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 With the Compliments of 
 
 YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 
 NEW HAVEN, CONN., U. S. A. 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31 9240291 92263 
 
CHRISTIANITY OLD AND NEW 
 
CHRISTIANITY OLD 
 AND NEW 
 
 LECTURES GIVEN AT BERKELEY, CAL. 
 
 ON THE 
 
 E. T. EARL FOUNDATION 
 
 By 
 
 BENJAMIN W. BACON 
 
 Professor of New Testament Criticism and 
 Interpretation in Yale University 
 
 NEW HAVEN: YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD 
 
 OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 MDCCCCXIV 
 
Copyright, 1914 
 By Yale University Press 
 
 First printed February, 1914, 750 copies 
 
TO 
 E. B. B. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 To the auditors who two years ago 
 kindly expressed their appreciation of 
 the lectures to which they had listened 
 by requesting their immediate publica- 
 tion, a word of apology is due in view of 
 delay in the appearance of the present 
 volume. 
 
 Change of substance there has been 
 none, and the very slight change of 
 wording and occasional expansion for 
 greater clearness which have been 
 effected might have been carried through 
 in a comparatively brief time, had not 
 other, and more imperative, duties inter- 
 vened. It is hoped that the addition now 
 of the essay entitled Old and New in the 
 Characterization of Jesus may compen- 
 sate for the delay, and in a sense bring 
 the discussion down to date. 
 
 The issue which in 1911 had already 
 begun to be drawn, is today far more 
 acute. More clearly than ever the world 
 of today is called upon to choose between 
 the gospel of Jesus, and the gospel 
 
 [vii] 
 
Peeface 
 
 ahov,t Jesus, between a so-called 'liberal' 
 Christianity, in which, social ethics pre- 
 dominates, and a Christianity which 
 promises a new and mystical relation of 
 the individual with God, whether the 
 means it offers for the attainment of 
 this end be regarded as symbol or fact. 
 
 History affords the only adequate 
 basis of judgment and we have sought to 
 make clear the lines at least along which 
 a historical judgment should proceed. 
 
 But the critic of the New Testament 
 has a further task. If 'the historical 
 Jesus' is to play any part in the 'reli- 
 gion of the future' criticism must vin- 
 dicate the distinctive traits of his moral 
 and religious character as the Church 
 has received it. To what extent this is 
 possible, and by what solvent the con- 
 flicting schools of critical opinion may 
 be made to serve the end of a sober judg- 
 ment, it is the object of the concluding 
 essay to determine. Neither the Helle- 
 nistic title, 'Lord,' nor the Jewish title, 
 'Son of man,' nor both combined, ex- 
 hibit all that primitive faith found in the 
 person of Jesus. While the title, 'Ser- 
 
 [ viii ] 
 
Pebface 
 
 vant,' has almost disappeared, tlie con- 
 ception of Jesus' character and career 
 as corresponding to that of the suffering 
 Servant of Isaiah has left indelible 
 traces in the earliest literature, and 
 gives us another and indispensable 
 means of definition. 
 
 If the present volume shall serve to 
 set in clearer light before a wider circle 
 the task of the historian of religion in 
 general, and of the student of Christian 
 origins in particular, its own existence 
 and the author's hope will be justified. 
 
 B. W. Bacon. 
 Yale University, January, 1914. 
 
 [ix] 
 
ANALYTICAL TABLE OF 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Peepace 
 
 Vll 
 
 I. The Evolution or Religion 
 AND HisTOBic Types of Cheis- 
 
 TIANITT 1 
 
 I. The tendency of human progress in 
 culture and enlightenment is not to discard 
 religion, but to deepen and refine it. Plas- 
 ticity of form a token of vitality. Mediseval- 
 ism vs. Modernism. 
 
 II. Historically, religions may be classi- 
 fied according to the preponderance of the 
 self-regarding or the altruistic impulse. 
 Nature religions and national religions. 
 Christianity combines both types. Imperial 
 persecution was incurred chiefly because of 
 its social ideal. 
 
 III. History must furnish the criteria of 
 further development. The Evolutionary 
 principle has been applied to religion in 
 general and to biblical literature in par- 
 ticular. "Inspiration" does not affect the 
 principle; for a Christian doctrine of Scrip- 
 ture makes Scripture subservient to "the 
 manifestation of the life." Hence: 
 
 [xi] 
 
Contents 
 
 rV. The alternative types of reconstructed 
 Christianity, the Ethical and the Mystical, 
 alike appeal to its history and must be judged 
 by it. 
 
 II. Nineteenth Centuey Lib- 
 
 EKALISM 43 
 
 I. President Eliot's "Religion of the Fu- 
 ture." Criticism has restored the portrait 
 of the historic Jesus. But Christianity began 
 as a gospel about Jesus, and cannot be re- 
 stored by reproducing the gospel of Jesus. 
 
 II. For the historic portrait the factor of 
 miracle is subordinate and incidental. The 
 resurrection does not belong in this category. 
 Results of criticism applied to the Matthaean 
 tradition of the Precepts of Jesus, and to the 
 Petrine tradition of his Career. 
 
 III. The ideals of the gospel of Jesus are 
 historically determinable, and are ultimate. 
 But they constitute only the prenatal form of 
 Christianity. Historically it is a gospel about 
 Jesus, originating with the resurrection as a 
 psychological experience of primitive be- 
 lievers, and propagated under Greek influ- 
 ences. 
 
 IV. The reformed Judaism of the Jewish- 
 Christian churches in A. D. 50-150, and their 
 mediaeval successor Islam, are in line with 
 
 [xii] 
 
Contents 
 
 the "liberal" ideal. "The religion of the 
 future ' ' must include the Pauline, Hellenistic 
 factor, the gospel of "God in Christ." 
 
 III. Twentieth Century Mythi- 
 
 CAX, Idealism 84 
 
 I. Christianity without the historic Jesus. 
 The Monists' propaganda is important as a 
 symptom. It indicates reaction from social 
 toward individual religion, and thus eon- 
 forms to the real history of Christian origins. 
 Results of recent study by the methods of 
 comparative religion. 
 
 II. Personal religion in the European 
 sense may be regarded broadly as a product 
 of Grseco-Roman cosmopolitanism; but it did 
 not and could not develop on the basis of 
 allegorized mythology. Christianity prevailed 
 because of its stronger foundation in historic 
 fact. Peter, the associate of Jesus, antecedent 
 to Paul in the founding of the Church. The 
 pre-Pauline rite of baptism ' ' into the name of 
 Jesus ' ' as the Christ, ' ' for the forgiveness of 
 sin." 
 
 III. Mythical idealism repeats the error 
 of the docetic Gnostics. Christianity remains 
 the doctrine that "Jesus is the Christ," with 
 equal emphasis on both terms, however his- 
 torical criticism may depict the one and the 
 psychology of religion restate the other. 
 Recapitulation. 
 
 [ xiii ] 
 
Contents 
 Essay : Old and New in the Char- 
 
 ACTEBIZATION OF JeSUS . . . 119 
 
 I. Criticism seeks the concrete basis of 
 fact behind myth and legend by an iastine- 
 tive sense of value. Sources for a character 
 study of Jesus. 
 
 II. Paul's moral judgment of 'the 
 Spirit' based on his knowledge of the char- 
 acter of Jesus. But this knowledge was 
 idealized in the conception of the Isaian suf- 
 fering Servant. 
 
 III. Gospel sources also give an idealized 
 portrait. But in Mark and Q a true tradi- 
 tion is traceable behind the idealization. In 
 Mark Jesus is the Strong Son of God. In Q 
 the suffering Servant, as in Paul. ' Consist- 
 ent eschatology' gives a one-sided iaterpre- 
 tation. 
 
 IV. Comparison of the Pauline with the 
 Markan portraiture. The two conceptions 
 mutually supplementary. The conception in 
 Q. Dominated by the doctrine of 'Wisdom' 
 as the redeeming Spirit of God indwelling in 
 man. But this source is too early to permit 
 the acceptance of a fictitious portrait. In the 
 combination of conceptions in Paul, Mark, and 
 Q, we have a critically historical portraiture 
 of Jesus. 
 
 [xiv] 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF RELIGION 
 
 AND HISTORIC TYPES OF 
 
 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 I. To speak of "the evolution of 
 religion" implies a conception of it as 
 advancing in continuous change from 
 lower to higher forms. In point of fact, 
 we hazard the assertion that it not only 
 has advanced, but is still advancing, and 
 will continue to advance with the pro- 
 gress of culture and enlightenment. 
 Our primary proposition is that the 
 tendency of human progress is not to 
 discard religion, but to deepen and 
 refine it. However, this proposition will 
 not command assent without careful 
 definition. 
 
 Religion may be so defined as to 
 incline us all to agree with that radical 
 school of sociologists who classify it 
 with the folkways that vanish with other 
 delusions, poetic, and perhaps tempo- 
 
 [1] 
 
Chbistianity Old and New 
 
 rarily useful, before the advance of 
 science. The definition of religion 
 which I propose is that of Carlyle: 
 
 "Not that to which in words or otherwise a 
 man will give assent, but what he lays prac- 
 tically to heart and knows for certain con- 
 cerning his vital relations to the mysterious 
 universe and his duty and destiny there — 
 this," says Carlyle, "is his religion." 
 
 "Duty and destiny" in the mysterious 
 universe ! The doctrine of evolution has 
 brought changes unparalleled in the his- 
 tory of thought to our conceptions of 
 "this mysterious universe" and our 
 vital relations to it. Is it any wonder 
 that our convictions of "duty and des- 
 tiny" are changing, too? Only a dead 
 religion, a religion imposed from with- 
 out, cast in the unchanging moulds of 
 the past, enforced under the other- 
 worldly penalties of dogma, could fail 
 to respond. Our religion is proving its 
 vitality by changing in answer to new 
 views of the universe. This is the real 
 significance of that vast new alignment 
 called by Vatican authority — and well 
 called — 'modernism.' But modernism 
 
 [2] 
 
Evolution op Religion 
 
 is not irreligion. It is an awakening 
 to the need of religion of higher type 
 and wider scope. It knows no limita- 
 tion to Catholic or Protestant. Petty 
 distinctions of sect and denomination 
 are disappearing before the conscious- 
 ness of an immeasurably more momen- 
 tous difference cutting sharply across 
 all sectarian lines: Is Christianity a 
 living, vital organism, a spirit and 
 instinct of religious truth destined to 
 perpetual reincarnation in new and 
 varied forms as the race advances? Is 
 it an interpretation of duty and destiny 
 modifiable without other limit than fidel- 
 ity to the truth of the past? Or is it 
 an unalterable inorganic mass, a system 
 committed once for all to a divinely 
 appointed hierarchy, or embodied in a 
 miraculous book? That is the issue 
 of Medievalism versus Modernism on 
 which we of today are summoned to 
 decide. The issue is indeed momentous. 
 But our awakening to it is not an evi- 
 dence of the passing of religion. Rather 
 the contrary. We feel the need of con- 
 fronting anew the problems of duty and 
 
 [3] 
 
Christianity Old and New 
 
 destiny. And till men cease to be con- 
 cerned with, these problems there will 
 be religion. 
 
 There is room for sympathy, even on 
 the part of modernists, with the zeal of 
 the champions of established authority 
 and the sharpness with which they have 
 perceived and defined the issue. At 
 their head stand the forces of the Vati- 
 can, launching successive bulls against 
 the twentieth century, straining every 
 ecclesiastical power to chain down the 
 minds of men to the world-view of 
 Aquinas, and to resist their efforts to 
 reconstruct the social order. The ultra- 
 montane policy may be mistaken, pos- 
 sibly hopeless. But at least it is not 
 blindly acquiescent. Instinctively it 
 feels the atmospheric change and knows 
 it portends momentous things. 
 
 It perceives conditions as they are, 
 and has courage to define the issue on 
 the true lines of cleavage. Rome may 
 be reactionary, but it is neither cow- 
 ardly nor foolish. It has appreciation, 
 as we, too, should have, of the values 
 at stake in days of changing faith. 
 
 [4] 
 
Evolution of Religion 
 
 That deepest and most vital thing in 
 man, his conviction of duty and destiny, 
 the meaning he gives to his relation to 
 the mysterious universe about him — 
 his religion, cannot be changed without 
 touching the very springs of civiliza- 
 tion, of the social order, of existence 
 itself. But neither can it be discarded. 
 Religion is not thrown off as civilization 
 advances; it only becomes more subtle, 
 more refined, lays hold more deeply on 
 the inner fibres of our being. "Man is 
 incurably religious," say the sociolo- 
 gists. "Religion belongs to human 
 nature," says Benjamin Kidd. One can 
 almost hear the sighs they heave as they 
 admit it. Yes, so long as man is con- 
 scious of a personality at cross purposes 
 with the universe, and is thus driven to 
 seek adjustment to such purpose, or 
 purposes, as he may find in it, he must 
 in some sense be religious. The time 
 may come when we shall cease to be 
 inconvenienced by personality, with its 
 hopes and fears, aspirations and ideals. 
 We may become evolved into mechan- 
 isms. Then, of course, we shall have 
 
 [5] 
 
Christianity Old and New 
 
 gotten beyond religion. Economics will 
 take its place. For the present, and so 
 far as human foresight extends for the 
 future, too, religion belongs confessedly 
 to man's nature. 
 
 II. Our second proposition affirms as 
 a phenomenon of history that religions 
 may be classified under two principal 
 types, according to the preponderance 
 in them of the self-regarding or the 
 altruistic impulse. Christianity com- 
 bines the two. 
 
 In days of changing views regarding 
 the mysterious universe and our rela- 
 tion to it we need feel no surprise at pro- 
 posed reconstructions of religion. Man 
 is incurably religious, but it makes a 
 deal of difference of what sort his reli- 
 gion is. It may be debasing or uplift- 
 ing, rational or superstitious: but so 
 far as history reveals its development 
 it inclines always to one or other of 
 two opposite poles. Either it will be 
 individualistic, setting up as the para- 
 mount ideal the perpetuation and wel- 
 fare of the self ; or it will be socialistic, 
 
 [6] 
 
Evolution op Eeligion 
 
 in the sense of seeking first the welfare 
 of the group, larger or smaller — the 
 tribe, the brotherhood, the nation, hu- 
 manity, the kingdom of God. 
 
 For the purposes of the present dis- 
 cussion I shall use the terms "Nature 
 religions" and "National religions" as 
 if they covered the same ground respec- 
 tively as "individualistic" and "social- 
 istic." In the abstract such a classifica- 
 tion might prove hard to justify; but 
 for the particular period of the begin- 
 nings of our own religion it will be sub- 
 stantially correct. In the great melting- 
 pot of the Roman Empire not alone the 
 ancient distinctions of tribe and nation- 
 ality were disappearing, but also the 
 ancient national religions. They were 
 fast crumbling under the combined on- 
 slaught of Greek philosophy and Roman 
 cosmopolitanism. Such as refused to be 
 universalized disappeared. And to uni- 
 versalize the old religions meant in most 
 cases to make them center upon the 
 individual and not upon the tribe or 
 state. 
 
 Together with the decay of the na- 
 
 [7] 
 
Christianity Old and New 
 
 tional religions the early Empire wit- 
 nessed a prodigious development of 
 interest in the duty and destiny of the 
 individual. Personality was the great 
 discovery of the Socratic school of phi- 
 losophy. It wrote over its portal the 
 Delphic motto, "Know thyself ," rv&i^t 
 creawToi'. But man cannot take himself 
 as "the measure of all things," he can- 
 not rise to a sense of the greatness of his 
 own 'personality,' without raising ques- 
 tions, aspirations, longings, as to the 
 destiny of this new-found jewel of life, 
 this immeasurably precious thing called 
 'soul.' Not only its future destiny but 
 also its present relation to the Infinite 
 becomes a matter of vital concern. 
 
 "We cannot be surprised, therefore, 
 that when philosophy in the semi-popu- 
 lar form of the Stoic and Cynic 'dia- 
 tribe,' the street-preachers' harangue, 
 began to reach the masses of the early 
 Empire, the immediate result was a vast 
 renaissance of the old nature religions 
 under the form of 'mysteries'; for these 
 all centered upon the idea of personal 
 redemption, and immortality by spirit- 
 
 [8] 
 
Evolution of Religion 
 
 ual union witli the divinity. The myste- 
 ries of Attis, Osiris, Adonis, the cult of 
 Mithra and the like, spread all over the 
 Empire. And this is precisely what 
 should have been anticipated. Individ- 
 ualistic religion is closely related to na- 
 ture-worship. The human spirit, con- 
 scious of its frailty, instinctively seeks 
 alliance with the boundless Source of 
 life and power endlessly poured out in 
 the phenomena of the living creation. 
 The world of vegetation annually re- 
 stored from death, the animal world, the 
 world of moving heavenly bodies vari- 
 able or constant in their orbits, all tell 
 of boundless energy and life somewhere 
 in store. Man aspires to union with the 
 Soul (or souls) of the living world. He 
 hopes thus to attain to larger, perhaps 
 eternal, life for his own personality. 
 Here the emphasis of religion is on 
 destiny. 
 
 With social religion in all its forms, 
 ancestor-worship, clan-worship, tribe- 
 worship, national religion, the reverse is 
 true. The individual seeks his well- 
 being in the welfare of the group. The 
 
 [9] 
 
Cheistianity Old and New 
 
 emphasis is on duty. Individual reli- 
 gion, probably for the reason mentioned, 
 seems to be historically rooted in nature- 
 worship. It naturally tends toward 
 mysticism. National religion develops 
 ethics. In the one case the goal in view 
 comes to be personal immortality, in the 
 other it becomes the new social order of 
 a redeemed race, a world-wide kingdom 
 of righteousness, equity, and truth. 
 
 The struggle of religions in the period 
 of the Antonines for supremacy in the 
 Empire, in which Christianity, the ulti- 
 mate victor, was but one of many fac- 
 tors, was fundamentally a struggle of 
 the individual against the social type, 
 and individual religion fell back for its 
 myths and forms upon the ancient prac- 
 tices of nature-worship. Our contention 
 is that Christianity combines both types, 
 and by the perfection of this adjust- 
 ment proves its right to be the ultimate 
 world-religion. 
 
 Graeco-Koman Christianity has been 
 
 denounced as predominantly and even 
 
 selfishly individualistic. Gibbon held it 
 
 largely responsible for the downfall of 
 
 [10] 
 
Evolution of Religion 
 
 classic civilization. With greater jus- 
 tice Lecky, in his History of European 
 Morals, blames rather that system of 
 medieval other-worldliness preached in 
 the name of Christ throughout the deca- 
 dent Empire. The charge is given 
 poetic form by a follower of Gibbon, 
 who paraphrases the legend of the de- 
 spairing death-cry of Julian surnamed 
 'the Apostate' for his fruitless effort to 
 restore the pagan faith. Swinburne 
 makes the Emperor's dying words an 
 echo of his despair over the fading 
 ideals of Roman imperialism and the 
 decay of classic civilization: 
 
 Thou hast conquered, pale Galilean, 
 The world has grown grey from thy breath. 
 We have drunken of things Lethsean 
 And fed on the fulness of death. 
 
 But the curious thing about these con- 
 demnations of Christianity as a religion 
 so one-sidedly individualistic as to lose 
 all altruistic interest in the welfare of 
 the race, is that they completely reverse 
 its basic character. For Christianity in 
 itself, whatever the special develop- 
 ments that won the dislike of Gibbon 
 
 [11] 
 
Cheistianity Old and New 
 
 and Swinburne, and which centuries be- 
 fore had led the Roman populace to 
 impute to the new sect a 'hatred of 
 humanity' {odium humani generis), is 
 certainly not at bottom an individual- 
 istic religion. It springs from a stock 
 representing the extreme of the oppo- 
 site, the social type. I mean Judaism, 
 with its century-long rejection of any 
 doctrine of personal immortality, and 
 its systematic concentration of religious 
 hope upon the 'messianic' idea, the faith 
 in a righteous govermnent of the world. 
 So far as there is just cause of com- 
 plaint against any religion for the de- 
 struction of the magnificent fabric of 
 classic civilization it seems to be far 
 better expressed by Frazer in a chapter 
 headed "Oriental Religions in the 
 West," in that splendid work of com- 
 parative religion. The Golden Bough, 
 Part II, Adonis, Attis, Osiris (1906). 
 Frazer thus contrasts the national reli- 
 gion of the Empire with the flood of 
 Oriental nature religions, mystery-cults, 
 religions of personal redemption, which 
 undermined it: 
 
 [12] 
 
Evolution op Religion 
 
 Greek and Eoman society was built on the 
 conception of the subordination of the indi- 
 vidual to the community, of the citizen to the 
 state ; it set the safety of the commonwealth, 
 as the supreme aim of conduct, above the 
 safety of the individual, whether in this 
 world or in a world to come. Trained from 
 infancy in this unselfish ideal, the citizens 
 devoted their lives to the public service and 
 were ready to lay them down for the common 
 good; or if they shrank from the supreme 
 sacrifice it never occurred to them that they 
 acted otherwise than basely in preferring 
 their personal existence to the interests of 
 their country. All this was changed by the 
 spread of Oriental religions which inculcated 
 the commune of the soul with God and its 
 eternal salvation as the only objects worth 
 living for, objects in comparison with which 
 the prosperity and even the existence of the 
 state sank iuto insignificance. The inevitable 
 result of this selfish and immoral doctrine 
 was to withdraw the devotee more and more 
 from the public service, to concentrate his 
 thoughts on his own spiritual emotions and 
 to breed in him a contempt for the present 
 life which he regarded merely as a probation 
 
 for a better and an eternal A general 
 
 disintegration of the body politic set in. 
 
 Is it then possible to conceive of Chris- 
 tianity (!) as "a selfish and immoral 
 
 [13] 
 
Christianity Old and New 
 
 doctrine" indifferent to the fate of the 
 world if only the devotee may save his 
 paltry soul from the wreck? That is 
 surely far enough from the temper of 
 him who said : " He that would save his 
 soul shall lose it, and he that would lose 
 his soul for the kingdom's sake shall 
 save it." Nevertheless all of us have 
 experience of a certain one-sided indi- 
 viduahsm often accepted as true Chris- 
 tianity, wherein the very doctrine of 
 self-devotion for the kingdom becomes 
 a counsel of farsighted selfishness. We 
 know that the teachings of Jesus him- 
 self can be so interpreted as to deserve 
 the epithets Frazer applies to the Orien- 
 tal religions which invaded the Empire. 
 The aspiration after personal salvation 
 may take forms to which the epithets 
 "selfish and immoral" are but too justly 
 applied. The period of the Decline and 
 Fall had superabundant experience of 
 that unsocial tendency. 
 
 Turn for a moment to the history of 
 imperial persecution. Why should the 
 age of the Antonines, that century of 
 unparalleled good government, under a 
 
 ,[14] 
 
Evolution of Ebligion 
 
 succession of world-rulers of the noblest 
 type, beginning with Trajan the hero, 
 and ending with Marcus Aurelius, phi- 
 losopher, emperor, and saint, have been 
 a century of war to the knife against 
 our nascent faith? Eome broke all her 
 age-long precedents of toleration to visit 
 this single Oriental religion with bitter 
 persecution. It maintained the hostility 
 two hundred and fifty years. Why was 
 this? What made Christianity so dif- 
 ferent from the other Oriental religions 
 of personal redemption? 
 
