ment against miracles is futile: for not only | mable state of the materials which it en are results in our hands, which cannot be kindled, they may perhaps do so with no otherwise accounted for, but the "experi- more kindly intention than to suggest how ence" you appeal to begins by excluding little wonderful was the conflagration that the experience of Matthew, Mark, Luke, ensued; but they are nevertheless unconand John, and then of course the desired sciously doing the Church's work. It is not conclusion follows of itself.”* their affirmations, but their negations which she repudiates. And she can well afford to receive, with full acknowledgments, all that they bring; for the convictions by which Christians lay hold of the Divine side of the question, and put themselves into personal relationship with Christ, are of another order altogether, and are but little affected by negative criticism. It is quite clear, therefore, that if these books of MM. Strauss and Renan are to receive that estimation which is, in some respects, justly due to them, they must be taken apart from the ridiculous premise on which they are professedly based, and judged with as little reference to it as possible. The childish simplicity must be forgiven of such passages as these: By miracles like that of feeding the multitudes, &c., natural science would be rased to its foundations' (Strauss, p. 39) — (that it would be much put out by a super-natural event we should quite expect); and if Jesus had not become transformed by legend, He would be an unique phenomenom in history' (Renan, Vie de J., p. xlvi.)-which is precisely, what Christians maintain Him to have been). The prerogative of the Almighty to address men through the senses, if it should seem good to Him to do so, must be dogmatically re-affirmed (for one piece of dogmatism is just as good as another); and these works must be studied, not for their arbitrary marshalling of texts in parody of the simple and noble delineation of Christ's life in the Gospels, but for their valuable aid towards realising the human side in His being, who was (under every hypothesis) very man'; and especially for their meritorious contributions towards setting it in an intelligible framework, and pointing out those nearer links of connections with previous and subsequent history which alone were wanting to substantiate the Christology of the Church. For it must be remembered, the Catholic doctrine has ever affirmed that Christ was a link n history, not out of it: a link heated to whiteness, it may be, and imparting that heat, but a link of precisely the same materials, and occurring in the same historical order, as the rest · perfect man,' and coming in the fulness of times.' And therefore, when write s, such as those in question, take much pains to display the preparation of the world for Christianity, and the strangely inflam *The subject of Miracles has recently been handled with extraordinary acuteness and force of reasoning by the Rev. Mr. Mozley, in his Bampton Lectures for last year. We know of nothing more able or more eloquent in our theological literature, and we would especially point out the Fourth Dis course, in which the writer proves that a belief in aud possibility of miracles is identical with, and inseparable from, a belief in a personal God. The fact is, that in disentangling profound and intricate problems, every thing depends on the quarter from which they are approached. The solar system, so long as it was viewed from the earth as a centre, was an inextricable web of confusion; but directly a standing-point for the imagination was found in the sun, everything fell at once into its right place. In so complex and subtle a question as that of the truth of Christianity, this is still more surely the secret of success. The question is one which addresses neither the reason alone, nor the imagination alone, nor the conscience alone. It is, in its essence, an ethical question. But, making pretensions to stand upon the solid ground of historical fact, it is inevitably mixed up with matters of a secondary interest-points of criticism, various readings, and other documentary questionsand becomes subject to the demands of the imagination, that its origin and history be presented in a readily conceivable form. But it makes all the difference in the world whether a man begin by entangling himself amid petty critical details, or by determining at all costs to satisfy the imagination, -or whether he begin by grasping the central object of the whole system by an ethical process, and then endeavour to arrange, in the best way that circumstances admit, the intellectual and pictorial details. Christianity itself makes no pretensions to be understood by either of the former methods. It is no fault of the Gospel if men will persist in approaching it from the wrong quarter, and make confusion worse confounded in the attempt. For it emphatically