society. According to this view,
   only the fructifying elements were given by Christ, and all the rest
   was left to human developement proper, animated by the Divine principle
   of life.

   According to this view, the only defined community which Christ
   established was that of the Apostles, who, as bearers and organs of his
   Spirit, formed the sole prototype of the Church, which only grew up at
   a later period from the seed which Christ had sown. He did not wish to
   establish an exclusive school or sect, but to draw all men to himself.
   In this view, further, it would be necessary to suppose that he had, at
   that time, fixed no rite of initiation into his narrower fellowship;
   that such passages as John, iii., 22; Matt., xxviii., 19, arose only
   from the attempts of a later period to ascribe the origin of baptism
   directly to Christ; and that baptism, with confession of the name of
   Christ, was introduced by the Apostles subsequently [195] to the
   formation of a separate Christian congregation, as a sign of membership
   therein. And the high estimate [196] which was put upon the rite may be
   ascribed, not to its having been instituted by Christ, but to the
   extraordinary phenomena of inspiration which were wont to attend it.

   We agree fully with the fundamental principle of the view just recited.
   Christ only prepared the way for the foundation of the Church,
   according to its inner essence and its outward form; as he gave no
   complete doctrinal system, so he erected no Church fabric that was to
   stand through all time; his work was rather to implant in humanity the
   new spirit, which was to adapt to itself such outward forms as would
   meet the wants of human progress in successive ages But, while we
   cordially go thus far, we do not find ourselves warranted, either by
   history or by the idea of such a community, in granting so wide a
   latitude as the theory demands to a principle so just in itself.

   The gradual and natural formation of the circle of disciples about
   Christ is no reason for believing that he did not found a Church. His
   manifestation to men of different degrees of susceptibility caused,
   indeed, a sifting process, which soon separated the congregation of
   believers from the mass that rejected Christ; but the natural way in
   which this result was brought about is no argument against the
   establishment of the Church at that time, more than against its
   existence at any time; for, in fact, in a certain sense this is always
   the case. The relations of Christ to the world typified, in every
   respect, what were afterward to be the relations of Christianity to the
   world. We find the name of disciples applied with a wider signification
   than that of Apostles; and why may we not consider the bands of these,
   scattered through different parts of Palestine, and especially those
   who, apart from the Apostles, formed the constant retinue of Christ, as
   constituting the first nucleus of the Church?
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   [191] See this inference drawn by Rothe, in his work "Uber die Anfaenge
   der Christlichen Kirche und ihrer Verfassung," p. 89.

   [192] Luke, xxii., 25, 26.

   [193] As is asserted by Weisse (p. 387, seq.; 406, seq.), whose views
   and proofs we shall examine in another place.

   [194] It is not without good ground, therefore, that we do not devote a
   separate section of this work to a systematic exposition of the
   doctrines of Christ, but content ourselves, both here and in the
   Apostolic age, with pointing out, in his words, the fundamental
   principles which were afterward expanded by the Apostles.

   [195] Weisse thinks that the first trace of the institution is to be
   found in Acts, ii., 38.

   [196] The ecclesiastical import of baptism would remain untouched, even
   if it were granted that the symbol was first instituted by the Apostles
   at the time of the bestowing of the Holy Spirit, which the rite
   symbolized; for, even in that case, we must consider them as Christ's
   organs, and acting out his will.
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   S: 83. Later Institution of Baptism as an Initiatory Rite.

   As for Baptism, we certainly do not find, either in the nature of the
   case or in the historical accounts, any ground for assuming that Christ
   himself, during his stay upon earth, instituted it as a symbol of
   consecration. As long as he could, in person, admit believers into
   communion with himself, no substituted symbol was necessary; and,
   besides, the Holy Spirit, which constitutes the essence of Christian
   baptism, and specifically distinguishes it from that of John, had not
   as yet been manifested. The element of preparation was sufficiently
   indicated by John's baptism, and therefore Christ (in the prophetic
   words which have been preserved to us in Acts, i., 5) contrasted that
   preparatory rite with the spiritual baptism which he himself was soon
   to impart to his disciples. The Apostles, however (quite naturally, in
   view of the ground which they occupied), were unwilling that John alone
   should baptize, and applied the rite, as the Messianic symbol of
   inauguration which Christ himself had recognized, in order to separate
   from the rest such as admitted the Divine calling of Jesus, and
   attached themselves to him. [197] We cannot infer from this, however,
   that there existed at the time a definite rule for the application of
   baptism. Yet, although Christ did not command, he permitted it, as
   fitted to form a point of transition from John's to Christian baptism.

   But when he was about to withdraw his personal presence from his
   disciples, it became necessary to substitute a symbol in its place for
   his sufferings and resurrection, the fundamental facts from which the
   new creation, through the Holy Spirit, was to spring, had necessarily
   to take place before the institution of Christian baptism proper; for
   that baptism implies an appropriation of the fruit of his sufferings, a
   fellowship in his resurrection, and a participation of that life, in
   communion with Him, which is above the world and death. The full import
   of baptism could not be realized until the process which began with
   Christ's death and resurrection had reached its consummation; until the
   exaltation had followed the resurrection, and the glorified Redeemer
   had displayed his triumphant power in the outpouring of the Holy Ghost.
   The same effects which flowed to mankind in general from these facts,
   and the process which rested upon them, were to be repeated in every
   individual case of baptism.
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   [197] John, iv., 2.
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  CHAPTER V.

  THE MIRACLES OF CHRIST.
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   S: 84. Connexion of Christ's Miracles with his Mode of Teaching.

   WE have before remarked that what most distinguished the Teaching of
   Christ was, that it was his self-revelation, and in this view it
   embraces both his Words and Works. His Miracles, then, must be spoken
   of in connexion with his mode of Teaching. Although they are not to be
   sundered from their connexion with his whole self-revelation, yet, as
   an especially prominent feature of it, they served the highest purpose,
   in a certain sense, in vividly exhibiting the nature of Christ, as Son
   of God and Son of Man. They have also an additional claim to be
   mentioned in this connexion, as they served as a basis and support of
   his labours as a teacher, as a preparatory means of leading from
   sensible phenomena to Divine things, and of rendering souls, as yet
   bound to the world of sense, susceptible of his higher Spiritual
   influences.

   In regard to the Miracles, three distinct inquiries present themselves:
   (1.) What was their real objective character and relation to the
   universe, and the Divine government thereof? (II.) In what view, and
   with what impressions, did the contemporaries of Christ receive them?
   (III.) What decision did Christ himself pronounce as to their nature,
   their value, and the ends he sought to accomplish by them?

