Horace Bushnell · 5 of 5
The Character of Jesus. · Part 4
Besides, if Jesus was a sinner, he was conscious of sin as all sinners are, and, therefore, was a hypocrite in the whole fabric of his character; realizing so muck of divine beauty in it, maintaining the show of such unfaltering harmony and celestial , and doing all this with a mind confused and fouled by the affectations acted for true virtues! Such an example of successful hypocrisy would be itself the greatest miracle ever heard of in the world.
Furthermore, if Jesus was a sinner, then he was, of course, a fallen being; down under the bondage, distorted by the perversity of sin and its desolating effects, as men are. The root, therefore, of all his beauty is guilt. Evil has broken loose in him, he is held fast under evil. Bad thoughts are streaming through his soul in bad successions; his tempers have lost their tune; his affections have been touched by leprosy; remorse scowls upon his heart; his views have lost their balance and contracted obliquity; in a word, he is fallen. Is it then such a being, one who has been touched, in this manner, by the demon spell of evil—is it he that is unfolding such a character?
Mr. Parker’s estimate of him. What, then, do our critics in the school of naturalism say of this character of Christ? Of course they are obliged to say many handsome and almost saintly things of it. Mr. Parker says of him, that “He unites in himself the sublimed precepts and divinest practices, thus more than realizing the dream of prophets and sages; rises free from all prejudice of his age, nation, or sect; gives free range to the Spirit of God, in his breast; sets aside the law, sacred and true—honored as it was, its forms, its sacrifice, its temple, its priests; puts away the doctors of the law, subtle, irrefragable, and pours out a doctrine beautiful as the light, sublime as Heaven, and true as God.” Again—as if to challenge for his doctrine, the distinction of a really supernatural excellence—“Try him as we try other teachers. They deliver their word, find a few waiting for the consolation who accept the new tidings, follow the new method, and soon go beyond their teacher, though less mighty minds than he. Though humble men, we see what Socrates and Luther never saw. But eighteen centuries have passed since the Sun of humanity rose so high in Jesus; what man, what sect has mastered his thought, comprehended his method, and so fully applied it to life.”
Mr. Hennel’s estimate. Mr. Hennel, who writes in a colder mood, but has, on the whole, produced the ablest of all the arguments yet offered on this side, speaks more cautiously. He says, “Whilst no human character, in the history of the world, can be brought to mind, which, in proportion as it could be closely examined, did not present some defects, disqualifying it for being the emblem of moral perfection, we can rest, with least check or sense of incongruity, on the imperfectly known character of Jesus of Nazareth.”
Faults charged. But the intimation here is, that the character is not perfect; it is only one in which the sense of perfection suffers “least check.” And where is the fault charged? Why, it is discovered that Jesus cursed a fig-tree, in which he is seen to be both angry and unreasonable. He denounced the in terms of bitter animosity. He also drove the money changers out of the temple with a scourge of rode, in which he is even betrayed into an act of physical violence. These and such like specks of fault are discovered, as they think, in the life of Jesus. So graceless in our conceit, have we of this age grown, that we can think it a point of scholarly dignity and reason, to spot the only perfect beauty that has ever graced our world, with such discovered blemishes as these! As if sin could ever need to be made out against a real sinner, in this small way of special pleading; or as if it were ever the way of sin to err in single particles or homoeopathic quantities of wrong! A more just sensibility would denounce this malignant style of criticism, as a heartless and really low-minded pleasure in letting down the honors of goodness.
