The Cradle of the Christ: A Study in Primitive Christianity

The worship of Jesus, it has been said, is the redeeming feature of Christianity. This evidently is the opinion of John Stuart Mill, who writes, confounding, as is usual, Jesus with the Christ: "The most valuable part of the effect on the character which Christianity has produced by holding up in a divine person a standard of excellence and a model for imitation, is available even to the absolute unbeliever, and can nevermore be lost to humanity. For it is Christ rather than God whom Christianity has held up to believers as the pattern of perfection for humanity. It is the God incarnate, more than the God of the Jews or of nature, who being idealized has taken so great and salutary a hold on the modern mind;" and more to the same effect, in the essay on Theism. Before Mr. Mill's intellectual eccentricities were as well understood as they are now, this testimony to the humanizing influence of christian, as distinct from philosophical theism, would have possessed great weight. As it is, it only excites our wonder that so keen and inexorable a thinker should so completely lose sight of facts. That Christendom has worshipped the Christ is true. Is it true that it has worshipped Jesus? Again we might say: Yes; – the Jesus who demanded faith in himself as the condition of salvation; the Jesus who depicted the Son of Man, sitting on a throne of judgment, summoning before him all nations, and placing the sheep on his right hand, the goats on his left; the Jesus who threatened everlasting fire, and spoke of the devil and his angels; the Jesus who made the church umpire in matters of faith and works; the Jesus who bade his friends forsake father and mother, brother and sister for his sake. But did Christendom ever deify the man of the Beatitudes, the relator of the parables of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son, the friend of publicans and sinners? Is Jesus the central figure in the Nicene, or the Athanasian creed? Is he the God of Calvin, or of Luther, of Augustine, even of Borromeo, or Fénélon? Long before the dogmatical or ecclesiastical system of Christendom was formed, the image of Jesus had faded away from the minds of christians, if it ever was stamped there. That it was ever stamped there is not quite apparent. In the east there exists no trace of it after the apostolic age, or beyond the circle of his personal friends. In the west the personal influence is not distinctly visible at any distance. From the reported heroism of the early christian centuries no solid conclusion can be drawn, for the reason that the reports come from panegyrists like Tertullian, and from a period when the apostolic age had become a tradition. Writers like Neander make the most of a few recorded instances of devotion which distinguished the christians from the pagans about them; and James Martineau uses them as evidence of an original spiritual genius in the young religion. They are indeed beautiful, but they do not refer back so far as the historical Jesus for their source of inspiration. That in a community composed, with scarcely an exception, of poor people, the ordinary social distinctions should be unobserved; that slaves, among whom in early times many converts were made, should have been acknowledged as brethren in Christ; should have appeared in public religious meetings as equal with the rest before the Lord; should have partaken of the communion on the same terms, taking their place among the believers, and receiving the passionless kiss of brotherhood and of sisterhood, is not surprising, especially when it is considered that these slaves belonged to hardy, white races, that they discharged, some of them at least, the most honorable offices of labor, and were, except for the mere accident of their condition, physically as well as morally, peers of the best.

It is simply in the course of nature that poor people, grouped in communities, sharing a common and a painful lot, should help each other in times of trouble. The christians did so. At every weekly or monthly service collections were made for the relief of the poor, the sick, the infirm, the aged, widows, prisoners, and toilers in the mines. These contributions were sent to the points of greatest need, converging on occasion from many directions at centres of extreme necessity. It is recorded that about the middle of the third century several members of the church in Numidia, men and women, were carried off captive by barbarians. The Numidian churches being poor applied to the Metropolitan church at Carthage. Cyprian, the bishop there, collected more than four thousand dollars in his diocese and sent the money as ransom, with a letter full of sentiments of kindness. On another occasion a portion of the sacred vessels of the sanctuary were sold to raise funds for a similar purpose. In this there was nothing strange. The acts were done in strict conformity with a long established usage.