   (A.) THE OBJECTIVE CHARACTER OF MIRACLES.
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   S: 85. Negative Element of the Miracle.--Its Insufficiency.

   We must distinguish in the Miracle a negative and a positive element.
   The former consists simply in this, that a certain event, either in the
   world of nature or man, is inexplicable by any known laws or powers.
   Events, however, thus simply inexplicable, [198] and even acknowledged
   to be so, are not miracles, unless they bear upon religious interests.
   Many will admit certain facts to be inexplicable by an) known laws, and
   at the same time refuse to grant them a miraculous or supernatural
   character. Some are led, by an unprejudiced admission of the facts, to
   acknowledge, without any regard whatever to religion, that they
   transcend the limits of existing science, and content themselves with
   that acknowledgment; leaving it to the progress of natural philosophy
   or psychology to discover the laws, as yet unknown, that will explain
   the mysterious phenomena. Or, if the narrative of facts be such as to
   preclude even the possibility of such subsequent discovery and
   solution, they seek an explanation in ascribing chasms and deficiencies
   to the account, and withhold, for the time at least, their judgment
   upon the facts themselves; while a spur is given to inquiry and
   research, in order, if possible, by some process of combination or
   conjecture, to fill up the existing gaps of the narrative.

   Even an objective (real) deviation from ordinary phenomena may be
   admitted by those who refuse to admit of miracles, in the religious
   sense of the term. That is, indeed, a narrow and ignorant skepticism
   which measures every thing by the stiff standard of known laws, and
   passes sentence at once upon every fact, no matter how well attested,
   which transcends those laws; but a more profound and scientific
   philosophy knows that there are powers yet undiscovered, which will
   explain many apparent anomalies. With such minds we can more readily
   come to an understanding in regard to the historical truth of a
   narrative of extraordinary events. No unprejudiced reader of history
   can deny the occurrence of inexplicable phenomena in all past ages; and
   even those of magnetism, ill-defined as they are as yet, have taught us
   not to decide so promptly against every thing that goes beyond our
   knowledge of the powers of nature.

   Yet we must not suppose that all this gains any thing directly to the
   cause of religion, within whose sphere alone the conception of the
   miracle is a reality. It leaves us still in the domain of nature and of
   natural agencies. It is not upon this road, therefore, that we can lead
   men to recognize the supernatural and the Divine; to admit the powers
   of heaven as manifesting themselves upon earth. Miracles belong to a
   region of holiness and freedom, to which neither experience, nor
   observation, nor scientific discovery can lead. There is no bridge
   between this domain and that of natural phenomena. Only by means of our
   inward affinity for this spiritual kingdom, only by hearing and
   obeying, in the stillness of the soul, the voice of God within us, can
   we reach those lofty regions. If there be obstacles in our way, no
   science can remove them.

   In fact, the mode of thinking to which we have refereed, instead of
   necessarily leading to Theism (the only religious stand-point; for
   religion demands something supramundane, and must enter the sphere of
   another world), is perfectly consistent with the Pantheistic view of
   the world, and may be used to confirm it. It is not the results of
   experience which fix our point of view; but the latter, independently
   assumed on other grounds, gives character to all our judgments of the
   former. Nay, by applying natural laws to religious phenomena, one may
   view new religions simply as proceeding from the laws of the
   developement of the universe, in order to form new epochs in the
   history of the world, and thence consider the founders of such
   religions as organs of the soul of the world, concentrating in them the
   hidden powers of nature. This was the view of Pomponatius, who thought
   that in this way, while denying every thing supernatural, he could
   admit many of what others call miracles. It is true, there are some of
   the miracles of the Bible which, on the face of them, admit of no such
   explanation, but one who holds such views will find no great difficulty
   in doubting every account of miraculous events which cannot be made to
   harmonize with them; as Pomponatius did, who could not with sincerity,
   after an utter denial of the supernatural, abandon his ground simply
   because come of the miracles could not be explained by it.
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   [198] A prodigium, or teras, but no semeion, distinguishing these words
   according to their original import.
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   S: 86. Positive Element.--Teleological Aim of Miracles.

   Miracles, then, are entirely different from results of the powers of
   nature intensified. The question of their character cannot be decided
   on the ground either of Deism or Pantheism (opposed as these theories
   are to each other; the one incorrectly separating the idea of God from
   that of the world, the other as incorrectly blending the two together),
   but only in regard to the Final causes of the government of God,
   considered as an Omniscient and Omnipotent personal Being. We might
   dispute with these theories in reference to isolated facts, on
   historical and exegetical grounds; but the question of miracles, as
   such, rises into a very different sphere, and no agreement on separate
   points would bring us nearer to an adjustment.

   The positive element, which must be added to the negative one, already
   spoken of, in order to constitute any inexplicable phenomenon a
   miracle, is, that the Divine power in the phenomenon itself shall
   reveal it to our religious consciousness as a distinctive sign of a new
   Divine communication, transcending the natural progress and powers of
   humanity, and designed to raise it to a position higher than its
   originally created powers could have reached. That higher position to
   which the Divine revelations, accompanied by miracles as distinctive
   signs, were destined to elevate mankind, is the character originally
   stamped by God upon human nature, which was lost by sin. Man violently
   sundered his union with God, his true element of life, in which the
   Supernatural and the Natural were in perfect harmony: it was necessary,
   therefore, that the former should reveal itself in opposition to the
   latter--that Miracles should be opposed to Nature--in order that Nature
   might be brought back to her original harmony with God. But miracles,
   considered as signs of the Divinity revealed in the world of sense,
   cannot, as such, be considered apart from their connexion with the
   whole revelation of God. Their essential nature is to be discovered,
   not by viewing them as isolated exhibitions of Divine power, but as
   elements of his revelation as a whole, in the harmony of his
   inseparable attributes, the Holy Love and Wisdom appearing as much as
   the Omnipotence. It is this which stamps Divinity upon such phenomena,
   and attracts all souls that are allied to God. Thus the negative
   element of miracles is only a finger-post to the positive; the
   inexplicable character of the event leads us to the new revelation,
   which it accompanies, of that same Almighty love which gave birth to
   the laws of the visible world, and which, in ordinary times, veils its
   operations behind them.
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   S: 87. Relation of Miracles to the Course of Nature.

   Omnipotence is always as directly operative in nature as it was at the
   creation; but we can only detect its workings by means of the law of
   cause and effect in the material world. Under this veil of natural
   laws, religious faith always discovers the Divine causality, and the
   religious mind, although it may, indeed, contemplate natural phenomena
   from different points of view, and may distinguish between free and
   necessary causalities in nature, will always trace them back to the
   immediate agency of Almighty love. Just so in miracles, we do not see
   the Divine agency immediately, but in a veil, as it were; the Divine
   causality does not appear in them as coefficient with natural causes,
   and therefore cannot be an object of external perception, but reveals
   itself only to Faith. But the miracle, by displaying phenomena out of
   the ordinary connexion of cause and effect, manifests the interference
   of a higher power, and points out a higher connexion, in which even the
   chain of phenomena in the visible world must be taken up.