Faults supposed and intimated. In justice to Mr. Parker, it must be admitted that he does not actually charge these points of history as faults, or blemishes in the character of Jesus. And yet, in justice also, it must be added that he does compose a section under the heading—“The Negative Side, or the Limitations of Jesus,”—where these, with other like matters, are thrown in by insinuation, as possible charges sometimes advanced by others. For himself, he alleges nothing positive, but that Jesus was under the popular delusion of his time, in respect to devils or demoniacal possessions, and that he was mistaken in some of his references to the Old Testament. What, now, is to be thought of such material, brought forward under such a heading, to flaw such a character! Is it sure that Christ was mistaken in his belief of the foul spirits? Is it certain that a sufficient mode of interpretation will not clear his references of mistake? And so, when it is suggested, at second hand, that his invective is too fierce against the , is there no escape, but to acknowledge that, “considering his youth, it was a venial error?" Or, if there be no charge but this, “at all affecting the moral and religious character of Jesus,” should not a just reverence to one whose life is so nearly faultless, constrain us to look for some more favorable construction, that takes the solitary blemish away? Is it true that invective is a necessary token of ill-nature? Are there no occasions where even will be most forward in it? And when a single men stands out alone, facing a whole living order and caste, that rule the time—oppressors of the poor, hypocrites and pretenders in religion, corrupters of all truth and faith, under the names of learning and religion—is the malediction, the woe, that he hurls against them, to be taken as a fault of violence and unregulated passion; or considering what amount of force and public influence he dares to confront and set in deadly enmity against his person, is he rather to be accepted as God’s champion, in the honors of great and genuinely heroic spirit?
His invective against the . Considering how fond the world is of invective, how ready to admire the rhetoric of sharp words, how many speakers study to excel in the fine art of excoriation, how many reformers are applauded in vehement attacks on character, and win a great repute of fearlessness, just because of their severity, when, in fact, there is nothing to fear—when possibly the subject is a dead man, not yet buried—it is really a most striking tribute to the more than human character of Jesus, that we are found to be so apprehensive respecting him in particular, lest his plain, unstudied, unrhetorical severities on this or that occasion, may imply some possible defect, or “venial error,” in him. Why this special sensibility to fault in him? save that, by his beautiful and perfect life, he has raised our conceptions so high as to make, what we might applaud in a man, a possible blemish in his divine excellence?
The glorious old reformer and blind poet of —vindicator of a free commonwealth and a free, unprelatical religion—holds, in our view, a far worthier and manlier conception of Christ’s dealing with the , and of what is due to all the usurpations of titled conceit and oppression in the world. With truly refreshing vehemence, he writes—“For in times of opposition, when against new heresies arising, or old corruptions to be reformed, this cool, impassionate mildness of positive wisdom, is not enough to damp and astonish the proud resistance of and false doctors, then (that I may have leave to soar awhile, as the poets use,) Zeal, whose substance is ethereal, arming in complete diamond, ascends his fiery chariot, drawn by two blazing meteors figured like beasts, but of a higher breed than any the zodiac yields, resembling those four which Ezekiel and St. John saw—the one visaged like a lion, to express power, high authority, and indignation; the other of man, to cast derision and scorn upon perverse and fraudulent seducers—with them the invincible warrior, Zeal, shaking loosely the slack reins, drives over the heads of scarlet prelates and such as are insolent to maintain traditions, bruising their stiff necks under his flaming wheels. Thus did the true prophets of old combat with the false; thus Christ, himself the fountain of , found acrimony enough to be still galling and vexing the prelatical . But ye will say, these had immediate warrant from God to be thus bitter; and I say, so much the plainer is it found that there may be a bitterness against the enemies of the truth.”
Probably Christ himself had no other account to give of his conduct, on the occasion referred to; and no other was needed, than that he felt a zeal within him (answering to Milton’s picture), which could not, must not be repressed. His disciples felt his terrible severity, and were going to be shocked by it, but they remembered the Scripture—“The zeal of thy house hath eaten me up.” After all, it was, when rightly viewed, the necessary outburst, only, of that indignant fire, which is kindled in the sweet bosom of innocence, by the insolence of hypocrisy and oppression.
I conclude, then, (1.) that Christ actually lived, and bore the real character ascribed to him in the history. And (2.) that he was a sinless character. How far off is he now from any possible classification in the genus humanity!