A more remarkable example often cited in evidence that the spirit of Jesus was alive still in the societies that worshipped him as Lord, occurred in the year 254, shortly after the Decian persecution, the most general and the most hideous to which the church had been exposed. In consequence of this persecution, which was attended with such slaughter that the unburied bodies poisoned the air, a fearful pestilence broke out in the city of Alexandria. Unhappily for the literalness of the truth, it is Lactantius who tells the story. "The plague," he says, "made its appearance with tremendous violence and desolated the city, so that, as Dionysius, the Christian bishop writes, there were not so many inhabitants left, of all ages, as heretofore could be numbered between forty and seventy. In this emergency the persecuted christians forgot all but their Lord's precept, and were unwearied in their attendance on the sick, many perishing in the performance of this duty by taking the infection. 'In this way,' says the bishop with touching simplicity, 'the best of the brethren departed this life, some ministers, and some deacons,' the heathen having abandoned their friends and relations to the care of the very persons whom they had been accustomed to call men-haters. A like noble self-devotion was shown at Carthage, when the pestilence which had desolated Alexandria made its appearance in that city, and, I quote the words of a contemporary, 'all fled in horror from the contagion, abandoning their relations and friends, as if they thought that by avoiding the plague, any one might also exclude death altogether. Meanwhile the city was strewed with the bodies or rather carcasses of the dead, which seemed to call for pity from the passers by, who might themselves so soon share the same fate; but no one cared for anything but miserable pelf; no one trembled at the consideration of what might so soon befall him in his turn; no one did for another what he would have wished others to do for him. The bishop hereupon called together his flock, and, setting before them the example and teaching of their Lord, called on them to act up to it. He said that if they took care only of their own people, they did but what the commonest feeling would dictate; the servant of Christ must do more, he must love his enemies, and pray for his persecutors; for God made his sun to rise and his rain to fall on all alike, and he who would be the child of God must imitate his Father.' The people responded to his appeal; they formed themselves into classes, and they whose poverty prevented them from doing more gave their personal attendance while those who had property aided yet further. No one quitted his post but with his life." The example shows the more gloriously against the dark background of horror that stood so near. Yet, to the misery of the persecution by which the people were educated in sympathy, patience, fortitude, and willingness to resign life, the benignant heroism must, in part, have been due. Previous to the persecution the spirit of consecration had departed from the church. Christianity had become a social and class affair. Luxury had crept in, and eaten up the heart of conviction. The alliance of church and state had been especially disastrous to the church, the mingling of secular ambition with spiritual aspiration operating fatally on the finer qualities of faith. Few could have suspected then that the spirit of Jesus had ever been with the church. The persecution purged the christian communities with fire. The surface was burned over, and only the roots and seeds were left in the ground. The persecution ended, tranquillity being restored, the roots burgeoned, the seeds sprung up, all the heroism of the two dreadful years, all the patience and fortitude turned to gentleness; and a copious rain of mercy, blessing every body, even the persecutors, was the result of the battle's thunder and flame. The suffering that had been endured softened the heart towards all suffering. The persecutors no longer active or hateful, their passive forbearance seemed, in contrast with their recent fury, a species of mercy calling for positive gratitude. Not to be hated was felt to be identical with being loved; not to kill was by sudden revulsion of emotion, accepted as a kindly saving of life. To be kind to those who had desisted from hurting was natural. Besides, the persecution was incited and pressed by the government in Rome. The populace even there were not responsible for it, and in the distant provinces simply followed the metropolitan precedent. Their infatuation had therefore its pitiable as well as its outrageous aspect. They too were victims of the imperial policy, were perishing of the contagion which that policy caused, and thus were paying a terrible penalty for their own unwitting crime. It is unnecessary to suppose that any personal contagion from the character of Jesus, stealing through the murky ages of eastern and western life, communicated its saving grace to the Carthaginian brotherhood. Uninspired human nature is sufficient to explain the beneficent display.

The conclusion is that no clearly defined traces of the personal Jesus remain on the surface or beneath the surface of Christendom. The silence of Josephus and other secular historians may be accounted for without falling back on a theory of hostility or contempt. The Christ-idea cannot be spared from Christian development, but the personal Jesus, in some measure, can be.