   Miracles, then, present themselves to us as links in that great chain
   of manifestations whose object is to restore man to his lost communion
   with God, and to impart to him a life, not derived from any created
   causality, but immediately from God. As here new and higher powers
   enter into the sphere of humanity, there must be novel effects re
   suiting from them, which cannot be explained apart from the
   accompanying revelation, but point out to the religious consciousness
   their self-revealing cause. Such effects are the miracles, which, from
   the considerations we have mentioned, lay claim, even as inexplicable
   phenomena simply, to a religious interest. And although, from their
   very nature, they transcend the ordinary law of cause and effect, they
   do not contradict it, inasmuch as nature has been so ordered by Divine
   wisdom as to admit higher and creative agencies into her sphere; and it
   is perfectly natural that such powers, once admitted, should produce
   effects beyond the scope of ordinary causes. [199] In the Divine plan
   of the universe (of whose fulfilment the connexion of causes in the
   visible world manifests only one side), miracles stand in relations of
   reciprocal harmony to events occurring in accordance with natural laws.
   From the chain of causes involved in that great plan, indeed, no
   events, natural or supernatural, are excluded; both circles of
   phenomena belong to the realization of the Divine idea.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [199] The Schoolmen of the 13th century rightly distinguished the
   potentia activa from the potentia passiva, in regard to the relation of
   the supernatural to the natural.
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   S: 88. Relation of the individual Miracles to the highest Miracle, the
   Manifestation of Christ.

   In the miracles nature is shown to be related, like history, to the one
   highest aim of God's holy love, namely, the redemption of the human
   race to the communion of the Divine life, or, what is the same thing,
   the establishment of His kingdom among men. Nature was destined to
   reveal and glorify God; but it can only do this in connexion with
   rational beings, together with whom it forms the world as a whole. Now
   the communion of rational beings, working together with conscious
   freedom to reveal and glorify God, is nothing else but the kingdom of
   God; and as the unity which is to exhibit the world as a whole can only
   be complete when nature has been fully appropriated for the revelation
   of that kingdom, it follows that the realization of the latter is the
   aim of the whole creation--of both nature and history.

   The manifestation of Christ, the founder of the kingdom of God, the
   bestower upon mankind of that Divine life which constitutes the essence
   of the kingdom, was the highest miracle, the central-point of all
   miracles, and required other and analogous phenomena to precede and
   follow it. But as the re-establishment of the original harmony between
   the natural and the Divine (which coincides with the completion of the
   Divine kingdom) was the final aim of redemption, so, when the Divine
   life, the essential principle of the miracle itself, which is purely
   and in its essence supernatural, was incorporated with the natural
   progress of humanity by the manifestation of Christ, it followed that
   thenceforward, in all ages, it should operate within the forms and laws
   of human nature.
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   S: 89. Relation of Miracles to History.

   The relation of miracles to history is perhaps sufficiently obvious
   from what has been said. Every theory of history that proceeds from the
   stand-point of natural reason, admitting nothing superior to itself,
   must, from its very point of departure, reject the idea of miracles. It
   must seek to include and explain all events by one and the same
   pragmatical connexion of causes, and can therefore find no place for
   miracles. Even if it be desirous to examine the acts of Christ without
   prejudice, it can only, from its peculiar stand-point, manifest such
   freedom by representing truthfully, according to the accounts that
   remain, how Christ himself wished these phenomena to be regarded, and
   what impression they made upon his contemporaries.

   But this holds good of only a very limited and arbitrary idea of
   history, one which barricades itself by its own prejudices against all
   higher views. The conception of the miracle, as such, is in no way
   repugnant to a really scientific theory of history; and as it is the
   task of the latter to study the proper character of every fact and
   phenomenon, the import of miracles, as miracles, is one of its
   necessary problems. The manifestation of Christ, indeed, can only be
   rightly understood when it is conceived as being originally Divine and
   supra-historical, and as having become historical; and Christianity can
   only be explained as a supernatural principle, destined to impart to
   history a new tendency and direction. In this connexion the individual
   miracles, preceding, accompanying, and following the manifestation of
   Christ, appear entirely in accordance with nature. As for history
   itself, when it does not refer to Christianity and the kingdom of God
   as the object of all human progress, it appears but as a lawless play
   of forces moving hither and thither, rising and falling, without aim
   and without unity. Christianity alone shows us that it has both. But in
   order to comprehend Christianity, and, through it, History, reason must
   receive the higher light of faith, without which the eye of the mind
   must remain blind to the operations and revelation of the Divinity in
   the course of human progress. [200]

   (B.) THE MIRACLES OF CHRIST AS SUBJECTIVELY VIEWED BY HIS
   CONTEMPORARIES.
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   [200] My view of the miracles agrees with what Twesten has said in the
   Introduction to his "Dogmatik;" and I am gratified to find a similar
   agreement, also, in his second volume, pt. i., p. 170, seq.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 90. Miracles deemed an essential Sign of Messiahship.

   It is evident from many passages in the Gospel narrative that miracles
   were essentially necessary, as signs of the Messianic calling. Had
   Christ, therefore, wrought no miracles, his contemporaries could not
   have believed in his Messiahship; nor could he himself have been
   thoroughly and permanently convinced of it, had he not both been
   conscious of power to perform them, and put that power into exercise.
   John the Baptist was satisfied, from his own inability to achieve such
   works, that he was not endowed with the Messianic fulness of the
   Spirit; and it is obvious, from his receiving Christ's miracles as a
   proof of his Messiahship, that he expected such signs of the indwelling
   fulness of Divine power in the true Messiah.

