The Character of Jesus - Part 3

 Horace Bushnell's The Character of Jesus, Part 3

The astonishing pretensions of Jesus. 

There is yet another point related to this, in which the attitude of Jesus is even more distinct from any that was ever taken by man, and is yet triumphantly sustained. I speak of the astonishing pretensions asserted concerning his person. Similar pretensions have sometimes been assumed by maniacs, or insane persona, but never, so far as I know, by persons in the proper exercise of their reason. Certain it is that no mere man could take the same attitude of supremacy towards the race, and inherent affinity or oneness with God, without fatally shocking the confidence of the world by his effrontery. 

Imagine a human creature saying to the world—“I came forth from the Father”—“ye are from beneath, I am from above”; facing all the intelligence and even the philosophy of the world, and saying, in bold assurance—“behold, a greater than Solomon is here”—“I am the light of the world”—“the way, the truth, and the life”; publishing to all peoples and religions—“No man cometh to the Father, but by me”; promising openly in his death—“I will draw all men unto me”; addressing the Infinite Majesty, and testifying—“I have glorified thee on the earth”; calling to the human race—“Come unto me”; “follow me”; laying his hand upon all the dearest and moat intimate affections of life, and demanding a precedent love—“he that loveth father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me.” 

Was there ever displayed an example of effrontery and spiritual conceit so preposterous? Was there ever a man that dared put himself on the world in such pretensions?—as if all light was in him; as if to follow him and be worthy of him was to be the conclusive or chief excellence of mankind! What but mockery and disgust does he challenge as the certain reward of his audacity! But no one is offended with Jesus on this account, and what is a sure test of his success, it is remarkable that, of all the readers of the gospel, it probably never even occurs to one in a hundred thousand, to blame his conceit, or the egregious vanity of his pretension,

His pretensions enter also into his actions. 

Nor is there any thing disputable in these pretensions, least of all, any trace of myth or fabulous tradition. They enter into the very web of his ministry, so that if they are extracted and nothing left transcending mere humanity, nothing at all is left. Indeed, there is a tacit assumption, continually maintained, that far exceeds the range of these formal pretensions. He says—“I and the Father that sent me.” What figure would a man present in such language—I and the Father? 

He goes even beyond this, and apparently without any thought of excess or presumption; classing himself with the Infinite Majesty in a common plural, he says—We will come unto him, and make our abode with him. Imagine any, the greatest and holiest of mankind, any prophet, or apostle, saying we, of himself and the Great Jehovah! What a conception did he give us concerning himself, when he assumed the necessity of such information us this—“my Father is greater than I”; and above all, when he calls himself, as he often does, in a tone of condescension—“the Son of Man.” 

See him also on the top of Olivet, looking down on the guilty city and weeping words of compassion like these—imagine some man weeping over London or New York, in the like—“How often would I have gathered thy children together as a hen doth gather her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!" See him also in the supper, instituting a rite of remembrance for himself, a scorned, outcast man, and saying—“this is my body”—“this do in remembrance of me.”

Nobody offended by these pretensions. 

I have dwelt thus on the transcendent pretensions of Jesus, because in them is an argument here for his superhumanity, which can not be resisted. For eighteen hundred years, these prodigious assumptions have been published and preached to a world that is quick to lay hold of conceit, and bring down the lofty airs of pretenders, and yet, during all this time, whole nations of people, composing as well the learned and powerful as the ignorant and humble, have paid their homage to the name of Jesus, detecting never any disagreement between his merits and his pretensions, offended never by any thought of his extravagance. In which we have absolute proof that he practically maintains his amazing assumptions! 

Indeed it will even be found that, in the common apprehension of the race, he maintains the merit of a most peculiar modesty, producing no conviction more distinctly, than that of his intense lowliness and humility. His worth is seen to be so great, his authority so high, his Spirit so celestial, that instead of being offended by his pretensions, we take the impression of one in whom it is even a condescension to breathe our air. I say not that his friends and followers take this impression, it is received as naturally and irresistibly by unbelievers. I do not recollect any skeptic or infidel who has even thought to accuse him as a conceited person, or to assault him in this, the weakest and absurdest, if not the strongest and holiest, point of his character.

What mere man could support such pretensions? Come now, all ye that tell us in your wisdom of the mere natural humanity of Jesus, and help us to find how it is, that he is only a natural development of the human; select your best and wisest character; take the range, if you will, of all the great philosophers and estate, and choose out one that is most competent; or if, perchance, some one of you may imagine that he is himself about upon a level with Jeans (as we hear that some of you do), let him come forward in this trial and say—“follow me”—“be worthy of me”—“I am the light of the world”—“ye are from beneath, I am from above”—“behold a greater than Solomon is here”; take on all these transcendent assumptions, and see how soon your glory will be sifted out of you by the detective gaze, and darkened by the contempt of mankind! 