 A modern instance will help us to 
 understand the irrepressible conflict. 
 Look across the Pacific at what the na- 
 tional religion of Shinto has done for 
 Japanese loyalty within the last ten 
 years. One may realize from it what a 
 flourishing national religion might have 
 done for classic civilization and the 
 world-empire of the Caesars. It has 
 secured for Japan what Roman emper- 
 ors endeavored to secure and failed. 
 The worship of the 'genius' of the 
 emperor, demanded by Eome in the 
 second century as the test of fealty to 
 
 [15] 
 
Cheistianity Old and New 
 
 the ideals of the world-commonwealth, 
 was refused by the Christian as an act 
 of disloyalty to the King invisible. He 
 "feared not their fear, but sanctified in 
 his heart Christ as Lord." But to men 
 like Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius, 
 emperor-worship was far more than a 
 tribute to their personal vanity. It was 
 not a mark of servile adulation, but a 
 vow of fealty to the imperial ideal. Men 
 who refused it would be guilty in the 
 eyes even of a Tacitus of "hatred of the 
 human race" {odium humani generis). 
 If, then, Christianity was singled out for 
 persecution alone among the many Ori- 
 ental religions of personal redemption, 
 this was not because of their common 
 trait of "indifference to the public wel- 
 fare," although this alleged common 
 trait of unsocial interest made all alike 
 "contemptible" in the eyes of the true 
 Eoman imperialist. It was because of 
 something distinctive and exceptional. 
 For Christianity, however in the Greek- 
 speaking world it might be clothed with 
 the ritual forms and sacramental ideas 
 of the Hellenistic religions of individual 
 [16] 
 
Evolution of Religion 
 
 redemption, however it might seem piv- 
 oted, like the mystery religions, on the 
 hope of personal immortality, was in its 
 origin and fundamentally, as I have 
 said, an offshoot of the most intensely 
 nationalistic of all tribal and national 
 religions. Judaism, the only national 
 religion which survived the destruction 
 of the ancient world-order in the con- 
 quests of Alexander and Rome, — Juda- 
 ism has actually outlived down to our 
 own time the national religion of the 
 Roman Empire itself. And Judaism is 
 nationalistic to the core. Before it took 
 over from Persian and Hellenistic 
 thought the doctrines of individual im- 
 mortality and the world to come, it made 
 national well-being its exclusive ideal. 
 More than a century ago this phenome- 
 non caught the attention of Warbur- 
 ton and drew from him the paradoxical 
 argument of The Divine Legation of 
 Moses. The Egyptian is the Jew's 
 nearest neighbor. And the hope of life 
 after death is the very essence of the 
 religion of Egypt. The religions of Per- 
 sia, Babylonia, Syria, were filled with it. 
 
 [17] 
 
Christianity Old and New 
 
 But the prophets of Israel not only- 
 ignored it ; they placed it under the ban. 
 To them it savored of nature-worship. 
 The weeping for Adonis, the nature-god 
 who dies and rises again, by union with 
 whom the human spirit attains immor- 
 tality, was as great an abomination to 
 Ezekiel as Christianity to Tacitus. 
 Later, it is true, under Persian and 
 Grreek influence, after the national life 
 had become a second time extinct, 
 Israel's doctrine of the kingdom of Grod 
 became rapidly universalized, and more 
 and more transcendental. The kingdom 
 of God ceased to belong to the things of 
 this world, and was relegated to another, 
 an ideal ' ' world to come. ' ' Christianity 
 in breaking down the last barrier be- 
 tween Jew and Gentile, in making hu- 
 manity the heir of the Abrahamic inher- 
 itance, and at the same time making that 
 inheritance transcendental, was simply 
 following the lines of manifest destiny. 
 Judaism itself had taken many strides 
 along this road. But however universal- 
 ized, the ideal of the kingdom of God 
 was too deep-rooted in the teachings of 
 
 [18] 
 
Evolution of Eeligiojst 
 
 Jewish prophets and the heroic suffer- 
 ings of Jewish martyrs to lose its iden- 
 tity by mere fusion with the Grraeco- 
 Roman ideal of the Commonwealth of 
 Humanity. Fusion there has been; but 
 in the process it has not been the classic 
 ideal which absorbed the Jewish. It has 
 been the Christianized Jewish which 
 took up and revitalized the classic. Not 
 Rome but Jerusalem has become for us 
 the type of the "Eternal City." While 
 the Empire still stood at only the begin- 
 ning of its decadence, Augustine was 
 writing his City of God, and Christians 
 throughout the western world were 
 sending forth their "Alleluia Perenne" : 
 
 Sing Alleluia forth in duteous praise, 
 Ye citizens of heaven, oh, sweetly raise 
 An endless Alleluia. 
 
 Ye powers who stand before the eternal Light, 
 In hymning choirs re-echo to the height 
 An endless Alleluia. 
 
 The Holy City shall take up your strain. 
 And with glad songs resounding wake again 
 An endless Alleluia.^ 
 
 1 From a Latin hymn of the fifth century. 
 
 [19] 
 
Christianity Old and New 
 
 Bernard of Cluny in the twelfth century 
 still has a social ideal which matches the 
 world-patriotism of Virgil and Seneca. 
 Only the 'messianism' of Virgil has 
 been transcendentalized in its tnrn, like 
 the 'messianism' of Isaiah. To Bernard 
 there is still a 
 
 .... sweet and blessed country 
 The home of God's elect ; 
 
 A sweet and blessed country 
 That eager hearts expect. 
 
 But the city of his dreams is not a heav- 
 enly Rome. It is a heavenly Jerusalem. 
 Nevertheless, if medieval Christianity 
 thought of its 'New Jerusalem' only as 
 an other-worldly, transcendental realm, 
 which the slow lapse of the ages has 
 lifted ever further into the dim unreali- 
 ties of cloud-land, modern Christianity 
 has brought its compensations. For 
 modern Christianity is tending back with 
 tremendous force toward the ancient 
 Hebrew ideal. It retains the cosmopoli- 
 tanism of Rome, but has the concrete 
 practicality of Jewish messianism. The 
 New Jerusalem of our modern hope is 
 
 [20] 
 
Evolution of Religion 
 
 the reconstructed social order of the 
 prophets; not an ethereal paradise for 
 disembodied souls, but a city that hath 
 foundations, that comes down out of 
 heaven from God, and is realized on 
 earth among men. 
 
 We point, then, to the singling out of 
 Christianity for persecution among the 
 many Oriental religions of personal re- 
 demption as proof that the threat which 
 it offered to the social ideal of the 
 Empire was not merely negative like 
 theirs, but positive and aggressive. 
 The starting-point of our religion was 
 the doctrine that Jesus is the Christ. 
 And what is a 'Christ' — a Messiah — ^if 
 not the representative and leader of a 
 social ideal? Whatever individualistic 
 ideals may be superadded out of the 
 profound and mystical doctrines of the 
 Oriental religions of incarnation, re- 
 demption, resurrection, whatever Paul 
 did toward Hellenizing the faith, Chris- 
 tianity remains from its foundation 
 ethical and social. This is the key to 
 its long and bloody warfare with the 
 Cfesars over the title 'Lord,' allowed by 
 
 [21] 
 
Cheistianity Old and New 
 
 it to none but its own Christ. Imperial 
 Rome, which had only contempt for 
 the "oriental superstitions" of Attis, 
 Adonis, Osiris, Mithra, and the like, had 
 equal contempt for Christianity. If 
 against Christianity alone it decreed a 
 war of extermination the reason lies 
 here: The other redemption religions 
 acquiesced in Rome's claim to universal 
 loyalty in the interest of the world's 
 welfare. Christianity alone rejected it. 
 For Christianity alone had a social 
 ideal for the race, irreconcilable with 
 Rome's. Domitian was the first emperor 
 to make war with Christianity a clearly 
 defined policy of the Empire. His 
 charge against it was loyalty to a hos- 
 tile political ideal. The brunt of the 
 attack was borne by the little 'caliphate' 
 gathered around the 'kindred of Jesus' 
 (desposyni) in Jerusalem. It is none 
 other than Domitian who first decreed 
 that imperial edicts should take the 
 form: "Thus wills our Lord and God" 
 (Sic vult dominus et deus noster). 
 Christian feeling toward these "names 
 of blasphemy" and the city "drunk with 
 
 [22] 
 
Evolution op Religion 
 
 the blood of the saints and martyrs of 
 Jesus ' ' may be learned from the contem- 
 porary Book of the Revelation of John. 
 A slightly earlier writing bearing the 
 name of Peter encourages the Pauline 
 Christians of Asia Minor to stand fast 
 in the ' ' fiery trial, ' ' meeting the emper- 
 or 's demand fearlessly, but with the 
 quiet determination to ' ' sanctify in your 
 hearts Christ as 'Lord' " and be loyal 
 unto death to the hope reserved in 
 heaven until his coming. The incom- 
 patibility between Empire and Church 
 was real. God Himself had made the 
 crucified Friend of publicans and sin- 
 ners "both 'Lord' and Christ." Loy- 
 alty to a divinely reconstructed social 
 order was inborn in our religion. It 
 was diffused through every fibre of the 
 Church by the blood-bath of the first 
 three centuries. It is there to stay as 
 long as Christianity endures. 
 
 III. It is in view of this historic 
 origin of Christianity, combining the 
 two great factors traceable in the evo- 
 lution of religion, that we must prepare 
 
 [23] 
 
Cheistianity Old and New 
 
 to consider modern proposals for its 
 reconstruction arising out of changed 
 views of the order of nature. We recog- 
 nize reasons for change, but affirm the 
 improbability of any of lasting benefit 
 which disregards the vital facts in the 
 nature and history of our religion, in 
 particular its adjustment to the two 
 antithetic poles, the individual and the 
 social ideal. Change is indispensable to 
 life. But degeneration as well as pro- 
 gress is covered by the term. We live 
 in a time of the reconstruction of ideas 
 rapid beyond precedent, revolutionary, 
 irresistible. Because our religion is 
 living it changes with our conceptions of 
 the universe and our relation to it. If 
 it were dead it might be stationary; not 
 otherwise. What, then, shall guarantee 
 us amid the proposed reconstructions of 
 Christianity that we be not led off into 
 some by-path, sacrificing the immeasur- 
 able values of the historic faith? Some, 
 indeed, hold it the policy of safety to 
 close eyes and ears to all that savors of 
 modernity and cling with dogged obsti- 
 nacy to whatever may be saved of medie- 
 [24] 
 
Evolution of Religion 
 
 val forms. That, however, is deliber- 
 ately to adopt a perpetually losing 
 strategy. Scholarship knows no guar- 
 antee of conservation but the historical 
 method. To appreciate our religion in 
 its living, vital, essential factors we 
 must understand it genetically, that is, 
 in its development. When we know the 
 principles of its growth we shall be 
 able to judge of the proposed recon- 
 structions that are commended to us, 
 whether, and to what degree, they rep- 
 resent the line of historic advance. It 
 is in this interest of continuity that I 
 speak. As between modernist and anti- 
 modernist I have no brief to plead. 
 The critical historian loses all authority 
 the moment he becomes a partisan. 
 But the historian of religion cannot be 
 a historian at all without the recogni- 
 tion of change — ^yes, of evolution; for 
 that term is one which, however exposed 
 to prejudice, really stands for a reason- 
 able religious faith. Not mere kalei- 
 doscopic 'change,' but 'evolution' is 
 the province of history. And if there 
 has been an evolution of anything, there 
 
 [25] 
 
Chbistianity Old and New 
 
 has been an evolution of religion. As 
 in other fields so here, there are periods 
 and phenomena of degeneration; but 
 they are less marked than those of de- 
 velopment. The practical service which 
 we ask of the critic of Christian origins 
 is that he should enable us to discrimi- 
 nate between degeneration and advance. 
 Only the most scientific methods of 
 critical research can be trusted to guide 
 us here. We must learn what has been 
 distinctive and vital in this most aggres- 
 sive of all aspirants to be the predis- 
 tined and final religion of the world. Is 
 Christianity essentially a socialistic or 
 individualistic religion? Or does it 
 combine in indissoluble union the vital 
 elements of its Jewish and its Helle- 
 nistic ancestry, the mysticism of the 
 redemption religions with the ethics of 
 the Kingdom of Grod? 
 
 Our age has been prolific of attempts 
 to reconstruct theology. And this really 
 means the reconstruction of Christian- 
 ity; for theology is simply the religion 
 itself reduced to logical order; and in 
 the long run practice must follow 
 
 [26] 
 
Evolution of Religion 
 
 theory. Twenty years ago when Joseph 
 Le Conte wrote his splendid vindications 
 of theistic and Christian evolution, called 
 Religion and Science and Evolution 
 and its Relation to Religious Thought, 
 we were still in the throes of the great 
 debate whether it was or was not com- 
 patible with Christianity, or even with 
 any theistic faith, to admit the theory 
 of evolution as an explanation of the 
 physical creation. Recent as that time 
 was, measured by mere years, we are 
 already chiefly puzzled to explain why 
 all enlightened men did not take the 
 same views as Asa Gray and Joseph Le 
 Conte. We find it hard to understand 
 that any thoughtful man should have 
 failed to see that evolution by the 
 progressive operation of inherent uni- 
 formly operative causes, is not neces- 
 sarily mechanical, materialistic, or fatal- 
 istic. Evolution conceived as a mode 
 of immanent divine action, is now rec- 
 ognized to be at least as worthy of 
 an all-wise, all-loving Father of our 
 spirits, as the medieval conception of 
 fiat-creation. But long ago in Europe, 
 
 [27] 
 
Christianity Old and New 
 
 and more recently in America also, 
 it has come to be recognized that 
 evolution involves other reconstruc- 
 tions than in the field of the physi- 
 cal creation. Criticism investigates 
 the history and literature of religion, 
 and criticism confesses to the same 
 principle of evolution. That does not 
 mean that biblical critics are atheistic. 
 Individual critics, like other men, have 
 had their bias; and there have been 
 periods when the general bent was 
 materialistic. Treatises have been writ- 
 ten on the Evolution of Religion, or the 
 Psychology of Eeligious Experience, 
 which seemed to take it for granted that 
 the truth or falsity of a belief could be 
 determined by the mode of its attain- 
 ment. We have had arguments of this 
 type : Humanity has reached its theistic 
 world-view through the devious paths 
 of primitive folkways and nature- 
 myths. Argol, the theistic world-view 
 is a delusion. This is the logic of the 
 country school-ma'am, who gives the 
 child arithmetician a zero mark if the 
 answer, true or false, be not obtained 
 
 [28] 
 
Evolution of Religion 
 
 according to the method set down in the 
 book. 
 
 More often the application of the evo- 
 lutionary principle to the history of reli- 
 gion has been made in devout conviction 
 that the development of religious faiths 
 and moral standards through inherent, 
 rational causes is but a mode of divine 
 operation in the spiritual creation, an 
 evolution of the sons of God. And the 
 future is with men of this type of 
 thought. Outcry there is against the 
 temerity of applying to the Scriptures 
 the same critical methods as to all other 
 ancient records and literatures. Criti- 
 cal results will be cried down. There is, 
 and will continue to be, strenuous resist- 
 ance to applying the doctrine of evolu- 
 tion in the spiritual realm. But the fact 
 remains. Slowly, surely, irresistibly, 
 criticism, the science of the history of 
 thought, advances, correcting its errors, 
 reducing its differences, achieving its 
 scientifically accepted results. There is 
 pathos, there is almost heroism, in the 
 frantic resistance of those who have 
 pinned their faith to the old order, be- 
 
 [29] 
 
Cheistianity Old and New 
 
 lieving that the Bible can no longer teach 
 the true path of duty and destiny unless 
 its history and doctrine be as miracu- 
 lously free from the human frailties of 
 other contemporary records and teach- 
 ings as its astronomy and geology were 
 once believed to be. The resistance 
 moves our sympathy, but its only effect 
 on the results is to make them more sure, 
 more carefully tested, more scientific, 
 than before. And the scientific results 
 are not open to dispute. Bible history 
 is not free from legend, bible philosophy 
 is not free from myth. Like the natural 
 science of the biblical writers they are 
 not born out of due time. They are the 
 history, the ethics, and the philosophy of 
 the particular writer's age and environ- 
 ment, and must be distinguished from 
 our history, our ethics, and our philos- 
 ophy. Prophets and holy men of old 
 spake as they were moved by the Holy 
 Ghost. But the teaching of God did not 
 overreach itself. It did not outrun the 
 times. The truth which these men saw, 
 and which inspired them to undying 
 speech and action, was seen under the 
 
 [30] 
 
Evolution of Eeligion 
 
 thought-forms of their own age, ex- 
 pressed in the language of their own 
 people. God's word was line upon line, 
 precept upon precept. If we would have 
 critical history from bible narrative, we 
 must apply to it the same critical pro- 
 cesses we apply to other records of the 
 time. If we would have a philosophical 
 construction of the events, we must put 
 our own interpretation upon them and 
 not simply borrow that of the narrators. 
 We must use the thought-forms of our 
 time, as they used the thought-forms of 
 theirs. 
 
 Most futile of all is the attempt to 
 draw arbitrary lines across the page and 
 say: Myth and legend may be admitted 
 to exist in Genesis, but not in Exodus; 
 the miracles of Samson may be legend- 
 ary, but those of Elisha are fact. If we 
 apply the standard critical tests in 
 Judges, we must apply them in Second 
 Kings; if we apply them in the Old 
 Testament, we must apply them in the 
 New. We cannot yield up the vision of 
 Ehsha's servant to the tender mercies 
 of the literary critic, and withhold that 
 
 [31] 
 
Christianity Old and New 
 
 of the Transfiguration. We cannot say 
 the visible ascension of Elijah to heaven 
 may have been fabulous, and exempt 
 from critical tests Luke's story of the 
 visible ascension of Jesus. Shall we, or 
 shall we not, admit scientific enquiry? 
 The way of the Vatican and the way of 
 the modernist are before us ; the author- 
 ity of dogma, or the authority of evi- 
 dence. But if we choose the latter we 
 cannot stop halfway. We must be pre- 
 pared to find many a narrative dis- 
 credited, many a doctrine traced to 
 misconception. 
 
 Eemember, we are to be led by no 
 prejudice either for or against what has 
 been beheved. Every consideration that 
 has truth must receive acknowledgment 
 to exactly that extent; but other con- 
 siderations simply have no weight. 
 There is indeed a relative freedom from 
 contemporary error and superstition 
 that comes to souls consecrated to a 
 lofty purpose, inspired by a vision of the 
 divine ideal. Men like Jesus and Paul 
 rise superior to current superstitions of 
 their time. To that extent religious in- 
 [32] 
 
Evolution of Religion 
 
 spiration indirectly improves scientific 
 perception. Jesus contemns the prog- 
 no sticators and bids men read rather 
 the "signs of the times." He stigma- 
 tizes as "evil and adulterous" the mor- 
 bid craving for miracle, and handles the 
 law and the prophets with a spiritual 
 insight into their eternal values that puts 
 to shame the servile, scholastic pettifog- 
 ging of the rabbis. To that extent he is 
 scientifically in advance of his age. 
 Paul also seems almost to anticipate 
 modern criticism. He has a sense of ethi- 
 cal values which teaches him that the 
 spectacular endoAvments of the Spirit by 
 which the Corinthian believers set such 
 store, "miracles," "tongues," "proph- 
 ecies," were ephemeral and worthless 
 as compared with the abiding graces of 
 the soul, faith, hope, love. This superi- 
 ority of Jesus and Paul to their times is 
 marvelous. But it is not magical. It is 
 a religious, not primarily a scientific, 
 superiority. Jesus has no magical /ore- 
 sight of Grod's purposes. He has wsight 
 into Grod's nature. The people ask him, 
 "When will the kingdom come?" and 
 
 [33] 
 
Cheistianitt Old and New 
 
 he tells them frankly he does not know. 
 They ask him, "What is it?" and he 
 tells them from his inward experience: 
 "It is being sons and daughters of the 
 Highest." So far as strictly scientific 
 knowledge is concerned Jesus and Paul 
 stand on a level with their contempor- 
 aries. It is so regarding the creation 
 and its expected end. It is so regarding 
 demons and their supposed relation to 
 calamity and disease. The superiority of 
 Jesus and Paul is religious. Demons 
 there may be, "gods many and lords 
 many." This is their belief as well as 
 that of their contemporaries. Yet they 
 are free from contemporary supersti- 
 tion. For, as Paul continues, "to us 
 there is one God the Father, of whom are 
 all things, and one Lord Jesus Christ 
 through whom are all things. ' ' We sink 
 back into the very bondage of the letter 
 from which Jesus and Paul would set 
 us free, if we make of their utterances 
 an external standard, instead of a guide 
 and incentive to draw for ourselves from 
 the eternal springs of life and truth. 
 "Who is Paul, or ApoUos, or Cephas 
 
 [34] 
 
 )> 
 ) 
 
Evolution of Ebligion 
 
 says the Apostle, "but ministers 
 througli whom ye believe?" "He that 
 believeth in me," says Jesus, "believeth 
 not in me, but in Him that sent me. ' ' 
 
 This, then, is one of the vast, slow 
 changes that have overtaken all our 
 views of the world since we began to 
 think in terms of evolution. We have 
 begun to look through the biblical writ- 
 ings at the spiritual life which lies be- 
 hind them, and of which they were the 
 product and flower. We have begun to 
 appreciate how vital a distinction that 
 is which our fourth evangelist puts in 
 the mouth of Jesus in rebuking the arro- 
 gance of the scribes: "Te search the 
 Scriptures because ye think that in them 
 ye have eternal life; and they are they 
 that testify of me, and ye would not 
 come unto me that ye might have life." 
 It is largely due to the application of 
 the evolutionary principle in the domain 
 of spiritual life that we have begun to 
 understand what the fourth evangelist 
 means by the eternal Word, the Logos. 
 We have become students of the history, 
 psychology, and philosophy of religion, 
 [35] 
 
Christianity Old and New 
 
 using its literature for the "testimony" 
 it bears to the Spirit of God in man, 
 working with God through all the dark 
 generations of the past, brooding over 
 His spiritual creation yet to be. We 
 have begun to see the glory of the living, 
 eternal Word, "the Life that was mani- 
 fested, ' ' the Life of God in man. 
 
 And from this new treatment of Scrip- 
 ture, objective, historical, scientific, crit- 
 ical, but passionate in its love for the 
 truth and devotion to it, has grown the 
 deep sense of need for restatement of 
 our Christian faith. On the one side is 
 medievalism, strengthening itself for 
 dogged resistance ; on the other modern- 
 ism eager for paths untried. Louder 
 and louder sounds the cry for theo- 
 logical reconstruction. And the cry 
 meets its response. There are proposed 
 reconstructions of Christianity which 
 follow the ethical type, and other pro- 
 posed reconstructions which follow the 
 individualistic and mystical. But here 
 is a significant fact. Of all the proposed 
 reconstructions of our faith none hopes 
 for the assent of the thinking world that 
 
 [36] 
 
Evolution op Religion 
 
 is not regarded, at least by its own advo- 
 cates, as historical. Each aspires to be 
 in some sense a restoration of the in- 
 spired past. Both, alternatives of pro- 
 posed reconstruction, the ethical and 
 the mystical, profess to rest on history. 
 History, then, must be their judge. 
 
 TV. The fourth and final proposition 
 for our consideration today may be 
 briefly stated. It is a defense of the 
 jurisdiction of the court. The alterna- 
 tive types of reconstructed Christianity 
 which appeal to the acceptance of 
 thoughtful men today are the Ethical 
 and the Mystical. Both appeal to his- 
 tory and must be judged by it. In select- 
 ing concrete instances we must mention 
 specific names; but they are used as 
 illustrative, and will be recognized as 
 typical. 
 
 One of the weightiest utterances of 
 the retiring president of our greatest 
 American university was published 
 not very long ago (October, 1909) in 
 The Harvard Theological Review, under 
 the title, "The Eeligion of the Future." 
 [37] 
 
Christianity Old and New 
 
 President Eliot's reconstmetion pre- 
 sents the distinctive type of what has 
 claimed for itself, and has sometimes 
 been accorded, the honorable name of 
 'Liberal' Christianity. To him the 
 mystical doctrines of personal religion, 
 the doctrines of incarnation, atonement, 
 immortaUty, represent mainly "pagan" 
 accretion. To restore to Christianity 
 its true message for our times we must 
 trace it back (thinks President Eliot) 
 to its "Hebrew purity" in the ethical 
 teachings of Jesus. As for what are 
 termed 'the consolations of religion' 
 they will be mainly found in 
 
 .... a universal goodwill, under the influ- 
 ence of which men will do their duty, and at 
 the same time promote their own happiness. 
 The devotees of a religion of service will 
 always be asking what they can contribute to 
 
 the common good The work of the 
 
 world must be done, and the great question is, 
 shall it be done happily or unhappily ? Much 
 of it is today done unhappily. The new reli- 
 gion will contribute powerfully toward the 
 reduction of this mass of mmeeessary misery, 
 and will do so chiefly by promoting goodwill 
 among men. 
 
