He undertakes what is humanly impossible.
But Christ shows
himself to be a superhuman character, not in the personal traits only,
exhibited in his life, but even more sublimely in the undertakings, works, and
teachings, by which he proved his Messiahship.
Consider then the reach of his undertaking; which, if he was only a man, shows him to have been the most extravagant and even wildest of all human enthusiasts. Contrary to every religious prejudice of his nation and even of his time, contrary to the comparatively narrow and exclusive religion of Moses itself, and to all his training under it, he undertakes to organise a kingdom of God, or kingdom of heaven on earth.
His purpose includes a new moral creation of the race—not of
the Jews only and of men proselyted to their covenant, but of the whole human
race. He declared thus, at an early date in his ministry, that many shall come
from the east and the west and sit down with Abraham, and Jews and Jacob, in
the kingdom of God; that the field is the world; and that God so loves the
world, as to give for it his only-begotten Son. He also declared that his
gospel shall be published to all nations, and gave his apostles their
commission to go into all the world, and publish his gospel to every creature.
He assumes to set up the kingdom of God among men.
Here, then, we have the grand idea of his mission—it is to new-create the human race and restore it to God, in the unity of a spiritual kingdom. And upon this single fact, Reinhard erects a complete argument for his extra human character; going into a formal review of all the great founders of states and most celebrated lawgivers, the great heroes and defenders of nations, all the wise kings and statesmen, all the philosophers, all the prophet founders of religions, and discovering as a fact that no such thought as this, or nearly proximate to this, had ever before been taken up by any living character in history; showing also how it had happened to every other great character, however liberalized by culture, to be limited in some way to the interest of his own people, or empire, and set in opposition, or antagonism, more or less decidedly, to the rest of the world.
But to Jesus alone, the
simple Galilean carpenter, it happens otherwise; that, never having seen a map
of the world in his whole life, or heard the name of half the great nations on
it, he undertakes, coming out of his shop, a scheme as much vaster and more
difficult than that of Alexander, as it proposes more and what is more divinely
benevolent! This thought of a universal kingdom, cemented in God—why, the
immense Roman empire of his day, constructed by so many ages of war and
conquest, is a bauble in comparison, both as regards the extent and the cost!
And yet the rustic tradesman of Galilee propounds even this for his errand, and
that in a way of assurance, as simple and quiet, as if the immense reach of his
plan were, in fact, a matter to him of no consideration.
His plan covers ages of time.
Nor is this all; there is included in his plan, what, to any mere man, would be yet more remote from the possible confidence of his frailty; it is a plan as universal in time, as it is in the scope of its objects. It does not expect to be realized in a lifetime, or even in many centuries to come. He calls it understandingly, his grain of mustard-seed; which, however, is to grow, he declares, and overshadow the whole earth. But the courage of Jesus, counting a thousand years to be only a single day, is equal to the run of his work.
He sees a rock of stability, where men see only frailty and weakness. Peter himself, the impulsive and always unreliable Peter, turns into rock and becomes a great foundation, as he looks upon him. “On this rock,” he says, “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”
His expectation, too, reaches boldly out beyond his own death; that, in fact, is to be the seed of his great empire—“except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth,” he says, “alone.” And if we will see with what confidence and courage he adheres to his plan, when the time of his death approaches—how far he is from giving it up as lost, or as an exploded vision of his youthful enthusiasm—we have only to observe his last interview with the two sisters of Bethany, in whom hospitality he was so often comforted.
When the box of precious ointment is broken upon his head, which Judas reproves
as a useless expense, he discovers a sad propriety or even prophecy, in what
the woman has done, as connected with his death, now at hand. But it does not
touch his courage, we perceive, or the confidence of his plan, or even cast a
shade on his prospect, “Let her alone. She hath done what she could. She is
come aforehand to anoint my body to the burying. Verily I say unto you,
wheresoever this gospel shall be preached throughout
the whole world, this also that this woman hath done shall be told for a
memorial of her." Such was the sublime confidence he had in a plan that
was to run through all future ages, and would scarcely begin to show its fruit
during his own lifetime.