The fact of his miracles implied. Here, then, is a being who has broken into the world, and is not of it; one who has come out from God, and is even an expression to us of the complete beauty of God—such as he should be, if he actually was, what he is affirmed to be, the Eternal Word of the Father . Did he work miracles? This now is the question that waits for our decision—did he work miracles? By the supposition, he is superhuman. By the supposition, too, he is in the world as a miracle. Agreeing that the laws of nature will not be suspended, any more than they are by our own supernatural action, will they yet be so subordinated to his power, as to permit the performance of signs and wonders, in which we may recognize a superhuman force? Since he is shown to be a superhuman being, manifestly nature will have a relation to him, under and by her own laws, such as accords with his superhuman quality, and it will be very singular if he does not do superhuman things; nay, it is even philosophically incredible that he should not, and that without any breach upon the integrity of nature. Thus an organ is a certain instrument, curiously framed or adjusted in its paste, and prepared to yield itself to any force which touches the keys. An animal runs back and forth across the key-board, and produces a jarring, disagreeable jumble of sounds. Thereupon he begins to reason, and convinces himself that it is in the nature of the instrument to make such sounds, and no other. But a skilful player comes to the instrument, as a higher presence, endowed with a super-animal sense and skill. He strikes the keys, and all-melodious and heavenly sounds roll out upon the enchanted air. Will the animal now go on to reason that this is impossible, incredible, because it violates the nature of the instrument, and is contrary to his own experience? Perhaps he may, and men may sometimes not be wiser than he. But the player himself, and all that can think it possible for him to do what the animal can not, will have no doubt that the music is made by the same laws that made the jargon. Just so Christ, to whose will or touch the mundane system is pliant as to ours, may be able to execute results through its very laws subordinated to him, which to us are impossible. Nay, it would be itself a contradiction of all order and fit relation if he could not. To suppose that a being out of humanity, will be shut up within all the limitations of humanity, is incredible, and contrary to reason. The very laws of nature themselves, having him present to them, as a new agent and higher first term, would require the development of new consequences and incidents, in the nature of wonders. Being a miracle himself, it would be the greatest of all miracles if he did not work miracles.
His errand is order itself. Let it be further noted, that Christ is here on an errand high enough to his appearing, and also of a nature to exclude any suspicion that he is going to overthrow the order of God’s works. He declares that he has come out from God, to be a restorer of sin, a regenerator of all things, a new moral creator of the world; thus to do a work that is, at once, the hope of all order, and the greatest of all miracle. He tells us, indeed, that he is come to set up the kingdom of God, and fulfil the highest ends of the divine goodness in the creation of the world itself; and the dignity of his work, certified by the dignity also of his character, sets all things in proportion, and commends him to our confidence in all the wonders he performs.
No disruption of law or system. Nor shall we apprehend in his miracles any disruption of law; for we shall see that he is executing that true system, above nature and more comprehensive, which is itself the basis of all stability, and contains the reel import of all things. Dwelling from eternity in this higher system himself, and having it centred in his person, wheeling and subordinating thus all physical instruments, as doubtless he may, to serve those better ends in which all order lies, it will not be in us when he comes forth from the Father, on the Father’s errand, to forbid that he shall work in the prerogatives of the Father. Visibly not one of us, but a visitant who has come out from a realm of spiritual majesty, back of the sensuous orb on which our moth-eyes dwell as in congenial dimness and obscurity of light, what shall we think when we see diseases fly before him, and blindness letting fall the scales of obscured vision, and death retreating from its prey, but that the seeming disruption of our retributive state under sin, is made to let in mercy and order from above? For, if man has buried himself in sense, and married all sense to sin, which sin is itself the soul of all disorder, can it be to us a frightful thing that he lays his hand upon the perverted casualties, and says, “thou art made whole?" If the bad empire, the bitter un-nature of our sin, is somewhere touched by his healing power, must we apprehend some fatal shock of disorder? If, by his miraculous force, some crevice is made in the senses, to let in the light of heaven’s peace and order, must we tremble lest the scientific laws are shaken, and the scientific causes violated? Better is it to say—“This beginning of miracles did Jesus make in Galilee, and manifested forth his glory, and we believe in him.” Glory breaks in through his person, to chase away the darkness. In him, peace and order descend to rebuild the realm below, they have maintained above. Sin, the damned miracle and misery of the groaning creation, yields to the stronger miracle of Jesus and his works, and the great good minds of this and the upper worlds behold integrity and rest returning, and the peace of universal empire secure. Out of the disorder that was, rises order; out of chaos, beauty. Amen! Alleluia! for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth!