 [38] 
 
Evolution op Religion 
 
 Of tlie nobility of this ethical ideal 
 there can be no question. It certainly 
 has justification in history, as we have 
 seen at least in a part of the history. 
 It may rightly claim to reflect in large 
 degree the teaching of Jesus, while it 
 goes almost more than half way to meet 
 the Reformed Synagogue and the liberal 
 Ethical Society. But can we with his- 
 toric truth call that Christianity which 
 passes lightly over the doctrine of the 
 person of Christ, the significance of his 
 life and work regarded (to use Hegel's 
 phrase) as "a representation of the 
 divine idea"? Can that really be 'the 
 gospel' in which there is not one word 
 of what Paul describes as ' ' the ministry 
 of reconciliation committed unto us" as 
 ambassadors for God, "how that in 
 Christ God was reconciling the world 
 unto himself, not imputing unto men 
 their trespasses"? 
 
 No ; President Eliot 's Religion of the 
 Future is good as far as it goes, but it 
 does not touch bottom. By strange coin- 
 cidence a protest almost violent in char- 
 acter is raised simultaneously against 
 [39] 
 
Christianity Old and New 
 
 the proposed new type of Christianity. 
 From Germany and Scotland comes the 
 positive assurance that the 'liberal' re- 
 construction has already been tried and 
 found wanting. Under date but three 
 months later than President Eliot's 
 article, Doctor K. C. Anderson presents 
 in the Hibbert Journal (January, 1910) 
 the indictment against it of a new and 
 clamorous school, the Idealistic Monists 
 of Germany. The Monists cry out 
 against the hypocrisy of the "Jesus- 
 worshippers" as they term them, those 
 who have stripped the gospel story of 
 its supernaturalism, and yet make God 
 in Christ the object of religious devo- 
 tion. Dr. Anderson entitles his article, 
 "The Collapse of Liberal Christianity," 
 and in that of a year later (January, 
 1911) called, "Whitherward? A Ques- 
 tion for the Higher Criticism," he 
 argues — I quote the language of the 
 editor's summary— " that the Higher 
 Criticism has proved entirely destruc- 
 tive of the historical basis of the Gos- 
 pels; but this result, though fatal to 
 Liberal Christianity, only serves to free 
 [40] 
 
Evolution op Eeligion 
 
 the religion of Clirist (i.e., abstract 
 Christhood) for a deeper and fuller 
 spiritual expression than it has received 
 heretofore. ' ' 
 
 President Eliot and Doctor Anderson 
 represent typically extreme views of 
 what the Christianity of the future is to 
 be. But both appeal to the same data, 
 the results of historical criticism. Nei- 
 ther view would be of itself alone a mat- 
 ter of vital importance, but as symptoms 
 of the great change that is taking place 
 in our religion, confronted as it has 
 come to be with the philosophy of evo- 
 lution, they are vitally significant. They 
 prove that our religion is preparing for 
 a new and great readjustment, as when 
 in medieval times it adapted itself to 
 the philosophy of Aristotle. The vital 
 power is present. Is there virtue and 
 wisdom sufficient in the historico-critical 
 study which the century just past has 
 lavished upon Christian origins, to 
 judge between these proposed recon- 
 structions and determine the true line 
 of historic advance? Shall we have a 
 reconstruction that will stay, because 
 
 [41] 
 
Christianity Old and New 
 
 made in the historic line of growth? 
 That is the question to which I shall 
 apply myself in the two succeeding 
 lectures. 
 
 42] 
 
II 
 
 NINETEENTH CENTURY LIBER- 
 ALISM 
 
 In the preceding Lecture two types of 
 modern Christian thought were briefly 
 referred to. According to the views of 
 the Idealistic Monists, the results of 
 criticism applied to the records of the 
 Christian faith have been entirely de- 
 structive. Nothing whatever has sur- 
 vived but myth. This, however, is de- 
 clared to be well; because religion will 
 be freer when it concerns itself only 
 with ideas, regardless of the course of 
 history. The individual soul will stand 
 face to face with the Eternal that speaks 
 to its own consciousness. Concrete real- 
 ity is at best the conditioning back- 
 ground of our development, it may be 
 an impediment. Let us seek with the 
 mystics to perfect the individual soul. 
 Let us with Nietzsche deify this individ- 
 ual personality that buds at last upon 
 
 [43] 
 
Christianity Old and New 
 
 the stem of biologic evolution. Leave 
 to humanitarians the improvement of 
 social conditions. 
 
 According to President Eliot, on the 
 contrary, historical criticism has de- 
 stroyed nothing but worthless myth and 
 legend. It has done us the incalculable 
 service of restoring the concrete historic 
 fact. A mist of dogma was at first 
 thrown off by speculative minds such as 
 Paul's. Later, mounting and expand- 
 ing it enveloped and almost hid from 
 sight the unadorned form, the plain and 
 sublimely simple precepts, of the me- 
 chanic Teacher of Nazareth. This trans- 
 figuring cloud criticism has at last dis- 
 pelled. Christianity is restored to its 
 "Hebrew purity." Little remains, the 
 author admits, of the so-called 'consola- 
 tions of religion.' The Eeligion of the 
 Future must abandon the attempt to 
 adjust individual interests and destinies 
 to the movement of the cosmic Soul. 
 Ethics will replace mysticism. The out- 
 come will still be ' Christianity, ' because 
 the teaching of Jesus will form its 
 nucleus. His example will remain the 
 [44] 
 
Nineteenth Centtjky Liberalism 
 
 best, Ms leadership will evoke the high- 
 est, most enduring loyalty. The Ser- 
 mon on the Mount and the Lord's 
 Prayer will remain the classic monu- 
 ments of noble and humane aspiration, 
 and the Teacher whose principles these 
 embody will remain humanity's social 
 Messiah, an example of the ' Christ that 
 is to be. ' Here is an ideal of individual 
 duty and of (racial) destiny. If reli- 
 gion consists of morahty lit up by emo- 
 tion, we have here the emotion also, the 
 sentiment of pathos and loyal devotion 
 to an ideal. Is it not ungrateful, is it 
 not selfish, to ask more? Take this as 
 historical Christianity — the religion of 
 Jesus — brought down to date, and what 
 more can we reasonably ask? 
 
 First of all, it is true that recent re- 
 search has done much to dispel the nim- 
 bus from the central figure of the Gos- 
 pels. Criticism has largely restored the 
 portrait of the Historic Jesus. Perhaps 
 I may claim the right to speak as a rep- 
 resentative of New Testament criticism. 
 If so, my first assertion — and a very 
 emphatic one — would be that President 
 [45] 
 
Christianity Old and New 
 
 Eliot's statement of its results is much 
 nearer the truth than that of the Ideal- 
 istic Monists. Criticism has given not 
 less, but more of tangible, vivid reality 
 to the portrait of Jesus. The historical 
 figure of Jesus, the prophet of Nazareth, 
 stands out with far greater clearness 
 than before in everything that makes 
 for concrete reality. As for the golden 
 background of dogma, Pauline and later, 
 against which the historical figure has 
 been seen projected by those who trans- 
 mit to us the portrait, that also is the 
 affair of criticism. It represents the 
 apostolic gospel about Jesus, the Pe- 
 trine and Pauline interpretation of the 
 significance of his person, his expe- 
 rience, his fate. Is the New Testament 
 critic a judge of these things f Perhaps 
 not, if we accept the definition of the 
 representative of Nineteenth Century 
 Liberalism. His idea would seem to be 
 that the critic when he has arrived at 
 the gospel about Christ has no use for 
 it but to cast it as rubbish to the void. 
 But we have ourselves defined the critic 
 to be a "historian of ideas." When he 
 
 [46] 
 
Nineteenth Century Libeealism 
 
 discriminates concrete fact and event 
 from the contemporary interpretation 
 wMchL they received, it is the thought 
 rather than the thing which concerns 
 him. True, he must know the thing, else 
 he cannot adequately appreciate the 
 thought. Therefore he is in the first 
 instance a historical critic. But in the 
 present field it is not political science, or 
 strategics, nor even the progress of art 
 and literature which count. We are 
 dealing with the history of religion. In 
 this field, it is true, historical facts are 
 not unimportant, because when properly 
 sifted they fall to be classified and inter- 
 preted in accordance with modern expe- 
 rience by modern standards. But con- 
 temporary judgments of the significance 
 of facts, inferences, convictions, faiths, 
 doctrines, are more important; because 
 what we aim to discover is the progress 
 of man's inward experience, his reli- 
 gious instinct. If, then. Nineteenth Cen- 
 tury Liberalism, as we find it repre- 
 sented in President Eliot's article, 
 seems to regard it as the function of 
 New Testament criticism merely to 
 
 [47] 
 
Chbistianity Old and New 
 
 eliminate and discard the gospel about 
 Jesus, that we must pronounce to be a 
 misconception. What the critic really 
 does with this inward reflection of his- 
 tory (if I may so call it) we shall see 
 later. It must be considered in our third 
 Lecture entitled, "Twentieth Century 
 Mythical Idealism," when we examine 
 the Idealistic Monist's conception of the 
 results of criticism and the kind of re- 
 construction of Christianity he would 
 base upon them. Let us turn first to his 
 judgment of fact. 
 
 Before taking up consideration of 
 Nineteenth Century Liberalism, permit 
 me to offer a preliminary caution. "We 
 have two kinds of respect to maintain: 
 We are to maintain, first, respect for the 
 ripe thought of one of the representa- 
 tive scholars of our age, a fearless, 
 broad-minded leader of thought. If the 
 school represented by President EUot is 
 small, let us remember what manner of 
 men they are, and that judgments in the 
 realm of truth do not go by count of 
 heads. We are to maintain, second, 
 respect for the tribunal we occupy. For 
 [48] 
 
Nineteenth Century Libeealism 
 
 the time being, at least, we are judge and 
 jury in the court of the History and 
 Philosophy of Eeligion. To judge of 
 criticism we must become critics — the 
 best critics we can. If we reason at all 
 about better or worse, truer or more 
 erroneous, forms of religion, we are 
 compelled to resort to this court ; for no 
 other common standard exists. We oc- 
 cupy today the seats of men committed 
 to the behef that spiritual, as well as 
 physical life, advances under a law of 
 evolution. Christianity, if it really rep- 
 resents the central stem of growth in the 
 branching tree of the religious instinct 
 of humanity, must be expected to re- 
 spond to the changed world-views of the 
 twentieth century, as in former times it 
 adjusted itself, without alteration of its 
 distinctive character, to Aristotelian and 
 Copernican conceptions. Is President 
 Eliot's forecast adequate? We are to 
 answer this question from the view- 
 point of the historian of rehgion (the 
 speaker aiming simply to give you 
 access to it) and we are to remember 
 that there is another claimant in the 
 
 [49] 
 
Cheistianity Old and New 
 
 field, of precisely the opposite way of 
 thinking. Perhaps there is no justice in 
 the claim of either to stand in the line 
 of historic development. Perhaps there 
 is something in the claim of one, or both. 
 In any event there is an obligation of 
 respect besides that we shall endeavor 
 to show towards the claimants. It is 
 respect for ourselves, and for the lofty 
 tribunal we temporarily ascend. 
 
 I. It is characteristic of what I 
 reluctantly consent to call the 'Liberal' 
 Christianity of the Nineteenth Century 
 (for I do not think it really deserves the 
 name) to seek religious adjustment to 
 the evolutionary world-view by histor- 
 ico-critical analysis of the primitive 
 sources. So far, so good. But it also 
 seems to regard the process of criticism 
 as aiming at and accomplishing a kind 
 of separation of the sheep from the 
 goats, metal from dross, after this fash- 
 ion : This, the historical, I keep ; this, the 
 legendary, mythological, imaginative, or 
 doctrinal is worthless, and I throw it 
 away. You will find this same attitude 
 
 [50] 
 
Nineteenth Century Liberalism 
 
 of mind assumed by much less thouglit- 
 ful people toward the work of biblical 
 critics in certain current expressions 
 which suggest that the higher critics 
 'cut out' this or that from the Bible, 
 'reject' this or that, retaining the re- 
 mainder. The biblical critic is supposed 
 to have but one standard of value — 
 historicity. 
 
 Now it is true that the first inferences 
 the critic draws from the classification 
 of his material aim to determine an 
 orderly chronological account of the 
 course of external events. This is the 
 only reasonable mode of procedure if he 
 would trace the deeper, more elusive 
 processes of spiritual development. It 
 does not follow that the critic 'throws 
 away' that portion of his material which 
 reflects something other than visible, 
 tangible matter of fact. Indeed, if he 
 did he would be like a silver miner who 
 after separating the lead from his mixed 
 ore threw away the more valuable metal. 
 From what was said a few moments ago 
 you will perceive how slight foundation 
 there is for the talk about critics 'cut- 
 
 [51] 
 
Christianity Old and New 
 
 ting out' parts of the Bible. Critics are 
 not more disposed than other men to saw 
 off the branch they sit on. Neither do 
 they undertake a task that is apt to 
 bring them anything rather than thanks 
 because of their exceptional love for the 
 concrete facts of Hebrew history. Apart 
 from the development of religion, what 
 care we for the struggle of Moses 
 against Pharaoh, David against the 
 Philistines, or even of Paul against the 
 Judaizers ? To many a critic the battles 
 of rooks and daws would be as interest- 
 ing. Critics engage in their laborious 
 analyses, putting on one side historical 
 events — call that the lead — putting on 
 the other contemporary reactions of the 
 religious mind upon the events in the 
 form of doctrine, myth, philosophy — 
 call that the silver — not for love of the 
 base metal, but for the silver. Eeligious 
 thought, like all other thought, depends 
 upon experience. But the biblical critic 
 does not stop with the attempt to define 
 the experience. He advances from it 
 to the interpretation devout men put 
 upon it. His quest is that which the 
 
 [52] 
 
Nineteenth Century Liberalism 
 
 scientific mind designates 'the evolution 
 of religion' and tlie religions mind 
 'God's progressive self -manifestation in 
 the human soul. ' The fourth evangelist 
 has a technical term for this spiritual 
 core of history. He designates it "that 
 which was from the beginning, the "Word 
 of life; for the life was manifested, 
 .... even the eternal life which was 
 with the Father and hath been mani- 
 fested unto us." 
 
 It seems/ however, to be the ideal of 
 the 'liberal' to reconstruct Christianity 
 by restoring what he understands to be 
 "the religion of Jesus"; and he extols 
 the work of the New Testament critic as 
 having made this achievement practi- 
 cable by eliminating what he calls the 
 "pagan intrusions." The formula for 
 this type of reconstruction would run 
 somewhat as follows : From contents of 
 New Testament subtract and discard the 
 gospel about Jesus, an element of legend 
 and myth derived from the dogmatic 
 period inaugurated by the apotheosis of 
 Jesus after his death. The remainder 
 will be the gospel of Jesus, an admirably 
 
 [53] 
 
Cheistianity Old and New 
 
 simple summary of hmnan duty. We 
 shall have "morality lit up with emo- 
 tion," which has been offered as a defi- 
 nition of religion. The morality will be 
 the law of love. The emotion will be of 
 two kinds: First, trust in a Heavenly 
 Father, whose beneficent purpose for the 
 world becomes ultimately apparent in a 
 truly brotherly social order, the King- 
 dom of Grod; second, loyalty to the his- 
 toric Jesus as a sublimely consistent and 
 heroic leader of the world into its ideal 
 and ultimate social order. 
 
 Christianity as thus reconstructed will 
 not entirely lack the element of religion 
 as distinguished from morality pure 
 and simple. It will have in addition to 
 the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount 
 the 'paternal theism' of the Lord's 
 Prayer. It would not be fair to refuse 
 to it the title ' Christian. ' For, however 
 little its 'Hebrew purity' advances be- 
 yond the Judaism which writers such as 
 Abrahams and Montefiore are teaching 
 us to discover in the Talmud, however 
 completely it discards all speculations 
 on the person of Christ, and even doubts 
 
 [54] 
 
Nineteenth Century Liberalism 
 
 of personal immortality, still it places 
 the historic Jesus in a position of per- 
 manent supremacy. To him the su- 
 preme loyalty of every man will always 
 be due; because the ideal of the King- 
 dom of God once adequately presented 
 as Jesus has presented it admits no 
 higher social ideal. And the very re- 
 striction of our knowledge of the his- 
 toric Jesus to the simple fact that he 
 lived and died in absolute faithfulness 
 to this ideal excludes the possibility that 
 any later claimant should usurp the 
 place. The greater the simplicity, the 
 poverty, the outward limitation of his 
 lot in humble Galilee, the more perfect 
 his adaptation to hold the fealty of all 
 men in all ages including the simplest 
 and lowliest. 
 
 Difficult as it is to distinguish religion 
 of this type from 'reformed' Judaism, 
 the critically reconstructed Christianity 
 of 'liberalism' is not only theistic, but 
 Christian; for it makes the supremacy 
 of Jesus permanent and unique. It is 
 also in a true sense historical; for in 
 spite of the extravagant assertions of 
 
 [55] 
 
Cheistianity Old and New 
 
 the Monists regarding the destructive 
 effects of New Testament criticism (they 
 also begin by praising the judge: "0 
 righteous judge! able judge!"), it is 
 a practicable thing to reproduce in out- 
 line both the religious teaching, and the 
 moral portrait of the historical Jesus. 
 That is a plain, scientific fact, resting on 
 exactly the same kind of evidence we 
 would apply in the case of Socrates, or 
 Mohammed, or Julius Caesar. 
 
 II. There is, indeed, an obstacle to 
 such historical delineation — the factor 
 of miracle which is prominent in the 
 record, and as some think is fatal to his- 
 torical portraiture. Our contention is 
 that this factor is really subordinate and 
 incidental. 
 
 The historical outline of Jesus ' teach- 
 ing, character, and career down to the 
 crucifixion is as little affected by the few 
 anecdotes of miracle connected with the 
 reports, as that of other ancient charac- 
 ters by the similar anecdotes related of 
 them. In spite of the agitation over the 
 question of Jesus' miracles the matter 
 
 [56] 
 
Nineteenth Centuey Liberalism 
 
 is not really vital. It is as indifferent to 
 the truly critical historian of religion as 
 Dr. George A. Gordon, in his Taylor 
 Lectures given at Yale in 1909 on Reli- 
 gion and Miracle, has shown that it may 
 be for the theologian. The New Testa- 
 ment critic finds the Apostle Paul refer- 
 ring in indubitably authentic letters to 
 miraculous healings wrought (to use the 
 New Testament phrase) "by the power 
 of the Spirit" through himself and 
 others. His references show that heal- 
 ings of the type attributed to Jesus in 
 the Gospels were then not unusual occur- 
 rences in the Church. Besides Paul's 
 references we have fragments of the con- 
 temporary diary of one of his travelling 
 companions, fragments whose testimony 
 not the most exacting of scientific critics 
 will wholly set aside. These fragments 
 record not only healings, but exorcisms, 
 visions, supernatural deliverances, and 
 even a supposed resuscitation from 
 death. In all of these both Paul and the 
 diarist were personally participant. Of 
 course it is to be admitted that if we 
 moderns had been present we might 
 
 [57] 
 
Cheistianity Old and New 
 
 have put a different interpretation on 
 the phenomena. We should not have 
 recorded the exorcism of the pythoness 
 at Philippi as the going out of an evil 
 spirit, nor the restoration to conscious- 
 ness of Eutychus at Troas as a return 
 from the dead. Miracles are made not 
 by the facts, but by the interpretation 
 put upon the facts. And each age makes 
 its own interpretation. The same phe- 
 nomena are to one man, of one age, 
 miracles ; to another man of a later age, 
 'providential' occurrences, or perhaps 
 only operations of 'natural law' im- 
 perfectly understood. It is not the 
 business of the historical critic to decide 
 philosophically which point of view is 
 more correct, but to read records of the 
 past with eyes trained to the light of the 
 writer's period. From this sjrmpathetie 
 viewpoint the few anecdotes of miracle 
 in the gospel record of Jesus' career and 
 teaching present scarcely more of diffi- 
 culty than those of the letters of Paul, 
 accompanied as these are by fragments 
 of a companion's diary embedded in the 
 later chapters of Acts. We must allow, 
 
 [58] 
 
Nineteenth Centtjey Liberalism 
 
 of course, that gospel narrative is not 
 magically free from human exaggera- 
 tion and growth of legend. That follows 
 from mere comparison of the later with 
 the earlier. Again some parts of the 
 story have better support than others. 
 The healings and exorcisms to which 
 Jesus' own sayings make incidental ref- 
 erence are not to be classed with tales 
 of prodigy in nature, to which his own 
 sayings give no support, if indeed they 
 are not disclaimed. 
 
 Above all else we must exclude the 
 accounts of the resurrection from the 
 story of Jesus' earthly career. The 
 resurrection does not belong among the 
 mighty works attributed to him. The 
 New Testament writers justly regard 
 the 'raising up' of Jesus as a work of 
 God ^lpon him. To Paul, as to his prede- 
 cessors, the revelation 'in' them of 
 their glorified Lord was a wonderful 
 work of Grod upon themselves. He had 
 "opened the eyes of their hearts" to 
 perceive the spiritual fact. The resur- 
 rection, then, so far as we can reach it 
 at all, is an experience of Jesus' follow- 
 
 [59] 
 
Cheistianity Old and New 
 
 ers after Ms death. In the records of it 
 which survive they have expressed vari- 
 ously their sense of a vital relation 
 established between his living, glorified 
 personality and theirs. Critical study 
 of the records brings us thus ultimately 
 to a phenomenon in the field of the psy- 
 chology of religion. Nothing, indeed, in 
 all the history of Christianity is of more 
 vital importance than this experience. 
 It deserves the study of psychologists 
 such as the late "William James. But I 
 am speaking now of Jesus' own earthly 
 life and work, including the stories of 
 healings and other wonders, and I 
 merely state the almost self-evident 
 principle that to the historical critic 
 accustomed to allow for distortion and 
 exaggeration in the report, they are no 
 more mysterious or unaccountable than 
 the similar contemporary anecdotes 
 about Paul. And Paul's 'miracles' and 
 'signs of an apostle' are sufficiently 
 attested. They are, in fact, alluded to 
 by himself in letters whose authenticity 
 is beyond dispute. In short, the prob- 
 lem of 'miracle' is not a problem for 
 
 [60] 
 
Nineteenth Century LiBEEAiiisM 
 
 the physicist, nor for the philosopher. 
 We cannot repeat the experiment. What 
 we have before us is the testimony. Pri- 
 marily, then, it is a problem for the 
 literary critic. His work must come 
 first. He must find out what sort of 
 occurrences were designated 'miracles' 
 in that age, and gave rise to the reports. 
 It is, then, a perfectly practicable 
 thing for New Testament criticism to 
 present in outline a scientifically trust- 
 worthy account of the teaching of Jesus, 
 and also of his character and public 
 career; an account wherein the moot- 
 point of miracle will be purely incidental 
 and subordinate. For this purpose we 
 have two ultimate sources, attested by 
 ancient tradition, and reproduced with 
 greater or less success by the approved 
 processes of modem analytical criticism 
 applied to the group of three interre- 
 lated writings called the Synoptic Gos- 
 pels.^ Many New Testament scholars 
 
 1 On the task of New Testament criticism in the 
 characterization of the historical Jesus see the Essay 
 appended to this series of Lectures. An accurate 
 account of critical results in the analysis and valua- 
 tion of gospel sources will be found in James Mof- 
 
 [61] 
 
Christianity Old and New 
 
 hold that the two ultimate sources on 
 which our earlier three Gospels were 
 primarily based were, first, a compila- 
 tion of the Precepts of Jesus, giving the 
 ethics of the Sermon on the Mount and 
 the worship of the Lord's Prayer; sec- 
 ond, anecdotes orally reported by Peter, 
 illustrative both of Jesus' teachings 
 and of his character and public career. 
 Early and undisputed tradition, partly 
 confirmed by the results of modem 
 criticism, tells us that the book of Pre- 
 cepts was compiled by the Apostle Mat- 
 thew about the period of the great Paul- 
 ine Epistles (50-60 A. D.), and was in 
 "Hebrew" (probably meaning Ara- 
 maic). This implies that its circulation 
 was at first confined to Syria. Many 
 critical attempts have been made to re- 
 produce it, and are accessible in Hebrew, 
 Greek, German and English;^ but the 
 results, while mutually confirmatory, do 
 not agree with the ancient tradition. A 
 "second source" (designated Q) inde- 
 
 fatt's Introduction to New Testament Literature; 
 Chas. Seribner's Sons, New York, 1911. 
 