claims to be, not a revelation to philosophers, but to babes; and no words can more distinctly point out the right clue than its own: -If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself.' Now, it is precisely this clue which both MM. Strauss and Renan have entirely missed, and which the author of 'Ecce Ho- | intercourse with learned people, especially with mo' has, with admirable judgment and sur- the disciples of the three leading schools [Pharprising success, taken up. Strauss's New isees, Sadducees, Essenes]: while, on the o her Life of Jesus' is not indeed so purely a dry hand, his originality, freshness, and freedom intellectual feat as the original work, which from every trace of school-pedantry, (such as in 1835 startled the world by its audacious stamps so unmistakably even the spiritual Apostle of the Gentiles,) render it probable that his attempt to sift the Gospels into a heap of development was still more independent of exbarren rubbish. Fired by the rapid popu- trinsic aid even than that. And to this no cirlarity of M. Renan's Galilæan idyll, and cumstances could be more favourable than those stung by the persistent refusal of the edu- of his Galilæan home. The inhabitants of that cated classes to acknowledge themselves region, it is well known, were especially in brought over to his views, he now appeals to the Northern parts- much mixed up with the the German people,' works up his sifted heathen; as is plainly confessed in the epithet particles afresh into a concrete but lifeless "Galilee of the Gentiles" (Matt. iv. 15, followfigure that could never have converted ing Isaiah viii. 23). And since the province was, yet farther, cut off by the whole breadth of Saanybody, much less the world and ends maria from the proudly orthodox Judæa, its naby arranging in little heaps of (so-called) tives were looked down upon as of little worth, legendary matter the large proportion of the and not regarded as Jews in the strict sense of Gospel narrative, which is rejected as ficti- the word. Yet these very untoward circumtious because it is miraculous. Thus Strauss, stances might contribute all the better to the too, like Renan, finds himself compelled, in formation of a free religious character.' (P. the earnest prosecution of his studies, to draw 194.) sensibly nearer towards Christianity. The Christ of his later work is a far more real and tangible personage than the faintlysketched and misty figure that floated as a possible residuum of fact amid the hallucinations, myths, and forgeries of which the former book was full. Here we have the whole of Part I., comprising no less than 150 closely-printed pages, devoted to the real and historical Jesus of Nazareth, as the author conceives him to haye actually lived and died. And though an equal space, it is true, is given to a critical introduction of very high interest, and a far larger number of pages to an elaborate classification of no less than twelve groups of myths, arranged in their respective imaginary layers, yet the concessions made in these 150 pages are so important, and the reality of Christ's earthly history as described by the Evangelists is, in its main features, so candidly confessed, that we seem to have here restored to us almost all that was worth contending for. Jesus of Nazareth, then-according to Herr Strauss's latest and most advanced criticism of his human history. was a Galilæan peasant of the lower orders, himself a carpenter and the son of a carpenter, and quite devoid of any education except such as he would gather for himself from an assiduous study of the Old Testament, and from observation of the curiously-mingled society around him. "Neither in the substance nor in the method of Jesus' teaching is there any thing whichalways bearing in mind his inward endowments -we cannot explain by supposing a careful study of the Old Testament and a free social FOURTH SERIES. LIVING AGE. VOL. III. Indeed the circumstances in question were themselves - as Strauss takes great pains to make us understand the fruits of a long preparation in antecedent history. 'I know not whether any supernatural origin we become convinced that even the Hero has a 32. ently opposing yet really co-operating forces, we | temporaries, he was inspired with the idea . may put it thus: Judæa, in all the stages of its history, sought God; Greece sought man.' (P. 167.) that the true preparation for him was, not the purchasing of daggers or the broadening of phylacteries, but the conversion of the heart; and that while he was thus foremost No one who remembers Mr Gladstone's among the files of the Jewish prophets, still eloquent expansion of this thought, in his he was less clear in his assurance that Jesus late farewell speech at Edinburgh, needs to was that Messiah, and more open to offence be reminded that all this is thoroughly at his new methods of procedure, than the Christian and even Churchman-like. Nay, least