The mythical hypothesis impossible. At the same time, it must not be overlooked, that the account which is made of the Christian miracles, by the critics who deny them, is itself impossible. It is that they are myths or legendary tales, that grew up out of the story-telling and marvelling habit of the disciples of Christ, within the first thirty years after their Master’s death. They were developed, in other words, in the lifetime of the eye-witnesses of Christ’s ministry, and recorded by eye-witnesses themselves. We are also required to believe that four common men are able to preserve such a character as that of Christ, while loading down the history thus, with so many mythical wonders that are the garb of their very grotesque and childish credulity! By what accident, then, we are compelled to ask, was an age of myths and fables able to develop and set forth the only conception of a perfect character ever known in our world? Were these four mythological dreamers, believing their own dreams and all others beside, the men to produce the perfect character of Jesus, and a system of teachings that transcend all other teachings ever given to the race? If there be a greater miracle, or a tax on human credulity more severe, we know not where it is. Nothing is so difficult, ell human literature testifies, as to draw a character, and keep it in its living proportions. How much more to draw a perfect character, and not discolor it fatally by marks from the imperfection of the biographer. How is it, then, that four humble men, in an age of marvels and Rabbinical exaggerations, have done it—done what none, not even the wisest and greatest of mankind, have ever been able to do?
Their success Mr. Parker concedes. So far, even Mr. Parker concedes the right of my argument. “Measure,” he says, “the religious doctrine of Jesus by that of the time and place he lived in, or that of any time and any place. Yes, by the doctrine of eternal truth. Consider what a work his words and deeds have wrought in the world. Remember that the greatest minds have seen no farther, and added nothing to the doctrine of religion; that the richest hearts have felt no deeper, and added nothing to the sentiment of religion; have set no loftier aim, no truer method than his, of perfect love to God and man. Measure him by the shadow he has cast into the world—no, by the light he has shed upon it. Shall we be told such a man never lived? the whole story is a lie? Suppose that Plato and Newton never lived. But who did their wonders, and who thought their thought? It takes a Newton to forge a Newton. What man could have fabricated a Jesus? None but a Jesus.”
Exactly so. And yet, in the middle of the very paragraph from which these words are gleaned, Mr. Parker says, “We can learn few facts about Jesus”; also, that in certain things—to wit, his miracles, we suppose—“Hercules was his equal, and Vishnu his superior.” Few facts about Jesus! all the miracles recited of him, as destitute of credibility as the stories of Hercules and Vishnu! And yet these evangelists, retailing so many absurd fictions and so much childish gossip, have been able to give us a doctrine upon which the world has never advanced, a character so deep that the richest hearts have felt nothing deeper, and added nothing to the sentiment of it. They have done, that is, the difficult thing, and broken down under the easy! preserved, in the life and discourses of Jesus, what exceeds all human philosophy, all mortal beauty, and yet have not been able to recite the simplest facts! Is it so that any intelligent critic will reason?
The miracles are in place in a gospel. Neither let it be objected that, since the miracles have in themselves no moral quality, there is no rational, or valuable, or even proper place for them in a gospel, considered as a new-creating for the world. For it is a thing of no secondary importance for a sinner, down under sin, and held fast in its bitter terms of bondage, to see that God has entered into his case with a force that is adequate. These mighty works of Jesus, which have been done and duly certified, are fit expressions to us of the fact that he can do for us all that we want Doubtless it is a great and difficult thing to a fallen nature; no person, really awake to his miserable and dreadful bondage, ever thought otherwise. But he that touched the blind eyes and commanded the leprosy away, he that trod the sea, and raised the dead, and burst the bars of death himself, can tame the passions, sweeten the bitter affections, the inbred diseases, and roll back all the storms of the mind. Assured in this manner by his miracles, they become arguments of trust, a storehouse of powerful images, that invigorate courage and stimulate hope. Broken as we are by our sorrow, cast down as we are by our guiltiness, ashamed, and weak, and ready to despair, we can yet venture a hope that our great soul-miracle may be done; that, if we can but touch the hem of Christ’s garment, a virtue will go out of him to heal us. In all dark days and darker struggles of the mind, in all outward disasters, and amid all storms upon the sea of life, we can yet descry him treading the billows, and hear him saying, “It is I, be not afraid.” And lest we should believe the miracles faintly, for there is a busy lurking always in our hearts to cheat us of our faith, when he cannot reason it away, the character of Jesus in ever shining with and through them, in clear self-evidence, leaving them never to stand as raw wonders only of might, but covering them with glory, as tokens of a heavenly love, and note that only suit the proportions of his personal greatness and majesty.