   Nor can it be proved (as some suppose) that it was common among the
   Jews to spread rumours of miracles wrought by men whose deeds had made
   them objects of popular veneration, as was subsequently the case in the
   Middle Ages, where we find miraculous powers ascribed to such men even
   during their lifetime. There is a great difference in the relations of
   the two periods. The Middle Age was the period of a new creation,
   developed from the new principle of life which Christianity (even
   alloyed as it was with Jewish elements) introduced among the
   uncultivated nations. It was a period of youthful freshness,
   enthusiasm, and poetry. The men of that time, through their lively
   faith in the Divine power of Christianity, as ever present and ever
   active, kept their connexion with the miracles that attended its first
   appearance unbroken, and figured and imitated them by their youthful
   and inventive power of imagination. [201] But while such was the
   relation between the Middle Age and the period of Christ's appearance,
   there was no similar relation between the latter and the Old Testament
   age. Christ did not manifest himself at a period of new creation
   through influences previously wrought into the life of the people by
   Judaism, but at a time when Judaism itself was decaying and dying; the
   revelations and mighty works of Divine power lay buried in a
   far-distant antiquity; and there was a vast chasm, visible to all eyes,
   between the lofty, holy age of Prophecy, and that weak and lifeless
   time. After the voice of prophecy was hushed, God was said to reveal
   himself only by occasional utterances; such, for instance, as the Bath
   Col, [202] a miraculous sound from heaven; or by words of men,
   interpreted as omens. Scarcely any tales of wonder were told but such
   as referred to the Exorcists, [203] who were skilled in the deceptive
   arts of jugglery, and were said to do many marvellous things. In short,
   it is sufficiently proved that miracles were deemed no ordinary
   occurrences among the Jews, [204] by the fact that they were expected
   to be distinctive signs of the Messiah, and that they were not ascribed
   even to John the Baptist, notwithstanding his great deeds and the
   honour in which he was held as a prophet.

   (C.) CHRIST'S OWN ESTIMATE OF HIS MIRACLES.
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   [201] The miraculous tales of the excited Middle Age may be explained
   from the co-working of various influences, but this is not the place to
   enter into the subject.

   [202] The Bath Col may be explained on the ground that a heavenly voice
   was supposed to be heard in a period of devotion, or that words
   accidentally spoken by one person had a peculiar subjective meaning for
   another, like the tolle lege of Augustine.

   [203] Joseph., Archaeol., viii., 2, 4.

   [204] Josephus says, with reference to miracles, "ta paraloga kai meizo
   tes elpidos tois homoiois pistoutai pragmasin."--Archaeol., x., 2, 1.
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   S: 91. Apparent Discrepancies, and Mode of Removing them.

   There are apparent contradictions in the several explanations given by
   Christ of his miracles, and by following them out separately we might
   arrive at different views of the estimate which he himself placed upon
   them. But in order to bring perfect harmony out of these apparent
   contradictions, it is only necessary to distinguish the different
   points of view in which the miracles present themselves. It has been
   already said, that miracles can be correctly understood, not when
   viewed as isolated facts, but in connexion with the whole circle of
   Divine revelation. Those of Christ, especially, are intelligible only
   when considered as results of his self-revelation, or, as St. John
   expresses it, as the manifestation of his glory. They demand,
   therefore, to be so conceived in connexion as to exhibit vividly his
   whole image in each of these separate manifestations; and, on the other
   hand, the same considerations point out, as the highest aim of
   miracles, the revelation of Christ's glory in the whole of his personal
   manifestation.

   (1.) Christ's Object in working Miracles two-fold.

   In their formal import miracles are semeia, signs, designed to point
   from objects of sense to God; powers which, by producing results
   inexplicable by ordinary agencies, are intended to lead minds yet under
   the bonds of sense, and unfitted for an immediate spiritual revelation,
   to yearn after and acknowledge a higher power. But as they were
   designed to show forth the whole revealed Christ, and as the Divine
   attributes, in the totality of which the image of God was realized in
   him, cannot be isolated from each other, so no separate manifestation
   of power could proceed from him, not at the same time exhibiting all
   the other attributes belonging to the Divine image. It is clear,
   therefore, that although miracles, in relation to nature, are
   especially manifestations of Power, they could not be performed except
   in cases where the other attributes, the Wisdom and the holy Love, were
   brought into requisition. For the same reason, too, we cannot conceive
   Christ's miracles as epideictic, i. e., wrought for no other purpose
   than to display his power over the laws of nature. In them, as in all
   his other actions, the end which he had in view is shown by the given
   circumstances in each case.

   Accordingly, we distinguish a two-fold object of his miracles, the
   first a material one, i. e., the meeting of some immediate emergency,
   of some want of man's earthly life? which his love urged him to
   satisfy; the other and higher one to point himself out to the persons
   whose earthly necessities were thus relieved, as the One alone capable
   of satisfying their higher and essential spiritual wants; to raise them
   from this single exhibition of his glory in the individual miracle to a
   vivid apprehension of the glory of his entire nature. Nor was this last
   and higher aim of the miracle confined to the persons immediately
   concerned; it was to be to all others a sign, that they might believe
   in Jesus as the Son of God.

   (2.) A Susceptibility to receive Impressions from the Miracles
   presupposed.

   But all external influences designed to produce an impression such as
   we have stated demand a susceptible soil in the minds of those who are
   to receive them. The revelation of Christ by his works, no more than by
   his words, could produce a Divine impression without an inward
   susceptibility of Divine influences. The consciousness of God must
   exist in the soul, though dormant. The Divine revelation must find some
   point of contact in human nature before religious faith can spring up;
   there is no compulsory influence from without by which the
   unsusceptible soul can be driven to faith by an irresistible necessity.

   So, when a carnal, worldly mind is the prevailing tendency, outward
   phenomena, however extraordinary, pass by, and make no impression. The
   mighty power of the will cannot be subdued by any external force. The
   worldly spirit makes every thing which touches it worldly too.
   Encompassed by Divine powers, it remains closed against them, in its
   earthly inclinations, thoughts, and feelings. The mind, thus perverted,
   cheats itself by denying all miracles, because to acknowledge them
   would oppose its fleshly interests, and contradict the system of
   delusion to which it is a slave. It calls the powers of sophistry to
   aid its self-deception, by converting every thing which could tend to
   undeceive it into a means of deeper delusion; like those Pharisees who,
   when compelled to acknowledge works beyond explanation by ordinary
   agencies, referred them to the powers of darkness rather than of light,
   in order to escape an admission which they were deter mined to evade.
   So he who totally rejects the supernatural has al ready decided upon
   all separate cases, and a miracle wrought before his very eyes would
   not be recognized as such. He might admit the fact as extraordinary,
   but would involuntarily seek some other explanation. A mode of thinking
   that controls the mind cannot be shaken by any power acting wholly from
   without. Such is the might of the free will, which proves its freedom
   even by its self-created bondage.

   Or if miracles do impress the fleshly mind for a moment by the flash of
   gratification or astonishment which they afford, the impression, made
   merely upon the senses, is but transitory; for it lacks the point of
   contact in the soul which alone can make it permanent. How quickly are
   sensible impressions, even the strongest, forgotten when other and
   contrary ones follow them! And here we find one of the reasons why
   Christ refused the demand for miracles merely as proofs of his
   wonderworking power. For those, he said, whose perverted minds could
   not be roused to repentance by Moses and the prophets, would not be
   persuaded though one rose from the dead.