of those who had actually attached to deny it would be downright heresy. For themselves to his person. Add to all this it is taught in every Catechism and Man--what seems likewise allowed that he ual of Church History; it is stated in plain actually foretold what soon after came to terms by the deepest thinkers of antiquity; pass: viz. that those who rejected the Mes- . and it is itself the direct fulfilment of many siah would be utterly and fearfully destroya noble passage of Hebrew prophecy, which ed, while the remnant that accepted him shrinks not from giving a divine mission to would form the germ of a great future organa Cyrus, a Melchizedek, a Jethro, a Job, a ization, subject in some way to his soverHazael, a Nebuchadnezzar, and looks for- eignty; and we really do not know what ward gladly to the day when 'Israel shall Churchmen could ask for more from Mr. be the third with Egypt and with Assyria: Strauss. whom the Lord shall bless, saying, Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel my inheritance.' (Isaiah xix. 24.) With the exception of these few facts, however, in the early life of Jesus, Strauss finds nothing very trustworthy until we arrive at his baptism by John. At this point his real history begins. That he was baptised by John, and remained with him for a short time, there can be no reasonable doubt. But John, like the hermit Banus, at a later period, to judge from the descriptions of both given by Josephus, was a sort of independent Essene, whose rigorous asceticism and rugged reproachful method of address soon became distasteful to one of so cheerful and social, of so courteous and merciful a temper as Jesus. Still the aim of both was the same, though their methods were different. Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand;' was the voice which resounded in the wilderness among the crowds of excited and expectant Jews. And it meant (says Strauss) nothing more or less than this: that the Messiah was about to appear, but that his appearing would bring good only to those whose hearts were preparing for his coming; while to the rest he would be like a winnowing fan, separating the chaff for the burning (p. 189). Now all this, again, is precisely what the Church has always taught. And if she has chosen to clothe her statement of it in words culled from Isaiah and Malachi, we really do not see how it makes any difference in the facts. The facts remain - so far as we can understand uncontested: that John the Baptist was, in plain words, a forerunner of the Messiah; that, unlike all his con The next scene acknowledged to belong to the genuine history of Jesus is his Galilæan ministry; the duration of which could not have been more than a few years, for even Tacitus (Annals, xv. 44) places his crucifixion under Pontius Pilate, whose procuratorship ended A.D. 36. During these few years, and with the means at his command which have been already described, it somehow or other came to pass that this Galilæan carpenter made such an impression on his contemporaries, that they almost unanimously hoped, or feared, he was the Messiah; that they came to attribute to him the most astonishing miracles: that, so far from being brought to their senses by his crucifixion, they got it into their heads that he was risen from the dead, and had conversed, walked, and eaten with several of those who had known him best before; nay, that on subsequent reflection they felt nothing could possibly account for his greatness short of some theory which made him positively divine, -a theory for which they found no precedent of authority whatever in Judaism, but were obliged to shape it by the help of Alexandrian Platonism, whose line of thought converged exactly at the right moment upon that precise spot. Yet we are constantly reminded, it was with the most consummate wisdom and genius (to say the least) that Jesus managed to produce these results. The Messiah of the popular imagination was no Man of Sorrows meekly riding on an ass; but a warrior, a good hater of the Romans, a zealot like Judas the Gualonite. He was to be no Son of Man,' but a Son of God,' -a human hero, that is, like David and Solomon of old; armed with God's fury and God's arrows against the heathen, who had run up such a score of vengeance in captivities, taxations and oppressions of all sorts upon Jehovah's favourites, that it was a perfect marvel-under which none but a cold-blooded Sadducee could sit still that the crack of doom was delayed so intolerably long. Amid such an atmosphere as this it was that Jesus had to work; and out of this red-hot seething mass of Jewish fanaticism, by a — we must not say 'divine:' let us say skilful blow, to forge the Christian Church. Let us see how he went to work. 