In some measure, not wholly; the earliest period of the church does require his presence; the first, the original, the only disciples lived under the influence of a great personalty, and were moulded by it. Their attachment to a commanding friend is avowed in the apparently authentic parts of the New Testament. If we know anything about those men, it is that they lived, moved and had their being in the memory of a great friend. Their attachment to him took hold of their heart-strings. They were haunted by him. This appears in their frequent meetings for the expression and confirmation of their feelings, in their communion suppers, memorial occasions purely and always, without a trace of mysticism or a shade of awe; in their attachment to the places he had consecrated by his presence; in their affection for each other. Ignorant they were, unintellectual, unspiritual in the moral sense of the word, rather impervious to ideas, dull, common place, simple-hearted. They were not soaring spirits, audacious, independent like Paul, but exactly the reverse, timid, self-distrustful, pusillanimous by constitution. Their ambition flew low, fluttering round sparkling jewels on the Messianic crown. Their master was not such an one as they would have chosen, had they been allowed to select. He met none of their expectations, he fulfilled none of their hopes. His rebuke was more frequent and more cordial than his praise. Their stupidity annoyed him, their selfishness grieved his heart. Instead of justifying their confidence in him as the Christ, he utterly overthrew one form of it by allowing himself to be captured, convicted and put to death. Still they clung to his memory. True, they clung to him in the conviction that he was the Christ and would have confessed themselves dupes had that conviction been dispelled. But why was it not dispelled? Why did they believe, in the face of the crushing demonstration of the cross? They anticipated his return, because he had told them he should reappear in clouds. But why did they believe him? Why did they believe, when month after month, year after year, went by and still he did not return? It was because they loved him, and trusted him in spite of evidence. When he did not return, they thought he meant to try their faith; still they met together; still they prayed and waited, imagining themselves to be in intimate communion with him in his skies.

That these men, with their unworthy conceptions of the kingdom, accepted him as their Christ, proves not only that his power over them was very great, but that he himself lived on the highest level of hebrew thought, and illustrated the highest type of hebrew character; that he was a genuine prophet and saint; all the more so, perhaps, for the completeness of his self-abnegation. Had he raised the standard of revolt, and appealed to arms, his name might have been more conspicuous in secular history. He sacrificed himself wholly; kept no shred of preëminence for his own behoof.

Hence, the person of Jesus, though it may have been immense, is indistinct. That a great character was there may be conceded; but precisely wherein the character was great, is left to our conjecture. Of the eminent persons who have swayed the spiritual destinies of mankind, none has more completely disappeared from the critical view. The ideal image which christians have, for nearly two thousand years worshipped under the name of Jesus, has no authentic, distinctly visible counterpart in history.

This conclusion will be distressing to those who have accorded to Jesus, by virtue of a perfect humanity a certain primacy over the human race, and even to those who, regarding him as the complete fulfilment and perfect type of human character have looked to him as the beacon star "guiding the nations, groping on their way." It will be welcome only to the few calm minds who feel the force of ideas, the regenerating power of principles. These will rejoice to be relieved of the last thin shadow of a supernatural authority in the past, and committed without reserve to the support and solace of simple humanity trained in the humble observance of uninterrupted law. Their gratitude for the human influence of the person is unqualified by distrust of the claims of the individual.

The Christ of the fourth Gospel – the incarnate Word – who has been asserting absolute spiritual creatorship over his disciples, calling himself the vine whereof they were branches, the door by which they must enter, the light by which they must walk, the way their steps must tread, – says to them at the critical hour: "It is expedient for you that I go away; if I go not away the Comforter cannot come to you." There was danger in his personal continuance. They were to live not in dependence on him, but in communion with the "Spirit of Truth," which, as proceeding from him and from the Father also, was to bring freshly home to them what he had said, and to guide them further on to all truth. How many times must those words be repeated, with new applications in the new exigencies of faith! How little disposition do we find in his followers to heed them! They have gone on with the process of idealization, placing him higher and higher; making his personal existence more and more essential; insisting more and more urgently on the necessity of private intercourse with him; letting the Father subside into the background as an "effluence," and the Holy Ghost lapse from individual identity into impersonal influence, in order that he might be all in all as regenerator and saviour. From age to age the personal Jesus has been made the object of an extreme adoration, till now, faith in the living Christ is the heart of the gospel; philosophy, science, culture, humanity are thrust resolutely aside, and the great teachers of the race are extinguished in order that his light may shine.