 2 Sixteen are reproduced in outline in Moffatt 'b 
 Introduction, pp. 194-206. 
 
 [62] 
 
Nineteenth Century Libeealism 
 
 pendent of Mark, and probably older, 
 can be recovered from Matthew and 
 Luke by subtracting the coincident mate- 
 rial which they do not derive from Mark. 
 But Q was not a "Hebrew" document. 
 It was not confined to "precepts," and 
 it has closer aflBnity with Luke than 
 with "Matthew." The teaching of 
 Jesus is indeed far more prominent in 
 it than the "mighty works," and it may 
 represent a stage between the reported 
 apostolic book of Precepts (Logia) and 
 the narrative of Mark, but the work of 
 analysis is not yet complete. 
 
 The other reported source, Peter's 
 oral reminiscences, lies at the founda- 
 tion of our present oldest Gospel, a com- 
 pilation credibly attributed to Paul's 
 follower, John Mark. This Gospel was 
 written in Eome after the death of both 
 Paul and Peter {ca. 75 A. D.). The 
 striking peculiarity of this Gospel of 
 Mark is that it includes neither the 
 Sermon on the Mount nor the Lord's 
 Prayer, but culminates in the story of 
 Calvary. Manifestly the work was not 
 framed for the purpose of giving the 
 
 [63] 
 
Cheistianitt Old and New 
 
 teaching of Jesus, but of proving the 
 apostolic gospel about Jesus. Its mes- 
 sage was that he was the Son of God, 
 who redeemed mankind through the 
 Cross and Resurrection. The anecdotes 
 related by Mark are therefore largely 
 of the sort to prove Jesus ' supernatural 
 endowment with "the Spirit" — that 
 effluence from Grod to which we find the 
 early Church attributing all its gifts of 
 'miracles' or 'prophecy,' as well as its 
 moral power and its assurance of eter- 
 nal life. The argument is that Jesus 
 from his baptism by John had been en- 
 dowed with this 'Spirit of Adoption' in 
 its fulness. He thereafter exhibited in 
 his ministry in unlimited degree the 
 qualities of 'the Spirit,' "the word of 
 wisdom and the word of power." But 
 above and beyond this in his martyrdom, 
 he showed by word and example as 
 Leader of human redemption what it is 
 to be a son of God and an heir of eter- 
 nal life. This, you see at once, is a 
 totally different kind of gospel from 
 any mere compilation of precepts. It 
 aims to make converts rather than to 
 
 [64] 
 
Nineteenth Centtjet Liberalism 
 
 build up disciples. Its reminiscences of 
 Peter are used chiefly in the interest of 
 the gospel about Jesus, the Pauline gos- 
 pel of human redemption through the 
 cross and resurrection, a gospel which 
 we have not yet taken into consideration 
 at all, and must defer until the third 
 and closing lecture. Obviously this old- 
 est of our canonical Gospels would serve 
 but ill the purposes of our 'liberal' re- 
 constructionist. But remove from this 
 Gospel of Mark its Pauline (or quasi- 
 Pauline) redemption doctrine, the evan- 
 gelist's effort to present the Spirit-filled 
 Jesus as the world-redeeming Son of 
 God. You will have left, if your work 
 be accurately done, an outline portrait 
 of the real Jesus in his distinctive char- 
 acter, life and work. And there will be 
 not a few homely touches to corroborate 
 the ancient tradition which declares it 
 to rest upon the preaching of Peter. 
 
 III. President Eliot and the 'liber- 
 als' are right in saying that the nine- 
 teenth century, the century of historical 
 criticism, has accomplished a great work 
 [65] 
 
Cheistianity Old and New 
 
 for the development of our religion by 
 these attempts to reach back through 
 the traditional testimony of Matthew 
 and Peter toward a trustworthy por- 
 trait of the historical Jesus. The lines 
 are as yet perhaps but faint and waver- 
 ing, but they will grow firmer and 
 clearer. It is not the bodily but the 
 spiritual portrait of Jesus that vitally 
 concerns us ; and that is already drawn, 
 and can never be obliterated. We al- 
 ready know the spirit of Jesus' teach- 
 ing and life better than the spirit and 
 life of many a great man of modern his- 
 tory; and we can see that his religion 
 was truly the consummate flower of all 
 that the nationalistic, ethical, or social 
 type can offer. It is the religion of 
 Moses and the prophets without its 
 racial limitations. The Matthsean tra- 
 dition of Jesus' teaching gives us, as I 
 have said, the ethics of the Sermon on 
 the Mount and the paternal theism of 
 the Lord's Prayer. The Petrine tradi- 
 tion of his career, Mark's anecdotes of 
 his life and character, give us a Leader 
 to command the altruistic loyalty of the 
 
 [66] 
 
Nineteenth Century Libebalism 
 
 human race, until the goal is reached in 
 the ideal social order of the Kingdom of 
 Grod. As the Fourth Gospel expresses 
 it: "He came unto his own (domain) 
 and his own (people) received him not. 
 But to as many as received him — lost 
 sons, outcasts, sinners — ^he gave the 
 right to be called ' sons of God. ' ' ' This 
 ethical and this social ideal are ulti- 
 mate. No one will ever improve upon 
 the aspiration : " Be ye therefore perfect 
 even as your Father; for He is kind 
 even to the unthankful and evil. Be 
 imitators of Him and ye shall be sons 
 and daughters of the Highest." There 
 is not, and there never can be, a higher 
 conception than this of duty and (racial) 
 destiny. Neither can there ever be a 
 Leader besides this man to whom all 
 humanity can look up as Lord and 
 Christ, without fear of disappointment 
 or humiliation. The greatest hero, 
 martyr, prophet, were he a very son of 
 God in his devotion to the will of the 
 Father in heaven, could only be a second 
 Christ, a younger brother of the Lord. 
 The ideal is ultimate, and its representa- 
 
 [67] 
 
Chbistianity Old and New 
 
 tive is unique. Full historical research 
 has established their position forever. 
 
 Moreover, there is something pecu- 
 liarly appealing to our age in this con- 
 ception of Christianity. We, today, are 
 in full reaction from the mystical type 
 of religion. We are no longer con- 
 cerned, as our fathers were, with the 
 redemption of the individual soul, its 
 sin and weakness, its responsibility to 
 Grod and dependence on Him, its re- 
 demption from sin and death, its partici- 
 pation now and hereafter in the eternal 
 life of God. We are swinging back 
 toward the social, ethical type. The mod- 
 ern man is more intent on getting this 
 world saved than in getting saved out 
 of it for a hypothetical world to come. 
 We modern democrats have no benevo- 
 lent despotism like the Caesars to which 
 we can entrust the destinies of the com- 
 monwealth in reasonable confidence that 
 peace, order, justice, civilization, will 
 advance progressively toward a not dis- 
 tant millennium. We are bitterly con- 
 scious of the failures of our own at- 
 tempts. How little has been realized of 
 
 [68] 
 
Nineteenth Century Liberalism 
 
 that democracy, civilization, federation 
 of the world, from which so much was 
 hoped when Tennyson wrote his Locks- 
 ley Hall! We are hotly aware of the 
 injustice of the economic and social sys- 
 tem. We thought we were creating a 
 brotherhood of man, and our repubhc 
 turns out to be a mere plutocracy. 
 Industrial capitahsm confers one-tenth 
 of the common product on the toilers 
 and nine-tenths on the idlers. Li days 
 like these men want an altruistic reli- 
 gion, a religion of ethics and a righteous 
 social order, the moral religion of the 
 prophets and of Jesus, with its law of 
 'greatness through service' and its 
 ideal of a brotherhood of the race under 
 the fatherhood of God. 
 
 Why not, then, for the Eeligion of the 
 Future, go back to the gospel of Jesus, 
 discarding the "pagan intrusions" of 
 the age of Paul? 
 
 No adequate answer to that question 
 can be tainted vsith personal prejudice, 
 theological bias, or individual sentiment. 
 To be effective it must be made in the 
 spirit of the historian of religion, who 
 
 [69] 
 
Christianity Old and New 
 
 judges of the future by the past. The 
 historian anticipates new adaptations 
 from a vital and growing faith; but he 
 forecasts their nature by knowledge of 
 the faith itself in its original formation, 
 and by comparison with previous eras of 
 change. From this point of view there 
 can be but one answer: Historically 
 Christianity is a religion about Jesus, 
 originating with a psychological expe- 
 rience of his disciples which we term 
 the Eesurrection, and propagated under 
 Hellenistic influences. 
 
 To say that there is nothing new in 
 the proposals of Nineteenth Century 
 Liberalism is to concede exactly what its 
 advocates maintain. In their enthusi- 
 asm for getting back to the facts of his- 
 tory they have not only gone back to the 
 beginning of our religion. They have 
 gone clear past the beginning and come 
 out on the other side in pure Judaism. 
 The Christian religion did not begin 
 with the earthly life of Jesus. That is 
 an idea which arose after the period of 
 the Apostles in the age of the Evange- 
 lists such as Mark. Our religion began 
 
 [70] 
 
Nineteenth Century Libeealism 
 
 witli the "manifestation of the Son of 
 God," which was not a physical but a 
 psychical experience. It began with the 
 Cross and Eesurrection, the doctrine 
 about Jesus. Of course this experience 
 was conditioned on what had gone be- 
 fore. The known example and teaching 
 of the Galilean prophet gave content to 
 the all-important proper name in the 
 confession "Jesus is Lord." That ex- 
 ample and teaching in themselves repre- 
 sented simply Judaism brought to its 
 perfect consummation and flower, the 
 religion of the prophets freely inter- 
 preted by One in whom their very spirit 
 was incarnate. Paul and others who 
 brought this gospel of the Eesurrection 
 of Jesus to the Gentile world applied the 
 Hellenistic conceptions of Incarnation 
 and Redemption to the story of Cal- 
 vary. 
 
 What right, then, have we to call 
 it an "intrusion" when Paul interprets 
 that tragedy, together with his own sub- 
 sequent experience and that of others 
 in whom (to use his own expression) 
 "God energized" through the Spirit of 
 
 [71] 
 
Chbistianity Old and New 
 
 Jesus to give the knowledge and power 
 of sonship and eternal life, by the use 
 of Hellenistic conceptions? Had all the 
 Greek-speaMng Gentile world converted 
 by Paul and his fellow-preachers of the 
 'gospel of reconciliation' no rights of 
 citizenship in the kingdom of heaven, be- 
 cause forsooth Jesus was a Jew and 
 spoke Aramaic? Paul himself admits 
 that for the confirmation of the prom- 
 ises made to the fathers, Jesus was 
 made "a minister of the circumcision." 
 But he does not admit that "God is the 
 God of the Jews only and not of the 
 Gentiles also." The experience of re- 
 demption, sonship, participation in the 
 eternal life of God through the spirit of 
 Jesus have been no small factor in his- 
 toric Christianity. These have found 
 expression in myriads of lives that knew 
 little enough of his earthly career. Are 
 we the spiritual children of our Jewish 
 mother only, and not also of our Gentile 
 father? If so, we must logically repu- 
 diate Paul, and humbly return to the 
 Galilean apostles who knew him after 
 the flesh. We must seek a late admission 
 
 [72] 
 
Nineteenth Century Libekalism 
 
 to the little group of reformed Jews in 
 Palestine who made James, the Lord's 
 brother, a kind of Caliph in Jerusalem, 
 and for a century or so continued to 
 regard themselves as the only heirs 
 apparent of the coming kingdom. 
 
 Such a narrow type of Jewish Chris- 
 tianity actually did exist from the be- 
 ginning. It repudiated Paul and all his 
 works. It looked upon Jesus as the 
 "Prophet like unto Moses," whose 
 teachings, if obeyed, would induce God's 
 sending him into the world again as the 
 Messiah, to restore the kingdom to 
 Israel. It confined its horizon to the 
 twelve tribes of Israel, with a penum- 
 bra of Gentile converts ' ' clinging to the 
 skirts of him that is a Jew," and it 
 continued in existence as late as 150 
 A. D. At this date Justin and other 
 Greek fathers describe the sect, etymolo- 
 gizing their name, 'Ebionite,' to mean 
 'poor' in respect to Christology. Like 
 the rest of orthodox Jews, the Ebion- 
 ites could see God in nature and God in 
 history; they recognized that Jesus was 
 an incomparable teacher in this aspect 
 
 [73] 
 
Christianity Old and New 
 
 of religion. But there they stopped 
 short. To see God in personality, as the 
 Greek sees him, was to them abomina- 
 tion and blasphemy. Paul's conception 
 of the message to the world as a doctrine 
 about Jesus, a gospel of "God reconcil- 
 ing the world in Christ" preached by 
 "ministers of the new covenant" who 
 had seen, like Moses, "the light of the 
 knowledge of the glory of God," but "in 
 the face of Jesus Christ" — -that was 
 beyond them. They could not see that 
 the personality of Jesus in his life, 
 death, and resurrection is a phenomenon 
 which has significance for our personal- 
 ity. That was an idea which only the 
 Greek mind was ready for. Since Plato 
 it had come to concern itself with the 
 relation, now and hereafter, of the con- 
 scious self to its preexisting, infinite 
 Source, the conscious, purposing God. 
 To the whole Greek-speaking world of 
 Paul's day, including Greek-speaking 
 Jews like himself, this had become the 
 main thing in religion. To the Ebionite 
 it was nothing. The Ebionite remained 
 a practical, moral, 'reformed' Jew. 
 
 [74] 
 
Nineteenth Cbntuey Libeealism 
 
 For the Greek Christian, on the con- 
 trary, the real story of Jesus was not 
 the story of the Nazarene prophet like 
 unto Moses; nor was the Greek Chris- 
 tian's expectation of the coming Christ 
 the hope for a second and greater David. 
 His version of the redemption story was 
 a drama of the unseen. It began with 
 Incarnation — entrance of an element of 
 the divine nature into the world in the 
 person of Jesus. It touched the depth 
 of pathos in Atonement — the suffering 
 of this divine Being in and for our hu- 
 manity. It culminated in his victory 
 over our foes of sin and death. The 
 Greek Christian's expectation of Christ 
 was that of a Forerunner of our Immor- 
 tality,^ welcoming his brethren into the 
 life hid with him in the bosom of his 
 Father. Can we wonder that to the 
 Greek Christian the ethics of the Ser- 
 mon on the Mount and the 'paternal the- 
 ism' of the Lord's Prayer taken alone 
 represented an 'impoverished' form of 
 the gospel ? How could we expect Justin 
 Martyr midway in the second century 
 
 3 Of. Acts 4: 15, Heb. 2: 10, 12: 2 (Greek). 
 [75] 
 
Chkistianity Old and New 
 
 to do otherwise than hold that the Jew- 
 ish Christian who had failed to take in 
 the significance of this drama had never 
 risen to the true meaning of the gospel, 
 never got beyond a reformed and uni- 
 versalized Judaism! In point of fact, 
 as Jewish Christianity dwindled and 
 Greek Christianity increased, the Greek 
 Christian at last lost patience and main- 
 tained that the Jewish Christian, if he 
 persisted in his intolerance of the 
 ampler Gentile gospel, should be ex- 
 cluded from the Church altogether. 
 
 rv. The rivalry between that ethical 
 type of Christianity to which Nineteenth 
 Century Liberalism looks back and the 
 mystical did not cease with the second 
 century. In that age the conception 
 which views it as a doctrine about Jesus, 
 the revelation of God to man and of 
 man to himself, embodied in the story of 
 Calvary had the upper hand. Individ- 
 ual personality and its destiny was the 
 great interest of the day, and so far as 
 the history of religion enables us to 
 judge, this interest can never cease to be 
 
 [76] 
 
Nineteenth Century Lzbebalism 
 
 felt. For men are concerned with more 
 than racial destiny. The individual is 
 not made for the social order, but the 
 social order for the individual. Hence 
 while the Empire lasted personal re- 
 demption and immortality played a 
 larger part in men's rehgious interest 
 than questions of social duty and the 
 evolution of a Kingdom of God. Gentile 
 Christianity, with its Greek ideas, its 
 inheritance from the mystical religions 
 of individual redemption, its interest in 
 personality in man and God, had free 
 course and was glorified. The theology 
 it built up for the Church was based on 
 Paul, elaborated by Greek thinkers, 
 consolidated by Augustine. It became 
 our theology, our Christianity in system- 
 atic form. But Semitic 'liberaUsm' 
 when ejected as heretical from the fel- 
 lowship of Nicsea did not cease to be. 
 It experienced a marvellous renaissance 
 on its own ancestral ground, that grew 
 and flourished as the Empire fell into 
 decay. 
 
 We are apt to forget that there was 
 a Unitarian movement against the 
 
 [77] 
 
Christianity Old and New 
 
 Cliristianity of tlie Greek theologians 
 many centuries before tlie days of Chan- 
 ning. This type of Unitarian belief 
 numbers its adherents today by the hun- 
 dred million against the few hundred 
 thousands of our own nineteenth cen- 
 tury Bostonian variety, and is still 
 spreading at a surprising rate. I mean 
 the great movement of reaction against 
 the Greek type of Christianity which 
 started in the seventh century from the 
 Syrian coast and Arabia with the cry: 
 "There is no God but God (the God 
 of Abraham) and Mohammed is his 
 prophet." If we put "Jesus" in place 
 of "Mohammed" — and every good Mos- 
 lem will admit that until Mohammed this 
 would be right — ^you have the same kind 
 of religion in Islam that you would 
 have if you carried back Christianity 
 to the period before Paul. Ebionism 
 had a creed exactly equivalent : ' ' God is 
 the God of Abraham, Moses, and David ; 
 and Jesus is his Prophet." And Mo- 
 hammedan unitarianism is a present- 
 day force by no means to be despised. 
 It is less scientific than Nineteenth Cen- 
 
 [78] 
 
Nineteenth Century Libeealism 
 
 tury Liberalism; but those who know it 
 at first hand know that it more than 
 makes up in sincerity of conviction, in 
 ardor of missionary zeal, and in success 
 of missionary effort, for its medieval 
 world-view. 
 
 Do not think I am depreciating the 
 historico-critical Nineteenth Century 
 Liberalism by this comparison. Far 
 from it. One must see Islam as it is 
 to see what a social, ethical religion can 
 do for barbarous conditions of life. I 
 make the comparison for the sake of 
 perspective and alignment. The two 
 attempts to reconstruct Christianity, 
 Islam and Nineteenth Century Liberal- 
 ism, are of the same order, though sepa- 
 rated by thirteen centuries. Their com- 
 mon viewpoint is that the Greek ele- 
 ment in Christianity, the doctrine that 
 the person and fate of Jesus, in his work, 
 his martyrdom, his resurrection, rightly 
 interpreted, contain (in Hegel's phrase) 
 a "representation of the divine idea," 
 is all "pagan intrusion"; and that the 
 results of biblical criticism invite us to 
 discard it. So conceived, the work of 
 
 [79] 
 
Christianity Old and New 
 
 tlie historical critic — if lie himself may- 
 be permitted to judge — is indeed a mag- 
 nificent failure. He has kept the base 
 metal and thrown away the silver. Dr. 
 Anderson will be justified in speaking 
 of the "Collapse of Liberal Christian- 
 ity, ' ' if its only result is to reason itself 
 back into Judaism, annul the marriage 
 of Semitic with Aryan faith, and disown 
 the parent from which it drew the vital 
 energy of its earliest and greatest days. 
 Eeligion may choose for its asylum be- 
 tween Synagogue and Mosque. The 
 Church henceforth will be but an empty 
 shrine. 
 
 But no; Nineteenth Century Liberal- 
 ism is far from having said the last word 
 on the Religion of the Future. Never- 
 theless, it is well to remember the great 
 words it has said. The biblical criticism 
 to which it appeals has indeed made re- 
 construction unavoidable. And it has 
 supplied some of the most indispensable 
 elements for the structure. It has re- 
 stored to us from the Synoptic Gospels 
 the priceless legacy of the Historical 
 Jesus, resting on the witness of Mat- 
 
 [80] 
 
Nineteenth Centuey Libbeai,ism 
 
 thew and Peter. It has put the records 
 of historical fact into critical, scientific 
 form, just at the exigency when they 
 were needed. On the other hand it has 
 not given us the Religion, the Christian- 
 ity, of the Future. It has not even, as 
 yet, given us the real Christianity of the 
 past, the Christianity that won the Gen- 
 tile world in the days of Peter and Paul. 
 For that we must look to further and 
 wider results of the critic's work, his 
 study of the doctrine about Jesus, the 
 interpretation given by primitive be- 
 lievers to the work of God effected by 
 the Spirit of Jesus. His death, his 
 resurrection, inwardly experienced by 
 these men as "the power of God unto 
 salvation" — these are the most impor- 
 tant data in all the psychology of reli- 
 gion, to speak only from the scientist's 
 point of view. 
 
 The resurrection experience was 
 necessarily described by those who had 
 it under the forms of thought and speech 
 available to their time. Critics, if their 
 work is to have value, must distinguish 
 between pre-critical and critical history, 
 
 [81] 
 
Christianity Old and New 
 
 pre-scientific and scientific reflection 
 upon experience. Pre-critical report we 
 call 'tradition' or 'legend.' Pre-scien- 
 tific theology we call 'myth. ' Those who 
 fail to understand the object of criticism 
 regard these terms 'legend' and 'myth' 
 as opprobrious. When a great scholar 
 of our time, describing the Eedemption 
 doctrine of the Pauline missionary 
 preaching, declares : 
 
 This whole point of view is a myth from 
 beginning to end, and cannot be termed any- 
 thing else It is the story of a God who 
 
 had descended from heaven.* 
 
 the common assumption is that the critic 
 means to reject this apostolic interpre- 
 tation of the career of Jesus as worth- 
 less, whereas it really implies only that 
 Paul's interpretation is precisely what 
 it was required to be to fit the capacity 
 of a pre-philosophic age. 
 
 But call this apostolic interpretation 
 what you will, 'myth' or 'theology' or 
 'philosophy,' the experience for which it 
 stands is the inward work of Grod 
 
 4 Wernle, Beginnings of our Beligion, I, p. 251. 
 [82] 
 
Nineteenth Centtjey Libeealism 
 
 effected through the Spirit of Jesus, and 
 that experience, then and now, repre- 
 sents the acme in the psychology of 
 religion. If the Apostle's expression of 
 his experience is unsuitable to our time 
 let it be recast — let us make a better. 
 The very last thing the true critic and 
 historian of religion will do with 'mythi- 
 cal' interpretations of genuine expe- 
 rience is to throw them away. In the con- 
 cluding Lecture, on Idealistic Monism 
 and its proposals for the reconstruction 
 of Christianity, I shall have occasion to 
 speak of the results of criticism in the 
 mythology of the faith; for, as you 
 know, the Idealistic Monist finds the be- 
 ginnings of our religion quite rightly in 
 the gospel about JesuSj and even con- 
 siders its mythology to be its sole ele- 
 ment of value. But Idealistic Monism 
 also makes its appeal to the results of 
 criticism, and may be judged by the his- 
 tory of a corresponding tendency in the 
 early Church. 
 