Why not? is not the challenge fair? Do you not tell us that you can say as divine things as he? Is it not in you, too, of course, to do what is human? ere you not in the front rank of human developments? do you not rejoice in the power to rectify many mistakes and errors in the words of Jesus? Give us then this one experiment, and see if it does not prove to you a truth that is of some consequence; viz., that you are a man, and that Jesus Christ is—more.

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Peculiar in the passive virtues. 

But there is also a passive side to the character of Jesus which is equally peculiar, and which likewise demands our attention. I recollect no really great character in history, excepting such as may have been formed under Christianity, that can properly be said to have united the passive virtues, or to have considered them any essential part of a finished character. 

Socrates comes the nearest to such an impression, and therefore most resembles Christ in the submissiveness of his death. It does not appear, however, that his mind had taken this turn previously to his trial, and the submission he makes to the public sentence is, in fact, a refusal only to escape from the prison surreptitiously which he does, partly because he thinks it the duty of every good citizen not to break the laws, and partly, if we judge from his manner, because he is detained by a subtle pride; as if it were something unworthy of a grave philosopher, to be stealing away, as a fugitive, from the laws and tribunals of his country. 

The Stoics, indeed, have it for one of their great principles, that the true wisdom of life consists in a passive power, viz., in being able to bear suffering rightly. But they mean by this, the bearing of suffering so as not to feel it; a steeling of the mind against sensibility, and a raising of the will into such power as to drive back the pangs of life, or shake then off. But this, in fact, contains no allowance of passive virtue at all; on the contrary, it is an attempt so to exalt the active powers, as even to exclude every sort of passion, or passivity. 

And Stoicism corresponds, in this respect, with the general sentiment of the world’s great characters. They are such as like to see things in the heroic vein, to see spirit and courage breasting themselves against wrong, and, where the evil can not be escaped by resistance, dying in a manner of defiance. Indeed it has been the impression of the world generally, that patience, gentleness, readiness to suffer wrong without resistance, is but another name for weakness.

But Christ, in opposition to all such impressions, manages to connect these non-resisting and gentle passivities with a character of the severest grandeur and majesty; and, what is more, convinces us that no truly great character can exist without them.

Does not falter in the common trials of existence. 

Observe him, first, in what may be called the common trials of existence. For if you will put a character to the severest of all tests, see whether it can bear without faltering, the little common ills and hindrances of life. Many a man will go to his martyrdom, with a spirit of firmness and heroic composure, whom a little weariness or nervous exhaustion, some silly prejudice, or capricious opposition, would, for the moment, throw into a fit of vexation, or ill-nature.

Great occasions rally great principles, and brace the mind to a lofty bearing, a bearing that is even above itself. But trials that make no occasion at all, leave it to show the goodness and beauty it has in its own disposition. And here precisely is the superhuman glory of Christ as a character, that he is just as perfect, exhibits just as great a spirit, in little trials as in great ones. In all the history of his life, we are not able to detect the faintest indication that he slips or falters.

And this is the more remarkable, that he is prosecuting so great a work, with so great enthusiasm counting it his meat and drink, and pouring into it all the energies of his life. For when men have great works on hand, their very enthusiasm runs to impatience. When thwarted or unreasonably hindered, their soul strikes fire against the obstacles they meet, they worry themselves at every hindrance, every disappointment, and break out in stormy and fanatical violence. 

But Jesus, for some reason, is just as even, just as serene, in all his petty vexations, and hindrances, as if he bad nothing on hand to do. A kind of sacred patience invests him everywhere. Having no element of crude will noised with his work, he is able, in all trial and opposition, to hold a condition of serenity above the clouds, and let them sail under him, without ever obscuring the sun. He is poor, and hungry, and weary, and despised, insulted by his enemies, deserted by his friends, but never disheartened, never fretted or ruffled.

You see, meantime, that he is no Stoic; he visibly feels every such ill as his delicate and sensitive nature must, but he has some sacred and sovereign good present, to mingle with his pains, which, as it were, naturally and without any self-watching, allays them. He does not seem to rule his temper, but rather to have none; for temper, in the sense of passion, is a fury that follows the will, as the lightnings follow the disturbing forces of the winds among the clouds; and accordingly, where there is no self-will to roll up the clouds and hurl them through the sky, the lightnings hold their equilibrium, and are as though they were not.