Yet from age to age the warning has been given again, the vain farewell has been spoken, "it is expedient for you that I go away." Perhaps he went, in one form; but he quickly re-appeared in another; and each new presentation had its own special kind of evil effect. The Christ of Peter, James and John retired to make room for Paul's "Lord from heaven." He withdrew in favor of the incarnate Word. The incarnate Word loses itself in the Second Person of the Trinity. The imagination of man, unable to invent further transformations rested here: Christendom for fifteen hundred years has knelt in awe before the divine image it projected on the clouds of heaven. But the work of disenchantment began early. The sublimated ideal slowly came down from the skies. The glorified Christ assumed the lineaments of a human being, from Deity became archangel, chief of all the celestial hierarchy; from archangel slipped down through the ranks of spirits, till he occupied the place of Son of God, preëxistent, and in attributes, super-human; thence he declined a step to the position of premiership over the human family, the inaugurator of a new type of man, virgin-born as indicating that he was not the natural product of the generations but was introduced into nature by an original law; a further lapse from the supreme dignity brought him to the plane of humanity, but reported him as miraculously endowed with gifts from the Holy Spirit, supernaturally graced with attributes of power and wisdom, sent on a special mission to found a church and declare a law, raised from the dead to demonstrate immortality, and lifted to the skies to establish the presence of a living Deity. To this eminent station he bids farewell to stand as the perfect man, teacher, reformer, saint, before the enthusiastic gaze of humanitarians, who made amends for the spoliation of his celestial wardrobe by the splendor with which they endowed his human soul. Here the idealists place him, still claiming for him no exceptional birth, no super-human origin, no preëxistence, no miraculous powers over nature, no superiority of wit or wisdom, no immunity from errors of opinion or mistakes of judgment, no fated sanctity of will, no moral impeccability, but ascribing to him an unerringness of spiritual insight, an even loftiness of soul, an incorruptibility of conscience, a depth and comprehensiveness of humanity which raise him far above the plane of history, and tempt them to look longingly backward, instead of directing a steady gaze forward. But this figure is now seen to be an ideal, like the rest unjustified by chronicle or by fact. The comforter, which is the spirit of truth, requires that he should go away, following his predecessors into the realm of majestic and beneficent illusion. The Christ in every guise disappears and there remain only the uneven and incomplete footprints of a son of man from which we can conclude only that a regal person at one time passed that way.

All these transformations, it will be observed, came in the order of mental development, each timely and beneficent in its place. The crowning and the dis-crowning were alike inevitable and good. The glorification and the disappearance were both justified. The final change comes neither too late nor too soon; not too late, for still the immense majority of mankind live in sentiment and imagination, worship ideal shapes, being quite incapable of appreciating knowledge, loving truth, or obeying principles. It will be generations yet, before any save the comparatively few think they can live without this great friend at their side. Sentiment is conservative. The poetic feeling detains in picturesque form the ideas which if exposed to the action of clear intelligence would be rejected as unsubstantial. The imagination like the ivy loves to beautify ruins, making even robber castles and deserted palaces attractive to tourists. Wordsworth, the poet of Nature expresses the feeling that will at times come over powerful and cultivated minds, in moods of sentiment —

 
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending we lay waste our powers.
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the Moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune,
It moves us not; – Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn,
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea,
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
 

This is pure sentiment. The sea was as lovely to Wordsworth, is as lovely to Tyndall, as it was to the superstitious Greeks. The winds awaken similar emotions in the sensitive being. Why then, should Wordsworth, having all that is or ever was to be had, beauty of form, movement, color, regret the superstition that peopled the sea with fanciful beings and animated the winds with supernatural spirits? Why not be content with the facts, and the more content, because the fancies are gone that disguised them? Is it not a weakness to love dreams better than realities? Mr. Leslie Stephen, in his admirable "History of English Thought in the XVIII century" explains this mood of mind by saying that for the expression of feeling symbols are necessary, and superstition supplies all the symbols there are. The bare truth may awaken emotions, but it gives them no voice, and emotion unuttered, becomes feeble; in all but sensitive natures it dies. "In time," says Mr. Stephen, "the loss may be replaced, the new language may be learnt; we may be content with direct vision, instead of mixing facts with dreams; but the process is slow; and till it is completed, the new belief will not have the old power over the mind. The symbols which have been associated with the hopes and fears, with the loftiest aspirations and warmest affections of so many generations may be proved to be only symbols; but they long retain their power over the imagination." It is not wise, therefore, to be impatient with sentiment that has so valid an excuse; nor is it magnanimous to stigmatize as weak and childish the romantic attachment to the symbol which is all that remains, which, with the unthinking, unadventurous multitude is so large a part of what abides of the mind's spiritual endowment. We must be patient with the conservatism that is born, not of fear, but of feeling, sympathizing when we can, with those that grieve when the idols lose their sanctity, and rejoicing that sentiment has the power to break the shock caused by the sudden dispelling of illusions. At the same time, it must be remembered that intellect is the propelling force in the intellectual world; that the acute, unimaginative, determined minds, impatient of the mists, however beautiful, that conceal knowledge, clear a way for the homes and gardens of the new generations; that the love of truth, simple and unadorned, is the mother at last of real beauty.