   How grossly ignorant, then, of human nature must the Deists of the 17th
   century have been, who plead in opposition to the reality of Christ's
   miracles, the comparatively little effect which they produced! [205]

   We shall find, therefore, Christ's own statements in regard to his
   miracles to harmonize perfectly with each other, if we properly
   distinguish the various classes of human character in their religious
   and moral relations to miracles, and the different relations and
   tendencies of the miracles themselves.
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   [205] Like that strange enthusiast, Daniel Mueller, who appeared in
   Nassau in the transition period between mysticism and rationalism, and
   in whom these two tendencies joined hands. From the extreme of mystic
   supernaturalism he passed over to the skeptical conclusions of our
   modern critics. In his treatise against Lessing he says, "It is
   impossible that there should have been a Christ 1700 years ago, who
   literally wrought such wonders as these. Had any man, by his mere word,
   caused the blind to see and the lame to walk, given health to the leper
   and strength to the palsied, fed thousands with a few loaves, and even
   raised the dead, all men must have esteemed him Divine, all men must
   have followed him. Only imagine what you yourself would have thought of
   such a man; and human nature is the same in all ages. And with so many
   followers, the scribes and Pharisees could not have killed
   him."--Ilgen's Zeitschrift, 1834, p. 257.
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   S: 92. The Sign of the Prophet Jonah.

   Christ's declaration, in answer to a demand for a miraculous
   attestation of his Messiahship, that "no sign shall be given to this
   generation but the sign of the Prophet Jonah," has been thought by some
   to indicate either that he wrought no miracles at all, or that he did
   not mean to employ them as proofs of his Divine calling. The passage
   preceding that declaration of itself is enough to refute this; for he
   had just appealed to the healing of a demoniac as proof of the Divine
   character of his power, [206] and to the fact that the kingdom of God
   was victoriously introduced among men by him [207] as a testimony that
   his ministry was Divine. But we can refute it by simply showing the
   only sense which the words could have conveyed, in the connexion in
   which they were used.

   The works of Jesus had made a great impression, very much to the
   discomfort of those whose mode of thinking and party interests made it
   necessary for them to oppose him. They naturally sought to counteract
   this impression; to dispute the evidence of the facts which confirmed
   his ministry as Divine. While the most base and hostile, compelled to
   admit the superhuman powers of Christ, attributed them to the kingdom
   of darkness, there were others who did not dare to utter such an
   accusation, but asked a sign of a different character, an objective
   testimony from God himself in favor of Christ and his ministry, which
   could not deceive; a visible celestial phenomenon, for instance, or a
   voice from heaven, clearly and unequivocally authenticating him as a
   messenger from God. In answer, then, to those who asked a Divine sign
   apart from his whole manifestation, a sign for that which was of itself
   the greatest of all signs, Christ appeals to that loftiest of signs,
   his own appearance as the God--Man, which included within itself all
   his miracles as separate, individual manifestations. [208] To this (he
   told them)--viz., that "The manifestation of the Son of Man was greater
   than that of Jonah or of Solomon"--belonged all those works of his
   which no other could perform; every thing was to be referred to that
   manifestation as the highest in the history of humanity. Had these
   words been spoken by any other, they would have convicted him of
   sacrilegious self-exaltation.
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   [206] Luke, xi., 20.

   [207] Luke, xi., 22.

   [208] We cannot but be surprised at the remark of De Wette, Comm. on
   Matt., 2d ed., p. 132: "If Jesus had wished to express this thought, he
   would have uttered nonsense--No sign shall be given to them, but still
   given." Christ said that to those who were not satisfied by his whole
   manifestation, as a sign, no other separate sign would be given; how
   could any thing be a sign for them to whom the highest sign was none?
   The words, however, do wear that air of paradox which we often find in
   the discourses of Christ.
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   S: 93. "Destroy this Temple," &c.

   Similar to this was Christ's reply at the Passover, which he first kept
   in Jerusalem, to those who, unable to comprehend an act of holy zeal,
   asked him to prove his calling as a reformer by a miracle--"Destroy
   this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." Instead of working
   a miracle, uncalled for by the circumstances, for their idle
   satisfaction, he pointed them to a sign that was to come, a great,
   world-historical sign, which may have been either his resurrection,
   that was to seal the conclusion of his ministry on earth, and bring
   about the triumph of his kingdom, in spite of the machinations of his
   foes, who hoped to destroy his work by putting him to death; or the
   creation, as the end and aim of his whole manifestation, of the new,
   spiritual, and eternal Temple of his kingdom among men, after the
   visible Temple should have been destroyed by their own guilt.
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   S: 94. Christ's Distinction between the material Element of Miracles
   and their essential Object.--John, vi., 26.

   Christ himself distinguishes the material part of the miracle, i. e.,
   its effect in satisfying a momentary want, and its formal part, as a
   sign to point from objects of sense to God, and to accredit himself as
   capable of satisfying all higher spiritual wants. To those who embraced
   the miracles in this latter sense, properly as semeia, he freely
   communicated himself; and, on the other hand, he must more and more
   have alienated himself from those who attached themselves to him only
   from a momentary interest of the former kind. He, therefore, reproached
   those who eagerly sought him after the feeding of the five thousand, by
   saying that they did not seek him because they "had seen the miracles"
   (i. e., as signs to lead them to something higher), but simply because
   their human wants had been satisfied--"Ye did eat of the loaves and
   were filled." The light of his works (he told them) was not sufficient
   to lead them to believe on him, inasmuch as they lacked--what was
   essential to faith--a sense for the Divine. The gratification of their
   natural senses was all they sought. In the spirit in which they were,
   faith was impossible; their preponderating worldliness of mind,
   subjugating the better tendencies of their nature, left room for no
   sense of higher wants, and prevented them from feeling the inward
   "drawing of the Father." [209]
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   [209] John, vi., 36, 44.
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   S: 95. Christ appealed to the Miracles as Testimonies; John, xv.,
   24.--Three different Stages of Faith.