 [83] 
 
Ill 
 
 TWENTIETH CENTURY MYTHI- 
 CAL IDEALISM 
 
 I. Let me remind you of the state- 
 ment made in the previous lectures that 
 Nineteenth Century Liberalism is not 
 the only claimant to represent the reli- 
 gion of the future. The reconstruction 
 of Christianity proposed by the Ideal- 
 istic Monists, Kalthoff and Drews in 
 Germany, J. M. Robertson and K. C. 
 Anderson in England, and W. B. Smith 
 in this country, is also a candidate. And 
 Idealistic Monism is the opposite of 
 Nineteenth Century Liberalism. It pro- 
 poses to discard the history and retain 
 the mythology. It favors Greek thought 
 as against Semitic. It looks upon Paul 
 as the real founder of Christianity, and 
 in the extreme form, represented by 
 Drews, Robertson, and Smith, it even 
 denies that there ever was a historic 
 Jesus. Where Paul in his letters refers 
 to events in the career of Jesus critical 
 
 [84] 
 
Twentieth Century Idealism 
 
 surgeons of this school operate at once. 
 The passage must be removed as a for- 
 eign body. Others of saner judgment, 
 such as Mauernbrecher, admit that the 
 historical portrait drawn by the critics 
 is in the main trustworthy, but they de- 
 mand to know how one is to worship a 
 saint without a halo. Schnehen, for 
 example, pours out the vials of his scorn 
 upon the 'liberals' whom he designates 
 "Jesus-worshippers." The uncritical 
 traditionalist, says Schnehen, is in a way 
 consistent. He has always been taught 
 to think of Jesus as a superhuman Being 
 temporarily resident on the earth. Such 
 worship is justifiable. The 'liberal,' 
 says Schnehen, is inconsistent. He has 
 taken away the halo of mythology and 
 substituted a modern portrait. But he 
 still continues to bow down in worship 
 as before — or at least pretends to. Fie 
 on such hypocrisy, is his cry. Speak the 
 truth out squarely, and confess that 
 Jesus either never lived at all, or that 
 his earthly career was not substantially 
 different from other men's and has no 
 bearing on the case. Religion does not 
 
 [85] 
 
Chbistianitt Old and New 
 
 concern itself with questions of history. 
 Religion concerns itself with the expe- 
 rience of the soul, and the artless lan- 
 guage of this experience is myth. Com- 
 parative mythology, therefore, is the 
 proper basis for the religion of the fu- 
 ture. 
 
 The Monist's proposal has had a 
 startling effect, where, as in Germany, 
 it has been brought squarely before the 
 people in great public conventions. 
 Walls and fences have been placarded 
 with "Jesus did live," and "Jesus 
 lives." In Berlin vast crowds stood for 
 hours on the steps of the great Court 
 Church singing chorals and the Emperor 
 himself took part in the controversy. 
 Meantime the Monists were making a 
 sensational propaganda through the 
 principal cities of the Empire, and since 
 that the propaganda has been system- 
 atically organized abroad. Drew's 
 "Christ-myth," already in its tenth or 
 eleventh edition in Germany, has been 
 recently translated and published in this 
 country by the Open Court Publishing 
 Company of Chicago, organ of the Mon- 
 
 [86] 
 
Twentieth Century Idealism 
 
 ists, and the theological journals are 
 now exchanging shots over the new 
 battle-ground. 
 
 As I said in the first lecture of this 
 series, the Monist propaganda, active as 
 it is, does not strike the historian of reli- 
 gion as important in itself, but simply 
 as a symptom. It indicates that we are 
 being swept by the first waves of a reac- 
 tion from the ethical toward the mystical 
 pole of Christian thought. We are be- 
 ginning to feel again the insatiable hu- 
 man needs which gave birth to our reli- 
 gion in the first place, and to realize that 
 Christianity did not begin as a system 
 of ethics taught and lived by Jesus as 
 conditioning the Kingdom of God. It 
 began as a doctrine about Christ which 
 aimed to express the inward experience 
 of Peter and Paul. The Christology of 
 Peter was antecedent to that of Paul. 
 It expresses itself in the utterance: 
 "God hath made that same Jesus whom 
 ye crucified both Lord and Christ." It 
 is an apotheosis doctrine. That of Paul 
 is expressed under the form of a descent 
 and ascent, in Hindu phraseology an 
 [87] 
 
Christianity Old and New 
 
 avatar doctrine: The spirit which was 
 in Jesus came into the world from God. 
 It so fully pervaded and controlled his 
 nature as to give him complete victory 
 over sin and death, the foes of human- 
 ity. The proof of this appears in the 
 fact that after his death the same Spirit 
 was received by other men in his name, 
 Paul himself being of the number, 
 transforming their personality. This 
 is essentially an Incarnation doctrine. 
 Paul has many expressions to describe 
 his psychological experience which I 
 need not repeat, "new birth," "new 
 creation," "laying hold on life," "liv- 
 ing in the Spirit," and the like. For 
 him the main point was the moral trans- 
 formation by which he found it now pos- 
 sible — yes, easy — to overcome the "law 
 of sin in his members" which had 
 "warred against the law of his mind, 
 bringing him into captivity to sin and 
 death." Others, less keenly susceptible 
 on this moral side, were more impressed 
 by the spectacular phenomena accom- 
 panying early Christian assemblies, the 
 charismata or "gifts of the Spirit." 
 
 [88] 
 
Twentieth Century Idealism 
 
 Wliat we have to note is that the Spirit 
 of JesTis, after his crucifixion, effected 
 certain psychological phenomena in a 
 group of men which they give account of 
 in the doctrine that God has made him 
 "Lord," "Christ," "Redeemer," "Son 
 of Grod" for humanity. Our religion 
 began with the testimony to this experi- 
 ence thus interpreted. It was a "wit- 
 ness of the resurrection." In Peter it 
 took a form conditioned by his acquaint- 
 ance with Jesus "after the flesh." In 
 Paul its form was conditioned by the 
 fact that his knowledge of Jesus was 
 "after the Spirit" only. You cannot 
 deny the psychological experience; for 
 it still continues. You can indeed say: 
 The interpretation hitherto put upon it 
 is fanciful and unphilosophie. Doubt- 
 less Peter's interpretation, and Paul's 
 too, was pre-scientific. But that only 
 calls upon you to give a better and more 
 philosophic one. That is what the 
 Monist means when he says : Mythology 
 is the true foundation for religion. 
 
 We may heartily and sincerely com- 
 mend this view in two respects. 
 
 [89] 
 
Christianity Old and New 
 
 (1) It is true to history in reminding 
 us that Christianity began as a teaching 
 about Jesns, not as the teaching of 
 Jesus. This is something which Nine- 
 teenth Century Liberalism did seem in 
 danger of forgetting. 
 
 (2) The Monist's view is also true to 
 philosophy in making the chief concern 
 of religion the welfare of the individual 
 soul. Having once attained to the con- 
 sciousness of an individual personality, 
 the human being must concern himself 
 with the welfare of this new-found 
 treasure. Even his concern for the wel- 
 fare of others must now transcend con- 
 ditions of bodily comfort. Their 'per- 
 sonality' must have room to develop as 
 well as his. Religion must henceforth 
 have for him as its primary object 
 the bringing of his own 'personality' 
 into right relations — relations not of the 
 present only, but of the eternal world. 
 Until he has secured this highest good 
 for himself — 'salvation' is the 'mytho- 
 logical' term for it — ^he cannot expect to 
 secure it for others. But what is ' salva- 
 tion' when we cease to think in terms of 
 
 [90] 
 
Twentieth Century Idealism 
 
 mythology and begin to think in terms 
 of scientific psychology? 
 
 Christianity, as I have said, was in 
 its early days only one of a number of 
 religions of personal redemption, most 
 or all of them oriental, which were offer- 
 ing 'salvation,' and competing for the 
 adherence of the mixed masses of the 
 cosmopolitan Empire. The old national 
 religions had crumbled with the nation- 
 alities concerned. Judaism had been 
 transcendentalized, the religion of Eome 
 had been made cosmopolitan in the form 
 of emperor-worship. The new sense 
 of the value of individual personality, 
 largely a product of Greek thinking, was 
 expressing itself in a revival of the 
 myths and ritual forms of ancient 
 nature-worship. The old chthonic reli- 
 gions which had personified the power 
 of astral motion, or of vegetal and ani- 
 mal fructification and reproduction, 
 were recast in forms to give expression 
 to the soul's aspiration after this inde- 
 structible life and power. Christianity 
 triumphed because it met this need and 
 met it better than its rivals. Forty 
 
 [91] 
 
Cheistianitt Old and New 
 
 years ago, yes, even twenty, we knew 
 almost nothing about this prodigious 
 movement of the human mind between 
 the time when Alexander married Asia 
 to Europe and that when the Antonine 
 emperors set up the national religion of 
 Rome as a new and universal state reli- 
 gion. Our generation has seen the rise 
 of the school of comparative mythol- 
 ogy {die religions gescMcMliche Schule). 
 Bousset and Gunkel have showed how 
 Persian and G-reek ideas were respon- 
 sible for the later developments of 
 Judaism. E. H. Charles has given us 
 editions of the apocalyptic literature, 
 with its hierarchies of angels and 
 demons and its dualistic world-view. 
 We have obtained an insight into the 
 nature of Pharisaism with its book-reli- 
 gion, its doctrines of angels and spirits, 
 of individual resurrection and partici- 
 pation in the world to come. Rohde's 
 Psyche, Reitzenstein 's Poimander and 
 Krebs' Der Logos als Heiland have 
 opened the mines of Hermetic specula- 
 tion of Egypt and shown from another 
 angle how the Hellenistic mind was 
 
 [92] 
 
Twentieth Centttet Idealism 
 
 absorbed with, tbe idea of personal im- 
 mortality by participation in divine life. 
 Dieterieh's Mithras Liturgie and Cu- 
 mont 's enlightening studies bave thrown 
 light on the process by which Roman 
 paganism was submerged under the 
 flood of mystery-cults from the East. 
 The mystery-cult of Mithra, carried by 
 Roman armies from Persia to Britain, 
 was only the last and most formidable 
 of these rivals of Christianity. Percy 
 Gardner and Grilbert Murray have lifted 
 a corner of the curtain from the Greek 
 mysteries. Frazer's Adonis, Attis, 
 Osiris has revealed the persistence into 
 medieval times of these prehistoric 
 forms of nature-worship. All have 
 proved that the treatment of the story 
 of Jesus, as Paul and the Greek-Chris- 
 tian world treated it, was simply inevit- 
 able. The theme of the Dying and Ris- 
 ing World Redeemer, which one of the 
 recent booklets of the comparative 
 Religionists takes as its title, was the 
 stock in trade of the oriental religions. 
 There were scores of them. The ancient 
 nature-myths of Orpheus descending to 
 
 [93] 
 
Christianity Old and New 
 
 the other world to bring back dead 
 Eurydice, Osiris, Attis, Adonis, return- 
 ing from the reahns of death, sun- 
 heroes like Marduk, Mithra, Herakles, 
 renewing their strength in conflict with 
 the powers of death and darkness — all 
 these were brought out and refurbished, 
 because in the piping times of peace, and 
 in the world-culture of the Empire, men 
 had come to realize that they had indi- 
 vidual souls, and had begun to think 
 quite as much about what was going to 
 become of these as about what was 
 going to become of tribe or nation. 
 The Empire should take care of itself. 
 It is because the tragedy of Calvary 
 was enacted in a generation that had 
 risen to this level of consciousness that 
 it gave rise to a new religion, and not to 
 a mere reformation of Judaism. What 
 Philo sought to do and could not, because 
 he spoke only from the academic halls 
 of Alexandria, Paul the "apostle to the 
 Gentiles" accomplished. We in our 
 generation have just begun to realize the 
 real psychological situation in the first 
 century A. D., which made the new 
 
 [94] 
 
Twentieth Centxjey Idealism 
 
 world-religion possible. And of course 
 we begin to have at once a school of 
 transcendentalists who say: "What is 
 the use of the historical element in 
 Christianity anyway ? " " Why not take 
 simply the mythology that the first 
 century insisted on applying to the case 
 of Jesus, and reduce it to modern 
 scientific terms 1 ' ' 
 
 These are the first fruits of the so- 
 called ReligionsgeschicJitliche Schule, 
 the school of New Testament criticism 
 which treats its religious ideas as the 
 silver, and seeks to understand these 
 ideas in relation to current phases of the 
 age-long, instinctive aspiration of hu- 
 manity toward some sort of participa- 
 tion in the cosmic life. 
 
 What now is true in this contention? 
 It is true that Christianity never would 
 have become a world-refigion at all but 
 for the inward experience of Saul of 
 Tarsus, a typical Hellenistic experience 
 of individual soul-redemption. We may 
 say truly that Saul of Tarsus never 
 would have had this experience if he had 
 not been born and bred on Gentile soil. 
 
 [95] 
 
Christianity Old and New 
 
 Jew as lie was, it was not the conserva- 
 tive type of Judaism which he followed 
 — the Sadducean — nor the political — 
 Zealotry. It was Pharisaism, the pro- 
 gressive type, the transcendental. Saul 
 of Tarsus had followed it, we are told, 
 under Gamaliel, a rabbi famous for his 
 study of Greek literature. Saul's soul- 
 devouring pursuit had been an ideal of 
 personal redemption, an ideal which, 
 however firmly rooted in Judaism, espe- 
 cially in Pharisean Judaism, in the time 
 of Paul, is not of Hebrew origin. It is 
 born of the antithesis between flesh and 
 spirit. It springs from the discovery of 
 the personal ego, 'the inward man,' 
 projected against the background of a 
 material world, alien, if not hostile, to 
 the spirit. This self-discovery of the 
 soul was not a discovery of the Hebrew 
 prophets. It is the response of Greek 
 thought to the Delphic motto: "Know 
 thyself. ' ' And Pharisaism as a religion 
 of personal redemption developed in two 
 directions. One was the legalism of the 
 synagogue from which Paul revolted. 
 The other was a religion of the Spirit. 
 
 [96] 
 
Twentieth Cbntxjet Idealism 
 
 II. Knowledge of these contemporary 
 conditions of religious thouglit leads 
 to the following general proposition: 
 Personal religion in our sense of the 
 term may be regarded broadly as a pro- 
 duct of Grseco-Roman cosmopolitanism. 
 But it did not, and could not, fully 
 develop on the ordinary basis of alle- 
 gorized mythology. Christianity pre- 
 vailed because of its more solid basis of 
 historic fact. 
 
 We may well approve the Monist's 
 championship of mythology. It repre- 
 sents the mystical, individual factor in 
 religion, that is, pre-scientific theology. 
 But the Monist's reading of history is 
 wrong. In the providence of God the 
 mystical religion of personal redemp- 
 tion came to effective expression only 
 through the acquisition of a social body. 
 It became incarnate when it laid hold of 
 the Christ-idea. An adequate, ultimate 
 personal Redeemer for individual souls 
 was found only in the World-saviour, the 
 Prophet of Nazareth, the Christ of the 
 new kingdom, who had now been made 
 'Lord.' 
 
 [97] 
 
Chkistianity Old and New 
 
 Paul's conversion, it is true, was con- 
 ditioned by the hunger of his own soul 
 for 'redemption' in more than the 
 ancient Hebrew sense, in something of 
 the Greek sense, i.e., emancipation of the 
 soul by affiliation with God. But Paul 
 would never have found the satisfaction 
 of his own soul-hunger in the doctrine 
 that 'Jesus is the Christ' if others 
 before him, victims, like Stephen, of his 
 persecuting zeal, and still others before 
 Stephen, back to Peter, whose conver- 
 sion Paul explicitly makes parallel in 
 all essential points with his own, had not 
 had an equivalent experience of the 
 risen, glorified Jesus as a personal 
 Redeemer. The beginning of our reli- 
 gion was the doctrine of 'the Spirit' 
 as an effluence from the risen Jesus. 
 
 There is a profound justice not only 
 in the representation of the New Testa- 
 ment that Christianity began as a wit- 
 ness of the resurrection, but also in its 
 manifold witness that this redemptive 
 experience, from which our religion 
 starts, must be traced in the first in- 
 stance to Peter. At first sight there may 
 
 [98] 
 
Twentieth Centtjey Ideax,ism 
 
 seem to be no vital significance in the 
 mere names 'Paul,' 'Peter.' If we are 
 studying as a basis for the religion of 
 the future the psychological experience 
 which has found classical expression in 
 the Christian doctrine of redemption, 
 what difference can it make who led the 
 way? If anything one would say, Let 
 Paul be the founder. The experience of 
 Paul is relatively clear; for his whole 
 gospel is based on it. That of Peter is 
 most obscure; for the secondary narra- 
 tives which come down to us have un- 
 fortunately eclipsed the record of this 
 vital, fundamental event, how Peter was 
 "converted" after the crucifixion, and 
 "stabhshed his brethren." All that 
 remains is a few traces of how Peter 
 became the Rock-foundation of the new 
 brotherhood, the Pillar of the new 
 temple; how, as Luke says, "the Lord 
 appeared to Simon," or how, as Paul 
 says, "God energized in Peter unto an 
 apostleship of the circumcision." About 
 all we know of Peter's experience is the 
 bare fact that the risen Christ was 
 "manifested to him." This primitive 
 
 [99] 
 
Christianity Old and New 
 
 form of the gospel of the resurrection 
 has heen superseded by traditions which 
 concern themselves only with later dis- 
 putes about what became of Jesus ' body, 
 traditions which play no part whatever 
 in Paul's report of the common apostolic 
 testimony to the fundamental inward 
 experience, and need play no part in our 
 own religious faith. It surely is dis- 
 appointing to know so little about the 
 most basic fact in the whole history of 
 our religion. But 'learn from the 
 enemy'! The vain endeavors of the 
 opponents of historical Christianity to 
 rid themselves of these references of 
 Paul to Peter's experience, the anticipa- 
 tion of his own, testify to their value. 
 Much as the Monists dislike to have it so, 
 Peter and not Paul was the founder of 
 the resurrection faith. 
 
 The one thing we do know for certain 
 about the psychological origin of our 
 religion is that it did not begin in the 
 speculative mind of a late Jewish theo- 
 logian, filled with the strange and 
 mingled ideas of Hellenistic Judaism, 
 unchecked by any personal recollection 
 
 [100] 
 
Twentieth Centuby Idealism 
 
 of Jesus as he was. It began in the 
 mind of one who had known Jesus inti- 
 mately, a plain and simple Gralilean, 
 whose heart had been riven by an agony 
 of remorse, despair, and bitter self- 
 humiliation that made his experience in 
 those days of Calvary a full equivalent 
 for Paul's, but one whom we know other- 
 wise only as a plain man of the people. 
 Paul in his letters again and again de- 
 scribes his religious experience as a 
 participation in the passion of Jesus, a 
 dying and rising again with Christ. 
 Peter 's is not only referred to by him as 
 similar; we can see for ourselves that 
 it must needs have been so. 
 
 Meagre indeed is our knowledge of the 
 inward experience of those pre-Pauline 
 disciples, but they have left us one 
 record, one testimony of their faith, as 
 full of meaning as the Pauline Epistles 
 themselves, if only we knew how to inter- 
 pret it. I mean the rite of baptism, 
 adopted in the days immediately after 
 the crucifixion, as a distinctive rite of 
 individual initiation into a separate 
 community of believers in Jesus as 
 
 [101] 
 
Chbistianity Old and New 
 
 'Lord' and 'Christ.' The primitive dis- 
 ciples, we are told, were "baptized every- 
 one of them into the name of Jesus"; 
 and this baptism was "for the for- 
 giveness of their sins." Why was this? 
 What leads this group of men who had 
 companied with Jesus since the baptism 
 of John, now that they have become 
 convinced that God has raised him from 
 the dead and made him both Lord and 
 Christ, to hark back beyond all their 
 intercourse with him, beyond his preach- 
 ing of the gospel of the kingdom, be- 
 yond their own vague, or fantastic, 
 or materialistic messianic expectations, 
 once ruined, now again reviving, back 
 to the experience which some at least 
 had had of the baptism of John ? Why do 
 they now adopt John's rite of a "bap- 
 tism of repentance unto remission of 
 sins" as the token of their new-found 
 faith in Jesus I — To say that they had 
 had an oracle of the risen Lord bidding 
 them do so is only putting the same 
 thing in different language. It means 
 simply that in doing so they felt that 
 [102] 
 
Twentieth Centtjby Idealism 
 
 they were obeying the Spirit of Jesus ; 
 but why? 
 
 There is only one thing that the adop- 
 tion of this Johannine rite of lustration 
 in preparation for the kingdom of Grod 
 can mean at this time. It means that as 
 in Peter, so in the rest there was a pro- 
 found sense of unreadiness without 
 some moral renewal for the kingdom 
 whose dawn they deemed to be just 
 breaking. The fact that the adoption 
 of the rite was attended by ecstatic 
 manifestations identified by all as "the 
 Spirit of Jesus," and by the highest- 
 minded as tokens of the impartation of 
 his moral disposition, is enough to prove 
 that even before Paul the risen Christ 
 was looked to as a personal Redeemer, 
 a Saviour of individual souls from sin 
 and death. The rite of baptism proves 
 that Peter and other predecessors of 
 Paul shared his overwhelming sense of 
 moral unworthiness. They had not 
 'persecuted the Church,' but there was 
 cause enough in the contrast at the great 
 crisis of Calvary just past, between 
 Jesus' faithfulness and their own cow- 
 
 [103] 
 
Christianity Old and New 
 
 ardly desertion. By this or some other 
 means the sense of sin had come to so 
 predominate over any previous, more 
 worldly messianic expectations they 
 may have entertained that the need 
 most deeply felt was moral. They 
 longed for personal redemption. They 
 were more ready now to cry out: "De- 
 part from me, for I am a sinful man, 
 Lord," than to ask: "Grant that we 
 may sit one at thy right hand and one 
 at thy left in thy glory. ' ' The adoption 
 at this time of the rite of "baptism unto 
 remission of sins ' ' by the first followers 
 of Jesus means that their old messianic 
 ideas had been remoulded by the still 
 regnant spirit of Jesus. In the tragedy 
 of the cross they had been refined and 
 purified as by fire. The adoption of this 
 rite, and the experience of its attendant 
 phenomena prove that Jesus' disciples 
 had at last been brought over to his 
 point of view. The essence of the 
 expected kingdom was now to them also 
 a direct and filial relation with God, 
 and without a baptism of the Spirit 
 they felt unprepared to walk in the 
 
 [104] 
 
Twentieth Century IdeaxiIsm 
 
 presence of the living God. Only 
 as they became Christ's, not in word 
 only, but in very life and fact and in- 
 ward reality, could they be ready. If 
 they proved themselves actually his in 
 the same sense as when he had said in 
 Galilee, "Whosoever will do the will of 
 my Father, the same is my brother and 
 sister and mother," then they might 
 indeed expect with full assurance the 
 forgiveness, the free entrance into the 
 kingdom which he had promised in the 
 name of the Heavenly Father to repent- 
 ant publicans and harlots. Such con- 
 siderations as these can alone account 
 for their being now "baptized every one 
 of them into the name of Jesus, confess- 
 ing their sins." And the awakening to 
 this moral perception can be attributed 
 to no other cause than contact with the 
 spirit of Jesus, the man whose life had 
 been lived in their presence as one who 
 'walked with God.' 
 
 There are those who think the criti- 
 cally sifted records of the resurrection 
 appearances do not warrant the infer- 
 ence of any external objective factor. 
 