His passion no mere human martyrdom. 

As regards what is called pre-eminently his passion, the scene of martyrdom that closes his life, it is easy to distinguish a character in it which separates it from all mere human martyrdoms. Thus, it will be observed, that his agony, the scene in which his suffering is bitterest and most evident, is, on human principles, wholly misplaced. It comes before the time, when as yet there is no arrest, and no human prospect that there will be any. He is at large, to go where he pleases, and in perfect outward safety. His disciples have just been gathered round him in a scene of more than family tenderness and affection. Indeed it is but a very few hours since that he was coming into the city, at the head of a vast procession, followed by loud acclamations, and attended by such honors as may fitly celebrate the inaugural of a king. 

Yet here, with no bad sign apparent, we see him plunged into a scene of deepest distress, and racked, in his feeling, with a more than mortal agony. Coming out of this, assured and comforted, he is shortly invested, brought to trial and crucified; where, if there be any thing questionable in his manner, it is in the fact that he is even more composed than some would have him to be, not even stooping to defend himself or vindicate his innocence. And when he dies, it is not as when the martyrs die. They die for what they have said, and remaining silent will not recant. He dies for what he has not said, and still is silent.

His agony misplaced, taken as being only a man’s. 

By the misplacing of his agony thus, and the strange silence he observes when the real hour of agony is come, we are put entirely at fault on natural principles. But it was not for him to wait, as being only a man, till he is arrested, and the hand of death is upon him, then to be nerved by the occasion to a show of victory. He that was before Abraham, must also be before his occasions. In a time of safety, in a cool hour of retirement, unaccountably to his friends, he falls into a dreadful context and struggle of mind; coming out of it finally to go through his most horrible tragedy of crucifixion, with the serenity of a spectator!

It is, humanly speaking, excessive. Why now this so great intensity of sorrow? why this agony? Was there not something unmanly in it, something unworthy of a really great soul? Take him to be only a man, and there probably was; nay, if he were a woman, the same might be said. But this one thing is clear, that no one of mankind, whether man or woman, ever had the sensibility to suffer so intensely; even showing the body, for the mere struggle and pain of the mind, exuding and dripping with blood. Evidently there is something mysterious here; which mystery is vehicle to our feeling, and rightfully may be, of something divine. What, we begin to ask, should be the power of a superhuman sensibility? and how far should the human vehicle shake under such a power? How too should an innocent and pure spirit be exercised, when about to suffer, in his own person, the greatest wrong ever committed?

The pathology is divine. 

Besides there is a vicarious spirit in love; all love inserts itself vicariously into the sufferings and woes and, in a certain sense, the sins of others, taking them on itself as a burden. How then, if perchance Jesus should be divine, an embodiment of God’s love in the world—how should he feel, and by what signs of feeling manifest his sensibility, when a fallen race are just about to do the damning sin that crowns their guilty history; to crucify the only perfect being that ever came into the world; to crucify even him, the messenger and representative to them of the love of God, the deliverer who has taken their case and cause upon him! 

Whomever duly ponders these questions, will find that he is led away, more and more, from any supposition of the mere mortality of Jesus. What he looks upon, he will more and more distinctly see to be the pathology of a superhuman anguish. It stands, he will perceive, in no mortal key. It will be to him the anguish, visibly, not of any pusillanimous feeling, but of holy character itself; nay, of a mysteriously transcendent, or somehow divine character.

His defence before Pilate all that could be made. 

But why did be not defend his cause and justify his innocence in the trial? Partly because he had the wisdom to see that there really was and could be no trial, and that one who undertakes to plead with a mob, only mocks his own virtue, throwing words into the air that is already filled with the clamors of prejudice. To plead innocence in such a case, is only to make a protestation, such as indicates fear, and is really unworthy of a great and composed spirit. A man would have done it, but Jesus did not. 

Besides, there was a plea of innocence in the manner of Jesus, and the few very significant words that he dropped, that had an effect on the mind of Pilate, more searching and powerful than any formal protestations. And the more we study the conduct of Jesus during the whole scene, the more shall we be satisfied that he said enough; the more admire the mysterious composure, the wisdom, the self-possession, and the superhuman patience of the sufferer. 

It was visibly the death-scene of a transcendent love. He dies not as a man, but rather as some one might, who is mysteriously more and higher. So thought aloud the hard-faced soldier—“Truly this was the Son of God.” As if he had said—“I have seen men die—this is not a man. They call him Son of God—he can not be less.” Can he be less to us?

To go to Part 4.  To go back to Part 1.