   Although Christ appeals (in John's Gospel) to the miracles as
   testimonies of his works, we are not to understand him as appealing to
   them simply as displays of power, for the grounds already stated. Yet
   he does, in more than one instance, declare them to be signs, in the
   world of sense, of a higher power, designed to lead minds as yet
   unsusceptible of direct spiritual impressions, to acknowledge such
   influences. "If I had not done among them the works which none other
   man did, they had not had sin." [210]

   In viewing the miracles thus as means of awakening and strengthening
   faith, we must distinguish different stand-points in the developement
   of faith. On the lowest stage stood those who, instead of being drawn
   by an undeniable want of their spiritual nature, inspired by the power
   of God working within them, had to be attracted by a feeling of
   physical want, and by impressions made upon their outward senses. Yet,
   like his heavenly Father, whose providence leads men to spiritual
   things even by means of their physical necessities, Christ condescended
   to this human weakness, sighing, at the same time, that such means
   should be indispensable to turn men's eyes to that which lies nearest
   to their spiritual being. "Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not
   believe." [211]

   A higher stage was occupied by those who were, indeed, led to seek the
   Messiah by a sense of spiritual need, but whose religious feelings were
   debased by the admixture of various sensuous elements. As these were
   yet in some degree in bondage to sense, and sought the Saviour without
   perfectly apprehending him as the object of their search, they had to
   be led to know him by miracles suited to their condition. Such was the
   case with the Apostles generally, before their religious feelings were
   purified by continued personal intercourse with Christ. He condescended
   to this condition, in order to lead men from it to a higher stage of
   religious life; but yet represented it as subordinate to that purer
   stage in which they should receive the whole impression of his person,
   and obtain a full intuition of the mode in which God dwelt and wrought
   in Him. Jesus said unto Nathanael, "Because I said I saw thee under the
   fig-tree, believest thou? Thou shalt see greater things than these.
   Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and
   descending upon the Son of Man." [212]

   A far loftier stage of faith was that which, proceeding from an inward
   living fountain, did not wait for miracles to call it forth, but went
   before and expected them as natural manifestations of the already
   acknowledged God. Such a presupposed faith, instead of being summoned
   by the miracles, rather summoned them, as did the pagan centurion whom
   Christ offered to the Jews as a model: "I have not found so great
   faith, no, not in Israel." [213]

   It appears, therefore, that Christ considered that to be the highest
   stage of religious developement in which faith arose, not from the
   sensible evidence of miracles, but from an immediate Divine impression
   finding a point of contact in the soul itself--from a direct experience
   of that wherein alone the soul could fully satisfy its wants; such a
   faith as testifies to previous motions of the Divine life in the soul.
   We have an illustration in Peter, who expressed his profound sense of
   the blessings that had flowed to him from fellowship with Christ, in
   his acknowledgment, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.
   And Jesus said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona, for flesh and
   blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in
   heaven." [214] This acknowledgment itself might have been made by Peter
   at an earlier period; but the way in which he made it at that critical
   moment, and the feeling which inspired it, showed that he had obtained
   a new intuition of Christ as the Son of God. It was for this that
   Christ called him; "blessed," because the drawing of the Father had led
   him to the Son, and the Father had revealed himself to him in the Son.
   Peter made his confession, at that time, in opposition to others, [215]
   who, although they had a dawning consciousness of Christ's higher
   nature, did not yet recognize him as the Son of God. The spirit in
   which he made it is illustrated by a similar confession made by him in
   view of the defection of many who had been led by "the revelation of
   flesh and blood" to believe in Jesus, and had afterward abandoned him,
   [216] for the very reason that their faith had so low an origin: "Lord,
   to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life. And we
   believe, and we are sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of the
   living God." [217]

   And so, when Thomas doubted, Christ condescended to give him a visible
   proof of his resurrection; [218] but at the same time he declared that
   that was a higher faith which needed no such support. but rested, with
   undoubting confidence, upon the inward experience of Divine
   manifestations. "Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have
   believed."
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   [210] John, xv., 24.

   [211] John, iv., 48.

   [212] John, i., 50, 51.

   [213] Matt., viii., 10.

   [214] Matt., xvi., 16, 17.

   [215] Matt., xvi., 14.

   [216] John, vi., 66.

   [217] John. vi., 69.

   [218] John, xx.. 27.
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   S: 96. The Communication of the Divine Life the highest Miracle.--John,
   xiv., 12.

   Finally, the words of Christ himself assure us that the communication
   of the life of God to men was the greatest of all miracles, the essence
   and the aim of all; and, further, that it was to be the standing
   miracle of all after ages. "He that believeth on me, the works that I
   do shall he do also, and greater works than these shall he do, because
   I go to my Father. And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I
   do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son." The power of
   diffusing the Divine life, which had been confined to him alone, was,
   by means of his glorification, to be extended to others, and to assume
   in them a peculiar self-subsisting form--the miracle which was to be
   wrought among all men, and in all time, by the preaching of the Gospel.
   ["He shall send you another Comforter, that he may abide with you
   forever, even the Spirit of Truth."]
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     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER VI.

  THE MIRACLES OF CHRIST CONSIDERED IN REGARD TO SUPERNATURAL AGENCY.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 97. Transition from the Natural to the Supernatural in the Miracles.

   IT has been asserted in modern times, that in order to receive miracles
   at all, we must conceive them as directly and abruptly opposed to
   nature, and admit no intermediate agencies whatever. But we cannot be
   confined to this alternative by men who wish to caricature the views
   which we maintain. Abrupt contrasts may be set up in abstract theories;
   but in real life we do not find them. There are always intermediate
   agencies and points of transition. And why should this not be the case
   in the opposition between the natural and the supernatural? We think
   that we have already shown that the higher unity of the Divine plan of
   the world embraces miracles as well as the ordinary developement of
   nature. We hold ourselves justified, therefore, in distinguishing, with
   regard to the marvellous part of the miracles, certain steps of
   transition from the natural to the supernatural. Not that we can
   separate these gradations so nicely as to constitute a division of the
   miracles thereby; but we can trace an important harmony with the
   universal laws of the Divine government of the world in the fact that
   here, too, there are no sudden leaps, but a gradual transition by
   intermediate steps throughout.

   Looking at all the miracles, there are some in regard to which it may
   be doubted whether they belong to the class of natural or supernatural
   events; on the other side, there are some in which the creative power
   is exhibited in the highest degree, and which. bear no analogy whatever
   to the results of natural causes. Between these extreme classes, there
   are many miraculous works in which the supernatural can be made vividly
   obvious by means of natural analogies. To these last belong most of the
   miracles which Christ wrought upon human nature; while those wrought
   upon the material world, rejecting all natural analogies, may be ranged
   under the second extreme class above mentioned. The latter are very few
   in comparison with the former, and far less intimately connected with
   Christ's peculiar calling.

   A. CHRIST'S MIRACLES WROUGHT UPON HUMAN NATURE.

   I. The Healing of Diseases.
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   S: 98. The Spiritual Agencies employed.--Faith demanded for the Cure.