 [105] 
 
Christianity Old and New 
 
 Others think such a factor to be neces- 
 sarily implied, even while they refuse to 
 attribute to it qualities apprehensible to 
 the senses, and hold open the unknown 
 possibilities of discarnate spiritual ac- 
 tion. Even this difference is not abso- 
 lutely vital. The fundamental psycho- 
 logical fact is that these men were re- 
 newed — 'saved' — by contact with the 
 spirit of Jesus. Those who felt the 
 experience believed it immediate and 
 supernatural. Suppose it was in reality 
 an unconscious echo and reflection of 
 the days in Galilee. Still it was an expe- 
 rience of God ' ' reconciling the world in 
 Christ, not imputing unto men their 
 trespasses." In short, the experience 
 of personal redemption began even be- 
 fore Paul. And it began by contact with 
 and knowledge of a Christ whose mes- 
 sianic work consists in making men after 
 his own likeness "sons and daughters 
 of the Highest." 
 
 III. From this consideration of the 
 implications of the early adoption of the 
 rite of baptism, and the real lessons to 
 
 [106] 
 
Twentieth Centuet Idealism 
 
 be learned from the mythologic school 
 of criticism, we turn to another aspect 
 of the matter. For the mythologists, 
 too, appeal to history, and in reality 
 the Christ of mythology had a completer 
 trying out in the second century than 
 any which could be given today even to 
 a modernized and rationalized Christ- 
 myth. 
 
 With the baptism of water primitive 
 believers experienced invariably a bap- 
 tism of the Spirit of Jesus. Its out- 
 ward and spectacular effects were tem- 
 porary, as Paul foresaw they would be. 
 Its abiding effects were, and still are, 
 the essential phenomena of Christian- 
 ity. They that have made themselves 
 Christ's experience an adoption as sons 
 into a fellowship with Grod like that of 
 Jesus to the Father in heaven in whom 
 his spirit rested. They become Christ- 
 like. These are the essential, permanent 
 phenomena in the history of Christian- 
 ity. This is the psychology of religion 
 in the stage to which it has been brought 
 through the events of the evangelic 
 story. Can we, or can we not, erect upon 
 
 [107] 
 
Chkistianity Old and New 
 
 these a permanent structure of absolute 
 religion? 
 
 Certainly not without the historic life 
 and death of Jesus to give meaning 
 and content to the term "becoming 
 Christ's." We have seen that the reli- 
 gious experience of Paul was condi- 
 tioned by that of his predecessors who 
 had known the historic Jesus. Paul's 
 experience can be — should be — reinter- 
 preted in the light of the psychology of 
 religion as modern science understands 
 the term. His phraseology and forms 
 of thought, borrowed from Eabbinic 
 Judaism and Hellenistic speculation, 
 should be translated into the idiom of 
 philosophy. But this translation, if 
 worthily done, will not alter the fact. 
 We shall still have before us a typical 
 experience, expressive of the utmost 
 reach of redemptive, or mystical, reli- 
 gion. Two thousand years is not a long 
 time in the evolution of conscious per- 
 sonality, and I doubt if we can point to 
 evidences of advance beyond the reli- 
 gious consciousness of Paul ; though pos- 
 sibly we may have outgrown the phrase- 
 
 [108] 
 
Twentieth Cbntuey Idealism 
 
 ology whereby he expresses it, such as 
 "adoption," "apprehension of the life 
 of Grod," "entrance into," or "laying 
 hold upon," "the life that is hid with 
 Christ in God." The reinterpretation 
 of this typical Christian experience is a 
 problem for religious psychology. "We 
 may safely leave it to those who have 
 made a study of religious psychology in 
 its ancient and its modern modes of 
 expression. But those who propose to 
 treat this as embodying the whole vital 
 substance of our religion, if judged from 
 the historian's point of view, are sim- 
 ply repeating the old error of the Greek 
 ultra-PauUnists, the Docetic Gnostics of 
 the sub-apostolic age, against whom the 
 Church brought forward the rich treas- 
 ures of its historic tradition of the teach- 
 ing and life of Jesus, the MatthaBan and 
 the Petrine tradition. 
 
 Never was there an age of mythology 
 like the era of the great Gnostics, Ce- 
 rinthus, Basilides, Valentinus, Marcion. 
 And their Gnosticism was not the artless 
 indulgence of the poetic imagination to 
 express religious and philosophic ideas 
 
 [109] 
 
Christianity Old and New 
 
 resorted to because the language of phi- 
 losophy was still wanting. It repre- 
 sented the best psychology of the day. 
 Gnosticism was not naif. It was to the 
 last degree conscious and artful. It 
 collected from all the mythologies of 
 antiquity imaginative expressions of 
 the redemptive idea, and interwove with 
 these the story of Calvary. The begin- 
 nings of this great ultra- (or pseudo-) 
 Pauline movement called forth, as I have 
 said, from the Palestinian branch of the 
 Church, what we designate the Synoptic 
 Literature, the Church's historic tradi- 
 tion, based on the authority of Matthew 
 and Peter, of the teaching and work of 
 Jesus. And this again led to a further 
 development. From Ephesus, metropo- 
 lis of the Pauline mission field, came 
 forth in turn the third great element of 
 the New Testament canon, the so-called 
 Johannine literature, aiming to combine 
 in due proportion the historic and the 
 mystical elements of the faith. Later de- 
 velopments brought ever broader combi- 
 nation. Synoptic and Johannine tradi- 
 tion were placed side by side in the 
 
 [110] 
 
Twentieth Centuey Idealism 
 
 'fourfold Gospel.' Extremes on both 
 sides were discarded. Gnosticism was 
 relegated to the same limbo as the 
 anti-Pauline reformed Judaism of the 
 Ebionites. The Church catholic followed 
 instinctively the line of historic develop- 
 ment, recognizing "neither Jew nor 
 Greek," but only the "one new man in 
 Christ Jesus." 
 
 If the history of religion can teach us 
 anything it surely should teach us not 
 to repeat the mistake of the post-apos- 
 tolic age, when nearly one-half the 
 Church was led off into the vague, specu- 
 lative, eclectic theosophy of Gnosticism, 
 rejecting the historic Jesus and the hope 
 of a kingdom of God on earth in the vain 
 endeavor to build religion upon psycho- 
 logical experience alone, regardless of 
 the ethical impulse of the past. The 
 line of historic advance was then what it 
 is today, what it must continue to be 
 so long as Christianity remains the 
 flower of the religious spirit of East and 
 West, Semite and Aryan, the social and 
 the individual ideal. 
 
 The names Peter and Paul stand thus 
 
 [111] 
 
Christianity Old and New 
 
 for sometMng vitally significant, some- 
 thing corresponding to the twofold as- 
 pect of our religion which combines in 
 itself the individualism of the Hellenist 
 and the nationalism of the Jew. The 
 religious experience of Paul himself was 
 conditioned upon the previous expe- 
 rience of those who before him had been 
 baptized into the faith that Jesus is the 
 Christ. They, too, like Paul, had gone 
 through an experience which trans- 
 formed their Jewish hopes of a national 
 and social redemption into a new type 
 of messianic hope, wherein individual 
 fitness for eternal life in the presence 
 of God was the primary consideration. 
 This was the supreme effect of the trag- 
 edy of Calvary. But this effect would 
 not have been attained, there would have 
 been no resurrection hope, even of the 
 lower type, had not the disciples learned 
 through contact with the historic Jesus 
 as the only way to the realization of this 
 ideal such moral consecration as Ms 
 precepts, his life, his death exemplified. 
 Once and for all the ethical goal has 
 been set for humanity in Jesus ' doctrine 
 
 [112] 
 
Twentieth Century Idealism 
 
 of the Kingdom: God's will to be "done 
 on earth as it is in heaven." Eternal 
 life in fellowship with God has been con- 
 ditioned on the law of love and service. 
 The consciousness that they had a gospel 
 for the world came to Peter and those 
 that were with him when they became 
 aware that the Spirit of Jesus had 
 brought them into a new relation with 
 God. 
 
 The Petrine gospel, like the Pauline, 
 has its local and temporary limitations. 
 Those who at the founding of the 
 Church were "baptized into the name of 
 Jesus" conceived their relation to him 
 under the forms of Judaism. They 
 borrowed their phraseology from the 
 prophecy of Daniel and from the one 
 hundred and tenth Psalm. Doubtless 
 they could give but a crude account, 
 more or less figurative in form, of their 
 own psychological experience, that expe- 
 rience which we call the Resurrection, 
 and of which we can only say that 
 directly or indirectly it was the opera- 
 tion upon their personality of the per- 
 sonaHty of Jesus, the 'manifestation,' 
 [ 113 ] 
 
Christianity Old and New 
 
 as they call it, of Jesus as 'Lord. ' Their 
 account of tliis is in fact dominated by 
 the current ideas of the Davidic ruler 
 exalted to sit at the right hand of God 
 till his enemies be made his footstool. 
 It is profoundly influenced by the apoca- 
 lyptic figure of the 'Son of man' coming 
 to judgment upon the clouds of heaven. 
 These cruder ideas of the Jewish mes- 
 sianism developed since the Persian pe- 
 riod under the pressure of Hellenistic 
 persecution are at least as susceptible 
 of reinterpretation as the more philo- 
 sophic ideas of Paul, and they are al- 
 ready being rapidly transformed. What 
 we have to remember is that both types 
 of religious aspiration, the ' eschatologi- 
 cal,' as it is technically termed, and the 
 'mythical,' stand for actual experiences 
 which are repeated in successive genera- 
 tions of individuals and of the race. 
 Even the more mystical experience, the 
 consciousness of the 'twice-born,' has 
 its roots in history. Men who today 
 verify for themselves the inward sense 
 for which New Testament writers sup- 
 ply the terms 'adoption,' 'sonship,' and 
 
 [114] 
 
TWBKTIETH CeNTUEY IdEALISM 
 
 the like, pass througb. this experience 
 not because of Isis, or Attis, or Diony- 
 sus, not because of mythical fancy or 
 philosophical abstraction, but because of 
 the historic Jesus, and by spiritual con- 
 tact with him. It was the real impress 
 of his personality that wrought the 
 change in Peter. Dismiss from consid- 
 eration, if you will, all possibilities of 
 direct action from behind the veil of the 
 discamate spirit of Jesus on the soul of 
 his penitent disciple ; even so, I may still 
 justly maintain that had Jesus ' life and 
 teaching been materially different from 
 what we have been taught they were, this 
 basic experience of Christian psychology 
 would have been wanting. For Peter 
 that experience voiced itself in the doc- 
 trine that "Jesus is the Christ." In a 
 sense, Peter is the Eock on whom we 
 all are builded. Subsequent experience, 
 whether of Paul or of later generations, 
 is conditioned by that which went be- 
 fore. The content of the term 'Christ' 
 must vary. Paul did not mean by it 
 precisely what Peter meant. He takes 
 explicit pains to discriminate his sense 
 [115] 
 
Chbistianity Old and New 
 
 for the term from that it had to some of 
 his predecessors. Our sense must differ 
 from his. We do not and cannot mean 
 by "the Christ" what either Peter 
 meant, or Paul. But we retain the vital 
 elements of their meanings with our 
 own. Historic continuity is not sacri- 
 ficed. Christianity will continue to be 
 what it ever has been, the confession of 
 Jesus as 'the Christ,' and in that con- 
 fession each term is historic. The reli- 
 gion of the future must grow from the 
 double stock of the national religion of 
 Israel and the personality of Jesus. 
 
 I have reached the conclusion of my 
 task. My effort has been to enable you 
 to look at two significant movements of 
 modern religious thought from the view- 
 point of the historian of religion. Nine- 
 teenth Century 'Liberalism' and twen- 
 tieth century 'Idealism' seem to me from 
 this point of view in one respect alike. 
 They both reflect only the periodic oscil- 
 lation of the dominant religion of the 
 world between the hereditary poles of 
 its faith. We shall not swing beyond 
 
 [116] 
 
Twentieth Centxjbt Idealism 
 
 our orbit. We shall progress along the 
 line of true advance. But our progress 
 will be swifter and surer if we learn 
 by the broad experience of the past. 
 Christianity is not only a social but 
 also a personal religion. It is not 
 only ethical but mystical; not only the 
 gospel of Jesus, but also the gospel 
 ahoxit Jesus. Perhaps I cannot better 
 express it all than it is expressed in 
 the two oldest and simplest prayers 
 of the Church that we possess. They 
 form the liturgy for the sacrament of 
 the breaking of bread in the little man- 
 ual of primitive church observance, dis- 
 covered only a few years ago by Bryen- 
 nios in Constantinople, and now pre- 
 served in Jerusalem, the so-called 
 Teaching of the Twelve Apostles. 
 These are the two prayers prescribed 
 in it for the consecration of the broken 
 bread; one a thanksgiving for the expe- 
 rience of personal redemption, the other 
 a petition for the realization of the 
 kingdom of God. The individual thanks- 
 giving is this : 
 
 [117] 
 
Chbistianity Old and New 
 
 We thank thee, our Father, for the life and 
 the knowledge which thou hast made known 
 to us through Jesus thy Servant. 
 
 And to this the response is : 
 
 To thee be the glory forever. 
 
 The prayer for the kingdom of God is 
 this: 
 
 Even as this broken bread was scattered 
 over the hills, and when gathered became one 
 loaf, so let thy Church be gathered together 
 from the ends of the earth into Thy King- 
 dom. 
 
 The response of that ancient rubric 
 will find echo in every Christian heart: 
 
 For thiue is the glory and the power 
 through Jesus Christ forever. Amen. 
 
 [118 
 
IV 
 
 OLD AND NEW IN THE CHAEAC- 
 TERIZATION OF JESUS 
 
 Pragmatism, the newest fasMon in 
 pMlosophy, defines "truth" to be the 
 conception which "works." We need 
 not wonder, then, that the same age 
 which makes practical service the test 
 of truth should declare the independence 
 of Christianity from the historic Jesus. 
 Will not myth produce the same result 
 as fact, if accepted as fact? Will it not 
 nourish aspiration, hope, faith, every 
 religious disposition— yes, even when 
 understood to be myth and not fact, if 
 myth be defined as we have defined it — 
 the pre-scientific expression of philo- 
 sophic ideas? It may; but only in pro- 
 portion as those ideas are understood to 
 be 'true.' The philosophic ideas must 
 correspond with observed fact. And 
 this procedure brings us round to a com- 
 plete reversal of the pragmatic princi- 
 [119] 
 
Chbistianity Old and New 
 
 pie. The ideas work because they are 
 true. In proportion as they are felt to 
 be lacking in objective reality independ- 
 ent of individual preference they lose 
 their efficacy. 
 
 In point of fact, myth not only may 
 produce the good fruits of religious and 
 moral uplift. It has produced them. 
 The age of the revival of myth, the age 
 of the Hellenistic mystery religions, was 
 an age of immense rehgious and moral 
 uplift, as we have seen. The revolution 
 out of which emerged Christianity vic- 
 torious at last over paganism after three 
 centuries of mortal conflict, was a transi- 
 tion of the civilized world to a higher 
 level in matters of religion and ethics, a 
 transition of vast importance, on the 
 largest scale; and in that transition 
 Christianity shared with its rival reli- 
 gions of the Orient the great conceptions 
 of personal redemption, union with God, 
 and immortality. A firm foundation in 
 concrete historic fact was perhaps its 
 chief point of superiority. The mystery 
 religions united their adherents in loy- 
 alty to the cult-hero, and in effort for 
 
 [120] 
 
Chabacteeization of Jesxts 
 
 personal and social redemption, in pro- 
 portion as the myth could be made to 
 seem real. Christianity triumphed over 
 them in part perhaps because of its 
 loftier ideals, but certainly to no small 
 extent because of its manifestly better 
 claim to historical reality. Jesus was 
 an actuality. His redemptive career be- 
 longed not to the shadowy past of 
 ancient fable, but to recent years. He 
 had been "crucified under Pontius Pi- 
 late." The Gnostic sects which sacri- 
 ficed history to myth, tangible fact to 
 metaphysical idea, perished in spite of 
 their greater conformity to the spirit of 
 the times. The catholic faith, strongly 
 buttressed upon historic tradition, sur- 
 vived. So then, while myth may serve — 
 while it has served the cause of religious 
 uplift, on condition and so long as its 
 vague and shadowy symbolism bodied 
 forth to the untutored imagination ideas 
 and truths that could not otherwise ob- 
 tain expression, yet fact is better than 
 fiction. We of today do not stop with 
 myth, claiming that it is true because it 
 works. Neither do we utterly discard 
 
 [121] 
 
Cheistianity Old and New 
 
 myth or legend. We are ever seeking 
 to understand it, to penetrate it, to get 
 beyond it and beneath it, to the real 
 objective fact which works because it is 
 true. 
 
 It is this instinct for the objectively 
 true which makes the Quest of the His- 
 torical Jesus a quest worth while. Ideal 
 portraiture has its value. In ages of 
 unquestioning faith nothing more is 
 asked. The artist is not called upon to 
 be historically realistic. If he express 
 successfully his own soul's adoration, 
 the worshipper takes the correspondence 
 with historical fact for granted. Indeed, 
 attempts at historical realism are re- 
 sented. If photography could reproduce 
 the face of Jesus as records can even 
 now reproduce the voices of men no 
 longer living, the feat would probably 
 rouse the same antagonism today as was 
 roused but yesterday by historical criti- 
 cism of evangelic story. But historical 
 criticism has made its way. The ages 
 of authority and unquestioning faith 
 are gone. A new age has succeeded, 
 which appreciates better the value of 
 
 [122] 
 
Chakacterization of Jesus 
 
 objective, ultimate fact. This age finds 
 Christianity the leading religion of the 
 world. It is an existing power, perhaps 
 increasing, certainly potential. If the 
 loyalty of all who are for the reign of 
 right at the cost of sacrifice is ever to 
 be concentrated into a world-redeeming 
 power, it will be " in the name of Jesus ' ' ; 
 for by impartial historic survey there 
 is none other given among men whereby 
 the world can or will be saved. Seeing 
 Christianity, then, as it is, this criti- 
 cal, fact-loving, authority-disdaining age 
 wishes to understand the power thereof, 
 to study its development from the roots. 
 The age has some regard for what the 
 first disciples thought about Jesus, real- 
 izing that only through these beliefs can 
 we come at the ultimate fact. But it has 
 a greater regard for the fundamental 
 fact, an instinctive appreciation that the 
 deepest, most vital thing in Christianity 
 is the personality of Jesus himself. 
 
 It must be admitted that the quest is 
 difficult. The only documents we pos- 
 sess whose authorship is known, or 
 whose date falls within a generation of 
 
 [123] 
 
Cheistianitt Old and New 
 
 Jesus ' life-time, are the greater Epistles 
 of Paul. And the Epistles have only the 
 scantiest allusions to the ministry of 
 Jesus, no reference to any of his mighty 
 works, and barely a half dozen to some 
 of his less important sayings. Paul 
 himself explicitly renounced the attempt 
 to "know a Christ after the flesh." He 
 intentionally directed all attention to 
 "the Spirit," a present redemptive 
 agency identical to his mind with "the 
 Lord. " If we accept the view of one of 
 the ablest of New Testament scholars, 
 well-known for a popular Life of Jesus 
 as well as for a number of most schol- 
 arly technical works, even the personal 
 character of Jesus was a matter of un- 
 concern to Paul. 
 
 It may be definitely affirmed that what we 
 designate the moral and religious personal 
 character of Jesus had no influence or signi- 
 ficance whatever for the religious feeling 
 (Frommigkeit) of Paul.^ 
 
 And yet the same writer is careful to 
 point out that the distinctive feature in 
 Paul's doctrine identifying the risen 
 
 1 Bousset, Kyrios Christos, 1913, p. 143. 
 [124] 
 
Chabactebization of Jesus 
 
 Lord with "the Spirit" was its morahz- 
 ing and ethicizing effect. This resulted 
 from an extension of control by the 
 Spirit to the Christian's whole life. The 
 ordinary view in Paul's day attributed 
 the ecstatic phenomena of the gather- 
 ing for worship, 'prophecy,' 'tongues,' 
 'miracles' and the like, to 'the Spirit.' 
 Those thus gifted were designated 
 "spiritual." Paul's view was that "if 
 any man have not the Spirit of Christ 
 he is none of his. ' ' He maintained that 
 if a man did have this Spirit he must be 
 "led by" it, everywhere and always. 
 Christ must be "in him," and he "in the 
 Lord." The life which he lived in the 
 flesh must be no more his own, but 
 Christ living in him. Whatsoever he 
 did, in word or deed, he must ' ' do all in 
 the name of the Lord Jesus." And the 
 characteristic feature in 'spirituality,' 
 as Paul conceived it, was moral. Every 
 manifestation was to be tested. It must 
 be judged by a standard derived from 
 the actual character of 'the Lord.' And 
 the distinctive note is ministering 'love.' 
 That is a veritable summing up of what 
 
 [125] 
 
Christianity Old and New 
 
 Paul elsewhere refers to as "the law of 
 Christ," when in his farewell epistle he 
 entreats the Philippians by their love 
 for him and their loyalty to the Lord to 
 have in them 
 
 the mind which was also in Christ Jesus, who, 
 beiag in the form of God, counted it not a 
 booty to be lawlessly seized to be on an equal- 
 ity with God (like Adam, Gen. 3:1-5), but 
 emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, 
 beiag made in the likeness of men ; and being 
 found ia fashion as a man he humbled him- 
 self, becoming obedient even unto death, yea 
 the death of the cross. 
 
 This, then, is a characterization of Jesus. 
 The Apostle who could rise superior to 
 his time in its love of the spectacular 
 and the marvellous, and declare that the 
 abiding ' ' gifts ' ' of the Spirit were faith, 
 and hope, and love, with love as "the 
 greatest of these, ' ' had no small sense of 
 the value of the moral as against the 
 magical in his doctrine of the Spirit. 
 And when Paul made it the supreme and 
 only test of true discipleship that a man 
 must have and be led by "the Spirit of 
 Christ," always, and in "every word 
 and deed, ' ' he surely had some very dis- 
 
 [126] 
 
Chabacteeization of Jesus 
 
 tinctly definable "moral and religious 
 character" of Jesus in mind. 
 
 It is true that to Paul "the Spirit of 
 Christ" is the incarnate Spirit of God, 
 and in this sense there is weight in the 
 objection that the personal religious and 
 moral character of the historic Jesus 
 was to him a matter of indifference. 
 But it is easy to take such an affirmation 
 in a very misleading sense. In reality it 
 would have been impossible for Paul to 
 make this identification of 'Lord' and 
 ' Spirit, ' if the actual personal character 
 of the historic Jesus had not possessed 
 in extraordinary degree the moral and 
 religious qualities which are required in 
 a universal ethical standard. It is also 
 true that neither Paul, nor those to 
 whom he commends "the mind that was 
 in Christ Jesus," had personal knowl- 
 edge of the details of Jesus ' life. When, 
 for example, in II Cor. 5:21 Paul 
 refers to his own embassage of peace 
 from God as having for its content 
 the atoning sacrifice, and declares: 
 "Him who knew no sin he made to be 
 sin on our behalf ; that we might become 
 
 [127] 
 
Chkistianity Old and New 
 
 the righteousness of God in him," it 
 would be absurd to imagine enquiries on 
 the part of Paul or his predecessors into 
 the thirty unknown years of Jesus' life 
 in Nazareth to ascertain its faultless- 
 ness. That would have been a quest 
 almost as futile then as now. Only in the 
 much later period of Johannine apol- 
 ogetic could the raising of such an issue 
 seem anything less than a fooUsh provo- 
 cation of Jewish opponents to blas- 
 phemy. In John 8 : 46 ; 9 : 24 ff. the ques- 
 tion of Jesus ' sinlessness is indeed actu- 
 ally brought into debate. This, however, 
 is only later theological dialectic. The 
 context of II Cor. 5 : 21, especially when 
 compared with other Pauline references 
 to the atonement, such as Eom. 4 : 25 ; 
 5:1, 9, 19, and more particularly still 
 when compared with I Pt. 2 : 22-24, 
 shows that Paul is simply applying to 
 Jesus the attribute of the suffering Ser- 
 vant of Isa. 53 : 9, who (to adopt the ren- 
 dering of I Pt. 2:22) "did no sin,= 
 neither was guile found in his mouth." 
 