The disappearance of the resplendent figure of the Christ from the heaven of our philosophy has not, therefore, come too soon; for thinking, clear-sighted, brave and resolute minds there are. Discerning eyes, bright and gentle, look out and see the fields, sown with new seed, whitening for a new harvest. To such as these Jesus is no longer necessary for faith in humanity, for enthusiasm and constancy in humanity's service. Heroic men and saintly women exist in such numbers and in such variety that they sit in judgment on the judges, and call the censors to account. The education of mankind in the qualities that knit and adorn society has gone so far that these virtues require no longer a super-human representative to give them honor. Knowledge of every kind has so abundantly increased that the aid of revelation to throw light on important subjects is not demanded. Philosophy, literature, science have taken possession of the fields once occupied by the surmise of faith, and are carefully mapping out the departments of speculation. The problems that remain dark, – and they are the many, – we are content should remain so till light comes from the proper sources. The darkest of them, no darker than they have always been, are no longer complicated by the difficulties of revelation which added enigmas where there were enough before, but lie open to all the light that can be thrown upon them. The confusion introduced into the orderly sequence of the world's development by the exceptionally providential man subsides, and the cumulative power of history is brought to bear on the necessities of the hour. Relieved from the sacred duty of turning backward for the form of the perfect man, thereby overlooking the present and suspecting the future, we are permitted to estimate fairly the conditions of the present existence, and to prepare for the future with unprejudiced, rational minds. The standard of moral attainment and the quality of moral character set up as authoritative by any single race, however distinguished, by any one era, however brilliant, abuses and injures the standards of other races, and casts suspicion on the attributes of other generations. The belief that at some time humanity has already come to full flower, discourages the laborers in the human garden. Humanity is still a-making; its perfection is prophecy not history.

The lesson of the hour is self-dependence, or rather, if we prefer, dependence on the laws of reason. It will be a gain for truth when true thoughts shall be welcomed because they are true, not because they are spoken by a particular sage; when erroneous thoughts shall be judged by their demerits, without fear of casting affront on the character of a saint. James Martineau's tender wisdom gains nothing in charm by being attributed to his beautiful fiction of a Christ, and Mr. Moody's painful caricatures of Providence have an unfair advantage in being sheltered behind the authority of the Hebrew Messiah. The holy beauty of Mr. Martineau's ideal person is more than offset by the awful grandeur of the "evangelical" Avenger, equally a creature of imagination. In the realm of fancy the lurid conception outlasts and overwhelms the radiant one. Safety lies in withdrawal from the realm of fancy, and domestication in the humbler realm of fact. The lesson can be now safely taught. Let men learn it as soon as they will. Dependence on individual personalities has been the rule hitherto; dependence on general ideas and organic laws, dependence on discovered fact and intelligent conclusion, will be the reliance hereafter. As for the demands of the heart, which must have persons to cling to, they will adjust themselves to the new science and will satisfy themselves in the future as they have done in the past. Are all the fine personalities dead? Then the sooner we give them a chance to revive by removing the prodigious personality whose shadow has blighted them, the better for us. Are there none to love with enthusiastic ardor? Who have made us think so, if not they by whom all amiable and adorable attributes have been claimed before? Are there no feet it is an honor to sit at, no heads it is a privilege to anoint, no hands it is a dignity to kiss? Whose fault can this be, if not theirs who challenged the adoration of men and women and pronounced it consecrated because rendered to him for one? Are there no leaders worth following, no causes worth espousing? They that think so must be listening to the voice that bade men follow in Galilee, and sighing because they cannot take up the cross that was imposed on the faithful in the cities of Judæa.

The imagination of man has not lost its power or forgotten its function since it performed the prodigious task of enthroning its hope by the side of the godhead. It is adequate to new and healthier performance. A world of fresh materials lies before it; new heavens display their glories; a new earth offers opportunity and prospect; a new humanity presents its varieties of good and evil. New beauties gladden the open vision; new glories fascinate the kindling hope. The regions of possibility, so far from being exhausted, have but begun to disclose their treasures. The realities of to-day surpass the ideals of yesterday. Art has a new birth. Poetry has a new birth. Philosophy teems with new births. These all look forward with confident expectation. Why should religion, which has built up more grandeurs than any of them, turn her back to the new day, confess her creative power exhausted, and creep back to the images of her own idolatry? The Christ-idea, become human, will surpass its old triumphs.