   Those works of redeeming love which Christ wrought upon the human body,
   the healing of diseases, and the like, displayed the peculiar feature
   of his whole ministry. The ailments of the body are closely connected
   with those of the soul; [219] and even if, in individual cases, this
   cannot be proved, yet in the whole progress of human developement there
   is always a causal connexion between sin and evil; between the
   disorganization of the spirit through sin, and all forms of bodily
   disorder, There was a beautiful connexion, therefore, between Christ's
   work in healing the latter, and his proper calling to remove the
   fundamental disease of human nature, and to restore its original
   harmony, disturbed by sin.

   Some of these diseases, also, arose purely from moral causes, and could
   be thoroughly cured only by moral and spiritual remedies. Little as we
   know of the connexion between the mind and the body, we know enough to
   make it in some degree clear to us how an extraordinary Divine
   impression might produce remarkable effects in the bodily organism.

   We do not mean, however, by this remark, to bring all such influences
   down (as some have done) into the sphere of the purely subjective. It
   is true that a natural power, highly intensified, might produce effects
   closely resembling the supernatural; it is true that the imagination,
   strongly stimulated and exalted, often works strange wonders; but we
   have to do here only with effects which must be attributed to higher
   causes, which must be due to an objective Divine agency. In. the cases
   to which we refer (as, indeed, in all cases), the objective and
   subjective factors could co-operate; the Divine influence of Christ
   upon the soul, and, through it, upon the bodily organism, could work
   together with the susceptibility to impression, the receptivity (so to
   speak), on the part of man. Hence it was that Christ demanded a special
   Faith as a necessary condition of his healing agency; indeed, we can
   find no instance of his working a miracle where a hostile tendency of
   mind prevailed.

   We can conceive of bodily cures thus wrought by means of spiritual
   influences more readily than any others; and they correspond precisely
   with the laws which Christ's operations have never ceased to follow.
   But we cannot bring all the instances of healing which he wrought under
   this class; some of them were wrought at a distance, and offer no point
   of departure of this kind. And as we are compelled to admit, in some of
   the miracles, immediate operations upon material nature, we are the
   less authorized to deny that such direct influences were exerted upon
   the bodily organism.
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   [219] It is remarkable that great plagues often spread over the earth
   precisely at the same time with general crises in the intellectual or
   moral world; e. g., the plague at Athens and the Peloponnesian war: the
   plagues under the Antonines and under Decius; the labes inquinaria at
   the end of the 6th century; the ignis sacer in the 11th; the black
   death in the 14th, &c. That great man, Niebuhr, whose letters contain
   so many golden truths, alluded to this coincidence in another
   connexion.--Leben, ii., 167.
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   S: 99. Use of Physical Agencies in the Cure of Diseases.

   Christ employed his miraculous power in various modes of operation. He
   operated by his immediate presence, by the power of that Divine will
   which exercised its influence through his word and his whole
   manifestation; and this in the very cases in which we might admit a
   bodily cure by the use of physical agencies. Sometimes, indeed. there
   was besides a material application, e.g., the contact of the hand. In
   other cases he made use of material substances, and even of such as
   were thought to be possessed of healing virtues, as, in blindness, of
   saliva, [220] water, [221] and anointing with oil.

   But in these cases the means were too disproportionate to the results,
   for us to imagine that they were naturally capable of producing them;
   and as Christ did not always employ them, there is no room to suppose
   that they were necessary as vehicles of his healing power--a
   supposition which brings the miracles too far down into the sphere of
   merely physical agencies. We must rather presuppose that as Christ. in
   his teaching, &c., took up the forms in common use among men to work
   out something higher from them, so he allowed his powers of healing to
   exhibit themselves in the use of these ordinary means in symbolical
   way. He may have designed thereby to bestow some peculiar lessons of
   instruction.

   The cures wrought at a distance do not admit of this material
   connecting link; but the operations of Christ's will could overstep all
   the barriers of space.
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   [220] Plin., Hist Natur., xxviii., 7.

   [221] Mark, viii.; John, ix.
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   S: 100. The Relation between Sin and Physical Evil.--Jewish Idea of
   Punitive Justice.--Christ's Doctrine on the Subject.

   We must now examine Christ's miracles of healing in their moral
   aspects, and in their connexion with his ministry as Redeemer. If it
   can be shown that all those disturbances of the bodily organism, which
   we call diseases, have their origin in Sin, as the source of all
   discord in human nature, we may infer that there is a close connexion
   between these miracles and his proper calling; and that, in healing the
   diseases produced by sin, by means of his influence upon the essential
   nature of the disturbed organism, he displayed himself also as the
   Redeemer from sin. In many cases, also, we may find the physical and
   the moral cure reciprocally operating upon each other.

   The question first occurs, In what relation does Christ himself place
   disease to sin? This question is connected with the broader one, In
   what relation to sin does he place physical evil in general? In Luke,
   v., 20, and John, v., 14, he seems to assign a special connexion
   between sin and certain diseases as its punishments; but other
   expressions of his appear to contradict such a connexion. To solve this
   difficulty, we must not only distinguish the different aims of these
   several expressions, but also discriminate between the true and the
   false in the modes of thinking prevalent among the Jews.

   The doctrine that sin is guilt, and that the Divine holiness reveals
   itself in opposition to sin, as punitive justice, is one of the
   characteristics of the religion of the Old Testament in its relations
   to the various shapes of natural religion. Punitive justice displays
   itself in the established connexion between sin and evil, in
   consequence of which the sinful will that rebels in act against the
   Divine law must be compelled, through suffering, actually to
   acknowledge that law, and to humble itself before its majesty.
   According to this view of the world, which subordinates the natural to
   the moral, all evil is to be attributed to sin; it shows itself to the
   soul estranged from God as belonging to, and connected with sin; the
   consciousness that sin is opposed to the Divine order of nature is
   developed by sufferings; and thus sin appears, even to the sinner, to
   be deserving of punishment. All history proves that the consequences of
   bad actions, as well as of good ones, operate for generations; all
   history testifies that "God is a jealous God, visiting the iniquities
   of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation."
   We can see this especially in the crises of the history of nations, by
   tracing them to their preparatory causes. The history of the Jewish
   nation, particularly, was designed to exhibit this universal law in
   miniature, but with striking distinctness.

   To this conception of the punitive justice of God, as displaying itself
   in the progress of history and in the course of generations, a
   contracted Theodicy had joined itself, which arrogantly assumed to
   apply the universal law to special cases. [222] The book of Job had
   already refuted this contracted view; and Christ himself opposed it;
   taking, however, the basis of truth which was found in the Old
   Testament, purifying it from foreign admixtures of error, and giving it
   a fuller developement. [223]

   The doctrine of punitive justice was in no degree impugned by the new
   and lofty prominence which Christ gave to the Redeeming love of God; on
   the contrary, the latter doctrine presupposed the former, but at the
   same time gave it peculiar modifications. And as Christ teaches us that
   all human events are subservient to the manifestation of redeeming
   love, the highest aim of God's moral government, it follows that the
   connexion between sin and physical evil, ordained by Divine justice,
   must serve the same great end. The universal evil introduced by sin is
   so distributed in detail as to aid in preparing the soil of men's
   hearts to receive and appropriate redemption and salvation, and in
   further purifying the hearts of those who have already become partakers
   of the Divine life.