 2 The LXX render the Hebrew word for sin by 
 im/iia. II Cor. 5: 21 and I Pt. 2; 22 agree in rendering 
 d/xaprfa. 
 
 [128] 
 
Chaeacteeization of Jesus 
 
 In short, Paul himself is no longer in 
 immediate contact with the historical 
 Jesus. This must be frankly admitted. 
 He stands removed by at least one very 
 important stage from the personality he 
 reveres. He had "received" from 
 others the doctrine that Christ died for 
 our sins according to the Scriptures (I 
 Cor. 15 : 4). And this doctrine certainly 
 involves the viewing of Jesus' earthly 
 character and fate from a more or less 
 theoretical standpoint. Even so early 
 as the time when Paul himself "re- 
 ceived'" his impressions of the historic 
 Jesus, they were already ideaUzed, con- 
 ventionalized, conformed to a theoretical 
 standard. His ' ' sinlessness, " " humilia- 
 tion," obedient suffering for others, and 
 "exaltation," were traits of the suflfer- 
 Lag Servant of Isa. 52 : 13—53 : 12, who 
 brings both Israel and the Gentile world 
 into reconciliation with God by his 
 martyrdom, and is thereafter "lifted up 
 very high" and made to "divide the 
 spoil of the strong. ' ' 
 
 ^I Cor. 15: 3, irapiKa^ov; the word is the technical term 
 for transmission of traditional teaching. 
 
 [129] 
 
Cheistianitt Old and New 
 
 Whether Paul received this concep- 
 tion of Jesus as the 'suffering Servant' 
 from the original Galilean disciples, or 
 (as seems on philological grounds much 
 more probable) from the early com- 
 munity or communities of Hellenistic 
 believers, is a secondary question. The 
 fact is undeniable that his conception of 
 the historic Jesus has already passed 
 through at least one stage of idealiza- 
 tion. The admission may well seem 
 unwelcome. If even one earliest witness 
 is secondary, and presents a protrait 
 already conventionalized, what value 
 can attach to narratives of wholly un- 
 known authorship, originating at a 
 remove in time at least double that of 
 the Pauline letters? 
 
 Modern criticism recognizes but two 
 main sources of real and definite his- 
 torical value in the evangelic literature 
 of the early church, the Gospel of Mark, 
 and the source combined with it on dif- 
 ferent principles by Matthew and Luke 
 which critics designate by the symbol 
 Q. The Gospel of John because of its 
 late origin and didactic character cannot 
 
 [130] 
 
Chabacteeization of Jesus 
 
 be employed for the history of Jesus, 
 though of incomparable value for the 
 history of primitive belief about Jesus. 
 The Book of Acts employs sources of 
 greater value than the fourth Gospel 
 for the earlier history of belief about 
 Jesus; but again this is merely sec- 
 ondary. Of real attempts to describe 
 the ministry of Jesus we have but 
 Mark and Q, to set over against the 
 scanty allusions of Paul; and neither 
 Mark nor Q attempts a really historical 
 pen-portrait. These are works of reli- 
 gious edification, not of critical history; 
 defenses of the existing faith and prac- 
 tise of the community of believers 
 whence they proceed, not impartial re- 
 searches into their origins. They too 
 have their theoretical conceptions of 
 Jesus' character, career and fate, and 
 set in relief what bears out the theory. 
 
 If, then, the quest be so perplexing 
 and difi&cult, must not the result be too 
 uncertain for real value? Must we not, 
 however sadly, resign the attempt to 
 characterize the historical Jesus? The 
 answer to this question will largely 
 
 [131] 
 
Christianity Old and New 
 
 depend on the nature of the "value" 
 sought. If it be that with which the 
 secular historian is mainly concerned, 
 the results which can be safely predicted 
 will be meagre indeed. Not much more 
 of Jesus' public activity, his teaching, 
 career and fate, will be surely estab- 
 lished than might be gleaned from the 
 scanty references of Pliny, Tacitus, and 
 Suetonius. But the secular values are 
 not those which are now supposed to be 
 in question. Eeligion does require a 
 true portrait; and therefore every 
 attainable trait of historical realism will 
 be welcome. But it does not require a 
 physical portrait. What it needs to 
 know is the spiritual and moral element 
 in the character of Jesus. And the 
 spirit survives. A man's contempora- 
 ries are doubtless far better qualified 
 than later generations to give the sensu- 
 ous testimony of eye and ear. The lapse 
 of but a few years will suffice in case of 
 even the greatest men to obliterate the 
 memory of mere physical characteristics 
 unless memory be sustained by art. But 
 for spiritual portraiture the later gener- 
 
 [132] 
 
Chaeacteeization of Jesus 
 
 ation is apt to be the better qualified. 
 On points of character we may often 
 better rely on the judgment of the 
 second or third generation than on that 
 of the first. And in the case of the 
 greatest qualities of all we are wont to 
 find the rule a true one that "the things 
 which are seen are temporal, the things 
 which are not seen are eternal." Not 
 the tangible facts, not the physical linea- 
 ments, remain; but that subtle, intangi- 
 ble, elusive thing we designate 'charac- 
 ter.' Immortality, were it only of 
 fame, belongs not to the body, but to the 
 soul. From the standpoint of moral and 
 spiritual values, as regards faith and 
 hope and love, as regards personality 
 and character, heroism, virility, stedfast 
 devotion to principle and duty, Wash- 
 ington and LlqcoIq are better known 
 today than to their contemporaries. 
 And it is true not only of them but of 
 all the truly great, of all whose greatness 
 is inward and spiritual. The earthly 
 house of this tabernacle is dissolved, but 
 the inward man is renewed and glorified ; 
 it is clothed upon (to use Paul's mingled 
 
 [ 133 ] 
 
Chbistianity Old and New 
 
 metapliors) with a house not made with 
 hands, eternal in the heavens. 
 
 It is so with the character of Jesus. 
 The traits which remain are traits of 
 moral and rehgious value, for the obvi- 
 ous reason that those who became his 
 disciples were concerned with these 
 values, and only these. But the sub- 
 ordination — yes, even to disappearance 
 — of the physical and temporary is far 
 from invalidating the historicity of the 
 spiritual and moral. It proves only the 
 relative unimportance of the external. 
 At a period so early as to evoke per- 
 petual amazement, Jesus' followers felt 
 that no other representation could do 
 justice to his qualities of soul than to de- 
 scribe his career as incarnating every en- 
 dowment of the Spirit of God.* He was 
 apotheosized, and apotheosized by mono- 
 theistic Jews. Moreover, this apoth- 
 eosis (to judge by our oldest and most 
 trustworthy sources) was not because of 
 
 * This is the sense of the expression of Paul in Col. 
 1: 19: "It was the (divine) 'good pleasure' that the 
 whole 'fulness' (of spiritual agencies) should dwell 
 down in him"; and of Jn. 1: 14, 16. An early 
 uncanonical gospel expresses it by saying, ' ' The whole 
 fountain-head of the Spirit descended on him. ' ' 
 
 [134] 
 
Chabactbbization of Jesus 
 
 marvellous deeds of power, wMcli Paul 
 never refers to, but mainly on the basis 
 of moral qualities. If any say, But the 
 apotheosis was a consequence of the 
 resurrection; we reply. The apotheosis 
 was the resurrection. Jesus could not 
 have been "manifested as the Son of 
 God with power by the resurrection 
 from the dead" (Eom. 1:4), if to those 
 who received the manifestation he had 
 not first been known as one whose per- 
 sonality was worthy of such enthrone- 
 ment. In that transfiguring glory the 
 memory of earthly individual traits 
 could not long endure. Only that which 
 was God-like in Jesus remained. But 
 the God-like was not grafted in. The 
 earthly dissolved away. As Paul felt 
 regarding his own life, that it was "hid 
 with Christ in God," so the personality 
 of Jesus himself. Its traits of great- 
 ness were those that are "hid in 
 God," and find their manifestation 
 when that which is mortal has returned 
 to earth, and the spirit has returned to 
 God who gave it. 
 We must not, then, expect to find the 
 
 [135] 
 
Cheistianitt Old and New 
 
 lesser traits of Jesus' character re- 
 flected in the records that remain. Paul 
 and Mark and Q are our authorities, 
 and none of these is a primary source. 
 None aims to furnish the pen-portrait 
 the historian covets. The most that 
 criticism can effect is to identify the 
 model in each case. For the conception 
 of Paul is one, the conception of Mark 
 is another, and the conception of Q is 
 a third. Each is theoretic, because each 
 is maintained in the interest of an iden- 
 tification of Jesus with one of the exist- 
 ing conceptions of Messiah and his work. 
 Each is more or less affected by the 
 intermingling of other theoretic ideals, 
 so that we cannot speak of the Pauline 
 as purely a doctrine of Christ as ' Lord, ' 
 of the Markan as purely a doctrine of 
 Christ as ' Son of God, ' of Q 's as purely 
 a doctrine of Christ as the incarnate 
 'Wisdom of God,' the suffering 'Ser- 
 vant.' They are only predominantly 
 thus characterized. 
 
 But each is also historical. The titles, 
 and the conceptions for which they 
 stand, would not have been applied to 
 
 [136] 
 
Chaeactekization of Jesus 
 
 Jesus, or if applied would not have met 
 the acceptance necessary to their sur- 
 vival, if they had not been felt to be 
 appropriate. And the application was 
 so early that those who made and those 
 who accepted it could know by authentic 
 report, if not from personal experience, 
 to what degree the titles and ascriptions 
 were in keeping with the life. In short, 
 primitive Christology, with its titles and 
 ascriptions, its symbols and its Scrip- 
 ture fulfilments, is the luminous haze 
 through which the critic's eye must 
 penetrate for outlines of the historic 
 Jesus. Our dependence for any really 
 authentic portrait must be on writers 
 who had already enshrined him in the 
 central sanctuary of their devotion. And 
 for this purpose they used the sym- 
 bols and forms of thought made 
 sacred by long and hallowed use. As 
 the sculptor (particularly the ancient 
 sculptor) employs the conventionalized 
 forms of the great artists of the past, 
 often even rebaptizing old divinities 
 under new names into the service of 
 another faith, so the authors of our 
 
 [137] 
 
Christianity Old and New 
 
 Gospels, and the coiners of the primitive 
 titles of the glorified Jesus, employed 
 existing religious ideals and concepts, 
 whose development the scholar must 
 trace out if he would understand why 
 they were deemed appUcable and appro- 
 priate. 
 
 Such is the task to which scholars of 
 various schools are today addressing 
 themselves. For example, a study of 
 the primitive titles of Christ forms the 
 basis of the scholarly and thorough 
 work of Bousset, entitled, Kyrios Chris- 
 tos, the most recent contribution to the 
 subject. It is an essential factor in the 
 outstanding treatise of Schweitzer, The 
 Quest of the Historical Jesus, the repre- 
 sentative work of the school of "consist- 
 ent eschatologists, ' ' who account for the 
 apotheosis of the crucified Galilean by 
 attributing to Jesus himself the use of 
 the title ' Son of man' as his own "favor- 
 ite self-designation." Those who follow 
 the lead of the "consistent eschatolo- 
 gists" disclaim all connection with 
 psychopathic judgments of Jesus. They 
 are careful to point out that an adop- 
 
 [138] 
 
Chabacteeization op Jesus 
 
 tion by John the Baptist and Jesus of 
 the world-view of the writers of apo- 
 calypse, that somewhat morbid and de- 
 generate type of later prophecy, does 
 not involve forfeiture of onr respect. 
 Even if John and Jesns made the apoc- 
 alyptic expectation of the impending 
 world-cataclysm their own primary mes- 
 sage, they will still be the representative 
 religious leaders of a representative 
 age. This may surely be granted. "We 
 may admit that even on grounds accept- 
 able to the 'consistent eschatologist,' 
 it will still be possible to look to the 
 teaching of Jesus as uniquely great, even 
 if delusive in any literal acceptation; 
 and surely it will be possible still to 
 cherish toward his person that supreme 
 reverence and loyalty without which he 
 cannot be for any of us the ultimate 
 world-Eedeemer. Acceptance — ^yes, un- 
 yielding advocacy — by Wesley of the 
 current delusion of witchcraft scarcely 
 affects our reverence for his religious 
 leadership. So in the more vital in- 
 stance. It can be said by great and loyal 
 Christians that Jesus was an "ec- 
 
 [139] 
 
Chkistianity Old and New 
 
 static," a "visionary"; for great and 
 loyal Christians, men whose faith is 
 proved by their works, have said it, and 
 continue to say it. But there are none 
 such who can wish to say it; and those 
 who accept the view can have little fault 
 to find with a Munkacsy if (as protest- 
 ing faith declares) he has "painted the 
 Christ with the face of a fanatic." 
 
 The verdict of historical criticism can- 
 not be swerved by clamor. Only evi- 
 dence will affect it; and the world of 
 faith must rest in its ancient loyalty 
 while 'mythic' and ' eschatologist ' weigh 
 the relative significance of ancient titles 
 and their use. Meantime it may be well 
 to point out for 'the intelligent reader,' 
 who is not a technical adept, what differ- 
 ent characterizations of Jesus exist 
 within the compass of the New Testa- 
 ment. Such differences are not appar- 
 ent to eyes accustomed to read only 
 from the viewpoint of the harmonist. 
 When the assumption is that all sacred 
 writers must say the same thing lest 
 occasion be given to the enemy to blas- 
 pheme, comparisons are both odious and 
 
 [140] 
 
Chabacteeization of Jesus 
 
 sterile. If, however, we proceed upon 
 the critic's assumption that the wider 
 the contrast the broader the basis of 
 judgment, comparison may be expected 
 to yield results both ampler and more 
 secure than indiscriminate acceptance. 
 
 It is, for example, a fact of no merely 
 casual significance that the title Son of 
 man, so pervasive in the Gospels, espe- 
 cially in the personal utterances of 
 Jesus, utterly disappears in the Epistles, 
 whether those of Paul, which so far ante- 
 date the Gospels, or in those of post- 
 Pauline origin. Apart from the single 
 occurrence in Acts 7 : 56 and one in 
 Hegesippus ' similar account of the mar- 
 tyrdom of James, the "favorite self- 
 designation of Jesus" disappears as 
 soon as we pass beyond the limits of 
 Gospel literature.^ There are grounds 
 for believing the title ' Son of man, ' and 
 the conceptions involved in it, well 
 known to Paul; for he employs (I Cor. 
 15:27) the Psahn passage (Ps. 8:7) 
 
 5 It occurs once in a fragment of the Gospel accord- 
 ing to the Hebrews. Hegesippus also is a Palestinian 
 authority and used this Gospel. 
 
 [141] 
 
Cheistianity Old and New 
 
 applied in this sense by primitive be- 
 lievers," and bis doctrine of Christ as 
 the "heavenly man" (I Cor. 15:49) and 
 "last Adam" (I Cor. 15: 45) is probably 
 connected with rabbinic speculation re- 
 garding this transcendental Being of the 
 apocalyptic writers. Moreover he thinks 
 of Jesus as agent of the impending judg- 
 ment of God. The Thessalonians had 
 been taught in his message of evangel- 
 lization "to wait for God's Son from 
 heaven, even Jesus, who delivereth us 
 from the wrath to come," the Corin- 
 thians are warned that all "must stand 
 before the judgment seat of Christ." 
 These are doctrines involving an identi- 
 fication of Jesus with the apocalyptic 
 figure of Dan. 7:9, 13f., the "one like 
 unto a son of man," that is, one in hu- 
 man form, representative of Israel, as 
 against the monsters who are declared 
 to represent temporary and hostile king- 
 
 6 The author of Hebrews (85-90 A. D.) employs the 
 two Scriptures used by Paul in I Cor. 15: 25-27 as 
 the basis of his Christological argument, viz., Pss. 8 
 and 110. Ps. 8 is the basis of his argument that 
 Christ as the Son and human, is higher than angels, 
 Heb. 2: 5-18. 
 
 [142] 
 
Chabactebization of Jesus 
 
 doms. This mysterious Son of man, who 
 in the vision of Daniel is brought "on 
 the clouds of heaven" to the divine pres- 
 ence, occupies there one of the "thrones 
 of judgment" and enters upon his 
 "everlasting dominion." He figures to 
 some extent in later apocalypses, also, 
 and is certainly meant in the title which 
 plays so large a part in the Grospels, 
 though its meaning there is already 
 taken for granted, not explained. The 
 idea is also present by implication in 
 Paul, in spite of the entire absence of the 
 title; but the whole conception remains 
 in the background of his thought. It is 
 not a leading idea. The prophecies of 
 the Son of man are never appealed to. 
 It is barely possible in the single in- 
 stance of I Cor. 15 : 27 to detect an allu- 
 sion to Ps. 8 : 7. There is no reference 
 to Daniel, and no suggestion that Jesus 
 had ever given utterance to the claim on 
 his own behalf. The conclusion is irre- 
 sistible that the doctrine is rather ad- 
 mitted than advanced by Paul. It does 
 not furnish the soil for his own Chris- 
 tological thinking, which is rooted in 
 [143] 
 
Cheistianity Old and New 
 
 the Wisdom literature of Alexandrian 
 Judaism rather than in the Palestinian 
 apocalyptic. In general, the phenomena 
 of Pauline usage are altogether opposed 
 to the idea that Jesus ' own message was 
 primarily eschatological, or that he 
 himself made the title Son of man his 
 own "favorite self -designation. " 
 
 These are certainly important and 
 significant facts in the Christology of 
 Paul, our earliest and most authentic 
 witness. But their bearing on the ques- 
 tion of the character of the historical 
 Jesus is indirect, and principally nega- 
 tive. Our doubts of the claim of the 
 'consistent eschatologists ' to hold the 
 key to the entire problem are very de- 
 cidedly strengthened, but Paul's atti- 
 tude toward the 'Son of man' doctrine 
 throws very little light on the personal 
 character of Jesus. 
 
 The case is similar in one respect with 
 another messianic title rarely applied 
 to Jesus in early Christian literature, 
 but associated with a circle of ideas at 
 once so distinctive, so fundamental and 
 so irresistibly attested, that its primi- 
 
 [144] 
 
Chaeacteeization of Jesus 
 
 tive currency is undeniable. It is the 
 title 'Servant' or 'Child of God' ( Trais 
 0eov), derived from the poems of the 
 post-exilic Isaiah, wherein this figure of 
 the Servant — for the Hebrew term ebed 
 Yahweh has not the double sense of its 
 Greek rendering Trais KvpLov — ^is em- 
 ployed of the martyr-people, scattered 
 among the nations without inheritance, 
 like Levi among the tribes, a priest-na- 
 tion endowed only with knowledge of the 
 true God, but destined "by his knowl- 
 edge " to " justify many. ' ' In his humil- 
 iation judgment was taken away from 
 him, he was smitten, afflicted, despised, 
 oppressed. This, however, was willingly 
 suffered for the transgression of God's 
 people ; and not only of these, but even 
 of the Gentiles. These had been aston- 
 ished at his affliction, but they would 
 come to the light of his rising, and be 
 sprinkled with the purifying drops of 
 his "sin-offering." Thus, whereas he 
 had been brought low, "despised and 
 rejected of men, ' ' the ' Servant ' would be 
 ' ' exalted and be very high, ' ' he would be 
 given a portion with the great, and 
 
 [145] 
 
Christianity Old and New 
 
 would distribute the spoil of the strong : 
 "because be poured out his soul unto 
 death, and was numbered with the trans- 
 gressors, and bare the sin of many, and 
 made intercession for the transgress- 
 ors.'" 
 
 Like the title 'Son of man,' the title 
 'Servant of God' is completely wanting 
 from the Pauline Epistles. It is almost 
 wholly wanting from the New Testa- 
 ment, occurring but four times, all four 
 in a special section of the Book of Acts. 
 And yet we have the explicit testimony 
 of Paul himself that the doctrine formed 
 part of the fundamental gospel "re- 
 ceived ' ' by himself and preached in com- 
 mon by all (I Cor. 15 : 4). Even without 
 this explicit statement we might have 
 inferred from the subtle allusions and 
 
 , ' In the above paraphrase the rendering of the 
 Septuagint has been followed where it seems to con- 
 trol the thought of Paul; e.g., "divide the spoil of the 
 strong ones" (Is. 53: 12; cf. Col. 2: 15). The figure 
 of the "kingdom of priests" (Ex. 19: 6) controls 
 from Is. 52: 15 to 53: 12. The "pouring out" of 
 the life-blood, "bearing (literally "lifting ofC") the 
 sin of many," and "making intercession for the 
 transgressors" represent the function of the priest 
 in the " sin-offering " ; cf . Lev. 9 : 9, 18-24, and Eom. 
 4: 25; 5:1, 9; 8: 34; II Cor. 5: 21; Eph. 5: 2, etc. 
 
 [146] 
 
Chaeaoterization op Jesus 
 
 echoed Isaian phrases in Paul's epis- 
 tles that he applied the Isaian figure of 
 the suffering Servant to Jesus, just as 
 is more openly done in I Pt. 2 : 21-25. 
 But the absence of explicit use is even 
 more remarkable in this case than in 
 that of the title Son of man. Nowhere 
 does Paul appeal to the prophecy, nor 
 openly cite it. The whole conception 
 remains in the background of his 
 thought; this time, fortunately, accom- 
 panied by an explicit statement that it 
 did belong to the common primitive 
 "received" belief. 
 
 The case differs, however, from that 
 of the title 'Son of man' and its group 
 of connected ideas, in that the Isaian 
 figure of the 'Servant' has an earthly 
 ministry, a human character; whereas 
 the DanieHc 'Son of man' has none. 
 The characteristics of the Servant are 
 unmistakably distinctive. "Meekness of 
 wisdom" is his salient attribute. Unself- 
 ish service, uncomplaining acceptance 
 of wrong, humble obedience to the will 
 of Grod, even unto death, service not of 
 friends alone, but of enemies, even to the 
 
 [147] 
 
Chbistianity Old and New 
 
 pouring out of his life-blood for their 
 forgiveness. These are the distinctive 
 characteristics of the Servant. The law 
 of his action is to "bear others' bur- 
 dens." The "mind" that is in him is 
 that which "seeks not its own," but 
 "beareth all things, believeth all things, 
 hopeth all things, endureth all things." 
 It "suffereth long and is kind"; it "en- 
 vieth not," it "vaunteth not itself, is not 
 puffed up, is not provoked, taketh not 
 account of evil, rejoiceth not in unright- 
 eousness but rejoiceth with the truth." 
 In short, it is a spirit of the wisdom of 
 God, peaceable, and easy to be entreated, 
 a spirit of faith and hope, but above all 
 things and everlastingly it is a spirit of 
 unselfish, ministering love. 
 