There are many in our day, as we know, who, without making any speculative point of the objection we are discussing, have so far yielded to the current misbelief as to profess, with a certain air of self-compliment, that they are quite content to accept the spirit of Jesus; and let the miracles go for what they are worth. Little figure will they make as Christians in that kind of gospel. They will not, in fact, receive the spirit of Jesus; for that, unabridged, is itself the Grand Miracle of Christianity, about which all the others play as scintillations only of the central fire. Still less will they believe that Jesus can do any thing in them which their sin requires. They will only compliment his beauty, imitate or ape his ways in a feeble lifting of themselves, but that he can roll back the currents of nature, loosened by the disorders of sin and raise them to a in , they will not believe. No such watery gospel of imitation, separated from , will have any living power in their life, or set them in any bond of unity with God. Nothing but to say—“Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God by miracles and signs which God did by him,” can draw the soul to faith, and open it to the power of a supernatural and new-creative mercy.
Jesus himself the all-sufficient evidence. We come back, then, to the self-evidencing superhuman character of Jesus, and there we rest. He is the sun that holds all the minor orbs of revelation to their places, and pours a , self-evidencing light into all religious knowledge. We have been debating much, and ranging over a wide field, in chase of the many phantoms of doubt and false argument, still we have not far to go for light, if only we could cease debating and sit down to see. It is no ingenious fetches of argument that we want; no external testimony, gathered here and there from the records of past ages, suffices to end our doubts; but it is the new sense opened in us by Jesus himself—a sense deeper than words and more immediate than inference—of the miraculous grandeur of his life; a glorious agreement felt between his works and his person, such that his miracles themselves are proved to us in our feeling, believed in by that inward testimony. On this inward testimony we are willing to stake every thing, even the life that now is, and that which is to come. If the miracles, if revelation itself, can not stand upon the superhuman ohmmeter of Jesus, then let it fall. If that character does not contain all truth and centralize all truth in itself, then let there be no truth. If there is any thing worthy of belief not found in this, we may well consent to live and die without it. Before this light, streaming out from God, the deep questions, and dark surmises, and doubts unresolved, which make a night so gloomy and terrible about us, hurry away to their native abyss. God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. This it is that has conquered the assaults of doubt and false learning in all past ages, and will in all ages to come. No argument against the sun will drive it from the sky. No mole-eyed skepticism, dazzled by its brightness, can turn away the shining it refuses to look upon. And they who long after God, will be ever turning their eyes thitherward, and either with reason or without reason, or, if need be, against manifold impediments of reason, will see and believe.
But before we drop a theme like this, let us note more distinctly the immense significance to our religious feeling of this glorious advent of Jesus, and have our congratulations in it, This one perfect character has come into our world, and lived in it; filling all the molds of action, all the terms of duty and love, with his own divine manners, works and charities. All the conditions of our life are raised thus, by the meaning he has shown to be in them, and the he has put upon them. The world itself is changed, and is no more the same that it was; it has never been the same since Jesus left it. The air is charged with heavenly odors, and a kind of celestial consciousness, a sense of other worlds, is wafted on us in its breath. Let the dark ages come, let society roll backward and churches perish in whole regions of the earth, let deny, and, what is worse, let spurious piety dishonor the truth; still there is a something here that was not, and a something that has immortality in it. Still our confidence remains unshaken, that Christ and his all- life are in the world, as fixed elements, and will be to the end of time; for Christianity is not so much the advent of a better doctrine, as of a perfect character; and how can a perfect character, once entered into life and history, be separated and finally expelled? It were easier to untwist all the beams of light in the sky, separating and expunging one of the colors, than to get the character of Jesus, which is the real gospel, out of the world. Look ye hither, meantime, all ye blinded and fallen of mankind, a better nature is among you, a pure heart, out of some pure world, is come into your prison and walks it with you. Do you require of us to show who he is, and definitely to expound his person? We may not be able. Enough to know that he is not of us—some strange being out of nature and above it, whose name is Wonderful. Enough that sin has never touched his hallowed nature, and that he is a friend. In him dawns a hope—purity has not come into the world, except to purify. Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins of the world! Light breaks in, peace settles on the air, lo! the prison walls are giving way—rise, let us go.