'It is the life of a wandering teacher that the Evangelists with ore consent attribute to Jesus. Capernaum, the home of his favourite disciples, was indeed his frequent resort: but for the most part he traversed the country attended by a company of trusted disciples and of women who provided for the wants of the society out of their own resources.' (P. 243.) That Jesus as a teacher made an overpowering, and upon sympathising souls an ineffaceable, impression, is not only told us by the Evangelists, but is ratified by the historical results. He was no Rabbi. He taught not as the Scribes. With logical artifices he had nothing to do; but only with the word that smites conviction by its own intrinsic truth. Hence in his Gospels that rich collection of sentences or maxims, of terse and pregnant sayings which, apart from their religious worth, are for their clear spiritual insight and for their straight unerring aim so beyond all price. "Render unto Cæsar the things that be Caesar's," &c., - these are imperishable sayings: because in them truths, that experience is ever ratifying afresh, are clothed in a form which is at the same time precisely expressive and also universally intelligible.' (P. 253.) The consciousness of a Prophetic mission arose in him before that of his Messiahship. Or rather we may well conceive that Jesus, while himself clear upon the point, chose in speaking to others an expression [Son of man] which was not yet in vogue as a title for the Messiah. Thus he avoided imposing upon his disciples and the people a mere authoritative belief in his Messiahship, but allowed it to grow up spontaneously from within. The more so, as he found reason to fear that by giving himself out at once for the Messiah he should wake up all those political hopes, which bore a sense diametrically opposite to that in which alone he would consent to be Messiah.' (P. 227.) Meanwhile, however much Jesus might decline any corporeal miracles, do them he must- according to the ideas of that time - whether he would or no. So soon as ever he was held to be a Prophet, at once he was credited with miraculous powers: and no sooner was he credited with them, than they were sure to appear in reality. It were strange if, among the crowds that approached to touch his gar ments wherever he came, none found a cure or an alleviation of his disease from an excited imagi nation or from a strong sensuo-spiritual impression. And the cnre was then attributed to the wonder-working power of Jesus.' (P. 265.) -- For ourselves, we are content with such admissions as these from the greatest living master of the modern destructive criticism. No one in his senses, who is not the victim of some preconceived idea, can possibly go so far as this, and not soon be compelled to go a good deal farther. He may not indeed be able to embrace until, at least, he understands their real meaning. the barbarisms that have been bequeathed to us by the scholastic philosophy. He may disdain to pronounce aright the Shibboleth of a mere Latin orthodoxy, entangled in dry legalisms, stupefied with forensic fictions, and catholic in nothing but the name. He may not picture heaven and earth to his imagination as they once were pictured, or conceive of Christian miracles in the childish way which M. Renan supposes to be the only one the Church allows, viz. as 'special interventions, like that of a clock-maker putting his finger in, to remedy the defects of his wheels.' (Apôtres, p. xlvii.) He may have seen, in short, that the lessons of the Bible and of Theology are learnt, like all other really effective lessons, in an order which is educational rather than philosophical; and that the true order of thought reverses the order of the lesson-book. But that very enfranchisement of his mind from the preconceptions of the nursery renders him less willing to be bound by the mere dogmas of the lecture-room. And unless he is content meekly to stop short just where Strauss has drawn the line, at a conception of a mere individual genius, designed (when fuel enough has been collected) to apply the enkindling spark' (p. 167); or immures his thought within some Hegelian pantheism, that (like the witch of Endor) conjures up gods out of the earth, instead of bringing down God from heaven; he will not be warned off from the yet farther and deeper inquiry, who then designed' all these converging lines? and whence came that clear unerring mind, that pure and guileless spirit, which, in Christ the cornerstone,' completed all, gave a meaning to all, and by the master-stroke of a few years' work in long-prepared Galilee created Christendom? 