Such attempts not human.
Is this great idea then, which no man ever before conceived, the raising of the whole human race to God, a plan sustained with such evenness of courage, and a confidence of the world’s future so far transcending any human example—is this a human development? Regard the benevolence of it, the universality of it, the religious grandeur of it, as a work readjusting the relations of God and his government with men—the cost, the length of time it will cover, and the far-off date of its completion—is it in this scale that a Nazarene carpenter, a poor uneducated villager, lays out his plans and graduates the confidence of his undertakings?
There have been great enthusiasts in the world, and they have
shown their infirmity by lunatic airs, appropriate to their extravagance. But
it is not human, we may safely affirm, to lay out projects transcending all
human ability, like this of Jesus, and which cannot be completed in many
thousands of years, doing it in all the airs of sobriety, entering on the
performance without parade, and yielding life to it firmly as the inaugural of
its triumph. No human creature sits quietly down to a
perpetual project, one that proposes to be executed only at the end, or final
harvest of the world. That is not human, but divine.
Passing now to what is more interior in his ministry, taken as a revelation of his character, we are struck with another distinction, viz., that he takes rank with the poor, and grounds all the immense expectations of his cause, on a beginning made with the lowly and dejected classes of the world. He was born to the lot of the poor. His manners, tastes, and intellectual attainments, however, visibly outgrew his condition, and that in such a degree that, if he had been a mere human character, he must have suffered some painful distaste for the kind of society in which he lived.
The great, as we perceive, flocked to hear him, and sometimes came even by night to receive his instructions. He saw the highest circles of society and influence open to him, if he only desired to enter them. And, if he was a properly human character, what virtuous, but rising young man would have had a thought of impropriety, in accepting the elevation within his reach; considering it as the proper reward of his industry and the merit of his character—not to speak of the contempt for his humble origin, and his humble associates, which every upstart person, of only ordinary virtue, is so commonly seen to manifest.
Still he adheres to the poor, and makes them the object of his ministry. And what is more peculiar, he visibly has a kind of interest in their society, which is wanting in that of the higher classes; perceiving, apparently, that they have a certain aptitude for receiving right impressions, which the others have not. They are not the wise and prudent, filled with the conceit of learning and station, but they are the ingenuous babes of poverty, open to conviction, prepared, by their humble lot, to receive thoughts and doctrines in advance of their age.
Therefore he loves the poor, and, without
descending to their low manners, he delights to be identified with them. He is
more assiduous in their service than other men have been in serving the great.
He goes about on foot, teaching them, and healing their sick; occupying his
great and elevated mind, for whole years, with details of labor and care, which
the nurse of no hospital had ever laid upon him—insanities, blind eyes, fevers,
fluxes, leprosies, and sores. His patients are all below his level and unable
to repay him, even by a breath of congenial sympathy; and nothing supports him
but the consciousness of good which attends his labors.
No great social architect ever saw the wisdom of it.
Meantime, consider what contempt for the poor had hitherto prevailed among all the great statesmen and philosophers of the world. The poor were not society, or any part of society. They were only the conveniences and drudges of society; appendages of luxury and state, tools of ambition, material to be used in the wars. No man who had taken up the idea of some great change or reform in society, no philosopher who had conceived the notion of building up an ideal state or republic, ever thought of beginning with the poor. Influence was seen to reside in the higher classes, and the only hope of reaching the world, by any scheme of social regeneration, was to begin with them, and through them operate its results.
But Christ, if we call him a philosopher, and, if he is only a man, we
can call him by no higher name, was the poor man’s philosopher; the first and
only one that had ever appeared. Seeing the higher circles open to him, and
tempted to imagine that, if he could once get footing for his doctrine among
the influential and the great, he should thus secure his triumph more easily,
he had yet no such thought. He laid his foundations, as it were, below all
influence, and, as men would judge, threw himself away.