 Can it be doubted whose spirit Paul 
 has in mind when he defines to the won- 
 der-loving Corinthians which are the 
 greater, the abiding "gifts of the 
 Spirit"? If doubt there could be, then 
 we should appeal to the few but signi- 
 ficant direct characterizations of Jesus 
 in his writings, the reference to the 
 "meekness and gentleness of Christ" 
 [148] 
 
Chaeacteeization op Jesus 
 
 (II Cor. 10:1), the declaration that 
 ' ' Christ also pleased not himself, but as 
 it is written, the reproaches of them that 
 reproached thee fell upon me" (Rom. 
 15 : 3), the appeal to ''the law of Christ" 
 in Gal. 6: If. as involving rulership "in 
 a spirit of meekness" for the help of 
 the weak. "We should appeal to the 
 whole depiction in Phil. 2 : 1-11 of the 
 second Adam, who not vaingloriously 
 "seeking his own things," nor counting 
 it (like the first Adam) "a booty to be 
 lawlessly seized to be equal with God," 
 "humbled himself and took on him the 
 form of a slave,* and became obedient 
 unto death, yea, even the death of the 
 cross." With all due reserve as to ques- 
 tions of derivation and authorship, we 
 should add also the word of Jesus cited 
 in Paul's farewell address to the elders 
 of the Ephesian Church (Acts 20 : 35) as 
 summing up the whole spirit of the Mas- 
 ter's primacy: "Ye ought to help the 
 
 8 Even here, PMl. 2:7, the Greek word is not the 
 ambiguous Trots = 'servant,' 'child,' but SoCXos 'slave,' 
 corresponding to the Septuagint rendering of Is. 53: 11, 
 'doing good service as a slave for many' (e^ 5ov}iejovTa 
 iroWois, ) 
 
 [149] 
 
Chkistianitt Old and New 
 
 weak, and to remember the words of the 
 Lord Jesus, how he himself said. It is 
 more blessed to give than to receive. ' ' 
 
 This embodies practically all that the 
 Pauline writings afford* to throw light 
 upon the character of Jesus as Paul 
 understood it. It is not intended to fur- 
 nish a pen-portrait. It is not specific 
 or detailed. It has the defect (if de- 
 fect it be) that it follows a conventional 
 model. Paul is thinking of Jesus in the 
 character of the 'suffering Servant' of 
 Isaiah. But how else should we expect 
 the character of Jesus to impress itself 
 on the men through whom we come in 
 touch with him, than in the mould of 
 such conventionalized forms? Is Paul 
 really thinking only of an abstraction 
 when he says, ' ' I live in the faith of the 
 Son of God, who loved me and gave him- 
 self up for me," because the phraseol- 
 ogy (7ra/3aSdi'7os iavrov virep ijjiov) is bor- 
 rowed from Is. 53:6 and 12! Is this 
 deep sense of personal devotion kindled 
 
 9 ' ' The forbearance " or " long-suffering ' ' of Jesus 
 is referred to in I Tim. 1:16; but the direct Pauline 
 authorship is more than doubtful. The agreement of 
 this allusion with the rest is, however, worth noting. 
 
 [150] 
 
Chaeactebization of Jesus 
 
 by the thought that the martyr-people, 
 the suffering Servant of the post-exihc 
 poem, had suffered for Paul's sake; or 
 that Jesus of Nazareth had so suffered? 
 Grant that Paul thinks of Jesus in the 
 character of the Servant, this at least 
 is sure : If the character of the historic 
 Jesus had not been distinguished for 
 the traits of "meekness and gentleness," 
 unselfish generosity, forbearance, min- 
 istering and forgiAdng love, the effort to 
 present him in this character would not 
 have met success. It could not, then, 
 have been part of the primitive "re- 
 ceived" Christology that he was the suf- 
 fering Servant of the Isaian poem who 
 "died for our sins according to the 
 Scriptures." Doubtless critical accu- 
 racy will demand that some discount be 
 made on the score of idealizing con- 
 formation to the conventional type rep- 
 resentative of the martyr-people. Still 
 we can hardly affirm that Paul has left 
 us in the dark as to "the moral and reli- 
 gious personal character of Jesus"; or 
 that it ' ' had no influence or significance ' ' 
 for his religious feeling, when he de- 
 
 [151] 
 
Cheistianity Old and New 
 
 clared "As many as are led by the Spirit 
 
 of Grod they are the sons of God 
 
 If any man have not the Spirit of Christ 
 he is none of his." When he held up 
 the standard of the true and abiding 
 "gifts of the Spirit" as being such as 
 are defined in the great lyric of love of 
 I Cor. 13, the delineation of Christlike- 
 ness was at least sufficiently definite for 
 the needs of religion. Paul did "know 
 him whom he had believed, ' ' and though 
 this knowledge was not "after the 
 flesh," yet he has given meaning to the 
 term "the spirit of Christ," a meaning 
 which is not useless for lack of moral 
 precision. 
 
 It is a wholly different conception 
 which predominates in the Gospel of 
 Mark and extends from it into the two 
 other Gospels which base their narrative 
 element almost exclusively upon Mark. 
 Here, as in Paul, the title 'Servant of 
 God' is completely wanting, and even 
 the conception has left but the scantiest 
 verbal traces. There is no specific ap- 
 peal to the Isaian prophecy, and 
 scarcely a reference to any scriptural 
 
 [152] 
 
Chakacteeizatioij' of Jesus 
 
 prediction of Jesus' fate; though Jesus 
 repeatedly predicts his own fate, and in 
 detail.^" But in two instances (Mk. 10: 
 45 and 14 : 24) the language and thought 
 in combination show that the suffering 
 Servant who bears the sin of "many" 
 in his death is remembered in connec- 
 tion with the sacrament. Elsewhere the 
 Gospel of Mark contains scarcely a trace 
 of this Isaian conception of Jesus. It 
 has no occurrence of the words for 
 'meekness' and 'gentleness,' nor any of 
 their cognates. Humility is never pre- 
 dicated of Jesus, nor is anything said 
 of his forbearance and long-suffering of 
 evil. There is no attempt to present 
 him in the role of the Servant as pro- 
 claiming glad tidings to the poor. His 
 distinctive and characteristic trait in 
 Mark is "authority." He looks round 
 upon the narrow and intolerant scribes 
 
 1" The references to scriptural prediction are Mk. 
 9: 12b and 14: 21, neither reference giving any clear 
 indication what ' ' Scripture " is in mind. The former 
 passage is rightly judged by most critics (so Bousset, 
 Kyrios Christos, p. It.) to be an early gloss. It 
 does not appear in Luke and is transposed in Mt. 
 17: 12 to its logical position. The sense requires that 
 it should stand after verse 13. It seems to have crept 
 in from the margin at the wrong place. 
 
 [153] 
 
Christianity Old and New 
 
 "witli anger, being grieved at the hard- 
 ening of their heart" (3:5). For those 
 who had said he had "an unclean 
 spirit" he has a warning of "sin that 
 hath never forgiveness" (3: 29). From 
 the superscription: "The beginning of 
 the gospel of Jesus Christ the Son 
 of God" (Mk. 1:1)" to the exclama- 
 tion of the centurion at the cross, 
 couched in the phraseology of hea- 
 then myth, "Truly this was a son 
 of God" (Mk. 15:39), Mark presents 
 his central figure in 'heroic' proportions. 
 The 'mighty works' of Jesus occupy the 
 foreground; the 'words of grace' of 
 Lukan story have almost disappeared. 
 There is no Sermon on the Mount, no 
 discourse on True Wealth, none on 
 Prayer, none on the Forgiving Father. 
 The two Markan examples of Jesus' 
 teaching are the chapter of parables 
 (Mk. 4), interpreted by the evangelist 
 (verses 10-12) as a preaching of judg- 
 ment against those who 'having eyes see 
 not, and having ears hear not' and the 
 
 11 Some ancient authorities omit ' 'the Son of God"; 
 but the conception reappears frequently in the Gospel. 
 
 [154] 
 
Chakacteeization of Jesus 
 
 utterance of doom upon Jerusalem (Mk. 
 13). The title, 'Son of man,' is freely 
 employed (in utterances of Jesus), but 
 never explained. It seems as much in 
 the background as in Paul. The title — 
 or rather the conception — to which all 
 leads up is introduced by Jesus himself 
 at a significant point. It is at the con- 
 clusion of the long chapter of disputing 
 in the temple (Mk. 12). Successively 
 Pharisee, Sadducee, and scribe have ad- 
 vanced, put their question, and retired 
 discomfited. ' ' No man, after that, ' ' says 
 the evangelist, "durst ask him any ques- 
 tion. " It is now Jesus ' turn to take the 
 aggressive. 
 
 And Jesus answered and said, as he taught 
 in the temple: How say the scribes that the 
 Christ is the son of David? David himself 
 said in the Holy Spirit : 
 The Lord said unto my Lord, 
 Sit thou on my right hand 
 Till I make thine enemies the footstool of thy 
 
 feet. 
 David himself calleth him LORD ; and whence 
 
 is he his son ? 
 
 "We have met before in Paul a re- 
 peated employment of Ps. 110 : 1 as ap- 
 
 [155] 
 
Chkistianity Old and New 
 
 plying to the exaltation of Jesus to "the 
 right hand of God," and in Acts 2: 34, 
 where again it applies to the "ascend- 
 ing into the heavens." We need not 
 here repeat the arguments employed 
 elsewhere" to show what others have 
 contended for on other grounds, that 
 this citation cannot be an authentic 
 utterance of Jesus in regard to himself. 
 It is the evangelist's adaptation of a 
 'messianic' Scripture, directed prima- 
 rily against the Jews, but also showing 
 his attitude toward that narrower con- 
 ception of Jesus which expressed itself 
 in the title 'Son of David.' 'Christ,' or 
 'Son of Grod,' rather than 'Lord' is 
 Mark's distinctive messianic title; but 
 this paragraph fully expresses his own 
 Christology, and sounds the keynote for 
 his own conception of Christ. Jesus, 
 from the time of his adoption by the 
 Spirit" and the heavenly Voice, became 
 a superhuman authority. He already 
 
 12 Bacon, Beginnings of Gospel Story, p. 175 ; cf . 
 Bousset, Kyrios Christos, p. 51. 
 
 13 Mark uses the title ' Son of man ' frequently, but 
 without explanation of its meaning. He seems to 
 regard it as involving an enigmatic claim of authority. 
 
 [156] 
 
Chaeactebization of Jesus 
 
 sits at the right hand of God, from 
 henceforth expecting until his enemies 
 be made the footstool of his feet. There 
 is more of defiance than of humility in 
 the parting word of Jesus to the assem- 
 bled "chief priests and scribes and eld- 
 ers of the people" when, according to 
 Mark, in answer to the challenge of the 
 high priest: "Art thou the Christ, the 
 son of the Blessed?" he answers : 
 
 I am: and ye shall see the Son of man 
 sitting at the 'right hand of power' and com- 
 ing with the 'clouds of heaven.' 
 
 The whole Gospel of Mark is a charac- 
 terization of Jesus. It is written for 
 that purpose far more than to convey 
 his teaching. The traits we have em- 
 phasized in the portrait are indeed not 
 the only ones. Jesus receives the httle 
 ones, rebuking the disciples who would 
 forbid them, looks lovingly on the kneel- 
 ing figure of the rich young man, sets the 
 example of unselfish devotion unto death 
 for the "ransom of many." But the 
 salient traits in the Markan portrait are 
 traits of heroism, virility, and power. 
 
 [157] 
 
Cheistianity Old and New 
 
 The contrast between this conception 
 and that of Paul could hardly be 
 stronger within the limits of fidelity to 
 historic fact. 
 
 And true to fact it is. We may even 
 say that the fate of Jesus at the hands 
 of Jewish and Eoman authorities would 
 be unaccountable had his character and 
 career been only such as delineated 
 by Paul. Certainly the stormy and im- 
 petuous devotion of his followers, which 
 within a few days of the tragedy of Cal- 
 vary had already acclaimed him as 
 "seated at the right hand of power," 
 and about to "come with the clouds of 
 heaven," would be utterly unaccount- 
 able. But the historicity is not apart 
 from idealization. Mark, too, has his 
 ideal conception of "the Christ the Son 
 of God" and gives what he has of cur- 
 rent historical tradition in the manner 
 and to the extent that will best sub- 
 serve the identification. This, too, be- 
 longs to the nature of the source; but 
 it does not invalidate the testimony. 
 Mark's story of Jesus' career has little 
 to tell of the inward man. But it throws 
 
 [158] 
 
Chaeactekization op Jesus 
 
 new light upon it by giving the character 
 its setting. Little indeed should we 
 know of Jesus as he was, but for the 
 Gospel of Mark. 
 
 And lastly there is Q. The work of 
 critical analysis is still so incomplete 
 that one can hardly speak with assur- 
 ance. And yet the leading facts are 
 assured. It is an older source than 
 Mark, older perhaps than the greater 
 epistles of Paul. And it is by no means 
 a mere collection of the precepts of 
 Jesus. Critics have maintained, on 
 grounds not convincing to the present 
 writer, that it had no story of the pas- 
 sion and resurrection. But as to its 
 introduction of the person and work of 
 Jesus there can be no dispute. It not 
 only began its story of Jesus ' career with 
 an account of his baptism and tempta- 
 tion, but placed the nature of his minis- 
 try in explicit contrast Avith the Bap- 
 tist's, reproaching the generation which 
 was "stumbled in him," because it 
 called the one 'demon-ridden," and the 
 other "a glutton, a friend of publicans 
 and sinners." Q not only characterizes 
 
 [159] 
 
Christianity Old and New 
 
 Jesus ' career and ministry. It places it 
 in careful, systematic antithesis to the 
 'eschatological' ministry of John. The 
 Baptist had come like Jonah to the Nine- 
 vites crying, Yet forty days and Nine- 
 veh shall be destroyed. His ministry 
 was a sign from God to an unbelieving 
 generation, but not the greatest sign. 
 The works of mercy and grace, the glad 
 tidings to the poor, forgiveness and 
 restoration, the winning gracious appeal 
 of a divine Father's love, which consti- 
 tuted the ministry of Jesus, were "a 
 greater matter than Solomon," a final 
 plea of "the Wisdom of God" whose 
 function is to seek out and save the 
 erring. "Wisdom's children" receive 
 it." 
 
 The conception of Jesus presented in 
 Q is that of the Servant of God who is 
 the incarnation of His redeeming Spirit 
 of Wisdom. This was made evident in 
 its opening scenes. Its account of his 
 
 1* In this paraphrase of the Q discourse on Israel's 
 'stumbling' at the Christ (Mt. 11 and Lk. 7: 18-35), 
 it has been assumed without the demonstration pub- 
 lished elsewhere (Bacon, Sermon on the Mount, p. 
 232) that the Sign of Jonah had original reference 
 to the ministry, not of Jesus, but of the Baptist. 
 
 [160] 
 
Chaeacteeization of Jesus 
 
 baptism (if we may judge from sur- 
 viving remnants) v?as framed on the 
 model of the Isaian scene of the calling 
 of the Servant-son, endowed with the 
 spirit of divine wisdom. We have rea- 
 son to believe the rendering of the Isaian 
 passage (Is. 42: 1-4) was that employed 
 in Mt. 12 : 18-21 for another purpose : 
 
 Behold my Servant ( wais ) whom I have 
 chosen, 
 
 My Beloved on whom my soul fixed her choice ; 
 
 I will put my Spirit upon him, 
 
 And he shall proclaim judgment to the Gen- 
 tiles. 
 
 He shall not strive nor cry, 
 
 Nor shall any hear his voice ia the street^, 
 
 A bruised reed will he not break, 
 
 Nor smoking flax will he quench. 
 
 Till he bring forth judgment unto victory; 
 
 And in his name the Gentiles shall hope. 
 
 The Markan story of the descent of 
 the Spirit on Jesus at his baptism and 
 the Voice from heaven proclaiming 
 "Thou art my Son, the Beloved, on 
 whom my soul fixed her choice" is but 
 a pragmatized form of the Isaian con- 
 ception, just as the story of the tempta- 
 [161] 
 
Christianity Old and New 
 
 tion which followed is abbreviated and 
 reduced to hard and concrete fact in 
 the two verses Mk. 1 : 12f . In Q a three- 
 fold contrast is drawn between the 
 career of the Servant-son as conceived 
 by men, and as conceived by the wisdom 
 of God. In two of the three the figure of 
 the Servant-son is the Isaian, as repro- 
 duced and developed in the pre-Chris- 
 tian Alexandrian writing, the Wisdom of 
 Solomon, where the title is used not in 
 the sense of 'Servant,' but 'Son' of God 
 and interchangeably with vtos? as a de- 
 signation of Israel, God's agent for 
 "giving the race of men the incorrupt- 
 ible light of the law. ' '" Here we read of 
 Israel's forty-year temptation in the 
 wilderness, where they had lived by 
 God's "all-nourishing bounty," 
 
 That thy sons whom thou lovedst, Lord, 
 
 might learn 
 That it is not the growth of earth's fruits that 
 
 nourisheth men, 
 But that thy word preserveth them that trust 
 
 thee." 
 
 15 Sap. 18: 4. 
 18 Sap. 16 : 25f . 
 
 [162] 
 
Chabacterization of Jesus 
 
 And still more distinctly does the de- 
 scription of Israel's humiliation as the 
 martyr-people in Wisdom 2 : 12-20 pre- 
 sent the lesson of the Gospel temptation 
 of the ' ' Son" to expect supernatural aid. 
 In Wisdom 2 : 12-20 the wicked say of 
 Israel, the Servant-son: 
 
 Let us lie in wait for the Righteous man, 
 
 Because he is of disservice to us 
 
 And is contrary to our works 
 
 And upbraideth us with sins against the law 
 
 And layeth to our charge sins against our 
 
 discipline. 
 He professeth to have knowledge (yvwa-is) of 
 
 God 
 And nameth himself Servant (irais) of the 
 
 Lord. 
 He became to us a reproof of our thoughts. 
 He is grievous unto us even to behold, 
 Because his life is unlike other men's, 
 And his paths are of strange fashion. 
 We were accounted of him as base metal, 
 And he abstaineth from our ways as from 
 
 uncleannesses. 
 The latter end of the righteous he calleth 
 
 happy 
 And he vaimteth that God is his father. 
 Let us see if his words be true. 
 And let us try what shall befall in his ending. 
 
 [163] 
 
Christianity Old and New 
 
 For if the Righteous man is God's son ( vlos ), 
 
 He will uphold him 
 And He will deliver him out of the hand of 
 
 his adversaries. 
 With outrage and torture let us put him to 
 
 the test 
 That we may know his gentleness 
 And may test his patience under wrong. 
 Let us condemn him to a shameful death, 
 For he shall be visited according to his words. 
 
 What Q presented as the career and 
 fate of "the Son of God" might be in- 
 ferred from the temptation-story with 
 its rejection of "the kingdoms of the 
 world and the glory of them," and its 
 acceptance of hunger and danger as the 
 predestined way that the Son of God 
 must go. But we are not left to con- 
 jecture as to the nature of this career. 
 It is the typical career which in the 
 Alexandrian Wisdom literature belongs 
 to the spirit of divine Wisdom incarnate 
 in a series of servants (TratSes) of the 
 Lord from Noah to Solomon. When in 
 Q (Mt. 11: 25-30 and Lk. 10: 21f.) there 
 is placed in the mouth of Jesus a typical 
 Hymn of Wisdom celebrating the knowl- 
 edge of God given to "the Son," and 
 
 [164] 
 
Chabactebization op Jesus 
 
 commending it in phraseology taken 
 largely verbatim from tlie Wisdom writ- 
 ers" to "babes," this is meant as a 
 commendation of tbe teaching of Jesus 
 as a whole. It is the yoke of the lowly 
 and meek. It offers eternal rest to the 
 sonl. The poem can hardly have stood 
 elsewhere in Q than at the conclusion of 
 Jesus ' teaching. And when in the same 
 Q source a typical Wisdom-plaint is 
 also used (Mt. 23: 34-39 and Lk. 11:49- 
 51; 13:341), denouncing the unbeliev- 
 ing generation whose hands are stained 
 with the blood of the prophets, and espe- 
 cially Jerusalem, vainly visited with re- 
 peated loving entreaty, Jerusalem whose 
 house is now forsaken of its divine ten- 
 ant, we cannot be in doubt as to the kind 
 of fate suffered by "the Son of God" 
 whom the Baptism and Temptation had 
 so poetically introduced upon the scene. 
 It is almost a superfluous note when one 
 of our two reporters of the ancient Gos- 
 pel makes the utterance in express terms 
 
 17 On the literary relations of Mt. 11 : 25-30, see 
 especially Von Norden, Agnostos Iheos, 1913, pp. 
 277-308. 
 
 [165] 
 
Chkistiaktity Old and New 
 
 a quotation from "The Wisdom of 
 God.'"« 
 
 In short, the Q source goes further 
 than any in the characterization of Jesus 
 as regards his "personal religious and 
 moral character," and at the same time 
 goes to at least equal length in the em- 
 ployment of a conventional ideal. In 
 the Alexandrian Wisdom literature the 
 Isaian suffering Servant had become 
 Israel the Servant-son," whose preroga- 
 tive was to be the 'dwelling-place' of the 
 divine Wisdom-Spirit. In Q this con- 
 ception was applied to Jesus, whose mar- 
 tyr-career exemplified the ideal of Isaiah 
 and of the Alexandrian poets as well. 
 Were idealization indeed fatal to his- 
 toric truth, then Q's idealized portrait 
 of Jesus would be but a dream, to place 
 beside the fainter outline we derive from 
 Paul, and the cruder from Mark. But 
 there are critical grounds cogent enough 
 to win from scholars as able and as di- 
 
 18 Lk. 11 : 49. 
 
 19 no(s and vlis are used interchangeably in Wis- 
 dom of Solomon. The sense of 'servant' (Heb. ehed) 
 is lost. The dropping of ttois in favor of the unam- 
 biguous vlis is the final third stage. 
 
 [166] 
 
Chaeacteeization of Jesus 
 
 verse in their views as Pfleiderer and 
 Harnack the belief that the greater 
 Pauline letters themselves show literary- 
 dependence upon Q.^° This remains one 
 of the problems of criticism. For the 
 present let the fact suffice that with Q 
 we return to a conception of the charac- 
 ter of Jesus which like that of Paul is 
 fundamentally based on the Isaian figure 
 of the suffering Servant of God, who by 
 his knowledge justifies many, making his 
 soul an offering for sin. 
 
 At the date to which a gospel source 
 must be assigned that if not employed 
 by Paul himself was certainly largely 
 employed by both Matthew and Luke, 
 and only less certainly, though scantily 
 and crudely, by Mark, the adoption of 
 such an ideal as the basis of a character- 
 ization of Jesus is not within the prov- 
 ince of poetic fancy. Had it not corre- 
 sponded with actual recollection it could 
 
 20 The passage in question is the famous Hymn of 
 Wisdom above referred to, Mt. 11 : 25-30 and Lk. 10 : 
 21f., compared with I Cor. 1: 18-25; 2: 1. See Har- 
 nack, Spriiche u. Beden Jesu, p. 210, n. 1, quoting 
 Pfleiderer, Urchrist, 12, p. 435f. [Eng. Transl., The 
 Sayings of Jesus, p. 301, note 1.] 
 
 [167] 
 
Christianity Old and New 
 
 not have survived. It is this characteri- 
 zation of Paul and what we might call 
 the 'Hellenistic,' perhaps even the 'Alex- 
 andrian,' gospel source, which holds 
 foremost place in all the writings of the 
 sub-apostolic age not actually based up- 
 on the Gospel of Mark itself. It must be 
 placed alongside the Markan, its sane 
 and sober view of the ministry, its more 
 poetic and mystical doctrine of Christ's 
 person and the significance of his suf- 
 fering must be weighed along with 
 the eschatological and "wonder-loving" 
 Mark, if we would form a just and con- 
 sistent and worthy conception. Only 
 thus can we appreciate the historic 
 Jesus, as he was in his moral and 
 inward character. 
 
 Is this historic Jesus, dimly and yet 
 truly and surely seen through the trans- 
 figuring haze of love and adoration, a 
 true Redeemer of the world ? That ques- 
 tion will be answered as we answer one 
 more practical and real: Is his doctrine 
 of the kingdom ultimate as a social, his 
 doctrine of sonship ultimate as an indi- 
 vidual, ideal! If so, their representative 
 
 [168] 
 
Chabacteeization of Jesus 
 
 is one in whom loyalty can never meet 
 disappointment. Their representative 
 is "Christ Jesus, who before Pontins 
 Pilate witnessed the good confession." 
 
 The End. 
 
 [169]