   There are two passages in which Christ contradicts, in the one
   negatively and in the other positively, the contracted view of punitive
   justice, before referred to.

   The negative contradiction is given in Luke, xiii., 2, 4: "Suppose ye
   that these Galileans were sinners above all the Galileans, because they
   suffered such things? I tell you, nay; but except ye repent, ye shall
   all likewise perish. Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam
   fell, and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that
   dwelt in Jerusalem?" In this passage Christ teaches that the evil that
   befel the individuals did not necessarily measure their individual
   guilt, but that their particular sufferings were to be traced back to
   the general guilt of the nation.

   The positive contradiction is found in John, ix., 2, 3: "Master, who
   did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus
   answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents; but that the
   works of God should be made manifest in him." Here he rebukes the
   presupposition that the calamity of the individual sufferer was to be
   referred to sins committed by his ancestors, and brings out, in strong
   contrast with it, that Almighty love which shows itself even by so
   distributing physical evil as to train men for salvation. [224]

   We interpret, in accordance with this view, the explanations which
   Christ gave in several cases of a relation between disease and sin, and
   between healing and the pardon of sin. He referred either to the
   general connexion, through which all evil was intended to call forth
   the consciousness of sin; or to a closer connexion, in individual
   cases, between a given misfortune and a specific sin. The relation
   between the bodily cure and the pardon of sin was still closer. [225]

   II. Demoniacal Possession.

   The connexion, of which we have spoken, between sin and evil, must be
   especially predicated of those forms of disease which, view them as we
   may, exhibited a moral wreck, not only of the individual sufferers, but
   of the age in which they lived; and which admitted no means of perfect
   cure except moral influences. We mean the psychical diseases, the
   sufferings of the so-called Demoniacs.
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   [222] The fact that this view was maintained by the carnally-disposed,
   and that the later Jewish history often apparently reversed the
   connexion between sin and evil, piety and happiness, gave rise,
   subsequently, to an Ebionitish reaction, which maintained that in this
   world, belonging as it does to Satan, the wicked have possession of the
   goods of this life, while poverty and pain must be the lot of the
   pious; and that this state of things will only be compensated in the
   Millennium, or in the life to come. Christ's truth opposes both these
   false views.

   [223] Luke, xiii., 4.

   [224] We shall examine this explanation again in its proper place in
   the narrative.

   [225] Matt., ix., 2-5.
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   S: 101. Two Theories of the Affliction: (a) Possession by Evil Spirits
   (b) Insanity.--Analogous Phenomena in other Times.

   There are two points of view, opposed to each other, but yet, perhaps,
   admitting of an intermediate ground, in which we may contemplate these
   forms of disease; they may have originated either (a) from internal
   causes in the soul itself, or (b) from causes entirely outward and
   supernatural. Those who adopt the first view confine their attention to
   the characteristic symptoms as reported, and compare them with the very
   similar ailments, the diseases of the mind and of the nervous system,
   which not only existed in that age, but have appeared at all subsequent
   periods. [226] Those who strictly adopt the latter view adhere closely
   to the letter of the narrative, and make no attempt to distinguish what
   is objective in it from what is subjective; but see in the miserable
   demoniacs only passive instruments of evil spirits.

   If, in accordance with this view, we admit no intermediate agency, but
   ascribe the phenomena immediately to evil spirits, the cures must be
   directly attributed to Christ's dominion over the powers of the other
   world; thus strikingly showing his supernatural control over a
   supernatural cause of disease. And, on the other hand, if we class
   these phenomena with diseases of the mind in general, and consider the
   supposed indwelling of evil spirits only as a symptom grounded on
   natural causes, we shall more readily be able to conceive how a disease
   arising entirely, or, at least, chiefly from a psychical cause, could
   be cured by a purely psychical agency. Nor would this in the least
   degree deny, or even detract from, the miraculous character of Christ's
   acts; for to restore a raving maniac to reason by a look or a word was
   surely beyond all natural psychological influence, and presupposed
   powers transcending all ordinary agencies. It is true, we find
   analogous cases in later times, in which great things were wrought by
   immediate Divine impressions, and by devout prayer in the name of
   Christ. [227]

   Not only at the time of Christ's appearance, but also in the centuries
   immediately following, [228] many forms of disease like those called
   demoniacal in the New Testament were spread abroad; and we may infer
   that the same cause was at work in both periods.
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   [226] Similar diseases, occurring in the first centuries, were
   explained in this way by the physicians.--Orig., in Matt., xiii., S: 6.

   [227] We must not take the spirit of an age of materialism or
   rationalism as a rule for judging of all phenomena of the psuche, which
   veils within itself the Infinite; which is capable of such manifold
   excitement; and whose various powers are alternately dormant and
   active--now one prevailing, and now another. An age may be destitute of
   certain phenomena and experiences, because it has no organs for
   developing them; and this would prove no thing against their reality.
   Although I can hardly think it possible that the view given in the
   text, taken in connexion with the general principles of this book, can
   be misunderstood, yet, in order to guard against a possible
   misinterpretation, I deem it best to add, that it was far from my
   intention to do away with the distinction between the natural and the
   supernatural, or to trace the latter entirely to the developement of
   powers inherent in the psuche. I wished only to point out the organ,
   the point of contact, in the psuche, for supernatural communications
   and influences; to show that it is itself supernatural in its hidden
   essence, which looks forward to be unfolded hereafter in the higher
   world to which it is allied.

   [228] As seen in the Fathers, and in Lucian's Philopseudes.
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   S: 102. Connexion of the Phenomena with the State of the
   Times.--Conceptions of the Jews in regard to them: of the Demoniacs
   themselves.

   The diseases of the mind in every age bear the stamp, to some degree,
   of the prevailing tendencies and ideas of the times; and those to which
   we refer reflected the peculiar and predominant features of the Jewish
   mind of that age. The wretched demoniacs seemed to be hurried onward by
   a strange and hostile power that subjugated their intellectual and
   moral being, and whose chief characteristic, as displayed in their
   paroxysms, was a wild and savage destructiveness. The Jews explained
   these phenomena according to their own notions, and especially by the
   general opinion that man was surrounded on every side by the operations
   of evil spirits, who were the authors