6 These are the points which it really concerns us to know. And they are points MM. Strauss and Renan has absolutely no which the bewildered philosophy of upon answer to give. For they cannot surely mean to tell us that Christ is only the ultimate development of forces latent in the . -- escape a to them—wholly undesired con clusion? They have invented two devices, two loopholes, the most extraordinary and unscientific (as it appears to us), that ever were proclaimed in the name of science as breaches in the fortress of religion. And these loopholes they labour, by every manœuvre in their power, incessantly to enlarge. Reason having tried her utmost against Christianity in vain, the assault is now to be attempted through the imagination. And while the ridicule is unsparing which, in his earlier work, Strauss heaped on the wornout methods of the rationalists, we may safely predict that the time is not far distant when the same measure will be as deservedly meted out to himself, and to M. Renan, who is mainly responsible for the second of the two remarkable arguments we are about to describe. Everyone is perfectly aware that by the laws of our imagination, every scene which is impressed upon the retina of our eye, every sound which is carried through the nerves of the ear, receives a colour, shape and meaning, from the living and personal qualities of the recipient. It is impossible that it should be otherwise. A living hu mushroom and the sponge: that he is the product of an unconscious series, pushing outwards towards consciousness and rationality; a series calculated by no pre-existing Mind, a product brooded over by no life-giving spirit. Why, the very sponge and the mushroom, the icthyosaurus and the plants of the coal-measures, the light of the nebulæ and the serial law itself, all reveal a Reason human in quality, but ante-human in time, and super-human in degree, and presenting not the slightest indications of development or change of any sort. Now this all-embracing and changeless Reason is what Theology means by God: and the arrangements by which, at crossing-places in their orbits, man's world is met and illumined by phenomena belonging to another zone, and moving in another plane, are what she terms Miracles. And knowing, as we do, nothing whatever about God, except what He pleases to reveal to us, and impotent as our imagination is (by the very laws of its nature) to project any sane conception of God upon its mirror, except under a personal form, — when we find a point in history at which a Person stands, who shines out as a thoroughly and intrinsically lovely nature, who needed only to un-man brain is not like a dead sheet of paper, fold himself from himself, to grow to greater consciousness of himself, greater confidence in himself, with no need for change of aim, no need of self-correction' (Strauss, p. 208); and when we know, from nineteen centuries' experience, how the spirit of this single Person has poured through all the veins of human society a fresh and vital force, given hope to publicans and sinners of all time, redeemed men's souls from the swine-troughs of sense, and shown for once the highest ideal of man clothed in actual flesh and blood, we challenge any one to produce a more rational theory about this Person than that which has obtained currency in the Christian Church; or to point out any bar which a mature and philosophical conception of God presents against regarding this unique Person as an incarnation of the Divine Reason upon earth. For all that is required to be conceded, in order to stamp this conception with perfect credibility, is that Pantheism be false and Theism true: in other words, that the distinction between moral good and moral evil be held a real one; and that the convergence of all the lines of history to produce a human conductor of heaven's light and life to earth has been the work of a conscious Reason, and not of a mere blind force which explains nothing, rather begs humbly for explanation itself. How then do these writers manage to which passively receives and helplessly retains everything that may happen to be marked upon it. It is only by a process of selection and grouping, in accordance with habits and qualities given by education and nature, that coherent images are formed and sane conceptions engendered. If anyone doubt this, let him only watch the spontaneous effort of his mind, when some object presents itself in the dusk or in the distance, to mould it into an intelligible shape, and he will catch himself (as it were) in the very act of conception. The colour, the outline, the motion, the top part, the bottom part, will be spontaneously selected for attention; and some person previously known, some hobgoblin previously believed in, some animal thought likely to be there, will be created out of the impressions given, and be projected without a moment's delay upon the imagination. Now this, which in its proper proportions is a scientific truth, is seized upon by Mr. Strauss, exaggerated into the most enormous and grotesque extravagance, and then employed as an engine to overthrow the truth of Christianity. The Jewish mind (he says) in the first century was full of Old Testament ideas. The Prophets and the Mosaic law had so far educated the nation, that they had supplied them with a whole series of types and forms of thought. So that when Jesus of Nazareth appeared, |