And precisely here did he display a wisdom and character totally in advance of his age. Eighteen centuries have passed away, and we now seem just beginning to understand the transcendent depth of this feature in his mission and his character. We appear to be just waking up to it as a discovery, that the blessing and upraising of the masses are the fundamental interest of society—a discovery, however, which is only a proof that the life of Jesus has at length begun to penetrate society and public history.
It is precisely this which is working so many and
great changes in our times, giving liberty and right to the enslaved many,
seeking their education, encouraging their efforts by new and better hopes,
producing an aversion to war, which has been the fatal source of their misery
and depression, and opening, as we hope, a new era of comfort, light, and
virtue in the world. It is as if some higher and better thought had visited our
race—which higher thought is in the life of Jesus. The schools of all the
philosophers are gone, hundreds of years ago, and all their visions have died
away into thin air; but the poor man’s philosopher still lives, bringing up his
poor to liberty, light, and character, and drawing the nations on to a brighter
and better day,
And still he raises no partisan feeling.
At the
some time, the more than human character of Jesus is displayed also in the fact
that, identifying himself thus with the poor, he is yet able to do it, without
eliciting any feelings of partisanship in them. To one who will be at the pains
to reflect a little, nothing will seem more difficult than this; to become the
patron of a class, a downtrodden and despised class, without rallying in them a
feeling of intense malignity. And that for the reason, partly, that no patron,
however just or magnanimous, is ever quite
able to suppress the feelings of a partisan in himself. A little ambition,
pricked on by a little abuse, a faint desire of popularity playing over the
face of his benevolence, and tempting him to loosen a little of ill-nature, as
tinder to the passions of his sect—something of this kind is sure to kindle some
fire of malignity in his clients.
No human leader in this.
Besides, men love to be partisans. Even Paul and Apollos and Peter had their sects or schools, glorying in one against another. With all their efforts, they could not suppress a weakness so contemptible. But no such feeling could ever get footing under Christ. If his disciples had forbidden one to heal in the name of Jesus, because he followed not with them, he gently rebuked them, and made them feel that he had larger views than to suffer any such folly.
As the friend of the poor and oppressed class, he set himself openly against their enemies, and chastised them as oppressors, with the most terrible rebukes. He exposed the absurdity of their doctrine, and silenced them in argument; he launched his thunderbolts against their base hypocrisies; but it does not appear that the populace ever testified their pleasure, even by a cheer, or gave vent to any angry emotion under cover of his leadership. For there was something still, in the manner and air of Jesus, which made them feel it to be inappropriate, and even made it impossible.
It was as if some Being were here,
taking their part, whom it were even an irreverence to applaud, much more to
second by any partisan clamor. They would as soon have thought of cheering the
angel in the nun, or of rallying under him as the head of their faction.
On one occasion, when he had fed the multitudes by a miracle, he saw that their national superstitions were excited, and that, regarding him as the Messiah predicted in the Scriptures, they were about to take him by force and make him their king; but this was a national feeling, not the feeling of a class. Its root was superstition, not hatred.
His triumphal entry into Jerusalem, attended by the acclamations of the multitude, if this be not one of the fables or myths, which our modern criticism rejects, is yet no demonstration of popular faction, or party animosity. Robbing it of its mystical and miraculous character, as the inaugural of the Messiah, it has no real signification. In a few hours, after all, these hosannas are hushed, Jesus is alone and forsaken, and the very multitudes he might seem to have enlisted, are crying “Crucify him!"
On the whole, it cannot be said that Jesus was
ever popular. He was followed at times, by great multitudes of people, whose
love of the marvellous worked on their superstitions, to draw them after him.
They came also to be cured of their diseases. They knew him as their friend.
But there was yet something in him
that forbade their low and malignant feelings gathering into a conflagration
round him. He presents, indeed, an instance that stands alone in history, as
God at the summit of the worlds, where a person has identified himself with a
class, without creating a faction, and without becoming a popular character.
To go to Part 5
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